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

Alistair: half-lying in the rattan settee, tawny-skinned, tawny-eyes, mandala-and-chain half-hidden in his Cozumel homespuns, his silver and turquoise bracelet (the real article with links as heavy and greasy as engine gears) slid down his wrist onto his gold hand, which he knows how to flex as gracefully as Michelangelo’s Adam touching God’s hand.

Mar-tyn: a wizened Liverpool youth, not quite clean, whose low furrowed brow went up in a great shock of dry wiry hair; Mar-tyn, who gave himself leave not to speak because it was understood he was “with” Alistair; who mystified Doris with his unattractiveness and who when I gave him his gin fizz in a heavy Abercrombie field-and-stream glass, always shot me the same ironic look: “Thanks, mite.”

Doris happy though, despite Mar-tyn. Here in her airy gazebo in the treetops it seemed to her that things had fallen out right at last. This surely was the way life was lived: Alistair sharing with her the English hankering for the Orient and speaking in the authentic mother tongue of reverence for life and of the need of making homely things with one’s own hands; of a true community life stripped of its technological dross, of simple meetings and greetings, spiritual communions, the touch of a hand, etcetera etcetera.

“We’re afraid of touching each other in our modern culture,” said Alistair, extending his golden Adam’s hand and touching me.

“You’re damn right we are,” I said, shrinking away.

He would discuss his coming lecture with Doris, asking her advice about the best means of penetrating the “suburban armor of indifference.”

Doris listened and advised breathlessly. To her the very air of the summerhouse seemed freighted with meanings. Possibilities floated like motes in the golden light. Breathlessly she sat and mostly listened, long-limbed and lovely in her green linen, while Alistair quoted the sutras. English poets she had memorized at Winchester High School sounded as fresh as the new green growth of the vines.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,

said Alistair, swishing his gin fizz.

“How true!” breathed Doris.

“Holiness is wholeness,” said Alistair, holding in his cupped hand a hooded warbler who had knocked himself out against the screen.

“That is so true!” said Doris.

Not that I wasn’t included, even after Alistair found out that it was Doris, not I, who had the money. Alistair was good-natured and wanted to be friends. Under any other circumstances we might have been: he was a rogue but a likable one. Mar-tyn was a Liverpool guttersnipe, but Alistair was a likable rogue. We got along well enough. Sunday mornings he’d give his lecture at the Unity church on reverence for life or mind-force, and Samantha and I’d go to mass and we’d meet afterwards in the summerhouse.

They were a pair of rascals. What a surprise. No one ever expects the English to be rascals (compare Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, Chinese). No, the English, who have no use for God, are the most decent people on earth. Why? Because they got rid of God. They got rid of God two hundred years ago and became extraordinarily decent to prove they didn’t need him. Compare Merrie England of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A nation of rowdies.

“I greatly admire the Catholic mass,” Alistair would say.

“Good.”

“I accept the validity of all religions.”

“I don’t.”

“Pity.”

“Yes.”

“I say, T?m.”

“Yes?”

“We could be of incalculable service to each other, you know.”

“How’s that?”

“You could help our work on mind-force with your scientific expertise in psychiatry. We’re on the same side in the struggle against materialism. Together we could help break the laws of materialism that straitjacket modern science.”

“I believe in such laws.”

“We could oppose the cult of objectivity that science breeds.”

“I favor such objectivity.”

“I have unending admiration for your Church.”

“I wish I could say the same for yours.”

“You know, Origen, one of the greatest doctors of your Church, was one of us. He believed in reincarnation, you know.”

“As I recall, we kicked his ass out.”

“Yes. And the poor man was so burdened with guilt, he cut off his own member.”

“I might do the same for you.”

“You’re a rum one, T?m.”

Mar-tyn laughed his one and only laugh: “Arr arr arr. Cut off ’is ruddy whacker, did he?”

Doris would have none of this, either Catholic vulgarity or Liverpool vulgarity, and she and Alistair would get back on reverence for life while I grilled rib-eye steaks on the hibachi, my specialty and Alistair’s favorite despite his reverence for steers.

What happened was not even his fault. What happened was that Samantha died and I started drinking and stayed drunk for a year — and not even for sorrow’s sake. Samantha’s death was as good an excuse as any to drink. I could have been just as sorry without drinking. What happened was that Doris and I chose not to forgive each other. It was as casual a decision as my drinking. Alistair happened to come along at the right time.

Poor fellow, he didn’t even get the money he wanted. He got Doris, whom he didn’t want. Doris died. God knows what Doris wanted. A delicate sort of Deep-South Oriental life lived with Anglican style. Instead, she died.

Alistair was right, as it turned out, to disapprove my religious intolerance. I, as defender of the faith, was as big a phony as he and less attractive. Perhaps I’d have done worse than follow Origen’s example, poor chap.

Feeling somewhat faint from hunger, I return to my apartment in the old wing and fix myself a duck-egg flip with Worcestershire and vodka. Check the phone. Dead. Call into Ellen on the Anser-Phone. The line is already plugged in. The Anser-Phone operator got frightened about something, Ellen said, and left. But all quiet at the motel. She and Moira are playing gin rummy.

Two lovely girls they are, as different as can be, one Christian, one heathen, one virtuous, one not, but each lovely in her own way. And some Bantu devil is trying to take them from me. He must be dealt with.

Back in the hunt room, I take the 30.06 from the cabinet. It is still greased and loaded. I pocket an extra clip. Get 38’s for the revolver!

Take the Toyota onto the links, use cart paths next to the woods, cross the fairway to my mother’s back yard, run under her mountainous Formosa azaleas and out of sight.

The back door is unlocked. All seems normal hereabouts. Eukie, Mother’s little servant, is sitting in the kitchen polishing silver and watching Art Linkletter III interview some school children from Glendale.

“Eukie, where is Mrs. More?”

“She up in the bathroom.”

“What’s been going on around here?”

Eukie is a non-account sassy little black who is good for nothing but getting dressed up in his white coat and serving cocktails to Mother’s bridge ladies.

Check the phone. Dead.

For a fact Mother is in the bathroom, all dressed up, blue-white Hadassah hair curled, down on her hands and knees in her nylons, scrubbing the tile floor. Whenever things went wrong, I remember, a sale fallen through, my father down on his luck sunk in his chair watching daytime reruns of I Love Lucy , my mother would hike up her skirt and scrub the bathroom floor.

“What’s wrong, Mama?”

“Look at that workmanship!” She points the scrub brush to a crack between tile and tub. “No wonder I’ve got roaches. Hand me that caulk!”

“Mother, I want to talk to you.” I pull her up, I sit on the rim of the tub. She closes the lid and sits on the john. “Now. What’s going on around here?”