When God Laughs
Carquinez had relaxed finally. He stole a glance at the rattling windows,looked upward at the beamed roof, and listened for a moment to the savageroar of the south-easter as it caught the bungalow in its bellowing jaws.Then he held his glass between him and the fire and laughed for joy throughthe golden wine."It is beautiful," he said. "It is sweetly sweet. It is a woman's wine,and it was made for gray-robed saints to drink.""We grow it on our own warm hills," I said, with pardonable Californiapride. "You rode up yesterday through the vines from which it was made."It was worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever reallyhimself until he felt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his blood.He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober, thehigh pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes and he was prone tobe as deadly dull as a British Sunday--not dull as other men are dull, butdull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte Carquinez was when hewas really himself.From all this it must not be inferred that Carquinez, who is my dear friendand dearer comrade, was a sot. Far from it. He rarely erred. As I havesaid, he was an artist. He knew when he had enough, and enough, with him,was equilibrium--the equilibrium that is yours and mine when we are sober.His was a wise and instinctive temperateness that savoured of the Greek.Yet he was far from Greek. "I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard," I haveheard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound of strange andancient races, what with his swarthy skin and the asymmetry andprimitiveness of his features. His eyes, under massively arched brows,were wide apart and black with the blackness that is barbaric, while beforethem was perpetually falling down a great black mop of hair through whichhe gazed like a roguish satyr from a thicket. He invariably wore a softflannel shirt under his velvet-corduroy jacket, and his necktie was red.This latter stood for the red flag (he had once lived with the socialistsof Paris), and it symbolized the blood and brotherhood of man. Also, hehad never been known to wear anything on his head save a leather-bandedsombrero. It was even rumoured that he had been born with this particularpiece of headgear. And in my experience it was provocative of nothingshort of sheer delight to see that Mexican sombrero hailing a cab inPiccadilly or storm-tossed in the crush for the New York Elevated.As I have said, Carquinez was made quick by wine--"as the clay was madequick when God breathed the breath of life into it," was his way of sayingit. I confess that he was blasphemously intimate with God; and I must addthat there was no blasphemy in him. He was at all times honest, and,because he was compounded of paradoxes, greatly misunderstood by those whodid not know him. He could be as elementally raw at times as a screamingsavage; and at other times as delicate as a maid, as subtle as a Spaniard.And--well, was he not Aztec? Inca? Spaniard?And now I must ask pardon for the space I have given him. (He is myfriend, and I love him.) The house was shaking to the storm, as he drewcloser to the fire and laughed at it through his wine. He looked at me,and by the added lustre of his eye, and by the alertness of it, I knew thatat last he was pitched in his proper key."And so you think you've won out against the gods?" he demanded."Why the gods?""Whose will but theirs has put satiety upon man?" he cried."And whence the will in me to escape satiety?" I asked triumphantly."Again the gods," he laughed. "It is their game we play. They deal andshuffle all the cards . . . and take the stakes. Think not that you haveescaped by fleeing from the mad cities. You with your vine-clad hills,your sunsets and your sunrises, your homely fare and simple round ofliving!"I've watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You havesurrendered. You have made terms with the enemy. You have made confessionthat you are tired. You have flown the white flag of fatigue. You havenailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in you. You haverun away from life. You have played a trick, shabby trick. You havebalked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown your cards underthe table and run away to hide, here amongst your hills."He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcelyinterrupted to roll a long, brown, Mexican cigarette."But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man havetried it . . . and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. Topursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in yourwisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease.Very well. You will become sated with surcease. You say you have escapedsatiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility isanother name for satiety. It is satiety's masquerade. Bah!""But look at me!" I cried.Carquinez was ever a demon for haling ones soul out and making rags andtatters of it.He looked me witheringly up and down."You see no signs," I challenged."Decay is insidious," he retorted. "You are rotten ripe."I laughed and forgave him for his very deviltry. But he refused to beforgiven."Do I not know?" he asked. "The gods always win. I have watched men playfor years what seemed a winning game. In the end they lost.""Don't you ever make mistakes?" I asked.He blew many meditative rings of smoke before replying."Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin Fiske.You remember him? And his Dantesque face and poet's soul, singing hischant of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was Ethel Baird,whom also you must remember.""A warm saint," I said."That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for love; andyet--how shall I say?--drenched through with holiness as your own air hereis with the perfume of flowers. Well, they married. They played a handwith the gods--""And they won, they gloriously won!" I broke in.Carquinez looked at me pityingly, and his voice was like a funeral bell."They lost. They supremely, colossally lost.""But the world believes otherwise," I ventured coldly."The world conjectures. The world sees only the face of things. But Iknow. Has it ever entered your mind to wonder why she took the veil,buried herself in that dolorous convent of the living dead?""Because she loved him so, and when he died . . ."Speech was frozen on my lips by Carquinez's sneer."A pat answer," he said, "machine-made like a piece of cotton-drill. Theworld's judgment! And much the world knows about it. Like you, she fledfrom life. She was beaten. She flung out the white flag of fatigue. Andno beleaguered city ever flew that flag in such bitterness and tears."Now I shall tell you the whole tale, and you must believe me, for I know.They had pondered the problem of satiety. They loved Love. They knew tothe uttermost farthing the value of Love. They loved him so well that theywere fain to keep him always, warm and a-thrill in their hearts. Theywelcomed his coming; they feared to have him depart."Love was desire, they held, a delicious pain. He was ever seekingeasement, and when he found that for which he sought, he died. Love deniedwas Love alive; Love granted was Love deceased. Do you follow me? Theysaw it was not the way of life to be hungry for what it has. To eat andstill be hungry--man has never accomplished that feat. The problem ofsatiety. That is it. To have and to keep the sharp famine-edge ofappetite at the groaning board. This was their problem, for they lovedLove. Often did they discuss it, with all Love's sweet ardours brimming intheir eyes; his ruddy blood spraying their cheeks; his voice playing in andout with their voices, now hiding as a tremolo in their throats, and againshading a tone with that ineffable tenderness which he alone can utter."How do I know all this? I saw--much. More I learned from her diary.This I found in it, from Fiona Macleod: 'For, truly, that wandering voice,that twilight-whisper, that breath so dewy-sweet, that flame-winged lute-player whom none sees but for a moment, in a rainbow-shimmer of joy, or asudden lightning-flare of passion, this exquisite mystery we call Amor,comes, to some rapt visionaries at least, not with a song upon the lipsthat all may hear, or with blithe viol of public music, but as one wroughtby ecstasy, dumbly eloquent with desire.'"How to keep the flame-winged lute-player with his dumb eloquence ofdesire? To feast him was to lose him. Their love for each other was agreat love. Their granaries were overflowing with plenitude; yet theywanted to keep the sharp famine-edge of their love undulled."Nor were they lean little fledglings theorizing on the threshold of Love.They were robust and realized souls. They had loved before, with others,in the days before they met; and in those days they had throttled Love withcaresses, and killed him with kisses, and buried him in the pit of satiety."They were not cold wraiths, this man and woman. They were warm human.They had no Saxon soberness in their blood. The colour of it was sunset-red. They glowed with it. Temperamentally theirs was the French joy inthe flesh. They were idealists, but their idealism was Gallic. It was nottempered by the chill and sombre fluid that for the English serves asblood. There was no stoicism about them. They were Americans, descendedout of the English, and yet the refraining and self-denying of the Englishspirit-groping were not theirs."They were all this that I have said, and they were made for joy, only theyachieved a concept. A curse on concepts! They played with logic, and thiswas their logic.--But first let me tell you of a talk we had one night. Itwas of Gautier's Madeline de Maupin. You remember the maid? She kissedonce, and once only, and kisses she would have no more. Not that she foundkisses were not sweet, but that she feared with repetition they would cloy.Satiety again! She tried to play without stakes against the gods. Nowthis is contrary to a rule of the game the gods themselves have made. Onlythe rules are not posted over the table. Mortals must play in order tolearn the rules."Well, to the logic. The man and the woman argued thus: Why kiss onceonly? If to kiss once were wise, was it not wiser to kiss not at all?Thus could they keep Love alive. Fasting, he would knock forever at theirhearts."Perhaps it was out of their heredity that they achieved this unholyconcept. The breed will out and sometimes most fantastically. Thus inthem did cursed Albion array herself a scheming wanton, a bold, cold-calculating, and artful hussy. After all, I do not know. But this I know:it was out of their inordinate desire for joy that they forewent joy."As he said (I read it long afterward in one of his letters to her): 'Tohold you in my arms, close, and yet not close. To yearn for you, and neverto have you, and so always to have you.' And she: 'For you to be alwaysjust beyond my reach. To be ever attaining you, and yet never attainingyou, and for this to last forever, always fresh and new, and always withthe first flush upon us."That is not the way they said it. On my lips their love-philosophy ismangled. And who am I to delve into their soul-stuff? I am a frog, on thedank edge of a great darkness, gazing goggle-eyed at the mystery and wonderof their flaming souls."And they were right, as far as they went. Everything is good . . . aslong as it is unpossessed. Satiety and possession are Death's horses; theyrun in span."'And time could only tutor us to ekeOur rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow.'"They got that from a sonnet of Alfred Austin's. It was called 'Love'sWisdom.' It was the one kiss of Madeline de Maupin. How did it run?"'Kiss we and part; no further can we go;And better death than we from high to lowShould dwindle, or decline from strong to weak.'"But they were wiser. They would not kiss and part. They would not kissat all, and thus they planned to stay at Love's topmost peak. Theymarried. You were in England at the time. And never was there such amarriage. They kept their secret to themselves. I did not know, then.Their rapture's warmth did not cool. Their love burned with increasingbrightness. Never was there anything like it. The time passed, themonths, the years, and ever the flame-winged lute-player grew moreresplendent."Everybody marvelled. They became the wonderful lovers, and they weregreatly envied. Sometimes women pitied her because she was childless; itis the form the envy of such creatures takes."And I did not know their secret. I pondered and I marvelled. As first Ihad expected, subconsciously I imagine, the passing of their love. Then Ibecame aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained. Then Ibecame curious. What was their secret? What were the magic fetters withwhich they bound Love to them? How did they hold the graceless elf? Whatelixir of eternal love had they drunk together as had Tristram and Iseultof old time? And whose hand had brewed the fairy drink?"As I say, I was curious, and I watched them. They were love-mad. Theylived in an unending revel of Love. They made a pomp and ceremonial of it.They saturated themselves in the art and poetry of Love. No, they were notneurotics. They were sane and healthy, and they were artists. But theyhad accomplished the impossible. They had achieved deathless desire."And I? I saw much of them and their everlasting miracle of Love. Ipuzzled and wondered, and then one day--"Carquinez broke off abruptly and asked, "Have you ever read, 'Love'sWaiting Time'?"I shook my head."Page wrote it--Curtis Hidden Page, I think. Well, it was that bit ofverse that gave me the clue. One day, in the window-seat near the bigpiano--you remember how she could play? She used to laugh, sometimes, anddoubt whether it was for them I came, or for the music. She called me a'music-sot' once, a 'sound-debauchee.' What a voice he had! When he sangI believed in immortality, my regard for the gods grew almost patronizingand I devised ways and means whereby I surely could outwit them and theirtricks."It was a spectacle for God, that man and woman, years married, and singinglove-songs with a freshness virginal as new-born Love himself, with aripeness and wealth of ardour that young lovers can never know. Younglovers were pale and anaemic beside that long-married pair. To see them,all fire and flame and tenderness, at a trembling distance, lavishingcaresses of eye and voice with every action, through every silence--theirlove driving them toward each other, and they withholding like flutteringmoths, each to the other a candle-flame, and revolving each about the otherin the mad gyrations of an amazing orbit-flight! It seemed, in obedienceto some great law of physics, more potent than gravitation and more subtle,that they must corporeally melt each into each there before my very eyes.Small wonder they were called the wonderful lovers."I have wandered. Now to the clue. One day in the window-seat I found abook of verse. It opened of itself, betraying long habit, to 'Love'sWaiting Time.' The page was thumbed and limp with overhandling, and thereI read:--"'So sweet it is to stand but just apart,To know each other better, and to keepThe soft, delicious sense of two that touch . . .O love, not yet! . . . Sweet, let us keep our loveWrapped round with sacred mystery awhile,Waiting the secret of the coming years,That come not yet, not yet . . . sometime . . .not yet . . .Oh, yet a little while our love may grow!When it has blossomed it will haply die.Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep,Bedded in dead denial yet some while . . .Oh, yet a little while, a little while.'"I folded the book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving fora long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse hadimparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God'slightning in the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, theforerunner of young life--young life that is imperative to be born!"I conned the lines over in my mind--'Not yet, sometime'--'O Love, notyet'--'Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep.' And I laughed aloud,ha, ha! I saw with white vision their blameless souls. They werechildren. They did not understand. They played with Nature's fire andbedded with a naked sword. They laughed at the gods. They would stop thecosmic sap. They had invented a system, and brought it to the gaming-tableof life, and expected to win out. 'Beware!' I cried. 'The gods are behindthe table. They make new rules for every system that is devised. You haveno chance to win.'"But I did not so cry to them. I waited. They would learn that theirsystem was worthless and throw it away. They would be content withwhatever happiness the gods gave them and not strive to wrest more away."I watched. I said nothing. The months continued to come and go, andstill the famine-edge of their love grew the sharper. Never did they dullit with a permitted love-clasp. They ground and whetted it on self-denial,and sharper and sharper it grew. This went on until even I doubted. Didthe gods sleep? I wondered. Or were they dead? I laughed to myself. Theman and the woman had made a miracle. They had outwitted God. They hadshamed the flesh, and blackened the face of the good Earth Mother. Theyhad played with her fire and not been burned. They were immune. They werethemselves gods, knowing good from evil and tasting not. 'Was this the waygods came to be?' I asked myself. 'I am a frog,' I said. 'But for my mud-lidded eyes I should have been blinded by the brightness of this wonder Ihave witnessed. I have puffed myself up with my wisdom and passed judgmentupon gods.'"Yet even in this, my latest wisdom, I was wrong. They were not gods.They were man and woman--soft clay that sighed and thrilled, shot throughwith desire, thumbed with strange weaknesses which the gods have not."Carquinez broke from his narrative to roll another cigarette and to laughharshly. It was not a pretty laugh; it was like the mockery of a devil,and it rose over and rode the roar of the storm that came muffled to ourears from the crashing outside world."I am a frog," he said apologetically. "How were they to understand? Theywere artists, not biologists. They knew the clay of the studio, but theydid not know the clay of which they themselves were made. But this I willsay--they played high. Never was there such a game before, and I doubt meif there will ever be such a game again."Never was lovers' ecstasy like theirs. They had not killed Love withkisses. They had quickened him with denial. And by denial they drove himon till he was all aburst with desire. And the flame-winged lute-playerfanned them with his warm wings till they were all but swooning. It wasthe very delirium of Love, and it continued undiminished and increasingthrough the weeks and months."They longed and yearned, with all the fond pangs and sweet deliciousagonies, with an intensity never felt by lovers before nor since."And then one day the drowsy gods ceased nodding. They aroused and lookedat the man and woman who had made a mock of them. And the man and womanlooked into each other's eyes one morning and knew that something was gone.It was the flame-winged one. He had fled, silently, in the night, fromtheir anchorites' board."They looked into each other's eyes and knew that they did not care.Desire was dead. Do you understand? Desire was dead. And they had neverkissed. Not once had they kissed. Love was gone. They would never yearnand burn again. For them there was nothing left--no more tremblings andflutterings and delicious anguishes, no more throbbing and pulsing, andsighing and song. Desire was dead. It had died in the night, on a couchcold and unattended; nor had they witnessed its passing. They learned itfor the first time in each other's eyes."The gods may not be kind, but they are often merciful. They had twirledthe little ivory ball and swept the stakes from the table. All thatremained was the man and woman gazing into each other's cold eyes. Andthen he died. That was the mercy. Within the week Marvin Fiske was dead--you remember the accident. And in her diary, written at this time, I longafterward read Mitchell Kennerly's:--"'There was not a single hourWe might have kissed and did not kiss.'""Oh, the irony of it!" I cried out.And Carquinez, in the firelight a veritable Mephistopheles in velvetjacket, fixed me with his black eyes."And they won, you said? The world's judgment! I have told you, and Iknow. They won as you are winning, here in your hills.""But you," I demanded hotly; "you with your orgies of sound and sense, withyour mad cities and madder frolics--bethink you that you win?"He shook his head slowly. "Because you with your sober bucolic regime,lose, is no reason that I should win. We never win. Sometimes we think wewin. That is a little pleasantry of the gods."
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
