With his marker Larry scratched “498” on the concrete-block walls of his cell, down low where no snooping fink would direct his flashlight—assuming he was privileged to possess a flashlight—looking for evidence of contraband, yet not so low that another snooping fink looking for signs of digging in the cracks of the ancient concrete floor would see it either. (He was not at all sure what constituted contraband, nor had he any evidence of his cell being searched for any reason.) Of course, 498 was practically an arbitrary figure, little more than a random guess, for he had no way of calculating how many days he had passed here before he discovered the fragment of metal on whose origin he had speculated often, sharpened to a fine point by rubbing it on the floor until it would make a mark in the wall deep enough for him to feel, even though there was no light in the cell for him to read the numbers he had scratched day after day, never free from the sinking fear that he had forgotten to scratch yesterday’s number or that he was scratching today’s for the second time. Undoubtedly there had been a period when the cell had been lit, for even now there was light in other parts of the institution—unreliable, flickering, dimming, brightening, dying, reviving light which could tease a man into relying on it, expecting it to keep on shining, only to go out without warning.
In one way, 498 was as preposterous a number as a tormented mind could have—as it might well have done in his case—conjured up. It was as out of the question for him to calculate how many days he had passed in here before he discovered the marker and scratched the first number as it would have been for Archbishop Ussher to speculate on what happened before October the whatever 4004 bc. Because the world, so far as he, Larry (who had once had a longer name and a proper name to go with it, both now only rarely remembered), was concerned, the world, the universe, the cosmos, had been tohu v’bohu, without form and void, before he had come to live in this place of dusk, agony, and unbelievable foetor.
Putting aside the indisputable fact that he and this tomb in which he existed must have been created simultaneously, 498 days was only a little more than a year and a third, and in a year and a third . . . His thought trailed off. Even if the count were exact from the moment he began using the marker—a dubious assumption indeed . . . Once again he lost his thought. The marker, oh, yes, the marker. He had no idea what it might have been before he found it—the tongue of a buckle, the tine of a fork, not a nail, no—he spent some time speculating on this; after all, it was at least as engrossing as the calculations of the learned archbishop.
He had picked it up on one of his daily excursions to the office. (He called it an office for lack of another term; perhaps it was no office after all. Examination room? Psychotherapy theater? Who knew?) It had been a lifelong habit to walk with his eyes trained downward; as a reward for all he missed in the world above knee-level he had discovered many pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, one or two paper dollars, and once a twenty-dollar bill. Among other things of doubtful value.
Would he have been better advised if instead of scratching a number for each day he had arbitrarily called the first one January 1 and so on? Cumbersome. Better to have begun with the French Revolutionary calendar. If he could remember the initial month. Nivoise?
Of course, he had no way of telling time, but his body, his metabolism, had become adjusted to the routine of the prison. If prison it were, not a hospital, mental institution, veterans’ home, experimental clinic of some kind. He wished—fleetingly—he knew. This adaptation warned him they would come for him, as they did daily, in a few minutes—what he guessed was between five and fifteen minutes from now.
Acclimated, yes. Yet there was something wrong. His eyes had never become properly habituated to the lack of light. By this time he should have developed night vision, at least to distinguishing more than just the difference between pitch dark and the looming outline of the guards, or whatever they were, who would be coming for him. Nor had he become hardened to the stench in the cell. The overwhelming stink that was made up of many other stinks blending together into one incredibly foul compound.
The excrement bucket, called for at a time he could only assume was early morning and emptied into some kind of tank on wheels in the corridor outside and returned without being washed or even rinsed. The pile of straw—wild grass?—constituting his bed, never changed or renewed. The smell of his body and his body’s sweat, distinct (was it really?) from the smell of the sores rubbed raw to form fresh pockets of pus, which periodically broke open to discharge their effluvia around him. The putridity of his rotting, ill-tanned moccasins and fur clothing, and the lingering odor of the decaying raw meat that constituted his daily meal. And of course there was the stink of confinement itself, a stink that had bitten into the stone walls like acid, the corrosive odor of fear and despair.
