He is a senior at a small college in northern Wisconsin where his father is bursar. His family is extremely proud of the educational progress of their children. Three sisters have assorted PhDs and MAs, piling up degrees on into the middle of life (he speaks in a rapid rehearsed way, a way he deems appropriate for our rare encounter, and when he is forced to use an ordinary word like “bus”—having no other way of conferring upon it a vintage flavor, he says it in quotes and with a wry expression). Upon completion of his second trimester and having enough credits to graduate, he has lit out for New Orleans to load bananas for a while and perhaps join the merchant marine. Smiling tensely, he strains forward and strikes himself dumb. For a while, he says. He means that he hopes to find himself a girl, the rarest of rare pieces, and live the life of Rudolfo on the balcony, sitting around on the floor and experiencing soul-communions. I have my doubts. In the first place, he will defeat himself, jump ten miles ahead of himself, scare the wits out of some girl with his great choking silences, want her so desperately that by his own peculiar logic he can’t have her; or having her, jump another ten miles beyond both of them and end by fleeing to the islands where, propped at the rail of his ship in some rancid port, he will ponder his own loneliness.
In fact, there is nothing more to say to him. The best one can do is deflate the pressure a bit, the terrible romantic pressure, and leave him alone. He is a moviegoer, though of course he does not go to movies.
The salesman has no such trouble. Like many businessmen, he is a better metaphysician than the romantic. For example, he gives me a sample of his product, a simple ell of tempered and blued steel honed to a two-edged blade. Balancing it in his hand, he tests its heft and temper. The hand knows the blade, practices its own metaphysic of the goodness of the steel.
“Thank you very much,” I say, accepting the warm blade.
“You know all in the world you have to do?”
“No.”
“Walk into the office—” (He sells this attachment to farm implement stores) “—and ask the man how much is his bush hog blade. He’ll tell you about nine and a half a pair. Then all you do is drop this on his desk and say thirty five cents and you can’t break it.”
“What does it do?”
“Anything. Clears, mulches, peas, beans, saplings so big, anything. That little sombitch will go now.” He strikes one hand straight out past the other, and I have a sense of the storied and even legendary properties of the blade, attested in the peculiar Southern esteem of the excellence of machinery: the hot-damn beat-all risible accolade conferred when some new engine sallies forth in its outlandish scissoring side-winding foray.
We sit on the rear seat, the salesman with his knee cocked up, heel under him, arm levered out over his knee. He wears black shoes and white socks for his athlete’s foot and now and then sends down a finger to appease the itching. It pleases him to speak of his cutter and of his family down in Murfreesboro and speak all the way to Union City and not once to inquire of me and this pleases me since I would not know what to say. Businessmen are our only metaphysicians, but the trouble is, they are one-track metaphysicians. By the time the salesman gets off in Union City, my head is spinning with facts about the thirty five cent cutter. It is as if I had lived in Murfreesboro all my life.
Canal Street is dark and almost empty. The last parade, the Krewe of Comus, has long since disappeared down Royal Street with its shuddering floats and its blazing flambeau. Street cleaners sweep confetti and finery into soggy heaps in the gutters. The cold mizzling rain smells of sour paper pulp. Only a few maskers remain abroad, tottering apes clad in Spanish moss, Frankenstein monsters with bolts through their necks, and a neighborhood gang or two making their way arm in arm, wheeling and whip-popping, back to their trucks.
Kate is dry-eyed and abstracted. She stands gazing about as if she had landed in a strange city. We decide to walk up Loyola Avenue to get our cars. The romantic is ahead of us, at the window of a lingerie shop, the gay sort where black net panties invest legless torsos. Becoming aware of us before we pass and thinking to avoid the embarrassment of a greeting (what are we to say, after all, and suppose the right word fails us?), he hurries away, hands thrust deep in his pockets, his small well-modeled head tricking to and fro above the great collar of his car coat.
Five
1
“I AM NOT SAYING that I pretend to understand you. What I am saying is that after two days of complete mystification it has at last dawned on me what it is I fail to understand. That is at least a step in the right direction. It was the novelty of it that put me off, you see. I do believe that you have discovered something new under the sun.”
It is with a rare and ominous objectivity that my aunt addresses me Wednesday morning. In the very violence of her emotion she has discovered the energy to master it, so that now, in the flush of her victory, she permits herself to use the old forms of civility and even of humor. The only telltale sign of menace is the smile through her eyes, which is a bit too narrow and finely drawn.
