Cast a Cold Eye (7 page)

A husband, hearing his wife’s voice quicken as she answered Francis Cleary’s telephone call, would be startled into asking himself the impermissible question:
Why do we see that fellow?
The light fervor of his wife’s tone jarred on his sense of what was fitting; it breached some unspoken agreement—she was not playing fair. He felt as if he had been duped. From that moment on, he disliked Francis Cleary intensely, and his wife would have to fight to get him invited to a party, just as if he had been one of her own friends. If she were loyal in her attachments, she would soon find herself trying to see him when her husband was out of town or working late at the office; she would meet him between engagements in the bars of quiet hotels. But this illicit atmosphere was deeply uncongenial to Francis. Her affection, her fidelity, could not begin to make up to him for the fact that he was no longer asked to her house. Indeed he hated her for that affection, which, as he saw it, was responsible for all the trouble. Like the husband, he experienced a sense of outrage; he too had been betrayed by her. With her inordinate capacity for friendship, she had gulled them both. She, on her side, became aware that Francis was suffering from his exclusion. She imagined (this particular wife was rather stupid) that he missed his old friend, her husband; and to save Francis pain she began to lie. “Jerry misses you terribly,” she would tell him, “but we see hardly anybody any more. Jerry hasn’t been feeling well. We stay home and read detective stories…” Francis, of course, knew better, and eventually it would happen that he met them when they were dining out with a large party of friends, and the poor wife’s duplicity would be exposed. All her nudges and desperate, appealing glances went unanswered—Jerry would not invite Francis to sit down at their table. After that, Francis was always too busy to see her when she called. If anybody mentioned her name, he spoke of her with a rancor that was for him unusual, so that people assumed either that she had come between Francis and his old friend, her husband, or that she had tried to have an affair with Francis and failed. Of the husband he continued to speak in the highest terms, thus reinforcing both of these theories. And his admiration was not simulated. He respected Jerry for the contempt in which Jerry held him—it was an attitude they shared. As for the unfortunate wife, she could never make out what had gone wrong. In the end, she came to believe her husband when he told her, as he frequently did, that she had no talent for human relations.

Between the Scylla of an Al and the Charybdis of a Jerry’s wife, Francis steers his uneasy course. Perhaps it is the vicissitudes of this life, the vigilance against the true and imaginary dangers, that are responsible for the change in Francis. Certainly it has been hard for him to be obliged, every year or so, to re-examine his premises. Francis had, it seemed to him, made a good bargain with the world. Yet whenever a Jerry’s wife took a fancy to him, he questioned his own shrewdness. If she likes me, he would ask himself, why wouldn’t others, and if likes, why not loves, and does she really and how much? It would be weeks, after such an experience, before Francis could silence these questions. Like a businessman, he feared that he had closed his deal with life too soon; the buyer might have paid much more. And as the businessman can only set his mind at rest by assuring himself that the property he disposed of was really good riddance of a negligible asset, so Francis’ one recourse was to persuade himself once again that he had been perfectly correct in setting the zero, dejected yet triumphant, opposite his own name. But however successful as auditing, these midnight reckonings must have been painful, even to Francis; one night his anesthetized spirit must have awakened in rage and spite.

Or perhaps nature does abhor a vacuum; perhaps the wall of the sealed, sterile chamber that was Francis’ nature collapsed from atmospheric pressure, and in rushed all the unattached emotions—that is, hatred, envy, fear, which, unlike love, do not cling to a definite object—that float, gaseous, over man’s sphere. At any rate, Francis has been changing. Under our very eyes, he has been turning into everything that he, by definition, was not. If you have failed to notice the steps in this process, it is because you are so much in the habit of
not
thinking about Francis that he could transform himself into a snake on your parlor floor without attracting your attention. Your indifference has been a cloak of invisibility behind which he has been preparing for you some rather startling surprises. But now that your memory has been jogged on the point, you will recall that his manners, while never highly polished, were once more acceptable than they are today. There was a time, for example, when he left your cocktail parties promptly at seven-thirty, taking with him one of the more burdensome women guests for a
table-d’hôte
dinner in the Village. But in the course of years his leavetakings have been steadily retarded; soon your wife has been cooking scrambled eggs for him at nine o’clock; and now you are lucky if at midnight or two or three you do not have to make up a bed for him in the spare room or, at the very best, take him home in a taxi and open his door for him. Once it was the interesting guests who stayed, disputing, quoting poetry, playing the piano, singing; today the fascinating people have always somewhere else to go, and every party boils down to Francis Cleary; you do not question this, possibly, but accept it as an analogy to life.

