Killing Time

by Thomas Berger

  “Except for her,” said Matty from high above, as if pronouncing divine judgment.

  “I was quoting her,” Smart said, crossing his arms over the cardigan like a woman. It was drafty in the hall and someone shouted metallically on another floor. Smart said: “Let me know if I can help you further. I’m not going anywhere.”

  In the down elevator Matty kept his distance, remaining silent except for a little breathy whistle emanating from the forefront of his mouth, to no tune: pippeesh, pip-peesh, like radiator steam.

  In the car Matty observed the human beings they passed, pedestrians and the occupants of other vehicles, on the off chance he might recognize a wanted person or even spot a crime in progress. In his time he had done both: three years before, while waiting for a traffic light he had seen upon a corner a man resembling the mug shot of the professional gunman Stanislaus Witchek, circulated by the Detroit police. Having been seized without warning and slammed against the wall, the suspect admitted immediately that he was indeed Witchek and was taken into custody without resistance. At another time Matthias had watched a man run from a jeweler’s with a bag in one hand and a pistol in the other. From the window of the car Matty fired five shots, killing the robber and superficially wounding a passerby, who subsequently sued the city.

  Tierney said: “My aunt died of stomach cancer, but she was sixty-eight.”

  An unshaven man in his fifties, wearing a dirty plaid tie, answered their knock on the basement door. He asked them inside before they could state their business, and addressed them as “Officers” before they identified themselves. From this behavior Tierney inferred that the super either had a record himself or was in some other role a veteran of encounters with the police: perhaps his tenants were often criminals.

  Tierney therefore wasted on him none of the courtesy and patience that had been shown to A. A. Smart, and in possession of his name, Moran, was conscious of no fellow-Irish affinity. In the current situation Matty was not a detriment. The superintendent was a tall man and heavy, but Matty was bigger than anyone.

  Backed against the dank basement wall, though he was not touched by either officer, Moran remembered a tenant named Joseph Detweiler, a blond kid, short, skinny, nuts. He wasn’t here no more, and didn’t leave a forwarding address.

  But Moran would check anyway, so they let him by and followed his dramatically cooperative stride, shoulders swaying loosely in exaggerated professionalism, past an open closet full of brooms and pails, into a living room that would not have been really squalid in better light. A small artificial Christmas tree stood on the mantle above a blocked-up fireplace. The TV was half alive with some murky representation; the sound was off. From his angle Tierney noticed only frantic shadows, which swooped towards an intense but transitory point of light as Moran extinguished the set.

  Moran plucked through a little file of the kind housewives use for recipes, and withdrew an exceptionally clean three-by-five index card. It had not seen much traffic. He prepared to read its legend aloud, having ostentatiously placed a pair of glasses on his head, but Matty’s great hand descended on him like the ax of an executioner and took the card away.

  “What do you mean he was nuts?” Tierney asked.

  Moran winced in thought. “He was a nut about noise. My wife goes through the rooms with a vacuum every Friday. He said the sound drove him out of his skull.”

  “He around all day?”

  “Sure,” said Moran, “molding these statuary heads. He was a sculpture, artist. Once I told him if he wanted to do one on the subject of myself, he could forget about a week’s rent, so he did it and there it is.”

  He pointed to an object alone on the top shelf of a bookcase otherwise the repository of stacked newspapers, then asked Tierney if he would mind stepping across for an examination, for it was fragile and shouldn’t be carried or handled.

  Tierney of course picked up the head straightaway, so as not to show respect to Moran, but he was secretly careful with it. His hands got the impression of weight, crudeness; no pleas-sure to his tactile tastes, which ran to precision mechanisms: watches, locks, jointed and wheeled devices. Art seldom was complete in itself and asked too much of him; in its presence he grew peevish.

  The head did resemble Moran’s own, which being bald was easy to simulate in the top third. In the rest, the sculpture was less coarse than the original, as it were smoothing Moran off, further cheapening a visage which in life displayed little probity. Tierney, though, was insensitive to its testimony, thought it badly executed. What he saw in the living Moran were the eyes, compounded of guile and cowardice, whereas of course only two holes appeared in the representation.

