THE HAND THAT FED ME
35
it's over. Yet
it
persists. Certain patterns are dangerous. We form them
once and follow them always. And if a man
will
attach, as I have
done, a whole morality to a single incident, he
will
always
be
at the
mercy of "incidents." The insight he will gain
will
give him no peace.
He will be forced to employ it everywhere, with
all
the subtle damage
it can do him. And at a time like the present when there is no place
for unhappy men, no understanding they can count on, no mood they
can share, what good will their insight do them?
But, Ellen, I release you. I go back to my own cares, reluctantly,
I admit, but with a certain confidence. My place in the
world~e
how quickly one can spring from his place in bed to
his
place in the
world! Can a woman do as much?- my place in the world
is
assured,
no matter how difficult it be, for I am my own assurance. I am that
man-and there are many like me- whose place is entirely contained
in
his
own being. So long as I exist, that
is
my place, my function.
I do not justify myself. I merely point this out: I have so little, so
little pride, so little belief, so little outward appetite, I am so pared
down to
iny
own core, that I cannot help believing I am an essential
man. And besides, WPA will come back, have no fear. Do you think
I wrote my report on pigeon racing for nothing? It stands there in
the files, waiting, ready to be taken up again. Some day, when the
war
is
over, and the machines have been removed from the old build–
ings,
after the dust has settled and the activity has died down, the
steel vaults will
be
unlocked and the steel files will be brought out,
and the pigeons will flutter again. Once again the world will take
account of us-we bare, pared, essential men. The earth will once
again
acknowledge loneliness, as real as her own mountains. What else
can be done? We may be a generation-we may, as well, be an
eternity. But perhaps a new wrinkle in disasters? Perhaps the night
and the wolves and the waves we howled about back in the 'thirties–
when there was still a little twilight-will really come down to blot
out, swallow, and wash us away? What will be will
be.
One only looks to his own accountable and natural future. But
here, I shan't write much longer. The New Year
is
coming. Ellen,
Ellen, :tt last I am free. One moment you were my great bitterness,
and now I am in the clear, rid of you. My life
will
find another ·bit–
temess, perhaps of a higher fresher quality, perhaps even a bitterness
in
some successful thing. What does it matter? I am cushioned at the
bottom and only look forward to what I may expect. For after
all,
