by John Gardner
It was true that Montrose was beautiful; but Mickelsson was unmoved. It was a village of old and dying rich people, superannuated doctors, lawyers, bankers, many of them retired to this place from Philadelphia. Nothing much had changed here in two hundred years, but not because it stood outside time, like the Bauer place (in Mickelsson’s admittedly queer opinion): in Montrose one had the feeling that time had been stubbornly resisted, refused lawful entrance, with the result that, somehow, nothing was secret here, nothing more mysterious than a Baptist’s sweet smile or a banker’s jovial “Good morning.” Nothing to be learned.
It was odd, a sympathetic observer might say, that the great white houses stirred in him no emotion. If the house he was buying were ever brought back to its former state, it would be much like one of these. Professor Mickelsson smiled, thinking of the warped, peeling shutters of his house, the dangling eaves, the knotty, slanting floors of native chestnut. It made him feel a little like a secret agent, standing here—a tall, stout scholar spy, pipe in hand, hat level now—thinking of his battered old shadow-filled monster in the presence of these proud, white, Christian homes.
Well, he was glad Montrose existed. He turned, bowing to Lake Avenue, touching his hatbrim, excusing himself, then walked to where his rusted, dented car was parked, down on the sidewalk in front of the lawyer’s office. Charley Snyder, Mr. Cook, and tall, wide-hatted Dr. Bauer all stood looking more or less in Mickelsson’s direction, laughing uproariously—too far away to hear—teetering, hanging on to one another’s elbows. He blushed, then on second thought nodded in their direction and touched his hat. There was no reason to believe they were laughing at him. He climbed into the car, switched on the engine, and covered his nose and mouth with his right hand while with his left he hastily rolled up the window against the foul-smelling cloud that exploded all around him, a great shameless blast of yellow-gray luminous pollution from the Chevy’s rear end.
Driving back to Binghamton, he noticed for the first time how many slag-heaps there were on the road out of Montrose, how many signs reading FILL WANTED—STONE ONLY, and NO DUMPING!
When he reached his apartment, late that evening, the first thing he saw was the dark, completely unornamented car parked, more or less in shadow, under the trees across the street. For some reason he did not think about it, merely registered its existence, as he pulled the old Chevy up the driveway to the back of the house. He got out, noisily closed the car-door, and crossed the pitchdark back yard to the door opening onto the stairs up to his apartment. He heard a car-door close, like a belated echo, somewhere in front of the house, and then footsteps. Even now he did not quite understand, though some animal part of him came alert. He climbed the stairs more quickly than usual, hunting in his trouser pocket as he did so for the key to his apartment door. Then he knew there was someone on the stairs below him, and his mind came fully awake. He turned, craned his head around, and saw in the stairwell’s dimness two men in suits. Fear flashed through him, and he imagined himself running up the stairs for dear life, reaching the boxes of books outside his door and hurling them down at his pursuers, then going in for the silver-headed cane. The same instant, the man in the lead—small and wiry, dark-haired; the other was larger, almost fat—called up to him, “Professor Mickelsson?” They stood frozen as in a movie still, or one of his son’s photographs, the smaller man with his hand on the bannister, the larger one just behind him, his hand flat on the opposite wall, both of them looking up at him as if in fear. Both of them wore hats. The one in front was holding something up for Mickelsson to see. Crazily, he thought at first it was something he’d dropped, which they’d come running to give back.
But the man was saying, “We’re with Internal Revenue, Professor,” and Mickelsson saw that what he held up was an identification card. Now the other man had his out too, holding it up as if Mickelsson might be able to read it in the dim yellow light, from twenty feet away.
“I see,” Mickelsson said, and touched his left cheek with the back of his right hand. At last he said, “Come on up.”
