• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1241 0

time in the enormous living room he’d had converted into an observatory. A giant telescope was rigged up right smack in the middle of the room, the original idea being that it would give him something to do when he got bored at one of his parties, but gradually it had come to obsess him and he was never far away from it. He even began using it to punctuate his conversations, to gesture with, the way other people use their spectacles and pipes. Uncle Roger had invented a special kind of screw which made him very, very rich, and a special kind of oracular noblesse oblige in distributing his largess, which made him very, very godlike. The telescope helped too. He was hard at it when I was announced.

“They tell me you were heading down Mexico way this time. What for?” he asked me over his shoulder, apparently unable even for a minute to tear himself away from the stars, or whatever you see through a telescope in broad daylight.

“I wanted to be a bullfighter,” I mumbled.

“What were you going to be last time?”

“You mean last year when I ran away?”

“Yes.”

“A singer in a jazz band. Why?”

“Nothing, nothing. Just curious.” He twiddled a few knobs and had another look at—the sun—I suppose, and finally turned round and looked at me. I was staring down at my saddle shoes. One shoelace had been badly tied and I was trying to retie it in my mind.

“My dear child, what a face! What a face to put on. Why so broody?”

“I am in mourning for my life,” I said, still staring at my shoes, wishing they were black, at least, and wondering if he’d ever read the play. He hadn’t.

“Good heavens, is that what they teach you at that school?”

“No.”

“Well, never mind. Let’s see what we can do to cheer you up, shall we? The reason I’ve asked you to come—now don’t be afraid, I won’t scold you. I’m sure you’ve been scolded quite enough—sit down, child, sit down anywhere, just throw all that camera stuff on the floor, we’re shooting Venus tonight, getting her quarter phase—the reason I asked you to come is to find out what you’d like for your birthday this year.”

“I want my freedom!” I said, tears stinging my eyes at the word.

“Your freedom? Ah yes, of course. What are you planning to do with it?”

I hesitated. I had to think for a moment. I hadn’t really put it into words before.

“I want to stay out as late as I like and eat whatever I like any time I want to,” I said finally.

“Is that all?”

“No. I think if I had my freedom I wouldn’t allow myself to get introduced to all the mothers and fathers and brothers of the girls at school. And all that junk. I wouldn’t get introduced to anyone. I’ve never wanted to meet anyone I’ve been introduced to. I want to meet all the other people … I can’t explain.…”

“Try. There must be some reason for your ambulatory urges.”

“It’s just that I know the world is so wide and full of people and exciting things that I just go crazy every day stuck in these institutions. I mean if I don’t get started soon, how will I get the chance to sharpen my wits? It takes lots of training. You have to start very young. I want them to be so sharp that I’m always able to guess right. Not be right—that’s much different—that means you’re going to do something about it. No. Just guessing. You know, more on the wing.”

Uncle Roger went back to the telescope and swung it around a bit, back and forth. Finally he came over and sat down beside me. For the first time he spoke to me man to man. “I think I understand your predilection for being continually on the wing, or rather, to put it more precisely, on the lam,” he said seriously. “It’s difficult to know nowadays where adventure lies. There are no more real frontiers. Funny how these things work out. I came roaring out of the Middle West, you know, and my greatest ambition was to conquer—that’s how I saw it—to conquer New York; New York and the mysterious, civilized East. Now my father before me had set his sights on conquering the Middle West. That was his adventure. I wonder what you will try to conquer? Europe, I suppose, since our family seems to be going backwards.”

I don