Something Happened

by Джозеф Хеллер

  "You'll think I'm crazy."

  "Maybe you are."

  "Then I won't tell you."

  "I know you aren't."

  "Do I have to?"

  "Yes. No. You want to. I can see you do. So you have to. Come on."

  "I wanted to give him something," he explains very softly. "And that was all I had."

  "Why did you want to give him something?"

  "I don't know."

  He tells me this so plainly, truthfully, innocently as to make it seem the most plausible and obvious reason imaginable. And I do understand. His frankness is touching, and I feel like reaching out to embrace him right there on the spot and rewarding him with dollar bills. I want to kiss him (but I think he will be embarrassed if I do, because we are out in public). I want to tousle his hair lightly. (I do.) Tenderly, I say to him:

  "That's still no answer."

  "How come?" he inquires with interest.

  "It doesn't tell why."

  "It's why."

  "It doesn't tell why you wanted to give him something. Why did you want to give him something?"

  "I think I know. You sure keep after me, don't you?"

  "Why did you want to give him something?"

  "Do I have to tell?"

  "No. Not if you don't want to."

  "I was happy," he states with a shrug, squinting uncomfortably in the sunlight, looking a little pained and self-conscious.

  "Yeah?"

  "And whenever I feel happy," he continues, "I like to give something away. Is that all right?"

  "Sure." (I feel again that I want to kiss him.)

  "It's okay?" He can hardly trust his good fortune.

  "And I'm glad you were happy. Why were you happy?"

  "Now it gets a little crazy."

  "Go ahead. You're not crazy."

  "Because I knew I was going to give it away." He pauses a moment to giggle nervously. "To tease you," he admits. "Then when I knew I was happy about that, I wanted to give the nickel away because I was happy about wanting to give the nickel away. Is it okay?"

  "You're making me laugh."

  "You're not mad?"

  "Can't you see that you're making me laugh? How can I be mad?"

  "Then I'll tell you something else," he squeals with ebullient gaiety. "Sometimes I feel like laughing for no reason at all. Then I feel like laughing just because I know I feel like laughing. You're smiling!" he cries suddenly, pointing a finger at my face, and begins shrieking with laughter. "Why are you smiling?"

  "Because you're funny!" I shout back at him. "It's funny, that's why. You're funny, that's why."

  "Are you gonna tell Mommy I gave money away?"

  "Are you? You can't tell her either if I don't. Otherwise I'll get in trouble."

  "You can tell her," he decides.

  "Then you can tell her too."

  "Was it all right?"

  "Sure," I comfort him. "It was all right. In fact, it was better than all right. It was very nice. And I'm glad you talked to me. You don't always talk to me." I rest the palm of my hand lightly on the back of his head as we start walking again and head toward the boardwalk. My hand feels unnatural there, as though I am stretching a small elbow and arm muscle into an unaccustomed position. I move my hand to his shoulder; I feel a strain there too. (I am not used to holding my boy, I realize. I am not used to holding my daughter either.) "But suppose — " I want to prepare him and shield him against everything injurious in the world, and I cannot stop myself.

  He pulls away from me with an impatient lurch of his shoulders, frowning. "Daddy, I knew you were going to say that!"

  "And I knew you were going to say that," I laugh in reply, but my heartiness is false. "What else am I going to say?"

  "I want it for myself later or tomorrow? Then I'll get it back from him. But suppose —»

  "Yeah?"

  "— he doesn't have it or won't give it to you?"

  "He won't."

  "Then I'll get another nickel. From who?"

  "I won't give it to you."

  "From you. I won't give it to you."

  "I won't. I warn you."

  "You will," he replies to me directly, ending his imitation of us. "You always say that. You always say you won't. And then you always do. So why do you say that? Won't you?"

  "Yes," I concede in a long syllable of total surrender, succumbing pleasurably to his childlike charm and intelligence. "I'll give it to you. I'll even give it to you now before you want it."

