It was, among the cousins, the Complete Little Citizen of the World who first caught sight of this astonishingly agreeable item in the paper and who announced the tidings in a voice as shrill as a steam whistle announcing the meridian of the day, and it was she that exclaimed hours later, while the little family was still boiling with the excitement and glory of it, ]usl think, Papa, the old man choked to death on our hard candy!
March 1953 (Published 1954)
Man Bring This Up Road
Mrs. Flora Goforth had three Easter-egg-colored villas perched on a sea cliff a little north of Amalfi, and being one of those enormously wealthy old ladies who come to be known as art patrons, often only because they have served, now and then, as honorary sponsor or hostess at some of those social functions, balls or banquets which take place on the fashionable periphery of the art world, she was diligently sought after by that flock of young people who fly to Europe in summer with one large suitcase and a small one, a portable typewriter or a paintbox, and a book of traveler’s checks that hardly amount to a hundred dollars by the time they have passed through Paris; and for this reason, because she was pursued and besieged by this flock of gifted, improvident young wanderers of summer, she had found it advisable not to improve the landward approaches to her siege on the Divina Costiera of Italy but to leave them as they were left by the hand of God, a mortal hazard to any creature less agile than a mountain goat.
However, Mrs. Goforth was now edging timorously into her seventies. Other rich old ladies of her acquaintance were popping off, here and there, with the jazzy rhythm of fireworks on the Fourth of July. She had to have bright young people around her at times, that summer, to forget those reports on mortality that kept appearing in the Paris Herald Tribune or cables from the States, so she would send out her motor launch now and again to pick up a select group of them from such nearby resorts as Capri or Positano, sometimes even from Naples.
But Jimmy Dobyne was not called for or recently invited by Mrs. Goforth; he reached her by the goat path up the landward approach to her domain that summer, and it was the gardener’s boy, Giulio, who warned her of his arrival by handing her a thin volume that had the shocking word “Poems” on its cover, passing it to her through the crack of her bedroom door and stammering in his pidgin English; Man bring this up road!
For several days her great old sunflower head had been drooping on its stem with incipient boredom and so Mrs. Goforth thought twice before she knew what to do, and then she said, also in pidgin English: Bring man out on terrace so can see.
When Giulio had vanished she picked up her German field glasses and crouched at her bedroom window in the white villa to inspect the Trojan horse guest. Presently he appeared, a young man wearing only a pair of lederhosen and bearing slung from his shoulders in a rucksack all that he owned, including four more copies of that volume of verse which he had offered as a visiting card to his hoped-for hostess. Giulio led him out upon the terrace and then drew back and Jimmy Dobyne stood blinking anxiously in the fierce noonday sun, looking here and there for his hoped-for hostess but seeing only an aviary full of small bright-plumaged birds, a fishpool of colorful fish and a chattering monkey that was chained to a pillar and everywhere cascades of violent purplish-red bougainvillea vines.
Mrs. Goforth? he called.
There was no response to his call except the loud chattering of the monkey chained to a corner post of the low balustrade that enclosed the terrace. Having not much to look at or consider, Jimmy looked at the monkey; its enchainment, he thought, could hardly be anything but a punitive measure. Near it was a bowl containing remnants of fruit but there was no water bowl and the length of the chain did not permit the monkey to get into shade. Not far from the reach of the chain was the fishpool and the monkey had stretched its chain as far toward the pool as it could, which was not far enough to reach it. Without any thought about it, just as a reflex, Jimmy scooped up some water from the pool in the food bowl and placed it within the monkey’s reach on the terrace. The monkey sprang to the bowl and started drinking from it with such incontinent thirst that Jimmy laughed out loud.
Signor!
The gardener’s boy had come back to the terrace. He jerked his head toward the far end of the terrace and said: Come!
He led Jimmy to a bedroom in the pink villa.
Jimmy Dobyne was at least temporarily “in.” As soon as Giulio left him alone in his guest room in the pink villa, Jimmy flung himself, all dusty and sweaty as he was, on the bed and blinked up at the painted cupids on the celestial blue ceiling.
His fatigue was so great that it even eclipsed his hunger and within a minute or two he fell into a sleep that lasted all that day and the night that followed and half the day after that.
After her siesta the day of Jimmy’s arrival, Mrs. Goforth went over to the pink villa to steal a look at her uninvited guest. She found him still in his lederhosen, his rucksack on the floor beside the bed.
She opened the canvas bag and, like an experienced thief, she rooted thoroughly but quietly through it till she discovered what she was looking for, his passport, wrapped up in a bunch of washed but not ironed shirts. She checked the date of his birth. It was in September, 1922, which confirmed her impression that he was a good bit older than he appeared. She said “Hello” several times, tonelessly as a parrot, to test the depth of his sleep, and, since he remained as dead asleep as ever, she turned on a bedside lamp so she could look at him better. She bent over him, brought her nose within a few inches of his parted lips to see if he smelled of liquor or tooth decay as young poets sometimes do when they’re not so young any more. His breath was odorless, but Mrs. Goforth could see that it was more than the fatigue of traveling by foot in rough country that had cast a color on his lower eyelids as if a bougainvillea petal had been rubbed on them.
