wally pippich sat behind his desk, facing up into a sun lamp, a strip of Reynolds Wrap covering his eyes. The smell of mops standing in dirty water had penetrated the office.
Gary, I called you in here to get briefed on the socalled leaving the game incident. I was downstate doing advance work on an allgirl rodeo so I've had to rely on eyewitness accounts. As it was given to me, word for word, you walked right off the field after your team's first play from scrimmage. Everybody thought you were injured.
I was hungry, I said.
That's what I understand your story is. The story you told Oscar Veech. That's what you allege to be the case. Hunger pangs.
I just couldn't stay out there. I was really starved for something to eat. Hunger pangs can be interpreted as a form of injury. I had to leave and get some food.
I liked the idea of talking with someone who could not see me. I watched his mouth as he spoke. It was extremely active, almost an animated cartoon, a visual guide to the soundmaking process. His mouth seemed to invent the words as well as speak them; it was as though he'd been raised among lip readers. Wally's tongue was lumpy and bluish. His right hand, hanging down between his thighs, moved in a vaguely masturbatory way as he spoke.
The game had just started, he said. "Oscar Veech said he saw you fall on the ground and grab somebody's foot. He thought you were sick or having some kind of fit."
I was hungry. Really, that's all it was.
Gary, I'm going to level with you. I don't believe a word you're saying. Nobody leaves an intercollegiate athletic event out of sheer appetite motivations.
Wally, why else? Why else then? Why would I walk off like that?
I know one thing, Gary. You've piqued my innate curiosity. This kind of thing is bread and butter to me. This is part and parcel of the dream stuff of publicity and public relations. I want to follow up on this thing. I'd like to see what I can do with it. Temperamental star. Psychosis attack. Loss of memory. Give me something to go on. I'll slam out a human interest thing, real fast, down and dirty, and I'll get it to the wire services for immediate release. Season's over. We have to get moving on it.
What are they going to do to me? I said.
They can't suspend you because there aren't any games left. And I don't know what Emmett thinks because he's under the weather. They've got him isolated over in his room. I guess they'll just have to wait on Emmett.
We won the game, I said. "I knew there wouldn't be any problem. I wouldn't have left if I thought we'd have trouble winning."
Gary, I've told you all I know. I'll stick my neck out for you if the situation calls for any necks to be stuck out. In return I ask just one thing. Tell me what happened. Tell me why you walked off the field.
I had to make peepee.
Pissation.
That's right.
Gary, I like flair. I like freak appeal. I like any kind of charisma. When I was an access coordinator for the phone company, I got together a specialty act in my spare time. Two swordswallowers on a trampoline. You got to daze people. You got to climb inside their mouth. Gary, I'll stick up for you all the way. Next season we make it big. The T and G backfield. I sure do like the sound of that. Slick as a turd.
Wally, aren't you going to hurt your eyes with just that aluminum foil over them?
This stuff is oventempered, he said.
I took a long walk around the college grounds. The wind blew across the plains, gusting now, leaving gray dust everywhere, on buildings, trees, benches, so that in time we too seemed bare, the campus and its people, sparse as the land around us, the hand of the wind on everything. I walked back to Staley Hall. In my room I did nothing for an hour or more. Then I went to visit Billy Mast. He was sitting on his bed, sewing a button on a blue dress. Ted Joost walked in behind me. He and I talked about Billy's course in the untellable. Billy himself merely listened. In a few minutes, Chester Randall and Jeff Elliott came in. Chester wore an old bathrobe and basketball sneakers.
Nothing's happening, he said. "I've been walking the halls all afternoon. I've been trying to figure out what might be happening. Season's over. Nothing's happening."
I tried to get in to see Coach, Jeff said. "But he can't see anybody yet."
Whose dress is that? Chester said.
Chuck Deering walked in. He did a dance step and then went over and sat on the windowsill.
Whose dress is that? he said. "Is that Alia Joy Burney's dress? Let me put my head in there. I want to bury my head in that erotic material."
We might as well take turns, Chester said. "There's no reason not to, what with the season being over. Nothing happening till spring practice."
I graduate, Deering said. "Talk about nothing happening, that's the biggest nothing there is. That's the ultimate nothing. I graduate in the spring."
No more football, Billy Mast said.
I'm all through school. I graduate. I'm gone for good.
No more football. No more hitting. No more sweat and pain. No more fear. "I can't believe it." "No more being yelled at and cursed by those insane coaches. No more running in the heat. No more two laps around the goal posts. No more getting kicked and elbowed and spat upon."
It's awful. I can't accept it. It's a bitch.
Literally spat upon, Billy said. "No more. None of it. Never. Not ever again for the rest of your natural days."
I need the dress. Give me the dress. I have to put my head under the dress.
