Promptly, the next afternoon, Maria was excited by Martin’s second visitor. But she did not lose her head this time, for she seated Brissenden in her parlor’s grandeur of respectability.
“Hope you don’t mind my coming?” Brissenden began.
“No, no, not at all,” Martin answered, shaking hands and waving him to the solitary chair, himself taking to the bed. “But how did you know where I lived?”
“Called up the Morses. Miss Morse answered the ‘phone. And here I am.“He tugged at his coat pocket and flung a thin volume on the table. “There’s a book, by a poet. Read it and keep it.” And then, in reply to Martin’s protest:“What have I to do with books? I had another hemorrhage this morning. Got any whiskey? No, of course not. Wait a minute.”
He was off and away. Martin watched his long figure go down the outside steps, and, on turning to close the gate, noted with a pang the shoulders, which had once been broad, drawn in now over, the collapsed ruin of the chest. Martin got two tumblers, and fell to reading the book of verse, Henry Vaughn Marlow’s latest collection.
“No Scotch,” Brissenden announced on his return. “The beggar sells nothing but American whiskey. But here’s a quart of it.”
“I’ll send one of the youngsters for lemons, and we’ll make a toddy,”Martin offered.
“I wonder what a book like that will earn Marlow?” he went on, holding up the volume in question.
“Possibly fifty dollars,” came the answer. “Though he’s lucky if he pulls even on it, or if he can inveigle a publisher to risk bringing it out.”
“Then one can’t make a living out of poetry?”
Martin’s tone and face alike showed his dejection.
“Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes. There’s Bruce, and Virginia Spring, and Sedgwick. They do very nicely. But poetry—do you know how Vaughn Marlow makes his living?—teaching in a boys’ cramming-joint down in Pennsylvania, and of all private little hells such a billet is the limit. I wouldn’t trade places with him if he had fifty years of life before him. And yet his work stands out from the ruck of the contemporary versifiers as a balas ruby among carrots. And the reviews he gets! Damn them, all of them, the crass manikins!”
“Too much is written by the men who can’t write about the men who do write,” Martin concurred. “Why, I was appalled at the quantities of rubbish written about Stevenson and his work.”
“Ghouls and harpies!” Brissenden snapped out with clicking teeth. “Yes, I know the spawn—complacently pecking at him for his Father Damien letter, analyzing him, weighing him—”
“Measuring him by the yardstick of their own miserable egos,” Martin broke in.
“Yes, That’s it, a good phrase,—mouthing and besliming the True, and Beautiful, and Good, and finally patting him on the back and saying, ‘Good dog, Fido. ’ Faugh! ‘The little chattering daws of men,’ Richard Realf called them the night he died.”
“Pecking at star-dust,” Martin took up the strain warmly; “at the meteoric flight of the master-men. I once wrote a squib on them—the critics, or the reviewers, rather.”
“Let’s see it,” Brissenden begged eagerly.
So Martin unearthed a carbon copy of “Star-dust,” and during the reading of it Brissenden chuckled, rubbed his hands, and forgot to sip his toddy.
“Strikes me you’re a bit of star-dust yourself, flung into a world of cowled gnomes who cannot see,” was his comment at the end of it. “Of course it was snapped up by the first magazine?”
Martin ran over the pages of his manuscript book. “It has been refused by twenty-seven of them.”
Brissenden essayed a long and hearty laugh, but broke down in a fit of coughing.
“Say, you needn’t tell me you haven’t tackled poetry,” he gasped. “Let me see some of it.”
“Don’t read it now,” Martin pleaded. “I want to talk with you. I’ll make up a bundle and you can take it home.”
Brissenden departed with the “Love-cycle,” and “The Peri and the Pearl,” returning next day to greet Martin with:—
“I want more.”
Not only did he assure Martin that he was a poet, but Martin learned that Brissenden also was one. He was swept off his feet by the other’s work, and astounded that no attempt had been made to publish it.
