The Great American Novel

by William Carlos Williams

[CHAPTER X]

Arnold, this wind is, the wise and sagacious captain. Henchman of the wind. The wind is a lion with hooked teeth. The saber-toothed tiger inhabited the region west of the Alleganies throughout the pleistocene age. With a snarl it wrenches the limbs of the trees from their places and tosses them to earth where they lie with the leaves still fluttering.

Vacuous; full of wind. Her whole pelvis is full of intestine but aside from the ptosis I find nothing really wrong. The uterus appears to be normal. The bleeding may come from a cyst. At least there is no good reason for removing—for a hysterectomy. There it is. It. Like some tropical fruit color of the skunk cabbage flower. There it is, that mystical pear, glistening with the peritoneum. Here the cavern of all caverns. Alpha if not omega. Talk politely and obey the law. But do not remove it.

Oh my country. Shall it be a hysterectomy? Arnold there is a wind with a knife's edge.

And Remy says the spring of curiosity is broken at thirty. Nothing left at fifty but the facts of bed and table. He has the lilt of Heine at his best and in places quite equals the work of the author of Danny Deever. The catgut had slipped out of the needle. The young interne held the point of the suture between his fingers and the nurse approached the needle as accurately as she could. But the man's hand trembled slightly. For a moment they tried to complete the connection but failing in their attempt the nurse took the end in her other hand and soon had the needle threaded. The young doctor looked up as much as to say thank you.

Such a wind. At fifteen they seem noble, desirable beyond dreams. In the winter the trees at least remain stems of wood that resist with a will, whose branches rebound against the impact of sleet. At thirty they are what they are. The boy rebels and she with her hair in distressed tangles about the disorderly boudoir cap, at mid-day, whines and snatches at him as he jerks and defies her. It is beyond her strength to control a boy of nine. Clutching her dressing sack—oh slobbery morsel—about her breastless form with one hand she rushes as far as she dares to the porch edge, glancing furtively about for chance gentlemen or neighbors and tries to overtake the youngster. No, the young man has really escaped. He goes to school filthy again and what will they think of his mother.

At fifteen they are slender and coquettish and they cry if you are rough with them. Great burly fellow, she seemed to him all that he was not, the quintessence of Ibsenism, the wind among the reeds. Or perhaps the reed in the wind. Something to love, to take into the arms, to protect—If you can find any reason for doing a hysterectomy doctor, do it. Her husband is good for nothing at all. She at least is a power in her family. She is not like the native American women of her class, she is a Polock. You never saw such courage.

The schooner left Southampton bound for New York with a cargo of rails—steel rails. But the English emigrants were not like these modern messes. Those round, expressionless peasant faces of today. See that one there with the little boy at her side. Castle Garden. At last we are to be in America, where gold is in the streets. Look at that face. That is the kind of immigration we want. Look at the power in that jaw. Look at that nose. She is one who will give two for every stroke she has to take. Look at the intensity of her gaze. Well, she's English, that's the reason. Nowadays they have no more of that sort. These Jews and Polocks, Sicilians and Greeks. Goodbye America!

The head nurse's legs under her practical short skirt were like mighty columns. They held the seriousness of her looks, her steady, able hands. A fine woman.