Bradbury, Ray - SSC 21

by Long After Midnight (v1. 1)

  The old man grew silent and drank his drink.

  "Grand-da," said Tom, at last, almost like a child crept in for penalties and forgiveness of a sin as yet unnamed, "do I worry you?"

  "No." Then the old man added, "But what life will do with you, how you may be treated, good or ill—I sit up late with that."

  The old man sat The young man lay wide-eyed watching him and later said, as if reading thoughts:

  "Grandfather, I am happy."

  The old man leaned forward.

  "Are you, boy?"

  "I have never been so happy in my life, sir."

  "Yes?" The old man looked through the dim air of the room, at the young face. "I see that. But will you stay happy, Tom?"

  "Does anyone ever stay happy, Grandfather? Nothing lasts, does it?"

  "Shut up! Your grandma and me, that lasted!"

  "No. It wasn't all the same, was it? The first years were one thing, the last years another."

  The old man put his hand over his own mouth and then massaged his face, closing his eyes.

  "God, yes, you're right. There are two, no, three, no, four lives, for each of us. Not one of them lasts, it's sure. But the thought of them does. And out of the four or five or a dozen lives you live, one is special. I remember, once .. ."

  The old man's voice faltered.

  The young man said, "Once, Grandpa?" The old man's eyes fixed somewhere to a horizon of the Past. He did not speak to the room or to Tom or to anyone. He didn't even seem to be speaking to himself.

  "Oh, it was a long time ago. When I first came in this room tonight, for no reason, strange, the memory was there. I ran back down along the shoreline of Galway to that week .. ." "What week, when?''

  "My twelfth birthday fell that week in summer, think of it! Victoria still queen and me in a turf-hut out by Galway strolling the shore for food to be picked up from the tides, and the weather so sweet you almost turned sad with the taste of it, for you knew it would soon go away.

  "And in the middle of the great fair weather along the road by the shore one noon came this tinker's caravan carrying their dark gypsy people to set up camp by the sea.

  "There was a mother, a father, and a girl in that caravan, and this boy who came running down by the sea alone, perhaps in need of company, for there I was with nothing to do, and in need of strangers myself.

  "Here he came running. And I shall not forget my first sight of him from that day till they drop me in the earth. He—

  "Ah God, I'm a failure with words! Stop everything. I must go further back.

  "A circus came to Dublin. I visited the sideshows of pinheads and dwarfs and terrible small midgets and fat women dnd skeleton men. Seeing a crowd about one last exhibit, I thought this must be the most horrible of all. I edged over to look at this final terror! And what did I see? The crowd was drawn to nothing more nor less than: a little girl of some six years, so fair, so beautiful, so cream-white of cheek, so blue of eye, so golden of hair, so quiet in her manner that in the midst of this fleshy holocaust she called attention. By saying nothing her shout of beauty stopped the show. All had to come to her to get well again. For it was a sick menagerie and she the only sweet lovely Doc about to give us back life.

  "Well, that girl in the sideshow was as wonderful a surprise as this boy come running down the beach like a young horse.

  "He was not dark like his parents.

  "His hair was all gold curls and bits of sun. He was cut out of bronze by the light, and what wasn't bronze was copper. Impossible, but it seemed that this boy of twelve, like myself, had been born on that very day, he looked that new and fresh. And in his face were these bright brown eyes, the eyes of an animal that has run a long way, pursued, along the shorelines of the world.

  "He pulled up and the first thing he said to me was laughter. He was glad to be alive, and announced that by the sound he made. I must have laughed in turn, for his spirit was catching. He shoved out his brown hand. I hesitated. He gestured impatiently and grabbed my hand.

  "My God, after all these years I remembered what we said: 'Isn't it funny?' he said.

  "I didn't ask what was funny. I knew. He said his name was Jo. I said my name was Tim, And there we were, two boys on the beach and the universe a good rare joke between us.

