“I really believe,” he said gently, “that you have the . . . true insight, the true wisdom, the true feeling” pausing before he added . . . in a whisper, “. . . and I believe you know my great need of you!”
As he spoke he gradually slipped his hand around her neck, along her throat and toward her breast, and Candy dropped her glass of sherry.
“Oh, my goodness,” she wailed, going forward at once from her chair to pick the pieces off the floor, for the glass had broken and scattered. She was so embarrassed she could scarcely speak for the moment.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I—”
“Never mind about that,” said Professor Mephesto huskily, coming down beside her, “it’s nothing, only a material object—the merest chimera of existence!”
On the floor next to her, he put his face to the back of her neck and one hand under her sweater.
“You won’t deny me,” he pleaded, “I know you are too wise and too good to be selfish. . . . Surely you meant what you wrote.” And he began to quote urgently “‘. . . the beautiful, thrilling privilege of giving fully,’” meanwhile pressing forward against her. But as he did, Candy sprang to her feet again and the professor lost his balance and fell sideways, rolling in the spilled sherry, trying to soften his fall with one hand and to pull the girl down with the other, but he failed in both these efforts; and now, having taken a nasty bump in the fall and, perhaps too, because of his unwieldy bulk, he merely lay for the moment in the pool of sherry, wallowing and groaning.
Candy was startled almost to alarm, standing now, one hand to her mouth.
“Oh, Professor Mephesto, I—”
“Comfort those whose needs are greatest, my dear,” he implored her from where he lay, arms outstretched to take her fully would she but come to him. “Remember the ‘thrilling privilege’!”
But the poor girl was too frightened, and still terribly upset about having broken the glass.
“Oh, I don’t know—” she stammered, almost tearfully, “I—I’m so afraid—I only wish—”
She stopped short as the door burst open and in came the young sullen-faced boy who had so begrudgingly conveyed the invitation to her. His eyes went wild and his face pale as he looked from one to the other of them.
“Excuse me!” he said then haughtily and turned on his heel to leave.
“Wait, Holly!” cried the professor, struggling to his feet, “Wait . . . it’s only—” He got up, brushing himself awkwardly; he was clearly embarrassed, and the boy meanwhile had stopped in the half-open door, waiting, indeed.
“I’d better be going,” said the boy, when no further explanation came.
“No, no, Holly,” said Professor Mephesto, collecting himself and coming to the boy. “Go into the inner office,” he said firmly.
The boy looked at him, no longer pale now, sulky and dark.
“Go,” repeated the professor; then he laid a hand on the boy’s arm. “I’ll go with you,” he said gently, “come.”
He turned to Candy just before closing the inner-office door. “Excuse us for a minute, please,” he said.
“Yes, of course,” said the bewildered girl, and she sat down again in the chair. For a moment she could hear the murmur of their voices, then something like a door slamming and she knew the young man had left. She waited a minute but the professor did not return. Selfish! Selfish! she was thinking of herself. To be needed by this great man! And to be only concerned with my material self! She was horribly ashamed. How he needs me! And I deny him! I deny him! Oh, how did I dare?
She listened, and her heart grew swollen and soft within her as she heard what was unmistakably a sob. “Oh Prof—” She could not bear it; he was alone, weeping in his need for her—”Oh, Meph, Meph,” she started up, and toward the door. She would go to him, give herself to him—fully. She recalled the image of her nakedness in the glass as she had stepped from the bath this morning. Yes, she was lovely; she would give him that—fully. Fleetingly now, as she put her hand on the knob of the inner-office door, she wished that she had worn her finest underthings, but she knew with satisfaction that these were fresh and sweet. And then she heard another sob, a moan. “I’m coming, Meph” she whispered, and softly opened the door.
But the young man had not left, and Candy was confronted with an extraordinary scene. The two of them were dancing about the clothes-strewn room, stark naked, flailing each other wildly with wet hand towels, moaning and sobbing, their bodies reddened and welted.
They didn’t see her, or if they did, were not distracted, so intense their engagement as they lashed out in great frenzy. Candy closed the door quickly and rushed out o£ the office and down the long quiet hall, finally bursting into tears, only conscious now of her swift little footsteps, and of her terrible selfishness, how it had driven Professor Mephesto, in his frustration, to . . . goodness knows what! “Oh, how could I?” she kept demanding of herself. “How could I?”
By the time she reached home, however, she was more composed; at least she was eager to tell her father about the A-plus thesis she had done.
Mr. Christian was sitting in his armchair, reading the paper.
“Hi!” he said, glancing at his watch as she came in. “Have a nice day?” He knew enough to alternate his salutation from “Learn anything?” to “Have a nice day?” and he did this with clocklike regularity.
“Well,” said Candy, coming forward to give him a kiss on the forehead, which he received with a grunt. “An A-plus on my last philosophy thesis! From Professor Mephesto! He never gives more than one for the whole class! Isn’t it wonderful?”
Mr. Christian’s questions were, of course, rhetorical, but so was his interest, so he could sustain the line of them easily enough.