  “It’s just cooked clay,” Moran whimpered nervously, watching Tierney weigh the piece in two hands as if he might toss it into the air.

  “He told me I could of got it made into bronze if I could of got the money for it, though pretty expensive, he said. But I ain’t got no money for that.” Moran produced a horrible, wheedling smile.

  Tierney asked: “You don’t own this house, do you?”

  “Nah,” affirmed Moran, still grinning through moistened lips.

  “Then I take it you paid the landlord out of your own pocket for the week’s rent you told Detweiler to keep.”

  The super sucked back his smile, and said: “Sure.”

  “And didn’t report the room empty for that week.”

  Moran said hoarsely: “I am one-hundred percent square with the boss, Officer. You can run a check on that.”

  Tierney said: “I’m not going to, Moran. I’m going to ask your precinct captain to do it, O.K.? You won’t be disappointed?”

  Moran nodded, and wrinkled his nose so as to show he appreciated Tierney’s wit, and said: “O.K., I haven’t nothing to hide.”

  “You’re shit, too,” Tierney said. “Detweiler never came around here again?”

  “No,” said Moran, still shaky. “He knew better than that. I would have called you guys.”

  Tierney still held the clay head, the broad nose pointing upwards.

  “He owe rent? Did he steal something?”

  “No,” Moran said, “oh no. He was the perfect tenant, paid me a week in advance every Saturday morning at ten A.M. Could set my clock by him. Clean, too. No parties, no breakage.”

  Tierney sneered at the blinded fireplace and left it to Matty to ask: “What you mean then, you would of called us?”

  “Sure,” said Moran, instantly going beyond recovery into the beginning of a swagger: he knew something the cops did not.

  The head had no pedestal. Tierney erected it again on the bookshelf, resting it on the smoothed end of the raw neck.

  “Fella,” said Matty, “are you going to tell us about it without more cute farting around?” He swung his trunk left, then right, rubbing each elbow against his belt, as if to warm the grease.

  Moran hastened to say: “He almost killed another roomer.”

  Chapter 6

  DETWEILER never dreamed, yet he often awakened in the morning with a piece of intelligence he had not possessed on retiring the night before.

  So it happened this morning. There seemed to be another thickness of curtain across the window, but walking there, which tickled as his bare feet met the floor between the rugs, he saw a wealthy descent of snow outside the pane, a collection of it on the sill and in the street below, parked cars already en-mired. A fat man plodded along the opposite sidewalk, ankle-deep. Detweiler noted with relief that this pedestrian was wearing artics. Joyfully he then determined to pelt him with a snowball, raised the window for that purpose, was flushed by the pure, cold, serene air; all sounds were muffled, distant, lovely; a truck rolled ahead of long furrows, as if on silent runners. Detweitler, chortling, tried to roll a ball of the cold fluff—then all at once he received a dispatch, or rather accepted that which had been delivered during his sleep and lay in its yellow envelope, unopened, on the night table of his mind.

  They were after him. He must elude
them.

  He lowered the window, repaired to the closet, and got from its top shelf his old rucksack. His extra pair of socks, washed the night before at the basin and hung across the radiator, were almost dry. He owned two sets of underwear, two shirts, a few ties and handkerchiefs and socks, one sweater, a suit. When fully dressed, he had very little to pack. He possessed no books, having not for years engaged in what was for him the utter futility of reading: Detweiler was innocent of a sense of humor, never got the joke implicit in imaginative writing, but on the other hand had too hopeful a temperament to appreciate philosophy and found exposition too abstract for his practical senses: he never, for example, read the instructions as to how to reclose a cracker box so as to keep the contents bakery-fresh, but either figured it out on his own or ate soggy saltines. It was offensive to him to trace out Flap A, Slit B, and effect their junction. He would not subordinate himself to tiny inkmarks on paper.

  Detweiler looked forward to a time when he could Realize the packing of his clothes, Realize himself upon a train, every detail precise and perfect—fellow passengers, passing landscape, meals in the diner, braking into stations, accelerating out, noises and smells—Realize his arrival at the destination. He would be there, without having physically left here. Yet if sought here, he would be there in body as well. He would be able to translate himself into a new context, using only the mind.

