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Management for Professionals

The Springer series Management for Professionals comprises high-level

business and management books for executives. The authors are
experienced business professionals and renowned professors who
combine scientific background, best practice, and entrepreneurial
vision to provide powerful insights into how to achieve business
excellence.
More information about this series at http://​www.​springer.​com/​
series/​10101
Editor
Uwe G. Seebacher

B2B Marketing
A Guidebook for the Classroom to the Boardroom
1st ed. 2021
Editor
Uwe G. Seebacher
Graz, Austria

ISSN 2192-8096 e-ISSN 2192-810X

Management for Professionals
ISBN 978-3-030-54291-7 e-ISBN 978-3-030-54292-4
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54292-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive

license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer
Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham,
Switzerland
Foreword
B2B Marketing’s Time Has Come
B2B marketing, as a discipline and an industry, has come of age. For so
many years, it was dismissed as the “poor relation” of B2C—less
interesting, less important, less professional, and just less good. But
today, in 2020, it has cast off those negative associations and has
emerged as a unique, dynamic, vibrant, and exciting discipline. That
vibrancy and dynamism mean we all need to work harder to stay
informed about the latest developments and what best practice looks
like—that is the only downside!
The maturation of the industry is in no small part due to the skill,
dedication, and professionalism of practitioners within it—people like
Dr. Uwe Seebacher and the other authors of this book, who have gone
out of their way to drive it forward. I am flattered for the opportunity to
play my own small part.
These authors have invested their time, energy, and intelligence into
making B2B marketing better and more effective world to work in—
and this book is just the latest example of their efforts to accelerate the
profession that they love. This willingness to share experiences and
pass on wisdom is truly the hallmark of a great practitioner. The
wisdom and experiences encapsulated within this book will
unquestionably be a major boost to helping the current generation of
B2B marketers to raise their game and to encourage the emerging
generation to reach new heights.
This book is being written and published against a backdrop of a
global pandemic, creating an unprecedented upheaval for B2B
companies of all sizes and in all industries. It is going to challenge all of
us to be at our best to navigate through it. But I can tell you two things
for certain: Firstly, that learning from industry luminaries like the
authors in this book is the best way to equip yourself for what lies
ahead. And secondly, that B2B will emerge from this crisis stronger,
better, and more effective than ever before.
Joel Harrison
B2B Marketing London, UK
Preface
Just as quickly as the corona crisis surprised Europe, this book was
written. It was at the end of March 2020, when many entrepreneurs
had to register their employees for short-time work or even dismiss
them into unemployment due to the shutdowns. During this turbulent
period, many organizations began to switch from events to virtual
conferences, online events, and lectures. I was also invited several times
to exchange experiences in industrial goods marketing with many
colleagues and interested listeners from different companies.
Subsequently, I was immediately approached by an international
publishing house to publish a publication on the topic of industrial
goods marketing. For years I had been of the opinion that there was no
literature in this field besides the classic books by renowned experts
and professors such as Backhausen and Meffert (to name only two) that
was up-to-date and comprehensive and did justice to the new terms,
approaches and concepts, possibilities, and MarTech IT tools.
Therefore, I wrote a LinkedIn Post to promote the idea of a guide for
B2B marketing in book form to my national and international network,
especially to the business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Within a short
period of time my call was viewed, liked, and shared many thousands of
times. I received a lot of encouragement and confirmation for the
increasing urgency of the realization of such a book and also promises
to participate in this publication with topic-specific contributions.
Under the impression of the enormous solidarity that emerged in
many countries in connection with global development (corona
pandemic) and was felt everywhere, the concretization of this book
project was only a question of time. The idea of this publication was not
only to share experience and knowledge, but also to bring the
community of marketing managers and colleagues closer together
symbiotically and virtually, but above all sustainably, in order to grow
with each other and be open for future projects. Transformation in
reverse would also be the idea of looking at a famous quotation upside
down: There is a beginning to every end (or even a certain magic).
This book was written in a truly dramatic situation that has gripped
the entire world. Even if such a crisis takes on truly dramatic
proportions, it cannot and must not have been in vain. Its effects can be
seen in the many different initiatives and actions of solidarity and
mutual assistance. Generous aid and support in the smallest of spaces
are proof that people in need are once again reflecting on each other
and treating each other with consideration.
A book is only a book. As such, it can by no means make us forget
the thousands of dead and the suffering associated with them, but,
because it was written with this tragedy in mind, it can serve as a
memorial to those difficult months in the spring and summer of 2020.
This book has only become a reality because many individuals have
recognized and seen the great whole. The contribution of each
individual and the bundling of many experiences and the knowledge
available in industrial goods marketing can make a lasting difference
and secure many jobs, locations, and their companies in global
competition in the future by applying and implementing these latest
approaches and findings from the book.
For this reason, it is important for me to thank all those involved for
the fact that this project could be realized within a short time.
Convinced of the necessity of being able to offer something for our
troubled society at exactly the right time with this book, my thanks go
to the many authors and experts who have put themselves at the
service of the cause.
Thoughts of sincere sympathy are dedicated to the many thousands
of mourners and victims. These thoughts may always remind us of
those days in April and May 2020.
Uwe G. Seebacher
Graz, Austria
Next-Generation B2B Marketing
Abstract In this chapter, we want to shed light on the background
which has led to the fact that industrial goods marketing has begun to
change massively in recent years. It looks at the big picture, which leads
to the fact that I have to change or rather change entire economic
sectors. In this context, digitalization and globalization are only two of
many different factors. Why is Germany, once the world’s third largest
economy, no longer the driving economic force that it once was? Or why
is the “Made in Germany” that used to be everywhere a symbol of a
faltering automotive and heavy industry? Against the background of
these emerging paradigm shifts, this chapter deals with B2B marketing
of the next generation. A B2B marketing whose goals must be to
proactively position Western industrial companies successfully in
global markets that are characterized by new, emerging economic
powers and their agile companies with increasingly innovative
products. Western engineers and their conventional, rigid ways of
thinking and acting alone will no longer suffice for the survival of the
companies. The convergence of the various areas of competence at eye
level within the companies is required in order to place customer-
centered innovations in a targeted and successful manner in the
relevant markets in the long term using modern B2B marketing.

Introduction
When I began work on my book Template-Driven Consulting, also
published by Springer Verlag, in the late autumn of 2003, the global
economy was supposedly in a difficult period. I described the situation
at the time like this:

Throughout the past 40 years, we have never had a world-

economic situation like we have right now; all three major
economies are exhausted and following a path of shrinking
growth rather than trying to focus the hausse direction. Now,
what is so specific about the current situation?
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 Recall economically turbulent situations of our modern
times and think about the three large economies: Europe, Asia
and the USA. At least one of these three large markets was
always strong and thus served as the engine to pull the others’
development along in a positive sense. Therefore, the power of
the one strong economy could help the two others to realize the
shift from a recession or weak market situation towards a
growing and more stable one. This causality was and still is
labeled as the so-called band-wagon effect.
At that time, nobody would have assumed how the global economy
would change or develop. Today, we are faced with a completely
different starting situation. The first two decades of the new
millennium have left their mark not only geopolitically but also in
terms of economic policy and have painted a completely new picture.
And it is precisely this picture that makes it more necessary than ever
before for industrial companies to rethink their respective functions in
terms of departments, because a completely changing macroeconomic
structure as a global economic environment also requires completely
new rules of the game. This also means that classical engineering,
which led to the strengthening of the global economy after the two
world wars, will gradually have to take on a new position. In the future,
engineers will no longer define and specify new products and
innovations on their own, but rather it will be the customers with
whom and with whose decisive input the cash cows of a company’s
future will be designed and realized.

Of Populists and Realists

The new geopolitical world is characterized by populists and power-
obsessed politicians. Russia feels compelled to annex parts of Ukraine.
On the other side of the world, efforts are being made to build a wall
between two states to stop migration flows. This undoubtedly brings
back memories of the very important and welcome fall of the Berlin
Wall. By the way—as dramatic as the current COVID-19 crisis is—it
mercilessly exposes the populists in the respective countries.
In other countries, parliaments decide to grant their heads of state
unlimited power because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as in earlier times.
In Europe, there is a debate on whether to issue common debts in the
form of Euro bonds to help countries such as Italy and Spain which are
severely weakened by the current pandemic. This should prevent an
“Italexit” after the more or less successful Brexit. This joint debt is
intended to help the European internal market with its closely
interlinked sales markets to regain its strength quickly. In view of the
border controls reintroduced because of COVID-19, however, the
question arises as to the direction in which the European Union will
develop as an association of states. Will this duty-free movement of
goods within the European internal market continue at all? Or will the
reactivated border controls have a lasting effect on the movement of
goods within the EU?
Time and again, one hears from economists and futurologists about
a new, completely different society or world order after corona.
Idealists assume or hope that the changed travel behavior due to the
corona crisis and the associated travel restrictions will manifest itself in
a large-scale rethinking process even after the lifting of the restrictions.
They even believe that corona would solve our general environmental
problem and global warming. It gives the impression that we find
ourselves in a world of dreamers and populists. The few realists are
currently very critical of whether the construct of the European Union
will pass this ordeal. They proclaim that the EU as a community of
states has actually lost its raison d’être as a result of the heterogeneous
approach taken in the corona crisis, or rather has by no means fulfilled
the expectations placed in it. Ursula von der Leyen was unable to pass
this first test in the eyes of those political advisers.
This new geopolitical scenario has dramatic implications for future
economic action. When states, due to their own lack of competitiveness,
rely on massively environmentally damaging, outdated technologies or
even punitive tariffs on imported goods from certain countries, the
question arises as to the causes and the reason for this. There is no
doubt that a country may try to secure and strengthen its own business
location. However, such strategies must always be able to stand up to
scrutiny from an international economic policy perspective. But the
dubious virtues that are spreading in the global geopolitical landscape
also have an impact on economic activity.
Forward into the Past
There is no question: there are always two sides to a medal.
Globalization and digitization have shown that they bring enormous
benefits for the world economy. Supply and demand are becoming
transparent on a global level. Supply and value chains can be planned,
controlled, and optimized in terms of the economic use of resources
worldwide. Through virtual marketplaces, companies can always order
products with regard to a shortened, optimized delivery route and thus
minimize CO2 emissions and transport costs. All this can equally
combine economic aspects and corporate social responsibility (CSR)1
aspects. However, when presidents start to disregard any CSR idea just
to compensate for the declining competitiveness of their own country,
the possible advantages and potentials of a world economy optimized
by digitalization and globalization are being squandered. The real fatal
thing about such behavior on the part of politicians is that in the long
term this happens at the expense of their own people and even their
own voters, which is actually tantamount to an abuse of trust in their
own country.
A further phenomenon of current economic policy development is
the resurgence and imposition of punitive tariffs on imported products
with the pretext of securing one’s own business location and domestic
jobs in the long term. Again, in the long term, all this is happening at the
expense of their own population; only that the latter is not aware of it.
For in the long term, old and outdated industries and weak economic
sectors and their companies are kept artificially alive, with the effect
that the development of new technologies falls by the wayside for lack
of pressure to act. The result is economic areas that are gradually losing
touch with emerging and innovative markets, companies, and
economies. Commercial law uses the term or the facts of an intentional
delay in filing for insolvency for such a procedure. The bill is paid by
future generations or the taxpayer.
It can therefore only be the goal of governments to do everything
possible to ensure that economic policy does not move forward into the
past. Our global economic system and everything that goes with it is too
valuable to be undermined by antiquated methods such as, among
other things, the reintroduction of punitive tariffs or the reactivation of
completely outdated, resource-wasting production methods.

