CHAPTER I

There are times when the city is mysterious ... a city remembered from ancient times, something for the conqueror to desire. He has fields and gardens and wide rivers running between the hills; but he looks toward the city and longs for it, he marshals his soldiers in bright array, for they are going to woo the city. The mystery of tall buildings panelled with sky, buildings whose surface is a multitude of window-eyes which are void of pupil, except when the sun shines on them and they blaze with a momentary glance; or when they are lighted at night and look out with myriad pin-points of vision. The city that is a magician's box. He has taken squares and squares more than anyone can count and craftily arranged them until there are cubes, and devised it so intricately that the people are trapped in a labyrinth of cubes, and move incessantly within them but cannot escape.

No one can fathom this endless repetition of cubes, or the manner in which they are contained within each other, or the lives of the people that are trapped in them. It is like a pattern that repeats itself forever, that cannot stop ... forever drawn on by the compulsion of its own lines. Only when there is a flaw in the pattern can one see it, when the eye can halt a moment, looking profoundly at a slight imperfect detail ... a beggar motionless in the crowded street, who turns to look after each one that goes by, his head like a queer pendulum ticking off every person that passes. Or it may be that while waiting on the elevated platform and looking into the tenements, someone sees the doll which the little girl who lives there has laid to sleep. It is all wrapped up in a blanket and slumbers near the window, against the trembling pane, against the wind of the trains. In the busy city it has a still infinitesimal being, like something in the woods that lives its life curled up in a leaf, and is not aware of its dying.

Though it has a long and devious way to the tops of the buildings, smoke curls out in the same primitive arabesque by which it lifted itself from the earth ... the tiny white plume that dances on the tips of the skyscrapers the same steps that it danced from the earth. Even the sky reveals its secret kinship with the earth. For there are strange sunsets ... layers of red and yellow, dark and raw like pigments still in the rock, as if the huge invisible cliff of the sky had been quarried out to show its colored interior. From that burning core of the sky the people in the street seem to be fleeing, moving in a stealthy retreat, never once looking back because what they saw was too fearful to be looked at again. Sound passes away. All the noises of the street whirl themselves into a funnel of sound, and only the small pointed end of it can be heard, which is faint and distant as humming. It is the undertone of all the people, a negation of sound because it is all their voices merging. And because of the radiance from which they are fleeing their faces are hidden in shadow ... they are beings without faces, a new and undreamed race whose lineaments are still in solution. Or perhaps they bear the archaic features of an old Aztec race; or else, having wearied of all things, of going to work and returning, of harrying their bodies in the tortuous intercourse of love, they have willed to erase their faces: that the face should break through its outworn ritual and arrange itself otherwise.

And is it strange that the face should change? The navel too is a mysteriously convoluted part of the body, and here may be an inchoate face ... or that all the people should turn with one impulse and flee from the sun, a sudden madness upon them? For in the legends we learn that a whole city could be bewitched ... that a good or bad curse was laid upon each city by someone who entered it unknown, and was refused bread at this door, or given water at another. And we learn that the prince going forth on his adventures is told: in this city they will all be weaving; here they will all be dancing in the streets; in another place everyone will be laughing; and in the last city you come to they will all be fleeing away from the sun, a silent stealthy retreat into nowhere. Indeed it is only the curse that the people are fleeing away from the sun ... their machines are only the curse, and if each day they call out the number of those who are killed by the machines it is because the spell grows old and cannot function perfectly any more. Newsboys are running through the streets shouting: fourteen killed ... But nobody hears them, because it is known too well that everyone must die. They have news too of a building that fell, but no one is curious. There is an infection in steel that spreads, that runs amuck through its secret veins and makes all the vast rigid body of the city a fluid of bricks. But they are content to let these things be, grown listless with the knowledge of their doom. Here on the corner they are barking for Jesus, with singing and drums and a conclave of bonnets. Yet nobody stops to buy ... he is no longer a satisfactory scapegoat. His body is effete with too many wounds, he is worn out with centuries of the crucifix. They will have another scapegoat, one whose body is virgin. Here a long-haired man stands in a place where they are building, under two steel beams that make a huge snout rooting upward into the sky, and talks and talks ... while his eyes are craftily watching everyone that passes. But they will not listen any more ... words are meaningless pellets of sound. And now a troop of soldiers comes by, drawn through them like a bright ribbon, with flags dipping above and a bugle lifting its throat to bray skyward. But each profile is young and austere under its helmet, each is a silent fear glimpsed through all the mummery. But all this is a bazar of miracles where there is nothing to buy. They will have smaller magic, they will forget themselves looking here and there at smaller wonders ... a man selling a device of feathers whirling at the end of a stick, or a doll that jigs on a little black board. And here they are crowded together and staring so hard that their eyes seem to produce the miracle by the power of their concerted gaze ... a peddler selling three knives for a quarter. And here is a top balancing itself, dancing for them, swerving daintily on its single pointed foot, and they watch as intently as if a graceful young girl were dancing for them. Their eyes grow bright and they feel a lust for swift motion. They have forgotten for a moment that they must die, and there is nothing in the world but the joyous dancing of the top. Surely then the spell can be ended ... if only one person remembered that there is choice, if only one person said: this is only the curse.

But at last the silent stealthy retreat into nowhere is over, and in the deserted city nothing stirs ... only the lightning runs mouse-like through the sky. Because there is no longer a light in any window, or the shape of a human being to be the pupil of it, the buildings stare at each other with blinded eyes; and in the darkness the city dreams of a new people that will come with the day ... while it lies in a caul of mist that morning tears apart, insisting on birth.

1

Lighter. He could feel a tension in the room as of something about to strike. He could feel the darkness whirring itself up as a clock does before it strikes. He listened for morning to strike. He raged within himself because it was morning, because the outlines of things came before his eyes and stared at him with their number and finality: six beds, four on this side and two on the other ... one table next to each bed, four legs to each table, four legs to each bed, one man to each bed, three windows ... because everything stared at him with one question that he had been trying not to hear: Well, what are you going to do? Well, what _is_ there to do? Listen ... that's easy ... spend the rest of my life listening to the noises in my head. Sounds as if all the scales I'd ever played were running riot. Turn them into a symphony. Start now and find out what happens ... seems they burst and collapse ... the long wheezing sound of collapse. Microscopic balloons bursting and collapsing inside his head ... fair-day inside my head. Turn over now, shift the noises to the other side. As he turned, an unpleasant thought ... what was it? Searching for it and afraid to find it ... the feeling you get when your teeth bite into something hard, and you keep on eating, afraid of finding the hard spot again ... Turn over, anyway. Shift the noises to the other side. But they don't seem to be moving any more, feels as if each one has fallen into place. Doctor, I have all the noises in place. Dr. Gaynor (as if lecturing): "Excellent, excellent! Now do you recall the game we used to play as youngsters? A little round case, the top made of glass, with tiny white balls in it, and holes for the balls to fall into ... the trick being to roll the balls into place by tilting the box this way and that. Now just keep that in mind. If the noises fall out, keep wagging your head around. After a while you'll be able to get them into place in no time." But doctor, what game does Biondi play when he lies awake twitching his chin that way? Here's a good question, doctor. When does he _win_? Again ... the hard bitter taste in his mouth! Ruth ... in the center of all his thoughts the hard kernel that he bit on. To forget her for a while ... to sleep, thrust himself back into the darkness. Why should I want to move again? The sheets and the blankets have hardened on me ... a long time ago they were poured over me, and now they have hardened into a mould. Why should I want to move again? I am tired ... I am so tired. How about this when he comes? Doctor, I don't want to be born. No good will come of it, doctor. Let me lie in the womb of the sheets, this way, my body folded up. "But my dear young man, we _must_ discharge you, now that you're well." Dr. Gaynor has his hands on my bed, leaning on them like forepaws. Four-footed ... that's what he is. The way he leans over each bed, gives him a chance to be four-footed again. Sick of seeing his short bow-legs under his haunches ... needs a curve of tail between to make it complete. Can you see Poldy? Poldy's remembering to be grown-up. Keeps shutting his lips when they fall open. _He_ doesn't want to, either, doctor. "Nonsense ... everything wants."

* * * * * * *

Lighter. That time it skipped a beat. Turn over and try to sleep. But instead his mind went back to his childhood. As he lay in the hospital bed trying to sleep, his childhood became a vast water around him, and each time that he dozed off, a little of it flowed in ... filled it up as water from the sea fills up, in the holes that children dig in the sand. In the winter, he remembered, spit froze on the streets in little round slabs that he tried not to slip on. Women put shawls over their heads, and the fringes fell down on their shoulders. From the back they looked like birds. In the winter men warmed themselves with their arms, a flaying motion, as if they suddenly felt guilty of something and had to do penance on the streets. Christopher ... who ran errands for the tailor, who had a lobe of soft flesh hanging like an ornament from his left ear. Christopher standing alone in a dark hallway, stroking his ear and smiling to himself. He had envied Christopher, for the lobe of soft flesh that could be felt at secret times, that gave pliantly between his fingers. His mother ... he remembered her less than the woman who came to do the washing ... whom he watched as she bent over the tub, and followed to the roof to see her hanging the clothes. Under her skirt her buttocks were shaped like large leaves, and when she stepped sideways they shook like leaves on the stem of her body. One time she put a clothes-pin in her mouth, and when she took it out he could see the beads of saliva on it shining for a second in the sun. Then he counted to himself the number it was from the end, so that he would not touch it when he took the things down at night ...

Somebody sighing and turning over in bed ... Geraghty walking around in the dark. In the bed next to him, Poldy muttering something that sounded like an answer to a question in his dream. Forgot himself and answered that one out loud ... how far towards morning? He could not tell when morning would strike. He curled up his legs and tried to sleep, but the past kept flooding in on him ... curious things from his childhood flowed in and drifted about ... Christopher feeling his ear in the dark hallway ... the women's shawls that were strange birds, women with fringed bird-shoulders walking before him. White knuckles ... the game of white knuckles! a secret greeting that he had with the other boys, to lift his hand in front of him and clench it until the knuckles showed white. As he tried it under the blanket a sharp pain went into his arm ... my hand is too weak to clench itself...

Weakness coming over him like a wave, the shallow wave that is left to creep back into the sea. Weakness receding into his body so that he could not move, so that he was held in the mould of the sheets, too weak to break through. Lying on the hill that time ... his fingers clamping themselves into the earth, his cheek to the earth ... and from the corner of his eye seeing a cloud come over him, feeling it pin him to the earth with one taut thread of light. For a moment, then, he could not break through. The earth and the air and the sky were moulded around him, and his body ... the careless shape it made when he flung himself down ... was only the empty space inside the mould ... To be back again, lying on the hill. To thrust himself into the darkness again, flood the deepest plane of his mind with sleep ... a level shore where nothing could lodge and be left for him when the water receded; where there would be no questions, no place for the past to come up and wake him with its swishing back and forth ...

How the napkins smelled of yeast one night. "Well, why don't you eat?" Because the napkins smell yeasty ... it was the night the tree fell in the storm, and lay clear across the street. Strange to see the trunk lying on the pavement, strange to see the boys riding the trunk. He remembered how they swung in the branches all day, and forgot themselves and the street, and became mythical creatures who have only a tree-life. But at night when the others were gone, he had bent over and looked at the roots still fastened in the earth, writhing against each other with arms that were embraced in a terrible struggle. Then he had wondered why the pavement had not burst over the place where the roots were struggling for so long, and the tree became something evil that he ran away from, that grew in his dreams that night ... an evil and brooding presence.

* * * * * * *

Five. Somewhere in a distant part of the building he heard it, he counted five strokes and heard them repeated in the corridors. Strange and sad it sounded to hear the clocks striking out of the silence. For the moment that he listened his being was suspended in longing for some remote wonder of his childhood. He heard the clocks speaking with the sudden utterance of birds ... he thought that somewhere in a distant part of the building there were three birds perching on a dark branch, and giving off in their sleep the same formula of sound ... and that he was a little boy again listening to it. Surely he had lived this moment before, for the infinite sadness of it was something remembered ... the dark branch in the woods was remembered ... perhaps from some picture in a child's book ... Poldy waking up ... but suppose I said it? Doctor, I don't want to be born. See, I have shaped the sheets around me, a snug womb. "Nonsense ... everything wants." Patient pleads to remain in hospital ... try it out on your newspaper headline. Nonsense ... But still-born children! Ah, how about that ...

Dozing off and dreaming of a strange child-birth. It was a drill. First the orderlies came in and ranged themselves against the wall. Then the nurses came and stood along the opposite wall. Dr. Gaynor came in and stood in the center of the room, and all the men were listening to him. They were lying down and sound asleep, yet they were listening. Dr. Gaynor stood in the center of the room and said: "We are going to have a drill. We are going to drill you on being born. The signal will be the clapping of my hands." He clapped his hands, and all the men swung out of bed with their legs first, holding them stiff and erect so that every pair of legs made an arc in the air; and the arcs remained in the air and shaped themselves into windows, rounded cathedral windows and someone was going in and out the windows.

Geraghty. He can't sleep. In and out the windows ... in and out the beds. Geraghty weaving himself in and out of the beds all night, as if he were a spool from which string was being unwound, weaving the string in and out of the beds as one does with an intricate bundle. Can't sleep until he's tied the beds securely. That's why he looks so craftily at the doctor in the morning ... keeps them all guessing why he can't sleep. "Couldn't sleep again, doctor, just couldn't sleep."

Doctor (leaning four-footed on the bed and turning his head to look out of the window): Couldn't sleep?

Geraghty: I don't know what it is, doctor.

Doctor (still looking out of the window): The drugs didn't help?

Geraghty: Not much ... slept at the beginning, but then I had to get up and walk around.

Doctor answers by tapping the right hind leg.

Geraghty (raising himself on his elbow, sudden terror in his voice): Doctor, what do you think it is?

Doctor stands erect, frowning at him ... Geraghty looking back, a wide impudent stare that seems to change into secret laughter. I'll tell you a secret, Geraghty ... Dr. Gaynor smells yeasty. He has a white handkerchief in his pocket that gives off a yeasty smell.

* * * * * * *

Turn over and try to sleep. He turned, hitting his arm against the wall. Someone in the room answered the sound, speaking out of his dream ... look at the sun. Who splashed it on the sky that way? Looks like paint splashed on a palette ... another cloudy day. Doctor, give me a brush. I want to use that splash of paint ... yes, that one ... see what color it is. Only one splash of paint on that whole big palette. Incredibly stupid. Seems to be a green light on the shade ... sign of going crazy, to see new colors in things ... look at Biondi trying to concentrate ... if that isn't! He must be having a difficult dream ...

Biondi frowning in his sleep, with the sheet tucked under his chin like a napkin looked suddenly childish and comic. Biondi turned, and a little wedge of sunlight lay on his back, as if it were a doctor's instrument being moved carefully, thoughtfully ... searching out something that was hidden underneath. And Biondi lying under it so patiently ... he pitied him. I'll see Biondi when I'm gone, be back to see him. Nonsense! The man had a disgusting way of clicking his tongue, and his face never looked clean. Two beds away ... the large man sleeping with his hands folded prayerfully under his cheek ... the heavy flesh collected under his eyes ... like another pair to see with when his eyes are closed. Two tiers of eyes staring at him ... turn away, can't bear that staring. Poldy's ear creeping out of the sheet, a peculiar look of listening to it. So this is your big day. Well, what are you going to do? Sleep. No, the room is too crowded. Oh God, all the listening and staring in the room...

Strange how much light is coming out. Diarrhœa ... the darkness can't stop itself. Well, they should be waking across the street.

* * * * * * *

He raised himself on his elbow and looked across Poldy, down and across to a window where the shade was half-way up, a dark outer shade showing a little way across the top, all carefully measured like the curtains of a stage. Very well, then, begin. The man comes out first...

A man came to the window and stood looking down into the street. His collar stuck out at a tangent from his neck, and while he looked thoughtfully into the street he kept pinching the flesh of his throat. Then he went away and the window was blank for a while, but by careful watching one could catch the flash of a white table-cloth. Now it's the woman's turn ... comes to the window and raises the shade, lifts her hand with it, so that the sleeve of her kimona falls back, and you can see the brown wrinkled flesh of her elbow. Next the man sits down at the table with his back to the window. His legs are curled round the chair, and while he waits for things to be brought he strokes the back of his hair. When they are through eating, the woman stands up and turns off the light ... After that he could not see anything. The window went dark and opaque, like the glass of a slide when no figures are being reflected on it. The lights went out in all the windows, and all the buildings he could see from the hospital became distant and opaque, a picture hung so that no detail of it could be seen. There _were_ pictures of that kind ... the one in my aunt's bedroom. At first only a long white figure lying on a bed, the rest of the canvas in shadow; and he was about to turn away when a face came out of the shadow and stared at him ... an angry old man with a long white beard. Then he saw other faces, all gazing out with a stern and terrible concentration ... and every wayward curving of line became a face, and every blur of shadow was turned into a face, until he felt that the picture had surrounded him ... rushing out and colliding with my aunt in the hall. "But is anything chasing you? Well, then, don't rush so..."

