The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

by Carson McCullers

  Mr. Brook finished off the rest of the brandy. And slowly, when it was almost midnight, a further understanding came to him. The reason for the lies of Madame Zilensky was painful and plain. All her life long Madame Zilensky had worked—at the piano, teaching, and writing those beautiful and immense twelve symphonies. Day and night she had drudged and struggled and thrown her soul into her work, and there was not much of her left over for anything else. Being human, she suffered from this lack and did what she could to make up for it. If she passed the evening bent over a table in the library and later declared that she had spent that time playing cards, it was as though she had managed to do both those things. Through the lies, she lived vicariously. The lies doubled the little of her existence that was left over from work and augmented the little rag end of her personal life.

  Mr. Brook looked into the fire, and the face of Madame Zilensky was in his mind—a severe face, with dark, weary eyes and delicately disciplined mouth. He was conscious of a warmth in his chest, and a feeling of pity, protectiveness, and dreadful understanding. For a while he was in a state of lovely confusion.

  Later on he brushed his teeth and got into his pajamas. He must be practical. What did this clear up? That French, the Pole with the piccolo, Bagdad? And the children, Sigmund, Boris, and Sammy—who were they? Were they really her children after all, or had she simply rounded them up from somewhere? Mr. Brook polished his spectacles and put them on the table by his bed. He must come to an immediate understanding with her. Otherwise, there would exist in the department a situation which could become most problematical. It was two o’clock. He glanced out of his window and saw that the light in Madame Zilensky’s workroom was still on. Mr. Brook got into bed, made terrible faces in the dark, and tried to plan what he would say next day.

  Mr. Brook was in his office by eight o’clock. He sat hunched up behind his desk, ready to trap Madame Zilensky as she passed down the corridor. He did not have to wait long, and as soon as he heard her footsteps he called out her name.

  Madame Zilensky stood in the doorway. She looked vague and jaded. ‘How are you? I had such a fine night’s rest,’ she said.

  ‘Pray be seated, if you please,’ said Mr. Brook. ‘I would like a word with you.’

  Madame Zilensky put aside her portfolio and leaned back wearily in the armchair across from him. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

  ‘Yesterday you spoke to me as I was walking across the campus,’ he said slowly. ‘And if I am not mistaken, I believe you said something about a pastry shop and the King of Finland. Is that correct?’

  Madame Zilensky turned her head to one side and stared retrospectively at a corner of the window sill.

  ‘Something about a pastry shop,’ he repeated.

  Her tired face brightened. ‘But of course,’ she said eagerly. ‘I told you about the time I was standing in front of this shop and the King of Finland——’

  ‘Madame Zilensky!’ Mr. Brook cried. ‘There is no King of Finland.’

  Madame Zilensky looked absolutely blank. Then, after an instant, she started off again. ‘I was standing in front of Bjarne’s patisserie when I turned away from the cakes and suddenly saw the King of Finland——’

  ‘Madame Zilensky, I just told you that there is no King of Finland.’

  ‘In Helsingfors,’ she started off again desperately, and again he let her get as far as the King, and then no further.

  ‘Finland is a democracy,’ he said. ‘You could not possibly have seen the King of Finland. Therefore, what you have just said is an untruth. A pure untruth.’

  Never afterward could Mr. Brook forget the face of Madame Zilensky at that moment. In her eyes there was astonishment, dismay, and a sort of cornered horror. She had the look of one who watches his whole interior world split open and disintegrate.

  ‘It is a pity,’ said Mr. Brook with real sympathy.

  But Madame Zilensky pulled herself together. She raised her chin and said coldly, ‘I am a Finn.’

  ‘That I do not question,’ answered Mr. Brook. On second thought, he did question it a little.

  ‘I was born in Finland and I am a Finnish citizen.’

  ‘That may very well be,’ said Mr. Brook in a rising voice.

  ‘In the war,’ she continued passionately, ‘I rode a motorcycle and was a messenger.’

  ‘Your patriotism does not enter into it.’

