Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“I’d have given five dollars, cash of the realm, to have heard the remarks of Miss Geraldine Farrar on this highly interesting occasion. In fact, had I been the General, I’d have taken my chances with the French.”

“Little temperamental, hey?”

“Some girl.”

He glanced through the brochure, then wanted to know more about my wound. I told him it was above the knee, on the outside, and had required plenty of surgery, massage, and heat. “Are you all right now?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I wanted to say more, but nothing would come out of my mouth. He closed his eyes for a while, then said: “Jack, I’m going to die.”

“Hey, quit talking like that!”

“I have angina pectoris, which in Latin means agony of the chest, the most painful way in nature that a man can go. That I can face, or hope I can. But — I ruined my life.”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“There were those who could have said it.”

“Did they?”

“If they didn’t, they forebore.”

“Are you talking about my mother?”

“I’m talking about a good many things, some of them hard to talk about, some of them hidden and obscure and shameful, almost impossible to talk about. I’m trying to say, what I’ve done to my life I don’t want you to do to yours.”

“Oh well, I probably have.”

“What are you talking about? It’s hardly begun.”

“It’s half lived. I’m thirty-five.”

“It’s a matter of youth, and it’s in your eye. Your face is battered and seamed and hurt, but the look of a boy is still on it.”

“I interrupted you.”

“There are things I want to tell you.”

“O.K., shoot.”

“... Jack, I can’t talk to the man who says: ‘O.K., shoot,’ and he doesn’t want to talk to me. Why deceive ourselves? Your tongue is as paralyzed as mine. We live under the curse of the inarticulate, some horrible murky screen that’s always been between us. Think of it, it’s thirteen years this fall, since you left this house, and yet, when I ask what you’ve been doing, you tell me ‘this and that.’”

“I’ve been doing a lot of things.”

“I know, lots and lots.”

“Some things I’m not proud of.”

“I know of them.”

“... What do you mean, you know of them?”

“Rumors reached me.”

“Rumors?”

“Let us say, inquiries.”

I don’t know how long I sat there, blinking at him, but after a while I said: “All right, I had some trouble with the police. Just once, on mistaken identification. You bat around like I did, you can have. What did they ask you about me?”

“When you went into the Army, telegrams were sent me, and I answered them. I’m not interested in your police record. I’ve one of my own, it may surprise you to learn. I got into a brawl on O’Connell Street one night, and before I was done with it they had me in Dublin Castle and some filthy jail, and it was days before I was done with it, and was out. It’s not important, and it’s been years since I thought of it. But the frilled shirt on the statue of George III, but a few blocks up the street, in the old Grattan’s Parliament Room of the Bank of Ireland, that’s important, and it’s of such things I’d like to talk to you about. Think of it, every thread, every knot, every flower, is hewn from the virgin marble, with the light showing through every tiny opening, and one mislick with a tool could have ruined it. John Bacon spent years on it, and even then died before it was done, and his son, John Bacon, Jr., had to finish it. It’s a trivial conception, like engraving the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin, and yet it represents one man’s consecration, and a second man’s acceptance of it, to an ideal, and has sustained me at times when I thought about it. I’m not talking of jails, or police, or incidental things. I’m talking of fundamentals, of what men believe in, and dedicate their lives to, of what your heart dreams of, and may yet have, and what mine wanted, and lost.”

“Threw away, I’ve heard said.”

“Aye.”

That had slipped out on me, but the quick way he agreed to it set me back on my heels, and for some time nothing was said. Then: “You did big things, Jack — or so I was told.”

“Anyhow, I was proud of them.”

“Are you still?”

“I don’t know. They’re a closed chapter.”

“But they were big?”

“The blues were a million dollars. I call that big.”

“And I. If for no other reason, I can understand that you were proud. The man doesn’t live, though he damn it and denounce it, who doesn’t think a million dollars is a matter for pride, and I agree with Julius Caesar, who once boasted he lacked fifteen million sesterces of having nothing at all, that even such a debt is something in the nature of an accomplishment. I now make you an overture. I should like to hear more about it.”

“That I can’t tell you.”

“Why not, if the ice is broken?”

“I’ve no gift for words, Dad. I’d tell the brawl on O’Connell Street and leave out the statue of George III. I’d tell the what, and leave out the why.”

“I’ve had similar trouble, trying to piece together what happened to me. Because on the face of it I was a fool, as were Brutus, Columbus, Burr, Davis, Bryan, and all the misfits of history. And yet when somebody takes one of these, an Othello, a Macbeth, a Hamlet, a George III if you like, and carves a little deeper than the world’s eye sees, he achieves something not possible with heroes. I believe it to be no accident, Jack, that the world’s great literature is peopled by a swarm and rabble and motley of a hundred-per-cent heels.”

“I should fascinate.”

“And I.”

The flicker of a smile passed between us, one of the few we’d ever had. He said: “And Jack, these medals didn’t come by cultivating the colonel’s good regards. You’ve been places only a brave man would venture into.”

“Who’s brave? If you’re really brave you’re a fool. If you’re not you’re a fake. I’ve saluted brave men, but they were dead.”

“There was a battle once, Jack, in what this country calls the Revolutionary War, fought in the South, at a place called the Pens, or Cowpens, as the town is now named. It’s lovingly studied by the military men, as General Daniel Morgan, the American, defeated General Banastre Tarleton, the Englishman, in a battle of decisive consequence. The point of interest is that Morgan disposed his green men, with reference to the terrain, so they couldn’t run and had to fight. ’Twas the last word in cynicism, the disbelief in heroism and glory and the colors of a parade, but I’ve often wondered if it didn’t summarize most what’s known of courage and war.”

“I’ve run. Or as we say now, ducked.”

“And lived to fight another day, I see.”

“Anyway, I’m here.”

“Jack, it’s melted a bit. Our barrier.”

“Then fine.”

“But not completely. I don’t think it will. And yet, I’ve hit on a plan that may help. That will help us both, if you like it.”

“Which is?”

“Write it.”

“Who — me?”

“Well, in my condition, hardly I.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll never learn grammar.”

“The American distrusts it, for its exactitude, which he associates with theology and metaphysics and logic, and identifies with superficiality. I don’t say he’s not right, but I’m a Trinity College man myself, and had as lief drop egg on my waistcoat as split an infinitive. I don’t wholly accept the American canon. Yet it’s wholly distinctive and I hope you don’t hesitate on that account. Never forget, the foreign colony, during the Civil War, looked down on Mr. Lincoln because of his uncouthness of speech. The greatest literary genius who ever sat in the White House, which is indeed a title — and the precisionists voted him down. Can you quote one phrase ever uttered by the minister from the Court of St. James during this memorable administration? Do you even know who he was?”