WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.240 align:middle line:84% If this machine is not doing right by you, 00:00:03.240 --> 00:00:06.510 align:middle line:90% would you please let me know. 00:00:06.510 --> 00:00:09.400 align:middle line:84% Is that level of voice all right in the back row? 00:00:09.400 --> 00:00:09.900 align:middle line:90% Good. 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:15.650 align:middle line:90% 00:00:15.650 --> 00:00:19.010 align:middle line:84% This is a kind of experiment because what I'm reading from 00:00:19.010 --> 00:00:24.560 align:middle line:84% is an incomplete manuscript and an untested one. 00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:28.430 align:middle line:90% 00:00:28.430 --> 00:00:31.160 align:middle line:84% It started out simply because not 00:00:31.160 --> 00:00:35.498 align:middle line:84% having any book to write I decided I had to write a book. 00:00:35.498 --> 00:00:38.990 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:38.990 --> 00:00:45.410 align:middle line:84% And got fooling around with some ideas 00:00:45.410 --> 00:00:48.770 align:middle line:84% and found that I had already started some of them years ago. 00:00:48.770 --> 00:00:55.460 align:middle line:84% And that here is a story called the Maiden In A Tower, 00:00:55.460 --> 00:00:57.350 align:middle line:84% which I thought might be a beginning. 00:00:57.350 --> 00:01:01.640 align:middle line:84% And the moment I saw it as a beginning of something else, 00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:05.450 align:middle line:84% it occurred to me that what it was a continuation or a return 00:01:05.450 --> 00:01:11.420 align:middle line:84% many years later to the Big Rock Candy Mountain. 00:01:11.420 --> 00:01:15.300 align:middle line:84% So I changed the name of the published story in this 00:01:15.300 --> 00:01:18.950 align:middle line:84% and remodeled it to suit my own ends. 00:01:18.950 --> 00:01:22.700 align:middle line:84% Since it was mine I could do what I wanted with it. 00:01:22.700 --> 00:01:27.290 align:middle line:84% And it seems to be a kind of return 00:01:27.290 --> 00:01:30.350 align:middle line:84% of the one survivor of the family and the Big Rock Candy 00:01:30.350 --> 00:01:32.390 align:middle line:90% Mountain. 00:01:32.390 --> 00:01:37.580 align:middle line:84% Returning to Salt Lake City, Utah 00:01:37.580 --> 00:01:41.810 align:middle line:84% after an absence of 45 years or so. 00:01:41.810 --> 00:01:44.540 align:middle line:84% This seems to be a novel about time, 00:01:44.540 --> 00:01:46.205 align:middle line:90% and about the changes of time. 00:01:46.205 --> 00:01:48.740 align:middle line:90% 00:01:48.740 --> 00:01:51.440 align:middle line:84% And since I already had one story 00:01:51.440 --> 00:01:54.320 align:middle line:84% that I could use for a beginning I cannibalized two others. 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:56.480 align:middle line:84% And somewhere in this manuscript two more 00:01:56.480 --> 00:01:58.880 align:middle line:84% stories are going to get worked in also 00:01:58.880 --> 00:02:03.620 align:middle line:84% with their names changed from the story of publication. 00:02:03.620 --> 00:02:04.880 align:middle line:90% And I will simply-- 00:02:04.880 --> 00:02:09.560 align:middle line:84% because it's hard to excerpt from this thing 00:02:09.560 --> 00:02:16.520 align:middle line:84% and make anything like a single or unified reading 00:02:16.520 --> 00:02:19.250 align:middle line:84% I'm going to simply start at the beginning 00:02:19.250 --> 00:02:22.970 align:middle line:84% and hope that when time runs out we have arrived 00:02:22.970 --> 00:02:26.040 align:middle line:90% at a place where we can stop. 00:02:26.040 --> 00:02:29.480 align:middle line:84% It's easier actually I think for you to start at the beginning. 00:02:29.480 --> 00:02:31.250 align:middle line:84% It's a little more like picking up a book 00:02:31.250 --> 00:02:32.960 align:middle line:90% and reading the first pages. 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:36.020 align:middle line:84% And you don't, in this case, have to go on with it. 00:02:36.020 --> 00:02:37.700 align:middle line:84% That's one of the nice things about it. 00:02:37.700 --> 00:02:41.060 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:41.060 --> 00:02:42.020 align:middle line:90% 00:02:42.020 --> 00:02:47.840 align:middle line:84% This begins I think with a couple of epigraphs. 00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:51.530 align:middle line:90% One from Ivan Turgenev. 00:02:51.530 --> 00:02:53.510 align:middle line:90% The truth is like a lizard. 00:02:53.510 --> 00:02:56.390 align:middle line:84% It leaves its tail in your hand and runs away. 00:02:56.390 --> 00:03:01.040 align:middle line:84% It knows that it will shortly grow another one. 00:03:01.040 --> 00:03:04.820 align:middle line:84% And the second from Gertrude Stein. 00:03:04.820 --> 00:03:08.060 align:middle line:84% Think of anything, of Cowboys, of movies, of detective 00:03:08.060 --> 00:03:11.330 align:middle line:84% stories, of anybody who goes anywhere, or stays at home 00:03:11.330 --> 00:03:14.960 align:middle line:84% and is an American, and you will realize that it is something 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:17.480 align:middle line:84% strictly American to conceive a space that 00:03:17.480 --> 00:03:18.470 align:middle line:90% is filled with moving. 00:03:18.470 --> 00:03:24.570 align:middle line:90% 00:03:24.570 --> 00:03:26.780 align:middle line:90% So this is the beginning. 00:03:26.780 --> 00:03:30.920 align:middle line:84% The short story with its names changed. 00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:36.020 align:middle line:84% Originally called Maiden In A Tower. 00:03:36.020 --> 00:03:38.330 align:middle line:84% The highway entering Salt Lake City from the West 00:03:38.330 --> 00:03:40.820 align:middle line:84% curves around the southern end of Great Salt Lake 00:03:40.820 --> 00:03:43.430 align:middle line:84% past Black Rock and the ratty beaches. 00:03:43.430 --> 00:03:46.460 align:middle line:84% Swings North, away from the smoke of the smelter town's, 00:03:46.460 --> 00:03:49.820 align:middle line:84% veers toward the dry lake bed where a long time 00:03:49.820 --> 00:03:51.860 align:middle line:84% ago the domes of the Saltair Pavilion 00:03:51.860 --> 00:03:55.040 align:middle line:84% used to rise like an Arabic exhalation 00:03:55.040 --> 00:03:57.800 align:middle line:84% and straightens out eastward again. 00:03:57.800 --> 00:04:01.100 align:middle line:84% Ahead across the white flats, the city and its mountains 00:04:01.100 --> 00:04:03.800 align:middle line:90% are a mirage or a mural. 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:06.680 align:middle line:84% Metropolitan towers, then houses and trees 00:04:06.680 --> 00:04:12.440 align:middle line:84% and channeled streets, and then the mountain wall. 00:04:12.440 --> 00:04:16.730 align:middle line:84% Driving into that, smelling the foul, exciting salt flat odor, 00:04:16.730 --> 00:04:19.910 align:middle line:84% I begin to feel like the newsreel diver whom 00:04:19.910 --> 00:04:25.130 align:middle line:84% the reverse projector sucks feet first out of his splash. 00:04:25.130 --> 00:04:27.380 align:middle line:84% Perhaps fatigued from the hard day and a half 00:04:27.380 --> 00:04:30.290 align:middle line:84% across the desert explains both the mirage-like look 00:04:30.290 --> 00:04:32.420 align:middle line:84% of the city, and my own sense that I'm 00:04:32.420 --> 00:04:36.110 align:middle line:84% being run backward toward the beginning of the reel. 00:04:36.110 --> 00:04:38.690 align:middle line:84% Perhaps a subconscious awareness of my errand 00:04:38.690 --> 00:04:40.560 align:middle line:90% has something to do with it. 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:43.070 align:middle line:84% It is not the first time I returned to Salt Lake 00:04:43.070 --> 00:04:47.540 align:middle line:84% to bury someone, but both of those previous homecomings, 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:51.440 align:middle line:84% dim and silvery in my memory, almost subliminal, 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:53.990 align:middle line:84% were from the East, through the mountains. 00:04:53.990 --> 00:04:56.570 align:middle line:84% This route suggests something else. 00:04:56.570 --> 00:04:59.490 align:middle line:84% This is the road out which at 16 or 17 00:04:59.490 --> 00:05:03.560 align:middle line:84% I remember driving much too fast in a stripped-down Ford bugs 00:05:03.560 --> 00:05:07.170 align:middle line:84% with yelling companions in the rumble seat. 00:05:07.170 --> 00:05:09.290 align:middle line:84% We must have driven back, too, but I 00:05:09.290 --> 00:05:11.510 align:middle line:90% remember only the going out. 00:05:11.510 --> 00:05:16.220 align:middle line:84% To see the city head on like this is strange to me. 00:05:16.220 --> 00:05:19.640 align:middle line:84% Past middle age, tired, but alert with the odd notion 00:05:19.640 --> 00:05:23.150 align:middle line:84% that I am returning both through distance and through time, 00:05:23.150 --> 00:05:25.820 align:middle line:84% I passed the airport and the expanding edge 00:05:25.820 --> 00:05:28.730 align:middle line:84% of town industries and the fairgrounds, 00:05:28.730 --> 00:05:32.600 align:middle line:84% and slow for the first streets of the city. 00:05:32.600 --> 00:05:36.200 align:middle line:84% 45 years have made differences, but they do not seem critical. 00:05:36.200 --> 00:05:38.930 align:middle line:84% The city has spread a good deal, and I 00:05:38.930 --> 00:05:41.570 align:middle line:84% am surprised after the desert by the green luxuriance 00:05:41.570 --> 00:05:43.220 align:middle line:90% of the trees. 00:05:43.220 --> 00:05:45.320 align:middle line:84% But the streets are still a half mile wide, 00:05:45.320 --> 00:05:48.470 align:middle line:84% and water still runs in at least some of the gutters. 00:05:48.470 --> 00:05:51.440 align:middle line:84% It really is a good town, clean, with a freshness about it 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:53.270 align:middle line:90% that revives me. 00:05:53.270 --> 00:05:54.890 align:middle line:84% Passing the Brigham Young monument 00:05:54.890 --> 00:05:58.160 align:middle line:84% I nod gravely to the figure with the outstretched hand. 00:05:58.160 --> 00:05:59.655 align:middle line:84% And like a native returning, I turn 00:05:59.655 --> 00:06:01.280 align:middle line:84% at the light in the middle of the block 00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:04.010 align:middle line:84% and pull into the parking garage that has replaced 00:06:04.010 --> 00:06:06.200 align:middle line:90% the old Deseret Gymnasium. 00:06:06.200 --> 00:06:08.000 align:middle line:90% That change shocks me a little. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:12.920 align:middle line:84% The old rat trap gym held a lot of the boy I used to be. 00:06:12.920 --> 00:06:14.420 align:middle line:90% The doorman collars my bag. 00:06:14.420 --> 00:06:17.240 align:middle line:84% A youth climbs in to take the car underground. 00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:20.240 align:middle line:84% Still running pleasantly backward into the reel, 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:23.270 align:middle line:84% I go into the not much changed lobby and register. 00:06:23.270 --> 00:06:25.850 align:middle line:84% And I'm carried up the not much changed elevators 00:06:25.850 --> 00:06:28.220 align:middle line:90% to the kind of room I remember. 00:06:28.220 --> 00:06:29.840 align:middle line:84% Such a room as we used to take when 00:06:29.840 --> 00:06:32.900 align:middle line:84% we held fraternity and class parties in the hotel 00:06:32.900 --> 00:06:35.600 align:middle line:90% back in prohibition times. 00:06:35.600 --> 00:06:37.100 align:middle line:84% During at least one of those years 00:06:37.100 --> 00:06:40.130 align:middle line:84% I was on a diet for ulcers and couldn't drink. 00:06:40.130 --> 00:06:43.100 align:middle line:84% But I used to retire religiously with the boys, 00:06:43.100 --> 00:06:46.340 align:middle line:84% gargle raw Green River Red Eye and spit it out again 00:06:46.340 --> 00:06:51.020 align:middle line:84% in the wash bowl, only for the pleasure of lawbreaking 00:06:51.020 --> 00:06:53.330 align:middle line:84% and of carrying a distinguished breath back 00:06:53.330 --> 00:06:54.980 align:middle line:90% to the ballroom with the girls. 00:06:54.980 --> 00:06:58.430 align:middle line:90% 00:06:58.430 --> 00:07:01.430 align:middle line:84% For a second I started thinking, touched by my giddy 00:07:01.430 --> 00:07:04.430 align:middle line:90% and forgotten youth. 00:07:04.430 --> 00:07:06.770 align:middle line:84% Later, fresh from the shower with a towel around me, 00:07:06.770 --> 00:07:09.320 align:middle line:84% I pick up the telephone book and hunt up the Merrill Funeral 00:07:09.320 --> 00:07:10.550 align:middle line:90% Parlor. 00:07:10.550 --> 00:07:12.290 align:middle line:84% But when I have found it I am troubled, 00:07:12.290 --> 00:07:14.450 align:middle line:90% struck by the address. 00:07:14.450 --> 00:07:18.680 align:middle line:84% 363 South Temple on the Avenue side, 00:07:18.680 --> 00:07:22.070 align:middle line:84% somewhere around D Street near the cathedral. 00:07:22.070 --> 00:07:24.380 align:middle line:84% I try to visualize that once familiar street, 00:07:24.380 --> 00:07:28.340 align:middle line:84% but it's all gone except for a general picture of tall stone 00:07:28.340 --> 00:07:30.230 align:middle line:84% and brick houses with high porches, 00:07:30.230 --> 00:07:33.110 align:middle line:84% and lawns overtaken by plantain weeds. 00:07:33.110 --> 00:07:37.610 align:middle line:84% One, the one Holly had lived in, had a three-story stone tower. 