The House of Numbers

by Jack Finney

  "And that's what you're telling me to send him back to!" I was shouting it, feeling the veins on my temples thrust out. "Back to your rotten prison?"

  He smiled a little, that same sad little smile. "Where else?" he said softly. "Have you got a better place? Have you got a good prison to send him to? Why, damn you," he shouted back, standing up to lean toward me across the desk, our faces only inches apart, "now you stand there! You never gave a thought in your life to the prisons you send men into every hour of every day, and now you stand here and complain to me! Listen, Mr. Jarvis, we spend our lives and careers here, scrounging second-hand ball bats and discarded television sets, begging free movie films, fighting for an extra five-cent-a-day food allowance per man, trying to drag this prison a single step closer to what it ought to be! We put in hours we're never paid for — we put in our lives — doing our damnedest with what we're given and what we can scrounge, trying to get these men through prison, and still keep some spark of humanity alive in them. And, yes! — sometimes we fail. Why, damn you, we have to wheedle and cajole the very paint we use to keep this place a little less like a prison with buildings a century old because we can't replace them. Don't ask me where to send your brother, mister! I've spent my life for your brother. And I'll keep right on."

  For several moments he stood staring at me; then he turned wearily away. "We'll do our best for him," he said quietly, and sat down again. "That's all I can promise you. And it may not be enough; I can't say. Not enough; that's the story of San Quentin, Mr. Jarvis. Not enough room — two men in cells not big enough for one! Not enough money, doctors, psychiatrists, equipment, or even time to do much more than lock these men up. Mr. Jarvis, San Quentin is one of the best prisons in the country; I think it's the best. And it's a bad prison; there are no good ones. But I didn't send nearly five thousand men into a prison built for two thousand; you tell me where to put the overflow you and the rest of California send me! My job is to obey your orders."

  He sat down in his chair again and looked up at me. "We'll do the best we can for your brother," he repeated. "And I'll offer you this much hope; men sometimes change in prison. I've seen it happen very often."

  "Why?" I said, as nastily as I could say it. "Because San Quentin's burned the life and juice out of them?"

  "Maybe. Sometimes. But not entirely. Men change of themselves, very often, in spite of all that prison can do to them. In time, they even acquire a strength they never had before. Maybe your brother will, too. But meanwhile he belongs here, for better or worse; there's no other place for him."

  Very softly I said, "No other place but the gas chamber, Warden?"

  He smiled a little. "No," he said, "that's not what I've been talking about. You don't ask a man to send his brother to the gas chamber. Mr. Jarvis, we don't know who hit the officer; and the witness is back in Wyoming again on parole. Tell me where your brother is — now, before it's too late and men are killed, including your brother — and I give you my personal word that the matter will be dropped. You'll have gained that much, and certainly I have to offer you that much. Listen, Mr. Jarvis — this is the only way you can save your brother from the gas chamber! Don't you realize that?"

  It almost succeeded; this man was speaking the truth, and I almost knew it. But not quite. Maybe, I told myself, though somewhere inside me I knew better, maybe Arnie will get away, to another country, or — I gave up thinking, because it didn't matter. I had to believe this because I simply could not turn in my brother.

  The warden knew it; he saw it in my face, and he shook his head in genuine sadness. "All right," he said. "It's your brother, I know. And yet," he said sadly, "he is what he is." Not really hoping to affect me any more, he murmured, "He's a man capable of anything right now, Mr. Jarvis, anything at all."

  And as he spoke, something rose up in my mind past all belief, released by those words, and I sat stock still as something clicked into place in my mind with a terrible finality. Right now he's capable of anything — it was true, and knowing what I'd done to Arnie, knowing that now he hated me, I was suddenly remembering the words the Warden had spoken when I'd entered this room. "He told me," the Warden had said, "that you moved up here from Los Angeles." It was such a little thing, utterly trivial, yet there was no possible escape from it. Nova didn't know where I'd come from. It was Arnie — an Arnie I knew at last was past all hope, who'd do anything, and would continue to do anything including murdering men who tried to recapture him. Arnie had phoned San Quentin about me early this morning, knowing I'd be certain to think it was Nova.

