I See You

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Elyot neither laughed nor flinched. He said gravely, “I don’t think that can be it, do you?”

  The man moved uneasily. “I’ve got no idea,” he growled. “Army Intelligence? Airplane Inspection? Who knows?”

  Elyot mused aloud. “I doubt if I am being told to go to anything military. I was 4-F.”

  AID. The letters were dancing in his head. Associated. Amalgamated. Or American, Asian, African, Australian? I for International, Industrial, Incorporated. And D for Development, Division—

  Before he knew it, he was getting off at his regular stop and proceeding according to his normal routine into the office.

  Elyot shook off his fruitless dredging up of words. He could never guess. He must find out. He felt strangely at sea. In pure habit, he took off his jacket, rolled up his cuffs, climbed up on his stool.

  Ron Mercer said, “’Morning.” Bill Moran grunted welcome.

  “Good morning,” said Elyot. He stared at the tools of his trade. Now wait—he had promised. He could not just sit here and begin work as usual. He had to live by the motto.

  Elyot said, “Say, do either of you know what the letters A-I-D stand for?”

  “Why?” asked Mercer.

  “Because I’ve got to go there.”

  “Go where?”

  “Wherever it is,” said Elyot.

  “A-I-D. Hm …” Mercer rolled his eyes. “Amalgamated Institute …”

  “Go on.”

  Ron Mercer sent his reddish eyebrows up his forehead. “I don’t understand. Why?”

  “I’ve given my word,” said Elyot stiffly. “I’ve taken a vow.”

  “Oh, yes?” Mercer’s left eyelid fluttered a wink, meant for Moran. “You’ve got to go there, eh, Elyot? What are you supposed to do when you get there?”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Elyot.

  “Associated Institute of Dowsers, isn’t it?” said Mercer in pious innocence.

  “Of what?”

  “Dowsers, of course.”

  “What is that?”

  “Water-diviners.” Mercer brayed out a laugh. “Come on, what’s the big idea, Elyot? You took a what?”

  “Never mind,” said Elyot in a resigned voice.

  Moran, the third draughtsman, was the eldest. He had a pink face under a thatch of white hair. He said, “Seriously, Elyot, what is all this about?”

  Elyot was the perennial fool. He never learned. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Moran. “This is what I’ve got to do. What do you think it means?”

  Moran kept his face smooth. “Where did you get this?”

  “It’s my motto for the day.”

  Moran’s bright blue eyes snapped wide open. Elyot could feel himself cringing. “Never mind,” he stammered. “It’s just—something I’ve got to do. I’ve got to go there.”

  “For a bet?”

  Elyot did not know how to lie. “No,” he said, “not that.”

  Moran tilted his white head. “Well, of course, I have seen these three letters, many times.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, on the way downtown,” said Moran musingly. “You can’t miss ’em, actually. They’re on a big sign. A-I-D.”

  “You’re sure?” said Elyot in excitement.

  “That’s what the sign says.” Moran moved his hands, keeping his eyes on the drawing board.

  “Is it a church? I mean a cult? Something like that?”

  Moran’s lashes flickered. “Could be,” he murmured. “The sign’s on an office building, though.”

  Elyot slid one thigh off the stool. “Well, then, I’d better go.”

  “You mean it!” burst Mercer.

  “I told you … I swore I would,” said Elyot. He marveled that something so simple could not be understood. He marched to where he had hung his jacket.

  Moran stared at Mercer. Mercer’s brows were high. Moran winked. “I don’t know how long I’ll be,” said Elyot awkwardly.

  After he had gone, Mercer heaved a great sigh. “He is the end,” he announced. “What bee has he got in his bonnet today? Took a vow. Got to go.…”

  “Oh, who knows,” chuckled Tom Moran. “Want to know where I sent him?” Moran told.

  Mercer guffawed.

  Elyot got on a bus with the uneasy feeling that he did not know what he was doing. How new, how strange, to be adrift on mere obedience. This was not Elyot’s way. He continually sent his mind ahead of him, searching for ways and means toward self-improvement, toward the good and the right and the fruitful path. Now, he took steps in the dark.

  He kept peering ahead for the sign. Suddenly he saw it.

  He got off at the next stop. The building upon which the sign was affixed was modern, made of steel and glass. Elyot dashed into its lobby and inspected the board where the tenants were listed.

  ASSOCIATION OF INTERIOR DECORATORS—Ground Floor

  Elyot stiffened. So Moran had been having his little joke, as usual.

  But here stood Elyot, his routine broken, out of the office in the morning, a thing unheard of … and he was committed to obey. If he did not understand what it was that he obeyed, that could be part of his lesson. So Elyot stood, feeling the vague pain of being, for a reason unknown to him, always the butt of men’s jokes … and an enormous stubbornness overtook him. He was committed blindly, as he had said. Well, then, to go ahead in darkness and incomprehension was exactly what he had asked for. Elyot clenched his underslung jaw.

  He looked round him, marched to the door, pushed, and entered. A svelte young woman seated at a handsome modern desk said, “Yes? May I help you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Elyot. “I am looking for something. I don’t think this is the place.”

  “Are you a decorator, sir?” she asked politely.

  “No,” said Elyot. “No, no.” He took the piece of paper out of his pocket. “You see, I am sworn to do what it says to do on this piece of paper.”

  The girl’s lashes fluttered rapidly. She looked over her shoulder, as if she were glad to remember that there were other people in inner rooms, within her call.

  “It could mean a place,” said Elyot earnestly. “Or a concept …”

  “A what?” She kept watching his face while her hand dragged the fat telephone book up to the desk top. He stood there, feeling numb. She dared to look down. She riffled pages. “Association of Industrial Designers?”

  “No,” said Elyot miserably. “This should be something that I’ll have to do.”

  The girl opened her mouth to gasp, and instead made an exaggerated Oh-sound. She gave him a long look. “I guess this is it, then.” She wrote out an address for him.

  “Thank you,” said Elyot. He turned dejectedly. His face burned. He felt like an idiot.

  He hurried out of the building, pursued by shame. He had done this before, forgotten the obvious. Why hadn’t he looked in the telephone book in the first place? The truth was, he suspected—as he had vaguely suspected before—Elyot was not adjusted to this world. Any other civilized man would have looked in the telephone book.

  A bus was stopping at the corner, and he ran for it.

  He got off the bus in a mindless daze, found the building, went in. A woman dressed in white said alertly, “Yes, sir?”

  “My name is Elyot. I have come.” He stood still. He hadn’t the slightest idea what would happen next. He wondered whether he was about to be absolved of his vow, having fulfilled it. He waited for the next move.

  “Well, we’re pleased to see you, Mr. Elyot,” the woman said. “Sit down, will you?”

  Is it really so simple? Elyot wondered.

  She had pulled out a printed form briskly, and she began to fire questions at him and to fill in his answers.

  “Your full name, sir? Address? Age? Blood-type?”

  Elyot gave what answers he could, almost dreamily. Nothing made sense, and he had given up expecting sense.

  Then he was sitting in a chair in another room and a man was bei
ng hearty and brisk and Elyot didn’t know what he was talking about. Then, Elyot was lying on a hard bed and the man was doing things to his arm. Then Elyot was lying there in a state of terror, watching his blood being drawn away.

  Another white-clad woman bent over him, professionally cheerful and encouraging.

  Elyot said, “Where is this place? Where am I?”

  “We call ourselves Aid.”

  “What does that mean?” Elyot could barely whisper.

  “It means giving blood,” she said soothingly. “That’s all.”

  “I don’t … understand.”

  “Well, you are giving aid,” the nurse said. “By giving your blood you may save a life, you know.”

  Elyot did not want to save a life. Elyot, terrified almost out of his wits, praying only for the ordeal to be over, now dimly perceived that his had been a bloodless life. To give his blood … he would have thought this to be the last thing he had to give.

