Testimony and Demeanor

by John D. Casey

  Q: “Pleasure?”

  A: “Satisfaction. Fulfillment. It is, you know. I should add that people always talk of sacrifice wrongly. The word once meant a pleasurable giving. Now it means, oh, rationing, privation, imposition. People then turn around and say, e.g., Proust sacrificed his life for his work. I would assert that on the contrary, Proust was not in the least deprived but very cleverly bargained away a life that he could never have really led for one that gave him the highest pleasure. I would be happy to make—in a very minor way, you understand—the same sort of bargain.”

  Q: “What in exchange for what?”

  A: “What I can’t have for what I’ve decided I really want.”

  Q: “Who are you dealing with?”

  A: “Well, let’s call it a broadside offer.”

  Q: “Well, what can’t you have?”

  A: “Earlier expectations.”

  Q: “Like what?”

  A: “Well, to lead you somewhat astray, to be a national figure.”

  Q: “Seriously?”

  A: “Yes. There was a moment.”

  Q: “But your earlier expectations—i.e., what you can’t have—are they yours to bargain with?”

  A: “I can’t think who else can claim them.”

  Q: “Of course, if they’re what you can’t have, they’re without value and your bargain is nudum pactum, without consideration.”

  A: “I tell you they’re extremely valuable. All that I once cared for.”

  Q: “But if you’re going to give up what you can’t have, you’re bargaining to do something you’re bound to in the first place—”

  A: “Put that way, of course, there is some merit to your objection. But not in my life. The logic in my life has not been law. [Laughter] In fact, in this realm everyone is always making bargains to do what he’s already bound to do. Those are the only ones anyone sticks to.”

  Q: “ ‘In this realm.’ Everything just slips away.”

  A: “Oh, no.… You know, it’s a shame we’re the only two lawyers or we could do this some Sunday.”

  Ann: “You know, I was struck today by the helplessness one feels in front of what is most touching. Last summer I was at a family picnic, of all things. I have a nephew named Bill who is a great ox of a schoolboy who spends all his time exercising, as far as I can see, and I have a cousin once removed who is sixteen and quite attractive. She has a little brother of an indeterminate age named Josh. Perhaps he’s eight, or six. All three happened to be standing by the swimming pool. My cousin had a great crush on this lifeguard of a nephew—why, I can’t imagine—and she was trying to attract his attention. So she started talking to her little brother. ‘If you’ll go swimming with me, Josh, I’ll give you a surprise.’ Josh said, ‘What?’ He was—quite rightly—suspicious of this sudden bright-eyed attention. My cousin said, ‘Oooh, I can’t tell you, but it’ll be something you really, really like.’

  “Josh still said ‘What?’ but what intrigued me was that he was beginning to squirm under the intensity of her really remarkable physical charm. She was hovering over him, and although she wasn’t touching him, the air was positively electric, and of course he couldn’t know it wasn’t for him. All the while Bill was doing deep-breathing exercises of some laborious sort. Finally my cousin turned to Bill and said, ‘Oh, Bill. You make him come swimming with me. He’s just being awful.’ Josh looked very hurt that he was being awful, but Bill said, ‘Can’t talk. Hyperventilating,’ and then dove into the pool and swam underwater down and back. It’s quite a long pool, and he pulled himself out like a wounded crocodile and just lay in the sun, occasionally rearing his head to knock the water out of his ear. My cousin looked down at him for a while with that brutal sour look that teen-agers have, which I hope is not as seriously evil as it looks. Then she walked off. Bill just lay there oblivious. Josh wandered around the pool looking very thin and sorry for himself, but when I talked to him he was completely bored and couldn’t wait for me to stop.”

  An odd thing. Mr. Pelham and Ann both happened to ask me the same question.

  Mr. Pelham: “I imagine there is such a thing as rustic virtue. Disabuse me.”

  Ann: “You must have had a marvelous childhood—I mean, growing up away from all the usual vices. Catching trout while boys in New York were shoplifting. Everything must have been so natural.”

  I said to Ann, “There’s nothing more natural about New Hampshire than New York anymore. Most of those trout are stocked. My brother worked as a guard at a state trout hatchery. Herons would come in droves to eat the hatch and he’d shoot the herons by the dozens. They were what was natural. But it’s an economic election. Herons or trout. Tourists come for trout. Q.E.D.” Ann was appalled.

  I said to Mr. Pelham that if rusticity itself is the virtue he’s talking about, and if virtue is desirable, which we assert by definition, then why did I, and my fellows, come to New York, and why does the rest of the state want, more than rusticity, electric power, highways, industry? And so forth.

  Story for story, essay for essay. But I begin to think that their idea of the purpose of their relations with other people is primarily informational. And that eventually the information, the more interested they become, will be an essence of me that they’ll have to dismantle me to get. Nothing necessarily destructive. Just to see. I suppose that’s O.K.

  I asked Mr. Pelham how he’d ever come to drop in, what first interested him. He wasn’t surprised. He had his essay.

  “I thought at first you were—from what people said—what every rigorous headmaster of every rigorous prep school claimed he wanted his boys to be. In practice, headmasters were often thrown into violent reactions by factors they professed to ignore. E.g., charm. They were both infatuated and irritated by it. But the theory of their preaching was that ‘a strong character’ was to be praised over intelligence, charm, talent, and even accomplishment. It was a curious thing to preach, because it was a sermon without end that crushed everyone. It praised, for example, those who gave their lives for their country in a way which made the living feel guilty. It praised the grit of the loser who battled on and on. Hopelessly. Which made the winner feel guilty and was no balm to the loser, because even when one is told he has a strong character, one cannot really acknowledge it inwardly. In any event, praise of one’s grit should be no substitute for winning.

  “A curious side effect of this preaching, by the way, was that certain extremely gifted prep school boys competing some years later for, let us say, Rhodes Scholarships would falter almost on purpose before the interviewing committee. They were under a posthypnotic suggestion, you see, to lose with grit and prove their character.

  “But to return to you. You seemed to be slogging it out on your own in both theory and practice, and because no one had imposed the theory on you, you were uninhibited toward bald success. I can’t tell you how deep a chord this struck in me. I have often had a dream career of being a headmaster. To be quasi-Olympian above the fray. To be on the riverbank as a racing eight swept by, knowing the life story of each man in the boat. What each stroke cost.” He paused. “To bestow the trophy, saying, ‘Well rowed, Prancer and Dancer and Donder and Blitzen …’ ”

  Later I asked Ann what had first got her interested in me. She started to back away, but I finally got the bit in her mouth. And then, of course, she took it between her teeth and ran off.

  “Well, I can say one thing, which is that you’re unlike any previous entanglement. Except perhaps Charles. Charles was like you—many years ago, of course. Not in manner. But he was isolated in the same way. Nothing, I can tell you, is less appealing than a lonely man who is feeling sorry for himself, but on the other hand, a lonely man who seems to be bearing up and who acts with a certain rudeness is infinitely attractive. The only thing more momentarily alluring—and it can be only momentary—is a man who is obviously in love with another woman, who is paying absolutely no attention to anything else, and who then, out of a clear blue sky, suddenly notices you and
is visibly shaken. It’s quite moving. But then, of course, he must either turn away sheepishly or advance raffishly, and that is that. I’m afraid I may be sounding like a terrible old whore, but if you insist on questions, I’m afraid you’ll get answers that go on like this. I mean, I’m not going to pretend that I returned to my maidenly role as frail flower after Alfred departed the scene. Indeed, I don’t even think that I find it a convincing role—frail flower, I mean. It is aesthetically repugnant, and I may say I’m glad to see that it is really not even a fashion anymore. Which is not to say that I admire myself unreservedly. In fact, I was somewhat unreflective with Charles in that it should have been apparent to me that since he was someone whom Alfred admired a great deal, I very likely had ulterior motives. I have noticed that divorced women tend either toward someone whom their husbands admire or toward someone whom their husbands rather despise. A visible step up or down. From the husband’s point of view, of course. The reality is always more baffling. But the original motive is to break away from the husband’s taste in people, which is the most lingering shared taste, because, of course, the people around you can’t be sent into storage along with certain chairs and rugs and paintings. But the people can be perceived differently. And one changes oneself, and so forth, until there is a whole new arrangement. But the period of changing one’s perceptions is, oddly, a very impersonal one—although not necessarily rational—and the person closest to one at the time gets treated rather badly, I’m afraid. That is to say, impersonally. I mean, one can behave quite theoretically. Women can. Men on the whole behave better, more naturally, at least more wholeheartedly. Alfred behaved extremely wholeheartedly and remarried very happily, if a little bit absurdly.

