Samuel Johnson Is Indignant (4 page)

The Grouch wants to listen to Fischer-Dieskau singing, accompanied by Brendel at the piano, but to his annoyance he finds that Fischer-Dieskau accompanied by Brendel is also accompanied by Old Mother humming, and he asks her to stop.

 

Old Mother makes an unpleasant remark about one of their lamps.

The Grouch is sure Old Mother is insulting him. He tries to figure out what she is saying about him, but can't, and so remains silent.

 

The Grouch is on his way out with heavy boxes in his arms when Old Mother thinks of something else she wants to say.

“Hurry up, I'm holding these,” says the Grouch.

Old Mother does not like to hurry when she has something to say. “Put them down for a minute,” she tells him.

The Grouch does not like to be delayed or told what to do. “Just hurry up,” he says.

 

In the middle of an argument, the Grouch often looks at Old Mother in disbelief which is either real or feigned: “What a minute,” he says. “What just a minute.”

 

Well into an argument, Old Mother often begins to cry in frustration. Though her frustration and her tears are genuine she also hopes the Grouch will be moved to pity. The Grouch is never moved to pity, only further exasperated, saying, “Now you start sniveling.”

The Grouch often arrives home asking such questions as:

“What is this thing? Are you throwing coffee grounds under this bush? Did you mean to leave the car doors unlocked? Do you know why the garage door is open? What is all that water doing on the lawn? Is there a reason all the lights in the house are on? Why was the hose unscrewed?”

Or he comes downstairs and asks:

“Who broke this? Where are all the bath mats? Is your sewing machine working? When did this happen? Did you see the stain on the kitchen ceiling? Why is there a sponge on the piano?”

Old Mother says, “Don't always criticize me.”

The Grouch says, “I'm not criticizing you. I just want certain information.”

 

They often disagree about who is to blame: if he is hurt by her, it is possible that she was harsh in what she said; but it is also possible that her intentions were good and he was too sensitive in his reaction.

For instance, the Grouch may be unusually sensitive to the possibility that a woman is ordering him around. But this is hard to decide, because Old Mother is a woman who tends to order people around.

 

Old Mother is excited because she has a plan to improve her German. She tells the Grouch she is going to listen to Advanced German tapes while she is out driving in the car.

“That sounds depressing,” says the Grouch.

The Grouch is cross about his own work when he comes home and therefore cross with her. He snaps at her: “I can't do everything at once.”

She is offended and becomes angry. She demands an apology, wanting him to be sincere and affectionate.

He apologizes, but because he is still cross, he is not sincere and affectionate.

She becomes angrier.

Now he complains: “When I'm upset, you get even more upset.”

 

“I'm going to put on some music,” says the Grouch.

Old Mother is immediately nervous.

“Put on something easy,” she says.

“I know that whatever I put on, you won't like it,” he says.

“Just don't put on Messiaen,” she says. “I'm too tired for Messiaen.”

 

The Grouch comes into the living room to apologize for what he has said. Then he feels he must explain why he said it, though Old Mother already knows. But as he explains at some length, what he says makes him angry all over again, and he says one or two more things that provoke her, and they begin arguing again.

 

Now and then Old Mother wonders just why she and the Grouch have such trouble getting along. Perhaps, given her failures of tact, she needed a man with more confidence. Certainly, at the same time, given his extreme sensitivity, he needed a gentler woman.

They receive many Chinese fortunes. The Grouch finds it correct that her mentality is “alert, practical, and analytical,” especially concerning his faults. He finds it correct that “The great fault in women is to desire to be like men,” but it has not been true, so far, most of the time anyway, that “Someone you care about seeks reconciliation” or that “She always gets what she wants through her charm and personality.”

 

Certainly the Grouch wanted a strong-willed woman, but not one quite as strong-willed as Old Mother.

 

The Grouch puts on some music. Old Mother starts crying. It is a Haydn piano sonata. He thought she would like it. But when he put it on and smiled at her, she started crying.

 

Now they are having an argument about Charpentier and Lully: he says he no longer plays Charpentier motets when she is at home because he knows she does not like them.

She says he still plays Lully.

He says it's the Charpentier motets she doesn't like.

She says it's the whole period she doesn't like.

 

Now she has put her stamps in his stamp box, thinking to be helpful. But the stamps are of many different denominations and have stuck together in the damp weather. They argue about the stamps, and then go on to argue about the argument. She wants to prove he was unfair to her, since her intentions were good. He wants to prove she was not really thinking of him. But because they cannot agree on the sequence in which certain remarks were made, neither one can convince the other.

 

The Grouch needs attention, but Old Mother pays attention mainly to herself. She needs attention too, of course, and the Grouch would be happy to pay attention to her if the circumstances were different. He will not pay her much attention if she pays him almost none at all.