He waited stoically, but with the faintest undercurrent of excitement, for this was one of the three breaks in the agonizing monotony of the day. Bucket-emptying time and feeding time could hardly compare with the experience of actually leaving his cell.
Although he knew, partly through logic and partly through instinct, that he wasn’t supposed to speak aloud, he whispered, “My name is Larry . . . Larry Smith.” The memory of the name of which “Larry” was only a part had slowly eroded, since he never had the chance to speak it aloud. As for “Smith”—was his name really Smith? How could he be sure? Why should he be sure? Some other—other what?—could easily have changed names with him, run off with Larry’s distinctive last name, leaving the scuffed and worn Smith for Larry to pick up, as he had picked up his precious marker, or leave lying in the dirt as he chose. Who cared? Who could possibly care?
Four hundred and ninety-eight days. Plus. Oh, it would be nice to go on with the list beginning “My name is Larry Smith.” “I have-had?—a wife whose name is . . .” Well, did he have a wife? Was her name Lucille? Did they have two children, Sandra and George?
When the fifteen minutes were nearly up, his ears, sensitized to the perpetual silence as his eyes had refused to be sensitized to the perpetual gloom, picked up the faint whisper of moccasins in the corridor. Another riddle to add to all the unsolved puzzles: what had happened to boots and shoes? Why had one skill, one raw material been lost instead of another? The electrical system for locking the cells had evidently gone, yet the flickering lights in the office worked—erratically. But there was no plumbing, and plumbing was simpler and older than electricity. Moccasin-making was surely no more primitive than shoemaking. Or was it?
He did not have to speculate at which cell they were going to stop. He had accumulated enough evidence in 498-plus days to convince him that he alone occupied this part of the institution, if not the entire building. The whole apparatus—building, guards, administrators, spies, might exist solely to keep him in custody. Solipsism gone mad.
The susurration of the moccasins stopped. He heard the manipulation of the big, awkward padlock that now did the work of the electrically manipulated bolts. The deputy’s dead voice said, “All right.”
He had no idea what would happen if he failed to step forward at this point. Would they lay hands on him, hit him, twist his arms as they dragged him out? He had no idea because he had never disobeyed them, never considered disobeying them. Even in his most secret thoughts he did not use the wording “never yet.” He had become the ultimate nonresister.
As always, inexplicably, his night vision was better in the corridor. Was there some hidden source of light? Perhaps a wall had fallen into such disrepair, or the roof had holed to let some daylight seep through. He could discern the shape of his escort, large men with fur hoods over their heads and bulky, shapeless fur garments. Technology had deteriorated, as witness the padlock on his cell, but he was convinced from fleeting glimpses that they had cotton cloth; why furs in a temperate climate?
Docilely he went forward and stood between them. Long ago— 498-plus days ago?—he would have asked: Where are we going? Or if in an especially daring mood: Great day for a stroll, isn’t it? But he knew they would no more respond now than they had then. Almost certainly they were bound by no vow of silence, no disciplinary interdiction against all speech. He conjectured that they simply had nothing to say to him and couldn’t conceive of his having anything to say to them worth the effort of listening to.
Larry—if his name were really Larry—walked at the customary pace between them. He could have covered the route blindfold without missing a turn or stumbling into a wall. He had been led along it daily for 498 days. He had long ago added to his sparse knowledge of “them” the fact that they had neither a four-, nor a seven-, nor a ten-day work week. Unless the personnel were rotated? He was convinced—mystically?—that these men (men?) were the same who had come for him every day.
And the interview at the end of the walk from his cell followed the same predictable pattern of its 498 forerunners. Except that there was always an unspoken, impalpable suggestion that perhaps today his interrogator—inquisitor, psychotherapist, jailer, warden, judge, executioner—would choose to vary the program, if only by an intonation here, an inflection there, to make it a confrontation, an exchange, a struggle, a descent (ascent?) to the human level.
