All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [121]
“What was his act?”
“He was the man who got hanged.”
“Oh,” I said, and looked at George. That accounted for the big neck, no doubt. Then, “Did the apparatus go wrong with him and choke him or something?”
“No,” the Scholarly Attorney said, “the whole matter simply grew distasteful to him.”
“Distasteful?” I said.
“Yes, distasteful. Matter came to such a pass that he could not perform happily in his chosen profession. He dreamed of falling every time he went to sleep. And he would wet his bed like a child.”
“Falling, falling,” George said through the bread, with a sound like fawing, fawing, but still smiled brightly in the midst of the chewing.
“One day when he got up on his platform with the loop around his neck, he could not jump. In fact, he could not move at all. He sank down on the platform and crouched there weeping. They had to remove him bodily, and bring him down,” the Scholarly Attorney said. “Then for some time he was completely paralyzed.”
“It sound,” I said, “like that hanging act must have got pretty distasteful to him. As you so quaintly put it.”
“He was completely paralyzed,” he repeated, ignoring my wit. “Through no physical cause–if–” he pause–“anything ever comes to pass from a physical cause. For the physical world, though it exists and it existence cannot be denied without blasphemy, is never cause, it is only result, only symptom, it is the clay under the thumb of the potter and we–” He stopped, the gleam which has started up fitfully in the pale eyes flickered out, the hands which lifted to gesticulate sank. He leaned above the gas plate and stirred the soup. He resumed, “The trouble was here,” and he laid a finger to his own forehead. “It was his spirit. Spirit is always cause–I tell you–” He stopped, shook his head, and peered at me before he said sadly, “But you do not understand.”
“I reckon not,” I agreed
“He recovered from the paralysis,” he said. “But George is not exactly a well man. He cannot bear high places. He will not look out the window. He covers his eyes with his hands when I lead him downstairs to go on the street to sell his artistic work. So I take him down only rarely now. He will not sit on a chair or sleep in a bed. He must always be on the floor. He does not like to stand. His legs simply collapse and he begins to cry. It is fortunate he has always had his artistic bent. It helps him to take his mind off thing. And he prays a good deal. I taught him to pray. That helps. I get up and pray and he says the prayers after me. When he wakes at night with the dreams and cannot sleep.”
“Does he still wet the bed?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” the Scholarly Attorney replied gravely.
I looked at George. He was weeping silently, the tears running down his smooth, flat cheeks, but his jawbone was not missing a beat on the bread. “Look at him,” I said.
The Scholarly Attorney looked at him. “Stupid, stupid,” he muttered fretfully, shaking his head, so that an additional flake or two of dandruff floated down to the black serge collar, “stupid of me to be talking that way with him listening. Stupid–I’m an old man and I forget–” and clucking and muttering and shaking his head in that same fretful fashion he poured some soup into a bowl, took a spoon, and went to George. “Look, look,” he said, leaning, with a spoon of soup thrust toward George’s face, “good, it’s good soup–soup–take some soup.”
But the tears continued to flow out of George’s eyes, and he didn’t open his mouth. But the jaws weren’t working on the bread now. They were just shut tight.
The old man set the bowl on the floor, and with one hand still holding the spoon to George’s mouth, with the other he patted George on the back soothingly, all the while clucking with that distraught, henlike, maternal little noise. All of a sudden he looked up at me, the spectacles hanging over, and said, peevishly like a mother, “I just don’t know what to do–he just won’t take soup–he won’t eat much of anything but candy–chocolate candy–I just don’t know–” His voice trailed off.
“Maybe you spoil him,” I said.
He put the spoon back into the bowl, which was on the floor beside him, then began to fumble in his pockets. He fished out, finally, a bar of chocolate, somewhat wilted form the heat, and began to peel back the sticky tinfoil. The last tears were running down George