  So what, his sage and ironic expression seems to say to me, am I making such a bogus fuss about? "I knew you would," he summarizes in triumph. He walks beside me with a lighter, more contented step.

  "I always will, I want you to know. Do you?" I watch him nod; I see his brow tightening a bit with recollection and perplexity. "We're pretty good pals now, ain't we?" I ask. "You and me?"

  "I used to be afraid of you."

  "I hope you're not, now."

  "Not as much."

  "You don't have to be. I won't ever hurt you. And I'll always give you everything you need. Don't you know that? I just yell a lot."

  After a moment more of deep reflection, he allows himself to bump against me softly with his shoulder as I often see him do with other boys I know he likes. (It is the friendliest answer he could have given me.) I bump him back the same way in response. He smiles to himself.

  "Daddy, I love you!" he exclaims with excitement, and throws his face against my hip to kiss me and hug me. "I hope you never die."

  (I hope so too.) I crook my arm around his shoulders and hug him in return. Very swiftly, before he can be embarrassed by it and stop me, I kiss the top of his head, brush my lips against his silken, light-brown hair. (I steal a kiss.) I love him too and hope that he never dies.

  I have the recurring fear that he will die before I do. I cannot let that happen. He is too dear to me. I know him now, and I know he is a much more valuable person to me than the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Defense, the Majority Leader and the Minority Whip. He is more important to me than the President of the United States of America. (I think more of my boy's life than I do of his.) I Pledge my Allegiance to him. (I never mention this heresy to anyone, of course.) I will never permit them to harm him.

  But what would I do to protect him? I think I know what I would do. Nothing.

  "Don't worry," I have promised him in earnest. "I will never let anything bad happen to you."

  He is afraid of the government, the army, the Pentagon, the police. (And so am I.)

  "I won't ever let them hurt you or take you away."

  And what is there, really, that I can do? Except nothing.

  So I do nothing.

  I can connive (that gives me time), as I connive now in my job at the company (connive to survive, keep alive till five), but that's about all. And time may soon run out.

  Who am I? I think I'm beginning to find out. I am a stick: I am a broken waterlogged branch floating with my own crowd in this one nation of ours, indivisible (unfortunately), under God, with liberty and justice for all who are speedy enough to seize them first and hog them away from the rest. Some melting pot. If all of us in this vast, fabulous land of ours could come together and take time to exchange a few words with our neighbors and fellow countrymen, those words would be Bastard! Wop! Nigger! Whitey! Kike! Spic! I don't like people who run things. I don't like Horace White, who is hard to take seriously (and yet I must).

  "If you ever write a book," he has said to me, and meant it, because such things are important to him, "I would like you to put my name in it."

  Horace White is a pale, insipid man of many small distinctions. He likes to see his name in the newspapers. He is an honorary deputy something or other of the City of New York (even though his legal residence is in Connecticut) and has an undistinguished bronze shield proclaiming that distinction affixed to the bumper of his automobile. The letters on the license plate of his automobile form his complete monogram (HOW); the nu
merals advance each year to give his age. (We think he lies about his age.) No one has ever been able to describe specifically what he does here in the company, except to be who he is, to have money, own stock, and be related in two collateral ways to one or more of the founders and directors. And I must toady to him. And I do.

  If I were poor, I believe I might want to overthrow the government by force. I'm very glad, however, that everyone poor isn't trying to overthrow the government, because I'm not poor. I don't know why every Negro maid doesn't steal from her white employer (but I'm glad our Negro maid doesn't, or at least has not let us find out she does). If I were Black and poor, I don't think I'd have any reason for obeying any law other than the risk of being caught. As it is, though, I'm glad colored people do obey the law (most of them, anyway), because I am afraid of Negroes and have moved away from them. I am afraid of cops. But I'm glad there are cops and wish there were more.

  (I don't like cops.)

  (Except when they're around to protect me.)

  I do not talk about any of this even to my wife, who, as she grows more lonely, old, and disappointed, is turning, like her sister, into a sour conservative who is opposed to happiness. (She is going to vote reactionary this year. I won't talk politics with her. I don't care how she votes.) I keep my own counsel and drift speechlessly with my crowd. I float.

