Universe 6 - [Anthology] Read online

  “No buts, honey! Let me for once pose as a man of action. Be round at my apartment at six, and we’ll have a drink before we go. I had a letter this morning that I’d like you to cast an eye over. Things are going to change from now on, and you’re a part of it.”

  “Oh, okay, Andrew, whatever you say. Thanks.”

  Although he set the phone down briskly, the smile on his face faded into abstraction, and he sat where he was, gazing into his own personal distance.

  He was lying on his bed with the same expression on his face when Rose-Jean arrived that evening, brightly dressed for the trip to town.

  “I’d meant to be showering, but I got lost in a fit of abstraction. I’m not always quite so absentminded.” He kissed her rather formally.

  “You’d better go and shower now, then. I came at six, as you asked.” She was piqued that he offered no compliments about her appearance after the long ritual she had subjected herself to before her mirror.

  “Sure, sure. Won’t be long! Grab yourself a Coke out of the icebox. Have a look at my books.”

  She did as she was bid, mooching back and forth before his well-worn collection of hardcovers and paperbacks with a glass in her hand. She saw no titles that particularly took her fancy, except for some egghead movie paperbacks. The directors discussed were Bunuel, Jancso, Tarkovsky, and Bergman. Since the latter was the only one she had heard of, and his films bored her, she shoveled the volumes back into their shelf. She put a Bonzo Dog Band record on the record-player instead.

  Just as Angsteed reappeared, looking unfamiliar in a gray suit, the doorbell rang. Alice Butley entered.

  “Hi, Rose-Jean, you’re looking great. I’ve picked a bad time to call, Andy—I can see you’re going out. I only dropped in for an idle chat. I’ll call around some other time.”

  “Don’t go. Great to see you again, Alice. I’m just getting myself a martini—let me make you one.”

  “I can resist anything but temptation. Set ‘em up.”

  When they were drinking, Angsteed said, “Alice, things are most definitely going to be different, radically different, around here. We’re on the move at last. The psyche is going to expand in a big way. Believe me, I’m on to something really new, aren’t I, Rose-Jean?”

  “Oh, I do hope so.”

  “Well, there are things that have never been done before, though most of them are powerless to alter the essence of existence,” Alice said.

  “What about a new thing that goes directly to the essence of existence?” He grinned and looked at Rose-Jean for her approval.

  “The essence of the human life experience is largely a matter of repetition. It’s cyclic in nature, at the least, with every generation suffering the same miseries and pleasures.”

  “Oh, sure, we all enjoy the same emotions, the same realities of birth and death, love, desire, hate. Haven’t I said that to you before?”

  Rose-Jean perched on the edge of Angsteed’s sofa and said, “These cycles, Alice—at least they can’t be concentric, or else the same events would happen over and over again without the participants being aware of it.” She passed her hand across her brow, as if brushing away a hair.

  Alice laughed. “So they do happen over and over again! I guess reason suggests otherwise, but reason is fallible in these matters.”

  “A fine thing for a philosopher to say! You’ve no proof of this repetition.”

  She spread her hands and offered him a face of innocence. “The major events of life occur over and over, perpetually. Rose-Jean agrees with me, don’t you, Rose-Jean?”

  But Rose-Jean had walked over to the window and was pressing her forehead against the glass. Angsteed went quickly across to her and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “What’s the trouble, honey? You okay?”

  “I’m okay. I just hate what we’re talking about. Sometimes I get an awful sense of déjà vu. Let’s go out; if we’re going out —can we, do you mind?”

  “Just say the word, sweetheart.”

  “I can take a hint,” Alice said. She shot Angsteed a significant and warning look, but he chose not to heed it.

  * * * *

  Toward midnight, they finished up at Luigi’s, where the juke-box was loud, the lamps were encased in lead, and the waitresses wore green leather pants and little else. Beyond the pool tables was a space for dancing. Angsteed was drunk enough to try a few steps. He enjoyed the music and the noise and the people.

  “Too long since I did this!” he shouted to her.

  “It does rather look that way, Andy. Wouldn’t you rather sit down?”

  “Come on, girl, I’m only just getting going! You know your trouble?”

  “What is my trouble?”

  He started to laugh as he swayed. “You’re just a babe-in-arms. You should learn to drink, that’s what you should do! Coke’s a kid’s drink.”

  “I happen to like it.”

  “Okay, you like it. I tell you what—let me get you a Coke with rum in it. How about that?”

  “No, thanks, alcohol is a drug and I’m not having any.”

  He stopped dancing. “What’s wrong with you, Rose-Jean? What was that you said the other day about not being a person? Alcohol never did anyone any harm in moderation. Now come on, come and have a Coke and rum. What do they call it? A Cuba Libre! I’ll have a Cuba Libre with you!”

  He dragged her away to a table, shouting for a waitress. Finally, two Cuba Libres were brought and set before them.

  “I’m not going to drink it, Andy, so you’d better make up your mind.”

