“… not merely honor but a punctilio of an honor the most sensitive.” I’ll never forget it, but I’ll never use it, and neither will anybody else.
Being able to work in a concentrated way is a great advantage. I shouldn’t have complained. I knocked off everything projected for the next three days in one single day. I got into it for three hard hours, and just when I felt myself slowing up I bore down for another three, ate a sandwich, and put in another three just coasting downhill toward supper. Ate, walked around the block, and rounded out the day with a last three which could have been two but I didn’t want to get careless. I won’t have to touch a thing I did today. I may have to take a half hour to explain the memo to Mr. Leland so he can explain it to the client, but it’s all there. All there in one neat package. I was worried that I’d been slowed up. No one else in the world could have done that piece of work in one day.
Mr. Pelham dropped by again. I’d just got back from presenting the memo to Mr. Leland. Mr. Leland was impressed, so I wasn’t bothered by the prospect of Mr. Pelham being cute again with his cultural quiz. But he started off in low. For him, that is. He actually asked me how I’d got along in law school. And he waited for an answer.
I told him that what gave me whatever edge I’d had—since I was clearly no Frankfurter—was a capacity for work and for organizing other people’s ideas. Right away I saw there were some minds which were quick and subtle. Some of them could grind too, and they went on to be Law Review. But some of them had no organizing power. They were happy to break up a problem in class. Suggest all the difficulties. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure I understood all of them. But having done all that work out loud—scored a few points for wit and elocution—they’d be tired of it. Maybe bored. That was their problem. I picked up the pieces. Not all the little cute ones. Early on I figured out that if you put too fine a point on an argument it’s likely to arouse suspicion. Ingenious but unsound, as the saying goes. Which means baloney is baloney no matter how thin you slice it.
The other thing I found out was not to waste time with my gut reactions. It was amazing to see how many bright guys kept on getting wrapped up in long-winded arguments, as though this or that case was the last chance to reform the country. Ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, even in textbooks, are narrow questions. You don’t have to start with the Bill of Rights every time.
There was another way that guys who might have started out smarter than me went wrong. They wouldn’t finish the question. They would find all the issues and go on and on about the rights and wrongs, but they’d forget that at the end you’ve got to be exact about who gets what. People don’t go into court to improve their minds.
But the main advantage came from not resisting the process. There were a few who could still be the fair-haired boys of the faculty in their defiance of the assumptions necessary to the workings of the law—in fact, a little fair-haired defiance is itself necessary to the workings of the law school. But many more people foundered because they were afraid they might be brainwashed away from some mental set they’d grown fond of—sometimes it was some political ideal, but more often it was some notion of themselves as too complex and humane to fit into the mold of just being a lawyer. A mere lawyer. To me there was nothing mere about it.
When I got through with this explanation—and it’s not a bad outline of how to overachieve with a B mind—Mr. Pelham said he couldn’t wait to hear more tomorrow but now he had to go. He left. But there isn’t any more.
Now comes Mr. Pelham to—to what?
Mr. Pelham: “Deferred expectations bother me more than anything. Going to law school, if one is serious, is tedious. One banks on the future. And three years pass. But the hopes that practice will be zestfully different are soon dashed. One’s manhood is not fulfilled. The new deferment is for five years. In five years the increment of skill, authority, and seniority will have made one’s life one’s own again. And I suppose thirty or thirty-one is not too late to start in. And yet it seems to me that people not only acquire the habit of work, which is not so bad—I rather like work, about half of the time—but they also have acquired the habit of deferring their expectations. Perhaps indefinitely. Occasionally one sees our young partners acquiring an energy for some project. They go to Washington or to an international conference. They are radiant and eager, but they are on a short tether. They return. There are others who never leave. I think they spend their real feelings in the bosom of their family in some umbrageous suburb. But either way everything is moderate. Moderated. That great leap forward will not be. But then, I suppose this is true in general. Immigrants used to defer their expectations to their children. Orwell once said that working-class Englishmen were middle-aged in their thirties because they gave up living for themselves, surrendering unconditionally to their jobs and families. In fact, he said they even look old. You can always find someone worse off.
“But adventure … Don’t you have the feeling that there was a class of people—perhaps in the eighteenth century, perhaps in the seventeenth—who could imagine no other way to live but toward an adventure that would illuminate their lives? When did they succumb? When did we succumb? I sometimes suspect adventure declined because of nineteenth-century genius. Nowadays no one dares to build a monument to his own passion—be it family, nation, creed, romantic love—because one knows that before long someone with a Ph.D. in Darwin, Freud, or Marx will come along and dissect it as an example of something doomed, repressed, unnatural. I have nothing against dissection or even vivisection. No brief against the academics at all, but rather against those who are intimidated. They are frightened of shadows. What they need is more disbelief. If one is frightened of being a pejorative example, one only has to believe his own sayings instead. I yearn to hear someone say, ‘My life is superb by no standard but my own adoration of it. I am not improving the world, I am not the wave of the future, I am not aiding any scheme of history or nature.’ ”
Mr. Pelham stopped abruptly. “That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? Reminds me of what’s-his-name. ‘Black as the night that covers me. Di-da-da-dum from pole to pole. I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.’ Terrible. Roosevelt liked it—publicly at least. But I was doing well until then. Up to ‘by no standard but my own adoration of it.’ ”
I checked around and found that Mr. Pelham doesn’t do this to anyone else—not recently anyway.