  ‘Just because I am getting out the first papers——’

  ‘Madame Zilensky!’ said Mr. Brook. His hands grasped the edge of the desk. ‘That is only an irrelevant issue. The point is that you maintained and testified that you saw—that you saw——’ But he could not finish. Her face stopped him. She was deadly pale and there were shadows around her mouth. Her eyes were wide open, doomed, and proud. And Mr. Brook felt suddenly like a murderer. A great commotion of feelings—understanding, remorse, and unreasonable love—made him cover his face with his hands. He could not speak until this agitation in his insides quieted down, and then he said very faintly, ‘Yes. Of course. The King of Finland. And was he nice?’

  An hour later, Mr. Brook sat looking out of the window of his office. The trees along the quiet Westbridge street were almost bare, and the gray buildings of the college had a calm, sad look. As he idly took in the familiar scene, he noticed the Drakes’ old Airedale waddling along down the street. It was a thing he had watched a hundred times before, so what was it that struck him as strange? Then he realized with a kind of cold surprise that the old dog was running along backward. Mr. Brook watched the Airedale until he was out of sight, then resumed his work on the canons which had been turned in by the class in counterpoint.

  The Sojourner

  THE TWILIGHT BORDER between sleep and waking was a Roman one this morning; splashing fountains and arched, narrow streets, the golden lavish city of blossoms and age-soft stone. Sometimes in this semi-consciousness he sojourned again in Paris, or war German rubble, or Swiss skiing and a snow hotel. Sometimes, also, in a fallow Georgia field at hunting dawn. Rome it was this morning in the yearless region of dreams.

  John Ferris awoke in a room in a New York hotel. He had the feeling that something unpleasant was awaiting him—what it was, he did not know. The feeling, submerged by matinal necessities, lingered even after he had dressed and gone downstairs. It was a cloudless autumn day and the pale sunlight sliced between the pastel skyscrapers. Ferris went into the next-door drugstore and sat at the end booth next to the window glass that overlooked the sidewalk. He ordered an American breakfast with scrambled eggs and sausage.

  Ferris had come from Paris to his father’s funeral which had taken place the week before in his home town in Georgia. The shock of death had made him aware of youth already passed. His hair was receding and the veins in his now naked temples were pulsing and prominent and his body was spare except for an incipient belly bulge. Ferris had loved his father and the bond between them had once been extraordinarily close—but the years had somehow unraveled this filial devotion; the death, expected for a long time, had left him with an unforeseen dismay. He had stayed as long as possible to be near his mother and brothers at home. His plane for Paris was to leave the next morning.

  Ferris pulled out his address book to verify a number. He turned the pages with growing attentiveness. Names and addresses from New York, the capitals of Europe, a few faint ones from his home state in the South. Faded, printed names, sprawled drunken ones. Betty Wills: a random love, married now. Charlie Williams: wounded in the Hürtgen Forest, unheard of since. Grand old Williams—did he live or die? Don Walker: a B.T.O. in television, getting rich. Henry Green: hit the skids after the war, in a sanitarium now, they say. Cozie Hall: he had heard that she was dead. Heedless, laughing Cozie—it was strange to think that she too, silly girl, could die. As Ferris closed the address book, he suffered a sense of hazard, transience, almost of fear.

  It was then that his body jerked suddenly. He was staring out of the window when there, on the sidewalk, passing by, was his ex
-wife. Elizabeth passed quite close to him, walking slowly. He could not understand the wild quiver of his heart, nor the following sense of recklessness and grace that lingered after she was gone.

  Quickly Ferris paid his check and rushed out to the sidewalk. Elizabeth stood on the corner waiting to cross Fifth Avenue. He hurried toward her meaning to speak, but the lights changed and she crossed the street before he reached her. Ferris followed. On the other side he could easily have overtaken her, but he found himself lagging unaccountably. Her fair brown hair was plainly rolled, and as he watched her Ferris recalled that once his father had remarked that Elizabeth had a ‘beautiful carriage.’ She turned at the next corner and Ferris followed, although by now his intention to overtake her had disappeared. Ferris questioned the bodily disturbance that the sight of Elizabeth aroused in him, the dampness of his hands, the hard heart-strokes.

