Edgar Pangborn - A Mirror for Observers

“Yes, if it reminds me that I’m capable of spoiling anything I touch — reminds me never to love anyone too much, or care too much—”

I scrambled up and caught hold of his wrists. “That’s one of the worst damn-fool monkey traps in the world. And there you are, with the biggest mind and heart I’ll ever know, running circles inside the trap with your tail in your teeth. You think nobody ever got hurt before? You’ve got life, and you’re saying: ‘Oh no, there’re flies on it, take it away!’”

“I’ll live,” he said, and tugged at his wrists a little. “Miriam, for instance, she’s just my size, a nice brassbound decorator’s job with her heart in the right place and I don’t mean her chest.” I guess he was trying to hurt me with words thrown back in my face. “Just bitchy enough so I don’t have to care whether I’m in love with her or not—”

“Nuts! She’s a harmless little woman who could be hurt like anybody else. I think you got engaged to her because Keller and Nicholas and maybe Max planned it that way.”

“What!”

“Yes…. What happened after you graduated?”

He stopped pulling at his frail wrists. “Oh, I — saw Bill on a telecast. Hitchhiked to New York. That’s all. What did you—”

“Three years ago?”

“Two.”

“After a year of what, Abraham?”

“What did you mean about — Keller and Nicholas—”

“Skip it — I could be wrong, if I am I’m sorry. Tell me about that year after you graduated, Abraham.”

“I — oh, I’d never make a good criminal, I’m simply one of the school’s failures. Matter of fact I was a good boy. Grease monkey in a filling station for a month, till they missed something out of the cash register. Hadn’t taken it, but there was the record. Couple of dishwashing jobs. Not good at that either. Often wondered if I’d make a good flagpole sitter—”

“Why not stop whipping yourself?”

“Ever sleep in a barrel, Mr. Meisel?”

The doorbell rang. “Abraham, you must promise me never to tell Keller or Nicholas or anyone about knowing me in Latimer.”

He looked up with his wounded, half-cruel smile. “I must promise?”

“If anything connected me with that ancient history, it could mean my life.” His anger vanished. “Like you, Abraham, I’m vulnerable.”

He asked softly with no wrath at all: “Outside the law?”

The bell rang again, long, urgently. “Yes, in a way, and I can’t explain it. If you ever spoke of that it could be a death sentence.”

He said with immediate sincerity: “Then I won’t speak of it.” I let go his wrists. He limped into the foyer, where I heard him exclaim: “Hey, take it easy! Are you ill, Dr. Hodding?”

He looked ill, that old man, so ill and changed that without hearing his name I might have failed to recognize him from the evening before. He had been drunk then, fish-eyed drunk. Now there were fires in his cheeks; his necktie was under one ear, his silvery hair wild. He lurched past Abraham as if the boy were intrusive furniture. “Walker — let me see Walker—”

“Dan Walker? He isn’t here. Haven’t seen him for days.”

“Well, damn the thing, boy, you know where he is.”

“But I don’t.”

I stepped forward. Hodding looked frantic enough for physical violence. But then he shuddered and collapsed in the chair I had abandoned. “Not at the office,” he said, and fumbled at his wrinkled lips. “I called.” He noticed me and croaked weakly: “Brown, who the devil is that?”

“Friend of mine. Look, I don’t know, haven’t heard anything—”

“You will. You will if you don’t find him. You’ll see—”

One whose voice I remembered said: “Hodding, cut that out!”

He stood in the silently opened doorway, massive and sodden. His bulk was wrapped in a huge black and orange dressing gown almost hiding the wobbling columns of his ankles. His artificial hair is appropriately white; it was rumpled from the pillow, not much whiter than bloated slabs of cheek.

He still has power. He glanced unconcernedly at Abraham and me. He walked — not a waddle but relentless rolling motion — to stand over Hodding with a mountain’s calm. Hodding was choking. “Ten years. Ten stupid years ago, that’s when I should’ve died—”

“You’re hysterical,” said Nicholas-Namir.

“That strange?” Hodding groaned. “You people bought me — I didn’t bargain much, did I? Damn the thing, I was sincere, too. I thought—”

Nicholas slapped him. “Get up, man!”

Hodding stood, weaving like a dry weed in the wind. “You’ve got to find Walker. He’s crazy. I am too, or I wouldn’t — listen, Nicholas, I was drunk. I let him get in there — yes, sure, into the laboratory. Last night. I was drunk. I must’ve told him. And now—”

“Be quiet. Come in the back room.”

“Never mind me, damn the thing. You’ve got to find Walker—”

Nicholas raised his puffy hand again. Hodding cringed. “Back room. You need a drink. Quit worrying. I’ll take care of everything.”

“But Walker—”

“I can find Walker.” While Abraham and I stood bewildered and silly, they were gone. The door closed without a slam.

“Abraham, what was that all about? — if you know.”

He said shortly: “I don’t.”

“They worked on virus mutations at the Wales Foundation. Before Dr. Hodding left the place…. Got a laboratory of his own now?”

“How would I — hell, yes, you heard him speak of it.”

“Money and incentive supplied by the Organic Unity Party?”

“Ben, I don’t have anything to do with all that, with — with the Party. And why should you?”

“I shan’t, from now on. It was just a device for getting in touch with Keller, in the hope of finding you.”

“Well,” he said emptily, “you found me. But why question me about the Party?” He was frightened. In some limited, unwilling way, he was lying to me. “I’m not even a member, and nobody’s urged me to join. I just live here.”

There was an answer to that, but he knew it as well as I. “Abraham, come and have lunch with me. We need to talk about a lot of things.”

He moved away. “I ought to be practicing….”

“I saw Sharon Wednesday evening, after the recital. I think I’ll see her again this evening. Will you come along?”

He was far away across the room, pressing his forehead against the coolness of window glass. Presently he said: “No…. She wouldn’t remember me. That was childhood. Can’t you understand?”

“She does remember you of course. We talked of you.”

“Then let her remember the kid she used to play with, and leave me out of it. Ben, please understand. All right — I’ve got a brain. I was a damned prodigy, and ran away from it. Because I couldn’t stand what my brain showed me. So I’m a coward. Born one.”

“You use an imaginary cowardice as a shield.”

He winced at that, but went on as if I had not spoken: “And the only way I can keep from going nuts is not to think at all. You mean well. But you’re trying to stir me up into being something important. I don’t think I could. I don’t think I want to be anything.”

“Except maybe a musician?”

“Different sort of thinking. You never meet anything mean or cruel in music. I’d like to be able to play Bach before they blow up the world. I’d like to be at the keyboard when they do it.”

“Quite sure they’re going to?”

“Aren’t they?”

“I wouldn’t even dare predict whether the baby will have a harelip. Will you come and have lunch with me?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Tomorrow? Meet me tomorrow noon, Blue River Café?”