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

“Sir,” says the reporter, stopping a passerby, a pleasant-looking green-faced man who is wearing two hats and carrying an old M-1 rifle. “Sir, can you tell me what the plans are here?”

“What’s that?” calls out the man, cupping an ear to hear over the uproar. His face has the amiable but bemused expression of a convention delegate.

The reporter repeats the question.

“Oh yes. Well, we’re going to take a stand is the thing,” says the man somewhat absently and, catching sight of a friend, waves at him.

“How is that, sir?” asks the reporter, holding microphone over and grimacing at the engineer.

“What? Oh, we’re going over there and clean them out.”

“Over where?”

“Over to Fedville.” The man gesticulates to the unseen friend and drifts off, nodding and smiling.

The reporter grabs his arm.

“Clean out who, sir? Sir!”

“What? Yes. Well, all of them.”

“All of who?”

“You know, commonists, atheistic scientists, Jews, perverts, dope fiends, coonasses—”

The reporter drops the man’s arm as if it had turned into a snake. “Thank you for your comment,” he says, coming toward the camera. “Now I’ll return you to—”

“And I’ll tell you something else,” says the man, who has warmed to the subject for the first time. He catches up with the fast-stepping reporter. “The niggers may be holed up over yonder in Paradise but you know where they’re getting their orders from?”

“No sir. Now we’ll have a message from—”

“From the White House, otherwise known as the Tel-a-Viv Hilton on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Yes sir! Take it, David!”

During the exchange I’ve been watching another reporter with transmitter and backpack passing with his ghost among the crowd. But no. It is — Art Immelmann, a green Art plus a green ghost of Art. No doubt about it. There’s the old-fashioned crewcut and widow’s peak. And he’s carrying not a microphone but my lapsometer. And he’s only pretending to do interviews: holding the device to people’s mouths only when they are looking at him, otherwise passing it over their heads or pressing it into the nape of their necks. “That’s Dr. Immelmann!” cries Ellen, jumping up and pointing to the flickering screen, but at that moment the newscast ends and the afternoon movie resumes, a rerun of a very clean film, which I recognize as The Ice Capades of 1981 .

“Did you see him, Chief?”

“It did look like him.”

“And he had your invention.”

“It did appear so.”

Moira comes out of the bathroom, face scrubbed.

“I’m leaving,” she announces and strides for the door.

“Wait!” I jump against the door, blocking her. “You can’t go out there!”

“I’m going to get my Cupid’s Quiver and my own clothes. That is, if I come back.”

“Get her what?” asks Lola.

“You can’t leave just now. It’s too dangerous.”

“I must get my own clothes.”

“What does she mean, her own clothes?” asks Lola, frowning.

“We may be here quite a while, Lola,” I explain earnestly.

“Yes,” says Moira. “Chico and I had plans to stay only for the weekend.”

“Weekend? Chico?” Lola has risen slowly and stands, one fist on her hip, pelvis tilted menacingly. “Who is this Chico?”

“Ha ha,” I laugh nervously. “I’m sure everybody’s plans for the Fourth were spoiled. I’ll tell you what,” I say quickly to Moira. “Give me your key and I’ll go for you.”

Now it’s Lola who heads for the door. “Out of my way, Chico. I’m going too. I have to get my cello and look after my horses. A horse you can trust.”

“I’ll get your cello too, Lola. It’s in Love, didn’t you tell me?”

Both girls confront me.

“Well? Are you moving out of the way, Tom?” Lola asks.

I shrug and step aside.

Out they go—“I may not be back,” says Moira over her shoulder — and back they come, reeling back as if blown in by a gale. They slam the door and stand, palms against the wood, eyes rolling up. Two girls they truly seem and very young.

Lola swallows. “He’s there.”

“Who?”

“A Bantu.”

I peep through the curtains. It is Ely in his kwunghali standing with his Sten gun in the shadow of the opposite balcony. I recognize the classy Duke Ellington forehead. He is looking right and left but not up.

“I’ll go, O.K.?” I say wearily, holding out a hand for Moira’s key. “Lola, take out your automatic and sit here. Ellen, take my revolver and sit there.”

Moira has collapsed on the bed, where she lies opening and closing her knees.

“Why don’t you go to the bathroom, dear,” says Ellen.

Moira obeys. She gives me her key without a word.

When she comes out, I open the bathroom window. Lola follows me.

“How are you going to get my cello through that window?”

“I’ll put it in a safe place downstairs.”

“What about the Bantu?”

“If he comes up on the balcony, shoot him.”

“Very well, Chico,” says Lola sarcastically. “You just be careful with my cello — Chico.”

I switch off the air-conditioner. “Sorry, girls.”

“Be careful, Chief,” whispers Ellen, helping me through the window. Absently wetting her fingertips with her tongue, she smooths out my eyebrows with strong mother-smoothings.

Before leaving, I give each girl a light Chloride massage over Brodmann 32 and pineal Layer I — to inoculate them against a Heavy Sodium fallout, an unlikely event in the next few hours, but who knows? After treatment, each girl looks so serene, both alert and dreamy-eyed, as sleepy and watchful as a waking child, that I do the same for myself.

A gaggle of unruly Left students mill about the main gate of the Behavioral Institute. Some drive nails into golf balls. Others fill Coke bottles with gasoline. They frown when they see me. I recognize several members of Buddy Brown’s faction.

Professor Coffin Cabot, a famous scholar on loan from Harvard, is in their midst, a pair of wire-cutters in one hand and the flag of North Ecuador in the other, counseling, exhorting, and showing students how to clip the heads off nails after they are driven into a golf ball.

“What are you doing here, More?” he asks, his face darkening.

“What’s wrong with my being here?”

“Haven’t you done enough dirty work for the military-industrial-academic complex?”

“What do you mean?’

“You know very well what I mean, I suppose you don’t know that your cute little toy has been added to the Maryland arsenal along with its cache of plague bacilli and lethal gases.”

“No, I didn’t. By whom?”

“By your fascist friend, Immelmann.”

“He’s not a friend. But may I ask what you are doing?”

“We are organizing a nonviolent demonstration for peace and freedom in Ecuador.”

“Nonviolent?” I ask, looking at the pile of spiked golf balls.

“We practice creative nonviolent violence, that is, violence in the service of nonviolence. It is a matter of intention.”

Professor Cabot is a semanticist.

“When is this coming off?”

“This afternoon. We’re marching against the so-called Fourth of July movement in town.”

“So-called?”

“Yes. We recognize only the Fifth of July movement named in honor of the day Jorge Rojas parachuted into the mountains of South Ecuador.”

“Jorge Rojas?”

“Of course. He’s the George Washington of Ecuador, the only man beloved north and south and the only man capable of uniting the country.”

“But didn’t he kill several hundred thousand Ecuadorians who didn’t love him?”