Reflections in a Golden Eye - Carson McCullers [3]
The Captain's restlessness this evening had many causes. His personality differed in some respects from the ordinary. He stood in a somewhat curious relation to the three fundaments of existence life itself, sex, and death. Sexually the Captain obtained within himself a delicate balance between the male and female elements, with the susceptibilities of both the sexes and the active powers of neither. For a person content to withdraw a bit from life, and able to collect his scattered passions and throw himself wholeheartedly into some impersonal work, some art or even some crack brained fixed idea such as an attempt to square the circle for such a person this state of being is bearable enough. The Captain had his work and he did not spare himself; it was said that he had a brilliant career ahead of him. Perhaps he would not have felt this basic lack, or superfluity, if it had not been for his wife. But with her he suffered. He had a sad penchant for becoming enamoured of his wife's lovers.
As to his relations with the other two fundaments, his position was simple enough. In his balance between the two great instincts, toward life and toward death, the scale was heavily weighted to one side to death. Because of this the Captain was a coward.
Captain Penderton was also something of a savant. During the years when he was a young Lieutenant and a bachelor he had had much opportunity to read, as his fellow officers tended to avoid his room in the bachelors' quarters or else to visit him in pairs or groups. His head was filled with statistics and information of scholarly exactitude. For instance, he could describe in detail the curious digestive apparatus of a lobster or the life history of a Trilobite. He spoke and wrote three languages gracefully. He knew something of astronomy and had read much poetry. But in spite of his knowledge of many separate facts, the Captain never in his life had had an idea in his head. For the formation of an idea involves the fusion of two or more known facts. And this the Captain had not the courage to do.
As he sat alone at his desk this evening, unable to work, he did not question himself as to his feelings. He thought again of the face of Private Williams. Then he recollected that the Langdons next door were dining with them that evening. Major Morris Langdon was his wife's lover, but the Captain did not dwell on this. Instead he suddenly remembered an evening long ago, soon after he had married. On that evening he had felt this same unhappy restlessness and had seen fit to relieve himself in a curious manner. He had driven into a town near the post where he was then stationed, had parked his car, and had walked for a long time in the streets. It was a late winter night. In the course of this walk the Captain came upon a tiny kitten hovered in a doorway. The kitten had found shelter and made itself warm; when the Captain leaned down he found that it was purring. He picked up the kitten and felt it vibrate in his palm. For a long time he looked into the soft, gentle little face and stroked the warm fur. The kitten was at the age when it was first able to open wide its clear green eyes. At last the Captain had taken the kitten with him down the street. On the corner there was a mailbox and after one quick glance around him he had opened the freezing letter slot and squeezed the kitten inside. Then he had continued on his way.
The Captain heard the back door slam and he left his desk. In the kitchen his wife sat on a table while Susie, the colored servant, pulled off her boots. Mrs. Penderton was not a pure bred Southerner. She had been born and brought up in the army, and her father, who a year before his retirement had reached the rank of Brigadier General, was originally from the West coast.