He did not bother to listen to their names as they introduced themselves, nor did he bother to look carefully at the cards they insisted on showing him up close, standing under the plastic-shaded light outside his door. When they told him their business he said “Fine,” obligingly—assuming he had no choice in the matter—cleared his typewriter and books from the table, and sat down beside the smaller man. The larger one stood over by the window in the kitchen, looking out at the wall of leaves, occasionally moving a little, leaning on the sink, walking over to read the calendar on the wall, bending his head to watch carefully as he cleaned his fingernails with a silver nail-clipper.
They had photostats of every check he’d paid or received over the past ten years, and a large, leatherbound notebook full of neatly penned words and numbers. Mickelsson’s job was to identify, insofar as he could remember, what each check received had been for and whether the checks he’d written were “business” or “personal.” Somehow, though Mickelsson wasn’t conscious of panic, his mind substituted “pleasure” for “personal,” so that he would say, stupidly, as he went through the photostats, “Pleasure, business, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure …” Once he said, “Pleasure—not that paying an electric bill is much pleasure, ha ha!”
“Actually,” the man said, unamused, coolly polite, “it’s ‘personal,’ not ‘pleasure.’ ”
“Yes. Yes of course,” Mickelsson said, but instantly his mind returned to the mistake. The man did not bother to correct him again.
They sat for hours—he had no idea how long—Mickelsson turning over photostats, the small man, expressionless, taking notes. They did not explain to him, nor did he dare ask, why it was necessary to go through all this, all these years, not just the two he hadn’t paid. Neither did they explain why both of them had to come, though one of them did nothing. Once, when they were between stacks of photostats, the man asked, “Would you say you’re personally responsible for your unpaid taxes, or were there others involved?”
Something about the way he asked it made Mickelsson feel that they knew about his wife’s having “borrowed” the tax-money he’d saved in ’77. The same instant he saw the opening he turned his eyes from it. “No, I’m responsible,” he said. “Ultimately, anyway.”
“Ultimately?”
He reached for his pipe and matches. “I’m responsible,” he said.
Without comment, the man slid him the next stack of photostats.
The night was still, unbearably muggy. Both men, like Mickelsson, had taken their coats off, though only Mickelsson’s shirt was pasted to his back. Moths bumped against the lamp on the table, occasionally striking the metal shade, softly ringing it. He could feel around him, stretching out infinitely in all directions, the government’s silent watchfulness.
Once, between stacks of photostats, the man drew out an envelope, took the folded paper from it, and placed both the paper and the envelope on the table in front of Mickelsson. “You don’t need to sign this now,” he said. “Talk to your lawyer, if you like.” Mickelsson saw, just glancing at it, that it was some kind of medical disclaimer. They knew about his bouts with mental illness. He was hardly surprised. He nodded, put the paper back in the envelope, and laid it to the right of his workspace.
“You think of everything,” he said, and smiled.
The man said nothing.
Was it possible that they had wives and children, troubles of their own? He bent over the stack of photostats the man had placed in front of him. “Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure,” he said, “business, I think. Pleasure. Business.”
All Binghamton was asleep, all but the moths, Mickelsson, and the United States government.
“Would you care for a beer?” he asked.
“No thanks.”
“Coffee?”
“No thanks.”
Once the man asked, “Is your son still financially dependent on you?”
“I’m not sure, lega
lly,” Mickelsson said. “I still send him money.”
“He’s engaged in anti-nuclear activities. Is that right?”
“He’s a student,” Mickelsson said, blushing, his muscles subtly tensing. “As for his politics—”
The man said nothing.
“What do you mean? What are you implying?”
The man studied his notes. His right hand moved to the upper corner of the page, closed on it, and turned it. “The question’s routine,” he said. “We’re not interested in his politics.” The statement was so flat, so mechanical, that Mickelsson, despite his better judgment, was inclined to believe it. The man looked at the stack of photostats to be identified.
Mickelsson looked down, unable to read for a moment, then said, “Pleasure. Business. Business.”
In the night outside a siren went off, police this time. He thought of the black dog.
The leaves outside his windows were stirring. Rain coming on. He got an image, sharp as an image in a dream, of rain and wind whipping the trees in the yard of the Bauer place—or rather, Sprague place.
