“Preacher,” I said, “I can’t find the handle.”
He tried smiling at me. “Yes, Trevitt.”
“What do you think of the temple of gold?”
“I don’t quite know,” he said.
“I asked you a question. What do you think of the temple of gold? Explain that. You’re the preacher. So explain it. Tell me!” He started to say something but I stood up, grabbing him by the shoulders, shaking him. “I came for some answers,” I said. “I’m twenty-one years old and I can’t find the handle.” And by then I was shouting, standing over him, pulling at his shirt, staring at his eyes. “And don’t try telling me about God. That’s all you know about is God. You and your goddamned God! I came for some answers, so just tell me about the temple of gold. That’s all I want! Just tell me about the temple of gold and I’ll be happy!”
He jerked free. “Sit down, Trevitt.”
I sat down.
“And stay there.”
I did. I stayed there while he picked up the telephone. I stayed there while he called the hospital. I stayed there, waiting, not looking at anything but those gold books in those nice clean rows on the shelves with the titles shining out plain as day. I stayed there while they came in, two of them, and talked to him. I stayed there while he told them. I stayed there until one of them said for me to come along. I got up. I followed them out, obediently, like a dog, followed them out of the office, on through the church to the street, into the ambulance.
It was only then, on the way to the hospital, that I started to cry...
The End
THE ROOM WAS RECTANGULAR. It was on the first floor and everything in it was rectangular, clean, and neat. On my left was a gray rectangular wall, a rectangular bureau set exactly in the center. In front of me was another wall, with two rectangular doors, a closet, and a washstand. On my right was a big window, divided in eight.
The sun poured through that window, past me, striking the mirror, rebounding, brightening the room. In the mirror you could see trees spreading green shadow on the ground. You could see green hedges, paper smooth, and beyond them, the rising, rounded tops of the buildings of Athens College. You could even see the edge of the sky, sliding down, gently touching the edge of Lake Michigan, so close together in color you couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other began; lake and sky were joined at the end of my mirror. ...
There wasn’t much to the first day. I slept. That was about all. I slept and I don’t know if they gave me anything or not, it didn’t matter. I slept twenty hours through with the only interruptions being the nurses, tiptoeing in, bringing food, and a doctor who examined me, talking to me in a soft voice, telling me not to worry, telling me to sleep. And I did. Except that even after twenty hours, I was still tired.
Reverend Holloway visited me the second morning. He knocked and came in, stopping at the foot of my bed.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him.
He nodded, smiling. “We tried reaching your mother,” he said. “We couldn’t get in touch with her so—”
“They’re just driving around,” I told him. “They’ll be back soon enough.”
“So I thought perhaps you might like to talk to me.”
I shook my head.
“How do you feel, Trevitt?”
“Fine,” I said.
He nodded again, clearing his throat. Then he started talking about God, telling me that he was always at the church, whenever I wanted him. I shut my ears, smiled back, thanked him when he left. Which he did, finally, and I was alone again.
But not for long. Because Miss Dietrich came bustling in soon after. Miss Dietrich was the college psychiatrist and a harpie, if ever there was one. Short, gray-haired, and pudgy, she got to me right off, smirking at me as if she was God and asking: “How do you feel?” When most people ask that, they mean it: “How do you feel?” Not Miss Dietrich. What she meant was; “Are you nuts or not?”
“I feel fine,” I told her.
“Now Mr. Trevitt,” she began, “I don’t imagine that to be quite accurate. After all, if you felt fine, we wouldn’t be chatting, would we? So why don’t we amend that to say ‘I feel better’?”
“I feel better,” I told her.
“Better than what, Mr. Trevitt? Better than when?”
“It was your idea,” I said. “You tell me.”
And that was the way it went, her asking questions, me answering, her correcting, me agreeing. She left after an hour or so, promising to come back tomorrow, and the minute she was gone I closed my eyes and slept. I woke up for supper, ate a little, then got ready to sleep again.
