First Love and Other Sorrows: Stories

by Brodkey, Harold

  At night, before going to the dining hall for supper, he would put on his bathrobe and slip down to the pool in the basement of Adams House. There, under the wooden beams, he would swim angrily from one end of the pool to the other, faster and faster, until his arms ached. Then he would take a cold shower.

  When he slept, he dreamed of carnage, horses, and speeding automobiles. He went to French movies and ground his knees against the seat in front of him. He laughed at himself, and decided to break this absurd habit he had got into of thinking all the time about this girl he had never met, but he didn’t quite succeed. At last, he admitted to himself that he was in love with her; and one night, sleeping in his lower bunk while Dimitri breathed heavily over his head, he had tears in his eyes because he was so foolish and did desire that girl whom he had seen the two times mentioned and only twice more besides.

  Having resigned himself—in imitation of Dante—to a state of perpetual longing, he felt calmer and looked at the world with sad, scholarly eyes. But his equilibrium was delicate, and in December Dimitri began having an affair with a Radcliffe girl named Felicia. Upperclassmen could have girls in their room in the afternoon if they signed them in with the campus policeman who sat in a little room near the main entrance of their house, and signed them out when they left. There was always the chance the policeman would come to the room and check up, but even so on gray December afternoons Dimitri, all bundled up, would come searching through Widener for Elgin and ask him not to come home until after six o’clock because Dimitri was taking Felicia to the room. Then Elgin would sit in front of his books, numbed, unable to read, with fine beads of sweat standing out on his upper lip and forehead.

  Once he came back to the room and found Dimitri lying in front of a fire in the fireplace; the fire was being fed by Dimitri’s lecture notes.

  “Oh God, it’s you. How I hate your ugly face!” Dimitri said, but Elgin knew what he meant; at that moment, being Elgin and not Felicia was a blasphemy. He tiptoed through the room to hang up his coat and tiptoed out again.

  In January, immediately after exams, Elgin came down with flu. He was exhausted. When he was well again, it seemed to him that he had been washed clean and purified. He hardly thought about that girl at all.

  But one sunny, cold morning in February Elgin saw her standing in front of Sever Hall. She was wearing long blue woolen socks, and she was talking to a pock-marked boy in a raccoon overcoat. Elgin suddenly turned and went into Sever and waited in the hall until the bell rang. The girl came in, and Elgin followed her upstairs and into a classroom; he sat three rows in back of her. It was a course given by Professor Bush on Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century. And that afternoon Elgin went and got permission to transfer from The Victorian Novel to that class.

  The girl’s name was Caroline Hedges and she came from Baltimore. She was a horsewoman of considerable ability. She spent a good deal of her time on clothes, not ever being quite sure where true elegance lay. She was inclined to buy pale colors, blouses one size too large for her, and tweeds. She was easily embarrassed. She read a good deal, her favorite books being “The Charterhouse of Parma,” “Anna Karenina,” and “Madame Bovary.”

  She was very proud and easily moved by appeals to her courage. She considered she’d had a happy childhood, and she liked her family (although she could not help looking down on them a little because their name was not famous in the history of America). When she was ten, she had briefly loved a cousin of hers, who was twelve, and who had taken her to the National Museum of Art in Washington and told her the names of the great painters.

  At Radcliffe, her freshman year, she discovered that she had been sheltered, compared to most of the other girls, and she felt young and slightly ashamed of herself. This gave her a look of great purity, and she was something of a belle. But late in the spring of her freshman year she stayed up all one night, obsessed and genuinely moved by the fact that she was intelligent and hadn’t really known it before. She had just found it out by noticing that section men and assistant professors and sometimes full professors liked to hear her talk in class. From that night on, she limited her dating and threw herself into studying.

  “It is poetry that I love,” she wrote in her diary. “It is hard for me to explain why. Once when I was staying with Aunt Kitty in New York I went for a walk in Central Park when it was snowing. In the zoo I saw the Bactrian camel standing in the middle of its pen. It was holding its head straight up in the air with its mouth open and its tongue out and the snowflakes were falling on it. Perhaps he never saw snow before. I’m not exactly sure where Bactria is or what its climate is like—perhaps it was remembering snow. That is how I feel about poetry.”

