Their voices mingled, sounding like one of those wild ultramodern symphonies—a Charles Ives work, perhaps. Soon my thoughts were as confused and discordant as the noise of their scolding.
“Eulalia says that you should stop insulting me,” I exclaimed above the pandemonium.
“Damn Eulalia!” said Madge brutally.
“Oh, what a common alley cat she is!” said Eulalia.
Determined not to be bullied, I boomed out, “Eulalia’s right! She’s right and you’re wrong.”
As Madge’s face had been growing redder and redder, it was now the color of a glass of Beaujolais, and her eyes had narrowed to slits. “Eulalia? Eulalia?” she said in a tone that was all of a sudden deceptively soft. “I’ll see to Eulalia!”
She rushed by me then, raised the walking stick as if it were a flail and brought it down upon my poor friend. So swiftly did she act that I had time to neither move nor cry out. Dumb, I watched the cane fly up, heard it whirr through the air, felt Eulalia’s shriek of terror stab into my brain, heard the explosion—like the bursting of a grenade—as the iron ferrule made contact with the thin porcelain, listened to the anguished scream die in a gruesome crackling, and stared in frozen agony as my old companion’s beautiful, fragile body came apart in a hundred ragged fragments which poured, in a sparkling cataract, down the bowed front of the mahogany secretary.
“Now what does she say?” Madge asked in a razor-edged voice.
“You killed her!” I gasped, stupefied by the immensity of the crime. Eulalia had disappeared. What had been Eulalia was now only a scattering of china chips on the floor.
“I’ve cured you of an hallucination,” said Madge, with open satisfaction.
“But you killed Eulalia,” I whispered huskily, still grappling with this incredible idea.
The woman made another remark, which I didn’t understand, and started around me toward the door. I took hold of her then and threw her against the wall. Again she brought up the walking stick; before she could use it on me, however, I tore it from her grip and flung it away. My hands circled her slender neck. I could feel the cartilage of her throat under my thumbs as I began to strangle her.
At first her eyes continued insolent, but suddenly they gleamed with a lunatic fear. It was this hideous aspect of fright that saved her from death. Little by little, as I looked upon her contorted features, my mind cleared and my rage abated. When I released her she slumped to the floor and sprawled there, noisily sucking in air.
I staggered out, stumbled down the hall to my room, and weeping and groaning, fell across my bed. Never had I felt such pangs of sorrow.
23
ALONE IN THE VOID
Of the numerous worlds in the universe—and they say there are as many as there are drops of water in the ocean—surely ours is the most terrible. This planet is a purgatory, a place of penance and chastisement. Here we are punished for villainies performed in a previous existence. Yes, it’s true! And what villainies they must have been! Before arriving on earth we were thieves, torturers, cowards, bloodthirsty tyrants, traducers, incendiaries, liars. If we were not, how then in so brief a period of time could we possibly have acquired so vast a knowledge of vice and treachery? This too explains why we are forced to endure such suffering. We are atoning for cruel deeds.
All that day I sat out in the Burying Ground, hearing over and over the fearsome sound of the bursting porcelain and the shriek of agony—the death cry of Eulalia—that rose above it. I longed to disappear from this awful world, just as my old friend had done. I wanted to die, to flee my sorrow, escape the days and months of anguish that lay like a gauntlet before me. What vile acts had I perpetrated in my forgotten past to deserve these penalties? Why was I singled out for such special torment? I must have been a monster.
It was warm, but I shivered. I tried to remember back beyond my birth. My brain, however, was too full of noise and . . . and confusion. I studied my trembling hands—scrutinized the creases and folds, the freckles, the ridges formed by aging veins, the joints and knuckles, the windows that were fingernails—studied them for clues that weren’t there. Old, worthless, disgusting—that was how I felt. A pace away from where I sat there was a broken gravestone, its diagonal edge like that of a guillotine’s blade. I considered smashing my skull on it.
But then the glaring sun descended and the wind, the trees, the dandelions, the birds, the insects and the automobiles all became silent. Even the clamor in my head grew faint, though it refused to leave me entirely. My thinking became somewhat less chaotic. Around my shattered citadel, I attempted to construct a philosophic barricade, hoping to regroup behind it the remnants of my routed dreams. I strove to be a stoic—an Epictetus. I tried to endure, to be valiant.
