Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
Photography
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”— Aaron Siskind
Suborn
Suborn means "to persuade (someone) to do something
illegal (such as to lie in a court of law)." It can also mean "to
obtain (false testimony) from a witness by persuasion."
The lawyer attempted to
suborn the witness.
The prosecutor was
guilty of suborning false testimony.
Suborn is from Latin
subornare, which translates literally as "to secretly furnish or
equip." The sub- that brings the "secretly" meaning to subornare
more commonly means "under" or "below," but it has its
stealthy meaning in the etymologies of several other English words, including
surreptitious (from sub- and rapere, meaning "to seize") and the verb
suspect (from sub- or sus- and specere, meaning "to look at"). The
ornare (meaning "to furnish") of subornare is also at work in the
words ornate, adorn, and ornament.
Fitzgerald
She was beautiful, but not like
those girls in the magazines. She was beautiful, for the way she thought. She
was beautiful, for the sparkle in her eyes when she talked about something she
loved. She was beautiful, for her ability to make other people smile even if
she was sad. No, she wasn’t beautiful for something as temporary as her looks.
She was beautiful, deep down to her soul.
Pinocchio
Disney’s Pinocchio inspiration came from a much darker story in the original novel published in 1883 called The Adventures of Pinocchio, a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi.
In the book form, a wood woodcarver
creates wooden puppet he names Pinocchio. The puppet immediately begins
verbally abusing his the wood maker and once his feet are made, he runs away.
The wood maker runs after him and eventually catches him but is arrested by the
police.
Pinocchio returns home.
When his talking cricket back talks him he murders it with a hammer.
Pinocchio then befriends a
fox and a cat who trick him into paying for an expensive dinner and then try to
kill him in an attempt to steal some money he earned. So he killed the cat and the
fox.
After almost being used for firewood, he is saved at the last minute by a fairy with blue hair, when he lies to her, his nose grows.
Pinocchio eventually finds
himself in the belly of a shark, where, f0r some reason, the wood maker lives.
They are both saved by the blue haired fairy, who finally grants his wish of
being a real boy.
While I know that Hollywood does as much harm as it does good, the words that actor Matthew McConaughey spoke while accepting an award for best supporting actor, are worth repeating.
There's a few things -- about three things, to my count, that I need each day. One of them is something to look up to; another is something to look forward to; and another is someone to chase.
Now, first off I want to
thank God because that's who I look up. He's graced my life with opportunities
that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand. He has shown me that
it's a scientific fact that gratitude reciprocates. In the words of the late
Charlie Laughton who said, "When you got God, you got a friend, and that
friend is you."
To my family -- that's who
and what I look forward to:
To my father, who I know
he's up there right now with a big pot of gumbo; he's got a lemon meringue pie
over there; he's probably in his underwear, and he's got a cold can of Miller
Lite and he's dancing right now. To you dad -- you taught what it means to be a
man.
To my mother, who's here
tonight, who taught me and my two older brothers -- demanded -- that we respect
ourselves. And what we in turn learned was then we were better able to respect
others. Thank you for that, Mama."
To my wife, Camila, and my
kids, Levi, Vida, and Mr. Stone, the courage and significance you give me every
day I go out the door is unparalleled. You are the four people in my life that
I want to make the most proud of me. Thank you.
And to my hero, that's who
I chase. Now when I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life
come to me and say "Who's your hero?" And I said, "I don't know.
I gotta think about that. Give me a couple of weeks." I come back two
weeks later -- this person comes up and says
"Who's your hero?" I said, "I thought about it. You know
who it is?" I said, "It's me in 10 years."
So I turned 25. Ten years
later, that same person comes to me and goes, "So are you a hero?"
And I was like, "Not even close. No, no, no." She said,
"Why?" I said, "Because my hero's me at 35." So you see
every day, every week, every month, and every year of my life, my hero's always
10 years away. I'm never gonna be my hero. I'm not gonna attain that. I know
I'm not, and that's just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to
keep on chasing.
So, to any of us, whatever
those things are, whatever it is we look up to, whatever it is we look forward
to, and whoever it is we're chasing -- to that I say, "Amen." To that
I say, "Alright, alright, alright." To that I say "Just keep
living."
Thank you.
What’s happening in American society is a transformation of one of the best aspects of America
What’s happening in
American society is a transformation of one of the best aspects of America and the
American people, it is the death of forgiveness, it is almost the death of
second chances. We have seen this death of forgiveness if you pay attention at
all to what's going on in the world. There are people in this country, that if
you make one mistake, they will try to end you, ruin you destroy you, cancel
you, they will never forgive you and they will smear you with your own mistake
forever. Even minor mistakes which they will use against you until the end of
time. They will make sure that whenever your name is broached, your mistake is
broached as well. They will have you noted and marked tainted. You are corrupt,
there's a mark on your soul that cannot be rubbed out no matter what you do,
you must live with your sin branded on your forehead.
Consider broadcaster Megan Kelly's
clumsy remarks on blackface. Her Twitter feed from now on, forever and always,
will be filled with people who will call her a racist even after she apologized, devoted an
entire show to trying to understand the issue deeper and sincerely understand
the issue, But it didn't matter. This is the new scarlet letter in digital form.
) Or consider comic Kevin Hart. He is forever associated with a joke he made about his son
potentially being gay. He was disinvited from hosting the Oscars for that joke,
a joke he made years prior. What are the real consequences of this death and
forgiveness? First people don't speak up, don't speak their mind, they are too
guarded. It happened when I was at university. I can vouch for this speaking up
as someone who is slightly conservative. I knew that speaking up always brought
risks. What if I misspeak? What if I'm thinking out loud searching for answers
and I say something wrong? Congratulations I just ruined my life.
Jordon Peterson
Olivia Arthur
Olivia Arthur (born 1980) is a British documentary photographer, based in London. She is a member of the Magnum Photos agency and has produced the books Jeddah Diary (2012) and Stranger (2015).
Originally studying mathematics
at Oxford University, Arthur later studied photojournalism at London College of
Printing
She became a nominee member of
Magnum Photos in 2008, an associate member in 2011, and a full member in 2013.
In 2010 Arthur co-founded
Fishbar, a publisher and space for photography in East London, with her husband
Philipp Ebeling
Her first book Jeddah Diary
(2012) is about the lives of young women in Saudi Arabia. Her second book
Stranger (2015) views Dubai through the eyes of the survivor of a shipwreck.
Publications
Publications by Arthur
Jeddah Diary. London: Fishbar, 2012. ISBN 978-0956995919.
Edition of 1000 copies
Stranger. London: Fishbar, 2015. ISBN 9780956995971. Edition
of 1000 copies
Marie-Claude Pietragalla
Pietragalla was born in Paris to a Coriscan
father and mother from Bordeaux. At 16, she joined the Ballet de l'Opera
National de Paris and was named étoile on 22 December 1990 after the
performance of Don Quixote in which she played the role of Kitri. In 1998, she
was appointed to the leadership of the National Ballet of Marseille, where she
remained five years. After a conflict, the dancers of the company obtained her
resignation.
She danced at the Opéra Bastille with Patrick
Dupond the "Swan Lake" (1992) and "Les Variations d'Ulysse"
(1995) under the direction of Jean-Claude Gallotta. In 1998 she received the
Prix Benois de la Danse. In 2000 she appeared in a one-woman show "Don't
look back", a solo performance created for her by Carolyn Carlson. In
October that year she introduced the ballet Sakountala that evokes the internal
struggle of the sculptor Camille Claudel with her own demons.
In 2002 she choreographed the show
"Enzo", a duo created for the show at the Olympia of Christophe
(Victoire de la Musique 2002).
In 2003 she choreographed the show
"Metamorphoses" for the dance school of Marseille. The same year she
also choreographed "Ni Dieu ni maître", a show about anarchist poet
and singer-songwriter Léo Ferré, which was presented first at the Théatre
Toursky in Marseille, then at the Olympia in Paris. The show was about music
and songs by Léo Ferré (and Elizabeth Cooper). She signed a new version of
"Don Quixote" (Minkus-Cooper).
Since 2004 she has run her own company, the
Pietragalla Company. In 2006 she presented a show called "Conditions
humaines". In 2007 she began her second year of residency at the
Nord-Pas-de-Calais and under the direction of Pierre Cardin created the
dance-drama "Sade ou le théâtre des fous". Presented first at the
castle of Lacoste in July 2007, this ballet was also given in February 2008 at
the Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris. In March 2009 she presented the show
"Marco Polo" at the Palais des Congrès in Paris.
To be of use—Marge Piercy
To be of use
BY MARGE PIERCY
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
For Esmé – with Love and Squalor by J. D. Salinger
Just recently, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that will take place in England on April 18th. It happens to be a wedding I'd give a lot to be able to get to, and when the invitation first arrived, I thought it might just be possible for me to make the trip abroad, by plane, expenses be hanged. However, I've since discussed the matter rather extensively with my wife, a breathtakingly levelheaded girl, and we've decided against it--for one thing, I'd completely forgotten that my mother-in-law is looking forward to spending the last two weeks in April with us. I really don't get to see Mother Grencher terribly often, and she's not getting any younger. She's fifty-eight. (As she'd be the first to admit.)
All the same, though, wherever I happen to be I
don't think I'm the type that doesn't even lift a finger to prevent a wedding
from flatting. Accordingly, I've gone ahead and jotted down a few revealing
notes on the bride as I knew her almost six years ago. If my notes should cause
the groom, whom I haven't met, an uneasy moment or two, so much the better.
Nobody's aiming to please, here. More, really, to edify, to instruct.
In April of 1944, I was among some sixty
American enlisted men who took a rather specialized pre-Invasion training
course, directed by British Intelligence, in Devon, England. And as I look
back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there
wasn't one good mixer in the bunch. We were all essentially letter-writing
types, and when we spoke to each other out of the line of duty, it was usually
to ask somebody if he had any ink he wasn't using. When we weren't writing
letters or attending classes, each of us went pretty much his own way. Mine
usually led me, on clear days, in scenic circles around the countryside. Rainy
days, I generally sat in a dry place and read a book, often just an axe length
away from a ping-pong table.
The training course lasted three weeks, ending
on a Saturday, a very rainy one. At seven that last night, our whole group was
scheduled to entrain for London, where, as rumor had it, we were to be assigned
to infantry and airborne divisions mustered for the D Day landings. By three in
the afternoon, I'd packed all my belongings into my barrack bag, including a
canvas gas-mask container full of books I'd brought over from the Other Side.
(The gas mask itself I'd slipped through a porthole of the Mauretania some
weeks earlier, fully aware that if the enemy ever did use gas I'd never get the
damn thing on in time.) I remember standing at an end window of our Quonset but
for a very long time, looking out at the slanting, dreary rain, my trigger finger
itching imperceptibly, if at all. I could hear behind my back the uncomradely
scratching of many fountain pens on many sheets of V-mail paper. Abruptly, with
nothing special in mind, I came away from the window and put on my raincoat,
cashmere muffler, galoshes, woollen gloves, and overseas cap (the last of
which, I'm still told, I wore at an angle all my own--slightly down over both
ears). Then, after synchronizing my wristwatch with the clock in the latrine, I
walked down the long, wet cobblestone hill into town. I ignored the flashes of
lightning all around me. They either had your number on them or they didn't.
