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Robinson Jeffers - Tamar
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Narrowing down from the shoulder-bones, no appeal,
A weapon and no sheath, fire without fuel,
Saying, "Have you anything more inside you
Old fat and sleepy sepulcher, any more voices?
You can do better than my father`s by-play
And the dirty tricks of savages, decenter people
Have died surely. T have so passed nature
That God himself, who`s dead or all these devils
Would never have broken hell, might speak out of you
Last season thunder and not scare me." Old Stella
Groaned but not spoke, old Jinny lying beside her
Wakened at the word thunder and suddenly chuckling
Began to mimic a storm, "whoo-whoo" for wind
And "boom-boom-boom" for thunder. Other voices
Wakened far off above the cliff, and suddenly
The farm-bell ringing fire; and on the rock-islets
Sleepy cormorants cried at it. "Why, now He speaks
Another way than out of the fat throat,"
Cried Tamar, and prayed, "O strong and clean and terrible
Spirit and not father punish the hateful house.
Fire eat the walls and roofs, drive the red beast
Through every wormhole of the rotting timbers
And into the woods and into the stable, show them,
These liars, that you are alive." Across her voice
The bell sounded and old Jinny mimicking it,
And shouts above the cliff. "Look, Jinny, look,"
Cried Tamar, "the sky`d be red soon, come and we`ll dress
And watch the bonfire." Yet she glanced no thought
At her own mermaid nakedness but gathering
The long black serpents of beached seaweed wove
Wreaths for old Jinny and crowned and wound her. Meanwhile
The bell ceased ringing and Stella ceased her moan,
And in the sudden quietness, "Tamar," she said
In the known voice of Helen so many years
Dead, "though you hate me utterly, Tamar, I
Have nothing to give back, I was quite emptied
Of hate and love and the other fires of the flesh
Before your mother gave the clay to my lover
To mould you a vessel to hold them." Tamar, winding
Her mindless puppet in the sea-slough mesh
Said over her shoulder, hardly turning, "Why then
Do you trouble whom you don`t hate?" "Because we hunger
And hunger for life," she answered. "Did I come uncalled?
You called me, you have more hot and blind, wild-blooded
And passionate life than any other creature.
How could I ever leave you while the life lasts?
God pity us both, a cataract life
Dashing itself to pieces in an instant.
You are my happiness, you are my happiness and death eats you.
I`ll leave you when you are empty and cold and join us.
Then pity me, then Tamar, me flitting
The chilly and brittle pumice-tips of the moon,
While the second death
Corrodes this shell of me, till it makes my end."
But Tamar would not listen to her, too busily
Decking old Jinny for the festival fire,
And sighing that thin and envious ghost forsook
Her instrument, and about that time harsh pain
Wrung Tamar`s loins and belly, and pain and terror
Expelled her passionate fancies, she cried anxiously,
"Stella, Aunt Stella, help me, will you?" and thinking,
"She hears when Jinny whimpers," twistingly pinched
Her puppet`s arm until it screamed. Old Stella
Sat up on the seaweed bed and turned white eyes
No pupils broke the diffused star-gleam in
Upon her sixty-year-old babe, that now
Crouched whimpering, huddled under the slippery leaves
And black whips of the beach; and by it stood gleaming
Tamar, anguished, all white as the blank balls
That swept her with no sight but vision: old Stella
Did not awake yet but a voice blew through her,
Not personal like the other, and shook her body
And shook her hands: "It was no good to do too soon, your
fire`s out, you`d been patient for me
It might have saved two fires." But Tamar: "Stella.
I`m dying: or it is dying: wake up Aunt Stella.
O pain, pain, help me." And the voice: "She is mine while I
use her. Scream, no one will hear but this one
Who has no mind, who has not more help than July rain." And
Tamar, "What are you, what are you, mocking me?
More dirt and another dead man? O," she moaned, pressing her
flanks with both her hands, and bending
So that her hair across her knees lay on the rock. It answered,
"Not a voice from carrion.
Breaker of trees and father of grass, shepherd of clouds and
waters, if you had waited for me
You`d be the luckier." "What shall I give you?" Tamar cried,
"I have given away"
Pain stopped her, and then
Blood ran, and she fell down on the round stones, and felt nor
saw nothing. A little later
Old Stella Moreland woke out of her vision, sick and shaking.

                                                   Tamar`s mind and suffering
Returned to her neither on the sea-rocks of the midnight nor
in her own room; but she was lying
Where Lee her brother had lain, nine months before, after his
fall, in the big westward bedroom.
She lay on the bed, and in one corner was a cot for Stella who
nursed her, and in the other
A cot for the idiot, whom none else would care for but old
Stella. After the ache of awakening
And blank dismay of the spirit come home to a spoiled house,
she lay thinking with vacant wonder
That life is always an old story, repeating itself always like the
leaves of a tree
Or the lips of an idiot; that herself like Lee her brother
Was picked up bleeding from the sea-boulders under the sea-cliff
and carried up to be laid
In the big westward bedroom . . . was he also fouled with
ghosts before they found him, a gang
Of dead men beating him with rotten bones, mouthing his body,
piercing him? "Stella," she whispered,
"Have I been sick long?" "There, sweetheart, lie still; three or
four days." "Has Lee been in to see me?"
"Indeed he has, hours every day." "He`ll come, then," and she
closed her eyes and seemed to sleep.
Someone tapped at the door after an hour and Tamar said,
"Come, Lee." But her old father
Came in, and he said nothing, but sat down by the bed; Tamar
had closed her eyes. In a little
Lee entered, and he brought a chair across the room and sat by
the bed. "Why don`t you speak,
Lee?" And he said, "What can I say except I love you, sister?"
