In a few seconds he was dressed again in dry clean clothes—dressed enough to run down and borrow ten dollars from Mr. Wallace at the A & P, enough to run into the liquor store for a quart and bound up the stairs again with the bottle in his hand, tear off the wrapping, open it, pour, all in the space of five minutes. Listening to the sound of the liquor spilling into the glass, thinking of the ordeal he had been through during the past few hours, how long it had taken, how much it had cost in mental agony and physical sweat, his spirits rose. He held the glass in his shaking hand and almost did not need it. Why didn’t I do this in the first place? he asked himself with a surprised smile. He had not even thought of Mr. Wallace till after he got back. Think what I could have saved myself. It was almost amusing! If he had been normal this morning, not befogged and benumbed with fatigue and shattering hangover, he would have thought at once of this easier quicker way. What a story that little jaunt would make someday, in the right company. How he would laugh and they would laugh. Don Birnam’s Rhine-Journey. Great! He drank.
Or if he had been normal at all during any part of that long ordeal, if he had not had to summon all of his concentration, all of his energy, merely to set one foot in front of the other at every step, merely to keep his balance and so keep on, he would have realized before he had gone five blocks that something was amiss besides himself. One pawnshop closed, or two—three at the most—would have told him that nothing was in league against him beyond the season, the holiday, the New Year of the Jews. It would not happen again in a lifetime, such a coincidence never happened to anyone, but it would happen to him and it did and it had. That would be the hard thing to explain when he told the anecdote (anecdote!). People would think he had made it up, had picked Yom Kippur to make the story a good one. In any case they wouldn’t care so long as it was a good one—any more than they would care to learn or hear of the real, the uncomfortable, the cruel and painful details behind the joke. These would only embarrass them, these they would believe even less than the hard-to-believe fact of the coincidence. And why should they—didn’t he look like anybody else, wasn’t he neat and clean, respectable? Did things like that happen to people like him or them—were they, or he, Bowery bums?
The new drink warmed his stomach, warmed all his whole tired frame, his arms even, his aching legs, and he felt a rising sense of well-being, heightened and hot, such as he had not felt, it seemed, for months. Well, truth is stranger than fiction, you could say—and just to prove it, just to make the story completely preposterous, you could throw in that little detail of the frantic wop (and don’t forget the dactyls) who clutched at your arm and scared the daylights out of you by shrieking “Mister! he’s cheating me!” Who would believe that? Nobody. And wasn’t it just as well? Wasn’t it even more fun—weren’t you liked even more—if they sort of got the teasing impression that maybe the story was true and maybe it wasn’t?—if you left it up to them, like the author’s point in The Guardsman? They would look at you with a faint tilted smile, one eye partly closed, trying to dope out if you were pulling their leg. You would look back—
He poured another drink, a full tumbler, and went into the bathroom to see how he would look back. Dead-pan, that was it; eyebrows raised a little; frank eyes wide open; followed, perhaps, by just the suggestion of a sigh suppressed (as if the memory were, for the moment, too painful); and then—then the slow disarming ultimate winning smile to take the edge off everyone’s discomfort and make you loved again. In the glass of the cabinet he saw the sweaty clothes lying on the tiled floor and kicked them under the washbowl out of the way.
Everyone’s? Whose? Who, for instance? Loved by whom? Who would he ever be telling the story to in the first place, where would he ever be welcome with such a story or any story, who ever gathered around for him to charm them with amusing anecdotes believable or not, when was he ever the center of any kind of gathering, any group at all, even of two or three—who had anything to do with him nowadays except his brother and Helen? True, he was the center, the talked-of one, when the three of them were together, but the talked-of and center for reasons quite different from those he’d been dreaming of now—and indeed the foolish psychiatrist had said his only importance was his nuisance-value; the only way he made himself felt was to cause anxiety in others; failing to achieve prominence in any other way, he achieved it by becoming a worry; he’d probably stop drinking entirely if people stopped talking and worrying. The patient is trying to wheedle attention and comfort from his betters by flinging his infantile narcissism in their faces. Words, words, words. The patient is using a technique of hysteria to exploit his illness for epinosic gain. What a ridiculous notion, what did he know about it, what did they, what did anyone—how did they know why you did what you did, when no one knew the things that drove you, not even yourself? He turned in disgust and saw the typewriter and its split case (the schizoid portable) against the wall of the tub. But the Nightmare of the Avenues was a fading nightmare now, something that had not happened—or had happened only in his imagination as an episode with which to regale companions he would never have. With nearly seven dollars in his pocket, with a full quart on the living room table, a half-full glass in his hand, he had no need of 2nd Avenue now.
The glass was empty, the quart by no means full; and some moments later there was scarcely more than a pint. He looked at the bottle in sudden alarm. The alarm gave way as suddenly to a feeling of delight and self-congratulation. Jesus Christ was he for once going to have sense enough not to be caught short? He had the money, he still had his faculties and the strength, he was a long way yet from passing-out, still further from the greater need later—well, good for him! He sprang up.
That money. Did he still have it? Maybe he ought to carry his money around tightly wadded in each fist, strung together with a string running up inside his sleeves and across the shoulders, like the homemade mittens he used to wear to school. He smiled at such a delightful idea. But the money. As he pulled it out of his pocket safe and sound, he wondered again what had become of all that money he had had yesterday, last night. Certainly he had never spent it all. He wouldn’t be as good as he was today, if he had. To hell with it! It didn’t matter now, not with these bills in his hand—these bills that were as good as any others, as good as a million, as good as enough-to-drink (for once) and more.
Provided he got there and got back. He would. He was feeling fine, great; a little unsteady, perhaps, but strong enough, and bright as hell. The things he felt, thought! His mind seemed to rise clear of his body, be larger than himself, see everything. It was intoxication (hell, he knew that), but it was also that old god-like superiority again, a superiority conscious of itself but superior just the same. Larger than life; with always the comforting assurance that just over the crest lay wonderful Lethe, Lethe that would absorb the plunge back again, erase the waning ecstasy, wipe out Helen and Wick and all the frowning un-understanding world. Larger than life. Of course! that’s why he drank! But who could hope to understand that—who but the guy who did it himself?
This time he would make a better impression in the liquor store, just in case they had wondered a little at his haste, or had any misgivings. He would put on a tie, he’d wear a jacket and even a vest—hat too. He whistled about the flat as he prepared himself; and just as he left the door, he looked back at the half-empty whiskey bottle. He pointed with an elaborate gesture, like a matador, like a showy radio-director indicating a cue. “You stay there!” he said in low, dark, super-menacing tones. “Don’t disappear; don’t hide or evaporate! I’ll be right back.”
At the top of the stairs he heard people on the landing below. He looked over the rail and saw the two ladies and their dog Sophie who lived in the front apartment. As they started up the last flight, loaded with bundles, they saw him looking down. They stepped back as he stepped back. “No, come along,” he said, “I’ll wait.”
“No no, that’s quite all right, Mr. Birnam, you come down.”
He took
off his hat and nodded gallantly. “Aprés vous. I’ll wait, there’s no hurry.”
“Do come down, Mr. Birnam,” one of the ladies said again. “We have all these packages and things—and there’s Sophie.”
“Very well,” he said. “Thank you.” He started down, smiling, his hat in his hand.
He found himself falling. A wonderful feeling, easy, light, pleasantly chilling in the stomach. Easy, easy the way you landed unhurt at the bottom, laughing at yourself, feeling absolutely no pain—’twas as easy as lying.
The dog barked, the two ladies squealed. “Oh Mr. Birnam! Are you hurt—oh!” They dropped their packages, bent over him.
He picked himself up, smiling. “Not a bit, not a bit, I— I didn’t even fall!”
“Didn’t fall, good gracious!”
“I mean,” he said, “it was almost as if I didn’t fall at all, the way it felt. They say if you fall relaxed— Hello, little Sophie.”
The two ladies exchanged glances. “Mr. Birnam, are you sure you’re all right?”
“Quite, I’m not hurt a bit, don’t trouble yourself. Goodbye. Sorry to cause such a fuss. Goodbye, Sophie!” He walked lightly along the landing and turned for the second flight.
Flight is good. His silly foot missed as before—it was easy, delightful.… He heard the women squeal again and saw with a smile the newel-post rising like a growing expanding up-swinging hammer to strike.
PART FOUR
The Dream
Like a fish of the deep rising to the surface of bright air and sun, he swam up to consciousness out of a dead blank into a whiter world than he had ever seen. The daylight was blinding. He heard voices very near at hand, as if just behind his ear, talking together quietly in a business-like way against a background medley of babblings and shrieks, moans and mutterings. He was lying prone and someone was working on his back—fingers probed at his spine. He flopped over, like a fish out of water, and found himself in a low bed, little more than a mattress, so low that the two men who worked over him were kneeling on the edge.
As surprised as he, they looked at him in impersonal silence, and then recovered themselves.
“Just a moment, take it easy, turn over again, please,” one of them said; and the other: “Take it easy, baby.”
They must have anticipated what he was going to say because here he was saying it—saying it all in a rush as if he hadn’t heard or as if he were too exasperated, angered, and offended to take it easy. “What’s going on here, where am I, what are you doing to me!”
“Just lie back again, it’ll only take a second,” the first man said; and the second murmured the classic “It won’t hurt a bit” as he himself cried out the still-more-classic “Where am I” again.
“You’re in the hospital.”
“What for!”
“Take it easy, baby.”
“What hospital?”
“The alcoholic ward.”
He didn’t get this, not any of it. He had awakened fightingmad, or at least bitterly offended and indignant because he couldn’t figure out where he was, because he was being taken advantage of, because he didn’t know who these two men were and what right had they to touch him? Now he heard the bedlam going on in the background and he was outraged at this further intrusion on his peace. “What’s all that racket!”
“The others.”
“Other what?”
“Patients. Now just turn over and relax, it won’t take a moment.”
“What do you think you’re doing! Who are you!”
“We want to draw off a little of the spinal fluid. Relieve the pressure on the brain.”
“Spinal tap, baby.”
