The Gallery (New York Review Books Classics)

by John Horne Burns

She’d started her Public Ministry by having officers to her lovely home in Cambridge, giving them those little snacks they couldn’t get at Fort Devens. The way they’d smiled at her during her candlelight suppers had given her a priestesslike ecstasy of sacrifice and service. She was forgetting herself in the sorrows of others, than which there is no more cathartic annihilation of self.

—American men, Louella said, have understood very little about the world in which they live. They’re new to anguish. Europeans have already lived with it. Europeans are concerned simply with existing. Americans have always had enough and to spare. . . . Naturally Americans are baffled by combat. It doesn’t have much to do with the stock market ticker and that dash for the eight-ten after kissing your wife. . . . But they’ll get over it after a time. There have been wars before, and men have recovered from them.

But Louella’d learned something of frailty and charity. It took all kinds, even though the saying was a desperate cliché. The vein in her left temple was throbbing

when she let herself out of her apartment. Ginny’s selfish tirade had got her worked up a little. That was one of Louella’s major faults, that she was more sensitive to situations than they demanded. She always tried to descend to other people’s levels instead of insisting that they meet her on her own. It was an exhausting philosophy of life, but she had an inkling that, after she’d left them, people gave vent to an admiration and a veneration they never dared show to her face.

Louella’d learned six or seven words of Italian, which she sprinkled into her conversation like paprika. She didn’t really care for the language, which made her think of gooey kisses pressed by some greaser on the neck of

This lack of spunk was what Louella loathed in Italian men, especially the good-looking ones. They were much too effeminate. And they had the kind of cringing good manners of a Negro, when he’s afraid you’ll push him off

the sidewalk—which you won’t if he knows his place. Louella guessed the reason why Italy’d lost the war. Too much inbreeding and not the virility to support their culture.

Nevertheless the bitterness of her morning had died, and she thanked God for some vitality in her that allowed her to cast off ugliness. Otherwise she’d have long ago been dead. She guessed she had that magnanimity of mind that Shakespeare must have possessed—the ability to come through any situation, understand it, but retain intact the integrity of her soul. What had she learned overseas? To forgive. She lifted her arms with a soft smile and lit a cigarette.

Bill Mauldin cartoons.

tels

She hadn’t much patience with the lonely and recondite spirits who pretend to rare gifts in order to camouflage their essential inability to get along with the rest of the human race.

She didn’t flinch or go prissy because she knew she was in the presence of that sacred and awful thing, American Loneliness, akin to the face of Abraham Lincoln. She knew that Americans were the saddest people in the world in time of war because they were Magnificent Provincials. That was why every American soldier who wasn’t queer had to have his buddy, with whom he shared a stream of consciousness in itself meaningless, but which added up to all the nobility and isolation of a young and idealistic people thrown into death and destruction.

Caporale into a bed. —Qu’est-ce qui se passe, madame?

By daylight they looked seamy in their pompoms and dungarees, outside the dull glow of Picardan wine and the moth-eaten gentility of the salle à manger. Tonight they and I would meet on a different plane, and we would fly to one another like estranged lovers.

Hal’s secret was a great emptiness within himself. He believed in nothing, often doubting his own existence and that of the material world about him.

Everyone said he was a genius, but Hal thought himself a zombi, one of the undead.

For Hal it was a relief to have the horizons of his mind planed down, with certain conventional fences erected in their stead. He would be saluted by all enlisted men, and henceforth his mind must move along neat little tracks, greased by order of the secretary of war. It was the first breather Hal had ever had from coping with things. —And you’ll be overseas soon, dear, he said to himself, turning away from the mirror. Perhaps you never belonged in America at all.

But not one had ever made to him the gesture of surrender.

He’d been one of the great drinkers of the Village, even when he was at CCNY. Alcohol made him colder and more compassionate and more penetrating than ever. When he arrived at the state which in others would be drunkenness, the last veil of illusion was torn from him. At such moments he saw nothing to life but a grisly round of eating and sleeping and talking to others until your heart stopped beating. His huge physical charm heightened under alcohol. He’d hold himself up like a locket before the dazzled eyes of whomever he was with. And then he’d excuse himself and go away to sleep. He never had hangovers because the alcohol never gave him any plus for which to exact a corresponding minus.

For some time now Hal had been noting in himself symptoms unknown to himself in the bars of New York, where he used to stand for hours alone, listening and appraising and throwing down the drinks. It had always been the same with him in bars: the joe next to him struck up a conversation. But in the bars of Oran some gap had arisen between him and all other human beings. It seemed to him that anything anybody else had to say was too prosaic, too factual, or too obvious to the situation. Like a bad exposition at the beginning of a play. It amazed and horrified him how people could talk for ten minutes on such subjects as how they couldn’t get the cigarette brand they wanted at the PX; what they said to their first sergeant; or the Oranaise who wouldn’t. Hal’s mind had become like an idling motor; he could foretell what they’d say ten minutes before they said it. In everything they wished to communicate there was something like a stale joke. And Hal found it difficult, after a few drinks, to look them straight in the eye. There was some vast and deadly scheme in which they were all working; only they didn’t know

it.

