The Second Coming

Yamaiuchi was leaving fast with a tray of empty bloody-Mary glasses. Will Barrett called to him and made a motion. It was possible for Yamaiuchi, whose eye had not quite met his, to pretend he hadn’t heard him. He called to him again. He knew that Yamaiuchi heard because his ears fluttered even closer to his glossy head, but he did not turn around. It was rare for anyone but Marion, who had hired him and sent him to forestry school in Asheville, to give him orders. For this reason it now became possible for Yamaiuchi to pretend not to hear him.
    For some reason this made him angry with a quick hot anger. He lost his temper. He had not been angry or surprised for thirty years—no, once before, when Kitty’s brother was dying and the stupid nurses wouldn’t do anything—and in the very instant of feeling the anger rise in his throat, he remembered that it was with exactly the same sudden rage his father had turned on the black guide. His father, known as a nigger-lover, cursed the guide like a nigger-hater.
    He, Will Barrett, meant to say: Get your ass or perhaps even get your yellow ass (his father said black ass) over here, but he felt the room go silent and felt himself shrug and laugh as Yamaiuchi wheeled with the tray. He beckoned to him. Yet even now the Japanese looked for the briefest instant in Leslie’s direction, decided she wasn’t boss, and came over, smiling angrily.
    â€œBring this man a plate of food,” he said, pointing to Mr. Arnold, who was pointing a forefinger straight into his mouth.
    â€œY’sah,” said Yamaiuchi. “The buffet is urready.” Again his eye slewed toward Leslie. Was he saying, I’d rather take orders from her?
    â€œDo it now,” he said, smiling angrily. He was genuinely puzzled: I wonder why this Japanese is playing this game, calculating decimal points of insolence.
    â€œY’sah.” Yamaiuchi bowed, two degrees too far, and left.
    Someday I’m going to hit that little grinning bastard, he thought, drive him right into the ground with both fists.
    An instant later he thought with amazement, where did that rage come from? I could have killed him. My father could have too: he could as easily have shot the guide as he shot the dog.
    You’re one of us, his father said.
    Yes, very well. I’m one of you. You win.
    Where does such rage come from? from the discovery that in the end the world yields only to violence, that only the violent bear it away, that short of violence all is in the end impotence?
    8
    He gazed at himself in the bathroom mirror, turned his head, touched his cheek like a man testing whether to shave. Presently his face canceled itself. The bright-faceted forehead went dark, the deep-set eyes began to glow, the shadowed pocked cheek grew bright. The mirror, he noticed, did not reflect accurately. It missed the slight bulge of forehead, the hollowing of temple which showed in photographs. Even when he turned his head, his nose did not look snoutish as it did in a double mirror.
    Something stirred in him. He looked at his watch. In three minutes Kitty would slip out into the cloud. When he thought of her standing in the summerhouse, hugging herself, wrapped in fog, he smiled. Then she would sit on the damp bench, straddling slightly, her thighs broadening and filling the creamy linen skirt. Yes, it was in her, not in a mirror, he would find himself. Entering her, he would be answered, responded to, delineated. His life would be proved by her. She would echo him, print him out, trace his shape like radar. He could read himself in her.
    His heart gave a big pump. Did Kitty want what she appeared to want? Did she want him to fuck her in the summerhouse? Yes! And it was Kitty’s ass he wanted. Yes! He blinked in astonishment. It was as if he had forgotten about women, about loving women, about having a woman’s ass or loving a woman, one woman, one’s own heart’s love, love her heart, mind, soul, sweet lips, ass and all. A violent shiver took hold of him; hairs on his arm raised. What was he afraid of? of being caught? that he shouldn’t? that he couldn’t?
    Heart beating in his neck, he hurried down the back stairs to the garage—and fell. Either fainted or fell, or slipped and fell, and knocked himself out, or perhaps had a fit, one of his “petty-mall” spells. Fit or fall, it seemed to him that he drifted down weightlessly, careening softly off the walls of