He threatened himself with every violence imaginable with the small portion of his brain that was not concerned only with the sight and taste of water.
He lifted his head. No other way to do it, it had to rise up.
Barbs of pain drove into his neck and upper back. He grimaced in pain and gasped as a package of needles exploded in his neck.
Why not pull the pillow under your head further, he heard a bland voice suggest. Why yes, that’s a good …
Look Out!!
He grabbed the glass again suddenly, his heart threatening to burst through the tissues and bone of his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath. He was never so frightened in his life. Even in the trenches with shells bursting around him, it hadn’t been so bad. He thought he couldn’t hold himself together he was so frightened.
He had to wait a little while.
It agonized him to stare at the glass. But he knew he couldn’t take chance on dropping it. He made up his mind to deal with his inner brain for having made him almost drop the glass. I’ll get you, later! he threatened half-consciously.
Finally he felt strong enough.
He had to have some water to drink. It was too much to lie there without trying to get at the water that was at his very lips.
He tilted the glass. His heart rattled like a dry rock shaken in a hollow gourd. His chest rose and fell like an earthquaked land.
He touched the rim edge of the glass with his lips.
His eyes started down lustfully into the bubbly depths of the water.
The frond touched his lips. He blew it away.
The water touched his lips.
Wet.
Cool.
It dribbled and ran into his parched mouth.
The hot dry flesh sucked it in thirstily. More water ran into his mouth and throat. He couldn’t taste it. He could only feel it, cool and wet and wonderful. He tilted the glass more.
Don’t drink it all! his brain demanded but he couldn’t listen to it yet. Impelled, he drew up the glass and let the water pour into his mouth, every drop a cool wet benefaction.
He couldn’t swallow first.
He had to let it run unguided down his throat. Some of it went down the wrong way and made him gag. A burst of the choking water came spraying up and out of his mouth, soaking his shirt with tiny drops. He almost cried aloud with horror. The glass jerked in his hand, water spouting up the walls of it. He fought to stop coughing. I mustn’t waste any! he thought in utter terror.
There was still no taste. As the coughing eased, he drank again and it was more like someone running a cool, wet finger around the inside of his mouth, down his throat, into his chest and stomach. A thin line of wet coolness running through the hot, dry chambers of his body.
Still he drank. It seemed miraculous that the water would last so long. But only a few drops at a time were going down.
At last he could swallow. The lump left his throat and saliva began working again. The tightened mucous membranes loosened and the oppressive cloud of heat departed.
He tasted the water.
It was brackish and stale. It was magnificent.
It was water.
Before he realized it the glass was almost empty.
All that remained was about a quarter of an inch. He held the glass away from his lips. His tongue licked greedily, wanting more.
But he had to leave it. He knew that.
He put the glass back on the table quickly before his thirst overwhelmed his impulse to conserve. His fingers unwrapped from the glass, caressing it lovingly. Then pulled away.
He drew back his arm, held it up a moment. Then rested it at his side. His head sagged back.
He sighed, ran his rejuvenated tongue around his mouth. Oh my God, but thirst is a hideous thing, he thought.
He almost felt human again.
The dryness was alleviated. Almost gone. His thirsty body was sucking gratefully at the liquid, drawing it in, making good use of it, embracing it. I have watered the garden, he thought, and closed his eyes.
Then his stomach, as if cued, contracted and he opened his eyes suddenly.
The candy bar.
2
He extends his hand.
His hands shakes badly. No food. A man is hardly noteworthy when he is starving.
His hand closes over the candy bar. The wrapper crackles invitingly. His trembling, grimy fingers curl over the bar. Clutch it, the thumb and pinkie pushing it at each end.
It is small, the bar is small.
But it is precious. To the poor, hungry man, it is a nugget of gold, a landslide in securities, inflation to the speculator, war to the maker of bombs.
He drags it over the table.
The wrapper continues to crackle, how very invitingly. He runs a tongue over his lips. The taste of stale water still clings to his throat.
He reaches the end of the table.
Again he must be careful. He must not, he dare not let the candy bar slip from his grasp and tumble to the rug. That would be catastrophe.
That must not happen.
He tightens his palsied hand on the wrapper. He counts.
One. Two.
Three!
He jerks the bar over the chasm. It thumbs down on his heaving chest.
He looks with fierce love at the candy bar.
It says Oh Henry
His lips form the beloved words. Oh Henry. Wonder of wonders is Oh Henry.
He drags it closer to his mouth. He sees maddening words.
Covered With Genuine Milk Chocolate.
The words incite him to revolution.
His fingers tear at the wrapper, the black nails trying to pierce the pierce the paper. He wants to rip away the concealing robes. Reveal to light all the naked glory of Oh Henry. His hands shake as he attempts it.
His fingers fumble at the bottom of the wrapper as though he were stroking a woman’s hair with sensual affection.
Upside down, his eyes drink in the words that are politics and philosophy and all.
Wt. 1 1/3 OZ. MFD. BY WILLIAMSON CANDY CO. CHICAGO.
Oh Henry! (Ingredients of) Bless them. Oh, God bless them. Bless the milk chocolate, the lecithin, the number of Spanish peanuts, the corn syrup, the sugar, the divine evaporated milk, the glorious sweetened, skimmed, condensed milk, the honorable vegetable oil, the salt, the just soya protein, the patriotic imitation vanilla flavor.
God love them!
His eyes are glittering. His tongue, a feverish impatient lump that keeps poking out through his lips to see what the hell is holding things up.
His fingers tear, rip, pull, disrobe.
There!
He sees it. Beautiful thing. Like a lumpy cigar, like a knob on a Scotchman’s cane, like a faceless miniature totem pole. Like a lump of … his nose curls up.
His breath is faster.
In a moment the delicious ambrosia will pass his lips. His teeth will click together. His mouth opens and closes like that of a suffocating fish. His fingers close over the lumpy chocolate beauty and bear it slowly, surely, to his eagerly awaiting mouth.
His lips close over the end.
He sucks on it.
His mouth trembles on it. His jaws feel watery weak. He tries to bite. He cannot. A moan of irate fury echoes in the empty amphitheater of his chest. His stomach growls a last truculent warning.
His teeth clamp together.
He bites off the end of the bar. His jaws chomp chomp.
He sucks and gasps and pops his excited lips. The chocolate melts in the tropic heat of his mouth. It clings to his teeth and to the roof of his mouth. The fragments of nut and dried com syrup lodge in the spaces between his teeth. His active tongue darts around the black room picking out little pieces, drips of chocolate, coatings of syrup.
His eyes are intent animal eyes.
He never takes his beady gaze from the candy bar. Oh Henry, he is thinking, Oh God Henry. His mind, which if it chose, could think of the four freedoms and the Australian ballo
t, thinks instead of the next mouthful coming up. The glorious mouthful, throatful, stomachful of nuts and syrup and sugar and genuine milk chocolate.
He pokes the bar into his mouth, bites it off. Savagely now, master of the situation.
He bites the nuts into tiny pieces. He keeps his tongue running around his mouth.
A piece of nut almost tumbles out and down his chin.
Whoa there!
His tongue leaps out and falls across his lower lip. Saved! He plucks in the elusive nut particle and hurls it down his throat for safekeeping.
Another bite, another, less violent. More in gratitude and slit-eyed bodily pleasure.
He savors each mouthful. He sniffs it before he bites it. The sweet fragrance of the chocolate and the nuts and the syrup is more wonderful, more glorious than the essence of a million roses. It tantalizes him, excites him. Food. Wonderful food.
Food, the only four letter word that counts.
He frowns sadly. Moodily Offended.
The bar is half gone, more than half.
He eats it more slowly, gazing blissfully at the ceiling, adamantly refusing to swallow before each morsel is chewed to a pulp. Absolutely declining to take a new bite until the old one is done away with for good.
In all details. He searches his mouth with tongue like a prospector panning for nuggets of gold in a stream. He licks his lips over and over on the vague possibility that some bit of chocolate has eluded him.
Two more bites. With moderation, three.
He bites smaller.
He closes his eyes, loathe to share the ecstasy of eating with the drab shabbiness of the room.
In darkness, he eats and sucks and gobbles and swallows and licks, dreaming a vision of mountains made of genuine milk chocolate, of temples erected with Oh Henry bars, the pillars thick, huge, Oh Henry bars towering over his head as he eats them down.
One more bite.
He looks at it unhappily. Like a cannibal popping down the one remaining finger of his best friend.
He chews it carefully, swallows, licks his lips.
Sighs.
He looks down at the empty wrapper. There is a small piece of nut, syrup coated, on the paper. He places it gently into his mouth and masticates it to a powder.
He looks again at the wrapper. There are some tiny spots of chocolate left on it.
The paper rattles around his twitching nose as he licks the spots away. Now there is only paper. He feels almost as empty as he did when he started.
But, at least, it is a little better.
He takes the glass and sips.
Unexpectedly, he discovers a bonus chunk of nut crouching behind a wisdom tooth, flushed out by the searching water.
Joyously, he sucks it, chews it, swallows it.
It is done.
He lies still and is almost happy. Gently, reverently, he puts the wrapper on the bed beside him.
And pats it lovingly like a father patting the tiny head of his only begotten son.
3
Now sleep, he told himself. He felt drowsy and comfortable. He had drunk. He had eaten. He could move his arm. And there was hope for returning to life. Everything had changed. The sun shone and the bleak despair of the night before was only memory.
He’d rest and then, later, he’d force himself up and leave the room.
Forever.
Wake me at nine, he told his mind. I’m going to take a snooze. He sighed in bliss, in utmost satisfaction. Odd, he thought, how little satisfies, how the littlest things in the world are of such immense satisfaction.
He closed his eyes. He sucked down collecting saliva.
It was good to be alive.
4
He woke up at nine. On the dot. The church bells were ringing for the ninth time as his eyes flew open and he stared at the ceiling.
He turned his head and looked at the glass.
It was true then. He hadn’t dreamed it. Only a few drops of water were left. And the dry, curling rose lay by the side of the glass. It’ll die fast now, he thought.
He looked over on his left side and saw the candy wrapper. That was true then too. He had eaten. He had drunk. But where did it all go? He was thirsty and hungry again.
He looked back at the table.
What was the third thing? He wondered it suddenly. It was a fascinating problem. Now that he could reach out and touch it. What could it be? Odd that in his own room, he should not know what one of three objects should be.
He reached out his right arm. His hand dropped on the object. He felt coolness, smoothness. His nails raised it lever-like. His fingers slid under. He lifted it up, carried it over and looked …
At himself.
His mouth fell open. It was a shock, it made him gape. It couldn’t be him.
But it was.
His cheeks and chin and neck and the space between his nose and mouth were covered with heavy bristle.
He held the mirror closer. He could see each individual bristle. Some of them were double, two growing out of one pore. He started to count the whiskers under his nose. He lost count quickly. They weren’t arranged in rows or in any orderly fashion.
He tightened his lower jaw and thrust his chin forward. Hundreds, thousands of bristles moved out at him, starting blonde, then becoming black at the jaw line and down his neck. They looked like porcupine bristles, like black needles poking into his flesh.
He wondered what the point of it all was? Why whiskers? The age-old question cropped into his mind. Why are the useless things retained? Like wisdom teeth and appendixes and tonsils and whiskers? Or maybe they were useful and it was only men who could not assize the function.
He pushed back his chin and the hanging flesh under his chin bunched out and made his face look as if it were made in layers.
He looked at his lips.
They were well-shaped. His mouth was small. It looked like an elongated heart split across, the long way. It had hardly any color at all. The upper lip was a sickly pink. It looked puffy. There were tiny white spots on it. When he extended his mouth, the lip was shot through with thin red vertical lines. The more he did it, the more wrinkled his lip became when he relaxed it and it returned to normal size. It looked as though it had once been slashed with tiny razor blades. The lip was dry. He ran his tongue over it and the lines disappeared, the lip was as before.
The lower lip hung like a fleshy ledge over his round chin.
There was a little hollow cave between the hanging lip and his chin. The lower lip had the same coloring as the upper one. It was a little thinner though. It had the same vertical red lines. The skin on it looked old and dry. He licked it but the red lines were still there. He looked closer. There were horizontal lines too. In places, the lip looked like fleshy graph paper. Like a pale pink and minute tic-tac-toe board. He lost himself in the pattern.
He looked at the lips together.
It was a good mouth, straight, well-shaped, if you didn’t look too closely. He pressed his lower lip against the teeth. The hollow disappeared and he saw the line of tiny blackheads along the under edge of the lip. He tightened the upper lip. There were blackheads along its upper edge.
He looked into the dry, hair-networked cavities of his nostrils.
He drew back his lips and looked at his teeth.
They were yellow.
There were two big ones in the top gum on each side of the center. They looked the same, the two of them; like yellowish-white hatchet blades, the sides almost parallel. Then, on each side of them, smaller teeth. Then, two ugly ones that looked like fangs or like lopsided, unpopped grains of yellow popcorn.
Small teeth on the bottom front. Two of them that came to points like tiny enamel mountain peaks.
He opened his mouth wide and saw all the dull silver fillings. What’s the matter with teeth? he thought. What’s wrong with them that they should be so full of stopped-up holes. What was wrong with the food of the world that it ate away the teeth and made necessary toothpaste and brushe
s and floss and dentists?
Dentists.
He looked through the years and saw the host of dental appointments he had kept, the hours and days he had sat in the torture chair dreading the moment when the dentist would step on the pedal and the buzzing drill would start and he would press the bit against the enamel and would grind away part of Erick’s tooth. And the heat would rise and his expanding tooth would fire lances of red-hot pain into his brain.
All that work. All that money. For what?
He stuck out his tongue.
It was dryish. He looked at all the tiny white buds standing up like white plants. His tongue was covered with them. Between them he saw the reddish flesh of the tongue. In back it was whiter, more heavily coated. He saw the dark cave of his throat, the flapping red finger of red-veined flesh that hung down from the roof of his throat.
He shut his mouth.
All that in there, he thought. All those tiny buds and those rows of teeth, all different shapes, fitting into one another like the pieces of some inordinately complex jigsaw puzzle. And the tongue fitting into the space between the teeth as though it were a ship in berth. The teeth all poking out from the gums and yet the two parabolas of them meeting squarely.
It was phenomenal.
He felt something of awe for a moment. Lost in the varied magic of a face.
He looked at his nose.
Even, he thought, I am even. If you drew a line down the middle of me I would be cut in half, half in quantity on each side. One foot, one leg, one arm, one nostril, one eye and ear—all half. It was absolutely mathematical. What about the heart? interrupted his alien mind. He ignored it. The point was made.
The bridge of his nose was straight. The flesh ran around it smoothly and tapered out evenly to the cheeks and eyes. The two large nostrils flared back and out forming a dip of flesh on each side. The nostril cavities were shaped like falling raindrops. They ran out and then into the tip of his nose, forming a perfect sine wave upside down.
He looked close at the tiny pores in his nose.
They were clogged with dirt and grease. She thought her face was clean until she took the tissue test! The words offended his mind. He could take the fingernail test on his skin and get dirt, he thought.