John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

He was trying to pace back and forth in the bedroom now, and it was difficult. The room was small, the double bed enormous. On one side the bed pressed up against the wall, on the other it stood only a foot and a half from the dresser. At the foot of the bed the highboy began, and it went halfway across the foot, then gave way to a four-by-six empty space, or a space that would have been empty except for the chair and the sewing machine. If he were more conscious of his surroundings just now, Benson would have moved something. But he was lost in anguished thought, so he merely squeezed between the dresser and the bed, went as far as the window, turned around and squeezed back toward the sewing machine, squeezed around behind it to the closet door, then turned back toward the sewing machine, the dresser and bed, the window.

He remembered very clearly the sense of wholeness and purity he had felt the night of the thunderstorm, sitting in the abandoned house and swearing he would change his life, but he also saw now, as he had not seen then, the other side of the nickel, so to speak. Shame, the loss of his worldly possessions, perhaps even prison. He shuddered.

He sat down on the bed abruptly and hunted through his bathrobe pockets for a Kleenex. He could find only one which had to be carefully unfolded and hadn’t a dry place anywhere. He blew his nose. He saw the corner of a Parade Magazine peeking out from under the bed and he reached for it and opened it up and sat perfectly motionless, as though he were back in jail, pretending to read it. Now his mind was a blank. He couldn’t read a word, but the pinked edge of the paper, the blurry, luminously red black print, the colored pictures steadied him. And then, for no reason, he was seeing once again the Indian boy and the Batavia Chief of Police, the pistol going crack! against the boy’s fat brown jaw. Benson’s hands shook. He remembered the guard with his head blown half off, slumping to the floor and reaching out slowly, out of all control, with the involuntary-looking movement of a penis or a snake. The opposition came suddenly clear to him — the violent, lawless bearded man, the violent policeman. It was, he saw with unspeakable clarity, a picture of his life. He, in the shape of Walter Benson, had been about to murder in cold blood the young man who had been toying with his wife’s affections!

He leaped to his feet and began to pace again, rubbing his nose painfully and gnashing his teeth and gesturing with his left hand. A man could not be both Benson and Boyle. It was more than confusing, it was immoral! He stopped in his tracks, struck by a thought even more telling. What had he ever gotten out of life anyhow, as Boyle? The men who cleaned the sewers got more money than Boyle, and got retirement pay when they were old. Even the Chief of Police would get retirement pay! His knees were suddenly weak and he had to sit down.

That moment Marguerite peeked in and said timidly, “Would you care for some tea, Walter?”

Instantly, his face squeezed shut and tears ran down his cheeks and he held out his arms to her. “Marguereed!” He wailed.

Her eyes grew round and she came in hurriedly with the tray. “My poor baby!” she exclaimed.

But he could not tell her what was troubling him. He hardly knew himself. Old age. Poverty. His terrible jealousy and something more than that, too, his awful sense of something wasted — a misspent youth, a betrayal of ideals. Waste.

“I don’d wan’ any tea,” he said. His mouth and eyes turned down and he sobbed and sobbed and clung to her hand. Afterward, he slept and she slipped downstairs to clean up a little bit.

When he awakened at suppertime he felt no better. He got out of bed, however, and put on his checkered light blue suit. He had a vague intention of drowning his miseries at a movie or walking in the park or looking through the bars of the locked-up Buffalo Zoo. Marguerite said nothing when he came out all shaved and dressed up. It was as if she’d expected it, more or less, and he tried to think if there was somewhere they usually went on whatever night this was (Wednesday? Friday?). But that was nonsense. Where did they ever go, he and Marguerite?

He stood in the kitchen with his head tipped back almost to his hump, taking nosedrops while Marguerite finished the cooking, then followed her in to the dining room while she set the table and laid out the napkins, looking up at him and smiling meekly from time to time. He carried in the food. When everything was ready she went to the foot of the stairs and called, “Oh Mr. Nuper! Dinner is served.”

There was some bumping and scuffing, and then he came bounding down the stairs, agile as a tiger, his curly long hair flopping around his ears, a cigarette in his mouth. He had an armload of signs with him, and the one on top said BLACK POWER. Benson frowned.

“You’re going out tonight, Mr. Nuper?” Marguerite said.

He nodded, almost bowed. “A meeting, yes.” He rubbed his hands. “Scalped potatoes!” he said.

“And Spam,” Benson said.

Marguerite looked at him, wounded. Just the same, it was Spam. Truth is truth.

2

Dinner was eventful.

Marguerite said, “What kind of meeting is it you’re going to, Mr. Nuper?”

“A demonstration, sort of,” Mr. Nuper said. He was leaning down way over his plate, sliding the scalloped potatoes in with his fork.

Benson pursed his lips and looked at him, and the paperback book that had been on the table came back into his mind. “Against what?” he said.

Something in his tone gave him away, so that Nuper said only, in a clipped sort of way, “For, not against.”

Benson squinted and wrinkled his nose. “For overthrowing the Goverdment, maybe? Throwing bombs into rich beople’s houses?”

“Not a bad idea,” Nuper said, grinning an instant, then scooping in potatoes and staring straight ahead of him at the wall between Walter and Marguerite.

Marguerite said, “Boys.”

“I dode believe in demonstrations, myself,” Benson said. He meant to leave it at that. He could feel the blood rising in his neck. He cut himself a small bite of Spam.

“I thought not,” Nuper said.

Benson flushed. “Because I’be rich? Because I’be got a little money in the bank?” It occurred to him that that was not exactly true.

Nuper glanced at him — just a flick of the eyes — then away. “Oh come on,” he said. “Let’s forget it.” It was a gesture of charity, Benson would know later. Nuper was a pro at this kind of thing, Benson merely a passionate ignoramus.

“Young people,” Benson sneered. He hunched his shoulders and cut his Spam into tiny pieces as if it were Nuper’s heart. “They think they ode the world. They think the whole world odes them a living. Eat, dring, add be merry, that’s all they do. Run aroudd half-naked and dance rock-n-roll and complain about the Goverdment and take drugs and have riots and whine about the Atom Bobb and play guitars—”

“Walter!” Marguerite said.

He chewed angrily.

There was a silence, and then both Nuper and Walter Benson spoke at once.

They both broke off, and each of them waited for the other one to speak first. They were both still staring straight ahead in white-hot fury, chewing, forking in the food.

“Would someone please pass the rolls?” Marguerite said.

They both reached. Nuper deferred.

Nuper said in a conciliating tone, “Actually, if one looks closely at the school districts in Buffalo — if one examines the character of each school — one makes the discovery that the schools are monolithic. That is to say, segregated. As the Supreme Court has stated in no uncertain terms, separate but equal is a logical contradiction. Do you believe a Negro child has a right to an education?”