The Sunlight Dialogues (68 page)

“so Saul was refreshed, and was well. …”

And the bitterness is, there are pipes and pipes—some pipes sweet and melodious, and others that tremble and howl like the Day of Doom. But either way, somebody pushes an unseen key.

(But a man is different from a cow: he ruminates by a different set of laws, and asks himself why.
)

Not organ pipes, then, or tractors, waterpipes, boards, stone walls; not even the slime of the earth. A man is the player and the instrument in one, and most of the time he’s the composer, note by note.

There came into his mind the beginning of a new way of telling the story of Saul and the harper: “There was a king full of wrath and vindictiveness, the Bible says, and he was what you’d call a man with a demon in him. He was a powerful king, and whatever tune he called, why, the people danced to it. Well sir, there was a harper in that land, and though the Bible doesn’t record it, he was deaf. …”

But all the while, the Negro boy in the milkhouse played on, wincing from the effort, baring his teeth, his eyes clamped shut. His arms ached, and the sweat ran off him in rivers. The sounds shooting out from his fingertips and palms and knuckles and the heels of his hands were like things alive, like birds or bats, and they flew to the cinderblock walls and struggled and escaped.

And until he stopped, the mindless, sullen air was full of wings;

4

The paper in Clumly’s trembling fingers shook so badly he couldn’t read it. He didn’t need to. He’d gone over it a hundred times at least since the stranger had delivered it to Esther last night. (She whimpered with fright as she told it.) He’d come up on the porch just a little after midnight—she was certain of the time, or thought she was—when Clumly was hearing the monologue of the Sunlight Man at the Presbyterian church, and he’d knocked sharply, as only a policeman would knock, or an agent of the German Gestapo in one of those movies. She’d gotten on her robe and slippers and turned off the radio and hurried down. “Who is it?” she’d said. The deepest voice she’d ever heard had answered quietly, “Message for Chief of Police Fred Clumly, ma’am. My name’s Warner. Open your door an inch and I’ll slip my card in.” She opened the door and groped for the card and pretended to study it in the pitch-dark room. “All right,” she said, and opened the door somewhat wider. She had an impression (it was hard to know how she formed her impressions) of a huge man in a coat. He was tall, at any rate. His voice seemed to come from at least two feet above her, which would make him at least seven feet, eight inches tall. And one other thing was certain, too. He had a sickening smell. It was like hoofrot, she said, or like burning flesh. It was like a cancer smell and like a sewer on a hot, wet day. He smelled like a goat, like an outhouse, like fire and brimstone. She was frightened, half-convinced she was confronting some monstrous apparition. But when he spoke again his voice partly allayed her fears. “You have to sign for it ma’am,” he said. She took the pencil and pad he placed in her hands and signed where he showed her she must sign. The smell made her feel faint. At last he said, “Good. That will do. Here’s the message.” He handed her a paper airplane. Clumly had scowled furiously, sitting up in bed, hearing the nightmarish account. “You must have made a mistake about the time,” he said. But she wasn’t mistaken. She’d been sewing and listening to the midnight news on the radio when he came—she couldn’t sleep—and after he left she’d checked the clock. It had occurred to Clumly that perhaps his own watch had been wrong, perhaps the man had tricked him into going late to his appointment. But his watch was right now. He remembered all at once the Sunlight Man’s first words last night:
You’re right on time.
And so it seemed certain, it had not been midnight at all when he entered the church. (If anything was certain, it was certain that the Sunlight Man would lie.) “Well, thank you,” he’d said to his wife. Then, reassuringly: “You did the right thing.” He’d waited until she had left the room, then unfolded the paper airplane. It was a map, drawn by, one would have sworn, a child. A kind of pirate’s treasure map. Some roads, a railroad—DL—some words along the bottom, badly spelled.

He stood now, in the murderous heat, pressing the map against the semaphore post to steady it enough that he could read it. He hadn’t much farther to go. He glanced at his watch. It was five after three. In ten minutes he was supposed to be there. He had no way of knowing whether he’d recognize the place of the appointment when he finally got there, and no way of knowing that the Sunlight Man would be waiting. But he had no choice. That is, he had chosen.

