Read the passage from the
1928 novel Quicksand by African American author Nella Larsen. Then
answer the questions.
from Quicksand
by Nella Larsen
1
Helga Crane felt no regret as the cliff-like towers faded. The sight thrilled
her as beauty, grandeur, of any kind always did, but that was all.
2
The liner drew out from churning slate-colored waters of the river into the
waves. The small seething ripples on the surface became little
waves. It was evening. In the western sky was a pink and mauve light,
which faded gradually into a soft gray-blue obscurity. Leaning against the
railing, Helga stared into the approaching night, glad to be at last alone,
free of that great superfluity of human beings, yellow, brown, and black, which,
as the torrid summer burnt to its close, had so oppressed her. No, she
hadn’t belonged there. Of her attempt to emerge from that inherent
aloneness which was part of her very being, only dullness had come, dullness
and a great aversion.
3
Almost at once it was time for dinner. Somewhere a bell sounded. She turned and
with buoyant steps went down. Already she had begun to feel happier. Just for a
moment, outside the dining-salon, she hesitated, assailed with a tiny
uneasiness which passed as quickly as it had come. She entered softly,
unobtrusively. And, after all, she had had her little fear for nothing. The
purser, a man grown old in the service of the Scandinavian-American Line,
remembered her as the little dark girl who had crossed with her mother years
ago, and so she must sit at his table. Helga liked that. It put her at ease and
made her feel important.
4
Everyone was kind in the delightful days which followed, and her first shyness
under the politely curious glances of turquoise eyes of her fellow travelers
soon slid from her. The old forgotten Danish of her childhood began to come,
awkwardly at first, from her lips, under their agreeable tutelage. Evidently
they were interested, curious, and perhaps a little amused about this Negro
girl on her way to Denmark alone.
5
Helga was a good sailor, and mostly the weather was lovely with the serene calm
of the lingering September summer, under whose sky the sea was smooth, like a
length of watered silk, unruffled by the stir of any wind. But even the two
rough days found her on deck, reveling like a released bird in her returned
feeling of happiness and freedom, that blessed sense of belonging to herself
alone and not to a race. Again, she had put the past behind her with an ease
which astonished even herself. Only the figure of Dr. Anderson
obtruded itself with surprising vividness to irk her because she could get no
meaning from that keen sensation of covetous exasperation that had so
surprisingly risen within her on the night of the cabaret party. This question
Helga Crane recognized as not entirely new; it was but a revival of the
puzzlement experienced when she had fled so abruptly from Naxos more than a
year before. With the recollection of that previous flight and subsequent
half-questioning a dim disturbing notion came to her. She wasn’t, she couldn’t
be, in love with the man. It was a thought too humiliating, and so quickly
dismissed. Nonsense! Sheer nonsense! When one is in love, one strives to
please. Never, she decided, had she made an effort to be pleasing to
Dr. Anderson. On the contrary, she had always tried, deliberately, to
irritate him. She was, she told herself, a sentimental fool.
6
Nevertheless, the thought of love stayed with her, not prominent, definite; but
shadowy, incoherent. And in a remote corner of her consciousness lurked the
memory of Dr. Anderson’s serious smile and gravely musical voice.
7
On the last morning Helga rose at dawn, a dawn outside old Copenhagen. She lay
lazily in her long chair watching the feeble sun creeping over the ship’s great
green funnels with sickly light; watching the purply gray sky change to opal,
to gold, to pale blue. A few other passengers, also early risen, excited by the
prospect of renewing old attachments, of glad home-comings after long years,
paced nervously back and forth. Now, at the last moment, they were impatient,
but apprehensive fear, too, had its place in their rushing emotions. Impatient
Helga Crane was not. But she was apprehensive. Gradually, as the
ship drew into the lazier waters of the dock, she became prey to sinister fears
and memories. A deep pang of misgiving nauseated her at the thought of her
aunt’s husband, acquired since Helga’s childhood visit. Painfully, vividly, she
remembered the frightened anger of Uncle Peter’s new wife, and looking
back at her precipitate departure from America, she was amazed at her own
stupidity. She had not even considered the remote possibility that her aunt’s
husband might be like Mrs. Nilssen. For the first time in nine days she wished
herself back in New York, in America.
8
The little gulf of water between the ship and the wharf lessened. The engines
had long ago ceased their whirring, and now the buzz of conversation, too, died
down. There was a sort of silence. Soon the welcoming crowd on the wharf stood
under the shadow of the great sea-monster, their faces turned up to the anxious
ones of the passengers who hung over the railing. Hats were taken off,
handkerchiefs were shaken out and frantically waved. Chatter. Deafening shouts.
A little quiet weeping. Sailors and laborers were yelling and rushing about.
Cables were thrown. The gangplank was laid.
9
Silent, unmoving, Helga Crane stood looking intently down into the
gesticulating crowd. Was anyone waving to her? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t in
the least remember her aunt, save as a hazy pretty lady. She smiled a little at
the thought that her aunt, or anyone waiting there in the crowd below, would
have no difficulty in singling her out. But—had she been met? When she
descended the gangplank she was still uncertain and was trying to decide on a
plan of procedure in the event that she had not. A telegram before she went
through the customs? Telephone? A taxi?
10
But, again, she had all her fears and questionings for nothing. A smart woman
in olive-green came toward her at once. And, even in the fervent gladness of
her relief, Helga took in the carelessly trailing purple scarf and correct
black hat that completed the perfection of her aunt’s costume, and had time to
feel herself a little shabbily dressed. For it was her aunt; Helga saw that at
once, the resemblance to her own mother was unmistakable. There was the same
long nose, the same beaming blue eyes, the same straying pale-brown hair so
like sparkling beer. And the tall man with the fierce mustache who followed
carrying hat and stick must be Herr Dahl, Aunt Katrina’s husband. How gracious
he was in his welcome, and how anxious to air his faulty English, now that her
aunt had finished kissing her and exclaimed in Danish: “Little Helga! Little
Helga! Goodness! But how you have grown!”
From QUICKSAND by Nella Larsen—Public
Do
The
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, written by American author James Weldon
Johnson in 1912.
1
I did not feel at ease until the ship was well out of New York harbor; and,
notwithstanding the repeated reassurances of my millionaire friend and my own
knowledge of the facts in the case, I somehow could not rid myself of the
sentiment that I was, in a great degree, responsible for the widow’s tragic
end. We had brought most of the morning papers aboard with us, but my great
fear of seeing my name in connection with the killing would not permit me to
read the accounts, although, in one of the papers, I did look at the picture of
the victim, which did not in the least resemble her. This morbid state of mind,
together with seasickness, kept me miserable for three or four days. At the end
of that time my spirits began to revive, and I took an interest in the ship, my
fellow passengers, and the voyage in general. On the second or third day out we
passed several spouting whales; but I could not arouse myself to make the effort
to go to the other side of the ship to see them. A little later we ran in close
proximity to a large iceberg. I was curious enough to get up and look at it,
and I was fully repaid for my pains. The sun was shining full upon it, and it
glistened like a mammoth diamond, cut with a million facets. As we passed it
constantly changed its shape; at each different angle of vision it assumed new
and astonishing forms of beauty. I watched it through a pair of glasses,
seeking to verify my early conception of an iceberg—in the geographies of my
grammar-school days the pictures of icebergs always included a stranded polar
bear, standing desolately upon one of the snowy crags. I looked for the bear,
but if he was there he refused to put himself on exhibition.
2
It was not, however, until the morning that we entered the harbor of Havre that
I was able to shake off my gloom. Then the strange sights, the chatter in an
unfamiliar tongue and the excitement of landing and passing the customs
officials caused me to forget completely the events of a few days before.
Indeed, I grew so lighthearted that when I caught my first sight of the train
which was to take us to Paris, I enjoyed a hearty laugh. The toy-looking
engine, the stuffy little compartment cars with tiny, old-fashioned wheels,
struck me as being extremely funny. But before we reached Paris my respect for
our train rose considerably. I found that the “tiny” engine made remarkably
fast time, and that the old-fashioned wheels ran very smoothly. I even began to
appreciate the “stuffy” cars for their privacy. As I watched the passing
scenery from the car window it seemed too beautiful to be real. The
bright-colored houses against the green background impressed me as the work of
some idealistic painter. Before we arrived in Paris there was awakened in my
heart a love for France which continued to grow stronger, a love which today
makes that country for me the one above all others to be desired.
3
We rolled into the station Saint Lazare about four o’clock in the afternoon,
and drove immediately to the Hotel Continental. My benefactor, humoring my curiosity
and enthusiasm, which seemed to please him very much, suggested that we take a
short walk before dinner. We stepped out of the hotel and turned to the right
into the Rue de Rivoli. When the vista of the Place de la Concorde
and the Champs Elysées suddenly burst on me I could hardly credit my own eyes.
I shall attempt no such supererogatory task as a description of Paris. I wish
only to give briefly the impressions which that wonderful city made upon me. It
impressed me as the perfect and perfectly beautiful city; and even after I had
been there for some time, and seen not only its avenues and palaces, but its
most squalid alleys and hovels, this impression was not weakened. Paris became
for me a charmed spot, and whenever I have returned there I have fallen under
the spell, a spell which compels admiration for all of its manners and customs
and justification of even its follies and sins.
From THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
AN EX-COLORED MAN by James Weldon Johnson—Public Domain
