The Last Gentleman: A Novel

by Walker Percy

  “Don’t they belong to Allie?” He was watching her eyes, which were rounded and merry but also going away.

  “Did I tell you I think I found out where Allie is?”

  “No.”

  “She’s here!”

  “Here?”

  “Not a mile from this spot. Lewis told me without knowing he was telling me. He thinks the world of you, thinks you’re the solidest citizen around. I didn’t tell him otherwise, that you’re the original flake and we’re two of a kind, the original misfits. Oh, Will, you’re the raunchiest loveliest mess I ever saw, let’s get in the Lincoln—no, I’m kidding. Lewis just happened to mention that a girl’s been living out at the old Kemp place, a shy blond little woods creature. She called it her place. Who else could it be? All he had to say was that she comes to town once a week, goes to the A & P, buys oatmeal, talks funny, says no more than three words, and I knew. It’s Allie. I’m going to see her now. Lewis drew me a map. Want to come? No, you go home.”

  “What do you and Walter want to do with Allie?”

  “Just me. Walter has copped out. He’s agreeable to anything. All he can think about are what he calls his Ayrabs. He and his Ayrabs, as he calls them, are going to turn the island into a 144-hole golf course with an airport big enough to take 727s from Kuwait.”

  “Very well. What do you want to do with Allie?”

  “Allie.” For the first time the merry Polly Bergen wrinkles at the corners of her eyes ironed out, showing white. Her eyes went fond and far away. “Allie Allie Allie. What to do with Allie?” Her eyes came back. “Let’s face it, Will.”

  “Okay.”

  “Alistair’s been telling me this for years but I couldn’t or wouldn’t believe him.”

  “Alistair?”

  “Dr. Duk.”

  “What’s he been telling you?”

  “Will,” said Kitty and in her voice he recognized the sweet timbre, the old authentic Alabama thrill of bad news. “Will, Allie can’t make it. Allie is not going to make it, Will. She can’t live in this world. No way.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What?” said Kitty dreamily.

  “Nothing. How do you know she can’t make it?” On the contrary, he thought. She may be the only one who can make it.

  “Because Alistair told me. And because I know her and I know what happens when she tries. Do I ever know.”

  “What happens when she tries?”

  “At first she’s bright as can be. Too bright. Everything is Christmas morning. And that’s the trouble. She can only live if every day is Christmas morning. But she doesn’t know how to live from one Christmas to the next.”

  “What happens when she tries?”

  “She can’t cope.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean that she literally does not know how to live. She can’t talk, she can’t sleep, she can’t work. So she crawls into a hole and pulls it in after her. Twice I’ve saved her from starvation. I can’t take that responsibility any more.”

  “What do you want to do with her?”

  “What is best for her. The best-structured environment money can buy, and all the freedom she can handle.”

  “You mean you want to commit her.”

  “I’ve talked it over again with Alistair. She can have her own cottage. She can do anything that you or I can do. The only difference is that I intend to make sure she will not injure herself. She will be around people who understand her and with whom she can talk or not talk as she chooses. She will have everything you and I have—books, music, art, companionship, you name it. And you and I will be here if she needs us.”

  He must have fallen silent for some time because the next thing he knew she was poking him in her old style.

  “What?” he said with a start.

  “Wake up. I was talking about Allie.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me something, Will.”

  “Okay.”

  “Does Allie’s life make sense to you?”

  “Well I don’t—” he began.

  “It’s like Ludean said. Ludean, Grace’s wonderful old Nigra cook. You know what she told me? She said: That chile don’t belong in this world, Miss Kitty.”

  He was silent. He was thinking about firelight on Allie’s face and arms and breasts as she knelt to feed logs into the iron stove.

