Death Be Not Proud (11 page)

He had some food and demanded, “Where is Putnam?”

I said that Putnam was out in California.

“Why doesn’t he hurry the hell back? He’d let me walk!”

Then: “Where’s Penfield?”

After a while he said, “Let me telephone Gerson and find out what to eat.” I said that from now on he could eat absolutely anything. “Except eggs,” he put in, and I still do not know the reason for this remark. At noon I said, “I’m going to run out for a minute and grab some lunch.” He replied, “You never eat lunch.” Frances arrived, and he exclaimed to her, “It was very unfair. They squirted my mouth full of something, and so I couldn’t talk.”

He felt a bandage. “That’s just for decoration. Why cover it up? What in heck for?”

He said he wanted to go to the bathroom and we rang for a nurse. “You can’t walk,” I said. “ I could crawl,” he said. He added, “ I have your blue pajamas on. Not the pants, though. They’re prejudiced here against pajama pants.”

We sat with him.

“It was very unfair,” he repeated. “They sprayed me full of stuff, and I couldn’t protest. I tried to protest when the barber came, but they gave me something so I couldn’t talk.”

Later: “What happens when I get out of this labyrinth? If I go back to Tutoring School, can I walk there by myself?”

Then: “Look at my arm.
Some
bruise!” This was where they had opened the vein for the transfusion. “They put me under general, not local,” he complained again, “and so I couldn’t see anything interesting!”

He dozed a while—all this within a very few hours of one of the most terrible operations a human being can undergo— and then concluded: “It was the works, all right.”

Finally he said, “It’s better this time than after Putnam’s operation. I can see.”

5

Smoothly, steadily, ominously, the next two weeks slipped by. The
bulge disappeared entirely for an interval and was replaced by what we had prayed for for a year, a concavity. Johnny was worried, though. The bandage was too big for him to feel through. On May 4 he said, “ I must ask Connie [Traeger] if Mount got out as much as Putnam did.” He said to a visitor, “ I wonder if the bump is still there. I’m not convinced.” Also he began to inquire with great earnestness why a plate had not been inserted, which must have meant that, finally, he had given up hope that the bone would grow back of itself. He said indignantly to one friend, “I f only they’d put in a plate, one of the new types of plate made of tantalum, at least I’d be able to swim and sail.”

Frances, who was holding up wonderfully under a strain that had become unendurable, went off to Florida for a brief rest, and, with my sister standing by, I got away later for a week in Virginia. There came one violent hour in the solarium before I left. Johnny was passionate and stormy. He exploded, “I’m always in a haze! I was in a haze up in school last year! The tumor must have been starting then, only nobody knew it! People kidded me about it, and it was very disagreeable. I talked it over with Steve [one of his classmates] but came to no conclusion. I’m sensitive about being kidded. I didn’t like it, and I don’t like it now! It wasn’t my fault that I was in such a haze!”

He relaxed. “My mother and father think that anything connected with me is remarkable. These strange parents ... ”

Mount dropped in and he turned to him furiously. “Get me out of here by crack of dawn Thursday, or I’ll sneak out by myself! Stop all this persecution!” He asked him to speed up his recovery by giving him electric shock therapy. Mount, with his deadpan face and the grave, warm brown eyes, was so dumfounded by Johnny’s outburst that he did not know what to say. He fumbled and tried to joke. “Electricity costs a lot and we save it for our serious cases.”

Then Johnny attacked my book. “You step backward to be fair too much. You ought to have more muckracking
(sic).
You beat around the bush. You should have begun the Dewey chapter with the simple statement, ‘Nobody trusts Tom Dewey!’ That was what you were trying to say in five thousand words. Libel lawyers? Fire the libel lawyers! You’ve written three books, they’ve all sold half a million copies, tell Cass to take it or leave it and fire the lawyers!”

But there were lighter moments. One nurse said, “I’ll be just like your mother to you.” He answered, “Okay, provided you don’t go too far.” I was being profiled by Dick Rovere of the
New Yorker,
and I brought Rovere up there one day and Johnny looked him over and said, “S o you’re the hatchet man.” Later he told me, “Well, I hope he digs up a lot of dirt about you.” I said Rovere was a fine fellow. Johnny: “Wait till you see what kind of piece he writes.”

“Did you sleep well?” the nurse asked one morning.

“Like an octopus.”

This is, I believe, the last letter he ever wrote. He had pleaded with his mother to get away for her brief holiday, and while she was in Florida he telephoned her a couple of times and then wrote this:

D
EAR
M
OTHER
,

Today is the last day at this—hospital! Thanks for your letters, and be sure to remember the words of wisdom which I tried to impart to you a few minutes before your departure. I feel fine but seem to be struck with a most monstrous attack of lazyness. What a job it is for my poor nurse to get me up in the morning! I’ve gotten into an awful habit of drinking coffee in the morning, and find it necessary to keep me awake—at least enough so I don’t fall asleep and drown in the bathtub!

It made me happy to hear that you will be returning soon. In a week or so I will go back to Deerfield to take the exams, and to say hello and goodbye!

