sirualsirual (![[info]](http://klab.lv/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sirualsirual) rakstīja,@ 2015-12-26 00:41:00 |
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šis ieraksts ir veltīts rakstniekam James Purdy jeb Džeimsam Pērdijam (1914-2009). iezīmīgi fakti viņa dzīvē man šķiet a) pirmoreiz publicējies ~42 gadu vecumā; b) radošās darbības sākumā tusējās pie mākslinieces Gertrude Abercrombie, pie kuras apgrozījās tādi cilvēki kā Čārlijs Pārkers un Mailzs Deiviss; c) homoseksuāls; d) balts; e) pratis franču, spāņu valodas, kādu laiku dzīvojis kubā un meksikā.
iezīmīgi fakti viņa stāstos (esmu izlasījis veselus divus) man šķiet: spēcīgs, ļoti dzīvs dialogs, kas lielā mērā virza sižetu; brutāla sabiedrības kritika un apzināta robežu jaukšana; dusmas un neērtas tēmas. interesanti šķita salīdzināt ar d. selindžeru, kura stāsti manī ir ļoti dziļi iesakņojušies un kas arī attiecas uz to pēckara laiku ASV, kad tika publicēti pērdija un selindžera stāsti. abu stāstiem - tiem, kurus esmu lasījis - līst cauri ZĪMĪGA elegance, kurai apakšā, šķiet, ir kas vairāk - mutuļojošas dusmas pērdija gadījumā, melanholiskas skumjas & vēlme pēc jēgas selindžera gadījumā. pērdijs man šķiet daudz patiesāks un nepiejaucēts, lai gan manis sacītais ir ļoti štancēts. šis ieraksts tiks papildināts ar, cerams, mazāk klišejiskiem teikumiem.
saite uz interviju ar viņu, sākumā viņš lasa savu dzejoli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPKJnD
saite uz viņa lasīto stāstu "Mother and Son" (1 daļa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXR2tI7
saite uz vairākām intervijam ar viņu: http://www.wiredforbooks.org/jamesp
vēl šodien atradu interviju ar viņu, kuru vajadzēja izraut no google web cache, jo lapa ir atslēgta. bail, ka pazudīs pavisam.
interviju var atrast šeit - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2y7q6et1ac2qh
un šeit http://pastebin.com/RTXCbSwU var atrast html kopiju šai intervijai. to ir jāsaglabā kā .html failu un jāatver ar savu pārlūku.
piezīmes: stāsts cutting edge sākas ar teikumu "Mrs. Zeller opposed her son’s beard." stāstu lasot pie beigām es smējos divējādus smieklus, it kā ieraugot kaut ko ļoti prasmīgi veiktu taču pēc savas dabas nešķīstu. ja es smietos šādus smieklus sociālā situācijā, es piebilstu paskaidrojošu: "re, kā". šis ieraksts ir tapis, lai latviski "kaut kas būtu" par džeimsu pērdiju.
stāsts "Cutting Edge", pirmoreiz publicēts, šķiet, 1957. gadā. nb: nedaudz pazudis formatējums kopējot.
Mrs. Zeller opposed her son’s beard. She was in her house in Florida when she saw him wearing it for the first time. It was as though her mind had come to a full stop. This large full-bearded man entered the room and she remembered always later how ugly he had looked and how frightened she felt seeing him in the house; then the realization it was someone she knew, and finally the terror of recognition.
He had kissed her, which he didn’t often do, and she recognized in this his attempt to make her discomfort the more painful. He held the beard to her face for a long time, then he released her as though she had suddenly disgusted him.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. She was, he saw, almost broken by the recognition.
“I didn’t dare tell you and come.”
“That’s of course true,” Mrs. Zeller said. “It would have been worse. You’ll have to shave it off, of course. Nobody must see you. Your father of course didn’t have the courage to warn me, but I knew something was wrong the minute he entered the house ahead of you. I suppose he’s upstairs laughing now. But it’s not a laughing matter.”
Mrs. Zeller’s anger turned against her absent husband as though all error began and ended with him. “I suppose he likes it.” Her dislike of Mr. Zeller struck her son as staggeringly great at that moment.
He looked at his mother and was surprised to see how young she was. She did not look much older than he did. Perhaps she looked younger now that he had his beard.
“I had no idea a son of mine would do such a thing,” she said. “But why a beard, for heaven’s sake,” she cried, as though he had chosen something permanent and irreparable which would destroy all that they were.
