Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (65 page)

For everyone’s sake, this was really the proper and decent moment to say goodbye to Alice. I had created another existence, another place in the world, completely private and impenetrable. I had only to say goodbye and walk a few blocks west to where everything was set up and waiting for me to live out my life alone. I would be safe, and Alice would lead a real life.

But the trouble with this carefully reasoned conclusion was that it overlooked the only really important fact in the whole debate, which was that I loved Alice and I was going to go on living with her. If only I could have seen it then: I might have mentioned it to Alice. But I find that sometimes, in my concern with solving the immediate problems, I miss altogether the heart of the matter. And in this instance I somehow went on telling myself that I would only be staying with Alice another few days. In a few days I would do the prudent thing and disappear forever through my secret bolt-hole to where Jenkins could never find me.

But really, I no longer worried about Jenkins in the same way. It had been so long since I had felt him pursuing me. And I think the fact that I now knew so much about him made him seem somehow less threatening.

Perhaps that is why, when I encountered him one October morning on Seventy-second Street, I arrogantly turned and began to walk alongside him. I should never speak to him. It can only help him.

“Good morning, Colonel.”

I was impressed by how well he contained his surprise: his head jerked perceptibly, and his hands tensed momentarily, but he relaxed again immediately and spoke, never altering his stride.

“Good morning, Nick. Are you ready to come in with me?” He seemed not to care about the answer as he always had before. And furthermore, he had not asked me how I was. That should have been a warning.

“I’m actually quite pleased with my life as it is. Please keep your hands at your sides and especially not in any pockets. Otherwise, I’ll have to leave, and we so seldom have a chance to chat anymore.”

“Yes, we really seem to have lost track of you, Nick. I was mistaken. I didn’t think you could make it through the winter.”

“What are you up to these days, Colonel?”

“The same things, Nick.”

“Still looking for me?”

“Yes. Among other things. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come in with me now?”

“I think not. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Nick.”

He never threatened me, never told me that they would have me soon. I should have paid attention to exactly what Jenkins was saying. I should have seen that something was wrong.

I
t was only a few nights later that Alice came in from work with A large portfolio of the sort that artists use to carry their work, which was unusual, because Alice never brought back anything from her studio. She would sometimes tell me that she was working on an illustration for a magazine advertisement or a book jacket, but she had never shown me anything except the drawings she did for herself at home.

I saw that she was going to much more trouble than usual in preparing dinner, and I wondered if she was celebrating some professional success. I should make a point of asking her about her work more often.

“Nick, could you open the champagne?”

“Certainly, if you’ll tell me why we’re having it.”

“You don’t know what day this is, do you?”

Could it be her birthday? I realized unhappily that I did not know when her birthday was.

When I did not reply, she said, “It’s the anniversary of our meeting.” She was still elated, but there was no missing the disappointment in her voice.

“I’m sorry. That’s stupid of me. I’m terrible about these things.”

“It’s all right. I know you by now. It doesn’t matter.”

Based on my experience of women in general and Alice in particular, it did matter.

“Of course it matters. I’m glad you remembered, anyway.”

“Never mind. Open the champagne. I have a surprise for you.”

While I worked the cork free and filled two glasses, she went to her portfolio and took out a flat package wrapped in colored paper with a ribbon.

“This gift can be for both of us,” she said.

She watched eagerly as the wrapping paper tore itself off, and then she watched the place where I stood. I did not grasp at first what it was I was looking at, and it must have been some time before I spoke, because the expression on Alice’s face had already turned from excited anticipation to uncomprehending disappointment.

It was an ink drawing of a naked man, which seemed an odd gift until I realized that it was a portrait of me. I stared at it stupidly, trying to judge how good a likeness it was. I had never had any very exact picture in my mind of what I looked like, and in any case I had not seen myself for a year and a half, but it was quite a good likeness, I should think. I was trembling with fear and anger.

