Pitch Dark

by Renata Adler

  In the pool of the Hospital for Special Surgery, which, perhaps because it specializes in diseases, not of life or death, but of locomotion, must be one of the most cheerful hospitals in the world, we aligned ourselves, at first, naturally, conversationally, according to the gravity of our ailments. The pool room is on the ground floor. Along one wall, its windows look out on the drive and the river, the dazzling grey light and the barges. Nobody swims here, no splashing, no barking or echoing tiles. At the deep end, where the water, which is of course heated, reaches only to the chins of the adults, a young therapist walked slowly back and forth, holding in his extended hands a small wooden bar. Clasping that bar, a small child of about six was being drawn gently, laughing, through the water. Mrs. Martinez, mother of eight, who walked back and forth beside me, looked on with approval; then, in order to free the therapist for other patients, she took over the small bar and the child herself. The three of us were soon joined by Mr. Lanier. It is not quite accurate to say, of Mrs. Martinez, Mr. Lanier, or myself, that we walked. We had been lowered into the pool by means of a crane and stretcher, and now we solemnly proceeded, technically upright and on our feet but with most of our weight borne by the water, from one side to the other of the pool. Anna Mills, who was slightly shorter than we were, walked a little nearer the shallow end, but took part in our general conversation. So, from time to time, did the three young athletes just beyond her. Recovering from knee surgery, they stood, arms outstretched along the pool’s edge, bending and straightening their injured legs before them. Buoyantly, gravely, wincing or expressionless, we chatted: about what was wrong with us, how it happened, whether we had been injured, or born this way, or simply, gradually disintegrated; about past surgery, impending surgery, no surgery. But the subject of most profound interest, the one that divided us along lines not of age, or class, or job, or personal affinity, was drugs. The Tylenol set, the group on Empirin with codeine, the poor souls on Bufferin or Darvon, or any non-prescription remedy, were separated from the lucky few on morphine derivatives, on Percodan. The difference, we soon discovered, or rather, the Percodan group discovered it, had less to do with kind of illness or intensity of pain than with the philosophy and disposition of the prescribing doctor. Al Hines, the truck driver, we knew, had been scolded by his doctor for taking too much aspirin, when he had the same problem as Mrs. Martinez, Mr. Lanier, and I. Ten days of traction, Al’s doctor had said, and if that didn’t do it, surgery. But my own doctor had said that traction—and, in our rooms, all of us were in traction—was of no use whatever, just a device to satisfy insurance companies. So there we were; when Al walked with us, like children discreetly withholding from less enlightened children the truth about the stork or Santa Claus, we would not discuss our medication. And the day old Mrs. James, completely warped and crabbed by her arthritis into a kind of clawed, bowlegged arc, mentioned that her doctor, bless him, did allow her Percodan, specifically one half a pill four times a day, we, we lucky few who took Percodan (and sometimes, having surreptitiously stored them, three Percodan eight times a day), we said nothing, only continued our stately procession, like swans, or philosophers, generals or Athenians, back and forth across the pool.

  But then, stopping everywhere, as I was, to ask directions, it was by no means clear, at many intersections, which was the straight continuation of the road and which was another road entirely. I asked various bicyclists, farmers, passersby. And once, when I pulled far off the road, for the last of several farmers with their herds of lowing cattle, I met, no, not met, encountered, one of the truly gentle and poetic souls, a man who said, You’ve bent part of your fender against this tall grass; and who bent the metal back in place, along its tidy line, getting mud on his trousers and his hands. A kind man, with the profound sense of natural honor from which, I supposed, the lorry driver’s You have my word, in some way, derived. My sense of the ominous and hostile receded. I began to think these were omens, perhaps, after all, auspicious. As the weather let up, I became aware for the first time of serenity, of the fields, the walls of stone, slate sky, the incredibly long eyelashes of the cows. I passed through the countryside, the towns. Just before dark, I found the unpaved road to Cihrbradàn, then the iron gates, and the long drive to the castle. In the circle of gravel, at the front door, I parked my car in such a way that the driver’s side, the damaged fender side, was visible to all comers on the road. Later, I thought this even then, later I could say, What kind of fool do you take me for; if concealment was what I had in mind, do you take me for such a fool as to park my car in such a way that the damaged side is there for all the world to see? As I opened the car door and got out, I felt watched. I saw a round middle-aged face peering at me through the shades. Celia, I thought, the hearty cook, looking out eagerly for the first glimpse of the stranger. But, as I crossed the few remaining yards of gravel driveway, she made no move toward the door.

