Something Happened

by Джозеф Хеллер

  "Why?"

  (Why not, indeed? Who knows? We didn't. Although we took it for granted we did.) We were unfailingly good-natured and convivial as we took pains to convey to him (it was our responsibility as parents to do so, we made plain), repeatedly, that we loved him as much as ever anyway and were not punishing him by criticizing him and were not really mad; but we did rebuke him diligently in cordial, tolerant tones (ganging up on him, two of us at a time) as we tried to educate him, and we did try, emphatically, tenaciously, maniacally, to elucidate patiently for him why what he was doing was not wise or correct.

  And the problem was that we could not explain. (We had no explanation that made sense even to us. It is difficult to be persuasive when the only answer to his Why? is a lame and dogmatic Because. We were worse to him, I feel now, than Forgione has ever been, more cruel and demoralizing than any teacher. I am overwhelmed with remorse. And yet, I know instinctively that I will do it again if he does it again and I catch him, or at least I will feel the urge to. I hope I restrain myself. I know I feel that what he does is wrong. I don't know why it is wrong. I don't know why I feel it is.) I know we were unable to present to him a single truthful and convincing reason why he ought not to give his pennies, nickels, and dimes away to other children if he wanted to. We actually put him on notice that, not to punish him, but only to teach him a lesson, we were going to punish him by teaching him a lesson. We would withhold money for stipulated periods of time: we would not give him any the next time he wanted some; or instead of money for ice cream, soda, or candy, we would give him the ice cream, soda, candy itself, because we did not feel he could be trusted with money; or tell him, so magisterially, that he would have the money to buy his own now if he had not gone and given it away as we warned him not to. ("See? We told you.")

  It crossed my mind whimsically to demand also that he always eat it all up himself right before our eyes (rather than run the risk he might give someone a bite from his Popsicle or candy bar), but I never went quite that far. (I am all heart, ha, ha.)

  He was so uncomfortable through all these discussions and inquisitions (he didn't know what to do or where or how to look; no matter how much we joshed and chuckled to put him at ease, he was never at ease. His doubtful smile was always forced and wavering as he strained to joke back cordially with us and asked questions and gave answers to ours in a profound and abortive effort to understand just what in the world it was we had grown so determined to teach him, and why) I suppose he really wanted to give up and cry: when I look back now and recall his delicate, furrowed expression, his lowered, obliging voice, it seems evident (now) that he had come awfully close to tears, but he would not (because we did not want him to) let them flow: he masked it well (but I know him better now): he flashed his doubtful smile often at us instead, from one to the other of us, as we harangued and excoriated him affably and he groped undecidedly, with knitted brow, to catch on to and hold what we felt we had explained so fluently.

  "Suppose you want the penny later, or tomorrow?" I would point out by way of benevolent illustration.

  "Then I'll get another one," he would answer.

  "Where?"

  "Here."

  "From who?"

  "From you."

  "I won't give you one."

  He squinted. "How come?" he asked in puzzlement.

  "Because I won't," I said, with a conclusive gloat

  "How come?"

  I shrugged.

  "Then I'll get it from Mommy."

  "Will you?"

  "I won't give you one either."

  "How come?" He draws back a bit and gazes at my wife.

  "You just gave one away before, didn't you? That's how little you thought of it."

  He sees us watching him in silence, waiting for his next attempt.

  "From the boy I gave it to," he says. "I'll get it from him."

  "He won't have it."

  "He won't give it to you."

  "He'll spend it by then. That's why he wanted it."

  "Do you think everyone's so generous?"

  "Or he won't give it to you. Not everyone is as generous as you are."

  "Or as rich."

  "Or as well off. We're not rich."

  "So you see? Do you?"

  "We won't give it to you."

  "You won't have one tomorrow."

  My boy is befuddled and gapes at us searchingly, still straining to smile and endeavoring to make some sense of the situation, twisting in confusion (and plucking rapidly, distractedly, at his penis) as he waits for a hint, seeks hopefully to detect some beam of light that will illuminate it as some kind of well-intentioned practical joke.

  ("Don't pull at your penis," I am tempted to reprimand him, but I don't.)

