Such Sweet Thunder (67 page)

Geometry was a desert, a wasteland dominated by a frightful tyrant, a neat brown-skinned man of small stature with wavy slickeddown hair and a mustache and polished fingernails and a mellow voice like Ronald Colman’s. There was a rumor afloat that he was mad as a result of shellshock during the World War and was subject to fits of violence when one could not ascertain the third side of a triangle. Besides,
she
was not there. And he was hungry, and tired, he could
ne
ver sit still. The effort of avoiding geometry wearied him. The bell rang and he fled to the cafeteria, where he managed to find an inconspicuous place two tables away, facing
her
. Once, or was it his fancy only? It seemed that she smiled faintly — ever so faintly! — at him!

After lunch, English. Miss Southern, over forty-five, well preserved, with a worldly, slightly wicked sense of humor, and wise. Like a queen,
but not
the
queen, more like Queen Elizabeth I, but darker, of course. She had a skin like tan satin, with a smudge of pink on her cheeks under her dark burning rimless spectacled eyes. Her speech was perfect and she never washed her face with soap. Creams.

He and Cosima sat
side by side!
in a heavenly atmosphere that reeked with the scent of sonnets.

“And don’t be afraid when you read Shakespeare!” Miss Southern was saying. “He wasn’t anything but a man. Made out of flesh and blood, just like any other man. They’re all alike, anyway. This one just happens to have been a genius. His language is personal. His sonnets are kind of like — like the blues. Just imagine Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday singing about trouble, about being tired and worried, about being in love with some no-good man. You’re old enough to know love. Think about the one
you
love, the fair skies and muddy waters
you’ve
seen — and then
read
the man! Now who wants to read?”

Fingers popped in the air like whip-ends, while he stared dumbfounded at the page of verse and struggled to discover his voice, to set his tongue, to squeeze an upsurging feeling into audible shape. He squirmed in his seat in order to get his body into the right position, and when the impulse was ready he raised his hand and popped his fingers desperately. But he was too late.

“All right, Miss Appleton — you try,” Miss Southern was saying. She began to read.

NO! That’s not it! That’s not the way to say it! he thought, unable to sit still. Before she could finish he was wriggling in his seat so excitedly that Miss Southern had to give him a silencing glance, which she, with benevolent humanity, tempered with a smile. When Miss Appleton had finished she nodded to him and said: “All right, Amerigo, say the thing.”

He took the book tenderly in his hands and fixed his eyes upon the opening line, struggling all the while to control the emotion that so overpowered his voice that it was only with the greatest effort that he could utter the first word. It half stumbled, half fell from his lips in a hoarse groan, followed by a fit of stuttering and desperate attempts to pick up the line. Then he fell into the throes of an impotent rage, and then the burning heat of a crushing humiliation, followed by a feeling of dread, and then silence. A terrible infinite silence, ringing with the aftertones of remembered words that intimidated him by the suddenness of the impact with which they bombarded his consciousness:

Now?

The other students had begun waving their hands. He cleared his throat and struggled to speak.

“Ruth,” said Miss Southern.

NO! he thought, It’s coming! It’s coming!

His lips quivered.

“Ruth — you try.…”

Ruth read, and when she had finished, Miss Southern and all the members of the class agreed that she had read the sonnet very well. He could only shake his head in protest. That was not it. She had not said it. The anguish one felt due to the indifference of his beloved was not like that at all. He searched for the right words with which to explain to the class and to
her
what he meant. But the spiteful bell rang before he had a chance to gather his murdered feeling into his arms and breathe the breath of life into it. He was the last to leave the room. As he passed through the door, his eyes met those of Miss Southern who regarded him with the faint trace of a sympathetic smile.

She knows, he thought, and proceeded wearily to the next class, and to the next, and ever and ever to the next, filled with the reverberations of the questions that he burned to answer, but failed to answer, again and again, because the magnitude of his feeling dammed up the stops of his sensibility, rang in his eyes and ears, filled his mouth, his nostrils, like the pealing of a great bell, filled the channels of his being with a great roaring wind that broke up into a flux of incoherent intonation, as though of a world being consumed by flames. Through season after season of still another year.

