The best seats were in the Ready Room with its windows overlooking the vacant lot. Mack was there behind a drape, munching Fauna’s crullers. The girls were there in their best kimonos. Becky had put on her mules with the ostrich feathers. At eight-thirty the audience heard the boiler door screech and shushed one another.
Suzy, on her hands and knees, poked her head out of the firedoor and rammed her nose into the giant floral tribute. For a long moment she stared at the flowers, and then she reached out and dragged them inside. The iron door closed after her.
At nine o’clock Suzy re-emerged and walked rapidly toward Monterey. At nine-thirty she was back. She went into the boiler and in a moment came out, pushing her suitcase ahead of her. The audience was filled with dismay, but only for a moment. Suzy climbed the steps and rang the bell at the Bear Flag. Fauna chased the girls to their rooms and Mack out the back way before she answered the door.
Suzy said, “You told me I could use your bathroom.”
“Help yourself,” said Fauna.
In an hour, when the splashing had ceased, Fauna knocked on the bathroom door. “Want a little toilet water, honey?”
“Thanks,” said Suzy.
In a few minutes she emerged, scrubbed and shining.
“Like a cup of coffee?” Fauna asked.
“Wish I could,” said Suzy. “I got to run. Thanks for the bath. There ain’t nothing like a good deep-dish set-down bath.”
Fauna, from behind a drape, watched her crawl back into the boiler.
In her office Fauna scribbled a note and sent it by Joe Elegant to Western Biological. It read: “She ain’t going to work today.”
35
Il n’y a pas de mouches sur la grandmère[119]
Doc laid his best clothes out on his cot. There were pale acid spots on the washed khaki trousers, the white shirt was yellow with age, and he noticed for the first time that his old tweed jacket was frayed through at both elbows. The tie he had worn to the dinner at Sonny Boy’s was spotted. He found a black army tie in the bottom of his suitcase. For the first time in his life he was dissatisfied with his clothing. It was silly to feel serious about it, but there was no doubt that he was serious. For a time he sat down and regarded his wardrobe and his life, and he found them both ridiculous. And not less ridiculous was the quaking certainty that he was frightened.
He spoke aloud to the rattlesnakes, and they ran out their forked tongues to listen.
“You are looking at a fool,” he said. “I am a reasonable man, a comparatively intelligent man—IQ one hundred and eighty-two, University of Chicago, Master’s and Ph.D. An informed man in his own field and not ignorant in some other fields. Regard this man!” he said. “He is about to pay a formal call on a girl in a boiler. He has a half-pound box of chocolates for her. This man is scared stiff. Why? I’ll tell you why. He is afraid this girl will not approve of him. He is terrified of her. He knows this is funny, but he cannot laugh at it.”
The eyes of the snakes looked dustily at him—or seemed to.
Doc went on, “Let me put it this way: there is nothing I can do. They say of an amputee that he remembers his leg. Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole. At the time I didn’t realize how important it was, but I do now. I am not a dope. I know that if I should win her I’ll have many horrible times. Over and over, I’ll wish I’d never seen her. But I also know that if I fail I’ll never be a whole man. I’ll live a gray half-life, and I’ll mourn for my lost girl every hour of the rest of my life. As thoughtful reptiles you will wonder, ‘Why not wait? Look further! There are better fish in the sea!’ But you are not involved. Let me tell you that to me not only are there no better fish, there are no other fish in the sea at all. The sea is lonely without this fish. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
He took off his clothes and had a shower and scrubbed himself until his skin was soap-burned and red. He brushed his teeth until his gums bled. His hands were frayed with formalin, but he gouged at his discolored nails just the same, and he brushed at his overgrown hair and he shaved so close that his face was on fire. At last he was ready—and still he looked for things to do, to put off his departure.
His stomach was crowding up against his chest, forcing him to breathe shallowly. I should take a big slug of whisky, he thought. But it would be on my breath and she would know why I’d taken it. I wonder if she’s frightened too? You never know. Women can conceal these things better than men. Oh God, what a fool I am! I can’t go this way. I’m falling to pieces. My voice would tremble. Why, the little—no, don’t do that. You can’t build your courage by running her down. You’re going to her, not she to you. Why do I say “you” when it is “I”? Am I afraid of “I”?
And then he knew what to do. He went to his records and he found the Art of the Fugue. If I can’t get courage from his greatness, he thought, I might as well give up. He sat unmoving while Bach built a world and peopled it and organized it and finally fought his world and was destroyed by it. And when the music stopped, as the man had stopped when death came to him, stopped in the middle of a phrase, Doc had his courage back. “Bach fought savagely,” he said. “He was not defeated. If he had lived he would have gone on fighting the impossible fight.”
Doc cried to no one, “Give me a little time! I want to think. What did Bach have that I am hungry for to the point of starvation? Wasn’t it gallantry? And isn’t gallantry the great art of the soul? Is there any more noble quality in the human than gallantry?” He stopped and then suddenly he seemed to be wracked with inner tears. “Why didn’t I know before?” he asked. “I, who admire it so, didn’t even recognize it when I saw it. Old Bach had his talent and his family and his friends. Everyone has something. And what has Suzy got? Absolutely nothing in the world but guts. She’s taken on an atomic world with a slingshot, and, by God, she’s going to win! If she doesn’t win there’s no point in living anymore.
“What do I mean, win?” Doc asked himself. “I know. If you are not defeated, you win.”
Then he stabbed himself in vengeance for having run Suzy down. “I know what I’m doing. In the face of my own defeat I’m warming myself at her gallantry. Let me face this clearly, please! I need her to save myself. I can be whole only with Suzy.”
He stood up and he did not feel silly anymore and his mission was not ridiculous. “So long,” he said to the rattlesnakes. “Wish me luck!” He took his box of candy and went jauntily down the steps of Western Biological. Crossing the street, he knew he was being observed from every window from which he was visible, and he didn’t care. He waved a salute to his unseen audience.
Going through the vacant lot among the mallow weeds, he thought, How do you knock on an iron door? He stooped and picked a rusty tenpenny nail from the ground and he arrived almost gaily at the boiler and tapped a little drumbeat on the iron wall. The firedoor was slightly ajar.
Suzy’s voice sounded with a metallic ring. “Who is it?”
“It’s I,” said Doc. “Or me—somebody like that.”
The firedoor opened and Suzy looked out. “Thanks for the flowers,” she said.
“I brought you another present.”
119
Il n’y a pas de mouches sur la grandmère: The English translation of the French is: “There are no flies on Grandmother.”