The Lost Weekend (27 page)

The humor of the hangover: the hilarious vocabulary: the things other drinkers call what they suffer then—the things
they
can call it who endure the normal reaction, merely, of a few hours of headache, butterfly-stomach, and (crowning irony!) nausea at the thought of another drink. The jitters, the ginters, the booze-blues, the hooch-humps, the katzenjammers; the beezy-weezies,
screaming meemies, snozzle-wobbles, bottle-ache, ork-orks, woefits, the moaning after. It was ghastly funny, oh hilarious!—He looked about the room as if he had not seen it before, as if he had just come awake. On the floor by the fireplace where he had flung it was the James Joyce that had started the whole thing, if start he had needed: the spell that was ending in anything but riot. Riot, God, it was lethargy, torpor, stupor! Atrophy; except for the violent heart, gradual petrification; slow death. And there on the table were the souvenirs of the spree (spree!), the trophies of the toot (bat, bout, binge, bender, bust, tear, souse, lark, pub-crawl, wingding, randan), the empty sticky bottles, the dead soldiers. Dead soldiers—Christ how could they joke or make light of such a taunting crazing thing as an empty bottle, the bottle so lately filled with that which was his hell to have but his life all the same, empty now before his eyes, mocking him with its shouting emptiness, degrading him, reducing him to a shattered broken wreck which could only be restored by the very stuff that destroyed him again. But to be thus destroyed! What would he not give for such destruction now! A jigger of it, two fingers, no more!

And yet was there one soul, among all the people he knew, who would give him that drink, if they could? Would Wick, would Helen? Even knowing, as they did know, how he needed it, what it would do for him? There was not one.

In a kind of self-abuse that was almost ease to his torment, he allowed himself to dwell, for as long as he could stand it, on the dream of drink.

Suppose a bottle should materialize before him full and unopened. Once assured of its reality, how calmly then, all excitement gone, he would open it and pour, almost not needing it in the security the sight of it gave him. But he would drink it, of course. He wouldn’t care how bad it tasted—un-iced, without water or soda, lukewarm, stinking, throttling. He would drink a good half-glass at once—and at once the pricking nerves would die down, the thumping heart quiet, the fatigue and ease come
warmly over him at last. That’s what liquor and only liquor could do for him on the mornings after, that’s why he had to go on and on, it was necessity. Half a glass and he would be at peace, as calm as if he had not been drinking for weeks. With a drink under his belt again, he would see differently, hear right, feel normal and relaxed. His mind would begin to work and notice and take stock. He would be aware of hunger, and wish to do something about it. He would get up and bathe and dress. He would certainly answer that ringing telephone, walk right up to it and pick up the receiver and answer it, saying (his voice composed and friendly, showing no trace of tension or guile): “Have you really been calling all this time, I’m so sorry, I’ve only just come in, fact is I was about to ring you up myself, how are you, Helen, what is it?” He knew how it would be. He knew he could get away with it, fool her, fool anybody, it didn’t make any difference what he said, it cost so little and made her feel better, might as well reassure her now, he was safe with all that distance between them, safe while they were at two ends of a telephone wire, she wasn’t going to be around to check up on him or reproach him; for he knew he was bound to miss or avoid the appointment they would make to meet later, the appointment he himself would propose, to reassure her—just as he had missed being here when Wick came back to take him to the farm. He knew all that; and he knew, too, that that one drink would not be his last, nor that bottle, now that he was on his feet again.

So much for the beginning. Then he would have another, because he knew that the effects would shortly wear off and he’d be right back where he started, raw and shaking in this chair. He would pour a larger drink, this time, and maybe take more time with it, while his mind began to pick up alertly, alarmingly (he knew that), and suggest a hundred different things to do. He would feel great, then, and ready for anything. He’d have another drink before he started out, his hunger would vanish and all thought of food would vanish too, he’d grab his hat and give a last
look in the mirror and run lightheartedly down the stairs, bound for who knows what pleasure or danger? That, he did
not
know. From then on, only one thing was certain. Tomorrow morning (provided he got home safe) would find him in this chair again, more desperate, if possible, than now; on the borderline itself.

