Walker Percy - The Moviegoer

We come to the corner of the gallery and a warm spray blows in our faces. One can smell the islands to the south. The rain slackens and tires hiss on the wet asphalt.

“Here’s what we’ll do. As soon as hot weather comes, we’ll all go up to Flat Rock, the whole family, Walter included. He’s already promised. We’ll have a nice long summer in the mountains and come back here in September and buckle down to work.”

Two cars come racing abreast down Prytania; someone shouts an obscenity in a wretched croaking voice. Our footsteps echo like pistol shots in the basement below.

“I don’t know.”

“You think about it.”

“Yes ma’am.”

She does not smile. Instead she stops me, holds me off.

“What is it you want out of life, son?” she asks with a sweetness that makes me uneasy.

“I don’t know’m. But I’ll move in whenever you want me.”

“Don’t you feel obliged to use your brain and to make a contribution?”

“No’m.”

She waits for me to say more. When I do not, she seems to forget about her idea. Far from holding my refusal against me, she links her arm in mine and resumes the promenade.

“I no longer pretend to understand the world.” She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. “The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears. The things we hold dear are reviled and spat upon.” She nods toward Prytania Street. “It’s an interesting age you will live in — though I can’t say I’m sorry to miss it. But it should be quite a sight, the going under of the evening land. That’s us all right. And I can tell you, my young friend, it is evening. It is very late.”

For her too the fabric is dissolving, but for her even the dissolving makes sense. She understands the chaos to come. It seems so plain when I see it through her eyes. My duty in life is simple. I go to medical school. I live a long useful life serving my fellowman. What’s wrong with this? All I have to do is remember it.

“—you have too good a mind to throw away. I don’t quite know what we’re doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fiber of my being. A man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.”

She is right. I will say yes. I will say yes even though I do not really know what she is talking about.

But I hear myself saying: “As a matter of fact I was planning to leave Gentilly soon, but for a different reason. There is something—” I stop. My idea of a search seems absurd.

To my surprise this lame reply is welcomed by my aunt.

“Of course!” she cries. “You’re doing something every man used to do. When your father finished college, he had his Wanderjahr, a fine year’s ramble up the Rhine and down the Loire, with a pretty girl on one arm and a good comrade on the other. What happened to you when you finished college? War. And I’m so proud of you for that. But that’s enough to take it out of any man.”

Wanderjahr. My heart sinks. We do not understand each other after all. If I thought I’d spent the last four years as a Wanderjahr, before “settling down,” I’d shoot myself on the spot.

“How do you mean, take it out of me?”

“Your scientific calling, your love of books and music. Don’t you remember how we used to talk — on the long winter evenings when Jules would go to bed and Kate would go dancing, how we used to talk! We tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky. Don’t you remember discovering Euripides and Jean-Christophe?”

“You discovered them for me. It was always through you that—” All at once I am sleepy. It requires an effort to put one foot in front of the other. Fortunately my aunt decides to sit down. I wipe off an iron bench with my handkerchief and we sit, still arm in arm. She gives me a pat.

“Now. I want you to make me a promise.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Your birthday is one week from today.”

“Is that right?”

“You will be thirty years old. Don’t you think a thirty year old man ought to know what he wants to do with his life?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Then?”

“Yes. Next Wednesday afternoon — after Sam leaves. I’ll meet you here at this spot. Will you promise to come?”

“Yes ma’am.” She expects a great deal from Sam’s visit.

Pushing up my sleeve to see my watch, she sucks in her breath. “Back to the halt and the lame and the generally no ’count.”

“Sweetie, lie down first and let me rub your neck.” I can tell from her eyes when she has a headache.

Later, when Mercer brings the car around to the front steps, she lays a warm dry cheek against mine. “m-M! You’re such a comfort to me. You remind me so much of your father.”

“I can’t seem to remember him.”

“He was the sweetest old thing. So gay. And did the girls fall over him. And a mind! He had a mind like a steel trap, an analytical mind like yours.” (She always says this, though I have never analyzed anything.) “He had the pick of New Orleans.”

(And picked Anna Castagne.)

Mercer, who has changed to a cord coat and cap, holds the door grudgingly and cranes up and down the street as much as to say that he may be a chauffeur but not a footman.

She has climbed into the car but she does not release my hand.

“He would have been much happier in research,” she says and lets me go.

THE RAIN HAS STOPPED. Kate calls from under the steps.

She is in the best of spirits. She shows me the brick she found under linoleum and the shutters Walter bought in a junkyard. It bothers her that when the paint was removed the shutters came somewhat frayed from the vat.

“They will form a partition here. The fountain and planter will go out here.” By extending the partition into the garden, a corner of the wall will be enclosed to form a pleasant little nook. I can see why she is so serious: truthfully it seems that if she can just hit upon the right place, a shuttered place of brick and vine and flowing water, her very life can be lived. “I feel wonderful.”

“What made you feel wonderful?”

“It was the storm.” Kate clears the broken settee and pulls me down in a crash of wicker. “The storm cut loose, you and Mother walked up and down, up and down, and I fixed myself a big drink and enjoyed every minute of it.”

“Are you ready to go to Lejiers?”

“Oh I couldn’t do that,” she says, plucking her thumb. “Where are you going?” she asks nervously, hoping that I will leave.

“To Magazine Street.” I know she isn’t listening. Her breathing is shallow and irregular, as if she were giving thought to each breath, “Is it bad this time?”

She shrugs.

“As bad as last time?”

“Not as bad.” She gives her knee a commonplace slap. After a while she says: “Poor Walter.”

“What’s the matter with Walter?”

“Do you know what he does down here?”

“No.”

“He measures the walls. He carries a little steel tape in his pocket. He can’t get over how thick the walls are.”

“Are you going to marry him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your mother thought it was the accident that still bothered you.”

“Did you expect me to tell her otherwise?”

“That it did not bother you?”

“That it gave me my life. That’s my secret, just as the war is your secret.”