J. D. Salinger
Teddy
I'LL
EXQUISITE DAY you, buddy, if you don't get down off that bag this minute. And I
mean it," Mr. McArdle said. He was speaking from the inside twin bed--the
bed farther away from the porthole. Viciously, with more of a whimper than a
sigh, he foot-pushed his top sheet clear of his ankles, as though any kind of
coverlet was suddenly too much for his sunburned, debilitated-looking body to
bear. He was lying supine, in just the trousers of his pajamas, a lighted
cigarette in his right hand. His head was propped up just enough to rest
uncomfortably, almost masochistically, against the very base of the headboard.
His pillow and ashtray were both on the floor, between his and Mrs. McArdle's
bed. Without raising his body, he reached out a nude, inflamed-pink, right arm
and flicked his ashes in the general direction of the night table.
"October, for God's sake," he said. "If this is October weather,
gimme August." He turned his head to the right again, toward Teddy,
looking for trouble. "C'mon," he said. "What the hell do you
think I'm talking for? My health? Get down off there, please." Teddy was
standing on the broadside of a new looking cowhide Gladstone, the better to see
out of his parents' open porthole. He was wearing extremely dirty, white
ankle-sneakers, no socks, seersucker shorts that were both too long for him and
at least a size too large in the seat, an overly laundered T shirt that had a
hole the size of a dime in the right shoulder, and an incongruously handsome,
black alligator belt. He needed a haircut--especially at the nape of the
neck--the worst way, as only a small boy with an almost full-grown head and a
reedlike neck can need one.
"Teddy, did you hear
me?"
Teddy was not leaning out
of the porthole quite so far or so precariously as small boys are apt to lean
out of open portholes--both his feet, in fact, were flat on the surface of the
Gladstone--but neither was he just conservatively well-tipped; his face was
considerably more outside than inside the cabin. Nonetheless, he was well
within hearing of his father's voice--his father's voice, that is, most
singularly. Mr. McArdle played leading roles on no fewer than three daytime
radio serials when he was in New York, and he had what might be called a
third-class leading man's speaking voice: narcissistically deep and resonant,
functionally prepared at a moment's notice to outmale anyone in the same room
with it, if necessary even a small boy. When it was on vacation from its
professional chores, it fell, as a rule, alternately in love with sheer volume
and a theatrical brand of quietness-steadiness. Right now, volume was in order.
"Teddy. God damn it--did you hear me?"
Teddy turned
around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on the
Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes,
which were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly
crossed--the left eye more than the right. They were not crossed enough to be
disfiguring, or even to be necessarily noticeable at first glance. They were
crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in context with the fact that one
might have thought long and seriously before wishing them straighter, or deeper,
or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the impact, however
oblique and slow-travelling, of real beauty.
"I want you to get
down off that bag, now. How many times do you want me to tell you?" Mr.
McArdle said.
"Stay exactly where
you are, darling," said Mrs. McArdle, who evidently had a little trouble
with her sinuses early in the morning. Her eyes were open, but only just.
"Don't move the tiniest part of an inch." She was lying on her right
side, her face, on the pillow, turned left, toward Teddy and the porthole, her
back to her husband. Her second sheet was drawn tight over her very probably
nude body, enclosing her, arms and all, up to the chin. "Jump up and
down," she said, and closed her eyes. "Crush Daddy's bag."
"That's a Jesus-brilliant
thing to say," Mr. McArdle said quietly-steadily, addressing the back of
his wife's head. "I pay twenty-two pounds for a bag, and I ask the boy
civilly not to stand on it, and you tell him to jump up and down on it. What's
that supposed to be? Funny?"
"If that bag can't
support a ten-year-old boy, who's thirteen pounds underweight for his age, I
don't want it in my cabin," Mrs. McArdle said, without opening her eyes.
"You know what I'd
like to do?" Mr. McArdle said. "I'd like to kick your goddam head
open."
"Why don't
you?"
Mr. McArdle abruptly
propped himself up on one elbow and squashed out his cigarette stub on the
glass top of the night table. "One of these days--" he began grimly.
"One of these days,
you're going to have a tragic, tragic heart attack," Mrs. McArdle said,
with a minimum of energy. Without bringing her arms into the open, she drew her
top sheet more tightly around and under her body. "There'll be a small,
tasteful funeral, and everybody's going to ask who that attractive woman in the
red dress is, sitting there in the first row, flirting with the organist and
making a holy--"
"You're so goddam
funny it isn't even funny," Mr. McArdle said, lying inertly on his back
again.
During this little
exchange, Teddy had faced around and resumed looking out of the porthole.
"We passed the Queen Mary at three-thirty-two this morning, going the
other way, if anybody's interested," he said slowly. "Which I
doubt." His voice was oddly and beautifully rough cut, as some small boys'
voices are. Each of his phrasings was rather like a little ancient island,
inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey. "That deck steward Booper
despises had it on his blackboard."
"I'll Queen Mary
you, buddy, if you don't get off that bag this minute," his father said.
He turned his head toward Teddy. "Get down from there, now. Go get
yourself a haircut or something." He looked at the back of his wife's head
again. "He looks precocious, for God's sake."
"I haven't any
money," Teddy said. He placed his hands more securely on the sill of the
porthole, and lowered his chin onto the backs of his fingers. "Mother. You
know that man who sits right next to us in the dining room? Not the very thin
one. The other one, at the same table. Right next to where our waiter puts his
tray down."
"Mm-hmm," Mrs.
McArdle said. "Teddy. Darling. Let Mother sleep just five minutes more,
like a sweet boy."
"Wait just a second.
This is quite interesting," Teddy said, without raising his chin from its
resting place and without taking his eyes off the ocean. "He was in the
gym a little while ago, while Sven was weighing me. He came up and started
talking to me. He heard that last tape I made. Not the one in April. The one in
May. He was at a party in Boston just before he went to Europe, and somebody at
the party knew somebody in the Leidekker examining group--he didn't say
who--and they borrowed that last tape I made and played it at the party. He
seems very interested in it. He's a friend of Professor Babcock's. Apparently
he's a teacher himself. He said he was at Trinity College in Dublin, all
summer."
"Oh?" said Mrs.
McArdle. "At a party they played it?" She lay gazing sleepily at the
backs of Teddy's legs.
"I guess so,"
Teddy said. "He told Sven quite a bit about me, right while I was standing
there. It was rather embarrassing."
"Why should it be
embarrassing?"
Teddy hesitated. "I
said `rather' embarrassing. I qualified it."
"I'll qualify you,
buddy, if you don't get the hell off that bag," Mr. McArdle said. He had
just lit a fresh cigarette. "I'm going to count three. One, God damn it
... Two.. ."
"What time is
it?" Mrs. McArdle suddenly asked the backs of Teddy's legs. "Don't
you and Booper have a swimming lesson at ten-thirty?"
"We have time,"
Teddy said. "--Vloom!" He suddenly thrust his whole head out of the
porthole, kept it there a few seconds, then brought it in just long enough to
report, "Someone just dumped a whole garbage can of orange peels out the
window."
"Out the window. Out
the window," Mr. McArdle said sarcastically, flicking his ashes. "Out
the porthole, buddy, out the porthole." He glanced over at his wife.
"Call Boston. Quick, get the Leidekker examining group on the phone."
"Oh, you're such a
brilliant wit," Mrs. McArdle said. "Why do you try?"
Teddy took in most of his
head. "They float very nicely," he said without turning around.
"That's interesting."
"Teddy. For the last
time. I'm going to count three, and then I'm-"
"I don't mean it's
interesting that they float," Teddy said. "It's interesting that I
know about them being there. If I hadn't seen them, then I wouldn't know they
were there, and if I didn't know they were there, I wouldn't be able to say
that they even exist. That's a very nice, perfect example of the way--"
"Teddy," Mrs.
McArdle interrupted, without visibly stirring under her top sheet. "Go
find Booper for me. Where is she? I don't want her lolling around in that sun
again today, with that bum."
"She's
adequately covered. I made her wear her dungarees," Teddy said. "Some
of them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they'll
still be floating will be inside my mind. That's quite interesting, because if
you look at it a certain way, that's where they started floating in the first
place. If I'd never been standing here at all, or if somebody'd come along and
sort of chopped my head off right while I was--"
"Where is she
now?" Mrs. McArdle asked. "Look at Mother a minute, Teddy."
Teddy turned and looked
at his mother. "What?" he said.
"Where's Booper now?
I don't want her meandering all around the deck chairs again, bothering people.
If that awful man--"
"She's all right. I
gave her the camera."
Mr. McArdle lurched up on
one arm. "You gave her the cameral" he said. "What the hell's
the idea? My goddam Leica! I'm not going to have a six-year-old child gallivanting
all over--"
"I showed her how to
hold it so she won't drop it," Teddy said. "And I took the film out,
naturally."
"I want that camera,
Teddy. You hear me? I want you to get down off that bag this minute, and I want
that camera back in this room in five minutes--or there's going to be one
little genius among the missing. Is that clear?"
Teddy turned his feet
around on the Gladstone, and stepped down. He bent over and tied the lace of
his left sneaker while his father, still raised up on one elbow, watched him
like a monitor.
"Tell Booper I want
her," Mrs. McArdle said. "And give Mother a kiss."
Finished tying his
sneaker lace, Teddy perfunctorily gave his mother a kiss on the cheek. She in
turn brought her left arm out from under the sheet, as if bent on encircling
Teddy's waist with it, but by the time she had got it out from under, Teddy had
moved on. He had come around the other side and entered the space between the
two beds. He stooped, and stood up with his father's pillow under his left arm
and the glass ashtray that belonged on the night table in his right hand.
Switching the ashtray over to his left hand, he went up to the night table and,
with the edge of his right hand, swept his father's cigarette stubs and ashes
into the ashtray. Then, before putting the ashtray back where it belonged, he
used the under side of his forearm to wipe off the filmy wake of ashes from the
glass top of the table. He wiped off his forearm on his seersucker shorts. Then
he placed the ashtray on the glass top, with a world of care, as if he believed
an ashtray should be dead-centered on the surface of a night table or not
placed at all. At that point, his father, who had been watching him, abruptly
gave up watching him. "Don't you want your pillow?" Teddy asked him.
"I want that camera,
young man."
"You can't be very
comfortable in that position. It isn't possible," Teddy said. "I'll
leave it right here." He placed the pillow on the foot of the bed, clear
of his father's feet. He started out of the cabin.
"Teddy," his
mother said, without turning over. "Tell Booper I want to see her before
her swimming lesson."
"Why don't you leave
the kid alone?" Mr. McArdle asked. "You seem to resent her having a
few lousy minutes' freedom. You know how you treat her? I'll tell you exactly
how you treat her. You treat her like a bloomin' criminal."
"Bloomin'! Oh,
that's cute! You're getting so English, lover."
Teddy lingered for a
moment at the door, reflectively experimenting with the door handle, turning it
slowly left and right. "After I go out this door, I may only exist in the
minds of all my acquaintances," he said. "I may be an orange
peel."