“Pleasure,” he said. Mechanically, the man noted it.
He looked at the next of the photostats.
“Pleasure,” he said.
4
Though he would not entirely deny the possibility of the existence of ghosts, or of anything else in this crazy universe, he was skeptical, to say the least; or, to put it more precisely, while he was not quite willing to deny absolutely that Swedenborg or William James’ cousin, or Mickelsson’s own grandfather, might now and then have communicated with “the other side,” or even that certain living psychics, much studied of late, might indeed, as they claimed, get occasional help in their work from spirits, he could not help dismissing as country foolishness the idea that the Bauer place—Sprague place—was haunted. If he felt uneasy, it was not about the ghosts but about the people who’d sold him the house without mentioning—that is, without giving more than delicate hints of—its local reputation. In a sense, of course, there was no reason they should have. If they considered the whole thing superstitious nonsense, as well they might—if none of them actually believed the place haunted—then perhaps it had simply slipped their minds. A man of sense would let it go at that. It was a mark of his paranoia that, despite what he knew to be the sensible course, he felt uneasy.
He could see no evidence, carefully thinking back, of any special eagerness to be rid of the house on Dr. Bauer’s part, much less on Tim’s. It was true that she’d come down considerably in price, but in all likelihood only for the reason she’d given, that she had to get away soon to Florida. (On the other hand, neither had she seemed at all reluctant to see a house so magnificent go cheaply.) Perhaps—abstracted and gloomy as he was, and eager to get the place—he hadn’t been watching very closely.
He’d been rather more depressed than usual, he remembered, the only time he’d really talked to the woman, when he’d gone up to the house to get the keys. The idea that had at first seemed just a madcap notion—a possibility to toy with at cocktail parties or when his apartment got him down—had changed, the minute he was granted that loan, to a sober, dangerous commitment: he’d agreed to buy the thing; now he must pay for it, actually move out to it, cough up money to movers, deal with upkeep and repairs. Sometimes when he thought seriously about his financial situation, his hands became so weak he could hardly keep his grip on a pencil. The words Out of control would flash into his mind. Out of control! But then he would tighten his jaw, rein in. All the universe was out of control, or at least showed no signs of the kind of control his grandfather’s dry, stern sermons on works and grace had read into it, the underlying order Mickelsson had taken for granted all those years, even after he’d abandoned theism—until suddenly the ground had dropped out from under him and he’d clearly grasped his situation.
He remembered his grandfather in his rose garden—a side of him Mickelsson hadn’t thought of for a long, long time. He remembered the old man, like a crooked-nosed black bird, bending over to sniff a flower. Was it possible that he’d simply been testing it by smell for some sickness—that he had no more feeling for scents than he had for children, dogs, or sunsets? Had he gotten any pleasure out of conceiving his own children—seven of them, only two of whom (Mickelsson’s father was the seventh) had survived?
The weather, when he’d gone up to the Bauer place, had been bright and crisp, much cooler in the mountains than down in Binghamton. The glen below the farmstead was full of restless bird movement and the sombre echo of waterfalls; up above, white luminous clouds hovered. Once the farm had been quite an operation, one could tell by the size of the empty barns; but that had been long ago. Now it came with only thirty acres. Dr. Bauer had lived here fourteen years, she said, and it had already been long past farming, grown up in wildflowers, brush, and woods, when she’d moved in.
