The Ninth Wave

by Eugene Burdick

  On the way back to the campus, Mike asked her for another date and she accepted. She told him that she had a Mercury coupé and they could go out in that if Mike didn't mind.

  Mike took her out four times. The fifth time he took her to the cottage. It was early in the evening and Hank was working at the bakery. Mike had bought a gallon of port wine and it was resting on the table. He had washed out the only two glasses in the cottage and dried them off carefully with Kleenex and they were placed neatly beside the big gallon bottle.

  "This is a cute little place, Mike," Connie said when they walked in. "I thought it would be real run down and dirty, but it's cute."

  Mike unscrewed the cap on the wine and poured port into both of the glasses. He handed Connie one. The dusty odor of the room was cut by the heavy, sweet smell of the wine. Connie sat down in one of the chairs.

  Mike studied her as they talked. She was attractive without being in the least beautiful or unusual. She had regular features and her figure was good. Her hair was the best thing about her. It had a sheen that came from much brushing and it curled up slightly when it reached her shoulders.

  Connie tasted the wine and wrinkled her nose.

  "I don't like wine very much," she said. "We have so much of it at home."

  "I've got some whisky," Mike said.

  He reached under the bed and pulled out the half case of Old Taylor they had stolen from the hotel. He opened a bottle and poured two inches of whisky into Connie's glass and added some water from the tap.

  She took the glass and swallowed half of it in one gulp. At once her mouth narrowed and she blew softly. Her eyes watered and she fidgeted with the handkerchief in her hand. She smiled thinly.

  Mike waited until she had had two drinks and then he changed the conversation.

  "I understand that you're one of the big liberals on campus," he said.

  "What do you mean by liberal?" Connie asked.

  "Big interest in the Young Democrats, take subscriptions to 'PM' and 'The New Republic,' leader in the drive to get Negroes admitted to Stanford. That sort of thing."

  "If that's being a liberal, I guess I'm a liberal."

  "Why are you interested in all that stuff?" Mike asked.

  "Oh, it's hard to say just right out," Connie said and she sipped at her drink. "I believe in economic and social justice and so I try to help those people that can't help themselves."

  "Help them do what?"

  "Help them get justice," Connie said. "The things they are entitled to."

  "How do you know what justice is?" Mike asked. "Maybe justice is each person getting what he is able to get. Maybe the Negroes don't get in Stanford because they don't deserve to."

  On the side of Connie's face that Mike could see a small spot of pink started to glow. She drank the rest of the glass and held the glass out to Mike to fill.

  "I've heard about your views," Connie said. "I heard what you did to Mardikan. You're a reactionary, Mike. Just a plain reactionary." Her voice trembled slightly.

  "What does that mean? To be a reactionary?"

  "It means that you are opposed to everything liberal and progressive," she said. "It means that you want to go back to something that existed a long time ago. To feudalism or something like that."

  "I don't want to go back to anything. All I want to do is to understand what is happening now."

  Connie hesitated.

  "You don't believe in progress," she said finally. "You look at the Negro today and you see him discriminated against, living in slums, undernourished and, of course, he has a high crime rate so you say that the high crime rate is proof that he should stay in the slums and be discriminated against."

  Mike sat up straight and stared at the girl. There was something curious about the girl. She strung set phrases and sentences together, as neatly as a child might string a variety of beads and objects on a string and then hold them up to see if they were beautiful.

  Mike looked down at his glass. He swished the deep red wine around. Dark particles, the infinitely small debris of wine, swirled at the bottom of the glass. Mike shook his head.

  "I didn't say anything like that," Mike said. "I just asked a question: what is justice for the Negroes? I don't know the answer. I don't really even care very much. All I want to do is to see the Negro, or anyone for that matter, just exactly the way he really is. I don't care about uplifting him or educating him or changing him. Why should I worry about that?"

  "Because we are all our brother's keeper," Connie said. "No society is any stronger than its weakest link. We should do what is best for the greatest number."

  She hesitated, stared uncertainly at Mike. She reached for the Old Taylor bottle and poured a small trickle into her glass. Carefully, keeping the bottle under control, she filled her glass almost a third full.

  Mike realized that she was not holding up the string of phrases and sentences to see if they were beautiful; she was holding them up for protection. O.K., you're through the guard, Mike, he told himself. Go easy now.

  He wished he had not drunk so much of the port. It was a warm pool in his stomach; blurring the edges of everything, making him limp and agreeable, slowing his reactions. He carefully composed himself.

  "We're interested in different things, Connie," he said. "You're interested in how we ought to act toward others. I'm not. I'm just interested in people the way they are."

  "But you ought to have sympathy. You ought to feel for people."

  "I do sometimes," Mike said. He hesitated and thought quickly. He felt as if he were at the outer edge of a secret; pushing against the last thin barrier to a dark understanding.

  Easy now, he told himself. Now is the time to go very, very easily. Make her speak first.