Mrs. Goforth was not displeased, on the whole, by her close inspection of her self-invited guest but she made a telephone call to check on his past history and present reputation.
There was a lady on Capri who had known Jimmy well in his heyday, which was in the forties, and this lady gave her some information about him. She told her that he had been discovered at a ski lodge in Nevada in 1940 by one of those ladies of Mrs. Goforth’s generation and social set who had “popped off” lately. This lady had brought him to New York and made him a shining star in the world of Connecticut and Long Island weekends, of ballet balls and so forth. He’d been the odd combination of ski instructor and poet, and this lady who launched him had brought out his book of poems through the sort of small publishing house called a vanity press. However, the book had created a sensation. He had been taken seriously as a poet, but after that the poems stopped for some reason. He’d coasted on his early celebrity all through the forties, but lately things had gone against him. It started with his “sleeping trick” a couple of summers ago. Mrs. Goforth naturally didn’t understand what that was but her friend on Capri gave a vivid account of it. It seemed that he had worn out his welcome at a rich lady’s villa on Capri, he had been asked to give up his room for another guest expected and had tried to avoid this eviction by playing this sleeping trick on his hostess. He had taken a large dose of sleeping tablets but had also left an early-morning call so that they’d find him early enough to revive him.
As soon as he was able to leave he was told to do so. It was after that that he started “constructing mobiles.”
Oh, he’s constructing mobiles?
That’s what he’s been doing since he dried up as a poet. You know what mobiles are?
Of course I know what they are!
Well, he constructed mobiles but they didn’t move, he didn’t construct them right, he made them too heavy or something and they just don’t move.
He gave that up?
No, as far as I know, he’s still constructing mobiles. Hasn’t he got any with him?
Oh! Mrs. Goforth remembered some odd metal objects among the stuff in the rucksack.
What?
Yes, I believe he still is, I think he’s brought some with him.
Is he still there?
Yes. Sleeping in the pink villa, for hours and hours, completely dead to the world there!
Well…
What?
Good luck with him, Flora. Watch out for the sleeping trick, though…
As Jimmy Dobyne came up to the breakfast table on the terrace of the white villa the next morning, he said to Mrs. Goforth: I think you must be the kindest person I’ve ever known in my life!
Then I’m afraid you haven’t known many kind people in your life, said his hostess.
She nodded slightly in a way that could be interpreted as a permission to sit at the table and Jimmy sat down.
Coffee?
Thank you, said Jimmy.
He was ravenously hungry, the hungriest he could remember ever being in a life that had contained more than one prolonged fast for secular reasons. He tried to look about for something to eat without appearing to take his eyes from his hostess, but there seemed to be nothing on the chaste white serving table but the silver urn and the china; there apparently wasn’t even cream and sugar.
As if she read his mind or the almost panicky tightening of his stomach muscles, her smile turned brighter and she said: For breakfast I have nothing but black coffee. I find that anything solid takes the edge off my energies, and it’s the time after breakfast when I do my best work.
He smiled back at her, thinking that in the next breath she’d surely say. But of course you order anything that you like. How about eggs and bacon, or would you like to begin with a honeydew melon?
But the long minute stretched even longer and the words that finally followed her ruminative look made no sense to him: Man bring this up road, huh?
What, Mrs. Goforth?
That’s what the little boy said when he gave me your book. I haven’t read it but I heard it talked about when it first came out.
You asked me to give you a copy last winter at the Ballet Ball, but you were never in when I called.
Well, well, that’s how it goes. When did it first come out?
In 1946.
Hmm, a long time ago. How old are you?
He thought a moment and said rather softly, as if he were asking for confirmation of the statement: Thirty.
Thirty-four, she said promptly.
How do you know?
I took a look at your passport while you were having that record-smashing siesta.
He made an effort to look playfully reproachful. Why did you do that?
Because I’ve been plagued by imposters. I wanted to be sure that you were the true Jimmy Dobyne, since last summer I had the false Paul Bowles and the year before that I had the false Truman Capote and the false Eudora Welty, and as far as I know they’re still down there in that little grass hut on the beach, where undesirables are transferred when the villas are overcrowded. I call it the Oubliette. Y’know what that is, don’t you? An oubliette? It’s a medieval institution that I think, personally, was discarded too soon. It was a dungeon where people were put for keeps, to be forgotten. So that’s what I call my little grass house on the beach, I call it the Oubliette. From the French verb oublier—that means to forget. And I do really forget them. Maybe you think I’m joking but it’s the truth. Y’see, I’ve been through a lot of unpleasant experiences with free-Ioaders and I have developed a sort of complex about it. I don’t want to be taken, I can’t stand to be made a patsy. Understand what I mean? This is nothing personal. You come with your book with a photograph of you on it which still looks like you, just, well, ten years younger, but still unmistakably you. You’re not the false Jimmy Dobyne, I’m sure about that.
Thank you, said Jimmy. He didn’t know what else to say.
Of course some people have got an oubliette in their minds. That’s also a good institution, a mental oubliette, but I am afflicted with perfect memory, almost total recall, as the psychologists call it. Faces, names, everything, everything, everything!—comes back to me…
She smiled at him so genially that he smiled back, although her rapid flow of speech made him flinch as if a pistol were aimed at him in the hand of a madman.
However, she went on, I don’t keep up with the new personalities in the world of art. Of course you’re not a new personality in it, you’re almost a veteran, aren’t you? I said a veteran, I didn’t say a has-been. Ha, ha, I didn’t call you a has-been, I said a veteran, baby! Ho ho ho…
Jimmy increased his smile because she was laughing, but he knew that it had turned to a tortured grimace.
There was an involuntary lapse in his attention to what she was saying while he said to himself: Don’t give up! The road goes on from here. He wasn’t certain that he was sure of it, though. Between him and anything coming after there was Naples again, and yesterday— there was Naples…
He had walked along the long, long row of hotels facing Santa Lucia, the bay, and in front of almost every hotel there had been sidewalk tables where he had encountered people he used to know well. And even when they didn’t appear to see him, although he knew that they did, he had stopped and talked a bit with them, as charmingly as he knew how. Not one of them, no, not a single one, had asked him to sit down with them at their sidewalk table! Frightening? my God, yes! Something must be visible in his face that let them know he had crossed over a certain frontier of…
He didn’t want to identify that frontier, to give it a name.
To his surprise, he was standing on his feet and shading his eyes to peer down at the beach. Oh, yes, I see it! he said.
What?
Your oubliette, I think it looks very attractive.
Well, she told him, it’s not in use this summer.
Why is it out of use now? It seems like a perfect solution, Mrs. Goforth.
Well, she said, it’s still on my property and some people hold me responsible for the ones that I put there. I don’t want to know, I never let myself know, what happened to them. As far as I know, or want to, they’re all washed out by the tide, all phonies and free-loaders and so forth that think I owe them a living! What do you do? You don’t write poetry any more, that much I know, but what do you do now?
Oh, now? I construct mobiles.
Oh, you mean those metal things that you hang from a ceiling to turn around in the wind.
Yes, that’s right, said Jimmy, they’re poetry in metal. I’ve got one for you.
Her geniality vanished. Her straight look at him drifted away from his face.
I don’t accept presents, she said, except from old friends at Christmas, and as for mobiles, no, baby! I wouldn’t know what to do with them. I think it would get on my nerves to watch them turning…
I’m sorry, he said, I wanted to give one to you.
What’s wrong with you? she asked him with sudden sharpness.
Wrong? With me?
Yes, there’s something wrong with you. What are you worried about?
I’m disappointed that you don’t want a mobile.
I don’t want or need anything at all in the world!
She made this pronouncement with such force that Jimmy felt compelled to try to disguise his fright with a smile that he knew was no more a smile than the response to a dentist’s order to “Open wide.”
You’ve got good teeth. Young man, you’re blessed with a very fine set of teeth, said Mrs. Goforth.
She leaned toward him a little, squinting, and then said: Are they real?
Oh yes, said Jimmy, except for one molar back here.
Well, I have good teeth, too. In fact my teeth are so good people think they are false. But look!
She took her large incisors between her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate the firmness of their attachment. See, not even a bridge, and I’ll be seventy-two years old in October. In my whole mouth I’ve had exactly three fillings, which are still there. You see them?
She pulled back her jowls, dropping her lower jaw till the morning sun lit three bits of go
ld in the purplish cavern.
This tooth here, she continued, was slightly chipped when my daughter’s third baby hit me in the mouth with the butt of a water pistol at Murray Bay, Canada. I told my daughter that child would grow into a monster and it sure as hell did—
Might I have some sugar? Jimmy interposed gently.
Oh, no thank you, she muttered rather crossly, I never take it because they once found a small trace of sugar in my urine…
A slightly frightened look clouded her gaze for a moment. All at once she sneezed. The sneeze was not at all violent but it seemed to throw her into a regular frenzy.
Angelina, Angelina! she bellowed. Subito, subito, Kleenex!
She sat crouched over, awaiting another sneeze, but all that happened was a couple of sniffs. She sat up slowly and fixed her angry glare on his face again. I’m allergic to something that grows around here. I haven’t found out what it is, but when I do—
The sentence was no less forceful for remaining unfinished.
I hope it is not the bougainvillea vines, said Jimmy. I have never seen such wonderful bougainvillea vines in my life, or so many of them, either!
No, it isn’t the bougainvillea, she said in her warning whisper, but I’m having an allergy specialist flown down here from Paris to check me with every goddammed plant on the place, and every animal, too!
She brooded a moment more, her slow gaze wandering among the two cocker spaniels, the aviary, the chained monkey, a kitten gazing Narcissus-like into the fishpool. That’s right, she growled. He’s going to check me with every plant and animal on the place.… Then she got up and left him sitting there, as if she were blown from her chair by her third faint sneeze. She went, crouched over, halfway down the terrace on little tottering steps, then stood stock-still and sneezed for a fourth time.