“Is it because you are an artist? No, don’t answer me,” she commanded. “I can’t stand to hear any explanation from you.…”
“I have always wanted to wear a beard,” her son said. “I remember wanting one as a child.”
“I don’t remember that at all,” Mrs. Zeller said.
“I remember it quite well. I was in the summer house near that old broken-down wall and I told Ellen Whitelaw I wanted to have a beard when I grew up.”
“Ellen Whitelaw, that big fat stupid thing. I haven’t thought of her in years.”
Mrs. Zeller was almost as much agitated by the memory of Ellen Whitelaw as by her son’s beard.
“You didn’t like Ellen Whitelaw,” her son told her, trying to remember how they had acted when they were together.
“She was a common and inefficient servant,” Mrs. Zeller said, more quietly now, masking her feelings from her son.
“I suppose he liked her,” the son pretended surprise, the cool cynical tone coming into his voice.
“Oh, your father,” Mrs. Zeller said.
“Did he then?” the son asked.
“Didn’t he like all of them?” she asked. The beard had changed this much already between them, she talked to him now about his father’s character, while the old man stayed up in the bedroom fearing a scene.
“Didn’t he always,” she repeated, as though appealing to this new hirsute man.
“So,” the son said, accepting what he already knew.
“Ellen Whitelaw, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Zeller said. The name of the servant girl brought back many other faces and rooms which she did not know were in her memory. These faces and rooms served to make the bearded man who stared at her less and less the boy she remembered in the days of Ellen Whitelaw.
“You must shave it off,” Mrs. Zeller said.
“What makes you think I would do that?” the boy wondered.
“You heard me. Do you want to drive me out of my mind?”
“But I’m not going to. Or rather it’s not going to.”
“I will appeal to him, though a lot of good it will do,” Mrs. Zeller said. “He ought to do something once in twenty years at least.”
“You mean,” the son said laughing, “he hasn’t done anything in that long.”
“Nothing I can really remember,” Mrs. Zeller told him.
“It will be interesting to hear you appeal to him,” the boy said. “I haven’t heard you do that in such a long time.”
“I don’t think you ever heard me.”
“I did, though,” he told her. “It was in the days of Ellen Whitelaw again, in fact.”
“In those days,” Mrs. Zeller wondered. “I don’t see how that could be.”
“Well, it was. I can remember that much.”
“You couldn’t have been more than four years old. How could you remember then?”
“I heard you say to him, You have to ask her to go.”
Mrs. Zeller did not say anything. She really could not remember the words, but she supposed that the scene was true and that he actually remembered.
“Please shave off that terrible beard. If you only knew how awful it looks on you. You can’t see anything else but it.”
“Everyone in New York thought it was particularly fine.”
“Particularly fine,” she paused over his phrase as though its meaning eluded her.
“It’s nauseating,” she was firm again in her judgment.
“I’m not going to do away with it,” he said, just as firm.
She did not recognize his firmness, but she saw everything changing a little, including perhaps the old man upstairs.
“Are you going to ‘appeal’ to him?” The son laughed again when he saw she could say no more.
“Don’t mock me,” the mother said. “I will speak to your father.” She pretended decorum. “You can’t go anywhere with us, you know.”
He looked unmoved.
“I don’t want any of my friends to see you. You’ll have to stay in the house or go to your own places. You can’t go out with us to our places and see our friends. I hope none of the neighbors see you. If they ask who you are, I won’t tell them.”
“I’ll tell them then.”
They were not angry, they talked it out like that, while the old man was upstairs.
“Do you suppose he is drinking or asleep?” she said finally.
“I THOUGHT HE looked good in it, Fern,” Mr. Zeller said.
“What about it makes him look good?” she said.
“It fills out his face,” Mr. Zeller said, looking at the wallpaper and surprised he had never noticed what a pattern it had before; it showed the sacrifice of some sort of animal by a youth.
He almost asked his wife how she had come to pick out this pattern, but her growing fury checked him.
He saw her mouth and throat moving with unspoken words.
“Where is he now?” Mr. Zeller wondered.
“What does that matter where he is?” she said. “He has to be somewhere while he’s home, but he can’t go out with us.”
“How idiotic,” Mr. Zeller said, and he looked at his wife straight in the face for a second.
“Why did you say that?” She tried to quiet herself down.