“You sick?” Viola asked. They were having supper.

“No.”

“You look kinda peaked to me. Stick out your tongue.”

He stuck out his tongue. Rutherford looked up from his paper and looked at him searchingly.

“What’s the matter, son?”

“Nothin’.”

“That all you gonna eat?” Viola asked, noticing that he had eaten only one pork chop.

“I’m not hungry.”

Rutherford returned to his paper, to the big headlines spread out across the front page of the
Star
telling about the war that was raging
in Europe. It said that England was in it, alone now, and that France had fallen and that the president was urging all-out aid to the Allies and that an increase in the national budget was requested. There were maps with the countries of Europe drawn on them with scales and numbers at the bottom to indicate the distances and arrows to show where the German armies were, where the submarines were, and where the Allies were retreating to and from.

Over the sea and over the sea and over the sea to … he thought, relieved to be able to articulate a thought, any thought, as he slipped into the bloodred room, regretting and yet strangely welcoming the loud
Boom
of war. It made him smile, then snigger, and then slobber, and choke, and momentarily awaken to the thought: I did it! He laughed, as he sank deeper into the depths of the room that was as red as blood, through the bottom of the redness that was blacker than he.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
exploded from the porch six times.

“Let me have a crack at it!” T. C. cried. He stepped beside Rutherford and leveled the big forty-five upon a nearby star.

AWHOOM! AWHOOM! AWHOOMAWHOOM! AWHOOM! AWHOOM!

“Hot damn!” Rutherford exclaimed:

AWHOOM!
the forty-five replied, amid the ringing of bells and other bursting, exploding sounds that echoed throughout the city. Like a big chain reaction, he thought, from over the sea and over the sea.… And from a strange part of the South Pacific, hearing the tramp tramp tramp of marching feet and the banners of war interspersed with stars heralding the coming of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the King of Peace.

“F-o-r — unto us a child is bor-orn!” he could hear the choir singing, “unto us, a Son is given! Unto us —”

AWHOOM! AWHOOM! AWHOOM!
hallelujahed the smoking forty-five.

He looked at his mother and father and the host who gathered in the front room, their faces flushed with optimism, animated by a frenzied relief due to the fact that at last something was happening.

“God is on
our
side!” exclaimed the bells and Joe Louis.

“Pray,” Miss Jenny whispered.

God bless A — merica!
Kate Smith sang out, just after the moon had gone over the mountain.

“This our country, too!” Rutherford’s voice exclaimed. “If they let us fight. And then — when it’s all over — they’ll see how loyal we were. They gotta give us our rights then!”

Next Year? He saw his question explode into a great flame and fall around the charred ruins of Harvard and Yale.

He, the battalion adjutant of the North High ROTC, strode through the yellowish blue light of an early Monday morning on his way to school, Sam Brown belt, brass buttons, and shoes shining, glistening saber clanking at his side, a senior who
knew
and
knew
that he knew. A worried fretful impatience stole upon him as he proceeded up Eighteenth Street. As he drew near
her
house his breath quickened. Her door opened and she stepped out and crossed the street, little jets of steam escaping from her mouth. He behind her, but not too close. From the bridge they heard the first bell ring. She quickened her pace. He behind her at a discreet distance. There was no one else on the street. He could hear her tiny feet crunching through the frozen snow.

In a kind of sweet miserable delirium he pursued her, his eyes and nose running from the January cold, but not too close. Her hair bobbled up and down, and by the way she carried her head he knew that she knew that it was he who followed her, though at a respectable distance.

He stared at her neck, and she began to walk faster, as though fired by a sense of urgency. He, too, accelerated his pace, his saber clanking against his leg. Once, when he almost tripped over it, she looked back, and their glances met for a fleeting instant, just as they gained the walk over which they sped in anticipation of the last bell:

Rrrrrrring!

She flung the door open and held it for him, lowering her gaze, while their burning faces were bathed in the wash of hot air from the giant radiators that sent them scuttling down the hall to their lockers. They arrived at the door of the music room at the same time. He smiled confusedly, stupidly, made a slight bow, as to a queen, and allowed her to pass through the door. Then he came after, but not too close.