“Would you verify my hypothesis? Is not that your discovery? First, is it not true that in all of past history people who found themselves in difficult situations behaved in certain familiar ways, well or badly, courageously or cowardly, with distinction or mediocrity, with honor or dishonor. They are recognizable. They display courage, pity, fear, embarrassment, joy, sorrow, and so on. Such anyhow has been the funded experience of the race for two or three thousand years, has it not? Your discovery, as best as I can determine, is that there is an alternative which no one has hit upon. It is that one finding oneself in one of life’s critical situations need not after all respond in one of the traditional ways. No. One may simply default. Pass. Do as one pleases, shrug, turn on one’s heel and leave. Exit. Why after all need one act humanly? Like all great discoveries, it is breathtakingly simple.” She smiles a quizzical-legal sort of smile which reminds me of Judge Anse.
The house was no different this morning. The same chorus of motors, vacuum cleaners, dishwasher, laundromat, hum and throb against each other. From an upper region, reverberating down the back stairwell, comes the muted hollering of Bessie Coe, as familiar and querulous a sound as the sparrows under the eaves. Nor was Uncle Jules different, except only in his slight embarrassment, giving me wide berth as I passed him on the porch and saying his good morning briefly and sorrowfully as if the farthest limit of his disapproval lay in the brevity of his greeting. Kate was nowhere to be seen. Until ten o’clock my aunt, I know, is to be found at her roll-to? desk where she keeps her “accounts.” There is nothing to do but go directly in to her and stand at ease until she takes notice of me. Now she looks over, as erect and handsome as the Black Prince.
“Yes?”
“I am sorry that through a misunderstanding or thoughtlessness on my part you were not told of Kate’s plans to go with me to Chicago. No doubt it was my thoughtlessness. In any case I am sorry and I hope that your anger—”
“Anger? You are mistaken. It was not anger. It was discovery.”
“Discovery of what?”
“Discovery that someone in whom you had placed great hopes was suddenly not there. It is like leaning on what seems to be a good stalwart shoulder and feeling it go all mushy and queer.”
We both gaze down at the letter opener, the soft iron sword she has withdrawn from the grasp of the helmeted figure on the inkstand.
“I am sorry for that.”
“The fact that you are a stranger to me is perhaps my fault. It was stupid of me not to believe it earlier. For now I do believe that you are not capable of caring for anyone, Kate, Jules, or myself—no more than that Negro man walking down the street—less so, in fact, since I have a hunch he and I would discover some slight tradition in common.” She seems to notice for the first time that the tip of the blade is bent. “I honestly don’t believe it occurred to you to let us know that you and Kate were leaving, even though you knew how desperately sick she was. I truly do not think it ever occ
urred to you that you were abusing a sacred trust in carrying that poor child off on a fantastic trip like that or that you were betraying the great trust and affection she has for you. Well?” she asks when I do not reply.
I try as best I can to appear as she would have me, as being, if not right, then wrong in a recognizable, a right form of wrongness. But I can think of nothing to say.
“Do you have any notion of how I felt when, not twelve hours after Kate attempted suicide, she vanishes without a trace?”
We watch the sword as she lets it fall over the fulcrum of her forefinger; it goes tat’t’t on the brass hinge of the desk. Then, so suddenly that I almost start, my aunt sheathes the sword and places her hand flat on the desk. Turning it over, she flexes her fingers and studies the nails, which are deeply scored by longitudinal ridges.
“Were you intimate with Kate?”
“Intimate?”
“Yes.”
“Not very.”
“I ask you again. Were you intimate with her?”
“I suppose so. Though intimate is not quite the word.”
“You suppose so. Intimate is not quite the word. I wonder what is the word. You see—” she says with a sort of humor, “—there is another of my hidden assumptions. All these years I have been assuming that between us words mean roughly the same thing, that among certain people, gentlefolk I don’t mind calling them, there exists a set of meanings held in common, that a certain manner and a certain grace come as naturally as breathing. At the great moments of life—success, failure, marriage, death—our kind of folks have always possessed a native instinct for behavior, a natural piety or grace, I don’t mind calling it. Whatever else we did or failed to do, we always had that. I’ll make you a little confession. I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they’re better than other people. You’re damn right we’re better. We’re better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. We do not whine. We do not organize a minority group and blackmail the government. We do not prize mediocrity for mediocrity’s sake. Oh I am aware that we hear a great many flattering things nowadays about your great common man—you know, it has always been revealing to me that he is perfectly content so to be called, because that is exactly what he is: the common man and when I say common I mean common as hell. Our civilization has achieved a distinction of sorts. It will be remembered not for its technology nor even its wars but for its novel ethos. Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we’re sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated and are congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don’t know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. Didi Lovell is the most sincere person I know: every time she crawls in bed with somebody else, she does so with the utmost sincerity. We are the most sincere Laodiceans who ever got flushed down the sinkhole of history. No, my young friend, I am not ashamed to use the word class. They say out there we think we’re better. You’re damn right we’re better. And don’t think they don’t know it—” She raises the sword to Prytania Street. “Let me tell you something. If he out yonder is your prize exhibit for the progress of the human race in the past three thousand years, then all I can say is that I am content to be fading out of the picture. Perhaps we are a biological sport. I am not sure. But one thing I am sure of: we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we’ll look them in the eye without apology.” Now my aunt swivels around to face me and not so bad-humoredly. “I did my best for you, son. I gave you all I had. More than anything I wanted to pass on to you the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a gaiety, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women—the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life. Ah well. Still you can tell me one thing. I know you’re not a bad boy—I wish you were. But how did it happen that none of this ever meant anything to you? Clearly it did not. Would you please tell me? I am genuinely curious.”
I cannot tear my eyes from the sword. Years ago I bent the tip trying to open a drawer. My aunt looks too. Does she suspect?
“That would be difficult for me to say. You say that none of what you said ever meant anything to me. That is not true. On the contrary. I have never forgotten anything you ever said. In fact I have pondered over it all my life. My objections, though they are not exactly objections, cannot be expressed in the usual way. To tell the truth, I can’t express them at all.”
“I see. Do you condone your behavior with Kate?”
“Condone?” Condone. I screw up an eye. “I don’t suppose so.”
“You don’t suppose so.” My aunt nods gravely, almost agreeably, in her wry legal manner. “You knew that Kate was suicidal?”
“No.”
“Would you have cared if Kate had killed herself?”
“Yes.”
After a long silence she asks: “You have nothing more to say?”
I shake my head.
Mercer opens the door and sticks his head in, takes one whiff of the air inside, and withdraws immediately.
“Then tell me this. Yes, tell me this!” my aunt says, brightening as, groping, she comes at last to the nub of the matter. “Tell me this and this is all I shall ever want to know. I am assuming that we both recognize that you had a trust toward Kate. Perhaps my assumption was mistaken. But I know that you knew she was taking drugs. Is that not correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that she was taking drugs during this recent trip?”
“Yes.”
“And you did what you did?”
“Yes.”
“That is all you have to say?”
I am silent. Mercer starts the waxer. It was permission for this he sought. I think of nothing in particular. A cry goes up in the street outside, and there comes into my sight the Negro my aunt spoke of. He is Cothard, the last of the chimney sweeps, an outlandish blueblack Negro dressed in a frock coat and bashed-in top hat and carrying over his shoulder a bundle of palmetto leaves and brown straw. The cry comes again. “R-r-r-ramonez la chiminée du haut en bas!”
“One last question to satisfy my idle curiosity. What has been going on in your mind during all the years when we listened to music together, read the Crito, and spoke together—or was it only I who spoke—good Lord, I can’t remember—of goodness and truth and beauty and nobility?”
Another cry and the ramoneur is gone. There is nothing for me to say.
“Don’t you love these things? Don’t you live by them?”
“No.”
“What do you love? What do you live by?”
I am silent.
“Tell me where I have failed you.”
“You haven’t.”
“What do you think is the purpose of life—to go to the movies and dally with every girl that comes along?”
“No.”
A ledger lies open on her desk, one of the old-fashioned kind with a marbled cover, in which she has always kept account of her properties, sundry service stations, Canadian mines, patents—the peculiar business accumulation of a doctor—left to her by old Dr Wills. “Well.” She closes it briskly and smiles up at me, a smile which, more than anything which has gone before, marks an ending. Smiling, she gives me her
hand, head to one side, in her old party style. But it is her withholding my name that assigns me my new status. So she might have spoken to any one of a number of remotely connected persons, such as a Spring Fiesta tourist encountered by accident in her own hall.
We pass Mercer who stands respectfully against the wall. He murmurs a greeting which through an exquisite calculation expresses his affection for me and at the same time declares his allegiance to my aunt. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him hop nimbly into the dining room, full of fizzing good spirits. We find ourselves on the porch.
“I do thank you so much for coming by,” says my aunt, fingering her necklace and looking past me at the Vaudrieul house.
Kate hails me at the corner. She leans into my MG, tucking her blouse, as brisk as a stewardess.
“You’re stupid stupid stupid,” she says with a malevolent look.