by James Jones
But it was not only the book and the rest of it that made him unable to participate in the sense of forthcoming gaiety: He was working ten and sometimes fourteen hours a day in the shell factory painting forty-millimeter shells—and now rifle grenades, too—and he could not forget that as soon as all of these were finished up, they were being swiftly shipped off to Korea—where men were using them, and perhaps being killed in using them. And he could sense the quality of rising hysteria in the whole town as Festival Week approached: to forget! just for a little while! But he could not forget: He worked with it every day, always in his mind. He just did not belong down there downtown, not the way he felt. The heavy ominous feeling of being in at the end of the Roman Empire which he had felt so strongly over Dewey and Hubie down at the house on Lincoln Street came back over him, as he watched the growing hysteria-to-forget as Festival Week approached. The trouble was, he knew the reason for it. He felt it too: that fear. But he knew what it was. And consequently, he could not participate.
But if Dave wanted nothing to do with what he could only call the “Tragedy of Festival Week,” Ginnie did not feel that way at all. She was looking forward to it eagerly. Dave had slept with her once, just once, in the past whole month. He had tried halfheartedly several times, but when she put him off, he just gave up. But in spite of that, Ginnie was making eager plans for all that they were going to do together Festival Week. And, in the end, it was this that brought on the crisis, and the final blowup, between them.
For the first two days of Festival Week, he refused to go out with her. He hated to do it, he knew how much she wanted him to go, but he couldn’t help it. In the first place, he hadn’t grown a beard or mustachios, and he did not feel equal to spending an hour in those damned stocks. He wasn’t in the proper mood. Ginnie, of course, could not understand this. And he made no very strong effort at trying to explain it to her. So he had stayed home those first two nights, working on the book alone in the little house, and it had been one of the most peaceful experiences he had had in some time—even though he couldn’t get the writing on the love affair going very much better. He was beginning to think perhaps he was being too calumnious with this love affair because of his irritation with Ginnie—perhaps even losing his objectivity. Anyway, it was worthwhile staying home and working on it. And so Ginnie had gone on by herself with some of her friends. Reluctantly, and angrily hurt at him—but she had gone.
But on the third night, when he came home from work, he found Ginnie already waiting for him with a wad of false hair.
“Look!” she said eagerly. “Look what I bought you! Now we can fix you up some sideburns and a beard. Then you can go and be all right. We’ll have a lot of fun. There’s a big dance on tonight the southwest corner.”
“Ah, look, honey,” Dave said sadly; he was incredibly touched by the false hair. “You go ahead and go with your friends, and have a good time. I don’t want to go. If I go, I’ll only be a wet blanket and spoil the fun.”
Ginnie looked at the false hair in her hand disappointedly and let her arm drop to her side. Her own costume was an old-fashioned calico dress and long-billed sunbonnet she had picked up God knew where, and her round moon face stared out from under the sunbonnet at him—at first, pensively, then irritably.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “You don’t never want to do anything with me. All you do is stay here at home with that damned book. You don’t love me at all anymore.”
“Ah, honey, it’s not that,” Dave said. “I just don’t feel like going, that’s all. It’s— Well, all those people— You know?— They’re—” He didn’t want to say hysterical, but it was the only word that fit. “They’re not having fun, they’re— Well, they’re just hysterical.”
“Hysterical!” Ginnie cried. “Hell! You and your damn big writer’s words! Those people are having fun. Why can’t you ever have fun? How do you think I feel? havin to go down to the festival without my husband?” Suddenly, she threw the wad of false hair on the floor. “All my friends, their husbands go with them. And they have fun. And what do you think they say about me? Hunh? You never want to do anything with me, damn you. You just don’t want to do anything with me, because it’s me.”
“Ah, no, honey,” Dave said. “It ain’t that. It’s just that— Well, it’s just gloomy. The whole damn thing makes me sad.”
