by Tito Perdue
It took two matches; she came to him in beauty at one of his favorite ages. He ought have known she wouldn’t mind about the room, not when she had never minded such things in reality. Right away he took her to bed and lay holding her about the back.
“Look at that sky!”
“I know.”
Now he could sleep, it was easy now.
Sixteen
HAVING WOKEN LATE, RISEN, and walked about the room, he got back in bed. Down below a commotion had broken out—Jebuzites haggling among the booths. All morning he had been lying abed, struggling to turn into a spiritual entity while down below everyone was devoted to the body and its things. Let them rather be, if not artists and intellectuals, then heroes at least, and if not heroes, artists then, or intellectuals. In fact, nothing would satisfy him better than to sleep through these next fifty years, and then wake into a bright yellow day with fine people and a new religion once again giving the sun its reverence. Deep was his hatred for the modern age, so deep and so rich, a rich feast. How he envied the times to come, the world made clear.
Now he was sleeping, but so lightly that he was able, as it were, to monitor the process. Someone was in the hall; he could hear it. Now he dreamed of that young man of the future that he himself was to have been, were it the future and were he young. But most of all, it was the knowledge of all the days and hours that still lay in front of him, together with the certainty that any moment now he would be encountering his wife for the first time again, the ten millionth time he had done so.
A line of gray-colored cars was seething out of town—it made him wonder if they might know something that he did not. By his reckoning it should have been dark two hours ago and everyone locked away in their stalls. This was the bad time, with a long dead space between now and nightfall; to his knowledge, nothing in history had ever taken place this time of day. Nevertheless, he went back and lay face down, counting, quite prepared to wait howsoever long it might take.
He was sleeping, peacefully too (floating in cream), when his soul became dislodged and began to slip free. Nothing could have prepared him for what followed. He had had some peculiar sensations in his time—faintings, hemorrhoids, orgasmics, etc., etc., etc.—but nothing on this scale. Heretofore, he had thought of the soul as small, a Japanese machine, instead, it was nearly the size of a doll and with a horrid little head on it. Moreover, once under way, he found that he could no more have halted the process than . . .
It was the blunt end came first. Somewhere he had read of how the fetus recapitulates the history of the beast, whereas in this case, the face was all innocence and awe and—this surprised him—sucking its thumb. He was being offered a chance that would soon expire: to remain with body and die, or take the risk of leaping aboard the soul and fly.
There was no fear; he had done his fearing during the seventy-two years. Now came the light fixture (or he to it), nor did it seem to him in the least strange that he was floating under the ceiling in a state of calm, which fled away, however, very quickly when he saw that he could see through walls. First, he saw a woman, two floors down, sitting on the toilet. Directly beneath him, of course, lay his own untenanted body—a long one, and with a face (and this really surprised him) that must have looked entirely ordinary to anyone who didn’t know him better. It had always seemed to him monstrous to have taken up in human form anyway, a vile manifestation with poor endurance and with beauty that was well below average for the animal kind. Moreover, he had worn it out completely, misused it so . . . He was glad his mother couldn’t see it. Suddenly he felt sleepy.
The body was still there, wrinkling under his eyes. As for himself, he was beginning to feel somewhat cramped. Again he pushed off, sailing over the body. It was all so new; he thought about his money. Nor could he understand why he was getting no help. Judy! Why had she not flown to his side?
His anxiety increased. Once he had imagined this would be his chance to see the lost books of Theopompos of Chios perhaps, not simply to float forever in a hotel room that was airless. He found himself humming, then, dredging up pictures from Herodotus. It embittered him: how he had had thus to pass through the “keyhole” of death simply to get back into times (small population of fine people) that were proper for a person of his kind; indeed, he almost felt sorry for those others, now also dead, who had never studied and therefore knew not how to use such a toy. Again he pushed off. All his life he had wanted to spend one evening in Ionic antiquity or, better still, go walking with his wife in the lovely swirling Silurian, by far the most gorgeous of ages. He could see it: two of them watching silently on shore at great comets flinging past. Instead, he woke—woke, called and fell, and found himself in the corpse once more.
Seventeen
THIS SLUM HAD A MEMBRANE; sidling to the opening, Lee tested it with the cane. The sentry was a slovenly man, always marching back and forth in what looked to be a hat of tin and with what appeared to be a musket; Lee had to clap hand over mouth to keep from bursting into mirth. And yet the gate was an easy matter to get open, a mere common latch of the household type.
He could identify these middle-class neighborhoods by the size of their television sets and whether the children had actual pajamas or went to bed in underwear; at once, he veered off the walk and up to the nearest window. It was a domestic scene; one might almost have thought it the 1950’s again, save for people’s faces. It was a strange truth—greater the possessions, littler the possessors. He recommended a life of near-poverty and time for long walks; what he saw was a man and wife still in business clothes and three little rotten children with, each of them, billions of complaints. He came nearer, shielding his eyes, only at the last minute giving himself away by the sound of his glasses clicking on the pane.