  I am certain I thought honestly in the silent moments that followed; I wasn't revenging myself. I'd turned loose a sick and dangerous man, and finally I understood it, and there was no longer a choice about what I could do. I was actually shaking my head as though to clear it as I got to my feet, and Ruth's arm slipped under mine as she stood up beside me. I felt the warm tears begin to slide down my face as I looked up at the patient waiting man before me. "All right, Warden," I whispered, "here's the address you'll find him at, if you hurry." And I was crying for my lost brother as he reached out for his phone.

  APPENDIX

  When Eyre & Spottiswoode published The House of Numbers in the U.K., dozens of editorial changes were made to the text, many of them involving the respellings of various words into their British forms, adding the word "god" in front of nearly every "damn" and an inordinate number of changes in punctuation, often blurring the phrasing of Finney's dialogue and adding an absurd number of commas. The most glaring difference, however, is the complete restructuring of the novel's first chapter, undoing the flashback motif and softening Ben's attitude towards Ruth. A number of phrases not present in the original text were also added here, thus raising the question of whether these alterations were made completely by an anonymous editor or were done by Finney himself at the editors' behest. Presented here, therefore, for completeness and comparison's sake is Chapter 1 of the UK edition of the book, published there under the title "House of Numbers" — Ed.

  Lying in the darkness, uncomfortable as always in a strange bed and room, I heard the snap of a light switch then the click of high heels, in the hall just outside the thin wood of my door. And in my mind I could see the sleek nylon legs that were making this sound only a few feet from my bed; the delicate fine-boned ankles that — gradually at first, then suddenly — swelled upward into rounded perfection. But an instant later, as a switch clicked in the front bedroom we'd decided would be hers, I tried to picture the girl's face as it looked when we'd introduced ourselves this morning, and I couldn't.

  I could see her hair; very heavy and long, nearly touching her shoulders, and the kind of yellow mixed with darker strands that only genuinely blonde hair ever has. But her face … Then suddenly I saw it again; the prominent cheek bones, the pale magnificent complexion, and the grey intelligent eyes that revealed Ruth Gehlmann's personality.

  The heels clicked towards me again, then stepped on to the tile of the bathroom floor near my door. I heard the medicine cabinet open, then the door closed, and I was intensely aware of all these sounds and of the girl, living under this roof with me now, who made them; and I tried to ignore them, and think of something else. But the door opened again, the steps sounded once more on the wooden hall floor, then stopped. There was a moment's complete silence, then I heard them approaching. A very light tapping sounded on my door, it opened quietly, and the girl's handsome figure stood sharply silhouetted against the hall light. "Asleep ?" she whispered.

  "No."

  She hesitated, then said. "Ben ? Do you ever… ? Are you at all — frightened ?"

  "Oh," I said slowly, "I don't know. Yeah, a little, I guess. Why? You frightened?"

  She nodded, standing there in the doorway, against the hall light. "Yes; some. Oh, Ben," she said suddenly, "yes, I am! I'm scared! Terribly! Tonight, after you left the living room, I sat there, the house so quiet, and it was as though I had my first chance all day to really think, and — Ben
, talk to me!" She moved quickly to my bed, and sat down on its edge facing me — "Tell me it'll be all right! Oh, Ben, I'm scared!"

  In the faint light from the hall I could see her face straining for control, I sat up, my mind searching for words, and she leaned forward suddenly, hands to her face, and dropped her forehead on my shoulder. Automatically, my arms rose and went around her, and as she huddled against me for comfort, I patted her back gently, and began to murmur. "Take it easy, relax; you've got a right to be scared. You've got a right to let down, and shed a few tears." My voice was a monotone, the sound of it more important than the words. "All in one day, you move out of your apartment, you move in here with a stranger, and the worst is still to come — why shouldn't it get to you ? But you'll be okay in the morning; things will look better; you'll be all right." I went on that way, and presently she wriggled her shoulders under my arm with a little shuddering sigh, and lay there against me, breathing quietly.

