Walker Percy - Lancelot

There is nothing like a liberal gone sour.

But I was wrong. He was ashamed, not of what he had seen, but of what he took to be his failure. A technical failure. I should have known.

“I’m sorry,” he said, hanging his head.

“I am too.” I still thought he meant he was sorry he had looked.

“It’s a negative effect I can’t explain.”

“Negative effect?”

“Did you ever hold a magnet against a TV screen?”

“No.”

“It pulls the images out of shape — the images being nothing but electrons, of course.”

“Yes, electrons.”

“I only watched enough to see that the effect is a little weird — But I think you may still have what you want.”

“Thank you.” Ha. Then he was my nigger after all, and if he could look, wouldn’t, didn’t. Or better, he looked for technical reasons but forbore to see. He was the perfect nigger.

He closed the door softly but presently opened it again. Again it was a Buell who still had the power to set things straight.

Elgin still didn’t look at me. All he said, face courteously inclined in the cracked door, as courteous as a Montgomery bellboy, you see, I’m not looking — was: “Mr. Lance, let me know if there is anything you need.”

“Okay.”

Note the exquisite courtesy of “anything you need.” He didn’t say: Let me know if you need any help, I’ll help you. He could have been understood as offering to bring a glass of water, a bourbon. It was for me to fathom the rest.

He looked now. He looked at me as sorrowfully as you — to hell with him.

One night at supper during a lull in the conversation Lucy, my daughter, who had said little or nothing and, feeling the accumulating necessity of saying something suitable, saw her chance and piped up, frowning and ducking her dark-brown head and saying it seriously: “It just occurred to me last night: here I am an adult human being, a person, and I have never seen my own cervix.”

There was a silence. I found myself worrying more about her worrying about her halting conversational entry than about her not seeing her cervix. But Raine and Dana nodded thoughtfully and even, I could see, with a certain courtesy and kindliness as if to encourage her timid foray into their lively talk. Raine put her arm around Lucy, gave her a hug, and said to me:

“Think of it! A mature woman who has never seen her own cervix!”

I thought about it.

Merlin, who did not like Raine, said not to Lucy but to Raine: “So what? I’ve never seen my own asshole. What’s the big deal?”

But it was Lucy who blushed and ducked her head even lower.

FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT THE MOVIES: A DOUBLE FEATURE

WHAT I MAINLY REMEMBER of the tapes is not the tapes themselves but the day outside. The videotapes, which came out as a movie on my tiny Trinitron and which I watched as gravely as I used to watch afternoon reruns of Gunsmoke , I think of now as a tiny theater set down in a great skyey afternoon loud with the rattle of blackbirds. The thunderstorm was gone, the hurricane was still a great Catherine wheel spinning slowly in the Gulf casting its pall of wind and rain two hundred miles ahead to the northeast while its northwestern quadrant sucked in the northern fall, the deep clear Canadian air funneling down, cirrus-flecked five miles high. There was no sign of a hurricane except a sense of urgency and a high commotion in the air. Restive blackbirds took alarm, rose in clouds from the marshes, settled, and rose again.

Something was indeed wrong with Elgin’s camera. The figures, tiny figurines, were reddish, like people in a film darkroom, and seemed to meet, merge, and flow through each other. Lights and darks were reversed like a negative, mouths opened on light, eyes were white sockets. The actors looked naked clothed, clothed naked. The figures seemed to be blown in an electronic wind. Bodies bent, pieces blew off. Hair danced atop heads like a candle flame. I stared. Didn’t Elgin say the figures were nothing but electrons?

FIRST FEATURE: MISS MARGOT’S ROOM

Who were these two dim rosy figures moving silently in a red sea?

I rewound the reel and examined the reel case. The label was neatly printed, MISS MARGOT’S ROOM, exactly like the chaste and formal museum signs mounted on the brass posts supporting velvet ropes in Belle Isle.

Two figures were standing, talking. They were not naked. Their clothes were light and their faces dark. It was Merlin and Margot. I recognized the shape of Merlin’s rooster shock of hair even though it flickered on his head like Pentecostal flame. Margot I knew instantly from the bright earmuff fluffs of hair at her ears and her mannish yet womanish way of setting her fist on her hip.

When they talked, their mouths opened on light.

They embraced.

The sound was not much better than the video. The voices were scratchy and seemed to come not from the room but from the sky like the blackbirds rattling and rising and falling. When they turned, their voices went away. Half sentences blew away like their bodies.

They embraced again. Merlin held her off, their bodies flowing apart like a Y.

MERLIN: You know that I always— (pause) —wish you every—

(You know that I always will love you? I wish you every happiness?)

MARGOT: (An assentive murmur.)

MERLIN: But what an ire — Oh, Christ — end — of a phizz infirm—

(But what an irony! Oh, Christ that it should end because of a physical infirmity?)

MARGOT: It did—

(It didn’t?)

MERLIN — a disproportion like Lee losing Gettysburg because of di—

(Diarrhea?)

MARGOT: Don’t be

MERLIN: It’s flat-out god — unax — Jesus.

(It’s flat-out goddamn unacceptable, Jesus?)

MARGOT: Jesus, men. You are all so—

(Jesus what?)

Were they talking about me?

No.

They embrace again. Blobs like breasts swell on Merlin’s shoulder and blow off toward Margot.

MERLIN: I fear for — But I wish you both ever—

(I fear for you. But I wish you both every happiness.)

You both? Me? No.

MARGOT: ( A deprecative murmur.)

MERLIN: I love you so f (?) — v (?) — much.

(I love you so fucking much? so very much? probably the former considering the two-syllable beat.)

MARGOT: I love you — oh s — (?) — oh sh — (?)

(I love you too. Oh so much. Or: I love you too. Oh shit, or sheet? or she-it. Probably the last, two beats, two syllables, and knowing Margot.)

MERLIN: DO you believe I love — enough — truth?

(???)

MARGOT: (A wary murmur.)

MERLIN: Why — wonder—

(???)

MERLIN: —could be exploit—

(He could be exploiting you?)

MARGOT: (Turning away: they come apart, Y becoming II.)

MERLIN: (An expostulation.)

MARGOT:!

MERLIN: —mon—

(???) (Money?)

MARGOT: NO.

MERLIN: Christ — not — even sure — part.

(Christ, you’re not even sure you have the part?)

MARGOT: You bas—

(You bastard.)

MERLIN: Well—?

MARGOT: Up — oars, oo bas—

(Up yours, you bastard.)

MERLIN: Oh, Jesus — I’d kike — oars.

(Oh, Jesus how I’d like to be up yours?)

MARGOT: (An indifferent murmur.)

MERLIN: Besides that — a basic incap — intimace—

(Besides that he has a basic incapacity for intimacy?)

MARGOT: I don’t care.

MERLIN: What a lousy trucking fire engine.

(What a lousy fucking triangle? I am reasonably sure of this reading: that it was not Elgin’s equipment but Merlin himself who scrambled “fucking triangle” to “trucking fiangle” (fire engine). A joke. Yes, I am 99 percent sure.)