“God cannot be a murderer,” the man said.
“And you killed all the others, too.”
“What others?”
“All of them, all of them! Don’t play dumb with me, you phony bastard.”
“God cannot be a phony bastard,” the old man said.
“No, and you can’t be God, because you don’t even know who the hell Beethoven is or was. You don’t even remember that you killed him on Tarawa! You don’t remember anything, you phony bastard!”
“I remember everything,” the man said.
“Yeah? Well, who am I? Do you happen to remember that?”
“Yes. You are Edward Voegler.”
“Wrong!” Buddwing said. “Ha!”
“God cannot be wrong.”
“God can be wrong and petty and a phony bastard besides,” Buddwing said. “I reject you! I reject you because you’re a murderer and a thief! You stole my identity this morning, and you stole Beethoven’s when you killed him on Tarawa.”
“On the contrary,” the old man said, “I did not steal his identity.”
“No, huh?”
“I gave him one,” the old man said.
“How do you figure—”
“Because you will always remember that he was killed on Tarawa. That is his identity. I have made him immortal in your memory.”
“And what have you done for me lately?”
“You asked me who you were, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and—”
“And I told you. You are Edward Voegler.”
“Convince me.”
“I do not perform miracles after five o’clock.”
“The hell with your miracles, just convince me! I’ll be whoever you want me to be, if you’ll only convince me!”
“You must convince yourself,” the old man said.
“How?”
“You must have faith.”
“In what?”
“In me.”
“Why you? You’re crazier than I am!”
“There,” he old man said softly. “You do know, don’t you?”
“I know nothing.”
“You know you’re crazy. And you also know you are Edward Voegler.”
“I never heard of him.”
“You are a paranoid schizophrenic,” the old man intoned hypnotically. “You belong in Central Islip State Hospital where you stole a director’s suit last night after dinner. You must go back there.”
“I don’t want to go back. Not there, and not anywhere!” Buddwing shouted. “No!”
The old man leaned closer to him. Buddwing saw his eyes for the first time. They were clear and blue and staring at him brightly, reflecting the late afternoon sun. They were the eyes of a lunatic.
The old man’s hand was on his sleeve again, the fingers tightening in the blue cloth like a claw. The old man’s breath was foul, and words tumbled from his mouth in a litany as he leaned closer to Buddwing, his eyes burning intensely. For a moment, Buddwing saw them as a pair, the insane old man who thought he was God, and the paranoid schizophrenic named Edward Voegler, both involved in a lunatic dialogue that had no connection with reality. And then, standing side by side with insanity, his eyes locked with the eyes of insanity, his sleeve gripped in the clutch of insanity, he knew all at once that this man was not his brother, and it was then he decided finally and with complete conviction that he was not Edward Voegler.
The old man was still talking. His speech was pleading and threatening, cajoling and abusive. He conjured images of Heaven and Hell, of sin and redemption, while Buddwing half listened, overwhelmed by an enormous sense of relief: he was not Edward Voegler, he was not insane. And then, because he had lived with the notion since 9:10 this morning when he had first seen the headline outside the candy store on 67th Street, because the notion had grown within him and become an image to fall back upon when all other hope of identity failed him, he stared blankly at the truth and willed it to be untrue. He wanted to be anyone, if only Edward Voegler, a poor confused madman who had stolen a director’s suit and fled. He wanted to be anyone, no, he wanted to be someone.
“Listen to God,” the old man was saying. “Listen to the voice of God, for He will lead you into green pastures and—”
“Listen to me,” Buddwing said.
“Listen to God.”
“No! You listen to me. I’m somebody, do you understand that?”
“You are Edward Voegler, and I—”
“No, I’m me, and you’re a crazy son of a bitch who thought you saw yourself in me. Well, I’m not Edward Voegler, I’m not insane. I’m me, you understand? And I’m tired of people looking at me and seeing only themselves! From now on, you look at me and you see me, or you see nothing at all! Nothing! Now, get the hell away from me, before I tell that cop on the corner you’re God. Go on, get out of here!”
“If you tell him I’m God, I’ll tell him you’re Edward Voegler,” the old man said slyly.
“Good. Maybe he’ll believe us both and lock us both up. How would you like that?”
“You are messing around with the Almighty, you little bastard,” the old man said suddenly.
“God shouldn’t curse,” Buddwing said, smiling.
The old man stared at him with insane malice in his eyes, the pipe, dead again, clenched tightly in his fist. Without warning, he turned toward the policeman on the corner and shouted, “Help! This man is Edward Voegler, the escaped maniac!”
For a shocked ten seconds, Buddwing could not believe the old man had really carried out his threat. Then he saw the cop turn slowly toward them, and he heard the old man shouting again, “Help! Help! Escaped maniac! Help!” and for the first time since he had awakened he knew real panic.
Blindly, he ran.
He ran toward the sun, west, fixing it in his mind as a goal, and wanting to reach it before it descended into the river. Behind him, he could hear the old man and the cop shouting after him in unison, but he ran for the sun, thinking if he could only reach the sun before it went out, everything would be all right. Their shouts diminished behind him, or perhaps were overwhelmed by the noise of his own ragged breathing. As he ran, he thought how curious it was that if you sat on a park bench in New York and minded your own damn business, a cop would come over to you and ask to see your identification; but if you raced along the city streets, running like a thief for the sun because you wanted to catch it before it fell, why, no one gave you more than a sideward glance. He smiled as he ran. He could feel his feet thumping against the pavement with good sole-rocking thwacks, could feel each pumping stride jarring his calves and thighs. He sucked in breath after breath; he could feel the hot air in his throat and lungs, could feel his body responding to the pavement and the exertion of his flight. You never run, he thought. You grow up, and you never run any more.
The cop and the old man were lost somewhere behind him now; they were no longer a threat. But he kept running anyway, wanting to reach the river and catch the sun. He ran through a city that had suddenly become one-dimensional, as though viewed from a seat at the extreme side of a motion-picture theater. The people, the buildings, the trucks parked outside the meat market between Ninth and Tenth, the overhead span of the Henry Hudson Parkway flashed past his eyes in flat unreality; only the river and the sun were real, and these only as half-understood goals. You son of a bitch, you gave him identity, did you? he thought. By killing him. You made him immortal, did you? I’ll always remember him as the one who was killed on Tarawa, is that it? And how will I remember the others, you son of a bitch? Have you made them immortal, too? He had to get to the river before the sun went out.
It was not what he had expected. The river’s edge was crowded with buildings and ships. He had wanted a dock he could sit upon; he had wanted to look up at the living sun and find its reflected stain on the water. Where are all the free spaces? he wondered. You’ve cluttered up the whole damn world with your dockside shacks and your cargo ships. Where can I sit to rest? He kept running, turning abruptly upriver, his eyes searching the waterfront, his legs weary now, his heart pumping furiously, his lungs aching. He did not know how long or how far he ran searching for a break in the unyielding barrier that kept him from the river, running against the southbound traffic that roared on the highway overhead. It had not been this way long ago, when he had idly watched a squadron of destroyers midstream, and a friend of his had tried to hit the nearest ship with a stone.