Stoicism, however, is for tranquil minds. No axioms of the Greek slave could ameliorate my sorrow. “Philosophy vanquishes past and future evils,” La Rochefoucauld has said, “but present evils vanquish philosophy.”
Twice Mrs. Binney called to me; I pretended not to hear her.
When it was fully dark I trudged back up the hill to the house. In my mother’s silent room I picked up the fragments of Eulalia, one piece at a time. There were thirty-four. I placed them in an empty cookie tin lined with tissue paper.
24
AT THE RUTHERFORD GRAVE
For all her faults, I must say Madge was well supplied with spunk. She returned promptly the next morning, her face a trifle drawn but her demeanor as self-assured as ever.
I couldn’t speak to her—not that day, nor the next, nor the next. Just seeing her was painful. I kept to my room or stayed in the kitchen with the door closed, drinking coffee and smoking.
One afternoon I was sitting near Ephraim Rutherford’s tombstone watching the yellow bees drift among the wildflowers. By then, time had worn away some of the brittle sharpness of my grief. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Madge approach along the flagstone path. When she was within a yard of me, she came to a halt. I turned and looked directly into her face, but I said nothing.
Meeting my gaze without flinching, she declared in a very gentle voice, “I’m sorry for what I did, Al. Apologies aren’t much good, I know. All the same, I wanted to tell you that I am sorry, extremely sorry.”
Since no adequate remark occurred to me, I maintained my silence. She continued standing there for several seconds, then walked slowly away.
Later, feeling a little better, I went down to the cellar and started to assemble a Conestoga wagon from a pile of bones that I had, sometime before the tragedy, put aside for this purpose. I worked there till dinner.
25
I SILENCE A CRITIC
Torpor held me fast in its grip. I moped about—feeling little, thinking less. It was the philodendrons, I guess, that jolted me out of my languor. They nagged me relentlessly, whispering and muttering the same old accusation—that I shot Norbie for his money in order to pay the mortgage and buy an automobile.
My comatose condition was proof against their remarks at first, but eventually I was goaded into action. I removed all four pots of them from the parlor out to the porch, and for a while had peace. That was not the end of it, however. After a few days one of the plants—a tangled, dense, dusky-green specimen in a majolica jardiniere—began to shout so loudly that wherever I retreated to in the house, I could still hear his vile taunts and insults. Even this I tolerated, until he dared to say that I was the one responsible for Eulalia’s destruction. It was then that my patience ran out.
I brought him back into the parlor and placed him on the butterfly table, got a pair of shears and set about clipping off his heart-shaped leaves. At once, his bravado left him. He yelped in pain and pleaded for mercy, but—and I’m ashamed to admit it—there was no compassion in me. I did away with the slanderer completely, slicing up the stems and the roots, too. And while I performed this savage little immolation, I grunted with satisfaction.
No sooner was I finished than I heard a shuffling noise on the second floor and looked quickly up t
he stairs. It was late in the afternoon of an overcast day and the hall was deep in shadows. I saw nothing, yet I had a most distinct impression that Madge was there, watching me.
I returned my eyes to my handiwork—to the snippets of slaughtered philodendron, and the drops and streaks of sap, like diaphanous blood or bile, which covered the surface of the table.
A minute passed—then I said, “Mulch. Compost.”
I said it loud enough for her to hear, if she was really standing there. There was no response from the shadows, however.
Gathering up the shreds, I threw them into the garbage.
26
RESUMPTION OF LIFE
That simple act, aberrant as it was, revived me. Immediately afterward I experienced a sensation of deliverance, just as if some monstrous, crushing weight had been taken from my shoulders. That night I slept better than I had for a long time.
Oh, I hadn’t forgotten my sorrow—I don’t mean to imply that—but the lacerations on my heart had begun to heal. I noticed the world again. Surprising though it may seem, even my relationship with Madge reverted to something like its former state. Occasionally we had coffee together and engaged in a solemn, almost cautious kind of conversation. Eulalia was never mentioned.