Global Madness: So What?

The legitimate question arises as to what the previously described has
to do with industrial goods marketing in the twenty-first century. The
classic B2B marketing manager enters an industrial company after
successfully completing his marketing studies or marketing training.
There he or she learns and experiences from day one what the function
of a marketing department is based on, namely the production of
brochures and the supervision of relevant industrial fairs. In most
cases, one then had the privilege of pursuing a brilliant marketing
career in this company until one’s own retirement. In most cases, the
ambitious young professional also has the dubious pleasure of learning
all his knowledge from an older marketing manager with the same
history—namely graduation, entry, and retirement. In summary, this
means that the one-eyed person trains the non-sighted. Very quickly
the ambitious young professional realizes that marketing is the
extended workbench in the company and actually has nothing to say,
because the gods in gray are the real heroes, the engineers. Moreover,
marketing only costs money anyway and creates no added value. This is
also confirmed by a statement from a marketing colleague from
Germany who I hold in high esteem and who wrote me the following:
Short-time working was introduced in our division. We received
an e-mail to the entire management team, which stated that
research and development had to be reduced by 50%, product
management by 40%, calculation by 30%, sales by 50% and
marketing by 90% (!) for the next three months. That means the
whole marketing department will only work 4 hours per week...

There is no need to go into further detail between the lines to

discuss the assessment or appreciation of the marketing department in
the company. It is important to mention that the responsible area
manager had a technical and not a commercial background. At this
point, it should be noted that the marketing manager in question does
anything but a bad job. It is therefore not surprising that if you listen to
engineers, they know and can do everything better than experts in
other fields; their products are always perfect and sell themselves. So
they do not know why you need marketing. This picture is painted by
experts with a technological education background who ideally—if at
all—had once heard of customers, markets, and sales in their entire
education.
Madness is thus not only global, but also in the companies
themselves, where overconfidence leads to the fact that any self-
reflection and self-criticism is stringently suppressed. Praise should be
given to the current, upcoming, young, and highly trained engineers
who are already benefiting from the expanded, adapted training
models. In addition to comprehensive technical training content, these
include modules in the areas of customer orientation, market analyses,
and sales. In this respect, it is interesting to note how the internal,
cross-departmental cooperation immediately changes significantly for
the better and how completely new projects and innovation potentials
are immediately created by the shoulder-to-shoulder cooperation of
market-oriented and product-oriented units.
Under no circumstances should the thesis be put forward here that
B2B marketing is the salutary savior for the current plight. But B2B
marketing can and must make a significant contribution to the
sustainable safeguarding and strengthening of the industrial companies
for and in which they operate. The technological developments in this
area make this possible. It must therefore be the task of the responsible
marketing managers in the industry to prepare their own marketing
departments and their teams for this, but also to spread the knowledge
of these new possibilities within the companies’ internal
communication. Against this background, the following essential fields
of competence arise for “next-generation” B2B marketing, which will be
discussed in more detail below:
Method and process competence
Data competence
IT Competence

Method and Process Competence

The Russian scientist Nikolai Dmitrievich Kondratieff (1892–1938) is
the founder of the theory of long waves. During his research on the
business cycle in 1919 and 1921, he found out that apart from short
cycles lasting up to 3 years and medium cycles lasting up to 11 years,
there are also longer time phases—so-called business cycle waves—
with a duration of 45–60 years. As part of his function as director of the
Moscow Institute for Business Cycle Research, Kondratieff published
his findings in 1926 in the German-language Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik| and pointed out that the economic
development of the Western industrial countries since the end of the
eighteenth century had been determined by three major upswings and
downturns. Joseph Schumpeter was the first to highlight the central
importance of basic innovations for a Kondratieff cycle in his work
Konjunkturzyklen (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 2008). It was also
Schumpeter who coined the term “Kondratieff cycle” and thus linked
the name with the phenomenon of long waves.
Kondratieff recognized in the course of his work that the increasing
automation and technologization of the economy would make humans
the weakest link in the chain. He predicted that this would be the great
challenge of the twenty-first century:
1. To ensure the holistic health of the human being and

2. to equip people with the appropriate methodological and structural

competence

in order to be able to fully realize the potential of automation and

technologization in the first place. The sharp rise in the number of
mental illnesses in people over the past few years is clear evidence of
Kondratieff’s hypothesis. An entire economic sector for corporate
health management has developed in recent years under the term
“corporate mental wellness ” (Gü pner et al. 2010). The costs to national
economies for the treatment of mental illness have already reached
high double-digit percentages of total healthcare costs. Significantly
greater is the economic damage caused by a lack of method and process
competence in companies.
Process Competence as a Basic Requirement
How does this damage occur? A lack of methodological and structural
competence manifests itself in the form of inefficient processes,
duplication, interface problems, inadequate use of information systems,
and even the failure to achieve defined goals within the specified time
and within the defined budget. A prime example is, for example, the
untimely introduction of a product because the responsible project
manager in the research and development department did not handle
the project properly. Another common problem is the lack of
coordination between production and project management, which can
result in significant overruns of a defined delivery time. With regard to
B2B marketing, a lack of structural and methodological competence
manifests itself in the absence of detailed process descriptions of
marketing and communication activities, and even in the absence of up-
to-date job descriptions , clear objectives, and clear performance
indicators of the measures implemented.
The lack of such basic structural elements of a marketing
organization means that such a department will always operate in the
so-called firefighting mode. Always on the defensive, marketing will try
to deliver in the best possible way, the activities that are handed over
and commissioned by the various departments much too late and most
of the time inaccurately. Marketing is therefore always the driven and
the plaything of the other departments. With the necessary structural
and methodological competence, the proverbial homework as
described above can be documented and made transparent to
everyone. Should someone now fail to bring in a work order in
accordance with the given processes and timelines, the marketing
department can refer to it and thus gradually become master of its own
time and planning.
Homework First
If these structural foundations are not created, an internal marketing
department will never have the necessary stringent and congruent
structure to be able to act and argue with the internal customer groups
with the necessary sovereignty. Once again we would like to state at
this point: Change always begins with itself and thus in the marketing
department. With the necessary structural competence, a clear
organizational chart of your own marketing department in the
narrower sense but also in the broader sense can be created in
interaction with other organizational units. This, in turn, has a positive
effect on cross-team and cross-departmental process efficiency, as
interfaces are clearly defined.
Everything Must Pay Off
Another important aspect also falls within the area of methodological
competence, namely that of presenting and analyzing all circumstances
in terms of economic efficiency considerations. This concerns every
small campaign up to investments in a new MarTech tool.2 Next-
generation B2B marketing says goodbye to the clumsy picking up and
querying of new resources and budgets but starts to show in a small
way how something can work. This creates an argumentative basis for
itself, in order to submit the proof of concept in the context of the
acquisition of additional means and resources and to deliver the big
business case based on it. Next-generation B2B marketing breaks away
from the shadowy existence of marketing and claims to always be one
step ahead of the competition. How can you do this? The answer is very
simple: be empathetic. Put yourself in the position of your counterpart.
Imagine that you were sitting opposite your CEO. What question would
he ask you? The answer is always the same 90% of the time: what does
it cost me and what does it get us?
Your goal must be to always shine in every imaginable situation and
not to expose yourself. This means that you must always think the
decisive step ahead. Think about what question might come up in the
meeting? Try to find the weak points in your concept. Identify
inconsistencies and structural weaknesses. Start to think in structures.
Structures can be diverse, such as:
Management models (BCG matrix, SWOT analysis, ...)
Business processes (Buyer’s journey, purchasing, production, ...)
Templates (questionnaire, checklist for an event, ...)
Against this background, structures already provide you with other
prequalified frames of reference with which you can evaluate relevant
information. The aim is not to keep reinventing the wheel, but to use
the existing one for yourself. Not for nothing do two proverbs say, “He
who reads has advantages in life” and “He who writes stays!” Try to find
provable and justifiable numbers and values for everything you do.