“I know what it is!” Ginnie cried suddenly, her disappointment at the failure of the false hair shining on her moonlike face. “It’s that damned book! You sit and work and beat your damned brains out on it—and what do you get? Nothing! That damned book! It won’t never sell! And you keep wastin time on it when you could be livin! With me!”
They were standing just inside the kitchen door, around the corner from the little room Dave had fixed up as a writing room and to which Dave had gradually retreated, hoping to get in and shut the door, until he was fully inside of it now with his hand resting on the corner of the table he used for a desk.
“That damned book!” Ginnie screamed and, herself still in the kitchen, seized up a heavy thick-walled aluminum saucepan, and taking a step toward him, threw it with all her strength through the door. She didn’t throw it at anything particularly—but the saucepan hit Dave’s typewriter sitting on the table beside which he stood, and both typewriter and saucepan slid off the table and crashed to the floor.
For a moment, there was complete silence in the little house, as both of them stood staring at each other and looking startled. Then Dave bent and picked up the typewriter and set it back on the table to see what damage had been done. The platen had been knocked completely off of it, and the carriage itself was bent. The thin back of the little portable had been deeply dented. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t be fixed, but Dave felt his face growing white with anger. And as his own face grew white, Ginnie’s face under the old sunbonnet grew correspondingly redder with sullen guilt.
“Well, I’m glad I done it,” she said sullenly. “Maybe now you’ll throw that old thing away and start livin like a reglar human being.” She stared at him, wide-eyed with fright.
“Get out!” Dave hissed at her through his teeth. Suddenly, he took a stride toward her beyond the doorway. “I said get out!”
And Ginnie, her eyes wide with both guilt and fear, backed away and then put her hands up over her face and began to cry and ran out through the back door.
Dave, his face still deathly pale, merely stood looking after her, feeling sorry for her, and for himself.
Ginnie Moorehead, Ginnie Moorehead Hirsh, was crying so hard she could hardly see the path as she ran around to the front of the house. He wasn’t comin after her. But that wasn’t why she was runnin. She was runnin because she had just done the very thing she had promised herself she wouldn’t never do: She had acted unbecomin to a lady. And that was what she was runnin from. Only, there wasn’t no place to run to. When she got out to the sidewalk, breathing heavily, she stopped and stood looking back at the little house sadly. Then, finally, she started to walk to town.
She had tried. God knew, she had tried. Takin all them cookin lessons. And she kept that house immaculately clean. She had fixed it up real pretty. And she had changed all her friends. She had done everything she knew. She had even watched her language, always saying “taking” instead of “takin”—except maybe when she got mad or excited. Takin! she thought wildly: What the hell difference did it make if you said “takin” instead of “taking”? Damn them! All of them! She had done everything she knew. But most of all, she had tried to be a lady for him, because she knew ladies was what he liked—real ladies, like that schoolteacher Gwen French. She had tried to be one. And it was right there that she had failed, and she guessed she knew it. And she wasn’t no lady. She was a bum. And always had been, she thought sorrowfully. A pig! Like ’Bama Dillert was always callin her behind her back. Oh, she knew what he said about her: a pig. A bum. All right, damn them! She hadn’t done nothing, hadn’t been out with nobody, ever since she
got home from Kansas. She had tried her very level best.
But it wasn’t good enough, was it? All right then, she’d show them. And wiping her eyes dry on her little lacy handkerchief she headed on up to town—but not for the Festival Week: She headed for Ciro’s. And after that, by God, she’d go out to Smitty’s, too, if she had to. Because, if she went to the festival tonight, by God, it would be with a man.
It wasn’t Dave’s fault. It was hers. And she guessed she knew it. Something in her had done it, no matter how hard she had tried, and kept her from bein a lady; and hating herself for whatever it was in her that had done it, she went resolutely on uptown to Ciro’s. Told her to get out! Of her own home! But it wasn’t his fault. It was hers.
Two or three times as she walked along she felt like somebody was following her, but when she looked around there was nothing.
