When God Laughs

After Jack London (1876–1916)

 

“The gods, the gods are stronger; time

Falls down before them, all men’s knees

Bow, all men’s prayers and sorrows climb

Like incense toward them; yea, for these

Are gods, Felise.”

 

Carquinez had relaxed finally. He glanced at the rattling windows and listened for a moment to the savage roar of the south-eastern wind as it caught the bungalow in its jaws. Then he held his glass between him and the fire and laughed for joy through the golden wine.

“It is beautiful,” he said. “It is sweet. It is a woman’s wine, and it was made for saints to drink.”

“We grow it on our own hills,” I said, with California pride. “You rode up yesterday through the vines from which it was made.”

It was worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. He was not really himself until he felt the warmth of the vine singing in his blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober, the high pitch went out of his thought-processes and he was likely to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday – not dull as other men are dull, but dull when compared with Monte Carquinez when he was really himself.

From all this it must not be inferred that Carquinez, who is my dear friend and dearer comrade, was a sot. Far from it. As I have said, he was an artist. He knew when he had enough, and enough, with him, was equilibrium – the equilibrium that is yours and mine when we are sober.

His was wise like the Greek. Yet he was far from Greek. “I am Aztec, I am Inca, I am Spaniard,” I have heard him say. And in truth he looked it, a compound of strange and ancient races, with his swarthy skin and the asymmetry and primitiveness of his features. His eyes, under massively arched brows, were wide apart and black with the blackness that is barbaric, while before them was falling down a great black mop of hair through which he looked like a satyr from a thicket. He always wore a soft flannel shirt under his velvet-corduroy jacket, and his necktie was red. This latter stood for the red flag (he had once lived with the socialists of Paris), and it symbolized the blood and brotherhood of man. Also, he had never been known to wear anything on his head save a leather-banded sombrero. It was even said that he had been born with this particular hat. I was also delighted to see that Mexican sombrero hailing a cab in Piccadilly.

As I have said, Carquinez was made quick by wine – “as the clay was made quick when God breathed the breath of life into it,” was his way of saying it. He was at all times honest, and, because he was compounded of paradoxes, he was greatly misunderstood by those who did not know him.

And now I must ask pardon for the space I have given him. (He is my friend, and I love him.) The house was shaking to the storm, as he drew closer to the fire and laughed at it through his wine. He looked at me, and demanded:

“And so you think you’ve won out against the gods?”

“Why the gods?”

“Whose will but theirs has put satiety upon man?” he cried.

“And whence the will in me to escape satiety?” I asked triumphantly.

“Again the gods,” he laughed. “It is their game we play. Don’t think that you have escaped by fleeing from the mad cities. You with your vine hills, your sunsets and your sunrises, your simple way of living!

“I’ve watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You have surrendered. You have said that you are tired. You have run away from life. You have played a trick. You refuse to play.”

He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes.

“But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have tried it… and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. To pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. Very well. You will become sated with your peace. You say you have escaped satiety! But the gods always win. I have watched men play for years what seemed a winning game. In the end they lost,” he said.

“Don’t you ever make mistakes?” I asked.

He paused before replying.

“Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin Fiske. You remember him? And his Dantesque face and poet’s soul, singing his song of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was Ethel Baird, whom also you must remember.”

“A saint,” I said.

“That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for love; and yet— Well, they married. They played with the gods— ”

“And they won!” I broke in.

Carquinez looked at me pityingly.

“They lost. They colossally lost.”

“But the world believes otherwise,” I replied coldly.

“The world sees only the face of things. But I know. Has it ever entered your mind to wonder why she took the veil, buried herself in that convent of the living dead?”

“Because she loved him so, and when he died…”

Speech was frozen on my lips by Carquinez’s laughter.

“A machine-made answer,” he said. “The world’s judgment! And much the world knows about it. Like you, she fled from life. She was beaten.

“Now I shall tell you the whole tale, and you must believe me, for I know. They had considered the problem of satiety. They loved Love. They knew the value of Love. They loved him so well that they intended to keep him always in their hearts. They welcomed his coming; they feared to have him depart.

“Love was desire. He was seeking easement, and when he found that, he died. Love without easement was Love alive. Do you follow me? They saw people could not be hungry after they have eaten. To eat and still be hungry is impossible. The problem of satiety. That is it. To have and to keep the appetite. This was their problem, for they loved Love. Often did they discuss it.

“How do I know all this? I saw much. More I learned from her diary.

“How to keep him? To feast him was to lose him. Their love for each other was a great love. Yet they wanted to keep their love sharp.

“They were not youngsters theorizing on the threshold of Love. They had loved before, with others, in the days before they met; and in those days they had lost Love through caresses, and killed him with kisses.

“They were not cold, this man and woman. They were warm human. They had no Saxon coldness in their blood. The colour of it was sunset-red. They had the French joy in the flesh. They were idealists, but their idealism was Gallic. They did not have the cold fluid that for the English serves as blood. There was no stoicism about them.

“They were all what I have said, and they were made for joy, only they had an idea. A curse on ideas! They played with logic, and this was their logic. But first let me tell you of a talk we had one night. It was of Gautier’s Madeline de Maupin. You remember the girl? She kissed once, only once, and she wanted to have no more kisses. Not that she found kisses were not sweet, but that she feared with repetition they would lose their sweetness. Satiety again! She tried to play against the gods.

“Well, the man and the woman argued thus: Why kiss once only? If to kiss once were wise, was it not wiser not to kiss at all? Thus could they keep Love alive. Fasting, he would knock forever at their hearts.

“As he said (I read it later in one of his letters to her): ‘To hold you in my arms, close, and yet not close. To desire you, and never to have you, and so always to have you.’ And she: ‘For you to be always just beyond my reach. To be ever desiring you, and yet never reaching you, and for this to last forever, always fresh and new.’

“And they were right, as far as they went. Everything is good… as long as it cannot be possessed. Satiety and possession are Death’s horses.

 

“‘And time could only tutor us to eke

Our rapture’s warmth with custom’s afterglow.’

 

“They got that from a sonnet of Alfred Austin’s. It was called ‘Love’s Wisdom.’ It was the one kiss of Madeline de Maupin. How did it run?

 

“‘Kiss we and part; no further can we go;

And better death than we from high to low

Should dwindle, or decline from strong to weak.’

 

“But they were wiser. They would not kiss and part. They would not kiss at all, and thus they planned to stay at Love’s topmost peak. They married. You were in England at the time. And never was there such a marriage. They kept their secret to themselves. I did not know, then. Their warmth did not cool. Their love burned with increasing brightness. Never was there anything like it. The time passed, the months, the years, and their love grew more and more.

“Everybody marvelled. They became the wonderful lovers, and they were greatly envied. Sometimes women pitied her because she was childless; it is the form the envy.

“And I did not know their secret. I thought and I marvelled. At first I had expected the passing of their love. Then I became aware that it was Time that passed and Love that remained. Then I became curious. What was their secret? How did they hold Love? What elixir of eternal love had they drunk together?

“As I say, I was curious, and I watched them. They were love-mad. They saturated themselves in the art and poetry of Love. No, they were not neurotics. They were sane and healthy, and they were artists. But they had done the impossible. They had achieved deathless desire.

“And I? I saw much of them and their everlasting miracle of Love. I wondered, and then one day – ”

Carquinez broke off abruptly and asked, “Have you ever read, ‘Love’s Waiting Time’?”

I shook my head.

“Page wrote it – Curtis Hidden Page, I think. Well, it was that verse that gave me the clue. One day, I was sitting near the big piano – you remember how she could play? What a voice he had! When he sang I believed in immortality.

“It was a spectacle for God, that man and woman, years married, and singing love-songs with a freshness of new-born Love, with a ripeness that young lovers can never know. Young lovers were pale and anaemic beside that long-married pair. To see them, all fire and tenderness, caresses of eye and voice, through every silence – their love driving them toward each other, and they revolving each about the other! It seemed more powerful than gravitation and more subtle, they melted each into each there before my very eyes. It was not strange they were called the wonderful lovers.

“Now to the clue. One day at their place I found a book of verse. It opened of itself, betraying long habit, to ‘Love’s Waiting Time’, and there I read:

 

“‘So sweet it is to stand but just apart,

To know each other better, and to keep

The soft, delicious sense of two that touch…

O love, not yet!.. Sweet, let us keep our love

Wrapped round with sacred mystery awhile,

Waiting the secret of the coming years,

That come not yet, not yet… sometime… not yet…

Oh, yet a little while our love may grow!

When it has blossomed it will haply die.

Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep,

Bedded in dead denial yet some while…

Oh, yet a little while, a little while.’

 

“I closed the book and sat there silent and without moving for a long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse had given me. It was illumination.

“I repeated the lines over in my mind – ‘Not yet, sometime’ – ‘O Love, not yet’ – ‘Feed it with lipless kisses, let it sleep.’ And I laughed aloud, ha, ha! I saw their blameless souls. They were children. They did not understand. They played with Nature’s fire and bedded with a naked sword. They laughed at the gods. They had invented a system, and expected to win out. ‘Beware!’ I cried. ‘The gods make new rules for every system. You have no chance to win.’

“But I did not so cry to them. I waited. They would learn that their system was worthless and throw it away. They would be content with whatever happiness the gods gave them and not try to get more away.

“I watched. I said nothing. The months continued to come and go, and still their love grew sharper. This went on until even I doubted. Did the gods sleep? I wondered. Or were they dead? I laughed to myself. The man and the woman had made a miracle. They had outwitted God. They were themselves gods.

“Yet in this, my latest wisdom, I was wrong. They were not gods. They were man and woman – soft clay that sighed, shot through with desire, having strange weaknesses which the gods have not.”

Carquinez laughed harshly. It was not a pretty laugh; it was like the mockery of a devil, and it rose over the roar of the storm that came to our ears from the outside world.

“How were they to understand? They were artists, not biologists. They knew the clay of the studio, but they did not know the clay of which they themselves were made. Never was there such a game before, and I doubt if there will ever be such a game again.

“Never was lovers’ ecstasy like theirs. They had not killed Love with kisses. They had quickened him with denial. And by denial they drove him on till he was bursting with desire.

“They desired, with all sweet delicious agonies, with an intensity never felt by lovers before nor since.

“And then one day the drowsy gods aroused and looked at the man and woman who had made a mock of them. And the man and woman looked into each other’s eyes one morning and knew that something was gone. It was Love. He had fled, silently, in the night, from them.

“They looked into each other’s eyes and knew that they did not care. Desire was dead. Do you understand? Desire was dead. And they had never kissed. Not once had they kissed. Love was gone. They would never desire and burn again. For them there was nothing left. Desire was dead. It had died in the night, on a cold bed.

“The gods may not be kind, but they are often merciful. All that remained was the man and woman gazing into each other’s cold eyes. And then he died. That was the mercy. Within the week Marvin Fiske was dead – you remember the accident.

“Oh, the irony of it!” I cried out.

And Carquinez looked at me with his black eyes.

“And they won, you said? The world’s judgment! I have told you, and I know. They won as you are winning, here in your hills.”

“But you,” I demanded hotly; “you with your mad cities and madder orgies – do you think that you win?”

He shook his head slowly. “Because you with your sober bucolic regime, lose, is no reason that I should win. We never win. Sometimes we think we win. That is a little pleasantry of the gods.”