Trust (65 page)

He was willing to succumb to the ordinary. He was workmanlike; he handled actualities; he met conditions (he said) pragmatically. His pragmatism lay in his seeming to think un-pragmatically, without regard for consequence. "We share the empty aftermath," he told her, "of the extraordinary. Have you been betrayed? So have I By what? By a beautiful commitment, in my case; in yours by a commitment to beauty. Now
I
am the opposite of beauty, as you may have noticed. I don't mean physical beauty; I'm no Nick; but I don't care about that. I mean I wouldn't want you to be harboring wrong notions that I'm somehow immensely worthwhile 'within.' I am not. I'll tell you now I'm not ambitious, and don't care about influence; but I don't expect you to remember that more than a minute; appearances will be against the truth of it. I used to believe in influence; I really believed that good influences make the world good. It's not true: that's why I have no ambitiousness left at all. In spite of that I want to go as high as I can, within my powers. And that's another thing, my powers—they're not what you think. I'm not a philosopher; not even a hack philosopher who chews over someone else's tangent and makes a little name for himself as a tangent-chewer. I'm not a philosopher or a political scientist or an economist or a historian. Nothing. A dilettante is all. What I mean is I'll never be a professional
anything.
I used to be a professional revolutionary, I admit it; I admit that's the thing that had me at the vitals; at the vitals is where it lost me finally. I was never more innocent than in my crafty plotful days; lately experience shows me how to sham purity of heart, so I'll go far. Far and high. Why do I want it if not to satisfy ambitiousness? if not to gratify a will for influence? I don't know. Maybe it's academic curiosity. A zoological inquisitiveness. I want to see how high and how far absolute rejection will take a man. By absolute rejection I mean absolute revulsion, absolute cynicism: in my amateur fashion I profess that. At revulsion I'm not a dilettante, I'm an expert. I want to learn how far and how high a man can go believing that the world is innately evil, without doing more than mere contributory evil himself. Call it an experiment; and remind yourself now and then not to confuse it with ambitiousness, which is not an experiment with an unknown outcome, but a commitment in which the results are anticipated. If they let Jews be President in this country I'd aim for that; and I don't omit the possibility—there was Disraeli, after all, a more extreme impossibility. Meantime I'll take things space by space, at my own haste, which isn't the same as speed, doing a job at this and a job at that: the eviller the premise and the principle, the better for my investigation. You want to avoid illusions about me, you see what I mean? I have to go into the high life to look things over, and see how they rob and murder up there with clean legal hands. I've seen how robbery and murder are done down below; now I want to prove that the world is of a piece, top and bottom. I want to demonstrate how creation is an unredeemed monstrosity."

It was their wedding night.

Allegra said: "But what
for?
"

"Why bother, is that it? Everyone knows it already, is that it?—A meagre question."

"No," she said. "That's not what I'm asking. I'm only asking why be so mean? Enoch, you're
mean
"—at that moment establishing exactly the vocabulary and the tonality of the kind of affection—comradely and hearty and faintly plaintive—that was to characterize them ever after.

"Because," he said, "I'm a disappointed religious. I expected another species of God, why not? Before my birth (it's time you heard the facts): before my birth (the facts, properly selected, account for everything psychological), I contracted to lead a virtuous life if only I could be born into a world where virtue was possible. Never mind probable. Probabilities are practically the same as certainties. But when you say a thing is 'possible' you give the world a chance to change itself overnight. By saying 'possible' you agree to adapt to the way things turn out, even if they lean against you, you see that?"

"Go on with the story," said his wife, yawning.

"Now the next question is what did I mean when I said 'a virtuous life'?"

"You meant the Party without hierarchical totalitarianism."

"Too involved for an unborn infant."

"Nothing's too involved for
you,
" she brought out with a suspect sweetness. "If something starts out uninvolved you fix it up so it
ends
involved. Look, there's a white hair. No, two! Right over your right ear. I'm going to tweeze them out, hold still."

"Age doesn't hold still. I'm ten years too old."

"I don't care, so was William, compared to me I mean, not that that's any recommendation. Age wasn't his trouble. —Tell the part about the virtuous life, will you? Hold
still.
Can't you talk without wiggling your head like a bear?"

"Would you like to hear a story about bears instead? Once upon a time there were Three Bears, and one was too cold, and one was too old, and one was
just right,
and his name was—"

"Shut up," she broke in. "I don't care about that, I want to hear about how you were going to live a virtuous life."

"His name was Nick," he finished.

"Oh Goddamn."

"Exactly what I said I would never do."

"Hm?"—hunting with the tweezer's jaws ready to spring.

"Damn God. I even promised—ouch, I can't spare so many hairs, you said there were only two grey ones to go—"

"
White.
There are eight million four hundred and six billion, and all the rest pure scalp. I'll pull till I'm satisfied. Don't say Nick any more or I'll pull and
pull.
Go on."

"If you had a razor instead of a tweezer would you nick instead of pull?" he said meekly.

In response she gave a ferocious yank and came away with a snarl like mist. "Poor Enoch, you're going bald like a rocket. Just fleece or feathers all over. Puff and it's out and gone."

"I'm a very unattractive man. Unsuitable for a husband. I never planned to be a husband. You know I thought I would be a monk."

"Jews don't
have
monks."

"Precisely the problem," he acknowledged with enthusiasm. "I made a pledge: let God be the kind of God who would allow the sort of world in which it is possible to lead a virtuous life, and I would repay him by dedicating my days and every so often my nights to constant praise of his holy name. No Goddamns to speak of. A sort of friar I would be. After I grew up, of course."

"And then you grew up."

"No. Then I was born—look how you lose the chronology, you're not attentive. First I was born, and found the world the way it is, and myself a Jew, and God the God of an unredeemed monstrosity, and well, just as you said, Jews don't have monks, so it was easy to see something was wrong immediately, but so naive was I that I didn't despair or suspect—"

"Yes you did. Jews are cunning."

"—and in my simplicity I thought that whatever you come upon that seems unredeemed exists in this state for the sake of permitting you the sacred opportunity to redeem it. I used to have a crooked idea that man finds the world unwell in order to heal it, I had the presumptuousness of thinking myself one of the miracle rabbis. Charlatans and deviations those were, and as cunning as Methodist Bishops. But afterward I became wise, and learned how the world isn't merely unredeemed: worse worse worse, it's unredeemable,"

"You have no sense of humor," said his wife.

"That was meant to be a joke."

"All of that?"

"Yes."

The tweezer dropped to the pillow. "I don't like long jokes."

He laughed aloud. "And that's a short joke."

"I don't see why."

"Not seeing why is the point of the joke. Sometimes a joke is a joke only if someone doesn't know it's a joke."

"Oh Enoch! How mean you arel"

"How rich you are," he countered.

"
I
can't help it, can I?" But she was all at once infiltrated by a sulky meditation. Her gaze moved interiorly. "Did you see this afternoon how that small-minded Sarah Jean came without any gloves?—Just because it was a civil ceremony doesn't make it right."

"Civility was expected to be an attribute of the ceremony, not of the witnesses," Enoch observed.

"She did it for spite. If it'd been
church
she would have worn them with a decency. But my God, did you get an eyeful of William's work?—it looked as though any minute Sandy might have to follow up with a christening. If judges do that."

He said, "You'd rather it was Nick."

"Nick?" She was fearful; she was petulant.

"Instead of me. Instead of me."

"Well what's the difference? She
still
wouldn't have worn her gloves. Anyhow I settled long ago it wasn't going to be Nick."

"You settled it wasn't going to be me," he contradicted.

"But that was before."

"Before? Before what?"

"Before we gave up finding him."

"And if we find him now?"

"What do you mean now? Now there's a war. You don't find anyone in a war. William said so. You said so. War's the end of finding anyone."

"But if we did?"

She picked up the tweezer and bit the air with it. "I've given it up, I told you."

