Lancelot

by Walker Percy

  Something went wrong. Jacoby called for an Arriflex hand-held camera and his assistant Lionel couldn’t locate it. Jacoby came over to talk to Merlin. More or less automatically I held out my hand—not that I wanted to shake hands with him, but we know in the South that the real purpose of manners is to make life easier for everyone, easier both to keep to oneself and to avoid the uneasy commerce of offense and even insult. Either one shakes hands with someone or one ignores him or one kills him. What else is there? Jacoby ignored me. His bemused eye looked through me and past me. I do believe that he did not insult me but rather did not see me. In his absorption I was part of the town decor, one of them. Merlin noticed the oversight and was embarrassed, cleared his throat, did not know what to do. There’s the function of manners: that no one will not know what to do.

  I rescued Merlin by asking him how long they were going to work today. “Oh, late! Late!” cried Merlin cordially. “And thanks so much for putting us up”—looking to Jacoby to echo thanks but Jacoby only nodded vaguely. I escaped and went out through the back, the office of the librarian.

  Raine and Lucy and Miss Maude, the librarian, were there. Raine kissed me with every appearance of pleasure—what is she? actress? flirt? wanton? nice affectionate girl? Lucy followed suit somewhat absentmindedly. She was so frantic in her crush on Raine that she hardly noticed me.

  “Isn’t it exciting!” said Raine, putting her hands on my shoulders, rocking me a little, brushing knees. One knee came between my knees.

  “What?”

  “The hurricane!”

  “I don’t think it’ll get here.”

  “But the light! Haven’t you noticed the peculiar yellow light and the sinister quietness about things? Isn’t this usually true of hurricanes?”

  “I suppose. I hadn’t really noticed.”

  “I was telling Lucy that there is more than coincidence involved here.”

  “How’s that?”

  “How could such a coincidence happen, that at the very time we are making a film about a hurricane, a real hurricane should come?”

  “Well, it could. This is hurricane season.”

  “What are the mathematical chances involved? One in a million? There is more than weather involved. There is more than light involved. I feel the convergence of all our separate lines of force. Can’t you feel something changed in the air between all of us?”

  “Well—”

  “I do, Raine!” cried Lucy, hugging Raine’s arm.

  Raine, color high in her cheek, spoke to me with her head ducked, as flirtatiously as Siobhan. Was this her way of being shy about her mystical convictions?

  “There’s a force field around all of us, waxing and waning,” said Raine absently, suddenly waning herself, losing interest. She spoke a little more, but inattentively.

  “Maybe you’re right, Raine.” I could never figure out the enthusiasm of movie folk. It was as if they were possessed fitfully by demons, but demons of a very low order to whom one needn’t pay strict attention.

  Miss Maude, like Lucy, fixed on Raine, eyes glistening.

  Dana came moseying in, thumbs hooked in his jeans. Miss Maude’s eyes bulged. He was something to see. Maybe he was the new sunlit god come to save this sad town. But when, ignoring us, he began to talk to Raine, it was about his—investments! Bad news from London, where he had bought a pub which made money but the government took 90 percent of it! “Christ, if I had just listened to Bob about Cayman,” and so forth—fretting! eyes crossed with worry about alimony and taxes, and all at once you saw that he was an optical illusion, a trick, that his beauty was not only accidental and that he had no part in it but that he didn’t even credit himself with it. He was like a hound dog wearing a diamond necklace.

  Miss Maude was suddenly possessed by a demon all her own. Imploringly, almost tearfully, eyes glistening, she offered Raine her house for the scene between Lipscomb the decadent planter and his aunt, a strong aristocratic type (“Christ, can’t you see Ouspenskaya doing her!” said Merlin), who tells him his true strength comes from the land. “You always have the land! The land is eternal!” and so forth. Miss Maude seemed to know all about the movie.

  “Thank you, Maude,” said Raine, giving her a hug. “I’ll tell Jan and Bob.” Raine, I saw, was in a kind of ecstasy of benevolence. It pleased her to be nice to Miss Maude. Raine’s face shone like a saint’s or like Ingrid Bergman’s. Was it the hurricane which excited her or the exaltation of being a movie star and confirming her stardom in the faces of ordinary folk?

