EST L QUEST great themes of literature and art irrepressible within the human ing greater than itself, nor ever ral survives beyond the death of est difference between us and the planet. But such a quest is not nvolve a quest for knowledge — in conventional religious terms, vs underpinning reality that the gists pursue. And the quest for ‘well as paths lit by sunlight, and us as well as the good. The myths {uest, and all three involve a self- sie? * > deep paradox of dark and of. auman soul. i i \ } ‘THE FORTUNES OF DR RAUSTUS THE FORTUNES OF Dr Faustus Good is incomprehensible without evil ‘THE MYSTERIOUS BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL WITHIN THE HUMAN SOUL IS PORTRAYED IN MYTH NOWHERE BETTER THAN IN THE STORY OF DR FAUSTUS, [MARLOWE’S GREAT TRAGEDY, DR FAUSTUS, AND GOETHE'S SUBLIME EPIC POEM, FAUST, WERE BOTH DRAWN FROM THIS MEDIEVAL TALE ABOUT A MAN WHOSE SPIRITUAL QUEST ULTIMATELY LED HIM TO SELL HIS SOUL TO THE DEVIL, HIS EVENTUAL RECOGNITION OF THE ARIDITY OF EARTHLY PLEASURES AND HIS FINAL REDEMPTION THROUGH REMORSE AND COMPASSION REMAIN A POWERFUL IMAGE OF THE NEED TO COMPREHEND BOTH THE DARK AND THE LIGHT IN ORDER TO FIND INNER PEACE. here once was a brilliant philosopher and student of theology called Dr Faustus. But the teachings which the philosophers and theologians offered about the nature of God and the meaning of life could not satisfy his inquiring intellect. Moreover, his pride was as, great as his knowledge, and he desired to discover the answers to life's greatest mysteries by his own efforts rather than receiving them from those whom he secretly despised; for thus he could claim all the credit. So, in time, Dr Faustus abandoned his theology and became a student of hermetic magic; for he hoped to find the secret of life in alchemical experiments and the forbidden knowledge of magic and sorcery passed down from the ancient Egyptians. Yet even these forbidden researches could not teach him all he wished to know, and he sank into a deep melancholy, calling on the infernal spirits in his despair. In response to his summons, a black dog mysteriously appeared in the scholar’s study, which then metamorphosed into a strange figure who announced himself as Mephistopheles, the spirit of evil and negation. Mephistopheles was forever on the lookout for human souls whom he could win over to the darkness, thus cheating God; and Faustus wanted Mephistopheles’ Be knowledge of life's secrets and the nature of the divine, Thus a pact wasTHE SPIRITUAL QUEST ‘THE FORTU Wen Feasts sh hoon headin on ew ne eg the heyy Grn, he gen to pti Soaicnne: erateia tara eel Gretchen in Pison, from Goethe's Faust, Prison, fom Goethe's Foust, von Josef ay 813-75) made between them, signe: made beoten them, signed in blood, and Mephistopheles agreed to sre Faun hs word ile Fat red wee Mephienpee ithe Mephistopheles knew fll well what price Faustus would pay, philosopher had no et understood tat twas his oe oes was signing away unto eternity aes For a time, Faustus was excited , Faustus was excited by the magic and m : Mephistopheles showed him, and believed that atlast i eee to knowing the setts of God Bu the dark pitt of negation gra sal eroded he scholar wil and fred him int deeper and Ser aly Pride, and all sense ofa spiritual quese was lose Faustus desired « young girl called Gretchen Eee 8 Gretchen, whom Mephistopheles contrived to lure into the scholar’s hands. She beca abandoned her, she went mad then executed for her crime, F wrought on an innocent huma remorse; for, although he was begun to truly love the girl, ané of corruption. And this Meph redemptive power of love any knowledge of. ‘But such was the power M many years, the philosophe penetrated every secret myste earned; and he understood shrouded bowels of the under the death of Gretchen grew li corruption something within scholar grew older, Mephistor for the time would soon arti then his soul would belong when Faustus at last contron he had made, so filled with re soul slipped from Mephistc heavenly spheres. COMMENTARY: The story of E beings struggle to find the lig ofthe inner world ofall of us, our longing to serve something original myth has its roots it and evil in a somewhat simoli specific religious doctrine, is a symbol of the questitg « individualistic enough to rejhappy Gretchen, he began to experienc real tine lve for the doomed gi #, von Josef Fey (1813-75) Menhistopheles agreed to serve 2 __exve Mephistopheles in the rice Faustus would pay, but the it was his immortal soul which ae magic and mysteries which that at last he was getting close ark spitit of negation gradually 10 deeper and deeper sensuality was lost. Faustus desired a stopheles contrived to lure into sss SURLUNES UF DR FaUSTUS } i the Scholar's hands. She became pregnant by Faustus and, when he abandoned ber, she went mad and killed her infant in despait, and was then executed for her crime. Realizing the terrible destruction he hed wrought on an innocent human life, Faustus suffered a deep and bitter femorse; for, although he was in the hands of Mephistopheles, he had begui to truly love the girl, and thus something in his soul was Kept ftee of corruption. And this Mephistopheles had not anticipated, since the redemptive power of love was not