Lee

by Tito Perdue

  He went back and clambered into bed. He had assumed the divine Judy was in place still, until he sat up suddenly. It was a bleak room, almost no furniture, and a mirror with an old man in it who seemed suffering from “the horrors.” He simply could not take this representation of himself seriously—it was not him. He was young, or had been, and might be so again. In any case, all these matters were but a question of will and hardness, and he considered himself the hardest of all hard men.

  He had neglected the coffee; he liked to drink it in great heat, straight from the pot, a way of inciting the day to be hotter than the one before. He needed to shave—a nuisance matter. His philosophy was to perform these things quickly, and yet, once started, he found himself carrying them out to perfection. He liked to look like a patient or convict, even practicing expressions in the mirror to make it more so.

  His suit itself was black. It had never been intended for summer weather in the first place, and now the sun was making it blacker. His glasses? Black too, and of a terrific thickness that had already been the ruin of one eye. His hardness increased. He was himself that one of whom Nietzsche had foretold, and with a cane that had two notches in it.

  He ran down past the “tea room” and the two menials in red jackets who got quickly out of his way. Slowly and slowly, he had emptied out the book chest until now only a few contemporary novels remained, women’s trash from the 1980’s that he had stolen for the joy of stealing before he saw what they consisted of. He stood, smoking, watching a parade of the little people brightly scurrying past on their way to office and work. Lee looked at them and then, on impulse, fell in behind. He loved to imitate the way in which these types walked, as if they imagined something of the most inestimable value to be waiting around the corner. There was a woman on a porch, this one with humor enough in her to see what he was doing; they grinned at each other. He was moving with lubricity (he thought) until a new person (short, briefcase, sweet lotion) came up out of nowhere and left him far behind.

  Really, what did they want? He had seen this throughout the whole modern period, every generation coming out with more and more handsome briefcases and a speedier and speedier folk for carrying them. He longed for that dictatorship that would blow away something of the amazing puffery of so many little people. Rather, what he really wanted was all power vested in whosoever was most embittered at any given moment. Now he could see four more coming on quickly, all of them bonded and insured, deodorized and manicured—he wanted to puke. Nor could he help but see how they went out of their way to go out of his way. He could have caned them all to death, save for so many witnesses everywhere.

  He went two blocks more; then he turned in at the building where he kept his money. This was a noble pile with columns and a dome in the Sassanid style. And such somber people! As for himself, he would have preferred to be murdered by someone with a soul than to prosper by such as these. He began to feel somber too. Three tellers were there, three variations on one narrow theme, all vying with each other in not looking at him. He knew them—more interested in job than books, and more than job, in clothes. He went first to a woman; then, getting a better look at her, he switched to a man who sat looking out between his bars as into the furthest future. The second thing Lee noticed was that his fingers, immensely long as they were, were stained a vile green. Somewhere in the rear, someone was groaning softly, while out here there were icy faces only, more than he had ever seen before. Quickly he gathered up the bills—furry things with, each of them, a juiceless dignitary on it.

  With so much traffic, it was an easy matter to get tangled up in the rotating door or take some injury to foot or nose. Suddenly, that instant, he recognized something, a person, someone he had known once, now in form of an old man in tinted glasses. Lee wanted to laugh; instead, he drew back immediately behind one of the columns. At one time they had done all manner of adventures together, and now Lee found himself craving to be recognized, for nostalgia’s sake. He leapt out grinning, but having missed his man, he leapt back again. Perhaps it was not yet too late to go on hiking trips; perhaps it was. In any case, the man must recognize him and courteously too, else—Lee had resolved upon it—he would burn the fellow’s house down.

  They came out, this time face to face. Formerly, they were of the same height exactly; now Lee was taller, having read more books. Strangely, his friend too had a bad eye (Lee looked at it) and a good one that was beginning to show the first, faint, faraway signs of recognition. But Lee was disappointed: here was one person more, judging from him, who had not held on to his soul. The man blinked, then suddenly turned, hit the door, and strode off sharply down Quintard Avenue, as if he had an appointment.

  They went a block at high speed. Lee could have caned him easily; he could not, however, except with the greatest effort, keep abreast with him. Above, the sun, having cleared the buildings, was spinning slowly and would soon be giving off sparks. He wanted it to be 600 degrees today, too hot for the weak, enough to melt these outrageous numbers from off the world and leave a small sum only of the very fine; to his knowledge it had never been hot enough. He was muttering about it, and people were watching. Once more, and without intending, he had been putting on a show for the vulgar, especially a grinning youth in jewelry and tattoo. Someday, surely, he would exterminate all these things in full open view, a thousand witnesses notwithstanding.

  He turned in at the post office, and entered the very lobby in which he used to spend so much time studying the criminal posters. Some he recognized still, while others stirred up memories of people he had known in seventh grade. A woman was taking notes. His friend was now plunging deeply into a lockbox overly full with mail that the man himself handled with indifference.

