No One Hears but Him

by Taylor Caldwell

  When he was rid of Sally, and got his hands on all that money, he’d really make up for lost time. Two or three years in Hawaii. A year in Rome. Perhaps a season or two in the south of France, and a winter in Paris. He smiled and his heart pounded with the joy of anticipation. The only thing that stood between him and the pleasures necessary to his youth was Sally, and she had promised him a divorce if he would come to this kookie place and talk to the man who listened. Well, he’d listen! And then freedom, like a kid again.

  Dimly he heard the bell chime. But he was sunken in his anticipations. Then the girl said to him across the room, in her sweet well-bred voice, “You are next.” He started and looked up. They were alone. He winked at her impudently, showing his dimples. She went back to her reading. He yawned, stood up, pulled down his jacket, and sauntered to the door. He had an easy, boyish lope which he knew was very appealing to women. The girl was evidently not impressed for she did not look up. He pulled open the door with unnecessary vigor and entered the white and blue room beyond. He stared.

  There was nothing there but marble walls, a marble chair with blue cushions and a blue-shrouded alcove. He grinned, knowingly. Just like those sex-investigations, the Kinsey Report, or something. The interrogator hidden behind a screen so that the one interviewed would have no embarrassment and so would talk freely. He sat down on the arm of the marble chair and felt his quick amusement returning.

  “Hello,” he said in his insolent and swaggering voice. “I’m here. Me.”

  No one answered him. There was no sound at all in the room. Was anyone there?

  “Anyone here?” he demanded. There was still no answer. He got up and loped to the curtain and took hold of its silk-velvet folds curiously and tried to move them. But they seemed meshed with steel. He saw the button which informed him that he could see the man who listened if he wished. With a flourish and a fresh grin he struck the button. The curtains did not move.

  “All right, all right,” he said indulgently. “If you want to stay hidden that’s your business. Professional ethics? All right. I don’t mind; actually, I like it this way. You don’t know me; I don’t know you. We can’t see each other—” He stopped. “Hey, can you see me from behind there? One-way window or something?”

  The man was silent. But with a tremor of uneasiness Johnnie felt certain that the man could see him clearly. Sullenly, he went back to the chair, crossed his legs and his arms and gloomily surveyed the curtain. “Let’s get this over with,” he said. “I’m not here like those old pigs and slugs you’ve been interviewing. I just want a divorce. Simple? That’s right. My wife sent me to talk to you; then she’d talk divorce. That’s why I’m here.”

  When the man did not reply he slapped the arm of the chair with finality. “O.K.,” he said, emphatically. “I’ve talked to you. That’s all I promised to do. So why should I stay? I’ve seen what this room looks like; I can tell Sally all about it. That’s all she wants. So, that’s it. Ring the bell for that girl who’s next. That woman, I mean, with the wrinkles. Goodbye.” He stood up. He waited for a murmur of protest. None came. The man was indifferent whether he stayed or not, whether he talked or not. Johnnie Martin was not used to indifference or to being ignored. He hesitated.

  “I wouldn’t have minded talking to you,” he said. It was his imagination that made him suddenly sure that the man was regarding him intensely from his one-way window. “No, I wouldn’t have minded talking to a headshrinker at that, and getting a little sympathy. I’m not disturbed; it’s only Sally who is; a frustrated old bag who angled me into marrying her when I was only a kid and didn’t know what it was all about.” He sat down again, slowly and without volition. “She and my mother. She was even worse than the others who angled me into marrying them—that is, if possible. But though I’m young, I’m fair. Mother didn’t have anything to do with the first two of my wives; actually, she tried to stop me from marrying them, and I wish I’d listened. I wouldn’t have three kids around my neck now.”

  He laughed affectionately at himself, and pushed his mop of hair fondly over his forehead. He even pulled one of his ears like a father. “Me, with three kids! Would you believe it at my age? Three kids, and I’m only a kid, myself! A blast, isn’t it?”

  Then he was no longer smiling lovingly at himself. He had suddenly recalled something. Sally was the only woman he had married in the Church, therefore, according to the natural law she was his only wife, and not the others hastily married before justices of the peace in other cities. Sally was pious. She had an iron will, like his mother, and so to keep her from nagging he sometimes went to Mass with her on Sundays and on holy days of obligation. Last Thursday was Assumption, and she had nagged him to go with her to the late afternoon Mass. The large church had been crowded to its vestibules, but he and Sally had been earlier than others and had managed to find a pew with the two remaining seats. This had irritated him. Sometimes, if he could manage to be a little late with Sally, they had to stand in the vestibules, and then, during a particularly solemn moment when all were kneeling he could silently spring up from his knees—that damned stone floor!—and slip out for a smoke. Sometimes he could return without Sally even knowing he had been absent; she was always praying and rattling her rosary anyway, all her devotion fixed on the mighty events transpiring at the altar, unaware of discomfort.

  But last Thursday he had been trapped, and the usher had beckoned them to the last seats. Then the rest of the crowd surged in from the hot August afternoon outside, and he was trapped; people even moved into the aisles along the walls. He scowled. Now he was not only trapped but he would have to trudge behind mobs when Mass was over, to get outside again. He saw that old Father Houlihan was already at the altar; he could see him over the bowed heads of the people. Old Father Houlihan was called Huddling Houlihan by the irreverent, for not only was he almost inaudible and so a bore when it came to the homily, but he was very slow and very ponderous, and Mass went on forever. Johnnie had grunted deep in his throat. It would be forty-five minutes at the very least before he could get out of here. Well, at least he had a leather kneeler to kneel on and not the stone floor of the aisles and the vestibules.

  The August sun poured hotly through the tall stained glass of the windows. The doors were all open but the air was heated in here and smelled of old incense and stone and beeswax. Father Houlihan turned and lifted and spread his hands. (Double, white, first-class; his vestments hung on his thin old body.)

  “Dominus vobiscum,” he droned.

  “Et cum spiritu tuo,” dutifully responded the people.

  Children wailed here and there in the heat. Johnnie flinched. He hated the hard shrill voices of children, and especially the voices of his own. Then he heard a rich and joyous chuckling, and he turned his head to his left. He had the end seat. The aisles were flooded with people. So close he could almost touch him stood a young and very slender boy, not more than twenty-three, dressed in poor dark clothes and with heavy workman’s boots. His white shirt was stiffly starched, and his tie was a dark blue. He was not very tall, hardly five foot nine, and his badly made clothing hung on his body as if they had been intended for a man much bigger. He had thick fair hair and a childish profile; he resembled an altar boy. In his arms he held a child much less than two years old, a little rosy boy with dancing blue eyes. It was the child who had chuckled so innocently and so happily. He was pulling his father’s ears. He suddenly screamed with delight: “Dada, Dada!” and kissed the very young man who held him.

  The boy blushed brightly, tried to look stern, melted, gazed into the face of his offspring, and his eyes softened and glowed with pride and love. Johnnie was caught by that glow; it lit up that snub-nosed profile with a holy and tender light; it gave to that nondescript and undistinguished young man somewhat of the air of joy and exultation. Johnnie had never been pious or reverent even as a child; the saints had bored him; he had never admired the statues or fervently joined in the prayers. His imagination had never been extraord
inary. Yet, when he looked at that very young workingman, in his wretched neat clothes, and with the child in his thin arms, Johnnie had thought, struck: Why do all paintings, and all statues I’ve seen show only women with infants in their arms? Why not a young father like this, with his kid? Why, why—there’s something heroic about this, something, well, noble, something basically beautiful! Something movingly poignant, almost unbearable.

  He was touched by himself being touched. When tears wetted his eyelids he told himself how actually good he was, how easily moved by beauty. But even then, in the midst of his self-congratulation, he could feel honestly stirred and a little sad and humble. He had forgotten the young man and his child at once when the priest had announced the end of the Mass, and had not thought of him since. Until today, in this cool white room with the blue curtains confronting him.

  As clearly as though it was his first sight he saw the young father again with his infant. And again he was deeply moved and again he felt that nameless sadness, that sadness mixed with compassion and inexplicable yearning. “What the hell?” he muttered and rubbed his cheek. “I suppose it’s because it was pitiful, a kid like that married and with a kid of his own. Only a child, himself. A little kid.” A poor young bastard, already tied down to some woman who had burdened him with a baby, and he hardly out of his teens; he worked hard; it had been evident in his worn young hands; he had all a boy’s shining innocence. And why not? If he hadn’t let some woman blind him and drag him into marriage, and if his parents had had the money, he’d be doing graduate work in some university and having himself a ball, playing around with the gals and driving a sports job all over the country. Poor kid. Only a child.

  Is he?

  Johnnie started quite violently. “What?” he stammered. “What did you say? Why sure he was only a child, that boy! There ought to be a law—”

  He stopped abruptly. Had he really heard a voice full of sternness and deep wondering quiet? No. It was all his imagination. The man behind the curtain could not possibly have heard his thoughts, and he had not spoken aloud. It was all the fault of his deep imaginings; Sally said he lacked imagination, but she was a liar! He had just proved it, not only by seeing that boy again in his mind’s eye so vividly but in having the hallucination that the man had answered his thoughts.

  “I was talking about my three kids,” he said to the man. “A blast! It’s ridiculous. Sometimes I can’t believe it; I don’t want to believe it. After all, I’m only a youth, and my youth shouldn’t be spoiled like this. You can’t live your life over again, and your youth is all you have. I’m only thirty—” He paused. He winced at the dreadful word. He was past thirty-two, but he did not find it contemptible to insist that he was younger. He felt like a child, like a very young man. And so did everyone his age think so, and they were right. Adolescence went on, these days, to thirty-five at least. Even the doctors hinted that, and basically they ought to know. A man wasn’t even mature, now, until he was in his late forties. The forties were far away to Johnnie Martin, eons away in time.

  “Sally, my wife, says everything is really my father’s fault. That’s another lie. Oh, the old guy wasn’t bright except when it came to money, but he did understand that your childhood and your youth are the most important parts of your life. He’d never had any, himself. He was twenty-three when he married my mother—and she was seventeen.”

  Only children?

  “It was different in those days,” said Johnnie in a loud and emphatic voice. “People were born old and responsible. My mother said so, herself. She was still only seventeen when I was born. Dad had a hardware store; he had had it since he was eighteen. When I was about a year old he invented some kind of a stupid small tool, and when the war came along—the second one, I mean, you know?—he sold the patent to some company making war material, and overnight he was rich, on the royalties. And royalties aren’t counted as earned income for tax purposes; they’re sort of capital gains. So Dad made it big, all at once.

  “He saved half of it and spent half of it. Right from the beginning, before everything got so expensive, we had it made, wonderful house, maids, cars—everything. I went to a rich nursery school. Dad filled my room full of marvelous toys; I had everything I wanted; I only had to howl a little and it was there as fast as he could get it for me. He’d say to Mom, ‘You and I had it tough, but the little kid is going to have anything he wants, anything, to make up for what we didn’t have.’ And I did, too.”

  Johnnie frowned bitterly at the curtain. “Mom never stopped interfering. She’d nag and complain when Dad would bring armloads of toys home for me, and new clothing, and candies. I can remember that just as if it was only yesterday—and it was at that. Mom would say, ‘You are spoiling him now, and he’ll be ruined for the rest of his life.’ Stupid, wasn’t it? I had a hell of a good time. Dad worshiped me, poor old little guy. He was an old man when he was born, and Mom was an old woman. But at least Dad understood.”

