Letty Fox

by Christina Stead

  Anatomy, diagnosis by face, gait.

  Current union, trade, and intellectual papers for phraseology—which avoid. Cant phrases, fads, movie wisecracks.

  Hold forth on topic, like Liberia, in meetings, homes, to draw reactions. Slogans, headlines. Cover sleep.

  National traditions, sexual traditions. Is there a true individual underneath? Seek.

  Basic beliefs of all people, e.g., he is special individual, so is his wife; others are mere types.

  I worked, and the events of the few preceding weeks began to lift from me like a fog-bank from a harbor. I was back in the world. I resolutely forgot the nights and days when I had sat gibbering with misery over men who were not there.

  39

  Jacky, now at college, and uncertain of her career, came to see me often, because I was alone at this new place. She had disliked both the Jane Street place and my friends, Amy and Lorna. She thought I was getting into trouble in Jane Street; and then she wanted to talk about herself and could not, with Amy and Lorna giving her advice about profane love. Jacky was on the classic side. She was handsome now, with dark gold hair still done in a plait crowning the oval head, hair that would become chestnut, gradually; her oval eyes fully opened, her long cheeks which in old age would droop into dewlaps, now were full, fresh, sensual. She had, above all, a remarkably beautiful skin, thick and translucent. When she was dull or dogged, her skin was dull as old paint; but at other times, she was radiant. She was well formed, more slender than myself, with an upward tug of the members which gave her an air of youthful pride. She was vain. Sometimes she would condescend to shine at a family party, but had the most curious vanity of all: she deserted the young men who clustered around her (Aunt Phyllis’s days were over) for the older men; and, as there were several brilliant men in our circle, like Froggart, Gondych, Froggart’s cousin, Solander, my father, and Banks, the lawyer, not to mention Joseph Montrose, all middle-aged men, she was the fancy of these men. No one else troubled about them at all. I, for one, could not bear them. But Jacky’s wits led her astray. She wanted to take each clever man on, in hand-to-hand fight, and then in a general melee. She considered herself a wit. I was anxious about her future, for she had no aim. One week it was languages, the next, medicine; and the next, it was poetry that she would take up.

  She came to see me one evening at the end of June as soon as college had closed. We had something to eat off the hotplate I had in my kitchenette, and sat at the window wondering what to do. I picked my words with Jacky, who, though no fool, had not had my experiences. Eventually, I got bored and would take her out to the movies. She generally paid. She was generous, even spendthrift. I had much to do with money, living alone as I did. But this evening, with her handsome, old-gold crowned face turned to the sunset across the Hudson, she was speaking so much of herself in a disordered, interesting fashion, that I thought I ought to stay there and listen to her. After all, the day must come soon when she would wake up and some man would disenchant her. Also, lately I had suffered such a revulsion from the small-minded counsels of Amy and my own horrid misadventures, that I was delighted to listen to the naïve clatter of a young girl. What a beautiful girl says can never really be stupid, whereas with a plain girl one always feels that what she is really saying is, “I am a failure.”

  She had been watching a man, an old carcass, who was sitting on the stoop opposite, leaning on a knotted stick and occasionally opening his mouth, like a fish. He was looking this way and that, not up into the sky, and timidly, sadly greeted anyone who would salute him.

  “Oh, he’s there every day, except when there’s wind, or snow, or rain, or humidity, or dust or one hundred degrees in the shade.”

  “Yes,” said Jacky, “old age is worse than death for such people; but, after all, I don’t know who he is. Perhaps he is one of those for whom death is worse even than old age. Suppose you are Rembrandt van Rijn—death is then worse than old age, for it is the extinction of Rembrandt. The way they all talk—‘I’ve only just begun, I must live; why, I’ve twenty years of work ahead of me—let me live another month at least, Doctor, I’ve got some work to finish.’ To them, it’s different; to the real workers. I hope I’m a real worker.”

  “I’d be delighted to settle down right now,” I said, with feeling; “I don’t want to be a real worker. Why do we have to struggle? I don’t believe in the struggle of youth. Things ought to be made easy for us when we’re at the height of our powers. Old people like to struggle; at least, they’re used to it. Why should we get crow’s-feet?”