The lights flared on just as they entered the office, and, painfully blinded, he shut his eyes tightly. The glimpse he caught of the room registered in incandescent lines on his retina as an afterimage. How could these people—”they”—have so quickly lost all knowledge of what was, after all, not so complicated a craft? Quickly? But had it really been quickly? His beard had grown, grown long even. He had no way of knowing if his hair had turned gray, if his muscles had relaxed and sagged, if his hands had become puffy, his knuckles enlarged. His teeth had not loosened and dropped out, but then, he had always had good teeth. His father had bragged ... At what age? His father had had the advantage of calendars to consult; Larry hadn’t even a mirror to see how nearly his throat was coming to resemble a turkey gobbler’s.
Granted that “they” had lost the power to repair their electrical system, as the Arabs forgot how to repair the clocks their ancestors made, why was this place in darkness? “They” must have animal fats, since “they” tanned skins for footwear and wore furs, and much of the food shoved under the door seemed to be the flesh of seals or whales. Why hadn’t “they” devised candles or oil lamps? Even more pertinently, why didn’t “they” let the daylight in? Had some unbelievable catastrophe dimmed the sun? A volcanic cloud, like Krakatoa’s? Unlikely? What could be more unlikely than to find himself imprisoned? Or to put it more genteelly, confined?
As soon as the retinal afterimage faded, he opened his eyes, blinked, endeavoring to adjust to the normal dusk after the blazing flash. Ahead of him loomed the shadowy desk, the hooded figure of the official—if official he were—seated behind it. “Good day,” the passionless voice from the depths of the hood said.
Good day, never good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Not even that much of a scrap of information. Just good day, another indistinguishable one.
“Good day,” he answered. What would happen if he shouted, cursed, yelled, became intransigent, insubordinate, uncooperative, militant, physically violent? Was it possible the hooded figure didn’t know either, was waiting for his response to discover?
The hooded one was also gloved. Thin gloves, clearly, in case of a need to write or draw. What with the gloves and the hood, it was impossible to discover the color of the interrogator’s skin. For that matter, it was impossible to find out the color of his own in the eternal twilight of the institution. A liter of water a day for all purposes didn’t leave enough for washing off the long-accumulated ingrained grime. He had tried washing in urine, but the sting of it in his sores was unbearable. And even if he had managed to get rid of the dirt, would he have dared to strip off his prison jacket to inspect the underside of his arms in the presence of the warden—assuming the light was conveniently on? No one had ever told him any of the rules regulating the conduct of inmates; perhaps there were none, but if there were, written or unwritten, surely “Do nothing to irritate those in charge” must be fundamental. He had a feeling—intuition? hope for a less vulnerable status?—that he was a caucasian, but his fingers in his long hair gave him no certainty. His hair seemed wavy; many blacks with an admixture of “white” blood had wavy hair. Was his nose broad, nostrils round? He had no way of telling, and if he had, would it mean anything irrefutable? His ears were small, but this was debatable evidence. Was a long, tangled, tightly curled beard Caucasian? Perhaps, perhaps not.
As he had been, ever since the first day in his cell, he was struck by the utter absence of sound. Beyond the quiet padding of his guards’ moccasins on the concrete floor when they came for him, the creak of the honey cart’s wheels, and the noise of his own movements, the place was utterly silent. Terrifyingly silent. Prisoners (patients?) didn’t shout for guards (attendants?), rattle something (what? who had anything to rattle?) against the bars of cells; no one screamed in rage or anguish. There was no roar of planes overhead, or of cars outside the walls. Very well, this culture had no cars. But horses (donkeys, camels, oxen) made noises of their own, carts (wagons, vans, drags, buggies) creaked and clanked, squeaked and squealed. No typewriters clacked, no pens scratched, no one drank midmorning coffee with smacks or satisfied grunts, munched dry crackers, guzzled Cokes, belched, farted, blew their noses. If chunks of broken concrete were dislodged, they fell noiselessly, became dust before they landed; if rats, or mice scurried out of holes, their nails scratched silently; if an institutionally sanctioned cat pounced on and devoured them, they died without squealing, and their captors did not purr.
“Do you have something to tell me?”