In the center of town, which was probably the
wettest part of town, I stopped in front of a church to read the bulletin
board, mostly because the featured numerals, white on black, had caught my
attention but partly because, after three years in the Army, I'd become
addicted to reading bulletin boards. At three-fifteen, the board stated, there
would be children's-choir practice. I looked at my wristwatch, then back at the
board. A sheet of paper was tacked up, listing the names of the children
expected to attend practice. I stood in the rain and read all the names, then
entered the church.
A dozen or so adults were among the pews,
several of them bearing pairs of small-size rubbers, soles up, in their laps. I
passed along and sat down in the front row. On the rostrum, seated in three
compact rows of auditorium chairs, were about twenty children, mostly girls,
ranging in age from about seven to thirteen. At the moment, their choir coach,
an enormous woman in tweeds, was advising them to open their mouths wider when
they sang. Had anyone, she asked, ever heard of a little dickeybird that dared
to sing his charming song without first opening his little beak wide, wide,
wide? Apparently nobody ever had. She was given a steady, opaque look. She went
on to say that she wanted all her children to absorb the meaning of the words
they sang, not just mouth them, like silly-billy parrots. She then blew a note on
her pitch-pipe, and the children, like so many underage weightlifters, raised
their hymnbooks.
They sang without instrumental
accompaniment--or, more accurately in their case, without any interference.
Their voices were melodious and unsentimental, almost to the point where a
somewhat more denominational man than myself might, without straining, have
experienced levitation. A couple of the very youngest children dragged the
tempo a trifle, but in a way that only the composer's mother could have found
fault with. I had never heard the hymn, but I kept hoping it was one with a
dozen or more verses. Listening, I scanned all the children's faces but watched
one in particular, that of the child nearest me, on the end seat in the first
row. She was about thirteen, with straight ash-blond hair of ear-lobe length,
an exquisite forehead, and blasé eyes that, I thought, might very possibly have
counted the house. Her voice was distinctly separate from the other children's
voices, and not just because she was seated nearest me. It had the best upper
register, the sweetest-sounding, the surest, and it automatically led the way.
The young lady, however, seemed slightly bored with her own singing ability, or
perhaps just with the time and place; twice, between verses, I saw her yawn. It
was a ladylike yawn, a closed-mouth yawn, but you couldn't miss it; her nostril
wings gave her away.
The instant the hymn ended, the choir coach
began to give her lengthy opinion of people who can't keep their feet still and
their lips sealed tight during the minister's sermon. I gathered that the
singing part of the rehearsal was over, and before the coach's dissonant
speaking voice could entirely break the spell the children's singing had cast,
I got up and left the church.
It was raining even harder. I walked down the
street and looked through the window of the Red Cross recreation room, but
soldiers were standing two and three deep at the coffee counter, and, even
through the glass, I could hear ping-pong balls bouncing in another room. I crossed
the street and entered a civilian tearoom, which was empty except for a
middle-aged waitress, who looked as if she would have preferred a customer with
a dry raincoat. I used a coat tree as delicately as possible, and then sat down
at a table and ordered tea and cinnamon toast. It was the first time all day
that I'd spoken to anyone. I then looked through all my pockets, including my
raincoat, and finally found a couple of stale letters to reread, one from my
wife, telling me how the service at Schrafft's Eighty-eighth Street had fallen
off, and one from my mother-in-law, asking me to please send her some cashmere
yarn first chance I got away from "camp."
While I was still on my first cup of tea, the
young lady I had been watching and listening to in the choir came into the
tearoom. Her hair was soaking wet, and the rims of both ears were showing. She
was with a very small boy, unmistakably her brother, whose cap she removed by
lifting it off his head with two fingers, as if it were a laboratory specimen.
Bringing up the rear was an efficient-looking woman in a limp felt
hat--presumably their governess. The choir member, taking off her coat as she
walked across the floor, made the table selection--a good one, from my point of
view, as it was just eight or ten feet directly in front of me. She and the
governess sat down. The small boy, who was about five, wasn't ready to sit down
yet. He slid out of and discarded his reefer; then, with the deadpan expression
of a born heller, he methodically went about annoying his governess by pushing
in and pulling out his chair several times, watching her face. The governess,
keeping her voice down, gave him two or three orders to sit down and, in
effect, stop the monkey business, but it was only when his sister spoke to him
that he came around and applied the small of his back to his chair seat. He
immediately picked up his napkin and put it on his head. His sister removed it,
opened it, and spread it out on his lap.
About the time their tea was brought, the choir
member caught me staring over at her party. She stared back at me, with those
house-counting eyes of hers, then, abruptly, gave me a small, qualified smile.
It was oddly radiant, as certain small, qualified smiles sometimes are. I
smiled back, much less radiantly, keeping my upper lip down over a coal-black
G.I. temporary filling showing between two of my front teeth. The next thing I
knew, the young lady was standing, with enviable poise, beside my table. She
was wearing a tartan dress--a Campbell tartan, I believe. It seemed to me to be
a wonderful dress for a very young girl to be wearing on a rainy, rainy day.
"I thought Americans despised tea," she said.
It wasn't the observation of a smart aleck but
that of a truth-lover or a statistics-lover. I replied that some of us never
drank anything but tea. I asked her if she'd care to join me.
"Thank you," she said. "Perhaps
for just a fraction of a moment."
I got up and drew a chair for her, the one
opposite me, and she sat down on the forward quarter of it, keeping her spine
easily and beautifully straight. I went back--almost hurried back--to my own
chair, more than willing to hold up my end of a conversation. When I was
seated, I couldn't think of anything to say, though. I smiled again, still
keeping my coal-black filling under concealment. I remarked that it was
certainly a terrible day out.
