Mockingbird

by Walter Tevis

  Then I pushed myself into her slowly, stopping for a moment and then going deeper. I was transported by it, ecstatic; I could not have spoken.

  We continued to move with one another, looking at each other’s face. She became more beautiful as I watched her, and the pleasure of what we were doing together was astonishing, unbelievable. It was nothing like the sex I had known about and been taught. I had never even suspected that such lovemaking was possible. When my orgasm came it was overwhelming; I shouted aloud as it happened, holding Mary Lou to me.

  And then we fell back from one another, both of us wet with perspiration, and stared at each other.

  “Jesus,” Mary Lou said softly. “Jesus, Paul.”

  I lay there on one elbow, looking at her, for a long quiet time. Everything seemed different. Better. And clearer.

  Finally I said, “I love you, Mary Lou.”

  She looked at me and nodded. Then she smiled.

  We lay together silently for a long while. Then she put her gown back on and said softly, “I’m going up to the fountain to wash my face.” And she left.

  I lay there for several minutes, feeling relaxed, very happy and calm. Then I got up and dressed and went out to be with her.

  It was dark out. But then she must have turned on a switch, for lights came on at the fountain and a kind of carousel music began to play.

  I walked up the path toward the light and water and music. She was bent over the fountain’s pool, washing her face vigorously with her hands. When I got within a few feet of her she still had not seen me. She stopped washing, sat down, and began drying her face with the hem of her gown, pulling the gown up past her knees to do so.

  I watched her for a moment. Then I spoke. “Do you want to use my comb?”

  She looked up at me, startled, and pulled her gown down. Then she smiled self-consciously. “Yes, Paul,” she said.

  I gave her my comb and sat down beside her on the edge of the little fountain and watched her combing her hair in the light from the spotlights that shone on the water.

  With the tangles out of her hair and with her face now scrubbed and bright, she looked shockingly beautiful. Her skin was luminous. I did not want to speak; I stared at her, just enjoying the sight of her, until she lowered her eyes and smiled.

  Then she spoke hesitantly. “Did they let you out of prison?”

  “I escaped.”

  “Oh,” she said, and looked back up at me, as if seeing me now for the first time. “Was it bad? Prison, I mean?”

  “I learned some things while I was there. It could have been worse.”

  “But you escaped.”

  The strength of my voice surprised me. “I wanted to come back to you.”

  She looked down again for a moment, and then back up to me. “Yes,” she said. “Oh Jesus. I’m glad you came back.”

  I nodded. Then I said, “I’m hungry. I’ll fix us something.” I turned and headed down the path.

  “Don’t wake the baby. . .” she said.

  I stopped and turned back to her. She looked a little lost, confused. “What baby?” I said.

  Suddenly she shook her head and laughed. “My God, Paul. I forgot. There’s a baby now.”

  I stared at her. “Then I’m a father?”

  She got up quickly, with her face all youthful, and ran down the path to me and threw her arms around my neck and, like a young girl, kissed me on the cheek. “Yes, Paul,” she said. “You’re a father now.” Then she took me by the hand and led me into the House of Reptiles. And I realized what the white cloths inside were; they were diapers.

  She took me to one of the smaller cases, where the iguanas had been, and there, lying on its fat stomach asleep and wearing a big white diaper, was a baby. It was pale and chubby-looking, and it snored quietly. There were bubbles of spit at the corners of its mouth. I stood there looking at it for a long time.

  Then I said to Mary Lou softly, “Is it a girl?”

  She nodded. “I’ve named her Jane. After Simon’s wife.”

  That seemed all right. I liked the name. I liked being a father. To be responsible for another person, for my own child, seemed like a good thing.

  Then I tried to picture the three of us together as though we were a family like the families in the old black-and-white films; but nothing in the films was remotely like this, standing there in the House of Reptiles with the diapers hanging from empty snake and lizard cases, with the smell of warm milk in the room and the soft sounds of snoring. I tried to imagine myself as a father the way I had thought of it back in prison when I had yearned so much for Mary Lou in that impotent, suicidal way; but I saw that I had thought of any children I might have as being half-grown— like Roberto and Consuela. And those two, I realized, belonged to a world of friendly postmen and Chevrolets and Coca-Colas, and not to my world at all.

  But I did not need that world of postmen and Chevrolets; this world, slight as it could be, would do. This fat and warm-looking and smelly little thing lying with its face pressed into a pillow in front of me was my daughter. Jane. I was happy with that.

  Then Mary Lou said, “I can get us a sandwich. Pimiento cheese.”

  I shook my head no, and then walked outside. She followed me silently. When we were out there she took my arm and said, “Paul. I want to hear about your escape.”

  “Later,” I said. And then, “I’ll fix some eggs for us.”

  She looked at me surprised. “Do you have eggs with you?”

  “Come on,” I said. I led her around to the side of the building where the thought bus was parked. Then I went in ahead of her with my lamp, and hung it from the ceiling. I lit the other lamp, using my prison lighter, and turned the flame up as brightly as possible.

  I brought Mary Lou inside. She stood in the aisle and looked around. I said nothing.

  At the back I had made a bookshelf by turning one of the seats over, and my books were all in a neat row on this. Biff was curled up, asleep, on top of the books.

  Next to my books my new clothes hung, along with those I had brought for her. Halfway down the bus, across from my sleeping place, was my kitchen area with a green camp stove and pans and dishes and boxes of preserved food and five of the coffee cakes I had made with Annabel. I looked at Mary Lou’s face. She seemed impressed, but said nothing.

  I put my omelette pan on the burner and began heating it up while I broke the eggs and stirred them with Tabasco sauce and salt. Then I grated some cheese of a land that Rod Baleen made from goat’s milk and mixed it with a little parsley. When the pan was hot enough I poured half the egg mix in it and began stirring it briskly while sliding the pan back and forth over the fire. Then, before the eggs browned and while the center was still moist, I added the cheese and parsley, let the cheese melt slightly, folded the whole thing over and slipped it out on a plate. I handed the plate to Mary Lou. “Sit down,” I said, “and I’ll get you a fork.” She sat down.

  When I handed her the fork I said, “Was it difficult? Having the baby? And painful?”

  “Jesus, yes,” she said. Then she took a bite of the omelette, chewed it slowly, swallowed. “Hey,” she said. “This is delicious! What do you call it?”

  “It’s an omelette,” I said. Then I put some water on the other burner for coffee and began making an omelette for myself. “In the ancient days,” I said, “women sometimes died in childbirth.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she said. “And I had Bob to help me.”

  “Bob?” I said. “Who’s Bob?”

  “Bob Spofforth,” she said. “The robot. And Dean. Your old boss.”

  I finished cooking my omelette. Then I poured us both some coffee in cups that Annabel had made and seated myself across the aisle from Mary Lou, on my bed, facing her.

  “Did Spofforth help you have the baby?” I said. I pictured that huge robot like William S. Hart in Sagebrush Doctor standing by the bedside of a woman who was going to have a baby. But I couldn’t picture Spofforth with a cowboy hat.

&
nbsp; “Yes,” Mary Lou said. There was something odd, slightly pained in her face as she talked about Spofforth. I felt there was something she wanted to tell me but was not yet ready to tell. “He cut the umbilical cord. Or at least he told me so afterward; I was too spaced out by it all to be sure.” She shook her head. “Strange. The one time in my life I really wanted a pill, and a week after I had Bob stop their distribution.”

  “Stop their distribution?” I said. “Of pills?”

  “That’s right. There’s going to be some changes.” She smiled. “Some big hangovers.”

  I didn’t care about that. “Spaced out?” I said. “I can’t imagine you that way.”

  “Not the way it is with drugs. It hurt a lot, but it wasn’t unbearable.”

  “And Spofforth helped you?”

  “After he took you away he ... he watched over my pregnancy. And when the baby came he got milk for me from the Burger Chef and he found an ancient baby bottle in a warehouse somewhere. I think he knows where everything is in New York. Diapers. And laundry soap to wash them with.” She looked out the window for a moment. “He got me a red coat once.” She shook her head, as if trying to shake away the memory. “I’ve been washing diapers in the fountain. Jane eats mashed-up sandwiches now, and I have a lot of powdered milk for her too.”

