society so that the natural impulses of humankind are allowed free
development.”
“Aha.” It was clear to Prosper that he was not saying this for the
first time. “And what are these impulses, would you say?”
Pancho placed his hands on the table in oracular fashion. “You
know. Think a minute, you’ll be able to make a list. We are made by
48 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
Nature with these desires, yet every political system and moral system
is bent on repressing or extinguishing them—either by force or by con-
vincing us our natures are evil and must be repressed. As if that were
possible. As if the industrial society could crush our desires for variety,
for pleasure, for worth, for interest, for satisfaction. As if two incom-
patible people locked in the legal institution of marriage could force
themselves to love, when their deep, true, innocent passions remain
unfulfilled.”
“You mean,” Prosper asked, “free love?”
“Free love, truly free, isn’t possible now. In a society rotten with
money values and venereal disease the idea’s laughable. But yes. In a
society correctly made, where human feelings and passions and needs
are understood and met, not repressed or denied or despised, yes. Free
love; mutuality; everyone a suitor to many; many loves for each one. A
Passionate Series in harmony. Old, young, everyone. The old in our
society suffer a loneliness that can hardly be imagined, because they
are cast out of the possibility of the love relation.”
“Everybody just going at it, then? Grandpa, Grandma, the kids?”
Prosper tried not to grin disrespectfully.
“Not at all,” said Pancho. “Not in a harmonious society, such as
you, my boy, have never experienced and perhaps cannot conceive,
which causes you to laugh at these possibilities. Of course even in the
Harmonious City to come, some will be satisfied with a brute con-
nection, and will find many who are like spirited, if they are allowed.
Some are naturally satisfied only with a lifetime devotion. Others
not; they enjoy intrigue, titillation, variety—they are like gourmets to
the plain dinner-eaters.” He sopped bread in his gravy. “Then there
are those whose spirits are the part that is most invested, who care
less for the physical, though no love relation is without the physical.
And so on.”
“Sounds complicated,” Prosper said.
“The complicated is always the true,” Pancho said. “The simple is
false and a lie.”
“I’ll remember that,” Prosper said.
When their Salisbury steaks were done and the greasy paper nap-
kins balled and tossed on the plates, Pancho said he’d retire, but Pros-
per decided to sit a while, have another drink, see if something
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 49
happened, he couldn’t say what. The bandstand remained empty, and
the few folks who arrived to take the tables or occupy the bar—a
couple of men in uniform among them—seemed to be fruitlessly await-
ing the same thing, whatever it was—intrigue, maybe, titillation—and
after a time Prosper went back across the courts to his room.
Pancho lay in his bed, pajamas buttoned up to the neck, his gray
hair upshot, reading from a small leather-bound book, a Testament
Prosper supposed.
“No,” Pancho said. “A poem, in the form of a play, by Percy Shel-
ley. Prometheus Unbound. Though it has served me in some ways as a
scripture.”
“Oh,” Prosper said. He got out of his jacket, rummaged in his knap-
sack to find his toothbrush and tooth powder, and went into the bath-
room; brushed his teeth, washed his face with a dingy cloth, and made
water, propping himself on one crutch. He flushed, and looked into the
damp-smelling shower stall, hung with a rubberized curtain. To use it
he’d have to turn it on standing, then sit to take his braces off while it
ran, then hump on his bottom over the lip and under the stream. If the
water changed temperature meantime, he was out of luck. Don’t forget
the soap: if he left it in its wire basket above, he wouldn’t be able to
reach it once he was in.
Maybe tomorrow.
He returned to his bed and sat. From now on, wherever he went, he
would have to lay plans for himself, and think of everything. He hadn’t
seen that clearly till now.
Pancho kept his eyes on his book while Prosper removed his pants,
unstrapped each of his braces in turn and with his hands pulled his legs
free. He laid the braces on the floor and managed to pull down the
coverlet and sheet and put himself within.
“Good night, my friend,” Pancho said then, and closed his book.
“Good night.”
Pancho pulled the chain of the lamp. He lay back against the pillow,
arms alongside him, gray hair upright, palms down; Prosper would
find him just that way in the morning.
Prosper lay awake in the light passing from outside through the
drawn shade and the calico. He tried to imagine all the things that he
would have to be prepared to do, to put up with, to get around or over.
50 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
He tried to feel sure that they would each be accomplished or avoided
somehow, even though he would have to face them alone, without
Elaine. That would make up for Elaine’s skipping out on him at the El,
and going on without him. She had urged him that far, she had made
him be that brave, but she’d been unable to believe in him any further,
and left him there at the bottom of the stairway. But when he found her
again he’d show her that he had done it. When he found her, out there
by the sea in the sun where she’d gone and he was headed, he would be
able to tell her See? I’m here, I made it, alone. You didn’t think I could
but I did. She’d be sorry and amazed. And he’d say It’s all right: it’s all
right now.
In the late afternoon of the next day they reached the city where Pancho’s
fabrics company had offices. Looking somehow determined and stricken
at the same time, Pancho left Prosper in the double-parked car, pulled
out his sample cases from the trunk, and disappeared into a closed-
faced building; reappeared an hour later without them. Prosper had
fended off a traffic cop by showing his crutches, claiming his driver’d be
out any minute. Pancho started the car and drove for a time without
speaking. Then he said:
“Prosper, not one thing written in all the books of philosophy or
morals over the last three thousand years has made one damn bit of
difference to human beings, or added one jot to human happiness.
They say what should be: not what is. I’ve learned more about the cor-
ruptions of the human spirit in that office, in that business, where for
thirty years and more I was robbed and hoodwinked and taken, than I
could have in any book. More about human nature in a smoking car.
More about the frustrations of desire in a boardinghouse. Don’t talk to
me about philosophy.”
Prosper didn’t. They checked in that night at a downtown hotel,
one supplied with all those things Pancho had said motels didn’t have,
plus a barbershop and a shoeshine stand. As Pancho had his shock of
straw-stiff hair cut, sighing at the barber’s worn wisecracks, Prosper
read magazines. Here was one on whose cover a young woman mod-
eled a uniform that an airplane company was issuing to all its women
employees. Inside, the article was titled “Working Chic to Chic” and