The Eighth Day

by Thornton Wilder

  “I’ll be here. What’s your grandfather’s name?”

  “O’Hara. Call him ‘Deacon.’ And if he says anything about me, do you know my name?”

  “Harry O’Hara.”

  “My name is Aristides.”

  “He’s in Plutarch’s Lives!”

  “In school the teacher called me Harry. They thought the children would laugh at Aristides.”

  “Tomorrow at four.—I’d better get back to the house and see Sophie.”

  They didn’t say goodnight. Just the glance, arrowlike, keener by three and a half years.

  Roger entered the gate at “The Elms” and went around the house to the back. Through the window he saw his mother seated at the kitchen table, her cup of Milchkaffee before her, lost in thought. He returned to the front of the house and stole silently upstairs. Sophia’s door was open a few inches. He stood still and listened. He whispered, “Sophie!”

  “Yes! Yes, Roger?”

  “Do you want to go to church with me on Christmas morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like we used to do when Papa was here? You and Connie. I’ll tell you a secret: Lily’s sent you both some beautiful dresses to wear. Mama sent her your measurements. Then the next day we’re going to the Bell Farm to see everybody there.—Now will you sleep nine hours for me tonight?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “I’m going to leave my door open a few inches, like Papa used to do. Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  In the morning a copper can of hot water stood before his door. As Roger finished shaving he gazed insistently into the mirror that had so often reflected his father’s face. Mirrors “hold” nothing. They don’t know we’re here. “T.G.” used to say that the universe was like a mirror. Vacant. The smell of coffee and frying bacon filled the air. He heard his sisters stirring. He went out into the hall and shouted: “Bathroom’s free! Last one down to breakfast is a buffalo!”

  Constance came rushing toward him screaming: “Papa’s home—I mean, Roger’s home.”

  Sophia hid behind her door.

  His mother had eaten breakfast. She brought a cup of coffee to the table and sat down beside him. She hesitated to speak. She knew that her hoarseness had returned. Besides, she could think of nothing to say. She was filled with pride in this visitor, this strange young man.

  “I want to see some people today,” he said. “Lily’s sent down some presents for Miss Doubkov and the Gillieses.”

  “I’ve asked them to supper with us.”

  “That’s fine. I may be a little bit late. I’m going up to Herkomer’s Knob this afternoon. Porky’s grandfather asked to see me.—After supper I’m going over to call on Mrs. Lansing. Have you got something to eat that I could take over for a present?”

  “Yes, I have. I’ll wrap up some marzipan and ginger cookies.”

  The girls joined them. Constance had plenty to say.

  By ten-thirty Félicité had lighted the stove in Miss Doubkov’s store. Roger knocked and entered. She was sitting behind the counter straight, severe, contained, like a schoolteacher—no, like a nun. She had brought Anne with her. (It was not necessary to explain that nothing escaped the eyes of Coaltown except the truth.) By previous arrangement Anne put cotton in her ears and sat down by the stove with a book.

  Roger and Félicité gazed into each other’s eyes a moment over something increasingly weighty; whatever it was, they were in it together. She began speaking in a low voice:

  “I have two things to tell you.” She told him about the money her mother had received from his father’s inventions. “It’s made her very unhappy. She doesn’t want to keep it one day longer. She hasn’t even put it in the bank. She cashed the cheque and keeps the money hidden in her room. She wanted to go to your house and give it to your mother, but she felt sure that your mother wouldn’t take it. She was sure that your mother would be very angry.” She paused and looked at him with a faint inquiry.

  “Yes. I think she was right.”

  “When she heard that you were coming to Coaltown she felt a great relief. She changed in one day. She’s going to put it all in your hands when you come to see her tonight. I thought I ought to tell you first so that you’d be ready. You will take it?”

  “Surely your father did some work on the inventions?”

  “Mother says she knows it wasn’t very much.” Félicité smiled faintly. “She says she’ll ask for ten percent and give it to orphans.”

  Roger was unable to sit still longer. He rose and took a few steps around the room. “Papa’s inventions! They’ve made money! . . . ? He always knew there was money in them, but he wouldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Will you take it from Maman tonight?”

  “I’ll put it in the bank. You and I will be the treasurers of it. We’ll use it for our sisters’ education. If Papa were here, he’d want it divided equally. That’s what I’ll tell your mother. . . . ? What else did you want to talk to me about?”

  Félicité’s expression changed. She pressed her lips together. She looked at him imploringly. She clasped her hands tightly on the counter. “Roger, I have something terrible to tell you. I wasn’t sure of it when I saw you on the train. I’m sure of it now.—Roger, what did your father do every time he fired his gun?”

  “What? What do you mean, Felicity?”

  “Try to remember! What did he teach you to do because he said it made you concentrate better?”

  “He counted.”

  “And he pressed with the tip of his left shoe on the ground. Always at the same speed.” Roger waited. “He said four words: ‘One, two, three, crack!’”

  “Yes?”

  Félicité was silent. The blood had left her face. She looked at him with urgent appeal. “Help me,” she whispered.

  Suddenly he saw what she meant. “Someone else could shoot at exactly the same second!”

  “From the house. From a window upstairs in the house.”

  “But who? Who, Felicity?”

  “Someone who would know about that counting.”

  “Me? You? We were all at the picnic in Memorial Park. George had left town the night before.”

  She began talking very rapidly, but distinctly. “Father had been very ill for weeks and weeks. Mother sat up beside his bed every night. Sometimes he was in pain and he’d shout and throw things off his table. George thought he was striking Mother. George would wander around the house all night like an animal—like an animal going crazy. My father would never have hurt Maman. But he was in pain. Sometimes he called her cruel names. Maman understood, but George didn’t. Then my father got the idea that he would shoot your father. George told me so. George said he heard him say so. My father didn’t mean it. He was just suffering. Do you see? George shot my father to protect Maman and to save your father’s life.”

  Roger rose slowly. He said. “That must be the way it was.”

  “Wait! Wait! George wouldn’t have let your father go through that trial. He didn’t know about the trial. He rode all night on one of those freight trains. He fell off and hurt his head. He was in an insane asylum for months. Oh, Roger, Roger! Help me!”

  Roger crossed to the stove quickly and tapped Anne on the shoulder. She pulled the cotton from her ears. “Get a glass of water.”

  Roger and Anne stood in silence while Félicité sipped the water. Anne had never seen her sister’s hands tremble. Finally Roger whispered, “Put the cotton back in your ears, Anne.”

  Finally he said, “Where’s George now?”

  “He came back four nights ago. He got into his room by the window. We didn’t know he was there until the morning. Nobody’s ever seen anyone so unhappy. Even my father wasn’t as unhappy as that. We’ve always been afraid that George would become insane. And now . . . ? I can see now that he’s trying to tell us something; but he can’t tell it.”

  “Does your mother . . . ??”

  Félicité had shed no tears. She put her hand over her mouth an
d a great sob broke beneath it. “Last night . . . ? George doesn’t want to go to bed. He wants us to sit up all night with him. We read scenes from Shakespeare and French plays. And we talk. George talks. He talks strange things, a sort of nonsense. And I saw that Maman was trying to help him tell the thing, whatever it was. Because if he told her . . . ? do you see?”

  She waited. “No, I don’t, Felicity.”

  “He’d go to a priest. She could persuade him to go to a priest.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think he can ever tell Maman! He wants to tell me, but so far he arranges it that we’re never alone together. Now that I’ve told you, Roger, I see what I can do: I can tell him that I know, that I understand. Yes. Yes.” She whispered, “Maman knows too—I’m sure now.”

  “Felicity, this is what you can do. Take that money from Papa’s inventions. Give it to George and tell him to go out of the country—to China, to Africa. But first have him write a full confession. When he’s been gone several months we’ll send the confession to the State’s Attorney.”

  Félicité seized his hands. “Yes, Roger. Yes! Then your father can come back.”

  Now she wept. “But I must hurry home. I’m so afraid that he’ll disappear as suddenly as he came. Help me put out the fire. Anne! Anne! We’re going. Thank you, Roger.”