  It was eight years since Ferris had last seen his ex-wife. He knew that long ago she had married again. And there were children. During recent years he had seldom thought of her. But at first, after the divorce, the loss had almost destroyed him. Then after the anodyne of time, he had loved again, and then again. Jeannine, she was now. Certainly his love for his ex-wife was long since past. So why the unhinged body, the shaken mind? He knew only that his clouded heart was oddly dissonant with the sunny, candid autumn day. Ferris wheeled suddenly and, walking with long strides, almost running, hurried back to the hotel.

  Ferris poured himself a drink, although it was not yet eleven o’clock. He sprawled out in an armchair like a man exhausted, nursing his glass of bourbon and water. He had a full day ahead of him as he was leaving by plane the next morning for Paris. He checked over his obligations: take luggage to Air France, lunch with his boss, buy shoes and an overcoat. And something—wasn’t there something else? Ferris finished his drink and opened the telephone directory.

  His decision to call his ex-wife was impulsive. The number was under Bailey, the husband’s name, and he called before he had much time for self-debate. He and Elizabeth had exchanged cards at Christmastime, and Ferris had sent a carving set when he received the announcement of her wedding. There was no reason not to call. But as he waited, listening to the ring at the other end, misgiving fretted him.

  Elizabeth answered; her familiar voice was a fresh shock to him. Twice he had to repeat his name, but when he was identified, she sounded glad. He explained he was only in town for that day. They had a theater engagement, she said—but she wondered if he would come by for an early dinner. Ferris said he would be delighted.

  As he went from one engagement to another, he was still bothered at odd moments by the feeling that something necessary was forgotten. Ferris bathed and changed in the late afternoon, often thinking about Jeannine: he would be with her the following night. ‘Jeannine,’ he would say, ‘I happened to run into my ex-wife when I was in New York. Had dinner with her. And her husband, of course. It was strange seeing her after all these years.’

  Elizabeth lived in the East Fifties, and as Ferris taxied uptown he glimpsed at intersections the lingering sunset, but by the time he reached his destination it was already autumn dark. The place was a building with a marquee and a doorman, and the apartment was on the seventh floor.

  ‘Come in, Mr. Ferris.’

  Braced for Elizabeth or even the unimagined husband, Ferris was astonished by the freckled red-haired child; he had known of the children, but his mind had failed somehow to acknowledge them. Surprise made him step back awkwardly.

  ‘This is our apartment,’ the child said politely. ‘Aren’t you Mr. Ferris? I’m Billy. Come in.’

  In the living room beyond the hall, the husband provided another surprise; he too had not been acknowledged emotionally. Bailey was a lumbering red-haired man with a deliberate manner. He rose and extended a welcoming hand.

  ‘I’m Bill Bailey. Glad to see you. Elizabeth will be in, in a minute. She’s finishing dressing.’

  The last words struck a gliding series of vibrations, memories of the other years. Fair Elizabeth, rosy and naked before her bath. Half-dressed before the mirror of her dressing table, brushing her fine, chestnut hair. Sweet, casual intimacy, the soft-fleshed loveliness indisputably possessed. Ferris shrank from the unbidden memories and compelled himself to meet Bill Bailey’s gaze.

  ‘Billy, will you please bring that tray of drinks from the kitchen table?’

  The child obeyed promptly, and when he was gone Ferris remarked conversationally, ‘Fine boy you have there.’

  ‘We think so.’

  Flat silence until the child returned with a tray of glasses and a cocktail shaker of Martinis. With the priming drinks they pumped up conversation: Russia, they spoke of, and the New York rain-making, and the apartment situation in Manhattan and Paris.

  ‘Mr. Ferris is flying all the way across the ocean tomorrow,’ Bailey said to the little boy who was perched on the arm of his chair, quiet and well behaved. ‘I bet you would like to be a stowaway in his suitcase.’

  Billy pushed back his limp bangs. ‘I want to fly in an airplane and be a newspaperman like Mr. Ferris.’ He added with sudden assurance, ‘That’s what I would like to do when I am big.’

  Bailey said, ‘I thought you wanted to be a doctor.’

