Role Models <Mobile Original>

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“That I used to be young,” he said. “And that I used to believe in things. Now I’m old, and I don’t believe in anything. Not in God, not in love, not in art, not in myself. I don’t even believe in the truth. I just tell stories.”

He looked at me, and his eyes were cold. “It wasn’t a story,” he said. “It was the truth.”

I met him at a party given by a couple who were both therapists. The party was in a large, white, high-ceilinged room in a house that had once been a barn. The therapists, like many in their profession, were rich. Their friends were rich, or at least successful—lawyers, doctors, producers, professors, and, like me, writers. I was a writer of some reputation, but my reputation was not as great as his. He was a famous poet, one of those poets who become famous without ever writing a best-seller, without ever appearing on television, without ever being photographed in a magazine. He was famous because his poems were beautiful and strange and because he had been, for a time, the lover of a famous actress. The famous actress was dead now, dead of cancer, and the poet was old. He was seventy-three, and his face was a map of wrinkles, his hair was white and thin, and his eyes were the color of the sea in winter. He stood by the fireplace, holding a glass of white wine, and people gathered around him, listening to him talk. I stood on the edge of the group, not wanting to intrude, but wanting to hear what he said. He was telling a story about a time when he was young, a time when he had gone to Paris and had met Gertrude Stein. Role Models

Here is the full text of the short story by the American author John Updike (first published in The Atlantic Monthly , 1994, and later included in his collection The Afterlife and Other Stories ). Role Models By John Updike

I was forty-two years old. I had a wife and two children, a house in the suburbs, a car, a dog, a cat, and a career that was neither a success nor a failure. I had never lost my innocence, because I had never had any to lose. I had been born old, like Gertrude Stein, but without her genius. I had been born careful, cautious, skeptical, and afraid. I had never believed in anything, not really, not deeply. I had never believed that the world was good, or that I was good, or that the people I loved would never hurt me. I had always known that they would. I had always known that everything ends, that everything falls apart, that everything is a story we tell ourselves to keep the dark away.

The poet stopped again, and this time he did not go on. He looked into his glass, as if the wine held a vision, and then he looked up and said, “I have spent my entire life trying to get that innocence back. And I have failed.” “I’m sorry,” I said

And then I went inside, and I went to bed, and I fell asleep. And I dreamed that I was young again, and that I was standing in a field of wildflowers, and that the sun was warm on my face, and that a woman was walking toward me, a woman I had never seen before, and she was smiling, and she was holding out her hand. And I reached out to take it, and then I woke up.

I left the party early. I drove home through the dark streets, past the houses with their lighted windows, past the trees with their bare branches, past the stars with their cold, distant light. I parked the car in the driveway, and I sat there for a long time, looking at my house. The lights were off. My wife and children were asleep. The dog was asleep. The cat was asleep. Everything was quiet. Everything was still. And I thought, This is my life. This is the only life I will ever have. And I felt nothing. Not sadness, not joy, not gratitude, not regret. Just nothing. A great, empty, peaceful nothing.

He poured himself another glass of wine, and then he walked away, leaving me standing by the bar. I watched him go, and I thought about what he had said. I thought about innocence, and about the loss of it, and about the way we spend our lives trying to get it back. I thought about the famous actress, dead of cancer, and about the poet, old and alone, and about Gertrude Stein, sitting in her armchair in Paris, talking about the war. I thought about Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and about the clean white lines and the beautiful sad parties. And then I thought about myself. Now I’m old, and I don’t believe in anything

There was a silence. Then someone laughed, a nervous, polite laugh, and the tension broke. People began to talk among themselves, and the poet turned away from the fireplace and walked toward the bar. I followed him.

I closed my eyes, and I waited for morning. End of text.

“That was a wonderful story,” I said.