Appointment in Samarra Read online

  O’Hara wrote his own epitaph, which is inscribed on the grave where he was buried in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1970: “Better than anyone else he told the truth of his time. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well.” That’s pure O’Hara: blustery, self-important, a little needy, but not entirely wrong. In general, he was among the least autobiographical of writers, more interested in studying the world and its ways than in studying himself, someone he already had a high opinion of. But we can nevertheless catch a glimpse of O’Hara—the young O’Hara—in Julian English. On the one hand, English, whose very name proclaims him to be a member of the WASP ascendancy, is O’Hara’s revenge on the people who he felt had snubbed him. It’s the self-made Irishman Harry Reilly who wins in the end. But English and his creator nevertheless have a lot in common. They were both doctor’s sons (though O’Hara lets us know that Dr. English was famously and dangerously bad at skull surgery, something his own father was renowned for), and both were disappointments to their fathers, who didn’t bother to disguise it. Both liked to take a drink and were apt to pick fights when a little tight. Both liked pretty girls. (O’Hara, who at the time of writing Appointment was recently divorced from his first wife—she was a well-born Episcopalian—was probably even more of a ladies’ man than Julian was.) Julian has some of O’Hara’s cynicism and prickliness and also his social awareness. In a conversation with his secretary, Mary, Julian can’t help noticing that “she represented precisely what she came from: solid, respectable, Pennsylvania Dutch, Lutheran middle class; and when he thought about her, when she made her existence felt, when she actively represented what she stood for, he could feel the little office suddenly becoming overcrowded with a delegation of all the honest clerks and mechanics and housewives and Sunday School teachers and orphans—all the Christiana Street kind of people.”

  In some ways Julian, with his money, his beautiful wife, his perfectly tailored clothes, his starched collars and waxed-calf shoes, his Kappa Beta Phi key, and his assured position in society, is the person O’Hara dreamed of being. Yet in the novel—this is perhaps the crucial point of Appointment in Samarra—it’s not enough. There’s an emptiness in Julian, a sense that life has already offered him all there is and it’s a disappointment. But O’Hara had still another quality: a toughness and grittiness, a determination to succeed and prove others wrong, that made him get up every morning—or, more likely, every afternoon—his head pounding, light another cigarette, and start typing.

  O’Hara is also more generous than Julian, who is a bit of a snob. To the end of the book O’Hara retains his sympathy for his character, whom he could so easily have lampooned, just as he resists the temptation to satirize or revenge himself on people like Julian’s parents or Caroline’s mother—social types he must have loathed in real life. The most remarkable thing of all about Appointment in Samarra is its tolerance, its sweetness, even. In his later novels O’Hara became harder and tougher, more cynical, but this first book is full of affection for the world as he found it.

  CHARLES MCGRATH

  Appointment in Samarra

  To F. P. A.

  DEATH SPEAKS:

  There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

  —W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

  1

  Our story opens in the mind of Luther L. (L for LeRoy) Fliegler, who is lying in his bed, not thinking of anything, but just aware of sounds, conscious of his own breathing, and sensitive to his own heartbeats. Lying beside him is his wife, lying on her right side and enjoying her sleep. She has earned her sleep, for it is Christmas morning, strictly speaking, and all the day before she has worked like a dog, cleaning the turkey and baking things, and, until a few hours ago, trimming the tree. The awful proximity of his heartbeats makes Luther Fliegler begin to want his wife a little, but Irma can say no when she is tired. It is too much trouble, she says when she is tired, and she won’t take any chances. Three children is enough; three children in ten years. So Luther Fliegler does not reach out for her. It is Christmas morning, and he will do her the favor of letting her enjoy her sleep; a favor which she will never know he did for her. And it is a favor, all right, because Irma likes Christmas too, and on this one morning she might not mind the trouble, might be willing to take a chance. Luther Fliegler more actively stifled the little temptation and thought the hell with it, and then turned and put his hands around his wife’s waist and caressed the little rubber tire of flesh across her diaphragm. She began to stir and then she opened her eyes and said: “My God, Lute, what are you doing?”

