But is there not also a compensation, a secret satisfaction to be taken in her death, a delectation of tragedy, a license for drink, a taste of both for taste’s sake?
It may be true. At least Doris said it was. Doris was a dumbbell but she could read my faults! She said that when I refused to take Samantha to Lourdes. Doris wanted to! Because of the writings of Alexis Carrel and certain experiments by the London Psychical Society, etcetera etcetera. The truth was that Samantha didn’t want to go to Lourdes and I didn’t want to take her. Why not? I don’t know Samantha’s reasons, but I was afraid she might be cured. What then? Suppose you ask God for a miracle and God says yes, very well. How do you live the rest of your life?
Samantha, forgive me. I am sorry you suffered and died, my heart broke, but there have been times when I was not above enjoying it.
Is it possible to live without feasting on death?
Art and Ellen help me to my feet.
“Ready, Chief?”
“Where are we going?”
“My car is over there.”
“Dr. More is going to Honey Island,” says Art.
“I haven’t decided,” I say, frowning.
“Then you and I can go to Denmark,” says Art.
“Denmark!” I repeat with astonishment. “Why?”
“Our work here is finished.” Art gazes down at the bunker, which is smoking more than ever. Charley Parker’s hose is still running but Charley is gone.
“Why Denmark?”
“Number one, it is my home base. Number two, it is close to the Nobel Prize committee. Number three, it is the vanguard of civilization. Number four, I can get you a job there.”
“What kind of a job?”
“Of course after the Nobel you can write your own ticket. Meanwhile you’ve been offered the position of chief encephalographer at the Royal University.”
Art advances with his lapsometer. I can’t seem to move.
“He’s not going off with you!” cries Ellen.
“I think he wants to,” says Art quickly. For a second the tuning fork hums on my skull. I knock it away.
“Keep away from him!” warns Ellen.
“One little massage of his musical-erotic and he’ll be right as rain,” says Art.
He stoops over me. I watch him dreamily.
“Just a minute.” Ellen touches his shirt. I frown but cannot rouse myself. “Step over here.”
Ellen returns arm in arm with Art. She hands me her car keys. “You can go now, Chief.”
I am peering at Art through the smoke. He nods reassuringly. “She’s right. You can go on home, Doc.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” I ask Ellen.
“With Dr. Immelmann.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “I need a job and you evidently don’t need me. It’s nothing new. Dr. Immelmann offered me a position the first day he came to see you.”
“Doing what?”
“As his traveling secretary.”
“You’re not traveling anywhere with this bastard.” I grab her hand and yank her away from Art. “Why you evil-minded son of a bitch,” I tell Art.
“I can’t understand why he calls me those extraordinary names,” says Art to no one in particular.
“Get away from here,” I say uneasily, for now Art is advancing upon us with his, with my, lapsometer.
Slinging the device from his shoulder, he holds out both hands. “The two of you will come with me.”
“We have to go,” whispers Ellen, shrinking against me.
“No we don’t.”
“If we both go, Chief, maybe it will be all right.”
“No, it won’t,” I say, not taking my eyes from Art, whose arms are outstretched like the Christ at Sacre Coeur in New Orleans.
“We’ll all be happy in Copenhagen,” murmurs Art.
Beautiful beautiful Copenhagen.
“Let’s sing, Doc!”
What is frightening is his smiling assurance. He doesn’t even need the lapsometer!
“Let’s go, kids,” says Art. One hand touches Ellen.
“Don’t touch her!” I cry, but I can’t seem to move. I close my eyes. Sir Thomas More, kinsman, saint, best dearest merriest of Englishmen, pray for us and drive this son of a bitch hence.
I open my eyes. Art is turning slowly away, wheeling in slow motion, a dazed hurt look through the eyes as if he had been struck across the face.
“I think you hurt his feelings,” whispers Ellen, trembling.
“How?”
“By what you called him.”
“What did I call him?”
“S.O.B.”
“Really?” I was sure I had not prayed aloud.
“What else were you mumbling? Something about a saint?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you think you’re a saint?”
“No.” Then Ellen never heard of the other Thomas More.
“Look, he’s leaving.”
“So he is.”
“Shouldn’t we—”
“No.” I hold her tight.
Art disappears into the smoke swirling beyond the bunker.
“Now what?” asks Ellen.
“I think I’ll have a drink.”
“No, you won’t. Let’s go home,” she says, spitting on me and smoothing my eyebrows.
FIVE YEARS LATER
In the Slave Quarters
9 A.M. / CHRISTMAS EVE
HOEING COLLARDS IN MY KITCHEN GARDEN.
A fine December day. It is cold but the winter sun pours into the walled garden and fills it up.
After hoeing a row: sit in the sunny corner, stretch out my legs and look at my boots. A splendid pair of new boots of soft oiled leather, good for hunting and fishing and walking to town. For the first time I understand what the Confederate soldier was always saying: a good pair of boots is the best thing a man can have.
A poor man sets store by good boots. Ellen and I are poor. We live with our children in the old Quarters. Constructed of slave brick worn porous and rounded at the corners like sponges, the apartments are surprisingly warm in winter, cool in summer. They are built like an English charterhouse, a hundred apartments in a row along the bayou, each with a porch, living room or (in my case) library, two bedrooms, kitchen, garden, one behind the other.
Waiting and listening and looking at my boots.
Here’s one difference between this age and the last. Now while you work, you also watch and listen and wait. In the last age we planned projects and cast ahead of ourselves. We set out to “reach goals.” We listened to the minutes of the previous meeting. Between times we took vacations.
Through the open doorway I can see Ellen standing at the stove in a swatch of sunlight. She stirs grits. Light and air flow around her arm like the arm of Velasquez’s weaver girl. Her half apron is lashed just above the slight swell of her abdomen.
She socks spoon down on pot and cocks her head to listen for the children, slanting her dark straight eyebrows. A kingfisher goes ringing down the bayou.
Meg and Thomas More, Jr., are still asleep.
Chinaberries bounce off the tin roof.
The bricks are growing warm at my back. In the corner of the wall a garden spider pumps its web back and forth like a child on a swing.
My practice is small. But my health is better. Fewer shakes and depressions and unnatural exaltations. Rise at six every morning and run my trotline across the bayou. Water is the difference! Water is the mystical element! At dawn the black bayou breathes a white vapor. The oars knock, cypress against cypress, but the sound is muffled, wrapped in cotton. As the trotline is handed along, the bank quickly disappears and the skiff seems to lift and be suspended in a new element globy and white. Silence presses in and up from the vaporish depths come floating great green turtles, blue catfish, lordly gaspergous.