Загадочная история Бенджамина Баттона / The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

To a chorus of the undergraduates’ laughter Benjamin walked away.

But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his sad walk to the railroad station he found that he was being followed by a group, then by a swarm, and finally by a dense mass of undergraduates. The word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance examinations and claimed he was eighteen. Men ran hatless out of classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined the mob, professors’ wives ran shouting after the procession that made hundreds of remarks about Benjamin Button.

“Look at the infant prodigy!”

“He thought this was the home for the aged.”

“Go up to Harvard!”

Benjamin was soon running. He would show them! He would go to Harvard, and then they would regret their words!

Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his head from the window. “You’ll regret this!” he shouted.

“Ha-ha!” the undergraduates laughed. “Ha-ha-ha!” It was the biggest mistake that Yale College had ever made.

In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he went to work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was in that same year that he began “going out socially”—that is, his father insisted on taking him to several dances. Roger Button was now fifty. Since Benjamin had ceased to dye his hair (which was still grayish) he and his father seemed to be about the same age, and looked like brothers.

One night in August they got into the carriage in their suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins’ country house. It was a gorgeous evening. It was almost impossible not to be affected by the beauty of the sky—almost.

“There’s a great future in our business,” Roger Button was saying. He was not a romantic man—his aesthetic sense was rudimentary.

“But old fellows like me can’t learn new tricks,” he continued. “It’s you youngsters with energy and vitality that have the great future before you.”

They pulled up behind a handsome carriage whose passengers were disembarking at the door. A lady got out, then an elderly gentleman, then another beautiful young lady.

Blood rose into Benjamin’s cheeks and there was a steady thumping in his ears. It was first love. The girl was slender and frail¹¹, with hair that was ashen under the moon and honey-coloured under the gas lamps of the porch.

Roger Button leaned over to his son. “That,” he said, “is young Hildegarde Moncrief, the daughter of General Moncrief.”

Benjamin nodded coldly. “Dad, you might introduce me to her.”

They approached a group, of which Miss Moncrief was the centre. She curtsied low before Benjamin. Yes, he might have a dance. He thanked her and walked away.

The interval until the time for his turn seemed interminable. He stood close to the wall silent, watching with murderous eyes the young men of Baltimore as they surrounded Hildegarde Moncrief. Their curling brown whiskers made him feel sick.

But when his own time came and he drifted with her to the music of the latest waltz from Paris, his jealousies and anxieties melted like snow. He felt that life was just beginning.

“You and your brother got here just as we did, didn’t you?” asked

Hildegarde, looking up at him with her bright blue eyes.

Benjamin hesitated. If she took him for his father’s brother, would it be best to tell her the truth? He remembered his experience at Yale, so he decided against it. It would be rude to contradict a lady. Later, perhaps. So he nodded, smiled, listened, was happy.

“I like men of your age,” Hildegarde told him. “Young boys are so idiotic. They tell me how much champagne they drink at college, and how much money they lose playing cards. Men of your age know how to appreciate women.”

Benjamin was about to propose to her, with an effort he choked back the impulse.

“You’re just the romantic age,” she continued—”fifty. Thirty is pale from overwork; forty is the age of long stories that take a whole cigar to tell; sixty is—oh, sixty is too near seventy; but fifty is the best age. I love fifty.”

Fifty seemed to Benjamin a glorious age. He suddenly wanted to be fifty.

“I’ve always said,” went on Hildegarde, “that I’d rather marry a man of fifty and be taken care of than many a man of thirty and take care of him.”

Hildegarde gave him two more dances, and they discovered that they agreed upon all the questions of the day. She was to go driving with him on the following Sunday, and then they would discuss all these questions further.

Going home in the carriage, Benjamin knew vaguely that his father was discussing wholesale hardware.

“… And what do you think should pay attention to after hammers and nails?” the elder Button was saying.

“Love,” replied Benjamin absent- mindedly.

“Lugs?” exclaimed Roger Button, “Why, I’ve just covered the question of lugs.”

Benjamin regarded him with dazed eyes. When, six months later, the engagement of Miss Hildegarde Moncrief to Mr. Benjamin Button was made known (I say “made known,” because General Moncrief declared he would rather die than announce it), the excitement in Baltimore society reached a feverish pitch. The almost forgotten story of Benjamin’s birth was remembered and became a scandal. It was said that Benjamin was really Roger Button’s father, that he was his brother who had been in prison for forty years, and, finally, that he had two small horns on his head.

The New York papers published fascinating sketches, which showed the head of Benjamin Button attached to a fish or a snake. He was called the Mystery Man of Maryland. But the true story, as is usually the case, was hardly known.