I was lying in bed, eyes closed, when suddenly there was a rapping at my window. I opened my eyes and there was Harriet, standing outside, gesturing to me. I nodded, so she opened the window, started climbing in, grumbling away all the time. After she’d made it, she took a deep breath, walked over and put her face down next to mine, our noses almost touching, both of us cross-eyed.
“I’m disappointed,” Harriet muttered. “You don’t look crazy at all.”
I pointed to the window.
“Crazy people can’t have visitors,” she answered, shaking her head. “I consider the whole thing sheer fraud. Here I walk all the way from my dorm, risk life and limb, and you don’t look any different.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do you feel funny when the moon is full, Euripides? You know, strange? Flesh creep or anything?” I tried smiling. She sat on the end of my bed, bouncing up and down. After a while she stopped and looked at me. “What happened, Euripides?” she said then. “Whatever happened?”
I told her. Starting from when I left the magazine, hurrying home. What I’d seen in Zock’s room, the marriage, the reception, the blow-off, coming home the next morning, the trip out to Crystal City to find Terry, the...
“Why did you do that?” Harriet cut in.
“What?”
“Why did you go to Crystal City?” I shrugged. “Did you want her back?” I shook my head. “Then, why?”
“What do you care?”
“I’m a girl and you’re a boy,” Harriet said. “We have mutual interests. Why did you go there?”
I thought a long time. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know.”
“O.K.,” Harriet said. “Now that you’ve cleared that up, go on.”
I did. And when I had finished she looked at me, smiling, shaking her head and smiling. “How do you feel now, Euripides?” she said.
“Tired,” I answered. “Honest to God, Harriet. I’ve never felt so tired in my life...”
I stayed in the hospital a week, “under observation,” and except for my daily visits with Miss Dietrich, I didn’t mind. It was quiet. I slept a lot and the food was good so I have no complaint.
Then, the eighth day, my mother and Adrian were standing in the doorway, holding hands, staring at me across that rectangular room.
“The newlyweds,” I said, laughing.
My mother ran to me, throwing herself on the bed, holding me. Adrian looked very serious. “Raymond, old chap,” he said, “how do you feel?”
“Miss Dietrich says I got a fifty-fifty chance of making it, Adrian. But the odds will go against me if the fits come back,” and I jerked my head, squinting. “I sure hope they don’t. I haven’t had one now since yesterday. Those fits are no fun, Adrian, let me tell you.”
“Katherine,” Adrian said, coming over, resting his hands on her shoulders, “you can stop worrying. He’s all right.”
And in his own way, he turned out to be a prophet, Adrian. Because two afternoons later, I went home.
A wet April afternoon, complete with thunder and pouring down rain. My mother drove slowly, peering ahead, turning here, there, here again. Then we were in the driveway. She led me up to my room. My bed was ready, clean sheets and all, a mountain of white pillows piled at the head. I lay down. My mother started talking, but pretty soon she realized I didn’t much want to. She asked me
if I minded her going downtown for a little. I said I didn’t. She kissed me on the forehead and left the house.
I lay quiet in bed, propped up by all those pillows. It wasn’t comfortable. I took some of them out. It didn’t help. The rain was coming down worse than ever, that thunder tearing up the sky. The room was hot and stuffy. I tossed and turned awhile longer, watching the rain die against my window. Then I threw the covers off and went downstairs.
To my father’s study. I closed the door and right away that leather smell hit me and I swear his tobacco was around too, some place. I walked to the bookcase, glancing at the tides; Sophocles and Homer, Catullus, Theocritus, Pliny the Elder. The air was so thick and heavy I started to sweat.
I sat down at his desk, in his chair, my head in my hands, my eyes closed, listening to the rain. I stayed like that a long time never looking up, not even when the thunder seemed right on top of me, not even when the study door opened and someone came in.
“I’ve been waiting for you to get home.”
Then I looked up. Andy Peabody was standing in the doorway, staring at me.
I nodded to him.
“I’ve been waiting for you to get home,” he said again, kicking the door shut, never once taking his eyes away.
“Some other time,” I said.
“I got a letter from your wife,” he said. “Don’t you want to see it?” He tossed me an envelope. I opened it. There was nothing inside. Suddenly he was laughing, high-pitched, the sound filling the room. “I burned it,” he said. “I burned it before you could see it. You’ll never see it now.”
“Come on,” I said. “I’m tired, Andy. Go home.”
“Don’t you want to know what was in it?”
I didn’t answer.
His body shook as he came closer to me, staring. “She said she was sorry. How do you like that? She said she was sorry and she’s gonna divorce you and she’s never coming back. She’s sorry and she’s never coming back here again.”
I didn’t say anything and neither did he. We waited there in that stuffy room, me sitting, him standing across, breathing deeper and deeper, his body shaking more, about to explode.
Then he was crying, the tears flooding down his face. He turned. “I hope you die,” he said. “I hope you both die.”
I stood up and he wheeled around, not able to see, but still staring, screaming at the top of his voice.
“I screwed your wife!”
I came closer to him, tensing, listening to him as he screamed, “Whore!” at me. I didn’t say anything. “Whore!” I didn’t answer. “Whore!” My stomach was aching and it was hard to breathe, but I kept on, coming, closer to him. “Whore!”
Closer.
“Whore!”
Closer.
“WHORE!!!”
I hit him.
All I had, the back of my hand against his cheek, my knuckles against the bone. He coughed, gasped, his body stiff. I hit him again and he sagged, suddenly limp, falling against me, sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and when I did he tried getting away. I held him with all the strength I had left, held him until he quit struggling and just lay there in my arms, pushing his head against my chest, burying it.
“I’m sorry about what happened, Andy! I honest to God am! I’m sorry about what happened and I’m sorry you had to be there, but that still doesn’t give you the right to go around calling her names. Not today or ever. Just because she did something you don’t like doesn’t give you the right to go around calling her names. Because everybody’s going to do something you don’t like sooner or later. Do you hear me, Andy? Do you hear what I’m saying? Everybody’s going to screw up on you sooner or later. Everybody screws up. Everybody fails. Everybody fails everybody. Just like God. God failed. God failed on His own son in the Garden of Gethsemane. God failed His own son in the Garden of...”
And I stopped.
I led him over to my father’s chair. I walked to the door. He was still sobbing when I called to him. “Stay as long as you want, you poor bastard. You got a right to cry.”
I closed the door and stood a second in the hallway, stretching. Then I went up to my room. I walked in. There was a face looking at me in the mirror. I stared back at it, watched it as it started to smile, said one word to me.
“Indeed.”
That’s about all.
My mother and Adrian left for England on the 14th of June, two months to the day after they were married. And how my mother lived through those months, I’ll never know, she was that busy. She put the house up for sale, held an auction on the furniture she didn’t want, shipped the rest off to England. She attended to all her club work, getting things in decent order for whatever poor soul was going to take over after she’d gone. She went to a million parties, was constantly in tears. With Adrian always one step behind her, running, trying to keep up.
I took it easy. There wasn’t much for me to do. Except wait. I spent most of my time in the back yard, throwing stones at the trees in the ravine, or just lying flat, sopping up sunshine. Harriet came over a lot, and we said good-by on the 8th of June, when she went home.
I walked her to her dorm. Neither of us said anything, but stood around instead, scuffing our shoes. Which got so ridiculous that finally she gave a giggle, kissed me, and dashed inside. I turned, heading for the sidewalk. She called to me before I got there, from the parlor window.
“I live in Rhode Island,” she called. “And my name is Harriet.”
“Raymond Euripides Trevitt,” I called back, bowing. “And the pleasure is mine.”
On the morning of the 14th we got set to go. It was a beautiful day, warm and clear, with just a couple of clouds speckled here and there, to break up the monotony. By ten o’clock we were ready, luggage in the car. But we didn’t leave.
Because Mrs. Atkins appeared at the end of the block, coming toward us, followed by about twenty-five other women, all of them calling, “Bon voyage, bon voyage, bon voyage,” over and over. My mother took one look and started bawling. The closer they came, the worse she got. Then they had us surrounded and began kissing my mother, giving her presents, hugging Adrian, smiling at me.
I dashed back into the house, stopping a second in the foyer, still able to hear that “Bon voyage, bon voyage.” I went up the stairs to my room, looked around, went into my mother’s room, did the same. I looked at every room upstairs and when I was through I went down and began with the kitchen. Just a quick glance and then to the dining-room. Then the living-room.
Finally I got to my father’s study. Like all the others, it was empty. The books were gone, the desk, everything. But you still could smell that leather in the air. I closed the door and headed outside.
I managed to get my mother into the car. Adrian followed. I sat behind the wheel, backed out of the driveway, those twenty-five women standing in front of us, waving.
The drive to the airport was horrible. My mother cried and cried, sniffling away in the back seat, Adrian doing what he could to comfort her—not much. I drove as fast as I could, and when we got there we waited, stuttering, trying hard to grab onto some conversation. Finally their plane was announced.
I shook hands with Adrian. “Good-by, old chap,” I said, which stopped him, seeing as he was about to say the same thing.
“Raymond.” My mother wept, throwing her arms around me. “I’m going away.”
“Not unless you get a move on, Mother.”
“Raymond,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“It’s a hell of a time to be asking.” I laughed, leading them toward the plane. They handed in their tickets and I followed to the steps. We looked at each other.
“I just knew you two would be pals,” I said. “I just—”
“Good-by, Raymond,” my mother interrupted. “Be a good boy.” I nodded, watching as they got on the plane, sitting by a window, looking out. They waved and I waved and they waved and my mother cried and we kept at it until the plane motored
down the runway. Then I got in the car, heading North.
It was mid-afternoon when I reached the cemetery. When I had parked, I tucked in my shirt and looked around. There were a lot of other people wandering aimlessly, walking among the graves. Way off on the right a funeral was ending, twenty or thirty people dressed in black.
I stepped onto the grass over him, bending down, kneeling, my eyes closed. “Zock,” I said. “I’ve come to say good-by. I’m leaving Athens, Zock, for good. I’m taking off and don’t ask me where, because I don’t know. But there’s a lot of places I haven’t been, and I’ve been here.” The sun was beating down on me as I knelt there, sweating, my collar wet against my neck. I opened my eyes, looked around at the cemetery again, up at the sky, then back to him. “And if that sounds like I haven’t found the handle, Zock, it ought to. Because I haven’t. But I don’t feel bad about it. Because you were wrong, Zock. There isn’t any handle, any temple of gold. You were wrong and I’m sorry if I failed you, but maybe it’s a good thing you’re dead, Zock. I don’t know. But you can’t keep expecting me to go on looking for something that isn’t there. I got my own life to lead and God knows where it’s going, but I have to follow along to see. And I’m sorry to be crying, Zock, and I don’t know why I am, because I really feel good and you got to believe that.” I stood up. “So long, Zocker,” I said. “Maybe I’ll see you sometime.” I left him there.
Afterword
WARNING: READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL
WHEN I SAT DOWN, June 24, 1956, to be totally precise about it, to write what turned out to be this book, I was as lost as any Cortes. But I knew I had to write something, so I did.
What follows is that something.
It is the original first chapter of my novel. When I submitted the book to Knopf, rewrote and doubled it in length (it originally ended a few pages after the chapter called The Army), and they accepted it, the first thing the editor did was cut the first chapter. Totally. The book you hold now starts with what was then chapter two.
One thing you must know about me: I don’t read what I’ve written. A slight exaggeration but only that. I never read what I’m writing while I’m putting it down, and I only read it through one time afterward, just before I meet with the editor if it’s a book, the director if a flick.