The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  I felt we were in some ancient Italian opera singing back to one another, echoing one another’s thoughts.

  “I didn’t like the way he stared at us with his holding the feather like it was proof of something,” Clyde started up.

  “Exactly, godson. The very words I was trying to express when I thought you were dozing.”

  “What does he aim to do with it?” Clyde raised his voice.

  “And what does he mean to do with it regarding us,” I took up his point. “He acts more like a policeman or detective than a doctor where the feather is concerned.”

  “You take the words right out of my mouth,” he spoke loudly.

  “Oh Clyde, Clyde, whatever would I do without you.”

  “You’d do all right, Delia. You know you would.” He picked up the empty wineglass, and to my considerable shock he spat into it. “It’s me,” he said, “who wouldn’t know where to turn if I wasn’t here with you. I would be the one didn’t know up from down.”

  “With all your talents, dear boy,” I cried almost angry he had spoken so against himself. “Never!”

  “Never what, Delia. You know how I failed in school and disappointed Uncle Enos.”

  “Failed him, failed school! Poppycock! Then it was their fault if you did. Uncle Enos adored you. You could do no wrong in his eyes. Oh if he was only here to tell us about the feather. And about that wretched doctor. He would set us straight.”

  “Now, now,” Clyde said rising, and he came over to my chair, and all at once he knelt down and looked up into my troubled face.

  “Does old Dr. Noddy know your jewels have disappeared?”

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’m sure I told him when I was having an attack of the neuralgia that they had all vanished.”

  “And what did he say then?”

  “It’s not so much what he said, he never says much, it was the way he stared at me when I said, ‘All my jewels are gone.’”

  “Stared how?”

  “As he stared at us today when he held the feather. Stared as if I had done something wrong. As if I had done away with my own jewels.”

  “Oh, he couldn’t think that against you, Delia.”

  “He thinks against everybody. He feels anybody who needs him and his services has something to be held against them. If we are ailing, then we are to blame. That’s what I gather from old Dr. Noddy.”

  “And now, Delia,” he said rising and standing behind my chair so that I could feel his honey sweet breath against my hair. “And now,” he went on, “we have to wait like the accused in a court of law.”

  “Exactly, exactly. And oh my stars, what on earth can he do with a feather anyhow? Make it confess?”

  We both laughed.

  “I can’t go to bed on all of this we’re facing now,” I told Clyde. “I am going to the kitchen and make us some coffee.”

  “Let me make it, Delia.”

  “No no, I am the cook here and the coffee maker. You make it too weak. I must stay alert. And we must put Doc Noddy on trial here tonight before he can put us in the witness box and call us liars to our face.”

  With that I went into the kitchen and took down the jar of Arabian coffee, got out the old coffee grinder, and let Clyde (who had followed me without being asked), let him grind the beans.

  “What a heavenly aroma,” I said when our chores was finished. “And I made it with well water of course, for as old Doc Noddy says, you must drink well water religiously, dear lad.”

  We felt less threatened, less on trial at any rate, drinking the Arabian brew.

  Then a great cloud of worry and fear descended upon me. I did all I could to conceal my feelings from my godson.

  The source of my fear was, of course, who else, Doctor Noddy.

  I recalled in the long, heavy burden of memory that Dr. Noddy was nearly as old as I, at least he must have been far into his eighties at this time. But it was not his age which weighed upon me. It was the memory of Dr. Noddy having been accused a half century or more ago of practicing hypnotism on his patients. And also being suspected of giving his older patients a good deal of opium. But the opium did not concern me now, has indeed never worried me. He only gave it in any case to those of us who were so advanced in age we could no longer endure the pain of, or the weight of, so many years, so much passed time.

  No, what gave me pause was hypnotism if indeed he ever had practiced it. His taking away the feather had brought back this old charge. But my godson sensed my sorrow. He watched me with his beautiful if almost pitiless hazel eyes.

  At last he took a seat on a little hand-carved stool beside me. He took my right hand in his and kissed it.

  “You are very troubled, Delia,” he said at last. He seemed to be looking at the gnarled very blue veins on the hand he had just kissed.

