A Saucer of Loneliness (15 page)

He made no attempt to attract her attention, or to join the group. He simply watched her until she left, which was some three or four hours later. He followed her and so did another man. When she turned up the steps of a brownstone a few blocks away the man followed her, and was halfway up the steps when she was at the top, fumbling for a key. When Don stopped, looking up, the man saw him and whirled. He blocked Don’s view of the girl. To Don he was not a person at all, but something in the way. Don made an impatient, get-out-of-the-way gesture with his head, and only then realized that the man was at bay, terrified, caught red-handed. His eyes were round and he drooled. Don stood looking upward, quite astonished, as the man sidled down, glaring, panting, and suddenly leapt past him and pelted off down the street.

Don looked from the shadowed, dwindling figure to the lighted doorway. The girl had both hands on the side of the outer, open doorway and was staring down at him with bright unbelief in her face. “Oh, dear God,” she said.

Don saw that she was frightened, so he said, “It’s all right.” He stayed where he was.

She glanced down the street where the man had gone and found it empty. Slowly she came toward Don and stopped on the third step above him. “Are you an angel?” she asked. In her voice was a childlike eagerness and the shadow of the laughter that her face was made for.

Don made a small, abashed sound. “Me? Not me.”

She looked down the street and shuddered. “I thought I didn’t care any more
what
happened,” she said, as if she were not speaking to him at all. Then she looked at him. “Anyway, thanks. Thanks. I don’t know what he might’ve … if you …”

Don writhed under her clear, sincere eyes. “I didn’t do nothing.” He backed off a pace. “What do you mean, am I a angel?”

“Didn’t you ever hear about a guardian angel?”

He had, but he couldn’t find it in himself to pursue such a line of talk. He had never met anyone who talked like this. “Who was that guy?”

“He’s crazy. They had him locked up for a long time, he hurt a little girl once. He gets like that once in a while.”

“Well, you want to watch out,” he said.

She nodded gravely. “I guess I care after all,” she said. “I’ll watch out.”

“Well, take it easy;” he said.

She looked quickly at his face. His words had far more dismissal in them than he had intended, and he suddenly felt miserable. She turned and slowly climbed the steps. He began to move away because he could think of nothing else to do. He looked back over his shoulder and saw her in the doorway, facing him. He thought she was going to call out, and stopped. She went inside without speaking again, and he suddenly felt very foolish. He went home and thought about her all night and all the next day. He wondered what her name was.

When he pressed the buzzer, Miss Phoebe did not come to the door immediately. He stood there wondering if he should buzz again or go away or what. Then the door opened. “Come in, Don.”

He stepped inside, and though he thought he had forgotten about the strange mirror, he found himself looking for it even before he saw Miss Phoebe’s face. It was still there, and in it he saw himself as before, with the dark suit, the quiet tie, the dull, clean-buffed shoes. He saw it with an odd sense of disappointment, for it had given him such a wondrous shock before, but now reflected only
what a normal mirror would, since he was wearing such a suit and tie and shoes—but wait; the figure in the reflection carried something and he did not. A paper parcel … a wrapped bunch of flowers; not a florist’s elaboration, but tissue-wrapped jonquils from a subway peddler. He blinked, and the reflection was now quite accurate again.

All this took place in something over three seconds. He now became aware of a change in the room,
it’s—oh, the light
. It had been almost glary with its jewel-clean windows and scrubbed white woodwork, but now it was filled with mellow orange light. Part of this was sunlight struggling through the inexpensive blinds, which were drawn all the way down. Part was something else he did not see until he stepped fully into the room and into the range of light from the near corner. He gasped and stared, and, furiously, he felt tears rush into his eyes so that the light wavered and ran.

“Happy birthday, Don,” said Miss Phoebe severely.

Don said, “Aw.” He blinked hard and looked at the little round cake with its eighteen five-and-dime candles. “Aw.”

“Blow them out quickly,” she said. “They run.”

He bent over the cake.

“Every one, mind,” she said. “In one breath.”

He blew. All the candles went out but one. He had no air left in his lungs, and he looked at the candle in purple panic. In a childlike way, he could not bring himself to break the rules she had set up. His mouth yawped open and closed like that of a beached fish. He puffed his cheeks out by pushing his tongue up and forward, leaned very close to the candle, and released the air in his mouth with a tiny explosive pop. The candle went out.

“Splendid. Open the blinds for me like a good boy.”

He did as he was asked without resentment. As she plucked the little sugar candleholders out of the cake, he said, “How’d you know it was my birthday?”

“Here’s the knife. You must cut it first, you know.”

He came forward. “It’s real pretty. I never had no birthday cake before.”

“I’m glad you like it. Hurry now. The tea’s just right.”

He busied himself, serving and handing and receiving and setting down, moving chairs, taking sugar. He was too happy to speak.

“Now then,” she said when they were settled. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

He assumed she knew, but if she wanted him to say, why, he would. “I’m a typewriter mechanic now,” he said. “I like it fine. I work nights in big offices and nobody bothers me none. How’ve you been?”

She did not answer him directly, but her serene expression said that nothing bad could ever happen to her. “And is that all? Just work and sleep?”

“I been thinkin’,” he said. He looked at her curiously. “I thought a lot about what you said.” She did not respond. “I mean about everything working on everything else, an’ the wasps and all.” Again she was silent, but now there was response in it.

He said, “I was all mixed up for a long time. Part of the time I was mad. I mean, like you’re working for a boss who won’t let up on you, thinks he owns you just because you work there. Used to be I thought about whatever I wanted to, I could stop thinkin’ like turnin’ a light off.”

“Very apt,” she remarked. “It was exactly that.”