  Lee followed past five stately clerks who seemed sculpted into the wall—he could have caned the lot of them. Outside, the sun was higher, hotter, but also lopsided and still short of the ferocity yet to come. Others might suffer, for him this heat stood in lieu of conversation.

  They went in at a restaurant and stood side by side waiting for a table to clear. Nor would his friend look at him anymore. Lee saw quantities of people eating, but not from real hunger; he had to remind himself of how it was in the West, where every adorable stomach must be full all moments. And it did him good to see it—that they might all be puffy as possible for the kill. Indeed, he could have caned them all and would have faced only token resistance. Suddenly, his friend lurched forward, racing quite unnecessarily for the first vacant space. Sixty years ago, they had camped together in the rain. Lee watched curiously to see what it was the man was ordering with so much forethought and concentration.

  He waited, scowling and intimidating until at last he got the table he wanted; not if he lived a thousand years would he understand people who were willing to sit with their backs exposed. Now came the waitress, a giant-sized North European with sausage arms and noodles and pasta for hair. Lee demanded whiskey; then, told they had none, he decided to stay where he was. None dared ask him to leave; no one indeed had done so in twenty years, nor ever would again. Instead, he grabbed up a longish butt which someone had left behind, and smoked.

  He watched three secretaries, delicate piping birds picking away with thirty painted nails. To him nothing could be more ghastly than the human face with its parts, valves opening and closing horizontally, nothing more terrible—better they had pitched the stuff in with shovels while making loud noises. He observed a table of businessmen whispering together urgently, trying not to gloat (he knew them), wasting life on matters and affairs while imagining they were doing something delicious. In fact, it was business they were doing, mere business, they knew not what else to do. For Lee, there were but two occupations for the serious mind: treason and literature. Looking at these folk, he saw that there could be no more doubt that the professions were becoming even more banal than he knew—from the great days of farming and printing and pathfinding, down now to mutual funds. The best of them looked forward to when all would
be prosperous; he, to when none would be.

  He felt he was walking on a seacoast in brightest weather, or, possibly, a snow-covered scene sanctified by much silence. A door was swinging but, for the life of him, making no noise. His own footfall—no noise. It was the hour when light tended to break down into its constituents, in fact, into dancing molecules that looked precisely like the diagrams in books.

  According to his theory, there were billions of living people, but few who had taken on the hard work of turning life into spirit. For that, it was necessary to begin young and read widely, and be thinking at all times. As to these small people—he knew them—they preferred having surgery to entertaining a thought. He only regretted that he hadn’t turned away earlier from society; now he was resigned to waiting for the next higher species to come on deck. And as regards humanity and human possibilities (taking into account the Greeks), he was never to understand why it hadn’t turned out six times better than it had.

  He entered the next building and searched about for the toilet, which was unmarked and supplied artificially with jasmine smell. He saw two polished shoes beneath one of the partitions and someone in them. Then he recognized that the person had taken a computer into the stall with him and was using it.

  Lee came out and went down to the pretty receptionist smiling at him from the distance. So cheery was she, such cheeks, so young, he felt he was walking straight on into the arms of someone who loved him a great deal. There had been such growth in insincerity since his day, so much so that he could never be sure from moment to moment but that someone had actually taken a liking to him. There was an elevator and a button, which he hit with his stick. In his time the town had possessed but one such elevator, and it had usually been out of operation owing to so many children flooding in to try it out.

  He came out into a flat area where he saw people in suits, so chilled by air conditioning that all their facial expression had been lost. Here the true purpose was to show off clothes; he saw one huffy-looking girl of the new type, with enough expensive fashion on her to pay for . . . He had seen hand-printed books that sold for less. Suddenly it hit him—that smell he had smelled before, when large numbers were brought together and all were thinking about money at the same time.

  He moved down the row, no one paying attention to an old man. In truth, they were working very diligently, a bad sign according to Nietzsche. Horrible to be a slave, but to adore the leash about one’s neck . . . ! He wanted to cane them all; instead, he slipped into the first vacant desk in order to think about it.

  Here there were two computers, one slumbering, the other in high activity that gave off a gastric sound. Statistics too—it looked to him like the work of the Assyrian astronomers, with row upon cribbed row of sightings so painfully acquired. He was perfectly aware of the woman next to him, watching in amazement, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t quite put her finger on what it ought to be. He turned, goggled at her with his biggest eye, then reached down lewdly and shifted his testicles.

  He could remember when toil of this dreary sort was considered a punishment. Now, it was the buildings that were full and the out-of-doors that was empty. Just then he spotted an extraordinarily well-dressed woman marching toward him in haste, and behind her came the same girl who a minute ago had been sitting at his side.

  “Do you have some business here?”

  That voice! Lee looked at her. His nose was on a level with her navel. No great difficulty at all to drive the cane in at this point and upwards, toward the throat; he could hardly credit it that she was willing to stand so near. Somewhere, a telephone was ringing. An airplane droned overhead.

