But deep in him, he felt the weakness, waiting, lurking. And then, in the midst of an important sentence, he faltered. He saved himself by improvising a coughing-fit. As he was playing a sick person, nobody noticed. But Rena had to whisper the next cue, and her words seemed to come from an enormous distance. Then during a hurried movement, his left leg refused. It was as if all his muscles suddenly decided to rebel. A fain murmur went through the audience... So they had noticed this time. More and more he had to search for his lines; new falterings came, as if there were empty places in his memory. Sometimes he could save his face by improvisation, but not always. He saw the surprised and slightly accusing looks of Rena. He thought he saw the banker, who financed the play, behind the curtains, in a heated discussion with one of the other leading actors.
Gordon knew he was acting badly now. All his talent seemed to have left him. More gaps appeared in his memory, as if something was stealing everything straight from his brain, - taking whole parts away. Sudden cramps of his muscles made his body do strange and bizarre movements, not unlike a badly controlled puppet.
The fluid hand movements, of which he had always been so proud,
became wooden; his voice turned raucous, the words jerky. He felt sick, sick; the darkness in him came up as vomit, in great black clouding gulps, swallowing him. He felt the concentrating will-power leading away from his body, as if it were running out of his very pores. His mind went white, then black, and there were no sounds, no lights left. He knew he had lost then, and once so far, it was so easy to stop all struggle, give up completely and surrender to the dark waves, which carried him with them into the sea. The world was 3 black hole, a gaping, toothless mouth; and in that mouth, faces, countless white faces looking surprised and somewhat frightened up at him. He had done his best for them, but he hadn’t strength to keep it up. He opened his mouth, but no sounds came. Something wet ran from his eye-sockets and dripped red on the floor of the stage.
Then someone started screaming in the audience.
“Curtain, curtain!” Rena shrieked. The curtain crashed down, but too late to hide from the public that which still'stood upright on the scene, a few seconds, before its legs bent and fell down.
Gordon Ashley accepted the darkness and the weakness now. There was no stage, no world, only enormous black wings, coming closer and closer...
After two pale agents had covered that which was lying on the stage with a sheet, the real inquisition started. They found Gordon’s car finally, near the cliffs by the sea, partly under water, where it had been lying for over a week. The door was open, and on a few places, where the sea didn’t reach the sand, they found the trail, where something had worked itself out of the sea. Something which was no longer alive, but not quite dead either—a mass of bones and already rotting muscles and disintegrating flesh, which, driven by fanatic will-power, had wrestled itself out of the wrecked car, and had come back for Gordon Ashley’s premiere.
Selected Stories Page 20
