The Hair of Harold Roux Read online

  Later it was a painful, sweet good night at the door of the small room he would sleep in. They whispered to each other. As long as they were standing she let herself be open to all his dangerous knobs and projections, as she really wanted to be. She whispered how she loved him; he whispered how he wished she would come to bed with him, which brought no answer. It was a theoretical question; the answer was of course, yes—when their union was blessed with official documents and ceremonies. His testicles were full of molten lead. Mary was precious to him. Why, he thought in his pain, did he want so much to arouse her delicacy, to reveal the lustful animal in it? He wanted to hear Mary growl like a beast.

  Someone stirred in a room down the narrow hallway and he let her go. She walked quickly, with soft guilty steps, and silently shut the door to her room.

  Alone in the rather insubstantial, twangy bed he arrived again at the conclusion that he had no moral hesitations about seducing Mary except that he might hurt her, and since, at that moment, he considered his intentions honorable, he had none at all. Even he could see the subjective flaw in this system. The dull ache in his genitals was a remorseless crush. With Mary’s heat, her scent, her willing body filling his head and hovering against him, his hand lovingly imitated her center. In a few moments came the relief of diffusion, the contented sadness; then, sometime or other without his awareness, as it had to be, he must have gone to sleep.

  He woke up damp, chilly, immediately nervous. Yellow daylight, a tarnished, city daylight, entered his small window. He wanted a cigarette. He hadn’t smoked the evening before because he had seen no evidence of smoking in the house—no ashtrays at all, though he had examined various small decorative objects looking for meaningful depressions in them. He waited, as though trapped in the small room, listening for his chance at the bathroom, then abruptly surprised Mr. Tolliver in the hallway, the man’s skinny shins below a plaid bathrobe, his offended face above. Allard pulled his shirt together and said good morning. “Urn. Yes,” Mr. Tolliver said.

  In the bathroom, now illuminated by the tired morning light, a tight, bluish old man’s stink faded in the morning air. The short bathtub on claw-ball feet crowded a small wash basin, which in turn crowded the toilet with its narrow seat of varnished wood. Medicines stood behind the glass of the cabinet. He thought of Mrs. Tolliver in that tub, one-sided after her mastectomy, a woman bleakly sitting in tepid water. He took two nerve-melting drags on a cigarette and threw it into the toilet, where it gasped its last. Soon they would all go to church, the real God place, in which he would become, because of his appearance there with the family, semiofficially Mary’s suitor, her fiancé, her intended. He emptied the bladder of her intended, washed the face of her intended, washed the crusty seed of her intended off her intended’s belly and chest.

  Downstairs he was still chilly. He couldn’t speak unless spoken to. Mary smiled at him so warmly it seemed she had forgiven herself for their kisses and caresses the night before and now loved him even more because of a sweet memory. He grimaced back at her. Robert was quiet, neutral, businesslike, while Mr. Tolliver exuded illness and disapproval.

  Time passed and soon they filed out past the Infant of Prague, who was too old to be an infant in his dusty finery, with his older figure and face. Mary wore a navy blue dress edged at the cuffs with white lace, and a navy blue hat edged with the same lace, the small hat changing the shape of her face so that she looked older, like a wife. Robert, who had only recently gotten his driving licence, backed the Tollivers’ 1940 Chevrolet out of the narrow garage. Mary and her father got in back and Allard sat in front next to Robert, his feet manipulating ghostly dual controls as the car bucked and stalled before Robert got it down the driveway, up the street, then up the hill Allard and Mary had walked the afternoon before. Soon they arrived at the burnt-brick church, parked and walked slowly, as though stiff, toward the wide doors. Other Catholics converged here in their Sunday clothes, the young boys strangled by collars and ties, smaller children fresh and solemn. Allard felt fresh, too, against the constraints of this solemnity; he could, if he wanted, jump over everybodys’ heads, a vivid jack-jumper among these ceremony-bound people who were all strangers, tranced by their religion. All the men seemed solemn yet bored, not aware of their boredom. Sunday duty: he saw it in their rugged faces. Only their fingernails and deepest pores retained the grime of their work. They were not large men. They were pale, small in the shoulders, large only in their wrists and hands. The coming ceremonies seemed the property of the women.

  Entering the wide dim church with these people he observed with half-knowledge their familiarity with its crannies and receptacles. Fountains, or fonts, of water, odd closets, alcoves, candles guttering behind colored glass somewhere down there toward the holier places, the high, stained-glass-illuminated reaches of the ceilings no one but he examined with a measuring eye. Though Mary had shown him how to genuflect before entering the row of benches, he could only duck down a little. To him sacrilege was not disbelief but the show of honoring unbelieved rituals. Down at the front of the holy barn was the wide altar with its sconces, symbol-woven altar cloth, shrines in miniature and strangely kitchen-like utensils. Soon a priest and a small boy entered, with much sign-making, and against his conscience Allard imitated the hunched general movement of kneeling that surged throughout the church.

  In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

  From the priest’s chanting mouth the words were self-justifying, said with no emotion, needing no human inflections.

  Introibo ad altare Dei.

  Then a mumbled response, varied among the worshipers but general throughout the church: Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. The mumblings were like a tired groan.

  Judica me, Deus, et discerne causam meam de gente non sancta: ab homine iniquo et doloso erue me …

  As the voices made answer, Allard’s mind turned half away from the words, not understanding most of them but feeling that nobody among these believers was really listening to their meanings, that the words that once must have meant something very specific no longer had to mean. The priest in his antique uniform, and the small boy who helped him. might have been wax models in a museum smelling of dust, the dusty armpits and crotches of ancient uniforms worn five hundred years ago now resurrected and mounted upon pale dummies whose skeletons were sticks of wood. They moved mechanically and chanted inaudible words. But words had to mean, and these words did not mean. You did not mindlessly repeat what had been previously said because that was rote, a kind of cheating, the death of reality which was life. You never said again what you had said before because that was the sore wounding of truth. He had no idea where he had acquired these strictures, but he knew that he believed them utterly and they seemed to apply here. In this place he could not feel the vibrations of faith, nor its always saddening nostalgic appeal.

  Next to him knelt Mary Tolliver, a changed person here at the stifling godhead of her faith. A grown woman, clever and warm yet believing all of it, wearing that fancy hat for some lost crazy senseless reason, her senses and organs unnaturally stilled by this syrup of grave incantative madness, not functioning swiftly for him. This was the place for thinking about dust and dying. Here you were told to yearn for death, a lie masquerading as balm for despair. And it was interminable. That all these dark-clothed, crouching people allowed themselves to be thus punished was degrading. He could smell the sour odors of fear and sanctimony, the effluvium of the church.

  Ah, but in spite of all this what if there was a God? Was there any permissible evidence revealed here in the church’s hollowness, its vast dim spaces?

  Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Joanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et tibi, Pater: quia peccavi nimis cogita-tione, verbo, et opere …

  Amidst the chanting many of the people struck themselves upon the chest three times. Mary, Mary, do not hurt your tender virgin breast.

&nb
sp; … mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem …

  It went on and on. He was aware of his body, his person there observing, taking punishment. The priest and his server took their turns, their steps. It reminded him of one of those European tower clocks where, upon the hour, animated figures appear and move across upon a track. Observer, victim of these stimuli, he knew the only ceremonies he could ever enter into would be those of his own making. If only he could create a Mass for presentation upon this stage, for this stunned receptive audience. The church slowly rolled like an ocean liner—slow, slow, and then the return, none of the other passengers aware. Later the priest spoke in English, extolling the supreme worth, the magnificent glory, of motherhood, as all the mothers listened. Allard furtively looked around. Mr. Tolliver seemed bruised about the eyes by these sentiments, clenched with emotion. His yellowed eye sockets were squeezed shut behind his tinted glasses.

  And somehow, after a convincing sample of eternity, it was over and they could stand, turn and follow the slowly moving people out into daylight. He had survived another of the stations of his self-imposed duty and felt light in the head. The sounds and rhythms of Latin had entered, without his consent, some deep organ of mimesis: Prohibitum meam nolens volens introibo corpus Mariae non semper virgini. Mea maximus lascivus libidinosus, maxima magnus et paratus intrare puella, maxima non culpa si solum beato tuns meato …

  The sun was a heavy yellow on this windless day, the first always startling hot humid day of spring that changes the world completely. Immediately he began to sweat, to itch to get away. He had told Mary a small (duly noted) lie—that he had to visit his parents in Leah before going back to school. That had been the reason for the fancy Saturday night dinner, because he was to leave right after church. And he would; within a few minutes he would be escaping upon his Indian Pony, pushing through the heavy air and making his own fresh wind as he rushed away.

  Back at the Tollivers’ he went to the guest room and took off his suit. It was too hot to wear it under his fatigues, so he folded it to fit in his saddlebags and wore only the baggy green fatigues, which seemed wrong with the white shirt underneath and his thin dress shoes. When he said goodbye to Mr. Tolliver it was as if they had already said goodbye. Everything necessary had been indicated between them.

  “Goodbye, sir, and thank you.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Good luck in college, Robert.”

  “Thanks,” Robert answered with a smile that acknowledged their moments of understanding.

  Then he was left alone with Mary, standing next to the raffish, oily Indian Pony. She had removed her church-going hat, but still wore her fancy church dress. She was pretty and immensely valuable, but in these clothes she seemed not to belong to him. Nylon stockings, slip, garter belt, panties, bra —those feminine things, official as badges, had an erotic effect upon him that felt puerile, as though she were an object to strip. It was not the way he wanted her; he wanted her light and free, companionable, riding behind him on his motorcycle, not a victim but part of a mutual joy. She looked at him as if he were a wonder, with the half-smile of love, and kissed him awkwardly as he stood there in the limbo before going. His hands came around her automatically and he felt the strap that ran across her back, with its hooks he would undo like Houdini when the time came.

  Her joy in him seemed to take too many things for granted—either that or he couldn’t understand it at all. In a way it was nice that she thought they sinned when they petted, but again that was not what he really wanted. He was depressed by the hopeless task of changing her. No, of course it was not hopeless. It was a dangerous and terrible responsibility because he would have to create an alternate world for Mary: ceremonies, rituals to contain and control all the dark powers of her past. He kissed her and said he would see her Monday evening; then, with the sense of emotion postponed, he mounted his Indian Pony and rode away, feeling relief in the sudden wind caused by his speed. He rode one block north in celebration of his lie to her, then turned east back toward the university. Out of the small city, on the highway again, he wondered why he had had to come along and complicate Mary Tolliver’s life. She should marry a nice Catholic boy and have many bambinos. Then her father, that gaunt, tragic stalk of a man, would at least not have been betrayed by both of his children. It was the man’s clenched face Allard retained most vividly from the Mass, the yellowed face weeping for a wife who had died horribly and young.

  He pushed the old motorcycle up to the limit he had decided was the very edge of danger. Stone walls, trees, farms, hills, rushed at their varying speeds backward into his past. So we don’t understand, he thought as his hard body cleaved the wind. Never mind; we are compelled to use those powers we have the power to use.

  Aaron gets up from his desk and walks through his house, going nowhere, knowing that he will only turn around at a wall or the end of a hallway and come back to his study. But in the kitchen he sees his crash helmet on the shelf. Now what? he asks himself as he puts on his helmet and wind-breaker. It would be safer right now if he left the motorcycle alone, entirely alone. But, in the garage, the Honda starts at the first kick and he is off, gravel flying, relaxed, boring on through the heavy pressure of the air. Soon he is on a narrow country road, leaning into curves, taking the curves with no movement of his handlebars. The engine hums beneath him, air whistles past his ears, the globe turns below him. He seems to know where he is going, yet he is not prepared to name that destination. The time is not now. There must be a corridor through these beautiful trees, a different voice speaking.

  My name is Allard Benson, and I here confess that I have been in love with a certain kind of machine for most of my life. Love is love, and is not cured by the disapproval of love’s object. I disapprove of all machines. Filthy, dangerous, what they do is remove us from our true lives, speed us loose from what we would be content to be—walking animals upon the slow and beautiful earth. But we are cursed with presumption, and never rest from creating false new worlds.

  My first two-wheeled machine, which I possessed at the age of four, was a strange sort of bike with pedals on the front axle—a tricycle-like thing with only one wheel on the back. Remember that I don’t use the word “love” lightly; even though I find the word impossible to define, neither can I define in any logical way my continuing relationship with machines that have caused me to break bones and lose skin. It’s not reasonable at all. In airplanes, for instance, which have been proven as safe as our general lives, safer than the bathroom, the basement or the bed, I’m in anxiety, as nervous as a cat—that animal who, like me, feels control to be safety in a world of dangers that must be deftly avoided. Who controls those great silver monsters? But then one’s control over a two-wheeled vehicle is pretty nominal at best, and when that modicum of control decides to disappear, nothing could be less visible. I once rolled a measured hundred feet down East Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena—an unforgettable experience in non-control. One second I was riding, and the next I was six to eight feet in the air, watching my motorcycle’s taillight pass beneath me. A rather classic wing-ding. Both the headlight and the taillight were broken in that accident. I tucked (a witness later told me that I resembled an oversized basketball). In that accident I lost some skin, blood, and the position of one kneecap, but not this weird and continuing fascination.

  It is not for me to analyze this fascination. What I will do is remember one warm spring night when this love ran true, a night of no particular significance except that I have never forgotten it.

  I was twenty-one, an undergraduate who hadn’t the slightest idea what he wanted to do in life except that someday it must change into meaning—become heroic, dedicated, disciplined by style. I was on the GI Bill, drifting from one school to another and finding them more or less the same. At the time I was at the University of New Hampshire; next year I’d be at the University of Chicago. An aimless time, remembered without much nostalgia at all. There were girl
s to whom, I’m afraid, I could be attentive and then turn cruelly indifferent. I was writing my first novel, but hadn’t yet come to believe it might be publishable, so even that possibility of a future seemed as unrealistic as any other daydream.

  My motorcycle was an ancient Indian Pony, 1937 model, a two-cylinder four-stroke with a small frame, for its time, but quite heavy compared to modern motorcycles. It had the old, wide, longhorn handlebars, and the saddle was farther back and lower than modern ones, so that you had the feeling of being down in, of driving a beast whose knobs and dials rose up around you. The clutch was foot-operated and the gearshift was manual—a knob on a stick, as in a car. Your left hand controlled the accelerator, and your right, the spark. Anyone who rides a motorcycle now will understand how archaic this arrangement was.

  My main problem was tires. These were clincher rims, and this kind of tire was extremely scarce. My rear tire was smooth but the casing was fairly healthy; my front tire was just plain weary and sick. It may have been on the wheel for more than ten years. The rubber was so tacky my fingers would stick to it and come away with a kissing noise, and every few miles the tire would lean sideways somehow, so that it actually rubbed against the fork. When this happened I’d stop, get off, and kick it back into shape again. Needless to say, I hadn’t driven the motorcycle very fast.