Bobby Iselin and Bobby Hopper came in. Iselin was still limping from the Centrex game.
Did you hear? Hopper said. "Mrs. Tom was in a plane crash. She was in a light plane going to some conference. It overshot the runway. She's on the critical list."
Let's have the details, Jeff said.
Those are the details. I about wet my pants when I heard.
Let me get it straight. Critical list. Overshot the runway. Light plane.
Going to some conference.
Look at that dress, Bobby Iselin said. "Whose dress is that? I bet that's Alia Joy Burney's dress."
He won't let me put my head under it, Deering said.
That's about the only exercise we can expect to get, Chester said. "I've been walking the halls all afternoon. One thought in mind. Spring practice. We hit and get hit. We sweat off the excess poundage. We really sweat. Sweeeeet. We hit. We hurl our bodies. We get hit."
Not Deering, Jeff said.
Not me. I've had it forever. I graduate. I'm gone for good. The ultimate nothing. My only hope is Billy gives me some leeway with that damn dress.
George Dole walked in.
They got Coach behind closed doors, he said. "They're keeping him isolated for some reason."
Did you hear about the plane crash? Jeff said. "She's on the critical list. It overshot the runway. She was in a light plane going to some conference. Bobby knows the details."
Who's on the critical list?
Mrs. Tom, Hopper said. "It overshot the runway. She's on the critical list. I'd prefer to be called Bob from now on. I'll be a senior next year. I've had it with Bobby."
That's a damn shame. No, I didn't hear about that. I didn't know about that at all. This is the first I've heard.
Howard Lowry, Billy's roommate, came in and sat on the desk, addressing himself to Billy.
People keep bringing up that course you're taking. The untenable. I keep hearing about that course. Nobody talks about it but I keep hearing.
So do I, Ted Joost said.
There's not much I can say about it, Billy said.
You can tell us what goes on.
We delve into the untellable.
How deep? Bobby Iselin said.
It's hard to tell. I don't think anybody knows how deep the untellable is. We've done a certain amount oi delving. We plan to delve some more. That's about all I can tell you.
But what do you talk about? Howard said. "There are ten of you in there and there's some kind of instructor or professor. You must say things to each other."
We shout in German a lot. There are different language exercises we take turns doing. We may go on a field trip next week. I don't know where to.
But you don't know German. I know damn well you don't. I'm your damn roommate. I know things about you.
Unfortunately I've picked up a few words. I guess that's one of the hazards in a course like this. You pick up things you're better off without. The course is pretty experimental. It's given by a man who may or may not have spent three and a half years in one of the camps. He doesn't think there'll be a final exam.
Why things in German? Ted Joost said.
I think the theory is if any words exist beyond speech, they're probably German words, or pretty close.
What do I say to people who keep bringing up the untellable? Howard said.
It's a threecredit course. It's a very hard course, no matter how bright you are. And apparently there are field trips. I don't know what else you can tell them.
Look at him work on that dress, Deering said. "Let me at least lick the button before you finish sewing it. That's all I ask. If I can't put my head under the dress, at least let me lick the button."
I really and truly did not know about the plane crash at all, George said. "It overshot the runway. Is that what happened?"
They had to rush her to the hospital, Hopper said.
Did she regain consciousness?
I don't know if she ever lost it. I just know they had to rush her to the hospital. She's on the critical list.
Tim Flanders and John Butler came in. Butler carried a laundry bag and three pairs of sneakers.
Did you hear about the plane crash? George said.
We just heard, Buttler said.
She was in a light plane going to some conference. It overshot the runway. She's on the critical list.
It overshot the runway. That's what we heard.
They had to rush her to the hospital.
I wonder if it was raining, Flanders said. "Usually they overshoot in bad weather."
We don't have anything on that yet, Hopper said.
We don't know if she lost or regained consciousness either. I about wet my pants when I heard.
A lot of times they die without regaining consciousness, Chester said.
I wonder if she was burned beyond recognition, Flanders said. "That usually happens in that kind of crash."
John Jessup appeared in the doorway.
What kind of news you got for us? Jeff said.
Shitnews.
Can you give us any details?
Chudko has the details. Chudko has all the particulars. I just know it's shitnews. Anybody wants details, go hunt up Chudko.
Whose dress is that? Butler said. "That must be Alia Joy Burney's dress. Hey, move over, Bobby. Plenty of room."
I get first crack at that dress, Deering said. "There's a waiting line for that dress. My head goes under first."
I don't know how people can chew just one stick of gum, George Dole said. "I chew all five."
Billy Mast rethreaded the needle, somewhat theatrically. Spurgeon Cole, Jerry Fallon and Dickie Kidd walked in. It was getting dark outside. I heard the wind rip around the building, actually turning corners, sounding wild enough to unpile stone. John Butler and Bobby Hopper started fighting for some reason. Several good punches were thrown. Then Randy King came in, swinging between a pair of crutches. He was wearing his team jersey, number 51.
in the darkness I listened to Bloomberg tapping the wall next to his bed. I turned the other way, toward my own wall, and tried to fall asleep. I reviewed the entire day. I reviewed the week just past. I tried to remember the precise meaning of a certain phrase: interval recognition bombing. Nothing helped. I remained wide awake. Seven feet away the tapping continued, the thin steady click of fingernails, of penitentiary teaspoons. In time he switched to knuckles.
Anatole.
What is it?
This isn't Devil's Island. If you want to communicate with the people next door, you're free to walk right in.
What do you mean?
You were tapping, I said.
Was I tapping? Was I hitting the wall? I'm sorry, Gary. I didn't know.
It's all right.
Was I keeping you awake? I'm really sorry. I didn't know I was doing it.
It's all right, Anatole. Really. I just thought I'd mention it. In fact, if you want to keep tapping, if it helps you fall asleep or even if it just reduces tension, go right ahead. It doesn't bother me all that much.
What was I tapping with? he said.
Your hand.
What part?
I think it was fingernails first, then knuckles.
That reverses the pattern, he said. "I used to tap all the time when I was a child. But I always started out with knuckles. This reverses the pattern."
Although it was too dark to see anything, I rolled over in order to be facing him while we spoke.
Why did you tap as a child, Anatole?
Children do that sort of thing. Probe everywhere for magic. There was always the chance somebody might answer.
Did anybody ever answer?
There was a warehouse on the other side of the wall. Nobody ever answered. But one night, as I was just getting into bed, I heard a sound from the wall. I started tapping. I tapped for at least half an hour. I tried to improvise codes. I tried to convey urgency by using both hands to tap. There was no reply. It was probably a rat.
Did this have some kind of effect on you, do you think?
It had no effect at all. What kind of effect would it have? It had a ridiculous effect. I was tapping at rats. That's the only effect.
But why were you tapping so urgently, do you think?
I wanted to be sure the sound knew I was there. I didn't know what kind of hearing the sound possessed. It occurred to me that the sound might possess a very primitive hearing apparatus. I wanted to impress on it the fact that there was somebody on the other side of the wall. The sound might have been anything. I felt this was not the time to be subtle. I wanted to be sure the sound heard me.
Why were you tapping a few minutes ago? I said. "Had you heard a sound?"
I didn't know I was tapping. I have only your word for it. I guess it was some kind of locomotor memory retrogression. As you know, I also wet the bed.
But not nearly as much as you used to.
Just as much but not as often, he said. "The improvement, obviously, is due to my recent efforts to forge a new consciousness."
Right, I said. "A sort of new man kind of thing. The new man. The nonethnic superrational man. That kind of thing, right?"
That's about right, Gary.
Your phrasing gets more precise every day. I've been noticing that.
I try to speak in complete sentences at least ninetyfive percent of the time. Subject, predicate, object. It's a way of escaping the smelly undisciplined past with ah1 its ridiculous customs and all its craziness—centuries of middle European anxiety and guilt. I want to think clearly. I train myself toward that end with every living fiber of my being.
Anatole, forgive me but that seems a little bit simplistic. Speak straight and you'll think straight.
There's a relatedness. Take my word.
Where did you grow up? I said. "I've always been reluctant to ask."
I don't want to discuss that. It no longer has any relevance. It's excess baggage. I'm getting rid of it. Go to sleep now, Gary, and try not to snore.
Do you plan eventually to change your name?
There's no need for that. I've already reached the point where my name connotes nothing more to me than the designation EKseventeen might connote. I don't feel I have to live up to my name, to defend it, to like it, to spell it. I used to think of Anatole Bloomberg as the essence of European Jewry. I used to think I had to live up to my name. I thought I had to become Anatole Bloomberg, an importerexporter from Rotterdam with a hook nose and flat feet, or an Antwerp diamond merchant wearing a skullcap, or a hunchbacked Talmudic scholar in a woolly black coat and shoes without shoelaces. Those are just three of the autobiographical projections I had to contend with. It was my name that caused the trouble, the Europeness of my name. Its Europicity. And there was another thing. Some names possess a smell. I didn't like the way my name smelled. It was like a hallway in a tenement where a lot of Bulgarians live. But that's all over now. Now I'm free. I'm EKseventeen.
It's a fabulous name, I said. "I mean the original one. I'm glad you're keeping it."
It's a means of identification. It has no significance beyond that.
Good night, Anatole.
