Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

by Walker Percy

  “What direction?”

  “To you and Miss Oglethorpe.”

  “You want me and Miss Oglethorpe …”

  “We thought we could use your waiting room with that wonderful campy old couch, and you and Miss Oglethorpe could stay in the examining room with the door cracked and spy a bit, to add piquancy to the observer factor.”

  “Miss Oglethorpe is a Presbyterian.”

  “So what? Don’t Presbyterian nurses treat patients?”

  “I expect she’s gone home.”

  “No, she said she’d wait.”

  I spill my drink. “You mean you asked her?”

  “She said anything you wanted to do was all right with her.” Ted turns to Tanya. “Do you know what that couch reminds me of?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “The porch at the old dorm in Lansing.”

  “I know, I know,” says Tanya, looking at Ted, but her out eye strays toward me.

  “I’m feeling like a kid, wow,” says Ted, rising. “I’ll go get Miss Oglethorpe.”

  “Wait,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “Why Miss Oglethorpe? Why the two of us? Why not me?”

  Ted frowns impatiently. “Studies in Palo Alto have shown that when observers are of both sexes, successful reconditioning increases by sixty-two percent.”

  “Yes. Hm. But I fear today is out of the question. I’m tied up.” The prospect of watching Ted ’n Tanya make love is lugubrious enough, but it is the enlisting of Ellen Oglethorpe that makes me nervous. In fact, I’ve broken out in a cold sweat.

  “You couldn’t give us half an hour, Tom?” asks Tanya, patting a gypsy ringlet.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What about Wednesday?” asks Ted.

  “Yes!” I say, seizing at the straw. By Wednesday anything could happen. The world could end. “Check with Ellen for a new appointment.”

  “Dear?” Ted stretches out both hands to Tanya, lifts her up. Ted is smiling. Two spots of color grow in Tanya’s cheeks. They exit, arms about each other like Rudolfo and Mimi.

  15

  I sit in the dark wondering where Ellen is. The storm breaks at last. My lapsometer gleams in the lightning flashes. If only … If only my lapsometer could treat as well as diagnose, I wouldn’t be caught up in these farces.

  The back door is open. The tape rolls. Don Giovanni begins his descent into hell. A bolt of lightning strikes a transformer with a great crack. Sparks fly. The ox-lot is filled with a rinsing blue-white light Trees jump backward. The lights go out.

  Ellen comes in to tell me she is leaving and that someone else wants to see me.

  “I’m not seeing any more patients.”

  “I think he’s a detail man. He said he wouldn’t keep you long.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t forget, Chief, your mother expects you tomorrow.”

  “What? Wait—”

  But she’s gone. In the lightning flashes a man seems to come forward by jumps. He carries an outsize attaché case like a drug salesman.

  “Look, I see detail men on weekdays.”

  But he’s not a detail man.

  “Art Immelmann is the name,” he says, sticking his hand across the desk. “Funding is my game.”

  “Very good, Art, but—” I notice gloomily that he’s sat down. Did he say Immerman, or Immelmann like the German ace and inventor of the Immelmann turn?

  “It’s a new concept in funding, Doctor.” Art is shouting over the storm as he takes papers out of his attaché case. He frowns at the open door but I don’t feel tike closing it,

  I try to turn on the tights to see him better, but the current is off. The lightning flashes, however, are almost continuous. He’s an odd-looking fellow, curiously old-fashioned. Indeed, with his old-style flat-top haircut, white shirt with short sleeves, which even have vestigial cuff buttons, and neat dark trousers, he looks like a small-town businessman in the old Auto Age, one of those wiry old-young fifty-year-olds, perhaps a Southern Bell manager, who used to go to Howard Johnson’s every Tuesday for Rotary luncheon. His face is both youthful and lined. The flat-top makes a tangent with the crown of his skull, giving the effect of a tonsure. Is it an early bald spot or a too-close flat-top?

  When he leans across the desk to shake hands, air pushes ahead of him bearing to my nostrils a heavy complex odor, the intricate canceled smell of sweat neutralized by a strong deodorant.

