by Walker Percy
If I had to name a single trait that all these people shared, it is their niceness. Their lives are triumphs of niceness. They like everyone with the warmest and most generous feelings. And as for themselves: it would be impossible for even a dour person not to like them.
Tonight’s subject is a playwright who transmits this very quality of niceness in his plays. He begins:
I believe in people. I believe in tolerance and understanding between people. I believe in the uniqueness and the dignity of the individual—
Everyone on This I Believe believes in the uniqueness and the dignity of the individual. I have noticed, however, that the believers are far from unique themselves, are in fact alike as peas in a pod.
I believe in music. I believe in a child’s smile. I believe in love. I also believe in hate.
This is true. I have known a couple of these believers, humanists and lady psychologists who come to my aunt’s house. On This I Believe they like everyone. But when it comes down to this or that particular person, I have noticed that they usually hate his guts.
I did not always enjoy This I Believe. While I was living at my aunt’s house, I was overtaken by a fit of perversity. But instead of writing a letter to an editor, as was my custom, I recorded a tape which I submitted to Mr Edward R. Murrow. “Here are the beliefs of John Bickerson Bolling, a moviegoer living in New Orleans,” it began, and ended, “I believe in a good kick in the ass. This—I believe.” I soon regretted it, however, as what my grandfather would have called “a smart-alecky stunt” and I was relieved when the tape was returned. I have listened faithfully to This I Believe ever since.
I believe in freedom, the sacredness of the individual and the brotherhood of man—
concludes the playwright.
I believe in believing. This—I believe.
All my shakiness over Sharon is gone. I switch off my radio and lie in bed with a pleasant tingling sensation in the groin, a tingling for Sharon and for all my fellow Americans.
12
SOMETIME DURING THE night and at the height of the storm the telephone rings, a dreadful summons, and I find myself in the middle of the floor shaking like a leaf and wondering what is amiss. It is my aunt.
“What’s that?” The telephone crackles with static. I listen so hard I can’t hear.
My aunt tells me that something has happened to Kate. When Uncle Jules and Walter arrived at the hotel from the Iberia ball, Kate was not to be found. Nell Lovell, herself a former queen, told them that Kate had left abruptly sometime before eleven o’clock. That was three hours ago and she had not come home. But Nell wasn’t worried. “You know as well as I do what she’s doing, Cousin Em,” she told my aunt. “You remember my Christmas party at Empire when she took out up the levee and walked all the way to Laplace? That Kate.” But my aunt has her doubts. “Listen to this,” she says in a peculiar voice—it is the dry litigious way of speaking of closely knit families in times of trouble: one would imagine she was speaking of a stranger. “Here is the last entry in her diary: Tonight will tell the story—will the new freedom work—if not, no more tight ropes for me, thank you. Now you recall her tight rope.”
“Yes.” “Tight rope” is an expression Kate used when she was sick the first time. When she was a child and her mother was alive, she said, it used to seem to her that people laughed and talked in an easy and familiar way and stood on solid ground, but now it seemed that they (not just she but everybody) had become aware of the abyss that yawned at their feet even on the most ordinary occasions—especially on the most ordinary occasions. Thus, she would a thousand times rather find herself in the middle of no man’s land than at a family party or luncheon club.
“Now I’m not really worried about her,” my aunt declares briskly. There is a silence and the wire crackles. Strange to say, my main emotion is a slight social embarrassment. I cast about for something to say. “After all the girl is twenty-five years old,” says my aunt.
“That’s true.”
Lightning strikes somewhere close, a vicious bolt. The clap comes hard upon it, in the very whitening, and shakes the house.
“—finally reached him in his hotel room in Atlanta.”
“Who?”
“Sam. He’s flying down first thing in the morning, instead of Sunday. He was quite excited.”
“About what?”
“He said he had the most extraordinary piece of news. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. It seems that by the eeriest sort of coincidence two things happened this very day with a direct bearing on Kate. Anyhow.”
“Yes ma’am?”
“I have a hunch she’ll wander out your way. If she does, will you drive her home?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t as if Kate were another Otey Ann,” says my aunt after a moment.
“No, it isn’t.” She is thinking of two things: one, an acquaintance from Feliciana named Otey Ann Aldridge who went crazy and used to break out of the state hospital in Jackson and come to New Orleans and solicit strangers on Bourbon Street; two, she is thinking of the look in Nell Lovell’s eye, the little risible gleam, even as she reassured my aunt.
I awake with a start at three o’clock, put on a raincoat and go outside for a breath of air.
The squall line has passed over. Elysian Fields is dripping and still, but there is a commotion of winds high in the air where the cool heavy front has shouldered up the last of the fretful ocean air. The wind veers around to the north and blows away the storm until the moon swims high, moored like a kite and darting against the fleeing shreds and ragtags of cloud.
