The Lone Pilgrim

by Laurie Colwin

  I was happy the way I was. At night, if I came home early, I made myself weird dinners of eggplant. I liked working in the shop, which smelled of Pete’s cigars. I liked what I was reading. Except for work, I had no schedule. It was impossible to say when I would be home. I thought it was a wonderful idea to go to Chinatown at four o’clock in the morning if someone suggested it. I thought seeing three movies in one day was a normal thing to do. If five people collected in one apartment, that was a party. One evening two boys came to pick me up at the same time, but that turned out well enough. We went to the movies and out for a drink, and it turned out that they had a college friend in common.

  Why in the middle of this cheerful chaos I had elected to read about monastic and church architecture was not clear to me. I was not religious, not an architect, and not a medievalist. Pete, who had made a study of the native structures of Tibet and Lapland without visiting either country, thought it a perfectly reasonable pursuit. I felt that this subject had the appeal of the substantial, the enduring, the traditional—three things notably lacking in my life. The idea of permanence, of a fixed course of life, of belief, was consoling to me. Often I wondered whether I continued this research because it had been handed to me by my cousin Charles. People who are lucky are often superstitious. My superstition was the sort that throws in its lot with the talismanic. This interest was my good-luck charm.

  One cold, rainy day, a customer whose name I can no longer remember gave me an inspired tip. It was a slow day, and I was sitting at Pete’s desk reading Cardinal Gasquet’s English Monastic Life and smoking a cigarette. The customer noticed my book. A conversation ensued, during which he asked me if I had read any of the lives of the saints. I said I had read The Rule of Saint Benedict, but that was about it. The customer suggested that I might find Saint Anthony interesting, since he is considered to be one of the founders of monastic life.

  About a month later I found a monograph about this saint at a secondhand store. It had been written by a German theologian and was mine for fifty cents. I took it home and put it on my desk with all of the other books I intended to read.

  I read it in a fit of restlessness one cold Saturday afternoon. I had been invited for dinner that evening by some friends of my cousin Charles, a couple named Karen and Philip Bridges. The Bridgeses were my good angels, in a sense. They liked to feed me, and they felt that I should have some glimpse of what a happy, orderly domestic life looked like. In order to be as impeccable as possible, I usually spent the afternoon before one of their dinner parties selecting my clothes, washing my hair, and lying in a bath preparing my story: I would lie back and rehearse my explanation of why Pete had not taken me to a bookseller’s convention, why my job had not expanded, and why I had not yet approached Pete about making me a junior partner. Such things interested the Bridgeses. But since it was early and I did not yet have to begin this process, I picked up the monograph and began to read.

  The story of Saint Anthony is well known, although it was not well known to me. As a young man, this rich Egyptian heard the Gospel and took it seriously. After settling the future of his sister, he gave away all his money and repaired to a cave. There he intended to live a life of solitude devoted to prayer. Instead, the devils we have seen in famous European paintings beset him. They came in all shapes and forms. There was no torment or temptation that did not flash before his eyes. At the age of thirty-five, he plunged into the desert to begin another form of hermitage. There he planted a garden, which was trampled on by wild beasts. The bread he ate was of the vilest sort. His holiness and wisdom attracted disciples whom he banded into a primitive kind of monastic life, and he died, full of serenity, at a very great age.

  I was surprised to find how moved I was by this account. I liked what I saw as Saint Anthony’s impetuousness—giving away everything at once. It made the youthful saint seem something of a hothead, the power of the Gospel notwithstanding. My image of the saint in his cave was that of a serious boy who in modern life might wear glasses and carry a slide rule. The idea of devils parading in front of that innocence made me feel protective. In fact, I hardly reacted to the saint as a saint at all, but as to some endearing person whose life was full of self-invented tests. I especially loved his scolding of the animals who trampled his desert garden. “Why do you do harm to me,” the saint rebuked them, “when I harm none of you? Go away, and in the Lord’s name, do not come near these things again.” This scolding worked, we are told. I had thought that saints were enormous figures who performed heroic actions and miracles in the name of faith, but, aside from inadvertently creating a form of monastery life, Saint Anthony had not accomplished very much at all in the world, except to be and to put himself in the way of things. And although I was hardly interested in sanctity, I was obviously interested in being and in putting myself in the way of things. Saint Anthony made me feel as if there might be some hope for someone like me, somehow.

  These thoughts were dispelled as soon as I walked through the Bridgeses’ door, which for me was the walking into another country. The Bridgeses represented all of adult life. They had substantial furniture and a silver service. At holiday time they gave parties, to which guests came in evening clothes. Both of them worked on Wall Street, and both cultivated their interests. Karen belonged to a group that read and discussed the works of famous philosophers. Philip was constantly upgrading his stereophonic equipment and buying subscriptions to the opera and the symphony. Both of them were interested in food. They went to wine tastings and belonged to a gourmet club. The meals they served were always correct and very good.

