by John Cheever
On the day before the Topaze opened as a gift shop, Leander paid a call on Honora. They sat in her parlor.
“Would you like some whisky?” Honora asked.
“Yes, please,” Leander said.
“There isn’t any,” Honora said. “Have a cookie.”
Leander glanced down at the plate of cookies and saw they were covered with ants. “I’m afraid ants have gotten into your cookies, Honora,” he said.
“That’s ridiculous,” Honora said. “I know you have ants at the farm, but I’ve never had ants in this house.” She picked up a cookie and ate it, ants and all.
“Are you going to Sarah’s tea?” Leander asked.
“I don’t have time to spend in gift shops,” Honora said. “I’m taking piano lessons.”
“I thought you were taking painting lessons,” Leander said.
“Painting!” Honora said scornfully. “Why I gave up my painting in the spring. The Hammers were in some financial difficulty so I bought their piano from them and now Mrs. Hammer comes and gives me a lesson twice a week. It’s very easy.”
“Perhaps it runs in the family.” Leander said. “Remember Justina?”
“Justina who?” Honora asked.
“Justina Molesworth,” Leander said.
“Why, of course I remember Justina.” Honora said. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“I meant that she played the piano in the five and ten,” Leander said.
“Well, I have no intention of playing the piano in the five and ten,” Honora said. “Feel that refreshing breeze,” she said.
“Yes,” Leander said. (There was no breeze at all.)
“Sit in the other chair,” she said.
“I’m quite comfortable here, thank you,” Leander said.
“Sit in the other chair,” Honora said. “I’ve just had it reupholstered. Although,” she said as Leander obediently changed from one chair to the other, “you won’t be able to see out of the window from there and perhaps you were better off where you were.”
Leander smiled, remembering that to talk with her, even when she was a young woman, had made him feel bludgeoned. He wondered what her reasons were. Lorenzo had written somewhere in his journal that if you met the devil you should cut him in two and go between the pieces. It would describe Honora’s manner although he wondered if it wasn’t the fear of death that had determined her crabwise progress through life. It could have been that by side-stepping those things that, through their force—love, incontinence and peace of mind—throw into our faces the facts of our mortality she might have uncovered the mystery of a spirited old age.
“Will you do me a favor, Honora?” he asked.
“I won’t go to Sarah’s tea if that’s what you want,” she said. “I’ve told you I have a music lesson.”
“It isn’t that,” Leander said. “It’s something else. When I die I want Prospero’s speech said over my grave.”
“What speech is that?” Honora asked.
“Our revels now are ended,” Leander said, rising from has chair. “These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.” He declaimed, and his declamatory style was modeled partly on the Shakespearians of his youth, partly on the bombast and singsong of prize-ring announcements and partly on the style of the vanished horsecar and trolley-car conductors who had made an incantation of the place names along their routes. His voice soared and he illustrated the poetry with some very literal gestures. “… and, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.” He dropped his hands. His voice fell. “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” Then he said good-by and went.
Early the next morning Leander saw that there would be no sanctuary or peace for him in the farm that day. The stir of a large ladies’ party—magnified by the sale of Italian pottery—was inescapable. He decided to visit his friend Grimes, who was living in an old people’s home in West Chillum. It was a trip he had planned to make for years. He walked into St. Botolphs after breakfast and caught the bus to West Chillum there. It was on the other side of Chillum that the bus driver told him they had reached the Twilight Home and Leander got off. The place from the road looked to him like one of the New England academies. There was a granite wall, set with sharp pieces of stone to keep vagrants from resting. The drive was shaded with elms, and the buildings it served were made of red brick along architectural lines that, whatever had been intended when they were built, now seemed very gloomy. Along the driveway Leander saw old men hoeing the gutters. He entered the central building and went to an office, where a woman asked what he wanted.
“I want to see Mr. Grimes.”
“Visitors aren’t allowed on weekdays,” the woman said.
“I’ve just come all the way from St. Botolphs,” Leander said.
“He’s in the north dormitory,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone I said you could go in. Go up those stairs.”
Leander walked down the hall and up some broad wooden stairs. The dormitory was a large room with a double row of iron beds down each side of a center aisle. Old men were lying on fewer than half the beds. Leander recognized his old friend and went over to the bed where he was lying.
“Grimes,” he said.
“Who is it?” The old man opened his eyes.
“Leander. Leander Wapshot.”
“Oh Leander,” Grimes cried and the tears streamed down his cheeks. “Leander, old sport. You’re the first friend to come and see me since Christmas.” He embraced Leander. “You don’t know what it’s like for me to see a friendly face. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Well, I thought I’d pay you a little call,” Leander said. “I meant to come a long time ago. Somebody told me you had a pool table out here so I thought I’d come out and play you a little pool.”
“We have a pool table,” Grimes said. “Come on, come on, I’ll show you the pool table.” He seized Leander’s arm and led him out of the dormitory. “We’ve got all kinds of recreation,” he said excitedly. “At Christmas they sent us a lot of gramophone records. We have gardens. We get plenty of fresh air and exercise. We work in the gardens. Don’t you want to see the gardens?”