Data Competence
A second essential area for successful B2B marketing in the twenty-first
century is the handling and knowledge of data and information of all
kinds. In classical management teaching, this has been an integral part
of current teaching and practice for years. Only the two areas of human
resource management and marketing have for years very successfully
negated the topic of performance management and measurement. It
was not until the last years of the twentieth century that the first
specific indicators for the area of human resource management were
introduced. Since that time, a rethinking process toward transparent
measurement and evaluation of marketing return on investment
(MRoI) in connection with the marketing resource management (MRM)
approach had also taken place in marketing (Seebacher and Gü pner
2021).
However, the field of data literacy has developed rapidly in recent
years. Enabled by increasingly complex business intelligence (BI)
solutions, ever larger volumes of data can now be processed,
interpreted, and evaluated more easily and quickly. Marketing
managers in the industry have only two options: either they start to
deal with the topic of data management in terms of business and
predictive analytics3 in a timely manner or they will find themselves on
the losing side in the long run. The saying “knowledge is power” is not
new but has experienced an enormous renaissance against the
background of current developments. Next-generation B2B marketing
must be able to know everything about markets, customers, projects,
and products 24/7 and always up to date. The content sovereignty of all
data and information, including in the area of customer relationship
management (CRM), must be uncompromisingly located in marketing.
In many companies, the sovereignty over the CRM system lies with
the sales or even the IT department. In the absence of the necessary
structural competence, most marketing managers do not realize what
the problem is. Because if you look at the situation described above in
terms of structural analysis, you inevitably come to the conclusion that
pure IT sovereignty in the sense of the system-technical term must very
well be located in the operational IT department, but not the
responsibility for the content. Logically, this can only be located in the
marketing department, which in turn must define which data is
collected, entered, analyzed, and used in the context of the further
marketing value chain, where, and how often. Of course, all this can
only be done in close coordination and together with the sales
department, because only the sales department has the competence in
dealing with customers and communicating with them. Coordination
with the sales department is essential!

IT Competence
This may sound hard for many readers, but it is reality. B2B marketing
in the twenty-first century is more and more driven by modern
information technology. As a member of the next-generation B2B
marketing manager community, you must be able to make competent
statements about the latest MarTech tools. This does not mean that you
have to become a programmer. But you need to be able to manage a
clean selection process for a new marketing solution with the help of
the required methodological skills. You will also need to be able to
communicate with colleagues in other departments, especially IT, via
interfaces and data fields, to ensure that you always have the correct
data available in the required format. You are the business owner and
represent the business. The IT department is the internal service
provider for the provision of the corresponding systems and interfaces.
As marketing manager, you must be able to conduct the necessary
coordination and discussions with your colleagues from a content
perspective with regard to system-related aspects.
The area of IT competence also means that from a strategic point of
view you need to develop a concept for the MarTech blueprint of the
organization. Which applications, systems, and tools should be used in
the future and in the long term in the company in the area of marketing
and through which interfaces should be connected? This is the only way
you can establish the necessary modern MarTech infrastructure in your
own company on the basis of the existing system landscape in the long
term, which is necessary to meet the demands of modern B2B
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marketing. If the subject area of marketing IT in terms of the MarTech
stack is not proactively dealt with by the marketing department in a
timely manner, marketing will soon find itself in a co-pilot role. This
means that others will make appropriate decisions for marketing. In
view of the madness in companies that is present everywhere with
regard to the appreciation of marketing, it can be assumed that the
right decisions will certainly only be made in the rarest of cases.

Summary
Change always starts with itself. Again and again, you hear the question
about the size of a marketing department in terms of the number of
employees. Again and again, the objection is raised that in small and
medium-sized companies there are too few resources in marketing to
implement all these things. Again and again, you hear the objection that
everything is too expensive and there would be no budget anyway?
Frankly, these are the wrong questions from someone who has
understood the ideology and philosophy of this book.
It does not take much to successfully implement next-generation
B2B marketing in a company—except a marketing manager who
stringently starts to do his own homework. No matter how many
employees are involved in marketing, it is always a matter of
progressing in small steps in a structured manner from within. This
approach makes it possible to present and document one’s own actions
in the form of concrete and measurable results. This subsequently
creates transparency and trust. On this basis and with the
corresponding advance of trust resulting from it, new ideas and
projects can be launched. The decisive factor is to always be clear about
what is possible on a small scale and only then to apply for further
resources or financial support from your superior. Always think of your
children and what you tell them when they want something from you:
“Duty comes before free skating” or “Homework must be done first!”
The entire book is based on the maturity model for industrial goods
marketing. This means that the approaches, concepts, and models
presented in the three main parts of this book are arranged in such a
way that the basic concepts are placed at the beginning of the chapter
and those with higher complexity and corresponding prior knowledge
are placed further back in the individual sections. The sections of this
book are thus structured in the sense of a companion and guide along
your very personal B2B marketing journey. Have a good journey!

References
Gü pner, A., Seebacher, U. G., Hillert, A. (2010). Corporate Mental
Wellness. Munich: USP Publishing.
Schumpeter, J. A. (2008). Business Cycles. Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht.
Seebacher, U. G., Gü pner, A. (2021). Marketing Resource Management.
Munich, Germany: AQPS Inc.
Seebacher, U. G. (2003). Template-driven Consulting – How To Slash
More Than Half of Your Consulting Costs. New York: Springer.
Uwe G. Seebacher
Graz, Austria
Acknowledgment Adobe Marketo

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences.

Marketo Engage is the leading engagement platform that helps
marketers build long-term relationships with their customers and drive
revenue. Consistently recognized as the industry’s innovation driver,
the Marketo platform is the trusted platform of thousands of CMOs due
to its scalability, reliability, and openness.
For more information about the Marketo Engagement Platform, the
Launch-Point® Partner Ecosystem, and the Marketing Nation®—a
network that promotes exchange among marketers—visit marketo.de
or adobe.de.
Acknowledgment LinkedIn

The publishers are grateful for the support of LinkedIn, the world’s
largest professional network and B2B marketing platform.
By bringing the world’s professionals together in one place,
LinkedIn provides B2B marketers with a unique opportunity to reach
relevant audiences at scale. It does so through an uncluttered, member-
first environment where professionals pursue lifelong aspirations while
occupying a mission-oriented mindset. LinkedIn members see their
time with the platform as invested rather than spent. This leads to
longer session times and a greater willingness to engage with content
and messages. This deep engagement provides B2B marketers with a
valuable source of insight on their most important audiences.
Contents
Part I Basics and Theories: A Good Base Is Half the Rent
1 The Big Picture:​Why the Going Gets Tougher!
Mike Kleinemaß and Uwe G. Seebacher
2 The B2B Marketing Ecosystem:​Finding Your Way Through the
World of Colorful B2B Terms!
Uwe G. Seebacher
3 The B2B Marketing Maturity Model:​What the Route to the Goal
Looks Like!
Uwe G. Seebacher
4 MarTech 8000:​How to Survive in Jurassic Park of Dazzling
Marketing Solutions
Uwe G. Seebacher
Part II Practical Concepts and Models: Applied Science from the
Experts
5 B2B Marketing Strategy:​Finding the Needle in the Haystack
Alex Cairns
6 The Marketing Canvas:​A Template for Powerful Go to Market
Strategies
Susanne Trautmann
7 To Brand or Not to Brand:​An Introduction to B2B Branding
Kirsten Juliet Ives and Vera Mü llner
8 Marketing Automation:​Defining the Organizational Framework
Alexander Mrohs
9 Marketing Automation:​Exploring the Process Model for
Implementation
Lutz Klaus
10 Successful Lead Management:​Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now
Stephan Wenger
11 Digital Lead Capturing at Trade Fairs:​Understanding the Low-
Cost Quick Win Generator
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swings open, his head bowed above thin shoulders twitches in, away from
the crash of an impending train above on its swinging iron rail. Wave of
acrid beer, soiled flesh, wet clothes. Above it, his head a moment is still....
Sober. Harry steps up to the bar, with sharp feet and hands marshalling
sudden to his head against the lazy swing of his body within the fetid wave.
He grasps a glass of whiskey, carries it untouched before him to a corner.
Bodies huddled like hulks of beef or pork, covered with rags. He floats
above them, finds a seat, bowing to a naked wooden table. Invitation. Glass
elbows on the naked table. Head on the table? No!—One gulp to swing my
body free with my sharp head ... to soberness.... So....—What am I? ...
Harry Howland Luve gazed on his world. A man snoring near him blew
a spray of blood from his mashed nose. A man, beside a barrel, let his
fingers trail like grey worms through the sawdust ... a red tongue broke
through the muck of his mouth, licked the grey worms of his hands, he slept
again. At the bar, careening like ships on a wave of the world, heads dipped
into huge glasses, swung against mirrors, broke thudding upon a window
upon a wall that was a grin of hardness.—What am I? Harry Howland Luve
laboriously counted his fingers....—One two three four ... one two three
four ... one two: my God! where is my fifth finger? “I lack a finger! I lack a
finger!” Body with head feet hands was one ... a toss, a catapult from the
stinking Harp House into a darkness clear, biting, without, beneath the
surge of the “L.” He flew. “I lack a finger.” He stopped. “What else do I
lack?” Again a train. He was caught. He could not move.—It is coming
over! He was clamped; the train’s murmur rose to a beat, a roar, a crash.
Iron and wood and steam shrieked and stampeded, mountained on his head.
He was clamped. He was a silence of horror under a mountain of noise,
crushing against the eggshell of his skull.... It passed....—I am alive. He
walked quiet now, looking on the pavement tracks for his lost finger.
“You have lost something?” A black form rose from the street like smoke
on a clear night. “Yes ... I have lost ... have lost....” “Perhaps,” said the
smokey man, “I can help you to find. Come along, Brother.” He clasped his
arm. The smokey man of God, the white seeker of color moved down the
cavern of Chatham Square where the high houses dimmed away like
stalactytes and the “L” thrust its lance into the belly of a world too weary to
cry, too worn to bleed. Before him Harry Luve held his white dry hand.
“My finger,” he muttered. “Yes,” said the man of God. “I see ... your
pointing finger....”
 He sat in a quiet room. Coffee and a sandwich rolled in his raw stomach.
“That tastes good, eh?” said the man of smoke. “Hot, eh? Whiskey makes
you shiver, I’ll bet.” Luve held his hands together and began to cry. “Heat is
the best thing in the world. Good heat is God. False heat is the Devil ... and
makes you shiver,” he said. “Another cup of coffee?”
“My finger ... my finger!” “Brace up, man. You’re a gentleman. You
were. I can see that. See clear, and you’re whole....” “How can I see clear
when I lack ... I lack—” ... “Hush—listen.”
There was a sound like a soft white quiet on a red wound. Music.
“Bow your head, Brother.... Listen.”
The quiet crept upon his body. Tucked in his toes, moistened his hands,
lay on his mouth. The quiet was warm. Was music. Harry shut his eyes. The
wave of the world, booze and streaking men, fell away. He was in a flatness
downy with gentle grass above a gentle river. His feet hurt, he was glad,
hurting was living. A warm cloud muffled his head: through his eyes and
mouth, through the warm cloud came words:
“Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy Kingdom ... give us this day our
daily ... not into temptation ... for thine is the Kingdom ... halleluja,
Blesst!... the glory for ever and ever ... seek and ye shall find ... seek seek
and and ye ye ... unto you opened ... unto you, opened ... Blood of the
Lamb, red blood, ... there is a quiet house, all white, where it is warm this
bitter Winter night ... all warm a quiet house ... and arms holding me to a
redness, passion, that is allowed. Allowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ...
allowed. Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy.... Fanny’s red, I have
seen her red blood. Since I have married her, holy ... red and holy ... knock
and it shall be ... opened ... red warm, dear ... all white is the blood of the
Christ....”
The smokey man was speaking: “Miracle is not dead.”
Harry Luve rolled around upon his face. The music was still. A new
quiet, also warm, wrapped him about. He rolled and rolled in a warm water.
“The quiet is ever’ where.”
His eyes gleamed against a blackness suddenly calm and dun, a wall. He
looked at a wall in a lighted room. He saw a man beside him clad in black.
A hand touched his. Harry was thankful how that hand touched his.
“I have seen,” he said, “ ... O I have seen—“
 The hand clasped his. “What, brother, have you seen?”
Harry wrenched away his hands, placed them like fenders before him.
“Let me—let me—!” he stopped. He swayed caught: he flew caught in a
chord that sped with the bright room through a roaring darkness. Roar! He
was dizzy. He tried to cry. He saw his hands speeding before his eyes like
two birds through cavernous space. He stopped from breath ... one two
three four FIVE ... he counted his flying fingers. A tiny spring sang over his
eyes, sang fraying ready to break. He wanted to cry ... five five!... a little
woman flew before his hands like a white bird in the blackness. Naked. One
red spot in her naked body where he had made red once ... Fanny!... warm
... allowed. Hallowed allowed hallowed allowed. The red spot was a painted
house home ... could be about him.... Blessed are they that mourn ... blessed
are they that mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit ... comforted ... Kingdom
of Heaven lead us not ... rejoice exceeding glad ... into temptation——