  I was often invited to be a fourth at dinner, doubtless because I was younger and therefore less predictable. The Bridgeses liked to throw me in with their more conservative and stuffy friends to see what happened. Nothing very radical ever did, but the investment bankers were pleased to have a chance to explain the real world to a shiftless, undirected book clerk, and I had a chance to feel superior to a bunch of staid grown-ups who paid in rent each month more than I earned in half a year.

  In ordinary times, devils are ordinary. You meet them not in caves but at dinner parties. The shape they assume is that of attractive mortals of the opposite sex. The Bridgeses had also invited an extremely attractive mortal by the name of Alden Robinson. I had heard him mentioned—he was an old friend of Philip’s. There was a copy of each of his books on their shelf. Alden was a socio-economist. His books were published by a university press. These bore his full name: Alden C. W. Robinson. He had just given up his teaching post in California and come East to lend his fine mind to the World Economic Committee.

  I assumed that Alden was one of the Bridgeses’ distinguished stiffs—the sort of people who hardly existed for me, since I divided the world into adults and people like myself, the way a child does. The questions I asked myself, for example, about the boys I met were: Did they look as if they knew how to dance? As if they were any fun? Daring? Good kissers?

  Alden was not a boy, but he had a nice grin, for a grownup. His hair was shiny brown, and his eyes were blue. He did not look like he would be much of a dancer, and it was not yet clear if he was any fun, but he did look to be a good kisser. During cocktails, he conversed with the Bridgeses and stared at me. I paid attention to the attention, but not to him. During dinner, he focused on me entirely, and I was not surprised when much later he offered to drive me home. All adults had cars, and Alden had told an elaborate story at dinner about driving his across country. He drove me to my door, although I lived out of his way. I hesitated to ask him in for a drink. Was it too late for a respectable socio-economist? Would he think I was forward? It turned out that he asked me.

  “Are you terribly tired?” he said.

  “I’m not tired at all,” I said.

  “Then may I come up for a nightcap?”

  I was too embarrassed to tell him that the only thing he might get as a nightcap was some awful old sherry someone had brought me a year ago, but when I gave it to him h
e did not seem displeased with it. While I made myself a cup of tea, Alden surveyed my apartment, which contained family cast-offs—furniture that was old and good, but all of it was broken or damaged in some way, and none of it matched. The cane seat of the rocking chair had two holes in it. The couch had a foot missing and it was propped up by a dictionary. It was clear that Alden noticed everything. I was alarmed at what he was thinking of the untidy pile of books next to the couch and the coffee cup and ashtray on the table. He paused in front of one of my few pictures—a framed plan of the London Charterhouse. Then he sat down. I drank my tea. He drank his sherry. Neither of us had a thing to say.

  “It’s nice just to sit here and look at you,” he finally said.

  This made me blush. “I don’t understand anything about sociology or economics,” I said. “That’s why you’re stuck looking at me.”

  “I find looking at you very interesting,” said Alden. “Is there any chance I can come and look at you some more one day soon?”

  Naturally he came back, and I fell in love with him. I felt that I was being pulled out of my old self and becoming a new creature. I felt that Alden was my passport into the adult world—a world in which things were planned and calculated. Since I was in love with him, the transition would be painless. I could not have asked for a better guide. Alden was established. His opinion was sought. He contributed to a number of journals. His own life was a miracle of precision. His desk was tidy, his bills were paid, he had regular checkups, and had his teeth cleaned every six months. In the autumn he had the chassis of his car painted with a rust-resistant paint. He had files for everything. But for all that he was not dull. He was nothing like those nice young men who had fallen in love with me. For one thing, he had been married and was now separated; he was not an untried boy. This made him seem glamorous. After all, no one I knew was married. No one I knew had any commitments whatsoever. And for another thing, Alden’s energy was furious. His orderly life seemed to be the result of daring and risk.

  My appearance in his life was a great relief to him, he said. I disturbed the neat universe he lived in—or so he claimed. I took life’s suprises (by which Alden meant traffic jams, wrong turns, spilled drinks, delayed trains, and being spoken to on the street by insane people) in stride. I had no expectations, and so I was pleased and charmed with whatever fell my way. Alden thought we would be the perfect travel mates. He would make up the itinerary, he said, and I would get us lost. Thus we would see at least some of the things a traveler was meant to see, and then we would have adventures. Left to our own devices, I would never find a landmark, and nothing interesting would ever happen to Alden. We planned a trip to France for the next fall.

  My availability for experience inspired him, he said. One evening, with a look of beautiful affection on his face, he told me: “The trouble with being prepared for everything the way I am is that one false move and you feel the world is falling apart. Last week, when I lost my keys, I thought I was going to disintegrate, remember? But you—you really aren’t prepared for things, so you’re much better at life than I am. If you hadn’t been with me, I would have just gone to pieces. I would have paid a locksmith some huge sum of money. I would never have traced our trail back to that restaurant and found the keys under the chair. So maybe you’re the one who’s prepared and I am simply overprepared. You are a great object lesson to me.”