  I float like algae in a colony of green scum, while my wife and I grow old, my daughter grows older and more dissatisfied with herself and with me (I see other girls her age who seem perfectly fine. Some are prettier. Others act more sure of themselves. At least they are doing some of the things she says she'd like to do, including getting laid, but never even tries. And get better grades. What do I care what grades she gets? I do. And I have to pretend I care very much, otherwise she will feel I am not interested in her at all), and my little boy grows up tortured and puzzled, uncertain who, beside himself, he is supposed to be (or who, if he thinks like I do, himself even is. Go find him. Go find me. Lost somewhere deep inside his small self already is the smaller boy he used to be, the original article. Or is there? If that is not so, if there is no vanished and irretrievable little me and him so starkly different from what each of us since has been forced to become, if there is no wandering, desolate lost little being I yearn for and started from so far back in my history who took a sudden, inevitable lurch into some inaccessible black recess at a moment when I must have been staring the other way, for I am unable to pinpoint the moment, and left me disoriented all by myself to continue willy-nilly on my own — then how the fuck did I ever get here? Somebody pushed me. Somebody must have set me off in this direction, and clusters of other hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world. He has never been found. Lost: one child, age unknown, goes by the name of me. And I can't keep looking back for sight of him to ask him hopefully where did you go and what did you mean. He would be too young still even to know what I was talking about — he was just a kid when he left me, he is younger than my own child — let alone succor me with the wise, experienced knowledge I need from him. What will I talk about to so many of those lined, ruddy faces with bloodshot, puffy eyes if Green does permit me to make my three-minute speech in Puerto Rico this year? I'll need jokes, quick jokes — ha, ha, ha — a few at the beginning and a very good one at the end, ha, ha, and all in only three minutes. We might just as well float like algae in colonies of green scum for as long as the tides will continue to carry us, and when they no longer support us, then what?) or which of the many dangers he pictures are real and which are merely hideous and fantastic daydreams. (Drowning is real. Being plucked from bed by a hook from an opening in the sky while lying helplessly asleep is not.) They are more than merely daydreams; they flood his consciousness at night in the darkness when we think he is asleep. Leaving a night light on makes no difference. It is impossible for us ever to know with certainty whether he is asleep or awake. If we peek in on him to check, he will often pretend to be asleep in order to avoid having us criticize him for being awake. I feel, without any real cause for believing so, that he always hears my wife and me make love or at least knows when we have done so. My daughter, at least, makes sure we hear her when she is up. She runs water or plays records or barges in on us without knocking to settle something once and for all. Not him. He is stealthy. I used to want to rumple my daughter's hair too, pat her head affectionately or touch or kiss her cheek or throw a hugging arm around her shoulders, but she began to shrink away from me as she grew up, kidding at first, I thought, and I would always pretend to be hurt. And then those times came when I began to comprehend that she was no longer kidding, and I no longer had to pretend I was really hurt. I really was hurt — and now I pretend I am not. Something took place, I felt, that made me awful to her, incited her disapproval and inspired her to overlook no opportunity to show it. There were times I felt she was after me in revenge. I don't know what it was I did or didn't do, and I still don't know what to do about it or even if there's anything I ought to try. Soon she'll be away at college.