“Oh?” he said, in slightly rising inflection, continuing to look at his paper, though with a frown which showed he was just scanning, and was, certainly, listening to his daughter too, “what was the subject of the thesis?”
“‘Contemporary Human Love,’” said Candy, putting her things away.
Mr. Christian shook his paper, clearing his throat. “That sounds practical,” he said. He tried to force a little laugh to show that philosophy courses weren’t serious, but he was too basically ill-tempered to manage it, so he shook his paper again, clearing his throat and frowning a bit more darkly than before.
Candy ignored it; she was determined to salvage something of her triumph, and she wasn’t going to let him spoil it.
“And—” she said, coming over to sit down near him, “I was invited to a conference with Professor Mephesto! To ‘have a drop.’”
The name of Professor Mephesto had come up previously, and Mr. Christian loathed it with the most simple-minded unrestrained jealousy. He took his pipe and began to empty it vigorously against the nearest ashtray. “What did he want?” he asked, in frank contempt. “Oh, Daddy! Really! It’s the greatest honor to be invited to Professor Mephesto’s office, and have a drop! I’ve told you that a dozen times! Good Grief!”
“Have-a-drop-of-what?” asked Mr. Christian slowly, feigning the patience of a saint.
“Of sherry, of course! I told you that a hundred times!”
“Sherry wine?” asked her father, making his frown one great black hole.
“No, sherry banana-split! Silly! Of course, sherry wine! He has a glass of sherry and a bit of cheese in the afternoon—some people prefer tea, but others find tea lacking. Whereas sherry has body and edge, and tea is so messy at best, don’t you . . . well, Good Grief, I mean it’s a taste he acquired in the best possible circles!”
“And he gives this wine to students?” That was the big point with Mr. Christian.
“Oh, Daddy!”
Candy got up and walked over to the window. Where she had begun by feeling just slightly ambiguous about her conference with Mephesto, now she felt in it the strength and rightness of the world itself.
Mr. Christian puffed on his pipe.
“I simply want to know—”
“I
don’t wish to discuss it,” said Candy, primly.
What was going on in her father’s mind, behind that impossibly dark brow, it is difficult to convey in full. Certainly he was furious with her, strove to dominate her, would argue, sulk and yet not raise a hand against her. Did he know he was playing a losing game? And is it, moreover, too much to believe that he enjoyed, not simply losing the game, but being a bad loser as well? In any event, he immediately lunged upon another very sore point between them.
“Then perhaps you will discuss this,” he said, tight-lipped. “Mrs. Harris said you were talking to Emmanuel again yesterday.”
Emmanuel was the Mexican boy who came to mow the lawn. Mr. Christian had strictly forbidden Candy to talk to him as she had shown, on a number of occasions, an inclination to do. Mr. Christian had said that he, personally, was broad-minded enough not to mind, but that it “looked funny” to the neighbors. He somehow associated the event with Professor Mephesto. But for Candy this was the last straw. “And I certainly won’t discuss that!” she said. “I’m so ashamed of you about that that I could die. Why, if Professor Mephesto knew that you had said that, I would never have been invited to his office! Not in a million years!”
Her father felt a severe, delicious pain in his head. It was with the greatest effort that he kept from blacking out, as he controlled his voice, and said:
“I don’t like to have to cut down on your allowance, but—”
“My allowance!”
Candy stamped her foot in pique.
“My gosh, is that all you can ever think of? Material things? Good Grief!”
With a toss of her pretty head, she turned abruptly, marched out of the room and up the stairs to her bed.
In the living room behind her, Mr. Christian looked back down at his paper, puffed on his pipe, and slowly, stiffly, shook his head, his lips and knuckles now the color of snow.
And that night Candy went to sleep trying to decide which she should do: give herself to the Mexican gardener, or run away to New York City.
3
THE NEXT DAY was Saturday, and Candy had no classes; she didn’t get up until about ten. When she went downstairs, Mr. Christian had already left for the office, as he usually did on Saturday mornings, to “take care of a few things that have been piling up.”
Candy always enjoyed having breakfast alone, for then she could drink her coffee undisturbed by her father’s frown and his occasional quips about “cocoa being best for a growing girl.” This morning she had two cups, from time to time looking anxiously out the breakfast-nook window, into the sunny backyard—for this was the day that Emmanuel came to mow. And Candy had made her decision.
After her coffee and toast (she told herself she was much too excited to have more) she went back upstairs to her bath, and afterwards put on one of her prettiest summer dresses, and a touch of her favorite perfume, Tabu. Then she went downstairs and out the back door.
She found Emmanuel, kneeling at one of the flower beds at the side of the house, turning the earth with a trowel. How thin and wan he looked in his poor clothes. Oh, thought Candy, he does need me so very much!
“Hi!” she said brightly.
Emmanuel looked up, somewhat surprised to see her.
“Ha,” he said. He did not speak English too well.
“That doesn’t look like much fun,” said Candy, referring to his work.
“Whot?”
He frowned up at her; from the beginning of their conversations he had thought she was the dumbest girl he had ever met.
“Wouldn’t you like to come inside for a drink of something cool?” asked Candy, showing her white teeth and wet pink tongue in a silvery laugh.
