Bring the Jubilee (9 page)

"That is right, Hodge. There is nothing you can do about it because— You will forgive me if I speak plainly, brutally even?"

"Go ahead. Tirzah"—what a joy it was just to say the name—"Tirzah has told me often enough how unrealistic I am."

"That was not what I meant. I would say there is nothing you can do about it because there is nothing you wish to do about it."

"What do you mean? I'd do anything I could . . ."

"Would you? Give up books, for instance?"

"Why should I? What good would that do?"

"I do not say you should or that it would do good. I only try to show that the young lady, charming and important as she is, is not the most magnetic or important thing in your life. Romantic love is a curious by-product of Western European feudalism that Africans and Asians can only criticize gingerly. You shake your head with obstinacy; you do not believe me. Good, then I have not hurt you."

"I can't see that you've helped me much, either."

"Ay! What did you expect from the black man of Haiti? Miracles?"

"Nothing less will do any good, I'm afraid. Now I suppose you'll tell me I'll get over it in time; that it's just an adolescent languishing anyway."

He looked at me reproachfully. "No, Hodge. I hope I should never be the one to think suffering is tied to age or time. As for getting over it, why, we all get over everything in the end, but no matter how desirable absolute peace is, few of us are willing to give up experience prematurely."

Later, I compared what Enfandin told me with what Tyss might have said. Did the responsibility of holding Tirzah lie with me and not with both of us, or with fate or chance? Or were events so circumscribed by inevitabilities that even to think of struggling with them was foolish?

I also asked myself if I had been too proud, too hypersensitive. I had tried to make her see my viewpoint by arguing, by fighting hers; might it not be possible, without giving up essentials, to approach her more gently? To divert her, not from her ambitions, but from her contempt for mine?

Full of resolves, I left the store after eight; eager walking brought me to our meeting place in Reservoir Square early, but the nearby church bells had hardly sounded the quarter hour when she said, "Hodge."

Her unusual promptness was a good omen; I was filled with warm optimism. "Tirzah, I saw you this afternoon—"

"Did you? I thought you were so busy with Sambo you would never look up."

"Why do you call him that? Do you think—"

"Oh for heaven's sake, don't start making speeches at me. I call him Sambo because it sounds nicer than Rastus."

All my resolutions about trying to see her point of view! "I call him M'sieu Enfandin because that's his name."

"Have you no pride? No, I suppose you haven't. Just some strange manners. Well, I can put up with your eccentricities, but other people wouldn't understand. What do you think Mrs. Smythe would say?" "Never having met the lady, I haven't the faintest idea."

"I have, and I agree with her. Would you like me to be chummy with a naked cannibal with a ring in his nose?"

"But Enfandin doesn't wear a ring in his nose, and you must have seen he was fully dressed. Maybe he eats missionaries in secret, but that couldn't offend Mrs. Smythe since appearances would be saved."

"I'm serious, Hodge."

"So am I. Enfandin is my only friend."

"You may be above appearances and considerations of decency but I'm not. If you ever appear in public with him again you can stop coming here. Because I won't have anything more to do with you."

"But Tirzah . . ." I began helplessly, overwhelmed by the impossibility of coping with irrelevancies and inconsistencies of her stand. "But Tirzah . . ."

"No," she said firmly, "you'll simply have to grow up, Hodge, and stop such childish exhibitions. Only friend indeed! Why I suppose if he appeared here right this minute, you'd talk to him."

"Well naturally. You'd hardly expect me to—"

"But I do. That's exactly what I'd expect. You to act like a civilized man."

I wasn't angry. I couldn't be angry with her. "If that's civilization then I guess I don't want to be civilized."

I detected astonishment in her voice. "You mean, actually mean, you intend to keep on acting this way?"

Grandfather Backmaker must have been a stubborn man; I had my mother's word I possessed no Hodgins traits. "Tirzah, what would you think of me if I turned on my only friend, the only thoroughly kind and understanding friend I've ever had, just because Mrs. Smythe has different notions of propriety than I have?"

"I'd think you were beginning to understand things at last."

"I'm sorry, Tirzah."

"I mean it, Hodge, you know. I'll never see you again."

"If you'd only listen to my side—"

"You mean if I would only become a crank like you. But I don't want to be a crank or a martyr. I don't want to change the world. I'm normal."

"Tirzah—"

"Good-bye, Hodge."

She walked away. I had the irrational feeling that if I called after her she might come back. Or at least stand still and wait to hear what I had to say. I kept my mouth obstinately closed; Enfandin had been right, the responsibility was mine. There were things I would not give up.

My heroic mood must have lasted fully fifteen minutes. Then I hurried through the little park and across the street to the Smythe house. There were lights in the upper floors, but the basement, as always, was dark. I dared not knock or ring the bell; her admonitions were too firmly impressed on my mind. Instead, in a turmoil of emotions, I paced the flagged sidewalk until the suspicious eye of a patrolman was attracked; then I fled cravenly.

I couldn't wait for the next day to write a long, chaotic letter begging her to let me talk to her, just to talk to her, for an hour, ten minutes, a minute. I offered to indent, to emigrate, to make a fortune by some inspired means if only she would hear me. I recalled moments together, I told her I loved her, said I would die without her. Having covered several pages with these sentiments I began all over and repeated them. It was dawn when I posted the letter in the pneumatic mail.

Sleepless and tormented, I was of little use to Tyss next day. Would she telegraph? If she answered by pneumatic post her letter might be delivered in the afternoon. Or would she come to the bookstore?

The second day I sent off two more letters and went up to Reservoir Square on the chance she might appear. I watched the house as though my concentration would force her to emerge. On the third day my letters came back, unopened.

There is some catchphrase or other about the elasticity of youth. It is true it was only weeks before my misery abated, and weeks more before I was heart-whole again. But those weeks were long.

The subject of Tirzah did not come up again between Enfandin and me. He must have sensed I had lost her, perhaps he even guessed his connection with the break, but he was too tactful to mention it and I was too sore.

I don't know if the episode precipitated some maturity in me, or if, as a result of grief and anger, I tried to turn my mind away from the easy emotions and shield myself against further hurt. At any rate, whether there was a logical connection or not, it is from this period that I date my resolve to centre my reading on history. Somewhat diffidently I spoke of this to him.

"History? But certainly, Hodge. It is a noble study. But what is history? How is it written? How is it read? Is it a dispassionate chronicle of events scientifically determined and set down in the precise measure of their importance? Is this ever possible? Or is it the transmutation of the ordinary into the celebrated? Or the cunning distortion which gives a clearer picture than accurate blueprints?"

"It seems to me facts are primary and interpretations come after," I answered. "If we can find out the facts we can form our individual opinions on them."

"Perhaps. Perhaps. But take what is for me the central fact of all history." He pointed to the crucifix. "As a Catholic the facts are plain to me; I believe what is written in the Gospels to be literally true: that the Son of Man died for me on that cross. But what were the facts for a contemporary Roman statesman? That an obscure local agitator threatened the stability of an uneasy province and was promptly executed in the approved Roman fashion as a warning to others. And for a contemporary fellow countryman? That no such person existed. You think these facts are mutually exclusive? Yet you know no two people see exactly the same thing; too many honest witnesses have contradicted each other. Even the Gospels must be reconciled."

"You are saying that truth is relative."

"Am I? Then I shall have my tongue examined, or my head. Because I mean to say no such thing. Truth is absolute and for all time. But one man cannot envisage all of truth; the best he can do is see a single aspect of the whole. That is why I say to you, be a skeptic, Hodge. Always be the skeptic."

"Ay?" I was finding the admonition a little difficult to harmonize with his previous confession of faith.

"For the believer skepticism is essential. How else is he to know false gods from true except by doubting both? One of the most pernicious of folk sayings is, 'I could scarcely believe my eyes.' Why should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Believe your mind, your intuition, your reason, your feelings if you like—but not your eyes unaided by any of these interpreters. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination, as easily as the actual scenery. Your eyes will tell you nothing exists but matter—"

"Not my eyes only, but my boss."

"Ay? What are you saying?" For all his amiability Enfandin enjoyed interruption in middiscourse no more than any other teacher. But in a moment his irritation vanished, and he listened to my description of Tyss's mechanistic creed.

"God have mercy on his soul," he muttered at last. "Poor creature. He has liberated himself from the superstitions of religion in order to fall into superstition so abject no Christian can conceive it. Imagine to yourself"—he began to pace the floor—"time is circular, man is automaton, we are doomed to repeat the same gestures over and over, forever. Oh, I say to you, Hodge, this is monstrous. The poor man. The poor man."

I nodded. "Yes. But what is the answer? Limitless space? Limitless time? They are almost as horrifying, because they are inconceivable and awful." "And why should the inconceivable and awful be horrifying? Is our small human understanding the ultimate measuring stick and guide? But, of course, this is not the answer. The answer is that all—time, space, matter—all is illusion. All but the good God Himself. Nothing is real but Him. We are creatures of His fancy, figments of His imagination. . . ."

"Then where does free will come in?"

"As a gift, naturally. Or supernaturally. How else? The greatest gift and the greatest responsibility."

I can't say I was entirely satisfied with his exposition, though it was certainly more to my taste than Tyss's. I returned to the conversation at intervals, both in my thoughts and when I saw him, but in the end I suppose all I really accepted was his admonition to be skeptical, which I doubt I always applied the way he meant me to.

To anyone but the mooncalf I still was in the year of my majority it would have long since occurred with considerable force that Enfandin ought to be told of Tyss's connection with the Negro-hating, antiforeign Grand Army. And the thought once entertained, no matter how belatedly, would have been immediately translated into warning. For me it became a dilemma.

If I exposed Tyss to Enfandin I would certainly be basely ungrateful to the man who had saved me from destitution and given me the opportunity I wanted so much. Membership in the Grand Army was a crime, even though the laws were laxly enforced, and I could hardly expect an official receiving the hospitality of the United States to conceal knowledge of a felony against his host, especially when the Grand Army was what it was. Yet if I kept silent I would be less than a friend.

If I spoke I would be an informer; if I didn't, a hypocrite and worse. The fact that neither man, for totally different reasons, would condemn me whichever course I took increased rather than diminished my perplexity. I procrastinated, which meant I was actually protecting Tyss, and that this was against my sympathies increased my feeling of guilt.

At this juncture a series of events involved me still deeper with the Grand Army and further complicated my relationship to both Tyss and Enfandin. It began the day a customer called himself to my attention with a selfconscious clearing of his throat.

"Yes sir. Can I help you?"

He was a fat little man with palpably false teeth and hair hanging down over his collar. However, the sum of his appearance was in no way ludicrous; rather he gave the impression of ease and authority, and an assurance so strong there was no necessity to buttress it.

"Why, I was looking for—" he began, and then scrutinized me sharply. "Say, ain't you the young fella I saw walking with a Nigra? Big black buck?"

Seemingly everyone had been fascinated by the spectacle of two people of slightly different shades of color in company with each other. I felt myself reddening. "There's no law against it, is there?"