Сол Беллоу - Dangling Man

Briggs will let us."

About her own plans she said nothing.

March 29

MRS. KIEFER died during the night. When I went out to breakfast I saw her door thrown open, her bed empty, the curtains in the room pinned back, the window open. Later, Mrs. Briggs appeared in black. In the afternoon other mourners came, gathering in the parlor. At five o'clock they began to pour out of the house. They went up the still street to the undertaker. The odor of coffee drifted up from the kitchen.

That evening, as we came out of the restaurant, we saw Mrs. Bartlett across the way. She had changed he; white uniform for a silk dress and a short fur coat. Her hat was a strange affair with a flat top and a curtain or wimple that fell about her neck-a fashion that disappearedmany years ago. We guessed that she was on her way to the movies after her long confinement with Mrs. Kiefer.

Her shiny, long, black pocketbook was clasped under her doubled arm; she walked in a heavy-hipped, @'@: energetic stride toward the brightly lit avenue.

March 31

TODAY, the funeral. The Captain drove up with a wreath in his car; to him came a woman in a blue cape and feathers and short legs in ribbed hose.

Her foot was set on the running board as though she were standing at a bar. Then she sprang in, and they drove off together. Telegraph messengers kept coming all morning. I don't know how many children the old woman had. There was a son in California, Marie had once said. The family gathered on the porch.

The women's faces were mottled with crying; the men looked morose. They returned from the funeral at noon and had lunch at a long table in the parlor.

I saw them when I went down for the midday mail.

The Captain caught me looking in, and frowned.

I withdrew quickly.

The postman was putting a letter in the box next door and he pointed vigorously at me and drew his finger across his throat. I had received my notice.

"A committee of your neighbors '@.

Later in the day, as I sat reading, Marie came to the door with fresh towels. She, too, was dressed in black. She went about the house somber and unapproachable, as though she shared with Mrs.

Kiefer and the mourners some unusual secret about death. I took this opportunity to tell her that I was going away.

"Your wife going to stay?" she said.

"I don't know."

"U-h. huh. Well, good luck." She gloomily wiped her cheeks with a blackedged handkerchief.

"Thanks," I said.

She took the soiled towels and shut the door.

April 2

UN'RW. RS. R relief. As old

AI'MSTADT put it, since I had to go, it was better to go and get it over with. And my father, too, said, "Well, at least you don't have to wait any more." Amos, when I spoke to him yesterday, asked me to have lunch with him at his club. I told him I was going to be busy. I know he would have introduced me to his friends as "my brother who is going into the Army," and would thereafter be known as a man who was "in it."

4priI 4

VrArRather moved this morning. I heard Marie in his room after he had gone and went in. She had found two empty perfume bottles in his wastebasket.

I was right. He left an interesting lot of goods behind, lying in the stale closet. Bottles, of coursc those he had not seen fit, for some reason, to throw into the yard-picture magazines with photos of nudes, gloves, soiled underwear, the bowl of a pipe a grease-stained handkerchief, a copy of Pilgrim's Progress and a school edition of One Hundred Great Nar. rative Poems, a carton of matches, a felt hat, a necktie with some matter dried into it. The whole collection went into a box which Marie carried down to the basement.

Spent several hours putting my things away in the April 5 WI'TILE it was still dark, I left the house this morning to go for my blood test. I had not been out so early for many months. The cars were jammed with factory workers. When I asked the conductor about my destination, a small park which I had never heard of, he said, "Stick around, I'll fix you up."

We plunged up the broad street for a mile or two, and then he nudged me and said, "Here y'are; comin' up." Andwitha sort of playfulness he pushed me toward the door, while the others looked on gloomily, sleepy and dark-faced.

I waited in line at the field house, under the thin trees. In the gymnasium I took off my clothes, marched naked around the floor with the others, examining their scars and blemishes as they did mine.

There were few boys; most of the men were in their thirties. The cripples were swiftly weeded out.

A doctor felt us in the groin; another, an aging man with a cigar, said perfunctorily, wielding the needle, "Clench your hand; open; that's it." Holding a swab to your arm, looking curiously at your blood in the tube, you filed out and were dismissed.

It was eight o'clock, morning, full and brilliant; my usual hour for rising. I stopped at a cafeteria for break. fast, went home, and read all day.

April 6

Iwt rrs put together a few things she thinks I'll need in the Army-my razor, a few handkerchiefs, a fountain pen and a block of note paper, my shaving brush. I am not going to take the usttal ten-day furlough. I would rather save the time and use it later, if that is possible. Ira, of course, thinks it a sign of coldness on my part.

It is merely that I do not want any more delays.

She is going back to the Almstadts'. Her father is coming on the tenth to move her combings.

April 8

WH. N I visited my father yesterday, I went upstairs to my old room. For a time after my marriage the maid had occupied it. It was unused now, and I found in it many of the objects I had kept around me ten years ago, before I left for school. There was a Persian print over the bed, of a woman dropping a flower on her interred lover-visible in his burial gown under the stones; a bookcase my mother had bought me; a crude water color of a pitcher and glass done by Bertha, some nearly forgotten girl. I sat in the rocking chair, feeling that my life was already long enough to contain nearly forgotten periods, a loose group of undifferentiated years. Recently, I had begun to feel old, and it occurred to me that I might be concerned with age merely because I might never attain any great age, and that there might be a mechanism in us that tried to give us all of life when there was danger of being cut off. And while I knew it was absurd for me to think of my "age," I had apparently come to a point where the perspectives of time appeared far more contractedthan they had a short while ago. I was beginning to grasp the meaning of "irretrievable." This rather ordinaryand, in some ways mean, room, had for twelve years been a standard site, the bearded Persian under the round stones and the water color, fixtures of my youth. Ten years ago I was at school; and before that '@. very facts of simple existence in doubt. Perhaps the war could teach me, by violence, what I had been unable to learn during those months in the room. Perhaps I could sound creation through other means. Perhaps. But things were now out of my hands. The next move was the world's. I could not bring myself to regret it.

Amos and Dolly and Etta and Ira were at the table when I came in to dinner. My father presented me with a watch. Amos gave me a suitcase which, he said, would be handy for overnight trips when I came back. From Etta and Dolly I got a leather sewing kit, complete with scissors and buttons.

April 9

THI'S is my last civilian day. Ira has packed my things. It is plain that she would like to see me show a little more grief at leaving. For her sake, I would like to. And I am sorry to leave her, but I am not at all sorry to part with the rest of it. I am no longer to be held accountable for myself; I am grateful for that. I am in other hands, relieved of self-determination, freedom canceled.