Authors: Eugene Burdick
The Ninth Wave (12 page)
"Help them do what?"
"Help them get justice," Connie said. "The things they are entitled to."
"How do you know what justice is?" Mike asked. "Maybe justice is each
person getting what he is able to get. Maybe the Negroes don't get in
Stanford because they don't deserve to."
On the side of Connie's face that Mike could see a small spot of pink
started to glow. She drank the rest of the glass and held the glass out
to Mike to fill.
"I've heard about your views," Connie said. "I heard what you did to
Mardikan. You're a reactionary, Mike. Just a plain reactionary." Her
voice trembled slightly.
"What does that mean? To be a reactionary?"
"It means that you are opposed to everything liberal and progressive,"
she said. "It means that you want to go back to something that existed
a long time ago. To feudalism or something like that."
"I don't want to go back to anything. All I want to do is to understand
what is happening now."
Connie hesitated.
"You don't believe in progress," she said finally. "You look at the
Negro today and you see him discriminated against, living in slums,
undernourished and, of course, he has a high crime rate so you say that
the high crime rate is proof that he should stay in the slums and be
discriminated against."
Mike sat up straight and stared at the girl. There was something curious
about the girl. She strung set phrases and sentences together, as neatly
as a child might string a variety of beads and objects on a string and
then hold them up to see if they were beautiful.
Mike looked down at his glass. He swished the deep red wine around. Dark
particles, the infinitely small debris of wine, swirled at the bottom
of the glass. Mike shook his head.
"I didn't say anything like that," Mike said. "I just asked a question:
what is justice for the Negroes? I don't know the answer. I don't really
even care very much. All I want to do is to see the Negro, or anyone
for that matter, just exactly the way he really is. I don't care about
uplifting him or educating him or changing him. Why should I worry
about that?"
"Because we are all our brother's keeper," Connie said. "No society is
any stronger than its weakest link. We should do what is best for the
greatest number."
She hesitated, stared uncertainly at Mike. She reached for the Old Taylor
bottle and poured a small trickle into her glass. Carefully, keeping
the bottle under control, she filled her glass almost a third full.
Mike realized that she was not holding up the string of phrases and
sentences to see if they were beautiful; she was holding them up for
protection. O.K., you're through the guard, Mike, he told himself. Go
easy now.
He wished he had not drunk so much of the port. It was a warm pool in his
stomach; blurring the edges of everything, making him limp and agreeable,
slowing his reactions. He carefully composed himself.
"We're interested in different things, Connie," he said. "You're
interested in how we ought to act toward others. I'm not. I'm just
interested in people the way they are."
"But you ought to have sympathy. You ought to feel for people."
"I do sometimes," Mike said. He hesitated and thought quickly. He felt
as if he were at the outer edge of a secret; pushing against the last
thin barrier to a dark understanding.
Easy now, he told himself. Now is the time to go very, very easily. Make
her speak first.
"But Mike, if you don't have sympathy, if you don't like people and
they don't like you . . . " She hesitated and her voice dropped to a
whisper. "Then you're alone, Mike. By yourself. Alone."
He was through. His breath came easily. He had broken through. Partially,
but not completely, he yielded to the warm glow of the port.
"But you're alone anyway," he said. "Whatever you do you're alone. Sympathy
doesn't have anything to do with it. You're alone whatever you do. Look at
an executive in a big company that's done a good job for fifteen years. One
mistake and he starts to drop. The company just stands aside and lets him
drop. If he's tough maybe he can claw his way back on top again, hanging on
by his fingernails. But if he isn't, no one gives a damn. He just keeps
dropping until he drops right out of sight. All by himself, with maybe
his wife and kids staring at him, he keeps dropping. No one raises a
hand to help him."
"Someone is always around to help, Mike," Connie said. She stared at
him over the edge of her glass. "Someone. Maybe . . . "
"No one. My God, Connie, look at the thousands of organizations that
have grown up in the last generation just to take care of people no one
will take care of anymore. Juvenile homes, homes for unmarried mothers,
insane asylums, homes for TB patients. All the things that a family
used to do are now done by some government agency. Don't you see: no
one gives a damn. You're alone. Everyone is. Look at old people. Every
home used to have a couple of old people in it; aunts, grandfathers,
old uncles. Now everyone scrambles around and gets old people into a
home for the senile. Anything, but just get them out of the house."