 

Old Mother is in the bathroom for an inordinately long time. When she comes out, the Grouch asks her if she is upset with him. This time, however, she was only picking raspberry seeds out of her teeth.

that Scotland has so few trees.

I ask my friend Bob what his New Year's Resolutions are and he says, with a shrug (indicating that this is obvious or not surprising): to drink less, to lose weight…He asks me the same, but I am not ready to answer him yet. I have been studying my Zen again, in a mild way, out of desperation over the holidays, though mild desperation. A medal or a rotten tomato, it's all the same, says the book I have been reading. After a few days of consideration, I think the most truthful answer to my friend Bob would be: My New Year's Resolution is to learn to see myself as nothing. Is this competitive? He wants to lose some weight, I want to learn to see myself as nothing. Of course, to be competitive is not in keeping with any Buddhist philosophy. A true nothing is not competitive. But I don't think I'm being competitive when I say it. I am feeling truly humble, at that moment. Or I think I am—in fact, can anyone be truly humble at the moment they say they want to learn to be nothing? But there is another problem, which I have been wanting to describe to Bob for a few weeks now: at last, halfway through your life, you are smart enough to see that it all amounts to nothing, even success amounts to nothing. But how does a person learn to see herself as nothing when she has already had so much trouble learning to see herself as something in the first place? It's so confusing. You spend the first half of your life learning that you are something after all, now you have to spend the second half learning to see yourself as nothing. You have been a negative nothing, now you want to be a positive nothing. I have begun trying, in these first days of the New Year, but so far it's pretty difficult. I'm pretty close to nothing all morning, but by late afternoon what is in me that is something starts throwing its weight around. This happens many days. By evening, I'm full of something and it's often something nasty and pushy. So what I think at this point is that I'm aiming too high, that maybe nothing is too much, to begin with. Maybe for now I should just try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

My friend is interesting but he is not in his apartment.

 

Their conversation appears interesting but they are speaking a language I do not understand.

 

They are both reputed to be interesting people and so I'm sure their conversation is interesting, but they are speaking a language I understand only a little, so I catch only fragments such as “I see” and “on Sunday” and “unfortunately.”

 

This man has a good understanding of his subject and says many things about it that are probably interesting in themselves, but I am not interested because the subject does not interest me.

 

Here is a woman I know coming up to me. She is very excited, but she is not an interesting woman. What excites her will not be interesting, it will simply not be interesting.

At a party, a highly nervous man talking fast says many smart things about subjects that do not particularly interest me, such as the restoration of historic houses and in particular the age of wallpaper. Yet, because he is so smart and because he gives me so much information per minute, I do not get tired of listening to him.

 

Here is a very handsome English traffic engineer. The fact that he is so handsome, and so animated, and has such a fine English accent makes it appear, each time he begins to speak, that he is about to say something interesting, but he is never interesting, and he is saying something, yet again, about traffic patterns.

If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest moment of his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck.

Q.

A. Jury duty.

Q.

A. The night before, we had been quarreling.

Q.

A. The family.

Q.

A. Four of us. Well, one doesn't live at home anymore. But he was home that night. He was leaving the next morning—the same morning I had to go in to the courtroom.

Q.

A. We were all four of us quarreling. Every which way. I was just now trying to figure it out. There are so many different combinations in which four people can quarrel: one on one, two against one, three against one, two against two, etc. I'm sure we were quarreling in just about every combination.

Q.

A. I don't remember now. Funny. Considering how heated it was.

Q.

A. Well, I put the older boy on the bus, and went on to the courthouse. No, that's not true. He stayed home alone, I trusted him home alone for a couple of hours. He was supposed to catch the bus in front of the house. That worked out all right, he was gone when I came home later. He hadn't taken anything, as far as I could see.

Q.

A. That's a long story.

Q.

A. The younger one was at school and my husband was at work. I had to be at the courthouse at nine. It was a Monday.

Q.

A. I was a little late—I had trouble parking. But of course the parking lot was full because I was already late. Most of the others were there. A couple of people came in after me.

Q.

A. A big old building uptown, very old. It was the same courthouse where Sojourner Truth testified when…

Q.

A. Sojourner Truth.

Q.

A. Sojourner.

Q.

A. She was a former slave who fought for women's rights back in the 1850's. I read that on the historic plaque they have out front. They also said she was illiterate.

Q.

A. Sojourner Truth testified there in that same building, probably in the very same courtroom we were sitting in. Although they didn't say that, come to think of it, and you'd think they would have, since they told us how the room had just been completely restored. In fact they asked us to admire it. That was strange, under the circumstances.

Q.

A. Strange that they would begin talking about the building, the architecture, in the midst of all the instructions they were giving us. As if we were there for a tour, instead of because we had to be there.

Q.

A. It was like a big old library reading room. Or one of those large waiting rooms with high ceilings in an old train station—there's one in New Haven, and there's Grand Central, of course.

Q.

A. Wooden pews, actually. Like a church or an old train station. But comfortable. Surprisingly.

Q.

A. About 175.

Q.

A. They were very quiet. Some of them were reading, some were talking to each other very quietly, just a few. I think they had found someone they knew or they were just being sociable with the person next to them.

Q.

A. No, I didn't talk to any of them, really. There was one older Italian man sitting near me. He couldn't understand anything they said, so I told him what we were supposed to do. He said he used to work in the garment district down in the city. He was a tailor.

Q.

A. Most were just sitting there looking around or staring straight ahead. They were very calm. They were also very alert. I'm sure they felt the same thing I did, that at any moment something might happen, we might be asked to do something, go somewhere. All very expectant, all these people, under that very high ceiling.

Q.

A. Well, first they called the roll—all our names. Most of us were there. Then they told us some of what would be happening. Then we waited.

Q.

A. I don't know—an hour, maybe.

Q.

A. I forget what we were waiting for. Something to do with the judges, or the case. There was a lot of waiting.

Q.

A. Then, after an hour, there was another instruction. I think we were told we could go out for 20 minutes if we wanted a cigarette or to go to the bathroom. I told the Italian man to be sure to come back in 20 minutes.

Q.

A. Someone employed by the court, some officer of the court. I forget if they told us. First it was a man, telling us what the day would be like, roughly, and the week. Then a woman. Still, we didn't really know what to expect. It's funny to think about, but we were all prepared to do whatever they told us. They could have told us to go to another room and sit there and we would have. Then they could have told us to come back and sit. They could have told half of us to go to another room, and we would have done that. We were very trusting of them.

Q.

A. Very gently. Very calmly, gently. They would say something and then leave, go out some door, come back in, say something else. They would look up from some papers and say something to us almost intimately, as though we weren't a whole crowd. And very respectfully. It was very soothing. As though they were treating us as kindly as possible because they were about to give us some bad news. And we couldn't answer them. We weren't invited to, but we also didn't dare.

Q.

A. No, it wasn't. I thought about that: first I thought of church, then an AA meeting, then something like going to an opera, or a concert. I thought of a large town meeting. But it was different. It was much more peaceful. For one thing, we weren't talking, none of us were talking, really. We weren't supposed to. And also, it was peaceful because we weren't looking for anything, we hadn't come there looking for some kind of spiritual uplift, or rehabilitation. Also, we weren't doing anything, we weren't even waiting for a train, or for an appointment. Actually, we were waiting, but we didn't know what we were waiting for, we didn't know what to expect. So there was this sort of blank wall ahead of us.

Q.

A. A blank wall ahead of us where the rest of the day would normally be, where you could normally see more or less what was coming next.

Q.

A. Yes, but they didn't explain much, and no one dared to ask.

Q.

A. It wasn't emotional. Going to church would be emotional. Going to an AA meeting or even a concert would be emotional. This was the most unemotional thing you could imagine. Maybe that's why it was such a relief.

Q.

A. After all that awful quarreling the night before. It was like some sort of therapy, some sort of treatment. A prescription. As though after such quarreling I was required by law to report to a place where I had to sit very still with other people who were sitting very still, and we would all be treated very kindly and gently until we were completely well again.

Q.

A. Not the way we do. Not like our family. It scares me. It scares the pets. God knows what it's doing to my younger boy.

Q.

A. Yes, we had no choice. We couldn't avoid it. By law, we had to be there. So there was no possibility of conflict—should I be here, should I not be here? And they didn't want us in particular—it wasn't in the least personal, it was random, we had been called randomly. And we weren't here because we had done anything wrong. We were innocent. In fact we were more than innocent. We were good. We were good citizens, good enough to be asked to judge other citizens. The law was saying that we were good. Maybe that's another reason it felt so deeply soothing. It was not emotional, it was not personal, and yet there was this feeling of approval. The law thinks you're a good person, or at least good enough.

Q.

A. Yes, they checked us for weapons down at the side entrance where we came in. They didn't use the old front entrance anymore. We went in through some modern, ugly side doors and down some steps below street level, then we went up to the second floor in an elevator.

Q.

A. There was a metal detector and a guard who looked into our bags and purses. He was very kind and gentle, too. He smiled in a kind way. The sign said something like, “No weapons beyond this point.” So it was as though symbolically, too, we were supposed to leave behind anything we could fight with. We were not going in there to fight. Anyone who entered through the metal detector and went beyond it was not dangerous, almost by definition.