“—Warm and sweet is the blood of the Lamb

That washes us sinners white.
Sinners sinners
Black and quivering sinners we
And the blood of the Lamb it warms us
It washes us sinners white.”

... The hand of the man in black touched his again. Smokey ... flame.
Warmness, red warmness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring burst.
His eyes burst out into myriad diamond stars. A sluice opened. He was all
wet. His soul poured ... a pent torrent ... out: speechless whiteness.
“Something—say something, Brother! What wrestles in you? What
chokes you? What do you see?”
“Christ!” gasped Harry Rowland Luve: then he slept.
* * *
Mrs. Luve leaned back in her chair, took the brimming words of Samson
Brenner.
They poured from him, free, full, into the dark pool of her eyes. They
poured bright, candid: in the dark pool they fell dark.
—You talk of your fears and your pains: you talk of your loves and your
dreams. You are a Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never in your
mouth?
 —O there is reason, deep! What is the pain of nearness—you pampered
Jew, you Jew-boy, plump about sorrow—that blots the word Christ from
your mouth?
“Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose myself, there sudden I am. I do
not know myself, but I say ‘that is me!’ ”—Pampered boy. “I talk and talk.
God knows of what and why. Mrs. Luve, do I bore you?”
“You move along a path that is mine. Go on. I have no earthly thing to
do but hear you.”
“You are grave!”
“Not so grave as you.”
“But I laugh. I must tell you ... the first time I really heard laughter....”
—You move upon my life like a broken sun ashift through cloud at
evening after a black day.... You in the flame of my candles, you in the
black of my room.... What is this word Christ you know too deep to utter?”

Fanny standing moved her hand from the gathered flowers on the table
... cherry and pear buds high, bowls of anemone, violets ... to her lips.
“He is coming!” She stood.
The door thrust forward—and was away from between them. Clad in
white she held firm against the sight of him; tall and dark with pale hands
and face, he rose from her still eyes like a column of smoke.
“Harry!” Then she held out her arms.
He shut the door. He knelt.
“Get up, husband.”
He kissed her hands.
She lifted his head in her two palms, lifted him up. His lips were on hers.
They were thin, sweet, laden now with little gasps of air warmed sweet
in sweet lungs: no smells of liquor and smoke like a hot corrugation
scraping her sense.
He broke from her and sat in a chair. His breath was sudden, he had run
a race. One hand lay palpitant against a knee: breathless, afraid, a being out
of its element. She thought of a sea. He was fished up dry from a sea.
 “Harry,” she spoke low. She knelt at his feet: she looked up: she could
smile now.
“Get up, wife.”
“No ... let me. Let me always.”
His dry hands, tremulous, waved about her hair: seeking, afraid: they
were moths now, fluttering upon a light: so his eyes. His face was pale and
hurt turned down upon her smiling. Fluttering search collapsed. He hid his
face in his hands.
“Do not cry now.” She felt shut out by his hiding hands.
“I do not cry. Instead, I pray.”
He looked at her. All of him was dry. From his words he seemed to have
won bravery. She felt shut out in his looking.
His eyes were braver: his hands. They moved forward upon her
shadowing face: they sought a thing, found it. They carried her mouth upon
his, differently, upward. He stood, she under him. Her flesh touched his
flesh.
Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black ... and in prayer. Lips washed clean
of liquor, scrubbed lips, thin ... very thin. Hands corroded in cleanliness
against the nape of her neck. Odorless, fireless.... Fanny flung her arms
about him.... Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a world. She
clasped him close.
“Harry—Harry,” she cried. “O I am so glad you are——” she stopped.
She lay swaying in his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint moan rose
from her parted lips as her arms clasped tighter....
They sat and looked at each other.
“You have loved me, Fanny.”
“Yes ... yes.”
“You are my wife.”
She could say no word. She could feel no thing to turn into a word. She
was a wisp of cloud: beneath her a weathercock stood still. Harry moveless
pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody spike ... under a sky with one wisp
of cloud.
From a fringed green horizon, memory like a wind moved up to her.
 —I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated my new free strength to that.
I have sworn how I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together!
“You know about me,” he said.
“I know you have come back, and I love you ... love you.”
“I must tell you all ... all the sin. You are my wife.”
“Tell me now, only that you are mine.”
“I am yours: for you are my wife since in my sinning you have loved
me, Fanny. God rewards me. You were there, awaiting my conversion.”
“We are wedded at last. Do not use words I cannot understand.”
“You must hear all my sins....”
Why did she feel:—He is satisfied with his words?
“I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my way of being cleansed, to
speak my sins. As they come forth from my mouth, they cleanse—God has
made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am washed clean, speaking them.
Already scores of boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All their
horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand washing clean.”
Why did she feel:—Speaking, he moves away?
—I am jealous of your sins. What are sins?
“Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can bury them. Then we can start
to build. Then you can come and hold me.”
“I was away more than two years....”
—He has come back to hold me.... I will hold him so he understands he
has come back to hold me.... O to be held!... He has never held me. We
were too wise, we fools, to hold each other. In a plunging world ... O my
God how the world veers and plunges ... what fools not to hold each other.
He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwelling again with his sins.
He was warm in them. When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife, his
eyes were colder.
—Hold me. Hold me! Let me hold you. Come plant your hand in my
heart. He spoke, dwelling warm in his sins.
—Damn your sins!
He ended. He came to her and knelt once more. Not feeling him, she let
him.
“Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife ... do you forgive me?”
 Not feeling him there, she was very quiet.
“I do not feel, my love, that there is anything to forgive.”
She looked straight, a little to the side of his white face. She was still.
“We were young,” then she said.—I must speak. “And did not know. All
that is past, but is good ... all ... since now we know.”
“I have sinned deeply. Forgive me.”
“You wandered loosely, because I held you loose: because you did not
hold me. Now we clasp each other close. It is not a sin to have been a
child.”
“Bless you. Bless you.”
“I have learned——“
“You have been always wonderful.”
“No, Harry. I have learned. I have changed.”
“You.... You have not needed to change.”
She looked at him. “Two years you left me alone: and before that two
years you left me alone while I was forced to live with a drunkard. Do you
think these years did nothing to me?”
“You suffered.”
“And what might come of suffering!”
“Fanny, my Christian wife, you were strong, you were not harmed by
suffering. You remained pure. You have been not changed, dear: tempered.”
“O Harry, I am afraid ... so afraid of your words.”
“You are a Christian, dear, and do not know it. That is why you are
frightened by my words.”
“You never saw me, Harry.”
“Yes, dear, always. Under a mist, but always. The mist lifted. Darling, I
must tell you: that frightful immortal night ... you and Christ.... I saw you
both at once together.”
“You never saw me. You do not know how I have changed.”
“You love me?”
“O my darling!”
“You suffered, waiting....”
 She put his hands together: helpless she beat her hands against his hands
clasped hard.
“You did not give up ... waiting, suffering?”
“I knew you would come back. I saw you, always, coming. Now I know
that.”
“Then you have not changed. For you do love me, then.”
“Harry, love to survive must change.”
“Dear, dear ... you were right. I have told my sins. Each one. You have
them all. You must remember them all. Let me hold you now, in silence.”
“But Harry, perhaps I too have the need of telling.”
“You have no sin.”
“No Harry, I have no sin. But there are other tidings.”
“Hush, dearest. Hold me——“
“Listen!”
He looked at her. Impatience bit his lip, puckered his eyes slightly.
“ ...Have you thought ever, Harry, of what I did, these years of waiting?
of what I was? Harry, look at me clear. Have you ever tried to see me?”
“My Christian wife!”
—Patience, patience!... “Harry, this coming home must be beautiful, it
must not be hideous. Give it your share of light, Harry. You must to save it,
to make it. Look at me.”
He puckered his brow: he suffered, looking at her beauty he would ...
now he had confessed his sins ... have preferred to kiss.—All of you, hidden
under your white prim dress! “It is so long since I have kissed you.”
“Harry, your word sin, does it cover up from your eyes what you and I
have done? Am I right, dearest, to fear your word sin?”
—I want to kiss you. You are my wife and have forgiven me. I’m done
with vices. I have the right, by God! to kiss your mouth and....
“Your going away killed me, Harry. I was near dead before you went.
Your going away killed me.”
“Forgive me, I say.”
“Never! if you use that word. Forgiveness, sin ... they are words, Harry,
that cover up. You killed me; you did not sin. You struggled for life and
killed me. That is all. I struggled for life, after your struggle had killed me.
Can you imagine how I needed, alone here in the house with Edith whom
you have never seen, to struggle against the death in which your going
buried me?”
“Edith——!”
“She is asleep. Have you thought, Harry?”
He stood up. “What can I do or say? Yes I have thought. It is that agony I
brought to you which I call my sin: it is my heartache for it, my rushing
back to you with hands imploring, that cries ‘Forgiveness.’ You stop me.”
“Harry you did not sin, because you needed life. Always that comes first;
our need of life. I did not give you life. I don’t know why, but I did not give
you life. You went elsewhere, fumbled. Now I feel strong. I feel now, Love,
that I can give you life. We can now, from our new strength, at last give life
to each other. If I did not know this, I would never have seen you again.
“But Harry ... please, please understand! I understand your wandering,
your hurting, almost your killing of yourself and of me ... in order to find
breath. Understand mine!”
“What do you mean, Fanny?”
“I am human also. I am not ... I do not want to be that perfect emptiness
you call your Christian wife. O my beloved, I am all warm for you, I am all
living for you, because I too have struggled and have wandered ... in order
to find breath.”
“What do you mean?”
She stood close to him. “Look at me close, my love.”
“What do you mean?” Very slowly, his pale white hands with their blue
veins curled up like leaves in autumn, drying, drying: fists.
“Do you feel how I love you? Do you feel ... O you must ... how my love
now, that was a little stupid girlish thing, has bloomed: how it is full of
blood, full of sustaining sweetness? Do you not feel, Harry, how you have
come back to a love that will feed you, that will lift you up until the end of
years?”
“Yes ... I feel that. What do you mean?”
“That love is over the despair and death of our past years as a tree is over
the ground.”
“Fanny ... I....”
 “ ...rooted in it. I was under the ground. That shows I loved you. Always,
always. If I had not loved you, I should not have been so deep-buried under
the ground. I was dead. That shows I loved you. I am all open in the air,
high to you. That shows I love you. Love for you has never stopped, it has
grown.”
“What do you mean ...?”
“There was a thing that helped me to push up from my despair, from my
death under the ground where you had buried me, Harry. There was a
man....”
Harry Luve stepped forward and viced her wrists: “A man—!”
“Harry dearest, you must let me now, me now tell you all about it.”
He stopped her. “One thing only.... This man—” His voice broke. He
dropped her wrists. His face was an ashen mist. “For God’s sake, Fanny!
You didn’t ... you didn’t, Fanny—“
His eyes saw her. Saw her face. Her face nodded.
His hands covered his face. He flinched away. He saw her not. He went
back, back ... the wall caught him. He crumpled to the floor. He lay under
his white hands. Lay long....
At last:
“Harry, Harry ... it was because I loved you. O the hurt! See, I have
killed you too. Because I loved you.... I too needed to live, for you had
killed me. Do not judge yet. Let me tell you, let me help us understand. I
heard you ... your horrors, your orgies, your hells. O Harry, this was not so
... this was clean somehow ... leading to birth, to you. It was, since I am
here now, loving you ... ready to give you all, all of a life I have at last won
to give you. O my boy....”
With each word she crept closer, sank nearer beside him. She knelt
beside him. She sought his hands, his eyes ... his eyes. He saw her face
hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled beyond her.... He saw
not her face, not her hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very soft,
very penetrable ... hers ... darkly penetrable; they were the stuff of his flesh,
they were the stuff of his brain and they were pierced by someone!... He
saw rootflesh of a man ... not he! piercing the stuff of his brain.
He got up. Her face was still low where his face had been. Her face was
near his feet. His feet touched her face.
 “Our Lord has spoken,” he said, “and I throw no stone.”
She was very still, her face low above his feet. Listening with a firm
stillness her body was hard and she held her face above his feet.
“Our Lord has spoken further!—‘But I say unto you, that whosoever
shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to
commit adultery.’ So has said our Lord.”
She was moveless.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Rise up.”
“Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try to tell you what I know now
I must: how I was helpless, how I was poisoned dead ... how I was lifted
up.”
“Get up.”
“O Harry, Harry ... I have killed you, too.”
“Get up, I say.”
She lifted her face, furrowed with tears, to his.
“I did not choose, Beloved, the Way I was saved....”
“Do you put that on God? or on Christ who has spoken against you?”
“When has He spoken against me?” Fanny Luve stood silently before
him.
“He has spoken against you ... even He. He has said: Cast no stone. No
stone shall be cast by me. He has said: Put her away....”
Her hands clenched under his mouth.
“—and I put you away.”
“You put me away!”
“I put you away.... Not for myself. I must travel. It is my mission to
travel from College to College. I must be away much from my home,
bringing where I can to my brothers the Word ... the Word of our Lord who
puts you away. I put you away ... for the sake of my child.”
“Whom you have never seen!”
“Whom you shall never see—“
 THREE
White Sky