00:07:37.610 --> 00:07:40.190 align:middle line:90% 00:07:40.190 --> 00:07:42.080 align:middle line:84% That tower, with all the Jazz age 00:07:42.080 --> 00:07:43.940 align:middle line:90% bohemians crawling in and out. 00:07:43.940 --> 00:07:47.330 align:middle line:84% Havelock, Ellis, Freud, Mencken, the memoirs of Fanny Hill, 00:07:47.330 --> 00:07:49.670 align:middle line:84% Love's Coming of Age, The Well of Loneliness, 00:07:49.670 --> 00:07:52.070 align:middle line:90% Harry Kemp, Frank Harris. 00:07:52.070 --> 00:07:55.960 align:middle line:84% My Lord, I'm flooded with delighted recollection. 00:07:55.960 --> 00:07:57.950 align:middle line:90% They're all before me. 00:07:57.950 --> 00:08:01.820 align:middle line:84% Reed-necked aesthetes, provincial cognoscenti, 00:08:01.820 --> 00:08:07.070 align:middle line:84% sad, sexy yokels, lovers burning with a hard gem-like flame. 00:08:07.070 --> 00:08:08.750 align:middle line:84% A homosexual or two trying to look 00:08:08.750 --> 00:08:12.740 align:middle line:84% blasted and corroded by secret sin. 00:08:12.740 --> 00:08:14.930 align:middle line:84% Painters of vile green landscapes, 00:08:14.930 --> 00:08:17.990 align:middle line:84% cubist photographers, poets and iconoclasts, 00:08:17.990 --> 00:08:20.510 align:middle line:84% scorners of the bourgeoisie, makers 00:08:20.510 --> 00:08:24.080 align:middle line:84% of cherished prose, dream tellers, correspondence school 00:08:24.080 --> 00:08:26.090 align:middle line:90% psychoanalysts. 00:08:26.090 --> 00:08:27.800 align:middle line:84% They swarmed through Holly's apartment 00:08:27.800 --> 00:08:30.170 align:middle line:84% and eddied around her queenly shape with noises 00:08:30.170 --> 00:08:32.630 align:middle line:90% like breaking china. 00:08:32.630 --> 00:08:38.330 align:middle line:84% I remember her in her gold gown, a Proserpine or a Circe. 00:08:38.330 --> 00:08:40.982 align:middle line:84% For an instant she is slim and tall in my mind, 00:08:40.982 --> 00:08:42.440 align:middle line:84% and I see her laughing in the midst 00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:44.450 align:middle line:90% of the excitement she created. 00:08:44.450 --> 00:08:48.620 align:middle line:84% And how her hair, smooth black, and her eyes, very dark blue, 00:08:48.620 --> 00:08:53.162 align:middle line:84% and how she wears massive gold hoops in her ears. 00:08:53.162 --> 00:08:54.620 align:middle line:84% I write the number down and tuck it 00:08:54.620 --> 00:08:56.780 align:middle line:84% into the pocket of the seersucker jacket laid out 00:08:56.780 --> 00:08:58.160 align:middle line:90% on the bed. 00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:00.410 align:middle line:84% But when I have dressed and gone down 00:09:00.410 --> 00:09:03.470 align:middle line:84% and I'm walking in the blazing heat of South Temple, 00:09:03.470 --> 00:09:06.980 align:middle line:84% past the Church offices, Beehive House, Lion House, the Eagle 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:10.430 align:middle line:84% Gate, the Elks Club and Alta Club, 00:09:10.430 --> 00:09:12.650 align:middle line:84% the old and new apartment houses. 00:09:12.650 --> 00:09:15.050 align:middle line:84% I begin to look at numbers with a feeling that approaches 00:09:15.050 --> 00:09:18.800 align:middle line:84% suspense, and I search not so much for the Merrill funeral 00:09:18.800 --> 00:09:23.150 align:middle line:84% parlor as for the house with the round stone tower. 00:09:23.150 --> 00:09:24.950 align:middle line:84% Finally, just past the cathedral, 00:09:24.950 --> 00:09:29.300 align:middle line:84% I see it lifting across the roof of a mansion gone to seed. 00:09:29.300 --> 00:09:32.570 align:middle line:84% And in another 30 paces I can see the sign and the new brass 00:09:32.570 --> 00:09:35.690 align:middle line:84% numbers on the riser of the top porch step. 00:09:35.690 --> 00:09:36.770 align:middle line:90% It is the very house. 00:09:36.770 --> 00:09:39.350 align:middle line:90% 00:09:39.350 --> 00:09:40.970 align:middle line:84% Quickly I look around for landmarks 00:09:40.970 --> 00:09:43.190 align:middle line:90% to restore and brace my memory. 00:09:43.190 --> 00:09:45.740 align:middle line:84% The street does not seem much changed. 00:09:45.740 --> 00:09:49.730 align:middle line:84% Some of the old maples and hickories I remember are gone. 00:09:49.730 --> 00:09:52.700 align:middle line:84% And the terrace rolls down with an unfamiliar smooth nap 00:09:52.700 --> 00:09:54.110 align:middle line:90% of grass. 00:09:54.110 --> 00:09:57.410 align:middle line:84% The porch no longer carries its sagging swing. 00:09:57.410 --> 00:10:02.390 align:middle line:84% And the porch and steps have been renewed and painted. 00:10:02.390 --> 00:10:04.340 align:middle line:84% The doors as I remember it, with rays 00:10:04.340 --> 00:10:06.170 align:middle line:84% of colored glass in its fan light, 00:10:06.170 --> 00:10:09.200 align:middle line:84% and the doorknob's massive handful is an almost startling 00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:10.550 align:middle line:90% familiarity. 00:10:10.550 --> 00:10:12.920 align:middle line:90% But inside all has changed. 00:10:12.920 --> 00:10:14.510 align:middle line:90% Partitions have been gutted out. 00:10:14.510 --> 00:10:17.690 align:middle line:84% The stairs now mount or levitate a spiral 00:10:17.690 --> 00:10:20.060 align:middle line:84% of white spokes and mahogany rails 00:10:20.060 --> 00:10:23.030 align:middle line:84% from an expansive, plum-colored carpet. 00:10:23.030 --> 00:10:24.680 align:middle line:84% Instead of the cupping old parquetry 00:10:24.680 --> 00:10:27.320 align:middle line:90% my feet find softness, hushness. 00:10:27.320 --> 00:10:30.810 align:middle line:84% The smells are of paint and flowers. 00:10:30.810 --> 00:10:32.810 align:middle line:84% I am eyeing the stair when a young man comes out 00:10:32.810 --> 00:10:34.640 align:middle line:84% of the office on the left and bends his head 00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:37.057 align:middle line:84% a little leftward and says softly and pleasantly, yes sir, 00:10:37.057 --> 00:10:39.350 align:middle line:90% can I help? 00:10:39.350 --> 00:10:44.300 align:middle line:84% I bring myself back to what I have driven 800 miles to do. 00:10:44.300 --> 00:10:45.560 align:middle line:90% I say, "I'm Bruce Mason. 00:10:45.560 --> 00:10:47.960 align:middle line:84% My aunt, Mrs. Webb, died day before yesterday 00:10:47.960 --> 00:10:49.940 align:middle line:90% at the Julia Hicks home. 00:10:49.940 --> 00:10:53.152 align:middle line:84% They telephoned me she would be here." 00:10:53.152 --> 00:10:54.860 align:middle line:84% "We've been expecting you," the young man 00:10:54.860 --> 00:10:56.210 align:middle line:90% says, and puts out his hand. 00:10:56.210 --> 00:10:58.100 align:middle line:90% "My name is McBride." 00:10:58.100 --> 00:11:00.740 align:middle line:84% A brief handshake, a moment when the young man regards me 00:11:00.740 --> 00:11:01.640 align:middle line:90% with his head tilted. 00:11:01.640 --> 00:11:03.200 align:middle line:90% "Did you fly in?" 00:11:03.200 --> 00:11:04.220 align:middle line:90% "Drove." 00:11:04.220 --> 00:11:06.230 align:middle line:84% "All the way from San Francisco?" 00:11:06.230 --> 00:11:08.480 align:middle line:90% "I slept a few hours in Elko." 00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:09.830 align:middle line:90% "It wasn't so bad, then." 00:11:09.830 --> 00:11:12.120 align:middle line:90% "Oh, no, not bad at all." 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:14.120 align:middle line:90% In my mind is a faint amusement. 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:15.860 align:middle line:84% This young man might have been left over 00:11:15.860 --> 00:11:17.960 align:middle line:90% from one of Holly's parties. 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:20.240 align:middle line:84% He looks better equipped to write fragile verses 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:23.270 align:middle line:90% than to deal with corpses. 00:11:23.270 --> 00:11:25.230 align:middle line:84% "She's in the parlor just back here," he said. 00:11:25.230 --> 00:11:25.970 align:middle line:90% "Would you like to see her? 00:11:25.970 --> 00:11:26.870 align:middle line:90% She looks very nice." 00:11:26.870 --> 00:11:30.230 align:middle line:90% 00:11:30.230 --> 00:11:32.540 align:middle line:84% This is, of course, McBride's function. 00:11:32.540 --> 00:11:35.900 align:middle line:84% He's the one who makes them look nice. 00:11:35.900 --> 00:11:37.040 align:middle line:90% "Maybe later," I say. 00:11:37.040 --> 00:11:39.740 align:middle line:84% "I expect there are some details we ought to settle." 00:11:39.740 --> 00:11:40.850 align:middle line:90% "Of course," McBride says. 00:11:40.850 --> 00:11:43.130 align:middle line:84% "If you just step in here we can look at caskets 00:11:43.130 --> 00:11:44.660 align:middle line:90% when we've done the paperwork. 00:11:44.660 --> 00:11:47.120 align:middle line:84% You have a family cemetery plot, I believe? 00:11:47.120 --> 00:11:49.460 align:middle line:84% Should only take a minute for this." 00:11:49.460 --> 00:11:51.560 align:middle line:84% He holds the door wide, standing gracefully 00:11:51.560 --> 00:11:55.400 align:middle line:84% and deferentially at arm's length, and ushers me through. 00:11:55.400 --> 00:11:58.130 align:middle line:84% A very few minutes suffice to settle the details. 00:11:58.130 --> 00:12:01.700 align:middle line:84% We rise, facing each other across the desk coolly 00:12:01.700 --> 00:12:04.507 align:middle line:84% glimmering in the muted North light. 00:12:04.507 --> 00:12:05.840 align:middle line:90% "Now would you like to see her?" 00:12:05.840 --> 00:12:07.700 align:middle line:90% McBride says. 00:12:07.700 --> 00:12:09.530 align:middle line:90% Clearly he takes pride. 00:12:09.530 --> 00:12:11.960 align:middle line:84% He probably stands back, estimating its effects 00:12:11.960 --> 00:12:14.012 align:middle line:90% like a window dresser. 00:12:14.012 --> 00:12:15.470 align:middle line:84% "All right," I say, though it's not 00:12:15.470 --> 00:12:17.120 align:middle line:90% as if I had any tears to shed. 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:19.940 align:middle line:84% I never saw her but three or four times in my life 00:12:19.940 --> 00:12:20.930 align:middle line:90% when I was just a boy. 00:12:20.930 --> 00:12:24.920 align:middle line:84% And she's been senile for 10 years. 00:12:24.920 --> 00:12:27.500 align:middle line:84% McBride guides me around the unfamiliar stairs 00:12:27.500 --> 00:12:29.960 align:middle line:84% to where the plum carpet flows smoothly into what 00:12:29.960 --> 00:12:32.150 align:middle line:90% was once perhaps a dining room. 00:12:32.150 --> 00:12:36.000 align:middle line:84% She does look nice, very sweet and peaceful. 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:38.870 align:middle line:84% Which I can't believe she did when she was alive. 00:12:38.870 --> 00:12:45.890 align:middle line:84% I go forward to the table with a basket of house gladioli 00:12:45.890 --> 00:12:48.620 align:middle line:84% at its foot to remind myself that this 00:12:48.620 --> 00:12:51.380 align:middle line:84% is my father's sister, the only relative on that side 00:12:51.380 --> 00:12:54.890 align:middle line:84% that I ever even saw, makes me feel nothing. 00:12:54.890 --> 00:12:56.900 align:middle line:84% It was only a freak that she came to Salt Lake 00:12:56.900 --> 00:13:00.770 align:middle line:84% at all, evidently with hope of attaching herself to my father 00:13:00.770 --> 00:13:03.620 align:middle line:84% and arriving when he was already dead and buried. 00:13:03.620 --> 00:13:06.050 align:middle line:84% So that she became, for lack of anyone else to look 00:13:06.050 --> 00:13:09.560 align:middle line:84% after her, my unwanted obligation. 00:13:09.560 --> 00:13:12.050 align:middle line:84% Though I have taken care of her for half her life, 00:13:12.050 --> 00:13:15.470 align:middle line:84% I can stir up no feeling for her wax figure. 00:13:15.470 --> 00:13:17.250 align:middle line:84% I suppose if I had been attached to her 00:13:17.250 --> 00:13:19.610 align:middle line:84% I might think her peaceful and even touching, 00:13:19.610 --> 00:13:21.650 align:middle line:90% as McBride wants me to. 00:13:21.650 --> 00:13:24.800 align:middle line:84% All I can think is that she looks well embalmed. 00:13:24.800 --> 00:13:29.720 align:middle line:84% But then, she was probably close to mummified when she died. 00:13:29.720 --> 00:13:32.840 align:middle line:84% Old Aunt Margaret, barely known in my childhood, 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:36.350 align:middle line:84% and in my maturity only an obligation and an expense, 00:13:36.350 --> 00:13:39.470 align:middle line:84% thrusts her sharp nose, sharp cheekbones, 00:13:39.470 --> 00:13:42.350 align:middle line:84% and withered lips up through the rouge and lipstick. 00:13:42.350 --> 00:13:44.390 align:middle line:84% And is, if she is not a total stranger, 00:13:44.390 --> 00:13:48.920 align:middle line:84% only old Aunt Margaret, mercifully dead at 86. 00:13:48.920 --> 00:13:51.680 align:middle line:84% I can't even see in her face any resemblance to my father, 00:13:51.680 --> 00:13:53.630 align:middle line:84% and I feel none of the conventional disgust 00:13:53.630 --> 00:13:56.510 align:middle line:84% with young McBride, who tampers with the dead. 00:13:56.510 --> 00:13:59.165 align:middle line:84% Considering what he had to work with, he's done pretty well. 00:13:59.165 --> 00:14:02.480 align:middle line:90% 00:14:02.480 --> 00:14:04.580 align:middle line:84% Back in the hall again I stand looking up 00:14:04.580 --> 00:14:08.420 align:middle line:84% the spiral stairs, apparently as unsupportive as the beanstalk, 00:14:08.420 --> 00:14:11.240 align:middle line:84% and remember a time when Holly and two roommates-- 00:14:11.240 --> 00:14:12.740 align:middle line:90% Was Nola one of them? 00:14:12.740 --> 00:14:14.960 align:middle line:90% No, she came later. 00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:17.990 align:middle line:84% --came down the shabby old steps arguing about the proportions 00:14:17.990 --> 00:14:20.340 align:middle line:90% of the perfect female figure. 