  "He looked at me with his great round full copper eyes, and laughed out his breath and I thought: He has chewed hay! his breath smells of grass; and suddenly I was giddy. The smell stunned me. Jesus God, I thought, reeling, I'm drunk, and why? I've nipped Dad's booze, but God, what's this? Drunk by noon, hit by the sun, giddy from what? the sweet mash caught in a strange boy's teeth? No, no!

  "Then Jo looked straight at me and said, "There isn't much time.'

  " 'Much time?'” I asked.

  "'Why,' said Jo, 'for us to be friends. We are, aren't we?'

  "He breathed the smell of mown fields upon me.

  "Jesus God, I wanted to cry, Yes! And almost fell down, but staggered back as if he had hit me a friend's hit And my mouth opened and shut and I said, 'Why is there so little time?'

  " 'Because,' said Jo, 'we'll only be here six days, seven at the most, then on down and around Eire. I'll never see you again in my life. So we'll just have to pack a lot of things in a few days, won't we, Tim?'

  " 'Six days? That's no time at all!' I protested, and wondered why I found myself suddenly destroyed, left destitute on the shore. A thing had not begun, but already I sorrowed after its death.

  " 'A day here, a week there, a month somewhere else,' said Jo. 'I must live very quickly, Tim. I have no friends that last. Only what I remember. So, wherever I go, I say to my new friends, quick, do this, do that, let us make many happenings, a long list, so you will remember me when I am gone, and I you, and say: that was a friend. So, let's begin. There!'

  "And Jo tagged me and ran.

  "I ran after him, laughing, for wasn't it silly, me headlong after a stranger boy unknown five minutes before? We must've run a mile down that long summer beach before he let me catch him. I thought I might pummel him for making me run so far for nothing, for something, for God knew what! But when we tumbled to earth and I pinned him down, all he did was spring his breath in one gasp up at me, one breath, and I leaped back and shook my head and sat staring at him, as if I'd plunged wet hands in an open electric socket He laughed to see me fall away, to see me scurry and sit in wonder. 'O, Tim,' he said, 'we shall be friends.'

  "You know the dread long cold weather, most months, of Ireland? Well, this week of my twelfth birthday, it was summer each day and every day for the seven days named by Jo as the limit which would be no more days. We walked the shore, and that's all there was, the simple thing of us upon the shore, and building castles or climbing hills to fight wars among the mounds. We found an old round tower and yelled up and down from it. But mostly it was walking, our arms around each other like twins born in a triangle, never cut free by knife or lightning. I inhaled, he exhaled. Then he breathed and I was the sweet chorus. We talked, far through the nights on the sand, until our parents came seeking the lost who had found they knew not what. Lured home, I slept beside him, or him me, and talked and laughed, Jesus, laughed, till dawn. Then out again we roared until the earth swung up to hit our backs. We found ourselves laid out with sweet hilarity, eyes tight, gripped to each other's shaking, and the laugh jumped free like one silver trout following another. God, I bathed in his laughter as he bathed in mine, until we were weak as if love had put us to the slaughter and exhaustions. We panted then like pups in hot summer, empty of laughing, and sleepy with friendship. And the weather for that week was blue and gold, no clouds, no rain, and a wind that smelled of apples, but no, only that boy's wild breath.

  "It crossed my mind, long after, if ever an old man could bathe again in that summer fount, the wild spout of breathing that sprang from his nostrils and gasped from his mouth, why one might peel off a score of years, one would be young, how might the flesh resist?

  "But the laughter is gone and
the boy gone into a man lost somewhere in the world, and here I am two lifetimes later, speaking of it for the first time. For who was there to tell? From my twelfth birthday week, and the gift of friendship, to this, who might I tell of that shore and that summer and the two of us walking all tangled in our arms and lives and life as perfect as the letter o, a damned great circle of rare weather, lovely talk, and us certain we'd live forever, never die, and be good friends.

  "And at the end of the week, he left. "He was wise for his years. He didn't say good-bye. All of a sudden, the tinker's cart was gone.

  "I shouted along the shore. A long way off, I saw the caravan go over a hill. But then his wisdom spoke to me. Don't catch. Let go. Weep now, my own wisdom said. And I wept.

