The Happy Man -- 2

# (space)

A Tech man, first a fervent engineer,
But now, at forty-two, a driving salesman,
Steve once had sought for oil in Mexico,
In Saudi Arabia, the Argentine.
He had sunk his oil-wells, bossed his native crews,
In Africa and China and Brazil,
Soldier -- of menaced wells in jungle outbreaks,
Sailor -- of sullen, lumbering river barges,
Ambassador -- of leases, taxes, bribes.

His girl at home, a lady much too ladylike,
Too eloquent on the Sacredness of Love,
To endure so coarse and threshing a thing as loving,
The most refined and cultured girl in Scranton,
Now brightly suggested Steve should make more money
Before they took the exalted marriage vows.
He turned oil salesman. From Vermont to Kansas,
A virile-visaged, organ-voiced evangelist,
He shouted hallelujahs to Cosmic Oil.

The Company, in awe at such a piety
(And such a record of collosal sales),
Praised him and raised him; and his virtuous sweetheart
Married a Scranton steel-mill millionaire.

Pennsylvania Dutch and Scotch and Irish,
Steve loved the reticent Italian soul.
He spoke Italian, and he sometimes said,
"This is my home; my other home is dead.
I'll never leave these towers and lakes and mountains,
These gray-red towns with battle-broken walls.
The Italian women do not talk of Sex,
Of a love too fine to cling to men in beds,
Then marry Scranton golfing millionaires
Who soggily snore through midnights forged for passion.
Italy is my home, my love, my bride,
With devouring eyes and warm and shining side."

## II

At conferences with his briefcased captains,
At Get-togethers of the district agents,
Steve played the part of loud executive;
Patted their backs before he kicked them out,
Of friendly handshakes made a work of art,
Was democratic but the unquestioned Chief.

The Happy Man -- 3

At banquets he told mildly dirty stories,
Then, turning <u>un</u>complacent serious, urged them all to toil
At the holy cause of selling Cosmic Oil.

The born ham actor, born to lights and clapping,
Head high, eyes glorying, sure and self-possessed,
Trusting himself and trusting every one,
Believing merchants civilized the world
And merchants were the messengers of God.

And all this was a fraud. And agony.

Steve loathed the shabby wizardry of selling.
He did not trust himself, nor any man,
In trade or politics or friendly talk.
When he was welcome guest at Prince Severi's,
Gale-swift at tennis, wooing ladies' eyes,
Wooing the men with stories of Brazil,
He hated it.

He thought their courtly games were childishness,
He darkly thought they took him for a bounder.
He did not like them or their snob assumptions,
Though they were better -- they had wit and manners --
Than the dreary Hanoverian court of business
Where he was joyless lord and bitter serf.

When he seemed surest, he was most confused.
He'd seen too much of treason and injustice.
Even as a youth in college, when his class,
Praising him as their prince of brains and valor,
Yet envied, ridiculed, were false to him.

Then, engineering rivals cut his throat.
Ungrateful clients eased their sense of debt
By sneering he had never really helped them.
But heart and soul and delicate sweet essence
Of treachery, ingratitude and hate
He'd found in women, pitiful or great,
His Scranton Sappho not his only fate.

Women who lusted for his strength and fury
But did not bother with his decent soul,
Women who scorned him for those uncomplacent selfsame splendors
And did not even know he had a soul.
Women who itched to barter smiles for dresses,
Nor ever meant to make the bargain good,
Plain tattling women, women cranks and gossips,
Women with rubber bosoms and dyed hair,
Women with dogs
---
No, Steve had never married.

X

The Happy Man -- 5

Over and over, like a frightened clerk,
He drearily checked the things he'd said and done:
Did I send off that letter to Air Cairo?
Did I get in it all I had to say?
Did I remember to re-read and sign it?
Can I be sure the mail clerk stamped and sent it?
Could it have missed the Tuesday morning plane?
And did the plane that day lands safe in Cairo?
Of course it did. Those planes are always safe.
I signed it. Sure I signed it! I remember
The extra flourish in the S and M.
I signed it ----- Did I sign it, did I, did I?
Don't you recall just how you scrawled the DS?
But did I? Did I sign the Cairo letter?

A maker and a crosser-off of lists:
"Write L.H.C. about a collie pup.
Haircut and manicure next Wednesday noon.
Special high octane for the King of Greece.
Smoke less! See tailor. Birthday wire to Henry."
His lists were a hollow man's revealed compulsions.

He was beset by automatic humming,
A dreary beat of self-repeating tunes,
The same tune over and over and over,
Hateful hypnotic as a prisoner's tread,
A rhythmic ticking background to his thoughts,
A hint of the contemptuous domination
Of all his being by an unknown power.
"Stop it! Shut up!" he bade the beating humming.
You cannot quite shut up an unknown power.

The haunted humming was a premonition
He was sinking into his familiar trance:
An hour of groping through punchcharted mist
When, though he spoke and smiled and moved as ever,
And made decisions instant and alert,
A lifelong habit carrying him through,
Nothing seemed real or comprehensible.
He was an a helpless figure in a dream,
Sightlessly guided through a sightless dream.

Tyrannical as his trances were his fears.
The bluff adventurer had every phobia
A psychoanalyst could find -- or have.
He was afraid this huge, well-guarded steamer
Would ram the horror of a sunken mine.
He was afraid this car, on mountain curves,
Would hit another and shoot dreadfully down,
A thousand feet down to that rock-fanged valley.
He was afraid this monster aeroplane
Would drop a wing and fall in spiralling flame.
And yet he had to do it, had to fly.
He was an eagle, and he had to fly.

The Happy Man -- 6

III

Great days, high days, x swift days in Steve's bright villa.
The secretaries beamed, made skittish jokes,
The fat cook wore a rose behind his ear,
Six dozen French champagne were ordered in,
Reporters met with courtesy and gin.

The Presence was there, the president of Cosmic,
The high command were there: the chief economists,
The experts on octane content, heat for cracking,
On curves and gradients for long-distance pipelines,
On contracts, leases, government control,
On Arabian ethics, purity and credit.

Mingled with them were diplomats in turbans
And Sackville Row cravats and morning clothes.
All of them turned to Steve with a respect
Second alone to their president and God.

There was a lovely summer-morning coolness,
With the Cosmic Empire riding strong and gay,
Briskly buying and briskly taking over
An Arabian kingdom, once the Garden of Eden, Assyrian kingdom,
With mosque and law-court, sacred mount and bay.

For decades now, the State had kept its oilwells
To guarantee its throne and church and schools
And the palace gardens green by the Euphrates.
Now, it was threatened by a northern nation.
Desperately panting at its peril,
For money to protect the faith of Allah,
For sacred gear like anti-aircraft guns,
It sold its oil to Cosmic, cheap and quick,
And Stephen's Arabic had turned the trick.

While American papers praised his skill, and gravely
called Steve an ambassador of worldwide peace,
He sat at Cittadei, sternly brooding,
"I stole the Arabians' old and sacred treasure.
I am a thief, a meanly pilfering thief."

Suddenly, no particular day nor hour,
He told his staff, "I'll grab a quick vacation.
It gets you, building up these Arab chiefs.
I think I'll loaf, a couple of days or so,
Up in the stillness of the Dolomites.
The chilly nights there will be fine for sleep.
I know a little inn -- it's not luxurious,
But boy! those sausages would make you weep!"

The Happy Man -- 8

#

"Buon! giorno, signorina; che bel canto!"
Said Stephen shyly, and she shyly said,
"I thank you greatly, Signor Mongrador!"

"Wait now! I've seen you somewhere. Cittadei?"
"I'm the chief clerk at Oriental Shipping,
Where you come sometimes. We admire you there!
This is my brother Carlo, medic student."

"And you?"
"Bianca Vezzi."
"At the inn?"
"A week or so."
"That's fine. Let's sup together, the
The three of us, with Dutch beer to begin."

Ceaselessly whispering pine woods hid the inn,
More Tyrol-Austrian than Italian.
It had smoked rafters hung with hams and thyme.
The balcony where they sat looked down a valley
Of little sloping farms with sloping huts.
Above the inn were sharp outrageous mountains,
The hacked-out upthrust of the Dolomites.

They dined on cabbage soup and veal with dumplings
On peasant dishes showing kobold castles
With broadbeamed Tyrol peasant fairies footing
Their simple dances on majolica.

Steve spoke of movies, tennis, aeroplanes.
In dirndl now, blouse soft upon her bosom,
Bianca fondly talked of mountain days.
She had a gift miraculously rare --
A naturalness uncolored by the world.
She liked her friends because she liked herself,
 Liked them and trusted them and gave her heart.
Steve found himself -- a venture new to him --
Saying exactly what he felt and thought,
And Carlo mildly spiced the talk with "Ec! !"

When they had finished grapes and Gorgonzola,
Carlo, not feeling vastly wanted there,
Droned, "Well, I guess I'll leave you two bambini
And take a look-in at the village square."

Breaths close, their elbows close upon the table,
With sweet airs moving from the darkened pines,
They were betrayed to cautionless communion.
Wanting her love, he owned all his distrusts,
A prince confessing his bewilderment
To a kind girl glad to hear and understand.

The Happy Man -- 9

#

She sounded tired. Steve said, with quickened pity,
"Young lady, skip! It's time you were in bed."
Reluctant, arm in arm, they climbed the stairs
And lingered a moment in the painted hall
With antlers over a hope chest blue and yellow.

They stared as if they just had found each other.
Gently he took her hand -- she did not stir.
Gently he led her to his pine-sheathed room,
Gently sat down beside her on his bed,
Gently undid the fastening of her blouse
And kissed her breast. She held and stroked his hand,
Then framed his face with light, encircling fingers
And looked at that virile portrait in surrender.

She let her head sink resting on his shoulder
With the trusting happiness of a sleepy child,
And was close to him and still. He heard her murmur
The low contentment of a lullaby:

Sunk in the sweetness of warm caresses,
My heart beats tenderly on your heart.

Glad and unhastening it confesses
An ecstasy free of demanding smart.

Too sweetly abandoned for desperate kisses,
Passionate love is not wild and high
But trustfully taking and giving as this is,
In the whispered breath of a lullaby.

richly

VI

Sedately trudging to the village church,
Loudly shoe-clattering at a village dance,
Stretched out at picnics in a patch of sky,
They were united, a lifetime in a week.

Easily, to a quick affectionate wife,
He told her all his angers and dismays,
And the shameful triumph of the Arab deal.
He told her that he did not trust himself,
He told her he had loved and trusted no one,
Since that tart, that fool in Scranton, till herself.
And he had meant to give himself to death,
But now instead had given himself to her.

The Happy Man -- 10

#

He said, with a hope too stirringly deep for flourish,
"Bianca, it's clear we shall be married."

"No."

"You are my faith and conscience."

"And I love you."

"Then nothing shall stop us -- nothing!"

"Steve, I shall!

I love you. I'd be glad and proud to marry,
But first I must be sure that you are sure.

I'll love you, nurse you, bully you and soothe you,
I'll share your debts, your worries and your bed,
But these things are not marriage. We must wait
Till we are seized and married by our fate."

She must have beaux, he fretted; younger, likelier
Rivals to menace his kingdom in her love.

"Why yes. What of it?" That was all she said.

Her father had been a lawyer in Cittadei,
But that she had family, caste, or old-time friends
Meant nothing to Steve; they could not touch his suit.
So honest and wise, she was an absolute.

Eager to test their love upon the city,
They bade their natal inn a swift good-by
And ten days later she had changed his villa
From a well-bred mausoleum to a home.

She'd banished all the paintings of Greek maidens
With jugs of water at a village well.

She'd banished chairs so gilded and so carven
No reasoning man had ever sat in them.

She'd shifted a couch, a table, the piano,
Moving the ponderous weights herself, with Carlo.

She'd bought six reading-lamps, and given six curtains
And a flowery bedspread to the worthy poor.

The Happy Man -- 11

#

Steve's friends -- a judge, a vicar, Prince Severi,
A learned surgeon, the American consul,
A journalist, the prefect of police,
A shabby snuffling archaeologist --
Accepted as their hostess, friend, companion,
A gaily-placid, silken-suave Bianca;
Argued, appealed to her, and kissed her hand.
Many of them had seen her as a child,
All of them claimed her now as their own age.

In Italy they do not wear as label
That patronizing word Democracy,
Which means you generously say Good-morning
To men with smaller incomes than your own.

Italians keep their hearts well warmed and lighted
As a meeting-place or all conditions of men.
A prince can meet and greet a contadino,
A contadino praise the prince's golf.

Steve's friends rejoiced that he had found his girl.
Their lively eyes and minds embraced Bianca
And held her as a necessary friend.

Her purpose, ardent with enduring passion,
Not philanthropically condescending,
Not wifely now-now-nowing, finger-shaking,
But the limitless loyalty of a selfless girl,
Was, make Steve Mongrador a happy man.

But he showed no vast change, quick and edifying,
From suspicious hermit to a guileless host.
He still was doubtful of his twisted wishes,
Doubtful of men, of Bianca, of himself.
He still gave masterful misinformation
About himself to Bianca and to God.

Evenings together in the small salon,
He read, she knitted, nodding her little chin,
Serenely cheerful both as the steady fire
On the marble hearth a Scaliger had laid.
Yet he could still feel muted desperation,
Uncertain what he wanted, why he wanted it,
And go on struggling with disastrous problems
That he had solved ten vanquished years ago.

The Happy Man -- 13

#

"At least you haven't told me," Stephen jeered,
Lifting her in the air to kiss her cheek,
"To pack my troubles in my old kit bag!
But you're the real American optimist,
Rotarian bluebirds gurgle in your heart,
Though probably you've never heard of Rotary."

"My father was a president," she said,
"Of the hustling Rotary Club in Cittadei
And very proud about it." "Well!" he cried.

To Stephen, the wrath and darkness of the gods
Were as natural as laughter to a fool,
And the bliss Bianca fed him was a babyish
Syrup for teething children. But he took it,
Not to gain happiness but to humor her,
Surrendering with amused humility
To another; Jupiter trying to be good
And putting on his best swan-wings for Leda.
He told her pleasing incidents from the office
And only spoke of amiable people --
Too amiably.

"Don't get too good too quickly," said Bianca.
"Buttercups in the hair are very pretty,
But not in the bristly crew-cut of my man.
I want you to laugh, but not be moist and gushing.
Happiness is too frail a flower to garden,
To water with a woman's steady tears
Or wither with the fierceeness of her smile."

Yet cheerfulness made cheerfulness a habit.
Steve slowly saw the route to happiness.
He made a discovery that to him seemed genius:
That to like kindly, simple-hearted people,
And like them warmly, was a pleasant thing;
To talk without reviewing how it sounded,
To sit for quiet hours, without compulsions,
Was happiness.

"Can I stand so much of happiness?" he sighed.

VI

The president's letter was on bank-note paper,
Immaculately neat and neatly cruel;
"Dear Steve, the company has greatly prized you.
You're fired. You've talked too much about Arabia.
T. Chesney Jones, whom we all know and honor,
Takes over on the tenth. Sincerely yours."

Bianca read it with a pitiful trembling,
But Stephen crowed, "Beloved, it's my chance
To take my exam in happiness, and pass!

The Happy Man - 14

Dear, darling girl! Why, seven months ago,
That nervous jittery time before I found you,
This slap-down would have maddened me, have killed me.
Dear, dear Bianca!

Tough rival to Cosmic Oil was Diamond Oil.
Steve wrote to Diamond; said he had been fired,
For talking too much, and general bad behaviour.
So he thought it might be nice to work for Diamond.
He'd like to build up Italy for them.

They answered that they loathed the Cosmic gang
And very much respected their decisions.
If they had fired him, Stephen should be fired.
Diamond had always stuck to ilmen's ethics,
But, in respect for his old shrewdness -- lost now --
They would (with permission of the local boss)
Give Steve a fitting job, a job in Florence:
Windshield-wiper at a service station,
With a tasteful uniform of pea-green denim,
And wages suitable to so high a job:
One-fiftieth of his salary with Cosmic.
P.S. They hoped that Steve had stopped his drinking.

Bianca waited, terrified of her monster.
He said, as amiably as a monk,
"I'll take that job, and thank those Diamond sweethearts.
A year from now, I'll run that Florence station,
Two years from now, run all their Florence show,
Three years from now, all Italy for Diamond,
Four years, and quit, and start my own concern
And carefully cut all Cosmic and Diamond throats.
Dear rose of my soul reborn, now we'll be married!"
"Yes!"
"In that crumbling Gothic chapel on the mountain."
"No --
I want a splendid wedding in the Cathedral,
With the archbishop, the altar flamed with flowers,
And the lights, the incense and the chanting choir
And orange blossoms and a cloud of veil."

"You? The natural girl, unflaunting, happy?"

"What is more natural than to madden Cosmic
By a proof we still ride high above their power?
What is more natural than to make old school-friends
Envious of Mrs. Stephen Mongrador;
To make them creep and hate me more than ever
By letting them see our ever-growing glory?
I'll fix those gabblers!"

"I marvel at you, Bianca. I confess
I think you swindled me into happiness.
But I'll remain your victim, none the less,
A timid, mousily happy married man."
Said Bianca, "Yes!"

San Remo - Nice - Montpellier-
Carcassonne - Souillac.
June 1950