The Last Gentleman: A Novel

by Walker Percy

  “This is the guy that’s going with us,” said the pseudo-Negro, linking arms with them. “He knows everybody down there and the ones he doesn’t know he’s kin to.”

  “No,” said the engineer, frowning and blushing.

  “You from down South?” asked Mort Prince, squeezing the beer can and not quite looking at him.

  “Yes.” Though the pseudo-Negro had led him to believe that Mort Prince would welcome him with open arms, he couldn’t help noticing that the writer wore an indifferent, if not unfriendly, expression.

  “Tell him where you’re from.”

  The engineer told him.

  But Mort Prince seemed abstracted and gloomy and did not respond. He said nothing and went back to pressing the beer can.

  “That’s where the festival is,” said the pseudo-Negro, giving the writer several meaningful nudges.

  “No, I’m sorry,” said the engineer, looking at his watch. He was anxious to be on his way. He didn’t like the look of things. Through the open doorway—Mort had not quite invited them in and they were standing barely beyond the sill—the engineer noticed that the householders were closer. Yes, beyond a doubt they were bearing down upon Mort Prince’s house.

  “I really appreciate it but as I told Mr. Aiken—” began the engineer, already nodding to the new arrivals to prepare Mort Prince and the pseudo-Negro—but it was too late.

  “Hey, you,” called the burly man in the alpine hat, pointing with his chin and resting his hands lightly on his hips.

  The engineer looked at him twice. Beyond any question, the stranger was addressing him. His heart gave a single dread leap. Adrenalin erected his hair roots, could it have come at last, a simple fight, with the issue clear beyond peradventure? “Are you speaking to me?”

  “You from Haddon Heights?”

  “Sir?” The engineer cupped a hand to his ear. The burly man’s T-shirt had the legend Deep Six printed on it. No doubt he belonged to a bowling league. He reminded the engineer of the fellows he used to see around bowling alleys in Long Island City.

  “You heard me.”

  “Sir, I don’t believe I like your tone,” said the engineer, advancing a step with his good ear put forward. Perhaps the time had come again when you could be insulted, hear it aright, and have it out then and there as his grandfather used to have it out. But there must be no mistake. “You were speaking to me?” he asked again, straining every nerve to hear, for nothing is worse than being an honorable deaf man who can’t be certain he is insulted.

  The alpiner turned to Mort Prince. “Mae here sawr him in Haddon Heights, Her brother-in-law lives in Haddonfield.”

  “Haddon Heights? Haddonfield? I’ve never heard of either place,” said the bemused engineer. “In any case I don’t care for this fellow’s tone.” It had happened again, he knew, he had been mistaken for someone else.

  The next thing he knew, another man came crowding in, a fair-skinned oldish man with a gray crew cut and tabs on his elbows like Jiggs.

  “He’s a Jersey agent, Mr. Prince,” said the newcomer.

  “What’s all this about?” asked the writer, feeling his wristlet uneasily. The engineer perceived that the other set great store by getting along with his neighbors—like Descartes—and so was in a quandary.

  “That’s a fact, Mr. Prince,” said the burly man, who had decided to take a neighborly tone toward the writer. “That’s the way they do it, they come over here from Jersey like him and his friend were and they ride around the block slow like them, looking. You saw them! But we’re not worried about you, Mr. Prince. I was just telling Whitey here that Mr. Prince wasn’t about to sell his house.”

  “I’m not a Jersey agent, whatever that is,” said the engineer, noticing that the pseudo-Negro was smiling a brilliant nervous rueful smile and was opening his hands first to one side and then the other.

  “Fellows,” the pseudo-Negro appealed to all parties, calling heaven to witness the follies and misunderstandings of men. “This is ridiculous,” he cried, opening his hands, “believe me.”

  The engineer flushed angrily. “And furthermore I’ve never heard of Haddon Heights,” he told them. Yet strive as he might to keep his anger pure and honorable, it was no use. The alpiner had detached himself somewhat and stood apart with an ironic expression like a man who has been in a wreck and is embarrassed by passers-by. And the engineer, up to his old tricks despite himself, began to tune him in to see how it stood with him. Damnation, he swore to himself. To make matters worse, his hay fever had returned, his nose swelled up and began to run, and he had left his handkerchiefs in the firkin. Rage leaked away.