  "I wept for three days and on the fourth grew very still. I did not go down to the shore again for many months. And in all the years that have passed, never have I known such a thing again. I have had a good life, a fine wife, good children, and you, boy, Tom, you. But as sure as I sit here, never after that was I so agonized, mad, and crazy wild. Never did drink make me as drunk. Never did I cry so hard again. Why, Tom? Why do I say this, and what was it? Back so far in innocence, back in the time when I had nobody, and knew nothing. How is it I remember him when all else slips away? When often I cannot remember your dear grandmother's face, God forgive me, why does his face come back on the shore by the sea? Why do I see us fall again and the earth reach up to take the wild young horses driven mad by too much sweet grass in a line of days that never end?"

  The old man grew silent. After a moment, he added, "The better part of wisdom, they say, is what's left unsaid. I'll say no more. I don't even know why I've said all this"

  Tom lay in the dark. "I know."

  "Do you, lad?" asked the old man. "Well, tell me. Someday."

  "Someday," said Tom. "I will."

  They listened to the rain touch at the windows.

  "Are you happy, Tom?"

  "You asked that before, sir."

  "I ask again. Are you happy?"

  "Yes."

  Silence.

  "Is it summertime on the shore, Tom? Is it the magic seven days? Are you drunk?"

  Tom did not answer for a long while, and then said nothing but, "Grand-da," and then moved his head once in a nod.

  The old man lay in the chair. He might have said, this will pass. He might have said, it will not last. He might have said many things. Instead he said, "Tom?"

  "Sir?"

  "Ah Jesus!" shouted the old man suddenly. "Christ, God Almighty! Damn it to hell!" Then the old man stopped and his breathing grew quiet. "There. If s a maniac night. I had to let out one last yell, I just had to, boy."

  And at last they slept, with the rain falling fast.

  With the first light of dawn, the old man dressed with careful quietness, picked up his valise, and bent to touch the sleeping young man's cheek with the palm of one hand.

  "Tom, good-bye," he whispered.

  Moving down the dim stairwell toward the steadily beating rain, he found Tom's friend waiting at the foot of the stairs.

  "Frank! You haven't been down here all night?"

  "No, no, Mr. Kelly," said Frank, quickly. "I stayed at a friend's."

  The old man turned to look up the dark stairwell as if he could see the room and Tom in it warm asleep.

  "Gah . . . !" Something almost a growl stirred in his throat and subsided. He shifted uneasily and looked back down at the dawn kindled on this young man's face, this one who had painted a picture that hung above the fireplace in the room above.

  "The damn night is over," said the old man. "So if you'll just stand aside—"

  "Sir."

  The old man took one step down and burst out:

  "Listen! If you hurt Tom, in any way ever, why, Jesus, I'll break you across my knee! You hear?"

  Frank held out his hand. "Don't worry."

  The old man looked at the hand as if he had never seen one before. He sighed. •

  "Ah, damn it to hell, Frank, Tom's friend, so young you're destruction to the eyes. Get away!"

  They shook hands.

  "Jesus, that's a hard grip," said the old man, surprised.

  Then he was gone, as if the rain had hustled him off in its own multitudinous running.

  The young man shut the upstairs door and stood for a moment looking at the figure on the bed and at last went over and as if by instinct put his hand down to the exact same spot where the old man had printed his hand in farewell not five minutes before. He touched the summer cheek.

  In his sleep, Tom smiled the smile of his father's father, and called the old man, deep in a dream, by name.

  He called him twice.

  And then he slept quietly.

  Darling Adolf

  They were waiting for him to come out. He was sitting inside the little Bavarian caf6 with a view of the mountains, drinking beer, and he had been in there since noon and it was now two-thirty, a long lunch, and much beer, and they could see by the way he held his head and laughed and lifted one more stein with the suds fluffing in the spring breeze that he was in a grand humor now, and at the table with him the two other men were doing their best to keep up, but had fallen long behind.

  On occasion their voices drifted on the wind, and then the small crowd waiting out in the parking lot leaned to hear. What was he saying? and now what?

  "He just said the shooting was going well."