  “Fortunately Charles and I became lasting friends, largely through his withdrawal in a very independent and orderly fashion. There was scarcely a bad moment. We were both very busy, and we soon found that we weren’t relying on each other at all, even though we kept on seeing each other. This was years ago. And then, of course, he became more the way he is now. His whole world in his head. Not in any selfish or even embittered way. Perhaps a little melancholy, but very literary, very picturesque. What I find attractive now is that he is analytic in a generous way, but not a and b, x and y—like a juggler, really, so that you just catch a glimpse. It really is the way I prefer to hear about things.”

  I said, “I guess you find me too much the other way. Too x and y.”

  She said, “Now, that is the intriguing thing; I really don’t know. Actually I do—at least one thing, which is this: that you’re changing visibly, and I find it amazing to be a cause—not so much a cause as a catalyst. Do you know what happens to catalysts, by the way? People are always using catalyst as a metaphor, and I know what it means metaphorically, but actually, chemically, I have no idea what happens to them.

  “Do you remember saying that your sleek, demure young associates seemed to know you down to the ground and that you didn’t know the first thing about them? I can assure you that that is most unlikely. There is, to flatter you some, something awesome about you. I’m quite serious. You really are as independent as Charles was, but with a more massive core of energy. Of course, that may be youth. I’ll tell you what I do like, though, is that from time to time you seem to focus it all on me. I can’t tell you how I’ve come to appreciate that feeling. Wasn’t that what you wanted to know?”

  I said yes.

  She said, “You know, for someone who never mentions it, you’re actually quite sensual.”

  She smiled, having deliberately turned the conversation that way. I noticed her mouth particularly. Her front teeth are large and regular. There is something attractive about the idea of her gold fillings in back, on the way to her red gullet. I find myself sometimes thinking about her insides, almost in a way to put me off. Not on account of her but on account of my own state of mind. The other day it made me think of shooting a deer—the whole process—seeing it flash, shooting, hauling it out, gutting it. Other times, fortunately, I think of her bones. They’re very light, and that is altogether pleasant, associated mainly with her control of her body.

  I have mentioned the deer to her, making it clear that that edge of thought exists only involuntarily. She said it probably had to do with my resenting the fact that she could not have a baby. I said no, that her steering clear of babies made her seem more like a young girl.

  She said, “A quick-frozen young girl, thawed out in perfect condition years later.”

  I didn’t say anything, but the fact is I’m not sure I would have liked her as a young girl. What I like is that she seems like a young girl. She, on the other hand, is in love with her memories of being a girl. I doubt if I’ll ever spend that much time dredging up stories. My story, the one that interests me, is from now on.

  It is interesting how Ann can tell stories publicly (the way she did today, Sunday) with real polish. And then she can tell me a story in private as though her recollections were a form of caress, as though she were nestling against me. If she were a patient and I were a psychiatrist, I would fall in love with her as she just lay there talking. She sometimes demands stories from me, but that is often like a caress that she asks for. Too requested. She once took my hand and very slowly pulled it against her face; now, if she could get stories from me like that …

  But when I hear her tell a story in public, it is hard to imagine how we ever get along in private. I can imagine what it would be like to be married to an actress.