“Anything you say, Grimes,” Leander said unwillingly. He did not want to see the gardens or much more of the Twilight Home. If he could sit quietly for an hour somewhere and talk with Grimes he would feel repaid for the trip.
“We grow all our own vegetables,” Grimes said. “We have fresh vegetables right out of the garden. I’ll show you the garden first. Then we’ll play a little pool. The pool table isn’t in very good shape. I’ll show you the gardens. Come on. Come on.”
They left the central buildings by a back door and crossed to the gardens. They looked to Leander like the rigid and depressing produce gardens of a reformatory. “See,” Grimes said. “Peas. Carrots. Beets. Spinach. We’ll have corn soon. We sell corn. We may grow some of the corn you eat at your table, Leander.” He had led Leander into a field of corn that was just beginning to silk. “We have to be quiet now,” he said in a whisper. They went through the corn to the edge of the garden and climbed a stone wall marked with a No Trespassing sign and went into some scrub woods. They came in a minute to a clearing where there was a shallow trench dug in the clay.
“See it?” Grimes whispered. “See it? Not everybody knows about it. That’s potter’s field. That’s where they bury us. These two men got sick last month. Charlie Dobbs and Henry Fosse. They both died one night. I had an idea what they were doing then but I wanted to make sure. I came out here that morning and I hid in the woods. Sure enough, about ten o’clock this fat fellow comes along with a wheelbarrow. He’s got Charlie Dobbs and Henry Fosse in it. Stark naked. Dumped on top of one another. Upside down. They didn’t like each other, Leander. They
never even spoke to one another. But he buried them together. Oh, I couldn’t look. I couldn’t watch it. I’ve never felt right after that. If I die in the night they’ll dump me naked into a hole side by side with somebody I never knew. Go back and tell them, Leander. Tell them at the newspapers. You were always a good talker. Go back and tell them.…”
“Yes, yes,” Leander said. He was backing through the woods, away from the clearing and his hysterical friend. They climbed the stone wall and walked through the corn patch. Grimes gripped Leander’s arm. “Go back and tell them, tell them at the newspapers. Save me, Leander. Save me.…”
“Yes, I will, Grimes, yes, I will.”
Side by side the old men returned through the garden and Leander said good-by to Grimes in front of the central building. Then he went down the driveway, obliged to struggle to give the impression that he was not hurried. He was relieved when he got outside the gates. It was a long time before the bus came along and when one did appear he shouted, “Hello there. Stop stop, stop for me.”
He could not help Grimes; he could not, he realized when the bus approached St. Botolphs and he saw a sign, VISIT THE S.S. TOPAZE, THE ONLY FLOATING GIFT SHOPPE IN NEW ENGLAND, help himself. He hoped that the tea party would be over but when he approached the farm he found many cars parked on the lawn and the sides of the driveway. He swung wide around the house and went in at the back door and up the stairs to his room. It was late then and from his window he could see the Topaze—the twinkling of candles—and hear the voices of ladies drinking tea. The sight made him feel that he was being made ridiculous; that a public spectacle was being made of his mistakes and his misfortunes. He remembered his father then with tenderness and fear as if he had dreaded, all along, some end like Aaron’s. He guessed the ladies would talk about him and he only had to listen at the window to hear. “He drove her onto Gull Rock in broad daylight,” Mrs. Gates said as she went down the path to the wharf. “Theophilus thinks he was drunk.”
What a tender thing, then, is a man. How, for all his crotch-hitching and swagger, a whisper can turn his soul into a cinder. The taste of alum in the rind of a grape, the smell of the sea, the heat of the spring sun, berries bitter and sweet, a grain of sand in his teeth—all of that which he meant by life seemed taken away from him. Where were the serene twilights of his old age? He would have liked to pluck out his eyes. Watching the candlelight on his ship—he had brought her home through gales and tempests—he felt ghostly and emasculated. Then he went to his bureau drawer and took from under the dried rose and the wreath of hair his loaded pistol. He went to the window. The fires of the day were burning out like a conflagration in some industrial city and above the barn cupola he saw the evening star, as sweet and round as a human tear. He fired his pistol out of the window and then fell down on the floor.
He had underestimated the noise of teacups and ladies’ voices and no one on the Topaze heard the shot—only Lulu, who was in the kitchen, getting some hot water. She climbed the back stairs and hurried down the hall to his room and screamed when she opened the door. When he heard her voice Leander got to his knees. “Oh, Lulu, Lulu, you weren’t the one I wanted to hurt. I didn’t mean you. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Are you all right, Leander? Are you hurt?”
“I’m foolish,” Leander said.
“Oh, poor Leander,” Lulu said, helping him to his feet. “Poor soul. I told her she shouldn’t have done it. I told her in the kitchen many times that it would hurt your feelings, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“I only want to be esteemed,” Leander said.
