Raintree County (136 page)

Shore and shallow, tarn and tangling swamp seemed now to mud his feet, but he would get the golden bough, regain the lost garden, achieve what no man ever had before. Still fired to hero fury by the elixir he had drunk from a flagon of enchantment, he rushed on reeling earth toward the trunk, which seemed now touched with motion. Somewhere the dragon brood was waiting, the guardians of the tree, and one, the greatest dragon of them all, lay mudded to forty fathoms in his lair, stirring the coiled length of his great tail. But before the beast awakened in his cave, the hero ran to the base of the tree and catching the supple trunk in his arms thrashed it back and forth. The whole earth swayed and swam beneath this plucking and this shaking, the roots of the tree throbbed and tightened in the deep soil, the dark vegetation lashed itself against him. . . .

WATCH OUT, PERFESSOR!

Just then, to the concern of all, the intrepid young funambulist was seen to miss his footing halfway across, although up to that time, with the blindfold over his eyes, he had proceeded with wonderful surefootedness. And so for what seemed an eternity, he tottered on the very brink of the chasm, while the rope thrashed mightily, and all
eyes turned instinctively to the hideous steepness and churning precipitous sides of the abyss into which unless . . .

CRASH!

The violence of the suddenly engendered storm having torn a great rent in the balloon, it was now carried broken and losing altitude swiftly toward the lake, scudding and skimming just over the tops of the trees, with branches now and again reaching up and tearing gaps in the burst, collapsing sphere, and now the cold waters of the lake were beneath us, and having thrown out everything and even taken off and tossed away all our garments, we were preparing ourselves for the inevitable plunge into . . .

. . . one last godlike exertion, whereupon, with a great cry, as if the earth were stabbed with pleasure to its center, the tree gave down the seeddust from its laden branches. This seed raining goldenly upon the earth was warm with exultation and the promise of eternal life. . . .

How many times and how long in that afternoon, the Hero of Raintree County, nameless and remote from time, pleasured himself with a forbidden fruit he couldn't say. But in the late afternoon, awakening as from a sleep, he rose from the place where he had lain. With him arose the woman his companion, and together, silently, not holding hands, they found their way back to a place where they had left their costumes. They entered again un-naked, the cold lake, and they swam back silently across, feeling as if an eye were watching them from covert. Arriving at the far side, Johnny Shawnessy discovered that he had left his oakleaf garland behind him and some other things beside that he would never get back. And with a start of wonder and recognition, now that his head was clearing, he remembered that in leaving the strange island in the middle of the swamp he had looked back and had seen what looked like letters carven on the stones beneath a tree, on one a J and on the other

SOMETHING THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
A
C
OR EVEN A
MISSHAPEN

—S,

said the Perfessor,

is for Sex and also for Sin.
The difference between them is not worth a pin.

—Well, I'm back, Mrs. Brown said, coming up the steps of the verandah.

Darkness, a gentle tide, had risen up the prim enclosure of the garden, hiding the nymphs in pools of shadow. Mr. Shawnessy could no longer distinguish the forms of two bronze bodies entangled in lilies at the base of the fountain. The children had gone behind the house.

—Still talking, I see, she said to the Perfessor. Here let me sit between.

—There's only one thing I like better than good talk, the Perfessor said. Put it right down here. We were talking about clothes.

Mr. Shawnessy cleared his throat.

—Don't worry, John, the Perfessor said. Evelina's an emancipated woman. As for clothes, I'm for 'em. What kills these back-to-nature cults isn't prudery, but the fact that most folks look like hell naked. Man is really one of the more unattractive animals. For sheer looks, the great apes beat him all hollow.

—Strange, Mr. Shawnessy said, that the only animal that knows it's an animal is desperately eager to conceal the fact.

—There, said the Perfessor, you have the beginning of religion. Modern religion is man's effort to convince himself that he's not an animal. Now, animals live according to their instincts. Therefore, says Religion, instinctive life shall be evil, and Sex, the strongest instinct, shall be the greatest evil. God is man's conscience, the policeman of civilization, punishing man for all recollections of his animal state. It's only right that religion should begin with the Fall of Man because religion was itself the Fall of Man.

