To that, he said nothing; his head was swimming.
“God,” she said, more composedly, now. “I've never been so attracted to a man. I was attracted to both of you, you in your big old wool sweaters … where did you ever get those sweaters?” Without pausing she said, “Why do you ride a bike? Didn't you have a bike as a child? Didn't your family give you a bike?”
He said, “There's nothing wrong with a grown person riding a bike.”
“Can I ride it sometime?”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course you can.”
“Is it hard?”
He said. “You haven't ever ridden a bike?”
“No,” she said.
“This one has a gearshift,” he said. “It's English.”
Now she did not seem to be listening to him; she drove in a preoccupied manner, her face somber. “Listen,” she said after a while. “Are you going to go running home to your wife and tell her about me propositioning you?”
He said, “Are you propositioning me?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not. You propositioned me. Don't you remember?” She said it with absolute conviction. “Isn't that why you came over? Good god, I wouldn't dare let you in the house. That's why I'm driving you back.” They had gotten almost to his house, now, and he realized abruptly that she really intended to drop him off. “I'm not letting you into my place,” she told him. “Not without your wife. If you want to come over you bring her along.”
With anger he said loudly, “You're a nut. A real nut.”
“What?” she said, falteringly.
“Don't you pay any attention to anything you say?”
That seemed to crush her. “Don't pick on me,” she said. “Don't you get picky. Why do you pick on me?” Her tone reminded him of the younger child's tone, the whining, self-pitying tone. Perhaps she was calculatedly imitating her child's tone; he had an intuition to that effect. It was both a satire and a theft. She used it and satirized it simultaneously, waiting to see how he reacted.
“I think you're a real kick,” he said. And he did. She intrigued him, her flashing moods; he could not tell at any moment which way she would jump. She seemed to have an infinite supply of energy. She went on and on, without fatigue.
“You don't take me seriously at all,” she said, and then she smiled at him, a mechanical, even formal smile. “Well, thanks for wanting to help me.” They had come to his house and she was stopping the car. She evidently was quite angry at him, quite cold. “I really am furious with you,” she said in a dead, level voice. “I really am. I'll never forgive you for your treatment of me. The hell with you.” She leaned over and grabbed at the car door. “So long.”
“So long!” he said, stepping out.
The door slammed; the car roared off. In a daze, he started up the steps to his own porch.
The next day he telephoned her, not from home but from his real estate office. “Hi, Fay,” he said. “I hope I didn't catch you when you're busy.”
“No,” she said. “I'm not busy.” On the phone her voice had a thin, brisk quality, as if he were talking to a woman accustomed to doing a great deal of her business transactions on the phone. “Who is this? Not that fink Nathan Anteil?”
He thought, And this is a thirty-two-year-old woman. He said, “Fay, you use the worst language of any woman I've ever known.”
“Stick it up your ass!” she said animatedly. “Did you phone me to pick on me some more, or what? Yes, why did you phone me? Just a second.” He heard her throw down the phone and then go shut a door. Back again, she said deafeningly in his ear, “I've been sitting here going over what happened last night. Evidently, I don't understand the masculine mind. What got into you? For that matter, what got into me?”
Today, she seemed to be in a sportive mood, taking nothing very seriously. She seemed to be in, for her, a relatively good mood. “Why don't I come over for a while tonight,” he said, feeling himself become tense. “For a little while.”
“All right,” she said. “Want me to pick you up?”
“No,” he said. He had an old Studebaker that he used to get into Mill Valley to his job. “I'll get over there on my own power.”
“You're not bringing that wife, are you? Whatever her name is. Say, just what is her name again, anyhow?”
“I'll see you,” he said. He hung up.
Her tone had been stark and overly loud, once she had realized who it was and why he had called. She knows, he thought. We both know.
What do we know?
He thought, We know that something is up; we are doing something. It does not involve my wife or her husband.
What is it? He asked himself. What do I have in mind? How far do I want to go? How far does Fay Hume want to go?
Perhaps, he thought, neither of us knows.
Then he asked himself why he was doing it. I have a really wonderful wife, he thought. And I like Charley Hume. And, he thought, Fay is married and she has two children.
Why, then?
Because I want to, he decided.
Much later in the day, as he was driving back to north west Marin County, he thought, And because she wants to.
10
In order to visit Charley in the University of California Hospital at Fourth and Parnassus, in San Francisco, I had to take the 6:20 Greyhound bus from Inverness. That got me to San Francisco at 8:00 in the morning. I generally went to the San Francisco public library, where I read the new magazines, picked out books that Charley might like, and did research. Now that he had had his heart attack, I did research on the circulatory system, copying scientific information into notebooks, and, when possible, checking out the actual reference books on articles to take to him to read.
When he saw me coming into his room, with my knapsack filled with library books and technical magazines, he almost always said, “Well, Isidore, what's the latest on my heart?”
I gave him what information I had been able to pick up from hospital personnel on his condition and how soon he might expect to get out and back to the house. He seemed to appreciate this detailed account; without me he got the usual clichés about his condition, so to an extent he was dependent on me.
After I had given him the scientific information I got out the notebook that I used for information concerning the situation back at Drake's Landing.
