God damn you world!
He closed his eyes and blotted out the jagged silver-edged world. The world isn’t round, the thought spoke itself, the world is just a little jagged piece of silver-backed glass. You can shatter it in your hand. You can cut your wrists on the world and bleed to death.
He held the mirror fragment on his chest.
He ran one finger over its sharpness, felt his heartbeat thud a little heavier as the impulse kept growing stronger and stronger. He swallowed, once, twice, three times. In his weakness, the idea seemed to have no arguments against it. It seemed like a perfectly sound idea. At least it was feasible. Sharp glass edges slicing open veins like a knife slicing open long blue strands of spaghetti. Gentle ebbing of life, drifting away, floating, sinking, sinking … He felt a tingling in his right wrist as if …
He found himself whimpering with fear. He was two people. A glassy-eyed murderer, threatening. A frightened child, remembering …
He solved it.
His brain threw black mist over all though. He slept heavily. And the glass piece slid from his chest while he slept and fell on the bed beside him again.
2
The elevated station was in full swing.
Trains rushed in breathlessly, spit out nine to fivers, jerked shut their rubber-edged doors and hurried out again. The footsteps of the people thudded on the wooden platform, trembling the structure. They went out through the groaning wooden turnstile spokes and clattered down the metal-carpeted stairs and went quickly to work.
Pay day.
The station stood there, old and sagging, a wandering, thrown-up mass of wood and steel and sloping tin roofs. It looked as if it had sprung up suddenly from the earth, a weird, shapeless, underground monster that stood there quivering and belligerent. It shuddered under the hurrying feet, under the rattle and the pounding of the heavy trains. It braced itself on fat metal legs and held its feet wide apart to let the busses and the cars run in between its legs. It stood old and rusty and mildewed under the April sun, mutely, creakingly, performing duty.
The rumble of the trains didn’t affect him anymore.
Once they had. When he first moved into the room they had kept him awake nights, caused him to jolt into wakefulness just as he was about to sink into slumber.
Now he slept through all their pandemonium, their crazy rattling and thundering. Now the sound was a lullaby to his ears. It was unexpected sound that woke him up that morning.
The machine-gun cry of a starting motorcycle.
A sudden horn in the silence.
An abrupt, explosive burst of gagging and choking by the drunk.
The door to his room banging in its frame, sucked by air.
He woke and slept, woke and slept. The early morning was a flat, endless pattern of drugged sleep and groggy waking. His eyes would flutter open, crustily. He would gaze stupidly at the ceiling. His eyes would shut again. A sudden noise would set his heart to beating faster, make him gasp into a brief waking state. Then he would wait, not remembering where he was, who he was.
Nothing would happen.
And each time, he sank back into his doped coma. And every moment he slept, his body grew heavier with immobility and more numb. Every time he woke up it was with a feeling of being weaker and drier. Every time he slept he died a little more.
3
There was something pressing against his left buttock, a lump.
He moaned a little and reached his all-duty right hand over his body. His fingers slid down and touch his back pants pocket.
It was his wallet.
He had forgotten about it completely. He touched it gingerly. Then slid in three fingers and drew it out. He dropped it onto the bed. Outside, the church bells tolled ten o’clock.
He picked up the wallet feebly and set it on his chest.
He looked at it, a heavy fold of black leather.
He pressed it open very slowly, saw the cards, the papers, the faded, gold letters, Genuine Goatskin. Goat, he thought. Mountain goat and piles of money…
He looked into the money slit. There was a one dollar bill there.
He drew it out and looked at it as the wallet slid off his chest and thumped quietly on the bed.
The bill was old and wrinkled. This certificate is legal tender, it read. The number I in each corner. The word one printed over the number I in each top corner and four more times along the bottom and top frames. And One Dollar printed over the blue seal in shaded letters and One Dollar written in huge letters under the little parabolic name plate that read Washington. Must be a one dollar bill, his other mind offered wearily.
George Washington’s nose had disappeared in wrinkles. Good start for a story, his mind said. And George Washington needed a haircut badly. I meant to get a haircut, sir but I’m short a continental. A dollar a dollar, a ten o’clock dollar …
What good is this? the thought came. What good? Can it buy water to drink? No. That thought alone made him want to throw away the money, made him want to throw away everything and just lie there screaming—Water is the only thing, the only thing! He didn’t feel like thinking about anything. He felt too sick.
He was too thirsty.
He started at the dollar bill. I’d give you this for a glass of water, he promised as though someone were reading his mind. No, I’d give you it for a shot glass full of water. No, I’d let you have it for a thimble full of water. No, I’d give it to you if you just dipped your finger in water and touched my lips with it. You give me some water and you can have all the money on the floor, how’s that? I mean it. You can have all that money on the floor if you let me have a glass of water.
Suddenly, completely, he hated the money. He hated the dollar bill and all those other bills on the floor. He wanted to get rid of them for good, dispose of them violently just to show this invisible person how unimportant money really was to him.
This for a start! he thought.
He crumpled up the bill and threw it away with great affected carelessness. There now, you see what I mean? I really mean it. Now, how about it? A glass of water for all that money?
His eyes slitted. He felt very cunning and shrewd. If only he could talk this poor gullible fool into giving him the most important thing in the world. And for that stupid pile of money too. Ha! He laughed at the crumpled ball he had just thrown away. It stood by the coat.
Then the humor left. His face grew hard and vengeful and his eyes flickered hate. I hate money.
I hate it!
No good shit anyway, that’s what it is! What good is it if it can’t buy water? Tell me that! Water should be the standard of exchange instead of …
Yes!!
That’s it. The most brilliant idea. He suddenly felt as if he had found the answer to the most vital problem in the world.
Make water the standard of exchange.
Immediately the plan began to billow and expand in his mind. He felt that if he were convincing enough, someone would come and give him some water to drink. He had only to evolve this plan carefully enough.
Get to it now!
Money as the standard of exchange. Let’s see now. Lecture commencing. He would write a book on it. It would be a new, a wonderfully new economy. Water as the means of exchange. Money as legal tender.
1. Each drop will be adjudged a unit. (That’s it, that’s it!!)
2. A drop will henceforth have the value of a penny. (Yes!)
3. Five drops will be a nickel.
Basis established. A man who had a brook on his land would never lose his bank account. Taxes would be paid in jars and bottles. Never any inflation because if there was too much legal tender the sun would get hotter and dry up the reserve banks and people would drink themselves to parity. Oh God, what a superb idea!
He couldn’t understand why someone hadn’t thought of it before.
Carefully, methodically, he went over the plans for his new system of economics. For almost a half hour, thinking of all sorts of ramifications and embelli
shments. He couldn’t get enough of them. He couldn’t appreciate the idea enough. It was so all-encompassing. And original. And struck through with pure genius. And the most incredible thing about it was that he had been the first one to ever think of it. That was absolutely incredible.
Then why was it so clear, so obvious that he was right?
Why? Because water was the most important thing in the world. People were ignorant idiots for not realizing it. Oh, they realized it, they were just too obstinate and stupid to admit it.
All right now.
Water as means of exchange. He waited for his reward as the discoverer of this momentous innovation. His prize.
He looked through his wallet while he waited. Go ahead, take your time, just bring me some water. It’s all yours, the money I mean. It’s worthless now, we all realize that full well. Oh, it’s worth something to you, I mean to me it’s no good. No, don’t worry about that, you’ll get a lot of value from it.
He drew a slip of paper out of the wallet.
It had Lynn’s address and telephone number on it. He had written it down years before when they’d gotten out of college and come back to New York and Lynn had found himself a job, and then the apartment, all in the space of a month.
The slip also had Leo’s telephone numbers; the one at work and the number of her hotel.
He drew out a card and another slip of paper. He let the other paper fall down, he wasn’t interested in it anyway. He wasn’t interested in any of this really. He was just killing time. While the authorities looked over his astounding plan and decided to reward him with water to drink, valuable fiat to pour down his throat, decided to make him the first millionaire under the new system.
On the second slip of paper he read the name F.F. Muller 220 E. 65th Street, New York City 21.
He remembered that Muller was a literary agent. When Erick left college, his writing instructor had given him Muller’s name and address. He had sent Muller the best story he’d done at school. Muller sent it back and with it a note that said the story “showed promise” but it wasn’t “quite commercial enough.”
He turned the slip over. Smith-Corona #5. he read; the size typewriter ribbon he used. He had finally written it down after getting the wrong size ribbon time and time again. Comb – 10-41-14. The combination of the lock he’d had on his gym locker at school.
He dropped the slip of paper casually on the floor. It was worthless. He swallowed and tried to move his tongue. But it only made him thirstier. Come on, he thought, get on with it, you can damn well see that the plan is foolproof. How about that water?
He looked at the card.
Selective Service System, it read. This is to certify that in accordance with the Selective Service Proclamation of the President of the United States…
Erick Linstrom (Place of Residence) (Date of birth) (Place of birth) has been duly registered…
And in black letters at the bottom:
The law requires you to have this card in your possession at all times for…
He tossed it on the floor. There, I’m breaking the law, he thought. Come throw me in jail. Put me in a dungeon with water trickling on the walls. Stick me in a damp cell with a dripping sink, make me walk in a dark rainy courtyard like Rubishov, soaked to the skin. Flay me with crushing whips of hose water. Give me the water torture. Hold my head under water in a vat of icy water. Go ahead, punish me.
He lay there breathing heavily, waiting for the heavy boots on the stairs, the pounding of black clubs on the door, the splintering of locks and hinges, the carrying away.
Nothing.
His eyes shut. He sighed. He told them to hurry up with the plans for water as the standard of exchange. His mind said—What are you talking about?
He drew out a ragged, washed-out photostat of his discharge paper.
Honorable Discharge
ERICK LINSTROM 12 237 312 Private
Hereby honorably discharged … awarded … a testimonial of Honest and Faithful Service to This Country.
Given at … Date …
He turned it over, recalling the day he’d gotten it. He remembered sitting meekly beside the T-5’s desk. The corporal rolled in the discharge paper and asked his questions in a bored voice.
“How tall are you?”
“Six foot and a fourth of an inch.”
“6’4” typed the corporal.”
“What color are your eyes?”
“Green.”
The corporal checked. Hazel, he typed. He looked at Erick’s hair. Brown, he typed.
Rifleman 745. Combat Infantry Badge. Rhineland Go 40 WD 45 European-African-Middle Eastern Ribbon. Certificate of Disability for Discharge. Section I AR 615-362 4 Nov. 44 1st Indorsement Hospital Center Camp Butner N.C. 17. Jul 45.
Remarks and thumb print and pay data and insurance notice. Two signatures, his and the personnel officer’s. The end. Goodbye to all that. He had trusted it was goodbye anyway.
Underneath in a crabbed hand, the writing of a ration board worker—Food 25257—6/27/45 Book 3 and 4.
He looked blankly at the blackened double sheet. The white lettering went out of focus.
That was the record of 20 months reduced to a few words on a piece of sensitized paper. And it was those 20 months as much as a drop was the ocean and Leo was the measurements of her body.
He dropped the discharge paper on the floor. He remembered quite vividly that as he went out of the discharge center he had stopped in the hall and bent over the water fountain and filled his stomach with cold delicious water.
He pulled out the remaining packet of cards in his wallet. He looked disinterestedly at his notice of classification, his social security card, his official membership card in the Journalism scholastic society, his membership card for the public libraries of New York. He thought of the water coolers in the big library at 42nd Street and remembered the times he had bent over them to drink.
He saw the picture of his father. He remembered looking at it as he had been waiting to go into battle.
He looked at it again.
His father was standing against the country house Erick had been born in. His father had a straw hat on and a light gabardine suit. In his arms Erick rested, small and incommunicable. In front stood the unknown photographer. A moment plucked from the past and put down for all to see.
The sun was shining again. He was in the picture. He was there. He felt the hot sunlight. And Papa held him squirming. Mother or Uncle Bill or someone else was taking the picture. There were other uncles and aunts about. It was a small moment in the turn of the world wherein millions of fathers stood against millions of houses of unrecorded photographers pushed down the little lever while they held their breath and stood as rocklike as they could. Smile now.
It was 1929.
Early in the summer. A moment picturized. The man standing with him in his arms is his father. He is a small businessman. He is thinking the market is secure. He does not even dream that in a relatively short time the bottom will fall out of the economic boat and the chaotic waters will rush in. It was the picture of a man about to face a terrible time who didn’t know it was coming. He was alive.
See him there, breathing again. He is young. Happily married so far and his house is his own. He has a good job and he has two children. They are healthy and attractive children. The war is long over and it is a new world and he is peopling it with two more healthy beautiful specimens who will be good for it. So he stands there in the sun with his straw hat and pride in his young son.
He would be bitter and miserable but he did not know of it. He would die in a charity ward after being picked up drunk and dying of pneumonia in an icy street in Brooklyn. He did not know of it. He would die because he would be a drunk but that did not occur to him there under the sun with his baby. It was a terrible thing to look on this picture for he knew what would happen to that man who smiled under his straw hat with his child close to him. He knew the coming misery and his father did not. He was
godlike and a clairvoyant and it was a terrible weight to bear.
He wanted to cry. He did cry.
But there were no tears. His chest shook with sobs and his cracking lips trembled. He felt only pity and sorrow for his father. He did not hate him anymore. He did not hate anyone.
Except those fools who were keeping water from him.
Who would not admit that his plan for water as the standard of exchange was the most brilliant plan ever evolved. He could have killed them. He would have like to see them running over that plain like those little running dolls they later told him were Germans. And he would hold his breath and smile and grit his teeth with pleasure as he pushed the rifle tight to his shoulder and fired hot slugs over the earth and watched the men leap and start, then crumple into broken heaps on the wet cold ground. And he would feel excitement. He would go out there and get their canteens and drink all the water up. His economic system, why didn’t they approve his …
Everything fluttered to the floor except one thing.
He held a picture of a girl in his hand.
He stared at her and, for a moment, almost forgot that he was thirsty.
He knew the girl.
She wasn’t looking at him. As though, slyly, she knew he would want her to look into his eyes but would not satisfy that longing. As though she were teasing him, playing with him. She was smiling happily and her smile said—I know you’re there but I want to tease.
She had on a black, form-fitting sweater and a twisted pearl necklace.
Her long dark brown hair hung over her broad shoulders. There were smaller twists of pearl fastened to her tiny ears. Her red lips were parted. He would see her even white teeth. Her eyes were bright and happy.
He kept looking at her. Waiting for her to turn.
His mind repeated her name. He ran one finger over the outline of her hair. Oh God, I love you so, his mind whispered to her. I always will. He thought she would give him water if she were here.
He held the picture against his rough cheek and one small tear ran down his cheek and soaked into the print.