The Sojourner is a short story by the great Carson McCullers. I am somewhat happy because the doorstep to the exclusive club of my favourite authors has been darkened by her shadow. She looks set to enter!
I read this story as a child in one of those voluminous Reader's Digest collections, "The World's Best Short Stories" or some similar title it had. It's amazing when they come back to you in fragments. Songs, poems, stories, pictures. . half forgotten and suddenly recognised. Oh the happiness of that moment!
Carson writes beautifully. Just the language I love. She almost joined Juilliard as a girl and it shows in her work. Rich with music, the narrative like a glissando, the unforgettable images! Filled with musical phraseology, metaphor.
The Sojourner is a simple story about a man who is a world traveller, a 'newspaperman' who has returned to Georgia for his long ailing father's funeral. On his last day in New York, before he returns to Paris, from his hotel window he sees his ex-wife crossing the street, and on an impulse calls her. She invites him over for dinner where he meets her new family. The next night, back in Paris, he goes to his lover's house. Her little boy is home alone, he has never before bothered much with the child but now, "[w]ith inner desperation he presse[s] the child close - as though an emotion as protean as his love could dominate the pulse of time."
Oh gorgeous, gorgeous!
It is one of the stories in 'The Ballad of the Sad Cafe'. I have two more to read in the volume, but very possibly, this one is already my favourite!
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