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:21.920 align:middle line:84% And I met them on the second landing. 00:14:21.920 --> 00:14:23.930 align:middle line:84% And like a chorus line they raised their skirts 00:14:23.930 --> 00:14:25.730 align:middle line:84% and thrust out their right legs before me, 00:14:25.730 --> 00:14:28.460 align:middle line:84% clamoring to know which was the most shapely. 00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:32.270 align:middle line:84% An undergraduate Paris and three demanding goddesses. 00:14:32.270 --> 00:14:33.050 align:middle line:90% I picked Holly. 00:14:33.050 --> 00:14:35.930 align:middle line:90% Why not? 00:14:35.930 --> 00:14:38.330 align:middle line:90% McBride is in the office door. 00:14:38.330 --> 00:14:40.400 align:middle line:84% "We've just redone the whole place," he says. 00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:42.740 align:middle line:84% "It was the home of a Park City silver king originally, 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:45.680 align:middle line:90% but it's all rundown." 00:14:45.680 --> 00:14:47.660 align:middle line:84% I continue to look up the stairs. 00:14:47.660 --> 00:14:49.820 align:middle line:84% McBride's information is no more important 00:14:49.820 --> 00:14:52.130 align:middle line:84% than the decorative changes, but upstairs there 00:14:52.130 --> 00:14:54.290 align:middle line:90% is something that is important. 00:14:54.290 --> 00:14:57.440 align:middle line:84% It pulls at me like an upward draft. 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:00.410 align:middle line:84% "I used to know this house years and years ago," I say. 00:15:00.410 --> 00:15:04.290 align:middle line:84% "Some people I knew had an apartment on the third floor." 00:15:04.290 --> 00:15:04.790 align:middle line:90% "Really? 00:15:04.790 --> 00:15:06.870 align:middle line:90% The front one or the back?" 00:15:06.870 --> 00:15:07.370 align:middle line:90% "Front. 00:15:07.370 --> 00:15:09.950 align:middle line:84% The one with the round tower window." 00:15:09.950 --> 00:15:11.950 align:middle line:84% "Oh, yes," McBride says, "we haven't done much 00:15:11.950 --> 00:15:15.260 align:middle line:90% to that yet, just painted it." 00:15:15.260 --> 00:15:17.360 align:middle line:90% "I wonder," I say. 00:15:17.360 --> 00:15:19.820 align:middle line:84% And make a little deprecatory gesture, 00:15:19.820 --> 00:15:23.690 align:middle line:84% and feel irritably ashamed, like a middle-aged man recalling 00:15:23.690 --> 00:15:26.420 align:middle line:84% last night's party and his own unseemly capers, 00:15:26.420 --> 00:15:29.270 align:middle line:84% and his pawing of the host's wife. 00:15:29.270 --> 00:15:32.750 align:middle line:84% It's fatuous to want to go up there, yet I do. 00:15:32.750 --> 00:15:34.400 align:middle line:84% "Go on up if you'd like," McBride said. 00:15:34.400 --> 00:15:37.860 align:middle line:84% "The only thing, there's a woman laid out there." 00:15:37.860 --> 00:15:40.230 align:middle line:84% "Well, then that wouldn't matter, if you don't mind." 00:15:40.230 --> 00:15:42.350 align:middle line:90% "She's presentable." 00:15:42.350 --> 00:15:44.120 align:middle line:90% For a moment I hang on the word. 00:15:44.120 --> 00:15:46.910 align:middle line:84% McBride's professional vanity is one of the odder kinds. 00:15:46.910 --> 00:15:51.270 align:middle line:90% 00:15:51.270 --> 00:15:53.010 align:middle line:84% And I'm annoyed that a corpse should 00:15:53.010 --> 00:15:57.060 align:middle line:84% intrude upon a sentimental but perfectly legitimate impulse. 00:15:57.060 --> 00:16:01.620 align:middle line:84% And I put my hand on the mahogany rail, maybe I will. 00:16:01.620 --> 00:16:03.480 align:middle line:84% The second floor hall at whose doors 00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:05.490 align:middle line:84% I have knocked and entered is as much 00:16:05.490 --> 00:16:06.990 align:middle line:90% changed as the ground floor. 00:16:06.990 --> 00:16:09.060 align:middle line:84% But up the second flight of stairs 00:16:09.060 --> 00:16:11.970 align:middle line:84% I mount into a growing familiarity, 00:16:11.970 --> 00:16:16.560 align:middle line:84% and I climb against the pressure of a crowd of ghosts. 00:16:16.560 --> 00:16:18.360 align:middle line:84% The carpet ends at the stair head. 00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:20.820 align:middle line:84% I put my feet down softly and hold my breath 00:16:20.820 --> 00:16:22.680 align:middle line:84% with a wild notion that I hear voices 00:16:22.680 --> 00:16:25.320 align:middle line:84% from the door of Holly's old apartment. 00:16:25.320 --> 00:16:30.690 align:middle line:84% Up these stairs 100, 200 times, through how long, a year? 00:16:30.690 --> 00:16:34.170 align:middle line:84% I came with books or bottles or manuscripts in my hands, 00:16:34.170 --> 00:16:37.230 align:middle line:84% and it seems to me now, an incomparable capacity 00:16:37.230 --> 00:16:39.990 align:middle line:90% for enthusiasm in my heart. 00:16:39.990 --> 00:16:42.630 align:middle line:84% From the high burlap-hung windows of the apartment 00:16:42.630 --> 00:16:45.000 align:middle line:84% we let our liquid ridicule fall on the streets 00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:46.980 align:middle line:90% of the bourgeois city. 00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:49.290 align:middle line:84% I half expect as I move into the doorway 00:16:49.290 --> 00:16:52.530 align:middle line:84% to see their faces look up enquiringly from chair 00:16:52.530 --> 00:16:55.230 align:middle line:90% and couch and floor. 00:16:55.230 --> 00:16:57.570 align:middle line:84% But in the room there's only the dead woman, 00:16:57.570 --> 00:17:01.110 align:middle line:90% and she's not looking at me. 00:17:01.110 --> 00:17:06.599 align:middle line:84% She lies on a wheeled table, with beside her one stiff chair 00:17:06.599 --> 00:17:09.329 align:middle line:84% and a taboret bearing a bowl of flowers. 00:17:09.329 --> 00:17:13.200 align:middle line:84% All of it arranged as if for a macabre still life. 00:17:13.200 --> 00:17:15.569 align:middle line:84% Looking toward the windows across the woman's body 00:17:15.569 --> 00:17:17.760 align:middle line:84% I see how the light of afternoon blurs 00:17:17.760 --> 00:17:21.390 align:middle line:90% in her carefully waved hair. 00:17:21.390 --> 00:17:24.300 align:middle line:84% For perhaps a minute I simply stand in the doorway, 00:17:24.300 --> 00:17:28.230 align:middle line:84% stopped partly by the body and partly by the sensation 00:17:28.230 --> 00:17:30.660 align:middle line:90% of an obscure threat. 00:17:30.660 --> 00:17:32.370 align:middle line:84% I'm walking in a strange neighborhood, 00:17:32.370 --> 00:17:36.540 align:middle line:84% and I need my own gang around me. 00:17:36.540 --> 00:17:39.990 align:middle line:84% In Holly's time the tower bay held an old upright piano, 00:17:39.990 --> 00:17:42.570 align:middle line:84% its backside exposed to the room like the hanging 00:17:42.570 --> 00:17:45.000 align:middle line:90% seat of a child's sleepers. 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:48.390 align:middle line:84% Afternoons, evenings, Sundays, and holiday mornings 00:17:48.390 --> 00:17:51.390 align:middle line:84% there were loud four hand renderings of 12th Street Rag 00:17:51.390 --> 00:17:53.700 align:middle line:90% and St. Louis Blues. 00:17:53.700 --> 00:17:55.320 align:middle line:84% On at least one Christmas morning 00:17:55.320 --> 00:17:58.950 align:middle line:84% we sang carols around it, syncopating them wickedly. 00:17:58.950 --> 00:18:00.660 align:middle line:84% That was the morning when I brought Holly 00:18:00.660 --> 00:18:04.290 align:middle line:84% the facsimile copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 00:18:04.290 --> 00:18:07.110 align:middle line:84% a mutinous book full of mottoes for our personalities 00:18:07.110 --> 00:18:10.110 align:middle line:90% and our times. 00:18:10.110 --> 00:18:12.480 align:middle line:84% But what I remember now, hanging in the doorway, 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:14.760 align:middle line:84% is how in some lull in the bedlam that always went 00:18:14.760 --> 00:18:17.910 align:middle line:84% on there we found ourselves smiling foolishly at each other 00:18:17.910 --> 00:18:19.350 align:middle line:90% by the piano. 00:18:19.350 --> 00:18:21.060 align:middle line:84% And she put up her hands to my face 00:18:21.060 --> 00:18:25.530 align:middle line:84% and kissed me sweet and soft, a kiss like a happy child. 00:18:25.530 --> 00:18:27.960 align:middle line:84% I realize that I remembered that kiss before, 00:18:27.960 --> 00:18:28.830 align:middle line:90% sleeping or waking. 00:18:28.830 --> 00:18:31.350 align:middle line:90% 00:18:31.350 --> 00:18:34.530 align:middle line:84% I feel the stairs in my legs, the years in my mind 00:18:34.530 --> 00:18:36.480 align:middle line:84% as I go in softly past the woman who 00:18:36.480 --> 00:18:38.670 align:middle line:90% lies so quietly on her back. 00:18:38.670 --> 00:18:41.460 align:middle line:84% And when I've almost past her I turn and search her face, 00:18:41.460 --> 00:18:43.890 align:middle line:84% as if I might surprise in it some expression 00:18:43.890 --> 00:18:48.090 align:middle line:84% meaningful to this wry and confusing return. 00:18:48.090 --> 00:18:51.570 align:middle line:90% She's a plain woman, perhaps 50. 00:18:51.570 --> 00:18:53.130 align:middle line:84% McBride has not yet made her look 00:18:53.130 --> 00:18:55.440 align:middle line:90% nice with lipstick and rouge. 00:18:55.440 --> 00:18:57.390 align:middle line:84% She wears a simple black dress, but she 00:18:57.390 --> 00:19:00.930 align:middle line:84% has a Navajo squash blossom necklace around her throat. 00:19:00.930 --> 00:19:04.350 align:middle line:84% It strikes me as a remarkable piece of realism. 00:19:04.350 --> 00:19:07.320 align:middle line:84% Perhaps something she especially liked, and stubbornly went 00:19:07.320 --> 00:19:11.040 align:middle line:84% on wearing even past an age when primitive costume jewelry 00:19:11.040 --> 00:19:12.340 align:middle line:90% became her. 00:19:12.340 --> 00:19:16.290 align:middle line:84% It gives her a touching, naively rakish air. 00:19:16.290 --> 00:19:18.600 align:middle line:84% Yet she sheds a chill around her, 00:19:18.600 --> 00:19:21.720 align:middle line:84% and her silence spreads to fill the room. 00:19:21.720 --> 00:19:24.930 align:middle line:84% Hardly a sound comes through the stone walls. 00:19:24.930 --> 00:19:27.300 align:middle line:84% In the old days, there was always the piano banging, 00:19:27.300 --> 00:19:30.270 align:middle line:84% the phonograph going, 2 or 6 or 16 voices 00:19:30.270 --> 00:19:32.790 align:middle line:90% making cosmic conversation. 00:19:32.790 --> 00:19:34.950 align:middle line:84% And I cannot remember ever seeing the apartment 00:19:34.950 --> 00:19:36.480 align:middle line:90% in daylight. 00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:39.240 align:middle line:84% The windows were always shrouded in their artistically frayed 00:19:39.240 --> 00:19:43.350 align:middle line:84% burlap, and the light was from lamps, most of them 00:19:43.350 --> 00:19:45.270 align:middle line:84% low on the floor and some of them, at least, 00:19:45.270 --> 00:19:47.160 align:middle line:90% with red globes in them. 00:19:47.160 --> 00:19:50.340 align:middle line:84% And always the smell of sandalwood, 00:19:50.340 --> 00:19:52.950 align:middle line:90% like a Chinese whorehouse. 00:19:52.950 --> 00:19:54.750 align:middle line:84% Pitying and entranced, I sit down 00:19:54.750 --> 00:19:58.320 align:middle line:84% on the window seat overlooking the reach of South Temple. 00:19:58.320 --> 00:20:01.020 align:middle line:84% Directly across is a Five Minute Car Wash 00:20:01.020 --> 00:20:04.740 align:middle line:84% with a big apron of concrete and a spic dazzle of white paint 00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:06.960 align:middle line:90% and red tiles. 00:20:06.960 --> 00:20:10.140 align:middle line:84% In the times I remember, that lot held a peewee golf course, 00:20:10.140 --> 00:20:13.440 align:middle line:84% where men in shirtsleeves, women in summer dresses, 00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:17.010 align:middle line:84% young couples loud with laughter putted little white balls 00:20:17.010 --> 00:20:20.250 align:middle line:84% along precise, green alleys of artificial grass, 00:20:20.250 --> 00:20:23.190 align:middle line:84% and over gentle and predictable bridges and causeways 00:20:23.190 --> 00:20:26.610 align:middle line:90% into numbered holes. 00:20:26.610 --> 00:20:29.580 align:middle line:84% "Look at them," Holly said to me once as we sat in the tower bay 00:20:29.580 --> 00:20:31.800 align:middle line:84% looking down at the after-dinner golfers moving 00:20:31.800 --> 00:20:33.480 align:middle line:90% under the floodlights. 00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:36.447 align:middle line:90% Toujours gai, my God. 00:20:36.447 --> 00:20:38.280 align:middle line:84% "Someday I'm going to build a miniature golf 00:20:38.280 --> 00:20:43.170 align:middle line:84% course with fairways six inches wide and rough six inches deep. 00:20:43.170 --> 00:20:45.900 align:middle line:84% I'll fill the water holes with full-sized crocodiles 00:20:45.900 --> 00:20:48.920 align:middle line:84% and sow the sand traps with sidewinders. 00:20:48.920 --> 00:20:51.590 align:middle line:84% How would it be to hide a black widow spider in every hole 00:20:51.590 --> 00:20:53.510 align:middle line:84% so that holding out and picking up your ball 00:20:53.510 --> 00:20:56.295 align:middle line:90% would get you some excitement?" 00:20:56.295 --> 00:20:58.670 align:middle line:84% "What if you sawed the supports of all the little bridges 00:20:58.670 --> 00:20:59.600 align:middle line:90% nearly in two?" 00:20:59.600 --> 00:21:04.010 align:middle line:90% 00:21:04.010 --> 00:21:06.170 align:middle line:90% Live dangerously. 