“The way you go on about nothing, Fern.” For a moment a kind of revolt announced itself in his manner, but then his eyes went back to the wallpaper, and she resumed her tone of victor.
“I’ve told him he must either cut it off or go back to New York.”
“Why is it a beard upsets you so?” he wondered, almost to himself.
“It’s not the beard so much. It’s the way he is now too. And it disfigures him so. I don’t recognize him at all now when he wears it.”
“So, he’s never done anything of his own before,” Mr. Zeller protested suddenly.
“Never done anything!” He could feel her anger covering him and glancing off like hot sun onto the wallpaper.
“That’s right,” he repeated. “He’s never done anything. I say let him keep the beard and I’m not going to talk to him about it.” His gaze lifted toward her but rested finally only on her hands and skirt.
“This is still my house,” she said, “and I have to live in this town.”
“When they had the centennial in Collins, everybody wore beards.”
“I have to live in this town,” she repeated.
“I won’t talk to him about it,” Mr. Zeller said.
It was as though the voice of Ellen Whitelaw reached her saying, So that was how you appealed to him.
SHE SAT ON the deck chair on the porch and smoked five cigarettes. The two men were somewhere in the house and she had the feeling now that she only roomed here. She wished more than that the beard was gone that her son had never mentioned Ellen Whitelaw. She found herself thinking only about her. Then she thought that now twenty years later she could not have afforded a servant, not even her.
She supposed the girl was dead. She did not know why, but she was sure she was.
She thought also that she should have mentioned her name to Mr. Zeller. It might have broken him down about the beard, but she supposed not. He had been just as adamant and unfeeling with her about the girl as he was now about her son.
Her son came through the house in front of her without speaking, dressed only in his shorts and, when he had got safely beyond her in the garden, he took off those so that he was completely naked with his back to her, and lay down in the sun.
She held the cigarette in her hand until it began to burn her finger. She felt she should not move from the place where she was and yet she did not know where to go inside the house and she did not know what pretext to use for going inside.
In the brilliant sun his body, already tanned, matched his shining black beard.
She wanted to appeal to her husband again and she knew then she could never again. She wanted to call a friend and tell her but she had no friend to whom she could tell this.
The events of the day, like a curtain of extreme bulk, cut her off from her son and husband. She had always ruled the house and them even during the awful Ellen Whitelaw days and now, as though they did not even recognize her, they had taken over. She was not even here. Her son could walk naked with a beard in front of her as though she did not exist. She had nothing to fight them with, nothing to make them see with. They ignored her as Mr. Zeller had when he looked at the wallpaper and refused to discuss their son.
“YOU CAN GROW it back when you’re in New York,” Mr. Zeller told his son.
He did not say anything about his son lying naked before him in the garden but he felt insulted almost as much as his mother had, yet he needed his son’s permission and consent now and perhaps that was why he did not mention the insult of his nakedness.
“I don’t know why I have to act like a little boy all the time with you both.”
“If you were here alone with me you could do anything you wanted. You know I never asked anything of you.…”
When his son did not answer, Mr. Zeller said, “Did I?”
“That was the trouble,” the son said.
“What?” the father wondered.
“You never wanted anything from me and you never wanted to give me anything. I didn’t matter to you.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” the father said doggedly.
“Those were the days of Ellen Whitelaw,” the son said in tones like the mother.
“For God’s sake,” the father said and he put a piece of grass between his teeth.
He was a man who kept everything down inside of him, everything had been tied and fastened so long there was no part of him anymore that could struggle against the stricture of his life.
There were no words between them for some time; then Mr. Zeller could hear himself bringing the question out: “Did she mention that girl?”
“Who?” The son pretended blankness.
“Our servant.”
The son wanted to pretend again blankness but it was too much work. He answered: “No, I mentioned it. To her surprise.”
“Don’t you see how it is?” the father went on to the present. “She doesn’t speak to either of us now and if you’re still wearing the beard when you leave it’s me she will be punishing six months from now.”
“And you want me to save you from your wife.”
“Bobby,” the father said, using the childhood tone and inflection. “I wish you would put some clothes on too when you’re in the garden. With me it doesn’t matter, you could do anything. I never asked you for anything. But with her …”
“God damn her,” the boy said.
The father could not protest. He pleaded with his eyes at his son.
The son looked at his father and he could see suddenly also the youth hidden in his father’s face. He was young like his mother. They were both young people who had learned nothing from life, were stopped and drifting where they were twenty years before with Ellen Whitelaw. Only she, the son thought, must have learned from life, must have gone on to some development in her character, while they had been tied to the shore where she had left them.