Connie's lips had pulled back slightly from her teeth as Mike talked. When
he paused she threw her head back and drank off the rest of the whisky
and water.
"Not my family," she said. "They wouldn't do that."
Her voice was a whisper.
"Don't kid yourself, Connie. Just assume that you had a mental breakdown
and the Dean of Women sent you home to St. Helena. How long do you think
your family would keep you around? About as long as it would take them
to get a psychiatrist to have you committed to Agnew. They'd do anything
to get you out of sight. Any family would."
"Not my family," Connie whispered.
Her hand reached for the bottle. The neck of the bottle chittered against
the glass as she poured. She looked up and smiled brightly.
"Say you just went home, Connie, after you graduated. Say you just went
home and stayed there. Lots of girls used to do that. They became old-maid
aunts and fitted into the family and they were sometimes even pretty
valuable members of the family. Think you could do that now? Your mother
would be embarrassed because you weren't married and she'd suggest that
you go see a marriage counselor or go down to San Francisco and get a
job. She'd make you do something; anything. But you couldn't just sit
around. She'd want you to see one of those social workers. Really she
wouldn't care what you did just so you didn't sit around the house
and remind them that you were different than the other girls. Isn't
that right?"
She was still looking at him over her glass. Through the brown clear
drink her chin looked sagging and uncertain. She closed her eyes for a
moment and when she opened them Mike knew that she believed him.
"Maybe you're right," she said.
"I didn't mean it personally, Connie," Mike said. "I just wanted
to illustrate a point. Once you see the point things aren't really
so bad. God, in a sense the system is beautiful. It takes all of the
individuals and measures them, shifts them around, tests them, puts them
in a new slot and finally they wind up where they belong. The system
peels each person like he is an onion. It rubs off all the unimportant
layers; the family, education, culture, good teeth, fine smile, nice
vocabulary. It gets right down to the core. And at the core is just the
skill and toughness of the individual. The system measures that and then
it puts him where he belongs. Oh, sometimes it makes a mistake. A rich
idiot can sit on a board of directors . . . but not forever. Sooner or
later there is a shifting around and someone else has the idiot's money
and he's out in the street wondering what happened. If he's an idiot
he'll wind up with the idiots. If he's good and tough he'll wind up with
the other good and tough people. The unskilled people get the unskilled
jobs; the tough people get ahead and the soft people get stepped on; the
bright people do the bright work and the dull people do the dull work."
"It's awful," Connie said.
Mike gestured with his hands. It was a fluttering, intricate gesture that
indicated movement and complexity.
"It's awful, but it's wonderful too," he said. "That great big disorderly
system, carefully grinding away at everybody. Everybody gets worn away
at the same rate. Everybody gets the finish taken off . . . "
"Shut up, Mike," Connie said. "Get me another drink. This bottle is
empty."
He went under the bed and dug out another bottle. When he handed her
the drink he noticed that she was shivering; just slightly, an almost
invisible twitching of her shoulders. Along her arms was a fine weltering
of gooseflesh.
"They say your sorority is going to build a new house," Mike said.
Connie told him eagerly about the new house. Then they talked about
the football team. Connie began to laugh and the color returned to her
cheeks. It was eleven o'clock when she went into the bathroom.
"I could drink the ocean tonight," she said when she came out. She saw the
empty whisky bottle and picked it up. Cleverly, like a comedy drunk, she
put the bottle to her mouth and threw her head back. Her tongue went up
the narrow neck of the bottle, was squeezed white and pink as it reached
for the few drops of whisky still left in the bottle. When she pulled
the bottle away her tongue came out of the bottle with a popping noise.
She turned toward Mike. He walked toward her and they came together
softly. He put one hand around her waist and tilted her face up with the
other. He felt her hand dig into his shoulder and he heard the bottle
fall to the floor.
Her lips were soft, a surprise. He ran his tongue over the inner flesh
of her lips and her mouth opened.
He lifted his head away. She stood with her head tilted back in surprise.
A streak of whisky ran from the corner of her mouth. Across her forehead
there was a faint pattern of sweat.
Mike wiped the whisky from her chin and kissed her again. This time, as
if she had learned everything in thirty seconds, her body came expertly
against his, her tongue worked across his lips. The soft flesh between
her thighs moved across his leg. She was the one that pushed away.