No one knew this in all the world better than he did. But no one else in all the world knew, either, why he would do this, or what he would get out of it. What if he did end up in this chair again, in this same crazed state? The hours of respite were worth it even if they flung him back worse than he was now—and besides, he lost all track of that fact during the respite hours. The curse of the thing, and the blessing too, was that he promised himself to take one drink, or at the most a couple, only to relieve the fright of his tension and stave off collapse; he took it as a medicine; and then, the medicine in him, he was whole again, ready once more to start out. An endless chain, of course; a vicious circle if ever there was one; a helpless series of processes in which the original disorder creates a second which aggravates the first and leads to a third, a third which makes inevitable and necessary a fourth, and so on till the nadir of such a day as today is reached—and
this
is not the bottom, this unhuman torture of now, this wanting to start all over again, even though he well knew that a fifth depth and a sixth were yet to be sounded. He knew all that, he was no fool like other people (they who believed his promises when he knew better than to believe them himself); and knowing it, he yet craved the drink that would bring the whole ruin down upon him again.

And what of the passing and lost, the uncounted and unrecoverable days used up in those depths, the time that went down the drain and never came back? What thing was there in all the world that could ever repay you for those days? Who knew besides yourself the panic-feeling of stopping suddenly in the middle of a morning’s fright to ask: What day is it? Often what month, what season? To ask, but to ask no one but yourself; because you could
not have admitted you didn’t know. Had you lost track of ten days, or one? Not only lost track, but not had them at all. Was it March or September? And wasn’t that using up life frightfully fast, or—worse than fast—unaware? Time was all you had, all anyone had, and you weren’t counting, you let it slip by as if the unused day or week might offer itself over again tomorrow. But it didn’t and couldn’t—it had been used even though you hadn’t used it. Had you no better use for precious time than that? What are you if the chief good and market of your time be but to drink and sleep? Hadn’t you in youth often cried out what a day to be alive? And how many days had there been, since, when you weren’t even able to long for death? Why ask how many? You could never say, you had lost count too long ago. The lost lost days, so many that you were something a good deal less than your thirty-three years, many months less, whole gaps and periods of your life taken out in blank—most shameful and wanton waste of all, because nothing could ever give them back again. Compensation for your loss, recovery of time itself, lay only in re-entering that blank once more where time was uncounted and time didn’t count, drinking yourself out of the middle of the week and into your timeless time-out.

The telephone had been ringing for minutes again. Was somebody calling him from Budapest? Was it Betty in Cleveland or Gösta in Borås? He thought of the calls he had made in one hour of one afternoon (and immediately forgotten) to Santa Fé, Chicago, Berlin, New Orleans, Murray Bay and Villefranche, how the letters came in, some a few days, some weeks later, asking what had become of him, hadn’t he been just about to leave or sail, had something delayed him, they had had no further word and were waiting. The first of these letters had puzzled him, he didn’t know what they were talking about; then Wick had presented him with the ’phone bill (before the other letters came in from abroad) and pleaded how could he, how could he.… How could he? It had been an inspiration of the earlier drinks; it gave
him a sense of power, he supposed, to pick up the telephone—just like that—and ring up Kees or Poupée and surprise them by saying he was coming to see them. He was lonely or something, he did it with the best will in the world, the friendliest motives—but how could he explain that to Wick? How could he, really, because he didn’t really know, or remember.

The ’phone had stopped ringing, but he knew that in the next room it was merely gathering itself to stab again. What of it? He would not be there, he wasn’t here.… He sat in the tub, both taps running full, getting ready for a long idle Sunday morning bath before Sunday-school. The din of the water was pleasant, the steam rose and obscured the tiny Dutch scenes repeated endlessly in the bathroom wallpaper. Someone was calling him. He turned off the faucets and shouted “Yes?” There was no one. The noise of the water running full had created new imaginary sounds in his ear, as it always did, sounds in which someone was forever calling his name, or pounding on the wall, or rapping on the bathroom door itself. He sat back and turned on the taps again. He busied himself with the soap and washcloth; and again, over the din of running water, he heard his name called. Did someone want to get in, was he wanted on the telephone? He shut off the taps and yelled “What
is
it!” … It was the telephone ringing.

