The Moviegoer (26 page)

“If I could be sure you knew how frightened I am, it would help a great deal.”

“You can be sure.”

“Not merely of marriage. This afternoon I wanted some cigarettes, but the thought of going to the drugstore turned me to jelly.”

I am silent.

“I am frightened when I am alone and I am frightened when I am with people. The only time I'm not frightened is when I'm with you. You'll have to be with me a great deal.”

“I will.”

“Do you want to?” “Yes.”

“I will be under treatment a long time.”

“I know that.”

“And I'm not sure I'll ever change. Really change.”

“You might.”

“But I think I see a way. It seems to me that if we are together a great deal and you tell me the simplest things and not laugh at me—I beg you for pity's own sake never to laugh at me—tell me things like: Kate, it is all right for you to go down to the drugstore, and give me a kiss, then I will believe you. Will you do that?” she says with her not-quite-pure solemnity, her slightly reflected Sarah Lawrence solemnity.

“Yes, I'll do that.”

She has started plucking at her thumb in earnest, tearing away little shreds of flesh. I take her hand and kiss the blood.

“But you must try not to hurt yourself so much.”

“I will try! I will!”

The Negro has already come outside. His forehead is an ambiguous sienna color and pied: it is impossible to be sure that he received ashes. When he gets in his Mercury, he does not leave immediately but sits looking down at something on the seat beside him. A sample case? An insurance manual? I watch him closely in the rear-view mirror. It is impossible to say why he is here. Is it part and parcel of the complex business of coming up in the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here at the corner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for both reasons: through some dim dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God's own importunate bonus?

It is impossible to say.

Epilogue

SO ENDED MY THIRTIETH
year to heaven, as the poet called it.

In June Kate and I were married. It was practicable to wind up my business affairs in Gentilly and to accompany my aunt to North Carolina sooner than I expected, since Sharon, now Mrs Stanley Shamoun, had become so competent that she was able to transact the light summer business without assistance, at least until my replacement could be found. In August Mr Sartalamaccia purchased my duck club for twenty five thousand dollars. When medical school began in September, Kate found a house near her stepmother, one of the very shotgun cottages done over by my cousin Nell Lovell and very much to Kate's taste with its saloon doors swinging into the kitchen, its charcoal-gray shutters and its lead St Francis in the patio.

My aunt has become fond of me. As soon as she accepted what she herself had been saying all those years, that the Bolling family had gone to seed and that I was not one of her heroes but a very ordinary fellow, we got along very well. Both women find me comical and laugh a good deal at my expense.

On Mardi Gras morning of the next year, my Uncle Jules suffered a second heart attack at the Boston Club, from which he later died.

The following May, a few days after his fifteenth birthday, my half-brother Lonnie Smith died of a massive virus infection which was never positively identified.

As for my search, I have not the inclination to say much on the subject. For one thing, I have not the authority, as the great Danish philosopher declared, to speak of such matters in any way other than the edifying. For another thing, it is not open to me even to be edifying, since the time is later than his, much too late to edify or do much of anything except plant a foot in the right place as the opportunity presents itself—if indeed asskicking is properly distinguished from edification.

Further: I am a member of my mother's family after all and so naturally shy away from the subject of religion (a peculiar word this in the first place,
religion;
it is something to be suspicious of).

Reticence, therefore, hardly having a place in a document of this kind, it seems as good a time as any to make an end.

The day before Lonnie died, Kate took a notion to pay him a visit. Ordinarily I pick her up at Merle's office, drop her off at her stepmother's and drive downtown where I transact a few odds and ends of business for her, my aunt, at Uncle Jules' office. But today we have only to walk across the street from Merle's office to Touro Infirmary.

I had my doubts about Kate's idea. It was an extravagant womanish sort of whim, what I call privately a doubling, or duplication: like the time she took a notion to fly to Dallas in a state of rapture and hear Marian Anderson; it sounded to her like the sort of thing one might well do. I don't mean she worries about what is the fashionable thing to do; no, it just sounded like a good thing to do—what one does under the circumstances if one is the sort of person who etc etc—so she did it. Also: she had not seen Lonnie since the onset of his illness and although I tried to prepare her for the change, she was not prepared.

Afterwards in the street, she went stumbling ahead of me, knuckles in her mouth and blind with tears.

“Oh my God, how dreadful.”

“I shouldn't have let you go.”

“It was like a blow in the face.”

“I'm sorry.”