"What did you say?" Dr. Gaynor asked. I said don't let it surround me. Dr. Gaynor could not hear very well, and he had to repeat the words over and over again, making the sounds crisper each time until the sentence was chopped into eight separate ticks, and his tongue ached with the effort of saying it. I said: don't let it surround me...

"But what?"

"The picture. It's badly hung. I can't see the faces."

"Ah, yes, you used to paint..."

"No, I used to play ... Poldy used to paint. Still I know something about it. But I can't see any of the faces. The light is bad."

"I said he may _not_ go blind..."

"The light is bad, doctor, pull up the shade. The light is very bad. I can't see the picture clearly."

"What picture?"

"The one out there, with the windows. The oil coagulated when I painted it. The oil lumped into windows ... they blur the picture. Oil paintings must be hung right."

"Yes ... yes ... I see..."

"But the light is _still_ bad. There isn't enough light, I say. You don't know how the darkness presses on the back of my neck."

"Is that better?" Dr. Gaynor lifted the shade slowly, imperceptibly, and stood near the window pinching the flesh of his throat and looking thoughtfully at the men lying in bed.

"But can't you lift it higher, doctor?" He heard his voice sounding as if it were going to cry. "You don't know how the darkness presses on the back of my neck..."

"Well, is _that_ better..."

But now, as the shade was raised all the way, there was a tremulous motion in the picture. Soon it began to quiver within itself, and while he noted this with a feeling of horror, he saw the doctor seize the picture in his hand and hold it out like a tray. And he saw that the picture was made up of brightly-colored fragments, each fragment shaped differently, but all put together to look like the buildings that he saw from the hospital. And he noted further, with a painfully oppressive feeling that this discovery had some ominous significance, that the picture had never really been painted, but only put together like a puzzle. "You see, it's a puzzle," the doctor said, "and this is the way"--he rattled the fragments on the tray until two or three bounced off--"to break it." Then with a stupid smile on his face Dr. Gaynor continued rattling the tray, and there was no end to the picture, there was no end to the pieces of it that fell on his bed ... showering down on him in a rain of fragments too bright for his eyes, suffocating him so that he could not shout to the doctor to stop; and piling around him so that, if he did not stand up or raise his arms, they would cover him and bury him. But just when he thought they were closing in over his head, the fragments disappeared, and the faces of his friends were looking at him ... stern and mask-like in expression. And he recognized the man who stood at the window pinching the flesh of his throat; and Dr. Gaynor's face went in and out of the others winking like a firefly. There was the face of Ruth, too ... an archway of hair and her face between; but the horror of it was that her face was void like the door-space between the arch. And a clear voice said: the picture surrounded you. Then he awoke. An orderly was at the window. He had raised the shade all the way and the sunlight streamed in, making everything brightly-colored like the fragments in his dream.

"Very clear day," the orderly said.

"Yes, promises to be warm."

* * * * * * *

Sunlight lay on the city ... a scourge of sunlight. But from the hospital window there was no longer the city ... only a set of building blocks small and distant as toys. Blocks laid out by some child who was not yet old enough to play with them, who didn't know how to pile them into a pattern or arrange them according to size ... who knew only which was the top and which was the base, and put the blocks together and considered it sufficient that all their tops were to the sky, and all their bases to the earth. And beyond the buildings was the ragged edge of the city, with boats nosing in at the docks ... coming to be nursed. When a lot of boats came together and stayed for a while in the docks they looked like young at the nipples of their mother. But all this was silent. No sound came from the city, and nothing happened to it except sun and rain. He had looked at it for hours together until it lost perspective, lost depth and height, and had only one plane ... until it looked to him like a vaudeville backdrop waiting there to be rolled up, staring desolately after the voice of the comedians is gone.

"Very far up..." the orderly said. But how far. The bottom may be miles below ... there may not be any bottom, only the walls of the buildings shooting down. Sidewalks ... a temporary scaffolding, so that they should have something to walk on. But they'd better not stamp on it or it will fall through.

A dream of stepping into the hospital elevator. It plunged down and could not stop itself, and he went over to the colored man who operated it and tapped him on the shoulder. Did you miss the sidewalk? "Yes, I seem to have missed it." And they continued going down, neither of them concerned over what had happened. Finally he grew tired of this. He went over to the colored man again. Reverse it, he said. And on the instant they were catapulted back to the top. "You see," the colored man observed sagely, picking his teeth, "you can reach the top but you can never reach the bottom..."

The orderly crossing the room and standing in the doorway, waving his hand at the window ... yes, great view. Something stopping in the room. What was it that stopped just now? What was it that stopped when the orderly went out? Geraghty ... Geraghty standing near his bed and looking down at it, getting in and sighing heavily. Came to the end of the string, and now he can sleep. But Biondi is waking up ... can tell by the way his chin begins to twitch...

All day Biondi lay in bed twitching his chin so that tiny parallel arches appeared on it, holding it so for a second and smoothing it out again. The moment his chin stopped twitching he fell asleep ... like the animals. They fall asleep easily ... just fold a wing or put their heads away or lift a leg and they're asleep. All Biondi has to do is to stop twitching his chin. I'll try this one on him: Doctor, what should I do to fall asleep? Doctor (thinking profoundly): "Shutting the eyes is good." No, don't shut your eyes ... the others will stare at you. I'll tell you a great secret, doctor, lean over, that's it. The eyes are not only to see with ... they are to prevent others from seeing us. Doctor (with astonishment): "Indeed." Yes, it's true. I found it out. You can't be stared at so easily if your eyes are open. "Oh come, now, he may _not_ go blind." Yes, but suppose he does ... the worst part of it will be the staring that he won't be able to repel with his eyes. He'll have to stay alone most of the time ... being blind is not so bad when you're alone. Isn't that true, doctor? Doctor (lecturing): "Now the blind man that came in here the other day ... you noticed that he walked with his head back? Blindness requires a whole re-adjustment of the body. You balance with the eyes, too. He'll have to learn that..." Doctor (continuing to lecture and leaning on the bed, four-footed): "But we don't really _know_ whether he'll go blind. In many cases vision has been retained. We are often fortunately disappointed ... (smiling here, and quickening his words) yes, yes, very often disappointed..."

In school that time when I was sent to be disciplined ... the dean rubbing his hands and saying: "But we don't really _know_ if you're bad ... I'm satisfied that most people are good. I'm satisfied if only a few people are bad." Why doesn't Dr. Gaynor say it ... I'm satisfied if only a _few_ people go blind ... Well, shut your eyes and try to imagine it ... geometry ... if Poldy goes blind will he see geometry all his life ...

She wrote it all down backhand and blotted as she went along ... name, Lewis Orling ... birth, December 12, 1894 ... age, married, wife's name, history, war record, diseases, religion ... all in ten lines and three for remarks ... I'll give Dr. Gaynor a recipe for creating new people. Dr. Gaynor (lecturing): To create new people, take all the hospital charts out of the files, cut into little strips, shake in a basket until they are thoroughly mixed, then let fall on large pieces of cardboard, a handful of strips at a time ... paste the fragments together ... How would _I_ come out? ... it really can't make any difference, though. Everybody here has a souvenir ... just a _lit_tle _sou_venir of the war. But why does Biondi get fat on his?

He turned and examined Biondi's face, the grayish overflowing cheeks. He noticed his hand as it held the sheet, puffed so that the knuckles showed as minute purple dots, and the joints as dark creases. Biondi's flesh filled him with loathing, it seemed like an evil compensation for the loss of his legs ... a senseless mathematical equation stubbornly working itself out. Hatred for Biondi rose in his throat, screwed it tight so that he felt he was suffocating. Hatred for all the men lying in bed. All night he had been lying awake, bearing for them the whole burden of consciousness. All night, with inevitable suction, the busy thoughts of their sleep had flowed into his wakefulness ... and now he hated them for the way in which they had used him. He hated them for their easy acceptance of what had been done to them. The trick of it! The monstrous trick of the whole thing, that for his hope of fame and for everything he had been before the war, he had only the noises in his head to listen to ... only the constant fine whirring in his head. Like the end of a record, somebody forgot to take the needle off ... And again the bitter taste of Ruth in his mouth. Now it came to him with the impact of something first discovered that he would have to go back to her that day; and in that moment his hatred flowed over to her...

But meanwhile he was staring at Biondi, and the force of his stare made Biondi open his eyes. "They change the beds around every day," Biondi observed drowsily ... then scratched his cheek with a rapid vibration of his forefinger, tucked the sheet under his chin and went to sleep again ... I enter Biondi's dream, he woke to let me in. Why can't _I_ sleep, I also am tired. Too late, too late ... no burrowing back any more, there is no darkness left to let me in.

But he seemed to be in utter darkness, and going down a flight of irregular stairs. His body jerked when a step was too shallow, and was carried down to be gently landed on those steps that were too high. But on one of the shallow steps, and just after he had been aware of taking it with an abrupt movement of his foot, he fell asleep.

2

At nine-thirty that morning Lewis and Poldy stepped out of the hospital together. At the entrance they paused, wondering which way to turn. Then, agreeing silently and indifferently, they faced about and walked down Fifth Avenue.

Neither of them spoke. Poldy walked with his head drooping forward and his eyes fixed on the pavement, and Lewis was painfully conscious that his suit was too big for him. He kept plucking at the sleeves to shorten them, and pulling the coat forward on his shoulders. At last these motions made Poldy turn to look at him. "I have a suit in Levine's office which ought to fit me better," Lewis said. But Poldy did not answer.

At fifty-ninth street they stopped to wait for the traffic to change. For the first time Poldy glanced around him, looking wonderingly at the people and the buildings. He turned to Lewis and spoke in a low voice. "Don't you think that night nurse was beautiful?" he asked, frowning anxiously. "Don't you think so?" But before Lewis answered he turned away again, his eyes intently watching the pavement. Now and then as they walked his hands fluttered to his tie, and without looking up or slowing his pace he tried to loosen it, stretching his neck absurdly as if he felt it was choking him. They walked rapidly, speeding up as they went, until Lewis had to take Poldy's arm to prevent him from breaking into a run.

Poldy took occasion then to speak again. "Do you know what I think, Lewis?" he asked, lowering his voice secretively.

"Well ... what?"

"Dr. Gaynor was sorry when we left ... he was pretty sorry about it. And did you see Biondi's face! His jaw just dropped, like that, you know. As though he didn't know right along that we were leaving today."

Something in his friend's voice made Lewis turn and look at him intently. As Poldy's hands kept fluttering to his tie, he noted how small they were ... the perfect small-boned modeling of the fingers that seemed to be always engaged in such busy and ineffectual motion. Many times before he had observed this, and always with a feeling of pity for Poldy, as if in some way the hands were a betrayal of the strong and well-formed body. But today he saw it with a slight disgust. He found himself wishing that Poldy would leave him; at the same time he knew he was afraid to be alone. While they were together he felt himself still secure, still held in the world of illness which had walled him in. Poldy, walking beside him with his abstracted air, his slack profile ... the lips parted and always moist ... made a defense around him, holding off the threat of ordinary life. And so, though Lewis knew he should have turned his steps westward, though he thought of all the things that had to be done, they continued to walk together. And always there was this absurd speeding up of their pace, until it seemed they were engaged in a walking race with each other and people turned to stare at them. Lewis took Poldy's arm. "See here, Poldy," he said irritably, "we don't have to walk so fast. Don't you see how we're rushing?" But when Poldy obediently slackened his pace, going too slowly this time, he stopped short and faced him angrily.

"See here, Poldy, what are you going to do? You can't walk the streets all day."

"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"Something might happen to you."

Poldy withdrew his arm pettishly. "Oh, what could happen to me _now_! That's a good one." He turned away frowning, absorbed in watching the automobiles ... looking at the wheels as they came within range of his vision and following their motion with his eyes as far as he could without turning his head. And in this intent observation of the wheels, with his head bent forward and rigid, there was something secretive and guilty. So wrapt was he that when the time came to cross he started nervously and looked up, bewildered. As he followed the lines of a tall building to its far-away pyramid top, his gaze widened with childish wonder. He stared at it and then looked away, sighing as at a problem that had to be given up. Finally he remembered Lewis's question. "I'd like to walk around a while," he said.

"What will you do after?"

Poldy considered. "Go to Bannerman's ... he has my pictures ... I must see what they're like. I really don't remember." He laughed shortly. "Say, did you _see_ Biondi's face when we left? His jaw just dropped ... like that, you know. Yet he knew right along--"

Lewis turned from him impatiently. "I think we had better part now, Poldy," he said. "It's stupid to walk around this way." And when Poldy looked at him, not understanding, Lewis drew him into the shadow of a building and gave directions on what he was to do, enforcing each with a tap on the shoulder. The last was that Poldy should call him up at night and they would tell each other what had befallen them during the day. Poldy nodded and walked away. But he had gone only a short distance when he turned and came back to Lewis, and stood before him, his eyes transfixed with a look of intense pleading.

"Lewis ... do you know what I really wish?" he began in a low hurried voice. "I wish I had made a promise ... I wish someone had made me promise that I would do a special thing, spend my life doing it ... and that I had to do it now. Then everything would be simple. I don't know what _sort_ of thing, though..." He stopped abruptly and looked at Lewis with troubled eyes. There was something else that he tried to say, but unable to find words for it he swung round on his heel and walked jauntily away. Lewis stood alone. As he watched Poldy's going he knew a beginning was made, he faced the obligation to set his own affairs in motion. He too turned briskly and walked in the opposite direction.

* * * * * * *

But after a while he felt tired. The energy which had made him leave Poldy was gone, and he turned into a quiet side street, walking against sidewalks so bright with sun that they struck like a blare of sound. He drew his cap over his eyes until he could see only what came just in front of him. With his hands curled up in his sleeves so that they seemed to be swinging empty, and coasting near the buildings for guidance, he gave himself up to his wanderings ... to the feeling of exhaustion that was settling around him, a fine film of it through which everything was strained.

Poldy was gone. Lewis remembered now that their parting on the street-corner had been like the parting in a fairy-tale: each to his separate adventure after the common fate in which they had been bewitched. And as the fairy-tale also taught, they were to meet at night and tell what had befallen them. But, Lewis asked himself, what _could_ befall? In his heart was the deep conviction that all adventures were at an end ... resentment that now he was forced to go about again, continuing his life. As he walked through the streets and tried to think of the future, he felt like someone unwillingly awake ... someone who expected to sleep all night but opens his eyes after a while, and is forced to lie that way, painfully feeling his own awareness. From the war and the hospital years he had been forcibly awakened ... they had been a profound sleep in which everything had rusted away within him. What could it matter then if anything _did_ befall? Experience was now nothing to be desired, it was valuable only because it could be recounted to Poldy at night. Poldy! All his thoughts kept swinging back and forth about Poldy, as if they were leashed to one center. Somewhere near him he was walking about, they might even encounter each other at the casual turning of a corner. But the fear of it made Lewis energetic again, he walked briskly to the corner and stopped there, and threw his head far back so that he could read the sign-post from under the brim of his cap. Where was he? The answer gave him a shock. He was near his home ... _she_ was near ... he might even have coasted past the house and been seen by her. As he stood there looking up in panic and wondering what to do, a tiny figure swam up before his eyes ... seemed to hover between him and the lamp-post ... a miniature statue swathed in gauze, something he must have seen somewhere and forgotten, until this moment when it came back to him strangely invested with meaning. It was swathed in hospital gauze that went in spirals around it, and somehow made an intricate cross in back ... went over the face of the statue in so many thicknesses that the head looked ovoid, nothing but a little peak in front to indicate that there were features. And in the transfixed moment that he saw it Lewis decided not to go back to her ... not yet, he pleaded with himself. Better to walk around a while, to be alone for a while longer. He turned from the sign-post and found that he was at a point where many streets intersected. He chose the one that he was facing because it would lead him far away.

* * * * * * *

Towards nightfall he found himself in the park. All day he had not stopped to eat or rest; and now, exhausted from his wanderings, he sat down on a bench that faced the avenue, intending to have a nap before he went home. But hardly had he stretched his legs and settled his hands in his pockets, when a strange alertness came over him. He felt the indefinite light and steady droning of traffic and the movement of people merging together into a heightened silence, in which some word was about to sound ... some revelation that would change everything, and make it possible for him to rise and go home as if there had never been any interruption. But only the thought of Christopher swam insistently into his mind; and he asked himself why it had troubled him all day ... why he remembered for the first time today all the delight and terror that he felt, in that moment when they had come upon Christopher standing alone and stroking his ear in the dark hallway. Craftily, now, he understood ... that Christopher had taught him all the subtle ways in which the body gives pleasure, that now he too could go apart with his pain, as Christopher had done with his deformity, and make a privacy of it where nothing could reach him ... where Ruth's love could not reach him or the memory of his past. So much had his childhood served him ... he had this to begin his life with. And from the war, he asked ... was there nothing to remember from the war, nothing swishing back and forth in his mind from all that rich cargo of debris? He could think only of the time with Poldy ... how Poldy burst out crying in the middle of the road, standing there with the tears running down his cheeks, ashamed to put his hands to his face, ashamed to look up. "But everything is over now, Poldy. Look how quiet it is." And Poldy taking his hand as if he wanted to crush it and looking at Lewis with anger and hatred in his eyes. "Tell me, will it happen again? Will I cry this way again?" Except for that there was nothing to remember. He could not look back at his past, he did not want it to exist. His past baffled him, as if he were looking into a room where he could see all that went on, without being able to hear what was said or distinguish the faces of those who were in it. Though the room was brightly lighted and people came and went before the window, all their gestures were detached and unreal, it was all a mysterious pantomime. Sound was muffled in it, and on every face was the impassive stern overtone of a mask. For him there would be neither past nor future, but only a timeless isolation of pain. He would not make any concession to the past ... no, not the first one, which was to accept her love again; for fear it might act as a breach, and all the things which he had forgotten ... all the things he had desired ... would come flooding back on him. Before he rose from the bench he warned himself: not to accept Ruth's love again, but to harden himself against his memories, and live with her as if they were strangers to each other. So he would hold himself intact, so the gesture of pain would be frozen into permanence ...

Lewis rose to go home. On his way, however, he decided to stop at Levine's office first and change his suit, and there to call up Poldy.

3

They had been talking for hours. Levine's back was to the lamp, his face shadowed save for the bright prismatic play of his glasses. Lewis sat opposite. Between them the desk bore the burden of their gestures. Lewis kept striking it with his clenched fist when he talked, or nervously smoothing it with his palm whenever he was forced to listen. Levine sat massive and immobile, his hands for the most part clasped in front of him, except when the word he wanted did not come. Then he would release his right hand, and putting the thumb and forefinger together, shake off an invisible drop of water ... a gesture which seemed to have the virtue of bringing the right word to mind. From the ambush of shadow in which he sat Levine studied his caller, his face never once relaxed from the curious expression with which he had first greeted him.

It was true, he noted, that Lewis's appearance had changed little. There were the same quick resentful motions of his small brown eyes, the same nervous gestures and voluble speech. If the war had made any change in him it had been merely to accentuate his mannerisms, to give them a hysterical tempo. Otherwise there was the same expression of the face ... an expression slightly fanatic, due perhaps to the sparsity with which it was fleshed ... an air of strain about the features, which seemed to be always peaked with the effort of staying together ... a strained expression about the nostrils, which were clamped too tightly into the upper lip and had a trick of whitening whenever Lewis was angered. As his friend spoke to him, Levine noticed it often ... this sudden concentrated pallor about the nostrils; and he sensed that under the voluble reminiscences and abrupt outbursts of laughter, there was a current of anger ... whenever they stopped speaking he could feel it almost physically present, waiting for a reckoning. Yes, all that had been said so far, Levine told himself, was nothing. He understood that Lewis had sought him out for something special that had to be said, to have the reckoning with his anger in his presence. So in a long silence that fell between them, he leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. "Tell me," he said, "why didn't you go home first?"

Lewis flashed a look at him that was half sulkiness, half appreciation. "You might understand that yourself, I think."

"But you see, I don't," Levine said humbly. "Well, no ... perhaps I do. There are so many things, at least, to understand by it..."

But Lewis was staring at him with fascinated eyes, as if he were held spellbound in an idea that had just occurred to him. He took from his pocket four tiny pieces of newspaper, each one folded small as a thumb-nail. These he opened and smoothed out on the desk.

"I'd like to tell you something," he said slowly. "It _is_ a sort of explanation. But first you'll have to read these. I cut them out of newspapers," he added carelessly, "various times, when I had nothing better to do."

Frowning, and holding the paper so close to his face that he seemed to be smelling it, Levine read:

Last night a fire broke out in the town hall during a performance of the Brahms' _Requiem_, given by the Ascension Choral Society. Flames were discovered by an usher in the cloak room on the balcony, and the extinguishers immediately applied. It required the quick action of the fire department, however, to prevent the flames from spreading. The audience left in good order, except for a slight panic at one of the exits, which occurred when one of the ushers had difficulty in opening a door.

Levine put it aside and glanced up inquiringly. "Read them all," Lewis said, shoving them across the desk. "They're pretty much alike, though." There was a peculiar expression on his face, a look of distrust and cunning while he watched his friend read. At one time he rose and began to pace excitedly around the room, rapping everything as he passed. More and more seriously, scarcely daring to look up and ask the meaning of it, Levine read:

Last night a performance of _Faust_ at the Opera House was temporarily interrupted by the discovery of fire in one of the property rooms. A fifteen minute delay in raising the curtain on the third act caused considerable impatience and anxiety among the audience. The flames were extinguished by stage hands before any serious damage occurred.

and,

Fire, attributed to the careless lighting of a cigarette, burned the Trentini Theatre to the ground, last night between nine and ten o'clock. The fire broke out during a performance of _Cosa Sia_, and there was a general stampede to the exits. Fireman Conrad Meltzi was fatally injured when a section of the balcony collapsed.

The last one was different:

A performance of _The Sunken Bell_ was interrupted last night at the Playhouse by a disturbance in the audience, due to the sudden illness of one of the women spectators. Dr. Alfred Downing who attended the patient announced that she had given birth to a boy in the women's rest room.

"Interesting! All very interesting!" Levine exclaimed on finishing. He took off his glasses and polished them, speaking meanwhile in a brisk professorial manner. "As I see it, there's a common element in all these notices. In each case a performance seems to have been interrupted. In three cases a fire caused the interruption, in one the premature delivery of a child under unfavorable circumstances. Now if we proceed from this point, our next step--" he looked inquiringly at Lewis. "Our next step, I should say, is to find out ... discover, I should say, what the symbols involved..."

"Do you think it was foolish?" Lewis interrupted.

"Think what foolish..."

"To collect those ... the papers you were reading." He leaned forward impulsively and swept them off the desk. "A hundred times I've been on the point of throwing them away, and yet I couldn't. I treasured them as if they were valuable coins. I insisted on keeping them every time they searched my pockets for things to throw away. People looked at me queerly. Something wrong here, you know, up here." He rapped his forehead three times and burst out laughing. "Yet it's awfully simple. I kept those papers," Lewis began, deliberately tapping off the words on the desk, "as a record of my life ... a simple, clear-cut record of my life. In each case, as you say, a performance is interrupted by fire. Fire is the war, of course, the years I've been away. Now isn't that easy? Don't you feel it when you read it?" He half-rose in his chair and thrust himself forward at Levine, a fixed triumphant expression on his face. Levine, intent on polishing his glasses, looked up gravely.

"Say you're sitting in a theatre," Lewis continued hurriedly. "Say you're listening to the performance ... a beautiful and deliberate performance. And suddenly some one cries fire, and instead you find yourself listening to the horrible crackling of the flames and screams of terror, and the sound of feet trampling over human bodies. Only--and this is the worst part of it--_through_ your panic you still hear the performance going on, even through your terror. Faint and far away you hear it completing itself. And while you struggle and scream and trample over the others you're still listening to it, a thousand times more beautiful and majestic because it comes to you through the fire. But now suppose--" He sat down abruptly, still staring across at Levine with that fixed expression of triumph.

"What should we suppose?" Levine asked mildly.

Lewis looked down and spoke more slowly, finding the words with difficulty. "Suppose that moment ... the moment of panic terror which should normally last only a second," he said, "were to be prolonged indefinitely. Suppose a person was destined to a lifetime of it ... to be haunted by the music even in his terror. If we could imagine such a person, if there was a person who had that fate..."

"Then what?" Levine interrupted drily.

But Lewis could not go on. His face flushed and now he felt a painful quivering in both eyelids, so violent that he wanted to shade his eyes with his hands, to hide it from Levine's scrutiny. "Well, take me for such a person," he finished, looking away shamefacedly.

Levine continued meditatively polishing his glasses. After a while he asked, "When did you figure all this out?"

"Oh, a long time ago ... too long ago," Lewis said wearily. "I got my first idea of it, I remember, one day during the war, when I came across that notice you read about the theatre burning down. Quite accidentally, while I was standing near a flight of steps, I remember, and happened to look down, and I saw an American newspaper lying on the ground. I read that part over and over again, while the paper was still lying on the ground, without knowing why it excited me so. Then I bent down and tore it out and put it away in my pocket. After that--weeks after, I remember--the meaning of it flashed on me. But there were a great many things that went before, before I could understand it."

"Well, what went before?" Levine held his glasses in front of him, turning them this way and that to catch the light from the window.

"There's something I'd have to explain first."

"Namely..."

Lewis hesitated. "The queer ways," he began slowly, "in which people amuse themselves ... comfort themselves when they suffer. Probably you don't know." He spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Of course they thought I was acting queerly, collecting those papers and saving them ... but only because they never noticed the queer ways that people have of comforting themselves. There was a fellow, for instance, who seized every scrap of tin foil he could lay hands on, and cut it up into the shape of nickels, and rubbed the design from real nickels on it so that it looked like real money. He must have had a fortune in make-believe nickels ... he carried them around in his pocket and acted as if everyone were trying to steal them. Whenever there was anything to eat, chocolate or cheese that came wrapped in tin foil, he cared more about getting the wrapper than the food. He was so greedy for it that he regularly traded his share of food for it. I lost track of him after a while, but I saw him again one time lying in bed, and making the artificial nickels with the one arm and few fingers he had left. So you see," he looked swiftly at Levine and turned away again, "once you have seen things like that...."

"My dear young man," Levine said drily, "you don't have to justify your ways to me."

"I'm glad, though, that I threw them away." Lewis sighed and touched the papers gingerly with his foot. Meanwhile Levine's gray eyes were fixed on Lewis. With his glasses off, their expression was mild, slightly astonished. Yet there was in that very mildness a hint of something implacable. There was, in Levine's eyes, infinite kindliness, but also infinite insistence ... eyes possessed of implacable patience, that would inevitably draw from whatever they looked at the intimate secret of that thing. Lewis looked away and tried to fixate the narrow line of red ribbon that showed on the typewriter, but the quivering in his eyelids began again and he was forced to look down. He began to trace imaginary circles on the desk, and while he gave his recital in a voice scarcely audible, he seemed intent on the circles he was making, now very rapidly, now slowly.

"It happened to me first," he said, "while I was waiting on line. There is, of course, endless waiting on line. It's not the least of the things one has to go through. This time we were standing in a narrow hallway, all leaning against the wall--some of us with our backs to the wall and our arms folded; and these were the ones who had their heads back as if they were sleeping standing up. And others standing sideways, crouching against the wall as though they had to support it. I think I remember the way we stood so well because it seemed at that moment as if we were all asleep, instead of standing and waiting on line. We were all so listless and tired. Nobody spoke, nobody cared any more whether the doctor's door would ever open again and call the next one in. It made the place where we were unnaturally quiet, the sort of quiet that happens only when there are people together who have been silent for a long time. And while I was standing there, and probably _because_ it was so quiet--I didn't know what it was to be in a quiet place for months together--I began to hear music ... an orchestra playing in the distance, but very clearly. So far away and sad, it seemed to me that I had never heard music before or known how sad it could be. It sounded very distinct, playing a triumphal march.... I heard it from the beginning to the last note, and after the last note it stopped. Only when it stopped, I realized that it hadn't been triumphant, but mournful ... and that all the time it had been going farther away while it played. And then suddenly, suddenly it seemed--" Lewis stopped, his lips twitching so that he could not speak. He sat in silence for a moment, rapping the desk violently with his clenched fist. "How do these things happen?" he asked harshly. "Perhaps _you_ know all about it, Levine. How did it happen that the music I heard then ... that march being played somewhere in the distance, became the symbol for my life ... no, it _was_ my life. It was all the past I had ever lived, every day I ever lived, every moment. Do you believe it, Levine, that a man can suddenly _hear_ his life?" He stared across at his friend with an absurd expression. "But it wasn't ordinary listening," he continued, raising his voice angrily as if someone had challenged him. "I tell you I felt a shock of recognition. I listened to it with horror, as though a physical presence, a ghost in the form of sound, were confronting me...."

Levine was about to speak, but Lewis motioned for silence. "And after that it came back to me ... in the midst of the fighting, when I could not even hear my own shouting, it would come back clearly ... screaming above the noise, never played too fast, but only magnified somehow a thousand times. And in every moment of pain, or when it was intensely quiet ... especially when it was quiet ... or when I couldn't sleep, I heard it again, at such times soft and far away. But often as I heard it, there it was--the strange feeling that my own life was speaking to me."

"Yet after a while," Lewis continued, intent again on the circles his finger traced, "after a while the experience became a sort of horror to me. I lived every minute in fear of it, and once that fear got hold of me, the war seemed to go on in another world, and I did my share of it in a trance. That time is all a blur to me. My real life was the fear of hearing the music. I could face danger, then, without thinking of it, I could kill without knowing it, because I had gone into a stupor of fear. And the strange thing is that it wasn't the fear of anything around me--all the things that threatened my life--but only the fear of hearing the music, the horror that at the next moment I would hear it playing. 'Very well,' I said to myself, quite calmly, 'that's what they mean by going insane.' And I might have gone insane, if not for finding the notice that way. It's so trivial that it sounds ridiculous to speak of it ... yet in some way it had the power to relieve the tension ... it cleared things up for me and lifted me out of my stupor into the world again...."

Lewis paused and looked directly at Levine for the second time in his narrative ... a swift suspicious glance. "Shall I continue," he asked sharply, "or does it sound stupid to you?"

"No ... no ... go on."

"But it _is_ stupid," Lewis insisted, watching him.

It seemed for a time as if Levine had forgotten Lewis. He had been pacing back and forth while he listened, measuring his route diagonally across the room, never varying it by a single step. Now he stopped near the window and busied himself with rubbing off the specks of paint that were spattered on the glass. He went to the typewriter and blew away the dust that lay on it in a thin film. Then a picture on the wall claimed his attention. This he straightened carefully, measuring it by the line of white moulding. In all these actions there was an air of profound absorption.

"No, I don't think it's stupid," he said, standing back to observe the effect of the picture.

"It _was_ stupid," Lewis insisted in a nettled voice. "Perhaps I did go insane ... mildly, without knowing it..."

Levine shrugged his shoulders. "Go on with the story."

"Well, you have to know first," Lewis resumed, his voice deliberately careless, "that I was a musician before the war."

"I know. And now?"

"Now? Why--why that's all over with ... head noises ... tinnitus aurium, the technical name." He laughed self-consciously. "And so it was natural that I should think of my life in terms of music ... as a symphony, let us say, that I was conducting ... something being conducted very deliberately to its end. You understand that I didn't see all this in a flash. It's a matter which I had to figure out, a part occurring to me now and then, and I pieced it together. But I must have been thinking about it for a long time without knowing it. I must have said: my life _will_ be a performance, it will be deliberate. I know that all the steps were planned in my mind, they were to follow each other inevitably like the movements of a symphony. But perhaps..." Lewis paused and stared thoughtfully ... "perhaps one has no right to be so deliberate about living ... or triumphant either? Perhaps there was something wrong with that ... I've often wondered." He was silent, rubbing his forehead and frowning. "Well, what does it matter anyway," he resumed. "At any rate the first step was already over--the first movement, I ought to say. And I began to hear the second, a few introductory notes, that is, nothing more. Do you remember that picture of me at the piano?"

"You mean the one where you were playing and looking over your shoulder?"

Lewis nodded. "The shoulder was too coquettish, by the way. Just nervousness that made me lift it a little when they snapped me."

"Why no, I didn't notice."

"It was, though. You can't imagine how I suffered because of that shoulder. I thought: it's impossible that anyone will take me seriously after that picture. But there it was the next morning ... 'a name that will rank with the greatest ... a musical talent of the first magnitude.' You know, those two phrases kept going through my head for weeks after, practically deafening me. It was terrible, like having the words of a popular song in your head. One time it occurred to me, just as I was starting to play, that the first one ... about the name that would rank ... made the opening words for my minuet ... the one that goes this way..." he hummed a few measures, emphasizing the time with short rhythmic movements of his right hand. "It seemed to me it was actually written for those words, light but sort of important. Or sometimes I amused myself by arranging the words like notes. A musical talent of the first magnitude ... that's sixth-eighth time. A name that will rank with the greatest, either three-quarter or..."

