“Tree?”
“The cherry tree.”
“Oh.” He looked a little downcast. “Sorry.”
“You never should have done it.”
He twisted. “It’s a hard thing for another person to see. Especially a man. Especially at a time like that.”
“I told you how young I was.”
“Try to put yourself in my place! For God’s sake. Once it had gone that far—”
“You should never have done it. It was wrong.”
“I suppose so. But it doesn’t seem to have—to have stunted your growth. Has it?”
“Stunted my growth?” She smiled a little. “I guess not. No, I suppose it hasn’t. I never thought of it that way. Isn’t that what cigarettes are said to do?”
They both smiled.
“Well, let’s forget it,” Barbara said at last. “It’s off my chest, at least. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it didn’t do any lasting harm. I don’t know. It’s hard to know. So hard to tell.”
“At the time you didn’t seem to be in any pain about it. You almost enjoyed it.” He grinned.
“Yes—After the first five minutes I enjoyed it. So that’s that.”
“What’ll we think about now that we’ve settled that?”
“We can think about getting me a second dresser.” She put her hand on the piles of clothing on the bed beside her. She was still frowning a little; he could not tell exactly what about. “I think one more dresser will do it”
“All right,” Verne said. “We’ll think about that.”
10
VERNE STRETCHED AND yawned. “Well, let’s go get the dresser. Where is it?”
Barbara leaned back on the bed, against the wall behind her. “Easy. Not so fast, on a day like this.”
“I feel active again. Heat is strange that way. First you feel dopey. You don’t want to anything at all. Then all of a sudden you spring right up out of your chair. This is the moment for me. I’ve sprung up.”
Barbara got slowly to her feet “All right. I think we’ll find a dresser in one of the other rooms.”
“They’ll probably be locked.”
But the room next to Barbara’s was not locked. And there was a little white dresser just like hers right next to the bed. Each of them took an end of it, and in a moment they had lugged it into Barbara’s room and set it by the other.
“That’s that,” Verne said. “Do the clothes go in any old way, or is there some ritual about it?”
“Maybe I should put the clothes away. Then I’ll know where things are.”
“All right.”
Barbara opened the top drawer of the dresser. “Damn!” she said. The drawer had razor blades and some adhesive tape and pieces of string and nails lying about on the dirty newspaper that had been used to line it.
Verne looked in the other drawers. They were all the same way.
“I’ll have to repaper it and clean it out. Maybe even scrub it. Christ.”
She went over and threw herself down on the bed. The bed sagged and groaned under her.
“Not a very strong bed,” Verne said. “Not much good for entertainment, is it?”
“Strictly a chaste bed.”
“Well, there’s always the floor.”
“Not unless it’s swept.”
Verne studied her intently. Was she kidding him, going along with the gag? Or—or something more? He tried to read her expression, but it was hopeless. A losing game, trying to read a woman’s face. Finally he shrugged. He reached into his pocket and got out his pipe and tobacco. Barbara watched him filling the pipe without speaking. Her eyes were wide.
Verne glanced up as he was clicking his lighter. “My pipe. Won’t go until I light it.”
“I know. I remember your pipe. I remember it very well. You had it that time. At Castle.”
“At Castle?”
“Yes.”
Verne sat down gingerly on the bed beside her. She said nothing. He went on sucking at his pipe, trying to get it lit. “God damn hard thing to operate,” he said between his teeth. At last the tobacco caught.
“I don’t see why you smoke when it’s so hot.”
“This isn’t for warmth. This is for comfort. It relaxes me.”
“Probably makes you feel more like a man.”
He shot her a sharp glance. “Why do you say a thing like that?”
“I don’t know. Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, all make me think of high school kids trying to grow up.”
“You smoke, too. These days.”
“Not a pipe.”
“No.” Verne was silent, smoking and thinking to himself. “Well, it might be. Freud, again.”
“What might be?”
“Let it go, if you’ve forgotten.” Verne leaned back, trying to make himself comfortable on the bed. He kicked his shoes off. The shoes fell to the floor with a loud crash.
“What’s that for?” Barbara said.
“To make myself comfortable.”
“Are you going to stay?”
Verne glanced at her. “That,” he said, “depends on you.”
Barbara reached over and picked up his shoes. She set them in his lap. “Put them back on.”
“Really? But I’m more comfortable.”
“I’m not.”
There was silence. Verne watched her with mixed amusement and embarrassment. Barbara’s face was dark and sullen. Finally she relaxed.
“All right. It doesn’t matter.” She tossed the shoes back on the floor. “Let them lie there, then.”
“I don’t think I know quite how to take this,” Verne said, still smiling at her. But his hand, gripping the pipe, was tense and pressed tightly to the wooden bole. Barbara did not say anything. She was looking indifferently off through the open door into the hall. Verne continued to examine her face intently, watching her with an almost eager interest. He blew smoke slowly into the center of the room.
“Want me to close the door to the hall?”
Barbara turned. “What?”
“Want me to close the door? Is that what you were staring out there for?”
“My God, no. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Lots of things. As one does. I was thinking about Carl, for instance. I was wondering what sort of a boy he is.”
“Seems nice,” Verne said noncommittally. “Certainly big enough. Why?”
“I don’t know. Last night I started down the hall to take a bath and there he was, standing outside the door, in the middle of the hall. Not making any kind of a sound. Just standing. It scared the hell out of me. As if he were some kind of—of ghost. A spectre. A great silent figure, watching me with that strange look he has. That look of detached contemplation. As if I were some sort of natural wonder, like a waterfall, or an insect.”
“The whole world is one vast insect for Carl. I think that about sums him up.”
“Does it? We’re going to have to spend a whole week with him. I’d like to know—But he does seem to be all right.”
“We could always push him into one of the septic tanks.”
Barbara laughed. “Anyhow, he’ll be busy exploring with his compass and map. He won’t bother us much. And I think he’s nice, Verne. I see nothing wrong with him. He leaps around and shouts a lot, but that’s natural for his age. Don’t you like him?”
“He’s your subject. You brought him up. I have nothing to say.”
“You know, it’s an odd thing, I don’t suppose I’m more than three years or so older than he is. But I feel like I’m not in his generation at all. Why? It’s not the age, I guess. The actual years. It’s more the attitude. When we were coming down he was skipping and jumping and dancing around, all ready to pull off his clothes and run naked over the hills. Then he smelled breakfast.”
“You never felt that way?”
“No. It’s too hot.”
Verne would have been glad to drop the subject. His pipe had gone out; the tobacco had been used up. He knocked
it against the wall and emptied the ashes into the ashtray on the table.
“That’s not actually so,” Barbara went on. “On the way down I was almost ready to go with him—for a moment. Run and dance, leap and roll. And early this morning when the sun came up, when I woke up—”
She stopped.
“Go on,” Verne murmured.
“No. Anyhow, I was almost ready to follow him across the countryside. But then all of a sudden I felt like a fool. I froze up around it. For a moment I felt myself in sympathy with him, and then the next minute I was disgusted. At myself. As if I had been lured by—by marbles and hopscotch again.”
“I get the picture.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m working it out in my mind. I didn’t intend to talk about it. I started thinking out loud. The door to the hall made me think about Carl. The way he stood out there.”
“All right. We’ll forget it. I’m just as glad.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t fascinate me to any unusual degree.”
“Have you forgotten your own youth?”
“I don’t see that it has anything to do with my youth.”
“Easy, easy. Forget it.” They were both silent for a time. Barbara rubbed her bare arms. “God, but it’s miserable! Like a Finnish bath house.”
“By six o’clock it’ll all be gone.”
Barbara looked at the clock. “Almost six hours. We’ll die. At least, I will. I can’t stand just sitting in the heat like this. I want to do something.”
“A shower would be fine. But actually, it’s not unusually hot. It’s always like this in the summer. But we’ve been busy before, working at our jobs. We never had time to notice the heat. We had something to do. When you get right down to it, we’re really bothered by not having anything to do. The heat is only incidental.”
“Oh?”
“We’re being paid to sit here and do nothing. So we feel all upset. First we stand up, then we sit down. We blame it on the heat, but it’s really because we don’t know what to do with ourselves.”
“I suppose so.”
“We’re restless. Our work filled up most of our lives. Now that’s gone. Behind us. We don’t know what to do without it. We’re too strongly involved with it; it’s too much a part of us. Like old fire horses. We won’t live long, now that the Company’s dead.”
“Carl’s doing all right, running around outside.”
“He’s younger. There’s a slim chance that he might live through this. You might, too. You’re young. You might be able to adjust to this, the fall of our world, the old world. Want to go out and start exploring?”
“Too hot.” She wiped her neck. In the amber half-light of the room he could see her twisting in an agony of discomfort. Suddenly she leaped up. “Let’s do something!”
“I already have made my suggestion.”
“What’s that?”
“Take a shower.”
“There’s nothing but a big pot of a tub here.”
“Then take a bath.”
“Oh, hell! Who ever took a bath at noon? Anyhow, that’s not what I want. I feel restless. As if there’s something I should be doing. Something undone. Some kind of work or something uncompleted. You’re right, I suppose. It comes of having sat at a desk for years.”
“You must try to adjust. Realize that it’s over. The old life is gone. Dead.”
“I guess so.”
“This is a moment of importance. The moment of decision. We’ve shed an old life, for the moment. We’ve just gotten out from a dying world. Now we stand at the brink, looking around us. Like those crabs that aren’t always in the same shell.”
“What kind of crab is that?”
“I don’t know. I read about them, once. They chase around, getting into empty shells. After a while they get tired of one shell and go on to the next.”
“That’s us?”
“In a way. We’ve lost the old shell; it wore out. Now we have to find a new one. We have to live in some kind of shell. We can go in several directions.”
“What are the directions?”
“One is back.”
“Back?”
“To whatever we’ve always done. To what existed before. The was.”
“What’s the other directions?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t worked it all out yet. You wait a while and I’ll have the rest.”
Barbara laughed. “A hell of a place to stop.” She stood in the middle of the room, first on one foot, then the other.
“I know. But that’s the trouble. We’re at a time of decision, and we don’t know what the decision represents or what choices we have, or even where they lead. Our world is gone, our old world. We can turn and go with it, die with it. The crab can stay in his worn-out shell and perish. We’ve been fortunate, the three of us. We’ve been pushed out to the lip of the shell. We can stand and look around us. The others have already left, gone with the old. Soon we can follow them. Or we can find something else.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Well, if we don’t we simply die with the rest. Our being picked out this way, the three of us, gives us a chance to escape. We become free agents for a moment. The cosmic process hangs poised. We can start it spinning in any direction we want. Like the figure in the Greek play. He looks around him. What is he going to do?”
“He always does the wrong thing. That’s why it’s a tragedy.”
“He does the greater thing. That’s why it’s tragedy. What he does brings personal ruin on him, but it had to be done. Duty. He recognizes what’s at stake and does what he should do. Just like a man plunging into a burning building. He does it because he feels he should. Even if he is burned up. The tragic figure does what he must, and is burned up. But burned or not, the thing must be done.”
“Why does the right choice always have to bring destruction on the person? It isn’t fair.”
“Well, if it brought him fortune, it wouldn’t be tragedy. It would be just sound business.”
Barbara was silent. “Anyhow, it makes an interesting topic for discussion.”
She wandered over to the doorway and stared out into the hall. The hall was dark and silent. All the way along it the doors were closed. Nothing moved. There was no sound. Except for the musty, clinging smells, the hall was empty.
“What do you see?” Verne said, from the bed.
“Silence and immobility.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why good?”
She did not answer. She continued to stand at the door, leaning against the doorjamb, her hands in her pockets. Verne gazed at her, square and supple under her slacks and her heavy cloth shirt. Her golden arms.
“You look pretty good,” he said.
“What?”
“You look all right.”
She did not answer, but she shifted a little onto her other foot. Her body straightened out. Some of the supple lines melted and disappeared. She was standing rigid and stem, because of what he said.
“What’s the matter?”
She turned around. “Nothing’s the matter.”
“You don’t want me to tell you that you look nice?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t! Do you understand? I don’t want any more of that. None. None at all.”
Verne was surprised. “But—”
“Anything but that. Don’t invent nice things to say. I don’t want to hear them.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“No doubt.” Her chin was up. “I have no doubt.”
“Get off it,” Verne said slowly. “I thought we made an agreement.”
Barbara relaxed. “Sorry. I’m divided up into a whole lot of parts. I want this, then I do that.”
“Forget it.”
“It’s the heat. And boredom. I keep thinking I want to do things. But as soon as I start to imagine walking downst
airs and outside into the sun—”
“Why go outside? Let’s do something here.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, goodness. What, indeed!”
“For God’s sake, Verne.”
He grinned up at her.
She smiled a little. “The bed will fall apart. It’s almost ready to collapse. That’s one reason why I’ve followed the straight and narrow.”
“Have you?”
“For a while.” She sat down next to him. “You know, Verne, it’s so strange how some things are the same, and some things are different.”
“How so?”
“You know what I mean. Four years kills so much, but it doesn’t kill everything. The real problem is trying to find out just exactly what it has killed and what is still alive. It’s so hard to know. It’s impossible to know. In advance, at least. What goes on, deep down in your mind? I wish I knew what was still alive in me. I wish I could find out.”
“There’s one thing that nothing kills. At least, not until the whole body perishes.”
“Four years is a long time. But what the hell.” She turned toward him. “Look at how different I am. It must be fascinating to see. I’ve changed a lot, haven’t I?”
“You’ve grown from a young girl into a fully developed woman,” Verne stated.
“Stop it.” She colored. “That’s what I don’t want to hear. I told you.”
“But it’s the truth.”
“I don’t care. That’s one thing that is not the same. It’s off.” Color rose into her cheeks.
“Really?”
Barbara got up quickly and walked around in a little circle. “Of course. It’s gone. It’s a matter of complete indifference to me. There’s no feeling left. I have no feeling about it. Maybe at one time it mattered. But not any more.”
“I’m not sure exactly what you mean. I get just a sort of general picture.”
“That’ll do.” She crossed to the door and looked up and down the hall. “I’m going to leave the door open. No one will be coming along.”
Verne gazed up, wonderingly. “What—what’s the pitch?”
Barbara came back and stood grimly in front of him, “The bed really will collapse, you realize.”