Hunger and Thirst (61 page)

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 growing. 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.

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.

Sally is married
.

I met Leo tonight and she told me
.

It is two things. It is possibility and impossibility. I can believe it and accept it. I cannot believe it and cannot accept it. It is all so irrevocably bound up with memories, with half-recognized hopes. With long disappointment
.

I love Sally
.

I have no right to say it now. Not when it’s too late. No use trying to capture that magic. It was a particular brand that is not repeated
.

Too late. That’s my trouble. I say things too late. I hope for something to happen. I lie awake at night and dream of possibilities. But never a concrete move do I make. Never a forward step do I make. I wait and dream. And then the bubble is burst and I am thrown down on rocks
.

That is me
.

I love her. I have loved her for some time now. Why didn’t I tell her that? Why didn’t I ask her to wait for me? To come to New York and be with me? Why didn’t I tell her I wanted to share my life with her and hers with mine. Why?

God only knows
.

Hidden childish hopes for better things when, rationally, I knew there was nothing better than her, there
is
nothing
.

I know I shall never find another woman in my life that will mean as much to me as Sally. Not because it is her, not just because of that. But because all the ties that bind us were of a non-weakening nature. She is always and always will be associated with the period of fruitage in my life, with the period when I first began to write and was successful with it. A time of rich fulfillment, not found since
.

Because when I think of happiness I think of Sally
.

I never knew one like her. Never. I don’t ever expect to find another like her. She could make me feel delight. She could make me feel happy and at ease. I liked being with her. I enjoyed her. I liked her. Love was long in coming but when it came it was no suspicious burst of juvenile fire. It was a growing realization that for a long time I had become increasingly fond of her and a further realization that I didn’t want to face life without her
.

Then why? Why?

Why didn’t I tell her? Why didn’t I write, telegraph, phone and say—Sally I love you. I know I have no right to say it now. It’s too late. I’m sorry I’m such a fool. But I love you. Will you come to me and will you hope and work with me and will you let me share my poor life with you? Will you be my wife?

I never said it
.

And I can never do it now. It is too late. Much too late. I am desolate to think that I shall never hold her in my arms and never have the warm, pervading comfort of her presence. To sleep with her. To have those warm arms around me. To feel that warm comforting body against mine. To talk to her in the darkness. To make love to her. To feel her love in the very nerves of my body
.

Oh God, how powerful a love she had
.

Well, what’s that to the matter? I’m lost, done for. I’ve not a chance of having her now. I surrendered. I gave up. I was a fool that didn’t know a miracle when it was in my own hands. I was cruel and stupid
.

And, if I’m unhappy without her, if I’m ready to cry because I’ve lost the only girl I ever loved—then I deserve it! I deserve each moment of misery richly. I have been owed these moments of sorrow. First a consuming sickness came and now this mental agony that threatens never to end
.

I deserve them
.

I have forestalled them too long. They came before but not without a ray of hope. Hope. For my own possibilities. Blind hope that something would happen. Without me even lifting a finger. Providence. Fate. Good fortune. That’s what it amounted to
. I’m
a supernaturalist hoping for unnatural intervention, always unwilling to help it along myself. How stupid I am and always have been!

Well it’s over. I can’t have her. And now I shall never marry. I want too much, expect too much. In this day and age, my desires are mountainous. I expect another girl to be as sweet as Sally was … is. Is such a thing possible. No
.