"Sit down," she said. "On the bed."
She turned off all the lights except a study lamp on one of the desks. She
walked back and stood in front of him and her face was hard. She kicked her
shoes off and pulled her skirt up over her knees. She had fine long legs
and delicate feet. She took off a garter belt and her stockings hissed
down her skin as she pulled them off.
She walked over to him and he stood up and kissed her. She put her head
close to his neck and began to talk very rapidly and softly.
"My father is funny," she said, so rapidly that Mike could barely
understand. "He samples the grapes and the wine all day long and his
lips get purple. Almost like a woman's. Maybe he is a little drunk
all the time. He picks at the grapes and spits out the seeds. And he
drinks wine all day long. One day, when I was thirteen, he stopped me
out in the vines and put his hand over my breast, like that," and she
took Mike's hand and put it over her breast. "And he said that someday
a boy would probably try to do that to me and that if he ever heard of
it he would kill the boy. Then he kissed me. His lips all moist and
purple and smelling of grapes and claret. I never forgot it."
Under his hand Mike felt her nipple harden and press against his hand. She
pushed him backward onto the bed and then stepped away.
She pulled the skirt up again, this time to her waist and her neat
untrimmed shorts cut into the round flesh of her hips. She undulated
slowly; almost as if she were doing a strange unlearned dance, her
free hand occasionally running across the roundness of her stomach.
She watched Mike tensely and finally she reached down and stepped out
of her shorts.
"All right," Mike said and his voice was sharp.
"All right?" she said and smiled. She walked toward him eagerly.
For the rest of that year Connie loaned Mike money. She loaned it to
him in small amounts that finally totaled six hundred and forty dollars.
Connie also insisted that Mike stop swearing. She
corrected his grammar and Mike did not object.
CHAPTER 8
"Ungrateful, Voluble, Dissemblers . . . "
The windows of professor Moon's office opened onto an arched passageway.
Across the scalloped strip of shade was the massive, soft sandstone mass
of the Quad. The palm trees gave it a tawny, desertlike look. Professor
Moon could see a Japanese gardener arranging a sprinkler. The gardener put
the hose down carefully in a square of lawn, and as he backed away the
sprinkler turned slowly and then more quickly, throwing out glittering
streams of water. The spray washed the dust off the leaves of grass and
they shone with a brilliant green. In the corners of the square, the grass
remained brown and dry. When the water hit the sandstone it steamed a few
seconds until it had cooled the stone.
It was merely warm in professor Moon's office, but he knew that the
Quad and the corridors around it were very hot. As he looked out the
open window, the sound of the sprinkler, the whir of distant automobile
tires passing over soft tar and the trembling of heat waves had a hypnotic
effect. With an effort he took his eyes away from the window and looked at
the papers in his hands. They were his lecture notes, and for a moment,
as his eyes readjusted to the dimness of his office, the words looked
Oriental and distorted. His forehead wrinkled as he focused his eyes.
"On the battlefield the flowing-haired Achaians and the Trojans were
throwing stones and arrows zissed through the air. Then Agamemnon,
king of men, went between the two arrays, in the space where the rank
of chariots were drawn up facing one another," he read. With a precise
copperplate hand he changed the first sentence to read, "Like a cloud,
stones and arrows soared between the Achaians and the Trojans."
Professor Moon was a lazy man, but he prided himself on changing
his lectures each time he gave them. Sometimes the changes were not
extensive, but always changes were made. It was a part of his reputation,
just as his discovery of obscure French and Swedish and Italian poets
was a part of his reputation. Professor Moon did not expect to be a
great or distinguished professor. He was too fastidious for that. To be
distinguished was to be vulgar and the inevitable price of popularity
was a cheapening of quality. Whenever one of his discoveries among the
poets of Europe had become popular Professor Moon had quickly dropped the
person from his lectures and conversations. His standards were high and
he did not therefore regret that he had such a small following. Indeed
he experienced a tiny, intense thrill of excitement each time he went
to his first lecture and saw only six or eight people. The smallness
of his following; their minute, careful, almost adoring attention; the
obscurity of his references; their look of appreciation when he delivered
a jeweled or obscure phrase; all of these were signs to Professor Moon
of fidelity and quality.
