It had been an encounter that had changed her, and this was sufficient measure. It had been neither more nor less than this. It had held for her the perfection of flawless timing and ripeness but another year, even another month, and she might have given and found less. For she forgot that she had contributed something, too. In her desperate search for realness she had demanded an absence of masks between them and perhaps this had changed Adam as well. She would never know. She had met and experienced him alone—and was still alone, as human beings must always be alone—unless they learned to contain experience, she thought, unless they allowed it to penetrate and enter like a presence into the country of their heart….
Then Stearns, too, had been real, she thought, and even in death could remain real to her if she could uncover and remember the essence of him. Recalling the slim pocket flashlight in her purse she brought it out and trained it on the book that was all that she had of him. She had forgotten how worn and used the volume was; it was a book that he must have chosen to carry with him as a private treasure. Holding it up she discovered that the pages opened by themselves to a certain section in the book. She held it up a second time, and again the book opened by itself to the same page and she saw that it contained the concluding paragraph of Emerson’s essay on Compensation. She read,
“And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding, also, after long intervals of time…The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living…and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banyan of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men…”
She gently closed the book…By the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener…She began to consider Stearns in relation to these words he must have read over and over, she began to wonder what lives he had lived before he became an agent, what calamities he must have suffered, what hells he might have endured before he met the final revolution in his life. It took something to mold a Stearns, she thought, and to her surprise she felt a peculiar closeness to him now, as if she shared with him something more than impending death.
“If I met him now,” she thought in astonishment, “I would see him—this time—as a human being.”
18
The bang of the breakfast tray on the floor awoke Melissa, and she opened her eyes, believing she would find herself at home. She had fallen asleep sitting up and she was so stiff that it pained her to move. Her concrete dungeon was cold this morning and Melissa’s head ached, but what stunned her was to discover that she was still in her cell, that not even dreams had removed her from it or exorcised the evil spell. She glanced quickly at her wristwatch and realized it was eight o’clock in the morning, that the time which had so perversely dragged last night was now streaming past her at an accelerated and unreasonable speed. “But this is my last morning on earth,” she thought with a sense of shock, and she jumped up and began looking for the pipes through which Señor Castigar would send the gas. She found them in the wall under her cot and sat down again. She realized that during the long night behind her she had extracted from this experience everything that could be squeezed from it and now she must have change or go mad. Something alien was building inside of her: this morning the cell’s narrowness was so overwhelmingly and shockingly oppressive that she felt a savage urge to push back the walls, which she could in fact touch on either side of her without moving. She shivered. Her cell was already a coffin.
“I give you until one o’clock,” he had said, and she glanced at the watch and saw that five minutes had passed. Slowly, deliberately she unstrapped the watch from her wrist, dropped it to the cement floor and ground the glass beneath the heel of her shoe. That terrible man Castigar—for the first time she saw him clearly and directed her thoughts toward him with malevolence. She remembered him saying, “You will learn soon enough that life is meaningless,” and then, “You see? Even your courage was meaningless.”
He dared to say that.
He dared.
“Damn him,” she said softly, feeling a blaze of anger at his shrewdness. “Damn you,” she said violently, and heard herself hiss through clenched teeth like an avenging witch. “Damn you to hell,” she shouted, and the impact of her shout abruptly released her from submission and to her astonishment she felt like a hollow vessel slowly filling with rage.
She stood up, staring down at her body as if she had never felt it before and it was as if the rage she felt was rising in her like floodwater, filling every artery and vein until they pulsated and flowed red with it. In awe she lifted her hands and stared at them, watching them also become instruments of rage, the fingers curling into fists and tingling with aliveness. “But this must be what it’s like to feel!” she cried in wonder. This current flowing through her, connecting her to every remote part of her self, reduced past angers to polite and tepid exercises, this was like the inner depths of a volcano slowly building into a rending eruption. And still the rage ignited her until she quivered with it and glared about for possibilities to spend it upon, for this luxurious and splendid fury had to be used or she would die.
Her eyes fell on the metal tray of food—she could kick it to the farthest corner of the cell or she could bang on the door and viciously scratch out the eyes of anyone who dared come.
Neither was enough. It was not that kind of rage, it did not want to destroy but to assert.
Her eyes went to the window high in the wall. With this rage that possessed her she wanted to tear it away, free it, break it, in her rage she felt alive enough to assail the walls with her bare hands, climb even to that thin shelf on the right wall and hurl herself five feet across the cell to the window on the left wall.
Shelf…she had not been consciously aware of any shelf before.
Stop, Melissa, she told herself. Stop. Think. Wait.
No, no, it was impossible. The ledge was no more than an architectural accident, a deviation in the wall, and it must be twelve feet above the floor. Even if she could by some superhuman effort reach it, she couldn’t possibly leap from there to the high window, which was on the opposite wall and slightly higher than the ledge.
Impossible…two men had already died here. He had said so.
Her eyes narrowed and she put her head back to scrutinize the window but from here she could see only that it was a small square opening set into the wall. It could be a window or an air duct; light came through it, and arrived in the shape of a perfect square so that presumably there were no bars or louvers. Why would they bother, after all, when the window was hopelessly beyond reach?
She turned to the right wall to look at the ledge, and then she stood on the cot to see better. On the cot…Her anger in abeyance, she looked down at the sheet of plywood and then jumped from it to examine it better. The plywood was not nailed in place; she discovered that it was only wedged tightly into metal inserts that protruded from the wall. With a feeling of awe she freed the plywood and lifted it out from the wall. If she could prop it against the side of her cell and use it as a kind of ladder, and somehow mount it, then six of the twelve feet between floor and shelf could be abridged.
If she could climb a smooth surface like plywood…if the ledge was deep enough to give both hand and toe hold…if she could hurl her body across five feet of space to catch at the window…and if the opening really was a window…
She replaced the plywood and stood on it for a wiser look at the ledge. Once it might have defined the spine of a chimney or held ornaments in a room no longer existing, or if this had once been an outside wall it might have bee
n a touch of architectural cunning to cast a shadow across an otherwise bland stucco wall. It was a set-back beginning at the center of her cell and running across the wall into the cellar beyond; from this distance she judged the shelf to be anywhere from six to eight inches in depth.
Not very deep. Deep enough perhaps to hold a flower pot but surely not deep enough to contain a body that must somehow bend knees to stand erect enough to gather momentum for a leap through space.
But she could try at least—anger was better spent than wasted. Tentatively, trembling a little at her audacity, she up-ended the plywood again and wedged it against the wall, tested it and leaned her body across it, fumbling with arms and knees for leverage to climb. But there was no conquering such a smooth and slippery surface. She went to her purse to see what tools it might contain. Its contents were meager: a pencil, a wallet, a glass swizzle stick, compact, lipstick, comb, loose change, and bills. Her passport was in the hotel safe and her travelers’ checks locked in her suitcase. What she did find was the toy flashlight with which she had read Emerson during the endless night just passed, and seating herself on the floor she removed the batteries and then the glass. Using the metal tube she gouged indentations in the plywood just deep enough to hold the toe of her shoe: four of them, like steps to the top.
Her anger was no less potent now but it was controlled, like a subterranean current feeding her vitality. Her mind was also controlled as it planned ahead with a stern efficiency. Without considering either success or failure she checked over what she might need for success. She would have to leave behind her trench coat and purse and probably her wallet as well. She removed a handful of pesetas from her wallet and rolled them into the taut left pocket of her cotton skirt. Into the right-hand pocket she slipped a few coins and Stearns’ book: the book fitted with a snugness that pleased her. She next sat down with the breakfast tray and stoically ate cold omelet and drank a cup of cold coffee.
Now she was ready to try again. She braced the sheet of plywood, setting it almost vertically against the wall, and put her foot into the first hole and then the second, and had nearly approached the top when the weight of her body drew the plywood back until it fell, carrying her with it. Gritting her teeth with determination she placed the plywood back against the wall in a slightly more diagonal position. This time she approached the top without unbalancing the plywood but reaching the third toe hold she stopped helplessly, because there was nothing to grip with her hands, they were totally useless appendages against these smooth surfaces and once she reached the top of the plywood she would be so close to the wall that her nose would touch it. The ledge would still be six feet above her, and the closeness of the wall would hurl her back.
“Damn,” she said aloud, and then it occurred to her starkly, bleakly, that to meet with any success at all she was going to have to use her body with the terrible ruthlessness of a tool, welding it to her intelligence until it obeyed her without anticipation of pain or damage. She thought with a tightening of her lips, “Very well then—did you expect this to be easy, did you expect it not to hurt?” She stepped to the top of the plywood and in the one precarious second given to her before the nearness of the wall rejected her she stood on tiptoe and touched—actually touched with her fingers—the rim of the ledge. A second later the rigid wall thrust her backward and she rolled and skidded down the plywood to the floor.
But she had touched the ledge—and if the next time she gave a small jump, as much of a jump as she could manage without her knees striking the wall, she might hang from the ledge and discover her next move.
Up she went, and with a lift of her toes grasped the ledge with ten fingers and hung there—and tears came to her eyes as she understood that what she had to do next was to pull the trunk of her body up behind her, using only the muscles of her arms and nothing more. It proved agonizing as inch by inch she dragged her body out of the space in which it hung until her elbows rested on the ledge, trembling from the strain. Now she was halfway up but uncertainty overwhelmed her because to kneel on this ledge she must lift even more of her dangling body. With panicky eyes she gauged the depth of the shelf; it was far too narrow a space in which to turn herself around. The best that the ledge could offer her was another precarious toe hold for a jump, but how could she ever stand on this ledge? Having briefly rested the outraged muscles of her arms she used them again to pull her hips to the ledge, and for just one moment she experienced the satisfaction of kneeling on the shelf, and then she attempted to sit on it, her right hip moved too abruptly, and the wall literally pushed her off the ledge. This time she fell twelve feet.
