Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (11 page)

 
          
Jim
had no answer to this but to shake his head.

 
          
“You
believe me now, don’t you?”

 
          
“I
saw what I saw.”

 
          
Evening came, and
Weinberger had still
not let go of the invisible thing in his hand. To Jim’s surprise the sick man
did not seem physically weaker. Rather, he seemed to be drawing strength from
this prolonged bout of hand-wrestling with a hidden opponent.

 
          
Plainly
the situation could not continue. Surely Weinberger must soon burn up all his
reserves. If his life became endangered — prematurely endangered, Jim reminded
himself, since Weinberger was dying anyway — would an emergency amputation of
his right hand be in order?

 
          
It
would be a castration, a cruel gelding of him.

 
          
If
he lost his grip that way — like some thief in the old
Middle East
who had tried to steal a jewel from the
Sultan of Death — it would be a cheat. Probably it would solve nothing.

 
          
Jim
sat with Weinberger for an hour, his hand touching the other man’s limp left
hand, then he went away to visit the farmer with multiple sclerosis. The farmer
was looking forward increasingly to an early retirement as the only sane
alternative to the inevitable withering away of his faculties which the disease
would bring. ‘Don’t sigh, die
high,'
was the motto in his case. It was a Norman Harper motto.

 
          
Jim
returned to his own room at
ten o’clock
to catch some sleep, setting the alarm to
rouse him at one in the morning.

 
          
Most
people’s bodily functions were at their lowest ebb around
three o’clock
in the morning. Three in the morning was
the time when most deaths used to occur ‘naturally’ in the days before one
could choose one’s time. Around
three o’clock
, therefore — most probably tonight — Jim
suspected that some kind of crisis might occur . . .

 
          
He
let himself into Weinberger’s room at one-thirty.

 
          
Weinberger
lay awake, though his eyes were heavy and there seemed to be dark bruises under
them. His hand was still clutched upon the bolster.

 
          
After
ensuring privacy, as usual, Jim sat on the edge of the bed.

 
          
“I
saw an. old movie years and years ago,” murmured Weinberger. “The movie was
old, I was young. It wasn’t your modern sort of movie. It had killing and
torture in it.”

 
          
“Didn’t
they all?”

 
          
“It
took place in some desert, during some war or other . . .

 
          
“It
was all one war, with different faces,

 
          
A
carousel war, in different places,

 
          
Turning,
turning, burning, burning,

 
          
Returning
. . .

 
          
“Shit
poet, you know, Norman Harper. Oh what have we come to? Anyway, the Arabs
caught this man and tortured him. They tied him in a chair and ground his wrist
bones back and forth with metal punishers.”

 
          
“You
remember that image especially?”

 
          
“Oh,
it hasn’t
suggested
anything, if
that’s what you think! No, I just feel like that
fellow
in the chair. Only, I don’t have any secret to confess. So the pain can’t stop.
The torture just goes on and on.”

 
          
“There
is
a secret, Nathan. The secret is
peace.
Acceptance and unity.
Fulfilment
and completion.”

 
          
“When
my hand’s being screwed? Screw that!”

 
          
“It’ll
stop, as soon as you let it stop.”

 
          
“Lame,
Jim, lame. You saw Death too.”

 
          
“But
Death shouldn’t hurt.”

 
          
“Don’t
complain, there is no pain
When
life’s fulfilment you
attain.”

 
          
This
time Jim couldn’t tell whether Weinberger was quoting the murdered poet or
parodying him.

 
          
They
sat in silence for a long time, their fingers touching, watching the icebergs
in the wall.

 
          
Occasionally
Jim glanced covertly at his watch. He always wore the watch with its face on
the underside of his wrist so as not to offend clients by checking the time
ostentatiously. For the same reason he favoured an old-style watch with hands
rather than an electronic one.

 
          
Two-fifteen.

 
          
Two-thirty
. . .

