The Eternal Wonder

  “Make the most of your age, my young lover,” she had said one day almost wistfully.

  “Why do you say that?” he had demanded.

  “Because even desire doesn’t last,” she had replied. “It becomes habit, and then—well, it’s only habit. That’s why I like my lovers young.”

  “Lovers?” he had inquired.

  “And are you not my lover?” she said, laughing.

  He considered this thoughtfully and she waited, watching his face with a teasing smile.

  “I am not sure I know what love is,” he said at last.

  She opened her eyes wide. “Then you give a very good imitation of it!”

  “No,” he said slowly, still thinking, “it’s not imitation, because I don’t really love you. In a way, it’s more like loving myself—or loving the opportunity you give me of loving myself. Perhaps that’s all I give you, too.”

  For she had made it a fair exchange. She had taught him how to exchange delight, an exchange he had not understood at first until she revealed to him the secrets of her own body and made them his, until he understood the fulfillments of mutuality. Ah yes, she had taught him very much. But when it was over, each time now, there was no more to learn. They returned to what they had been before, two separate beings—himself, herself. And was this all there was to love? Was separateness inevitable and eternal between human beings? Then what was the use of love if it was only endless physical repetition? Was there no more?

  “What are you thinking?” she demanded.

  He looked at her. They were here in her room afterward, long after midnight. She was lying on the white satin canopied bed beside him, naked.

  “What does this mean to you?” he asked in reply.

  She put up her arms and drew his head to her warm breasts.

  “It keeps me young,” she said.

  IT WAS A SIMPLE STATEMENT, simply made, and with it she had given him her lovely smile. At the moment it had seemed no more. But he woke before dawn, alone in his own room. The moonlight had wakened him and, as though that cold light illumined his mind, the full enormity of what she had said revealed itself to him. His mother was right. He was being used. He pondered upon this truth. Lady Mary needed a male body to stimulate and satisfy her own need. He was young, physically he was in the full fresh vigor of his sexual manhood. Into that narrow passage of her body his strong thrust excited, exalted, and satisfied her. That was all he was to her, an instrument of gratification. He was used as a machine might be used and was he not more than a machine? Was he not also spirit?

  Yet let him be just a machine, if this was what she wished. Did he in turn demand more of her? He was fastidious in his own way, nevertheless. He could never have lent the use of his body, of which he was proud, if not indeed even somewhat vain, to a mere Ruthie, any more than he had been able to accept the strange caresses of Donald Sharpe. He did not love Lady Mary, but her beauty charmed him—her beauty and her breeding. In a way, he supposed, it was a sort of love. But was there anything lasting, or even meaningful for him about such love? Still, perhaps, it was more than she felt for him. She had spoken only of herself, and for such ends, that he felt at this lonely moment degraded and therefore outraged. He would not be used. He would not have his body used. His body was his own possession—solely his own. And then he had made up his mind. It was time for him to move on his way. Beyond this castle the whole world still waited. It was the world to which he belonged. All people were his people. No one woman was his only woman, no one man his only friend. He was going his own way, where he did not know, but onward. His world was in readiness somewhere beyond this castle.

  THE FAREWELL WAS EASY, AFTER ALL. He had dreaded it, though only a little because he was resolute, and yet somewhat because in his own way he was also tender of heart. She had been kind, in her English, offhand fashion, and he was not sure whether after all she had an attachment. Even though she might replace him, undoubtedly would replace him in time, still a vague sort of fondness held them lightly together. He felt it in himself. She was lovely in her cool fashion, delicate even in her passion—no, “delicate” was not the word. She could be abandoned but always with taste; if the words were not too contradictory. She could not offend. Her very frankness was never offensive. Her clarity of expressed desire was pure.

  Then when, he had pondered, was the suitable hour for the farewell? Now that he had decided upon it, he was impatient for it to be over. One night he packed his bags, the third night after the decision. He had avoided going to her room, and so delicate was her perception that she had seemed also indifferent to him. By this very indifference, studied and graceful, he knew she was preparing herself for the unavoidable separation. The next morning, his bags packed and breakfast over, although they had lingered at the breakfast table that had been laid for them outside on the terrace, it being a perfect early spring morning, he began, not abruptly, but as though they had spoken before of his departure.