"Yes; quite," said my guest, in the
clear, unmistakable voice of a small-talk detester. She placed her fingers flat
on the table edge, like someone at a seance, then, almost instantly, closed her
hands--her nails were bitten down to the quick. She was wearing a wristwatch, a
military-looking one that looked rather like a navigator's chronograph. Its
face was much too large for her slender wrist. "You were at choir
practice," she said matter-of-factly. "I saw you."
I said I certainly had been, and that I had
heard her voice singing separately from the others. I said I thought she had a
very fine voice.
She nodded. "I know. I'm going to be a
professional singer."
"Really? Opera?"
"Heavens, no. I'm going to sing jazz on the
radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I'm thirty, I shall retire and live
on a ranch in Ohio." She touched the top of her soaking-wet head with the
flat of her hand. "Do you know Ohio?" she asked.
I said I'd been through it on the train a few
times but that I didn't really know it. I offered her a piece of cinnamon
toast.
"No, thank you," she said. "I eat
like a bird, actually."
I bit into a piece of toast myself, and
commented that there's some mighty rough country around Ohio. "I know. An
American I met told me. You're the eleventh American I've met."
Her governess was now urgently signalling her to
return to her own table--in effect, to stop bothering the man. My guest,
however, calmly moved her chair an inch or two so that her back broke all
possible further communication with the home table. "You go to that secret
Intelligence school on the hill, don't you?" she inquired coolly.
As security-minded as the next one, I replied
that I was visiting Devonshire for my health.
"Really," she said, "I wasn't
quite born yesterday, you know."
I said I'd bet she hadn't been, at that. I drank
my tea for a moment. I was getting a trifle posture-conscious and I sat up
somewhat straighter in my seat.
"You seem quite intelligent for an
American," my guest mused.
I told her that was a pretty snobbish thing to
say, if you thought about it at all, and that I hoped it was unworthy of her.
She blushed-automatically conferring on me the
social poise I'd been missing. "Well. Most of the Americans I've seen act
like animals. They're forever punching one another about, and insulting
everyone, and--You know what one of them did?"
I shook my haad.
"One of them threw an empty whiskey bottle
through my aunt's window. Fortunately, the window was open. But does that sound
very intelligent to you?"
It didn't especially, but I didn't say so. I
said that many soldiers, all over the world, were a long way from home, and
that few of them had had many real advantages in life. I said I'd thought that
most people could figure that out for themselves.
"Possibly," said my guest, without
conviction. She raised her hand to her wet head again, picked at a few limp
filaments of blond hair, trying to cover her exposed ear rims. "My hair is
soaking wet," she said. "I look a fright." She looked over at
me. "I have quite wavy hair when it's dry."
"I can see that, I can see you have."
"Not actually curly, but quite wavy,"
she said. "Are you married?"
I said I was.
She nodded. "Are you very deeply in love
with your wife? Or am I being too personal?"
I said that when she was, I'd speak up.
he put her hands and wrists farther forward on
the table, and I remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced
wristwatch she was wearing--perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her
waist.
"Usually, I'm not terribly
gregarious," she said, and looked over at me to see if I knew the meaning
of the word. I didn't give her a sign, though, one way or the other. "I
purely came over because I thought you looked extremely lonely. You have an
extremely sensitive face."
I said she was right, that I had been feeling
lonely, and that I was very glad she'd come over.
"I'm training myself to be more
compassionate. My aunt says I'm a terribly cold person," she said and felt
the top of her head again. "I live with my aunt. She's an extremely kind
person. Since the death of my mother, she's done everything within her power to
make Charles and me feel adjusted."
"I'm glad."
"Mother was an extremely intelligent
person. Quite sensuous, in many ways." She looked at me with a kind of
fresh acuteness. "Do you find me terribly cold?"
I told her absolutely not--very much to the
contrary, in fact. I told her my name and asked for hers. She hesitated.
"My first name is Esmé. I don't think I shall tell you my full name, for
the moment. I have a title and you may just be impressed by titles. Americans
are, you know."
I said I didn't think I would be, but that it
might be a good idea, at that, to hold on to the title for a while.
Just then, I felt someone's warm breath on the
back of my neck. I turned around and just missed brushing noses with Esmé's
small brother. Ignoring me, he addressed his sister in a piercing treble:
"Miss Megley said you must come and finish your tea!" His message
delivered, he retired to the chair between his sister and me, on my right. I
regarded him with high interest. He was looking very splendid in brown Shetland
shorts, a navy-blue jersey, white shirt, and striped necktie. He gazed back at
me with immense green eyes. "Why do people in films kiss sideways?"
he demanded.
"Sideways?" I said. It was a problem
that had baffled me in my childhood. I said I guessed it was because actors'
noses are too big for kissing anyone head on.
"His name is Charles," Esmé said.
"He's extremely brilliant for his age."
"He certainly has green eyes. Haven't you,
Charles?" Charles gave me the fishy look my question deserved, then
wriggled downward and forward in his chair till all of his body was under the
table except his head, which he left, wrestler's-bridge style, on the chair
seat. "They're orange," he said in a strained voice, addressing the
ceiling. He picked up a corner of the tablecloth and put it over his handsome,
deadpan little face.
"Sometimes he's brilliant and sometimes
he's not," Esme said. "Charles, do sit up!"
Charles stayed right where he was. He seemed to
be holding his breath.
"He misses our father very much. He was
s-l-a-i-n in North Africa."
I expressed regret to hear it.
Esme nodded. "Father adored him." She
bit reflectively at the cuticle of her thumb. "He looks very much like my
mother--Charles, I mean. I look exactly like my father." She went on
biting at her cuticle. "My mother was quite a passionate woman. She was an
extrovert. Father was an introvert. They were quite well mated, though, in a
superficial way. To be quite candid, Father really needed more of an
intellectual companion than Mother was. He was an extremely gifted
genius."