  I finished my omelette. “I’ve been living alone,” I said. “In a wooden house that I repaired. With the help of some friends.” That word, “friends”; it seemed strange. I had never referred to the Baleens that way before; but it was the right word. “I brought you something,” I said.

  I went to the back of the bus and got the dresses and blue jeans and T-shirts I had taken from the store in Maugre for her, and laid them on a seat. “These,” I said. “And a box of candy.” I got a heart-shaped box out of the panel-covered compartment where I kept food supplies, and gave it to her. She looked astonished, holding the box and not knowing what to do with it. I took it from her and opened it. There was a paper on top of the candy and it said, “Be my Valentine.” I read it aloud, strongly. It was a good thing to read.

  She looked up at me. “What’s a Valentine?”

  “It has to do with love,” I said, and took the paper off.

  Underneath the paper there were pieces of candy, each wrapped in a food-preserving transparent plastic cover. I took out a large chocolate one and handed it to her. “You take the covering off with your fingernail. At the bottom—the flat side,” I said.

  She looked at it and tried her fingernail. “What do you call this?” she said.

  “Candy. You eat it.” I took it from her and got the plastic off. I had become expert at that while learning to eat the various things from Sears over the the past year. I handed the candy to her and she looked at it a moment, turning it over in her fingers. She had probably never seen chocolate before; I never had, before I came to Maugre. “Taste it,” I said.

  She bit into it and began chewing. Then she stared up at me, her mouth partly full, with a look of pleasant surprise. “Jesus,” she said through the mouthful. “It’s wonderful!”

  Then I gave her the clothes, and she looked at them excitedly. “For me?” she said. And then, “That’s wonderful, Paul. That’s really wonderful.”

  We sat there silently for a moment, I with the box of candy in my lap; she with her lap filled with new clothes. I watched her face.

  The bus door was open. Suddenly a loud, wailing sound came in, something like a siren, except that it sounded human and angry.

  “Oh Lord!” Mary Lou said, getting up quickly, with the clothes in her arms. “The baby!” She ran out of the bus and shouted back at me. “Give me ten minutes. I want to try the clothes on.”

  I left the bus, walked back to the fountain, and sat down on its edge. The music, light and airy, and the gentle sound of the water behind me were pleasant. I looked up; the moon was still out and there was no sign of dawn. I felt completely at ease.

  Then Mary Lou came out of the House of Reptiles with her arms full. She shut the door smartly behind her with her elbow. She was dressed in the blue jeans and a white T-shirt and sandals and was carrying the baby expertly, cradled in one arm. Over the other arm were the rest of her new clothes and on top of them a pile of diapers. The clothes she was wearing fit her perfectly. Her hair was combed neatly and her face was radiant as she came toward me and the light from the fountain fell on it. The baby had stopped crying and just lay in her arms looking comfortable, pleased. Looking at them both I could hardly breathe for a moment.

  Then I let my breath out and said softly, “I can make a baby bed out of one of the bus seats. And we can go away together.”

  She looked up at me. “Do you want to leave New York?”

  “I want to go to California,” I said. “I want to go as far from New York as we can go. I want to be away from robots, and drugs, and other people. I have my books and my music and you and Jane. That’s enough. I don’t want New York anymore.”

  She looked at me a long time before she answered. Then she said, “All right.” She paused. “But there’s something I have to do . . .”

  “For Spofforth?” I said.

  Her eyes widened. “Yes,” she said. “It’s for Spofforth. He wants to die. I made a... a bargain with him. To help him.”

  “To help him die?”

  “Yes. It frightens me.”

  I looked at her. “I’ll help you,” I said.

  She looked at me, relieved. “I’ll get Jane’s things. I guess it is time to leave New York. Can this bus take us to California?”

  “Yes. And I can find food. We’ll get there.”

