Clock Without Hands by Carson Mccullers Read Free Book Online Page A

answer immediately, so much did the image appall him.
    "You see," the Judge said. "You were only making empty lip-service—for the Northerners, at that."
    Jester said: "I still think that as a judge you judge one crime in two different ways—according to whether it is done by a Negro or a white man."
    "Naturally. They are two different things. White is white and black is black—and never the two shall meet if I can prevent it."
    The Judge laughed and held Jester's hand when he tried to pull away again.
    "All my life I have been concerned with questions of justice. And after your father's death I realized that justice itself is a chimera, a delusion. Justice is not a flat yardstick, applied in equal measure to an equal situation. After your father's death I realized there was a quality more important than justice."
    Jester's attention was always held by any reference to his father and his death. "What is more important, Grandfather?"
    "Passion," the Judge said. "Passion is more important than justice."
    Jester stiffened with embarrassment. "Passion? Did my father have passion?"
    The Judge evaded the question. "Young people of your generation have no passion. They have cut themselves off from the ideals of their ancestors and are denying the heritage of their blood. Once when I was in New York, I saw a Nigra man sitting at a table with a white girl and something in my bloodstream sickened. My outrage had nothing particularly to do with justice—but when I saw those two laughing together and eating at the same table, my bloodstream—I left New York that same day and never went back to that Babel, nor will to my dying day."
    "I wouldn't have minded at all," Jester said. "Soon› as a matter of fact, I am going to New York."
    "That's what I meant. You have no passion."
    The words affected Jester violently; he trembled and blushed. "I don't see—"
    "One of these days you may have this passion. And when it comes to you, your half-baked notions of so-called justice will be forgotten. And you will be a man and my grandson—with whom I am well pleased."
    Jester held the chair while the Judge pushed himself up from the table with his stick and stood upright for a moment facing the picture above the mantelpiece. "Wait a minute, Lamb." He sought desperately some words that would abridge the chasm that had opened in the last two hours. And finally he said: "You know, Jester, I can see the pink mule you were talking about—there in the sky over the orchard and the shack."
    The admission altered nothing and they both knew it. The Judge walked slowly and Jester stood near him ready to steady him if necessary. His pity mingled with remorse and he hated pity and remorse. When his grandfather was settled on the library sofa, he said: "I'm glad you know how I stand. I'm glad I told you." But the tears in his grandfather's eyes unnerved him so that he was forced to add: "I love you anyway—I do love you—Grandy." But when he was embraced, the smell of sweat and the sentimentality disgusted him, and when he had freed himself he felt a sense of defeat.
    He ran out of the room and bounded up the staircase three steps at a time. At the head of the upstairs hall there was a window of stained glass which brightened Jester's auburn hair but cast a sallow light on his breathless face. He closed the door of his room and flung himself on the bed.
    It was true he had no passion. The shame of his grandfather's words pulsed in his body and he felt that the old man knew that he was a virgin. His hard boy's hands unzipped his fly and touched his genitals for solace. Other boys he knew boasted of love affairs and even went to a house run by a woman called Reba. This place fascinated Jester; on the outside it was an ordinary frame house with a trellis on the porch and a potato vine. The very ordinariness of the house fascinated and appalled him. He would walk around the block and his heart felt challenged and defeated. Once, in the late afternoon, he saw