The Last of the Savages (15 page)

I didn’t know how to respond to this last statement. I wasn’t sure if he meant that his father was of the older generation that identified themselves with that old-fashioned appellation—
black
being the fashionable new term—or whether he meant, more spectacularly, that he somehow considered himself white. Afraid of asking, instead I confessed to similar feelings, acknowledging that my parents had nurtured a sensibility delicate enough to be embarrassed by them. But at least, I thought with sudden, unexpected gratitude, we were the same color.

Later, we used our high beams to harass the couples making it in their cars above the reservoir. “If we aren’t getting any,” Aaron declared, “then neither should these other bastards.”

When Aaron talked about women, the referents were deities who transcended race. He carried a picture of his prom date, a pretty blonde he said was his girlfriend. Our junior year, women were finally admitted as fully vested, if not fully accepted, members of the college. Before that, sexual anthropology involved a field trip to Smith or Vassar. At my roommate’s instigation, I assayed a couple of miserable road trips. We were late for our first mixer at Smith, having spent more than an hour
by the side of the road changing the tire on the Dodge Dart we’d borrowed for the occasion. Making up for lost time, Aaron immediately approached the prettiest girl in the auditorium, a blonde whose hair turned up in a perfect flip, as did her nose and her breasts.

“What’s shaking?” Aaron said, staring at the latter. She seemed amused. Introducing herself as Cameron DeVeere, she directed my attention to her friend—a plain-looking girl in a polka-dot dress. When Aaron and Cameron sauntered off without a backward glance, I asked the other one to dance. Far from deeming this an honor or a pleasure, she seemed merely resigned to her fate—and remained so indifferent and distracted that I persisted in dancing with her to prove that I was not merely settling. When I finally kissed her to the lugubrious chords of “Whiter Shade of Pale,” she submitted to my tongue, her acrid breath unfriendly, her upper lip curiously abrasive, her lack of response irritating me to greater effort. And when that interminable song which inevitably signaled the end of all college mixers in those years was finally over, she curtsied stiffly, and said, “I better find Cameron.”

But neither Cameron nor Aaron was to be found. I spent a sleepless night shivering in the backseat of the car. When Aaron finally appeared in the miserable gray dawn, chirpy and bright as the birds, I pointedly did not ask him about his night. He talked about everything
but
for the first half hour of the drive, until finally he couldn’t contain himself. “I think I’m in love,” he said, only partly in jest. They had spent most of the night in the yearbook office, to which Cameron had a key. He did not say whether he had actually screwed her, but he seemed far too animated to have gotten anything less than a hand job.

After that my weekends were spent alone in our suite or in the library, while Aaron was usually off with Cameron. And to this day I feel a tingle of melancholy panic when I hear the first organ chords of “Whiter Shade of Pale.”

Will turned up in Memphis early in the New Year, delirious with hepatitis and the wisdom of the road. He wrote me a long letter which even at the time seemed less a letter to a friend than an attempt to mythologize
his
Wanderjahre.
I saved it for a number of years, rereading it one maudlin, drunken evening in law school, though it has long since disappeared. The highlights, as I recall them now, sound like a kind of greatest-hits-of-the-hippie-trail, though at the time I’d hardly heard of most of the ports of call. As I recall, he reported he’d spent a month living in a tent with a band of Pathan tribesmen who ran guns and drugs through the Khyber Pass and were big fans of American rock and roll; after a hard day of smuggling and robbing they would listen to Chuck Berry and Elvis around the campfire. He’d then trekked the Himalayas to Ladakh, where he had meditated with Tibetan monks. Rolling overland by train and by thumb, he had lingered on a Greek island and in a squatters’ commune in Amsterdam, whence he had taken a steamer to Rio. In a village in Ecuador, stoned out of his gourd on mushrooms, he was captured by a band of guerrillas, who took him to their mountain camp and interrogated him for three days as a suspected CIA agent. More than merely convincing the guerrilla leader of his innocence, Will had by his own account worked up for this charismatic warrior/scholar a New Left reading list which emphasized Marcuse and the rest of the Frankfurt school. And he had apparently promised financial and other support upon his return to the States, though, of course, he explained to me he was sure I would understand that he could not be specific about this.

My adventures at Yale were somewhat pale, by comparison, though at that moment the climate at Yale and elsewhere was just progressive enough that I suppose I did not feel penalized by those whose acceptance I craved for hanging out with my roommate. But Aaron was increasingly reminded of everything he wished to forget by the more militant black students, who wanted to claim him as their own.

One lunchtime our second semester, a tall angular young man from the Afro table muttered “Oreo” as he passed our group. The rest of us were indignant and would have leaped to Aaron’s defense if any other issue had been involved—if he’d been called a fag, for instance. But our bookish little confederation was uncertain of the new etiquette, and, with the exception of Aaron, we were white as plucked poultry; half of us had never heard the word used in this context. Aaron himself pretended
not to have heard. It seems odd to me now that Aaron and I never talked about any of this. But, then, young men seldom talk among themselves about the things that matter the most to them.

My attempt to accommodate divergent loyalties and ambitions was challenged that March by the arrival of an invitation to Dalton Percy’s birthday party. Our near roommate had become the center of the Brahmin, rakehell set in our class, the boys whose ancestors were Old Blues and who themselves would soon fill the ranks of the secret societies. Dalton owned an old fire engine, and on Friday nights he and his friends would gather at some exclusive location to drink themselves into hilarity, after which they would climb aboard and race around the campus throwing water balloons at passersby. I’m sorry to report that this seemed to me the height of stylish fun at the time.

I’d never manned the fire engine, but Dalton had been in my history class in the first term, and I’d lent him my class notes on one occasion. Our initial encounter was never mentioned, and for some reason I had extended myself to be friendly, as if I were the one who had rejected him as a roommate. He in turn seemed eager to communicate, in his own careless way, that he had nothing against me, and always said hello. But I was still surprised to get the engraved invitation—black tie at Mory’s, the venerable private club on York Street.

I didn’t need to ask Aaron if he’d been invited. And in a momentary flash of lucidity, I wondered if that was
why
I had been invited, to sharpen the point of my roommate’s exclusion. This anxious thought was immediately suppressed, as anticipation about the party swirled across the Old Campus. Participants were to be picked up in front of their dorms by the fire engine; prostitutes and strippers were forecast.

“Ask Patrick,” Peter Barnholtz said to our table, one day at lunch. “He’s going.”

“I’m not going,” I said, glancing at Aaron’s face and just as quickly turning away, already angry that I’d been made to blurt out a denial when in fact I was still trying to work out a Missouri compromise with my conscience.

“I mean, I was invited,” I added. “Don’t ask me why. I hardly even know the guy.”

“Don’t stay away on my account,” Aaron said coldly, as we got up to walk to class.

“I wouldn’t think of going,” I lied. The salient point, I suppose, was that I hadn’t mentioned the invitation before, hadn’t held it up and laughed in derision when I had opened it a few days before with Aaron standing right beside me at the mailboxes, tearing the wrapper from his latest issue of the fucking
Boating News.
Obviously, I was considering my response, and by the time Aaron heard that, from Peter, it was already too late.

In fact, I was not among the celebrants. Seldom has an intended good deed, modest though it was, been performed with such tortured reluctance. Then again, the older I get the more I suspect that many genuine heroes have sulked onto the field of glory, that famous stands of principle have often been hunched over with doubt. I wanted to go, was dying to go. But I couldn’t find a place to hide my scruples. Finally, the night before the party, I called Dalton with an elaborate story of a dying grandfather—the classic failure-to-produce-homework story, which sounded no less hackneyed in this case.

“Too bad,” Dalton said. “You’re missing a bash.”

“If it were
anything
else …,” I croaked.

“Yeah, well, catch you later, guy.”

I returned to our rooms and paced, waiting for Aaron to come back so I could tell him what I had done and thereby alleviate in some small measure the sickening feeling of loss in my chest. I waited until midnight, unable to concentrate on
Beowulf
or Aristotle or the Dred Scott decision. I went to the library to look for him, then rushed home to silent, empty rooms. I hardly slept that night, imagining all the splendor and
bon
vivacity I would be deprived of in twenty-four hours.

In the morning, Aaron’s bed had clearly not been slept in, and he was not at lunch. No one knew where he was. Indignant at his disappearance, I began to reconsider. The afternoon was ruined by indecision and the certain knowledge that I would regret either choice. At four I called the formal shop, expecting, and half hoping, to be told that all plausible sizes and types were unavailable due to a major undergraduate party. But in fact they had my very size, available in both shawl and notched
lapel; I should have known that most of Dalton’s friends would own tuxedos. At six-thirty I went to dinner, but I was unable to eat or to listen to anything said at table. When I raced back to my room there was still no sign of Aaron.

Finally, the fire engine, preceded by its siren, pulled up on High Street. I watched from our window as the boys in their evening wear climbed onto the side of the truck, holding the rails with one hand and clinking their beer and champagne bottles together as the flashing red lights disappeared into the festive night.

Aaron sauntered in an hour later to change his clothes.

“Where have you been?” I practically shouted.

He stopped and turned in the door frame. “I was with Cameron,” he said. “What’s the big deal?”

“I didn’t go to the party.” I didn’t know what else to say. Angry as I was at him, the ostensible cause and beneficiary of my decision, I wanted him to make me feel better about it.

“What party,” he asked.

“Dalton Percy’s birthday,” I said incredulously.

After a moment he nodded slowly, as if on reflection he dimly recalled hearing something about the event. “Bully for you,” he said jauntily, and disappeared into his room.

“Y
ou know anything about this nigger girl?”

When Cordell Savage called with the offer of dinner in New Haven, I was flattered that he’d make the detour from New York. It wasn’t until we were tucking into our steaks at Mory’s that he revealed what was clearly the true purpose of his visit.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, hoping the flush I felt rising in my cheeks wouldn’t betray me.

“Hasn’t he talked to you about her?” He paused as if to try to sniff my sincerity. I developed a sudden interest in my plate. “Well, he will sooner or later. And when he does I want you to remember what I’m about to tell you.” He waited until I looked up expectantly. “We’ve heard tell Will’s infatuated with this … girl. I don’t exactly know your sympathies, whether you cotton to all this civil rights business. I don’t expect you share my convictions. But most of our people do. They don’t believe that God intended the races should mix—I’m talking coloreds as well as whites.”

When he took a breather to fill our wineglasses, I conducted a quick reconnaissance of the immediate tables; no one appeared to be listening, but I still felt awkward hearing these sentiments expressed in this
privileged outpost of the great institution of liberal education from which Cordell himself had graduated.
Lux et Veritas
, that was our motto. And yet Cordell was a charismatic man. He sounded reasonable. It was difficult for me to discount his opinions, particularly within the force field of his presence. Those of us with democratic temperaments are handicapped in the face of the autocratic personality.

“It may be up here you think there’s nothing wrong with it,” he continued. “But I’m telling you that down south this is a very grave matter. We have a heritage. We live in the world that was given to us. Even if I wanted to give my blessings, the fact is Will would have to contend with the judgment of an entire society. In fact I cannot give my blessings, and if Will continues on this course he’s going to find himself cut off from his family and his people and his patrimony. And I don’t think I have to tell you, Patrick, it would kill his poor mother.”

“Don’t you think all this is a little premature?” I said. “We don’t even know if he’s dating this girl, let alone—”

“We know he’s seeing her,” Cordell interrupted. “Memphis is a small town and Will is, need I mention, a conspicuous figure. Driving around town in a goddamned cement truck wearing some British officer’s uniform—you think people don’t notice that, don’t tell us what he’s up to? What worries me—we both know that Will is given to bold dramatic gestures.”

I winced at the thought that this might be an allusion to Will’s sacrificial expulsion, though on reflection, I doubted he had ever heard the real story.

“If he is serious about this girl,” I said, “I doubt my opinion is going to make any difference.”

“Of course it would. You’re his best damn friend. And you’re an outsider. Right now he’s not listening to his own people.”