"Kindness", a story by Alexis Levitin

Martin took great pride in his honesty. He felt that he had never lied in his life. In childhood he had suffered much retribution for his stubborn, perhaps arrogant veracity. “How’s your cherry tree?” the other kids would mock him, “How’s your cherry tree, George Washington?” Then, after dancing around him in a circle, they would all run away. He couldn’t explain why he refused to lie, when everyone else seemed so comfortable doing so. And surely he would have had more friends, if only he had joined the others in their barbaric tribal bickerings, their vicious little lies about the fat boy down the block. But he simply couldn’t do it. He could call Freddy fat, because it was true, but he couldn’t say he smelled like trash, because he didn’t. “Freddy Trask smells like trash! Freddy Trask smells like trash!” the neighborhood gang screamed. He couldn’t stand it. Not because it was unkind, but because it was untrue. For him truth was implacably itself and could not be challenged or denied. Facts were facts. Truth was truth. Fitting in, being liked, was something else. It just couldn’t be helped. That’s all there was to it.

However, as he moved into adulthood, he began to be troubled by his addiction to veracity, his fierce loyalty to facts, especially when it came to romantic relationships. He could not fail to see the shadow of disappointment, of sorrow, that crossed a girl friend’s face after one of his gestures of brutal honesty. Why, if you liked someone, was it necessary to make them miserable? There was a force inside him that insisted on these attacks, attacks which part of him understood to be a rebellion against the very fabric of civility, of decency, in a word, of society life itself. Not surprisingly, despite having found a number of very fine women as romantic partners, the trajectory of his life inexorably defined itself as one of precise, curmudgeonly solitude. He couldn’t remember ever having planned it that way, but as time passed it became obvious. He would always be a bachelor.

He remembered his first real girlfriend, the lovely bangs covering her bright, broad forehead, her shining blue eyes, the perfect symmetrical of her face, and her charming habit of cleaning one of her contact lenses on her tongue, while kissing him. She was tempting him with disaster; would she swallow the contact lens, would he swallow the contact lens, would it pop out and be lost in the grass or in the shrubs? Sometimes she daringly passed the contact lens to his tongue. He would be thrilled and terrified and would quickly pass it back. She had glistening white teeth and a perfect smile. She stood very straight, had a lithesome body, and could have been mistaken for a ballerina. In fact, she was a violinist. She played the Mendelsohn Concerto with a local orchestra. Utterly charming. She was descended directly from Cotton Mather. But she was not a Puritan.

She was lovely and smooth and filled with life. He bought her a blue summer frock, which turned out to be the only dress he ever bought anyone. She looked even lovelier in the frock. And lovelier later still. Everything was good. She was happy; he thought he was happy. Bu one day, as he was holding forth on a concerto they both loved, she interrupted to ask: “Martin, I’m sorry, but what does mellifluous mean?”

“You don’t know what mellifluous means, honey? I can’t believe it. It’s from the Latin for honey, you should know that, ‘mel,’ meaning honey. And ‘fluus,’ obviously meaning the flow. Latin always comes in handy, sweetie. It means flowing like honey, that’s what it means, the music was flowing like honey.”

“Oh, she said, and her eyes fell. “I’m sorry.”

He felt a pang of sorrow for her. But after all, she was already eighteen, she was studying at a good college, shouldn’t she know the simple word “mellifluous?” It wasn’t logical, but he was angered by her ignorance. He took it personally. And yet he pitied her his anger.

When, with sparkling eyes, she later would say “smooth like silk” or “bright like the sun” he would cringe and feel a tightening in his heart. He would correct her, as if in passing, but they both knew it wasn’t in passing, at all. A year later, when graduate studies had led him half a continent away, he was not totally surprised to receive a tearful Dear John letter. He understood why she had left him. He wasn’t sure he deserved the regrets she expressed. She was too kind.

Years later, in a remote provincial capital, he met a charming Brazilian woman, with an easy laugh, a good sense of humor, and a body in which she was totally at home. He considered himself lucky, at first. But then came the dénouement. Like the rest of Brazil, they had been accompanying the World Cup on T.V. To everyone’s distress, Brazil had just suffered the most ignominious defeat in its history against Germany. Despite a bitter taste in the mouth, they kept watching the meaningless playoffs, either out of inertia or stubbornness. They watched to the very end. When Germany won the final game, their hometown fans went wild on the TV screen. Deep in the interior of Brazil, with a vast, muddy river sluggishly floating by the shopping center, Martin and his woman heard the announcer shouting almost desperately: “ Utter pandemonium here in Alexanderplatz, the heart of Berlin, total chaos here in the streets at midnight.” Graciosa, his lovely tropical flower, looked bewildered, glanced down at her watch, and said to him in great consternation: “Midnight?” Though her arms were slender, her neck long, her skin like satin, a dagger of ice pierced his heart. Were facts that important? What is a mere time zone, after all? Yet for him it was over.

At the university, he advanced, his publication record was stalwart, but, in his personal life, even he could sense that something was amiss. He thought that perhaps fortune would shine upon him during his upcoming sabbatical. He intended to sojourn in Greece, while deepening his analysis of the role of the Apollonian in the world of the arts. Surely Nietzsche had not said it all.

After a period of research in Athens, he found himself on a Greek island of whitewashed stucco houses trimmed in blue, dropping like dominoes from the highest hillside, down to the usually quiet harbor. Every afternoon, having completed his four pages of writing, he would descend a narrow, cobbled street and take a table in the café fronting the still waters within the jetty. He would order his usual ouzo, and sit for an hour or two, content with the steady progress of his book. Then, one day he noticed a woman with a long, thick mane of dark hair, who seemed to scowl, while smiling from within. The first time he noticed her he nodded in a friendly way but did not approach. The next day he asked if he might join her at her table. She responded, “Why not?”, with a charming Greek accent. They shared a bottle of Retsina. Within a few days they were lovers.

Zoey was from Crete, though she preferred to spend her time on this small island. The smell of linseed oil came from her fingers. At times her gaze would fix on the middle distance, but he could see nothing there. Her canvases were unabashed, brimming with powerful colors, violent brush strokes, motion everywhere, no fear at all. When he spoke to her of the predominance of the Apollonian in all civilized endeavors, especially the arts, she only smiled. He himself had always tried to look as Apollonian as possible, though it troubled him when tipsy friends would suggest he offer himself as an exhibit to Madame Tussaud’s in London. The same friends, at least when deep in their cups, would chide him for his almost British accent. “Just because you went to Phillips Exeter, doesn’t mean you’re a Brit, you know.”

When Zoey showed him her canvases, he didn’t know what to say. There was something lurking there, she seemed sure of herself, but it all made him feel a bit uncomfortable. He wondered if the wild colors and savage brushstrokes could somehow be tamed, domesticated, brought to acknowledge the overriding need for order in the universe. He was staring at canvases that almost screamed. It was as if tradition, convention, history itself had never been established. It seemed to him that her paintings were beckoning him towards a door he did not want to open. But that he could not say to her, so he would gaze at a wilderness of paint, then fall back upon the old evasion: “Very interesting.” There may have been some irony in her glance, but she said nothing. He wondered about the truth, about order, and where it might be hiding in her work.

He was happy with his advancing arguments about the inevitable dominance, nay dominion, of the Apollonian in all human artistic endeavor. The four pages a day were adding up. He was also happy with his relationship, though he was embarrassed to find her always on top. He felt, at times, that he was like a pony being spurred across the steppes of Asia, Zoey mounted firmly on his body, riding him harder and harder, pushing, writhing to get to where she wanted to go. After their passion was spent, she would lift her body, roll to the side, and turn away, curling into herself and her dreams. He wasn’t sure if, beyond the ride, he meant anything at all.

One evening, after they had returned from the cafe to her apartment, where the rich smell of linseed oil and turpentine wafted in from the adjoining studio, he was regaling her, as he often tried to do, with a meticulous account drawn from his travels. He mentioned how he had fulfilled a boyhood dream by reaching Antarctica one January, twenty years before. She had looked astonished. “But Martin,” she exclaimed, “surely it makes no sense to visit Antarctica in the middle of the winter. It must be very cold.” He looked beyond her at the black windowpane of night. “Zoey,” he said, through tight lips, “surely you are aware that in the Southern Hemisphere the seasons are reversed. There January is the height of summer. Surely everyone knows that?” She looked at him astonished. There was a silence, a poignant stillness in the room. “Of course,” she said. “How stupid of me.”

From then on, he could no longer bear to look into the dark well of her eyes. They still made love, but now even sex felt stilted, compromised, awkward. When the time came to return to Athens for more research, with some hesitation he asked if she would like to come along. She looked at him for a long moment and said: “No, Martin, I think it is better if I stay here and keep on painting. Ya sas, Martin. Adio.”

A year later his book on the inevitable triumph of the Apollonian appeared from a University Press in the Midwest. A few critics of the old school, for the most part retired, praised his study. But there was also a torrent of criticism, sometimes tinged with ridicule, most of it coming from the West Coast. The criticism was so fierce that it generated sales and his publisher was mildly pleased at the results. For better or for worse, Martin clearly had made his mark.

During his next sabbatical, he encountered Gudrun during a lingering excursion through Norway. He had allowed himself a lengthy detour for mere pleasure and had found her in the mountains at Geilo. She was considerably younger than he (many years had passed by then), and was ever cheerful, with rosy cheeks and a healthy, sturdy little body. She had been hitching rides during a vacation break with a girlfriend, but the girlfriend had found a young man at the youth hostel and so she was conveniently free. Martin had a rental car from Oslo and asked her to join him. They made their way to the West Coast, visited Bergen with its waterfalls, then headed north along the fjords and the green headlands above the sea. After two nights in Tromso, where the sun never set and the townsfolk took their drinking seriously, they continued on towards Nordkapp, the northernmost point in Europe.