00:21:06.170 --> 00:21:09.500 align:middle line:84% It's strange to recall how essential that one seemed. 00:21:09.500 --> 00:21:12.590 align:middle line:90% Kaboom, take chances. 00:21:12.590 --> 00:21:14.570 align:middle line:84% I run my hand along the weathered sill 00:21:14.570 --> 00:21:16.940 align:middle line:84% thinking that this was the pose, sitting right here 00:21:16.940 --> 00:21:20.390 align:middle line:84% and looking out, that Holly assumed when Tom Stead painted 00:21:20.390 --> 00:21:24.200 align:middle line:90% her in her gold velvet gown. 00:21:24.200 --> 00:21:26.430 align:middle line:84% Probably that portrait wasn't anything special. 00:21:26.430 --> 00:21:28.580 align:middle line:90% It couldn't have been. 00:21:28.580 --> 00:21:30.980 align:middle line:84% The chances are that Tom Stead is painting signs 00:21:30.980 --> 00:21:33.950 align:middle line:84% somewhere now, if he hasn't drunk himself to death. 00:21:33.950 --> 00:21:37.100 align:middle line:84% But then, in this room, in the presence of its subject 00:21:37.100 --> 00:21:38.960 align:middle line:84% whose life overflowed upon us all, 00:21:38.960 --> 00:21:41.600 align:middle line:84% that slim golden shape with the velvet highlights 00:21:41.600 --> 00:21:46.880 align:middle line:84% was Lilith, Helen, Guinevere, das Ewig-Weibliche. 00:21:46.880 --> 00:21:49.790 align:middle line:84% And it was hardly a day before other girls less fortunately 00:21:49.790 --> 00:21:54.170 align:middle line:84% endowed or graced had begun dropping comments on how warm 00:21:54.170 --> 00:21:56.570 align:middle line:84% that Holly-Stead romance was getting. 00:21:56.570 --> 00:21:58.580 align:middle line:84% And hinting that there was hidden away somewhere 00:21:58.580 --> 00:22:03.770 align:middle line:84% in the best Goya fashion a companion portrait, a nude. 00:22:03.770 --> 00:22:08.000 align:middle line:84% Well, well, what a bunch of bohemian Puritans. 00:22:08.000 --> 00:22:10.490 align:middle line:84% I don't believe in any nude, or in its importance 00:22:10.490 --> 00:22:11.840 align:middle line:90% if there was one. 00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:13.700 align:middle line:84% Though at the time I suppose it bothered me, 00:22:13.700 --> 00:22:15.230 align:middle line:90% and I was merely offended. 00:22:15.230 --> 00:22:18.140 align:middle line:84% Surprised that she would lower herself. 00:22:18.140 --> 00:22:19.730 align:middle line:84% What I meant was that my vanity was 00:22:19.730 --> 00:22:21.890 align:middle line:84% hurt she might have accorded to Stead privileges 00:22:21.890 --> 00:22:24.120 align:middle line:90% she didn't accord to me. 00:22:24.120 --> 00:22:26.960 align:middle line:84% And I didn't even believe she accorded them to him. 00:22:26.960 --> 00:22:29.810 align:middle line:84% What truly shone out of that golden portrait, as out 00:22:29.810 --> 00:22:34.670 align:middle line:84% of Holly herself, was not so much glamour as innocence. 00:22:34.670 --> 00:22:37.550 align:middle line:84% Under the sheath she was positively virginal. 00:22:37.550 --> 00:22:40.460 align:middle line:84% A girl from Parowan who had made the big step to the city 00:22:40.460 --> 00:22:43.580 align:middle line:84% excitements, and was still a girl from Parowan. 00:22:43.580 --> 00:22:45.770 align:middle line:84% If you cracked the enamel of her sophistication, 00:22:45.770 --> 00:22:47.915 align:middle line:84% you found a delighted little girl playing life. 00:22:47.915 --> 00:22:50.930 align:middle line:90% 00:22:50.930 --> 00:22:53.060 align:middle line:84% What's more, I feel on my lips the touch 00:22:53.060 --> 00:22:55.160 align:middle line:84% of that soft, childlike kiss by the piano 00:22:55.160 --> 00:22:57.290 align:middle line:90% on a Christmas morning. 00:22:57.290 --> 00:22:59.600 align:middle line:84% And stand up so abruptly that I startle myself 00:22:59.600 --> 00:23:03.200 align:middle line:84% with the sight of the dead woman whom I have forgotten. 00:23:03.200 --> 00:23:05.150 align:middle line:90% It was innocence. 00:23:05.150 --> 00:23:08.840 align:middle line:84% Holly could put away the predatory paws of college boys, 00:23:08.840 --> 00:23:11.090 align:middle line:84% twist laughing from the casual kiss, 00:23:11.090 --> 00:23:12.950 align:middle line:84% pass among the hot young Freudians 00:23:12.950 --> 00:23:16.070 align:middle line:84% as untouched as a nun, shed like water 00:23:16.070 --> 00:23:19.010 align:middle line:84% the propositions that came at her seven to the week. 00:23:19.010 --> 00:23:22.160 align:middle line:84% There she sits in her gold gown by her window opening 00:23:22.160 --> 00:23:24.170 align:middle line:90% on the foam. 00:23:24.170 --> 00:23:27.170 align:middle line:90% A maiden in a tower. 00:23:27.170 --> 00:23:28.910 align:middle line:84% Across the room I try the door to what 00:23:28.910 --> 00:23:33.200 align:middle line:84% was once her bedroom, wanting to look in on her intimately. 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:37.280 align:middle line:84% In this room, now completely bare, aseptically painted, 00:23:37.280 --> 00:23:39.800 align:middle line:84% I sat many times when she was ill. 00:23:39.800 --> 00:23:41.570 align:middle line:84% Or when on Sunday mornings she made it 00:23:41.570 --> 00:23:43.550 align:middle line:84% a charming point of her sophistication 00:23:43.550 --> 00:23:46.040 align:middle line:90% to entertain in bed. 00:23:46.040 --> 00:23:48.530 align:middle line:84% While she lay propped with pillows I read to her, 00:23:48.530 --> 00:23:52.310 align:middle line:84% talked to her, kissed her, had my hands fended away. 00:23:52.310 --> 00:23:55.010 align:middle line:84% The empty room is still charged with the vividness with which 00:23:55.010 --> 00:23:57.050 align:middle line:90% she invested everything. 00:23:57.050 --> 00:23:59.270 align:middle line:84% There was one night, very late, 2 or 3 o'clock, 00:23:59.270 --> 00:24:01.310 align:middle line:84% when I sat on one side of the bed, 00:24:01.310 --> 00:24:05.430 align:middle line:84% and a mournful and lovesick jazz trumpeter sat on the other. 00:24:05.430 --> 00:24:09.440 align:middle line:84% Neither of us willing to leave the other one alone there. 00:24:09.440 --> 00:24:11.870 align:middle line:84% And all that night I read aloud into the smell 00:24:11.870 --> 00:24:14.330 align:middle line:84% of sandalwood the life story of a crazy woman 00:24:14.330 --> 00:24:16.340 align:middle line:90% from Butte, Montana. 00:24:16.340 --> 00:24:20.510 align:middle line:84% I, Mary MacLane that one was called. 00:24:20.510 --> 00:24:22.070 align:middle line:90% What an occasion she made of it. 00:24:22.070 --> 00:24:24.860 align:middle line:84% Laid up by flu, hemmed in by rival young men, 00:24:24.860 --> 00:24:28.280 align:middle line:84% covered to the chin in an absurd high-necked old fashioned 00:24:28.280 --> 00:24:32.630 align:middle line:84% nightgown, taking aspirins with sips of ginger beer. 00:24:32.630 --> 00:24:34.610 align:middle line:84% Laughing at us, alternately or together, 00:24:34.610 --> 00:24:36.860 align:middle line:84% with that face as vivid on the pillow as a flower 00:24:36.860 --> 00:24:39.180 align:middle line:90% laid against the linen. 00:24:39.180 --> 00:24:42.260 align:middle line:84% It was innocence in that crackpot bohemian 00:24:42.260 --> 00:24:43.950 align:middle line:90% pre-crash wonderful time. 00:24:43.950 --> 00:24:47.300 align:middle line:90% It was innocence. 00:24:47.300 --> 00:24:50.420 align:middle line:84% How the trumpeter and I broke our deadlock, whatever 00:24:50.420 --> 00:24:52.820 align:middle line:84% happened to the Tom Stead flurry, 00:24:52.820 --> 00:24:55.370 align:middle line:84% what became of Holly's string of admirers? 00:24:55.370 --> 00:24:56.690 align:middle line:90% All gone. 00:24:56.690 --> 00:24:58.880 align:middle line:84% She sent them away, or they quarreled at her 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:00.680 align:middle line:90% over their bruised egos. 00:25:00.680 --> 00:25:05.390 align:middle line:84% But they became upset at finding her always in a crowd. 00:25:05.390 --> 00:25:07.580 align:middle line:84% Plenty of self-appointed hummingbird catchers, 00:25:07.580 --> 00:25:10.580 align:middle line:90% but no captures. 00:25:10.580 --> 00:25:15.470 align:middle line:84% And yet, maybe, summer and winter, day and night, 00:25:15.470 --> 00:25:17.837 align:middle line:90% are telescoped in my memory. 00:25:17.837 --> 00:25:18.920 align:middle line:90% How old would I have been? 00:25:18.920 --> 00:25:19.830 align:middle line:90% 19? 00:25:19.830 --> 00:25:22.880 align:middle line:90% Something like that. 00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:25.160 align:middle line:84% I was still in college, and even after staying out 00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:26.990 align:middle line:84% most of one year to work I graduated 00:25:26.990 --> 00:25:29.270 align:middle line:90% when I was not quite 21. 00:25:29.270 --> 00:25:31.250 align:middle line:90% 1927 or 1928. 00:25:31.250 --> 00:25:32.540 align:middle line:90% Say I was 19. 00:25:32.540 --> 00:25:35.240 align:middle line:90% Holly two or three years older. 00:25:35.240 --> 00:25:37.970 align:middle line:84% There's neither beginning nor end nor definite location 00:25:37.970 --> 00:25:40.880 align:middle line:84% in time to what I most vividly remember. 00:25:40.880 --> 00:25:42.440 align:middle line:84% What we'd been doing, whether we'd 00:25:42.440 --> 00:25:45.950 align:middle line:84% been out at some university dance, or just out on a date. 00:25:45.950 --> 00:25:47.870 align:middle line:90% Whether she then had roommates. 00:25:47.870 --> 00:25:50.150 align:middle line:90% Yes, she did, of course she did. 00:25:50.150 --> 00:25:52.130 align:middle line:84% Hardly any details come back, though, 00:25:52.130 --> 00:25:56.117 align:middle line:84% but we were alone in a way we seldom were. 00:25:56.117 --> 00:25:57.200 align:middle line:90% We must have been talking. 00:25:57.200 --> 00:25:58.580 align:middle line:84% Something must have led up to it. 00:25:58.580 --> 00:26:00.538 align:middle line:84% For there she is, with the clarity of something 00:26:00.538 --> 00:26:02.390 align:middle line:90% floodlighted in my mind. 00:26:02.390 --> 00:26:05.660 align:middle line:84% Pressing against me and crying with her face against my chest, 00:26:05.660 --> 00:26:08.402 align:middle line:84% clinging and crying and saying, "Bruce, get me out of here. 00:26:08.402 --> 00:26:09.485 align:middle line:90% I want to get out of this. 00:26:09.485 --> 00:26:13.880 align:middle line:84% This is all no good, I've got to get out of it, Bruce, please." 00:26:13.880 --> 00:26:16.580 align:middle line:84% Both the tears and the way she clung excited me, 00:26:16.580 --> 00:26:19.070 align:middle line:84% but the game had been played so long by other rules 00:26:19.070 --> 00:26:22.010 align:middle line:84% that I didn't even ask her what was the matter. 00:26:22.010 --> 00:26:24.950 align:middle line:84% I just went on in the old way, burlesquing gestures 00:26:24.950 --> 00:26:26.300 align:middle line:90% of consolation. 00:26:26.300 --> 00:26:28.190 align:middle line:84% Patting the crowing hair, saying, "There, 00:26:28.190 --> 00:26:28.982 align:middle line:90% there, little girl. 00:26:28.982 --> 00:26:31.730 align:middle line:84% Don't you fret, Brucie fix it, whatever it is." 00:26:31.730 --> 00:26:34.280 align:middle line:90% Inanities, idiocies. 00:26:34.280 --> 00:26:36.980 align:middle line:84% She wore an evening dress cut very low in the back, 00:26:36.980 --> 00:26:40.550 align:middle line:84% and I played my fingers up and down her spine. 00:26:40.550 --> 00:26:42.470 align:middle line:84% I slid my hand in against her skin, 00:26:42.470 --> 00:26:45.020 align:middle line:84% slid it further, expecting the competent twist 00:26:45.020 --> 00:26:47.150 align:middle line:84% and shrug and fending, and the laugh 00:26:47.150 --> 00:26:49.400 align:middle line:84% that would mean the emotional fit was over. 00:26:49.400 --> 00:26:51.920 align:middle line:84% But my hand went on around, clear around, 00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:54.140 align:middle line:84% and with a shock like an internal explosion 00:26:54.140 --> 00:26:58.550 align:middle line:84% I found it cupping the frantic softness of her breast. 00:26:58.550 --> 00:27:02.870 align:middle line:84% Even remembering, all my sensations are shocking to me. 00:27:02.870 --> 00:27:05.180 align:middle line:84% I remember how smoothly the curve of her side 00:27:05.180 --> 00:27:08.210 align:middle line:84% swelled upward, how astonishingly consecutive 00:27:08.210 --> 00:27:10.400 align:middle line:90% her body seemed. 00:27:10.400 --> 00:27:14.270 align:middle line:84% Also, and almost with revulsion, how rigid and demanding 00:27:14.270 --> 00:27:16.310 align:middle line:90% the nipple of her breast. 00:27:16.310 --> 00:27:19.070 align:middle line:84% Innocence, I'd never touched a girl there. 00:27:19.070 --> 00:27:22.670 align:middle line:84% Never imagined, or I'd imagined wrong. 00:27:22.670 --> 00:27:25.190 align:middle line:84% Stupefied by the sudden admission to her flesh. 00:27:25.190 --> 00:27:27.740 align:middle line:84% Made uneasy by the way she crowded and clung. 00:27:27.740 --> 00:27:31.040 align:middle line:84% A scared schoolboy where she needed a man. 00:27:31.040 --> 00:27:33.530 align:middle line:84% I stood wrapping her awkwardly, with my hand 00:27:33.530 --> 00:27:35.810 align:middle line:84% paralyzed against her discovered body, 00:27:35.810 --> 00:27:37.880 align:middle line:84% and kissed her and tasted her tears. 00:27:37.880 --> 00:27:39.740 align:middle line:84% And thought with alarm and conviction 00:27:39.740 --> 00:27:41.540 align:middle line:84% of Tom Stead and the rumored nude, 00:27:41.540 --> 00:27:45.650 align:middle line:84% and was anguished with eagerness to escape. 00:27:45.650 --> 00:27:49.770 align:middle line:84% I remember not a scrap, not a detail of how I got away. 00:27:49.770 --> 00:27:53.450 align:middle line:84% She offers herself passionately in my memory, and that's all. 00:27:53.450 --> 00:27:55.790 align:middle line:84% The peewee golfer putting his little white ball 00:27:55.790 --> 00:27:57.920 align:middle line:84% up the little green alley of his youth 00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:03.720 align:middle line:84% come suddenly on the sidewinder in the sand trap, the crocodile 00:28:03.720 --> 00:28:05.130 align:middle line:90% in the artificial lake. 00:28:05.130 --> 00:28:08.510 align:middle line:90% 00:28:08.510 --> 00:28:10.220 align:middle line:90% I closed the door on the memory. 00:28:10.220 --> 00:28:13.370 align:middle line:84% It's begun to occur to me that I was an extraordinary young man, 00:28:13.370 --> 00:28:15.620 align:middle line:84% and not everything of what was extraordinary about me 00:28:15.620 --> 00:28:16.520 align:middle line:90% pleases me. 00:28:16.520 --> 00:28:22.460 align:middle line:90% 00:28:22.460 --> 00:28:24.080 align:middle line:90% Innocence? 00:28:24.080 --> 00:28:28.610 align:middle line:84% Maybe, though there are more contemptuous names for it. 00:28:28.610 --> 00:28:30.680 align:middle line:84% Standing in Holly's denuded bedroom 00:28:30.680 --> 00:28:33.320 align:middle line:90% I try to understand myself. 00:28:33.320 --> 00:28:36.830 align:middle line:84% At that stage in my life I was certainly hungrier for security 00:28:36.830 --> 00:28:40.490 align:middle line:84% than for taking chances, no matter what I pretended. 00:28:40.490 --> 00:28:43.520 align:middle line:84% A fraud, a gargler of whiskey I would obediently not 00:28:43.520 --> 00:28:46.400 align:middle line:84% drink, a great yapper with the crowd, 00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:48.290 align:middle line:84% but when the cat stopped running what 00:28:48.290 --> 00:28:50.270 align:middle line:90% a frantic sliding to a stop. 00:28:50.270 --> 00:28:54.050 align:middle line:84% What digging not to catch what I was after. 00:28:54.050 --> 00:28:57.230 align:middle line:84% I tell myself that I was a very young 19. 00:28:57.230 --> 00:29:00.560 align:middle line:84% And that young 19 is likely to back away in consternation 00:29:00.560 --> 00:29:03.200 align:middle line:90% when its bluff is called. 00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:06.710 align:middle line:84% I tell myself that the bohemian excitement boiling around Holly 00:29:06.710 --> 00:29:09.230 align:middle line:84% was an absurd, and perhaps touching, and certainly 00:29:09.230 --> 00:29:11.720 align:middle line:90% unimportant stage of growing up. 00:29:11.720 --> 00:29:14.810 align:middle line:90% The rules change with maturity. 00:29:14.810 --> 00:29:18.800 align:middle line:84% Yet my mother married unhappily 19, and my brother disastrously 00:29:18.800 --> 00:29:20.600 align:middle line:90% at 17. 00:29:20.600 --> 00:29:22.430 align:middle line:84% What does that say of them and of me? 00:29:22.430 --> 00:29:25.490 align:middle line:84% What does it say of caution and of risk, half-heartedness 00:29:25.490 --> 00:29:27.830 align:middle line:90% and whole-heartedness? 00:29:27.830 --> 00:29:29.450 align:middle line:84% And nibbling at the edge of my mind 00:29:29.450 --> 00:29:31.880 align:middle line:84% is the knowledge that by then Nola Gordon 00:29:31.880 --> 00:29:33.350 align:middle line:90% was one of Holly's roommates. 00:29:33.350 --> 00:29:35.270 align:middle line:84% And that in a couple of casual encounters 00:29:35.270 --> 00:29:38.270 align:middle line:84% I had had intimations of an altogether sultrier possibility 00:29:38.270 --> 00:29:39.980 align:middle line:84% than Holly's brittle bohemianism. 00:29:39.980 --> 00:29:44.150 align:middle line:84% The last time I saw Holly, she was boarding 00:29:44.150 --> 00:29:47.420 align:middle line:84% a train for Seattle on her way to Shanghai, and a job we 00:29:47.420 --> 00:29:51.050 align:middle line:84% all publicly envied and would not have risked ourselves. 00:29:51.050 --> 00:29:53.040 align:middle line:90% Not yet, at least. 00:29:53.040 --> 00:29:55.970 align:middle line:84% Whatever happened to her, her life can't have been dull. 00:29:55.970 --> 00:29:58.190 align:middle line:84% She's probably spent it flying around the world 00:29:58.190 --> 00:30:01.520 align:middle line:90% like a piece of space hardware. 00:30:01.520 --> 00:30:04.460 align:middle line:84% In the end, as it happened, I played it Holly's way. 00:30:04.460 --> 00:30:06.710 align:middle line:84% Security, which I was once avid for, 00:30:06.710 --> 00:30:10.670 align:middle line:84% and from which only irresistible temptation could lure me, 00:30:10.670 --> 00:30:12.890 align:middle line:84% eventually disgorged me and sent me 00:30:12.890 --> 00:30:16.280 align:middle line:84% to live my life in the exotic ends of the Earth. 00:30:16.280 --> 00:30:19.310 align:middle line:84% Or so it has seemed to some of my friends. 00:30:19.310 --> 00:30:21.650 align:middle line:84% Right now I would find it hard to say whether I've 00:30:21.650 --> 00:30:25.040 align:middle line:84% been adventurous or have made my moves in search of a wider 00:30:25.040 --> 00:30:27.380 align:middle line:90% safety. 00:30:27.380 --> 00:30:30.800 align:middle line:84% Like a bubble of gas escaping from something submerged 00:30:30.800 --> 00:30:33.680 align:middle line:84% and decaying in deep water that rises 00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:37.340 align:middle line:84% to the surface of my mind, one of Blake's Proverbs of Hell 00:30:37.340 --> 00:30:39.980 align:middle line:84% that Holly and I admired together that long gone 00:30:39.980 --> 00:30:42.800 align:middle line:90% Christmas morning. 00:30:42.800 --> 00:30:46.760 align:middle line:84% It bursts, and it says prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid 00:30:46.760 --> 00:30:48.320 align:middle line:90% courted by incapacity. 00:30:48.320 --> 00:30:51.320 align:middle line:90% 00:30:51.320 --> 00:30:55.790 align:middle line:84% Actually, I don't accept Blake's contemptuous romanticism. 00:30:55.790 --> 00:30:58.940 align:middle line:84% From the life of prudence I've got a training in law, 00:30:58.940 --> 00:31:01.580 align:middle line:90% and law is something I respect. 00:31:01.580 --> 00:31:03.440 align:middle line:84% The prudent appraisal of my own gifts 00:31:03.440 --> 00:31:05.480 align:middle line:84% and the possibilities of the Depression years 00:31:05.480 --> 00:31:07.070 align:middle line:84% forced me into the Foreign Service, 00:31:07.070 --> 00:31:10.700 align:middle line:84% where I've served in ways I can't think contemptible. 00:31:10.700 --> 00:31:14.090 align:middle line:84% I've made an adequate salary and been prudent with it. 00:31:14.090 --> 00:31:17.000 align:middle line:90% Lived well and retired secure. 00:31:17.000 --> 00:31:19.700 align:middle line:84% I can regret no specific prudent act. 00:31:19.700 --> 00:31:22.580 align:middle line:84% It's impulse that I've learned to be wary of. 00:31:22.580 --> 00:31:25.430 align:middle line:84% And yet I stand here remembering the night when Holly stopped 00:31:25.430 --> 00:31:27.050 align:middle line:84% playing make believe, and I wonder 00:31:27.050 --> 00:31:29.780 align:middle line:84% if my youthful timidity was symptomatic, 00:31:29.780 --> 00:31:33.320 align:middle line:84% a fatal flaw of character and nerve. 00:31:33.320 --> 00:31:36.110 align:middle line:84% I remind myself that nobody can turn in any direction 00:31:36.110 --> 00:31:37.880 align:middle line:84% without turning away from something. 00:31:37.880 --> 00:31:40.610 align:middle line:90% Wasn't I exercising choice? 00:31:40.610 --> 00:31:43.400 align:middle line:84% I reflected anyone who has watched his father tear himself 00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:46.370 align:middle line:84% apart chasing rainbows and his mother and his brother brought 00:31:46.370 --> 00:31:48.230 align:middle line:84% down by a too great open-heartedness 00:31:48.230 --> 00:31:50.900 align:middle line:90% is likely to grow up cautious. 00:31:50.900 --> 00:31:53.180 align:middle line:84% But the fact is, right now I do not like 00:31:53.180 --> 00:31:56.720 align:middle line:90% that cautious image of myself. 00:31:56.720 --> 00:31:58.460 align:middle line:90% Irritably I look at my watch. 00:31:58.460 --> 00:32:00.110 align:middle line:90% Nearly five. 00:32:00.110 --> 00:32:02.720 align:middle line:84% Starting for the door I pass the dead woman's table 00:32:02.720 --> 00:32:05.660 align:middle line:84% and see her calm, pale face, the skin delicately 00:32:05.660 --> 00:32:08.330 align:middle line:84% wrinkled like the skin of a winter kept apple. 00:32:08.330 --> 00:32:12.680 align:middle line:84% But soft looking, as if it would not be unpleasant to touch. 00:32:12.680 --> 00:32:13.830 align:middle line:90% What was her name? 00:32:13.830 --> 00:32:14.750 align:middle line:90% What did she die of? 00:32:14.750 --> 00:32:18.067 align:middle line:84% What did she look like when she wore expression? 00:32:18.067 --> 00:32:18.650 align:middle line:90% Who loved her? 00:32:18.650 --> 00:32:19.370 align:middle line:90% Who mourned her? 00:32:19.370 --> 00:32:23.810 align:middle line:84% What things in her life did they regret, or had she regretted? 00:32:23.810 --> 00:32:25.790 align:middle line:84% Would they dislike it that a total stranger 00:32:25.790 --> 00:32:29.630 align:middle line:84% had been alone with her, staring into her dead face? 00:32:29.630 --> 00:32:32.510 align:middle line:84% And in that face what is it that the caution of death 00:32:32.510 --> 00:32:33.635 align:middle line:90% encloses and hides? 00:32:33.635 --> 00:32:36.290 align:middle line:90% 00:32:36.290 --> 00:32:40.070 align:middle line:84% The barbaric silver necklace seems somehow to define her. 00:32:40.070 --> 00:32:42.110 align:middle line:84% What it says about frivolity, girlishness, 00:32:42.110 --> 00:32:46.130 align:middle line:84% love of ornament and gaiety in life makes me like her. 00:32:46.130 --> 00:32:49.010 align:middle line:84% The way it lies on the black, sober crepe breasts 00:32:49.010 --> 00:32:52.610 align:middle line:90% says, "Too late, too late." 00:32:52.610 --> 00:32:54.920 align:middle line:84% I think how she's been transported and tampered 00:32:54.920 --> 00:32:57.830 align:middle line:84% with by McBride, and how further touches of disguise 00:32:57.830 --> 00:33:00.410 align:middle line:84% will complete her transformation from something 00:33:00.410 --> 00:33:05.240 align:middle line:84% real and terrible to something serene and removed. 00:33:05.240 --> 00:33:07.370 align:middle line:84% Alone with her before she must be taken away, 00:33:07.370 --> 00:33:10.250 align:middle line:84% I feel an actual sadness for the death of this woman I never 00:33:10.250 --> 00:33:14.840 align:middle line:84% knew, and gratitude that I've been permitted to see her. 00:33:14.840 --> 00:33:17.090 align:middle line:90% Gratitude or something like it. 00:33:17.090 --> 00:33:20.020 align:middle line:84% And yet, as I start for the door, 00:33:20.020 --> 00:33:22.500 align:middle line:84% I throw an apologetic glance around the room 00:33:22.500 --> 00:33:25.110 align:middle line:90% as quiet and empty as a chapel. 00:33:25.110 --> 00:33:28.710 align:middle line:84% And at the woman who lies so quietly at its center. 00:33:28.710 --> 00:33:32.760 align:middle line:84% I mean to tiptoe out, but I hear almost with panic 00:33:32.760 --> 00:33:36.780 align:middle line:84% the four quick raps my heels make on the bare floor 00:33:36.780 --> 00:33:39.540 align:middle line:84% before they find the consoling softness of the stairs. 00:33:39.540 --> 00:33:42.210 align:middle line:90% 00:33:42.210 --> 00:33:44.940 align:middle line:90% So much for the story. 00:33:44.940 --> 00:33:49.470 align:middle line:84% Having got to that point, I had to tip it 00:33:49.470 --> 00:33:52.713 align:middle line:84% so that it would go somewhere else. 00:33:52.713 --> 00:33:56.080 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:33:56.080 --> 00:34:03.300 align:middle line:90% 00:34:03.300 --> 00:34:04.793 align:middle line:90% I'm out of fuel. 00:34:04.793 --> 00:34:08.110 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:08.110 --> 00:34:10.110 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:34:10.110 --> 00:34:13.199 align:middle line:84% I want to read you a little more, if I may. 00:34:13.199 --> 00:34:16.929 align:middle line:90% 00:34:16.929 --> 00:34:19.030 align:middle line:84% Smiling with a slip of paper in his hand 00:34:19.030 --> 00:34:20.949 align:middle line:84% McBride intercepts me at the bottom. 00:34:20.949 --> 00:34:23.440 align:middle line:90% "Find anything familiar?" 00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:24.489 align:middle line:90% "Too familiar. 00:34:24.489 --> 00:34:25.960 align:middle line:84% A man shouldn't go back to anything 00:34:25.960 --> 00:34:28.270 align:middle line:90% after nearly 50 years." 00:34:28.270 --> 00:34:29.350 align:middle line:90% "Has it been that long? 00:34:29.350 --> 00:34:30.717 align:middle line:90% No, I should think he shouldn't. 00:34:30.717 --> 00:34:32.050 align:middle line:90% Here, I forgot to give you this. 00:34:32.050 --> 00:34:35.469 align:middle line:84% Somebody telephoned, wants you to call her." 00:34:35.469 --> 00:34:37.330 align:middle line:90% I will not accept the paper. 00:34:37.330 --> 00:34:39.880 align:middle line:84% I have the unpleasant sense that I have been shadowed, 00:34:39.880 --> 00:34:44.290 align:middle line:84% my disguise penetrated, my cover cracked. 00:34:44.290 --> 00:34:45.280 align:middle line:90% "Telephoned me? 00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:47.290 align:middle line:84% Nobody knows I'm here, unless my wife-- 00:34:47.290 --> 00:34:50.440 align:middle line:90% Was it from California?" 00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:51.100 align:middle line:90% "No, local. 00:34:51.100 --> 00:34:53.980 align:middle line:84% She'd read in the newspaper obituary about Mrs. Webb, 00:34:53.980 --> 00:34:56.590 align:middle line:84% and she guessed you might be coming. 