The snows fell hard throughout January all over the world, according to the
Star
and the
Voice
. Headlines came more often now,
more maps and arrows and pictures of troops in frozen attitudes, as though the men and machines had suddenly been caught unawares by the hypnotizing winds that had turned them into grimacing statues. The great ubiquitous BOOM! resounded on land and below the freezing waters, and the names of the dead were spewed out upon the pages of the
Voice
every Friday.…

With the advance of spring, the snows melted and the rains came, laying bare the fallen fruit of the cold season. Blinded by the searing brightness of
her
eyes, smarting from wounds inflicted by
her
cutting glances, or supercilious smiles flung at him like hand grenades, he rallied all his strength in order to meet the onslaught of an army of trees writhing in the agony of giving birth to a new generation of leaves. Flowers boomed! And freshets of rain and malicious winds lashed at the exposed love-infected nerve.

“Now-is-the-month-of-May-ing!” they sang, and he wondered how long he would be able to stand it.

“Hi, Amerigo.” Mary Ann greeted him with a tender smile that seemed an expression of patient sadness. They had a secret. Only to her had he confessed his love for Cosima, her best friend. It was almost like having confessed to Cosima herself.

“She likes you,” Mary Ann had said one March day when the wind had howled like a hungry dog.

“How do you
know?
”

“Because she
said
so, that is, not
exactly
 … in so many
words
, but she talks about you all the time.”

“I tried to call her, but her father always says she’s busy or not in, or something like that.”

“He doesn’t think
anybody’s
good enough for her!” said Mary Ann. “Are you going to make the honor roll?”

“I don’t know.”

“They’re going to select the speakers for the commencement exercises from the honor students. If you could just get your name on that list. Maybe that would help.”

“Do you think so, Mary Ann! And I’m
already
in the choir and the Glee Club and the Special Singers. I’m gonna be the battalion adjutant in the ROTC, and when I have to go to the army I’ll probably make second lieutenant right off. Old Carrol has already been elected editor
of the yearbook, but I can make business manager, I think. The one that sells the most ads gets it. And that’ll mean that my picture will be in the book at least ten times! And I’m the chairman of the entertainment committee, too. I proposed at the last meeting that we have dances for the senior class every Friday evening from three-thirty until six-thirty. If Mr. Thornton won’t let her come out at night, maybe he’ll let her stay a little after school. He wouldn’t have to
know
it. She could tell him she was staying for something else.”

“We could try,” Mary Ann answered sadly.

He took her hand and led her around behind the library where they sat on the steps and faced a pleasant little lawn with a green pelt of grass. She looked at him with tenderness as he continued to disclose the plans through which he hoped to win Cosima.

“Wouldn’t it be
wonderful
if I could take her to the senior prom!” he exclaimed. “Who’s taking you?”

“I don’t know.”

The hopelessness in her tone aroused a feeling of pity in him. She’s like me, he thought, wondering exactly what he meant, looking at her now, really looking at her, for perhaps the first time. And then he suddenly realized that they were alone, but then took satisfaction in the fact that no one could see them, no one would talk. And if they did, what could they
say?
Everyone
knew
that Mary Ann was Cosima’s closest friend. In fact, it now occurred to him that she and Cosima were strikingly alike, only Cosima was bright and clear and sharp, like a photograph, and Mary Ann was dark and subdued, sort of like a negative. Thrilled by a sense of discovery, he continued to compare them. Mary Ann played the piano, too! Not as well as Cosima, of course, but well, very well, indeed, and she was a member of the same society, accepted by the same circle of friends. She was on the honor roll the same as Cosima, but Cosima would be valedictorian. This proximity to Cosima seemed to enshroud Mary Ann in a veil of mist. That is to say, he became acutely aware of her dark brown color, as though it were some sort of encumbrance, through which she must struggle before she could shine like Cosima, as though it had clogged her sensibility, dulled her reflexes just a hair, causing her to appear but a parody of Cosima. How pretty her face is! He didn’t dare say
beautiful
out of deference to Cosima. If it were not for — what? He contemplated the effect of touching her up, speculating as to just what alteration would transform her into that electrifying, magical, queenlike being who flitted over the horizon of his fondest dreams.