Lancelot

being overtaken by something, by the past, by myself. One look at that same old sardonic expression of yours and it was as if I suddenly remembered everything and was not even surprised. I even knew what you were going to say when you shook your head and opened your mouth to say something and didn’t say it. You were going to say as usual, weren’t you. “For Christ’s sake, Lance, what have you gone and done now?” Or something like that. Right?
    Only later that night I remembered that I remembered something on my own hook, without being told. My own name. Lance. Rather remembered your liking to pronounce all of it: “Lancelot Andrewes Lamar,” you used to say. “You were named after the great Anglican divine, weren’t you? Shouldn’t it have been Lancelot du Lac, King Ban of Benwick’s son?”
    It was as if I remembered everything but could not quite bring myself to focus on it.
    I perceive that you’re not a patient but that something is wrong with you. You’re more abstracted than usual. Are you in love?
    You’re smiling. Smiling but not saying anything. You have to leave? Will you come tomorrow?

2
    COME IN, COME IN. Sit down. You still won’t? I have a confession to make. I was not quite honest yesterday when I pretended not to know you. I knew you perfectly well. There’s nothing wrong with my memory. It’s just that I don’t like to remember. Why shouldn’t I remember you? We were best of friends, in fact inseparable if you recall. It’s just that it was quite a shock seeing you after all these years. No; not even that is true. I noticed you in the cemetery day before yesterday. Still I hardly knew what to say to you. What do you say to someone after twenty years when you have already said everything.
    It bothers you a bit too, doesn’t it? You are shy with me. But you like my window and my little view, I can see.
    You still look doubtful. About my sanity? Well yes, after all, here I am in the nuthouse. But I remember you perfectly, everything we ever did, every name you ever had. We knew each other by several names depending on the oblique and obscure circumstances of our lives—and our readings. I bet I remember your names better than you. To begin with, you were simply Harry, when you lived at Northumberland close to us on the River Road and we went to school together. Later you were known variously as Harry Hotspur, a misnomer because though you were pugnacious you were not much of a fighter. Also as Prince Hal, because you seemed happy only in whorehouses. Also as Northumberland, after the house you lived in. Also as Percival and Parsifal, who found the Grail and brought life to a dead land. Also by several cheerful obscene nicknames in the D.K.E. fraternity of which the least objectionable was Pussy. Miss Margaret Mae McDowell of Sweet Briar, I want you to meet my friend and roommate, Pussy. Later, I understand you took a religious name when you became a priest: John, a good name. But is it John the Evangelist who loved so much or John the Baptist, a loner out in the wilderness? You were a loner.
    So as you see, I remember a great deal about you. Right?
    Ah, you smile your old smile.
    Yet you prefer to look at the cemetery.
    It makes a pretty scene today, don’t you think? All Souls’ Day. A pleasant feast for the dead: the women in the cemetery whitewashing the tombs, trimming the tiny lawns, setting out chrysanthemums, real and plastic, lighting candles, scrubbing the marble lintels. They remind me of Baltimore housewives on their hands and knees washing the white doorsteps of row houses.
    A pretty sight, the bustling cluttered cemetery, the copper-penny-colored rain trees, the first fitful north wind blowing leaves every which way. If you listen carefully, you can hear the dry curlicues of crepe-myrtle leaves blowing up and down the paths like popcorn. When the wind shifts you catch a whiff of coffee and tar from the Tchoupitoulas docks.
    In New Orleans I have noticed that people are happiest when they are going to funerals, making money, taking care of the dead, or putting on masks at Mardi Gras so nobody knows who they are.
    Well, I found out who you are. Your profession, that is. A priest-physician. Which is to say, a screwed-up priest or a half-assed physician. Or both. Ah, I managed to surprise you, didn’t I? Yes, someone told me yesterday. But it is more than that. It was something I