I started to help the scholar with her investigations, not consistently, but now and then. Together we searched the dusty caverns under the eaves for more notebooks. Together we went through a stack of headstones in the charnel house—those grave markers that were taken up when Amory Street was laid across a part of the Burying Ground during the last century—to see if one of them might somehow provide a clue to Great-grampy’s whereabouts. Together we sifted through sheaves of brittle, yellow correspondence, diligently hunting for pertinent information.
What perverse beasts humans are! With the passing days I discovered, almost to my horror, that I still liked being with this strange, cold woman. In spite of everything, the attraction hadn’t faded.
27
I AM GIVEN A COMMISSION
July passed into August. One day, to my surprise and consternation, Madge asked me to drive to Philadelphia and fetch a couple of books from her apartment there. She had come upon some hieroglyphics in the old man’s journals that she was unable to decipher, and she was convinced they were of great significance. “Unfortunately,” she said, “neither the Boston Public Library nor any of the university libraries in this area have what I need. I realize it’s an awful bother. I’d go myself, if it weren’t such a long trip by train.”
I protested that I was a poor driver, that a journey of that distance was beyond my capabilities, but she made light of my fears. “Oh, Al. You can do it,” she said, “Why, driving on a turnpike is much less difficult than driving on those country roads you use when you’re out for one of your jaunts.”
“No, no—I couldn’t manage such a trip,” I declared, embarrassed by my lack of courage.
“Such a trip? Three hundred miles is all it is, Al. If you left tomorrow morning you’d be back by the following night, and without hurrying.”
“But the cars go awfully fast on the turnpike, Madge. I’ve seen them. They whiz along like rockets.”
“Sixty or seventy miles an hour on a three-lane highway is not a dangerous speed. You’re not afraid, are you?”
“No. Still, I don’t want to do it,” I replied, shaking my head stubbornly.
“Listen, Al,” she said, fixing me with those lustrous eyes of hers. “I fully realize what a nuisance I’ve been to you, and what misfortune I’ve brought into your life. I’m not insensible to these things. My only excuse is that the object of my research is so important that it blinds me sometimes. If I’m a scourge, I am so only in the interest of high scholarship. Believe me, I have sacrificed no one more than myself in the pursuit of knowledge.”
“But how can you be certain that this object of which you speak actually exists?” I asked. “If you find Great-grampy—and there now seems little chance that you will—I’m quite positive you’ll be in for a bitter disappointment.”
She smiled and answered, “I think not. The fact is, though, if you get these two books for me, we’ll soon know which of us is right. In the meaning of those hieroglyphics lies the secret of the whole thing. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
“I see, Madge. I see. Why not have a colleague mail them to you? Wouldn’t that be more sensible than having me make this near-thousand-mile expedition?”
“Six hundred miles, round trip,” she corrected me. Then she cast a sly, conspiratorial glance my way and said, “To be frank, I wouldn’t think of trusting a colleague with a discovery as personally important to me as this one is. I’m afraid to arouse anyone’s curiosity. I’ve told no one what I’m up to.”
“I’m sure I’d never make it,” I said uncomfortably. “Suppose the weather turned bad?”
“In the middle of the summer, Al? Do you expect snow?”
“No, of course not, but there can still be storms,” I said, feeling myself weakening.
“Only seldom. Oh, Al! Won’t you do this one last thing for me?” she implored, the sweetest smile imaginable on her soft, moist mouth. “It’s so terribly important . . . please! And when you get back—well, perhaps we can have a little celebration of some kind. How would that be? We could dine here together, and I can try to make amends to you for all the trouble I’ve caused.”
In her eyes I saw a glint that sent a shiver of desire through my body. I cleared my throat, but because I was busy wondering what form these amends might take, I didn’t immediately answer her.
“Won’t you, Al? I have no one else,” she murmured.
Like some already tottering structure that has been given the coup de grâce by the demolitionist’s dynamite, my resistance crumbled.
“All right,” I said feebly. “All right, Madge. I’ll go there, since it means so much to you.”