I sit in the shelter outside Mrs Schexnaydre’s chain link fence. Opposite the school, it is used by those children who catch buses toward the lake. The streetlight casts a blueblack shadow. Across the boulevard, at the catercorner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants, is a vacant lot chest high in last summer’s weeds. Some weeks ago the idea came to me of buying the lot and building a service station. It is for sale, I learned, for twenty thousand dollars. What with the windfall from Mr Sartalamaccia, it becomes possible to think seriously of the notion. It is easy to visualize the little tile cube of a building with its far flung porches, its apron of silky concrete and, revolving on high, the immaculate bivalve glowing in every inch of its pretty styrene (I have already approached the Shell distributor).
A taxi pulls up under the streetlight. Kate gets out and strides past the shelter, hands thrust deep in her pockets. Her eyes are pools of darkness. There is about her face the rapt almost ugly look of solitary people. When I call out to her, she comes directly over with a lack of surprise, with a dizzy dutiful obedience, which is disquieting. Then I see that she is full of it, one of her great ideas, the sort that occur to people on long walks.
“What a fool I’ve been!” She lays both hands on my arm and takes no notice of the smell of the hour. She is nowhere; she is in the realm of her idea. “Do you think it is possible for a person to make a single mistake—not do something wrong, you understand, but make a miscalculation—and ruin his life?”
“Why not?”
“I mean after all. Couldn’t a person be miserable because he got one thing wrong and never learned otherwise—because the thing he got wrong was of such a nature that he could not be told because the telling itself got it wrong—just as if you had landed on Mars and therefore had no way of knowing that a Martian is mortally offended by a question and so every time you asked what was wrong, it only grew worse for you?” Catching sight of my sleeve, she seizes it with a curious rough gesture, like a housewife fingering goods. “My stars, pajamas,” she says offhandedly. “Well?” She searches my face in the violet shadow.
“I don’t know.”
“But I do know! I found out, Binx. None of you could have told me even if you wanted to. I don’t even know if you know.”
I wait gloomily. Long ago I learned to be wary of Kate’s revelations. These exalted moments, when she is absolutely certain what course to take for the rest of her lif
e, are often followed by spells of the blackest depression. “No, I swear I don’t believe you do,” says Kate, peering into my face, into one eye and then the other, like a lover. “And my telling you would do no good.”
“Tell me anyhow.”
“I am free. After twenty-five years I am free.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re not surprised?”
“When did you find out?”
“At four thirty this afternoon, yesterday afternoon.”
“At Merle’s?”
“Yes. I was looking up at his bookshelf and I hadn’t said anything for a long time. I saw his book, a book with a sort of burlap cover that always struck me unpleasantly. Yet how hard I had tried to live up to him and his book, live joyfully and as oneself etcetera. There were days when I would come in as nervous as an actress and there were moments When I succeeded—in being myself and brilliantly (look at me, Merle, I’m doing it!), so brilliantly that I think he loved me. Poor Merle. You see, there is nothing he can say. He can’t tell me the secret even if he knew it. Do you know what I did? After a minute or so he asked me: what comes to mind? I sat up and rubbed my eyes and then it dawned on me. But I couldn’t believe it. It was too simple. My God, can a person live twenty-five years, a life of crucifixion, through a misunderstanding? Yes! I stood up. I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free. But even if Merle knew this and told me, there is no way in the world I could have taken his advice. How strange to think that you cannot pass along the discovery. So again Merle said: what comes to mind? I got up and told him good-by. He said, it’s only four thirty; the hour is not yet over. Then he understood I was leaving. He got interested and suggested we look into the reasons. I said, Merle, how I wish you were right. How good to think that there are reasons and that if I am silent, it means I am hiding something. How happy I would be to be hiding something. And how proud I am when I do find secret reasons for you, your own favorite reasons. But what if there is nothing? That is what I’ve been afraid of until now—being found out to be concealing nothing at all. But now I know why I was afraid and why I needn’t be. I was afraid because I felt that I must be such and such a person, even as good a person as your joyous and creative person (I read your articles, Merle). What a discovery! One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be and shaking in my boots for fear I would fail—and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed and become your joyous and creative person, that it was not good enough for me and that I had something better. I was free. Now I am saying good-by, Merle. And I walked out, as free as a bird for the first time in my life, twenty-five years old, healthy as a horse, rich as cream, and with the world before me. Ah, don’t disapprove, Binx. Binx, Binx. You think I should go back! Oh I will, no doubt. But I know I am right or I would not feel so wonderful.”
She will not feel wonderful long. Already the sky over the Chef is fading and soon the dawn will glimmer about us like the bottom of the sea. I know very well that when the night falls away into gray distances, she will sink into herself. Even now she is overtaking herself: already she is laboring ever so slightly at her exaltation.
