The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [105]
‘You know this is something I never have told anybody,’ he said. ‘I hate to realize about it myself.’
‘What?’
‘You remember when you first began to read the newspapers and think about the things you read?’
‘Sure.’
‘I used to be a Fascist. I used to think I was. It was this way.
You know all the pictures of the people our age in Europe marching and singing songs and keeping step together. I used to think that was wonderful. All of them pledged to each other and with one leader. All of them with the same ideals and marching in step together. I didn’t worry much about what was happening to the Jewish minorities because I didn’t want to think about it. And because at the time I didn’t want to think like I was Jewish. You see, I didn’t know. I just looked at the pictures and read what it said underneath and didn’t understand. I never knew what an awful thing it was. I thought I was a Fascist. Of course later on I found out different.’
His voice was bitter against himself and kept changing from a man’s voice to a young boy’s.
‘Well, you didn’t realize then--’ she said.
‘It was a terrible transgression. A moral wrong.’
That was the way he was. Everything was either very right or very wrong--with no middle way. It was wrong for anyone under twenty to touch beer or wine or smoke a cigarette. It was a terrible sin for a person to cheat on a test, but not a sin to copy homework. It was a moral wrong for girls to wear lipstick or sun-backed dresses. It was a terrible sin to buy anything with a German or Japanese label, no matter if it cost only a nickel.
She remembered Harry back to the time when they were kids.
Once his eyes got crossed and stayed crossed for a year. He would sit out on his front steps with his hands between his knees and watch everything. Very quiet and cross-eyed. He skipped two grades in grammar school and when he was eleven he was ready for Vocational. But at Vocational when they read about the Jew in ‘Ivanhoe’ the other kids would look around at Harry and he would come home and cry. So his mother took him out of school. He stayed out for a whole year.
He grew taller and very fat. Every time she climbed the fence she would see him making himself something to eat in his kitchen. They both played around on the block, and sometimes they would wrestle. When she was a kid she liked to fight with boys--not real fights but just in play. She used a combination jujitsu and boxing. Sometimes he got her down and sometimes she got him. Harry never was very rough with anybody. When little kids ever broke any toy they would come to him and he always took the time to fix it. He could fix anything. The ladies on the block got him to fix their electric lights or sewing-machines when something went wrong. Then when he was thirteen he started back | at Vocational and began to study hard. He threw papers and worked on Saturdays and read. For a long time she didn’t see much of him--until after that party she gave. He was very changed.
‘Like this,’ Harry said. ‘It used to be I had some big . ambition for myself all the time. A great engineer or a great doctor or lawyer. But now I don’t have it that way. . All I can think about is what happens in the world now. About Fascism and the terrible things in Europe--and on the other hand Democracy. I mean I can’t think and work on what I mean to be in life because I think too much about this other. I dream about killing Hitler every night And I wake up in the dark very thirsty and scared of something--I don’t know what’ She looked at Harry’s face and a deep, serious feeling made her sad. His hair hung over his forehead. His upper lip was thin and tight, but the lower one was thick and it trembled. Harry didn’t look old enough to be fifteen. With the darkness a cold wind came. The wind sang up in the oak trees on the block and banged the blinds against the side of the house. Down the street Mrs. Wells was calling Sucker home.
The dark late afternoon made the sadness heavy inside her. I want a piano--I want to take music lessons, she said to herself. She looked at Harry and he was lacing his thin fingers together in different shapes. There was a warm boy smell about him.