Dave sat for a long time at the kitchen table after she had gone, thinking it all over. Something had happened; some light had gone out; and he could feel it. It wasn’t the busting of the typewriter so much, it was the way both of them had reacted to the act, afterwards. He shouldn’t have told her to get out like that, and he was sorry for that. And she shouldn’t have thrown the saucepan, and she was probably sorry for that. But neither one of them had reacted like they really felt: sorry. Why? Pride? Stubbornness? Yes, but also no. Basically, they had both reacted as they did because both of them were afflicted with—certain—ahh—desires. They each had in them a sort of superimposed picture, like a celluloid overlay on a map, of what life was, or was not, and also of what it should be—or, rather, what they wanted it to be. And each saw his own picture so clearly that they actually made them exist. And Ginnie’s picture of the world and his picture of the world could not be made to coincide: because both of them existed just as factually and as materially as the real world existed. And so it was just exactly like the physical impossibility of two bodies trying to inhabit the same space at the same time.
Perhaps—no, almost undoubtedly—he thought elaborating it as he sat there—undoubtedly no two humans on earth ever lived in identical worlds. So he was probably wrong when he had thought Frank and Agnes were happily married, and that Dawnie and Shotridge were happily married.
Because each had his own private world, and what was more wanted to keep it. And not only that, wanted to if possible impose it upon everyone else that he possibly could. And that was always where the trouble came. Because the other man—or woman—or nation, for that matter—was doing the same identical thing. Consequently, only clash resulted—and trouble.
And from the trouble came the pain: the pain of defeat, the pain of victory and the hate it brought, but most of all the pain of being forced to relinquish part or all of that illusory world each has built up for himself.
Ginnie—poor old Ginnie—with her illusory world of what she thought a happy respectable marriage ought to be—Ginnie, who wanted to be respectable more than anything else in the world—so much so that she even convinced herself that it was distasteful for a “lady” to even sleep with her own husband.
And was he any better? with his illusory world of what he thought would be a safe, sane, peaceful, work-producing life being married to a good dumb writer’s wife?
For the first time, really—sitting there at the little kitchen table, smoking a cigarette—Dave thought he could get a glimpse of what Bob French had been driving at when he talked about “illusions” all the time.
And for the first time in his life, as this window opened up, giving him a glimpse beyond the frosted pane into the cold wintry scene outside, Dave Hirsh realized with complete finality just how much he was, after all, alone—and would always be alone. Just how alone it was almost ghastly to contemplate—because no one would ever just exactly see the illusory world he lived in, nor would he ever be able to get out of it. But perhaps you could get out: in writing, in creating. It wouldn’t make you less alone, but it would at least make other people’s illusory world more real—to you. But even so, such utter and complete loneliness—such aloneness—was almost physically unbearable. And no way out of it; not through love, not through work, not through play, not through courage, not through fear. No way.
And the real world: What about it? Was there even a real world? If there was, no human would ever see it. To all intents and purposes, there was no real world, only a sharply jostling collection of private spheres. You could love a million women, and be loved by the million in return, and never would you be able to show them your private world, or have them show you theirs; never would either of you be able to escape from your private illusory world. It was not only frightening, it was devastating.
Sitting there with terror quivering all through him like mercury, Dave thought he could realize what Bob French had been driving at when he spoke of “Glamours.” Everything that exists is “Glamours;” because there isn’t anything but “Glamours.” And simultaneously, he thought perhaps he understood—a little bit anyway—of what Bob meant by Karma that he was always talking about. He didn’t understand it clearly. But he had made Karma with Ginnie, and simultaneously made Karma in Ginnie. By clashing his private illusory world against hers. Just like he had made Karma with and also in everyone he had come in contact with since he first came back to Parkman. Frank, and Agnes, Gwen and Bob and ’Bama, Dewey, Hubie, Wally. And that Karma would stay with all of them until the day they died. And perhaps, as Bob maintained, would stay with them afterwards, too. And, as Bob also said so often, perhaps they had all met before somewhere, too? And perhaps, if it was so, they were all also working out old Karma, at the same time they were making new. He wished there was just some way he could actually know. Some Sign, some Voice, some Something that would speak to him. But nothing did.
Poor old Ginnie: with her illusory world of what respectability should be. And him, with his “Glamour” of the safe, calm, productive life. Man, what a match they were! In his illusory picture, he had tried to bring about, he had caused her pain—and in so doing, had caused “Karma.” She had caused him pain, too; but he was more responsible than she was because he was smarter. He knew more, or should have. Whatever Ginnie did or hadn’t done, he was responsible for his own illusions. He had run to her and, in a wildly self-imposed illusion, had taken her on—because he was afraid after having lost Gwen, afraid of being alone. And whatever Ginnie had to do with the whole thing just simply did not count. Only what he did—as far as he himself was concerned.
“Each man must find his salvation in himself alone. It is not to be found outside. In another person.” Bob French’s statement came back in his mind clearly, with an understanding of it he had never had before. It was really very simple: There just wasn’t any other way. There just wasn’t any other place to find it. And nothing that anyone did to you, or for you, made one damn bit of difference, in the end. And Bob’s other statement came back, too: “It was the most painful thing I ever had to learn in my life, dear Dave.”
Tonight, somehow, had broken two illusions: God knew how many more both of them had. But tonight had broken two: Ginnie’s illusion of what a happy respectable marriage was—and his own—which was an even greater one—that there existed a way in which a man need not be alone. Whatever happened from now on to either of them was not the other’s responsibility anymore. And perhaps, never had been.
Stubbing out his cigarette—his third since she had gone—Dave got up and went to pack. The terror that had slid mercurially along his veins had subsided. And in its place was left only that bone-cold aloneness, frozen as the moon. He packed only one bag. He looked, once, at all his war ribbons; then left them in their drawer. In the bag, with the few clothes he was taking, he carefully packed the stack of manuscript. And as he did so, he knew something else: That love affair didn’t belong in this book at all; Bob French had been right all along; and if it made a slim volume, to hell with it; and if it didn’t sell because there wasn’t enough sex in it, why to hell with that, too. That love affair didn’t bel
ong in there. And when he got settled in someplace, wherever it might be, he would start working on it from that theory. And after that? Well, there was that novel about his childhood and Parkman that he wanted to write. And then, there was that novel on Ginnie’s life that he wanted to write. That one would be an awful lot better now than if he had written it when he first conceived it. And then, in addition to those, there was still the true novel he wanted to write about Francine and the group in Hollywood. He figured, as he packed, that he would have plenty to keep him busy quite a while.
The only other thing he packed was his broken typewriter in its battered little case. He could leave it and buy another one somewhere wherever he was going but somehow—sentimentally, perhaps—he did not want to leave it. After all, it had been through as much with him as his head had, the past two years. The broken platen he padded into the case with rags, then he set it on the floor of the kitchen with the bag and looked all around to see if there wasn’t something else he wanted to take. There wasn’t. He was ready to go.
But then, just as he was ready to pick them up and go, a sort of an idea struck him: Only God knew where he might be the next few weeks until he got settled in, or what might happen to him. And lighting another cigarette, he sat down again at the kitchen table and decided to write himself out a Last Will and Testament. Really, he didn’t know what made him do it—probably the manuscript more than anything else, he didn’t want anything to happen to it; but after he had done it, he felt strangely better. There really wasn’t much to leave: the house, and its contents; his little old Plymouth; and his little share of the taxi service. That was all. He left all of these to Ginnie: She deserved them. The manuscript he left to Bob and Gwen French jointly. It didn’t take very long to write it out. But then, sitting looking at it, he had an afterthought and wrote out two more exact copies of it. One he put in an envelope and addressed to Judge Deacon, and the other he put in another envelope and addressed it to Gwen French. He would like to see her—and Old Bob—once more before he left; but it would only be painful to them all. Could a man really live and not cause pain? Dave wondered. It was an interesting thought. Old Bob would probably say: No; we were all supposed to cause each other pain. In the envelope addressed to Gwen, he stuck an added little note:
