The Lost Weekend

by Charles Jackson

  There was no cure. It was something that would ail you always, as long as you lasted (and how long would that be, the way you were going?). But—you did have this: you could recover and stay well. You could recover and become an “arrested case,” like the TB patient whose doctor will not commit himself to a cure more certain or permanent than that. “Your case is arrested, provided you take care of yourself,” or “provided you don’t break down again.” When the patient is discharged from Davos, he is bidden God-speed with the cheery farewell: “So-long till your next relapse”—and the nurse Bim, saying goodbye to the lovely advertising man for the sixth time that year, looks forward to his early return. But the patient does manage to keep away from Davos for good (and the advertising man need see no more of the alcoholic ward and Bim): provided he takes care of himself, provided he doesn’t break down again.

  Who knew better than himself how true these reflections were, he who had had cause—on a hundred such evenings of zero as this—to puzzle them out and think them through and promise himself to remember, remember. Oh, he could promise himself; but when the state of well-being was restored in him again, the nightmare of the latest long weekend paled and dimmed and became unreal—unreal as that streak of flame racing now, this minute, along the carpet to the bed, the path of blazing gasoline that went out when you looked at it, because it wasn’t there to begin with.…

  The light in the room had seemed to become a wash of grey-yellow, a lifeless glare almost without light in itself, like the livid dead color that stands in the air before a late summer afternoon thunder-shower, the light seen along the clapboards of country houses when the atmosphere becomes oppressive and thick and heavy with storm. It was a distillation—a dilution, rather, a weakening and watering—of the yellow-red flare of the gasoline on the carpet, thinned and spread out through the still air of the room, like a fog. The little bed-lamp itself had become a feeble yellowish glimmer, anemic and unnatural, like the white glow of a cigarette in the murky red gloom of a café.…

  The thumping erratic heart had died down to a lethargy like stone. He was calm outside; but suddenly so restless within, unquiet, all but unruly, that he longed for something on which to fix his attention and so take his mind off himself—longed, almost, for the tremors and panic of the afternoon and morning and all that long day, tremors and fright which had given him action, of a sort, and distraction.…

  His eye seemed to be attracted by a stir or rustle near the foot of the bed. He turned, and saw nothing but a small hole in the wall about a foot above his eye-level. It was an opening with cracked plaster around it, as if a big nail had once been hammered there and later yanked out—a spike or bigger. After a moment he saw, with a start, the little stir of movement that had drawn his attention.

  Was that a mouse which appeared at the mouth of the hole? He saw only its snout first, pointed and twitching, assaying the light. He lay flat on his back, uneasy, and did not move; it grew bolder; and soon he could see the mouse entire, hesitant in the opening as if timid about the difficult descent to the floor. It trembled there, half-in half-out of the hole, the little beast that might have been his poor earthborn companion and fellow-mortal if he had not had an irrational feminine abhorrence of mice. He tried now to control this, knowing the mouse was safe in the wall and could not get down. He kept his eye fixed on it, and gradually relaxed. Though he did not like it, he found he could watch the mouse with equanimity, even interest, so long as it was not running around on the floor, under the bed. There was even a certain pathos in the way it peered from side to side—something pathetic in the tiny nose twitching in nervous apprehension, the sensitive whiskers strained for danger, the infinitesimal shining bead-like eyes that held so much alarm. In fascination and pity he watched, and forgot for the moment his own terrors.

  Curious the way he began, then, to like the little creature. From time to time it looked at him, as all the while he looked at it, never taking his eyes away. He wondered if the mouse really saw him, and began to hope that it did or would. He believed that if he turned his head ever so slightly, or made some small movement, the mouse would really see him, see that it was he; yet he was afraid, too, that some stir on his part would frighten it away, and he did not want to cause the mouse any more anxiety than he could see it was already suffering. Besides, he was beginning almost to feel its company. Finally he wished he could get up and help the little grey thing to the floor, if that was what it wanted: still more, that the mouse might know he intended it no harm—or, foolishly, that they might nod to each other in friendly trust and fellowship. A foolish fancy; but it grew, he felt, out of the mouse’s loneliness no less than his own.… And now the mouse did really see him. For some time, then, the two of them lay looking at one another, as if in quiet recognition, and unaccountably he felt contented and relieved.

  He jumped. There was an almost soundless noise at his ear as something brushed by his temple—a sound like the soft flik made by a light-bulb when it burns suddenly out—and a bat flew by. The tip of its hooked wing nicked his forehead as it sped in swift but fluttering flight straight at the mouse. Like a sprung snare he was off the pillow, upright, staring from a sitting position at the two locked in titanic pygmy struggle.

  His throat seemed to burst apart as he cried out. He could not stay and be helpless witness to the horror and injustice of that spectacle. (Oh that at this moment the world might end and they and he with it!) His breast was on fire with passion and grief but he could not protest or help. Tears blurred his sight, but he had to look.

  The obscene wings hid how the contest went. They were folded around the opening of the hole, hooked into the plaster, deathly still; then they stirred with a scratching sound as the bat shifted for position. There was a smell. His breath stopped in his agony to see. The wings spread as the bat began to squeeze the small bat-body of the mouse—he could see the gripping claws like miniature nail-parings. The horrible wings lifted, the round ears of the bat disappeared, as its teeth sank into the struggling mouse. The more it squeezed, the wider and higher rose the wings, like tiny filthy umbrellas, grey-wet with slime. Under the single spread of wings the two furry forms lay exposed to his stare, cuddled together as under a cosy canopy, indistinguishable one from the other, except that now the mouse began to bleed. Tiny drops of bright blood spurted down the wall; and from his bed he heard the faint miles-distant shrieks of dying.

  Helen came running.

  “Don—what is it!”

  He was pointing, stammering in terror. “The mouse—bat—!”

  She took the rigid arm in both her hands and pressed it down, slowly, to his side. She held it firmly there. “Lie back, Don,” she said softly. “Please try to relax, won’t you please? Don’t sit up.”

  He struggled. “There, in the hole—that hole—!”

  Involuntarily she turned her head in the direction of his stare, apprehensive herself; then sat down on the edge of the bed, still holding his arm. She took the handkerchief from his pajama-pocket and mopped the sweat from his face. Her voice was low and comforting. “Don, there’s no mouse, no hole”—and she was right.

  He lay back, gasping; and tears of exhaustion streamed from his eyes, tears of pity for Helen’s quiet sad bewildered concern, tears of helpless fright for what might happen to him yet.

  In a few moments he had closed his eyes. She put out the light and tiptoed out of the room and shut the door behind her. He lay finally in a wakeful drowse, just this side of sleep. The telephone rang beyond the closed door. He was aware of Helen hurrying down the hall to answer it before the repeated ringing would wake him. He heard her talking, and knew that Wick had called back to see how things were. He did not hear the words but he could tell that she was reassuring Wick; and he knew by the tone of her voice that she thought he was safe.…

  PART SIX

  The End

  I hope you had a good night. I saw you were still sleeping so I didn’t disturb you. The coffee is made. Just warm it up. And t
here are eggs in the ice-box. Holy Love comes in at 10.30 so if you wake up after that, she can get your breakfast. I’ll telephone around noon. I hope you have a quiet day and more rest if you want it. Don’t let Holy Love get in your hair. Just chase her away if it bothers you having her around. The house can go till tomorrow. Love.—H.

  Eggs. He couldn’t imagine anything more sickening at the moment than eggs. He looked around for Helen’s clock. But she must have taken it to the living room where she slept. He heard someone moving about in the kitchen and after a moment realized it was Holy Love. That meant it was past ten-thirty, maybe around eleven, or even noon. That meant Wick would be coming back very shortly. That meant the long weekend was over. Wick had said they’d come back Tuesday morning (they!) and it always took a good three hours to drive from the farm.

  He had slept soundly since—when? He had no idea when it was he went to sleep, but certainly he had been sleeping twelve hours and maybe more. He should feel very rested. But he didn’t and he wasn’t. The moment he stirred in bed, tried to get up, made a move with his legs, he felt how weak he was. His heart didn’t thump like yesterday but it was irregular and it hurt. He was dizzy in the head. His responses and co-ordination weren’t what they should be. When he made a move he moved too far or not quite far enough. His breathing still came in panting gasps, even after the long sleep.

  He settled back among the pillows and lay still for a moment, and the swaying room came to rest with him. Flecks of sunlight rippled on the ceiling or maybe it wasn’t sunlight at all maybe it was something in his own head or vision or something that lingered on from sleep. If he opened his eyes wide or sat up again—

  He sat up and the whole room seemed just slightly ajar. That wasn’t what he meant. Slightly off center. That wasn’t it either. Whatever you called it in a two- or three-color job when the frames hadn’t quite jibed and the color stood just above or a little to one side of what it was supposed to color. He couldn’t think straight this morning or apparently see right. The outlines of things inside and out were a touch blurred. So was his vision unless he looked straight at something and held it for a moment. When he moved, the object moved too, for a second, and then settled back. The effect of the paraldative maybe. Sodium amytive. Sedative. Whatever the hell it was. Anyway something like an intoxication, a little whoozy, not at all unpleasant. You could lie back and kind of float just off the bed and enjoy it. Except that he had things to do.

  Intoxication. Pifflocation. He remembered going to a movie with his mother so many years ago that he was too young to have been there at that kind of movie at all, but his mother didn’t know what the movie was about until they got into it; and then, during an awful scene in which a man reeled and staggered across the floor of an awful Western saloon and fell down and came to rest with his head on a spitoon, his mother laughed self-consciously and said aloud to a neighbor “He’s pifflocated,” making a lighthearted joke of it so he wouldn’t take the awful scene too seriously or think too much about it. Every time he had heard the word intoxication since, he thought of the other. Both words connoted something very unpleasant. Not nice. Something one didn’t mention. He had never identified himself with either of them. Ever thought of himself, in any stage, as being one or the other. He honestly didn’t believe he’d ever used or spoken either word. Why say intoxicated anyhow when drunk was what you meant and said it better.

  For that matter why think of such a thing now when you were so far from drunk that you could bridle at the term as you bridled at the other. But not far from drinking. How far depended on how fast he worked.

  So Helen was going to ’phone at noon. He couldn’t not answer the call. She’d know that he heard it no matter how soundly he still slept, or that Holy Love would answer it if he didn’t and go in and wake him. The thing to do was not be here. But then he’d had that clear in his mind from the moment he opened his eyes. It was the only thing this morning that was clear.

  He waited till he heard Holy Love go down the hall to the living room. Then he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. It wasn’t too good. He felt strong enough but uncertain. His whole body felt cool inside as if his blood didn’t run warm any more. He swayed slightly, and when he took a step he wobbled. Perhaps this would pass when he got some coffee in him. He opened the door to Helen’s closet, got out a wrap of hers, and put it over his shoulders. He went to the kitchen.

  Sitting at the little enamel table drinking the hot coffee, he suddenly had the odd idea that somebody was standing behind him, towering above and in back of his head. He knew better, but involuntarily he looked around. He felt a pressure weighing on his spirit, an almost physical weight pressing down on him. He kept wanting to dodge the heavy hand that was about to be placed on his shoulder, or wheel around suddenly and stop the voice that was about to speak out and thunder his name. He bent down to the coffee again, getting right down to it so that he could sip it from the cup without picking it up.