something the spirit of negation had any knowledge of. Bur such was the power Mephistopheles held over Faustus that, for many years, the philosopher indulged every sensual pleasure and penetrated every secret mystery. All that he had wanted to know, he leamed; and he understood the glorious heights of heaven and’ the shrouded bowels of the underworld. However, the remorse he felt abour the death of Gretchen grew like a canker inside him, and in spite of his corruption something within him continued to long for the light. As the scholar grew older, Mephistopheles waited with patience and satisfaction, for the time would soon arrive when the scholar would face death, and then his soul would belong to the darkness. But at the final moment, When Faustus at last confronted the true consequences of the pact which ‘he had made, so filled with remorse and love and suffering was he that his soul slipped from Mephistopheles’ grasp and was botn aloft to the heavenly spheres. COMMENTARY: The story of Dr Faustus isa mythic metaphor for every human beings struggle to find the light in the midst of darkness, Faustus is « paradigm af the inner world ofall of us, fll of conflict between our egocentric deies and our longing to serve something higher and greater than ourselue, Although the p Ciginal myth has its rots in medieval Christianity an, therefore, presets good and evil in a somewhat simplistic way, nevertheless the message transcends any “Peifc religious doctrine, particulary fit is understood psychologically. Faustue a symbol of the questing spirit within each human being, courageous and individualistic enough t0 reject the dogma offered by conventional religious‘THE SPIRITUAL QUEST authorities, yet dangerously arrogant in assuming that it can defy fundamental human morality in the name of knowledge. We may condemn Faustus for his greed and arrogance, yet we must admire him for his courage and willingness to risk his soul in order to penetrate to the heart of life's mysteries. Here we are presented with the profound paradox of good and evil, for in order to truly under stand the former, we must also recognize the latter; and in order to make that recognition, we must meet it frst in the secret darkness of our own hearts Faustus’ disillusionment with conventional philosophical and theological offerings reflects the dilemma of a fine intellect which cannot simply ‘believe’ because one is told to do so. The spiritual quest, if it is truly heartfelt, arises not fiom a childlike acceptance of beliefs, but fiom disillusionment and a profound desire to understand life's paradoxes. Many people never move beyond childlike belief, for itis more comforting to be given simple answers to moral and spiritual dilemmas; and while such people may risk no danger inwardly, they can never really know what life is about, nor find any peace when confronted with the unansierable questions invoked by unfair suffering. Many of the world’s great religions condemn such questioning, as did the medieval Church of Faustus’ time. Questioning involves danger, but it also opens up the potential for a real experience ofthe soul and the inner world. Power corrupts — a fact no less true on the spiritual plane than on the material one, Faust's new power pushes him over the moral edge, and he is impervious to the destruction he inflicts on Gretchen. Yet he does love her, and cannot entirely ignore what he has done; and this little seed of remorse, born from compassion, is ultimately what allows him to cheat the Devil and find forgiveness and redemption. Thus it is not ‘good works’ which save him, but the fact that, despite being steeped in pride and sensuality, he can still love and feel remorse. We are ‘taught that we must be ‘good’ in terms of our actions if we are to be acceptable in ‘the eyes of God. Yet the story of Faustus teaches us that goodness is relative to the definitions of morality espoused by any society at any epoch of history. Love and remorse, however, are not confined to the doctrines of any specific culture or religion. They allow us to taste of both light and darkness and somehow retain ‘the integrity of the soul. It is possible that any honest spiritual quest will ead us into our own potential for darkness and destruction, and that only through ‘THE BUDDH {facing these things, and perhaps e our own ‘pact with the devil’ — Grace, although the term is Christ is a mysterious inner release whicl only of our goodness, but of our & ‘Thus the myth of Dr Faustus appear. It is an inner journey an Togicat level, all the characters art are two sides of the same coin, ¢ ‘The spirit of negation — which ‘worthless and others as insi~™ al invoke Mephistopheles with 2 Mephistopheles is not merely the says to Foust, 1 am that sprit through the agency of our fnner ‘the light. THE BUDDH _ T IN PART TWO, WE MET THE YO [LEET HIS HOME AND FAMILY T’ [BINALLY ACHIEVE THAT WH ‘SUFFERING: AN UNDERSTAK ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF LIFE, TH [ACTUAL BVENZ, A RELIGIOL SYCHOLOGICAL SEN: INTERPRETATIONS. AS MYTH, HUMAN SOUL'S JOURN “TRANSFORMATIVE COMP 254at it can defy firndamental ay condemn Faustus for his s courage and willingness to ifes mysteries. Here we are |, for in order to truly under- ond in order to make that 2ss