Elizabeth answered; her familiar voice was a fresh shock to him. Twice he had to repeat his name, but when he was identified, she sounded glad. He explained he was only in town for that day. They had a theater engagement, she said\u2014but she wondered if he would come by for an early dinner. Ferris said he would be delighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As he went from one engagement to another, he was still bothered at odd moments by the feeling that something necessary was forgotten. Ferris bathed and changed in the late afternoon, often thinking about Jeannine: he would be with her the following night. \u2018Jeannine,\u2019 he would say, \u2018I happened to run into my ex-wife when I was in New York. Had dinner with her. And her husband, of course. It was strange seeing her after all these years.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elizabeth lived in the East Fifties, and as Ferris taxied uptown he glimpsed at intersections the lingering sunset, but by the time he reached his destination it was already autumn dark. The place was a building with a marquee and a doorman, and the apartment was on the seventh floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Come in, Mr. Ferris.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Braced for Elizabeth or even the unimagined husband, Ferris was astonished by the freckled red-haired child; he had known of the children, but his mind had failed somehow to acknowledge them. Surprise made him step back awkwardly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018This is our apartment,\u2019 the child said politely. \u2018Aren\u2019t you Mr. Ferris? I\u2019m Billy. Come in.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the living room beyond the hall, the husband provided another surprise; he too had not been acknowledged emotionally. Bailey was a lumbering red-haired man with a deliberate manner. He rose and extended a welcoming hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I\u2019m Bill Bailey. Glad to see you. Elizabeth will be in, in a minute. She\u2019s finishing dressing.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last words struck a gliding series of vibrations, memories of the other years. Fair Elizabeth, rosy and naked before her bath. Half-dressed before the mirror of her dressing table, brushing her fine, chestnut hair. Sweet, casual intimacy, the soft-fleshed loveliness indisputably possessed. Ferris shrank from the unbidden memories and compelled himself to meet Bill Bailey\u2019s gaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBilly, will you please bring that tray of drinks from the kitchen table?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The child obeyed promptly, and when he was gone Ferris remarked conversationally, \u2018Fine boy you have there.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018We think so.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flat silence until the child returned with a tray of glasses and a cocktail shaker of Martinis. With the priming drinks they pumped up conversation: Russia, they spoke of, and the New York rain-making, and the apartment situation in Manhattan and Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Mr. Ferris is flying all the way across the ocean tomorrow,\u2019 Bailey said to the little boy who was perched on the arm of his chair, quiet and well behaved. \u2018I bet you would like to be a stowaway in his suitcase.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Billy pushed back his limp bangs. \u2018I want to fly in an airplane and be a newspaperman like Mr. Ferris.\u2019 He added with sudden assurance, \u2018That\u2019s what I would like to do when I am big.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bailey said, \u2018I thought you wanted to be a doctor.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I do!\u2019 said Billy. \u2018I would like to be both. I want to be a atom-bomb scientist too.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elizabeth came in carrying in her arms a baby girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Oh, John!\u2019 she said. She settled the baby in the father\u2019s lap. \u2018It\u2019s grand to see you. I\u2019m awfully glad you could come.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The little girl sat demurely on Bailey\u2019s knees. She wore a pale pink crepe de Chine frock, smocked around the yoke with rose, and a matching silk hair ribbon tying back her pale soft curls. Her skin was summer tanned and her brown eyes flecked with gold and laughing. When she reached up and fingered her father\u2019s horn-rimmed glasses, he took them off and let her look through them a moment. \u2018How\u2019s my old Candy?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elizabeth was very beautiful, more beautiful perhaps than he had ever realized. Her straight clean hair was shining. Her face was softer, glowing and serene. It was a madonna loveliness, dependent on the family ambiance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You\u2019ve hardly changed at all,\u2019 Elizabeth said, \u2018but it has been a long time.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Eight years.\u2019 His hand touched his thinning hair self-consciously while further amenities were exchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ferris felt himself suddenly a spectator\u2014an interloper among these Baileys. Why had he come? He suffered. His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years. He felt he could not bear much longer to stay in the family room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He glanced at his watch. \u2018You\u2019re going to the theater?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018It\u2019s a shame,\u2019 Elizabeth said, \u2018but we\u2019ve had this engagement for more than a month. But surely, John, you\u2019ll be staying home one of these days before long. You\u2019re not going to be an expatriate, are you?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Expatriate,\u2019 Ferris repeated. \u2018I don\u2019t much like the word.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What\u2019s a better word?\u2019 she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He thought for a moment. \u2018Sojourner might do.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ferris glanced again at his watch, and again Elizabeth apologized. \u2018If only we had known ahead of time\u2014\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018I just had this day in town. I came home unexpectedly. You see, Papa died last week.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Papa Ferris is dead?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Yes, at Johns Hopkins. He had been sick there nearly a year. The funeral was down home in Georgia.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Oh, I\u2019m so sorry, John. Papa Ferris was always one of my favorite people.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The little boy moved from behind the chair so that he could look into his mother\u2019s face. He asked, \u2018Who is dead?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ferris was oblivious to apprehension; he was thinking of his father\u2019s death. He saw again the outstretched body on the quilted silk within the coffin. The corpse flesh was bizarrely rouged and the familiar hands lay massive and joined above a spread of funeral roses. The memory closed and Ferris awakened to Elizabeth\u2019s calm voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Mr. Ferris\u2019 father, Billy. A really grand person. Somebody you didn\u2019t know.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018But why did you call him Papa<\/em> Ferris?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bailey and Elizabeth exchanged a trapped look. It was Bailey who answered the questioning child. \u2018A long time ago,\u2019 he said, \u2018your mother and Mr. Ferris were once married. Before you were born\u2014a long time ago.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Mr. Ferris?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The little boy stared at Ferris, amazed and unbelieving. And Ferris\u2019 eyes, as he returned the gaze, were somehow unbelieving too. Was it indeed true that at one time he had called this stranger, Elizabeth, Little Butterduck during nights of love, that they had lived together, shared perhaps a thousand days and nights and\u2014finally\u2014endured in the misery of sudden solitude the fiber by fiber (jealousy, alcohol and money quarrels) destruction of the fabric of married love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bailey said to the children, \u2018It\u2019s somebody\u2019s suppertime. Come on now.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018But Daddy! Mama and Mr. Ferris\u2014I\u2014\u2014\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Billy\u2019s everlasting eyes\u2014perplexed and with a glimmer of hostility\u2014reminded Ferris of the gaze of another child. It was the young son of Jeannine\u2014a boy of seven with a shadowed little face and nobby knees whom Ferris avoided and usually forgot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Quick march!\u2019 Bailey gently turned Billy toward the door. \u2018Say good night now, son.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Good night, Mr. Ferris.\u2019 He added resentfully, \u2018I thought I was staying up for the cake.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018You can come in afterward for the cake,\u2019 Elizabeth said. \u2018Run along now with Daddy for your supper.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferris and Elizabeth were alone. The weight of the situation descended on those first moments of silence. Ferris asked permission to pour himself another drink and Elizabeth set the cocktail shaker on the table at his side. He looked at the grand piano and noticed the music on the rack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Do you still play as beautifully as you used to?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018I still enjoy it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Please play, Elizabeth.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elizabeth arose immediately. Her readiness to perform when asked had always been one of her amiabilities; she never hung back, apologized. Now as she approached the piano there was the added readiness of relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She began with a Bach prelude and fugue. The prelude was as gaily iridescent as a prism in a morning room. The first voice of the fugue, an announcement pure and solitary, was repeated intermingling with a second voice, and again repeated within an elaborated frame, the multiple music, horizontal and serene, flowed with unhurried majesty. The principal melody was woven with two other voices, embellished with countless ingenuities\u2014now dominant, again submerged, it had the sublimity of a single thing that does not fear surrender to the whole. Toward the end, the density of the material gathered for the last enriched insistence on the dominant first motif and with a chorded final statement the fugue ended. Ferris rested his head on the chair back and closed his eyes. In the following silence a clear, high voice came from the room down the hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Daddy, how could<\/em> Mama and Mr. Ferris\u2014\u2014\u2019 A door was closed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The piano began again\u2014what was this music? Unplaced, familiar, the limpid melody had lain a long while dormant in his heart. Now it spoke to him of another time, another place\u2014it was the music Elizabeth used to play. The delicate air summoned a wilderness of memory. Ferris was lost in the riot of past longings, conflicts, ambivalent desires. Strange that the music, catalyst for this tumultuous anarchy, was so serene and clear. The singing melody was broken off by the appearance of the maid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Miz Bailey, dinner is out on the table now.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even after Ferris was seated at the table between his host and hostess, the unfinished music still overcast his mood. He was a little drunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018L\u2019improvisation de la vie humaine<\/em>,\u2019 he said. \u2018There\u2019s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Address book?\u2019 repeated Bailey. Then he stopped, noncommittal and polite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018You\u2019re still the same old boy, Johnny,\u2019 Elizabeth said with a trace of the old tenderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a Southern dinner that evening, and the dishes were his old favorites. They had fried chicken and corn pudding and rich, glozed candied sweet potatoes. During the meal Elizabeth kept alive a conversation when the silences were overlong. And it came about that Ferris was led to speak of Jeannine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018I first knew Jeannine last autumn\u2014about this time of the year\u2014in Italy. She\u2019s a singer and she had an engagement in Rome. I expect we will be married soon.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The words seemed so true, inevitable, that Ferris did not at first acknowledge to himself the lie. He and Jeannine had never in that year spoken of marriage. And indeed, she was still married\u2014to a White Russian money-changer in Paris from whom she had been separated for five years. But it was too late to correct the lie. Already Elizabeth was saying: \u2018This really makes me glad to know. Congratulations, Johnny.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n He tried to make amends with truth. \u2018The Roman autumn is so beautiful. Balmy and blossoming.\u2019 He added, \u2018Jeannine has a little boy of six. A curious trilingual little fellow. We go to the Tuileries sometimes.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lie again. He had taken the boy once to the gardens. The sallow foreign child in shorts that bared his spindly legs had sailed his boat in the concrete pond and ridden the pony. The child had wanted to go in to the puppet show. But there was not time, for Ferris had an engagement at the Scribe Hotel. He had promised they would go to the guignol another afternoon. Only once had he taken Valentin to the Tuileries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a stir. The maid brought in a white-frosted cake with pink candles. The children entered in their night clothes. Ferris still did not understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Happy birthday, John,\u2019 Elizabeth said. \u2018Blow out the candles.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferris recognized his birthday date. The candles blew out lingeringly and there was the smell of burning wax. Ferris was thirty-eight years old. The veins in his temples darkened and pulsed visibly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018It\u2019s time you started for the theater.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferris thanked Elizabeth for the birthday dinner and said the appropriate good-byes. The whole family saw him to the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A high, thin moon shone above the jagged, dark skyscrapers. The streets were windy, cold. Ferris hurried to Third Avenue and hailed a cab. He gazed at the nocturnal city with the deliberate attentiveness of departure and perhaps farewell. He was alone. He longed for flight-time and the coming journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day he looked down on the city from the air, burnished in sunlight, toylike, precise. Then America was left behind and there was only the Atlantic and the distant European shore. The ocean was milky pale and placid beneath the clouds. Ferris dozed most of the day. Toward dark he was thinking of Elizabeth and the visit of the previous evening. He thought of Elizabeth among her family with longing, gentle envy and inexplicable regret. He sought the melody, the unfinished air, that had so moved him. The cadence, some unrelated tones, were all that remained; the melody itself evaded him. He had found instead the first voice of the fugue that Elizabeth had played\u2014it came to him, inverted mockingly and in a minor key. Suspended above the ocean the anxieties of transience and solitude no longer troubled him and he thought of his father\u2019s death with equanimity. During the dinner hour the plane reached the shore of France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At midnight Ferris was in a taxi crossing Paris. It was a clouded night and mist wreathed the lights of the Place de la Concorde. The midnight bistros gleamed on the wet pavements. As always after a transocean flight the change of continents was too sudden. New York at morning, this midnight Paris. Ferris glimpsed the disorder of his life: the succession of cities, of transitory loves; and time, the sinister glissando of the years, time always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Vite! Vite!<\/em>\u2019 he called in terror. \u2018D\u00e9p\u00eachez-vous<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valentin opened the door to him. The little boy wore pajamas and an outgrown red robe. His grey eyes were shadowed and, as Ferris passed into the flat, they flickered momentarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018J\u2019attends Maman<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeannine was singing in a night club. She would not be home before another hour. Valentin returned to a drawing, squatting with his crayons over the paper on the floor. Ferris looked down at the drawing\u2014it was a banjo player with notes and wavy lines inside a comic-strip balloon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018We will go again to the Tuileries.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n The child looked up and Ferris drew him closer to his knees. The melody, the unfinished music that Elizabeth had played, came to him suddenly. Unsought, the load of memory jettisoned\u2014this time bringing only recognition and sudden joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Monsieur Jean,\u2019 the child said, \u2018did you see him?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Confused, Ferris thought only of another child\u2014the freckled, family-loved boy. \u2018See who, Valentin?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Your dead papa in Georgia.\u2019 The child added, \u2018Was he okay?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferris spoke with rapid urgency: \u2018We will go often to the Tuileries. Ride the pony and we will go into the guignol. We will see the puppet show and never be in a hurry any more.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Monsieur Jean,\u2019 Valentin said. \u2018The guignol is now closed.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, the terror the acknowledgement of wasted years and death. Valentin, responsive and confident, still nestled in his arms. His cheek touched the soft cheek and felt the brush of the delicate eyelashes. With inner desperation he pressed the child close\u2014as though an emotion as protean as his love could dominate the pulse of time.<\/p>\n\n\n Author: Carson McCullers [Full text]<\/p>\n\n\n THE TWILIGHT BORDER between sleep and waking was a Roman one this morning: splashing fountains and arched, narrow streets, the golden lavish city of blossoms and age-soft stone. Sometimes in this semi-consciousness he sojourned again in Paris, or war German rubble, or Swiss skiing and a snow hotel. Sometimes, also, in a fallow Georgia field at … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[632,630,570],"class_list":["post-8191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-carson-mccullers-en","tag-realism","tag-united-states","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":559,"label":"Short stories"}],"post_tag":[{"value":632,"label":"Carson McCullers"},{"value":630,"label":"Realism"},{"value":570,"label":"United States"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Carson-McCullers.jpg",800,457,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Juan Pablo Guevara","author_link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/author\/spartakku\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":559,"name":"Short stories","slug":"short-stories","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":559,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":419,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":559,"category_count":419,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Short stories","category_nicename":"short-stories","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":632,"name":"Carson McCullers","slug":"carson-mccullers-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":632,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":630,"name":"Realism","slug":"realism","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":630,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":52,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":570,"name":"United States","slug":"united-states","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":570,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":294,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/divider2.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nBibliographic data<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Title: The Sojourner
Published in: Mademoiselle<\/em>, 1950<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Carson](\"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Carson-McCullers-150x150.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"