Chapter 5

The clumsy force of Rennie was a thing that attracted meduring the weeks following this dinner of shrimp, rice, beer, and values that the Morgans had fed me. It was a clumsiness both of action and of articulation -- Rennie lurched and blurted -- and I was curious to know whether what lay behind it was ineptitude or graceless strength.

At least this was my attitude when we began my riding lessons. My mood was superior, in that I regarded myself as the examiner and her as the subject, but it was not supercilious, and there was a certain sympathy in my curiosity. That I felt this special superiority is fortunate, because it got me through the first lessons on horseback, which otherwise would have been difficult to face indeed. I hated not the work but the embarrassment of learning new things, the ludicrousness of the tyro, and I can't imagine ever having learned to ride horses (for I had only the most vagrant interest in riding) without this special curiosity and special superiority feeling to salve my pride.

Rennie was an excellent rider and a most competent teacher. We rode mostly in the mornings, fairly early, and occasionally after supper, and we rode every day unless it was raining very hard. I would drive to the Morgans' place at seven-thirty or eight in the morning, sometimes earlier, and have breakfast with them; then Joe would begin his day's reading and note taking, and Rennie, the boys, and I would drive the four miles out to her parents' farm. Mrs. MacMahon, her mother, took charge of the children, and Rennie and I went riding. Her horse was a spirited five-year-old dun stallion of fifteen hands (her description) named Tom Brown, and mine a seven-year-old chestnut mare with a white race down her face, sixteen hands high, named Susie, whom both Rennie and her father described as gentle, although she was plenty lively enough for me. Rennie's father kept the two horses for his own pleasure but rarely had a chance to exercise them properly, and so he was quite pleased with Joe's project. The first thing he said to Rennie when he saw us approach in our riding outfits (Rennie had insisted that I purchase cotton jodhpurs and riding boots) was "Well, Ren, I see Joe recruited you a companion!"

"This is Jake Horner, Dad," Rennie said briskly. "I'm going to teach him how to ride." She was quite aware that her father's remark had told me something I wasn't especially intended to know -- that Joe's project hadn't occurred to him on the spur of the moment, but had been premeditated -- and being conscious of this made her awkward. She moved off immediately to the paddock where the two horses were grazing, leaving her father and me to shake hands and make pleasantries as best we could.

There is no need for me to go into any detail about my instruction: it is uninteresting and has little to do with my observation of Rennie. About the only prior knowledge I had of horses was that one mounted them from the "near," or left, side, and even that little piece of equine lore I found to be not so invariably true as I'd believed. I was introduced to the mysteries of Pelhams and hackamores, snaffles and curbs, of collected and extended gaits, of the aids and the leads. I made all the mistakes that beginners make -- hanging on by the reins, clinging with my legs, lounging in the saddle -- and slowly corrected them. That I was at first very much afraid of my animal is irrelevant, since I'd not under any circumstances have shown my fear to Rennie.

She herself was a "strong" rider -- she applied the aids heavily and kept frisky Tom Brown as gentle as a lap dog -- but most of her abrupt instructions to me were aimed at making me use them lightly.

"Stop digging her in the barrel," she'd blurt out as we trotted along. "You're telling her to go with your heels and holding her back with your hands."

Hour after hour I practiced riding at a walk, a trot, and a canter (both horses were three-gaited), bareback and without holding the reins. I learned how to lead a horse who doesn't care to follow; how to saddle and bridle and currycomb.

Susie, my mare, had a tendency to nip me when I tightened her girth.

"Slap her hard on the nose," Rennie ordered, "and next time hold your left arm stiff up on her neck and she won't turn her head."

Tom Brown, her stallion, liked to rear high two or three times just out of the stable. Once when he did this I was horrified to see Rennie lean as far back as she could on the reins, until Tom was actually overbalanced and came toppling over backwards, whinnying and flailing. Rennie sprang dextrously out of the saddle and out of the way a second before eleven hundred pounds of horse hit the ground: she caught Tom's reins before he was up, and in a few seconds, by soft talking, had him quiet.

"That'll fix him," she grinned.

But "It's your own fault," she told me when Susie once tried the same trick. "She knows you're just learning. No need to flip her over; she'll behave when you've learned to ride her a little more strongly." Thank heaven for that, because if Rennie had told me to flip Susie over, my pride would have made me attempt it. I scared easily; in fact, I was extremely timid as a rule, but my vanity usually made this fact beside the point.