  At the same time, at the same hour, George Lansing was lying full length, face down, on the floor of Miss Doubkov’s sitting room, his head toward the icons. Miss Doubkov was standing beside him reading in Old Slavonic the Prayer of Contrition.

  He had told his story. When his panting for breath had prevented his continuing Miss Doubkov had bound a wet towel about his forehead. Now his exhaustion was such that he could barely repeat the words after her. When she had finished she leaned down and held a crucifix before him. He kissed it.

  He rose. She led him to the desk by the window and put pen, ink, and paper before him. “Write down what I dictate to you: ‘I, George Sims Lansing, on the afternoon of May 4, 1902, shot and killed my father Breckenridge Lansing on the lawn behind our house. I had left town on the previous evening, but returned the next noon riding on the underside of a freight car. I hid in the woods. . . . ?’ ”

  While she was dictating she moved in and out of her four small rooms, collecting sums of money from various hiding places.

  “Now address the envelope: ‘The State’s Attorney, The State of Illinois. . . . ?’ Now go into the bathroom and wash your face. Sit down in my bedroom until I call you.”

  She wrote a letter and called him.

  “You are taking the twelve-twenty train for Chicago. Go out by my back stairs. Take the path behind the courthouse. Don’t get on the train at the station; jump on it when it starts to cross the bridge by the water tower. Go straight to Canada—to Halifax. Take a ship to St. Petersburg. When my father came to America from Paris we arrived in Halifax. There was a sort of Russian club there to welcome Russians and to help them make plans. Buy some workmen’s clothes as soon as you can and roll in the dirt in them. You are from a small town in Alberta where my father worked for a while. Until you get to Russia you must act the part of a stupid, ignorant backwoods boy from that small Russian colony in Alberta. You know scarcely any English and your Russian’s bad because you’re stupid. . . . ? Don’t get angry at anybody. Don’t quarrel with anyone. Be an idiot. I have written a statement here. It says that you are an orphan . . . ? honest and industrious . . . ? a good Christian. You had a fever when you were a child that left you a little slow. The letter is written in English, but it is signed by the Pope of that small town in Alberta. When you reach Halifax look for Russians. Tell everybody you must go to Russia to find your grandmother. She is in Moscow. You do not know her address. There is her name. . . . ? I do not know how you will manage all this. I do not know where you will get papers, but we must leave some things to God. Here are two hundred dollars. . . . ? Now you have time only to write one or two sentences for your mother and sisters. I shall see your mother this afternoon. I shall tell her everything. Can I give her your promise that you will make your confession soon?”

  “Yes, Olga Sergeievna.”

  “When you get to Russia, write me. Write in Russian. Do not write to your mother for several years.” She continued in Russian: “God bless you, dear Ghyorghy. God fill your heart and soul with true repentance and free you of that great load of mortal sin. You have taken a life and you doubly owe a life to God and to His creation. The Mother of God is a source of consolation to all—particularly to us who are wanderers and exiles. May she make Herself known to you. . . . ? Go! Go, dear boy. . . . ?”

  He bowed low over her hand. Without a word he left the house.

  At four that afternoon Olga Sergeievna called at “St. Kitts.” Eustacia knew at once from the expression on her face that grave matters were in the air. She called Félicité, who stood beside her chair throughout the half hour.

  Olga Sergeievna told them everything. She laid his short note on the table. She reported his solemn promise.

  “Chère Eustachie, when I hear from George over there I shall send his story to Springfield.”

  Eustacia pressed Félicité’s hand. In a low voice she said, “Shouldn’t you tell Beata now?”

  “That’s for you to decide. I should wait.”

  Suddenly Eustacia’s sad but not stricken face lit up with joy. “I shall tell it all to Roger tonight.”

  Félicité said softly, “Maman, Roger knows almost all of it already. I had a talk with him about it this morning.”

  Eustacia looked at her in wonder. “Olga,” she asked, “has he some money?”

  “He has money. He has hope. He has courage. He has religion. He has intelligence. Go rest, Eustachie.”

  Eustacia kissed her, murmuring, “And pray.”

  Vista after vista . . . ? range beyond range.