  “I am that,” I said after a lengthy silence on my part.

  “You don’t need to say more, Delia. We understand one another.”

  “I know that, godson, but see here, I want to share with you all that is necessary for me to share. I want you to have everything you deserve.”

  “I don’t deserve much.”

  “Never say that again. You don’t know how precious you are, Clyde, and that is because you are perfection.”

  He turned a furious red and faced away from me.

  “Let me think how I am to tell you, Clyde,” I spoke so low he cupped his ear and then he again took my hand in his.

  “I can see it’s something you’ve got to share.”

  “Unwillingly, Clyde, so unwillingly. Perhaps though when I tell you, you won’t think it’s worth troubling about.”

  He nodded encouragement.

  “Clyde, years ago before even your parents were born, before the days of Uncle Enos, Dr. Noddy was charged with having practiced hypnotism on his patients.”

  Clyde’s mouth came open, and then he closed it tight. I thought his lips had formed a cuss word.

  We sat in silence for a lengthy while.

  “That is why his taking away the feather has worried me.”

  “And worries me now,” he almost gasped.

  “My worry over the white feather finally recalled the charge he had hypnotized some of his patients.”

  “But what is the connection,” he wondered, “between a bird’s feather and hypnotism.”

  “I don’t know myself, Clyde. Only I feel the two have a connection we don’t understand.”

  He smiled a strange smile.

  “We must be calm and patient. Maybe nothing will happen at all, and we will resume our old, quiet evenings,” I said.

  He released my hand softly.

  Looking into his face, yes I saw what I had feared. My trouble had fallen upon him. And so that long evening drew to its close.

  For a whole month we could do nothing but wait in suspense for Dr. Noddy’s return. Now that I come to think of it, how happy I would have been if there had been no Dr. Noddy! Yes, I do think and believe that had he never appeared out of the fog and the snow and the bitter winds, Clyde and I would have been happy and without real sorrow forever. Dr. Noddy having found the clue, the feather, began to dig and delve, uncover and discover, sift evidence, draw conclusions and then shatter all our peace and love along with our parlor song evenings and Clyde’s solos on the Jew’s harp. All was to be spoiled, shattered, brought to nothing.

  But then as someone was to tell me much later (perhaps it was one of the Gypsy fortune-tellers who happen by in this part of the world), someone said to me, “Had it not been Dr. Noddy, there would have been someone else to have brought sorrow and change into your lives.”

  “Then call it destiny why don’t you,” I shouted to this forgotten person, Gypsy or preacher or peddler or whoever it was made the point. Oh, well then, just call it Dr. Noddy and be done with it.

  “IN OUR PART of the world nature sometimes is enabled to work out phenomena not observed by ordinary people,” Dr. Noddy
began on his next visit, sounding a little like a preacher.

  Dr. Noddy had tasted the wine Clyde had brought him from the cellar even more sparingly, if possible, than was our own custom. (I had felt the physician needed wine to judge by his haggard and weary appearance.)

  To my embarrassment he fished out a piece of cork, tiny but as I saw very distasteful to him.

  “Fetch Doctor a clean glass,” I suggested to Clyde.

  Dr. Noddy meanwhile went on talking about Nature’s often indulging in her own schemes and experiments, indifferent to man.

  “She in the end can only baffle us. Our most indefatigable scholars and scientists finally admit defeat and throw up their hands to acknowledge her inscrutable puissance.”

  I looked into my wineglass as if also searching for pieces of cork. Clyde had meanwhile brought Dr. Noddy a sparkling-clean glass. He had opened a new bottle and poured out fresh wine.

  “Dr. Noddy was saying, Clyde, whilst you were out of earshot, that Nature is an inscrutable goddess,” I summarized the Doctor’s speech.

  “Yes,” Clyde answered and gave me a look inviting instruction. I could only manage a kind of sad, sour smile.

  “The feather,” Dr. Noddy began again pulling it out now from his huge wallet, “is one of her pranks.”

  Clyde and I exchanged quick glances.

  “But we should let Clyde here expatiate on Dame Nature’s hidden ways and purposes. Your godson was known from the time he came to live with Uncle Enos as a true son of the wilderness, a boon companion to wild creatures and the migratory fowl.”

  Clyde lowered his head down almost to the rim of his wineglass.

  “Our young man therefore must have known that nearby there lived a perfect battalion of white crows, or perhaps they were white blackbirds!”

  At that moment Clyde gave out a short, stifled gasp which may have chilled Dr. Noddy into silence. To my uneasiness I saw Dr. Noddy rise and go over to my godson. He took both Clyde’s hands and held them tightly and then slowly allowed the hands to fall to his sides. Dr. Noddy then touched Clyde’s eyes with both his hands. When the doctor removed his hands, Clyde’s eyes were closed.

  “Please tell us now,” Dr. Noddy moved even closer to Clyde, “if you know of the birds I am speaking of.”

  “I am not positive,” Clyde said in a stern, even grand tone, so unlike the way he usually spoke. He kept his eyes still closed.

  “You must have known there were white crows or white blackbirds, what some who delve into their histories call a sport of nature.”

  “I often thought,” Clyde spoke musingly and in an almost small-boy voice now, “often would have swore I saw white birds in the vicinity of the Bell Tower.”

  “The Bell Tower!” I could not help but gasp. The Bell Tower was one of the many deserted large buildings which I had long ago sold to Uncle Enos at a very low price.

  “You see,” Dr. Noddy turned to me. “We have our witness!”

  “But what can it all mean,” I spoke with partial vexation. “It is so late, Dr. Noddy, in time I mean. Must we go round Robin Hood’s barn before you tell us what you have found out.”

  “This feather,” Dr. Noddy now held it again and almost shook it in my face, “let Clyde expand upon it.” The old man turned now to my godson. “Open your eyes, Clyde!” He extended the feather to Clyde. “Tell us what you think now, my boy.”

  Clyde shrank back in alarm from the feather. “It could certainly be from a white crow if there is such a bird,” my godson said.

  “Or a white blackbird, Clyde?”

  Clyde opened his eyes wide and stared at his questioner. “All I know, Delia,” Clyde turned to me, “is yes I have seen white birds flying near the Bell Tower, and sometimes . . .”

  “And sometimes,” Dr. Noddy made as if to rise from his chair.

  “Sometimes flying into the open or the broken windows of the Bell Tower.”

  “And did you ever see a white crow carrying anything in its beak when you saw it making its way to your Bell Tower?” Clyde’s eyes closed again. “I may have, sir, yes I may have spied something there, but you see,” and he again turned his eyes now opened to me, “you see, I was so startled to glimpse a large white bird against the high green trees and the dark sky, for near the Bell Tower the sky always looks dark. I was startled, and I was scared.” Some quick small tears escaped from his right eye.

  “And could those things the white bird carried, Clyde, could they have been jewels?”

  At that very moment, the wineglass fell from Clyde’s hand and he slipped from his chair and fell prone to the thick carpet below.

  Dr. Noddy rushed to his side. I hurried also and bent over my prostrate godson.

  “Oh, Doctor Noddy, for pity’s sake, he is not dead is he!”

  Dr. Noddy turned a deprecatory gaze in my direction. “Help me carry him to that big sofa yonder,” he said in reply.

  Oh, I was more than opposed by then to Dr. Noddy. Seeing my godson lying there as if in his coffin. I blamed it all on the old physician. “You frightened him, doctor,” I shouted.

  I was surprised at my own angry words leveled against him. I would look now to my godson lying there as if passed over and then return my gaze to Noddy. I must have actually sworn, for when I came out of my fit of anger I heard the old man say, as if he was also in a dream, “I never would have thought I would hear you use such language. And against someone who has only your good at heart, Delia. Only your good!”

  Taking me gently by the hand he ushered me into a seldom used little sitting room. The word hypnotism seemed at that moment to be not a word but a being; perhaps it was a bird flying about the room.