“Imagine living with someone for six months and not speaking,” the father said as if to himself. “That happened once before, you know, when you were a little boy.”
“I don’t remember that,” the son said, some concession in his voice.
“You were only four,” the father told him.
“I believe this is the only thing I ever asked of you,” the father said. “Isn’t it odd, I can’t remember ever asking you anything else. Can you?”
The son looked coldly away at the sky and then answered, contempt and pity struggling together, “No, I can’t.”
“Thank you, Bobby,” the father said.
“Only don’t plead anymore, for Christ’s sake.” The son turned from him.
“You’ve only two more days with us, and if you shaved it off and put on just a few clothes, it would help me through the year with her.”
He spoke as though it would be his last year.
Why don’t you beat some sense into her?” The son turned to him again.
The father’s gaze fell for the first time complete on his son’s nakedness.
BOBBY HAD SAID he would be painting in the storeroom and she could send up a sandwich from time to time, and Mr. and Mrs. Zeller were left downstairs together. She refused to allow her husband to answer the phone.
In the evening Bobby came down dressed carefully and his beard combed immaculately and looking, they both thought, curled.
They talked about things like horse racing, in which they were all somehow passionately interested, but which they now discussed irritably as though it too were a menace to their lives. They talked about the uselessness of art and why people went into it with a detachment that would have made an outsider think that Bobby was as unconnected with it as a jockey or oil magnate. They condemned nearly everything and then the son went upstairs and they saw one another again briefly at bedtime.
The night before he was to leave they heard him up all hours, the water running, and the dropping of things made of metal.
Both parents were afraid to get up and ask him if he was all right. He was like a wealthy relative who had commanded them never to question him or interfere with his movements even if he was dying.
He was waiting for them at breakfast, dressed only in his shorts but he looked more naked than he ever had in the garden because his beard was gone. Over his chin lay savage and profound scratches as though he had removed the hair with a hunting knife and pincers.
Mrs. Zeller held her breast and turned to the coffee and Mr. Zeller said only his son’s name and sat down with last night’s newspaper.
“What time does your plane go?” Mrs. Zeller said in a dead, muffled voice.
The son began putting a white paste on the scratches on his face and did not answer.
“I believe your mother asked you a question,” Mr. Zeller said, pale and shaking.
Ten-forty,” the son replied.
The son and the mother exchanged glances and he could see at once that his sacrifice had been in vain: she would also see the beard there again under the scratches and the gashes he had inflicted on himself, and he would never really be her son again. Even for his father it must be much the same. He had come home as a stranger who despised them and he had shown his nakedness to both of them. All three longed for separation and release.
But Bobby could not control the anger coming up in him, and his rage took an old form. He poured the coffee into his saucer because Mr. Zeller’s mother had always done this and it had infuriated Mrs. Zeller because of its low-class implications.
He drank vicious from the saucer, blowing loudly.
Both parents watched him helplessly like insects suddenly swept against the screen.
“It’s not too long till Christmas,” Mr. Zeller brought out. “We hope you’ll come back for the whole vacation.”
“We do,” Mrs. Zeller said in a voice completely unlike her own.
“So,” Bobby began, but the torrent of anger would not let him say the thousand fierce things he had ready.
Instead, he blew savagely from the saucer and spilled some onto the chaste white summer rug below him. Mrs. Zeller did not move.
“I would invite you to New York.” Bobby said quietly now, “but of course I will have the beard there and it wouldn’t work for you.”
“Yes,” Mr. Zeller said, incoherent.
“I do hope you don’t think I’ve been …” Mrs. Zeller cried suddenly, and they both waited to hear whether she was going to weep or not, but she stopped herself perhaps by the realization that she had no tears and that the feelings which had come over her about Bobby were likewise spent.
“I can’t think of any more I can do for you,” Bobby said suddenly.
They both stared at each other as though he had actually left and they were alone at last.
“Is there anything more you want me to do?” he said, coldly vicious.
They did not answer.
“I hate and despise what both of you have done to yourselves, but the thought that you would be sitting here in your middle-class crap not speaking to one another is too much even for me. That’s why I did it, I guess, and not out of any love. I didn’t want you to think that.”
He sloshed in the saucer.
“Bobby,” Mr. Zeller said.
The son brought out his What? with such finished beauty of coolness that he paused to admire his own control and mastery.
