CHAPTER XXIII

That Ruth had little faith in his power as a writer, did not alter her nor diminish her in Martin’s eyes. In the breathing spell of the vacation he had taken, he had spent many hours in self-analysis, and thereby learned much of himself. He had discovered that he loved beauty more than fame, and that what desire he had for fame was largely for Ruth’s sake. It was for this reason that his desire for fame was strong. He wanted to be great in the world’s eyes;“to make good,” as he expressed it, in order that the woman he loved should be proud of him and deem him worthy.

As for himself, he loved beauty passionately, and the joy of serving her was to him sufficient wage. And more than beauty he loved Ruth. He considered love the finest thing in the world. It was love that had worked the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a student and an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of the three, greater than learning and artistry, was love. Already he had discovered that his brain went beyond Ruth’s, just as it went beyond the brains of her brothers, or the brain of her father. In spite of every advantage of university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or so of self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world and art and life that she could never hope to possess.

All this he realized, but it did not affect his love for her, nor her love for him. Love was too fine and noble, and he was too loyal a lover for him to besmirch love with criticism. What did love have to do with Ruth’s divergent views on art, right conduct, the French Revolution, or equal suffrage? They were mental processes, but love was beyond reason; it was superrational. He could not belittle love. He worshipped it. Love lay on the mountain-tops beyond the valley-land of reason. It was a sublimates condition of existence, the topmost peak of living, and it came rarely. Thanks to the school of scientific philosophers he favored, he knew the biological significance of love; but by a refined process of the same scientific reasoning he reached the conclusion that the human organism achieved its highest purpose in love, that love must not be questioned, but must be accepted as the highest guerdon of life. Thus, he considered the lover blessed over all creatures, and it was a delight to him to think of “God’s own mad lover,” rising above the things of earth, above wealth and judgment, public opinion and applause, rising above life itself and “dying on a kiss.”

Much of this Martin had already reasoned out, and some of it he reasoned out later. In the meantime he worked, taking no recreation except when he went to see Ruth, and living like a Spartan. He paid two dollars and a half a month rent for the small room he got from his Portuguese landlady, Maria Silva, a virago and a widow, hard working and harsher tempered, rearing her large brood of children somehow, and drowning her sorrow and fatigue at irregular intervals in a gallon of the thin, sour wine that she bought from the corner grocery and saloon for fifteen cents. From detesting her and her foul tongue at first, Martin grew to admire her as he observed the brave fight she made. There were but four rooms in the little house—three, when Martin’s was subtracted. One of these, the parlor, gay with an ingrain carpet and dolorous with a funeral card and a death-picture of one of her numerous departed babes, was kept strictly for company. The blinds were always down, and her barefooted tribe was never permitted to enter the sacred precinct save on state occasions. She cooked, and all ate, in the kitchen, where she likewise washed, starched, and ironed clothes on all days of the week except Sunday; for her income came largely from taking in washing from her more prosperous neighbors. Remained the bedroom, small as the one occupied by Martin, into which she and her seven little ones crowded and slept. It was an everlasting miracle to Martin how it was accomplished, and from her side of the thin partition he heard nightly every detail of the going to bed, the squalls and squabbles, the soft chattering, and the sleepy, twittering noises as of birds. Another source of income to Maria were her cows, two of them, which she milked night and morning and which gained a surreptitious livelihood from vacant lots and the grass that grew on either side of the public sidewalks, attended always by one or more of her ragged boys, whose watchful guardianship consisted chiefly in keeping their eyes out for the poundmen.

In his own small room Martin lived, slept, studied, wrote, and kept house. Before the one window, looking out on the tiny front porch, was the kitchen table that served as desk, library, and type-writing stand. The bed, against the rear wall, occupied two-thirds of the total space of the room. The table was flanked on one side by a gaudy bureau, manufactured for profit and not for service, the thin veneer of which was shed day by day. This bureau stood in the corner, and in the opposite corner, on the table’s other flank, was the kitchen—the oil-stove on a dry-goods box, inside of which were dishes and cooking utensils, a shelf on the wall for provisions, and a bucket of water on the floor. Martin had to carry his water from the kitchen sink, there being no tap in his room. On days when there was much steam to his cooking, the harvest of veneer from the bureau was unusually generous. Over the bed, hoisted by a tackle to the ceiling, was his bicycle. At first he had tried to keep it in the basement; but the tribe of Silva, loosening the bearings and puncturing the tires, had driven him out. Next he attempted the tiny front porch, until a howling southeaster drenched the wheel a night-long. Then he had retreated with it to his room and slung it aloft.

