The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

by Jonathan Lethem

  She daubed at them both with her underwear, and buttoned him up. She stood and pulled her skirt up and it was as if nothing had happened, except her smeared underwear was on the floor and she felt a coolness and a trickling on the inside of her thighs. She ran a bath. Then she went out to him again and arranged his teeshirt so it covered his stomach, and fit his arms back at his sides.

  Something was wrong. The more she restored him, the deader he looked, as if she were a mortician. She moved him with difficulty to the easy chair, which was an improvement. It seemed to put more of an end to the affair. Then, a little guiltily, as though it should have been the first thing she’d done on coming home, she gathered the houseplants. There were four of them, a fern, a spiderplant, a tall thing that was some kind of succulent, with fat, fleshy plumes, and a small fist-like cactus with white wisps of hair instead of spines. She arrayed them near his chair.

  He slept on. She got into the bath.

  When she got home from work the next day, the plants already seemed bigger, and the fern, the most flexible of the four, was definitely bent towards him, as if in the direction of sunlight. His position was changed too, his head tipped forward, chin on his chest, and his arms were folded. It gave him a decisive, even obstinate look. She put her things on the sofa and went into the kitchen.

  After dinner she put on her coat again and went out onto the porch. The street was quiet. It was a cold night. It looked safe. She closed the door.

  Perhaps the people in the bar would know something about the sleepy man.

  Quick’s Little Alaska was a perfect cube, like a children’s block that had been disguised with scribbles of neon and daubs of graffiti and surrounded with Dumpsters and parked or abandoned cars so it could pass as a building. The cars on Schermerhorn Avenue raced by, oblivious. Judith herself didn’t know anyone with a car anymore. Eva and Tom walked all the way downtown to work, like she did. Judith suspected the people inside Quick’s, the militia, hadn’t driven their cars, if they had cars, for a long time. The cars around the bar didn’t look like they’d been started in a while. They all had cat footprints on the windshields and hoods.

  It was chilly inside, as advertised. Everyone at the bar turned when she stepped through the door. Farther inside, at the cluster of tables, nobody seemed particularly interested. She recognized some of the faces, others were new. She took a deep breath and went to the bar.

  The music playing was slurred and slow, a voice and a trumpet winding down like an uncranked engine.

  The man working the bar was one she remembered from the last time she’d come in, years ago. He was the son of Quick, the owner. His hair was red, like his father’s. He moved over to where she stood and cleared away an empty bottle. He obviously remembered her too. “What can I do you for, Judith?” he said. “Looking for someone?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. She knew that Quick’s son meant someone in particular: John, who had been Judith’s husband once. John was sitting in the back of the bar, at one of the tables. He was part of the militia now. He was a general. Judith tried not to look his way.

  “Do you sell tee-shirts?” she said.

  In answer Quick’s son reached underneath the bar and pulled out a shirt identical to the one the sleepy man wore.

  “Yes, that’s it,” she said.

  “You want one?”

  “No. There’s a man—he had one. I was wondering if you knew him.”

  Quick’s son didn’t answer, but the man beside her at the bar turned and said, “Where’d you see him?”

  He had a beard and was wearing a sweater with leather patches and the kind of hat she imagined men wore on fishing boats.

  “He was sleeping on my porch,” she said.

  The bearded man raised his eyebrow and said, “Give the lady a drink, Red.”

  “She didn’t order anything,” said Quick’s son.

  “I don’t need anything,” Judith said. “Do you know the man, the one who was sleeping?”

  The bearded man raised a finger and said, “Lieutenant?”

  A woman a seat away from him rested her elbow on the bar and peered at him and Judith over the top of her half-glasses.

  “Lady’s looking for Danny-boy,” said the bearded man.

  “I’m not looking for him,” Judith said quickly. “I wanted to know if he came from here.” Danny-boy, she thought. If that was his name, if they meant the same person.

  “Sure, sure,” said the older woman. “We understand what you mean. Danny-boy giving you trouble?”

  “No,” said Judith. “So he was here? He lived in the bar?”

  “He’s Absent without Leave,” said the bearded man. “It sounds like you have information concerning his whereabouts.” He took a large finishing swallow of his drink. “Another like that, Red,” he said to Quick’s son, who was leaning on his side of the bar. “And don’t listen in on privileged communication.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Quick’s son.

  “Danny-boy’s not in any trouble, is he?” said the older woman, removing her half-glasses. They were strung around her neck by a red cord and rested crookedly in her cleavage.

  “No,” said Judith again, a little confused. If anything, she was getting him into trouble by coming here.

  “Sounds like he’s found himself a woman,” said the bearded man.

  “Sergeant, we don’t presume anything around here,” said the older woman, the lieutenant. “We operate on the basis of verifiable fact.”

  Quick’s son was still leaning in from his side of the bar, listening. They’d attracted another listener, too, a man with a cane, but no limp. He had hawk-like eyes and a gigantic nose. He stepped over and hung his cane on the bar.

  “One of our scouts has been contacted, Admiral,” said the woman, moving her eyebrows significantly.

  The admiral turned and looked sharply at Judith, then reached out and pinched her chin. Judith jerked her head away. “Excellent disguise,” said the man.

  “Not her,” said the lieutenant. “She’s a civilian volunteer.”

  “Scout, that’s a good one,” said the sergeant. “Dannyboy couldn’t scout the inside of his eyelids.”

  Judith didn’t like agreeing with the abrasive sergeant, but she did want them to understand. “He’s sleepy,” she said.

  “Who isn’t?” said the admiral. “I’m interested in his findings, not his feelings.” He turned and scowled across the bar. “Scotch, Quick.”

  Quick’s son hurried to his bottles. Two other members of the militia joined them from the tables at the back of the room. A young woman in overalls, with a crewcut, and John, who had long ago been Judith’s husband. “Hello, Judith,” John said.

  “General Map,” said the admiral. “Hail.”

  “You joining our merry band?” John said to Judith, ignoring the admiral.

  “I was just—I just had a question,” said Judith.

  “She’s playing Betsy Crocker to a Benedict Arnold,” said the sergeant sneeringly.

  “Don’t you mean Betsy Ross?” said the lieutenant.

  Quick’s son put a whiskey on the bar in front of the admiral, then opened two bottles of beer and handed them to the woman in overalls, who passed one to John. Quick’s son still hadn’t refilled the sergeant’s glass, Judith noticed.

  “Danny-boy?” said John to the lieutenant. She nodded sagely.

  “He’s taken up position on a porch,” said the admiral, and then added, “As per my orders,” and shot a fierce look at the sergeant.

  Judith opened her mouth to say that he wasn’t actually on the porch anymore, that he’d been moved inside. But she didn’t speak.

  “So what’s the problem?” said John, his eyes on Judith.

  “Communication is poor-to-nonexistent,” said the admiral, with a hard look in his eyes.

  “Snoring, however, is highly satisfactory,” japed the sergeant.

  “Admiral, why don’t you buy the young lady a drink?” said the lieutenant. “I hate to see
her empty-handed.”

  “It’s fine,” said Judith.

  “Make it a round for the house,” said the sergeant. “That’s the only way I’ll ever get a drink around here.”

  “We’ll reestablish communication when we need to,” said John to the admiral. “For the time being let’s leave Danny-boy where he is. Deep in mufti.”

  The woman in overalls suddenly laughed.

  “In mufti?” said the sergeant puzzledly.

  “A round for the house,” said John. “I’m buying.”

  “Mighty white of you, General,” said the lieutenant. But John was already headed back to his table.

  “Mighty white of you, General,” echoed the sergeant in a mocking whine.

  “Young lady, I wonder if perhaps you would accompany me to a booth?” said the admiral to Judith.

  “No thank you,” she said. “I have to go.”

  In another day the cactus had grown extra knobs, on the side that faced him. Almost like tumors, she thought. The needle-fur over the new growth was downy, like a baby’s first hair. It was overweighted on that side now, and nearly tipping its pot. She turned it so the new growth faced away from him.

  The other three had proliferated too. The spiderplant had cast new trailers over his ankle, and the fern and the succulent were both turned towards him, and thicker and shinier on his side. He was like Ring Arthur, she thought. The land, the crops, grew when he was well and died when he was sick. Or was it the other way? Ring Midas, maybe that was righter. Golden touch. She wanted him to have a title or rank, like the others from the bar. Danny-boy didn’t seem enough.

  Porch Ring. Arthur Midas, Porch Ring. Maybe she should move him out to the porch again.

  Instead she moved the plants all a little farther away, then stood back and looked. She was embarrassed for him, somehow, in a cozy chair surrounded by the eager foliage. It was too feminine, not really kingly at all, let alone military. She thought of the famous painting of the Midwestern farmer parting the cattails to find the nude sleeping there. He was still as inappropriate, as unexpected as that. The plants seemed to make it worse.

  If she took him and the plants out together to the porch, they would be camouflage, not decoration. But it was too cold; the fern would die. And she wanted him inside. So she took them away to their original spots in the house. They’d basked enough, and what was happening to the cactus didn’t necessarily seem so healthy anyway. Denuded of the plants he looked dead again, but she had an idea.

  In the closet was her television, on a rolling metal stand. She didn’t watch it anymore. It had gone from all news about militias forming and dinosaurs to replaying old shows that weren’t about anything at all. She rolled it out of the closet to a spot in front of his chair and plugged it in, set the volume low, and stepped behind it to watch him. Perfect. He was transformed, restored. The flickering glow seemed to animate his features. It reminded her of when she found him, that first day, on the porch.

  She went to the closet and took out a large cardboard mailing tube. It was still marked with stamps and stickers. She put one end in his lap and pointed the other across his shoulder, and arranged his arms around it as though it were a rifle. She tipped his head forward a bit so he seemed more attentive. If the dinosaurs looked in her window, they would see him keeping watch, waiting. Though it was hard to see it really as a rifle; they would think he was holding a bazooka, a flame thrower. Or a cardboard tube.

  Finished, she knelt and let her head rest against his knee briefly. His breathing was soft and steady, as always. He was a good sleeper, she thought. He was getting good sleep. She touched his thigh. It felt nice. But that part of their relationship had to wait, she decided. He shouldn’t be undressed now, she shouldn’t be thinking of that.

  “He made the plants grow.”

  She’d just learned that in one shop 70-watt lightbulbs were selling for two dollars and fifty cents apiece, while in another shop, a few blocks away from the first, they cost almost ten dollars. Then she’d called Eva.

  “They all do that, I told you.”

  “Do you—have you known a sleepy person?”

  “Well—” Eva giggled.

  Out of the corner of her eye Judith saw Tom go from his cubicle to the door of Eva’s. “Just a sec,” said Eva.

  Judith could make out their talk, though Eva must have had her hand over the mouthpiece. “Who’s on the phone?” said Tom.

  “It’s Judith. We’re talking.”

  “Hurry up, I want to go to lunch.”

  Eva came back on the line. “I have to go,” she said.

  When she got home, Judith saw that the new growths on the cactus had sagged, like little deflated balloons. The hair on them was thin and disordered. She brought the cactus back into the living room and put it on the floor at his feet, in front of the television.

  That night from her bedroom, just as she was drifting off to the sound of the voices on the television, she heard him pad to the bathroom and pee. The sound of his urine falling into the little pool went on forever, and the tone rose, as if he were filling the bowl completely. Finally it stopped, and there came the sound of the faucet, then a slapping and slurping noise that she decided meant he was drinking from his cupped hands. He left the bathroom without flushing the toilet.

  In the morning she saw he’d gotten to his chair and retaken the tube into his arms, though he was holding it more like a pillow than a rifle, hugging it to his chest, his grizzled cheek resting against it. A little stream of drool was soaked into the cardboard. She restored the tube to rifle position, then turned the television off for the day.

  The cactus had already reinflated nicely.

  At work she found that her phone couldn’t be used to call the other cubicles anymore.

  They arrived while she was brushing her teeth before bed. She was in a robe. It was a warm night. His television was on now, a reassuring monotone of chatter. They broke the front window with a rock from the yard. When she came out of the bathroom to look, someone had a foot through the broken window, tangling in the blind, and someone else was pounding on the front door. She opened it, and they came at her.

  It was a group of dinosaurs, five of them, three male and two female. They looked young, younger than dinosaurs looked in the news. She wondered if any of them were even twenty. The first two through the door grabbed her by the arms. One pulled her wet toothbrush from her hand and threw it under the table. The last stepped in and closed the door.

  “Drop it,” one of them yelled. His hair was fluffed into an enormous Afro, and he wore a pumpkin-colored satin jacket with a fluted waist and sleeves. He poked a small knife toward the sleepy man and said again, “Drop it.” Another dinosaur, a teenage girl, dashed forward and jerked the cardboard tube out of the sleepy man’s arms, releasing it to clatter to the floor beside his chair.

  “He’s asleep,” said Judith.

  Keeping the knife at waist-level, the dinosaur with the Afro squinted at the sleepy man. “Sure he is,” he said. “Be rough with her. We’ll see how he likes that.”

  “What?” said the teenage girl.

  “Be rough with her,” said the one with the Afro. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”

  They threw Judith back against the sofa. Her robe was flung open, revealing her body to them. She was wearing panties, nothing else. She was conscious of her appendectomy scar. The teenage girl took the knife and perched at the other end, on the arm of the sofa. “Sit still,” she said.

  “Search for stuff,” said the dinosaur with the Afro to the others.

  “What stuff?” said one of the other dinosaurs.

  “Shut up,” said the dinosaur with the Afro. “You know what I mean.”

  The dinosaurs began tearing up the house, two in the bedroom, two in the kitchen. They cleared cabinets with a sweeping arm, dumped every drawer and container on the floor, then tipped each piece of furniture onto its front, away from the wall. It didn’t seem to Judith that they were really searching f
or anything, more like a ritual destruction. Even for that it was halfhearted.

  The dinosaur with the Afro came out of her bedroom with both hands full of stuffing. They’d slashed her bed. He tossed the handfuls, and the stuffing scattered in clumps over Judith and the sofa. She pulled her robe closed.

  “We’ve been watching you,” he said, sneering.

  Judith didn’t say anything. The other dinosaurs came out and stood gathered there in front of her.

  “We watch everyone,” the dinosaur said after a moment, as though he’d decided he didn’t want her to feel special after all.

  “On this street?” said Judith. She wasn’t sure she understood what he meant.

  “We’ve never been here before. You’d know if we’d been here, believe me.” The other dinosaurs laughed. One of them was poking at the sleepy man, checking his pockets and under the cushions of his chair.

  “What did you see?” she asked him.

  “You live like robots,” he said. “Don’t ask me any more questions.”

  One of the dinosaurs stepped up and pulled her hair and poked her gently in the eye. “Sorry,” he said. Judith covered her eye with her hand. Another of the dinosaurs tuned the television to a station playing music, and turned the volume up so loud that the throb of the bass line was like an elephant’s footsteps muffled in static.

  “Hold her,” said the dinosaur with the Afro. The girl on the sofa and the boy who’d poked Judith took her arms now and pinned her back against the cushions.

  “What are you doing?” said Judith, frightened.

  “Quiet.” The one giving the orders pulled a roll of duct tape from his jacket. Judith thought: $12.99. He ripped a short patch of tape from the roll and pasted it across her mouth and, inadvertently, her nose. She could breathe through only one nostril. Suddenly all of her attention was devoted to the need to continue breathing.