F ANNY DIRK Luve stood on the Bridge where she could see the river up
and down.
—I know what I am going to do. I know. Not die. Not going to see—
What can I—? Since she knew, “Why! Why!” she said aloud.
She searched the world trying to find the anguish—I am not going to
die!... of what she was to do.—Why not? But she knew that.... Not die. Not
see her child.... She saw the river.
The river came to her from trees. The city, a raised shadow near her
eyes, pulled her eyelids down away from there beyond, where she lay once
on her back. She lies on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting in erection,
spilling in bud. Over: he.... From these trees came the river ... from this past
... flowing like the dimension that was time upon her standing on the
Bridge. Time and the river were one. It swept upon her from the past of
trees, past of sweet love, thrust against her, surging resistless; it was going
to overwhelm her. Where? Time and the river flung in a stroke eternally
sure against her standing dry in anguish—love an edged steel—on the
Bridge. She turned. It turned her. Time and the river sweeping from rootage
and trees struck her now in the back. She saw where it flowed.
It flowed into flat land. A rugose strewing of rust and yard and factory
was the flat land. The city in the heights fell down from its proud mansions
—through dawdling soiled cottages, through clustered shanties—fell to the
flat land of rust and coal. Slow brackish river here, turmoiled ... full. It
swirled in oil, it recoiled from the harsh thrusts of the makings of men—of
junkyards. River and time stole through this newness of noise and filth
away, in a filmy scarf of smoke-bitten locusts, beyond the eyes of Fanny.
She felt in her back the subtle thrust of a beginning world of high-banked
trees free in the air: how it fell, grew, now hurling through noise, dirt,
misery—making, struggle to make!—to beyond her eyes that lay so
wistfully against the dying locusts, unable to fall farther.
And at her side the city fell along. From its secluded shadow—warmed
mansions fell with her along into a rising clatter of smoke, a foam of steel,
huddling men moving.... Mist.
Black-purple mist ... red rust ... the shriek of wheels crunching resistless
against and upon steel lines thrust resistless also.
Fanny left the Bridge....
* * *
In one hand of Fanny was a valise. Her other hand was a fist.
Her mouth asking for a ticket shut fast. Her hand counting change shut
fast. She sat in a train, shut.
The moving train worked at her, stole up in her, swayed, shook, pried her
open. Her feet in the opening rhythm of the train. Her legs. Her loins. Warm
loins. Breasts, not so frozen, melting. Her head, erect on her frozen breast,
now plunged in their melting. She sat in a train, open.... She lay in a hot
bath of her melted pain and life, flowing within it, open.
She had no sense of a world of objects—fragments to beat against her.
She was all melted hot. She had a sense of the whole world ... whole worlds
... all ... falling. The train fell sure, it was sure of itself in its fall. It fell with
the world it held so sure, so steadfast; it was a blessing so. She had the
sense of the whole world falling in a stark cadence upward upon God.
Tears, battle ecstacy of loss ... a falling somehow upward upon God.
Her hands gripped the plush arms, shrill sharp against the quick of her
nails. The world was her world again, and was a delirious tangle of broken
objects hurling against her eyes. She was bruised and aghast in the rain of
broken objects of her world. But that which she had sensed in the melt of
worlds remained. All fell upward ... let her pray!—can I dare?... fell upward
upon God.
—I am falling away. Grappling, crying, she saw at last how real was this
falling away from the whole warm world of her sorrows and joys and
wants.—Edith, Harry; myself, O Edith my heart! It is true. Can I fall
upward? ...
The fast train seemed to be running over her life. It ran over an earth full
of flying fragments. Over houses, fence snapping, cows dipped sudden into
trees, pool flaring skyward, cloud-full, caught in the porch of a house, road
ribboning a tobacco-field, shaken straight, road stiff like a rod flashing
away beneath her.—This is Virginia, this is I. The fast train running over
her life smoothed it clear....
She could have remained and fought him for her child, she could not.
She could have remained and won him ... repulsive ... she could not. She
moved upon a track that was there she sensed before her moving upon it.
But Edith! What sort of a life is this, moving away from Edith? The pain of
her deprival was a thousand pains, gray: a thousand gray birds circling her
in mist.—I am suffering, suffering. Can I stand this? The mists cleared. She
saw her Pain clear ... one Pain ... one moment. Pain. She saw that it was not
a thousand pains, weeping in gray wings mistily about her. She saw that it
was Life.
Life solid and salient.
—What is this terror? What have I to do with this terror?
You are within it!
... Like this Virginia, an unbroken sweep, broken alone by the unwonted
stress of the dimension of moving. One can face solid. One has two eyes
and a mind for facing solid.... She loved her daughter.—I love you, love
you! More things she loved. Not Harry perhaps, O yes ... the warm dreams
she had born in Harry. The house around Edith. Clean beds, linen her own,
the kitchen where she came each day and the apron she tied about her hips
and the hips too she loved which arms must circle she was sure of. Edith’s.
Home, daughter, man ... why were they all destroyed?

