John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

“Shit!” Craine exclaimed. He hit the table with the flat of his hand.

“Jesus, Craine,” Inspector McClaren said, trembling.

The waiter appeared, wide-eyed, hurrying toward the table with the coffee.

“They told me you were crazy,” the inspector said, “but I must say, you outdo yourself!”

“It’s the liquor,” Craine said. “Bane of my existence!”

“I can see that. You should check into a hospital!” He was wiping his lapels with both hands. Craine glanced at his watch.

Now the waiter was mopping up the table with a cloth from the bar. “It’s all right,” he said, laughing. “Everybody spill things.” When he finished he went to the bar for the inspector’s whiskey.

“Actually,” Craine said, “I haven’t read the book on Sanskrit myself. I just got it.”

McClaren, still wiping his lapels, looked at him as if it was the craziest thing he’d said yet.

“I did read a page or two, at the bookstore, before I bought it.” The image of Two-heads Carnac rose up in his mind, then the airplane with the eye on it, and he shuddered.

McClaren studied him, his left hand mechanically going out to take the whiskey from the waiter. Graceful as a dancer’s, the hand brought the glass directly to the inspector’s mouth. The mouth opened and drank. The waiter poured Scotch into Craine’s coffee, then backed away and, in a moment, was gone.

“It’s an Aryan language,” Craine said soberly. Absentmindedly he reached out to open the sack, uncap his own Scotch, and pour in more.

“The Vedic priests did an interesting thing. They analyzed the sounds in Sanskrit with a kind of mechanical contraption, a little brass plate with grains of sand on it. They discovered that each sound made a different kind of pattern in the sand — an o makes a circle, for instance — and they revised the sounds until the patterns corresponded, or so they believed, to the fundamental forces in the universe. This was in 58 B.C.”

McClaren stared at him.

“How they knew the fundamental forces, I’m not sure. But in any case—” It occurred to him that McClaren was right; he was crazy as a loon. It wasn’t news, but it made him uneasy. He noticed he had the cap of the Scotch bottle in his hand — he couldn’t remember how it had gotten there — and carefully, trying not to shake too badly, he reached to the bottle and, after a moment, got the cap back on. He twisted the sack shut, his chest full of guilt for no conceivable reason, as if he’d mocked and scorned not just McClaren, but others more important somehow, perhaps the person who’d stood watching him from the stacks at Tully’s bookstore (only the skin on the back of Craine’s neck remembered it with absolute clarity). “As for the trouble I have with my memory, it’s an interesting question,” he said, “you’re right. I’ve wondered about it myself, to tell the truth.”

As he spoke, a strange thing happened. Neck hairs a-tingle, he got a flash image of his aunt Harriet in her coffin. A single frame — maybe two or three — as the people who make movies say. (He’d read articles on the subject.) She looked serene, a wax figure. Beneath the closed lids, he knew, the pale blue eyes were staring. The memory stirred no particular emotion, or none beyond his surprise and alarm at remembering. He had a feeling that if he concentrated, he might remember something more. His fingers shrank inward, making fists.

McClaren was uneasy, restless. He was watching himself in the mirror beside their table, image of himself a split second ago, removed from him forever, locked behind the glass. (Craine thought of mentioning it, then decided he’d better not.) “Language is an interesting thing,” Craine said “There are some who maintain that we’re imprisoned inside it. I have a neighbor, a poet, who’s very troubled by that idea.”

“You remember him, then?” McClaren asked.

“Dimly.” Craine smiled and opened his hands as if to show he was unarmed. He must remember to think about why McClaren was so angry.

McClaren drank, glanced down at his watch.

“Time Lost Can Ne’er Be Recaptured,” Craine said and smiled again.

And now for a second time (so far as Craine was aware) a brief memory flamed up in him, so powerful it made his hands shake. He was a child in his room at his aunt Harriet’s house, looking up at a picture on the wall, an engraving of the sphinx. It stared out horribly — such was his impression — at miles and miles of desert. Did it follow that Eternity lost could ne’r be recaptured? He reached into his inside coat pocket for his pencil and a scrap of paper, laid the paper on the table — there was something written on it already — and jotted down his question on the edge of it.

“Something’s occurred to you?” McClaren said, distant.

Craine raised the paper and pretended to read it. “Remember to pick up laundry.” He folded the paper and put it, with the pencil stub, back into his pocket.

For a full minute they sat in silence, Craine listening to the stillness, thinking nothing whatsoever, as far as he was aware, the inspector staring into his glass. At last, thoughtful, the inspector looked up. “That boy you were chasing on the street. You say he was tailing you?”

“Actually,” Craine said, “I believe he was a sexual molester.”

“Ah?”

There’s no lower form of life,” Craine said. His hands began to shake again as he got into it. “Vermin!” he said. “Filth! Hanging’s too good for them!”

Nobody hangs people in Illinois,” McClaren said. “At least not legally.”

“They’re fiends incarnate,” Craine said, and showed his teeth. “They follow some girl into some dim, dark alley, or they lurk in department store dressing rooms—”

McClaren tipped his dome, writing invisible letters with one finger on the tabletop. “Does it ever occur to you,” he asked softly, thoughtfully, “that this lunatic act you do might get out of hand?”

“Detective, I kiss you on the lips,” Craine said.

Detective Inspector McClaren blushed deeply, and once again, for an instant, his eyes showed rage. That moment, the front door of the restaurant opened, throwing light along the floor. A figure came in, closed the door, and stood adjusting itself to the darkness. McClaren turned in his seat to see who it was. “Sergeant Eggers,” he called; “You looking for me?”

“Ah, there you are!” the man called back, waving both arms in a broad, slow gesture like flying. He groped his way toward them, taking off the police cap as he came. Craine hunted through his pockets for a matchbook, carefully not spilling any papers this time, then, when at last he’d found his matches, poked down the dottle in his pipe with one finger and lit it.

“Have a seat,” McClaren said. “You want coffee? Hit the bell.” He pointed toward the service bell on the bar.

“No, thanks,” Eggers said, “just got through with a cup. H’lo there, Craine.” He took a chair from the table across from them and drew it up.

“Afternoon, Sergeant,” Craine said. He looked for an ashtray for the match, then laid it neatly on the table, lined up with his book.

“You feeling all right these days?” Eggers asked. He seated himself and laid his hands, pointing inward, on the fat of his upper legs. “I heard you were away at some cancer clinic.”

Cancer?” McClaren said, reproving, as if Craine had held out on him.

“Well, there’s some rottenness in all of us,” Craine said.

“Amen,” Eggers said, his tone so serious that Inspector McClaren glanced at him.

“Sergeant Eggers is a born-again Christian,” Craine explained. He blew out smoke.

Eggers smiled, lowering his eyelids modestly. He had a button chin, bright cheeks, ears that stuck out like sugar bowl handles. “Well—” he said.