Nostalgia (44 page)

Then, at other times, he suffers the worst kind of remorse about what he has done, what he has felt, who he is, and sees himself doomed to a life of perverse longings and unmerited losses—which quickly connects with the other thing, the larger thing, the Wilderness, the regret of having survived, the thunder and flames … beneath which hums the high-pitched whir, the rasp of the surgeon’s saw, the plucked string growing tighter, the cries of the dying … beneath which simmers the smoke and the brilliant impenetrable silence, the speechlessness, the loss of meaning.

Following
On the contrary
, he writes:

No, he doesn’t want to imply that she is like a dream to him, for it is both insulting and oddly suggestive. He scores
dreamlike
with the nib and tries to think of a suitable substitute. At last he writes:

Is it a too-direct expression of fact, to say that he thinks of her? Might it kindle an inflated—

He lays down the pen and holds his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the tabletop. Truthfully, he can think of no word for the terrible deep-rooted compunction that so often overtakes him, the sorrowful dereliction that makes his hands shake and his imaginary wounds sting and bleed, that sops him with the sense that no one can really be trusted, that he is alone, beyond forgiveness, less than human, and will forever dwell in a half world of rattling skulls, the stench of latrines and the sweet coppery stink of burning flesh, the
sucking sound of the blade going in, the blade coming out—a kind of boiling syrup that pours over him and darkens the air, stills and steals the air, leaving an ash of bafflement and ugly, pointless vanity.

He has been reading Emerson, which strikes him, at turns, as incisive and as if it were crafted in code. He imagines that if Mr. Emerson examined him, the diagnosis would concern the condition of his soul. He thinks of the roses under Emerson’s window, how—simple and pure in their existence—they make no reference to former or better roses; how there is no time to them; and how, by contrast, man “with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.”

Another knock comes at the door, Mrs. B again, this time to say that there are two gentlemen downstairs wishing to see him.

“I showed them into the parlor,” she says. “I said they might wait there but that you are not well, and I could make them no promises.”

“That’s exactly right, Mrs. B,” he says. “It’s undoubtedly a delegation from the Eckford Club, come round to cajole me in person. Please tell them—”

“Oh, they don’t look like ball players to me,” she says.

“Well, they wouldn’t necessarily … what name did they give?”

“The older one,” she says, “the big, oddly dressed one with the bushy beard—he said only to tell you Walt had stopped for a visit.”

W
ALT
’
S BROTHER
J
EFF
—at least a decade younger, tall and slender, with a long face, long nose, and long mustaches—says immediately that he mustn’t tarry, he has errands, but that he’d hoped to glimpse Gilfinian’s betrothed if she were possibly at home. Summerfield, stumped, looks (probably hopelessly) to Walt, as if Walt might not only divine the problem but also offer a solution. Walt—in a respectable-looking blue suit, and still wearing his hat—smiles, apparently perceiving that
something
wants smoothing, and says, “My dear boy … I fear we’ve ambushed you.”

“No,” says Summerfield, “it’s just … if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and see …”

He turns toward the hall door, intending to find Mrs. B and ask
her to approach Sarah. But when he opens it, Sarah herself stands in the hall, one hand still resting on the newel post. She says, “I believe I heard someone humming a tune down here only a few moments ago. Do we have company?”

It is the brittle shell he has met once before, some months earlier. Paradoxically, she wears his favorite blue-plaid dress.

Walt, who has heard her, comes toward the door, saying, “Oh, dear … I didn’t know I was so loud as that!”

In the parlor, as Summerfield makes introductions, Sarah appears both in awe and at sea, almost as if she were in a trance. Of course Gilfinian has mentioned his friendship with the brother of the famous poet, but Summerfield has told her nothing of his own connection with Walt. To help her, he says, “Walt visited me regularly when I was in the hospital. More than anyone, he’s responsible for seeing me home.”

“You can’t just now be telling her this,” says Walt. “I believe I feel slighted.”

“There’s been surprisingly little time for—”

“I’m only teasing you, my boy,” says Walt. “I’m sure you’ve had more important things to talk about. No doubt graver things as well.”

Sarah narrows her eyes, and Summerfield wonders if Walt has reminded her of some graver thing. But she says, “Please … do tell me the name of that beautiful melody I heard you humming.”

