The Bell Tolls for No One (27 page)

At the factory the next day it was about the same. Harry felt like an experimental rat running on a treadmill. No matter how you kept going you go nowhere. All you could do, finally, was die. Meanwhile, you kept going, uselessly. Christ, didn't the others ever think about it? He looked over at Joe to his right. Joe was packing away. He had a cap on his head with the bill turned to the back. He was chewing gum.

Harry looked at the assembly line. All girls. And not a looker on the line. The girls moved deftly and with agility, keeping up with the line. They were good at that. And they showed no pain. The made little jokes. Sometimes they swore, other times they laughed. They went on, minute after minute, day after day. Food, shelter, and clothing. Transportation. Subsistence.

Stevenson came by. “How's it going, Harry?”

“Smooth, Mr. Stevenson, real smooth.”

“O.K., keep it that way.”

Stevenson walked on off . . .

Harry decided not to eat that night. He stopped at a bar near the apartment. It was a dreary place, full of dull and lonely people. The bartender's face was full of warts and there was a faint smell to him, an unkindly smell, something like the smell of piss.

“Yeh?” he asked Harry.

“Draft beer,” Harry answered.

The bartender put the glass under the spigot, pulled the handle, and the beer came out, only it was mostly foam, a yellow curling foam, demented. As the foam spilled over the top of the glass the barkeeper took two fingers of his left hand and cut the excess off. He plopped the glass on the bar and the foam rand down the sides wetting the bar—highlighting the grains whereupon somebody had crudely carved in the word “SHIT.”

“Nice night,” the barkeeper said.

“Yeh,” said Harry.

Harry worked at the beer, somehow got it down. Meanwhile, the conversations he heard about him were hardly endearing. It seemed almost as if people pretended to be stupid. So then, just to prove the fuckers couldn't run him out, Harry ordered another beer. It had more foam than the other. He worked at it. What an existence. You got fucked over at work and then when you came out to spend your money you got fucked over again. Everything possible was done to screw you up. No wonder the jails and the madhouses were overcrowded, no wonder skid row was packed.

Harry finished his beer. Nothing to do but go back to the apartment.

When Harry got there he had a long hot shower. To hell with that bathtub. He toweled off, got into some fresh clothes, and joined Adolph in the other room. Adolph was reading the
Wall Street Journal.
Harry sat down, picked up the daily paper from the coffee table. Same crap. Little wars everywhere. They were afraid to have the big one. Maybe some day it would come anyhow. All it took was one finger on one man to start it. Seemed like it was impossible not to happen. What a thing to think about after busting your ass in a factory all day and then drinking bad beer. He put the paper down.

“Hey, Adolph!”

“Yes, my friend . . . ”

“Where are those two things?”

“In the bedroom.”

“What are they doing there?”

“My friend, they are not sleeping . . . ”

“Don't they need sleep?”

Adolph put the
Wall Street Journal
down. “These creatures . . . they don't need sleep. Or food. Or water.”

“How do they get their energy?”

“Oh, that! That's a secret. I will tell you, though part of it is from the sun. Other sources, I cannot tell you . . . ”

“Do they have to go to the bathroom?”

“No, they are not like us.”

“Are they like us in any way?”

“They are like most of us in two ways, at least.”

“Like?”

“They reproduce and they take orders. They reproduce and they obey.”

“Listen, Adolph, I don't want those things running around the apartment.”

Adolph picked up the
Wall Street Journal
and began reading again.

“Put that paper down, Adolph, I haven't finished talking to you!”

Adolph put the paper down and smiled. “Hard day at the office, Harry?”

“I don't want those two things running around the apartment!”

“Ah, I am so sorry, Harry, but there will be
more
than two. You see, these creatures reproduce in from 2 to 8 hours.”

“What the fuck you telling me, Adolph?”

“That
this
is the greatest miracle yet, Harry, don't you REALIZE that? It's the greatest miracle since man walked the earth! Just allow yourself to THINK about it! A NEW LIFE FORM! And, you, yourself, helped evolve it! Can't you fathom the immensity of all this?”

“But what
good
are these things?”

“What good, indeed? These ‘things' as you call them . . . they need no food, no water. They are loyal and obedient.”

“They sound like slaves.”

