Summary The City of William Faulkner
William Faulkner
City
It’s been ten years since Flem Snoops, with his wife and baby, arrived in Jefferson and settled at the restaurant counter, half the share in which he traded from VK Ratliff to a third of the abandoned Old Frenchman’s manor. Soon he was already the sole owner of this institution, and some time later he left the restaurant and took up the hitherto existing post of superintendent of a municipal power station.
In this position, he quickly found an additional way of enrichment, in addition to a decent salary: Flamoux was struck by the abundance of heavy copper parts attached or scattered here and there; they began to sell it somewhere on the side – first, slowly, and then in bulk, for which it took him two black stokers. Negros helped Flemus, not suspecting anything, but when he needed to set his assistants against each other for their own purposes, they all understood, conspired with each other, and dragged the already stolen parts
The site of the power plant superintendent was created specifically for Flem by the Mayor of Jefferson Manfred de Spain. Returning from Cuba in the rank of lieutenant, with a face decorated with a scar from the blow of the Spanish blade, de Spain announced the offensive of new times in the city; he easily won elections, and the first thing he did when he took up the post of mayor, bought a racing car, than violated the law issued by his predecessor, which prohibited Jefferson from driving cars – he simply spat at him, although he could easily cancel it.
The meeting and subsequent romance of Manfred de Speine and Julia Snoups were prepared for fate, they so undeniably embodied the divine simplicity, the sinless and boundless immortal passion that all, or almost all, the Baptist Methodist Jefferson –
After fleeing at the power station, Flem had not studied anything definite for several years, but, as Ratliffe put it, he bred the Snops, who in his footsteps leaked into Jefferson. His place in the restaurant first took Eck, but as a fake Snoups, not capable of money-grubbing, he soon turned out to be a watchman at the oil tank, and the institution passed into the hands of the former teacher from the French Balka, AO Snoups. There was a real teacher in the city Snopes, but he was caught with a fourteen-year-old, for which they rolled in tar and feathers and drove away; From the mountain-teacher there were two sons – Byron and Virgil.
One of the few who could not calmly look at the relationship between Julia and de Spain was Gavin Stephen, a young city attorney. Thoughts about the fact that before the eyes of all Jefferson makes a woman, equal to which nature did not create, led him into confusion, prompted something – which, he himself did not know – to take to rescue either Yulia, or Jefferson from Yulia and de Speine. Gavin’s twin sister, Margaret, advised her brother to first figure out what troubled him more: that Yulia was not so virtuous, or that she was ruining her virtue precisely with De Spain.
Before the ball given by the Cotillon Club, which united the noble ladies of Jefferson, Gavin had the idea of sending a ball bouquet to Julia Snoups, but Margaret said that it was then necessary to send bouquets to all the invited ladies. Gavin did so, and de Speine, upon learning of this, followed his example, but Margaret and her brother sent to the house not one but two festively decorated boxes – in his Gavin discovered a pair of booties, used by a condom tied to sharpened rakes, with the help of which his nephew in due time, when the mayor started to run past the prosecutor’s house, mockingly signaled, punctured the bus of De Speane’s car. The confrontation between the two men was continued at the ball: Gavin – as perhaps, and many others – it seemed that de Spanish was dancing with Julia indecently, and he yanked out the gentleman;
In the summer, when there were no special cases in court, Prosecutor Gavin Stephen instituted proceedings against the joint-stock company and the mayor, accusing them of connivance with embezzlement at the power plant. On the day of the meeting he received a note from Yulia with instructions to wait for her late at night in her office; when she came, he began to wonder and ask her why she came, who-Flem Snoops or Manfred de Speyne-sent her to him, what she wanted and what he wanted, and, completely confused in his own doubts, put a guest behind him Door. Her words about what she does not like, when people are unhappy, and, they say, since it’s easy to fix… – Gavin could not or did not want to hear. One way or another, but the next day the prosecutor dropped his charges, and after a short time left to improve his knowledge in Heidelberg.
Before leaving, he bequeathed to Ratliffe to carry the common Jeffersonian cross – the Snoops – and, as far as possible, protect the city from them. In Jefferson, Gavin Stephen again appeared only a few years later, at the height of the war, but soon again left for Europe as an officer in the rear units. With him, he took Montgomery Ward Snoups, son of AO, who went to war not for patriotic reasons, but wishing to look around there properly, until everyone was completely taken for a shave.
