The Resurrection, page 12
“It’s all right, it’s been taken care of,” he said. His lips had a loose way of coming together and parting as he talked, as though there were no moisture at all in his mouth. He had his hat on again, and he had another crooked, crinkled cigarette.
“I’m sorry to behave this way,” she said. “I’m just all nerves these days.” She blew her nose.
The man merely stared, uncomfortable. Again and again he wet his lips as if to speak, then thought better of it. Then, after a quick, angry glance at the others in the room, he leaned toward her.
“Listen, I know how you feel,” he said. His eyebrows were lifted, and his eyes were larger than ever. “And I know there’s nothing anyone can say. But I want to tell you something, Mrs. Chandler, if I may.” He sucked excitedly at the stub of his cigarette, but it had gone out. He glanced at it, then got out cigarette papers and a can of Prince Albert. (That was why the smell was familiar, it came to her. When she’d first known him, James had smoked Prince Albert in his pipe.) John Horne rolled a cigarette as he talked, his eyes going repeatedly from the cigarette to her face and back, his whole manner frantic, for he spoke with feeling. What he had to say was very confused, or so it seemed to Marie, and his expressions, his gestures, his tone, all seemed something made up, not life but some sort of stage performance—a sad-clown act, or one of those monologues in a Beckett play at the Actors’ Workshop. And yet, strange to say, as he talked she began to see clearly again, sort herself out.
He said rather loudly, as if in defiance of the silent group behind him:
“You must understand that this is a difficult thing for me. I’ve never been good at talking with people; in fact it’s only very recently that I’ve begun to try it at all.” He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the others were minding their business. One of the women, a buck-toothed, stupid-looking person, looked straight at him a moment, then down. Horne wet his lips with his tongue and hurried on. “For years I didn’t have the courage to say ’Good morning’ to the man I bought my newspaper from. I’d actually practice it on my way there sometimes—he had a stand right in front of the office-building where I worked—I was in Buffalo at the time—and it would make the sweat pop out on my forehead. I’d try it first one way and then another, ’Good morning, Mr. Populos,’—this cheerfully, like a shopkeeper—‘Good morning, Mr. Populos,’—more casually, mind on other things—‘Good morning, Mr. Populos,’—an undertaker. Even mere practice was terrifying. It was exactly like standing on a bridge, playing in deadly earnest with the idea of jumping. When I got to the stand I’d go blood-red with fright—no, shame—and I’d say nothing. I was probably the most timid creature in Buffalo, New York. But because of a cat (I’ll explain all that at the proper time), I conquered myself. I cannot speak, I simply and positively cannot, but I do it.” He puffed at his cigarette as if hungrily, then drew a piece of toilet paper from his pocket and wiped his forehead.
Marie sat rigid, drawn back from the man’s deformity, his smell, his words, as from an adder.
“I know how ludicrous all this sounds, Mrs. Chandler. You can’t imagine it, born Venerian as you are, with the moon in a fortunate aspect, Calliope for a godmother, Tisiphone busy with lesser creatures; but the plain truth is, however absurd, that speaking this way, for a man congenitally shy (whatever his arrogance, you know), is directly equivalent to—” He hesitated, flustered, hunting for an image. “To marching with the Negroes in Birmingham, or burning oneself alive to preserve one’s religion, or infecting oneself with some deadly disease for science. You find these comparisons comic, no doubt.” He laughed, goatlike, to show that he too saw the comedy. “But you see, I consciously choose to speak, difficult as it is for me, and I choose not for my sake—certainly not for my own comfort—but for the sake of, as it were, mankind. Suppose Charles Dickens’ Scrooge had not been sent those dreams and had not been miraculously transformed, but suppose he had come by the process of reason to the conclusion that it was his duty to be unselfish. Think what it would have cost him to become the Scrooge of Dickens’ final scene! Every smile would be agony, every gift to the poor a piece of his own heart. And so, in a word, if what I say seems ludicrous—” He paused; then, softly almost a hiss: “But does it count without a change of heart? That’s the question. Is it possible for a man to be reborn?”