“Slaves, ha!” Suddenly Adolph's eyes blazed furiously. “THINK WHAT AN ARMY THEY'D MAKE!”

“Army?”

“Yes, and they could survive a nuclear attack for they have no needs. Isn't life finally strange?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean because of the nuclear arms race most of us have felt that the world is doomed, or almost doomed, that there could be no alternative but total or near-total destruction. And now we have created these durable and self-sufficient creatures. There's hope now.”

“But these aren't human. What about the humans?”

“There should be a few humans left to ally themselves with these new creatures. There will be hope and a rebuilding
and
a surviving nation.”

“Which one?”

“That too, my friend, is a secret.”

“Sounds like crap to me that those fucking sponges could do anything.”

“Ah, my friend, if you could only know how carefully we have planned over all these decades.”

“‘We'? Who's ‘we'?”

Adolph's eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked very dangerous. Then, he smiled. “Ah, Harry! I've just been JOKING with you! You see, I am just going to raise a few of these and then sell them to a circus. A freak show, you know. The Walking Sponges. The crowd will love them.”

Adolph picked up the
Wall Street Journal
, glanced at Harry over the top of the page, then began reading again.

Harry got up and went to the refrigerator for a beer. When he came back Adolph was gone. Harry sat down with his beer and flipped on the Johnny Carson show . . .

He watched TV for some hours, drinking many beers. Between the factory and Adolph, life had become a little bit too much for him. After some time he passed out only to be aroused by something. The room was dark. He could make out the form of Adolph and then Adolph said, “NOW!” and five or six sponges rushed upon him. He knocked one off into space, catching it with a good right. It bounced right up and rushed him again. And the others were upon him. The things were powerful. He felt himself being lifted and he was being carried. He struggled but it was useless. The apartment door opened and he was carried down the hall. It was as if he were being flung along by a tornado.

Then they were outside. They were by his car. How did they know? He felt a seaweed hand go into his pants pocket for his keys. The thing had a sort of built-in prescience.

They unlocked the car doors, flung him into the front seat next to the driver. The driver started the car. The sponge knew how to drive.

Harry was driven down a street of night by sponges.

“God,” he thought, “I am being taken for a ride! Just like a gangster movie.”

“Hey, look,” Harry said, “you're not going to get away with this! You're going to stop at a traffic light and somebody is going to see a
sponge
driving and all those other sponges sitting around. You'll be exposed!”

“Let us worry about that,” said the driver.

“Hey, you guys can talk! Why haven't you spoken before this?”

“Speech is the last factor to develop in our make-up.”

“But what do you know? You don't
know
anything!”

“We're programmed. Try us.”

“Who sewed the 13 stars on the American flag?”

“Betsy Ross.”

“Name a great American actress.”

“Bette Davis.”

“Name me a one-eyed black Jew.”

“Sammy Davis Jr.”

Harry leaned back. They were going to take him to some secluded spot and kill him, then return to Adolph and continue the master plan. History was riding along with him in his 8-year-old car.

Then they stopped at a traffic light. Another car pulled up along beside them.

“Make a sound,” said one of the sponges, “and you're dead now.”

Harry looked over at the other car. It was
Stevenson
, for Christ's sake! He was drunk and he was sitting in his car with a drunken floozie. Stevenson was smoking a cigar. Then Harry saw the floozie dive down to Stevenson's middle. Stevenson stared straight ahead. The floozie was giving him a blowjob right there at the traffic light.

The light changed and the sponge at the wheel dug out leaving Stevenson back there getting his. Harry knew he didn't have much time left. He had to think, and fast.

“Now look,” he said to the sponges, “I am the FATHER of two of you and grandfather to the rest. Do you realize that? Do you want to kill your father?”

“Who doesn't want to kill the father?” asked the sponge driving the car.

“Dostoevski,” said one of the sponges in the back seat.

“Yes, Ivan in
The Brothers Karamazov
,” said another sponge.

Then they were on the freeway. It was a night more warm and splendid than most. Harry wished more than anything to be back at the factory again, to be dull and bored, to be useless, to be stupid, to be a slave. He wanted to drink more foamy and poisonous beer. He wanted to find a crass and unfeeling whore for his love.

“How can I get out of this?” he asked them.

“No way,” one of them answered, “you know too much.”

“Your goose is cooked,” said another.

“You're up shit creek without a paddle,” added another.

“We were created to re-create history,” said the driver, “and you, my friend, are only a cipher in the totality.”

“Thanks, motherfucker,” said Harry.

They disgusted him. Their complete inhumanness. Farts out of his ass driving him to his very death. Sickening. Because he might spill the beans on the 2,000-year secret of the Reichstag. And Stevenson getting head at a traffic light. A wave of blackness passed over Harry.

They began to pass a gasoline tanker on the right and Harry grabbed the wheel and twisted it to the right and the car spun in a full circle in front of the tanker. The driver hit the brakes but it was useless.

There was the sound of the tanker groveling and grinding into the automobile.

There seemed a moment of nothing, then the auto advanced into a sheet of flame. With the tanker still pushing at it.

The driver finally halted his machine, then reversed it to back off from the fire as a Volks hit his rear, flipped, and went over the side of the freeway.

The tanker didn't ignite.

The driver edged his machine over to the freeway ledge, got out with road flares, and placed them around the tanker and then the flaming auto exploded. The tanker still lucked it but the driver was blown backwards. He got up, still all right except most of his eyelids were burned off.

When the squad car got there he told the cop, “I don't know what the hell happened. This guy just spun in front of me. That's all I know . . . ”

Two days later in both of the major newspapers of that city an ad appeared:

WANTED; PARTNER TO SHARE EXPENSES IN A MODERN APARTMENT. ALL CONVENIENCES. CABLE TV, WALL TO WALL CARPETING. SOUNDPROOF. I AM A CONGENIAL AND UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY THOUGH PRIVATE IN NATURE. REFERENCES REQUIRED. NO PETS. GENTLEMAN PREFERRED. $195 PER MONTH. NO FIRST OR LAST. CONTACT: A.H., 555-2729, 9 A.M. to 10 P.M.

The Bell Tolls for No One

W
hen I got home from the auto parts warehouse—well, wait, it wasn't a home, it was a room, a room in a roominghouse—I opened the door and there were two men sitting there.

“Are you Henry Chinaski?” one of them asked.

Both men were dressed in grey suits and wore blue neckties and they really looked quite similar. Their faces were a bland, almost yellow color. They looked neither angry or unpleasant. But they did look proficient at whatever they wanted. And they wanted me.

“I'm Henry Chinaski.”

“Do you want to put on a coat or something?” the other man asked.

“What for?”

“You're coming with us.”

“For how long.”

“For a long time, I think.”

I didn't ask who they were. I felt it would please them too much. I walked to the closet and opened the door. They both stood watching me.

“Just reach for the COAT!”

I reached for the only coat I had.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

I did and they snapped the handcuffs on. They seemed angry then. The man who applied the cuffs really snapped them on tight, digging the steel hard against the flesh.

I didn't say anything. They didn't tell me my rights like they did in the movies.

“O.K.,” said one of them, “let's go . . . ”

They pushed me through the door and down the stairway. Halfway down one of them shoved me and I rolled down the stairway. I cracked my head against the wall but what really hurt was rolling over the handcuffs.

I got up and waited for them.

They pushed me through the front door. Then at the top of the steps, leading to the street, each of them took me by the armpit and lifted me into the air and ran me down the steps, my legs dangling. I felt like some wooden and freaky toy.

There was a car down there, black. They stood me there, opened a back door and threw me in. I landed on the floorboards. Then I was yanked up and placed between the two men in the back seat. The other two men got in the front, started the car and we drove off.

One of the men in the front, the one who wasn't driving, turned and spoke to the men in the back seat: “I've picked up a lot of men in my time but never one like this!”

“What ya mean?”

“I mean, he doesn't seem to give a damn.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He's got to be a prick, a real prick!”

Then the man in the front turned forward again.

The man to my left asked, “You a tough guy?”

“No.”

The man to my right asked, “You think your shit doesn't stink?”

“My shit stinks.”

We drove along in silence for a while.

Then the man in front turned again.

“See what I mean?”

“Yeah,” said the man to my right, “he's too fucking cool.”

“I don't like this guy,” said the man to my left.

I watched the familiar buildings on the familiar streets go by.

“I could punch you out,” said the guy to my right, “and nobody would ever know.”

“That's true.”

“Fuckin' wise-ass!”

