The Eternal Wonder

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Perhaps you are right, Dr. Sharpe. Perhaps I am being childish. There is really no reason for me to go home in a snowstorm. It’s just that this has taken me quite by surprise and I do not wish to pursue the subject any further, so it seems best that I leave.”

  Sharpe sat in the chair by the fireplace and watched Rann. “Again I say, don’t be absurd. The snow is nearly two feet deep. You have said you don’t wish to pursue the subject any further, so that’s all there is to it. I’ll go to bed and leave you quite alone. After all, I have my own pride, you know.”

  “I’m sure of that, Dr. Sharpe, and I’m equally sure I can believe you will not bother me again.”

  “You can be sure of that, Rann. Now I’ll go to bed. Good night, dear boy, and I’m sorry, or perhaps I’m sorry for my sake and not for yours, that things cannot be different.”

  When Donald Sharpe left the room, Rann tried to put the events of the evening into some sort of order so he could understand what had happened. It was of no use, for he could not understand. He was desperately tired, he was sick with anger, with disappointment, and to his astonishment and horror, he burst into weeping as soon as he put out the light and drew the covers about his shoulders. He had not wept since his father died, but these were bitter tears too. He had been wounded, he had been insulted, his body violated—and he had lost the friend in whom he had believed with all his heart and soul. Moreover—and this shocked him to new knowledge of himself—his body, while he slept, had physically responded to the stimulation. He was angry with himself, too. Of course he could not continue now with college. What if Sharpe wanted to explain, apologize, try to establish some sort of relationship again? He, himself, was too embarrassed by his own response to even think of it.

  He returned to his own home early the following day.

  “I’m going away for a while,” he said to his mother, trying to speak calmly.

  His mother looked across the table at him, her blue eyes opened wide. “Now? In the middle of the school term?”

  He was silent for a long moment. Suppose he told her about last night? He decided against it for now. The conflict within him was too great. He had to think through the whole relationship with Donald Sharpe—his admiration for the man quite apart from the experience of last night. Would he have told even his father, had he been alive? A year ago, yes, he would have told him. But now, maturing as he was, and he was mature enough to recognize how much of this was due to the many hours he had spent with Sharpe, he felt he would not have confided last night’s experience even with his father. He recoiled from the physical disgust he felt for Sharpe as he thought of him and would recoil at any memory of it forever, but he wanted time to understand why a man of Sharpe’s brilliance and, yes, goodness—could stoop to so physical an act. Perhaps he would never understand; if not, then he must try to understand himself, and why, hating the act, he was surprised to realize that he did not hate the man. But the shock, the horror, was too recent. He needed time to sort out his feelings.

  “Yes, now,” he said to his mother.

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  He could see that she was trying to hide her consternation, perhaps even her fear. Her lower lip quivered.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Southward, perhaps, so that I can be out-of-doors.”

  She said no more and he knew why. Long ago he had heard his father tell her. “Don’t push the boy with your questions. When he is ready to tell us, he will tell us.”

  He had been grateful many times for this advice, and never more grateful than now. He rose from the table.

  “Thank you, Mother,” he said gently, and went upstairs to his room.

  IN THE NIGHT HE WAKED and lying quiet, his eyes opening wide, he saw his mother standing beside his bed, wrapped in her long white flannel robe. He turned on the bedside lamp and saw her looking at him.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said wistfully.

  He sat up in bed. “Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked.

  “I feel a heaviness here,” she said, crossing her hands on her breast.

  “A pain?”

  “Not physical,” she said. “A sadness, a loneliness. I could bear more easily your going away if I knew what had happened to make you want to go.”

  He was instantly wary. “What makes you think something has happened?”

  “You’re changed—you’re very changed.” She sat down on the bed so that they were face-to-face. “It was such a mistake that it was your father who died and not I,” she went on in the same tone. She had a girlish voice, very young and gentle. But she was not old. She had been only twenty-two when he was born and she looked younger, especially now with her curly red-gold hair about her face and on her shoulders. “I should have been the one to die,” she repeated mournfully. “I’m not capable of helping you. I know that. I can quite understand why you can’t confide in me. It’s probably true that I wouldn’t know how to help you.”

  “It is not that I don’t want to confide in you,” he protested. “It’s that I don’t know how. It’s so—unspeakable.”

  “Is it about a girl, darling? Because if it is, I’ve been a girl myself and sometimes—”

  “That’s just it. It’s not about a girl.”

  “Is it about Donald Sharpe?”

  “How did you know?”

  “You’ve been so different since you knew him, Rannie—so wrapped up in your friendship. And I was glad. He’s brilliant, everyone says. I’ve been happy that he was teaching you—being like an older brother, but—”

  She broke off and sighed.

  “But what?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice troubled, her face concerned, her eyes searching his face.

  He yielded then, but uncertainly, word by word. He was compelled to tell her now that they were alone in the darkness of the night. He was compelled to share the weight of his memory of the night before, when Donald Sharpe had suddenly become a stranger from whom he must escape.

  “Last night—,” he began haltingly, and stopped.

  “In Donald Sharpe’s house?” she asked.