“Poor soul,” Lulu said. “You poor soul.”
“You won’t tell anyone what you saw,” Leander said.
“No.”
“You promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Swear that you won’t tell anyone what you saw.”
“I swear.”
“Swear on the Bible. Let me find the Bible. Where’s my Bible? Where’s my old Bible?” Then he searched the room wildly, lifting up and putting down books and papers and throwing open drawers and looking into book shelves and chests, but he couldn’t find the Bible. There was a little American flag stuck into the mirror above his bureau and he took this and held it out to Lulu. “Swear on the flag, Lulu, swear on the American flag that you won’t tell anyone what you saw.”
“I swear.”
“I only want to be esteemed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Although the administration of Island 93 was half military and half civilian, the military, having charge of transportation, communication and provisions, often dominated the civilian administrators. So Coverly was called to the military communications office one early evening and handed a copy of a cable that had been sent by Lulu Breckenridge. YOUR FATHER IS DYING. “Sorry, fellow,” the officer said. “You can go to communications but I don’t think they’ll do anything for you. You’re signed up for nine months.” Coverly dropped the cable into the wastebasket and walked out of the office.
It was after supper and the latrines were being fired and the smoke rose up through the coconut palms. In another twenty minutes the movies would begin. When Coverly had gone a little way beyond the building he began to cry. He sat down by the road. The light was changing and the light goes quickly in the islands and it was that hour when the primitive domesticity of a colony of men without women begins to assert itself: the washing, letter-writing and the handicrafts with which men preserve some reason and dignity. No one noticed Coverly because there was nothing unusual in a man sitting by the side of the road and no one could see he was crying. He wanted to see Leander and cried to think that all their plans had taken him to the flimflam of a tropical island a little while before the movies began while his father was dying in St. Botolphs. He would never see Leander again. Then he decided to try to go home and dried his tears and walked to the transportations office. There was a young officer there who seemed, in spite of Coverly’s civilian clothes, disappointed not to have him salute. “I want some emergency transportation,” Coverly said.
“What’s the nature of the emergency?” Coverly noticed that the officer had a tic in his right cheek.
“My father is dying.”
“Have you any proof of this?”
“There’s a cable at communications.”
“What do you do?” the officer asked.
“I’m one of the Tapers,” Coverly said.
“Well, you might get excused from work for a week. I’m sure you can’t get any emergency transportation. The major’s at the club but I know he won’t help you. Why don’t you go and see the chaplain?”
“I’ll go and see the chaplain,” Coverly said.
It was dark then and the movies had begun and all the stars hung in the soft dark. The chapel was about a quarter of a mile from the offices and when he got there he could see a blue gasoline lamp above the door and behind the lamp a large sign that said WELCOME. The building was a considerable tribute to human ingenuity. Bamboo had been lashed into a scaffolding and this was covered with palm matting—all of it holding to the conventional lines of a country church. There was even a steeple made of palm matting and there was an air of conspicuous unpopularity about the place. The doorway was plastered with WELCOME signs and so was the interior and on a table near the door were free stationery, moldy magazines and an invitation for rest, recreation and prayer.
The chaplain, a first lieutenant named Lindstrom, was there, writing a letter. He wore steel-rimmed GI spectacles on a weak and homely face, and he was a man who belonged to the small places of the earth—to little towns with their innocence, their bigotry and their devilish gossip—and he seemed to have brought, intact to the atoll, the smell of drying linen on a March morning and the self-righteous and bitter piety with which he would thank God, at Sunday dinner, for a can of salmon and a bottle of lemonade. He invited Coverly to sit down and offered him some stationery and Coverly said he needed help.
; “I don’t remember your face,” Linstrom said, “so I guess you’re not a member of my congregation. I never forget a face. I don’t see why the men don’t come here and worship. I think I have one of the nicest chapels in the West Pacific and last Sunday I only had five men at the service. I’m trying to see if I can’t get one of the photographers to come down from headquarters and take a picture of the place. I think there ought to be a photograph of this chapel in Life magazine. I have to share it with Father O’Leary, but he didn’t give me much help when there was work involved. He didn’t seem to care where his men worshiped. He’s over to the officers’ mess, playing poker right now. It’s none of my business how he spends his time but I don’t think a minister of the gospel ought to play cards. I’ve never held a playing card in my hand. Of course it’s none of my business, but I don’t approve of the methods he uses to get his congregation together, either. He had twenty-eight men here last Sunday. I counted them. But you know how he did it? There was a whisky ration last Saturday and he went down and pulled the men out of line and made them come to confession. No confession, no whisky. Anybody could fill up a church if they did things like that. I put out the stationery and the magazines and I painted the Welcome signs myself and whenever my wife sends me cookies—my wife bakes oatmeal cookies; she could make a fortune if she wanted to open a bakery—now when my wife sends me cookies I put them in a dish out here but that’s as far as I’ll go.”