Nothing but the Night

by John Williams

  They were, he thought, like so many dumb puppets manipulated by unseen hands; so many odd-sized figurines of wood and clay, dressed in shiny rags, painted, primped, fixed with automatic smiles, pulled up and down on invisible strings. He was not witness to a social endeavor that had to do with flesh and blood: what he saw was a dumb show, a horribly grotesque and childlike thing of terror with all the idiot simplicity of a marionette ballet.

  By concentrating, it seemed that he could slow and control the action of these dancers, could, if he desired, halt the action to observe and analyze each posture. It amused him to see them as conjoined bodies which jerked in spasmodic unison and remained suspended, immobile until another beat of music blared from the orchestra; then he could watch them jerk again, and halt, and continue that unreal contortion, jerking, twisting, squirming and halting with each successive beat of the music.

  He changed the focus of his eyes and allowed the action to speed up to its normal acceleration; and the floor became a pit where eel-like bodies writhed and flowed in liquid stops and starts. The men and women seemed almost pasted, pressed together until they were one irregular, bulky shape of contrasting color, two-headed monsters of another world. Lips were bared back from teeth in ludicrous retractions which were simultaneously smiles, vicious snarls, and grimaces of deep pain.

  Yet despite all the hysterical movement, the erratic tortuosity, there was some basic thing mechanical and grim about the dancing figures. It was as if only an unimportant, physical part of them danced, as if the other, more significant portion of them looked down from an unimaginable height. Or it was as if they were really the wooden-bodied, clay-masked puppets of his first imagining, trying desperately to achieve some semblance to life, and failing in the very method of approach, and aware of that failure.

  He heard a slight, discreet cough at his side. He looked up and saw his waiter standing patiently, holding a silvered tray upon which rested his brandy and soda. He nodded. The waiter put the drink in front of him and walked away.

  For a few moments, he considered the amber fluid in that tall glass. There was a glow deep inside it, as if a flame were burning there. Sitting and staring, almost hypnotized by the unmoving glow and by the soporific hum of the room’s composite sound, it seemed to him that very slowly and subtly he left his body and ascended into another dimension from where he could look down and see himself with a strange omnipotence. Nor was there any cleavage in that removal; more nearly, it was a doubling, as a cell dividing itself, creating two entities where formerly there was but one.

  He felt his mind and body utterly sapped of strength. He realized now that the entire day had been one of great trial. There was no single thing he could exactly name which had so weakened him—there were so many events, each piling upon the other, each creating its own tension; and now their sum pulled at his raw nerves so powerfully that he could in no way react to defend himself.

  Why had he come into this place? This was no haven and he had known that it was not. What was the senseless circumstance which led him on and on, deeper and deeper into what seemed to him to be a mazed labyrinth, devoid of pattern or meaning?

  Then suddenly he believed that for whatever happened to him for as long as he lived, no blame could be attached to himself. For he did not act, he had never acted from his own volition. Some unnameable power pushed him from one place to another, down paths he had no wish to travel, through doors he did not know and had no wish to know. All was dark and nameless and he walked in darkness.

  He sighed sharply; and he came back into his body. The glow in the amber fluid became merely a reflection of the room’s hidden lights.

  He picked up the glass. It was cold in his fingers. He sipped. The cool beverage pressed against his upper lip, tickled and numbed it. He smacked his lips, pretending to enjoy the taste, and exhaled a drawn-out ‘Ah-h-h’ of facile appreciation. He settled back in his chair and drank slowly and waited for the evening to reveal itself to him, sentence by sentence, like an unread book.

  He did not see the girl suddenly. Her presence crept upon him with the subtlety of sleeping, and she caught only one unconscious corner of his eye at first. Perhaps he would never have noticed her at all had she not been so motionless. In that rapidly shifting, yet unchanging room, she was the only creature that did not move. The others swarmed and wormed their aimless ways about the floor, but she only leaned, inert and insubstantial, against the wide arched frame of the aperture which led into the alcove of the bar.