At any rate, I became a reasonably proficient horseman and even learned to be at ease on horseback, but I never became an enthusiast. The sport was pleasant, but not worth the trouble of learning. Rennie and I covered a good deal of countryside during August; usually we rode out for an hour and a half, dismounted for a fifteen- or twenty-minute rest, and then rode home. By the time we finished unsaddling, grooming, and feeding the animals it was early afternoon: we would pick up the boys, ride back to Wicomico, and eat a late lunch with Joe, during which, bleary-eyed from reading, he would question Rennie or me about my progress.

But the subject at hand is Rennie's clumsy force. On horseback, where there are traditional and even reasonable rules for one's posture every minute of the time, it was a pleasure to see her strong, rather heavy body sitting perfectly controlled in the saddle at the walk or posting to the trot, erect and easy, her cheeks ruddy in the wind, her brown eyes flashing, her short-cropped blond hair bright in the sun. At such times she assumed a strong kind of beauty. But she could not handle her body in situations where there were no rules. When she walked she was continually lurching ahead. Standing still, she never knew what to do with her arms, and she was likely to lean all her weight on one leg and thrust the other awkwardly out at the side. During our brief rest periods, when we usually sat on the ground and smoked cigarettes, she was simply without style or grace: she flopped and fidgeted. I think it was her self-consciousness about this inability to handle her body that prompted her to talk more freely and confidentially during our rides than she would have otherwise, for both Morgans were normally unconfiding people, and Rennie was even inclined to be taciturn when Joe was with us. But in these August mornings we talked a great deal -- in that sense, if not in some others, Joe's program was highly successful -- and Rennie's conversation often displayed an analogous clumsy force.

One of our most frequent rides took us to a little creek in a loblolly-pine woods some nine miles from the farm. There the horses could drink on hot days, and often we wore bathing suits under our riding gear and took a short swim when we got there, dressing afterwards, very properly, back in the woods. This was quite pleasant: the little creek was fairly clean and entirely private, shaded by the pines, which also carpeted the ground with a soft layer of slick brown shats. I remarked to Rennie once that it was a pity Joe couldn't enjoy the place with us.

"That's a silly thing to say," she said, a little upset.

"Like all politeness is silly," I smiled. "I feel politely sorry for him grinding away at the books while we gallop and splash around."

"Better not tell him that; he hates pity."

"That's a silly way to be, isn't it?" I said mildly. "Joe's funny as hell."

"What do you mean, Jake?" We were resting after a swim; I was lying comfortably supine under a tree beside the water, chewing on a green pine needle and squinting over at Susie and Tom Brown, tethered nearby. Rennie had been slouched back like a sack of oats against the same tree, smoking, but now she sat up and stared at me with troubled eyes. "How can you possibly call Joe silly, of all people?"

"Do you mean how can I of all people call Joe silly, or how can I call Joe of all people silly?"

"You know what I mean: how can you call Joe silly? Good God!"

"Oh," I laughed. "What could be sillier than getting upset at politeness? If I really felt sorry for him it would be my business, not his; if I'm just saying I feel sorry for him to be polite, there's even less reason to be bothered, since I'm just making so much noise."

"But that kind of noise is absurd, isn't it?"

"Sure. Where did you and Joe get the notion that things should be scrapped just because they're absurd? That's a silly one for you. For that matter, what could be sillier than this whole aim of living coherently?"

Now I know very well what Joe would have answered to these remarks: let me be the first to admit that they are unintelligible. My purpose was not to make a point, but to observe Rennie. She was aghast.

"You're not serious, Jake! Are you serious?"

"And boy oh boy, what couldpossibly be sillier than his notion that two people in the same house can live that way!"

Rennie stood up. Her expression, I should guess, was that of the Athenians on the morning they discovered that Alcibiades had gelded every marble god in town. She was speechless.

"Sit down," I said, laughing at her consternation. "The point is, Rennie, that anybody's position can be silly if you want to think of it that way, and the more consistent, the sillier. It's not silly from Joe's point of view, of course, granted his ends, whatever they are. But frankly I'm appalled that he expects anybody else to go along with him."

"He doesn't!" Rennie cried. "That's the whole idea!"

