792
PARTISAN
REVIEW
life. At bottom what you find, in such cases, is awful dislike, dis–
taste, people unable to stand themselves or others; and, at the same
time, practical organization, prudence, selfishness. You find they
have a practical hammerlock all the same on this life they personally
consider not good enough. You bet they treat their inferior organs
with loving attention. I hate to see one of these gross, misery sad–
sacks, just as tenacious of life as anyone else, keeping a middle line
like anybody else.
If
he can't keep himself going a little under the
angels, he ought to be a nihilist. Either of the extremes is worth cam–
paigning for, but holding to the middle line is shameful."
Now he did not seem as solidly planted and as stable as before.
Scampi began to have the impression as he watched the action of
his big, shapely, high-formed lips that his body was performing var–
ious movements, edging forward and drawing back as if he circled
from a mooring, moving and swaying, somewhat like a chained bear
who rocks himself. In outline, there was something bearish about
his facial angle and upstanding hair. Looking closely at his face,
smelling his male odor, almost touching inquisitively his moleskin
robe, he sized him up in his civilized heart as half-finished, original,
eccentric, powerful, drugged by the effort of self-direction, in some
ways intolerant, some ways naively overbearing, rough, barbarian,
with learning unassimilated. And really impassioned. Really a man
of feeling, though to define these feelings of his was a far larger pro–
ject than Scampi had at first imagined.
"Well, you haven't been melancholy here. At least I haven't
noticed it."
"No, everything'S been different here, though it is a hospital,
and miserable, or supposed to be. Nothing's happened to me here that
I haven't gotten a kick out of."
"And why?" said Scampi. But this was something that Weyl ap–
parently was not ready to discuss.
"Tell me," said Scampi. "Your sister intends to marry this young
man. You say you're not opposed to that. I understand that what
she wants now is that you go home with her, to Columbus, to visit
your mother- Mr. Neff, and she, and you. You keep refusing. Is
it that you don't want to see your mother?"
"My mother? She thinks there's something terribly wrong with
me and she wants to do something. She thinks she can. She thinks