Walt turns to Jeff. “What was it, Jeff, do you know?”

Jeff rolls his eyes upward, as if Walt asks him this question a hundred times a day. “Donizetti,” he says, flatly.

“Ah, yes,” says Walt. “ ‘Spirto Gentil,’ that’s it.”

“Well, I found it haunting,” says Sarah. “I’ve heard about your work in the hospitals. How admirable you are!”

“Thank you, dear,” says Walt, “but I assure you, I’ve received much more than I’ve given.”

“It’s true,” says Jeff. “He ‘received’ his near-death, for one thing. You should’ve seen him when he first got home.”

“I only needed a rest,” says Walt, to Sarah. “Jeff exaggerates … a family weakness.”

Sarah casts her eyes about the room and says, “Has no one offered you any refreshment?”

Walt points to two empty glasses on the gaming table. “Your Mrs. Bannister brought us what we wanted most,” he says. “Some of your delicious, pure clean water.”

“If our water’s delicious and pure clean,” says Sarah, “I believe we have your brother to thank.” Turning to Jeff, she adds, “Thomas has told me about your engineering … in the water office.”

Jeff, obviously pleased, says, “Oh, not at all … my contributions are flimsy at best.”

“There, you see it again,” says Walt. “Exaggeration in the form of false modesty.”

“In any case,” says Sarah, “I thank you for our good water.” To Walt, she adds, “And I thank you for helping my brother home … 
and
for helping him recover from his own malaria. I’m fully aware that not everyone survives it.”

“Malaria?” says Jeff, to Walt. “I thought you told me—”

“Your brother had some first-rate doctors,” says Walt quickly, glancing first at Summerfield and then, differently, at Jeff.

A short silence occurs, and then Jeff, possibly sensing that he has somehow misspoken, says, “Well, I must be off. I’ve got my long list. Walt, I’ll be back for you within the hour.”

Sarah offers to help Jeff locate his hat and then sees him to the door.

Left alone with Walt, Summerfield finds in Walt’s eyes a gaze of understanding that conjures the days of his own muteness—when meeting Walt’s eye was everything. Walt comes forward and gives him a deeper embrace than he first did while Jeff was present. He kisses him briefly on the lips and says, “Darling boy, here you are.”

They hear the sound of Sarah’s laughter in the hallway, and Walt says, “I wonder if we might sit.”

“Of course,” says Summerfield. “I’ve kept you standing all this time.”

He guides Walt to one end of the sofa and relieves him of his cane. He takes a seat at the opposite end of the sofa, where he places the
silver handle of Walt’s cane against his shoulder, like a firearm, and pretends to shoot at the parlor windows.

When Sarah returns to the room seconds later, Walt is still laughing. She sits on the ottoman near him and says, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea or lemonade or … more of our delicious water?”

Walt heaves a great sigh and removes his hat, laying it down beside him on the sofa. “No, thank you, my dear,” he says. “I’m quite content.”

He reaches for her hand, which she gives him, and he holds it in both his own. “This friend of Jeff’s,” he says, “this Gilfinian … he’s a lucky man.”

She withdraws her hand and says, with surprising seriousness, “Not nearly as lucky as you might assume.”

As if she means to enlist his support, she looks—for the first time directly—at Summerfield, who cannot think what to say. In the next moment, he finds Walt looking at him, too, with a similar and bewildering expectation.

At last, he says, “Of course Gilfinian’s lucky … very lucky. I would say lucky’s exactly what he is.”

He believes she almost smiles—subtly, fleetingly—and then she says, “I think Summerfield’s been in his room reading Mr. Emerson the last several days. It’s making him abstract.”

“I hope that’s all it makes him,” says Walt. “It’s the least of the dangers in reading Mr. Emerson.”

“Yes, I agree,” Sarah says.

Summerfield—who cannot discern the substance of what it is she agrees with, and who feels the slightest bit colluded against—says, “I’m afraid I don’t know what either of you mean.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Walt, waving a hand dismissively, “I don’t know what I mean either.” To Sarah he says, “Do you know what
you
mean?”

She laughs and says, “No, I don’t, actually. I almost never do.”

Bantering
, thinks Summerfield,
silly flirtation
.