As always, he struggled to understand what lay behind this question. “What do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to confess to crimes? Whatever they are, I’ll admit to them. Any and all of them. I’ll confess freely. Murder, robbery, rape, mayhem, kidnapping, embezzlement, blackmail, commingling, espionage, compurgation, conspiracy, forgery, slander, incest, perjury, bribery, extortion, arson—anything you want. I’ll give you details, name accomplices, expose plots. Swear I know anyone you like was implicated in whatever you want. I’ll write out confessions, repent in open court, on the scaffold, beg for the harshest penalty—won’t even ask for a trial—if you’ll just tell me what you want. I beg you, I beg you.”
There was a heavy silence in the already silent room. In the same level, dead tones, the hooded figure said (regretfully?—surely not), “You have nothing to say to me.”
Recklessly Larry shouted, “But I have, I have. I want to know where I am and why I’m kept here. When will I be tried, and what is the charge? I demand to know.” There was no answer. In the stillness he could hear his own breathing, but no one else’s. “At least tell me if I’m charged with a political offense.”
Again there was no answer.
“Oh, you can say there’s no difference. That killing someone is treason to the regime—whatever regime is in power at the moment. Murder is treason, treason is murder. Theft is a crime against the state, sedition is a crime against the security of the citizen. I understand. But surely you have some form of arrest, or indictment, arraignment, or charge—even in the most secretive of tyrannies one isn’t punished without some formality. I implore you to repeat that form to me. I implore you.”
The lights flickered on, just long enough for Larry to see the eyes staring at him through the holes in the hood. They did not blink; neither did they move to the right or left.
He took a deep breath to control his rising hysteria. “Will you at least tell me how long my sentence is?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“But you must know how long I’ve been incarcerated. You can tell me that.”
“You have no way of evaluating such information. It would be useless to give you meaningless data. And surely you understand it isn’t the time you’ve been here, but the time you’ve yet to stay that’s vital.”
“Very well. How much time do I have to serve?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“Is this some mystical thing? Will I wake one morning knowing I’ve paid my debt to society and am about to be released? Or will you get a directive in the mail to that effect?”
“It is impossible to say. There are too many factors. Do you sleep well?”
Briefly Larry had a tantalizing hint of the other’s viewpoint. There were no yes or no answers: too many factors. Did he sleep well? In sleep he escaped into an oblivion, a refuge from the misery of being alive. In his sleep he endured new torments, new terrors. “I don’t know.”
“Take a handful of coca leaves.”
Why not? The drug would give him new endurance for his misery. Why reject the soporific simply because it was offered by authority? As well refuse the food shoved under his cell door. Was this some masochistic puritan streak that urged him to cap inflicted suffering with voluntary hurt, affliction with self-denial, and, like the Christians, pay for the agony on the cross with mortification of the flesh? He shook his head.
His jailer was silent.
At this point, Larry knew, the interview was over. Desperately he cried out, “Can’t I be allowed in the open air for a few minutes? I swear I’ll not try to run away. Let me see the light, let me . . .” He felt the tears running down his cheeks, furrowing channels in the dirt. “I beg . . .” He stopped, knowing it was futile.
The hooded one maintained the ominous, inhuman silence. Larry thought of throwing himself upon the impassive figure, pressing his thumbs into the windpipe, strangling, hammering the concealed face with his fists, forcing the others in the room to rush forward and kill him. But would they? Perhaps there would be no interference, no overt action at all. They might not even shout for him to stop. Perhaps he could run out of this office without hindrance, find his way from the building, and go free, without anyone raising a hand to stop him. What inhibited him, prevented him from putting it to the test? Perhaps if there had been light ...
He turned away from the desk, sensed his two wardens moving to either side of him. All three walked, out of step, through the door of the office (or whatever it was), into the corridor. Greatly tempted, he began, “What would happen if I . . . ?” but the knowledge that his words went unheard because of their complete lack of interest, their utter unconcern, forced him to let his voice trail off.
They progressed at an even pace, retracing their route. Without a word of direction or a pressure against his arm, all three turned at the proper corners and halted before the door of his cell. He had an impulse to say: Well, here we are, back at the old home; or: See ya tomorrow, boys. Instead he stepped quietly across the threshold and heard them slide the door closed behind him and snap the padlock. Home, he whispered voicelessly to himself, this is my home; I’ll live and almost certainly die here. One day they’ll come for me, unlock the door, and call: All right! and get no response. What then? Let the corpse lie here until the flies and rats pick it clean, throw a forkful of fresh straw on top of it, and there you are—all ready for the next man. Or woman.
