by Nigel Dennis
He heard the waiter’s knock, the organist’s lamentations for the world’s despair, the slamming of Divver’s door; but he heard them all from the bottom of a well. He only woke up when the sun became too strong for his eyes: he looked at his watch and saw that it was noon. He realized with pleasure and astonishment that he had outwitted the morning simply by not presiding at it; and this frugal accomplishment was as satisfying as a deed of revenge. That very day he decided that having grimaced once in the bossy face of Mother Nature, he could continue doing so; and no sooner had he given this matter a little concentrated thought than it seemed to be the most important problem in his life, the one that demanded the use of his reason and cunning to the exclusion of any other.
He went straight to work, clear-headed and firm. Since his need was to stay awake until it was safe to fall asleep, he hunted through Mell until he discovered books that could not be read too easily or quickly, including a huge Polish dictionary. In his bedside cabinet, in the section where a chamber-pot stood for visitors who were too infirm or full of old-fashioned prejudice to rise more properly, he put a sweet liqueur, some crackers and aspirin. In the so-called ‘American Shop’ he bought a pair of black ear-muffs, to exclude the noise of Divver’s morning rites and the strokes of the town clock. Pointing to the large books on his night table, he gravely explained his new routine to the breakfast-waiter and the chambermaid. Neither showed any surprise; in fact they seemed to think that at last he had learnt to behave like a normal tourist. It struck him that Divver was the only person who might object, and he spent a full afternoon collecting arguments for this emergency and skilfully wrapping them in the bolder remarks that he had been too afraid to say before.
But all this brainwork was wasted. In the next week he met Divver only by accident: with mutual dislike they asked: “How are you?” replied, “Fine, thank you,” and passed straight to their respective obsessions. And as with Divver, so with Morgan’s other problems: in his devotion to his new routine, he went for hours without so much as remembering its first cause, and when, once, a sharp stab of horror went through him, and he realized that he had not so much as considered his sailing-date, he said to himself: I’ll hang on another month exactly, to the very day—words which satisfied him as much as if he had gone to the telegraph office and cabled them to his mother, but which again provoked a sweet, uncalled-for vision of the wide-open countryside of Pembroke County, making him sigh miserably as he looked at the tight little grey streets of Mell.
One noon he woke up and removed his ear-muffs with a silly notion playing in his head. It had struck him that perhaps morning really meant the time at which you got up, and that the lunch he was about to eat should really be considered his breakfast: in short, there was every reason to feel morning-terror in the afternoon. But this thought seemed too absurd, because if it were true it would entirely destroy his routine: and furthermore, he thought sarcastically, if such a notion were correct, the names that mankind has bestowed on Time would be meaningless: August is not January; day and night cannot be made interchangeable by human opinion. Why, should this be true, there would be no natural order whatever, only a kind of unceasing pressure in chaos; and he envisioned an endless monotony of sunlight and darkness, unreeling over him until he was dead and continuing when he had been buried for centuries. Well, I shall be dead, so what do I care? he thought; death sounds nice and comfortable, but it’s my life I have to handle now. He got up quickly, dismissing the preposterous fact of eternity, but unable to dismiss the feeling that he had had a narrow escape from something awful.
Next day he arose for lunch in a good enough humour to smile at the idea of its being breakfast. He went to the barber and had his hair cut; after which the barber pleased him by saying that he badly needed a shave too. He lay back, the barber tilted the chair, tucked a fresh gown in at his neck and covered his face with lather. As he lay, bound up like a mummy, looking vaguely at the ceiling’s decorations, he noticed that the large room was very quiet. He could hear nothing but the barber’s breathing and the gritty rustle of the razor. “Not many people these days?” he said, to break the silence, and the barber replied: “No; all going early this year; a short season,” and continued to shave him.
A second later he seemed to hear a voice scream It’s Coming Now—this very moment. He shouted “Let me up,” sprang out of the chair, tore the gown from his throat and ran out of the door, wiping the lather off his face with both hands.
Once in the open air he was appalled by his ignominious behaviour. He went to his room to shave the other half of his face; trembling, he wrote a note of apology to the barber and enclosed twice the necessary fee. But he needed only one glance at the heavy books on his bedside-table to know that his period of safety was over, that he could no more go back to his artificial routine than to the barber’s shop, the priest’s house, the backstairs … he began to list the various places that were closed to him, and the only opening he could see was the road home, a road which he now admitted was the one he most wanted to take, and which was closed to him only because he could not bear to obey his own desire.
Sweating, trembling, he now felt not only like a fugitive but someone far worse than that, a clown with a whole bagful of buffoonery and antics. The ignominy of himself in pyjamas, wearing ear-muffs and reading an incomprehensible dictionary, the contrast between this creature and the vigorous animal that had stepped off the boat so short a time ago, made him cry with humiliation. He thought: but as long as I retain my full consciousness nothing can happen to me: I must look oblivion in the face every hour of the day and night.
But this prospect was so shocking and so plainly impossible that he found himself suddenly praying that the seizure would come, and so bury itself in the past instead of hanging poised to strike him at an unknown split-second. He would have run frantically out of his room at this point, had he not realized that from now on the terror that had seized him in the barber’s shop might do so in any public place, and that his only resort was the few square feet of his room, the area he most detested, whose pieces of furniture were not only like pieces of his past hopes but an array of hard, wooden edges, on one of which, at some moment in the future, he was likely to split his face open. All that remained safe was the bed, on which he could lie indefinitely; prostrate, defeated, stirred by nothing but spasms of terror, clinging to nothing but his consciousness—the very faculty that steadily reminded him of the terrible second that lay somewhere ahead.
*
He clung to his consciousness in this way for most of two days and nights. Twice he managed to get off his bed, compose himself enough to endure the elevator’s slow descent, and get to a sandwich shop. As soon as he had given his order he went out into the street and walked impatiently up and down until his food had been wrapped; he threw what he knew to be enough money on the counter and then hurried back to his room. Safe on his bed, he shuddered to think of what he had escaped.
He no longer even recognized solutions that might be planned over periods of months, weeks, or even days. As his body, except for his desperate excursions, was limited to the space of his bed, so his forethought was limited to the next half-minute; and occasional lunges of forgetfulness only made his fear worse when he remembered it again. From time to time, involuntarily, he went to sleep for an hour or two, and woke up in terrible horror of having been so reckless. The sounds that he had once excluded he now listened for anxiously: each was proof of his being awake and alert. He kept his eyes roaming from point to point, certain that so long as he was capable of sight he was incapable of oblivion. Occasionally he had an illuminating burst of detachment in which, as in the dream that had preceded his terror, he looked down on his anguished self, struggled to recognize it as his own, and marvelled that anyone as poised and inflexible as he had once been could be reduced in two weeks to a panting, exhausted wretch. I must have the seizure, he concluded, and then I can go home knowing that I faced fear all alone. But soon he ceased to think ab
out a good reason for having it, and, while he still dreaded it more than ever, longed for it for its own sake.
On the third morning a shrill noise interrupted the regular sounds and so took him off guard that it made him scream. When the noise was repeated he recognized the bell of his telephone. “What is it? What is it?” he asked, his voice rising and falling hoarsely. “The Mrs. Director Streeter wishes to see you,” said the clerk.
He spent some seconds puzzling out these peculiar words, which seemed to have no connection with himself and his world. At last, he remembered an appropriate phrase, and answered: “Tell her to come up.” He heard the clerk’s faraway voice saying: “Madam, he would be delighted if you would come to his room. Number 118B.
He looked about him and found everything meaningless. He had no idea of what or who was about to come in; nonetheless, he ran wildly around, acting on vaguely connected impulses: he pulled a chair straight, emptied all the ash trays into one of his shoes, which he kicked under the bed, smoothed the spread, which was as full of creases as a muddy road, smelt himself under the arms and was appalled, ran a toothbrush over his front teeth, exclaimed, “God! My God!” repeatedly. When she knocked, every vestige of terror had left his mind; but still he had no notion why he was running about so madly or what emotions he felt towards his visitor: he only knew that something extraordinary had come to claim his attention.
But the first sight of her was enough to make another man of him. When he saw her in the doorway, neat and smiling, he wanted to fall on her in a heap and smother her with grateful kisses. He hardly felt her hand; he kept his eyes fixed on hers with the same conviction of having been redeemed that he had felt when Divver, swaggering down the library passage, had cried out: “How would you like to go to Poland?”
She, however, seemed far more interested in his surroundings than in him. Sniffing, she examined the room curiously, while he goggled at her like a mad cupid. “Well, stranger,” she said, “you seem to be pretty snug in here.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, following her eyes obediently, and quite ready to believe that what she had said might be true.
“But I don’t really think I like you very much, Jimmy,” she said, looking mournful; and it seemed that he had not heard that beautiful and endearing word “Jimmy” for centuries.
“I forgive you for merely ordering me up here instead of meeting me in the lobby: your mother obviously is one of those progressive parents who has never explained what is polite to you. But I see no reason to forgive you for the general way you have behaved. I thought we had agreed to be friends, but it seems that you have felt that Larry and I were lepers.”
“I suppose I have,” he replied in a sunny voice, not knowing what he or she was saying and not caring. With every word she spoke he seemed to shed another piece of his haunted skin, to become human again and take another step back into the fresh, safe world that he had not expected to see again. He even began to understand what an important part she had played in the games of his childhood; and soon he recognized the shape of her face and body, and comprehended the connection between her words and himself.
She fixed him with a reproachful stare, as though she were too afraid of his temper to appeal to more than his sense of shame. He responded by passively hanging his head; he would just as readily have stood on it, provided he could have done so in her company.
He put out his hand and took her fondly by the arm, thinking how nice and warm the world was. The world was made of expensive velvet and soft flesh, and he gave it a good pinch.
“No, Jimmy,” she said, removing her arm. “If I had known that you were going to be disgusting I should never have come to your room. You make me very disappointed.”
He only breathed a deep sigh of relief and dropped impolitely into a chair, looking at her and the furniture with dreamy affection. Then he jumped up and caught her firmly in his arms and managed to kiss her ecstatically before she got loose. “I am glad to see you!” he exclaimed: “I imagine I’d have been thankful to see anyone, but since it’s you—well, it’s you. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
At this she moved with extreme coldness toward the door, pulling her coat straight and saying: “I can see that you are making a point of being insulting and that there’s no use my trying to be serious.” But when she saw that he was striding up and down the room, happy as a deaf man, she waited.
He continued to stride about, testing his fresh strength.
“You are behaving most queerly, Jimmy,” she said.
He promptly sat down again.
“Do you or don’t you want to know what I came for?”
“I just wish you had come every day,” he said. “And how are you, by the way? Everything snug in that Annex of yours?”
“No, we are all in a state of extreme tension.”
“Oh, what a shame! Something go wrong?”
“Do you live in an ivory tower, Jimmy?”
“I guess I do.”
“I think it’s a very irresponsible way to live. You seem to have no concern with the sort of problems we are facing—in fact I almost think you are trying to make them more difficult.”
He sensed something familiar in these words and was at last jolted back into the problems that his terror had driven away. They now seemed rather childish and unimportant compared with the marvellous possibility of having found a shoulder for his head. “I’ve been nervous and worried, to tell you the truth,” he said. “But I’m not any more.”
“I think Max—of whom you once spoke so loyally—has been nervous and worried too. But it has not prevented him from considering others as well as himself.”
“Oh, I suppose he’s talked to you about my not wanting to go back. Is that why you came?”
She replied, with the primness of surface loyalty: “Max did, in fact, say that. But he said it only because it is weighing on his mind.”
“Oh, yes, I know what you mean. He always has to confess when he gets to that stage.”
“What a callous thing to say!”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it—just said what I thought.”
“Apparently your mother, who sounds just like you, sent him a very rude telegram yesterday. And I see no reason why Max should have your burden too. In spite of all his troubles, he has been a wonderful person for Larry to have around; and when Larry is contented—as contented as anyone can be at such a terrible time—then my life becomes bearable too. So I think that you …”
She stopped, and burst into tears. “Max didn’t tell me to come and ask you to go home. He doesn’t know I know you well enough. So don’t tell him I came.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “I made up my mind to go before you ever spoke,” he said. “I don’t care what he told you. I don’t care about anything.”
“He would have come to see you himself this evening. I thought I might come first.”
“How kind and thoughtful, Harriet!”
She started to dry her tears, and at once ejected a fresh flood. “Its been terrible, really terrible!” she cried. “As you know, better than anyone, I love Larry truly. But what am I to do if he is desperate? They are treating him disgustingly—and think of how frightened I get when I feel I cannot depend on him.” She stopped crying, and continued: “My father—you didn’t know I had a father, did you?—wrote to me only yesterday. So worried, so unable to understand, asking what were we both going to do? Larry was furious, of course; and whenever he suspects that I have lost faith in him, he looks as though he could kill me—as though he were jealous of something. But who could be jealous of my father—a man so kind and strong that he has always been worried about me living in Europe…? I don’t think Larry feels that Max is very bright about things that really matter, but, oh! it does help him to have some other man around who looks up to him, someone who wants to be taught—in a friendly way, don’t misunderstand me—and Max really needs a helping hand, and his appreciation and respect do wonders for Larry. So you see … i
f you would help Max by going, Max would be free to help Larry, and I …”
“Oh yes, I do see,” he said, wondering with astonishment what surprising things had been hardening into shape during his absence, and hardly able to credit that three such experienced adults could feel as hopeless as he had himself. “I’m going,” he told her, with a gladness that arose out of a delightful conviction that he was doing so chiefly for her sake, “in two weeks. I’ll send a cable this very day.”
She kissed him. “I thought you’d changed, Jimmy; but under your bad manners you’re just the same.”
She hurried to the toilet, and, returning with her face restored, said to him: “You’ll come and see us, won’t you?”
“You bet I will. But just one thing … Max and I are not on speaking terms: will he mind?”
She smiled as though she had never cried, and waved her hand kittenishly. “I’ll tell Mr. Max he’d better be very nice to my friend Jimmy…. Oh, Jimmy, I am so glad I came. Larry and I both love Max; but he is Larry’s friend really, and you are mine. And now I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The day after tomorrow Larry has to be in Tutin all day, to see the people at the Ministry. He is very depressed and has quite forgotten that it will be his birthday. So, I am planning a little surprise party to cheer him up when he gets back. Will you come and help the surprise?”
“Indeed I will.”
“About four-thirty…. Do I look terribly woebegone?”
“Not one bit.”
“Then I’ll leave you in peace with your books and your ivory tower…. No, don’t come with me.”
She opened the door and looked out into the passage, just as she had done when he had lain waiting for her in the enormous bed…. When she was out of sight he threw the door wide open and drew in great gulps of breath, as though the freshest breeze was driving down the passage. I have to go, he thought dreamily: whatever stopped me from going there before?