  “Yes, I was in his guestroom. I was asleep. We’d had a wonder­ful evening talking about science and art and which direction I might want to take. It was long after midnight before we noticed. Then he took me to my room and we said good night. He came in to see that everything was all right. Then he went away. He’d had his Filipino manservant put a pair of his white silk pajamas­ on the bed—a huge four-poster bed. After my bath I put them on. I’d never worn silk next to my skin before—so soft, so smooth … I fell asleep soon. I must have slept quite a long time. The fire was burning when I went to bed—very brightly when I turned off the bed light. There was a volume of Keats on the bedside table, I think, but I didn’t read. I just lay watching the fire die and I went to sleep. When I woke—”

  He paused so long that she prompted him gently. “When you woke—”

  He flung himself back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

  “I was waked—”

  “By him?” she asked.

  “By someone—smoothing my thighs—and then … touching me … there. I felt—response. I thought it was one of those dreams—you know!”

  “Yes, I know,” she said, her voice very low.

  “It wasn’t a dream. By the light of a newly lighted fire I could see his face. I felt his hands … compelling me—against my will. I hated myself. I leaped out of bed. I was so angry—at myself, Mother! How can the body respond to what one hates and finds disgusting and repulsive? I was frightened—at myself, Mother!”

  There—he had told her. He had put it into words. It would never again be a secret he had to carry alone. He lay, his hands clasped behind his head, he opened his eyes and met her tender, pitying gaze.

  “Oh the poor, poor man!” she whispered.


  He was astounded. “You’re sorry for him?”

  “And who could not be sorry for him?” she retorted. “He’s in need of love where he can never find it—never truly find it because it’s against human nature. Male and female God created us, and when a poor man tries to find that love with a man or a boy, he’s doomed to sorrowfulness. However he excuses himself saying that to love and be loved is the importance in life, he knows he’ll only find a poor warped sort of love. It’s like a male dog mounting a male dog. There’s no fulfillment. Oh yes, it’s him I’m sorry for, my son. Thank God you weren’t a little boy, beguiled by a toy or an ice-cream cone or something—perhaps just fear or even pleasure. Thank God you were old enough.”

  “But myself, Mother … how could I—my—my body respond to his … touch … when I hated it? That’s what frightened me.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, son. You didn’t respond. The body has its own mechanism. You’ve learned a lesson—your body has its separate being and your mind, your will, must be in control, ceaselessly, until the time when it is right for body to have its way. Oh, how I wish your father were here to explain such things to you!”

  “I understand already,” he said, his voice very low.

  “Then you must forgive Donald Sharpe,” she said resolutely. “To forgive is understanding.”

  “Mother, I can’t go back to school here.”

  “No, I can see that. Let’s take a bit of time, though, to think. You could stay home a day or two. We mustn’t decide too fast just where is the right place.”

  He sighed. “So long as you see I must go away—”

  “We’ll agree on that,” she said. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead. “Now I can sleep, and you must sleep too.”

  She closed the door softly, and he lay for a few minutes, relieved of his anger, his shame, his sense of guilt. Though he felt now he never wanted to see Donald Sharpe again, he felt also a loss. He would miss him in spite of all. There had been communion between them, and he had supposed it would last forever. Now he felt a loss, a desolation. Who was his friend? His mother, of course, but he needed more. He needed friends.

  Lying alone in his bed, his hands clasped behind his head on his pillow, he remembered a warning his father had given him shortly before he died. With his gift of envisioning, he remembered. He was sitting beside his father, lying on the living-room couch. His father’s voice was weak, for he was near the end of his life and they both knew it. He knew, too, that his father was trying to tell him in that short time before death came that which he needed years to tell—the years that were not to be.

  “You will be solitary, my son. The solitary creator is the source of all creation. He has produced all the most important ideas and works of art in human history. Lonely creators—you will be one of those. Never complain of being lonely. You are born to be lonely. But the world needs the solitary creator. Remember that. One-man creation—it shows that above all you are capable of greatness. What inspiration!”

  LYING IN HIS BED, SLEEPLESS, he reviewed his life as he could remember it, a brief life in years, but somehow old. He had read so many books, he had thought so many thoughts, his mind constantly teeming with ideas—and here, with his ability to visualize, he suddenly remembered the goldfish in the pool under a willow tree in the garden, and how in the first warm days of spring when the sun shone, the water was moving and alive with flashing gold as the fish swarmed out of the mud where they had sheltered during the winter. That, so he thought, was a living picture of his mind, always flashing and moving with glittering thoughts, pushing for exploration. He was often exhausted by this mind of his from which he could find no rest except in sleep, and even his sleep was brief, though deep. Sometimes his mind waked him by its own activity. He envisioned his brain as a being separate from himself, a creature he must live with, an enchantment but also a burden. What was he born for? What was the meaning and the purpose? Why was he different from, say, Chris? He had not seen Chris since that brief visit shortly before his father had died. Some two years had passed since, years during which he had been pushing his way through college. Now, before he began again in some other place, if he began again, it occurred to him to go and find Chris, in curiosity and with a desire to return, however briefly, to the past. His mind thus resolved itself and allowed him at last to sleep.

