27 August, 1924 15 страница

on nothing, on green air through which he fell without falling, spun without moving. He threw out his arms and caught the padded arm of a chair.

He was back in Le Grand Theatre des Illusions. One light burned gloomily down at him, revealing in semi-chiaroscuro his strewn clothing. Tom yanked his trousers on and shoved his feet into his shoes; he balled up his socks and underwear and thrust them into a pocket. Then he put on his shirt. All this he did mechanically, numbly, with a numb mind.

He looked at his watch. Nine o'clock. Nine or ten hours had vanished while Coleman Collins played tricks with him.

He went down the darkened hall. What had Del been doing all this time? The thought of Del revived him — he wanted to see him, to have his story matched by Del's. That morning, he had been almost joyful, being at Shadowland; now he again felt endangered. Warmth was just beginning to return to bis frozen toes.

Tom had reached the point in the hallway, just before it turned into the older part of the house, where the short corridor led to the forbidden door. Tom stood at the juncture of the two corridors looking at the cross-beamed door. He remembered Collins' words: This is your kingdom too, child. He thought: Well, let's see the worst.

And as he had said to Del the first night, wasn't the very commandment not to open it a disguised suggestion that he look behind the door?

'I'm going to do it, ' he said, and realized that he had spoken out loud.

Before he could argue himself out of his mood of defiance, he moved down the short hallway and put his hand on the doorknob. The brass froze his hand. He thought back to the third thing Collins had shown him, back in the wintry sleigh: a boy opening a door and being engulfed by lyric, singing brightness.

Your wings, or your song?

He pulled open the forbidden door.

The Brothers

'Look, Jakob, ' a man said, looking up from a desk. He smiled at Tom, and the man who sat at another desk facing him lifted his head from the papers before him and gave a similar quizzical, inviting smile. 'Do you see? A visitor. A young visitor. ' His accent was German.

'I have eyes. I see, ' said the other man.

Both were in late middle age, clean-shaven; glasses as old-fashioned and foreign as their dress modified their sturdy faces, made them scholarly. They sat at their desks in a little pool of light cast by candles; high bookshelves loomed behind them.

'Should we invite him in? ' said the second man.

'I think we ought. Won't you come in, boy? Please do. Come in, child. That's the way. After all, we are working for you as much as for anyone else. '

'Our audience, Wilhelm, ' said the second man, and beamed at Tom. He was stockier, deeper in the chest than the man with the kindly face. He stood and came forward, and Tom saw muddy boots and smelled a drifting curl of cigar smoke. 'Please sit. There will do. ' He indicated a chesterfield sofa to the right of the desk.

As Tom advanced into the dark room, the crowded detail came clear: the walls covered with dim pictures and framed papers, a stuffed bird high up on a shelf, a glass bell protecting dried flowers.

'I know who you are. Who you're supposed to be, ' he said. He sat on the springy chesterfield.

'We are what we are supposed to be, ' said the one called Wilhelm. 'That is one of the great joys of our life. How many can claim such a thing? We discovered what we were supposed to be young, and have pursued it ever since. '

'We shared the same joy in collecting things, ' said Jakob. 'Even as children. Our whole life has been an extension of that early joy. '

'Without my brother, I should have been lost, ' said Wilhelm. 'If is a great thing, to have a brother. Do you have one, child? '

'In a way, ' Tom said.

Both brothers laughed, so innocently and cheerfully that Tom joined them.

'And what are you doing here? ' Tom asked.

They looked at each other, full of amusement which somehow embraced and included Tom.

'Why, we are writing down stories, ' Jakob said.

'What for? '

'To amaze. To terrify. To delight. '.

'Why? '

'For the sake of the stories, ' Jakob said. 'That must be clear. Why, our very lives have been storylike. Even the mistakes have been happy. Boy, did you know that in our original story it was a fur slipper which the poor orphan girl wore to the ball? What an inspired mistranslation made it glass! '

'Yes, yes. And you remember the strange dream I had about you, my brother: I stood in front of a cage, on top of a mountain. . . it snowed. . . you were in the cage, frozen. . . I had to peer through the bars of the cage — so much like one of our treasures. . . '

'Which we were determined to show the world the wonder we felt in discovering, yes. You were terrified — but it was a terror full of wonder. '

'These stories are not for every child — they do not suit every child. The terror is there, and it is real. But our best defense is nature, is it not? '

Tom said 'Yes' because he felt them waiting for an answer.

'So you see. You learn well, child. ' Jakob set down the quill pen with which he had been toying. 'Wilhelm's dream — do you know that when Wilhelm was dying, he spoke quietly and cheerfully about his life? '

'You see, we embraced our treasures, and they gave us treasure back a thousandfold, ' Wilhelm said. 'They were the country in which we lived best. If our father had not died so young — if our childhood had been allowed its normal span — perhaps we could never have found what it is to live in that country. '

'Do you hear what we are saying to you, boy? ' Jakob asked. 'Do you understand Wilhelm? '

'I think so, ' Tom said.

'The stories, our treasures, are for children, among others. But. . . '

Tom nodded: he saw. It was not the personal point.

'No child can go the whole way with them, ' Wilhelm said.

'We gave our wings, ' Jakob said. 'For our song was our life. But as for you. . . '

Both brothers looked at him indulgently.

'Do not idly throw away any of your gifts, ' said Jakob. 'But when you are called. . . '

'We answered. We all must answer, ' Wilhelm said. 'Oh, my, what are we saying to this boy? It is late. Do you mind stopping work until tomorrow, brother? It is time to join our wives. '

They turned large brown eyes toward him, clearly expecting him to leave.

'But what happens next? ' Tom asked, almost believing that they were who they appeared to be and could tell him.

'All stories unfold, ' Jakob said. 'But they take many turns before they reach their ends. Embrace the treasure, child. It is our best advice. Now we must depart. '

Tom stood up from the chesterfield, confused: so much of what happened here ended with a sudden departure! 'Where do you go? According to you, where are we? '

Wilhelm laughed. 'Why, Shadowland, boy. Shadowland is everything to us, as it may be to you. Shadowland is where we spent our busy lives. You may be within a wood. . . within a storied wood. . . '

'Or fur-wrapped in a sleigh in deep snow. . . '

'Or dying for love of a sleeping princess. . . '

'Or before a dwindling fire with your head full of pictures. . . '

'Or even asleep with a head full of cobwebs and dreams. . . '

'And still you will be in Shadowland. '

Both brothers laughed, and blew out the candles on their desks.

'I have another question, ' Tom said into the lively blackness.

'Ask the stories, child, ' said a departing voice.

A flurry of quiet rustling, then silence: Tom knew they were gone. 'But they never give the same answers, ' he said to the black room.

He felt his way to the door.

When he turned the corner back into the main hallway, Coleman Collins was standing before him in the semi-darkness, blocking his way. Tom felt an instant ungovernable surge of fright — he had broken one of the rules, and the magician knew it. He must have seen him turn out of the short corridor.

Collins' posture gave him no clues; he could not see his face, which was shadowed. The magician's hands were in his pockets. His shoulders slouched. The entire front of his body was a dark featureless pane in which a few vest burtons shone darkly: tiger's eyes.

'I went in that room, ' Tom said.

Collins nodded. Still he kept his hands in his pockets and slouched.

'You knew I would. '

Collins nodded again.

Tom edged closer to the wall. But Collins was deliberately blocking his way. 'You knew I would, and you wanted me to. ' He bravely moved a few inches nearer, but Collins made no movement. 'I can accept what I saw, ' Tom said. He heard the note of insistence, of fear, in his voice.

Collins dropped his head. He drew one heel toward him along the carpet. Now Tom could see his face: pensive, withdrawn. The magician tilted his head and shot a cold glance directly into Tom's eyes.

There might have been some playacting in it; Tom could not tell. All he knew was that Collins was frightening him. Alone in the hallway, he was scarier than in the freezing sleigh. Collins was more authoritative than a dozen Mr. Thorpes. The expression which had jumped out of his eyes had nailed Tom to the wall.

