Clock Without Hands

by Carson McCullers

  Sherman, who had been listening jealously, was relieved when the music stopped. Furiously Jester attacked the etude at the beginning.

  "Stop it," Sherman shouted, but Jester played on, the music punctured frantically with Sherman's shouted protests.

  "Well that's pretty fair," Sherman said at the frantic, rickety end. "However, you don't have tone."

  "Didn't I tell you I could play it?"

  "There are all kinds of ways of playing music. Personally, I don't like yours."

  "I know it's just an advocation, but I enjoy it."

  "That's your privilege."

  "I like the way you play jazz better than the way you play German lieder," Jester said.

  "When I was a youth," Sherman said, "for a while I played in this band. We had hot sessions. The leader was Bix Beiderbecke and he tooted a golden horn."

  "Bix Beiderbecke, why, that impossible."

  Sherman lamely tried to correct his lie. "No, his name was Rix Heiderhorn. Anyway, I really wanted to sing Tristan at the Metropolitan Opera House but the role is not adaptable to me. In fact, most of the roles of the Metropolitan are severely limited for people of my race; in fact, the only role I can think of offhand is the role of Othello who was a Negro Moor. I like the music all right, but on the other hand, I don't dig his feeling. How anybody can be that jealous over a white dame is beyond me. I would think about Desdemona... me ... Desdemona ... me...? No, I can't dig it." He began to sing, "O! now, for ever farewell the tranquil mind."

  "It must give you a funny feeling, not to know who your mother was."

  "No it don't," said Sherman, who had spent all his childhood trying to find his mother. He would pick out one woman after another who had a gentle touch and a soft voice. Is this my mother? he would think in wordless expectancy that ended always in sorrow. "Once you get accustomed to it, it don't bother you at all." He said this because he had never gotten accustomed to it. "I loved very much Mrs. Stevens, but she told me outright I wasn't her son."

  "Who is Mrs. Stevens?"

  "A lady I was boarded out with five years. It was Mr. Stevens who boogered me."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Sexually assaulted, goofy. I was sexually assaulted when I was eleven years old."

  Jester was speechless until he finally said, "I didn't know anybody ever sexually assaulted a boy."

  "Well they do, and I was."

  Jester, who always had been subject to propulsive vomiting, suddenly began to vomit.

  Sherman cried, "Oh, Zippo's Wilton rug," and took off his shirt to scrub the rug. "Get towels in the kitchen," he said to Jester who was still vomiting, "or get out of this house."

  Jester, still vomiting, stumbled out. Jester sat on the porch until he stopped vomiting, then he came back to help Sherman clean up the mess, although the smell of his own vomit made him feel sickish again. "I was just wondering," he said, "since you don't know who your mother is, and since you have a voice like yours, if your mother wouldn't be Marian Anderson?"

  For the first time Sherman, who soaked up compliments like a sponge because he had had so few, was truly impressed. In all of his search for his mother he had never thought about Marian Anderson.

  "Toscanini said she had a voice like once in a century."

  Sherman, who felt it was almost too good to be true, wanted to think about it alone, and as a matter of fact, hug the idea to himself. Sherman changed the subject abruptly. "When I was boogered by Mr. Stevens"—Jester turned white and swallowed—"I couldn't tell nobody. Mrs. Stevens asked why I was always hitting Mr. Stevens. I couldn't tell her. It's the kind of thing you can't tell a lady, so at that period I began to stammer."

  Jester said, "I don't see how you can even bear to talk about it."

  "Well, it happened, and I was just eleven years old."

  "What a queer thing to do," Jester said, who was still wiping the iron alligator.

  "I'll borrow a vacuum tomorrow and vacuum this rug," Sherman said, who was still concerned about the furniture. He flung a towel at Jester: "If you feel anything like that is coming on again, kindly use this ... Since I was stammering and always hitting Mr. Stevens, Reverend Wilson talked to me one day. At first he would not believe me, as Mr. Stevens was a deacon in the church and as I had made up so many things."

  "What other things?"

  "Lies I would tell people about my mother." The thought of Marian Anderson returned to him and he wanted Jester to go home so he could brood about it. "When are you going home?" he asked.

  Jester, who was still feeling sorry for Sherman, did not want to take the hint. "Have you ever heard Marian Anderson sing 'Were You There When They Crucified My Lord'?" he asked.

  "Spirituals, that's another item that makes me blow a fuse."

  "It occurs to me your fuses blow awfully easy."

  "What's that to you?"

  "I was just commenting how I love 'Were You There When They Crucified My Lord' sung by Marian Anderson. I practically cry every time I hear it."

  "Well, cry ahead. That's your privilege."

  "...in fact, most spirituals make me cry."

  "Me, I wouldn't waste my time and trouble. However, Marian Anderson sings a creepy species of German lieder."

  "I cry when she sings spirituals."

  "Cry ahead."

  "I don't understand your point of view."

  Spirituals had always offended Sherman. First, they made him cry and make a fool of himself which was mortally hateful to him; second, he had always lashed out that it was nigger music, but how could he say that if Marian Anderson was his true mother?

  "What made you think up Marian Anderson?" Since that worry-wart Jester wouldn't take the hint and go home to let him daydream in peace, he wanted to talk about her.

  "On account of your voices. Two golden, once-in-a-century voices are quite a coincidence."

  "Well, why did she abandon me? I read somewhere where she loves her own old mother," he added cynically, unable to give up his marvelous dream.

  "She might have fallen in love, passionately, I mean, with this white prince," Jester said, carried away with the story.

  "Jester Clane," Sherman's voice was mild but firm, "never say 'white' just out like that."

  "Why?"

  "Say Caucasian, otherwise you would refer to my race as colored or even Negro, while the proper name is Nigerian or Abyssinian."

  Jester only nodded and swallowed.

  "...otherwise you might hurt people's feelings, and you're such a tenderhearted sissy, I know you wouldn't like that."

  "I resent you calling me a tenderhearted sissy," Jester protested.

  "Well, you are one."

  "How do you know?"

  "Little Bo-Peep told me so." Jester's admiration for this remark was not lessened because he had heard it before.

  "Even if she had fallen for this Caucasian, I wonder why she left me in a church pew at the Holy Ascension Church in Milan, Georgia, of all places."

  Jester, who had no way of sensing the anxious, fallow search which had lasted all Sherman's childhood, was worried that a random suggestion on his part could have been blown up to such certainty. Jester said conscientiously, "Maybe she wasn't exactly Marian Anderson; if it was, she must have considered herself wedded to her career. Still it would be a kind of crummy thing to do and I never thought of Marian Anderson as the least bit crummy. In fact, I adore her. Passionately, I mean."

  "Why are you always using the word 'passionately'?"

  Jester, who had been drunk all evening and for the first time with passion, could not answer. For the passion of first youth is lightly sown but strong. It can spring into instant being by a song heard in the night, a voice, the sight of a stranger. Passion makes you daydream, destroys concentration on arithmetic, and at the time you most yearn to be witty, makes you feel like a fool. In early youth, love at first sight, that epitome of passion, turns you into a zombie so that you don't realize if you're sitting up or lying down and you can't remember what you
have just eaten to save your life. Jester, who was just learning about passion, was very much afraid. He had never been intoxicated and never wanted to be. A boy who made A grades in high school, except for a sprinkling of B's in geometry and chemistry, he daydreamed only when he was in bed and would not let himself daydream in the morning after the alarm clock went off, although sometimes he would have dearly liked to. Such a person is naturally afraid of love at first sight. Jester felt that if he touched Sherman it would lead to a mortal sin, but what the sin was, he didn't know. He was just careful not to touch him and watched him with the zombie eyes of passion.

  Suddenly Sherman began to pound on middle C, over and over.

  "What's that?" asked Jester, "just middle C?"

  "How many vibrations are there in the treble?"

  "What kind of vibrations are you talking about?"

  "The teeny infinitesimal sounds that vibrate when you strike middle C or any other note."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Well, I'm telling you."

  Again Sherman pounded middle C, first with the right forefinger, then with the left. "How many vibrations do you hear in the bass?"

  "Nothing," Jester said.

  "There are sixty-four vibrations in the treble and another sixty-four in the bass," Sherman said, magnificently unaware of his own ignorance.

  "What of it?"

  "I'm just telling you I hear every teeniest vibration in the whole diatonic scale from here," Sherman struck the lowest bass note, "to here," the highest treble note was sounded.