  How wonderful it was to have what I had thought of as an unfortunate character trait looked at as a grace. I was often sick of myself losing keys and wallets. Of course, I was an expert at finding them. But Alden saw this as flexibility, esprit, lightness. Suddenly that lazy floating feeling I had always lived with was good for something, a virtue.

  My function was to cheer him. I took him dancing. I bullied him out of tempers when the service was bad at restaurants. I saw us as teachers and students both. From Alden, I was learning how to give life some shape, how real work was performed in the world, how to harness energy to a project. I realized that I might be buoyant but I need not be untidy. I cleared my desk. I began to pay my bills on time. I bought a notebook and began to codify all the reading I had done and assemble all the notes I had taken. For a year Pete had been talking about redesigning the shop. He had asked me to sketch out any ideas I might have, but I had never taken him seriously. Now I did. I made elaborate plans, most of which Pete approved.

  From me, Alden was learning how to float, how to relish life without such strict rules for it. Our best selves, I thought, were on display. The variance of our natures seemed like art—light and shadow. There were times I felt that I was Alden’s pet, and that did not bother me a bit, since, in a sense, he was mine. He was a pet from another country whose life was not, like mine, a relief map full of valleys, hills, and moraines, but was a hard, straight road that got you to an appointed city. Alden was pleased with my relief map. It was full of turns he had never taken. I was entranced by his straight road. We had absolutely nothing in common.

  Beneath his proper exterior, Alden was an eccentric. I felt that doting on these eccentricities was good for him—after all, wasn’t it my job to make him giggle and swoon? I singled out his oddities and doted on them: that he could imitate a cat’s purr; that he was secretly afraid of shaving and, since he hated electric razors, he distracted himself from the thought that he might somehow slit his own throat by walking around the living room while he shaved; that he hated to wear shoes. These things were what I thought personality was all about. I did not stop to think that to Alden they were frivolities. I thought that the world was an open proposition: if I got tidier and Alden got less fussy, we would go along beautifully forever.

  One evening Alden sat me down and told me that it was necessary to have a serious talk. I had thought that all of our talks were serious, but I was wrong. I sat down on the sofa next to him.

  “I think you’d better sit in the chair by the desk,” Alden said.

  I crossed the room and sat in the chair by the desk. Alden sat silently on the couch. Then he began to speak. He said his wife was coming to New York. What was she doing that for, I wondered. I had not paid very much attention to Alden’s separation. When you were separated, that was it. Besides, Alden hadn’t seemed to have given it much thought. It turned out that she was coming back to live with him—to try to work things out. What things? The very concept amazed me. If things didn’t work out once, they never worked out twice.

  Alden explained to me, in the sober way a doctor tells you what is wrong with you, knowing that he knows more than you do, that you cannot, without his training, possibly understand. He sits on his side of the desk—the side with the expertise on it—and makes you feel that you and your body are bad children.

  “I am very grateful to you,” was one of the things Alden said. “You’ve helped me to free myself a little. But I work on the principle of commitment, and marriage is a very serious one. It is my obligation to do everything I can to honor it unless I find out that it is totally hopeless.”

  I did not say a word. Alden then went on to talk about his wife. Her name was Eleanor, and she was an economist, too. They shared a large store of communal memories. They had ideas and goals in common. Although the separation had been mutual, it had been Eleanor’s idea to reconnect. That made immediate sense to Alden. Had it made immediate sense even while he was in my company? Those nights when I had watched him and he looked so dear to me, had it been his obligation to marriage he was thinking about?

  It was not yet clear to me that Alden was packing me in and filing me under “an unserious romp with an entertaining girl.” It was not clear that all the time we had played so happily together, Alden’s real life, in what he thought was the real world, was lived apart from me. I thought for a moment that Alden had misread me—that he took high spirits for superficiality. I thought that perhaps he did not understand the gravity of my feelings for him, so I told him. These were the sacred words—the words I thought changed everything. Alden was now sitting on a ricke
ty chair with one of the back slats missing. He repeated that he was very grateful to me, that our time together had been an enchantment.

  I said: “But this is serious, Alden. I love you.”

  He said: “You’ll get over it.” And then he left.

  I was not prepared for the aftermath of this affair. The distress I felt seemed uncontainable. At the shop I found myself in the bathroom in tears, running the faucets so that Pete would not hear me weeping. It was hard not to notice what bad shape I was in, so Pete asked me if I wanted the week off, but the thought of being alone with my distress horrified me.

  What difference did it make that my bills were paid on time, that my desk was in order, that my research was actually taking some form, that the shop had been redesigned according to my plans, and that Pete was finally thinking of making me a partner? I did not look around to see that in fact my life was adding up to something after all. I only knew that my days were very long and my nights were unendurable.