“Please, Bobby,” Mr. Zeller said.
They could all three of them hear a thousand speeches. The agony of awkwardness was made unendurable by the iciness of the son, and all three paused over this glacial control which had come to him out of art and New York, as though it was the fruit of their lives and the culmination of their twenty years.
iezīmīgi fakti viņa stāstos (esmu izlasījis veselus divus) man šķiet: spēcīgs, ļoti dzīvs dialogs, kas lielā mērā virza sižetu; brutāla sabiedrības kritika un apzināta robežu jaukšana; dusmas un neērtas tēmas. interesanti šķita salīdzināt ar d. selindžeru, kura stāsti manī ir ļoti dziļi iesakņojušies un kas arī attiecas uz to pēckara laiku ASV, kad tika publicēti pērdija un selindžera stāsti. abu stāstiem - tiem, kurus esmu lasījis - līst cauri ZĪMĪGA elegance, kurai apakšā, šķiet, ir kas vairāk - mutuļojošas dusmas pērdija gadījumā, melanholiskas skumjas & vēlme pēc jēgas selindžera gadījumā. pērdijs man šķiet daudz patiesāks un nepiejaucēts, lai gan manis sacītais ir ļoti štancēts. šis ieraksts tiks papildināts ar, cerams, mazāk klišejiskiem teikumiem.
saite uz interviju ar viņu, sākumā viņš lasa savu dzejoli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NPKJnD
saite uz viņa lasīto stāstu "Mother and Son" (1 daļa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXR2tI7
saite uz vairākām intervijam ar viņu: http://www.wiredforbooks.org/jamesp
vēl šodien atradu interviju ar viņu, kuru vajadzēja izraut no google web cache, jo lapa ir atslēgta. bail, ka pazudīs pavisam.
interviju var atrast šeit - https://www.dropbox.com/s/2y7q6et1ac2qh
un šeit http://pastebin.com/RTXCbSwU var atrast html kopiju šai intervijai. to ir jāsaglabā kā .html failu un jāatver ar savu pārlūku.
piezīmes: stāsts cutting edge sākas ar teikumu "Mrs. Zeller opposed her son’s beard." stāstu lasot pie beigām es smējos divējādus smieklus, it kā ieraugot kaut ko ļoti prasmīgi veiktu taču pēc savas dabas nešķīstu. ja es smietos šādus smieklus sociālā situācijā, es piebilstu paskaidrojošu: "re, kā". šis ieraksts ir tapis, lai latviski "kaut kas būtu" par džeimsu pērdiju.
stāsts "Cutting Edge", pirmoreiz publicēts, šķiet, 1957. gadā. nb: nedaudz pazudis formatējums kopējot.
Mrs. Zeller opposed her son’s beard. She was in her house in Florida when she saw him wearing it for the first time. It was as though her mind had come to a full stop. This large full-bearded man entered the room and she remembered always later how ugly he had looked and how frightened she felt seeing him in the house; then the realization it was someone she knew, and finally the terror of recognition.
He had kissed her, which he didn’t often do, and she recognized in this his attempt to make her discomfort the more painful. He held the beard to her face for a long time, then he released her as though she had suddenly disgusted him.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. She was, he saw, almost broken by the recognition.
“I didn’t dare tell you and come.”
“That’s of course true,” Mrs. Zeller said. “It would have been worse. You’ll have to shave it off, of course. Nobody must see you. Your father of course didn’t have the courage to warn me, but I knew something was wrong the minute he entered the house ahead of you. I suppose he’s upstairs laughing now. But it’s not a laughing matter.”
Mrs. Zeller’s anger turned against her absent husband as though all error began and ended with him. “I suppose he likes it.” Her dislike of Mr. Zeller struck her son as staggeringly great at that moment.
He looked at his mother and was surprised to see how young she was. She did not look much older than he did. Perhaps she looked younger now that he had his beard.
“I had no idea a son of mine would do such a thing,” she said. “But why a beard, for heaven’s sake,” she cried, as though he had chosen something permanent and irreparable which would destroy all that they were.
“Is it because you are an artist? No, don’t answer me,” she commanded. “I can’t stand to hear any explanation from you.…”
“I have always wanted to wear a beard,” her son said. “I remember wanting one as a child.”
“I don’t remember that at all,” Mrs. Zeller said.