  “A lovely little lady, Doc,” says the stranger, nodding at the closed door.

  “Who? What’s that?” I say sharply, frowning with irritation. Did he wink at me or is it the effect of the lightning?

  “Very high-principled and efficient, yet most attractive. Most I’d like to beat you out of her.”

  “How—! What in hell do you mean?” At a loss for words—I almost said, How dare you?—I jump up from the chair.

  “No offense! Take it easy, Doc! Ha ha, made you come up for air, didn’t I?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I only meant that I admire your nurse and wish I had someone as good to assist me in my own researches. What is the saying: All is fair in love and war and hiring cooks?”

  “Are you selling something?” My hair prickles with an odd, almost pleasurable dislike.

  “Not selling today, Doc. We’re giving it away.” With that, Art hands over what appear to be application forms. “Don’t worry!” He laughs heartily. “They’re already filled in.”

  I haven’t been listening carefully. The papers seem to jump back and forth in the lightning. “What are these for?” (Why don’t I throw him out?)

  “For the money you need.”

  “Money? Who are you representing, Art?”

  “I’m one of those liaison fellows from Washington.”

  “Liaison? Between whom?”

  “Between the public and private sectors.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Ha ha, you might well ask.” His young-old face, I notice, goes instantly serious between laughs. “In this case it is between the National Institute of Mental Health in the public sector and the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations in the private sector.”

  “Good.”

  “It does sound impressive, doesn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Actually, I’m a glorified errand boy.”

  “Is that so?” I say gloomily, trying to read my watch.

  “We of N.I.M.H. and”—for a moment his words are lost in a clap of thunder—“you may have come up with the most important integrative technique of our time.”

  “What’s that?” I say. The wind shifts and a fine mist blows in the doorway. There is a smell of wet warm brick.

  “You’ve done it, Dr. More!”

  “Done what?”

  “You’ve come up with a technique that maximizes and unites hardware and software capabilities.”

  “How’s that?” I ask inattentively. What to make of this fellow who talks like a bureaucrat but looks—and smells —like a hard-working detail man? “What technique are you talking about?”

  “The More Qualitative-Quantitative Ontological Lapsometer,” says Art Immelmann, laughing. “What a mouthful. Everybody at the office calls it the MOQUOL. Sounds like a hole in the ground, doesn’t it?”

  I set down my toddy. My hand, feeling light and tremulous, levitates. I put it in my pocket.

  “Surprised, eh, Doc?”

  After a moment I decide to fix a drink. Though my hand feels normal, I decide to hold the glass in both hands.

  “What I don’t understand is how you knew about it.”

  “Think about it a moment Doc, and you’ll see.”

  I see in the next lightning flash. Either the Director has approved my article, or Brain has accepted it or both, and either or both have leaked the news to N.I.M.H.

  “You’ve won, Doctor,” says Art gravely. Again the hand comes across the desk. We shake hands. Again comes the intricate canceled
sweat-and-deodorant smell.

  I’ve won.

  Now I know how Einstein felt when the English astronomers flashed the news from Venezuela that sure enough, Arcturus’s light had taken a little bend as it swept past the sun.

  Victory.

  I sit back and listen to the steady rain and the peepers turning up in the ox-lot What to do now? I recall my uncle’s advice: guard against the sadness of hubris. How to do that? By going to the Little Napoleon and having a drink with Leroy Ledbetter.

  “We’re interested in funding truly innovative techniques. Yours is truly innovative.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got your own built-in logistical factor. The results, moreover, are incremental.”

  “Yes.” What in hell is he talking about? It doesn’t matter. I’ve won.

  “You are aware of the national implications?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “For the first time the behavioral sciences have a tool for dealing with the heretofore immeasurable and intangible stresses that are rending the national fabric.”

  “Yes.”

  “Dr. More.” Again Art stands up, not to shake hands again I hope, no, but again there is the heavy mollified protein smell.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re prepared to fund an interdisciplinary task force and implement a crash program that will put a MOQUOL in the hands of every physician and social scientist in the U.S. within one year’s time.”

  “You are?” Why don’t I feel excited? My eyes don’t blink.

  “As you know better than I, your MOQUOL has a multilevel capacity. It is operative at behavioral, political, and philosophical levels. I would even go so far as to say this, Doc—” Art pauses to hawk phlegm and adjust his crotch with an expert complicated pat.

  “What’s that, Art?”

  “If the old U. S. of A. doesn’t go down the drain in the next year, it will be thanks to your MOQUOL.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that, but—”

  In the last flash of lightning, a legal-size blue-jacketed document appears under my nose and a pen is pointed at my breastbone.

  “What’s this, Art?”

  “A detail. A bureaucratic first step, ha ha.” Art laughs his instant laugh and goes as sober as a mortician.

  “Hey, this is a transfer of patent rights!”

  “Boilerplate, Doc. Standard procedure for any contract with the private sector. And look at your return!” Expertly he flips pages. “Seventy-five percent!”

  “Yeah, but I mean, goddamn, Art—!” I begin, but Art Immelmann turns white and falls back a step.

  “Pardon. I only meant to say that the money doesn’t interest me.” Art must be a Holy Name man or a hard-shell Baptist.

  “I told them you’d say that. But let’s don’t worry about it. The important thing is to get the MOQUOL distributed in time.”

  “Well, I’ve already got a hundred production models.”

  “Where?” Art nearly comes across the desk.

  I sit back in surprise. “In a safe place. Don’t worry.”

  “You don’t want to leave something like MOQUOL lying around. Doc.”

  “I know.” I tell him of my plans, my appointment with the Director Monday, the submission of my article to Brain. “I just don’t see the necessity of signing over my patent rights.”

  “You know, you could be disappointed, Doc,” says Art thoughtfully but beginning, I see with relief, to put the application forms back in his case.

  “Well, I’m hopeful.”

  “You know how people resist a really radical innovation.”

  “Yes, but this thing works, Art.”

  “I know. Tell you what, Doc,” says Art cheerfully, snapping up his attaché case. “I’ll drop in next week.”

  “Cant the funding be arranged without signing over control of the MOQUOL?”

  “No doubt. But I’ll be seeing you in a day or two. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “In case you hit a snag. You never know about people, Doc,” says Art mysteriously.

  “Very true,” I say, anxious only to get rid of him and get over to the Little Napoleon, a snug and friendly haven in any storm.

  Some seconds pass before I realize that Art left by the back door, striking out across the dark ox-lot. I shrug. Perhaps he’s taking the short cut to the old Southern Hotel, where a few drummers and detail men still put up.

  But how would he know about the short cut?

  JULY SECOND

  My mother’s house

  10:00 A.M. / SUNDAY, JULY 2

  SUNDAYS I EAT BREAKFAST WITH MY MOTHER. But today is special. Yesterday was my birthday. Today is Property Rights Sunday. My mother, who is president of the altar society and also of the Business & Professional Women, is leading an ecumenical delegation to Saint Pius VII Church (A.C.C.). (A.C.C. = American Catholic Church.)

  The Summer Moonlight Tour of the Champs is in full swing. The fish fry will be held this afternoon. Later this morning the Kaydettes corps of Christian baton-twirlers will give a performance. Tuesday they leave for the nationals at Oxford, Mississippi.

  It seems I promised to go to church with Mother—because it is my birthday, because it is Property Rights Sunday, and because she wants me to “come back to the Church.”

  We are sitting on a terrace overlooking the golf links where we are served a hearty breakfast by Eukie, Mother’s little black houseboy. His white jacket is too dazzling to be looked at. The pile of steaming grits is also white and glittering in the morning sunlight. I’ve already had my warm Tang plus duck eggs plus vodka, and my pulse races along at a merry clip. I am both alert and shaky.

  Everything is lovely and peaceful here. Towhees whistle in the azaleas. Golfers hum up and down the fairways in their quaint surrey-like carts. Householders mow their lawns, bestriding tiny burro-size tractors. Why am I so jumpy?

  On the other hand, the vines are encroaching. Mother’s yard is noticeably smaller.

  My chair is placed so that I am facing Tara next door, Dusty Rhoades’s plantation house, which he purchased from Vince Marsaglia, a gangster from New Orleans who runs Louisiana.

  Mother, I see, has all sorts of schemes afoot for me. She is saying:

  “I can just see you and Lola walking up and down by moonlight while from the inside come the strains of lovely old-world music.”

  “Lola Rhoades?”

  “Ho ho, you can’t fool your mother! I know what’s going on between you two.”

  “You do? What is going on?”

  “I couldn’t be more pleased. She’s wild about you, Tom! What a wonderful girl!”

  I am scratching my head: this is odd. Until now Mother hasn’t had much use for Lola, considering her Texas-raw and Texas-horsy. Lola’s cello-straddling always struck Mother as somehow unladylike. She’s been talking to Dusty, I reckon.

  “You’re a Cancer and she’s a Taurus. It couldn’t be better!”

  “That may be, Mother, but the fact is I don’t really—”

  “Beware of Aries and Libra.”

  “O.K., Mother, but—”

  “Isn’t that little nurse of yours an Aries?”

  “Who? Ellen? Good Lord, I have no idea, Mother. In any case, Ellen and I have no—”

  “And isn’t that little Left snippet of yours a Libra?”

  “Who? Moira? My Lord, Mother, how in the world do you know? And in any case why do you say ‘of mine’?”

  “She’s not for you, son.”

  “Are you speaking of marriage? Moira has no intention of marrying me.”

  “Then all the more reason for breaking it off. But I’m not really worried about that. Here’s what’s been on my mind.”

  “Yes?”

  “Being a Cancer means that you are deeply sensitive and that family strife tends to cause you much suffering. God knows this is true in your case.”

  “That it is.”

  “Ginger Rogers and Red Skelton were Cancers.” />
  “I didn’t know that.”

  “You are also under Moon rule, which means that you are emotionally unstable and tend to form will-o’-the-wisp relationships with more than one sweetheart.”

  “That’s true.”

  “What I wanted to tell you is that in this, the first week of July, I believe that certain things are going to become clear to you and that you will make some important decisions, but—”

  “I believe that too.”

  “But—! Do not make any real estate transfers until later in the month. I’ve told Dusty and Lola the same thing.”

  “Real estate transfers,” I say, scratching my head.

  “I’ve told Dusty and Lola and I’m telling you: whatever plans you all might have, don’t sell anything now or buy anything now.” She nods meaningfully at Tara.

  “Sell anything? Mother, Lola and I have no plans. What did Dusty tell you?”

  “Ho ho ho. I know a thing or two. And I know that Lola is a wonderful girl.”

  It is true. Lola, a big beautiful cellist, is a wonderful girl. Last Christmas Eve we lay in one another’s arms in the grassy bunker of number 18 and watched the summer constellations wheel in their courses—I, smashed out of my mind with love, with scientific triumph, and brain hives, she full of love and music, hissing cello tunes in my ear. A brave girl, she saved my life at the expense of her reputation, went to fetch her father as I lay dying of love and hives in the bunker.

  What Mother doesn’t understand is that we loved each other for one night and that was the end of it. One night I sang between her knees like an antique cello while she watched the wheeling constellations. A perfect encounter, but it is not to be thought that we could repeat it.

  And yet—here’s the wonder of love—even as I bend shivering over the glittering mound of grits, love revives! Love is always possible, even here in the ashes of my forty-five-year-old life. Something stirs, a phoenix. Bad as things are, perhaps just because they are so bad, why not go to the fish fry this afternoon, see Lola again, drink a gin fizz or two?

  “Doris was not for you, Tom,” Mother is saying. “God knows she was a wonderful person, but she was never for you. A Capricorn, your exact opposite. I told you!”

  No, she didn’t. The truth is she was all for Doris at the beginning, embracing her as a Virginia aristocrat, which she was not, being no more than a good-looking Shenandoah Valley girl.