To walk in the hot sun was more than displeasure. The physical annoyance of the heat-absorbing black robe and cap were bad. But they were nothing to compare to the mental agonies. The slipping away of pleasures, never recognized as pleasures until their times had passed. The poor inadequate consolation of photographs, notebooks, letters, memories, in the face of complete hopelessness.
There were almost two thousand of them. They walked in double columns. Like a flow of blackness they issued from the administration building, their heels clicking noisily onto the sidewalk. Around the huge square campus they marched. Bugs and cameras clicked their recognition of the scene. Parents and friends looked for a familiar face in the sea of black capped heads. And smiled to see it. Waved self-consciously or raised ubiquitous cameras to place the moment on silver paper for all time, that moment caught fast as well as could be.
Erick wondered how his mother would look standing there. He could almost visualize her. Her stooped body dressed in her best dress, a white hat on her greying head. The sun glinting of her glasses. The pink cheeked face glowing with happiness and pride. The little self-conscious wiggle of her fingers as he passed by and the flush of delight to see him for a moment. He was almost sorry she wasn’t there. Then he knew he wouldn’t want her there. He wanted to be alone. There was too much in those last hours to leave room for sharing feelings with anyone. She would have spoiled it.
Everyone must be feeling the moments falling away, he thought. No, maybe not, he decided, maybe the future was all that counted to them. Maybe they were like Lynn with letters in their pockets from magazines and advertising agencies offering them jobs at good salaries starting within the next two weeks. Maybe the world was their toy.
Not his.
The minutes like intangible racers gained and kept gaining. Now in sight of the wire, they were blurs of light. And worlds had perforce to end because there never was any going back since time began.
His lips trembled as he thought of returning to a world he had forgotten how to use. There was no future for him except the dim hope of writing successfully. There was nothing to look forward to returning to a world he didn’t trust or care for. The sense of freedom he had felt after the last examination was gone now. He wanted to take it all on again, start from scratch, become a freshman again. Wipe the slate clean and fill it up again. It had been the happiest time of his life. Now there was only a couch in a livingroom, a brother-in-law who represented to him all the elements in the world he despised, a sick, doting mother.
He had the wild impulse to go to the dean and tell him he had cheated flagrantly on all his final examinations and ask to be put back a term. To ask for a job, any job, just so he could stay at college. He was like a frightened boy afraid to leave his mother. The thought of Sally crossed his mind. For a moment it stood out in sharp clarity. Was the fear of leaving the fear of leaving Sally?
He didn’t know. All he knew was that, despite the heat, he felt his body covered with a chill he knew that he suddenly realized for the first time that he would never see her again.
“Sally,” he murmured.
The girl in front of him looked over her shoulder. He looked down, feeling himself blush. Then the line stopped moving and he came down heavily on the girl’s heel. She turned in spasmodic irritability.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He felt the heat like a blast from an oven. Dark waves settled around him and he blinked. Someone pushed his back and he stumbled forward suddenly remembering the night in Germany when the man behind him had pushed him forward and he had wanted to kill them all. He didn’t want to kill anyone now. He felt like dying himself.
He stepped on the girl’s heel again. “Come on!” she snapped angrily.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Drops of sweat ran down his wrists. On and on he plodded thinking this was the end of the rest, that this was his punishment, his hell. To walk forever under the hot sun in black with the end of happiness etched in his mind.
Passing clouds and visions. Heat. Stumbling through streets lined with people.
They were in the field house. He found himself listening to some bald man telling the graduates how the world was waiting for them.
He looked around distractedly, remembering how they used to arrange the field house for concerts, looking at the place where Sally and he had always sat. He turned back front, conscious of being watched. He stared at the program littered floor and wanted to cry. He felt like squirming. He felt like leaping up and screaming—Christ, let me out of here! And running down the long weaving aisles like a maniac, into the sunlight. He could hardly sit still, he kept twisting and shifting. He felt sick. Oh, stop it, ordered his mind, what are you bitching about, you don’t love her. And he realized that it was her that was upsetting him.
He twisted his head and saw that everyone had their caps held in their laps. He took his off and felt his hair sticky and plastered to his head.
“God this is awful,” he muttered.
“You said it,” agreed the young man next to him. Erick glanced at him and wondered when he’d stood up with the rest of them. He couldn’t remember doing it.
He remembered the deans droning over the public address system that according to the authority vested in them … they all said they were happy to graduate them. Erick felt dizzy, as if he were going to faint. He recalled the time in basic training when he had gotten sunstroke while standing in review on a great open field in Georgia. He had been holding his rifle before him at parade rest and it had an unsheathed bayonet on the end. He had gotten dizzy and almost fallen forward and impaled his throat on the sharp blade. They had caught him and dragged him to a shady spot. He remembered the cool smell of the grass in that shady spot and the feeling of the cool water they gave him to drink.
The ceremony was over.
He found himself wandering among the broken masses of happy graduates and friends and parents. It was over. He concentrated on that, tried to understand it.
He stumbled along without seeing, his feet moving automatically for the room. Later, he realized he didn’t have his diploma and had to go back to the administration building and stand in a long line to get it. He left his robe at the school store and went down into the cool basement into the Drama office. Lynn sat there alone in a sweat soaked shirt smoking a cigarette. He looked up.
“That’s that,” he said mildly.
* * * *
They walked through the streets toward the train station.
Erick wanted to stop and sit down on the earth, hang onto it. Everything seemed precious to him. There had been nothing so wrenching in his entire life as that moment. To leave such a beautiful portion of existence behind. He couldn’t take it with him. It was not to be lifted, piece by piece, not to be stored in a trunk and sent Railway Express back home.
No, it was ingrained in every spot, in the very ground he walked on, walked away from. And for him it was on the campus where he had walked, in the bars where he had danced to jukebox music with Sally in his arms. Mostly, every spot seemed precious now because of Sally. The house she lived in, the streets they had walked together. The movies they had sat in together. The cafes and restaurants they had eaten in. In all the places they had enjoyed together.
And he could not take those things with him. Like gold, it was too heavy to be carted away in the hand. It had to be left in its place, there to remain, a shining memory. And he could never have it again.
“Glad to get out of this hole,” Lynn said.
Erick felt like stopping, putting down his bags, sitting on them and saying—all right, go on. Leave me alone. I’m here to stay.
He kept walking. And every time they passed a public phone booth he felt a twinge. And thought of how easy it had been all afternoon and evening to call Sally and say—Hello, how are you?
But he didn’t, he waited for her to call. He thought maybe she would. But all afternoon the phone was silent. And in the evening. And the feeling of pain kept g
rowing. Now it was almost reaching a peak as they walked slowly through the streets toward the train station.
“Damn cab company,” Lynn said, “They should have enough cabs.”
“Shut up,” Erick said, “Think about your 120 a week and shut up.”
“Oh,” Lynn said, “I sense a delicate ire.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
Drag me down earth! His mind cried, hold me back, don’t let me go!
They were in the train station, buying tickets. The air was crushing him. His legs felt like running lead, he could hardly walk. Sally. His mind kept saying her name. His stomach was rocklike mass, sinking. He struggled along lugging his suitcase into which had crept all the elephants in the world.
That clicking.
He blinked his eyes, focused.
It was the train wheels!
He lurched as he realized that he was staring through dusty windows, watching the dark city pass away into the night, melt away, rush backwards and disappear into forever. As though it were a magic place, an enchanted city which had appeared to his eyes four years ago and now was swept away by a returning curse.
Now there were only stretching plains and black lumps of trees looming up and leaping past the window. And the rapid clicking of the wheels on the tracks. He stared dizzily at the passing country.
“Oh, by the way,” Lynn said, “Sally called yesterday.”
Erick’s head snapped over and he gaped at Lynn. Lynn looked back blandly.
“What?” Erick said.
“That girl called,” Lynn said, “Sally.”
Erick couldn’t speak. His throat was suddenly congested.
“She called three times,” Lynn said casually, “You were out all day though.”
Erick felt himself drawing in. His fists were clenching.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
His voice sounded too patient to him. He felt the words screaming in his mind.
Lynn shrugged. “Why should I?” he said, “If you didn’t want to call her yourself, what difference would it make if you knew she called you?”
Lynn was right. He recognized that a split second before rage broke up the thought.
“You stupid son of a bitch!”
He said it slowly and distinctly, not caring if the entire car heard it. He felt himself as hard as rock, felt almost an uncontrollable urge to drive his fist into Lynn’s face.
“Why?” Lynn asked, his face genuinely alarmed, “Oh surely you …”
Erick shoved up and pushed past him, his right foot stamping over Lynn’s. He felt himself weaving drunkenly down the aisle, his hands shooting out in automatic spurts for support. The whole car seemed to distort and melt, running like wax. His stomach heaved, leaped.
The door banged shut behind him and he stood in the small reeking cubbyhole. He twisted around, making sounds of disbelief, of incredible disbelief.
He bent over and stared into the spot-flecked mirror. He saw his own harrowed eyes and his mouth half open. He felt like a child lost in the night. There were no words for it. All he could do was stand there staring and weaving, running his right hand over his face, sounds of terror and distress moving his throat.
Then a rush of sickness enveloped him.
He spun around with a lurch and threw up into the toilet. The brownish waste spilled and splattered over the toilet seat and dripped on the floor.
He was leaning and shivering against the cool metal wall, his brow pressed into it. The wall ran before his eyes and he was carefully reading instructions about the use of the toilet. He read it again and again.
He came back. He closed his eyes suddenly and cried. And he was lost in darkness, rattling throbbing darkness that moved on and on, carrying him away from everything that was in the world for him.
* * * *
A week after he got home there was collapse and fever and delirium. And when it ended, it left him white skinned, thin and apathetic to everything.
13
The church bells rang the half hour.
Thirty minutes to midnight of the fourth night. Thirty minutes left to Friday. Thirty minutes to the one thousand four hundred and forty minutes that would be Saturday. The end and the beginning simultaneous. That’s the way it was. Transformation of energy. Heat becoming cold, ice-water, water-steam. And Thursday wasn’t lost but was turned into Friday. The entire dream of the world enacted in one day that kept changing its face and its name. Or maybe it was a year that kept repeating or a decade.
Or a minute. Or not a time period that man had given a name to because it was there before he came, making his appearance dropping from a tree with his toys of discursiveness and waddling on land and deciding right off that it was his and he’d kill the first bastard that said different. And the time period would be there when time and man were gone and …
1440 minutes. What in seconds? He couldn’t figure it out. 24 times 60 times 60.
The fever had abated. He felt hot and dry but he wasn’t in an incinerator any more. They weren’t trying to cremate him alive anymore. He lay passive on his bed, looking dully at the ceiling that was a wall and going through the whole crazy pattern of thoughts again, height being length and vice versa.
Oh, my God, he suddenly thought, why didn’t I start taking my watch off my left wrist with my right hand. No reason. Just why didn’t he think of it. Simple, obvious that he could do it. They were always the hardest nuts to crack, the simple ones.
He reached over his weakening hand and worked the expansion bracelet down over his thin wrist. Good thing it wasn’t a clasp hand or he’d be lost, the thought occurred.
He pulled the band down over the dead limp fingers. Like taking it off a block of wood. No feeling. Thinking—My God all the water in me must have gone into this watch it’s so damn heavy.
He listened holding it against his ear.
Stop roaring trains, he thought. The trains sounded like ocean surf. He saw himself running in the cold whipping spray, diving into the icy wet waves.
He noticed something pressing against his ear. What is this? He wondered. He pressed it. He couldn’t figure it out.
He decided it felt like a wristwatch though how in hell it got up by his ear he’d never know. He shook it feebly. Why couldn’t he hear the ocean when he held the shell right against his ear? He shook it again. Still no sound of ticking from that damn watch. His face contorted, a look of dull surprise twitched his features.
Why, it’s stopped.
The conclusion appealed to him as one of great deductive brilliance. He was simply amazed at himself. He felt like patting himself on the head. He patted himself on the head. The watch stopped. Man, that’s something! His pale, dried lips curled up in a smile of undoubted victory. His watch had stopped, his mind announced clearly and forcefully, his watch had stopped and he knew it.
He blinked stupidly in the darkness.
Vaguely, he remembered his mother and himself in a jewelry shop on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. It was after he’d gotten out of the army with a medical discharge. He’d seen that watch in the window. She wanted to get him something to show her love for him, her gratitude that he was back. A watch it was decided.
That’s the one, he’d said, pointing it out to her. It’s almost exactly like the one I designed for myself when I was in the hospital in England. See the roman numerals and the gold hands so thin?
She bought it for him. Because she was so joyous that he was home alive to her. And she smiled and, proudly, put the money on the counter from her tiny bank account and watched him put the watch on his wrist. And he kissed her cheek and said thanks Mom. And they walked back onto the street and went to a movie.
Then later the same day he’d seen a watch exactly like the one he’d designed. With a black face and only four roman numerals in thin gold at 12, 3, 6, and 9. And a thin sweep second hand.
And he’d snapped his fingers in disgust and said, “Well, wouldn’t you know it, there’s one exactly like the one
I designed and only a little more money too.”
She had tried to smile and be pleasant. And, only now, he remembered the terrible hurt in her eyes. Remembered it so sharply that the memory made him sob and cry out brokenly. Eight years later, lying half dead in a black room.
“Mother, mother,” he whimpered in his dry, crackling voice.
Desperately, he tried to remember one nice thing he’d done for her. And only remembered all the cruel things, the callous things, remembered especially the day he’d left her side when she was very sick. Left in a rage and gone walking with deadly intent through the city.
He wept for it. I’m sorry, he cried. I am sorry, mother. I loved you always, only. But I was consumed with hate and despair with the world and its people and I forgot. Please forgive me too or I die. Now that I die. Reach out your hand and touch me. Stroke my brow with your hand. Give me to drink, I thirst. Mother, please touch your fingers in cool water and brush them lightly over my lips.
That’s it.
He reached out his hand to touch her face and the watch slipped from his fingers and shattered its face on the floor.
He blinked.
Something drop?
Well, it didn’t matter. He looked up again.
His mother was gone.
Maybe it had been Sally come to think of it. Maybe Leo. Maybe it was Ava Gardner. What were they doing here? I’m …
He blinked. It was hard. As if dragging a dry scraping lid over soft fleshy eyeballs. He almost felt the eyeballs being scratched. He wanted to stop blinking because it hurt. But he couldn’t. He kept blinking and the room kept jumping on and off like a flickering light. Only it wasn’t light except for the bars of reflected light on the ceiling and on the walls.
He looked up at the transoms. What were those two letters up there? Who put them there.
Sally.
14
Sally is married.