  But he had not reckoned with the woman.

  “Faggot!” she cried, rushing past Jiggs and thrusting her face within inches of the engineer’s. She wore a black bolero jacket over her bowling-league skirt. Her bare arms were moist and muscular like a man’s.

  “Faggot?” repeated the puzzled engineer, feeling his nose.

  “You work for Oscar Fava, don’t you?” she asked, both malignant and triumphant.

  “I do not.” He glanced at her uneasily. What to do with a maniac of a woman?

  “As a matter of fact, I do have the place for sale,” said Mort Prince, who had decided to be irritated with his neighbors after all.

  “Did you sign any papers?” asked the burly man, his good nature beginning to stick in his throat.

  “What is it to you?”

  “Could I see the papers, Mr. Prince?” He pronounced it päpers.

  “They can’t break a block without you let them,” said Jiggs, his face beginning to mottle Irish red and white.

  “Get the hell out of my house,” said Mort Prince, although the householders had not crossed the threshold. Everyone still stood in the cathedral doorway.

  “Fink,” said the woman, who had not taken her eyes from the engineer’s face. As he watched incredulously, she balled up her fist like a man, thumb out of the way, and cocked it back.

  “Hold on,” said the engineer—she could hit him! And at the same moment from the corner of his eye he saw the burly man advance upon the writer, hand outstretched, perhaps for the “papers,” perhaps to shake hands, but advancing nevertheless. Two other householders, he noticed for the first time, were standing in the background, speaking in low tones and swinging their arms briskly in the manner of bystanders.

  “Excuse me,” said the engineer to the woman, squeezing past her as if she were an irate shopper in Macy’s basement. On the way he brushed against Jiggs, who immediately fell back and began to crouch and wave him in with his fingertips.

  “Come on, come on,” said Jiggs.

  But it was the pseudo-Negro who caught his attention. He had come between the engineer and Jiggs and shook his head sadly and good-naturedly. “Hold on, fellows,” he said, undoing his cuff link. “I’m afraid there’s been a rather pathetic misunderstanding here—a sad commentary in fact on the fraility of us all. Fellows—”

  “No,” cried the engineer angrily. “Don’t roll up your sleeve.”

  “Go ahead and roll up your sleeve,” cried Jiggs, misunderstanding, dancing ominously and now waving the pseudo-Negro into him.

  The engineer groaned. “No. I—” he began, taking another step toward the grinning alpiner. Here was the villain!

  But in that instant, even as he was passing the woman, whom he had forgotten, she drew back her fist clear to her earlobe and, unleashing a straight whistling blow, struck the engineer on the fleshy part of his nose, which was already swollen and tender from hay fever.

  Oh, hideous exploding humiliating goddamnable nose pain, the thump-thud of woe itself. Oh, ye bastards all together. “Come here,” he thought he heard himself say as he struggled to get at the alpiner—did he hit him?—but the next thing he knew he was sitting on the front steps enveloped by the dreadful cordiality of misunderstandings cleared away, of debits to be balanced. The bastards, friends and foe, were all apologizing to each other. As he held his nose, he saw
the pseudo-Negro rolling his sleeve down. He had shown them his white patch.

  Only Mort Prince was still angry. “That’s not the point,” he was saying furiously to the householders, who, the engineer perceived instantly, were anxious for him to score his point. They were allowing him his anger. Everyone felt bad. The engineer groaned.

  “I thought they were blockbusters, for Christ’s sake,” Jiggs was telling a newcomer. “They been here,” he assured Mort Prince. “And they come from Jersey.”

  “I just want to make it damn clear I’m selling to anyone I please, regardless of race, creed, or national origin.”

  “Me too! That’s just what I was telling Lou here.”

  “And hear this,” said the writer, massaging his wristlet grimly. “If there is any one thing that pisses me off, its bigotry.”

  “You’re right,” cried Jiggs. “Mr. Prince, if Mae and I didn’t have our savings in our house—listen, let me tell you!” But though everyone listened, he fell silent.

  “We keep the lawr, Mr. Prince,” said the alpiner earnestly. Then, seeing a chance to put a good face on the whole affair, he laughed and pointed his chin toward the engineer. “Tiger over there though, he was coming for me. Did you see him? I’m telling you, he was coming and I was getting out of his way. Tiger.” Hand outstretched, he crossed to the engineer.

  The engineer held his nose and looked at the hand. He had had enough of the whole crew.

  “You not from Jersey, fella?” asked the alpiner, for some reason taking off his hat. “Mae here said—now isn’t that something!” He called upon the neighborhood to witness the human comedy.

  The engineer did not answer.

  “You don’t work for Oscar Fava?” cried the tall woman, meaning the question for the engineer, but not quite bringing herself to look at him. “You know Fava’s real estate over there, next to Pik-a-Pak,” she asked Jiggs and when he nodded she offered it to the engineer as a kind of confirmation, perhaps even an apology. “Over in Haddon Heights.”

  “I thought it was in Haddonfield,” said Jiggs. They argued the point as another earnest of their good faith. “You never been over to Tammy Lanes in Haddonfield?” Jiggs asked him.

  The engineer shook his head.

  “Wasn’t that Oscar Fava come over last night?” Jiggs asked Mae.

  “And he was with him,” said the woman. “Him or his twin brother.”

  “You know what I wish he would do,” the alpiner told the other householders, presuming to speak of the engineer fondly—a true character was he, this engineer, another five minutes and they’d call him Rocky. “I wish he’d come on down to Tammy with us tonight, just to bug Oscar.” Again he held out a hand to the engineer. “Come on down just for laughs.”

  “No, thank you,” said the latter gloomily. He rose. “I’ve got to be on my way.” He looked around for the pseudo-Negro, who had vanished. Most of all he wanted to get away from Mort Prince, who was still trying to hit upon some way to use his anger, a special delayed Hemingway writer’s sort of anger. It was embarrassing. This was the age of embarrassment, thought the engineer, of unspendable rage. Who to hit? No one. Mort Prince took the engineer by the arm and pulled him inside. The best Mort could do was slam the door on the householders, catching Jiggs in midsentence:

  “Any time any of youse want to come down—”

  Reviving now, the writer opened a fresh beer and hung suspended from himself, free and clear of the refrigerator, while he told them: “I’ve got it, by God. I’m going to call up this guy Oscar Fava and let him sell it Stick around for laughs,” he told the engineer.

  “No, thanks,” said the engineer, who was sick of them and their laughs.

  Fetching his firkin, in which he had packed his medicines, he took three Chlortrimeton tablets for his hay fever and rubbed his nose with an ice cube.

  “Bill,” said the pseudo-Negro earnestly, “if I can’t persuade you to make the tour with us, at least promise me you’ll come as far as Virginia.”

  “No, thanks,” said the engineer, politely now. “I’ve really got to be going. I’d be obliged if you’d take me to the bus station.”

  “Very well,” said the pseudo-Negro, as formally as the other. Shaky as he was, he was as sentient as anyone. He knew there were times for staying and times for leaving, times for sitting and times for standing. He stood up.

  “Perhaps it would be possible for us to meet you in your hometown later this summer, he said.

  “Perhaps,” said the engineer and picked up his firkin.

  4.

  A white misty morning in northern Virginia found a young man, pleasant of mien and moderately disoriented, dressed neatly and squatting on a stout cedar firkin beside a highway which ran between a white-oak swamp on one side and a foggy hill, flattened on top like a mesa, on the other. He sat on the firkin and counted his money several times, reviewed the contents of a notebook, and from time to time read a page or two from a small red volume. Then he unfolded an Esso map of Virginia and spread it out on an expensive case of blue leather. Opening the firkin, which was as cedarous and cool inside as a springhouse, he took out a round molding of sweet butter, a box of Ritz crackers, a plastic knife, and a quart of buttermilk. As he ate his breakfast he traced the red and blue lines on the map with his gold pencil.

  Where could he have spent the night? Not even he was certain, but he must have spent it tolerably well because his Brooks Brothers shirt was still fresh, his Dacron suit unwrinkled, and his cheek smooth and fragrant with soap. Another fact may be pertinent. An hour or so earlier, a Mayflower van with two riders had turned off the highway onto the gravel road directly behind him and pulled up at a farmhouse nestled at the foot of the foggy hill. Mayflower vans, he had learned recently and already forgotten, are owned by their drivers, who usually drive them home after finishing a haul.

