“It’s very rare for Father to read from his journals, Will,” Tradd said, sipping the espresso with some slight distaste. “He treats them like Biblical texts.”
“I’ve tried to keep journals, myself,” I said. “Every time I buy a new journal, I write furiously in it for the first week or two. Then I put it away and never pick it up again. I’ve never had any staying power at all. Do you think that reflects badly on my personality?”
“Having roomed with you for four years, Will,” Tradd said, “I think everything reflects badly on your personality.”
“Slap your mouthy son, Abigail. He’s trying to hurt my feelings.”
“I’m glad you can’t keep a journal, Will. I wish Commerce didn’t keep one,” said Abigail, listening to her husband’s footsteps coming back down the stairs. “I’m sure he says dreadful, unforgivable things about me. It puts such pressure on me. Every time we fuss or have a fight, he races up to his study. I’m sure he records it all in such a way as to make me sound positively beastly. I do wish he would get another, more reputable hobby.”
Commerce listened to her last sentences as he entered the room again, wearing his glasses, and leafing through the pages of a leather-bound journal.
“My journal is a record of my life, Abigail,” he said defensively, “a complete record. I’ve been as diligent as a scientist in recording everything of significance that has happened to me since I was a cadet at the Institute. I mark down time and place. I note the weather conditions. If I have been fishing, I record the number and type of fish caught, what kind of bait I used, and where I caught them. When I die I’m leaving these journals to the Charleston museum. It might be interesting to some future historian who wants to follow an old Charlestonian through his daily life around the city and his tours around the globe.”
“It sounds unimaginably dull to me, Father,” Tradd said, staring into his cup as though examining it for flaws. “It sounds like a cookbook written by someone who doesn’t like food.”
“It is dull in many places. But it is accurate, and accuracy is all that really matters. The log of a ship is dull to anyone but a seaman, but a seaman finds it fascinating and filled with information. I record in my journal like the mariner I am.”
“I would like to read your journals someday, Father,” Tradd said. “I would learn a great deal about you, I suspect.”
“You’ll never read my journals,” said Commerce sharply to his son. “A journal is the most private form of communication in the world, and it would be a violation of the form if I let you or Abigail or anybody read the journals. I will put a stipulation in my will that no one opens the journals until all of us are dead. Why do you think I have my door to the study padlocked when I’m at home? It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t wish to tempt you.
“I achieve accuracy. That is all. Now let me read Will and Tradd this rather interesting passage I found the other day. I think they will find this particular entry rather amusing. This scene took place on February 6, 1934, when I was a junior at the Institute. It reads as follows: ‘Last night my roommate, Obie Kentsmith, and I, under the influence of Edgar Allan Poe and “The Cask of Amantillado,” attempted to brick in our First Sergeant, one Bentley Durrell, who was not demonstrating the proper respect for his classmates. To wit, he was holding surprise room inspections whilst the rest of us were in class.’ ”
“Whilst?” Abigail said.
“I went through a very affected writing style while in college,” Commerce explained.
“Whilst you were in college, Father,” Tradd said without meeting Commerce’s eyes.
“ ‘Obie and I,’ “ Commerce continued, “ ‘armed with trowels, brick, and mortar, waited until 0200 hours, then proceeded to build a brick wall in front of Durrell’s door on second division. Alas, the mortar did not have time to set properly . . .’ ”
“Alas?” Abigail interrupted again, highly amused.
“ ‘And Bentley managed to beat his way out to freedom using the butt of his rifle as a bludgeon at reveille,’ “ Commerce read, ignoring his wife. “ ‘All the talk in the barracks is speculation as to the identities of the perpetrators of this perfect crime. Obie and I do our best to keep from laughing right out loud during these discussions. Bentley came to our room all in a huff this morning and asked our help in finding the villains who had performed this dastardly deed. Obie and I gave our solemn word that we would help track down these odious criminals and bring them to justice.’ ”
“I can’t believe you bricked the General into his room,” I said.
