Conrad Aiken: Great Circle

— One puts the fake in one’s windows.

— Make it singular.

— Window.

— Well, to hell with you anyway.

— Keep the change.

But there was no clock in this room. Time, in this room, was not recognized, was excluded, relegated to the more conscious upper floors, where there was no bar. Singular foresight, for which perhaps one ought to be grateful. Where were they now? Dining at the Commander? At the Greek’s? Oysters, followed by broiled live lobster, or chicken pilaf , or chicken livers en brochette ? Sitting opposite each other, with their feet together on the table rung, or side by side in the leather seat in a booth? And where were his hands in that case? The little hard nodule of her garter clasp, felt through the skirt. Unprotesting.… Or in the kitchen at Shepard Hall, side by side beside the stove, a dishcloth hung over his arm, Tom the waiter and Bertha the cook — scrambled eggs or shrimp soufflé .

— What’s wrong with you, anyway? Jitter was saying. I don’t think I ever quite made you out. I don’t think I ever really liked you, even at school. Something fishy about you. Too damned secretive. God knows you can talk the hair off a dog’s back; you can talk all right, but Christ, what a life you lead. Now look at me, you think I’m a drunken rotter, and so I am, and I don’t give a damn, I’ve done everything from digging ditches to laying rails or busting bronchos, I can’t keep a job, every one thinks I’m just a good-for-nothing shite. That’s all right, the point is I’m intelligent and I live my life the way I want to live it, family and conventions can go to hell. I’m honest. But you, One-eye, I think you’re yellow —you’re even afraid of a whore! Good God, I’ll never forget that night when you spent the night at my place and sat there shivering in a blanket when I brought that bitch in at two in the morning to talk to you. Anybody’d have thought you were trying to talk to some God-damned duchess. And that wife of yours — where in the name of God did you ever pick her up! Just the sort of damned Brattle Street lemon you would pick out …

— Thanks for the battalion of compliments. No defense. I’m both yellow and secretive — that’s the fate, my boy, of the self-conscious. Also manic depressive. Advance one day, retreat the next.

Jitter’s drunken gaze, slit-eyed, roved about the room indifferently, as if delighting in nothing it saw, least of all in his vis-à-vis. His collar was dirty, his necktie was skewed to one side, his skeleton fingers were yellow with cigarette smoke. When he talked, it was as if to himself — his diction beautiful, clear, caressing, but the voice monotonous and whining, low-pitched, as if the effort, for one so picturesquely exhausted, were almost insupportable.

— Oh don’t talk to me about psychology. I know all that stuff — I’ve lived it all — what do you know about it? You read books and think you know a lot, but I’d like to see you break a horse, or a woman, for that matter. I know you can sling words better than I can, but where the hell has it ever got you? Here you are writing rotten little textbooks and tutoring for a living and going to your damned little teas — what kind of a life is that.

But there was no clock in this room, this room which had once been the billiard room, this room where so many evenings had been spent in playing cowboy pool with Tom, and which now, decorated with Paris-green Audubon prints of precise birds in fantastic landscapes, had become grillroom and bar. There was no clock, the time seemed as vague as Jitter’s wandering melancholy monologue, full of changes and pauses, ticking and then resting, but with this difference, that after every rest, every pause, it resumed its course more heavily, more menacingly, more swiftly, the tick becoming louder and more insistent, the bloodstream in the artery threatening with every beat of the pulse to breach its walls. It was as if, also, this stream more and more persistently and meanly were choosing and following an inimical direction, like a snake with its eyes on the heart, which nothing could deflect or dissuade. Pressingly and insinuatingly it encroached; forgotten or ignored for a moment, when next looked at it would be a little nearer, a little more vivid, a little brighter, a little more alert. To be in a hurry, but not to be able to hurry — the familiar nightmare sensation, of course, that appalling slow-motion, languid agony, with which one tries to escape the vague claw of the unknown. On the train it had been better, for there one had at least had the satisfaction of being immersed in speed, of rushing forward from one place to another; but even in the train he had felt at moments an almost overwhelming desire to get out and run , as if this more primitive effort might somehow be more effective. Hurry — hurry — hurry — the world was hurrying, the night was hurrying, and nevertheless here was this exasperating slow counterpoint of conversation, this idiotic talk, this exchange of profoundly uncandid candors, each lying laboriously and laconically to the other. And so odd to be perfectly indifferent to Jitter’s drunken and intentionally injurious remarks! What would Jitter make of that? An added yellowness, no doubt. Yes, and then no, he said, no, and then yes, finding that Jitter had reached a point at which replies were immaterial to him. He was talking about the actress to whom he was engaged, describing her, reporting fragments of her vaudeville slang, what she had done in Paris, how they managed to sleep together on the steamer. My dear Andy, it’s none of my business — but suppose it all turned out to be nothing, a delusion? No. It wasn’t a delusion. There had been that look of Bertha’s at the fortuneteller’s, that strange deep, secret look, that appeal as to the person most intimately known and liked. And the episode at the breakfast table, when, breaking a lifelong habit of Cantabrigian modesty, not to say prudishness, Bertha had come to the table in her pajamas, very self-conscious and flushed and so obviously pleased by Tom’s surprise. Was this the way all things ended? Was it inevitable? If not Tom, would it have been another? And precisely how much did it matter? Damn. Blast. Putrefaction. A deep wound opened in his heart. A gulf fell through him, dividing all things, he held hard to the edge of the oak table, trembling.

— She sounds very gay.

— What do I care what you think she sounds like?

— Oh, I don’t give a damn about her.

— She wouldn’t about you.

— That doesn’t worry me, either. I’ve got enough cancers of my own. My dear Jitter, I’m lousy with them. I’m falling to pieces …

— And I’m supposed to be dining with her.

— Good beginning.

— It will probably end like the others. What the hell.

Smiling cynically, mysteriously, he rose without reply to this obviously quite true prediction, and walked rapidly past the bar, across the hall, and into the locker room which smelt of sour male sweat. This is what we smell like. Would a woman enjoy this quintessence? He took the jug and tin funnel from his locker, refilled his silver flask, and then stood for a moment with his forehead against the reticulated ironwork. Time. Nine o’clock. If a taxi to Harvard Square, driving slowly, and then on foot across the Common — the air would clear his head, prepare him for the scene — give him the necessary poise. But would it be late enough? Would they have—? Yes, at this stage, they would. Their time was still precious.

— Harvard Square, please — and make it slow.

— Slow, yes, sir, and which way would you like to go?

— Across the Harvard Bridge, and along Memorial Drive.

— Yes, sir.