Barbara Michaels - The Dark on the Other Side

Soothed and comforted by the familiar cacophony and the friendly dirt, he was drifting off to sleep when he remembered something else. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time to Randolph ’s remark; he had been tired and confused, and the remark hadn’t made any sense anyhow. Now he remembered it, and the utter illogic of it brought him out of his doze, wide awake and staring.

“If she should come to you,” Randolph had said, “try to get her to see a doctor. Maybe you can do it.”

Had Gordon Randolph really said that? Of all the weird, crazy things to say…And he had simply nodded and muttered, “Sure, of course; be glad to.”

Michael groaned aloud. What had he got himself into this time? What kind of tacit admission could be read into that acquiescing mumble of his? He was always doing things like that, agreeing to propositions without listening to them, letting his mind wander off into byways and returning to a conversation to find that he had committed himself to ideas he violently opposed or plans that he had no intention of carrying out. But this was his worst fiasco yet. Did Randolph really think…?

Of course there had been those two episodes. When a man walks into a room and finds his wife in another man’s arms, he may be excused for thinking there is something between them. Was Linda Randolph a nymphomaniac as well as an alcoholic?

Michael groaned again, so heartily that it provoked a loud response from Napoleon, out by the front door; but at the same moment he denied the thought. He had spotted Linda as a heavy drinker the first time he saw her. The symptoms of the other were just as obvious, and she wasn’t…No, indeed, she wasn’t. His face burned, in the darkness, as he remembered the strength with which she had held him off.

So, all right, he told his wounded male ego-so you made a mistake. You got carried away. Perfectly natural. But the girl really was sick, she had passed out cold.

“If she should come to you…”

Damn it, why didn’t he listen to what people said? He should have rejected the preposterous suggestion. He shouldn’t have seemed to accept any such possibility.

Then the most disturbing thought of all forced its way into his reluctant mind. Had he failed to deny the proposition because, in reality, it had not seemed so incredible? Did he, unconsciously, want Randolph ’s wife to seek him out-for help, for anything? He pushed the idea away, outraged; but it came back. If a desire was really unconscious, he wouldn’t know it himself. If he really wanted…

“Oh, damn it,” Michael said helplessly. There was only one thing to do with an idea like that one. He turned over and went to sleep.

THE FANTASIES AND SELF-DOUBTS OF THE NIGHT were easy to dismiss in the cold light of dawn-which was not only cold, but gray, rainy, and sooty. But it was several days before Michael could make himself stop listening for footsteps coming toward his door.

He threw himself into work as a cure for mental degeneration, and found that after a while he didn’t have to force himself; the hunt was up, and as usual it gradually gripped him. Even the inevitable frustrations were minor challenges, to be overcome.

One such challenge was Randolph ’s book. Michael could have sworn he owned a copy of The Smoke of Her Burning; it took two hours of disorganized search before she would admit that he no longer owned it. He kept meaning to get his books arranged in some kind of order, but they wouldn’t let themselves be arranged; every time he started the project, he ended up with piles all over the floor and himself sitting cross-legged in the middle of the debris, deep in some fascinating volume he had forgotten he owned. The bookshelves were as motley as the volumes they housed; he had always meant to have some bookcases built in…

What had he done with Randolph ’s book? Damn it, he had to read Randolph ’s book, that was the least a biographer could do. Standing in the middle of the floor, like a pillar in the midst of a forum paved with literature, Michael scratched his chin. He must have given it to someone. Why hadn’t he read it himself? That was not unusual, though; he was a compulsive book buyer, and his collection included a deplorably large group that he had never had time to read. He would just have to buy another copy of The Smoke of Her Burning.

But it wasn’t that easy. The book was out of print. After all, as the third bookdealer pointed out waspishly, the printing presses of America poured out thousands of new books every year. You couldn’t expect them to keep every old title in stock. Oh, sure, The Smoke of Her Burning had been an important book. But you couldn’t expect…

So Michael tried the secondhand bookstores and encountered another snare; he could waste days in such places. He finally found the book, but not until he had loaded himself with old masterpieces he hadn’t been looking for and probably wouldn’t read-including, for reasons he refused to consider, a worn copy of somebody’s History of Witchcraft. By the time he got home, he had transferred his annoyance to Gordon’s book, and no longer wanted to read it.

There were plenty of other things to be done. He spent two afternoons in the newspaper morgues reading about the public exploits of Gordon Randolph. It was an unexpectedly depressing activity. Some of the yellowed, crumbling clippings were over twenty years old; the face of a young Gordon Randolph mummified by antique newsprint made any attempt at immortality seem futile.

The clippings came from sports pages, literary columns, and the general-news sections, but there was one significant omission. Randolph ’s name did not appear in the gossip columns. Rarely, there might be a mention of his presence at some charity affair or concert, but he never escorted a lady who was not impeccable in reputation and social status. Either Randolph ’s private life was arranged with a circumspection that verged on Top Secret, or he was abnormally well behaved. Not a wild oat in the whole field.

His marriage had rated a long column, and the lady reporter gave it the Cinderella approach-Professor Weds Student, Millionaire Marries Policeman’s Daughter. They had been married at the college chapel. There was a picture of Linda Randolph in her wedding dress, and Michael found it more depressing, for different reasons, than Gordon’s photographs. Poor as the print was, it conveyed something of that quality Randolph had vainly tried to describe. It conveyed something else-happiness. She glowed with it, even through cheap paper and smeary ink. From that, Michael thought, to what I saw three days ago. He turned the page quickly.

All of it, sports achievements, literary kudos, political successes, were dry bones. This was just the beginning. The next step was to talk to people who knew Randolph. So, on Wednesday, Michael got his car out and drove up to the campus of the well-known Ivy League school where Randolph had matriculated.

He had taken the precaution of providing himself with a general letter of introduction, and it finally got him into the sanctum of a Vice-President in charge of something. Public Relations, to judge from the gray-haired gentleman’s suave manner. The President of the university was unavailable. Probably away on a fund-raising campaign, Michael thought-or building barricades in preparation for the spring campaign of the SDS. Not that it mattered. Anything the President would say about one of his most illustrious alumni wouldn’t be worth peanuts. The same thing was true of the Vice-President. Michael only needed him as a source of references.

“I’m afraid there are very few of Mr. Randolph’s former professors available,” the Vice-President explained winsomely. “Now although I was not myself in residence at the time, I have followed Mr. Randolph’s career with interest, and I might say…”