The Last Gentleman: A Novel

by Walker Percy

  “Poppy, with all due respect to you and Mom, I’ve got to have something better. I’ve got to have something better in the way of relationships and I’ve got to have something better in the way of a genuine faith community. Mom lived by ritual. You live by—what do you live by, Poppy?”

  “Ah, I’m not sure.”

  “Well, I know what I live by and I want to thank you and Mom for giving me what you did and for making it possible for me to learn, to learn to level with myself and others.”

  “Ah, you’re welcome.”

  Once he saw the tiger traveling the highways and byways. But perhaps it was only one of the little explosions of light and color which now and then lit up the fragments of road map, bits of highway, crossroad, dots of towns which drifted across his retina. In the gray watery world, anyhow, no one seemed to notice the tiger. Very well, he thought, neither shall I.

  In New York, below Columbus Circle, on the platform of the downtown Eighth Avenue Express, hundreds of people stood waiting. Each wore a kind of hood not like a hangman’s hood but lopped over at the peak.

  He woke. The tiger was there, standing in the opening. There was nothing bright or fearful or symmetrical about him. His eyes were lackluster and did not burn. His coat was not thrifty. His muzzle looked more like a snout. Otherwise, there was nothing notable about him. He was as commonplace as the tiger in the picture book the child recognizes and points to. “Tiger,” says the child. The tiger’s head turned this way and that. He swayed as he stood. He was too tired even to unlock his legs and let himself lie down. It was clear he had come to die.

  Without fear or even curiosity he watched as the beast lay down heavily, its bones knocking against rock.

  Later when he happened to touch the tiger beside him, which was either dead or dying, he noticed without surprise that the fur and skin had grown as hard as rhinoceros hide.

  That’s unusual, he thought. Moreover, there had been an unusual expression through the eyes of the tiger before he lay down. The eyes were careworn and self-conscious. He felt toward the tiger as he often felt toward the patients at St. Mark’s. Haven’t you troubled yourself and fretted needlessly over the years? Did you ever really know your times and seasons? What a mystery that you should have come here without knowing! Were you ever really a splendid tiger burning in the forests of the night?

  A dry rustle came from the dead tiger like wasps in a gourd. Something was stirring in the carapace of this beast. Perhaps it is a female tiger lying down to whelp. No, this was an old male tiger, a friendly senile child’s-picture-book tiger. It was a death rattle.

  As he absently explored the beast, hide now hardened and chitinous as a locust, his hand felt along the spine as if it were looking for the slit where the creature escaped. There was no slit, but the skin had loosened in preparation for the molt.

  Molt? Tigers don’t molt. Be logical. It can be figured out. Very well. Whatever is alive here is more than a dying tiger. Yet it is not a tiger giving birth or a tiger molting and being transformed like a cicada. It is the same tiger but different.

  He watched curiously until he saw the joke. Then he grew sleepy and lay down beside the beast.

  The joke was that for the first time in the history of the universe it was the man who knew who he was, who was as snug as a bug in his rock cocoon, and the beast who did not, who was fretful, unsure of himself and the future, unsure what he was doing here. The tiger asked: Is this the place for me? Will I be happy here? Will the others like me? Will my death be a growth experience?

  But how can you be dead and grow? Dead is dead.

  The man laughed, took three more pills, scooped up water from one of the holes which was as perfectly cylindrical as if it had been drilled by a bit. Tiger or no tiger, he thought, it’s all the same. The experiment continues. That was no sign.

  He was vomiting. The pain from the tooth forked up into his head like lightning.

  I’m really sick, he thought with interest. Sick as a dog. What could have made me so sick? the drug? the toothache? How long have I been down here?

  He looked at the row of Placidyl capsules. Not quite half were gone. Six days? Ten days?

  There was the sound of water dripping.

  A tiger? John Ehrlichman? He shook his head. It made him vomit again. But he shook his head again and, gathering flashlight and batteries, started for the opening. Let me out of here. It is astonishing how such a simple and commonplace ailment as pain and nausea can knock everything else out of one’s head, lofty thoughts, profound thoughts, crazy thoughts, even lust.

  Ooooooh, he groaned aloud.

  Let me out of here, he said with no thought of God, Jews, suicide, tigers, or the Last Days.

  When he wiped his mouth he felt more than the beginnings of a beard.

  The trouble was he was weaker and more drugged than he knew. Halfway down the chimney, his knee gave way and he fell the remaining twenty or thirty feet, fortunately bouncing off the walls, else he’d have surely killed himself, and landed in a heap, bruised and bleeding, at the bottom.

