Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  “As soon as the past showed itself, you tried to run away. At the same time you set yourself various tests to find out what you were like. None of the results appeared to be conclusive, though, because the tests did not seem to you real. What you were being drawn toward all the time was a re-enactment of the old situation, but your first marriage and your other relationships fulfilled practically none of the conditions that had prevailed in your father’s house. And the essential thing was lacking: you felt free; you were an equal; you could always get away. You say that you were happier in these relationships. In the end, though, they proved unsatisfactory. You dropped them abruptly. However, as you got older and—you must not forget this—stronger, you began to choose men who more nearly resembled your father. A middle-aged man, married men, even, once, a New Englander who came from your father’s home state.”

  “That was nothing,” she said. “A flash in the pan. One afternoon.”

  “Yes. All these affairs are mere signposts of a direction. Finally, however, your father dies, and you are free to make a real marriage. You at once marry Frederick and imitate, as much as it’s possible for a grown woman, your own predicament as a child. You lock yourself up again, you break with your former friends, you quit your job; in other words, you cut yourself off completely. You even put your money in his bank account. You are alone: if you cry out, no one will listen; if you explain, no one will believe you. Frederick’s own weaknesses contribute to this picture; they affirm its reality. His own insecurity makes him tyrannical and over-possessive; his fear of emotional expenditure makes him apparently indifferent. On the one hand, he is unjust to you, like your aunt; on the other, like your father, he pretends not to notice your sufferings and to deny his own culpability in them. Religion appears again, but now (this is very significant) it is the Protestant religion. A doctor enters the scene. If I remember rightly, you say that the only time your father came into your bedroom, he was bringing a doctor with him.”

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  “You reproach yourself with cowardice for having contracted this marriage. But look at the facts. Isn’t this the most dangerous action you have ever performed as an adult? You have run a terrible risk, the risk of severe neurosis, in putting yourself to this test. For that’s the thing you are asking: will I be able to get out? And once again you have the answer in yourself.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said. “I’m turned to water. I’m finished. I’m overrun by barbarian tribes. Two or three years ago, perhaps . . . Not now.”

  “Two or three years ago, Margaret,” he said gently, “you wouldn’t have had the courage to put yourself in this situation, let alone to save yourself.”

  “It’s not true. I was wonderful then.”

  He smiled.

  “In those days, you were avoiding the things you feared. Now you are eating breakfast with them.”

  “Not eating breakfast,” she said. “Frederick prefers to breakfast alone. I disturb his train of thought.”

  “The weakness you feel is a result of living with these fears. You must find your way out, and you’ll discover that you are just as strong as Frederick.”

  “But what can I do? He won’t allow me to leave him. I have nobody left to borrow money from. I could run away and sleep on a park bench, I suppose.”

  But she did not want that. Ah, no! The days of romantic destitution were gone for her. It was no longer possible for her to conceive of herself as a ribbon clerk at Macy’s. Now there was not so much time left in the world that you could spend two years or three in the unrewarding occupation of keeping yourself alive. Her apprenticeship was finished. If she took a job, it would have to be a good one, one that would keep the talents limber. No more secretarial work, no more office routine, that wonderful, narcotic routine that anesthetizes the spirit, lulls the mind to sleep with the cruel paranoiac delusion of the importance, the value to humanity, of the humble-task-well-done.

  “You tried running away as a little girl, and it didn’t work,” he said. “No. You misunderstand me. I’m not advising you to leave Frederick. You must win your freedom from him, your right to your opinions, your tastes, your friends, your money. And, of course, your right to leave him. Once you have it, I believe, you will cease to want to exercise it. You can become truly reconciled with Frederick, and you may even be happy with him.”

  “It sounds impractical,” she said. “How am I going to get these rights?”

  “You did it before,” he answered. “You did it with your mind. That and your beauty are the two weapons you have.”

  He closed his black notebook.

  “All right!” he announced in a totally different voice, high and unnaturally sprightly, as if he were giving a bird imitation. The hour was over. She looked at the electric clock. He had given her five minutes extra. This pleased her, and she was ashamed of being pleased over such a small, such a niggardly present. What a pass indeed she had come to when the favors of this commonplace little doctor could be treasured, like autumn leaves in a memory book! The knife of terror struck at her, and she saw herself as a transient, and this office with its white walls as the last and bleakest hotel room she would ever lie in. Guests who stay after one P.M. will be expected to pay for the extra day. When she was gone, he would empty the ash tray, smooth out the white cloth on the pillow, open the window for an instant, and the room and he would be blank again, ready for the next derelict. She put her hat on carefully, trying not to hurry, lest he see how humble and rejected she felt, how willing to be dislodged; and trying, on the other hand, not to take too much time, lest he think her inconsiderate. He picked up her coat from the end of the couch and held it out for her, an attention he rarely paid her. She glanced at him and quickly lowered her eyes. Does he think I am unusually upset today, she wondered. Or was it something else? “My beauty,” she murmured to herself. “Well, well!” She slid her arms into the coat. She turned, and he offered her his hand. In slight confusion, she shook it. “Good-bye,” she said softly. He patted her arm. “Good-bye. See you tomorrow,” he said in a rather solicitous voice. He held the door open for her and she slid out awkwardly, half-running, not wanting him to see her blush.

