The Inner Self

by EDWIN O’CONNOR

IT WAS, by now, more than two hours after the final curtain, and the room was crowded with people. Anne Stephens, aware suddenly that she was standing quite alone before the buffet, decided to walk across the room once more. It was a walk which she had taken rather often that evening, and yet it was not simply a walk: the word did not stand up, for her progress from wall to wall was not to be so plainly described. It was rather, she thought, a drift: a lovely, elusive, gossamer passage, in which she remained miraculously immune to the masculine lodestars who had pulled the other women about them in small, attentive clusters. Along her course, each little group had its own talk, and she seemed to float through adjoining, unrelated clouds of words.

“You could never begin to imagine,” a squat, brown, barbate man was saying, “where I spent the first five days of last week.’" Anne noticed him vaguely; he was, she knew, by profession an aesthete of some reputation, who had once ridden to Acapulco on a bicycle.

“Five days? No, where?" a thin blonde girl asked.

“In a Cistercian monastery.”

“Really? You mean, all by yourself?” “Naturally,” the squat man said, with some annoyance. “One does not go en famille to a coenobitic community.”

“Was it fun?”

“It was a profound experience,” the squat man said severely, “but I would hardly call it fun.”

Anne, moving on, lost his words. They were swallowed up by the low throaty music that flooded from the cruel-looking woman in purple: —

‘. . . a mad, mad young man, but zo at-truetive, do you zee? Vrom Zurich to Paris, vrom Paris to Lon-don, I vas pur-sooed by him. ‘Use!’ he vould cry, hiss eyes shi-ningg, ‘it iss a blay vich only YOU can do; re-fuse me and I am dez-o-lated!’ My dearss, he vas a char-mingg child, too eharmingg, zo to New York I came in zprmg, and now . . .” She flung her palms outward in a strangely triumphant gesture which indicated, more emphatically than any words, that the rest, was History.

Further along, the woman in purple was herself under discussion, as a tired, dusty rasp of a voice filed away at her dimensions.

“. . . a great actress?” It was a weary, incredulous echo. “Hardly, my dear. A personality, yes. hven, if you will, an overwhelming personality, although possibly a bit too overwhelming for some tastes. But a great actress she most certainly is not. Nor, I’m afraid, truly an actress at all. No, no, no! ”

Anne reached the shadowed alcove which was her destination. She had been there before that evening; it was an oddly inconspicuous corner of the garish room—a corner intended, perhaps, for the concealment of lesser possessions: a Christmas vase, a rubber plant. Anne stood and watched, as out on the floor the human islands moved and throbbed, melted and expanded. The party was a large one; she estimated that there were at least seventy guests. Seventy guests, seventy strangers, Anne thought, and a gentle mask of ineffable resignation settled familiarly upon her face. It was in such a place, in the midst of so many, that she became more than ever aware of her own wit hdrawn quality. All these people, she reflected, and yet she knew that among them was not one real friend. Anne’s standards of friendship were rather exacting; so exacting, in fact, that she really could find no one who measured up to them. Her one, unquestioned ally, for whose presence she never ceased to give thanks to God, was no one from without at all; it was what she liked to refer to as her Inner Self. Ever since her husband had died, eighteen months before, it had been the rich pulse of this Inner Self that had sustained her, that had been the only companion, constant and of unfailing resource, that she had required. Now, here in these surroundings, the emotional purity of such an association almost overwhelmed her, and she felt, as she had so often on similar occasions in the past, a little like a nun.

“Here you are!" The voice broke rudely against conventual reflection. It belonged to Susan, her late husband’s sister. She was forty, almost ten years Anne’s senior: a small, dark, abrupt woman with a snapping eye and a speech so rapid that it rattled. An unwearying hostess, she never failed to include Anne among those she gathered about her.

“What are you doing over here in the dark? she challenged. “Standing here like a mushroom when I have so many wonderful people out there!" Her voice rose to a command. “Come out and have a good time.”

Anne smiled sweetly; she knew that Susan was really, in her way, being kind. “ I am having a good time, Susan,”she said. “I’m having a very good time.”

“Nonsense,” Susan said briskly. “No one has a good time at a party alone in a dark corner.”

Anne smiled again. “I do, Susan,”she said.

Susan’s head darted forward and her quick, curious eyes poked at Anne for a moment. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she said impatiently. “Well, have it your own way. I’ll see you a little later on.

