Theophilus North

by Thornton Wilder

  “What’s your plan, old man?” he asked with happy expectation.

  “Bodo, something very serious this time. I must talk fast. Do you know the Ugolino passage in Dante?”

  “Naturally!”

  “You remember Agnese? Her husband was lost in a submarine at sea.” I told him the little I knew. “Maybe the men died of suffocation within a few days; maybe they lived on for a week without food. The boat was finally liberated from the ice. Do you suppose the Navy Department informed the widows and parents of the men of what they may have found?”

  He thought a minute. “If it was appalling, I don’t think they did.”

  “The possibilities haunt Agnese. They are robbing her of the will to live. She does not suspect that I know what is haunting her.”

  “Gott hilf uns!”

  “She tells me that she is filled with thoughts that she cannot tell her sister, her best friends, or even her mother. When people say a thing like that it means that they are longing to tell them to someone. Mino has asked her to lunch several times since our party at the Scottish Tea Room. She tells me she cannot accept any more invitations from him alone. Don’t you think Mino a fine fellow?”

  “I certainly do.”

  “I want to give a sunset picnic at Brenton’s Point next Sunday. Are you free to come between five and eight?”

  “I am. It is one of my last days in Newport. They’re giving a reception for me at nine-thirty. I can make it.”

  “I shall provide the champagne, the sandwiches, and the dessert. Will you, as a Knight of the Two-Headed Eagle, come with us and lend us your car? You and Agnese and Mino will sit in the front seat and I will sit in the rumble seat with the ice-bucket and the provisions. I don’t want to appear to be host. Will you be the ostensible host?”

  “No! For shame! I shall be the host. Now I too must talk fast. In my guest house there are always bottles of champagne in the ice-box. I shall bring along a little portable kitchen with a hot dish. Any Swiss can open a hotel with one day’s notice; we Austrians can do it in a week. If it’s raining or cold we can go to my guest house. You have supplied the idea—that’s quite enough from you.—Now tell me your plan. What is the idea?”

  “Oh, Bodo, don’t ask me. It’s only a hope.”

  “Oh! Oh!—Give me a hint.”

  “Do you know Macbeth?”

  “I played in it at Eton. I was Macduff.”

  “Do you remember Macbeth’s question to the doctor about Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking?”

  “Wait!—‘Canst thou not . . . Pluck from the memory a rooted sorroiv. . .?, and something about ‘Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?’ ”

  “Oh, Bodo!—That’s what will win you Persis; that’s what we must do for Agnese.”

  He stared at me. He whispered, “Persis too? Did her husband die in a submarine?”

  “Only the happiness that is snatched from suffering is real; all the rest is merely what they call ‘creature comforts.’ ”

  “Who said that?”

  “One of your Austrian poets—Grillparzer, I think.”

  “Schön!—I must run. Send me a note about where to pick up my guests and all that. Ave atque vale.”

  The invitations were sent through Rosa and accepted. “Rosa, we would love to invite you and Filumena, too, but you know the size of his car.” Rosa’s eyes showed she understood—perhaps understood the whole stratagem. “Will you show me, Rosa, where you put your hand on Mino’s back to help him in and out of doorways and cars?”

  Her mother watched us laughing. “I do’no w’at you are tinking now, Signor Teofilo, but I no afraid.”

  The great day arrived. The weather was perfect. Mino was seated in the car by skilled hands. Agnese preferred to be picked up at the Materas’ store, in order—I assumed—that her son’s disappointment would not be enhanced by his longing to accompany her on an automobile ride. When we arrived at Brenton’s Point that great hotel-man Baron Stams whisked out two portable service tables, spread them (with a flourish) with linen, and proceeded to uncork a bottle. Mino and Agnese remained in the car with trays on their laps while the other two cavaliers drew up beside them on folding chairs.

  Mino said, “Now I can say that I’ve tasted champagne twice. I’ve tasted Asti Spumante at my brothers’ weddings. The only time I had champagne before was at your wedding, Agnese.”