Lewis stopped and burst out laughing ... a paroxysm of laughing and coughing that made the tears stream from his eyes. He put his handkerchief to his mouth and looked over it at Levine, his eyes widening with an expression of surprise, that turned into alarm as the coughing continued. When at last he was able to withdraw the handkerchief, his face was red and he turned away sheepishly.

"No, really," he said, wiping his eyes, "I shouldn't laugh. It's nothing to laugh at, I assure you."

Levine sat down and looked thoughtfully at Lewis. He clasped his hands in front of him, then released the right hand and shook off an invisible drop of water from his thumb and forefinger. But the gesture failed him, and he rose abruptly and continued with his pacing back and forth. For a long time he seemed absorbed in his own thoughts, until a knock at the door roused him. He opened it to admit a stout little man whom he addressed as Lustbader. Lustbader sat down in a corner of the room, and with a quick dainty movement vaulted one leg across the other.

"I'll wait, I'll wait!" he protested, looking brightly from Levine to Lewis. "Nothing special, Levine, just a friendly call." And by way of establishing this, he looked off into the distance, whistling, and occupied himself with throwing his cane from one hand to the other. This he did with a skill and precision that fascinated Lewis.

Later, when Lustbader removed his hat, he revealed that the fringe of hair on his head, his eyebrows and eyelashes, even the little tuft of mustache, were all of the same color ... a dull brick red, which seemed to cast a reflected glow on his cheeks; and not merely of the same color, but perfectly matched in shading and texture. And this uniform coloring made his face look so unreal, so much as if it were made up for a masquerade, that Lewis found himself unable to take his eyes from the newcomer. He was staring open-mouthed when Levine called him to attention, and he realized that they were being introduced.

"Lewis Orling, whom you may be able to use in your theatre, a musician before the war, but he's been out of things for a long time--"

Lustbader interrupted with an imperious motion of his hand. "The name is no good," he said, and then, nodding genially to everything that Levine said, he permitted him to continue. "Excellent! Very excellent!" he said, when Levine had finished. "We have a musical audience in the theatre ... he'll appreciate that. Besides, he can work up a little orchestra later on. Go around tomorrow, Levine will give you the address, and ask for Mr. Lange. Be sure you say Lan-ge, in two syllables like that. He always insists on it." He looked from one to the other with a droll wink, and then burst into a mighty laugh, from which he abruptly extricated himself. Switching on a most serious expression, he stared at Lewis as if he were noticing him for the first time.

"The name is entirely too short," he said emphatically. "But we can fix it, we can fix it. How about adding something? Orlingoff? No, that won't do. Have to make it something Italian, you know. Antonini is one I've often used. Now when will you report, Antonini? Tomorrow, say, at three?"

Lewis nodded as if hypnotized. He looked toward Levine, but seeing him absorbed in sorting out papers, he took his leave with a muttered and self-conscious good-bye to Lustbader. As he went down the stairs, a feeling of complete weariness and indifference to everything overcame him. But he remembered, on his way home, to call up Bannerman, to find out whether Poldy had been there. He was told that Poldy had not been heard from all day.

4

The subway train ran out of the station, flashing sparks from the rear like a sudden bright excretion. Poldy stood on the platform looking after it ... listening to the wheels spinning themselves out in the distance, spinning themselves into a sharp needle of sound that went probing through his brain.

It seemed to him that everyone knew his purpose, everyone was waiting for it to happen ... walking impatiently around him, glancing at him slyly as they passed. He wanted to say to them, "Be patient ... in a little while..." Even the newsboy grew tired. He put down his papers angrily, slapped the back of his hands to his buttocks, and began to dance up and down on his heels. "Wait ... only wait," Poldy wanted to plead with him. "I've been afraid all day ... in a little while ... when the next train comes it will happen." And while he thought of these words, the newsboy looked at him as if he understood, and sat down on his papers and patiently watched the tracks.

Poldy wondered whether he had spoken out loud and the boy had really heard, or whether it was only a coincidence that he sat down that way and watched the tracks. It was strange. It was all part of the strange feeling that had come over him since the moment he left Lewis and continued his way alone ... a feeling that he could not tell any more what part of reality he dreamed to himself, made up as he went along, and what part actually existed. A painful feeling that he had entered into a waking dream, and that everything that happened ... faces he saw and words that he heard ... played up to it, like actors called on to improvise ... a dream that he was powerless to stop and could not escape from by waking. There were only unexpected moments when it was suddenly lifted from him; and then he would look around self-consciously, ashamed of what had happened in his fantasy, ashamed of what he had made the others say and do...

But now it seemed to be growing darker. He could feel the darkness hanging lower over his eyes each time, as if he were being slowly blindfolded. Everything was quiet. The noise of the trains and the clapping of turnstiles and the shouts of the newsboys had all stopped together. Nothing was left of it but the silent shuffling of feet around him, like the part of a parade where there is no music.

And now a tall negro carrying a monkey wrench came walking down the platform. He picked out one of the slot machines and began to pry it loose from the steel pillar. He turned, as he worked, with his cheek to the mirror, and Poldy could see his eye reflected. All around it there was heavy wrinkled flesh, and his eye nested snugly in the flesh, white and round as an egg. And when the negro looked down, he seemed to be covering the egg and laughing to himself because he had hidden it.

"When he is through he will put the slot machine on his head and bend his knees outward, and walk down the platform that way, frightening them..." and he smiled, knowing what would happen. But the newsboy turned to him severely.

"There's a train coming," the newsboy said.

"I can't hear it."

"There's a train coming."

"Let me alone ... I feel sleepy."

And Poldy closed his eyes and dozed off at once; but every time that his head seemed to fall into something which was cool and bottomless water, and then to be catapulted to the surface again, he would open his eyes and give a long, low whistle: "Did you see that one?" But the boy stood up as if he had just reminded himself of something. He picked up one of the papers and waved it over his head, turning himself slowly around under it. "Fourteen killed," he intoned, "fourteen killed..."

"You needn't turn around that way."

"Ah ... but watch this." Bubbles of saliva began to wink at the corners of his mouth, he curved the paper over his head for a sail and whirled himself faster and faster, crying to all the mirrors of the air: "Fourteen killed ... fourteen killed..." until they were caught in a network of voices, in the whirling deafening center of it, and every voice was calling in the same pitch and rhythm: "Fourteen killed..."

Poldy put his hands to his ears. "Stop them now," he said irritably. The boy stopped whirling at once and it was quiet again.

"Besides, fourteen what? It might be rabbits."

"There's a train coming..."

The whistle of the train sounded in the distance. His eyes grew blurred with a vision of wheels ... an imprint of wheels whirling wherever he turned, and in the hollow rim of each wheel a curve of light swinging, swishing itself gleefully to and fro. He shut his eyes, but with a cunning quick motion they began to rotate under his eyelids, swifter and swifter rotating in their narrow framework, until they beat against it with a fury of imprisoned motion ... until his head was set quivering with the impact, and his whole body fluttered back and forth in the air like some huge tuning fork. "Now ... now," the boy whispered ecstatically. But instead Poldy put his hand out and caught the steel pillar near him, he waited with fingers clamped to the shaft until the train passed. Again he saw it flash an excretion of light, he heard the wheels spinning themselves out in the distance. Then the wheels under his eyelids stopped turning, his body touched with something hard and rigid, was steady again ... nothing was left but a slow deliberate pulse in his head like part of a machine that has to swing itself still....

Poldy went to the bench and sat down. The newsboy followed, staring at him rapt and attentive, and once he thrust his cap back from his forehead with an excited motion.

"It won't happen," Poldy said humbly. "But there's a man walking on the tracks, it may happen to him."

"You were afraid."

"I'll buy a paper. Will that fix it?"

The boy handed him the paper without answering and walked away. He was almost out of sight when a wind blew his blouse out in back, as if he were flashing back an obscene gesture.

