The Dark on the Other Side

by Barbara Michaels

  Randolph? Michael dismissed that hypothesis not because of Randolph ’s charm and talent but because of a fact that stood as solidly as Mount Everest. Randolph was genuinely, desperately, in love with his wife. Although Michael had interviewed a lot of people, he couldn’t always tell the truth from the assumed; but in this case he would have staked his reputation on the genuineness of Randolph ’s feelings.

  All of which led straight back to the most obvious source of evil. Linda herself.

  Now, there, surely, he was out of his depth and could candidly admit the fact. God damn it, he wasn’t a psychiatrist. Nobody but a professional had the right to speculate about a mental condition as severe as Linda’s. He couldn’t even consult a professional. It would be an unforgivable violation of friendship.

  But the idea remained, dangling like a shiny toy in the forefront of his mind, and for a few minutes he played with it. Often in his biographical research he had talked to Galen Rosenberg about the personalities of his subjects. Rosenberg had been one of his father’s best friends, and Michael would have appreciated his pithy comments even if he had not been one of the top psychiatrists in the east. His humility and his sardonic sense of humor were as great as his all-embracing tolerance. It was a pity Gordon couldn’t convince his wife to see Galen. If anyone could help her…

  Michael shook his head. He was busy-bodying again, and if he had learned anything in the course of his thirty-three years, it was the futility of trying to force help on people who didn’t want it. No, he couldn’t discuss the case with Galen, not even under pseudonyms. His problem was not Linda’s neuroses, it was a question of his own professional competence. Could he do a decent job with Randolph ’s life without mentioning the fact that Randolph ’s wife had tried to kill him? Another of those simple questions that weren’t simple at all.

  The answer, like the question, could be phrased with paradoxical simplicity. Michael realized, with a slight shock, that the answer was not the one he had hoped to get. He was a professional, and a good one; on that theme he had no false modesty whatever. Already sentences were framing themselves in his mind, possible lines of investigation were taking shape; the subject fascinated him as a problem, all personal ties aside. Oh, sure, there would be sticky moments, places were he would have to walk carefully, but they were only part of the challenge of the job. He could do it, all right. And he wanted to do it. And he didn’t want to do it.

  Michael bounded to his feet with a snarl, knocking two issues of Mad, an American Historical Review, and approximately two weeks of the New York Times off the coffee table, and evoking an answering growl from Napoleon, who was crouched on the rug by the front door. It was his favorite place. What he was waiting for, Michael never knew, though he wasted a lot of time speculating. Other cats? Not people. Napoleon hated people, all people, and departed via the window whenever a visitor approached.

  “Why the hell I don’t get a nice friendly dog, I don’t know,” Michael said aloud. “I could talk to it and get an answer now and then. I can’t even kick you to relieve my spleen. You’d wait till I was asleep and then come in and tear my throat out. Who do you think you are, squatting there by the door? A watchdog? A lion? A vulture? God damn it, I hope that old saw about animals reflecting the personalities of their owners isn’t true. You make me look like some kind of nut.”

  Having thus relieved his spleen, he stalked toward the bedroom, shedding coat, tie, and shirt as he went. Napoleon settled back on his haunches muttering to himself. The eerie sound followed Michael all the way into the bedroom, and he kicked the dresser in passing. Why couldn’t the cat purr like an ordinary feline? This sound wasn’t quite a growl, but it certainly wasn’t a purr; Napoleon never expressed approval in that traditional fashion. He never expressed approval at all. He just sat around muttering to himself. A helluva pet for a poor miserable bachelor…

  No pets. No animals at all, on the whole expansive twenty acres of Randolph ’s estate. Surely that was not coincidental. You’d expect a man like Randolph to ride and hunt, to keep dogs.

