“I saw him get in,” said Macklin, “back at the Stop ’N Start on Pico?” He groped under the seat for the tire iron. “I was driving by and—”
“Get out.”
“What?”
“We saw you. Out of the car.”
He shrugged and swung his legs around, lifting the iron behind him as he stood.
The younger man motioned with his head and the driver yanked Macklin forward by the shirt, kicking the door closed on Macklin’s arm at the same time. He let out a yell as the tire iron clanged to the pavement.
“Another accident?” suggested the younger man.
“Too messy, after the one yesterday. Come on, pal, you’re going to get to see your friend.”
Macklin hunched over in pain. One of them jerked his bad arm up and he screamed. Over it all he felt a needle jab him high, in the armpit, and then he was falling.
The van was bumping along on the freeway when he came out of it. With his good hand he pawed his face, trying to clear his vision. His other arm didn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t move when he wanted it to.
He was sprawled on his back. He felt a wheel humming under him, below the tirewell. And there were the others. They were sitting up. One was Juano.
He was aware of a stink, sickeningly sweet, with an overlay he remembered from his high-school lab days but couldn’t quite place. It sliced into his nostrils.
He didn’t recognize the others. Pasty faces. Heads thrown forward, arms distended strangely with the wrists jutting out from the coat sleeves.
“Give me a hand,” he said, not really expecting it.
He strained to sit up. He could make out the backs of two heads in the cab, on the other side of the grid.
He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Hey. Can you guys understand me?”
“Let us rest,” someone said weakly.
He rose too quickly and his equilibrium failed. He had been shot up with something strong enough to knock him out, but it was probably the Dexamyl that had kept his mind from leaving his body completely. The van yawed, descending an off ramp, as he began to drift. He heard voices. They slipped in and out of his consciousness like fish in darkness, moving between his ears in blurred levels he could not always identify.
“There’s still room at the cross.” That was the younger, small-boned man, he was almost sure.
“Oh, I’ve been interested in Jesus for a long time, but I never could get a handle on him…”
“Well, beware the wrath to come. You really should, you know.”
He put his head back and became one with a dark dream. There was something he wanted to remember. He did not want to remember it. He turned his mind to doggerel, to the old song. The time to hesitate is through, he thought. No time to wallow in the mire. Try now we can only lose/And our love become a funeral pyre. The van bumped to a halt. His head bounced off steel.
The door opened. He watched it. It seemed to take forever.
Through slitted eyes: a man in a uniform that barely fit, hobbling his way to the back of the van, supported by the two of them. A line of gasoline pumps and a sign that read WE NEVER CLOSE—NEVER UNDERSOLD. The letters breathed. Before they let go of him, the one with rumpled clothes unbuttoned the attendant’s shirt and stabbed a hypodermic into the chest, close to the heart and next to a strap that ran under the arms. The needle darted and flashed dully in the wan morning light.
“This one needs a booster,” said the driver, or maybe it was the other one. Their voices ran together. “Just make sure you don’t give him the same stuff you gave old Juano’s sweetheart there. I want them to walk in on their own hind legs.” “You think I want to carry ’em?” “We’ve done it before, brother. Yesterday, for instance.” At that Macklin let his eyelids down the rest of the way, and then he was drifting again.
The wheels drummed under him.
“How much longer?” “Soon now. Soon.”
These voices weak, like a folding and unfolding of paper.
Brakes grabbed. The doors opened again. A thin light played over Macklin’s lids, forcing them up.
He had another moment of clarity; they were becoming more frequent now. He blinked and felt pain. This time the van was parked between low hills. Two men in Western costumes passed by, one of them leading a horse. The driver stopped a group of figures in togas. He seemed to be asking for directions.
Behind them, a castle lay in ruins. Part of a castle. And over to the side Macklin identified a church steeple, the corner of a turn-of-the-century street, a mock-up of a rocket launching pad and an old brick schoolhouse. Under the flat sky they receded into intersections of angles and vistas which teetered almost imperceptibly, ready to topple.
The driver and the other one set a stretcher on the tailgate. On the litter was a long, crumpled shape, sheeted and encased in a plastic bag. They sloughed it inside and started to secure the doors.
“You got the pacemaker back, I hope.” “Stunt director said it’s in the body bag.” “It better be. Or it’s our ass in a sling. Your ass. How’d he get so racked up, anyway?” “Ran him over a cliff in a sports car. Or no, maybe this one was the head-on they staged for, you know, that new cop series. That’s what they want now, realism. Good thing he’s a cremation—ain’t no way Kelly or Dee’s gonna get this one pretty again by tomorrow.” “That’s why, man. That’s why they picked him. Ashes don’t need makeup.”
The van started up.
“Going home,” someone said weakly.
“Yes…”
Macklin was awake now. Crouching by the bag, he scanned the faces, Juano’s and the others’. The eyes were staring, fixed on a point as untouchable as the thinnest of plasma membranes, and quite unreadable.
He crawled over next to the one from the self-service gas station. The shirt hung open like folds of skin. He saw the silver box strapped to the flabby chest, directly over the heart. Pacemaker? he thought wildly.
He knelt and put his ear to the box.
He heard a humming, like an electric wristwatch.
What for? To keep the blood pumping just enough so the tissues don’t rigor mortis and decay? For God’s sake, for how much longer?
He remembered Whitey and the nurse. “What happens? Between the time they become ‘remains’ and the services? How long is that? A couple of days? Three?”
A wave of nausea broke inside him. When he gazed at them again the faces were wavering, because his eyes were filled with tears.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I wish you could be here,” said the gas station attendant.
“And where is that?”
“We have all been here before,” said another voice.
“Going home,” said another.
Yes, he thought, understanding. Soon you will have your rest; soon you will no longer be objects, commodities. You will be honored and grieved for and your personhood given back, and then you will at last rest in peace. It is not for nothing that you have labored so long and so patiently. You will see, all of you. Soon.
He wanted to tell them, but he couldn’t. He hoped they already knew.
The van lurched and slowed. The hand brake ratcheted.
He lay down and closed his eyes.
He heard the door creak back.
“Let’s go.”
The driver began to herd the bodies out. There was the sound of heavy, dragging feet, and from outside the smell of fresh-cut grass and roses.
“What about this one?” said the driver, kicking Macklin’s shoe.
“Oh, he’ll do his 48-hours’ service, don’t worry. It’s called utilizing your resources.”
“Tell me about it. When do we get the Indian?”
“Soon as Saint John’s certificates him. He’s overdue. The crash was sloppy.”
“This one won’t be. But first Dee’ll want him to talk, what he knows and who he told. Two doggers in two days is too much. Then we’ll probably run him back to his car and do it. And phone it in, so Saint John’s gets him.
Even if it’s DOA. Clean as hammered shit. Grab the other end.”
He felt the body bag sliding against his leg. Grunting, they hauled it out and hefted it toward—where?
He opened his eyes. He hesitated only a second, to take a deep breath.
Then he was out of the van and running.
Gravel kicked up under his feet. He heard curses and metal slamming. He just kept his head down and his legs pumping. Once he twisted around and saw a man scurrying after him. The driver paused by the mortuary building and shouted. But Macklin kept moving.
He stayed on the path as long as he dared. It led him past mossy trees and bird-stained statues. Then he jumped and cut across a carpet of matted leaves and into a glade. He passed a gate that spelled DRY LAWN CEMETERY in old iron, kept running until he spotted a break in the fence where it sloped by the edge of the grounds. He tore through huge, dusty ivy and skidded down, down. And then he was on a sidewalk.
Cars revved at a wide intersection, impatient to get to work. He heard coughing and footsteps, but it was only a bus stop at the middle of the block. The air brakes of a commuter special hissed and squealed. A clutch of grim people rose from the bench and filed aboard like sleepwalkers.
He ran for it, but the doors flapped shut and the bus roared on.
More people at the corner, stepping blindly between each other. He hurried and merged with them.
Dry cleaners, laundromat, hamburger stand, parking lot, gas station, all closed. But there was a telephone at the gas station.
He ran against the light. He sealed the booth behind him and nearly collapsed against the glass.
He rattled money into the phone, dialed Operator and called for the police.
The air was close in the booth. He smelled hair tonic. Sweat swelled out of his pores and glazed his skin. Somewhere a radio was playing.
A sergeant punched onto the line. Macklin yelled for them to come and get him. Where was he? He looked around frantically, but there were no street signs. Only a newspaper rack chained to a post. NONE OF THE DEAD HAS BEEN IDENTIFIED, read the headline.