Or woman. When he had first come here he had been bothered— plagued was too strong a word—by thoughts of women. Young girls particularly. Prenubile girls, almost ready, shrinking from the prospective defloration: Ah, no, please don’t. Then oscillating to envision courtesans, call girls, the cheapest hookers, young, mature, overripe, having in common only facility, marble-cold and lynx-eyed, shrewdly alert, contemptuous of masculine weakness yet, perversely, giving more pleasure, since the hired bodies kept the bargain while the jaded minds stayed aloof.
But the preoccupation had faded away. He had become a castrato, a eunuch, without a knife ever touching his flesh. Perhaps he should be glad to escape the torments of desire, but he was neither glad nor sorry. He no longer saw visions of female bodies; he was that much poorer, but this poverty failed to make him rage at his loss. He did not even have the impulse to say: Too bad.
He lay down on the straw, shielding his eyes with his arms, even though the straw had become so limp with time that it didn’t threaten to prick him. It was at such a pass that men were said to turn to matters of the spirit, to see visions and follow supernatural guidance. One would think the imprisoned seers and prophets ought to be grateful to their jailers for the mind-stretching experience, yet Cervantes had not dedicated a book to the Turks, nor John Bunyan one to the Stuarts.
Outside of the sores on his body, misery, boredom, and general discomfort, he had not been ill. What would happen if he were attacked by some disease—typhus, say, or some other filth-borne sickness? Would they simply leave him in the cell to die? Or would there be a whole new dispensation: orderlies, a stretcher trip, gentle, cautious, to an infirmary, white, antiseptic, hidden in the depths of the building, scrupulously clean, staffed with nurses in starched uniforms, glorious hair pinned up under perky white caps, crisply directing the lustful but cowed orderlies to strip off his filthy clothes and carefully lower his befouled naked body into a bath of exactly the proper temperature while they tenderly bathed him, not neglecting his private parts, and bending over him in frowning preoccupation to offer enchanting glimpses of rounded breasts and rosy nipples? Would they massage him with fragrant oils and healing unguents, being scrupulous not to irritate his dreadful sores, over which they exclaimed in pitying horror? Would they dress him in fresh cotton nightclothes, give him a sleeping pill, and sit beside his bed while he slept deeply, not waking till his fever broke and he was animated again?
Dozing off in the midst of his speculative daydream, he woke to an unchanged reality. Not quite unchanged, for now, in addition to the irritation of the straw and the pain of his sores, he had the aches, rapid pulse, and lapsing consciousness of fever. High fever, it seemed to him. He thrashed around on the straw and longed for a drink of cold, clear water. But he was conscious enough to know he would get no water for the rest of the day. He groaned.
The next time he woke, he was sure hours had passed. His fever was higher, and he thought he had the clue to his imprisonment. Eskimos—jailed by Eskimos. Revenge for bringing them smallpox and syphilis. To say nothing of Indian tea and refined flour. But why me? I was never north of Maine in my life. They must have been after another Larry Smith—like the Germans shooting the wrong Otto Schmidt. A thousand pardons; you understand, it was a perfectly natural mistake. Oh, quite. “The act says, ‘encompassing the death of the heir apparent,’ nothing about not meaning it.” A policeman’s lot is not a happy one. Why, I’m going to die. Right here in this filth. The wrong Smith.
He tried to drag himself off the straw, to stand up. His knees folded, his body collapsed. “Help,” he groaned, “help me.”
The cell, in which no sound had been audible, save for the terse command by his guards, now reverberated with a single “Thunk!” as of a great mallet hitting the concrete-block walls. But this was impossible; had anyone been put in the nearby cells, he would have heard them being led in. Yet the sound was indubitable.
“Thunk! Thunk!
“Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!”
Counting. Why? To establish that these were not random noises, but made purposefully by a sentient being?
“Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!”
