Instead Shrike became jovial. He slapped Miss Lonely-hearts on the back. "Put on a pair of pants, my friend," he said, "we're going to a party."
Miss Lonelyhearts picked up a can of crackers.
"Come on, my son," Shrike urged. "It's solitary drinking that makes drunkards."
Miss Lonelyhearts carefully examined each cracker before popping it into his mouth.
"Don't be a spoil-sport," Shrike said with a great deal of irritation. He was a gull trying to lay an egg in the smooth flank of a rock, a screaming, clumsy gull. "There's a game we want to play and we need you to play it.--Everyman his own Miss Lonelyhearts.' I invented it, and we can't play without you."
Shrike pulled a large batch of letters out of his pockets and waved them in front of Miss Lonelyhearts. He recognized them; they were from his office file.
The rock remained calm and solid. Although Miss Lonelyhearts did not doubt that it could withstand any test, he was willing to have it tried. He began to dress.
They went downstairs, and all six of them piled into one cab. Mary Shrike sat on his lap, but despite her drunken wriggling the rock remained perfect.
The party was in Shrike's apartment. A roar went up when Miss Lonelyhearts entered and the crowd surged forward. He stood firm and they slipped back in a futile curl. He smiled. He had turned more than a dozen drunkards. He had turned them without effort or thought. As he stood smiling, a little wave crept up out of the general welter and splashed at his feet for attention. It was Betty.
"What's the matter with you?" she asked. "Are you sick again?"
He did not answer.
When every one was seated, Shrike prepared to start the game. He distributed paper and pencils, then led Miss Lonelyhearts to the center of the room and began his spiel.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, imitating the voice and gestures of a circus barker. "We have with us to-night a man whom you all know and admire. Miss Lonelyhearts, he of the singing heart--a still more swollen Mussolini of the soul.
"He has come here to-night to help you with your moral and spiritual problems, to provide you with a slogan, a cause, an absolute value and a raison d'ętre.
"Some of you, perhaps, consider yourself too far gone for help. You are afraid that even Miss Lonelyhearts, no matter how fierce his torch, will be unable to set you on fire. You are afraid that even when exposed to his bright flame, you will only smolder and give off a bad smell. Be of good heart, for I know that you will burst into flame. Miss Lonelyhearts is sure to prevail."
Shrike pulled out the batch of letters and waved them above his head.
"We will proceed systematically," he said. "First, each of you will do his best to answer one of these letters, then, from your answers, Miss Lonelyhearts will diagnose your moral ills. Afterwards he will lead you in the way of attainment."
Shrike went among his guests and distributed the letters as a magician does cards. He talked continuously and read a part of each letter before giving it away.
"Here's one from an old woman whose son died last week. She is seventy years old and sells pencils for a living. She has no stockings and wears heavy boots on her torn and bleeding feet. She has rheum in her eyes. Have you room in your heart for her?
"This one is a jim-dandy. A young boy wants a violin. It looks simple; all you have to do is get the kid one. But then you discover that he has dictated the letter to his little sister. He is paralyzed and can't even feed himself. He has a toy violin and hugs it to his chest, imitating the sound of playing with his mouth. How pathetic! However, one can learn much from this parable. Label the boy Labor, the violin Capital, and so on..."
Miss Lonelyhearts stood it with the utmost serenity; he was not even interested. What goes on in the sea is of no interest to the rock.
When all the letters had been distributed, Shrike gave one to Miss Lonelyhearts. He took it, but after holding it for a while, he dropped it to the floor without reading it.
Shrike was not quiet for a second.
"You are plunging into a world of misery and suffering, peopled by creatures who are strangers to everything but disease and policemen. Harried by one, they are hurried by the other...
"Pain, pain, pain, the dull, sordid, gnawing, chronic pain of heart and brain. The pain that only a great spiritual liniment can relieve..."
When Miss Lonelyhearts saw Betty get up to go, he followed her out of the apartment. She too should see the rock he had become.
Shrike did not miss him until he discovered the letter on the floor. He picked it up, tried to find Miss Lonelyhearts, then addressed the gathering again.
"The master has disappeared," he announced, "but do not despair. I am still with you. I am his disciple and I shall lead you in the way of attainment. First let me read you this letter which is addressed directly to the master."
He took the letter out of its envelope, as though he had not read it previously, and began: "'What kind of a dirty skunk are you? When I got home with the gin, I found my wife crying on the floor and the house full of neighbors. She said that you tried to rape her you dirty skunk and they wanted to get the police but I said that I'd do the job myself you...'
"My, oh my, I really can't bring myself to utter such vile language. I'll skip the swearing and go on. 'So that's what all your fine speeches come to, you bastard, you ought to have your brains blown out.' It's signed, 'Doyle.'
"Well, well, so the master is another Rasputin. How this shakes one's faith! But I can't believe it. I won't believe it. The master can do no wrong. My faith is unshaken. This is only one more attempt against him by the devil. He has spent his life struggling with the arch fiend for our sakes, and he shall triumph. I mean Miss Lonelyhearts, not the devil.
"The gospel according to Shrike. Let me tell you about his life. It unrolls before me like a scroll. First, in the dawn of childhood, radiant with pure innocence, like a rain-washed star, he wends his weary way to the University of Hard Knocks. Next, a youth, he dashes into the night from the bed of his first whore. And then, the man, the man Miss Lonelyhearts--struggling valiantly to realize a high ideal, his course shaped by a proud aim. But, alas! cold and scornful, the world heaps obstacle after obstacle in his path; deems he the goal at hand, a voice of thunder bids him 'Halt!' 'Let each hindrance be thy ladder,' thinks he. 'Higher, even higher, mount!' And so he climbs, rung by weary rung, and so he urges himself on, breathless with hallowed fire. And so..."
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE PARTY DRESS
When Miss Lonelyhearts left Shrike's apartment, he found Betty in the hall waiting for the elevator. She had on a light-blue dress that was very much a party dress. She dressed for things, he realized.
Even the rock was touched by this realization. No; it was not the rock that was touched. The rock was still perfect. It was his mind that was touched, the instrument with which he knew the rock.
He approached Betty with a smile, for his mind was free and clear. The things that muddied it had precipitated out into the rock.
But she did not smile back "What are you grinning at?" she snapped.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean anything."
They entered the elevator together. When they reached the street, he took her arm although she tried to jerk away.
"Won't you have a soda, please?" he begged. The party dress had given his simplified mind its cue and he delighted in the boy-and-girl argument that followed.
"No; I'm going home."
"Oh, come on," he said, pulling her towards a soda fountain. As she went, she unconsciously exaggerated her little-girl-in-a-party-dress air.
They both had strawberry sodas. They sucked the pink drops up through straws, she pouting at his smile, neither one of them conscious of being cute.
"Why are you mad at me, Betty? I didn't do anything. It was Shrike's idea and he did all the talking."
"Because you are a fool."
"I've quit the Miss Lonelyhearts job. I haven't been in the office for almost a week."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to look for a job in an advertising agency."
He was not deliberately lying. He was only trying to say what she wanted to hear. The party dress was so gay and charming, light blue with a frothy lace collar flecked with pink, like the collar of her soda.
"You ought to see Bill Wheelright about a job. He owns an agency--he's a swell guy...He's in love with me." "I couldn't work for a rival."
She screwed up her nose and they both laughed.
He was still laughing when he noticed that something had gone wrong with her laugh. She was crying.
He felt for the rock. It was still there; neither laughter nor tears could affect the rock. It was oblivious to wind or rain.
"Oh..." she sobbed. "I'm a fool." She ran out of the store.
He followed and caught her. But her sobs grew worse and he hailed a taxi and forced her to get in.
She began to talk under her sobs. She was pregnant. She was going to have a baby.
He put the rock forward and waited with complete poise for her to stop crying. When she was quiet, he asked her to marry him.
"No," she said. "I'm going to have an abortion."
"Please marry me." He pleaded just as he had pleaded with her to have a soda.
He begged the party dress to marry him, saying all the things it expected to hear, all the things that went with strawberry sodas and farms in Connecticut. He was just what the party dress wanted him to be: simple and sweet, whimsical and poetic, a trifle collegiate yet very masculine.