  “Tories are people who are frightened of the future,” said Jacky; “perhaps the source of life is shallow in them; anyone can see the future, it all depends on courage.”

  “Courage is too painful; she speaks who knows.”

  “The face of a really brave man—oh! how he looks at others! He never blinks,” she said, smiling; “it isn’t like a man turning his face to an enemy, but like someone turning his face to the sun. But, you see, even the brave get old; then they are afraid of the snow, the wind, the dust, and people who won’t say hello to them. Isn’t it terrible?”

  “Yes. I don’t know. I suppose you can keep your chin up at any age.”

  “No,” said Jacky. “If you think about old age, you can’t believe in anything but materialism. The immortal soul doesn’t exist. A man like Faraday, Talleyrand, gets old; Goethe, King Lear, Faust—”

  “What have they to do with each other?”

  “They were all old.”

  Tears were standing in her eyes. I looked at her attentively and waited. She continued, “The face of Talleyrand was shrewish, with an intent glance, and a high forehead. Thought pierced through his skin; he seemed never asleep. When old, his eyes were sluggish, nothing was seen; he had spots on his skin, he limped, he was bent, and his skin was as dry as an old corpse under an autopsy, it wheezed and crackled. He was infinitely polite, he loved society. When he was old he would not let anyone in to see him. Do you think both of these were Talleyrand? Yes, they were. But there was no sole Talleyrand. There was Talleyrand old and Talleyrand young, the two men. Perhaps many more Talleyrands than that.”

  “Are you writing about Talleyrand?”

  “No. He is interesting though; he was a professional cynic, so much of a crook, so to speak, a diplomatist, that his name is a byword; but as a friend he was charming, open, frank, simple. So you see there were more than even two Talleyrands. Ordinary people are just of one piece, like paper dolls.”

  Her skin blazed now. I saw she had something on her mind, and I waited. She led me a dance. Said Jacky:

  “The sexual cells are immortal, you know. These queer beings like Talleyrand, I don’t say him in particular, for I don’t know about his sexual life, but such beings, hypersensitive, morbid, and what we call great, seem to understand that, for they wish to be immortal and they cling to their sexual life when it is exhausted. Now, that poor old man, well, perhaps, even now he dreams of pretty young girls who will come and hold his hand, or something else.”

  “Really, you ought to be a playwright. So much in that old hulk, sitting on the stoop!”

  “Yes! There is no death from old age, don’t you, see. That is to say, no natural death, without lesion, fatal sickness, although I admit you could dispute about the fatal sickness. But there is natural death in this sense, that many generations of cells have lived in us before we die, and sooner or later they cease to regenerate themselves and so life is no longer possible. Or they begin to increase and reproduce in such a dreadful, mistaken way—but no doubt it is in us, the remnant of what once was the power to re-create unremittingly—a limb, skin, parts of the body.”

  “I see you’ve decided to go in for medicine, after all, Jacky.”

  “The infusoria have no corpses. The earthworm can re-create himself. Starfish put on a broken limb, lizards a new tail. We can grow new hair, and new teeth once, that’s all. Our children don’t have any changes, except in the womb. Once they emerge, t
hey just grow from little to big, but no change in actual diagram. We’re a fixed race.”

  “But those other things die,” I said, thinking she was worried about death. “They die sooner than we do.”

  “I’m just speaking generally. Death isn’t one thing, it has all kinds of factors. We ought to find a way to prolong each stage of life. They complain that the youth of the race is longer now, but also the age of the race is longer. We can lengthen it. Those people who live long have always signs of youth in them, even to the end. Men who are packed with energy contain all the men they ever were: children, youths, men in their prime, even their mothers, too. And they attach to themselves all kinds of other living things of their race, as other grand old men, which they suck up; and they consort only with the most living; and they love young beautiful girls, for example, only to drink up, unconsciously, from them the new blood, don’t you see? But also they have shunned old age all their lives. So, such men are not old, but young, and you can never tell when, out of this secret drinking of new and strong blood they have always done, they will regenerate at least their energy and flash upon you, making even an ordinary young girl or man feel feeble. There are such old men and I am sure that old man there, timidly sitting there begging for glances is not one of them. I don’t want to run down the poor old man, but he is not one of them.”

  “But King David gat no heat,” said I.

  She looked sad, “Yes. I am just thinking generally. Old age begins at sixty perhaps, but senility does not begin till much later, even till eighty-five if the person is energetic. Some men of genius have kept going, apparently in perfect health, till eighty-four or so. It is quite possible. In senility the intelligence dies, but until then, there is no sign of deterioration; the brains are sharper, and the judgment gentler, but—naturally, there is fatigue. Even feeling, sensitivity collapses. Especially the ability to know how others suffer. The old man wants to love, he knows he is in a situation where he might, and he cannot—then he becomes very sad. I read about one poor old man who had been a celebrity—he had to walk upstairs on his hands and knees, when no one was looking. He could not bear the weight of his body, it was too much to hold up. Other old men spend fortunes trying to get back their hair, their clear skin, their potency—it is a different life from ours. It is in another planet.”

  “I can’t bear old men or old women. I never could.”

  Jacky said: “You know, poor Faust”—she laughed, as if she knew him—“he drew the sign of the macrocosm, that’s the great world—”

  “Look, I’ve been to school!”

  She laughed, “He feels intense joy and cries out, ‘Am I a god?’ Today, he’d cry out, ‘Am I a ruler, a dictator, the head of a government?’ Wouldn’t he? God was the highest in those days; of course, an imaginary creature. Now, we’d say, I’m fit to run the government. I suppose a very rich man, born to it, like W. R. Hearst, he naturally thinks, am I a god? Am I a king? Am I nature? He tries to do what he can to give other people his impression.”

  “Yes, sentimentalism leads you to defend Hearst on romantic ground.”

  “Not at all. I hate him. But what’s the situation of a man who considers himself above the mob, for whatever reason? Take not a bad man like Hearst, but a good man like Gondych.”

  “Gondych who?”

  “Simon Gondych; he’s some vague relative of ours, or, at least, of the Foxes.”

  “Oh! Yes. I see. What about Gondych? What’s he doing in this boat?”

  “No, you don’t understand!”

  To my surprise, I saw that Jacky was hurt.

  “Yes, yes. I understand; excuse me, Jacky, I’m so gross, really. I get used to making jokes, but I didn’t see what you meant.”

  “You don’t see now; it isn’t your fault, Letty. I have to tell you, though. No one could understand. But you’ve been out with men; you understand.”

  I was silent because a premonition struck me. Jacky said, “You have no idea what he is really like … All my life I heard things about Simon Gondych. You know last year he got the Copley Medal or something, from the Royal Society.”

  “Yes, Jacky.”

  “I went out with him several times,” she said, in enraptured tones.

  “Really, with Simon Gondych?”

  “Oh, you have no idea what he is like.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, Letty! Such a man! I’m not afraid to rave, because it’s clear he is an exceptional man—he gets medals; he got the Nobel Prize.”

  “Yes—evidently; of course.”

  “But as a man—he is charming; beyond everything; out of this world!”

  I laughed.

  “He’ll soon be out of this world, won’t he—he’s a bit old for you, Jacky.”

  She started to cry and put her head on her two arms on the window sill.

  “Il est vieux, c’est un vieux, je sais.”

  I saw everything, but did not understand it.

  “Don’t let yourself go like that; explain it to me. I’m listening.”

  “Since Grandma’s last party, about Muron, the broker, you know—I went out with him. He’s very interesting. Papa met us in a cafeteria one day and he said: ‘What are you doing, Faust, with this young girl? I give you permission to seduce her, for you have not the aid of Mephistopheles.’

  “Gondych said: ‘Probably Mephisto wouldn’t do business with me anyhow.’

  “Anyhow, the next day he telephoned me. I have the impression he thought he had got the go-ahead signal from Papa.”

  “I know,” I said. “Papa is capable of that. He sees everything, he knows everything, and he is a scandal as a papa.”

  “I have been out with Simon about fifteen times since then. One weekend I refused to see him because, you know, the whole week I didn’t sleep, but really, not one night. It was as if I had eaten deadly nightshade, or benzedrine; whatever you eat not to sleep. I had been out three times that week—and as I thought it over in bed at night, of course, I went into simply every detail, I saw—”

  “Yes?”

  She said, “I saw he was trying to seduce me.”

  “You let him see you were crazy about him “

  “I didn’t mean to, but I suppose he couldn’t help but see it. But I am glad that he did not know what I was thinking all that week— he would laugh at me.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “Why, I was adoring him, like any schoolgirl adores any professor. I was inwardly praying, ‘Oh, divine intelligence, oh, god, enlighten me.’ I thought he took me out to enlighten me, can you imagine? I am delighted that he can never know that about me. He would think I am a fool.”

  “Yes, and you still think he’s a god, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I am still sure. But a different kind. The god of love. The true one. Supposing he is here, he has to have some human form. Why a vapid young man, with yellow curls? Why not a divine old man?”

  I looked at her attentively. I knew that in a way, this way, I had never loved and did not even wish to. I preferred to have the right use of my eight senses and of my brains as well.

  “At any rate, I am not mad, but everything I have ever wished for, he has given me. Absolute love.”

  “Well, I don’t understand. Do you mean he loves you, too—?”

  She was silent for a while, and I looked her over, in the dusk, now thickening. She was really beautiful. I was surprised. I could not help thinking of her powerful and white limbs and of what charms Gondych could have. He was red and yellow, bright-eyed, brisk, well-mannered.

  “He loves young women, you know, because he is old,” said Marguerite, my sister Jacky, “and not my sort, I know. I don’t fool myself. He likes the lively sort; and I am quite a bore to him with my adoration, or I would be if I let him see it. But I don’t. I go out with him—fifteen times—and I listen to the story of his adventures with other young women.”

  “That means he likes to confide in you.”

  “Why can’t he tell me he
loves me? Why must I hear about them?”

  “Well—perhaps it’s his line. ‘Parler l’amour, c’est faire I’amour.’ ”

  “No. He doesn’t love me, that’s all. Imagine—I’m a little more than eighteen, not bad-looking. I love him, but so madly that I’d sacrifice my life for him if I could, and what does he tell me? ‘Love is sacrifice; at one time a young woman I lived with—’ and he tells me some absurd story. All the time I’m pawing the ground with impatience, and I myself would do anything just to prove to him— but meanwhile, what happens? In comes a girl of rather a gypsy type—a bit like you, in fact, Letty, and he follows her with his eyes: ‘That girl certainly has gypsy blood,’ he says. Of course, I have no nous, I admit. He places me with my back to the street, and then he tells me, ‘Now I can look at you,’ but it is to look at the street he wants, he is mad about company. I don’t attract him. I go, look at myself in the glass, I’m beautiful! Pale-faced, disagreeable young men actually follow me, but he looks over my shoulder and says, ‘There’s a pretty girl with a young man, you know, my dear, an old man is fascinated, and looks to see why he has invited her out.’ ”

  “Very ungallant! Why do you go out with him?”

  “I don’t know. Each time I come home very angry and swear at him. I burst into tears. As if I needed him! And I can go three or four days without thinking about him, then he calls up. I go unwillingly, and as soon as I see him, he has his claws in me—he doesn’t mean to. He only sees me to tell me about the others.”

  “It’s really extraordinary! After all, Jacky, there are lots of men. Why go out with him? Turn him down!”

  “I can’t.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “I can’t turn down Simon Gondych.”

  “Because he is Simon Gondych?”

  “If he weren’t, of course, but what is the use? I love him madly, so madly, so much with my whole soul, that if he won’t have me—”

  “Don’t say such things,” I said.

  I had tears in my eyes, I didn’t know why exactly. I thought her affair absurd and the result of isolation and summer. Later, she told me some of the things he had told her, old scholar’s tales, fascinating researches he only had pursued and which he told her. I understood the vanity of her love. I took Jacky to the subway and took a drink at a soda fountain coming home. I was engrossed with her story. I knew she was a young college girl without knowledge of men, but the conduct of Gondych was something new to me. When I got home, I thought for a long while, and then, with a smile, I wrote Gondych a note, telling him how much I had always admired him, how I’d seen his citation in the paper, and how I had always compared him with Talleyrand, so complex and witty in company, but frank and simple, charming and human in tête-à-têtes. I asked him to come and have tea with me at my flat the next Saturday about four.