Theophilus North

by Thornton Wilder

  “Mino, I think it’s great the way you struck out for yourself and are on the way to making yourself self-supporting—first solving the puzzles and then inventing new ones. Tell me how that happened?”

  “I began doing them when I was about twelve. Schoolwork wasn’t very hard so I used to read a lot. Rosa would bring me books from the library.”

  “What kind of books then?”

  “I thought then that I’d be an astronomer, but I began that too early. I wasn’t ready for the mathematics. I am now. Later I wanted to be a priest. Of course I couldn’t, but I read a lot of theology and philosophy. I didn’t understand all of it, but . . . that’s when I learned a lot of Latin.”

  “Couldn’t you find anyone to talk those things over with?”

  “I like to figure things out by myself.”

  “Hell, you wanted to read Dante with me.”

  He blushed and murmured, “That’s different . . . then I began doing puzzles to make money to buy books.”

  “Show me some puzzles that you’ve been making.”

  Most of the shelves within reach of his hand were like those in a linen closet. He drew out a sheaf of leaves; the puzzles were written with India ink on art paper. “Opus elegantissimum, juvenis!” I said. “Do you get a lot of pleasure out of this?”

  “No. I get pleasure out of the money.”

  I lowered my voice. “I remember my first paycheck. It was like a kick in the pants. It’s the beginning of manhood. Your mother told me you were inventing some new things.”

  “I have designs for three new games for adults. Do you know Mr. Aldeburg?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a lawyer in town. He’s helping me take out patents for them. The whole field of puzzles and games is full of crooks. They’re crazy for new ideas and they’d steal anything.”

  I leaned back. “Mino, what are the three most important things you want to do when the real money starts coming in?”

  He reached toward another shelf and brought out a manufacturer’s catalogue—hospital equipment, wheelchairs for invalids. He opened it and held a page toward me: a rolling chair, propelled by a motor, nickel-plated, with a detachable awning for protection against rain, snow, or sun—a beauty. Two hundred and seventy-five dollars.

  I whistled. “And after that?”

  Another catalogue. “I get fitted for some boots. They’re attached to my legs above and below the knee by a lot of straps. I’d still have to use crutches, but my feet wouldn’t swing. Through my legs I could put some of my weight on the ground. But I’d have to use some kind of cane to prevent my falling on my face. I think I could invent something after I’d got used to the boots.”

  Such was his mature control that he might have been talking about buying a car. But there was one element of confidence still lacking. I went right to the point. “And after that you want to rent your own apartment?”

  “Yes,” he said surprised.

  “Where you can entertain your friends?”

  “Yes,” he said and looked at me sharply to see if I had guessed what was in his mind. I smiled and repeated my question, holding his glance. The courage ebbed out of him and his eyes fell away.

  “Can I look over your books, Mino?”

  “Sure.”

  I rose and turned to the shelves behind me. The books were all second-hand and appeared to have suffered long use—longer than his life. If he had bought them in Newport he must have ransacked the same second-hand stores that I had come to know when I was “excavating” the Fifth City. Maybe he had ordered them from the catalogues of such dealers in the larger cities. On the bottom shelf were the Britannica (eleventh), some atlases, star charts, and other large works of reference. The majority of the shelves were filled with works on astronomy and mathematics. I took down Newton’s Principia. The margins were covered with notes in fine handwriting and in faded ink.

  “Are these notes yours?”

  “No, but they’re very sharp.”

  “Where’s your Divina Commedia?”

  He pointed to two shelves within his reach: the Summa, Spinoza, the Aeneid, the Pensées of Pascal, Descartes . . .

  “You read French?”

  “Rosa’s crazy about French. We play chess and go and parcheesi in French.”

  I had been thinking of Elbert Hughes. So there was another half-genius in Newport; maybe a genius. Maybe a late blooming of the Fifth City. I remembered having heard that in Concord, Massachusetts, almost a century before, groups used to devote an evening to reading aloud in Italian or Greek or German, or even in Sanskrit. In Berkeley, California, my mother used to read Italian aloud with Mrs. Day on one evening in the week and French with Mrs. Vincent on another. She attended German classes at the University (Professor Pinger), because we, her children, had learned some German in two successive German schools in China.

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Mino if he had any wish to go to either of the two universities nearby. I saw that his rigorous independence not only forbade his relying on others to help him move about from place to place, but that his deprivation had shaped his mind toward becoming an autodidact. (“I like to figure things out by myself.”) I remembered how the father of Pascal had come upon the young boy reading with delight the First Book of Euclid. The father had other plans for his son’s education. He took away the volume, scarcely begun, and shut the boy in his room; but Pascal wrote the rest of the book himself, deducing the properties of the rectangle and the triangle, as a silkworm produces silk from his own entrails. But in the case of Mino I was saddened. In the twentieth century it is not possible to advance far as an autodidact in the vast fields of his interests. I had already known such solitary men—and in later years discovered others—who, having early repudiated formal education, were writing a History of the Human Intelligence or The Sources of Moral Values.

  I sat down again. “Mino, have you seen any girls you like lately?”

  He looked at me as though I’d struck him or ridiculed him. I continued looking at him and waited.

  “No . . . I don’t know any girls.”

  “Oh, yes you do! Your sister brings some of her friends here to see you.” He couldn’t or didn’t deny it. “Didn’t I see you talking to one of those assistant librarians in the magazine room at the People’s Library?” He couldn’t or didn’t deny it.

  At last he said, “They don’t take me seriously.”

  “What do you mean, they don’t take you seriously?”

  “They talk for a minute, but they’re in a hurry to get away.”

  “God damn it, what do you want them to do: start taking their clothes off?”

  His hands were trembling. He put them under his buttocks and continued to stare at me. “No.”

  “You think they don’t talk naturally to you. I’ll bet you don’t talk naturally to them. A fine-looking young man like you, with top-quality first-rate brains. I’ll bet you play your cards wrong.” There was a breathless silence. His panic was contagious, but I plunged on. “Sure, you have a handicap, but the handicap isn’t as bad as you think it is. You build it up in your imagination. Be yourself, Mino! Lots of men with a handicap as bad as yours have settled down and got married and had kids. Do you want to know how I know this personally?”

  “Yes.”

  I told him about the veterans’ hospital. I ended up almost shouting, “Four hundred men in wheelchairs and wagons. And some of them still send me letters and cards. With photographs of their family—their own new family around them. Especially on Christmas cards. I haven’t got any of them in Newport, but I’ll send home for some to show you. But, Mino, understand this: they’re older than you. Most of them were older than you when they were wounded. What the hell are you so impatient about? The trouble with you is that you’re building up an anxiety about the years ahead; you’ve got 1936 and 1946 planted in your head as though they were tomorrow. And the other trouble with you is that you want the Big Passionate Bonfire right now. A man can’t live
without female companionship, you’re damn right about that. But don’t spoil it, don’t ruin it by building up a lot of steam too early. Begin with friendship. Now listen: the Misses Laughlins’ Scottish Tea Room is just eight doors from your father’s door. Have you ever eaten there?” He shook his head. “Well, you’re going to, you and Rosa. I’m inviting you and some girl you know to lunch with me next Saturday noon.”

  “I don’t know any girl well enough to ask.”

  “Well, if you don’t bring a girl to lunch on Saturday, I’ll clam up on the whole matter. It’ll always be a pleasure to me to come and call on you and talk about Sir Isaac Newton and Bishop Berkeley—I’m very sorry to see that you haven’t got any of his works on your shelves—but I’ll never open my damn mouth on the subject of girls again. We’ll just pretend we’re eunuchs. My idea was that you ask one girl this Saturday with the three of us—just to break the ice—and that the following Saturday you ask another girl, all by yourself. I guess you can afford it, can’t you? They serve a very good seventy-five-cent blue-plate lunch. You were ready to throw away sixteen dollars on some lousy Dante lessons with me.—Then the following Saturday I’ll give another party and you bring still a different girl.”

  A terrible struggle was going on within him. “The only girls I know . . . I know a little . . . are twin sisters.”

  “Great! Are they lively?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s their name?”

  “Avonzino—Filumena and Agnese.”

  “Which do you like better?”

  “They’re just the same.”

  “Well, Saturday you sit by Agnese and I’ll bring a friend of mine to sit by Filumena. You know what Agnese means in Greek, don’t you?” He made no sign. “It comes from hagne—‘pure, chaste.’ So put the damper on those lascivious ideas of yours. Keep calm. Just a pleasant get-together. Just talking about the weather and about those puzzles of yours. We’ll give the girls a big thrill talking about your new inventions and patents. Is it a deal?” He nodded. “You aren’t going to backslide, are you?” He shook his head. “Remember this: Lord Byron had to strap up his misshapen foot in complicated boots and half the girls in Europe were crying their eyes out for him. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. What does King Oedipus’s name mean?”

  “Swell-foot.”

  “And who did he marry?”

  “His mother.”

  “And what was the name of that splendid daughter of his?”

  “Antigone.”

  I burst out laughing. Mino managed a hesitant laugh. I continued, “I’ve got to go now. Shake hands, Mino. I’ll see you next Sunday at this time; but first I’ll see you next Saturday at twelve-thirty at the Scottish Tea Room. Wear just what you’re wearing now and be ready to have a good time. Remember, you don’t win the right kind of girls by dancing with them and playing tennis; you win them by being a fine honorable fellow with a lot of zzipp in your eyes, and enough money in the bank to feed the little Antigones and Ismenes and Polyneiceses and Eteocleses. ’Nuff said.”

  Passing through the store I told Rosa about the Saturday engagement. “Will you come?”

  “Oh, yes! Thank you.”

  “See that Mino gives the invitation to the Avonzino girls. He may need a little help from you, but leave as much of it to him as you can.—Signora Matera, you have the brightest boy on Aquid-neck Island.”

  “Datt’a wot I tole you!” And she kissed me in the crowded store.

  I shook hands with her husband. “Goodbye, Don Matteo!” (In southern Italy respected heads of families even in the working classes are addressed as “Don”—vestige of centuries of Spanish occupation.)

  I reached a telephone and having called the Venable house asked to speak to the Baron.

  “Grüss Gott, Herr Baron!”

  “Ach, der Herr Professor! Lobet den Herrn!”

  “Bodo, we had dinner in the Eighth City—remember?”

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “How’d you like to have lunch in the Ninth City?”

  “Schön! When?”

  “Are you free next Saturday at twelve-thirty?”

  “I can get free.”

  “You’ll be my guest. You’ll be enjoying the seventy-five-cent blue-plate lunch at the Scottish Tea Room on Lower Broadway at twelve-thirty punkt. Do you know where that is?”

  “I’ve seen it. Will there be any police interference?”

  “Bodo! The Ninth City is the most respectable of all the nine cities of Newport.”

  “Have you got another of your plans on your mind?”

  “Yes. I’ll give you a hint. You won’t be the guest of honor. You won’t even be a baron. The guest of honor is a twenty-two-year-old genius. He has no feet.”

  “What did you say?”

  “A train ran over him when he was a baby. No feet. Like you, he reads the Summa and Spinoza and Descartes before breakfast—in the original. Bodo, if you had no feet, would it make you a little shy about meeting girls?”

  “Ye-e-es. Maybe it would, a little.”

  “Well, there are going to be three charming Ninth City girls there. Don’t dress too elegant, Mr. Stams. And no pinching, Mr. Stams.”

  “Gott hilf uns. Du bist ein verfluchter Kerl.”

  “Wiederschaun.”

  On Saturday morning I dropped in at the Tea Room and had a word or two with my esteemed and straight-backed friend Miss Ailsa Laughlin.

  “There’ll be six of us, Miss Ailsa. Can we have the round table in the corner?”

  “We never hold reservations, Mr. North. You know that. Five minutes late and you must take your chances with the other guests.”

  “When I listen to you, Miss Ailsa, I have to close my eyes—just to listen to that Highland music.”

  “It’s Lowland, Mr. North. It’s Ayrshire. The Laughlins were neighbors of Robbie Burns.”

  “Music, perfect music. We’ll be here exactly at twelve-thirty. What is being offered?”

  “You know perfectly well that on Saturday noons in summer we have shepherd’s pie.”

  “Ah, yes, agneau en croûte. Kindly convey my shy admiration to Miss Jeannie.”

  “She won’t believe it, Mr. North. She thinks you’re a fickle deceiver. You and Miss Flora Deland behaving scandalously in our house!”

  We are all prompt, but the Materas were promptest. They arrived five minutes early so that we did not see Mino rise from his rolling chair, adjust his crutches, and swing himself into the Tea Room—Rosa’s hand in the small of his back as leverage. I arrived just in time to seat them. Rosa was the kind of girl who appears more attractive at each successive meeting; happiness casts a spell. Mr. Stams and the Avonzino girls followed immediately. Filumena and Agnese were bafflingly identical and so beautiful that the world was enhanced by the duplication. They were enchantingly and even alarmingly dressed. Rosa, who sat at my right, informed me that they were wearing the dresses and hats which they had made themselves from a Butterick pattern, five years before, to serve as bridesmaids at an older sister’s wedding. These were of tangerine organdy and they had “built” wide-brimmed hats of the same material, stretched on fine wire. When they went down a crowded street passers-by formed two hedge-rows to watch them. Each had embroidered the initial of her first name over her heart to help us to identify her. Agnese wore a wedding ring. Her name was Mrs. Robert O’Brien; her husband, a naval warrant officer, had been drowned at sea three years before.

  I made the introductions. “We’re all going to call one another by our Christian names. Beside me is Rosa; next is Bodo—he is from Austria; next is Agnese; next is Mino, who is Rosa’s brother; next is Filumena. Bodo, will you repeat these names, please.”

  “They’re all such beautiful names, except mine, that I’m ashamed. But we are Theophilus, Rosa, poor old Bodo, Agnese, Mino, Filumena.”

  He was applauded.

  It was a warm day. We began the meal with a glass of Welch’s grape juice with a “scoop” of lemon sherbet in i
t (ten cents extra). Two of my guests—Mino and Bodo—were intimidated, but the twins were raving beauties and knew that everything would be permitted them.

  “Bodo,” said Filumena, “I like your name. It sounds like the name of a very nice dog. And you look like a very nice dog.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “Agnese, wouldn’t it be nice if we could build a big kennel in our back yard and Bodo could live with us and keep naughty men away. Mamma would love you, Bodo, and feed you very well.”