The Thurber Carnival
Page 14
My wife told Emma to get her bag packed, we were leaving in a little while. Emma said her bag was packed, except for her electric fan, and she couldn’t get that in. ‘You won’t need an electric fan at the Vineyard,’ my wife told her. ‘It’s cool there, even during the day, and it’s almost cold at night. Besides, there is no electricity in the cottage we are going to.’ Emma Inch seemed distressed. She studied my wife’s face. ‘I’ll have to think of something else then,’ she said. ‘Mebbe I could let the water run all night.’ We both sat down and looked at her. Feely’s asthmatic noises were the only sounds in the room for a while. ‘Doesn’t that dog ever stop that?’ I asked, irritably. ‘Oh, he’s just talking,’ said Emma. ‘He talks all the time, but I’ll keep him in my room and he won’t bother you none.’ ‘Doesn’t he bother you?’ I asked. ‘He would bother me,’ said Emma ‘at night, but I put the electric fan on and keep the light burning. He don’t make so much noise when it’s light, because he don’t snore. The fan kind of keeps me from noticing him. I put a piece of cardboard, like, where the fan hits it and then I don’t notice Feely so much. Mebbe I could let the water run in my room all night instead of the fan.’ I said ‘Hmmm’ and got up and mixed a drink for my wife and me – we had decided not to have one till we got on the boat, but I thought we’d better have one now. My wife didn’t tell Emma there would be no running water in her room at the Vineyard.
‘We’ve been worried about you, Emma,’ I said. ‘I phoned your room but you didn’t answer.’ ‘I never answer the phone,’ said Emma, ‘because I always get a shock. I wasn’t there anyways. I couldn’t sleep in that room. I went back to Mrs McCoy’s on Seventy-eighth Street.’ I lowered my glass. ‘You went back to Seventy-eighth Street last night?’ I demanded. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘I had to tell Mrs McCoy I was going away and wouldn’t be there any more for a while – Mrs McCoy’s the landlady. Anyways, I never sleep in a hotel.’ She looked around the room. ‘They burn down,’ she told us.
It came out that Emma Inch had not only gone back to Seventy-eighth Street the night before but had walked all the way, carrying Feely. It had taken her an hour or two, because Feely didn’t like to be carried very far at a time, so she had had to stop every block or so and put him down on the sidewalk for a while. It had taken her just as long to walk back to our hotel, too; Feely, it seems, never got up before afternoon – that’s why she was so late. She was sorry. My wife and I finished our drinks, looking at each other, and at Feely.
Emma Inch didn’t like the idea of riding to Pier 14 in a taxi, but after ten minutes of cajoling and pleading she finally got in. ‘Make it go slow,’ she said. We had enough time, so I asked the driver to take it easy. Emma kept getting to her feet and I kept pulling her back on to the seat. ‘I never been in an automboile before,’ she said. ‘It goes awful fast.’ Now and then she gave a little squeal of fright. The driver turned his head and grinned. ‘You’re O.K. wit’ me, lady,’ he said. Feely growled at him. Emma waited until he had turned away again, and then she leaned over to my wife and whispered. ‘They all take cocaine,’ she said. Feely began to make a new sound – a kind of high, agonized yelp. ‘He’s singing,’ said Emma. She gave a strange little giggle, but the expression of her face didn’t change. ‘I wish you had put the Scotch where we could get at it,’ said my wife.
If Emma Inch had been afraid of the taxicab, she was terrified by the Priscilla of the Fall River Line. ‘I don’t think I can go,’ said Emma. ‘I don’t think I could get on a boat. I didn’t know they were so big.’ She stood rooted to the pier, clasping Feely. She must have squeezed him too hard, for he screamed – he screamed like a woman. We all jumped. ‘It’s his ears,’ said Emma. ‘His ears hurt.’ We finally got her on the boat, and once aboard, in the saloon, her terror abated somewhat. Then the three parting blasts of the boat whistle rocked lower Manhattan. Emma Inch leaped to her feet and began to run, letting go of her suitcase (which she had refused to give up to a porter) but holding on to Feely. I caught her just as she reached the gangplank. The ship was on its way when I let go of her arm.
It was a long time before I could get Emma to go to her stateroom, but she went at last. It was an inside stateroom, and she didn’t seem to mind it. I think she was surprised to find that it was like a room, and had a bed and a chair and a wash-bowl. She put Feely down on the floor. ‘I think you’ll have to do something about the dog,’ I said. ‘I think they put them somewhere and you get them when you get off.’ ‘No they don’t,’ said Emma. I guess, in this case, they didn’t. I don’t know. I shut the door on Emma Inch and Feely, and went away. My wife was drinking straight Scotch when I got to our stateroom.
The next morning, cold and early, we got Emma and Feely off the Priscilla at Fall River and over to New Bedford in a taxi and on to the little boat for Martha’s Vineyard. Each move was as difficult as getting a combative drunken man out of the night club in which he fancies he has been insulted. Emma sat in a chair on the Vineyard boat, as far away from sight of the water as she could get, and closed her eyes and held on to Feely. She had thrown a coat over Feely, not only to keep him warm but to prevent any of the ship’s officers from taking him away from her. I went in from the deck at intervals to see how she was. She was all right, or at least all right for her, until five minutes before the boat reached the dock at Woods Hole, the only stop between New Bedford and the Vineyard. Then Feely got sick. Or at any rate Emma said he was sick. He didn’t seem to me any different from what he always was – his breathing was just as abnormal and irregular. But Emma said he was sick. There were tears in her eyes. ‘He’s a very sick dog, Mr Thurman,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to take him home.’ I knew by the way she said ‘home’ what she meant. She meant Seventy-eighth Street.
The boat tied up at Woods Hole and was motionless and we could hear the racket of the deckhands on the dock loading freight. ‘I’ll get off here,’ said Emma, firmly, or with more firmness, anyway, than she had shown yet. I explained to her that we would be home in half an hour, that everything would be fine then, everything would be wonderful. I said Feely would be a new dog. I told her people sent sick dogs to Martha’s Vineyard to be cured. But it was no good. ‘I’ll have to take him off here,’ said Emma. ‘I always have to take him home when he is sick.’ I talked to her eloquently about the loveliness of Martha’s Vineyard and the nice houses and the nice people and the wonderful accommodations for dogs. But I knew it was useless. I could tell by looking at her. She was going to get off the boat at Woods Hole.
‘You really can’t do this,’ I said, grimly, shaking her arm. Feely snarled weakly. ‘You haven’t any money and you don’t know where you are. You’re a long way from New York. Nobody ever got from Woods Hole to New York alone.’ She didn’t seem to hear me. She began walking toward the stairs leading to the gangplank, crooning to Feely. ‘You’ll have to go all the way back on boats,’ I said, ‘or else take a train, and you haven’t any money. If you are going to be so stupid and leave us now, I can’t give you any money.’ ‘I don’t want any money, Mr Thurman,’ she said. ‘I haven’t earned any money.’ I walked along in irritable silence for a moment; then I gave her some money. I made her take it. We got to the gangplank. Feely snaffled and gurgled. I saw now that his eyes were a little red and moist. I know it would do no good to summon my wife – not when Feely’s health was at stake. ‘How do you expect to get home from here?’ I almost shouted at Emma Inch as she moved down the gangplank. ‘You’re way out on the end of Massachusetts.’ She stopped and turned around. ‘We’ll walk,’ she said. ‘We like to walk, Feely and me.’ I just stood still and watched her go.
When I went up on deck, the boat was clearing for the Vineyard. ‘How’s everything?’ asked my wife. I waved a hand in the direction of the dock. Emma Inch was standing there, her suitcase at her feet, her dog under one arm, waving good-bye to us with her free hand. I had never seen her smile before, but she was smiling now.
There’s an Owl in My Room
I saw
Gertrude Stein on the screen of a newsreel theatre one afternoon and I heard her read that famous passage of hers about pigeons on the grass, alas (the sorrow is, as you know, Miss Stein’s). After reading about the pigeons on the grass alas, Miss Stein said, ‘This is a simple description of a landscape I have seen many times.’ I don’t really believe that that is true. Pigeons on the grass alas may be a simple description of Miss Stein’s own consciousness, but it is not a simple description of a plot of grass on which pigeons have alighted, are alighting, or are going to alight. A truly simple description of the pigeons alighting on the grass of the Luxembourg Gardens (which, I believe, is where the pigeons alighted) would say of the pigeons alighting there only that they were pigeons alighting. Pigeons that alight anywhere are neither sad pigeons nor gay pigeons, they are simply pigeons.
It is neither just nor accurate to connect the word alas with pigeons. Pigeons are definitely not alas. They have nothing to do with alas and they have nothing to do with hooray (not even when you tie red, white and blue ribbons on them and let them loose at band concerts); they have nothing to do with mercy me or isn’t that fine, either. White rabbits, yes, and Scotch terriers, and blue-jays, and even hippopotamuses, but not pigeons. I happen to have studied pigeons very closely and carefully, and I have studied the effect, or rather the lack of effect, of pigeons very carefully. A number of pigeons alight from time to time on the sill of my hotel window when I am eating breakfast and staring out the window. They never alas me, they never make me feel alas; they never make me feel anything.
Nobody and no animal and no other bird can play a scene so far down as a pigeon can. For instance, when a pigeon on my window ledge becomes aware of me sitting there in a chair in my blue polka-dot dressing-gown, worrying, he pokes his head far out from his shoulders and peers sideways at me, for all the world (Miss Stein might surmise) like a timid man peering around the corner of a building trying to ascertain whether he is being followed by some hoofed fiend or only by the echo of his own footsteps. And yet it is not for all the world like a timid man peering around the corner of a building trying to ascertain whether he is being followed by a hoofed fiend or only by the echo of his own footsteps, at all. And that is because there is no emotion in the pigeon and no power to arouse emotion. A pigeon looking is just a pigeon looking. When it comes to emotion, a fish, compared to a pigeon, is practically beside himself.
A pigeon peering at me doesn’t make me sad or glad or apprehensive or hopeful. With a horse or a cow or a dog it would be different. It would be especially different with a dog. Some dogs peer at me as if I had just gone completely crazy or as if they had just gone completely crazy. I can go so far as to say that most dogs peer at me that way. This creates in the consciousness of both me and the dog a feeling of alarm or downright terror and legitimately permits me to work into a description of the landscape, in which the dog and myself are figures, a note of emotion. Thus I should not have minded if Miss Stein had written: dogs on the grass, look out, dogs on the grass, look out, look out, dogs on the grass, look out Alice. That would be a simple description of dogs on the grass. But when any writer pretends that a pigeon makes him sad, or makes him anything else, I must instantly protest that this is a highly specialized fantastic impression created in an individual consciousness and that therefore it cannot fairly be presented as a simple description of what actually was to be seen.
People who do not understand pigeons – and pigeons can be understood only when you understand that there is nothing to understand about them – should not go around describing pigeons or the effect of pigeons. Pigeons come closer to a zero of impingement than any other birds. Hens embarrass me the way my old Aunt Hattie used to when I was twelve and she still insisted I wasn’t big enough to bathe myself; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me. They have absolutely no effect on anybody. They couldn’t even startle a child. That is why they are selected from among all birds to be let loose, with coloured ribbons attached to them, at band concerts, library dedications, and christenings of new dirigibles. If anybody let loose a lot of owls on such an occasion there would be rioting and catcalls and whistling and fainting spells and throwing of chairs and the Lord only knows what else.
From where I am sitting now I can look out the window and see a pigeon being a pigeon on the roof of the Harvard Club. No other thing can be less what it is not than a pigeon can, and Miss Stein, of all people, should understand that simple fact. Behind the pigeon I am looking at, a blank wall of tired grey bricks is stolidly trying to sleep off oblivion; underneath the pigeon the cloistered windows of the Harvard Club are staring in horrified bewilderment at something they have seen across the street. The pigeon is just there on the roof being a pigeon, having been, and being, a pigeon and, what is more, always going to be, too. Nothing could be simpler than that. If you read that sentence aloud you will instantly see what I mean. It is a simple description of a pigeon on a roof. It is only with an effort that I am conscious of the pigeon, but I am acutely aware of a great sulky red iron pipe that is creeping up the side of the building intent on sneaking up on a slightly tipsy chimney which is shouting its head off.
There is nothing a pigeon can do or be that would make me feel sorry for it or for myself or for the people in the world, just as there is nothing I could do or be that would make a pigeon feel sorry for itself. Even if I plucked his feathers out it would not make him feel sorry for himself and it would not make me feel sorry for myself or for him. But try plucking the quills out of a porcupine or even plucking the fur out of a jackrabbit. There is nothing a pigeon could be, or can be, rather, which could get into my consciousness like a fumbling hand in a bureau drawer and disarrange my mind or pull anything out of it. I bar nothing at all. You could dress up a pigeon in a tiny suit of evening clothes and put a tiny silk hat on his head and a tiny gold-headed cane under his wing and send him walking into my room at night. It would make no impression on me. I would not shout, ‘Good god almighty, the birds are in charge!’ But you could send an owl into my room, dressed only in the feathers it was born with, and no monkey business, and I would pull the covers over my head and scream.
No other thing in the world falls so far short of being able to do what it cannot do as a pigeon does. Of being unable to do what it can do, too, as far as that goes.
The Topaz Cufflinks Mystery
When the motor-cycle cop came roaring up, unexpectedly, out of Never-Never-Land (the way motor-cycle cops do), the man was on his hands and knees in the long grass beside the road, barking like a dog. The woman was driving slowly along in a car that stopped about eighty feet away; its headlights shone on the man: middle-aged, bewildered, sedentary. He got to his feet.
‘What’s goin’ on here?’ asked the cop. The woman giggled. ‘Cock-eyed,’ thought the cop. He did not glance at her.
‘I guess it’s gone,’ said the man. ‘I – ah – could not find it.’
‘What was it?’
‘What I lost?’ The man squinted, unhappily. ‘Some – some cufflinks; topazes set in gold.’ He hesitated: the cop didn’t seem to believe him. ‘They were the colour of a fine Moselle,’ said the man. He put on a pair of spectacles which he had been holding in his hand. The woman giggled.
‘Hunt things better with ya glasses off?’ asked the cop. He pulled his motor-cycle to the side of the road to let a car pass. ‘Better pull over off the concrete, lady,’ he said. She drove the car off the roadway.
‘I’m near-sighted,’ said the man. ‘I can hunt things at a distance with my glasses on, but I do better with them off if I am close to something.’ The cop kicked his heavy boots through the grass where the man had been crouching.
‘He was barking,’ ventured the lady in the car, ‘so that I could see where he was.’ The cop pulled his machine up on its standard; he and the man walked over to the automobile.
The lady laughed again; her husband got slowly into the car, as if he were afraid the officer would stop him any moment. The officer studied them.
‘Been to a party?’ he asked. It was after midnight.
‘We’re not drunk, if that’s what you mean,’ said the woman, smiling. The cop tapped his fingers on the door of the car.
‘You people didn’t lose no topazes,’ he said.
‘Is it against the law for a man to be down on all fours beside a road, barking in a perfectly civil manner?’ demanded the lady.
‘No, ma’am,’ said the cop. He made no move to get on his motor-cycle, however, and go on about his business. There was just the quiet chugging of the cycle engine and the auto engine, for a time.
‘I’ll tell you how it was, Officer,’ said the man, in a crisp new tone. ‘We were settling a bet. O.K.?’
‘O.K.,’ said the cop. ‘Who won?’ There was another pulsing silence.
‘The lady bet,’ said her husband, with dignity, as though he were explaining some important phase of industry to a newly hired clerk, ‘the lady bet that my eyes would shine like a cat’s do at night, if she came upon me suddenly close to the ground alongside the road. We had passed a cat, whose eyes gleamed. We had passed several persons, whose eyes did not gleam –’
‘Simply because they were above the light and not under it,’ said the lady. ‘A man’s eyes would gleam like a cat’s if people were ordinarily caught by headlights at the same angle as cats are.’ The cop walked over to where he had left his motor-cycle, picked it up, kicked the standard out, and wheeled it back.