  For a moment longer I held her, sitting up there in bed, then I arched my chest to push her gently erect, and as she looked up, face puzzled, I put my hands on her shoulders, and leaning back, held her at arm's length. "Go to bed now," I said, and though I smiled to soften the effect, I hadn't quite kept the gruffness out of my voice. "Go ahead now," I said as she continued to stare at me, and I couldn't help it — there was an edge of irritation in my voice; and I knew I had to explain it. "Look," I said gently, "I know how you feel, and I want to help you, but — god damn it, Ruth," I burst out, "you're a beautiful woman! Not just pretty, and sort of attractive, but beautiful! And we're alone here, absolutely alone, living and sleeping under the same roof, and now here you are sitting-" I stopped suddenly, then said, "I'm sorry. I'm very sorry, but …"

  She was nodding, the light from the hall yellow in her hair, "Of course," she said quietly. "I just didn't think; it didn't enter my mind, at the moment. I was scared, I wanted comfort, but … well, of course." She stood up quickly from the bed, nervously brushing her skirt. "I'm sorry, Ben. And I'm all right now" — she managed to smile down at me.

  My name is Benjamin Harrison Jarvis. I'm twenty-six years old, a stocky man several inches under six feet weighing a hundred and seventy pounds; with black hair, blue eyes, and an ordinary average American face — and I'm no faster thinking than the next guy. But now for the first time in the strange and hectic past two days, I seemed to be thinking straight again; things seemed to be falling into place, or into focus, or something. "Get your coat," I said suddenly to the frightened girl standing beside my bed. "We're going to take a little ride."

  When I spoke, I was thinking of my car, but while I was getting dressed, I remembered the boat. The man whose house I'd rented the day before, an Army man transferred to Germany, owned a little rowboat and outboard — half the people in Marin County own boats - and the boat and outboard went with the place, and I decided to use them.

  It took us ten minutes, then, to drive south on 101 to Sausalito, the first town past the Golden Gate Bridge on the Marin County side. I parked at the north end of the town's single business street, shut down now for the night. Then I led Ruth across the narrow strip of weed-grown land which separates the street here from the Sausalito dock area. Nothing had really changed here through the years, so far as I could see; way off to the right, against the night sky, 1 could see the black silhouette of the. old ferry-slip, still there though it's been unused ever since Golden Gate Bridge opened.

  This area — dozens of floating docks projecting out into the Bay, each lined on both sides with pleasure boats of every size and kind — was a gay festive place on summer weekends. I'd been here often; my brother and I went to school in San Francisco. But now the whole area was dark, deserted, and almost utterly silent, the bare masts of the sailboats just visible against the dark sky, moving in shallow arcs on the never-still tidewater.

  On the wide wooden walkway alongside the docks, I found — in a long row of them — the little wooden storage locker, with the number painted on its door, which my key would unlock. Then I brought out oars, motor, and a half-filled gas can, and led Ruth out on to the nearest dock, and found the little rowboat — Albatross, it had painted on the prow.

  For the first ten minutes I rowed, very quietly, heading out into the Bay to the southeast, Ruth in the back seat facing me. A quarter-mile out, I attached the outboard, started it on the fourth try, then sat down beside Ruth, my hand on the tiller.

  It was a nice night, the water calm, and to the right across the black Bay lay San Francisco clear and sparkling, its lights shimmering with distance. Tiny but distinct, on the water's edge, we could see the sharp spire of the floodlighted old Ferry Building; and far above it, the lighted shape of Coit Tower. Beyond the shorelevel lights of the San Francisco waterfront, the patterned lighting of the city's hills sloped up from the shore, the criss-crossing of the streets pricked out and defined by their lamps.

  Sausalito, I saw, turning on the seat, lay well behind us now, diminished in size, the tiny lights of its homes scattered on the hillsides that enclosed it. Far ahead, extending out from San Francisco towards the Oakland side of the Bay, were the orange lights of the Bay Bridge; and we could see the buildings, floodlighted like billboards, of Alcatraz Island. Here and there on the black surface of the water lay the green and red lights of buoys, and we could hear their bells now and then. So far as I could see, we were the only moving craft on the visible surface of the Bay.

