Young Adam

by Alexander Trocchi

  I found it difficult to conceive what evidence they could have against Goon. Goon had nothing to do with it. And I was quite convinced that I had destroyed all possible evidence.

  When Cathie tripped and fell backwards into the river the scream choked in her throat before it was uttered and then the lights on the opposite shore were winking and everything seemed deadly quiet. The splash was contained inside my head for a few moments, like a cry in a wood, before I lay down flat on the quay in a movement of panic and stared down at the quick black water. It sidled swiftly past the quay stones and a few yards away, quietly at the surface, a few bubbles broke, like suds from a laundry, farther and farther away until there was nothing to be seen.

  I knew at once that she was dead, gone, beyond all help, at once and at the same time as the knowledge of the paralysis of my limbs came to me. I remained where I was without moving for a long time, my eyes after the hour we had spent together well-accustomed to the dark, and first there was a matchbox and then a bottle and then a spar of wood, and each object made a different noise as it scraped past the stones and disappeared in the flow of the current. I thought of stars hurtling away from one another in the black universe beyond the speed of light.

  And then I was thinking that Cathie was down there somewhere.

  It was too dark and it was too late to do anything. Scream now? I looked for a trace of her for a long time but, except for the debris that was floating past, the water was evenly dark, and after a while it struck me that what I was trying to do was like trying to pin the tail on the donkey behind the sheet. She might have been anywhere, at any level. Christ!

  I remember a feeling of disbelief. How quickly it had happened, with nothing to lead up to it. Nothing. To me it was as unreasonable as an earthquake on an English lawn. Later, that was what was to strike me as so fraudulent about the prosecutor’s point-by-point reconstruction. At the moment she fell there was no great passion in either of us. There wasn’t even a scream, no frantic hand in the water, and, on my side, I was surprised how quickly I became calm. Did I believe she had swum a distance under water and reached the bank farther down? I knew she hadn’t. I knew she couldn’t swim. She had always been afraid of the water. I used to tease her about it sometimes when we went out in a rowing boat. A summer’s day perhaps, not far from shore somewhere off the west coast, and we would be lying naked on the bottom boards under the seats. She was more passionate that way than any other, because she knew she couldn’t swim, because our erotic struggle in the drifting boat represented for her a life and death matter. It was not only her body which prostrated itself in the flimsy shell of the dinghy. It was her life she gambled with, uttering little screams of delirious pleasure when a chance wave decapitated itself on the gunwale and splashed like quicksilver about her buttocks. She said she felt the power of the sea through the wood of the boat in her flesh as well as in her ears and that she never felt she was giving herself so utterly as when, her muscles taut on the rutted bottom-boards, the bows lifted and a spray of water landed like chill grapeshot against her thighs.

  Gradually I became used to the idea that she was drowned, beyond help, and somehow the quiet lap of water against the stones was reassuring to me – more than that, it had a positive fascination for me. Undoubtedly it was because of the kind of compact which had always existed between our mating and the water. She attained to an ecstasy through terror of it, and on more than one occasion she said, even if thereby she was simply giving in to her penchant for melodrama, she felt that was how she would die, overtaken in sex by water. She was not entirely mistaken.

  If a policeman had come along at that moment I should probably have made no move to escape. It was only later, after a few minutes, that I realized my own position was dangerous, that there was only my word for it that it was an accident. Or was it an accident? I suppose it was. It had never occurred to me to kill her. I was merely walking away. She tried to hold me back. I extricated myself. She lost her balance. She tripped over a cobblestone and then she was in the water. Splash. It all happened so quickly.

  Perhaps some people would say I was to blame because my reactions were so slow. I must have willed her death. I don’t think so. Although certainly the feeling uppermost in my mind when she toppled backwards was that of annoyance. I was annoyed with her. And then a kind of panic-tinged curiosity. She was gone suddenly, and as my anger evaporated I became breathlessly curious, and then a wave of fear that was almost nausea came over me, and I was lying down staring at the water where she had disappeared. If only she had broken the surface, even for an instant, I might have moved. But somehow or other from the very beginning I felt it was hopeless, done rather, and at that moment I cannot honestly say I cared very much, though I did afterwards when I realized she was dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. My mother and now Cathie. As surprising as forked lightning. And then the gradual expansion as, caught up in my imagination, the dull red fact expanded like a painful sunrise over the whole horizon.

  Say I was involved in a state of quiet shock, at the edge of apprehension, soothed by the water as it swirled indolently past the slime-covered quay stones. The seconds marked themselves out with the disappearance of the bubbles, and with the appearance of the matchbox, the bottle, the spar, a hunk of rotting cork, and three minutes at least must have passed before I felt my sense of personal danger. That came suddenly as the accident itself, as though a trapdoor all at once opened into a deeper consciousness of the situation, and my eyes left the surface of the water and moved across the flickering breadth of the river to the other side where the lights still winked in a kind of cynical confederacy. I felt very alone then, an alien, an exile, society already crystallizing against me, and only my own desperate word for what had happened.

  I was now in a kneeling position on the cobblestones and I could feel their cold hardness at my kneecaps. I stood up and as I did so my eyes caught sight of the bundle of clothes she had so willingly taken off for me. They were lying close to the wheel of the railway truck under which we had made love. The siding was right on the quay. We had both of us thought it was a good place.

  It was then it occurred to me that things would have looked better for me if she had had her clothes on when she fell in. The furtive sexuality of the situation would tend to make it appear criminal. I had the absurd idea of finding the body and dressing it in the clothes. That struck me as funny a moment later. I picked up the clothes and looked at them. They were evidence. Naturally, I had to get rid of them.

  It did not occur to me to go to the police but I saw no reason why they should accept my version of the incident. I always say the wrong things at interviews. I dislike the way most other people expect me to share their attitudes. I could imagine their questioning me about Cathie, the loaded questions they would thrust at me. I dismissed the thought of going to the police almost as soon as it occurred to me.

  There was no hurry. There was no sign of anyone about. I decided to smoke a cigarette and think the whole thing over carefully.

  The cigarette made me feel better. I was not going to do anything much. The clothes were there, still slightly warm under my hand. Or was that an illusion? I decided to think the whole thing out in detail before deciding on my course of action. Part of me began almost to enjoy the situation. It had been forced upon me without logic, like Mexico on Maximilian; it was up to me to accept my predicament and to free myself of the implications. Good. It was like a game of chess. I ground the stub of my cigarette on the stone. My hand had hardly left it when my fingers felt for it again almost reflectively. That too, I supposed was evidence. I smiled then. It was a good thing I had smoked a cigarette. Somewhere under the truck were two other cigarette butts and one would have lipstick on it. I repressed the urge to look for them at once. Take it easy. Plenty of time. Oh, Cathie! The main thing was not to commit myself to any unanalysed act however slight it might seem and to destroy scientifically the absurd complex in which I had become involved.

  I had got myself inv
olved, absurdly and without forethought. For I had met Cathie in the street, quite by accident, after a period of two months during which I had neither seen her nor written to her (in fact I had left her, or she had left me, quien sabe?) and our decision to make love had been sudden, impulsive, as decision sometimes is, taken while seated in an alcove in a small café, where we had gone for coffee. I simply took her hand. And it was as though we had never separated. The gesture brought back a hundred memories, of nights during which we had lain in one another’s arms, of thighs insistently interlocked, of happy laughter.

  We had known each other for a long time. We did not need to speak about it. A glance was enough, a slight flush of excitement on her cheeks, a responsive pressure of the hand. She would if I suggested it. We left the café and walked straight towards the river. She had a room mate now.

  The proprietor of the café was an old Italian who sat on a high stool behind the counter. He had glanced at us without interest, as later, while we were drinking coffee, he had looked at the wall with the faded harlequins which happened to be opposite him. He said good night as we left, indolently, or mechanically. He might have recognized me again but there was little likelihood of his being called upon to do so. As far as he was concerned, I judged, there was nothing to be afraid of. And unless we had been seen by someone who knew us both he appeared to be the only possible witness. We had met two streets away from the café, walked there together, and then, when we came out again, we had gone quickly along the dark streets which led to the river. Possibly we were seen. But as I smoked my second cigarette I became certain that we weren’t. It was dark when we met. We crossed only one main street in a city of more than a million inhabitants. A tree hidden in the forest...

  No connection for over two months. For the world, for our mutual acquaintances, we were separated. She had had no opportunity to speak to anyone of our meeting. The element of chance had worked for as well as against me. There was no point in going to the police. It wouldn’t do Cathie any good. She had no relatives, only me, as I already knew. I began to pity her then. It had been so sudden, so fraudulent, and she had been laughing a few minutes before. Christ! But going to the police was out. It might involve me, fatally.

  What about the clothes? (“Let me take them off,” she had said. I was surprised at first but then I realized what it was she wanted. It would give her pleasure to feel the wood of the sleeper and the gravel under her. I remember the whiteness of her hips against the dark wood. Looking up above my shoulder she must have seen the oily underside of the truck. How to explain all that to the police? To a jury of twelve good men and true?)

  I was sorry now that she taken her clothes off. If she had been fully dressed she would not have been in such a hurry to stop me as I walked away. The whole thing might never have happened. And now the clothes were a problem.

  Not much of a problem though. If there was nothing to connect me with her, then her clothes were irrelevant. The police might as well have them. (This proved to be a mistake.) They would miss them anyway. The coroner’s verdict would be “murder by person or persons unknown”. Some impulse made me throw the clothes into one of the trucks. Afterwards I wondered why I had done it. And I even thought of climbing in to retrieve them. But I thought: “You are becoming hysterical.” Perhaps I derived a sense of having gambled from this act in spite of the fact that the clothes were irrelevant anyway. I didn’t bother to go after them. But there was the handbag. I had touched that, so there would be fingerprints on it. Elementary, my dear. I rubbed the smooth surface briskly with my handkerchief before finding a large stone, weighting the handbag with it, and throwing far out into the water. That took care of that, doubly. And then I was suddenly annoyed with myself. There was a Ronson cigarette-lighter in the handbag and I had touched that too. Two for one against. But the bag would probably never be found – “till a’ the seas gang dry...”

  My sense of tidiness made me search for the cigarette stubs. It was fortunate I did so. I found her packet of Player’s and the cigarette-lighter too. I was pleased about that. The cigarette-lighter had been my only oversight, and lying there under the truck for anyone to see and pick up it might have been decisive – certainly, because of the monogram, if the body was identified. I wiped it carefully with my handkerchief and hurled it as far as I could. I listened for the plop, thinking of St Mungo and the fish. Mouth open, fish. I saw no point in wasting the cigarettes. I transferred what remained (seven) to my own box and dropped the empty packet into the river. I found the two stubs and did the same with them. After that there was nothing else to be done. Perhaps an hour had passed since Cathie had disappeared in the water. If not at the beginning, it was certainly too late now. In my hesitation did I commit murder?

  I stepped close to the edge for the last time and looked down at the water. Still no sign of her. The water was smooth and black with lights like fish scales glimmering where a street- or bridge-lamp was reflected, smooth as though smoothed by a plasterer’s trowel, and inscrutable. Behind me, the line of railway trucks stood silent and abandoned, blockish like cows in the dark, with their wheels at rest and their couplings like tails dangling loose, screening me with their immobility from the movement of the city. They seemed bigger than they were, prehistoric cows, and their immobility communicated itself to me. I felt vaguely that the whole incident had taken place out of time, that there had been a break in continuity, that what happened was not part of my history. It was pervaded with the unreality of fiction, dream. I would wake up soon. I had merely to walk away to free myself from an obsession.

  Nevertheless I found myself walking carefully to the shadow of the line of trucks, articulating, without voice: “Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my step... for fear the very stones...” I did not wish to be seen coming away from the spot. As I crossed the rails behind the last truck it came to me that anyway I had never told Cathie my real name. She knew me as Joe Taylor. I always gave my correct Christian name because it’s difficult to remember and react normally to an incorrect one. Perhaps in her room there would be a few photographs, not many, because I never liked having my photograph taken, but one or two, and that worried me. Still, it wasn’t likely they would look very hard for Joe Taylor. Those who knew us knew we had separated over two months before, by mutual agreement, not in anger. True? False? Anyway, I had not seen any of them since.

  I reached the street without being seen. I passed only one man in the dark streets which led to the centre of the city, and then, by another route altogether, I made my way back to the river and the barge. Ella – as yet Leslie’s wife only – was awake when I got back.

  “That you, Joe?” she called from the bunk.

  In the darkness I heard Leslie’s snore.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Fine time to be coming back here! What d’you think this is? A doss house?”

  I didn’t reply.

  When I got into my bunk I felt sad, and a little frightened. Christ! Why? That it couldn’t have happened, and certainly without it ever occurring to me to frame the possibility, that it couldn’t be that I would ever see Cathie again.

  2

  THE FACTS WERE NOT MADE PUBLIC at that time. I could get no information from the newspapers beyond the fact that the plumber had been charged with murder. I assumed that investigations were still being made and the lack of information in the press made me uneasy.

  When I considered the whole thing calmly I saw no reason why I should even be questioned, far less suspected, but as the days passed and no new reference was made to the crime in the newspapers and the silence struck me as ominous, and the fact that I could make no move myself to find out what was happening without running the risk of bringing attention on myself made things worse.

  I wanted to act. I had an illogical fear that I had left something undone and that by so doing I had committed myself unknowingly, but to what circumstances or line of action I had no idea. There was nothing to do but wait. The silence couldn’t last
indefinitely. Sooner or later they would have to bring the plumber to trial. For the present there was no moment at which I could say with certainty that I was in more (or less) danger than I had been the moment before, and this inability to localize in time, place, or person, a concrete threat, made me morose and uncommunicative. Sometimes in the street I had the impression I was being followed, and I would turn off, double back on my tracks, come to an abrupt halt, board a moving bus. But in calm moments I dismissed this idea as unrealistic. Once they connected me with the affair they would take me in for questioning. There would be no beating about the bush.

  I found it impossible to think of the plight of Goon out of relation to myself. Poor bastard, there was no point in my exaggerating my sympathy for him. I didn’t even know him. As a representative of the industrious working classes he was in a sense my enemy. I dislike people who make a virtue of work. And in a way he was a part, if an uncritical one, of the society which might condemn him in a sense in which I was not. I knew he was innocent certainly. But so was I. I couldn’t establish his innocence without convicting myself. The position might have been reversed. In an absurd way we were rivals; if one of us were condemned the other would go free. His arrest too was no more absurd than the position which would be thrust upon me by an unintelligent society perennially bent on its moral purification: “What! She didn’t have her knickers on!” When I thought of Goon I thought of him as part of a vast octopus organism which, spotlighting an individual cell, called that cell bad. Poor Goon was bad. The newspapers implied it. If he was convicted the judge would pronounce it. And the octopus would strangle him. Goon would know that he was not bad, but no doubt he would be convinced that someone else was bad, I, for example, though for him I was nameless. I still pitied him in spite of the fact that he thought I was bad. That didn’t make him bad, nor even the octopus; they were simply unintelligent. Both Goon and I were victims of that, and only one of us could escape. Of course we might both have escaped. The police might have accepted my account of the incident. But there was a strong possibility that they wouldn’t. I couldn’t take the chance. My responsibility in the matter was simply a convenient social fiction, one which had shamed God knows how many men into assisting at their own murder.