Part 61 (2/2)

I lifted myself and watched her. She lay flattened and nearly breathingless.

”Something political?”

”I said taboo, didn't I? Pariah. Dead.” The finger rasped. ”Nothing public. Something personal. Something with me left out of it.”

”If it leaves you out it can't be personal,” I said.

”Oh shut up. Once and for all shut up. I hate a logician. You talk like a G.o.dd.a.m.n little Jew. How do / know what he'll do?” But she appended with authority: ”h.e.l.l write history.”

”But he might be good at that-”

”Might be good at that,” she drilled out singsong. ”Of course he won't be good at it. If you're meant to live it you can't write it. And don't give me Julius Caesar. One Latin reb.u.t.tal out of you, just one, and I swear I'm fit for gore and murder. Lady Macbeth, I mean it this time. Besides, there's nothing in history any more. Nothing”-she hurtled to her last effect-”for me.”

”n.o.body ever got into history by being an Amba.s.sador's wife,” I said.

”Oh didn't they! Well you don't know me, I don't give up like that, I don't want to just get into history, that's what I call burial, I want to climb up out of it, I want to survive!” My mother teetered in a crouch; then with hands forward and heavy she thrust herself into the chair. ”It's Madame de'Sevigne not Mademoiselle you hear about, and Medea was somebody important's wife, ditto the aforementioned Lady Macbeth so don't tell me position doesn't count, in the sands of time spinsters don't leave tracks. And don't give me Emily d.i.c.kinson either, I'm not talking about mystic types and so forth, I mean people like myself who panteth after the world as the hart panteth after the brook or something. Is that Enoch coming in down there? I thought I heard-” She blinked. ”Look, I have to feel I'm somebody more than just, just, I don't know, you think I want to be n.o.body? You think I could stand getting submerged in a century? Or a generation? That's bad enough, already you hear people matching me up with the Radical Thirties so-called, you should see William's ears get red at that. Or even a G.o.dd.a.m.n country.” She was all at once tearing at her neck. ”Hives, d.a.m.n it, I've got these hives again. You know I thought that was Enoch down there. Well the fact is 111 die if he just crawls home into a corner and starts writing like Immanuel Kant or somebody. Basically all he's got are these ideas, you know what idea Enoch has, I mean about me? I'm an American, that's what he thinks. He thinks I'm an American! What he always wanted was an American. Well I'll fix him, he'd be a fool to go just on that. Oh G.o.d how I itch. I want to be more than the best heating plant in the whole world. Not just hum awhile and then die like the Great American Refrigerator-”

It was, plainly, her great speech of capitulation. She recognized she had gone down, and irretrievably. It was her mourning song-protracted, like the mourning songs of the Chorus of Women in the old old plays. Mockery remained. ”You can't be an ancient Greek,” I noted.

”Oh bla bla bla. I know where you got that Same old corrupted conniving blather, Nick all over again. Well I never wanted to be Greeky, you follow? His idea not mine. All I'm saying is I want something more than just my exact home address on my death certificate. A person should mean something. That's right, go stick your head in the rug, just like Enoch, you don't think I can think. I don't care who said it first, I say it for myself, only louder. You take alt these feelings in the world, who knows how many feelings, you see my point?”

”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 pa.s.sion. 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 G.o.d, 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-a.n.a.lytic 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, ”h.e.l.l 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 G.o.d 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? n.o.body cares about that, Was.h.i.+ngton 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 pensee. 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 Amba.s.sador.

Most of his maxims were personal:

22.

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,

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