His throat tightened, his voice racing. “None of the dead has been identified,” he said, practically babbling.
Silence.
So he went ahead, pouring it out about a van and a hospital and a man in rumpled clothes who shot guys up with some kind of superadrenalin and electric pacemakers and nightclerks and crash tests. He struggled to get it all out before it was too late. A part of him heard what he was saying and wondered if he had lost his mind.
“Who will bury them?” he cried. “ What kind of monsters—” The line clicked off.
He hung on to the phone. His eyes were swimming with sweat. He was aware of his heart and counted the beats, while the moisture from his breath condensed on the glass.
He dropped another coin into the box.
“Good morning, Saint John’s. May I help you?”
He couldn’t remember the room number. He described the man, the accident, the date. Sixth floor, yes, that was right. He kept talking until she got it.
There was a pause. Hold.
He waited.
“Sir?”
He didn’t say anything. It was as if he had no words left.
“I’m terribly sorry…”
He felt the blood drain from him. His fingers were cold and numb.
“...but I’m afraid the surgery wasn’t successful. The party did not recover. If you wish I’ll connect you with—”
“The party’s name was White Feather,” he said mechanically. The receiver fell and dangled, swinging like the pendulum of a clock.
He braced his legs against the sides of the booth. After what seemed like a very long time he found himself reaching reflexly for his cigarettes. He took one from the crushed pack, straightened it and hung it on his lips.
On the other side of the frosted glass, featureless shapes lumbered by on the boulevard. He watched them for a while.
He picked a book of matches from the floor, lit two together and held them close to the glass. The flame burned a clear spot through the moisture.
Try to set the night on fire, he thought stupidly, repeating the words until they and any others he could think of lost meaning.
The fire started to burn his fingers. He hardly felt it. He ignited the matchbook cover, too, turning it over and over. He wondered if there was anything else that would burn, anything and everything. He squeezed his eyelids together. When he opened them, he was looking down at his own clothing.
He peered out through the clear spot in the glass.
Outside, the outline fuzzy and distorted but quite unmistakable, was a blue van. It was waiting at the curb.
The Enemy
Isaac Bashevis Singer
I
During the Second World War a number of Yiddish writers and journalists managed to reach the United States via Cuba, Morocco, and even Shanghai—all of them refugees from Poland. I did not always follow the news about their arrival in the New York Yiddish press, so I really never knew who among my colleagues had remained alive and who had perished. One evening when I sat in the Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street reading Phantasms of the Living by Gurney, Mayers, and Podmor, someone nudged my elbow. A little man with a high forehead and graying black hair looked at me through horn-rimmed glasses, his eyes slanted like those of a Chinese.
He smiled, showing long yellow teeth. He had drawn cheeks, a short nose, a long upper lip. He wore a crumpled shirt and a tie that dangled from his collar like a ribbon. His smile expressed the sly satisfaction of a once-close friend who is aware that he has not been recognized—obviously, he enjoyed my confusion. In fact, I remembered the face but could not connect it with any name. Perhaps I had become numb from the hours spent in that chair reading case histories of telepathy, clairvoyance, and the survival of the dead.
“You have forgotten me, eh?” he said. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Chaikin.”
The moment he mentioned his name I remembered everything. He was a feuilletonist on a Yiddish newspaper in Warsaw. We had been friends. We had even called each other “thou,” though he was twenty years older than I. “So you are alive,” I said.
“If this is being alive. Have I really gotten so old?”
“You are the same schlemiel.”
“Not exactly the same. You thought I was dead, didn’t you? It wouldn’t have taken much. Let’s go out and have a glass of coffee. What are you reading? You already know English?”
“Enough to read.”
“What is this thick book about?”
I told him.
“So you’re still interested in this hocus-pocus?”
I got up. We walked out together, passing the Catalogue Room, and took the elevator down to the exit on 42nd Street. There we entered a cafeteria. I wanted to buy Chaikin dinner but he assured me that he had already eaten. All he asked for was a glass of black coffee. “It should be hot,” he said. “American coffee is never hot enough. Also, I hate granulated sugar. Do you think you could find me a lump of sugar I can chew on?”