He suddenly understood. “Oh no you’re not!” He drew up his knees against his chest, and as he did so his head exploded in pain above his eyes.
Both men straightened and stood back from the bed. One of them put his hands on his hips. The other’s already were.
He saw now the syringe and needle and also saw the two men more or less clearly for the first time. One was small, baldish, pleasant-looking, in his middle forties. Probably the doctor, though he looked more like a professor or teacher. The other was a big strapping fellow around thirty, broad and well-built but far from muscular. With a frame like a hammer-thrower, he was yet soft, just this side of fat. He stood looking down with a half-smile on his face, and the impression he gave was that of an enormous sleepy tomcat, indifferent, self-sufficient, yet predatory.
“What’s the matter, what are you afraid of,” the teacherish man said.
“I’m not afraid of anything!”
“Then why won’t you let us do it?”
“Because I won’t have it! You’re not going to do that to me!”
“A spinal tap won’t hurt you any. We do it all the time.”
“Not on me you don’t!” He had a horror of the spinal puncture because when it had been used in the TB sanatorium as a means of anesthesia some years ago, a friend of his had been paralyzed by it; not temporarily, which had been the idea, but permanently.
“You must listen to reason. You have too much alcohol in your system. This will help clear your brain, take some of the pressure off. Do you understand?”
“Sure I understand, what do you think I am!”
“Besides that, you have a fractured skull.”
“Fractured skull!”
“A slight fracture, between the right temple and eye.”
“I don’t believe you!” His splitting head denied this disbelief but he didn’t believe it all the same.
“The X-ray showed it very clearly. It’s not serious, however. There’s no real concussion.”
“But where did I get—”
“Don’t ask us, baby,” the bigger man said, smiling. “That’s what you came in with.”
“How did I get here? I didn’t ask to be—”
“You were brought in by the ambulance. Now let’s go ahead with this. It’s the best thing for you. It’ll make you feel a lot better.”
“I feel all right, right now!” He didn’t. His head was bursting with pain, but—hadn’t it often, didn’t it always, on such mornings as this?
“You refuse?” the professor-like man said.
“I certainly do! You’re not going to do that to me!”
The small man turned to the other and spoke as if Don weren’t there at all, or as if he didn’t understand English. “I guess there’s nothing to do then, Bim. We can’t give it to him without his consent, now that he’s conscious. The patient seems to be in his right mind, capable of deciding for himself.”
“Try him, Doctor.”
The doctor turned back to Don. “What’s your name?”
“Don Birnam,” he answered, almost haughty.
“Where do you live?”
“Three-one-one East Fifty-Fifth.”
“Manhattan?”
“Certainly!”
“What do you do?”
“Do? I—well, I’m not doing anything, at the moment.”
“Unemployed?”
“He didn’t look unemployed to me,” the other said with a smile. “Not from the clothes he was wearing.”
Don automatically looked down at himself. He had on a short white gown that barely reached to the knees; made of a heavy cloth as stiff and rough as canvas. It was tied in the back: he could feel the thick knot, now, between his shoulder blades. He was outraged at the spectacle he must present of himself, outraged that the man should smile. But the smiler was not smiling at him, he noticed; it was just a habit, a fixed expression of the sleepy cat-like face.
“What year is it?” the doctor went on.
“Why are you asking me these fool questions!”
“What year is it?”
“Nineteen thirty-six!”
“What month?”
“October.”
“What day is today?”
Oh-oh. This is something he couldn’t be sure of.
“What day is it?”
&nbs
p; “I—I’m sorry, I guess I don’t know. Monday or Tuesday, maybe, but I—” God if it were Tuesday he had to be back home, had to be safely back and in bed and finished with the weekend before Wick came in. He had to get out of here and quick.
“What’s your name?”
“I told you. Don Birnam.”
“Where do you live?”
“Three-one-one East Fifty-Fifth. Manhattan!”
“Three-eleven?”
“Three-one-one, I said! That’s three-eleven in any language, isn’t it? Or it was when I went to school.”
The doctor turned again to the other. “Okay, Bim. Give him some paraldehyde and let him go. Ten grains. I’ll be in the women’s ward.” He started down the room.
Don suddenly couldn’t let him go like that. “Doctor!” he called out. “Wait a minute!”
The doctor went on without turning back.
The big fellow was looking down at him, squinting faintly. “What did you want?”
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
“Oh.” He sank back, relieved.
“You were brought in here yesterday afternoon.”
“Really in an ambulance?”
“I’ll say. You were out like a lamp. You’ve got an awful black eye.”
Instinctively Don raised his hand and touched the eye with his fingers.
“Too bad. Such nice eyes, too. Really awful nice.” The voice had no fiber or resonance at all. It was the audible but whispered intimacy of one who spoke from a pillow in the dead of night. “Want to see what you look like?” From a pocket in his jacket he drew out a small round mirror and held it between thumb and forefinger.
Don pulled away. “No thank you.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s the matter, baby?”
In anger, Don glanced up again. But he was in no position to be angry. He had to bear with this until he got out of here, or at least until he got his clothes. “Are you a doctor?” he said, to say something.
“No.”
The Lost Weekend Page 13