A small closet contained his clothes and the books he had accumulated and for which there was no room on the table or under the table. Hand in hand with reading, he had developed the habit of making notes, and so copiously did he make them that there would have been no existence for him in the confined quarters had he not rigged several clothes-lines across the room on which the notes were hung. Even so, he was crowded until navigating the room was a difficult task. He could not open the door without first closing the closet door, and vice versa. It was impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a straight line. To go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag course that he was never quite able to accomplish in the dark without collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the kitchen. Next, he sheered to the left, to escape the foot of the bed; but this sheer, if too generous, brought him against the corner of the table. With a sudden twitch and lurch, he terminated the sheer and bore off to the right along a sort of canal, one bank of which was the bed, the other the table. When the one chair in the room was at its usual place before the table, the canal was unnavigable. When the chair was not in use, it reposed on top of the bed, though sometimes he sat on the chair when cooking, reading a book while the water boiled, and even becoming skilful enough to manage a paragraph or two while steak was frying. Also, so small was the little corner that constituted the kitchen, he was able, sitting down, to reach anything he needed. In fact, it was expedient to cook sitting down;standing up, he was too often in his own way.

In conjunction with a perfect stomach that could digest anything, he possessed knowledge of the various foods that were at the same time nutritious and cheap. Pea-soup was a common article in his diet, as well as potatoes and beans, the latter large and brown and cooked in Mexican style. Rice, cooked as American housewives never cook it and can never learn to cook it, appeared on Martin’s table at least once a day. Dried fruits were less expensive than fresh, and he had usually a pot of them, cooked and ready at hand, for they took the place of butter on his bread. Occasionally he graced his table with a piece of round-steak, or with a soup-bone. Coffee, without cream or milk, he had twice a day, in the evening substituting tea; but both coffee and tea were excellently cooked.

There was need for him to be economical. His vacation had consumed nearly all he had earned in the laundry, and he was so far from his market that weeks must elapse before he could hope for the first returns from his hack-work. Except at such times as he saw Ruth, or dropped in to see his sister Gertrude, he lived a recluse, in each day accomplishing at least three days’ labor of ordinary men. He slept a scant five hours, and only one with a constitution of iron could have held himself down, as Martin did, day after day, to nineteen consecutive hours of toil. He never lost a moment. On the looking-glass were lists of definitions and pronunciations; when shaving, or dressing, or combing his hair, he conned these lists over. Similar lists were on the wall over the oil-stove, and they were similarly conned while he was engaged in cooking or in washing the dishes. New lists continually displaced the old ones. Every strange or partly familiar word encountered in his reading was immediately jotted down, and later, when a sufficient number had been accumulated, were typed and pinned to the wall or looking-glass. He even carried them in his pockets, and reviewed them at odd moments on the street, or while waiting in butcher shop or grocery to be served.

He went farther in the matter. Reading the works of men who had arrived, he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the tricks by which they had been achieved—the tricks of narrative, of exposition, of style, the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; and of all these he made lists for study. He did not ape. He sought principles. He drew up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms, till out of many such, culled from many writers, he was able to induce the general principle of mannerism, and, thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of his own, and to weigh and measure and appraise them properly. In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of common speech. He sought always for the principle that lay behind and beneath. He wanted to know how the thing was done; after that he could do it for himself. He was not content with the fair face of beauty. He dissected beauty in his crowded little bedroom laboratory, where cooking smells alternated with the outer bedlam of the Silva tribe; and, having dissected and learned the anatomy of beauty, he was nearer being able to create beauty itself.

He was so made that he could work only with understanding. He could not work blindly, in the dark, ignorant of what he was producing and trusting to chance and the star of his genius that the effect produced should be right and fine. He had no patience with chance effects. He wanted to know why and how. His was deliberate creative genius, and, before he began a story or poem, the thing itself was already alive in his brain, with the end in sight and the means of realizing that end in his conscious possession. Otherwise the effort was doomed to failure. On the other hand, he appreciated the chance effects in words and phrases that came lightly and easily into his brain, and that later stood all tests of beauty and power and developed tremendous and incommunicable connotations. Before such he bowed down and marvelled, knowing that they were beyond the deliberate creation of any man. And no matter how much he dissected beauty in search of the principles that underlie beauty and make beauty possible, he was aware, always, of the innermost mystery of beauty to which he did not penetrate and to which no man had ever penetrated. He knew full well, from his Spencer, that man can never attain ultimate knowledge of anything, and that the mystery of beauty was no less than that of life—nay, more that the fibres of beauty and life were intertwisted, and that he himself was but a bit of the same nonunderstandable fabric, twisted of sunshine and star-dust and wonder.

In fact, it was when filled with these thoughts that he wrote his essay entitled “Star-dust,” in which he had his fling, not at the principles of criticism, but at the principal critics. It was brilliant, deep, philosophical, and deliciously touched with laughter. Also it was promptly rejected by the magazines as often as it was submitted. But having cleared his mind of it, he went serenely on his way. It was a habit he developed, of incubating and maturing his thought upon a subject, and of then rushing into the typewriter with it. That it did not see print was a matter a small moment with him. The writing of it was the culminating act of a long mental process, the drawing together of scattered threads of thought and the final generalizing upon all the data with which his mind was burdened. To write such an article was the conscious effort by which he freed his mind and made it ready for fresh material and problems. It was in a way akin to that common habit of men and women troubled by real or fancied grievances, who periodically and volubly break their long-suffering silence and “have their say” till the last word is said.

第二十三章

露丝不相信马丁能成为作家，而马丁却并没因此改变对她的看法，也丝毫不减对她的感情。在那段休心养性的假期里，他用去大量时间分析自己，对自己有了深入的了解。他发现自己爱美胜过爱名，而他追逐名利的欲望主要是为了露丝。正是出于这个原因，他的成名欲才特别强烈。他要当世人眼里的伟人，按他自己的说法是“干出点名堂”，让他钟爱的女人为他感到自豪，把他视为可敬慕的人。

至于他本人，他的爱美之心非常强烈，同时，他从为露丝服务中获取欢乐，并把这看作丰厚的报酬。他爱露丝又胜过爱美。他觉得爱情是世界上最美好的东西。正是爱情在他心里引发了一场革命，把他从一个粗鲁的水手变成了一位学者和艺术家，所以在他的眼里，爱情比学问和艺术都伟大，是这三者当中最美好、最重要的一个。他早就发现自己在智能上胜露丝一筹，也为她的父兄所不及。尽管她条件优越，受过高等教育，又获得了文学学士学位，但他的智力却是她望尘莫及的。经过一年来的自学和提高，他对世界大事、艺术和生活都有了深刻的了解，这是她无法比拟的。

这些他全都意识到了，但这并未影响他对她的爱，也没影响她爱他。爱情是极其美好、极其崇高的，而他又是个极其忠诚的恋人，所以他绝不会以指责挑剔玷污爱情。对于艺术、道德品行、法国革命以及平等选举权，露丝固然持不同见解，但这和爱情有什么关系呢？这些都属于思维活动，而爱情却凌驾于理智之上，是超理性的。他不能贬低爱情的价值，因为他对爱情顶礼膜拜。爱情耸立在理智峡谷旁的山巅之上，它是人生的升华，生命的辉煌顶点，是非常珍贵的。由于喜欢看哲学家的科学论著，他了解爱情在生物学上的重大意义；但是用同样的科学理论进行进一步的分析，他得出了这样的结论：爱情是人类的最高目标，容不得有半点怀疑，应该被视为生活的最丰厚报酬。所以，他认为在所有的生物中恋人是最幸运的。一想到“疯狂的恋人”超越于世间万物，超越于财富、理智、舆论和赞誉，超越于生活本身，想到“愿为一吻而死”，他便感到欣喜。

这些道理，有许多马丁早就琢磨出来了，而有些则是他以后悟出的。同时，他发奋工作，除了去看望露丝以外，再没有别的消遣，过着斯巴达式的艰苦生活。他租葡萄牙女房东玛丽亚·西尔瓦的那间小屋，每月要交两块半钱的房租。女房东是个泼辣的寡妇，手脚勤快，脾气却很暴躁，辛辛苦苦拉扯着一大群孩子，隔三岔五就到街拐角的杂货铺或酒馆里花上一角五分钱打一加仑发酸的淡酒，借酒浇愁解乏。起初，马丁讨厌她，讨厌她那张爱说脏话的臭嘴，可后来看到她在生活中不屈不挠的精神，便渐渐产生了敬意。这个小户人家只有四个房间，被马丁租去一间，就只剩下三间了。其中的一间是客厅，里面铺着一块色彩鲜艳的地毯，散发出轻松的情调，但厅里还挂着她的一个亡婴（她有许多孩子都早年夭折）的丧葬卡片和遗像，未免有几分悲凉。这间房子按严格规定只用作接待客人。这座圣堂里的百叶窗帘常年低垂，除非发生重大事情，否则绝不允许那些赤着脚的孩子们涉足此地。无论是她煮饭还是全家吃饭，都在厨房里。而且，除星期天以外，她每天都在厨房里浆洗衣服和熨烫衣服，因为她的收入主要是靠为境遇较好的邻居们洗衣服挣来的。最后还剩下一间卧室，同马丁的那间一般狭小，她和她的七个孩子都挤在里边睡觉。马丁一直都想不透他们怎么能挤得下，他每天晚上隔着薄薄的板壁，都能听得见那边上床睡觉时发出的声响，听得见孩子的啼哭、争吵以及似鸟叫一样的喋喋不休的低语。玛丽亚的另一收入来源是两头奶牛，她每天一早一晚挤两次奶。这两头奶牛偷偷摸摸地吃长在空地上和人行道两旁的草赖以活命，老是由她的一两个衣衫褴褛的孩子看守着。孩子的任务主要是担任警戒，严防牲畜管理员不期而至。

马丁在自己的小房间里生活、睡觉、学习、写作和料理家务。屋里唯一的窗户面朝狭小的前廊，窗前摆着一张桌子，既当写字台，又当书架和打字机台。床铺靠后墙放着，把整个房间三分之二的地方都占了去。桌子的一边摆着一个俗丽的衣柜，造衣柜的人光顾赚钱，不管能不能用，上面的装饰板每天都要裂开一点。这个柜子放在屋角，

而对面的那个角落，也就是桌子的另一侧，是他的“厨房”——一只油炉放在棉布箱上，箱里有碗碟及炊事用具；墙上装着搁板架，供放食品用；地板上放着一桶水。马丁的房间里没安水龙头，所以他得到厨房去打水。有时，他煮饭产生大量水蒸气，致使柜上的装饰板一块块往下掉。他的自行车用滑车吊起，挂在床头上方的天花板上。起初，他把车子放在地下室里，但西尔瓦家的那帮孩子拧松了轴承，扎破了车胎，吓得他把车子又搬了出来。随后，他把车子存放在狭小的前廊里。有一天，呼啸的东南风把雨吹进来，将车子淋了一整夜，他只好把它弄回自己的房间，高高挂起来。

一个小橱里盛着他的衣物及藏书，因为无论是桌上还是桌下都没有放书的地方。在看书的过程中，他养成了做笔记的习惯。他写出的笔记铺天盖地，要不是在屋里拉了几根晾衣服的绳子把笔记挂上去，恐怕连他的生存之地都不会有了。即便如此，屋里还是拥挤得使走路都成了困难。必须先关上橱门才能打开房门，而开橱门时，得先关房门。在屋里直来直去地移动是不可能的。从房门口到床头，必须走一条弯曲的路线，黑暗中免不了会磕磕碰碰。刚刚历尽艰难绕过水火不相容的房门和橱门，又得向右急转弯，以免碰上油炉。然后，必须朝左拐，绕开床腿；但这个弯不能拐得太大，不然会撞到桌角上。他拐弯时把身子猛然扭动和歪斜，接着又沿着一条“运河”向右走，“运河”的两岸一边是床，另一边是桌子。如果屋里仅有的那把椅子放在桌前的老地方，“运河”便阻塞不通了。那椅子不用的时候，便放到床上去，但有时他坐在椅子上煮饭，边看书边等水开，甚至熟练得在炸牛排时也能看上一两段。存放炊具的那个角落也小得可怜，他坐在那儿便能够得着自己所需的一切东西。说实在的，还是坐着煮饭便利；如果站着，太容易自我妨碍。

他的肠胃无可挑剔，不管吃什么都能消化。而且，他在食品方面知识渊博，知道哪些食物既富于营养又价格便宜。他的食谱里常有豌豆汤、土豆和扁豆，这种扁豆是大颗粒、棕褐色，烹饪时依照墨西哥人的方法。米饭每天至少在马丁的饭桌上出现一次，其做法是美国家庭主妇从未采用过，也永远学不会的。干果比新鲜水果便宜，他常常煮一锅干果备在手头，代替黄油抹在面包上吃。有时，他会煮一大块牛肉或一道骨头汤，丰富一下饭桌。他的咖啡不掺乳脂或牛奶，每天喝两次，晚上的一次代替喝茶；但无论是咖啡还是茶，都煮得恰到好处。

勤俭节约对他来说是很有必要的。休假时，他几乎花光了从洗衣店挣到的钱，但离市场还有相当长一段路，必须等待很久才能指望拿到第一笔卖手稿的钱。除了去看望露丝，或者到姐姐葛特露那儿坐坐以外，他过的是隐士生活，每天至少完成普通人三天的工作量。他每天的睡眠时间几乎不足五个小时，剩下的十九个小时埋头苦干，天天如此，只有钢筋铁骨的人才能与他抗衡。一分一秒他都不浪费。镜子上贴着单词的注解和发音，以便在刮脸、穿衣或梳头时默记。油炉旁的墙上也贴着这类表格，供他在煮饭时或洗盘子时记忆。他时不时地用新表格换下旧表格。看书中遇到生词或半生半熟的词，他便立刻抄下来。积到相当的数量，便用打字机打好，贴到墙上或镜子上。他甚至把表格装在衣袋里随身携带，上街时或者到肉店及杂货铺等着买东西时，便抽空复习。

这还不算，在阅读成名作家的作品时，他对他们的每项成果都十分关切，并寻找出他们成功的诀窍，有铺笔上的诀窍，有叙述和风格上的诀窍，也有表现观点、运用对比和警句的诀窍。所有的这一切他都制成表格加以研究。他并不着意模仿，而是从中吸取精华。他在表格中记载的是卓有成效、生动感人的表现手法。待研究了许多作家和记录下许多表现手法后，他才总结出了表现手法的一般性原则，从而为创造自己崭新、独特的风格，以及正确地权衡、估量和评价自己的风格，铺平了道路。以同样的方法，他还把感染力强的词句制成表格，这类词句是生龙活虎的语言，像硫酸一样具有腐蚀性，似火焰一般灼人，在平庸语言的荒漠中闪闪发光，带来醇香、甘美的气息。他始终探索的是深藏在内的原则，因为只有了解了事物的根由，他自己才能行动。他并不满足于美的表面光华。于是，他在自己拥挤不堪、既当卧室又为实验室的小屋里把美加以解剖——在这儿，有时可闻到煮饭的气味，有时则能听到外边西尔瓦家那帮孩子的喧闹声；在解剖了美，了解了美的五脏六腑之后，他就向自己创造美的目标接近了一步。

根据天性，只有在理解之后，他才能开展工作。他无法在黑暗中盲目地工作，对自己创造的东西缺乏了解，只一味依靠运气和天赋去寻求完美的效果。他对偶然性的效果嗤之以鼻，只想弄清事情的原委和经过。他的天赋是有意识的创造性的天赋。在动笔写故事或诗之前，作品的内容已在他的脑海里翻腾，无论是写作的目的还是实现这一目的的方法，他都一清二楚、胸有成竹。如若不然，他的创作就注定会失败。可话又说回来，对于那些轻松自然出现在他脑海中的词语，他又相信偶然性效果了，因为这些词语能经得住美和力量的一切考验，能产生种种惊人的无法言喻的含义。他对它们顶礼膜拜，认为它们并非任何人着意编造出来的。不管他怎样解剖美，怎样寻觅深藏在它之中使之成其为美的原则，他都始终感觉得到自己并未理解美的深层秘密，而且从来没有人深入那个领域。他从斯宾塞的作品中清楚地看到，人类对任何事物都不可能彻底了解，美的秘密不亚于生活之谜——啧，美比生活更为玄妙；他还看到美和生活紧密交织在一起，而他本人只是这种由阳光、星尘及奇迹组成的不可思议编织物当中的一根棉线。

说实话，此时他正抱着这样的观念撰写名为《星尘》的论文，文中攻击的对象不是评论的原则，而是那些著名的评论家。文章写得精彩、深刻、富于哲理性，同时又耐人寻味地带有几丝诙谐。他屡次投稿，屡次被杂志社即刻退回。然而，他的大脑并不纠缠于此，而是安安稳稳地继续耕耘。他养成了一种习惯：先对一个问题深思熟虑，然后一口气用打字机打出。至于文章是否能刊出，他倒觉得无所谓。写作是长期思维的顶点，是对千丝万缕思绪的集中，是对大脑中所有材料的最后总结。写这样的文章是一种有意识的活动，他可以借此解放大脑，使其准备接受新的材料、思考新的问题。这种情况有点类似受了委屈或自以为受了委屈的男男女女所普遍养成的习惯：隔一段时间就要打破忍耐已久的沉默，滔滔不绝地“倾吐衷肠”，吐尽方休。