  Today Professor Keller got after her about laughing at his Central European “private economist.” She said, “Let me explain. Marie-Claire was being driven back to her villa in Neuilly by her chauffeur when she happened to see a tramp eating grass by the roadside. She rapped on the glass partition and told the chauffeur to stop. She addressed the tramp. ‘My good man,’ she said. ‘Are you actually eating grass by the roadside?’ The tramp said, ‘Yes, madame.’ ‘Well then, you must come with me,’ said Marie-Claire. They drove off and at length reached Marie-Claire’s house. She told the tramp to follow her. They proceeded through the front hall, and out the back door onto the terrace. Marie-Claire gestured with her slim white hand across the well-tended grounds. ‘My poor fellow,’ she said. ‘I was touched when I saw you eating grass by the roadside. Here is an English lawn!’ ”

  Professor Keller said, “Oh, come on. That’s not an analogy.” But Ann won the point by acclamation.

  I enjoy her triumphs, but not as much as she does. She lights up, revs up, and doesn’t slow down for hours. But when she does finally, she is especially low-keyed and balmy. When we got back to her place I was going to leave, but she said no—she wanted me to sit and talk for a while. She floated around the living room, turning on lights in corners and bringing me a drink. She settled down on the sofa and said, “I’ve been thinking about that friend of yours you told me about.”

  I said I didn’t remember any more than the first time I told her. She said, “That’s all right. Tell me again. I love it. It’s like a painting.”

  I told her again. “I had a friend in New Hampshire who lived outside Nashua when he was a kid, and he started going to a whore in town when he was just fourteen. He would save up his chore money, and when he had ten bucks, which was maybe every other month, he’d go down to see this whore, who mostly just did the old geezers around town—the retired mill hands and so forth. She was always very glad to see him, and she would give him a bath and ask him how he was doing in school and on the baseball team and so forth—the same things each time—and then she’d dry him off, take off her bathrobe, get up on the bed, and say, ‘Climb aboard, sunshine boy.’ ”

  “Tell me when he told you,” Ann said. “How did it come up? How old was he?”

  “When he told me? We were both eighteen, and he hadn’t told anyone before me. After we got out of high school we got a couple of IDs and went to the dog races down in Taunton. In the last race there was a dog named Sunshine Boy, and my friend started laughing and to
ld me about it. We went out to a bar and had some drinks, and he couldn’t get off it. It was the first time I’d seen anybody drunk that way, although he was probably copying someone he’d seen. At the time I couldn’t tell if it was real. He said something like ‘She’s probably dead and gone.’ He fell asleep in the car and I drove back to New Hampshire. I went off the next day to a summer job in Keene and then to college. He joined the Army, I think. I used to think about that in college—his story, I mean. It seemed mysterious. Not so much the sex part—that seemed more natural than anything else I heard—but the fact that he’d kept it secret for such a long time and finally only told me by accident.”

  Ann said, “It is like a Hopper. A cliché imbued with realism. A realized cliché. An intensified cliché. No. You aren’t making anything up?”

  I said no.

  She said, “What I like about Hopper is this—the other dimension, the suggested dimension, is absolutely, precisely in focus. There is nothing to play with, to jiggle into focus. It all comes at once. In fact, it all comes at once even though I don’t know of another painter who can suggest that a scene—the one of the inside of the movie theater, for instance—has such a stretch of long, boring time locked into it. Just on and on and on. Even his houses with the yards grown over. And yet every one of his paintings has such a clear point. I mean, all the time is brought to a head, as though his picture is a dam waiting for you to look at it for all the time to be released.”

  I thought: This is the way she is most coherent—fitting her mood to a subject and controlling both at once by talking. I thought: I have never known anyone this well and this abstractly at the same time. Somehow she has made sure I know the mechanics of her, but for no mechanical reason.