'Isn't that what you said? Isn't that what you wanted? '

Collins exhaled, pursed his lips. Finally he spoke. 'Arrogant midget. Do you really think you know what I want? '

Tom's tongue froze in his mouth. Collins reared back and propped his head against the wall. Tom caught the sudden clear odor of alcohol. 'In two days you have betrayed me twice. I will not forget this. '

'But I thought — '

The magician's head snapped forward. Tom flinched, feared that Collins would strike him.

'You thought. You disobeyed me twice. That is what I think. ' His eyes augered into Tom. 'Will you wander into my room next? Ransack my desk? I think that you need more than cartoons and amusements, little boy. '

'But you told me I could — '

'I told you you could not. '

Tom swallowed. 'Didn't you want me to see them? '

'See whom, traitor? '

'The two in there. Jakob and Wilhelm. Whoever they were. '

'That room is empty. For now. Get on your way, boy. I was going to give your friend a word of warning. You can do it for me. Scat. Get out of here. Now! '

'A warning about what? '

'He'll know. Didn't you hear me? Get out of here. ' He stepped aside, and Tom slipped by him. 'I'm going to have fun with you, ' the magician said to his back.

Tom went as quickly as he could to the front of the stairs without actually running. He realized that he was dripping with sweat — even his legs felt sweaty. He could hear Collins limping away down the hall in the direction of the theaters.

The next second brought a new astonishment.

When he looked up the stairs, he saw a nut-faced old woman in a black dress at their top, looking down at him in horror. She lifted her hands sharply and scurried away out of sight.

'Hey! ' Tom said. He ran after her up the stairs. He could hear her moving frantically as a squirrel, trying to escape bun. When he reached the head of the stairs, he ran past the bedrooms and saw the hem of a black dress just vanishing around a corner at the end of the hall. To his side, through the glass and far away, lights burned deep in the forest and sent their reflections across the black lake.

He reached the far end of the hall and realized that he had never been there before. The old woman had opened an outside door, one Tom had never seen, and was starting to descend an exterior staircase that curved back in toward the patio and the house. Tom got through the door before it closed and clapped a hand on the old woman's shoulder.

She stopped as suddenly as a paralyzed hare. Then she looked up into his face with a compressed, dense mixture of expressions on her dry old face. A few white hairs grew from her upper lip. Her eyes were so brown as to look black, and her eyebrows were strongly, starkly black. He understood two things at once: she was foreign, and she was deeply ashamed that he had seen her.

'I'm sorry, ' he said.

She jerked her shoulder away from his hand.

'I just wanted to talk to you. '

She shook her head. Her eyes were cold flat stones embedded in deep wrinkles.

'Do you work here? '

She made no movement at all, waiting for him to allow her to go.

'Why weren't we supposed to see you? ' Nothing. 'Do you know Del? ' He caught a glimmer of recognition at the name. 'What's going on around here? I mean, how does all this stuff work? Why aren't we supposed to know you're here? Do you do the cooking? Do you make the beds? '

No sign of anything but impatience to get away from him. He pantomimed breaking an egg into a pan, frying the egg. She nodded curtly. Inspired, he asked, 'Do you speak English? '

No: a flat, denying movement of the head. She stabbed him with another black glance, and turned abruptly away and flew down the stairs.

Tom lingered on the little balcony for a moment. From the bottom of the long hill, girdled by woods, the lake shone enigmatically up at him. He tried to find the spot where Coleman Collins had taken him in the sleigh, but could find no peak high enough — had all that really taken place only in his head? Far off in the distance he heard a man crying out in the woods.

His room had been prepared for the night. The bed was turned down, the bedside lamp shone on the Rex Stout paperback. That, and the clear-cut puzzles it contained, seemed very remote to him — he could not remember anything he had read the night before. The sliding doors between his room and Del's were shut.

He went to the doors and gently knocked; no response. Where was Del? Probably he was out exploring — imitating Tom's actions of the night before. Probably that was what the 'warning' was about. Tom sighed. For the first time since getting on the train with Del, he thought of Jenny Oliver and Diane Darling, the two girls from the neighboring school; maybe it was Archie Goodwin and his strings of women that brought them to mind, but he wished he could talk to them, either of them. It had been a long time since he had talked to a girl: he remembered the girl in the window the magician had shown him — shown him as coolly as a grocer displays a shelf of canned beans.

His room was barren and lonely. Its cleanliness, its straight angles and simple colors, excluded him. He hated being alone in it, he realized; but now he did not feel that he could go anywhere else. Loneliness assailed him. He missed Arizona and his mother. For a moment Tom felt utterly bereft: orphaned. He sat on the hard bed. and thought he was in jail. All of Vermont felt like a prison.

Tom stood up and began to pace the room. Because he was fifteen and healthy, simple movement made him feel better. At that moment, in one of those peculiarly adult mental gestures which 1 see as characteristic of the young Tom Flanagan, he arrived at both a recognition and a decision. Shadowland, as much as he knew of it, was a test harder and more important than any he had ever taken at Carson; and he could not let Shadowland defeat him. He would use Collins' own maxim against him, if he had to, and discover how to do the impossible.

He nodded, knowing that he was arming for a fight, and realized that he had lost the desire to cry which had come over him a moment before. Then he heard a noise from behind the sliding doors. It was a light, bubbling sound of laughter, muted, as if hidden behind a hand. Tom knocked again on the doors.

The sound came again, even more clearly.

'Del. . . you there? '

'For God's sake, be quiet, ' came Del's whisper.

'What's going on? '

'Keep your voice down. I'll be right there. '

A moment later the left half of the door slid an inch back, and Del was scowling out at him. 'Where were you all day? ' Del asked.

'I want to talk to you. He made me think it was whiter — '

'Hallucinatory terrain, ' Del said. 'He's spending a lot of time with you, letting me knock around by myself. . . '

'And I remember flying. ' Tom felt his face assume some expression absolutely new to him, uttering this statement. He half — expected Del to deny it.

'Okay, ' Del said. 'You're having a whale of a time. I'm glad. '

'And I met an old woman. She doesn't speak English. I had to practically tackle her to get her to stop running away. And your uncle. . . '

His voice stopped. A girl had just walked into the tiny area of Del's room he could see. She wore one of Del's shirts over a black bathing suit. Her hair was wet and she had moth-colored eyes.

Del glanced over his shoulder and then looked irritatedly back at Tom. 'Okay, now you've seen her. She was swimming in the lake just after dinner, and I asked her up here. I guess you might as well come in. '

The girl backed away toward the slightly mussed bed, stepping like a faun on her bare legs. It was impossible for Tom riot to stare at her. He had no more idea then if she were beautiful than he did if the moon were rock or powder: she looked nothing at all like the popular girls at Phipps-Burnwood. But he could not stop looking at her. The girl's eyes went down to her tanned bare legs, then back to him. She tugged Del's shirt close about her.

'You probably guess already, but this is Rose Armstrong, ' Del said.

The girl sat down on the bed.

'I'm Tom Armstrong, ' he said. 'Oh, Jesus. Flanagan, I mean. '

THREE

The Goose Girl

Just looking at her had me so rattled — I saw right away what Del had meant about her looking 'hurt. ' You couldn't miss it. That face looked like it had absorbed about a thousand insults and recovered from each one separately. But if she'd ever had them, she was recovering, all right. Honestly, I couldn't believe that Del had been seeing this amazing girl every summer; and watching her sit down on Del's bed with her knees together, I knew, knew, knew, that my whole relationship with Del had just changed.

Miami Beach, 1975

But before we can really look at Rose Armstrong through Tom Flanagan's eyes and travel with these three young people through their final convulsive months at Shadowland, I must introduce a seeming digression. Up to this point, this story has been haunted by two ghosts: of course one is Rose Armstrong, who in a black bathing suit and a boy's shirt has just now sat down on Del's suggestively mussed-up bed, badly 'rattling' Tom Flanagan. The other ghost is far more peripheral; certainly the reader has forgotten him by now. I mean Marcus Reilly, who was mentioned less than half a dozen times in the first part of this story — and perhaps Marcus Reilly is a persistent 'ghost' only to me. Yet suicide, especially at an early age, makes its perpetrator stick in the mind. It is also true that when I last saw Marcus Reilly, a few months before he killed himself, he said some things that later seemed to me to have a bearing on the story of Del Nightingale and Tom Flanagan; but this may be mere self-justification.

At the beginning ot this story, I said that Reilly was the most baffling of my class's failures. As a Carson student, he had a great success, though not academically. He was a good athlete, and his closest friends were Pete Bayliss and Chip Hogan and Bobby Hollingsworth, who was on the same terms with everyone. A burly blond boy with a passing resemblance to the young Arnold Palmer, Marcus was bright but not reflective. His chief characteristic was that he took things as they came. His parents were rich — their house in Quantum Hills was more lavish than the Hillmans'. He could have been taken as one kind of model of the Carson student: someone who, though clearly he would never become a teacher, could be expected to have some slight trace of Fitz-Hallan about him always.

After our odd, limping graduation, Reilly went off to a private college in the Southeast; I cannot remember which one. What I do remember is his delight in finding a place where suntans and a social life were taken to be as critical as grades. After college he went to a law school in the same state. I am sure that he graduated in the dead center of his class. In 1971 Chip Hogan told me that Reilly had taken a job in a Miami law firm, and I felt that small, almost aesthetic smack of satisfaction one gets when an expectation is fulfilled. It seemed the perfect job and place for him.

Four years later a New York magazine commissioned me to do an article on a famous expatriate novelist wintering in Miami Beach. The famous novelist, with whom I spent two tedious days, was a self-important bore, turning out of his hotel onto sunny Collins Avenue in a flannel suit and trilby hat, with furled umbrella. He had consciously given two months of his life to Miami Beach in order to fuel his disdain for all things American. He pretended an ignorance of the American system of coinage. 'Is this one really called a quarter? Dear me, how unimaginative. ' When I had sufficient notes for the article, I put the whole project into a mental locker and decided to look up Bobby Hollingsworth. I had not seen Bobby in at least ten years. He was living in Miami Beach, I knew from the alumni magazine, and owned a company that made plumbing fixtures. Once, in an Atlanta airport men's room, I had looked down into the bowl and seen stamped there 'hollingsworth vitreous. ' I wanted to see what had become of him, and when I called him up he promptly invited me to his house.

His house was a huge Spanish mansion facing Indian Creek and the row of hotels across it. Moored at his dock was a forty-foot boat that looked like it could make a pond of the Atlantic.

'This is really the place, ' Bobby said during dinner. 'You got the greatest weather in the world, you got the water, you got business opportunities up the old wazoo. No shit, this place is paradise. I wouldn't go back to Arizona if you paid me. As for living up North-wow. ' He shook his head. Bobby at thirty-two was pudgy, soft as a sponge. A diamond as big as a knuckle rode on one sausagy hand. He still had his perpetual smile, which was not a smile but the way his mouth sat on his face. He wore a yellow terry-cloth shirt and matching shorts. He was enjoying his wealth, and I enjoyed his pleasure in it. I gathered that his wife's family had given him his start in the business, and that he had rather surprised them by his success. Monica, his wife, said little during the meal, but jumped up every few minutes to supervise the cook. 'She treats me like a king, ' Bobby said during one of Monica's excursions to the kitchen. 'When I get home, I'm royalty. She lives for that boat — I gave it to her for Christmas last year. Squealed like a puppy. What do I know from boats? But it makes her happy. Say, if you play golf we could go out to the club tomorrow. I got an extra set of clubs. '

'I'm sorry, but I don't play, ' I said.

'Don't play golf? ' For a moment Bobby seemed totally perplexed. He had taken me into his world so completely that he had forgotten that I was not a permanent resident there. 'Well, hell, why don't we go out in the boat? Laze around, have a few drinks? Monica would love that. '

I said that I might be able to do that.