“I remember it quite well. I was in the summer house near that old broken-down wall and I told Ellen Whitelaw I wanted to have a beard when I grew up.”
“Ellen Whitelaw, that big fat stupid thing. I haven’t thought of her in years.”
Mrs. Zeller was almost as much agitated by the memory of Ellen Whitelaw as by her son’s beard.
“You didn’t like Ellen Whitelaw,” her son told her, trying to remember how they had acted when they were together.
“She was a common and inefficient servant,” Mrs. Zeller said, more quietly now, masking her feelings from her son.
“I suppose he liked her,” the son pretended surprise, the cool cynical tone coming into his voice.
“Oh, your father,” Mrs. Zeller said.
“Did he then?” the son asked.
“Didn’t he like all of them?” she asked. The beard had changed this much already between them, she talked to him now about his father’s character, while the old man stayed up in the bedroom fearing a scene.
“Didn’t he always,” she repeated, as though appealing to this new hirsute man.
“So,” the son said, accepting what he already knew.
“Ellen Whitelaw, for God’s sake,” Mrs. Zeller said. The name of the servant girl brought back many other faces and rooms which she did not know were in her memory. These faces and rooms served to make the bearded man who stared at her less and less the boy she remembered in the days of Ellen Whitelaw.
“You must shave it off,” Mrs. Zeller said.
“What makes you think I would do that?” the boy wondered.
“You heard me. Do you want to drive me out of my mind?”
“But I’m not going to. Or rather it’s not going to.”
“I will appeal to him, though a lot of good it will do,” Mrs. Zeller said. “He ought to do something once in twenty years at least.”
“You mean,” the son said laughing, “he hasn’t done anything in that long.”
“Nothing I can really remember,” Mrs. Zeller told him.
“It will be interesting to hear you appeal to him,” the boy said. “I haven’t heard you do that in such a long time.”
“I don’t think you ever heard me.”
“I did, though,” he told her. “It was in the days of Ellen Whitelaw again, in fact.”
“In those days,” Mrs. Zeller wondered. “I don’t see how that could be.”
“Well, it was. I can remember that much.”
“You couldn’t have been more than four years old. How could you remember then?”
“I heard you say to him, You have to ask her to go.”
Mrs. Zeller did not say anything. She really could not remember the words, but she supposed that the scene was true and that he actually remembered.
“Please shave off that terrible beard. If you only knew how awful it looks on you. You can’t see anything else but it.”
“Everyone in New York thought it was particularly fine.”
“Particularly fine,” she paused over his phrase as though its meaning eluded her.
“It’s nauseating,” she was firm again in her judgment.
“I’m not going to do away with it,” he said, just as firm.
She did not recognize his firmness, but she saw everything changing a little, including perhaps the old man upstairs.
“Are you going to ‘appeal’ to him?” The son laughed again when he saw she could say no more.
“Don’t mock me,” the mother said. “I will speak to your father.” She pretended decorum. “You can’t go anywhere with us, you know.”
He looked unmoved.
“I don’t want any of my friends to see you. You’ll have to stay in the house or go to your own places. You can’t go out with us to our places and see our friends. I hope none of the neighbors see you. If they ask who you are, I won’t tell them.”
“I’ll tell them then.”
They were not angry, they talked it out like that, while the old man was upstairs.
“Do you suppose he is drinking or asleep?” she said finally.
“I THOUGHT HE looked good in it, Fern,” Mr. Zeller said.
“What about it makes him look good?” she said.
“It fills out his face,” Mr. Zeller said, looking at the wallpaper and surprised he had never noticed what a pattern it had before; it showed the sacrifice of some sort of animal by a youth.
He almost asked his wife how she had come to pick out this pattern, but her growing fury checked him.
He saw her mouth and throat moving with unspoken words.
“Where is he now?” Mr. Zeller wondered.
“What does that matter where he is?” she said. “He has to be somewhere while he’s home, but he can’t go out with us.”
“How idiotic,” Mr. Zeller said, and he looked at his wife straight in the face for a second.
“Why did you say that?” She tried to quiet herself down.
“The way you go on about nothing, Fern.” For a moment a kind of revolt announced itself in his manner, but then his eyes went back to the wallpaper, and she resumed her tone of victor.
“I’ve told him he must either cut it off or go back to New York.”
“Why is it a beard upsets you so?” he wondered, almost to himself.
“It’s not the beard so much. It’s the way he is now too. And it disfigures him so. I don’t recognize him at all now when he wears it.”
