A New Chapter in the Human Comedy

Whenever Homer Macauley left a hotel room just before checking out, he did two things, as if an important personal ritual would be belittled if he didn't.

He looked for the Bible, opened it at random, and read a sentence or two. If he felt he ought to get to the bottom of the whole story that had been started in the one or two sentences, he put the Bible in his suitcase, so he could finish reading the story later at his leisure. If he didn't, he put the Bible back.

The other thing he did was study the room, wall by wall, floor and ceiling, windows, doors, furniture, lamps, pictures and space--especially space, the living area that for two or three nights had been around him.

And then he said, sometimes aloud and sometimes only inside, "I've got to leave you now, all of you, whoever you are, whoever you were, wherever you are, and whatever you have become. I don't expect to be coming back, ever, but I don't see how I can ever leave entirely, either, just as you have never been able to leave entirely. We've been here, we've been in old 702, haven't we? I thank you for your company, and I hope you haven't minded mine. Dance on, then, and so long."

He was 33, married, still in love with his wife Gertrude after four years, and with his young son named Joseph after her father, because, as he had said at the time of the naming, "Ladies first. We'll name the next one after my father, and let's not forget we've both got two grandfathers whose names deserve to be used up in this manner, also."

"Two?" his wife had asked. "Isn't it one each?"

"That's why I love you," he'd said and had refused to explain.

His work took him from their vineyard home in Ithaca almost daily by car to nearby towns, in which case he drove home every night, even if his arrival would be after midnight, sometimes long after. Every ten or eleven days he was obliged to drive to larger cities where his work kept him away from home for two or three days. Three or four times a year he flew to New York, Boston, Chicago or Philadelphia, and so, since his marriage, he had been to a great many hotels all over the country and had occupied a great many rooms.

He was not a lonely man by nature and Gertrude had never urged him to telephone, which was another thing he cherished about her, so that he was never really away from her, or from Joseph, or from home, and he gathered that both his wife and his son also had this feeling of nonseparation from within themselves, or had somehow gotten it from him, and were quite happy to have it.

Whenever he left home he said to both of them, "Two or three days," or, "Seven or eight days."

As for Gertrude, she just didn't seem to know there was, or could be, such a thing as boredom or fear.

"Have your mother over," he said now and then, to which she invariably replied, "For tea, maybe."

But when he was home, Homer himself had everybody over: his relations and hers, his friends and hers, and anybody they happened to want to bring along for one reason or another, and he enjoyed (continued on page 80) Human Comedy (continued from page 65) noticing how much fun this was for her and for Joseph, how deeply, like himself, they loved people. When he first began to travel, Homer imagined that during his absence Gertrude had the people over, but it was soon impossible not to know that she didn't, and so of course he asked why, to which she had been unable to make a reply, impelling him to say, "Don't you get lonely?"

"How? How could I get lonely?"

"The way everybody else does, I guess."

"Do you get lonely?"

"No, but I'm a nut."

"I am, too."

"I mean, I don't ever really leave you and Joseph."

"Neither do Joseph and I leave you."

"Do you want to know what I want to tell you? Homer said. "Do you really want to know what I want to tell you? You're working at this whole thing, that's what I want to tell you. You're working hard at it. And sooner or later this has got to make trouble."

"It isn't work, and sooner or later it hasn't got to make any trouble at all." And then, after perhaps only five seconds, but now and then after five minutes, and once after five hours, she said, "What do you mean, trouble?"

"Women are women is what I mean. That is, members of the female branch of the human family. And before we were married if ever a woman was a woman, you were a woman. So what's all this hard work all about?"

"Before we were married," Gertrude said, "a lot of thing were a lot of things."

"And men are men," he said, and then deadpan, in the same quiet, earnest tone of voice, "especially out here in the West," but she didn't even suspect the possibility of comedy in the remark. "And when men are men and women are women, whenever one man has one woman who also has one man, that is, himself, and herself, the woman, this particular woman, whenever this man has to go away, she says to herself, 'I bet he looks at other women. After all, I'm not exactly Cleopatra, and the women in these faraway cities where he goes to, they are Cleopatra, every one of them, I'll bet he speaks to them. I'll bet he talks to them the same way he talks to me, all alone out there now, all alone and nowhere, I'll bet he tells them by the way he talks to them that he likes them, likes them a lot, likes them more than he likes his wife, and I'll bet they like him to like them, and who does he think he is to do that?' That's what I mean."