"Why do you call me sister,
Not Tamar?" And he answered, "I love you, Tamar." Then old
Aunt Stella said, "See, she`s much better.
But you must let her rest. She`ll be well in a few days; now kiss
her, Lee, and let her rest."
Lee bent above the white pure cameo-face on the white pillow,
meaning to kiss the forehead.
But Tamar`s hands caught him, her lips reached up for his: while
Jinny the idiot clapped and chuckled
And made a clucking noise of kisses; then, while Lee sought to
untwine the arms that yoked his neck,
The old man, rising: "I opened the Book last night thinking
about the sorrows of this house,
And it said, `If a man find her in the field and force her and lie
with her, nevertheless the damsel
Has not earned death, for she cried out and there was none to
save her.` Be glad, Tamar, my sins
Are only visited on my son, for you there is mercy." "David,
David,
Will you be gone and let her rest now," cried old Stella, "do
you mean to kill her with a bible?"
"Woman," he answered, "has God anything to do with you?
She will not die, the Book
Opened and said it." Tamar, panting, leaned against the pillow
and said, "Go, go. To-morrow
Say all you please; what does it matter?" And the old man said,
"Come, Lee, in the morning she will hear us."
Tamar stretched out her trembling hand, Lee did not touch it,
but went out ahead of his father.
So they were heard in the hall, and then their footsteps on the
stair. Tamar lay quiet and rigid,
With open eyes and tightening fists, with anger like a coiled steel
spring in her throat but weakness
And pain for the lead weights. After an hour she said, "What
does he mean to do? Go away?
Kill himself, Stella?" Stella answered, "Nothing, nothing, they
talk, it`s to keep David quiet.
Your father is off his head a little, you know. Now rest you,
little Tamar, smile and be sleepy,
Scold them to-morrow." "Shut the sun out of my eyes then,"
Tamar said, but the idiot Jinny
Made such a moaning when the windows were all curtained they
needed to let in one beam
For dust to dance in; then the idiot and the sick girl slept. About
the hour of sundown
Tamar was dreaming trivially an axman chopping down a tree
and field-mice scampering
Out of the roots when suddenly like a shift of wind the dream
Changed and grew awful, she watched dark horsemen coming
out of the south, squadrons of hurrying horsemen
Between the hills and the dark sea, helmeted like the soldiers of
the war in France,
Carrying torches. When they passed Mal Paso Creek the columns
Veered, one of the riders said, "Here it began," but another
answered, "No. Before the granite
Was bedded to build the world on." So they formed and galloped
north again, hurrying squadrons,
And Tamar thought, "When they come to the Carmel River
then it will happen. They have passed Mal Paso."

                                                                           Meanwhile
Who has ever guessed to what odd ports, what sea buoying the
keels, a passion blows its bulkless
Navies of vision? High up in the hills
Ramon Ramirez, who was herdsman of the Cauldwell herds,
stood in his cabin doorway
Rolling a cigarette a half-hour after sundown, and he felt puffs
from the south
Come down the slope of stunted redwoods, so he thought the
year was turning at last, and shortly
There would come showers; he walked therefore a hundred
yards to westward, where a point of the hill
Stood over Wildcat Canyon and the sea was visible; he saw
Point Lobos gemmed in the darkening
Pale yellow sea; and on the point the barn-roofs and the house roof
breaking up through the blackness
Of twilight cypress tops, and over the sea a cloud forming. The
evening darkened. Southwestward
A half-mile loop of the coast-road could be seen, this side Mal
Paso. Suddenly a nebular company
Of lights rounded the hill, Ramirez thought the headlights of
a car sweeping the road,
But in a moment saw that it was horsemen, each carrying a light,
hurrying northward,
Moving in squads he judged of twenty or twenty-five, he counted
twelve or thirteen companies
When the brush broke behind him and a horseman rode the
headlong ridge like level ground,
Helmeted, carrying a torch. Followed a squad of twelve, helmeted,
cantering the headlong ridge
Like level ground. He thought in the nervous innocence of the
early war, they must be Germans.

Tamar awoke out of her dream and heard old Jinny saying,
"Dear sister Helen, kiss me
As you kiss David. I was watching under a rock, he took your
clothes off and you kissed him
So hard and hard, I love you too, Helen; you hardly ever kiss
me." Tamar lay rigid,
Breathless to listen to her; it was well known in the house that
under the shell of imbecility
Speech and a spirit, however subdued, existed still; there were
waking flashes, and more often
She talked in sleep and proved her dreams were made out of
clear memories, childhood sights and girlhood
Fancies, before the shadow had fallen; so Tamar craving food
for passion listened to her,
And heard: "Why are you cross, Helen? I won`t peek if you`d
rather I didn`t. Darling Helen,
I love him, too; I`d let him play with me the way he does with
you if he wanted to.
And Lily and Stella hate me as much as they hate you." All
she said after was so mumbled
That Tamar could not hear it, could only hear the mumble, and
old Aunt Stella`s nasal sleep
And the sea murmuring. When the mumbled voice was quiet it
seemed to Tamar
A strange thing was preparing, an inward pressure
Grew in her throat and seemed to swell her arms and hands
And join itself with a fluid power
Streaming from somewhere in the room from Jinny?
