The Human Stain

by Philip Roth

  “He ripped ’em down.”

  Faunia burst out laughing, much louder this time than before. “He ripped them down?”

  “With his beak. Tore ’em up.”

  “He didn’t want anybody to know his background! Ashamed of his own background! Prince!” she called, turning back to face the cage whose door was still wide open. “You’re ashamed of your notorious past? Oh, you good boy. You’re a good crow.”

  Now she took notice of one of the several stuffed animals scattered on mounts around the room. “Is that a bobcat there?”

  “Yeah,” the girl said, waiting patiently for the snake to finish flicking its tongue out at the new dead mouse and grab hold of it.

  “Is he from around here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve seen them around, up in the hills. Looked just like that one, the one I saw. Probably is him.” And she laughed again. She wasn’t drunk—hadn’t even got half her coffee down when she’d run from the house, let alone had a drink—but the laugh sounded like the laugh of someone who’d already had a few. She was just feeling good being here with the snake and the crow and the stuffed bobcat, none of them intent on teaching her a thing. None of them going to read to her from the New York Times. None of them going to try to catch her up on the history of the human race over the last three thousand years. She knew all she needed to know about the history of the human race: the ruthless and the defenseless. She didn’t need the dates and the names. The ruthless and the defenseless, there’s the whole fucking deal. Nobody here was going to try to encourage her to read, because nobody here knew how, with the exception of the girl. That snake certainly didn’t know how. It just knew how to eat mice. Slow and easy. Plenty of time.

  “What kind of snake is that?”

  “A black rat snake.”

  “Takes the whole thing down.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gets digested in the gut.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How many will it eat?”

  “That’s his seventh mouse. He took that one kind of slow even for him. That might be his last.”

  “Every day seven?”

  “No. Every one or two weeks.”

  “And is it let out anywhere or is that life?” she said, pointing to the glass case from which the snake had been lifted into the plastic carton where it was fed.

  “That’s it. In there.”

  “Good deal,” said Faunia, and she turned back to look across the room at the crow, still on its perch inside its cage. “Well, Prince, I’m over here. And you’re over there. And I have no interest in you whatsoever. If you don’t want to land on my shoulder, I couldn’t care less.” She pointed to another of the stuffed animals. “What’s the guy over there?”

  “That’s an osprey.”

  She sized it up—a hard look at the sharp claws—and, again with a biggish laugh, said, “Don’t mess with the osprey.”

  The snake was considering an eighth mouse. “If I could only get my kids to eat seven mice,” Faunia said, “I’d be the happiest mother on earth.”

  The girl smiled and said, “Last Sunday, Prince got out and was flying around. All of the birds we have can’t fly. Prince is the only one that can fly. He’s pretty fast.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Faunia said.

  “I was dumping some water and he made a beeline for the door and went out into the trees. Within minutes there were three or four crows that came. Surrounded him in the tree. And they were going nuts. Harassing him. Hitting him on the back. Screaming. Smacking into him and stuff. They were there within minutes. He doesn’t have the right voice. He doesn’t know the crow language. They don’t like him out there. Eventually he came down to me, because I was out there. They would have killed him.”

  “That’s what comes of being hand-raised,” said Faunia. “That’s what comes of hanging around all his life with people like us. The human stain,” she said, and without revulsion or contempt or condemnation. Not even with sadness. That’s how it is—in her own dry way, that is all Faunia was telling the girl feeding the snake: we leave a stain, we leave a trail, we leave our imprint. Impurity, cruelty, abuse, error, excrement, semen—there’s no other way to be here. Nothing to do with disobedience. Nothing to do with grace or salvation or redemption. It’s in everyone. Indwelling. Inherent. Defining. The stain that is there before its mark. Without the sign it is there. The stain so intrinsic it doesn’t require a mark. The stain that precedes disobedience, that encompasses disobedience and perplexes all explanation and understanding. It’s why all the cleansing is a joke. A barbaric joke at that. The fantasy of purity is appalling. It’s insane. What is the quest to purify, if not more impurity? All she was saying about the stain was that it’s inescapable. That, naturally, would be Faunia’s take on it: the inevitably stained creatures that we are. Reconciled to the horrible, elemental imperfection. She’s like the Greeks, like Coleman’s Greeks. Like their gods. They’re petty. They quarrel. They fight. They hate. They murder. They fuck. All their Zeus ever wants to do is to fuck—goddesses, mortals, heifers, she-bears—and not merely in his own form but, even more excitingly, as himself made manifest as beast. To hugely mount a woman as a bull. To enter her bizarrely as a flailing white swan. There is never enough flesh for the king of the gods or enough perversity. All the craziness desire brings. The dissoluteness. The depravity. The crudest pleasures. And the fury from the all-seeing wife. Not the Hebrew God, infinitely alone, infinitely obscure, monomaniacally the only god there is, was, and always will be, with nothing better to do than worry about Jews. And not the perfectly desexualized Christian man-god and his uncontaminated mother and all the guilt and shame that an exquisite unearthliness inspires. Instead the Greek Zeus, entangled in adventure, vividly expressive, capricious, sensual, exuberantly wedded to his own rich existence, anything but alone and anything but hidden. Instead the divine stain. A great reality-reflecting religion for Faunia Farley if, through Coleman, she’d known anything about it. As the hubristic fantasy has it, made in the image of God, all right, but not ours—theirs. God debauched. God corrupted. A god of life if ever there was one. God in the image of man.

  “Yeah. I suppose that’s the tragedy of human beings raising crows,” the girl replied, not exactly getting Faunia’s drift though not entirely missing it either. “They don’t recognize their own species. He doesn’t. And he should. It’s called imprinting,” the girl told her. “Prince is really a crow that doesn’t know how to be a crow.”

  Suddenly Prince started cawing, not in a true crow caw but in that caw that he had stumbled on himself and that drove the other crows nuts. The bird was out on top of the door now, practically shrieking.

  Smiling temptingly, Faunia turned and said, “I take that as a compliment, Prince.”

  “He imitates the schoolkids that come here and imitate him,” the girl explained. “When the kids on the school trips imitate a crow? That’s his impression of the kids. The kids do that. He’s invented his own language. From kids.”

  In a strange voice of her own, Faunia said, “I love that strange voice he invented.” And in the meantime she had crossed back to the cage and stood only inches from the door. She raised her hand, the hand with the ring, and said to the bird, “Here. Here. Look what I brought you to play with.” She took the ring off and held it up for him to examine at close range. “He likes my opal ring.”

  “Usually we give him keys to play with.”

  “Well, he’s moved up in the world. Haven’t we all. Here. Three hundred bucks,” Faunia said. “Come on, play with it. Don’t you know an expensive ring when somebody offers it to you?”

  “He’ll take it,” the girl said. “He’ll take it inside with him. He’s like a pack rat. He’ll take his food and shove it into the cracks in the wall of his cage and pound it in there with his beak.”

  The crow had now grasped the ring tightly in its beak and was jerkily moving its head from side to side. Then the ring fell to the floor. The
bird had dropped it.

  Faunia bent down and picked it up and offered it to the crow again. “If you drop it, I’m not going to give it to you. You know that. Three hundred bucks. I’m giving you a ring for three hundred bucks—what are you, a fancy man? If you want it, you have to take it. Right? Okay?”

  With his beak he again plucked it from her fingers and firmly took hold of it.

  “Thank you,” said Faunia. “Take it inside,” she whispered so that the girl couldn’t hear. “Take it in your cage. Go ahead. It’s for you.”

  But he dropped it again.

  “He’s very smart,” the girl called over to Faunia. “When we play with him, we put a mouse inside a container and close it. And he figures out how to open the container. It’s amazing.”

  Once again Faunia retrieved the ring and offered it, and again the crow took it and dropped it.

  “Oh, Prince—that was deliberate. It’s now a game, is it?”

  Caw. Caw. Caw. Caw. Right into her face, the bird exploded with its special noise.

  Here Faunia reached up with her hand and began to stroke the head and then, very slowly, to stroke the body downward from the head, and the crow allowed her to do this. “Oh, Prince. Oh, so beautifully shiny. He’s humming to me,” she said, and her voice was rapturous, as though she had at last uncovered the meaning of everything. “He’s humming.” And she began to hum back, “Ewwww . . . ewwww . . . ummmmm,” imitating the bird, which was indeed making some sort of lowing sound as it felt the pressure of the hand smoothing its back feathers. Then suddenly, click click, it was clicking its beak. “Oh, that’s good,” whispered Faunia, and then she turned her head to the girl and, with her heartiest of laughs, said, “Is he for sale? That clicking did it. I’ll take him.” Meanwhile, closer and closer she came to his clicking beak with her own lips, whispering to the bird, “Yes, I’ll take you, I’ll buy you—”

  “He does bite, so watch your eyes,” the girl said.

  “Oh, I know he bites. I’ve already had him bite me a couple of times. When we first met he bit me. But he clicks, too. Oh, listen to him click, children.”

  And she was remembering how hard she had tried to die. Twice. Up in the room in Seeley Falls. The month after the children died, twice tried to kill myself in that room. For all intents and purposes, the first time I did. I know from stories the nurse told me. The stuff on the monitor that defines a heartbeat wasn’t even there. Usually lethal, she said. But some girls have all the luck. And I tried so hard. I remember taking the shower, shaving my legs, putting on my best skirt, the long denim skirt. The wraparound. And the blouse from Brattleboro that time, that summer, the embroidered blouse. I remember the gin and the Valium, and dimly remember this powder. I forget the name. Some kind of rat powder, bitter, and I folded it into the butterscotch pudding. Did I turn on the oven? Did I forget to? Did I turn blue? How long did I sleep? When did they decide to break down the door? I still don’t know who did that. To me it was ecstatic, getting myself ready. There are times in life worth celebrating. Triumphant times. The occasions for which dressing up was intended. Oh, how I turned myself out. I braided my hair. I did my eyes. Would have made my own mother proud, and that’s saying something. Called her just the week before to tell her the kids were dead. First phone call in twenty years. “It’s Faunia, Mother.” “I don’t know anybody by that name. Sorry,” and hung up. The bitch. After I ran away, she told everyone, “My husband is strict and Faunia couldn’t live by the rules. She could never live by the rules.” The classic cover-up. What privileged girl-child ever ran away because a stepfather was strict? She runs away, you bitch, because the stepfather isn’t strict—because the stepfather is wayward and won’t leave her alone. Anyway, I dressed myself in the best I owned. No less would do. The second time I didn’t dress up. And that I didn’t dress up tells the whole story. My heart wasn’t in it anymore, not after the first time didn’t work. The second time it was sudden and impulsive and joyless. That first time had been so long in coming, days and nights, all that anticipation. The concoctions. Buying the powder. Getting prescriptions. But the second time was hurried. Uninspired. I think I stopped because I couldn’t stand the suffocating. My throat choking, really suffocating, not getting any air, and hurrying to unknot the extension cord. There wasn’t any of that hurried business the first time. It was calm and peaceful. The kids are gone and there’s no one to worry about and I have all the time in the world. If only I’d done it right. The pleasure there was in it. Finally where there is none, there is that last joyous moment, when death should come on your own angry terms, but you don’t feel angry—just elated. I can’t stop thinking about it. All this week. He’s reading to me about Clinton from the New York Times and all I’m thinking about is Dr. Kevorkian and his carbon monoxide machine. Just inhale deeply. Just suck until there is no more to inhale.

  “‘They were such beautiful children,’ he said. ‘You never expect anything like this to happen to you or your friends. At least Faunia has the faith that her children are with God now.’”