—Truth is always treasonous, the captain said, clicking his glass with a soft ferocity on the bar. And now these poor dears are involved in a war. This war is simply the largest mass murder in history. Theirs is the only country that has enough food and gasoline and raw materials. So they’re expending these like mad to wipe out the others in the world who’d like a cut of their riches. In order to preserve their standard of living for a few more years, they’ve dreamed up ideologies. Or their big business has. So they’re at war with nearly everybody else in the world. The rest of the world hates Americans because they’re so crude and stupid and unimaginative. . . . They will win this war. They’ll reduce Europe to a state of fifteen hundred years ago. Then their businessmen and their alphabetical bureaucracies will go into the shambles of Milan, Berlin, and Tokyo and open up new plants. . . . International carpetbaggers. . . . Millions of human beings will be dead, and most of the human feelings will be dead forever. . . . Hurray for our side. . . . We’re destroying all the new ideas and all the little men of the world to make way for our mass production and our mass thinking and our mass entertainment. Then we can go back to our United States, that

green little island in the midst of a smoking world. Then we can kill all the Negroes and the Jews. Then we’ll start on Russia. —Not pessimistic, are you? Hal asked feebly, watching the glowing green eyes. —Me? the captain said. I’m the most optimistic man in the world. I see what is happening to the human race. It gets worse all the time. . . . What an obscene comedy. The parachute captain had an almost effete

—Blow all that, the parachute captain said. You’ve always stalled with me. That’s caused your ruin. You’re a dishonest man, chum. You think of yourself as the center of the universe. . . . And anything that doesn’t fit into your scheme of things gets rationalized away like a piece of rock found on the wrong geologic stratum.

copain du genre féminin.

—Born in the States, sir? I said feebly after a pause. —Born there, corporal, but probably sha’n’t die there. I had ideas of aristocracy without class, of brotherhood without familiarity and sentimentality. And I studied and I read and I admired nature and art. And I said what a piece of work is man, and I believed it. But it looks as though individuality is going out forever. Yet the propaganda assures me that a new age is at hand.

Momma dreamed that she was queen of some gay exclusive club.

Her crowd had something that other groups hadn’t. Momma’s boys had an awareness of having been born alone and sequestered by some deep difference from other men. For this she loved them. And Momma knew something of those four freedoms the Allies were forever preaching. She believed that a minority should be let alone. . . .

That’s what it is, Magda, vomit. Why kid ourselves and talk of love? Love is a constructive force. . . . We only want to destroy ourselves in others because we hate ourselves. . . .

—What will become of us, Esther? When we were young, we could laugh off the whole business. You and I both know that’s what camping is. It’s a Greek mask to hide the fact that our souls are being castrated and drawn and quartered with each fresh affair. What started as a seduction at twelve goes on till we’re senile old aunties, doing it just as a reflex action. . . . —And we’re at the menopause now, Magda. . . . O God, if some hormone would just shrivel up in me and leave me in peace! I hate the thought of making a fool of myself when I turn forty. I’ll see something gorgeous walking down Piccadilly and I’ll make a pass and all England will read of my trial at the Old Bailey. . . . Do you think we would have been happier in Athens, Magda?

Don’t

youth looking for something that doesn’t really exist. Therefore none of us is ever at peace with herself. All bitchery adds up to an attempt to get away from yourself by playing a variety of poses, each one more gruesome and leering than the last. . . . I’m sick to death of it, Esther. I can think of more reasons for not having been born than I can for living. . . . Is there perhaps some nobility stirring in my bones? —Then is there no solution, Magda? the second British sergeant asked wistfully. He cast his eyes about the bar like a novice about to take the veil. —Millions, Esther. But rarely in the thing itself. That’s what tantalizes us all. We play with the thing till it makes of us what we swear we’ll never become, cold-blooded sex machines, dead to love. There are so many ways of sublimating, Esther. . . . But are they truly satisfying either? For some hours I’ve known, though they’ll never come again, I’d cheerfully pass all eternity in hell.

Perhaps some new code may come out of all this . . . I hope so. —And if not? —Why then, the first British sergeant said in drunken triumph, we shall have a chaos far worse than in Momma’s bar this evening. This is merely a polite kind of anarchy, Esther. These people are expressing a desire disapproved of by society. But in relation to the world of 1944, this is just a bunch of gay people letting down their back hair . . . We mustn’t go mad over details, Esther. Big issues are much more important. It is they which should drive us insane if we must be driven at all. . . . All I say is, some compromise must and will be reached. . . . Esther, I’m stinko.