—But they have never been.

What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream.
Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood.
My dream’s blood flows!

It was true. Bleeding to death? Bleeding to birth? She did not know. But
flowing.
“God, let me think!” The words came aloud.—God, let me think! now
silent....—Edith? Yes, Edith was flowing alive. But Edith was not herself,
not her blood flowing. Edith’s blood flowing. Let it flow for Edith.
Fanny sat shaken in a mother’s storm. Help for her child. Could her child
flow first alone? Where was the mother to help her? Father? Fanny sat
trembling. She saw him, as he oldens in the cant moulds of his ideals.
Harry, pious, weak, stale ... leading the life of her child. What did she have
of her father?—If she is like her father let her rot! But now would she not
surely be like him? She alone could save her child from that. She alone
could, who could not. ... The train ran.... Fanny saw the Town, it would be
the world of her child growing, of her child learning to live in the world.
World of such women! Edith’s blue eyes, open beneath the dimpled softness
of her brows, behold a world of such women ... the only world! Stiff brittle
creatures, floating upon the viscid surface of a stream they have no weight
to pierce. And their Laws: “Have no weight, have no thrust that might
pierce the viscid surface of our stream.” World of such men! Liars, builders
of lies, men taught to pray to Christ and to cheat their fellows, to cheat their
women and wear them ... trim them then wear them ... taught to ignore half
of the aching world that was black.—Let me go back to Edith! O let me go
back!... The train ran smooth.—You may not.
Fanny faced the dead of her heart. She felt the world of her child clear,
how it stank, how it swarmed like an evil stinking weed sucking the soil of
God. She saw the blue eyes of her girl. They stood upon a body, white and
clear like a flower: and all about, the Weed, swarming and purulent with its
harsh roots sucking soil, with its hot leaves stealing sun.—What can I do?
She faced she could do nothing. Yet reasonably something. Fight ...
pursuade. There was reason with the cry of her mangled heart that there was
much she could do. Turn back. The train, racing, swept her eyes upon a
world lying folded in myriad skies, a world solid, a world one with space
and stars ... space solid joined her to the stars as her white body joined her
eyes to her limbs. One. And Edith within it, flowing her way. Ruthlessly
hers....—Let her blood flow for her.
Fanny facing the dead of her heart faced the life of failure. She knew at
last she could live.
The train swam into a strewing of neat flat houses, cut across asphalt. A
marble Dome in sun rose above smoke of roofs. Washington!... Leon’s
home.—I must change here. Every hour New York trains every ... get there
by day, though.
Fanny walked through a city incredibly neat.—Very fine. Government
world. Fine and dead. It has not started to grow, it has not started to be. It is
easy and fine, like a nonexistence.
 Her feet were heavy as if she were walking in space.
“When, God,” she said aloud, “do I begin to think?”
* * *
She stood halted by a building. She knew which building it was.—— He
is inside! Of course perhaps he is inside no longer. It was a gray pile rising
in numberless piddling columns to the white of the sky. It was cold. She
looked at it. “I am not going in.”
He was perfect in her. Why should she go in to take from him
perfection? She was afraid for his perfection.—How can he be this holy
man in this grave? The Government Building stood like an insolent lackey
fending her off. It glared at her and was very insecure and stupid within its
ruffles of marble. It strutted its turrets before her like a vain proud bird.—
He is perfect. He is done. He is no more. He is buried here. She felt a great
need to see him.
She knew she must not. “I must seek you,” she whispered against the
mounting marble, “differently.”
She walked and knew that Leon Dannenberg who was in each of her
steps, in each of her pangs, in each leap forward of her blood was forever
beyond her eyes.—Here you are, holy man. Where am I? There you are.
She walked away. A vast openness was upon her flank, it ached sweetly
as if her blood poured through it. An open longing lay upon her flesh as if
she walked away from him who had given her birth.—You are behind. Not
so far behind as Edith. Nearer, holy man. Farther ahead.
But as she walked the inept city, a scene came and it filled her. She gave
herself her scene fully, voluptuously ... starving ... while the long buildings
passed her in a squad of uniformed dull giants.
He is up from a wide desk. He says no word, looking deep in her eyes.
One instant doubt as to the full free independence of her coming. Doubt
goes before the intelligence of her eyes. He took her hands, very lightly,
released them.
“I am going North. I am on my way North.”
“How can I help you?”
“You have helped me all you can.”
“He came back ... you told him?”
She nodded.
 “He did not understand?”
“How could we expect he should understand? Would I? Do I?... if this all
was not mine ...?”
“It is good, Fanny Luve. Go ahead.”
His face sudden is like a field under a sky of longing: a sun came down;
his face glows in tender fear: it shadows to resolution.
“You must go North. We can’t understand. I can see, you are going
right.”
“How can you see that, Leon?”
“No day since I left have you been far from me. You come into my
thinking, my dreaming, into my sudden flying visions. You measure
yourself always with them, with the best of them, Fanny. You measure full
with them.”
“What you have said I could have said.”
His eyes came very near. They filled with tears of her. He looked away.
“But I am vague. O Leon, so blind!”
“You are no longer afraid of being blind. You are ready.”
“Leon, what am I going to be?”
“We are no longer prophets ... save in our lives. Live, Fanny.”
“Leon, I could fight.... I could win her, I could save her.”
“No, Fanny ... you are going to live.”
“I ... and Edith?”
“You....”
She walked with mouth tear-brimmed and open out of her fancied words.
She saw about her with relentless eyes, felt with relentless feet, this hard
pavement, these hard houses, hard white sky. Out of the deep scene came
now upon her, as her mouth shut, clearer and more solid than the stone city
his last words:
“You, Fanny ... not Edith, you ... are to live.”
Clear feet carried body erect through the stone city. Mother worlds in
blood poured from her, leaving white feet, white body, while the soul of
Fanny swooned in a ruthless knowledge.
 FOUR
Pavement Over Earth

A MAN and a woman walked this day with Autumn burning all about
them. The sun lay in thin cloud. The trees burst.
“I have found out, Fanny,” he said.
She was so shorter than he and her steps swifter than his long lurches.
She felt him from his broad brown halfshoes upward ... big fleshly man,
somehow lithe, somehow gentle like song above his crude-rhythming feet.
And his hairy great hands she felt—as when they were on her body like a
little child’s, so helpless yearning, so imperious.
“I knew I should find out if I gave myself the space to: that’s why I
brought you up here. We came yesterday. This morning I know ... that I
have known since the day you came into the Office asking for a job.”
She laughed.—I can laugh!
“O I see your thought: ‘That’s the conventional phrase.’ ”
“ ...from Christopher Johns!”
“Maybe he’s been so durn unconventional these forty years because he
hadn’t found himself. Maybe he feels, now he can look at last straight at
you and himself and understand, it’d be good to be conventional: like
rolling in warm blankets which the hard days’ work has paid for.”
She felt the dissonance of her feet striking the rutted road beside his.
“There must have been a frost last night.”
“Look at that maple! It’s a blazing red, because there was a frost.”
She looked. He was keeping step.
“I mean it, Fanny. It’s nearly two years since I’ve known you ... nearly
two years you’ve worked for me ... one year we’re—well—lovers though I
fear the word for the rare wonder you have given me—why, why? But now
it is a blossom of knowing, a whole Spring of knowing, woman! There has
been Sylvia Frau, there has been Sadie. I chuck ’em both, and when it is
done we marry.”
“Jonathan! I want you to walk quiet ... miles and miles beside me quiet,
today all day—do you understand? I am listening for something.”
She knew he would, clutching his stick behind him in two fists.
Two years ... they tramped ... two years....
—You are Fanny Dirk, Mrs. Luve.... I’ll keep that name! And you have
gotten tired already, tired of what if you look and face it you will find all
bundled and labelled in two years. Labelled to know, Bundled ... to throw
out! That’s clear, though the facing, the training of my eyes and the opening
of my mind to hold what I face, is going to be hard.... Here is an autumn
day and a dear man trudging so you are alone with it. Day of glory, day of
flame, day of death. The leaves are singing for they are going to fall. The
trees are singing for they are going to sleep. The world is a maze of
trumpeting insects, loomed with flutters of dry grass, trill of seed, for soon
comes snow stillness. O Fanny, once you were Springtime! I hear a man
talk blossom and I feel September. The bundles ... the labels ... two years
inventoried! Aren’t you a business woman, Fanny, earning two thousand a
year? A year ... two years. Each year has a Spring and a Fall. A third year
might green if you burn away like these trees.
“It is simply,” she whispered to herself, and the man watched her mouth:
“do I want to green like these trees?... When will I learn to think?”
She knew already what was to be.
She struggled only, she gave this full free day in the air only, to know
Why. Did not the world have reasons? She had suffered losing two lives
that grew within her flesh. She had asked Why, and in the questioning been
rent away so even these agonies were dim: they were worlds dead like dim
moons in the dawn of her adventure. And that adventure was Why!
—Why shall I say No very soon ... so very soon? Why am I going to
leave the warm of this dear man, the ease, the goodness of it all—why am I
going to push him back into new Emptiness?
She saw him that first day: his arms thrust out, nervous arms, haggard
hands, hair wet ... business man! this big bumping child, bumping in
Emptiness? Dear ... so good (she could see that at once as of a horse and a
dog all in one, and his life a currycomb brushing wrong, a bone
marrowless): now, back he goes into worse Emptiness. Why?
 —Tell me trees....
I am not tired, I am rested.

In the arms of this man, with my face turned away, I have rested.
I can bear what you tell me....
I am hard like you.

