Маргарет Миллар - The Cannibal Heart

“Who? The doctor?”

“Positively brilliant.”

“Well, but you don’t eat enough greens.”

When they got home he flushed the tablets down the toilet. There weren’t enough of them anyway, to be fatal.

It was harder to dispose of the leafy green vegetables. They appeared at the table in all forms and guises, and he ate them to please Janet.

She had wonderful control during those days. She didn’t once mention the episode in the garage. No questions were asked, and no controversial matters about the future were brought up.

Every now and then he caught her looking at him in a half-hopeful, half-puzzled way. Poor Janet, he thought. She’s waiting for the vegetables to take effect. She can’t believe it was really me who wanted to die — it was only the vitamin deficiency.

He felt terribly sorry for her, but he couldn’t reach out to her through the strange detachment that enveloped him like a fog. She felt the fog and tried to penetrate it by talking of incidents and people from their shared past, playing the game of Remember?

“Remember that couple we met on the boat coming from Panama, the ones who sat and played gin rummy in the bar all day?”

“It was funny, that time I got the measles and you kept saying it was only from eating too many strawberries...”

“I wonder what ever happened to Nancy Howard. Remember? She wanted to go on the stage but she had that awful voice...”

Of course he remembered. He remembered everything. Each new day, people with lost names and faces, forgotten people saying and doing forgotten things, stepped back into his memory. He seemed to have total recall, as if his mind, cleared of the future, had given the extra space to the past. His memories were vivid, but without nostalgia, without even self-pity.

A week later he had a birthday, his forty-ninth. Janet’s gift to him was a new pair of binoculars she had ordered from Hammacher Schlemmer in New York.

“Thank you, Janet. It was very thoughtful of you. I needed a new pair of binoculars.”

He carried them to the edge of the cliff and held them to his eyes. They were very good binoculars, but the sea was endless, the sky infinite; there was nothing to see.

At dinner he ate a piece of birthday cake and afterwards he went upstairs to say good night to Billy. It had been nearly two weeks since he’d seen him, except at a distance, walking with Miss Lewis.

Billy was sitting up in bed playing with a rubber doll that squeaked when it was pressed.

“Good night, Billy. Good night, Old Timer.”

Over the railing of the bed the child looked at him as if he’d never seen him before.

“My goodness, Billy,” Miss Lewis said, “don’t you remember your daddy? This is your daddy. Say it now, say daddy.”

Billy squeaked the rubber doll.

“Children forget easily,” Miss Lewis said.

“Of course.”

“Out of sight, out of mind, that’s how it goes.”

He took one last look at Billy and thought, My son, my freak, my jailer: Goodbye, goodbye, poor baby.

Janet was waiting for him downstairs. She had built a fire in the grate with monkey-puzzle boughs and the living room was subtly fragrant.

“Was he glad to see you?” Janet said.

“Oh, yes. Very.”

“Can I get you anything, John?”

“No, thanks. I thought perhaps I’d go out for a short walk.”

She rose immediately. “I’ll go with you.”

“Not this time.” He went over and took her in his arms and stroked her hair gently. “Not this time, Janet,” he said, staring over her head at the night that pressed against the window. “You’re tired. Sit here and rest for awhile.”

“Promise you won’t be long, then.”

“It’s my birthday. I’m not making any promises.”

“John...”

“Yes?”

“When you come back we’ll discuss things. We’ll come to some kind of decision.”

“All right.”

“I know we can work things out between us.”

“Of course.”

“Perhaps we can go away on a holiday, just you and I. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Very nice.”

Turning away, he took off his glasses and put them on the mantel.

“If you’re going for a walk,” she said, “you’d better wear your glasses.”

He remembered the night he’d gone out to the garage how alert his senses had been, how clearly he had seen the bright discs of marigolds and the red blossoms of the castor bean bush.

“I can see better without them at night.”

“Then there must be something the matter. You’ll have to get a new prescription.”

“Tomorrow.”

Perhaps it was a mistake anyway to see too clearly. Through the binoculars the sky had warned him of infinity. To the giant telescopic eye on Mount Wilson the constellations were more remotely mysterious than they were to the curious but uncritical eyes of a child. The final mystery lay not in the vastness of the stars but in the infinitesimal atoms of the mind of man.

He looked at Janet — her face was a little blurred now — and then back at the window again. Below the black horizon was tomorrow, but he felt no regret that he wouldn’t be there to see it. He already knew its size and shape. We’ll talk things over, come to a decision, work things out, take a holiday . It was all rather funny, like the doctor’s advice about eating leafy green vegetables.

“Janet,” he said, “Janet, thanks very much for the binoculars. I really appreciated them.”

He was sure she hadn’t caught the error in tense, and yet there was something queer in the way she was looking at him.

“What are you staring at?” he said.

“Nothing. Let me mix you a drink before you leave.”

“No, thanks.”

“Promise me you won’t be long?”

“No promises on my birthday, remember.”

He thought that at the last moment she would follow him out, but she just sat down again in front of the fire. She watched the flames, her chin resting on her hands. Her face was nebulous, he couldn’t read it without his glasses, or the binoculars, or the giant telescope.

He went outside by the back door and passed the garage. The door had a new padlock, and the spark plugs had been taken out of the jeep and the Lincoln. He had seen Mr. Roma taking them out and Mr. Roma had seen him seeing, but they were both too polite to discuss the matter.

It was high tide. Walking along the edge of the cliff he could hear the hiss of spray and see the white uneven curves of the breakers along the shore.

He took out his watch and looked at the time on the luminous dial. It was nearly nine o’clock.

I’ll wait until it’s exactly nine , he thought.

He stood there until the minute hand mounted the dial and started its descent, but still he couldn’t jump.

Holding the watch in his hand he walked on, blinded by the dark and his own tears.

At ten-thirty they began searching for him, Miss Lewis with the flashlight and Mr. Roma and Mrs. Wakefield carrying the two lanterns that had hung unused in the shed for years.

The lights flickered weirdly through the woods and along the barranca and the edge of the cliff. The birds, startled out of their sleep, squawked distress calls from the uncertain shelter of the leaves. The sound of the surf was like a heavy wind blowing through a forest, pausing, returning.

All this fuss, Miss Lewis thought. There’s fussing about something around here all the time. I’d like a long quiet rest in the city.

But she raised her voice with the others, and called, “Mr. Wakefield, Mr. Wakefield...”

Their voices were feeble against the surf, and their lanterns helpless against the night, no better than glow worms.