O! How wonderful food is again! Bacon and eggs! salt! steaks! How I eat! mushrooms! last night I played poker with some fellow patients!—great fun! I’ve almost finished the English anthology which we were reading

lots of love and kisses

J
OHNNY

He was cleared to go home on May 15, only two weeks after the operation. So for the last time Johnny checked out of Neurological. He ended the experience with a wry wisecrack. We marched out and
I
said the hospital knew us so well by this time that they sent the bill by mail. Johnny jibed: “You mean by parcel post.”

What a lot goes into a life, into a brain—all that the fragile shell of cranium holds! Usually the size of a skull, and the brain concealed within, is an index of mental capacity. Johnny’s brain, we learned later, weighed two thousand grams. The average for a normal, fully-grown male is fifteen hundred. The largest male brain ever known weighed 2,222.

He remained pretty well, but now it became increasingly difficult for him to fix his belt or shoelaces. He was too proud to admit this, and Marie, our admirable housekeeper, helped him to put on his shoes one morning. Johnny said,
“I
’m only giving way to your maternal instinct.” Carl, our old elevator man, wept once when he saw how warped his face was and how difficult it was for him to walk. Johnny said to him coolly,
” I
haven’t had any chance to exercise, and so my foot is tired.”

Marie told me of another colloquy. A schoolmate whom he had not seen for years called up.

J
OHNNY:
“ I
should warn you that my head is bandaged because
I
have a brain tumor.”

B
OY:
“I
’ve never known anybody with a brain tumor.”

J
OHNNY
: “YOU
know me.”

B
OY
: “What’s it like?”

J
OHNNY
: “I’ve been lucky. I have no pain, and there has been no impairment of my faculties.”

The boy came over that afternoon, and Johnny cleaned him up in a game of chess.

The effort to pretend that the tumor was nothing cost him dearly; the price of his invincible fight was great fatigue. It took a miserable lot out of him to pretend to ignore what he must have now known to be the truth, that he wasn’t getting any better. The faraway look was in his eyes more often now. But it was impossible for us not to support his optimism, because any discouragement would have been a crushing blow. All he had now was his will to live. We had to keep that up at any cost. The cord of life was wearing very thin, and if we took away hope, it would be bound to snap.

After a struggle one morning he gave up trying to tie his tie, and things would drop out of his left hand more frequently. “My left hand is a mess.” The hand cupped sharply and he looked frightened. “The nerves are crazy in this left hand. I can’t get it open.”

He always loved to joke with me about my size. I said one day that I was tired enough to stay asleep until I starved to death. Reply: “That would take quite some time, Father.” I had a massage and reported that I had lost some weight. Comment: “Ho w much did the masseur lose?”

He read the papers carefully and with Frances listened to every important broadcast. He said, “The reason why the Republicans don’t offend and oppose those Southern Democrats is because they may need their help some day.” Some friends talked once about the great vitality of the United States. He asked, “But may not vitality end in smugness? Isn’t it possible, too, that vitality could express itself in reaction, in the wrong direction?” He turned to me. “In Volume Two, hit them hard, Father!” I can tell you all right whom he meant by “them”—anybody cheap, anybody shoddy or vulgar, anybody selfish and corrupt, anybody on-the-make or feathering his nest in the name of false principle.

He dropped a pill.

“Is it still all right?” I asked stupidly enough reaching for it.

“It will be if you pick it up of f the floor.”

On Sunday mornings Frances read to him from the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Gospels, the Hindu scriptures, Confucius, and other eastern sages. One of the last things he read was the Psalms. I read to him, too, though not so much. One of the books he was going through for English was a poetry anthology; he would look bored or turn away when-ever we chanced on a poem about Death.

One day came an unbearably moving moment when he announced, as if casually, that perhaps he was having the bump for
us!

The phone rang on May 25 and Mr. Boyden’s cheerful, assured voice came through. “I’ve gone through Johnny’s papers and examinations,” he said. “You know he did extra work in his freshman year and has some surplus credits. He has caught up to his class in everything except one examination, and we are going to give him a diploma. This isn’t a favor. It is Johnny’s right. Come up next week, and he will graduate with his class.”

Johnny yawned and tried to look casual, and we all burst into tears. We drove to Deerfield on May 27, and Johnny graduated on June 4, though he had not been to school for fourteen months. The days passed in a proud procession, and I think probably it was the happiest week of his life.

It seemed chilly when we started, and Johnny, as always extracting compensation out of any ill fortune, said, “Well, at least we don’t have a heat wave.” We passed through Hartford and he asked, “Were you here when you did your research?—I wouldn’t dream of asking how long you stayed, probably half an hour.” I was full of nerves as we got near Deerfield with its stiff old houses and great fanlike elms, and impatiently I asked him if I had overshot the side road and did he recognize any landmarks. He replied gently, “You know I don’t see well out of my left eye.”

Then without the slightest self-consciousness he took his place in his class. He sat between old friends in the dining hall (the instructors had warned them) and Frances whispered that they should inconspicuously cut his meat if necessary. The boys stared at him for a second as if he were a ghost—of course his hair had not grown back fully after the last operation and he wore a white turban—and then accepted his appearance without question.

Every evening after dinner an informal ceremony takes place at Deerfield which is one of the distinguishing marks of this magnificent school; each boy from Freshman to Senior meets with Mr. Boyden, and the roll of the entire school is called. The boys are heaped together on the floor. Usually there is a casualty or two—some youngsters hurt in a football game—for whom there are big leather chairs. Johnny eased himself into one of these, and his name was called in the roll exactly as if he had never been absent for a moment. Then he limped slowly and proudly to the Senior Dorm where he would have been living this past year, and looked at what should have been his room with a piercing yearning. Boys were moving back and forth in the orderly bustle that precedes commencement. Johnny had the attitude of one who is both a participant in and a spectator of a great event. Mr. Boyden crept up to us and asked if we were sure he would not get too tired. Then he joined calmly in a bull session.

It was decided that he should sleep in the infirmary—a building he knew only too exasperatingly well. The next morning we came to pick him up at what we thought was a reasonable hour. But he had left the building before eight, alone, and was at the moment taking the final exam in chemistry! He passed it  Minus—though he had never taken a regular chemistry course in his life.

Later that day I bumped into him accidentally on the bright sunlit grass as he dragged himself from behind a hedge in shadow. His left shoulder sagged; his arm hung almost useless; his mouth was twisted with effort; the left side of his lip sank down; his eyes were filmy; he was happy. “Oh, pardon me, sir,” Johnny said. He had not recognized me, and thought that I was some master he did not know.

Everybody tried hard to keep him from being too active. But he said, “Walking around this way helps the wound heal.” Frances told him to sit around in the sun—how they both loved the sun!—and get brown and he answered, “All you are interested in, Mother, is my color!” When he had trouble with knife and fork one evening, he told her in exquisite parody of what she often said: “B e patient. Believe in calmness and Nirvana.” It was a lovely day the next day and Johnny spent an hour learning some calculus from a fellow student. He worked out the equations on the bottom of a paper plate during a picnic lunch in the soft grass. Frances remonstrated that he might be getting tired. He replied briefly, “There’s no future to just sitting.”

The day before graduation was strenuous, with a lunch for the parents at noon and then a baseball game which Johnny watched with serious interest for about four innings. The dress-up banquet that night, to celebrate among other things Mr. Boyden’s forty-fifth year as headmaster, lasted three hours; Johnny did not miss a minute of it. He tramped across the lawn afterward, with his classmate Henry Eisner holding his hand, for the off-the-record talk Mr. Boyden gives each graduating class. Then the class, standing under the trees in a night grown chilly, serenaded the Boydens on the front porch. Johnny, on the outskirts of the massed pack of boys, looked suddenly exhausted, and I slipped away from the adults to join him inconspicuously, standing just behind him. He did not mind, though as a rule he loathed having us anywhere near him at school. I was afraid he might fall. Then I heard his light, silvery tenor chime in with the other voices. The song floated across the lawn and echoed back. We hiked to the infirmary and Johnny ran into a classmate who had won an award. “Congratulations!” he snapped briskly.

The next morning the boys assembled early for the quarter-mile walk to the white-frame Deerfield church, arranging themselves four abreast in order of their height. I did not think Johnny could manage such a march. He shook us off and disappeared. The procedure is that the boys, reaching the church, line up behind the pews, and then walk one by one down the center aisle, as each name is called. Mr. Flynt, the president of the board of trustees, then shakes hands with each boy, giving him his diploma in the left hand. We explained that Johnny might not be able to grasp the smooth roll of diploma with his left fingers, and asked Mr. Flynt to try to slip it into the right hand instead. The boys began to march in slowly, and though Johnny should have been conspicuous with his white bandage, we did not see him and I was in an agony fearing that he had fallen out. Mr. Boyden, sweeping the assembly with his all-embracing sharp affectionate glance, caught Frances’s eye and nodded to her reassuringly. One by one the names were called out, and each boy disassociated himself from the solid group and marched forward alone. The call was alphabetical, and by the time the G’s were reached we were limp with suspense, since we did not know for sure that Johnny had even got into the church. As each boy passed down the aisle, there was applause, perfunctory for some, pronounced for others. Gaines, Gillespie, Goodwin, Griffin, Gunther. Slowly, very slowly, Johnny stepped out of the mass of his fellows and trod by us, carefully keeping in the exact center of the long aisle, looking neither to the left nor the right, but straight ahead, fixedly, with the white bandage flashing in the light through the high windows, his chin up, carefully, not faltering, steady, but slowly, so very slowly. The applause began and then rose and the applause became a storm, as every single person in the old church became whipped up, tight and tense, to see if he would make it. The applause became a thunder, it rose and soared and banged, when Johnny finally reached the pulpit. Mr. Flynt carefully tried to put the diploma in his right hand, as planned. Firmly Johnny took it from right hand to left, as was proper, and while the whole audience rocked now with release from tension, and was still wildly, thunderously applauding, he passed around to the side and, not seeing us, reached his place among his friends.