The Order of Death

by Hugh Fleetwood

  He thought about Bob more and more, and on the morning of the seventh day, when he awoke with the green-brown carpet tickling his nostrils, and the grey dawn light making the living room soft and flabby and suffocating, he couldn’t bear it any more. He had, he told himself, to know why Bob had pitied him. He had to. And as only Lenore might know—because Bob, possibly had spoken to her about him—he decided to call her.

  He decided to call her as he lay on the floor of the dawn grey living room; but by the time he had got up, showered, shaved, and made himself some coffee, he wasn’t so sure. And by the time Smith—who slept in the corridor—had got up, said his usual ‘hi, good morning’, and wandered, as if he owned the place, into the kitchen, he had almost definitely decided not to.

  If only, he thought, he could recapture the strength that had been taken from him; if only he could regain his dream intact….

  He said, ‘You know who Bob was married to?’

  ‘No.’ Smith smiled, as if, there never having been an announce­ment of the impending marriage in the social column of the Sunday Times, he couldn’t possibly have known. ‘Although,’ he went on, ‘he did say something when he burst into the bath­room last week. But I was too shocked, too—I didn’t know what was going on—to really understand. I’ve been meaning to ask you, but I forgot. Something about a letter.’

  Fred nodded. ‘There were some articles about the police once in some magazine, written by a woman called Lenore Morris. You wrote her a letter which she never replied to. Your grand­mother told me.’

  ‘And she—’ what wonders there were in social life, Smith’s eyes seemed to say, ‘was married to that Bob?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well!’ Smith smiled again—with just a trace of embarrass­ment. ‘It’s a small world, isn’t it?’

  Fred shrugged.

  ‘And she saw about my disappearance in the paper, and your friend put two and two together.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Smith said, ‘that he said anything to her? About me?’

  ‘No. I’m sure he didn’t.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘You read her articles.’

  ‘Yes. They impressed me at the time.’ A casual laugh. ‘I guess I might find them rather superficial now. I mean—I’ve rather gone beyond her, haven’t I? I can just picture her though. I bet she’s small and sharp and awfully—’ he snapped his fingers. ‘And probably deep down has wild erotic dreams about being screwed or tortured by cops, which she tells to all her friends, who think she’s funny, and admire her for her frankness, but which she can’t quite make a joke of to herself, and so she compromised and married that lemon and kidded herself she loved him for his integrity.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Fred said. He felt slightly shocked. ‘That’s you you’re talking about, not Lenore.’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry sir,’ Smith mocked. ‘I didn’t realize.’

  He mustn’t get angry, Fred told himself. He mustn’t. He must accept everything. He murmured, ‘I was thinking of going to see her.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Smith said, suddenly serious. ‘If you go see her you’ll give yourself away.’

  ‘No I won’t.’

  ‘Yes you would. I told you. You’ve changed. Something’s happened to you. I bet you’re just longing to go and cry on her shoulder and tell her you killed her husband, and ask for her forgiveness.’

  ‘No,’ Fred murmured.

  ‘Then why?’ How arrogant the boy was; how cold those watery eyes that had always seemed so weak….

  ‘Because—’ he stopped. How could he say, ‘because I want to know why Bob pitied me’. How could he say it even to himself? He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess I just want to see if she’s all right. Tell her I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For Bob’s being dead.’ He bowed his head. ‘But maybe you’re right. It’s better not to go.’

  ‘You’ll give yourself away if you do.’ Smith turned on the coffee grinder, as if to make his point. ‘You really have changed you know. You’re falling to pieces.’

  Fred looked at the white monkey hand holding the dark plastic grinder. He muttered, ‘Well that’s what you came back to see, isn’t it? I mean—as well.’

  Smith turned off the grinder. ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think so. Not really. I really was just scared, and coming back here was sort of instinctive.’

  Fred wandered back into the living room, and looked out of the window at the park. It was, visibly, spring now. But how right he had been to think that spring would never come through the glass, never come into the apartment or his life. It was like looking at a photograph. And how much he had changed to care about such things…. He turned away, and called to Smith, ‘I think I’m going out, anyway. I guess it’s safe. I think I’ll go to Brooklyn and check if there’s any mail.’

  Smith came to the door of the living room, and looked at him. He was like a father considering whether to give a child per­mission to go out. Fred waited apprehensively, knowing that if Smith said no, he wouldn’t disobey him. But the boy, after having looked at him long enough, and with just the right degree of contempt, shrugged. ‘I guess you can,’ he said.

  *

  How warm it was! How soft the wind! How gentle and peaceful and lovely! It was like a poet’s description of spring. And, Fred thought, as he walked slowly towards the subway, how temporary the massive buildings around him now seemed, that only a week or so ago had seemed so solidly, so monument­ally set. How temporary, and fragile, and almost touchingly tacky, as if they might, at any moment, be blown away, like tents laid out in rows on sand.