 
          
Perhaps
Weinberger would simply fall asleep at
three o’clock
. Outside, the House was hushed. It seemed
hours since Jim had heard a sound of any sort. Not even the duet of their
breathing was audible. Jim blinked, wishing that he had had the foresight to
take a stimulant.

 
          
At
a
quarter to three
Weinberger suddenly cried out like a woman in childbirth. His eyes
goggled. Both his hands flexed, the fingers bending backward like an Asian
dancing girl’s. For just a moment Jim thought that the man had died, and his
hand jerked towards the phone to call for a resuscitation unit.

 
          
But
then Weinberger brought both hands together with a sharp clean smack.

 
          
“It’s
gone!” he cried. “It’s damn well gone! Death’s gone! Given up! Let go!
Got away!”
He pounded his hands together again and again.

 
          
And
fell asleep, a moment later.
Soundly asleep.

 
          
Jim
checked the man’s pulse and breathing. Both were fine. He reached for the phone
again, to order the spy camera switched back on, but stopped
himself
in time. Nothing, but nothing, should disturb Weinberger while sleep healed his
self-inflicted, phantom scars. Not a word, not a whisper. He would phone from
his own rooms, instead.

 
          
He
tiptoed out, locked the door silently and headed for the elevator.

 
          
It
was with a huge feeling of relief and release that Jim climbed into bed.

 
          
Now
that he was
persona grata
again, he
wished he could share that sense of release, and his bed, with someone. But it
was far too late, and besides, who was quite to be trusted? Maybe Marta
Bettijohn was. Or perhaps he could apologize to Sally Costello. But no, she was
under Menotti *s wing, and operatic heroes could be jealous characters
off-stage as well as on.

 
          
Before
he fell asleep, he decided that it was time for that promised dinner excursion
to the Three Spires restaurant down Egremont Mall, with Marta.

 
          
Jim was dreaming
of Marta. She was a
Rubens woman, dressed in the skimpiest of lace streamers. These blew around her
in the breeze, attached to little more than her nipples and the cleft of her
sex — this was shaven and pink. Away from the chalet she skipped, in between
the junipers; he pursued. The sky was monochrome, as were the trees and
bushes. Yet Marta was rose-hued, and the sun was blood-red. Red, too, were the
sails of yachts tacking on the lake. He gained on Marta. She beckoned him. They
would act out the little death of orgasm on the shore.

 
          
But
then the sails of the yachts became the wings of great moths. These moths beat
into the air. They fluttered towards Marta and descended all about her. The
moths sipped from her with long hollow tongues . . . Then Jim realized that far
from sipping they were pumping something into her. Instead of deflating, Marta
swelled like a balloon, becoming larger and larger and less and less
substantial till she was quite transparent. Whereupon she floated off into the
sky. Even though he had no wings, Jim flew after her to pierce the balloon, to
pop it . . .

 
          
The
trilling of the telephone woke him.

 
          
He
clutched for his watch. It was late morning. He had forgotten to set his
alarm,
he had missed one appointment already and was late
for the second one. Strange that no one had tried to rouse him till now.

 
          
When
he picked up the phone Marta’s voice spoke from the earpiece like an extension
of his dream.

 
          
“Jim,
I thought I should warn you. Your client Weinberger has been creating a fine
old stir this morning —’’

 
          
“He
should be asleep! He should be sacked out for hours yet.”

 
          
“On
the contrary, he’s remarkably energetic — I hear. Full of beans! Listen, Jim,
he’s claiming there’s been a spontaneous remission of his illness. He says
he’s completely cured.”

 
          
“What?
Cured of his
cramp
— I know that! And just maybe he’s cured of the mental
complex that caused it. That
is
what
you mean?”

 
          
“It
isn’t. Weinberger says that his cancer has all gone. Whoosh, just like that. He
demanded a re-evaluation. Not a biopsy — he wouldn’t let himself
be
cut open. A thermogram would suit him fine: a hot spot
picture.”

 
          
“Oh dear.
Well, a thermogram will merely show that he’s
still riddled with cancer.”

 
          
“Jim,
I quite like you, so I should warn you —”

 
          
(‘As you liked me, last night?’)

 
          
“—
Noel got very annoyed, and had Weinberger rushed over to the Hospital with an
escort,
tout de suite.
They already
took the heat profile an hour ago. So far as they can tell, the cancer
has
all mostly gone. Or it’s well on the
way to going. They’re still arguing about the exact interpretation of the
thermogram results. But apparently Weinberger
is
cured. Rather suddenly.”

 
          
Jim
collected his scattered wits.

 
          
“A
hysterical cure — is that it?
Hysterical remission?”

 
          
“But
Jim, he already officially retired. What’s more, he’s still a murderer! So he
has
to go through with his retirement.
How likely is it now that he’ll do it gracefully? The last time I saw Noel, he
was lunging from side to side, shouting, ‘What do we do now? Starve him to death?
Drug the bastard with conditioners? Everybody would know!’ The ball’s in your
court, Jim. And oh
boy,
is it bouncing.” She hushed
her voice, so that he could hardly hear her. “It’s as if he shot his own death
into
Norman
— successfully. You know what that implies
. . .

 
          
“The
other fellow dies

 
          
In place of me.

 
          
So
here I’ll pull the trigger;

 
          
Here,
I’ll drop the bomb.”

 
          
This
was one of the poet’s few ventures into free verse . . .

 
          
“I
thought you should know.”

 
          
“Fuck
it,” said Jim.

 
          
“What?”

 
          
“I
said thanks a lot.
For telling me, for waking me.
I
overslept.” Jim shook the hand set. “It’s just like we’re in bed together,” he
said to it from a distance.

 
          
He
heard a click and a buzz as Marta rang off.

 
          
After
dressing hastily, Jim hurried down to the room occupied by the woman with the
heart condition. He apologized to her rather abjectly for having failed to keep
their morning appointment. He went to other rooms, next, to reorganize his
schedule for the day. That done, he descended to Noel Resnick’s office. By now
it was well after
eleven o’clock
.

 
          
“What’s
this I hear about Weinberger being cured?” he demanded accusingly as soon as he
was inside the office. Accusation seemed to be the best policy. It was not
Jim’s fault that the man was cured. Nor was it Resnick’s fault either, but Jim
hoped that Resnick would overlook that detail, since it was he who had
authorised the thermogram.

 
          
For
once Resnick was alone. He was staring at a print of a human body in the form
of a multicoloured mosaic.

 
          
Resnick
promptly stood up, as though some invisible cord linked him to the door so that
when this closed behind the visitor Resnick was jerked erect and his mouth
tugged open to let his words flow easily.

 
          
‘We’re
all puppets,’ thought Jim: ‘dolls in Death’s puppet theatre. And Death is the
director of the show —
according to
Nathan
.’

 
          
On
this occasion it seemed as if the Master would have to climb bodily on to his
desk before he could get his tongue untied.

 
          
But
Resnick triumphed.

 
          
“Been
keeping your ear to the ground, eh Jim? Even while you were sound asleep... I
guess that means you must have been sleeping on the floor! ” He tapped the
heat profile, like an acupuncturist jabbing needles. “Well, it’s true. He
certainly seems to be cured. The plot thickens!”

 
          
“What
plot?” asked Jim.

 
          
Resnick
ignored the question.

 
          
“It
doesn’t make a fart of difference to the final outcome of Weinberger’s stay in
this House,” he went on. “But needless to say we can do without miracles of
this sort. They breed a wholly false attitude to death.
Eleventh
hour reprieve, that kind of nonsense.
If one word of this —”

 
          
Jim
placed his own hands squarely on Resnick’s desk, as though magically to
paralyse the man — to control what he could say.

 
          
“Listen,
Noel, let’s cut a lot of corners right away. This ‘cure’ of Weinberger’s has to
be hysterical — at the same time as it’s a physical fact. I’ll take your word
for it being a fact. So it’s psychosomatic. Okay, that proves how deeply my
therapy affected him. He’s burnt out the cancer in himself with all that
violent, hostile energy he was storing up. Now it’s gone — like lightning
rushing down a conductor to earth
itself
.”

 
          
“Gone?
Have you seen him this m-m-m-morning?”

 
          
Ah
yes, the man
did
stutter. Jim pressed
the desk harder, and pressed his point home.

 
          
“The
next thing is
,
he’ll adjust — because he
knows
that he killed a man. So there’s
no way out for him, is there? He’ll come to terms and make his peace. But he
couldn’t do that as long as he believed that an actual hostile ‘Death’ was
gnawing at his vitals. That’s all changed now. There’s only good death for
Nathan now. He’ll calm down.” Jim was lying; he utterly doubted it. “If we play
it that way, and I certainly shall, he’ll see the natural logic. When he
appears in public in a few weeks’ time it’ll be to . . .
commemorate
Norman Harper, who was in a sense his very own
lightning conductor. No man could have done more for another man than
Norman
did, unwittingly, for him. But Weinberger
should
never
have been allowed to get
the way he did. It ought to have been spotted. I’m not criticising Mary-Ann, or
this House —”

           
“B-b-but you are.”

 
          
Jim
shook his head. “We all pull together. When we quit pulling, we retire to make
way.”

 
          
“We
sure do.”

 
          
“I
shall see my client now to pick up the threads — I don’t doubt that quite a few
got severed during all the panic this morning. I don’t want Weinberger
interfered with again.”

 
          
Amazingly,
Resnick nodded. He had swallowed this huge distortion — this shucking off of
the blame on to him. Why? It must be because neither his ‘operator’ Alice, nor
his minion Mary-Ann, was present. Resnick must really feel quite vulnerable.
Even his tongue could betray him under stress. There was nothing more
disconcerting than a giant of a man whose very words let him down.

 
          
And
Resnick was definitely under stress. Jim had never wholly understood all the
hidden strains and tensions which bound the various groups in society together:
the Houses, the Peace Offices, the Census Bureau, the Re-Education Bureau — not
forgetting such rich though numerically minor forces as the freezer freaks, or
the disenfranchised religious groups which still clung on here and there. But
he had his suspicions that society did not cohere as smoothly as it seemed to
on the surface. He visualized society as a geodesic dome. A kick delivered to
one part of it did no visible damage to that part. But the corresponding part
one hundred and eighty degrees removed would be buckled. Norman Harper’s murder
— and now, Weinberger’s spurious ‘resurrection’ — were two such almighty kicks,
one overt, one as yet covert. The question was, if the kick was delivered here
in well-adjusted, unblemished Egremont, what exactly would buckle, and where?
Alternatively, what kicks was Resnick presently buckling under? If the
Sino-Soviet War had been the huge kick from elsewhere on this globe which had
propelled this land into the great Reappraisal of Death and the Restructuring,
how national and even global might these events in Egremont turn out to be?

 
          
Weinberger
had raved about ‘beneficiaries of murder and accident’ and about how the very
best defence against Death would be a hydrogen bomb . . . Had Weinberger’s
imaginary creature, Death, gotten hungry for souls because too many souls had
escaped it in a flash during the lightning Chinese-Russian war so many years ago?
In that case Death must be like some sort of intelligent yeast or bacteria
culture which was now trying to ensure its food supply by influencing men’s
minds . . . And Weinberger would be forced to feed
himself
to it. So must everyone who couldn’t arrange a fatal accident for themselves,
an accident about which they knew nothing in advance.

 
          
‘That’s
sheer insanity,’ thought Jim.

 
          
Removing
his hands from Resnick’s desk, he left quickly before Resnick could recover his
poise.

 
          
“You
haven’t helped much,’’ said Jim wryly to Weinberger.