The Rending

== THE RENDING ==
=== By James Oppenheim ===
From The Dial 1920
There is a bitter moment in youth, and this
moment had come to Paul. He had passed his mother's door without entering or
even calling out to her, and had climbed on doggedly to the top floor. Now he
was shut in his sanctuary, his room, sitting at his table. His head rested on a
hand, his dark eyes had an expression of confused anguish, a look of guilt and
sternness mingled.... He could no more have visited his mother, he told
himself, than he could voluntarily have chopped off his hand. And yet he was
amazed at the cruelty in himself, a hard cold cruelty which prompted the
thought: "Even if this means her death or my death, I shall go through
with this."
It was because of such a feeling that he
couldn't talk to his mother. Paul was one of those sensitive youths who are
delivered over to their emotions--swept now and then by exaltation, now by
despair, now by anguish or rage, always excessive, never fully under control.
He was moody, and always seemed unable to say the right thing or do the right thing.
Suddenly the emotion used him as a mere instrument and came forth in a shameful
nakedness. But the present situation was by all odds the most terrible he had
faced: for against the cold cruelty, there throbbed, warm and unutterably
sweet, like a bird in a nest of iron, an intense childish longing and love....
You see, Paul was nineteen, the eldest son
in a family of four, and his mother was a widow. She was not poor; they lived
in this large comfortable house on a side street east of Central Park. But
neither was she well off, and Paul was very magnanimous; he had given up
college and gone to work as a clerk. Perhaps it wasn't only magnanimity, but also
pride. He was proud to be the oldest son, to play father, to advise with his
mother about the children, to be the man of the house. Yet he was always a mere
child, living, as his two sisters and his brother lived, in delicate response
to his mother's feelings and wishes. And he wanted to be a good son: he thought
nothing was more wonderful than a child who was good to his mother. She had
given all for her children, they in return must give all to her. But against
this spirit of sacrifice there arose a crude, ugly, healthy, monstrous force, a
terrible thing that kept whispering to him: "You can't live your mother's
life: you must live your own life."
Once, when he had said something conceited,
his mother had flashed out at him: "You're utterly selfish." This
stung and humiliated him. Yet this terrible monster in himself seemed concerned
about nothing but self. It seemed a sort of devil always tempting him to eat of
forbidden fruit. Lovely fruit, too. There was Agnes, for instance: Agnes, a
mere girl, with a pigtail down her back, daughter of the fishman on Third Avenue.
His mother held Agnes in horror. That her
son should be in love with a fishman's daughter! And all the child in Paul,
responding so sensitively to his mother's feelings, agreed to this. He had
contempt for himself, he struggled against the romantic Thousand and One Nights
glamour, which turned Third Avenue into a Lovers' Lane of sparkling lights. He struggled,
vainly. Poetry was his passion: and he steeped himself in Romeo and Juliet, and
in Keats's St. Agnes' Eve and The Pot of Basil.... It was then the great
struggle with his mother began, and the large house became a gloomy vault,
something dank, damp, sombre, something out of Poe, where a secret duel to the
death was being fought, mostly in undertones and sometimes with sharp cries and
stabbing words.
Now, this evening, with his head in his
hand, he knew that the end had already been reached. To pass his mother's door
without a greeting, especially since he was well aware that she was ill, was so
unprecedented, so violent an act, that it seemed to have the finality of something
criminal. His mother had said two days ago: "This can't go on. It is
killing me."
"All right," he flashed. "It
sha'n't. I'll get out."
"I suppose you'll marry," she
said, "on fifteen a week."
He spoke bitterly:
"I'll get out of New York altogether.
I'll work my way through college...."
She almost sneered at the suggestion. And
this sneer rankled. He telegraphed his friend, at a little freshwater college,
and Samuel telegraphed back: "Come." That day he drew his money from
the bank, and got his tickets for the midnight sleeper. And he did all this
with perfect cruelty....
But now the time had come to go, and things
were different. An autumn wind was blowing out of the park, doubtless carrying
seeds and dead leaves, and gusting down the street, blowing about the sparkling
lamps, eddying in the area-ways, rapping in passing on the loose windows.... The
lights in the houses were all warm, because you saw only the glowing yellow
shades: Third Avenue was lit up and down with shop-windows, and people were
doing late marketing. It was a night when nothing seemed so sweet, or sane, or
comfortable, as a soft-lighted room, and a family sitting together. Soft
voices, familiarity, warm intimacy, the feeling of security and ease, the
unspoken welling of love and understanding: these belonged to such a night,
when the whole world seemed dying and there was only man to keep the fires
burning against death.
And so, out of its tomb, the little child
in Paul stepped out again, beautiful and sweet with love and longing. And this
little child said to him: "Sacrifice--surrender--let the hard heart melt
with pity.... There is no freedom except in love, which gives all." For a
moment Paul's vivid imagination, which presented everything to him like works
of dramatic art, pictured himself going down the steps, as once he had done,
creeping to his mother's bed, flinging himself down, sobbing and moaning,
"Forgive me. Forgive me."
But just then he heard the stairs creak and
thought that his eldest sister was coming up to question him. His heart began a
frightened throbbing: he shook with a guilty fear, and at once he saved himself
with a bitter resurgence of cruel anger. He hated his sister, he told himself,
with a livid hatred. She always sided with his mother. She was bossy and smart
and high and mighty. He knew what he would do. He jumped up, went to the door,
and locked it. So--she could beat her head on the door, for all he cared!
He packed. He got out his valise, and
filled it with his necessaries. He would let the rest go: the books, the old
clothes. He was going to start life all over again He was going to wipe out the
past....
When he was finished, he anxiously opened
his pocket-book to see if the tickets were safe. He looked at them. It was now
ten o'clock. Two hours--and then the long train would pull out, and he would be
gone.... To-morrow morning they'd come downstairs. His sister probably would
sit at the foot of the table, instead of himself. The table would seem small with
himself gone. Perhaps the house would seem a little empty. Automatically they
would wait for the click of his key in the front door lock at seven in the
evening. He would not come home at all....
His mother might die. She had told him this
was killing her.... It was so easy for him to go, so hard for her to stay....
She had invested most of her capital of hopes and dreams and love in him: he
was the son; he was the first man. And now he was shattering the very structure
of her life....
Easy for him to go! He slumped into the
chair again, at the table.... The wind blew strongly, and he knew just how the
grey street looked with its spots of yellow sparkling lamplight; its shadows,
its glowing windows.... He knew the smell of the fish-shop, the strange raw sea-smell,
the sight of glittering iridescent scales, the beauty of lean curved fishes,
the red of broiled lobsters, the pink-cheeked swarthy fishman, the dark
loveliness of Agnes.... He had written to Agnes. His mother didn't know of it,
but he was done with Agnes. Agnes meant nothing to him. She had only been a way
out, something to cling to, something to fight for in this fight for his
life....
Fight for his life! Had he not read of this
in books, how the young must slay the old in order that life might go on, just
as the earth must die in autumn so that the seeds of spring may be planted? Had
he not read Ibsen's Master Builder, where the aging hero hears the dread doom
which youth brings, "the younger generation knocking at the door"? He
was the younger generation, he was the young hero. And now, at once, a vivid dramatization
took place in his brain: it unwound clear as hallucination. He forgot
everything else, he sat there as a writer sits, living his fiction, making
strange gestures with face and hands, muttering words under his breath....
In this phantasm, he saw himself rising,
appearing a little older, a little stronger, and on his face a look of divine
compassion and understanding, yet a firmness inexorable as fate. He repeated
Hamlet's words: "For I am cruel only to be kind." Blame life, fate,
the gods who decree that a man must live his own life: don't blame me.
He unlocked the door, crossed the big hall,
stepped down the stairs. His mother's door was shut. The younger generation
must knock at it. He knocked. A low, sad voice said: "Come." He
opened the door.
This was the way it always was: a pin-point
of light by the western window, a newspaper pinned to the glass globe of the
gas-jet to shield his mother's eyes, the wide range of warm shadow, and in the
shadow the two beds. But his sister was not in one of them. His mother was alone....
He went to the bedside....
"Mother!"
"Paul!"
He took her hand.
"Are you feeling better?" he
asked.
"A little more quiet, Paul...."