  On the street, she felt very happy. “He likes me,” she thought, “he likes me the best.” She walked dreamily down Madison Avenue, smiling, and the passers-by smiled back at her. I look like a girl in love, she thought; it is absurd. And yet what a fine rehabilitation of character that had been! The most dangerous action . . . run a terrible risk. She repeated these phrases to herself, as if they had been words of endearment. I think you can . . . Suddenly, her heart turned over. She shuddered. It had all been a therapeutic lie. There was no use talking. She knew. The mind was powerless to save her. Only a man . . . She was under a terrible enchantment, like the beleaguered princesses in the fairy tales. The thorny hedge had grown up about her castle so that the turrets could hardly be seen, the road was thick with brambles; was it still conceivable that the lucky third son of a king could ever find his way to her? Dr. James? She asked herself the question and shook her head violently. But supposing he should fall in love with her, would she have the strength to remind herself that he was a fussy, methodical young man whom she would never ordinarily have looked at? All at once, she remembered that she had not told him the end of her dream.

  She was matriculating at a place called Eggshell College. There was an outing cabin, and there were three tall young men, all of them a sort of dun color, awkward, heavy-featured, without charm, a little like the pictures of Nazi prisoners that the Soviet censor passes. They stumbled about the cabin, bumping their heads on the rafters. She was sorry she had gone there, and she sat down at a table, resolved to take no part in the proceedings. Two other girls materialized, low-class girls, the kind you said, “Hello, there” to on the campus. A sort of rude party commenced. Finally one of the men came toward her, and she got up at once, her manner becoming more animated. In a moment she was flirting with him and telling on
e of the other girls, “Really he is not so bad as the others. He is quite interesting when you begin to talk to him.” His face changed, his hair grew dark and wavy. There was something Byronic about him. He bent down to kiss her; it was a coarse, loutish kiss. “There must be some mistake,” she thought. “Perhaps I kissed the wrong one,” and she looked up to find that the Byronic air was gone; he was exactly like the others. But in a few minutes it happened again; his skin whitened, his thick, flat nose refined itself, developed a handsome bridge. When he kissed her this time, she kept her eyes shut, knowing very well what she would see if she opened them, knowing that it was now too late, for now she wanted him anyway.

  The memory of the dream struck her, like a heavy breaker. She stopped in the street, gasping. “Oh my God,” she demanded incredulously, “how could I, how could I?” In a moment, she told herself that it was only a dream, that she had not really done that, that this time at least she need feel no remorse. Her thirsty spirit gulped the consoling draft. But it was insufficient. She could not disown the dream. It belonged to her. If she had not yet embraced a captive Nazi, it was only an accident of time and geography, a lucky break. Now for the first time she saw her own extremity, saw that it was some failure in self-love that obliged her to snatch blindly at the love of others, hoping to love herself through them, borrowing their feelings, as the moon borrowed light. She herself was a dead planet. It was she who was the Nazi prisoner, the pseudo-Byron, the equivocal personality who was not truly protean but only appeared so. And yet, she thought, walking on, she could still detect her own frauds. At the end of the dream, her eyes were closed, but the inner eye had remained alert. She could still distinguish the Nazi prisoner from the English milord, even in the darkness of need.

  “Oh my God,” she said, pausing to stare in at a drugstore window that was full of hot-water bottles, “do not let them take this away from me. If the flesh must be blind, let the spirit see. Preserve me in disunity. O di,” she said aloud, “reddite me hoc pro pietate mea.”

  It was certainly a very small favor she was asking, but, like Catullus, she could not be too demanding, for, unfortunately, she did not believe in God.

  THE OASIS

  To Bowden

  In fact, it must be confessed that, both in this world and the next, the wicked are always a source of considerable embarrassment.

  From the passage on Mme de Warens’

  religious views in Rousseau’s Confessions.

  OBEDIENT to the social law that makes the moot guest the early bird at a tea party, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Lockman were the first to arrive in Utopia. The past cannot be discarded in a single gesture, and Joe, in real life a diabetic business man from Belmont, Massachusetts, had spent thirty years beating his competitors to the jump. Joe’s intentions toward Utopia were already formidable: honoring its principles of equality and fraternity, he was nevertheless determined to get more out of it than anybody else. This determination was purely spiritual. Translated from his factory and his garden to this heavenly mountain-top, he intended to paint more, think more, and feel more than his co-colonists. He meant no evil by this; he called it leadership. He expected to be a spur and an incentive, as he had been to the brothers and the brothers-in-law in Lockman Leathergoods below. He would not have been in earnest about the higher life if he had failed to think of it in terms of the speed-up.