From Stella? and in a moment the heavy chair
That Lee had sat in, tipped up, rose from the floor,
And floated to the place he had brought it from
Five hours ago. The power was then relaxed,
And Tamar could breathe and speak. She awaked old Stella
And trembling told her what she had seen; who laughed
And answered vaguely so that Tamar wondered
Whether she was still asleep, and let her burrow
In her bed again and sleep. Later that night
Tamar too slept, but shudderingly, in snatches,
For fear of dreaming. A night like years. In the gray of morning
A horse screamed from the stableyard and Tamar
Heard the thud of hooves lashing out and timbers
Splintering, and two or three horses broken loose
Galloped about the grounds of the house. She heard men calling,
And downstairs Lee in a loud angry tone
Saying "Someone`s pitched the saw-buck and the woodpile
Into the horse-corral." Then Tamar thought
"The same power moved his chair in the room, my hatred, my
hatred,
Disturbing the house because I failed to burn it.
I must be quiet and quiet and quiet and keep
The serving spirits of my hid hatred quiet
Until my rime serves too. Helen you shadow
Were never served so handily." Stella had awakened,
And Tamar asking for a drink of water
She waddled to fetch it and met Lee at the door.
"O Lee," she said, "that noise what ever has happened?"
He: "I don`t know. Some fool has pitched the whole woodpile
Into the horse-corral. Is Tamar awake?
I want to see Tamar." He entered the room
As Stella left it. Old withered Aunt Jinny
Sat up in her bed saying "David, David," but Lee
Kneeling at Tamar`s bedside, "O Tamar, Tamar.
The old man`s outdoors tottering after the horses
So I can see you a minute. O why, why, why,
Didn`t you tell me Tamar? I`d have taken you up
In my arms and carried you to the end of the world."
"How it`s turned sour," she thought, "I`d have been glad of this
Yesterday," and she clinched her finger-nails
Into her palms under the bed-covers,
Saying, "Tell you what? What have they told you," she asked
With a white sidelong smile, "people are always lying?"
"Tamar, that you that we ... O I`ve lived hell
Four or five days now." "You look well enough,"
She answered, "put yours by mine," laying her white, lean,
And somewhat twitching hand on the counterpane,
"Mine used to manage a bridle as well as yours
And now look at them. I don`t suppose you want me
Now, but it doesn`t matter. You used to come to my bed
With something else than pity, convenient, wasn`t it?
Not having to ride to Monterey?" He answered frowning,
"However much you hurt me I am very glad too
That all the joys and memories of a love
As great and as forbidden as ours are nothing to you
Or worse than nothing, because I have to go away,
Two days from now, and stay rill the war`s over
And you are married and father is dead. I`ve promised him
Never to see him again, never to see his face.
He didn`t ask it because he thinks his Book
Told him I`m to be killed. That`s foolishness,
But makes your peace with him and thank God for that.
What his Book told him." "So here`s the secret
I wasn`t strong enough yesterday to hear.
I thought maybe you meant to kill yourself."
"Thanks, Tamar. The old man thinks I don`t need to." "O,
You beast," she said, "you runaway dog.
I wish you joy of your dirty Frenchwomen
You want instead of me. Take it, take it.
Old people in their dotage gabble the truth,
You won`t live long." "What can I say, Tamar?
I`m sorry, I`m sorry, I`m sorry." "But go away,"
She said, "and if you`ll come again to-night
Maybe I`ll tell you mine, my secret."
                                                        That morning
Ramon Ramirez who watched the Cauldwell cattle
Up in the hills kept thinking of his vision
Of helmets carrying torches; he looked for tracks
On the ridge where he had seen the riders cantering,
And not a bush was broken, not a hoof-mark
Scarred the sear grass. At noon he thought he`d ride
To Vogel`s place taking his lunch in the saddle
And tell someone about it. At the gap in the hill
Where storm-killed redwoods line both sides he met
Johnny Cabrera with a flaming bundle
Of dead twigs and dry grass tied with brown cord.
He smelled the smoke and saw the flame sag over
On a little wind from the east, and said in Spanish
"Eh Johnny, are you out of matches?" who answered flashing
His white teeth in a smile, "I`m carrying fire to Lobos
If God is willing," and walked swinging ahead,
Singing to himself the fool south-border couplet
"No tengo tabaco, no tengo papel,
No tengo dinero, God damn it to hell,"
And Ramon called "Hey Johnny," but he would not stop
Nor answer, and thinking life goes wild at times
Ramon came to the hill-slope under Vogel`s
And smelled new smoke and saw the clouds go up
And this same Johnny with two other men
Firing the brush to make spring pasture. Ramon
Felt the scalp tighten on his temples and thought best
Not to speak word of either one of his visions,
Though he talked with the men, they told him Tamar Cauldwell
Was sick, and Lee had enlisted.
                                                 The afternoon
Was feverish for so temperate a sea-coast
And terribly full of light, the sea like a hard mirror
Reverberated the straight and shining serpents
That fell from heaven and Tamar dreamed in a doze
She was hung naked by that tight cloth bandage
Half-way between sea and sky, beaten on by both,
Burning with light; wakening she found she had tumbled
The bed-clothes to the floor and torn her nightgown
To rags, and was alone in the room, and blinded
By the great glare of sun in the western windows.
She rose and shut the curtains though they had told her
She mustn`t get out of bed, and finding herself
Able to walk she stood by the little window
That looked southeast from the south bay of the room
And saw the smoke of burning brushwood slopes
Tower up out of the hills in the windless weather
Like an enormous pinetree, "Everybody
But me has luck with fire," she thought to herself,
"But I can walk now," and returned to bed
And drew the sheets over her flanks, but leaving
The breasts and the shoulders bare. In half an hour
Stella and old Jinny came into the room
With the old man David Cauldwell. Stella hastily
Drew up the sheet to Tamar`s throat but Tamar
Saying, "You left the curtains open and the sun
Has nearly killed me," doubled it down again,
And David Cauldwell, trembling: "Will you attempt
Age and the very grave, uncovering your body
To move the old bones that seventy years have broken
And dance your bosoms at me through a mist of death?