He swung his fist in a short swift arc and it landed in my belly center. There was a flash of darkness, a flash of red, then it cleared. There was fire and whirling in my gut. I concentrated on the sound of the car motor as if it were my friend.

“Now,” the man asked, “did I hit you?”

“No.”

“Why are you so fuckin' cool?”

“I'm not cool. You guys are best.”

“He's a fuckin' freak,” said the man to my left, “he's a geek, he's a goddamned GEEK!”

Then he swung, again into my gut. It got to my breathing. I couldn't suck in air, my eyes began to water. Then I felt like puking. Something did rush up—blood or matter—I swallowed it back down. When I swallowed it, it seemed to soothe the pain.

“Now, did I hit you?”

“No.”

“Why don't you ask us to stop?”

“Stop.”

“You fuckin' geek!”

One of them slammed me across the face with an open palm. One of my teeth cut something inside of my mouth and I could taste the blood.

“Aren't ya gonna ask us why we're picking you up?”

“No.”

“You prick. You PRICK!”

Something cracked across the back of my neck. Inside of my mind a huge yellow face looked at me and it had a red mouth which was half-grinning, half-smiling, just about to go into laughter. Then, I was into unconsciousness . . .

It was no longer evening. It was early night, a clear moonlit night. And I was being pushed through tall wet grass surrounded by trees. The grass was about knee-high and wet, it brushed along my legs and it was soothing. I was in a numb state. I could no longer feel the handcuffs against my wrists.

Then they stopped. They spun me about and stood there looking at me.

The men were all about the same size and weight. There seemed to be no leader.

“O.K., asshole,” one of them said, “you know what this is all about, don't you?”

“No.”

“Goddamn him! I really hate this fucker!”

Strangely then, I thought of myself in a bathtub, a bathtub full of very hot water and I was washing myself under the arms while looking at the small cracks in the ceiling—cracks shaped like lions and elephants, and there was one large tiger, leaping.

“You got one last chance,” one of them said, “say something . . . ”

“Vacuum.”

“That does it.”

“Let's mutilate the son of a bitch!”

“Yeah, but first let's humiliate him!”

“Yeah.”

In the night I could hear the sound of birds, crickets, frogs . . . a dog barked and way off I could hear a train; everything was graceful and full. I could smell the green of the grass, I could even smell the tree trunks, and I could smell the earth the way a dog smells the earth.

One of them grabbed me by the hair and threw me to the ground, then yanked me up by the hair and I was on my knees.

“Whatya got to say now, cool boy?

“Take the bracelets off and I'll whip your ass.”

“Sure I will, cool boy, only first you gotta do this . . . ”

He unzipped his pants and pulled out his penis. The others laughed.

“You do a good job, no biting, just tongue it and suck it and swallow it and then we'll take off the cuffs and see what you can do.”

“No.”

“You're gonna do it
anyhow
, cool boy! Because I
said
so!”

“No.”

I heard the safety go off.

“One last chance . . . .”

“No.”

“
Shit
!”

The gun fired. There was a searing rip, and numbness. Then a drip of blood. And more dripping of blood where my left ear had been . . . .there were pieces and shards.

“Why didn't you kill him?”

“I don't know . . . .”

“You think we got the right guy?”

“I don't know. He doesn't act like the guy we want.”

“What would he act like?”

“You know . . . .”

“Yeah.”

I could still hear them. I could still hear. There was no pain for the missing ear, just a feeling of coolness as if somebody had stuck a large piece of ice into the left side of my head.

Then I saw them walking away. They just walked away and then I was alone. And it was darker and colder.

I managed to stand up.

Curiously, I didn't feel bad at all. I began to walk along not knowing where I was or where I could go.

Then in front of me there was an animal. It looked like a large dog, a wild dog. The moon was to my back and it shone into the beast's eyes. The eyes were red like burning coal.

Then I had the urge to urinate. With the cuffs behind me, I let it go. I could feel the warm piss running down my front, down my right leg.

The beast began a long slow growl. It rose from his innards and passed through the night . . . .

He bunched his body for the leap.

I knew that if I moved backwards that I was finished.

I ran forward, kicked out and missed, fell to my side, rolled over just in time as the flash of fangs ripped the quiet air, I got to my feet and faced the thing again, thinking, this must happen all the time to everybody . . . one way or the other . . . .