“Alice, what made you think you could do this?”

“I don’t understand…”

“This has to be destroyed.”

“I just don’t understand.”

“I want to know if you have any sketches or any other versions of this?”

“No… This is the only one…”

Once again I had the feeling that there was something wrong about Alice’s answer. Tears were running down her cheeks.

“I thought you’d be so pleased.”

Alice fled to the next room. I could hear her methodically tearing the drawing up into little pieces as she sobbed convulsively.

The world seemed suddenly a very bleak place, and I would gladly have given up anything else in it to have my words and Alice’s drawing back.

I followed her into the bedroom and kissed her. She turned away, her mouth set firm, and her body rigid.

“Alice, I’m horribly sorry. Of course you couldn’t possibly have known how dangerous that drawing could be for me. But everything I said was still inexcusable.”

“Damn you,” she said. “Damn all your secrets. Why don’t you just go away? You’re going away anyway, aren’t you?”

“No. I’m not going away… Alice, listen to me. I was completely wrong. Why don’t the two of us go away together for a while?”

She did not answer. I kissed her again. She had stopped sobbing, but as we made love, I felt the tears running down her cheeks the entire time.

However, the next morning Alice seemed to have put the incident out of her mind. When I tried to apologize again, she dismissed the whole matter with a shake of her head, and when I proposed again that we drive up to Sheffield, she agreed at once, although I knew she had a lot of work.

We stayed almost a week. It was already quite cold there, but I had a jacket with an enormous floppy hood that I kept pulled over my head, and I would go outside fully dressed in visible clothes. If anyone had got up close and seen the empty hood, he would have thought he had run into the Grim Reaper. But I could not see the effect, and I enjoyed being able to walk about freely with warm clothes on. However, it may be that my appearance affected Alice, because she would be cheerful one moment and then look up at me and begin weeping the next. Or in the middle of a conversation she would suddenly become silent and preoccupied for no reason.

We went for long walks through the countryside, and as always, being able to talk openly out of doors gave me a wonderful feeling of liberation. More than once I was on the point of telling Alice everything. Despite Alice’s moodiness I felt happier each day. And yet, when it was time to return to New York, it was Alice who wanted to stay.

“Why couldn’t we spend the winter here? Why go back to the city at all?”

“Don’t you think the local residents would begin to wonder about the sinister hooded figure that never speaks to anyone?”

“You could use the invisible things I made for you. I could pretend I was living alone.”

I had a vision of my footprints appearing mysteriously in the snow.

“We could stay up here for good,” she went on. “We could have a completely normal life together all by ourselves.”

“It’s not safe for me here, Alice. We have to get back to the city.”

But as soon as we returned to New York, Alice’s mood seemed to recover. She had apparently forgotten entirely about the drawing, and to my relief, she no longer asked me where I went during the day or whether I was about to leave or who I really was, so that our life together was if anything more pleasant than before. And of course I now enjoyed the security of knowing that whenever anything went wrong, whenever Jenkins began to close in on me again, I would have my identity as Jonathan Crosby and my apartment on Ninety-second Street to bolt to. But in the meantime I was perfectly happy living with Alice.

T
hey came early one morning, just at dawn. A moment afterwards I realized that in my sleep I had heard the hissing sound made by whatever gas they were pumping in under the door and I had been aware of Alice climbing out of the bed and walking toward the entrance to see what was happening. But the first thing I heard consciously was the throttled scream and the awful gasping as Alice breathed in the fumes.

I remember stumbling out toward her and seeing her turn back from the door, her face convulsed, her mouth opened wide to reveal a grotesquely contorted tongue. It may be that she was trying to speak. She took a step toward me and seemed to reach out for something with one hand, when her legs abruptly gave way and she collapsed onto the floor. Locks were turning in the door.

