The Eighth Day (34 page)

“All but the Bishop.”

“During the early months—because of starvation, loss of consciousness, and other things—the German prisoners had lost count of the calendar. It was from the English merchant that they learned the day and the week and the month. They got back their Sundays and their Easter and their feast days—that other calendar that strengthens our steps and confirms our joy. In time another cell became vacant. It was filled by a Portuguese, a shopkeeper from Macao. He knew only Portuguese, Spanish, and Cantonese. Apparently he was an intelligent and well-disposed man. Throughout the night he tapped out messages from the right wall to the left wall and from the left wall to the right wall. Perhaps he thought his fellow prisoners were planning some escape—some attempt to murder a guard and to set the watchhouse on fire. Do you think so?”

Roger thought. “I think that, if he'd believed that, he would have got tired of it after a few weeks.”

“Why did I tell you this story, Mr. Frazier?”

“You were telling me that my father and mother were like the Portuguese man.”

“We all are. You are, Mr. Frazier. I hope I am. Life is surrounded by mysteries beyond the comprehension of our limited minds. Your dear parents have seen them; you and I have seen them. We transmit (we hope) fairer things than we can fully grasp.”

Silence.

“Is this story true, Father?”

“Oh, yes. I have talked with one of the sisters.”

“What was she like, Father?”

“What was she like? . . . ? Well . . . ? The greatest joys are those that come to us upon some confirmation of our faith—even in small fragments of faith, faith in St. Casimir's Home, in a friendship, in the survival of a family. Sister Benedikta was joyous.”

To himself Roger said, “I hope Papa is joyous.”

At the door, taking his leave, Roger asked and received permission to print the story for his readers. It appeared four weeks later as “A Tapping on Your Wall.” At the close of it there was a pattern of vertical strokes, looking somewhat like a broken picket fence. Thousands of Chicagoans worked at it. They found: “API ESTR T E AL.” The story was reprinted far and wide. It crossed the seas.

The layers of ice about Roger's heart were beginning to melt or—shall we say?—the plates of armor to fall to the ground. His freedom from isolation was accelerated by his encounters with a number of young women.

The Ashley children were widely regarded as “precocious.” Three of them had gained a certain notoriety by twenty-four. The truth is they were slow to mature in mind and body; they met the appointments of growth, however, soundly though late.

Roger's work required his crossing and recrossing Chicago daily—“like a skeeter bug on a pond,” said T.G. At banquets, entertainments, athletic events he was coming to recognize and know a large number of young women. He particularly singled out those of other nations, colors, and backgrounds. These were all slightly older than himself, self-supporting, and employers of others. There were not many of this latter category at the beginning of the century. They were pioneers and were viewed askance by respectable women. Roger prolonged his conversations with them. They did most of the talking, but so intent a listener was he that they received the impression of having heard a great deal from him. They were not like other young women; he was not like other young men. It was only several years later that Roger became aware of all that he had learned from Demetria, Ruby, and the rest. Only later, too, did he realize that these associations had released him from a dangerous constraint. Mysterious are the processes of sexual selection. All the young women were vivacious, enterprising, and above all independent; only one was tall, only one was light-haired. He was expunging from his imagination—by urgent necessity—the compelling presence of the woman whom he had loved so passionately and whose failure to respond to him had come close to convincing him that he would never be loved, that he could never love. None of these women resembled his mother.

Demetria was Greek but with Turkish and Lebanese blood, twenty-six, big hipped, joyous, excitable, and ruthless in business. Like Roger, she was making her way in Chicago fast. She had begun the climb at fourteen, sewing flowers on hats for twelve hours a day in a sweatshop—foreman at sixteen, a purchaser of materials and a scout for market outlets at twenty. At twenty-one she had opened a sweatshop of her own. There was an expanding market for ugly house dresses. Every Sunday she visited her baby on a farm near Joliet. Roger first met her at the farm. (Hence Trent's article “Kennels for Babies.”)