“If the mortar had had another hour or two to set, Bentley would have been in real trouble,” Commerce cackled. “They’d have had to call a demolition team in to get him out of there.”
“That seems rather odd behavior for the scion of one of Charleston’s oldest families, Father,” Tradd said. “What would you say if I went around the barracks bricking up every poor soul who tried to do his duty? Why, you wouldn’t be able to open a single door in fourth battalion.”
“I wouldn’t say a word if you didn’t get caught, and I didn’t. No one suspected the scion of one of Charleston’s oldest families to be capable of such shenanigans,” Commerce said delightedly, still enjoying the success of his prank so many years after the fact.
“Well, I certainly don’t think it’s anything to be proud of,” Abigail said. “Why don’t you strike that passage so that future historian, whoever he is, does not think the St. Croix family was composed of men with absurd and childish senses of humor?”
“He will get the truth about the St. Croixs, Abigail, whatever that is.”
“You mean, however you personally interpret the truth.”
“Yes,” Commerce said, immensely pleased with himself. “The truth, as I see it. But that’s only fair. I’m the one who takes the time to keep journals. I deserve some reward. Now if y’all will please excuse me, I have some packing to finish. Don’t leave without telling me good-bye, Will. I’ll send you something nice from Europe.”
He left the room and ascended the stairway again. For a few moments we sat in complete silence, the pleasant lassitude of Sunday overcoming us and a fragrant breeze pouring through the open first-floor windows. I looked about me again and said, “I want to catch what you’ve got, Abigail.”
“Catch what, Will?” she asked.
“This thing that you’ve got. This Beauty Disease. I want to spend my entire life perfecting the art of making everything around me as beautiful as possible. I want my furniture to be beautiful, my house to be beautiful, my gardens, my children, my wife . . . everywhere I look I want to be stunned by the sheer absolute force of physical beauty.”
“You’re such a slob, Will,” Tradd said with conviction. “You don’t even shine your shoes or keep your part of the room clean.”
“Please get your son to hush, Abigail,” I appealed, with a gesture of dismissal toward Tradd. “I’ve already suggested once today that you slap his uppity mouth. The subject is beauty, Tradd, and I’m telling you how I’m going to go about getting it in my life. It’s going to be very simple. I’m going to mold my life on the St. Croix family. I’m going to stop being excitable and flamboyant. I’m going to quit horsing around. From now on I’m going to be reserved and silently filled with wisdom. I’m not going for the cheap laugh anymore or make any attempt to amuse the herd. I’m going to dress impeccably. I’m going to shop for charming objects in antique shops and learn to prepare exquisite meals. I’ve got to make myself susceptible to the Beauty Disease. I want my whole life to be infected by beauty.”
“Beauty Disease?” Tradd winced. “It sounds like some fungus Mother finds on her roses.”
Folding her large bony hands on her lap, Abigail said reflectively, “I wouldn’t call it a disease. I call it a search for quality. I’ve looked at my life carefully and I’ve made solicitous choices about what is truly important to me. I would recommend it to both of you as a way to improve your daily life i
n immeasurable ways.”
“You have me for a roommate, Tradd,” I said in a voice far too loud for the formal atmosphere of the room. “Your search for quality is over. You’ll never be able to do any better.”
“Oh, please, Will.”
“I know,” Abigail announced suddenly. “Let’s perform a ceremony. It’s one that I would love to share with the two favorite men in my life.”
Abigail left the room as Tradd and I went into the dining room to clear the table and extinguish the candelabra. When she returned she was carrying a silver tray with a set of wine glasses and a crystal decanter filled with a pale liquid upon it. She filled three wine glasses with the fluid.
“What is this concoction, Mother?” Tradd asked, eyeing his glass suspiciously.
“When Commerce and I were first married, we went on a long honeymoon to Europe and both of us fell in love with Greece and especially the Greek islands. When I went to those islands I felt that I had come to a place where I was meant to be. I don’t mean anything so prosaic as a sense of coming home. This was different, very different. It was like arriving at a place much safer than home. Something ancient and pure inside me responded to the life and spirit of those people. We brought back a jar of water from the Aegean sea, chilled it in a decanter, offered toasts to each other, and drank the water. Every time Commerce goes to the Aegean, he replenishes our supply. Each time he leaves to meet a ship, we drink some of the water for a bon voyage and a safe return. We’ll drink our toast tonight together, but I don’t think he would mind if I shared it with you two. I’m sure he’d be pleased.”
“How romantic, Abigail.”
“Mother,” Tradd said, “Greeks urinate directly into the ocean, and that’s the very least of what they do.”
“My son, the antiromantic,” she sighed, winking at me.
“Your son, the enlightened realist.”
“Will will drink it with me,” she said.
“So will Tradd,” I said, raising my glass in a toast. “To the Beauty Disease.”
“The disease,” Tradd and Abigail echoed.
And another Sunday passed away in the St. Croix mansion. When I left the house, I could see by the look on Abigail’s face that she was hurt that I did not have time for one of our walks around the city. I made an excuse about falling behind in my studies with the basketball season coming so close. But I embraced Commerce, told him I would write him, made my farewells, and walked to my car on East Bay Street.
Then I drove to Annie Kate’s. I had already caught the Beauty Disease. It was a secret malady that I could share with none of my friends, but I was glad that at least this secret had a name.
Chapter Twenty-six
We received our rings on the first truly cold day in November. The Carolina lowcountry did not have the spectacular autumns that were famous in the mountainous part of the state above Greenville; instead, there was a rather subtle transfiguration of the trees, a patient, almost invisible killing of the lush greens of summer and a reluctant, though inevitable, turning toward the coming winter months. The week before, the cadets had gone into their wool dress grays, a sign of winter’s approach in Charleston more accurate than the discoloring of an oak leaf.
But it was in the marsh at the edge of the Institute that the winter could be most visibly seen and felt. Almost imperceptibly, at the beginning of November, the marsh began to change its color. Its marvelous fertility and brazen health, its deep, brilliant greenness altered and waned almost daily, as winter with its chilly nights and the slow cooling of the Atlantic started to settle into each stem and living thing in the marsh. The oystermen of Charleston began to haunt the banks and protected creeks around Folly Beach, and the shrimpboats anchored at Shem Creek were already dragging the shallows along the coast when the first light broke across the Eastern Seaboard. The entire marsh for two hundred miles began the lovely turn, the slow leisurely withdrawal into its vestments of gold, as the lowcountry prepared for the cycle of death and renewal. The marshes of Charleston had a different look when the weather was cold. And the Institute had a different look, and I felt like a different man the night I put on the ring.
The senior class gathered at 1900 hours on the parade ground to muster for the grand march to the South Carolina Hall on Meeting Street. We were arrayed in our full-dress uniforms, and we gathered in companies on the north end of the campus to begin the march by walking between two long lines of cadets composed of the boys from the three under classes. The cheering was deafening as the drums began to roll and the A Company seniors began the promenade of honor between the two immense files of underclassmen.
The ring march was the longest and most pleasant of a cadet’s career. We left the Gates of Legrand with the regimental band playing fight songs of the Institute. We passed beside Hampton Park and the handsome residences of Moultrie Street before we turned south on Rutledge Street and began the long march to Broad. The city aged as we headed down the peninsula, the houses grew older and more distinguished, as though we were marching backward into history. Black children waved and danced to the music of the band, and old people watched our progress from sagging, unpainted verandahs. Policemen halted traffic at each intersection as our heels thundered on the asphalt, creating that strange alarming music of disciplined men moving according to a single will. The streetlights struck the brass insignias of our field caps as though someone was striking matches just above our eyes.
We passed Highway 17, Ashley Hall, and Charleston High School, crossed Calhoun Street, and neared the Charleston museum on our right, the oldest city museum in North America. The band quit playing as we approached the museum, and I heard Jeff Pomerantz prepare the seniors for the annual salute to the whale.
The baleen whale, whose skeleton hung like a graceful trellis from the ceiling in the main hall of the museum, was the unofficial mascot of the Institute. Plebes were required to make a special visit to the museum to salute the whale before they left for the Christmas holidays.
A Florida cadet had begun the tradition in 1910 when he had been denied entry into a debutante ball because of his questionable ancestry. The same week the cadet had learned the story of how the bones of a baleen whale, an extraordinary rarity in the coastal waters of South Carolina, had come to rest in the Charleston museum. In 1881, Charlestonians promenading along the Battery were more than mildly surprised to see the forty-foot whale entering the main channel of Charleston harbor. A long sea chase ensued, with Charlestonians, armed with harpoons, taking to the river in tugs and smaller boats to engage the disoriented mammal. For two days the harpoonists pursued the whale around the harbor until the beast died of its wounds and the exhaustion of the chase. It was dragged ashore, photographed, butchered, and its bones preserved and reassembled on the museum’s ceiling. The cadet from Florida recognized in the epic of the baleen a perfect metaphor for Charleston’s relationship to the outsider. He and every other cadet who came to the Institute from “away” knew some things the whale did not know: The city has never taken to visitors or uninvited strangers who tried to force an entry into the aristocratic milieu South of Broad. Many Charlestonians far preferred even whales to cadets, and the annual Salute to the Baleen was the Corps’s recognition of this irrefutable truth.
When we reached the South Carolina Hall, we broke ranks and entered the main ballroom. The seniors of each company sat together at long tables that were covered with white damask and decorated with candelabra and carnations. We found our names printed on small place cards and sat primly, awaiting the arrival of the General. The band played light classical music, and most of the seniors stared at the small black box set beside each place card.
I looked around at the Romeo Company seniors and tried to relate the proud faces to the shivering, aghast initiates who had endured Hell Night on the fourth battalion quadrangle over three years before. We looked older and more mature, but we also looked the same. However, the difference was enormous and part of the bizarre and glorious alchemy that made
us love the Institute more than anything we had ever loved before. That was the single most sublime and untranslatable mystery of the school. And I felt the immense weight and actuality of that mystery as I studied the small black box that was before me. Inside that box was an Institute ring. But this ring was different from all the other rings ever made. Engraved in a feathery script on the inside shank was the name: William McLean. Here, at last, was the symbol, the absolute proof, that I was part of all of this, that I had earned the right to love the school, and to criticize it.
As I looked around the Hall, I felt irrationally close to my classmates who had come to the auditorium for the most meaningful ceremony of our careers as cadets at the Institute. From the beginning of my plebe year, I could always articulate what I loathed about the school but never could find the adequate words or the proper voice to praise it. It was not a dilemma of language but of emotion and persona. I would always be a better hater of things and institutions than a lover of them.
But in this gathering, this coming together of the eldest members of the Corps, I was moved deeply and profoundly before the ceremony had even begun, before I had actually put on the ring. I was seized by the ineffable power of membership, of finally belonging to something. So long had I secretly thought of the day when I would wear the ring that not even my reflexive cynicism, not even my loneliness among the regiment, not even the profound differences that I insisted separated me from all the rest of them, could diminish my joy at wearing the ring. On this night I was adding my small inconsequential history to the history of the ring. It transformed you into something beyond the powers of men unseasoned by the Institute to comprehend. The ring would be our alterer, our connection to the bright circuit of immemorial fraternity.
The General walked through the center of the room followed by his usual cortege of aides. He acknowledged our cheers with an imperial wave of his arm. In his dress whites, he seemed a splendid figure of a man, one who could be elected emperor by acclamation in a crowd of boys. He made his way down the center aisle, calling many of the seniors by name as he passed by them. As he passed the R Company table, I saw his eyes focus on me, he smiled, and called out, “Congratulations, Will. Let’s beat Auburn.”