When I arrived here last year, he said, "I was still in a state of confusion and inner panic. But the remoteness helped me. The desert was an ideal place in which to begin the process of unjewing. I spoke aloud to myself in the desert, straightening out my grammar, getting rid of the old slang and the old speech rhythms. I walked in straight lines. I tried to line myself up parallel to the horizon and then walk in a perfectly straight line. I tried to become singleminded and straightforward, to keep my mind set on one thought or problem until I was finished with it. It was hot and lonely. I wore a lot of clothing to keep the sun from burning me and causing my skin to peel. Sometimes I read aloud from a children's reader. I wanted to start all over with simple declarative sentences. Subject, predicate, object. Dick opened the door. Jane fed the dog. It helped me immensely. I began to think more clearly, to concentrate, to leave behind the old words and aromas and guilts. Then I was called to the telephone. My mother had been shot to death by a lunatic. It all came back, who I was, what I was, where the past crossed over into the present and from being to being. Another innocent victim. I didn't go home to look at her small dead body. That would have been too much of a bringing back. I was sure I would never recover from the unspeakable heartbreak and Jewishness of her funeral. So I didn't go home.
Instead I went into the desert with a paintbrush and a can of black paint. Among all those flat stones I found a single round one. I painted it black. It's my mother's burial marker."
it rained and then snowed. I wrote letters through the blurred afternoons, embryonic queries on the nature of silence and time, notes really, laconic and hopeful, ready for bottling, and I mailed them to friends and former teachers, to people back home, to selfpossessed young women in prospering colleges. There were no picnics with Myna. The days seemed even longer than the meandescent days of summer. Mrs. Tom died finally after remaining in a coma for several weeks.
I took a walk down the hall and dropped into Taft's room. He was sitting on his bed, legs bent in, back quite straight, reading a huge gray book. I sat by his desk. Beyond the window was that other world, unsyllabled, snow lifted in the wind, swirling up, massing within the lightless white day, falling toward the sky. The blanket was gray. The walls were bare except for an inch of transparent tape curling into itself, thumbsmudged, just one corner sticking now, a small light imprint on the wall indicating (to anyone who was interested) exactly how the tape had first been applied, at what angle to the ceiling, at what approximate angle to the intersection of that wall with each adjacent wall, at what angle to all other fixed lines in the room. The complete and absolute bareness of the walls (tapeless) made the tape seem historic. This room had not existed one year before. Room and building were new. Tape was (most likely) almost as old as the room itself, judged by poor coloring and generally shriveled appearance. Tape therefore (applied) was as old as the man occupying the room in terms of roomage or the lapsedtimeoccupancy factor. Tape and man had a special relationship. (As did room and man, tape and room.) They were coeval, in roomtime, and existed as the sum. of a number of varying angles. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, bored with myself. Both my shoelaces were untied. Taft went on reading, his head bowed slightly. I studied the topography of his skull, searching for mountain ranges and rivers, for a sign of ancient civilizations under the saltwhite sand. Without hair, I thought, you will run even faster. Vision of a torchbearer black in the high dawn of a mountain country. (Spurgeon Cole stood beneath the goal posts, repeating them, arms raised in the shape of a crossbar and uprights, his fists clenched. The crowd was still up, leaning, in full voice, addressing its own noise. This was it then, the legend, the beauty, the mystery of black speed. Perhaps twenty thousand people watched, overjoyed to see it finally, to partake in the ceremony of speed, in statistical prayer, the human effort tracked by pulsing lights. They were privileged to witness what happened in real tune, nonelectronically, in that obscure compass point of America, all standing now, the young men of bootcamp countenance, the lightbaked girls with freckled arms, the men with sheriff bellies, the bespectacled and longnecked women—crafty grim inedible birds—of middle age, the old men with one shoulder higher than the other, with dented felt hats and stained teeth. It was not just the run that had brought them to their feet; it was the idea of the run, the history of it. Taft's speed had a life and history of its own, independent of him. To wonder at this past. To understand the speed, that it was something unknown to them, never to be known. Hipwidth. Leglength, Tendon and tibia. Hyperextensibility. But more too: wizardry drawn from wells in black buckets. Much to consider that could not be measured in simple centimeters. Strange that this demon speed could be distilled from the doldrums of old lands. But at least they had seen it now. The hawks in their lonesome sky. It had been a sight to ease the greed of all sporting souls. Maybe they had loved him in those few raw seconds. Truly loved him in the dark art of his speed. That was the far reach of the moment, their difficult love for magic.) Taft wore a white shirt and gray pants. His socks were black. I wondered if he had planned to put a poster on the wall and if he had then changed his mind, stripping off all but one piece of tape. What kind of poster, I thought. Of what or whom. It would have told something. That, I knew, was why he hadn't put it up. And now he enveloped his presence in neutral shades. (A somber cream covered the walls and ceiling.) In his austerity he blended with the shadowless room, reading his gray history, a dreamer of facts. Everywhere it was possible to perceive varieties of silence, small pauses in corners, rectangular planes of stillness, the insides of desks and closets (where shoes curl in dust), the spaces between things, the endless silence of surfaces, time swallowed by methodically silent clocks, whispering air and the speechlessness of sentient beings, all these broken codes contained in the surrounding calm, the vastness beyond the window, sunblaze, a clash of metals no louder than heat on flesh. The snow had stopped falling. I got up and went back to my room.
jim deering brought a football out to the parade grounds and we played for several hours in the fresh snow. It began as a game of touch, five on a side, no contact except for brush blocks and tagging the ballcarrier. The snow was anklehigh. We let the large men do all the throwing. Some of us cut classes in order to keep playing. It was very cold at first but we didn't notice so much after a while. Nobody cared how many passes were dropped or badly thrown and it didn't matter how slowly we ran or if we fell trying to cut or stop short. The idea was to keep playing, keep moving, get it going again. Some students and teachers, walking to and from classes, stood and watched for a few minutes and then went away. Two more players entered the game, making it six to a side. They left their books on top of the pile of heavy coats in the snow. Most of us wore regular shoes and nothing heavier than a sweater. George Dole, his first chance to play quarterback, wore a checkered cowboy shirt with the sleeves rolled way up. Nobody wore gloves after John Jessup said gloves were outlawed. Toward the end of the first hour it began getting windy. The wind blew loose snow into our faces, making it hard to keep track of .the ball's flight. Between plays I crossed my arms over my chest, keeping my hands wedged in my armpits for warmth. We blocked a little more emphatically now, partly to keep warm, to increase movement, and also to compensate for the wind, the poor playing conditions; more hitting helped us forget the sting of cold snow blowing in our faces. Each team had just one deep back to do all the throwing and running; there were three linemen blocking and two receivers. Defense was a 33 most of the time. It was getting harder to complete a pass or turn the corner on a running play. I noticed that Buddy Shock's nose was bleeding. It started to snow now, lightly at first, then more heavily, and in time it was almost impossible to see beyond the limits of the parade grounds. It was lovely to be hemmed in that way, everything white except for the clothes we wore and the football and the bundle of coats and books in the snow nearby. We were part of the weather, right inside it, isolated from objects on the land, from land, from perspective itself. There were no spectators now; we were totally alone. I was beginning to enjoy skidding and falling. I didn't even try to retain my balance when I felt myself slipping. Certain reflexes were kept slack; it seemed fitting to let the conditions determine how our bodies behaved. We were adrift within this time and place and what I experienced then, speaking just for myself, was some variety of environmental bliss. Jessup outlawed the placing of hands under armpits between plays. I found merit in this regulation; even the smallest warmth compromised immersion in the elements. Then he outlawed huddles and the making of plays in the usual way. Each play, he decreed, would be announced aloud by the team with the ball. There would be no surprise at all, not the slightest deception; the defense would know exactly what was coming. Again I found it easy to agree. We were getting extremely basic, moving into elemental realms, seeking harmony with the weather and the earth. The snowfall was very heavy now, reducing visibility to about fifteen yards. Suddenly Tim Flanders and Larry Nix were standing near the coats. Someone had told them about the game and they had come down hoping to get in. That made it seven men on each team, four blockers, an unbalanced line, a 43 defense. I was playing center now, stooped way over, my body warped and about to buckle, hands positioned on the cold wet ball, eyes on huge George Dole awaiting the snap four yards behind me and upsidedown, calling out the play and number, his face that of an outlandishly large Navaho infant, dull muddy red in color, his feet lost in snow, sniffling now as he shouted out the cadence, white haired in the biting wind, abominable and looming. The blocking became more spirited and since we wore no equipment it was inevitable that tempers would flare. Randall and Nix butted each other a few times, throwing no punches because of the severe cold. Then Jessup outlawed passing plays. It became strictly a ground game. After two plays it was decided, by unanimous consent, to replace tagging with tackling. Naturally the amount of hitting increased. Somebody tore my sweater and left me buried in snow. I got up and kept going. With passing outlawed the game changed completely. Its range was now limited to a very small area and its degree of specialization diminished. There were no receivers and defenders to scatter the action. We were all blockers, all tacklers. Only the ballcarrier, one man, could attempt to use evasion and finesse in avoiding the primal impact. After a clumsy doublereverse I stood alone watching Ron Steeples, way over at the far rim of vision, whirl in a rotary cloud of snow and take a swing at Jim Deering, whose back was turned. Steeples lost his balance as he swung; the punch missed completely and he fell. Deering, unaware of any of this, trotted over to his side of the line. Steeples got up and walked slowly toward the defense, wiping his hands on his stiff wet trousers. At this point Jessup banned reverses of any kind. The ball had to be handled by one man and one man alone. Even fake reverses were outlawed. No offensive player could pass in front of or behind the ballcarrier while the ballcarrier was still behind the line of scrimmage. Jessup shouted these regulations