  And then, as he walked, he half closed his eyes, and imagined that he was walking down the island as it had been, not very long before; a slim, silent strip of land uninhabited except by the occasional Indian and the quietly grazing bison. Had there been bison on Manhattan, he wondered…. He could almost see it. The green grass, the smoke slowly drifting up into the white and blue sky, drifting out towards the sea…. He could see it. It was so. And all these buildings—no. They were not buildings. They were merely tents. Tents laid down by nomads who, quite soon, would pull them up and move on, somewhere else. And then the quiet would be disturbed only by the crying of the seagulls, wheeling in from the empty, shipless Atlantic….

  How very beautiful it was! And yet, Fred told himself, open­ing his eyes again wide and looking at the cars, and the side­walk, and the uniformed doormen hovering about near the awnings, how sad it was, too. How sad that he could only look, and imagine, and not participate. How sad that only now could he feel that the world around him was not something to be mastered, conquered, and beaten back, but something to be lived with, and through—like an ocean of seemingly chaotic currents, in which one had to live within the general drift and pull and pattern of the waves, but in which it was also possible to swim, as it were, one’s own strokes. How sad that only now, now that he was dead, he should become aware of life….

  This sadness, and the feeling of being dead, stayed with him all the time he was on the subway, and hit him with even greater force when, with two letters in his hand that he had taken from his mail-box, he opened the door of his apartment—his real apartment, it suddenly struck him as being. Before, only the apartment on Central Park West had seemed real, but now— oh, he suddenly loved this place. This long thin living room with its bare boards, pale grubby green walls, and odd ugly furniture that he had picked up in the street. This small, peeling bedroom with its mattress lying on the floor on an old worn rug. This tiny, hideous kitchen, painted orange and green and blue by the former tenants, with its old stained sink and stove that had only been cleaned once or twice, and where, at night, roaches grazed. Why had he never, since he had taken this place when Helen had left him, thought of this as home? Why had he never tried to make this into a place where he could live, and relax, and walk around with his shoes off, or sit down with a can of beer and watch the television? Wh
at was wrong with it? Sure, the build­ing was shabby, but it too had a view of a park—a view he had never looked at, of a park he had never walked in—and it too provided him with all he needed; a roof over his head, a place to sleep, and a place to wash and cook in. What else did he need? What else had he ever needed? Oh why had he had that dream? Why—but it was no use asking why now. It was too late. He had had his dream, and it had been with him too long— all his life perhaps—to be shaken off now. It had too long a history of cold, of corruption, of death, to be discarded. The glacier had wrought too much damage to the land. It had, the great, frozen, unstoppable thing, ripped too deeply through the earth. Now all that was left him was an empty apartment, and a mad boy, and dust.

  If only, Fred thought, as he sat heavily down on the edge of his grey unmade mattress, he could have gone to see Lenore— or maybe just anyone—and talk. If only he could talk to someone as he had talked to Bob that day in the bar on Avenue B. But Smith had said no, and Smith, now, for as long as it lasted, was leading the game. And the boy had been right of course. If he had gone to Lenore, he probably would have broken down, and told her what he had done. Sooner or later. He would have told her everything. And in spite of the change he had felt come over him, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to go to prison. He didn’t want to be tried, and condemned, and locked up. He just wanted to be left alone with the consciousness of his own death; and to hope that at the end, while he would never see the ruined land bloom, that very awareness of what might have been might give the dust in his mouth at least the taste of life.

  But he would have liked to talk to someone….

  He opened the first of his two letters and threw it away with only a glance; it was some sort of circular. But when he opened the second letter, he started to tremble and, involuntarily, to smile. There was, perhaps, some hope! There was, perhaps, some chance of his regaining some share, some tiny share, in the real, living world. Because he saw that the letter started, ‘Dear Fred, I have to talk to you’, and ended with the signature of Lenore.

  What came in between read: ‘I came up to find you—I heard you were sick—but no one answered the door. I hope you aren’t dead.’ (There was a word heavily crossed out in ink after ‘dead’. It looked like ‘too’.) ‘I have to talk to you about Bob. I have suddenly realized after a relationship of almost four years, and a marriage of a year and half, that I didn’t know him. And I have to. I have to find out, so that I can get some sort of order and sense back into my existence and fix our relationship in its proper context. If I don’t, I’m never going to get over—not his death; I guess I’ll never get over that—but his life, and our life together. It’ll torment me, disturb me forever. You might think it strange that I ask you, but it was you who introduced us, and I know that for some reason you played a significant part in Bob’s life. I can’t think what, or how, or why, but you did— and I must know. Please, as soon as you get this, call me. I shall be at home. I’m trying, while I can still remember the exact texture of Bob’s skin, the exact smell of him as he slept, the exact way he moved his lips when he spoke, the exact way he stood when he was happy, mad, serious, silly, to write every­thing down; to see if I can find out what I didn’t know by recreating the appearance—both exterior and interior—of Bob. I want to batter my soul with pain as if it were an atom, and when it explodes, hope that the energy it creates will give me the power to possess entirely after Bob’s death what I never possessed entirely during his life—and thereby let Bob live for­ever, and meaningfully, with a purpose, a sense, in me. And that’s the real thing that bothers me, I think. Not only is Bob’s death meaningless to me still, but, at the moment, so is his life, and our marriage. And I can’t let four great, happy years of my life be meaningless. I must recreate Bob whole, and therefore make me whole. And to do this I must know what I have a feeling only you can tell me. I have dreamed about you every night since Bob died, and you’re like a great dark presence stand­ing between him and me. Please get in touch with me as soon as you can. I’m sorry I didn’t say all this to you when you called, but I couldn’t think then, and besides, it hadn’t really hit me. I thought I’d see you at the funeral and speak to you then, but that was when I heard you were sick. I hope you’re better now.’

