Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (30 page)

“What have you found out so far?”

“Do you realize,” asked Anne, “that this is the most serious disaster in the history of nuclear power?”

“It is?”

“Two people dead.
Two fatalities!
That’s why they have this total news blackout. Do you realize that they’ve closed off the entire area? You can’t get near the place. It’s a massive cover-up. They have government investigators interviewing every single person who was there, and at the same time they’re saying it was just a fire. Those people down there were completely government funded, and they had no permits of any kind — no safety inspections. Nothing. They were in violation of all kinds of federal, state, and local regulations. This is a fantastic story.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“It has a human dimension too.” I had never known her to be this excited about anything. “You have these two people, complete opposites: one, despite being born with every privilege, chooses an altruistic life working for political justice; the other, from not such a great background, makes the opposite choice, for personal profit, even to the point of working on nuclear energy. And they die together in this nuclear accident, actually almost
physically fighting —
God, I’d give anything for a picture of it. It’s really an incredible story.”

“Sort of ‘parallel lives,’ so to speak.” I spoke absent-mindedly. I was picturing the two of them again, struggling on the lawn.

“That’s it. That could even make a good title. ‘Parallel Lives.’ The whole thing is perfect for the Sunday magazine. It really holds a mirror up to the American soul in the 1980s: altruism versus greed, morality versus science, nonviolence versus nuclear power, the contrasting social backgrounds, even the different physical appearance of the two of them. You didn’t see anyone there with a camera, did you?”

“I didn’t, really.”

“And I know there’s absolutely a book in it.”

“Well, I’m glad I got you to go down there. It’s really worked out well for you.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? It
was
your idea to go down there. I’d forgotten that. Well, it’s an unbelievable opportunity for me. It’s going to lead to a lot of things. This is the most important thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“That’s great. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something related to the… accident.”

“That reminds me. I have to talk to you. You’re very important in all this.”

“That’s good to hear. I—”

“You were one of the last people to speak to Carillon. I want everything you can remember about his state of mind, about the political statement he hoped to make. Anything he said. It could be very—”

“Anne, I know the story is uppermost in your mind just at the moment, but… I wanted to ask you about something else, if you have just a moment.”

“Sure,” she answered dubiously.

“You and I…”

“What is it, Nick?” It was hard to tell whether it was concern or impatience in her voice.

“It’s hard to know exactly where to begin. I want to ask you something straight out. As important as this story and your career, or whatever, are to you, suppose I were to ask you, right now, if you were willing to drop everything and go off with me somewhere? For good. Just the two of us. Tonight.”

“Is something the matter, Nick?”

“No. I’m just making this proposal. Now or never. We both give up everything else in our lives and go off together.”

“Nick, could we talk about this sometime next week? I have to get back down to Princeton tonight. I’m so tied up with this story, I really can’t think about anything else right now. I mean, you’re extremely important to me… Has something happened to you?”

“No, no. Nothing. Listen, Anne, something that happened the other day… seeing those two people die there, or whatever… Anyway, it’s forced me to take stock and try to figure out exactly where I’m going from here in my life… and it’s important to me to know exactly where you stand. You’re the one person—”

“Nick, have you brought these feelings up in therapy?”

“What?”

“Have you talked to your therapist about these things?”

“I don’t have a therapist.”

“Well, you should, you know. It’s important to have someone to talk to about these things. There are some things a person can’t handle alone. Nick, could you describe to me exactly what you saw at the moment the fire broke out? I mean, they’re saying it was just an ordinary fire. But what did you actually see happen to Wachs and Carillon when it broke out? This is really important.”

“I wasn’t looking at that precise moment. Anne, I think you’re right, actually: maybe we should put off this discussion for now and talk sometime next week. I could collect my thoughts and give you any useful information then.”

“That would be good. I’m sort of in a hurry now anyway.”

“I did want to ask you something else, Anne, while I’ve got you. I got a call today from some sort of government investigator looking into—”

“Don’t tell them anything.”

“Did they talk to you?”

“Sure. They’re talking to everyone who was there.”

“Did they ask about me?”

“Of course. They asked about everyone. Why?”

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t tell them a thing about anyone. Didn’t you talk to them down there after the accident? Were you one of the people who left right away?”

“I left right after I said goodbye to you. Remember?”

“Yes, of course,” she said vaguely. “It was such a madhouse there. I was really busy. It’s an incredible story.”

“It really is,” I agreed. “I’d better say good night.”

“Good night, Nick. Take care.”

When I hung up the telephone, I noticed that the television was still on. Basketball game. Hard to focus on it. Ridiculous to start putting all your hope in other people. Just a way to avoid facing problems you really have to solve by yourself. Tuesday. Don’t think about it. Deflect them somehow. This was shaping up as a solitary sort of existence. Fuck you, Anne! Well, what claim did I have on Anne’s loyalty? What had I ever done for her that she should suddenly reorganize her life around me? Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Four days. Three and a half. When your need is great, you start assuming other people have to help you. This isn’t really the sort of situation in which you can confide in other people.
(Charley? This is Nick — Nick Halloway. You remember. I’m calling because a little something has come up and I wonder if I could ask a small favor. I’ve just become totally invisible and also I’m being sought by the authorities in connection with some felonies and I was wondering if you could put me up for a few years until I die or get caught or something. Oh, and I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention this call to anyone.)
Damn you, Anne!

Another gin and tonic would help me sleep. Already lurching a bit. “Drunk” might not be too strong a word. The magic bottle tipping in midair over the magic glass. The magic glass spirited into my bedroom, onto the bedside table. Amazing feats of levitation. I could be the greatest magician of all times. Amaze and mystify vast audiences. No. Uninteresting. No performer, only tricks. No one for them to applaud. Nothing to love.

There was a movie, I remember… pictures of a head swathed in bandages. One long bandage. I should get one. Are people ever actually bandaged like that for real injuries? A cliché, those head bandages. Might as well wear a sign reading Invisible Man. I remember him — I think I remember him — unwinding the bandage. To start with, there’s the surface of a human being… Unravel it, round and round. Winding sheet. What’s the point? Winding and winding. Nothing there.

I
woke early again on Saturday and lay there for a long time, staring at the wall and brooding miserably. It is difficult to get back to sleep when you can see through your eyelids. That call to Anne. Never try to operate a telephone under the influence of alcohol. I went back and forth over the whole, ludicrous conversation in my mind, trying to remember whether I had said anything that might give me away. How could I ever have thought of confiding in Anne? By now my story would have been in distribution throughout the civilized world on the front page of the
Times.
Anne’s career prospects would be in splendid shape, and I would be in a cage. It was perfectly obvious that I could not turn to anyone else for help. It was self-delusion to imagine otherwise. It might even be self-delusion to imagine that there was anything much I could do to help myself. Wait for Tuesday and see whether I would get away with it all.

Maybe I would not be so much worse off if I did get caught. The best I could hope for on my own was to lie here cowering alone in my apartment. It would be almost a relief if they did come and get me. Let them take care of me. It would be like living the rest of my life in a hospital.
_] I would probably have important visitors all the time, coming to stare through me. [
(Can we watch him eat? Is it all right to speak to him?)_] And after my performance to date, they would scarcely be willing to allow me even the slightest freedom.

I ought to make myself get up. Not just lie here in my bed brooding until they came to get me. Although it wasn’t clear how getting up would make things any better.

Only the agonizing need to urinate finally got me going. I showered for half an hour and then trudged into the kitchen, where I heated up a large pot of water and dumped in a dozen of the bouillon cubes. Why fool around with a cup at a time? If I was going to limit my diet to bouillon, I would at least have to force down enough of it to keep myself alive. I drank a good quart of the stuff there in front of the stove, keeping my bathrobe on so I wouldn’t have to watch the activity in my stomach.

I wandered restlessly into the other room and switched on the radio, but the music seemed like so much noise to me and I switched it off again and went back to ladle out another cupful of bouillon. How long could a human being subsist on bouillon? The mind would go before the body. It was unwholesome staying cooped up in this apartment without exercise. I shed the bathrobe and tried running around in little circles out on the balcony, but it was difficult to get my heart into it.

I went back into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. Bleak. I picked up a shriveled half lemon and sucked at it in desperation. The sourness was almost painful, but it did have a wonderfully un-bouillonlike taste. In the cabinet I found an unopened loaf of sliced, white bread, which had been sitting there since the Sunday before and was going a little stale. I tore off a little piece and began devouring it greedily. It seemed delicious, and I could not stop myself from stuffing the rest of the slice into my mouth. I glanced down to watch its progress in my digestive tract. It seemed to go pretty quickly — much faster than the fish the night before. I really ought to be timing this. I should be using these days of safety to figure out whatever I could about my condition. Telling myself I was performing a valuable experiment, I got out a stopwatch and gobbled up another slice of bread.

Soon I was standing in front of the full-length mirror with pencil and paper, timing the digestion of everything I could find in my kitchen. From bread I moved on to strawberry jam and honey, then sugar, salt, and flour. I cooked and ate a potato, an onion, several frozen string beans, and a dozen peas. I opened cans of tuna fish and sardines. I even tried some canned tomatoes, with visual results worse than anything I could have imagined. I would chew a bite of each new food thoroughly and then wait until it was well down the pipeline and had begun to break up and dissipate, before I started on the next food. I worked my way gradually through everything edible in the apartment, becoming progressively more methodical, until I was measuring out equal, teaspoon-sized portions of each substance and carefully writing down exact results for each. All this was providing me with valuable information, and it was also giving me something useful and absorbing to do. It was preserving, more or less, my sanity and keeping my mind off next Tuesday.

I was not much of a cook in those days, so that my larder was rather limited, and by midday I saw that I would have to do something to broaden the scope of my scientific investigations. I put in another call to FoodRite.

“I remember you,” said the same voice. “Clear food, right?”

“Yes, that’s right, except that actually I feel I’m ready now to try—”

“I been thinking about your problem, and I got some ideas for you,” he persevered.

“That’s very kind. Why don’t you put whatever you’ve come up with right into the order along with—”

“You ever try winter melon?”

“I don’t know that I have. Send one along by all means. I’d also like one of every other kind.”

“Every other kind of what?” he asked.

“Every other kind of melon. Of fruit, actually. And one of each kind of fresh vegetable. We could leave the canned and frozen things for the next order.”

“Every
kind of fruit and vegetable? What about clear foods? What about your health?”

“I’m feeling quite a lot better, thanks. Maybe you could put the smallest portion of each kind of meat into the order as well. You know, a small piece of pork, one of beef, and maybe some ground beef as well, and some chicken, some lamb — say, one chop. And fish. Fish is a good idea. However many kinds of—”

“Do you know how many kinds of fruit we have here?” He sounded upset. “What about the clear foods?”

“I’m still extremely interested in clear foods. In fact, they should form the foundation of my diet. Fish usually comes in little packages, doesn’t it? You could just pick out the smallest package of each—”

“You know someone has to bag and weigh each piece of fruit in this order? Have you talked to your doctor about this?”

“I’m changing doctors, actually. The last one seemed rather rigid. If you could also throw in a
Times
and a
Barron’s.”

“What does that mean, anyway: one of each fruit? You want one grape? One pea?”

“Well, you choose the portions. I appreciate it. I’d like some baked goods too: bread — white and rye and any other kind — and any pastry, doughnuts, whatever you have. And if you think of anything else that might be good, just add it to the order. I’ll rely absolutely on your judgment.”