The Man Who Was Left Behind (7 page)

He put the book in his pocket and went to the park. The tree no longer suggested Mexico of its own accord, it looked like his hands, stiff, old, going numb in the cold weather.
He had to will it into looking like a tropical tree. And then for a while he was with the flower beds and spice smells and the sunshine on them as they sat at their table and watched the people walk past through the green square.

Then he was out again, sitting on his bench with the wind blowing his hair down into his face and the others walking in through the entrance. Elmie brought a bottle and Jumbo read them an account of a disaster at sea, a ship with a burning cargo that might explode at any moment. The Captain had been told to anchor it off the coast and the nearby townspeople had complained, since should the ship blow to pieces they might be in danger. They had already been advised to keep their windows open against a possible shattering of the glass. Keep their windows open in November.

“Captain’s still on her,” Jumbo said. “Ain’t that a thing?” He stuffed the paper back inside his coat. Spats wanted to know if the Captain was really duty-bound to stay on his ship when it went down. Jumbo said yes, Elmie said he was supposed to stay on till the very last moment, but when the utmost tip started to go under he was allowed to jump off and swim away. But did they hold it against him afterwards? They talked the matter over.

When the light began to fail, Mr. Mackenzie remembered that he had to buy a stamp, and stood up.

“Coming along?” Jumbo asked.

He shook his head and said, “Can’t. When will you be going?”

“Tonight, tomorrow maybe, next week.”

They stood up also and all four walked from the park, passing the guitar player and heading towards the post office.

“I’ve got to buy a stamp,” he said and crossed the road, waving goodbye. They waved back and he thought: that’s probably the last time we’ll see each other.

The post office was just about to close. He bought the stamp, came out, and remembered that he needed an envelope. He searched through his pockets and found the last month’s bill for electricity. Tearing the old stamp off, he crossed out his own name, readdressed it to Bender’s firm, and put the new stamp on it. Then he folded up the will and put it inside, tucked the flap of the envelope in to keep it there, and dropped it into the mailbox.

He stood looking at the box, thinking that there was something he had meant to remind himself of. Off in the distance, coming through the crowd of people making their way home from work, a voice called, “Repent.” It came nearer, saying, “Repent, the hour is at hand,” and Mr. Mackenzie saw a man, looking doubtless much like himself, with long hair and a beard and carrying a large cardboard sign on a stick. Written on the board was the message:
Prepare to meet thy doom.
The man came closer, and because Mr. Mackenzie was the only person in the crowd whose eyes were not turned away, singled him out, looking straight at him and finally coming up and standing next to him, shouting, “Re-pent, re-pent, the day is nigh, repent.”

“What for? I’ll be dead soon,” he said and barged away into the crowd, thinking: what does he know about repentance—no more than I do or anyone else and that’s too much knowledge to have to live with anyway. No wonder they don’t look at him, a life of repentance would be a lifetime of hell, and if they believe in all that they’ll have the opportunity to do all the repenting necessary after death.

He thought he would have a drink. He went to two or three bars and ended up in the one with the frontier nude. The megaphone system was playing conveyer-belt Dixie-land and it became very crowded so that he was squashed up against the corner, but when he had somewhere to sit down he preferred the crowd, which made it less likely that some
one would speak to him. He could still see the exit, so that was all right. He got out his library book and turned over the pages, telling himself to do it slowly or else he’d have to exchange it the next day. He promised himself not to go through it all because he liked to have something to read before going to sleep.

The pages went by and he followed Xenophon through Persia with the ten thousand. He saw them going through their hardships, trapped in a foreign country, being shot at by the Persian archers, pursued by the enemy cavalry, uncertain as to the direction in which they were travelling. He could almost smell the dust and the sunshine and see the column moving tightly-packed for protection through the brown hills, and all the time being full of fear. He seemed to be watching with them, for raiding parties attacking in the rear, for single enemy scouts that would appear on the hilltops indicating who knew what huge forces waiting to receive them and massacre every last one of them.

Then came the cold and the snowstorm and all the men falling sick and dying, lying where they dropped in the snow, and all the heart went out of the ones who were still alive. Mr. Mackenzie began to cough.

He ordered another drink and was just taking the first sip when he heard a ticking sound. The man seated next to him had an elbow on the bar, propping his head up in the cup of his hand while he talked to his neighbour on the other side. The ticking came from his wristwatch. That was it, Mr. Mackenzie remembered, and pulled his own watch from his pocket and set it from the other watch at quarter to seven. In an hour he would get up and go home to eat the dinner he was supposed to have had at noon. Remember that, he told himself, one hour from now.

He read on. Out of the snow, into lush fields green and gold, asking directions, allying themselves with this man and that. The treachery, the betrayals, the discussions. The
sea, the sea, they all shouted, and beyond the sea, home. But more treachery and more betrayals and corruption over money matters and Xenophon losing his grip, having to call meetings, saying he’d give up the command if anyone could prove he’d been at fault.

It was really a pretty good book, he thought. When he’d first read it, a long time ago and in Greek, he hadn’t liked it. He’d thought it wholly lacking in psychological interest, not to be compared with Thucydides or Herodotus or even Arrian, and unstylish, just plonk-plonk-plonk we did this and we did that and so-and-so said such-and-such to which Xenophon replied as follows; worse than Caesar. But now he liked it, he was even really reading parts of it and it was easy to understand, simple, only told you the important things: where they were, what was happening, where they were going, how many people were killed, what they had to eat, how many horses were left. Just the plain truth. He thought it a model book and was about to read on when he noticed how thin it was getting at the end—he was near the end and wouldn’t have anything left to read late that night. Just this one more paragraph, he told himself, and I’ll go back to the room and be there in time and Bessie will be pleased that I remembered. He finished off his drink and read.

A man stood up from the group and said he had a gripe against Xenophon because when the army was all lost in the snow, Xenophon slapped him.

That’s a nice touch, Mr. Mackenzie thought. The anonymous man throughout history. Empires fail and governments are overthrown, dark ages come and new learning springs up and there are always these men who can say with pride: I held Napoleon’s horse, General Washington hired a boat from me, I delivered a message for Lord Byron, Xenophon slapped me.

He closed the book and put it back in his pocket, looking
forward to reading Xenophon’s explanation and justification of his conduct. He walked out into the street and thought he must be drunker than he had imagined, for the wind blew him against the wall and he had to put up his hands against it to keep from falling over while he coughed.

He was still coughing, but not badly, when he opened the door. He took off his coat and hung it on the peg in the hall. Bessie came out of the kitchen.

“You see? I remembered,” he said.

“Remembered what?”

“I said I’d come home for dinner and here I am.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Where was you at four o’clock?”

“Four o’clock?”

“Dr. Hildron called up here. You never been there.”

“I knew there was something else. I forgot.”

“He say he coming round tomorrow morning and you be here.” She had a spoon in her hand and shook it at him.

When he’d finished eating and put his plate on the sideboard, she came in with coffee, saw the plate, and put it back in front of him.

“The doctor says he see you last week and why don’t I feed you right. You eat that up.”

“I’m full. Don’t fuss, Bessie.”

“I do all that cooking just for you and you don’t eat half of it.”

“All right.” He ate some more, drank his coffee, took another bite, and spread around what was left to make it look smaller.

“I believe I’ll get to bed early tonight,” he said, and saw she was glad that he wouldn’t be going out. He took the book from his coat pocket, calling out a goodnight to her, and prepared for sleep. When he was ready to get into bed he noticed that she’d taken all the ashtrays out of the room. Did Hildron tell her to do that? He went into the bathroom and found a box of cough drops. The box was metal, so he
tipped the contents out and brought it back and set it on the night table.

He smoked in bed and read the rest of the book. When he was through with it he smoked for a while longer, listening to the wind outside. Cold. It would be months before the tree in the park regained its tropical look. He thought, maybe I should go away. Everyone kept telling him that. And he had enough money to go anywhere. But somehow he didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to be where he was, either, and now that Jumbo and Elmie and Spats were moving on—he thought of the long winter, walking in the cold, not wanting to be inside any one place for too long a time, and the park having to wait for spring to bring back the allusion to Mexico.

He turned off the bedside light and lay in darkness, breathing hard and thinking about the cold.

When he woke up it was freezing. It was snowing. And someone was carrying him, walking through the snow. He wondered what could be happening. Then he opened his eyes and saw the other men, soldiers walking. They had their feet wrapped in hides and he remembered the terrible trouble they had with them because in the cold sometimes the torn soles of their feet would freeze to the leather skins and rip off pieces of their flesh. Then he saw riders and noticed the leather bags tied around the horses’ hooves to prevent them from sinking into the snow. Someone passed on horseback and said an encouraging word to the man who was carrying him. The wet snow beat into Mr. Mackenzie’s face and he closed his eyes again. He felt himself being let down to the ground on to the snow, so cold that it burned and made him open his eyes. The man who had been carrying him was doing something. Digging a grave, Mr. Mackenzie realized. That’s what he’s doing, he’s digging my grave. Another man walked to where he was lying. He heard the steps vague and swallowed in the flying snow and heard
a voice, saying, “What do you think you’re doing? That man’s not dead yet. Pick him up.”

The one who had been carrying him said, “I don’t care if he’s dead or alive, I’m not dragging him one more step.”

Then Mr. Mackenzie heard it: the slap. And he saw Xenophon bending over him. The other man said, “Well, he’s dead now,” and Mr. Mackenzie wanted to say he wasn’t, but he couldn’t speak or move. The soldier dropped him down into the grave and piled earth over him and then heaped snow on top of that. The earth was cold but the snow felt warm, like a blanket, and he thought, they’re going to leave me behind, I must get out. He tried to move, to scrape away the earth and snow, but his hands moved so slowly. One of those terrible feelings, his wish to get out moving quickly quickly through him and his hands going so slowly. The way it sometimes happens in dreams. But this couldn’t be a dream because he could feel everything. He could feel the snow and how cold the earth was, burrowing through it.

And then he was out.

He looked around and it was spring, the snow was melting, and down in the plain the brown was turning to green. They had left him behind, thinking that he was dead. He stood up. Away to the north stretched the great plain with its fields and villages, the hills beyond, and beyond that the sea and home. From somewhere in the sky at a great distance he thought he could distinguish a voice.
Oh Mr. Mac
kenzie, sir, what happened? Oh my Lord, Lord. Don’t move,
don’t you move. I’m sending for the doctor.

Let me see, he thought, this is sometime around the fourth century
B.C.
If I can make my way north I could be at the great Library before Alexander comes to burn it down.

He began to walk down the slopes. No other person was in sight, and his own people must be miles away by now,
marching over the hills and plains, green now and full of growing fields, impossible to catch up to. He imagined them as they must have looked disappearing over the farthest ridge at the horizon, the winter sunshine glinting on their helmets, their eyes tired, with the winter still in them. Again he thought he heard a sound that might be water or leaves rubbing against each other, seeming to be saying something like
Charlie, Charlie, can you hear me? You hold
this to his mouth, hold that there, we II need the ambulance.

But to walk, alone, all the way to the coast—it might take him years. Even if he kept his strength up, there were other dangers to consider, such as the undoubted hatred of the people through whose lands they had been marching.

The wind overhead made a wailing sound as he reached the plains, and a word came into his head:
Oxygen, quick,
the oxygen.
A Greek word.

And that was the trouble. The army had marched off and left him, one lone Greek in the middle of the great Persian plains. He did not look like the people who lived there, he did not speak their language, and there was nowhere for him to hide among that enemy country lovely now with spring, that stretched away for thousands of miles into the horizon where the management had locked the doors to make sure that nobody got out without paying.