"It? It? And what do I read for
it?
" he demanded.

"Hope."

"Ah, that's something else! Hope isn't Nick. You give up hope, you don't give up Nick. Nick you don't give up, is that the idea?"

"I give up what I please, who knows if I'll ever see him again? So it doesn't matter. For God's sake, Enoch."

"It doesn't matter? What doesn't matter? It doesn't matter that you'll never see him again or it doesn't matter whom or how you marry as long as there's a certainty you'll never see him again?"

"For God's
sake,
Enoch. I can't follow any of that. You married me for the money so
think
of the money. Concentrate on the money and leave Nick out of it."

"All right. Out he goes. Put the child away."

"What do you mean, put her away?"

"In a school. Or whatever."

"A school! A baby three years old! And melancholy enough to begin with!"

"The point is you look at her and think Nick."

"Liar. You mean
you
do. All you think is Nick Nick Nick. It was supposed to be the money you cared about!"

"I care about signs."

"Dollar signs you're supposed to care about!"

"If you gave up all hope—"

"I have, damn it. Talk about signs, what's this bed?"

"The first time isn't typical."

"I know what's typical and what isn't," she threw out with a roar, "for goodness' sake I'm no virgin."

"Plainly," he said: which softened her.

"The way a thing begins is a sign anyhow. I believe that The way it begins is the way it stays. So if you want a sign that I don't think of him you've had it."

But it was not enough. He said again, "If you gave up all hope of him—"

"I have! Go to hell if you can't tell that I have."

"No. You would give up all sign of him. That's all."

"The child stays," she said with a finality. "She goes with me wherever I go and she stays with me, and
that's
all."

"Because
pt
Nick. She's Nick's, there's the reason. Open and clear."

"She's mine, that's why."

"She's not mine. Just remember that. Don't have any expectations inconsistent with that"

"You don't have to tell me what to remember! I know what to remember without slogans!" she delivered up with the wrath of humiliation, and released from her covetous grasp the wrested puff of his weakling hair: it ascended on a thrust of draft from the open window like a horde of parachute-seeds preparing to fertilize the hotel-room carpet "Don't think I don't remember things without your advice! I remember how I got her, I remember how and where and when. Brighton! You think I can forget Brighton just like that? You think it's easy to forget Brighton?"

"Naturally Brighton. Brighton would stick to you," he answered, "like an icicle. He left you to freeze and went to warm himself God knows where. Reminisce about freezing while you're at it."

"I never reminisce," she said proudly. "I hate the past"

"Carpe diem. I married an American."

"Don't talk foreign languages at me, it's gauche."

"All I said was tomorrow we die."

"That's how
I
feel. Entre nous, that's just how I
feel
about things, Enoch, don't you?"

He said solemnly, "Let us vow to agree about everything."

"Don't think I don't know when you're being sarcastic!" But she had subsided. "All right. As long as I have my way in everything."

"Oh, you will, you will," he saluted her, and went his way, and let her have hers: so that it was difficult to see that their ways were divergent, they agreed so well. The next day he departed to resume espionage, his trade then, and she stayed to invent his future. "His future" became the thing they agreed on. It suited them both, like an eclipse to watchers satisfied to see their equal moon-borne shadows cover the parts that had been too light to bear.

Exposition of this latter scene was my mother's, when I finished reading her letters.

"Of course it was a fib—Enoch's saying he didn't have any ambition. That was his way of covering up. He always has to cover things up, he's terribly complicated. It's right in his temperament, being negative about things. Negative and proud. The more negative and proud he is the more he's craving something. I ought to
know
him by now! Take my word for it: he's got a hollow craving in him, more than anyone: more than I have. That's why he's the only person I could have married, logically speaking," she concluded haughtily.

But this, I must be careful to explain, was afterward.

Also to be noted: before this statement, with all its rococo belligerence and artful defensiveness, she flung herself upon herself, she tore histrionically at her own skin; she performed, in short, a largeness of weeping, an avian elegance of screech; her elbows declared themselves two muses of grief.