  After I had knocked for quite a while, the door was opened by a younger woman. Kathleen, I thought, but when I introduced myself, she did not give her name. She said, There’s a note for you from Captain and Mrs. Walton, and led me to a small room, full of guns, boots, hunting jackets, and a large desk. On the wall above the desk, there was an ancient telephone, on a wooden panel, with many wires and switches. An envelope addressed to me lay on the desk. Kathleen handed it to me; and walked back across the little entryway, down a short, narrow corridor, to an immense kitchen, where she introduced me to Celia, who stood beside the kitchen table, watching protectively over a round pink child. You’ll be wanting to see your room then, Kathleen said. We climbed a beautiful, old, slowly rounding staircase, to a room which looked out in two directions, on an old grey tower, and on the sea. The waves were placid against the black rocks of the bay; to the absolute verge of those rocks, and the sea itself, the fields extended, in calm, perfect, implausibly familiar, muted green. Three sources of heat in the room, Kathleen pointed out to me briskly: central heating, an electric blanket, the peat fireplace. She also showed me the closet and the bed. Not the bathroom, which I found later, at some distance, down the hall. You’ll be wanting tea, she said, as she was going down the staircase. I said, Thank you, yes. And what time would you like your dinner? I looked at my watch. It was five-fifteen. I said, At seven, please. And then, On second thought, with dinner as soon as that, instead of tea, I’d like a drink. I like to go to bed early, I added, and get up early. We walked through the first kitchen, past Celia and the baby, through a second, still larger kitchen, to a pantry, with an enormous wall safe. We always keep it locked, Kathleen said, when the ambassador’s away. The door swung open, revealing shelves and quantities of every kind of whiskey, gin, rum, brandy, vodka. As you’re his guest, she said, I’ll leave the key in while you’re here. I chose one of the Irish whiskeys, Bushmills. Have you known the ambassador long? she asked, as she led me through several dark rooms, one of which seemed to be the study, to the drawing room, where the lamps nearest the sofa were on, and there was a peat fire burning in the grate. He had said, Talk to them, they are friendly; so I said, Not long, and told her how I met him, and that he sent his best. Will you be wanting ice? she said. She brought cubes, in a glass, and some water in a small pewter pitcher. I stayed a long time, alone, with my drink, beside the grate in the drawing room. I opened the envelope from Captain and Mrs. Walton. An invitation to dinner, the following evening, at eight. Paddy, the groundskeeper there, will give you directions, it said. Hope you can come. An illegible signature. A legible phone number. One digit, like the number of the castle. I sloshed a bit more water from the pitcher into my glass. A little tired now, from the whiskey, and the day itself, I thought I should call to accept. I found my way to the hunting and phone room, looked at the wooden panel, with its wires and switches. Celia appeared in the doorway. I’d like to phone the Waltons, I said. I can’t figure out quite how this works. Kathleen does that, Celia said. A pause. She’s upstairs. Feeding the baby. Shall I call her down? I say, It’s nothing urgent. Anothe
r pause. Celia walks to the phone, turns a crank, flips several switches, then hands the receiver to me. So glad you’re here, says the Captain; heard all about you; look forward enormously; just ask Paddy for directions; eight o’clock then. Hangs up. Celia stands in doorway. Whenever you’re ready, she says. Your dinner’s there.

  I look at you for signs of leaving me and find to my despair that one of us has already left. Maybe it’s me. But, if it’s me, I always do come back, or always have. Please don’t go. Writing is always, in part, bending somebody’s ear. As reading is. In the matter of the commas. In the matter of the question marks. In the matter of the tenses. In the matter of the scandal at the tennis courts.

  But then, don’t you see, I despaired. I simply, no, not simply, I rarely do anything simply, despaired. And then I despaired.