“I don thunk Mister Christy wud leek,” said the gardener at last when he had understood her proposal.
“Oh, darn Daddy, anyway,” said Candy. “Surely I can entertain friends in my own home occasionally without his making a fuss!” But, of course, she knew he was right; so it was finally agreed, through a series of repetitions and gestures, that the gardener would go ahead of her into the garage and she would join him there with the drinks.
When she reached the garage she found him kneeling again, this time sharpening the blades of the lawn mower.
“How devoted you are!” said Candy, beaming, “I should think you could find something better to do on a lovely day like this!”
“Whot?”
She handed him the drink, bringing herself very close as she did, so that he could not fail to feel her warmth, nor to catch the fragrance of her Tabu.
“It’s a drop of sherry,” she said, at the same time indicating a box for them to sit on, “I think you’ll like it.”
“Whot?”
When they were seated, the gardener understood for perhaps the first time, when he had a tentative sip of the wine, what was being offered him.
“This good!” he said with a broad smile at the glass.
“Yes,” said Candy, “I find it has body and edge. Not like tea, a messy affair at best. Don’t you agree?”
“Whot?”
“Now then,” she said, hurrying on, for beneath her composure, the girl was quite excited, “tell me about yourself—your values, your plans and aspirations; tell me all sorts of things about yourself.”
“Whot?”
“Oh, Emmanuel,” said Candy with a soft sigh and a look that had become mournful, “it’s so very difficult for you here, isn’t it?”
She put her hand on his arm, closing her eyes, and leaning forward as though to comfort him in her understanding—and with some satisfaction she felt her breast touch against the back of his arm. She was all prepared to be kissed violently, but when it did not come, she opened her eyes to see the gardener staring at her oddly, suspiciously. For a moment she was flushed with confusion, which she covered by saying:
“Emmanuel, look at me. Listen to me now,” she continued in a grave tone, taking his hands in her own, “I know you don’t think Daddy—Mr. Christian—likes you. But I want you to know that we aren’t all like that, I mean that all human beings aren’t like that! Do you understand? Nothing is so beautiful as the human face.” Her manner had become quite severe, indeed, almost intimidating, and the gardener watched her with eyes grown large in wonder.
“You know, don’t you,” the girl went on, softer now, “that I’m not like that—that I’m very fond of you,” and she leaned forward again, closed-eyed, to his face and finally to his mouth, kissing him, deeply, and upsetting their glasses of sherry. And Candy was prepared to tell him not to bother about that, a material object of no importance, but it was not necessary, for with a few whimpering sounds of surprise, the gardener had held her kiss and was reaching into her dress now for her breast while his other hand had plunged between her legs.
“Oh, my darling,” Candy was saying. “You do need me so, you do need me so!”
But it was happening much faster than the girl had planned, and she became truly frightened now, as he tore at her small white panties, trying, with considerable urgency, to remove them.
“Oh darling, please, not here, not now, we mustn’t,” and she quickly broke away from him and ran to the door of the garage, where he followed her and renewed his attack, so that the girl rushed out into the open and the skirmish persisted halfway across the backyard.
Finally she calmed him, near the rhododendrons.
“Tonight,” she promised in a whisper. “Come to me at midnight,” and she indicated her bedroom, which was directly above them. “Oh I know how you need me, my darling,” she said, pressing her pelvis against his leg, “and I do so want it to be perfect for us. Come to my bedroom at midnight,” she said again, stealing away, one hand outstretched to him as she went in the back door—and a good thing, too, for Daddy Christian’s big Plymouth was just pulling in the drive at that very moment.
That evening at dinner, Mr. Christian was unfolding his napkin as he asked, frowning seriously:
“Have a good day?”
“So-so,” said Candy, toying with the cottage cheese and peach salad before her and avoiding her father’s eyes.
“Hmm,” he said, “nothing wrong, is there?”
“Oh, no,” said the girl lazily, “no, no.”
“Hmm,” said Mr. Christian. He cleared his throat. “Well, Aunt Ida wants us to come over for Sunday dinner tomorrow.”
Candy continued eating.
“I don’t know whether we should go or not,” said her father in a controlled voice. “I mean, there’s not much point in going if you’re just going to sulk all the time.”
She glared at him furiously, while he cleared his throat, seeming more at ease now that he had roused her anger.
“Well,” he went on, “I mean, if you’re in one of your moods, we don’t want to inflict it on Aunt Ida and the others, do we? There’s not much point in that, is there?”
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Candy sharply, “there’s not much point in anything around here!”
And she left the table in a huff.
Mr. Christian gave his exasperation-sigh and went on with his peach salad, unable to keep his fork from shaking a little, but managing, with certain effort, not to drive it suddenly into his chest.
4
AT ELEVEN-THIRTY that night, Candy had another bath—a bubble bath this time steeped with pine-fragrance crystals—and put on the black nightgown she had bought for the occasion. Finally, a fresh application of Tabu, and, by five minutes to midnight, she was in her bed, the lamp a glowing rose, and soft music purring from the radio.
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