—Personally, Mr. Shawnessy said, I think we're happier wearing the figleaf of forbidden knowledge.

—O, I don't know, the Perfessor said. The average animal is happier than you or I—that is, until man comes along and fences him in. Think what a good time our friend Jupiter over there in the bullpasture would have if we let him run loose. He could feed and fight and flute to his heart's content until cut down in a serene old age. Man's unhappiness, you see, comes precisely because he knows. Man's the only animal who knows that he's going to die. Religion's a vast ritual of remorse for the unhappy discovery of pain and death.

A sound of singing came from the Revival Tent.

—There is a fountain filled with blood. . . .

—Listen to 'em! the Perfessor said. Inmates of the greatest lunatic asylum man ever built—the Christian Church! The typical Christian is just plain crazy—in a socially acceptable way. He believes that the universe was made by a grand old man squatting on a cloud. He believes that this old man somehow begot a son without intercourse a few hundred years ago. He believes that this son is in some mysterious way also the father. He believes that this son came down to earth for the express purpose of being executed like a common criminal to purge humanity of its sins. He believes that the world is better for all this, despite the fact that people go on being as no-account as ever. He believes that this young man, after being very dead, got up and walked out of the grave. He believes that the old man up there on the cloud is all-good and all-powerful, but that the world of his creation is a world of corruption and death.

The Perfessor stopped and took a drink. A faint glare of fire was on the western wall of the night. The singing from the Revival Tent had lapsed and begun again.

—As for this god, the Perfessor went on, he has all the characteristics of a crazy person. He has a god-obsession. He's being constantly annoyed and persecuted by other imaginary gods that shall not be had before him. He wants everything to redound to his personal credit. Nothing for others—but all only for him, so that he may be glorified forever and forever. He falsifies the history of the world as an act of self-justification. He wields unlimited power like a despot and brags of his triumphs. Whatever he wills is good, and whatever is against his will is evil. He attributes his own faults to others, attacking Satan for wanting to rule in heaven and charging
the Hebrews for being a stiff-necked people. Isn't this a picture of a thoroughly unpleasant old man and a thoroughly unpleasant universe?

—Yes, it is, Mr. Shawnessy said. But it was better than what went before. At least the Hebrew God was the product of a strong moral sense. Later, in the Christian ethic of the Golden Rule, this moral sense went beyond the tribal stage.

—The pagans were closer to divinity than Christ was, the Perfessor said. At least they frankly recognized the miracle of sex and procreation. They showed a healthy appetite for life itself, which is more than we can say for the immaculate Nazarene.

—The pagans recognized the divinity of process, Mr. Shawnessy said, but not of personality. And as far as I can see, human life is people. It's even simpler than that. It's Oneself, a simple, separate person. But Oneself exists by virtue of a world shared with other selves. Our life is the intersection of the Self with an Other. In the intense personal form this intersection is love, and in the ideal, general form it's the Republic. Jesus gave us the moral shape of this Republic—the Sign of the Cross.

Mr. Shawnessy heard a commotion in the bushes. The Perfessor's place on the swing was empty, and the Perfessor's head was just disappearing over the side of the verandah.

—I'll be back later, he said. Be good children, and don't eat any apples.

—It's getting quite dark, Mrs. Brown said, her voice low and musical.

She sat beside him on the swing, her hair bound up leaving her neck bare all around in the fashionable way, her hands folded in her lap, her face and figure in piquant profile.

