I should have talked to her? Beans! She’d have taken me for a ride. That was sure as shit … I’d have understood even less … Buttoning up built my character at least.
In school Mr. Merrywin tried to persuade me, he went to a lot of trouble, he put all the kids to work making me talk. He wrote whole sentences on the blackboard in capital letters … easy to decipher … and the translation underneath … The kids repeated them all together, in chorus … in cadence … over and over. I opened my mouth wide … I pretended something was coming … I was waiting for it to come out … Nothing came out … Not a syllable … I shut my mouth again … The try was over … They’d leave me alone for another twenty-four hours … “Hello, Hello! Ferdinand!” the old ape would sing out, crestfallen, at the end of his wits … When he did that, he really gave me a pain … I’d have made him swallow his big stick … I’d have put him on a spit … I’d have hung him up on the window by the ass … Ah! He caught on finally … He stopped pushing me … He suspected the kind of instincts I had. I frowned … I grunted when my name was called … I kept my overcoat on even in school, I slept in it …
I meant a lot to Merrywin, he didn’t want to lose me, his school wasn’t overcrowded, he didn’t want me to go home before my six months were up. He was worried about my impulses. He kept on the defensive …
In the dormitory we kids were left to ourselves … once the prayers were over … We said them in our nightgowns, kneeling on the floor at the foot of the bed … Merrywin delivered a kind of sermon, we formed a circle around him … and then he went off to his room … We didn’t see him anymore. After hurrying through our responses, we hit the sack quick, impatient to start playing with ourselves. It warms you up … Nora shut the idiot up in a special bed with a grating over it. He was always trying to get out … he walked in his sleep so bad that sometimes he upset the bed …
I’d made friends with a crazy little kid that jerked me off almost every night, he suggested a lot of other things, he had ideas, I had plenty of juice, more than the others … He was greedy, he made all the kids laugh with his clowning … He sucked two of the other kids … He pretended to be a dog … Woof! Woof! he’d bark … he’d crawl around like a puppy, he came when we whistled, he liked being ordered around … On the nights when the storm was really acting up, when the wind was howling in the alley under our windows, we made bets whether the wind would put out the lamp … the one that creaked so bad, that was hanging above the gate … I used to hold the bets, the ginger, the chocolate, the pictures, the cigarette butts … even a few lumps of sugar … and three matches. They trusted me … They put it all on my bed … The woof-woof dog often won … He had an instinct about stormy weather … On Christmas Eve there was such a cyclone that the lamp in the alley smashed to bits. I can still remember … Kid Woof-Woof and I ate up all the bets.
It was the style and tradition that in the afternoon everybody put on sport clothes, a green-and-yellow-striped uniform and a cap to match, all decorated with the college seals and blazons … I wasn’t very eager to dress up like a jester and one of those outfits, I felt sure, must be mighty expensive … Especially the cleated shoes … I wasn’t in the mood for toys … I didn’t see any games in my future … It was just some more damn foolishness, made to order for little punks.
Right after lunch old man Merrywin himself took off his half-soutane, put on his Pied Piper coat and bzing! … out he went. All of a sudden he was full of beans, you wouldn’t have known him … He’d go romping up and down the field like a pony … Under the squalls and showers he was especially happy … His little harlequin suit had a magical effect on him. He was comical, as jumpy as quicksilver.
Englishmen, you’ve got to admit, are a funny sight … A cross between a pastor and a little boy … Everything about them is ambiguous. Mostly they bugger each other … He was awfully keen on having them buy me a complete set of livery, so I could be rigged out like a champion from Meanwell College. So I wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb when we went for a walk, or on the football field … He even showed me a letter he’d written my father on the subject … Maybe there was something in it for him. Maybe he’d get a rake-off. There was something suspicious about the way he kept insisting … I didn’t bat an eyelash when I saw the letter, but I had a little laugh to myself … “Go ahead and send it, you old fool, you don’t know my parents. They don’t give a good godam about sports.” Obviously he had no idea … Obviously they’d tell him what for … They’d stick at the monkeysuit … any bets? There’d be hell to pay …
Well anyway, after lunch, rain or shine or earthquake, we all had to go out … Two by two we had to climb another hill behind ours, absolutely waterlogged, a chaos of bogs and torrents … I brought up the rear with Mrs. Merrywin and the idiot in between us … We brought his pail and shovel, so he could make mud pies, big mushy ones, that kept him quiet for a while … Umbrellas and raincoats were no use at all … nothing could resist the tornadoes … If it hadn’t been for the slush that was thicker than lead, we’d have flown away with the birds …
I had the best position in the football game, I kept goal … that gave me a chance to meditate … I didn’t like to be disturbed, I let almost everything through … When the whistle blew, the brats flung themselves into the battle, they plowed through the muck till their ankles cracked, they charged at the ball, full steam into the clay, they plastered themselves with it, their eyes were full of it, their whole heads were covered … When the game was over, our little angels were nothing but molded garbage, staggering hunks of clay … with big wads of pigeon shit sticking to them. The muddier they were, the shittier, the more hermetically sealed, the happier they felt … They were wild with joy under their crusts of ice, welded into their clay helmets.