I looked around in Montgomery Ward in France not bad. Soon he began to manage the quartermaster’s shop, and she enjoyed enormous popularity with American soldiers, thanks to the fact that in the back room he placed a cute Frenchwoman. When the war was over, the ingenious Snoups moved to Paris, where he put the matter on a broader foot. In Jefferson, where he returned to the last of the visited soldiers in Europe, Montgomery Ward opened a photo studio and initially took in his clients in the finery of a Montmartre artist. But over time, Jefferson began to notice that for more than a year the pictures in the window have not changed, and the clientele is mostly young surrounding farmers who come off for some reason closer to the night. Eventually a search was made in the workshop, and an album with obscene Paris postcards was retrieved.
Flem Snoeps did not even think of delivering a scandalous relative from prison; he only stole material evidence from the sheriff’s office, and dragged pots with homemade whiskey into the workshop-self-brewing in the eyes of normal inhabitants is much more worthy of debauchery. Another odious Snoups, AO, having spent an impressive sum on this, Flem also rode out of Jefferson – to Franzuzov Bulk.
About his good name Flem began to bake from the moment when he, to everyone’s surprise, got the post of vice-president of the bank Sartoris, who was robbed shortly before Byron Snoups, who served as a clerk in it. Then de Spain from his money reimbursed the stolen, thanks to which he was elected president. The appointment of Flemus was on his side another payment for the tacit assumption of his wife.
The first undertaking of Flem in the new place was unsuccessful – he wanted to join the non-Uspov field with the unreal Snowses, Wall (his father, Eck, died in the explosion of the oil tank, and Wall Street-Panic, as he was called then, to life), whose shop flourished solely because of his diligence and integrity. Wall rejected the offer of a relative, and for this he was denied an extremely necessary loan. Walla Ratliff had helped; he got to his feet and eventually, on a share with Ratlif, opened the first in those parts of the real supermarket, although there was still no word for it.
The daughter of Yulia Snoups, Linda, was the first time that Gavin Stevens was struck when she was fourteen. She did not represent a copy of her mother, but she was just as radiant, unique and beautiful. Gavin, although he was well in his thirties, irresistibly attracted to this creation, and, deciding for himself that he was just going to form the girl’s mind, almost every day met her after school, led to a drugstore where he treated him to ice cream and Coca-Cola, entertained by conversations and gave books.
Linda grew up, and she had a younger gentleman, a boxer and a motorist who somehow broke into Gavin’s office and smashed his face in the blood. In time, Linda cursed the youngster, and Gavin confessed her love. After this incident, their meetings became very rare – an old bachelor worried about the girl’s good name, as rumors spread that the rival found him alone with Linda and was beaten for it. Gavin now considered his main duty to save Linda from the Snops, and therefore, it was necessary to try to make her send to one of the colleges in the east or in the north.
Flem Snoups was against: firstly, his wife and daughter were for him the indispensable furnishings of the house of a respectable vice-president of the bank; Second, away from home Linda could marry without his knowledge, which would mean for Flem to lose part of the inheritance of Yulia’s father, old Bill Warner; and finally, people who did not depend on him could reveal to Linda the truth about her birth. Yulia, in turn, dumbfounded Gavin with the words that protection from snowses is only poetic nonsense, women are the most valuable facts, and the most weighty fact is marriage, and thus the best thing that he can do for Linda is to marry on it.
But one day Flem allowed his adopted daughter to leave Jefferson. He did it for a reason, but after calculating that in a fit of gratitude Linda could refuse in his favor from the share of the maternal inheritance due to her and give a receipt about it. The receipt was required to him for a decisive battle with de Spein for the presidency of the bank – the last thing that Flem had to bring eighteen years of dishonor.
Flem drove a receipt about the French Beam; That same night, Bill Warner, the holder of a third of the bank’s shares, was in the house with all the heart of the despised and hated son-in-law, where he learned everything about Julia and de Spain. On the next day, de de Spine’s shares were sold to Flem, from now on to the bank’s president, and the next day he had to leave Jefferson, alone or with Yulia. In the evening of the same day, Yulia came to Gavin Stevens for the second time in her life; she explained to Gavin that neither to leave with Deine, nor to remain with Snopes for her is equally impossible – because of her daughter, and took from him a promise to marry Linda. He promised, but only if nothing else could be done for her. At night, Yula committed suicide.
Linda Gavin did not send to the university – she overgrew all the universities – and to New York, in Greenwich Village, where he had friends and where she had a lot to try and learn a lot until she met the most daring and strong – he himself was not. Flem healed a solid widower in the mansion de Speins he had bought and converted into a plantation style. In Jefferson and Joknapatofo everything went on as usual.
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