  His eyes did not move to inspect her more closely, so she was only a vague figure barely in the sphere of his sight. Yet, without fully seeing her, he had the strangest feeling that she was looking directly at him. His first impulse was to dismiss it as a delusive hypersensitivity caused by the several brandies he had drunk. But still the feeling persisted, and he could not rid himself of it.

  It became a small game he played with himself, an inner battle to rid himself of the sensation without actually turning and looking at the girl. He felt the back of his neck go red with the inexplicable embarrassment which is felt when one is the recipient of unsolicited and unexplained regard.

  After all, he told himself, a mere flick of the head would settle the matter. Look at the girl, but briefly, he told himself again, and then turn your attention back to more important things, to your brandy, for example.

  But he had delayed his looking for so long that it was no longer a thing easily done. The prospect filled him with the private embarrassment of personal failure.

  Almost guiltily, he swung his upper body around and stared directly at the girl who leaned so easily, so restfully on the frame of the arched entrance into the bar.

  She was very pretty. He noticed that at once. Quite the prettiest girl in the room. Quite the prettiest girl he had seen in a long while. Her small well-knit body was sheathed in a loosely flesh-clinging gown of red silk jersey. She stood taut against the door, one leg thrust slightly in front of the other. He could see the long sweep of hip and thigh where the dress flowed downward in revealing folds. Her waist was small; and from her waist, her body was swelled up to delicate, perfectly formed breasts that pushed against her gown’s tight bodice. She was dark: her skin, her hair, and her eyes. Her lips were full and brightly carmined.

  And she was looking at him.

  Then he realized something else. She was very drunk. Her stance against the door was not one of repose but of support. As he looked at her, she swayed perceptibly and caught at the door frame to retain her balance. Her mouth was parted minutely and the corners of her lips were curved down to form, almost, a half-circle. And although she stared at him steadily, she did not smile.

  Then embarrassment returned, overtaking his momentary elation upon seeing this lovely girl. Should he glance over his shoulder, pretend he did not see her? But he rejected that; he had been looking too long and too intently. He swallowed rapidly, inclined his head, and forced an uncertain smile on his lips.

  In no way did she immediately acknowledge that small salutation. No flicker of movement crossed her brooding face. For perhaps half a minute she returned his stare while he became increasingly uncomfortable. Then, without warning, she swayed forward again; and she weaved across the room toward him.

  He felt a brief, tearing gust of panic. Why, he wondered miserably, had he smiled? He did not want to talk to her, did not want her at his table. He neither knew what to say nor what to do upon her imminent arrival. He hurriedly gulped the warm remains of his brandy and soda.

  Then she was standing beside him, teetering and swaying alarmingly, looking down rather curiously at him. Afraid that she would fall, he got up quickly and made a stiff bow. Not until then did he realize that the liquor was affecting him. He was quite dizzy, and the room tilted about him. He gripped the back of his chair and smiled at her.

  ‘How do you do?’ he said formally. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  She looked at him glassily. Her voice was throaty and only a trifle thick.

>   ‘I was with someone. I don’t know where he is now. He left, I think.’

  The smile was fixed on his lips.

  ‘Really? Is that so? Well—sit down. Sit down, please.’ He spoke with what he imagined was hearty charm.

  She collapsed in the chair he held for her, managed it gracefully.

  ‘Thirsty,’ she said. ‘So-o-o thirsty.’

  His panic was gone. In its place there was a kind of throat-burbling satisfaction. He waved a careless arm in the air, signaling the waiter.

  ‘Of course,’ he said to the girl. ‘By all means. What will you have?’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference at all.’

  At the clearing of a throat, he turned. He discovered the waiter standing patiently at his side. He thought rapidly, bit his underlip in indecision. Then:

  ‘Oh, I think we’ll have champagne.’ The words, which he tried to make casual, came out strained, self-conscious. He turned to the girl. ‘Is champagne all right?’

  She nodded indifferently.

  To the waiter, he said, ‘Yes. Champagne.’

  The waiter looked at them doubtfully; he shook his head and walked away from them.

  Arthur turned his smile back to the girl. He beamed at her, and she regarded him languorously.

  ‘Hello, little chum,’ she said.

  ‘Hello.’ He laughed. ‘My name is Arthur Maxley.’

  ‘Little chum,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you little chum.’

  He laughed again. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘Me? Who am I? Oh. I’m Claire. Claire Hegsic. I’m a Bohemian, you see.’

  His smile was confused. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s my nationality. Bohemian.’

  ‘That’s a nice nationality,’ he said. ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Did I tell you I came in here with someone? Well, I did. But’s he’s gone now. Gone. I don’t know where he went.’

  He put amazement on his face. ‘You mean—he left you here? How could he do that?’

  Claire said somberly, ‘He was a bastard, I think.’

  She brooded over this discovery for a while.

  Then she declared, ‘I like you better.’

  He expanded. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Fine. That’s the way it should be.’

  His head was very light. He began to see things with a new clarity. His earlier depression was gone, his tensions relaxed. Everything was beautiful, gay: and such a delicious creature, here, beside him. He looked at her admiringly. Her eyes leveled with his own, but he knew she did not really see him. There was still that brooding, opaque intro-version which would not let them meet. But wait, he thought: but wait, he thought exultantly. That will change.

  The waiter, bearing their champagne, interrupted his stream of thought. He watched, fascinated, as the waiter did strange things to the bottle. When the cork popped, he started and giggled nervously.

  ‘I like champagne,’ Claire said. ‘It tickles. It tickles all the way down.’

  He laughed delightedly, agreeing. They drained their glasses ceremoniously.

  ‘But it doesn’t have any kick,’ she said then. ‘I like for things to have a kick.’

  She talked on slowly, dreamily. As he listened, he began to lose awareness of what she said; it was enough to be soothed by that pleasant voice. He wondered what sort of person she was. (Altogether delicious, of course, but—) Where did she come from? Where did she live? What did she do? All the trivial things that did not really matter. He would discover them later, of course, but now it was most amusing to conjecture as he listened to the smooth lullaby of her talking. Stenographer? No. She did not look the secretarial type, nothing like that: and besides, her fingernails were much too long, lacquered a brilliant red, the exact shade of her lips. Those fingers did not pound a typewriter. (He was inordinately proud of that deduction.) Shopgirl, clerk? No, again not the type. Too svelte, too well-kept. But what?

  It was most pleasant to be able to sit back here in this crowded jolly place, relax and listen to the charming voice of a lovely girl, all the while considering, trying to discover the two and two of the creature’s existence. Woman of mystery. It sounded rather trite, but it appealed to him now. Moving in dark, mysterious ways: from whence to where no one knows: a whispered word at midnight, a rendezvous, a white rose in that dark hair. (Oh, by all means a white rose in that lovely hair!) Kind and eternally wise, knowing all, understanding all. Now the orchestra should break into the haunting strains of a familiar waltz: the night in Vienna: the ball, the woman of mystery whom all adored and no one knew.

  He chuckled inwardly. It was an almost audible giggle. Such wild thoughts: like things in a magazine story. Then defiantly—No, they were lovely thoughts, quite lovely. And why should he not be allowed to think lovely thoughts? Was there any reason why he should not?

  He was utterly weightless as he smiled at Claire through a festal haze. She had stopped talking; she was staring at him again with those peculiarly blank eyes.

  ‘What?’ he asked. ‘What did you say?’

  She paused for another moment, thinking about it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember.’ Then she pointed an unsteady finger at the champagne bottle. She waited.

  ‘What?’ he asked blankly.

  ‘The bottle,’ she said gravely. ‘The bottle is empty.’

  He looked at it with some surprise. So soon? Time had no meaning: it seemed that only a moment ago the waiter had popped the cork and they had lifted the first glasses.

  ‘So it is,’ he said. ‘Empty. Well. We’ll have to do something about that.’

  He signaled; and the waiter walked up to him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  The waiter was amused. ‘Nichols,’ he said.

  ‘Nick, the lady and I want—’ He turned to her questioningly. ‘More of the same?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Something with a kick.’

  ‘Something with a kick, Nick. Bring us a bottle—’ He demonstrated the desired magnitude with incautious hands. ‘A big bottle.’

  Nichols smiled amiably. ‘Sorry. No bottles allowed on the tables.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right,’ he said affably. ‘It’s okay. Just keep them coming. Brandy. Big glasses.’

  Nichols smiled again, nodded, and dissolved away from them.

  The orchestra, as if self-consciously noting its own long silence, burst rather precipitously into sound.

  ‘I feel sick,’ Claire said. ‘Let’s dance.’

  He frowned in confusion, but he did not question her logic. He hesitated, however.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t dance very well.’

  ‘You can move, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, come on, then.’

  They insinuated themselves into the mass of bodies with some difficulty. He placed a tentative arm around her waist. His fingers touched the flesh of her bare back and he recoiled as if the shock had been electric. She giggled, and he replaced his hand, more firmly, rather sheepishly. She glued herself to him, and they moved their bodies (there was no room to move their feet) in close and intimate rhythm with the music. Now, he thought, I, too, am a puppet. Now, I, too, am pulled by unseen strings: now I am descended in the pit, I am one of them.

  Swaying slowly, sensuously, he was overpoweringly aware of the girl’s body against his own. Her arm, encircling his neck, was tight, and she pushed herself against him with a sort of detached hunger. Her hard firm breasts thrust against his shirt front, and he could feel the pressure of her thigh against his leg, the little trembling motion of her stomach as they moved together. Her face was strained up until their cheeks were touching, and he could feel her heavy breathing tickle his ears. He pulled back from her a little and looked at her face. For several moments they remained so, their eyes and heads unmoving, staring at each other, while their bodies continued the slow roll and sway. And on her parted lips there was, for the first time, a smile. A la
zy, somnolent, rapt smile. He imagined that he could see a smoldering of banked fires deep in those half-closed orbs. Then with a petulant movement, with no expression flickering on her face, she pulled his head back down to her; and he could feel once more the rise and fall of her breath upon his cheek and ear.

  He could hardly realize that the dance had ended. Visibly shaken, he disengaged himself, took her arm, and they walked back to the table. He breathed heavily, and he felt that his face was faintly pink. They sat down; he looked across the table at her. Her face had assumed the old mask of sullen boredom. Her eyes were glassy again, and the corners of her mouth dropped in a nameless discontent. He found that he resented the fact that she remained visibly unaffected, that she had so quickly lost whatever feeling she had evidenced on the dance floor.

  He tried vainly to keep the tremble from his voice.

  ‘Feel better now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Much better. Where’s that damned waiter?’

  ‘Here he comes.’

  Their drinks were set before them. Simultaneously, they raised them to their lips and drank. When he put his glass down, it was still more than half-full; but Claire did not stop until the tall container that she held was empty.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘That had a kick.’

  ‘Brandy.’

  ‘Was it? Well. It tastes the same after a while.’

  He knew that he was getting drunk. His jaw drooped, his mouth hung slack, words tumbled forth easily, and he had no idea what he said; he only knew that miraculously, conversation came without effort, that his voice flowed on and on. The muscles of his cheeks began to ache from an incessant grin.

  Escapism, of course, he thought; pure escapism. But how he hated that word! How he hated it. Much too puritanical. They used it to designate actions for which they could find no simple reasons, actions both high and low. Escape. Of course. Escape from a large confusion into a smaller one. Here, at least, he could recognize the confusion, even if he could not understand it: meet it face to face: defeat it, if only for a moment, even if it was necessary to drink it down into oblivion. Brandy and soda, the elixir of our age. Claire, loosely drunk, the pedestaled damozel.