Who Will Not Go Away

THE CHILDREN AT THE GATE by Edward Lewis Wallant. 184 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $3.95.

Though few recognized it at the time, it is increasingly apparent that the U.S. lost one of its best novelists when Edward Lewis Wallant died 15 months ago at the age of 36. His career was astonishing in several ways, the first of these being simply that each of his four books was so good that it seemed unlikely that the author could write another at the same level. A second surprise is that no cult has gathered since Wallant's death. Ordinarily, the work of a brilliant and relatively unknown writer would, at his death, quickly be walled into a shrine and suffused with critical incense, as happened to Nathanael West. But West raged at chaos, and rage can be read as hate, which is a suitable cult emotion. Wallant's transcendent gift was for compassion, and in his writing compassion is so clear and so strong that no willful misreading can blur it to the cult-currency of hate or despair.

Agony of Laughter. Wallant wrote of suffering; he believed with no sense of dismay that it was man's fate. His first novel, The Human Season, is nothing more than an extended portrayal of the enormous grief of a middle-aged Jewish plumber whose wife has died. The author does not founder in the plumber's sorrow; neither does he regard it with detachment. His view might be that of a loving son or brother who says only, because there is nothing more to say, "This is part of what it is to be a man."

The Children at the Gate is Wallant's last novel. The title, which was thoughtfully chosen, is from T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday:

Will the veiled sister pray

For children at the gate

Who will not go away and cannot

pray . . .

The book sears the mind; for a time, until the pain clears at the end, compassion becomes an agony of mocking laughter.

The book is the story of an education. Runty 19-year-old Angelo has an idiot sister, a slatternly mother, a dreary job as a druggist's assistant, and no hopes. He is intelligent, and he stakes everything on reason. Runty, it seems, can stand the whole crummy mess so long as he can remain aloof from the environment he despises and, ultimately, from himself.

Then, in the hospital where he peddles toothpaste and Cokes for the druggist, he meets a mad Jewish orderly named Sammy. Reason or reasons do not seem to exist for Sammy. His role is to drown the rationalist Angelo in humanity, and he rants outrageous anecdotes proving that the perversity and saintliness of the human swarm are inextricably intertwined. In the hospital Sammy is seen acting out his mad parables, caring lovingly for the dying, and hooking complaining patients on the morphine he steals and peddles.

Saintly Insanity. Angelo begins to sink in this morass of freakish love, and desperately betrays Sammy to the hospital authorities. It is clear by now that Sammy is quite consciously living a daft but in some ways reverent imitation of Christ. It should be under stood that the parody is Sammy's, not symbol-mongering of the author's. The saintly insanity reaches its only possible resolution as Sammy, in an apocalyptic jape, crucifies himself. Comprehension at last overflows in Angelo, and he finds release in long minutes of hysterical laughter. Wallant brings things to an end almost without a flaw, although perhaps his final page goes further toward an explanation than is necessary.

The book itself is a remarkably fine ending for a remarkably fine novelist. Here is Sammy wildly spieling out the core of Wallant's concern: "Let me tell you the worst dreams of all for me. I dream like I'm God, up on top of everything with nothing higher, all I have to do is wave my hand and I got what I want. I got no pains, no problems. Hungry? I wave the hand and there's roast beef. Everything. Nobody can insult me or beat me up or anything. I'm never cold or hot or sick . . . but you know, it's the worst, worst feeling I ever had. It's so lonely not to suffer, so lonely. Who would want it if they knew? I don't say I like to suffer or not like to suffer. But not to!"

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