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “Don’t, will you please?” she said, but she smiled happily and put her arms around his big back. “God, you’re crazy,” she said. “Oh, but I love you.” And for a little while Gibbsville knew no happier people than Luther Fliegler and his wife, Irma. Then Luther went to sleep, and Irma got up and then came back to the bedroom, stopping to look out the window before she got into bed again.

  Lantenengo Street had a sort of cottony silence to it. The snow was piled high in the gutters, and the street was open only to the width of two cars. It was too dark for the street to look cottony, and there was an illusion even about the silence. Irma thought she could yell her loudest and not be heard, so puffily silent did it look, but she also knew that if she wanted to (which she didn’t) she could carry on a conversation with Mrs. Bromberg across the way, without either of them raising her voice. Irma chided herself for thinking this way about Mrs. Bromberg on Christmas morning, but immediately she defended herself: Jews do not observe Christmas, except to make more money out of Christians, so you do not have to treat Jews any different on Christmas than on any other day of the year. Besides, having the Brombergs on Lantenengo Street hurt real estate values. Everybody said so. The Brombergs, Lute had it on good authority, had paid thirty thousand for the Price property, which was twelve thousand five hundred more than Will Price had been asking; but if the Brombergs wanted to live on Lantenengo Street, they could pay for it. Irma wondered if it was true that Sylvia Bromberg’s sister and brother-in-law were dickering for the McAdams property next door. She wouldn’t be surprised. Pretty soon there would be a whole colony of Jews in the neighborhood, and the Fliegler children and all the other nice children in the neighborhood would grow up with Jewish accents.

  Irma Fliegler had hated Sylvia Bromberg since the summer before, when Sylvia was having a baby and screamed all through a summer evening. She could have gone to the Catholic hospital; she knew she was having a baby, and it was awful to have those screams and have to make up stories to tell the nice children why Mrs. Bromberg was screaming. It was disgusting.

  Irma turned away from the window and went back to bed, praying that she would not get caught, and hating the Brombergs for moving into the neighborhood. Lute was sleeping peacefully and Irma was glad of the warmth of his big body and the heavy smell of him. She reached over and rubbed her fingers across his shoulder where there were four navel-like scars, shrapnel scars. Lute belonged on Lantenengo Street, and she as his wife belonged on Lantenengo Street. And not only as his wife. Her family had been in Gibbsville a lot longer than the great majority of the people who lived on Lantenengo Street. She was a Doane, and Grandfather Doane had been a drummer boy in the Mexican War and had a Congressional Medal of Honor from the Civil War. Grandfather Doane had been a member of the School Board for close to thirty years, before he died, and he was the only man in this part of the State who had the Congressional Medal of Honor. Lute had the French Croix de Guerre with palm for something he said he did when he was drunk, and there were a couple of men who got Distinguished Service Crosses and Distinguished Service Medals during the War, but Grandfather Doane had the only Congressional Medal of Honor. Irma still thought she was entitled to the medal, because she had been Grandfather Doane’s favorite; everyone knew that. But her brother Willard and his wife, they got it because Willard was carrying on the name. Well, they could have it. It was Christmas, and Irma did not begrudge it to them as long as they took care of it and appreciated it.

  Irma lay there, fully awake, and heard a sound: cack, thock, cack, thock, cack, thock. A car with a loose cross-chain banging against the fender, coming slowly up or down Lantenengo Street, she could not make out which. Then it came a little faster and the sound changed to cack, cack, cack, cack-cack-cack-cack. It passed her house and she could tell it was an open car, because she heard the flapping of the side curtains. It probably was a company car, a Dodge. Probably an accident at one of the mines and one of the bosses was being called out in the middle of the night, the night before Christmas, to take charge of the accident. Awful. She was glad Lute did not work for the Coal & Iron Company. You had to be a college graduate, Penn State or Lehigh, which Lute was not, to get any kind of a decent job with the Coal & Iron, and when you did get a job you had to wait for someone to die before you got a decent promotion. And called out at all hours of the day and night, like a doctor, when the pumps didn’t work or something else happened. And even your ordinary work on the engineering corps, you came home dirty, looking like an ordinary miner in short rubber boots and cap and lunch can. A college graduate, and you had to undress in the cellar when you came home. Lute was right: he figured if you sell two Cadillacs a month, you make expenses, and anything over that is so much gravy, and meanwhile you look like a decent human being and you’re not taking chances of being crushed to death under a fall of top rock, or blown to hell in an explosion of black damp. Inside the mines was no place for a married man, Lute always said; not if he gave a damn about his wife and children.

  And Lute was a real family man. Irma shifted in bed until her back was against Lute’s back. She held her hand in back of her, gently clasping Lute’s forearm. Next year, according to Hoover, things would be much better all around, and they would be able to do a lot of things they had planned to do, but had had to postpone because of this slump. Irma heard the sound of another loose cross-chain, fast when she first heard it, and then slow and finally stopping. The car was getting a new start, in low gear. Irma recognized it: Dr. Newton’s Buick coach. Newton, the dentist, and his wife, Lillian, who had the house two doors below. They would be getting home from the dance at the country club. Ted Newton was probably a little plastered, and Lillian was probably having her hands full with him, because she had to get home early on account of being pregnant. Three months gone, or a little over. Irma wondered what time it was. She reached out and found Lute’s watch. Only twenty after three. Good Lord, she thought it was much later than that.

  Twenty after three. The country club dance would just be getting good, Irma supposed. The kids home from boarding school and college, and the younger marrieds, most of whom she knew by their first names, and then the older crowd. Next year she and Lute would be going to those dances and having fun. She could have gone to the one tonight, but she and Lute agreed that even though you knew the people by their first names, it wasn’t right to go down to the club unless you were a member. Every time you went, whoever you were the guest of had to pay a dollar, and even at that you were not supposed to go under any circumstances more than twice in any quarter of the year. That was the rule. Next year she and Lute would be members, and it would be a good thing, because Lute would be able to make better contacts and sell more Cadillacs to club members. But as Lute said: “We’ll join when we can afford it. I don’t believe in that idea of mixing your social life with your business life too much. You get signing checks for prospects down at the country club, and you wind up behind the eight-ball. We’ll join when we can afford it.” Lute was all right. Dependable and honest as the day is long, and never looked at another woman, even in fun. That was one reason why she was content to wait until they could really afford to join the club. If she had married, say, Julian English, she would be a member of the club, but she wouldn’t trade her life for Caroline English’s, not if you paid her. She wondered if Julian and Caroline were having another one of their battle royals.

  II

  The smoking room of the Lantenengo Country Club was so crowded it did not seem as though another person could get in, but people moved in and out somehow. The smoking room had become co-educational; originally, when the club was built in 1920, it had been for men only, but during many wedding receptions women had broken the rule against their entering; wedding receptions were private parties, and club rules could be broken when the whole club was taken over by one party. So the feminine members had muscled in on the smoking room, and now there were as many females as males in the room. It was only a little after three o’clock, but the party had been going on forever, and hardly anyone wondered when it would end. Anyone who wanted it to end could go home. He would not be missed. The people who stayed were the people who belonged on the party in the first place. Any member of the club could come to the dance, but not everyone who came to the dance was really welcome in the smoking room. The smoking room crowd always started out with a small number, always the same people. The Whit Hofmans, the Julian Englishes, the Froggy Ogdens and so on. They were the spenders and drinkers and socially secure, who could thumb their noses and not have to answer to anyone except their own families. There were about twenty persons in this group, and your standing in the younger set of Gibbsville could be judged by the assurance with which you joined the nucleus of the smoking room crowd. By three o’clock everyone who wanted to had been in the smoking room; the figurative bars were let down at about one-thirty, which time coincided with the time at which the Hofmans and Englishes and so on had got drunk enough to welcome anyone, the less eligible the better.

  So far nothing terrible had occurred. Young Johnny Dibble had been caught stealing liquor from someone’s locker and was kicked in the behind. Elinor Holloway’s shoulder strap had slipped or been pulled down, momentarily revealing her left breast, which most of the young men present had seen and touched at one time or another. Frank Gorman, Georgetown, and Dwight Ross, Yale, had fought, cried, and kissed after an argument about what the team Gorman had not made would have done to the team Ross was substitute halfback on. During one of those inexplicable silences, Ted Newton was heard to say to his wife: “I’ll drink as much as I God damn please.” Elizabeth Gorman, the fat niece of Harry Reilly, whose social-climbing was a sight to behold, had embarrassed her uncle by belching loud and unashamed. Lorimer Gould III, of New York, who was visiting someone or other, had been told nine times that Gibbsville was dull as dishwater the year ’round, but everyone from out of town thought it was the peppiest place in the country at Christmas. Bobby Herrmann, who was posted for non-payment of dues and restaurant charges, was present in a business suit, gloriously drunk and persona grata at the inner sanctum (he was famous for having said, on seeing the golf course without a person playing on it: “The course is rather delinquent today”), and explaining to the wives and fiancées of his friends that he would like to dance with them, but could not because he was posted. Everyone was drinking, or had just finished a drink, or was just about to take one. The drinks were rye and ginger ale, practically unanimously, except for a few highballs of applejack and White Rock or apple and ginger ale, or gin and ginger ale. Only a few of the inner sanctum members were drinking Scotch. The liquor, that is, the rye, was all about the same: most people bought drug store rye on prescriptions (the physicians who were club members saved “scrips” for their patients), and cut it with alcohol and colored water. It was not poisonous, and it got you tight, which was all that was required of it and all that could be said for it.

  The vibrations of the orchestra (Tommy Lake’s Royal Collegians, a Gibbsville band) reached the smoking room, and the youngest people in the room began to hum Something To Remember You By. The young men addressed the girls: “Dance?” and the girls said: “Love to,” or “Sa-well,” or “Uh-huh.” Slowly the room became less crowded. A few remained around one fairly larger table in a corner, which by common consent or eminent domain or something was conceded to be the Whit Hofman–crowd’s table. Harry Reilly was telling a dirty story in an Irish brogue, which was made slightly more realistic or funny by the fact that his bridgework, done before the Reillys came into the big money, did not fit too well, and Harry as a result always whistled faintly when he spoke. Reilly had a big, jovial white face, gray hair and a big mouth with thin lips. His eyes were shrewd and small, and he was beginning to get fat. He was in tails, and his white tie was daintily soiled from his habit of touching it between gestures of the story. His clothes were good, but he had been born in a tiny coal-mining village, or “patch,” as these villages are called; and Reilly himself was the first to say: “You can take the boy out of the patch, but you can’t take the patch out of the boy.”

  Reilly told stories in paragraphs. While he was speaking he would lean forward with an arm on his knee, like a picture you have seen of a cowboy. When he came to the end of the paragraph he would look quickly over his shoulder, as though he expected to be arrested before finishing the story; he would finger his tie and close his mouth tight, and then he would turn back to his audience and go into the next paragraph: “…So Pat said…” It was funny to watch people listening to Harry telling a story. If they took a sip of a drink in the middle of a paragraph, they did it slowly, as though concealing it. And they always knew when to laugh, even when it was a Catholic joke, because Reilly signaled the pay-off line by slapping his leg just before it was delivered. When everyone had laughed (Reilly would look at each person to see that he or she was getting it), he would follow with a short history of the story, where he had heard it and under what circumstances; and the history would lead to another story. Everyone else usually said: “Harry, I don’t know how you remember them. I hear a lot of stories, but I never can think of them.” Harry had a great reputation as a wit—a witty Irishman.