  I blinked. All at once Miss Maude, whom I had known all my life or thought I knew, went off her rocker. Or she had been off her rocker for forty years and now at last came to herself. In fact she said so.

  Her face suddenly wrinkled up like a prune, her eyes glittered with tears. At first I thought she was crying, but it was not grief, it was happiness, gratitude. She twisted a handkerchief in her hands.

  “I just can’t tell you what it means to me,” said Miss Maude, pumping her tired hands back and forth.

  “Raine got Jan to give Miss Maude a walk-on in the library scene,” explained Lucy.

  “Is there any way I can tell you?” implored Miss Maude, coming ever closer to Raine, wringing her hands, frantic with an emotion not even she could name.

  “You did a good job,” said Raine, backing off, getting a little more than she had bargained for. “You’re a beautiful person. Maude.”

  “Oh, Raine, Raine, Raine,” said Maude and actually threw back her head and closed her eyes.

  I looked at Maude in astonishment. Had everybody in this town gone nuts or was I missing something? The special nuttiness of the movie people I was used to, but the town had gone nuts. Town folk, not just Maude, acted as if they lived out their entire lives in a dim charade, a shadow-play in which they were the shadows, and now all at once to have appear miraculously in their midst these resplendent larger-than-life beings. She, Maude, couldn’t get over it: not only had they turned up in her library, burnishing the dim shelves with their golden light; she had for a moment been one of them!

  Presently Mrs. Robichaux, a dentist’s wife, whom all these years I had taken to be a mild comely content little body, showed up from nowhere and told Raine she would do anything, anything, for the company: “even carry klieg lights!”

  The world had gone crazy, said the crazy man in his cell. What was nutty was that the movie folk were trafficking in illusions in a real world but the real world thought that its reality could only be found in the illusions. Two sets of maniacs.

  Somehow they had dropped the ball between them.

  Lionel came in close with the Arriflex camera saddled on his shoulder. Again Dana moved against Margot. He looked straight into her eyes, lazily and with no difficulty. Margot looked back with difficulty. Three lights were reflected in her pupil.

  Jacoby held both of them, his bent hands on their shoulders, eyes fixed on the floor, like a referee talking to boxers.

  “Dear,” he said to Margot, “this time let’s try it this way. I want your legs wrapped around him.”

  He’s not from Poland, I thought. He’d lost his accent again.

  “How?” asked Margot faintly.

  “How? Christ, just do it. He’ll help. He’s going to grab your ass and hold you off the floor. Don’t worry.”

  “All right.”

  “And when you say your one line: ‘You will be gentle with me, won’t you?’ I want to hear both fear and tenderness. Can you manage that, dear?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Yeah, all right. You ready? Remember, Dana, I want to hear the zipper. It’s important.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Merlin,” I asked, “what happens to, ah, Lipscomb in the end?”

  Merlin shrugged. “Just what you might suppose. He is almost reached, first by the stranger, then by his own aunt. But in the end he slips away from both. He gently subsides into booze and Chopin. Sarah opts for life, he for death. The stranger is
immolated by a town mob who think they hate him but really hate the life forces in themselves that he stirs. He is the new Christ, of course.”

  I walked back to Belle Isle on the levee. Sure enough, the air had got heavy and still. Yet far above, black clouds were racing, fleeing north of their own accord like the blackbirds which rose from the swamp disquieted. A yellow light filled the space between earth and clouds as if the Christmas bonfires were already burning.

  I couldn’t stand it. I still can’t stand it. I can’t stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age. What is more, I won’t. That was my discovery: that I didn’t have to.

  If you were right, I could stand it. If your Christ were king and all that stuff you believe—Christ, do you still believe it?—were true, I could stand it. But you don’t even believe it yourself, do you? All you can think about is that girl on the levee. No wonder you don’t have time to pray for the dead. All you can think about is getting that girl over the levee into the willows.

  No? But if what you once believed were true, I could stand the way things are.