“So, he’s never done anything of his own before,” Mr. Zeller protested suddenly.
“Never done anything!” He could feel her anger covering him and glancing off like hot sun onto the wallpaper.
“That’s right,” he repeated. “He’s never done anything. I say let him keep the beard and I’m not going to talk to him about it.” His gaze lifted toward her but rested finally only on her hands and skirt.
“This is still my house,” she said, “and I have to live in this town.”
“When they had the centennial in Collins, everybody wore beards.”
“I have to live in this town,” she repeated.
“I won’t talk to him about it,” Mr. Zeller said.
It was as though the voice of Ellen Whitelaw reached her saying, So that was how you appealed to him.
SHE SAT ON the deck chair on the porch and smoked five cigarettes. The two men were somewhere in the house and she had the feeling now that she only roomed here. She wished more than that the beard was gone that her son had never mentioned Ellen Whitelaw. She found herself thinking only about her. Then she thought that now twenty years later she could not have afforded a servant, not even her.
She supposed the girl was dead. She did not know why, but she was sure she was.
She thought also that she should have mentioned her name to Mr. Zeller. It might have broken him down about the beard, but she supposed not. He had been just as adamant and unfeeling with her about the girl as he was now about her son.
Her son came through the house in front of her without speaking, dressed only in his shorts and, when he had got safely beyond her in the garden, he took off those so that he was completely naked with his back to her, and lay down in the sun.
She held the cigarette in her hand until it began to burn her finger. She felt she should not move from the place where she was and yet she did not know where to go inside the house and she did not know what pretext to use for going inside.
In the brilliant sun his body, already tanned, matched his shining black beard.
She wanted to appeal to her husband again and she knew then she could never again. She wanted to call a friend and tell her but she had no friend to whom she could tell this.
The events of the day, like a curtain of extreme bulk, cut her off from her son and husband. She had always ruled the house and them even during the awful Ellen Whitelaw days and now, as though they did not even recognize her, they had taken over. She was not even here. Her son could walk naked with a beard in front of her as though she did not exist. She had nothing to fight them with, nothing to make them see with. They ignored her as Mr. Zeller had when he looked at the wallpaper and refused to discuss their son.
“YOU CAN GROW it back when you’re in New York,” Mr. Zeller told his son.
He did not say anything about his son lying naked before him in the garden but he felt insulted almost as much as his mother had, yet he needed his son’s permission and consent now and perhaps that was why he did not mention the insult of his nakedness.
“I don’t know why I have to act like a little boy all the time with you both.”
“If you were here alone with me you could do anything you wanted. You know I never asked anything of you.…”
When his son did not answer, Mr. Zeller said, “Did I?”
“That was the trouble,” the son said.
“What?” the father wondered.
“You never wanted anything from me and you never wanted to give me anything. I didn’t matter to you.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” the father said doggedly.
“Those were the days of Ellen Whitelaw,” the son said in tones like the mother.
“For God’s sake,” the father said and he put a piece of grass between his teeth.
He was a man who kept everything down inside of him, everything had been tied and fastened so long there was no part of him anymore that could struggle against the stricture of his life.
There were no words between them for some time; then Mr. Zeller could hear himself bringing the question out: “Did she mention that girl?”
“Who?” The son pretended blankness.
“Our servant.”
The son wanted to pretend again blankness but it was too much work. He answered: “No, I mentioned it. To her surprise.”
“Don’t you see how it is?” the father went on to the present. “She doesn’t speak to either of us now and if you’re still wearing the beard when you leave it’s me she will be punishing six months from now.”
“And you want me to save you from your wife.”
“Bobby,” the father said, using the childhood tone and inflection. “I wish you would put some clothes on too when you’re in the garden. With me it doesn’t matter, you could do anything. I never asked you for anything. But with her …”
“God damn her,” the boy said.
The father could not protest. He pleaded with his eyes at his son.
The son looked at his father and he could see suddenly also the youth hidden in his father’s face. He was young like his mother. They were both young people who had learned nothing from life, were stopped and drifting where they were twenty years before with Ellen Whitelaw. Only she, the son thought, must have learned from life, must have gone on to some development in her character, while they had been tied to the shore where she had left them.
“Imagine living with someone for six months and not speaking,” the father said as if to himself. “That happened once before, you know, when you were a little boy.”
“I don’t remember that,” the son said, some concession in his voice.
“You were only four,” the father told him.