  The greatest Russian actor during the early years of this century first called attention to himself by behaving as a clown in the various taverns where he was engaged as waiter. He discovered an old derelict actor to work with—George speaking French; his associate, German. George played dreamy waiters, enthusiastic waiters, embittered waiters to his fastidious diner. He was particularly fine as an angry waiter, for he was said to have the face of an angry feline. George spilled soup on his guest, trod on his toes, found knives and forks in his pockets. The din was terrific; the room filled up. They were invited to cause consternation and havoc in more expensive restaurants. They were engaged as clowns in a pleasure park at the edge of the city. Posters appeared announcing “GHYORGHY.” The step to the theatre followed rapidly. He was engaged as a low comedian and was particularly admired as a player of old men. Before long he arrived at a position where he was able to select his own roles. He refused all invitations to leave Russia. Visitors from abroad reported that he was—in his own translations—the finest Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Falstaff, Malade lmaginaire, Tartuffe they had ever seen. Olga Sergeievna, writing Eustacia from Moscow in 1911, said that she had been enjoying the company of a friend, a remarkable young “opera singer.” They had talked much of their earlier lives in France—in Charbonville—remembering old days with laughter and tears and much love. Finally he wrote himself. He sent pictures of his children. The last letters from both were dated 1917. They seem to have disappeared in that turbulent time.

  When Roger arrived at Porky’s store at four o’clock he found Porky’s cousin Stan (Standfast Rawley) in the street holding the bridles of two saddled horses. Stan was an old friend, even more taciturn than his cousin. He worked in Bilbow’s livery stable. The young men shook hands. Stan disappeared. Porky and Roger mounted the horses and began the ascent.

  The members of the Covenant Church in Herkomer’s Knob lived in identical frame houses surrounding their tabernacle. This was one of the many communities that survived, like vestigial pockets, from the days of the Great Wilderness—moving westward from Virginia to Kentucky and Tennessee and beyond. Their isolation wa
s a result not only of their religious beliefs, but of the large amount of Indian blood in their veins. Since on the old frontier it was white men who married or lived with Indian women—no full-blooded Indian ever married a white girl—it was the men’s names that were transmitted, spelled as they were heard. Most of the families on the Knob were named Gorum, Rawley, Cobb, O’Hara, and Ratliff. For generations they engaged in hunting and trapping, but when game became scarce their young men descended into Coaltown, first to work in the railroad yard or in the livery stables. They were sober by custom and upbringing and were known to be extremely trustworthy and industrious. They served as janitors in the bank, the jail, the court house, and the hotel. Men of the open air and of free movement they could not adjust themselves to working in stores, nor would they go underground as miners. In school their boys and girls—with the sole exception of Porky—made no friends outside of their own number. They were unsmiling, joyless, dogged. The older men never came to town save to pay their taxes, coins in hand. The community was known to be poor. As one of the distinguished economists in the Illinois Tavern saloon put it, they were “mouse-farm poor.” The women made homespun garments and wove bedspreads. The men made utilitarian objects from the hides of horse and deer. They did not sell these products in Coaltown (it had become apparent to some that they detested Coaltown), but carried them a considerable distance to other markets. Some of their middle-aged women came down the hill and worked as “hired girls” in homes, but always with the understanding that they would be back on Herkomer’s Knob by seven o’clock. There were many beehives on the Knob and much clover. The honey was sold elsewhere; the Ashleys and the Gillieses prized it as gifts. Their young people attended the town’s schools through the eighth grade; their deportment was that of solemn little men and women. Their clothes of homespun were spotlessly clean and smelled of lye soap. Their given names were the source of much amusement. Some were taken from the Bible, but the larger number were from the two works that always accompanied the earliest adventurers from Virginia into the Wilderness: Pilgrim’s Progress and Plutarch’s Lives. There was many a Christian and a Good Works, and many a Lycurgus, an Epaminondas, a Solon, and an Aristides. The plantation owners in the East had drawn from Plutarch the tyrannicides and warriors—Cassius, Cincinnatus, Horatius, and Brutus; the members of the Covenant Church elected the sagacious. All the boys were exceptional athletes, but were forbidden by their elders to take part in the high school’s Saturday afternoon games, which were conducted under the imagery of revenge, hatred, and extermination.