The Old Religion Page 4

  “For does she not, by her lights, make these decisions (as she feels) for our mutual benefit? Yes,” he thought. “Yes, she does—in no way unlike myself—in electing this or that improvement in favor of our mutual domestic life.”

  And so he told her she could redecorate, and was ashamed of his chagrin when she took his capitulation as a matter of course, and launched into a recital of plans which obviously had been not only thought out but well-nigh implemented long since.

  “This is my task,” he thought, “not to ‘grant,’ no, but to recognize that to grant is, in this, outside of my gift.”

  And yet he struggled to resist the simultaneous feelings of pride in his very humility and condescension in the residual conviction that his wife chose to find important the right to legislate regarding trivia.

  “Yes. After all of it,” he thought, and, “This is as it should be. She is just a woman.”

  But his thoughts of the changes to come worked on him. And he sat on his leather chair, and looked at his couch, at the old comfortable couch where he’d lain so many evenings after work, which cradled him those many Saturday afternoons when he’d slept, his workweek done.

  He looked across to the couch, and he saw not the couch but the couch-to-be. And he found he was impatient.

  The old couch, the old room, looked to him passé. He found it important to have the new designs completed and installed, but he could not determine why he found it so.

  “As I attempt to analyze it,” he thought, “I recognize this (I must say) basic, and I could say, ‘savage,’ need to be accepted by the community.”

  Here he made a note on a leaf of his letterhead notepad.

  The note read:

  Advertising must appeal, as is its essential nature, to the fear that one is to be excluded. It must both awaken and suggest how to allay this fear.

  The heading on the notepaper sheet read, “National Pencil Company. Atlanta, Georgia.”

  The voice of the prosecutor dwelt on that word each time he said it. “How lovely it is,” Frank thought, “that people can communicate so. He does not pause so much as inflect, and he does not inflect so much as signify—in a way which, were we to reproduce and dissect his rhythm and pronunciation, would be absent. For science cannot discover it. It is a spirit,” he thought. Frank heard the prosecutor drone on: “… that it is usurpation for a company to descend to the South and call itself ‘National.’”

  Frank smiled, in an experimental trial of the irony. “And that is what they’re going to kill me for.’”

  That Saturday

  There was a heavy summer smell, and there was the question of the ink.

  “You’d think,” he thought, “that it would get into the house and cause mildew, but it is just this side of that; and if you paid attention, you would know it. In the smell. That it was laden and wet, but it stopped short of being harmful, if you had the courage to recognize that you knew it.”

  The humidity was not going to harm anything except your sense of order. And if you were required to pay for it, you’d pay for it later in the day, in the heat. “Well, now,” he thought, “will that assuage your sense of fairness?” For was there not a breeze in the world? Yes. There was, he thought, as he sat down to breakfast.

  And they said the ribbons in the typewriting machines would last two or three months. But he wondered, as they seemed to last longer, if it was a function of the humidity.

  “What is ink?” he thought. “Some substance which maintains semi-liquidity sufficient to allow its transfer, and then dries into a solid state.

  “Some dye, in effect, of that description.” And could it not be that the humidity of his city kept the ribbons moist, kept the ink moist, and could it not be that the insufficiency of the company’s estimate reflected not the absence of ink at the end of two months but the desiccation of the ink and ribbon, and that moistening …?

  He nodded at Rose, as she sat. He tried to envision a remoistening of the typewriter ribbons. How would it take place? Could one wind and immerse them, and why was that image, he wondered, not as satisfying as the, granted, more elaborate scenario of unwinding the spool to its total length—whatever that might be? (“What might that be,” he thought, “a hundred yards? Hardly. Fifty? Twenty, more likely …”)

  “These are the musings,” he thought, “of a content man.”

  “At twenty yards”—he smiled at the thought—“some might call me silly. But if the ribbons were strung building-to-building, in the rain—wouldn’t that moisten them? Now, is that idiocy, or an elegant solution? Who can say?” he thought. “Who could say, who hadn’t tried it? If, finally, if—if moisture was, in fact, the problem. And here I am, already surpassing their estimate by thirty percent.

  “Are these the thoughts,” he wondered, “of a miser?” And he answered himself, “No, no. I don’t think so. I think that it’s business, and it’s all reducible to that; and if the care, and foresight, yes, and yes, and dreaming, isn’t business, then I do not know what is.

  “The man who invented the wheel. Think of that. Think of it. How many millennia of placing a free roller underneath a load. And people dreaming, dreaming, ‘If I could dispense with carrying these rollers: but how?’ and someone, probably, thought of fixing rollers underneath the load, to be axle and wheel at once. But the genius,” he thought, “the genius … and must he not have shivered as he thought of it, not in triumph, but in fear. In fear: ‘Can it work? How can it work? If it could work, would someone not have invented it before?’

  “In fear, he must have had the insight, the notion, to abstract the roller into two ‘wheels.’ And must he not have thought: ‘Why me?’

  “… Why me?” He nodded.

  “For, if he was right, then the rest of the tribe was wrong, and had been wrong for millennia—not to see the obvious.

  “And then,” he thought, “they could not see the obvious, and …”

  The double-hinged door banged open, and Ruthie came in with the coffeepot.

  “These are the thoughts of a happy man,” he thought. “Have I tempted fate?” And: “Jesus Christ, this coffee smells good.”

  “Starting to turn hot already,” he thought, as he left the house.

  “Turn hot. Parade. Well, that’s as it should be. Price for everything. Some mornings, in the damp, you feel it as a coming penance; some mornings as a reprieve.”

  Already the flags were flying. Up and down his street. Confederate Flags. He nodded as he walked past them.

  “Everyone has a right,” he thought. “Who is to say he’s less misguided than his adversaries?” He thought: “Any of us. To believe in this or that? When, five years, ten years, our beliefs change that completely we wonder, ‘What can I have meant …?’

  “And, of course, it’s a religion. The State. Any state, perhaps; and a good thing, perhaps, at that.

  “For how is it different from a company? It is not. It is a company. A Group of Men. Organized under a set of Principles which, perhaps they may think—but they are in error—which will cover all contingencies.

  “Now: what do they do when situations arise outside the scope of the Precepts upon which the Concern was founded?

  “Good morning, Mrs. Breen,” he said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Frank. Goin’ to work?”

  “Yes. Off to work. Off to the office.”

  “Don’t miss the parade,” she said.

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t miss it, I,” he said. “You know, I see it—I can see it from my fifth-floor windows.”

  “You can’t. In the fact’ry?”

  “Yes, I can.” He smiled. A little piece of Pear Street. “Yes, indeed, I can.”

  “Hmm,” she said, wagging her head slightly, as to say, “What do you know …”

  They stopped there for a moment, and she sighed. “Going to be warmish,” she said.

  “Well, I should say so. I’d say it’s going to be quite warm.”

  He tipped his hat and continued down the
street.

  The Coffee Corner

  The two men sat in the Coffee Corner, with their hats pushed back on their heads.

  “‘Waal, if they don’t, I will,’ many would say. And I’m not sure I would, but I can’t discount it. In the right circumstances. An’ it’s one thing come acrost a thing, you follow: see a fellow in the act, and stop him …” They nodded.

  “There in the heat, eh …?”

  “… Yeaauh,” they said, and nodded.

  “… in the heat. Or even after. Look: I can’t discount it. A man need to see some justice done. ’Ven after. I can see that. Take out your pistol, bam. A man’s got feeling. ’N’ I want to tell you something.” He hitched his chair closer to the counter.

  “All the laws in the world, and all the religion, to one end: to try to legislate …”

  “… uh huh,” they said.

  “… keep these feelings in check. Well. Fine. You mizewell …” He shrugged, and his hand searched the air for the perfect comparison, the cigarette in the hand like a part of it, his fingers like yellow morocco leather, stained by nicotine, the nails huge and cracked. “… you mizewell …”

  “… water in a sieve,” a friend said.

