The Eighth Day (52 page)

EUSTACIA to George (May 4):

“I have just returned from your father's grave. To us is given, as we grow older, the gift of understanding more fully and of loving more uncloudedly.

“My dear Jordi, I have long noticed that people who talk to those closest to them only about what they eat, what they wear, the money they make, the trip they will or will not take next week—such people are of two sorts. They either have no inner life, or their inner life is painful to them, is beset with regret or fear. Bossuet believed that there are not two such kinds of person, but just one—that people of the world occupy themselves with external things in order to escape from thoughts of death, illness, solitude, and self-reproach.

“I treasure your letters, but I miss in them any reflection of that inner life which has always been so intense and vivid and rich in you. How you used to argue—with your whole soul in your eyes and in your voice—about God and the creation and goodness and evil and justice and mercy and destiny and chance! You remember that well. At eleven o'clock I would cry out: ‘Children, children, you must go to bed! We cannot settle these matters tonight.'

“Now I can only assume that you are carrying some burden that ‘closes your mouth.' And I assume that that burden has to do with the events that took place here three springs ago.

“Your father was often unjust toward you. His father was unjust toward him and toward his mother. I think it very likely that his grandfather was unjust toward
his
son. And each of these sons toward his father. Oh, do not add new links to that unhappy chain. Someday you will have sons. No man can be a good father until he has understood his own.

“Try, my dear boy, to be just toward your father.

“Justice rests upon understanding
all
the facts. God, who sees all, is Justice—Justice and Love.

“When that happy day comes when I shall see you again (every night I make sure that the window in your room is raised a little) I shall tell you many things about your father. What I wish to tell you now is that during the last weeks of his life—during those nights that you so greatly misunderstood, when you thought he wished to do me harm—he saw his life with new eyes. He recognized his injustice toward you and toward all of us. In profound sincerity and deep emotion he looked forward to a new and different life.

“Then the fatal accident took place.

“Your father's last words—and above all his last
glance
—would seem unimportant to a stranger, but they showed clearly the change that was going on in him.

“You had left Coaltown the night before. On that Sunday afternoon, three years ago today, Mr. and Mrs. Ashley came over to the house as I have told you. You have probably forgotten that the Junior Epworth League of the Methodist Church was holding a picnic in Memorial Park across the hedge. The Ashley children had invited you and your sisters to be their guests. Just before the shot was fired that killed your father, the children began singing around the campfire. We all raised our heads and listened a moment.

“Your father said, ‘Jack, will you thank your children for inviting ours to the picnic? You Ashleys have always been mighty good friends to us.'

“Mrs. Ashley glanced at me quickly. Mr. Ashley looked surprised. It had not been your father's habit to acknowledge kindness in anyone.

“Mr. Ashley said, ‘Well, Breck, when anybody has children like your children, there's no call to thank anybody for inviting them.'

“While Mr. Ashley took his aim—you remember how serious and slow he was about it—your father looked across the lawn at me. There were tears in his eyes—tears of pride in you.

“Forgive, George. Forgive and understand.

“You will soon be playing Shylock. Think of your father when you hear Portia saying to you:

“Your father died at the moment when his real self was beginning to find expression. But that real self is in us all from birth. It was that
real self
that I was aware of in your father throughout our long life together—which I loved and shall continue to love in eternity.

“As I do you. As I shall you.”

GEORGE to Félicité (Seattle, May 10):

“Don't expect letters from me for a while. Tomorrow I'm taking a boat to Alaska, maybe.
But you write me.
I've made arrangements so that your letters will be sent on to me. Do you remember the Roman candles on Fourth of July? Well, everything here went up in a blaze of flame and sparks. I got fired. I got arrested. I got ordered to leave Seattle. The only thing I'm sorry about is Florella Thompson. She's pretty unhappy about it, I guess. I got into a fight on the stage, right in front of the audience. The fight was written in the play. Mr. Culloden Barnes is in the hospital, but he isn't hurt. I learned one thing: when I fight in a play I don't get dizzy. I win. The mayor and his wife came to see the shows often. They liked me. He's getting me out of jail tomorrow. If I don't take the boat to Alaska tomorrow, I can take one to San Francisco two days later. It had to be. I don't regret anything except Florella's being so unhappy. Yes, I do regret it, because what I did to him didn't change anything.”

FÉLICITÉ to George (May 18):

“I beg you, Jordi, by all that's precious to you, by
Maman
, by all that God has sent to St. Kitts, by Shakespeare and Pushkin: write once a week without fail. Put your hands over your eyes and imagine my unhappiness if I do not hear from you regularly. Jordi, my brother, I shall ask
Maman
for a hundred dollars and I shall come out to California. I shall go to all the places where you have been. I shall hunt for you everywhere. Don't make me do that unless it is necessary. I would have to tell
Maman
that I was deeply anxious about you. She would insist on coming with me. Just one letter a week will prevent this
desperation
on our part. You and God are all we have.”

GEORGE to his mother (San Francisco, June 4, 11, 18, 25, and so on into July and August):

“Everything's fine. . . . ? I'm working. . . . ? I've got a room way out by what they call the Seal Rocks. The seals bark all night. . . . ? I bought a new suit. . . . ? I've been twice to the Chinese theatre. I go with a Chinese friend and he explains it to me. I learn things. . . . ? I'm doing something very interesting that I'll tell you soon . . . ? Yes, I sleep fine. . . . ?”

GEORGE to Félicité (San Francisco, September 10):

“Now I'm going to tell you what I've been doing. I went back to being a waiter in a saloon again. There are about forty saloons along the waterfront where I work. Ours is a fifth-rate one. Other saloons have girly shows or singing waiters or Irish or Jewish comedians. We just have old sailors and old miners who fall asleep on the tables and don't leave any tips. Well, there's an old comic actor here named Lew. He's Greek and very good. Also, he's a kind of saint. His health is just held together with a pin. I've been paying for his drinks. Well, we started a kind of act together. In a pawnshop I found one of those tall silk hats and a ratty old overcoat with a fur collar. He comes in as a rich customer and I wait on him. We have terrible quarrels. At first the customers (and the manager!) thought it was real; then we got to be popular. He talks in Greek and I talk in Russian. Soon there were fifty people at one o'clock and two o'clock and then more and more, standing up around the walls. Sometimes I'm a sad waiter telling him my troubles, sometimes I'm a dreamy waiter or a furious waiter. We practice mornings in a warehouse. We love to practice. We're
great.
We're
wonderful.
The manager of another bigger saloon offered us ten dollars a night for four shows. The signs say LEO
AND LEW, THE GREATEST CLOWNS IN TOWN
. Society people come now. The reason it's funny is because we've practiced every little move and
silence
, and because people don't understand the words. Lew is great. Now I know what I want to be. I want to be a comic actor. [October, 29]: Lew died. I held his hand. Everything I do falls to pieces for me, but I don't care. I don't live. I don't really live. I never will. I don't care as long as other people live. Lew told me I gave him three happy months. I heard that in India those street cleaners have to wear badges. I'm proud of mine. Don't you worry about me.”

FÉLICITÉ to George (November 10):

“Many times you have told me not to worry about you, but it has become clearer and clearer to me that you
do
want me to worry about you. That's why you write me—you want me to join you in some deep trouble. I'm not charging you with lying to me; I'm saying that you are so unhappy about
something
that you do not think clearly. Last night I sat down in my room at ten o'clock and read through all your letters slowly. It was almost three o'clock when I finished.

“In all those letters you mention
Père
only five times (his insurance, his boasting, his killing animals—twice—and his ‘bad education.') Our father was murdered. You do not mention that once. As you used to say, that is a ‘very loud silence.'

“Jordi, you have some very heavy burden on your heart. I think it is a self-reproach—a remorse of some kind. It is a secret. You want to tell it to me, but you do not. You almost tell it to me, then you run away. I know that you do not go to Confession and Mass, because you would have told me so. If I am the only person to whom you have thought of revealing this secret I am ready to hear it. Though there are many wiser than I, there is only one who loves you as much. Let me send you fifty dollars. Come! Do you remember how you used to make me read from Macbeth? You have not forgotten the lines:

‘Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart.'

“Your unhappiness has somehow to do with
Père.
In some way you feel responsible for his death. That's impossible. When you suffered that concussion of your head in St. Louis some fancy became tangled and twisted in your mind. Oh, write to me! Best of all, come and tell me everything.

“Almost six years ago you came back from the New Year's Eve gathering in the Illinois Tavern. You waited until
Maman
had turned out her light and you woke me. You told me at that time what Dr. Gillies had said about the history of the universe. He said that a new kind of human being was going to be born, the children of the Eighth Day. You said that you were a
CHILD OF THE EIGHTH DAY
. I understood that. Many people in town thought you something very different, but
Maman
and Miss Doubkov and I knew. We knew what your road had been.

“What frightens me now is that you may have let some mistaken fancy
ROB YOU OF FOUR YEARS OF YOUR LIFE
, warp you, dwarf you. You'll slip back to the
SIXTH DAY
, or earlier.

“Jordi, believe what Our Lord said, ‘The truth will make you free.'

“But you must tell it.

“Spring into freedom.

“I cannot imagine what crime you torment yourself with, but God forgives us all if we acknowledge our weakness. He sees billions of people. He knows everybody's road.

“You know what the deep wish of my life is. I cannot ask to take my vows until my dear brother is—as the Bible says—‘made whole.' Come to Coaltown.”

GEORGE to Félicité (November 11):

“You won't hear from me for a while. I think I'm going to China soon and from China to Russia. So don't be an idiot and come trying to find me in California because I won't be there.”

In early November, 1905, Eustacia answered the postman's ring. It was a letter from her brother-in-law. She did not open it at once; everything about Fisher Lansing displeased her. An hour later Félicité, mopping the upper hall, heard her mother cry out in distress. She descended the stairs rapidly.

“
Maman! Qu'est-ce que tu as?
”

Her mother gazed at her with an imploring expression and pointed to a letter and a cheque which had fallen to the floor from her lap. Félicité took them up and read them. Fisher had submitted one of the Ashley-Lansing inventions to an expert. He had obtained a patent for it. The mechanical device had been leased to a clock-making firm. He enclosed a cheque for two thousand dollars—a first payment; royalties would follow. He was proceeding slowly in the matter of the other inventions. He was protecting her interests, she could be sure of that. “There may be a lot in these, Stacey. Start thinking about your automobile.”

They exchanged a long glance. Félicité handed the cheque to her mother, who turned her head. “Keep it. Hide it. I don't want to look at it.”

After supper Anne went upstairs to do her homework for school. She would be down at eight for the evening's reading. Félicité had never seen her mother so restless—not during her father's illness nor following the receipt of a letter from George. Eustacia walked back and forth.

“Maman!”

“It's not mine. It's not ours.”

“
Maman
, we'll think of some way to give it to them.”

“Beata Ashley would never take it—never, never.”

Anne appeared.

“Girls, get your hats and coats. We're going to take a walk.”

The lights were going out in the homes. There was an early warning of winter in the air. From time to time Eustacia's fingers closed tightly about Félicité's wrist. For a moment she paused in deep thought before Dr. Gillies's house, then moved on slowly. They reached “The Elms.” The sign gleamed faintly in the star-light. Eustacia stood a long time, her hand on the swinging gate.

Félicité” whispered, “I'll go in with you.”

Anne said, “
Maman
, let's!”

Their mother turned to each of them, anguished but dry-eyed. “But how—how?” she said harshly.