“I believe this is the only thing I ever asked of you,” the father said. “Isn’t it odd, I can’t remember ever asking you anything else. Can you?”
The son looked coldly away at the sky and then answered, contempt and pity struggling together, “No, I can’t.”
“Thank you, Bobby,” the father said.
“Only don’t plead anymore, for Christ’s sake.” The son turned from him.
“You’ve only two more days with us, and if you shaved it off and put on just a few clothes, it would help me through the year with her.”
He spoke as though it would be his last year.
Why don’t you beat some sense into her?” The son turned to him again.
The father’s gaze fell for the first time complete on his son’s nakedness.
BOBBY HAD SAID he would be painting in the storeroom and she could send up a sandwich from time to time, and Mr. and Mrs. Zeller were left downstairs together. She refused to allow her husband to answer the phone.
In the evening Bobby came down dressed carefully and his beard combed immaculately and looking, they both thought, curled.
They talked about things like horse racing, in which they were all somehow passionately interested, but which they now discussed irritably as though it too were a menace to their lives. They talked about the uselessness of art and why people went into it with a detachment that would have made an outsider think that Bobby was as unconnected with it as a jockey or oil magnate. They condemned nearly everything and then the son went upstairs and they saw one another again briefly at bedtime.
The night before he was to leave they heard him up all hours, the water running, and the dropping of things made of metal.
Both parents were afraid to get up and ask him if he was all right. He was like a wealthy relative who had commanded them never to question him or interfere with his movements even if he was dying.
He was waiting for them at breakfast, dressed only in his shorts but he looked more naked than he ever had in the garden because his beard was gone. Over his chin lay savage and profound scratches as though he had removed the hair with a hunting knife and pincers.
Mrs. Zeller held her breast and turned to the coffee and Mr. Zeller said only his son’s name and sat down with last night’s newspaper.
“What time does your plane go?” Mrs. Zeller said in a dead, muffled voice.
The son began putting a white paste on the scratches on his face and did not answer.
“I believe your mother asked you a question,” Mr. Zeller said, pale and shaking.
Ten-forty,” the son replied.
The son and the mother exchanged glances and he could see at once that his sacrifice had been in vain: she would also see the beard there again under the scratches and the gashes he had inflicted on himself, and he would never really be her son again. Even for his father it must be much the same. He had come home as a stranger who despised them and he had shown his nakedness to both of them. All three longed for separation and release.
But Bobby could not control the anger coming up in him, and his rage took an old form. He poured the coffee into his saucer because Mr. Zeller’s mother had always done this and it had infuriated Mrs. Zeller because of its low-class implications.
He drank vicious from the saucer, blowing loudly.
Both parents watched him helplessly like insects suddenly swept against the screen.
“It’s not too long till Christmas,” Mr. Zeller brought out. “We hope you’ll come back for the whole vacation.”
“We do,” Mrs. Zeller said in a voice completely unlike her own.
“So,” Bobby began, but the torrent of anger would not let him say the thousand fierce things he had ready.
Instead, he blew savagely from the saucer and spilled some onto the chaste white summer rug below him. Mrs. Zeller did not move.
“I would invite you to New York.” Bobby said quietly now, “but of course I will have the beard there and it wouldn’t work for you.”
“Yes,” Mr. Zeller said, incoherent.
“I do hope you don’t think I’ve been …” Mrs. Zeller cried suddenly, and they both waited to hear whether she was going to weep or not, but she stopped herself perhaps by the realization that she had no tears and that the feelings which had come over her about Bobby were likewise spent.
“I can’t think of any more I can do for you,” Bobby said suddenly.
They both stared at each other as though he had actually left and they were alone at last.
“Is there anything more you want me to do?” he said, coldly vicious.
They did not answer.
“I hate and despise what both of you have done to yourselves, but the thought that you would be sitting here in your middle-class crap not speaking to one another is too much even for me. That’s why I did it, I guess, and not out of any love. I didn’t want you to think that.”
He sloshed in the saucer.
“Bobby,” Mr. Zeller said.
The son brought out his What? with such finished beauty of coolness that he paused to admire his own control and mastery.
“Please, Bobby,” Mr. Zeller said.
They could all three of them hear a thousand speeches. The agony of awkwardness was made unendurable by the iciness of the son, and all three paused over this glacial control which had come to him out of art and New York, as though it was the fruit of their lives and the culmination of their twenty years.
Nopūsties:
