The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald (summer beach reads .txt) đ
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- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
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But as winter wore awayâthe short, snowless winter marked by damp nights and cool, rainy daysâhe marvelled at how quickly the system had grasped him. He was a soldierâall who were not soldiers were civilians. The world was divided primarily into those two classifications.
It occurred to him that all strongly accentuated classes, such as the military, divided men into two kinds: their own kindâand those without. To the clergyman there were clergy and laity, to the Catholic there were Catholics and non-Catholics, to the negro there were blacks and whites, to the prisoner there were the imprisoned and the free, and to the sick man there were the sick and the wellâŠ. So, without thinking of it once in his lifetime, he had been a civilian, a layman, a non-Catholic, a Gentile, white, free, and wellâŠ.
As the American troops were poured into the French and British trenches he began to find the names of many Harvard men among the casualties recorded in the Army and Navy Journal. But for all the sweat and blood the situation appeared unchanged, and he saw no prospect of the warâs ending in the perceptible future. In the old chronicles the right wing of one army always defeated the left wing of the other, the left wing being, meanwhile, vanquished by the enemyâs right. After that the mercenaries fled. It had been so simple, in those days, almost as if prearrangedâŠ.
Gloria wrote that she was reading a great deal. What a mess they had made of their affairs, she said. She had so little to do now that she spent her time imagining how differently things might have turned out. Her whole environment appeared insecureâand a few years back she had seemed to hold all the strings in her own little handâŠ.
In June her letters grew hurried and less frequent. She suddenly ceased to write about coming South.
DEFEATMarch in the country around was rare with jasmine and jonquils and patches of violets in the warming grass. Afterward he remembered especially one afternoon of such a fresh and magic glamour that as he stood in the rifle-pit marking targets he recited âAtalanta in Calydonâ to an uncomprehending Pole, his voice mingling with the rip, sing, and splatter of the bullets overhead.
âWhen the hounds of spring âŠâ
Spang!
âAre on winterâs traces âŠâ
Whirr-r-r-r! âŠ
âThe mother of months âŠâ
âHey! Come to! Mark three-e-e! âŠâ
In town the streets were in a sleepy dream again, and together Anthony and Dot idled in their own tracks of the previous autumn until he began to feel a drowsy attachment for this Southâa South, it seemed, more of Algiers than of Italy, with faded aspirations pointing back over innumerable generations to some warm, primitive Nirvana, without hope or care. Here there was an inflection of cordiality, of comprehension, in every voice. âLife plays the same lovely and agonizing joke on all of us,â they seemed to say in their plaintive pleasant cadence, in the rising inflection terminating on an unresolved minor.
He liked his barber shop where he was âHi, corporal!â to a pale, emaciated young man, who shaved him and pushed a cool vibrating machine endlessly over his insatiable head. He liked âJohnstonâs Gardensâ where they danced, where a tragic negro made yearning, aching music on a saxophone until the garish hall became an enchanted jungle of barbaric rhythms and smoky laughter, where to forget the uneventful passage of time upon Dorothyâs soft sighs and tender whisperings was the consummation of all aspiration, of all content.
There was an undertone of sadness in her character, a conscious evasion of all except the pleasurable minutiae of life. Her violet eyes would remain for hours apparently insensate as, thoughtless and reckless, she basked like a cat in the sun. He wondered what the tired, spiritless mother thought of them, and whether in her moments of uttermost cynicism she ever guessed at their relationship.
On Sunday afternoons they walked along the countryside, resting at intervals on the dry moss in the outskirts of a wood. Here the birds had gathered and the clusters of violets and white dogwood; here the hoar trees shone crystalline and cool, oblivious to the intoxicating heat that waited outside; here he would talk, intermittently, in a sleepy monologue, in a conversation of no significance, of no replies.
July came scorching down. Captain Dunning was ordered to detail one of his men to learn blacksmithing. The regiment was filling up to war strength, and he needed most of his veterans for drill-masters, so he selected the little Italian, Baptiste, whom he could most easily spare. Little Baptiste had never had anything to do with horses. His fear made matters worse. He reappeared in the orderly room one day and told Captain Dunning that he wanted to die if he couldnât be relieved. The horses kicked at him, he said; he was no good at the work. Finally he fell on his knees and besought Captain Dunning, in a mixture of broken English and scriptural Italian, to get him out of it. He had not slept for three days; monstrous stallions reared and cavorted through his dreams.
Captain Dunning reproved the company clerk (who had burst out laughing), and told Baptiste he would do what he could. But when he thought it over he decided that he couldnât spare a better man. Little Baptiste went from bad to worse. The horses seemed to divine his fear and take every advantage of it. Two weeks later a great black mare crushed his skull in with her hoofs while he was trying to lead her from her stall.