“That poor little boy—he's so hideously thin and yellow, like one of those wrecks lying on a flatcar at Dachau. Why is he so
yellow?”

“He's got a hepatitis.”

“How can you be so cold-blooded? Are you going to be thick-skinned and bumptious like a medical student? How I hate that! He's dying, Binx!”

“I know.”

“What was that he whispered to you?”

“He told me he had conquered an habitual disposition.”

“What is that?”

“He also said you were a very good-looking girl.”

“He breaks my
heart!”
We walk in silence. “And his poor parents. Did you see the way Mr Smith stepped out into the hall and dashed the tears from his eyes like a countryman?”

“Yes.”

“It is so
pitiful.”

She stops to blow her nose. Her heavy gunmetal hair is separated by a wide ragged part. I kiss the thick white skin of her scalp. “You are very good-looking today.” In the past year, she has fattened up; her shoulders are sleek as a leopard.

Kate is horrified. “Please don't.” She plucks at her thumb. “There is something grisly about you.”

“I have to find the children.” When Lonnie took a turn for the worse early this morning, my mother had to bring all the children with her, all but Jean-Paul. They've been sitting in the car since eight o'clock.

Thérèse catches sight of me and sticks her sharp little face out the window. “How is Lonnie?” she asks, trying a weaving motion.

“He is very sick.”

“Is he going to die?” Thérèse asks in her canny smart-girl way.

“Yes.” I sit around backwards to see them. Kate smiles in at them and stands a ways off. “But he wouldn't want you to be sad. He told me to give you a kiss and tell you that he loved you.”

They are not sad. This is a very serious and out-of-the-way business. Their eyes search out mine and they cast about for ways of prolonging the conversation, this game of serious talk and serious listening.

“We love him too,” says Mathilde with a sob.

“Kiss us first!” cry Donice and Clare from the back seat.

Mathilde sobs in my neck and Thérèse eyes me shrewdly. “Was he anointed?” she asks in her mama-bee drone.

“Yes.”

“Very good.”

Only the two girls are sad, but they are also secretly proud of having caught onto the tragedy.

Donice casts about. “Binx,” he says and then appears to forget. “When Our Lord raises us up on the last day, will Lonnie still be in a wheelchair or will he be like us?”

“He'll be like you.”

“You mean he'll be able to ski?” The children cock their heads and listen like old men.

“Yes.”

“Hurray!” cry the twins, but somewhat abstractly and more or less attentive to the sound of their own voices.

“Listen,” I say, laughing at them. “How would you like to go up to Audubon Park and ride the train?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Then wait a minute. I'll be right back.”

“Binx, we love you too!” cries Donice for the fun of it and leans way out the window. “Will you come to see us?”

“Sure. Now hush up. I want to talk to Kate.”

Kate looks back at the car. “You were very sweet with them.”

“Thanks.”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Will you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“I'll be up here all day with Lonnie and the children. Will you go downtown for me and pick up some governments at the office? Your mother has decided again to keep them at home. She thinks that if war comes, her desk is safer than the vault. Will you go?”

“Alone?”

“Yes. You can ride the streetcar down St Charles. It is nice sitting by an open window.”

“I wouldn't know what to ask for!”

“You don't have to. I'll call Mr Klostermann and he'll hand you an envelope. Here's what you do: take the streetcar, get off at Common, walk right into the office. Mr Klostermann will give you an envelope—you won't have to say a word—then catch the streetcar at the same place. It will go on down to Canal and come back up St Charles.”

“I don't have any money.”

“Here.”

She considers the quarter in her palm. “Here's the only thing. It's not that I'm afraid.” She looks at a cape jasmine sticking through an iron fence. I pick it and give it to her.

“You're sweet,” says Kate uneasily. “Now tell me …”

“What?”

“While I am on the streetcar—are you going to be thinking about me?”

“Yes.”

“What if I don't make it?”

“Get off and walk home.”

“I've got to be sure about one thing.”

“What?”

“I'm going to sit next to the window on the Lake side and put the cape jasmine in my lap?”

“That's right.”

“And you'll be thinking of me just that way?”

“That's right.”

“Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

Twenty feet away she turns around.

“Mr Klostermann?”

“Mr Klostermann.”

I watch her walk toward St Charles, cape jasmine held against her cheek, until my brothers and sisters call out behind me.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A small section of this book originally appeared in
Forum
in slightly different form as “Carnival in Gentilly.”

copyright © 1960, 1961 by Walker Percy

cover design by Jason Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-4532-1625-5

This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com