  Or if my great-great-grandfather were right, I could live with that. Do you know what he did? He had a duel! Not a gentlemanly affaire d’honneur under the Audubon oaks in New Orleans, but a fight to the death with fists and knives just like Jim Bowie, in fact on the same sand bar. He had won a lot of money in a poker game in Alexandria. The heavy loser took it hard and began muttering about cheating. That was bad enough. But he made a mistake. He mentioned my kinsman’s mother’s name. She was a d’Arbouche from New Roads. Now my kinsman was a swarthy man; he looked like Jean Lafitte. “What’s that you said?” he asked the fellow, who then said something like, “You got the right name all right.” “And how is that?” asked my ancestor pleasantly. “Well, it’s d’Arbouche, isn’t it, or is it Tarbrouche?” Which was to say that my ancestor had a touch of the tarbrush which was in turn to say that his mother, a very white Creole lady, had had sexual relations with a Negro, and offhand it is harder to say which was the deadlier insult: that she had had sexual relations with a man other than her husband, or that the man was a Negro. “I see,” said my ancestor. “Well, I’ll tell you what I propose. You and I will meet in four hours, which is dawn, on the Vidalia sand bar, which is outside the jurisdiction of both Louisiana and Mississippi. With one Bowie knife apiece. No seconds.” They met. Seconds did come but were scared and hid in the willows. They fought. My ancestor killed his man, was badly cut on the arms and face, but managed to grab the fellow, turn him around, and cut his throat from ear to ear. Then he sent for an ax, beheaded, dismembered, and quartered the body, and fed it to the catfishes. He washed himself in the river, bound his wounds, and he and his friends rowed over to Natchez-under-the-Hill and ate a hearty breakfast.

  I could live that way, crude as it was, though I do not think men should butcher each other like animals. But it is at least a way to live. One knows where one stands and what one can do. Even defeat is better than not knowing.

  Or I could live your way if it were true.

  What I can’t stand is the way things are now. Furthermore, I will not stand for it.

  Stand for what, you ask? Well, for that, to give an insignificant example. What you’re looking at. You see the movie poster across the street? The 69ers? Man and woman yin-yanged, fellatioed, cunnilinged on the corner of Felicity and Annunciation Streets? What would I do about it? Quite simply it would be removed.

  Come here, Percival, I want to tell you something. It is not a confession but a secret. It is not a sin because I do not know what a sin is. I understand that before you can sin, you must know what sin is—Bless me, Father, for I have done something which I don’t understand. I know what a trespass or an injury or an insult is—something to be set right. So I’m telling you this and, confession or not, I consider you bound by the seal of friendship if not the confessional.

  Come over here. Never mind the window. Look at me. We’ve been through a great deal together: school, war, talk, whoring, football, nice girls, hot girls, so since you understand me and my past—if you don’t, nobody does—I’m going to tell you my plans for the future. There is going to be a new order of things and I shall be part of it. Don’t confuse it with anything you’ve heard of before. Certainly not with your Holy Name Society or Concerned Christians Against Smut. This has nothing to do with Christ or boycotts. Don’t confuse it with the Nazis. They were stupid. If in fact there was a need to clean up the Weimar Republic and if in fact they did in part, they screwed everything up by getting off on the Jews. What stupidity! The Jews were not to blame. The Nazis were clods, thugs. What they should have done was invite the Jews. Half the Jews would have joined them—just as half the Catholics did. Don’t confuse it with the Klan, those poor ignorant bastards. Blacks, Jews, Catholics—they are all irrelevant; blaming them only confuses the issue. We’ll invite them and you. Don’t confuse it with Southern white trash Wallace politics. It’s got nothing to do with politics.

  It is none of these things. What is it then?

  It is simply this: a conviction and a freedom. The conviction: I will not tolerate this age. The freedom: the freedom to act on my conviction. And I will act. No one else has both the conviction and the freedom. Many agree with me, have the conviction, but will not act. Some act. assassinate, bomb, burn, etc., but they are the crazies. Crazy acts by crazy people. But what if one, sober, reasonable, and honorable man should act, and act with perfect sobriety, reason, and honor? Then you have the beginning of a new age. We shall start a new order of things.