  In the dining room, my place is set, back to the windows, at one end of the table, which is long. Along the wall at the opposite end of the table is a massive sideboard, on which there is a silver bowl of fruit. On the table, to the left of my plate, is a small electric bell. From the kitchen, Kathleen brings in oxtail soup, which is very hot. Before I have finished, she brings in a serving tray with five lamb chops, also mashed potatoes, string beans, squash, all home grown. Five lamb chops seems a lot for a single guest. I eat two, wonder ever so briefly who will eat the others. Kathleen comes in with a crème caramel large enough to serve, I guess, twenty people. When I ask for seconds, having for the first time used the electric bell, Kathleen returns with the immense dish, on which half a single portion now remains. I am really tired, and perhaps slightly crocked. As I pass the kitchen, on my way to the stairs, Celia says, What time will you be wanting breakfast? I say, Don’t trouble with breakfast; I like to go to sleep very early, and get up very early. Kathleen says, We come in at nine-thirty, but you just sleep in late. That subject seems closed somehow. But before I say goodnight, I ask, Is there anything I need to know about the peat fire in my room: I mean, do I just use a match? Kathleen says yes. When I reach my room, there are no matches. I return to the drawing room, find matches beside the grate, go back upstairs to my room, and try match after match against the peat, to no effect. I go downstairs to the kitchen, say, Somehow the matches don’t quite seem to work. Oh well, Kathleen says, of course you need the firestarter. She walks into a room, which, when she turns the light on, turns out to be the study, hands me a packet of brown squares, in color and texture rather like what was served to us in college as scrapple. I take the packet to my room, put one of the squares against the peat and light it. The fire takes, immediately. Soon the room is hot. I open the window slightly, upon the luminous seascape and the tower; I do not shut the drapes against the sky. Putting blankets, pillow, sheets on the carpeted floor, beside the grate, I fall asleep almost at once, coughing slightly, from the smoldering peat perhaps, or the air coming through the windows. I think of the coughing man on the plane, and then, with a smile, of the seriousness with which our night editor, at the paper, regards what his secretary refers to as his little colds. When I wake up, well before dawn, I am warm. The sky is still blue-black; and yet sea, rocks, green verge, and tower are irradiated, clear. I have begun to love the beauty, and the quiet. To begin with, after all, I almost went instead to Graham Island. Not to have to wait for you any more, your call, the sound, as characteristic as your footsteps, of your engine in the driveway, what that would mean. Not to think of you all the time any more. And suddenly I welcomed grey weather, clouds and rain.

  What’s new? the biography of the opera star says she used to ask in every phone call, and What else? I’m not sure the biographer understood another thing about the opera star, but I do believe that What’s new. What else. They may be the first questions of the story, of the morning, of consciousness. What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here, says the inspector, or the family man looking at the rubble of his house. What’s it to you, says the street tough or the bystander. What’s it worth to you, says the paid informer or the extortionist. What is it now, says the executive or the husband, disturbed by the fifteenth knock at the door, or phone call, or sigh in the small hours of the night. What does it mean, says the cryptographer. What does it all mean, says the student or the philosopher on his barstool. What do I care. What’s the use. What’s the matter. Where’s the action. What kind of fun is that. Let me say that everyone’s story in the end is the old whore’s, or the Ancient Mariner’s: I was not always as you see me now. And the sentient man, the sentient person says in his heart, from time to time, What have I done.

  Was it in the contemplation of my ancestors that I should share a guest room, one long weekend, with Mausi Esterhazi? Was it in the contemplation of Mausi’s ancestors. Was it in the contemplation of my ancestors that the sushi chef should say to me, with concern, at summer’s end, You are lose weight? Or that one curator should say to another, in my presence, of a third, He is married, which is very important in Chicago?

  You spend too much time alone, says a murmur from the anti-claque; you are like some wet, tousled, obsessed rat or mouse, in a concrete bunker, all the time alone. But also, you spend too much time with friends. Here we have the water colors, here we have the bas reliefs. And these are the oils. This is the sculpture garden. We also have mobiles, in color, that can both make sounds and move. And here, he said, we have the rubble that resulted when the breakthrough came. You remember everything, he said, you remember everything, out of context, and then you brood. Look, you can’t write on a trapeze, and this is not a metronome. Yes, it is. I live with an hysteric and a metronome. I live with a person in despair. I live on a trapeze in a jungle where there is a harpsichord. I’m a pretty persuasive advocate when the cause is just.