  He pointed his finger at the friend, to say, “You have hit it exactly?”

  “All the laws in the world,” he continued, “all the laws in the world, Jesus Christ himself, in the heat of a blood passion …

  “Because, boys, wait a second,” he said. “Because what we are talking about here is Human Nature. And you tell me that that’s not a mystery? And self-control? How many, you think, ’s in there armed? Any meetin’? Any …”

  The others murmured.

  “… mm?”

  “That’s right,” a friend said.

  “… ’n’ you tell me that’s not an instance?”

  “… self-control …”

  “… waal, I don’t know it’s self-control …”

  “What is it, then?”

  “… self-”

  “… what?”

  “Waal, I’m telling you, you’d listen to me,” the man said, as the other men at the counter waited, as at a long-watched and long-appreciated comedy turn.

  “I think that it is equally a desire. Mm? To be part of a group. Wait: not to violate …”

  “… that’s right,” the other man said.

  “… to … hmm? To put the interests of the group before himself?”

  “… before who?”

  “That man with a gun. Mm? That man, as you said, who’s out there, who, in the interests of his group, to which he belongs—or, or, wait a second, to the urge not to be ostracized, out of the group, that’s all right—refrains from the action, eh, which would ostracize him. Mm? That’s self-control. Or not, as you may choose to put it. I don’t know what it is. You finish your coffee you c’n tell me.”

  Frank walked by the Coffee Corner, and he looked in at the men.

  The watch

  Could it be the desire for the watch which had doomed him?

  As he walked down Hazel Street he wanted to turn down Rutherford.

  “No,” he said. “I can choose or avoid any route that I wish; and my detour, if one can call it that, is nothing more than an alternative. An alternative of no greater length than the original or—‘More direct,’” his mind supplied. “Not more direct,” he responded. “Yes. Perhaps more direct. Perhaps. Though I do not stipulate it, but add that the desirability of a route, in this case, can be judged according to differing criteria: the length of a route; its … its …

  “Well, yes,” another portion of his mind said. “Yes, We can allow it.”

  “Its …” he thought, and bowed slightly, as in thanks for the concession, “its beauty …” That was the word allowed him. He nodded.

  A cardinal fluttered in the corner of his eye. He turned to see it, expecting to find it gone. But, no, there it was, in the tree on Walnut Street. And he walked and found he was on Main Street and had not, after all, turned down Rutherford, and he was on Main Street, walking as he had vowed not to do, and there he was in front of Winford’s, and there was the watch.

  “What garbage is man,” he thought.

  “What a swine I am—although mischance and not wilfulness took me here. Forgetfulness,” he thought, “or a preoccupation took me here. Although their existence could be accounted as weakness.”

  But there was the watch. It sat in its purple-blue velvet box in the window. The inside lid was lined in silk, imprinted in gold with the letters “Breguet, Paris,” and, beneath that, in small block letters, “For Winford’s, Atlanta.”

  It was a full hunter. A slim pocket watch in rose gold. The case was covered front and back with small diamond cross-hatchings, which, Mr. Winford had told him, were known as “diapering.”

  “Breguet,” Winford had said. “Napoleon carried a Breguet watch at Waterloo.” He paused. “And so did Wellington.”

  “That a fact?” Frank had said.

  On two days he had gone in, and Winford had displayed the watch: the elegance of the lines, the precision of the movement, the repeater function, which chimed the hour, the quarter, and the odd minute when one pressed the small gold stud.

  Frank had never seen a repeater watch up close before; and when Winford caused it to work, Frank’s reaction, as he phrased it to himself, was “like a savage on seeing an airplane.”

  The jeweler pressed the stud, and the watch, in a musical, but by no means effete, tone chimed ten, and then, in a higher tone, one-two-three; and after a pause, on the same note, in quicker rhythm, one-two-three-four-five.

