Authors: Robert Cormier
I Am the Cheese (13 page)
TAPE CHANGE:
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| TAPE OZK012 | 1019 | date deleted T-A |
| A : | Next thing I knew I was downstairs in the recreation room, sitting there. I left the door open. I knew that my father would find me there eventually. I heard the phone ring but I didn’t bother answering it although there was an extension in the room. I sat there, as if in a trance. I knew it was Amy on the phone. But Amy didn’t matter at the moment. I sat there and waited for my father to come downstairs and I don’t know how much time had passed … |
He hadn’t bothered to put on the lights. But a feeble shaft of light penetrated the room from the other part of the cellar and it struck a Ping-Pong ball. The ball lay suspended in the darkness like a miniature moon. He didn’t know how long he had sat there, and then he heard his father’s voice.
“Adam?”
His father calling from the top of the stairs.
“Adam, are you down there?”
Adam didn’t answer. His father must have sensed his presence, however, because he began to descend the steps, blocking out part of the brightness that spilled in from the cellar outside the recreation room. His father advanced to the door of the paneled room and saw him.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked. “Amy called a while ago and I told her you were on the way to her house.”
He looked up at his father. His good father, that worried look on his face. Whatever had happened, he trusted him completely. But Adam still didn’t speak. He didn’t trust himself to speak, afraid of the words that might spill out of him, the questions he didn’t want to ask, the answers he didn’t want to hear. But at the same time, he wanted to know, he wanted to know everything. He was tired of pretending that nothing
had happened, that the second birth certificate didn’t exist, that he had not listened to that phone call. He was tired of faking it, being a fake.
“Are you okay, Adam?” his father asked, a frown of concern on his forehead. His father sat down beside him on the couch.
Adam looked at the Ping-Pong ball. It was no longer a moon, just a ball.
“What’s the matter?” his father asked, voice light and bantering now, the same kind of voice he used with Adam’s mother during her bad times.
Adam closed his eyes. And then without planning, without preliminaries, he said, “What’s it all about, Dad? Who’s Mr. Grey, or is he Mr. Thompson? Who’s that woman—Martha’s her name—that Mom calls every week? What’s going on, Dad?”
He knew that by asking the questions he was betraying himself, admitting that he had been spying and eavesdropping. And he also knew, deeply and sadly, that the answers would change his life, that there would be things in his life, in their lives, that he hadn’t known before. Maybe that’s why he had delayed the questions from the very beginning. Because he didn’t want things to change. But the questions had been asked now. And he opened his eyes to confront his father.
“Jesus,” his father said, and Adam wasn’t certain whether his father was swearing or praying. “Jesus,” he said again, sighing, a long sigh, weariness in the sigh and sadness, too, such sadness.
His father touched his shoulder. A gentle touch, a caress, really. “How much do you know, Adam?”
“I’m not sure, Dad. Not very much.” His voice sounded funny, an echo-chamber voice.
“Of course. I’m still not playing fair with you, asking that. You’ve suspected something for a while now, haven’t you? I’ve seen you looking at me, at us, your mother and me, studying us. And lately you’ve been skulking around the house. Listening. Brooding. At first we thought it was Amy, that you were mooning about her. I tried to convince myself of that because I’ve always dreaded the day when you’d ask certain questions.” He sighed again. “And now the day is here …”
“Are you going to tell me, Dad, what it’s all about?” Adam asked. “I’ve got to know.”
“Of course you have to know. It’s your right to know. You’re not a child anymore. I’ve been telling myself that for a long time. But there never seemed to be a good time for it …”
| T : | And did he tell you? |
| A : | Yes. Yes, he told me. |
| T : | And what did he tell you? |
| A : | That my name is Paul Delmonte, that there is no Adam Farmer. (15-second interval.) |
| T : | Are you able to proceed? |
| A : | Yes. I’m all right, I’m fine. |
| T : | Then—what else did your father tell you? |
| A : | Everything … |
| T : | Everything |
| A : | Well, almost everything. That night I told you about—the first memory—the bus. I was right about that, my father said. We were running away. Going to a new place to live. And that day in the woods, with the dog. We fled into the woods because my father thought he had spotted one of Them— |
| T : | Who was Them? (9-second interval.) |
| A : | I’m not sure. I think I knew once—maybe it will come back to me. But that day in the cellar my father told me who I was, who he was, who we all were. Suddenly I had a history, something I realized I had never had before. Everything changed in one afternoon, in that cellar, in a few hours … |
His father’s real name was Anthony Delmonte and he had been a reporter in a small town in upstate New York. The name of the town was Blount, population about thirty thousand. Famous for the high hills
veined with granite that loomed above the town. Those hills drew a few Italians across the Atlantic a hundred years ago, men skilled in the uses of marble and granite, among them the grandfather of Adam’s father. The quarries dried up after a while but the Italians remained and became assimilated into the town and the state. These were light-skinned blond Italians from northern Italy. They grew no grapes on terraced slopes. Adam’s grandfather was the first of his generation to seek an education; he graduated from law school and was modestly successful, conducting a law office in the heart of Blount. Adam’s father did not seek a career in law. He was drawn by the written word. He completed his studies at Columbia University in New York City and attended the Missouri Graduate School of Journalism. With his degrees tucked into his suitcase, he returned to Blount and became a reporter for the Blount
Telegrapher
. Soon he was promoted to staff reporter, then to political reporter. He loved working for the newspaper. He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page. Roscoe Campbell, owner and editor of the
Telegrapher
, encouraged Adam’s father to go beyond the superficial aspects of stories, to find the meanings below the surfaces, to root out what might be hidden or not apparent to the casual reader. He won the “Small City Reporter of the Year” award, presented
annually by the Associated Press, for a series of stories involving corruption in Blount—an official in the Public Works Department involved in kickbacks connected with purchases of snowplows and trucks. Roscoe Campbell was delighted. Occasionally he allowed his award-winning reporter to spend a few days at the state capitol in Albany. Once again, the owner beamed with pride—how many newspapers of similar size received exclusive stories from their own man at the State House?
Meanwhile, Adam’s father and mother met and married. She was Louise Nolan, blue-eyed and dark-haired, a shy beauty, the younger daughter of tragic parents. Her mother had died giving birth to this second child, and her father, an artist of modest reputation in the Blount area, was seduced by beer, whiskey, rum or rye or whatever balm came in bottles. He froze to death one January night, having tumbled in a stupor to the snow-covered pavement of a back alley. The hardworking young reporter rescued Louise Nolan from her grief and they were eventually married in St. Joseph’s Church, Adam’s mother having been a devout Catholic all her life—religion, in fact, had always sustained her through bad periods, particularly after her father died. The wedding was modest and unpretentious; the parents of both were dead and they had only a scattering of distant relatives in that section of the state. After a honeymoon at Niagara Falls, they settled down in a five-room ranch house in Blount in the shadows of those hills that had drawn Adam’s forebears to the town. Soon Adam was born, a sweet and
docile child (Adam blushed at his father’s description of him), and life was good, life was fine …
| T : | Yes, yes. I see, I see— |
| A : | You sound impatient. I’m sorry. Am I going into too much detail? I thought you wanted me to discover everything about myself. |
| T : | Yes, of course I do. I apologize for my seeming impatience. We have such a long way to go together. (5-second interval.) |
| A : | What do you really want to know about me? What’s this questioning really about? |
| T : | Must we discuss motive again? We have agreed that these sessions are journeys to discover your past. And I am willing to serve as your guide. |
| A : | But I sometimes wonder what’s more important—what I find out about myself or what you find out about me. |
| T : | You must avoid these needless doubts—they could only delay the process of discovery and you are then left with those terrifying blanks. (6-second interval.) |
| A : | All right, then. I’m sorry. Guide me, like you said you would. |
| T : | Then let us get on with it. Let’s explore what happened to send your family from that idyllic existence in Blount out into the night on that bus … |
He could still remember his father’s voice in the cellar that day, and the Ping-Pong ball like a small
planet suspended in space, his father’s voice holding him captive, enthralled—and yet a small part of him was isolated and alone, a part that was not Adam Farmer any longer but Paul Delmonte. I am Paul Delmonte, a voice whispered inside him. Paul Delmon-tee. Then who is Adam Farmer? Where did he come from? And, finally, his father told him that Adam Farmer had come into being a long time before, when the reporter who was Anthony Delmonte—and would someday be David Farmer—had uncovered certain documents, obtained certain information at the State House in Albany, information that would change a lot of lives irrevocably …
| T : | What kind of information? |
| A : | He wasn’t precise about it. But I know this much—it involved corruption in government. |
| T : | At what level of government—state, federal? |
| A : | Both. And there was more than government involved. There were links. |
| T : | What were these links? |
| A : | Between crime—he spoke about the organizations, the syndicates—and government, from the local ward right up to Washington, D.C. |
| T : | Was he specific about these links? |
| A : | Now you’re sounding like an investigator again—as if you’re looking for specific information that has nothing to do with me as a person. |
| T : | Everything has to do with you as a person. We have to be specific. Haven’t you dealt in generalities, vaguenesses, long enough? Lack of specifics—isn’t that what gives you nightmares at two o’clock in the morning? (5-second interval.) |
| A : | I’m sorry. Anyway, he said the information he found, information that took him a year to uncover, made it necessary for him to become a witness. To testify, in Washington. Before a special Senate committee. Behind closed doors. No television cameras. No reporters. Later, there would be indictments, arrests. But the testimony had to be given in secret. Otherwise— |
| T : | Otherwise what? |
| A : | I remember his exact words. He said that otherwise his life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel. That was an expression I had never heard before. But I knew what it meant as soon as I heard it. (5-second interval.) |
| T : | Go on. |
| A : | He went to Washington, he testified, he gave evidence for investigators to follow up on. They said he would be protected, his identity kept a secret. He trusted them. He was away for almost a year, hiding in hotel rooms, coming home once in a while to visit my mother and me, while guards stood around the house, inconspicuous, in the shadows. I was just a baby—two or three years old. He said he was riddled with guilt during all that time. But it was his duty, he said. He said he was an old-fashioned citizen who believed in doing the right thing for his country, to provide as much information as possible. |
| T : | Earlier, you said that he told you almost everything. What did you mean by that? |
| A : | He said that there was a lot of information he couldn’t give me. For my protection. |
| T : | And how would this provide protection for you? |
| A : | He said that if I was ever questioned about certain topics, certain information, I couldn’t possibly give away the information if I didn’t have it to begin with. He said I’d be able to pass lie-detector tests or any other tests. In other words, I could always tell the truth, even if some fancy truth serums were used, and I’d never betray anything. |
| T : | What do you think you would have betrayed? (6-second interval.) |
| A : | That’s a funny question. |
| T : | In what way is this question of mine, as you say, funny? |
| A : | It’s as if your question about betrayal is trying to make me betray something. I don’t know—I’m confused. |
| T : | Of course you’re confused. May I make a suggestion? I suggest that this particular reasoning of yours, these doubts of yours, are a defense on your part. Whenever you are on the edge of revealing something important in your past, you stall, voicing suspicions of my questions because you are afraid, because you are reluctant to face your past. |
| A : | I’m not afraid. I want to know. |
| T : | Then let’s go forward, not sideways, not backward. |
| A : | All right … (5-second interval.) |
| A : | Where were we? |
| T : | The testimony in Washington … |
| A : | Well, finally it was over. He came back to Blount, returned to his job. Mr. Campbell had given my father a leave of absence. He thought he had been researching a book in Washington. The government had paid my father’s salary. Anyway, it was all over. Done with. Indictments were issued. Quiet arrests made, sudden resignations in Washington. But no heroics—my father didn’t want any. He only wanted to resume his life again, be with his family. And then it happened … |