She was a likeable person; a large, farmish woman whom everyone affectionately called “the doc.” She had the same owt’s and gaht’s as her neighbors, the same flattened vowels and enriched r’s. She worked at the grim, dark-brick local hospital (torn green windowshades on the office windows, in the patients’ rooms gray Venetian blinds), and nearly everyone he’d met in Susquehanna had at one time or another been helped by her. She was sixty, a dowdy dresser (she’d been wearing that day a light, countryish flowerprint dress of inexpensive material)—her bodily construction tall, squarish, heavy, her flesh queerly pale and soft. Something about her made Mickelsson suspect at once that she must be vegetarian. Except for that, the vegetarian look, if he’d met her on the street he’d have set her down as a well-to-do farmer’s wife, old-fashioned, no doubt religious. The hex signs on the barns, though more recently painted than the walls themselves—or touched up, perhaps—were so old and weatherworn they had to be the work of a previous owner—except that, he thought fleetingly, that hardly explained the relatively new one on the pleasantly crude Dutch door into the kitchen. What the hex signs meant he had no idea, nor could the doctor enlighten him, apparently. “Interesting, aren’t they?” she’d said, smiling. It was as if for her they were simply strange flowers that had one day, through no effort of hers, bloomed there, and seemed to do no harm. Mickelsson had his doubts. Each of them was set inside a circle of black, and Mickelsson knew enough of symbolism to be suspicious. But of course he hadn’t pressed her. All over that section of Pennsylvania, though they began in earnest farther south, there were hexes. He’d felt, if anything, a little pleased with himself for having found a place with special character; and except in those moods when nothing pleased him, he’d enjoyed that specialness more and more as time passed. (He would get up, mornings, after he’d moved in, and go out onto his lawn to watch the swallows lift and swoop, the martins step out of their high, red apartment house and fly heavily off to work, the fat catbird in the branches of the birchtree mewing crossly. Across the glen below his house, shadowy trees slowly darkened into view through their broad, low fogbank like ships drawing nearer. The yellow morning light—hitting the barns broadside, giving the old, faded hexes sharp detail—could fill Mickelsson, when depression wasn’t on him, with a wonderful satisfaction.) The doctor had no doubt felt the same when she’d lived here; had no doubt felt pleased, as he did now, when tourists stopped their cars and took pictures of the signs on the barns or the waterfall beyond. (In the large, unheated workroom that jutted out behind the house toward the rise of the mountain and the woods—a room Mickelsson intended to convert, as soon as he could afford it, into a large, formal diningroom, not that he expected to be having much company—he found evidence of the magic the doctor cared most about: a picture of Jesus in a crown of thorns, looking mournfully, with gentle Anglo-Saxon eyes, toward heaven.)
He’d walked up into the woods with her for a look at the old concrete reservoir, his water supply.
“I’m sure you won’t be having any trouble, Prahfessor,” she’d said. “It doesn’t exactly come gushing, but there’s only the one of yo
u.” Her laugh was girlish, the laugh of someone perfectly at peace with the world.
Mickelsson had nodded, half smiling politely, standing precariously in his leather-soled shoes on the slope of crumbling shale and wet weeds, hatless today (he’d left his hat on the front seat of the Chevy), his red hair streaming as if angrily in all directions, tugged by the wind they’d found up here, the tips of his pink, freckled fingers in his tight trouser pockets. It was probably true that the water system had never given her, as she said, a speck of trouble. She had the look of one of the elect. For Mickelsson things would go otherwise. The two pipes visible above the dark, clear water had orange, cancerous-looking growths of rust; they would disintegrate at a touch. And the overflow pipe, just above the ground-line, was large enough for a rabbit to crawl through. Sooner or later some rabbit would try it, it was a foregone conclusion, and the water would be polluted. But Mickelsson knew from his farm childhood, when rats would occasionally drown in the cistern and swell obscenely, that polluted water did not necessarily mean instant death; it was more likely to mean just a little more unpleasantness in the general run: a taste and smell that would gradually build up until suddenly, before you were quite aware of why, you were seized, sniffing your glass, by an urge to retch. He would get to the reservoir eventually—replace the old pipes, put an iron mesh on the overflow. For now it would do. With luck, he thought … and let the thought trail off. He’d managed this much; had risen out of his despair and bought a house. He would manage the rest. What the doctor brought about by faith—the smiling expectation that made mountains tip their cloud-hats and move—Mickelsson would manage by will.