  He remembered getting slowly to his feet and pushing down the aisle. Some were grinning—he didn’t care—while one of the older ones had a compassionate look. He had not thought he would be accompanied all the way to the elevator, or then that three of them would ride the whole distance to ground level itself. He had a woman on his right and a woman on his left; both of them, having taken up the new philosophy, looked straight ahead.

  It was bright outside, also uninhabited; he had to go a full six paces to snap free of the air conditioning. These days the sun was shuddering violently, each shudder a thousand years. He knew it must be two o’clock exactly, the very minute when it was given to him to envision in his mind’s eye the forests and seascapes of the lovely Silurian Age, with the sky quite cloudless where just now a few buildings had been temporarily standing. Indeed, he was like one of those proto-humans for whom the time came finally to acknowledge that they were alive and on earth without having willed it, and no way out.

  Nothing could be more horrible. He moaned suddenly, very loudly. He had the most distinct memories of those days (Silurian), and he especially experienced that odd feeling of having come up over a dune to descry for the first time the astonishing ocean, vastest of things, and in a sun like this. And below? Three great cephalopoda sporting on a mint-new shore.

  Seven

  HE WOKE, ROLLED OUT OF the bed, and ran around the room. However, he did not feel well (nothing surprised him anymore), and soon he was back within the sheets. It was much like a hospital, this starkness of wall and ceiling. Also, the birds mocked cruelly from the window, sometimes even throwing up their arms in glee. Ofttimes he could persuade himself that he was sleeping, but not now, not today, not with the sun ripping up the roof and tossing the shingles away.

  Pain in head, hair, eye and nose, nor could he remember when he had eliminated last. He had not become more efficient with experience; instead, he was rotting from the head down. While as to memory . . . Already he had lost the entire Byzantine Period and with another half-inch of rot would lose the Classical as well—it didn’t bear thinking about.

  During six days he had felt like he was pulling himself up by main force, nearer and nearer to spiritual perfection, until the seventh day, like this day, when he had doubts. The world outside was abounding in rumors of a Great One, a new doctrine just around the corner, and so little time for seeing it ushered in before he himself must needs depart. Or, he might envision a bright time, a tiny population of fine people, and nations governed like great universities. At present, the nations were squabbling over this and that, who should have the power, etc., etc.—he didn’t care. He was aware of the two grand forces: wealth force and the equality force, neither of them having aught to do with the likes of him. Anyway, all the thinking he needed to do could be done in a dark cell; nor had he failed to notice how some of the very best thinking had taken place under the most hair-raising conditions. As for these moderns, they had been given the greatest freedom, true, yet had used it for doings that (most of them) it were better they had never done!

  Half an hour he sat, glaring, sometimes breaking into curses. He was absolutely determined that his bodily self should serve his spiritual and not the other way around. Sloth he could endure, broken fingers too, but a headache of this kind was serious, even for the person merely writing about it. He wanted to vomit but couldn’t, and meanwhile the birds, debased little things that daren’t come near him when he was in his fettle, were dancing on the sill.

  He was lying in a certain way, hair dragging on the ground, when the landlady (he recognized the tread) came and tapped two times at his door. He groaned. It shocked and disappointed him that anyone still had the bravery to come up here where, for all they knew, he might have parts of butchered people in his closets. Nevertheless, he rose, cursing, and padded to the door. First, he saw that she was smiling; second, that she had on a great deal of rouge, more than he had ever seen on one person, and third, that she was bearing a little covered dish with something precious in it. He regretted he had left his cane in the bed.

  “Yes, we’ve been a little concerned, Dr. Pefley. When you didn’t come down, I mean!” (She spoke in a kind of affectionate reproach, as to a child; he could feel guilt spreading over him, also his gorge rising. It did please him that she had used his title, which he had bestowed upon hi
mself two years ago after reading his ten thousandth book.)

  “Headache.”

  “Oh, dear! Well, I’m not surprised, the way things are these days.”

  “Yeah. Fucking thing’s driving me insane.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, come on in, I know you’ve been wanting to.”

  “Well.”

  That something was bad about him, she knew, but as to why, that she did not know. He had money; moreover, his rooms were immaculate, stark even, in fact a desert with books. He loved to see the expression on ignorant people when faced with so much stacked wisdom. The next room was wiser still; he nudged her to the opening and pushed her in. So many books! So many untoward ideas; plainly she was affrighted.

  “Now, if there’s anything here you need to consult . . . ” he began to say.

  Instead, she shivered, and keeping her dish, she fled amid a rush of words about headaches and these times. He found himself alone, fifteen yards from bed, his rash on fire and hemorrhoids throbbing. Time was when he could snort at health and go running after the good things at full tilt; now, it was only with the greatest dizziness that he could travel the short distance to the window and, searching for his thing, urinate into space.

  Eight

  HE WOKE. AMAZINGLY, HE WAS under the bed, not on it; also, there was a jesting fat man in the window impersonating “the moon.” He thought indeed he could see someone, the merest speck of a man trundling at high speed across one of the larger craters. Further, he could even put himself in the person’s mind—a very yellow view, and a terrain as soft and strange as phosphorus and powder.