  That’s what some jerk-off told the paper. 2 CHILDREN SUFFOCATE IN LOCAL HOUSE FIRE. “‘Based on the initial investigation,’ Sergeant Donaldson said, ‘evidence indicates that a space heater . . .’ Residents of the rural road said they became aware of the fire when the children’s mother . . .”

  When the children’s mother tore herself free from the cock she was sucking.

  “The father of the children, Lester Farley, emerged from the hallway moments later, neighbors said.”

  Ready to kill me once and for all. He didn’t. And then I didn’t. Amazing. Amazing how nobody’s done it yet to the dead children’s mother.

  “No, I didn’t, Prince. Couldn’t make that work either. And so,” she whispered to the bird, whose lustrous blackness beneath her hand was warm and sleek like nothing she had ever fondled, “here we are instead. A crow who really doesn’t know how to be a crow, a woman who doesn’t really know how to be a woman. We’re meant for each other. Marry me. You’re my destiny, you ridiculous bird.” Then she stepped back and bowed. “Farewell, my Prince.”

  And the bird responded. With a high-pitched noise that so sounded like “Cool. Cool. Cool,” that once again she broke into laughter. When she turned to wave goodbye to the girl, she told her, “Well, that’s better than I get from the guys on the street.”

  And she’d left the ring. Coleman’s gift. When the girl wasn’t looking, she’d hid it away in the cage. Engaged to a crow. That’s the ticket.

  “Thank you,” called Faunia.

  “You’re welcome. Have a good one,” the girl called after her, and with that, Faunia drove back to Coleman’s to finish her breakfast and see what developed with him next. The ring’s in the cage. He’s got the ring. He’s got a three-hundred-dollar ring.

  The trip to the Moving Wall up in Pittsfield took place on Veterans Day, when the flag is flown at half-mast and many towns hold parades—and the department stores hold their sales—and vets who feel as Les did are more disgusted with their compatriots, their country, and their government than on any other day of the year. Now he was supposed to be in some two-bit parade and march around while a band played and everyone waved the flag? Now it was going to make everybody feel good for a minute to be recognizing their Vietnam veterans? How come they spit on him when he came home if they were so eager to see him out there now? How come there were veterans sleeping in the street while that draft dodger was sleeping in the White House? Slick Willie, commander in chief. Son of a bitch. Squeezing that Jew girl’s fat tits while the VA budget goes down the drain. Lying about sex? Shit. The goddamn government lies about everything. No, the U.S. government had already played enough bad jokes on Lester Farley without adding on the joke of Veterans Day.

  And yet there he was, on that day of all days, driving up to Pittsfield in Louie’s van. They were headed for the half-scale replica of the real Wall that for some fifteen years now had been touring the country; from the tenth through the
sixteenth of November, it was to be on view in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn under the sponsorship of the Pittsfield VFW. With him was the same crew that had seen him through the trial of the Chinese meal. They weren’t going to let him go alone, and they’d been reassuring him of that all along: we’ll be there with you, we’ll stand by you, we’ll be with you 24/7 if we need to be. Louie had gone so far as to say that afterward Les could stay with him and his wife at their house, and, for however long it took, they would look after him. “You won’t have to go home alone, Les, not if you don’t want to. I don’t think you should try. You come stay with me and Tess. Tessie’s seen it all. Tessie understands. You don’t have to worry about Tessie. When I got back, Tessie became my motivation. My outlook was, How can anyone tell me what to do. I’m going into a rage without any provocation. You know. You know it all, Les. But thank God Tessie steadfastly stood by me. If you want, she’ll stand by you.”

  Louie was a brother to him, the best brother a man could ever hope to have, but because he would not leave him be about going to the Wall, because he was so fucking fanatical about him seeing that wall, Les had all he could do not to take him by the throat and throttle the bastard. Gimpy spic bastard, leave me alone! Stop telling me how it took you ten years to get to the Wall. Stop telling me how it fucking changed your life. Stop telling me how you made peace with Mikey. Stop telling me what Mikey said to you at the Wall. I don’t want to know!