“I suppose not,” said Victorine.
“I am of course a bum by choice,” said the bum. “Circumstances had nothing to do with it.”
“No,” said Victorine.
“Are you sure you don’t mean yes?” said the bum. “You are a good listener,” he added, “a very good listener, but there is no need for you to agree with me; I am beyond the need of assurance or applause or respect. Once I wanted them and I sacrificed love for success. Don’t misunderstand me . . .”
“Oh, no,” said Victorine, shaking her head, and a kind of sense did reach her.
“But you do,” said the bum.
“How do I misunderstand you?”
“By not understanding me,” he looked a little sullen, he moved impatiently.
“Don’t go,” said Victorine.
“But you thought I meant the love of a woman,” he said, “isn’t it so, didn’t you? I don’t know why I am wasting my time like this, you looked like a quiet nice child, part of the landscape almost, but I might have known that you would interrupt.”
Victorine said nothing.
“A woman always thinks that love means her,” he said, “they never fail.” He searched beside him for a brittle twig and he broke it. “I can see that you have lost interest,” he continued, “but the love I so stupidly sacrificed for admiration has nothing whatever to do with sex. Neither do I mean by sex what you mean by sex.”
“I don’t know about sex yet,” said Victorine a little primly.
“It’s of no consequence what you know or don’t know yet,” said the bum, “you are guilty nevertheless. I saw your guilt when you leaned over the fire with me, I saw it as plainly as if you had lifted your skirt and opened your legs, but I chose to ignore the invitation, I am not interested.”
Victorine was astonished.
“You look astonished,” said the bum, “but you need not feel offended. It isn’t that you aren’t pretty or desirable but I simply refuse to share another’s guilt. If you wish to be evil, be evil alone, sin is not divisible and the responsibility lies with the individual. Remember that, when you sleep with a man, and do not expect him to share your secret nor do you share his. You caught me a while ago and you startled me, you had the advantage, and like a woman you hoped to gain from it, you wished to share your guilt with me . . . but I repeat myself. You look so stupid sitting there with your big eyes, how many times must I say a thing, how many analogies must I make, for you to understand. I will not sleep with you, is that clear?”
“I’m not sleepy,” said Victorine.
“It has nothing whatever to do,” said the bum, “with my physical condition, I am perfectly fit, it is a simple manœuvre, easily accomplished.” He raised a palm, he raised an eyebrow, he thrust out his chin slightly and shook his head. “I know it is expected of me, but I no longer work on schedule, I am a bum.”
Victorine said nothing, she felt less and less like a little hostess, she felt at ease, she sensed that she was scarcely there at all for him. She was not necessary to him, he felt no need of her.
“Neither shall I meet my class at eight o’clock in the morning,” he said, “and share their enthusiasm and their ignorance, their vulgarity. How pitiful they were, how gullible, how greedy! And how they laughed at my jokes. Success! I had the formula and it worked. . . .” He lowered his head and was silent; the tracks hummed and sang steadily; Victorine said nothing.
“She sits quietly and says nothing,” he said.
“Love?” whispered Victorine.
The bum jerked back his head and narrowed his eyes. “You sit there without breasts and dare to speak of love!” he said; he trembled.
“I . . .” said Victorine, but the bum lost track of her again.
“Hand in hand with success, came the hatred of my fellow men,” he said calmly. “Listen!” he said. “Look!”
The shining railroad tracks began to quiver, the earth to shake, and at the end of their perspective could be seen what looked like a big bug coming closer and closer fast, its elbows moved up and down. The bum stood up and waved, the thing was almost upon them, two twitching humans on a little machine. The thing slowed down and came to a gliding stop. “Hi, Professor, how are ye, pal!” The two men smiled at the bum and then at each other. “We brought you a little sustenance, as you call it . . . here.” Each man reached out and handed the bum the remains of his lunch, a few crusts, a half slice of pound cake. “And a smoke,” they gave him a crumpled cigarette that had been partly smoked, it was edged with lipstick. “A little tart threw it away,” said one of the men. “Well, we better get goin’, see you tomorrow,” they smiled at the bum again and at each other and leaning their weight against the arms of the machine, it slowly and then faster and faster became littler and littler until it looked no bigger than a mosquito on a hair.
“Nice boys,” said the bum. “Do you follow me?”
“They were very nice,” said Victorine.
“They love me,” said the bum. “They think I am crazy.”
Victorine said nothing, a cowardly fear tugged at her heart.
“They are in no way that they know of indebted to me, do you see what I mean?” said the bum. “They feel at ease; they are good men but they thank God every time they see me that they are rational. I give them confidence.” He smiled into the hazy distance that was empty, he placed his hand on the tracks and felt them vibrating. “The boys are nearly home,” he said, “each will tell his wife as he gets into bed with her about me, about how I am crazy, and a bum, how I have no job, nothing, and the wives will be glad that they have men for husbands, men with big parts, rational men, men with jobs.” He spoke without bitterness, he spoke almost lovingly as he visualized each twin domestic scene. “They do well to love me,” he said, “no May, and no Edith, will ever say, ‘Why can’t you be a bum like the Professor!’ Ha! Ha! They will not humiliate their men by saying, ‘Why aren’t you crazy like the Professor down by the tracks!’ ”
Victorine said nothing and he added, “You women are all alike with your constant nagging and your constant desire, how you tire a man out.”
“Well,” said Victorine, after what she thought was a suitable pause, she did not wish to offend him, “I think I had better be going. I have had a very nice time.”
“Have you really,” said the bum.
“Yes,” said Victorine, “it was very interesting.”
“You haven’t understood a word I’ve been saying.”
“Oh, yes, I have.”
“It’s impossible,” he said irritably. “All right, tell me in your own words, make it short, not over two hundred words, it is discipline that you need . . . well?”
“I am a sinner,” said Victorine, “and I must sin alone.”
“Good! Excellent!” said the bum.
“Well, goodbye.” Victorine was surprised at her own answer, how it had come out so neatly, something she had known right along she felt. The bum must have been and still was a very good teacher. She smiled and waved at him as he resumed his original position on his heels; he was straightening out the crumpled cigarette with the pink edging.
“But do not take me literally,” he said.
“What?”
“Do not take me literally.”
“No?”
“You see I was right,” he said, he seemed pleased, “you misunderstood me,” and as Victorine quickened her step, she heard him again take up the monologue that she had interrupted. It mingled with the hum of the tracks and the higher notes of the wires overhead, and accompanied by the symphony that would never be written down she headed for home and, in her room, hid there until she could and did prepare herself for the din and exaggeration of reality.
•
The next day, fresh as a daisy, curious, Victorine returned to see if the bum was still there or whether it had been, possibly, a dream. As she neared the little clearing by the melodious tracks where he had been the day before, the music met her, but it was punctuated by shouts
, not noisy shouts, but controlled, almost ecstatic. She saw him as before, before he saw her, and the little scene made her want to turn and run away, but she could not. Fascinated, stage struck, she saw the agile bum twisting and turning his lean body, tossing himself through the air like a dancer and shouting as if in a transport of pleasure. Finally, again as if he felt a presence, he landed nimbly on his feet and looked cautiously around. He was breathing with difficulty, his blue jowls were startling against the strange pallor of his face, as if he had bled to death. He was naked to the waist, and as he inhaled, his rib basket stood out like a cadaver’s. In spite of the chill November day his white skin glistened with sweat. Slowly he let his bony hands unclench and they dropped to his sides. He saw Victorine, her eyes popping out of her head, staring at him, and a terrible heart-breaking embarrassment came over him. He looked sick with it.
“Did you see it?” said the bum, breathing shallowly through his mouth, his teeth chattering.
“Yes,” said Victorine.
“The alligator?” he pleaded.
“Yes,” said Victorine.
The bum said nothing, he stood disconsolate and ashamed and Victorine loved him, she loved and pitied his shame so akin to her own that was built in, part of her.
“Are you cold?” she said softly.
The bum reached for his ragged shirt and his mouldy coat and put them on; he shivered.
“Let’s build a fire,” said Victorine.
Together they built it of twigs and refuse and neither said anything. The bum ignited a match on his backside.
“It was a big fellow,” he said finally, looking at her questioningly, “wasn’t it?” The little fire flared up.
Victorine nodded.
“It was in Miami,” said the bum as if he had said, “Once upon a time,” and Victorine waited.
“We were on vacation,” continued the bum, “and my wife looked at the boy as if she would eat him up. He was naked to the waist as he wrestled in the pit with the alligator ‘Alligator wrestling today,’ the sign said and, ‘Let’s go’, said my wife. I could smell her desire, almost taste it, as the boy showed every quivering muscle in his body to her. ‘Bravo!’ she screeched, and he looked right at her, straight into her eyes, as he flung the big alligator over his shoulder and crashed it down, breaking every bone in its body. ‘Bravo!’ Her big red mouth hung open and she licked her lips and her pelvis rotated,” he made a circular gesture with his hands as if he would crush a vase to bits, “she could hardly keep her hands off herself. Christ!” said the bum. “Oh, Christ!”
Victorine’s heart beat slow and hard with a new strange fear, the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
“ ‘You!’ ” said the frenzied bum, “she said; ‘You!’ she said to me. ‘Wrestle an alligator! Don’t make me laugh!’ ” The burn let his head fall between his knees and sobbed.
But Victorine was so frightened she dared not speak or touch him, his sorrow was too big for her, his pain unrecognizable, she could not, in her feeble experience, identify herself with him.
The bum gradually calmed himself and sat looking into the tiny fire as if she were not there. She shook with the cold and nervous apprehension, she wanted to go.
“Your insistence that I confide in you is disconcerting,” he said. “What do you want? Remember what I told you, I will not . . .”
“I’m going,” said Victorine, “I don’t want anything.” She felt miserable.
“I am a bum and as such I give nothing, that is why I am so much loved. No one envies me, I am no one’s rival, no one is indebted to me for anything. . . . Except for an occasional weakness . . .” He looked sideways at Victorine.
“Look!” shouted Victorine. “Here they come!” It was as if, storm-tossed, she had sighted land, Mother and Dad, crackers and milk. “It’s them!”
“They,” corrected the bum. He was tired.
The up-and-down boys, the smile of one appearing and disappearing as he bobbed up and down, the back of the other’s head ducking, it seemed, out of sight between his shoulders blades and back again, their baggy pants flapping in the breeze they whipped up, gliding again, as yesterday, to a stop.
They reached out their greasy packages of left-overs. “Weenies, Professor,” they said. “Well, so long, gotta be goin’,” and they smiled at the bum and at each other. They did not look at Victorine, as if they thought she was, perhaps, a figment of the bum’s imagination.
“Stay,” said the bum.
“Can’t,” said the boys, already the weight of their bodies rested on the shovel-like handles of the little car and it began to move. “Sorry,” cried the one who faced them as he bent his back, “but my old lady gets a notion on Tuesdays,” and his almost heavenly smile disappeared down the tracks, and again the bug-like apparition sped, littler and littler, towards the horizon.
The bum stooped and picked up his belongings in the bandanna and tied the fat bundle to a long stick; he laid it along his shoulder and looked into the distance from where the “boys” had come. He ground his heel on the cold ashes. “I must move on,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said Victorine; she felt terribly relieved but did not want to show it. “I hope you have a nice time, but don’t go if you don’t want to.”
The bum gave her a quick look. “Want?” he said. “My will is merged with the will of Him, I am a bum, I go unprepared for tomorrow, I shall be fed by those who love me, who envy me not, I am in His hands, He leadeth me and I lie down in His green pastures and when it is time to move on, I move on, I feel no pain.”
“I’m glad,” said Victorine.
“I should prefer,” said the bum, giving her a penetrating look, “that you say nothing of my temporary presence here or of the direction I have gone.”
“I won’t,” but she said it weakly.
The bum stepped quickly to her side and without warning grasped her hand. He bent the top joint of her fingers forward exactly as Costello had. “Swear that you will not tell!” he hissed. “You heard nothing, you saw nothing!”
