Сол Беллоу - Dangling Man

I recognize in the guide of the first dream an ancient figure, temporarily disguised only to make my dread greater when he revealed himself, Our first encounter was in a muddy back lane.

By day it was a wagon thoroughfare, but at this evening hour only a goat wandered over the cold ruts that had become as hard as the steel rims that made them.

Suddenly I heard another set of footsteps added to mine, heavier and grittier, and my premonitions leaped into one fear even before I felt a touch on my back and turned. Then that swollen face that came rapidly toward mine until I felt its bristles and the cold pressure of its nose; the lips kissed me on the temple with a laugh and a groan. Blindly I ran, hearing again the gritting boots. The roused dogs behind the snaggled boards of the fences abandoned themselves to the wildest rage of barking.

I ran, stumbling through drifts of ashes, into the street.

Could the fallen man of last week have seen, had he chanced to open his eyes, his death in dae face of that policeman who bent over him? We know we are sought and expect to be found. How many forms he takes, the murderer. Frank, or simple, or a man of depth and culti. ration, or perhaps prosaic, without distinction. Yet he is the murderer, the stranger who, one day, will drop the smile of courtesy or custom to show you the weapon in his hand, the means of your death. Who does not know him, the one who takes your measure in the street or on the stairs, he whose presence you must ignore in the darkened room if you are to close your eyes and fall asleep, the agent who takes you, in the last unforgiving act, into inexistence? Who does not expect him with the opening of the door; and who, after childhood, thinks of flight or resistance or of laying any but ironic, yes, even welcoming hands on his shoulders when he comes?

The moment is for him to choose. He may come at a climax of satisfaction or of evil; he may come as one comes to repair a radio or a faucet; mutely, or to pass the time of day, play a game of cards; or, with no preliminary, colored with horrible anger, reaching out a muffling hand; or, in a mask of calm, hurry you to your last breath, drawn with a stuttering sigh out of his shadow.

How will it be? How? Falling a mile into the wrinkled sea? Or, as I have dreamed, cutting a wire? Or strafed in a river among chopped reeds and turning water, blood leakingthrough the cloth of the sleeves and shoulders?

I can safely think of such things on a bright afternoon such as this. When they come at night, the heart, like a toad, exudes its fear with a repulsive puff.

But toward morning I have a way, also, of holding court on myself, and that is even more intolerable.

Half-conscious, I call in a variety of testimony on my case and am confronted by the wrongs, errors, lies, disgraces, and fears of a lifetime. I am forced to pass judgment on myself and to ask questionsI would far rather not ask: "What is this for?" and "What am I for?" and "Am I made for this?"

My beliefs are inadequate, they do not guard me.

I think invariably of the awning of the store on the corner. It gives as much protection against rain and wind as my beliefs give against the chaos I am forced to face. "God does not love those who are unable to sleep soundly," runs an old saying. In the morning I dress and go about my "business." I pass one more day no different from the others. Night comes, and I have to face another session of sleep-that "sinister adventure. Baudelaire calls it-and be brought to wakefulnessby degrees through a nightmare of reckoning or inventoryMy mind flapping like a rag on a clothesline in cold wind.

We had an enormous sunset, a smashing of gaudy colors, apocalyptic reds and purples such as must have appeared on the punished bodies of great saints, blues heavy and rich. I woke Iva, and we watched it, hand in hand. Her hand was cool and sweet. I had a slight fever. @?

January 28

WE DID not have a bad time at my father's house. My stepmother was cordial; my father did not pry. We left at ten o'clock. Iva did not tell me until today that, as she was preparing to go, my stepmother gave her an envelope containing a card congratulating us on our anniversary and a check.

"Now, Joseph, don't be angry," Iva said. "We can use the money. We both need things."

"I'm not angry."

"They wanted to give us a present. It was nice of them. You need a new shirt. And some shorts. I can't keep darning them." She laughed.

"There's no place for another patch."

"Whatever you like," I said, putting a strand of hair behind her ear.

I was glad enough to have escaped the usual interview with my father, which begins, as a rule, with his taking me aside and saying, "Have I told you about Gartner's boy, the youngest, the one who was studying chemistry?

They've taken him out of school. He has an excellent job in a war plant. You remember him."

Indeed I do.

This means that I, too, should have been a chemist or physicist or engineer. A nonprofessional education is something the middle classes can ill afford. It is an invest. ment bound to fail. And, in the strictest sense, it is not necessary, for any intelligent man can pick up all he needs to know.

My father, for instance, never went to college, and yet he can keep up his end of a conversation with a quotation from Shakespeare-"Pause, now, and weigh thy values with an equal hand,"

"A loan oft loses both itself and friend," the passage beginning, "Yes, young boy," from King John.

My accomplishments, he acknowledges, are wider than his; my opportunities were greater. But bread and butter come first. Besides, professional men are also sometimes cultured. Take George Sachs, now (our family doctor in Montreal), who was a scholar and even wrote a book in his spare time. (a pamphlet for the Quebec Musical Society: The Medical Facts about Beethoven's Deafness.) My father's justification is, however, that I have prepared myself for the kind of life I shall never be able to lead. And, where my abiding obsession formerly was to carry out my plans, I know now that I shall have to settle for very, very little. That is, I shall have to accept very little, for there is no question of settling.

Personal choice does not count for much these days.

January 29

As r was "ASSI'RGo Vanaker's favorite dumping yard, I saw on a bush, amid the bottles, a pair of socks that had a familiar look. I took one of them off and examined it. It was mine. There could be no doubt about it; I had bought several pairs in this pattern about a year ago.

To make doubly sure, I took one of the socks home and compared it with the others. It was the same in every detail. Perhaps he did steal Ira's perfume.

I had been unwilling to believe it before. Vanaker, Mrs. Briggs tells me, has a good job in a garage. Sunday mornings, when we see him leaving for church, he is well dressed. What can have inspired this theft of my worn socks? I said nothing about it to Iva, but wrapped the evidence in a piece of paper and threw it away.

January 30 wrtorEvery to Abt without mentioning his pamphlet.

He is sure to be angry.

January 31

SL'IGhThat letup in the cold. The fury of cleanliness. One of my shirts came back from the laundry without a single button. I must complain.

February 1

N. m Sixty-third and Stony Island I ran into Alf Steidler, whom I hadn't seen in years.

He had heard that I had been drafted, and I had heard the same news about him. "They turned me down," he said. "Bad teeth, bad heart, and emotionally unsuitable. Mostly the last. Jack Brill was bait, though."

"Did they take him?"

"In December. He's going to be a bombardier."

"What are you doing so far from Huron Street?"

"I've been up to see my brother in the hospital. He smashed his cab last Thursday."