... That afternoon, the ninth of beating about on pavement until pavement
tumored upward through her legs, her bowels, her blood, stiffened her brain
... that afternoon she had felt strong again sudden.—So this is Business?
this soft flesh in the hard City?
“Mr. Johns, you must let me have that place,” she told him very calmly.
The next day she hung her coat on the costumer in the corner away from
the open window. A grey wall rose beyond eyes, shrill greenish white
electric bulbs blazed, shutting them all together, papers typewriter woman
and desks and murmur beyond: she found she wished to smile.
Solid New York! Solid New York relieved her burden of no base. She
had visited New York before: she felt the City deep, having in that past
surface of her life beheld its surface. She sensed an analogue. She too had
not changed but had gone down below her surface to a turmoiled depth.
Within still deeper was there not a quiet, as now she sensed the Quiet of the
City under its torrential streets and its human million midges of fire through
stone? Thus New York welcomed her: it was a place where people dwelt
and had dwelt long, so she could feel it was a place where people dwelt.
Her Southern City, ... almost as old, was dead where old, was raw and
unaccustomed where it was new ... its industrial heart of smoke, its outskirts
of prim bungalows. Here was a City one: the place she knew for such as she
to come to.
—Such as I?
Loving New York so sudden above the agony of her intimate deprivals,
she said: “We are something in common, you and I.” She and the wide solid
City that untouched her frail and bloody inwardness ... lifting her up to a
light where she could seek what this thing meant, this I.
In the Office was Clara Lonergan.
When she spoke to persons, particularly when she spoke to Clara, Fanny
lost her quiet City: New York became a pullulent pile, a heaving surface
above a boil of blood. So Fanny did not seek out persons, she feared that
City.—Do I not need to seek myself? She feared the self that was like it.
But Clara, she knew at once, she was not to avoid.
She saw in a glance that she was supposed to remove her hat. She took a
seat demurely, her heart compressed and moving up and down as she
breathed fragilely. She felt how all within her was fragile and was
surrounded by a solid world. Miss Lonergan smiled:
“I guess Mr. Johns will see about you pretty soon,” and went into his
Office. Her smile alone of the outside world also was fragile.
So Fanny sat demurely. Beyond her was a long dark room filling with
girls. She heard their footfalls in the hall: at times through the wired glass of
the door she caught faces ... face sallow hungry, face angrily uplifted toward
sun and laughter by the means of rouge, face resigned in sweet debility....
That one will marry. As feet cadenced the hard cement Fanny’s heart
fluttered. The door swung; voices angled against the feet and the door,
escaping in this brief interim of home and work in allusive herd-calls:
Fanny felt thrust away. Each voice and footfall thrust her. She struggled to
be back.
—I am of you, now, she argued to herself. A little older than most. O in
life so older!... But I am one of you now.
The door opening from the private Office called her sharp up. Miss
Lonergan came in, seated herself with fingers already rustling at her pad.
Mr. Johns loomed before her.
“Good morning. Good morning.”
He stood with his feet apart and his toes turned out. Fanny observed how
his knees flexed inward, how his legs aburst in their drab trowsers flexed
and gave her mind the same thought as his ruffled hands and hair: made her
smile.
“Well now,” he was saying, “you two said anything yet to each other?
get acquainted yet? no explanations?” He turned from the one woman to the
other. “You’ll be friends. O all of us’ll be friends. What could be more
companionable after all than to engage in the business of soft drinks ...
making Delight Drinks for the thirsty people....”
Miss Lonergan struck a key of her machine. Click, she smiled.—I can’t
wait for your nonsense. Click clicket click....
 “You see,” went on Mr. Johns, “the people get hot and what cools em off
is ice. But they wont pay for ice. Not much! Ice is ice ... nameless. We don’t
furnish ice. They pay for our lovely game of names,” he handed Fanny a
list. “So we send the names in the liquid forms, to the candy men and the
soda men: and they put in the ice: and the ice cools the people: and the
people pay us.”
He flourished clumsily. His face glowed open about his clear blue eyes.
“Will you come, Mrs. Luve?” His head serious now thrust back. “I want to
show you the girls you are here to take care of.”
* * *
“Why I live on Twenty-First Street. That’s right near.”
“Let’s walk,” said Clara.
New York was open letting the calm day in. An afternoon of May ...
made of the scent of far young grass, the swayings of far trees, the slopings
of far hills ... lay above the streets where Fanny and Clara walked: came
down, feathery certain into the open City, into their eyes and limbs. They
walked languorous through a sleepy city lying like a brittle-kneed woman
under the loved day. The City glowed with half responses ... new. The angle
of a street falling away from the straight street where they walked was a
gesture of pleasaunce. Above the clotted people the dim houses leaned
gently together, making a haze of memory above the urgence of people. The
streets turned angles leisurely: a Square beyond them was an invitation like
a hand open or a mouth relaxed, the swerve of the Elevated train on the near
Bowery was a stroke that caressed.
“You are from the South, I can hear that. Have you been here long?”
“About a month,” said Fanny.
“I was born here. I wonder what it’s like, coming to New York.”
“New York is easy to come to.”
“Do people come here happy?”
Fanny did not want to look at Clara. The day was lazy and round, falling
into night. “Why do you ask that?” she said.
“O I don’t know.... I was just wondering—why do they come to New
York.”
“Why did your parents come?”
 “My father’s family was starving in Wicklow. Pa was a boy and no use
at home ploughing more fields for a grabbing landlord. So he came. He
wasn’t happy coming. Mother I don’t remember very well, she came from a
place near Pressberg in Bohemia. She was so lovely always ... tall and so
sweet ... and always so tired. I guess they were all just tired—her whole
family came—they couldn’t keep still. I’ve been tired that way. I’d keep
moving and moving. I’d say to myself; Now Clara if you’ll just try and stop
and sit down you’ll be better. I couldnt. Something like that I’ve felt in all
the foreigners ... Czechs and Dagos and Bohunks ... I have ever seen.
Something in ’em I guess got too tired to hold on, to stay on, they had to
move ... and there’s America all ready, a chute like in the cowpens I’ve seen
over in Brooklyn ready to swallow ’em up as they come tumblin’. Heaven
knows where those foreigners get their idea of us.”
She was taller than Fanny, slimmer.—She cant be more than eighteen.
Fanny’s heart went out, clamorous, sudden ... stopped against a strength and
a maturity she felt. With her heart’s warmth she saw this girl.
Saw sharp against the day’s languor the long face, clear dark, with
narrowing thrust chin from the full mouth, cheeks high and delicate, brow
faintly curving and sheer beneath the black hair. Saw in the soft fabric of
her waist nervous elbows thrusting outward always as she walked, against
air, against world. Saw the whole taut tender body in a world less clear, ever
less fair than her dark freshness. Saw at last as they stopped: “Well I go
here. See you to-morrow” ... eyes very black very large, dry and within
themselves like windows of some hidden world having no faith in the sun.
—I have lost what you have not yet begun to make. Yet my hand is
softer than yours! Fanny knew it was a thing which must change: that her
hand was softer. She walked the swirling Spring-drunk dusty streets with
thoughts of this girl and her hand.
* * *
She had a room which she had come to love. It was upstairs in the back
of an old red brick house: it was oblong, square-buttressed by its honest
doors painted white, its two wide windows and its low grey ceiling. She had
spent eight dollars to remove the acid-red carnations blotching a sea of
green bars on the walls ... (“I want you to scrape first, not paper over it”) ...
then clad her room in a dull buff. The walls were bare. The landlady
grumblingly took out the wide iron bed, leaving her a couch. The carved
oak table, the bastard Empire chairs were distributed to the rest of the
lodgers and replaced by plain ones from the storeroom. She took off her hat,
let down her hair, put slippers on her feet and drew a chair to the wind. The
day was more darkly textured but still clear. An ailanthus flaunting half
naked through its tinselly leaves thrust above fence and tesselate brick walls
between her and the grey rear of a Church. Beside the Church, a small
house receded, built of the same dim sooty stone. On Sundays, the sun
vaulted the cluttered roofs at just about the time that a hymn, many-voiced,
shone through the corner of the stained-glass window which she could
glimpse on the protruding side. There was a little grass plot. It was littered
with dust and ash bits, fluffs of drifting textile: but now sod pushed bravely
up in a dim green. On the high fence at the side away from the Church,
among clusters like sunrays of iron spikes, clothes-lines were drawn. A
servant was busy taking in the wash.
The girl’s arms reached up, loosed clothes-pins, dropped her armsfull in
a basket. The girl’s arms reached up.... Fanny lost herself in the dull
catatony. She was tired. She held her eyes beyond her. Dimly behind she
felt a world she did not wish to turn to: world where there were wash-lines
and a girl her own.... Industrious, this girl. A young man stepped from the
kitchen door of the house. The girl’s arms, full of tableclothes, suspended
against her breast. He spoke to her, she nodded: disposed her burden. She
was bent before him, he leaned down and kissed her. He stepped back, his
arms and hands and shoulders, his feet and hips throwing out little splintery
signals of his panic. He wore the cloth of the Church. Then the girl
straightened, lifted her hands to her broad hips and smiled. The little
curate’s splintering commotion melted. He kissed her again. They went
together into the kitchen.
Fanny sat very still. She felt that the muscles of her throat and legs and
chest were tense, holding her still.
—What is the matter?
The world dim behind her eyes bellied out ... swallowed the cool grey
scene before her of a backyard, a flirting servant and a Church. A Church!
Fanny swung around in her chair. She was circled now by a world no longer
dim. She asked no question. Like one dropped sudden into a sea, she swam.
She swam to get out. Not yet ... some day ... she must swim in the other
direction, away from shore, away from shore ... swim, swim till she sank.
But something within her told her she was not ready. This dullness upon her
mind, this fog fending her heart that was there since the month she was
gone: let it be there longer. Was it beginning to part?
—Why am I here? I am afraid to ask why I am here. Solid New York,
bear me up! Longer, your cold surface, lift me, hold me!
She swam to get out. She was up from her chair. Humming a tune she
did not hear or know of, she lighted the gas: she clasped her short thick hair
and thrust it atop her head. The gas danced hard on her eyes and her black
hair. She lighted her little stove: she put water to boil: she was very busy
swimming to get out.
And when she had drunk two coddled eggs and eaten an orange, she
took the blue cover from her couch, folded it carefully away, threw wide her
windows: and with the light of the downtown heavens falling in sprays and
fluffs of murmurous gold against her sombre carpet, she lay down. Soon she
slept.
* * *
Work gripped her. Mr. Johns was delighted with her way of work.
“Dont kill yourself, Mrs. Luve.”
She smiled wistfully. “I shant die.”
He looked at her warmly. “You say that as if you knew.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps you don’t know the deadliness of New York.”
“I’m not ready yet,” she announced half to herself.
“You’re a bad example,” he caressed her with bluff words, “of Southern
indolence.”
“I’m a New Yorker,” she said and went back to her girls.
Always she knew this could not last. Yet always life came easier, easier
... in its harsh brusque work, in its biting flavor of intercourse with Mr.
Johns, with Clara.
Each night as she lay down to sleep, the question stood before her: Why?
A question like a single point of steel piercing so many lives, piercing so
many loves, all bleeding-spitted upon it. But she slept quick. She slept
heavy. In her sleep, if it was parted at all, merely the Question again, rising
up, up, out of sight like an infinite steel point: she was impaled on it: but
bloodless already. She lay there quiet, impaled. She had no responsibility
since she was bloodless already. And in the morning, when she awoke there
was work.
She entered the Office a breath of wistful quiet, a cloud of gentle
moisture moving upon a sultry day. All who were there unthinking were
glad, when she entered the Office.
Clara found herself glad when she was with her. In the cooling dusk of
summer they walked homeward: at times they dined together: quiet words
went from each to each, no depths articulate and yet there was a peace.
Fanny looked at her friend as they ate in silence.
—Know everything! There is naught in me I do not wish you to know.
But know it silent. She would have been happy to be of help to Clara.
Summer was a full time in the Sales Office of Delight Drinks Inc. Even
so there came pause. Slack hours lounged in the hot rooms. Rooms, writhed
in the dry green blare of the electric lights, burning like sores against the
summer’s sultry and drab dampness, came to a halt, jolted against their
usual flow, stood glazed and ominous upon the dark grain of Time.
As in a crowded car suddenly broken from its speed the passengers
congest, fall huddled upon each other, so Fanny’s girls piled heavy moist
against the soul of Fanny. She sat at her desk with her hands laid before her.
The girls at long tables opened the envelopes of orders, marked blanks and
sheets, sorted by geographical location, placed in trays. The girls yawned
together ... sudden the girls were One, with moist throat running down in
dusty waist, with bare arm brushing sweat from brow, with body crowded
lush in a narrow skirt, under narrow table, into narrow shoes. They were a
body breathing and sweating in a smoulder of will to lie out naked near a
lapping sea under cool winds ... cool lips. She loved the girls.
—O if I could show you how I understand!
—Why do I understand?
Here with these girls, her life could come and she face it. Question no
longer. Her life was a way, here, tender and passionate and simple, leading
into the hearts of a dozen girls.