“Let's hear the latest on the old homestead,” he almost always said.
On this particular occasion, I referred to my notebook to get my facts in order, and then I said, “Your wife is beginning to become involved with Nathan Anteil in extramarital relationships.”
I had intended to go on, but Charley stopped me. “What do you mean?” he said.
“For the last four days,” I said, checking my facts, “Nathan Anteil has come over in the evening without his wife. And he and Fay have talked in such a way as to suggest a romance between them.”
I did not enjoy giving him this information, but I had set out to keep him apprised of the situation at home; I had made it part of my job, in exchange for what I received in the way of food and lodgings. Along with my other chores bringing him information was my duty, and it had to be scrupulously done, with regard only for accuracy and completeness.
“They sat together on Thursday night drinking martinis until two a.m.,” I informed him.
“Well,” he said presently. “Go on.”
“At one point—they were seated together on the couch— he put his arm around her and kissed her. On the mouth.”
Charley said nothing. But obviously he was listening. So I continued.
“Nathan didn't actually come out and say that he loved your wife—”
Charley interrupted, “I don't give a damn.”
“How do you mean?” I said. “You mean you don't give a damn about that particular piece of information or—”
He interrupted, “I don't give a damn about the whole subject.” He was silent for a long time and then he said, “What else happened at the old homestead
during the week?
And don't give me any more on that topic, about him or her. Tell me about the ducks.”
“The ducks,” I said, glancing at my notes. “The ducks laid a total of thirty eggs since my last report. The Pekins laid the most of that, with the Rouens laying the least.”
He said nothing.
“What else would you like to know?” I asked. “How much egg-gro they consumed?” I had it both by weight and by volume.
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me about that.”
I felt keenly that his failure to take an interest in such an important topic as his wife's relationship with Nathan Anteil was due to my inability to relate it properly. Obviously I had failed to do justice to it; I had not given him a convincing picture. He had been present, he would have reacted, but all he had to go on were the barren statements that I presented him. A newspaper or a magazine, when it wants to stir an emotional reaction in its readers, does an expert job of presenting a topic; it does not merely list facts in chronological order, as was my tendency.
Then and there I saw the limitation of my systematic method. As a means of recording significant data it was unexcelled, but as a means of conveying that data to another person, it had no merit. Up to now, my recording and preservation of significant facts had been for my own use … but now I was gathering facts for the use of another person, in this case a man who had little or no scientific education. Looking back, I recalled that in the past a great number of facts that had impressed me had been conveyed in highly dramatized articles, such as those in the American Weekly, and other facts had been conveyed in fictional forms, such as in the stories I read in Thrilling Wonder and Astonishing.
Obviously I had a thing or two to learn. I left the hospital feeling very chagrined, and, for the first time in years, basically questioning myself and my methods.
A day or so later, while spending the afternoon alone in the house, I heard the doorbell chime. I had been folding the laundry that had come out of the clothes drier. Leaving the heaps of clothes on the table I went to open the door, thinking that possibly Fay was back from town and wanted me to carry something in from the car.
When I opened the door I found myself facing a woman that I had never seen before.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
The woman was quite small, with a huge black pony tail of such heavy hair that I thought she must be a foreigner. Her face had a dark quality, like an Italian's, but her nose had the bony prominence of an American Indian's. She had quite a strong chin and large brown eyes that stared at me so hard and fixedly that I became nervous. After saying hello she said nothing at all but smiled. She had sharp teeth, like a savage's, and that also made me uneasy. She wore a green shirt, like a man's, out at the waist, and shorts, and gold sandals, and she carried a purse and a manila envelope and a pair of sunglasses. I saw parked in the driveway a new Ford station wagon painted bright red. In some respects the woman seemed to be breathtakingly beautiful, but at the same time I was aware that something was wrong with her proportions. Her head was slightly too large for her shoulders—although it may have been an illusion due to her heavy black hair—and her chest was somewhat concave, actually hollow, not like a woman's chest at all. And her hips were too small in proportion to her shoulders, and then, in order, her legs were too short for her hips, and her feet too small for her legs. So she resembled an inverted pyramid.
It came to me that although this woman was in her thirties, she had the figure of a somewhat underweight but very good-looking fourteen-year-old girl. Her body had not matured, only her face. She had not developed beyond a certain point, and this top-heavy effect was not an illusion. If you noticed only her face she seemed absolutely ravishingly beautiful, but if your gaze took in all of her, then you were conscious that there was something wrong with her, something fundamentally out of proportion.
Her voice had a rasping, husky quality, very low-pitched. Like her eyes it had a strong and intense authority to it, and I found myself unable to break away from her gaze. Although she had never seen me before—laid eyes on me, as they say—she acted as if she had expected to see me, as if I was familiar to her. Her smile had a sly certitude to it. After a moment she started forward and I stood aside; she came on into the house, gliding with very small steps and making no sound at all. Apparently she had been there before because she went without hesitation into the living room and put her purse down on one of the tables there, the same table on which Fay always put her purse. Then she turned to look back at me and said,
“Have you been having any pains in your head lately? Around your temples?” She put up her hand and traced a line across her forehead from eye to eye. “I have. Do you know what it is?” She came gliding forward and stopped a short distance away. 'That's the crown of thorns,” she said. “We all have to wear it before the world can end and a new world take its place. Fm wearing it now. I've been wearing it since last Friday, when I ascended the cross and was crucified and then spent a night in the tomb.” Smiling at me, and keeping her large brown eyes fixed on me, she continued, “I slept the whole night outdoors in the cold and never even knew it. My husband and children didn't know I was missing; it was as if no time had passed. I had been transfigured into eternity. The whole house vibrated—I saw it vibrate, my god, as if it was going to fly up into the sky like a spaceship.”
“I see,” I said, unable to take my eyes away from hers.
“Over the house,” she continued, “there was a huge blue light hanging, like crackling electric fire. I laid on the ground and that fire consumed me, from that spaceship. The whole house became a spaceship ready to go into space.”
I couldn't help nodding.
In the same tone of voice she went on, “I'm Mrs. Hambro. Claudia Hambro. I live over in Inverness Park. You're Fay's brother, aren't you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Fay isn't here; she went into town.”
“I know,” Mrs. Hambro said. “I knew that when I woke up this morning.” She walked over to the window, looked out at the sheep, who were going by the fence. Then she turned and seated herself in a chair, crossing her bare legs and setting her purse on her lap; she opened her purse, got out a package of cigarettes, and lit up. “Why did you come here?” she said. “To Drake's Landing. Do you know the reason?”
I shook my head.
“It's the force that's pulling us all together,” she said. “Throughout the world. There's groups forming everywhere. The message is the same: suffer and die to save the world. Christ was not suffering for our sins, he was suffering to show us the way. We all have to suffer. We all have to ascend the cross to gain eternal life, each in his own way.” She blew smoke from her nostrils up at me. “Christ was from another planet. From a more evolved race. Earth is the most backward planet in the universe. At night I can lie awake—sometimes it really scares me—and listen to them talking. The other night they began to open my head. They cut a flap open this way and one that way.” With her hand she traced lines across her head. “And I heard this terrible noise; it was the loudest noise I have ever heard. It absolutely deafened me. You know what it was? It was Aaron's rod coming down; it appeared in the air before me. Since then I haven't been able to look at the sun. The cosmic ray intensity is too great; it's burning our minds out. By the end of May it'll reach its ultimate and the world will come to an end, according to scientists. The poles are about to switch positions. Did you know that? San Francisco is getting closer to Los Angeles.”
''Yes,” I said. I remembered having read that in the newspaper.
“The most evolved beings of all live in the sun,” Mrs. Hambro went on. “They've been entering my head every night now. I'm an initiate. Soon I'll know the whole mystery. It's very exciting.” All at once she laughed, showing me her sharp-pointed teeth. “Do you think I'm out of my mind? Are you going to call the loony bin?”
“No,” I said.
She said, “I've suffered, but it's worth it. None o
f us can hide from it; it's destiny. You've been hiding all your life, haven't you? But destiny brought you here. Look at this.” Putting her cigarette down on the edge of the coffee table she opened her manila envelope and brought out a folded-up paper; she unrolled it, and I saw an intricate pencil sketch of an old Chinaman. “That's our guru,” she said. “We've never seen him, but Barbara Mulchy drew that under hypnotic suggestion when we asked to see He Who's Leading us. No one has been able to read the inscription. It predates any known language.” She pointed to some Chinese-looking writing at the bottom of the picture. “He drew you up here to Drake's Landing,” she said. “He's been guiding you all your life.”
In many respects what she said was difficult to accept. But certainly it was true that I had felt that I did not understand the real purpose of my life. And certainly I had been brought to Drake's Landing not of my own free will…
“Our group has made several scientifically-authenticated sightings,” Mrs. Hambro continued. “We've established contact with these evolved superior beings who are in control of the universe and who are directing the cosmic radiation here in an effort to save us from our own anti-christ. I saw the anti-christ last night. That's why I'm here. I knew then that I had to contact you and get you into our group. We've had eleven or twelve people contact us in the last week or so, due to various articles printed in newspapers, some of them facetious in tone.” From this manila envelope she got a newspaper clipping and passed it to me. The clipping read:
LOCAL SAUCER GROUP SAYS SUPERIOR BEINGS CONTROLLING MAN, LEADING US TO WORLD WAR III
Inverness Park. World War Three will begin before the end of May, and not to destroy man but to save him, according to Mrs. Edward Hambro of Inverness Park, Marin County. The flying saucer group of which she is the spokesman declares that several psychic contacts have been made with the “superior beings who are in control of our lives,” and who “are leading us to material destruction for the purpose of spiritual salvation,” Mrs. Hambro's words. The group meets once a week to report sightings of UFOs, unidentified flying objects. There are twelve members of the group, from Inverness Park and surrounding towns of north west Marin County. They meet in Mrs. Hambro's home. “Scientists know that the world is about to explode,” Mrs. Hambro declared. “Either from a build-up of internal pressures, or from man-made atomic radiation. In any case, man must prepare for the end of the world.”
Confessions of a Crap Artist Page 10
