The Last Gentleman: A Novel

by Walker Percy

  “Poppy,” said Leslie, coming close and straightening his smock, giving it firm tugs and pats like a mother. “Vance and Dr. Ellis want to have a little powwow with you. Jack and I will be waiting in the hall. When the scientists get through with you, we want a piece of you. Jack, Vance, and I have cooked up something special for the four of us. But that can wait.”

  Jack Curl took his hand too and squeezed it with both of his in a special way like a fraternity grip. Jack seemed more English than before. His hair flew off unbrushed to one side. He didn’t use deodorant.

  They went into another room. Dr. Ellis was standing there, doing nothing, not smiling, not frowning.

  When the door closed, Vance turned on the light of a shadow box, another box, then another. There was the galaxy again, not swimming in deep space now but its poor pale image, an X-ray. Next to it a pelvis connected legbones to backbone as simply and comically as a Halloween skeleton. Next, a bigger woman-size pelvis had something new cradled in its womb, a puddle of white. What was hatching here?

  The two doctors lined up alongside him as if he were a colleague, a man among men. The women and priests were gone and they could talk.

  “Boy, you some lucky,” said Vance. “You want to know what I thought you had until Dr. Ellis here talked me out of it. You know I went to Chapel Hill and we know all about Duke assholes but this is one more smart asshole.”

  Dr. Ellis nodded and pressed his lips together in a faint smile. Will Barrett wished Vance would not try to be funny. Dr. Ellis was not the sort of person to be called an asshole. Vance went down the bank of X-rays, snapping his fingernail against the heavy celluloid. “I thought you had a prostatic growth here—” pow “—with metastases here—” pow “—here in the brain—” pow “I’d have given you three months. But you’re some lucky. What you got I barely heard of and Dr. Ellis has written a paper about. He even invented a test for it. Frankly I think he invented the disease. And that ain’t all. They can’t cure it but they got a drug for it and we can control it. Ain’t that right, Doctor?”

  Dr. Ellis went on with his nodding and faint smile. The two doctors fell back, folded their arms, and examined the X-rays as if they were a wall of Rembrandts. He saw that they were using the X-rays as stage props, something to look at so they could talk to him.

  “I’m afraid Dr. Battle is doing himself an injustice,” said Dr. Ellis dryly, his eyes drifting along the X-rays. He saw that Dr. Ellis had a way of feigning inattention which in fact allowed him to pay strict attention. “He suggested all along that you had a petit-mal epilepsy, which in fact you do, a rare form, so rare it bears the name of its discoverer. It’s called Hausmann’s Syndrome. It is in fact a petit-mal temporal-lobe epilepsy which is characterized by typical symptoms. It is not too well controlled by Dilantin but there’s a new drug which works very well. That is to say, it clears up the symptoms. What we have to do is rule out a lesion in the temporal lobe. Dr. Battle favors that. I don’t. The odd thing about the treatment is—”

  “What are the symptoms?” asked Will Barrett.

  Dr. Ellis shrugged. “As I recalled, Dr. Hausmann listed such items as depression, fugues, certain delusions, sexual dysfunction alternating between impotence and satyriasis, hypertension, and what he called wahnsinnige Sehnsucht—I rather like that. It means inappropriate longing.”

  It ought to be called Housmann not Hausmann, he thought, the disorder suffered by the poet who mourned dead Shropshire lads and rose-lipt maids and his own lost youth.

  “As I was saying, the odd thing is that the drug is the simplest of all substances, so simple that no one would think of it—in fact, it was discovered by accident. It is nothing other than the hydrogen ion, a single nucleus of one proton, not even an electron. Isn’t that intriguing? that the most complex symptoms, wahnsinnige Sehnsucht, inappropriate longings, depression and such, can be cured by a single proton? Apparently it all comes down to pH. I’ve had a series of six cases, and in each one you have petit-mal seizures plus an unstable pH which fluctuates between a mild alkalosis and acidosis. It is apparently a high sensitivity to pH changes which causes the symptoms. For instance, this morning your pH ran seven point seven. The treatment is simple but pesky. It means checking your pH every couple of hours and calibrating the medication accordingly. Anyone can pass out from alkalosis—I could put Vance out just by having him hyperventilate—but you’re much more sensitive and therefore your pH must be monitored all the time. All my patients are doing well but have to be maintained under the most carefully controlled conditions.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Will Barrett, taking note of the not unpleasant sensation of being caught up, diagnosed, recognized, planned for, of the prospect of one’s life being ordered henceforward, like joining the army.

  “I’ve got this one case of Hausmann’s in the math department here at Duke. Instead of showing up for class he’d be found sitting in the stadium alone. Once he went to Kitty Hawk and lived in the dunes and nearly starved.”

  The dunes? Yes.

  “Now, under treatment, he meets his classes and publishes voluminously. Except for living in our convalescent wing, he has a normal life.”

  “Here? He lives here in the hospital?”

  “We have to monitor his blood pH every hour. One spoon of vinegar salad dressing and he’s in the depths. One Alka-Seltzer and he’s off for the dunes with two coeds. Heh heh. We don’t know whether it’s your internal governor on the blink or whether your limbic system is abnormally sensitive. Or whether you have a temporal-lobe lesion, though”—he snapped an X-ray—“I see no sign of it. Remarkable, don’t you think, that a few protons, plus or minus, can cause such complicated moods? Lithium, the simplest metal, controls depression. Hydrogen, the simplest atom, controls wahnsinnige Sehnsucht.”

  “How about that?” said Vance.

  The two doctors could have been enlisting him as a colleague. Will Barrett saw that it was his, Dr. Ellis’s, way of telling him good news, and a very good way it was, giving him a new lease on life as offhandedly as making an appointment. What a good fellow Dr. Ellis was!

  Leslie came in, all smiles and melts, Jack Curl dancing behind her.

  “Let’s head for the hills, Poppy.”

  He looked at Dr. Ellis.

  “Vance can monitor your pH as well as I. If he finds any sign of a lesion he can bring you back.”

  “And here’s the bottom line,” said Jack Curl, coming too close. “Bertie’s got you signed up for the Seniors tournament next month and these two docs say you can make it. If—”

  “If?”

  “If you put up at my place so Vance can check your blood. You can start out on St. Mark’s putting green.”

  He looked at Vance.

  “You heard the man. Now let’s get out of here, old buddy. I got sick people to tend to. I can only add one item to Dr. Ellis’s diagnosis—incidentally, I concur with him now. I’ll make you a press bet that the hydrogen ion will correct your slice—that may be my contribution to medical literature: the correlation of blood pH and the golf slice. Who knows?” He gave him a wink. “The hydrogen ion may even solve the Jewish question. As a matter of fact, why don’t we try it for size—you’re on hydrogen now, your blood pH is exactly seven point four, normal. Is Groucho Marx dead or alive?”

  “Dead.”

  “Right. Now what happened to the Jews in North Carolina?”

  “The Jews?” he said, frowning.

  “Yes, the Jews.”

  “Why, nothing. They’re going about their business as usual, I suppose.”

  “Right. And what about that Jewish girl in high school you were raving about last night?”

  “What Jewish girl?”

  “What about the Jewish exodus?”

  “What exodus?”

  “What about your business in Georgia?”

  “What business?”

  “You were talking about some unfinished business in a Georgia swamp.”

  “What swamp?
”

  “Let’s head for the hills, son.”

  “From whence cometh our help,” said Leslie.

  “Okay,” he said agreeably, blinking. Yes, he felt exactly as he felt when he was drafted in the army, a dazed content and a mild curiosity. His life was out of his hands.

  IV

  THANKSGIVING FOUND HIM COMFORTABLY installed in St. Mark’s Convalescent Home taking pills and shots and having blood drawn every hour. Jack had put him in the penthouse suite overlooking the gorge. Leslie moved in his new clothes, cardigans, pipes, stereo, Bible, everything but the Greener and Luger. She had even retrieved the Mercedes from the maple tree, had it repaired and parked outside. With a significant look she handed the keys to him. Perhaps it was an act of faith in him.

  For a long time he stood twiddling the keys and looking at the Mercedes. He opened the trunk. There lay the Greener in its case and the Luger in its holster. He stood, foot on bumper, thinking.

  Vance came by twice a day to give him his “acid” and to take blood to test his pH. He came close as a lover, breath strong and sweet, sniffed at him, looked into his eyeballs. He told his patient he smelled healthy, his pressure was down, and the arteries in his eyegrounds were as supple as snakes.

  Not only did Will Barrett tolerate the drug, he seemed in a queer way to prosper. A smell of pesticide hung in his nostrils. He smelled like a house sprayed for termites. A chemical exuberance took hold of him. The simplest of all atoms gave him a complex sense of well-being. If the treatment was dangerous, he felt as safe as a knife thrower’s girl. Friendly knives zipped past his head, between his legs, fanned his ears, went zoing straight to their malignant target. A cool Carolina Salk rattling his test tubes at Duke had saved his life. How odd to be rescued, salvaged, converted by the hydrogen ion! a proton as simple as a billiard ball! Did it all come down to chemistry after all? Had he fallen down in a bunker, pounded the sand with his fist in a rage of longing for Ethel Rosenblum because his pH was 7.6? A quirky energy flowed into his muscles. He couldn’t sleep but didn’t mind. He rose at all hours, dressed carefully, prowled the halls, explored the grounds, even drove the Mercedes. He wanted to see Allie. He forgot about Jews but not Allie. Had his longing for her been a hydrogen-ion deficiency, a wahnsinnige Sehnsucht? No, hydrogen or no hydrogen, he wanted to see her face. Would the protons now coursing through his brain and eyegrounds make her look different? Why hadn’t she come to see him? He headed for the club, but a twisting in his head caused him to turn the Mercedes to correct the twist. Again the Mercedes took to the woods. Maybe he’d better drive around the block at first.

  Then why not walk? But when he struck out through the woods, he found himself turning against the gyroscope in his head and went round in a circle. He had to stick to the sidewalks like ordinary folk.

  Things increased in density and stood apart. He could see around trees. But time ran together. Was it Wednesday or Sunday? He bought a calendar Timex watch. Things increased in value. As he drove the Mercedes his attention was transfixed by the luminous turquoise of a traffic light. It glowed like a huge valuable jewel! He stopped and gazed until it turned into a great hot ruby. Surely red meant go, not stop. He went. A woman in a Dodge pickup cursed him.

  He stopped driving and took up golf.

  “You want to putt a round?” he asked Jack Curl.

  “You got to be kidding. Get Vance or Slocum.”

  He got Slocum. Slocum too seemed to like him better. Everybody was relieved that he was sick not crazy, that he was being treated and was getting better. Being sick made him feel better too.

  His driving and walking were peculiar, but his putting was deadly. The little hydrogen ions had odd effects. The gyroscope spinning in his head hurt his driving the Mercedes but helped his putting. All he had to do was settle over a putt, wait till the gyroscope steadied and the twisting stopped and zing, the ball flew straight for the cup like a missile locked on target.

  Bertie came by. Will Barrett beat him seventeen up on eighteen holes. Bertie looked left and right. “You don’t have to turn in a scorecard here, do you?” “No.” “Thank God. It won’t affect your handicap.” “That’s right.” Bertie winked. “We missed the Seniors here but we’re signed up for Hilton Head and the whole Southern tour. We can’t miss.”

  2

  A wiry old man was watering a young pine with a bucket.

  Will Barrett watched him for a while. At first the old man appeared as part of the scenery and therefore of no particular moment, old-man-watering-tree-in-front-of-old-folks’-home. Then it occurred to him to wonder. Why would anyone want to water a pine tree with a bucket?

  Standing on the porch, he asked him.

  The old man frowned and went on watering but presently he replied: “They planted these seedlings too early. They should have waited till the winter months when there is plenty of rain.”

  “Seedlings? Those are not seedlings. They’re two years old. I know because my wife had them planted.”

  “They still need water,” said the old man, not raising his eyes from the pine.

  “You know about plants?”

  Yes, he did. His name was Lionel Eberhart, born in Kingsport, Tennessee. He had started out as a gardener in Asheville with one old truck, hiring out himself and wife and two sons and one daughter to tend lawns. They weren’t afraid of work. He started his own nursery. Before he retired he was wholesaling lots of one hundred thousand rhododendron and laurel to Sears, Roebuck.

  “Why did you retire?”

  “My wife died. I had three heart attacks. My two sons wanted to put me here. My daughter wanted me to live with her but her husband didn’t. So the doctor put me here. But that’s all right! They all right! I wouldn’t want to live with them! So.” He went to fill his bucket.

  “Is that all you can find to do around here, water a pine tree?”

  “They got a gardener. Your wife took care of everything. She surely was a nice lady. They got ever’ thing around here a fellow would need.” Still, he did not raise his eyes from the small wet pine.

  He gazed down at the old man. Quick and wiry, an East Tennessee Yankee, yes, he’d drive his wife, sons, daughter crazy with his puttering. Yes, of course he’d seen the old man before, always outside, walking with his quick stoop, raking leaves, watering trees, pestering the gardener. He’d live another thirty years.

  3

  Jack Curl was leaving for Hilton Head and an ecumenical meeting between a Greek Orthodox archimandrite, a Maronite patriarch, and the Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, a meeting suggested in fact by Jack Curl. Could Jack Curl reunite Christendom? He laughed, socked himself, and did a turn. Why not? Isn’t it just the sort of damn fool thing God might favor? Actually Marion had conceived the idea before she died and even provided the funds.

  “You mean that’s the sort of thing the Peabody Trust would undertake?” he asked Jack.

  “You got it, Will,” said Jack, his laughter turning off like a light.

  “And you want me to put Marion’s money in a trust to be administered by you.”

  “Or Leslie. Or both.”

  “Well, which?”

  “Take your pick. Then we’ll run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Jack Curl shrugged and looked vague. “You’re the lawyer. Check it out with Slocum. It comes down to naming a trustee or co-trustees. I’m glad to serve.”

  Jack Curl showed him around St. Mark’s before he left, even though Jack must have known that he used to pilot Marion through once a week in her wheelchair. The dining room was pretty and the food good, tables for four, ladies in dresses and hairdos, gents in coats and ties, grace before meals.

  “Now,” said Jack, “I’m going to show you something that’s going to blow your mind. Not even Marion knew about it. It’s strictly off limits to the ladies. Okay. I’m going to show you a bunch of guys having a ball. I spend a little time here myself. A little, ha.”

  They c
limbed steep steps. A door opened into a spacious attic. Tracks and trains ran everywhere through a waist-high landscape. Not children’s toy trains but good-sized Pennsylvania diesels, an L & N steam locomotive, a Southern Pacific freight, a Twentieth Century Limited, crossed trestles, ran through tunnels, stopped at stations, switched onto sidings, off-loaded bales of cotton, took on soybean oil. Bars came down at crossings. Bells donged. A mechanical darky on a mule doffed his cap. Lonesome whistles blew. Half a dozen men, old men, operated control panels, switches, water towers, roundhouse turnarounds. Most of the men wore railroader’s caps.

  “Talk about a nostalgia trip,” whispered Jack Curl.

  “Yes,” he said and for some reason thought about Allison standing in the sunlight.

  “Highball it, Shorty!” cried Jack Curl to a man wearing a railroader’s cap but with a false note in his voice and Shorty did not reply. “Shorty was president of First National of Georgia,” whispered Jack. “You see that guy on the roundhouse? That’s Orin Henderson of Henderson Textiles. They’re great guys. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  “Later.” He looked at his watch. What was Allie doing? It was four-thirty. The sunlight was yellow. Was she going down into herself? Was the dog worrying about her?

  “Who knows, Will, you might take up railroading. You could do worse,” said Jack Curl, his eyes not quite coming round to him.

  “No thanks.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m taking up senior golf.”

  “All right!” said Jack.

  “Yes.”

  “You remember Father Weatherbee, also a known train nut. You’ll be in his hands while I’m gone. And damn good hands they are, better than Allstate. Father spent fifty years in the Philippines.”

  Father Weatherbee was the ancient emaciated priest whose clerical collar and lower eyelid drooped. One eye had a white rim and spun like a wheel. Smiling, he took Barrett’s hand in both of his, two dry hot whispering banyan leaves. He shrugged at Jack Curl. Will Barrett saw something in his eyes.