  When I have dressed and gone downstairs, I find a small pitcher of milk in the refrigerator; on a shelf, nearby, an open jar of instant coffee, two-thirds empty, with a spoon still in it, clearly Celia’s. Everything else is clean, tidy, spankingly empty. In a small, damp pantry, not the one with the wall safe, I find a trash can, full of coffee grounds and egg shells. For the compost heap, I think. No eggs. On the counter, some stale bread. Though the kitchen is very well equipped, with pots, pans, stoves, refrigerators, small devices, even, come to think of it, elaborate hi-fi radio (Celia, I now recall, had, from the moment I met her, been playing loud, incongruous rock), I cannot, for some reason, find the toaster. I know there must be one. I try the oven. After several minutes of looking in vain for the pilot light, with matches, I give up. Fearing an explosion, I turn the oven off, and consider giving a toaster as a house present. I make coffee, with hot water from the tap and cold milk from the pitcher. I decide to try to use the telephone. Having turned the crank, and figured out the switches, I reach an operator, to whom I explain that, once my call has gone through to New York, he must under no circumstances interrupt the call, because to do so would be to disrupt, perhaps permanently, but at the very least for half an hour, my answering machine. Oh, he says, I would never interrupt; I only connect you with the international operator. Then, bypassing the international operator, he puts the call straight through, and abruptly cuts it off. When I try again, having waited the required half hour, I reach the international operator. In response to my explanation, she says, becoming very obdurate on this point, I would never cut into a line, certainly, never. As soon as the call goes through, she breaks in, to say, Go ahead please, your party is on the line. When another half hour has elapsed, I reach her again. I start to say, But this time, operator, please. And she says, with that edge of injury and contempt I am beginning to become accustomed to in all their voices: It was only a recording. The call goes through. No message there.

  She was Goldilocks, really, with this exception: when the third bear left, he had taken with him his porridge, and his chair. And the bed? Well, the bed was there, and the prince came and he kissed her. Hey, wait. Look here, this is Medea. This is Eloise at the Plaza. This is Agatha Runcible. Here I am, for the first time, and yet again, alone at
last on Orcas Island. You were, you know, you are the nearest thing to a real story to happen in my life, and you are gone.

  I go into the study, light a peat fire, watch the dawn through the soft rain. From the bookshelves, I take down Samuel Pepys, abridged; I have somehow never read him. I put paper in the typewriter, and begin a friendly note to the ambassador. Shortly after ten, the front door opens. I hear voices in the kitchen. I find Celia, Kathleen, that overfed, moon-faced baby, all three eating fried eggs and ham. I mention that I have had coffee with milk. Was there enough for you? Celia says, perhaps with irony, certainly not in the slightest friendly. Or what would you like for breakfast now. I say I’d like a five-minute egg. And, when Kathleen brings it to me, at my place in the dining room, the egg really is five minutes. Celia had not mentioned toast, nor had I, so I’m startled when, as I eat in silence, toast pops up out of a toaster, which I had simply not noticed on the sideboard. I get up, take the toast and a banana. When I have finished eating, I return to the study. As I begin to type, Kathleen appears, says, Will you be wanting me for your phone calls? I say, Thank you, I think I can manage. About an hour later, a stocky man, in a woolen cap and jacket, comes in, says, How do you do, I’m Paddy. Is there anything I can do for you this morning? He seems marginally more friendly than the others. At the same time, something covertly appraisive in his manner, an almost lascivious shrewdness, makes me think, Is it just that they think I’m the ambassador’s mistress, and that there is something not quite proper in the arrangement; is it my clothes, the faded corduroy slacks, the tennis shoes, my down jacket; or, perhaps outdoors, the damaged fender? But I say, Well, yes, Paddy, could you tell me the best place to go for a walk. How long a walk were you thinking of? he says. I say, About an hour, and add that I don’t have much sense of direction. In some detail, then, he describes a walk. I ask where I would go if I wanted a two-hour walk. In reply, he describes what I realize is the exact same walk. While it’s true I’ve said that I can get lost virtually anywhere, on account of that sense of direction, it seems odd to me, not sinister but odd, that the one-hour walk and the two-hour walk should be the same. As I pass the kitchen, on my way to the front door, Celia asks what I would like for lunch. Remembering the ambassador’s words, I ask whether I might have a picnic. Celia, brightening, says, Now? I look at my watch. It is quarter past eleven. I say, No thank you, when I come back from this walk, I’ll just take another walk and have my picnic then. I set out down the driveway, toward a path along the sea verge and the rocks. When the path turns inland, uphill, the wind subsides, the rain slows to a fine mist, and I see, coming toward me, a small man of middle years, with one of the sad, poetic faces—wisdom there, humor and beauty. From some distance off, he says, Good morning, in such a friendly voice. I reply, Good morning. And, not wanting to lose contact, I go on, Nice day. A bit showery, he says, as he steps aside to let me pass. We continue on our separate ways.