by Tito Perdue
“I see.”
“But here’s the good part: you will be paid. Paid and paid well!”
“Good. But I think I’ll just stay here.”
They laughed.
Fifty-two
It developed that the county had need of a new eighty-bed facility, and with the help of the Cobbs organization, a 5.25 percent utility bond had been issued. Seventeen acres were required for the project, and whether the owners wished to sell or not had very little relevance when compared to the law.
Again, how strange things were. He had just this moment “made” a great deal of money without any effort of his own, a magical procedure that had done so much for the country. Far better was it to deal than to do—he would have to remember that.
The community did put forth an effort to save their homes and was even given twenty minutes in front of a judge of some sort, a grave individual, about sixty years old with a youthful wife.
In the event, it needed the boy just a single day to find new quarters, a one-room complex with toilet facilities further down the hall. He bargained with the owner, a youthful wife of a sixty-year-old husband who disliked the boy at first sight. No effort could convince the woman either to allow flowers on the roof or to alleviate the rent in return for certain custodial duties. She was hard.
At this date, the boy possessed about fourteen hundred pounds of personal property, most of it in books and iron tools. He imagined at first that he ought be able to transport those materials through his own efforts alone. With an ego like his, nothing could have given him more pleasure, never mind that his automobile was growing weaker by the day. He had a famous dictionary that alone weighed six pounds. Finally, toward nightfall, in exchange for his bedstead, he contracted with an antiques dealer to move the furniture in that person’s covered van. The mattress he saved for himself.
He rested six days, until finally, on the following Wednesday, he jumped into his best clothes and strode toward town. They were not terribly good, his best clothes, but from a distance they gave off a certain respectability much at odds with a closer view. His socks were in deleterious condition, but his cufflinks had real silver in them and looked to be new. Dressed so, with two books under his arm and his revolver taped in place, he paced to the lawyer’s office, and after signing a plethora of papers with two witnesses hanging over him, was given a check on grey paper worth precisely twenty thousand ninety-six dollars as itemized hereunder in rounded numbers:
Moving Expenses Allowed—$700 (giving him a profit)
Prepaid Property Tax Rebate—$204
Refund of Environmental Impact Inspection charge —$804
Reimbursement for 18 tropical fish with offspring and spawn—$70
Dwelling—$4,250
Sundial—$18
Disused water well—$12
Land, 1.166 acres—$14,038
-----------------
$20,096
He took the money and ran to the bank, but then had to wait around while the teller verified the information. He watched scrupulously as she counted out the money, one bill after another of mint-new currency bearing the portraits of Northern generals on them. Thrilled beyond measure, he tried to tip the woman who at first declined to take it. His next job was to alert his girlfriend, a good-looking music student introduced previously in this account. Communicating quietly by telephone, they added up their assets. The girl:
Savings from unexpended scholarship monies—$3,821
Earnings saved from private cello lessons—$884
Harp lessons—$34
From sale of hand-painted dinnerware—$600–$700 (receivable)
Resale of diamond bracelet and other unsolicited gifts—$1,668
Commission on the sale of parents’ soybean harvest —$2,085
Modeling fees—$8,823
-------------------------------
$17,915
It came therefore to about thirty-eight thousand dollars for their joint wealth, a tremendous endowment that in truth was to give them the most they were ever to possess. They gloated over the telephone.
“You deserve it.”
“What? No, you deserve it! You deserve it sixteen times more than I do!”
“Oh! Just because I’m beautiful? You had to work for it.”
“Yeah. I work about two hours a day.”
“And all those books you’ve read.”
“They don’t care about that! They don’t even like it.”
“Maybe we ought to do something.”
“I’ll be there Friday.’’
“No, something else. Maybe we ought to take a vacation.”
He thought about it. “The sea?”
Fifty-three
But first he had to furbish his single-room apartment and make it more suitable for an occupant of his type. He scrubbed the floor, moved his books, and found a place for his iron tools. The mattress itself he located in the southeast corner furthest from the Sun. He had a radio, two matching socks, and a used refrigerator acquired for an unimaginably small price. And then, too, there were those objects he sometimes found lying at hazard in the alleyway that led to town. All his life, or at least since he had turned twenty-two, he had wanted to live off society’s leavings, contributing as little as possible to the world while consuming even less. A fair bargain! He lived for himself.
Unwilling to invest his money in a system he deplored, he divided his cash into portions. The largest share he stored in an otherwise empty pickle jar in the freezer compartment of his antique refrigerator. Some he put in Volume Three of Hodgkin’s Italy, but then took it out again just in the nick of time before returning the book to the library. Some he put in other places, and some in places even other than that. These days his wallet held more than ever, and with his good clothes and his countenance the way it was, he could walk into any store or restaurant he wanted and fool the world.
How he loved it! He who could have made a decent living with minimum effort. He was young, smart as a cat, not unhandsome, and yet had turned away from what most people crave most of all. He could indict the world without the world even knowing of it. Nothing (except for one thing only) gave him greater pleasure.
“I see!” said I. “And so you can rub their faces in it without anyone getting hurt!”
He grinned. “Humans believe they are important because they’re human. I suppose grasshoppers feel the same way about their own crowd. People have to have a good opinion of each other to wish to hurt one another, right? Or have influence.”
It was only my fourth interview with this exasperating personage, a two-hour meeting during which he unfolded still another theory about the decay of civilizations. He was nervous and must have used up a dozen cigarettes during the time. He had somehow come into possession of a velvet jacket that didn’t sort altogether well with his trousers or the condition of his shoes.
“How goes the German?”
He seemed loath to talk about that.
“Good,” he said. “Except for those goddamn prefixes all the time. You start out thinking you know what they’re talking about, only to find out that you were wrong.”
“Or maybe they’re wrong.”
“I’m going to wait till I get over there.”
“Thought you were going to India!
“Later.”
That was Monday. Two days later the girl herself came in, only the second time I had set eyes on this particular phenomenon. We had been recommended to each other by the boy, who had often spoken to her of my wide-ranging knowledge and other virtues.
She sat without moving. Her forest-green dress was conservative, and her wristwatch as tiny as a dime. She was proud, no question about that, and her face was both calm and melancholy to a degree. She was intelligent, a woman like Abelard’s, and once again I began to experience the experience I had so inappropriately experienced before.
“Glad you could come,” said I. “Coffee?”
I made it for her and stirred it with a curious
little spoon acquired in Peru. She paid no attention to it, however.
“I wanted to thank you for coming to the concert,” she said. “You had to travel so far.”
“I go to all of them.”
“Oh.”
“The music was good, too.”
The comment didn’t please her.
“Next week he’s going to . . .” (She mentioned a location on the Florida coast.) “He sold that old house, and he needs a vacation. He works so hard.”
“I doubt it.”
“He’s so wild about the ocean. He has to look at it once in a while, he says. I think he should have been one of those explorers that used to find new places.”
“He would have liked that, yes. But a person like that can find new places in all sorts of places. Even while sitting at a table. He’s been my all-time favorite student, you realize, though I wouldn’t give two pence for his future. Such a shame. Imagine, with just a little effort, he could almost have been like me!” I laughed loudly, laughing alone. “No, I wouldn’t really want him to be like me.”
“No.”
“He is what he is.”
“I think so, too.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
She was gazing out the window toward the smoke-infested mountains of eastern Tennessee, a far-away scene not available to older people.
“I never thought I’d actually meet him. I used to think it was too late.”
“Too early or too late. That’s the way things are, usually.”
“I know.”
“But you did meet him, right? Here, have some more of this good coffee.”
We sat, gazing around at the books, smoke, mountains, the paperweight.
“But how can I let him go off to a place [Florida] like that and leave me here? It’s not fair.”
“Not in his condition, no. Say, maybe he should take you with him! It’s worth considering.”
“Yes.”
“These things don’t come along too often, you understand.”
She looked steadily at me and at that moment gave up her secret, which forms the gravamen of my account.
“I’m ill.”
“I hope not.”
“Don’t tell him.”
“No.”
Fifty-four
She didn’t look ill, unless it were illness that had given her a loveliness as implausible as hers, a possibility mooted sometimes in classic books.
The day, too, was implausibly beautiful when the boy leapt aboard his worn-out car and, satisfied with its noises and other deficiencies, ran downstate to gather the woman. It still remained for her to prepare her lizards and put the last touches on her makeup. Together they studied her image in the mirror, the boy offering a few tiny suggestions that either she accepted or didn’t.
“How does it feel?” he asked, “Being like you?”
She thought about it. “It’s a big responsibility. But you get used to it.”
“I’ll never get used to you.”
“That’s sweet. But everything gets old after a while. I’m getting old while we sit here.”
“Well, stop it.”
“And then I’ll just be a skeleton lying in the ground. Who will look at me then?”
His brain contracted suddenly, producing a fluid of some kind that sprayed the interior of his head.
“It can’t be!”
“But it is. Look at me.”
He focused on her in the mirror, a soul in golden foil, her perfect features and the far-away melancholy in her blue-grey eyes.
“I couldn’t endure it.”
“You’ll have to. Or maybe,” she said brightly, “it’ll be the other way around.”
“Hope so.”
“And so you want me to do the suffering. Is that the way you are?”
They sat together quietly on the bench, clock ticking, automobiles passing in the street. If he held her close enough, perhaps she’d never go away.