Our only trouble was lack of competition … Rival teams were rare, especially nearby. Actually the only ones that played us regularly, every Thursday, were the kids from Pitwitt Academy, on the other side of the bridge at Stroud, a gang of miserable pimplefaces, foundlings, a charitable institution … They were mighty skinny, even lighter than our gang … Actually they didn’t weigh anything. At the first violent charge downwind, they flew away just like the ball … The main thing was to hold them, to flatten then down … We used to beat them 12 to 4. Regularly. It was the custom … If there were any complaints, if we heard the slightest murmur, we didn’t hesitate a second, we beat the shit out of them, we massacred them … That was the custom too. If they kicked so much as a single goal more than usual, our boys got really vicious … They said they’d been double-crossed … they began looking for the guilty parties … murder was in the air … When we got home in the evening, they went over the whole business again … after prayers, when the old man had closed the door … Hell broke loose for five minutes … Jongkind was to blame … The fool things he did, he was always responsible for the penalties we got … He got his punishment … It was epic … They lifted up the grating and spilled him out of his crib … First they spread him out on the floor like a crab, ten of them all together gave him a mean whipping with belts … even with the buckles … When he yelled too loud, they’d pin him under a mattress and everybody stamped on him … Then they went after his pecker … to teach him how to behave … till there wasn’t any more … not a single drop.
Next day he couldn’t stand up … Mrs. Merrywin was puzzled, she couldn’t make the kid out … He didn’t say “No trouble” anymore … He crumpled up at the table and in class … for three days he was a wreck … But he was incorrigible, you’d have had to tie him to make him keep still … You had to keep him away from the goal … The minute he saw the ball go in, he went off his rocker, he dashed in like a madman, jumped on the ball, wrenched it away from the goalkeeper … Before we could stop him, he’d run away with it … At times like that he was really out of his mind … He ran faster than anybody else … “Hurray, hurray, hurray!” he’d keep shouting all the way down the hill. It wasn’t easy to catch him. He’d run all the
way to town. Often we’d catch him in a shop … kicking the ball into shop windows, smashing signs … He was a demon athlete. He had funny ideas, you never knew what he was going to do next.
For three months I didn’t say boo; I didn’t say hip or hep or oof … I didn’t say yes … I didn’t say no … I didn’t say anything at all … it took some heroism … I didn’t speak to a living soul … That suited me fine …
In the dormitory everything went on as usual … the jerking and sucking … I wondered about Nora, but I didn’t really know a thing …
Around January and February it was terribly cold and the fog was so thick we could hardly find our way home from the playing field … We groped our way …
The old man let me alone in school and on the hill, he’d stopped trying to argue with me. He caught on to my character … He thought I was thinking things over … that I’d come around after a while, if handled gently … That’s not what interested me. What gave me the creeps was the thought of going back to the Passage. It gave me the shivers three months in advance. It drove me crazy just to think about it … Christ! Having to start talking again! …
On the physical side I had nothing to complain about, I was doing all right. I was feeling a good deal stronger … The rough climate, the glacial weather was just what I needed … It built me up more and more, if the eats had been better I’d have turned into a regular strong man … I’d have laid them all flat …
Another couple of weeks went by … That made four months of silence. Then all of a sudden Merrywin got kind of scared … One afternoon when we came in from sports, I saw him grabbing a sheet of paper. He begins to write my father, hysterically … a lot of bilge … It was a dumb thing to do …By return mail I got three big long letters that I can safely describe as vile … stupid, bristling with threats, bloodcurdling oaths, insults in Greek and Latin, warnings, prospective punishments, selected anathemas, infinite grief … My conduct was diabolical! Apocalyptic! … That got me down again … He writes me an ultimatum to plunge into the study of the English language, immediately, in the name of his terrible principles, of their extreme privations … of their twenty million sacrifices, of the horrible sufferings they had endured, all for my sake. Merrywin, the stupid bastard, stuttered and stammered … he was all upset, flummoxed at having brought on such a deluge … A lot of good it had done him! Now the dikes were broken … it was every man for himself … I can’t begin to say how rotten sick it made me to see all my old man’s damn foolishness right there on the table, spread out in black on white … It was even crummier in writing.
What an asshole he turned out to be … old Swallowtail Merrywin! Worse than all the brats lumped together … And ten times stupider and stubborner … I was sure he’d be my downfall with those glass eyes of his.
If he’d kept quiet and minded his business as agreed, I was good for another six months … Now that he’d put his foot in it, it was only a question of weeks … I locked myself up in my silence … I was very angry with him … If I picked up and left, he’d asked for it … It would be a disaster for the school. He’d brought it on himself. Meanwell College wasn’t doing very well to begin with … Without me on the football team, they were all washed up, the team would never get through the season.