of our own heats. tilosophical and theological ‘hich cannot simply ‘believe’ tis truly heartfelt, arises not illusionment and a profound never move beyond childlike nswers to moral and spiritual iger inwardly, they can never ice when confronted with the ig. Many of the world’s great liewal Church of Faustus’ time. up the potential for a real ual plane than on the material | and he és impervious to 5 wot her, and cannot entirely torse, born from compassion, is vil and find forgiveness and cchirm, but the fact that, despite ove and fed remorse. We are ons if we are to be acceptable in s that goodness is relative to the any epoch of history. Love and ines of any specific culture oF d darkness and somehow retain. nest spiritual quest will lad us ‘udtion, and that only throught ‘THE BUDDHA'S ENLIGHTENMENT {facing these things, and perhaps even feeling, fora time, that we are irredeemable our own ‘pact with the devil’ — can we experience what might be called grace. Grace, although the term is Christian, is something not limited to Christianity; it is a mysterious inner release which arises from within and which makes sense not only of our goodness, but of our evil as wel. ‘Thus the myth of Dr Faustus is not the simple morality tale it might first appear. It is an ier journey and, as with all myths when viewed on a psycho- logical level, all the characters are within each of us, Faustus and Mephistopheles are two sides of the same coin, and reflect two dimensions of the human being ‘The spirit of negation — which we may all experience when we view life as worthless and others as insignificant — may be found in every one of us. We may invoke Mephistopheles within, every time we become disillusioned with life. But ‘Mephistopheles is not merely the Devil. In Goethe's great drama, Mephistopheles says to Faust, am that spirit which wills forever evil yet does forever good. It is through the agency of our inner darkness that we may eventually find our way to the light. THE BuDDHA’s ENLIGHTENMENT ‘The wheel of rebirth IN PART TWO, WE MET THE YOUNG BUDDHA, THEN CALLED SIDDHARTHA, AS HE LEFT HIS HOME AND FAMILY TO PURSUE HIS DESTINY. NOW WE SES THE BUDDHA FINALLY ACHIVE THAT WHICH HE HAS SOUGHT THROUGH STRUGGLE AND SUFFERING: AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE MEANING OF SUFFERING AND THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF LIFE. THE BUDDHA'S ENLIGHTENMENT MAY BE TAKEN AS AN ACTUAL EVENT, A RELIGIOUS PARABLE OR A MYTH IN THE MOST PROFOUND PSYCHOLOGICAL SENSE; OR ONE MAY FIND TRUTH IN ALL THREE INTERPRETATIONS. AS MYTH, THE TALE PRESENTS US WITH A PARADIGM OF EVERY HUMAN SOUL'S JOURNEY FROM THE DARKNESS OF IGNORANCE TO A ‘TRANSFORMATIVE COMPREHENSION OF THE CYCLE OF LIFE AND DEATH. 255164 Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Body's Beauty Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and beauty and life are in its hold. The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent ‘And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent And round his heart one strangling golden hair.“The Demon Lover,” Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, fifth edition 1812, ii, 427; taken down from the recitation ofWalter Grieve byWilliam Laidlaw. Fl 10 WHERE have you been, my long, long love, 2 This long seven years and mair 30 I'm come to seek my former vows 4 Ye granted me before.” F2 1 ‘O hold your tongue of your former vows, 2 For they will breed sad strife; 3 O hold your tongue of your former vows, 4 For lam become a wife.’ F3 1 He turned him right and round about, 2 And the tear blinded his ee: 3 ‘wad never hae trodden on Irish ground, 4 Ifit had not been for thee. Fa 1 ‘I might hae had a king's daughter, 2 Far, far beyond the sea; 3 I might have had a king's daughter, 4 Had it not been for love o thee’ FS 1 ‘Ifye might have had a king's daughter, 2 Yer sel ye had to blame; 3 Ye might have taken the king’s daughter, 4 For ye kend that I was nane. F.6 1 ‘If Iwas to leave my husband dear, 2 And my two babes also, 3.0 what have you to take me to, 4 If with you I should go?” R7 1 ‘Ihae seven ships upon the sea—— 2 The eighth brought me to land—— 3 With four-and-twenty bold mariners, 4 And music on every hand FB 1 She has taken up her two little babes, 2 Kissd them baith cheek and chin: 30 fair ye weel, my ain two babes, 4 For I'll never see you again.” Fa 1 She set her foot upon the ship, 2.No mariners could she behold;3 But the sails were o the taffetie, 4 And the masts o the beaten gold. F.10 1 She had not sailed a league, a league, 2. A league but barely three, 3 When dismal grew his countenance, 4 And drumlie grew his ee. FAL 1 They had not saild a league, a league, 2 Aleague but barely three, 3 Until she espied his cloven foot, 4 And she wept right bitterlie. F.12z 1 0 hold your tongue of your weeping’ says he, 2 ‘Of your weeping now let me be; 3 [will shew you how the lilies grow 40n the banks of Italy.” F.13 10 what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills, 2 That the sun shines sweetly on?” 3 ‘O you are the hills of heaven,’ he said, 4 ‘Where you will never win.’ F.4d 10 whaten a mountain is yon,’ she said, 2All so dreary wi frost and snow?’ 30 yon is the mountain of hell,’ he cried, 4 ‘Where you and I will go.’ FAS 1 He strack the tap-mast wi his hand, 2 The fore-mast wi his knee, 3 And he brake that gallant ship in twain, 4 And sank her in the sea.243F: James Harris, (The Daemon Lover) 243F-.1 ‘0 WHERE have you been, my long, long love, This long seven years and mair?’ ‘0 I'm come to seek my former vows Ye granted me before.’ 2438.2 ‘0 hold your tongue of your former vows, For they will breed sad strife; O hold your tongue of your former vows, For Iam become a wife” 243F.3 He turned him right and round about, And the tear blinded his ee: ‘1wad never hae trodden on Irish ground, Ifithad not been for thee. 243F.4 ‘I might hae had a king's daughter, Far, far beyond the sea; I might have had a king’s daughter, Had it not been for love o thee’ 24385 ‘Ifye might have had a king’s daughter, Yer sel ye had to blame; Ye might have taken the king's daughter, For ye kend that I was nane. 2438.6 ‘If | was to leave my husband dear, And my two babes also, O what have you to take me to, If with you I should go” 243F.7 ‘I hae seven ships upon the sea-+--+- ‘The eighth brought me to land With four-and-twenty bold mariners, ‘And music on every hand.’ 243F.8 She has taken up her two little babes, Kissd them baith cheek and chin: ‘0 fair ye weel, my ain two babes, For I'll never see you again.” 243F.9 She set her foot upon the ship, No mariners could she behold; But the sails were o the taffetie, And the masts o the beaten gold. 243F.10 She had not sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three, When dismal grew his countenance, And drumlie grew his ee. 243F.11 They had notsaild a league, a league, A league but barely three, Until she espied his cloven foot,And she wept right bitterlie. 243F.12 ‘Ohold your tongue of your weeping, says he, ‘Of your weeping now let me be; Iwill shew you how the lilies grow On the banks of Italy. 243F.13 ‘OQ whathills are yon, yon pleasant hills, ‘That the sun shines sweetly on?” “O you are the hills of heaven,’ he said, ‘Where you will never win.” 243F.14 ‘O whaten a mountain is yon,’ she said, “All so dreary wi frost and snow?" ‘O yon is the mountain of hell; he cried, “Where you and I will go’ 243F.15 He strack the tap-mast wi his hand, The fore-mast wi his knee, And he brake that gallant ship in twain, And sank her in the sea. (Child Ballad No. 243F)House Carpenter Lyrics Artist(Band):Bob Dylan Review The Song (0) Print the Lyrics Send “House Carper Well met, well met, my own true love Well met, well met, cried she I've just returned from the salt, salt sea And it's all for the love of thee I could have married a King's daughter there She would have married me But I have forsaken my King's daughter there It's all for the love of thee Well, if you could have married a King's daughter there I'm sure you're the one to blame For Lam married to a house carpenter And I'm sure he's a fine young man Forsake, forsake your house carpenter And come away with me T'll take you where the green grass grows On the shores of sunny Italy So up she picked her babies three ‘And gave them kisses, one, two, three Saying "take good care of your daddy while I'm gone And keep him good company." Well, they were sailin' about two weeks I'm sure it was not three When the younger of the girls, she came on deck Sayin’ she wants company "Well, are you weepin' for your house and home? Or are you weepin' for your babies three?" "Well, I'm not weepin' for my house carpenter I'm weepin' for my babies three." ‘Oh what are those hills yonder, my love They look as white as snow Those are the hill of heaven, my love You and I'll never knowOh what are those hills yonder, my love They look as dark as night Those are the hills of hell-fire my love Where you and I will unite Oh twice around went the gallant ship I'm sure it was not three When the ship all of a sudden, it sprung a leak And it drifted to the bottom of the seaPage | “The Demon Lover” Elizabeth Bowen ‘Toward the end of her day in London Mrs. Drover went round to her shut-up house to look for several things she wanted to take away. Some belonged to herself, some to her family, who were by now used to their country life. It was late August; it had been a steamy, showery day: At the moment the trees down the pavement glittered in an escape of humid yellow afternoon sun. Against the next batch of clouss, already piling up ink-dark, broken chimneys and parapets! stood out. In her once familiar street, as in any unused channel, an unfamiliar queemess had silted up; a cat wove itself in and out of railings, but no human eye watched Mrs. Dover's return. Shifting some parcels under her arm, she slowly forced round her latchkey in an unwilling lok, then gave the door, which had warped, a push with her knee. Dead air came out to meet her as she went in, The staircase window having been boarded up, no light came down into the hall But one door, she could just see, stood ajar, so she went quickly through into the room and unshuttered the big window in there. Now the prosaic woman, looking about her, was ‘mote perplexed than she knew by everything that she saw, by traces of her long former habit of life—the yellow smoke stain up the white marble mantelpiece, the ring let by @ vvase on the top of the escritoire;? the bruise in the wallpaper where, on the door being thrown open