"I am very glad...."
Now there was silence.... Then he spoke
quietly, honestly, candidly. It was the only way. Why can't human beings be
simple with one another, be sweetly reasonable? Isn't a little understanding
worth more than pride and anger? To understand is to forgive. Surely any one
must know that.
Starting to speak, he sat down on the chair
beside the bed, still holding her hand....
"Mother, come let's talk to one
another. You think perhaps I have stopped loving you. It isn't true. I love you
deeply. All this is breaking my heart. But how can I help it? Can't you see
that I am young, and my life all before me? The best of your life is behind
you. You have lived, I haven't. You have tasted the sweet mysteries of love,
the agonies of death and birth, the terrors of lonely struggle. And I must have
these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't help myself. I am like a leaf in the
wind, like a rain-drop in the storm.... How can you keep me here? If you compel
me, I'll become a shadow, all twisted and broken. I won't be a man, but a
helpless child. Perhaps I shall go out of my mind. And what good will that do
you? You will suffer more if I stay, than if I go. Oh, understand me, mother,
understand me!"
His mother began to cry. She spoke at first
as she always spoke, and then more like a mother in a poem.
"Understand? What do you understand?
You know nothing about life. Oh, I only wish you had children and your children
turned against you! That's the only way that you will ever learn.... I worked
for you so hard. I gave up everything for my children. And your father died,
and I went on alone, a woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I
had? Sacrifice, toil, tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year after
year, for five, six years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught you at my
knees. I have known the bitterness of child-bearing, and the bitter cry of
children.... I have fought alone for my little ones.... And you, Paul! You who
were the darling of my heart, my little man, you who said you would take your
father's place and take care of me and of your sisters and brother! You who
were to repay me for everything; to give me a future, to comfort my old age,
the staff I leaned on, my comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up:
so proud to see your pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that
you would have fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest mother
in the world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one who cares for nothing
but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a flitter from place to
place, and I--I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to wither in
bitterness.... I gave everything to you--and you--you give back despair,
loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and destroy me for the
gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand it--the piercing anguish,
the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I feel the chill of death creeping
over me...."
The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He
pressed her hand now with both of his.
"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I
have understood always, I have tried so hard to help you. I have tried so hard
to be a good son. But this is something greater than I. We are in the hands of
God, mother, and it is the law that the young must leave the old. Why do
parents expect the impossible of their children? Does not the Bible say, 'You
must leave father and mother, and cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother
and grandpa, to go to your husband? Can't you remember when you were young, and
your whole soul carried you away to your own life and your own future? Mother,
let us part with understanding, let us part with love."
"But when are you going, Paul?"
"To-night."
His mother flung her arms about him
desperately and clung to him....
"I can't let you go, Paul," she
moaned.
"Oh, mother," he sobbed.
"This is breaking my heart...."
"It is Agnes you are going to,"
she whispered.
"No, mother," he cried. "It
is not Agnes. I am going to college. I shall never marry. I shall still take
care of you. Think--every vacation I will be back here...."
She relaxed, lay back, and his inventions
failed. He had a confused sense of soothing her, of gentleness and
reconciliation, of a last good-bye....
And now he sat, head on hand, slowly
realizing again the little gas-lit room, the shaking window, the autumn wind. A
throb of fear pulsed through his heart. He had passed his mother's door without
greeting her. And there was his valise, and here his tickets. And the time? It
was nearly eleven.... A great heaviness of futility and despair weighed him down.
He felt incapable of action. He felt that he had done some terrible deed--like
striking his mother in the face--something unforgivable, unreversible, struck
through and through with finality.... He felt more and more cold and brutal,
with the sullenness of the criminal who can't undo his crime and won't admit
his guilt....
Was it all over, then? Was he really
leaving? Fear, and a prophetic breath of the devastating loneliness he should
yet know, came upon him, paralyzed his mind, made him weak and aghast. He was
going out into the night of death, launching on his frail raft into the barren
boundless ocean of darkness, leaving the last landmarks, drifting out in utter nakedness
and loneliness.... All the future grew black and impenetrable; but he knew
shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt loomed there, waiting
for him. He knew that he was about to understand a little of life in a very
ancient and commonplace way: the way of experience and of reality: that at
first hand he was to have the taste against his palate of that bitterness and
desolation, that terror and helplessness, which make the songs and fictions of
man one endless tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer who comes to
the condemned man's cell on the morning of the execution. There was no escape.