After Christmas vacation four kids left—that is, they didn’t come back … The school would have one hell of a football team even if they let Jongkind play … It would be nonexistent … With only eight snotnoses left it was no use even lining up … They’d wipe the floor with us. Pitwitt would score whenever they felt like it … even if their kids had been lighter than feathers, even if they’d been twice as undernourished … Our boys would cut and run … They wouldn’t wait for the massacre … Meanwell was washed up … No more football meant bankruptcy … The old man was scared shitless … He made a last despairing try … He questioned me in French … Did I have any complaints, was anything wrong? … Did the kids bully me? … I’d have liked to see them try! Did my feet get too wet? … Was there something special I’d like to eat? There was no sense in talking. I was ashamed to sulk and act like an ass in front of Nora … but self-respect wasn’t the half of it … Once you’ve made up your mind, you got to go through with it … The more pupils they lost, the more indispensable I was getting … They were always making up to me … smiling … doing me favors … The kids knocked themselves out … Little Jack, the one that put on the puppy act at night, brought me candy … he even gave me some of his watercress … the little tiny leaves … stiff as whiskers … that taste like mustard … and grow in special moldy boxes on the windowsill …
The old man had told them all to be nice … and try and keep me until Easter … for the sake of our sports, the honor of the school depended on it … If I left any sooner, the team would be shot … they wouldn’t be able to play Pitwitt anymore …
To make things even nicer for me they let me off classes. In class I distracted everybody’s attention … I was always banging my desk … or I’d go and look out the window … at the fog and the movement in the port … I had projects of my own, I did things with chestnuts and walnuts, I set up naval battles … I made big sailboats with matches … I prevented the others from learning anything …
The idiot behaved pretty well, except he kept sticking his penholder up his nose … Sometimes he put two or even four of them in one nostril … He pushed them way up and yelled … He drank the ink out of the inkwells … It was better he should take walks … The more he grew the harder it got to handle him … They took us out together … I missed the classroom a little … I didn’t learn anything but I felt good, I didn’t mind the sound of English … It’s pleasant, elegant, supple … It’s a kind of music, it comes from another planet … I had no talent for learning … It wasn’t hard for me to resist … Papa always said I was stupid and opaque … There was nothing to be surprised about … My isolation suited me better and better … Obstinacy is my strong point … They had to give in, to stop bothering me … They flattered my instincts, my taste for bumming … They walked me all over the region, up hill and down village, with the idiot, his wheelbarrow, and all his toys …
As soon as school started, we lit out for the country, Jongkind, Mrs. Merrywin, and I … We often came back by way of Chatham, depending on the errands we had to do. We held the idiot by a rope fastened to his belt, so he wouldn’t make off through the streets … He was always up to something … We’d mosey down to town, we’d saunter along the shop fronts, we’d have to watch out for the carriages, he was scared of horses, he’d practically jump under the wheels …
While doing the shopping, Mrs. Merrywin tried to teach me the signs on the shops … That way I’d learn without even trying, without the slightest effort … I let her talk … I just looked at her face, at the particular spot that fascinated me, her smile … that saucy little jigger … I’d have liked to kiss her right there … It was itching me something terrible … I went around behind her … I hypnotized myself on her waist, her movements, her undulations … On market day we took the big basket … it was like a cradle … Jongkind and I each held a handle. We brought back all the food for the whole week … Our shopping took all morning.
I saw Gwendoline, my Greasy Joan, in the distance. She was still cooking her fritters, she was wearing a different hat, it was even bigger, with more flowers … I refused to go in that direction … I’d never have extricated myself from all the explanations and gush. When we stayed home because Jongkind had a cold, Nora lay on the couch in the drawing room and began to read, there were books all over the place … Our blessed angel was a sensitive soul, poetic, imaginative … She didn’t soil her hands, she never touched a finger to the food or the beds or the floors. There were two maids when I first came: Flossie and Gertrude. They seemed to be pretty hefty … How did they manage that? They must have kept all the grub for themselves, or maybe it was some disease … They were neither of them any spring chickens … You could hear them griping the whole time, the
y were always sniffing on the stairs. They’d shake their brooms at each other … But they didn’t knock themselves out … It was filthy in the corners …
Flossie smoked on the sly, I caught her one day in the garden … No washing was done in the house, we took it all to town to a special laundry, at the end of the world, way past the barracks. On those days Jongkind and I didn’t rest a minute, we went up and down the hill any number of times with enormous bundles … We’d have contests to see who could carry more and faster … That was a sport I understood … it reminded me of the days on the Boulevards … Our walks got to be wild adventures when the rain came down so heavy and wet … when the sky crashed against the roofs and burst into torrents and waterfalls. The three of us clung together to resist the tempest … The storm was so violent that Nora … her curves, her buttocks, her thighs … looked like solid water, everything was stuck together … We weren’t making any headway … We couldn’t take the stairs that went up our cliff … We had to go around by the park … to make a detour past the church. We stopped outside the chapel, under the portico … waiting for the storm to pass.
Death on the Installment Plan Page 26
