The Moviegoer

Five

“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 occurred 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.

“What?”

“I heard it all, you poor stupid bastard.” Then, appearing to forget herself, she drums her nails rapidly upon the windshield. “Are you going home now?”

“Yes.”

“Wait for me there.”

IT IS A GLOOMY day. Gentilly is swept fitfully by desire and by an east wind from the burning swamps at Chef Menteur.

Today is my thirtieth birthday and I sit on the ocean wave in the schoolyard and wait for Kate and think of nothing. Now in the thirty-first year of my dark pilgrimage on this earth and knowing less than I ever knew before, having learned only to recognize merde When I see it, having inherited no more from my father than a good nose for merde, for every species of shit that flies — my only talent — smelling merde from every quarter, living in fact in the very century of merde, the great shithouse of scientific humanism where needs are satisfied, everyone becomes an anyone, a warm and creative person, and prospers like a dung beetle, and one hundred percent of people are humanists and ninety-eight percent believe in God, and men are dead, dead, dead; and the malaise has settled like a fall-out and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall — on this my thirtieth birthday, I know nothing and there is nothing to do but fall prey to desire.

Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral. My search has been abandoned; it is no match for my aunt, her rightness and her despair, her despairing of me and her despairing of herself. Whenever I take leave of my aunt after one of her serious talks, I have to find a girl.

Fifty minutes of waiting for Kate on the ocean wave and I am beside myself. What has happened to her? She has spoken to my aunt and kicked me out. There is nothing to do but call Sharon at the office. The little pagoda of aluminum and glass, standing in the neutral ground of Elysian Fields at the very heart of the uproar of a public zone, is trim and pretty on the outside but evil-smelling within. Turning slowly around, I take note of the rhymes in pencil and the sad cartoons of solitary lovers; the wire thrills and stops and thrills and in the interval there comes into my ear my own breath as if my very self stood beside me and would not speak. The phone does not answer. Has she quit?

Some children have come into the playground across the street; two big boys give them a ride on the ocean wave. Ordinarily the little children ride only the merry-go-round which is set close to the ground and revolves in a fixed orbit.

I’ve got to find her, Rory. It is certain now that my aunt is right and that Kate knows it and that nothing is left but Sharon. The east wind whistles through the eaves of my pagoda and presses the glass against its fittings. I try the apartment. She is out. But Joyce is there, Joyce-in-the-window, Joyce of the naughty-you mouth and the buckskin jacket.

“This is Jack Bolling, Joyce,” says a voice from old Virginia.

“Well well.”

“Is Sharon there?”

“She is out with her mother and Stan.” Joyce’s voice has a Middle West snap. Moth-errr, she says and: we-ull we-ull. “I don’t know when shill be back.” She sounds like Pepper Young’s sister.

“Who is Stan?”

“Stan Shamoun, her fiancé.”

“Oh yes, that’s right.” What’s right? She’s not only quit. She’s marrying the macaroni. “What about you? Are you getting married?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been wanting to meet you for some time.”

“I just thot of something.”

“What?”

“The Lord of Misrule reigned yesterday—”

“Who?” Is she starting out on some sort of complicated Midwestern joke? Grinning like a lunatic, I hold on for dear life.

Joyce goes on talking in a roguish voice about the Lord of Misrule and a fellow down from Purdue, a dickens if she ever saw one.

The two big boys on the playground have got the ocean wave going fast enough so they can jump on and keep up speed by kicking the ground away on the low passes. Iii-oorrr iii-oorrr goes the dry socket on its pole in a faraway childish music and the children embrace the iron struts and lay back their heads to watch the whirling world.

“Joyce, I wonder if I may be frank with you”—the voice comes into my ear and I myself am silent.

“Please do. I like frank people.”

“I thought you were that kind of person—” Old confederate Marlon Brando — a reedy insinuating voice, full of winks and leers and above all pleased with itself. What a shock. On and on it goes. “—I know some folks might think it was a little unconventional but I’m gon tell you anyway. I know you don’t remember it but I saw you last Saturday—” It is too much trouble to listen.

“I remember!”

Round and round goes the ocean wave screeching out its Petrouchka music iii-oorrr iii-oorrr and now belling out so far that the inner bumper catches the pole and slings around in a spurt so outrageously past all outrage that the children embrace the iron struts for dear life.

“I’m only home for lunch,” says Joyce. “But why don’t you come over Saturday night. Some of the kids will be there. Praps we could all go to Pat O’Brien’s.” Joyce makes herself out to be a big girl child, one of the kids, and all set for high jinks.

“No praps about it.”

A watery sunlight breaks through the smoke of the Chef and turns the sky yellow. Elysian Fields glistens like a vat of sulfur; the playground looks as if it alone had survived the end of the world. At last I spy Kate; her stiff little Plymouth comes nosing into my bus stop. There she sits like a bomber pilot, resting on her wheel and looking sideways at the children and not seeing, and she could be I myself, sooty eyed and nowhere.

Is it possible that — For a long time I have secretly hoped for the end of the world and believed with Kate and my aunt and Sam Yerger and many other people that only after the end could the few who survive creep out of their holes and discover themselves to be themselves and live as merrily as children among the viny ruins. Is it possible that — it is not too late?

Iii-oorrr goes the ocean wave, its struts twinkling in the golden light, its skirt swaying to and fro like a young dancing girl.

“I’d like to very much, Joyce. May I bring along my own fiancée, Kate Cutrer? I want you and Sharon to meet her.”

“Why shore, why shore,” says Joyce in a peculiar Midwest take-off of her roommate Sharon and sounding somewhat relieved, to tell the truth.

The playground is deserted. I notice that the school itself is locked and empty. Traffic goes hissing along Elysian Fields and the jaybirds jeer in the camphor trees. People turn in now and then at the school gate but they make for the church next door. At first I suppose it is a wedding or a funeral, but they leave by twos and threes and more arrive. Then, as a pair of youths come ambling along the sidewalk, I catch sight of the smudge at the hair roots. Of course. It is Ash Wednesday. Sharon has not quit me. All Cutrer branch offices close on Ash Wednesday.

We sit in Kate’s car, a 1951 Plymouth which, with all her ups and downs, Kate has ever cared for faithfully. It is a tall gray coupe and it runs with a light gaseous sound. When she drives, head ducked down, hands placed symmetrically on the wheel, the pale underflesh of her arms trembling slightly, her paraphernalia — straw seat, Kleenex dispenser, magnetic tray for cigarettes — all set in order about her, it is easy to believe that the light stiff little car has become gradually transformed by its owner until it is hers herself in its every nut and bolt. When it comes fresh from the service station, its narrow tires still black and wet, the very grease itself seems not the usual muck but the thrifty amber sap of the slender axle tree.

“Why didn’t you tell her about our plans?” Kate still holds the steering wheel and surveys the street. “I was in the library and heard every word. You idiot.”

Kate is pleased. She is certain that I have carried off a grand stoic gesture, like a magazine hero.

“Did you tell her?” I ask.

“I told her we are to be married.”

“Are we?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She didn’t. She only hoped that you might come to see her this afternoon.”

“I have to anyway.”

“Why?”

“I promised her one week ago I would tell her what I planned to do.”

“What do you plan to do?”

I shrug. There is only one thing I can do: listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along, and for good and selfish reasons. It only remains to decide whether this vocation is best pursued in a service station or—

“Are you going to medical school?”

“If she wants me to.”

“Does that mean you can’t marry me now?”

“No. You have plenty of money.”

“Then let us understand each other.”

“All right.”

“I don’t know whether I can succeed.”

“I know you don’t.”

“It seems the wildest sort of thing to do.”

“Yes.”

“We had better make it fast.”

“All right.”

“I am so afraid.”

Kate’s forefinger begins to explore the adjacent thumb, testing the individual spikes of the feathered flesh. A florid new Mercury pulls up behind us and a Negro gets out and goes up into the church. He is more respectable than respectable; he is more middle-class than one could believe: his Archie Moore mustache, the way he turns and, seeing us see him, casts a weather eye at the sky; the way he plucks a handkerchief out of his rear pocket with a flurry of his coat tail and blows his nose in a magic placative gesture (you see, I have been here before: it is a routine matter).

“If I could be sure you knew how frightened I am, it would help a great deal.”

“You can be sure.”

“Not merely of marriage. This afternoon I wanted some cigarettes, but the thought of going to the drugstore turned me to jelly.”

I am silent.

“I am frightened when I am alone and I am frightened when I am with people. The only time I’m not frightened is when I’m with you. You’ll have to be with me a great deal.”

“I will.”

“Do you want to?” “Yes.”

“I will be under treatment a long time.”

“I know that.”

“And I’m not sure I’ll ever change. Really change.”

“You might.”

“But I think I see a way. It seems to me that if we are together a great deal and you tell me the simplest things and not laugh at me — I beg you for pity’s own sake never to laugh at me — tell me things like: Kate, it is all right for you to go down to the drugstore, and give me a kiss, then I will believe you. Will you do that?” she says with her not-quite-pure solemnity, her slightly reflected Sarah Lawrence solemnity.

“Yes, I’ll do that.”

She has started plucking at her thumb in earnest, tearing away little shreds of flesh. I take her hand and kiss the blood.

“But you must try not to hurt yourself so much.”

“I will try! I will!”

The Negro has already come outside. His forehead is an ambiguous sienna color and pied: it is impossible to be sure that he received ashes. When he gets in his Mercury, he does not leave immediately but sits looking down at something on the seat beside him. A sample case? An insurance manual? I watch him closely in the rear-view mirror. It is impossible to say why he is here. Is it part and parcel of the complex business of coming up in the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here at the corner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for both reasons: through some dim dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God’s own importunate bonus?

It is impossible to say.