Four. Not Morse code. Simple counting. Would the authorities stop it? Was the thumper trying to communicate? Or was it a retarded intelligence merely showing off its ability to count? “Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!. . He lost count, began again. He counted sixteen thumps hazily, not sure. Making a feverish guess—was the full count twenty-six, for the letters of the alphabet? If so, then it would be the English, or rather the Latin, alphabet, not Cyrillic, German, Greek, or Arabic. If the thumps constituted a message, might it not be in the most elementary of all codes, with one thump for A, two for B, and so on? He willed his mind to concentrate, not to slip away on the tide of fever into the tempting drowsiness. One, two, three . . . The count was merely being repeated. He paid attention rigorously: nineteen, twenty . . . Yes, there was no doubt, twenty-five, twenty-six. Could this be some mechanical repetition, the effect of an electronic device set in place long ago and only now activated to count endlessly up to twenty-six, and then begin again? Despairing, he held off collapse while he kept on counting.
Long pause. One: A. Two: B. One: A. Fourteen: N. No question; he had the key. Four: D. Fifteen: O. Fourteen: N.
He could guess the rest, but he kept on counting intently. One, twelve, twelve. Pause. Eight, fifteen, sixteen, five, all hope, abandon all hope. Long pause. Four, five, nineteen, sixteen, one, nine, eighteen: despair.
After two years, someone or something had spoken to him. To him specifically, or to any inmate, to all humanity? What did it matter? But what—who—was sending (had sent) the messages? What did the words ultimately mean? Why should he abandon all hope, despair? Having conveyed so much, why not more? Why not explain the force that confined him, the reason for the confinement, the inevitability of despair? (Were the jailers as captive as the prisoners? Were both acting out a script from which no deviations were permitted?)
He fell back into another stupor, to be awakened by the clanging open of his cell door, and the ritual, “All right.”
“I can’t,” he groaned. “I’m sick.”
He was aware of them on either side of the door, waiting patiently, impatiently, implacably, for him to rouse himself, throw off the fever, stagger to the front of the cell, accompany them as always. He knew they would not invade the cell, grab his arms, pull him to his feet, drag him through the corridors to the office to endure the hooded commander’s questioning, to plead with him vainly. Probably they couldn’t hear what he was saying: they didn’t expect him to talk, therefore he wasn’t talking.
He rolled over, got to his hands and knees, crawled to the door. He put out a hand, grasped the furred leg of the guard on his right. It was a measure of discipline—or inhumanity—that he didn’t flinch but let Larry pull himself to his feet by holding onto the fur. Trembling, he stood erect at last. “I can’t,” he muttered, “I can’t.”
Both guards took a half-step forward. Rather than let go, Larry took the half-step with them. Shuffling and staggering, slowly, torturedly, they plodded toward the office. Several times he fell, clung to the luxury of withdrawal, resignation. Each time, the silent expectation of the guards, their perceptible conviction that he would eventually get to his feet, forced him to obey.
When they reached the inquisitorial desk, Larry collapsed again. No one urged him to rise; there was no unspoken exhortation in the air. He had fallen: so be it. The hooded one spoke. “Have you anything to tell me?”
“Yes,” he whispered, knowing his voice could not carry. “Yes. No one is innocent. All are guilty.”
“Do you sleep well?” pursued the voice behind the hood.
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Larry. “What is sleep, and what is waking? Where is the line dividing them?”
“You may have a handful of coca leaves.”
“Why? So I’ll be doped when your executioner does his work? No thanks.” He tried to rise. He should have taken the coca; it would have supplied the hysterical energy to meet death with dignity. Ridiculous. One met death dignifiedly only to impress an audience. And what audience was there in figures with faces masked?
Despair. Could the carefully banged-out message to abandon hope have come directly from his captors to cow him into a final, absolute, unprotesting submission to his fate?
By some curious stimulation his fever momentarily receded. With an effort of will he rose from the floor, and swaying, stumbled away from the desk. He had no feeling the warders were accompanying him. He stumbled out into the corridor, came to the familiar spot where he was accustomed to turning right. Surely that was what they were expecting—that he had become so conditioned that he would return meekly to his cell. Of course, they must know about the painful enumeration of days, had almost surely put the marker where he was bound to find it. Yes, yes, everything had been preparation for his ultimate act of resignation.