  He lay quietly for a long time before he began to feel himself for broken bones and serious bleeding. Save for a few scrapes and many bruises on his hips and arms and head, he didn’t seem to be badly hurt. The dark pressed in. It didn’t matter whether his eyes were open or closed. Suddenly his heart gave a thump. The flashlight! Certainly it was in his hand when he started down the chimney. How stupid of him not to have brought a spare, a little pocket penlight! Now, even if he found the light, it was undoubtedly broken. Not even a match or a lighter. The toothache and nausea, he noticed, were gone. Gooseflesh rippled like wheat along his flanks. His scrotum drew up tight as a slipknot. Does fear supplant nausea as nausea supplanted God? Taking care not to move his body, he felt every square inch around him. No flashlight. Getting up on hands and knees, he almost fainted. Then putting his head down like an anteater, he began to spiral slowly, sweeping the rock with the outer hand. What if the light had landed on a ledge above? But no. The flashlight was lodged face up in a crevice a good twenty feet from where he had fallen. When his hand closed over the plastic rim, one finger went inside. The glass was broken. But the bulb wasn’t. He pushed the switch. Darkness pressed in. He pushed it again. Darkness pressed in closer. Ah then, this is how things are, things might be settled for me after all. If he hadn’t been so weak, he would have laughed. What kind of answer is this to an elegant scientific question? This way Prudential is going to get euchred honestly, he thought, and tapped the butt of the metal case against the rock. The darkness sprang back like an animal.

  Limping and aching in every joint, legs spraddled like a drunk’s, he made his way slowly along the beach, not bothering to look for fish, past Honest Abe and the three nuns, and started up the slide. He crossed the theater, but when he came to the upper slide, it was necessary to stop and rest with every step. I’m weak. I must have been down there a week. His legs and arms trembled. Twice he fell, once badly. He was so weak that, when he felt himself fall, he cradled the flashlight in both arms and let go of his body like a sack of potatoes. It, his body, rolled down a flat rock and wedged under an outcrop. He turned off the light and lay in the dark for half an hour. The nausea and the toothache were better but he felt very weak and all at once very thirsty. Why was he weak? How long had he been in this cave haranguing with God, the Jews, tigers, and John Ehrlichman? Five hours? Fifty hours? A week? He felt his beard. At least a week.

  This time when he checked his bones, he found that one was probably broken, the small bone below the knee. When he tried to stand, it seemed to want to come through the skin. But there was little pain. It was possible to go on all fours, knees spread. Perhaps the bone was only cracked.

  It was only after an hour, when at least, by any calculation, he should have gained the top and the opening, that there came the awful sense of loss, like a traveler who even before he slaps his back pocket knows his wallet is missing. Something was missing. He had lost something. What?
The crawl. He had misplaced the crawl.

  No, he hadn’t misplaced the crawl. The crawl opened into the theater. When he crossed the theater he should have entered the crawl. Instead, he had started up the slide. It was the wrong slide, however. He was lost. A cave is like a river. It is hard to get lost going down. Going up is something else.

  Turning off the light, he made himself comfortable and took stock. All he knew for certain was that he could not go back to the theater, let alone negotiate the crawl and another slide. Well then—he thought, yawned, and either fainted or went to sleep.

  When he woke, he found himself wondering where he was, what strange bedroom. The toothache was gone, he noticed. He spat out something. Probably pus. The abscess had drained. Then the bad memories opened in his head like doors. This was not a bedroom but a cave. He had lost the crawl. He was very thirsty. It took a long time to stand up. As he shone the light around, he realized he was looking for something, water.

  One of the dark spots on the ceiling close above him drizzled. He reached up his free hand. It was not water. Furry bodies fell on him, around him, squeaking. Tiny fans of warm skin brushed against his face. Hooks went through his hair like a comb. The dark spot went away. The rock was dry. The spots were colonies of bats. It was the bats that drizzled. Then, whatever day it was, it was daytime. Bats roost during the day, don’t they? How did the bats get out?

  Did he imagine it or did another, stronger breath of air stir against his cheek. A great bat?

  Down on hands and knees again and slowly up the slide. What to do when slide meets roof? For here in fact slide did meet roof and he crouched in the angle, cleaving against the roof like a bat. He turned off the light. It was only after a minute or so that he realized that it was not quite dark. Rather was it ordinary dark, not the blind black retinal dark of the cave. A breath of air stirred his hair.

  Turning his head as slowly as a sick man greeting a visitor, he saw a shadow on the rock. It was only a shadow, he thought. But consider that my flashlight is turned off. It follows then that the shadow has been made by another source of light. As he crawled along the cave a light breeze sprang up, and by the time he reached the shadow, he could smell leaves and bitter bark and the smell of lichened rock warming in sunlight.

  But when he turned, he saw, not sunlight but a lattice of vines which all but sealed a hole in the rock. The hole was square.

  Well then, he said, and noticed that he was not excited about his deliverance from the cave.

  Then there must be more than one opening in the ridge. But why the square hole? Perhaps this was the actual escape hatch for the Confederate moles. Even fat Confederates could use this hole.

  Carefully inching his way to the light, he discovered that the opening was not more than a foot and a half square and head high, the head, that is, of a man on all fours. The square shape came not from the rock but from a wooden frame beyond the rock.

  A rigor seized him and he shook like a leaf. His teeth chattered. Somewhere above the racket he was thinking that it would be a curious experience to emerge from the cave as a Confederate years later, like a Japanese holdout in the Philippines. Hey you in the Mercedes, who won the war?

  Resting elbows on the sill, he meant to poke his head through for a look, but both vines and sill were rotten and he fell, thinking even as he fell that it couldn’t be much of a fall, what with the vines and the ridge itself not being much higher than a man. But this was a fall through air not vines or bushes, through air and color, brilliant greens and violet and vermilion and a blue unlike any sky, a free-fall headfirst with time enough to wonder if he might not be dead after all, what with this tacky heaven and the great black beast of the apocalypse roaring down at him, eyes red, jaws open and ravening, when, wood splintering first then exploding into kindling, he hit the table, then concrete, but not too hard, with one shoulder mostly but with the back of his head some. He shut down, turned off like a light.

  3

  Something was trying to get into his mouth. He clenched his teeth.

  “You were asking for water.”

  He opened his eyes. Something, someone, a person, a woman, a girl, bent over him with a paper cup.

  “Okay.”

  He tried to raise his head to drink properly. It was impossible. Pains shot up his neck. Very well. He had broken his neck. He opened his mouth and she poured water into it. There are few joys greater than drinking cool water after a serious thirst.

  The colors came from a stained-glass window set in a roof of clear glass. I’m in church.

  “How did you find me and get me in here?”

  “I didn’t. You fell in.”

  “Fell in? From where?”

  “There.” She lifted her face.

  In the peak of the gambrel roof, where the vent of an attic might be, a square window had been set in the wall against the ridge. He looked at it.

  “How did I get up here on this table or bed or—”

  “I got you up with my block-and-tackle.”

  “I see.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Bad.”

  “What hurts?”

  “Everything, from my leg to my head. I think my leg is broken.” If my leg hurts, he thought, I am probably not paralyzed.

  “Take these three aspirin and go to sleep.”

  “Don’t call anyone until I tell you.”

  “All right.”

  He took the three aspirin and went to sleep.

  When he woke, she fed him a large bowl of oatmeal. Why had he never noticed how good oatmeal is?

  “What were you doing? Where did you come from?” she asked after a while.

  “The cave,” he said absently. He had been looking at the framed hole in the roof peak a long time. “Do you feel anything?” he asked her.

  “Yes, a breeze. I had not felt it before. Where does it come from?”

  “From the cave.”

  “What’s it for?” she asked.

  “To keep the greenhouse warm in winter and cool in summer. How does it feel to you?”

  “Cool. But did you notice my—”

  “Yes, because it’s still warm out.”

  “No, it’s cold outside.”

  “I judge the cave air is about sixty degrees. It is said to come from air blowing up the gorge and into the cave mouth and across some hot springs.”

  “Yes, but did you notice that it is warmer than that in here?”

  “Yes,” he said absently. “Can you imagine that vent being there all along and you not noticing it?”

  She nodded. “It is both revealing and appealing to me that you cleaned out the vines so my window could catch the breeze from the cave.”

  “What old Judge Kemp did,” he said more to himself than to her yet watching her closely, “was to back this greenhouse against the vent in the ridge so he could keep it a steady sixty winter and summer.”

  “So the natural air-condition was for fruition.”

  “Yes,” he said, closing his eyes. “He made a lot of money. It’s warm in here, warmer than the cave. Hm.”

  “I know,” she said. “Did you notice a novelty hereabouts?”

  “A novelty?” He opened his eyes and followed her gaze.

  There, fitted snugly under the raised sashes of the partition, squatted the huge old kitchen range, no not old but surely new, transformed, reborn. Its polished nickel glittered in the sunlight. Expanses of immaculate white and turquoise enamel glowed like snowy peaks against a blue sky. A fire burned behind amber mica bright as tigers’ eyes.

  “You moved it.”

  “I moved it.”

  “By yourself.”

  “By myself. Look, it also has a reservoir.”

  “I see.”

  “The water is hot.”

  “Good.”

  “I gave you a bath. To see you was not to believe you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But for now, go to sleep. You’re exhausted.”

  “Ve
ry well. Don’t tell anybody I’m here.”

  “Who would I tell?”

  Part Two

  I

  IT WAS NO TROUBLE handling him until he came to and looked at her. She could do anything if nobody watched her. But the moment a pair of eyes focused on her, she was a beetle stuck on a pin, arms and legs beating the air. There was no purchase. It was an impalement and a derailment.

  So it had been in school. Alone at her desk she could do anything, solve any problem, answer any question. But let the teacher look over her shoulder or, horror of horrors, stand her up before the class: she shriveled and curled up like paper under a burning glass.

  The lieder of Franz Schubert she knew by heart, backwards and forwards, as well as Franz ever knew them. But when four hundred pairs of eyes focused on her, they bored a hole in her forehead and sucked out the words.

  When he landed on the floor of her greenhouse, knocking himself out, he was a problem to be solved, like moving the stove. Problems are for solving. Alone. After the first shock of the crash, which caught her on hands and knees cleaning the floor, her only thought had been to make some sense of it, of him, a man lying on her floor smeared head to toe with a whitish grease like a channel swimmer. As her mind cast about for who or what he might be—new kind of runner? masquerader from country-club party? Halloween trick-or-treater?—she realized she did not yet know the new world well enough to know what to be scared of. Maybe the man falling into her house was one of the things that happened, albeit rarely, like a wood duck flying down the chimney.