However, everyone agreed with General Moncrief that it was “criminal” for a lovely girl who could have married any handsome young man in Baltimore to marry a fifty- year-old man¹². In vain Mr. Roger Button published his son’s birth certificate in large type in the Baltimore Blaze. No one believed it. You had only to look at Benjamin and see.

But Hildegarde refused stubbornly to believe even the true story. In vain General Moncrief pointed out to her that a fifty-year-old man was too old for her; in vain he told her of the instability of the wholesale hardware business. Hildegarde had chosen to marry Benjamin, and marry she did…

In one particular, at least, the friends of Hildegarde Moncrief were mistaken. The wholesale hardware business prospered amazingly. In the fifteen years between Benjamin Button’s marriage in 1880 and his father’s retirement in 1895, the family fortune was doubled—and this was due to the younger member of the firm.

Baltimore eventually got used to the couple. Even old General Moncrief¹³ accepted his son-in-law when Benjamin gave him the money to publish his “History of the Civil War” in twenty volumes, which had been refused by nine prominent publishers.¹⁴

Benjamin himself changed a lot in the last fifteen years. It began to be a pleasure to rise in the morning, to walk along the busy, sunny street, to work untiringly with his shipments of hammers and nails. It was in 1890 that he suggested that all nails used in nailing up the boxes, in which nails are shipped, are the property of the company. It saved Roger Button and Company, Wholesale Hardware, more than six hundred nails every year.

In addition, Benjamin discovered that he was becoming more and more attracted by the gay side of life. He was the first man in the city of Baltimore to own and run an automobile. His contemporaries envied him. “He seems to grow younger every year,” they would remark.

There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him.

At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. Benjamin had worshipped her, but as the years passed, she became conservative, content, and boring. As a bride it had been she who had “dragged” Benjamin to dances and dinners. Now she went out socially with him, but without enthusiasm.

At the outbreak of the Spanish- American War in 1898 Benjamin’s home had for him so little charm that he decided to join the army. He went there as a captain, and but soon became a lieutenant-colonel. In the war he was slightly wounded, and received a medal.

Benjamin had become so attached to the army life that he regretted to give it up, but his business required attention, so he returned home.

Hildegarde greeted him on the porch. She was a woman of forty now, with a faint line of gray hairs in her head. The sight depressed him.

Up in his room he saw his reflection in the familiar mirror—he went closer and compared his own face with a photograph of himself in uniform taken just before the war.

“Good Lord!” he said aloud. The process was continuing.

There was no doubt of it—he looked now like a man of thirty. Instead of being delighted, he was uneasy—he was growing younger.

His destiny seemed to him awful, incredible.

When he came downstairs, Hildegarde was waiting for him.

“Well,” he remarked lightly, “everybody says I look younger than ever.”

Hildegarde regarded him with scorn:

“I should think you have enough pride to stop it.”

“How can I?” he demanded.

“I’m not going to argue with you,” she retorted. “But there’s a right way of doing things and a wrong way. If you’ve made up your mind to be different from everybody else, I don’t suppose I can stop you, but I don’t approve of it.”

“But, Hildegarde, I can’t help it.”

“You’re simply stubborn. You think you don’t want to be like anyone else. You always have been that way, and you always will be.”

Benjamin made no reply. He wondered what possible fascination she had ever had over him.

Later Benjamin found that his thirst for gayety grew stronger. He never missed a party of any kind in the city of Baltimore, he danced with the prettiest of the young married women and found their company charming, while his wife sat among the chaperons, looking at him reproachfully.

“Look!” people would remark. “What a pity! A young fellow that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife.” They had forgotten—as people inevitably forget—that back in 1880 their mammas and papas had also remarked about this same pair.

Benjamin’s growing unhappiness at home was compensated for by his many new interests. He took up golf, he went in for dancing. His social activities, of course, interfered with his business, but then he had worked hard at wholesale hardware for twenty-five years and felt that he could soon hand it on to his son, Roscoe, who had recently graduated from Harvard.

He and his son were, in fact, often mistaken for each other. This pleased Benjamin—he soon forgot the fear, which had come over him on his return from the Spanish-American War, and grew to take a naive pleasure in his appearance.

There was only one problem—he hated to appear in public with his wife. Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feel absurd.

One September day in 1910—a few years after Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware, had been handed over to young Roscoe Button—a man, about twenty years old, entered Harvard University in Cambridge. He did not mention the fact that his son had graduated from the same institution ten years before. He was admitted, and almost immediately attained a high position in the class, partly because he seemed a little older than the other freshmen, who were about eighteen.

But his success was largely due to the fact that in the football game with Yale he played so brilliantly that he scored twenty-one goals for Harvard, and caused one entire eleven of Yale men to be carried from the field, unconscious. He was the most celebrated man in college.

Strange to say, in his third or junior year he was scarcely able to “make” the team. The coaches said that he had lost weight, and it seemed that he was not quite as tall as before. He was kept on the team chiefly in hope that his enormous reputation would bring terror and disorganisation to the Yale team.

In his senior year he did not make the team at all. He had grown so slight and frail that one day he was taken by some sophomores for a freshman. The incident humiliated him terribly. He became known as a prodigy—a senior who was surely no more than sixteen. His studies seemed harder to him—he felt that they were too advanced. He heard his classmates speak of St. Midas’, the famous school, at which so many of them had prepared for college, and he decided after his graduation to go to St. Midas’.

Upon his graduation in 1914 he went home to Baltimore with his Harvard diploma in his pocket. Hildegarde was now living in Italy, so Benjamin went to live with his son, Roscoe. But though he was welcomed in a general way, there was obviously no heartiness in Roscoe’s feeling toward him—there was even a tendency on his son’s part to think that Benjamin was somewhat in the way. Roscoe was married now and prominent in Baltimore life, and he wanted no scandal connected with his family.

Benjamin found himself left much alone, except for the companionship of three or four fifteen-year-old boys in the neighborhood. He remembered his idea of going to school.

“I’ve told you over and over that I want to go to school.”

“Well, go, then,” replied Roscoe shortly. He wished to avoid a discussion.

“I can’t go alone,” said Benjamin helplessly. “You’ll have to take me up there.”

“I haven’t got time,” declared Roscoe. His eyes narrowed and he looked uneasily at his father. “As a matter of fact,” he added, “this has gone too far to be a joke. It isn’t funny any longer!”

Benjamin looked at him, on the verge of tears.

“And another thing,” continued Roscoe, “when visitors are in the house I want you to call me ‘Uncle’—not ‘Roscoe,’ but ‘Uncle,’ do you understand? It looks absurd for a boy of fifteen to call me by my first name. Perhaps you’d better call me ‘Uncle’ all the time, so you’ll get used to it.”

With a harsh look at his father, Roscoe turned away. Benjamin stared at himself in the mirror. He had not shaved for three months, but he could find nothing on his face. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had suggested that he should wear eyeglasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks. But whiskers had itched and made him ashamed. He wept and Roscoe weakened.

Benjamin opened a book of boys’ stories and began to read. But he found himself thinking about the war. America had joined the Allied course during the preceding month, and Benjamin wanted to enlist, but, alas, sixteen was the minimum age, and he did not look that old. His true age, which was fifty-seven, would have been too much.

There was a knock at his door, and the butler appeared with a letter addressed to Mr. Benjamin Button. Benjamin tore it open and read it with delight. It informed him that many reserve officers who had served in the Spanish-American War were being called back into service with a higher rank. He was ordered to report immediately.

Benjamin jumped to his feet. This was what he had wanted. He seized his cap, and ten minutes later he entered a large tailoring establishment on Charles Street, and asked to be measured for a uniform.

“Want to play soldier, sonny?” demanded a clerk.

Benjamin flushed. “Never mind what I want!” he retorted angrily. “My name’s Button and I live on Mt. Vernon Place, so you know I’m good for it.”

“Well,” admitted the clerk, “if you’re not, I guess your daddy is, all right.”

Benjamin was measured, and a week later his uniform was completed.

Saying nothing to Roscoe, he left the house one night and went by train to Camp Mosby, in South Carolina, where he was to command an infantry brigade. On a sultry April day he approached the entrance to the camp, and turned to the sentry on guard.

“Get someone to handle my luggage!” he said.

The sentry eyed him reproachfully¹⁵. “Say,” he remarked, “where are you going with the general’s duds, sonny?”

Benjamin, veteran of the Spanish- American War, looked at him with fire in his eye.

“Come to attention!” he tried to thunder; he paused for breath—then suddenly he saw the sentry snap his heels together. Benjamin smiled, but when he glanced around his smile faded. It was not he who had inspired obedience, but an artillery colonel who was approaching on horseback.

The colonel looked coolly down at Benjamin. “Whose little boy are you?” he demanded kindly.

“I’ll soon show you whose little boy I am!” retorted Benjamin. “Get down off that horse!”

The colonel roared with laughter. “Here!” cried Benjamin desperately. “Read this.” And he gave his letter to the colonel.

The colonel read it, his eyes popping from their sockets.

“Where’d you get this?” he demanded, slipping the document into his own pocket.

“I got it from the Government, as you’ll soon find out!”

“You come along with me,” said the colonel with a peculiar look.

“We’ll go up to headquarters and talk this over.”