By the time they arrived at her house, they were discussing their life after marriage. Where they would live and in how many rooms. Whether they could afford to have the child. How they would rehabilitate the farm in Connecticut. What kind of furniture they both liked.
She agreed to have the child. He won that point. In return, he agreed to see Bill Wheelright about a job. With a great deal of laughter, they decided to have three beds in their bedroom. Twin beds for sleep, very prim and puritanical, and between them a love bed, an ornate double bed with cupids, nymphs and Pans.
He did not feel guilty. He did not feel. The rock was a solidification of his feeling, his conscience, his sense of reality, his self-knowledge. He could have planned anything. A castle in Spain and love on a balcony or a pirate trip and love on a tropical island.
When her door closed behind him, he smiled. The rock had been thoroughly tested and had been found perfect. He had only to climb aboard the bed again.
MISS LONELYHEARTS HAS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
After a long night and morning, towards noon, Miss Lonelyhearts welcomed the arrival of fever. It promised heat and mentally unmotivated violence. The promise was soon fulfilled; the rock became a furnace.
He fastened his eyes on the Christ that hung on the wall opposite his bed. As he stared at it, it became a bright fly, spinning with quick grace on a background of blood velvet sprinkled with tiny nerve stars.139
Everything else in the room was dead--chairs, table, pencils, clothes, books. He thought of this black world of things as a fish. And he was right, for it suddenly rose to the bright bait on the wall. It rose with a splash of music and he saw its shining silver belly.
Christ is life and light.
"Christ! Christ!" This shout echoed through the innermost cells of his body.
He moved his head to a cooler spot on the pillow and the vein in his forehead became less swollen. He felt clean and fresh. His heart was a rose and in his skull another rose bloomed.
The room was full of grace. A sweet, clean grace, not washed clean, but clean as the inner sides of the inner petals of a newly forced rosebud.
Delight was also in the room. It was like a gentle wind, and his nerves rippled under it like small blue flowers in a pasture.
He was conscious of two rhythms that were slowly becoming one. When they became one, his identification with God was complete. His heart was the one heart, the heart of God. And his brain was likewise God's.
God said, "Will you accept it, now?"
And he replied, "I accept, I accept."
He immediately began to plan a new life and his future conduct as Miss Lonelyhearts. He submitted drafts of his column to God and God approved them. God approved his every thought.
Suddenly the door bell rang. He climbed out of bed and went into the hall to see who was coming. It was Doyle, the cripple, and he was slowly working his way up the stairs.
God had sent him so that Miss Lonelyhearts could perform a miracle and be certain of his conversion. It was a sign. He would embrace the cripple and the cripple would be made whole again, even as he, a spiritual cripple, had been made whole.
He rushed down the stairs to meet Doyle with his arms spread for the miracle.
Doyle was carrying something wrapped in a newspaper. When he saw Miss Lonelyhearts, he put his hand inside the package and stopped. He shouted some kind of a warning, but Miss Lonelyhearts continued his charge. He did not understand the cripple's shout and heard it as a cry for help from Desperate, Harold S., Catholic-mother, Brokenhearted, Broad-shoulders, Sick-of-it-all, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband. He was running to succor them with love.
The cripple turned to escape, but he was too slow and Miss Lonelyhearts caught him.
While they were struggling, Betty came in through the street door. She called to them to stop and started up the stairs. The cripple saw her cutting off his escape and tried to get rid of the package. He pulled his hand out. The gun inside the package exploded and Miss Lonelyhearts fell, dragging the cripple with him. They both rolled part of the way down the stairs.
THE END
Table of Contents
MISS LONELYHEARTS, HELP ME, HELP ME
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE DEAD PAN
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE LAMB
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE FAT THUMB
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE CLEAN OLD MAN
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND MRS. SHRIKE
MISS LONELYHEARTS ON A FIELD TRIP
MISS LONELYHEARTS IN THE DISMAL SWAMP
MISS LONELYHEARTS IN THE COUNTRY
MISS LONELYHEARTS RETURNS
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE CRIPPLE
MISS LONELYHEARTS PAYS A VISIT
MISS LONELYHEARTS ATTENDS A PARTY
MISS LONELYHEARTS AND THE PARTY DRESS
MISS LONELYHEARTS HAS A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
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