  "Do you have to go to the bathroom?" my wife does inquire peremptorily. He shakes his head with surprise, wondering why she has asked.

  He cannot figure out what has just happened to him. A tremor of uncertainty shivers through him as he turns, looking frozen, from one to the other of us and finds himself deserted by both.

  "How come?" he asks plaintively, and now a note of misery and total resignation perforates his voice. (He is ready to capitulate if he has to.)

  "To," I summarize with lofty and deliberate relish, "teach you a lesson."

  What a prick I was.

  What a selfish, small, obtuse, and insensitive prick. I am glum with shame and repentance now when I remember those smug and tyrannical persecutions of my little boy (and will be sickened with shame and repentance afterward when I inflict them on him again. How can I stop myself?). For my own part (I plead guilty, your honor, but with an explanation, sir), I honestly believe I was motivated mainly by a protective and furious desire to safeguard him against being taken advantage of by other children (even by my daughter. I never could stand to see him taken advantage of. It was as though I myself were undergoing the helpless humiliation of being tricked, turned into a sucker. My own pride and ego would drip with wounded recognition. That's when I have been most enraged by him, when I wanted to smash and annihilate him, at those times when I felt, in a flaring outbreak of nearly unbridled bitterness, that he was allowing himself to be victimized and bullied by other children. So I bullied and victimized him, instead). I have loved and grieved for him almost from the day he was born, from the time I first noticed his lonesome, ingrained predilection for staring pensively out from his crib or playpen (my daughter was not that way, and neither was Derek, who seemed placid and normal at the beginning). And I loved him also for his naпve candor and absence of hostility, pitied him (and gave him black marks sullenly) for his tender impulses and for his many nameless and immobilizing forebodings; he seemed lost and distant and passive to me in a way it seemed I had once been myself and still feel I am at times when my guard lets down and all my strength ebbs away; I have always wanted him immune to abuse and defeat. So I abused and defeated him instead with my unctuous homilies, my meddlesome intrusions on his behalf, with my nagging, endless admonitions and discourses. I never could bear to see him unhappy (and would find it difficult to pardon him whenever he was); so I made him unhappier still (purging myself of some of my own distress in the act of doing so), but always feeling smirched immediately afterwards. (I can never sustain satisfaction from humbling him, as I usually can do when I humble my daughter, and always do when I win fights with my wife. With my wife by now, I think it no longer matters very much either way to either one of us whether I make her happy or unhappy; the difference is not so great nor the effect lasting; by now, I think we have learned how to get through the rest of our lives with each other and are both already more than halfway there. Who would ever have believed long, long ago that I would live as long as I have? But my boy is still only just beginning.) What a blind, petty, domineering, and sanctimonious prick I truly was. He simply could not see, and we simply could not show him. And even while all of these disputes were going on (it was usually during the summer in the country or at the beach, where
I rent a house and all of us go almost every year and none of us ever have a good time. None of us but Derek. Who is able to take what simple pleasures he enjoys anywhere, even at home. Like Martha going crazy slowly in our office, hearing voices that bring a glow of pleasure to her face and playing games on country outings somewhere else as she gazes over the carriage of her typewriter at the blank green wall just a foot or two in front of her. I wonder how she will finally go under, how she will elect to do it, and whose responsibility this Martha our typist really is, Green, who hired her, or Personnel's, who screened and recommended her. She is not mine. At least in the summer, I can stay alone in the city more when the family is away and am free to have as much fun as I can find), my wife and I were charmed extremely by his peculiar generosity (if that's what it was) and beguiling good nature (we would smile at each other in fond and complacent self-approval and comment about him in fascination:

  "He's really something, isn't he?"

  "And how. So lovable.").

  We were enchanted by his novel unselfishness; we talked about him with gusto to other people, feeling fortunate and superior because he was ours and we were able to do so. We fished for envious praise from other parents, soliciting, collecting, devouring, and waxing fat and glib on good comments about him in corpulent self-esteem. (What a vain and vainglorious, hypocritical, and egotistical prick.) And even then (indisputably now), if we had been asked to pick between a child who liberally gave away his pennies, nickels, and dimes that he did not want or need for himself and one who would always hoard them only for his own use, we would have chosen exactly what we had. We liked what we had.

  (So why did I try to change him?)

  Why did we proscribe and threaten and interrogate? (Why did we feel so affronted?) Why did we not chortle and prattle complacently to him also (as we did in conceit to our friends) because he gave those pennies, nickels, and dimes away, instead of only criticizing and reprimanding him and extracting reluctant confessions and recalcitrant vows? (If I were him — he, I know — I think I would hate me now. Why can't I leave him alone? Why can't I leave it alone, even now?)

  And, of course, most contemptible of all, we did give him his penny, his nickel, or his dime the very next time he asked for it (he was invariably right about that, too, and we were invariably wrong), and his dollar or his dollar and a half for the movies, although we generally could not refrain from giving him something of a sermon with it. (Waste Not, Want Not. He could anticipate our catechism with unsettling accuracy and frequently would recite the words right along with us, especially if our daughter was present, for she could join in with him. I begin to perceive what a stereotype I am only when I realize how often my daughter and my boy can predict and mimic my remarks with such verbatim precision. Have I really become so calculable a bore to them without my knowing it? I smart secretly when they succeed in aping me and do not forgive them easily. I forget, rather than forgive. I do not like them to ridicule me.) And we knew we would give him the money he wanted the next time he asked, even as we were declaring to him that we would not. So why did we confound and torture him (put him through the wringer) and make him stand there and take it? Why did we make him feel, perhaps (and perhaps intentionally), like something bizarre, different, like some kind of freak?

  (For a penny and a nickel or a dime.)

  To teach him, we told ourselves, a lesson.

  (What was that lesson?)

  (We never found it. We didn't even look.)

  "Have you learned your lesson?" I would catechize him further the next time he came to me for money.

  "Yes."

  "What is your lesson?" I would make him recite.

  "I shouldn't give money away."

  "Will you give it away?"

  "No."

  "Promise?"

  "I want gum, Daddy."

  "Do you promise?"

  "I promise."

  "What do you promise?"

  "I won't give it away."

  "What will you do with it?"

  "Spend it."

  "On who?"

  "On gum."

  "On what?"

  "On me. I want gum, Daddy. Don't you understand? I just want some gum now."

  "If I give you more than one penny, what will you do?"

  "Buy more gum."

  "And if I give you no pennies, what will you do?"

  "Buy no gum."

  "But you had pennies yesterday, didn't you? If you didn't give them away you wouldn't have to ask me for any today, would you?"

  "Suppose I spent them yesterday? I'd have to ask you for some today anyway, wouldn't I?"

  "I suppose you would. But do you understand now why you shouldn't give money away?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you?"

  "Yes."

  "Why? Why is it wrong for you to give money away?"

  "Because," he begins — and his eyes gleam suddenly in anticipation and he finds it is impossible to resist giving the impish reply that comes to his mind — "because," he repeats, with a reckless, mischievous laugh and decides to plunge ahead with his joke, "it makes you and Mommy angry."

  What a nice kid.

  I am so pleased. And I have to laugh along with him to let him know the risk was a good one and that I am not going to make him pay for it.

  We have brisk, Socratic dialogues, he and I, on just about everything (the lines fly crisply in rhythmic questions and answers), and we both enjoy them. (With my daughter, I have arguments and demoralizing discussions that tend to become overladen with personal imputations and denials, even when she starts out discussing, objectively and dispassionately, life and its meaning or her friends or mine. She has many comments to make about the people my wife and I know, as though they were any of her business.) I am Socrates, he is the pupil. (Or so it seems, until I review some of our conversations when I am alone, and then it often seems that he is Socrates. I know I love him. He loves me. He is nice. I am not.

  "You're nice, Daddy," he exclaims to me frequently. He hugs me a lot.

  "You know, Daddy, you're really nice sometimes," even my daughter remarks to me every now and then.

  So maybe I'm not really always as bad as I think I am. I enjoy being praised, by anyone, even by members of my family. It makes me feel important; I grow expansive. Nobody is good always. Everybody is good sometime.) And there is no predicting in what directions our words will fly, for there is no telling in advance what closely guarded observations of his might suddenly spring to his tongue and flash out almost involuntarily, or what preoccupations, deliberately, after tense, inner centuries of concentrated brooding and speculation, he might choose without preliminaries to bring out into the open. (And once he does decide, there will be no deterring him.

  "Did you have to fuck Mommy to get me?" he has asked.

  "That's not why," I told him.

  "Why what?"

  "Why we did it or why we got you."

  "It's how, though, isn't it?" He doesn't seem to like the idea.)

  He won't take chances he doesn't have to. (Neither will I. Except with girls, and even then I tend to play it very safe.) He has never, to my knowledge, been in a fist fight. (I wouldn't get in one now either unless it was clearly a matter of life or death. The apple has not fallen far from the tree.) He has no taste for bullying or beating children smaller or weaker. He tries as best he can to avoid associating with anyone he's afraid of, even at the cost of giving up activities he enjoys or forfeiting the companionship of other children he likes. He does not know what to do when an older or tougher or even smaller kid shoves him or shouts at him or when a roving band takes away his bicycle or his baseball bat (as did happen to him in the park in the city on successive days that first time I was away at the company convention in Puerto Rico; maybe that's why he still does not like me to go away anywhere in an airplane, although I would not have been there with him in the afternoon anyway to protect him and his bicycle and his baseball bat from that gang of Puerto Rican kids one day and
Negro kids the next, so maybe it is not. Other parents, mothers, were there, and they couldn't. Everything is so much more confusing than it ought to be). On the other hand, he is capable of acts of great courage and emotional strength that leave my wife and me flabbergasted. (We compliment ourselves on these, too.) He will sit still and docile if a doctor or dentist tells him he is about to hurt him and submit without flinching (though white as a sheet, or sallow, and with the tips of his fingers trembling) to whatever he has been told has to be done to him. I will flinch for him. I feel dizzy and am compelled to look away in terror and nausea when his slim arm is bared by a doctor working speedily to inoculate him or take blood. I see on his face in a doctor's or dentist's office that same sickly pallor I recognize now from mornings when he has to face Forgione later in the gymnasium or give an oral report in one of his classes (the whole impression I have of his person when he looks this way is one of phlegm. His total substance is phlegm. But he is certainly not phlegmatic. Ha, ha). He says nothing in objection as he submits, but I know that he is nauseated too: his gut is constricted, his limbs are tubes, and he fears he may yell for help and embarrass us all (and I am so shaken to see him this way thatI can scream in agony for him. I could not bear it when he had his tonsils out and I saw the tiny, crescent crust of dried blood looped out the bottom of his right or left nostril. I'm not certain which. My mind is no longer clear on such details, but that doesn't matter. There was a ringing in my head when they wheeled him back into the room, and my wife had to spring to me quickly to grip me by the arm and lead me to a chair, or I think I might have fallen). I hope he does not have to have a tooth pulled until he is old enough and hardy enough to bear it without my support, bear it much more courageously than I would be able to bear having one of his teeth pulled out now. I am so glad he no longer seems as frightened of me as he used to be, not even of my yelling or my acidulous sarcasm when I am feeling unhappy or suffering from a headache. (I remember some of the things I used to taunt and bully him about, like giving money away or being afraid to try to dive or sail or ski or ice skate, and I am saddened by shame, for a minute or two; I find it remarkable that he has been able to forgive me and forget, if indeed he has forgiven me, for maybe he remembers too. I think he remembers everything. He may even remember which nostril of his it was that bore that staining crust of blood when he was transported back to us inside the hospital room, but I don't want to ask him because I don't want to remind him of that deep and shattering trauma I suffered when he had his tonsils and adenoids pulled and clipped out and from which I am not sure either one of us will ever recover fully. He suffered too and did not want to stay in his own room when we brought him home from the hospital with his throat that hurt so much he could not speak or smile without pain. When he forgot and cracked a joke in a slow, croaking voice and began to smile he was stunned by the sharp reminder of pain. We made him return to his own room. It was a pretty room with decals on the wall and a hi-diddle-diddle mobile hanging from the ceiling in the center. In the hospital, he was thirsty when he woke up, but we could not give him water until all the ether fumes had evaporated. He would vomit, they told us. So we didn't. His eyelids were blue.)