I take her cold hands. “What do you think of this for an idea?” I tell her about the service station and Mr Sartalamaccia. “We could stay on here at Mrs Schexnaydre’s. It is very comfortable. I may even run the station myself. You could come sit with me at night, if you liked. Did you know you can net over fifteen thousand a year on a good station?”
“You sweet old Binx! Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Sure.” I watch her uneasily.
“Not a bad life, you say. It would be the best of all possible lives.” She speaks in a rapture—something like my aunt. My heart sinks. It is too late. She has already overtaken herself.
“Don’t—worry about it.”
“I won’t! I won’t!”—as enraptured and extinguished in her soul, gone, as a character played by Eva Marie Saint. Leaning over, she hugs herself.
“What’s the matter?”
“Ooooh,” Kate groans, Kate herself now. “I’m so afraid.”
“I know.”
“What am I going to do?”
“You mean right now?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll go to my car. Then well drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then well go home.”
“Is everything going to be all right?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me. Say it.”
“Everything is going to be all right.”
Three
1
SATURDAY MORNING AT the office is dreary. The market is closed and there is nothing to do but get on with the letter writing. But this is no more than I expected. It is a fine day outside, freakishly warm. Tropical air has seeped into the earth and the little squares of St Augustine grass are springy and turgid. Camphor berries pop underfoot; azaleas and Judas trees are blooming on Elysian Fields. There is a sketch of cloud in the mild blue sky and the high thin piping of waxwings comes from everywhere.
As Sharon types the letters, I stand hands in pockets looking through the gold lettering of our window. I think of Sharon and American Motors. It closed yesterday at 301/4.
At eleven o’clock it is time to speak.
“I’m quitting now. I’ve got sixty miles to go before lunch.”
“Wherebouts you going?”
“To the Gulf Coast.”
The clatter of the typewriter does not slacken.
“Would you like to go?”
“M-hm”—absently. She is not surprised. “It just so happens I got work to do.”
“No, you haven’t. I’m closing the office.”
“Well I be dog.” There is still no surprise. What I’ve been waiting to see is how she will go about shedding her secretary manner. She doesn’t. The clatter goes on.
“I’m leaving now.”
“You gon let me finish this or not!” she cries in a scolding voice. So this is how she does it. She feels her way into familiarity by way of vexations. “You go head.”
“Go?”
“I’ll be right out. I got to call somebody.”
“So do I.” I call Kate. Mercer answers the phone. Kate has gone to the airport with Aunt Emily. He believes she is well.
Sharon looks at me with a yellow eye. “Is Miss Cutrer any kin to you?” she cries in her new scolding voice.
“She is my cousin.”
“Some old girl told me you were married to her. I said nayo indeed.”
“I’m not married to anyone.”
“I said you weren’t!” She tilts her head forward and goes off into a fit of absent-mindedness.
“Why did you want to know if I was married?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, son. I’m not going out with any married man.”
But still she has not come to the point of waiting upon my ministrations—like a date. Still very much her own mistress, she sets about tidying up her desk. When she shoulders her Guatemalan bag and walks briskly to the door, it is for me to tag along behind her. Now I see how she will have it: don’t think I’m standing around waiting for you to state your business—you said you were closing the office—very well, I am leaving.
I jump ahead of her to open the door.
“Do you want to go home and let me pick you up in half an hour? Put your suit on under your clothes.”
“All right!” But it isn’t all right. Her voice is a little too bright.
“Meanwhile I’ll go get my car and my suit.”
“All right.” She is openly grudging. It is not right at all! She is just like Linda.
“I have a better idea. Come on and walk home with me to get my car and then I’ll take you to your house.”
“All right.” A much better all right. “Now you wait right here. This won’t take me long.”
When she comes out, her eyes are s
napping.
“Is everything all right?”
“You mighty right it is”—eyes flashing, Uh oh. The boy friend has torn it.
“I hope you brought your suit down from Eufala.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Why no.”
“It’s some suit. Just an old piece of a suit. I was going to get me one at Maison Blanche but I didn’t think I’d be going swimming in March.”
“Do you like to swim?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I’d rather swim than eat. I really would. Where’re we going?”
“To the ocean.”
“The ocean! I never knew there was an ocean anywhere around here.”
“It’s the open Gulf. The same thing.”
When I put her in the car, she addresses an imaginary third person. “Now this is what I call real service. Your boss not only lets you off to go swimming—he takes you to the beach.”
On these terms we set forth: she the girl whose heart’s desire is to swim; I, her generous employer, who is nice enough to provide transportation.
Early afternoon finds us spinning along the Gulf Coast. Things have not gone too badly. As luck would have it, no sooner do we cross Bay St Louis and reach the beach drive than we are involved in an accident. Fortunately it is not serious. When I say as luck would have it, I mean good luck. Yet how, you might wonder, can even a minor accident be considered good luck?