  “You know what she meant, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “In her own way she was expressing the wisdom of the ages. I’m sure Ludean never heard of reincarnation, but what she was saying in her own way was that Allie had come from another life but had not quite made it all the way. That does happen, you know. I can’t find much written on the subject but it seems quite reasonable to me that some incarnations are more successful than others, that some, like Allie’s, don’t take. That’s why we use expressions like she’s not all there. Though I would say she’s not all here. You ought to see her eyes. She’s seeing something we don’t see.”

  He thought of Allie’s eyes, the quick lively look she gave him, lips pressed tight, after she hoisted him onto the bunk, her hands busy with him like a child bedding down a big doll.

  “There is no other explanation for it, Will. If I didn’t know what I know, I couldn’t stand it. As it is, it is so simple, so obvious.”

  For a fact, she did seem to know something. There was in her eyes just above the Mercedes seat the liveliness (so like Allie yet unlike) of someone who knows a secret you haven’t caught on to. “Don’t you see it, you dummy, or do I have to tell you?”

  “What is it you know?”

  “Allie did have another life. Unlike most of us, you and me for instance, her karma is so strong she almost remembers it. Sometimes I think she does. In fact, after one session with Ray at Virginia Beach, she did remember it.”

  “Ray?”

  “A true mystic—and you know how hardheaded I am about such things. Well, I can tell you there was no humbug here. After trance and regression, first Ray’s trance without Allie present, then Allie’s regression, both wrote down what they saw. I was there, I took the papers, I read them. It’s scientific proof. The particulars differ but there is enough to know what sort of life Allie had and the explanation of what she’s going through now. The upshot is that our duty is to protect her and take care of her while she works it out.”

  “Works what out?”

  “The karma of that life. Or lives.”

  “Lives?”

  “They described two lives but essentially they were the same. Allie’s version was that she had been a camp follower of the Union Army before the battle of Chancellorsville. Now here’s the fascinating part. When Allie would get down on herself and crawl into her hole, she would say over and over again: I’m no good, I’m a liar, I’m the original hooker. Over and over again she would say, I’m the original hooker. Now, that’s not Allie’s style—I doubt if she ever even heard that word. But we look up the word and guess what. It turns out that the word hooker was first applied to camp followers of General Hooker’s army who fought—guess where?—at the battle of Chancellorsville. So when she said I’m the original hooker she was telling the literal truth. Those that have ears—?

  “What was the other version?”

  “Okay. Here’s what Ray had written after his trance. Allie had been not a hooker but a courtesan spy for the North in Richmond, where she was known as a great Southern belle who charmed many officers with her wit and conversation. Later we figured out that they might both be right. There had been a famous Union spy in Richmond who had been a prostitute, a hooker. Isn’t that fascinating? But of course what really matters is how it explains her present life.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t you see? Then she was too much of this world, she knew too many men, talked too much, lied too much, and abused her body. So now she is not of this world, knows nobody, can’t talk enough to lie, doesn’t use her body at all. Or as she would put it: my body doesn’t work�
�implying that, before, her body worked.”

  Kitty went on smoothly from Allie to herself and her karma and to him and his Scorpio tenacity: “Oh, I could have told you twenty years ago if you’d asked me, that you would have to undergo trial and exile before you finally won, like Napoleon and Lenin and Robert Bruce. Your destiny is the Return.”

  “Napoleon didn’t win,” he said.

  Her belief in such matters was both absolute and perfunctory. There was a plausibility to it. Things fell into place. Mysteries were revealed. Why could he not be a believer? Who were the believers now? Everyone. Everyone believed everything. We’re all from California now. Yet we believe with a kind of perfunctoriness. Even now Kitty was inattentive, eyes drifting as she talked. In the very act of uttering her ultimate truths, she was too bored to listen.

  “Ah, I’ve got to go,” he said suddenly, getting out of the car stiffly and setting one foot toward the woods.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Why don’t you drive?” asked Kitty, laughing.

  “Right,” he said, frowning and fumbling for the keys.

  “Now, you’re coming to see me after you’ve talked to Leslie?”

  “Sure,” he said, feeling his face. Suddenly he wanted a shave, a bath, a drink.

  “Just remember. Villa number six. Dun Romin’.”

  “Right,” he said absently. “Dun Romin’.”

  2

  Things began to happen fast. For one thing, he noticed, the days were ending much sooner. The sun, smaller and colder, dropped quickly behind a mountain. Events speeded up. A general law of acceleration prevailed. His Mercedes fairly zipped along the highway yet other cars honked and passed him.

  The house was dark and silent when be stopped in the driveway. The sun seemed to be setting in the gorge. The stunted maple which looked like a post oak was nearly stripped of its leaves.

  He frowned and drove into the garage. The garage was empty. Both the Rolls and Yamaiuchi’s Datsun were gone. Hm.

  The house above him did not tick and settle like a lived-in house cooling off. There was a sense in its silence of people having moved away. The house did not breathe. It was unlived-in. How long had he been gone?

  He was standing against the inner wall of the garage watching the oblong of eastern sky. It seemed to turn violet. A small rainbow formed. There was no cloud. He shut one eye. The rainbow went away. He opened the eye. The rainbow came back. He walked to the door. There seemed to be two doors where once there was one. He walked into the wall. He closed his left eye. One door went away.

  The door was unlocked. He climbed the rear stairs to his bedroom. The sun rested on the rim of the gorge like a copper plate on a shelf. The room was filled with a rosy light. He walked around, hands in pockets. The bed had been stripped. The closet was empty. No, the Greener shotgun was still there in its case. The Luger in its holster hung from a hook. Head cocked, he gazed at the room. There was something he didn’t like about the light of the setting sun filling the empty room. The room seemed to have an emotion of its own. Was it the feeling of someone present or someone absent? He frowned again and turned quickly toward the bathroom. No, rooms do not have emotions. Rooms are only rooms. How he hated the fake sadness of things. As he turned, he fell. Christ, I’m weak from hunger, he drought. But it’s not bad to be down here on the floor. Above him the bar of sunlight stretched out straight as a plank. Motes drifted aimlessly in and out of the light. The bar of sunlight seemed significant. He sat up and shook his head. No, things do not have significances. The laser beam was nothing more than light reflected from motes he had stirred up. It was not “stark.” One place is like any other place.

  A sudden sharp smell came to his nostrils. It was the smell of a Negro cabin in winter, a clean complex smell of newspapers, flour paste, coal oil, and Octagon soap. How is such a thing possible? he said, smiling, and stood up. Goodbye, Georgia.

  No, the closet was not empty. A single hanger held a pair of slacks and a clean shirt he recognized and a tan cardigan sweater he did not recognize. Neatly folded on the top shelf were a T-shirt and shorts and on the shoe rack with a rolled-up sock tucked neatly in each a pair of new loafers. The gun case stood in the corner. Strange. He had never worn loafers or a cardigan sweater. Then Leslie had closed the house. She has moved me out. But she has bought me a new outfit. She has plans for me.

  The bathroom was empty except for a towel, soap, comb, and his Sunbeam razor. When he saw the figure in the doorway he did not give a start but he felt his face prepare itself to address a stranger. But the stranger was his reflection in the full-length mirror fixed to the door. It was then that he saw that the expression on his face was the agreeable but slightly fearful smile one might assume with an interloper. What can I do for you? He looked like a drunk bearded mountaineer or a soldier who had fought and marched for days and slept in his clothes. The cloth of his shirt and pants felt like skin.

  He ran a hot full tub. When he let himself aching and cold down into the steaming water, he groaned and laughed out loud. Oh my God, how can a simple thing like a hot bath be this good, and since it is, is happiness no more than having something you’ve done without for a long time and aaah does it matter?

  He bathed for a long time, shaved carefully, combed his hair, and dressed. He looked at himself. He was thin, he felt weak, hungry, lightheaded, but fit enough. Something was odd, however. It was the cardigan sweater and loafers. They made him look like an agreeable youngish old man, like a young Dr. Marcus Welby. All he needed was a pipe. He found a new pipe on the dresser! And a Bible.

  He went into the hall and down the front stairs and turned on the lights. It was only then that he found the two notes on the refectory table in the foyer. They were in envelopes addressed to him. One, in Leslie’s hand, said Poppy. The other in Bertie’s hand said Willie and below and underlined: Urgent!

  Bertie’s note read:

  Please call me, Willie. Urgent.

  Leslie’s letter read:

  Dearest Poppy:

  Kitty just told me where you are. I did not want to wake you so I’m leaving this note for you, knowing you’re coming here.

  I’ve forgiven you everything. I did not mind your doing your usual number and splitting for parts unknown before the wedding, but I admit it did hurt a little to learn you had spent the past week shacked up in the woods with a little forest sprite not two miles away. But we always can have the forgiveness of sins through the riches of his grace (Eph. 1:7). Anyhow, I acted like a pill myself.

  But everything is different now! My joy is fulfilled (John 3:29).

  Dr. Battle told me of your whereabouts during the past week. He felt consideration for your health outweighed doctor-patient confidence.

  Jack Curl and Jason and I have some wonderful ideas for the love-and-faith community you and Jack are planning. What you and your little sprite do is your business, but before you make any radical decisions, lets sit down with Lewis and Jack and finalize the Marion Peabody Foundation, which was Mother’s dream.

  We’ll be at Jack Curl’s house waiting for you. I laid out some clothes for you. Closed house. Will tell you more. Can’t wait to see ya.

  Devotedly,

  Yours in the Lord,

  Leslie

  Dearest? Ya? Devotedly? What’s cooking here, Leslie? The slanginess was not like her. The friendliness was ominous. The “devotedly” was somewhere north of love and south of sincerely. He liked her old sour self better.

  What was she up to? He felt a faint prickle of interest under the unfamiliar cashmere of the cardigan. Dr. Marcus Welby chuckled and tapped out his empty pipe. Was she afraid he was going to marry Allie and blow the Peabody millions? Then what would happen to hers and Jack Curl’s love-and-faith community? Kelso would say they’re out to screw you. But Kelso was crazy. He shrugged. Did it matter?

  He telephoned Bertie.

  “Willie, I’m delighted heh heh,” said Bertie, coming as close as he c
ould to a laugh, a hollow Hampton chortle, a whuffing sound. “Happy birthday.”

  “What’s that?” he asked quickly. “Oh, yes. I forgot. Thank you.”

  “This is not just your ordinary birthday,” said Bertie. Bertie’s horserace, he knew, would be slanted and keen about the nostrils.

  “It isn’t?”

  “Don’t you know what this means, Willie?” Bertie’s voice lowered. He sounded as if he were covering the receiver with both hands like a spy in a phone booth.

  “No, what?”

  “As of yesterday, you are eligible for the Seniors, a young fellow like you! They changed the rules last year.”

  “The Seniors,” he said, musing.

  “Yes. Your birthday was yesterday, which makes you eligible. First the tournament here this weekend. After that, the tour. We can do Hilton Head and Sea Island before Thanksgiving. Willie, we got them by the short and curlies heh heh hough.”

  “We have?”

  “Figure the arithmetic. You’re at least six strokes better than your new handicap of twelve which was posted last week and which was due to your slice which you can correct easily if you put your mind to it—you couldn’t have planned it better, in fact. I’m ten strokes better than my twenty-five—I sneaked out yesterday and carded a ninety-four. We’ll sandbag ever’ sucker between here and Augusta,” said Bertie, trying to talk Southern, but it still came out hollow-throat Hampton. “We’ll clean up on them.”

  He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Willie—”

  “Yes.”

  “Could we at least sign up for the Seniors here?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve been thinking about your slice.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think I can straighten you out. Okay?”