“Nothing,” whimpered Victorine.
“Good! Excellent!” said the bum and he gave a quick and business-like look around as if he wished to leave the place in order, he slapped his pockets as if to be sure of his passport, his keys, his private papers. “I’ll write,” he said and he left. His colourless form merged with the cinders, the smoky haze, the grey sky.
“It could be Jesus,” said Victorine to herself, “but I guess not. It could be, though.” She was frightened and hurried home, she almost ran.
Chapter VI
“Continued”
There was no doubt that the Holy Bum was gone and gone for good. Except for the cigarette butt edged with lipstick that a little tart had flipped away, he had left no sign of himself, his coming or his going. Victorine felt a little and for the first time as if she had been jilted. It was one thing to dismiss one’s loves, another to have one, of his own volition, turn on his heel and disappear into a November, or any other haze, a little shrimp-size cloud, pink around his head, like a halo; an indecisive parting for her, rather impolite. She had been frightened, afraid of his madness, but not so scared that she put him out of her mind; she, rather, deliberately, took him back into her consciousness and played with the story of him over and over again, as one does with an experience that has been exciting when one is safe again. Besides, to her, his incorrigible behaviour was not the queerest thing about him, and he had given the password, “Don’t tell,” which children honour. She had seen nothing queer in his talking to himself or to a piece of bacon, she had anticipated his shame at being caught at it, however, and had played her part as the hostess whom nothing surprises rather well. Even his realistic battle with an imaginary alligator she accepted as only a deviation from the norm and a deviation merely in its startling tropical subject-matter. She had had no trouble in visualizing the alligator at all as soon as he mentioned it, and if that had been all, what of it? She and Costello had often indulge
d in torrid affairs with bright red Indians and by herself she had lifted dripping made-up children from the pond and gritty ones from imaginary quicksands. So what? (The heroics of the lovelorn?) Private excesses to be shared among the happy few, harmless, it would seem, to the spirit, guilty as the protagonists themselves, tiny tots, as a rule, feel.
She had glibly repeated almost, said back, to the Holy Bum what he had wished to teach her and in his presence had seemed to understand, but he had, whether he knew it or not, given her a deal of homework. The professor had provided her with the answer, but what was the question? “I must sin alone.” “Excellent! Good!” But Victorine would never be able to apply her new knowledge and would never reach, as the Holy Bum seemed to have, that lonely moon-like equidistance from all things, that pure ego, which sustained him. And he had instilled in her a fear that would never leave her, a sexual fear, the real thing. His passionate pantomime had been more than that make-believe, so comparatively innocent, that up to now had made her feel guilty. It was as if her childhood, like Misael, was leaving her. The bum who could be Jesus had acted out by the tracks a sexual charade, a parable too hot to print. Certainly Victorine didn’t know, and would never remember, but the November afternoon between four and six of the Fall preceding the winter that Dennis flew through the air on his belly whopper (that was the year of the big snow) she had sat in a private box and watched the opera of sex. She had run home scared. The revelation had not taken. But fear, sexual fear, that day left its imprint, the print of its heel, one might say, and a tiny lesion formed, hardly visible to the naked eye, but one that would cause spiritual adhesions later on.
•
“Joe?”
“Miss?”
Joe stood watching the outsize Jersey, big with calf, making friends with the second cow, delivered that day. “Two cows are better than one,” he had suggested and the new one, tawny, too, with lovely brown eyes and curling pink tongue and a blue-veined udder with long teats, stood quietly looking off across the field towards the church steeple that looked like a white sword piercing the sky. Nanny, the cow that had been named after Costello’s first goat, was pretending to be a bull and was awkwardly attempting to mount her new friend. Her sides expanding almost to bursting; her swollen udder swinging, she tried again and again with beating delicate hooves to embrace her sister cow who showed no sign of approval or disapproval, her jaws dripping with jade-green saliva moved rhythmically from side to side. Joe stood, legs apart, his cap forward over his brows, scratching the back of his head.
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