Бернард Маламуд - The Natural

“Go ahead and tell them to go.”

“You tell them,” Flores urged. “They weel leesten to your word.”

“Right,” said Roy.

Memo returned and Flores left him. Roy struggled to his feet, broke into a sweat, and sat down again. Fowler grabbed Memo and they whirled around. Roy didn’t like them pressed so close together.

His face was damp. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and felt Iris’ letter. For a second he thought he had found what he was looking for. More clearly than ever he remembered her pretty face and the brown eyes you could look into and see yourself as something more satisfying than you were, and he remembered telling her everything, the first time he had ever told anybody about it, and the relieved feeling he had afterward, and the long swim and Iris swimming down in the moonlit water searching for him, and the fire on the beach, she naked, and finally him banging her. For some reason this was the only thing he was ashamed of, though it couldn’t be said she hadn’t asked for it.

Fat girls write fat letters, he thought, and then he saw the little chef looking at him and was astonished at how hungry he felt.

Roy pushed himself up and headed for the table. The chef shined up a fast plate and with delight lifted the serving fork.

“I’ve had a snootful,” Roy said.

The chef tittered. “It’s all fresh food.”

Roy looked into his button eyes. They were small pig’s eyes. “Who says so?”

“It’s the best there is.”

“It stinks.” He turned and walked stiffly to the door. Memo saw him. She waved gaily and kept on dancing.

He dragged his belly through the hall. When the elevator came it dropped him down in the lobby. He went along the corridor into the grill room. Carefully sitting down at the table, he ordered six hamburgers and two tall glasses of milk — clean food to kill the pangs of hunger.

The waiter told the cook the order, who got six red meat patties out of the refrigerator and pressed them on the grill. They softly sputtered. He thought he oughtn’t to eat any more, but then he thought I am hungry. No, I am not hungry, I am hungry, whatever that means… What must I do not to be hungry? He considered fasting but he hadn’t fasted since he was a kid. Besides, it made him hungry. He tried hard to recapture how it felt when he was hungry after a day of fishing and was sizzling lake bass over an open fire and boiling coffee in a tin can. All around his head were the sharppointed stars.

He was about to lift himself out of the chair but remembered his date with Memo and stayed put. There was time to kill before that so he might as well have a bite.

A hand whacked him across the shoulders.

It was Red Blow… Roy slowly sat down.

“Looked for a minute like you were gonna murder me,” said Red.

“I thought it was somebody else.”

“Who, for instance?”

Roy thought. “I am not sure. Maybe the Mex.”

“Flores?”

“Sometimes he gets on my nerves.”

“He is really a nice guy.”

“I guess so.”

Red sat down. “Don’t eat too much crap. We have a big day comin’ up.”

“I am just taking a bite.”

“Better get to bed and have plenty of sleep.”

“Yes.”

Red looked glum. “Can’t sleep myself. Don’t know what’s the matter with me.” He yawned and twitched his shoulders. “You all right?”

“Fine and dandy. Have a hamburger.”

“Not for me, thanks. Guess I will go for a little walk. Best thing when you can’t sleep.”

Roy nodded.

“Take care of yourself, feller. Tomorrow’s our day. Pop’ll dance a jig after tomorrow. You’ll be his hero.”

Roy didn’t answer.

Red smiled a little sadly. “I’m gonna be sorry when it’s over.”

The waiter brought the six hamburgers. Red looked at them absently. “It’s all up to you.” He got up and left.

Through the window Roy watched him go down the street.

“I’ll be the hero.”

The hamburgers looked like six dead birds. He took up the first one and gobbled it down. It was warm but dry. No more dead birds, he thought… not without ketchup. He poured a blop on three of the birds. Then he shuffled them up with the other two so as not to know which three had the ketchup and which two hadn’t. Eating them, he could not tell the difference except that they all tasted like dead birds. They were not satisfying but the milk was. He made a mental note to drink more milk.

He paid and left. The elevator went up like a greased shot. As it stopped he felt a ripping pain on the floor of the stomach. The wax-faced elevator man watched him with big eyes. He stared at the old scarecrow, then stumbled out. He stood alone in the hall, trying to figure it out. Some — thing was happening that he didn’t understand. He roused himself to do battle, wishing for Wonderboy, but no enemy was visible. He rested and the pain left him.

The party was quiet. Flores had disappeared. The lights were dimmed and there was some preliminary sex work going on. Olson had his blonde backed into a corner. A group near the piano were passing a secret bottle around. In the center of the darkened room one of the girls held her dress over her pink panties and was doing bumps and grinds. A silent circle watched her.

Roy buttonholed Fowler. “Stay off the rotgut, kid.”

“Stay away from the stuffin’s, big shot.”

Roy swiped at him but Fowler was gone. He wiped his sweaty face with his sleeve and searched for Memo to tell her it was time. He couldn’t find her in the fog that had blown up, so he left the party and reeled down the stairs to the fourth floor. Feeling for her buzzer, he found the key left in the lock and softly turned it.

She was lying naked in bed, chewing a turkey drumstick as she looked at the pictures in a large scrapbook. Not till he was quite close did she see him. She let out a scream.

“You frightened me, Roy.” Memo shut the scrapbook.

He had caught a glimpse of Bump’s face. I’ll take care of that bastard. He unzipped his fly.

Her green eyes closely watched him, her belly heaving above the red flame.

Undressing caused him great distress. Inside him they were tearing up a street. The sweat dripped from his face… Yet there was music, the sweetest piping he had ever heard. Dropping his pants he approached for the piping fulfillment.

She drew her legs back. Her expression puzzled him. It was not — the lights were wavering, blinking on and off. A thundering locomotive roared through the mountain. As it burst out of the rock with a whistle howl he felt on the verge of an extraordinary insight, but a bolt of shuddering lightning came at him from some unknown place. He threw up his arms for protection and it socked him, yowling, in the shattered gut. He lived a pain he could not believe existed. Agonized at the extent of it, Roy thudded to his knees as a picture he had long carried in his mind broke into pieces. He keeled over.

The raft with the singing green-eyed siren guarding the forbidden flame gave off into the rotting flood a scuttering one-eyed rat. In the distance though quite near, a toilet flushed, and though the hero braced himself against it, a rush of dirty water got a good grip and sucked him under.

Judge Banner had a money-saving contract with a small maternity hospital near Knights Field (it was there Bump had died) to treat all player emergencies, so that was where they had rushed Roy. The flustered obstetrician on duty decided to deliver the hero of his appendix. However, he fought them deliriously and his strength was too much for the surgeon, anesthetist, attendant, and two mild maternity nurses. They subdued him with a hypo only to uncover a scar snaking down his belly. Investigation showed he had no appendix — it had long ago been removed along with some other stuff. (All were surprised at his scarred and battered body.) The doctors considered cutting out the gall bladder or maybe part of the stomach but nobody wanted to be responsible for the effect of the operation upon the Knights and the general public. (The city was aghast. Crowds gathered outside the hospital, waiting for bulletins. The Japanese government issued an Edict of Sorrow.) So they used the stomach pump instead and dredged up unbelievable quantities of bilge. The patient moaned along with the ladies in labor on the floor, but the doctors adopted a policy of watchful waiting and held off anything drastic.