The Listener

by Taylor Caldwell

  “And so he built this ‘sanctuary’, as some call it, where someone will listen to anyone who comes. There is no set time. A visitor may take up ten minutes, or an hour, or even two hours. The building is open twenty-four hours a day. It is maintained by the Stella Godfrey Memorial Fund, established by Mr. Godfrey, her husband.”

  The room darkened. Alexander Damon stared before him, the pamphlet limp in his hands. Half-past five came, then six. Suddenly he started as church bells began to ring, filling all the mild autumn air and penetrating the room. He looked at his watch. Six o’clock! What had he been doing all this time? Not reading, certainly. Had he fallen asleep? Not possible. He was always too tense, and he was more tense than usual because of the long drive today. He threw the pamphlet from him, went to his suitcase, and took out the bottle of whiskey. He went to the telephone to call room service for ice. The pamphlet lay near the chair where he had thrown it, its little white ‘Parthenon’ staring up at him. ‘The Man who Listens’.

  “To what?” he asked contemptuously. “To every driveling little housewife, yuk, truck driver, petty doctor, teen-ager, failing lawyer, grocer? The Man who Listens. I’ll drink a few to you, sir, and sympathize with you.”

  Still, he picked up the pamphlet and turned a page. “This pamphlet is left in your room to inform you that someone is waiting to listen to you if you feel the necessity. Hundreds of visitors to our city have visited John Godfrey’s memorial to his wife. No one knows who the man is, or, if he is known, no one has told. You are invited, at any hour of the day or night, to enter this building and speak to the Man who Listens.”

  Alexander always prided himself on the fact that though he was a gentleman, and successful, and an ‘intellectual’, he was always ‘up’ on the latest modern jargon. “What do I have to lose?” he asked himself, and laughed. “Besides, it might be amusing. ‘Something to tell the folks at home’. ” He was to be the guest of a very witty commentator in three months on a nationally popular television broadcast: ‘Visit Him Now’. Mr. Alexander Damon, famous architect. Raconteur. Personality. Author of the sparkling book, Why Build? No one who intended to build a larger, glassier, more steely building than any yet built — whether for business or for living — failed to consult Alexander Damon. Brighter, bigger, better, full of softly controlled and filtered air, colorful steel doors, new ‘miracle’ floors, aluminum, chrome — but not flashy or gaudy. Quiet, modern, efficient. Everything at the touch of a button. Elegant. Sanitary. Even self-cleaning. Smooth as velvet. ‘Easeful living or working’.

  ‘Easeful’.

  An account of a visit to John Godfrey’s coquettish little Taj Mahal would be good fun, and the television audience would enjoy it. There was nothing so enjoyable these days as scintillating malice, elegantly spoken. Devastating. But not for the yuks, who were often bewildered, preferring their humor ‘straight’. But who cared for the yuks? What had a scientist, concerned over the population explosion in the world, said about the terrible danger of an increase, a swarming increase, of yuks? “It would take,” the expert had said seriously, “several hydrogen bombs every three years to keep down the engulfing populations.” He had meant it quite seriously. If necessary, nations would have to resort to that. “Splendid,” said Alexander aloud. And saw Moira’s face.

  He put the whiskey bottle on the desk. He really must see that Taj Mahal. He phrased sentences in his mind and smiled. Perhaps this city would become so embarrassed over his broadcast that it would pull the infernal, ridiculous thing down and build in its place a fine apartment house with aluminum and stone balconies.

  Alexander smiled with pure, delighted hate. He hated everything that was ‘popular’, best-selling, widely accepted, revealing public vulgarity at its worst. He hated the gross businessman, the brash politician, the inelegant, the openly enjoyed. He hated Hollywood and movies (except the esoteric little foreign films), large restaurants teeming with people and smells, women who were simple and kind and had no finesse — American women, for instance — and American automobiles, and ‘the American way of life’, whatever in the name of God that was! He loved little slim stream-of-consciousness volumes of poetry which few read, except those like himself. He loved Joyce, because only a few understood him. He loved ‘the dance’, provided it was ballet, Russian or British preferred. (Americans really could not interpret ballet very well.) But, as he was a liberal, he also loved swarming, after-theater, furiously lighted large dens where one could buy a proletarian hamburger (two dollars) and a good, rousing glass of beer (one dollar) and mingle with ‘the people’. He loved the people, provided they did not intrude upon him. He could become quite eloquent on the subject of ‘the people’. Fresh, earthy, Gothic, he would call them. He never saw ‘the people’. But, as a liberal, he loved them just the same. ‘Virtue resides in the people’. The throngs on the streets of New York were not ‘the people’ to him or to his kind. They lived somewhere far in space, or as a symbol.

  “You are a pretentious mess,” Moira had said to him. “You are as insulated as a baby in an incubator.” Had he begun to despise her then? Stupid Moira.

  He really must go to the Taj Mahal. He forgot to open the bottle of whiskey. Smiling happily, he put on his black coat (London-made) and his black severe hat (London-made). His ridicule of the Taj Mahal would reach the European correspondents, who would then write articles for their foreign newspapers on the ‘naiveté and utter unsophistication of the American people’. “Mr. Alexander Damon, the Architect,” one London feature writer had written, “is one of the few truly intellectual Americans of today.” Alexander loved to make charming bons mots about Americans, which were widely quoted in Europe, and especially in Russia.

  Alexander was in almost a happy and exhilarated mood when he took a taxicab to John Godfrey’s little ‘Parthenon’. (It had overtones of Zen-Buddhism.) He regarded taxi drivers as part of ‘the people’. Witty, wise, illiterate Socrateses. He said, “Have you ever been to John Godfrey’s building?”

  “Nope,” said the driver sullenly. (What could you expect outside New York? Even the taxi drivers were stupid.)

  “Do you take many people there?”

  The driver was silent.

  Alexander looked with cool distaste at the interior of the cab. A typical American ‘job’. He said with his usual sang-froid when he was speaking to a member of ‘the people’, “Why don’t you fellers insist on the European cars? Quicker, more agile, and not gas-eaters? There’s nothing like a foreign car. I have a small Mercedes-Benz, myself.”

  “You do, huh?” said the driver. He had a thick neck, and now it became crimson. He did not turn. “Look, mister, I got a son and his family in Detroit. He works in one of them automobile joints, makin’ cars. You’re puttin’ him out of business, you and your foreign cars! What can they make better’n an American car? You tell me that! If people want little cars, we got the tools in Detroit to make them better than in Europe. You one of them Communists, everythin’ better outside this country than in?”

  Alexander was startled. But then, he was in the ‘hinterland’, where everyone was one hundred percent American, no matter where one was born. He knew how to handle ‘the people’. He peered at the driver’s certificate. “Now, Bob, you know that Europe does have some talents we don’t have, don’t you?”

  “Sure, I know,” said the driver. “We’re all Europeans here, ain’t we? Your dad or granddad, or maybe even way back — they was Europeans. Think we’re all Indians, eh? You’re sure mixed up. Mister, you sure are mixed up!”

  Alexander did not answer. He felt hot and disgusted. He liked love and humility in ‘the people’, and an eagerness to learn obediently. And an anxiety to be ‘led’ by their natural rulers, the intellectual elite. This driver was definitely not one of ‘the people’.

  The driver stopped the cab. “One dollar fifty,” he said in a surly voice. “Can’t drive the car up there. You gotta walk a little.” Alexander got out of the cab. He counted out precisely one dollar
and sixty-five cents. The driver looked at the money and snorted. “I shoulda known!” he said, and drove off.

  Alexander laughed softly. That idiot was exactly like any New York taxi driver. They wanted nothing but money. That was the grossness of America. He walked up the gently winding red gravel walk; everything was dimly illuminated. Almost European in its effect; no glare. No neon signs. He had expected neon, in various flaming colors, going on and off, in big pink and blue and purple letters: ‘Come! The Man who Listens!!!’ Like a Revivalist temple. It was nothing like that.

  The small marble building raised itself purely against the dark sky, shining and simple. Alexander thought, Why, it’s very artistic! And very emotional, in a restrained and serene sort of way. The gravel under his feet reminded him of Oslo, of Rome, of Stockholm. He nodded approvingly. No smooth concrete or asphalt. That would be out of character. He detested things out of character. The men who built this place, laid out these gardens, were very sophisticated and knowing. He could not have designed this better himself.

  Nor, he thought, could he have imagined anything more restful and beautiful than the waiting room. No money had been spared. Where had that silly old lawyer gotten that money in this city? And the decorator? Very restful. No modern furniture, no amoeba-like, free-form glass tables on one or two scattered legs. But I designed an office like that, thought Alexander Damon. It was photographed for a national magazine. It gave me the horrors. In fact, everything gives me the horrors. He sat down in his coat and hat and looked before him. “The horrors,” he said aloud. There was no one there but himself. The proletarian dinner hour. There was a chime.

  “For me?” he asked courteously. The chime sounded again. He stood up, smiling in anticipation, and went into a stark-white marble room with blue velvet curtains concealing an alcove, and a marble chair.

  He sat down in the marble chair. He looked at the curtains. There was no sound here, no hurrying, no shrill whisper. No sense of amusement. The white walls were without decoration. They beamed at him, illuminated and waiting.

  He sat. No one asked him any questions or gave an indication of impatience. He continued to sit and to wait. The room waited with him. What had that pamphlet said? ‘All the time there is’.

  “That’s the trouble,” he said to the curtains. “There’s too much time.”

  He was aghast at this blunder.

  “I must be candid,” he said in his cool voice. “I’m not here because I have a ‘problem’. I am here only as an investigator. I won’t tell you my profession or business. That is immaterial.”

  What was wrong with him? His profession, immaterial! He must call his analyst tonight. When a man thought his work was ‘immaterial’ he was out in the deep end.

  “Are you a psychiatrist?” he asked contemptuously. “Not that I dislike psychiatrists. We all need help. I have an analyst of my own. If there were more psychiatrists in America we’d all come to understand ourselves more. ‘Know thyself,’ said Socrates. A very sound idea. My analyst assures me that I know myself completely. But I have the worst possible propensity for selecting wives that are bad for me. He has studied my last wife, Moira, and is convinced, as I am, that she is the most stupid selection of them all. She has no flair, no style, though she had convinced me she had before we were married. A dull, plodding woman, Moira, though she paints. But every woman, I am sure, is dull and plodding. Their biological necessity, their nest-building. But who would have thought it of Moira, the modernistic painter? Everyone lives in deception.”

  There was no sound, no movement, no rustle of traffic.

  “Every psychiatrist, and I am sure you are no exception, wants to know your background, from birth on, your childhood traumas, your parents, your siblings. Your teachers. Your playmates. Your relatives. It is only in that way that they can fix the blame where it belongs, for your misery, your meaningless life.”

  He leaned forward, flushing. “I’m sorry. That was a slip of my tongue. My life has meaning. The only trouble is that there is no meaning in others. They exist only as impediments, slowing up your flow of ideas, your enthusiasm, your dreams.”

  No one spoke. “And when that happens there is nothing left, no life, no drama, no significance, no zest, no meaningful end, nothing to strive for, to hope for, to work for. No color, no vitality, no excitement, no passion, no drive — no goal. We kill each other, not with an honest knife or a blow, but through our inertia. That is the real murder. I’ve been murdered, from my childhood on. By pointless people, by conformists, by repetition. Always repetition.”

  He smiled slightly at the curtains. “I have read your pamphlet. If one doesn’t wish to see the face of the psychiatrist who listens, one doesn’t need to press the button. I have no intention of pressing it. I prefer that you hear me in silence and in anonymity.”

  He said, “I wish to be perfectly candid. I’m here to expose this silly nonsense. I was always an honest person. I intend to speak of this place when I make my appearance on a certain television program called ‘Visit Him Now’. Very poignant, isn’t it? ‘Visit Him Now’. No doubt you are familiar with the program. Very urbane; civilized. One of the few civilized programs on the television circuit. It has a high rating, I’m told, and this surprises me. I was under the impression that the public prefers Western shooting and gangsters and what they call ‘situation home dramas’. But Mr. Brewster — Gene, we call him — is very popular, even if he has a late broadcasting. Every intelligent person listens to him. Of course the yuks are in bed at that time.”

  Alexander waited. He looked coldly at the curtains. “Of course you have seen his programs?”

  Why this damned, white, marble silence? Oh, the Man who Listens.

  “I’m a listener, myself,” said Alexander. “In fact, it seems to me that I’ve been listening — too much! — all my damned life.

  “At any rate, I am going to expose this sentimental slop on that program. I hope you don’t mind. After all, when your identity is known you’ll have more publicity than you ever had before! Is that your object?”

  He shrugged. “Everything is Madison Avenue,” he said. “Look, I’m not condemning you. We all live by advertisement, don’t we? And I must say that the way you advertise — discreet and artistic — is very well done. I couldn’t do better, myself. Of course you know the origin of the word ‘broadcasting’. It was done by the Romans, and the Greeks before them, and the Egyptians. ‘Public letters’. So even the most stupid would understand when the letters, or the parchment, or the paper, appeared on the walls of the city. Catiline was famous for it. He would make it especially dramatic by pinning the broadcasts to the walls of the temples with a naked dagger. Very startling; caught the attention of the populace at once. It didn’t really matter that the daggers could be bought for five hundred a sesterce. Very cheap metal; of no value. But interesting. Very interesting. But even politicians in these days are dull. No bright ideas. They must hire people to give them ideas, who will then broadcast them in the names of the politicians. That is public relations.”

  He paused. He felt a hungry, sick crawling along his nerves, a desperate aching. “It is not,” he said, “that I am an alcoholic. My analyst assured me I am not. It is only that I can’t stand — — ” He stopped. Then he exclaimed, “I can’t stand living!”

  He rubbed the palms of his hands together, over and over, in the immemorial gesture of despair, and did not know it. “What an idiotic thing to say,” he murmured apologetically. “I never blurted out that to my analyst! I’m sure if I had said an imbecile thing like that he’d have recommended shock treatment at once. Manic depression. I’m not in the least ‘depressive’. You can take the word of one of your colleagues about that! I am not even manic-depressive-manic. I’m quite normal. If I sometimes drink to excess, who can blame me? No one.”

  He stood up restlessly. “I’m afraid I’m taking up too much of your time. After all, you don’t find many people like myself, do you, in this city? Still, it may be interest
ing to you to listen to someone who doesn’t have bunions, or constipation, or bewildering teen-age children, or a quarrel with a husband or wife — ordinary, foolish problems. One of my friends, who is an advertising manager, told me that the ‘problems’ of the stupid were big business in America. They created ‘wants and needs and demands’. To satisfy the ‘problems’. In other words, give a man whose soul is aching a nice sweet strawberry-flavored lollipop. That will do it! Suck like a baby, and smile and gurgle, and then there are no more problems. The soul doesn’t ache anymore. It settles down to enjoy the momentary syrup. I’m sure you understand that I’m speaking of the soul in a loose sense — the psyche. An aching soul.”

  He had a sudden intense sensation that someone had moved closer to him and was listening acutely. He shrugged, smiled about the room. He sat down again.

  “Do you know what happens to me when I drink too much, as I usually do? You see, I’m being candid, and no alcoholic is candid. When I was in preparatory school we studied Swinburne, that Victorian, gloomy, unsophisticated poet. I remember his Garden of Proserpine — when I’m drinking. Only one stanza, I’m pleased to say. May I repeat it?