  The whole experiment was a joke, he thought bitterly, a cruel hoax. Somebody had managed to interfere with it. This made no sense. He should have known. He was always the butt … Tears came into his eyes. He was tied here, losing blood, and he was not understood. And couldn’t understand why not. The nurse was saying, “There now, soon over. It’s a fine thing you are doing.” But Elyot wept like a lonely child.

  Afterwards, he felt very ill. The nurse petted him, the doctor thanked him. They brought him hot coffee. They fussed over him.

  When he recovered enough strength, at last, to make his way to the street and into a taxi, he lay back weakly in the seat and was conveyed to the office. He staggered in. The girl at the switchboard said there had been a phone call for him. He must phone a Kevin MacCleery. So Elyot phoned Kevin.

  In his strange condition of physical weakness and an awareness of the physical that was upsetting, in fact devastating, he did not note the brisk volubility that was coming over the line from the landlady’s blind and normally silent son. He received Kevin’s invitation to a party apathetically. “Fine,” he said.

  Well, he thought, hanging up, very simple. Perfectly clear. No one had been deliberately cruel. There had been no mischief. Blood and emotion were not involved. A simple accident—easy to understand. Logical, even. His little experiment had never really begun.

  I am an idiot, said Elyot to himself. Any normally intelligent man would have guessed that those ridiculous words were no motto, no instruction, must be an error. He should never have taken them seriously. He should have seen, at once, that something had gone wrong. But Elyot, somehow, never did. He approached life seriously, literally, innocently. And the world, the whole world, complex and mysterious—wherein the dark blood moved—laughed to see.

  “Don’t you feel well, Mr. Elyot?” asked the receptionist.

  “I’ll be all right,” said Elyot feebly. “I’ve just given some blood, that’s all.”

  She seemed inclined to fuss over him but he left her. He didn’t call the girls. This slipped out of his mind. He went into the men’s room, where he dashed cold water upon his face.

  He came back into the office where his co-workers were perched on their high stools, and climbed upon his own.

  Mercer said to him, “Are you feeling all right, Elyot?”

  “All right,” said Elyot morosely.

  “Gave blood, eh?” said Moran. “Makes you feel dizzy? Listen, I’m sorry about the interior decorators. I was just joking. I’d like to apologize if I sent you out of your way.”

  “All right,” said Elyot dully.

  “Is it much of a thing to give blood?” asked Mercer nervously. “I always mean to, but never get round to it.”

  “It’s all right,” said Elyot, stuck in the rut of one meaningless word.

  Moran said, “Care for a cigarette, Elyot?”

  “No, thanks.” Elyot took up his tools. He began to put down one fine careful line.

  As his shocked psyche began to relax he thought to himself, Wait a minute. I was wrong, just now. I shouldn’t have declined that cigarette. Elyot seemed to know, as he had not heretofore known, that men use symbols. For Moran to offer him a cigarette was not to be taken literally. To have accepted would have meant to forgive. Elyot blinked and swallowed. He began to perceive a difference in the atmosphere.

  All his life Elyot had stubbornly ignored atmosphere. He had pursued his own way against hostility, against derision, against everything of the blood, never understanding why he had to push so. But in this moment, neither Moran nor Mercer was hostile. They were feeling sheepish, instead. They were respectful. They wanted to be forgiven. For some reason Elyot had become something of a hero.

  But Elyot was moral. He would not receive this respect dishonestly. So he raised his head and looked at Moran and then at Mercer with his clear, bright, innocent eyes. “I was scared stiff,” he said. “Weak, all my life. Suppose I don’t have a lot of blood? It nearly finished me.”

  Mercer, fleshy and sanguine, turned redder. Elyot sensed his shame. But Moran said gruffly, “You did all right, Elyot.”

  Elyot now perceived that to have confessed fear was only enhancing his bravery in their eyes. It was reproaching them too. He had not meant to reproach them. For the first time Elyot sensed kindliness, going both ways. Elyot knew, now, that these men were sometimes afraid. He knew now they made fun of the big rules because they could feel shame. Their jokes and their scorns were only padding between them and the great and terrible issues that they knew about as well as he. For the first time in his life Elyot understood what the joke was.

