myself. What I wear, what I eat, my sex life and a lot of my thinking is pretty well regimented but there are times when I like being told what to do. I can't figure out what's right and wrong in every situation.
'The newspapers are sometimes very confusing. They keep running photographs of soldiers dying in jungles and mudholes right beside an advertisement for a forty-thousand-dollar emerald ring or a sable coat. It would be childish to say that the soldier died for emeralds and sables but there it is, day after day, the dying soldier and the emerald ring. And homosexuality. You read a lot about that these days and it bothers me. I wish it didn't exist. Before I joined the Chemists Club I used to have to pump ship in Grand Central and I almost never went into those choppers without getting into trouble. Once when I was going up the stairs this guy came along and took my arm. I had on a Brooks suit and a Locke hat and Peal shoes and the reason I had all this stuff on was to make my intentions clear. So I walked away from him. I didn't hit him. I didn't see his face. I've never seen any of their faces. The only reason I joined the Chemists Club was so that I could have a place in midtown where I could pump ship without getting into a moral crisis. Of course I'm not really a chemist and pushing mouthwash isn't a very inspiring life but when you think of the things we need you realize that someone has to make them. I mean razor blades and soap and bacon and eggs and gasoline and train tickets and shoes. Somebody has to make all that stuff. Tony? Tony?' Tony slept.
Nailles finished his drink and looked lovingly at his mysterious son. Tony was born in Rome, where Nailles had worked as a chemist for FAOU. Nailles had taken Nellie to the international hospital across the river late one afternoon. The doctor was a very fat man. He timed Nellie's pains and told Nailles to return to the hospital at half past ten. When Nailles returned he was taken into an office to have his blood typed. There was no explanation. Later a friend appeared with a bottle of scotch and a package of American cigarettes, both of which were difficult to get at the time. The nuns seemed to have no objection to their drinking; in fact they brought them glasses and ice. Nailles's friend left at midnight. The doctor came in at three. He was sweating and seemed worried. 'Is she in danger,' Nailles asked. 'Yes,' the doctor said harshly, 'she is in danger. Life is dangerous. Why do Americans want to be immortal?'
'Please tell me,' Nailles said.
'I will tell you that when this is over I would advise her not to have any more children.'
There were some peacocks in a park across the street. They began to shriek as the sun rose. This sounded to Nailles portentous. The doctor came in again at eight. 'Take a walk,' he said to Nailles. 'Divert yourself. Breathe some fresh air.' Nailles walked down the hill to St. Peter's and said his prayers. Then he climbed the stairs to the roof where all the gigantic saints and apostles stood with their backs to him. He had liked the city of Rome. Now it seemed sinister; the city of the wolf. Rome would kill Nellie. The bloody history of the place seemed to have some bearing on her Me. Rome would murder Nellie.
He walked across the city on foot, trying to sweat out his pain. In some back street he encountered an old man selling phallic symbols and death's heads. He walked to the zoo and had a Campari at the cafe. Beside the caf6 was a cage of carnivorous birds, tearing at raw meat. Leaving the cafe he saw a hyena; then a cage of wolves. When he got back to the hospital a nun told him that he had an eight-pound son and that his wife was out of danger. He howled with relief and banged drunkenly around the waiting room. He saw Nellie and his son that night and Tony seemed to him then to be brilliant, impetuous and strong. Much later they had discussed the possibility of adopting a brother or sister for Tony, but a foundling would have challenged Tony's sovereignty and this was something they did not want.
He had no way of judging his worth as a father. They had quarreled. When Tony was nine. He had suddenly given up all his athletics and friendships and settled down in front of the television set. The night of the quarrel was rainy. Nailles came into the house by the kitchen door. Nellie was cooking. Nailles kissed her on the back of the neck and raised her skirts but she demurred. 'Please darling,' she said. 'It makes me feel as if I were in a burlesque skit. Tony's report card is on the table. You might want to take a look at it.' Nailles mixed a drink and read the report. The marks were all C's and D's. Nailles walked through the dining room, crossed the dark hall to the living room where Tony was watching a show. The tube was the only light, shifting and submarine, and with the noise of the rain outside the room seemed like some cavern in the sea.
'Do you have any homework,' Nailles asked.
'A little,' Tony said.
'Well I think you'd better do it before you watch television,' Nailles said. On the tube some cartoon figures were dancing a jig.
'I'll just watch to the end of this show,' Tony said. 'Then I'll do my homework.'
'I think you'd better do your homework now,' Nailles said.
'But Mummy said I could see this show,' Tony said.
'How long has it been,' said Nailles, 'that you've asked permission to watch television?' He knew that in dealing with his son sarcasm would only multiply their misunderstandings but he was tired and headstrong. 'You never ask permission. You come home at half past three, pull your chair up in front of the set and watch until supper. After supper you settle down in front of that damned engine and stay there until nine. If you don't do your homework how can you expect to get passing marks in school?'
'I learn a lot of things on television,' Tony said shyly. 'I learn about geography and animals and the stars.'
'What are you learning now?' Nailles asked.
The cartoon figures were having a tug of war. A large bird cut the rope with his beak and all the figures fell down.
This is different,' Tony said. 'This isn't educational. Some of it is.'
'Oh leave him alone, Eliot, leave him alone,' Nellie called from the kitchen. Her voice was soft and clear. Nailles wandered back into the kitchen.
'But don't you think,' he asked, 'that from half past three to nine with a brief interlude for supper is too much time to spend in front of a television set?'
'It is a lot of time,' Nellie said, 'but it's terribly important to him right now and I think he'll grow out of it.'
'I know it's terribly important,' Nailles said. 'I realize that. When I took him Christmas shopping he wasn't interested in anything but getting back to the set. He didn't care about buying presents for you or his cousins or his aunts and uncles. All he wanted to do was to get back to the set. He was just like an addict. I mean he had withdrawal symptoms. It was just like me at cocktail hour but I'm thirty-four years old and I try to ration my liquor and my cigarettes.'
'He isn't quite old enough to start rationing things,' Nellie said.
'He won't go coasting, he won't play ball, he won't do his homework, he won't even take a walk because he might miss a program.'
'I think he'll grow out of it,' Nellie said.
'But you don't grow out of an addiction. You have to make some exertion or have someone make an exertion for you. You just don't outgrow serious addictions.'
He went back across the dark hall with its shifty submarine lights and outside the noise of rain. On the tube a man with a lisp, dressed in a clown suit, was urging his friends to have Mummy buy them a streamlined, battery- operated doll carriage. He turned on a light and saw how absorbed his son was in the lisping clown.
'Now I've been talking with your mother,' he said, 'and we've decided that we have to do something about your television time.' (The clown was replaced by the cartoon of an elephant and a tiger dancing the waltz.) 'I think an hour a day is plenty and I'll leave it up to you to decide which hour you want.'
Tony had been threatened before but either his mother's intervention or Nailles's forgetfulness had saved him. At the thought of how barren, painful and meaningless the hours after school would be the boy began to cry.
'Now crying isn't going to do any good,' Nailles said. The elephant and the tiger were joined by some other animals in their waltz.
'Skip it,' Tony said. 'It isn't your business.'
'You're my son,' Nailles said, 'and it's my business to see you do at least what's expected of you. You were tutored last summer in order to get promoted and if your marks don't improve you won't be promoted this year. Don't you think it's my business to see that you get promoted? If you had your way you wouldn't even go to school. You'd wake up in the morning, turn on the set and watch it until bedtime.'
'Oh please slap it, please leave me alone,' Tony said. He turned off the set, went into the hall and started to climb the stairs.
'You come back here, Sonny,' Nailles shouted. 'You come back here at once or I'll come and get you.'
