“Christ,” Fergesson cried, “he’s the most unhealthy person I know, him and his bellyaches and his celery phosphate. He’s always sick—he’s a hypochondriac!”
Ellen nodded. “Don’t you see? They left him with such a terrible sense of needing to be healthy…of needing to be outdoors, out in the country. Out of the city, out where things are natural. They didn’t teach him anything useful; they didn’t teach him to live in this world… He doesn’t know how to take care of himself. And then his father died.”
“I know,” Fergesson said. “That was bad.”
“If his father hadn’t died Stuart might not have got this way. He was only eight. His mother and sister brought him up. They always had money; his father left them property and life insurance. Stuart always had it pretty easy.”
“I know,” Fergesson agreed. “He never had to work for a living.”
“When I met him he was going to be an artist. I met him in college, you know. He had great dreams; he always talked about himself and his future. But there was that hunger he didn’t understand; he thought he wanted to paint, but really he didn’t have the discipline. He didn’t understand it meant work and learning a lot of techniques. What he wanted to do was express himself through his hands some way. Because that was what he had been taught to do. It wasn’t really art he was interested in, it was himself. He was yearning, and he didn’t know what for. I knew. It was a religious thing, and I knew sooner or later he’d discover it. Religion was just an empty void in his training. They sent him to Sunday school a few times… He learned a couple of psalms, heard about missionary work in China. You know, one day Stuart was brooding about God, the way he does. He asked me what church my family went to.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“I said the First Presbyterian. I was brought up very strictly. He brooded about that then. He wanted to know why the First Presbyterian. I told him.”
“Tell me.”
Ellen got up from the table and carried the bowl of hulled strawberries to the refrigerator. “Well, I told him the truth. We joined the First Pres because it was the church closest to our house. It was just down the block.”
Fergesson said nothing.
“You see, Stuart couldn’t make anything out of that; it wasn’t the answer he wanted. And it made him sick; he gets that dismal, moaning way, when he’s worried or confused. He moped around the apartment for days after that. I was sorry—” She turned unhappily to face Fergesson. “I knew it was my fault; but what else could I say? I don’t know what to do about him; I can’t be his father confessor.”
“He ought to go to a priest or something,” Fergesson agreed.
“One day this last June, Stuart delivered a television set to a minister. He didn’t know the man was a minister. He saw the big house, all the luxury, he saw the man’s wife, he couldn’t understand how the man could be a minister. It had a terrible effect on him. I think that was part of what brought this on.”
“You mean this Beckheim business?”
She nodded. “I knew before he went to the lecture what was going to happen. I knew he wouldn’t come back the same. That was what he was looking for, and he didn’t even know it himself. I knew it; I was afraid.” Half to herself, half to Fergesson she went on: “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he should change. Sometimes I get so fed up with his moping around I think good God, anything would be better than this, even if he went out and shot himself.”
But she didn’t mean that. Tears came up and stung her eyes; she walked quickly away from Fergesson and stood with her back to him, gazing out the window. What was she doing? She was delivering him over to his enemies, to Fergesson. Talking about him, deriding him. And all she wanted to do was save him.
“No,” she said. “I don’t mean it. I don’t care how sick and worrying he is.” Her voice choked. “He’s my husband and I love him. I want to keep him; I don’t want to give him up. And if he changes maybe I’ll lose him. I guess I’m selfish; I don’t know. It just seems to me that he’s so—sort of fragile. He looks big and strong—a lot bigger than you. A lot bigger than you’ll ever be. But he’s not like you; he can’t do things. Somebody has to take care of him, somebody who loves him.”
Fergesson scowled. “He’s old enough—”
“No, he isn’t.” Her words rushed out furiously, agonized. “I want to take care of him…but so did Sally. Maybe she felt the same way; maybe she realized there’s something lacking in him. But it’s not just that. There’s something more; he has something; he is something. He wants to do so much… That’s what’s the matter with him. That’s why he mopes and gets mad and does strange things. When he wakes up, when he sees the world, you and the store—he doesn’t understand how he can be there, just a salesman. That’s not him. He wants much more. God, I wish I could get it for him. But nobody can. He can’t get it for himself… It isn’t possible. He had such dreams; he grew up when dreams were popular. Now it’s only reality. And he can’t face that. And it makes him angry.”
Some meager thread of her words was comprehensible to Fergesson. “Yeah,” he agreed, or thought he agreed. “That damn temper of his. Stumblebum’s going to have to watch that temper; he can’t get mad with customers. I don’t care if he worries; that’s his business. But I care if he’s going to fly off the handle the way he does. My God, he has tantrums like a little kid… When some old lady’s chewing his ear he stands there red as a beet, getting madder and madder.”
“For a little while,” Ellen said tightly, “that’s gone.”
“Gone! What do you mean?”
Ellen tied on a plastic apron and shakily began pouring soap dust and hot water into the sink. “When he came back from the lecture he was as quiet as a child. He was like a scared little boy; he just stood there, his eyes big and round, not saying anything. I knew it had happened…even though after a while he sort of snapped out of it. He came over to me—I was in bed, of course—and sat down on the edge without saying anything. I never saw him look like that before, and I asked him what happened. It was a long time before he’d say.”
“What did he say?” Fergesson asked, morbidly curious.
“He said he’d learned something. He’d found out something he’d always suspected. Beckheim told him the world was coming to an end.”
Fergesson hesitated, then bellowed with laughter. “The world’s been coming to an end for five thousand years!”
“Yes, it’s funny, isn’t it?” Ellen gathered up the pots and pans from the stove. “I wish you could have been there and seen his face. Maybe you would have laughed; maybe not.” For a time she was silent. “He was so—awed.” she said finally. “Stuart has always seen beyond this…” She nodded at the apartment, herself, and Fergesson. “He’s been aware of it and we haven’t. You know what I mean. I mean the war.”
“Oh,” Fergesson said. “What about the war?”
“That’s it. That’s the end.”
“The end of the world?”
“The end of everything. It fell into place for him. All the pieces running around his mind. You say it’s old—but to him it was a great discovery. All of a sudden everything made sense, everything he had seen, all that had happened to him, all that he had ever heard of. The whole process added up to something…for the first time in his life. You’re lucky—you never lived in the world he was living in. He couldn’t see any purpose, any pattern to it…to his life or all our lives or the whole universe. It was just a big senseless mechanism to him. And then suddenly it wasn’t. Suddenly everything was for a purpose.”
“All that Armageddon stuff? God against the Devil?” Fergesson paced around restlessly. “Sure, that’s what I was brought up on. But a man’s a fool if he takes that seriously! I mean, you can’t really go around spouting that stuff. I mean—”
“You mean it’s for Sunday.”
“Yes.”
“Stuart believes the war is going to destroy the whole world. He believes man-made civilization will end. He beli
eves all the armies of the world, all the cities, the factories, the roads, will be demolished. He believes a new world will arise.”
“I know,” Fergesson said testily, “I’ve read Revelation.” His outrage increased. “But they’ve talked that way for centuries! Every time there’s a war somebody says it’s Armageddon, the end of the world. Every time a comet comes around some crackpot gets out and bellows and prays and says, ‘Prepare for the Day of Judgment.’” He turned suddenly to Ellen. “My God, you don’t believe this stuff, too, do you?”
“No.”
“Maybe you can talk him out of it. Maybe it’s just a phase; maybe it’ll wear off.”
“I don’t think it will…not all of it. It’s sunk down into him; it’s not on the surface anymore: it’s down inside him where it doesn’t show. He’s just sure all this will pass away. He feels calm. He isn’t excited or worried about it. He feels easier in his mind not having to have anything to do with it.”
“Escapism!” Fergesson raged. “He’s got a job to keep, he’s got you and Pete to support! He can’t turn his back on his responsibilities.”
Ellen shut off the water and turned away from the sink. “Do you read the newspaper?”
Fergesson blinked. “Sure.”
“Anything but the sports page and the comics?”
“Sure! Everything, all the way through.”
“Do you read the front page? About the war?”
“The Korean War? Naturally. I’ve got two cousins fighting over there. And I was in the First World War myself. In the Marines—I volunteered.”
“Do you think we’ll be alive ten years from now? Do you think we’ll live through a hydrogen-bomb war?”
Fergesson’s beefy face twisted. “Look, Ellen, once you start worrying about that, there’s no hope. You can’t do anything about it; it either comes or it doesn’t. It’s like flood or famine…it’s out of our hands—so why worry about it? We have to go about our living and just hope it never comes.”
For a long time Ellen studied him. The tight, grim expression on her face made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of the way his mother had looked at him when he was a child and said something unspeakably filthy, picked up from the farmhands. He tried to think of what to say, but nothing came. He was baffled. The woman’s brown eyes blazed; her lips worked furiously, silently. Her body trembled under her white cotton shirt.
“What’s the matter?” Fergesson quavered uneasily.
“You don’t understand, do you? You’re exactly the way Stuart says; you just don’t have any understanding. You live in a little dead stale old world of your own.”
“Don’t talk to me that way,” Fergesson said sharply.
While they stood glaring at each other, the sound of footsteps came from the living room. Fergesson turned slowly around. His wife, Alice, had come into the apartment; she stood quietly in the doorway, in slacks and a red-checkered sports shirt, the car keys dangling from her hand.
“I got tired of waiting,” she said to her husband. “Hello, Ellen. Where’s Stuart? Where’s the man of the house?”
“He isn’t here,” Ellen said briskly.
Alice sensed that something had been going on; a mild, almost placid expression appeared on her face. “Where’s Pete? Can I say hello to him? I’ve only seen him a couple of times, you realize.”
“Sure,” Ellen said listlessly. She dried her hands, took off her apron, and edged past Fergesson. “He’s in the bedroom; I have the shades pulled down so he can sleep.”
“I don’t want to wake him up,” Alice said gently.
“You won’t. He’s sound asleep. If he wakes up I’ll feed him; it’s about time.” She led Alice through the door and into the dark, heavy-amber bedroom.
Pete was awake. Exhausted by his struggles with the sunbeams drifting past the shade and over his blankets, he lay on his back, slack and inert, gazing blankly up. The two women stood over his bassinet for a long time, both of them deep in thought.
“He has Stuart’s eyes,” Alice said. “But he has your brown hair. It’s going to be soft and long, like yours.”
“He’s got his grandfather’s teeth,” Ellen said, smiling. She lifted the baby from his covers and propped his head against her shoulder as she unfastened the buttons of her shirt. “Always hungry, aren’t you?” she said to Pete. Supporting him in the crook of her arm she pushed her shirt aside and lifted her breast to the baby’s greedy mouth. Cupped in the palm of her hand, her breast was full and firm, its dark nipple raised expectantly. Pete took it eagerly, and the girl shuddered. Laughing, she said to Alice: “I must be sensitive—I think his teeth are beginning to come through. But it couldn’t be, so soon.”
Alice pushed the door a trifle shut after them and stood watching Ellen as she fed the baby. “What was going on when I came in?” she asked. “Was Jim trying to tell you how to run your life?”
“No,” Ellen answered indifferently. “We were just arguing about the war.”
“If he tries to lecture you, pour a pan of boiling water over him. That’s what I do.” The sight of the young mother and her baby made momentary envy stir in Alice. “The little old goat,” she said, with surprising vehemence. “Damn him.”
Outside the bedroom, Fergesson stood clutching his beer, eyes fixed on the half-closed bedroom door, hearing the indistinct murmur of the two women’s voices, an occasional laugh, and finally, the wail of the baby. They were changing him, probably. He moved over a little to see; for an instant he caught sight of Ellen, the baby in her arms, gazing down intently, absorbed. In the amber light of the bedroom the girl’s breasts hung large and dark, a vision that was quickly stolen from Fergesson, as Alice pushed the door all the way shut.
Shame touched Fergesson, embarrassment at having watched. And then a terrible sorrow so great that it was almost past bearing. Miserable, lonely, he turned bitterly away from the closed door, an acid pain cutting across his chest and into his lungs. Baffled, he plunged around the warm bright living room in an aimless circle. Outside, men were washing their cars and listening to the ball game. Empty, lost, Fergesson could no longer stand it; suddenly he had to go and wrestle with the shipment of television sets. He couldn’t stay in the apartment a second longer. The hell with Hadley.
“I’m going!” he shouted at the closed door. “You can stay here and gab—I’ve got stuff to do!”
There was no answer from the bedroom.
As he hurried blindly out of the apartment and down the hall, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. He found them as he came out on the shattering-white sidewalk. Hopping into the car, he gunned the motor and released the parking brake. For a second he hesitated, half hoping, half expecting, Alice to come out after him. But there was no sign of her. He didn’t wait. He pulled out onto the street and in a moment he was on his way home, to the basement full of great three-hundred-pound television combinations in their ponderous brown cardboard cartons.
When they got to San Francisco the ancient Cadillac showed signs of giving out. Steam poured from its radiator; the motor hesitated, roared, misfired, spilled torrents of foul black smoke from the exhaust pipe. At Market and Third it stalled. Horns honked and pedestrians surged angrily on all sides of them: they were blocking the crosswalk.
Looking out at the clouds of black smoke coming from the exhaust pipe Dave observed: “She’s burning a little oil.”
“Jesus,” Laura said wretchedly, hands clenched helplessly around the steering wheel. “What’ll I do? We can’t leave it here.”
Dave Gold and Hadley got out and pushed. Presently a grocery delivery truck came up behind them, nosed at them and honked. Dave and Hadley scrambled gratefully inside, and the truck bumped up against the Cadillac.
In summer, in the middle of July, the great city was beautiful. Hot sunlight had burned away the fog; buildings rose clear and sharp, separated by narrow streets no wider than footpaths. Cars crept up sides of hills, wavered, shifted to low, barely managed to reach the ledge that was the
next intersection. All hills sloped down and down to the vast blue trough of the Bay. Before the streets and buildings disappeared into the frigid surface of water there was a narrow band of warehouses, piers, docks, a ribbon of commerce solidly ringing in the city.
“Down there,” Dave said to Laura as the motor roared into spasmodic life. “Coast down to the Embarcadero and we’ll park it. We can walk to Fisherman’s Wharf.”
The huge old car rattled and rumbled down Pine Street, past the stock exchange and out of the business district, among deserted office buildings and into the commercial section. A few seedy bars squatted here and there among the warehouses, an occasional hamburger stand, gas station. As they came out onto the flat Embarcadero, Dave spotted a parking lot.
“Over there. Two bits—a steal! But what the hell; Stuart’ll pay for it.”
Laura parked the Cadillac, and they got stiffly out one by one. Gravel crunched under their feet as they passed a billboard and came up onto the sidewalk. The dilapidated stores nearby were shut down, deserted flyspecked windows thick with dust. A few cars moved aimlessly along the wide street; now and then a pedestrian tramped past vacant loading platforms. Behind them, the slope of the city rose, a solid cliff of white houses and buildings that kept going up. The city looked as if someday it might slide into the Bay and disappear. It looked as if it were already sliding.