It was a long walk. She did not remember ever having walked so far in the city before. She had no worry about her parents’ anxiety because she had not arrived home at the regular time—when she did, anyway. They believed in Respecting the Privacy of Our Children, and never asking any questions. She was twenty years old; but her parents had been Respecting her Privacy since she was ten years old. What did that mean? she asked herself. That they really didn’t care a damn for her at all and only wanted not to be bothered? Her parents and their contemporaries and social counterparts believed in respecting the Privacy of everyone except the Culturally Deprived—who apparently neither wanted nor deserved any decent human reticence. Who had degraded them so? Her parents, and their kind. It was her parents and their kind, including Dr. Pfeiffer, who had brought her to this dithering state, and millions of other young people like her. This awful, empty, agonizing state. It would serve her parents right if she came home, sometime, vividly pregnant, or drugged. Or at least dead drunk and with her “clothing disarranged,” as the newspapers delicately put it. She wondered if that was part of the reason why the papers reported so much “rising crime” as they did lately. What in God’s name had the world really given young people like herself? Fun times, the best of food, education, money, cars, wonderful clothes, beauty parlors, refined lectures, “understanding of the adolescent,” something they euphorically called “love,” and that was about it. Even the so-called poor had all that, too. But, what else was there to “give”? They have really given us nothing at all, thought Lucy, and thought again of the river, the cold dark river which would put a stop to questions.
The summer western sky was a brilliant scarlet when she reached the Sanctuary. The men working on the lawns had left. Now the lawns stretched before her with their flower beds and their trees and their neatly raked gravel paths. The sun lay on the red roof of the building yonder, like a fire itself. Lucy walked up the path; it was really steeper than it seemed. It was wide enough for a car; they should have a parking lot. Or, maybe no one ever came. No; it was rumored that the place was always full of whiners and sick people, to see the doctor or the psychiatrist or the clergyman, who waited to listen to them or hand them out a placebo. I’ll be something different for him, thought Lucy with some hard grimness. He’s never known anyone like me. I swear to God, if he gives me any of that psychiatric crap about “facing maturity” I’ll spit in his face! What’s immature about my body or my mind? What is there that I don’t know?
I should have gone away to college, she thought, as she panted in the heat and with the effort of walking. That’s what Dad and Mom wanted. “New experiences, new outlook. That’s What Our Children Deserve in These Days.” It was to spite them that I insisted on going to the university here. It occurs to me that I’m always thinking up ways to spite them lately. No, I’ve been spiting them ever since I was a kid. It was the only pleasure I ever had, spiting them. And they’d look so Hurt and Confused, but never a slam on my face, never that old-fashioned discipline. They never told me anything worthwhile at all!
She looked in her purse for her wallet, the beautiful gold purse her parents had given her on her last birthday. It was full of bills, as usual. She crumpled a ten-dollar bill in her hand, in preparation for the collection. That should please the replica of Dr. Pfeiffer in there! I swear, she thought, if he tells me I’m so Advantaged and that I should direct my thoughts and actions to the betterment of “humanity” I’ll give him a sample of the talk of The New Breed! That should curl the edges of his nice haircut. She was full of fresh hatred and fresh despair. She did not know whom she actually hated with such ferocity and such desolation. But there was a hunger in her for something she did not know, a ravenous hunger which was like furious starvation.
She pushed open the bronze doors with angry impatience and charged inside the room, terribly anxious only to confront the hypocrite who would lie to her as he had lied to multitudes of others, lie to her as she had been lied to all her life, with such kindness and such sickening “understanding.” But she saw only three people in the waiting room, two elderly women and one young man with a face as desolate and intense as her own. It was a nice, quiet room, beautifully furnished. There was a marble tablet sunken in one marble wall: “I can do all things in Him Who Strengthens me.” Silly damned thing. Who was “He”?