  "Why are you telling me all this? Are you a piano tuner?"

  "As a matter of fact, I used to be, smarty. But I'm not talking about pianos."

  "Well, what the hell are you talking about?"

  "About my race and how I register every single vibration that happens to those of my race. I call it my black book."

  "Black book?... I see, you are talking of the piano as a sort of symbol," Jester said, delighted to use the brainy word.

  "Symbol," repeated Sherman, who had read the word but never used it, "yeah man, that's right... when I was fourteen years old a crowd of us got in a rage against the Aunt Jemima signs, so we suddenly decided to tear them off. We scraped and chiseled away to get the sign off. Upshot ... cops caught us in the middle and all four of the gang was sent to jail, sentenced to two years on the road for destroying public property. I wasn't caught because I was just a lookout, but what happened is in my black book. One guy died from overwork, another came back a living zombie. Have you heard of the Nigerians and that quarry in Atlanta, who broke their legs with hammers so they wouldn't be worked to death? One of them was one that was caught on the Aunt Jemima signs."

  "I read that in the paper and it made me sick, but is that the solemn truth, was he one of those Golden Nigerian friends of yours?"

  "I didn't say he was a Golden Nigerian, I just said he was somebody I knew, and that's what I mean by vibrations. I vibrate with every injustice that is done to my race. Vibrate ... vibrate ... and vibrate, see?"

  "I would too, if I were of your race."

  "No you wouldn't ... tenderhearted, chicken, sissy."

  "I resent that."

  "Well resent ... resent ... resent. When are you going home?"

  "You don't want me?"

  "No. For the last time, no ... no ... NO." He added lowly in a venomous voice, "You fatuous, fair, redheaded boy. Fatuous," Sherman said, using a word that had been hurled at him by a brainy vocabulary-wise boy.

  Jester automatically ran his hand down his rib cage. "I'm not a bit fat."

  "I didn't say fat ... I said fatuous. Since you have such a putrid and limited vocabulary, that means fool ... fool ... fool."

  Jester held up his hand as though warding off a blow as he backed out of the door. "Oh, sticks and stones," he screamed as he ran away.

  He ran all the way to Reba's house and when he reached the door he rapped with the firm rap of anger.

  The inside of the house was not like he had expected. It was an ordinary house, and a whore-lady asked him, "How old are you boy?" and Jester, who never lied, said desperately, "Twenty-one."

  "What would you like to drink?"

  "Thanks a million, but nothing, nothing at all, I'm on the wagon tonight." It was so easy he did not tremble when the whore-lady showed him upstairs, nor did he tremble when he lay in bed with a woman with orange hair and gold in her teeth. He closed his eyes, and having in mind a dark face and blue flickering eyes, he was able to become a man.

  Meanwhile, Sherman Pew was writing a letter in ice-cold sober black ink; the letter started, "Dear Madame Anderson."

  5

  ALTHOUGH the Judge was up the night before until far past his bedtime and had spent a restless night, he awakened at four in the morning as usual. After sloshing in the bathtub so mightily that he waked his grandson, who was also having a restless night, he dried himself, dressed slowly, using mainly the right hand because of his infirmity ... he could not manage the shoestrings so he left them flopping ... and bathed, dressed and in command of himself, he tiptoed down to the kitchen. It promised to be a fair day; the gray of the dawn sky was changing to the rose and yellow of sunrise. Although the kitchen was still gray, the Judge did not turn on the light, as he liked to look at the sky at this hour. Humming a little song without a tune, he put on the coffee and began preparing his breakfast. He selected the two brownest eggs in the icebox as he had convinced himself that brown eggs were more nourishing than the white ones. After months of practice, with many a gooey slip, he had learned to crack an egg and slip it carefully into the poacher. While the eggs were poaching he buttered his bread lightly and put it in the oven as he disliked toaster toast. Finally, he put a yellow cloth on the breakfast table and blue salt and pepper shakers. Although it was a solitary meal, the Judge did not want it to be a dismal one. The breakfast finished, he carried it item by item to the table, using only the good hand. Meanwhile the coffee was perking merrily. As a final touch he brought mayonnaise from the refrigerator and put a careful dollop on each poached egg. The mayonnaise was made of mineral oil and had, thank God, few calories. The Judge had found a wonderful book, Diet Without Despair, which he read constantly. The only trouble was that mineral oil was laxative and it behooved you to be careful not to eat too much for fear of sudden bathroom accidents, bathroom accidents which he knew were unbecoming to a magistrate ... especially if it occurred in the courthouse office as it had two times. Being sensitive to his own dignity, the Judge was careful to ration the helpings of the delicious, low-calorie mayonnaise.