  Another entry read, “My mother writes and asks me if I still see Louis Du Pont whom she thought such a charming boy. How can Mother think anyone so plump is charming?”

  Early in April of her junior year, she wrote, “Today in Metaphysical Poetry, we discussed the tradition of Platonic Love in Jacobean England. A boy named Elgin Smith spoke brilliantly, I thought. He described the winters the young people spent in those vast country houses, twenty or so young people visiting in one house, with two or three chaperons, and snow everywhere. They sang and gave masques and such things. Because young people are so hot-blooded, it was necessary to devise a code of courtship to restrain them, for marriages of alliance had to be made later. Needless to say, it didn’t work, Platonic Love, I mean, and it was much more often written about than observed. I do so admire brilliance and wish that I had some. This young man had the oddest voice. It is positively nasal and twangs and twangs. I wanted to put my hand over his mouth and tell him ‘Sh-h-h.’ He is terribly intense and nervous. He has borrowed a pencil from me several times, and he asked me to have coffee with him once. I said I couldn’t, but next time he asks, I will accept. I long for some really intelligent friends.”

  When you consider the combustibility of the emotions of these two young people, it is hardly surprising that within two weeks of their first long conversation together they were trembling when they talked, and found themselves oppressed whenever silences fell. The impulse to discuss this state of affairs with each other kept recurring, but they fought it, until one afternoon when they were sitting in the Cambridge Common and having a cigarette together before separating for dinner.

  All through the Common, young mothers were sitting, bored, by baby carriages, and beneath the trees, newly come to leaf, children were climbing on the old cannon. Abraham Lincoln was brooding under his canopy, and trolleys clanged on Massachusetts Avenue.

  “Elgin,” Caroline said, “we’ve talked about a hundred things, a thousand things, I bet.”

  “Yes.”

  “But we’ve never talked about what we think of each other.”

  “No,” he said, twisting his fingers together. “I guess we never have.”

  “I—I don’t approve of it, actually,” Caroline said. “Analyzing things and all. Some things are better left unsaid.”

  “I agree,” Elgin said. The words seemed to explode on his lips, leaving a faintly surprised look on his face.

  “Do you?” Caroline said. For her part, she was having difficulty hanging on to her poise.

  “There isn’t much people can say that hasn’t been said before,” Elgin said with finality. Then he added, “It’s my reading. I’ve read so much I guess I’m a little jaded.”

  “I see,” said Caroline. “Well, it’s a fascinating subject.”

  “Yes,” said Elgin, “it is.”

  They sat in silence for several seconds, both of them on the verge of speaking, but Elgin was frightened and Caroline was disconcerted, as if her ideas of what could happen had been trampled on and left for dead.

  “Let’s get started back,” Elgin said. Caroline rose and the two of them walked on toward Radcliffe, past the Hotel Continental. At the corner, Caroline said, “You coming by this evening?”

  Elgin nodded.

  Caroline reached out
and shook Elgin’s hand, which was a strange thing for her to do.

  “Caroline!” Elgin said sharply.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s go have dinner together.”

  “Where? I thought you were broke.”

  “The Chinese restaurant.”

  “All right, if I have enough money.” She opened her purse and looked; she and Elgin went Dutch most places. “I’ve got two dollars and some change.” They linked arms and walked back to the Common.

  “I think Vaughan is a little bit of a bore,” Caroline said. “Really, the language has deteriorated so much since Donne.”

  They sat down on the same bench where they had sat before.

  Elgin said, “I assume since our conversation fifteen minutes ago it would be terrible if I talked about the way I feel about you.”

  “Oh, no,” said Caroline. “Go right ahead.”

  “Well, they’re very strong.”

  “I’d more or less guessed that,” Caroline said, unable to make her voice sound normal.

  “But I never mentioned it before,” Elgin said, “because I didn’t want anything to come up that might make you want to stop seeing me.”

  “I understand,” Caroline said. “That was very subtle of you.”

  “Please shut up,” Elgin said. “I’m trying to get something out and it’s very hard. I want you to know I’m not just chasing you or anything like that.”

  “Oh?”