  “You were only fifteen then, Mino. I’m glad you did.” She spoke like someone treading on ice. “My husband’s family live in Albany, New York. They came and stayed at our house. They brought three bottles of champagne. . . . Do you remember Robert well, Mino?”

  “I certainly do. His boat didn’t come in to the Bay often, but he once asked me if I wanted to go on board and, of course, I was crazy to. But on that day there was a big storm blowing up and I couldn’t have managed the ladders and the gangway. He told me he’d take me another time. He was my idol. My mother thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen—and the nicest.”

  Agnese looked about her distraught.

  Bodo asked, “Did the Navy give him special leave for the wedding?”

  “Oh, he’d saved up his shore leave. We went to New York. We saw everything. We took a different El and a different subway to the end of the line every day. Robert knew that I loved music, so we went to the opera three times.” She turned to Mino and looked up into his face. “Of course, we had to sit way up high, but we could see and hear everything perfectly. And we went to the zoo and to Mass at St. Patrick’s.” There were tears in her eyes, but she added with a little laugh, “We went to Coney Island too. That was fun, Mino.”

  “Yes, Agnese.”

  “Yes . . . Theophilus, what is Bodo doing?”

  Bodo was busy over a chafing-dish. “I’m cooking supper, Agnese. It won’t be ready for a while so have another glass of champagne.”

  “I’m afraid that it’ll make me tipsy.”

  “It’s not very strong.”

  “Agnese,” I asked, “has Maestro del Valle given you any songs that you can sing without piano accompaniment? You know he wants you to sing if anyone asks you seriously. I can promise you we’re all serious.”

  “Well, there’s an old Italian song. . . . Let me recall it a minute.”

  She put her hand over her eyes and then sang “Caro mio Ben, Caro mio Ben” as purely as a swan gliding over the water. In the second verse she broke down. “I’m sorry I can’t go on. That was one of the three songs he loved best. . . . Oh, Theophilus, oh, Bodo . . . he was such a good man! He was just a boy really and he loved life so much. Then that dreadful thing happened to him—under the ice, without food. I suppose they had water, didn’t they? . . . but nothing to eat . . .”

  Bodo started speaking, distinctly but without emphasis, his eyes on the work before him. “Agnese, during the War I lay in a ditch for four days without food. I was so wounded that I could not get up to look for water. I kept losing consciousness. When the doctors found me they said that I had died several times, but that I was smiling. You can be sure that the men in the boat—with so little air—lost consciousness. Air is more important than even food and water.”

  She stared at him startled, a gleam of hope. She put her hand to her throat and murmured, “No air. No air.” Then she threw her arms about Mino; she laid her cheek on the lapel of his coat and sobbed, “Mino, comfort me! Comfort me!”

  He put his arm around her and repeated, “Dear Agnese, beautiful Agnese . . . dear Agnese, brave Agnese . . .”

  “Comfort me!”

  Bodo and I stared at one another.

  Suddenly Agnese collected herself, saying, “Forgive me, forgive me, everybody,” and drew a handkerchief from her handbag.

  Bodo said loudly, “Supper’s ready.”

  Alice

  During my earlier stay in Newport—at Fort Adams in 1918 and 1919—I had belonged to the Fourth City, that of the military and naval establishments. In this summer of 1926 there was little
likelihood—nor did I seek any—that I would have any contact with those self-sufficient enclosures.

  Yet I did come to know and delight in one very humble member-by-alliance of the United States Navy—Alice.

  From time to time I am overcome by a longing for an Italian meal. I had received invitations to dinner at the homes of the Materas, the Avonzinos, and the Hilary Joneses, where I was promised an Italian meal; but the reader knows of my resolve to accept no invitations whatever. My life was so gregarious and fragmented that only a strict adherence to that rule could save me from something approaching breakdown. I ate alone. There were three restaurants in Newport purporting to be Italian, but like so many thousands in our country they offered sorry imitations of true Italian cooking. My favorite was “Mama Carlotta’s” at One Mile Corner. There one was able to obtain, in a teacup, a home-grown wine popularly called “dago red.” About once in two weeks I wheeled the mile to “Mama Carlotta’s” and ordered the minestrone, the fettuccine con salsa, and the bread; the bread was excellent.