He trudged on, trying not to think. His ankles ached from turning and twisting on the cinders and stones of the railroad bed, and the raw place on his left foot, from a cinder he’d gotten inside his shoe and not stopped to take out until much too late, was stinging now. His brown police shirt was soaking wet—it couldn’t have been wetter if he’d jumped in the creek that wandered in and out along the railroad embankment—and his crotch was chafed and raw. His ears would be blistered by sunset. He had burdock leaves hanging out of his hat now to shade his ears and neck, but he hadn’t thought of it until the sun had already done its work. The heat was incredible. Had the devil
known
it would be like this? The woods to his left stood motionless, wilting and steaming in the heat. To the right he looked down on fields and pastures where cows lay unmoving beside dried-up creekbeds or stood huddled in the shade of locust groves. The rails of the track gleamed blindingly, and Clumly had no sunglasses with him. When he closed his eyes and gently pressed the lids to soothe them he saw the rails in red-vermillion, as bright as the arc of a welding torch. The world stretching out all around him was enormous—dry, hot, dull, and, above all, indifferent as the Sunlight Man’s wooden gods. It did queer things to his mind. He felt like a man out walking against his will on some desolate mountainside. He could see for miles, behind him, in front of him, and off to the right—piles of smooth round stones, white as bone in the sunlight; smoothly nibbled pasture; here and there a lacy grove that gave no particular shade; a solitary pine tree; a row of dead elms; overhead, blue sky, white clouds, the sun burning down like a pure white, sightless eye. As far as one could see in any direction, there was scarcely a house or a barn. In all this silence and emptiness, the slightest tricks of his mind took on ludicrous importance. A song came into his head and refused to leave:

Old Molly Hare,
What you doin’ there?
Sittin’ in the fireplace
Smoking my cigar.

It was the only verse he knew.

And this, even more infuriating: when he’d first come up onto the tracks, miles ago now—he’d parked on the Creek Road and climbed up where the Little Tonawanda went under the railroad bridge—he’d watched a freight train pass. It had entered his mind that one might put a bullet on the tracks, the train would fire it. It was a foolish thought, a child’s whimsical reflection that would have entered and left almost unnoticed at any other time. But now as he walked through the seemingly endless afternoon he could not get the idiotic thought out of his head. He tried to distract himself with memories of the days long ago when he’d stood on the deck of the
Carolina,
soaking up heat like this but smelling the water and getting, now and then, a tingle of spray. “That was the life,” he said aloud. But to no avail. He had to do it, and at last, craftily, looking all around him first—he bent over, slipped a bullet from his belt, and placed it on the track. Then he hurried on. He felt relieved, and the relief, like everything else, was exaggerated. He felt, crazily, like a new man entirely. Then he began to believe he was being followed. It became for him almost a certainty. He even thought he caught a glimpse, once, of a man with snow white hair peeking out from behind a tree.

Then Clumly stopped, and his fists closed tight. The place he’d been told to come stood directly in front of him, a hundred yards down the track. “Idiot!” he thought in a rage. The Sunlight Man’s map had made one omission: it did not include the Francis Road. Incredibly, Clumly had not noticed. He had walked miles to a point that he could have reached by car. He touched the burning-hot handle of his revolver and for a moment found he was thinking, with perfect seriousness, of murder. He got hold of himself.

He took a breath and walked nearer, with exaggerated caution, to the preposterous place of meeting. It was a tent. It was square, with a pointed roof—an old tarpaulin which had been furnished with a wooden floor and had been painted white, as gleaming white as sugar. On the white there were painted symbols of glittering red, blue, and yellow, and purple. Over the door there was a picture of a lion’s head, vaguely Egyptian. Strangest of all—and most ridiculous—the tent was not on the ground. It hung suspended from the railroad trestle, directly in the path of any train that might come. The log-chain that held it up had been painted bright yellow.

Fifteen feet from the tent, Clumly stopped and stood rubbing his nose.

“Ridiculous,” he whispered. “What am I doing here? Ridiculous!”

Then he caught the smell. There was no question about it. Inside the tent he would find the Sunlight Man. The tent-flap opened and a dirty rope ladder dropped slowly down. Clumly studied it, studied the tent. For a long time nothing happened. At last, behind him, the Sunlight Man said, “Shall we go up?” Clumly whirled and reached for his revolver in a single motion, but the revolver was, naturally, gone. The Sunlight Man bowed. He had on the same drab black suit he’d had on at the church last night, but today he had added to his costume an enormous turban. Clumly’s gaze went to the clasp on the turban and remained there. The clasp was a police badge. He did not need to touch his shirt to know it was his own.

The Sunlight Man bowed again.

After a moment, heart quaking, Clumly moved, half-stumbling, toward the ladder. When he clambered inside—the tent both swinging and turning now—he found that whoever had thrown down the ladder was gone.

SUNLIGHT:
You find our tent curious?

CLUMLY
(coughing):
The tent-flap … if you would … some air!

SUNLIGHT:
Ah, yes. One forgets. It’s a bit of a trial to be cooped up this way with a man who carries my curse. Air then. Better.

CLUMLY:
Thank you.

SUNLIGHT:
Haven’t you wondered about that smell? Have you tried to identify it?

CLUMLY:
At times. I’ve wondered about how it comes and goes. You take it off and put it on like a coat.

SUNLIGHT:
That’s interesting, yes. Fascinating! But we must hurry along. You were asking about the tent.

CLUMLY:
No,
you
were.

SUNLIGHT
(speaking rapidly)
: Have some manners, you old fool. Be civilized! Good manners are all that stand between you and Kingdom Come. Don’t forget it! We’re here in truce, not peace. Just once in the history of the world I want to see cop and robber understand who they are, what they’re doing it for, before they come out blasting. I want you to know my position, sir, so that if you kill me it’s not with that tiresome leer of self-righteousness. But I warn you well, I too can be driven to righteousness. Mock me, abandon the decent forms, and I’ll shoot you. I think I may be serious.
CLUMLY:
I’ll be careful.
(The Sunlight Man laughs.)
CLUMLY:
Are you all right?
SUNLIGHT:
Well enough. I thank you for asking.
CLUMLY:
No trouble. No trouble at all.
SUNLIGHT:
You’re very kind.

CLUMLY:
I try…
(Pause.)
This is a funny sort of tent.
SUNLIGHT:
Bless you! You
are
kind! What drives a man like you to a life of decency?
(He laughs again.)
CLUMLY:
Well—

SUNLIGHT:
Enough.
Sh!
The tent. We’re on the track—excuse the pun. Our time is limited. Precisely limited, as a matter of fact, because the afternoon freight … Are you getting all this? Does the tape recorder work inside your shirt? Have you listened over to what I said last night? Did you pick it up?
CLUMLY:
It came out fine, yes.

SUNLIGHT:
You make me nervous, keeping it inside your shirt. Get it out where it can work right. The microphone—
(Sounds of the tape recorder being shifted; a sharp bumping noise from the microphone.)
Good. There. You won’t run out of time and miss the end?
CLUMLY:
No danger. You see, there are three separate—
SUNLIGHT:
Enough, enough! Don’t tell me the details. You’ve no idea how sharply our time is limited. I wanted to tell you about the tent, explain all the symbols. No time for that now. On the wall there behind you, those are Babylonian figures for the twelve houses—astrological houses. I wanted to explain, but you got me off on … What was I saying?

CLUMLY:
I got you off.

SUNLIGHT:
Astrology. Yes. No doubt you laugh at astrology, like everybody now. The same as they laugh at religion. They do. Don’t fool yourself! The arrogance! If only we had more time! If only you hadn’t …
(Calms himself.)
All right. This much: if religion is scorned in America—and everywhere else in the modern world—it’s because nobody understands its terms any more, nobody can penetrate the distinction between religion and mere theology. So with astrology. People look at it now, with their incredible modern arrogance, and they ask precisely the wrong questions, look precisely in the wrong direction, and when astrology gives them no answers they scorn it, mock it for childish superstition, and, worst of all, foist it off on the stupidest people in the culture, the devout of the drugstores-old ladies, gamblers, uneducated halfwit housewives thirsting for adventure. Well they’re wrong, and if my lips shake as I say it, I apologize. I hate this modern slime, I make no bones about it! Centuries of labor by serious men, ah,
brilliant
men, shrugged off by a pimply, pasty-faced age which conceives itself—
CLUMLY:
The wrong questions?