we all breathed a sigh of relief. As for
myself, it was only maybe ten or fifteen years later that I thought about
this boy and his strange elegant behaviour. And it was then that I felt I
had made a bad blunder. For suddenly one day it occurred to me that Claude
de Lorraine had come up to me on a certain occasion obviously to win my
friendship and I had treated him rather cavalierly. At the time I thought of
this incident it suddenly dawned on me that Claude de Lorraine must have
seen something different in me and that he had meant to honour me by
extending the hand of friendship. But back in those days I bad a code of
honour, such as it was, and that was to run with the herd. Had I become a
bosom friend of Claude de Lorraine I would have been betraying the other
boys. No matter what advantages lay in the wake of such a friendship they
were not for me, I was one of the gang and it was my duty to remain aloof
from such as Claude de Lorraine. I remembered this incident once again, I
must say, after a still greater interval - after I had been in France a few
months and the word "raisomiable" had come to acquire a wholly new
significance for me. Suddenly one day, overhearing, I thought of Claude de
Lorraine's overtures on the street in front of his house. I recalled vividly
that he had used the word reasonable. He had probably asked me to be
reasonable, a word which then would never have crossed my lips as there was
no need for it in my vocabulary. It was a word, like gentleman, which was
rarely brought out and then only with great discretion and circumspection.
It was a word which might cause others to laugh at you. There were lots of
words like that - really, for example. No one I knew had ever used the word
really - until Jack Lawson came along. He used it because his parents were
English and, though we made fun of him, we forgave him for it. Really was a
word which reminded me immediately of little Carl Ragner from the old
neighbourhood. Carl Ragner was the only son of a politician who lived on the
rather distinguished little street called Fillmore Place. He lived near the
end of the street in a little red brick house which was always beautifully
kept. I remember the house because passing it on my way to school I used to
remark how beautifully the brass knobs on the door were polished. In fact,
nobody else had brass knobs on their doors. Anyway, little Carl Ragner was
one of those boys who was not allowed to associate with other boys. He was
rarely seen, as a matter of fact. Usually it was a Sunday that we caught a
glimpse of him walking with his father. Had his father not been a powerful
figure in the neighbourhood Carl would have been stoned to death. He was
really impossible, in his Sunday garb. Not only did he wear long pants and
patent leather shoes, but he sported a derby and a cane. At six years of age
a boy who would allow himself to be dressed up in this fashion must be a
ninny - that was the consensus of opinion. Some said he was sickly, as
though that were an excuse for his eccentric dress. The strange thing is
that I never once heard him speak. He was so elegant, so refined, that
perhaps he had imagined it was bad manners to speak in public. At any rate,
I used to lie in wait for him Sunday mornings just to see him pass with his
old man. I watched him with the same avid curiosity that I would watch the
firemen cleaning the engines in the fire house. Sometimes on the way home he
would be carrying a little box of ice cream, the smallest size they had,
probably just enough for him, for his dessert. Dessert was another word
which had somehow become familiar to us and which we used derogatorily when
referring to the likes of little Carl Ragner and his family. We could spend
hours wondering what these people ate for dessert, our pleasure consisting
principally in bandying about this new-found word, dessert, which had
probably been smuggled out of the Ragner household. It must also have been
about this time that Santos Dumont came into fame. For us there was
something grotesque about the name Santos Dumont. About his exploits we were
not much concerned - just the name. For most of us it smelled of sugar, of
Cuban plantations, of the strange Cuban flag which had a star in the comer
and which was always highly regarded by those who saved the little cards
which were given away with Sweet Caporal cigarettes and on which there were
represented either the flags of the different nations or the leading
soubrettes of the stage or the famous pugilists. Santos Dumont, then, was
something delightfully foreign, in contradistinction to the usual foreign
person or object, such as the Chinese laundry, or Claude de Lorraine's
haughty French family. Santos Dumont was a magical word which suggested a
beautiful flowing moustache, a sombrero, spurs, something airy, delicate,
humorous, quixotic. Sometimes it brought up the aroma of coffee beans and of
straw mats, or, because it was so thoroughly outlandish and quixotic, it
would entail a digression concerning the life of the Hottentots. For there
were among us older boys who were beginning to read and who would entertain
us by the hour with fantastic tales which they had gleaned from books such
as Ayesha or Ouida's Under Two Flags. The real flavour of knowledge is most
definitely associated in my mind with the vacant lot at the comer of the new
neighbourhood where I was transplanted at about the age often. Here, when
the fall days came on and we stood about the bonfire roasting chippies and
raw potatoes in the little cans which we carried, there ensued a new type of
discussion which differed from the old discussions I had known in that the
origins were always bookish. Some one had just read a book of adventure, or
a book of science, and forthwith the whole street became animated by the
introduction of a hitherto unknown subject. It might be that one of
these-boys had just discovered that there was such a thing as the Japanese
current and he would try to explain to us how the Japanese current came into
existence and what the purpose of it was. This was the only way we learned
things - against the fence, as it were, while roasting chippies and raw
potatoes. These bits of knowledge sunk deep - so deep, in fact, that later,
confronted with a more accurate knowledge it was often difficult to dislodge
the older knowledge. In this way it was explained to us one day by an older
boy that the Egyptians had known about the circulation of the blood,
something which seemed so natural to us that it was hard later to swallow
the story of the discovery of the circulation of the blood by an Englishman
named Harvey. Nor does it seem strange to me now that in those days most of
our conversation was about remote places, such as China, Peru, Egypt,
Africa, Iceland, Greenland. We talked about ghosts, about God, about the
transmigration of souls, about Hell, about astronomy, about strange birds
and fish, about the formation of precious stone, about rubber plantations,
about methods of torture, about the Aztecs and the Incas, about marine life,
about volcanoes and earthquakes, about burial rites and wedding ceremonies
in various parts of the earth, about languages, about the origin of the
American Indian, about the buffaloes dying out, about strange diseases,
about cannibalism, about wizardry, about trips to the moon and what it was
like there, about murderers and highwaymen, about the miracles in the Bible,
about the manufacture of pottery, about a thousand and one subjects which
were never mentioned at home or in school and which were vital to us because
we were starved and the world was full of wonder and mystery and it was only
when we stood shivering in the vacant lot that we got to talking seriously
and felt a need for communication which was at once pleasurable and
terrifying.
The wonder and the mystery of life - which is throttled in us as we
become responsible members of society! Until we were pushed out to work the
world was very small and we were living on the fringe of it, on the
frontier, as it were, of the unknown. A small Greek world which was
nevertheless deep enough to provide all manner of variation, all manner of
adventure and speculation. Not so very small either, since it held in
reserve the most boundless potentialities. I have gained nothing by the
enlargement of my world: on the contrary, I have lost. I want to become more
and more childish and to pass beyond childhood in the opposite direction. I
want to go exactly contrary to the normal line of development, pass into a
super-infantile realm of being which will be absolutely crazy and chaotic
but not crazy and chaotic as the world about me. I have been an adult and a
father and a responsible member of society. I have earned my daily bread. I
have adapted myself to a world which never was mine. I want to break through
this enlarged world and stand again on the frontier of an unknown world
which will throw this pale, unilateral world into shadow. I want to pass
beyond the responsibility of fatherhood to the irresponsibility of the
anarchic man who cannot be coerced nor wheedled nor cajoled nor bribed nor
traduced. I want to take as my guide Oberon the night-rider who, under the
spread of his black wings, eliminates both the beauty and the horror of the
past: I want to flee towards a perpetual dawn with a swiftness and
relentlessness that leaves no room for remorse, regret, or repentance. I
want to outstrip the inventive man who is a curse to an earth in order to
stand once again before an impassable deep which not even the strongest
wings will enable me to traverse. Even if I must become a wild and natural
park inhabited only by idle dreamers I must not stop to rest here in the
ordered fatuity of responsible, adult life. I must do this in remembrance of
a life beyond all comparison with the life which was promised me, in
remembrance of the life of a child who was strangled and stifled by the
mutual consent of those who had surrendered. Everything which the fathers
and the mothers created I disown. I am going back to a world even smaller
than the old Hellenic world, going back to a world which I can always touch
with outstretched arms, the world of what I know and see and recognize from
moment to moment. Any other world is meaningless to me, and alien and
hostile. In retraversing the first bright world which I knew as a child I
wish not to rest there but to muscle back to a still brighter world from
which I must have escaped. What this world is like I do not know, nor am I
even sure that I will find it, but it is my world and nothing else intrigues
me.