  "But Mike, if you don't have sympathy, if you don't like people and they don't like you . . . " She hesitated and her voice dropped to a whisper. "Then you're alone, Mike. By yourself. Alone."

  He was through. His breath came easily. He had broken through. Partially, but not completely, he yielded to the warm glow of the port.

  "But you're alone anyway," he said. "Whatever you do you're alone. Sympathy doesn't have anything to do with it. You're alone whatever you do. Look at an executive in a big company that's done a good job for fifteen years. One mistake and he starts to drop. The company just stands aside and lets him drop. If he's tough maybe he can claw his way back on top again, hanging on by his fingernails. But if he isn't, no one gives a damn. He just keeps dropping until he drops right out of sight. All by himself, with maybe his wife and kids staring at him, he keeps dropping. No one raises a hand to help him."

  "Someone is always around to help, Mike," Connie said. She stared at him over the edge of her glass. "Someone. Maybe . . . "

  "No one. My God, Connie, look at the thousands of organizations that have grown up in the last generation just to take care of people no one will take care of anymore. Juvenile homes, homes for unmarried mothers, insane asylums, homes for TB patients. All the things that a family used to do are now done by some government agency. Don't you see: no one gives a damn. You're alone. Everyone is. Look at old people. Every home used to have a couple of old people in it; aunts, grandfathers, old uncles. Now everyone scrambles around and gets old people into a home for the senile. Anything, but just get them out of the house."

  Connie's lips had pulled back slightly from her teeth as Mike talked. When he paused she threw her head back and drank off the rest of the whisky and water.

  "Not my family," she said. "They wouldn't do that."

  Her voice was a whisper.

  "Don't kid yourself, Connie. Just assume that you had a mental breakdown and the Dean of Women sent you home to St. Helena. How long do you think your family would keep you around? About as long as it would take them to get a psychiatrist to have you committed to Agnew. They'd do anything to get you out of sight. Any family would."

  "Not my family," Connie whispered.

  Her hand reached for the bottle. The ne
ck of the bottle chittered against the glass as she poured. She looked up and smiled brightly.

  "Say you just went home, Connie, after you graduated. Say you just went home and stayed there. Lots of girls used to do that. They became old-maid aunts and fitted into the family and they were sometimes even pretty valuable members of the family. Think you could do that now? Your mother would be embarrassed because you weren't married and she'd suggest that you go see a marriage counselor or go down to San Francisco and get a job. She'd make you do something; anything. But you couldn't just sit around. She'd want you to see one of those social workers. Really she wouldn't care what you did just so you didn't sit around the house and remind them that you were different than the other girls. Isn't that right?"

  She was still looking at him over her glass. Through the brown clear drink her chin looked sagging and uncertain. She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them Mike knew that she believed him.

  "Maybe you're right," she said.

  "I didn't mean it personally, Connie," Mike said. "I just wanted to illustrate a point. Once you see the point things aren't really so bad. God, in a sense the system is beautiful. It takes all of the individuals and measures them, shifts them around, tests them, puts them in a new slot and finally they wind up where they belong. The system peels each person like he is an onion. It rubs off all the unimportant layers; the family, education, culture, good teeth, fine smile, nice vocabulary. It gets right down to the core. And at the core is just the skill and toughness of the individual. The system measures that and then it puts him where he belongs. Oh, sometimes it makes a mistake. A rich idiot can sit on a board of directors . . . but not forever. Sooner or later there is a shifting around and someone else has the idiot's money and he's out in the street wondering what happened. If he's an idiot he'll wind up with the idiots. If he's good and tough he'll wind up with the other good and tough people. The unskilled people get the unskilled jobs; the tough people get ahead and the soft people get stepped on; the bright people do the bright work and the dull people do the dull work."

  "It's awful," Connie said.

  Mike gestured with his hands. It was a fluttering, intricate gesture that indicated movement and complexity.

  "It's awful, but it's wonderful too," he said. "That great big disorderly system, carefully grinding away at everybody. Everybody gets worn away at the same rate. Everybody gets the finish taken off . . . "

  "Shut up, Mike," Connie said. "Get me another drink. This bottle is empty."

  He went under the bed and dug out another bottle. When he handed her the drink he noticed that she was shivering; just slightly, an almost invisible twitching of her shoulders. Along her arms was a fine weltering of gooseflesh.

  "They say your sorority is going to build a new house," Mike said.

  Connie told him eagerly about the new house. Then they talked about the football team. Connie began to laugh and the color returned to her cheeks. It was eleven o'clock when she went into the bathroom.

  "I could drink the ocean tonight," she said when she came out. She saw the empty whisky bottle and picked it up. Cleverly, like a comedy drunk, she put the bottle to her mouth and threw her head back. Her tongue went up the narrow neck of the bottle, was squeezed white and pink as it reached for the few drops of whisky still left in the bottle. When she pulled the bottle away her tongue came out of the bottle with a popping noise.

