Pitch Dark (19 page)

They were rich, they were publicly generous. In private they were miserly beyond belief. They were slumlords, but they were on the boards of a lot of charities, and therefore oddly placed to do a lot of good. And this they did. So that, on balance, one has to say, I don’t know what. There was all the difference in the world between the beneficiaries of what they were on the boards of and anyone who actually depended on them. They had a meddlesome, inconsiderate, pious, bullying rapacity; and yet they wanted, as a last straw, to be thought poetic. So, one by one, he told the wives of his tenants that he was in love with them. He had no ear whatever for language. He liked to say, I’m very sensitive. Meaning quick to anger. He spoke of heighth, of nucular, of walking with he and I. When his best friend was dying, he said, he’s being fed intraveniously.

And I, don’t you see, and I, and I. Imagine, if you will, being me.

When one of our oldest reporters, a not untalented man, wrote a long piece, in three parts, entitled Can the Rich Write?, I asked one of my favorite editors why on earth we published it. It’s satire, he said. Satire? I said. It’s the most slavish, interminable, pointless exercise in snobbery I’ve ever seen in print. Ah, well, he said, you see, it’s satire that cuts both ways. I’ve had twenty years to think about this, and I know that, whatever the editor can have meant—satire of subject and author, satire of subject and reader, satire of author and reader—whatever he can have thought he meant, there is simply no such thing as satire that cuts both ways.

In the matter of problem one, hope is almost at an end. Well, need it be all or nothing, dear? No, but do you call these crumbs and stale rinds half a loaf? Crusts, not rinds. Crusts. You call this having your cake and eating it? You call this emotion recollected in tranquility? In the matter of problem two, he does not return our calls. Problem three keeps calling; we have him on hold. Problem four, long-term solutions, there are none. Problem five: we have lost the correspondence, though the subpoena lies here on our desk. Problem six, immediate pleasures, has no active file.

But, look here, my typewriter spoke to me. I mean, I had rented what is called a memory typewriter; I liked it so much that I forgot to read its instructions. When I had typed a page, and pressed the Recall button, what it typed was: “Memo, June 23, 1981: Salary Increases.” At another page, “Any of the deferred weeks which have accumulated may be taken in any year, in addition to the regular time scheduled for that year. Pay for vacation actually taken, including both regular and the deferred vacation time, is based on the employee’s salary.” At every page, there was something from a prior user. Three times, it typed exactly this:

Well, I particularly liked the “develoo/”; it occurred in the course of what was evidently, as well, a memo of recommendations concerning Swimming Pool Covers. But I thought, then, of privacy, of thrillers, of secrets, personal and corporate; and that I, too, was about to become a prior user. So, without reading any further, I cleared the memory of all its remaining pages. And immediately, I thought of all that may have been there, and I felt a sense of loss. My typewriter, after all, had tried to speak to me; and I erased it.

At dinner, I said, Can we live this way; what do other people do. He said, It doesn’t matter what other people do. I said, I know. You said, What matters now is this.

Here’s another sort of thing that happens to and around me. There are five wild cats on our road, three black, one white, one orange. They attack Frank and Marilyn’s tame cats, one grey, one calico. One night last spring, Marilyn looked out the window. The white cat was prowling on the hillside. Marilyn heard a flat, understated crack, saw the cat rise and then lie down. Frank had used his rifle, through the window of the upstairs bedroom. I have my own rifle; our whole neighborhood is armed. I would never use that rifle though, have in fact no ammunition. There are vandals here, but so far, though they’ve stolen weathervanes, smashed some headlights on neighbors’ cars parked outside at night, and crushed, as delinquents even in my time used to crush, a lot of mailboxes, I have had no contact with them—except for one foil plate, with french fries and a half-eaten hero sandwich on it, which I found, early one morning, wedged between the screen door and the front door of my house. For some time, though, it has been clear to me that I will buy a handgun. I’ve known it, in a way, since the night Frank shot the cat.

In the same week Frank shot the cat, Marilyn organized a parade of three- and four-year-olds, on tricycles, on Main Street; Frank and Marilyn bought a hotdog stand on wheels, which they brought home attached to the bumper of Frank’s car. It may not, to begin with, seem remarkable that the owner of a kindergarten should organize a parade of very small children on Main Street. But the occasion was Labor Day. The group right behind the tricycles was men on horseback; the group right in front was antique cars. Marilyn had arranged to buy helium balloons for the event, and the woman who brought them arrived, like Mary Poppins, holding the strings of fifty helium balloons and nearly airborne. Marilyn and her partner, Jean, the only other teacher in their kindergarten, tied a balloon to the belt loop at the back of the pants of each child, so that the smallest children, too, seemed nearly airborne. Time passed. The parade did not begin. One child said he needed to go to the bathroom. Marilyn said, Forget it. Another asked how much longer they must wait to start. Marilyn said, Never mind. A half hour later, at ten-thirty, the first groups of the long parade set out, with music and spectators along the route. When the crowd saw the tricycles, cheers went up. The children, heartened, speeded up. The drivers of antique cars were extremely worried as they looked back, not for the safety of the children but that the accelerating tricycles would hit and scratch the finish of the cars. Main Street also has a hill, not a steep hill, but the parade route went down it. Jean and Marilyn, who had not thought of the hill, began, for the first time, to worry. Marilyn, walking backward down the hill, faced the children and made braking motions. Her partner paced the roadside, rounding up and slowing strays. All the mothers who had come were marching, some bearing signs that read We Are the Trinity School. Only two fathers had appeared, both airline pilots, both skeptical throughout the parade and therefore keeping their distance from it. An hour later, when the event was safely over, both pilots shook Marilyn’s hand, as though she had made a brave and perilous landing. As she had.

Well, here’s how it was about the handguns. I went, in my professional capacity I think, to buy one. In the glass case at the gunshop, there they were. To my surprise, there were so many sizes, kinds, and varieties of them, heavy as tennis rackets, most of them, glistening like snakes. So I turned back. And, embarrassed to leave the shop without buying something, I bought a few periodicals for gun buffs. And many of the articles had to do with the sort of gun you would want your wife to have, if she’s alone in the house, and, this is what they call him, the Incredible Hulk breaks in. For months, I thought no more about it. Then, there was another wave of assassinations and attempted assassinations, and I thought, They are going to outlaw handguns, and everyone who should not have them already has them, and, when guns are outlawed, only our side, and I knew in a general way what I thought was our side, only our side will not have guns. So I thought it would be foresighted to buy one, against the day, I vaguely, no, rather distinctly, imagined this, against the day when a call should go out from our side that guns are needed, and that anyone who has one should bring it, at some appointed hour, to some place, or meeting at the corner, so that the people who need them will have guns.

Here’s what you have to do in our state: show your driver’s license; make a choice; leave a deposit; wait two weeks. The two weeks, presumably, are to check, on the basis of your driver’s license, that you have not previously been convicted of a felony. And, I imagine, also, to make sure that you won’t do anything on an impulse; that if you are, for instance, very angry, you will have time to cool off. Would you like a new or used one, the clerk asked, when I had chosen one of the less heavy revolvers. New, I said. Well, he said, used is cheaper, and the used ones come from police departments, when they change the specifications. All the same, I said, I would rather have one that’s never been used. More than two weeks went by, but when I called to inquire whether I might wait a few weeks more, the clerk said no, the permit to buy expires after five weeks, and you have to start the whole process again. I went back to the shop, paid, decided to buy no ammunition. The clerk put the gun, in its box, in a white paper bag, the flat, white paper bag stationery stores use. I have put the white paper bag, with the box and the gun in it, into a closet. And though there is no ammunition, it seems to me to lie there, ticking. I mean, I know I ought to throw it out. Or not worry about it, after all, everybody has them. And cars are dangerous, germs are dangerous, writing is dangerous, and reviewing is dangerous, and editing is dangerous, and some of those doctors were. So I’m not a coward or a hypochondriac so much, with respect anyway to risks of certain orders. I’ve taken on a bully or two, in my professional capacity, and on occasions of another sort risked my physical self. But this buying of a gun, this simple, in some ways quotidian purchase, is the most extreme, the worst, most extremest, I can’t find the word for it, thing I’ve ever done.

One of the times he was on his island, and before she ever left, she wrote a story. He said, Kate, will I like it. She said, I don’t think so. He said, I won’t read it then, if you don’t want me to, since it is not in your name.

Here’s how it is with the old couple. It is his second marriage. He is a doctor. He married her when his first wife failed, as so many of those refugee wives failed, to make the transition with him across the abyss of culture and of war. But now here’s how it is with the old couple, in their second marriage, for love. At bedtime, she likes to watch television, programs he especially despises. He cannot sleep with the TV on; but every night, in the course of the program, she goes to sleep. When he gets up, to turn off the set, she is furious. Either she insists that she was not asleep, and that she wants to watch, or she reproaches him for having switched the set off. You woke me up she says, with rage.

As a child, Jon was told by his parents to live by four maxims: do the best you can; never boast; never complain; and always think of those less well off than you are. Very sound precepts, all, moral. They only seemed designed to cut him off from any happiness whatever. He does the best he can, fair enough, the effort. If it succeeds, he should not make it known. If it fails, and fails by some injustice or in some manner painful to him, he should not complain about it. And lest he enjoy, even in private, his moment of success, or, in the other case, his private failure, he is to think at once of others. And not of fortunate others, but of others less fortunate than he. He is a truly good man, but the cost must have been high.

Is he gentle with the children, does he recognize the family, I asked the deputy sheriff from upstate, who said he worked mainly with German shepherds, on drug cases and bar fights, and that he had one for a pet. Lady, he said, when he gets into the car at night, I tell you, he becomes a different dog.

My world, after all, has been, in a way, the newspaper, and all these people; and home, whatever home is, consists of sheriffs, neighbors, lawyers, doctors, ambassadors, editors, senators. Also, of course, come to think of it, now swamis. Last summer, when I broke my foot, and could not drive, on account of the brake and the clutch, Ben drove me from time to time. And we talked. When my foot was better, he drove me, in his own car, as a kind of present, to his ashram. When we got there, I thought, I cannot really say that I understand this, it does not speak to me really, but Ben does seem to have, look at him, rapt, chanting, though he is trained as an engineer, does seem to have a faculty for this spiritual matter; and these people are not Moonies; there is nothing sinister here; it seems gentle rather. On the drive back, Ben said, Kate you, who are always seeing doctors, I know you are skeptical, I was skeptical too, for years, but you who are always seeing doctors, why don’t you take one class, just one at the ashram in New York? He gave me a ticket, which admits the bearer to one hatha yoga class. And one day, when there was, as there now always seems to be, this pending question of the surgery, I thought why not. So I called the ashram, and I reached a voice with so Bronx an intonation that I thought at first I had misdialed. But he gave me the schedule of the classes, and sounded so very kind, that at the end of our conversation I asked his name and whether I would see him there. He replied, Yes you will, and I am Vishnu. But then, but then, I never went.

In the matter of helplessness. “This is a final notice,” the blue-and-white slip from the telephone company said. If I did not pay the amount below within five days, they would disconnect my phone. After that, if I paid the amount in full, there would be a service charge, to reconnect. As it happens, for once, I had my bank statements in order, and canceled checks to show that I had paid my phone bills every month. When I had called the business office, and been put, as one always is, several times, for long intervals, on hold, I finally reached someone. Mr. Beaumont was his name. Yes, he said, phone company records indicated that five months ago, the company had erroneously twice credited a single check to my account. I said it seemed rather hard, on their part, to expect me to intuit an error in their bookkeeping system, and harder still to threaten at once to disconnect. Oh, he said, those notices go out automatically. I said that, for my own records, it would help if he sent me a letter, and some sort of document showing they
had
in fact credited me twice in error. He said, No, I’m afraid we don’t do that. I said, Look, you know, you really must; otherwise, I’m just paying this arbitrary and rather large amount, on the basis of this conversation, and a slip of paper that threatens, without any explanation whatever, to disconnect. Well, the long and the short of it is: they did disconnect my phone. And I thought, I can’t. The rudeness of their voices; this is a whole different department, it’s bullying and rudeness. And the time I had spent on it. There ought to be more important things to occupy my mind. But I can’t pay it, I’d sooner bomb them, I’d sooner lose contact with the world entirely, I’d sooner die. I thought this is part of what being black used to be like, this is part of what being poor is like, this is what being stateless is like, this is helplessness. Then I thought, It cannot be; surely I am not this helpless. And of course, within days it came to me, I am the press.