  “Ten-fifty,” Winford said. And Frank felt he had to check to see if his mouth hung open.

  “Full hunter. Gold repeater,” Winford said. “Breguet, Paris. Lucky to get it. Doubt if ten come into the country this year.”

  Frank, looking at the watch, felt that his whole character was revealed. “I stand before that man,” he thought, “unmasked as a grasping, an idolatrous swine.”

  For, when the watch chimed ten-fifty, and Winford interpreted the notes, did not Frank extract his perfectly good, his in fact superb, Illinois from his vest pocket? Did it not read ten-fifty, and was it not likely and was he not old enough to know it likely that, had he purchased the new watch, he would find it inferior to the one he carried?

  “A man with one watch knows the time,” he’d quoted to Winford. “A man with two watches is never sure.”

  “No, I’d not heard that one before,” Winford said. He waited an amount of time to show respect for Frank’s right of refusal, but not so long as to indicate he thought the customer less than decisive. He took the watch and returned it to the box, and the box to the window, and Frank left the store.

  The second time he came, he felt fully within his rights.

  It was not excessive to examine at length and on more than one occasion such an important—not to say costly—object.

  For was that not the point? How could one consider spending three hundred dollars on a watch?

  Although it was a rarity. Although, as Winford delicately observed, it would bid fair to increase in value, although it was a gift or recompense other successful men awarded themselves in the form of the automobile, the boat, the second home, the Sporting expedition.

  Finally, “Finally,” he said to himself, “finally, it was wrong.”

  It was wrong for him to own more than one watch. For him to spend that money on that watch. It was wrong. How did he know?

  He did not know how he knew. But it was wrong.

  Could one construct and defend the opposing argument?

  Yes. And have it prevail—with any adversary but oneself. For the unconquerable fact—and he knew it to be a fact—was it was wrong: he knew it to be wrong. And he shrugged—less against this self-denial of the watch than at this new self-knowledge: that there was a force in the world superior to the individual, and that that force regulated action in those to whom it appealed.

  H
e could not wish it away.

  And here he was, swine that he was, once again on the sidewalk outside Winford’s. He saw the jeweler in the store, talking to a salesgirl. And the man looked up and nodded at him.

  “Son of a bitch,” Frank thought. “Does he mean to assert he does not care if I buy the watch? Does he think I do not know his courtesy point by point is nothing other than the attempt to induce me to purchase it?”

  Winford came out of the store, shielding his eyes against the morning glare.

  “Can he mean to accost me,” Frank thought, “with some comment either about or—the more effective (so he might think)—not about the watch? What other reason or what pretext might he have to come out here?”

  Winford was turning the placard in the door from “Open” to “Closed.”

  “Going downtown, Mr. Frank?” he said.

  “Yes. Down to work. Nice morning.”

  “… Working today?”

  “Yes. Odds and ends. You’re closing?”

  “Half-day. M’morial day. Half-day. Might as well.”

  “… Mm?”

  “… No business. Not to speak of.”

  “Everyone downtown, eh?”

  “I would think so.” He paused. “Down the parade.”

  As they stood nodding for a moment, they heard the faint sounds of a band, far away, and particularly of several horns warming up.

  “… Yeessssss …,” Winford said.

  “Wealllup,” Frank said. He caught himself as he started to reach for the watch in his vest. “No,” he thought. He hoped that Winford had not seen what could be interpreted as a gesture on his part to open dialogue about a watch. But Winford was already turned away, and speaking to the shopgirl, who passed between him and the half-closed door.

  “’Bye, Mr. Winford.”

  “Good day, Sal,” he said.

  “Yes,” Winford said. “You have a good day, Mr. Frank.”

  Frank nodded and walked on. He heard the sound of the man stepping back into his shop, and the sound of the heavy shade being drawn down.

  “That’s good,” Frank thought. “That’s needful to keep the sun off the carpet. Bleach it out quick as you please.” He walked on.