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PARTISAN REVIEW
cilable with suicide. He knew that the Church grants religious burial
to suicides only in so far as it admits their ... irresponsibility."
He seemed jealous of the resoluteness with which his brother
had died-and at the same time, proud.
"Irresponsibility was not his strong point. But after all, he
rejected the Church, not the sacraments."
My father hesitated, then went on:
"I believe what happened must have been very painful. You
know that the will was sealed. The sentence: 'My formal wish
is
to he buried as a Catholic,' was written on a separate page and was
found on the bedside table where the strychnine was; but the first
version had been:
'My
formal wish is nvt to be buried as a Catholic.'
He crossed out the negative later, drawing a large number of lines
through it. Probably he hadn't the strength any longer to tear the
paper up and write over again."
"Fear?" Walter suggested.
"Or the end of revolt: humility."
"And besides, what does one ever know? In essentials, man is
what he conceals.... "
Walter shrugged liis shoulders and brought his aged hands
together, as children do to make a mud-pie:
"A pitiful little heap of secrets.... "
"Man is what he does!" my father replied almost brutally.
Temperamentally, he was exasperated by what he called, as though
speaking of pick-pocketing, the psychology-of-secrets. Assum1ng that
my grandfather's suicide had had a "cause," that cause, whether
the most banal or the saddest of secrets, was less significant than
the strychnine and the revolver-than the resolution by which he had
chosen
death, a death that resembled his life.
"In the realm of secrets," he went on in a more moderate tone,
"men are a little too easily equal."
"Yes, you are what is called, I believe, a man of action.... "
"It is not action that has made me understand that in essentials,
as you put it, man is higher than his secrets."
From the funeral room he saw again the bed, mussed by the
men from the hospital who had just taken the body away, and timidly
straightened out by Jeanne, with the hollow in it like that of a sleeper;
the electricity was still on, as though no one-not even himself–
had dared to drive away death by pulling back the curtains. In the
half-open closet he saw a little birthday spruce, with all its tiny