  It took half an hour to reach and pass through Raccoon Strait - the black silhouette of lightless Angel Island now close at hand to the right; the scattered lights of the villages of Belvedere and Tiburon on the mainland of Marin at the left. I'd known this whole area well as a boy, and it was almost good to be back.

  A sudden bark sounded, loud and raucous, immediately ahead, and Ruth jumped, clutching my arm in fright. "A seal," I said, smiling. "There are a fair number of them in the Bay; sea-lions, actually," and Ruth's grip on my arm relaxed.

  Out of the strait, Angel Island well behind us now, I moved the tiller, and the prow of the boat swung to the left in a wide gradual arc. Far ahead in the blackness before us lay a glow of pale orange light, and I straightened the tiller, holding the nose of the boat on that faint orange glow, and I felt Ruth's body go rigid. Glancing at her profile, I saw that her face muscles were set, and that her eyes were closed, but I said nothing, offering her not a word or gesture of comfort.

  The orange glow grew steadily in size, and presently, when we were a mile or so from it, it acquired form and definition; and Ruth blinked her eyes several times, then narrowed them and stared. Now we could see plainly what it was.

  It was a line of huge floodlights mounted on standards higher than telephone poles, and shining on an immense peach-coloured building which rose up out of the spade-shaped point of land we were approaching. Before it sat a smaller structure of the same material and colour. The motor growling quietly behind us, we moved closer still, over a period of five or six minutes, and now the great peach-coloured building less than half a mile away seemed very close; a long building with immensely tall windows; a strange sort of structure unlike any, I was certain, either of us had ever seen anywhere else.

  "There it is," I said, and shut off the motor, and we sat in the sudden silence, still moving through the black water with the dying momentum of the boat, staring at the great peach-tinted building ahead.

  High in the air before it, on the edge of the shore, stood a glass-windowed hut on immensely tall stilt-like legs; and off to the left, fading into the darkness beyond the floodlights, were more buildings, tinted a delicate shade of green. Staring at them now, and at the great peach-coloured building, Ruth murmured, "It's coloured; I can never get over that. It's not grey, but coloured; and in pastels."

  "That's right" — I nodded. "San Quentin, the pastel prison; it's almost pretty from here." I put a hand on her arm. "Look at it, Ruth; fill your eyes with it; you can actually see the bars on the windows now — notice?" She nodded. "And of
f to the left, way back" — I pointed; you could just make them out from here — "you can see the walls, and there are men on them with guns. Ruth, it's all real, and you're looking at it now, San Quentin prison; there's nothing more real in the world. Look at it, Ruth; we're actually talking about taking a man out of there! Actually helping Arnie escape from San Quentin! Take a good look, because that's the kind of place you'll end up in instead — you, Ruth, in the women's prison at Corona! — if anything at all goes wrong."

  I sat looking at her, waiting a moment; and even in the dim starlight I could see that her face was set and pale, but I didn't let up. My arm pointed again, and I said, "See that green light?" and she lifted her face to stare at the globe of vivid green light mounted high on a standard over the prison. "It's green now because all is quiet, every last man accounted for. Ruth, once that light turns red, if you helped do it, you're in the worst trouble of your life. And you may never be free of the consequences as long as you live." I waited, letting her look her fill of the stone-and-steel floodlighted reality before us. Then I said softly, "When I told you this morning what Arnie wanted us to do, you said yes, you'd help. But that doesn't count; it came at you too fast. You've had time to think now, though. Ruth, what about it?"

  After a moment she turned to stare at me wonderingly, then she turned back to look at the great prison ahead, and now she was shaking her head. "I can't," she whispered. "Ben, you're right; I can't do it!" and she covered her face with her hands. After a long moment she lowered her hands, and turned to me, eyes bitter. "Maybe I ought to," she said quietly. "I think I should, I think I ought to, but" — her shoulder moved helplessly — I can't, that's all; it's absurd. I don't want to be in prison any more than Arnie does!"

  '"Ought to?'" I said. "Why do you say that? Why should you help Arnie ?"