I waited, receptively, for further information,
but none came. I looked down at Charles, who was now resting the side of his
face on his chair seat. When he saw that I was looking at him, he closed his
eyes, sleepily, angelically, then stuck out his tongue--an appendage of
startling length--and gave out what in my country would have been a glorious
tribute to a myopic baseball umpire. It fairly shook the tearoom.
"Stop that," Esmé said, clearly
unshaken. "He saw an American do it in a fish-and-chips queue, and now he
does it whenever he's bored. Just stop it, now, or I shall send you directly to
Miss Megley."
Charles opened his enormous eyes, as sign that
he'd heard his sister's threat, but otherwise didn't look especially alerted.
He closed his eyes again, and continued to rest the side of his face on the
chair seat.
I mentioned that maybe he ought to save
it--meaning the Bronx cheer--till he started using his title regularly. That
is, if he had a title, too.
Esmé gave me a long, faintly clinical look.
"You have a dry sense of humor, haven't you?" she said--wistfully.
"Father said I have no sense of humor at all. He said I was unequipped to
meet life because I have no sense of humor."
Watching her, I lit a cigarette and said I
didn't think a sense of humor was of any use in a real pinch.
"Father said it was."
This was a statement of faith, not a
contradiction, and I quickly switched horses. I nodded and said her father had
probably taken the long view, while I was taking the short (whatever that
meant).
"Charles misses him exceedingly," Esme
said, after a moment. "He was an exceedingly lovable man. He was extremely
handsome, too. Not that one's appearance matters greatly, but he was. He had
terribly penetrating eyes, for a man who was intransically kind."
I nodded. I said I imagined her father had had
quite an extraordinary vocabulary.
"Oh, yes; quite," said Esmé. "He
was an archivist--amateur, of course."
At that point, I felt an importunate tap, almost
a punch, on my upper arm, from Charles' direction. I turned to him. He was
sitting in a fairly normal position in his chair now, except that he had one
knee tucked under him. "What did one wall say to the other wall?" he
asked shrilly. "It's a riddle!"
I rolled my eyes reflectively ceilingward and
repeated the question aloud. Then I looked at Charles with a stumped expression
and said I gave up.
"Meet you at the corner!" came the
punch line, at top volume.
It went over biggest with Charles himself. It struck
him as unbearably funny. In fact, Esmé had to come around and pound him on the
back, as if treating him for a coughing spell. "Now, stop that," she
said. She went back to her own seat. "He tells that same riddle to
everyone he meets and has a fit every single time. Usually he drools when he
laughs. Now, just stop, please."
"It's one of the best riddles I've heard,
though," I said, watching Charles, who was very gradually coming out of
it. In response to this compliment, he sank considerably lower in his chair and
again masked his face up to the eyes with a corner of the tablecloth. He then
looked at me with his exposed eyes, which were full of slowly subsiding mirth
and the pride of someone who knows a really good riddle or two.
"May I inquire how you were employed before
entering the Army?" Esmé asked me.
I said I hadn't been employed at all, that I'd
only been out of college a year but that I like to think of myself as a
professional short-story writer.
She nodded politely. "Published?" she
asked.
It was a familiar but always touchy question,
and one that I didn't answer just one, two, three. I started to explain how
most editors in America were a bunch--
"My father wrote beautifully," Esmé
interrupted. "I'm saving a number of his letters for posterity."
I said that sounded like a very good idea. I
happened to be looking at her enormous-faced, chronographic-looking wristwatch
again. I asked if it had belonged to her father.
She looked down at her wrist solemnly.
"Yes, it did," she said. "He gave it to me just before Charles
and I were evacuated." Self-consciously, she took her hands off the table,
saying, "Purely as a momento, of course." She guided the conversation
in a different direction. "I'd be extremely flattered if you'd write a
story exclusively for me sometime. I'm an avid reader."
I told her I certainly would, if I could. I said
that I wasn't terribly prolific.
"It doesn't have to be terribly prolific!
Just so that it isn't childish and silly." She reflected. "I prefer
stories about squalor."
"About what?" I said, leaning forward.
"Squalor. I'm extremely interested in squalor."
I was about to press her for more details, but I
felt Charles pinching me, hard, on my arm. I turned to him, wincing slightly.
He was standing right next to me. "What did one wall say to the other
wall?" he asked, not unfamiliarly.
"You asked him that," Esmé said.
"Now, stop it."
Ignoring his sister, and stepping up on one of
my feet, Charles repeated the key question. I noticed that his necktie knot
wasn't adjusted properly. I slid it up into place, then, looking him straight
in the eye, suggested, "Meetcha at the corner?"
The instant I'd said it, I wished I hadn't.
Charles' mouth fell open. I felt as if I'd struck it open. He stepped down off
my foot and, with white-hot dignity, walked over to his own table, without
looking back.
"He's furious," Esmé said. "He
has a violent temper. My mother had a propensity to spoil him. My father was
the only one who didn't spoil him."
I kept looking over at Charles, who had sat down
and started to drink his tea, using both hands on the cup. I hoped he'd turn
around, but he didn't.
Esmé stood up. “Il faut que je parte
aussi," she said, with a sigh. "Do you know French?"
I got up from my own chair, with mixed feelings
of regret and confusion. Esmé and I shook hands; her hand, as I'd suspected,
was a nervous hand, damp at the palm. I told her, in English, how very much I'd
enjoyed her company.
She nodded. "I thought you might," she
said. "I'm quite communicative for my age." She gave her hair another
experimental touch. "I'm dreadfully sorry about my hair," she said.
"I've probably been hideous to look at."
"Not at all! As a matter of fact, I think a
lot of the wave is coming back already."
She quickly touched her hair again. "Do you
think you'll be coming here again in the immediate future?" she asked.
"We come here every Saturday, after choir practice."
I answered that I'd like nothing better but
that, unfortunately, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to make it again.
"In other words, you can't discuss troop
movements," said Esme. She made no move to leave the vicinity of the
table. In fact, she crossed one foot over the other and, looking down, aligned
the toes of her shoes. It was a pretty little execution, for she was wearing
white socks and her ankles and feet were lovely. She looked up at me abruptly.
"Would you like me to write to you?" she asked, with a certain amount
of color in her face. "I write extremely articulate letters for a person
my--"
"I'd love it." I took out pencil and
paper and wrote down my name, rank, serial number, and A.P.O. number.
"I shall write to you first," she
said, accepting it, "so that you don't feel compromised in any way."
She put the address into a pocket of her dress. "Goodbye," she said,
and walked back to her table.
I ordered another pot of tea and sat watching
the two of them till they, and the harassed Miss Megley, got up to leave.
Charles led the way out, limping tragically, like a man with one leg several,
inches shorter than the other. He didn't look over at me. Miss Megley went
next, then Esmé, who waved to me. I waved back, half getting up from my chair.
It was a strangely emotional moment for me.
Less than a minute later, Esmé came back into
the tearoom, dragging Charles behind her by the sleeve of his reefer. "Charles
would like to kiss you goodbye," she said.
I immediately put down my cup, and said that was
very nice, but was she sure?
"Yes," she said, a trifle grimly. She
let go Charles' sleeve and gave him a rather vigorous push in my direction. He
came forward, his face livid, and gave me a loud, wet smacker just below the
right ear. Following this ordeal, he started to make a beeline for the door and
a less sentimental way of life, but I caught the half belt at the back of his
reefer, held on to it, and asked him, "What did one wall say to the other
wall?"
His face lit up. "Meet you at the
corner!" he shrieked, and raced out of the room, possibly in hysterics.
Esme was standing with crossed ankles again.
"You're quite sure you won't forget to write that story for me?" she
asked. "It doesn't have to be exclusively for me. It can--"
I said there was absolutely no chance that I'd
forget. I told her that I'd never written a story for anybody, but that it
seemed like exactly the right time to get down to it.
She nodded. "Make it extremely squalid and
moving," she suggested. "Are you at all acquainted with
squalor?"
I said not exactly but that I was getting better
acquainted with it, in one form or another, all the time, and that I'd do my
best to come up to her specifications. We shook hands.
"Isn't it a pity that we didn't meet under
less extenuating circumstances?"
I said it was, I said it certainly was.
"Goodbye," Esmé said. "I hope you
return from the war with all your faculties intact."
I thanked her, and said a few other words, and
then watched her leave the tearoom. She left it slowly, reflectively, testing
the ends of her hair for dryness.
This is the squalid, or moving, part of the
story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from
here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself
so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.
It was about ten-thirty at night in Gaufurt,
Bavaria, several weeks after V-E Day. Staff Sergeant X was in his room on the
second floor of the civilian home in which he and nine other American soldiers
had been quartered, even before the armistice. He was seated on a folding
wooden chair at a small, messy-looking writing table, with a paperback overseas
novel open before him, which he was having great trouble reading. The trouble
lay with him, not the novel. Although the men who lived on the first floor
usually had first grab at the books sent each month by Special Services, X
usually seemed to be left with the book he might have selected himself. But he
was a young man who had not come through the war with all his faculties intact,
and for more than an hour he had been triple-reading paragraphs, and now he was
doing it to the sentences. He suddenly closed the book, without marking his
place. With his hand, he shielded his eyes for a moment against the harsh,
watty glare from the naked bulb over the table.
He took a cigarette from a pack on the table and
lit it with fingers that bumped gently and incessantly against one another. He
sat back a trifle in his chair and smoked without any sense of taste. He had
been chain-smoking for weeks. His gums bled at the slightest pressure of the
tip of his tongue, and he seldom stopped experimenting; it was a little game he
played, sometimes by the hour. He sat for a moment smoking and experimenting.
Then, abruptly, familiarly, and, as usual, with no warning, he thought he felt
his mind dislodge itself and teeter, like insecure luggage on an overhead rack.
He quickly did what he had been doing for weeks to set things right: he pressed
his hands hard against his temples. He held on tight for a moment. His hair
needed cutting, and it was dirty. He had washed it three or four times during
his two weeks' stay at the hospital in Frankfort on the Main, but it had got
dirty again on the long, dusty jeep ride back to Gaufurt. Corporal Z, who had
called for him at the hospital, still drove a jeep combat-style, with the
windshield down on the hood, armistice or no armistice. There were thousands of
new troops in Germany. By driving with his windshield down, combat-style,
Corporal Z hoped to show that he was not one of them, that not by a long shot
was he some new son of a bitch in the E.T.O.
When he let go of his head, X began to stare at
the surface of the writing table, which was a catchall for at least two dozen
unopened letters and at least five or six unopened packages, all addressed to
him. He reached behind the debris and picked out a book that stood against the
wall. It was a book by Goebbels, entitled "Die Zeit Ohne Beispiel."
It belonged to the thirty-eight-year-old, unmarried daughter of the family
that, up to a few weeks earlier, had been living in the house. She had been a
low official in the Nazi Party, but high enough, by Army Regulations standards,
to fall into an automatic-arrest category. X himself had arrested her. Now, for
the third time since he had returned from the hospital that day, he opened the
woman's book and read the brief inscription on the flyleaf. Written in ink, in
German, in a small, hopelessly sincere handwriting, were the words "Dear
God, life is hell." Nothing led up to or away from it. Alone on the page,
and in the sickly stillness of the room, the words appeared to have the stature
of an uncontestable, even classic indictment. X stared at the page for several
minutes, trying, against heavy odds, not to be taken in. Then, with far more
zeal than he had done anything in weeks, he picked up a pencil stub and wrote
down under the inscription, in English, "Fathers and teachers, I ponder
`What is hell?' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to
love." He started to write Dostoevski's name under the inscription, but
saw--with fright that ran through his whole body--that what he had written was
almost entirely illegible. He shut the book.
He quickly picked up something else from the
table, a letter from his older brother in Albany. It had been on his table even
before he had checked into the hospital. He opened the envelope, loosely
resolved to read the letter straight through, but read only the top half of the
first page. He stopped after the words "Now that the g.d. war is over and
you probably have a lot of time over there, how about sending the kids a couple
of bayonets or swastikas . . ." After he'd torn it up, he looked down at
the pieces as they lay in the wastebasket. He saw that he had overlooked an
enclosed snapshot. He could make out somebody's feet standing on a lawn
somewhere.
He put his arms on the table and rested his head
on them. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly
interdependent. He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in
series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective.
The door banged open, without having been rapped
on. X raised his head, turned it, and saw Corporal Z standing in the door.
Corporal Z had been X's jeep partner and constant companion from D Day straight
through five campaigns of the war. He lived on the first floor and he usually
came up to see X when he had a few rumors or gripes to unload. He was a huge,
photogenic young man of twenty-four. During the war, a national magazine had
photographed him in Hurtgen Forest; he had posed, more than just obligingly,
with a Thanksgiving turkey in each hand. "Ya writin' letters?" he
asked X. "It's spooky in here, for Chrissake." He preferred always to
enter a room that had the overhead light on.
X turned around in his chair and asked him to
come in, and to be careful not to step on the dog.
"The what?"
"Alvin. He's right under your feet, Clay.
How 'bout turning on the goddam light?"
Clay found the overhead-light switch, flicked it
on, then stepped across the puny, servant's-size room and sat down on the edge
of the bed, facing his host. His brick-red hair, just combed, was dripping with
the amount of water he required for satisfactory grooming. A comb with a
fountain-pen clip protruded, familiarly, from the right-hand pocket of his
olive-drab shirt. Over the left-hand pocket he was wearing the Combat
Infantrymen's Badge (which, technically, he wasn't authorized to wear), the
European Theater ribbon, with five bronze battle stars in it (instead of a lone
silver one, which was the equivalent of five bronze ones), and the pre-Pearl
Harbor service ribbon. He sighed heavily and said, "Christ almighty."
It meant nothing; it was Army. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt
pocket, tapped one out, then put away the pack and rebuttoned the pocket flap.
Smoking, he looked vacuously around the room. His look finally settled on the
radio. "Hey," he said. "They got this terrific show comin' on
the radio in a coupla minutes. Bob Hope, and everybody."
X, opening a fresh pack of cigarettes, said he
had just turned the radio off.
Undarkened, Clay watched X trying to get a
cigarette lit. "Jesus," he said, with spectator's enthusiasm,
"you oughta see your goddam hands. Boy, have you got the shakes. Ya know
that?"
X got his cigarette lit, nodded, and said Clay
had a real eye for detail.
"No kidding, hey. I goddam near fainted
when I saw you at the hospital. You looked like a goddam corpse. How much
weight ya lose? How many pounds? Ya know?"
"I don't know. How was your mail when I was
gone? You heard from Loretta?"
Loretta was Clay's girl. They intended to get
married at their earliest convenience. She wrote to him fairly regularly, from
a paradise of triple exclamation points and inaccurate observations. All
through the war, Clay had read all Loretta's letters aloud to X, however
intimate they were--in fact, the more intimate, the better. It was his custom,
after each reading, to ask X to plot out or pad out the letter of reply, or to
insert a few impressive words in French or German.
"Yeah, I had a letter from her yesterday.
Down in my room. Show it to ya later," Clay said, listlessly. He sat up
straight on the edge of the bed, held his breath, and issued a long, resonant
belch. Looking just semi-pleased with the achievement, he relaxed again.
"Her goddam brother's gettin' outa the Navy on account of his hip,"
he said. "He's got this hip, the bastard." He sat up again and tried
for another belch, but with below-par results. A jot of alertness came into his
face. "Hey. Before I forget. We gotta get up at five tomorrow and drive to
Hamburg or someplace. Pick up Eisenhower jackets for the whole
detachment."
X, regarding him hostilely, stated that he
didn't want an Eisenhower jacket.
Clay looked surprised, almost a trifle hurt.
"Oh, they're good! They look good. How come?"
"No reason. Why do we have to get up at
five? The war's over, for God's sake."
"I don't know--we gotta get back before
lunch. They got some new forms in we gotta fill out before lunch.... I asked
Bulling how come we couldn't fill 'em out tonight--he's got the goddam forms
right on his desk. He don't want to open the envelopes yet, the son of a
bitch."
The two sat quiet for a moment, hating Bulling.
Clay suddenly looked at X with new-higher-interest than before.
"Hey," he said. "Did you know the goddam side of your face is
jumping all over the place?"
X said he knew all about it, and covered his tic
with his hand.
Clay stared at him for a moment, then said,
rather vividly, as if he were the bearer of exceptionally good news, "I
wrote Loretta you had a nervous breakdown."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. She's interested as hell in all that
stuff. She's majoring in psychology." Clay stretched himself out on the
bed, shoes included. "You know what she said? She says nobody gets a
nervous breakdown just from the war and all. She says you probably were
unstable like, your whole goddarn life."
X bridged his hands over his eyes--the light
over the bed seemed to be blinding him--and said that Loretta's insight into
things was always a joy.
Clay glanced over at him. "Listen, ya
bastard," he said. "She knows a goddam sight more psychology than you
do."
"Do you think you can bring yourself to
take your stinking feet off my bed?" X asked.