into the wind. I asked about laterals. Absolutely forbidden, Jessup said. My hands were numb. I looked at them. They were purplish red. Snow on my lashes blurred everything. Lines of sight shortened. My shoes weighed me down. We kept playing, we kept hitting, and we were comforted by the noise and brunt of our bodies in contact, by the simple physical warmth generated through violent action, by the sight of each other, the torn clothing, the bruises and scratches, the wildness of all fourteen, numb, purple, coughing, white heads solemn in the healing snow. Jessup banned end runs. It became a straightahead game, tackle to tackle. We handfought and butted. Linemen fired out and the ballcarrier just lowered his head and went pounding into the tense rhythmic mass. Blocking did not necessarily cease when the ballcarrier went down. Private battles continued until one man gave ground or was buried in snow. These individual contests raged on every play, each man grunting and panting, trying to maintain traction, to move the other man, to chop him down, to overwhelm him. Randall grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to toss me off to the side. I slipped out of his grip, getting hit on the back of the neck with a stray elbow, and then I rammed a shoulder into his gut and kept on moving, kept driving, making him give way; but he tightened up, hardening considerably now, too strong for me, coming back with a slap to my left ear which turned me halfaround and then moving straight in with everything, head, shoulders, hands, until he buried me. He dug me out and slapped me on the rump. On the next play I crossblocked, going after Deering, more my size, standing him up with two shoulderblows to the chest, getting shoved from behind and going down with three or four others. The cold was painful now; it hurt more than the blocking and tackling. I got up, one shoe missing. I saw it a few yards away. I went over and picked it up. It felt like a dead animal. I forced it over my foot. The laces were stiff and my hands too frozen to make a knot. I looked up. Oscar Veech was standing directly in front of me, wearing a padded ski jacket and a pair of snow goggles.
Coach wants to see you, he said.
Everybody stood around watching. I went over and found my coat. I put it over my head and followed Veech into the dimness and silence. We went over to Staley Hall. Veech didn't say anything. We went downstairs and he simply nodded toward the closed door at the end of the isometrics room. I left my coat bundled on a scale. Then I blew my nose, walked to the door and knocked. The room was small and barely furnished, just an army cot, a small folding table, two folding chairs. There were no windows. On the wall was a page torn from a book, a blackandwhite plate of a girl praying in a medieval cell, an upper corner of the page loose and casting a limp shadow. Near the door, at my shoulder, a whistle hung from a string looped over a bent nail. Emmett Creed was in a wheelchair. His legs were covered with a heavy blanket, gray and white, not quite the school colors. Ten or twelve looseleaf binders were stacked neatly on the floor.
Sit down, Gary.
Yes sir.
I'm told it's a near buzzard out there.
We were going at it, I said. "We were playing. We were ignoring the weather and going right at it."
So I'm told.
How are you feeling, Coach? A lot of the guys have tried to get in to see you. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if I brought back word.
Everything is progressing as anticipated.
Yes sir. Very good. I know they'd appreciate hearing that.
A near blizzard is what they tell me.
It's really snowing, I said. "It's coming down thick and steady. Visibility must be zero feet."
Maybe that's the kind of weather we needed over at Centrex.
None of us can forget that game, Coach.
We learned a lot of humility on that field.
It was hard to accept. We had worked too hard to lose, going all the way back to last summer, scrimmaging in that heat. We had worked too hard. It was impossible to believe that anybody had worked harder than we had. We had sacrificed. We had put ourselves through a series of really strenuous ordeals. And then to step out on that field and be overwhelmed the way we were.
It takes character to win, he said. "It's not just the amount of mileage you put in. The insults to the body. The humiliation and fear. It's dedication, it's character, it's pride. We've got a ways to go yet before we develop these qualities on a team basis."
Yes sir.
I've never seen a good football player who didn't know the value of selfsacrifice.
Yes sir.
I've never seen a good football player who wanted to learn a foreign language.
Yes.
I've been married three times but I was never blessed with children. A son. So maybe I don't know as much about young men as I think I do. But I've managed to get some good results through the years. I've tried to extract the maximal effort from every boy I've ever coached. Or near as possible. Football is a complex of systems. It's like no other sport. When the game is played properly, it's an interlocking of a number of systems. The individual. The small cluster he's part of. The larger unit, the eleven. People stress the violence. That's the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there's a calm, a tranquillity. The players accept pain. There's a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies strewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there's a satisfaction to the game that can't be duplicated. There's a harmony.
