“Oh…I see.”
Would have seen, too, my mad masters; never doubt it. Would have seen clearly and seen whole, without our agony, without confusion, without struggling with the surface of each brick, each square inch of concrete pavement, each scale of rust upon the fire-escapes, the raw-green paint of the lamp-post, the sterile red-front brightness of the cigar store, the shapes of windows, ledges, cornices, and doorways, the way the shops were set into old houses along the street, all the heart-sick ugliness exploded into the nothingness of Brooklyn. Fox would have seen it instantly, without having to struggle to see all, know all, hold all clearly, singly, permanently, in the burning crystal of the brain.
And if Fox had lived in Brooklyn, he would have got much else as well—got it clear and straight—while we were trying to make our maddened ears spread out like funnels to absorb it—every whispered word in Flatbush, every rhythmic-creaking spring in the back bedrooms of whore’s Sand Street (by old yellow shades concealed), every barker’s cry in Coney, all the jargons of each tenement from Red Hook to Brownsville. Yes, while we wrestled with our five senses there in Jungletown, our tormented brain caught in the brutal chaos of “Gewirr! Gewirr!”—Fox would have got it all, without madness, agony, or the fevered eye, and would have murmured:
“Oh…I see.”
Wherever he was, Fox was one to get the little things—the little, most important things that tell you everything. He never picked a little thing because it was a little thing, to show he was a devilish cunning, subtle, rare, and most aesthetic fellow: he picked a little thing because it was the right thing—and he never missed.
Fox was a great fox, and a genius. He was no little Pixy of the Aesthetes. He did not write nine-page reviews on “How Chaplin Uses Hands in Latest Picture”—how it really was not slap-stick, but the tragedy of Lear in modern clothes; or on how Enters enters; or on how Crane’s poetry can only be defined, reviewed, and generally exposited in terms of mathematical formulae—ahem! ahem, now!—as:
_____________________
\/an pxt = n-F3(B18+ 11)
-------- ------------ 237 2
(Bring on the Revolution, Comrades; it is Time!)
Fox did not go round making discoveries nine years after Boob McNutt had made them. He didn’t find out that Groucho was funny seven years too late, and then inform the public why he was. He did not write: “The opening Volte of the Ballet is the historic method amplified in history, the production of historic fullness without the literary cliché of the historic spate.” He had no part in any of the fine horse-manure with which we have allowed ourselves to be bored, maddened, whiff-sniffed, hound-and-hornered, nationed, new-republicked, dialled, spectatored, mercuried, storied, anvilled, new-massed, new-yorkered, vogued, vanity-faired, timed, broomed, transitioned, and generally shat upon by the elegant, refined, and snobified Concentrated Blotters of the Arts. He had nothing to do with any of the doltish gibberings, obscene quackeries, phoney passions, and six-months-long religions of fools, joiners, and fashion-apes a trifle brighter and quicker on the uptake than the fools, joiners, and fashion-apes they prey upon. He was none of your little frankypanky, seldesey-weldesey, cowley-wowley, tatesy-watesy, hicksy-picksy, wilsony-pilsony, jolasy-wolasy, steiny-weiny, goldy-woldly, sneer-puss fellows. Neither, in more conventional guise, was he one of your groupy-croupy, cliquey-triquey, meachy-teachy devotobloato wire-pullers and back-scratchers of the world.
No, Fox was none of these. He looked at the whole thing, whatever it was, and got it straight, said slowly: “Oh…I see,” then like a fox would begin to pick up things round the edges. An eye here, a nose there, a cleft of lip, a length of chin elsewhere—and suddenly, with the frame of a waiter’s face, he would see the grave, thought-lonely visage of Erasmus. Fox would turn away reflectively and drink his drink, glance casually from time to time as the man approached him, catch his coat lapels and turn, stare fixedly at the waiter’s face again, turn back to the table, turn again and stare, bend over, staring right up into the waiter’s face:
The waiter, troubled now, and smiling doubtfully: “Sir?...Is there anything wrong, sir?”
Fox, slowly, almost in a whisper: “Did you ever hear of—Erasmus?”
And the waiter, still smiling, but more doubtfully than ever: “No sir.”
And Fox, turning away and whispering hoarsely with astounded conviction: “Simply astonishing!”
Or, again, it will be a hat-check girl at the place where he has lunch—a little tough-voiced, pert, hard-boiled girl. Fox will suddenly stop one day and look at her keenly with his sea-pale eyes, and will give her a dollar as he goes out.
“But Fox,” friends will protest, “in God’s name, why did you give that girl a dollar?”