The first glimpse, the first realization, of the bright new world came
through my meeting Roy Hamilton. I was in my twenty-first year, probably the
worst year of my whole life. I was in such a state of despair that I had
decided to leave home but thought and spoke only of the California where I
had planned to go to start a new life. So violently did I dream of this new
promised land that later, when I had returned from California, I scarcely
remembered the California I had seen but thought and spoke only of the
California, which I had known in my dreams. It was just prior to my
leave-taking that I met Hamilton. He was a dubious half-brother to my old
friend MacGregor: they had only recently made each other's acquaintance, as
Roy, who had lived most of his life in California, had been under the
impression all along that his real father was Mr. Hamilton and not Mr.
MacGregor. As a matter of fact it was in order to disentangle the mystery
surrounding his parentage that he had come East. Living with the MacGregors
had apparently brought him no nearer to a solution of the mystery. Indeed he
seemed to be more perplexed than ever after getting acquainted with the man
whom he had concluded must be his legitimate father. He was perplexed, as he
later admitted to me, because in neither man could he find any resemblance
to the man he considered himself to be. It was probably this harassing
problem of deciding whom to take for a father which had stimulated the
development of his own character. I say this, because immediately upon being
introduced to him, I felt that I was in the presence of a being such as I
had never known before. I had prepared, through MacGregor's description of
him, to meet a rather "strange" individual, "strange" in MacGregor's mouth
meaning slightly cracked. He was indeed strange, but so sharply sane that I
at once felt exalted. For the first time I was talking to a man who got
behind the meaning of words and went to the very essence of things. I felt
that I was talking to a philosopher, not a philosopher such as I had
encountered through books, but a man who philosophized constantly - and who
lived this philosophy which he expounded. That is to say, he had no theory
at all, except to penetrate to the very essence of things and, in the light
of each fresh revelation to so live his life that there would be a minimum
of discord between the truths which were revealed to him and the
exemplification of these truths in action. Naturally his behaviour was
strange to those about him. It had not, however, been strange to those who
knew him out on the Coast where, as he said, he was in his own
element. There apparently he was regarded as a superior being and was
listened to with the utmost respect, even with awe.
I came upon him in the midst of a struggle which I only appreciated
many years later. At the time I couldn't see the importance which he
attached to finding his real father: in fact, I used to joke about it
because the role of the father meant little to me, or the role of the
mother, for that matter. In Roy Hamilton I saw the ironic struggle of a man
who had already emancipated himself and yet was seeking to establish a solid
biological link for which he had absolutely no need. This conflict over the
real father had, paradoxically, made him a superfather. He was a teacher and
an exemplar: he had only to open his mouth for me to realize that I was
listening to a wisdom which was utterly different from anything which I had
heretofore associated with that word. It would be easy to dismiss him as a
mystic, for a mystic he undoubtedly was, but he was the first mystic I had
ever encountered who also knew how to keep his feet on the ground. He was a
mystic who knew how to invent practical things, among them a drill such as
was badly needed for the oil industry and from which he later made a
fortune. Because of his strange metaphysical talk, however, nobody at the
time gave much heed to his very practical invention. It was regarded as
another one of his cracked ideas.
