by Hugh Hood
So for the moment he lives alone in his room with his radio and his screened sun-porch, not too eager to round off this course of life. Tonight he turns off his desk-lamp while the radio babbles quietly, sits for a moment in the warm summer darkness rubbing his eyes, then he gazes off at the lake two blocks away down Frontenac Street, gets up from his desk and manipulates the volume control on the radio with some care, hoping that it won’t scream. He manages to get the Wednesday Night Talk and, lighting a cigarette, lies down on his couch to listen and think of nothing, perfectly aware that his veins will tingle like this until the morning of August twenty-fifth when he can go down to the University Bookstore and admire the display. He understands that one novel isn’t a career, that publication day is the day he’ll have to start all over again, but hard covers are hard covers, and the bees will buzz in assorted hives; Evanston, Berkeley, Toronto, Madison, Cambridge.
As the slow dark relaxes him and his eyes lose the image of his lamp, the smell of his cigarette sharp and pleasant in his nostrils, he moves his legs tiredly on the couch and listens to the voice on CBC Wednesday Night, peppery, combative, lucid, engaging, and it is, who else, David Wallace. “Summer in the City,” Jesus, he’s been doing that in the papers, in magazines, in novels, he ought to hire a plane, skywrite the piece in permanent smoke, and get maximum coverage all at once, “Summer in the City.” And at that it is a good talk, and nobody will read informal essays any more. He tunes the set more carefully, to get the shriek out of the speaker, stretches out again, and listens.
“Doing what I do for a living,” says the familiar, old friend’s voice, “I don’t get out onto the streets until the middle of the afternoon. You know, we should have the custom of the siesta, as they do in the Latin countries, and most of all in August in the city. My siesta lasts until two-thirty and by then the sun is beginning to get down the other side of the sky, that summer sky, always light grey, nearly white, not the blue of spring or fall. So … anyway … I take my time getting into my clothes. Maybe someday I’ll tell you my secret, how to keep from getting sticky in August. But I don’t get sticky and I don’t move very fast at all. I walk slowly across the bridge, looking down at the poplars and elms in the ravine, and the children from the Hunt Club on their ponies on the bridle path. Sometimes on the other side I have an ice cream soda. Then I walk to the Subway, taking my time and admiring the girls’ blouses, and the lovely way their hair moves in the light air and the heat. It’s cool in the Subway going downtown and I don’t have to rush because I’m just coming into the studio to record this talk. The studio is air-conditioned and very cool, and about four o’clock I begin to wake up, just as the office workers downtown are going home. That way I have the downtown to myself after dinner.”
Lying on the couch in the summer dark, Joe smiles very soberly to himself, remembering the places, the studios, the quiet discussions, the beer, a cold-beef plate in the Morrissey Dining Room, with a mint parfait to follow, and David asking his producer to please do something about echo noises on the tape. He can’t yet wish himself back there but all the same he remembers — and wonders what Toby would think.
“I might take the ferry to the island if I’m alone at night,” says David to the nation and to Joe remembering, “or go to the ball game and sit in the pavilion, the best seventy-five cents’ worth in town, watching the gamblers pass large bills from hand to hand, the light planes at the airport, ships in the Western Gap. But usually I’m in a group that talks for a few hours, a drama critic, a young writer from Kingston, in town for a day to see his publisher,” and Joe thinks to himself, I wish he’d stop doing that, but David is a paragraph further on now, “and about twelve, when they close the lounges, I say goodnight to my friends, and by now the city is growing quiet. I wander along Bloor Street as people come out of the lounges, getting into their cars, or deciding to go somewhere else for something to eat and another drink, or just walking up Avenue Road hand in hand, under the trees in the dark. I might buy a morning paper at the corner of Avenue Road and talk for a minute to Sammy, who has the newsstand there. Now there aren’t many cars, and you can hear the streetcars blocks away. I stroll along, taking my time, going home to work. Because this, you see, is when my working day begins, hours after midnight. I hop a streetcar and go along to the bridge over the ravine, dark now, and the bridle path a grey strip between the deep black masses of the trees.
“When I get home I turn on the sprinkler and the fountain in the garden and sit for a few minutes in the best part of the night, about one o’clock to one-thirty. Far away across the ravine I can hear the night traffic. But there isn’t a sound on my street except the splash of water around the cupid in the fountain. Then I go into my screened porch — just to keep off the mosquitoes, don’t you see — turn my desk light on, and go to work.” He makes it sound wonderful; there was always a wide streak of romance in him.
“I’m halfway into the manuscript of a new book, to follow the one that comes out later this summer. I’m excited about it, and as it grows quieter around me my ideas seem to get brighter and brighter, because I work best at night, best on an after-midnight summer night. And that’s my summer in the city. Goodnight, everybody, and stay cool, won’t you.”
The announcer, another old acquaintance — the Wednesday Night series is like old home week for Joe — comes on to give David his plug, and is particular about urging his listeners to buy and read the new novel which is to appear late in August. Then he does the station break and is followed by strings playing an allegro from one of the Handel Opus Six Concertos.
“Jesus,” says Joe violently, aloud, trying to wrench his thoughts away and remembering in spite of himself, “Jesus!”
Seven undergraduates are arguing in the kitchen, making a hideous racket, while Rabbit Wallace pokes angrily around in a pile of cartons and old newspapers beside the radiator.
“Jesus!” says Rabbit with terrible scorn, “will you look at that?” His face is wrathy and terrible, and the seven boys, Joe among them, break off their wrangle to stare at him.
“What is it?” asks one, and they silently follow his finger. Behind the pile of rubbish are lined up six pints of beer, a little cache concealed by some unsportsmanlike drinker so that when everyone else has drunk his last there will be some left for him.
“That’s MY BEER,” says Rabbit. “Which of you has done this?”
Nobody in the kitchen will confess to it and there are fifteen other possible culprits in the house.
“That’s the trick of an alcoholic,” says Rabbit angrily, “and it’s damned selfish besides. I’ll tell you, one of those stinking brandy-drinkers did this. We’ll watch and see who comes for it later on, when everything else is gone. He picks up the six beers with tender loving care and puts them in the refrigerator, already a solid phalanx of green glass.
“These aren’t cold,” he says considerately, the perfect host, “I’ll fish out some cold ones.” He begins to yank out the bottles next the freezing unit, handing them back over his shoulder.
“Got enough?”
“I’m drinking gin,” says one of the boys.
“And I’m not drinking,” says another, who is in residence at Emmanuel.
“We’ll hang on to the extra ones,” says Rabbit to Joe, throwing his arm over his shoulders affectionately, “come on, I’ll show you around.”
It is all new to Joe, who has never lived in this part of town, this big old house across the ravine with the cupid in the fountain. The Wallaces have just bought it and are doing it over room by room, painting it and choosing the colours themselves. Rabbit leads him upstairs by winding back passages and downstairs by the graceful main staircase, showing him what they mean to do.
“Dad bought it after he came back from New York for good.”
“For good?” Joe finds this incomprehensible. He has always believed that anyone who has the option will live in New York forever.
/> “Dad doesn’t like New York. He thinks it hurts his writing. Paris didn’t. He liked Paris and wrote well there. But there are too many writers in New York, all sitting around trying to impress each other. You know, Joey, a writer’s career is very fragile; it has to be guarded carefully. Joe knows Rabbit can only be quoting his father, that he doesn’t know anything about a writer’s career at first hand, but what he says has an air of second-hand authenticity and shouldn’t be ignored. Rabbit has already chosen his profession, the law, and can’t be suspected of harbouring secret writing inclinations, so he can likely be trusted to report his father accurately.
“It’s precious,” says Joe.
“What is?”
“A writer’s career. It has a certain shape of its own. The early works, the middle period, the periods of stagnation and doubt, the triumphant later years, and the final apotheosis.”
They are standing at the foot of the staircase and as he rounds off this summary with proper sonority there comes a muffled shout of laughter from the coat closet and lavatory under the stairs. Joe starts nervously and takes a long drink of beer.
“That’s Dad,” says Rabbit, “I didn’t know he was home. Hey, Dad, come on out. I know you’re in there.” He rattles the closet door. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up, Rabbit,” says a voice, “I’m hiding the whiskey. I just got in.” Then the closet door opens and Mr. Wallace emerges wearing a sheepish grin, looking first at Joe and then at his son. “It’s like the marriage feast of Cana,” he says, “except that I won’t serve the good wine at the end; they wouldn’t appreciate it. Who’s this?”
“Joe Jacobson. Goes to U.C. My year.”
Mr. Wallace looks at Joe. “You went to Malvern Collegiate,” he says quickly but politely, “you got a scholarship,” he takes another look, “and I would guess that your father’s dead.”
Joe stares at him, aware how easy the trick is, but half-impressed anyway.
“Sure it’s a trick,” says David Wallace, “a trick of observation. I didn’t mean to speak lightly about your father.” He is a small, lightly built man of fifty or so, with a suspiciously mild manner that conceals a terrifying alertness; he misses nothing. “I read that story of yours in The Varsity.” he says now, to Joe’s enormous gratification. “Rabbit brought it home and told me to look at it. That’s one of those lucky subjects, isn’t it,” he gives it professional consideration, “that you just daydream your way through. You didn’t have to build that story, did you? It told itself.”
“That’s right,” says Joe peaceably, although it isn’t strictly true, “I didn’t have to invent anything. It just came along and I put it down.”
“I wish they were all like that,” says Mr. Wallace, whose best-known book is a collection of stories, a marvellous collection, almost every story an anthology piece. “People read my stories,” he says with humorous regret, “and they say: ‘How easy. All he had to do was set it down as it came.’” He laughs. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Jacobson, there’ll be a dozen or so, maybe twenty, stories that you can daydream your way through, that you don’t have to build like you were building a house. Don’t sit down and write up all those easy stories right off the bat, do you see? Save them, and build your early stories while you’re learning how to write. When you’ve formed your style, then you can do those stories that come along line for line. Don’t shoot them off all at once.”
Since he hasn’t yet read everything Mr. Wallace has written, Joe is on infirm ground. “The story of yours I like best,” he says tentatively, “is ‘The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.’ That’s a terrific story.”
Rabbit gives Joe a peculiar look, smothering a grunt of laughter. “Joey,” he says, “Joey, finish your beer!”
“‘The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,’” says Mr. Wallace slowly and kindly, “I remember it. The young married couple on Fifth Avenue and he’s looking over the other girls. You know,” he smiles, “that’s a story of Irwin Shaw’s. When it came out I told him how much I liked it. It’s in the first New Yorker collection, isn’t it?” Seeing that Joe is about to die of mortification, he goes into the library to look for the book.
“I’d have sworn your father wrote it,” says Joe to Rabbit helplessly.
But Rabbit has disappeared into the host of beer drinkers leaving him to face the music as Mr. Wallace comes back with a book in his hands.
“You’re right, you know,” he says comfortingly, “it’s a subject I might have done myself, and it’s about my length for that kind of piece, but it’s Irwin’s story. I’d never have done it that way. I remember telling him that and he wasn’t very pleased with me.” Then he leads Joe by degrees into the living room where there are only one or two slowly settling drinkers and begins to reminisce, as though he were talking to himself, in a way that opens Joe’s eyes to a hitherto only half-suspected life.
“When I dropped Scribners and they dropped me — it was mutual but I made the first move — Max said to me: ‘I’m sorry David that you’ve been so much under Ernest’s shadow. Like Ruth and Gehrig. We know you’re not a second-string Ernest but what can we do?’ I suppose he had a point, although I’d been selling pretty well, especially the collection, which was a famous book for years. Maybe it will be again, one day, though of course you can’t tell about these things. A lot of people have compared me to Anderson because I write about simple people in small towns quite a lot. But I’m not a primitive. I’ve had some intellectual training of a kind that Sherwood never had, and it hurt him. He had no judgment.”
