“And that was all. I mean … nothing. That was just all. Because you — a girl anyway — dont really hate your father no matter how much you think you do or should or should want to because people expect you to or that it would look well to because it would be romantic to—”
“Yes,” I said, “ — because girls, women, are not interested in romance but only facts. Oh yes, you were not the only one: Ratliff told me that too, that same day in fact.”
“Vladimir too?” she said.
“No: Ratliff,” I said. Then I said, “Wait.” Then I said: “Vladimir? Did you say Vladimir? V.K. Is his name Vladimir?” And now she did sit still, even the hands on the bag that had been like things asleep and breathing their own life apart, seemed to become still now.
“I didn’t intend to do that,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I know: nobody else on earth knows his name is Vladimir because how could anybody named Vladimir hope to make a living selling sewing machines or anything else in rural Mississippi? But he told you: the secret he would have defended like that of insanity in his family or illegitimacy. Why? — No, dont answer that. Why shouldn’t I know why he told you; didn’t I breathe one blinding whiff of that same liquor too? Tell me. I wont either. Vladimir K. What K?”
“Vladimir Kyrilytch.”
“Vladimir Kyrilytch what? Not Ratliff. Kyrilytch is only his middle name; all Russian middle names are itch or ovna. That’s just son or daughter of. What was his last name before it became Ratliff?”
“He doesn’t know. His … six or eight or ten times grandfather was … not lieutenant—”
“Ensign.”
“ — in a British army that surrendered in the Revolution—”
“Yes,” I said. “Burgoyne. Saratoga.”
“ — and was sent to Virginia and forgotten and Vla — his grandfather escaped. It was a woman of course, a girl, that hid him and fed him. Except that she spelled it R-a-t-c-l-i-f-f-e and they married and had a son or had the son and then married. Anyway he learned to speak English and became a Virginia farmer. And his grandson, still spelling it with a c and an e at the end but with his name still Vladimir Kyrilytch though nobody knew it, came to Mississippi with old Doctor Habersham and Alexander Holston and Louis Grenier and started Jefferson. Only they forgot how to spell it Ratcliffe and just spelled it like it sounds but one son is always named Vladimir Kyrilytch. Except that like you said, nobody named Vladimir Kyrilytch could make a living as a Mississippi country man—”
“No,” I said, cried. “Wait. That’s wrong. We’re both wrong. We’re completely backward. If only everybody had known his name was really Vladimir Kyrilytch, he would be a millionaire by now since any woman anywhere would have bought anything or everything he had to sell or trade or swap. Or maybe they already do?” I said, cried. “Maybe they already do? — All right,” I said. “Go on.”
“But one in each generation still has to have the name because Vla — V.K. says the name is their luck.”
“Except that it didn’t work against Flem Snopes,” I said. “Not when he tangled with Flem Snopes that night in that old Frenchman’s garden after you came back from Texas. — All right,” I said. “ ‘So that was all because you dont really hate your father—’”
“He did things for her. That she didn’t expect, hadn’t even thought about asking for. That young girls like, almost as though he had put himself inside a young girl’s mind even before she thought of them. He gave me the money and sent us both to Memphis to buy things for her graduation from high school — not just a graduating dress but one for dancing too, and other things for the summer; almost a trousseau. He even tried — offered, anyway told her he was going to — to have a picnic for her whole graduating class but she refused that. You see? He was her father even if he did have to be her enemy. You know: the one that said ‘Please’ accepting the clothes, while the one that defied him to stop her refused the picnic.
“And that summer he gave me the money and even made the hotel reservation himself for us to go down to the coast — you may remember that—”
“I remember,” I said.
“ — to spend a month so she could swim in the ocean and meet people, meet young men; he said that himself: meet young men. And we came back and that fall she entered the Academy and he started giving her a weekly allowance. Would you believe that?”
“I do now,” I said. “Tell me.”
“It was too much, more than she could need, had any business with, too much for a seventeen-year-old girl to have every week just in Jefferson. Yet she took that too that she didn’t really need just like she took the Academy that she didn’t want. Because he was her father, you see. You’ve got to remember that. Can you?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“That was the fall, the winter. He still gave her things — clothes she didn’t need, had no business with, seventeen years old in Jefferson; you may have noticed that too; even a fur coat until she refused to let him, said No in time. Because you see, that was the You cant stop me again; she had to remind him now and then that she had defied him; she could accept the daughter’s due but not the enemy’s bribe.
“Then it was summer, last summer. That was when it happened. I saw it, we were all at the table again and he said, ‘Where do you want to go this summer? The coast again? or maybe the mountains this time? How would you like to take your mother and go to New York?’ And he had her; she was already beat; she said, ‘Wont that cost a lot of money?’ and he said, ‘That doesn’t matter. When would you like to go?’ and she said, ‘No. It will cost too much money. Why dont we just stay here?’ Because he had her, he had beat her. And the … terrible thing was, she didn’t know it, didn’t even know there had been a battle and she had surrendered. Before, she had defied him and at least she knew she was defying him even if she didn’t know what to do with it, how to use it, what to do next. Now she had come over to his side and she didn’t even know it.
“And that’s all. Then it was fall, last October, she was at the Academy again and this time we had finished supper, we were in the living room before the fire and she was reading, sitting on one of her feet I remember and I remember the book too, the John Donne you gave her — I mean, the new one, the second one, to replace the one that boy — what was his name? the garage mechanic, Matt Something, Levitt — tore up that day in your office — when he said, ‘Linda,’ and she looked up, still holding the book (that’s when I remember seeing what it was) and he said, ‘I was wrong. I thought the Academy ought to be good enough, because I never went to school and didn’t know any better. But I know better now, and the Academy’s not good enough anymore. Will you give up the Yankee schools and take the University at Oxford?’
“And she still sat there, letting the book come down slow onto her lap, just looking at him. Then she said, ‘What?’
“ ‘Will you forget about Virginia and the northern schools for this year, and enter the University after Christmas?’ She threw the book, she didn’t put it down at all: she just threw it, flung it as she stood up out of the chair and said:
“ ‘Daddy.’ I had never seen her touch him. He was her father, she never refused to speak to him or to speak any way except respectfully. But he was her enemy; she had to keep him reminded always that although he had beaten her about the schools, she still hadn’t surrendered. But I had never seen her touch him until now, sprawled, flung across his lap, clutching him around the shoulders, her face against his collar, crying, saying, ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’”
“Go on,” I said.
“That’s all. Oh, that was enough; what more did he need to do than that? have that thing — that piece of paper — drawn up himself and then twist her arm until she signed her name to it? He didn’t have to mention any paper. He probably didn’t even need to see her again and even if he did, all he would have needed — she already knew about the will, I mean Papa’s will leaving my share to just Eula Varner without even mentioning the word Snopes — al
l he would need would be just to say something like ‘Oh yes, your grandfather’s a fine old gentleman but he just never did like me. But that’s all right; your mother will be taken care of no matter what happens to me myself; he just fixed things so I nor nobody else can take her money away from her before you inherit it’ — something like that. Or maybe he didn’t even need to do that much, knew he didn’t have to. Not with her. He was her father, and if he wouldn’t let her go off to school it was because he loved her since that was the reason all parents seemed to have for the things they wont let their children do; then for him to suddenly turn completely around and almost order her to do the thing she wanted, which he had forbidden her for almost two years to do, what reason could that be except that he loved her still more: loved her enough to let her do the one thing in her life he had ever forbidden her?
“Or I dont know. He may have suggested it, even told her how to word it; what does it matter now? It’s done, there: Papa storming into the house at four this morning and flinging it down on my bed before I was even awake — Wait,” she said, “I know all that too; I’ve already done all that myself. It was legal, all regular — What do they call it?”
“Drawn up,” I said.
“ — drawn up by a lawyer in Oxford, Mr Stone — not the old one: the young one. I telephoned him this morning. He was very nice. He—”
“I know him,” I said. “Even if he did go to New Haven.”
“ — said he had wanted to talk to me about it, but there was the …”
“Inviolacy,” I said.
“Inviolacy. — between client and lawyer. He said she came to him, it must have been right after she reached Oxford — Wait,” she said. “I asked him that too: why she came to him and he said — He said she was a delightful young lady who would go far in life even after she ran out of — of—”
“Contingencies,” I said.
“ — contingencies to bequeath people — she said that she had just asked someone who was the nicest lawyer for her to go to and they told her him. So she told him what she wanted and he wrote it that way; oh yes, I saw it: ‘my share of whatever I might inherit from my mother, Eula Varner Snopes, as distinct and separate from whatever her husband shall share in her property, to my father Flem Snopes’. Oh yes, all regular and legal though he said he tried to explain to her that she was not bequeathing a quantity but merely devising a — what was it? contingency, and that nobody would take it very seriously probably since she might die before she had any inheritance or get married or even change her mind without a husband to help her or her mother might not have any inheritance beyond the one specified or might spend it or her father might die and she would inherit half of his inheritance from herself plus the other half which her mother would inherit as her father’s relict, which she would heir in turn back to her father’s estate to pass to her mother as his relict to be inherited once more by her; but she was eighteen years old and competent and he, Mr Stone, was a competent lawyer or at least he had a license saying so, and so it was at least in legal language and on the right kind of paper. He — Mr Stone — even asked her why she felt she must make the will and she told him: Because my father has been good to me and I love and admire and respect him — do you hear that? Love and admire and respect him. Oh yes, legal. As if that mattered, legal or illegal, contingency or incontingency—”
Nor did she need to tell me that either: that old man seething out there in his country store for eighteen years now over the way his son-in-law had tricked him out of that old ruined plantation and then made a profit out of it, now wild with rage and frustration at the same man who had not only out-briganded him in brigandage but since then had even out-usury-ed him in sedentary usury, and who now had used the innocence of a young girl, his own grand-daughter, who could repay what she thought was love with gratitude and generosity at least, to disarm him of the one remaining weapon which he still held over his enemy. Oh yes, of course it was worth nothing except its paper but what did that matter, legal or valid either. It didn’t even matter now if he destroyed it (which of course was why Flem ever let it out of his hand in the first place); only that he saw it, read it, comprehended it: took one outraged incredulous glance at it, then came storming into town —
“I couldn’t make him hush,” she said. “I couldn’t make him stop, be quiet. He didn’t even want to wait until daylight to get hold of Manfred.”
“De Spain?” I said. “Then? At four in the morning?”
“Didn’t I tell you I couldn’t stop him, make him stop or hush? Oh yes, he got Manfred there right away. And Manfred attended to everything. It was quite simple to him. That is, when I finally made him and Papa both believe that in another minute they would wake up, rouse the whole neighborhood and before that happened I would take Papa’s — Jody’s — car and drive to Oxford and get Linda and none of them would ever see us again. So he and Papa hushed then—”
“But Flem,” I said.
“He was there. — for a little while, long enough—”
“But what was he doing?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “What was he supposed to do? What did he need to do now?”
“Oh,” I said. “ ‘long enough to—’”
“ — enough for Manfred to settle everything: we would simply leave, go away together, he and I, which was what we should have done eighteen years ago—”
“What?” I said, cried. “Leave — elope?”
“Oh yes, it was all fixed; he stopped right there with Papa still standing over him and cursing him — cursing him or cursing Flem; you couldn’t tell now which one he was talking to or about or at — and wrote out the bill of sale. Papa was … what’s that word? neutral. He wanted both of them out of the bank, intended to have both of them out of it, came all the way in from home at four oclock in the morning to fling both of them out of Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha County and Mississippi all three — Manfred for having been my lover for eighteen years, and Flem for waiting eighteen years to do anything about it. Papa didn’t know about Manfred until this morning. That is, he acted like he didn’t. I think Mamma knew. I think she has known all the time. But maybe she didn’t. Because people are really kind, you know. All the people in Yoknapatawpha County that might have made sure Mamma knew about us, for her own good, so she could tell Papa for his own good. For everybody’s own good. But I dont think Papa knew. He’s like you. I mean, you can do that too.”
“Do what?” I said.
“Be able to not have to believe something just because it might be so or somebody says it is so or maybe even it is so.”
“Wait,” I said. “Wait. What bill of sale?”
“For his bank stock. Manfred’s bank stock. Made out to Flem. To give Flem the bank, since that was what all the trouble and uproar was about. — and then the check for Flem to sign to buy it with, dated a week from now to give Flem time to have the money ready when we cashed the check in Texas — when people are not married, or should have been married but aren’t yet, why do they still think Texas is far enough? or is it just big enough? — or California or Mexico or wherever we would go.”
“But Linda,” I said. “Linda.”
“All right,” she said. “Linda.”
“Dont you see? Either way, she is lost? Either to go with you, if that were possible, while you desert her father for another man; or stay here in all the stink without you to protect her from it and learn at last that he is not her father at all and so she has nobody, nobody?”
“That’s why I sent the note. Marry her.”
“No. I told you that before. Besides, that wont save her. Only Manfred can save her. Let him sell Flem his stock, give Flem the damned bank; is that too high a price to pay for what — what he — he—”
“I tried that,” she said. “No.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said. “I’ll tell him. He must. He’ll have to; there’s no other—”
“No,” she said. “Not Manfred.” Then I watched her hands, not
fast, open the bag and take out the pack of cigarettes and the single kitchen match and extract the cigarette and put the pack back into the bag and close it and (no, I didn’t move) strike the match on the turned sole of her shoe and light the cigarette and put the match into the tray and put her hands again on the bag. “Not Manfred. You dont know Manfred. And so maybe I dont either. Maybe I dont know about men either. Maybe I was completely wrong that morning when I said how women are only interested in facts because maybe men are just interested in facts too and the only difference is, women dont care whether they are facts or not just so they fit, and men dont care whether they fit or not just so they are facts. If you are a man, you can lie unconscious in the gutter bleeding and with most of your teeth knocked out and somebody can take your pocketbook and you can wake up and wash the blood off and it’s all right; you can always get some more teeth and even another pocketbook sooner or later. But you cant just stand meekly with your head bowed and no blood and all your teeth too while somebody takes your pocketbook because even though you might face the friends who love you afterward you never can face the strangers that never heard of you before. Not Manfred. If I dont go with him, he’ll have to fight. He may go down fighting and wreck everything and everybody else, but he’ll have to fight. Because he’s a man. I mean, he’s a man first. I mean, he’s got to be a man first. He can swap Flem Snopes his bank for Flem Snopes’s wife, but he cant just stand there and let Flem Snopes take the bank away from him.”
“So Linda’s sunk,” I said. “Finished. Done. Sunk.” I said, cried: “But you anyway will save something! To get away yourself at least, out of here, never again to.… never again Flem Snopes, never again, never—”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 492