  ‘I do!’ said Billy. ‘I would like to be both. I want to be a atom-bomb scientist too.’

  Elizabeth came in carrying in her arms a baby girl.

  ‘Oh, John!’ she said. She settled the baby in the father’s lap. ‘It’s grand to see you. I’m awfully glad you could come.’

  The little girl sat demurely on Bailey’s knees. She wore a pale pink crepe de Chine frock, smocked around the yoke with rose, and a matching silk hair ribbon tying back her pale soft curls. Her skin was summer tanned and her brown eyes flecked with gold and laughing. When she reached up and fingered her father’s horn-rimmed glasses, he took them off and let her look through them a moment. ‘How’s my old Candy?’

  Elizabeth was very beautiful, more beautiful perhaps than he had ever realized. Her straight clean hair was shining. Her face was softer, glowing and serene. It was a madonna loveliness, dependent on the family ambiance.

  ‘You’ve hardly changed at all,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but it has been a long time.’

  ‘Eight years.’ His hand touched his thinning hair self-consciously while further amenities were exchanged.

  Ferris felt himself suddenly a spectator—an interloper among these Baileys. Why had he come? He suffered. His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years. He felt he could not bear much longer to stay in the family room.

  He glanced at his watch. ‘You’re going to the theater?’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but we’ve had this engagement for more than a month. But surely, John, you’ll be staying home one of these days before long. You’re not going to be an expatriate, are you?’

  ‘Expatriate,’ Ferris repeated. ‘I don’t much like the word.’

  ‘What’s a better word?’ she asked.

  He thought for a moment. ‘Sojourner might do.’

  Ferris glanced again at his watch, and again Elizabeth apologized. ‘If only we had known ahead of time——’

  ‘I just had this day in town. I came home unexpectedly. You see, Papa died last week.’

  ‘Papa Ferris is dead?’

  ‘Yes, at Johns-Hopkins. He had been sick there nearly a year. The funeral was down home in Georgia.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, John. Papa Ferris was always one of my favorite people.’

  The little boy moved from behind the chair so that he could look into his mother’s face. He asked, ‘Who is dead?’

  Ferris was oblivious to apprehension; he was thinking of his father’s death. He saw again the outstretched body on the quilted silk within the coffin. The corpse flesh was bizarrely rouged and the familiar hands lay massive and joined above a spread of funeral roses. The memory closed and Ferris awakened
to Elizabeth’s calm voice.

  ‘Mr. Ferris’ father, Billy. A really grand person. Somebody you didn’t know.’

  ‘But why did you call him Papa Ferris?’

  Bailey and Elizabeth exchanged a trapped look. It was Bailey who answered the questioning child. ‘A long time ago,’ he said, ‘your mother and Mr. Ferris were once married. Before you were born—a long time ago.’

  ‘Mr. Ferris?’

  The little boy stared at Ferris, amazed and unbelieving. And Ferris’ eyes, as he returned the gaze, were somehow unbelieving too. Was it indeed true that at one time he had called this stranger, Elizabeth, Little Butterduck during nights of love, that they had lived together, shared perhaps a thousand days and nights and—finally—endured in the misery of sudden solitude the fiber by fiber (jealousy, alcohol and money quarrels) destruction of the fabric of married love.

  Bailey said to the children, ‘It’s somebody’s supper-time. Come on now.’

  ‘But Daddy! Mama and Mr. Ferris—I——’

  Billy’s everlasting eyes—perplexed and with a glimmer of hostility—reminded Ferris of the gaze of another child. It was the young son of Jeannine—a boy of seven with a shadowed little face and knobby knees whom Ferris avoided and usually forgot.

  ‘Quick march!’ Bailey gently turned Billy toward the door. ‘Say good night now, son.’

  ‘Good night, Mr. Ferris.’ He added resentfully, ‘I thought I was staying up for the cake.’

  ‘You can come in afterward for the cake,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Run along now with Daddy for your supper.’

  Ferris and Elizabeth were alone. The weight of the situation descended on those first moments of silence. Ferris asked permission to pour himself another drink and Elizabeth set the cocktail shaker on the table at his side. He looked at the grand piano and noticed the music on the rack.