Angle of Repose

by Wallace Stegner

They were in no race for wealth-that was precisely what disgusted Grandfather with the mining business. They were makers and doers, they wanted to take a piece of wilderness and turn it into a home for a civilization. I suppose they were wrong–their whole civilization was wrong-but they were the antithesis of mean or greedy. Given the choice, any one of them would have chosen poverty, with the success of their project, over wealth and its failure. It was some such perception that made Susan raise her voice above the lonely night sounds of fire and wind.

Murillo.

Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Spanish painter known for portraits of urchins and peasants

No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike. It is a law I take advantage of, and bless, but then I am not young, ambitious, and balked.

Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest And on her silver cross soft amethyst And on her hair a glory, like a saint .

The Eve of St. Agnes, John Keats

What bothers me most is to watch the slow corrosion of the affection and loyalty that have held Oliver and Susan Ward together. I am ashamed that he hits the bottle when he gets low, I hate the picture of Grandmother sitting in the canyon house, a sulky, sullen dame, worrying half spitefully that he may fall off the bridge coming home, or show himself sodden and sottish before the children.

Miserable, both of them, everything hopeful in them run down, everything joyous smothered under poverty and failure.

I have thought about all this. How could I help it? Forgiving I have considered, though like my father and grandfather before me, I am a justice man, not a mercy man. I can’t help feeling that if justice is observed, mercy is forever unnecessary. I don’t want her punished, I want no eye for an eye, I hope I don’t gloat over her misfortunes. I just can’t feel about her as I once did. She broke something.

So what happened when base desires and unworthy passions troubled the flesh of men and women inhibited from the casual promiscuity, adultery, and divorce that keep us so healthy? One thing that happened was platonic friendship, another was breakage. The first always risked the second.

Yet it is not the marriage I dreamed of, not the marriage it was. It is a bruised and careful truce; we walk in bandages and try not to bump our wounds. After fourteen years, that bride whose judgment you questioned finds herself unable fully to trust either the man she married, or herself.

I’ve got no excuse. But this general business of trusting people, I don’t know. I doubt if I can change. I believe in trusting people, do you see? At least till they prove they can’t be trusted. What kind of life is it when you can’t?”

Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed, and betray others. It was probably touch, in some office or hallway, or in my own hospital room while I snored away the anesthetic and dreamed of manglings and dismemberments, that betrayed Ellen Ward–an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands, those surgeon’s hands laid on her shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lied like a thief, that took, not gave, that wanted, not offered, and that awoke, not pacified. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact. And maybe pure accident, maybe she didn’t know she had been waiting.

But when Frank’s hand closed around her foot hanging over the taut edge of the hammock, her body was not encased in its usual armor; it was free and soft in a dressing gown.

I wouldn’t be surprised, that is, if she was tempted. To flee failure, abandon hopelessness, disengage herself from the stubborn inarticulate man she was married to, and the scheme he was married to, would have been a real temptation. And of course, in 1890, for Susan Burling Ward, utterly unthinkable.

Nemesis.

In the Greek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris, and as such is akin to Atë and the Erinyes. She was sometimes called "Adrasteia", probably meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithet Erinys ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele.

“Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they’d spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don’t think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don’t like crowds, I don’t like noise, I don’t like anarchy, I don’t even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation–not better, different. I don’t like children who are part of the wild life.

Lyman on folks wanting to live on a commune in 1970 America

Civilizations grow by agreements and accommodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting stagnant but they get swept down and absorbed, they’re a side issue. Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition. If revolutionaries would learn that they can’t remodel society by day after tomorrow–haven’t the wisdom to and shouldn’t be permitted to–I’d have more respect for them.

“He sounds like a hard man.” “On the contrary, he was soft. People imposed on him. Grandmother always said he was too trusting. Actually he never expected much of people, and so he wasn’t upset if they turned out to be shysters or chiselers or crooks. But a few people he trusted absolutely. It was when they betrayed him that he turned to rock. Come on, I’ll show you the vegetable garden.”

“What do you mean, ‘Angle of Repose’?” “I don’t know what it meant for her. I’ve been trying to make out. She said it was too good a phrase for mere dirt. But I know what it means for me.” “What?” “Horizontal. Permanently.”

“They got along,” I said. “They respected each other. They treated one another with a sort of grave infallible kindness.”

Her real mistake was that she never appreciated him enough until it was too late.”