Absolutely, I said.
But I didn't intend getting into that. You know all that. A boy of your intelligence doesn't have to be told what this game is all about.
Thank you, I said.
No boy of mine has ever broken the same rule twice.
Yes sir.
No boy in all my years of coaching has ever placed his personal welfare above the welfare of the aggregate unit.
Yes sir.
Our inner life is falling apart. We're losing control of things. We need more selfsacrifice, more discipline. Our inner life is crumbling. We need to renounce everything that turns us from the knowledge of ourselves. We're getting too far away from our own beginnings. We're roaming all over the landscape. We need to build ourselves up mentally and spiritually. Do that and the body takes care of itself. I learned this as a small boy. I was very sickly, a very sickly child. I had this and that disease. I was badly nourished. My legs were no thicker than the legs of that chair. But I built myself up by determination and sacrifice. The mind first and then the body. It was a lonely life for a boy. I had no friends. I lived in an inner world of determination and silence. Mental resolve. It made me strong; it prepared me. Things return to their beginnings. It's been a long circle from there to here. But all the lessons hold true. The inner life must be disciplined just as the hand or eye. Loneliness is strength. The Sioux purified themselves by fasting and solitude. Four days without food in a sweat lodge. Before you went out to lament for your nation, you had to purify yourself. Fasting and solitude. If you can survive loneliness, you've got an inner strength that can take you anywhere. Four days. You wore just a bison robe. I don't think there's anything makes more sense than selfdenial. It's the only way to attain moral perfection. I've wandered here and there. I've made this and that mistake. But now I'm back and I'm back for good. A brave nation needs discipline. Purify the will. Learn humility. Restrict the sense life. Pain is part of the harmony of the nervous system.
I said nothing.
What I called you in here for, Creed said.
Yes sir.
Do you know the reason?
Why I'm here? I assume because I walked off the field.
I knew that exploit was coming, he said. "In one form or another it had to come. It was just a matter of time. I knew about Penn State and Syracuse. Sooner or later you had to make a gesture. Do something. Upset things. Test yourself—yourself more than me. I've been waiting. Every team I've ever coached had at least one boy who lad to make the gesture. I've been waiting all season. You did it at other schools in one form or another and I knew you'd do it here. It's off your chest now. You can settle down. What I called you in here for. Kimbrough graduates in the spring. You're offensive captain."
I never expected anything like this, I said. "I'm not a senior. Doesn't it go to seniors?"
Never mind that.
Frankly I thought I was here to be disciplined.
Maybe that's what it all amounts to. I'll be demanding extra. I'll be after you every minute. As team leader you'll be setting an example for the rest of them. You'll have to give it everything you've got and then some.
I'll be ready, I said.
I know you will, son. You'll find Oscar Veech in the training room. Send him in here.
One thing I've been meaning to ask since the minute I walked in. What's that picture taped to the wall? Who is that in the picture? Is it anybody in particular?
Somebody sent that picture to me many years ago. Looks like it came from some kind of religious book for kids. People were always sending me things. Good luck things or prayers or all kinds of advice. Not so much now. They've been keeping pretty quiet of late. But that's a Catholic saint. I've kept that picture with me for many years now. Teresa of ávila. She was a remarkable woman. A saint of the church. Do you know what she used to do in order to remind herself of final things?
Something to do with a skull, I think.
She used to eat food out of a human skull.
I'll go find Veech, I said.
In my room later I became depressed. No American accepts the deputy's badge without misgivings; centuriesof heroic lawlessness have captured our blood. I felt responsible for a vague betrayal of some local code or lore. I was now part of the apparatus. No longer did I circle and watch, content enough to be outside the center and even sufficiently cunning to plan a minor raid or two. Now I was the law's small tin glitter. Suck in that gut, I thought.
Jimmy Fife came in and sat on Anatole's bed. Fife was a defensive back who had been disabled all year, a ruptured spleen. Someone had accidentally kicked him during a practice session the previous spring. He had been very close to death. Many players still kidded him about it.
Nix went wild last night and started throwing ash cans through windows. His ass has likely had it.
Coach made me captain, I said. "As of now, I captain the offense."
Congrats, Fife said.
I don't know if it's good or bad. I feel a little bit upset. I guess I just have to get used to it. So Nix went berserk.
Completely amuck, he said. "I saw the last part of it. It took six people to carry him off. It was a real fistswinging melee. I didn't get anywhere near it. Stupid to expose the spleen to contact at this point."
But Nix was out in the snow with us a little while ago. I just realized. I'm sure Nix was there. He was in the game we were playing out in the blizzard.
