The Dream Life of Balso Snell by Nathanael West Page B

stolid, in the face of calamity. And, as the death is that of a very intimate friend, it is important that I show, in some subtle way, that I am hard hit for all my pretence of coldness. Or perhaps because the Carcas is full of artists, I can refuse to stop dreaming, refuse to leave my ivory tower, refuse to disturb that brooding white bird, my spirit. A wave of the hand: “Yes, really. You don’t say so?—quite dead.” Or I can play one of my favorite roles, be the “Buffoon of the New Eternities” and cry: “Death, what is it? Life, what is it? Life is of course the absence of Death; and Death merely the absence of Life.” But I might get into an argument unbecoming one who is lamenting the loss of a loved one. For the sake of the waiters, I will be a quiet, sober, gentle, umbrella-carrying Mr. B. Darwin, and out of a great sadness sob: “Oh, my darling, why did you do it? Oh why?” Or, best of all, like Hamlet, I will feign madness; for if they discover what lies in my heart they will lynch me.
     
    MESSENGER
    “Beagle! Beagle! Janey has fallen from the window and is no more.”
     
    PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC., AT THE CAFE CARCAS
    “The girl you lived with is dead.”
    “Poor Janey. Poor Beagle. Terrible, terrible death.” “And so young she was, and so beautiful…in the cold street she lay.”
     
    B. HAMLET DARWIN
    “Bromius! Iacchus! Son of Zeus!”
     
    PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC.
    “Don’t you understand, man? The girl you lived with is dead. Your sweetheart is dead. She has killed herself. She is dead!”
     
    B. HAMLET DARWIN
    “Bromius! Iacchus! Son of Zeus!”
     
    PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC.
    “He’s drunk.”
    “Greek gods!—does he think we don’t know he’s a Methodist?”
    “This is no time for blasphemy!”
    “A little learning goes to the heads of fools.”
    “Yes, drink deep of the Pierian spring or…”
    “Very picturesque though, ‘Bromius! Iacchus!’ very picturesque.”
     
    B. HAMLET DARWIN
    “‘0 esca vermium! 0 massa pulveris!’ Where is the rich Dives? He who was always eating? He is no longer even eaten.”
     
    PATRONS, WAITERS, ETC.
    “A riddle! A riddle!”
    “He is looking for a friend.”
    “He has lost something. Tell him to look under the table.”
     
    MESSENGER
    “He means the worms have eaten Dives; and that, in their turn dead, the worms have been eaten by other worms.”
     
    B. HAMLET DARWIN
    “Or quick tell me where has gone Samson?—strongest of men. He is no longer even weak. And where, oh tell me, where is the beautiful Appollon? He is no longer even ugly. And where are the snows of yesteryear? And where is Tom Giles? Bill Taylor? Jake Holtz? In other words, `Here today and gone tomorrow.’”
     
    MESSENGER
    “Yes, what he says is but too true. An incident such as the sad demise we are now considering makes one stop ‘midst the hustle-bustle of our work-a-day world to ponder the words of the poet who says we are ‘nourriture des vers!’ Continue, dear brother in sorrow, we attend your every word.”
     
    B. HAMLET DARWIN
    “I shall begin all over again, folks.
    “While I sit laughing with my friends, a messenger stalks into the café. He cries: ‘Beagle! Beagle! Janey has killed herself!’ I jump up, white as a sheet of paper, let us say, and shriek in anguish: ‘Bromius! Iacchus! Son of Zeus!’ You then demand why I call so loudly on Dionysius. I go into my routine.
     
    “Dionysius! Dionysius! I call on the wine-god because his begetting and birth were so different from Janey’s, so different from yours, so different from mine. I call on Dionysius in order to explain the tragedy. A tragedy that is not alone Janey’s, but one that is the tragedy of all of us.
    “Who among us can boast that he was born three times, as was Dionysius?—once from the womb of ‘hapless Semele,’ once from the thigh of Zeus, and once from the flames. Or who can say, like Christ, that he was born of a virgin? Or who can even claim to have been born as was