  "What, where?!"

  "Fool. The film, the film is shooting well."

  "Is that the director sitting with him?"

  "Yes. And the other unhappy one is the producer."

  "He doesn't look like a producer."

  "No wonder! He's had his nose changed."

  "And him, doesn't he look real?"

  "To the hair and the teeth."

  And again everyone leaned to look in at the three men, at the man who didn't look like a producer, at the sheepish director who kept glancing out at the crowd and slouching down with his head between his shoulders, shutting his eyes, and the man between them, the man in the uniform with the swastika on his arm, and the fine military cap put on the table beside the almost-untouched food, for he was talking, no, making a speech.

  "That's the Fuhrer, all right!"

  "God in heaven, it's as if no time had passed. I don't believe this is 1973. Suddenly it's 1934 again, when first I saw him."

  "Where?"

  "The Nuremberg Rally, the stadium, that was the autumn, yes, and I was thirteen and part of the Youth and one hundred thousand soldiers and young men in that big place that late afternoon before the torches were lit. So many bands, so many flags, so much heartbeat, yes, I tell you, I could hear one hundred thousand hearts banging away, we were all so in love, he had come down out of the clouds. The gods had sent him, we knew, and the time of waiting was over, from here on we could act, there was nothing he couldn't help us to do."

  "I wonder how that actor in there feels, playing him?"

  "Sh, he hears you. Look, he waves. Wave back."

  "Shut up," said someone else. "They're talking again. I want to hear—"

  The crowd shut up. The men and women leaned into the soft spring wind. The voices drifted from the caf6 table.

  Beer was being poured by a maiden waitress with flushed cheeks and eyes as bright as fire.

  "More beer!" said the man with the toothbrush mustache and the hair combed forward on the left side of his brow.

  "No, thanks," said the director.

  "No, no," said the producer.

  "More beer! It's a splendid day," said Adolf. "A toast to the film, to us, to me. Drink!"

  The other two men put their hands on their glasses of beer.

  "To the film," said the producer.

  "To darling Adolf." The director's voice was flat.

  The man in the uniform stiffened.

  "I do not look upon myself—" he hesitated, "upon him as darling."

  "He was darling, all right, and you're a dol
l." The director gulped his drink. "Does anyone mind if I get drunk?"

  "To be drunk is not permitted," said Der Fiihrer.

  "Where does it say that in the script?"

  The producer kicked the director under the table.

  "How many more weeks' work do you figure we have?" asked the producer, with great politeness.

  "I figure we should finish the film," said the director, taking huge swigs, "around about the death of Hinden-burg, or the Hindenburg gasbag going down in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, which ever comes first."

  Adolf Hitler bent to his plate and began to eat rapidly, snapping at his meat and potatoes in silence.

  The producer sighed heavily. The director, nudged by this, calmed the waters. "Another three weeks should see the masterwork in the can, and us sailing home on the Titanic, there to collide with the Jewish critics and go down bravely singing 'Deutschland Uber Mies' "

  Suddenly all three were voracious and snapping and biting and chewing their food, and the spring breeze blew softly, and the crowd waited outside.

  At last, Der Fuhrer stopped, had another sip of beer, and lay back in his chair, touching his mustache with his little finger.

  "Nothing can provoke me on a day like this. The rushes last night were so beautiful. The casting for this film, ah! I find Goring to be incredible. Goebbels? Perfection!" Sunlight dazzled out of Der Fuhrer's face. "So. So, I was thinking just last night, here I am in Bavaria, me, a pure Aryan—"

  Both men flinched slightly, and waited.

  "—making a film," Hitler went on, laughing softly, "with a Jew from New York and a Jew from Hollywood. So amusing."

  "I am not amused," said the director, lightly.

  The producer shot him a glance which said: the film is not finished yet. Careful.

  "And I was thinking, wouldn't it be fun . . ." Here Der Fuhrer stopped to take a big drink, ". . . to have another ... ah ... Nuremberg Rally?"

  "You mean for the film, of course?"

  The director stared at Hitler. Hitler examined the texture of the suds in his beer.