  She turned toward Mike. He walked toward her and they came together softly. He put one hand around her waist and tilted her face up with the other. He felt her hand dig into his shoulder and he heard the bottle fall to the floor.

  Her lips were soft, a surprise. He ran his tongue over the inner flesh of her lips and her mouth opened.

  He lifted his head away. She stood with her head tilted back in surprise. A streak of whisky ran from the corner of her mouth. Across her forehead there was a faint pattern of sweat.

  Mike wiped the whisky from her chin and kissed her again. This time, as if she had learned everything in thirty seconds, her body came expertly against his, her tongue worked across his lips. The soft flesh between her thighs moved across his leg. She was the one that pushed away.

  "Sit down," she said. "On the bed."

  She turned off all the lights except a study lamp on one of the desks. She walked back and stood in front of him and her face was hard. She kicked her shoes off and pulled her skirt up over her knees. She had fine long legs and delicate feet. She took off a garter belt and her stockings hissed down her skin as she pulled them off.

  She walked over to him and he stood up and kissed her. She put her head close to his neck and began to talk very rapidly and softly.

  "My father is funny," she said, so rapidly that Mike could barely understand. "He samples the grapes and the wine all day long and his lips get purple. Almost like a woman's. Maybe he is a little drunk all the time. He picks at the grapes and spits out the seeds. And he drinks wine all day long. One day, when I was thirteen, he stopped me out in the vines and put his hand over my breast, like that," and she took Mike's hand and put it over her breast. "And he said that someday a boy would probably try to do that to me and that if he ever heard of it he would kill the boy. Then he kissed me. His lips all moist and purple and smelling of grapes and claret. I never forgot it."

  Under his hand Mike felt her nipple harden and press against his hand. She pushed him backward onto the bed and then stepped away.

  She pulled the skirt up again, this time to her waist and her neat untrimmed shorts cut into the round flesh of her hips. She undulated slowly; almost as if she were doing a strange unlearned dance, her free hand occasionally running across the roundness of her stomach. She watched Mike tensely and finally she reached down and stepped out of her shorts.

  "All right," Mike said and his voice was sharp.

  "All right?" she said and smiled. She walked toward him eagerly.

  For the rest of that year Connie loaned Mike money. She loaned it to him in small amounts that finally totaled six hundred and forty dollars.

  Connie also insisted that Mike stop swearing. She corrected his grammar and Mike did not object.

  CHAPTER 8

  "Ungrateful, Voluble, Dissemblers . . . "

  The windows of professor Moon's office opened onto an arched passageway. Across the scalloped strip of shade was the massive, soft sandstone mass of the Quad. The palm trees gave it a tawny, desertlike look. Professor Moon could see a Japanese gardener arranging a sprinkler. The gardener put the hose down carefully in a square of lawn, and as he backed away the sprinkler turned slowly and then more quickly, throwing out glittering streams of water. The spray washed the dust off the leaves of grass and they shone with a brilliant green. In the corners of the square, the grass remained brown and dry. When the water hit the sandstone it steamed a few seconds until it had cooled the stone.

  It was merely warm in professor Moon's office, but he knew that the Quad and the corridors around it were very hot. As he looked out the open window, the sound of the sprinkler, the whir of distant automobile tires passing over soft tar and the trembling of heat waves had a hypnotic effect. With an effort he took his eyes away from the window and looked at the papers in his hands. They were his lecture notes, and for a moment, as his eyes readjusted to the dimness of his office, the words looked Oriental and distorted. His forehead wrinkled as he focused his eyes.

  "On the battlefield the flowing-haired Achaians and the Trojans were throwing stones and arrows zissed through the air. Then Agamemnon, king of men, went between the two arrays, in the space where the rank of chariots were drawn up facing one another," he read. With a precise copperplate hand he changed the first sentence to read, "Like a cloud, stones and arrows soared between the Achaians and the Trojans."

  Professor Moon was a lazy man, but he prided himself on changing his lectures each time he gave them. Sometimes the changes were not extensive, but always changes were made. It was a part of his reputation, just as his discovery of obs
cure French and Swedish and Italian poets was a part of his reputation. Professor Moon did not expect to be a great or distinguished professor. He was too fastidious for that. To be distinguished was to be vulgar and the inevitable price of popularity was a cheapening of quality. Whenever one of his discoveries among the poets of Europe had become popular Professor Moon had quickly dropped the person from his lectures and conversations. His standards were high and he did not therefore regret that he had such a small following. Indeed he experienced a tiny, intense thrill of excitement each time he went to his first lecture and saw only six or eight people. The smallness of his following; their minute, careful, almost adoring attention; the obscurity of his references; their look of appreciation when he delivered a jeweled or obscure phrase; all of these were signs to Professor Moon of fidelity and quality.