VARIETY
THE H**GHT
**N
M*FFL *N
FELLOWSHIP
The mailman has been here
again. As always when he feels
that he produces something which
will make an imperative demand
upon my attention, he pushes the
bell, firmly, so that its unexpected
sound in the winter stillness erupts
in both rooms with a spectacular
clamor. (A considerate silence ac–
companies all communications
from societies for the election of
Swedish politicians and unsealed
letters which begin "My dear new
friend ... ." and suggest that 1
present one hundred dollars im–
mediately to the undersigned
chairman. ) He has become fam–
iliar too, with my manila envelopes.
Someday 1 shall tcll him that 1
am not
half
so pleased as he, in his
innocence, to see them in my mail–
box.
Originally, many years ago, be–
fore we bowcd on the stairs, Mrs.
Eberhart, The Explorer of the U n–
known World of the Psyche, and 1
--our bells became intermixed and
that is how 1 met the mailman. I
was constantly hurrying down the
stairs to find that her box, open
and unprotected (1 must admit
that 1 looked into it, for since my
bell had been rung, my mail had
obviously been placed there by mis–
take), was filled with fat Occult
magazines dealing with the perigri–
nations of the celestial bodies and
bulging letters from someone called
R.
U. Plume in Minneapolis,
Minn., while
mine
was empty with
that particular emptiness specific
to steel boxes. Occasionally he
would still be there. He is a gentle–
man, our mailman, soft-spoken,
clean, and very reserved. About
him I know nothing but that after
the last war (the
first
last war, that
is--our generation gives itself away
by these stubborn identifications)
he remained in France under the
illusion that a colored man who
had studied there would find a
whole new world waiting for him
in the United States when he re–
turned. That he had been lonely
there, speaking his groping French,
sitting in the Luxembourg, a reti–
cent young man, even then distin–
guished by his gentility, was appa–
rent to me, but that isolation when
he expected nothing more was but
the negative of the full-length por–
trait of loneliness which was devel–
oped when he returned to his own
country. Now he has forgotten
most of his irregular verbs (while
I have never really learned mine)
and we are careful not to embar–
rass each other by even a jocular
attempt to speak French. We feel
our ability
almost
to do so as a
cultural bond between us.
Today he left me a H**GHT*N
