I Am Elijah Thrush by James Purdy

Author:James Purdy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fordham

Stop! Eyes only for the President!” Millicent De Frayne’s voice boomed as I was about to go into her withdrawing room. This incomprehensible remark, however, did not make me hesitate, but I walked directly into her presence. “Eyes only for the …” she had begun again, but my own cries of astonishment drowned out her repetition of the sentence.

I cannot say that I was astonished at what I saw, because astonishment had begun to disappear from my makeup; still I was taken aback, because I was unprepared for this particular spectacle in her big room. For one thing, Millicent was standing without her cane or any other support. The big surprise of course was that directly in front of her, kneeling, was the Mime himself. There was nothing penitent, however, or servile, in his expression, and he looked, indeed, as though he was standing over a cowering Millicent De Frayne.

“I might have known you would come in at such a moment!” he shrieked at me. “You have no sense of timing, my sweet. I’m afraid I am tiring of you …”

“That would be a hard blow to get over, Elijah,” I told him, and I did not speak with irony. I meant what I said.

“How touching a remark, Elijah,” Millicent spoke from her great height, and, she was, have I remembered to emphasize, standing or sitting a very tall person: I believe she must have been six feet in her stocking soles.

“I don’t know why I am always being seen at my worst by people who have not had a proper introduction to my life and my work. I must give him my unpublished autobiography, Millicent, pray remind me, and the privately published book of poems and aphorisms …”

“I wish you would either rise, my dear, or let me call for assistance from one of my staff …”

“Count on you, my dear, to speak like a parcel of jackasses,” the Mime cried as he began to advance on his knees toward a large sacristy cabinet, in which instead of priestly vestments Millicent kept a small collection of monocles, and some wine and medicines.

“I don’t know why, but humiliation is one aspect of reality I could never get used to,” Elijah cried, and at that moment I realized somehow what his predicament was: he had slipped and fallen, and owing to his age and condition of his bones, he was unable to rise.

“Allow me, dear Elijah,” I went toward him.

“Yes, yes, allow the dear boy!” Millicent cried.

“Stand back, and away, you idiots!” Elijah cried, and although his face went purple from the exertion, and a looking glass or two and a notebook fell out from his inner clothing, he did manage, by holding on to the sacristy cabinet to get up on one leg, and then, disobeying him, I helped him rise on the other.

“Perfectly grand, perfectly wonderful! Hosanna indeed!” Millicent cried.

I picked up the looking glasses, and the notebook, and began looking through the latter before I was conscious of my bad manners.

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