Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

“Wait! No!” I yell at the top of my lungs and go bounding up the steps and past the startled Director. “No, Art!”

But Art can’t or won’t hear. Lapsometers are stacked up his arm like a black marketeer wearing a dozen wrist-watches.

Dr. Helga Heine aims a lapsometer at Stryker’s mid-frontal region.

“Wait, Helga!” I cry. “That thing is not a toy! It’s not a prop for The Pit! It’s for real! No, Helga!”

“But, liebchen , all we’re doing is what you yourself suggested,” says Helga as Stryker points his lapsometer at the region of her interpersonal sulcus.

“Yes, but my God, what’s the setting? Let me see. Oh Lord, he’s set the ionization at plus ten!”

Everywhere lapsometers are buzzing like a swarm of bees. Students and doctors and nurses either duck their heads or buzz away at their neighbors’ heads with their new hair-dryers.

“STOP I BEG OF YOU!” I yell at the top of my voice.

But nobody pays attention except the Director, who plucks at my sleeve.

“Isn’t this all part of the hijinks, Doctor, heh heh. Just what is it you fear?” he asks and cups his ear to hear me in the uproar.

“Goddamn sir,” I yell into the hairy old ear. “As I told you earlier, this device is not a toy. It could produce the most serious psychic disturbances.”

“Such as?”

“If it were focused over certain frontal areas or the region of the pineal body, which is the seat of selfhood, it could lead to severe angelism, abstraction of the self from itself, and what I call the Lucifer syndrome: that is, envy of the incarnate condition and a resulting caricature of the bodily appetites.”

“Eh? What’s that? Angelism? Pineal body? Seat of the self? Lucifer? Oh, I get it. Heh heh heh. Very good. Good show, Doctor. But really, I’m afraid The Pit is getting away from us.”

“Sir, you don’t understand. What I meant—” But Helga jostles me.

She has unwound her hair and let it down like Brunhilde. Placing her hand on her breast, she tells Stryker: “Everything is spirit. Alles ist Geist. ”

“Right.” Stryker nods and puts his hand on her other breast.

“Hold it,” I tell Stryker and turn to the Director. “Sir, this is not what it appears.”

A powerful grip, catching my arm, yanks me erect. I find myself standing between the two proctologists, Dusty Rhoades and Dr. Walter Bung. Have they—? Yes, Dr. Bung carries a lapsometer slung from his shoulder.

Yet they seem in the best of humors. They nod and wink at each other, claim me as an ally, and give every appearance of approval.

“Did you ever in your life,” says Dr. Walter Bung, holding us close, “see this many commonists, atheists, hebes, and fags under one roof?”

“Excuse me, Dr. Bung,” I say, unlimbering my lapsometer, “but the fact is that neither they nor you are quite yourselves.”

“How’s that, son?”

“I’ll warrant you your red nucleus is at this moment abnormally active. May I take a reading?”

“What the hell you talking about boy, my red —”

“The reason you’re both so upset is this,” I tell them both, but at that moment someone, perhaps one of them, pushes me violently and I stumble backward into the pit, nearly cracking my skull.

Moira is standing transfixed behind Mr. Ives’s chair.

“Let’s go to Howard Johnson’s,” she whispers, leaning over me as I struggle to get up.

“Get the patient out of here,” I tell her.

Moira hesitates, opens and closes her mouth. Mr. Ives rises and takes her arm.

“I’ll take care of her, Doctor.”

“Thank you.”

“Where shall I take her?”

“Are we going to Howard Johnson’s?” Moira asks, coming close.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll go to my room first.”

“I’ll take her to her room,” Mr. Ives assures me.

“Thank you.”

They disappear into the tunnel, Mr. Ives escorting Moira like the Tennessee gentleman that he is.

Colley Wilkes is trying to reach his wife, Fran, by detouring through the pit. But Buddy Brown stands in his way.

“Who you shoving?” asks Buddy.

“Out of my way.”

“If there is anything I can’t stand, it’s a smart-mouth coon.”

Buddy picked the wrong man. For Colley is no ordinary Negro, smart-mouthed or not, but a super-Negro who besides speaking five languages and being an electronic wizard, also holds the Black Belt in karate.

Colley pokes his hand, fingers held stiff as a plank, straight into Buddy’s throat. Buddy sits down in Mr. Ives’s wheelchair and tries to breathe.

I must see to Ellen and Lola.

Halfway up the aisle two students are fighting over a girl. I recognize J.T. Thigpen. The girl is Gloria, by no means a beauty, still dressed in her soiled lab coat, her brass-colored hair sprung out in a circle like a monstrance. The second student is a Knothead named Trasker Gluck. Seeing Trasker and Gloria together, I suddenly realize they are brother and sister.

Trasker and J.T. have each other elbow around neck, grunting and cursing, the way boys fight.

“Hold it, fellows.” I try to stop them.

“You stay away from my sister, you son of a bitch,” says Trasker, who is a clean-living athletic Baptist type like pole-vaulter Bob Richards.

“It’s a meaningless relationship and nothing for you to take exception to,” grunts J.T. “We get fifty bucks for a successful performance. Let me go, I need the money. Let me go! I feel if we can get over to Love right away we can make it for sure. Let me go! There is nothing between us. Ask your sister.”

“Why you son of a bitch, that makes it worse,” says Trasker, slamming J.T. squarely on the nose with his big fist.

“Do something, Dr. More!” pleads Gloria. “I love him!”

“Who?”

“J.T.!”

“Excuse me,” I say, spying Ellen and Art Immelmann in the next aisle.

Ted ’n Tanya are lying under the seats. I almost step on Ted’s back.

“Tom, you were wonderful,” says Tanya over Ted’s shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“Your invention works! We can love. We are loving!”

“Good. Pardon.” I step over them.

“All we feared was fear itself.”

“I know.”

“Stay with us! Share our joy!”

“I can’t just now. Pardon.”

Warm arms encircle my waist I find myself sitting in Lola’s lap. “Hi, Sugah!”

“Hi, Lola.”

“My, you’re a big fine boy!” She gives me a hug.

Reaching back, I give her a hug. She warms my entire back from shoulders to calves.

“Do you love Lola?”

“Yes, I do.” I do.

“Lola’s got you.”

“She sure has.”

“When you coming to see Lola?”

“Tomorrow. No, this evening.”

“Lola will make you some gin fizzes and we’ll go walking out in the moonlight.”

“Absolutely. But you better go home now. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“O.K., Sugah,” says Lola, giving me a final tremendous squeeze.

Dusty seizes my shoulder in his huge hand, working the bones around like dice.

His face looms close, his breath reeks like a lion’s.

“You listen here, Doctor.”

“Yes, Dusty?”

“You mess with my daughter one more time without wedding bells and you done messed for the last time. You read me?”

“Yes.”

“You all right, boy,” says Dusty and, taking Dr. Walter Bung in one arm and me in the other, draws the three of us close.

Ellen is shouting angrily at Art Immelmann, who surveys the pit, swinging his arms idly and whistling loudly and accurately Nola , the piano theme of Vincent Lopez, a band leader in the Middle Auto Age.

I snatch Ellen away.

“Stay away from him.”

“Chief, he got your lapsometers!” Ellen is sobbing with rage.