A faint current of irritation passed through Anne, washing unpleasantly against the sweet melancholy of her mood. For all Susan’s good intentions, for all her rather too persistent consideration, there were things which she simple did not see, and one of these was that had Anne desired to mingle with these other guests, she could have done so with ease and success. Earlier that evening, purely as a mailer of courtesy, she had entered two or three of the groups. As was her custom, she had contrived to go unnoticed and had been remarkably successful. Yet she was certain that from this Susan had drawn an inference that would have been humiliating if it were not so absurd. It was especially absurd to Anne, remembering, as she did, the capacity she had always enjoyed for attracting the men to whom she was partial — witness her late husband. That she should hardly have been partial to these smug, theatrical men with their endless specialized chatter and their coarse appreciations should have astonished no one who really knew her. It would not, for example, have astonished any genuine friend, and by this congenial route she returned to the comforting awareness of her Inner Self.

She had, by now, and without at all being aware of it, come to accept the comfortable distortions of this boon companion as matters of fact, particularly with reference to her late husband. Actually a glum and inept young man. who had unfortunately drowned while paddling inexpertly in a shallowwater pond, he had become, through the happy chemistry of her fancy, a gifted contemplative, tragically assassinated by the jealous fates. Also, it was the Inner Self which led her to ascribe to herself a fragility of feature, a delicacy of physique, and an appealing glow of spirit. Anne looked always through this glass of amiable dissemblance, and at least it can be said that she rather liked what she saw.

2

GOOD evening, Mrs. Stephens.”

Anne jumped; the masculine voice, springing from the here and now, startled her.

“Good evening,” she answered. Her voice fluttered just perceptibly; despite her confidence in her own indifference, she sometimes felt an odd, primordial trembling at the voluntary approach of a male.

“I wonder if you’d mind if I sat down for a moment, Mrs. Stephens?” he asked. “I mean, sat down here. By you.”

Anne could not recall ev er hav ing seen him before; she was certain she would have remembered, for he was a man of decidedly unusual appearance. In his late thirties or early forties, he was almost pretermiturally tall and thin, with a thick crop of black hair brushed straight bark from his forehead. Even in the dim light of the corner, Anne could see that his features, while regular enough, were smaller than might have been expected in such a long face. Their smallness was emphasized by the presence of a large hedge of mustache — a broad, hairy bar, chopped abruptly at the ends, like that worn by one of the Marx Brothers — nestling dominantly among them. It was almost, she thought, as if the face had grown around the mustache.

The stranger repeated his question. “If you’d rather I didn’t join you, just say the word, Mrs. Stephens,” he said, with a rueful air. “Although I must say I’m hoping you won’t.”

“Why . . . no,” Anne said uncertainly. The onslaught of attention had caught her quite unprepared; however, she was never rude. “ Please sit down.”

“Ah, thank you, thank you,”he said. The long body sank to the settee in a swift, strange collapse, as though all its joints had conspired to fold at once. For a moment Anne was alarmed: knowing men, she wondered if this cascading descent might not be the preliminary to an evil maneuver. Apparently it not. The stranger sat bolt upright and turned to face her; there remained between them an interval which was respectful rather than intimate.

“Well then,” he said, his wide smile flashing, seeming to illumine the vast mustache, “this is quite a party, isn’t it? Quite a party. I wonder, Mrs. Stephens, I wonder if I might dare to ask you something? I wonder if I might just dare to ask you for your opinion of our fellow guests this evening? Ah?” He gleamed at her invitingly.

“Why . . . really,” she said, rather nervously, “really, I don’t . . .”

“I ask you for a definite reason,” he said. “This is not idle inquiry. Actually,”he said, lowering his voice to the pitch of confidence, “my own feeling is that they are pretty much of a type. They’re doubtless good people, very good people, in their way, but I often feel" — he paused deliberately, as if to warn of the rather special point in the words to come — that their way is not my way.” He regarded her gravely. “I wonder if just by any chance you might share that feeling, Mrs. Stephens?” he asked.

Anne hesitated. She certainly had no intention of parading her views on her sister-in-law’s guests before this outspoken stranger; yet it was undeniable that he appeared to regard her views as quite important.

“I really don’t know,” she offered tentatively. “They are wonderful people, of course, but possibly they might seem a bit theatrical . . . superficial . . .”

A long finger stabbed the air, halting her.