Q.

A. Yes, as though we were in suspension, everything in our lives suspended, waiting. We were waiting.

Q.

A. Yes, I though of the word patient. But it wasn't that. Patience is something you need in a strained situation, a situation in which you have to put up with something uncomfortable or difficult. This wasn't difficult. That's what I'm trying to say: we had to be there, and so it relieved us of all personal responsibility. I don't think there is anything else quite like it. Then you have to add onto that the spaciousness of the room. Imagine if it had been a small, crowded room with a low ceiling. Or if people had been noisy, talkative. Or if the people in charge had been confused, or rude.

Q.

A. Finally. The woman had a drum with all our names in it. She turned the drum and then picked names out of the drum one at a time to go up and sit in the jury box and be interviewed. This was going to be the interesting part—that's what I was thinking.

Q.

A. No, we all had to stay there. All the rest of us had to stay there in case the ones being questioned were disqualified or excused. Since it was random, any one of us might be called up to replace them, so we all had to stay.

Q.

A. Again, very gently, very respectfully. And calling them by their first names, gently, like a doctor or a nurse.

Q.

A. There was an unexpected sort of excitement to it. Something ceremonious. The suspense before she called out the name—everyone thinking it might be their name next, of course. Then when the names were called, they had to go up there in front of all these people, and then they had to answer these personal questions with everyone listening and watching them. There were so many of us. We had no idea who all these people were. Then the lives of some of us were gradually revealed, all the rest of us sitting there and listening. We would hear about these people, we would hear their stories. Now we knew the names of some of them. It was like some Indian ritual, some Navajo ceremony.

Q.

A. Oh, some questions you'd expect, some general questions, like, Are you employed? What do you do for a living? Do you have a family? Then more specific questions. Do you drive? Have you ever been in an accident? Do you have any relatives on the police force? Do you have any relatives in the insurance business? Are you familiar with the Palisades Parkway?

Q.

A. The part just north of Exit 11.

Q.

A. It took a long time. I couldn't hear very well.

Q.

A. Very calmly. They called them by their first names. And there were all these pauses. Question. Pause. One lawyer would consult another lawyer while everyone waited, so quiet, so obedient. These quiet voices, and then long silences, and this expectant atmosphere.

Q.

A. Well, so first they were special, the Chosen. Up in front of everyone. I heard enough of their answers to decide I liked them, or I didn't like them. One woman was a real estate dealer, divorced, a cold, tense sort of woman. Grim. I didn't like her. Then there was a tall strong man, an artist, a family man, obviously a nice guy. I liked him right away. There was a college student who was afraid he'd miss too many days of classes, but then they pointed out to him that this was going to be a short trial and he might miss even more if he didn't go ahead and sit on this jury. So he decided to stay on the jury. And once he was on the jury you had to see him as rather special because he was so young—he was like the child on the jury, the child prodigy, young but wise enough to stand in judgment, who would be taken care of by the older people. And then after a while you even began to dislike him and resent him for being so young, for presuming, for saying in front of everyone that he might not do this thing that he had been asked to do, then for being the child prodigy, so young and bright and being taken care of by the others.

So these ones, who stayed on the jury, they were the Chosen. And the ones who were excused, after all that questioning, when they were excused, when they had to walk back to their seats in front of everybody, they became the Unchosen, they lost all that special prestige, they were ordinary again, they were not special anymore. Or rather, the ones who were rejected for obvious or technical reasons were simply ordinary. But the ones who were rejected for mysterious reasons, for reasons that probably said something not so good about their lives and who they were, they were not just ordinary anymore, now, they had somehow been declared unfit. The others were still sitting up there.

Q.

A. No, not many. Three or four, maybe. One, I think, because he was unemployed and hadn't driven for eleven years—no, longer than that, not since 1979. He used a bicycle to get around. It also came out that he had been in an accident in 1979, or caused one. He had been sued, but he had won. You only get part of the story.

Q.

A. He was dressed more formally than most of the others, in a dark suit and a tie. But his hair was long, in a ponytail, and he was wearing tinted glasses. They asked him about his glasses.

Q.

A. I wasn't surprised that they excused him. He was unemployed. And it also turned out that he wasn't married and had no children. But they don't have to say why they're excusing them. I wondered what he was feeling when he went back to his seat, and after that, for the rest of the day. He was so carefully dressed I thought he might have felt proud that he had been called for jury duty in the first place. Then he might have been embarrassed or humiliated that they didn't want him after all.

Q.

A. Yes, another one was excused because he had a nephew on the police force.

Q.

A. Well, they were all selected by lunchtime, and we were allowed to leave for an hour. They pinned special badges on the ones who had been selected for the jury and instructed them not to talk to anyone, and told us not to talk to them.