Though I know that you and your brother have utterly despised
The bonds of blood, and daughter and father are no closer
bound,
And though this house spits out all goodness, I am old, I am old,
I am old,
What do you want of me?" He stood tottering and wept,
Covering his eyes and beard with shaken old hands,
And Tamar, having not moved, "Nothing," she said,
"Nothing, old man. I have swum too deep into the mud
For this to sicken me; and as you say, there are neither
Brother nor sister, daughter nor father, nor any love
This side the doorways of the damnable house.
But I have a wildbeast of a secret hidden
Under the uncovered breast will eat us all up
Before Lee goes." "It is a lie, it is a lie, it is all a lie.
Stella you must go out, go out of the room Stella,
Not to hear the sick and horrible imaginations
A sick girl makes for herself. Go Stella." "Indeed I won`t,
David." "You-you-it is still my house." "To let you kill her
with bad words
All out of the bible-indeed I won`t." "Go, Stella," said Tamar,
"Let me talk to this old man, and see who has suffered
When you come back. I am out of pity, and you and Jinny
Will be less scorched on the other side of the door." After a
third refusal
The old woman went, leading her charge, and Tamar: "You
thought it was your house? It is me they obey.
It is mine, I shall destroy it. Poor old man I have earned
authority." "You have gone mad," he answered.
And she: "I`ll show you our trouble, you sinned, your old book
calls it, and repented: that was foolish.
I was unluckier, I had no chance to repent, so I learned something,
we must keep sin pure
Or it will poison us, the grain of goodness in a sin is poison.
Old man, you have no conception
Of the freedom of purity. Lock the door, old man, I am telling
you a secret." But he trembling,
"O God thou hast judged her guiltless, the Book of thy word
spake it, thou hast the life of the young man
My son . . ." and Tamar said, "Tell God we have revoked
relationship in the house, he is not
Your son nor you my father." "Dear God, blot out her words,
she has gone mad. Tamar, I will lock it,
Lest anyone should come and hear you, and I will wrestle for
you with God, I will not go out
Until you are His." He went and turned the key and Tamar
said, "I told you I have authority.
You obey me like the others, we pure have power. Perhaps
there are other way, but I was plunged
In the dirt of the world to win it, and, O father, so I will call
you this last time, dear father
You cannot think what freedom and what pleasure live in having
abjured laws, in having
Annulled hope, I am now at peace." "There is no peace, there
is none, there is none, there is no peace
But His," he stammered, "but God`s." "Not in my arms, old
man, on these two little pillows? Your son
Found it there, and another, and dead men have defiled me.
You that are half dead and half living,
Look, poor old man. That Helen of yours, when you were
young, where was her body more desirable,
Or was she lovinger than I? You know it is forty years ago
that we revoked
Relationships in the house." "He never forgives, He never forgives,
evil punishes evil
With the horrible mockery of an echo." "Is the echo louder
than the voice, I have surpassed her,
Yours was the echo, time stands still old man, you`ll learn when
you have lived at the muddy root
Under the rock of things; all times are now, to-day plays on
last year and the inch of our future
Made the first morning of the world. You named me for the
monument in a desolate graveyard,
Fool, and I say you were deceived, it was out of me that fire lit
you and your Helen, your body
Joined with your sister`s
Only because I was to be named Tamar and to love my brother
and my father.
I am the fountain." But he, shuddering, moaned, "You have gone
mad, you have gone mad, Tamar,"
And twisted his old hands muttering, "I fear hell. O Tamar, the
nights I have spent in agony,
Ages of pain, when the eastwind ran like glass under the peeping
stars or the southwest wind
Plowed in the blackness of the tree. You-a little thing has
driven you mad, a moment of suffering,
But I for more than forty years have lain under the mountains
and looked down into hell."
"One word," she said, "that was not written in the book of my
fears. I did indeed fear pain
Before peace found me, or death, never that dream. Old man,
to be afraid is the only hell
And dead people are quit of it, I have talked with the dead."
"Have you with her?" "Your pitiful Helen?
She is always all about me; if you lay in my arms old man you
would be with her. Look at me,
Have you forgotten your Helen?" He in torture
Groaned like a beast, but when he approached the bed she
laughed, "Not here, behind you." And he blindly
Clutching at her, she left the coverlet in his hands and slipping
free at the other side
Saw in a mirror on the wall her own bright throat and shoulder
and just beyond them the haggard
Open-mouthed mask, the irreverend beard and blind red eyes.
She caught the mirror from its fastening
And held it to him, reverse. "Here is her picture, Helen`s picture,
look at her, why is she always
Crying and crying?" When he turned the frame and looked,
then Tamar: "See that is her lover`s.
The hairy and horrible lips to kiss her, the drizzling eyes to eat
her beauty, happiest of women
If only he were faithful; he is too young and wild and lovely,
and the lusts of his youth
Lead him to paw strange beds." The old man turned the glass
and gazed at the blank side, and turned it
Again face toward him, he seemed drinking all the vision in it,
and Tamar: "Helen, Helen,
I know you are here present; was I humbled in the night lately
and you exulted?
See here your lover. I think my mother will not envy you now,
your lover, Helen, your lover,
The mouth to kiss you, the hands to fondle secret places." Then
the old man sobbing, "It is not easy
To be old, mocked, and a fool." And Tamar, "What, not yet,
you have not gone mad yet? Look, old fellow.
These rags drop off, the bandages hid something but I`m done
with them. See ... I am the fire
Burning the house." "What do you want, what do you want?"
he said, and stumbled toward her, weeping.
"Only to strangle a ghost and to destroy the house. Spit on the
memory of that Helen
You might have anything of me." And he groaning, "When I
was young
I thought it was my fault, I am old and know it was hers, night
after night, night after night
I have lain in the dark, Tamar, and cursed her." "And now?"
"I hate her, Tamar." "O," said Tamar gently,
"It is enough, she has heard you. Now unlock the door, old
father, and go, and go." "Your promise,
Tamar, the promise, Tamar." "Why I might do it, I have no
feeling of revolt against it.
Though you have forgotten that fear of hell why should I let
you
Be mocked by God?" And he, the stumpage of his teeth knocking
together, "You think, you think
I`ll go to the stables and a rope from a rafter
Finish it for you?" "Dear, I am still sick," she answered, "you
don`t want to kill me? A man
Can wait three days: men have lived years and years on the
mere hope."
                    Meanwhile the two old women
Sat in their room, old Stella sat at the window looking south
into the cypress boughs, and Jinny
On her bed`s edge, rocking her little withered body backward
and forward, and said vacantly,
"Helen, what do you do the times you lock the door to be
alone, and Lily and Stella
Wonder where David`s ridden to?" After a while she said again,
"Do tell me, sister Helen,
What you are doing the times you lock the door to be alone,
and Lily and Stella wonder
Where David`s ridden to?" And a third time she repeated,
"Darling sister Helen, tell me
What you are doing the times you lock the door to be alone,
and Lily and Stella wonder
Where David`s riding?" Stella seemed to awake, catching at
breath, and not in her own voice,
"What does she mean," she said, "my picture, picture? O! the
mirror I read in a book Jinny.
A story about lovers; I never had a lover, I read about them;
I won`t look, though.
With all that blind abundance, so much of life and blood, that
sweet and warming blaze of passion,
She has also a monkey in her mind." "Tell me the story about
the picture." "Ugh, if she plans
To humble herself utterly . . . You may peek, Jinny,
Try if you can, shut both eyes, draw them back into your forehead,
and look, look, look
Over the eyebrows, no, like this, higher up, up where the hair
grows, now peek Jinny. Can`t you
See through the walls? You can. Look, look, Jinny. As if they`d
cut a window. I used to tell you
That God could see into caves: you are like God now: peek,
Jinny." "I can see something.
It`s in the stable, David`s come from Monterey, he`s hanging
the saddle on a peg there . . ."
"Jinny, I shall be angry. That`s not David,
It`s Lee, don`t look into the stable, look into the bedroom, you
know, Jinny, the bedroom,
Where we left Tamar on the bed." "O that`s too near, it hurts
me, it hurts my head, don`t scold me, Helen.
How can I see if I`m crying? I see now clearly."
"What do you see?" "I see through walls, O, I`m like God,
Helen. I see the wood and plaster
And see right through them." "What? What are they doing?"
"How can you be there and here, too, Helen?"
"It`s Tamar, what is she doing?" "I know it`s you Helen, because
you have no hair
Under the arms, I see the blue veins under the arms." "Well, if
it`s me, what is she doing?
Is she on the bed? What is she saying?" "She is on fire Helen,
she has white fire all around you
Instead of clothes, and that is why you are laughing with so
pale a face." "Does she let him do
Whatever he wants to, Jinny?" "He says that he hates . . .
somebody . . . and then you laughed for he had a rope
Around his throat a moment, the beard stuck out over it." "O
Jinny it wasn`t I that laughed
It was that Tamar, Tamar, Tamar, she has bought him for
nothing. She and her mother both to have him,
The old hollow fool." "What do they want him for, Helen?"
"To plug a chink, to plug a chink, Jinny,
In the horrible vanity of women. Lee`s come home, now I
could punish her, she`s past hurting,
Are they huddled together Jinny? What, not yet, not yet?"
"You asked for the key but when he held it
You ran away from him." "What do I want, what do I want,
it is frightful to be dead, what do I ...
Without power, and no body or face. To kill her, kill her?
There`s no hell and curse God for it . . ."

                                                         Lee Cauldwell childishly
Loved hearing the spurs jingle, and because he felt
"After to-morrow I shan`t wear them again,
Nor straddle a pony for many a weary month and year,
Maybe forever," he left them at his heels
When he drew off the chaps and hung the saddle
On the oak peg in the stable-wall. He entered the house
Slowly, he had taken five drinks in Monterey
And saw his tragedy of love, sin, and war
At the disinterested romantic angle
Misted with not unpleasing melancholy,
Over with, new adventure ahead, a perilous cruise
On the other ocean, and great play of guns
On the other shore ... at the turn of the stair he heard
Hands hammering a locked door, and a voice unknown to him
Crying, "Tamar, I loved you for your flame of passion
And hated you for its deeds, all that we dead
Can love or hate with: and now will you crust flame
With filth, submit? Submit? Tamar,
The defilement of the rideline dead was nothing
To this defilement." Then Lee jingling his spurs,
Jumped four steps to the landing, "Who is there? You,
Aunt Stella?" Old gray Aunt Jinny like a little child
Moaning dr`ew back from him, and the mouth of Stella:
"A man that`s ready to cross land and water
To set the world in order can`t be expected
To leave his house in order." And Lee, "Listen, Aunt Stella,
Who are you playing, I mean what voice out of the world of
the dead
Is speaking from you?" She answered, "Nothing. I was something
Forty years back but now I`m only the bloodhound
To bay at the smell of what they`re doing in there."