  “HI,” CHRIS SAID, coming out of the garage. “What can I do for you?”

  “Don’t you know me?” he asked.

  Chris stared at him. “I don’t recollect you.”

  “Have I changed so much? I’m Rannie—Rann, nowadays.”

  Chris’s face, grown round with added weight of years and food, broke into a grin.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said slowly, “I’ll just be damned. But you’re twice as tall as you was. You sure have shot up.”

  ‘‘Like my father,” he said. “Remember how tall and thin he was?”

  Chris looked concerned. “Say, I sure was sorry to hear about him. Come on in. I don’t get real busy until around noon when the trucks come in on their way to New York.”

  He followed Chris into the garage. They sat down. “I’m the owner now,” Chris said, trying to be offhand.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  “Yes,” Chris continued. “Happened last year when Ruthie and I got married. Remember Ruthie?”

  Did he not? He had never forgotten the glimpse he had had of that rosebud organ, in childish ignorance that was scarcely old enough to be curiosity. He wondered if Ruthie remembered.

  “Of course I remember,” he said. “She was so pretty.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said proudly, but pretending carelessness. “I had to marry her to keep the crowd away. She’s pretty, all right. In fact”—he paused for a short laugh—“she was so damned pretty that our kid’s coming a little too soon. We had to hurry the wedding. Course, there was no question I wanted to marry her, but we had to hurry everything. This here garage—I might have waited another year or two—our folks had to help out. But—”

  He slapped his knees. “It’s done. I’m on my way, I’m makin’ out. Business is good here on the truck route.” He glanced at the open door. “Here comes Ruthie now, bringin’ me a hot lunch. Have a bite with me? There’s always plenty. She don’t skimp on anything, Ruthie don’t. She’s a damned good kid.”

  Ruthie reached the door and hesitated, basket in hand.

  “I didn’t know you had company,” she said.

  “Come in, hon,” Chris shouted. “Guess who this is!”

  She came in, and set the basket on the table beside Chris, and stared.

  “Did I see you before?” she asked.

  Yes, she was pretty as ever, he thought, her face fuller but almost as childlike as he remembered. But her body was the body of a woman ready to give birth. The mystery of birth! He had scarcely thought of it yet. He had scarcely thought of women, his life so much the life of his mind.

  “Yes, you have seen me before,” he said.

  They waited while she continued to stare at him. Then she shook her head.

  “I don’t remember you,” she said.

  He felt a quick relief. She did not remember him. Probably there had been many episodes, none as childish as the one he remembered so vividly.

  “He’s Rannie!” Chris shouted, laughing at her puzzlement. “’Member little ole Rannie in school? Always knowin’ all the answers? You sure were a damned know-it-all, Rann—makin’ fools out of the rest of us. We didn’t like you too well for it in them days either.”

  “You wouldn’t like me any better now,” he said in a quiet bitterness.

  “Aw, it don’t matter now,” Chris said with kindly warmth. “I got my garage. I got my girl—what else do I need? I make good money.”

  Ruthie sat down, her eyes still gazing. “You’ve changed,” she announced. “I wouldn’t of kn
own you anywhere. Didn’t you used to be sort of runty?”

  “Naw, he wasn’t ever runty—he was just a kid besides us—too smart for us, I reckon. Well, it takes all kinds. What’d you bring? Pork and beans—enough for an army! Have some, Rannie.”

  He rose. “No, thanks, Chris. I must be on my way, I’m leaving town—”

  “Goin’ where?”

  “New York first—Columbia, perhaps. I am to finish in another year. Then I may go on to my doctorate. I haven’t decided.”

  Chris let his jaw drop. “Say, how old are you now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen!” Chris echoed. “Hear that, Ruthie? Still a kid and talkin’ about bein’ a doctor!”

  He opened his mouth to explain, “not a medical doctor,” and then did not explain. What was the use? These were not his people.

  “Good-bye,” he said. He put out his hand to Chris and then to Ruthie. “I’m glad I came by before I went.” They were warm, they were honest, they were kind, but they were not his people and he went away leaving them behind forever.

  “WHEREVER YOU GO, SON,” his mother had begged him, “stop and see my father—your grandfather—in New York City. He lives alone there in a little apartment in Brooklyn. I don’t know why. He rarely writes to me now. When he came back to America after my mother died, he went to the city where he was born. He said he’d always wanted to live there and to live alone. I’ve felt badly about it—but he was never like anyone else. Sometimes I wonder if you take after him!”

  He did not promise that he would seek out his grandfather. He did, however, go to New York and take a room at a small hotel—simple but to him horrifyingly expensive, although his mother had given him the money on which they had once planned to go to Europe before his father died. It was a long, narrow room, “self-contained,” the landlord called it, because at one end there was a small gas stove, a smaller refrigerator, and a sink with a cold-water faucet. Down the dark and dusty hall upon which it opened there was a communal bathroom in which beside the toilet was an old four-legged bathtub. But the room itself was furnished after a fashion, and the bed was clean. The landlord, an ancient bearded Jew who wore a small black cap on his head, was proud of the room.