In mid-July came rumors, and then orders, that concerned a change of camp. The brigade was to move to an empty cantonment, a hundred miles farther south, there to be expanded into a division. At first the men thought they were departing for the trenches, and all evening little groups jabbered in the company street, shouting to each other in swaggering exclamations: âSu-u-ure we are!â When the truth leaked out, it was rejected indignantly as a blind to conceal their real destination. They revelled in their own importance. That night they told their girls in town that they were âgoing to get the Germans.â Anthony circulated for a while among the groupsâthen, stopping a jitney, rode down to tell Dot that he was going away.
She was waiting on the dark veranda in a cheap white dress that accentuated the youth and softness of her face.
âOh,â she whispered, âIâve wanted you so, honey. All this day.â
âI have something to tell you.â
She drew him down beside her on the swinging seat, not noticing his ominous tone.
âTell me.â
âWeâre leaving next week.â
Her arms seeking his shoulders remained poised upon the dark air, her chin tipped up. When she spoke the softness was gone from her voice.
âLeaving for France?â
âNo. Less luck than that. Leaving for some darn camp in Mississippi.â
She shut her eyes and he could see that the lids were trembling.
âDear little Dot, life is so damned hard.â
She was crying upon his shoulder.
âSo damned hard, so damned hard,â he repeated aimlessly; âit just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they canât be hurt ever any more. Thatâs the last and worst thing it does.â
Frantic, wild with anguish, she strained him to her breast.
âOh, God!â she whispered brokenly, âyou canât go way from me. Iâd die.â
He was finding it impossible to pass off his departure as a common, impersonal blow. He was too near to her to do more than repeat âPoor little Dot. Poor little Dot.â
âAnd then what?â she demanded wearily.
âWhat do you mean?â
âYouâre my whole life, thatâs all. Iâd die for you right now if you said so. Iâd get a knife and kill myself. You canât leave me here.â
Her tone frightened him.
âThese things happen,â he said evenly.
âThen Iâm going with you.â Tears were streaming down her checks. Her mouth was trembling in an ecstasy of grief and fear.
âSweet,â he muttered sentimentally, âsweet little girl. Donât you see weâd just be putting off whatâs bound to happen? Iâll be going to France in a few monthsââ
She leaned away from him and clinching her fists lifted her face toward the sky.
âI want to die,â she said, as if moulding each word carefully in her heart.
âDot,â he whispered uncomfortably, âyouâll forget. Things are sweeter when theyâre lost. I knowâbecause once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.â
âAll right.â
Absorbed in himself, he continued:
âIâve often thought that if I hadnât got what I wanted things might have been different with me. I might have found something in my mind and enjoyed putting it in circulation. I might have been content with the work of it, and had some sweet vanity out of the success. I suppose that at one time I could have had anything I wanted, within reason, but that was the only thing I ever wanted with any fervor. God! And that taught me you canât have anything, you canât have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. Itâs like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp itâbut when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and youâve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is goneââ He broke off uneasily. She had risen and was standing, dry-eyed, picking little leaves from a dark vine.
âDotââ
âGo way,â she said coldly. âWhat? Why?â
âI donât want just words. If thatâs all you have for me youâd better go.â
âWhy, Dotââ
âWhatâs death to me is just a lot of words to you. You put âem together so pretty.â
âIâm sorry. I was talking about you, Dot.â
âGo way from here.â
He approached her with arms outstretched, but she held him away.
âYou donât want me to go with you,â she said evenly; âmaybe youâre going to meet thatâthat girlââ She could not bring herself to say wife. âHow do I know? Well, then, I reckon youâre not my fellow any more. So go way.â
For a moment, while conflicting warnings and desires prompted Anthony, it seemed one of those rare times when he would take a step prompted from within. He hesitated. Then a wave of weariness broke against him. It was too lateâeverything was too late. For years now he had dreamed the world away, basing his decisions upon emotions unstable as water. The little girl in the white dress dominated him, as she approached beauty in the hard symmetry of her desire. The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame. With some profound and uncharted pride she had made herself remote and so achieved her purpose.
âI didnâtâmean to seem so callous, Dot.â
âIt donât matter.â
The fire rolled over Anthony. Something wrenched at his bowels, and he stood there helpless and beaten.
âCome with me, Dotâlittle loving Dot. Oh, come with me. I couldnât leave you nowââ
With a sob she wound her arms around him and let him support her weight while the moon, at its perennial labor of covering the bad complexion of the world, showered its illicit honey over the drowsy street.
THE CATASTROPHEEarly September in Camp Boone, Mississippi. The darkness, alive with insects, beat in upon the mosquito-netting, beneath the shelter of which Anthony was trying to write a
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