The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [50]
3:30 p.m. Daily meeting. Leon reads Requiescat, by Matthew Arnold, from a book of poems Joseph brought to the meeting. He interprets it as referring to death, the body covered by the falling rose petals of the funeral flowers. He then reads O Captain, My Captain, by Walt Whitman, which he finds “exhilarating” and sees as the story of a son taking the place of his father. Then a poem by Robert Browning, which he interprets as involving adventure, desire, and not attaining one’s desire. “I wonder if he’s a bachelor?” Leon asks. “No,” says Joseph, “he married Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” Leon comments that he thought Browning was a bachelor because he didn’t get what he wanted. He then reads Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat, which he interprets as an example of “cosmic eye fertilization,” the offspring being a marmoset.
Joseph then reads from The Insolent Chariots, an attack on the automobile industry. Joseph sees it as an advertisement for cars. Leon prophesies that automobile manufacturers will finally be forced to obey the Ten Commandments because more and more people are traveling by translocation—he prefers traveling with the speed of light, breaking through the cosmic barrier. Joseph says translocation would be too expensive.
2:00 p.m. Waiting for elevator to return to the laundry, Leon asks another patient: “What time d’you have?” “Two, Rex.” “Thank you, sir—it’s TIME TO SHAKE OFF.” His voice has the ring of a World War II fighter pilot preparing to peel off from formation to dive-bomb a battleship.
Breakfast. Clyde sits down at the table and, upon seeing a patient he had scuffled with a couple of days earlier, becomes highly agitated: “He’s got no business here! I’ll fight him! This is a private table!” Joseph seats himself, saying: “Well, here I am again.” Leon brings his tray to the table, crosses himself, and sits down. As they eat, Leon salutes every employee, male and female, who passes by.
1:40 p.m. A messenger comes with a note addressed to Leon Gabor, announcing that his mother is here for a visit. Leon hands the note back, saying that his name is not Leon Gabor, that the woman is not his mother, that he does not want to see her, and that she is not to come again.
A research assistant goes to talk to Leon’s mother. She is wearing a long black dress, and carries a huge black purse crammed with rosary beads, crucifixes, and religious pictures. She speaks with an accent and throughout the interview weeps and fingers her beads. All she wants, she says, is to talk to Leon and find out why he is angry with her. When asked what Leon was like before he became sick, she says that he “burned up everything, pictures, paper”; that he took down all the crucifixes, all the religious pictures; that he broke the statues of Jesus and threw them in the garbage can; and that he did all this on Good Friday while she was at church. She goes on to say she was afraid of him because he had choked the pigeons, the nice white pigeons; he had broken the necks of all the white birds and had left the others alone. (Apparently there had been a pigeon colony on the roof of the building, although it is not clear who kept the colony.) She goes on to describe Leon before he went into the army, and to tell how much he had changed when he returned. She gives the impression of a defeated woman approaching the end of life, who realizes that all she has valued most highly has turned out badly, but who has not the faintest idea why. Least of all does she show any awareness of the part she herself played in her own bitter defeat. She repeats over and over that she is alone now, that she has lost both her grown sons and that she has no place in their lives. “Why it has turned out this way?” she cries brokenly. “Why