All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [125]
“Very pretty,” I said.
“He makes statues of angels, too. See,” and he went to a kitchen safe, and opened it, to expose a shelf of dishes and pots and another with an array of gaudy angels.
I examined the angels. While I did so, the Scholarly Attorney took a can of soup, a loaf of bread, and some soft butter out of the safe, put them on the table in the center of the room, and lighted one of the burners on the two-burner plate in the corner. “Will you join me in my supper?” he asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, and continued to stare at the angels.
“He sometimes sells them on the street,” he said, pouring out his soup into a stewpan, “but he can’t bear to sell the best ones.”
“Are these the best ones?” I asked.
“Yes,” the Scholarly Attorney replied. And added, “They are pretty good, aren’t they?”
I said, “Yes,” for there wasn’t anything else to say. Then’ looking at the artist, asked, “Doesn’t he make anything but angels? What about Kewpie dolls and bulldogs?”
“He makes angels. Because of what happened.”
“What happened?”
“His wife,” the Scholarly Attorney said, stirring the soup in the stewpan. “On account of her he makes angels. They were in a circus, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Yes, they were what you call aerialists. She did the angel act. She had large white wings, George said.”
“White wings,” George said through the bread, but it was a sound like wite whungs, and he fluttered his big hands like wings, and smiled.
“She fell down a long way with white wings which fluttered as though she were flying,” the Scholarly Attorney continued, explaining patiently.
And one day the rope broke,” I affirmed.
“Something went wrong with the apparatus. It affected George very deeply.”
“How about the way it affected her?”
The old man ignored my wit, and said, “He got so he could not perform his act.”
“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.