—I am all open. You do not come in.

I am all open. I come into you.
 “It’s a hot afternoon, girls.”
“Gee ... yes!”
“What do you say to a round of lemonade?”
Surface of scared wills against a whirling world. But here all was quiet
and sweet, and all was in herself. She could look at each girl, see a face
already bitten and shrunk by the acids of life. But she looked in herself, and
each hurt, each struggle was a throb within her ... they were healed.
“Good! You, Daisie, you know that Italian’s on the corner? Let’s collect
five cents each—only those who want it though! You go out, dear, and bring
up a pitcher ... two pitchers.” As Daisie bustled by, she slipped a quarter
holding the little calloused hand just long enough to give two messages:
“Buy some cookies or something with that” and her heart’s fullness.
—What do I understand? now she asked herself as the room waited,
spinning in expectancy, released in laughter and jest and stretching of arms
from Time.
—There is something beautiful ... in the understanding? in what? O life
how you hurt! O life, how when one holds you warm and athrob in one’s
heart, you are good, hurting!
The lemonade came: giggles and smacking lips softened the blare of the
lights. “One can live,” Fanny murmured sipping her sweet drink, ...
“without questions.” The room went its way up Time’s black tunnel. The
girls’ congestion broke. They were one and one and one. They were many
girls, now, some sweet, some bitter, some bright, some dull, some brave,
some ugly and broken. They were many girls at work: they opened
envelopes, marked blanks and sheets, sorted and marked ... they droned in
many minds about little shut circles of thought, each shut from the other
circles: circles spun about their many heads, colliding, rebounding, spinning
away alone....
—One can live without asking questions. Not you. One can live spinning
and droning. Not you. One can weave a steel sheet between one’s heart and
one’s mind. Not you. Lord, I shall think. I promise, Lord.... I shall
remember that I have suffered and died, that I am here, to think.... Lord, just
a little longer.
* * *
 Fanny walked home alone, avoiding Clara. In the dim afternoon the City
was solid. Houses were made of stone and brick and were held up in their
vast weights by pavements.

Pavements solid strong, hold me up also.

You hold these crowds, you hold these walls.
Solid City, do not let me fall.

Fanny walked tense through the slack afternoon, helping to hold herself.
Her trip from the South was there. She runs swift, relaxed, through the
world. She falls through the world in a train, falls upward. She falls upward
upon God. Hold me, City.
In her room, the Church. Her fists clenched.
“I am going to move,” she muttered, her breath was angry. She hated ...
she hated. “Damn that Church! it blots out most of the sun.”
Down she went, deliberate, to the kitchen. Old Mrs. Deemis bent
rhythmically over a padded board ironing towels.
“Hot, eh? Mrs. Luve.”
“Yes.”
“Anything I kin do for you, dearie?” the woman filled the pause. Her
gray hair fell in wet patches over her wide bland forehead. “Never you
hesitate if there’s anything I kin do for ye, now.”
Fanny, quailing before her sudden resolve to give notice, sat in a chair.
“You couldn’t remove that Church for me, could you, Mrs. Deemis?”
Mrs. Deemis stamped the steaming iron with elbows right-angled to the
board.
“Now, will you believes me, Mrs. Luve, I wisht I could!”
Fanny tried to laugh.—Haven’t I been joking?
“You mean Saint—acrost the way there, don’t you? They own this
house, and they’re the meanest landlords ... the downright stingiest, meanest
landlords, now, you ever seen. I been here twenty years. On the first of the
month, it’s the rent quick, you bet. But if it’s the roof that leaks, or the
plumbin’ that stinks—O any year’ll do for fixin’ that.”
“This is Church property,” murmured Fanny.
 “Yes ... this....” Mrs. Deemis flourished the dismal kitchen with its
seeping walls, its crumbling plaster ceiling, its ooze rotted floor, into the
eyes of Fanny.
“How can I live on Church property,” Fanny thought aloud.
“Why!... Mrs. Luve!” Mrs. Deemis doubted her ears. “What’d ye say?
Beg pardon?”
“They’re rotten landlords?”
“Well now ... of course.... I dont say they’re no worse....”
“The Church takes the sun from my window, Mrs. Deemis. I love the
sun.”
“Why you aint never there? You work. What do ye need the sun for?...
Dont blame the Church for that, my dear. You must be fair. If ’twasnt the
Church wouldn’t it be one of these here ... now ... factories or office-
buildings?”
“—— taking the sun,” murmured Fanny and saw the once more
ploughing arms of the old lady.
“You aint thinkin’ of leaving, Mrs. Luve? Cause ... that’s a fine room ...
kin rent——“
“Why no.” Fanny got up. “No, I shant move. I love my room. But if you
could be so obliging as to remove that Church....” She laughed with her
eyes gleaming differently from laughter.
Upstairs she lowered the shades. She undressed. Naked, she saw in the
glass that she still wore her hat. Her brow ached. She let fall her hair, letting
her cold hands run through its electric dusk. Ungowned in her sheet she lay
through the thick night with hands clasping her arms beneath her breasts.
She lay dreamless, moving very fast. When she awoke it was late and she
knew she had gone far. There were red furrows deep in the flesh of her
arms.
The night following ... sudden she emerged from the hot fog that held
her. She is in the Church. Naked she stands before a stately mirror whose
gold-tooled pediment crowned the blaze of her black hair and eyes. She
struck her breasts with a firm fist. “You are cast out, you are vomited by
Love.” She stands there burning in cold shame. Her mouth is open, and
from it, like a white water, runs a moan. “What does it mean? Christ, what
does it mean? Why was I hurt so? Why was I so given a high thought, high
dream? I have been hurt. O Christ how it hurts so to be hurt without a
meaning. Why?”
—This is a Church! She knew that Christ was coming. He was a man
whom she knew. She could not see him, standing there beyond her: but each
nerve of her lay in the impact of his presence.—He sees me! It was right
that he should look upon her naked and shamed.—It is good, it is good. He
looks on me and that is good. He looks on me because my hurt is an
unmeaning hurt....
Her half-opened eyes, her half-shut hands, her outstretched knees and
her thighs touched the warm smoothness of her bedclothes.—I am so tired!
It was good in bed. She slept.
She walked downtown in the young summer morning. The air had a
coolness like lilacs after rain. A man passed. Coming closer, sheer, the sight
of the man tugged on the cheek and on the neck of Fanny. A man old and
bent. Grey beard tangled from a face long furrowed: the eyes were blue and
gentle and the brow was untouched.... His beard was a grey prayer. His face
was his life. Above his life was his brow like a dawn above storm. “He was
a Jew,” she whispered to herself. Then she remembered her dreaming and
her moan.
* * *
... Something within her said: “There is no hurry.” Much within her said:
“You have no life, you are broken. Why alive? You are broken and flayed
by life. Life without what you have lost is a mere agony dying down, a slow
starving, a slow suffocation.” But something within her said: “There is no
hurry.”
Something within her stirred to say: “Even your hurt has a soul. Even the
insult lying in your heart has a soul.” Then her hands worked faster. She had
eyes then for her girls toiling in their mute slavery, that brought out love,
like a cool mist rising from a morning sun, into the dismal workroom.
At times, eating her meat and enjoying it, laughing alone at a show, she
found in herself assurance ... mad and blind howsoever ... like a babe’s
lying within a womb.
She asked herself doubtingly: “You have been unhappier having, than
now when you are empty. Perhaps I am dead!”
Each thought and pain, pushing forth from her, could not leave the mist
of her strange slumber. So that she could not be unhappy. For unhappiness