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

by Walker Percy

  Before leaving, I give each girl a light Chloride massage over Brodmann 32 and pineal Layer I—to inoculate them against a Heavy Sodium fallout, an unlikely event in the next few hours, but who knows? After treatment, each girl looks so serene, both alert and dreamy-eyed, as sleepy and watchful as a waking child, that I do the same for myself.

  12

  A gaggle of unruly Left students mill about the main gate of the Behavioral Institute. Some drive nails into golf balls. Others fill Coke bottles with gasoline. They frown when they see me. I recognize several members of Buddy Brown’s faction.

  Professor Coffin Cabot, a famous scholar on loan from Harvard, is in their midst, a pair of wire-cutters in one hand and the flag of North Ecuador in the other, counseling, exhorting, and showing students how to clip the heads off nails after they are driven into a golf ball.

  “What are you doing here, More?” he asks, his face darkening.

  “What’s wrong with my being here?”

  “Haven’t you done enough dirty work for the military-industrial-academic complex?”

  “What do you mean?’

  “You know very well what I mean, I suppose you don’t know that your cute little toy has been added to the Maryland arsenal along with its cache of plague bacilli and lethal gases.”

  “No, I didn’t. By whom?”

  “By your fascist friend, Immelmann.”

  “He’s not a friend. But may I ask what you are doing?”

  “We are organizing a nonviolent demonstration for peace and freedom in Ecuador.”

  “Nonviolent?” I ask, looking at the pile of spiked golf balls.

  “We practice creative nonviolent violence, that is, violence in the service of nonviolence. It is a matter of intention.”

  Professor Cabot is a semanticist.

  “When is this coming off?”

  “This afternoon. We’re marching against the so-called Fourth of July movement in town.”

  “So-called?”

  “Yes. We recognize only the Fifth of July movement named in honor of the day Jorge Rojas parachuted into the mountains of South Ecuador.”

  “Jorge Rojas?”

  “Of course. He’s the George Washington of Ecuador, the only man beloved north and south and the only man capable of uniting the country.”

  “But didn’t he kill several hundred thousand Ecuadorians who didn’t love him?”

  “Yes, but they were either fascists or running dogs or lackeys of the American imperialists. Anyhow, the question has become academic.”

  “How is that?”

  “Because those who are left do love him.”

  I scratch my head. “Why are you carrying that flag?”

  “Because North Ecuador stands for peace and freedom.”

  “But aren’t you an American?”

  “Yes, but America is a cancer in the community of democratic nations. Incidentally, More, my lecture on this subject last month in Stockholm received an even greater ovation than it got at Harvard.”

  “If that is the case, why don’t you live in Sweden or North Ecuador?”

  Professor Cabot looks at me incredulously as he adjusts a wick in a Coke bottle.

  “You’ve got to be kidding, More.”

  “No.”

  He stands up, looks right and left, and says in a low voice, “Do you know what I’m pulling at Cambridge?”

  “No.”

  “A hundred thousand a year plus two hundred thousand for my own institute. And Berkeley offered me more. What do you think of that?”

  “Very good,” I reply sympathetically, setting as I do as high a value on money as the next man.

  “Say, why don’t you join us, More?” asks Coffin Cabot impulsively.

  “No thanks. I’ve got to pick up a ah cello.” For some reason I blush.

  Cabot grins. “That figures. Fiddling while Rome burns, eh?”

  “No. The fact is there are three girls over there in the motel—”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I was on the point of telling him about the dangers of the misuse of my invention when I catch sight of—I It can’t be but it is. There over Coffin Cabot’s shoulder, moving about among the students with my lapsometer, is Art Immelmann!

  “Excuse me,” I murmur, but Cabot is already preoccupied with the next batch of golf balls and does not notice Art.

  I watch him.

  Art Immelmann, it soon becomes clear, is demonstrating my device to the students as the famous fake prop of The Pit, laughing and shaking his head at the preposterousness of it, like a doctor unmasking the latest quackery. The students laugh. Yet, as he does so, he makes passes over the students’ heads.

  In the instant he catches sight of me I lay hands on my invention and snatch it away from him.

  “Oh, Doc!” he cries with every sign of delight. “Just the man I’m looking for!”

  I gaze at him in astonishment. “How did you get here?”

  “What do you mean, Doc?”

  “I saw you on TV not ten minutes ago and you were in town.”

  Art shrugs. “Perhaps it was a tape.”

  “It was no tape.” I am examining the lapsometer. “Do you realize you’ve got this thing set for plus ten dosage at the level of the prefrontal abstractive centers?”

  “It’s only for purposes of demonstration.”

  “Do you realize what this would do to a man, especially a student?”

  “I know,” says Art, smiling good-naturedly. “But I like to hear you say it.”

  “It would render him totally abstracted from himself, totally alienated from the concrete world, and in such a state of angelism that he will fall prey to the first abstract notion proposed to him and will kill anybody who gets in his way, torture, execute, wipe out entire populations, all with the best possible motives and the best possible intentions, in fact in the name of peace and freedom, etcetera.”

  “Yeah, Doc!” cries Art delighted. “Your MOQUOL surpasses my most sanguine expectations. I’ve already elicited positive interactions from both ends of the spectrum—”

  “Goddamn, man, do you realize what you’re saying?”

  Art winces and turns pale. I swing him round to face me.

  “I authorized you to use my invention to diminish, not increase tensions. It says so in the contract.”

  “Yeah, but Doc, this is the pilot. In the pilot you have to get the problem out on the table. Then when the pilot’s completed—”

  “Screw the pilot,” I am yelling, beside myself with anger.

  “How do you mean, Doc?” asks Art, mystified. “How is that possible?”

  “Never mind. It’s no use trying to tell you. I’m taking this lapsometer and I want the rest that you stole. Where are they?”

  Art looks mournful. “I’m very sorry, Doc, but they’re all in the hands of the interdisciplinary task force—”

  “Listen, you son of a bitch, our agreement is canceled as of this moment.”

  “Excuse me, Doc.” Art shakes his head regretfully. “In the first place, I don’t understand your imputation about my mother when the fact of the matter is I don’t—but that’s neither here nor there. In the second place, I’m afraid the contract cannot be voided unilaterally.”

  “Get out of my way,” I say, suddenly remembering the three girls in room 203.

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Doc!” Art waves cheerily. “Don’t worry about the Nobel Prize either. You’re in.”

  Though I fling away in a rage, a pleasant tingle spreads across my sacrum. Is it the prospect of the Nobel or the effect of the gin fizz?

  13

  I am surprised and dismayed to find Love Clinic humming with activity. Stryker explains that it was the volunteers themselves who, excited by a “new concept in therapy,” had forgone the holiday in order to complete the research.

  But how to retrieve the cello without awkward explanations?

  Father Kev Kevin sits at the vaginal console reading Commonweal.


  But I am blinking at the scene in the behavior room. What a transformation! Nothing is the same. The stark white clinical cube has been decorated in Early American and furnished with a bull’s-eye mirror, cobbler’s bench, rag rugs, and two bundling beds.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Stryker, who comes gliding up, one foot swinging wide in a tango step.

  “You of all people should know!”

  “Why me?”

  “It’s thanks to you we made the breakthrough.”

  “What breakthrough?”

  “The use of substitute partners.”

  “The use of what?”

  “Ha ha, don’t be modest, Doctor! Your associate told me otherwise.”

  “My associate?” I ask with sinking heart.

  “Dr. Immelmann.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He showed us your paper in which you demonstrate that marital love often founders on boredom and the struggle to attain a theoretical orgasmic perfection.”

  “But I didn’t suggest—”

  “You didn’t have to. We simply implemented your insight.”

  “With?”

  “Substitute partners! A fresh start!” Like an impresario Stryker waves a graceful hand toward the viewing mirror.

  Instead of the usual solitary subject, or at the most two subjects, there are four, two in each bed, J.T. Thigpen, Gloria, and Ted ’n Tanya. But Gloria is in one bed with Ted and J.T. in the other with Tanya. The couples are, for the most part, dressed: the women in Mistress Goody gowns, the men in Cotton Mather knee-britches.

  “As you see, Tom, we also make use of your warnings about an abstract and depersonalized environment. We place our lovers in a particular concrete historical setting.”

  “But I didn’t suggest—”

  Dr. Helga Heine suddenly turns up the music, which is not Early American, however, but Viennese waltzes.

  “Okay, keeds!” She speaks into a microphone, keeping time with her free hand. Though she is hefty, she balances lightly on the balls of her feet.

  “Zwei Herzen! Now—bundling partitions up!”

  “Hold it!” cries the chaplain from the vaginal console. “They haven’t inserted the sensors! Rats!” He grabs Helga’s microphone. “Hold it, kids! Bundling partitions down! Insert sensors!”

  But it is too late. The couples are too engrossed with each other to pay attention. Nor do Stryker and Helga object.

  “The important thing is the breakthrough,” Stryker tells me. “The quantifying can come later.”

  “Go go go, keeds!” cries Helga, recovering the microphone and waltzing about in one place.

  “Don’t fret, Kev.” Stryker tries to soothe the distraught chaplain. “We’ll have the film and there’ll be more sessions to collect data.”

  “Tch!” The chaplain stamps his foot and rends his Commonweal. “I wish somebody would tell me why we’re paying these people!”

  But Stryker is standing beside Helga, the two of them suddenly quiet as they watch the lovers.

  “Wow,” says Stryker, lips parted.

  “And how,” says Helga.

  They look at each other.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asks Stryker, touching Helga’s elbow.

  “The chicken room?” asks Helga softly, her eyes radiant. She pronounces it zhicken.

  Linking arms, they disappear through the doorway of the Observer Stimulation Overflow Area.

  But wait! That’s where the cello is!

  It’s too late. The door closes. Father Kev Kevin and I watch in dismay.

  “I have to get a cello out of there,” I tell the chaplain for lack of anything better to say.

  “What are we going to do?” asks the chaplain frantically, wringing his hands, starting now for his console, now for the chicken room. He is sweating profusely.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to get that cello.”

  “Oh dear!” cries Father Kev Kevin. “If there was ever an existential decision—! Kenneth, how could you!” He groans aloud and, thrusting me aside, disappears into the cubicle.

  After a moment of indecision, I rush after him.

  Despite the urgency, I find myself knocking politely at the door. No response. Try the knob. It is unlocked. Hm, nothing for it but to slip in, find the cello, and slip out with as little fuss as possible.

  I do so, trying as best I can to pretend nothing is out of the way, but the cello is propped in the far corner and I have to bend over the cot to reach it.

  “Pardon,” I murmur, eyes rolled up into eyebrows.

  But there is no not seeing a large rosy buttock. Stryker is at Helga, Father Kev Kevin is at Stryker, but Helga is also patting the chaplain as if to reassure him lest he feel unwanted. The three embrace like lost children trying to keep warm.

  The encased cello is as bulky as a sarcophagus. There is no purchase on it and there is the devil’s own time getting it over and across the populous cot without knocking the occupants.

  “Pardon.”

  Puffing and straining, I make it at last. Whew!

  I rush through the observation room without bothering to look at the volunteer lovers. Wheels whir, pointers quiver, unattended.

  Now to find Moira’s room, her Cupid’s Quiver and underwear, and I’m on my way!

  14

  It’s raining again when I return to the motel. No sign of Ely, the Bantu home guard. I store the cello in the Rotary dining room and go up through the bathroom window.

  In my absence Moira has taken a shower and looks lovely, but she and Lola have fallen out. In their quarrel they hardly take notice of my return. Lola hardly acknowledges the news that her cello is safe and sound.

  Ellen brings me a Spam sandwich and a glass of bitter hose water. Noticing her, Lola fixes me a gin fizz. I decide to drink the gin fizz before eating.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what goes on in that so-called Love Clinic,” Lola is saying with an ironic smile.

  “And what might that be?” asks Moira.

  Both women are smiling and speaking to Ellen but really through Ellen to each other. They have reached that stage of a quarrel where both still smile but neither can stand the sight of the other.

  “Everybody knows about the atheistic psychologists who encourage immorality under the guise of research,” Lola tells Moira through Ellen.

  Moira is sitting cross-legged on the bed, doing her nails. She looks like a sorority girl. “At least there is no hypocrisy, which is more than I can say about the goings on in the so-called country-club set.”

  “Such as?”

  Now they’re looking at me!

  “Well well, girls,” I tell them. “You’ll be glad to hear I brought everything you sent me for.”

  “Such as what goes on at night on the golfing greens and the skinny-dipping in the pool,” Moira tells me with a wink.

  “Sounds like someone’s been reading girlie magazines, Tom,” says Lola, to me.

  “Yes. Well, to tell the truth”—I sip the gin fizz and close my eyes with every appearance of exhaustion—“you must excuse me. I can’t concentrate on such matters. I’m afraid the situation outside has deteriorated badly.” I relate the events of my excursion to the Center, omitting only some of the occurrences in Love. Disaster has its uses. “We may be here longer than you think. I’m afraid we’re in for a long evening.”

  “How’s that, Chief?” asks Ellen seriously. She pulls up a chair and absently plucks beggar’s lice from my pants’ leg.

  “If there is going to be a major outbreak of violence, it will occur, I calculate, sometime this evening. I suggest that we all take a nap and prepare for what might be a bad night.”

  The grave news only partly mollifies Lola and Moira. Lola cants her pelvis and smolders, color high in her cheeks. Moira lies back on the bed, tucks her lip secretly, and holds up one pretty leg with both hands.

  Ellen clears her throat and beckons me into the dressing room. “Chief, eat your sandwich
!” she scolds and, as soon as we’re inside, whispers: “You better do something about that pair.”

  “Yes,” I say, noticing that Ellen is enjoying herself for the first time.

  “Do you know what they did while you were gone?” she asks, scraping more beggar’s lice from my sleeve. “They almost started scratching each other. I actually had to stand between them. They refused to stay in the same room, so what I did was fix up two other rooms. I had to! One’s in 204 and the other in 205. I found some sheets and some Gulf spray, so we sprayed the mattresses and made them up.”

  “Then why are they back here?”

  “Getting pillow cases!” Ellen nudges me. Her tone is the same she uses when she describes the antics of patients.

  After a careful reconnoiter of the balcony, I tell the girls: “The coast is clear. Here’s what we’ll do. It’s cool now, so everyone can go to his or her room and take a nap. I’ll stand guard. Ellen, you keep this room.”

  “And where might his room be?” Lola asks The Laughing Cavalier.

  “Don’t worry, there are plenty of vacancies!” I say heartily.

  “Then would you mind getting my cello?” asks Lola without looking at me.

  “And I’ll take my sachet,” says Moira, stretching and yawning.

  “Of course!” I say, laughing. Why am I laughing?

  15

  I take Moira and Lola to their rooms. The coast is clear. Ellen is agitated when I return. She paces the carpet.

  “I didn’t tell you that I talked to Aunt Ellie—the last message before the Anser-Phone broke down and the operator left for Mississippi.”

  “A fine woman, Miss Ellie.”

  Miss Ellie Oglethorpe, who raised Ellen, is a fine woman. She looks like a buxom President Wilson with her horse face, pince-nez, and large bosom. A virtuous and hard-working woman, she supported herself as town librarian, raised and educated Ellen, and still sends money to the African mission where Ellen’s parents were killed by Nigerian tribesmen.

  “She doesn’t want me to stay out here alone, Chief.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “If I don’t come back tonight, she wants to come out here.”

  “Good Lord, she can’t do that.”