John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

1

Walter Benson had a bad cold. His nose dripped and his chest ached and his eyes ran so badly he could hardly see. It made him cynical and cross, and in a hundred ways it interfered with the resolve he’d made the night before last, the night of the thunderstorm. He’d thought then, oh yes, of throwing all caution to the winds: he would call the Batavia police and tell them all he knew, and if by involving himself he ended up exposing himself, then so be it. The Lord is Just! It had been an exhilarating idea, at the time. But when one thought about it, really thought about it, it was nonsense. And another thing which contributed to his change — or rather, relapse — of heart was this: whenever he had a cold his wife Marguerite was always unusually kind and solicitous, forever bringing him sweets, offering him orange or grapefruit juice, plying him with candied pills and sugary syrups freighted with aspirin and codeine and milk of magnesia and heaven knew what; or she would read to him out of the Saturday Evening Post or Field and Stream (which he did not like but which it flattered him to have people think he would be the type to like); and she would ask him if he wanted the Venetian blinds adjusted or if he needed the hotpad turned up or wanted more Vicks on his chest. He liked all this, especially now, when he knew it was pure hypocrisy, and the more he growled and fretted and whined, the harder she struggled to please him. He revelled in his illness and his jealousy both, and pretended to himself that both were considerably worse than they were, and he said to himself, with a testy curl of the lip, that he would think about “that other” sometime when he was better, his heart not breaking in two, as it was just now, and his nose not plugged.

Also, his wet trudge home had abruptly brought the house back to normal. Marguerite and Ollie Nuper were behaving as if nothing had happened between them, and actually, of course, when you really thought about it (he began to confess to himself, little by little), nothing had. It had been, of course, a blow to Walter Benson’s self-esteem. Of course. And a terrible shock, terrible! But that was the world, you know, you read about such things every day; they were all, after all, adults. The thought made him weep and blow his nose.

And so he padded around the house in his slippers and robe, with a turkish towel wrapped around his neck and Vicks on his chest and pushed up into his nostrils, or he sat with the electric blanket around him, in front of the television, or lay in bed with the hotpad under his hump and read the paper.

Today Ollie Nuper was all polite respect and thoughtfulness. He came into the livingroom with a bundle of dowel pins under his arms (he used them for signs) and he paused, seeing Walter Benson sitting unshaven and red-eyed and crotchety in front of the television, and he leaned the bundle on one hip, tipped his head-like-a-sheep’s and put on his sad look. He said, “Feeling better this morning, sir?”

“Doh,” Walter Benson said and fiercely rubbed his nose. His eyes filled with tears again.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nuper said with great sincerity. “Well though, time heals all.”

Just then Marguerite came in from the kitchen with a plate of crackers and some Limburger cheese. She set them on the wide, flat arm of his chair and then, seeing his expression, tried to help him by changing the television channel, but it did no good. The only half-interesting program all morning was “Captain Kangaroo.” What she got this time, to Walter Benson’s horror, was the news. They were showing, again, the picture of the Sunlight Man.

“Still loose,” Marguerite said, alarmed. “It’s terrible!”

Nuper scratched his chin.

“Do we have do watch the dnews?” Benson said, angrily starting to get up.

She meekly changed the channel, giving him a smile. It was a quiz program. He settled in his chair again grumpily and blew his nose. After a moment he glanced over his shoulder at Nuper, and Nuper gave a little jerk, glanced at his dowel pins, remembering himself, and slouched, studiously indifferent, to his room. Benson concentrated on watching the program, thinking nothing whatever, but it was difficult. East Bethany, he thought, suddenly panicky for no reason. Attica. Alexander. Leroy. Medina.

Just after lunch something very unsettling happened. The new mailman came to the door, and when Benson answered, the mailman asked him who he was. For a moment — it was this that was so upsetting — Walter Benson (or Boyle) could not remember. As sometimes happens in such cases, the whole thing got out of all proportion, and he stood hemming and hawing, evading the question, for a full minute. He clutched the collar of his bathrobe in his two fists and shook it up and down and said, “Why, why, I dlive here! Can’d you see dthat?”

“Ah,” said the mailman, all apologies.

But Benson, crazily, was still trying to remember which was his thief-name, which his other one. He spluttered, “Do I look like some kide of a prowler, standding here id my bathrobe? Hah?” He leaned closer, winking obscenely. “Do I look lige the milgman or subthing?”

“I’m sorry,” the mailman said. “I beg your pardon.”

It was astounding! The name absolutely refused to come clear in his mind! He rolled his eyes up for divine assistance, and that made him remember the night of the thunderstorm, his hour of conversion, and he tried to think which of them the conversion had come to, as though only one of them, the citizen, presumably, could have undergone a conversion. But it was no use.

The mailman said, “I have this letter that needs postage, is all. And if your name happens to be Walter Benson—”

Benson’s eyes lit up and he pounced with joy. “Well what else would id be?” He folded his arms, triumphant.

It cost him five cents.

After the mailman delivered the letter up to him and went away somewhat nervously down the street (frowning and pursing his lips and pushing his cart with exaggerated care, as though he thought the packages all had bombs in them and he mustn’t hit a gopher hole or a stick or a bump in the sidewalk), Benson went back into the livingroom and tore open the letter, pacing back and forth in front of the television (hundreds of cowboys were shooting at each other from behind huge rocks), and tried to blow his nose and read the letter at the same time. His eyes ran, and even what he could make out of the scrawled words on the page made no sense to him, that is to say, though he stated the words to himself one by one, they fell into no meaningful order, for he was thinking of other things. He thrust the letter in front of Marguerite, who was sitting with a root beer in front of the television watching meekly (aware of his violent pacing behind her and aware, no doubt, of her sin), and he said, “Whad’s this say? My confoudded eyes …” She took it from him, lowered her glasses on her nose a little (he looked at the great bulge of lilywhite fat on the back of her neck) and read it aloud, but even now he caught none of it — a word or two: “as a priest,” “would be so pleased,” “among us all,” “heaven’s love”—and when she finished he blew his nose violently and nodded and said “I zee” and went up to his room.

It was, in plain truth, a dangerous situation. Walter Benson — or rather — that is — Walter Boyle? — was no psychologist, but he knew there was something wrong with him. The violent ups and downs alone were an indication. It was Marguerite’s fault, no question about it, and Nuper’s, and the Sunlight Man’s (in some obscure way), but the problem was not so much whose fault it was as what he was going to do about it.