Chris Adrian - Gob's Grief

“They are very particular,” Walt said, because he did not quite know what to make of the skates. Tennie insisted on surrendering hers so that Walt could try them out. They held his arms and pulled him to and fro over the grass by the lake, until he got some skill with the things.

“It’s just like ice-skating!” Walt said, very pleased with how he was flying down the road at what must have been a full ten miles an hour. He imagined a notice in the papers: Walt Whitman was in the Central Park yesterday, riding on the wheels of the future. Gob put his fingers on Walt’s wrist to steady him, then took his hand. They skated full around the lake, returning to find Tennie seated by the water. She rose and ran to them, a confusion of blue and yellow fabric, flashing her legs at the whole wide world, waving in her hand the book she’d found.

“A dark place,” said Tennie, “but I like it.” Walt had taken them to Pfaff’s, because he thought Tennie would liven the place up considerably. It had become rather staid since the days before the war when Henry Clapp and Ada Clare held court there. “We are in my neighborhood, you know,” she said. “I live with my family in Great Jones Street, Number Seventeen. You are welcome to visit, Mr. Whitman. My sister would be delighted to meet you. Of course, don’t come by thinking to see little Gob, here. Great Jones Street is not great enough for him. He lives in Fifth Avenue, and doesn’t care for visitors.”

“The house where I live is gloomy,” Gob said. “It was my teacher’s. When he passed on he left it to me.”

“Did you hear of the horrible murder in France?” asked Tennie. Walt said he had not. “A man named Gaucher went for a stroll in the Tuilleries and noticed a fine handkerchief abandoned on the wet ground. Now, he is a man of limited means, this Gaucher. He has never been a fortunate person, but he blesses his good fortune that he has found this truly exquisite piece of material, which he is already planning to sell before he picks it up. But no sooner does he take it than he discovers that in doing so he has uncovered a horrible staring eye. A hideous, staring green eye. It belonged to the youngest child, the only member of a family of five not buried completely by the fiend who killed them.”

“I hadn’t heard!” Walt said.

“No,” said Tennie. “Of course you hadn’t. It’s a year off yet. Sometimes I am confused. But worry you not, Mr. Whitman. Those poor babies will be sheltered in the Summerland.”

“I think they’d rather shelter on earth,” said Gob. “But what say have we got in it, eh Walt?”

“Pfaff’s used to be a lively place,” said Walt, feeling bewildered. “Back in its day.”

“Gob, fetch us some frankfurters,” said Tennie. “I am hungry for a frankfurter and thirsty for a beer.” As soon as Gob left, Tennie leaned over to Walt and whispered to him. “Mr. Whitman,” she said very slowly. “Listen to me. I am beautiful and I love you. I think you have got a child for me, a noble and perfect man child. Our boy … do you not already love him? He must be gotten on a mountaintop, in the open air. Not in lust, not in mere gratification of sexual passion, but in ennobling pure strong deep passionate broad universal love!”

As she spoke, Walt had shrunk back from her, so far that his chair was leaning away from the table and he might have fallen over if Gob hadn’t come up behind him and steadied the chair with his hip. Tennie had been charming, previously, and now she was just another alarming female.

“Walt,” said Gob, “I think my aunt has played a joke on you.”

“A joke!” said Tennie. “Mr. Whitman, I only sought to amuse you!”

“Of course,” said Walt. “Of course.” He took his frankfurter from Gob, who was scolding his aunt.

“It’s a cause with me, Mr. Whitman,” Tennie said in her own defense. “The manufacture of liveliness is my cause.”

Among the men and women the multitude , Hank said, I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs. Walt was at his desk in the Attorney General’s office. It was one o’clock on a snowy afternoon in early December of ’68. To the casual observer, he appeared to be very hard at work, bent over a sheet of paper with his broad-brimmed hat on the desk beside his arm. He looked to be copying some official document, writing a bit and then glancing again at the original, but in fact he was copying a letter of his own, making it prettier to look at and more pleasing to the reader’s ear.

Dear Gob ,

I send you a few lines, though there is nothing new or special with me. I am still working in the same place, and expect to be here all winter (yet there is such a thing as a man’s slipping up in his calculations, you know). My health keeps good, and work easy. I often think of you, my boy, and think whether you are all right and in good health, and riding yet on the Belt Line when the mood takes you.

I suppose you received the letter I sent you. I got yours November 15and sent you a letter about the twentieth or twenty-first, I believe. I have not heard from you since.

Congress began here last Monday. I have been up to see them in session. The halls they meet in are magnificent. The light comes all from the great roof. The new part of the Capitol is very fine indeed. It is a great curiosity to any one that likes fine workmanship both in wood and stone. But I hope that you will come here and see me, as you talked of — Whether we are indeed to have the chance in future to be much together and enjoy each other’s love and friendship — or whether worldly affairs are to separate us — I don’t know. But somehow I feel (if I am not dreaming) that the good square love is in our hearts, for each other, while life lasts.

As I told you in my previous letter, this city is quite small potatoes after living in New York. The public buildings are large and grand. Most of them are made of white marble, and on a far grander scale than the N.Y. City Hall; but the oceans of life and people, such as in N.Y. and the shipping etc. are lacking here. Still, a young man ought to see Washington once in his life, any how. Then I please myself with thinking it will be a pleasure to you to be with me, Gob, I want you to write me as often as you can.

Walt folded up the letter in the envelope and took a break to post it. Outside, he leaned for a moment against a streetlamp, because he was momentarily overcome with a feeling like the one he’d had in Central Park — there were magical wheels on his feet and he was flying along hand in hand with his comrade. This feeling kept returning to him, the same way a tossing sea feeling would return to him as he fell asleep after a day playing in the surf. Acknowledging none else , Hank said. Not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am. Some are baffled, but not that one — that one knows me.

Walt got no reply to his December letter. Christmas came and went, and though he was among good friends, he felt lonely. He and Hank welcomed in the New Year sitting by his window. Walt made a punch of lemon, scotch whiskey, sugar, and snow from the windowsill. “To the year!” Walt called out to the black sky. Year all mottled with good and evil! shouted Hank. Another week passed, and another and another, with still no word from Gob. Walt gave up hope of hearing from him again, and cursed his own extreme nature. How stupid, after all, to feel such a ridiculous attachment! “We will leave omniphily to M. Fourier and his moony-eyed compatriots,” Walt said to Hank. “It is not for Walt Whitman.” Hank said, Not in any or all of them O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life! Need I that you exist and show yourself any more than in these songs.