  This restaurant was across the road from one of the half-dozen entrances to the vast high-fenced Naval Base. It adjoined the many acres of barracks—six apartments to a house—in which lived the families of sailors many of whom worked at the Base, the majority of whom were often absent for many months at a time. Ulysses, King of Ithaca, was separated from his wife Penelope for twenty years—ten of them fighting on the plains before Troy, ten of them on the long voyage home. These men in Newport, their wives and children, lived in a densely crowded area of identical dwellings, identical streets, identical schools and playgrounds, and identical conventions. Since 1926 the area has grown many times in size, but with the increase of air travel home leave is granted more frequently and even the families are transported for a time to similar “compounds” in Hawaii, the Philippines, and elsewhere. In 1926 there were hundreds of “shore widows.” Density of population increases irritability, lonesomeness, and a censorious view of the behavior of others, all exacerbated at that time by walled enclosure. Penelope’s was a hard lot and she must have been surrounded by the wives of absent seamen, but at least, being a queen, not every moment of her daily life was exposed to the eyes of women as unhappy as herself.

  Residents on the Naval Base were permitted to leave the enclosure at will, but they seldom ventured into the town of Newport—they had their own provision stores, their own theaters, clubhouses, hospitals, doctors, and dentists. Civilian life did not interest and perhaps intimidated them. But they enjoyed escaping briefly from what they themselves called the “rabbit warren” and the “ghetto” to certain locations outside the walls. “Mama Carlotta’s” was one of a group of restaurants and licit bars at One Mile Corner that they felt to be theirs. It consisted of two large parallel rooms, the bar and the restaurant. The bar was always crowded with men, though there were tables for ladies (who never came singly); the restaurant at noon and evening was generally well filled. The naval families seldom spent money for meals away from home, but occasionally when parents and relatives arrived for a visit they were offered the treat of a meal off the Base. A warrant officer or a chief petty officer came here, out into the world, to celebrate an anniversary. It is proverbial among the other services that professional seamen, from admirals down, marry good-looking women, not conspicuously intelligent, and that they find them in our southern states. I was able to confirm this rash generalization over and over again, notably at “Mama Carlotta’s.”

  Early one evening, soon after I had entered into possession of my apartment, I was enjoying a meal at “Mama Carlotta’s.” It was my custom to read a paper or even a book at table. The fact that I was alone and reading was sufficient to mark me a landlubber. On this evening for reasons unknown I could not be served with wine and was drinking Bevo. I sat alone and exposed at a table for four, though the crowd was so great that the feminine portion of it had overflowed from the bar into the restaurant where it stood, two by two, glass in hand, engaged in animated conversation.

  This chapter is about Alice. I never knew her married name. During the few hours I saw her I learned that she came from a large, often starving, family in the coal-mining region of West Virginia and that she had run away from home at the age of fifteen with a gentleman-friend. I shall not attempt to reproduce her accent nor to indicate fully the limitations of her education.

  Alice and her friend Delia (from central Georgia) were standing, touching two of the empty chairs at my table. They were talking to be seen talking—not for my benefit only, but for the benefit of the public. Almost everyone in the room knew everyone else in the room and was keeping watch on everyone else in the room. As an author of a later day has said, “Hell is they.” I have unusually sharp hearing and became aware of an alteration in their tone. They had lowered their voices and were debating whether it would be “out of place” to ask me if they could sit in the empty chairs at my table. Presently the elder, Delia, turned to me and asked with chilly impersonality if the seats were taken.

  I half-rose and said, “No, indeed, ladies. Please sit down.”

  “Thank you.”

  I was to learn later that even my partially rising from my chair was positively exciting. In the circles where they moved men did not under any occasion rise to acknowledge the presence of a woman; that was what gentlemen did in the movies, hence the excitement. I resumed my reading and lit a pipe. They turned their chairs face to face and continued their conversation in their earlier manner. They were discussing the election of a friend to the chairmanship of a committee responsible for supervising a charity bingo tournament. I had the sensation of listening to a scene from one of those old-fashioned plays wherein—for the audience’s benefit—two characters inform one another of events long known to each of them.

  It went on for some time. Delia was pointing out that it was ridiculous that a certain Dora had been elected. Dora, in a former high office, had made a perfect mess of organizing a farewell tea-party for a couple transferred to Panama; and so on.

  “She tries to make herself popular by telling fortunes from palm-reading. Do you know what she told Julia Hackman?”

  “No.” Some whispering. “Alice! You made that up!”

  “Cross my heart to die.”

  “Why, that’s terrible!” (Stage laughter.)

  “She’ll do anything to get talked about. She said there was a Peeping Tom outside her bathroom; she opened the window suddenly and threw a soapy wet sponge in his face—in his eyes.”

  “Alice! That’s not true.”

  “Delia, that’s what she says. She’ll say anything to get famous. That’s the way she gets votes. Everybody knows her name.”

  I had now the opportunity to observe them surreptitiously. Delia was the taller, dark and handsome, but discontented and even embittered; I took her to be about thirty. Alice was scarcely over five feet, about twenty-eight years old. She had a pretty, birdlike, pointed face, of a pallor that suggested ill-health. Under her hat some wisps of lusterless straw-colored hair could be seen. But all was rendered vivid by dark intelligent eyes and an almost breathless eagerness to extract enjoyment from life. Her drawbacks were two: her native intelligence led her into a constant irritation with those less quick of mind than herself; the other was an unprepossessing figure which, like her pallor, was probably the result of malnutrition in childhood. In spite of the difference in their ages Alice exerted an ascendancy over her friend.

  They emptied their glasses. Almost without raising my eyes I spoke to them in a low voice: “May I offer the ladies a glass of beer?”

  Each stared into the other’s face, frozen—as though they had heard something that cannot be repeated. Neither looked at me. Having established the audacity of my overture, Delia assumed the responsibility of answering me. Without smiling, she lowered her head and murmured, “That’s very kind of you.”

  I arose and gave a barely audible order to the waiter and returned to my book.

  Convention! Convention! That ri
gorous governor of every human assembly, from the Vatican to the orphanage sandpile, is particularly severe on “shore widows,” for a sailor’s advancement is also conditioned by his wife’s behavior. We were being observed. We were under fire. Convention demanded that no smiles be exchanged. The important thing was to give no impression that we were enjoying ourselves—for envy plays a large part in censorious morality. When the glasses were placed before them the girls nodded slightly and resumed their conversation. But before I returned to my reading Alice’s eyes met mine—those superb dark eyes in the body of that early-aging hedge-sparrow. Quicksilver began coursing through my veins.

  After a few minutes I ostentatiously spilled some of my beer on the table—“I beg your pardon, ladies,” I said, mopping up the beer with my handkerchief. “Excuse me. I’d better have my eyes examined. Have I spilled any on you?”

  “No. No.”

  “I’d never forgive myself, if I’d spilled anything on your dresses.” I pretended to dry the hem of my jacket.

  “I have a scarf here,” said Delia. “It’s an old thing. Use it. It’ll wash out easily.”

  “Thank you, thank you, ma’am,” I said earnestly. “I shouldn’t read in a place like this. It’s bad for the eyes.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Alice. “My father used to read all the time—at night, too. It was terrible.”

  “I’d better put my book away. I sure need my eyes every minute of the day.”

  We were solemn enough to satisfy the severest critics.

  Alice asked, “Do you live in Newport?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Seven years ago in the War I was stationed at Fort Adams. I liked the place and I came back here to find work. I work on the grounds of one of the places.”

  “On the grounds?”

  “I’m a kind of handyman—furnaces, leaves, cleaning up the place—like that.”