Dark Memory

by Jonathan Latimer

  “Wet his face, Jay,” she said.

  Jay went to the river and dipped his shirt in the water. The sun was low, but the light was still strong. It hurt his eyes coming off the water. The river was clearing after the rain and where it was shallow he could see a sand bottom. On the other bank were reeds and a green wall of trees. Birds were feeding in the reeds to the right. He saw a blue crane with a crested head. On the way back his feet sank in the sand. He knelt beside Bill.

  “I’m all right,” Bill said.

  “I’ll wet your face.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Just your face.”

  “Please!” Bill said. “Can’t you let me die in peace?”

  “You’re not dying.”

  Bill was taking short breaths, as though he had been running. He was still sweating. He did not move, except when his breathing shook him. Jay did not try to wet his face.

  “Eve,” Bill said, “do you still think I’m a coward?”

  “I could cut my tongue out for saying that.”

  “I was a coward.”

  “You’re a brave man.”

  “I was so ashamed about that lion.”

  “You’ve made up for it,” Jay said. “A thousand times.”

  “You’re a very brave man,” Eve said.

  “Well, I’m not afraid to die,” Bill said.

  “Oh, Bill.”

  “No, that’s a lie,” Bill said. “I’m scared as hell. But I can’t do anything about it.”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “No,” Bill said. “Not for three or four minutes.”

  His face was very gray now. A cloud came across the sun and at once it was cooler. When the wind was not blowing it was possible to hear the steady rush of the river and the noise of his breathing.

  “Jay,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Speak to my father of Bombi.”

  “I will.”

  “It was a joke we had.”

  “I know, Bill.”

  “And give Prof my papers.”

  “Yes.”

  He did not try to talk any more. He sat on the ground, keeping his back as straight as he could. The blood was still coming between his fingers. He closed his eyes. It was only his will that kept him seated, but he would not lie down. Once Jay tried to help him. He sat beside him.

  “Hold onto me, Bill.”

  Bill did not answer.

  “It will be easier,” Jay said. “Hold on.”

  When Bill did not reply, he tried to brace him by taking his elbow. “Don’t touch me,” Bill said.

  Jay got up and went over to Eve. They sat for a long time near the tree, thankful when the wind blew and they could not hear Bill’s breathing. Jay’s wounds hurt a great deal. The sun approached the tops of the trees across the river and then went behind them. It began to get dark in the clearing.

  “Hadn’t we better build a fire?” Eve said.

  “I suppose so.” Jay got to his feet. “I’ll find some wood.”

  Along the bank of the river there was driftwood. Some of it was wet from the rain, but in the thickets the driftwood was dry. When he found it hurt him to bend, he knelt for the wood. His left arm was not strong and he could carry only four pieces. He took these to the shelter they had built of the tree. Then he went back to the river.

  “Jay!” Eve called. Her voice was alarmed. He ran to her.

  Bill had fallen over on his side. He was still holding his belly with both hands, but his face was on the ground.

  “Get the brandy,” Eve said.

  When Jay came back with the brandy, she had taken Bill’s head in her lap. He would not drink. Jay tried to force him, but his teeth were closed.

  “Do drink some,” Eve said.

  Bill shook his head. He opened his eyes and looked up at her and smiled. His lips moved, but they could not hear what he was saying. He closed his eyes again. His lips were pale and his skin was the blue-white color of soap. A few minutes later he stopped breathing. It was something like going to sleep, except that his eyes came open at the last. There was a film over them. His face was peaceful. Gradually his hands came away from his belly and they could see the exposed terra-cotta intestines.

  Eve began to cry. Jay took the knapsack and dumped out the tinned goods and the chocolate. Eve was crying, still holding Bill’s head. Jay lifted the head and she stood up and he put the knapsack under the head. He tried to close Bill’s eyes, but the lids kept coming open. He got the bottle of cognac and filled a paper cup and gave it to Eve.

  “Drink it,” he said.

  The sand around Bill was dark and damp with blood. He had bled to death. The blood made the sand a dark brown.

  “I feel so awful,” Eve said.

  “Drink,” Jay said.

  She drank half the brandy. He took the cup and finished the brandy and poured in more. “Another,” he said.

  She drank and again he took what she had left. He looked at the bottle. It was about half full. The brandy had no effect on him. He had not even been able to taste it.

  “Couldn’t we have done something?” Eve asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think we could have.”

  “What?”

  “Something,” she said. “Oh, I’m sure something.”

  “Let’s don’t talk about it.”

  “I feel so awful,” she said. “I’m sure it’s our fault.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense.”

  “It’s our fault.” She began to cry. “It’s our fault. We could have done something.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  She stared at him in surprise.

  “Don’t act like a Goddamn schoolgirl,” he said.

  “Don’t you care that he’s lying here dead?”

  “No.”

  “You unfeeling beast,” she said.

  “For Christ’s sake, shut up.” He started to leave her.

  “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t answer her. He went to the other side of the clearing. It was quite dark here, but he could still see the path. The wind was not blowing and there was no noise in the trees. Eve ran after him.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m afraid alone.”