"What,
darling?" Mrs. McArdle asked from across the cabin, still lying on her
right side.
"Let's get on the
ball, buddy. Let's get that Leica down here."
"Come give Mother a
kiss. A nice, big one."
"Not right
now," Teddy said absently. "I'm tired." He closed the door
behind him.
The ship's daily
newspaper lay just outside the doorsill. It was a single sheet of glossy paper,
with printing on just one side. Teddy picked it up and began to read it as he
started slowly aft down the long passageway. From the opposite end, a huge,
blond woman in a starched white uniform was coming toward him, carrying a vase
of long-stemmed, red roses. As she passed Teddy, she put out her left hand and
grazed the top of his head with it, saying, "Somebody needs a
haircut!" Teddy passively looked up from his newspaper, but the woman had
passed, and he didn't look back. He went on reading. At the end of the passageway,
before an enormous mural of Saint George and the Dragon over the staircase
landing, he folded the ship's newspaper into quarters and put it into his left
hip pocket. He then climbed the broad, shallow, carpeted steps up to Main Deck,
one flight up. He took two steps at a time, but slowly, holding on to the
banister, putting his whole body into it, as if the act of climbing a flight of
stairs was for him, as it is for many children, a moderately pleasurable end in
itself. At the Main Deck landing, he went directly over to the Purser's desk,
where a good-looking girl in naval uniform was presiding at the moment. She was
stapling some mimeographed sheets of paper together.
"Can you tell me
what time that game starts today, please?" Teddy asked her.
"I beg your
pardon?"
"Can you tell me
what time that game starts today?" The girl gave him a lipsticky smile.
"What game, honey?" she asked.
"You know. That word
game they had yesterday and the day before, where you're supposed to supply the
missing words. It's mostly that you have to put everything in context."
The girl held off fitting
three sheets of paper between the planes of her stapler. "Oh," she
said. "Not till late afternoon, I believe. I believe it's around four
o'clock. Isn't that a little over your head, dear?"
"No, it isn't ...
Thank you," Teddy said, and started to leave.
"Wait a minute,
honey! What's your name?"
"Theodore
McArdle," Teddy said. "What's yours?"
"My name?" said
the girl, smiling. "My name's Ensign Mathewson."
Teddy watched her press
down on her stapler. "I knew you were an ensign," he said. "I'm
not sure, but I believe when somebody asks your name you're supposed to say
your whole name. Jane Mathewson, or Phyllis Mathewson, or whatever the case may
be."
"Oh, really?"
"As I say, I think so,"
Teddy said. "I'm not sure, though. It may be different if you're in
uniform. Anyway, thank you for the information. Goodbye!" He turned and
took the stairs up to the Promenade Deck, again two at a time, but this time as
if in rather a hurry.
He found Booper, after
some extensive looking, high up on the Sports Deck. She was in a sunny
clearing--a glade, almost--between two deck-tennis courts that were not in use.
In a squatting position, with the sun at her back and a light breeze riffling
her silky, blond hair, she was busily piling twelve or fourteen shuffleboard
discs into two tangent stacks, one for the black discs, one for the red. A very
small boy, in a cotton sun suit, was standing close by, on her right, purely in
an observer's capacity. "Look!" Booper said commandingly to her
brother as he approached. She sprawled forward and surrounded the two stacks of
shuffleboard discs with her arms to show off her accomplishment, to isolate it
from whatever else was aboard ship. "Myron," she said hostilely, addressing
her companion, "you're making it all shadowy, so my brother can't see.
Move your carcass." She shut her eyes and waited, with a cross-bearing
grimace, till Myron moved.
Teddy stood over the two
stacks of discs and looked down appraisingly at them. "That's very
nice," he said. "Very symmetrical."
"This guy,"
Booper said, indicating Myron, "never even heard of backgammon. They don't
even have one."
Teddy glanced briefly,
objectively, at Myron. "Listen," he said to Booper. "Where's the
camera? Daddy wants it right away."
"He doesn't even
live in New York," Booper informed Teddy. "And his father's dead. He
was killed in Korea." She turned to Myron. "Wasn't he?" she
demanded, but without waiting for a response. "Now if his mother dies, he'll
be an orphan. He didn't even know that." She looked at Myron. "Did
you?"
Myron, non-committal,
folded his arms.
"You're the
stupidest person I ever met," Booper said to him. "You're the
stupidest person in this ocean. Did you know that?"
"He is not,"
Teddy said. "You are not, Myron." He addressed his sister: "Give
me your attention a second. Where's the camera? I have to have it immediately.
Where is it?"
"Over there,"
Booper said, indicating no direction at all. She drew her two stacks of
shuffleboard discs in closer to her. "All I need now is two giants,"
she said. "They could play backgammon till they got all tired and then
they could climb up on that smokestack and throw these at everybody and kill
them." She looked at Myron. "They could kill your parents," she
said to him knowledgeably. "And if that didn't kill them, you know what
you could do? You could put some poison on some marshmellows and make them eat
it."
The Leica was about ten
feet away, next to the white railing that surrounded the Sports Deck. It lay in
the drain gully, on its side. Teddy went over and picked it up by its strap and
hung it around his neck. Then, immediately, he took it off. He took it over to
Booper. "Booper, do me a favor. You take it down, please," he said.
"It's ten o'clock. I have to write in my diary."
"I'm busy."
"Mother wants to see
you right away, anyway," Teddy said.
"You're a
liar."
"I'm not a liar. She
does," Teddy said. "So please take this down with you when you go . .
. C'mon, Booper."
"What's she want to
see me for?" Booper demanded. "I don't want to see her." She
suddenly struck Myron's hand, which was in the act of picking off the top
shuffleboard disc from the red stack. "Hands off," she said.
Teddy hung the strap
attached to the Leica around her neck. "I'm serious, now. Take this down
to Daddy right away, and then I'll see you at the pool later on," he said.
"I'll meet you right at the pool at ten-thirty. Or right outside that
place where you change your clothes. Be on time, now. It's way down on E Deck,
don't forget, so leave yourself plenty of time." He turned, and left.
"I hate you! I hate
everybody in this ocean!" Booper called after him.
Below the Sports Deck, on
the broad, after end of the Sun Deck, uncompromisingly alfresco, were some
seventy-five or more deck chairs, set up and aligned seven or eight rows deep,
with aisles just wide enough for the deck steward to use without unavoidably
tripping over the sunning passengers' paraphernalia knitting bags,
dust-jacketed novels, bottles of sun-tan lotion, cameras. The area was crowded
when Teddy arrived. He started at the rearmost row and moved methodically, from
row to row, stopping at each chair, whether or not it was occupied, to read the
name placard on its arm. Only one or two of the reclining passengers spoke to him--that
is, made any of the commonplace pleasantries adults are sometimes prone to make
to a ten-year-old boy who is single-mindedly looking for the chair that belongs
to him. His youngness and single-mindedness were obvious enough, but perhaps
his general demeanor altogether lacked, or had too little of, that sort of cute
solemnity that many adults readily speak up, or down, to. His clothes may have
had something to do with it, too. The hole in the shoulder of his T shirt was
not a cute hole. The excess material in the seat of his seersucker shorts, the
excess length of the shorts themselves, were not cute excesses.
The McArdles' four deck
chairs, cushioned and ready for occupancy, were situated in the middle of the
second row from the front. Teddy sat down in one of them so that--whether or
not it was his intention--no one was sitting directly on either side of him. He
stretched out his bare, unsuntanned legs, feet together, on the leg rest, and,
almost simultaneously, took a small, ten-cent notebook out of his right hip
pocket. Then, with instantly one-pointed concentration, as if only he and the
notebook existed--no sunshine, no fellow passengers, no ship--,he began to turn
the pages.
With the exception of a
very few pencil notations, the entries in the notebook had apparently all been
made with a ball-point pen. The handwriting itself was manuscript style, such
as is currently being taught in American schools, instead of the old, Palmer
method. It was legible without being pretty-pretty. The flow was what was
remarkable about the handwriting. In no sense--no mechanical sense, at any
rate--did the words and sentences look as though they had been written by a
child.
Teddy gave considerable
reading time to what looked like his most recent entry. It covered a little
more than three pages:
Diary
for October 27, 1952
Property of Theodore McArdle
412 A Deck
Property of Theodore McArdle
412 A Deck
Appropriate
and pleasant reward if finder promptly returns to Theodore McArdle.
See
if you can find daddy's army dog tags and wear them whenever possible. It won't
kill you and he will like it.
Answer
Professor Mandell's letter when you get a chance and the patience. Ask him not
to send me any more poetry books. I already have enough for 1 year anyway. I am
quite sick of it anyway. A man walks along the beach and unfortunately gets hit
in the head by a cocoanut. His head unfortunately cracks open in two halves.
Then his wife comes along the beach singing a song and sees the 2 halves and
recognizes them and picks them up. She gets very sad of course and cries heart breakingly.
That is exactly where I am tired of poetry. Supposing the lady just picks up
the 2 halves and shouts into them very angrily "Stop that!" Do not
mention this when you answer his letter, however. It is quite controversial and
Mrs. Mandell is a poet besides.
Get
Sven's address in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It would be interesting to meet his
wife, also his dog Lindy. However, I would not like to own a dog myself.
Write
condolence letter to Dr. Wokawara about his nephritis. Get his new address from
mother.
Try
the sports deck for meditation tomorrow morning before breakfast but do not
lose consciousness. Also do not lose consciousness in the dining room if that
waiter drops that big spoon again. Daddy was quite furious.
Words
and expressions to look up in library tomorrow when you return the books--
Nephritis
myriad
gift horse
cunning
triumvirate
myriad
gift horse
cunning
triumvirate
Be
nicer to librarian. Discuss some general things with him when he gets
kittenish.
Teddy abruptly took out a
small, bullet-shaped, ballpoint pen from the side pocket of his shorts,
uncapped it, and began to write. He used his right thigh as a desk, instead of
the chair arm.
Diary
for October 28, 1952
Same
address and reward as written on October 26 and 27, 1952.
I
wrote letters to the following persons after meditation this morning.
Dr. Wokawara
Professor Mandell
Professor Peet
Burgess Hake, Jr.
Roberta Hake
Sanford Hake
Grandma Hake
Mr. Graham
Professor Walton
Professor Mandell
Professor Peet
Burgess Hake, Jr.
Roberta Hake
Sanford Hake
Grandma Hake
Mr. Graham
Professor Walton
I
could have asked mother where daddy's dog tags are but she would probably say I
don't have to wear them. I know he has them with him because I saw him pack
them.
Life
is a gift horse in my opinion.
I
think it is very tasteless of Professor Walton to criticize my parents. He
wants people to be a certain way.
It
will either happen today or February 14, 1955 when I am sixteen. It is
ridiculous to mention even.
After making this last
entry, Teddy continued to keep his attention on the page and his ball-point pen
poised, as though there were more to come.
He apparently was unaware
that he had a lone interested observer. About fifteen feet forwardship from the
first row of deck chairs, and eighteen or twenty rather sun-blinding feet
overhead, a young man was steadily watching him from the Sports Deck railing.
This had been going on for some ten minutes. It was evident that the young man
was now reaching some sort of decision, for he abruptly took his foot down from
the railing. He stood for a moment, still looking in Teddy's direction, then
walked away, out of sight. Not a minute later, though, he turned up, obtrusively
vertical, among the deck-chair ranks. He was about thirty, or younger. He
directly started to make his way down-aisle toward Teddy's chair, casting
distracting little shadows over the pages of people's novels and stepping
rather uninhibitedly (considering that his was the only standing, moving figure
in sight) over knitting bags and other personal effects.
Teddy seemed oblivious of
the fact that someone was standing at the foot of his chair--or, for that
matter, casting a shadow over his notebook. A few people in the row or two
behind him, however, were more distractible. They looked up at the young man
as, perhaps, only people in deck chairs can look up at someone. The young man
had a kind of poise about him, though, that looked as though it might hold up
indefinitely, with the very small proviso that he keep at least one hand in one
pocket. "Hello, there!" he said to Teddy.
Teddy looked up.
"Hello," he said. He partly closed his notebook, partly let it close
by itself.
"Mind if I sit down
a minute?" the young man asked, with what seemed to be unlimited
cordiality. "This anybody's chair?"
"Well, these four
chairs belong to my family," Teddy said. "But my parents aren't up
yet."
"Not up? On a day
like this," the young man said. He had already lowered himself into the
chair at Teddy's right. The chairs were placed so close together that the arms
touched. "That's sacrilege," he said. "Absolute sacrilege."
He stretched out his legs, which were unusually heavy at the thighs, almost
like human bodies in themselves. He was dressed, for the most part, in Eastern
seaboard regimentals: a turf haircut on top, run-down brogues on the bottom,
with a somewhat mixed uniform in between--buff-colored woolen socks,
charcoal-gray trousers, a button-down-collar shirt, no necktie, and a
herringbone jacket that looked as though it had been properly aged in some of
the more popular postgraduate seminars at Yale, or Harvard, or Princeton.
"Oh, God, what a divine day," he said appreciatively, squinting up at
the sun. "I'm an absolute pawn when it comes to the weather." He
crossed his heavy legs, at the ankles. "As a matter of fact, I've been
known to take a perfectly normal rainy day as a personal insult. So this is
absolute manna to me." Though his speaking voice was, in the usual
connotation, well bred, it carried considerably more than adequately, as though
he had some sort of understanding with himself that anything he had to say
would sound pretty much all right--intelligent, literate, even amusing or
stimulating--either from Teddy's vantage point or from that of the people in
the row behind, if they were listening. He looked obliquely down at Teddy, and
smiled. "How are you and the weather?" he asked. His smile was not
unpersonable, but it was social, or conversational, and related back, however
indirectly, to his own ego. "The weather ever bother you out of all
sensible proportion?" he asked, smiling.
"I don't take it too
personal, if that's what you mean," Teddy said.
The young man laughed,
letting his head go back. "Wonderful," he said. "My name,
incidentally, is Bob Nicholson. I don't know if we quite got around to that in
the gym. I know your name, of course."
Teddy shifted his weight
over to one hip and stashed his notebook in the side pocket of his shorts.
"I was watching you
write--from way up there," Nicholson said, narratively, pointing.
"Good Lord. You were working away like a little Trojan."
Teddy looked at him.
"I was writing something in my notebook."
Nicholson nodded,
smiling. "How was Europe?" he asked conversationally. "Did you
enjoy it?"
"Yes, very much,
thank you."
"Where all did you
go?"
Teddy suddenly reached
forward and scratched the calf of his leg. "Well, it would take me too
much time to name all the places, because we took our car and drove fairly
great distances." He sat back. "My mother and I were mostly in
Edinburgh, Scotland, and Oxford, England, though. I think I told you in the gym
I had to be interviewed at both those places. Mostly the University of
Edinburgh."
"No, I don't believe
you did," Nicholson said. "I was wondering if you'd done anything
like that. How'd it go? They grill you?"
"I beg your
pardon?" Teddy said.
"How'd it go? Was it
interesting?"
"At times, yes. At
times, no," Teddy said. "We stayed a little bit too long. My father
wanted to get back to New York a little sooner than this ship. But some people
were coming over from Stockholm, Sweden, and Innsbruck, Austria, to meet me,
and we had to wait around."
"It's always that
way."
Teddy looked at him
directly for the first time. "Are you a poet?" he asked.
"A poet?"
Nicholson said. "Lord, no. Alas, no. Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. Poets
are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their
emotions in things that have no emotions."
Nicholson, smiling,
reached into his jacket pocket and took out cigarettes and matches. "I
rather thought that was their stock in trade," he said. "Aren't
emotions what poets are primarily concerned with?"
Teddy apparently didn't
hear him, or wasn't listening. He was looking abstractedly toward, or over, the
twin smokestacks up on the Sports Deck.
Nicholson got his
cigarette lit, with some difficulty, for there was a light breeze blowing from
the north. He sat back, and said, "I understand you left a pretty
disturbed bunch--"
" `Nothing in the
voice of the cicada intimates how soon it will die,' " Teddy said
suddenly. "'Along this road goes no one, this autumn eve."'
"What was
that?" Nicholson asked, smiling. "Say that again."
"Those are two
Japanese poems. They're not full of a lot of emotional stuff," Teddy said.
He sat forward abruptly, tilted his head to the right, and gave his right ear a
light clap with his hand. "I still have some water in my ear from my
swimming lesson yesterday," he said. He gave his ear another couple of
claps, then sat back, putting his arms up on both armrests. It was, of course,
a normal, adult-size deck chair, and he looked distinctly small in it, but at
the same time, he looked perfectly relaxed, even serene.
"I understand you
left a pretty disturbed bunch of pedants up at Boston," Nicholson said,
watching him. "After that last little set-to. The whole Leidekker
examining group, more or less, the way I understand it. I believe I told you I
had rather a long chat with Al Babcock last June. Same night, as, a matter of
fact, I heard your tape played off."
"Yes, you did. You
told me."
"I understand they
were a pretty disturbed bunch," Nicholson pressed. "From What Al told
me, you all had quite a little lethal bull session late one night--the same
night you made that tape, I believe." He took a drag on his cigarette.
"From what I gather, you made some little predictions that disturbed the
boys no end. Is that right?"
"I wish I knew why
people think it's so important to be emotional," Teddy said. "My
mother and father don't think a person's human unless he thinks a lot of things
are very sad or very annoying or very-very unjust, sort of. My father gets very
emotional even when he reads the newspaper. He thinks I'm inhuman."
Nicholson flicked his
cigarette ash off to one side. "I take it you have no emotions?" he
said.
Teddy reflected before
answering. "If I do, I don't remember when I ever used them," he
said. "I don't see what they're good for."
"You love God, don't
you?" Nicholson asked, with a little excess of quietness. "Isn't that
your forte, so to speak? From what I heard on that tape and from what Al
Babcock--"
"Yes, sure, I love
Him. But I don't love Him sentimentally. He never said anybody had to love Him
sentimentally," Teddy said. "If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want
people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable."
"You love your
parents, don't you?"
"Yes, I do--very
much," Teddy said, "but you want to make me use that word to mean
what you want it to mean--I can tell."
"All right. In what
sense do you want to use it?"
Teddy thought it over.
"You know what the word `affinity' means?" he asked, turning to
Nicholson.
"I have a rough
idea," Nicholson said dryly.
"I have a very
strong affinity for them. They're my parents, I mean, and we're all part of
each other's harmony and everything," Teddy said. "I want them to
have a nice time while they're alive, because they like having a nice time . .
. But they don't love me and Booper--that's my sister--that way. I mean they
don't seem able to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us
unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for
loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not
so good, that way." He turned toward Nicholson again, sitting slightly
forward. "Do you have the time, please?" he asked. "I have a
swimming lesson at ten-thirty."
"You have
time," Nicholson said without first looking at his wrist watch. He pushed
back his cuff. "It's just ten after ten," he said.
"Thank you,"
Teddy said, and sat back. "We can enjoy our conversation for about ten
more minutes." Nicholson let one leg drop over the side of the deck chair,
leaned forward, and stepped on his cigarette end. "As I understand
it," he said, sitting back, "you hold pretty firmly to the Vedantic
theory of reincarnation."
"It isn't a theory,
it's as much a part--"
"All right,"
Nicholson said quickly. He smiled, and gently raised the flats of his hands, in
a sort of ironic benediction. "We won't argue that point, for the moment.
Let me finish." He crossed his heavy, outstretched legs again. "From
what I gather, you've acquired certain information, through meditation, that's
given you some conviction that in your last incarnation you were a holy man in
India, but more or less fell from Grace-"
"I wasn't a holy
man," Teddy said. "I was just a person making very nice spiritual
advancement."
"All right--whatever
it was," Nicholson said. "But the point is you feel that in your last
incarnation you more or less fell from Grace before final Illumination. Is that
right, or am I--"
"That's right,"
Teddy said. "I met a lady, and I sort of stopped meditating." He took
his arms down from the armrests, and tucked his hands, as if to keep them warm,
under his thighs. "I would have had to take another body and come back to
earth again anyway-I mean I wasn't so spiritually advanced that I could have
died, if I hadn't met that lady, and then gone straight to Brahma and never
again have to come back to earth. But I wouldn't have had to get incarnated in
an American body if I hadn't met that lady. I mean it's very hard to meditate
and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try
to. My father thinks I'm a freak, in a way. And my mother--well, she doesn't
think it's good for me to think about God all the time. She thinks it's bad for
my health."
Nicholson was looking at
him, studying him. "I believe you said on that last tape that you were six
when you first had a mystical experience. Is that right?"
"I was six when I
saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all that," Teddy
said. "It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was only a very tiny
child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she
was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into
God, if you know what I mean."
Nicholson didn't say
anything.
"But I could get out
of the finite dimensions fairly often when I was four," Teddy said, as an
afterthought. "Not continuously or anything, but fairly often."
Nicholson nodded.
"You did?" he said. "You could?"
"Yes," Teddy
said. "That was on the tape . . . Or maybe it was on the one I made last
April. I'm not sure."
Nicholson took out his
cigarettes again, but without taking his eyes off Teddy. "How does one get
out of the finite dimensions?" he asked, and gave a short laugh. "I
mean, to begin very basically, a block of wood is a block of wood, for example.
It has length, width--"
"It hasn't. That's
where you're wrong," Teddy said. "Everybody just thinks things keep stopping
off somewhere. They don't. That's what I was trying to tell Professor
Peet." He shifted in his seat and took out an eyesore of a handkerchief--a
gray, wadded entity--and blew his nose. "The reason things seem to stop
off somewhere is because that's the only way most people know how to look at
things," he said. "But that doesn't mean they do." He put away
his handkerchief, and looked at Nicholson. "Would you hold up your arm a
second, please?" he asked.
"My arm? Why?"
"Just do it. Just do
it a second."
Nicholson raised his
forearm an inch or two above the level of the armrest. "This one?" he
asked.
Teddy nodded. "What
do you call that?" he asked.
"What do you mean?
It's my arm. It's an arm."
"How do you know it
is?" Teddy asked. "You know it's called an arm, but how do you know
it is one? Do you have any proof that it's an arm?"
Nicholson took a
cigarette out of his pack, and lit it. "I think that smacks of the worst
kind of sophistry, frankly," he said, exhaling smoke. "It's an arm,
for heaven's sake, because it's an arm. In the first place, it has to have a
name to distinguish it from other objects. I mean you can't simply--"
"You're just being
logical," Teddy said to him impassively.
"I'm just being
what?" Nicholson asked, with a little excess of politeness.
"Logical. You're
just giving me a regular, intelligent answer," Teddy said. "I was
trying to help you. You asked me how I get out of the finite dimensions when I
feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it. Logic's the first thing
you have to get rid of."
Nicholson removed a flake
of tobacco from his tongue with his fingers.
"You know
Adam?" Teddy asked him.
"Do I know
who?"
"Adam. In the
Bible."
Nicholson smiled.
"Not personally," he said dryly.
Teddy hesitated.
"Don't be angry with me," he said. "You asked me a question, and
I'm--"
"I'm not angry with
you, for heaven's sake."
"Okay," Teddy
said. He was sitting back in his chair, but his head was turned toward
Nicholson. "You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred
to in the Bible?" he asked. "You know what was in that apple? Logic.
Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So--this is my
point--what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they
really are. I mean if you vomit it up, then you won't have any more trouble
with blocks of wood and stuff. You won't see everything stopping off all the
time. And you'll know what your arm really is, if you're interested. Do you
know what I mean? Do you follow me?"
"I follow you,"
Nicholson said, rather shortly.
"The trouble
is," Teddy said, "most people don't want to see things the way they
are. They don't even want to stop getting born and dying all the time. They
just want new bodies all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God,
where it's really nice." He reflected. "I never saw such a bunch of
apple-eaters," he said. He shook his head.
At that moment, a
white-coated deck steward, who was making his rounds within the area, stopped
in front of Teddy and Nicholson and asked them if they would care to have
morning broth. Nicholson didn't respond to the question at all. Teddy said,
"No, thank you," and the deck steward passed them by.
"If you'd rather not
discuss this, you don't have to," Nicholson said abruptly, and rather
brusquely. He flicked his cigarette ash. "But is it true, or isn't it,
that you informed the whole Leidekker examining bunch--Walton, Peet, Larsen,
Samuels, and that bunch--when and where and how they would eventually die? Is
that true, or isn't it? You don't have to discuss it if you don't want to, but
the way the rumor around Boston--"
"No, it is not
true," Teddy said with emphasis. "I told them places, and times, when
they should be very, very careful. And I told them certain things it might be a
good idea for them to do . . . But I didn't
say anything like that. I didn't say anything was inevitable, that way." He took out his
handkerchief again and used it. Nicholson waited, watching him. "And I
didn't tell Professor Peet anything like that at all. Firstly, he wasn't one of
the ones who were kidding around and asking me a bunch of questions. I mean all
I told Professor Peet was that he shouldn't be a teacher any more after
January--that's all I told him." Teddy, sitting back, was silent a moment.
"All those other professors, they practically forced me to tell them all
that stuff. It was after we were all finished with the interview and making
that tape, and it was quite late, and they all kept sitting around smoking
cigarettes and getting very kittenish."
"But you didn't tell
Walton, or Larsen, for example, when or where or how death would eventually
come?" Nicholson pressed.
"No. I did
not," Teddy said firmly. "I wouldn't have told them any of that
stuff, but they kept talking about it. Professor Walton sort of started it. He
said he really wished he knew when he was going to die, because then he'd know
what work he should do and what work he shouldn't do, and how to use his time
to his best advantage, and all like that. And then they all said that . . . So
I told them a little bit."
Nicholson didn't say
anything.
"I didn't tell them
when they were actually going to die, though. That's a very false rumor,"
Teddy said. "I could have, but I knew that in their hearts they really
didn't want to know. I mean I knew that even though they teach Religion and
Philosophy and all, they're still pretty afraid to die." Teddy sat, or
reclined, in silence for a minute. "It's so silly," he said.
"All you do is get the heck out of your body when you die. My gosh, everybody's
done it thousands and thousands of times. Just because they don't remember it
doesn't mean they haven't done it. It's so silly."
"That may be. That
may be," Nicholson said. "But the logical fact remains that no matter
how intelligently--"
"It's so
silly," Teddy said again. "For example, I have a swimming lesson in
about five minutes. I could go downstairs to the pool, and there might not be
any water in it. This might be the day they change the water or something. What
might happen, though, I might walk up to the edge of it, just to have a look at
the bottom, for instance, and my sister might come up and sort of push me in. I
could fracture my skull and die instantaneously." Teddy looked at
Nicholson. "That could happen," he said. "My sister's only six,
and she hasn't been a human being for very many lives, and she doesn't like me
very much. That could happen, all right. What would be so tragic about it,
though? What's there to be afraid of, I mean? I'd just be doing what I was
supposed to do, that's all, wouldn't I?"
Nicholson snorted mildly.
"It might not be a tragedy from your point of view, but it would certainly
be a sad event for your mother and dad," he said "Ever consider
that?"
"Yes, of course, I
have," Teddy said. "But that's only because they have names and
emotions for everything that happens." He had been keeping his hands
tucked under his legs again. He took them out now, put his arms up on the
armrests, and looked at Nicholson. "You know Sven? The man that takes care
of the gym?" he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson.
"Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very
bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in
the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream."
Nicholson nodded.
"What's the point, exactly?"
"The point is if his
dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only, he wouldn't know it.
I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself." Nicholson, looking
detached, was using his right hand to give himself a slow, sensuous massage at
the back of the neck. His left hand, motionless on the armrest, with a fresh,
unlighted cigarette between the fingers, looked oddly white and inorganic in
the brilliant sunlight.
Teddy suddenly got up.
"I really have to go now, I'm afraid," he said. He sat down,
tentatively, on the extended leg attachment of his chair, facing Nicholson, and
tucked in his T shirt. "I have about one and a half minutes, I guess, to
get to my swimming lesson," he said. "It's all the way down on E
Deck."
"May I ask why you
told Professor Peet he should stop teaching after the first of the year?"
Nicholson asked, rather bluntly. "I know Bob Peet. That's why I ask."
Teddy tightened his
alligator belt. "Only because he's quite spiritual, and he's teaching a
lot of stuff right now that isn't very good for him if he wants to make any
real spiritual advancement. It stimulates him too much. It's time for him to
take everything out of his head, instead of putting more stuff in. He could get
rid of a lot of the apple in just this one life if he wanted to. He's very good
at meditating." Teddy got up. "I better go now. I don't want to be
too late."
Nicholson looked up at
him, and sustained the look--detaining him. "What would you do if you
could change the educational system?" he asked ambiguously. "Ever
think about that at all?"
"I really have to
go," Teddy said.
"Just answer that
one question," Nicholson said. "Education's my baby, actually--that's
what I teach. That's why I ask."
"Well . . . I'm not
too sure what I'd do," Teddy said. "I know I'm pretty sure I wouldn't
start with the things schools usually start with." He folded his arms, and
reflected briefly. "I think I'd first just assemble all the children
together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out
who they are, not just what their names are and things like that . . . I guess,
even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and
everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's
big, I'd make them empty that out. An elephant's only big when it's next to
something else--a dog or a lady, for example." Teddy thought another
moment. "I wouldn't even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show
them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I'd let them just walk up to the
elephant not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them.
The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't even tell them grass is
green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it
makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way--your way--instead
of some other way that may be just as good, and may be much better . . . I don't know. I'd just make them vomit
up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out
of."
"There's no risk
you'd be raising a little generation of ignoramuses?"
"Why? They wouldn't
any more be ignoramuses than an elephant is. Or a bird is. Or a tree is,"
Teddy said. "Just because something is a certain way, instead of just
behaves a certain way, doesn't mean it's an ignoramus."
"No?"
"No!" Teddy
said. "Besides, if they wanted to learn all that other stuff--names and
colors and things--they could do it, if they felt like it, later on when they
were older. But I'd want them to begin with all the real ways of looking at
things, not just the way all the other apple-eaters look at things--that's what
I mean." He came closer to Nicholson, and extended his hand down to him.
"I have to go now. Honestly. I've enjoyed--"
"Just one second-sit
down a minute," Nicholson said. "Ever think you might like to do
something in research when you grow up? Medical research, or something of that
kind? It seems to me, with your mind, you might eventually--"
Teddy answered, but without
sitting down. "I thought about that once, a couple of years ago," he
said. "I've talked to quite a few doctors." He shook his head.
"That wouldn't interest me very much. Doctors stay too right on the
surface. They're always talking about cells and things."
"Oh? You don't
attach any importance to cell structure?"
"Yes, sure, I do.
But doctors talk about cells as if they had such unlimited importance all by
themselves. As if they didn't really belong to the person that has them."
Teddy brushed back his hair from his forehead with one hand. "I grew my
own body," he said. "Nobody else did it for me. So if I grew it, I
must have known how to grow it. Unconsciously, at least. I may have lost the
conscious knowledge of how to grow it sometime in the last few hundred thousand
years, but the knowledge is still there, because--obviously--I've used it. . .
. It would take quite a lot of meditation and emptying out to get the whole
thing back--I mean the conscious knowledge--but you could do it if you wanted
to. If you opened up wide enough." He suddenly reached down and picked up
Nicholson's right hand from the armrest. He shook it just once, cordially, and
said, "Goodbye. I have to go." And this time, Nicholson wasn't able
to detain him, he started so quickly to make his way through the aisle.
Nicholson sat motionless
for some few minutes after he left, his hands on the armrests of the chair, his
unlighted cigarette still between the fingers of his left hand. Finally, he
raised his right hand and used it as if to check whether his collar was still
open. Then he lit his cigarette, and sat quite still again.
He smoked the cigarette
down to its end, then abruptly let one foot over the side of the chair, stepped
on the cigarette, got to his feet, and made his way, rather quickly, out of the
aisle.
Using the forwardship
stairway, he descended fairly briskly to the Promenade Deck. Without stopping
there, he continued on down, still quite rapidly, to Main Deck. Then to A Deck.
Then to B Deck. Then to C Deck. Then to D Deck.
At D Deck the forwardship
stairway ended, and Nicholson stood for a moment, apparently at some loss for
direction. However, he spotted someone who looked able to guide him. Halfway
down the passageway, a stewardess was sitting on a chair outside a galleyway,
reading a magazine and smoking a cigarette. Nicholson went down to her,
consulted her briefly, thanked her, then took a few additional steps
forwardship and opened a heavy metal door that read: TO THE POOL. It opened
onto a narrow, uncarpeted staircase.
He was little more than
halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained
scream--clearly coming from a small, female child. It was highly acoustical, as
though it were reverberating within four tiled walls.
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