Trust (91 page)

"No," I said.

"Because some of them don't have people attached. I think every feeling should be represented by a live person, every feeling should have somebody to stick up for it, you see what I mean? I'm not just talking about emotions, I mean
feelings,
you see the difference?"

"No."

"Lost on you. On you it would be. Look, you
know
when you're having an emotion, there you are living right in the middle of it, but a feeling you might not know about until long afterward, a feeling might go on for years before you realized anything about it" She stirred; she knew her passion. Alas, she could not remember its name. "Like a sense of destiny—"

"You could begin a list," I said.

"What?"

"In order of appearance. Emotions: rage, outrage, jealousy, love."

"Oh, you're cold. You always
were
cold."

"Types of sense of destiny: visionary, practical, prophetic, missionary, American evangelical, Napoleonic, messianic, world-love—"

"Cold cold cold. Don't say love, any kind of love don't say it"

"Love," I said.

"You've never
had
a feeling."

"Recently," I informed her.

She showed an amazement not genuine. "Not that boy—"

I let the word stand.

"That
boy?
I can't believe it. Imagine that, put her on an island and boom. We were
talking
about that boy practically two seconds ago, and not a word out of her. Not that you ever had half a chance with him, but good for you, naturally when
you
come round to a thing it's too late. Pettigrew's got him."

"Water's got him," I did not say.

"He's taken taken taken," my mother said, "and when you get right down to it, so what?"

"Taken," I said, "by water," and never again spoke to her of her lover.

But she thought me, like herself, preoccupied with the trip home and its diversions. "Never mind water, it could be a helicopter for all the difference, in or
out
of a boat what can you talk about to a boy like that? Glum, no conversation. Carbon copy of his father. Not a smear of charm. Leave it to you to pick someone without any. I like a man with charm. He used to have
some.
That stutter years ago: fake but a style anyhow. Law school peeled it off. For your own sake I wouldn't consent to it," she announced, exactly as though William's son had just asked her for my hand; she raised one of her own like a perverse madonna retracting a blessing. "William might like the idea, I don't know. History repeating itself—not that it ever does. Or maybe he wouldn't, he's got this funny feeling about you—he thinks you're tainted." Her recurrent blink, like an automated doll's, had grown compulsive. Below it her nose was beginning to leak. "My God, I never dreamed I'd be telling you a thing like that"

"Enoch thinks the same."

"Not Enoch, William I said. Look, if you want some advice, just forget about that boy. When you have a feeling about someone who doesn't reciprocate the best thing to do is forget it. That's what Enoch would say. Enoch doesn't think anyone's tainted. Well he thinks the
world's
tainted, but that's another story. I admit Enoch never had charm, but he doesn't need it after all. If you're a political genius all you have to
be
is just that." She descended into herself. Something half-analytic possessed her nostrils. They went on watering. "If he doesn't write history he might write philosophy," she told me.

"You know he won't."

She said defensively, "Hell do something. He has this idea for an essay—actually it's a Jewish sort of essay, he was explaining about it and then, right in the middle, that Washington call came and he left. —Don't stare, I can't help it, it's hives, I
have
to scratch. —It's called Pan Versus Moses. It's Moses making the Children Of Israel destroy all the grotto shrines and greenwood places and things. It's about how Moses hates Nature. Enoch said the Jewish God is the Lord of Hosts but it's the Lord of Guests who really keeps the world. The Lord of Hosts lives in his house and calls 'Come in, Come in,' but the Lord of Guests lives anywhere at all and says 'You're already here.'" My mother excavated for a handkerchief and blew volcanically. "He'll never write it, and even if he does, so what? Nobody cares about that, Washington isn't looking for advisers on holiness lately, you know. He'll sleep, that's what I'm afraid of. All he'll do is sleep. He'll never get up all day if he hasn't got something to do in the world. He
needs
something to do in the world."

I said, "Needing isn't wanting."

