Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [143]
St. Botolphs may be an Eden of sorts, but it is a fallen Eden, and the provoking odors of the place (the “smells” that had worried the author so much) are a constant reminder that flesh lusteth contrary to the spirit—surely the major theme of Cheever's work as well as his life. In the village, one is assailed by scents of wood smoke and salt marshes, or (indoors) floor oil and coal gas and perhaps a boiling fish: “A carp is cooking in the kitchen, and, as everyone knows, a carp has to be boiled in claret and pickled oysters, anchovies, thyme and white onions. All of this can be smelled.” Such bouquet is a goad to sensual sport, and indeed the very name “Wapshot” suggests an aspiration to subdue one's animal passions: derived from the Norman “Vaincre-Chaud”—literally, “to defeat heat”—the name graces a family of “copious journalists” who have long been in the habit of using their diaries (as Cheever did) to reproach themselves “for idleness, sloth, lewdness, stupidity and drunkenness, for St. Botolphs had been a lively port where they danced until dawn and where there was always plenty of rum to drink.” No wonder Coverly flees when he sees a stripper do “something very dirty” with a farm hand's hat at a “cootch show” on the fairgrounds, only to find himself “admiring squashes” while he tries to regain his composure (“The irony … was not wasted on him”).
But if anything the novel is a celebration of “larky,” robust sensuality of the sort suggested by Moses, who remarks to the tractable Rosalie, “What harm can there be in something that would make us both feel so good?” Far from being harmful, the point is made again and again that sexual commerce is one of the great consolations in this vale of tears, as when a young man aboard the sinking Topaze sees fit to reflect (potentially his final thought) on the “fair and gentle” way his girlfriend has just “spread her legs” for him. Certain extremes of celibacy are perceived as a form of meanness, most notably in the case of Cousin Justina, who “hatefully” forces Moses to traverse a quarter-mile of treacherous rooftop to get to his lover's bed each night. Such prudery is an excess almost as damnable as outright “lewdness,” and both are degrading to the spirit. The danger of the latter is illuminated for Leander in his dream of “walking alone through hell,” where he encounters a hideous old man who exposes his “inflamed parts”—intoning “This is the beginning of wisdom”—before walking away “with the index finger up his bum.” Thus Leander spends his last waking hours on earth in a sort of purification ritual: attending church and then swimming away into the cold, beloved sea.
That human beings are sinful is never in doubt, but Cheever is ultimately more concerned with the possibilities of goodness—the goodness of God, no less, manifest in our own better instincts and the beauty of all creation. Despair is almost never final. Hobbled by a sense of aloneness, Honora soon recovers her appetite; Melissa's first husband, the egregious Beaver, rallies himself “at the nadir of his depression” with visions of “cities or archways at least of marble” and so absconds with Justina's jewels. And finally, most movingly, Leander is succored by rain at the funeral of his first wife, Clarissa, a suicide: “Wind slacked off in middle of prayer. Distant, electrical smell of rain. Sound among leaves; stubble. Hath but a short span, says Father Frisbee. Full of misery is he. Rain more eloquent, heartening and merciful.