“Arrogant. Of course. You had to take yourself very seriously. So others would. You had to believe in yourself. That was part of the stage setting, darling. Good Lord, if you keep telling a frump she’s lovely, she’ll start believing it and even start improving in looks. You can pat people into shape like tortillas. Almost any shape you want.”
“I’m a good artist,” I told her.
She patted my knee. “Poor Gil. No, baby. You aren’t any kind of an artist. Not any kind at all. You’re just a big guy with muscles and you’ve had a good time, haven’t you? The end of the line, baby. All out. Evis may be able to unload a few more, but a year from now nobody will even remember who the hell you were. Unless you can keep on paying Steve’s fees, and I know damn well you can’t, because you haven’t saved a dime. And I’m not going to keep on with it, certainly.”
“I need you,” I said. “I need to come and talk to you. I get shaky and then I need to come and…”
She took her hand away. “Now listen! How can you be so goddamn dumb? This was a gag. Get it? Wilma had fun. So did you. Now Wilma is bored. With you and with the gag. You just aren’t good company, Gil. You haven’t any conversation and damn few manners and you go around preening yourself and flexing your muscles. I’m throwing you off my back. If you’re smart, you’ll find a nice clean counter and get behind it and put on a monkey hat and start making with the cheese on rye.”
She left me there. I saw her down on the dock. She was laughing with Steve. They were laughing at me. I knew it. I was nothing and they had made me into something and now they were making me back into nothing again. I sat up there and I was empty. I was like a figure you could make out of twisting wire coat hangers so they were the outline of a man. You could see through me. See the stars and the lights and everything. And sounds went right through me, and the tiny breeze that there was, up high where I sat.
And right in the middle of all the wire a little round thing started to grow. Round and solid and shining. It grew and grew until it filled up all the wire and then I was me again and I wanted to laugh out loud. The best part of the joke was on her.
They put it up on the cork board. It was on thick white paper and they put it up with four yellow thumbtacks, one in each corner. I drew every leaf. It took me hours. Every single little leaf, and each leaf had five little points. One day it was gone and I asked, but nobody knew what had happened to it. I wanted to do it all over again, but there wasn’t time. Because by then we were planting the garden. I hated the garden. I worked all one day, squashing each seed between my fingers when I put it down in the hole I made with the stick. Nothing grew there.
She had thought she had made me. I had made myself. But I could see the danger, even in that. The danger of her mouth. The laughing of it. And others laughing. The way they were laughing down there. I could not permit that. I could not allow it.
I stood up and felt tall. I felt that my shoulders were against the sky. I looked around. The light reflection was dim on the croquet wickets, on the striped posts. I walked over, and my body felt as if it were made of leather and springs, tireless. I pulled the post from the ground. It was hard wood, striped in gay paint, and the end that went into the ground was capped with brass that ended in a sharp point.
The wood was hard. I held the post in both hands close to my chest. I increased the effort slowly. My shoulders made popping sounds. The muscles of my arms creaked. My throat closed and the world darkened and my hands were bright with pain. It had to happen, or nothing would happen. This had to be true or nothing would happen. This had to be true or nothing would be true.
And the hard maple made a faint crackling sound and then broke sharply and I fell to my knees in the sudden weakness, my ears ringing, the depths of my lungs burning. In my left hand I held the turned brass tip, with four or five inches of the glossy wood attached. I threw the rest of the post behind me as I stood up, heard it roll and clatter on the gravel. I tucked the small end in the waistband of my trunks. The brass was cool against my belly.
It had broken and I was strong and important and known to myself. Whole again and significant. I went down to them and laughter was something that ran gaily around in my chest, little running silver bits, like spilled mercury. I went down among them. It was significant that I went down from a high place where I had proved my strength in the lights. Sister Elizabeth had read the pagan myths to us, of the ones on Olympus who, for amusement, coldly and without compassion, would go down to play among the mortals, concealing the godhead, concealing the shining uniqueness the way the striped bit of wood capped with brass was hidden from them. It was hidden because it was proof of strength they could not know, and if I displayed it openly they would look too knowingly at me and be ashamed. I was grateful to Wilma because she had made it necessary to undergo the trial of strength, the final proof.
I swam with them, careful not to lose the symbol. It was enough to know that it was there. And I found that I could talk with them cleverly, so that they knew nothing. That was enough. It pleased me.
When at last, after a long time, we swam in naked darkness, I swam with the symbol of strength in my hand. I played their childish games because it pleased me to do so.
And then there came a time when I was beside Wilma, stars pale on her body in the black water. And the meaning of many things was revealed to me. It was a new secret I had discovered, a new measure of my growth. It’s something you must learn to do, and it’s hard. You must open your mind to a blankness, and then what you must do will be told to you.
I felt a great tenderness toward her. A gratitude, because she was making this possible for me. She became a part of the design, and once it was unfolded, it was so evident that I wondered why I had not seen it before. It fitted together. It was an art form in which I had not worked before and the laws of the form were rigid. If it were not done to precise ritual, it would all be spoiled. Out of my strength and importance flowed the plan and I felt humble. It was an honor for her that she could share this uniqueness, share it as a mortal proving her mortality.