Hadn’t she had enough? What was she trying to do, anyway? What did she mean, what did she think she was doing! He tried to think it out, calmly. He went over it all again, trying to think if he had it right. She and Wick had been in touch with each other and Helen was trying to keep tabs on him. Wick had stayed on at the farm, the whole long weekend, as planned. He didn’t want to come back in the middle of it because he knew what he would come back to. Helen was trying to get hold of him and perhaps help him get back in shape before Wick came home. She would keep on ’phoning until he answered. If he was out, he wouldn’t stay out forever. Not if he was still alive, or out of jail. He’d be bound to be in at least once when she called. But what if she tried
some other means besides ’phoning, what if she came over here? No, she had done that this noon and it hadn’t got her anywhere, she wouldn’t do it again, she couldn’t, God, would she? And if she did, what then? If she found some means of getting in—! Nothing in this or any world could make him face Helen today. Not even her opening the door could make him do it. He wouldn’t be responsible if she tried. All he wanted to do was die here alone, without anyone, because he could never explain, he could never even say goodbye. If she tried to get at him again, tried to help him or reach him—well, let her try, he wouldn’t be here, alive, if she should succeed.

The excursions into the past (willful and deliberate before, because they were all he had) had become spontaneous, the automatic reflex of his anxiety and over-taut nerves.… He lay in his bed at home, sleepless, alert, for in another hour or so it would be Christmas morning and he had to know, somehow, if what he wanted most in all the world was under the tree. Wick was sound asleep beside him and would not wake until wakened. The sky outside the window was so brilliant and clear that he was sure it was daylight, or would be daylight soon. The stars glittered hard and fast as if on a blue ceiling, a ceiling that was surely bluer now than it had been half an hour before or even ten minutes ago. Tense and rigid in his bed (for it was very cold) he gazed at the sky and wondered how long before it would really be dawn.… Now and again he heard noises from outside, the crackling sharp noises of the bitter cold. The wheels of a wagon ground and groaned in the icy street, and then came the hard ringing rattle of milk-bottles clinking together in their steel basket and the sound of the milkman going up the walk—
grutch, gruntch, grutch, gruntch
along the solid snow. He listened. The wagon started and went on again, and the frozen wheels gave out hard, slow, but musical sounds as they moved on, like the sound of pendant panes of glass being knocked together—like the little Chinese wind-bells that used to hang on the side porch, but exaggerated, now, and harsh.
The sounds continued as the wagon went up the street, but always they seemed to be just below the window, so sharp and clear did they ring upon the frosty air. Everything was intensified a hundred times: the stillness of the house, his awareness, the noises outside, the cold, the glittering fast stars, his anxiety and need to know.… He got out of bed, being careful to put the covers back over Wick, and stole downstairs. The house was dark, the shades in the living-room were drawn, he stumbled over something on the floor. He listened, breathless. His mother slept in the downstairs bedroom just off the living room. Through the closed door he heard her bed creak. Then she said, “Who’s there?” He did not answer. “Is that you, Don? Shame on you!” There was a pause. “Now listen. It’s under the tree. You can take one look, and then I want you to go back to bed and stay there till you’re called, do you hear?” All this low, not loud, she didn’t want to wake the others any more than he did. “Don’t turn the lights on. Just pull up the shades. You can see enough.” He picked his way carefully across the room and raised the shades. Then he came back and looked at the tree. On the floor, right in front, was the fat oblong package wrapped in thin tissue-paper. He picked it up and took it over to the light. By its size and weight he knew at once this was it. He pressed the tissue-paper close to the book with his fingers and read the title through the white blur:
Idylls of the King
. It was the same as the large illustrated copy he had coveted so long from the Fine Books shelf at the public library. “Hurry up,” his mother said, “now march!” He put the book back and went upstairs. He crawled into bed beside Wick and took his hand, as they always did when they were ready for sleep. Now let Christmas come whenever it was ready, let it take its time, let all the other presents wait, the book could wait too, now that he knew he had it.…