  We? Who are we? We will not even be a secret society as you know such things. Its members will know each other without signs or passwords. No speeches, rallies, political parties. There will be no need of such things. One man will act. Another man will act. We will know each other as gentlemen used to know each other—no, not gentlemen in the old sense—I’m not talking about social classes. I’m talking about something held in common by men, Gentile, Jew, Greek, Roman, slave, freeman, black, white, and so recognized between them: a stern code, a gentleness toward women and an intolerance of swinishness, a counsel kept, and above all a readiness to act, and act alone if necessary—there’s the essential ingredient—because as of this moment not one in 200 million Americans is ready to act from perfect sobriety and freedom. If one man is free to act alone, you don’t need a society. How will we know each other? The same way General Lee and General Forrest would know each other at a convention of used-car dealers on Bourbon Street: Lee a gentleman in the old sense. Forrest not, but in this generation of vipers they would recognize each other instantly.

  You have your Sacred Heart. We have Lee. We are the Third Revolution. The First Revolution in 1776 against the stupid British succeeded. The Second Revolution in 1861 against the money-grubbing North failed—as it should have because we got stuck with the Negro thing and it was our fault. The Third Revolution will succeed. What is the Third Revolution? You’ll see.

  I cannot tolerate this age. And I will not. I might have tolerated you and your Catholic Church, and even joined it, if you had remained true to yourself. Now you’re part of the age. You’ve the same fleas as the dogs you’ve lain down with. I would have felt at home at Mont-Saint-Michel, the Mount of the Archangel with the flaming sword, or with Richard Coeur de Lion at Acre. They believed in a God who said he came not to bring peace but the sword. Make love not war? I’ll take war rather than what this age calls love. Which is a better world, this cocksucking cuntlapping assholelicking fornicating Happyland U.S.A. or a Roman legion under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus? Which is worse, to die with T. J. Jackson at Chancellorsville or live with Johnny Carson in Burbank?

  Yes, I’ll be out of here in a month or two. What do we intend to do, you ask? We? I can only speak for me. Others will then do likewise. But let me give you an example from my future life. Yes! I may be uncertain about the past, about what happened—it’s all confused, I’d rather not think about it—but I know what the future and the new or
der and my life will be like. The new order will not be based on Catholicism or Communism or fascism or liberalism or capitalism or any ism at all, but simply on that stem rectitude valued by the new breed and marked by the violence which will attend its breach. We will not tolerate this age. Don’t speak to me of Christian love. Whatever came of it? I’ll tell you what came of it. It got mouthed off on the radio and TV from the pulpit and that was the end of it. The Jews knew better. Billy Graham lay down with Nixon and got up with a different set of fleas, but the Jewish prophets lived in deserts and wildernesses and had no part with corrupt kings. I’ll prophesy: This country is going to turn into a desert and it won’t be a bad thing. Thirst and hunger are better than jungle rot. We will begin in the Wilderness where Lee lost. Deserts are clean places. Corpses turn quickly into simply pure chemicals.

  Then how shall we live if not with Christian love? One will work and take care of one’s own. live and let live, and behave with a decent respect toward others. If there cannot be love—you call that love out there?—there will be a tight-lipped courtesy between men. And chivalry toward women. Women must be saved from the whoredom they’ve chosen. Women will once again be strong and modest. Children will be merry because they will know what they are to do.

  Oh, you wish to know what my own life will be like? (Look at you, all at once abstract and understanding and leading me on, all ears like one of these psychologists: why can’t you priests stick to being priests for a change?) Very well, I will tell you. I plan to marry Anna here in the next room. I think she’ll have me. You can marry us if you like. I shall love and protect her. I can make her well. I know that I can just as I know I can do what I choose to do. She is much better already. Yesterday we watched the clouds flying along and she smiled. She is the first woman of the new order. For she has, so to speak, endured the worst of the age and survived it, undergone the ultimate violation and come out of it not only intact but somehow purged, innocent. Who else might the new Virgin be but a gang-raped social worker? I do not joke. Her ordeal has made her like a ten-year-old.