She sat down in an empty chair. No one looked at her though she looked at the others challengingly, especially the young man who wore a very fine sports coat. His hair was too long, too carefully combed. Lucy was accustomed to having young men stare at her and smile hopefully. She prepared a contemptuous expression, but the young man was not even aware of her presence. This startled her; she looked at him more closely. Why, he was one of her own kind! Funny. Did he feel the way she did, too? No, she was unique. He had another problem. But she smiled bitterly. She couldn’t stand, any longer, young men of her generation. She glared at the youth. He, too, perhaps, had never been told anything of value, either. They were two of a kind. It was strange that she hated herself in him, and felt no pity and nothing but a hopelessness. So many of us! Perhaps I’m not unique at all.
She picked up a magazine, expecting only religious matter. But the magazine was a pictorial one, full of people in gay, exciting occupations or engaged in fun. She threw it aside. There was The Wall Street Journal. So, people like her father came here, too. She saw a dim nameplate. She looked at the stock-market reports with vague interest. Her father had given her a nice block of stock on her eighteenth birthday. Then a wave of sickness came over her and she threw aside the paper also. She wished she had brought one of her schoolbooks, for she had a final tomorrow. She hadn’t studied, really, for nearly a month. What was the use?
She had been vaguely aware of a chiming which had intruded just a little on her thoughts, a soft chiming and then a rustle as people rose and went to that door yonder where the clergyman or the psychiatrist or the doctor or the social worker waited to talk to the intruders. She allowed herself the pleasure of thinking of what she would say to the kook inside. She would shout in his stupid face. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The whole stupid world.
The chime sounded. She ignored it. It chimed again, with gentle insistence. She lifted her fallen head. She was alone in the room. So the chime was for herself. She hesitated. Then she rose, smoothed down her wrinkled rose linen dress and slowly approached the door. It was cool in the room, but she was sweating again. In spite of her delicate deodorants she could smell her own body odor, acrid and insistent. She could smell the cologne she had used this morning after her shower. She was suddenly aware of herself as she had never been aware before, and it was as if she were naked and exposed in all her suffering, a frightened child, a lost child, who had been deprived remorselessly—of what? But, strangely enough, she was herself and all that was herself, something she could not remember ever feeling before. A distinct personality, with responsibility for herself, and with no responsibility for another person, and with no reason to smile and talk gaily.
She pushed open the door and saw within the second room nothing at all but whitely beaming marble walls and shining floor and a large marble chair with blue cushions and an oval blue-curtained alcove. The door closed behind her. She stared at the alcove. Did he prefer to be hidden? Maybe it was Dr. Pfeiffer behind that curtain, the urbane and polished Dr. Pfeiffer with his soft voice urging Social Responsibility. She felt a bilious taste on her tongue. That would be a joke—Dr. Pfeiffer. But no, she had once heard him talk indulgently of the “superstition” of the alcove and of one of his parishioners—a family friend—John Service, who had tried to get the Sanctuary abolished. Dr. Pfeiffer had been in hearty agreement with Johnnie Service. And then Johnnie Service had unaccountably stopped going to Dr. Pfeiffer’s church and had seemed changed a little and less loquacious about Social Responsibilities when he talked to Dad. In fact he and Dad had quarreled on the subject once. She wished she could remember what they had said. It seemed very important now.
>
Lucy moved slowly to the chair, and coughed tentatively to inform the man behind the curtain that she had entered. It was very funny, but she thought that he had become instantly aware of her. He must have a one-way mirror or something. But the walls about the alcove were smooth. However, science could do anything these days, and nothing was what it seemed.
She sat down, her purse primly on her knees. She looked about for a receptacle, but saw none. Well, the collection would come later, or she could lay the bill on his desk. She looked at the curtain. It did not stir, and there was no sound of breathing. Yet the impression of a presence grew stronger.
“Good evening,” said Lucy, the well-bred girl to an elder.
The man did not reply.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” she said, and thought that the man must be astonished for people generally knew why they had come to this place. Lucy smiled. “I don’t suppose you get girls like me, privileged girls, of good family, and with everything they ever wanted, love and all that. That’s what I am. Do you want my name, or something?”
It was really crazy. She suddenly had the idea that the man knew her name and all about her. She cringed a little. Then, it was a friend of the family, and she blushed with mortification. The curtain remained tranquilly folded in all its lustre and beautiful blueness. She rose and went to it, and saw the button near it which informed her that if she wished to see the man who listened she had only to press the button. She did so. Nothing happened. The curtain did not move. So, he recognized Lucy Marner! So what? Let him listen and write his notes and know, once and for all, that all that she had, and so many like her, was nothing, worse than nothing, less than nothing. It would give him something to think about and maybe talk seriously with his stupid colleagues who were all as “liberal” as himself. Perhaps he would even talk it over with Dad and Mom. She grinned, spitefully. Let someone tell her parents what she really thought about them and perhaps they would be jolted out of their damned complacency. She hoped he would tell her profs, too, with their supercilious smiles and their jocund sense of reality and their rich, indulgent smiles when someone like herself asked “Why?”
“All right,” she said angrily. She returned to the chair. “You know me. Who cares? Tell everybody. Tell the whole damned world. I’m sick of your kind, sick of everybody.”
The man waited. She received no awareness that he was annoyed. He merely waited.
“I’ll make it short and sweet,” said Lucy. “I’m what the profs and the sociologists and the clergy admiringly call ‘The New Breed.’ You know? The young people who ask questions and dissent against everything and insist on facts and intelligent answers. The dissatisfied New Generation who won’t be put off with the old clichés and old pat explanations and the old theology and old traditions. The generation which wants to know Why. The generation which wants replies—which will satisfy the New World and the World of the Future.”
The taste of bile was sicker on her tongue. She leaned toward the curtain. “Do you know what they answer now? They answer nothing! They merely admire us, God damn them! They merely stand off and say, with nods of their silly heads, ‘The New Breed,’ and that’s supposed to be an answer and we’re supposed to admire ourselves and be satisfied!”
It was crazy, really, but she thought she heard the man say, “There is no New Breed, but there is always an answer to the old eternal question.”
“What?” she muttered. “I thought you said—something. But I don’t think you said anything, did you? I’m just talking to myself. I was thinking of Granny, and I imagined that she was speaking to me again. My father’s mother.”
The man said nothing. He merely waited. Lucy had the impression that his face was turned to her alertly behind the curtain, and that he was hearing something he had heard thousands of times before. Crazy.
But Lucy’s young tense face began to glow softly. “I’d like to tell you about Granny. She wasn’t very old when she died. Less than fifty. You couldn’t have known her. She lived in Cleveland, and I understand you’re a younger man and that you’ve never been out of this city. Young? No, they say you’re old, very, very old. Are you?”
Oh, mad, mad! She thought the man had answered that he was much older than time. She put the back of her hand to her forehead. “I’m sure a mess,” she said. “Now I’m imagining things, things I thought you said to me. Insane things.”
What was that she had heard? A sigh? No, it was herself who was sighing.
“Granny,” she said, in a young and desperate voice. “I was about twelve years old. She lived in Cleveland. That was the year my parents went abroad and everything was so prosperous that they couldn’t get anyone to take care of me adequately here at home. I was a big girl, and very mature. But to my parents I was a ‘child.’ Granny offered to take care of me in her house in Cleveland while Dad and Mom were gone, and so they took me to her. I had seen her only three times before. She wasn’t popular with Mom, especially. Mom said she was ‘medieval’ and that she didn’t want me ‘exposed’ to ‘foolish ideas.’ Mom’s very modern, you know. She’s a lot more modern than I am. Mom’s right out there in orbit with the astronauts!”
Lucy burst out laughing. She did not know how desperate her young laugh was.
“In fact,” she said, when she could control herself, “Mom hates what she calls the ‘feminine mystique.’ She’s forty-one, and about a thousand years younger than I am. She thinks a woman can do ‘everything.’ If Washington doesn’t watch out Mom is going to march on it and demand that she be the first female astronaut. Maybe I’m imagining that and exaggerating, but Mom’s like that. She prides herself on being aggressive and right with it. To look at her you’d think she was only about ten years older than I am, and she just loves to have everybody tell her that, and they do. As for Dad, he looks like a juvenile. He’s younger than young. He’s like a kid. You’d never suspect he was the most prosperous realtor in town. Younger than young. And modern! My God! They’re so modern they make me feel as ancient as the hills. And sick to my stomach.”
“Yes,” said the man. “It is very piteous.”
“What?” cried Lucy, moving forward on the chair. “‘Piteous?’ Is that what you said, or am I imagining things again?”
The man did not answer her. But Lucy was certain that he had said what she imagined he had said. She leaned back in her chair. She frowned. Piteous? Her vital, young, bouncing parents? Her laughing, gay, serene, healthy parents? What was piteous about them? They “adjusted” to everything. They were tolerant about everything and serious about nothing. They smiled at her when she tried to tell them of her despair. They said it was a “phase.” An adolescent turmoil. They did not know that they had taken away—What had they taken away, they who had given her everything, including boundless love?
“Granny,” she said again, and now for the first time her young eyes filled with tears. “I did love Granny, though I never saw her again after I was twelve and my parents came back from Europe. Her house was so—tranquil. It’s funny that I don’t think my own home is tranquil like Granny’s, yet our home is really so peaceful. No one ever raises his voice. Everything is good humor and sensible and can be ‘discussed reasonably.’ Yet, it isn’t tranquil the way Granny’s house was. There—there seemed a presence in Granny’s house, just as there is a presence here. Now, isn’t that absolutely mad?”
She pressed her pink young palms together fiercely. The tears were spilling over her pale cheeks. “I—I’ve talked to Dr. Pfeiffer. He’s our clergyman, you know. I’ve tried to ask him—things. About what Granny told me. And he just touches me gently, and says, ‘That was right for your grandmother’s time, Lucy. But you are The New Breed. This old gent admires you so much. You refuse to accept the circumscribed answers. You ask wider questions. Yes, I admire you so much. You have given us a great deal.’
“The thing,” cried Lucy, “is that they don’t give us any answers! They talk about science and ‘new discoveries.’ And Social Pro
blems. As if social problems stand out in space and are apart from us! As if we don’t have any personal identity at all, and as if we aren’t hungry for something that would—that would—make life meaningful to us! Surely people aren’t just collectivist animals, like a herd of cattle! Surely we are alive as individuals, aren’t we? Surely we have a responsibility to ourselves alone, first of all, before we have a responsibility to other people? Surely we have—have—what did Granny call it? Souls!”
She blushed. That silly, silly word. The man must be laughing silently behind that curtain. She looked at the curtain defiantly. The sweet and fragrant silence about her appeared to move closer, as if not to miss any word she said. Insensibly her taut body relaxed in gratitude. She smiled tremulously, and her face paled again. She began to fumble with her bag, and she fished out a crushed clipping from a newspaper. She held it out to the curtain.
“I’ve something here that explains better than I can what I mean. It was printed in Pravda, the Russian newspaper, and it was reported in our newspapers. This girl, she was named Svetlina, in the paper, and she lives in Moscow. Seventeen years old. She wrote to Pravda. I’ll read you what she says, for it’s exactly what I mean.
‘“I consider the world stupidly conceived and irrelevant. We learn and work all our lives and study, and then when we are valuable to humanity and our country we grow old and die. What is the meaning of all that? What is more worthless? All that effort which ends in nothing and extinction. Our scientists should try to develop an immortality pill for us.’