The Man Who Loved Children (53 page)

But this spring Saturday that he walked out with the two young girls, the need for Gillian rushed back into his veins like a relapse into fever. Only by talking, diverting his own attention all the time, could he forget her, smile and save himself from despair; and so when he reached home, sure enough, he gathered all his little ones round him, stealing them from whatever occupation he found them in, setting them round the long table in the square dining room that looked up Spa Creek, and he began to tell them all that had happened that afternoon—the walk, the wicked dilapidation of the Negro houses, the charming little wooden village that a Negro woodworker had there (birds, dolls, Mary-quite-Contraries, houses, picket-fences all in miniature and painted, in a little Swiss village), the
Scyphomedusae,
and Clare, and all he had said to Clare and Louie, with new variations. Meanwhile Louie got supper, and Henny, nearly mad with toothache and neuralgia, was crying in her room, her head tied up in an old flannel nightgown that once belonged to Tommy. Filled with love, with his eye on Louie, who was running backwards and forwards with the supper dishes, and who was wearing the pretty flowered blue dress that she had got new for school, he said to the children,

“When Bluebeak [Louie] was very tiny and could hardly speak, she and I often communicated by human radio, telepathy: one day she was playing in a little blue dress, just the same blue as that blue dress she has now—it was made from the dress her mother, my dear Rachel, wore when she was married—we came out to Annapolis—isn’t that queer, kids!—the day before and she wore it then, too (for we were very, very poor). Bluebeak (I called her ‘Ducky’ then), Ducky was playing with her blocks—and she was wonderful at building with them, so serious, stopping for nothing, nothing could disturb her, shrieks, the milkman coming, the streetcar, nothing—I was standing there, thinking about poor Uncle Ebby (he didn’t look so old and worn then, though he had his troubles, he had bad troubles)—and my Ducky suddenly looked up and said, ‘Wassamattr wi’ Uncle Ebby, Daddy?’ Later on, I tried experiments with Bluebeak and they always worked. I always knew when you were sick, Bluebeak” (he broke off, addressing Louie who had just come into the room with a glass of water in her hand), “and the strange thing, is, kids, I always know what Bluebeak is thinking.”

The children giggled at the new name, Bluebeak.

“Her nose isn’t blue,” said Little-Sam thoughtfully.

Louie laughed. Sam thought she laughed at the new name, “Whop you tee-heein’ at, Bluebeak?” he asked.

“You always know what I think!” she said and shouted with laughter.

“You think Sam-the-Bold can’t fathom your great thoughts?”

“No.”

“Then whop you larfin at poor Sam fower?”

“You don’t always know what I think.” She became even more hilarious.

“Don’t be a goat, Bluebeak.”

She kept on laughing.

“The way you think you’re so clever,” she managed to get out between explosions.

He frowned, “Stop that hysterical teeheeing, Looloo.”

She began to calm down, only giving an occasional giggle; the children were all giggling, all their little bellies and shoulders shaking. He said solemnly, “I will always know what Bluebeak thinks all her life.”

Ernie burst out, “I betcha you don’t know what she’s got written in her diary.”

Sam’s face cleared in a second. He looked at Ernie with surprise and delight, “A diary? Looloo, you bin keepin’ a diary, after all. Why, I told you to, but I didn’t know you did.”

Louie protested that she did not but Ernie, only wishing to be of service, rushed into her bedroom and, though Louie rushed after him, he was back in a moment, ducking past her, evading her grabbing arm, and showing Sam the five-cent notebook which he had just taken from under her pillow. Sam began laughing like a jackass, and all the children began bobbing about, like targets in a shooting gallery, laughing and shouting. Ernie thrust it into Sam’s hand, but he was serious: he did not laugh:

“You can’t read it,” he told his father.

Louie stood like a stone image at the door, looking stupidly at them all.

“What is it, Looloo?” asked Sam gently, pushing Ernest away from him.

“A notebook.”

“I see that!” He had not opened it. “What’s in it? Notes on nature?” He was very kind.

“No.”

“What then?”

She flushed purple. “It’s in code; in code—I make up my own code: so that no one can read.”

“You can show your poor little dad,” he cadged, and winked at the children who sat round simmering, waiting for the excitement. He insinuated, “It isn’t something you’re ashamed to show me, is it? You see, Looloo, though you think I’m too dopey to see through you, I know more’n you think.”

It certainly was a pleasure to tease Louisa, for she fell into every trap.

“I never said you were a dope.”

“Well, if I ain’t a dope, I can see your own brilliant
aphorisms
,” and he winked at the children, in a circle of winks—for the past few weeks Louie had been solemnly stuffing them with the aphorisms of La Rochefoucauld, results of French books she had got from the library. After a short struggle, she burst into tears and gave in, unexpectedly. He then opened the rolled, dogeared little book (he was honorable, he had not looked at it without her permission!). On the first page were only a few lines.

(i) 8 2800 h3f34 5300 q 083

(ii) ejsy s dytsmhr yjomh yjsy ejrm s, omodyrt pt s v;rtl pt s kidyovr pg yjr I/2rsvr I/2tpmpimvrd s fre eptfd pbrt s ,sm smf ep,sim s vr;; nrhomd yp frbr;pI/2—

(iii) jdjayfvy jpcjatjqzj sntzn tl etljay fjhafjl ej—

(iv) Ii7i-7i5iii5iii-Ii7i-3i7ii-8iiIiii7i4iii3iii3l3ii7ii 3i-6iiiIi5ii-7ii5iii-4iii5iii5iii4ii2ii5iiiRiii-7ii3ii2ii-8ii2ii4iii4iii-Ii5ii2i-7ii3ii2ii-7i6i3iii2i2ii6iii-and the high barn, only yesterday found out they were dreams.

The code expert had apparently got tired of this slow way of writing, and the fifth entry was merely in her French: “
Dans les moyen ages les parents envoyaient les enfants à les etrangers
.”

“What does this say?” asked Sam, after studying all these items and pointing to the fourth entry. The children crowded round in great curiosity, while Ernie, who worked codes in school with a friend of his, pretended to ignore it. But Louie could not read her own entries and had first to go into her bedroom whence she came again with several scraps of paper, which she held away from Sam. Then she slowly read, “As soon as it was light I ran to look for the well and the spider and the high barn, only yesterday found out they were dreams.”

He was very puzzled, “What is it? What does it mean? Is it a dream?”

No: she explained that long ago before she could talk, she had dreamed about a well in the yard and never been able to understand why it was not there; she had tried to ask, but they had not understood her. So with other things. This treasure hunt fascinated Sam, who insisted on the translation of the other codes (the numbering referred to codes, one to four, not to the entries). After work that made her sweat, she finally read to him,

“
i:
I will never tell a lie.”

“Well, that’s a change, that’s something good,” said Sam, grinning and winking, his smiles reflected on all the little mirrors round him.

“
ii:
What a strange thing that when a minister or a clerk or a justice of the peace pronounces a few words over a man and a woman a cell begins to develop.”

This caused Sam much consternation and merriment when he finally understood it, for though he had given Louie a book, and Henny had given her a talk about marriage, Louie now imagined that marriage was essential to conception and that, provided no powders were administered to the bride and groom (she had made cautious inquiries on this subject—did they eat anything special on their wedding day?), a miraculous or magical event took place during the marriage ceremony. This was confirmed by her reading of various sentimental stories in which, after a hasty wedding, the bridegroom departed leaving the bride at the altar, and yet some months later a baby appeared on the scene. She explained this, with embarrassment, but honestly enough, to Sam who guffawed into his hand, and worked himself up into a paroxysm of fun. But after the first few minutes, the children sat round sad and mystified, for in fact they saw nothing comical in Louie’s theory. Heaving with laughter, Sam insisted on Louie’s going on with the next item, even though she refused, with a very red face, and so she went on,

“
iii
: Everyday experience which is misery degrades me.”

At this he pulled a long face; and then there was nothing more but the ungrammatical French sentence which meant, “In the Middle Ages parents sent (their) children to (into the care of) strangers.”

However, this all struck Sam as very bizarre, and he thought over the whole thing during supper. When Louie wanted to go to her room “to do her homework,” he made her come to work in the common room, as he called it, saying that he hoped she was not intending to do anything that she would be ashamed of in front of her little sister and brothers and himself; so that she stamped around the house in a great temper, and Henny opened her upstairs bedroom door and screamed out that she’d come down and strangle the great ox that thought it was funny to make so much noise.

When the children went to bed, Louie went up with them to tell them their story, leaving Sam sitting alone, down in the common room, and when she came back to gather up her books, he was still sitting there with misty eyes and a thoughtful expression. She said very sulkily, “Good night.”

“Doin’ beddybye so soon, Bluebeak?” Sam asked kindly.

“Yes.”

“Sit down, Bluebeak, Sam-the-Bold wants to talk to you. What do you mean by saying misery degrades you? What can you know about misery?”

“The misery here at home.” She knew it was cruel, and she would have said it a thousand times to make it sharper a thousand times. After a silence, he said sullenly, “Sit down!”

She sank into a chair, frowning at him. Presently he raised his eyes from the table where he was jumping a table knife,

“Well, Louie, since you’re beginning to understand some things and since you’re occasionally getting a thought into that fat head of yours” (but after this insulting beginning, which she knew was only to cover timidity, he went on to tell her about his boyhood; and how in poverty and ignorant youth, with a gay, licentious father and a dying mother, he had begun his experiments in science and fought upwards, ever since).

“Your mother loved me dearly and short as was her life,” said Sam in a weeping tone, “she sacrificed every deed, every thought to you and me: she was a most beautiful soul and I hope you will grow like her; in love we must sacrifice—love is sacrifice, and that is why for love of the people, I have sacrificed my whole life, and would again, had I a thousand lives. I love, all my life has been love, love to me is the whole world—love of nature, man and mankind’s good, I mean. Man is naturally good, not wicked, though wicked men, more beasts than men, transformed by greed, have led him into evil. When the time for man comes, though, he will see and rise to the light—there is no need of revolution, but only of guidance, and through evolution and good laws by wise men administered, we will reach the good world, the new age of gold. I heard you speak the other day of the Augustan Age, Looloo: now, that was a wicked age. I wish they would not teach you history, for the pages of history are blotted with crime—only in the good around us, and in our own lives, can we do good. And even we are stained.”

Louie had laid her sheets of paper down on the table and was idly scribbling on them. Sam paused for a moment, to attract her attention, but since she said nothing, he went on in a softer, more insinuating tone, “And you later on will lead others to understand: first you must come to understanding yourself. It is not study but the penetration of human motive, you see, Looloo. I think you can do that.”

Outside was the plashing of the creeping tide, and the shrieks of young people on the little lighted houseboat, at the end of Shipwrights Street. They both listened to it, and to the breeze, still brittle, not fully leaved.

“The year is young, gawky,” thought Sam to himself, “like poor Looloo, so ignorant of herself and me.” He said in a low voice, “What are you thinking of, Looloo?”

She replied, with a rush, “
It is night: now do all gushing fountains speak louder, and my heart also is a gushing fountain
.”

“What is that?” She did not reply.

After a silence, he went on, “You know I call myself an agnostic; and perhaps you will be too, Looloo. But we both believe that good is paramount and will spread through the nations, perhaps through the help of the radio. I always said that a second Christ could arise with the radio, speaking to all mankind—though for that we need the universal tongue and not cranky Frongsay and guttural Deutsch: yes, I believe it will spread even to the mean-spirited Frogs and the savage Rossian Tartars, though they may be the cream of Tartars, since Lenin’s little tricks—”

He waited for the laugh, but it did not come. Louie was scribbling at the other end of the table.

“I am not personally concerned in what anyone believes as long as he believes in those main principles which you have so often heard me set forth, so often that you know them by heart, Looloo, Looloo, Looloo!”

She raised a drained, martyred face.

“What are you writing, Looloo? Are you making notes of what your dad is telling you?”

She said nothing: her shoulders writhed slightly. He could see that all of two sheets were covered with her little scrawl.

He went on, “And in you I see sure signs of the love of man—Looloo, look at me: what are you writing?”

She sat with her head sunk between her shoulders. Amazed, he got up and came up to the other end of the table. She sat there without a movement. He bent over her shoulder and read,

Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, I can’t stand your gassing, oh, what a windbag, what will shut you up, shut up, shut up.
And so
ad infinitum.