The Moviegoer - Walker Percy [34]
Explore connection between romanticism and scientific objectivity. Does a scientifically minded person become a romantic because he is a left-over from his own science?
I must reply to Harold, but it is almost more than I can do to write two sentences in a row. The words are without grace.
Dear Harold: Thank you for asking me to be godfather to your baby. Since, however, I am not a practical Catholic, I doubt if I could. But I certainly appreciate—
Certainly appreciate. Tear it up.
6
An odd thing. Ever since Wednesday I have become acutely aware of Jews. There is a clue here, but of what I cannot say. How do I know? Because whenever I approach a Jew, the Geiger counter in my head starts rattling away like a machine gun; and as I go past with the utmost circumspection and with every sense alert—the Geiger counter subsides.
There is nothing new in my Jewish vibrations. During the years when I had friends my Aunt Edna, who is a theosophist, noticed that all my friends were Jews. She knew why moreover: I had been a Jew in a previous incarnation. Perhaps that is it. Anyhow it is true that I am Jewish by instinct. We share the same exile. The fact is, however, I am more Jewish than the Jews I know. They are more at home than I am. I accept my exile.
Another evidence of my Jewishness: the other day a sociologist reported that a significantly large percentage of solitary moviegoers are Jews.
Jews are my first real clue.
When a man is in despair and does not in his heart of hearts allow that a search is possible and when such a man passes a Jew in the street, he notices nothing.
When a man becomes a scientist or an artist, he is open to a different kind of despair. When such a man passes a Jew in the street, he may notice something but it is not a remarkable encounter. To him the Jew can only appear as a scientist or artist like himself or as a specimen to be studied.
But when a man awakes to the possibility of a search and when such a man passes a Jew in the street for the first time, he is like Robinson Crusoe seeing the footprint on the beach.
7
A beautiful Friday morning and a successful excursion into St. Bernard Parish with Sharon.
Sharon eyes my MG narrowly. After she has gotten in, she makes it plain that MG or no MG there is to be no monkey business. How does she make such a thing plain and in an MG sitting thigh to thigh and knee to knee? By her Southern female trick of politeness. “This is the cutest little car!” she sings and goes trailing off in a fit of absent-mindedness, hands to the nape of her neck and tilting her head forward so that she surveys the street though her eyebrows and with a cold woman’s eye; then seeming to rouse herself apologetically: “This sure beats typing. Mhm-M!”—as singsongy and shut off to herself as her mammy in Eufala. Southern girls learn a lot from their nurses.
We meet Mr. Sartalamaccia and a queer thing happens.
First, some kind of reversal takes place and it becomes natural for Mr. Sartalamaccia to show me the place he wants to buy. He becomes the guide to my property and even points out the good features. A far cry from a duck club now, my patrimony is hemmed in on one side by a housing development and on the other by a police pistol range. In fact, my estate puts me in mind of the pictures in detective magazines of the scene where a crime was committed: a bushy back lot it is, tunnelled through by hog trails and a suspicious car track or two. Every inch of open ground sprouts new green shoots and from the black earth there seems to arise a green darkness. It is already like summer here. Cicadas drone in the weeds and the day seems long.
We leave the MG in a glade (a good hard-used creature of red metal and fragrant worn leather; I run a hand over its flank of stout British steel as if it were a mare) and stand on a hummock with Mr. Sartalamaccia between us; Mr. Sartalamaccia: wagging a limp panama behind him and giving off a bitter cotton smell. He is less an Italian than a Southern country man, haggard and