Джон Макдональд - All These Condemned

“Hush. You’ve never come up with anything either good or original. You just submit to me a lot of fancy presentations of my own ideas. Watered down, usually. I’ve given you every chance. I thought that in spite of the people you work for, you might come through eventually. Dorn, you haven’t had an idea of your own in fifteen years. So you’re an expensive luxury. I need a younger, hungrier agency. Somebody with vitality and imagination. You people think you’re in something a little like banking. Suits by Brooks Brothers. Dark paneling. Hushed voices. You bore me.”

“Miss Ferris, I...”

“And you are the dullest man I’ve ever set eyes on. An imitation limey from Indiana. What are you trying to do? Inspire confidence? I am uninspired, Dorn. When I’m in town Monday I’ll phone that unctuous Mr. Howey and kiss him off and pick myself something new. You can cancel out all that stuff they’re working on over there that they laughingly call a campaign. My God, stop goggling at me! I can do this, you know.”

“I wish you would reconsider,” I said weakly.

“I have. Too many times,” she said. I looked at her. Nobody knew it but Wilma and me. So far. I could see myself sitting across Mr. Howey’s desk, his eyes like little swords.

I wished she would fall dead. I wished she would drop dead on the floor. And I could go to the office and be very upset and tell Mr. Howey that she had told me that she had decided the advertising appropriation should be increased, but had died before she could take steps.

I looked at her throat. I saw a pulse there. I stood up slowly. I couldn’t permit this disorderly and ridiculous woman to put an end to a quiet and satisfying and honorable career. Advertising has become a respected profession. I am a respected man. She was doing this to me out of restlessness, out of whatever it was that was driving her. I stood up and my arms and hands felt heavy and powerful. She turned her back on me and went over toward the dressing table. I took one silent step, my arms half lifted. She craned her arms up behind her in that graceful-awkward way of woman and worked at the snaps of the sunsuit top. She said in a flat bored voice, drained of emotion, “Now run along and play games or something, Dorn.”

She released the top and took it off and sat down. I let my arms fall to my sides. They felt heavy, but no longer strong. I felt old. I felt as though I should totter as I walked, as though my voice should crack and quaver as I spoke.

I shut her door quietly behind me. I could smell food. Saliva flooded my mouth in sudden sickness. I went to my room. By the time I reached the bathroom the nausea was gone. But my face was sweaty. I dried it on a towel. I looked at my face in the mirror. It is a reliable face. Florence says it is easy to see the character expressed there. I was pale. The color came back slowly, darkening to customary healthy ruddiness. One side of my mustache looked a bit ragged. I took my shears from my kit, and a small comb, and clipped carefully. I stepped back and smiled at myself. That usually comforts me. It did not work. Because I did not know what I would do. I did not know where I would go. Next year I will be fifty. With my usual bonus I make nearly eighteen thousand dollars a year.

And I thought again of what I wanted to do to her. Of the brutal and exquisite pleasure of digging my fingers into the soft pulsing throat until her face darkened and her eyes went mad.

And the thought brought the nausea back. Perhaps because I am a fastidious man. Nausea and sweat and the pallor. What do you do when They want to take everything away from you? When They want to smash you and grind you down and take away everything? But why They? It was Wilma. Why, in her eyes, am I a figure of fun? What is there ridiculous about me? Hayes and Hess are ridiculous men. I did not ask for that account. They gave it to me because they knew she was difficult. Mr. Howey gave it to me because he was afraid to handle it himself. She has prepared him for this by poisoning his mind against me, so that lately I have felt unsure of myself when speaking with him. It is not fair.

Suddenly, almost without warning, I was sick. Afterward I felt faint. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth and lay down on my bed.

... George, you are just going to have to do something about those dreadful boys. They chased Wallace home again from school today. He was screaming with fright when he ran up on the porch. They were hitting him over the head with their books. They could hurt him seriously. They could deafen him, George. George! Put that paper down and listen to me.

... No, George. That’s not right. You don’t have the right attitude. Wallace has never been physically strong. He’s not like those boys. He’s sensitive and delicate. George Dorn, you listen to me! I won’t have it. Wallace has told me who they are. And I have a list here of their parents’ names and where they live, and you are going to get out of that chair this minute and put your coat back on and we are going to go call on those people.

... It will not make it worse for Wallace. You can make it quite clear that it will be a police matter if it happens again. And if you keep referring to him as a crybaby, I am definitely going to become annoyed with you, George.

And, lying there, still tasting the acid in my throat, I remembered the small boy, huddled at the top of the stairs, listening. And how I sneaked back to my room. Mother would take care of things. She’d make my darn father do something about it. A lot he cared about what happened to me. I hoped the police would put those kids in jail.

I need her now. And she had been gone from me for a long time. Leaving me alone. Leaving me in a world where I had no defenses. They do not leave you dignity and honor. They run after you, banging your head with books, jeering at you, as if you were a nobody.

It was midafternoon when I left my room. It was very still. Some were napping. Some were limp on the dock in the still sun, over mirror water. I felt far back in my head, as though my eyes were tubes I looked through, destroying side vision, so that I had to turn my head slowly to change the direction of my glance. And I went back to my room. On rusty knees. Squatting far back in my head.

I felt as though I waited for darkness. As though darkness would provide some unknown answer. I lay on the bed again and tried to play the game I often play when going to sleep. White pawn to king four. Black pawn to king four. White queen’s knight to queen’s bishop three. But I could not go further. I had lost the power to visualize. I could not see the board. The words were just sounds. Half remembered. There was no board. No look of ivory on the squares. No slant and rhythm and precision. My mind was a muddy thing awaiting darkness.

It knew that darkness would come. It squatted back there, diverting itself with obscene imaginings.

She was dead.

I will try to say what I felt. How it was. Once when I was little there was a hypnotist on a stage. Somebody took me there. I remember the boy who went up, scuffing his feet, trying to swagger, giving swift looks at the audience. It was done so quickly.

You are a chicken. And the boy hopped and clucked and flapped his arms. You are a dog. And he scampered and barked. Oh, there was a lot of fun! Oh, they laughed! Wake up! Wake up!

The boy woke up. He stared stupidly around. They were still all laughing. I was laughing. He fled in confusion from the stage.

She was dead.

I woke up. I looked stupidly around at the world. Who am I? How did I get here? Why do they laugh? By what strange road did I get to this place?

I remember another time. A summer camp where I was very lonely and unhappy. They taught us first aid. A man who looked like an ape demonstrated a tourniquet. Roger and I were alone in the cottage during a rest period. It was a contest between us. We knotted huck towels and each used a drumstick to tighten the tourniquet on our own leg, midway between knee and thigh. Nearly as tight as we could get them, and then bet a dime about who would loosen it first. It was very tight. At first my leg throbbed and it was painful. It looked swollen. It turned a lot darker. And the pain went away. It felt quite numb. The contest went on for a long time and then the look of my leg and foot and the numbness began to frighten me. I said we should both loosen them at the same time. He would not. More time passed. I loosened mine. He yelled that I owed him a dime. The towel had cut into my thigh, marking it deeply. For a moment nothing happened. And then I screamed with the pain of returning circulation. I thought my leg would burst, would split open like something that had spoiled. But it did not. It felt weak and strange for a long time. I paid him my dime.