He turned left and immediately fell into a panic at the unfamiliarity of the walls. He guided himself with his hand against the nearest one, resolved to turn right at the first opening and find his way to his cell.
But though it was inconceivable that he had missed it, the first opening was very far away. He must have walked, staggered, much farther than the distance to his barred sanctuary. And—unbelievably —he thought he felt a faint stirring of air on his cheek, replacing the noxious atmosphere of the prison.
Surely by this time “they” had summoned the killers, traced out his course, located his position, sent the executioner to do his work. He braced—tried to brace—his shoulders against the blow of the ax that would surely come any second now. Or the bludgeon crushing his skull. Or would they break their silence, discard their reversion to primitive means, and shoot him in the back of the head? He flinched. He would never hear the shot.
Incredibly, there seemed to be light ahead. Not a dim glow, but actual, blazing sunlight. Though it was constrained by an opening narrower than the corridor, it stabbed his eyes excruciatingly. He leaned against the wall with his eyes shut against the pain.
He tried to open his lids slightly. Impossible. He could either open them wide, closing them again instantly, or keep them shut. He blinked rapidly. This was less painful. Also, at the end of the blink, he could close the upper lid. Interesting knowledge: couldn’t half-open, could half-shut.
No question—it was daylight ahead. What a refinement of torture to let him get so close to escape before stopping him, killing him, or returning him to his cell. What if he whirled around suddenly? No longer facing the light, he could open his eyes wide. But whirl around? It was all he could do to slump against the wall. They were cunning, too cunning for him.
If he put his hand over his face, he could tolerate the light let in between his fingers. He moved forward, still hunching his shoulders against the expected blow.
A few feet—yards—farther on he was in a large entranceway. No doors, no bars, just open space. He crept forward, still shielding his eyes, to what seemed to be an open courtyard. Ahead he saw a tree. A tree with green leaves. To see, to see color. He began weeping helplessly, mourning his imprisonment and imminent death, but most of all the chromatic world.
Putting his arms around the twisted shape of the tree, clinging to it, he stared back at the squat, grim building, standing there in a freedom as enigmatic as the captivity he had left behind.
* * * *
Ward Moore writes:
I was walking along Fountain Avenue, which is one of the crummier streets in the tiny business district of Pacific Grove, a street which had distinct possibilities in, say, 1905, but which had unquestionably failed even to begin to fulfill them seventy years later. The November sun turned the cement sidewalk, the asbestos-shingled roofs, and the soapily washed windows into iridescent rainbows batting their vibgyors back and forth in a dazzling tennis volley. The fall sun is northern California’s premature promise of the resurrection and the life; it is our belated, very belated summer, soon—any day—to be flooded and frosted to death. But while it endures, it is summer.
The sun’s heat penetrates through the bones, into the marrow of old men. But they do not think forbidden thoughts—even the sun isn’t that powerful. They think thoughts more proper to their senior citizenship.
So I walked along, nursing my thoughts like invalid gruel, reflecting on all the intimations of mortality which were crowding in on me, the soothing, damning, triumphant words: . . . not alarm you, but . . . medication ... see .. . Well, one must face reality. Facts. Whatever.
After all, I thought, it is possible to resign oneself to reality. Seventy-second year, hearing gone to hell, eyesight going, hemmerods, gall bladder, all the disgusting ailments of aging. Resign oneself to decay, deterioration, desuetude. Even the unspeakable prospect. Another five, ten, even a miraculous fifteen years. Resignation, fortitude. Acceptance. Why not?
And then, coming toward me, one of the glorious natural wonders of the world. Sandals on unblemished tanned feet. Long, fine, tanned thighs in revealing white shorts, legs and thighs covered with fine, golden down. Above, a laced white bodice showing a sweet belly and a sweet bellybutton, the lacing strained apart by sturdy breasts, curved, the pink nipples just suggested rather than showing. . . .
No, I could not be resigned. Not this year.