She swam slowly and, beside her, holding the symbol of strength in my right hand, I slid my left hand under her arm lightly across one breast to cup her right breast, the water-cooled surface and the living warmth underneath. I drove the sharp brass tip into the back of her head with one quick blow and pulled it free. I felt a tremor run through her body and then a stillness. She seemed to grow heavier. I released her.
She was motionless, face down. She sank slowly beneath the surface. For a moment I could see the gleam of paleness under the water and then that faded down and was gone. I had been true to the vision, and I had accomplished it to perfection. She had shared the perfection and it had honored her. I had been given a new reassurance of strength, and out of it I had become stronger. There would be other assurances until I would at last be so shining that they would not dare look directly at me. My shining would blind them.
When they began to call, I called too, and laughed inside. She lay below us, honored and dedicated, and it was not yet time to explain it. I put the shorts back on in the darkness and hid the symbol again. I dived for her as they told me to. It amused me. Later, back in my room, when I changed to the khaki shorts and the striped shirt, I put the symbol of strength and art in the pocket of the shorts. They searched through the night. It surprised me that they found her. I thought at first that to bring her up would spoil the exact form of it, but then I realized that it was part of the ritual, a part I had not understood. It was fitting that she be brought up as dawn was coming, because then it would form a new symbol of birth into death, the dawn of her honor and of the importance I had given her by selecting her to complete the design.
They called us and I sat there on the floor and turned the pages of the big books. Utrillo, Rouault, Dufy. They had left patterns behind them. But they could not even draw. I had drawn every leaf. And then I had progressed beyond them to this new form. This new art form had a rhythm and a symmetry that coul
d never be captured on two-dimensional canvas. It had a richness of color beyond anything that can be purchased in a tube. And a brush is an artificial thing. It comes between the artist and the art form. I wondered why they had not seen and understood that. The art form must be done with the body itself. The dance is artificial because it merely acts out a symbolic drama. It imitates the meaningful. The body must be used for a meaningful act, and each meaningful act must be accomplished with the rhythm and design inherent in the act. And the art form cannot be undertaken by anyone except those few who have the special insight and strength of the new shining race of man.
I wanted to tell them. I could hear them babbling about car keys and criminal investigation and newspaper reporters. It made me impatient. I wanted to stand up and roar for silence and then explain what I had discovered. If I could make them understand, then they could stop this babbling foolishness. They could not learn the methods and the plans, of course. But if they could follow my words, they could see how it had been given to me to open this new frontier. I put the books aside, those books that were merely exhaustive records of failure, of the lack of comprehension. I sat there filled with contempt for them. No, you could not tell them. It was too intricate for them. Their standards were too mortal.
I felt the excitement coming, and I did not know why. I looked carefully around the room, looking for the source, knowing that this was, as it would always be, the first warning of a new design, a new creative act. The form was still new to me, so that it took me a long time to find my way through to the inevitable.
As with Wilma, it was ridiculously easy. They were mortal. They could not be convinced with words. But they could be convinced with deeds. With demonstration. Then they could see, all at once, the beauty and the significance of it. And then there would be no awkwardness and no delay in interpretation. Then we could discuss it calmly and I could explain to them why the form had to be exact each time, balanced to meet the symmetry of the moment, precise in its beauty, brilliant and deathless.
Mavis Dockerty sat six feet from me, her back to me. I felt differently toward her than toward Wilma. I felt grateful to Wilma. But I owed this woman nothing. It was I who would honor her, who would make her this gift that would provide an eternal moment of meaningfulness to her shallow life, so that, in effect, she would live forever.
I stood tall behind her, my feet planted strongly, and I took the godhead symbol from my pocket and held it tightly. I learned another thing in that moment. That it is important to achieve a special expression for the need of the moment. The face must be utterly slack and expressionless. All expression is in the muscular rhythm, so the face must not detract. I waited until they began to notice me, to look at me rather oddly. Then, as with Wilma, I slipped my hand under her left arm, bringing it across to cup her right breast. She tensed in shock and in my mind I told her strongly to welcome this and not to resist it. I drove the symbol into her skull with one sharp blow, sensing that I must leave it there for a time. I stepped back and it was a gay wooden decoration, bedded perfectly. She bent forward from the waist in slow worship, and there was but one flaw to mar it. Her leg kept making a rather ridiculous kicking motion.
I looked up, waiting for their awe and their appreciation, hoping the flaw had not disturbed them, that the flaw had been overbalanced by the perfection of placement, and I saw her husband and the largest uniformed man running at me, while Steve Winsan bounded from the room.
The uniformed man yanked his gun from his holster and struck me across the side of the face. I fell heavily. I could not move, but I was aware of what was going on. It puzzled me. It seemed such a ridiculous thing to do. Ridiculous to hear the scream of a woman. And then, suddenly, I realized my own error. I had expected too much of them. The act had been truly beyond their comprehension. They would make no effort to understand. They had completely missed the significance of it. And I smiled inside and knew how I would punish them. Later, when they realized, they would beg and plead for an explanation. They had acted hastily. They had hurt me. So it was my right and my privilege to deny them access to me.
