The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
David polished his change board vigorously and said, “Mr. Stone is wrong.”
“Of course he is!” Kol agreed. “He’s never been in love. But a boy who isn’t interested in girls isn’t much of a boy. It’s no good saying, ‘Wait till you’re thirty and some nice girl comes along.’ There’s no good to that, is there?”
David looked up at the tall Pole and said, “Are you kidding me, Mr. Kol?”
The musician looked away and asked quietly, “How would I dare?”
“Then wait a minute!” David cried eagerly. He called the assistant manager and told him to watch the booth. “I don’t care if you sell a thousand old tickets,” he said. Then he crawled out to join Mr. Kol. “I need to talk to you,” he said.
They went to a bench by the lake and the conductor said, “In Warsaw I used to watch families weep when their sons fell in love with prostitutes or actresses. But it never signified. A young boy who has not fallen desperately in love has missed getting started in the world of feeling. At any age love is wrong only if it means nothing.”
“I don’t understand,” David said.
“You!” the musician said slowly. “You must be the criterion of any love.”
“What’s a criterion?” David asked.
The conductor grew impatient. “There’s only one test, David. Does the love you feel make you a bigger and a stronger person? Do you spend your mind and heart and goodness on this little prostitute, or only your body? Always ask yourself that about any love, for by this test thousands of proper marriages in Philadelphia, or Warsaw, are filthy, terrible things. But if any love makes you stronger and more determined to share, then it’s much finer than most people ever attain.”
David and his mentor stared at the lake. Boats with white sails drifted back and forth, toyed with by vagrant winds that could not make up their minds. The carrousels played Faust, and dust, like jewels, hung in the air. David said simply, “I had more than three hundred dollars saved. I don’t know for what. I made Nora take it, because she ought to have things.” His lip began to tremble and the musician looked away. After a long silence David said, “A man came to our poorhouse once … Mr. Kol, I saw a lot of old men die. But this man had a cough and I thought the rest of us would go crazy listening to him. He couldn’t clear his lungs, and finally he died. Nora has that kind of cough …” He lost control of his voice, and his eyes filled to the brimming point. He wanted to rub them but was ashamed to do so.
Klementi Kol waited for a moment and then observed, “If a relationship is spiritually sound, a minor question still remains. Can it hurt you in some other way? Will it cost you your job? Will it prevent you from getting ahead? Might it alienate your friends? Alienate means to make angry, like Mr. Stone. There’s nothing more difficult in life than answering those questions about a sexual relationship that is spiritually very right.” The tall man looked steadfastly at the lake and said, “You’ll see more men kill themselves spiritually that way than any other. They love a girl but feel she won’t help them to get ahead, whatever that phrase means. And so they make the terrible compromise, and when they’re fifty, they’re ahead … and they are desolate.”
No person in recent years had made so much sense as Klementi Kol, and David wanted to ask him many questions, but he still had not gained control of his voice, and after a moment Kol continued. “I am sure old men forget what it was to be young and to be wholly in love. Not even I can remember those breathless moments. That’s why they give old men important jobs and big salaries and orchestras to lead. To pay us back for the terrible loss we have sustained.”
The musician stared at the lake, and David felt that it was he, Kol, who needed comfort. In a low voice the boy asked, “Then you don’t think I’m being a fool?”
“Of course you are!” Kol laughed. “But I can’t give you Balzac one week and then deny life the next.” Great laughter was in his eyes and he held David’s hands. “You’ll love this little girl, and she’ll die, and you’ll break your heart and wish that you had never lived, and some day you’ll be a man. For hearts are like springs. They snap back.”
It was then that David knew how deeply he loved Nora. He said, “I’ve talked her into going out to Denver, Mr. Kol. It’s very high there, you know, and she can get a job. A waitress, maybe. Next summer, when school’s out, I’ll go to Denver myself …”
“You’ve taken a lot of responsibility, haven’t you?” Kol asked.
“Maybe we’ll stay in Colorado,” David said eagerly. “Maybe she’ll get well.”
“That’s possible,” Kol said quietly. “But promise me one thing, David. Before you do anything big like going to Denver, promise you’ll talk to me or Mr. Stone.”
“I thought you were disgusted with Mr. Stone.”
“In some ways he’s a very intelligent man. Neither of us wants you to get into trouble, David.”
“I’ll behave myself!” David promised. “And I’ll sure keep out of trouble.”
As the season drew to a close, David worked diligently at short-changing. He must save enough money to start Nora in the West. He added two hundred dollars to the fund he had already provided, and she said, “I don’t need so much dough! I’ll go by bus and have a job in no time.” But he continued to cadge dimes and quarters from the customers, and he continued also to use the Sheik’s palace.
“It’s very damp in here for you,” he pointed out to Nora.
“It was worse at Max’s,” she reasoned. “That was dirty damp. Here the water keeps movin’.”
“You’ll find it good and dry in Denver,” he assured her. Like a schoolboy he rattled off a table of facts about humidity. He was surprised at how methodically he and Nora now talked.
“It’s like I said,” she laughed. “We’re as good as married!” They came to know each other casually, often to sleep without awareness of sex, and always to think of the other’s well being. In fact, David began to think that his love for the frail girl had worn down, and he began to wonder what courses he should take in high school that year. Then one afternoon the Sheik coughed.
The sound was lonely and gruesome, echoing along the canals. David jumped up from the barren iron bed and cried, “Who’s out there?” He jerked on his pants and leaped for the door, where he met the immense Sheik. “What are you doing here?” David cried.
“I jus’ standin’ here,” the badly frightened moron replied.
“Well, get out!” David ordered, and then he saw the peephole through which the Sheik had observed the iron bed. Instinctively he swung about and clouted the monster above the ear. The big man moved back along the runway and pleaded, “I di’n do no wrong!” The ape-man would have stumbled off except that Nora, frightened by the noise, came to the door and thus stopped his retreat. The sight of the hulking brute terrorized her, and she struck at him, clawing his face. Then she fled through the superstructure.
The Sheik was stunned by her behavior and gritted his teeth, moving ape-like toward David. “You tol’ ’at priiy gi’l!” he bellowed.
There was no way for David to escape, and he cried, “Sheik! Go back!” But the big man, his face smarting more from Nora’s scratches than from David’s solid blow, lunged on. He clutched at David and pulled him into the now-empty palace room. With a crunching sound he tried to crush the boy in his massive arms, but David doubled up his knees and dealt him a vile blow in the pit of the stomach. There was a thud, and the big man slipped backwards. From the floor he leered up at David and mumbled, “I gonna kill you!” He struggled to his feet and dived brutally at the boy, so that they crashed together into the palace wall and ripped it.
A gondola came round the corner and smart-aleck boys started to joke about the mechanical princess, but the girls started to scream. “Look at the fight!” Slowly, inevitably, the gondola drifted right beneath David’s head. With a violent effort, he pushed his left hand against the prow and regained the castle room. The gondola banged against the walls, and the boys riding it began to shou
Now there was silence, and the gasping moron spread his fingers very wide to grab at David. He caught one arm and ripped David off his feet. “You tol’ the priiy gi’l!” the great brute mourned, as if he were sorry that he must destroy David. But the young athlete summoned fresh strength and beat the Sheik heavily about the face. Blood trickled from the monster’s eyes and nose, but he continued to wail, “You tol’ ’a priiy gi’l.”
With a tremendous effort David drove his fist in the Sheik’s windpipe, so that the man’s monstrous tongue protruded and he had to drop the boy. “Acchhh,” he groaned, trying to get air, and when he did so, he lunged bear-like at his enemy, crying, “I smash you plenty!” His foot slipped, and his right leg tore away a large portion of canvas. Seeing this, David leaped for the door, but the strong man reached out and grabbed his ankle. David collapsed into a painful heap and the brute leaped upon him. Grunting and sweating, the big moron began to hammer David about the face and shoulders. The boy’s energy was almost gone, but in the distance he heard shouts of men dashing through the runways of the canal. They were yelling instructions at one another, and someone fired off a revolver.