  Michael turned out the light and pulled the crumpled sheet up to his chin. He liked to consider himself above such considerations as physical comfort, but his uncooperative body remembered the smoothness of the sheets at the Randolph house, and the yielding yet firm surface of the mattress. Surely this mattress had grown another lump since the last time he slept on it. He wriggled, trying to find a smooth spot. No use. The damned mattress grew tumors, like protoplasm…

  There was no clue to Randolph ’s personality in the absence of animals; that was a pretty corny old cliché. A lot of nice people didn’t like dogs. There were such things as allergies, too. And…of course. Linda Randolph’s neurosis had to do with animals. Randolph couldn’t have a dog on the place when the sight of an imaginary one sent his wife into fits. So much for the subtle analytical biographer’s insight.

  Michael gave up his search for comfort and lay staring up at the ceiling, hands clasped under his head. The dirty yellow light from the street filtered in through panes grimy with city dirt, past the cracks in the wooden slats of the ancient blind. Sounds filtered in, too-the soft drizzle of the rain and the hooting, honking blare of traffic. Even at this late hour there were cars on the city streets. Soon the trucks would begin their nightly deliveries, but he wouldn’t hear them; his ears had become inured to the grind of brakes and the vibration that was gradually eroding the fabric of buildings and pavements. He was used to the sounds and the grime and the press of human beings. They were part of his habits; without them he probably couldn’t work. Yearning for apple blossoms and fresh country air and crocuses (crocuses?) pushing their tender green tips through the damp brown earth-sentimental nonsense, that was what it was. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

  Soothed and comforted by the familiar cacophony and the friendly dirt, he was drifting off to sleep when he remembered something else. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time to Randolph ’s remark; he had been tired and confused, and the remark hadn’t made any sense anyhow. Now he remembered it, and the utter illogic of it brought him out of his doze, wide awake and staring.

  “If she should come to you,” Randolph had said, “try to get her to see a doctor. Maybe you can do it.”

  Had Gordon Randolph really said that? Of all the weird, crazy things to say…And he had simply nodded and muttered, “Sure, of course; be glad to.”

  Michael groaned aloud. What had he got himself into this time? What kind of tacit admission could be read into that acquiescing mumble of his? He was always doing things like that, agreeing to propositions without listening to them, letting his mind wander off into byways and returning to a conversation to find that he had committed himself to ideas he violently opposed or plans that he had no intention of carrying out. But this was his worst fiasco yet. Did Randolph really think…?

  Of course there had been those two episodes. When a man walks into a room and finds his wife in another man’s arms, he may be excused for thinking there is something between them. Was Linda Randolph a nymphomaniac as well as an alcoholic?

  Michael groaned again, so heartily that it provoked a loud response from Napoleon, out by the front door; but at the same moment he denied the thought. He had spotted Linda as a heavy drinker the first time he saw her. The symptoms of the other were just as obvious, and she wasn’t…No, indeed, she wasn’t. His face burned, in the darkness, as he remembered the strength with which she had held him off.

  So, all right, he told his wounded male ego-so you made a mistake. You got carried away. Perfectly natural. But the girl really was sick, she had passed out cold.

  “If she should come to you…”

  Damn it, why didn’t he listen to what people said? He should have rejected the preposterous suggestion. He shouldn’t have seemed to accept any such possibility.

  Then the most disturbing thought of all forced its way into his reluctant mind. Had he failed to deny the proposition because, in reality
, it had not seemed so incredible? Did he, unconsciously, want Randolph ’s wife to seek him out-for help, for anything? He pushed the idea away, outraged; but it came back. If a desire was really unconscious, he wouldn’t know it himself. If he really wanted…

  “Oh, damn it,” Michael said helplessly. There was only one thing to do with an idea like that one. He turned over and went to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  I

  THE FANTASIES AND SELF-DOUBTS OF THE NIGHT were easy to dismiss in the cold light of dawn-which was not only cold, but gray, rainy, and sooty. But it was several days before Michael could make himself stop listening for footsteps coming toward his door.

  He threw himself into work as a cure for mental degeneration, and found that after a while he didn’t have to force himself; the hunt was up, and as usual it gradually gripped him. Even the inevitable frustrations were minor challenges, to be overcome.

  One such challenge was Randolph ’s book. Michael could have sworn he owned a copy of The Smoke of Her Burning; it took two hours of disorganized search before she would admit that he no longer owned it. He kept meaning to get his books arranged in some kind of order, but they wouldn’t let themselves be arranged; every time he started the project, he ended up with piles all over the floor and himself sitting cross-legged in the middle of the debris, deep in some fascinating volume he had forgotten he owned. The bookshelves were as motley as the volumes they housed; he had always meant to have some bookcases built in…

  What had he done with Randolph ’s book? Damn it, he had to read Randolph ’s book, that was the least a biographer could do. Standing in the middle of the floor, like a pillar in the midst of a forum paved with literature, Michael scratched his chin. He must have given it to someone. Why hadn’t he read it himself? That was not unusual, though; he was a compulsive book buyer, and his collection included a deplorably large group that he had never had time to read. He would just have to buy another copy of The Smoke of Her Burning.

  But it wasn’t that easy. The book was out of print. After all, as the third bookdealer pointed out waspishly, the printing presses of America poured out thousands of new books every year. You couldn’t expect them to keep every old title in stock. Oh, sure, The Smoke of Her Burning had been an important book. But you couldn’t expect…

  So Michael tried the secondhand bookstores and encountered another snare; he could waste days in such places. He finally found the book, but not until he had loaded himself with old masterpieces he hadn’t been looking for and probably wouldn’t read-including, for reasons he refused to consider, a worn copy of somebody’s History of Witchcraft. By the time he got home, he had transferred his annoyance to Gordon’s book, and no longer wanted to read it.

  There were plenty of other things to be done. He spent two afternoons in the newspaper morgues reading about the public exploits of Gordon Randolph. It was an unexpectedly depressing activity. Some of the yellowed, crumbling clippings were over twenty years old; the face of a young Gordon Randolph mummified by antique newsprint made any attempt at immortality seem futile.

  The clippings came from sports pages, literary columns, and the general-news sections, but there was one significant omission. Randolph ’s name did not appear in the gossip columns. Rarely, there might be a mention of his presence at some charity affair or concert, but he never escorted a lady who was not impeccable in reputation and social status. Either Randolph ’s private life was arranged with a circumspection that verged on Top Secret, or he was abnormally well behaved. Not a wild oat in the whole field.

  His marriage had rated a long column, and the lady reporter gave it the Cinderella approach-Professor Weds Student, Millionaire Marries Policeman’s Daughter. They had been married at the college chapel. There was a picture of Linda Randolph in her wedding dress, and Michael found it more depressing, for different reasons, than Gordon’s photographs. Poor as the print was, it conveyed something of that quality Randolph had vainly tried to describe. It conveyed something else-happiness. She glowed with it, even through cheap paper and smeary ink. From that, Michael thought, to what I saw three days ago. He turned the page quickly.

  All of it, sports achievements, literary kudos, political successes, were dry bones. This was just the beginning. The next step was to talk to people who knew Randolph. So, on Wednesday, Michael got his car out and drove up to the campus of the well-known Ivy League school where Randolph had matriculated.

  He had taken the precaution of providing himself with a general letter of introduction, and it finally got him into the sanctum of a Vice-President in charge of something. Public Relations, to judge from the gray-haired gentleman’s suave manner. The President of the university was unavailable. Probably away on a fund-raising campaign, Michael thought-or building barricades in preparation for the spring campaign of the SDS. Not that it mattered. Anything the President would say about one of his most illustrious alumni wouldn’t be worth peanuts. The same thing was true of the Vice-President. Michael only needed him as a source of references.

  “I’m afraid there are very few of Mr. Randolph’s former professors available,” the Vice-President explained winsomely. “Now although I was not myself in residence at the time, I have followed Mr. Randolph’s career with interest, and I might say…”

  He recapitulated Randolph ’s public career, which Michael could have recited from memory, for ten minutes before Michael could stop him.

  “I want to talk to people who actually knew him,” Michael explained.

  The Vice-President hesitated, torn between irritation and caution. How these pompous asses did love to see their names in print, Michael thought. The man was smart enough to know that if he vexed the biographer, his name might appear amid adjectives that would make him writhe. The pungent style of the periodical that had commissioned the biography was well known.

  “Well, of course, this was twenty years ago,” the V.P. said, with a slight sniff. “Most of our professors are mature men when they are at the height of their careers; by now the majority are retired or-hem-deceased. And, while people tend to think of the academic profession as static, there is in actual fact-”

  “A lot of job shifting,” Michael interrupted. “I know that. I’ll do the tracking down myself. All I really need are the names of Randolph ’s professors and their current addresses, if they are available.”

  “Well, if you insist, Mr.-”

  Michael insisted. When the file was produced, the Vice-President brooded over it.

  “Physics; Professor Kraus. Emeritus, now, of course; I believe he returned to Germany or Austria. If he’s still alive…Sociology; that would be Professor Smith, he is now at Elm College, in the-er- Midwest somewhere.”

  “ Chicago,” Michael said.

  “Somewhere of that sort, yes. I don’t know that he would be of much help to you; Mr. Randolph only took one of his courses. Now his major, naturally, was English; the chairman at that time was Professor-”

  He looked up, his eyes widening, and Michael nodded.

  “Collins. He was my father. He’s dead. Ten years ago.”

  “I’m sorry… Well, then, let me see, there was Doctor Wilkes…”

  Not a single one of Randolph ’s former professors was still in residence. Michael finally escaped with a very short list. Four of the men were still living, two in Europe and one at Harvard, plus the unfortunate exile in the Midwest. Michael went home and wrote letters. He couldn’t go traipsing off to Munich to interview a man who had taught Randolph algebra twenty years ago. The man at Harvard was on sabbatical leave.

  He had begun his investigations with the academic world not only because it was more in line with his own interests but because he believed in the importance of that period in character formation. Sooner or later, he would have to interview Randolph ’s business associates. Talk about a subject being outside your field; he wasn’t even sure what Randolph ’s business was. One of those massive conglomerates that included manufacturing, investments, oil wells, and
God knows what else. But there were offices someplace in the city; if there wasn’t a Randolph Building, it was presumably only because Randolph hadn’t got around to constructing one. Yes, eventually he’d have to talk to the inhabitants of the business world, but he had no illusions about that; no one who worked for Randolph was going to tell him anything interesting.

  So the next step was the college where Randolph had taught. It was in Pennsylvania; not a long drive, but he decided to plan to stay overnight, since that particular episode was fairly recent, and there ought to be a number of witnesses still available-possibly even a few students working for advanced degrees.

  A sullen sun sulked above the skyscrapers when he left the city, but it wasn’t until he had bypassed Philadelphia that he felt any awareness of spring. The Main Line suburbs reminded him of the countryside around Randolph ’s home-manicured lawns and smug, neat houses, flowers and kids playing in the front yard. Things were blooming.

  This time he had taken the precaution of setting up an interview in advance, by phone, and he saw, not a Vice-President, but the Vice-Chancellor. Michael had read too much history to have much faith in revolution as a means of social progress; but every time he met a college administrator, he was aware of a sneaking sympathy for the militant students. The Vice-Chancellor might have been a brother of the Vice-President-the same graying hair and discreet tie, the same canny brown eyes. Michael sniffed. Yes; they even used the same scent. Christ, he thought; and placed a look of intelligent interest on his face as the Vice-Chancellor lectured.

  “I was a mere Assistant Professor at the time,” he explained with a deprecating smile. “Nor was Gordon in my department. Economics is my field.”