“Simpatico!” he cried, his mustache bobbing happily. “Theatrical, superficial: the very words, Mrs. Stephens. I see we think alike. They’re simply not real — not,”he said carefully, “genuine! Don’t tell me you haven’t felt that also, Mrs. Stephens?” “Why . . . yes, I suppose at times . . .”

He seemed delighted. “Of course you have,” he said. “I could sense it, I could see it. I attempted to talk with some of these people tonight, without much success.” He considered. “Without any success, as a matter of fact,” he said. “We had no points of contact. And do you know why, Mrs. Stephens? Because not a single one of them” — his voice subsided into the thoughtful crouch, the prelude to the wise, final pounce— “is really interested in people!”

The words were not unimpressive: it was almost as if he had been reading her thoughts. She wondered if by some unremembered chance they could have met before. He seemed to know her; it was all very odd, and even a little exciting.

“Do you know,” she said, essaying a social laugh, “I can’t help wondering if we’ve met before, Mister . . .”

“Doctor,” he said, reinforcing the correction with his superabundant smile. “Dr. Brady, Mrs. Stephens. Dr. Bernard Brady.”

With similarly expectant inflection, one might have said: “Mr. Churchill, Mrs. Stephens. Mr. Winston Churchill.” Yet the name meant nothing to Anne; it was the title that held light. Doctor! The word explained much: the insight into their fellow guests, the concern for people, the accurate estimate of herself. . . .

“No, Mrs. Stephens, we’ve never actually met,” Dr. Bernard Brady said, sweeping her with a glance of playful conspiracy, “but I do know you. That is to say, your sister-in-law and her husband are great friends of mine. They’ve spoken about you so much that I’m almost tempted to say I know all about you.”There was a moment of toothy dazzle; then Dr. Brady continued with increased earnestness. “Almost tempted, Mrs. Stephens, but not quite, because in my few minutes of conversation with you I’ve discovered”—again the hushed, precessional pause— that you’re far too complex a person for anyone to know!”

This handsome compliment drove Anne to blushing confusion. Not since the early mumbled appreciations of her late husband had she faced an analogous situation; it was not easy to determine just how to respond with grace. Fortunately, Dr. Brady offered some assistance.

“I hope you don’t mind my speaking so frankly,” he said. I’m afraid frankness is an occupational disease with me; often, in my profession, saying exactly what one thinks is of great help.”

Anne understood. She had read Green Light and the novels of A. J. Cronin; she was not ignorant of the ways of the healer. She murmured politely about flattery, then slipped into evasion by uttering a desultory phrase in praise of her sister-in-law.

“Yes, a charming woman,” Dr. Brady agreed. “I’ve known her for some time now. I first met her, he explained, “in my professional capacity.”

“I see.’ At no time had Susan said anything to her about Dr. Bernard Brady.

“She comes in regularly for a checkup.” Then, without warning, he said astonishingly, “I see you’ve been admiring my mustache.”

Anne started and reddened. She began to stammer a reply, but Dr. Brady mercifully interrupted.

Many people do. It is an unusual mustache” — he pronounced the word with an odd, Continental elegance — “and I wear it for a rather unusual reason. May I tell you about it, Mrs. Stephens?”

“Please do.” She was relieved that her furtive survey had been interpreted as being one of admiration; she had no wish to wound Dr. Brady. She found him increasingly interesting. Although not really a handsome man, in the ordinary sense of the word, he undoubtedly had his points of compensation. She was quite willing to forgive so minor a vanity as his singular pride in his mustache.

“In memoriam,” he said, pointing respectfully to his upper lip. “I wear it, Mrs. Stephens, in memory of a man who was both my father and my greatest friend: Dr. Alfred Coleman Brady. He died four years ago, on Labor Day morning.

The sepulchral quality of the announcement indicated that Dr. Brady was not a man to forget easily the loss of a loved one. Anne was moved, and murmured a phrase of condolence. “But isn’t it wonderful that you could follow in his footsteps,” she said. “I mean, in your profession.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s a family tradition with the Bradys. I am the fourth generation in the profession.”

“Such a splendid heritage! Anne said warmly. “And did you personally take charge of your father’s case during his . . . his last illness?”

“Oh, no, no!” Dr. Brady exclaimed. “My goodness, no! With his kidneys? Why, Mrs. Stephens, they were three times their normal size!”

Anne blushed, almost dissolving in embarrassment. She had forgotten that skilled physicians seldom elect to take care of their own; it was a question of emotion warping objective judgment.

“He was in far, far better hands than mine,” Dr. Brady said, in a humble voice. “ He had the best of care, Mrs. Stephens, even though he was ill a very long time. I was devoted to him; he had given me so much it was impossible to repay him. But still I wanted to do something, some one final thing that would give him pleasure. It finally came to me. My father was inordinately proud of his rich mustache, Mrs. Stephens, and it came to me that I might grow one exactly like it, as a sort of symbol, don’t you see, that I was carrying on. Well, it was completed shortly before he passed away — and, Mrs. Stephens,” he said gravely, “when he realized what I had done, I’ve never seen a man so pleased! And then, when it was all over, I resolved that I would wear it always”—again the effective pause — “in memoriam!”

Il was a tale of such moving simplicity that Anne felt a quick, liquescent flood of sympathy for the man who told it; she had done him the gravest of injustices in supposing the mustache to be a flag of personal vanity.

“Doctor, I think that was wonderful of you!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining.

“ Really? Do you really, Mrs. Stephens? I’m so glad. You don’t think I’m too . . . sentimental?”

“No. no!”

“Well!” Dr. Brady said, straightening briskly. “I mustn’t bore you with all these stories about myself. Here I am, with a pretty and intelligent woman, and all I can talk about is Dr. Bernard Brady!” He shook his head in a flurry of selfaccusation; it proved to be a gesture of such prolonged generosity 1 hat he appeared to be apologizing for all similar defections of the past.

Anne broke in on the penitent. “Please, Doctor, I wish you’d continue telling me about yourself, your work. I’m really enjoying it extremely. I’ve always felt that a doctor was so much closer to things than the rest of us. I mean, you have such a direct experience with life!”

“That’s true,” agreed the Doctor, recovering from contrition. “It is an interesting vocation. And although from a strictly material point of view other fields might have offered me more, I have never regretted my choice. It may seem like an exaggeration to say so, Mrs. Stephens, but I would not trade a single year of my day-by-day experiences”— pause —“for all the rice in China!”

“It must be so satisfying to know that you’re doing such a good work, “ Anne sighed.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

“I mean, there are so many people who fail to see that there are considerations beyond the material. I admire a man with ideals, Doctor. I think every woman does.”

“Every woman should,” corrected the Doctor, “but only the rare one does, Mrs. Stephens. Now,

I have my ideals,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m no goody-goody boy, but. I’ve always had my ideals.

I suppose that it is my extensive work with people, so many kinds of people, that is responsible. You’re sure I’m not boring you, Mrs. Stephens?”

“No, indeed,” she said dreamily.

3

SHE basked in the warm and unaccustomed glow cast by this man of science. Free of insularity, his view was broad and kind, humane and unselfish. Anne could not help recognizing in this good companion the possible yeast from which a future might well be fashioned. She did not know— he had not said — what kind of doctor he was; it did not matter. Her eyes saw his long hands, folding and unfolding as he talked. They were the scoured, immaculate, powerful instruments of health; they were the hands of a surgeon.

“I may be too humble, Mrs. Stephens,” the Doctor said, his fine elastic smile lending the words a secular sanctity, “but I believe that my work must primarily be with the common people. I like to think of the members of my profession as clergymen, in a way, treating the ills of those who come to us for comfort, without respect to class.”

He went on, the noble tide of speculation rolling ever forward, but he was only hall heard; Anne was otherwise occupied. Hand in hand with the Inner Self, she was racing through the corridors of time. One delightful image after another Hashed before her; the youthful, sullen face of her deceased husband, with her so often in the past, was now replaced by a countenance which was sensitive, skilled, and matured, its great mustache concealed behind a surgeon’s mask. She saw the owner of this face progressing to the forefront of his profession: a long, lanky man, moving with Lincolnesque dignity through antiseptic halls, trailed by the grateful huzzahs of the convalescent. She saw the powerful fingers rest, for a moment; press gently upon her arm for encouragement. . . .

. . in the mind!” said Dr. Bernard Brady loudly. “So much pain is in the mind! Anesthesia is all very well, Mrs. Stephens, but there is pain of the sort our anesthetics do not touch. In such cases, Mrs. Stephens, I talk to my patients, I soothe them, I . . .”

The surgeon’s mask disappeared; in its place she saw a long and elegant figure in an office of quiet pastels, speaking in low, probing tones of hypnosis to the jangled, the overwrought. She saw this man, guided by the sure hand of his helpmate, move onward and upward through innumerable ids, egos and superegos, traveling steadily past the intermediate stages of psychiatric fame. She saw him as he arrived; and then, simultaneously, she saw herself, elderly and exquisite, poised beside him at a State Reception, while the President of his land paid belated tribute to the Healer of a Nation. And finally—and most clearly of all — she saw the celebrated doctor turn and, with the famous voice itself now broken by emotion, pay public homage to the woman who had made it all come true. . . .

4

WHAT are you two doing over here? Playing footsie?" The sharp, demanding voice cracked through all dreams; Anne, once again, was dashed back to the present. She looked up to see Dr. Bernard Brady rising to greet her sister-in-law.

“Ah, Susan!” he exclaimed. “What a fine chat I’ve been having with Mrs. Stephens! We’ve been getting along famously.”

“Mmm,” Susan said. She turned to Anne. “I thought you liked to be lonely. Bernie the next best thing?”

Anne flushed. “Really, Susan,” she said, “Dr. Brady and I were merely . . .”

“Skip it, Susan said. “I’m only kidding. Say!” she snapped, addressing herself belligerently to the Doctor, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Bernie.

You know that upper left molar you filled for me?”

“Yes, of course,”he said. “On Tuesday.”

“Well, it hurts. It started hurting tonight and it hurts like hell. What’s more, I think that part of the filling’s fallen out. What did you put in there, anyway? Cheese?”

Dr. Brady laughed, in high good humor. “Pretty expensive cheese, he said. “ That was one of my best gold fillings, and I’ll guarantee that nothing’s wrong with it. You’re one of my very special patients, Susan. You know that.”

Anne listener! in frozen disbelief. Teeth? Fillings? She knew it could not he; somewhere, a disastrous mistake had been made, rectifiable at any moment.

But that moment did not come; Dr. Bernard Brady inclined professionally toward Susan. “It looks fine from here,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. You’ve probably been chewing on ice all evening and maybe you do have a little reaction. If you have a trace of it in the morning, call me up. But you’ll be perfectly all right, just you wait and see.”

“I’d belter be,”Susan said grimly, “or I can think of one dentist who might just as well pick up his forceps and head for the hills.”

Dentist! The word struck her hard, in full, disillusioning horror. Dr. Bernard Brady, surgeon, psychiatrist, comfort of her declining years, was in fact a dentist! A man who spent his days poking about in other people’s mouths was the unheroic clay she nearly had been tricked into molding. At the thought of the monstrous deception she retreated into a chill, gray mood, formed of the fragments of fallen clouds. She shivered with shame.

Unaware of his fall from grace, Dr. Brady struck a note of continued cheer. “It’s very late,” he said, looking at his wrist, “and I still have some interesting mouth damage to see before the night is through. I really should have left long ago, but I’m afraid Mrs. Stephens has been far too interesting a companion.”He smiled at her; with a scarcely suppression shudder, she saw the ogling grimace wriggle out from behind the horrid comic mustache.

“Good night, Susan,” he said, taking his hostess’s hand. “I’ve had a wonderful time. Thanks for asking me.” Turning back to Anne, he hooked her hand in a viscous grasp. “And as for you, Mrs. Stephens,”he said archly, “thanks for making this a grand, grand evening. I have a feeling that our first meeting will by no means be our last.”

Anne flinched before the unbearable roguishness; he did not notice. With a jaunty wave of the hand, and a final flash of mustache, Dr. Bernard Brady was off across the room. Anne watched him bit terly.

Susan exhaled. “Ah!” she said. “There goes an awfully good dentist, but New York’s prize boob. He lurks around theater lobbies, snooping for gossip, and waiting to be asked to parties; tonight I got lagged. I’m sorry you were saddled with him so long. Did he bore you to tears?”

“Yes, in a way. This is the way it had to be, she thought, with sudden resignation; from her own sad experience, she knew the dim inheritance of the good woman upon earth.

“He bores me stiff,”Susan said. “A lot of silly jabber about nothing at all; I think he’s psycho. Thank God I’m usually under gas while he’s working on me. She sighed. “ The things I go through to keep my own teeth! Well, I’m going back out there and see a few people. Coming?”

“No,”Anne said slowly. “I don’t think so, Susan. I think I’ll stay here for a while. Alone.” And yet, as she said the word, she knew that she would not be alone. With the old smile of sweet renunciation tracing its accustomed pattern across her face, she prepared to give herself up to the pale embrace of the friend within herself.