“Sure, come on into the living room,” I answered, moving past him.
When Da Campo had found a reasonably comfortable position in one of Charlotte’s doubly–damned modern chairs, I tried to make small conversation. “I’ve never noticed a TV antenna on your house. Don’t tell me an inside one works over there. No one this far out seems to be able to make one of those gadgets bring in anything decently.”
“We don’t have television.”
“Oh,” I said.
The silence hauled itself around the room several times, and I tried again. “Uh — how come we never see you at the new Civic Center? Got some sweet bowling alleys down there and the little theatre group is pretty decent. Like to see — ”
“Look, John, I thought I might come over and try to explain about myself, about us — Ellie and me.” He seemed so intent, so earnest, I leaned forward.
“What do you mean? You don’t have to — ”
“No, no, I mean it,” he cut me off. “I know everyone in the neighborhood has been wondering about us. Why we don’t go out much, why we don’t invite you over, everything like that.” He held up his hands in fumbling motions, as though he were looking for the words. Then he let his hands fall, as though he knew he would never find the words.
“No, I don’t think anyone has — ”
He stopped me again with a shake of the head. His eyes were very deep and very sad and I didn’t quite know what to say. I suddenly realized how far out of touch with real people I’d gotten in my years of commuting. There’s something cold and impersonal about a nine–to–five job and a ride home with total strangers. Even total strangers that live in the same town. I just looked at Da Campo.
“It’s simple, really,” he said, rubbing his hands together, looking down at them as though they had just grown from the ends of his arms.
“I got mixed up with some pretty strange people a few years ago, and well, I went to jail for a while. When I came out I couldn’t get a job and we had to move. By then Ellie had drawn into a shell and . . . well, it just hasn’t been easy.”
I didn’t know why he was telling me all this and I found myself embarrassed. I looked around for something to break the tension, and then pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I held them out to him and he looked up from his hands for a second, shaking his head. He went back to staring at them as I lit a cigarette. I was hoping he wouldn’t go on, but he did.
“Reason I’m telling you this is that you must have thought me pretty odd this afternoon. The only thing I have is my garden, and Ellie, and we don’t like living as alone as we do, but it’s better this way. That’s the way we have to do it. At least for a while.”
For a second I got the impression he had skimmed the top of my mind and picked off my wonderment at his telling me the story. Then I shook off the feeling and said, “That’s understandable. If I ever did wonder about you and Mrs. Da Campo, well, it’s something I won’t do any more. And feel free to drop over any time you get the urge.”
He looked thankful, as though I’d offered him the Northern Hemisphere, and stood up.
“Thanks a lot, John. I was hoping you’d understand.”
We shook hands, I asked him if he wanted to call up the Missus and come over for dinner, but he said no thanks and we’d certainly get together again soon.
He left, and I wasn’t surprised to see the cup of sugar sitting on an end table where he’d set it down.
Nice guy, I thought to myself.
Then I thought of that staring plant, which he hadn’t explained at all, and some of the worry returned.
I shrugged it off. After three weeks I forgot it entirely. But Da Campo and I never got together as he’d suggested.
At least not at the Civic Center.
Da Campo kept going to the City on the 7:40 and coming back on the 5:35 every day. But somehow, we never sat together, and never spoke to one another. I made tentative gestures once or twice, but he indicated disinterest, so I stopped.
Ellie Da Campo would always be waiting at the station, parked a few cars down from Charlotte in her station wagon, and Clark Da Campo would pop into it and they’d be off before most of the rest of us were off the train.
I stopped wondering about the absence of light or life or smoke or anything else around the Da Campo household, figuring the guy knew what he was doing. I also took pains to caution Jamie to stay strictly off–limits, with or without baseball.
I also stopped wondering because I had enough headaches from the office to take full–time precedence on my brain–strain.
Then one morning, something changed my careful hands–off policies.
They had to change. My fingers were pushed into the pie forcibly.
I was worried sick over the Gillings business.
The Gillings Mills were trying to branch over into territory held by another of our Association’s members, trying to buy timber land out from under the other. It looked like a drastic shake–up was in the near offing.
The whole miserable mess had been heaped on me, and I’d not only been losing my Saturdays — and a few Sundays to boot — but my hair was, so help me God, whitening, and the oculist said all the paperwork had played hell with my eyes. I was sick to tears of the thing, but it was me all the way, and if I didn’t play it right, mergers might not merge, commitments might not be committed, and John Weiler might find himself on the outside.
Mornings on the train were a headache and a nightmare. Faces blurred into one runny gray smear, and the clickety–clack didn’t carry me back. It made my head throb and my bones ache and it made me hate the universe. Not just the world — the universe! All of it.
I unzipped my briefcase and opened it on my lap. The balding $125,000–a–year man sharing the seat harrumphed once and gathered the folds of his Harris tweed about his paunch. He went back to the Times with a nasty side glance at me.
I mentally stuck my tongue out and bent to the paperwork.
I was halfway through an important field agent’s report that might — just barely might — provide the loophole I was seeking to stop the gobbling by the Gillings Mills, and I walked out of the station with my briefcase under my arm, my nose in the report, with a sort of mechanical stride.
About halfway down the subway ramp I realized I didn’t know where the bloody Hell I was. Hurrying men and women surrounded me, streaming like salmon heading to spawn. I was somewhere under Grand Central’s teeming passageway labyrinth, heading for an exit that would bring me out into the street somewhere near my building.
But where the devil was this?
I’d never seen any of the signs on the tiled walls before. They were all in gibberish, but they seemed to be the usual type thing: women, big bold letters in some foreign language, packaged goods, bright colors.
I lost interest in them and tried to figure out where I was.
I’d gone up through the Station and then down again into the subway. Then there’d been a long period of walking while reading that damned report, and thinking my practiced feet knew where they were going.
It dawned on me that for the last few years I’d been letting myself go where my feet led me each morning. Yeah, but my feet were following the subconscious orders of my head that said follow the rest of the commuters.
This morning I’d just followed the wrong batch.
A string of yellow lights spaced far apart in the ceiling, between the regular lights, indicated the way to a line of some sort. I followed the lights for a while until I looked down at my watch, for perhaps the hundredth time that morning, and realized it was past nine. I was late for the office.
Today of all days!
I started to get panicky and stopped a gray–suited man hurrying past with a sheaf of papers under his arm.
“Say, can you tell me where the exit onto 42nd and Lex — ”
“Derlagos–km??
?ma–sne’ephor–july, esperind,” he drawled out of the corner of his mouth and stalked past.
I was standing there stupidly till the next couple people cast dirty looks at me for being in the way.
Foreigner, I thought, and grabbed a girl who was walking with typical hurried secretarial steps. “Say, I’m trying to get out of here. Where’s the 42nd and Lexington exit?”
She looked at me, amazedly, for a moment, shook my hand loose from her coat–sleeve, and pattered off, looking once over her shoulder. That look was a clear, “Are you nuts, Mac?”
I was getting really worried. I had no idea where the blazes I was, or where I was heading, or how to get out. I hadn’t seen an exit in some time. And still the people continued to stream purposefully by me.
Subways had always scared me, but this was the capper.
Then I recognized the arrows on the wall. They were marked with the same kind of hyphenated, apostrophied anagrams on the billboards, but at least I got the message!
THIS WAY TO SOMEWHERE!
I followed the crowd.
By the time I got to the train, I was in the middle of a swarm of people, all madly pushing to get into the cars. “Hey, hold it! I don’t want to — ! Wait a minute!”
I was carried forward, pressed like a rose in a scrapbook, borne protesting through the doors of the car, and squashed up against the opposite door.
If you live in New York you will know this is not an impossibility. If you don’t, take my word for it.
The doors slid shut with a pneumatic sigh and the train shot forward. Without a jar. That was when I began to sweat full–time.
I had wondered, sure, but in the middle of downtown Manhattan you just don’t expect anything weird or out–of–place unless there’s a press agent behind it. But this was no publicity stunt. Something was wrong. Way off–base wrong, and I was caught in the midst of it.
I wasn’t scared, really, because I didn’t know what there was to be afraid of, and there was too much familiarity about it all to hit me fully.
I had been in a million subway crushes just like this one. Had my glasses knocked off and trampled, had my suit wrinkled, had the shine taken off my shoes, too often to think there was anything untoward here.
But the signs had been in a foreign language. No one I’d been able to accost would talk to me in anything but gibberish, and most of them looked at me as though my skin was green. The train was definitely not an ordinary train. It had started without a jerking rasp. If you know New York subways, you know what I mean.
That was unusual. That was fantastic!
I bit my lower lip, elbowed my way into a relatively clear space in the car, and for the second time in my life dragged out my square–folded lapel hankie to mop my face.
Then I saw Da Campo.
He was sitting in one of the plush seats, reading a newspaper. The headline read:
SELFGEMMEN–BARNSNEBBLE J’J’KEL–WOLO–BAGEDTAR!
I blinked. I blinked again. It was Da Campo all right, but that newspaper! What the hell was it?
I made my way over to him, and tapped him on the shoulder, “Say, Da Campo, how the deuce do I — ”
“Good Tilburr all mighty!” he squawked, his eyes bugging, the newspaper falling to the floor. “How the — dwid olu — did you follow — Weiler!” He went off in a burst of that strange gibberish, gasped, and finally got out, “What are you doing here, for God’s sake, man?”
“Look, Da Campo, I got lost in the subway. Took a wrong turn or something. All I want is out of here. Where’s this train’s next stop?”
“Drexwill, you damned fool!”
“Is that anywhere near Westchester?”
“It’s so far away your best telescopes don’t even know it exists!” He was getting red in the face.
“What?”
“The planet Drexwill, you idiot! What the hell are you doing here?”
I felt suddenly choked, hemmed in, like a fist was tightening around the outside of my head, squeezing it.
“Look, Da Campo, this isn’t funny. I’ve got an appointment this morning, and the office is waiting for me to — ”
“Understand this, Weiler!” he snapped, pointing a finger that seemed to fill the universe for me. “You’ll never make that appointment!”
“But why? I can get off at the next sta — ”
“You’ll never make another appointment back there.” His eyes flicked back toward the rear of the car and I found my own drawn in that direction. The fear was crawling around in me like a live thing.
He seemed to be grinding inside. His face was screwed up in an expression of distaste, disbelief and pity. “Why? Why? Why didn’t you leave well enough alone? Why couldn’t you believe what I told you and not follow me?” His hands made futile gestures, and I saw the people near us suddenly come alive with the same expressions as our conversation reached them.
I was into something horrible, and I didn’t know precisely what!
“Auditor! Auditor! Is there an Auditor in the car?” yelled Da Campo, twisting around in his seat.
“Da Campo, what are you doing? Help me, get me off this train, I don’t know where I’m going, and I have to be at the office!” I was getting hysterical, and Da Campo kept looking from me to the back of the car, screaming for an Auditor, whatever that was.
“I can’t help you, Weiler, I’m just like you. I’m just another commuter like you, only I go a little further to work every day.”
The whole thing started to come to me then, and the idea, the very concept, dried my throat out, made my brain ache.
“Auditor! Auditor!” Da Campo kept yelling.
A man across the aisle leaned over and said something in that hyphenated gibberish, and Da Campo’s lips became a thin line. He looked as though he wanted to slap his forehead in frustration.
“There isn’t one on the train. This is the early morning local.” He made fists, rubbed the thumbs over the tightened fingers.
A sign began flashing on and off, on and off, in yellow letters, over the door of the car, and everyone lowered his newspaper with a bored and resigned expression.
The sign blinked HUL–HUBBER on and off.
“Translation,” said Da Campo briefly, and then the car turned inside out.
Everything went black and formless and limp in the car and for a split split–second my intestines were sloshing around in the crown of my hat and my shoe soles were stuck to my upper lip. Then the lights came back on, everyone lifted his paper, the sign went dead, and I felt as though I wanted to vomit.
“Good Lord above, what was that?” I gasped, holding onto the back of Da Campo’s seat.
“Translation,” he said simply, and went back to his paper.
I suddenly became furious. Here I was lost in a subway, going — if I was to believe what I had been told — somewhere called Drexwill. I was late for the office, and this thing had overtones that were only now beginning to shade in with any sort of logic. A mad sort of logic, but logic nonetheless.
And the only person I knew here was reading his newspaper as though my presence was a commonplace thing.
“Da Campo!” I screamed, knocking the weird newspaper out of his hands. Heads turned in annoyance. “Do something! Get me off this goddamed thing!”
I grabbed his coat lapel, but he slapped my hand away.
“Look, Weiler, you got yourself into this, you’ll just have to wait till we hit the Depot and we can fish out an Auditor to help you.
“I’m just a lousy businessman; I can’t handle anything as snarled as this. This is government business, and it’s your headache, not mine. I have to be at work . . . ”
I wasn’t listening. It all shaded in properly. I saw the picture. I didn’t know where I was going, or what it was like there, but I knew why Da Campo was on this train, and what he’d b
een doing in my town.
I wanted to cry out because it was so simple.
I wanted to cry because it was so simply terrifying.
The train slowed, braked, and came to a hissing halt, without lurching. The doors opened and the many commuters who had been crowded into the car began to stream out. The entire trip couldn’t have taken more than twenty minutes.
Then I thought of that “translation” and I wasn’t so sure of my time estimate.
“Come on,” said Da Campo, “I’ll get you to an Auditor.” He glanced down at his wrist, frowning at the dial of a weirdly–numeraled watch. He whistled through his teeth for a moment, as the crowd pushed out. Then he shoved me after them resignedly. “Let’s hurry,” he said, “I haven’t much time.”
He herded me before him, and told me to wait a moment while he took care of something. He stepped to the end of a line of men and women about to enter a small booth, one of about twenty such booths. A dilating opening in the booth admitted one person at a time.
In a few moments the line had diminished, as men went in one side wearing suits like my own gray flannel, and emerged from the other clad in odd, short jackets and skin–tight pants. The women came out in the equivalent, only tailored for the female form. They didn’t look bad at all.
Da Campo went in and quickly came out. He stepped to my side, dressed like the others, and began pushing me again.
“Had to change for work,” he commented shortly. “Come on.”
I followed him, confused. My stomach was getting more and more uneasy. I had a feeling that the twinge I’d occasionally felt in my stomach was going to develop into an ulcer.
We stepped onto an escalator–like stairway that carried us up through a series of floors where I saw more people — dressed like Da Campo — scurrying back and forth. “Who are they?” I asked.
Da Campo looked at me with pity and annoyance and said, “Commuters.”
“Earth is a suburb, isn’t it?” I asked.
He nodded, not looking at me.
I knew what it was all about, then. A fool would be the only one unable to see the picture after all the pieces had been laid out so clearly. It was really quite simple: