Saturday came and he had a little money, so he went to a used bookstore, as he had often done lately, with the thought that he might find something to leave on Della’s front step. Nothing was adequate, no très riches heures. Nothing quaint and curious, no gem of rarest ray serene, in that musty little cave walled with failed efforts of every literary kind, growing drabber together as the years passed. Still, the sheer mass of books and the smell of them always made him imagine the existence of the pure and perfect book, poetry no doubt, just barely translated from some ancient tongue, an earthy strangeness clinging to it. The owner of the place, a large, rumpled man, sat hunched uncomfortably on a high stool and watched him, clearly suspecting him of some legerdemain that would leave him poorer by some worthless tract or memoir. This became a part of Jack’s sporadic inquiry into the nature of commerce. The man must value his time at less than nothing, because the world seemed to value his hoard of books at about exactly nothing, and the man was himself a cost, since he had to keep himself in sandwiches and chewing tobacco, not to mention all the odds and ends needed if one is to be even marginally presentable. Add to this the cost of keeping the lights on. Aside from a little sweeping, the man’s chief occupation seemed to be watching Jack, who, so as not to disturb this strange equilibrium, never stole anything. It passed the time.
Then it was Sunday again. In preparation Jack had bought himself a newer hat. He retired the old one to a dresser drawer, a sacred object despite all, since Della had touched it. He walked to the church, walked through the door, returned the greeting of the young usher, who seemed glad to see him. He sat down in what he thought of as his pew, exchanging nods with the man who sat next to him.
After the benediction, he went down the stairs, a stream of children passing under his elbow, laughing, intent on some plan they had, all of one mind like a flock of birds. There was an empty table by a far wall and Jack made his way to it, past the smiles and nods and good mornings, which he acknowledged with nods. He sat down. No one joined him, which was the whole idea and embarrassing all the same, not least because they all read correctly his wish to be alone, but would no doubt have failed to notice the ambivalence of it. Miss Jones was nowhere in sight.
It made no sense to be sitting there, trying to seem relaxed and casual, legs crossed, arms crossed, twiddling a foot, nowhere to look. He thought, the heat that made him sweat was just heat, and the light that made him feel so exposed in that dim corner was just light, and if there were a time when everything dispersed through the universe gathered into its essence, this would be heat indeed, light indeed, rid of the dilutions that sometimes made them into warmth and illumination, those blandishments. This heat would be hot enough to burn in. Ergo the existence of hell was indisputable. If he could just see where the plates were stacked, he could step into the line without drawing so much attention to himself, without having to ask anybody. It seemed like a presumption to join the line, somehow much worse than theft. You can’t actually steal food from a church supper. Too bad.
And sure enough, here came the minister, carrying two plates. He paused to speak with a family at another table. People always want to speak with the minister. They chatted and laughed a little, and then he came on to Jack’s table and set a plate in front of him and another opposite, and said, “Please sit down,” which made Jack realize he had stood up, though this man did not resemble his father. “I thought you might want a little something. Beans and rice. You know how it is. The churches have to squeeze every penny.” This was to make Jack feel more like a guest, less like a mendicant. His father would have said the same kind of thing to some shabby exotic. “Yes,” he would have said afterward, “an unusual fellow. He seemed bright enough. Maybe a little shifty.” And the stranger would have stepped out of loneliness, moved by hope or nostalgia, then slipped back into loneliness, forgotten as soon as he was gone. Jack could see that the minister was taking his measure, so tactfully it was almost painless. There was the frayed cuff. He didn’t cover it with his hand, but he could feel that slight, hard smile forming—I know what you see, I know what you think—and looked down to conceal it. The man was trying to decide how to speak to him. He said, “I’m the pastor here, Samuel Hutchins.” He held out his hand across the table.
“John Ames,” Jack said, for some reason, and shook his hand.
“You’re a son of the church, I take it.”
“Yes. Not really. My father is a minister. Was. He’s still alive. The last I heard. He lost his church. My fault, I believe.” He cleared his throat, which is a thing people do sometimes to sound reasonable when otherwise they might not.
“You certainly know the songs. I believe I heard you playing last Sunday.”
He said, “They’re hard to unlearn.” Then, “I have great respect for my father. I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“No, I understand that. It can be difficult, being a minister’s son. I see that fairly often. Maybe the admiration is part of the problem.”
“I’m not at all like him. I look like him. People used to say that. But I know age has been hard on him. Then my mother died. And I am”—he shrugged—“what I am.”
The minister was watching him from that calm distance of kindly appraisal, probably because Jack was talking a little too fast, for one thing. He said, “Maybe you’re looking for someone to tell you to go home and spend a little time with your father. I’d be happy to do that for you. Say the word.” He said, “You look to me like you could use a little forgiving.”
Jack said, “He’s forgiven me every day of my life from the day I was born. Breach birth.” He wished he could smoke. Where was all this candor coming from? He said, “Forgiveness scares me. It seems like a kind of antidote to regret, and there are things I haven’t regretted sufficiently. And never will. I know that for a fact.”
The minister removed his glasses, heavy lenses and gold wire frames that had settled into his face like one more feature. When he took them off, the skin around his eyes looked tender, like a private self. He rubbed his eyes with a finger and thumb and polished the lenses with the corner of a very large handkerchief—“I have to be ready for grief,” Jack’s father had said once. “You don’t always see it coming.” He was meticulously ironing, then folding, a dozen big handkerchiefs.
The minister put his glasses on again and smiled as if he were just back from a brief absence. He said, “Mr. Ames, if the Lord thinks you need punishing, you can trust Him to see to it. He knows where to find you. If He’s showing you a little grace in the meantime, He probably won’t mind if you enjoy it.”
Jack said, “I’m not sure that’s what’s happening. It’s not always clear to me how to tell grace from, you know, punishment. Granting your terms.” If the thought of someone sweetened your life to the point of making it tolerable, even while you knew that just to be seen walking down the street with her might do her harm, which one was that? He said, “I don’t actually believe in God. I’m sorry. That probably means I’ve been wasting your time.”
“No, no.” The minister said quietly, reflectively, “That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it. The great question.”
“I’ve never even understood the difference between faith and presumption. Never.” He noticed a slightly aggressive urgency in his voice that he would not have expected to hear from himself.
The minister glanced at his watch. He said, “I have a meeting in three minutes. So I have three minutes to answer your question, or you can come back next Sunday, when I’ve had a week to think it over.”
“Next week. I’ll try to be here.” Such a busy man.
“I’d take it as a kindness. I’m going to be thinking about this. Your word was ‘presumption’? Don’t get up.”
But he did, and they shook hands. When he picked up his plate, a young woman said, “Let me take care of that for you!” with that particular warm emphasis of a kindness that means more than itself—nobody cares how much you don’t belong here, at least I don’t. Jack nodded and we
nt up the stairs before anyone else could speak to him. But there was the minister, coming back down. “I was looking for you, Mr. Ames. I just wanted another word or two, if you don’t mind.” He said, quietly, “You’re all right?” A question without that irritating lilt.
“Yes. Fine.”
The minister, half a head shorter than he and two steps above him, studied his face. “Well, I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “Sometimes when people come to me with, you know, big questions, I find out that there’s something else on their minds. Besides that question.”
“What? Suicide? I can’t do that. Not while he’s alive. My father. So I’m all right.” Jack saw a startled tenderness in the man’s eyes and looked away. He thought, If I told the truth more often, I might be better at it.
The minister rested his hand lightly on Jack’s shoulder. “Well, that’s good to know. That you’re all right,” as if he had put his doubts aside. “That’s good,” he said. “You take care now,” and Jack stepped past him into the foyer and out the door.
Once out on the pavement, he set his hat at a tilt that meant he was not the sort of man who would find himself in a church. Rakish. He lit a cigarette. He felt himself assuming himself again, and it was almost a relief. Those handkerchiefs, white, identical except for the tiny mending his mother made in them where the fabric might wear through. No telling which one had wiped sweat off the face of the woman dying in labor, which one had blotted an orphan’s tears. When his father took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe milk from Jack’s chin, it felt like an induction into intolerable mysteries. He did not let himself inhale. This minister was polishing lenses that shone already with a corner of Lazarus’s shroud, carefully laundered for its next use. These ministers were far too familiar with absolute things. Jack was startled when he heard the word “suicide,” though he was the one who said it. Well, another thing to worry about.
Reverend Hutchins was a serious man, which placed Jack under a kind of obligation to be honest with him. This was the best interpretation he could make of his own behavior. He had heard himself telling, as if to his father, the very things he would never tell his father. Well, Hutchins did seem to be shaped by and for discretion. His vest was close, not tight, not new either, a sign of self-discipline persisted in for years. He was one of those people who look away when you speak to them, as if watching a story or an idea form under his gaze, ready to laugh or to add something or to ponder the sadness of a tale that was now as much his as it was the teller’s. A respectful man. And Jack would go back the following Sunday to prove he was not dead, which seemed fair in the circumstances.
When he reached the rooming house and went upstairs to his room, he found the clerk and some friend of his looking at his geranium, fists on their hips, which means, more or less, What the hell?! The clerk turned to him. “A flower?”
“One. No harm in it.”
“Nobody brings flowers in here.”
“It’s a geranium,” Jack said, pointlessly.
“Who gives a damn what it is?”
Unanswerable.
“Anyway, it’s too damn clean in here. Expecting company, I suppose. This is a respectable house, remember.” It wasn’t, but there was no point getting into that. Jack could feel the flush rising in his face that meant he would sweat. His whole miserable plan, already given the worst possible interpretation just because he’d put a blasted flower on a windowsill. He thought this as he also thought how ridiculous he’d look delving around in his pockets for his handkerchief, or wiping his face on his sleeve, or just standing there sweating. The clerk looked at him, almost smiling, and said to the other guy, “We’ve got work to get to,” and they left. A joke, but a warning, too. I can humiliate you if I feel like it, with this company of yours here to watch.
