Collected Stories of Carson McCullers (21 page)

"It was in the fifth year that it happened," he said. "And with it I started my science."

Leo's mouth jerked with a pale, quick grin. "Well none of we boys are getting any younger," he said. Then with sudden anger he balled up a dishcloth he was holding and threw it down hard on the floor. "You draggle-tailed old Romeo!"

"What happened?" the boy asked.

The old man's voice was high and clear: "Peace," he answered.

"Huh?"

"It is hard to explain scientifically, Son," he said. "I guess the logical explanation is that she and I had fleed around from each other for
so long that finally wc just got tangled up together and lay down and quit. Peace. A queer and beautiful blankness. It was spring in Portland and the rain came every afternoon. All evening I just stayed there on my bed in the dark. And that is how the science come to me."

The windows in the streetcar were pale blue with light. The two soldiers paid for their beers and opened the door—one of the soldiers combed his hair and wiped off his muddy puttees before they went outside. The three mill workers bent silently over their breakfasts. Leo's clock was ticking on the wall.

"It is this. And listen carefully. I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with?"

The boy's soft mouth was partly open and he did not answer.

"A woman," the old man said. "Without science, with nothing to go by, they undertake the most dangerous and sacred experience in God's earth. They fall in love with a woman. Is that correct, Son?"

"Yeah," the boy said faintly.

"They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love?"

The old man reached over and grasped the boy by the collar of his leather jacket. He gave him a gentle little shake and his green eyes gazed down unblinking and grave.

"Son, do you know how love should be begun?"

The boy sat small and listening and still. Slowly he shook his head. The old man leaned closer and whispered:

"A tree. A rock. A cloud."

It was still raining outside in the street: a mild, gray, endless rain. The mill whistle blew for the six o'clock shift and the three spinners paid and went away. There was no one in the café but Leo, the old man, and the little paper boy.

"The weather was like this in Portland," he said. "At the time my science was begun. I meditated and I started very cautious. I would pick up something from the street and take it home with me. I bought a goldfish and I concentrated on the goldfish and I loved it. I graduated from one thing to another. Day by day I was getting this technique. On the road from Portland to San Diego—"

"Aw shut up!" screamed Leo suddenly. "Shut up! Shut up!"

The old man still held the collar of the boy's jacket; he was trembling and his face was earnest and bright and wild. "For six years now I have gone around by myself and built up my science. And now I am a master, Son. I can love anything. No longer do I have to think about it even. I see a street full of people and a beautiful light comes in me. I watch a bird in the sky. Or I meet a traveler on the road. Everything, Son. And anybody. All stranger and all loved! Do you realize what a science like mine can mean?"

The boy held himself stiffly, his hands curled tight around the counter edge. Finally he asked: "Did you ever really find that lady?"

"What? What say, Son?"

"I mean," the boy asked timidly. "Have you fallen in love with a woman again?"

The old man loosened his grasp on the boy's collar. He turned away and for the first time his green eyes had a vague and scattered look. He lifted the mug from the counter, drank down the yellow beer. His head was shaking slowly from side to side. Then finally he answered: "No, Son. You see that is the last step in my science. I go cautious. And I am not quite ready yet."

"Well!" said Leo. "Well well well!"

The old man stood in the open doorway. "Remember," he said. Framed there in the gray damp light of the early morning he looked shrunken and seedy and frail. But his smile was bright. "Remember I love you," he said with a last nod. And the door closed quietly behind him.

The boy did not speak for a long time. He pulled down the bangs on his forehead and slid his grimy little forefinger around the rim of his empty cup. Then without looking at Leo he finally asked:

"Was he drunk?"

"No," said Leo shortly.

The boy raised his clear voice higher. "Then was he a dope fiend?"

"No."

The boy looked up at Leo, and his flat little face was desperate, his voice urgent and shrill. "Was he crazy? Do you think he was a lunatic?" The paper boy's voice dropped suddenly with doubt. "Leo? Or not?"

But Leo would not answer him. Leo had run a night cafe for fourteen years, and he held himself to be a critic of craziness. There were the town characters and also the transients who roamed in from
the night. He knew the manias of all of them. But he did not want to satisfy the questions of the waiting child. He tightened his pale face and was silent.

So the boy pulled down the right flap of his helmet and as he turned to leave he made the only comment that seemed safe to him, the only remark that could not be laughed down and despised:

"He sure has done a lot of traveling."

He was a large man, a contractor, and he was the husband of the small, sharp Mrs. Mahoney who was so active in club and cultural affairs. A canny businessman (he owned a brick yard and planing mill), Mr. Mahoney lumbered with tractable amiability in the lead of the artistic Mrs. Mahoney. Mr. Mahoney was well drilled; he was accustomed to speak of "repertory," to listen to lectures and concerts with the proper expression of meek sorrow. He could talk about abstract art, he had even taken part in two of the Little Theatre productions, once as a butler, the other time as a Roman soldier. Mr. Mahoney, diligently trained, so many times admonished—how could he have brought upon them such disgrace?

The pianist that night was José Iturbi, and it was the first concert of the season, a gala night. The Mahoneys had worked very hard during the Three Arts League drive. Mr. Mahoney had sold more than thirty season tickets on his own. To business acquaintances, the men downtown, he spoke of the projected concerts as "a pride to the community" and "a cultural necessity." The Mahoneys had donated the use of their car and had entertained subscribers at a lawn fete—with three white-coated colored boys handing refreshments, and their newly built Tudor house waxed and flowered for the occasion. The Mahoneys' position as sponsors of art and culture was well earned.

The start of the fatal evening gave no hint of what was to come. Mr. Mahoney sang in the shower and dressed himself with detailed care. He had brought an orchid from Duffs Flower Shop. When Ellie came in from her room—they had adjoining separate rooms in the new house—he was brushed and gleaming in his dinner jacket,
and Ellie wore the orchid on the shoulder of her blue crepe dress. She was pleased and, patting his arm, she said: "You look so handsome tonight, Terence. Downright distinguished."

Mr. Mahoney's stout body bridled with happiness, and his ruddy face with the forked-veined temples blushed. "You are always beautiful, Ellie. Always so beautiful. Sometimes I don't understand why you married a—"

She stopped him with a kiss.

There was to be a reception after the concert at the Harlows', and of course the Mahoneys were invited. Mrs. Harlow was the "bell cow" in this pasture of the finer things. Oh, how Ellie did despise such country-raised expressions! But Mr. Mahoney had forgotten all the times he had been called down as he gallantly placed Elbe's wrap about her shoulders.

The irony was that, up until the moment of his ignominy, Mr. Mahoney had enjoyed the concert more than any concert that he had ever heard. There was none of that wriggling, tedious Bach. There was some marchy-sounding music and often he was on foot-patting familiarity with the tunes. As he sat there, enjoying the music, he glanced occasionally at Ellie. Her face bore the expression of fixed, inconsolable grief that it always assumed when she listened to classical concert music. Between the numbers she put her hand to her forehead with a distracted air, as though the endurance of such emotion had been too much for her. Mr. Mahoney clapped his pink, plump hands with gusto, glad of a chance to move and respond.

In the intermission the Mahoneys filed sedately down the aisle to the lobby. Mr. Mahoney found himself stuck with old Mrs. Walker.

"I'm looking forward to the Chopin," she said. "I always love minor music, don't you?"

"I guess you enjoy your misery," Mr. Mahoney answered.

Miss Walker, the English teacher, spoke up promptly. "It's Mother's melancholy Celtic soul. She's of Irish descent, you know."

Feeling he had somehow made a mistake, Mr. Mahoney said awkwardly, "I like minor music all right."

Tip Mayberry took Mr. Mahoney's arm and spoke to him chummily. "This fellow can certainly rattle the old ivories."

Mr. Mahoney answered with reserve, "He has a very brilliant technique."

"It's still an hour to go," Tip Mayberry complained. "I wish me and you could slip out of here."

Mr. Mahoney moved discreetly away.

Mr. Mahoney loved the atmosphere of Little Theatre plays and concerts—the chiffon and corsages and decorous dinner jackets. He was warm with pride and pleasure as he went sociably about the lobby of the high school auditorium, greeting the ladies, speaking with reverent authority of movements and mazurkas.

It was during the first number after the intermission that the calamity came. It was a long Chopin sonata: the first movement thundering, the second jerking and mercurial. The third movement he followed knowingly with tapping foot—the rigid funeral march with a sad waltzy bit in the middle; the end of the funeral march came with a chorded final crash. The pianist lifted up his hand and even leaned back a little on the piano stool.

Mr. Mahoney clapped. He was so dead sure it was the end that he clapped heartily half a dozen times before he realized, to his horror, that he clapped alone. With swift fiendish energy José Iturbi attacked the piano keys again.

Mr. Mahoney sat stiff with agony. The next moments were the most dreadful in his memory. The red veins in his temples swelled and darkened. He clasped his offending hands between his thighs.

If only Ellie had made some comforting secret sign. But when he dared to glance at Ellie, her face was frozen and she gazed at the stage with desperate attentiveness. After some endless minutes of humiliation, Mr. Mahoney reached his hand timidly toward Ellie's crepe-covered thigh. Mrs. Mahoney moved away from him and crossed her legs.

For almost an hour Mr. Mahoney had to suffer this public shame. Once he caught a glimpse of Tip Mayberry, and an alien evil shafted through his gentle heart. Tip did not know a sonata from the
Slit Belly Blues.
Yet there he sat, smug, unnoticed. Mrs. Mahoney refused to meet her husband's anguished eyes.

They had to go on to the party. He admitted it was the only proper thing to do. They drove there in silence, but when he had parked the car before the Harlow house Mrs. Mahoney said, "I should think that anybody with a grain of sense knows enough not to clap until everybody else is clapping."

It was for him a miserable party. The guests gathered around José Iturbi and were introduced. (They all knew who had clapped except Mr. Iturbi; he was as cordial to Mr. Mahoney as to the others.) Mr. Mahoney stood in the corner behind the concert-grand piano drinking Scotch. Old Mrs. Walker and Miss Walker hovered with the "bell cow" around Mr. Iturbi. Ellie was looking at the titles in the bookcase. She took out a book and even read for a little while with her back to the room. In the corner he was alone through a good many highballs. And it was Tip Mayberry who finally joined him. "I guess after all those tickets you sold you were entitled to an extra clap." He gave Mr. Mahoney a slow wink of covert brotherhood which Mr. Mahoney at that moment was almost willing to admit.

The twilight border between sleep and waking was a Roman one this morning: splashing fountains and arched, narrow streets, the golden lavish city of blossoms and age-soft stone. Sometimes in this semi-consciousness he sojourned again in Paris, or war German rubble, or Swiss skiing and a snow hotel. Sometimes, also, in a fallow Georgia field at hunting dawn. Rome it was this morning in the yearless region of dreams.

John Ferris awoke in a room in a New York hotel. He had the feeling that something unpleasant was awaiting him—what it was, he did not know. The feeling, submerged by matinal necessities, lingered even after he had dressed and gone downstairs. It was a cloudless autumn day and the pale sunlight sliced between the pastel skyscrapers. Ferris went into the next-door drugstore and sat at the end booth next to the window glass that overlooked the sidewalk. He ordered an American breakfast with scrambled eggs and sausage.

Ferris had come from Paris to his father's funeral which had taken place the week before in his home town in Georgia. The shock of death had made him aware of youth already passed. His hair was receding and the veins in his now naked temples were pulsing and prominent and his body was spare except for an incipient belly bulge. Ferris had loved his father and the bond between them had once been extraordinarily close—but the years had somehow unraveled this filial devotion; the death, expected for a long time, had left him with an unforeseen dismay. He had stayed as long as possible to be near his mother and brothers at home. His plane for Paris was to leave the next morning.

Ferris pulled out his address book to verify a number. He turned the pages with growing attentiveness. Names and addresses from New York, the capitals of Europe, a few faint ones from his home state in the South. Faded, printed names, sprawled drunken ones. Betty Wills: a random love, married now. Charlie Williams: wounded in the H¨rtgen Forest, unheard of since. Grand old Williams—did he live or die? Don Walker: a B.T.O. in television, getting rich. Henry Green: hit the skids after the war, in a sanitarium now, they say. Cozie Hall: he had heard that she was dead. Heedless, laughing Cozie—it was strange to think that she too, silly girl, could die. As Ferris closed the address book, he suffered a sense of hazard, transience, almost of fear.