Agyar Page 6

  I find myself growing apprehensive at the prospect of what Kellem has planned. There is no doubt that she is pulling together all the threads for my demise, and the thought of her complacently going about her business, knowing she may take as much time as she needs, has been preying on my mind. And yet, she is certainly right, there is nothing I can do.

  It is mid-January, and winter’s grip is still firm. I must be careful where I walk, lest I leave footprints that could cause suspicion. My thoughts have returned to Susan several times, but I don’t think it means anything; little infatuations are not uncommon, particularly in old men, and no doubt it will pass. I remember that, years ago, Kellem mentioned something about this, although I can’t think what it was. I recall that we were walking as she spoke, and it must have been shortly after we left London, because that was when we spent the most time together, and she was telling me things I ought to watch out for, and she mentioned infatuations as one.

  I said, “Why should I worry about that when I have you to be infatuated with?” She laughed, treating it as a joke, so I pushed it a little and said, “Is that what I am? A little infatuation?” and that made her laugh even more. It’s funny how I see all of these clear signs now, but never saw them when they were happening. There’s probably a moral in there somewhere, but I don’t think I’ll bother trying to find it.

  I have been avoiding Jill because, I suppose, of some fear of involvement with Susan, but the notion is absurd. Tomorrow I will visit Jill.

  I must say that I am growing to like Jim; it seems we are saying more with fewer words. Our conversations over the past few days have been short, and seldom about anything, but they have been a source of distraction and no small solace as I go through this period of anguish about Kellem’s plans. Certainly, I don’t expect it to last—there is little that is more senseless than bothering one’s self over what cannot be helped, and it is quite unusual for me to worry about anything.

  It is one of those days when the path of the moon matches the sun, and it comes with the new moon. There used to be those who believed that this was a time of change, or growth, and, who knows, maybe there is some truth in it.

  Today I thought I would go back to the Ave and perhaps pick up a girl, but apparently the best, as it were, had been taken; those who were left were the old ones, or those who played too hard at appearing glamorous, or coy, and after a time one gets tired of these things.

  I am tempted to rail at the stupidity of women, did I not know that these theatrics are perpetrated because of the stupidity of men. And, in all honesty, I was no better myself when I was younger. It comes to me that Prudence, the girl I nearly married, was of just this type. Odd. I have not thought of Prudence in some time, and now that I do, I cannot see what attraction she ever held for me. Her laugh, which I remember as so endearing, was in fact a stupid titter, and there was no trace of life in her smile, nor did she ever say anything that could have held the interest of anyone.

  I’ve heard women, and, lately, some men, talk of women acting stupid to please men, but in fact, I think, that is not what they are doing; it is not lack of wit or intellect that shallow men crave, it is lack of personality; they desire a woman who will exist only as a shadow to themselves, because this gives them the illusion that they have some importance, that they are more than cattle. Personality is what distinguishes us from each other, what makes each man and woman unique, and to submerge one’s personality is to make one’s self interchangeable, like a mass-produced commodity; yet the demands of instinct, the will to survive through reproduction, are strong, and if this is what it takes to fulfill that instinct, not many can fight it. But really, why should I care? Most men, in fact, are little more than cattle, as are most women. When one finds an exception, such as

  I am rambling pointlessly, a sure sign that the fingers have become disconnected from the frontal lobes. It feels very late, and, though we are past the solstice, I am nevertheless feeling an acute need for sleep. Tomorrow I will visit Jill, and no doubt I will feel better for it, and if I wish then to set down more words, perhaps there will be some thought behind them.

  My hands have twitched over the keys a few times. I want to write, but it feels as if I’ve been in a place of dreams, and everything is still in that state midway between the time of sleeping and the time of waking; when the distinction between the real and the unreal either doesn’t exist or cannot be found. Show me a painting by Salvador Dali, and I might like it now; or at least I might understand it. Time has stretched, so that a few hours are an age; and it has collapsed, so that the events of hours seem to have ended before they began. Turmoil, even when generated from within, can do that to a person.

  But, in fact, I think that little has really happened; I have gone from acute worry (has Kellem’s trap been sprung? would the police show up while I slept?) to rage, to—well, through the whole range of emotions, but all of these momentous events were internal; in fact, I have done little.

  No gentlemen in blue came to disturb me, so when I got up I walked down to the booth at the corner and reached my dear Gillian by telephone and asked her to meet me. She said she would rather not.

  “Why is that?” I said into the cold, black plastic. “Are you unwell?”

  “No, I’m feeling fine, thanks.” Her voice was strange over the phone, forced and artificial.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I have to study.”

  “You can study later. Right now I have something for you to do.”

  “No, I really can’t. I’m sorry.” She hung up before I could say anything more, so I went over there. I entered just as she was walking out the door, apparently in a hurry. When she saw me, she stopped and looked guilty, as if she’d been caught at something.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Nowhere,” she said.

  “Good. Then there’s something you can help me with.”

  “Jack—”

  “Let’s go.”

  I had her help me find the offices of the Lakota Plainsman, which we did just before they closed. I put an ad in the personals that read, “Laura K, Jack wants to see you.” I was running short of cash, so I had Jill pay for it. She complained of the headache, so I took her home after that. The stars twinkled benignly as we walked, with no moon to kick them back into supporting roles.

  She said, “Did you sleep with Susan?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Then don’t speak.”

  “Jack—”

  “Shut up.”

  She huddled into herself and we completed the walk in as much silence as the night would allow, with its chatter of night things and occasional automobiles. I escorted her through the door and didn’t touch her except to help her take off her coat; I am nothing if not a gentleman. Susan was not in; no doubt she was dancing or perhaps out with some friends. I went off alone. Sometimes I let my Wellingtons slap against the sidewalk, sometimes I made my footfalls silent. It was cold, colder than New York at any rate; but it was a distant cold; it didn’t really penetrate, rather it tingled against my cheeks and inside my nose. I came to a place called Terrence F. Kleffman Park. It was one neat city block, surrounded by evenly spaced oaks, with a wading pool in the middle, and a pair of baseball diamonds at the far end, identified by those peculiar tall wire fences to catch the balls the players miss. Here, said the park, you may engage in recreation during the prescribed hours. Here are the trees you may be shaded by, and these are the sports in which you may participate.

  There had been a light snowfall during the day, and a little bit remained in the grass of the park, making it look like a field of toothpicks sticking up out of a sandbox filled with salt.

  A police cruiser went by on the far side. They didn’t notice me, or they would certainly have sent a spotlight my way, and maybe stopped to ask questions. What could someone be doing alone in a park at night in the midd
le of winter? Must be something illegal. Ah, you poor fools, walking so tall and haughty with your guns and your sticks and your wide belts full of gear like the second coming of Batman, sitting in your little cars full of mechanized fear as you reach for your little radios at the first sign of anything more worrisome than a jaywalker. Shall I introduce you to Jim? How would you feel about that, you blue-jacketed clowns? But he’s nothing, of course. What about Traci, who lives less than a hundred miles from here, and, when the mood is on her, could walk through a storm of your metal-coated leadfilled man-killers, and rip your heart out and eat it in front of you before you died? Yes, drive on, drive on, looking for drunks on the road or children out past curfew. You are nothing to me.

  Oh, I have no doubt Kellem means to use you to bring me to earth, but, even then, you will be no more than tools. That’s all you will ever be, faceless, nameless tools, who sell yourselves more often and more cheaply than any whore in this town.

  I began to run, which I often do when frustration turns to wrath. The icy wind stroked my hair like Laura’s caress had, so long, so long ago. The pavement hurt my feet, but that didn’t slow me. My senses were filled with the mindless, meaningless life I passed; my heart was full of the need for destination, which I found, and that filled me; now I wished for a moon to light my way, for my sight had dimmed, but all of my other senses were heightened. I wanted to laugh, but in my range it was another sound that emerged, but no one heard it anyway, or ever would, for silence inhabits the minds of the deaf, and mine is the power over those who will not hear.

  Shadows slowly lengthen as evening turns to cold;

  The fruits of my labor lie dormant in the hold.

  An empty hand awaits a glove another day survived,

  Nightmares fall like poetry, carefully contrived.

  The leaves blow ’round in circles where before the sun was hot,

  Add a pinch of desperation to what’s boiling in the pot.

  The circle widens now, with every blinded turn and twist,

  To tell of wind and thunder, ice and rain and mist.

  Close your coat against the wind, tight around your neck;

  It’s bitter here without the sun, but what did you expect?

  Words flow by like melody; watch as they unfold,

  And hear the shadows lengthen as evening turns to cold.

  For the first time in more years than I care to remember, I’ve written a poem. I must have spent four or five hours revising it, then typed it out all nice and neat, and I still don’t really like it; it seems like one of those regular, choppy efforts made by first-year students of English literature; but it is interesting that I felt like attempting poetry at all. I think it is this house that is bringing out that side of me. I stopped by to see Jill again today, but she wasn’t in, and neither was Susan. I have nothing to say, but sitting here is better than anything else I can think of to do. Maybe I’ll go back to Jill’s place again and wait around until she comes home. Or I

  Jim has just come in and suggested we build a fire. We haven’t had one in several days, and perhaps that is the better idea. I shall sit in front of the fire and ask Jim to tell me of the house; who has lived here and why they left. If he is not in a mood to talk, I shall stare into the flames the way he does, and maybe I’ll begin to learn what he is seeing in the dancing lights.

  It has reached the point where I become annoyed when, like yesterday, I can’t get to the typing machine. Odd how much this annoys me. Didn’t Horatio say something on the subject? Or was it Hamlet? My education seems to be gradually slipping away. This saddens me. I was once a very good student, I think. I had a good attitude, which, I believe, means that one looks on learning as a game; or rather, a series of games, such as: What can I invent as a device to remember the year the War of the Roses ended? Or, how can I use my studies of German philosophy to help with a paper on natural science?

