There was a pause. Mary tried to fill it by saying in a bright voice, “You’ll stay for supper with us, Gerry, I hope?” But behind the words he could read desperate anxiety: please say no, I never told him about you and I don’t think I could bear to have you reminding me, reminding me…
Howson made great play of looking at his watch. “I’d love to,” he lied. “But I haven’t got too much time and I want to look up a good many old acquaintances. I’d better say no.”
He collected his valise and took his leave. On the doorstep he looked back at Mary.
“Apologize to the children for my not being able to stay and tell them another story, won’t you?” he said. “And — try not to hate me.”
“I promise,” said Mary with a wan smile.
“And try not to pity me, either!” he finished savagely, turning his back. He wished he could have stormed down the path from the house, instead of hobbling like a rather ridiculous jointed doll.
23
For many years the hope had endured in his mind: that the deaf-and-dumb girl who had been kind to him had not suffered lastingly because of him. He had believed that there, if anywhere, he had managed ultimately to ensure a person’s happiness.
He had avoided questioning the assumption — why ? Because he subconsciously realized the truth ?
The encounter with her had jolted his personality to its foundations. For a while, as he limped towards the highway fringing the West Walnut development, he was inclined to abandon his trip at once, unwilling to face any more such revelations. But this was exactly what he must not do; no matter how unique his talent made him, he remained a human being, and he had come hunting for the completion of that humanity.
He sighed, put his valise down on the sidewalk and looked both ways along the street. A cab was turning around after dropping a dark-suited man, home from work. He waved at the driver, wondering where he should ask to be taken now.
The vehicle went on by. In sudden anger Howson made as if to project a deafening mental shout after it, but at the last moment he realized the driver had mistaken him for a kid waving a greeting because of his small size, and contented himself with suggesting that the man think again.
The cab braked, reversed, pulled up to where he stood. The hackie, a thick-set man with humorous eyes, took in Howson’s appearance, considered it, shrugged. He said, “Sorry, pal—dreaming, I guess. I lose more fares — Where to, anyway?”
“Grand Avenue,” Howson said briefly, and scrambled in.
Now, the name was ridiculous. The process of disintegration which had begun at the time of Howson’s birth and was well under way when he left for Ulan Bator had gone nearly to completion. A stretch of four blocks at the north end of the avenue was being demolished and laid out as a city housing project; beyond, as though disheartened by the threat of extinction, the stores had closed their eyes behind lids of crude bright posters — everything must go! clearance sale! lease up, bargain time now!
An evening wind pushed balls of paper and clouds of dust down the unswept gutters, and the few people about walked with an air of gloom.
There was the movie theatre where he had conceived his first and disastrous attempt at importance, still struggling on, but grimy and neglected. And beyond it, something entirely new: a handsome, clean, tall block with discreet bronze lettering on the marble pillars of its main door. Frowning, Howson considered what they said.
CENTRAL UNIVERSITY — FACULTY OF PURE AND APPLIED SCIENCE.
“Driver!” he called. “Take it slow along here, will you?”
Complying with a dab on his brakes, the driver glanced over his shoulder. “Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” he commented. “That’s the Drake Gift, that place. Whole big piece of land given to the university a few years back. Going to have room for a thousand students when they’re through — study halls, offices, hostels!”
Well, that was an improvement, no denying. But once more Howson felt the unaccountable stab of nostalgia at the disappearance of a place he had never thought he would want to see again.
“Is it already in use ?” he asked.
“Oh, sure — since last fall. They put the students into rooms all around this district so they needn’t wait till the hostels are ready.”
Way, way back young Gerry Howson had had visions of going to college, then on to some academic career… He stifled the memory with an effort. Even if he had got farther than he had done towards his goal, his gift would have developed sooner or later and everything else would have had to take second place anyway. He wouldn’t have got where he was by the same route, but he would have been forced here eventually.
“Is there still a bar along here on the right?” he asked. “The one that used to be run by a guy called Horace Hampton?”
“The Snake?” The driver twisted his head clear around at that. “You must have been away a long time, pal! I recall the Snake, but only just! Why — uh — ten years back, I guess, some teeps came in from the UN and went through the big rackets and cleared “em out. The Snake got five years with compulsory rehabilitation for accessory to murder, and last I heard he was going to join some UN outfit and make good.”
Teeps — TP’s — telepathists. Howson nodded. He didn’t remember hearing the nickname before, which surprised him; it was so obvious. As for the news about Snake Hampton, it was less strange that he shouldn’t have known that. This was, after all, a city that the new world was passing by. A minor law-enforcement action was petty compared to the big jobs the—the teeps had undertaken here.
“But his bar’s still going,” the driver said. “Just coming into sight ahead, there. I don’t know who runs it now.”
“There’s a hotel the other side of it,” Howson said. “Drop me there.”
Having checked in at the hotel and arranged for the rest of his bags to be sent down from the airport, he ate a solitary meal and reflected on what he had found out so far. He felt despondent. Why should he have expected to be able to come back to where he had left off eleven years ago? It seemed an arrogant assumption, and annoyed him.
He was a stranger now. He’d have to accept that.
After his meal he left the hotel and went along the street to what had been Hampton’s bar. It was shabbier, more dimly lit than he remembered, its mirrors fly-specked, its floor worn by many feet. Were the rooms in back as they had been — the blue room where he had spent those anxious hours with Lots, for example? Did it matter? He had made up his mind not to look for things as they had been, but as they were now. He moved to a corner table at the back of the bar, ordered a beer, and sat miserably contemplating it.
The image of Mary’s face kept getting between him and the world around him. It was going to take a long time to adjust to what she had confessed to him. “Why,” Hugh Choong had asked him, in effect, “do you feel guilty about using your ability for your own enjoyment?”
And he might have answered, “Because when I did I was repaid with the subconscious knowledge that I had created suffering.”
Poor Mary… Poor fairy-tale princess!
Other things were growing clear in his mind, too. Charlie Birberger had been eager to convince himself that he had given Howson a helping hand; well, how much of Howson’s own insistence on staying the year around at the Ulan Bator hospital was due to a desire to see as many patients as possible feel indebted to him? Was he in fact being influenced by the urge to secure their admiration and gratitude, as he had sought Mary’s admiration and gratitude eleven years before?
He broke off the train of thought in annoyance. Self-analysis like this could go on indefinitely and never get anywhere. He had indisputably done a hell of a lot of good work, and he would do more — provided only that he could restore his confidence in himself. So far he had managed to destroy some self-defensive illusions; granted, if they were illusions they were fragile anyway, but they had helped to sustain him in the past, so he was making his situation worse instead of better.