Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“You are not what is called ’a good Catholic,’ are you?” the old man asked suddenly.

Surprise me no surprises, I thought. “I try to be,” I said.

“Do you?” he said. “I watched you before. You fumbled with the rituals.”

“I’m a convert, Grand Master. It’s still somewhat new to me.”

“I hope there has been no mistake in making this marriage.”

“Because I didn’t make the sign of the Cross smoothly?”

“You made it very smoothly,” he said.

Runs deep, I thought. Familiar type. Recognize him from literature. Marvelous when you meet him in life. Grand Master, Grand Inquisitor. Grand. Lee J. Cobb plays him in the picture. Good guy or bad? Hard to tell. But, I thought, that’s it. To be like that. That’s the ideal. Cryptic wisdom. Talk like a double acrostic. Never raise your voice when you shout. Spiritual politics. Run scared. Every day a new election. Move! Manipulate! Mold! Power the still center at the core of motion. That’s it. That’s it. Seen everything, been there before; nothing new under the sun. Past so long you’re already immortal. Never sick a day in your life but always in pain. Anguish in the smell of a rose. Heart, strategies, philosophy. Wisdom, the black art!

So much for you. It boils down to death, statistics. Everybody dies. Death is my argument. Leave me alone.

“My wife”—he would understand the thrust—“ My wife has told me that you are angry about the settlement. I’ll try to explain it to you.”

“The settlement is a matter of indifference to me,” the Grand Master said.

“Of course,” I said. “I understand that. She has made me a wealthy man. That part was her idea, anyway. I know you don’t object to that — you don’t care who has the wealth as long as someone has it. I think perhaps it’s The Club you’re interested in.”

I began to explain about The Club.

The truth is we haven’t caught on. We are so lonely. Margaret asks, Are we happy, and the question makes me furious and sad. I put her off with a joke. I read our bank balance. I point to the carpet and indicate its thickness with my forefinger and thumb. I bring her to the kitchen and show her our meats.

I tell Margaret that she is my war bride. The fact is she seemed actually to diminish when we went through customs. The man asked if we had anything to declare and Margaret stared at him as if she didn’t understand the question. When he asked again she looked at me and I thought she would cry.

“No, nothing,” I said. “We have nothing to declare.” You know how it is when you make a mistake.

I can’t explain it. We are out of touch. Not with each other, but mutually, with everything.

Hawthorne tells a story about a man named Wakefield who left his home one evening and didn’t return for twenty years. His act was a whim, unpremeditated, but it made no difference; if he had come back a week later it would already have been too late. One must never break the rhythm of his life. You stay in lockstep or you suffer. Every vacation is an upheaval. I have seen men at the seashore whose free time is the most grotesque of burdens. They are haunted by the idea of things going on without them, of someone at the office doing their job, opening their mail, answering their phone. It’s an intimation of death. You have to make a life, however grab-bag or eccentric; there has to be routine, pattern. I’ve failed there. Something about my life gives my life away, something improvised and sad. At my dinner parties there are mismatched dishes, chairs, plastic spoons. I was better off alone, I think. There was desperation to keep me going. It’s all what you’re used to. For me running scared is the only way to travel. Poor is what I know best, and there are times when I can almost taste the old degradation of the bones — ten minutes for a rest stop, pee, spit, and regret, talking to the driver beside the big open underbelly of the bus where the cardboard suitcase goes, the box tied up with string.

I’ll tell you what’s wrong with me. I don’t know what to tip. A grown man!

There are “executive flights” now and I am on them and there is always monogrammed linen and the best booze in my attaché case, but the truth is I was never less attaché. I have heard the stewardesses singing each to each, I do not think that they will sing to me.

Well, the grass is never greener, I always say. The course of true life never did run smooth.

When as a child I was home ill everything was fine until the others came back and I heard their voices and laughter outside. Then something would happen inside me, in my heart, and I’d have to get up and shut the window. To this day the most awful sound for me is a conversation overheard, people talking to each other in a restaurant at the next table, behind me on a bus. I swear, sometimes I feel already like a ghost.

For me envy isn’t a sin, it seems, but a fact. I need it to live, like air. Sometimes I think, If I’d lived more to the purpose… Crap! Who has lived more to the purpose than myself? No; disappointment, like rotten fruit, is always the last thing left in the larder. Things pall. The world’s appalling. A’palling. It goes like a song.

Each day the conviction grows. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’ll tell you how far it’s gone: I’ve stopped smoking; there are seatbelts in my automobiles; I will not have phosphorescent dials on my clocks; I watch my cholesterol; I am wary of air-conditioning. All that can be done I do. It means nothing. Nothing.

For a year we lived like tourists in our own city. We went to all the shows, the movies, the museums, the public buildings. Three times we went on the boat around Manhattan island, five times to the top of the Empire State Building. For a sense of belonging we took out library cards. We joined the clubs that send you merchandise or books. Making our fastidious choices provided us with the illusion of will. Margaret learned to cook. I learned nothing.

I sent money to my son’s grandmother, enclosing with the checks long letters. I wanted my boy, I said, and outlined the advantages I could bestow upon him now. When she opposed my plans I was glad, for that allowed me to continue to compose the letters. Like the book clubs, these gave me the illusion of somehow shaping a domesticity. Something ritualistic had been absent from my life always, I recognized, was absent still. I made a conscious effort to live as others lived, but I noticed that whenever I did the things other people did, I felt strangely incognito — as if, like all orphans, I was ultimately at home only in the homes of others. It cannot be good for me to have an address, my own phone number. I have been too long bizarre. Domestic dibbuks have claimed me. Ah, I think, reality flattens everything, despite its being good for us. (One must come to grips, they say. If they mean I must embrace pain, that’s redundant. What the hell isn’t reality; who doesn’t face up to it?)

I had my ruses; they were legion. Sometimes I read the obituaries in newspapers for the opportunity they gave me of further rituals. In my files there is an example. From the Times of October 19, 1960:

ELWORTHAM. On October 18, 1960, peacefully, in his sleep, at his home, 143 Bell Avenue, Brooklyn, Edward J. Elwortham, aged 59. Beloved husband of Frances, dear father of Robert. Funeral service 11:30 A.M., Friday, October 20, 1960. Phizer’s Chapel, 71 Avenue C, Brooklyn, N.Y. No flowers.

The feeling with which I wrote Mrs. Elwortham was not faked. It was almost as though I had indeed known him as I said. I even signed my name.

I wrote:

Dear Mrs. Elwortham,

Words cannot express the deep sense of shock I experienced when I read Thursday of Edward’s death. We haven’t met, Mrs. Elwortham. Of recent years Edward and I had drifted apart, as even best friends do, and we saw each other only infrequently, but Edward was a friend of my youth, and I have thought of him often over the years. No words of mine can ease the grief I know you must be experiencing now. Edward was a good man. His absence will be keenly felt by all who knew him. I can only pray that time, that old healer, will do its job to assuage your and Robert’s pain.