  Now that I think of it, I cannot remember when the War of the Roses ended, and the little I remember of German philosophy is that a few of us once wrote a poem about an imaginary duel between Feuerbach and Hegel, which the latter eventually won by putting the former to sleep and then drowning him in a twenty-page sentence. It sounds more clever than it probably was, but we were pleased with it at the time, although we never dared to show it to our professors.

  Nevertheless, I think I was a good student. I have, at any rate, retained a strong desire to learn, and a tendency to question things around me. I’ve been told that age brings acceptance and complacency, and I’ve even seen examples of this, but it seems not to be true in my case.

  Age does, however, bring about an annoying softening of the hard edges of memory; there are now many things of which I no longer remember the details, only how those details affected me. I remember a Latin professor named Smythe, and I have the feeling that he was a devoutly religious man, yet kind and well disposed toward me, but I can no longer remember what he looked like, nor any of the things he actually did. This annoys me.

  As I said, I was not able to use the typewriting machine yesterday, because the house was invaded just as I was about to come up to my sanctum. It was not a serious, nor even frightening invasion; there were three boys, aged about ten or eleven, who, from what little I picked up of their conversation, had been dared or had dared each other to spend a night in the haunted house.

  I kept urging Jim to make himself visible to them, or let me rattle some woodwork or something, but he wouldn’t. We sat in the basement with the dust and the spiders and occasionally went up to see if they were still there.

  “You like children, don’t you?” I said.

  “Used to be one,” said Jim.

  “Would you have spent a night in a haunted house?”

  “No, sir, not for anything.”

  “I think I might have, if we’d had one around.”

  “I would have thought that haunted houses were everywhere.”

  “Not as such. We knew ghosts appeared, here and there, but mostly in places we couldn’t get to. And there were always a few spirits of one sort or another in everyone’s house, or at least we thought there were, but I don’t remember anyone ever leaving a house because there was a spirit there. Then, in England—”

  “When did you go to England?”

  “I was sent to University there. In England there were stories of ghosts in nearly every building on the campus, I think, but I can’t recall any in houses.”

  “These kids got some grit, though,” he said.

  “Maybe. We could find out for sure if you’d—”

  “No.”

  “Have it your way. I’m going to take a walk.”

  “Can you get out of the house without them seeing you?”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enjoy the basement.”

  I wandered for a while, something I was getting good at, but did nothing of interest beyond making some very general plans for the next day.

  Laura Kellem was waiting near the front door, apparently having determined that I wasn’t home. Her head was uncovered, and, while she had no more hair missing, there were still those odd bald patches. They made her look slightly grotesque, which in an odd way enhanced her attractiveness.

  When she saw me, the first thing she said was, “What was it you wanted to see me about that drove you to place an ad in the personals, of all things?”

  “It worked. How else could I see you? You’ve carefully arranged things so all communication is one-way.”

  “Well, I’m here. Shall we go inside?”

  “Sorry, company.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Some children have shown up to see if they could spend the night in the haunted house.”

  Kellem laughed.

  “Not so loudly, if you please,” I said.

  She nodded, still grinning. “Is your ghost friend doing anything to their poor, dear heads?”

  “No; he’s showing great restraint.”

  “
What are they doing now?”

  “I’ve been out. When I left they were lighting a fire in the fireplace and talking about telling ghost stories. I wonder if they’ll notice that the fireplace has been used lately.”

  “I doubt it.”

  She looked around at the yard, so overgrown with weeds that one could see them above the snow, surrounded by a faded, rotting fence that had once been painted red, featuring, on one side of the now invisible walk, a single apple tree of the variety someone had once called Mushy Rome Beauty, and, on the other, a catalpa with enough twists to give the place a creepy feeling even if it didn’t have Jim to lend it authenticity. “A nice place, actually,” said Kellem.

  “Yes. A good location, too; not far from St. Bart’s, not far from the Tunnel, a couple of parks nearby. It was built by a professor of one of the colleges, I forget which, right around the turn of the century.”

  “Why was it abandoned?”

  “Last family to buy it thought it was haunted. They wouldn’t live there, and refused to sell it to anyone else without the guarantee that it would be torn down. The Historical Society wouldn’t let that happen, even if they’d found someone stupid enough to do it.”

  “So here it sits,” she said.

  “Yes. From time to time the city comes in and cleans up the yard and sends the owners a bill. As long as they pay the taxes, no one cares.”

  She looked at me fully. “What do you want?”

  “I would like,” I said, “to negotiate.”

  “Pardon me?”

  I repeated myself.

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand. For what?”

  “Eh? For my life.”

  It seemed to get through at last, and she looked like she didn’t know if she ought to laugh or just look perplexed. “What would you have that I might want? Or that I couldn’t get anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Can we discuss it?”