  Elyot let out a rusty laugh. “Do you want to hear something ridiculous?” he asked. “The whole thing was a mistake and the laugh was certainly on me!”

  Sonia Jones thought of herself as a terrible softie. She hated to see anyone made uncomfortable. She often said whatever, at the moment, would make that person feel better. For herself, she normally took the path of the least possible resistance.

  Now, finding herself on her way to work with this penny in her pocket, she grimaced. She had never actively wished to join in this silly experiment of Elyot’s. But when Elyot had hurt Kevin MacCleery, and then Helen had hurt him even worse with her stupid cooing, Sonia had only wanted to bury it quickly, and bring the talk back to a strain that Kevin could endure. It hadn’t meant anything else to her at the time. Now it seemed that she was going through with this nonsense.

  She was reluctant to unwrap the paper and read what was on it. She supposed she would have to make some effort; at least she would have to produce something to tell in the evening that would please Elyot. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course. But Elyot took it so seriously and so did Helen.

  She thought now that this experiment could be troublesome and unpleasant if you took it too hard. She sighed and unwrapped her slogan and read it.

  But it made no sense at all! Sonia found herself, to her astonishment, very angry. On the paper was typed three words, “for all good.” That was no motto. Nothing there could be lived by. It meant nothing! Or if it did—how had it happened to come to her? Why was she so furious?

  She was struck—she was deeply hit somewhere. Who was taking a swipe at Sonia Jones in this underhand way? Which of them had fixed it so that she got this particular combination of words to live by? Who thought Sonia Jones was not already “for all good?”

  When she was! As a matter of fact, she behaved very well—certainly too well for her own advantage. Was she not always kind, tolerant, softhearted? Did she not always avoid trouble and conflict with everybody she met?

  What did they think she was? A villain? Somebody evil? “For all good.” What did it mean, if anything? Sonia found that she could not imagine either Elyot or Helen putting down such a thing as a motto. It wasn’t like either of them. It wasn’t precise enough. It wasn’t even a sentence. It was nothing … unless it was meant to be an insult.

  But it simply did not apply! She’d pay no attention to it, whatsoever. She crushed the bit of paper down d
eep into her coat pocket and her hand came away from it as if her fingers had touched fire.

  The bus was waddling through the morning traffic, along a street that was no longer residential and not yet business, but a depressing mixture of both. What was old was shabby. What was new was jerry-built. Sonia, gazing out, realized that she was angry because she was afraid. “Oh, come on, now,” she said to herself. And then she saw a sign.

  There was a church on the corner. It was small and old. Beside its steps there was a notice board, and on the board in white letters there was the sign: God Is All Good.

  The bus ambled by. Sonia’s heart was in an uproar of alarm. She was afraid because she had taken her oath and she must not break it, but to keep it was going to be difficult and upsetting and she did not want to do it … But she must! Sonia got up; at the next stop she got off the bus.

  She stood in this strange street with her coat flapping open and the bit of paper burning in her pocket. “Twelve hours. Half a day,” she said to herself, and she began to walk back toward the church. She did not know what she was going to do. But the paper said “for all good” and the sign had told her, “God Is All Good.” So Sonia Jones, on Monday morning, was plainly committed to do something for God!

  She crossed to the corner where the church stood. Perhaps it was locked up and nobody there. Then she would give herself full marks for trying and go on her way. No, she could not! If her duty wasn’t here, she would have to look elsewhere for it. In a state of panic, Sonia went up the church steps and put her hand upon the door. It wasn’t locked. It opened.

  Inside, the light was dim. Once upon a time this church had been given the beauty and dignity of stained glass. But the sanctuary had a musty smell and it was cold.

  A man’s voice said, “Won’t you sit down, please? You are welcome.”

  He had been sitting there, she now perceived. He was a young man with dark hair, a lock, of which fell across his forehead. He said, “I am Donald Biggin, the minister. Can I help you?”

  She said, “I am not a member of this church. I came in because—I had to. What is there that I can do?”