  “I saw you last fall. You were going into Widener. It was—you know—at first sight.”

  “Elgin!”

  “It was. I only took Metaphysical Poetry because you were taking it. Caroline, I have deep feelings about you.”

  Caroline felt an intense sense of relief. “Well, I always thought so,” she said. “But I wasn’t sure.” Then she realized Elgin was trembling. “Elgin, what’s wrong?”

  A child ran by with a red disintegrator pistol. “You’re not angry?” Elgin asked.

  “Of course not!” she said ringingly.

  “You’re not going to tell me that the most I can expect is your friendship? And if I expect more we oughtn’t to see each other any more?”

  There was silence. “I hadn’t thought this far,” Caroline said. She thought it was much more decent if she didn’t have to mention her feelings; she felt trapped. “Well, Elgin, I’ll tell you, I certainly don’t want to stop seeing you.” She moved her legs until they were spread ungracefully. “But, really, I think…we ought to be careful and not get, oh, I don’t know, sloppy, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t mind that,” Elgin said. He swallowed. “But is it all right—Is it all right, Caroline, if I show how I feel a little more?” His voice rose and quivered with longing.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You do.”

  “Honestly, Elgin, I—”

  “You do!”

  “I suppose so…. Yes. Do show it. Let’s be honest. For God’s sake, who can it hurt? Yes, let’s not be priggish.”

  To her astonishment and delight, Elgin caught her hand and pressed it to his lips.

  They hadn’t kissed then, nor did they kiss each other for several days afterward. It was a tacit confession that they suspected the presence of passion, and in such cases, if one is at all practical, one stands back, one dawdles, one doesn’t rush in to confront the beast in its lair. Or to put it another way, one doesn’t go tampering with the floodgates. What they did, after this conversation, was suddenly to become lighthearted. They made jokes; Caroline stole Elgin’s notebook from his hands and made him chase her; they discussed Metaphysical Poetry. And when this lightness and gaiety had eased their suspicion and their fright was in abeyance, Caroline decided she wanted Elgin to kiss her.

  She was walking up Garden Street in late afternoon, and the sunlight was clear and golden. There was a light wind that ruffled her hair, and she was striding along, passing any number of couples, Harvard boys and Radcliffe girls, some with their arms around each other’s waist, some holding hands, some just walking side by side. Caroline decided then, in a single flash; and the next minute her cheeks began to glow and she pushed happily at her hair, which kept blowing across her eyes.

  At seven o’clock that evening, Elgin arrived at Cabot Hall to pick her up. He was wearing his shabby tweed jacket and khaki pants and a striped tie. Caroline came downstairs wearing her prettiest sweater, a pink cashmere. Her hair was carefully brushed and she wore lipstick, so Elgin knew something was up.

  “I’d sort of like to go to a movie tonight,” she said. “I’ve got enough money for both of us if you’re flat.”

  Elgin told her he had a little cash. They settled on the U.T.—the University Theatre in Harvard Square.

  “I’m in the mood for gangsters,” Caroline said as they emerged from Cabot into the spring evening.

  The sky between the trees was purple, a deep, stirring plum color. Caroline put her arms through Elgin’s, and they strode briskly through the Quad toward Garden Street, and then through the Common—one of a number of couples, in a long, irregular procession stretching from the Radcliffe dormitories to Harvard Square.

  “I finished my paper on Donne,” Elgin said.

  Caroline laughed inconsequently, and Elgin laughed, too, for no good reason.

  They passed through the middle of the Common, by Lincoln’s statue, where a lamp cast a ghostly white glare on leaves and benches and the surface of the walk. Caroline’s charming face swam into the light, shadows fell across it, and Elgin closed his eyes.

  Caroline pressed his hand. They hurried.

  All during the movie, they sat holding both of each other’s hands, and their shoulders touching. Entwined and tangled like that, they giggled together whenever the movie became particularly violent. They couldn’t stop giggling after a while, as the death toll in the movie mounted. When the movie ended, they left and Elgin bought Caroline a chocolate ice-cream cone at St. Clair’s and they walked down to the Charles River.