Clay left his feet where they were for a few
don't-tell-me-where-to-put-my-feet seconds, then swung them around to the floor
and sat up. "I'm goin' downstairs anyway. They got the radio on in
Walker's room." He didn't get up from the bed, though. "Hey. I was
just tellin' that new son of a bitch, Bernstein, downstairs. Remember that time
I and you drove into Valognes, and we got shelled for about two goddam hours,
and that goddam cat I shot that jumped up on the hood of the jeep when we were
layin' in that hole? Remember?"
"Yes--don't start that business with that
cat again, Clay, God damn it. I don't want to hear about it."
"No, all I mean is I wrote Loretta about
it. She and the whole psychology class discussed it. In class and all. The
goddam professor and everybody."
"That's fine. I don't want to hear about
it, Clay."
"No, you know the reason I took a pot shot
at it, Loretta says? She says I was temporarily insane. No kidding. From the
shelling and all."
X threaded his fingers, once, through his dirty
hair, then shielded his eyes against the light again. "You weren't insane.
You were simply doing your duty. You killed that pussycat in as manly a way as
anybody could've under the circumstances."
Clay looked at him suspiciously. "What the
hell are you talkin' about?"
"That cat was a spy. You had to take a pot
shot at it. It was a very clever German midget dressed up in a cheap fur coat.
So there was absolutely nothing brutal, or cruel, or dirty, or even--"
"God damn it!" Clay said, his lips
thinned. "Can't you ever be sincere?"
X suddenly felt sick, and he swung around in his
chair and grabbed the wastebasket--just in time. When he had straightened up
and turned toward his guest again, he found him standing, embarrassed, halfway
between the bed and the door. X started to apologize, but changed his mind and
reached for his cigarettes.
"C'mon down and listen to Hope on the
radio, hey," Clay said, keeping his distance but trying to be friendly
over it. "It'll do ya good. I mean it."
"You go ahead, Clay. . . . I'll look at my
stamp collection."
"Yeah? You got a stamp collection? I didn't
know you--"
"I'm only kidding."
Clay took a couple of slow steps toward the
door. "I may drive over to Ehstadt later," he said. "They got a
dance. It'll probably last till around two. Wanna go?"
"No, thanks. . . . I may practice a few
steps in the room."
"O.K. G'night! Take it easy, now, for
Chrissake." The door slammed shut, then instantly opened again. "Hey.
O.K. if I leave a letter to Loretta under your door? I got some German stuff in
it. Willya fix it up for me?"
"Yes. Leave me alone now, God damn
it."
"Sure," said Clay. "You know what
my mother wrote me? She wrote me she's glad you and I were together and all the
whole war. In the same jeep and all. She says my letters are a helluva lot more
intelligent since we been goin' around together."
X looked up and over at him, and said, with
great effort, "Thanks. Tell her thanks for me."
"I will. G'night!" The door slammed
shut, this time for good.
X sat looking at the door for a long while, then
turned his chair around toward the writing table and picked up his portable
typewriter from the floor. He made space for it on the messy table surface,
pushing aside the collapsed pile of unopened letters and packages. He thought
if he wrote a letter to an old friend of his in New York there might be some
quick, however slight, therapy in it for him. But he couldn't insert his
notepaper into the roller properly, his fingers were shaking so violently now.
He put his hands down at his sides for a minute, then tried again, but finally
crumpled the notepaper in his hand.
He was aware that he ought to get the
wastebasket out of the room, but instead of doing anything about it, he put his
arms on the typewriter and rested his head again, closing his eyes.
A few throbbing minutes later, when he opened
his eyes, he found himself squinting at a small, unopened package wrapped in
green paper. It had probably slipped off the pile when he had made space for
the typewriter. He saw that it had been readdressed several times. He could
make out, on just one side of the package, at least three of his old A.P.O.
numbers.
He opened the package without any interest,
without even looking at the return address. He opened it by burning the string
with a lighted match. He was more interested in watching a string burn all the
way down than in opening the package, but he opened it, finally.
Inside the box, a note, written in ink, lay on
top of a small object wrapped in tissue paper. He picked out the note and read
it.
17, ----ROAD,
-----DEVON
JUNE 7, 1944
DEAR SERGEANT X,
I hope you will forgive me for having taken 38
days to begin our correspondence but, I have been extremely busy as my aunt has
undergone streptococcus of the throat and nearly perished and I have been
justifiably saddled with one responsibility after another. However I have
thought of you frequently and of the extremely pleasant afternoon we spent in
each other's company on April 30, 1944 between 3:45 and 4:15 P.M. in case it
slipped your mind.
We are all tremendously excited and overawed
about D Day and only hope that it will bring about the swift termination of the
war and a method of existence that is ridiculous to say the least. Charles and
I are both quite concerned about you; we hope you were not among those who made
the first initial assault upon the Cotentin Peninsula. Were you? Please reply
as speedily as possible. My warmest regards to your wife.
Sincerely yours,
ESMÉ
P.S. I am taking the liberty of enclosing my
wristwatch which you may keep in your possession for the duration of the
conflict. I did not observe whether you were wearing one during our brief
association, but this one is extremely water-proof and shockproof as well as
having many other virtues among which one can tell at what velocity one is
walking if one wishes. I am quite certain that you will use it to greater
advantage in these difficult days than I ever can and that you will accept it
as a lucky talisman.
Charles, whom I am teaching to read and write
and whom I am finding an extremely intelligent novice, wishes to add a few
words. Please write as soon as you have the time and inclination.
HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO
HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO
LOVE AND KISSES CHALES
It was a long time before X could set the note
aside, let alone lift Esmé's father's wristwatch out of the box. When he did
finally lift it out, he saw that its crystal had been broken in transit. He
wondered if the watch was otherwise undamaged, but he hadn't the courage to
wind it and find out. He just sat with it in his hand for another long period.
Then, suddenly, almost ecstatically, he felt sleepy.
You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he
always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac-with all his
f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact.
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