Clock Without Hands

by Carson McCullers

  "What did you mean by that?" the old Judge asked with apprehension.

  "Nothing," Jester said. "Except it is natural to wonder about my father's death under the circumstances."

  The Judge tinkled the dinner bell and the sound seemed to gather the tension in the room. "Verily, bring a bottle of that elderberry wine Mr. Malone brought me for my birthday."

  "Right now, today, sir?" she asked, as wine was usually served only at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. She took the wineglasses from the sideboard and wiped off the dust with her apron. Noticing the platter of uneaten food, she wondered if a hair or a fly had been cooked in the candied yams or dressing. "Is anything wrong with the dinner?"

  "Oh, it's delicious. I just have a mite of indigestion, I suppose."

  It was true that when Jester talked of the mixing of races his stomach seemed to chum and all appetite had left him. He opened and poured the unaccustomed wine, then drank as soberly as if he had been drinking at a wake. For the break in understanding, in sympathy, is indeed a form of death. The Judge was hurt and grieving. And when hurt has been caused by a loved one, only the loved one can comfort.

  Slowly he put his right hand palm upward on the table toward his grandson, and after a moment Jester placed his own palm on his grandfather's. But the Judge was not satisfied; since words had hurt him, his solace lay in words. He grasped Jester's hand in desperation.

  "Don't you love your old grandfather any more?"

  Jester took his hand away and drank some swallows of wine. "Sure I do, Grandfather, but—"

  And though the Judge waited, Jester did not finish the sentence and the emotion was left qualified in the strained room. The Judge's hand was left extended and the fingers fluttered a little.

  "Son, has it ever occurred to you that I am not a wealthy man any longer? I have suffered many losses and our forebears suffered losses. Jester, I'm worried about your education and your future."

  "Don't worry. I can manage."

  "You've heard the old saw about the best things in life are free. It's both true and false like all generalizations. But this one thing is true: you can get the best education in this country absolutely and entirely free. West Point is free and I could get you an appointment."

  "But I don't want to be an army officer."

  "What do you want to be?"

  Jester was perplexed, uncertain. "I don't know exactly. I like music and I like flying."

  "Well go to West Point and enter the Air Corps. Anything you can get from the Federal Government you ought to take advantage of. God knows the Federal Government has done enough damage to the South."

  "I don't have to decide about the future until I graduate from high school next year."

  "What I was pointing out, Son, is my finances are not what they used to be. But if my plans materialize, then one day you will be a wealthy man." The Judge had often made vague hints from time to time of future wealth. Jester had never paid much attention to these intimations, but now he asked:

  "What plans, Grandfather?"

  "Son, I wonder if you are old enough to understand the strategy." The Judge cleared his throat. "You're young and the dream is big."

  "What is it?"

  "It's a plan to correct damages done and to restore the South."

  "How?"

  "It's the dream of a statesman—not just a cheap political scheme. It's a plan to rectify an immense historical injustice."

  Ice cream had been served and Jester was eating, but the Judge let it melt in his saucer. "I still don't get the drift, sir."

  "Think, Son. In any war between civilized nations what happens to the currency of the country who didn't win? Think of World War I and World War II. What happened to the German mark after the armistice? Did the Germans burn their money? And the Japanese yen? Did the Japanese make bonfires of their currency after their defeat? Did they, Son?"

  "No," Jester said, bewildered by the vehemence of the old man's voice.

  "What happens in any civilized nation after the cannons are silenced and the battlefields are quiet? The victor allows the vanquished to rest and restore in the interests of the common economics. The currency of a conquered nation is always redeemed—devalued, but still redeemed. Redeemed: look what is happening now in Germany—in Japan. The Federal Government has redeemed the enemy money and helped the vanquished restore itself. From time immemorial the currency of a defeated nation has been left in circulation. And the lira in Italy—did the Federal Government confiscate the lira? The lira, the yen, the mark—all, all were redeemed."

  The Judge was leaning forward over the table and his tie brushed his saucer of melted ice cream, but he did not notice.

  "But what happened after the War Between the States? Not only did the Federal Government of the United States free the slaves which were the sine qua non of our cotton economy, so that the very resources of the nation were gone with the wind. A truer story was never written than Gone With the Wind. Remember how we cried at that picture show?"

  Jester said: "I didn't cry."

  "You certainly did," the Judge said. "I wish I had written that book."

  Jester did not comment.

  "But back to the issue. Not only was the economy of the nation deliberately wrecked, but the Federal Government completely invalidated all Confederate currency. Not one cent could be redeemed for the wealth of the entire Confederacy. I have heard of Confederate bills used as kindling for fires."

  "There used to be a whole trunk of Confederate bills in the attic. I wonder what happened to them."

  "They're in the library in my safety box."

  "Why? Aren't they worthless?"

  The Judge did not answer; instead, he pulled from his vest pocket a Confederate thousand-dollar bill. Jester examined it with some of the wonder of his attic-playing childhood. The bill was so real, so green and believable. But the wonder illumined him only for a few instants, then was extinguished. Jester handed the bill back to his grandfather.

  "It would be a lot of money if it was real."

  "One of these days it might be 'real' as you say. It will be, if my strength and work and vision can make it so."

  Jester questioned his grandfather with his cold clear eyes. Then he said: "The money is nearly a hundred years old."

  "And think of the hundreds of billions of dollars squandered by the Federal Government during those hundred years. Think of the wars financed and public spending. Think of the other currencies redeemed and put back into circulation. The mark, the lira, the yen—all foreign currencies. And the South was, after all, the same flesh and blood and should have been treated as brothers. The currency should have been redeemed and not devalued. Don't you see that, Lamb?"

  "Well it wasn't and it's too late now."

  The conversation made Jester uneasy and he wanted to leave the table and go away. But his grandfather held him with a gesture.

  "Wait a minute. It's never too late to redress a wrong. And I am going to be instrumental in allowing the Federal Government to redress this historic and monumental wrong," the Judge stated pontifically. "I am going to have a bill introduced in the House of Representatives if I win the next election that will redeem all Confederate monies, with the proper adjustment for the increase of cost-of-living nowadays. It will be for the South what F.D.R. intended to do in his New Deal. It will revolutionize the economy of the South. And you, Jester, will be a wealthy young man. There are ten million dollars in that safety box. What do you say to that?"

  "How did that much Confederate money accumulate?"

  "There are ancestors of vision in our family—remember that, Jester. My grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, was a great lady and a woman of vision. When the war was over she traded for Confederate money, swapping now and then a few eggs and produce—once I remember her telling me she even swapped a laying hen for three million dollars. Everybody was hungry in those days and everybody had lost faith. All except your great-great-grandmother. I will never forget her saying: 'It will
come back, it's bound to.'"

  "But it never has," Jester said.

  "Until now—but you wait and see. It will be a New Deal for the economy of the South and benefit the nation as a whole. Even the Federal Government will be benefited."

  "How?" Jester asked.

  The Judge said calmly, "What benefits one benefits the whole. It's simple to understand; if I had a few million, I would invest, employ a lot of people and stimulate local business. And I'm just one individual to be reimbursed."

  "Another thing," Jester said. "It's been about a hundred years. And how could the money be traced?"

  The Judge's voice was triumphant. "That's the least of our worries. When the Treasury announces that Confederate money is being redeemed, the money will be found all right. Confederate bills will be cropping up in attics and barns all over the South. Cropping up all over the nation and even in Canada."

  "What good would it do to have money cropping up in Canada?"

  The Judge said with dignity: "That's just a figure of speech—a rhetorical example." The Judge looked hopefully at his grandson. "But what do you think of the legislation as a whole?"

  Jester avoided his grandfather's eyes and did not answer. And the Judge, desperate for his approval, persisted. "What, Lamb? It's the vision of a great statesman," he added more firmly. "The Journal has many times referred to me as a 'great statesman' and the Courier always speaks of me as the first citizen of Milan. Once it was written I was 'one of the fixed stars in that glorious firmament of Southern statesmen.' Don't you admit I am a great statesman?"

  The question was not only a plea for reassurance, but a desperate command for emotional annealment. Jester could not answer. For the first time he wondered if his grandfather's reasoning power had been affected by the stroke. And his heart balanced between pity and the natural instinct for separation that divides the sound from the infirm.

  The veins of age and excitement crawled in the Judge's temple and his face flushed. Only twice in his life had the Judge suffered from rejection: once when he was defeated in an election for Congress, and again when he sent a long story he had written to the Saturday Evening Post and it was returned to him with a form letter. The Judge could not believe this rejection. He read the story again and found it better than all the other stories in the Post. Then, suspecting that it had not been properly read, he glued certain pages of the manuscript together and when it was returned another time he never read a Post again, and never wrote another story. Now he could not believe that the separation between himself and his grandson was a reality.

  "Do you remember how, when you were a little boy, you used to call me Grandy?"

  Jester was not moved by the recollection and the tears in his grandfather's eyes irritated him. "I remember everything." He rose and stood behind the Judge's chair, but his grandfather would not get up and would not let him leave. He grasped Jester's hand and held it to his cheek. Jester stood stiff with embarrassment and his hand did not respond to the caress.

  "I never thought I'd hear a grandson of mine speak as you have done. You said you didn't see why the races shouldn't mix. Think of the logical outcome. It would lead to intermarriage. How would you like that? Would you let your sister marry a Nigra buck if you had a sister?"

  "I'm not thinking of that. I was thinking of racial justice."

  "But if your so-called 'racial justice' leads to intermarriage—as it will according to the laws of logic—would you marry a Nigra? Be truthful."

  Involuntarily, Jester was thinking of Verily and the other cooks and washwomen who had worked at home, and of Aunt Jemima of the pancake ads. His face flushed bright and his freckles darkened. He could not answer immediately, so much did the image appall him.

  "You see," the Judge said. "You were only making empty lip-service—for the Northerners, at that."

  Jester said: "I still think that as a judge you judge one crime in two different ways—according to whether it is done by a Negro or a white man."

  "Naturally. They are two different things. White is white and black is black—and never the two shall meet if I can prevent it."

  The Judge laughed and held Jester's hand when he tried to pull away again.

  "All my life I have been concerned with questions of justice. And after your father's death I realized that justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation. After your father's death I realized there was a quality more important than justice."

  Jester's attention was always held by any reference to his father and his death. "What is more important, Grandfather?"

  "Passion," the Judge said. "Passion is more important than justice."

  Jester stiffened with embarrassment. "Passion? Did my father have passion?"

  The Judge evaded the question. "Young people of your generation have no passion. They have cut themselves off from the ideals of their ancestors and are denying the heritage of their blood. Once when I was in New York, I saw a Nigra man sitting at a table with a white girl and something in my bloodstream sickened. My outrage had nothing particularly to do with justice—but when I saw those two laughing together and eating at the same table, my bloodstream—I left New York that same day and never went back to that Babel, nor will to my dying day."

  "I wouldn't have minded at all," Jester said. "Soon› as a matter of fact, I am going to New York."

  "That's what I meant. You have no passion."

  The words affected Jester violently; he trembled and blushed. "I don't see—"

  "One of these days you may have this passion. And when it comes to you, your half-baked notions of so-called justice will be forgotten. And you will be a man and my grandson—with whom I am well pleased."

  Jester held the chair while the Judge pushed himself up from the table with his stick and stood upright for a moment facing the picture above the mantelpiece. "Wait a minute, Lamb." He sought desperately some words that would abridge the chasm that had opened in the last two hours. And finally he said: "You know, Jester, I can see the pink mule you were talking about—there in the sky over the orchard and the shack."

  The admission altered nothing and they both knew it. The Judge walked slowly and Jester stood near him ready to steady him if necessary. His pity mingled with remorse and he hated pity and remorse. When his grandfather was settled on the library sofa, he said: "I'm glad you know how I stand. I'm glad I told you." But the tears in his grandfather's eyes unnerved him so that he was forced to add: "I love you anyway—I do love you—Grandy." But when he was embraced, the smell of sweat and the sentimentality disgusted him, and when he had freed himself he felt a sense of defeat.

  He ran out of the room and bounded up the staircase three steps at a time. At the head of the upstairs hall there was a window of stained glass which brightened Jester's auburn hair but cast a sallow light on his breathless face. He closed the door of his room and flung himself on the bed.

  It was true he had no passion. The shame of his grandfather's words pulsed in his body and he felt that the old man knew that he was a virgin. His hard boy's hands unzipped his fly and touched his genitals for solace. Other boys he knew boasted of love affairs and even went to a house run by a woman called Reba. This place fascinated Jester; on the outside it was an ordinary frame house with a trellis on the porch and a potato vine. The very ordinariness of the house fascinated and appalled him. He would walk around the block and his heart felt challenged and defeated. Once, in the late afternoon, he saw a woman come out of the house and he watched her. She was an ordinary woman wearing a blue dress and with her lips gummed up with lipstick. He should have been passionate. But as she glanced at him casually, the shame of his secret defeat made him draw up one foot against the other leg and stand stricken until the woman turned away. Then he ran all the six blocks to his house and flung himself on the same bed where he lay now.

  No, he had no passion, but he had had love. Sometimes, for a day, a week, a month, once for a whole yea
r. The one year's love was for Ted Hopkins who was the best all-around athlete in the school. Jester would seek Ted's eyes in the corridor and, although his pulses pounded, they only spoke to each other twice in that year.

  One time was when they entered the vestibule together on a raining day and Ted said, "It's foul weather."

  Jester responded in a faint voice, "Foul."

  The other conversation was longer and less casual but completely humiliating. Because Jester loved Ted, he wanted more than anything to give him a gift and impress himself upon him. In the beginning of the football season, he saw in a jeweler's a little golden football. He bought this but it took him four days to give it to Ted. They had to be alone for him to give it and after days of following, they met in the locker room in Ted's section. Jester held out the football with a trembling hand and Ted asked, "What's this?" Jester knew somehow, someway, he had made a mistake. Hurriedly, he explained, "I found it."

  "Why do you want to give it to me?"

  Jester was dizzy with shame. "Just because I don't have any use for it and I thought I would give it to you."

  As Ted's blue eyes looked mockingly and suspiciously, Jester blushed the warm painful blush of the very fair and his freckles darkened.

  "Well thanks," Ted said, and put the gold football in his trousers pocket.

  Ted was the son of an army officer who was stationed in a town fifteen miles from Milan, so this love was shadowed by the thought that his father would be transferred. And his feelings, furtive and secret as they were, were intensified by the menace of separation and the aura of distance and adventure.

  Jester avoided Ted after the football episode and afterward he could never think about football or the words "foul weather" without a cringing shame.

  He loved, too, Miss Pafford who taught English and wore bangs but put on no lipstick. Lipstick was repulsive to Jester, and he could not understand how anyone could kiss a woman who wore gummy smeary lipstick. But since nearly all girls and women wore lipstick, Jester's loves were severely limited.