  The small yellow tablecloth and others of the same size which he used and cherished, having them carefully hand laundered, were the ones that had been used on his wife's breakfast trays that he had brought up to her every morning. The robin's-egg blue salt and pepper set had been hers too, as well as the silver coffeepot the Judge now used for his own breakfast. In the old days when he became, little by little, an early riser, he would make his own breakfast, then lovingly prepare his wife's tray, often stopping to go out into the garden and pick some posies to decorate the tray. Then he would walk up carefully, bearing her breakfast, and if his wife was sleeping he would awaken her with kisses, as he was loath to start the day without her gentle voice and encouraging smile before he left for the office. (Except when she became ill he did not waken her; but he could not start out on his day until he saw her, which meant that sometimes toward the end he did not get to the office until afternoon.)

  But surrounded by his wife's possessions, his grief subdued by the years, the Judge seldom thought consciously of Miss Missy, especially at breakfast time. He just used her things and sometimes would stare at the blue salt and pepper set with the stun of grief in his eyes.

  Anxiety always put a keen edge on the Judge's appetite, and he was especially hungry this morning. When his grandson had come in at nearly one the night before, he had gone straight to bed, and when the Judge had followed, the boy had said in a cold, angr
y voice, almost shouting: "Don't bother me, for Christ sake, don't bother me. Why can't I ever be left in peace?" The explosion was so loud and sudden that quietly, almost humbly, the Judge went away in his bare, pink feet and his dimity nightshirt. Even when he heard Jester sobbing in the night he was too timid to go in to him.

  So for these due and good reasons the Judge was ravenous this morning. He ate the whites of his eggs first ... the least delicious part of his breakfast ... then he carefully mashed up the peppered and mayonnaised yolks and spread them delicately on his toast. He ate with careful relish, his maimed hand curved lovingly around the rationed food as though to defend it from some possible aggressor. His eggs and toast finished, he turned now to the coffee which he had carefully decanted into his wife's silver pot. He loaded the coffee with saccharine, blew on it to cool it somewhat, and sipped it slowly, very slowly. After the first cup, he prepared his first morning cigar. It was now going on seven and the sky was a pale tender blue that precedes a fair bright day. Lovingly, the Judge alternated his attention between his coffee and his first cigar. When he had that little seizure and Doc Tatum took him off cigars and whiskey, the Judge had been worried to death at first. He slipped around smoking in the bathroom, drinking in the pantry. He argued with Doc, and then came the irony of Doc's death ... a confirmed teetotaler who never smoked and only enjoyed a chew on rare occasions. Although the Judge was overwhelmed by grief and an inconsolable mourner at the wake, when the shock of death was over, the Judge felt a secret, such a secret relief that he was almost unaware of what had happened and never acknowledged it. But within a month after Doc's death he was smoking cigars in public and drinking openly as before, but prudently he cut down to seven cigars a day and a pint of bourbon.

  Breakfast over, the old Judge was still hungry. He picked up Diet Without Despair which was on the kitchen shelf and commenced to read studiously, hungrily. It almost comforted him to know that anchovies, large-sized, were only twenty calories and a stalk of asparagus only five, and that a medium-sized apple was a hundred. But though this knowledge almost comforted him, he was not quite soothed, for what he wanted was more toast, dripping with butter and spread with the homemade blackberry jam that Verily had made. He could see in his mind's eye the delicately browned toast and feel in his mouth the sweet, grainy blackberries. Although he had no intention of digging his grave with his teeth, the anxiety that had sharpened his appetite had at the same time weakened his will; stealthily he was limping to the breadbox when a low growl in his stomach made him stop, his hand outstretched toward the breadbox, and start toward the bathroom which had been put in for him after the 'little seizure.' He veered on his way to pick up Diet Without Despair in case there should be any waiting.