“I’ve got to stop him!” David grunted. “Sheik! Sheik!” he pleaded. “If they see you …” A monstrous fist hammered into his mouth, and things grew dark. With a last effort, David doubled his knees once more and tried to kick the ape-man loose. He could not, and the fist fell again. There was another pistol shot, and the voices were near. With almost superhuman effort, the boy shot his knees out and the tired moron spun across the floor and through the torn canvas into the canal.
A gondola came by and the occupants screamed at the sight of the Sheik’s bleeding face peering at them from the dark waters. Their cries were doubled when he made weird, gurgling sounds at them. Then the workmen from the Canals rushed up and cried, “There he is! Shoot him in the legs!” Like a monster from Greek mythology the Sheik rose from the waters with green slime about him. A workman had a heavy club which he shied across the canal and at the moron’s head. “Accchhh!” the wounded man grunted, and for a moment it seemed that he had been killed. But soon he rose farther downstream, and a young boy began clubbing him in the face. Like a wounded otter, the great hulk beat his way to safety.
“Come over here!” the Canal manager shouted. Obediently the moron pawed his way to shore, like a dog. “What were you doing?” the manager asked.
“I ’sn’t doin’ nothin’,” the exhausted fool replied.
“He had too much whiskey,” David said quickly. The manager looked suspiciously at David and then at the panting Sheik, who mouthed a confession of being drunk.
“You’ll have to pay ten dollars for that damage,” the manager said, and the Sheik mumbled a series of inchoate vowels. The workmen led their giant charge back to his heavy job of hauling gondolas. David watched them go and wondered both at them and at himself. They knew what the Sheik had been doing, and they recognized how dangerous he was; but they also knew that if he were fired they would have to do his ugly work. It seemed that every job David knew of was like this one: certain men took it easy and stole from others, while way down in the caverns monsters and fools and the dispossessed labored in bitter sweat.
And then he thought of another person he had known in the cavern, frail Nora who had worked for Max Volo, and he dashed out into the sunlight of Paradise to look for her. He found her by a rootbeer stand. “Cripes!” she whimpered. “Your face looks awful.”
“Nothing broken,” David assured her.
“You shouldn’t of hit him,” the thin girl said, wiping David’s lips.
“To think of him spying there!” David blustered.
“You’re one to talk!” Nora chided. “Didn’t you spy into Max’s room? Huh?”
David gave the best excuse in the world for anything: “That was different. I had reasons.” He wanted to tell her that the idea of anyone’s looking at her or touching her infuriated him, but even then he did not comprehend how love can transform any man into an automatic creature. It took the Hurricane to teach him that.
Shortly before Nora was to leave for Denver, Klementi Kol arranged a dinner for the young lovers. Miss Meigs was there, but not Mr. Stone. That austere man had primly refused to share a meal with a “rotten little baggage.”
The dinner was excellent, and Nora acquitted herself decently. David had coached her on what he had learned of table manners, and she sat very straight and kept her elbows on her lap. When Kol asked David what he would like to hear as an encore, David replied, “The Grand March from Aïda.” Then Kol asked Nora, and she grinned happily, saying, “What’s good enough for Dave is good enough for me!”
At the concert she sat in the front row and between numbers kept up a merry chatter which David found better than the music. She thought that Miss Meigs was quite a singer. “She sure makes eyes at Mr. Kol! Her dress must cost a fortune. Do you suppose she’s in love with Mr. Kol? That guy who blows the big thing is sure giving her the eye!” She clutched David’s arm warmly and whispered, “Who’d ever thought such people would ask me to dinner?”
When the last cymbals crashed, the young lovers went backstage to thank Mr. Kol and to congratulate Miss Meigs. “It was a swell concert,” David admitted. “About the best. Now you’ll have to excuse me, since I’ve got to get back to work.” He led Nora off past the lake, and when she saw the Hurricane she said, “Say, how’s about a ride? One quick one?”
“I can’t do it,” David protested. “My relief’ll raise the devil as is.” He refused to go, but when Nora pouted he gave her the money, and she smiled so winsomely that he wanted to kiss her then, but people were watching. She was very proper and lovely as she walked to the booth. From a distance David saw her slide past Mr. Stone without his ever looking up. “I’m glad of that!” he sighed.
He watched her board a car and start the long climb up the incline. He shot a kiss at her and then started to run back to Venice. But he had taken only a few steps when he heard wild screams. There was a crashing sound as the topmost railing ripped loose, and then came the long night wail of another car riding to death.
He stopped rigidly and prayed: “Oh, God! Don’t let it be Nora!” But it was Nora! He knew it, and he started to run toward the lilac trees. Ahead of him others ran, and by the time he got to the crashed cars, men were already throwing coats upon the dead bodies.
“Was there a single girl?” he shouted.
“All sorts of people,” a man replied.
“Where?” David screamed, running from body to body. As always, most of the victims were young. He looked in horror at five of them. Nora was not there, but other bodies had been thrown beyond the lilacs. He scrambled across a ditch and searched among the ruins. A boy held the head of another boy.
“Get a doctor, mister!” the first boy cried. “He ain’t dead.”
“Was there a single girl?” he shouted.
“Me? I wouldn’t know. Catch me in one of them death traps?” the boy asked. “I work here!”
David looked at the remaining bodies. Still there was no Nora, and for a moment he believed that his prayer had been answered. Then he saw still a third group of people, and he became pale. Even his hands blanched and he climbed back across the ditch. He was reaching down to pull away a coat when he saw Nora standing at the edge of the crowd.
“David!” she cried. He leaped across the body and grasped her hands. “Was I ever scared?” she asked. “I was in the next car.”
Trembling, he led her from the crowds. When they were alone she confided, “I could see them all the way down to earth. The cars were running too close. They make more money that way. It went off not twenty feet from us. David! We just scraped by.” Above them the lights went out. No more that year would the Hurricane roar.
“Nora,” David finally said, “I thought my heart would never beat again. It isn’t only because … I mean, in the palace …” He could find no words. He held her closely and smelled the heavy per
They walked a long time, and he took no thought of his job, nor of the people about him, nor of anything. By the lake he met Klementi Kol and the singer. He rushed up to them crying: “I thought she was on the Hurricane, but she wasn’t. She was, of course, but she wasn’t on that car. She’s all right!”
All the way home on the trolley he thought of the strange passion that had possessed him when he believed Nora to be dead. It was like nothing he knew, not even like the fragile moments when he lay deep upon her. It was wrenching and terrible, that passion. He had to acknowledge that one day Nora would be dead. He even suspected that sending her to Denver was not much good; yet he could still reason that the day of death was in the future. But tonight! That had been now! This day! This moment of time, and after it was gone he would never see her again nor feel her soft body nor hear her whisper: “Now you get some sleep, Dave.”
He wondered how men could live till they were seventy if they endured such passions as he had known that fifteenth summer, and although he knew many things, and although he tossed on his poorhouse bed all night, he did not even guess that men are able to live because slowly, one by one, they snuff out the fires of spring until only embers burn in white dignity, in loneliness, and often in cold despair.
Paradise closed and Nora went to Denver. Almost as if his own good common sense had dictated it, David plunged into the boy’s world of high-school politics and basketball. This was his sixteenth winter, and he was becoming a wiry fellow. Away from the Park he was a boy again, and he alternately rode the crests of fortune when his team won, or wallowed in the troughs of dismay when they lost. Especially in games away from home he was prone to go wild with excitement and want to fight the entire crowd. He played at his best then and on the way home Bobby Creighton would sit beside him and say, “All right now, Dave. Cool down. You’ve got to learn to master yourself if you want to be a star.” Bobby spoke to him as if he were a fledgling boy and David looked forward to being with the coach.