Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“But I thought you said—”

“It’s just come. It’s all these questions—! Can I, mother?”

“You can go as soon as the doctor has finished.”

“Don’t you think this thing ought to be gone into thoroughly, and now ?” This was Father’s voice. The brown slippers again came a step nearer, the voice was the well-known “punishment” voice, resonant and cruel.

“Oh, what’s the use, Norman—”

Quite suddenly, everyone was silent. And without precisely facing them, nevertheless he was aware that all three of them were watching him with an extraordinary intensity—staring hard at him—as if he had done something monstrous, or was himself some kind of monster. He could hear the soft irregular flutter of the flames; the cluck-click-cluck-click of the clock; far and faint, two sudden spurts of laughter from the kitchen, as quickly cut off as begun; a murmur of water in the pipes; and then, the silence seemed to deepen, to spread out, to become world-long and world-wide, to become timeless and shapeless, and to center inevitably and rightly, with a slow and sleepy but enormous concentration of all power, on the beginning of a new sound. What this new sound was going to be, he knew perfectly well. It might begin with a hiss, but it would end with a roar—there was no time to lose—he must escape. It mustn’t happen here—

Without another word, he turned and ran up the stairs.

IV.

Not a moment too soon. The darkness was coming in long white waves. A prolonged sibilance filled the night—a great seamless seethe of wild influence went abruptly across it—a cold low humming shook the windows. He shut the door and flung off his clothes in the dark. The bare black floor was like a little raft tossed in waves of snow, almost overwhelmed, washed under whitely, up again, smothered in curled billows of feather. The snow was laughing; it spoke from all sides at once; it pressed closer to him as he ran and jumped exulting into his bed.

“Listen to us!” it said. “Listen! We have come to tell you the story we told you about. You remember? Lie down. Shut your eyes, now—you will no longer see much—in this white darkness who could see, or want to see? We will take the place of everything.… Listen—”

A beautiful varying dance of snow began at the front of the room, came forward and then retreated, flattened out toward the floor, then rose fountain-like to the ceiling, swayed, recruited itself from a new stream of flakes which poured laughing in through the humming window, advanced again, lifted long white arms. It said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold—it said—

But then a gash of horrible light fell brutally across the room from the opening door—the snow drew back hissing—something alien had come into the room—something hostile. This thing rushed at him, clutched at him, shook him—and he was not merely horrified, he was filled with such a loathing as he had never known. What was this? this cruel disturbance? this act of anger and hate? It was as if he had to reach up a hand toward another world for any understanding of it—an effort of which he was only barely capable. But of that other world he still remembered just enough to know the exorcising words. They tore themselves from his other life suddenly—

“Mother! Mother! Go away! I hate you!”

And with that effort, everything was solved, everything became all right: the seamless hiss advanced once more, the long white wavering lines rose and fell like enormous whispering sea-waves, the whisper becoming louder, the laughter more numerous.

“Listen!” it said. “We’ll tell you the last, the most beautiful and secret story—shut your eyes—it is a very small story—a story that gets smaller and smaller—it comes inward instead of opening like a flower—it is a flower becoming a seed—a little cold seed—do you hear? we are leaning closer to you—”

The hiss was now becoming a roar—the whole world was a vast moving screen of snow—but even now it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep.

I.

The half-filled bottle stood at the right of the typewriter, and beside it the heavy tumbler; the green-shaded drop-light swung in the draft from the window over his head; he took a drink of whisky and typed in capitals ROUND ONE. He propped up his penciled notes of the fight against the calendar pad, then pulled it nearer, trying to make out his own shorthand. Romero led with left and followed with light right before going into clinch. He typed quickly with his two forefingers. The door of the alcove opened and Cush came in with his coat over his arm, his hat on the back of his head. He dropped the coat on top of his roll-top desk and went to the window.

“Well, and how was the fight of the century?” he said, as if to the office building across the alley, or as if to the fire escape. “Or was it in the bag like all the rest of them?”

“It was a peach, but I wasn’t looking. Have a drink.”

Cush brought a glass and poured himself a drink.

“These musical shows get my goat, they’re all alike. Jesus, what the hell can you say about them? Sprightly and whimsical and fantastic. If you could only say the smut was only so-so, or A No. 1 Gorgonzola. This one is a piece of cheese, but the chorus is pretty good.”

“Was his honor the mayor there?”

“Sure he was—sitting right next to the censor. But he needn’t have worried. This one won’t be taken off. It wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“How do you mean, fly?”

He continued to type, while Cush pulled the black oilcloth cover off his machine. Micky then drove a right to the ribs and left to face. Romero landed a left to face. Zabriski landed right to body. Zabriski drove right and left to body, which Romero cleverly blocked. At this point, he remembered, the man behind him said, “He won’t last it out, he won’t last ten rounds. Zabriski will kill him, he hasn’t got the guts.” Zabriski’s fiancée, in the fourth row, was being photographed—she was sitting with her mother and two other janes. She looked drunk. This was before she had begun to yell at Zabriski—come on Patsy, come on Pat, give it to him.

“Well,” said Cush, to his typewriter, “did Zabriski win it, or who?”

“There is a new champion, and it was a swell fight, science defeats slugging, but I didn’t watch it. I was elsewhere.”

“All right, I’ll bite, where were you?”

“I was picking flowers.”

“You mean Ann’s given you the bum’s rush again, or something. Who is it now?”

He didn’t answer at once, he frowned over his notes. Cush turned the sheet of paper into his machine and began typing. Round even. ROUND TWO … Zabriski scored a light left to jaw before clinch. Romero reached the champion with two good rights to jaw. The man behind him was saying, say this fellow’s good, this fellow is pretty good, watch him. Zabriski can’t touch him, look at the way he ties him up. Oh, baby, and was that a sock.

“It isn’t the same guy, it’s two other fellows. If you know what I mean.”

“Well for Christ’s sake why don’t you call it a day and give her the gate? Why didn’t you marry one of those chorus floozies and have someone faithful?”

“Faithful! heh heh. Isn’t that a laugh? That word isn’t in the dictionary any more, I looked it up. Nowadays all you’ve got to do is be yourself, that’s what the psychologists say, just be yourself. Ann’s herself, all right—she’s herself with everybody.”

“Well, don’t let it eat you, she isn’t worth it.”

Cush was typing quickly. The window shade began flapping in the draft, he got up and gave the cord a twitch so that the shade flew up to the top and wound itself silent with a series of ecstatic slaps against the casement. He leaned for a moment on the window-sill, and looked down into the squalid alley. Forty feet of midnight. Forty feet of emptiness surrounded by rusty fire escapes. But to jump down was no good, he didn’t want to die, that wasn’t the idea at all. What he wanted was Ann, all right—Ann standing here with her hands on the window-sill, seeing how desolate an alley could be at midnight.