As long as they kept moving, they were happy enough. She had a light spirit, though her body was clearly of the earth, Martin had noted. In any case, they made it to Nordkapp, where the Arctic Ocean surprised them both with its warmth. Martin collected himself and was able to explain the phenomenon. “You see, Gudrun, it’s because the Gulf Stream flows up here all the way from the Caribbean, four thousand miles away.” “Wow,” she replied, “you must know everything, don’t you?” He wasn’t sure if this sturdy Norwegian girl was capable of irony. He smiled at her in a neutral fashion and left it at that. It was that very night, there in lovely and desolate Nordkapp, in their cozy room in their small pension at the ends of the earth, that suddenly, without a thought, he said to Gudrun: “What a lovely person you are. Really. I am so lucky to have met you.” And, after a pregnant pause, not knowing why, he felt compelled to add: “What a pity that such a lovely creature has such heavy ankles.” She looked as if she had been shot. Without a word she gathered her toiletry, her sweater, her red bikini panties, and a few other scattered items, threw them hastily into her suitcase, bolted for the door, and, dragging the half-closed suitcase, bumped her way noisily downstairs to an empty room. He himself was surprised at his words, though, in fact, they were true. The next morning, before he was awake, she had taken the morning bus to Narvik.

As the years passed, he found himself less inclined to travel. Back home in his rather undistinguished university town, he settled down for the duration. He knew he was approaching the end of his career and really couldn’t imagine what to add to his monumental tomb on the Apollonian. He felt he had said what he had to say. Most of his hair was gone and what was left had turned gray. He could still swim, of course, but his knee was bone-on-bone, and tennis had become impossible. Nonetheless, he knew he was graced with tremendous good fortune in those waning years. He had a devoted long-haired Belgian Shepherd mix, a dog who would have died for him. And he had a girl friend who was the most solidly kind woman he had ever known. What more could he ask for? But the years were passing and good old Shep was getting arthritic, almost unable to step down from the car. He would walk him along the street, holding him up by his tail. His front legs were still strong, but the rear legs were rubbery. He knew what was coming, but found it impossible to confront.

Then one day, desperate over the thought of what awaited him, he blurted out the strangest declaration of love anyone had ever heard. His hand on Shep’s now grizzled head, he turned to Bertha, his best companion and best support, the best woman he had ever known, and declared: “How utterly pathetic! The only person in the world I love is Shep.” She said nothing, finished the dishes, then, with a light peck on the cheek, left the house and left him. He didn’t think she would come back. Although what he had said was true, even he understood its cruelty. He heard a month later that she had sold her condo in town and moved back to mid-state, where she had grown up in a remote village in the mountains.

Shep died, as he had to, and now he was by himself. The years continued to pass. Mandatory retirement swept him out of his cozy office, where he had been accustomed to work till after midnight, luxuriating in the empty corridors, the quiet orderliness of the department, when no one was there. Now he lived at home, only going out in the afternoon for a walk in the nearby woods. He would sometimes leaf through his old books, many grown moldy with the years, but he rarely reread the things he had studied, the things he had taught. However, he still remembered with a certain grim affection a quote from his Anglo-Saxon class back in college days: “lif is læne: eal scæceð leoht and lif somod.” “Life is fleeting: everything passes away, light and life together.” Worth remembering.

As his body shrunk and the years weighed heavy, minor aches and pains increased. Then one night the throbbing of a new pain awakened him. To his surprise, he began to think it might be time to re-examine his life. He had always assumed that by adhering to facts and to truth, he had led the good life. But in a corner of his mind, doubt apparently had been gnawing away. Nervously, he began to ask himself if he might have been wrong, if indeed there might be something more important than the truth, than being right. He began to think about kindness, a new thought for him, and was struck by how absent it had been from his arsenal of weapons. He was shocked to discover that he had never really troubled himself to consider that rather meek virtue. He began to wonder if perhaps he had been wrong all along, if perhaps he had not, after all, lived a good life. He wondered if it might be possible to make amends, to set things right, before it was too late.

And so, he dared to call Bertha, the most loyal, trustworthy, decent, reliable, woman he had ever known. He managed to reach her in her mountain village downstate. He apologized for calling, hemmed and hawed a bit, then said, in a matter of fact tone of voice, that he was soon going to die, and though he knew he did not deserve it, might he ask her to come and assist his passing, which, the doctors had assured him, would not be long delayed. Since she was also the most patient and long-suffering woman imagineable, she agreed to come. He breathed a sigh of relief. And now, the time was here. The brown woodland river below his windows flowed as it always had, but now he could feel that it was carrying him away. The crucial moment had come. He gestured to Bertha, asking her to come near. She bent over his sweating brow, his grimacing mouth, his emaciated neck, and listened. And Martin, having decided that his worship of the god of Truth had been too vehement, having decided to abandon his lifelong self-righteous, ruthless honesty, pulled himself together and, in a gravelly, broken voice said: “ Darling, everything I said, it was all a lie, it was nothing but lies. The truth is I always loved you.” With those valiant words, his last breath expended itself, his chest fell, his eyes glazed over, and a contented smile sealed his lips. Bertha gazed at him, pressed closed his eyelids, crossed his hands on his chest, and turned back to finish the dishes. Scrubbing clean the desert bowls (yes, he had managed to down a last bit of vanilla ice cream), she chuckled to herself and couldn’t help murmuring: “Poor old Marty, you can always tell when he’s lying.”