536
PARTISAN REVIEW
Beaumont. If there was Justice on this earth! Was there Justice on this
earth? Ah, but who can know the face of true Justice? As Hymen of
Rhodes said, bitter and broken at the end of his long life: "Who
knows the face ofJustice? Can a man understand his own face?" But
somehow, I believed, believed in this flower of a girl, this queenly
gem, this pearl. Her small, gentle voice went on and on 'gainst en–
croaching night ...
. . . just a simple little frip of a girl with vast pretensions, thought
that I'd be happy with a man of marvelous intellect, a man who had
read
Paterson,
say, anyone from anywhere, a hairy beast from Ocean
Parkway, even . Phony little me. Well, I had the silliness knocked out
of me. How I remember like yesterday, my thick little head in the
oven-that was in California and I meant to scare, oh blackmail is the
better word, poor Tom, working there in one of his father's platinum
mines . He was happy but I missed the city. I can remember cheese
Danish all over the floor and dear Tom's stricken face, that frozen
visage he often affected. Then, soon, soon, I guess, but perhaps it was
years, sometimes it seems like centuries, like the flight of a poem, we
were heading back to New York on a
707.
Tom's face in the sunlight
pouring lavishly through the window looked familiar and then I real–
ized that he looked like Steve McQueen! I shuddered and asked for a
blanket, you know how you can ask for a blanket? Well, I asked for
one . Then we were over New York, which I immediately recognized by
the way the Atlantic heaved and shuddered. Well, Martin ... well
. . . that was the turning place in the crossroads of my life . . . that
false attempt at suicide. Tom had but contempt and the like for me
from then on although he always treated me well, but I could see the
faraway look in his eyes whenever we had cheese Danish. There are
certain things that kind Time will not erase. Oh, what a year was that!
For a time I thought to return to Mechanicville where I was born and
grew up. It is a leafy and peaceful village, the townspeople are kind,
they laugh readily and sweat a lot, I had been happy there once for, oh,
for such a fleeting moment in the scheme of things of my life . . .
For a time she could not go on and silence reigned, silence broken
only by the buzzing of an insane fly somewhere, somewhere. How
lucky he was! I felt my heart swell almost to bursting. Perhaps it did
burst . Who can tell when the heart bursts? Often we think we know the
truth . We know nothing! I thought of Cystis of Thebes , thought by all
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