  I feel awkward when I have to touch her. She recoils from me, as though the tiniest physical contact with me would disgust her, or flinches, as though I were going to inflict pain. I never hit her! The most I have ever done, the most I ever do now, is shove her roughly in the shoulder when I have to. The most my wife ever does is start to slap her face when they're fighting, but makes her motion slowly enough to enable my daughter to block or avoid the blow; my daughter can inflame my wife to such anger almost at will and then reduce her to hysterical, muddled weeping. I am always stricken with bewilderment for a moment by my daughter's unexpected flashes of alarm. I am always contrite and flooded with such immense guilt and shame because my daughter thinks instinctively that I intend to hit her — or reacts as though she does. Is she waiting tensely, has she been waiting tensely all these years, for some tremendous blow from us? Does she honestly believe, when I flick my hand out to brush a loose eyelash from her cheek or a crumb of food, that I intend to hit her in the face? Or is she, as I frequently surmise now (perhaps irrationally), merely pretending, consciously and diabolically simulating such terror because she understands how keenly it shocks and saddens me? She is cunning enough for all of that, I think. It runs in the family: she gets it from me: don't I sometimes let my wife suffer through her strangling, moaning nightmares now by making no effort to rouse her from them? And glory in my advantageous position as I watch and listen? Don't I often exaggerate the agony of my own horrible dreams and feign to be more deeply entrapped in them than I am in order to make her labor longer, harder, and more compassionately to wake me from them? I do not understand my daughter any longer and I cannot cope with her successfully or make it possible for her to cope with me. So I try not to try. I wait, and hope for things to run their course. I do not understand my son, either. He is too young to be so magnanimous. He gave cookies away also. That was also the summer he tried to give cookies away to another kid and almost got a punch in the nose in return.

  "Here, you can have a cookie," he said to the little boy who had dropped in to the summer house we had rented to play with him while we were all still having breakfast.

  The boy gulped it down in a twinkling. Then the boy gazed hungrily at the remaining round chocolate cookie, which my boy was rolling about contemplatively on the tablecloth as he dawdled over his glass of milk. With a flicker of surprised recognition, my boy took note of the hungering stare.

  "You can have this one too," he offers. "Here."

  The boy stiffens as though offended and pulls back with a look of hostility. Suddenly, to my own amazement, he is enraged and befuddled and shakes his head in vigorous resentment.

  "What do you mean?" he demands.

  "Why? Don't you want it?" My boy pushes it part way across the table to him.

  "You had it in your mouth."

  "No, I didn't."

  "It fell on the floor."

  "No
." My boy is taken aback and sounds defensive and apologetic. (He looks like he's lying.)

  "It's dirty," the other boy accuses.

  "It isn't. I'm not lying. You don't have to take it."

  "Why don't you want it?"

  "Because you want it. Don't you? I had some."

  The other boy is furious, too flustered anymore to trust himself to speak, and his face turns fiery as he sits there in hatred and continues shaking his head adamantly. My boy whitens. The fists of the other boy are clenched and raised, and he is ready to fight; but I am there, sitting forbiddingly (ready to fight too, I feel. If he tries to hit my boy, I believe I will take his arm and break it). He sputters in tongue-tied, gagging wrath, shoves the second cookie roughly back across the table so it falls over the edge, and gallops out of our house, his mouth writhing and his downcast eyes almost spilling over with steaming tears of bellicose frustration. He feels, somehow, that he has been made a fool of. My little boy is blank with consternation; his face is like a crossword puzzle; he cannot understand what he has just done, simply by offering cookies, to cost him a friend and make for himself a young, new enemy who wishes to injure him. He looks about wanly in pleading confusion and tries to smile.

  "You can't give things away, not so generously," I explain for him, with a weak, sympathizing smile.

  "Why?" he asks.

  I shrug. "I don't know. People get suspicious."

  "I don't like bugs," he complains. "I don't like it here. Do we have to spend the whole summer?"

  "We do. I don't like it here either."

  "You go to the city."

  "I have to. I'm glad we didn't send you away to camp. I'm glad you're here when I come out."

  "I'm not."

  That was also the summer in which my boy was having a difficult time of it (my boy has always been having a difficult tune of it, it seems, and my wife and I are finding it more and more fatiguing) in the play group in which we enrolled him to insure that he would have fun and much to do with other kids during the day. At the beginning, he was very happy there and eager to go. He was astonished and overjoyed to find himself among so many other boys his own age whom he considered his friends. Boisterously and proudly, he would point them out to us when he came upon them on the boardwalk at night or at the beach or in different parts of town.