He was continually talking about himself and his relation to the world
about, a quality which created the unfortunate impression that he was simply
a blatant egotist. It was even said, which was true enough as far as it
went, that he seemed more concerned about the truth of Mr. MacGregor's
fatherhood than about Mr. MacGregor, the father. The implication was that he
had no real love for his new-found father but was simply deriving a strong
personal gratification from the truth of the discovery, that he was
exploiting this discovery in his usual self-aggrandizing way. It was deeply
true, of course, because Mr. MacGregor in the flesh was infinitely less than
Mr. MacGregor as symbol of the lost father. But the MacGregors knew nothing
about symbols and would never have understood even had it been explained to
them. They were making a contradictory effort to at once embrace the long
lost son and at the same time reduce him to an understandable level on which
they could seize him not as the "long lost" but simply as the son. Whereas
it was obvious to any one with the least intelligence that his son was not a
son at all but a sort of spiritual father, a sort of Christ, I might say,
who was making a most valiant effort to accept as blood and flesh what he
had already all too clearly freed himself from.
I was surprised and flattered, therefore, that this strange individual
whom I looked upon with the warmest admiration should elect to make me his
confident. By comparison I was very bookish, intellectual, and worldly in a
wrong way. But almost immediately I discarded this side of my nature and
allowed myself to bask in the warm, immediate light which is profound and
natural intuition of things created. To come into his presence gave me the
sensation of being undressed, or rather peeled, for it was much more than
mere nakedness which he demanded of the person he was talking to. In talking
to me he addressed himself to a me whose existence I had only dimly
suspected, the me, for example, which emerged when, suddenly, reading a book
I realized that I had been dreaming. Few books had this faculty of putting
me into a trance, this trance of utter lucidity in which, unknown to
oneself, one makes the deepest resolutions. Roy Hamilton's conversation
partook of this quality. It made me more than ever alert, preternaturally
alert, without at the same time crumbling the fabric of dream. He was
appealing, in other words, to the germ of the self, to the being who would
eventually outgrow the naked personality, the synthetic individuality, and
leave me truly alone and solitary in order to work out my own proper
destiny.
Our talk was like a secret language in the midst of which the others
went to sleep or faded away like ghosts. For my friend MacGregor it was
baffling and irritating: he knew me more intimately than any of the other
fellows but he had never found anything in me to correspond to the character
which I now presented him with. He spoke of Roy Hamilton as a bad influence,
which again was deeply true since this unexpected meeting with his
half-brother served more than anything else to alienate us. Hamilton opened
my eyes and gave me new values, and though later I was to lose the vision
which he had bequeathed me, nevertheless I could never again see the world,
or my friends, as I had seen them prior to his coming. Hamilton altered me
profoundly, as only a rare book, a rare personality, a rare experience, can
alter one. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to
experience a vital friendship and yet not to feel enslaved or attached
because of the experience. Never, after we parted, did I feel the need of
his actual presence: he had given himself completely and I possessed him
without being possessed. It was the first dean, whole experience of
friendship, and it was never duplicated by any other friend. Hamilton was
friendship itself, rather than a friend. He was the symbol personified and
consequently entirely satisfactory hence no longer necessary to me. He
himself understood this thoroughly. Perhaps it was the fact of having no
father that pushed him along the road towards the discovery of the self,
which is the final process of identification with the world and the
realization consequently of the useless-ness of ties. Certainly, as he stood
then, in the full plenitude of self-realization, no one was necessary to
him, least of all the father of flesh and blood whom he vainly sought in Mr.
MacGregor. It must have been in the nature of a last test for him, his
coming East and seeking out his real father, for when he said good-bye, when
he renounced Air. MacGregor and Mr. Hamilton also, he was like a man who had
purified himself of all dross. Never have I seen a man look so single, so
utterly alone and alive and confident of the future as Roy Hamilton looked
when he said good-bye. And never have I seen such confusion and
misunderstanding as he left behind with the MacGregor family. It was as
though he had died in their midst, had been resurrected, and was taking
leave of them as an utterly new, unknown individual. I can see them now
standing in the areaway, their hands sort of foolishly, helplessly empty,
weeping they knew not why, unless it was because they were bereft of
something they had never possessed. I like to think of it in just this way.
They were bewildered and bereft, and vaguely, so very vaguely aware that
somehow a great opportunity had been offered them which they had not the
strength or the imagination to seize. It was this which the foolish, empty
fluttering of the hands indicated to me: it was a gesture more painful to
witness than anything I can imagine. It gave me the feeling of the horrible
inadequacy of the world when brought face to face with truth. It gave me the
feeling of the stupidity of the blood tie and of the love which is not
spiritually imbued. I look back rapidly and I see myself again in
California. I am alone and I am working like a slave in the orange grove at
Chula Vista. Am I coming into my own? I think not. I am a very wretched,
forlorn, miserable person. I seem to have lost everything. In fact I am
hardly a person -1 am more nearly an animal. All day long I am standing or
walking behind the two jackasses which are hitched to my sledge. I have no
thoughts, no dreams, no desires. I am thoroughly healthy and empty. I am a
nonentity. I am so thoroughly alive and healthy that I am like the luscious
deceptive fruit which hangs on the Californian trees. One more ray of sun
and I will be rotten. "Pourri avant d'etre muri!"
Is it really me that is rotting in this bright California sunshine? Is
there nothing left of me, of all that I was up to this moment? Let me think
a bit... There was Arizona. I remember now that it was already night when I
first set foot on Arizona soil. Just light enough to catch the last glimpse
of a fading mesa. I am walking through the main street of a little town
whose name is lost. What am I doing here on this street, in this town? Why,
I am in love with Arizona, an Arizona of the mind which I search for in vain
with my two good eyes. In the train there was still with me the Arizona
which I had brought from New York - even after we had crossed the state
line. Was there not a bridge over a canyon which had startled me out of my
reverie? A bridge such as I had never seen before, a natural bridge created
by a cataclysmic eruption thousands of years ago? And over this bridge I had
seen a man crossing, a man who looked like an Indian, and he was riding a
horse and there was a long saddle-bag hanging beside the stirrup. A natural
millenary bridge which in the dying sun with air so clear looked like the
youngest, newest bridge imaginable. And over that bridge so strong, so
durable, there passed, praise be to God, just a man and a horse, nothing
more. This then was Arizona, and Arizona was not a figment of the
imagination but the imagination itself dressed as a horse and rider. And
this was even more than the imagination itself because there was no aura of
ambiguity but only sharply and dead isolate the thing itself which was the
dream and the dreamer himself seated on horseback. And as the train stops I
put my foot down and my foot has put a deep hole in the dream: I am in the
Arizona town which is listed in the timetable and it is only the
geographical Arizona which anybody can visit who has the money. I am walking
along the main street with a valise and I see hamburger sandwiches and real
estate offices. I feel so terribly deceived and I begin to weep. It is dark
now and I stand at the end of a street, where the desert begins, and I weep
like a fool. Which me is this weeping? Why it is the new little me which had
begun to germinate back in Brooklyn and which is now in the midst of a vast
desert and doomed to perish. Now, Roy Hamilton, I need you! I need you for
one moment, just one little moment, while I am falling apart. I need you
because I was not quite ready to do what I have done. And do I not remember
your telling me that it was unnecessary to make the trip, but to do it if I
must? Why didn't you persuade me not to go? Ah, to persuade was never his
way. And to ask advice was never my way. So here I am, bankrupt in the
desert, and the bridge which was real is behind me and what is unreal is
before me and Christ only knows I am so puzzled and bewildered that if I
could sink into the earth and disappear I would do so.
I look back rapidly and I see another man who was left to perish
quietly in the bosom of his family - my father. I understand better what
happened to him if I go back very, very far and think of such streets as
Maujer, Conselyea, Humboldt... Humboldt particularly. These streets belonged
to a neighbourhood which was not far removed from our neighbourhood but
which was different, more glamorous, more mysterious. I had been on Humboldt
Street only once as a child and I no longer remember the reason for that
excursion unless it was to visit some sick relative languishing in a German
hospital. But the street itself made a most lasting impression upon me: why
I have not the faintest idea. It remains in my memory as the most mysterious
and the most promising street that ever I have seen. Perhaps when we were
making ready to go my mother had, as usual, promised something spectacular
as a reward for accompanying her. I was always being promised things which
never materialized. Perhaps then, when I got to Humboldt Street and looked
upon this new world with astonishment, perhaps I forgot completely what had
been promised me and the street itself became the reward. I remember that it
was very wide and that there were high stoops, such as I had never seen
before, on either side of the street. I remember too that in a dressmaker's
shop on the first floor of one of these strange houses there was a bust in
the window with a tape measure slung around the neck and I know that I was
greatly moved by this sight. There was snow on the ground but the sun was
out strong and I recall vividly how about the bottoms of the ash barrels
which had been frozen into the ice there was then a little pool of water
left by the melting snow. The whole street seemed to be melting in the
radiant winter's sun. On the bannisters of the high stoops the mounds of
snow which had formed such beautiful white pads were now beginning to slide,
to disintegrate, leaving dark patches of the brown stone which was then much
in vogue. The little glass signs of the dentists and physicians, tucked away
in the comers of the windows, gleamed brilliantly in the noonday sun and
gave me the feeling for the first time that these offices were perhaps not
the torture chambers which I knew them to be. I imagined, in my childish
way, that here in this neighbourhood, in this street particularly, people
were more friendly, more expansive, and of course infinitely more wealthy. I
must have expanded greatly myself though only a tot, because for the first
time I was looking upon a street which seemed devoid of terror. It was the
sort of street, ample, luxurious, gleaming, melting which later, when I
began reading Dostoievski, I associated with the thaws of St. Petersburg.
Even the churches here were of a different style of architecture; there was
something semi-Oriental about them, something grandiose and warm at the same
time, which both frightened me and intrigued me. On this broad, spacious
street I saw that the houses were set well back from the sidewalk, reposing
in quiet and dignity, and unmarred by the intercalation of shops and
factories and veterinary stables. I saw a street composed of nothing but
residences and I was filled with awe and admiration. All this I remember and
no doubt it influenced me greatly, yet none of this is sufficient to account
for the strange power and attraction which the very mention of Humboldt
Street still evokes in me. Some years later I went back in the night to look
at this street again, and I was even more stirred than when I had looked
upon it for the first time. The aspect of the street of course had changed,
but it was night and the night is always less cruel than the day. Again I
experienced the strange delight of spadousness of that luxuriousness which
was now somewhat faded but still redolent, still assertive in a patchy way
as once the brown stone bannisters had asserted themselves through the
melting snow. Most distinct of all, however, was the almost voluptuous
sensation of being on the verge of a discovery. Again I was strongly aware
of my mother's presence, of the big puffy sleeves of her fur coat, of the
cruel swiftness with which she had whisked me through the street years ago
and of the stubborn tenacity with which I had feasted my eyes on all that
was new and strange. On the occasion of this second visit I seemed to dimly
recall another character out of my childhood, the old housekeeper whom they
called by the outlandish name of Mrs. Kicking. I could not recall her being
taken ill but I did seem to recall the fact that we were paying her a visit
at the hospital where she was dying and that this hospital must have been
near Humboldt Street which was not dying but which was radiant in the
melting snow of a winter's noon. What then had my mother promised me that I
have never since been able to recall? Capable as she was of promising
anything, perhaps that day, in a fit of abstraction, she had promised
something so preposterous that even I with all my childish credulence could
not quite swallow it. And yet, if she had promised me the moon, though I
knew it was out of the question, I would have struggled to invest her
promise with a crumb of faith. I wanted desperately everything that was
promised me, and if, upon reflection I realized that it was dearly
impossible, I nevertheless tried in my own way to grope for a means of
making these promises realizable. That people could make promises without
ever having the least intention of fulfilling them was something
unimaginable to me. Even when I was most cruelly deceived I still believed;
I found that something extraordinary and quite beyond the other person's
power had intervened to make the promise null and void.
This question of belief, this old promise that was never fulfilled, is
what makes me think of my father who was deserted at the moment of his
greatest need. Up to the time of his illness neither my father nor my mother
had ever shown any religious inclinations. Though always upholding the
church to others, they themselves never set foot in a church from the time
that they were married. Those who attended church too regularly they looked
upon as being a bit daffy. The very way they said -"so and so is religious"
- was enough to convey the scorn and contempt, or else the pity, which they
felt for such individuals. If now and then, because of us children, the
pastor called at the house unexpectedly, he was treated as one to whom they
were obliged to defer out of ordinary politeness but whom they had nothing
in common with, whom they were a little suspicious of, in fact as
representative of a species midway between a fool and a charlatan. To us,
for example, they would say "a lovely man", but when their cronies came
round and the gossip began to fly, then one would hear an entirely different
brand of comment, accompanied usually by peals of scornful laughter and sly
mimicry.
My father fell mortally ill as a result of swearing off too abruptly.
All his life he had been a jolly hail fellow well met: he had put on a
rather becoming paunch, his cheeks were well filled out and red as a beet,
his manners were easy and indolent, and he seemed destined to live on into a
ripe old age, sound and healthy as a nut. But beneath this smooth and jolly
exterior things were not at all well. His affairs were in bad shape, the
debts were piling up, and already some of his older friends were beginning
to drop him. My mother's attitude was what worried him most. She saw things
in a black light and she took no trouble to conceal it. Now and then she
became hysterical and went at him hammer and tongs, swearing at him in the
vilest language and smashing the dishes and threatening to run away for
good. The upshot of it was that he arose one morning determined never to
touch another drop. Nobody believed that he meant it seriously: there had
been others in the family who swore off, who went on the water wagon, as
they used to say, but who quickly tumbled off again. No one in the family,
and they had all tried at different times, had ever become a successful
teetotaler. But my old rnan was different. Where or how he got the strength
to maintain his resolution. God only knows. It seems incredible to me,
because had I been in his boots myself I would have drunk myself to death.
Not the old man, however. This was the first time in his life he had ever
shown any resolution about anything. My mother was so astounded that, idiot
that she was, she began to make fun of him, to quip him about his strength
of will which had heretofore been so lamentably weak. Still he stuck to his
guns. His drinking pals faded away rather quickly. In short, he soon found
himself almost completely isolated. That must have cut him to the quick, for
before very many weeks had passed, he became deathly ill and a consultation
was held. He recovered a bit, enough to get out of bed and walk about, but
still a very sick man. He was supposed to be suffering from ulcers of the
stomach, though nobody was quite sure exactly what ailed him. Everybody
understood, however, that he had made a mistake in swearing off so abruptly.
It was too late, however, to return to a temperate mode of living. His
stomach was so weak that it wouldn't even hold a plate of soup. In a couple
of months he was almost a skeleton. And old. He looked like Lazarus raised
from the grave.
One day my mother took me aside and with tears in her eyes begged me to
go visit the family doctor and learn the truth about my father's condition.
Dr. Rausch had been the family physician for years. He was a typical
"Dutchman" of the old school, rather weary and crochety now after years of
practising and yet unable to tear himself completely away from his patients.