He knew these people—they daren’t come out after him themselves. Instead, he cut across, down someone’s yard and into a mown place where a good-size dog came bounding up in delight. There was a ditch and then a culvert, put there expressly for him to hide in. Here he smoked, wasting time. At one point he almost fell off to sleep. Only the dog could have revealed his location, and the dog had gone off bored.
It was near to two in the morning before he came out and, at first, lurched off in the wrong direction. He could see the moon, once his own special star, also the gigantic silhouette of the towering apartment complex known as “Nietzsche’s Head.” Then Lee recognized a home with high-peaked roof where a friend of his once had dwelt. He craved to rush inside, rouse the man, and see whether he still had any playfulness left (having once been famous for it); instead, he settled for gathering up two small stones and tossing them to the second-story window.
He loved these late night walks; never in his day had he been permitted out at this time, no doubt because the beauty had been too much for his young frame. Now that it was beautiful indeed, the mature people chose to be asleep! He would never understand it. Sometimes his contempt boiled over into a kind of spittle. The neighborhood was tidy, yes, but paid for by extreme simplification of mind. Now Lee pissed, but not into the grass; there was a rich little car with the window down.
The next house had been destroyed, burnt two months ago, and already there was a new foundation in place. He might burn one each hour, it didn’t matter; their number were without end.
He pushed on, into darker homes and lower ground. One house was perfect—a brown object with turfen roof. Someone here was awake, awake and reading behind a window that was itself made of little bookish squares. He could not help but go and press against it with his ear. He heard numerous things: a clock, a page being turned. Apparently, he had here someone in the perfect house reading the perfect book. And music! this too perfect, courtesy of Ravel; ten seconds of it and Lee was back in Hellas. He pleaded it to go on forever; instead, it stopped. He could feel his gorge rise. He might or might not have been able to jab through the window, perhaps or perhaps not catching the reader in the eye or temple. And as always with people that he couldn’t actually see, th
ere was always the infinitesimal chance that it might be a fine person.
He came away sadly. Another fifty yards and he was back in typical houses, white ones with no trees about and nothing good inside. He could pinpoint the decline in history—when the uneducated are given comfortable houses. He saw a stained-glass window-portrait of a certain famous football coach rendered to look like Jesus.
It was now three in the morning, for him the second-best time in the day. The moon was weak, however, and looked like a quoit. Somewhere here he had had his first aesthetic experience once, now so many years ago that he couldn’t remember what had brought it on. It had ruined him, he knew that. Suddenly, that instant, he saw something—a wolf, or mayhap a jackal—flashing out of the woods. They looked at each other. Now Lee remembered what had caused his experience so long ago.
He had to spend a good long time on the lock. Then he went past the “tea room” and up the stairs. He weighed almost nothing these days, and yet each step yelped out loud and clear. He half expected a barrier around his room, even a lout standing guard in uniform, but there was nothing of the kind. Again, they had underrated him, not even so much as switching keys on him!
A minute went by while he stood in darkness. His books were all around, hundreds gasping at his audacious return. He had forgotten the comforts of the place, the carpet. Perhaps he could take up residence again! No, not likely, not with policemen coming back ever and anon to finish off the Schopenhauer. Instead, Lee stripped off the pillowcase; then, working in the dark by touch alone, he began to fill the bag. This was that dilemma he had always dreaded—that of having to choose which of the world’s writings to salvage and which let lapse. Murray’s Homer—he cared nothing for his country but would have laid down his life for Murray’s Homer—two copies. Hesiod certainly, Herodotus too. True, he had some modern books, also hermit literature of the greater Western anchorites, and yet, when all was over, the bag near to bursting, everything he kept had come from Greece.
Few things are more pleasant than to break into middle-class territory and take what one wants, and break out again. Outside, he began whistling. This was that same route as when he used to be off to school with his pencils and child books—he could feel himself grow tender at thought of it. He had been good from the beginning, a thinking man from the time he was three, and all of it in a country that hated such things. Suddenly, he broke out laughing, a ringing sound that caused him to put down his bag first and then, as it got worse, to try and stifle the coughing. He rather wished these occupants would come out and see what he was thinking. No doubt about it, his hatred was increasing, his wisdom too; he now looked upon himself as the century’s most preeminent prophet of the coming of the cracking of the West. Heads he saw, heads for reaping, eyes, buckets of eyes. His job was to spend as much time as he still had in becoming as hard as he still could, exhilarating as it most certainly was.
He slipped into the slum, past the watchman fast asleep, thence to his favorite all-night tavern called The Pied Cow. First, he saw a drunk by the fireplace looking jealously at his bag. Lee went straight to his place, but then leaped back when he found it occupied already. In the end, he had to sit at a small table, his back exposed. Moreover, on top of that, the waitress was so exhausted and dilatory he had time to open the bag and, as it were, stir in it somewhat. And when she did come, it was to bring a plate of beans with all the color gone and two wan dollops of pre-chewed meat. He noticed how all things here had a film of grease, a slippery deposit good for writing messages in; twice his elbow flew out from under him.
It was necessary to be grateful for the small things—namely, that there were no young people about, no “music.” In back, he could spot the cook, an emaciated man looking around in some indignation at the quality of the customers. Lee himself was bending, very nearly asleep, when an elderly man came up of a sudden and, as if the table were not already crowded enough, took the place opposite. Lee stood, then sat down again.
“Yes?”
“I saw you over here. Thinking, right? You know, it’s not often I run into someone our age, not here at the ‘Cow’ leastwise.”
Our age! In fact the man was old and had a cane. Lee looked at him coldly. “I’ll be leaving in a moment.”
“Take your time! it don’t bother me. Don’t have any tobacco, do you?”
One more hour and the sun would have been up; Lee had looked forward to it, the display. Now, instead, he had been delivered over unto an acidic-looking old man who kept poking the bag with his cane.
“What you got in there, money?” He laughed.
“No, no, I keep that in my coat.”
“Indeed!”
Lee showed it to him, then tried to go back to reading.
“My lands, you need to invest that stuff!! Unless of course you want some of these niggers around here to take it.”
“No, no—that’s usury. Besides, I always take this.” (He showed the cane.)
“Why lands, that’s not going to do you any good! Why they’ve got knives longer than that. ‘Usury!’”
“But do they know how to use them? Knives, I mean.”
“Shore they do! I know.”
“But I’m talking speed, man; do they have the speed?” (Suddenly Lee stood and thrashed wildly once or twice, showing his speed. It was a mistake, of course; instead of departing, the man was getting more and more interested.)
“I don’t know. When I look at you . . . ”
Lee hummed, then took out the Musaeus. The man’s eyes were weak and red; moreover, he kept leaning across the table in order to see more clearly.
“Knew it!” the other said finally. “By God, I knew it. As soon as I set eyes on you: ‘That ole boy over there,’ I said (speaking to myself, you understand), ‘that old boy over there, he just don’t give a shit about nothing.’ Was I right?”
“Look, why don’t you just finish up that ‘ale,’ if that’s what it can properly be called. The sun’s going to be up very shortly now.”
“Come around here with your little goddamn sack of money. Maybe you don’t even belong here! Anyway, I’ve never seen you before.”
Lee sighed, but then finally said it out loud: “Oh, you’ve seen him alright, indeed you have. Miss Hatcher’s third grade?”
The man’s mouth flew open. “You were that little shit?”
“Oh, yes.”
“All the time with that little goddamn clarinet?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well I’ll be jiggered. Say, you don’t seem to have made out too well, do you?”
“Oh? Where’s your little sack of money?”
“You know something, I’ll tell you the solemn truth: you’re nothing in this world but trash—I hate to say that to a man of your age.”
Lee grinned.
“Smile then, do! I reckon you don’t care about nothing—not me, not the Cow, and not the country neither!”
“It’s finished.”
“What’s that I hear you say?”
“Finished. Oh, I don’t say it won’t slop along for another two or three hundred years.”
“Why . . . my God . . . you’re a bad man!”
Lee grinned. “You realize, of course, that you have a tic right . . . ”—he touched the spot—”there! Right under the left eye.”
“That’s right, keep it up, I know your type. Why boy, I’ve been handling your type all my life! It’s not your country you hate, but …”
Lee stood.
“ . . . life. That’s right! And now if you ain’t too grand to step outside . . . ”
“By all means.”
“I’m going to whup you good, boy.”
“With my speed? In fact, you’re going to wish you were back in the third grade.”
“Fourth.”
“Third, I’m telling you.”
“Debra Mae? I reckon you remember her, don’t you?”
He was right. Lee could see her even now, a dark- complected girl. It was the man grinning
now, a most obscene smile. Lee yelled at him.
“Blackguard!” Then: “Had to screw her, didn’t you? Hound. You know, I hadn’t really intended to kill you, but I shall certainly do so now. I’ve killed four already, you should know.”
“You the one doing all that?”
They rose and filed out, the cook coming too. There was a blank wall on the other side, enough to fence them in and keep the other from running away. One thing did trouble him: he had never before had to do with someone of his own generation, formidable and, like himself, with nothing to lose.
“Very well, and now I shall hove your skull in.”
They engaged. Lee was hardened to the sound of cane on bone followed by shrieks; this time it was clashing sticks. He didn’t like it. The man was good, especially with cross strokes and parry. Lee aimed one at his fibula, but almost fell himself. Now for the first time he saw the full horror of it, to be set upon by an old man with large weapon. He didn’t like it.
“Freemason!”
Suddenly, Lee took one to the crown—painful. No one had ever treated him this way. He goggled, eyes bulging, then brought down his own stick with such force that it made a chiming sound. He was in peril of losing this battle. He wanted his hat, a helmet, umbrella or book, anything to save his head. Came now another strike straight to his neck, formerly his own special target. Now that he thought about it, the other man was perhaps a few months younger than himself and, moreover, had passed his entire life in the cruel South. Suddenly, Lee nicked the man’s Adam’s apple.