"You mean no such thing," Gertrude said.

"You don't want to ask me about Cleopatra?"

"There is no Cleopatra."

"Ok, if you say so, but six or seven banks have put about sixty million dollars into the proposition that there is, and a whole great big moving-picture company has gone to a lot of terrible trouble to prove it, but OK, if you say so."

"It's not on television yet, but I saw her on the big signboard, if that's who you mean."

"It is indeed."

"And I think she's very--well, pretty, or unmarried--for a girl on a signboard, I mean, and for on the Nile long ago, but not really anybody, not even the lady who plays the part. What are you talking about?"

"Life," Homer said. "People. Male and female." He picked up one of the six or seven Bibles he had brought home from his travels, opened it and said, "Sex. It's all written down right in here somewhere. You may very well be the woman of Ithaca who worked very hard about the whole hopeless problem of marriage, only suddenly to be over-whelmed and forever lost. You're in here, you known. Under another name. The name Gertrude is in here, too, somewhere, but that's not who you are in here. They've written about you, the woman of Ithaca who worked very hard to help found a family, and lost. Read this book, this is a good copy. It'll help you solve the awful problem."

"What problem?"

"Sin. We're sinners, every one of us. And doomed. That problem."

"You're not doomed."

"Oh, yes I am."

"Funny, maybe," Gertrude said.

"Oh, being doomed is very funny. At the same time, it is totally without humor."

"Do you mean me?"

"You're very doomed."

"About being totally without humor, I mean?"

"If you didn't have just about the best sense of humor I have ever seen in any woman, do you think I could have asked you to be my wife? That's the one thing that's liable to postpone the inevitable marriage, I mean."

"Oh, go and look at Joseph, the way you always do when he's asleep."

Going, Homer said, "And just try to bear in mind how it happened that there is a Joseph. Just try to bear that in mind."

Quiet chats of this kind happened every time Homer got home late at night, the chats starting anywhere, stopping anywhere, and being forgotten, or almost forgotten immediately, except for the meaning, which was always a meaning of love, that happened during the chats, while he opened his suitcase and brought out the stuff in it, and glanced at the various papers, and sorted them, and Gertrued worked at getting him a simple supper, with tea.

After having a look at Joseph, he came back and sat and ate and smiled and nodded and sang old songs he liked instead of talking any more--about anything.

Now, Homer was ready to leave room 1015 at the Royalton Hotel on 44th Street in New York, at 4:30 in the afternoon by special permission of the desk, instead of at two, which was the regular check-out hour. He had been at the Royalton for six July days, a brand-new hotel for him, in a room he especially liked because it was rather big, and had a hall and a refrigerator.

He drew open the drawer of the night table and brought out the gray book with stamped gold lettering: Holy Bible. At the bottom of the cover he saw a gold circle framing a gold jug, beneath which were the words: "Placed by the Gideons." When he opened the cover he saw an enlargement of the jug and saw that it was actually a lamp with a flame rising out of it.

On the first page inside the cover he saw: Help in Time of Need, and subdivisions of the various kinds of popular need: The Way of Salvation, Comfort in Time of Sorrow, Relief in Time of Suffering, Guidance in Time of Decision, Protection in Time of Danger, Courage in Time of Fear, Peace in Time of Turmoil, Rest in Time of Weariness, Strength in Time of Temptation, Warning in Time of Indifference, Forgiveness in Time of Conviction.

"I don't believe I can use any of that just now. Perhaps another time."

He turned a few more of the front pages and came to a piece of information he had never before found in any hotel Bible: "There is a verse in the Bible that has been translated into over 1100 languages. It tells of One Who Loved us with an everlasting love. The verse is here recorded in 22 of the important languages that are understood by three quarters of the earth's population. The verse is John 3:16."

And then he looked at each name of the 22 languages, and at John 3:16 in each of the languages: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English--"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."--French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish.

Well, of course he had known the (continued on page 136) Human Comedy (continued from page 80) message of John 3:16 most of his life, but now he read the message three times in order to see if it might have a new value for him at the age of 33, instead of three, which had been his age when he had first heard the message and hadn't understood it. Now, he felt, it continued to be at least a little baffling.

For God so loved the world: well, all right. That He gave His only begotten Son: well, all right again. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish: well, all right once more. But have everlasting life: hold it. Have everlasting life when? Now? Or later? Or always? And does the believer know he is having everlasting life? If so, how does he know?

Homer wasn't a disputatious fellow. He was intelligent, open-minded, enthusiastic, but at the same time skeptical, severe about the varieties and possibilities of truth, although never scornful.

"How does it go in Dutch?" he thought, and then read:

"Want alzoo lief heeft God de wereld gehad, dat Hij zijnen eeniggeboren Zoon gegeven heeft, opdat een ieder, die in Hem gelooft, niet verloren ga, doch eeuwig leven hebbe."

"It's perfectly reasonable in Dutch. Maybe the English is a little too ornamental."

He decided to try putting it into ordinary English, or at any rate his idea of ordinary English: Look here, Gertrude, Joseph, and all you others I know and love, the thing we have got to try to understand every day, as long as we live, is that this whole business has come from love, some kind of enormity of love that's almost impossible to explain in so many words, because it is bigger than words and bigger than language, bigger than all of the languages put together that have ever been spoken and written and understood or completely misunderstood by everybody who ever spoke or wrote them. This love is in everything, and it has probably come from everything, but it is in One--one kind of everything, or one variation of it--so particularly and effectively that all the rest of us enjoy noticing that that is how it is, because in doing so, in noticing, we ourselves feel the arrival of that love in ourselves, and glad and true and alive. We feel so alive we really can't imagine not having always been alive, and not going on being alive that way continuously.

"Too long."

He turned back to Help in Time of Need, studied the various categories, and decided to look up Strength in Time of Temptation: I Corinthians 10:13, to which he turned, on page 1022: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

"I prefer turning to something accidentally."

So he did: "And of Levi he said, Let they Thummim and they Urim be with thy holy one, whom though didst prove at Massah, and with whom didst strive at the waters of Meribah;

"Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children: for they have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant."

"More like it, so now I can go in peace."

He picked up his suitcase and his briefcase and left the room, going down the long narrow black-and-white papered hall to the elevator, where he pressed the button, and then said, "What's the matter with me? I didn't say goodbye to the old residents of room 1015."

He walked back to the room, opened the door, went in, looked at the floor, the ceiling, the walls, and all the rest of it, and then in a good clear voice said, "I didn't mean to turn my back and go without so much as a by-your-leave, so I have come back to say how pleasant it has been to spend six days with you in old 1015. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a privilege not to know you, and yet to know that you have been here, and are still here, by the hundreds since 1898, one by one, and a very extraordinary group. I am honored to leave six days of my own unworthy self in your distinguished company. Dance on, then, and so long."

Ten hours later, when he drove from the Ithaca Airport to his vineyard house and saw no light, he was not surprised, since the hour was half past one in the morning, but when he let himself into the house and switched on a light he had the distinct impression that nobody was home. This was unusual, but then, why shouldn't something or other be unusual now and then? Besides, the distinct impression that nobody was home could very easily be false, but that would be even more unusual than the absence of Gertrude and Joseph: that would mean he was getting panicky in his old age. Or if not panicky, something worse: perhaps unconsciously he wanted them not to be home, although he had no patience with that sort of unconsciousness. He not only wanted them to be home, if they actually happened not to be home, he would find out where they were and go and get them--out of bed, if need be, and bring them home. And maybe not be entirely nice about it, either: maybe be a little annoyed.

They weren't home, so he telephoned Gertrude's mother and after the phone had rung 11 times Gertrude's mother finally answered the phone.

"Where's Gertrude?"

"Home. Where are you?"

"I'm home, and where's Joseph?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure Gertrude and Joseph are spending the night with friends somewhere."

"That's not like Gertrude and Joseph. Have you any idea who the friends might be?"

"No, but if you'd send a telegram instead of coming home any old time, I think you'd find them home."

"I've never sent a telegram, but I've always found them home, so why aren't they home this time?"

"How long have you been gone?"

"Six days. When did you see Gertrude last?"

"Ten or eleven days ago, with you."

"When did you speak to her last?"

"Ten or eleven days ago."

"What did she say?"

"Well, you were there. I don't believe she said anything."

"As little as that?"

"You know perfectly well Gertrude isn't a conversationalist."

"I know perfectly well she is. I've been having a very fascinating conversation with her for four years. I want to resume the conversation as quickly as possible, because I've got a few things to say and I can't wait to hear what she's going to say back. I've never asked you this, Mrs. Eliot. Is your daughter by any chance given to keeping things to herself?"

"Well, Gertrude was never a blabber-mouth."

"As a child, how long would she tend to keep something to herself? A week, a month, a year?"

"She may have kept a number of things to herself forever. One or two she kept for only six or seven months. What are you getting at?"

"Mrs. Eliot, I don't know what I'm getting at, because I don't know where Gertrude is, and I'm not even sure Joseph is with her."

"Wherever Gertrude is, Joseph is also there."

"One would hope to think so, at any rate."

"Now, what about yourself? Are you all right? Can you get yourself a cup of tea and some toast?"

"When I come home, Gertrude gets the tea and toast. Otherwise, I'm just fine. It's a beautiful night, but this place is awfully strange without Gertrude standing around being a conversationalist, and Joseph fast asleep thinking about the future. Go back to bed, I'll go mow the lawn."

"Drink a glass of milk, then, and go to bed. They'll be home in the morning, I'm sure."

He went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. From the things in it he gathered that Gertrude couldn't be far or likely to remain gone for long. Still, this whole situation was rather bad from a certain point of view. He poured milk out of a carton into a glass and began to drink the milk, feeling it was bad from the point of view of disappointment. He was disappointed, that's what he was. On the other hand, it was rather good from the point of view of Gertrude being able to do a thing like that. It took courage to dress Joseph in his traveling clothes and take him somewhere. It took courage, but it also took nerve. If it was nerve rather than courage, or more nerve than courage, it wasn't good, it was bad, because having a lot of nerve is the beginning sometimes of a gondola ride down the Nile, and that's bad, especially with Joseph standing aft in his traveling clothes actually knowing little or nothing about Cleopatra. Gingersnaps with a glass of milk are always nice, but there weren't any, only graham crackers. Gus Graham, most likely, messing around with some kind of impractical batter, the laughingstock of bagel bakers, until he dealt a hand to each of the six bakers, and they knew he had something that was painful to eat, too, but of course not nearly as painful as the bagel, just drier.

He ate a royal flush of them and leaned on the kitchen counter to think. After ten minutes of it, he went to his bed and looked at it. The trouble with it was it was his bed but speechless because Gertrude wasn't around with her brilliant conversation. The trouble with it was it was alone, and a little cold, too.

Standing and looking at the mute, mirthless bed, he had the feeling that he was standing at the same time in all of the hotel rooms of his travels, being with the sleepless hosts that had also gone to sleep and awakened in the rooms, the living ghosts of the other travelers through the human comedy who had stopped there, as he had, to think it over, and when in doubt to look for guidance in the hotel Bible. These hosts of ghosts were also his family, and he had always been pleased at the end of a day to be among them, to put his head down and sleep, as they had slept, to become a part of the great sleep of that proud and comic crowd of fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

But now, at home, in his own house in Ithaca, which he himself had had built for Gertrude, for the founding of his own family, for the arrival one by one of his own kids, even the idea of putting his head down and sleeping was unwelcome.

He went back to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and stood looking at the stuff in it as if these things were some kind of book to read late at night: milk, cheese, butter, bacon, eggs, lamb chops, steaks, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, grapes, figs, half a Persian melon and three or four kinds of leftovers in square glass containers with lids.

"Meaning in Time of Delicatessen." But he wasn't interested in eating at all. There was no meaning in the leftover potato salad, or the shank of baked ham. He took an egg from a bowl containing six of them and looked at it, because that had always been one of the important things to do with an egg--just look at it. An egg was always something good to read. He read the egg for a full minute, put it back, shut the refrigerator, and went to the phone in the living room.

This time Mrs. Eliot answered the telephone after only two rings.

"Would you say Gertrude is a surprising girl?"

"No, I'd say she's an unsurprising one."

"I mean, she wouldn't be likely to be a brilliant conversationalist for four years and then suddenly run off with D. H. Lawrence or somebody, would she?"

"Oh, no, D. H. is an awfully nice boy, but Gertrude means every bit of her life, she's not a trifler. She's never worried about you. Is it possible you're worried about her?"

