Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

He winced at the idea, as if it had been something physical. He knew what she would think. He knew what he would think himself. The next meeting between them would be more painful than he could bear. She would be subdued, silent, hurt, forgiving; she would say nothing about it; neither would he; but there it would be, a kind of ominous shadow. They would be embarrassed and silent; they would talk about other things, but with a horrible sense of not talking about the thing that most mattered to them.… And it might well be that the delicate balance between them would never again be quite as fine as it had been before.

Perhaps there was something wrong with him. Perhaps, as Kit had kept saying, it was simply that he wasn’t mature about it. What did it matter? Men and women were profoundly different about these things—much better to face this fact and make the most of it or the best of it. Was there no romanticism in men? none at all?—or at any rate in the average man? Or was it true that in men the romanticism could exist side by side with this extraordinary “something else”? This queer, bare, hideous propagative instinct, which of course must have a sort of “tribe” sanction?

Frowning, he went slowly down the stairs and out to his car, which he had left in the drive at the side of the house. Fortunately, nobody was about. Mother was playing bridge at the golf club, Father hadn’t come home yet from town. He drove slowly down the Avenue, took an extra turn round the Square, for no particular reason, and then got out and went into the apartment house in which Kit lived.

Kit had the cocktails all ready. Bacardi, and lots of it.

“These will put you right,” Kit said. He gave the frosted shaker an extra rattle, and poured the frothed and pinkish liquid into two green glasses. “Here’s to everything, God included. Bottoms up. Here’s to Gay and Tom and all the little Gays and Toms.”

“Fortune.”

Kit smacked his lips.

“Pretty good, if I do say so myself. Why in hell, Tom, do you have to get into such a funk about it? They’re all good eggs, you know. They won’t hurt you. It’ll be a good party, if you take it right. Here, have another. There are three apiece.”

Feeling the glow in his belly, Tom walked to the window and looked down at the street. A balloon man was passing, with his bobbing cluster of multicolored bubbles. A small fox terrier circled the balloon man rapidly and suspiciously, then sped westward with an air of urgent destiny. A lot of sparrows were chattering in a tree.

“I suppose,” he said, without turning, “I’m a sentimentalist. And of course I’m also, as you know, unsocial. To begin with, I hate, really hate, the god-awful publicity of the wedding ceremony; it’s practically like going to bed in the middle of Boston Common. Does it seem decent to you? It certainly doesn’t to me.… And as for this damned bachelor supper—that’s worse and more of it. Do you know what I suspect?”

Kit shook the cocktail shaker again, listening to the rattle of ice with his head amusedly on one side.

“No. Don’t tell me you’ve gone paranoid under the strain, and suspect us all of some deep plot against you!… You take life too hard.”

“You bet I do.”

“Well, don’t.… But tell me what you suspect.”

They looked at each other, smiling. The light curtains blew inward from the window on a warm current of air, and the room seemed suddenly to fill with the voices of the sparrows. The sound was multitudinous, idiotic, like life itself. But how was one to say it? Or how was one to be sure that it wouldn’t simply be laughed at?

He looked aside, feeling almost guilty at the doubt—guilty and helpless; as if the constellation of his thought were as incommunicable and unanalyzable as that absurd chorus of little voices; as if one were to try to present, atom by separate atom, an ocean, or the world. Would Kit, with two cocktails fuming in his brain, grasp this idea, or all that depended on it?

“Oh, I don’t know,” he murmured, with conscious inadequacy. And then, a feeling of obligation overcoming him, a fear of hurting Kit’s feelings, “It’s like this.… You know some of those African tribes have a peculiar marriage custom. You know what it is?…”

“I can’t say I do.”

“Every man-jack in the tribe lies with the bride—before the husband is allowed to have her. I daresay you’ve heard of it. What’s the idea behind it? It’s not very pretty.… A sort of communal business: as if the tribe were itself taking possession of the woman by defiling her; humbling the bridegroom and putting him in his place. It certainly ought to cure him of any fine romantic notions about love, and blast out of him any notion of exclusive proprietorship in his woman! Oughtn’t it? Assuming that African tribes have any romantic notions!… Just imagine what the bridegroom must feel about it.”

“I very much doubt if he feels a damned thing.”

“Maybe not, if he’s completely tribal-minded. But suppose he’s a little bit of an individualist—and after all, it’s exactly through such preliminary outcroppings of individualism that civilization has developed—and wants to indulge in his own unique reactions to the world or God or whatever you want to call it, in his own way, without any pawings and meddlings and bellowings from the herd. Suppose he has his own little vision of beauty, if you like, and doesn’t want it spat upon by the village fathers. He has this little secret something-or-other in his heart or soul, and it’s damned precious to him. What’s he going to feel about it then ?”

Kit frowned, holding the palm of his hand against the top of the shaker. He was standing in a characteristic attitude, with one foot crossed over the other. His face was flushed, and he looked puzzled.

“You’re getting a little deep,” he said. “And yet I see what you mean. Sure, I see what you mean. It would be kind of nasty.… Have another?”

Tom held out his glass; Kit smiled and poured.

“Nasty is the word. And that’s what a bachelor supper is.”

“Don’t kid me!”

“No kidding. I mean it.”

Kit began to laugh—as if on the assumption that the whole thing was perhaps a rather amusing extravaganza—but then apparently thought better of it. He put the cocktail shaker on the mantelpiece beside a gilt-porcelain snuff-box. Then he rubbed his hand across his forehead.

“I had a couple of these before you came,” he said. “So I’m ahead of you. Life is damned funny.”

“The hell you say.”

“For God’s sake, Tom, you don’t mean you take all that seriously? Snap out of it. What the devil does it matter? Sometimes I really think you’re psychopathic.”

“Don’t make me tired. I thought you were intelligent enough to understand it. Or sensitive enough to feel it. My mistake.”

He moved to the table, to put down his glass, and felt his first step waver slightly. His second was firmer, and he felt that his wavering had been quite unobserved. Kit was in no state to observe. The curtains lifted inward again, undulating, and something in his mind lifted and undulated in the same fashion. It was April, and such things were suitable. It would have been a nice evening for a walk or drive with Gay. To Concord or Lexington. Past that little knoll where the peach trees were always first in bloom.… Odd, how difficult, not to say impossible, it had been to discuss all this with Kit. And it had been the same way with Gay. He had thought of telling her about it—his shrinking from the supper—his feeling of contamination in the very idea of it—he had even begun to choose the phrases for it; but then, all of a sudden, he had become tongue-tied. Even in the talking about it something precious would be lost. The whole affair was so delicately balanced, so emotionally precarious.…