Walker Percy - The Last Gentleman

Jamie’s eyes seemed to open in their deep sockets. But they gazed back at him, not with their usual beamish expression, casting about for recondite areas of agreement in the space between them, but mockingly: ah, you deceive yourself, Jamie seemed to say. But when the engineer, smiling and puzzled, leaned closer, he saw that the eyes had not opened.

A bar of yellow light fell across the room. A figure was outlined in the doorway of the kitchenette. It beckoned to him.

It was Rita.

As soon as he was inside the tiny room, she closed the door and whispered: “Is Jamie asleep?”

“Yes.”

Sutter stood gazing into the sink. The sink was dusty and still had a paper sticker in the basin.

“We want you to settle a little point,” said Rita.

Sutter nodded. The engineer sniffed. The kitchenette had the close expired air of impasse. Now as if they were relieved by the diversion, its occupants turned toward him with a mild, unspecified interest.

“I want to know whether you are still prepared to go somewhere with Jamie,” Rita said.

The engineer rubbed his forehead. “What time is it?” he asked no one in particular. Was this the true flavor of hatred, he wondered, this used, almost comfortable malice sustained between them, with its faint sexual reek? They turned as fondly to him as spent lovers greeting a strange child.

“Two thirty,” said Sutter.

“What about it, Bill?” asked Rita crisply.

“What? Oh, Jamie,” he repeated, aware that Sutter watched him. “Why, yes. But you knew all along that I would go with him. Why do you ask?”

“I have reason to believe that Jamie is getting restless and that he may ask Sutter to go off somewhere with him. I think this is too much to ask of Sutter.”

He stole a glance at Sutter, but the latter’s expression was still fond and inattentive.

“You are very much in demand, Bill,” said he at last. “Jimmy wants you, not me.”

“Then what’s the difficulty?” asked the bemused engineer, feeling their apathy steal into his bones.

“The difficulty,” said Sutter, “is that Rita wants to make sure Jimmy doesn’t go anywhere with me.”

“Why not?”

“That’s a good question, isn’t it, Rita,” said Sutter, but still not quite looking at her (couldn’t they stand the sight of each other?). “Why don’t you want Jimmy to go with me?”

“Because of your deliberate cultivation of destructiveness, of your death-wish, not to mention your outhouse sexuality,” said Rita, still smiling, and addressing Sutter through the engineer. “Every man to his own taste but you can bloody well leave Jamie out of it.”

“What do you think I would do?” Sutter asked.

“I know what you have done.”

“Jamie also spoke of going down to Val’s,” said the engineer for reasons of his own. He could not quite make this pair out and wished to get another fix on them. Val was his triangulation point.

“Val,” said Rita nodding. “Yes, between the two of you, Sutter and Val, you could dispose of him very nicely. You’d kill him off in three weeks and Val would send his soul to heaven. If you don’t mind I shall continue to minister to the living.”

“Kill him off?” Sutter frowned but still could not tear his vacant eye from the engineer. “I understood he was in a remission.”

“He was.”

“What’s his white count?”

“Eighteen thousand.”

“How many immature forms?”

“Twenty percent.”

“What’s he on?”

“Prednisone.”

“Wasn’t he on Aminopterin?”

“That was a year ago.”

“What’s his red count?”

“Just under three million.”

“Is his spleen palpable?”

“That’s what I like about you and your sister,” said Rita.

“What’s that?”

“Your great concern for Jamie, one for his body, the other for his soul. The only trouble is your interest is somewhat periodic.”

“That’s what interests me,” said Sutter. “Your interest, I mean.”

“Put up your knife, you bastard. You no longer bother me.”

They quarreled with the skillful absent-minded malice of married couples. Instead of taking offense, they nodded sleepily and even smiled.

“What is it you want this young man to do?” Sutter asked, shaking his head to rouse himself.

“My house in Tesuque is open,” said Rita. “Teresita is there to cook. The Michelins are next door. I have even determined that they could transfer to the college in Santa Fe without loss of credit — at the end of this semester.”

“Who are the Michelins?” asked the engineer.

“A duo piano team,” said Sutter. “Why don’t you take him out yourself, Rita?”

“You persuade him to go and I will,” said Rita listlessly.

“Rita,” said Sutter in the same mild temper which the engineer had not yet put down to ordinary friendliness or pluperfect malice, “what do you really care what happens to Jimmy?”

“I care.”

“Tell me honestly what difference it makes to you whether Jimmy lives or dies.”

The engineer was shocked but Rita replied routinely. “You know very well there is no use in my answering you. Except to say that there is such a thing as concern and there is such a thing as preference for life over death. I do not desire death, mine, yours, or Jamie’s. I do not desire your version of fun and games. I desire for Jamie that he achieve as much self-fulfillment as he can in the little time he has. I desire for him beauty and joy, not death.”

“That is death,” said Sutter.

“You see, Bill,” said Rita, smiling but still unfocused.

“I’m not sure,” said the engineer, frowning. “But mainly what I don’t understand is what you are asking me to do since you already know I will go anywhere Jamie wants to go and any time.”

“I know, Bill,” said Rita mournfully. “But apparently my former husband thinks you have reasons for staying.”

“What reasons?” he asked Sutter.

“He cannot conceive that everyone is not as self-centered as he is,” Rita put in before Sutter could reply.

“No, I can’t, that’s true,” said Sutter. “But as to reasons, Bill, I know you are having some difficulties and it was my impression you wanted me to help you.” Sutter was opening and closing cabinet doors, searching for the bottle which was in plain sight on the counter. The engineer handed it to him.

“What’s number two?”

“Number two: I would not suppose that you were anxious to leave Kitty.”

“Kitty?” The engineer’s heart gave a queer extra thump.

“I could not help but observe her kissing you in the garden as you lay under a Governor Mouton.”

He stopped his hand, which had started up to touch his lips. Then someone had kissed him, not Alice Bocock in his dream,but Kitty herself, warm and flushed from the sun, tiny points of sweat glistening in the down of her lip. He shrugged. “I don’t see what that has to do—”

“The question is not whether you would stay but whether Kitty would go with you.”

“I don’t think so,” said the engineer, blushing with pleasure at the prospect. It had not occurred to him.

“The further question is, ahem, whether in case all three of you go, Rita might not go along with you after all.”

“You can’t reach me any more, you bastard,” said Rita, but not, it seemed, angrier than before.

“You’re right, of course,” said Sutter cheerfully and earnestly, facing her for the first time over his drink. “You were right before and I was wrong. I couldn’t stand prosperity. We were good, you and I, as good as you wanted us to be, and in the end I couldn’t stand it. You were productive and so, for the first time in years, was I, and thanks to you. As you say, we were self-actualizing people and altogether successful, though somewhat self-conscious, in our cultivation of joy, zest, awe, freshness, and the right balance of adult autonomous control and childlike playfulness, as you used to call it. Though I don’t mind telling you that I never really approved your using technical terms like ‘penis envy’ in ordinary conversation—”