  The sun came up and warmed his back. Sapsuckers began yammering in the swamp. He gazed at the network of red and blue lines and with his pencil circled a tiny pair of crossed swords marking a battlefield. As best he could determine, his present location lay somewhere near Malvern Hill and the James River. No doubt he was correct, because he was experiencing the interior dislocations which always afflicted him on old battlegrounds. His nose was better and he could smell. He sniffed the morning. It was white and dim and faraway as Brooklyn but it was a different sort of whiteness and dimness. Up yonder was a faraway Lapland sort of dimness, a public wheylike sunlight, where solitary youths carrying violin cases wait at bus stops. Here the dimness was private and one’s own. He may not have been here before but it seemed to him that he had. Perhaps it was the place of his father’s childhood and he had heard about it. From the corner of his eye he took note of the green confettilike plant which floated on the black water, of the fluted trunks and bald red knees of the cypress, of the first fall specklings of the tupelo gums.

  He studied his map. He reckoned he could not be more than twenty miles from Richmond. Richmond. Yes, had he not passed through it last night? As he ate Ritz crackers and sweet butter, he imagined how Richmond might be today if the war had ended differently. Perhaps Main Street would be the Wall Street of the South, and Broad might vie with New Orleans for opera and theater. Here in the White Oak Swamp might be located the great Lee-Randolph complex, bigger than GM and making better cars (the Lee surpassing both Lincoln and Cadillac, the Lil’ Reb outselling even Volkswagens). Richmond would have five million souls by now, William and Mary be as good as Harvard and less subverted. In Chattanooga and Mobile there would be talk of the “tough cynical Richmonders,” the Berliners of the hemisphere.

  When he finished his breakfast, he took a steel mirror from his Val-Pak and examined his nose in the morning sunlight. It was within bounds, though still lilac inside. His face reassured him. It was all of a piece, an equable lower-South Episcopal face. He began to feel better and, standing up, threw a few combinations at the rising sun. My name is Williston Bibb Barrett, he said aloud, consulting his wallet to mak
e sure, and I am returning to the South to seek my fortune and restore the good name of my family, perhaps even recover Hampton plantation from the canebrakes and live out my days as a just man and little father to the faithful Negroes working in the fields. Moreover, I am in love with a certain someone. Or I shall marry me a wife and live me a life in the lovely green environs of Atlanta or Memphis or even Birmingham, which, despite its bad name, is known to have lovely people.

  Hitchhiking in Virginia was better than New Jersey; within half an hour he had been picked up and now went roaring down historic old US 60 in a noble black Buick, a venerable four-holer. His father used to drive one and it summoned up many a déjà vu to hear once again the old loose-meshed roaring runaway sound of the Dynaflow transmission. It was a carful of ladies, so crowded that he had to put his Val-Pak and firkin in the trunk. Rejoicing, he climbed in and held his telescope on his lap: what good fortune to be picked up by a bevy of Virginia noblewomen. Nor did he mind when they turned out to be Texans, golfers from a Fort Worth club, fortyish and firm as India rubber and fairly bursting their seersuckers. They had just played in a tournament at Burning Tree and were out for a good time sightseeing. They laughed all the way to Williamsburg. He too. Once he caught sight of himself in the sunshade mirror grinning like a forty-pounder. They told stories on each other, on one in particular, the lady on his left, a good-looking younger one who was subject to blushing.

  “Grace settin’ up there,” said one lady in the back seat, “acting like she’s crowded and can’t stand it.”

  “She can stand it, hooo,” said another and they all hooted with laughter.

  Another one said: “I peep out of my door last night and here comes Grace tippy-toeing down the hall with this little bitty man and I say what is this: look like Grace got a little blister, the way she walking.”

  For some reason the word “blister” set them off again. It even seemed to the engineer to mean six different things. “Hooo, she got a little blister!” The most ordinary words and objects like zippers and golf tees brought on more hoots and jabs in the ribs. Although the engineer did not quite know what the joke was—it had something to do with the good-looking one sitting next to him—he couldn’t help being tickled and in fact laughed like a maniac. By the time the old howling Dynaflow Buick reached Williamsburg, his sides ached.