  “I shall never be able to thank you enough,” he said.

  “When are you going?” she asked.

  “Today,” he said.

  “And where?” she asked. She sipped her coffee and did not look at him.

  “To London and then to France, and then southward across Italy and perhaps even to India. I shan’t stay anywhere—as I have stayed here.”

  “Ah, you’ll like India,” she said almost indifferently. Still she did not look at him.

  “What shall I find there?” he asked.

  “Whatever it is you are looking for,” she said. She touched a bell and the butler appeared.

  “Have a car ready to take Mr. Colfax to the station at once. He’ll catch a train for London.”

  “Yes, madam,” the butler said, and disappeared.

  Mr. Colfax! She had never called him that before and he looked at her, his eyebrows lifted in question.

  “Aren’t you going?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “But—”

  She rose from the table. “I’m not sending you away,” she continued. “It’s only that I’ve learned that if something is over, it’s better to have it over at once.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He rose too, and they stood facing each other, he taller than she. Yonder in the rose garden where a fountain played, a bird sang three clear notes, a cadence, and stopped abruptly.

  “Oh, Rann,” she said in a whisper.

  And suddenly he saw that she was sad. But what could he say except to stammer his thanks?

  “I do thank you—I thank you most awfully—”

  She did not hear him. She was talking to herself.

  “I’d give anything to be your age—I’d give all I’ve ever had—I would and I would; I would indeed!”

  She put her arms about him and held him and then pushed him away. “I’m going to the village for shopping. When I come back, you’ll be gone.”

  He stood watching her as she walked away in her usual light, quick fashion. She did not turn her head, and he knew now that she was gone from him forever, and he was returned to himself—free as perhaps he had never before been free.

  WHEN HE ARRIVED IN LONDON he took a taxi to the small hotel his grandfather had told him about.

  “We had expected you much earlier, Mr. Colfax,” the desk clerk said to him. “Your grandfather had led us to believe you would be here some months ago. There is a letter here from some solicitors but nothing more than that.”

  “I’ve been visiting a friend I met on the ship on the way over,” he said by way of explanation. “Now I’ll be here for a few days, then I’ll be going to Paris.”

  “Very good, sir,” the clerk said. “Your room is all ready.”

  The letter from his grandfather’s London legal firm told him of funds his grandfather had made available for him, and by telephone he told them he would not be needing the money in L
ondon and they insisted he take the name and address of the firm in Paris where it would be forwarded to him. He walked around London for a while and found it much the same as New York and other cities he had visited and decided the sooner he went on to Paris the better for him. He had heard that Paris was a city with a soul, unlike any other city in the world.

  PARIS WAS IN THE MIDST OF AUGUST HEAT. It was a changeable city, and he had loved it immediately, partly because it was changeable and difficult to understand and therefore enchanting. In June it had been like a young girl his own age. Indeed, it had swarmed with young girls. They were new to him and he was fascinated by them but not more by them than he was by the beauty of the city itself, its history, which led him into libraries; its paintings, which led him to weeks in the Louvre; its magnificence—which led him into Versailles, and cathedrals. But now there were days when he simply wandered about the streets, stopping at outdoor cafés, sometimes walking as far as the Bois de Boulogne to throw himself on the ancient French earth and lie there, submitting himself to it. He imagined, or felt, emanation from that earth, as indeed he had felt too in England. Lady Mary more than a few times had stopped the small car she drove herself, when she was alone with him, when they were out merely to enjoy a fine mild day, or when she wanted to show him an old village, or open a picnic basket or make excuse, he now suspected—at any rate, she had stopped the car in some remote spot, shielded by hedgerows, and declaring herself weary, had spread a car rug, usually folded in the backseat, and there in the hedges, in the warm glow of approaching spring, she had stirred him to make love. Make love! He disliked the phrase. Could one make love? There was a compulsion hidden in the word “make.” Now, today, far away from her, and lying alone under the trees in this French forest, he admitted his own too-ready response to her physical stimulation. He had allowed himself to be overcome not by her so much as by himself. He carried within himself his own constant temptation and therefore he must blame himself. But was there need to blame himself for his male nature? No, his reason replied, for he was not responsible for his own parts. His responsibility lay only in the choice of which part of him was to be his master. There was far more to him, he knew, than the enjoyment of his physical being. His world was still not in himself. Or else, he was only a small single world, however composite, in a world of other worlds, and his undying sense of curiosity and wonder—that powerful inner force that impelled him to every adventure—made him a part of every other world. Knowledge was his deepest hunger and now especially the knowledge of people, of what they were and thought, and did. And when he was replete with this knowledge, if ever he were, what would he do with it?

