Moise and the World of Reason

by Tennessee Williams

  “I do believe we all belong in this room.”

  “Thank you, yes,” said the man who’d removed his jacket and folded it neatly as a jacket at the Brothers Brooks and placed it beside her tealess tea things on the box next to her bed.

  “Not me but God,” said Moise in a tone that might be described as one of ineffable sweetness, phrase by courtesy of countless Victorian pen-pushers.

  She drew a breath and continued, “I think He knows that the violence of reason must wait upon the soft annealments of love, at least till”

  She did not complete this whisper, and, looking up again, I could see why she didn’t. It was a case of turning from expression to action. She had crawled on her knees to the cameraman who still had on his jacket and with her delicate artists fingers she was removing his trousers. To be more exact about it, she was loosening the waistband of his trousers while her other hand reached behind her beneath her surprisingly wide bed and drew from beneath it a jar that contained a bit of petroleum jelly, which divine providence would soon replace with a full one.

  Of course I diverted my eyes from the ecstasy of Moise to the object of my own, yes, indeed, to the jacketless cameraman, and I observed that he was now standing in tall profile to me, his back to Moise and his partner.

  This position in profile, the tallness of it with delicate gleams here and there, almost broke my heart, but he repaired this almost-heartbreak with a very slight up and down motion of his head which I have chosen to mean a soundless assent, like that of a timid bride, before a marriage altar.

  It isn’t yet dark in the room but dim and dimmer and all that I hear now are the footsteps of a giant being, as hushed as they are gigantic, footsteps of the Great Unknown One approaching our world of reason or unreason, you name it as you conceive it. And now

  The last Blue Jay is completed.

  Copyright © 1975 by Tennessee Williams

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Moise and the World of Reason, by Tennessee Williams, is published by special arrangement with the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First published as a New Directions Paperbook in 2016

  eISBN 9780811225625

  New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

  by New Directions Publishing Corporation

  80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011