"Who? Tamar? Blood?" "Too close in blood, I am the bloodstain
On the doorsill of a crime, she does her business
Under her own roof mostly." "Tamar, Tamar,"
Lee called, shaking the door. She from within
Answered "I am here, Lee. Have you said good-by
To Nita and Conchita in Monterey
And your fat Fanny? But who is the woman at the door
Making the noise?" He said, "Open the door;
Open the door, Tamar." And she, "I opened it for you,
You are going to France to knock at other doors.
I opened it for you and others." "What others?" "Ask her,"
Said the young fierce voice from old Aunt Stella`s lips,
"What other now?" "She is alone there," he answered,
"A devil is in you. Tamar," he said, "tell her
You are alone." "No, Lee, I am asking in earnest,
Who is the woman making the noise out there?
Someone you`ve brought from Monterey? Tell her to go:
Father is here." "Why have you locked it, why have you
locked it?"
He felt the door-knob turning in his hand
And the key shook the lock; Tamar stood in the doorway
Wrapped in a loose blue robe that the auburn hair
Burned on, and beyond her the old man knelt by the bed,
His face in the lean twisted hands. "He was praying for me,"
Tamar said quietly. "You are leaving to-morrow,
He has only one child." Then the old man lifting a face
From which the flesh seemed to have fallen, and the eyes
Dropped and been lost: "What will you do to him, Tamar?
Tamar, have mercy.
He was my son, years back." She answered, "I am glad
That you know who has power in the house"; and he
Hid the disfigured face, between his wrists
The beard kept moving, they thought him praying to God.
And Tamar said, "It is coming to the end of the bad story,
That needn`t have been bad only we fools
Botch everything, but a dead fool`s the worst,
This old man`s sister who rackets at the doors
And drove me mad, although she is nothing but a voice,
Dead, shelled, and the shell rotted, but she had to meddle
In the decencies of life here. Lee, if you truly
Lust for the taste of a French woman I`ll let you go
For fear you die unsatisfied and plague
Somebody`s children with a ghost`s hungers
Forty years after death. Do I care, do I care?
You shan`t go, Lee. I told the old man I have a secret
That will eat us all up ... and then, dead woman,
What will you have to feed on? You spirits flicker out
Too speedily, forty years is a long life for a ghost
And you will only famish a little longer
To whom I`d wish eternity." "O Tamar, Tamar,"
It answered out of Stella`s mouth, "has the uttermost
Not taught you anything yet, not even that extinction
Is the only terror?" "You lie too much," she answered,
"You`ll enter it soon and not feel any stitch
Of fear afterwards. Listen, Lee, your arms
Were not the first man`s to encircle me, and that spilled life
Losing which let me free to laugh at God,
I think you had no share in." He trembled, and said
"O Tamar has your sickness and my crime
Cut you so deep? A lunatic in a dream
Dreams nearer things than this." "I`d never have told you,"
She answered, "if his vicious anger-after I`d balanced
Between you a long time and then chose you
Hadn`t followed his love`s old night-way to my window
And kindled fire in the room when I was gone,
The spite-fire that might easily have eaten up
And horribly, our helpless father, or this innocent
Jinny . . ." "He did it, he did it, forgive me, Tamar.
I thought that you gone mad . . . Tamar, I know
That you believe what you are saying but I
Do not believe you. There was no one." "The signal
Was a lamp in the window, perhaps some night
He`d come still if you`d set a lamp into my window.
And when he climbed out of the cypress tree
Then you would know him." "I would mark him to know.
But it`s not true." "Since I don`t sleep there now
You might try for the moth; if he doesn`t come
I`ll tell you his name to-morrow." Then the old man jerking
Like dry bones wired pulled himself half erect
With clutching at the bed-clothes: "Have mercy, Tamar.
Lee, there`s a trick in it, she is a burning fire,
She is packed with death. I have learned her, I have learned her,
        I have learned her,
Too cruel to measure strychnine, too cunning-cruel
To snap a gun, aiming ourselves against us."
Lee answered, "There is almost nothing here to understand.
If we all did wrong why have we all gone mad
But me, I haven`t a touch of it. Listen, dead woman,
Do you feel any light here?" "Fire-as much light
As a bird needs," the voice from the old woman
Answered, "I am the gull on the butt of the mast
Watching the ship founder, I`ll fly away home
When you go down, or a swallow above a chimney
Watching the brick and mortar fly in the earthquake."
`Til just go look at the young cypress bark
Under her window," he said, "it might have taken
The bite of a thief`s hobnails." When he was gone
And jingling down the stair, then Tamar: "Poor people,
Why do you cry out so? I have three witnesses,
The old man that died to-day, and a dead woman
Forty years dead, and an idiot, and only one of you
Decently quiet. There is the great and quiet water
Reaching to Asia, and in an hour or so
The still stars will show over it but I am quieter
Inside than even the ocean or the stars.
Though I have to kindle paper flares of passion
Sometimes, to fool you with. But I was thinking
Last night, that people all over the world
Are doing much worse and suffering much more than we
This wartime, and the stars don`t wink, and the ocean
Storms perhaps less than usual." Then the dead woman,
"Wild life, she has touched the ice-core of things and learned
Something, that frost burns worse than fire." "O, it`s not true,"
She answered, "frost is kind; why, almost nothing
You say is true. Helen, do you remember at all
The beauty and strangeness of this place? Old cypresses
The sailor wind works into deep-sea knots
A thousand years; age-reddened granite
That was the world`s cradle and crumbles apieces
Now that we`re all grown up, breaks out at the roots;
And underneath it the old gray-granite strength
Is neither glad nor sorry to take the seas
Of all the storms forever and stand as firmly
As when the red hawk wings of the first dawn
Streamed up the sky over it: there is one more beautiful thing,
Water that owns the north and west and south
And is all colors and never is all quiet,
And the fogs are its breath and float along the branches of
the cypresses.
And I forgot the coals of ruby lichen
That glow in the fog on the old twigs. To live here
Seventy-five years or eighty, and have children,
And watch these things fill up their eyes, would not
Be a bad life . . . I`d rather be what I am,
Feeling this peace and joy, the fire`s joy`s burning,
And I have my peace." Then the old man in the dull
And heartless voice answered, "The strangest thing
Is that He never speaks: we know we are damned, why should
He speak? The book
Is written already. Cauldwell, Cauldwell, Cauldwell, Cauldwell.
Eternal death, eternal wrath, eternal torture, eternity, eternity,
eternity . . .
That`s after the judgment." "You needn`t have any fear, old
father,
Of anything to happen after to-morrow," Tamar answered, "we
have turned every page
But the last page, and now our paper`s so worn out and tissuey
I can read it already
Right through the leaf, print backwards."
                        
                                                                 It was twilight in the
room, the shiny side of the wheel
Dipping toward Asia; and the year dipping toward winter encrimsoned
the grave spokes of sundown;
And jingling in the door Lee Cauldwell with the day`s-death
flush upon his face: "Father:
There are marks on the cypress: a hell of a way to send your
soldier off: I want to talk to her
Alone. You and the women " he flung his hand out, meaning
"go." The old man without speaking
Moved to the door, propping his weakness on a chair and on
the door-frame, and Lee entering
Passed him and the two women followed him three, if Stella
were onebut when they had passed the doorway
Old Cauldwcll turned, and tottering in it: "Death is the horror,"
he said, "nothing else lasts, pain passes,
Death`s the only trap. I am much too wise to swing myself in
the stable on a rope from a rafter. Helen, Helen,
You know about death." "It is cold," she answered from the
hallway; "unspeakably hopeless . . ." "You curse of talkers,
Go," he said, and he shut the door against them and said, "Slut,
how many, how many?" She, laughing,
"I knew you would be sweet to me: I am still sick: did you find
marks in the bark? I am still sick, Lee;
You don`t intend killing me?" "Flogging, whipping, whipping,
is there anything male about here
You haven`t used yet? Agh you mouth, you open mouth. But
I won`t touch you." "Let me say something,"
She answered, standing dark against the west in the window, the
death of the winter rose of evening
Behind her little high-poised head, and threading the brown
twilight of the room with the silver
Exultance of her voice, "My brother can you feel how happy
I am but how far off too?
If I have done wrong it has turned good to me, I could almost
be sorry that I have to die now
Out of such freedom; if I were standing back of the evening
crimson on a mountain in Asia
All the fool shames you can whip up into a filth of words would
not be farther off me,
Nor any fear of anything, if I stood in the evening star and saw
this dusty dime`s worth
A dot of light, dropped up the star-gleam. Poor brother, poor
brother, you played the fool too
But not enough, it is not enough to taste delight and passion and
disgust and loathing
And agony, you have to be wide alive, `an open mouth` you
said, all the while, to reach this heaven
You`ll never grow up to. Though it`s possible if I`d let you
go asoldiering, there on the dunghills
Of death and fire ... ah, you`d taste nothing even there but
the officers` orders, beef and brandy,
And the tired bodies of a few black-eyed French dance-girls:
it is better for you
To be lost here than there." "You are up in the evening star,"
he said, "you can`t feel this," flat-handed
Striking her cheek, "you are up on a mountain in Asia, who
made you believe that you could keep me
Or let me go? I am going to-morrow, to-night I set the house
in order." "There is nothing now
You can be sorry for," she answered, "not even this, it is out
of the count, the cup ran over
Yesterday." He turned and left the room, the foolish tune of
the spurs tinkled
Hallway and stair. Tamar, handling the fiery spot upon her
cheek smiled in the darkness,
Feeling so sure of the end. "Night after night he has ridden to
the granite at the rivermouth
And missed my light, to-night he will see it, the Lobos star he
called it, and look and look to be sure
It is not a ship`s light nor a star`s, there in the south, then he
will come, and my three lovers
Under one roof."

VII
Lee Cauldwell felt his way in the dark among the cypress trees,
and turning
At the stable-door saw the evening star, he felt for the lantern
Hung on the bent nail to the right of the door,
Lighted it, and in the sweet hay-dusty darkness
Found the black quirt that hung beside the saddle
And seemed a living snake in the hand, then he opened
A locker full of hunter`s gear and tumbled
Leather and iron to the floor for an old sheath-knife
Under all the rest; he took the knife and whip
And Tamar in the dark of the westward bedroom heard him
Tinkle on the stair and jingle in the hall, slow steps
Moving to hers, the room that had been her room
Before this illness; she felt him as if she had been there
Lighting her lamp and setting it on the sill,
Then felt him look about the little room and feel it
Breathing and warm with her once habitancy
And the hours of hers and his there, and soften almost
To childish tears at trifles on the wall-,
And then he would look at the bed and stiffen
In a brittle rage, feel with thrust under-lip
Virtuous, an outcrop of morality in him
To grow ridiculous and wish to be cruel,
And so return to her. Hastily, without light,
She redded up some of the room`s untidiness,
Thrust into the stove the folds of bandage-cloth,
Straightened the bed a little, and laying aside
The loose blue robe lay down in the bed to await him,
Who, throwing open the door, "Tamar: I`ve got no right
To put my hands into your life, I see
That each of us lives only a little while
And must do what he can with it: so, I`m going
To-night; I`d nearly worked myself to the act
Of some new foolishness: are you there, Tamar?