He waited while this was absorbed. “After I was here I couldn’t turn off the light; the switch was busted. The more I worked on things, the more mixed-up they got.” In a moment he added, “For a while.”

“What things?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” he answered honestly. “I never had nobody to tell me much, but I had some things pretty straight. It’s wrong to swipe stuff. It’s right to do what they tell you. It’s wrong to play with yourself. It’s right to go to church.”

“It’s right to worship,” she interjected. “If you can worship in a church, that’s the best place to do it. If you can worship better in another place, then that’s where you should go instead.”

“That’s
what I mean!” he barked, pointing a bony finger like a revolver. “You say something like that, so sure and easy, an’ all the—the fences go down. Everything’s all in the right box, see, an’ you
come along and shake everything together. You don’t back off from nothing. You say what you want about anything, an’ you let me say anything I want to you. Everything I ever thought was right or wrong could be wrong or right. Like those wasps dyin’ because of me, and you say they maybe died
for
me, so’s I could learn something. Like you sayin’ I could be a wasp or a fire, an’ still know what was what … I’ll get mixed up again if I go on talkin’ about it.”

“I think not,” she said, and he felt very pleased. She said, “It’s in the nature of things to be ‘shaken all together,’ as you put it. A bird brings death to a worm and a wildcat brings death to the bird. Can we say that what struck the worm and the bird was evil, when the wildcat’s kittens took so much good from it? Or if the murder of the worm is good, can we call the wildcat evil?”

“There isn’t no … no
altogether
good or bad, huh.”

“Now, that is a very wrong thing to say,” she said with soft-voiced asperity.

“You gone an’ done it again!” he exclaimed.

She did not smile with him. “There is an absolute good and an absolute evil. They cannot be confused with right and wrong, or building and destroying as we know them, because, like the cat and the worm, those things depend on whose side you take. Don, I’m going to show you something very strange and wonderful.”

She went to her little desk and got pencil and paper. She drew a circle, and within it she sketched in an S-shaped line. One side of this line she filled in with quick short strokes of her pencil:

“This,” she said, as Don pored over it, “is the most ancient symbol known to man. It’s called ‘yin and Yang.’ ‘Yin’ is the Chinese term for darkness and earth. ‘Yang’ means light and sky. Together
they form the complete circle—the universe, the cosmos—everything. Nothing under heaven can be altogether one of these things or the other. The symbol means light and dark. It means birth and death. It is everything which holds together and draws down, with everything that pours out and disperses. It is male and female, hope and history, love and hate. It’s—everything there is or could be. It’s why you can’t say the murder of a worm by a bird is good or evil.”

“This here yin an’ Yang’s in everything we do, huh.”

“Yes.”

“It’s God an’ the Devil then.”

“
Good
and the devil.” She placed her hand over the entire symbol. “God is all of it.”

“Well, all right!” he exclaimed. “So it’s like I said. There ain’t a ‘altogether good’ and a ‘altogether bad’. Miss Phoebe, how you know you’re right when you bust up some pusher’s business or close a house?”

“There’s a very good way of knowing, Don. I’m very glad you asked me that question.” She all but beamed at him—she, who hardly ever even smiled. “Now listen carefully. I am going to tell you something which it took me many years to find out. I am going to tell you because I do not see why the young shouldn’t use it.

“Good and evil are active forces—almost like living things. I said that nothing under heaven can be completely one of these things or the other, and it’s true. But, Don—good and evil come to us from
somewhere
. They reach this cosmos as living forces, constantly replenished—from
somewhere
. It follows that there is a Source of good and a Source of evil … or call them light and dark, or birth and death if you like.”

She put her finger on the symbol. “Human beings, at least with their conscious wills, try to live here, in the Yang part. Many find themselves on the dark side; some cross and recross the borderline. Some set a course for themselves and drive it straight and true, and never understand that the border itself turns and twists and will have them on one side and then the other.

“In any case, these forces are in balance, and they must remain so. But as they are living, vital forces, there must be those who willingly
and purposefully work with them.”

With his thumbnail he flicked the paper. “From this, everything’s so even-steven you’d never know who you’re working for.”

“Not true, Don. There are ways of knowing.”

He opened his lips and closed them, turned away, shaking his head.

“You may ask me, Don,” she said.

“Well, okay. You’re one of ’em. Right?”

“Perhaps so.”

“Perhaps nothing. You knocked me flat on my noggin twice in a row an’ never touched me. You’re—you’re somethin’ special, that’s for sure. You even knew about my birthday. You know who’s callin’ when the phone rings.”

“There are advantages.”

“All right then, here’s what I’m gettin’ to, and I don’t want you to get mad at me. What I want to know is, why ain’t you rich?”

“What do you mean by rich?”

He kicked the table leg gently. “Junk,” he said. He waved at the windows. “Everybody’s got venetian blinds now. Look there, cracks in the ceiling ‘n you’ll get a rent rise if you complain, long as it ain’t leakin’. You know, if I could do the things you do, I’d have me a big house an’ a car. I’d have flunkies to wash dishes an’ all like that.”

“I wouldn’t be rich if I had all those things, Don.”

He looked at her guardedly. He knew she was capable of a preachment, though he had been lucky so far. “Miss Phoebe,” he said respectfully, “You ain’t goin’ to tell me the—uh—inner riches is better’n a fishtail Cadillac.”

“I’ll ask
you
,” she said patiently. “Would you want a big house and servants and all those things?”

“Well,
sure!
”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, because, because—well, that’s the way to live, that’s all.”

“Why is it the way to live?”

“Well, anyone can see why.”

“Don, answer the question. Why is that the way to live?”