He appeared almost out of nowhere, as a family spirit must, and immediately after the ceremony, after he partook of the wine, food, rice, sermon or verdict, he vanished as he had come and no one remembered him.
He who had traveled a thousand miles to sustain this family tree, to solder the spreading and dissipated family unity, was instantly forgotten.
Of course it was simple enough to follow the caeers of the more official members of the family, those who practiced orthodox marriages and divorces, or such classical habits as first nights, presentations at the Court of England, decorations from the Academie Francaise. All this was announced in the papers and all Uncle Philip had to do was to read the columns carefully every morning.
But his devotion to the family did not limit itself to obvious attendance upon the obvious incidents of the family tree. He was not content with appearing at cemeteries, churches, private homes, sanatoriums, hospitals.
He pursued with equal flair and accuracy the more mysterious developments. When one relative entered upon an irregular union Uncle Philip was the first to call, assuming that all was perfectly in order and insisting on all the amenities.
The true mystery lay in the contradiction that the brilliance of these happenings (for even the performance at the electric chair was not without its uniqueness, the electric power failing to achieve its duty) never imparted any radiation to Uncle Philip; that while he moved in a profusion of family-tree blossoms, yet each year he became a little more faded, a little more automatic, a little more starched—like a wooden figure representing irreparable ennui.
His face remained unvaryingly gray, his suits frayed evenly, his soles thinned smoothly, his gloves wore out not finger by finger but all at once, as they should.
He remained alert to his duties, however. His genius for detecting step by step the most wayward activities led him to his most brilliant feat of all.
One relative having wanted to travel across the Atlantic with a companion who was not her husband, deceived all her friends as to the date of her sailing and boarded a ship leaving a day earlier.
As she walked up and down the deck with her compromising escort, thinking regretfully of the flowers, fruit and books which would be delivered elsewhere and lost to her, she encountered Uncle Philip holding a small bouquet and saying in an appropriate voice: “Bon voyage! Give my regards to the family when you get to America!”
The only surprising fact was that Uncle Philip failed to greet them at their arrival on the other side.
“Am I aging?” asked Uncle Philip of himself as he awakened, picked up the newspaper at his door, the breakfast tray, and went back to his bed.
He was losing his interest in genealogical trees.
He thought of the cafe and of all the people he had seen there, watched, listened to. From their talk they seemed to have been born without parents, without relatives. They will all run away, forgotten, or separated from the past. None of them acknowledged parents, or even nationalities.
When he questioned them they were irritated with him, or fled from him.
He thought they were rootless, and yet he felt they were bound to each other, and relat himselfach other as if they had founded new ties, a new kind of family, a new country.
He was the lonely one, he the esprit de famille.
The sap that ran through the family tree had not bloomed in him as the sap that ran through these people as they sat together.
He wanted to get up and dress and sit with them. He remembered a painting he had seen in a book of mythology. All in coral and gold, a vast tree, and sitting at each tip of a branch, a mythological personage, man, woman, child, priest or poet, scribe, lyre player, dancer, goddess, god, all sitting in the same tree with a mysterious complacency of unity.
When Donald had been ejected from his apartment because he had not been able to pay his rent, all of them had come in the night and formed a chain and helped him to move his belongings out of the window, and the only danger had been one of discovery due to their irrepressible laughter.
When Jay sold a painting he came to the cafe to celebrate and that night everyone ate abundantly.
When Lillian gave a concert they all went together forming a compact block of sympathy with effusive applause.
When Stella was invited by some titled person or other to stay at a mansion in the south of France, she invited them all.
When the ballet master fell ill with asthma and could no longer teach dancing, he was fed by all of them.
There was another kind of family, and Uncle Philip wished he could discover the secret of their genealogy.
With this curiosity he dressed and went off to the cafe.
Michael liked to awaken first and look upon the face of Donald asleep on the pillows, as if he could extract from the reality of Donald’s face asleep on a pillow within reach of his hand, a certitude which might quiet his anxiety, a certitude which, once awake, Donald would proceed to destroy gradually all through the day and evening.
At no time when he was awake could Donald dispense the word Michael needed, dispense the glance, the smallest act to prove his love.
Michael’s feelings at that moment exactly resembled Lillian’s feelings in regard to Jay.
Like Lillian he longed for some trivial gift that would prove Donald had wanted to make him a gift. Like Lillian he longed for a word he could enclose within his being that would place him at the center. Like Lillian he longed for some moment of passionate intensity that would be like those vast fires in the iron factory from which the iron emerged incandescent, welded, complete.
He had to be content with Donald asleep upon his pillow.
With Donald’s presence.
But no sooner would his eyes open than Donald would proceed to weave a world as inaccessible to Michael as the protean, fluid world of Jay became inaccessible to Lillian.
This weaving began always with Donald’s little songs of nonsense with which he established the mood of the day on a pitch too light for Michael to seize, and which he sang not to please himself, but with a note of defiance, of provocation to Michaeclass="underline"
Nothing is lost but it changes
into the new string old string
into the new bag old bag…
“Michael,” said Donald, “today I would like to go to the zoo and see the new weasel who cried so desperately when she was left alone.”
Michael thought: “How human of him to feel sympathy for the weasel crying in solitude in its cage.” And Donald’s sympathy for the weasel encouraged him to say tenderly: “Would you cry like that if you were left alone?”
“Not at all,” said Donald, “I wouldn’t mind at all. I like to be alone.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I left you?”
Donald shrugged his shoulders and sang:
in the new pan old tin
in the new shoe old leather
in the new silk old hair
in the new hat old straw…
“Anyhow,” said Donald, “what I like best in the zoo is not the weasel, it’s the rhinoceros with his wonderful tough hide.”
Michael felt inexplicably angry that Donald should like the rhinoceros and not the weasel. That he should admire the toughness of the rhinoceros skin, as if he were betraying him, expressing the wish that Michael should be less vulnerable.
How how how could Michael achieve invulnerability when every gesture Donald made was in a different rhythm from his own, when he remained uncapturable even at the moments when he gave himself.
Donald was singing:
in the new man the child