  He rubbed his warm pink forehead. “Yes, he understood. I went to a private Catholic boarding-school; that was Mom’s idea, not Dad’s. I couldn’t stand it there, all those grim old priests and solemn brothers. When I was kicked out the first year Dad only laughed, but Mom cried. I can’t ever remember her laughing and having fun like us. I can see now that she should have been sent to a psychiatrist like you; she was mentally ill. She was always talking about responsibility and self-respect and maturity, but anyone who knows anything about these things knows she was totally irresponsible and lacked maturity in her outlook on life. She didn’t understand that things are different these days, for everybody. What right did she have to talk about maturity, for instance, to a little kid only sixteen? Why, she’d actually tell me that I was a man—at that age! Isn’t that a drag? Just because, at sixteen, I was only a freshman in this private high school, she thought it scandalous or something. At sixteen, she said, she had been graduated. But look at the schools in those days, before the war! They had the idea that schools were just places of learning, and not happiness-centers. You were supposed to crouch over books for hours, just studying, instead of having fun and fun-courses, and enjoying yourself. You were supposed to fill your mind with learning and waste all your childhood in libraries and at your desk.

  “Yes, Mom was mentally ill. She’d say, ‘There’s no royal road to learning.’ As if learning from books was all there was! She said nothing of playing and being happy and carefree. She thought that sinful. That’s because she had been raised by nuns. We know better in these days. We young guys know that this life is all you have and if you miss enjoying it you’ve missed it forever.”

  Have you?

  Johnnie started again. “What?” he exclaimed. But only the soft whispering of the air-conditioning answered him. Talking to myself, he said ruefully. And no wonder, with all those damned women!

  “Well,” he said, smiling affectionately at himself, “I was kicked out of that preparatory school after the first year. Mom cried like she was sick, and she probably was. So, I had a tutor. He was an old man, too, though I think he was only a kid in years, about twenty-two. He really twisted my arm. This time Dad didn’t interfere much. He was afraid I wouldn’t make a good university, and that was his goal. I didn’t make it,” said Johnnie Martin, flatly. “But what the hell does that matter? You’re only a kid once. I did get into a college, a small private one, that emphasized sports, and had no real grading system. They didn’t care much about that. Most of the kids were kids like me, who had Dads like mine. Living it up. We had good cars, nice apartments off campus, all the girls we wanted, the best of clothes, all the money we could spend.”

  Johnnie sighed, remembering those joyful years of heedless life. “It was a shock to me when I was graduated. Mom didn’t come to the exercises. She said, later, that my diploma didn’t mean a thing. ‘It hasn’t any verity,’ she said, and isn’t that a stupid remark? I got it, didn’t I? What did it matter that the college had no accreditation? A diploma’s a diploma, isn’t
it? Dad thought it was wonderful. He bought me a fine foreign car to celebrate. I was twenty-three years old, just a kid.”

  He smiled deeply. “Dad gave me another present—a trip around the world. A whole year! I didn’t miss a thing.” He stopped smiling. “Two days after I got back Dad died.”

  He leaned earnestly toward the curtain. “And that’s what I mean! Dad had been earning his own living since he was only a child, about fifteen. No wonder his heart was worn out; he died of a heart attack, you know? Well, he was old; he was forty-nine.”

  A small cold finger laid itself on the base of his neck and he shivered. “Too much air-conditioning,” he muttered. Forty-nine. His father had been only forty-nine when he had died, and forty-nine was only, these days—His mother had been forty-two at the death of his father, only ten years older than himself, now. The cold finger pressed itself heavier on his neck. She had been an old woman! When he was forty-two, ages from now, he’d still be young, still almost a youth.

  Will you?

  He raised his voice over the terrible question. “I think Mom really went round the bend when Dad died. She accused me of causing it! She said that Dad hadn’t really been fooled by me, at the last! He’d realized, she said. And what had I done? Nothing but what Dad had wanted for me: Enjoying my childhood.