28
PHILADELPHIA
Quite early the next morning, I bade her good-bye. I even managed a trifling joke, remarking that if I had an accident en route, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the Mercedes shattering into a thousand pieces.
“Why is that, Al?” she asked.
“Because a Mercedes-Benz,” I replied triumphantly. She gave me an indulgent smile and shook her head.
I was by no means light-hearted when I pulled out of the driveway, however. My nerves were in terrible shape, like the strings of a violin on which an enthusiastic fiddler is playing pizzicato. To Massachusetts Avenue and down onto the asphalt belt of the turnpike I went. The first few miles I covered at a snail’s pace, but by the time I reached Newton I had lost much of my timidity and was flying along at sixty miles an hour. The weather was ideal, and since it was a Wednesday and not the weekend, traffic was sparse.
Framingham, Grafton, Worcester, Auburn, Sturbridge—the town lines flitted by with astonishing rapidity. I was reminded of the Burma-Shave advertisements of years ago which had been strung at intervals along the roads, each sign proclaiming to the passing motorist its snatch of verse.
HE PASSED AN AUTO . . . . . WITHOUT LOOKING . . . . . . WHO WILL EAT . . . . . HIS WIDOW’S COOKING? . . . . . BURMA-SHAVE.
That had been one of them—and another was:
SPRING HAS SPRUNG . . . . . THE GRASS HAS RIZ . . . . . WHERE LAST YEAR’S . . . . . CARELESS DRIVER IS . . . . . . BURMA-SHAVE.
Amusing, despite the grim themes. In those long-gone days people hadn’t been so intense. Even death was a subject for comedy.
Those long-gone days—yes. My straw-hatted, high-collared father, proudly steering the new Studebaker along Route 1; my dear, sweet mother with her boyish-bobbed hair and her rouged cheeks, seated beside him; Clarice, my sister, face scrubbed and patent-leather shoes as gleaming as onyx, leaning half out the window; and me, holding on to her—me, resplendent in Harold Teen trousers and Argyle socks. Those long-gone days. It was another world.
PROPER DISTANCE . . . . . . TO HIM WAS BUNK . . . .
. . . THEY PULLED HIM OUT . . . . . . OF SOME GUY’S TRUNK . . . . . . BURMA-SHAVE.
Though as poetry it was hardly John Keats or Sir Philip Sidney, yet it had vigor and invariably pointed up a moral.
Between these musings and one or two desultory daydreams about Madge and her promised celebration, the journey progressed swiftly. In no time at all I was across the Connecticut line. I enjoyed a long and pleasant lunch in a pseudo-Colonial restaurant outside Hartford, and got back behind the wheel in a confident, almost eager frame of mind.
As I approached New York, however, the traffic increased and my assurance melted away. Commuters sprang up everywhere. The closer I got to the city, the worse it became. I felt as if I’d been tossed into a massive, mindless mill that would soon grind both me and the Mercedes into very fine powder. It was only good luck that prevented me from taking the wrong lane and ending up on Long Island. The flow vehicles carried me like a helpless passenger in the right direction—across the George Washington Bridge and into New Jersey.
It was harrowing. Perspiration trickled into my strained eyes, while my hands clutched the steering wheel in a grip of death. Near New Brunswick I could stand no more. Thinking it was better to arrive the following morning in one piece than that night in several, I pulled into a motel.
Not until I’d downed a couple of whiskey sours and eaten a hearty steak dinner did I begin to feel comfortable once more. I watched color television until eleven-thirty, then retired to a very soft and capacious bed.
Completely restored by a sound sleep, I set off again at ten o’clock the next morning. I soon crossed the Delaware River and entered Philadelphia, where I deposited my automobile in a crowded parking lot. My knowledge of the city was meager. During my undergraduate days at Princeton I’d visited the town a couple of times, but that was more than thirty years ago. With Madge’s keys in my pocket, I asked the lot attendant to direct me to 304 Walnut Avenue—the address she had given me. He told me that what I wanted was Walnut Street, not Walnut Avenue, and that it was just around the corner. There wasn’t any Walnut Avenue, he said.
The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton Page 15