widely, the china handle had always hit the wall. The piano, having gone away to be stored, had left what looked like claw marks on its part of the parquet. Though not much dust had seeped in, each object wore a film of another kind; and, the only ventilation being the chimney, the whole drawing room smelled of the cold hearth, ‘Mrs. Drover put down her parcels on the escritoire and left the room to proceed upstairs; the things she wanted were in a bedroom chest. She had been anxious to see how the house was—the part-time caretaker she shared with some neighbors was away this week on his holiday, known to be not yet back. At the best of times he did not look in often, and she was never sure that she trusted him, There were some cracks in the structure, left by the last bombing, on which she was anxious to keep an eye. Not that one could do anything — A shaft of refracted daylight now lay across the hall. She stopped dead and stared at the hall table—on this lay a letter addressed to her. She thought first—then the caretaker must be back. All the same, who, seeing the house shutttered, would have dropped a letter in at the box? It was not a circular, it was not a bill. And the post office redirected, to the address in the country, everything for her that came through the post. The caretaker (even if he were back) did not know she was ue in London today—her call here had been planned to be a surprise—so his negligence in the manner of this letter, leaving it to wait in the dust, annoyed her. Annoyed, she picked up the letter, which bore no stamp. But it cannot be important, or they would. know . .. She took the letter rapidly upstairs with her, without a stop to look at the writing till she let in light. The room looked over the garden and sharpened and lowered, the trees and rank lawns seemed already to smoke with dark. Her reluctance to look again at the letter came from the fact that she felt intruded upon—and by someonePage 2 contemptuous of her ways. However, in the tenseness preceding the fall of rain she read it: It was a few lines, Dear Kathleen: You will not have forgotten that today is our anniversary, and the day we said. The years have gone by at once slowly and fast. In view of the fact that nothing has changed, I shall rely upon you to keep your promise. I was sorry to see you leave London, but was satisfied that you would be back in time. You may expect me, therefore, at the hour arranged. Until then . K ‘Mrs. Drover looked for the date: It was today’s. She dropped the letter onto the bedsprings, then picked it up to see the writing again—her lips, beneath the remains of lipstick, beginning to go white. She felt so much the change in her own face that she sent to the mirror, polished a clear patch in it, and looked at once urgently and stealthily in. She was confronted by a woman of forty-four, with eyes starting out under a hat brim ‘that had been rather carelessly pulled down. She had not put on any more powder since she left the shop where she ate her solitary tea.“ The pearls her husband had given her on their marriage hung loose round her now rather thinner throat, slipping in the V of the pink wool jumper her sister knitted last autumn as they sat round the fire. Mrs. Drover’s ‘most normal expression was one of controlled worry but of assent. Since the birth of the third of her little boys, attended by a quite serious illness, she had had an intermittent ‘muscular flicker to the left of her mouth, but in spite of this she could always sustain a ‘manner that was at once energetic and calm, ‘Turning from her own face as precipitously as she had gone to meet it, she went to the chest where the things were, unlocked it, threw up the lid, and knelt to search. But as rain began to come crashing down she could not keep from looking over her shoulder at the stripped bed on which the letter lay. Behind the blanket of rain the clock of the church that still stood struck six—with rapidly heightening apprehension she counted each of the slow strokes. “The hour arranged . .. My God,” she said, “what hour? How should... ? After twenty-five years...“ ‘The young girl talking to the soldier in the garden had not ever completely seen his face. Itwas dark; they were saying goodbye under a tree. Now and then—for it felt, from not seeing him at this intense moment, as though she had never seen him at all—she verified his presence for these few moments longer by putting out a hand, which he each time pressed, without very much kindness, and painfully, on to one of the breast buttons of his, uniform, That cut of the button on the palm of her hand was, principally, what she was to carry away. This was so near the end of a leave from France that she could only wish him already gone. It was August 1916, Being not kissed, being drawn away from and looked at intimidated Kathleen till she imagined spectral glitters in the place of his eyes. Tuming away and looking back up the lawn she saw, through branches of trees, the drawing-room window alight: She caught a breath for the moment when she could go running back there into the safe arms of her mother and sister, and cry: “What shall I do, what shall I do? He has gone.” Hearing her catch her breath, her fiancé said, without feeling: “Cold?” “You're going away such a long way.” “ tea: in Britain, a light, aftemaon meal, served with tea,Page 3 “Not so far as you think.” “I don’t understand?” “You don’t have to,” he said. “You will. You know what we said.” “But that was—suppose you—I mean, suppose.” “{ shall be with you,” he said, “sooner or later. You won’t forget that. You need do nothing but wait.” Only a little more than a minute later she was free to run up the silent lawn. Looking in through the window at her mother and sister, who did not for the moment perceive her, she already felt that unnatural promise drive down between her and the rest of all humankind. No other way of having given herself could have made her feel so apart, lost and forsworn.’ She could not have plighted a more sinister troth.* Kathleen behaved well when, some months later, her fiancé was reported missing, presumed killed. Her family not only supported her but were able to praise het courage without stint because they could not regret, as a husband for her, the man they knew almost nothing about. They hoped she would, in a year or two, console herself—and had it been only a question of consolation things might have gone much straighter ahead. But her trouble, behind just a little grief, was a complete dislocation from everything, She did not reject other lovers, for these failed to appear. For years, she failed to attract men—and with the approach of her thirties she became natural enough to share her family’s anxiousness on the score. She began to put herself out,’ to wonder, and at thirty-two she was very greatly relieved to find herself being courted by William Drover. She married him, and the two of them settled down in the quiet, arboreal® part of Kensington: In this house the years piled up, her children were born, and they all lived tll they were driven ‘out by the bombs of the next war. Her movements as Mrs. Drover were circumscribed, and she dismissed any idea that they were still watched. ‘As things were—dead or living the letter writer sent her only a threat. Unable, for some minutes, to go on kneeling with her back exposed to the empty room, Mrs. Drover rose from the chest to sit on an upright chair whose back was firmly against the wall. The desuetude’ of her former bedroom, her married London home’s whole air of being a cracked cup from which memory, with its reassuring power, had either evaporated or leaked away, made a crisis—and at just this crisis the letter writer had, knowiedgeably, struck. The hollowness of the house this evening cancelled years on years of voices, habits, and steps. Through the shut windows she only heard rain fall on the roofs around. To rally herself, she said she was ina mood—and for two or three seconds shutting her eyes, told herself that she had imagined the letter. But she opened them—there it lay on the bed. (On the supernatural side of the letter’s entrance she was not permitting her mind to dwell. Who, in London, knew she meant to call at the house today? Evidently, however, that had been known. The caretaker, had he come back, bad had no cause to expect her: He would have taken the letter in his pocket, to forward it, at his own time, through the post. There was no other sign that the caretaker had been in—but, if not? * forsworn: having lied under oath: perjured § plighted ...troth: made a more sinister promise of marriage. 2 put herself out: vex or distress herself * arboreal: fll of tess. * desuetudPage 4 Letters dropped in at doors of deserted houses do not fly or walk to tables in halls. They do not sit on the dust of empty tables with the air of certainty that they will be found. There is needed some human hand—but nobody bot the caretaker had a key. Under the circumstances she did not care to consider, a house can be entered without a key. It was possible that she was not alone now. She might be being waited for, downstairs. Waited for—until when? Until “the hour arranged.” At least that was not six o’clock: Six has struck ‘She rose ffom the chair and went over and locked the door. The thing was, to get out. To fly? No, not that: She had to catch her train. As a ‘woman whose utter dependability was the keystone of her family life, she was not willing to return to the country, to her husband, her little boys, and her sister, without the objects she had come up to fetch. Resuming her work at the chest she set about making up a ‘number of parcels in a rapid, fumbling-decisive way. These, with her shopping parcels, ‘would be too much to carry; these meant a taxi—at the thought of the taxi her heart went up and her normal breathing resumed. I will ring up the taxi; the taxi cannot come too soon: I shall hear the taxi out there running its engine, till walk calmly down to it through the ball. ’ll ring up—But no: the telephone is cut off. . . She tugged at a knot she had tied wrong, “The idea of flight... . He was never kind to me, not really. I don’t remember him kind at all. Mother said he never considered me. He was set on me, that was what it ‘was—not love. Not love, not meaning a person well. What did he do, to make me promise like that? I can’t remember—But she found that she could. She remembered with such dreadful acuteness thatthe twenty-five years since then dissolved like smoke and she instinctively looked for