  Habits die hard, particularly with the successful, and where the other colonists, defeated, for the most part, in their earthly endeavors by drink, pride, greed, caution, or laziness, looked upon Utopia as a concerted New Year’s resolution, an insurrection of slaves against the inner masters, as well as a secession from society, Joe saw it simply as an extension of opportunity. He had always been a good man, and the only sin he had ever committed—the brother whom he had pronounced dead the day the shortage in the firm’s accounts was discovered—he considered a righteous act. His one regret in real life, aside from family cares, was that he had not found sufficient time to give to his painting, a hobby he had taken up in middle age for purposes of relaxation, only to find in art (he had gone straight to the moderns) something bigger and better than business, a gigantic step-up transformer for the communication of personal electricity which excited his salesman’s vision with promises of a vast “development.” He looked forward with the greatest interest to the conversation of writers and painters, and it did not occur to him that he was participating in an anarchistic experiment. He knew himself to be a good mixer, as well as a good neighbor, and the communal program of the colony filled him, therefore, with no alarms—“What’s mine is yours,” he was fond of saying to acquaintances, and though he voted the Republican ticket, he had long been of the opinion that there was too much selfishness in the world. His exodus from Belmont, therefore, had an orderly and calmly transitional character. He had the AAA map out the route for him as usual, outlining the best highways in a serene wide ribbon of turquoise that ended abruptly, however, at the junction down in the valley, where the dirt road to Utopia trailed off from the numbered highway, anonymous and unmarked.

  It was in the AAA office that Joe had experienced his first qualm. Before the blonde secretary, he felt really humiliated to think that Utopia did not figure on his Socony Automobile Guide. Etymology being one of his hobbies, he had already done the derivation of Utopia from ou, not, topos, a place (“Notaplace, get it?” he had said to his wife, Eva), yet the stare of the secretary unmanned him. He could not resist the impulse to put Utopia on the map. Seizing a pencil from the girl’s desk, he had quickly drawn in a mountain where no surveyor had ever found one. “Look,” he said. “Next year Socony will have it, right between Shaker Village and the birthplace of Stephen A. Douglas.”

  Afterwards, he was ashamed of what he had done. “Joe,” he said to himself, in the hillbilly dialect he had adopted for interior disputation, “you hadn’t ought to act thataway. What you care what folks think? We-uns up in the mountains don’t give a damn about they-uns down in the valley.” Self-parody was Joe’s misfortune; he was a buffoon even with his soul. A sad Jewish comedian, grey-haired, grey-eyed, grey-skinned, sick, intelligent, unsure, he lacked audience-sense to an almost fatal degree. He used a dozen masks, accents, patters, soft-shoe steps, to parry an invisible laughter whose source he could not locate; in the confusion of these disguises, he had lost himself. The go-getting business man, the official greeter, the barber-shop harmonist, the Scout leader, the comic Englishman, Ikey the Jew, all these stereotypes were Joe’s repertory, but they were also Joe. He had made himself grotesque for fear of becoming ridiculous, and though somewhere within him there was a voice crying in the wilderness, it spoke in a babel of tongues, in the base dialect of the Philistines. He was a prophet without honor to himself.

  “He is the antithesis of everything we stand for,” shouted Macdougal Macdermott, the editor of a libertarian magazine, the night Joe’s name was proposed to the Utopian council. “My God, aren’t we going to have any standards? I don’t hold his business against him; he may be a decent employer; but, my God, the man is uncivilized. Don’t you believe in anything? This fellow is a Yahoo.” Ordinarily a generous-minded man, ready to oppose sectarianism whenever he observed it in others, Macdougal Macdermott felt the proposed admission of Joe Lockman as a personal affront. Of all the enrolled Utopians, he was closest to Joe by temperament. Tall, red-bearded, gregarious, susceptible to a liver complaint, puritanical, disputatious, hard-working, monogamous, a good father and a good friend, he had suffered all his life from a vague sense that he was somehow crass, that he did not belong by natural endowment to that world of the spirit which his intellect told him was the highest habitation of man. That he could not see this world was a source of perpetual grievance to him; he knew that it existed through perceiving its effect on others, as a man in a snug house infers that the wind is blowing from the agitation of the leaves on the trees. Had he not seen a poem, he would have scoffed at the idea of poetry, and had the idea of poetry not been presented t
o him, he would have scoffed at a poem. Nevertheless, ten years before, he had made the leap into faith and sacrificed $20,000 a year and a secure career as a paid journalist for the intangible values that eluded his empirical grasp. He had moved down town into Bohemia, painted his walls indigo, dropped the use of capital letters and the practice of wearing a vest, and, having thus impressed his Sancho Panza into the service of quixotic causes, he now felt it to be the keenest ingratitude that he should be asked to admit into the fellowship a man who had done nothing. A whole habit of thrift in him cried out against the proposed largesse. Where was the justice in the world, if the savings of a lifetime were to be wiped out in a sudden inflation of the currency? Like the Prodigal Son’s brother, he rebelled against this capriciousness of favor; his logical character cried out against the illogic of grace.