They hit the highway in bright sunlight and ran off toward the Gulf of Mexico, four hundred miles away. Both people had contributed to the music hoard in the glove compartment, wonderful material, the best in all the world, nine-tenths of it from the Romantic Era. Her lips were red, and the impatient Sun had set her hair ablaze. Too much beauty, too much music, too much light, and too stunning an earthscape, with little red farms here and there. This surely was the time to die, just now, this very moment, the two of them transfixed with music, both of them poaching on the exact instant of youth’s crescendo.
“Oh, God,” she said.
Even more than when they were in each other’s arms, this moment was sublime. He couldn’t bear to look at her lest that face and figure, that sky-blue dress and luminous forehead, her prophet-bearing eyes, lest of an instant they turn to dust. He slowed, turned onto a farmer’s road, and continued on until the way began to narrow. No one had been in this location for years, judging by the lapsing road and unharvested blackberries on all sides. Leaving the car, they walked up and down for a short time, awaiting the moment.
“Just think,” he said, “life will never be like this again. Never, never, never.”
“Oh, God.”
“Everything is downhill from now on out.”
They ran into each other’s arms. She was so small, a thing of beauty, a mere wafer compared to the Sun; he lifted her to a level with his eyes.
“You’re looking at me.”
“I know.”
“And I can see what you’re thinking.”
“What?”
“That you love me.”
“Can’t help it.”
“What time is it?”
She delivered the time.
“Okay, write it down.”
“Is this it?”
“Yes! For us, life will never be better than right . . . wait a minute . . . right now!”
“Oh, God!”
They flew into one another’s arms and sank to the ground. Was this—yes—the most excelsior moment of their careers? Languid among the pines she lay, the Sun crackling in her hair. Was she even human?
They continued through a day that seemed to have been especially set aside for them as a one-time concession from the begrudging God. From certain indications, the flora and a lost gull, they believed they were approaching the coast. Still in the afterglow of life’s best moment, their excitement took on new growth.
“Over there,” he said, “that’s where you’ll first see the ocean.”
“No, over there.”
“Want to bet?”
A car passed by bearing a foreign license plate. It was large, the world, and they had time to sample every inch of it.
“Germany,” he said, “that’s where I want to go. Wagner was there.”
“But ended up in Venice, I believe.”
She was smart; he’d have to get used to that. The Sun, mostly deplete by now and fighting for its life, was but inches from plunging into the all-begirding Ocean. The bats were out, mixed with gulls, while in the east a few precautionary clouds had put themselves into formation. He was looking forward to eleven o’clock, his favorite weather, when the salt-water waves would be contesting with the draw of the Moon.
“Getting closer!” he said, without looking at her.
“Can we go swimming tonight?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I have a new bathing suit, and you won’t be able to look at anything else.”
And thus at some moment between six and seven in the very late afternoon, they came into a coastal city where ten thousand lamps, lanterns, and neon advertisements were ablaze in the crepuscule. It must have looked like Byzantium to them, young people more desperately in love than provided for by time and nature. He was sitting next to a wisp of beauty, more precious ounce for ounce than anything dreamt of in the periodic table. They halted in front of an office building where, in the window, the boy observed some half-dozen thralls working overtime at the close of day. Is this what life is for,
and really, wouldn’t those people prefer to be like him?
No one had ever been like him and never would, and never had anyone had a love like his and never could. He darted a look at the girl, who was looking right back. Now, now, now let life freeze in its tracks, while, as for future generations, let them come visit someday and see how happy boy and girl had been one time.
By their standards, the resort was a luxurious destination, and they were ready to squander up to four hundred dollars of their joint windfall. Striding importantly to the lobby, the boy began to question the woman at the desk. Apparently, the room was to have its own bathroom and other facilities. Meanwhile it was getting late, no doubt about that, and they had reached this place just in the nick of time. Soon, strange creatures would be emerging from the ocean, bad things capable of breaking down a person’s door. Suddenly they ran together and, after kissing once or twice, handed off a tip to the man who stood waiting for it. He loved these types, did the usher, unmarried people who always gave too much.
“Ready to go swimming?” she asked, jumping like a child.
“I’d rather slice you open and eat your intestines.”
“But can’t we go swimming first?”
“Does that mean that you’ll take off all your clothes while standing right there in front of me?”
“Do I have to?”
The usher seemed reluctant to leave.
“Certainly, you do! But let’s have supper first, you want to?”
“But why can’t we go swimming now?”
“Because there’s still some people out there. When I’m with you, the ocean has to be for us only.”
He went to a corner of the room and watched slowly as she got quickly into her skirt and hose. The skirt was cerulean blue, but the hosiery bothered him more. She had a brooch made of butterfly wings, a tourist item costing not much more than a loaf of bread.
The room was well-appointed, too, and contained a modern sculpture conveying a philosophic conception of some type. The curtains were yellow, and there were two brand new toothbrushes in an analogous number of plastic containers. Four towels, all quite fuzzy. The toothpaste itself was green, and both of them tasted of it. The girl was puzzled when the boy reverted to his customary loathing of such things: