Read Online A Visit to Priapus and Other Stories by Glenway Wescott - Free Book Online
Authors: Glenway Wescott
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have trouble enough somewhere else, all your own. This can’t be yours. For the trouble is always where the joy is, and your joy is not here. There isn’t any here for you.”
Thus she took the child away the moment after she had given it to him in so many words. It was a great relief and a disappointment— the almost impossible, all too human burden which did him honor and made him less anomalous in his good fortune, slipping out of his arms. To the same degree that he shrank from any excess of responsibility, he always sought to prove himself able to assume it. In nature, he thought, such things balance better. Tall and attenuated shadows held up the sky; now and then another star came out, and, just enough to support its weight, the shadows darkened. They turned back into the town and came home, where the tired grandmother in the meantime had rocked the child to sleep.
Already sensual and sentimental, the infant boy had learned that by weeping he could obtain the extra gratification of being sung to and carried in someone’s caressing arms up and down, up and down. So he would not let his eyes close when left alone. They had tried to discipline him, but he would stand up in the cot, shaking with willfulness, until he fell and struck his head against the railing. Then the obstinate lament would give way to fainter cries of genuine pain, and someone would give in. His mother could now rarely be the one, and his weight was bound to go on increasing faster than she could recover health. The heat was intense; no one’s strength lasted quite all the day.
The brother consulted the younger sister. “The sooner we stop indulging him the better,” he said. “A little older, he would bear a grudge for a week, and feel altogether unloved and abandoned and abused. I was like that; even God neglected me. Now he won’t mind by morning. Babies haven’t much memory.”
“We all have to give up luxuries in hard times,” the girl said. “Why shouldn’t he?”
So they devised a harness of an old pair of suspenders and some strong tape, stitched and knotted, which both the mothers approved. In it he might exhaust his indignation and his self-pity without any risk, free to turn from side to side, but unable to stand up and fall. “From now on,” the bachelor said, “no more real injuries toward fraudulent ends.” They all smiled deliberately, their mother with a tear. The child’s mother, full of her secret shame, said little. She was able to go down to supper the night the experiment was tried.
It was a simple but fine meal of ham and cottage cheese and jelly and milk. Their father, still young in body but anxious about his health, commented upon each dish. The son-in-law, after long hours of vain business, hungry out of proportions to any such repast, hid his disappointment.
The younger daughter came late to the table, having fastened the baby in his bed.
“Is the boy asleep so soon?” the son- in- law asked.
“Oh, not yet.”
The son explained as lightly as he could. “We decided he would have to be broken of being rocked to sleep. So we made a harness. He can’t stand up and can’t hurt himself.”
Upstairs he began to cry.
The elder mother said, “It is better that he should be trained now. The older he gets, the harder on him it will be. And on the rest of us.”
The son said, “He only cries because he knows that by so doing he can get what he wants. Babies’ lives are experimental; they repeat whatever has resulted in pleasure.”
The aging man at the head of the table scowled at this pretentious reasoning.
The young girl said, “He is getting heavier every minute. Sister can scarcely lift him now. It is hard for anyone, just at this time of day, when you’re tired to death. If he insists on his lullaby very much longer, one of those Polock giantesses up the street will have to be sent for.” She tried to make it seem humorous, but her eyes sought her brother’s—they had made a grave
Thus she took the child away the moment after she had given it to him in so many words. It was a great relief and a disappointment— the almost impossible, all too human burden which did him honor and made him less anomalous in his good fortune, slipping out of his arms. To the same degree that he shrank from any excess of responsibility, he always sought to prove himself able to assume it. In nature, he thought, such things balance better. Tall and attenuated shadows held up the sky; now and then another star came out, and, just enough to support its weight, the shadows darkened. They turned back into the town and came home, where the tired grandmother in the meantime had rocked the child to sleep.
Already sensual and sentimental, the infant boy had learned that by weeping he could obtain the extra gratification of being sung to and carried in someone’s caressing arms up and down, up and down. So he would not let his eyes close when left alone. They had tried to discipline him, but he would stand up in the cot, shaking with willfulness, until he fell and struck his head against the railing. Then the obstinate lament would give way to fainter cries of genuine pain, and someone would give in. His mother could now rarely be the one, and his weight was bound to go on increasing faster than she could recover health. The heat was intense; no one’s strength lasted quite all the day.
The brother consulted the younger sister. “The sooner we stop indulging him the better,” he said. “A little older, he would bear a grudge for a week, and feel altogether unloved and abandoned and abused. I was like that; even God neglected me. Now he won’t mind by morning. Babies haven’t much memory.”
“We all have to give up luxuries in hard times,” the girl said. “Why shouldn’t he?”
So they devised a harness of an old pair of suspenders and some strong tape, stitched and knotted, which both the mothers approved. In it he might exhaust his indignation and his self-pity without any risk, free to turn from side to side, but unable to stand up and fall. “From now on,” the bachelor said, “no more real injuries toward fraudulent ends.” They all smiled deliberately, their mother with a tear. The child’s mother, full of her secret shame, said little. She was able to go down to supper the night the experiment was tried.
It was a simple but fine meal of ham and cottage cheese and jelly and milk. Their father, still young in body but anxious about his health, commented upon each dish. The son-in-law, after long hours of vain business, hungry out of proportions to any such repast, hid his disappointment.
The younger daughter came late to the table, having fastened the baby in his bed.
“Is the boy asleep so soon?” the son- in- law asked.
“Oh, not yet.”
The son explained as lightly as he could. “We decided he would have to be broken of being rocked to sleep. So we made a harness. He can’t stand up and can’t hurt himself.”
Upstairs he began to cry.
The elder mother said, “It is better that he should be trained now. The older he gets, the harder on him it will be. And on the rest of us.”
The son said, “He only cries because he knows that by so doing he can get what he wants. Babies’ lives are experimental; they repeat whatever has resulted in pleasure.”
The aging man at the head of the table scowled at this pretentious reasoning.
The young girl said, “He is getting heavier every minute. Sister can scarcely lift him now. It is hard for anyone, just at this time of day, when you’re tired to death. If he insists on his lullaby very much longer, one of those Polock giantesses up the street will have to be sent for.” She tried to make it seem humorous, but her eyes sought her brother’s—they had made a grave
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