“Are you listening, Klaff, you second-story fink?” Bertie yelled. “Do you see how your old pal is developing what is called character?”
And so, master of himself for once, he resolved — feeling what someone taking a vow feels — not to use the last of his drugs until the strategic moment of strategic truth.
That was Wednesday evening. By Thursday morning he had decided to break his resolution. He had not yielded to temptation, had not lain fitfully awake all night — indeed, his resolution had given him the serenity to sleep well — in the sweaty throes of withdrawal. There had been no argument or rationalization, nor had he decided that he had reached his limit or that this was the strategic moment he had been waiting for. He yielded as he always yielded: spontaneously, suddenly, unexpectedly, as the result neither of whim nor of calculation. His important decisions were almost always reached without his knowledge, and he was often as surprised as the next one to see what he was going to do — to see, indeed, that he was already doing it. (Once someone had asked him whether he believed in Free Will, and after considering this for a moment as it applied to himself, Bertie had answered “Free? Hell, it’s positively loose.”)
Having discovered his new intention, he was eager to realize it. As often as he had taken drugs (he never called it anything but drugs, never used the cute or obscene names, never even said “dope”; to him it was always “drugs,” medicine for his spirit), they were still a major treat for him. “It’s a rich man’s game,” he had once told Klaff, and then he had leaned back philosophically. “You know, Klaff, it’s a good thing I’m poor. When I think of the snobbish ennui of your wealthy junkies, I realize that they don’t know how to appreciate their blessings. God keep me humble, Klaff. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder, a truer word was never spoken.”
Nor did a drug ever lose its potency for him. If he graduated from one to another, it was not in order to recover some fading jolt, but to experience a new and different one. He held in contempt all those who professed disenchantment with the drugs they had been raised on, and frequently went back to rediscover the old pleasures of marijuana, as a sentimental father might chew some of his boy’s bubble gum. “Loyalty, Gimpel,” he exclaimed, “loyalty, do you know what that is?”
Bertie would and did try anything, though currently his favorite was mescaline for the visions it induced. Despite what he considered his eclectic tastes in these matters, there were one or two things he would not do, however. He never introduced any drug by hypodermic needle. This he found disgusting and, frankly, painful. He often said he could stand anything but pain and was very proud of his clear, unpunctured skin. “Not a mark on me,” he would say, waving his arms like a professional boxer. The other thing he would not do was take his drugs in the presence of other users, for he found the company of addicts offensive. However, he was not above what he called “seductions.” A seduction for him was to find some girl and talk her into letting him share his drugs with her. Usually it ended in their lying naked in a bed together, both of them serene, absent of all desire and what Bertie called “unclean thoughts.”
“You know,” he would say to the girl beside him, “I think that if all the world’s leaders would take drugs and lie down on the bed naked like this without any unclean thoughts, the cause of world peace would be helped immeasurably. What do you think?”
“I think so too,” she would say.
Once he knew he was going to take the drug, Bertie made his preparations. He went first to his trumpet case and took out the last small packet of powder. He opened it carefully, first closing all the windows so that no sudden draft could blow any of it away. This had once happened to a friend of his, and Bertie had never forgotten the warning.
“I am not one on whom a lesson is lost,” Bertie said.
“You’re okay, Bertie,” a Voice said. “Go save France.”
He placed the packet on the Premingers’ coffee table and carefully spread the paper, exactly like the paper wrapper around a stick of chewing gum, looking almost lustfully at the soft, flat layer of ground white powder. He held out his hand to see how steady it was, and although he was not really shaky he did not trust himself to lift the paper from the table. He brought a water tumbler from the kitchen and gently placed it upside down on top of the powder. He was not yet ready to take it. Bertie was a man who postponed his pleasures as long as he possibly could; he let candy dissolve in his mouth and played with the threads on his tangerine before eating the fruit. It was a weakness in his character perhaps, but he laid it lovingly at the feet of his poverty.
He decided to wait until sundown to take the drug, reasoning that when it wore off, it would be early next morning and he would be ready for bed. Sleep was one of his pleasures too, and he approved of regularity in small things, taking a real pride in being able to keep hours. To pass the time until sundown he looked for something to do. First he found some tools and busied himself by taking Norma’s steam iron apart. There was still time left after that, so he took a canvas and painted a picture. Because he did not know how to draw he simply covered the canvas first with one color and then with another, applying layer after layer of the paint thickly. Each block of color he made somewhat smaller than the last, so that the finished painting portrayed successive jagged margins of color. He stepped back and considered his work seriously.
“Well, it has texture, Bertie,” Hans Hoffman said.
“Bertie,” the Voice said suddenly, “I don’t like to interrupt when you’re working, but it’s sundown.”
“So it is,” he said, looking up.
He went back into the living room and removed the tumbler. Taking up the paper in his fingers and creasing it as if he were a cowboy rolling a cigarette, Bertie tilted his head far back and inhaled the powder deeply. This part was always uncomfortable for him. “Ooo,” he said, “the bubbles.” He stuffed the last few grains up his nose with his fingers. “Waste not, want not,” he said.
He sat down to wait. After half an hour in which nothing happened, Bertie became uneasy. “It’s been cut,” he said. “Sure, depend upon friends to do you favors.” He was referring to the fact that the mescaline had been a going-away present from friends in Oklahoma City. He decided to give it fifteen more minutes. “Nothing,” he said at last, disappointed. “Nothing.”
The powder, as it always did, left his throat scratchy, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. His soft palate prickled. He seized the water tumbler from the coffee table and walked angrily into the kitchen. He ran the cold water, then gargled and spit in the sink. In a few minutes the bitter taste and the prickly sensation subsided and he felt about as he had before he took the drug. He was conscious, however, of a peculiar smell, unpleasant, unfamiliar, nothing like the odor of rotting flowers he associated with the use of drugs. He opened a window and leaned out, breathing the fresh air. But as soon as he came away from the window, the odor was again overpowering. He went to see if he could smell it in the other rooms. When he had made his tour he realized that the stench must be coming from the kitchen. Holding his breath, he came back to see if he could locate its source. The kitchen was almost as Norma had left it. He had done no cooking, and although there were some empty soup and beer cans in the sink he knew they couldn’t be causing the odor. He shrugged. Then he noticed the partially closed door to Preminger’s study.
“Of course,” Bertie said. “Whatever it is must be in there.” He pushed the door open. In the middle of the floor were two blackish mounds that looked like dark sawdust. Bertie stepped back in surprise.