His lips began to shake, and he couldn’t go on. Abruptly, like something mechanical, he sat down in the chair nearest her and removed his hat. He began to shake all over. The child came near and bent down to look up at him as he might have looked at a sleeping lion.
Marie Chandler sat very still. She had no choice, she knew, but to get up and go to him, but she was like a victim of abulia, or like a person in a nightmare, unable to move. Little by little his shaking began to pass. At last the old man seemed calm. For a long time neither of them moved a muscle; then Horne got up. The child fled back to its mother.
“I’m a ludicrous creature,” he said with a wide, ghastly smile. “Not entirely human, really. Some sort of mutation that will never catch on. It says on my card ’Attorney at Law’ and ’Quidquid tetigit ornavit.’ Both statements are bitterly ironic, at least from a certain point of view. From another point of view—but I’ll come to that. I’m a law librarian, in point of fact, for a large and complicated firm of people whose first names I know only by hearsay. In all my life I’ve never dealt in propre persona with an actual case. All strictly theoretical. I hunt up precedents, I theorize, I reason, I commit thick books to memory—mostly indexes alphabetically arranged: Aamram, the State of New York versus. A caricature of the modern condition, my life. Spectator of spectators. But that’s all of very little interest, of course. I realize that. I mention it only by way of background, so you’ll understand the seriousness of what might otherwise seem quite preposterous, that my one significant relationship, the only significant relationship in all my life, has been (and I make no apologies for it; the fault has not been entirely mine) with a cat.” He got out his materials to roll another cigarette, lit it, and began to pace back and forth as he talked, almost running at times, at times stopping abruptly, snatching a puff at his cigarette, wetting his lips, mopping his head with the toilet paper he carried for that purpose. “Human beings must have significant relationships; it’s the sine qua non of the existence of the species. You hear biologists talk about the adaptability of man: how the first primitive human being when he came from the trees couldn’t run at all compared to a deer, or see very well compared to an eagle, or hoist things up like an elephant, or bite or scratch like a wolf or a tiger, or keep warm in winter like the polar bear, or swim like a fish, or fly like an eagle, and yet in a short while he learned to move about faster than sound, see galaxies thousands of light-years away, move mountains even in the absence of faith, kill his enemies by ICBM’s, walk in comfort in Antarctica, search out the oceans, and fly up as far as the moon. Very adaptable, no doubt about it.” He hesitated a moment, glancing in terror at the silent group behind him, then hurried on again, as if to stop would be to end. “But I’ll tell you the truth, being a theoretical person committed, like biologists, to celebration of the trivial. All that rushing and seeing and hefting is only the way we stay alive, not the reason for it. The reason is purely and simply self-love, the greatest power in the universe. And the true measure of human adaptability is man’s power to find, despite overwhelming arguments, something in himself to love. It’s not a thing to be scorned or to reprimand children for; a thing of beauty! Because at its root self-love is awe: Man looks at himself and says, ’Great God, what a splendid thing!’ Not vulgar egotism; nothing of the kind. Splendor! Honest and forthright recognition of the best there is in Nature.—Unless we’re mistaken.—And I’ll tell you the proof, a brilliant insight I had when only a very young man, and in fact an insight I later wrote up. (I used to write up all my insights, in those days, and I’d publish them and await the results; such was my mania, I confess it. I wrote it up and published it as an answer to logical positivists, who would cure us of philosophical curiosity—’cure’ us! So one of them actually puts it. A group which in those days I sadly deplored. And do yet, though I may be wrong; I may not have fully understood them. Always that chance.)” He paused, staring at his cigarette with his bulging eyes. “The proof, as I was saying—an incredibly obvious thing, yet persistently misinterpreted by foolish people—though possibly they’re right and I’m wrong, of course—, foolish people who … Where was I? Ah! … who are always afraid of human freedom (and no amount of article writing will change it; I’ve learned that much, at least. Articles merely awaken one of the weaknesses in one’s own position)—the proof that self-love is awe, as I was saying, is the fact of love. Serious. Perfectly serious, my dear Mrs. Chandler. Any psychologist will tell you that what we love in the alter—you notice how it puns on altar?—is our own projection. ’Only God can love you for yourself alone,’ as the poet saith. A beautiful truth, an inspiration! But stupid people twist it and transmogrify it, which is to say, make it monstrous. They call it a matter of self-delusion: I fall down before the projection of myself and worship it as I symbolize it in someone I do not in fact love at all or know or feel, even, indifferent to. They identify it with onanism and other equally revolting things. But they misunderstand, if my own interpretation is correct. Self-love is in fact religious awe in the presence of the mystery of life represented in oneself. A mystery too vast to get hold of—infinite, changeable, everlastingly capable of unexpected developments (I might mention a piece in the Daily News this very morning about a man who swam close to Niagara Falls to save some child he didn’t know. They got back alive, and he told the reporters, ‘I never knew I’d do such a thing.’) So great a mystery—” He paused again, apparently having lost the thread. He blinked rapidly, his loose lips pursed. Then, excitedly: “The mystery of life! A thing so majestic requires our worship, and a thing so complex can only be worshiped with the help of symbols. There’s why people fall in love, or make up religions, or turn themselves into philosophers. It’s why we invent our Draculas and Frankenstein monsters. (Only by logical abstraction do we separate one kind of mystery from another. Mon semblable.) You have heard it said that Cogito, ergo sum. But I give you a new law, which is Sumus, ergo amemus, or, conversely, Amamus, ergo simus. The most ignorant boy will lie down and die for his ignorant girl, unless of course he’s got less religion in him than a common dog. And let it be added, despite certain risks, that the commonest child of Cerberus will on rare occasions lie down and die for its human master, though not, as a rule, the reverse.” He paused. “Though perhaps under certain circumstances—” Then: “If you push me to the more or less logical conclusion, that dogs are worshipers of life, like ourselves, I reply that only seventy-five million years of evolution—or forty-five, perhaps; I forget—distinguishes Herr from Hund. But I leave these things to veterinary science—I mention all this, however, only as background.”
Two well-dressed teen-age girls came in and sat down, to Marie’s left. They began to talk, very quietly, flipping through magazines.
Horne blushed and seemed to shrink from them as from something preternatural. He even stepped away a little. He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table in front of Marie and promptly rolled another. When he had the new cigarette lighted, he straightened up once more, but this time he did not pace. He stood with his head tipped far to one side, his left hand in his coatpocket, and smoked, getting himself in control by a terrific effort of his facial muscles. At last he said: “The striking feature of human adaptability—have I said this already?”
She shook her head.
He jerked his head in a nod and returned to his formal pose. “The striking feature of human adaptability is man’s adaptation to his own unspeakable ugliness. I speak as a grotesque myself, from a family of grotesques. The point might not occur so forcibly to a person like yourself, more fortunate by birth. I learned very young. It was pointed out to me by relatives, by playmates, even by my mother, indirectly. My father had a metal plate in his head—a brilliant civil engineer in his earlier days, tradition holds, but prematurely kicked by a horse, which left him addled and also cantankerous. A difficult person to love. He beat my poor mother and me half to death—we had to call neighbors in sometimes. But he meant no harm, you know. It was just his way. As for my mother, poor soul, she had muscular dystrophy. It took supreme effort and great contortion to lift up a coffee cup. She stands immortal in my mind—I say it with devotion, as God is my judge; indeed, I say it with devout admiration—she stands immortal in my mind with her tongue clamped firmly between her teeth and her kindly blue eyes crossed. We had very few visitors. The house settled slowly around our ears, with no one able to take care of things, and my mother looked forward to the resurrection of the body. She always wore carefully ironed dresses, though ironing was hard for her. (I merely mention the point in passing.) Also she always wore gloves and a hat—with white and red berries on it, symbolic of Holy Purity and Martyrs’ Passion—when she left the house. Ironically enough, my poor ill mother was knocked down in the street—my word of honor—on three separate occasions: Once by the Father, presumably, once by the Son, and once by the Holy Ghost. She could never make it across before the light changed.”
Horne stood silent for perhaps a full minute, lost in anguished thought, perhaps still delivering his monologue and unaware that he had ceased to speak aloud. Then he said:
“I came to be attracted, for obvious reasons, to the discipline of Law. A metaphysical problem, really, the problem of justice. I graduated from Buffalo U. at the top of my class—a matter of record—and settled down to life of a legal librarian, an occupation which perfectly suited my character, involving, on one hand, a justification for endless, altogether pointless thought, and involving, on the other hand, just enough need for nice distinctions and just enough contact with reality (at third remove) to keep me relatively safe. Most of my waking hours I spent among the books of my employers; for sleep I returned to my two-room bachelor apartment above the Hyde Street Market.
“Time passed; I never dreamed of marriage; I grew older and fatter. I lost my youthful confidence, what little I’d had. I thought myself the forlornest of men, a genius crushed by the force of circumstances. And then something happened to me which changed my life.
“Lying in my solitary bed one night, I heard what I thought was a prowler in my kitchen. I lay there for possibly fifteen minutes, shaking like a leaf, my head pulled down inside my covers, too terrified to think. Then something made me realize that whatever it was I had in my kitchen, it was not, at least, human. I thought at once of the murders in Rue Morgue, then of the possibility of rats. At last, with more courage than I’d have thought I possessed, I got up and tip-toed in to see. I snapped on the light. There on my kitchen table stood a gigantic yellow tomcat, a veritable tiger. His back went up and his jaws parted ferociously, but I wasn’t afraid; in fact—it’s uncanny, when you think about it—the very first words I said were, ’Well, so it’s you!’ I stepped between him and the open window, and he hissed like a cobra, those terrible-snake-toothed jaws wide open. But I hesitated for only a moment. In a flash, I had the window closed, and he was mine!
“You never heard of such a battle of wills as ensued in the months that followed. He befouled every inch of my apartment—purposely and maliciously, according to a carefully worked out plan. He refused to eat, with the notion of killing himself and leaving his death on my conscience. Whenever I came anywhere near him, he hissed. Sometimes in the middle of the night I’d awaken and find him staring at me with his yellow, dusty, unblinking eyes, thinking, I am firmly convinced, of fratricide. But he finally decided to eat my food. He began to befoul my rugs somewhat perfunctorily and sometimes he would even turn, as if absentmindedly, to the kitty litter. At the end of six months we had established the terms of our truce. That was as far as it ever went. Armed truce. I began to let my fellow being wander nights, and he, being old, elected to come back for his food. He eventually came to consider the room I happened to be sitting in faintly preferable to a room in which he would be forced to sit alone, as long as his position was significantly higher than mine. (He invariably perched on the top of my bookshelf, just below the ceiling.) But we were not friends, not at all. We were of different species. That’s very important, from a cat’s point of view. Right to the end—we were together for three years—he’d strike out like a rattler if I dared to reach up to pet him. When he died, of poison, I believe—he was never a popular cat with the neighbors—I buried him in the yard behind Mr. Jensen’s store, under the stump of, I believe, an oak. It was only after Tommy’s death that I realized the significance of what had happened.”
He came closer now and bent down toward her. The eyes of the group followed him. There were others now, looking in from the hall.
“I had lost something, Mrs. Chandler. Which implied that I had had, all along, even before I met him, something to lose, which implied in turn something more, something as yet undiscovered but capable of being lost—something in myself, you see, something to be seized, brought to birth, requiring only my self-annihilation. I became a believer in that great spirit in whom we live and move and have our being. I saw my way clear at last to accept, in principle, the resurrection of life.”
He was silent for a moment, his lips trembling. Then he said: “Life can be resurrected, Mrs. Chandler. Do you understand me?”