the weal" left by the button on the palm of her hand. She remembered not only all that he said and did but the complete suspension of her existence during that August week. I was not myself—they all told me so at the time, She remembered—but with one white burning blank as where acid has dropped on a photograph: Under no conditions could she remember his face. So, wherever he may be waiting, I shall not know him. You have no time to run from a face you do not expect. ‘The thing was to get to the taxi before any clock struck what could be the hour. ‘She would slip down the street and round the side of the square to where the square gave on the main road, She would return in the taxi, safe, to her own door, and bring the solid river into the house with her to pick up the parcels from room to room. The idea of the taxi driver made her decisive, bold: She unlocked her door, went to the top of the staircase, and listened down, ‘She heard nothing—but while she was hearing nothing the passé" air of the staircase was disturbed by a draft that traveled up to her face. It emanated from the basement: Down where a door or window was being opened by someone who chose this moment to leave the house. ‘The rain had stopped; the pavements steamily shone as Mrs. Drover let herself out by inches from her own front door into the empty street. The unoccupied houses opposite continued to meet her look with their damaged stare. Making toward the thoroughfare and the taxi, she tried not to keep looking behind. Indeed, the silence was so intense—one "8 yyeal: hump; welt ™ passé: no longer ffesh; rather oldPage S of those creeks of London silence exaggerated this summer by the damage of war—that no tread could have gained on hers unheard. Where her street debouched'* on the square where people went on living, she grew conscious of, and checked, her unnatural pace. ‘Across the open end of the square, two buses impassively passed each other: Women, a perambulator,”* cyclists, a man wheeling a barrow signalized, once again, the ordinary flow of life. At the square’s most populous comer should be—and was—the short taxi rank. This evening, only one taxi—but this, although it presented its blank rump, appeared already to alertly waiting for her. Indeed, without looking round the driver started his engine as she panted up from behind and put her hand on the door. As she did ‘0, the clock struck seven. The taxi faced the main road: To make the trip back to her house it would have to tum—she had settled back on the seat and the taxi had tumed before she, surprised by its knowing movement, recollected that she had not “said where.” She leaned forward to scratch at the class pane! that divided the driver's head from her own. “The driver braked to what was almost a stop, turned round, and slid the glass panel back: The jolt of this flung Mrs. Drover forward till her face was almost into the ‘glass. Through the aperture driver and passenger, not six inches between them, remained for an eternity eye to eye. Mrs. Drover’s mouth hung open for some seconds before she could issue her first scream. After that she continued to scream freely and to beat with her ¢gloved hands on the glass all round as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets. gebouched: came out; emerged ® perambulator: chiefly British for “baby catige.” The word is often shortened to pram.Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? voyce Carol Oates First published in Epoch, Fall 1966. Included in Prize Stories : O Henry Award Winners (1968), and The Best American Short Stories (1967). Copyright © by Joyce Carol Oates for Bob Dylan Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of ‘craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty ‘once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie, “Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed— what the heil stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk.” Her sister June was twenty-four and still ived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn't bad enough—with her in the same building—she was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this, June did that, she ‘saved money and helped clean the house and cookedand Connie couldn't do a thing, her mind was all filed with trashy daydreams. Their father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made everything she said sound a litle forced, whether it was, sincere or not. There was one good thing: June went places with gitl friends of hers, girls who were just as plain and steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that her mother had 1no objections. The father of Connie's best girlfriend drove the girls the three miles to town and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go toa movie, and when he came to pick them up again at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done. They must have been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and fiat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone passed who amused or interested them. Connie had long dark blond hair that drewanyone's eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home. Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and ‘smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home— "Ha, ha, very funny,"—but highpitched and nervous, anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet. ‘Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out. The restaurant was shaped like a big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle, and on its cap was a revolving figure of a grinning boy holding a hamburger aloft. ‘One night in midsummer they ran across, breathless with daring, and right away someone leaned out a car window and invited them over, but it was just a boy from high school they didn't like. It made them feel good to be able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of parked and cruising cars to the bright-lit, fly-infested restaurant, their faces pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for. They sat at the counter and crossed their legs at the ankles, their thin shoulders rigid with excitement, and listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon. ‘A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backwards on his stool, turning himself jerkily around in semicircles and then stopping and tuning back again, and after a while he asked Connie if she would like something to eat. She said she would and so she tapped her friend's arm on her way out—her friend pulled her face up into a brave, droll look—and Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across the way. "I just hate to leave her like that," Connie said earnestly, but the boy said that she wouldn't be alone for long. So they went out to his car, and on the way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music. ‘She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn't help glancing back and there he was, still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, "Gonna get you, baby.” and Connie tured away again without Eddie noticing anything. She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza. Her girl friend was there, talking with a boy. When Connie came up, the two girls smiled at each other and Connie said, "How was the movie?" and the gil said, "You should know." They rode off with the gir!'s father, sleepy and pleased, and Connie couldn't help but look back at the darkened shopping plaza with its big empty parkinglot and its signs that were faded and ghostly now, and over at the drive-in restaurant where cars were still circling tirelessly. She couldn't hear the music at this distance. Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie said, "So-so. ‘She and that girl and occasionally another girl went out several times a week, and the rest of the time Connie spent around the house—it was summer vacation—getting in her mother s way and thinking, dreaming about the boys she met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July. Connie's mother kept dragging her back to the daylight by finding things for her to do or saying suddenly, ‘What's this about the Pettinger gir?" ‘And Connie would say nervously, "Oh, her. That dope." She always drew thick clear lines between herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and kind enough to believe it. Her mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so much. Her mother went scuffling around the house in old bedroom slippers and ‘complained over the telephone to one sister about the other, then the other called up and the two of them complained about the third one. If June's name was mentioned her mother's tone was approving, and if Connie's name was mentioned it was disapproving. This did not really mean she disliked Connie, and actually Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June just because she was prettier, but the two of them kept up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, over coffee, they were almost friends, but something would come up—some vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around their heads—and their faces went hard with contempt. ‘One Sunday Connie got up at eleven—none of them bothered with church—and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long in the sun. Her parents and sister were going to a barbecue at an aunt's house and Connie said no, she wasn't interested, rolling her eyes to let her mother know just what she thought of it. "Stay home alone then," her mother said sharply. Connie sat out back in a lawn chair and watched them drive away, her father quiet and bald, hunched around so that he could back the car out, her mother with a look that was still angry and not at all softened through the windshield, and in the back seat poor old June, all dressed up as if she didn't know what a barbecue was, with all the running yelling kids and the flies. Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs; and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-\ike line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still. The asbestos ranch house that was now three years, old startled her—it looked small. She shook her head as if to get awake. It was too hot. She went inside the house and tumed on the radio to drown out the quiet. She sat on the edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour and a half toa program called XYZ Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking songs she sang along with, interspersed by exclamations from "Bobby King’: *An" look