“A plague on all their houses!” was Brissenden’s answer to Martin’s volunteering to market his work for him. “Love Beauty for its own sake,”was his counsel, “and leave the magazines alone. Back to your ships and your sea—That’s my advice to you, Martin Eden. What do you want in these sick and rotten cities of men? You are cutting your throat every day you waste in them trying to prostitute beauty to the needs of magazinedom. What was it you quoted me the other day?—Oh, yes, ‘Man, the latest of the ephemera.’ Well, what do you, the latest of the ephemera, want with fame? If you got it, it would be poison to you. You are too simple, too elemental, and too rational, by my faith, to prosper on such pap. I hope you never do sell a line to the magazines. Beauty is the only master to serve. Serve her and damn the multitude! Success! What in hell’s success if it isn’t right there in your Stevenson sonnet, which outranks Henley’s ‘Apparition,’ in that ‘Love-cycle,’ in those sea-poems?
“It is not in what you succeed in doing that you get your joy, but in the doing of it. You can’t tell me. I know it. You know it. Beauty hurts you. It is an everlasting pain in you, a wound that does not heal, a knife of flame. Why should you palter with magazines? Let beauty be your end. Why should you mint beauty into gold? Anyway, you can’t; so there’s no use in my getting excited over it. You can read the magazines for a thousand years and you won’t find the value of one line of Keats. Leave fame and coin alone, sign away on a ship tomorrow, and go back to your sea.”
“Not for fame, but for love,” Martin laughed. “Love seems to have no place in your Cosmos; in mine, Beauty is the handmaiden of Love.”
Brissenden looked at him pityingly and admiringly. “You are so young, Martin boy, so young. You will flutter high, but your wings are of the finest gauze, dusted with the fairest pigments. Do not scorch them. But of course you have scorched them already. It required some glorified petticoat to account for that ‘Love-cycle,’ and That’s the shame of it.”
“It glorifies love as well as the petticoat,” Martin laughed.
“The philosophy of madness,” was the retort. “So have I assured myself when wandering in hasheesh dreams. But beware. These bourgeois cities will kill you. Look at that den of traitors where I met you. Dry rot is no name for it. One can’t keep his sanity in such an atmosphere. It’s degrading. There’s not one of them who is not degrading, man and woman, all of them animated stomachs guided by the high intellectual and artistic impulses of clams—”
He broke off suddenly and regarded Martin. Then, with a flash of divination, he saw the situation. The expression on his face turned to wondering horror.
“And you wrote that tremendous ‘Love-cycle’ to her—that pale, shrivelled, female thing!”
The next instant Martin’s right hand had shot to a throttling clutch on his throat, and he was being shaken till his teeth rattled. But Martin, looking into his eyes, saw no fear there,—naught but a curious and mocking devil. Martin remembered himself, and flung Brissenden, by the neck, sidelong upon the bed, at the same moment releasing his hold.
Brissenden panted and gasped painfully for a moment, then began to chuckle.
“You had made me eternally your debtor had you shaken out the flame,”he said.
“My nerves are on a hair-trigger these days,” Martin apologized. “Hope I didn’t hurt you. Here, let me mix a fresh toddy.”
“Ah, you young Greek!” Brissenden went on. “I wonder if you take just pride in that body of yours. You are devilish strong. You are a young panther, a lion cub. Well, well, it is you who must pay for that strength.”
“What do you mean?” Martin asked curiously, passing aim a glass. “Here, down this and be good.”
“Because—” Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it. “Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there’s no use in your choking me; I’m going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your calf love;but for Beauty’s sake show better taste next time. What under heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them alone. Pick out some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and jeers at death and loves one while she may. There are such women, and they will love you just as readily as any pusillanimous product of bourgeois sheltered life.”
“Pusillanimous?” Martin protested.
“Just so, pusillanimous; prattling out little moralities that have been prattled into them, and afraid to live life. They will love you, Martin, but they will love their little moralities more. What you want is the magnificent abandon of life, the great free souls, the blazing butterflies and not the little gray moths. Oh, you will grow tired of them, too, of all the female things, if you are unlucky enough to live. But you won’t live. You won’t go back to your ships and sea; therefore, you’ll hang around these pest-holes of cities until your bones are rotten, and then you’ll die.”
“You can lecture me, but you can’t make me talk back,” Martin said.“After all, you have but the wisdom of your temperament, and the wisdom of my temperament is just as unimpeachable as yours.”
They disagreed about love, and the magazines, and many things, but they liked each other, and on Martin’s part it was no less than a profound liking. Day after day they were together, if for no more than the hour Brissenden spent in Martin’s stuffy room. Brissenden never arrived without his quart of whiskey, and when they dined together down-town, he drank Scotch and soda throughout the meal. He invariably paid the way for both, and it was through him that Martin learned the refinements of food, drank his first champagne, and made acquaintance with Rhenish wines.
But Brissenden was always an enigma. With the face of an ascetic, he was, in all the failing blood of him, a frank voluptuary. He was unafraid to die, bitter and cynical of all the ways of living; and yet, dying, he loved life, to the last atom of it. He was possessed by a madness to live, to thrill, “to squirm my little space in the cosmic dust whence I came,” as he phrased it once himself. He had tampered with drugs and done many strange things in quest of new thrills, new sensations. As he told Martin, he had once gone three days without water, had done so voluntarily, in order to experience the exquisite delight of such a thirst assuaged. Who or what he was, Martin never learned. He was a man without a past, whose future was the imminent grave and whose present was a bitter fever of living.
緊跟著,在第二天下午,瑪麗亞見又有一位貴賓來看望馬丁,不由激動(dòng)萬分。不過,這次她可沒有驚慌失措,而是把勃力森登請(qǐng)進(jìn)華麗、體面的客廳入座。
“我不期而至,讓你討厭了吧?”勃力森登啟口問道。
“不,不,哪里的話!”馬丁說著,跟他握握手,招呼他坐到僅有的那張椅子上,而自己在床沿上落了座,“你是怎么知道我住在這里的?”
“我給摩斯家掛了個(gè)電話,是摩斯小姐接的,所以我就來啦。”他把手伸進(jìn)外衣口袋,掏出一本薄書扔到了桌子上,“這本書是一位詩人寫的,你留著看吧。”他見馬丁一味客氣,便又說道,“我要書有什么用呢?今天早晨我又吐了血。有威士忌嗎?嘖,當(dāng)然不會(huì)有嘍。請(qǐng)稍等一下?!?/p>
他立起身朝外走去。馬丁目送他那頎長的身影下了門外的臺(tái)階,望著他轉(zhuǎn)過身來想關(guān)上大門,不無痛心地留意到他那曾經(jīng)一度寬闊的肩膀如今已凹入萎縮下陷的胸部。馬丁取來兩只大酒杯,然后開始看那本詩集——亨利·沃恩·馬羅的新作。
“沒有蘇格蘭威士忌,”勃力森登回來時(shí)說道,“那窮小子只賣美國酒,我打了一夸脫[1]。”
“我叫孩子去買些檸檬來,咱們做甜酒喝。”馬丁建議說。
“不知這本書能給馬羅帶來多少稿酬?”他把那本詩集舉起來,接著說道。
“大概五十塊錢吧?!睂?duì)方回答,“其實(shí),只要不賠錢,哄著出版商冒風(fēng)險(xiǎn)把書印出來,就已經(jīng)是萬幸的了。”
“如此看來,靠寫詩是無法維持生活嘍?”
馬丁的口氣及神色都顯得十分沮喪。
“當(dāng)然是不行的,只有傻瓜才抱那種指望??繉懘蛴驮?,倒還可以。譬如,布魯斯、弗吉尼亞·斯普林,還有塞奇威克,就干得相當(dāng)出色。可是,寫真正的詩歌就不行了。你知道沃恩·馬羅是怎么度日的嗎?他在賓夕法尼亞的一家私立男生小學(xué)校里教書,那兒可是天底下最糟糕的地方。就是讓我再活上五十年,我也不愿同他交換位置。然而,他的作品比現(xiàn)代打油詩人的劣作要強(qiáng)到了天上,簡直像是拿紅寶石和胡蘿卜相比??稍u(píng)論家把他說得一錢不值!他媽的,那幫家伙全都愚不可及!”
“不會(huì)寫文章的人偏偏要評(píng)論會(huì)寫文章的人,他們寫的東西滿世界都是?!瘪R丁頗有同感地說,“評(píng)論史蒂文森及其作品的糟粕文章,多得讓人吃驚。”
“那是一群欺世盜名的壞蛋!”勃力森登咬牙切齒地說,“對(duì),我了解那些雜種——他們得意地揪住那封為達(dá)米恩神甫寫的辯護(hù)信[2]不放,挑史蒂文森的毛病,對(duì)他分析來衡量去——”
“全是用他們自己的那種可悲的自私自利標(biāo)準(zhǔn)對(duì)他衡量?!瘪R丁插進(jìn)來說。
“對(duì),說得好,正是這樣。那些家伙滿口的‘真善美’,簡直是在糟蹋人,末了還要在他背上拍一拍,說什么‘好樣的,費(fèi)多’。呸!難怪理查德·拉爾夫[3]臨終的那天晚上稱他們?yōu)椤畤\嘰喳喳的小人’?!?/p>
“他們是在挑星塵[4]的毛病,”馬丁撿過話頭,充滿激情地說,“是在挑燦若朗星的偉人的毛病。我曾經(jīng)寫過一篇諷刺短文,抨擊那些批評(píng)家——更確切些,那些評(píng)論家?!?/p>
“容我拜讀一下?!辈ι菓┣蟮?。
于是,馬丁找出一份《星塵》的復(fù)寫本。勃力森登看著看著,不由笑出了聲,還搓著雙手,竟然忘掉了喝他的甜酒。
“我覺得你自己就是一點(diǎn)星塵,落入了一個(gè)小人的世界,他們用毛巾蒙住眼睛,什么都看不見?!辈ι亲x完文章后,這樣評(píng)價(jià)道,“稿子一投出去,肯定就被雜志刊用了吧?”
馬丁翻了翻投稿記錄簿,說道:“遭到了二十七家雜志社的退稿?!?/p>
勃力森登原想開懷大笑一場(chǎng),可是卻劇烈地咳嗽了起來。
“不用說,你也寫過詩。”他氣喘吁吁地說,“拿幾篇讓我瞧瞧?!?/p>
“現(xiàn)在別看了吧。”馬丁帶著央求的口氣說,“我想和你交談呢。我為你捆扎好,你拿回去看?!?/p>
勃力森登辭別時(shí),帶走了《愛情組詩》以及《仙女與珍珠》。次日來時(shí),他一見馬丁的面就說:
“我想再看幾篇。”
他堅(jiān)信馬丁是個(gè)真正的詩人,而馬丁發(fā)現(xiàn)他也是位詩人。馬丁對(duì)他的詩作大為佩服,當(dāng)?shù)弥麖奈醋鲞^發(fā)表的努力時(shí),不由十分吃驚。
“愿天火燒掉所有的編輯部。”當(dāng)馬丁自告奮勇要為他的詩作找個(gè)出版的地方時(shí),勃力森登這樣說道,“你應(yīng)該為了美而愛美,”他勸告說,“不要再向雜志社投稿了。馬丁·伊登,我建議你回到輪船上去,回到大海上去。城市里到處都是病態(tài)和墮落的人,你有什么可留戀的呢?在這里,你為了迎合雜志的口味每一天都在出賣美,簡直等于自殺。那天,你對(duì)我引用了一句什么話來著?——啊,對(duì),‘人呀,最后誕生的蜉蝣?!?qǐng)問,你這個(gè)最后誕生的蜉蝣要名有什么用呢?一旦得到了名,它反而會(huì)害了你。你太單純、太樸實(shí)、太富于理性,我看你靠這種空洞的東西發(fā)不了跡。希望你永遠(yuǎn)也別向雜志出賣自己的半行詩作。你應(yīng)該只效忠于美,為它盡心竭力,讓功名利祿統(tǒng)統(tǒng)見鬼去吧!哼,狗屁成就!如果你的那首比亨利的《幽靈》還高明一等的似史蒂文森風(fēng)格的十四行詩,以及《愛情組詩》和海洋詩算不上成就的話,那么,成就到底是什么呢?