  Everybody would be capable of this technique in time to come, outmoding cars, railroads, aircraft, with their racket and dirt and dizzying motion. Detweiler knew he was merely the forerunner and therefore had no cause to be arrogant. Indeed, did he not know that God was omniscient, he would have believed himself a poor choice for the role, he who was so liable to distraction. As yet he could Realize not so much as his neckties into the haversack. He stood in the center of the room, staring at them as they hung upon a string stretched between two thumbtacks on the inner surface of the open closet door. Perhaps the striped one trembled; perhaps it was only the draft. Anyway, he was distracted, unable to bring 100 per cent of his force into play. They were after him.

  He had never been pursued in this fashion before, but he had many times run afoul of those who were hostile to Realization. Usually these persons were stupid rather than malignant, captives of erroneous assumptions about reality.

  For example, he had gone to several private doctors and a number of public clinics, with a simple request: that his penis be amputated. His motive was not perverse. Of the basic pleasures he enjoyed nothing more than making love to women. Indeed, he liked it too much. Sex was a major distraction. How often had his labors been interrupted by no more than the sound of a woman’s shoes on the distant pavement. Realization was possible only in a state of utter serenity, desires purged, the mind unresponsive to contemporary phenomena. But heel-clicks on the sidewalk, a girl’s high laughter, a filament of perfume in the sea of air—a suggestion of femininity, however slight and remote was enough to divert Detweiler from the most elaborate project, turn him from Realizing to mere dreaming, imagining, conjuring up nipples and the warm inner surfaces of thighs.

  Elimination of the obstructive member would take care of the problem. He had explained as much to the various physicians to whom he applied for relief. It was anyway his own organ, to dispose of as he saw fit. Were not sex maniacs sometimes emasculated by law? But his appeals were unavailing. One doctor advised frequent warm baths; another prescribed two aspirins every four hours. At last, in a public clinic, he was referred to a psychiatrist, who questioned him on a host of subjects that had only their irrelevance in common: his parents, masturbation, attraction to other men, and whether he had ever yearned to be a girl. However, Detweiler found these questions more amusing than objectionable, and he liked the doctor, who though childish, perhaps even weak-minded, seemed sympathetic and made a genuine effort to understand. Detweiler talked to him at length about Realization. How much got through was another matter, but at least the man listened.

  Perhaps he was being merely polite. Detweiler loved good manners. When the doc offered to treat him, he accepted, though he recognized in himself no illness that needed care. However, it would certainly have been rude and mean to turn down the invitation. So to be obliging he went occasionally to the psychiatrist’s private office for an hour’s talk. He was never asked for a fee, and considered that what he told the doctor about Realization was adequate payment for whatever was being done for him.

  Now, as he fastened the straps of the rucksack, Detweiler remembered that doc, that really nice guy, recalled he had neglected to see him for ever so long. He should at least have sent the doctor a Christmas card. Detweiler made his own cards, drawing each one freehand in India ink and adding the tint in water colors: his favorite subject was a big, roly-poly Santa Claus, with one boot in the chimney, one on the roof. It was full of good feeling. He had forgotten to make any this year, owing to his preoccupation with Betty, and nothing had come of that, and now he was being pursued. God, the distractions! He had tried once to amputate his penis himself, using a razor blade, but hadn’t the nerve to go through with it. The pain, so simple a thing, was unbearable after the edge penetrated the skin jacket and sank into the red core of nerve and muscle.

  He was frequently hindered by natural, basic processes. Sometimes, poised on the very threshold of a Realization, he felt ungovernable hunger, had to forsake hours of work to go eat a bowl of vegetable soup. But Detweiler never surrendered to despair. He found joy even in losing, through his conviction that at any time he could see only a portion of the sphere of maximum being, in which an apparent reverse might be really an advance from another direction: as in terrestrial travel you may go either east or west and eventually reach China. And it was with ecstasy that he thought of himself as an average person. What he could do, could be done by any other normal person with similarly routine gifts. And ultimately he could do anything, after having overcome certain massive resistances.