She picked herself up, her body thoroughly jarred by the fall. Up the plywood she went again, balanced precariously for a moment on its upright edge, and, with muscles screaming, pulled her body up again until her elbows rested on the ledge, hesitated a second and then pulled her body higher. This time she succeeded in negotiating her hips to the ledge without tripping over the right arm that braced her, but now, sitting on the very edge of the shelf, she saw that this was not enough either, for her hands, her shoulders and her hips got in her way each time she moved. The wall was too close, the space too narrow.
Carefully, gingerly, she experimented with possibilities for standing. She turned just a little and placed one foot along the ledge. But again her shoulders were in the way and threatening to push her from the ledge if she moved farther. She began to cry a little with frustration as she sat there, one leg dangling and one leg along the ledge for she saw that there was simply no way to pull herself out of this sitting position. The next time that she mounted the plywood she must not stop to rest at all but kneel on the ledge facing the wall, and in her attempt to stand she would have to use the same movement of her body for the jump into space before the wall hurled her back to the floor. The wall would of necessity thrust her back but she must use this thrust for a momentum up rather than down.
This time, trembling from fatigue, she lowered herself down into the cell without falling. What she was attempting was insane—she knew this—and yet a possibility had opened up for her and she could not admit defeat yet, the idea was untenable, even as her mind told her it was inevitable.
She began all over again. It held within it now all the elements of a mad choreography, she thought: the steps up to the top of the plywood, the quick leap before the plywood could fall, the hands clutching the rim of the ledge, body dragging itself up with every muscle crying out in protest, the resting of elbows on the ledge, the knee placed on the ledge and then—
“Now!” she cried silently, and as she brought one foot to the ledge she recklessly spun on the rim of the shelf and using the momentum behind her pivot hurled her body blindly through space toward the window on the opposite wall.
She struck the wall just below the window, nearly stunning herself, and then she slid down the wall to the floor, her fingers clutching the stucco as she fell and leaving traces of blood behind them. Bruised and dazed she stumbled to her feet, brushed off her skirt and angrily mounted the plywood again: up, push, drag, rest, kneel—and resisting all thoughts of her bruised body she spun and leaped again. Up and across, and this time her fingers tantalizingly brushed the base of the window sill and for just a second trembled there, until the weight of her body carried her down to the floor of the cell again.
She lay there panting, and when she lifted her head and looked up at the wall it was with hatred and revulsion, her nerves shrieking in anticipation of new pain, her body protesting new wounds. Doggedly she arose and doggedly she approached the plywood. Up, jump, pull, drag, hoist, then rest—but not too long, damn it, she whispered—and then kneel and rest again—and then—
“Now!”
Again her fingers brushed the sill, clutched and lost the sill and she dropped, sobbing, to the floor.
This time she fell on her side and lay there, all anger spent, her body bruised and raw. She had to give up now, it was absol
utely pointless to make such efforts, it had to be simpler to lie here and passively wait for the death that would come in only a few hours. It would come with a gentle hissing sound, she supposed, followed next by a drowsiness and then—really it would be quite comfortable for her—the beginnings of sleep. He really was humane, she agreed, except that of course he was counting on her fear of death to crush her first. But certainly his methods of killing were kinder than her own, it was folly to stun herself to death like this, she could not remember what she was trying to prove. There had never been any real hope of succeeding.
Wearily she lifted her hands and looked at the blood trickling down the palms, looked at the splintered nails and ripped fingers. Her body trembled from the repeated shocks of falling, her knees and elbows ached unbearably. She put her head down on the floor again, ready to surrender both will and spirit to the inevitable, hoping that if she closed her eyes she might sleep her way into death. A manic fury must have driven her, she thought drowsily, but she could no longer remember what had caused it, and now her attempts appeared so absurd to her that she did not know whether to smile or to weep. What on earth had possessed her to leap like a crazed monkey from wall to wall?
Rage had possessed her, she remembered, a rage begotten by thoughts of Señor Castigar—it all seemed very distant and inconsequential now—and then she opened her eyes, suddenly alert, as she realized that she had completely forgotten Señor Castigar. In her preoccupation, in the act of attempting to scale the unscalable, she had given not so much as a thought to Señor Castigar, or to Doctor Szym or to Stearns, or even to Adam, and this knowledge shocked her, it even frightened her so that she sat up in astonishment. She had assailed the wall of her cell because she had to, because she must, because there was nothing else to do and because it was necessary for her to try it. She had tapped a new strength, never before used.
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