Walker Percy - The Moviegoer

“I am sorry for that.”

“The fact that you are a stranger to me is perhaps my fault. It was stupid of me not to believe it earlier. For now I do believe that you are not capable of caring for anyone, Kate, Jules, or myself — no more than that Negro man walking down the street — less so, in fact, since I have a hunch he and I would discover some slight tradition in common.” She seems to notice for the first time that the tip of the blade is bent. “I honestly don’t believe it occurred to you to let us know that you and Kate were leaving, even though you knew how desperately sick she was. I truly do not think it ever occurred to you that you were abusing a sacred trust in carrying that poor child off on a fantastic trip like that or that you were betraying the great trust and affection she has for you. Well?” she asks when I do not reply.

I try as best I can to appear as she would have me, as being, if not right, then wrong in a recognizable, a right form of wrongness. But I can think of nothing to say.

“Do you have any notion of how I felt when, not twelve hours after Kate attempted suicide, she vanishes without a trace?”

We watch the sword as she lets it fall over the fulcrum of her forefinger; it goes tat’t’t on the brass hinge of the desk. Then, so suddenly that I almost start, my aunt sheathes the sword and places her hand flat on the desk. Turning it over, she flexes her fingers and studies the nails, which are deeply scored by longitudinal ridges.

“Were you intimate with Kate?”

“Intimate?”

“Yes.”

“Not very.”

“I ask you again. Were you intimate with her?”

“I suppose so. Though intimate is not quite the word.”

“You suppose so. Intimate is not quite the word. I wonder what is the word. You see—” she says with a sort of humor, “—there is another of my hidden assumptions. All these years I have been assuming that between us words mean roughly the same thing, that among certain people, gentlefolk I don’t mind calling them, there exists a set of meanings held in common, that a certain manner and a certain grace come as naturally as breathing. At the great moments of life — success, failure, marriage, death — our kind of folks have always possessed a native instinct for behavior, a natural piety or grace, I don’t mind calling it. Whatever else we did or failed to do, we always had that. I’ll make you a little confession. I am not ashamed to use the word class. I will also plead guilty to another charge. The charge is that people belonging to my class think they’re better than other people. You’re damn right we’re better. We’re better because we do not shirk our obligations either to ourselves or to others. We do not whine. We do not organize a minority group and blackmail the government. We do not prize mediocrity for mediocrity’s sake. Oh I am aware that we hear a great many flattering things nowadays about your great common man — you know, it has always been revealing to me that he is perfectly content so to be called, because that is exactly what he is: the common man and when I say common I mean common as hell. Our civilization has achieved a distinction of sorts. It will be remembered not for its technology nor even its wars but for its novel ethos. Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we’re sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated and are congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don’t know anybody nowadays who is not sincere. Didi Lovell is the most sincere person I know: every time she crawls in bed with somebody else, she does so with the utmost sincerity. We are the most sincere Laodiceans who ever got flushed down the sinkhole of history. No, my young friend, I am not ashamed to use the word class. They say out there we think we’re better. You’re damn right we’re better. And don’t think they don’t know it—” She raises the sword to Prytania Street. “Let me tell you something. If he out yonder is your prize exhibit for the progress of the human race in the past three thousand years, then all I can say is that I am content to be fading out of the picture. Perhaps we are a biological sport. I am not sure. But one thing I am sure of: we live by our lights, we die by our lights, and whoever the high gods may be, we’ll look them in the eye without apology.” Now my aunt swivels around to face me and not so bad-humoredly. “I did my best for you, son. I gave you all I had. More than anything I wanted to pass on to you the one heritage of the men of our family, a certain quality of spirit, a gaiety, a sense of duty, a nobility worn lightly, a sweetness, a gentleness with women — the only good things the South ever had and the only things that really matter in this life. Ah well. Still you can tell me one thing. I know you’re not a bad boy — I wish you were. But how did it happen that none of this ever meant anything to you? Clearly it did not. Would you please tell me? I am genuinely curious.”

I cannot tear my eyes from the sword. Years ago I bent the tip trying to open a drawer. My aunt looks too. Does she suspect?

“That would be difficult for me to say. You say that none of what you said ever meant anything to me. That is not true. On the contrary. I have never forgotten anything you ever said. In fact I have pondered over it all my life. My objections, though they are not exactly objections, cannot be expressed in the usual way. To tell the truth, I can’t express them at all.”

“I see. Do you condone your behavior with Kate?”

“Condone?” Condone. I screw up an eye. “I don’t suppose so.”

“You don’t suppose so.” My aunt nods gravely, almost agreeably, in her wry legal manner. “You knew that Kate was suicidal?”

“No.”

“Would you have cared if Kate had killed herself?”

“Yes.”

After a long silence she asks: “You have nothing more to say?”

I shake my head.

Mercer opens the door and sticks his head in, takes one whiff of the air inside, and withdraws immediately.

“Then tell me this. Yes, tell me this!” my aunt says, brightening as, groping, she comes at last to the nub of the matter. “Tell me this and this is all I shall ever want to know. I am assuming that we both recognize that you had a trust toward Kate. Perhaps my assumption was mistaken. But I know that you knew she was taking drugs. Is that not correct?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that she was taking drugs during this recent trip?”

“Yes.”

“And you did what you did?”

“Yes.”

“That is all you have to say?”

I am silent. Mercer starts the waxer. It was permission for this he sought. I think of nothing in particular. A cry goes up in the street outside, and there comes into my sight the Negro my aunt spoke of. He is Cothard, the last of the chimney sweeps, an outlandish blueblack Negro dressed in a frock coat and bashed-in top hat and carrying over his shoulder a bundle of palmetto leaves and brown straw. The cry comes again. “ R-r-r-ramonez la chiminée du haut en bas!”

“One last question to satisfy my idle curiosity. What has been going on in your mind during all the years when we listened to music together, read the Crito, and spoke together — or was it only I who spoke — good Lord, I can’t remember — of goodness and truth and beauty and nobility?”