  The Charles looked placid, and glimmered as it quietly flowed under its bridges; the lights of Eliot House were reflected in its surface. Caroline put her head on Elgin’s shoulder. They breathed in unison, the two of them, standing on the bank of the river, and then Elgin said, “It’s clumsy to ask, but Caroline, do you really…or…would I…” He missed her lips, kissing her cheek instead, and he was holding her so tightly that she couldn’t move and correct his mistake. But a minute later he corrected his error himself. They both had difficulty breathing. “I love, I love you, I love you,” he whispered.

  It sounded beautiful in the moonlight, the river ran quietly beneath the bridge, and Caroline was glad she had let him kiss her.

  After that they took to kissing each other a good deal. They met every afternoon at Widener. When one of them broke off work, the other would break off, too, and they would both go downstairs. Along either side of the steps rose large stone arms, which looked as if they should be surmounted by statues, but they were bare, and in spring, in the afternoons, on both of them there would usually be people sitting, sometimes alone, sometimes in pairs. Here Elgin and Caroline would sit and look out over the Yard toward the Chapel.

  At four-thirty, they would go to Massachusetts Avenue and have a cup of coffee in one of the luncheonettes. Usually they separated then, Caroline to go to Cabot Hall, Elgin to Adams House, for supper, but some evenings, when they had the money, they had dinner together at a Chinese restaurant near the Square, where the food was very cheap. (Elgin didn’t like taking her to Adams House on the nights when girls were allowed in the dining hall, because it reminded him that he was young and ineffectual and under the control of an institution.) In the evenings, they studied, either in the library or in one of the common rooms at Cabot, and at nine o’clock when the library closed, they would walk down to the riverbank. Elgin had an old raincoat that he wore, and they used that to spread on the grass, to sit on. They sat side by side and shared long, rather tender kisses. At first on the
se expeditions they talked about poetry, but after a while conversation began to seem disagreeable, and they sat in silence.

  Then they began to leave off studying at Widener earlier in the afternoon, at three-thirty, or even three. Caroline liked going with Elgin to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and they would look at the pictures and, when their feet were tired, go and sit in the Fens, the park just behind the Museum, which has a rose garden at one end of it. Caroline wanted Elgin to lose his Middle Western pronunciation, and the excuse they used for these jaunts was that this was time spent in teaching Elgin how to speak. He would bring a book, Bacon’s “Essays,” or Montaigne’s, or Jeremy Taylor’s “Sermons,” or Johnson’s “Rasselas”—good, sturdy books, with sentences so rich that sometimes Elgin’s voice grew fuzzy with the pleasure he felt reading them.

  “Always, all-ways, not oll-wez,” Caroline would say.

  “Wait, Caroline, just wait a bit, listen to this,” and he would read another rolling, rhetorical period. “Isn’t that gorgeous?”

  “Not gorgeous,” Caroline would say. “That’s not the right word somehow.”

  “Oh, it is in this case,” Elgin would say. “It’s absolutely exact.”

  And Caroline, struggling not to be moved, would say, “I suppose. I suppose, just barely.”

  Then Elgin started reading Colette and Boccaccio. Now, when silence fell, something seemed to be lying beside them on the grass, breathing softly. Glances, trees, the movements of people in the park suddenly split off from the commonsensical, taken-for-granted world and became strange. Caroline frowned more and more often, turned into something very like a nag. She made Elgin buy new ties and have his shoes reheeled. Often, in the afternoons, she would take him to St. Clair’s and make him drink freshly squeezed orange juice. When it was raining, she still insisted they go for walks because it was good for Elgin. She took to proof-reading all his papers and typing them over for him because he was a poor and careless typist. One day, Elgin read to her the story in Boccaccio of the young girl who used to tell her mother that she wanted to sleep in the garden in order to hear the nightingale sing, but the girl met her lover in the garden—he was the nightingale. Elgin read this story to Caroline in an intense and quavering voice. For a week afterward, Caroline walked back and forth to classes hearing in her head the phrase “listening to the nightingale.” Finally, the phrase came to stand for so much, it aroused such deep tumult in her and made her feel so lonely and deprived, that one night Elgin came back to his room, woke Dimitri from a sound sleep, and asked him to stay away from the room the next afternoon.