At this moment Joe could listen forever. Sherwood, Ernest, Max, and it is all real because David Wallace is the authentic thing with the fully formed career, with all the contacts. He really has known all these men and what’s more they’ve known him and still do, except that Max and Sherwood are dead and so are Tom and Scott and Ernest.
“I was trained as a lawyer and was actually called to the bar after I left college,” says Mr. Wallace, “and whatever you might think about some lawyers, the law is one of the great humane disciplines which can form the mind and give it a toughness that Sherwood never had. I still practise law now and then, just to keep the forms in my mind.” He stares alertly at Joe. “Are you going to have a purely literary education?”
Nobody ever put such a question to him before; nobody from his neighbourhood could have thought of it; so he hasn’t thought of it himself. “I don’t know,” says Joe.
“There’s no telling, writers grow up like weeds, everywhere, in the most surprising circumstances, and there aren’t any laws. I think it helps to have a kind of …” he casts around for the word.
“Urbanity?” says Joe, off the end of his tongue.
“The very word. North American writers are rarely urbane — they’re afraid to death of it. That’s why we don’t have those dozens of pretty good second-rate writers like the English have, writers whose good manners and schooling make up for their defects in imagination and talent.”
“Is that so?” says Joe, who can think of nothing else to say.
“I don’t know. I just thought of it. It might be true.”
They are interrupted by the arrival in the living room of Rabbit, four undergraduates with beer bottles who have just heard that Mr. Wallace is in the house and who want to talk impressively with the celebrity, and a fifth miserable creature whom Rabbit accuses of hiding his beer.
“What a trick,” he shouts with disgust, “so the rest of us wouldn’t have any.”
“Honest, Rabbit,” moans his victim, “I brought them with me and there was no room in the icebox.”
“Balls you did! Where’s the empty carton?”
“I had them in my coat pockets. I’d have shared them with you.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” Rabbit is too good-natured to embarrass the culprit any further. “I believe you,” he says, though he obviously does not.
The eager undergraduates surround Mr. Wallace and ply him with technical questions of a breathtaking naivety.
“Do you feel that you can divorce art from morality?” asks the lad from Emmanuel, and with a polite smile Mr. Wallace turns to answer him. It astonishes Joe that nothing the thronging admirers can say, no matter how terrible, causes Mr. Wallace to lose his courtesy. He files this in his memory as the real professionalism.
“What do you do about myths?” asks another lad, maybe the most dreadful of all.
“I don’t quite understand that,” begins Mr. Wallace, just the least bit haltingly, and at this Joe quits the living room in search of his raincoat, finds it, and quietly leaves the house.
Afterwards he went there for years, all the way through that literary education which he decided to undergo in the face of Mr. Wallace’s hints. Joe reckoned himself to be in a special situation not covered by the older man’s mandate. He and all the other Jacobsons were strangers to every literature but the Rabbinical. There could be nothing discomforting, pedantic, unhealthy academic, in a formal literary training for a man who started from scratch as it were, who had to pack into himself the generations of evolution that the mannerly second-rate talents from Oxford would possess from instinct. Years later, when the going was good, when Joe thought that he had some control over his powers of expression and the English sentence generally, he still sometimes recognized that he was fundamentally an untrained writer, and that you couldn’t acquire all the instincts of the mannerly Oxford second-rater in a single lifetime. Never mind, he would say to himself, your grandsons will have it in their marrow.
When he came to have something like a personal signature — for he wouldn’t of course call it a “style” — he could still feel in his muscles the ache of holding the rules of expression together, and he understood what David had said about Anderson. The lacks, the gaps, not in one’s formal education which grew in time to be mighty formidable, but in the larger, lovelier urbanity of the achieved European, were what hurt the first-generation writer.