  “What you afraid of? Come on, pour it down, honey! More where that came from!” He started his own drink, and continued until his glass was empty. Some of the liquid ran down his chin and onto his shirt. He wiped his chops with a grand gesture.

  She clutched his arm. “Andy, let’s get out of here. I see my husband over by the bar, and he can be real mean.”

  “Leave it to me. I’ll take care of that bastard! Where is he? Which one’s him?” He stared pugnaciously at the throng of people by the bar.

  “I’m not having any fighting. I thought he was a thousand miles away. Let’s get out of here fast and back home, if you’re sober enough to drive.”

  “Balls, go and tell him to join us. Let’s buy him a drink.”

  She put her face closer to him and said, “Andy, if you don’t come out to the car this instant, I swear to you that everything is over between us from this moment on, and I will never speak to you again. I know my husband better than you do, and I’m telling you to come on out.”

  “All right, all right, I heard, relax! He won’t kill us!”

  “You’d be surprised!” She put her arms around Angsteed and dragged him through the crowd and out of the saloon, keeping her face away from the bar. Angsteed tried to determine whom they were avoiding, but, as far as he could see, none of the people at the bar were taking any notice of them.

  Outside, they made their way through the parking lot to Angsteed’s car. Angsteed was argumentative and wanted to return to give Dempson a going-over; Rose-Jean had some difficulty in getting him into the driving seat.

  “Please drive carefully, Andy! Oh, you look so wild!”

  He steered a way slowly through the lot and toward the main entrance. As they came under the fake carriage lights at the gate, Rose-Jean cried that she could see Dempson, head down, walking toward the exit.

  With a roar, Angsteed threw the vehicle forward. Rose-Jean screamed. A man in their path turned and jumped to one side, and the off-wing of the vehicle rammed a brick pillar. Sounds of falling glass as one of the headlights went out. Automobiles behind began hooting. Both Angsteed and Rose-Jean jumped out to inspect the damage.

  “You were going to run him over, you madman!”

  “No, I wasn’t. I only meant to give him a scare.”

  “When I got a proper look at him I saw it wasn’t Allan anyway.”

  * * * *

  In her arms later, the drink still
in him, he cried in self-hatred, “What sort of a man am I? Is there a curse on me, something I can’t get free from? How wretched, how circumscribed, my goddamned life is!”

  “Don’t talk so loud, Andy! You’ll give me a bad reputation.”

  “I love you, Rose-Jean, you’re marvelous, you’re natural in a way I could never be. I want to please you, yet all I do works against our relationship. A repetitive event, like Alice says. Anything I love, it dies on me. Even now, even saying what I am saying, I’m conscious that I may be driving us further apart.”

  “I love having you in my bed, Andy. It gets lonely. Did you ever make love to Alice?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that? What’s that got to do with what we’re talking about?”

  “What are we talking about? I don’t know. I’m not really intellectual, as you seem to think. I mean, people are what they are, aren’t they?” She started to stroke him. Finally, her hands and her kisses had their proper effect, and they filled her narrow bed with loving.

  She fell asleep before he did. Angsteed lay huddled against her, claustrophobic in her narrow room, yet relishing the experience of having his head on the same pillow as that other head, which contained—or projected—a world he regarded as much more splendid than reality.

  Gradually, eyes still open, he built up, in his dream cartography, a misty globe not unlike a celestial globe, with quadrants, sectors, and mythological figures scrawled over it, every one with its own intense magic. This was Rose-Jean’s personal globe. What puzzled him was how it related to her personally, how far it was beyond her or even antithetical to her, how far it was on completely another plane from her own limited consciousness. That puzzlement faded as he lowered himself into the unlimited globe; his own reactions were dimmed out under the kaleidoscope of emotions in which he found himself moving.

  At first, it was as if he were running amid a herd of reindeer in a storm—either a snow blizzard or a sand storm. Glittering particles obscured almost everything. Shaggy things stood to one side, fir trees of which neither boles nor crowns were visible. The eyes of the reindeer were yellow in their melancholy faces.

  The colors blended perfectly. He was moving nearer the source. Currents of heat served as compass-bearings. Somewhere ahead were the mountainous heartlands, living under different times, different suns. People and animals were transformed there.

  Already the process was happening about him. As he bent his head to climb, the reindeer were going into people, the people going into animals, coming out, going in again, eating and being eaten, diving into what appeared to be the ground, springing up again like divers, their movements beautiful and horrific. He tried to look into the faces of the people, which somehow eluded him. He could tell that some were unaffected by the majestic process and walked with sunshades or in flowing robes.

  Someone was running beside him, matching him stride for stride. Under the jogging hair, eyes, lambent. A hint about the mouth of—what? Joy, lust, laughter, despair? Together, they came to a narrowing way, where windows loomed above them like the luminiferous eyes of fish.

  He felt his heart hammering as darkness, heat, walls confined him. Now he was in a house, and someone was explaining—or attempting to explain—that this house was all there was, anywhere, that it was coextensive with the universe. The being beside him was denying the explanation.