  She looked toward the bus, toward its sturdy, solid shape, and then back toward me. She seemed to study my face for a long time, carefully and with a hint of surprise. Then she said, “I love you, Paul. I really do.”

  “I know,” I said. “Let’s get going.”

  Spofforth

  It looks, by itself, as it did in 1932—an essentially stupid, non-human building, its architecture concerned merely with height and with bravado. It has now, on the third of June, 2467, the same number of stories, one hundred two, that it had then; but now they are all empty even of the furniture of offices. It is one thousand two hundred fifty feet tall. Nearly a quarter mile. And there is no use for it now. It is only a marker, a mute testimony to the human ability to make things that are too big.

  The context over which it stands has come to magnify it more than the New York of the twentieth century ever could. There are no other tall buildings in New York; it truly towers above Manhattan in singleness of form and intent in the way that it must have first sprung to the hopeful minds of its architects. New York is nearly a grave. The Empire State Building is its gravestone.

  Spofforth stands as near to the edge of the platform as he can come. He is alone, waiting for Bentley and Mary Lou to finish the climb. He has carried Mary Lou’s baby for her, and he holds it now, sheltering it from the wind. The baby is asleep in his arms.

  The sky will lighten soon on Spofforth’s right, over the East River and Brooklyn; but it is dark now. The lights of thought buses are visible below. They move slowly up and down Fifth and Third and Lexington and Madison and Broadway, and up further through Central Park. There is a light in a building at Fifty-first Street, but no lights at Tunes Square. Spofforth watches the lights, holds the baby protectively, and waits.

  And then he hears the heavy door behind him open, and hears their footsteps. Almost immediately, Mary Lou’s voice, nearly out of breath, speaks. “The baby, Bob. I’ll take it back now.” The climb has taken them over three hours.

  He turns and sees their shadows and holds the baby out. Mary Lou’s dark form takes it and she says, “Tell me when you’re ready, Bob. I’ll have to set the baby down.”

  “We’ll wait until daylight,” he says. “I want to be able to see.”

  The two human beings sit, and Spofforth, facing them now, sees a yellow flame flicker brightly in the wind as Bentley lights
a cigarette. In sudden chiaroscuro he sees Mary Lou’s strong body hunched over her child’s, her hair blown sideways.

  He stands there looking at what is now only her shadow again, with Paul Bentley’s shadow next to hers, touching: the old, old archetype of a human family, here atop this grotesque building over a numb and aimless city, a city of drugged sleep for its people and of an obscene mock-life for its robots, with its only brightness the small and pleasant minds of its buses, complacent and at ease, patrolling the empty streets. His robot mind can sense the telepathic thought bus buzz, but it does not affect his state of consciousness. Something is coming into his mind slowly, gently. His spirit is hushed, letting it come in. He turns and faces north.

  And then from nowhere and darkness there is a fluttering in the wind, and a small dark presence settles on Spofforth’s motionless right forearm and becomes, in abruptly frozen silhouette, a bird. Perched on his arm, a sparrow, a city sparrow—tough and anxious and far too high. And it stays there with him, waiting for dawn.

  And the dawn begins, low over Brooklyn, spreading to Upper Manhattan, over Harlem and White Plains and what was once Columbia University, a gray light over land where Indians had slept on filthy skins and where, later, white men had focused their fretful intensity of power and money and yearning, pushing up buildings in hubris, in mad cockiness, filling streets with taxis and anxious people and, finally, dying into drugs and inwardness. The dawn spreads and the sun appears, bulging up red over the East River. Then the sparrow flicks its head and flies away from Spofforth’s bare arm, holding its tiny life to itself.

  And the thing that has been coming slowly into Spofforth’s mind now seizes it: joy. He is joyful as he had been joyful one hundred seventy years before, in Cleveland, when he had first experienced consciousness, gagging to life in a dying factory, when he had not yet known that he was alone in the world and would always be alone.

  He feels the hard surface beneath his bare feet with pleasure, feels the strong wind on his face and the sure pumping of his heart, senses his youth and strength and loves them, for a moment, for themselves.