  “Come along, then.”

  The path was now exactly like a cave. It was much darker in the forest. Eve kept close behind him. When he came to the place where the leopard had attacked him, an animal ran off into the undergrowth. The noise frightened him. The animal ran noisily for a moment, then halted. Jay felt it watching them from the forest. He found the leopard. Something had been feeding upon it; the hindquarters were partially eaten. He knelt where he remembered the Springfield had fallen and felt with his hands through the grass. It was very dark. He tried not to think of snakes. The grass was wet. His fingers touched metal and he picked up the rifle by the barrel and balanced it in his right hand. Then he turned and walked quickly out of the forest. Eve touched his arm when they reached the clearing.

  “I’m sorry I behaved so badly,” she said.

  “I was afraid you’d have hysterics.”

  “I very nearly did.”

  “I had to be rough.”

  “I know,” she said. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “I always say the wrong thing.”

  “Let’s light the fire.”

  He built the fire in front of the shelter. He cut slivers from the driest piece of wood and lit them first. Then he cut slightly larger pieces, and finally he was able to put on whole sticks. He wished he had a log to back the fire against. The flames lit up a part of the clearing. The circle of light did not quite reach Bill’s body under the tree. Jay got the tins of meat and crackers and the chocolate. Eve was sitting by the fire, looking out towards the river. The sound of the current came to them over the noise of the fire.

  “Would you like some food?” he aske
d.

  “Can you eat?”

  “No.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “What about some brandy?”

  “Yes, please.”

  They drank some of the brandy. Jay could taste it this time, and he felt it in the pit of his stomach. The air had turned cold and he wondered if they would be able to keep warm during the night. He took an ember from the fire and with its light he found enough driftwood to supply the fire until dawn. He carried back some damp wood, too, because it would take longer to burn. Each time he went to the fire with a load he saw Eve crying. He did not try to stop her. He thought it was good for her to cry. He wished he could cry or get drunk. It was much the same thing, he thought. Both were emotional escapes. He threw the ember in the fire.

  “You’d better lie down,” he said.

  “I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Rest, anyway. You’ll need strength tomorrow.”

  “All right.” She did not go to the shelter. “May I stay outside? I don’t like it in there alone.”

  “I’ll lie in the doorway.”

  “That would help.”

  “I’ll watch the fire from the doorway.”

  She went in the shelter. He banked the fire with wet wood and sat in the doorway. Insects swarmed about him, their wings making a high-pitched hum. For a long time he tried to fight them off, but at last he gave up and wound what was left of his shirt around his face and neck. His leather jacket protected the rest of his upper body.

  “You’d better lie down, too,” Eve said.

  Her voice came to him from the darkness of the shelter. “I suppose so,” he said.

  He lay on his side, resting on his uninjured right arm. The insects sang around his head. He could see stars in the sky above the clearing, several looking big and close. The sky was violet. The wet wood in the fire hissed and the dry wood burned with a noise of breaking twigs and back of everything was the mysterious sound of the river. The air was heavy with the smell of vegetation. He could just see the dark mound that was Bill’s body under the tree.

  First Linda; and now Bill, he thought. His wife and his best friend. Still, everyone has to die. Possibly it was better to die young, in violence, quickly, with courage, than to live with the growing knowledge that death also lies in the ultimate corruption and disintegration of your own flesh. That was a fancy idea. The young man faces death but once, but the old man lives with death. This was not exactly what the poet said, but it was very philosophical. But it did not help. Death was a tragedy when the victim was not ready to die. And practically nobody was ready to die. Was he ready to die? He thought to himself, yes; but he knew he was lying. Even with Bill dead, and Linda, he was not ready to die. Not that it made any difference to The Man in the Balcony. He would put the finger on you ready or not. If there was a Man in the Balcony. He had never been able to make up his mind about that.

  He got up and put wood on the fire. His body throbbed with pain and he was very stiff. His head hurt and his face felt hot. He had a fever. That would account for the way his mind was working. What had he been thinking about? The Man in the Balcony. God would certainly be interested to know that Jay Nichols had not been able to make up his mind about Him. He lay down again.

  Poor old Bill. He suddenly remembered the smell of leather-bound books in the minister’s study, and the minister asking formally, “Who is to give the bride away?” and Bill grinning and saying, “Me, and this is one time when it’s more blessed to receive than to give,” and the minister’s suddenly frozen face, and then he was kissing Linda, she crying a little, and they were getting into the convertible, and Bill was saying, “You’ll find something in the rumble.” New England was lovely that day, the country brown and green and some of the trees turning red, the river smooth gliding and silver blue, and in the air the smell of apples and of corn and stacked hay and pumpkins and burning leaves, but when the sun went down they were glad to reach the inn. And in the rumble were six bottles of Veuve Cliquot, ’26, ice cold from the night. They drank it with dinner in their room, with the crisp tender brown-fried chicken and the mashed potatoes and giblet gravy and the squash and the baking-powder biscuits and the currant jelly. The serving maid was jolly and was not surprised at the champagne because she had seen it in the movies, and they were jolly but underneath a little frightened because they were really in love, and this night would be the test of what they could be to each other.

  “Jay.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “It’s Eve, Jay.”

  “Oh.” He shook his head to clear it. It was not Linda. He must have been asleep. “What is it?”

  “I heard something by Bill.”

  The fire had burned away to a bed of coals. He found the Springfield and stood up. Two shadows detached themselves from Bill’s body and slid towards the forest. He took a snap shot at the second shadow, the kararoong of the rifle blasting the silence of the clearing and falling away and then coming back in an echo from the trees across the river. The Springfield’s recoil hurt his shoulder. With cries and a whir of wings, water birds took off from the reeds and flew up the river. He put dry wood on the fire and went to Bill’s body. Part of the face had been eaten away. One cheek was torn open and the jawbone and the teeth were exposed. He went back to the fire and found a broken branch with a sharp end.

  “What was it?” Eve asked in a low voice.

  “Hyenas.”

  “Is Bill all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to bury him.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I can bury him in the sand,” he said. “The sand is soft.”

  “But why?”

  “If we fall asleep the hyenas will get him.”

  “I won’t fall asleep,” she said.

  “You might.”

  She was silent again. She was frightened. He found a chunk of wood for scraping sand and piled more wood on the fire.

  “Please watch the fire,” he said.

  He did not want her to see what the hyenas had done to Bill. She stood by the entrance of the shelter. Her eyes looked strange in the firelight. Her face was pale. He took the two sticks and the Springfield and walked to the river’s edge. The sand was soft a few yards from where Bill lay. He knelt and began to loosen the sand with the broken branch. He outlined a rectangle about seven feet long and three feet wide, pushing the sharp stick deep into the sand. Then he took the chunk of wood and began to scrape out the sand. It was hard work scraping with one hand. The sand was dry on top, but down a foot it was damp.

  Here was Bill being buried by a river in Africa, in the cool moist sand by the river. Where was Linda buried, whom he had loved too? In a fashionable cemetery with a lawn that was like a broad-loom carpet and asphalt driveways and willow trees and white crosses with names and dates and epitaphs cut clearly in the marble, all the graves as neat and undistinguished as a row of middle-class suburban homes. But even in such a graveyard he would like to lie with her, but her family would not let him, and so he would be buried on a hill on his grandfather’s farm that would be his someday, near trees, alone, his grave untended except for the rain and the sun and the dung of cattle and the tangled covering of grass, with no other bodies to keep him company, no ghosts, no Sunday mourners with wreaths and tears and picnic lunches to disturb his rest. But no Linda either.

  Eve called, “Have you fallen asleep, Jay?” She had come part way to him.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You knelt there so long without moving.”

  “I was resting.”

  “Please let me help you.”

  “All right.”

  She came to him. “Can’t this wait until morning?”

  “No.”

  She knelt beside him and scooped out the sand with her hands. The sky was quite light, but Jay could not see the moon. It was not above the trees. As the pit deepened the sides caved in and they ha
d to stop digging and take out the loose sand. They worked for a long time, the susurrus of the river in their ears, the sand now cool and wet in their hands. At last the grave was deep enough. It was about three feet deep. Jay helped Eve to her feet, and then he went over to Bill. She started to follow him.

  “Wait,” he said.

  He took his shirt and covered Bill’s face and tied the arms in back of Bill’s head. “Now you can help,” he said.

  She came over to Bill. Her face was frightened. He could see her clearly in the light of the silvery-violet sky. She did not speak. Mist was rising from the river behind her.

  “Take his feet,” he said.

  She was looking at the shirt over Bill’s face. “Why did you do that?”

  “I thought it would be better.”

  “Poor Bill,” she said.

  They dragged the body to the pit, leaving a dark streak in the sand. Water had seeped into the grave. There was a foot of it on the bottom. When they put Bill in, his shirt-concealed face up, his arms crossed over his chest, the water almost covered him. Jay started to push sand over the body. He wanted to bury Bill before the water got higher.

  “Hadn’t you better say something?” Eve asked.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know either.”

  “You should say something.”

  He thought for a moment. He did not know any prayers. Bill would not want prayers anyway. He could not think what to say. He could see the mist rising across the river. He heard the murmur of the river and the sound of the water birds in the reeds and the whine of insects around his head. The river air was damp and cold. It was not very long before dawn.

  “He was a swell guy,” he said at last. “Please take good care of him.”

  They pushed the sand over Bill’s body. Presently it was out of sight. They worked until all the sand was over the body. Jay smoothed the top of the grave with his good hand. Then he went back to the shelter with Eve. She went inside. He put some wood on the fire and sat in the entrance. He heard Eve crying. From the entrance he could not quite see the place where Bill was buried.

  CHAPTER 27

  THE NOISES OF BIRDS in the trees woke them. The sky was covered with clouds and the forest was dark, but it did not feel like rain. Eve went to wash in the river. She went as far as she could from Bill’s grave. Jay watched her, but he did not try to sit up. He did not care if he ever moved. Poor Bill! What a hell of a thing to have happen! He closed his eyes and tried not to think of him.