I remember that in Algiers, because I had too much time to think and because the Mediterranean lay in front of me like a soft yet cynical mirror of time, I began to ponder on variety and difference. I lost something, because I became other people by thinking about them. For better or for worse I think I annihilated myself at this time.

The only advancement made by the human race is because some guy discovered pity. He found out that everyone was really quite like himself, with unimportant differences. We all must die alone. And we start dying with our birth. And a thousand years from now we’ll all look equally silly: the movie star, the Ayrab whore, the financier, and the hustler. . . . If only we could publicly acknowledge our silliness for the few years that we are alive, we could then pool whatever dignity we possess. Then life would be worth living for all, instead of for the few.

At the station he was slightly autocratic with the nigra porters. Arriving at five-thirty in the morning, he spent half an hour calling goddam over the telephone wires till he got some action. Rancid from their sleep, a group of drowsy nigras turned up in dungarees. They fumbled around with his baggage, heavy with his impedimenta and Lucinda’s poems. —Goddam it, get a move on, Captain Motes called. Are you still waiting for John Brown? —Yassuh, the nigras said in chorus.

—Guess it’s not often that you see an officer here, eh? he said cheerily to the waitress. —No suh, she squeaked. An dey ain’t supposed to come here at all at all. Ah hates officers. Tinks dere rears doesn’t stink like other folkeses’ does. When dese American men gits a piece of brass on dere shoulders, dey tinks dey’s Mussolini. No suh, ah done want no truck widdem, ah don’t. —Well, there are officers and officers, Captain Motes said, laughing indulgently. —Dere shouldn’t be any officers at all, the nigra waitress said, furrowing her mouth and mopping the other tables. When you gits an army, you gits to killin fore ya knows it. An killin makes trouble to Americans. Dey ain’t used to it, cept on a small scale like in lynchins. An when you makes some better dan udders, you is askin for a bruise. —Wishful thinking, Captain Motes answered, leaving her a nickel tip. There have always been wars and there always will be wars. And there will always be officers and enlisted men. —Dere’s wars, said the nigress, retreating and waving an umber arm, cause a few men wants em. An ah sees yo is one of dose

men. . . . Goomawnin to yo, capting.

In the Louisiana maneuvers Captain Motes’s nigras were captured to the last man while storming Hill Fifty-eight. —Captain, a brigadier general said, you have done a beautiful job in killing all combat

initiative in your men. I hereby hand you the booby prize as an infantry company officer.

Captain Motes knew that as an intelligence officer he could trust himself. Lucinda wept when he told her they were sailing the following morning. He told too the number of ships in the convoy. He guessed also that they’d land on the northwest coast of Africa. —We must rig up a code, lovey, she said panting, so I’ll always know just where you are. And all the other pieces of information a wifey needs for her peace of mind. —Not necessary, he answered smiling and patting her hand. He looked around the restaurant with a hideous penetration, then took something with a wooden handle on it out of his pocket. —Mercy, lovey! What’s that, a grenade? —A base censor stamp. With this on the envelope I can write you every goddam thing that happens. . .

But I remember even then thinking and fearing that we’d come to a day when we too, we rich rich rich Americans, would pay for this mortal sin of waste. We’ve always thought that there was no end to our plenty, that the horn would never dry up. Already I seem to hear the menacing rumblings, like a long-starved stomach. But in Naples in August, 1944, we were on the crest of the wave. We? We were Americans, from the best little old country on God’s green earth. And if you don’t believe me, mister, I’ll knock your teeth in. . . .

And I wondered if perhaps the world must eventually be governed by individuality consecrated and unselfish, rather than by any collectivism of the propagandists, the students, and the politicians. In Naples in August, 1944, I drowned in mass ideologies, but was fished out by separate thinking and will.

He didn’t understand how people could take their time about their shots. Here they had death in their blood, yet they were leisurely and dilatory about receiving from the needle’s point those yellow drops that meant life to them, life truer than the amber drops of gasoline or bubbles of molten gold.

So we came to look upon this Having Sex, this ejaculation without tenderness as the orgasm of a frigidaire. There was no place for it in the scheme of human love. It wasn’t so much bestial as meaningless. For Having Sex meant that the two bodies involved never really knew one another. They just rolled and arose strangers, each loathing the other.

I remember that in Naples I learned that everything in life is a delusion, that all happiness is simply a desire for, and unhappiness a repining of, love. Nothing else matters.

Caro John, ti consiglio di dire a tutti quel che hai visto in Italia . . . Perchè, sai, gl’Italiani non vi odiano, non vi odiano, voi altri americani. . . . Thus I walked often in the Galleria Umberto Primo, that arcade in the center of the city of Naples. Most of the modern world could be seen in ruins there in August, 1944.

I remember that Galleria as something in me remembers my mother’s womb.

This is the reason why I remember the Gallery in Naples. Italy. . . .