Beyond a “Good morning” or “Thank you” I doubt if we exchanged a hundred words until the time I saw a copy of Randolph Bourne's Fragment among his selections. “That's not what you think it is,” I exclaimed brashly; “it's a novel.”
He looked at me gravely. “You also admire Bourne?”
“Oh yes.” I felt a trifle foolish, not only for having thrust my advice upon him, but for the inadequacy of my comment on a writer who had so many pertinent things to say and had been persecuted for saying them. I was conscious, too, of Tyss's opinion: How could a cripple like Bourne speak to whole and healthy men?
“But you do not approve of fiction, is that so?” Enfandin had no discernible accent, but often his English was uncolloquial and sometimes it was overly careful and stiff.
I thought of the adventure tales I had once swallowed so breathlessly. “Well… it does seem to be a sort of a waste of time.”
He nodded. “Time, yes… We waste it or save it or use it—one would almost think we mastered it instead of the other way around. Yet are all novels really a waste of the precious dimension? Perhaps you underestimate the value of invention.”
“No,” I said; “but what value has the invention of happenings that never happened, or characters who never existed?”
“Who is to say what never happened? It is a matter of definition.”
“All right,” I said, “suppose the characters exist in the author's mind, like the events; where does the value of the invention come in?”
“Where the value of any invention comes in,” he answered. “In its purpose or use. A wheel spinning aimlessly is worth nothing; the same wheel on a cart or a pulley changes destiny.”
“You can't learn anything from fairy tales,” I persisted stubbornly.
He smiled. “Maybe you haven't read the right fairy tales.”
I soon discovered in him a quick and penetrating sympathy which was at times almost telepathic. He listened to my callow opinions patiently, offering observations of his own without diffidence and without didacticism. The understanding and encouragement I did not expect or want from Tyss he gave me generously. To him, as I never could to Tirzah, I talked of my hopes and dreams; he listened patiently and did not seem to think them foolish or impossible of accomplishment. I do not minimize what Tyss did for me by saying that without Enfandin I would have taken much less profit from the books my employer gave me access to.
I was drawn to him more and more; I'm not sure why he interested himself in me, unless there was a reason in the remark he made once: “Ay, we are alike, you and I. The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless vice.”
I wanted anxiously to speak of Tirzah, not only because it is an urgent necessity for lovers to mention the name at least of their beloved a hundred times a day or more, but in the nebulous hope he could somehow give me an answer to her as well as to her question. I approached the topic in a number of different ways; each time our conversation moved on without my having told him about her.
Often, after I had delivered an armful of books to the consulate and we had talked of a wide range of things— for, unlike me, he had no self-consciousness about what interested him, whether others might consider it trivial or not—he would walk back to the bookstore with me, leaving a note on his door. The promise that he would be “Back in ten minutes” was, I'm afraid, seldom fulfilled, for he became so deeply engrossed that he was unaware of time.
The occasion which was to be so important to me sprang from a discussion of nonresistance to evil, a subject on which he had much to say. We were just passing Wanamaker & Stewarts and he had just triumphantly reviewed the amazing decision of the Japanese Shogun to abolish all police forces, when I became conscious that someone was staring fixedly at me.
A minibile, high slung and obviously custom built, moved slowly down the street. Its brass brightwork, bumpers like two enormous tack heads, hub rims like delicate eyelets in the center of the great spokes, rococo lamps, rain gutters, and door handles, was dazzling. In the jump seat, facing a lady of majestic demeanor, was Tirzah. Her head was turned ostentatiously away from us.
Enfandin halted as I did. “Ah,” he murmured, “you know the ladies?”
“The girl. The lady is her employer.” “I caught only a glimpse of the face, but it is a pretty one.”
“Yes. Oh yes…” I wanted desperately to say more, to thank him as though Tirzah's looks were somehow to my credit, to praise her and at the same time call her cruel and hard-hearted. “Oh yes. .
“She is perhaps a particular friend?”
I nodded. “Very particular.” We walked on in silence.
“That is nice. But she is perhaps a little unhappy over your prospects?”
“How did you know?”
“It was not too hard to infer. You have been concealed from the mistress; the young lady is impressed by wealth; you are the idealistic one who is not.”
At last I was able to talk. I explained her indenture, her ambitious plans, and how I expected her to end everything between us at any moment. “And there's nothing I can do about it,” I finished bitterly.
“That is right, Hodge. There is nothing you can do about it because— You will forgive me if I speak plainly, brutally even?”
“Go ahead. Tirzah"—what a joy it was just to say the name—"Tirzah has told me often enough how unrealistic I am.”
“That was not what I meant. I would say there is nothing you can do about it because there is nothing you wish to do about it.”
“What do you mean? I'd do anything I could…”
“Would you? Give up books, for instance?”
“Why should I? What good would that do?”
“I do not say you should or that it would do good. I only try to show that the young lady, charming and important as she is, is not the most magnetic or important thing in your life. Romantic love is a curious by-product of Western European feudalism that Africans and Asians can only criticize gingerly. You shake your head with obstinacy; you do not believe me. Good, then I have not hurt you.”
“I can't see that you've helped me much, either.”
“Ay! What did you expect from the black man of Haiti? Miracles?”
“Nothing less will do any good, I'm afraid. Now I suppose you'll tell me I'll get over it in time; that it's just an adolescent languishing anyway.”
He looked at me reproachfully. “No, Hodge. I hope I should never be the one to think suffering is tied to age or time. As for getting over it, why, we all get over everything in the end, but no matter how desirable absolute peace is, few of us are willing to give up experience prematurely.”
Later, I compared what Enfandin told me with what Tyss might have said. Did the responsibility of holding Tirzah lie with me and not with both of us, or with fate or chance? Or were events so circumscribed by inevitabilities that even to think of struggling with them was foolish?
I also asked myself if I had been too proud, too hypersensitive. I had tried to make her see my viewpoint by arguing, by fighting hers; might it not be possible, without giving up essentials, to approach her more gently? To divert her, not from her ambitions, but from her contempt for mine?