"Wisdom. Maybe that means something, to me it doesn't mean a thing. A pensée. All right, then read Enoch's. I was just looking at them myself, I dug them up out of his desk. Well
he
didn't do them. Adam Gruenhorn did, not that you'll know what I'm talking about." She had forgotten her letters and what I knew. "They're sentences. Interesting, but no genius in 'em—that's because they're not political. Years ago I had them typed up and sent them to
Atlantic Monthly, Woman's Day, Country Gentleman, Esquire,
and
Harps. {Harps
is where Euphoria K. has her things.) They all rejected," she concluded sadly. "Enoch won't let me use them for
Bushelbasket.
"

So I spread the slips on the red rug and entered the mind of Adam Gruenhorn, political genius, failed Ambassador.

Most of his maxims were personal:

To attempt to extinguish self-indulgence by the application of just a little more self-indulgence is like lighting a match in a room that is already blazing with fire: the big fire is neither diminished nor increased; the little fire will not frighten away the big fire; the little fire will not tire the big fire; the little fire will not conquer the big fire.

To make oneself believe that one really exists; to make oneself believe that another person really exists—which taxes credulity more? To achieve the belief in the real existence of another person one must first achieve the belief in the real existence of one's own being. But how does one persuade oneself that one really exists? By persuading oneself that the other person really exists. Hence psychological realities are interdependent.

Not a solace, not a refuge.
What then was broken?
The solace which was not a solace,
The refuge which was not a refuge,
Or an illusion?

1. Do not belittle others as you would not have others belittle you.

2. Do not aggrandize others as you would have others aggrandize you.

a. One who says, "I can't help it" means "I want it."

b. One who refuses to rebel condones his slavery.

To want to be what one
can
be is purpose in life.

Time heals all things but one: Time.

The cosmic system, oddly enough, is not to be found in the pit of the stomach.

Resentment is a communicable disease and should be quarantined.

He who cries, "What do I care about universality? I only know what is in
me,
" does not know even that.

A blasphemer: He who laments his lot without sufficient cause.
What is sufficient cause?
What seems sufficient not to oneself, but to others.

1. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces.

2. Hope directed toward luck is not hope but superstition.

One's sense of "Self" is not relevant to the world unless one considers the world relevant to the Self. What does this purport? If everything outside of the expression of your own feelings does not exist for you, or if it exists but is of no consequence to you, to whom and to what will you express your feelings?

He who cries, "All right, then, I'm selfish—so be Undoes he think confession is absolution?

The continents of desire and wisdom lie beyond the membrane-meridian of the self.

The difference between sorrow and petulance is the difference between having cancer and having a temper tantrum.

Aspiration and complaint come in successive breaths. One is the catarrh to be expelled by the other.

1. Feelings of "constant distraction" occur when one refuses to allow oneself to be distracted even for a moment—from oneself.

2. An "inability to concentrate" is the result of excessive concentration—on something else.

a. A little discomfort is better than a great deal of gratitude.

b. But there is a great deal of comfort in a little gratitude.

Unmitigable depression = mitigable self-indulgence. It is useless either to hate or to love truth—but it should be noticed.

1. Before you blame a person for not understanding you, first ask yourself whether he is obliged to do so. (If you have lent him money, he is.)

2. Before you blame a person for not weeping for you, first be sure that his tears are not needed elsewhere. (If he has lent you money, they are.)

He who squanders talent praises death.

Ego should not be condemned. Ego without imagination to evaluate ego should be.

The difference between thirty-two and twenty-five is not seven, but a generation.

Do not choose for sympathizer your psychological twin.

A sense of proportion presupposes an interest in the size of the universe.

Exploitation, whether material or not, is reduction in the guise of swelling.

Dedication to one's work in the world is the only possible sanctification. Religion in all its forms is dedication to Someone Else's work, not yours.