00:34:56.590 --> 00:35:00.850 align:middle line:84% She called the home first, and they directed her here." 00:35:00.850 --> 00:35:03.700 align:middle line:84% Unwillingly I let my fingers close on the slip. 00:35:03.700 --> 00:35:06.070 align:middle line:84% There is nothing to it but a number. 00:35:06.070 --> 00:35:07.580 align:middle line:90% "She didn't leave her name?" 00:35:07.580 --> 00:35:08.080 align:middle line:90% "No. 00:35:08.080 --> 00:35:11.680 align:middle line:84% If you'd like to use the phone there's one in here." 00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:14.620 align:middle line:84% Still uneasy from my upstairs encounter with the past, 00:35:14.620 --> 00:35:17.020 align:middle line:84% I briefly consider, and at once reject, 00:35:17.020 --> 00:35:19.330 align:middle line:84% the thought that by some incredible coincidence 00:35:19.330 --> 00:35:21.100 align:middle line:90% the call might be from Holly. 00:35:21.100 --> 00:35:22.660 align:middle line:90% Ridiculous. 00:35:22.660 --> 00:35:25.540 align:middle line:84% I stick this slip into the breast pocket of my jacket. 00:35:25.540 --> 00:35:27.040 align:middle line:84% "Thanks, I'll call from the hotel. 00:35:27.040 --> 00:35:29.470 align:middle line:84% What time should I be here tomorrow?" 00:35:29.470 --> 00:35:31.578 align:middle line:84% "Since there will only be a graveside service, 00:35:31.578 --> 00:35:33.370 align:middle line:84% there's no reason to come until we're about 00:35:33.370 --> 00:35:36.490 align:middle line:84% ready to leave for the cemetery, say 11:30." 00:35:36.490 --> 00:35:38.260 align:middle line:90% "All right, I'll see you." 00:35:38.260 --> 00:35:41.230 align:middle line:84% McBride bends his head sideward in agreement like a Hindu, 00:35:41.230 --> 00:35:45.580 align:middle line:84% and I go out and down the steps into the unabated heat. 00:35:45.580 --> 00:35:47.740 align:middle line:84% The late afternoon glares in my eyes. 00:35:47.740 --> 00:35:49.690 align:middle line:84% Up the eastbound lanes of South Temple 00:35:49.690 --> 00:35:53.320 align:middle line:84% the rush hour traffic is thick, but the lanes going downtown 00:35:53.320 --> 00:35:54.880 align:middle line:90% are nearly empty. 00:35:54.880 --> 00:35:56.500 align:middle line:84% The sun glancing off the pavement 00:35:56.500 --> 00:35:59.770 align:middle line:84% lifts into the air a dark, wet-looking mirage. 00:35:59.770 --> 00:36:02.530 align:middle line:84% A car passes, moving into the rising heat waves. 00:36:02.530 --> 00:36:05.200 align:middle line:84% Its outline after half a block begins to blur. 00:36:05.200 --> 00:36:06.940 align:middle line:84% It grows as square and tall as one 00:36:06.940 --> 00:36:09.850 align:middle line:84% of the old Dodges of my youth, stretching and lifting 00:36:09.850 --> 00:36:13.000 align:middle line:84% off the street, darker and higher, until tall as a tower 00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:16.480 align:middle line:84% it merges with the buildings downtown. 00:36:16.480 --> 00:36:20.050 align:middle line:84% All my impressions suffer from distortion and ambiguity. 00:36:20.050 --> 00:36:22.480 align:middle line:84% Looking at buildings I can't say whether I remember them 00:36:22.480 --> 00:36:24.790 align:middle line:84% or whether my memory is filling the familiar streets 00:36:24.790 --> 00:36:27.610 align:middle line:90% with things it wants familiar. 00:36:27.610 --> 00:36:29.410 align:middle line:84% I have been prepared for strangeness, 00:36:29.410 --> 00:36:32.290 align:middle line:84% and I've also been hopeful of finding some things unchanged. 00:36:32.290 --> 00:36:34.870 align:middle line:84% But I'm not prepared for the ways in which strangeness 00:36:34.870 --> 00:36:37.220 align:middle line:90% and familiarity fuse. 00:36:37.220 --> 00:36:39.070 align:middle line:84% It's like turning a corner into a new street 00:36:39.070 --> 00:36:41.740 align:middle line:84% and finding it the street I just left. 00:36:41.740 --> 00:36:44.080 align:middle line:84% Like walking into a mirror, and then 00:36:44.080 --> 00:36:46.780 align:middle line:84% looking closer finding that it isn't the same street backwards 00:36:46.780 --> 00:36:50.080 align:middle line:84% at all, but a deceptively altered imitation. 00:36:50.080 --> 00:36:52.000 align:middle line:84% Is that because the person who sees 00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:54.700 align:middle line:84% and the person who remembers are not the same, though they 00:36:54.700 --> 00:36:57.820 align:middle line:90% use the same pair of eyes? 00:36:57.820 --> 00:37:00.910 align:middle line:84% Here goes Bruce Mason, retired diplomat, 00:37:00.910 --> 00:37:04.660 align:middle line:84% with three Middle Eastern and two European posts behind him, 00:37:04.660 --> 00:37:07.840 align:middle line:84% as well as the hard-won Middle Eastern ambassadorship. 00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:10.120 align:middle line:84% Resident now of Menlo Park, California. 00:37:10.120 --> 00:37:11.320 align:middle line:90% Comfortably well off. 00:37:11.320 --> 00:37:16.090 align:middle line:84% Well preserved at 180 pounds, but that's 10 too many. 00:37:16.090 --> 00:37:19.870 align:middle line:84% A solid, settled, judicious man who can accept responsibility, 00:37:19.870 --> 00:37:22.360 align:middle line:84% and knows how to keep his counsel and his cool. 00:37:22.360 --> 00:37:25.630 align:middle line:84% Something of a troubleshooter, something of a scholar. 00:37:25.630 --> 00:37:28.240 align:middle line:84% A treatise on Sharia law, a book on the politics 00:37:28.240 --> 00:37:30.970 align:middle line:84% of Middle Eastern oil, articles in Foreign Affairs 00:37:30.970 --> 00:37:32.110 align:middle line:90% and elsewhere. 00:37:32.110 --> 00:37:35.140 align:middle line:84% A member now of a presidential commission on energy. 00:37:35.140 --> 00:37:38.170 align:middle line:84% In demand as a speaker before service clubs and university 00:37:38.170 --> 00:37:38.830 align:middle line:90% groups. 00:37:38.830 --> 00:37:40.450 align:middle line:84% An associate of the Hoover Library 00:37:40.450 --> 00:37:43.510 align:middle line:90% on War, Revolution, and Peace. 00:37:43.510 --> 00:37:45.910 align:middle line:84% A man who reads not only the things his profession 00:37:45.910 --> 00:37:48.910 align:middle line:84% demands of him, but biography, novels, poetry. 00:37:48.910 --> 00:37:50.140 align:middle line:90% A rather private man. 00:37:50.140 --> 00:37:52.630 align:middle line:84% No back slapper, sometimes moody, 00:37:52.630 --> 00:37:55.930 align:middle line:84% a man not exactly serene but most of the time cheerful, 00:37:55.930 --> 00:37:58.510 align:middle line:90% and on balance, content. 00:37:58.510 --> 00:38:02.170 align:middle line:84% And so composed and unflappable that in the embassy in Amman 00:38:02.170 --> 00:38:04.540 align:middle line:84% they joke that a self-winding watch would go dead 00:38:04.540 --> 00:38:06.230 align:middle line:90% on his wrist. 00:38:06.230 --> 00:38:09.050 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:38:09.050 --> 00:38:10.930 align:middle line:90% 00:38:10.930 --> 00:38:13.060 align:middle line:84% So I guess I would be characterized 00:38:13.060 --> 00:38:14.290 align:middle line:90% by those who know me. 00:38:14.290 --> 00:38:16.030 align:middle line:90% So I would characterize myself. 00:38:16.030 --> 00:38:20.290 align:middle line:84% Something as close as possible to the ideal foreign officer. 00:38:20.290 --> 00:38:22.450 align:middle line:84% But here inside this mature diplomat, 00:38:22.450 --> 00:38:24.460 align:middle line:84% an expert on world energy problems, 00:38:24.460 --> 00:38:26.440 align:middle line:84% walking with the same muscles and feeling 00:38:26.440 --> 00:38:27.880 align:middle line:84% with the same nerves and sweating 00:38:27.880 --> 00:38:32.860 align:middle line:84% through the same pores, goes a thin, brown youth. 00:38:32.860 --> 00:38:35.230 align:middle line:84% Volatile, impulsive, never at rest, 00:38:35.230 --> 00:38:38.500 align:middle line:84% not so much a person as a possibility. 00:38:38.500 --> 00:38:41.650 align:middle line:84% Subject to enthusiasm and elation and exuberance 00:38:41.650 --> 00:38:43.900 align:middle line:84% and occasional great black moods. 00:38:43.900 --> 00:38:44.740 align:middle line:90% Stubborn. 00:38:44.740 --> 00:38:46.900 align:middle line:84% Capable of calculation, but often 00:38:46.900 --> 00:38:49.330 align:middle line:90% astonished by consequences. 00:38:49.330 --> 00:38:53.740 align:middle line:84% A boy vulnerable to wonder, awe, worship, devotion, hatred, 00:38:53.740 --> 00:38:59.080 align:middle line:84% guilt, vanity, shame, ambition, dreams, treachery. 00:38:59.080 --> 00:39:01.600 align:middle line:84% A boy hungry for acceptance and distinction. 00:39:01.600 --> 00:39:03.880 align:middle line:90% Secretive and a blabbermouth. 00:39:03.880 --> 00:39:06.820 align:middle line:90% Life crazy and hence girl crazy. 00:39:06.820 --> 00:39:10.900 align:middle line:84% A showoff who can be withered by a contemptuous word or look. 00:39:10.900 --> 00:39:13.540 align:middle line:84% A creature overflowing with brash self-confidence 00:39:13.540 --> 00:39:16.825 align:middle line:84% one minute, and oppressed with its own worthlessness the next. 00:39:16.825 --> 00:39:20.950 align:middle line:84% A vessel of primary sensations undiluted by experience, 00:39:20.950 --> 00:39:24.190 align:middle line:90% caution, or fatigue. 00:39:24.190 --> 00:39:28.270 align:middle line:84% Put aside, postponed, schooled, overtaken by events, 00:39:28.270 --> 00:39:32.260 align:middle line:84% he was never quite defined much less fulfilled. 00:39:32.260 --> 00:39:35.020 align:middle line:84% Hardly even remembered until I came around Black Rock 00:39:35.020 --> 00:39:37.090 align:middle line:84% this afternoon and saw the old lake bottom 00:39:37.090 --> 00:39:40.330 align:middle line:84% littered with the stumps of the pilings on which the Saltair 00:39:40.330 --> 00:39:44.110 align:middle line:84% Pavilion used to ride above waist-deep water. 00:39:44.110 --> 00:39:46.660 align:middle line:84% And turned eastward to see the mirage city rising 00:39:46.660 --> 00:39:49.900 align:middle line:84% against its mountains and heard the ghostly and muffled roar 00:39:49.900 --> 00:39:53.050 align:middle line:90% of Jack Bailey's bug. 00:39:53.050 --> 00:39:55.900 align:middle line:84% Holly knew a version of that unformed Bruce Mason. 00:39:55.900 --> 00:39:57.820 align:middle line:84% Whoever telephoned McBride was trying 00:39:57.820 --> 00:40:01.360 align:middle line:84% to make contact with a version of that same youth. 00:40:01.360 --> 00:40:05.560 align:middle line:84% Now young Bruce Mason, multiple and nascent, gone for decades, 00:40:05.560 --> 00:40:09.100 align:middle line:84% but never quite given up, walks with me into the eye of the sun 00:40:09.100 --> 00:40:12.250 align:middle line:90% and steals my senses. 00:40:12.250 --> 00:40:15.040 align:middle line:84% When I take off my jacket an adrift of air brushes 00:40:15.040 --> 00:40:17.890 align:middle line:84% my sweating forearms with a chill like liquid nitrogen. 00:40:17.890 --> 00:40:20.530 align:middle line:84% It's the boy's skin that cringes with remembrance 00:40:20.530 --> 00:40:25.330 align:middle line:84% of what evaporation can do in super dry air. 00:40:25.330 --> 00:40:27.640 align:middle line:84% And when I look at people I meet, half expecting 00:40:27.640 --> 00:40:29.890 align:middle line:84% to encounter someone in whose altered features 00:40:29.890 --> 00:40:32.270 align:middle line:84% I can decipher a face once known, 00:40:32.270 --> 00:40:35.380 align:middle line:84% it's the boy on whom I rely for recognition. 00:40:35.380 --> 00:40:37.870 align:middle line:84% I myself would not an old acquaintance. 00:40:37.870 --> 00:40:40.450 align:middle line:84% No old acquaintance would know me. 00:40:40.450 --> 00:40:43.120 align:middle line:84% Actually, I fear meeting someone the boy might know, 00:40:43.120 --> 00:40:45.280 align:middle line:84% for I don't want him to be recognized. 00:40:45.280 --> 00:40:49.780 align:middle line:84% I want him to see and know without being seen and known, 00:40:49.780 --> 00:40:53.230 align:middle line:84% like someone behind one-way glass. 00:40:53.230 --> 00:40:54.820 align:middle line:90% We meet only strangers. 00:40:54.820 --> 00:40:57.820 align:middle line:84% In the hot street the sound of tires is sticky. 00:40:57.820 --> 00:41:00.790 align:middle line:84% The sidewalk is hot through my soles. 00:41:00.790 --> 00:41:06.400 align:middle line:84% Inhabited by my doppelganger I pass the old church offices 00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:08.650 align:middle line:84% with their flower beds and the garage ramp 00:41:08.650 --> 00:41:11.650 align:middle line:84% that has usurped the space of the old Deseret Gym. 00:41:11.650 --> 00:41:13.540 align:middle line:84% And with definite relief I am sucked 00:41:13.540 --> 00:41:17.680 align:middle line:84% through a whirl of reflections into the cool hotel lobby. 00:41:17.680 --> 00:41:19.510 align:middle line:84% For the last block we have been marching 00:41:19.510 --> 00:41:21.190 align:middle line:84% to the beat of a scrap of poetry, 00:41:21.190 --> 00:41:23.290 align:middle line:84% risen from the same cistern which yielded 00:41:23.290 --> 00:41:25.660 align:middle line:90% Blake's proverb of hell. 00:41:25.660 --> 00:41:28.000 align:middle line:84% You need not be a chamber to be haunted. 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:31.570 align:middle line:90% You need not be a house. 00:41:31.570 --> 00:41:34.000 align:middle line:84% In my room where a chilly wind blows out 00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:36.460 align:middle line:84% of the air conditioning unit I call room service 00:41:36.460 --> 00:41:38.290 align:middle line:90% for ice and tonic water. 00:41:38.290 --> 00:41:39.340 align:middle line:90% They come promptly. 00:41:39.340 --> 00:41:41.470 align:middle line:84% This has always been a first class hotel. 00:41:41.470 --> 00:41:44.380 align:middle line:84% Quintessentially Mormon, both in its cheerful efficiency 00:41:44.380 --> 00:41:48.040 align:middle line:84% and the air of moneyed confidence it wears. 00:41:48.040 --> 00:41:52.055 align:middle line:84% I'm glad to be inside it, cool and safe. 00:41:52.055 --> 00:41:53.710 align:middle line:90% Safe. 00:41:53.710 --> 00:41:56.440 align:middle line:90% Have I been feeling threatened? 00:41:56.440 --> 00:41:58.570 align:middle line:84% No, I decide, only a little uneasy. 00:41:58.570 --> 00:42:01.780 align:middle line:84% Not yet acclimated to the clash between what the eye sees 00:42:01.780 --> 00:42:04.480 align:middle line:90% and what the mind remembers. 00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:06.520 align:middle line:84% I get the bottle of gin from my bag, 00:42:06.520 --> 00:42:08.410 align:middle line:84% before leaving I remembered that Utah 00:42:08.410 --> 00:42:10.450 align:middle line:84% sells no liquor by the drink, and made 00:42:10.450 --> 00:42:13.570 align:middle line:90% myself a gin and tonic. 00:42:13.570 --> 00:42:16.090 align:middle line:84% Mine is a corner room the west windows which 00:42:16.090 --> 00:42:18.760 align:middle line:84% look across Main Street toward Temple Square I leave 00:42:18.760 --> 00:42:21.820 align:middle line:84% shrouded, for I can feel how the undiminished heat will burst in 00:42:21.820 --> 00:42:25.210 align:middle line:84% at me if I draw the drapes even inches apart. 00:42:25.210 --> 00:42:27.790 align:middle line:84% But the south windows are shaded by the sun's angle, 00:42:27.790 --> 00:42:29.950 align:middle line:90% and I pull the drapes wide. 00:42:29.950 --> 00:42:32.530 align:middle line:84% Sipping my drink I look down on the intersection 00:42:32.530 --> 00:42:34.610 align:middle line:84% of Main and South Temple, a corner once 00:42:34.610 --> 00:42:37.720 align:middle line:90% as familiar as my own face. 00:42:37.720 --> 00:42:40.540 align:middle line:90% Progress has been at work on it. 00:42:40.540 --> 00:42:43.180 align:middle line:84% Directly across South Temple the old Zion's Bank 00:42:43.180 --> 00:42:45.370 align:middle line:90% has leaped up 26 stories. 00:42:45.370 --> 00:42:47.950 align:middle line:84% On the southwest corner the Deseret News building 00:42:47.950 --> 00:42:50.320 align:middle line:90% has been replaced by a new one. 00:42:50.320 --> 00:42:53.140 align:middle line:84% And something drastic has happened to Main Street. 00:42:53.140 --> 00:42:54.970 align:middle line:84% Its sidewalks have been widened well 00:42:54.970 --> 00:42:56.620 align:middle line:84% out into the former traffic lanes, 00:42:56.620 --> 00:42:59.050 align:middle line:84% perhaps for the purpose of pinching off traffic 00:42:59.050 --> 00:43:02.200 align:middle line:84% and encouraging the pedestrian as in a mall. 00:43:02.200 --> 00:43:04.780 align:middle line:84% But the sidewalks thus expanded have been encumbered 00:43:04.780 --> 00:43:06.970 align:middle line:84% by planters, fountains, flower urns, 00:43:06.970 --> 00:43:09.490 align:middle line:84% and stelae made of a substance that looks like granite 00:43:09.490 --> 00:43:11.380 align:middle line:90% but probably isn't. 00:43:11.380 --> 00:43:13.660 align:middle line:84% The pedestrian now walks an obstacle course 00:43:13.660 --> 00:43:16.400 align:middle line:84% among structures suitable for the Soviet exhibit at a World's 00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:16.900 align:middle line:90% Fair. 00:43:16.900 --> 00:43:20.230 align:middle line:90% 00:43:20.230 --> 00:43:23.740 align:middle line:84% God pity the adolescent who in his exuberance 00:43:23.740 --> 00:43:26.230 align:middle line:84% talking to his girl turns around and walks backward. 00:43:26.230 --> 00:43:28.900 align:middle line:90% 00:43:28.900 --> 00:43:33.370 align:middle line:84% God pity the woman who window shops as she walks, 00:43:33.370 --> 00:43:36.632 align:middle line:84% ass over teacup into a fountain or a bed of gaillardias. 00:43:36.632 --> 00:43:40.570 align:middle line:90% 00:43:40.570 --> 00:43:43.180 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, it does get some flowers and young trees 00:43:43.180 --> 00:43:44.710 align:middle line:90% into the downtown concrete. 00:43:44.710 --> 00:43:47.500 align:middle line:84% It does demonstrate the community pride, half Mormon 00:43:47.500 --> 00:43:49.030 align:middle line:84% and half Chamber of Commerce that 00:43:49.030 --> 00:43:53.200 align:middle line:84% has always made Salt Lake a cleanly and pleasant town. 00:43:53.200 --> 00:43:55.960 align:middle line:84% All right, I decided, what if the imitation granite things 00:43:55.960 --> 00:43:57.640 align:middle line:90% are too heavy and too many? 00:43:57.640 --> 00:43:59.410 align:middle line:84% What if somebody now and then does fall 00:43:59.410 --> 00:44:02.590 align:middle line:84% into the fountains or the flowers? 00:44:02.590 --> 00:44:05.410 align:middle line:84% As far as I can see down Main, about a block and a half, 00:44:05.410 --> 00:44:07.990 align:middle line:84% the wide encumbered sidewalks continue. 00:44:07.990 --> 00:44:11.140 align:middle line:84% Though I lean, I can't quite see to the entrance of the old pool 00:44:11.140 --> 00:44:11.860 align:middle line:90% hall. 00:44:11.860 --> 00:44:15.890 align:middle line:84% Is that smelly cave still There probably not. 00:44:15.890 --> 00:44:18.800 align:middle line:84% It would be incompatible with beautification. 00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:21.740 align:middle line:84% But I feel its possibility down there just out of sight, 00:44:21.740 --> 00:44:24.050 align:middle line:84% and I feel the instant protective caution, 00:44:24.050 --> 00:44:26.540 align:middle line:84% like the caution I would exercise if I were walking 00:44:26.540 --> 00:44:29.540 align:middle line:90% along a road I knew was mine. 00:44:29.540 --> 00:44:32.612 align:middle line:90% I keep to one side, I circle. 00:44:32.612 --> 00:44:34.070 align:middle line:84% From the middle of the intersection 00:44:34.070 --> 00:44:36.380 align:middle line:84% the shadow of Brigham Young's frock coated figure, 00:44:36.380 --> 00:44:38.990 align:middle line:84% standing where the Gentile jingle left him, with his back 00:44:38.990 --> 00:44:41.390 align:middle line:84% to the temple and his hand to the bank, 00:44:41.390 --> 00:44:43.340 align:middle line:84% reaches almost to the bank doors. 00:44:43.340 --> 00:44:47.250 align:middle line:90% 00:44:47.250 --> 00:44:50.400 align:middle line:84% A car turning the corner burrows under the shadow like a cat 00:44:50.400 --> 00:44:51.780 align:middle line:90% under a rug. 00:44:51.780 --> 00:44:54.600 align:middle line:84% When it has passed, the outline of Brother Brigham 00:44:54.600 --> 00:44:57.840 align:middle line:84% settles back upon the pavement as intact as a revelation. 00:44:57.840 --> 00:45:01.230 align:middle line:90% 00:45:01.230 --> 00:45:02.670 align:middle line:90% Then something strange. 00:45:02.670 --> 00:45:05.880 align:middle line:84% The intersection drifts and becomes a double exposure, 00:45:05.880 --> 00:45:09.120 align:middle line:84% as if a transparent overlay has been slid cross it. 00:45:09.120 --> 00:45:11.070 align:middle line:84% Over the modern corner with a zebra 00:45:11.070 --> 00:45:14.910 align:middle line:84% striped pedestrian crossing and its wide, cluttered sidewalks 00:45:14.910 --> 00:45:19.050 align:middle line:84% hovers the image of an older, simpler meeting of streets. 00:45:19.050 --> 00:45:22.050 align:middle line:84% From my window I see three foreshortened figures 00:45:22.050 --> 00:45:25.080 align:middle line:84% pass below me and turned across South Temple. 00:45:25.080 --> 00:45:29.100 align:middle line:84% The camera cuts to street level and I see them plain. 00:45:29.100 --> 00:45:32.370 align:middle line:84% Three sunburned boys of 16 or 17 or 18. 00:45:32.370 --> 00:45:35.520 align:middle line:84% One of them very tall with red hair, one dark and curly 00:45:35.520 --> 00:45:37.680 align:middle line:90% haired, one thin and blond. 00:45:37.680 --> 00:45:40.200 align:middle line:84% All of them in white shirts whose sleeves are rolled nearly 00:45:40.200 --> 00:45:43.200 align:middle line:84% to the shoulder and in white Navy-surplus bell-bottom 00:45:43.200 --> 00:45:47.110 align:middle line:84% ducks with laces at the back of the waist. 00:45:47.110 --> 00:45:49.950 align:middle line:84% They walk past in a way, slim-hipped identicals, 00:45:49.950 --> 00:45:53.070 align:middle line:84% walking with a spring that could at any moment break into a run, 00:45:53.070 --> 00:45:55.920 align:middle line:84% grinning back over their shoulders at the camera. 00:45:55.920 --> 00:45:58.020 align:middle line:84% Three abreast they pass out of the frame, 00:45:58.020 --> 00:46:00.540 align:middle line:90% out of sight, out of time. 00:46:00.540 --> 00:46:03.210 align:middle line:84% Glimpsed and gone, irrecoverable. 00:46:03.210 --> 00:46:06.030 align:middle line:84% Their presence written on the hot summer air, the period 00:46:06.030 --> 00:46:08.190 align:middle line:90% as irrecoverable as they. 00:46:08.190 --> 00:46:13.080 align:middle line:84% Joe Mulder, Jack Bailey, Bruce Mason, fixed for a few seconds 00:46:13.080 --> 00:46:16.320 align:middle line:84% by a Pathe News cameraman filming a Salt Lake City street 00:46:16.320 --> 00:46:20.070 align:middle line:84% scene in the summer of what, 1925? 00:46:20.070 --> 00:46:21.960 align:middle line:90% 1926? 00:46:21.960 --> 00:46:25.500 align:middle line:84% The summer after our freshman year in college. 00:46:25.500 --> 00:46:27.180 align:middle line:90% The days there intact. 00:46:27.180 --> 00:46:28.680 align:middle line:84% We've just come from the tennis club 00:46:28.680 --> 00:46:30.430 align:middle line:84% where Joe Mulder and I have played and won 00:46:30.430 --> 00:46:32.670 align:middle line:84% a doubles match that puts us into the second round 00:46:32.670 --> 00:46:33.990 align:middle line:90% of the state tournament. 00:46:33.990 --> 00:46:35.850 align:middle line:84% From the club we have accompanied Bailey 00:46:35.850 --> 00:46:38.760 align:middle line:84% to the mission home, which he will enter tomorrow 00:46:38.760 --> 00:46:41.910 align:middle line:84% to be briefed for his coming mission to Tonga. 00:46:41.910 --> 00:46:44.130 align:middle line:84% We're now on our way down to Second South to lunch 00:46:44.130 --> 00:46:47.190 align:middle line:84% at the workingman's restaurant called Joe Vincent's. 00:46:47.190 --> 00:46:50.250 align:middle line:84% On my palate, either as anticipation or remembrance, 00:46:50.250 --> 00:46:53.940 align:middle line:84% lingers the flavor of that slab of white bread and slab 00:46:53.940 --> 00:46:57.630 align:middle line:84% of overdone beef smothered in that yellow-brown Formula 57 00:46:57.630 --> 00:47:00.150 align:middle line:90% gravy. 00:47:00.150 --> 00:47:01.950 align:middle line:84% I let the three figures go and sit 00:47:01.950 --> 00:47:05.370 align:middle line:84% brooding with a cold edge of the glass against my upper lip. 00:47:05.370 --> 00:47:08.430 align:middle line:84% Irrecoverable, but realer than anything else in the street. 00:47:08.430 --> 00:47:10.560 align:middle line:84% Much realer than the planters and fountains 00:47:10.560 --> 00:47:12.690 align:middle line:90% of downtown beautification. 00:47:12.690 --> 00:47:15.930 align:middle line:84% I saw them living, solid, Mercurial with expression 00:47:15.930 --> 00:47:18.250 align:middle line:90% but as unchangeable as history. 00:47:18.250 --> 00:47:20.130 align:middle line:90% They are history. 00:47:20.130 --> 00:47:22.620 align:middle line:84% That Pathe newsreel must be preserved somewhere. 00:47:22.620 --> 00:47:25.410 align:middle line:84% I could go to some archive and project it. 00:47:25.410 --> 00:47:27.390 align:middle line:84% Just before the boys appear on camera, 00:47:27.390 --> 00:47:30.210 align:middle line:84% President Calvin Coolidge has been crowned with a war bonnet 00:47:30.210 --> 00:47:33.540 align:middle line:84% by some tame Sioux in the Black Hills. 00:47:33.540 --> 00:47:36.660 align:middle line:84% Just after they pass out of sight, beyond the ZCMI corner, 00:47:36.660 --> 00:47:38.490 align:middle line:84% a forlorn family will start picking 00:47:38.490 --> 00:47:39.960 align:middle line:84% through the wreckage of their home 00:47:39.960 --> 00:47:43.560 align:middle line:84% in a tornado-struck Oklahoma town. 00:47:43.560 --> 00:47:46.050 align:middle line:90% Je suis une chose qui dure. 00:47:46.050 --> 00:47:49.020 align:middle line:84% So said Henri Bergson, whom I've probably not thought 00:47:49.020 --> 00:47:50.550 align:middle line:84% of since reading him as background 00:47:50.550 --> 00:47:53.670 align:middle line:84% for a college paper on Proust away back, nearly half 00:47:53.670 --> 00:47:54.900 align:middle line:90% a century. 00:47:54.900 --> 00:47:57.630 align:middle line:90% Je suis une chose qui dure. 00:47:57.630 --> 00:48:00.720 align:middle line:90% I am a thing that lasts. 00:48:00.720 --> 00:48:03.960 align:middle line:84% But not unaltered, either as subject or as object. 00:48:03.960 --> 00:48:07.170 align:middle line:84% If I have the idea that I could come back after 45 years 00:48:07.170 --> 00:48:09.990 align:middle line:84% and resume conversations in the middle of a sentence, 00:48:09.990 --> 00:48:12.060 align:middle line:84% I'm certainly going to be disappointed. 00:48:12.060 --> 00:48:14.310 align:middle line:84% Being is consciousness and consciousness 00:48:14.310 --> 00:48:18.120 align:middle line:84% retains its identity, which is in good part memory. 00:48:18.120 --> 00:48:21.210 align:middle line:84% But experience doesn't wait while identity defines itself 00:48:21.210 --> 00:48:22.080 align:middle line:90% for eternity. 00:48:22.080 --> 00:48:25.230 align:middle line:84% It enforces on identity an uninterrupted process 00:48:25.230 --> 00:48:26.730 align:middle line:90% of transition. 