Pearl Buck - The Eternal Wonder

She broke off and sighed.

“But what?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice troubled, her face concerned, her eyes searching his face.

He yielded then, but uncertainly, word by word. He was compelled to tell her now that they were alone in the darkness of the night. He was compelled to share the weight of his memory of the night before, when Donald Sharpe had suddenly become a stranger from whom he must escape.

“Last night—,” he began haltingly, and stopped.

“In Donald Sharpe’s house?” she asked.

“Yes, I was in his guestroom. I was asleep. We’d had a wonderful evening talking about science and art and which direction I might want to take. It was long after midnight before we noticed. Then he took me to my room and we said good night. He came in to see that everything was all right. Then he went away. He’d had his Filipino manservant put a pair of his white silk pajamas on the bed—a huge four-poster bed. After my bath I put them on. I’d never worn silk next to my skin before—so soft, so smooth… I fell asleep soon. I must have slept quite a long time. The fire was burning when I went to bed—very brightly when I turned off the bed light. There was a volume of Keats on the bedside table, I think, but I didn’t read. I just lay watching the fire die and I went to sleep. When I woke—”

He paused so long that she prompted him gently. “When you woke—”

He flung himself back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

“I was waked—”

“By him ?” she asked.

“By someone—smoothing my thighs—and then… touching me… there. I felt—response. I thought it was one of those dreams—you know!”

“Yes, I know,” she said, her voice very low.

“It wasn’t a dream. By the light of a newly lighted fire I could see his face. I felt his hands… compelling me—against my will. I hated myself. I leaped out of bed. I was so angry—at myself, Mother! How can the body respond to what one hates and finds disgusting and repulsive? I was frightened—at myself , Mother!”

There—he had told her. He had put it into words. It would never again be a secret he had to carry alone. He lay, his hands clasped behind his head, he opened his eyes and met her tender, pitying gaze.

“Oh the poor, poor man!” she whispered.

He was astounded. “You’re sorry for him ?”

“And who could not be sorry for him?” she retorted. “He’s in need of love where he can never find it—never truly find it because it’s against human nature. Male and female God created us, and when a poor man tries to find that love with a man or a boy, he’s doomed to sorrowfulness. However he excuses himself saying that to love and be loved is the importance in life, he knows he’ll only find a poor warped sort of love. It’s like a male dog mounting a male dog. There’s no fulfillment. Oh yes, it’s him I’m sorry for, my son. Thank God you weren’t a little boy, beguiled by a toy or an ice-cream cone or something—perhaps just fear or even pleasure. Thank God you were old enough.”

“But myself, Mother… how could I—my—my body respond to his… touch… when I hated it? That’s what frightened me.”

“Don’t blame yourself, son. You didn’t respond. The body has its own mechanism. You’ve learned a lesson—your body has its separate being and your mind, your will, must be in control, ceaselessly, until the time when it is right for body to have its way. Oh, how I wish your father were here to explain such things to you!”

“I understand already,” he said, his voice very low.

“Then you must forgive Donald Sharpe,” she said resolutely. “To forgive is understanding.”

“Mother, I can’t go back to school here.”

“No, I can see that. Let’s take a bit of time, though, to think. You could stay home a day or two. We mustn’t decide too fast just where is the right place.”

He sighed. “So long as you see I must go away—”

“We’ll agree on that,” she said. She leaned over him and kissed his forehead. “Now I can sleep, and you must sleep too.”

She closed the door softly, and he lay for a few minutes, relieved of his anger, his shame, his sense of guilt. Though he felt now he never wanted to see Donald Sharpe again, he felt also a loss. He would miss him in spite of all. There had been communion between them, and he had supposed it would last forever. Now he felt a loss, a desolation. Who was his friend? His mother, of course, but he needed more. He needed friends.

Lying alone in his bed, his hands clasped behind his head on his pillow, he remembered a warning his father had given him shortly before he died. With his gift of envisioning, he remembered. He was sitting beside his father, lying on the living-room couch. His father’s voice was weak, for he was near the end of his life and they both knew it. He knew, too, that his father was trying to tell him in that short time before death came that which he needed years to tell—the years that were not to be.

“You will be solitary, my son. The solitary creator is the source of all creation. He has produced all the most important ideas and works of art in human history. Lonely creators—you will be one of those. Never complain of being lonely. You are born to be lonely. But the world needs the solitary creator. Remember that. One-man creation—it shows that above all you are capable of greatness. What inspiration!”

LYING IN HIS BED, SLEEPLESS, he reviewed his life as he could remember it, a brief life in years, but somehow old. He had read so many books, he had thought so many thoughts, his mind constantly teeming with ideas—and here, with his ability to visualize, he suddenly remembered the goldfish in the pool under a willow tree in the garden, and how in the first warm days of spring when the sun shone, the water was moving and alive with flashing gold as the fish swarmed out of the mud where they had sheltered during the winter. That, so he thought, was a living picture of his mind, always flashing and moving with glittering thoughts, pushing for exploration. He was often exhausted by this mind of his from which he could find no rest except in sleep, and even his sleep was brief, though deep. Sometimes his mind waked him by its own activity. He envisioned his brain as a being separate from himself, a creature he must live with, an enchantment but also a burden. What was he born for? What was the meaning and the purpose? Why was he different from, say, Chris? He had not seen Chris since that brief visit shortly before his father had died. Some two years had passed since, years during which he had been pushing his way through college. Now, before he began again in some other place, if he began again, it occurred to him to go and find Chris, in curiosity and with a desire to return, however briefly, to the past. His mind thus resolved itself and allowed him at last to sleep.

“HI,” CHRIS SAID, COMING OUT of the garage. “What can I do for you?”

“Don’t you know me?” he asked.

Chris stared at him. “I don’t recollect you.”

“Have I changed so much? I’m Rannie—Rann, nowadays.”

Chris’s face, grown round with added weight of years and food, broke into a grin.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said slowly, “I’ll just be damned. But you’re twice as tall as you was. You sure have shot up.”

‘‘Like my father,” he said. “Remember how tall and thin he was?”

Chris looked concerned. “Say, I sure was sorry to hear about him. Come on in. I don’t get real busy until around noon when the trucks come in on their way to New York.”

He followed Chris into the garage. They sat down. “I’m the owner now,” Chris said, trying to be offhand.