“It’s a difficult business,” says Walt. “Everything’s so persistently illusive, don’t you find?”

“Very,” says Sarah, and they laugh together.

She turns to Summerfield and says, gaily, “Summerfield, darling … when you say or do a thing, do you always know exactly what you mean?”

He supposes it’s his face—either serious or stony, he can’t tell which—that causes her to fall so abruptly silent and to blush. Rashly, she has quit the brittle shell and taken up this clever giddy role, brimming with innuendo, and, in the process, fallen short of her own values. For his own part, Summerfield thinks perhaps he’s simply losing his bearings, that after days of solitude, the motion of society is too much for him; he thinks of his father’s ballroom polka, the music growing faster, the unknowable men (capable of anything) ending in a heap. He recalls how happy it made him when he first learned, only a few minutes before, that Walt had stopped by, and as if to steady himself, he says, “You look better than when I last saw you, Walt. How are you coming along?”

Walt’s eyes cloud over with tears. “I was well enough today for my first outing in Jeff’s cab,” he says. “I’d hoped for some sunshine, but we may get some yet. You see … my very first outing, and I came to you, dear boy. How are
you
coming along?”

Summerfield can’t think why he says what he says next, except that it’s what occurred to him: “I met a man in the Wilderness who reminded me of my father.”

Walt nods and then smiles sadly at Sarah, who returns the same sad smile and looks into her lap.

“Our father, I should say,” says Summerfield, “mine and Sarah’s … a man named Phipps … just about Papa’s age … the age Papa would be now. Had his coloring, too, and a similar-sounding voice. When the rebels flanked us on two sides, broke us apart and beset us … I took cover with him in the limbs of a fallen tree. We waited there at the edge of a small clearing in the woods. A Confederate boy … about twelve or thirteen years old … soon walked into the clearing … and this man who reminded me of our father shot and killed him, asking God’s forgiveness. Of course we were quickly discovered, and Mr. Phipps left me … took off running into the thicket. He knew he would likely be shot or captured, but he meant
to draw the rebels away from me. He was willing to risk his own life to save mine … yet, only the moment before, he had shot and killed a young boy.”

After a pause, Walt says, “This is what you meant at the hospital … when you told Captain Gracie that it was sometimes hard to tell right from wrong.”

He’s not at all sure that’s what he meant then—nor can he clearly recall the interview with Captain Gracie—but now that Walt says it, it seems true, and so he nods.

“The whole war’s like that, isn’t it,” says Walt. “Everything about it.”

Summerfield nods again and says, “Our colonel told us he knew our side would win because he’d seen it portended in the heavens. He’d watched one afternoon, after a storm, as the gray clouds scattered and gave way to blue sky.”

Sarah looks at him perplexed, so he says, “Because of the color of our uniforms … he took it as an omen.”

Walt chuckles. “There was a bit of wisdom circulating around Washington recently, before we left,” he says. “I heard it three different times, in three different places, from three different men: that in the war, God could not be on both sides at once. I never expressed my doubts on the subject, but I did wonder … maybe that’s precisely who God is.”

“If you’re right in what you say,” says Sarah, “then … just as we were taught in Sunday school … we’re surely made in his likeness. I’ve certainly felt myself on two sides of a thing at once.”

“Yes,” says Walt, “but we say we’re of ‘two minds.’ We say of ourselves that we are ‘torn.’ Maybe God’s supremacy lies in his capacity to be thoroughly of one mind, entirely on both sides of a conflict at once, and not the least bit torn.”

Now Walt leans forward and says, “Summerfield, my friend.”

He waits for Summerfield to meet his eye.

“Summerfield, my friend,” he repeats, a medium, summoning a reluctant spirit.

When Summerfield does meet his eye, he sees Walt as he first encountered him: a solicitous, gray-haired, gray-bearded old man;
perpetually flushed; pink around the eyes; sympathetic to the point of sometimes seeming telepathic; a sunny veneer cloaking a private sorrow.

“All of us have more than one side to us,” says Walt. “And sometimes these sides oppose one another. There’s no thoughtful person who doesn’t find within himself both friends and enemies. I don’t know if my saying this to you is a comfort or not. Please tell me what you have to say about it.”