My days have been peaceful for two weeks. Mr. Pelham has been in Japan (a Japanese conglomerate is one of our clients). I found I missed his visits. But today he got back and gave me a good half hour on the Japanese. Boring? I’m telling you. A few headnotes: Japanese forms of prayer. Japanese childhood. Japanese food. Japanese attitudes toward career. Failure of psychiatry in Japan. About five minutes per item. But he kept it moving along. He said he thought I would like the Japanese.
Maybe he wants me to work for him when I get through with Mr. Leland. Not on my program if I can help it.
Today—a week after Japan—he gave me a lecture on paternity. His attitude toward it. Sort of a moot point since he isn’t married and is over sixty, I’d guess.
Mr. Pelham: “I would have liked to have a son who was extremely gifted in, let us say, music or painting but whose attitude toward his work was so intense that he refused to discuss it. And perhaps he would be somewhat inarticulate anyway. By way of reaction to his father. However, having known him for, let us say, twenty-four years, I would be in a unique position to perceive his state of mind as it emerged in his work. I would know almost all the variables. Imagine the possibilities of appreciation in that situation.”
Mr. Pelham paused, as usual, just before winding up, and, as usual, wound up with a crack at himself. “Yes, I would have been a great stage mama lurking in the wings.”
Apparently when he’s doing business he doesn’t talk this much.
Today for the first time he showed up twice. The second time was just for a minute as I was leaving for supper. He caught me in the hall an
d asked me what I read. I told him detective novels. He seemed to be waiting for more, so I told him (which was true when I was at law school and couldn’t get to sleep) histories of military campaigns.
“Seven Pillars of Wisdom?” he said. “Francis Parkman?”
“World War Two,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
“How interesting,” he said in that you’ve-flunked-your-cultural-quiz way. If he thinks I’ve flunked, why doesn’t he go talk to one of the three-piece suits custom made in London?
He brought me a book today that he said was a Japanese general’s account of the taking of the Philippines. Now I’ll have to read it.
I asked him why he thought I’d like the Japanese.
A: “Because technical progress didn’t disrupt their inner life, although now they couldn’t live without it.”
Query that.
I whipped through the book last night and it wasn’t bad. Well detailed. The author wasn’t afraid of details. A lot of American accounts are boring precisely because all they want to talk about is hitting the beaches so they can sell to the movies. This Japanese general went into decision-making when you only know a fraction of the variables and you’re not sure what fraction. There were unfortunately a lot of fragments of poems, which might have helped if I knew the whole thing, as I suppose the reader is supposed to. “The clouds linger by mountain peaks.” That sort of clue. Thanks a lot.
But what is interesting is this: I went upstairs to leave the book off. Mr. Pelham was across the hall in a conference room. As I left his office, the conference room door opened and there he was with some Japanese, speaking Japanese. Just gargling away. He talked to me twice about Japan and never said he spoke the language. I’m not saying that if you speak a foreign language you tell everyone you meet, but he had a whole week of chances and he is not a man to hide what he knows.
Mr. Pelham: “What is interesting about you is that you have no group to report to. I had the handicap of knowing a number of interesting people in college and some time thereafter (alas, not all of them interesting anymore), and therefore almost every pleasurable experience I had I spoiled somewhat by thinking how I was going to report it. Of course, the reporting itself was something of a pleasure. And I suppose even the seeking out of pleasurable experiences in order to report them was a pleasure, so perhaps I didn’t lose—although it wasn’t until I was past forty that I discovered pleasures that were isolated, unlinked to any imaginary audience of friends or friend. I sometimes think we’ve reached a stage of such social density that almost all pleasures are vicarious. Certainly echoic, in that they are transmutations of a small band of original visions generally unknowable. Brahms conceives in pleasure (let us assume, although perhaps he didn’t). He scribbles down what he heard. The performer gets it second-hand, and we get it third-hand from him. Now, one theory is that the original Platonic shimmering whole that Brahms glimpsed through the clouds becomes less perfect with every communication of it. But another theory, perhaps my own, is that the original vision actually has very little to recommend it except Brahms’ rendering of it. And it is only enhanced, not lessened, in its successive stages. Not inevitably but possibly; good vicars are necessary. Good translators. If we can assume them, then nothing is lost in translation—on the contrary. The primitive vision was not of paradise (there is none); it was only a quirk of one mind. Providing that the successive receivings and retransmittings are done by minds as rich—and why not?—the original is augmented. In fact, the pleasures of Proust’s life were nothing to write home about. But I like Proust’s liking them. And I like even more my liking of Proust’s liking. I’ve gotten as much pleasure remembering my reading Proust as I ever did reading Proust.
“But then, perhaps the most complete pleasure of all would be to know the original germ, be aware of its injection into a mind, see its growth ab ovo, and follow its passage from mind to mind, sensing the entire cycle of enrichment. Until at last one saw—one witnessed—the whole ornate growth entering one’s own mind.” Mr. Pelham paused. “And decaying there in a sterile vacuum. I refer to my lawyer-like habit of being an objective observer in the vortex of other people’s passions.”
He left on that note. But I thought it was his best day so far.
Mr. Pelham: “It was you I meant to speak of yesterday. I’m sorry. I was distracted by myself again. And yet it’s sometimes instructive to follow a chance phrase. I noted that you have no group to report to. But what I really meant to say is that you seem immune to other people’s psychic disturbances. Quite the opposite from me. I am almost too conscious. I would be particularly susceptible to folie à deux. Even when I’m talking to you I find myself revolving around your stolidity. You come from New Hampshire, don’t you? The Granite State. Dartmouth too. What is that song? ‘We have the granite of New Hampshire in our muscles and our minds.’ ”
I said that was an old joke.
“I’d like you to meet a group of people,” he said after a minute. “Mostly much older, but often much sillier. Than you. I’m not sure.… Some of the women are very attractive. For some reason, especially on Sunday afternoons. Especially in the fall. There’s something about the light. Tired yellow sunlight on the sides of empty buildings. I can’t imagine why people leave New York to go to the country.”
I said I’d come and he told me where he lives.
I’ve been here two years today. Still going strong. Mr. Leland noticed the anniversary and said he’d noticed the amount of work I was doing. My health is good. I maintain my level in the Canadian Air Force exercise book. I drink less than I did in law school. Work doesn’t get me down while I’m doing it. Only occasionally at night, after it’s done.
What are my weaknesses? I think my ambition is less in a general way. I shy away from arguments that are general. And I must learn to maintain my point of view with something more than just answers.
I went to Mr. Pelham’s Sunday afternoon. Only a half dozen people. That was worse than a crowd. All older. One very old woman named Eleanor and two middle-aged ones. All three of them are divorced.
Everyone was playing a word game. The game was what words can you do without (in connection with yourself) when you’re over fifty? They all sat around suggesting words that had a tendency to be a little tough, a little too serious. I mean, they’re none of them young.
A man said, “Hope.” They hemmed and hawed over that.
Someone said, “Innocence.”
A woman with straw-colored hair said, “I’m not sure, but we can certainly do without the pretensions of innocence.”
They all said, “Ahh.”
“Infatuation.”
“No,” the woman with the straw-colored hair said. “Au contraire. It’s a word you wouldn’t think of using in connection with yourself until you’re at least forty.”
Someone said, “Pride.”
The other middle-aged woman said, “But not vanity.”
“Fertility.”
Same lady, who had a deep tan and black hair with a white streak, said, “Thank God.” But I think she was putting on being brassy, since she looked the youngest. Maybe forty-five.
There was a pause in the game. Mr. Pelham said, “Perhaps we should examine the seven deadly sins.”
The tan lady said, “Is that all there are?” They all laughed and she looked pleased.
A fat man said, “I’m sure you’ll find them all intact for years, my dear.”
Mr. Pelham said, “Well, no. I found, for example, that when I reached the age of fifty I was no longer bothered by envy.”
I found that interesting.
The fat man said, “What about the five senses?”
The lady with the straw-colored hair said, “I hope old age doesn’t find any of us tasteless.”
The fat man said, “Oh, very good.”
The tan lady said, “Sensitivity,” cutting in on the straw-haired lady’s applause. “I mean being upset, you know, going around being wounded.”
“
Righteousness,” the fat man said loudly.
The lady with the straw-colored hair turned to me and said, “What do you think? Aren’t you playing? That keen legal mind …”
“Acne,” I said.
She said, “Oh, quelle horreur.”
The tan lady with the silver streak laughed and said to Mr. Pelham, “And you told me he didn’t have a sense of humor.”
Mr. Pelham laughed at her, although he could tell I’d heard what she’d said. Didn’t seem to bother him.
The game went on for a while and then died. I went over to talk to the lady with the straw-colored hair. Mrs. Morr. She talked to me about ballet, for some reason. I couldn’t think of anything to say so I finally asked her if she used to do it herself.
“Oh, when I was a very little girl,” she said. She curled up in the corner of the sofa and looked like a little girl. I suppose I stared at her. It was sort of a shock, no, a surprise, since she’d looked pretty good from the start, but she looked suddenly very flirtatious and I realized that the whole thing—her outfit, her gestures, her looking off to one side to show off her nose—the whole thing right along had been meant to be attractive and I just hadn’t noticed. I’d just been talking to her because she seemed the most talkative. Even by comparison with Mr. Pelham. Anyway, it suddenly took hold. What it was was this—I don’t think of the girls I used to know as women, even the ones now married and with kids. Just as I don’t think of anyone I know who’s my age (including myself) as a man. There seems to be no marking the change from high school to college to law school to working for a firm. Just more intensity. The more they pour on, the more you learn to handle. But Mrs. Morr was beyond all that. She didn’t have to do anything, and there was a pleasant sense of drift to her when she opened up. It was clearly just for the fun of it. Like a great big sunny flower.
Testimony and Demeanor Page 16