They pulled my wrists together and put handcuffs on me. They had moved my body. And that gave me a problem that bothered me. True, I could refuse to speak to them, but even in the movements of my body there would be meaning for those who watched carefully. It was beyond my powers to do anything at all devoid of meaning.
After a time I resolved that difficulty. I would give them no clue, by word or movement. When they saw that I was conscious, they sat me in a chair. I gave them no help. Once they sat me there, I stayed there, far back inside myself, looking at nothing, and I was laughing at them. I would give them nothing. No matter how they pleaded, I would give them nothing. They kept at me, shouting at me, pulling me this way and that way. I assumed each position into which they pulled me, but I made no motion of my own. And soon I found a new talent that pleased me. I could make my thoughts loud, so that their voices came to me from far away, fuzzy and insignificant and without meaning. Once you are able to do that—and only very few, I am certain, can accomplish it—it destroys the meaning of the passage of time. A year is a minute, or an hour is a lifetime.
I was aware that others had come. New ones. Older ones with grave faces. I sat there. I stared at nothing. I let my mouth sag open. And I felt the rope of saliva from the corner of my mouth to my chest. I could shut them out entirely. They would get nothing from me. There were great depths in me, a thousand hiding places. Where no one could follow me and drive me out into the light.
And in one of the dark places I began to redo that picture of long ago. Every leaf. Each leaf had five points. It would take a very long time, and once it was done, I could do it over again. With the ultimate of care.
From a long way away somebody came to me and he took my chained hands and lifted them so that they were over my head. Then he let go of them. I held my hands there. I would not betray myself. I would hold them up there until they withered and died, until my shoulders locked in place, rather than betray myself by any conscious movement.
And then somebody took my hands quite gently and lowered them back to my lap. I knew then that I had defeated all of them. It was the final test.
Now they would leave me alone. I would never let them know how. Then I would be the only one who had ever found out, in all the history of the world.
Chapter Seventeen
(JOSEPH MALESKI—AFTERWARD)
ROY CARREN dropped me off at Shattocks’ Pine Tree Restaurant. It’s just down the road from the barracks. By then it was eleven o’clock in the morning. Sunday morning. I watched him drive down the road. Slow. I felt like somebody had peeled the skin off my face and stuck it back on again, using too much glue. When I rubbed my jaw I felt the whiskers. I felt real strange. It made me remember a time when I was a little kid. I had to go to a Halloween party all dressed up funny in the daylight. I had to go alone with everybody laughing at me. All the grown-up people.
I went on into the restaurant. On Sunday they serve a big breakfast and serve it up until noon. Usually I sit at the counter. But as soon as I got in the door and saw them all looking at me, I knew that if I sat at the counter they were going to start asking all those questions. Usually I don’t mind all that. I guess maybe I sort of like knowing what has gone on. Like with a bad accident on the main route or something. I go in and they ask me about it and I tell them. But I could see they wanted to know all about the drowning and those people and all, and I just didn’t want to talk about it. So I turned and went on over to one of the booths and slid in and hiked the holster around so the gun wasn’t digging into me.
I guess I didn’t look so friendly. Benny, from the garage, came over to the booth sort of uneasy and stood about four feet away and said, “Guess it was kind of a mess out there, that guy going crazy and everything, eh?”
I gave him a look and nodded and picked up the menu and opened it, even though I knew I was going to have what I always have on Sunday when I
go in there. Sunnyside up with ham and a double order of toast with the wild strawberry jam Mrs. Shattock makes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him stand there and then go away.
I looked at the menu but I didn’t see the printing there. I kept seeing that crazy one, and me moving in slow motion while he stuck that thing in the woman’s head. Roy told me a hundred times I couldn’t have risked a shot, and even if I had, I couldn’t have squeezed it off fast enough, but it’s a thing you remember and wonder about.
Janey Shattock came over and stood by me. I looked up at her and tried to grin at her like always, but it didn’t work right.
“The usual, Janey,” I said, and my voice was too loud. It was as though the other people in the place weren’t talking the way they always do. And there didn’t seem to be the usual noise coming from the kitchen. They seemed to be looking at me as if I was some sort of a freak or something.
She brought my order after a while and I said, “Bring yourself some coffee and sit down, Janey.”
She did. She sat across from me. I looked at her and I knew she wasn’t going to ask any questions. I said in a low voice, “It was bad and I can’t talk about it yet.”
“I know by looking at you it was bad, Joe,” she said.
It was only after I started eating I knew how hungry I was. She was quiet, the way I wanted her to be. She’s a strong girl. She’s big, and I thought when I glanced across at her that she really isn’t plain. She isn’t pretty and she isn’t plain either. Maybe handsome, if you can call a girl that.
And I felt ashamed all of a sudden. Ashamed of me. Ashamed of Joseph Maleski. Because this is what I have been doing: dating Janey and not liking some things about her. Like how her hands are sort of rough and red-knuckled, and she all the time hides them in her lap when you’re out with her. And how, unless she has just washed her hair, there’s a little kitchen smell in it, because they serve a lot of fried stuff and she’s in and out of the kitchen all day.
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