  Fred read the letter through twice, and then put it down on the bed beside him, and simply stared at it. He thought that if he had received such a letter ten days ago, he would have laughed with derision, and torn it up; told himself that only someone like Lenore would want to make copy out of her hus­band’s death, and only be preoccupied with her own reaction to that death, and not really spare a thought or a regret for the man himself. But now—though the letter did still reek of the Lenore he had always despised—he felt warmed by it, touched by it, and grateful for it. Even the slickness of it, the—he couldn’t help feeling—shallowness of it, and, at one point—‘to batter my soul with pain’—the downright falseness of it, only seemed to make the letter as a whole more genuine, more desperate, more truly a cry of grief; a cry made more tragic by the fact that Lenore, with all her literary training and background, was in­capable of expressing it. No—the words were what they were, but the feeling behind them—that was genuine. He was sure. It had to be. Oh let it be, he whispered silently to himself.

  And then, putting Smith, and the apartment, and all that had happened and was happening still out of his mind, and thinking only that perhaps he did still, after all, have a chance of life, he went to the telephone and dialled Lenore’s number.

  ‘Yes,’ Lenore said.

  ‘Hi. It’s Fred.’

  ‘Hi.’ She sounded, Fred thought, as if she couldn’t think why in the world he was calling. And, somehow, he was glad of this attitude. It was like having his face washed with an astringent. It woke him up. It made him attentive.

  ‘I got your letter,’ he went on. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called before, but I only just got home. I’ve got a mild attack of hepatitis, and I went to stay with my sister for a week.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you should,’ Fred said—and felt pleased with himself for saying. It was the sort of retort Lenore herself would have made. ‘The doctor told me I should stay in bed for a month, but I got bored. And I’m feeling better now. I feel tired the whole time, and I’m only eating boiled rice, but—you know. I’ve never been sick in my life before, and I’m not aiming to start now.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Lenore was waiting for him to get on to—or get back to—the subject of the letter. But he wasn’t about to. It was she who had asked him to call. He waited.

  ‘Fred?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’

  There was another long pause. Then: ‘Well, when can I see you?’

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  ‘I guess you couldn’t come here, could you? I know I should come and see you if you’re sick, but I don’t like to go out unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

  Did she not believe he was sick, Fred wondered, or did she simply believe that her sensibility was more delicate than his health—however sick he was.

  He said, ‘I guess I can make it to the Village.’

  ‘Maybe you should take a cab,’ Lenore said grandly.

  Was she, Fred wanted to ask, planning to reimburse him for the fare, and put it down to research expenses?

  He said, ‘Yeah, I probably will.’

  ‘When will you be here?’

  ‘I’ll come right away.’

  *

  He went right away; and it was only when he was in the cab that he realized that not only had he not thought about the possibility of being watched, or even arrested, as he went in and out of his apartment, but also that, when he had agreed to go over to Lenore’s, he hadn’t for an instant worried about the danger of giving himself away to her. And he hadn’t, he thought, simply because it was she who had asked to see him, who had called him to her. It was she who wanted something
from him. And as long as she didn’t know that he, too, wanted something from her—then he was safe, and in no danger. What was more, he told himself, he intended to stay out of danger. Because now that he felt that he did have a chance of life, he was more than ever determined not to jeopardize that chance, or risk spend­ing the life he might finally achieve in a prison cell.

  It would be perfect, he thought, if Smith would get bored with him, and would forget that he had ever met him, and go tell someone else that he was the cop-killer. That he had killed them all, including Bob. It would be so, so perfect…. And then he, Fred O’Connor, would quit the police, sell the apartment on Central Park West, and—go away. Leave New York. Even leave America, maybe. Perhaps he would go to Europe. Or even further away. To India perhaps. To do what? Look after starving refugees? No, probably not. More likely just settle down some­where and work with his hands—become a carpenter or some­thing—and marry some woman who had survived an ice-age herself, and understood his scars—or one who was warm and temperate enough to coax some buds out of the shattered earth. Yes…. And then they might have some children. He would like children…. Children he could bring up to be free, and happy. Children he could love. Children he would never lecture to; never, ever. Unless, he thought, he decided to warn them of the dangers, of the mortal dangers, of committing themselves to dreams; to cold, dead dreams….

  And then, finally, he realized that just by getting into a taxi and giving the driver Lenore’s address, he had found out what he wanted to know. He realized that Lenore didn’t have to tell him anything; or rather, had told him everything just by asking him to come. He realized, at last, what Bob—unconsciously maybe, instinctively maybe, but certainly, for him, fatally, had pitied him for….