  He swung the haversack onto his shoulders, buttoned his wool-lined raincoat, and went from the room, leaving the key in the lock. Rent was paid up to next weekend. Detweiler understood that the super was entitled to keep the surplus in lieu of notice. Along the hall and descending the stairway to the ground floor, he looked for his friend the house cat, a very interesting animal of the tough city breed. Detweiler had invited it into his room one night early in his residence. After cautious investigations it lapped up the saucer of condensed milk he had provided. But when he sought amiably to scratch the cat’s head, indignant claws opened furrows on the back of his hand.

  Dispassionately, Detweiler got into a pair of leather gloves and batted Cat’s head around. It did not run away, but stood and fought back, though ineffectively, against the drubbing. Noble animal. This cleared the air between them. From then on, the cat would rub its length along Detweiler’s shins whenever they met. And for his part, he was always good for a handout. If he had the money he might even buy thick cream for his pal.

  At the moment Cat remained somewhere else, and Detweiler opened the street door and departed from that address forever. He had lived in many places, liked most of them, forgot them all when he left except those in which he had made some enduring human contact. He remembered the Starrs’ because of Betty.

  Taking the snow in his face as he came down the stoop, Detweiler decided to walk to the railroad station. His shoes were rubber-soled and sound, and he wore a good warm stocking cap. He found this type of weather refreshing. He strode so rapidly that he began to perspire after three blocks, and he breathed through his mouth, thereby catching snowflakes that dissolved in little peppery flashes on the tongue. The snow stuck to the sidewalks and streets, however, insulating the city. Detweiler sensed that it was going to be a fall of some proportions: his nostrils picked up a gunpowdery smell, and the atmosphere was growing ever more opaque and yet whitening as well, providing illumination in and of itself while denying access to the sun. It might snow for days and arrest all movement.

 
Excited by his thoughts, Detweiler plodded northwards. He was disappointed to see the station suddenly appear across the street. He could make it disappear through Realization, replace it with Valley Forge as of winter 1777 with Washington striding grimly about in his greatcoat and boots, soldiers warming their hands over campfires, horses stamping and steaming.

  Inside the station he bought a paper headlined ARTIST SOUGHT and with tepid interest but no surprise read his name in the story that followed. Having turned the page, he saw the first installment of Betty Starr’s narrative. Overwrought, he quickly discarded the paper into the nearest trash container. He bought a chocolate bar full of almonds, usually a favorite treat, but could hardly swallow it for the lump in his throat. Betty provided the great disappointment in his life. He had loved her on the very highest level, where the passions gave precedence to spirit and mind.

  He did not wonder that she had turned to professional writing: her intelligence was radiant. She was the only other person who grasped the theory and practice of Realization. In her presence and aided by her moral strength, he had conducted his most successful experiments. Certainly he never touched her, and she made no sound except an occasional murmur as they sat side by side, sometimes in the dark, often on his bed, to which she tiptoed after lights out. In another kind of association Detweiler would no doubt have been attracted to Betty: he could admit that academically. But by contrast to this enterprise, sex was pathetically fragmentary. You had it and it was done for the moment; you waited for the reservoirs to refill. It was not truth-retaining, not durable. You were incapable of it until puberty and after a certain age, whereas Detweiler had begun to practice Realization when he was ten years old, and he expected to work at it until he died, which would be ever so long because he planned to live a lengthy span. His will armored him against physical ailments. Detweiler was never under the weather, nor even got cavities in his teeth.

  He had met Arthur Bayson once or twice in the Starr living room, was technically aware that Arthur came to take Betty out, and could even remember, when he made the effort, that Arthur had given Betty an engagement ring. Detweiler took none of this seriously. Therefore he was dumbstruck when Betty married Arthur and left home to live with him in the suburbs. He could not understand that Realization meant so little to her. Together they had attempted to Realize Cleopatra drifting down the Nile on her gaudy barge, being fanned by giant blue-black eunuchs. Little handmaidens offered grapes in silver dishes. Brawny slaves strained at the oars when the rectangular sail fell slack. Old Antony stood at the rail, a weak but pitiable character. There you had the limits of lust. To see him there, his lackluster eye, his used face, his skinny shanks, varicosed, was to apprehend historical truth.