Ruth sat smilingly before him. But why, she inquired, should this stimulation be higher in the presence of certain members of the opposite sex than in that of others? And even if you explained the entire physical mechanism, she said, weren’t you still left with the same question? If you felt a longing for one certain person, and just wanted to be with that person and not with anyone else, didn’t you have to admit it was more than physiological?
I find it somewhat painful even today to project myself into this love scene between Ruth and Judd, for as I summon her up, I respond to the glow of her as though I were sitting opposite, at the small, round table with the menu card against the flower glass. I hear the music, “The Japanese Sandman”, and see all the couples around us, and feel Ruth’s own wonder at what was happening in herself, in regard to this boy, and in regard to me. Was she going to discover that what she felt for me was only “girlish attraction” and that her fate was with this tangled and intense boy, sometimes a genius, sometimes so childish about the most obvious things?
Judd must have tried to analyse what, in particular, drew him. He had a few times before experienced sudden compelling drives to “make” some certain girl – you gave the girl a rush, but always with the feeling of hurrying back to tell Artie. Now, since that stupid spilling of Saturday, he hadn’t wanted to tell Artie anything about himself and Ruth. He felt an endless need of exploration with this girl.
Was there for Judd a possible going-over? Was the time nearing for his going-over? Another day, another day, and would the emotion grow deep enough in him to hold?
So I torment myself with their little scene, with the certainty that while sophisticated words poured out, their fingers touched, and they reacted like any two kids made goofy at the contact. I see them later in the car, sitting mooning by the lake, perhaps only their hands clasped on the seat between them.
And he is still talking, talking as he never before talked to a girl, or to anyone. The slight clacky accents of self-satisfaction, so often irritating when Judd speaks, fade down and vanish. He tells her, his tone just barely tinged with sorrow, that he has never had a true friendship with a woman and has never thought it possible, because every connection between men and women becomes falsified through sexual desire. (There wings through his mind the image of his father, his mother, but how could his father ever have understood the delicacy, the fastidious quality, the purity of Mother Dear? The times when they must have copulated, since children were born, Judd banishes as gross, gross moments that didn’t really count in her life.) And so he explains to Ruth that pure love, disinterested love, can be felt only between men, just as Socrates said, for only then is nature unable to intrude her ulterior motive and to make people imagine they are in love. Yet as he speaks, Judd reserves within himself the knowledge that he includes the component of physical love between men. This knowledge gives him a feeling of power over her, the power of deception, but tinged with a tender shade of protectiveness – she need not know this thing in him, and how he has always felt toward Artie.
As he talks, headlong, about pure love, abstract love, it is almost as though he were exorcising the moment when he will be caught by that same dreadful purpose, by the demands of real life, that make a bond between men and women. He is still free, and perhaps in the crime he has committed with Artie he has made himself free forever, for as the toils of natural love reach toward him, the toils, also, of the punishing law may be reaching to seize him.
And thus as Judd talks, his sense of inverse pleasure increases: it is as though a self-thrust knife were already in his flesh, to cut off this prospect of love, and as he twists and turns in his emotions the heightening tension of his muscles presses exquisitely against the ready blade.
This, too, in her innocence Ruth cannot know. And Judd hints only darkly; he says he does not believe happiness ever to be obtainable for himself. And when she spoofs, “Oh, Judd, you’re just having Weltschmerz,” he pretends perhaps she is right, but lets her feel there may indeed be something more, something dark and personal.
“But what is it, Judd?” Ruth begs. “Why do you have these fits of melancholy?”
“Oh, the whole world,” he says. “It disgusts me. The things people do.”
“I know,” she says. “Sometimes you wonder how human beings can be so ugly, when they are capable of beauty, too.”
He plays with the idea of a sudden Dostoevskian confession. To tell her everything, the crime, and even how he intended to rape her. What would she do? Could he possibly discover in Ruth a soul so deep that it could encompass the horror of his own? Or would she jump out of the car? He feels she might burst into prolonged tears. That would finish everything.
But perhaps the black knowledge would draw her in, seal her to him, like the time, the breathless night, when Artie had let him guess about the body pushed into the lake. From that night, he had felt sealed to Artie; and the whole need to take part with Artie in another such crime was perhaps a need to put himself beyond the reach of ever squealing on Artie.
Could Ruth be up to it? In the remaining days, if only days remained, to treat all of life like some Huysmansesque Black Mass! Could she join him in a carnival of the senses?
“A penny,” she says.
And with a short laugh Judd reminds himself that Ruth is nevertheless a nice girl, that this is a component part of his permitting himself to be drawn to her, as an experiment. Perhaps a girl like Myra could go into some mad final carnival, but not Ruth. So he responds to her conventional query with, “Oh, just the same old subject.”
“Dat old debbil sex,” she quotes knowingly, soothingly. The sophisticated note returns to his voice and Judd makes some remark about Paris, soon – Paris, where they know how to make the most of such pleasures – and she mock-slaps his wrist, and he says well, of course, he believes in the same freedom for women as for men.
Ruth begins to say, “Would you like it if I-” but cuts it short, and Judd says, with a show of self-surprise, “You know I do believe I would feel quite furious; I would feel possessive about you,” and she laughs softly. “You see, all our smart theories-” And there is a lapse, and she remarks that she heard his brother is getting engaged.
Oh, he had meant to invite her – the party is Wednesday, Judd says. But is he sure it isn’t meant to be strictly a family party? Ruth asks. Perhaps she would be… “Oh, no!” he insists. “It’s a big brawl. The whole South Side will be there, and anyway even if it were a family party” – he feels suddenly peculiarly not himself to be saying a thing like this, yet tells himself he means it – “you must come!”
And the girl, his brother’s girl, Ruth asks, what is she like? Has he met her? Max met her in New York, Judd tells her; it was one of those conventional things, a perfect match, a Mannheimer. The girl is said to be very nice, quite pretty. She will arrive day after tomorrow for a visit, to meet Max’s friends, and from then on Judd is sure the house will be unbearable…
Suddenly he remarks that he has often thought of simply going away, leaving home on his own, bumming around, something like Harry Kemp tramping on life. She restrains herself from observing that all boys have such an impulse. And he continues, saying with a self-conscious little laugh, “Or maybe even getting married.”
“Now,” Ruth says, “that is surprising.”
Yes, Judd says, he has thought how it would be to have a wife and a home, but with someone quite different from his own family.
Ruth says she understands how he may sometimes feel a stranger at home, because even in her own home – though her mother and father are angels, and her mother is very young in feeling, more like a girl friend – still, parents can’t really tell you everything; you have to find out for yourself.