October Light

by John Gardner

  So she cleaned house like a Nubian slave, though a born princess, because the money was good, so that she could live in approximately the way she wished—could buy records and books, new clothes for church, an occasional lithograph, reproductions of paintings—could keep up the noble old traditions she in fact had never known. If traditions made you safe, gave stability, identity—or at least the illusion of secure identity—she would be safe, though she knew there was no safety, finally. She’d had a friend once, a young minister. He had taken his religion seriously—had taken it to the streets, to the druggies, the drunks and small-time thieves. But it was expensive and, besides, unseemly, taking religion to the ugly and fierce; religion was community, and they preyed on community. Soon he’d found he had behind him only his beliefs, no church. His beliefs had changed. He had seemed to her once beautiful and vulnerable, the two inextricable in his character, or perhaps the beauty was the vulnerability. If she were to meet him now, she knew, she would be afraid of him.

  Still there had come no sound from the room. Strong as it was, she dismissed the intuition and opened the apartment door wide. Nothing was changed. If he’d been back while she was away, he’d left no sign. The gray-white monkscloth curtains were drawn, making the place a crypt. She opened them, then opened the window a crack to get rid of the scent of—what? Without removing her coat, as if the intuition she’d dismissed was still with her, she walked through the never-used dining room to the kitchen. There was nothing changed there either: no sign that he’d eaten or even entered the place. Yet she hesitated, troubled by an inexplicable sense that, once again, the jungle had inched closer. She caught that smell again, like escaping gas, and knew even before she checked the range that that was not where it came from. Moving quickly all at once, she went back into the dining room and opened the bathroom door. She caught her breath. On the white sink, the white Formica top beside it, there were black handprints. She shot a look behind her, but the dining room was empty. “Jesus,” Pearl whispered. There was a towel on the floor, black and horrible, and the room was full of a smell like rottenness. Worse. There were smudges of filth on the floor too, and on the bathtub and toilet. She knew now what the black stuff was, though the word escaped her. Was the creature still here. Her roommate would be at work, not reachable till five. She remembered then the telephone number in her purse. Leonard had insisted that she take it, his neighbor’s number; they knew where to get him if she needed him. “Phone up, now,” he’d said, urgent yet casual, like the boyfriend in one of those sunlit, big-city horror films. “No jive, baby. Phone up.” She felt better, as if the phone number were Leonard himself, curled up snug in her purse ready to leap out into the room with a howl of Banzai! to defend her.

  Because of the confidence the number gave her, she hurried to the bedroom, where a worse surprise awaited her. The bed, not slept in, had black stains on it, and on the carpet beside it lay a black pile of clothes. She only looked at first, steadying herself on the doorframe. Then she bent down to touch the mess, and the word suddenly popped into her mind: sewer. He’d fallen in the sewer, or someone had thrown him there, then brought him back, for some reason, and changed his clothes, or else he’d crawled back himself—or, no, hired someone to carry him—and he’d changed and returned to—wherever—without a word. Before she knew she’d do it she had slipped her gloves off and was going through his pockets, gritty outside, slimy inside. Everything was gone but a few slips of dirt blackened paper. She took them to the bathroom and held them, one by one, under the faucet. The first was a note in ink, and whatever it said went down the pipes to the darkness it came from. The second was a note in pencil. She set it on the windowledge to dry a little. The third was a sales receipt which she didn’t even finish cleaning when she saw that it was nothing. She looked again at the pencil note. The Indom (something) off mexico lost souls r.

  In the elevator she suddenly changed her mind and pressed the button that would take her up, not down. She felt unreal, a little wild, like the heroine in a scary movie. The door closed and she felt the sudden lift that would take her to the tower. The first thing she saw when the elevator opened was that the gin cupboard was ajar. It was someone else, then, she thought, and they had robbed him. Her skin prickled as it always did when she was reminded of the intruder, and she clenched her fists.

  But the black metal box was still there—though some of the gin was gone, several bottles. She lifted the box and it was heavy, the money still inside, or certainly most of it.

  More powerfully than ever, she had the feeling of things reaching out at her, misshapen, pale as a flicker of witchcraft. She held the box in her two hands. He was gone, perhaps dead, perhaps sunk to some mad depravity of drugs. Gone, in any case, abandoning the house, the sunlit world of rooftops, chimneys, the double spires in the distance. And she too was abandoned, then, who cleaned for him, who said nothing of his eccentricities, the scent of his flesh and gin, his wine and oysters.

  She thought of the telephone number in her purse. Leonard could advise her, Leonard with his kind and vulnerable eyes, his ridiculous street-talk, his darkie shuffle. He would know what to do. His very normalness would save her. But it flashed through her mind that in the big cheap building where they had lived—ten, twelve people in one apartment—Beverly Hollander had gone to the basement with Leonard More, sometimes to the roof, so people said … Her mind went blank. There were books above the gin cupboard, dark green leather bindings, The Complete Works of Chas. Dickens. A title caught her eye, The Pickwick Papers, a book she’d read, and for an instant she saw an English landscape clearly, as if she’d really been there, and a huge old lumbering carriage, old gentlemen laughing.

  She turned, looked out the window. The lines of the houses were as clean and precise as the hands of clocks, and the streets moved over the hills like well-planned arguments. She moved closer to the window, narrowing her eyes, her face prickling. It was Saturday, but there was no sign of life in the house where the herd of hippies lived. Asleep, probably—tangled together on their filthy mattresses. She hated them, drunkards and carriers of disease, yet at the thought of them lying there together like lost children, bare arms draped off the mattress-sides, no decent food, in the drawer where the silverware should be, guns and gun-parts, she felt a pang, not sorrow for them specially but for all lost lives, all wrecked souls past feeling pain.

  The metal box in her hands was warm, as if the money inside it were on fire. The street directly below her was black with new asphalt, black and warm, beautiful in the sun, like a huge sleeping serpent that meant no harm. She strained to think. She stared at the street as if waiting for the blackness to explain itself, alive in the sunlight, warm and regular, maybe deep-rooted as a desert tree, reaching down like a fist into the earth. But no—

  She would steal the money. That was what was lurking in her mind, she knew: the thought watching her, biding its time like a lion in high grass. There was enough to last her a lifetime, and in a way she had a right to it. Whether he was dead right now or not, he was a dead man. On some mad whim he’d stepped off the path of the possible, and he’d left no other heir. It would save her, unprotected as she was, alone, without any vow to keep and no one to keep to any vow.

  The sharp-lined roofs in the sunlight were like dusty jewels. Houses in the distance were as wealthy white as houses on a travel poster. A face, gray like a fish, appeared at a window in the hippie house, then vanished again as if swallowed. She remembered, for no reason—unless it was the white wisp of smoke in the distance—the scent of garbage burning. Christ was crucified in a city dump, someone had told her. In church? She saw the three crosses rising shadowy blue, out of blue-gray smoke. The small crowd coughed, moved back. Red nameless fire seeped out of mounds near the tilting, shaggy crosses. Christ’s death was an accident, someone had told her. They mistook him for a politician.

  Her eyes narrowed as if offended, and she touched her lower lip lightly with her upper teeth. She replaced the box, closed the
cupboard, and carefully drew on her gloves.

  Mr. Fiorenzi sat in his gray suit, wringing his soft hands and shaking his head. “This is terrible,” he said. “And how terrible for you! How terrible you must feel.”

  Just perceptibly, for politeness, Pearl nodded.

  “And here just a day or two ago,” Mr. Fiorenzi continued, his amazement growing, “there he sat, right where you’re sitting, more or less.” He looked at the little piece of cardboard she’d given him. “Can I keep this?” he said.

  “You can copy it, if you want,” she said. “I need it.”

  “Yes of course. Good idea!” He hunted through the papers on his desk for a pencil or pen, then opened his drawer. “Damn,” he said. He hunted on the top of the desk again and at last found a small green felt-tip. He found his notepad, ran his tongue around his lips, and began to copy the note. She looked over at the flag, the suitcase at the foot of it. She would try Mrs. Waggoner again, if she ever managed to get away from Mr. Fiorenzi. He was a kind enough man, there was no denying that; it was a pity he couldn’t be, also, a little competent.

  “There!” he said, “that’s got it.” He pushed back his chair and stood up, came around the desk, and handed her the note she’d found at Dr. Alkahest’s.

  “Thank you,” she said, and dropped the note into her coinpurse. She stood up.

  There was a gap of several pages. The novel resumed:

  … Waggoner was out but would be back in ten minutes; they’d have her return the call. Pearl waited for an hour, then gave up.

  “Lady,” the Commissioner said, “you’re wasting my time. I talked with your employer myself just three, four days ago. I grant you he’s interested in the drug problem, that much is true. Lot of people are, these days. Popular issue.” He blew out smoke and sucked for air. “But as to his being snuffed, or tied up with—” he laughed, then coughed, still laughing, then smoked again, and coughed. His face was so fat it made his eyes want to shut.

  But Pearl had waited forever to see him, had refused to go away, and though he waved toward the door, coughing too hard to be able to dismiss her, she sat tight, stiffly erect in her chair, knees clamped together, brown purse in her lap. As if for help, she stared at the collection on the gray-green wall behind him. She opened the purse then and drew out the clip of paper she’d found. He merely looked at it, not reaching for it, forcing her to rise partly out of her chair to hand it to him. Racist, she thought, and felt better.

  “Look here,” he said, “got no time for this.” He glanced at the paper, dismissed it.

  “Read it,” she said.

  He scowled, a man to whom respect was due. But he read it, then jerked it closer and read it again. He reached for the telephone and dialed a number, at the same time calling to the man in the reception room. “Sergeant Mawkin!”

  “Yes sir?” the man said, behind her.

  “Hold this woman, and get me State Narcotics.”

  “What charge, sir?” Mawkin said.

  “Suspicion,” he said. He looked cross-eyed into the telephone receiver. “Hello? Hello?”

  “Suspicion of what?”

  “Murder!” the Commissioner squealed, “Murder One!—And just between you and me, it’s drug related.”

  The Commissioner, though not a soft-hearted man, was competent.

  She was half out of her chair, reaching toward his desk. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

  “Lady, you come in here with this cockamamie story about a citizen’s duty and—hee hee!—” His eyes crossed again, snapping back to the telephone receiver. “Hello, Governor?” He sucked in air, blew it out again, leaned back.

  ~ ~ ~

  13

  HOSANNAH! GLORY TO THE HIGHEST!

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” Dr. Alkahest said. “Whatever you were doing before I arrived, go right ahead with it!” He was so excited he could hardly sit still. The whole volcano basin was filled with potsmoke like a bowl of heaven’s grace. He looked around him, twitching, dead knees jerking. Part of the group stood over by the cave-mouth, holding their clothes up in front of them. “Go ahead!” he said, waving, giggling. “Go right ahead! Feel Free!” Handsome young men, a beautiful young maiden …

  Was it possible he’d arrived too late, missed all the fucking? But they were young, yes, wonderful! Surely … “I’m here to buy your shit,” he cried out.

  The bearded black man handed the machine gun to the brown-haired man and went to the flat rock near the fire to snatch up his clothes.

  “Who knows you came?” he demanded.

  “Not a soul!” Dr. Alkahest said, leaning forward in his chair. “Nobody but the old Negro gentleman who brought me. An old fisherman, he told me. Great silver, woolly head of hair. He’s been fishing these waters since nineteen hundred and five.” He chuckled. “He’s nobody’s fool, I can tell you. Charged me two hundred dollars.”

  “Dusky,” Santisillia whispered. Some thought teased his brain …

  There was another gap in the novel, a dozen or more pages, and Sally stared at it in dismay, reaching out toward the wicker table with her left hand for an apple exactly as Ginny, in distress, would reach for her cigarettes, or Richard, in his last years, would have reached for his glass. It didn’t matter to the old woman that she was missing the adventures of Dr. Alkahest. She disliked the character and did not believe in him—recognized him, without knowing the term, as a gothic cliché, one more version of the age-old mad scientist, here put to use for some satirical purpose which she grasped only dimly and felt no sympathy with. But she did feel concern about Dr. Alkahest’s cleaning woman, Pearl. Already too much of Pearl’s story had been lost to missing pages. How, she wondered, could they accuse Pearl of murder? It made no sense! Sally Abbott of course knew perfectly well that one could not ask too much of a novel, a weightless trifle even in comparison to what was happening right here in this house tonight; but her dismay refused to be driven away by reason. Did all turn out well with Pearl Wilson or didn’t it?

  As she thought back over the story, hoping to find a clue—knowing that quite possibly it would all be revealed in the part she hadn’t read yet, but knowing too that, given all those missing pages, she’d do well to be prepared to catch the slightest hint—she noticed an odd pattern. Pearl Wilson was frightened by animalness, which had gotten mixed up in her mind with movies of African savages with bones in their noses, with the jungle-like quality of her life in the ghetto, and with love. The intruder who’d broken into her apartment had become related in her mind with the white man who’d raped her, until in the end all intrusions, even the innocent words “What’s happenin?” were alarming to her. The more Sally Abbott thought about it, glancing back now through the earlier pages, making sure she was right, the more elaborate the pattern became. She doubted that the author had intended it, but that was unimportant; it was definitely there, and vaguely, only half aware that she was doing it, Sally began to muse on it. It was a kind of puzzle, tantalizing because she had a curious feeling that it had crept into the book from the real world, so that to solve it would be to know something—reach some point of wisdom she had perhaps reached already in dim intuition; otherwise why this curious feeling of distress?

  There was no one in this world, however mighty of will—her own life was proof—not capable of being robbed, or raped, or murdered, not capable of being attacked from nowhere, for no real reason, by the mindless bestiality of things—her drunken brother with his shotgun. And also there was no one not capable of slipping toward the bestial himself, as Pearl had done when she considered taking the money from Dr. Alkahest, or as the people who frightened Pearl did, stealing or breathing obscenities to some stranger on the phone. It was that—both those things—that made it terrible to be alone: one’s potential for becoming an innocent victim, and one’s potential for becoming a destroyer. One had to be a kind of mad hero, like Peter Wagner’s old uncle with the snowplow, to go it alone, and even he had been a destroyer—though not from
bestiality. Was Pearl, then, a hero?—acting all alone, by the highest code she knew, the behavior of women in movies and books, and a version of Christian righteousness? Her way of acting hadn’t saved her—unless it was yet to come. Would any heroic way of acting save her? Sally did not believe one bit in the character of the Missing Persons man or in that of the fat Police Commissioner, but she’d lived around James

  L. Page too long to have complete confidence in regulations, impersonal agencies, officials. Better for Pearl, then, to huddle safe with the ordinary people, better to have phoned Leonard, submitting to commonness, the touch of bestiality in the life she’d escaped. Why not?

  She looked hard at the crate above her bedroom door and frowned. No!, she thought. As soon say that she, Sally Page Abbott, should come out of her room and let all she had fought for be a joke at her expense and a glory to James because his violence had won! As soon say Horace had been wrong to give Richard support in his rebellion against his father! No, no, no, no siree! But if submission was wrong …

  She glanced at the page beyond the gap, took a bite from her apple, and uneasily, decided to read on.

  … life evil. What I mean—when my moment of Conversion came …” He jerked his head around, as if he were seeing something strange in the heavens. Mr. Goodman, just about to hand him the pipe, reconsidered, smoking it himself, looking up.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Alkahest cried out, pointing.

  They all had the solid impression, for an instant, that directly above them hung a huge flying saucer. It vanished. “Did you see what I saw?” they all said at once. They couldn’t believe they’d really seen it. “The pot,” they said. “It must be.” But they talked in hushed voices, awed by a whole new world of possibility.