And now the man came strolling out of the tunnel. There was something queer about his face. All the features sagged into the right cheek, as if the face had been fluid once and congealed while it was being held at the wrong angle. He was very short and thin, and a large red can was attached to his side, like the strange cylinders that insects wear. He was filling it with papers, prying them out from the tiny crevices under the tracks, rubbing them for a moment between his fingers and slipping them away. But once he glanced up and saw that everyone was watching him. Then he seemed to be frightened and he crossed over to the platform and paced back and forth in front of it, peering into all the spaces underneath for a place where he could crawl in. There, where no one would see him, he would shift his cylinder to his back, fold his arms and legs under him and go to sleep....

But in a little while this man on the tracks was going to be run over. It was known beforehand to Poldy. He knew it by the way the man was standing ... in shoes that were too big for him, and turned out and sprawling away from each other ... the same way that the shoes looked in his dream: that a man had been run over and the crowd gathered to see him, and all they could see was his shoes sticking out from under the wheels, sprawling away from each other at a crazy angle. He knew it because he remembered the wheels ... how a curve of light sat swinging in each wheel, swishing itself gleefully to and fro with a foreknowledge of its prey.

So he turned to the old man sitting near him. "There's a fellow down there on the tracks who's going to be run over."

The old man did not answer.

"He looks Jewish," Poldy thought, "and he's a peddler. There's a fellow down there on the tracks who is going to be run over."

But the old man shifted his bundle and moved away. He had a handkerchief tied over his chin, and there was something bulging out underneath. His hand was trembling with palsy, and he held it close to his body and tilted his head to one side, listening to the trembling of his hand, as if to a very faint ticking. After a few minutes he looked at Poldy with a crafty sideways glance. "Do you hear it?" he asked.

Poldy heard it, and the sound of his palsy was so loud that it reverberated through the whole station, it vibrated in his ears, deafening him.

"Stop it!" he snapped.

The old man's eyes widened innocently. "Stop what?"

"That noise you're making with your hand."

"What noise?"

"I tell you it's making me deaf," Poldy retorted angrily, and he caught the old man's hand and held it in his; but under his palm he could feel it craftily vibrating, like a still thing that a little boy picks up, and it suddenly begins to wiggle. He dropped it then, and the old man put it near him again and went on listening to it.

"Besides, what have you under your handkerchief? Why is your chin covered that way? There must be something loathsome on it."

The old man fingered his chin and looked archly at him.

"There's a man down on the tracks who's going to be run over," Poldy said. "Ah ... I knew that would interest you."

"But how do you know?"

"By his shoes."

"By his shoes?"

"Exactly ... did you ever stop to notice your shoes just after you've slipped them off? They stand there at a crazy angle ... nobody ever walks that way...."

"I seem to remember something like that."

"Well, that's the way he's standing down there on the tracks, and that's how his shoes will look when they stick out from under the wheels."

"Indeed!" He looked admiringly at Poldy.

"Yes," Poldy continued. "You can see how the crowd shuffles around him, as if they're waiting for a tardy performer. They want to see him turn his feet out like a clown when he's lying under the wheels ... and his face will be fluid again..."

"Fluid?"

"Ah ... there's the whistle..."

They stood up and went to the edge of the platform, and the old man's fingers were thrumming his handkerchief, as if he wanted to tear it away. People drifted here and there, uncertain where it would happen. The train whistled in short frantic bleats, but the man on the tracks was standing quietly before it, looking up at it with infinite wonder on his face, and once he lifted his hand and flapped it weakly. That was comical, as if a timid patient were trying to wave the dentist away, when he takes up a new instrument. Meanwhile the old man was scurrying around on the edge of the crowd. Poldy took his arm and drew him aside.

"Don't be excited," he advised. "I've a riddle."

"Yes?"

"Why are people always standing on the edge of a crowd and thinking they see something?"

With his free arm the old man gesticulated frantically towards the train.

"Look ... look at that..." Poldy continued. "It's much more fun back here. Just stay here and see how their buttocks quiver. You can tell everything that's happening by watching their buttocks."

But now the people seemed to be going off in different directions, and the old man looked at Poldy in alarm. "What is it ... what is it? Has nothing happened?"

"Wait ... only wait. It's teasing them for a while. Did you ever see anyone holding a piece of candy in the air and teasing the children with it?"

"Of course ... of course."

"They don't know where to stand, because the candy is being waved around all the time. That's how it is."

The old man wagged his finger playfully against his chin. "Ah ... I see, I see..." he murmured. But now Poldy noted with terror that the old man could not stop wagging his finger, but that it went faster and faster, almost tearing away the handkerchief. And he knew that he was waking at last from the dream; for he remembered that in every dream there is the moment when one of the actors will not go on with it; he keeps doing the same thing over and over, and the dreamer is forced to wake up. But because of his disobedience, that actor in the dream is still with him when he awakes, masked with reality and slyly arranging his speech so that it sounds like a continuation of the dream. So Poldy awoke, and found that he was standing next to the old man, and that he had just stepped aside to let him see the accident better. And the old man was looking down into the tracks with a sorrowful face, and murmuring: "Ah, I see ... I see." Meanwhile his finger took the handkerchief from his chin, and there was nothing underneath but his beard. "And he was a young man, too," he added softly, turning to Poldy. "You noticed him on the tracks, didn't you? We were sitting there on the bench."

Poldy nodded.

"And his shoes too big for him. Ach! the poor fellow!"

And it was all as he had foreseen. The shoes were sticking out from under the train and sprawling away from each other, as if someone had placed them carelessly outside the door; and now he thought the old man turned to him accusingly, as though in his dream they had been in some secret place together, and willed that it should happen.

"A young man, wasn't he?"

"Yes, a young man."

"Didn't have time to get away?"

"I don't know..."

"Did he hear the whistle?"

"No..."

A policeman came and ordered them all to move back against the wall. They retreated before him, walking backward with their eyes fixed on the tracks as if they were hypnotized. "Yes, watch ... watch..." Poldy told himself bitterly. "It will all be this way when it happens to you. You thought of suicide quickly but you will see little by little what it is like. You catch something in your hand quickly, but you open your hand slowly to see what it is...."

But now for a time there was nothing to do. It was like a badly-written play that lags ... new players drifted in at regular intervals in response to a silent unsuspected cue. They made desultory gestures and spoke sometimes. The newsboy came running the whole length of the platform. He sat down on his bundle of papers, put his hands on his knees and rode them back and forth, never once looking at the tracks. He seemed to care only to sit there, riding his hands back and forth on his knees. The brakeman came out of the train and jumped down on the tracks, and looked at the shoes for a long time, and then at the wheels and then at the train, involved in strange calculations of his own. At length his face grew puzzled, as if he could not fathom the relation between all these things. He took off his gloves and dusted them against the platform. Then he leaped up cheerfully and hailed the policeman. A man appeared from nowhere, swinging a lantern and shouting: "Back her up ... back her up."

"Here, here ... what's the hurry?" the policeman called back. "It'll keep."

A soldier stepped out of the crowd and planted himself near the policeman. "Say ... perhaps he's living yet," he said.

"Brother, that's an idea."

"Sure ... you never can tell."

The policeman winked at the others and burst into a hearty laugh. They moved nearer and some who were going away turned back, looking eagerly from the policeman to the soldier, as if they were two performers whose repartee would lead up to a joke for all of them.

"You never know what you can pick up living," the soldier began.

"No, you don't."

The old man kept twitching Poldy's coat. "He lies dead," he whispered. "He lies dead and they quarrel."

"Strangest thing how they keep on living ... I've seen it."

"You certainly have," the policeman agreed cordially. He had been facing the crowd, but now he wheeled around to the soldier and raised his voice. "Well, now, suppose he is living..."

The soldier stared at him, completely entranced by the finality of that question. But to Poldy, looking intently at the feet under the wheels, it seemed as if there was a slight movement. The right foot seemed to turn itself inward, with the indifferent movement of a very tired sleeper. "Then if I dream it again tonight," he thought, "I must revise the position of the shoes." But now the old man was twitching Poldy's coat again. His face was pale and he fingered his beard nervously. "The train's moving back," he whispered. They had been coaxing the train backward, and it was moving away reluctantly. The man with the lantern swung it into the air, and the train stood still. Then they ran to the edge of the platform, swift as a litter of kittens when the plate is uncovered, and turned away again, each with the memory of it on his face. The old man mounted the stairs with Poldy. He tucked the handkerchief over his chin and went away. The newsboy ran down the street waving his paper and shouting: Fourteen killed ... There was one thought in Poldy's mind that came to him fluently and impersonally, as if he were reading it: he had gone down into the subway to commit suicide, but the death of the man on the tracks had given him a reprieve. There was one word that he kept repeating to himself as he walked ... tomorrow.