Jack did not linger ten seconds over the thought of homicide. Suicide crossed his mind, but he really had forsworn it. That was true. There remained to comfort him an unformed plan to slip down the fire escape and abscond when the rent came due. He had thought through this plan a hundred times, or a thousand, as often as a man with no violent impulses might let himself dream of retaliation. If the bed where he lay was its center, then the area around it in which he might encounter the defrauded clerk on the street was the radius that determined the circumference within which he had better not find another room. Beyond lay all St. Louis and the world. There was the cemetery, but there was also a limit to how long he could stand to go without shaving. A day or two. He hated sleeping in his clothes. Neither would be practical for someone employed as a dance instructor, in any case. He spent an hour or two attempting to ponder how gross disproportion, incommensurability, could be a structural principle of Creation. Mighty hostility pitted against harmless fantasy. The cosmic disorder. The disorder of things. There were no books with these titles, so far as he could discover, and he had looked.
So here he was, buffeted like Satan, falling through the billowing voids. He could not stop himself from thinking that triviality added to triviality however many times should finally have some of the qualities of nothingness, nonbeing. But instead, a plan he would no doubt never act on, but which seemed somehow to consecrate his shabby life ex nihilo, a pleasant anticipation that seemed as real as daylight, could collapse into the nothing it always had been because somebody made a cheap joke. He and the clerk were alike in that neither of them mattered at all. Absent either of them, no one would look at the universe and say, Very nice, only one thing missing. This being the case, why could his mind create a demi-paradise, and the clerk destroy it, creating and de-creating like warring gods? At least this is how it seemed to him at the moment. Meaninglessness was no refuge. Giant miseries and giant hopes can carry on their wars in the merest cranny.
Then the door opened partway and the clerk tossed a small cat onto Jack’s bed. “Dames like cats,” he said, and closed the door. This was conciliatory. Jack could think of no other way to interpret it, though he was, of course, cautious. It was a passable cat. Gray with darker gray stripes. Or the other way around. It did not limp or cough. Eyes, ears, and tail were all intact. If there was a trick involving the cat, there was nothing obvious about it. It curled up against his side. When he touched it, it purred.
Whatever was pleasing about the plant was much enhanced by the cat. Here he was, again imagining Della stepping into his room, quietly, tentatively. She would glance around to see what kind of room it was, and be charmed by something, reassured. At first it was the stack of library books on his dresser, all of them poetry. Then it was the flower and the books. He put the little picture of the river on the dresser, too, then put it back in his suitcase, because if the clerk noticed it, he might steal it, literally or in effect. But the cat sleeping in the sunlight by the geranium—he would have to look at her face, the way it brightened and softened when she saw something that charmed her. And then he would ask her to sit down, but she would go to the window first and, say, touch a sleeping paw, make an ear flick.
Sardines ought to please a cat. He picked it up, hand under its belly, and carried it downstairs, alert but unresisting, an animal for which the world was no longer a matter of the somber urges and competences it had felt emerging in its sinews and bones, urges that sent it prowling among the unstartled sparrows and cold-eyed gulls scavenging at the same garbage cans it did. Jack slipped it into his pocket for the moments he spent buying a box of crackers and a tin of sardines.
He sat down on the stoop of the rooming house, rolled back the lid of the tin, and put one little fish on his palm. The cat ate it, propping itself with its paws, and scrubbed Jack’s hand with its tongue. Another sardine. The third and fourth Jack put on a cracker for himself. Pleasant enough, a man and his cat. It leaped down into the bushes to do the meticulous business of scratching the ground and covering the place. Then it came back to him. He picked it up again, hand under its belly because he liked to feel its heart beating, and went inside.
The clerk said, “What do you think of the c
at?”
“It seems decent enough.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I like it well enough.”
“All right. Five bucks.”
“What?”
“Three-fifty. I’ll put it on your tab.”
“You’re trying to sell me a cat? It’s just like every cat in every alley in St. Louis!”
“True. And there’s a rule against cats in this house, anyway. Dogs. And there’s nothing particular about it, so there’s no reason to pay me for it. That’s true.”
Jack had looked it over carefully. It had no distinguishing marks of any kind. It was too young to have any distinguishing behaviors. “This is ridiculous,” he said, and put it back in his pocket. But this time it jumped out and ran. The clerk caught it up in his hand and chucked it out the door. “There are a million more just like it,” he said. “Give me a few bucks every now and then to cover damages and I’ll look the other way. If you decide you want a cat.”
Jack stepped out the door. No cat in sight. He walked around a little, disgruntling pigeons, looking into garbage cans and around them with an interest that must have appeared fairly pitiful to passersby. Then he went to the shop where he had bought the sardines and got another tin. He was beginning to add up the expenses involving this cat. But he sat back down on the stoop with the open tin beside him. Two cats appeared, then a third, all gray with gray stripes, all half grown. Then a small, cautious fourth, gray with gray stripes. He held out a sardine to it on the fingers of one hand, grabbed it with the other, and left the oily tin on the stoop for the rest of them to fight over. As he walked in past the desk, the clerk looked up from his newspaper. He said, “That’s not the same cat.”
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