He was thinking of her universe. It was, he knew, a rather brave, hopeful, lovely universe. He understood this universe, liked it, lingered uneasily at the threshold of it. He was thinking of the long, long way that had led from female to feminine, from Woman to Eve. Billions of lost souls had labored to perfect this slight creature and her universe of feminine values. Two hundred thousand years had been necessary to tailor her modish dress out of a figleaf. Billions of dead hands had put stone upon stone to erect the curious monument of her house. Like a sound of ocean was the murmur of
dead tongues that had struggled to speak so that her mouth might make musical words about the rights of women and the finer things of life, so that her bookcase might be full of gilded volumes. This woman, too, was Eve, a sacred Other. There was, he knew, a sense in which he approached her through the precise formulations of her lawn, and as he did so, garden and house dissolved; pagan adornments were overcome by bark and leaves. He had entered a grove of danger and decision. There was a sense in which he found her there, forever waiting, naked, with gracious loins, an anguishingly beautiful young woman whose body wore perhaps some curious blemish as a sign of her mortality. There was a sense in which he was always reaching out his hand toward her in this place and touching her face as it looked up into his. There was a sense in which the face was that of the woman he had married, and also of some other women whose faces had been turned up toward his. There was a sense in which this face of the archetypal woman was forbidden, untouchable, divine. In this excitement, there was a sense in which he became lost: he lost his name, his selfhood, his oakleaf garland, and even his own private republic, and achieved a wonderful unity—which was immediately relinquished.

—Professor Stiles is an odd person, isn't he? Mrs. Brown said at last. What makes him so unhappy?

—The Professor has a vested interest in being unhappy. If the world were other than he supposed, he'd be a discredited person.

—He says so much that's true. But he turns it all to a joke or a hollow thing at last.

—But it gives him a great advantage in conversation to speak without responsibility. Nothing is sacred to the Professor. There are no taboos, no forbidden words or places. You and I, on the other hand, Evelina, are continually treading with care as if the universe were all alive and wherever we put down our foot we might hear a cry of human anguish.

—I used to admire Professor Stiles very much, Mrs. Brown said. He wants me to come back to New York. Do you think I ought to go?

Just then, there was a disturbance in the bushes, and Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles clambered over the wall of the verandah and lay full-length on the stone floor.

—
And curst be he that moves my bones,
he said, his voice hoarse.

—Mrs. Brown!

It was a voice from the backyard.

—Excuse me, Mrs. Brown said. I'll try to come back. It's about time to hang the Japanese lanterns.

She walked down the steps into the darkening lawn and disappeared around the corner of the house. The Perfessor stayed flat, a monumental effigy with eyeglasses on, face sharp and pallid, hands crossed on chest.

—There she goes! he said. What a waste of beauty! Why will women try to be intellectual? The only feminist movement I want to see is one to make women more feminine. For Christ's sake, let's not make them more like men. You know, I really despise bright women. It's unbecoming of a woman to be interested in ideas.

—Professor, Mr. Shawnessy said, don't you ever get tired of being a professional rebel? Why don't you resign yourself to being happy now and then? Why not give up and admit that you enjoy life? Still, I suppose such a radical change of mind might make you disintegrate in a second like the corpse of M. D. Valdemar, when they took it out of the mesmeric trance.

—Really! the Perfessor said. You disturb me, John. I'm not feeling very well as it is.

He crawled over to the swing and sat down.

—I would love to be moral, he said. I would love to believe in the Republic of Brotherly Love, Sisterly Affection, Filial Piety, and Jesusly Humility. If only I weren't so goddam well-informed and bright! After all, John, human morality is a mere refinement of the social instinct, which we see also in some of the other animals. We're moral because it pays to be moral. But the really great problems of the Republic don't achieve moral solutions. Take the Negro question. The Negro is morally about where he was before the War. The Declaration of Independence is still a White Paper.

Westward, from the Revival Tent, came a smell of smoke. Low flames licked the fringed horizon.

—What are they doing over there anyway? the Perfessor asked.

—Just a Fourth of July bonfire, Mr. Shawnessy said.

He was vaguely troubled. He was stirred by a memory of some
thing that had happened, a legend of beauty and the earth, of the tangled world of personal republics, and of their infinite intersections.

—Yes, sir, the Perfessor said. If everyone were like me, the Negro problem could be settled in a jiffy. Sex doesn't draw any color lines, and neither do I. At night, all cats are black. Never in the history of mankind have two races lived so close as the black and white do in America without a complete blend after a while. This dark old rule of the jungle is just what the Southern white fears. Let's not fool ourselves: all his efforts to keep the Negro down are, at root, efforts to keep black seed running in black channels. This paladin, the old Southern Colonel, defends the purity of us all.