  Lying there on the warm French earth, his cheek pressed against its green moss, he pondered his own question, adding to it his eternal why. Why was he as he was? What was his compound? Without vanity, he accepted the fact of his own superiority, his own self-­confidence. He knew that whatever he chose to do he would do superbly well. He did not think of fame—indeed, he did not care for it. His own need to live in freedom, to learn in his own way, at his own speed, was now his supreme desire. How he would express his self-gained knowledge was as yet unknown to him. But there was a way, waiting, and he would find it.

  He turned on his back, head on his clasped hands, and gazed into the leaf-flecked blue sky and waited while slowly a decision found itself invincibly in his own being. It was not only in his mind. It was a decision forming throughout his whole being. He would never again go to school—not to college—ever! Others could not teach him what he wanted now to know. Books he would always learn from, for people, great people, put the best of themselves into books. Books were a distillation of people. But people would be his teachers, and people were not in schoolrooms. People were everywhere.

  Decision! He had decided. He recognized finality and a deep peace pervaded his being, as real as though he had drunk an elixir, a wine, had eaten a consecrated bread. Whatever came to him was good. It was life. It was knowledge. He sprang up from the earth. He brushed the leaves from his hair and with his handkerchief he brushed the dampness of moss from his cheek. Then he walked back into the city.

  FROM THAT DAY ON, he devoted his time to the new learning. He who had spent his life as long as he could remember with books, still read as a matter of habit and necessity. On any fair afternoon he wandered to the book stalls of the Left Bank and spent hours there, browsing, searching, tasting one book and another to take an armful of books back with him to the big attic room that in its fashion had become home to him. For he came to perceive that since people were his study, his teachers, the objects through which he could satisfy his persistent wonder about life itself, his own being among others, wherever he lived for the moment, there was his home. It was as though he had reached a place that he had been seeking all his life, a point of knowing himself first, and where he was meant to be and what he was meant to do. Now he could satisfy his hunger to know, his eternal sense of persistent wonder about life, its reason, its purpose, for now he had found his teachers, and these teachers were wherever he happened to be. A new and delicious joy filled his entire being. He had no sense of compulsion. He was entirely and truly free.

  Therefore on this August morning, a hot and sunny morning, a day of quiet in the city, for this was the month of holiday and many people were away at seaside and country resorts, he lingered at the bookstalls and fell into conversation with the wizened old woman who was dusting her stall. He had seen her often, had always replied to her cheerful greetings, her chirping comments, her sly, suggestive remarks on certain books a young man might like, especially one, this morning, which she said an American might like.

  “And why especially an American?” he asked.

  He spoke French easily now, being long past the stage where he was compelled to translate French mentally into English before he could converse.

  The old woman was only too ready to converse. He was her first customer, August being a poor business month, and she was as cheerful as a cricket.

  “Ah, the Americans,” she exclaimed. “So young, so full of sex—always the sex! Me, I remember—ah yes, I remember—my husband was a real man in such matters … but Americans are so young—even white hairs don’t mean age when it comes to sex—the men—the women—I tell you—”

  She shook her tousled white head and cackled laughter. Then she sighed. “Alas! We French! It is soon over with us. Is it because we are poor? Too soon we must think of how to earn a loaf of bread, a bottle of cheap red wine! From birth to death—behold me, myself, old as an ancient crab—yet rain or sun I am here, am I not? Ah, truly!”

  “Have you no children?” he asked.

  The question was mild, almost abstracted, for he had his eyes on a book in another stall, but it loosed her complete concern. She beat her breast.

  “I have the best son on the Earth,” she declared. “He is married to a seamstress, a good young woman. They both work. There are two children. Her mother cares for them during the day. But I—I am proud to work. I have a room next to their apartment. They have two rooms—well, call it three. My son is clever. He has put up a small wall, behind which her mother sleeps. The wife leaves very early for work—also my son. He is a guard at a factory. We eat our evening meal together. But I am independent, you understand? Two evenings in the seven I buy food and cook dinner. They make me welcome, ah yes—I am still welcome!”

  “Will you not always be welcome?”

  She shook her head. “One does not ask too much of life. I pray the good God that when my hour comes it will be quick. If He is merciful, it will come in my sleep, after a day’s work. Ah yes, that would be happiness—to lie asleep in my bed—I have a good bed. That I saved. When we were married, my husband said, ‘At least let us have a good bed.’ So we had it. And I kept it. There, pray God, let me die in peace. The bed where I first knew love, where my children were born, where my husband died—” She wiped her rheumy eyes with ends of
the black scarf that hung about her neck.

  “You had more children?”

  “A daughter who died at birth—”

  He put his hand on her shoulder, forgetting the book.

  “Don’t cry—I cannot bear it because I don’t know how to comfort you!”

  She smiled up at him through her tears. “I thought I had done with weeping long ago. But no one asks me such questions now—only the price of a book and trying to buy it cheaper!”

  “But to me you are a human being,” he said, and smiled at her and went away, putting the coins for the book in her dry old palm.

  That night he did not go out on the streets as he usually did for his long evening walks. Instead he sat on the low windowsill and looked out over the city until the twilight faded into night and the electric globes sparkled as far as the horizon. He kept thinking of the old woman. It was a life. Poor as it was, it was a human life: birth and childhood, a woman and a man in marriage, children—one dead, one alive. Then death splitting a life in half, and now what was life for this human being except work? Except work and still life itself—waking in the morning to another day—life itself!

  He rose and lit the small lamp on the table and, as though impelled, he wrote down the story of the old woman. It was only a shred of a story, a shred of a life, but writing it down as he remembered it, as he felt it, brought him a new sort of relief—not physical, as he felt after an orgasm with Lady Mary, but something deep—very deep, which was so new to him that he did not try to fathom it or explain it. Instead he laid himself upon his bed and fell quickly asleep.

  IT WAS A HOT DAY in early September. People were coming back to the city. He sat down at a small round metal table under the awning outside a café. It was late morning, too early for luncheon, but he was hungry. He was growing, still growing, now well over six feet and his skeleton bare of flesh. His skin was smooth and clear, and although he had always kept his auburn red hair cut short, now that the new style was coming in that men, at least young men, were beginning to wear their hair longer, he was letting his own hair grow, washing it daily, for to be clean was a passion, yes, and there was little time for anything more. If women looked at him with more than a glance, he was not aware of it. If his eyes caught hers, he met the look with such blankness she went on and he did not notice it. He knew, or thought he knew, all about women; Lady Mary was a woman, was she not? He had not forgotten her, but she belonged to his past. But everything belonged to his past, once he had lived through it. He lived intensely in the moment, in every day as it came, without planning or preparation. He was always consumed in thinking. About what? About what he had learned today merely in living—the people who had come and gone, the people with whom he had talked or had not wanted to talk so that he could simply study their faces, their hands, their behavior. He stored them away in his memory and this he did unconsciously. They remained with him. Though they came and went, these people he collected stayed with him. He thought of them with wonder and question. He asked questions if they were willing to answer him, as usually they were, for most people he met were interested in themselves and he had a concern to know, which he himself could not yet understand. These strangers—why did he want to know where they came from and went, what they did and thought, any scrap of information they were ready to give him?