Seeing his hesitation, she said, “You do not need to be tactful with me. Say it.”
“My impressions are no doubt dulled from too much traveling,” he began tactfully, “but it does seem to me that there are things that cannot be said except in a roundabout way. And things that cannot be done until you have first done something else. A wide avenue that you can see from one end to the other is a splendid sight, but when every street is like this, the effect is of monotony.” Then, with a smile that was quite dazzling with happiness, the Prince went on, “Would you like to know my name? I am called Arqué. Before setting off on the Grand Tour, I should have supplied myself with letters of introduction, but I was in too much of a hurry, and so here, as in the other countries I visited, I knew no one. I could not present myself at the palace on visiting day because I was traveling incognito. I was free to pack my bags and go, but I lingered, unable to make up my mind what country to visit next, and one morning as I was out walking, an idea occurred to me. I hurried back to the inn and persuaded a stableboy to change clothes with me. Fifteen minutes later I was at the back door of the palace asking to speak to the head gardener. Shortly after that I was on my hands and knees, pulling weeds. The rest you know.”
They were now standing beside a fountain. Looking deep into her eyes, he said, “In my father’s kingdom there is a bird called the nightingale that sings most beautifully.”
“A generation ago there were still a few nightingales here,” the Princess said, “but now there aren’t any. It seems they do not like quite so much order. This is the first time I have ever walked in the gardens at night. I didn’t know that this plashing water would be full of moonlight.”
“Your eyes are full of moonlight also,” the Prince said.
“I feel I can tell you anything,” the Princess said.
“Tomorrow,” Prince Arqué said, glancing in the direction of the rosebush that was named after the Queen of Denmark, “I will move them all back.”
“Oh, no!” the Princess cried. “Oh, don’t do that! They are perfect just the way they are.”
“Would you like to be alone now?” the Prince inquired wistfully. “I cannot bear the thought of leaving you, but I know that you like to have some time to yourself.”
“I cannot bear to leave you either,” the Princess said.
SINCE they had both been brought up on fairy tales, they proposed to be married amid great rejoicing and live happily ever after, but the Minister of State had other plans, and did not favor an alliance with a country whose foreign policy was so lacking in straightforwardness. The Princess Horizon was locked in her room, Prince Arqué was informed that his visa had expired, and they never saw each other again. According to the most interesting and least reliable of the historians of the period, Prince Arqué succeeded his father to the throne, and left the royal palace, which was as confusing as a rabbit warren, for a new one that he designed himself and that set the fashion for straight lines and right angles in architecture. From architecture it spread to city planning, and so on. King Arqué had a son who was terribly long-winded, and a thorn in his flesh.
As for the Princess Horizon, it seems she found a new and rather dreadful way of disappearing. From the day she was told she could not marry Prince Arqué, she never smiled again, and no one knew what was on her mind or in her heart. When her sympathetic ladies-in-waiting had finished grouping themselves around her chair, to their dismay she was sitting in it. When the royal family appeared on a balcony that was reserved for moments of history, the Princess was with them and bowed graciously to the cheering multitudes. She opened bazaars, laid cornerstones, distributed medals, and went to the opera. When the exiled King of Poland asked for her hand in marriage, the offer was considered eminently suitable and accepted. The exiled King of Poland turned out to have a flaw in his character also, but of a more ordinary kind; he had a passion for gambling. Ace of hearts, faro, baccarat, hazard, roulette — he played them all feverishly, and feverishly the courtiers imitated him, mortgaging their castles and laying waste their patrimony so they could go on gambling. The trees in their neglected orchards soon took on a more natural shape, and sorrowing elders grew bent with age. The common people aped the nobility as usual. New roads were carelessly built and therefore less straight than the old ones, the law of the land became full of loopholes, and only now and then did someone indulge in straightforward, logical thinking.
19. The old man at the railroad crossing
“REJOICE,” said the old man at the railroad crossing, to every person who came that way. He was very old, and his life had been full of troubles, but he was still able to lower the gates when a train was expected, and raise them again when it had passed by in a whirl of dust and diminishing noise. It was just a matter of time before he would be not only old but bedridden, and so, meanwhile, people were patient with him and excused his habit of saying “Rejoice,” on the ground that when you are that old not enough oxygen gets to the brain.
But it was curious how differently different people reacted to that one remark. Those who were bent on accumulating money, or entertaining dreams of power, or just busy, didn’t even hear it. The watchman was somebody who was supposed to guard the railroad crossing, not to tell people how they ought to feel, and if there had been such a thing as a wooden or mechanical watchman, they would have been just as satisfied.
Those who cared about good manners were embarrassed for the poor old fellow, and thought it kinder to ignore his affliction.
And those who were really kind, but not old, and not particularly well acquainted with trouble, said “Thank you” politely, and passed on, without in the least having understood what he meant. Or perhaps it was merely that they were convinced he didn’t mean anything, since he said the same thing day in and day out, regardless of the occasion or who he said it to. “Rejoice,” he said solemnly, looking into their faces. “Rejoice.”
The children, of course, were not embarrassed, and did not attempt to be kind. They snickered and said “Why?” and got no answer, and so they asked another question: “Are you crazy?” And — as so often happened when they asked a question they really wanted to know the answer to — he put his hand on their head and smiled, and they were none the wiser.
But one day a woman came along, a nice-looking woman with grey hair and lines in her face and no interest in power or money or politeness that was merely politeness and didn’t come from the heart, and no desire to be kind for the sake of being kind, either, and when the old man said “Rejoice,” she stopped and looked at him thoughtfully and then she said, “I don’t know what at.” But not crossly. It was just a statement.
When the train had gone by and the old man had raised the gates, instead of walking on like the others, she stood there, as if she had something more to say and didn’t know how to say it. Finally she said, “This has been the worst year and a half of my entire life. I think I’m getting through it, finally. But it’s been very hard.”
“Rejoice,” the old man said.
“Even so?” the woman asked. And then she said, “Well, perhaps you’re right. I’ll try. You’ve given me something to think about. Thank you very much.” And she went on down the road.
ONE morning shortly after this, there was a new watchman at the crossing, a smart-looking young man who tipped his hat to those who had accumulated power or money, and bowed politely to those who valued good manners, and thanked the kind for their kindness, and to the children he said, “If you hang around my crossing, you’ll wish you hadn’t.” So they all liked him, and felt that there had been a change for the better. What had happened was that the old man couldn’t get up out of bed. Though he felt just as well as before, there was no strength in his legs. So there he lay, having to be fed and shaved and turned over in bed and cared for like a baby. He lived with his daughter, who was a slatternly housekeeper and had more children than she could care for and a husband who drank and beat her, and the one tiling that had made her life possible was that
her old father was out of the house all day, watching the railroad crossing. So when she brought him some gruel for his breakfast that morning and he said “Rejoice,” she set her mouth in a grim line and said nothing. When she brought him some more of the same gruel for his lunch she was ready to deal with the situation. Standing over him, so that she seemed very tall, she said, “Father, I don’t want to hear that word again. If you can’t say anything but ‘Rejoice,’ don’t say anything, do you hear?” And she thought he seemed to understand. But when she brought him his supper, he said it again, and in her fury she slapped him. Her own father. The tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks into his beard, and they looked at each other as they hadn’t looked at each other since he was a young man and she was a little girl skipping along at his side. For a moment, her heart melted, but then she thought of how hard her life was, and that he was making it even harder by living on like this when it was time for him to die. And so she turned and went out of the room, without saying that she was sorry. And after that the old man avoided her eyes and said nothing whatever.
One day she put her head in the door and said, “There’s somebody to see you.”
It was the grey-haired woman. “I heard you were not feeling up to par,” she said, and when the old man didn’t say anything, she went on, “I made this soup for my family, and I thought you might like some. It’s very nourishing.” She looked around and saw that the old man’s daughter had left them, so she sat down on the edge of the bed and fed the soup to him. She could tell by the way he ate it, and the way the color came into his face, that he was hungry. The dark little room looked as if it hadn’t been swept in a month of Sundays, but she knew better than to start cleaning another woman’s house. She contented herself with tucking the sheets in properly and straightening the covers and adjusting the pillow behind the old man’s head — for which he seemed grateful, though he didn’t say anything.
“Now I must go,” she said. But she didn’t go. Instead she looked at him and said, “Things aren’t any better, they’re worse. Much worse. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.” And when he didn’t say what she expected him to say, she stopped thinking about herself and thought about him. “I don’t care for the new watchman at the crossing,” she said. “He stands talking to the girls when he ought to be letting the gates down, and I’m afraid some child will be run over.”
But this seemed to be of no interest to him, and she quickly saw why. Death was what was on his mind, not the railroad crossing. His own death, and how to meet it. And she saw that he was feeling terribly alone.
She took his frail old hand in hers and said, “If I can just get through this day, maybe things will be better tomorrow, but in any case, I’ll come to see you, to see how you are.” And then, without knowing that she was going to say it but only thinking that he didn’t have much longer to wait, she said what he used to say at the railroad crossing, to every person who came that way.
20. A mean and spiteful toad
A TOAD sat under a dead leaf that was the same color it was. Most toads are nice harmless creatures, full of fears, and with good reason, but this toad was mean and spiteful. For no reason. It was born that way. One day a little girl on her way home from school saw him and nudged him gently with the sole of her shoe to see him hop. Which he did, helplessly. But the bile churned in his ice-cold veins and he said — though not so she could hear it — You will turn against the people who love you the most. And for the whole rest of the day, under the leaf that was the same color he was, he was pleased. Of all the curses he had ever put on people and other toads, this struck him as the most original.
When the little girl got home, her father was sitting in the big chair that was sacred to him, reading the Sports section of the evening paper. He lowered his newspaper and said, “Did you have a nice time in school today?”
No answer.
“I see,” he said, and went on reading the paper. He was an even-tempered man, and it is a fact widely acknowledged that little girls sometimes get up on the wrong side of the bed.
At bedtime, as she was having her bath, her mother started to go in and inquire whether she had taken a washcloth to her ears, and found that the door was locked. She started to call out and then thought better of it. “A new stage,” she said to herself and went into the little girl’s room and picked up her clothes and opened the window and turned the covers down. She had only this one child and her heart was wholly wrapped up in her.
This made it not exactly easy for the little girl to turn against her, but she knew all about Cinderella and the other little girls whose mother died and whose father presented them with a wicked stepmother, so by a careful reinterpretation and rearrangement of whatever was said at the family dinner table and at other times, she convinced herself that they were not her true mother and father but just some people who were taking care of her until her rightful parents came to get her. When her father picked her up and sat her on his lap, as he was given to doing, she squirmed and got down. He waited for her to come and kiss him good night and she didn’t.
Later, he said to his wife, “What’s with Alice?”
“She’s going through a stage. I think it makes her uncomfortable if we show any affection.”
Once in a while she would lean against her father, but when he responded by putting his arm around her she was gone. It was all the work of the toad.
“What did I do?” the woman asked over and over again.
And over and over and over again the man responded, “Nothing.”
The other toads in the neighborhood knew, of course, about the toad who was mean and spiteful, and they were careful not to sit under or on the leaf he considered his property. Their lives were full of dangers. People sometimes stepped on them without meaning to. Bad boys pulled their legs off. Cars ran over them and left them flat as a pancake in the middle of the highway. In the place where everything is known and recorded, there is a list of the human beings who have been kind to toads, and left a saucer of milk where they could find it, and carefully avoided stepping on them, and been distressed at the sound of the toads’ cry as they were about to be hurt. It is not a very long list.
Sometimes the little girl broke down and allowed herself to treat her mother and father as she had before the mean and spiteful toad put a curse on her, but these periods were brief. There was hardly time for her mother to remark to her father, “Have you noticed how happy Alice is these days?” before they saw once more the closed look that meant Don’t touch me.
One day the woman was on her hands and knees in the garden weeding a flower bed when a tiny voice said, “It isn’t any of your doing. It’s the mean and spiteful toad who sits under a leaf that is the same color he is.”
At first the woman thought she had imagined this, but on reflection she realized that she couldn’t have, and looked around to see where the voice had come from, and spotted a toad sitting under a big foxglove. “I didn’t know toads could talk,” she said.
“Oh yes,” the toad said. “But they don’t talk to people. At least not very often. It’s just that we — the toads who live in this part of the world — have noticed how much you and your husband love that child and we can’t bear the way you are being treated.”
“It’s true that she isn’t very affectionate these days,” the woman said. “It seems to be a stage she’s going through.”
“She hates you,” the toad said.
“Really?” the woman said, trying not to show how the words had struck her to the heart.
“Both of you,” the toad said. “She nudged the mean and spiteful toad with her shoe and he put a curse on her.”
If I tell George, the woman thought, he will never believe me. He will think I have gone crazy.…
“What’s to be done?” she asked.
“By you, nothing,” the toad said. “Something has to happen.”
“To Alice?”
“No. To the spiteful toad. Wait. Be patient. Hope for the best
.”
So the woman did. And in the place where each thing that happens to every form of animal, vegetable, and mineral life is recorded, it was recorded that a mean and spiteful toad, with only a small provocation, had made a little girl turn against her mother and father who loved her. Immediately afterward, into the atmosphere was released a small drop of mystery, which during a heavy downpour was absorbed into a drop of rainwater that by a — you might say — miracle fell on the mean and spiteful toad. Feeling a pang of remorse he said to himself, It’s only what they deserve, and tried to put the matter out of his mind. And couldn’t. If I remove the curse, he said to himself, I will be just like every other toad and somebody will step on me. Or my leaf will blow away. Or something. So I won’t. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I just won’t.…
Ordinarily the woman was careful not to touch the little girl but this day the little girl looked so strange and lost that she put her hand on her forehead, thinking she must have a fever. The little girl closed her eyes and shuddered, and then she burst into a storm of tears and threw her arms around her mother and said, “Oh, Mama, I really do love you!”
All the kindhearted toads sitting under leaves here and there in the garden set up a humming in their throats. “Watch out,” they said to each other. “I never thought he would do it, but now that he has, he’s bound to do something especially mean and spiteful to make up for it.”
The leaf that the mean and spiteful toad was hiding under gave forth a faint glow, but that was because of the mystery.
21. All the days and nights
ONCE upon a time there was a man who asked himself, “Where have all the days and nights of my life gone?” He was not a young man, or the thought would never have crossed his mind, but neither was he white-haired and bent and dependent on a walker or a cane, and by any reasonable standards one would have to say that his life had been more fortunate than most. He was in excellent health, he had a loving wife, and children and friends, and no financial worries, and an old dog who never failed to welcome him when he came home. But something had taken him by surprise, and it was this: Without actually thinking about it, he had meant to live each day to the full — as he had — and still not let go of it. This was not as foolish as it sounds, because he didn’t feel his age. Or rather, he felt seventeen sometimes, and sometimes seven or eight, and sometimes sixty-four, which is what he actually was, and sometimes forty, and sometimes a hundred, depending on whether he was tired or had had enough sleep or on the company he was in or if the place he was in was a place he had been in before, and so on. He could think about the past, and did, more than most people, through much of his adult life, and until recently this had sufficed. But now he had a sense of the departure from him not merely of the major events of his life, his marriage, the birth of his children, the death of his mother and father, but of an endless succession of days that were only different from one another insofar as they were subject to accident or chance. And what it felt like was that he had overdrawn his account at the bank or been spending his capital, instead of living comfortably on the income from it.
All the Days and Nights Page 47