"Women are women, Mrs. Eliot."

"Yes, that's true."

"And they don't think."

"I suppose not, although I remember having long ago thought."

"Do you happen to remember what it was that you thought?"

"Something about love, but of course I can't remember precisely what it was."

"Can you guess?"

"Well, I really can't, but I can pretend to, if you don't mind. I guess I thought love is the best thing there is, although it is terribly confusing, troublesome, illogical, ineffable, stubborn, selfish, laughable, unreasonable and cuddly."

"And what?"

"Cuddly."

"Ten or eleven days ago when you spoke to Gertrude, did you gather she was in a family way?"

"Yes, of course, but then, even as a small girl Gertrude gave me the impression she was in a family way --by nature, waiting with the patience of a small girl who actually knows nothing at all about such things for the fact. Why?"

"Maybe she's in the hospital."

"No, I think she's spending the night somewhere perfectly sensible, and you'll laugh at yourself in the morning."

"I'm laughing at myself now, what I want to laugh at in the morning is the sun."

"I'm sure you will."

"I mean, I'm so used to having a chat with Gertrude whenever I get home that rather than not have a chat at all I'm having one with you, and that's what's making me laugh at myself. I mean, I've awakened you twice, just because twenty-six years ago you happened to be chosen to be the mother of Gertrude. Did it make you proud?"

"Terribly, and you've awakened me only once."

"You didn't go back to sleep?"

"Oh, no. I enjoy having a ringing bell wake me up in the middle of the night and remind me of time. I wouldn't think of going back to sleep."

"What was the matter with Cleopatra?"

"I think she was mad, but of course it may have been everybody else who had been mad and Cleopatra who hadn't been. What was the matter with Luther?"

"Burbank?"

"No, Martin."

"Fear, I guess. The protester is always angry, but he's also always afraid."

"Of dying?"

"In a manner of speaking. Afraid of living, actually. Mrs. Eliot, I've got to hang up now, because a car has just driven up and I think it may be a taxi bringing home Gertrude and Joseph."

"I'll hold on, and let me know, will you?"

"All right, and thanks very much for the chat."

He put the phone down and went to the front door and drew it open just in time to see a big car leaving the drive-way and turning onto Mulberry Avenue. And there in the middle of the front lawn was Gertrude bending over and picking small white flowers out of the grass, with Joseph beside her, doing the same thing, but neither of them speaking. He went out to them and bent over and began to pick with them, nobody saying anything. They picked the small white flowers for at least five minutes, the moon full and the light of it directly upon them. Far away in the hotel rooms of his travels he stood among the hosts and smiled at the idea of such a thing coming to pass sooner or later, and then Joseph stood up and turned to the open door and began to walk to it, followed by Gertrude. After they had both gone inside and had been there at least a full minute, he went in and shut the door and said, "If this next one's a girl, what have you in mind in the way of a name?"

"Well, not Cleopatra."

"Why not?"

"Well, the fact is I took Joseph to see it tonight, and I would rather she had another name. We went with the Ajemians who kept us at their house for music and stuff until just now. That was Vahan who just drove away."

"What kind of music?"

"The new stuff, mainly Varèse. I'll put Joseph down and get you some tea and toast."

"How about Margaret?"

"That's my mother's name."

"Maggie for short, I suppose it would be."

"Well, we've given Joseph my father's name, are you sure we want to give the next one my mother's?"

"How long have we got to talk about it?"

"Well, three months."

"Well, put Joseph down and we'll start talking about it."

Gertrude went off with Joseph, who came back from the hall suddenly and said, "We saw her, Poppa."

He picked up the boy and said, "Who?"

"The lady on the boat on the river."

"What do you think of her, Joseph?"

"She was Momma--before."

"Yes, you're quite right."

After tea and an hour of talk Gertrude said, "What's the phone off the receiver for?"

"I'm having a little chat with your mother."

He went to the phone and said, "They went to see Cleopatra, and then to the Ajemians' for music and stuff, and we're seriously thinking of calling the next one, if it's a girl, Margaret."

"That will make me feel very proud, but please do think about it very carefully."

"We will."

He hung up and said, "Throw me that hotel Bible over there, will you. I think I'd like to read some of the names in there, for ideas, although if you really want to know the truth, I know now that her name ought to be Margaret."

"Why?"

"It goes good with Macauley."