Page "fiction" Paragraph 902

He was in his mid-fifties at this time, long past the establishment of his name and the wish to be lionized yet once again, and it was almost a decade since he had sworn off lecturing.

There was never a doubt any more how his structures would be received ; ;

it was always the same unqualified success now.

He could no longer build anything, whether a private residence in his Pennsylvania county or a church in Brazil, without it being obvious that he had done it, and while here and there he was taken to task for again developing the same airy technique, they were such fanciful and sometimes even playful buildings that the public felt assured by its sense of recognition after a time, a quality of authentic uniqueness about them, which, once established by an artist as his private vision, is no longer disputable as to its other values.

Stowey Rummel was internationally famous, a crafter of a genuine Americana in foreign eyes, an original designer whose inventive childishness with steel and concrete was made even more believably sincere by his personality.

He had lived for almost thirty years in this same stone farmhouse with the same wife, a remarkably childish thing in itself ; ;

he rose at half-past six every morning, made himself some French coffee, had his corn flakes and more coffee, smoked four cigarettes while reading last Sunday's Herald Tribune and yesterday's Pittsburgh Gazette, then put on his high-topped farmer's shoes and walked under a vine bower to his workshop.

This was an enormously long building whose walls were made of rocks, some of them brought home from every continent during his six years as an oil geologist.

The debris of his other careers was piled everywhere ; ;

a pile of wire cages for mice from his time as a geneticist and a microscope lying on its side on the window sill, vertical steel columns wired for support to the open ceiling beams with spidery steel cantilevers jutting out into the air, masonry constructions on the floor from the time he was inventing his disastrous fireplace whose smoke would pass through a whole house, visible all the way up through wire gratings on each floor.

His files, desk, drafting board and a high stool formed the only clean island in the chaos.

Everywhere else his ideas lay or hung in visible form: his models, drawings, ten-foot canvases in monochromes from his painting days, and underfoot a windfall of broken-backed books that looked as though their insides had been ransacked by a maniac.

Bicycle gear-sets he had once used as the basis of the design for the Camden Cycly Company plant hung on a rope in one corner, and over his desk, next to several old and dusty hats, was a clean pair of roller skates which he occasionally used up and down in front of his house.

He worked standing, with his left hand in his pocket as though he were merely stopping for a moment, sketching with the surprised stare of one who was watching another person's hand.

Sometimes he would grunt softly to some invisible onlooker beside him, sometimes he would look stern and moralistic as his pencil did what he disapproved.

It all seemed -- if one could have peeked in at him through one of his windows -- as though this broken-nosed man with the muscular arms and wrestler's neck was merely the caretaker trying his hand at the boss's work.

This air of disengagement carried over to his apparent attitude toward his things, and people often mistook it for boredom in him or a surrender to repetitious routine.

But he was not bored at all ; ;

he had found his style quite early in his career and he thought it quite wonderful that the world admired it, and he could not imagine why he should alter it.

There are, after all, fortunate souls who hear everything, but only know how to listen to what is good for them, and Stowey was, as things go, a fortunate man.