'Great, kiddo. You know, this is what that school of ours was all about, wasn't it? '

'What do you mean, Bobby? '

His wife came back to the table and Bobby turned to her. 'He's coming out on the boat with us tomorrow. Let's toss some lines overboard, catch dinner, hey? '

Monica gave a wan smile.

'Sure. It'll be great. Now, this is what I'm saying — our old school had one goal, right? To get us to where I am now. And to know how to live once we get here. That's the way I see it. To make us into the kind of people who could fit in anywhere. I want to write in to the alumni magazine and say that you can travel all over the Southeast and see my name whenever you stop to take a leak. And that's almost true. '

Monica looked away and turned over a lettuce leaf on her salad plate to peer at its underside.

'Do you ever see Marcus Reilly? ' I asked. 'I understand he lives here. '

'Saw him once, ' Bobby said. 'Mistake. Marcus got involved in some bad shit — got disbarred. Stay away from him. He's a downer. ' 'Really? ' I was surprised.

'Oh, he was a big deal for a little while. Then I guess he got weird. Take my advice. . . I'll give you his phone number if you like, but stay away from him. He's a failure. He has to stick his nose above water to suck air. ' The next morning I called the number Bobby had given me. A man at the other end of the line said, 'Wentworth. ' 'Marcus? ' 'Who? '

'Marcus Reilly? Is he there? ' 'Oh, yeah. Just a second. '

Another telephone rang. It was lifted, but the person at the other end said nothing. 'Marcus? Is that you? ' I gave my name. 'Hey, great, ' came the breezy, husky voice of Marcus Reilly. 'You in town? How about we get together? ' 'Can I take you to lunch today? ' 'Hell, lunch is on me. I'm at the Wentworth Hotel on Collins Avenue, just up on the right side from Seventy-third Street. Tell you what, I'll meet you outside. Okay? Twelve o'clock? '

I called Bobby Hollingsworth to say that I would not be able to go out on his boat. 'That's fine, ' Bobby said. 'Come back next time, and we'll go out with a couple of girls I know. We got a date? '

'Sure, ' I said. I could see him lolling back on a deck chair, propping a drink on his yellow-terry-cloth belly, telling a good-looking whore that whenever you took a leak in the Southeast, you could read his name just by looking down.

There was nothing splendid about Collins Avenue up where Marcus Reilly lived. Old men in canvas hats and plaid trousers below protruding bellies, old women in baggy dresses and sunglasses crawled beneath the sidewalk awnings of little shops. Discount stores, bars, cut-rate novelty shops where everything would be an inch deep in dust. At the Wentworth Hotel, the motto Where Life Is a Treat was painted on the yellow plaster. The lobby seemed to be outside, in a sort of alcove set off the sidewalk.

At five past twelve Marcus came bustling out, wearing a glen-plaid suit, walking quickly past the rows of old people sitting in aluminum-and-plastic chairs as if he were afraid one of them would stop him.

'Great to see you, great to see you, ' he said, pumping my hand. He no longer resembled the young Arnold Palmer. His cheeks had puffed out, and his eyes seemed narrower. The moisture in the air screwed his hair up into curls. Like the expatriate novelist's, his suit was much too warm for the climate, but he had none of the novelist's internal air conditioning. Marcus snapped his fingers, smacked his palms together, and looked up and down the street. I could smell violence on him, as you sometimes can on a dog. 'Jesus, hey, here we are. What is it, fifteen years? '

'About that, ' I said.

'Let's move, man. Let's see some sights. You been here long? '

'Just a couple of days. '

Marcus rolled away from me and began bustling down the street. 'Too bad. Where you staying? '

I named my hotel.

'A dump. A dump, believe me. ' We rounded the corner and Marcus opened the door to a green Gremlin with a big rusting dent on its right-rear fender. 'A word I could use to describe this whole town. ' We got into the Gremlin. 'Just toss that stuff into the back. ' I removed a stack of old Miami Heralds and a ball of dirty shirts. 'You want lunch first, or a drink? '

'A drink would be fine, Marcus. '