“并非在大功告成時(shí)獲得歡樂,而是在追求中尋覓喜悅。你不必說明,我非常清楚,你自己也明白。美對(duì)你來說是一種痛苦,一種沒完沒了的痛苦,它像永不愈合的傷口,似燒得火紅的刀子。何必與雜志糾纏不清呢?讓美作為你的目的吧。何必把美鑄造成金幣呢?反正你也做不到;所以我沒必要為此而感到不安。你把雜志看上一千年,從中找到的價(jià)值也抵不上濟(jì)慈[5]的一行詩句。不要再計(jì)較名利了,明天就到船上找份工作,返回大海去吧。”
“我追求的不是名,而是愛情?!瘪R丁笑著說,“愛情在你的宇宙里似乎無存身之地,可在我的宇宙里,美只是愛情的使女?!?/p>
勃力森登望著他,目光中既有憐憫又包含著羨慕?!澳氵@么年輕,小馬丁,如此地年輕。你想展翅高空,但你的翅膀是用最薄的紗織成,上面涂著最華麗的色粉。小心別燒焦了你的翅膀。嘖,事實(shí)是它們已被燒焦。難道《愛情組詩》非得是為了謳歌女人嗎?這話讓人覺得臉紅?!?/p>
“它謳歌愛情,也謳歌女人。”馬丁哈哈大笑道。
“瘋?cè)说恼芾?。”?duì)方回敬道,“抽了大麻煙,游歷于夢(mèng)境時(shí),我才會(huì)這么想。勸你還是小心為妙。這種資產(chǎn)階級(jí)味十足的城市會(huì)毀掉你的。就拿我跟你相遇的那個(gè)市儈窩而言吧,說它‘腐敗透頂’還太客氣了些。在那種氣氛中無法保持神志清醒。真是墮落啊。他們當(dāng)中,無論男女,沒有一個(gè)不墮落。他們腹中裝著蛤肉,從蛤蟹那兒獲取高度理性及藝術(shù)的靈感——”
他突然停了下來,打量著馬丁。接著,他猛地恍然大悟,明白了過來,臉上的表情變得又詫異又驚恐。
“你的那首美妙絕倫的《愛情組詩》原來是寫給她——一個(gè)蒼白、干癟的女人!”
一眨眼的工夫,馬丁刷地伸出右手,一把緊卡住他的脖子,使他透不過氣來,搖得他上下牙直打架??墒邱R丁在他的眼睛里看不到恐懼的表情,只有一種驚異和嘲諷的神色。馬丁覺得自己這樣做不對(duì),于是便揪住勃力森登的脖子,把他按倒在床上,同時(shí)松開了手。
勃力森登痛苦地喘了會(huì)兒粗氣,而后咯咯笑了起來。
“你要是真把我搖死了,到了黃泉之下我還得感激你呢。”他說。
“這些日子我的脾氣太糟糕,一觸即發(fā),”馬丁道歉說,“希望沒傷著你。來,讓我為你摻一杯甜酒喝。”
“嘿,你這棒小伙子!”勃力森登說,“不知你是不是為你的身體感到自豪。你強(qiáng)壯得很哩,簡直是一只小豹,一頭幼小的雄獅。可老天知道,你必須為這副好身板付出代價(jià)?!?/p>
“這話是什么意思?”馬丁把酒杯遞給他,不解地問,“來,把酒喝了,別再胡言亂語了?!?/p>
“因?yàn)椤辈ι沁攘丝诰疲瑵M意地笑了笑,“因?yàn)榕藛h。她們會(huì)糾纏你,一直把你纏死。她們已把你纏得夠嗆,我又不是昨天才出生的小孩,哪能不知道。你大可不必再卡我的脖子了,我反正要把話說出來的。毫無疑問,你們之間產(chǎn)生了年輕人的愛情;可是,看在‘美’的分上,下次可得把對(duì)象選好啊。你為什么要跟一個(gè)資產(chǎn)階級(jí)的小姐兒女情長呢?算啦,別跟她來往了。勸你挑個(gè)感情奔放、不貪生、不怕死、一愛到底的偉大女子吧。世上是有這樣的女子的,她們的愛也可以像嬌生慣養(yǎng)、羞怯的資產(chǎn)階級(jí)小姐的愛那樣纏綿?!?/p>
“怎么是羞怯?”馬丁不服地問。
“對(duì),正是羞怯。她們滿口談的都是褊狹的倫理觀,那是別人灌入她們腦子里去的。她們懼怕真正的生活。她們也許會(huì)愛上你,但她們更愛自己褊狹的倫理觀。你需要的是無拘無束的生活和自由自在的精神,需要的是絢麗多彩的蝴蝶,而非灰色的小飛蛾。唉,你要是沒死的福分,殘留于人世的話,你對(duì)她們也會(huì)感到厭倦的,厭倦所有的女人。不過,你會(huì)死去的。你絕不會(huì)搭乘輪船重返大海,而是繼續(xù)逗留在這些滿世界都是害蟲的城市里,直至骨朽肉爛,一命升西?!?/p>
“你可以給我上大道理,我不想跟你拌嘴?!瘪R丁說,“不管怎樣,你的觀點(diǎn)是由你的性格決定的,而我的觀點(diǎn)也同樣不可動(dòng)搖?!?/p>
在愛情方面、為雜志撰稿方面以及許多其他的事情上,他們兩人意見不統(tǒng)一,可他們彼此喜歡對(duì)方;馬丁對(duì)勃力森登的感情是非常深的。兩人天天見面,但勃力森登頂多只在馬丁那密不透風(fēng)的房間待上個(gè)把鐘點(diǎn)。他每次來都隨身帶著一夸脫威士忌,上街吃飯時(shí),他把威士忌和蘇打水從頭喝到尾。兩人的飯錢總是由他清付,馬丁在他的邀請(qǐng)下吃到了美味佳肴,第一次喝到了香檳酒,還品嘗上了萊茵葡萄酒。
可是,勃力森登始終都叫人琢磨不透。盡管他看上去像是個(gè)苦行者,盡管他臉無血色,但他一味地縱酒狂飲。他不怕死,對(duì)一切事物都抱著仇視和憤世嫉俗的態(tài)度;可是在茍延殘喘之際,他卻顯得熱愛生活,熱愛生活的每一個(gè)細(xì)節(jié)。他懷著一種瘋狂的勁去咀嚼生活和尋求刺激,正如他曾經(jīng)說過的那樣“我來到凡塵世間,就應(yīng)該索取我的一點(diǎn)小小的空間”。他吸過毒,干過許多離奇古怪的事,為的是尋求新的刺激和感受。有一回他告訴馬丁,說他曾經(jīng)一連三天不喝水,而且是有意這樣做,為的是體會(huì)一旦喝水后渴感消除時(shí)的那種妙不可言的歡樂。
他究竟是何人,或怎樣一個(gè)人,馬丁始終都沒弄清楚。他是一個(gè)沒有過去的人,他的將來是近在眼前的墳?zāi)梗默F(xiàn)在是一種痛苦和狂熱的生活。
* * *
[1] 1夸脫=1.101升。
[2] 達(dá)米恩于1873年自愿赴麻風(fēng)病區(qū)為患者服務(wù),死后遭到誹謗。史蒂文森發(fā)表了《給海德神學(xué)博士的一封公開信》,伸張正義。
[3] 19世紀(jì)美國詩人。
[4] 此處比喻杰出人物。
[5] 19世紀(jì)英國著名浪漫派詩人。
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