  “It’s the other way about—the universe is in the house.”

  They sat down, on furniture scarcely indicated, and a woman entered the room. She was tall, she came toward them bearing a precious gift, something that changed shape so that they hardly comprehended. The woman’s motion also set into being other shape changes. The room itself, responding to her, began to grow tremendously tall and the walls to become soft, so that he clenched his hands and felt the pulse in them like a spring.

  She came and looked him in the face. The other had gone. The room was more like the hollow trunk of a tree—and more and more, until her eyes and face seemed like leaves and he became part of her and they were both merely patterns on the sinuous green growth.

  * * * *

  “Just a minute,” Alice mumbled. “Who is it? What time is it?”

  She threw on a gown and padded over to her outer door. Rose-Jean was standing there. Night lay behind her in the corridor.

  “Rose-Jean? What’s the matter? I feel such a mess. What time is it?”

  The girl was near to tears.

  “Oh, Alice, I’m in such trouble! It’s Andrew, please help me. He’s unconscious or something and I can’t wake him up. Maybe he’s dying. I’ve tried pouring water on his face and everything.”

  “Jesus Christ, child, try whiskey, try the college quack, or the shrink, or the fire department—just don’t try me. Andy’s not my responsibility!”

  “But he may be dying. People do die!”

  “You don’t have to wake me in the small hours to tell me that. I know people die. That’s never been news!”

  She backed into her room and started to search for cigarettes. Rose-Jean followed her around. Darkness lay outside the windows.

  “The trouble is, Alice—I had to come to you. I’m in trouble. Andrew’s blacked out in my bed.” She laughed feebly, in apology.

  Alice looked at her. Still looking at her, she lit a cigarette, sucked in the smoke, began to laugh and cough. Finally she managed to speak.

  “Gee, that’s sweet, that’s just sweet! Oh, Rosie, you kill me! Poor Andy was never too much of a lover, and I guess you just wore him out. He’s catching up on his beauty sleep, that’s all. Now you trot on back to him and leave me to my beauty sleep—if that’s the phrase I’m looking for any longer.”

  “Alice, please—there’s something really wrong with Andy. I know it.”

  “There’s something wrong with him, all right,” Alice said, as she stared down at Angsteed a few minutes later. She lifted one of his eyelids and watched it fall back into place. “Did you hit him?”

  “Of course not. At least he’s not dead. Is he dying, do you imagine? How are we going to get him to his room without anyone seeing us?”

  “Can’t be done. I’ll phone Dr. Norris for you. He’s a nice discreet guy.”

  Angsteed lay curled in Rose-Jean’s bed, his face colorless, his lips slightly parted, hardly seeming to breathe.

  “Catatonia if I ever saw it,” Dr. Norris said when he arrived. He rolled Angsteed over onto his back. Angsteed lay awkwardly in the new position, unmoving.

  “What happened to him?” Rose-Jean asked.

  “Can’t say yet. We’ll have to get him to the hospital.”

  “Seems a pity,” Alice said. “Must be something two women could do here with an absolutely helpless man. I’m sure we’d think of something.”

  * * * *

  three interviews

  Interview A. Mrs. Rose-Jean Dempson.

  interviewer: Mrs. Dempson, Andrew Angsteed has now been in a condition of schizophrenic withdrawal for forty-one days. On occasions he shows some awareness of his surroundings, but he will not communicate. We hope by talking to some people who know him well that we may be able to help him. Did you at any time hear him say anything which led you to suspect that he was suffering from mental stress?

  rose-jean: Why, no, he was perfectly fine, I mean he was so intellectual that I doubt if I—well, he could be violent, I suppose. But what’s violent? It’s a violent world, isn’t it?

  interviewer: In what way was he violent? Did he hit you?

  rose-jean: Hit me? What makes you say that? I don’t give anyone cause to hit me. Besides, Andy was pretty gentle, I guess. Too gentle, really; he was sort of withdrawn, now that I come to think of it—not in any nasty way, of course. But I wouldn’t call him violent. He ran his automobile into a gatepost, that I do know. Broke the headlights on the driver’s side.

  interviewer: Was that an accident?

  rose-jean: No, that was deliberate! (Laughs) You see, he was drunk that night. We were driving out of a
nightclub and he thought he saw my husband—did I tell you I was married? My husband and I live apart. I told Andy it wasn’t Allan. I said, “Allan’s in Detroit, you loon!” but he was drunk, and he drove the car at the man. The man jumped clear and Andy ran into the gatepost. Just an accident, of course.

  interviewer: Was Angsteed often drunk?

  rose-jean: Not to my knowledge. He was too wrapped up in the dream project. I don’t drink at all myself. He was on the verge of a breakthrough when—when this happened. He was on a verge of a breakthrough that was about to change the world, so he said.

  interviewer: Do you know what he imagined this breakthrough to be?