00:48:26.730 --> 00:48:31.680 align:middle line:84% Perhaps even the memory that records the stages of change 00:48:31.680 --> 00:48:32.820 align:middle line:90% isn't permanent. 00:48:32.820 --> 00:48:37.820 align:middle line:84% Memory has to be, doesn't it, a series of overlays. 00:48:37.820 --> 00:48:41.970 align:middle line:84% The collegiate bohemian of 19 who hung around Holly 00:48:41.970 --> 00:48:44.490 align:middle line:84% and affected Proust and Joyce and Havelock Ellis 00:48:44.490 --> 00:48:47.190 align:middle line:84% was a different creature from the 16-year-old in sailor 00:48:47.190 --> 00:48:49.560 align:middle line:84% pants drunk on achieved companionship 00:48:49.560 --> 00:48:52.170 align:middle line:84% and the exhilaration of having friends. 00:48:52.170 --> 00:48:54.510 align:middle line:84% But one contains the other, as the one who 00:48:54.510 --> 00:48:57.510 align:middle line:84% sits looking out a Utah hotel window contains them both, 00:48:57.510 --> 00:49:00.030 align:middle line:90% and 1,000 more besides. 00:49:00.030 --> 00:49:02.310 align:middle line:84% Of all the identities or partial identities 00:49:02.310 --> 00:49:05.790 align:middle line:84% or tentative identities I have been, I am now for this moment 00:49:05.790 --> 00:49:10.050 align:middle line:84% the unpredicted, evanescent, directorial sum. 00:49:10.050 --> 00:49:12.360 align:middle line:90% I remember, therefore I was. 00:49:12.360 --> 00:49:15.030 align:middle line:90% I was, there I am. 00:49:15.030 --> 00:49:17.130 align:middle line:84% I both contain and commemorate myself, 00:49:17.130 --> 00:49:20.970 align:middle line:90% I am both grave and gravestone. 00:49:20.970 --> 00:49:24.060 align:middle line:84% I left Salt Lake City sick with hatred of Jack Bailey, 00:49:24.060 --> 00:49:26.430 align:middle line:84% but grievance and injured vanity heal. 00:49:26.430 --> 00:49:28.770 align:middle line:84% And other recollections have lasted at least as well 00:49:28.770 --> 00:49:29.730 align:middle line:90% as the grudge. 00:49:29.730 --> 00:49:34.200 align:middle line:84% I would be glad enough to see Bailey again, 00:49:34.200 --> 00:49:37.680 align:middle line:84% if only out of curiosity to know what time has made of him. 00:49:37.680 --> 00:49:39.690 align:middle line:84% And if Bailey, then many others, too. 00:49:39.690 --> 00:49:41.550 align:middle line:84% The ones who made a world for me. 00:49:41.550 --> 00:49:44.850 align:middle line:84% Joe Mulder especially, who all but created Bruce Mason. 00:49:44.850 --> 00:49:48.340 align:middle line:84% And having created him made it possible for him to survive. 00:49:48.340 --> 00:49:51.160 align:middle line:90% Will I call him? 00:49:51.160 --> 00:49:53.080 align:middle line:84% I can't answer myself with certainty. 00:49:53.080 --> 00:49:56.050 align:middle line:84% If Joe is alive, and there's at least a 50% chance 00:49:56.050 --> 00:49:58.990 align:middle line:84% that he isn't, he contains as many versions of young Bruce 00:49:58.990 --> 00:50:02.740 align:middle line:84% Mason as old Bruce Mason contains of young Joe Mulder. 00:50:02.740 --> 00:50:04.810 align:middle line:84% Their meeting will be an effort by two strangers 00:50:04.810 --> 00:50:06.910 align:middle line:84% to reconstruct each other from the album 00:50:06.910 --> 00:50:09.700 align:middle line:90% snapshots of a long time past. 00:50:09.700 --> 00:50:11.830 align:middle line:84% A reunion of two sets of outgrown, 00:50:11.830 --> 00:50:14.590 align:middle line:90% and by now false memories. 00:50:14.590 --> 00:50:17.230 align:middle line:84% And how do I explain to Joe or Joe's survivor 00:50:17.230 --> 00:50:19.960 align:middle line:90% 45 years of total silence? 00:50:19.960 --> 00:50:23.080 align:middle line:90% I can't explain them to myself. 00:50:23.080 --> 00:50:26.470 align:middle line:84% I get up and make myself another drink, holding it in my hand 00:50:26.470 --> 00:50:28.210 align:middle line:84% and looking down on the telephone book, 00:50:28.210 --> 00:50:31.210 align:middle line:84% lying where I threw it on the bed earlier this afternoon. 00:50:31.210 --> 00:50:35.080 align:middle line:84% If Joe is alive it'll take only 20 seconds to find out. 00:50:35.080 --> 00:50:37.570 align:middle line:84% Before I can change my mind I've opened the book 00:50:37.570 --> 00:50:39.850 align:middle line:90% and found the Ms. 00:50:39.850 --> 00:50:42.370 align:middle line:84% My finger moves down the column and stops. 00:50:42.370 --> 00:50:44.170 align:middle line:84% There it is, even the same address, 00:50:44.170 --> 00:50:46.420 align:middle line:84% Joe's parents' house, which for two or three years 00:50:46.420 --> 00:50:48.940 align:middle line:90% was more home to me than my own. 00:50:48.940 --> 00:50:50.770 align:middle line:84% Delighted I hunt for something on which 00:50:50.770 --> 00:50:53.770 align:middle line:84% to copy down the number, and finally fish out 00:50:53.770 --> 00:50:57.040 align:middle line:84% of my jacket pocket the slip that McBride gave me. 00:50:57.040 --> 00:50:59.740 align:middle line:84% I scribble the number on it, and then struck by something turn 00:50:59.740 --> 00:51:00.850 align:middle line:90% the slip over. 00:51:00.850 --> 00:51:04.105 align:middle line:84% Joe's number and the one on McBride's side are the same. 00:51:04.105 --> 00:51:06.640 align:middle line:90% 00:51:06.640 --> 00:51:08.140 align:middle line:90% Adrenaline goes through me. 00:51:08.140 --> 00:51:10.930 align:middle line:84% It's as if I had taken a whiff of ammonia. 00:51:10.930 --> 00:51:13.600 align:middle line:84% Right in the same house, waiting all these years, 00:51:13.600 --> 00:51:17.080 align:middle line:84% keeping his eye out for the slightest clue of my returning. 00:51:17.080 --> 00:51:19.450 align:middle line:84% Manifestly keeping his eye out, or why would he 00:51:19.450 --> 00:51:21.220 align:middle line:84% have seized on the obituary notice 00:51:21.220 --> 00:51:24.820 align:middle line:84% of Margaret Webb, a woman he probably never heard of? 00:51:24.820 --> 00:51:29.260 align:middle line:84% The notice must have contained me as a named survivor. 00:51:29.260 --> 00:51:30.730 align:middle line:90% But why did a woman call? 00:51:30.730 --> 00:51:32.710 align:middle line:90% Joe's wife? 00:51:32.710 --> 00:51:34.300 align:middle line:90% Probably he has one. 00:51:34.300 --> 00:51:37.420 align:middle line:84% Still, it strikes me as odd that his instant, infallible 00:51:37.420 --> 00:51:38.950 align:middle line:84% restoration of contact should have 00:51:38.950 --> 00:51:41.980 align:middle line:84% come by some other voice than his own. 00:51:41.980 --> 00:51:44.140 align:middle line:84% I take a nervous little journey across the room 00:51:44.140 --> 00:51:46.300 align:middle line:84% and back to the bed table and the telephone. 00:51:46.300 --> 00:51:49.600 align:middle line:84% My skin has glazed over in the air conditioned chill. 00:51:49.600 --> 00:51:52.810 align:middle line:84% The stiffness of the long drive lurks in my muscle. 00:51:52.810 --> 00:51:55.720 align:middle line:84% I have an unsteady moment, a darkening of the sight, 00:51:55.720 --> 00:51:56.860 align:middle line:90% vertigo. 00:51:56.860 --> 00:51:59.770 align:middle line:84% Then it clears and I pick up the telephone. 00:51:59.770 --> 00:52:02.260 align:middle line:84% But at the last moment my finger betrays me, 00:52:02.260 --> 00:52:07.360 align:middle line:84% I swerve aside, I dial the present, not the past. 00:52:07.360 --> 00:52:10.630 align:middle line:84% She answers in the middle of the second ring, "Hello?" 00:52:10.630 --> 00:52:12.087 align:middle line:90% "Hi, Annie." 00:52:12.087 --> 00:52:12.670 align:middle line:90% "Oh, it's you. 00:52:12.670 --> 00:52:13.750 align:middle line:90% I was hoping it was. 00:52:13.750 --> 00:52:14.830 align:middle line:90% How are you, exhausted? 00:52:14.830 --> 00:52:16.660 align:middle line:90% Are you in Salt Lake?" 00:52:16.660 --> 00:52:19.540 align:middle line:84% I love the way her voice warms at the sound of mine. 00:52:19.540 --> 00:52:21.370 align:middle line:84% Intimacy and comfort and certainty 00:52:21.370 --> 00:52:24.550 align:middle line:84% flow toward me over 800 miles of wire. 00:52:24.550 --> 00:52:26.470 align:middle line:84% I sit down on the bed and pull the pillow up 00:52:26.470 --> 00:52:29.380 align:middle line:84% against the headboard and get comfortable. 00:52:29.380 --> 00:52:31.180 align:middle line:84% "Everything's fine, I got in about 3:00. 00:52:31.180 --> 00:52:32.890 align:middle line:90% How's it with you?" 00:52:32.890 --> 00:52:33.400 align:middle line:90% "Fine. 00:52:33.400 --> 00:52:34.150 align:middle line:90% Quiet. 00:52:34.150 --> 00:52:39.033 align:middle line:84% I've already done anything since you left except practice Bach. 00:52:39.033 --> 00:52:39.700 align:middle line:90% Ugh is he hard." 00:52:39.700 --> 00:52:42.430 align:middle line:90% 00:52:42.430 --> 00:52:45.850 align:middle line:84% "That's the best thing you ever did, taking up the piano again. 00:52:45.850 --> 00:52:48.430 align:middle line:84% I wish I hadn't let it go so long, it might be easier now." 00:52:48.430 --> 00:52:50.120 align:middle line:90% "How was the drive?" 00:52:50.120 --> 00:52:50.620 align:middle line:90% "Great. 00:52:50.620 --> 00:52:53.260 align:middle line:84% Beautiful across the desert, big brassy sky, 00:52:53.260 --> 00:52:56.020 align:middle line:84% big shaving cream clouds, big gray valleys 00:52:56.020 --> 00:52:57.310 align:middle line:90% slung between the ranges. 00:52:57.310 --> 00:52:59.320 align:middle line:84% I kept being reminded of the Beqaa Valley 00:52:59.320 --> 00:53:02.530 align:middle line:84% up behind Beirut on the way to Damascus." 00:53:02.530 --> 00:53:05.770 align:middle line:90% "I hope you had a vision." 00:53:05.770 --> 00:53:10.840 align:middle line:84% "Not quite, just the usual hallucinations." 00:53:10.840 --> 00:53:12.430 align:middle line:90% "Was it hot?" 00:53:12.430 --> 00:53:13.085 align:middle line:90% "It's hot here. 00:53:13.085 --> 00:53:15.460 align:middle line:84% I didn't notice it on the road with the air conditioning. 00:53:15.460 --> 00:53:17.500 align:middle line:90% You should have come." 00:53:17.500 --> 00:53:19.210 align:middle line:90% "I'm better off practicing Bach. 00:53:19.210 --> 00:53:22.000 align:middle line:84% Anyway, you didn't want me to come." 00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:24.280 align:middle line:90% "What makes you think that?" 00:53:24.280 --> 00:53:24.940 align:middle line:90% "I could tell. 00:53:24.940 --> 00:53:26.558 align:middle line:84% From the minute they called you acted 00:53:26.558 --> 00:53:28.600 align:middle line:84% as if you'd been given a chance to go to the moon 00:53:28.600 --> 00:53:29.860 align:middle line:90% but couldn't tell anybody." 00:53:29.860 --> 00:53:32.770 align:middle line:90% 00:53:32.770 --> 00:53:35.290 align:middle line:90% "It's you having hallucinations. 00:53:35.290 --> 00:53:37.780 align:middle line:84% Why should I be excited about having to come back and bury 00:53:37.780 --> 00:53:39.730 align:middle line:90% Aunt Margaret?" 00:53:39.730 --> 00:53:42.710 align:middle line:90% "The funeral is a good excuse." 00:53:42.710 --> 00:53:44.620 align:middle line:84% I thought about that for a few seconds. 00:53:44.620 --> 00:53:46.600 align:middle line:90% "Oh, it is?" 00:53:46.600 --> 00:53:47.320 align:middle line:90% "Yes." 00:53:47.320 --> 00:53:49.990 align:middle line:84% She waits ready to debate me if I choose. 00:53:49.990 --> 00:53:52.030 align:middle line:84% When I don't choose she says, "Anyway, I'm 00:53:52.030 --> 00:53:52.960 align:middle line:90% not good at funerals. 00:53:52.960 --> 00:53:55.390 align:middle line:84% I weep even for people I never knew. 00:53:55.390 --> 00:53:57.220 align:middle line:90% Have you made the arrangements?" 00:53:57.220 --> 00:53:59.543 align:middle line:84% "We'll bury her at noon tomorrow." 00:53:59.543 --> 00:54:01.960 align:middle line:84% "Will there be anyone there but you and the funeral parlor 00:54:01.960 --> 00:54:02.993 align:middle line:90% people?" 00:54:02.993 --> 00:54:05.410 align:middle line:84% "I don't suppose, unless some of the old folks at the home 00:54:05.410 --> 00:54:06.970 align:middle line:90% are up to it." 00:54:06.970 --> 00:54:07.810 align:middle line:90% "I hope they are. 00:54:07.810 --> 00:54:09.730 align:middle line:84% I'm destroyed by funerals where there's only 00:54:09.730 --> 00:54:14.020 align:middle line:84% the one car and the hearse, and three people at the grave. 00:54:14.020 --> 00:54:15.370 align:middle line:90% It just seems so forlorn. 00:54:15.370 --> 00:54:19.725 align:middle line:84% Buy a lot of flowers, send the poor old thing off in style." 00:54:19.725 --> 00:54:21.100 align:middle line:84% "All right, though nobody's going 00:54:21.100 --> 00:54:23.500 align:middle line:90% to notice, she least of all." 00:54:23.500 --> 00:54:24.760 align:middle line:90% "Just the same." 00:54:24.760 --> 00:54:26.200 align:middle line:90% "All right." 00:54:26.200 --> 00:54:28.150 align:middle line:90% We seem to have run down. 00:54:28.150 --> 00:54:30.700 align:middle line:84% The pause lengthens, then she says in a different voice, 00:54:30.700 --> 00:54:33.070 align:middle line:90% "How does it seem to go back?" 00:54:33.070 --> 00:54:35.800 align:middle line:84% "Strange," I say, suddenly eager to talk about it. 00:54:35.800 --> 00:54:38.170 align:middle line:84% "Strangely familiar, familiarly strange. 00:54:38.170 --> 00:54:40.900 align:middle line:90% Lots of deja vu. 00:54:40.900 --> 00:54:42.760 align:middle line:90% "Does it bother you?" 00:54:42.760 --> 00:54:44.080 align:middle line:90% "Bother me?" 00:54:44.080 --> 00:54:46.090 align:middle line:90% "You were so unhappy there." 00:54:46.090 --> 00:54:46.790 align:middle line:90% "Was I?" 00:54:46.790 --> 00:54:49.200 align:middle line:90% I ask, surprised. 00:54:49.200 --> 00:54:51.190 align:middle line:90% "Your father and all that." 00:54:51.190 --> 00:54:52.540 align:middle line:90% "Yeah, I suppose," I say. 00:54:52.540 --> 00:54:54.980 align:middle line:90% "Well, it's a long time ago." 00:54:54.980 --> 00:54:57.000 align:middle line:90%