The lamp?" He struck a match and saw her eyes
Shine on him from the pillow and when the lamp
Was lighted he began again: "It`s all such foolishness.
Well, you and I are done. I set your lamp for a signal on the sill,
I`ll take it away or help you to that room,
Whichever you like. That`ll be my last hand in the game.
It won`t take me ten minutes to pack and go, my plan`s
Not to risk losing temper and have half-decent
Thoughts of you while I`m gone, and you of me, Tamar."
She lay too quietly and the shining eyes
Seemed not to hide amusement, he waited for her
To acknowledge not in direct words perhaps
His generosity, but she silent, "Well, shall I leave the lamp?"
He said, not all so kindly, and Tamar, "I`ve no one else
If you are going. But if you`d stay I wouldn`t
Touch you again, ever. Agh, you can`t wait
To get to France to crawl into strange beds,
But Monterey to-night. You what a beast.
You like them dirty." He said, "You`re a fool, Tamar.
Well, so I`ll leave the lamp. Good-by, Tamar."
"You said you`d help me down the hall." "Yes, even that.
What must I do, carry you?" "Is the bed together?
See whether there are sheets and covers on it."
He went, and returned icy-pale. "It hasn`t been changed
Since I smelled fire and ran into the room
Six or eight days ago. The cupboard door-frame
Is all charcoal. By God, Tamar,
If I believed he`d done it-who is he, Andrews?-
You and your lies have made a horror in the house.
What, shall I go, shall I go?" "Me? who made me
Believe that I could keep you or let you go.
Didn`t you say?" "You still believe it," he answered,
Doubling his fists to hold in anger, the passionate need
Of striking her like a torrent in his throat,
"Believe it, fool." "Poor brother. You will never see France.
Never wear uniform nor learn how to fasten
A bayonet to a gun-barrel." "Come. Stop talking.
Get up, come to your room." "Carry me," she answered.
"Though I am not really much too tired to walk.
You used to like me." "Well, to get done and be gone,"
He said, bending above her, she enlaced his neck
Softly and strongly and raised her knees to let
His arms slip under them, he like a man stung by a serpent
Felt weakness and then rage, panted to lift her
And staggered in the doorway and in the dark hallway
Grew dizzy, and difficultly went on and groaning
Dropped her on the bed in her own room, she did not move
To cover herself, then he drawing his palm
Across his forehead found it streaming wet
And said, "You whore, you whore, you whore. Well, you shall
have it,
You`ve earned it," and he twisted himself to the little table
And took the whip, the oiled black supple quirt,
Loaded at the handle, that seemed a living snake in the hand,
And felt the exasperate force of his whole baffled
And blindfold life flow sideways into the shoulder
Swinging it, and half repenting while it dropped
Sickened to see the beautiful bare white
Blemishless body writhe under it before it fell,
The loins pressed into the bed, the breast and head
Twisting erect, and at the noise of the stroke
He made a hoarse cry in his throat but she
Took it silently, and lay still afterward,
Her head so stricken backward that the neck
Seemed strained to breaking, the coppery pad of her hair
Crushed on the shoulder-blades, while that red snake-trail
Swelled visibly from the waist and flank down the left thigh.
"O God, God, God," he groaned; and she, her whole body
Twitching on the white bed whispered between her teeth
"It was in the bargain," and from her bitten lip
A trickle of blood ran down to the pillow.

                                                        That one light in the room,
The lamp on the sill, did not turn redder for blood nor with the
whipstripe
But shone serene and innocent up the northward night, writing
a long pale-golden track
In the river`s arm of sea, and beyond the river`s mouth where
the old lion`s teeth of blunted granite
Crop out of the headland young Will Andrews kissed it with
his eyes, rode south and crossed the river`s
Late-summer sand-lock. Figures of fire moved in the hills on
the left, the pasture-fires and brush-fires
Men kindle before rain, on a southerly wind the smell of the
smoke reached him, the sea on his right
Breathed; when he skirted the darkness of the gum-tree grove
at San Jose creek-mouth he remembered
Verdugo killed there; Sylvia Vierra and her man had lived in
the little white-washed farm-hut
Under the surf-reverberant blue-gums, two years ago they had
had much wine in the house, their friend
Verdugo came avisiting, he being drunk on the raw plenty of
wine they thought abused
Nine-year-old Mary, Sylvia`s daughter, they struck him from
behind and when he was down unmanned him
With the kitchen knife, then plotted drunkenly for he seemed
to be dead-where to dispose the body.
That evening Tamar Cauldwell riding her white pony along
the coast-road saw a great bonfire
Periling the gum-tree grove, and riding under the smoke met evil
odors, turning in there
Saw by the firelight a man`s feet hang out of the fire; then Tamar
never having suffered
Fear in her life, knocked at the hut`s door and unanswered entered,
and found the Vierras asleep
Steaming away their wine, but little Mary weeping. She had
taken the child and ridden homeward.
Young Andrews thinking of that idyll of the country gulped at
Source
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