Part 22 – THE PENDULUM
By
VIKRAM KARVE
Long back, when we were carefree bachelors, we had a senior, who was much married – let’s call him “X”. Though “X” was married, he spent every evening with us at the club, playing billiards, having a drink, and would go home at closing time.
We pitied his wife, who he took for granted, and who had to spend her lonely evenings at home waiting for her husband to come back around ten to have dinner.
One evening “X” did not turn up at club. We probably thought he was unwell. But when he did not come to club for three successive evenings we decided to go to his house and see if things were okay. We were taken aback to see “X” sitting all alone in the darkness nursing a drink which he did not seem to be enjoying.
When we asked him what was the matter, he simply said that his wife had gone to her mother’s place for a few days and he was feeling lonely and miserable. We asked to come with us to the club and cheer up, but he refused saying that he was not in the mood.
The moment his wife returned, “X” was back to square one. He was seen in the evening in the club enjoying himself thoroughly and from that day onwards he was back to his familiar routine.
Later I read a story whose plot was similar to the story of “X”. It is is one of my daughter’s favourite stories, and mine too – THE PENDULUM by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter).
I am sure you have seen a pendulum, either in your physics laboratory or as the hanging component on your grandfather clock that swings back and forth with every second in time. Like a pendulum which swings from one side to another, in this story it is metaphorically used to refer things in life swinging from one extreme to the other.
The Pendulum is a story about a man whose behaviour is like a pendulum, which goes from one extreme to the other. At one extreme is his being bored of his married life and at the other extreme is his misery and despair when his wife goes away for an evening, his loneliness, his regret at taking his wife for granted and his melancholic longing for her to come back.
But the moment his wife returns, he is back to his old ways, forgetting all the resolutions he made and switches back to his normal routine, leaving her all alone in the house while he goes off to enjoy his evening with he boys, as always.
The title of the story THE PENDULUM is very fitting. The behaviour of John Perkins is just like a pendulum which swings from one side to another.
One day he returns home and finds his wife Katy missing. He feels lonely and her absence mkes him feel miserable. In his melancholic mood he realises her importance in his life and is filled with guilt and remorse for having neglected his wife. He resolves to make amends for his past neglect of her and decides that form now on he look after his wife properly, with care and love. But the moment his wife returns home he quickly forgets his resolution and is off to play a game or two of pool with the fellows.
This story THE PENDULUM is freely available to read on the internet. I am giving a few url links to the story and also pasting it below for your convenience.
The Pendulum
A Short Story by O Henry
Title: The Pendulum
Author: O Henry
Author: O Henry
"Eighty-first street
A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with the released flock.
John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of his daily life there was no such word as "perhaps." There are no surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day.
Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in- hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey--Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred- dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across the air- shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and letter-box--and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be under way.
John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone:
"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?"
"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," he would answer, "and play a game or two of pool with the fellows."
Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his victims from the Frogmore flats.
To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs--this was not Katy's way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation must have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these combings in the little blue vase on the mantel to be some day formed into the coveted feminine "rat."
Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper. John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus:
"Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I hope it isn't her quinzy again. Pay the milkman 50 cents. She had it bad last spring. Don't forget to write to the company about the gas meter, and your good socks are in the top drawer. I will write to-morrow. Hastily, KATY."
Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never varied, and it left him dazed.
There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butterscotch lay with its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping, rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart.
He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He had never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had pointed a finger at his secure and uneventful home.
John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings now appeared to him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan polish dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law had knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal John sat at a front window.
He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might go forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as any gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his fling until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy waiting for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy. He might play pool at McCloskey's with his roistering friends until Aurora dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings that had curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon him were loosened. Katy was gone.
John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown--or in other no less florid and true utterances?
"I'm a double-dyed dub," mused John Perkins, "the way I've been treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the boys instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone with nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, you're the worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the little girl. I'll take her out and let her see some amusement. And I'll cut out the McCloskey gang right from this minute."
Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were knocking the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the nightly game. But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and he wanted it. Backward to a certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim bounced from the orchard, could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his descent.
Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of it stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of her contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles made by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:--yes, tears-- came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things would be different. He would make up for all his neglect. What was life without her?
The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John stared at her stupidly.
"My! I'm glad to get back," said Katy. "Ma wasn't sick to amount to anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little spell, and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the next train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee."
Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third- floor front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order of Things.
A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted and the wheels revolve in their old orbit.
John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his hat and walked to the door.
"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" asked Katy, in a querulous tone.
"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," said John, "and play a game or two of pool with the fellows."
I love reading short stories. I have learnt more about life from short stories rather than from moral lectures and pontifications. I hope you are enjoying this series on My Favourite Short Stories. I’ll be back soon with my next one. Till then, Happy Reading.
VIKRAM KARVE
© vikram karve., all rights reserved.
Did you like this story? I am sure you will like the stories in my recently published book COCKTAIL comprising twenty seven short stories about relationships. To know more please click the links below:
Do try out this delicious, heady and exciting COCKTAIL
About Vikram Karve
A creative person with a zest for life, Vikram Karve is a retired Naval Officer turned full time writer. Educated at IIT Delhi, ITBHU Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale and Bishops School Pune, Vikram has published two books: COCKTAIL a collection of fiction short stories about relationships (2011) and APPETITE FOR A STROLL a book of Foodie Adventures (2008) and he is currently working on his novel. An avid blogger, he has written a number of fiction short stories and creative non-fiction articles in magazines and journals for many years before the advent of blogging. Vikram has taught at a University as a Professor for almost 14 years and now teaches as a visiting faculty and devotes most of his time to creative writing. Vikram lives in Pune India with his family and muse - his pet dog Sherry with whom he takes long walks thinking creative thoughts.
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© vikram karve., all rights reserved.
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