Man Drowning

by Henry Kuttner

  “A beautiful job,” Mrs. De Anza said admiringly. “I’m sure Nick has exactly the idea you want him to have, after that. Nick. The job’s yours.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I looked halfway between the two. It was a tricky setup.

  But the Count didn’t say a word, for a while. He picked up his glass, tilted it to his mouth, and didn’t stop till the glass was empty. Then he stood up and nodded toward Mrs. De Anza.

  “Very well, Irene,” he said.

  He looked at me through the dark lenses for a moment longer, and then, with an air of deliberate sacrifice, he clicked his heels and offered me his free hand. I shook it. The skin felt cold, slick, faintly moist.

  He let go of my hand and sat down again. So did I.

  He said to Mrs. De Anza, “Very well. Nick may have the job.”

  “That’s what I said,” the Countess told him.

  “You didn’t mention salary, though.”

  She said angrily, “He’ll get paid.”

  “Certainly. Nick—remind me if I should forget.”

  “Don’t be so sure Nick will need to remind you,” she said. “I can always get money.”

  “Certainly you can. All you have to do is ask.”

  “You may have a surprise coming, one of these days,” she said, and stopped abruptly. “All right,” she went on, after a second. “I’m going into Phoenix tomorrow. I’ll need some money. Nick, remind me about that. I’ll want you to drive me in, too.”

  De Anza said, “Why take Nick with you? There’s a good deal to be done here. Callahan left a number of jobs unfinished, I suspect.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Why not go alone?” he repeated.

  “I might go farther than Phoenix, Leo.”

  He smiled at her.

  “Not for long,” he said. “Not alone, Irene. You’d be back. You’d find it hard to live away from the desert now.”

  She closed her chocolate-colored eyes and opened them again.

  “No doubt,” she said. “There’s no place like home. And since we’re on clichés, I think I’ll return to my crossword puzzle. Don’t forget to tell Nick where the strait jackets are stored.”

  She picked up her pencil and ignored us. De Anza finally decided I was still present. But he couldn’t bring himself to think I was a real person, even when he asked me how I liked the desert.

  I told him I liked it fine.

  That was what he wanted.

  “Then why should anybody want to go into Phoenix?” he asked. “What can you do there?”

  “What can you do here?” the Countess said, joining us again.

  “A great many things.”

  “Shake hands and shoot ourselves?” she asked, instantly forgetting us.

  De Anza was just about to light a cigarette, but changed his mind. Instead, he put out his hand to the revolver, pressing down lightly. The dark glasses swung toward me.

  “Mrs. De Anza refers to an incident in my past,” he said. “She hopes it will distress me. It doesn’t. Well—I hope you’ll find your new job pleasant, Nick. As for you, Irene, why don’t you sleep on the idea of going into Phoenix? I don’t know where the checkbook is, anyway.”

  She gave him a direct, frowning look.

  “Will you give me some money or won’t you?”

  De Anza blew out cigarette smoke that smelled sickeningly heavy and sweet. The pause lasted a long time.

  “Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

  There was a little silence.

  Then the Countess said, “All right. That’s settled, thank God. Somebody fix me a drink. And after that, just let me alone for a while, will you? Pretend I’m not here. I want to relax. I want to pretend I’m all alone. In a wasteland, where no one comes or hath come, since the making of the world. The rest is silence.” She looked blankly at us, dismissed us both with a blink, and went back to her crossword, scratching away noisily and muttering to herself in an angry voice.

  De Anza got up, took his glass, and wandered over to the bar. He got busy. Presently there was a tall glass pitcher on the bar, with ice in it, and what smelled like gin. He swirled a silver rod around a few times, leaned forward to sniff, and said to me, “Help yourslf. Or there’s tequila, if you like it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, coming over to him. “This’ll be fine.”

  “A civilized reaction. Martinis are fine. There’s little difference between tequila and peyote buttons. Will you pour, please?” There was a little dish of curled-up lemon peels on the bar, and some cocktail glasses. The Count followed me along, twisting the lemon peels over the Martinis.

  Then he looked at the woman on the couch.

  “Irene,” he said.

  She didn’t answer. De Anza took one of the glasses and carried it carefully to her. He slid the pencil out of her right hand and replaced it with the Martini. Mrs. De Anza mumbled something, drained the glass so carelessly a trickle ran down her chin, and groped till she’d set the glass down on the rug. The glass fell over. She got the pencil again and concentrated on her crossword.

  By then the Count was settling himself back in his chair. He moved his finger from me toward another chair near him and raised his black eyebrows above the dark glasses. I did what he wanted.

  “Well,” he said, leaning back and looking at me without any expression at all, “I take it we’re going to see a good deal of each other—for a while. I hope it won’t be too painful for any of us. I hope you’ll enjoy the work. No doubt that’s possible. Personally, I’m emotionally incapable of working. Your references were not enthusiastic, but I doubt if I could produce any better ones myself—if I got a fair sample. The selection would range from the highest approbation to flat statements that I’m a son of a bitch. References don’t always correlate with qualifications.”

  “I’ve just got general qualifications, I suppose,” I said. “I’m a fair mechanic and handyman. I’m not much good in a sickroom.”

  “Well, we don’t need a male nurse,” he said. “In case you were wondering why you found me in bed on your arrival, I can assure you that there’s only one semi-invalid here—and that probably isn’t the right term. It’s nothing physical.” He glanced toward his wife. “I myself occasionally have periods of nervous exhaustion. Then I merely stay in bed till I feel stronger. This house is very well situated in that respect. Nothing intrudes. It’s like a sanitarium, isolated. Isn’t that so, Irene?”

  “What?” she said absently, without looking up.

  “I was mentioning the isolation of a sanitarium. I think it’s possible to relax only when you’re disconnected from the world.”

  She gave us a blank, absent stare that gradually cleared. Then she grinned.

  “It depends on the sanitarium,” she said. “Personally, I got rather tired of crossword puzzles and counting the mesh in the window gratings. The grave’s a fine and private place, too.” She waited a moment, watching the Count, and still grinning. “Incidentally,” she said, when he got out his cigarette case and opened it, “you notice I’m beginning to work crosswords again. I need a vacation. Or something.”

  “The riotous excitement of Phoenix tomorrow should refresh you,” De Anza said. But she paid no attention. She had dived back into the crossword and we didn’t exist any more. De Anza took out a cigarette, lit it, and glanced down at his glass. It was half empty. He said, “Another drink, Nick?”

  I hadn’t finished mine, but I got up, brought over the glass pitcher, and poured. I went over to the Countess and picked up her glass, carrying it back to the bar for refilling. Afterward I brought it back to her, but I wasn’t quite up to servicing her the way De Anza had. I just shoved the glass under her nose and asked her if she wanted it. It took a while for the idea to penetrate. I could almost imagine it burrowing down busily through sluggish layers of mud. No, chocolate. Like her eyes. When she finally looked up, I noticed that from where I was standing her lashes made a sort of
network of tiny red wires, an untidy screen guard in front of those flat eyes. It was queer—those eyes of hers that somehow weren’t eyes at all, just as her face was less of a face than a skull, and that tight blue turban setting it off. A sort of mask, the kind sand-painters sculpt out.

  “Fourteen vertical,” she said, not to me, and refocused her eyes so I wasn’t there any more. She took the glass, gulped, and began to put it down on the floor. But I got it first and carried it back to the bar.

  Then I went over and sat down beside the Count again.

  “I noticed something in your reference letters,” he said. “You don’t keep jobs long, do you?”

  “No, I guess I don’t.”

  He didn’t ask questions. “If a man is in the wrong job, he should quit,” he said. “Unexpended energy is apt to be a nuisance.”

  I waited, and he turned his head slightly to watch me. I couldn’t help feeling a little funny, talking to a guy who certainly must have been at least fifty, but who had the face of a kid. I suppose the reason is that you talk in a different way to different people, and if De Anza had really been as young as he looked, I’d have relaxed and kidded him along and let him talk about hot-rods and jet planes. Or, maybe, with his particular face, it would have been books and music instead. But as it was…

  His voice had sounded a little dreamy. Maybe the stuff he was smoking had begun to take hold, I thought. Certainly, when he went on, he did sound more—well, relaxed.

  “Nick,” he said, “listen. Our routine is that we have no routine. Convenience is most important of all. Make yourself quite at home. You will dine with us if you care to. Having made the mistake of being born at this stage of evolution, it’s wise to minimize the obvious disadvantages. For example, I’m comfortable in this chair, and I assume you’re neither sedentary nor tired. So it’s logical for me to ask you if you’d be good enough to freshen my drink again.” He was putting it away pretty fast.

  “Logical and sensible,” I said, and did it. “This sounds like a good job.”

  “And you like the desert, you say. Well, you may find this a fine place. A fine and private place,” he said, and laughed softly. The dark glasses turned toward me.

  “But don’t be too unsuspicious,” he went on. “Do you know what you’re really selling?”

  “What?”

  “Your freedom,” he said. “To start with. What more, remains to be seen.”

  Chapter 7

  Dinner was good and well served, but queer too, in a way. The Countess brought her crossword book and paid no attention to us. She alternately wrote down block letters and shoveled food into her mouth. There was wine, which she ignored for half the meal, and then gulped. I don’t know what the meat was; it was very tender, with a mild garlic flavor and some sort of sauce over it. The plates were ordinary ceramic stuff, but the silver was really something, heavy, and crusted over with designs that managed not to get in the way of the lines. I’m no artist, but I do know a little about tools. Those knives and forks were beautiful, functional tools. They had a crest on them; that is, I guessed it was a crest.

  De Anza pushed his food around carefully. He didn’t seem to pay much attention, but I noticed he cleaned the plate, mopping up with a crust of sourdough. Whenever he wiped his mouth, I couldn’t help wondering if he used kiss-proof lipstick, the kind that isn’t supposed to come off. But I still wasn’t absolutely sure he had on lipstick at all.

  Benita made Turkish coffee in a brass gadget that looked like an antique. De Anza asked me to get a bottle of brandy from the bar, Spanish, not cognac, and a big inhaler glass for himself. “Liqueur glass for the Countess,” he said. “I don’t know what you prefer, Nick.”

  There were some pretty Swedish liqueur glasses on the shelf, each with a different color glowing softly through the stems and bases, so I took a couple of them and passed the brandy around. De Anza held out a cigarette case to me, but I saw they were some trick brand, so I said no thanks, I’d smoke my own. When we lit up, the funny perfume was in the room again, and now I could tell where it came from. I tried to keep my nose from twitching. I tried to figure out just what the Count was smoking. I might as well say I never did find out, except it wasn’t hemp. I know that smell.

  The funny part was, he looked almost too young to smoke.

  There hadn’t been much conversation during dinner. The Countess hadn’t said anything at all, and De Anza and I talked about things that didn’t matter one way or the other. Now he warmed his inhaler between his hands and swished the brandy around, while I sniffed at mine so the sharp, strong smell would block that other smell, but it sneaked in around the side and felt like a greasy layer in my nose and sinuses.

  Mrs. De Anza dropped her pencil on the tablecloth, moved her narrow shoulders as though loosening the joints, and looked at us blankly. She saw the brandy and tossed it off. She did the same to the little cup of coffee, though it was so hot it must have burned her. That seemed to clear the board. She worked her mouth, trying to remember by the taste what she’d been eating and drinking, and apparently decided it didn’t matter. It was food and drink. Okay.

  The dull eyes focused on me and cleared a little. She opened her mouth slightly, jerked her head, and began fumbling under the table. She brought out her hand with a wad of bills in it, and tossed them across to me.

  “Advance on your salary,” she said. “Not that I know how much it is. However. Remind me when it’s pay day, will you? I’ll extract a check from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and started to count the money.

  Mrs. De Anza looked at me. “God, you’re careful,” she said. “I’ll bet you’ll write it down, too.”

  I finished counting and put the bills in my pocket. “Two hundred and seven dollars,” I said. “Sure, I’ll write it down. Somebody ought to.”

  I did, while De Anza, his eyes half closed, slid his thumb and forefinger back and forth gently on the cylinder of his cigarette holder. It was a long tube of smooth pale material, faintly greenish, with goldwork binding it to an amber bit. The Countess yawned.

  Benita came in from the kitchen with an empty tray. The Count rose, and I went around to pull back Mrs. De Anza’s chair. “Thanks, Nick,” she said absently. “I wonder—do you know how to use a typewriter?”

  I told her I did.

  “Good. I’ve been letting some stuff pile up since Callahan left. I loathe routine. Wait a minute.” She went away. De Anza had gone back to his Monterey chair, and he sat slouched down in it, stroking the cigarette holder.

  “Nita,” he said.

  “Sí?”

  He made a little dipping motion with his fingers bunched together. She nodded, finished clearing the table, and carried the tray into the kitchen. De Anza held out his cigarette holder to me.

  “Feel this,” he suggested.

  I took it from him and fingered the material. Then I laughed and showed him my hand.

  “Too many calluses,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Jade, white jade. It’s an acquired talent anyway. But it’s possible to discriminate, simply through touch, between one grade of jade and another. The old Empress of China spent much of her time practicing it. It does gratify some special sense, I find. And it’s mechanical enough to occupy the conscious mind—very useful, sometimes.”

  He got up, crossed the room, and pushed back a corner of the rug with his foot. He slid a metal plate aside, and there was the dial of a floor safe beneath it. Crouching, he spun the dial a few times and opened the door, taking out a box as large as a cigarette carton.

  The Countess came back, a bundle of papers in her hand. She walked past me and threw them on the dining table.

  “There,” she said with relief. “Mostly bills. There’s a checkbook; make out the stuff and his lordship will sign it. Some letters to be answered. Try and answer them for me, Nick. Ask me if there’s anything you don’t understand.”

  I b
egan leafing through the papers with one hand.

  “Oh, not now,” Mrs. De Anza said impatiently. “Business makes my stomach crawl. Here.” She seized an ash tray and thumped it down on the papers. “And that settles everything,” she said. “You see?”

  “Not quite,” I told her. “For instance, your cars really need some repair work—work I can’t do myself, without the tools. Am I supposed to keep an eye on things like that?”

  “Somebody should,” she said. “All right, phone that garage—you were there today—tell ’em to send out and pick up one of the cars. Or both. No, not both, we’ll need one. Oh, go ahead and do what you want. Don’t ask me. The more details you take care of yourself, the better I’ll like it.”

  “Suppose I take the Buick in tomorrow and have it worked on? Not that garage, though—they do sloppy work. I’ll find a good one.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Nita, where’s my snake?”

  Benita had come in. She was carrying a small brown pottery bowl, carefully, and she took it to De Anza, who was back in his chair, and set it down on the armrest, beside the silver-mounted revolver. De Anza, busy with the box on his knees, nodded. The carpet was back over the safe, I saw.

  Benita pointed to the radio console. Underneath it I could make out a mounded, soft-looking heap of scales.

  “Well, that’s all right then,” Mrs. De Anza said. She went to the radio, squatted down, and began whistling softly at the snake.

  “Get some more brandy if you want it, Nick,” the Count told me.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough.”

  I went over and sat in the other Monterey chair, lighting a Lucky. De Anza drew out his case and I held the match for one of his trick cigarettes. It couldn’t smell up the place any more, I thought; the odor had already moved in for the night.

  The long box in De Anza’s lap held layers of cotton, and he was unpacking little beads and dropping them in the brown bowl, which was half full of what looked like water. De Anza nodded at it, and I bent forward. A faint flowery fragrance rose from the bowl. At the bottom were a lot of colored beads.