"Help them get justice," Connie said. "The things they are entitled to."
"How do you know what justice is?" Mike asked. "Maybe justice is each
person getting what he is able to get. Maybe the Negroes don't get in
Stanford because they don't deserve to."
On the side of Connie's face that Mike could see a small spot of pink
started to glow. She drank the rest of the glass and held the glass out
to Mike to fill.
"I've heard about your views," Connie said. "I heard what you did to
Mardikan. You're a reactionary, Mike. Just a plain reactionary." Her
voice trembled slightly.
"What does that mean? To be a reactionary?"
"It means that you are opposed to everything liberal and progressive,"
she said. "It means that you want to go back to something that existed
a long time ago. To feudalism or something like that."
"I don't want to go back to anything. All I want to do is to understand
what is happening now."
Connie hesitated.
"You don't believe in progress," she said finally. "You look at the
Negro today and you see him discriminated against, living in slums,
undernourished and, of course, he has a high crime rate so you say that
the high crime rate is proof that he should stay in the slums and be
discriminated against."
Mike sat up straight and stared at the girl. There was something curious
about the girl. She strung set phrases and sentences together, as neatly
as a child might string a variety of beads and objects on a string and
then hold them up to see if they were beautiful.
Mike looked down at his glass. He swished the deep red wine around. Dark
particles, the infinitely small debris of wine, swirled at the bottom
of the glass. Mike shook his head.
"I didn't say anything like that," Mike said. "I just asked a question:
what is justice for the Negroes? I don't know the answer. I don't really
even care very much. All I want to do is to see the Negro, or anyone
for that matter, just exactly the way he really is. I don't care about
uplifting him or educating him or changing him. Why should I worry
about that?"
"Because we are all our brother's keeper," Connie said. "No society is
any stronger than its weakest link. We should do what is best for the
greatest number."
She hesitated, stared uncertainly at Mike. She reached for the Old Taylor
bottle and poured a small trickle into her glass. Carefully, keeping
the bottle under control, she filled her glass almost a third full.
Mike realized that she was not holding up the string of phrases and
sentences to see if they were beautiful; she was holding them up for
protection. O.K., you're through the guard, Mike, he told himself. Go
easy now.
He wished he had not drunk so much of the port. It was a warm pool in his
stomach; blurring the edges of everything, making him limp and agreeable,
slowing his reactions. He carefully composed himself.
"We're interested in different things, Connie," he said. "You're
interested in how we ought to act toward others. I'm not. I'm just
interested in people the way they are."
"But you ought to have sympathy. You ought to feel for people."
"I do sometimes," Mike said. He hesitated and thought quickly. He felt
as if he were at the outer edge of a secret; pushing against the last
thin barrier to a dark understanding.
Easy now, he told himself. Now is the time to go very, very easily. Make
her speak first.
"But Mike, if you don't have sympathy, if you don't like people and
they don't like you . . . " She hesitated and her voice dropped to a
whisper. "Then you're alone, Mike. By yourself. Alone."
He was through. His breath came easily. He had broken through. Partially,
but not completely, he yielded to the warm glow of the port.
"But you're alone anyway," he said. "Whatever you do you're alone. Sympathy
doesn't have anything to do with it. You're alone whatever you do. Look at
an executive in a big company that's done a good job for fifteen years. One
mistake and he starts to drop. The company just stands aside and lets him
drop. If he's tough maybe he can claw his way back on top again, hanging on
by his fingernails. But if he isn't, no one gives a damn. He just keeps
dropping until he drops right out of sight. All by himself, with maybe
his wife and kids staring at him, he keeps dropping. No one raises a
hand to help him."
"Someone is always around to help, Mike," Connie said. She stared at
him over the edge of her glass. "Someone. Maybe . . . "
"No one. My God, Connie, look at the thousands of organizations that
have grown up in the last generation just to take care of people no one
will take care of anymore. Juvenile homes, homes for unmarried mothers,
insane asylums, homes for TB patients. All the things that a family
used to do are now done by some government agency. Don't you see: no
one gives a damn. You're alone. Everyone is. Look at old people. Every
home used to have a couple of old people in it; aunts, grandfathers,
old uncles. Now everyone scrambles around and gets old people into a
home for the senile. Anything, but just get them out of the house."
Connie's lips had pulled back slightly from her teeth as Mike talked. When
he paused she threw her head back and drank off the rest of the whisky
and water.
"Not my family," she said. "They wouldn't do that."
Her voice was a whisper.
"Don't kid yourself, Connie. Just assume that you had a mental breakdown
and the Dean of Women sent you home to St. Helena. How long do you think
your family would keep you around? About as long as it would take them
to get a psychiatrist to have you committed to Agnew. They'd do anything
to get you out of sight. Any family would."
"Not my family," Connie whispered.
Her hand reached for the bottle. The neck of the bottle chittered against
the glass as she poured. She looked up and smiled brightly.
"Say you just went home, Connie, after you graduated. Say you just went
home and stayed there. Lots of girls used to do that. They became old-maid
aunts and fitted into the family and they were sometimes even pretty
valuable members of the family. Think you could do that now? Your mother
would be embarrassed because you weren't married and she'd suggest that
you go see a marriage counselor or go down to San Francisco and get a
job. She'd make you do something; anything. But you couldn't just sit
around. She'd want you to see one of those social workers. Really she
wouldn't care what you did just so you didn't sit around the house
and remind them that you were different than the other girls. Isn't
that right?"
She was still looking at him over her glass. Through the brown clear
drink her chin looked sagging and uncertain. She closed her eyes for a
moment and when she opened them Mike knew that she believed him.
"Maybe you're right," she said.
"I didn't mean it personally, Connie," Mike said. "I just wanted
to illustrate a point. Once you see the point things aren't really
so bad. God, in a sense the system is beautiful. It takes all of the
individuals and measures them, shifts them around, tests them, puts them
in a new slot and finally they wind up where they belong. The system
peels each person like he is an onion. It rubs off all the unimportant
layers; the family, education, culture, good teeth, fine smile, nice
vocabulary. It gets right down to the core. And at the core is just the
skill and toughness of the individual. The system measures that and then
it puts him where he belongs. Oh, sometimes it makes a mistake. A rich
idiot can sit on a board of directors . . . but not forever. Sooner or
later there is a shifting around and someone else has the idiot's money
and he's out in the street wondering what happened. If he's an idiot
he'll wind up with the idiots. If he's good and tough he'll wind up with
the other good and tough people. The unskilled people get the unskilled
jobs; the tough people get ahead and the soft people get stepped on; the
bright people do the bright work and the dull people do the dull work."
"It's awful," Connie said.
Mike gestured with his hands. It was a fluttering, intricate gesture that
indicated movement and complexity.
"It's awful, but it's wonderful too," he said. "That great big disorderly
system, carefully grinding away at everybody. Everybody gets worn away
at the same rate. Everybody gets the finish taken off . . . "
"Shut up, Mike," Connie said. "Get me another drink. This bottle is
empty."
He went under the bed and dug out another bottle. When he handed her
the drink he noticed that she was shivering; just slightly, an almost
invisible twitching of her shoulders. Along her arms was a fine weltering
of gooseflesh.
"They say your sorority is going to build a new house," Mike said.
Connie told him eagerly about the new house. Then they talked about
the football team. Connie began to laugh and the color returned to her
cheeks. It was eleven o'clock when she went into the bathroom.
"I could drink the ocean tonight," she said when she came out. She saw the
empty whisky bottle and picked it up. Cleverly, like a comedy drunk, she
put the bottle to her mouth and threw her head back. Her tongue went up
the narrow neck of the bottle, was squeezed white and pink as it reached
for the few drops of whisky still left in the bottle. When she pulled
the bottle away her tongue came out of the bottle with a popping noise.
She turned toward Mike. He walked toward her and they came together
softly. He put one hand around her waist and tilted her face up with the
other. He felt her hand dig into his shoulder and he heard the bottle
fall to the floor.
Her lips were soft, a surprise. He ran his tongue over the inner flesh
of her lips and her mouth opened.
He lifted his head away. She stood with her head tilted back in surprise.
A streak of whisky ran from the corner of her mouth. Across her forehead
there was a faint pattern of sweat.
Mike wiped the whisky from her chin and kissed her again. This time, as
if she had learned everything in thirty seconds, her body came expertly
against his, her tongue worked across his lips. The soft flesh between
her thighs moved across his leg. She was the one that pushed away.
"Sit down," she said. "On the bed."
She turned off all the lights except a study lamp on one of the desks. She
walked back and stood in front of him and her face was hard. She kicked her
shoes off and pulled her skirt up over her knees. She had fine long legs
and delicate feet. She took off a garter belt and her stockings hissed
down her skin as she pulled them off.
She walked over to him and he stood up and kissed her. She put her head
close to his neck and began to talk very rapidly and softly.
"My father is funny," she said, so rapidly that Mike could barely
understand. "He samples the grapes and the wine all day long and his
lips get purple. Almost like a woman's. Maybe he is a little drunk
all the time. He picks at the grapes and spits out the seeds. And he
drinks wine all day long. One day, when I was thirteen, he stopped me
out in the vines and put his hand over my breast, like that," and she
took Mike's hand and put it over her breast. "And he said that someday
a boy would probably try to do that to me and that if he ever heard of
it he would kill the boy. Then he kissed me. His lips all moist and
purple and smelling of grapes and claret. I never forgot it."
Under his hand Mike felt her nipple harden and press against his hand. She
pushed him backward onto the bed and then stepped away.
She pulled the skirt up again, this time to her waist and her neat
untrimmed shorts cut into the round flesh of her hips. She undulated
slowly; almost as if she were doing a strange unlearned dance, her
free hand occasionally running across the roundness of her stomach.
She watched Mike tensely and finally she reached down and stepped out
of her shorts.
"All right," Mike said and his voice was sharp.
"All right?" she said and smiled. She walked toward him eagerly.
For the rest of that year Connie loaned Mike money. She loaned it to
him in small amounts that finally totaled six hundred and forty dollars.
Connie also insisted that Mike stop swearing. She
corrected his grammar and Mike did not object.
CHAPTER 8
"Ungrateful, Voluble, Dissemblers . . . "
The windows of professor Moon's office opened onto an arched passageway.
Across the scalloped strip of shade was the massive, soft sandstone mass
of the Quad. The palm trees gave it a tawny, desertlike look. Professor
Moon could see a Japanese gardener arranging a sprinkler. The gardener put
the hose down carefully in a square of lawn, and as he backed away the
sprinkler turned slowly and then more quickly, throwing out glittering
streams of water. The spray washed the dust off the leaves of grass and
they shone with a brilliant green. In the corners of the square, the grass
remained brown and dry. When the water hit the sandstone it steamed a few
seconds until it had cooled the stone.
It was merely warm in professor Moon's office, but he knew that the
Quad and the corridors around it were very hot. As he looked out the
open window, the sound of the sprinkler, the whir of distant automobile
tires passing over soft tar and the trembling of heat waves had a hypnotic
effect. With an effort he took his eyes away from the window and looked at
the papers in his hands. They were his lecture notes, and for a moment,
as his eyes readjusted to the dimness of his office, the words looked
Oriental and distorted. His forehead wrinkled as he focused his eyes.
"On the battlefield the flowing-haired Achaians and the Trojans were
throwing stones and arrows zissed through the air. Then Agamemnon,
king of men, went between the two arrays, in the space where the rank
of chariots were drawn up facing one another," he read. With a precise
copperplate hand he changed the first sentence to read, "Like a cloud,
stones and arrows soared between the Achaians and the Trojans."
Professor Moon was a lazy man, but he prided himself on changing
his lectures each time he gave them. Sometimes the changes were not
extensive, but always changes were made. It was a part of his reputation,
just as his discovery of obscure French and Swedish and Italian poets
was a part of his reputation. Professor Moon did not expect to be a
great or distinguished professor. He was too fastidious for that. To be
distinguished was to be vulgar and the inevitable price of popularity
was a cheapening of quality. Whenever one of his discoveries among the
poets of Europe had become popular Professor Moon had quickly dropped the
person from his lectures and conversations. His standards were high and
he did not therefore regret that he had such a small following. Indeed
he experienced a tiny, intense thrill of excitement each time he went
to his first lecture and saw only six or eight people. The smallness
of his following; their minute, careful, almost adoring attention; the
obscurity of his references; their look of appreciation when he delivered
a jeweled or obscure phrase; all of these were signs to Professor Moon
of fidelity and quality.
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