“That’s the answer,” she said placidly. “The final solution.”
Dieter drew himself up in a magisterial fashion.
“Foolish girl,” he said softly. “That’s the problem, it can’t be the answer. When you say that, it’s cheap junkie pessimism. If you spend your time making holes in yourself and tripping on the cracks in the wall — how else can you think?
“You begin from there,” he shouted at her — “life belongs to the strong!”
“The strong?” Marge asked incredulously, “The strong?
Who the hell is that supposed to be? Superman? Socialist man?” She stood up wearily and leaned against the wall.
“You’re an asshole,” she said to Dieter. “You’re a Fascist. Where were you during the Second World War?”
Laughing to herself, she staggered out of the room and went down the corridor to the cell where Hicks was sleeping. The bag was beside him; she pulled it out and opened it and spent a long time staring at it with wonder. Her hand absently caressed the outer covering in a ridiculous manner and the notion came to her that it was like a child but less trouble. It was a stupid thought and she was not amused. She got up and went out again to the garden where the stream was and sat beside it with her head in her hands. When she looked up she saw Dieter standing in the doorway.
“It doesn’t get better,” he said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him. “Mind your business.”
When she looked up again he was still there. “If I didn’t have it now, I’d be out of my mind. Things are crazy and it’s been horrible. It’s like I haven’t slept for a week.”
He smiled with his thick hairy lips in a way that she thought at first was extremely cruel but when she had stared at him for a few moments she was no longer sure that it was cruelty she saw there.
“But you’re all right,” he said. “You have it.”
_
CONVERSE AND HIS COMPANIONS SPENT THE FIRST EVENING of their journey at a hotel called the Fremont. It was in the mountains, across the road from a yellow slope on which Herefords grazed.
As soon as Converse determined that it was not the last day of his life, he began to drink in celebration. He drank Bacardi because that was what Danskin liked.
Danskin and Smitty sat on the bed playing chess with a portable set that had tiny plastic pins for pieces. In play, Danskin was imperturbable; he slumped motionless over his own belly, his shoulders hunched, his feet on the floor. His breathing was always audible; for all his size and apparent strength, he did not seem to be very healthy. Smitty hummed and tapped his foot and licked his lips frequently.
“Check…” Danskin said wearily. “And mate.”
Smitty’s eyes narrowed in panic. He removed his king from its fatal position and surveyed the board.
“Where the fuck did that come from? I never seen it.”
“Checkmate,” Danskin said.
He watched Smitty move the king from one square to another, and finally replace it in the trap.
“You got me,” Smitty said.
Danskin sighed.
When they stood up, he struck Smitty across the mouth with his fist — a lightning right cross from nowhere that had the whole weight of his trunk behind it. Smitty caught it fiat-footed; he had not even tried to duck. The blow stood him on tiptoes and he staggered backward and caught himself against the wall. He felt his lip, spat blood, and walked into the bathroom. Danskin followed him stolidly.
“You stupid little bastard, I’m tired of your jailbird chess. You better learn to play.”
He turned to Converse, who was pouring another Bacardi.
“I hate jailbird chess,” he explained. “I hate the style. No foresight, no reasoning. Just like a little kid.” He pursed his lips and spoke mincingly, raising his voice for Smitty to hear. “Just like a little tweety bird! Oooh, here’s a move. Oooh, there’s a move. It’s fucking degrading.”
Smitty came out of the bathroom holding a face towel to his lip, and sat down on the bed.
“You hit my fucking bridge, man,”
“Tough tit. Why don’t you read a chess book once in your life?”
“Plenty of guys will belt you when they lose,” Smitty said thickly. “Fuckin’ Danskin — he wins and he hits you.”
Danskin shrugged and lay down beside Smitty with a book of road maps of the national parks.
“Where do you think I learned the game, man?” Smitty demanded. “I learned it in the slams, I can’t help that.” He looked at the bloody face towel. “Fuck you, man, I ain’t playin’ no more chess with you.”
Danskin looked up at Converse.
“Play chess?”
“I’m very weak,” Converse said.
Danskin laughed.
“He’s very weak,” he told Smitty.
“I don’t think I have the cast of mind for it.”
“That’s odd,” Danskin said. “It can’t be that you’re stupid, can it?”
“No,” Converse said.
He went to sleep in his chair.
When he woke up, he had the sense that some hours had passed. It seemed to him that there had been sunlight on the drapes before and there was none now. His head ached, and he was thirsty; he was on the floor.
When he tried to stand, his legs would not respond. He twisted round and saw that there were handcuffs on his ankles.
One of the small table lamps was lit. Smitty sat beside it in a blond wood armchair giggling at him silently. Danskin was in bed with a pillow over his head.
“Where you going?” Smitty asked merrily.
“I’d like to get some water.”
“Go ahead,” Smitty said.
“For Christ’s sake,” Converse said. “I agreed to come out here. I don’t see the necessity for this kind of thing.”
“If you want water, get it. I’m not stopping you.”
He drew himself up and hopped to the bathroom.
“I’ll wake up the whole damn place this way,” he told Smitty.
“Fuck the whole damn place.”
Converse drank and washed his face under the tap. He held to the sink to keep from falling over. When he had finished, he hopped back into a chair across the room from Smitty.
There was a red binding mark around Smitty’s spindly arm; the skin in the crook of his elbow was black and blue. His undersea eyes were at peace.
“You from New York?” Smitty asked.
“Yes,” Converse said.
“You know Yorkville?”
“Yes.”
“You know Klavan’s?”
Converse knew Klavan’s well. It was a bar on Second Avenue in which he had drunk illegally when under the required age. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1955, he had been beaten up there and it was there he had attempted the seduction of Agnes Comerford, a nursing student at Lenox Hill Hospital. He had invested a considerable amount of his life’s energy in transporting himself as far from Klavan’s, in every respect, as he was capable.
“No,” he said.
The idea of being held prisoner in a California motel by a denizen of Klavan’s was profoundly distasteful to him.
“You know, I was in Vietnam too,” Smitty said. “I got fucked up there.”
“What happened?”
“I stepped on a pungi stick. Hurt? Jesus! It got me the fuck out of there, though.”
“Good,” Converse said. Smitty glanced over his shoulder at the bed, and listened with satisfaction to Danskin’s asthmatic breathing.
“Some nut, huh?”
Converse grunted.
“You know what his I.Q. is? One hundred and seventy. A rating of genius.”
“I’m not surprised,” Converse said.
“You’re riding with the guy and some classical music comes on the pipe — he says that’s Mozart. That’s Beethoven. What good does it do him?”