I was wide awake now. Panic had brought me instantaneously from deep sleep to a state of total consciousness in which everything all around me was brilliantly clear to my senses but in which my mind remained in a trancelike state, capable of comprehending only one thought at a time. But at that moment there was only one thought that required comprehension. From the instant I saw Alice, I held my breath. I was running past her now. The front door had swung open, and men in gas masks that made them look like giant insects were pushing into the apartment. One of them held a short hose with a flat nozzle connected to a large canister mounted on wheels. He was aiming it into the apartment, and the hiss of escaping gas was quite loud now. Somehow, although I thought I was not breathing, I got a whiff: it was as if a bus had slammed into me. Two of the men were picking up Alice. The others were charging toward the bedroom.

I was running across the living room and sliding open the glass door to the balcony. I have no idea whether any of them saw it move. They were piling into the bedroom. I remember leaning over the balcony railing and gasping for air, sucking in enormous lungfuls. I found that, miraculously, I had my bundle of clothes in one hand, the little bundle I had made each night and always kept by my bedside in readiness for this moment.

I leaned out and threw it onto the balcony below. The balcony was fenced around on all three sides with opaque glass panels mounted in a framework of steel rails. I climbed over and, holding onto one of the steel posts, lowered myself down, so that I was dangling off the end of the balcony. The view down was horrible: a repeating pattern of balconies like endlessly reflected forms in facing mirrors and then the pavement. There were people gathered beneath the building — too far down to make out clearly — and police cars double-parked everywhere. Dizzying. If you start to think about that long, sickening drop, you could find yourself spinning down. It was particularly horrible for me, because I could not see my own grip, my hold on life.

With my forearm wrapped around a post, I lowered myself further, so that I was dangling below the balcony. I remember thinking that I could now probably not pull myself back up. I kicked my feet about, trying to find the railing of the balcony below. Nothing. If only I could see my foot. I could see the railing right there, right beside the vertiginous view down to the pavement. I should surely be able to reach it, to find it with my foot.

Above me I heard voices.

“Was this door open when we came in?”

I heard the door slide further open. I had to keep going. I slid down the rest of the way until I was holding onto the post by my hands. The toes of my right foot came to rest on the railing. I slid another fraction of an inch, until I was clinging by my fingers. My left foot found the railing. I got the balls of my feet onto it and let them take some of my weight, then all of it. I was poised on the railing, steadied only by my tenuous hold on the balcony above. If I fell forward, I would tumble down onto this balcony; if I fell backward, I would plunge down to the street. I took my right hand off the railing post and slid it under the bottom of the balcony above me. Trying to dig my fingertips into the concrete, I pulled myself forward until I had to let go of the post with my left hand too. I felt myself tilting forward. I came down on the balcony floor on all fours.

I heard footsteps on the balcony above.

“Anything out here?”

I did not move. Looking up, I saw two gas-masked heads appear over the edge of the balcony above and peer down. One of the heads and then the other twisted around to peer upwards. “The door was open when we came in. Better check the apartments above and below. Below first.”

It might have been Clellan.

I was pulling on my clothes frantically. The moment the heads withdrew, I slid over the railing and began lowering myself to the next balcony.

It was easier this time. For one thing I knew it was possible. For another I now had rubber-soled tennis shoes on my feet to help me get my footing and clothes to protect my body as I slid against the concrete edge of the balcony floor. But by the time I had descended three more stories, my fingers were trembling with exhaustion. And terror probably. I paused to rest them. Heads appeared above me again, peering out over the edge of a balcony. They were unmasked, and I recognized one of them as Morrissey. I tried to count back and figure out exactly which floor they were on, but my mind was seized with panic. This was awful. I was not sure I could do this sixteen more times. Was it sixteen now? No, fifteen: there was no thirteenth floor. It didn’t matter. No choice. I went down two more stories and on the second came crashing through a canvas beach chair.

Then, looking out at the prospect below, I saw several yards away the column of balconies descending along the neighboring line of apartments. Below the third floor there were no balconies! Of course not.