In his stupid Teutonic way he tried to scare the less serious patients away,
tried to argue them into health, as it were. When you walked into his office
he didn't even bother to look up at you, but kept on writing or whatever it
might be that he was doing while firing random questions at you in a
perfunctory and insulting manner. He behaved so rudely, so suspiciously,
that ridiculous as it may sound, it almost appeared as though he expected
his patients to bring with them not only their ailments, but the proof of
their ailments. He made one feel that there was not only something wrong
physically but that there was also something wrong mentally. "You only
imagine it," was his favourite phrase which he flung out with a nasty,
leering gibe. Knowing him as I did, and detesting him heartily, I came
prepared, that is, with the laboratory analysis of my father's stool. I had
also analysis of his urine in my overcoat pocket, should he demand further
proof.
When I was a boy Dr. Rausch had shown some affection for me, but ever
since the day I went to him with a dose of clap he had lost confidence in me
and always showed a sour puss when I stuck my head through the door. Like
father like son was his motto, and I was therefore not at all surprised
when, instead of giving me the information which I demanded, he began to
lecture me and the old man at the same time for our way of living. "You
can't go against Nature," he said with a wry, solemn face, not looking at me
as he uttered the words but making some useless notation in his big ledger.
I walked quietly up to his desk, stood beside him a moment without making a
sound, and then, when he looked up with his usual aggrieved, irritated
expression, I said - "I didn't come here for moral instruction ... I want to
know what's the matter with my father." At this he jumped up and turning to
me with his most severe look, he said, like the stupid, brutal Dutchman that
he was: "Your father hasn't a chance of recovering; he'll be dead in less
than six months." I said "Thank you, that's all I wanted to know," and I
made for the door. Then, as though he felt that he had committed a blunder,
he strode after me heavily and, putting his hand on my shoulder, he tried to
modify the statement by hemming and hawing and saying I don't mean that it
is absolutely certain he will die, etc., which I cut short by opening the
door and yelling at him, at the top of my lungs, so that his patients in the
anteroom would hear it - "I think you're a goddamned old fart and I hope you
croak, good-night!"
When I got home I modified the doctor's report somewhat by saying that
my father's condition was very serious but that if he took good care of
himself he would pull through all right. This seemed to cheer the old man up
considerably. Of his own accord he took to a diet of milk and Zwieback
which, whether it was the best thing or not, certainly did him no
harm. He remained a sort of semi-invalid for about a year, becoming more and
more calm inwardly as time went on and apparently determined to let nothing,
disturb his peace of mind, nothing, no matter if everything went to hell. As
he grew stronger he took to making a daily promenade to the cemetery which
was nearby. There he would sit on a bench in the sun and watch the old
people potter around the graves. The proximity to the grave, instead of
rendering him morbid, seemed to cheer him up. He seemed, if anything, to
have become reconciled to the idea of eventual death, a fact which no doubt
he had heretofore refused to look in the face. Often he came home with
flowers which he had picked in the cemetery, his face beaming with a quiet
serene joy, and seating himself in the armchair he would recount the
conversation which he had had that morning with one of the other
valetudinarians who frequented the cemetery. It was obvious after a time
that he was really enjoying his sequestration, or rather not just enjoying
it, but profiting deeply from the experience in a way that was beyond my
mother's intelligence to fathom. He was getting lazy, was the way she
expressed it. Sometimes she put it even more extremely, tapping her head
with her forefinger as she spoke of him, but not saying anything overfly
because of my sister who was without question a little wrong in the head.
And then one day, through the courtesy of an old widow who used to
visit her son's grave every day and was, as my mother would say, "religious"
he made the acquaintance of a minister belonging to one of the neighbouring
churches. This was a momentous event in the old man's life. Suddenly he
blossomed forth and that little sponge of a soul which had almost atrophied
through lack of nourishment took on such astounding proportions that he was
almost unrecognizable. The man who was responsible for this extraordinary
change in the old man was in no way unusual himself; he was a
Congregationalist minister attached to a modest little parish which adjoined
our neighbour- hood. His one virtue was that he kept his religion in the
background. The old man quickly fell into a sort of boyish idolatry; he
talked of nothing but this minister whom he considered his friend. As he had
never looked at the Bible in his life, nor any other book for that matter,
it wa