  “What I want to impart to you, Delia,” the old physician began, “is simply this: I must now take action. I and I alone must pay a visit to the Bell Tower. For in its ruined masonry there lies the final explanation of the mystery.”

  The very mention of the Bell Tower had always filled me with a palsy-like terror; so when Dr. Noddy announced that he must go there I could not find a word to say to him.

  “Did you hear me, Delia,” he finally spoke in a querulous but soft tone.

  “If you think you must, dear friend,” I managed to reply. “If there is no other way.”

  “But now we must look in on Clyde,” he said after a pause. At the same time he failed to make a motion to rise. A heavy long silence ensued on both our parts when unexpectedly my godson himself entered our private sitting room. We both stared without greeting him.

  Clyde looked refreshed after his slumber. His face had resumed its high coloring, and he smiled at us as he took a seat next to Dr. Noddy.

  “I have been telling Delia, Clyde, that I must make a special visit to the Bell Tower.”

  Clyde’s face fell and a slight paleness again spread over his features.

  “Unless you object, Clyde,” the doctor added.

  As I say, the very mention of the Bell Tower had always filled me with dread and loathing. But I had never told Clyde or Dr. Noddy the partial reason for my aversion. I did not tell them now what it was which troubled me. My great uncle had committed suicide in the Tower over a hundred years ago, and then later my cousin Keith had fallen from the top of the edifice to his death.

  These deaths had been all but forgotten in our village, and perhaps even I no longer remembered them until Dr. Noddy announced he was about to pay a visit there.

  While I was lost in these musings I suddenly came to myself in time to see Noddy buttoning up his greatcoat preparatory to leaving.

  “But you can’t be paying your visit there now!” I cautioned him. “What with a bad storm coming on and with the freezing cold and snow what it is.”

  “This is one visit that should not be postponed, Delia! So stop once and for all your fussing.”

  He actually blew a kiss to me and raised his hand to Clyde in farewell.

  I watched him go from the big front window. The wind had changed and was blowing from a northeast direction. Th
e sycamore trees were bending almost to the ground in a fashion such as I could not ever recall.

  I came back to my seat.

  “Are you warm enough, Delia?” Clyde asked, smiling concern.

  “Clyde, listen,” I began, gazing at him intently.

  “Yes, Delia, speak your mind,” he said gaily, almost as if we were again partaking of the jollity of our evenings.

  “We must be prepared, Clyde, for whatever our good doctor will discover in the Bell Tower,” I said in a lackluster manner.

  Clyde gazed down at the carpet under his feet.

  I felt then that if I were not who I was I would be afraid to be alone that night with Clyde Furness. But I had gone beyond fear.

  “Shan’t we have our evening wine, Delia,” he said, and as he spoke fresh disquietude began again.

  “Please, dear boy, let’s have our wine.”

  We drank if possible even more sparingly. I believe indeed we barely touched the wineglass to our lips. Time passed in a church-like silence as we sat waiting for the doctor’s return. I more than Clyde could visualize the many steps the old man must climb before he reached the top floor of the Tower. And I wondered indeed if he would be able to summon the strength to make it. Perhaps the visit thither would be too much for his old bones.

  It was the longest evening I can recall. And what made it even more painful was that as I studied my godson I realized he was no longer the Clyde Furness I had been so happy with. No, he had changed. I studied his face for a sign but there was no sign—his face was closed to me. Then began a current of words which will remain with me to the end of my days:

  “It’s hard for me to believe, Clyde, our good Doctor’s theory that it is a bird which has taken my ancestors’ jewels.”

  Clyde straightened up to gaze at me intently.

  “Ah, but, Delia, do you understand how hard it has been for me over and again these many weeks to have to listen to your doubts and suspicions!”

  “But doubts and suspicions, Clyde, have no claim upon you where I am concerned.”

  “No claim,” he spoke in a bitterness which took me totally by surprise. “Perhaps, Delia, not in your mind, but what about mine?”

  “But Clyde, for God in heaven’s sake, you can’t believe that I regard you as . . .” But I could not finish the sentence. Clyde finished it for me.