Of Time and the River (63 page)

Then he started to come out of the cell. When he did, the two big red-faced policemen came running forward with a lumbering, panting, and somehow revolting clumsiness and tried to push him back into the cell. When this happened, something dark, grey, and terrible that he had never known before rose up in his soul—and this thing, which now came to him for the first time, was to return often in the savage years that followed.

As the police came rushing towards Eugene his fury and desperation were so great that he felt little or no fear, but the sensations of horror and disgust were so terrible that they drove him mad, and he seemed to be drowning in them. And the first visible and physical, although perhaps not the basic, causes of these sensations of horror and disgust came from the mountainous figures of the two policemen, and the feel of their huge soft-solid bodies as they jammed against him. For, if they had quelled his rebellion at the outset by smashing him over the head with their clubs, he might have felt a moment’s fear before the club crashed on his skull, but he would not have felt horror and disgust.

But the sight, the feel, the smell, the look of these huge soft- solid bodies of mountainous flesh, and the revolting clumsiness of their movements, made the thing horrible. As they rushed towards Eugene and tried to thrust him back into the cell, he grabbed hold of the bars on either side of the door, and began to howl at them and curse them foully, and to butt at them with his head. When this happened the policemen braced themselves together like turn- squat Buddhas, holding on to the bars with their huge muttony hands, that had no leanness in them, and butted back at Eugene with their huge soft-solid stomachs.

They stood, half-squatly, side by side, their muttony hands gripped around the bars, their great red faces moist and panting, their huge buttocks somehow obscenely womanish in their fat breadth, as they butted back clumsily at him with their soft ponderous bellies— all of this, and the revolting contact of their flesh against his own, filled him with such an infinite loathing of horror and disgust that he went mad.

He started to come out of the cell. When he did, the two big police men came running forward with a lumbering clumsiness and tried to push him back in. One of the men raised his ponderous fist and shouted: “Git back in thar now or I’ll hit ye.” A huge muttony fist smashed squarely on his nose and mouth: he butted, cursed, amid a pin-wheel aura of exploding rockets: the fist smashed hard again below one eye: the boy screamed like a wounded animal and cursing horribly all the time began to use his head as a battering ram, butting again and again at the fat red faces.

Meanwhile the other one, grunting and puffing, and with his tongue between his teeth, began to thump, tug and wrench at the fingers of one hand, trying to loosen them from the bar, and saying to his fellow:

“You git his other hand, Jim, an’ try to make him turn a-loose.”

During all this time that Eugene had been cursing and butting at these men, he had also been shouting: “You God-damned red-faced South Car’lina bastards, you’re not going to lock me up in here with a nigger—no, you ain’t!”—and now he felt something rough and woolly scraping underneath his arm. It was the frightened negro’s head. He went squirming out below Eugene’s arm until he was outside peering with white eyeballs over a policeman’s shoulder, and when Eugene saw they would not try to keep the negro there with him, he went back in the cell and was locked up. He felt very sick, and everything was swimming nauseously around him: for a while he leaned over the w.c. and vomited into it. Then he sat down on the edge of the cot and stared ahead, thinking about nothing, but with something hideous, like a great grey smear, inside him.

XLIII

How long he sat there in this way he did not know, for time would pass in a hideous smear of brownish grey while all things reeled, mixed, and were fused drunkenly and shapelessly around him—and then for a moment time would burn in his mind like a small hard light of brilliant colour, and he would see everything with an exact and blazing vividness and hear the voices of his comrades in their cells.

The cell Eugene sat in was a little cubicle of space, perhaps eight feet deep and four or five feet wide. Its only furnishings were a black iron cot or bed which projected from the wall and could be turned up or out, and which had no springs or mattress on it, and a w.c. of dirty white enamel, which had no seat, and was broken and would not flush so that it had run over and spilled out upon the cement floor. The walls and ceilings of the cell were made of some hard slate-like substance of black-grey, scrawled with the familiar obscenities and pictures of its former occupants. Because of these solid walls, each cell was cut off from its neighbours and for this reason he could not see Emmet Blake, who had the cell next to him, nor Robert, who had the cell on the other side of Emmet, but now, as his mind swam from the stupor of its drunkenness, he could hear their voices and began to listen to their conversation.

Both were still quite drunk, and for a while they continued a kind of mournful drunken chant, each responding to the other with a repetition of his own misfortune.

“Yes, sir,” Robert would say, heaving a sigh and speaking in a hoarse, mournfully drunken voice, “this is certainly a hell of a way to treat a man who’s just been admitted to the bar six weeks ago! A hell of a thing!” he said.

And Blake would answer:

“Yes, sir! And I’ll tell YOU what IS a hell of a thing! This is a hell of a way to treat George Blake’s nephew! A hell of a way!” he said. “If my uncle knew about this he’d come down here and tear their damned little jail to pieces! He’d RUIN their town!” he cried. “Yes, sir! He’d wash ‘em out and send ‘em to the cleaners! Why!” Blake now said in a tone of drunken boastfulness, “there are 70,000 Blake dealers in the United States ALONE—and if they knew that
I
was here,” he said, “every damned one of them would be on his way here in five minutes to get us out!”

“Lord! Lord!” said Robert, in a kind of mournful brooding ululation, as if he had not heard Blake’s words at all. “Who’d have thought it? A young attorney just admitted to the bar six weeks ago and here he is in jail! The damnedest thing I ever heard of!” he declared.

“Yes, sir,” Blake declared, not by way of response, but with the same self-centred concentration on the indignity which had been visited on him. “If you told any Blake dealer in the country that George Blake’s nephew was down here in the Blackstone jail, he wouldn’t believe you. Uncle George will carry this thing to the Supreme Court when we get out,” he said. “It is certainly a hell of a thing to happen to George Blake’s nephew!”

“Yes, sir,” Robert answered, “a hell of a thing to happen is RIGHT— and here I’ve only had my licence to practise for six weeks. Why, it’s awful!” he said solemnly.

“Robert!” Blake cried suddenly, getting to his feet.—“Do you guess these damned Blackstone cops know who I am? Do you guess they realize they’ve got George Blake’s nephew here?” Here he went to the door of his cell, rattled it violently, and yelled: “Hey—y! I’m George Blake’s nephew! Do you know you’ve got George Blake’s nephew back here? Come and let me out!” he shouted. No one answered.

Then they would be silent for a while, and mournful, brooding drunken time would pass around them.

Then Blake would say:

“Robert?”

“What do you want?” said Robert mournfully.

“What time is it?”

“Hell, how do I know what time it is?” said Robert in a sullen and protesting tone. “You know they took my watch.” Then there would be silence for a moment more.

“Emmet?” Robert would then say.

“All right. What is it?”

“Did they take your watch, too?”

“Yes!” Blake shouted suddenly in an angry and excited tone. “And that was an eighteen carat, thirty-two jewel platinum-case watch that Uncle George bought for me in Switzerland. That watch is worth $225 and I’d better get it back when I get out of here!” he shouted rattling the door. “Do you hear? If those sons of bitches try to steal my watch, my Uncle George will put ‘em ALL in jail! I want it back!” he shouted.

No one answered.

Then they were silent for another spell of time, and finally Robert said in a hoarse, brooding, and mournful tone:

“Eugene?”

“Well.”

“Are you there?”

“Where the hell do you think I am?” Eugene said bitterly. “You don’t see any holes in this place you can crawl out of, do you?”

Robert laughed his hoarse falsetto laugh, and then said with a kind of brooding wonder:

“Lord! Lord! Who’d have thought it? Who’d ever have thought Eugene and I would get put in jail together here in Blackstone, South Carolina. Here I am just out of Yale and admitted to the bar six weeks ago and you—boy!” he laughed suddenly his annoying falsetto laugh, and concluded—“Just got back from three years at Harvard and here you are in jail already! Lord! Lord! What are you going to tell your mother when she sees you? What’s she going to say when you tell her you’ve been in jail?”

“Oh, I don’t know!” the other said angrily. “Shut up!”

Robert laughed his annoying falsetto laugh again, and said:

“Boy! I’d hate to have to face her! I’m glad I’m not in YOUR shoes!”

“Not in MY shoes!” the other shouted in an exasperated tone. “You damned fool, you are in my shoes!”

Then they were silent for a spell, and grey time ticked wearily around them the slow remorseless sound of interminable minutes.

Presently Blake spoke, out of a drunken silence, saying:

“Gant?”

“What is it?”

“What time is it now?”

“I don’t know. They have my watch,” he said.

And grey time ticked around them.

“Robert,” Eugene said at length, straightening from his dejected stupor on the cot, “did you see that nigger?”

“What nigger?” Robert said stupidly.

“Why, the nigger they tried to put in here with me!” he said.

“Why, I didn’t see any nigger, Gene,” said Robert, in a hoarse and drunken tone of mild and melancholy protest. “When was this?”

“Why, Robert!” the other boy now cried in an excited voice and with a feeling of hideous dread inside him. “You were right here all the time! Didn’t you hear us?”

“Why no, Eugene,” Robert answered in a slow protesting voice that had dull wonder and surprise in it. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said.

“Why, my God, Robert!” Eugene now cried excitedly, and even with a kind of frenzy in his tone. “You must have heard us! Why, we were fighting here for ten minutes!” he said, for the time of the struggle now seemed at least that long to him.

“Who?” said Robert, dully and stupidly.

“Why, me and those two big cops!” he cried. “Good God, Robert, didn’t you see us?—didn’t you hear us?—butting and kicking like a goat—hitting me over the head, trying to make me turn a-loose!” he cried in an excited, almost incoherent tone.

“Who did?” Robert stupidly inquired.

“Why—those two big cops, Robert—that’s who! Good God, do you mean to tell me that you never heard us when we were cursing and butting away there right in front of you?”

“I didn’t hear anything—I thought you said a nigger,” he said in a stupid and confused tone.

“Why, Robert, that’s what I’m telling you!” Eugene shouted. “They had him in here—”

“Where?”

“Why, in the cell! They were trying to put me in here with him! That’s what the trouble was about!” he said.

“Why, Eugene,” Robert said with an uneasy and troubled laugh, which yet had a note of good-natured derision in it that was maddening, “I didn’t see any nigger. Did you, Emmet? I was right here all the time and I didn’t hear any trouble. . . . YOU’VE been dreaming,” Robert now said, with a conviction in his tone that goaded the other boy almost past endurance, and yet struck a knife of cold terror into his heart. And he began to laugh hoarsely his annoying and derisive laugh, as he shook his head, and said: “Lord! LORD!—He’s in there seeing niggers and policemen and I don’t know what-all.” And here he laughed hoarsely again, his derisive and falsetto laugh, and said: “BOY! You’ve got ‘em! You’ve GOT ‘em bad! You’ve been seeing things!”

“Robert, God-damn it!” Eugene now fairly screamed, “I tell you he was here! I tell you I saw him standing in the cell when I came in! I know what I’m talking about, Robert!—there was a nigger here when I came in!”

“Why, hell, Eugene!” Robert said more kindly, but with a hoarse derisive laugh, “you’ve just been seeing things, son. There was no one there; you just imagined it. I reckon you just passed out and dreamed it happened!”

“Dreamed! Dreamed!” Eugene shouted, “God-damn it, Robert, don’t you think I know when I’m dreaming? I’ll show you if it was a dream! I’ll prove it to you that it really happened! I can prove it by Blake!” he cried. “Ask Blake! . . . Blake! Blake! Blake!” he shouted.

And grey time slid with its slow sanded drop around them.

Blake did not answer: he had not heard their conversation and now they heard him talking softly, slowly, murderously to himself.

“Yes, sir,” he was saying, in a low, quiet, drunkenly intent soliloquy. “Yes, sir, I’ll kill him! . . . So help me, God, I’ll kill him dead, as sure as my name is Emmet Blake! . . . I’ll pull out my forty-five. . . . I’ll get my forty-five out when I go home . . . and I’ll go Ping! Ping! Ping! the minute that I see him. I’ll go Ping! Ping! Ping!” cried Blake. “I’ll kill him dead, so help me, God, if it’s the last thing that I ever do!”

“I’ll kill him!” Blake continued in a tone of dogged, drunken repetition, still talking to himself. “When I get home I’ll kill him if it’s the last thing I ever do!”

“And I’ll kill YOU, too,” Blake muttered in this same brooding and intent oblivion of drunken soliloquy. “You God-damned whore, I’ll kill you, too! I’ll kill the two of you together! . . . The bitch! The bitch! The dirty bitch!” the man now screamed, starting to his feet, and now really with a tortured note of agony and desperation in his voice. “I know where you are this minute! I know you’re with him! I know you’ll sleep with him tonight, you— dirty—low-down—”

“Emmet, you damned fool, shut up!” Robert now said, with a troubled and protesting laugh. “Do you want everyone in the whole damned place to hear you?” The dreadful shame and anguish in the man’s desperate life had burst nakedly through his drunkenness, and the hideous mutilation of his soul was suddenly stripped bare—“Don’t talk like that,” said Robert, with a troubled laugh—“you’ll be sorry tomorrow for what you said, you know you will: oh, Emmet, shut up!” Robert said again with a protesting and embarrassed laugh.