My heart and my flesh

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

They converged toward something, focused toward some following object or person although their faces were set forward and they marched on. Their steps plodded on the pavement. They centered back in a fan-shape of interest toward some other, some focus. Then there was a great blare of sudden music and, the women being finished, the object was at hand. It was the figure of a man, made of human flesh. He stood at ease on a dais or float and moved forward with the blare of music without effort. The women were gone now, their backs visible as they walked down the way of the procession, but the man was at hand in the midst of a great burst of horn music. He was more than life-size, was of heroic proportions, moving easily along on the float as if he were propelled by some unseen force engendered by the multitude of women. He was one, one man, heroic in size, bursting with strength and life, made of flesh like a man. He stood erect, his limbs apart, in a lewd pose. He was naked. On his body were marks then; on his chest they began, as small warts sprinkled over his breast, but lower, on his upper abdomen, they were larger and were shaped like small teats. They became larger as they descended over his abdomen and became more alive, each one more living than the last. They were rigid with life and were pointed forward toward the women.

Her own self stood at her elbow. She turned quickly about, toward her self, and she knew a deep wish, an ardent prayer that her self had not seen this last. Her self had not seen, was watching the women as they were going far down the street. The great fanfare of horns became suddenly remote and the float had passed by. Her self had not seen it. She was glad with a great thankful prayer. She found then, suddenly, that she had waked from sleep, that she was in the room with Horace, who was still speaking. His voice gathered itself back, closing the wide opening that had stood between his words. “Silent Night and one thing and another,” the words said, gathering together into sense. “It was Mike proposed to take a walk, and we sang a long while out by the Johntown forks of the road.”

Her dream rolled back before her conscious eyes, vivid in memory now. The terrible drama of it stood it before her eyes as a passing design. Her picturing mind went back to it, detail by detail, fascinated and frightened. She put it together and took it apart, dwelling on each terrible picture, and saw the dreary women in procession, laboring forward, and then the man infinitely furnished, and then herself guarding her self from the sight. She went back to the beginning and stated it anew, bringing the pageant into play slowly. The women marched in their long drab garments, walking without music, laboring forward. The man then, and the blare of horns.

She walked to the opened door and looked at Anthony where he lay stretched out to die, covered as she had covered him. He was sleeping profoundly, his breath continuing. The evening was early as yet; later she would look for others to come, Frank and a friend or two of Horace’s. She went back to her seat by the fire, and Horace was still speaking.

“Then I recollect we set-to to finish up the job Mike proposed for us, to walk down every street and alley in town. ‘We’ll slight not one,’ Mike said. ‘No alley or by-way so humble it would be said we wouldn’t walk on it,’ Mike said. That’s how I ever got in the alley back of the jail, I reckon. ‘I drink to the health of the unborn,’ Mike said, up in Tom’s room before we went over to the Christmas tree, and had you in mind, you understand. Mike was always a good friend of mine. I’ve been richly endowed with friendship all my life, good friends as any you’ll ever see any man have.... That my father should ’a’ come you might say to poverty in his old age, to actual poverty. Those sneaken, low-down, three-times-damned hounds that got his property. I’ll do something about it yet. Put up Les Robinson for governor and all the low-down sharks in the state got the pickens of his purse. They’re not done with me yet, not by a jugful. That my father, Anthony Bell, should.... The old man adored you, always from the start. I could see it, you no bigger than two years old. Believed in you. ‘She’s got a rare musical talent,’ he said. Used to get warmed up over it, you no bigger than that high. What’ll become of us now, we two the only ones left? We’ll have to console each other, get near together. The world, it’ll be a lonesome place for me and you without the old man.”

Theodosia was distraught when he began to weep. She walked to the inner door again, but when she returned his head was in his hands, his body bowed forward. Retelling all that he had said of Anthony he cried aloud, “A fine old man. I’ll be a bereft man now,” turning his mind toward self-pity. “Come to your father’s arms, Dosia. My heart, it’s broken. Come kiss your poor old father.”

She kept in her place. “I’ll stay where I am,” she said.

She had moved to a chair toward the table, toward her grandfather’s door, and sat erect. The large heavy sideboard reached beyond her, too near, as if she were crowded into its shadow, as if she were something living that was being expelled from the dark, dead mass of the furniture, pushed outward into a quivering point of pain. She stared at the dim pattern in the carpet, or she moved and stood before the sideboard, her arms folded together. Her tears were gone now and she gathered herself together in the act of folding her arms. Expelled from the entire room, from all the history of the place, she turned about without guidance and stood near the wall.

“You poor child. Come to my arms,” he said, coming near to her.

“Your hands off me. I’ll stay where I am.” She felt herself to be diminished to a point of denial, concentrated to negation, and his grief continued.