Not God but fashion compelled the fig-leaf. God would have contrived something that did not have to be pasted on or held by the hand that should hold the plough. It is not our nakedness that God intends us to cover, but our notions of dress.

Riddle:
Who is the starved traveler who chooses the longest road, carries the weightiest baggage, and hardly ever arrives? And should he arrive, he at once loses not only his whole equipage but his very name.
Answer:
Hope.

Fear of hostility is less useful than hostility to fear.

Ideals die not because they fail of their attainment but because they have succeeded. To defeat a cause, work for it.

The unhappy person resents only his own unhappiness, not another person's. Unhappiness is the inability to generalize.

Boredom is the consequence of believing in the uniqueness of one's own experience. It vanishes the moment one acquires History.

The books we care for most are the ones which read us.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books.
b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments.
c. Poets: people who raze monuments.
d. Publishers: people who sell rubble.
e. Readers: people who buy it.

Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.

Lonesomeness is hatred of truth.

If one does not reduce one's trouble to its proper proportion on one's own, life will do it soon enough—only more brutally.

Offer the resourceful man one of two legacies: a mammoth trust fund by inheritance of wealth, or a minuscule fund of trust by inheritance of nature; and he will choose the one which least inhibits venturesomeness.

Friendships produce confidences; but confidences do not often produce friendships.

A person who mourns for himself while his parents are alive is" a sinner.

Death persecutes before it executes.

Detail mocks Theme; Theme worships Detail. That is why the possible and the feasible are always at war.

Here I stopped; an apparition of Enoch blotted the doorway.

"I've been waiting hours. Believe me I've just about run out of patience," my mother said. "What kept you? Don't tell me reporters or I'll
know
it was dancing girls. Washington's just the town for dissipation. What was it, you found a salami market? A peanut store?"

"Of the three cardinal pations," my stepfather said (he set down his suitcase), "choose one as follows: A, dissi-, hereinabove referred to; B, consti-, the mind's enemy; C, extir-, the world's delight. So you can never run out of pations even if you try." He spotted me swimming in aphorisms. "Where'd she get those?"

"
I
gave them to her," my mother said.

"Old saws have no teeth."

"Plenty of big jokes in your pockets. Something to celebrate. Comes in playing parlor games. Lost your life, and first thing home it's ha ha."

"Ha ha I have not lost my life."

"All right, call it anything you want, call it self-respect. Self-respect you've lost."

"I continue to think highly of myself," he demurred.

"Time," she said. "Don't say you haven't lost time! In a career time is everything. How long before they start taking you seriously again, that's what I want to know. You've lost time, you've lost a job, you've lost your footing on the high rungs, you've lost everything."

"Have I lost you?"

A desolation trailed in her eye.

"Then I'll look for you," he said, going for her chair. He stared heavily down at her. "Dark visage, black looks—next time I bring a lantern. Glimmer of the whites. She emerges. She was obscured by a dark brown study. Lo, here she is."

"Enoch, stop it, just cut it out, I'm nowhere. Nowhere. Don't tell me to accept it, I can't accept it. Everything's spoiled. One Goddamn little revolution and that's it They might just as well have shot
me
in the public square."

"It happens to have been a nice clean little coup—they made a clean job of it, you know how you like clean jobs. Nobody blown up. Not a pinprick. Instead of sentries around the palace they posted cameramen. The new General is even more photogenic than the old one—wears a corset."

"Fine. Everyone's laughing. A musical comedy and you're the star. Fallen star. What do you want me to do, dance and sing with timbrels?"

"Tell you what—stealthily but boldly get out your timbrels and tomorrow I'll suffer me to be taken to any nightclub in New York. Capitalize on the current notoriety."

"
I'm
not the Two-Hour Ambassador," she sneered. "They won't notice
me.
Enoch, don't try to buy me off. You can buy off a tragedy, but you can never in a hundred years buy off a comedy. A comedy
lasts.
—Is that what we're going to do from now on, reel from place to place?"