John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

To Craine’s drunken ears, the whirring, pinging, and bonging of the clocks was monstrously mechanical, at the same time mocking and despairing. He strained to hear the words, but if any were there they eluded him. It seemed to him that he knew where the wild noise came from, the pitch-dark hole at the center of the universe, aclutter with dead things — old planets, prima materia , a cosmic Sargasso sea from which came now only the sound he’d heard as he came back to consciousness after his operations. His eyes leaped toward Ira Katz. Ira, he saw to his amazement, had heard something totally different, innocent. Craine felt himself quietly slipping under again, drowning toward the whisper.

Ira Katz had set his wineglass on the table beside his chair, the glass still almost full. He sat — or blurrily hovered — with his fingertips together, like a priest. He looked up and ran one hand through his hair.

“Yes, it’s interesting,” he said, “the work Dr. Tummelty’s been doing.” Craine had to concentrate, tensing so hard his cheeks twitched, to make the words make sense. Ira was saying, “I got a copy of his book— The Shattered Mind , I think it’s called. I only read a little of it. You know him well?”

By Ira’s tone Craine understood for the first time — dimly, as he understood everything just now — that Dr. Tummelty was in some way famous. Perhaps he’d heard that before, in fact. No use hunting; his mind was like a dead man’s. With his right hand he was gripping the chair arm, with his left the glass of whiskey, still struggling against the horror of that chiming from the depths. “I’ve talked with him once or twice, that’s all,” Craine managed to bring out. His speech was badly slurred, beyond all control now. He could feel the long tumble of the room through space. Struggling for sobriety, he tried to think what Dr. Tummelty had said, but his mind had quit as if forever.

“He works with people who’ve had head injuries,” Ira said. His voice came out hollow, the words dirge-slow; a dream voice. “People who’ve severed certain nerves or something. They can write, for instance, but they can’t read — not even what they’ve written. Neurophysiology. It’s a scary business. You introduced him to Carnac?”

“No,” Craine said, “something …” He could call back none of it, or nothing but one phrase, the bioplasmic universe . Then that too slid away from him. He felt his eyelids sinking and struggled to stay awake.

Ira Katz was increasingly impatient to see him gone; he could barely hide it, Craine saw. But the door was far across the room. If he stood up and tried he couldn’t make it, not a chance. As if he’d actually gotten up, he saw himself staggering, falling against bookshelves, knocking down clocks. Again, he jerked his eyes open. “Psychics,” he said.

Ira Katz looked at him. “Pardon?” he said.

“Tummelty’s in’rested in psychics,” Craine said. It took all his energy to keep his eyelids partway open. He saw himself as Ira Katz must be seeing him, a newly dead corpse, two narrow chinks through which his icy blue, unfocussed eyes peered out with hushed malevolence.

Then, like a collision of clocks thrown together, maybe sliding from a dump truck, there came from behind him the deafening jangle of Ira Katz’s phone in the bedroom. Ira started as if in fear, then, controlling himself, rose to his feet. “So that’s it ,” Craine thought, and would have cackled if he could have — one last feeble burst of demonic intelligence— he’s been expecting a phone call from his wife! Craine’s eyes narrowed more, murderous as the cat’s, and he strained all his powers toward the difficult business of eavesdropping, but before the phone could ring twice, he was fast asleep.

He slept for forty minutes, or forty-five, perhaps fifty — the clocks were in rough agreement on ten to twelve. It took him a long time to remember where he was and even longer to realize that it was his neighbor in there, still on the phone, speaking angrily and loudly, confident that Craine was asleep, or else indifferent to his hearing. “I didn’t say that,” he was shouting. “Listen, we need to talk —”

Craine’s arms and legs were leaden, his head strangely clear and indifferent, remote. The room around him was like a sharply focused old photograph, blurry at the edges. He listened, unsurprised, to the crackle of rage in his neighbor’s voice in the bedroom. It was nothing unusual, in Craine’s profession, this murderous enmity of separated husbands and wives. Chances were they’d be together again in six months, or amicably parted, sending birthday cards. He smiled, cold as ice, then slowly turned his head. The red light on the stereo was off now. The cat stood by the door to the bedroom, watching him.

“Kill them!” his neighbor shouted. “That’s a wonderful idea! Jesus Christ, that’s terrific! Listen, I got a better idea. Kill them and pin the thing on me!”

Craine thought, for no reason, of drawing out his pistol and shooting himself. He smiled again. His arms lay flat on the chair arm, heavy as dead-men at the bottom of a pond. He saw himself sitting here in Ira Katz’s chair with his head half blown away, blood and hair on the wall behind him. His arms remained perfectly still, as if he’d done it already.

“Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,” the clocks said.

It was curiously interesting, the thought of being dead. Like a midnight swim in one’s childhood, or a journey by train.

Craine’s eyes again fell shut and, like a stone, he slept.

When he awakened the second time, Ira Katz was at the window, staring down into the street, one hand flat on his beard. There was an afghan over Craine’s chest and legs. According to the clocks, it was quarter after twelve. The cat, in the chair where Ira had been sitting, had his eyes fixed on Craine. Craine looked away, as he would from the stare of some stoned young bore at a bus station. It no longer mattered that someone was following him, spying on him. It was all the same, the connected universe he’d dropped out on. Maggots. After a minute Craine’s hand rose unbidden to his forehead, as if seeing if it was there.

“Headache?” Ira Katz said, turning slowly. His mind, for all his solicitude, was far away.

“Not yet,” Craine said.

Ira Katz studied him, eyelids puffy, as if he’d been crying, then turned his face back to the window. “I know what it’s like,” he said. He stroked his beard. It seemed that he would say no more, but then, surprisingly, as if speaking to the darkness outside the room, he said, “I used to do it all the time — knock myself unconscious with martinis. It’s a very inefficient way to kill yourself. You want some aspirin?”

“If you’ve got some handy,” Craine said.

Ira nodded, thought about it, then crossed to the door to the bedroom and bathroom, hardly glancing at Craine as he passed. He switched the bathroom light on — a ribbon of white shot up the wall across from Craine— then ran water. When he’d turned the tap off, he said — still in the bathroom, standing there looking into the mirror, perhaps—“I knew a woman once managed to kill herself on whiskey. Hemorrhage of the esophagus. Managed to rear up, spouting blood like a geyser, and make a few last interesting remarks.” He switched off the bathroom light, blew his nose, and after a moment emerged with a glass of water and three aspirin.

“You were there, I take it,” Craine said, not looking at him, leaving him free to ignore it if he pleased. To Craine it hardly mattered. He was not floating now. He’d sunk to the center of things, the ultimate idea of stone.

“Intimate part of the conversation,” Ira said. He held out the aspirin and glass of water.