It was not easy for me to make the girl behind the counter pour coffee into a glass and give me a lump of sugar for a greenhorn who missed the old ways. But I did not want Chaikin to attack America. I already had my first papers and I was about to become a citizen. I brought him his glass of black coffee and an egg cookie like the ones they used to bake in Warsaw. With fingers yellowed from tobacco Chaikin broke a piece and tasted it. “Too sweet.”
He lit a cigarette and then another, all the time talking, and it was not long before the ashtray on our table was filled with butts and ashes. He was saying: “I guess you know I was living in Rio de Janeiro the last few years. I always used to read your stories in The Forwerts. To be frank, until recently I thought of your preoccupation with superstition and miracles as an eccentricity—or perhaps a literary mannerism. But then something happened to me which I haven’t been able to cope with.”
“Have you se
en a ghost?”
“You might say that.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? There’s nothing I like better than to hear such things, especially from a skeptic like you.”
“Really, I’m embarrassed to talk about it. I’m willing to admit that somewhere there may be a God who mismanages this miserable world but I never believed in your kind of hodgepodge. However, sometimes you come up against an event for which there is absolutely no rational explanation. What happened to me was pure madness. Either I was out of my mind during those days or they were one long hallucination. And yet I’m not altogether crazy. You probably know I was in France when the war broke out. When the Vichy government was established I had a chance to escape to Casablanca. From there I went to Brazil. In Rio they have a little Yiddish newspaper and they made me their editor. By the way, I used to reprint all your stuff. Rio is beautiful but what can you do there? I drank their bitter coffee and I scribbled my articles. The women there are another story—it must be the climate. Their demand for love is dangerous for an old bachelor. When I had a chance to leave for New York I grabbed it. I don’t have to tell you that getting the visa was not easy. I sailed on an Argentine ship that took twelve days to reach New York.
“Whenever I sail on a ship I go through a crisis. I lose my way on ships and in hotels. I can never find my room. Naturally I traveled tourist class, and I shared a cabin with a Greek fellow and two Italians. That Greek was a wild man, forever mumbling to himself. I don’t understand Greek but I am sure he was cursing. Perhaps he had left a young wife and was jealous. At night when the lights were out his eyes shone like a wolf’s. The two Italians seemed to be twins—both short, fat, round like barrels. They talked to each other all day long and half through the night. Every few minutes they burst out laughing. Italian is almost as foreign to me as Greek, and I tried to make myself understood in broken French. I could just as well have spoken to the wall. They ignored me completely. The sea always irritates my bladder. Ten times a night I had to urinate, and climbing down the ladder from my berth was an ordeal.
“I was afraid that in the dining room they’d make me sit with other people whose language I didn’t understand. But they gave me a small table by myself near the entrance. At first I was happy. I thought I’d be able to eat in peace. But at the very beginning I took one look at my waiter and knew he was my enemy. For hating, no reason is necessary. As a rule Argentines are not especially big, but this guy was very tall, with broad shoulders, a real giant. He had the eyes of a murderer. The first time he came to my table he gave me such a mean look it made me shudder. His face contorted and his eyes bulged. I tried to speak to him in French and then German, but he only shook his head. I made a sign asking for the menu and he let me wait for it half an hour. Whatever I asked for he laughed in my face and brought me something else. He threw down the dishes with a bang. In short, this waiter declared war on me. He was so spiteful it made me sick. Three times a day I was in his power and each time he found new ways to harass me. He tried to serve me pork chops, although I always sent them back. At first I thought the man was a Nazi and wanted to hurt me because I was a Jew. But no. At a neighboring table sat a Jewish family. The woman even wore a Star of David brooch, and still he served them correctly and even chatted with them. I went to the main steward to ask for a different table, but either he did not understand me or pretended he didn’t. There were a number of Jews on the ship and I could have easily made acquaintances, but I had fallen into such a mood that I could not speak to anyone. When I finally did make an effort to approach someone he walked away. By that time I really began to suspect that evil powers were at work against me. I could not sleep nights. Each time I dozed off I woke up with a start. My dreams were horrible, as if someone had put a curse on me. The ship had a small library, which included a number of books in French and German. They were locked in a glass case. When I asked the librarian for a book she frowned and turned away.
Dark Forces: The 25th Anniversary Edition Page 3