  These were not hallucinations. He wondered if they might not be something worse. He remembered waking up in his room at the farm one morning and finding on his desk a volume of the medical dictionary open at the page describing what alcohol did to a guy. Shy Mrs. Hansen (shy hell!) who never would have spoken a word to him on the subject or admitted to his face that she even knew he drank, had looked it up, marked the passage, and left it there for him to see for himself. Amused, he read it through.

  ALCOHOLISM: Edema of brain with serous meningitis in both acute and chronic cases. Thickened dura and pia mater, some tissue degeneration. It acts, at least in part, by inhibiting the ego-ideals and revealing the anti-social. Consequently a great variety of clinical pictures present themselves, especially in the acute intoxications—i.e., coma, amnesia, furor, automatism. The persistent drinker develops delirium tremens, chronic hallucinations and dementia.

  ACUTE: Symptoms: Flushing of face, quickening of pulse, mental exhilaration, followed by incoherent speech, deep respiration, loss of co-ordination, dilated pupils, vomiting, delirium, slow pulse, subnormal temperature, impaired judgment, emotional instability, muscular incoordination and finally stupor and coma.

  CHRONIC: Symptoms: Fine or violent tremor, mental impairment, disturbed sleep, injection of conjuctivae, redness of nose, etc. If long continued, atheroma of arteries, cirrhosis of liver and chronic interstitial nephritis are apt to develop.—This brings mental deterioration in its wake and change in the central nervous system resulting in impaired memory, failure of judgment, inability to carry on business and lower moral ideals and habits. Natural affection disappears.

  Furor. Delirium. Disturbed sleep. Mental deterioration. As for that natural affection disappearing, it was so damned true that he was offended. He was far from amused when he finished the passage. For once in his life he got a scare. The only thing he ever feared was losing his mind or destroying the responses or functions of his brain, and it looked as if he might be doing just that. If anything could ever deter him from drinking, it would be this fear. Is that what was happening now? Or, if it was happening, would he realize it? Or would it sneak up on him without his knowing, make a babbling idiot of him all of a sudden, sometime, somewhere, without a moment’s warning? Was this weight, back of him, above him, on top of him, a premature sign? Could it be, thus, a blessing in disguise, a signal that there was still time if he would only yet use those waning wits to pull himself together before it was too late? Okay, Mrs. Hansen, but it’s been too late for years—and I’m still whole. For instance:

  The pressure that weighed upon him, the feeling that someone stood behind him, spurred him also to gather his thoughts and map out his plan. What he did he’d have to do quickly. Speed was what counted today. He got up from the table and went down the hall to see how the land lay.

  He stuck his head in the living room and said “Good morning.” Holy Love was probably thinking the worst (he and Helen had spent the night together) because she replied Good-morning without calling him by name or
without looking up from her dusting. He went to the bathroom and, in passing, tried the door to the closet in the hall. It was locked.

  He went into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub. Helen had seen to it, of course, that the hall-closet was safely locked before she went to work. She never had any great supply on hand but one bottle would have been enough. There was a key to that lock somewhere about the place but where? Maybe Holy Love had it or knew where it was. He didn’t feel like facing her again but he could call. He stood up, looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, and called out “Holy? Would you open the hall-closet for me, please?” His heart sank at the sight of his eye.

  “Sorry, Mist’ Birnam,” she said from the other room, “I don’t have no key.”

  He pretended not to have heard. “I left something in there last night, and I need it.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have no key.”

  She was a liar, of course, but what could he do about it? He felt himself begin to sway and he hung onto the washbowl. Well, now he could only go back to the bedroom, try to dress, and wait his chance. If Holy Love should produce a key from her apron-pocket and open that closet door behind his back, God help her. God help him!

  He pulled on his socks and his shirt and pants and then lay back on the bed. He had begun to breathe hard again and he felt a rising excitement grow in him, an excitement he couldn’t control or understand. Probably physical. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the heavy breathing. He had to be calm in order to get out of here and on to what he was about. He thought deliberately of his objective and named it to himself: He must get back into that bed of his, his own bed at home, before Wick returned.