"Why did he cork you once for apologizing, then -- twice, I mean: just for the exercise? Why wouldn't you dare tell him you felt sorry for him even if you did?"

I asked these things without genuine malice, only as a sort of tease, but Rennie, to my surprise, burst into tears.

"Whoa, now!" I said gently. "I'm terribly sorry I hurt your feelings, Rennie." I took her arm, but she flinched as if I too had struck her.

"Whoops, I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry."

"Jake, stop it!" she cried, and I observed that the squint-eyed head-shaking was used to express pain as well as hilarity, and this it did quite effectively. When she had control of herself she said, "You certainly must think our marriage is a strange one, don't you?"

"Damnedest thing I ever saw," I admitted cheerfully. "But hell, that's no criticism."

"But you think I'm a complete zero, don't you?"

Ah. Something in me responded very strongly to this not-especially-moving question of Rennie's.

"I don't know, Rennie. What's your opinion?"

By way of answer Rennie began what turned out to be the history of her alliance with Joe. Her face, chunky enough to begin with, was red and puffy from crying, and in a more critical mood I would have found her unpleasing to look at just then, but it happened that I was really impressed by her breakdown, and the curious sympathy that I'd felt from the time I first heard of her knockout --a sympathy that had little to do with abstract pity for women -- was now operating more noticeably in me. This sympathy, too, I observed impersonally and with some amusement from another part of myself, the same part that observed me being not displeased by Rennie's tearful, distracted face. Here is what she told me, edited and condensed:

"You know, I lived in a complete fog from the day I was born until after I met Joe," she said. "I was popular and all that, but I swear it was just like I was asleep all through school and college. I wasn't really interested in anything, I never thought about anything. I never even particularly wanted to do anything -- I didn't even especially enjoy myself. I just dreamed along like a big blob of sleep. If I thought about myself at all, I guess I lived on my potentialities, because I never felt dissatisfied with myself."

"Sounds wonderful," I said, not sincerely, because in fact it sounded commonplace: The Story of American Youth. It interested me only because it fitted well with the unharnessed animal that I had sometimes thought I glimpsed in Rennie.

"You shouldn't say that," Rennie said flatly. "It wasn't anything, wonderful or otherwise. When I got out of college I went to New York to work, just because my roommate had a job there and wanted me to go along with her, and that's where I met Joe -- he was taking his master's degree at Columbia. We dated for a while, pretty casually: I wasn't much interested in him, and I didn't think he saw much in me. Then one night he grinned at me and told me he wouldn't be taking me out any more. I asked him why not, and he said, 'Don't think I'm threatening you; I just don't see any point to it.' I said, 'Is it because I don't sleep with you?' and he said, 'If that was it I'd have gotten a Puerto Rican girl in the first place instead of wasting my time with you.' "

"A good line," I remarked.

"He said he just didn't feel any need for female companionship in itself: companionship to him meant a real exchange of everything on the. same level, and sex meant sex, and I wasn't offering him either. You'll have to take my word for it that he wasn't just feeding me a line. He meant it. He said he thought I could probably be wonderful, but that I was shallow as hell like I was, and he didn't expect me to change just for his sake. He couldn't offer me a thing in return that would fit the values I had then, and he wasn't interested in me like I was, so that was that."

"Did you fling yourself at him then?"

"No. I was hurt, and I told him he wasn't so hot himself."

"Good!"

"You're silly to say that, Jake."

"I retract it."

"Don't you see that right now you're doing all the things that Joe would never do? Those pointless remarks, half teasing me. Well, Joe just shrugged his shoulders at what I said and walked off, leaving me on the bench -- he didn't give a damn for courtesy."

"On the bench?"

"Yes, I forgot to tell you. The night all this happened my roommate and I were having a party for some reason or other, and all our New York friends were there -- just ordinary people. We'd been drinking and talking silly and horsing around and all: I can't even remember what we did, because I was still in my fog then. About halfway through the evening Joe had said he wanted to go walking, and I hadn't especially wanted to leave the party, but I went anyhow. We walked around in Riverside Park for a while, and when we sat on the bench I thought he was going to neck. He'd never bothered much with that before, and I was kind of surprised. But he came out with this other instead and then walked off. I realized then for the first time what a complete blank I was!

"I went back to the party and got as drunk as I could, and the drunker I got, the more awful everybody seemed. I discovered that I'd never really listened to people before, what they said, and now when I heard them for the first time it was amazing! Everything they said was silly. My roommate was the worst of all -- I'd thought she was a pretty bright kid, but now that I was listening to her she talked nothing but nonsense. I thought if I heard another word of their talk I'd die.

"Finally, when I was good and drunk, my roommate tried to get me to take a fellow to bed with me. Everybody else had gone but two fellows -- my roommate's boy friend and this other guy -- and they'd made up their minds to sleep with us. My roommate was willing if I was willing, and you know, I was disgusted with her, not because of what she wanted to do but because she was too dumb to do anything clearly. But Joe had made me feel so awful and useless, once he'd opened my eyes, that I just didn't give a damn what happened to me; I assumed he was gone for good.

"It was funny as hell, Jake. I was a virgin, but that had never meant anything to me one way or the other. This fellow wasn't a bad guy, just a thin, plain-looking boy who worked in an office somewhere, and with the liquor in him he was pawing and poking me like a real he-man. When I decided I didn't care what happened to me I grabbed him by the hair with both hands and rubbed noses with him. I was bigger than he was, and he fell right off the couch!

"My roommate and her boy friend were already in the bedroom, so I helped the guy take his pants down right in the living room. He was scared to death of me!

He wanted to turn off the lights and turn on the music and undress me in the dark and spend a half hour necking before he started and this and that and the other -- I called him a fairy and pulled him right down on the rug and bit him till the blood came. You know what he did? He just lay there and hollered!"

"Lord, I don't blame him!" I said.

"Well, I knew if he didn't do something quick it would be too late, because I was hating myself more every second. But the poor boy passed out on the floor. I thought it would be fun to straddle him like he was and give him artificial respiration --"

"My God!"

"I was drunk too, remember. Anyhow, I couldn't make it work right, and to top things off I got sick all over him."

I shook my head in awe.

"Then I was so disgusted I walked out of the place and went over to Joe's room -- I lived on a Hundred and Tenth and he lived on a Hundred and Thirteenth, right near Broadway. I didn't give a damn whathe did to me then, after this other guy."

"I won't ask you what he did."

"What he did was take one look at me and throw me in the shower, clothes and all: remember I'd vomited all over myself. He turned the cold water on and let me sit there while he fixed some soup and tomato juice, and then he put pajamas and a robe on me and I ate the soup. That was all. I even slept with him that night --"

"Hey, Rennie, you don't have to tell me all this."

Rennie looked at me, surprised.

"No, I meanslept. He didn't make love to me, but he'd never have slept in a chair all night just for propriety's sake. Don't you want to hear this?"

"Sure I do, if you want to tell it to me."

"I do want to tell it to you. I've never told anybody this stuff before, and Joe and I have never even mentioned it, but nobody ever suggested to me before that our marriage might look silly, and I think it's important to me to tell you about it. I don't believe I ever even thought about it until you started making fun of us."

"I admire Joe's restraint," I said uncomfortably.

"Jake, heis a Boy Scout in some ways, I guess, but he had another reason, too. When I was sober he told me he just wasn't so hard up he had to take advantage of me when I was helpless. He said he'd like to make love to me, but not just for that -- anything we did together we had to do on the same level, understanding it in the same way, for the same purpose, nobody making allowances for anybody else, or he just wasn't interested. But he told me he'd like a more or less permanent relationship.

" 'Do you mean marry me?' I said. He said, 'It doesn't make a damn to me, Rennie. I'd rather get married, because I don't like the horseshit that goes with most mistress-lover relationships, but you'd have to understand what I mean by a more or less permanent arrangement.' What he meant was that we'd stay together as long as each of us could respect everything about the other, absolutely everything, and working for that respect would be our first interest. He wasn't much interested in just having a wife or a mistress, but this other thing he was intensely interested in.

"Do you know what we did? We talked about it almost steadily for two days and two nights, and all that time he wouldn't touch me or let me touch him. I didn't go to work and he didn't go to class, because we both knew this was more important than anything else we'd ever done. He explained his whole attitude toward things, all of it, and asked me more questions about myself than I'd ever been asked before. 'The world is full of tons and tons of horseshit, and without any purpose,' he said. 'Only a few things could ever be valuable to me, and this is one of them.' We agreed that on every single subject, no matter how small or apparently trivial, we'd compare our ideas absolutely impersonally and examine them as sharply as we could, at least for the first few years, and he warned me that until I got into the habit of articulating very clearly all the time -- until I learnedhow to do that -- most of the more reasonable-sounding ideas would be his. We would just try to forget about my ideas. . . He wanted me to go back to school and learn a lot of things, not because he thought scholarship was so all-important, but because that happened to be his field, and if I stayed ignorant of it we'd just get farther and farther apart all the time. There was to be no such thing as shop talk, no such thing asmy interests andhis interests. What one of us took seriously both ought to be able to take seriously, and our relationship was first on the list, over any career or ambition or anything else. He told me that he would expect me to make the same heavy demands on myself and on him that he made on himself and would make on me, and that they always had to be the same demands."

"God!"

"Do you see what that meant? Joe had no friends, because he would expect a lesser degree of the same kind of thing from a friend -- expect them to be sharp and clear all the time. So I scrapped every last one of my friends, because you had to make all kinds of allowances for them; you couldn't take them as seriously as all that. I had to completely change my mind not only about my parents, but about my whole childhood. I'd thought it was a pretty ideal childhood, but now I saw it as just so much cottonwool. I threw out every opinion I owned, because I couldn't defend them. I think I completely erased myself, Jake, right down to nothing, so I could start over. And you know, the thing is I don't think I'll ever really get to be what Joe wants -- I'll always be uncertain, and he'll always be able to explain his positions better than I can -- but there's nothing else to do but what I've done. As Joe says, it's all there is."

I shook my head. "Sounds bleak, Rennie."

"It's not!" she protested. "Joe's wonderful; I wouldn't go back if I could. Don't forget I chose to do this: I could walk out any time, and he'd support the kids and me."

But it seemed to me that she chose it as I choose my position in the Progress and Advice Room.

"Joe's remarkable," I agreed, "if you go for that sort of thing."

"Jake, he's wonderful!" Rennie repeated. "I've never seen anybody anything like Joe, I swear. He thinks as straight as an arrow about everything. Sometimes I think that nothing Joe could think about would ever be worth the sharpness of his mind. This will sound ridiculous to you, Jake, but I think of Joe like I'd think of God. Even when he makes a mistake, his reasons for doing what he did are clearer and sharper than anybody else's. Don't laugh at that."

"He's intolerant," I suggested.

"So is God! But you knowwhy Joe's intolerant: he's only intolerant of stupidity in people he cares about! Jake, I'm better off now than I was; I wasn't anything before. What have I lost?"

I grinned. "I suppose I should say something about your individuality, Rennie. People are supposed to mention individuality at times like this."

"Joe and I have talked about that, Jake. God, please of all things don't accuse him of being na?ve! He says that one of the hardest and most essential things is to be aware of all the possible alternatives to your position."

"How did he mention it?"

"First of all, suppose everyone's personalityis unique. Does it follow that because a thing is unique it's valuable? You're saying that it's better to be a real Rennie MacMahon than an imitation Joe Morgan, but that's not self-evident, Jake; not at all. It's just romantic. I'd rather be a lousy Joe Morgan than a first-rate Rennie MacMahon. To hell with pride. This unique-personality business is another thing that's no absolute."

"To quote the gospel to you, Rennie," I said: "it doesn't follow either that because a thing's not absolute it isn't valuable."

"Stop it, Jake!" Rennie was getting upset again.

"Why? You could just as well take the position that even though Rennie MacMahon wasn't intrinsically valuable, she was all there was. Let me ask you a question, Rennie: why do you think Joe is interested in me? He must know I'm not going to go along with any program of his. I make allowances for everybody, most of all for myself. God, do I make allowances for Joe! And certainlyhe's been making allowances for that. Why was he so anxious to have me talk to you? Didn't he know I'd tell you I think this whole business is either funny or appalling, depending on my mood?"

"Jake, you haven't seen how strong Joe is, I guess. That's the finest thing of all: his strength. He's so strong that he wouldn't want me if anybody could convince me I was making a mistake."

"I don't see much strength in this premeditated horseback riding thing. Anybody who didn't know better would think he was trying to fix me up with you."

Rennie didn't flinch. "He's so strong he can afford to look weak sometimes, Jake. Nobody is as strong as Joe is."

"He's an Eagle Scout, all right," I said cheerfully.

"Even that," Rennie said; "he's so strong he can even afford to be a caricature of his strength sometimes, and not care. Not many people are that strong."

"Am I supposed to be a devil's advocate, then? I'd be a damned good one."

Now Rennie was uneasy. "I don't know. I guess this will insult you, Jake. I honestly don't know why Joe's so taken with you. He's never been interested in anybody before -- we haven't had any friends, or wanted any -- but he said after your interview that he was interested in you, and after your first few conversations he was pretty much excited. What he told me was that it would be good for me to get to know a first-rate mind that was totally different from his, but there must have been more to it than that."

"I'm flattered," I said, and to my mild annoyance I really was. "You think there must be more to it than that because you can't see anything first-rate about me?"

"Never mind that. What scares me sometimes is that in a lot of ways you'renot totally different from Joe: you're just like him. I've even heard the same sentences from each of you at different times. You work from a lot of the same premises." Rennie had been getting more nervous all the time she spoke. Now she shuddered. "Jake, I don't like you!"

This calmed me: my own discomfort disappeared at this pronouncement, and my mood changed as if by magic. I was now a strong, quiet, half-sinister Jacob Horner, nothing like the wise-cracking fop who'd heard the earlier part of Rennie's history. I smiled at Rennie.

"I wish Joe hadn't thought of this idea," she said. "I don't like anything about it. I don't want to be unfair to you, Jake, but I think I was much happier a month ago, before we met you."

"Tell Joe about it."

The squint-eyed head-whipping, not in hilarity.

"Joe thinks I've come farther than I have," she said tersely. "Already I feel guilty about telling you so much. That was weak; almost like I've been dishonest with him."

"I'll tell him we've talked about it," I said.

Rennie breathed shakily and shook her head.

"That's it, see? I can't tell you not to tell him, but if you did I'd be lost. I'd never catch up again."

I could see that easily enough: it was a little germ of Rennie MacMahon that had made the confidences.

"You must have realized that some people would think the whole Morgan plan was just plain funny."

"Of course I did. But they were just 'some people.' What scares me is that anybody could grant all of Joe's premises -- our premises -- understand them and grant them andthen laugh at us."

"Maybe that's what Joe was after."

"It could be, but if it was he overestimated me! I can't take it. He could take it and not worry -- you remember when he was talking about the kids' physical efficiency and you suggested that they snap each other's pajamas? That's what I meant when I said he's strong enough to be a caricature of himself -- all the things about him that you've made fun of. When you suggested that, it scared me, really scared me. I didn't know what he'd do. God, Jake, he can be violent! But he just laughed and had the kids do what you said."

"He's got you scared to death, Rennie. Is it because of the time he socked you?"

Every time I mentioned this Rennie wept. That blow had struck harder than God imagined.

"I'm not that strong, Jake!" she cried; "it's my fault, but I'm not strong enough for him."

Said I, "I understand that God is a bachelor."

Like Joe's earlier disquisition on values, this history of the Morgans' domestic problems was not delivered to me all in so handy a piece as I've presented it here. What happened was that, once it got started, our daily equitations changed their character. Now we generally rode silently and with amusing purposefulness directly to the little creek in the pine grove for our talk, and spent as much as an hour there instead of twenty minutes. It is interesting to note that Rennie never spoke of the matter while riding: in fact it was with ill-concealed lack of relish that she mounted Tom Brown every morning. But we always headed for the grove -- the horses would doubtless have gone there without our direction, and I will admit that more than once Susie and I took the initiative in heading that way.

Back at the Morgan apartment Rennie would clam up completely unless Joe questioned her directly about our morning. This, of course, he did often, and when it became quite necessary Rennie would lie grimly to him about the nature of our conversation. Grimly and clumsily: it was not pretty to watch. Joe listened carefully, and, as a rule, noncommittally, and sometimes smiled. Probably he knew she was lying, although it is hard for one who is aware of the truth to judge effectively its disguise. But if he knew, it didn't worry him. He was indeed very strong.

He and I got along better all the time. He argued exuberantly with me about politics, history, music, integrity, logic -- everything; we played tennis and gin rummy together, and I proofread two or three improperly split infinitives out of the manuscript of his dissertation -- an odd, brilliant study of the saving roles of innocence and energy in American political and economic history. My attitude toward Joe, Rennie, and all the rest of the universe changed as frequently as Laoco?n's smile: some days I was a stock left-wing Democrat, other days I professed horror at the very concept of reform in anything; some days I was ascetic, some days Rabelaisian; some days super-rational, some days anti-rational. Each time I defended myself vehemently (except on my uncommunicative days), and Joe laughed and took me to pieces. It was a pleasant enough way to kill the afternoons, I thought, but Rennie grew increasingly morose as August progressed. At the pine grove she shuddered, rationalized, talked, and wept. She was caught.

As for me, I was still undecided whether what I had learned of her unusual self-effacement evidenced a great weakness or an extraordinary strength; there is no way to gauge such things when they are carried out so completely. But I found her altogether, if inconsistently, more attractive, I believe, and the observing part of me now thought that it pretty well understood the attracted part (many, many other "parts" were totally unaffected one way or the other): I think Rennie's attraction for me lay in the fact that, alone of all the women I knew, if not all the people, she had peered deeply into herself and had foundnothing. When such is the case, the question of integrity becomes meaningless.

On August 31, 1953, her attitude seemed to have changed. It had rained until early afternoon, and so we took our ride after supper, while Joe was at his Boy Scout meeting in Wicomico. That evening she held Tom Brown to a walk-rode him almost apprehensively, I thought, without force or style, and chatted idly about nothing during the ride. But in the pine grove she was calm.

"Everything's okay, Jake," she smiled, not warmly.

"What's okay?"

"I'm still sorry I ran at the mouth so, but that's over with now."

"Oh?"

"You know, I really was frightened of you for a while. Sometimes it seemed to me that I couldn't really say to myself that Joe was stronger than you. Whenever his arguments were ready to catch you, you weren't there any more, and worse than that, even when he destroyed a position of yours it seemed to me that he hadn't really touchedyou -- there wasn't that much of you in any of your positions."

"You're getting very sharp," I laughed.

"That, right there," she said, catching me up: "all you'd do was laugh when he took the props out of your argument. Then just lately, I began to wonder, 'If his opinions aren't him, whatis him?' "

"Bad grammar."

Rennie ignored me. "You know what I've come to think, Jake? I think you don't even exist at all. There's too many of you. It's more than just masks that you put on and take off -- we all have masks. But you're different all the way through, every time. You cancel yourself out. You're more like somebody in a dream. You're not strong and you're not weak. You're nothing."

I thought it appropriate to say nothing, since I didn't exist.

"Two things have happened, Jake," Rennie said coolly. "One is that I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant again -- my period is a week late, and I'm usually regular. The other thing is that I've decided I don't have to think about you or deal with you any more, because you don't exist. That's Joe's superiority.

"One day last week," she went on, "I either had a dream, or else I was just daydreaming, that for the past few weeks Joe had become friendly with the Devil, and was having fun arguing with him and playing tennis with him, to test his own strength. Don't laugh."

"I'm not laughing." Hell, I was flattered.

"I thought Joe had invited the Devil to test me, too -- probably it was because you mentioneddevil'sadvocate that time. But this Devil scared me, because I wasn't that strong yet, and what was a game for Joe was a terrible fight for me." Here Rennie faltered a bit. "Then when Joe saw how it was, he told me that the Devil wasn't real, and that he had conjured up the Devil out of his own strength, just like God might do. Then he made me pregnant again so I'd knowhe was the one who was real and I wouldn't be scared, and so --"

(This pretty conceit Rennie had started calmly, but as she told it she grew more and more emotional -- it was a thing she'd obviously worked out for herself with care to salve the hurt of her lying until at the end her apparent new control was gone, and she shook with tears.)

"-- and so I'd grow to be just as strong as he is, and stronger than somebody who isn't even real!"

But she wasn't. I stroked her hair. Her teeth were actually chattering.

"Oh, God, I wish Joe was here!" she cried.

"You know what he'd say, Rennie. Crying is one of the things that are beside the point: you're just begging the question. This Devil business is too easy. It lets you get rid of me on false pretenses."

"You're notreal like Joe is! He's the same man today he was yesterday, all the way through. He's genuine! That's the difference."

She was sitting on the ground, her head on her knees, and still I stroked her hair.

"But not me," I said.

"No!"

"How about you?"

For answer she whipped her head from side to side shortly.

"I don't know. Joe's strong enough to take care of me, I guess. I don't care."

This was absurd and we both knew it. I confined my argument to stroking her hair, which made her shudder. We sat thus for perhaps five minutes without saying anything. Then Rennie got up.

"I hope to Christ you know what you're doing to us, Jake," she said. I made no reply.

"Joe's real enough to handle you," she said. "He's real enough for both of us."

"Nothing plus one is one," I said agreeably.

Now Rennie was tight-lipped, and rubbed her stomach nervously. "That's right," she said.

But a most curious thing happened shortly afterwards. We took the horses back to the stable and drove home, neither of us saying an unnecessary word. It was as though a great many things were held suspended in delicate equilibrium -- the rapid crowding on of dusk upon an entirely empty summer sky, with its attendant noiseless rush as of the very planet plunging, doubtless helped -- and one felt hushed, for a word might knock the cosmos out of kilter. It was dark when we parked in front of the Morgans' apartment and I escorted Rennie across the deep lawn.

"Joe's home," I said, observing a light behind the closed blinds of the living room. I heard Rennie, beside me, sniff, and realized that she'd been crying some more.

"We'd better wait a minute before you go in, don't you think?"

Rennie made no answer, but she stopped and we stood quietly just outside the door. I had no desire to touch her. I bounced idly on my heels, singing to myselfPepsi-Cola hits the spot. I noticed that although the Venetian blind was closed, it was not lowered completely: a bar of light streamed across the grass from an inch-high slit along the window sill.

"Want to eavesdrop?" I whispered impulsively to Rennie. "Come on, it's great! See the animals in their natural habitat."

Rennie looked shocked. "What for?"

"You mean you never spy on people when they're alone? It's wonderful! Come on, be a sneak! It's the most unfair thing you can do to a person."

"You disgust me, Jake!" Rennie hissed. "He's just reading! You don't know Joe at all, do you?"

"What does that mean?"

"Realpeople aren't any different when they're alone. No masks. What you see of them is authentic."

"Horseshit. Nobody's authentic. Let's look."

"No."

"I am." I tiptoed over to the window, stooped down, and peered into the living room. Immediately I beckoned to Rennie.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"Come here!" A sneak should snicker: I snickered.

Quite reluctantly she came over to the window and peeped in beside me.

It is indeed the grossest of injustices to observe a person who believes himself to be alone. Joe Morgan, back from his Boy Scout meeting, had evidently intended to do some reading, for there were books lying open on the writing table and on the floor beside the bookcase. But Joe wasn't reading. He was standing in the exact center of the bare room, fully dressed, smartly executing military commands. Aboutface! Rightdress! 'Ten-shun.' Paraderest! He saluted briskly, his cheeks blown out and his tongue extended, and then proceeded to cavort about the room-spinning, pirouetting, bowing, leaping, kicking. I watched entranced by his performance, for I cannot say that in my strangest moments (and a bachelor has strange ones) I have surpassed him. Rennie trembled from head to foot.

Ah! Passing a little mirror on the wall, Joe caught his own eye. What? What? Ahoy there! He stepped close, curtsied to himself, and thrust his face to within two inches of the glass. Mr. Morgan, is it? Howdy do, Mr. Morgan. Blah bloo blah.Oo-o-o-o blubble thlwurp. He mugged antic faces at himself, sklurching up his eye corners, zbloogling his mouth about, glubbling his cheeks. Mither Morgle. Nyoing nyang nyumpie. Vglibble vglobble vglup. Vgliggybloo!Thlucky thlucky, thir.

He snapped out of it, jabbed his spectacles back on his nose. Had he heard some sound? No. He went to the writing table and apparently resumed his reading, his back turned to us. The show, then, was over. Ah, but one moment -- yes. He turned slightly, and we could see: his tongue gripped purposefully between his lips at the side of his mouth, Joe was masturbating and picking his nose at the same time. I believe he also hummed a sprightly tune in rhythm with his work.

Rennie was destroyed. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the window sill. I stood beside her, out of the light from the brilliant living room, and stroked and stroked her hair, speaking softly in her ear the wordless, grammarless language she'd taught me to calm horses with.