No end, but death....
He was leaving everything that was comfort
in a bleak world, everything that was safe and tried and known in a world of
unthinkable perils and mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on
the inside of his mother's house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how
human were the cords that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the
fear and deadly helplessness he felt.... What could he have been about all these
months of darkening the house, of paining his mother and the children, of
bringing matters to such inexorable finalities? Was he sane? Was he now
possessed of some demon, some beast of low desire? Freedom? What was freedom?
Could there be freedom without love?
And now, as he sat there, there came slow
deliberate footsteps on the stairs. There was no mistaking the sounds. It was
Cora, his older sister.... His heart palpitated wildly, he shook with fear, the
colour left his cheeks, and he tried to set his face and his throat like flint not
to betray himself. She came straight on. She knocked.
"Paul," she said in a peremptory
tone, clothed with all the authority of his mother....
He grew cold all over, his eyelids
narrowed; he felt brutal....
"What is it?" he asked hard.
"Mother wants you to come right
down."
"I will come," he said.
Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly,
heavily, like the man who must now face the executioner.... He stuck his
pocketbook back in his coat and picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked
about the room. Then he unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and
went into the lighted hall.
And as he descended the steps he felt ever
smaller before the growing terror of the world. Never had he been more of a
child than at this moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out
and give over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he
done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this strange and
frightful experience? He went on, lower and lower....
The door of his mother's room was a little
open. It was all as it had always been--the pin-point of light, the shading
newspaper, the sick-room silence, the warm shadow.... He paused a second to
summon up strength, to combat the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He
tried with all his little boyish might to smooth out his face, to set it straight
and firm. He pushed the door, set down the valise, entered: pale, large-eyed,
looking hard and desperate.
He did not see his sister at all, though
she sat under the light. His mother he hardly saw: had the sense of a towel
binding her head, and the dim form under the bedclothes. He stepped
clumsily--he was trembling so--to the foot of her bed, and grasped the brass
rail for support....
His mother's voice was low and thick; a
terrible voice. Her throat was swollen, and she could speak only with
difficulty. The voice accused him. It said plainly: "It was you did
this."
She said: "Paul, this has got to
end."
His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his
words came with such deadly coldness....
"It will end to-night."
"How ... to-night?"
"I'm leaving.... I'm going
west...."
"West.... Where?"
"To Sam's...."
"Oh," said his mother....
There was a long cruel silence. He shut his
eyes, overcome with a sort of horror.... Then she turned her face a little
away, and he heard the faintly breathed words....
"This is the end of me...."
Still he said nothing. She turned toward
him, with a groan.
"Have you nothing to say?"
Again he spoke with deadly coldness....
"Nothing...."
She waited a moment: then she spoke....
"You have no feelings. When you set
out to do a thing, you will trample over every one. I have never been able to
do anything with you. You may become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who
loves you, any one who gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds
you--always.... I was a fool to give birth to you: a great fool to count on
you.... Well, it's over.... You have your way...."
He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty,
afraid, horrified, his whole soul beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold
trampler?
He stood, with all the feeling of one who
is falsely condemned, and yet with all the guilt of one who has sinned....
And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came
from his mother's throat....
"Oh," she cried, "how
terrible it is to have children!"
His heart echoed her cry.... The
executioner's knife seemed to strike his throat....
He stood a long while in the silence....
Then his mother turned in the bed, sideways, and covered her face with the
counterpane.... His sister rose up stiffly, whispering:
"She's going to sleep."
He stood, dead.... He turned like a
wound-up mechanism, went to the door, picked up his valise, and fumbled his way
through the house.... The outer door he shut very softly....
He must take the Lexington Avenue car. Yes;
that was the quickest way. He faced west. The great wind of autumn came with a
glorious gusto, doubtless with flying seeds and flying leaves, chanting the
song of the generations, and of them that die and of them that are born.
Category:The Dial
Category:Oppenheim