Madame Anne-Marie Blanc, from the Province of Quebec, rose and gold, short and plump, avowedly twenty-nine, was a caterer for weddings and wakes, for patriotic societies and conventions. At the conclusion of a dinner, Roger—that experienced restaurant man—would go into the kitchen and help pack up, filling the great hampers with crockery and silver. He watched Madame Blanc pay her army of cooks and waiters. He knew a genius for organization when he saw it; she knew he knew it. She asked him to stay and have a cup of coffee; she could take off her shoes and rest. She suffered from insomnia and dreaded returning to her rooms. He ventured to tell her that the food she served was less than appetizing. She burst out laughing. “Yes, yes—but
they
like it. All I want, Mr. Frazier, is money. If you will stop and think for five minutes—only five minutes, Mr. Frazier—about the life of a woman, you will understand that the first thing she wants is money. Girl, wife, or widow. Of course, I mean a sensible woman.” She knew that Roger was the “writer man Trent”; she collected his pieces. She suffered from insomnia and from a despairing need to tell her story, but no one in this world listens. At first slowly, then with alarming rapidity, Roger came to learn that there were two Anne-Maries—the trenchant able businesswoman, rose and gold, given to quick short laughter; and a frightened girl barely seventeen, terrified of death and hell, haunted by memories of her childhood, athirst for a humane word, a humane ear, a humane touch. He discovered that she fortified herself in the evening with
crème de menthe
which she drank by the half pint. Before long she hurled herself at him in a storm of fear, dependence, and gratitude. Roger did not know enough to be afraid; besides, we came into this world to learn and to be useful. Lauradel, Negro, was twenty-seven, a singer and part owner of the “Old Dixie Ballroom, a Refined Dance Floor for Ladies and Gentlemen.” From time to time Roger visited the establishment toward two in the morning to hear Lauradel sing “Jaybird, don't you sing that song at me” and “I walk on the water and I'm not afraid.”

Ruby Morris was Japanese and Hawaiian, twenty-six. She had been adopted by some missionaries on the Islands and brought to this country, where she so profited by the public school system that she soon outgrew her foster parents, teachers, and all those tender sentimental benefactors, who—treating her always as a pretty doll—had hovered over her progress. She renounced Christianity, relearned Japanese, turned Buddhist, and struck out for herself. With help from the small Japanese community in Chicago, she opened a store for curios, kimonos, and gifts. She prospered.

He entered into each relationship with an intensity that approached violence. He pursued several simultaneously to the verge of endangering even the redoubtable store of health that had been allotted to the Ashley's. This phase of dissipation, however, came to an end almost as abruptly as it began, and without rancor. All was conducted under the sign of independence. He had made no promises and exerted no claims. Demetria and Ruby wanted to do his laundry for him; Anne-Marie and Lauradel wanted to buy him shirts and shoes; Ruby and Anne-Marie offered him a room in which to live; but he avoided any shadow of dependency.

These young women divined that something was amiss, that he was pursuing some end beyond sensuality and beyond vanity. They knew also that he was honest and that in some obscure way he was “in trouble.” Without knowing it he called upon their understanding; without knowing it he afforded them an opportunity to serve. And he, in turn, brought them an exceptional gift—his ardor held a large measure of wonder and curiosity and discovery. They were accustomed to being desired; it was something new to be listened to.

Lauradel:

“I used to see you come in and sit in that dark corner. You weren't hiding from me, Junior. I knew you were listening. And you'd come up afterwards and say something gentlemanly and put twenty cents in the saucer. I don't forget anything. And then you put that piece in the paper about our ‘Ballroom' and about my singing and the white people started coming to the place and we had to move in eight more tables.—Have you gone off to sleep again, big ears?”

“No, I hear everything you're saying, Lauradel.”

“Go to sleep, if you want . . . ? Men! . . . ? But that thing you put in the paper about me being such a good singer that I didn't have to sing bad taste—I was mad! I wasn't sure I knew what that meant. I asked people—some said it meant vulgar and common and dirty! Oh, I was mad. You and your cat's-mess taste. The next night you came in, I wanted to go over to your table and tell you to
GO
HOME
and take your taste with you. We didn't want you and your pweetsy-tweetsy taste here. You! . . . ? You! . . . ?”

“Stop hitting me, Lauradel!”

“Because there are only two things I like to sing about: my religion and making love. And I don't have to ask permission out of you, Mr. Tasty. I'm sorry I hit you, newspaperboy. I didn't break any of your bones. Aren't you ashamed to be lying there looking like a half-peeled radish?—Oh, you people that live in the middle of the United States and don't know anything about the ocean! Do you know where I came from?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'll tell you. I came from the islands off the State of Georgia where only the boiled shrimps are that color of you. The sun gets hot in Chicago, too, but it isn't real sun, not real. It hasn't got any
salt
in it. You're a poor little fresh-water nothing.”

“I can't breathe, Lauradel. . . . ?”

“Taste!—Think about this for a minute.
If nobody made love for a hundred days!
Are you thinking about that—just to please your big Lauradel? People would be creeping around the streets as though their spines had turned to jello. Even the children would stop jumping rope. You'd go in a store and ask for a pair of shoes and the man would say, ‘Ma'am, shoes? Oh yes, shoes, let me see, have we any shoes?' Just imagine what people's eyes would be like—like holes you burned in wallpaper. The birds would fall out of trees; their wings wouldn't have any zupp in them. The trees would sag like old widows with female trouble. And God would get up. He'd look down. He'd say,
WHAT'S GOING ON AROUND HERE? THIS HAS GOT TO STOP! I DON'T WANT ANY MORE OF MR. TRENT'S CAT'S-MESS TASTE AROUND HERE
.”

Roger slid out of bed and, kneeling, put his arms around her. She pushed him away, roaring with laughter, royal.

“
GET LOVING, YOU SONS-OF-BITCHES, OR THE WORLD WILL TURN COLD
. That's what I sing about! Now do you understand?”

“Lauradel, you're as big as a house!”

“Well, don't you start getting me mixed up in my head about what's vulgar and what's not vulgar, because
you don't know and I know.
”

Still laughing, she bent his head to the floor with her foot. “Get away from me, you little paperboy! I don't know why I go around with such a pink wart.”

“You can hit me all you want to, Lauradel.”

“Get back into bed and stop playing the fool on my carpet. You'll get splinters in your foot.—I told you about all the bad times I've been through, didn't I?”

“Yes, you did.”

“When a person's been through
ALL THAT
and comes out alive—that person knows what's what.”

“Tell me some more about your grandfather Demus.”

“Well, first: I've got another old bone to pick with you.”

“What else have I done wrong, Lauradel?”

“Mr. Trent—I mean Mr. Frazier—you hurt my feelings so bad that I don't think I'll ever get over it. And you know how you did it!” Roger was silent. “You sent back that overcoat I sent you. That wasn't honorable or decent.”

“Lauradel!”

“You keep saying ‘Lauradel,' but you don't love me.”

“Lauradel, that's the way I am.”

“When people love each other money doesn't matter. Love kills money. I love to give, Mr. Trent. I wish I had a million dollars. I'd give you a . . . ? shoelace. You sent back the coat I gave you. You dress bad. You don't dress any better than an old crow.”

“Don't cry, Lauradel. Don't cry.”

“You gave me a present: a real genuine invitation to Abraham Lincoln's funeral.”

“I didn't buy that. A lady gave it to me. An old lady gave it to me because of a piece I wrote in the paper.”

“But you gave it to me—in your heart you gave it to me.”

“Don't cry, Lauradel. We all have to be as we're made.”

“Well . . . ?”

“Lauradel, I have to get some sleep. I have to be at City Hall early tomorrow. Sing me to sleep, will you?”

“What'll I sing you, boy? Shall I sing you ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child'?”

“No, not that one.”

“I'll sing you one I never sang you before. It's in the language my people talked on Sea Island, Georgia. It's about why God made shells.”

And Ruby:

“What are you whispering to yourself about, Ruby?”

“Go to sleep, Trent. I'm reciting the Lotus Scripture.”

“I don't want to go to sleep. I want to hold your hand and hear you talk.”

“Sh . . . ? sh . . . ?!”