Perhaps it is Francis’ growing addiction to drink (he no longer waits for you to notice his empty glass but helps himself from the shaker or inquires boldly, “Did someone say something about another drink?”) that keeps him late and is also responsible for the mounting truculence of his conversation. In the old days Francis was always prompt to shut off one of his anecdotes when his companion’s interest slightly wavered away from him; indeed, much of his conversation seemed to be constructed around the interruption he awaited. Gradually, however, he has become more adhesive to his topics. He may be interrupted by the arrival of a newcomer, the host may excuse himself to fetch somebody’s coat, or the hostess may go in to look at the baby—but Francis has put a bookmark in his story. “As I was saying,” he resumes, when the distraction has passed. Furthermore, his opinions, which he used to modulate to suit the conversation, never taking up a position without preparing a retreat from it, have now become rigid and obtrusive. This is particularly true of him in his female aspect. Frances Cleary, once the indistinct listener, now arrives at a party with a single idea that haunts the conversation like a ghost. This idea is almost always regressive in character, the shade of a once-live controversy (abstract vs. representational art, progressive vs. classical education), but the female Frances treats it as though she personally were its relict; any change of subject she regards as irreverence to the dead. “Others may forget but I remember,” her aggrieved expression declares. If the hostess is successful in deflecting her to some more personal topic, a single word overheard from across the room will be enough to send her train of ideas puffing out of the station once more. She has dedicated herself, say, to the defense of Raphael against the menace of Mondrian; momentarily silenced, she will instantly revive should one of the other guests be so careless as to remark, “She’s as pretty as a picture.” “You can talk about pictures all you want,” Frances will begin…

In the male Francis Cleary this belligerency is more likely to take a physical form. More and more often nowadays, Francis breaks glasses, ash trays, lamps. His elbow catches the maid’s arm as she is serving the gravy, and the hostess’s dress must go to the cleaners. All during an evening, he may have been his old undemanding self, but suddenly, at midnight, a sullenness will fall on him. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he will ejaculate when the talk goes over his head. Or he may grab someone else’s hat and stumble savagely out, knocking over a table on his way.

As a couple, he does not drink too much. On the contrary, he quietly but firmly refuses the third and even the second drink. He arrives early, the two of him, and ensconces himself on the sofa (the Clearys of all numbers and genders have an affinity for the sofa, which they occupy as a symbol of possession). From this point of vantage, he, or shall we say for convenience’ sake, they, overlook the proceedings with a kind of regal lumpishness. Though their position as friends of the family may be new and still insecure, they treat the very oldest and dearest members of the wife’s or the husband’s circle (the college roommate, the former lover) as candidates for their approval. They do not consider it necessary to talk in the ordinary way, but put sharp, inquisitorial questions to the people that are brought up to them (“Would you mind telling me the significance of that yellow necktie?” “Why do the characters in your novels have such a depressing sex life?”), or else they merely sit, demanding to be entertained.

Like the drinking Francis Cleary, they stay until the last guest has gone, and present a report of their findings to the host and hostess. Nothing has escaped them; they have noticed your former roommate’s stammer and your lover’s squint; they have counted the highballs of the heavy drinker and recorded the tremor of his hand; the woman you thought beautiful is, it turns out, bowlegged, and the lively Russian should have washed his hair. And they present these findings with absolute objectivity; they do not judge but merely report. Though each human being is, so to speak, a work of art, the Clearys are scientists, and take pride in disobeying the artist’s commands. If the artist places a highlight at what he considers a central point of his personality, a highlight that says, “Look here,” the Clearys instantly look elsewhere: the expressiveness of a man’s eyes will never blind them to the weakness of his chin. And you and your wife, who have hitherto obeyed the laws of art and humanity and looked where you were told to look, are now utterly confounded by this clear, bleak view. Your friends whom you regarded as wholes are now assemblages of slightly damaged parts. You are plunged into despair, but you do not question the Clearys’ right to conduct this survey, for their observations are given a peculiar authority and force by the fact that they refer to the other guests—whom they have just met—by their first names. “John drinks terribly, doesn’t he?” they say, and it is useless for you to pretend that this particular evening was exceptional for your friend—that “John” asserts a familiarity with his habits that is greater, if anything, than your own. By the time they have finished their last glass (“Just a little cool water from the tap, please”) and you have seen them to the door you and your wife are utterly drained of energy and belief. There is not even a quarrel left between you, for they have exposed your friends and hers with perfect impartiality. Your world has been depopulated. You have only each other and the Clearys.

Your sole escape from this intolerable situation is for one of you to blame the Clearys on the other. You can divide them up between you. If the husband, say, can be held responsible for Mr. and Mrs. Cleary (“
You
were the one who insisted on having them”), the wife can take Francis as her charge. You can treat them, that is, as friends, and this will immediately result in the exclusion of both factions. But now a super Francis Cleary must be found, a zero raised to a higher power, a negation of a negation. The search may be long, you may wander down false trails, but finally one night at a cocktail party you will find him, the ineffable blank, and you and your wife will seize him and drag him home with you to eat sandwiches and talk excitedly like lovers, of why you have never met before. Your difficulties are over, your wife smiles at you again, and when the two of you stand in the doorway to see him off, your arm falls affectionately across her shoulder.

But alas the same process is about to begin again, and the stakes have been raised. Your new nonentity is larger and emptier than your original little friend; naturally, he commands a higher price. Dozens of other couples are competing with you for this superb creation; he does not hold himself cheap. You realize very quickly from the envious glances your colleagues and neighbors cast toward him whenever you display him at a public gathering that if you want to hold on to him you will have to pay through the nose. Gone are the potted plants, the Christmas cheeses, the toys for the children that were regularly issued by the old Francis Cleary. The super friend gives nothing; he does not even try to make himself agreeable; he will not talk to old ladies or help with the dishes or go to the store for a loaf of bread. His company is all you will ever get of him, and the demands he makes on you will grow steadily more extortionate. If you want him around, his demeanor will tell you, you will have to give up your former friends, your work, your interests, your principles—the whole complex of idiosyncrasies that make up your nature—and your only reward for this terrible sacrifice is that your wife will have to make it too. Soon he will be bringing his own friends to your house, and these friends will be the other couples with whom you share him (did you imagine that he could confine himself to
you?
)
.
Already he borrows your money, your books, and your whiskey.

He will stop at nothing, for he has always hated you and now he knows that he has got you where he wants you—you cannot live without him. Watching this monster as he sits at his ease on your sofa, your wife may look back with feelings of actual affection on your queer old friend, Hugh Caldwell; but now it is too late. Hugh Caldwell spits at the mention of your wife’s name, and, quite possibly, at the mention of your own; and, anyway, you ask yourself, are you really sure that you want to see Hugh Caldwell again, especially if it would mean that your wife, in return, could see one of her old friends? No, you say to yourself, we cannot have
that
; there must be some compromise, some middle way—it is not necessary to go so far. Your mind beats on the door of the dilemma. Surely somewhere, you exclaim silently, somewhere in this great city, living quietly, perhaps, in a furnished room, there is a friend whom neither of us would have to feel so strongly about…Some plain man or woman, some dowdy little couple of regular habits and indefinite tastes, some person utterly unobjectionable, unobtrusive, undefined…With loving strokes, you complete the portrait of this ideal, and all the while there he sits, grinning at you, the lesser evil, but you do not recognize him.