I don't doubt it, Fife said. "He's an animal. He's an animal's animal. The animals themselves would vote him allanimal. After a night like last night anybody else would be in bed for a week. Animalism aside, I'll tell you what he really is. He's a nihilist. He himself says so. I've had conversations with the guy. He blames it on his name. Nix meaning no, no thanks, nothing."
I've never talked to the guy, I said.
I've had conversations with the guy. He's pretty interesting, albeit a little bit stereo.
What do you mean—stereo?
I mean psycho. Did I say stereo? What a funny word to use.
You said albeit a little bit stereo.
Did I say albeit? That's incredible, Gary. I'd never use a word like that. A word like that is way out of my province.
But you used it, Jimmy. I'm certain.
I must have been speaking in tongues, Fife said.
He bounced on the bed a few times, his mouth wide open, and I thought he might be trying to cast out a minor playful worddemon.
Anyway, I said, "Nix has probably had it."
Sure, they'll get him for the windows. It's my guess he'll be gone for good. Have you heard about Conway's insects?
Offensive captain, I said. "That means I go out for the coin toss. If Coach doesn't object I think I'll go out with my helmet off. I'll carry it rather than wear it. I think it looks better. It sort of humanizes the coin toss. Then I can put it on again as I come running off."
Who's the new defensive captain? Fife said.
I don't know. Coach didn't say and I didn't ask.
How is he? I hear he's the same.
He's in a wheelchair, I said.
A wheelchair.
Don't ask me why. Something to do with his legs, I guess. At least that's what he seemed to intimate. Maybe not.
Where's Bloomers?
I don't know.
John Butler tells me he's been hearing strange noises at night. These noises come from the other side of Butler's wall. The other side of Butler's wall is right here. It goes on for hours, Butler says it goes teek teek teek teek.
I don't know anything about it.
Conway, he said. "I started to tell you about Conway's insects. He's got this tremendous assortment of insects in his room. A few days ago he went out In the desert and dug them out of hibernation and brought them back to his room. Everybody's been going in there to look at them. I think he wants to put them in some kind of cage or giant bowl. Arrange it like their natural surroundings. Some dirt, some small plants, some rocks. And then see what happens."
It sounds horrible.
I think it might be interesting, Gary. We'll get a chance to see what happens.
What could happen?
They could reproduce. They could fight among themselves. I don't know. But it might be interesting. Conway knows all about insects. They're his field. He was telling us all about it. It's pretty interesting from a number of viewpoints.
Has he built this thing he's going to build yet?
Work on that starts tomorrow. For the time being he's keeping them in a number of jars.
What kind of number? How many insects are there?
Maybe forty all told. All different kinds. Beetles, spiders, scorpions—mostly beetles. The spider incidentally is not an insect. The spider is an arachnid. Let's go take a look.
I'd just as soon stay here, I think, Jimmy.
A quick look, he said.
How quick?
In and out, Gary.
I've got things to do. We'd have to make it a very quick look.
We'll just stick our heads in the door. Wap. In and out.
We went down the hall. I saw two people come out of Conway's room. Four others were there when we walked in. Conway escorted us around the room. There were ten or eleven large jars. Most of the insects seemed to be asleep.
Tell Gary about the tiger beetle, Fife said.
The tiger beetle is a very interesting creature. The tiger beetle hunts by night. It moves swiftly over the ground or it climbs trees. It goes after caterpillars mostly.
What's so interesting about that? I said.
Tell him about the radioactivity.
Insects are highly resistant to radioactivity, Conway said. "In case of an allout somethingorother, they'll probably end up taking over the planet. All the birds will be killed off by the fallout. But the insect resists fallout. He won't have birds feeding off him. He'll be able to reproduce freely."
Most people are aware of that, I said.
But I'll tell you a mistake almost everybody makes. It concerns the spider. The spider is not an insect. The spider is an arachnid.
I know that. Almost everybody knows that.
He doesn't know about the wolf spider, Fife said. "Tell him about the wolf spider and the little spiderlings. How they ride on her back."
The wolf spider has eight eyes. It spins no web. When the female's eggs hatch, the little spiderlings ride on her back for about a week.
The scavenger beetle, Fife said. "Tell him about the scavenger. I like the part where it lays the eggs."
The scavenger beetle is equipped with a set of digging claws. It can bury a dead mouse or a dead bird in two or three hours. Something many times its own size. The beetle then lays eggs on the dead carcass. These eggs hatch very quickly and the larvae come out and start eating the meat of the dead bird. The scarab beetle is of the scavenger type. It lives on dung. The scarab had been a symbol of immortality since the ancient Egyptians.
Dennis Smee walked in.
Somebody told me to ask you about radioactivity.
Insects are highly resistant to radioactivity, Conway said. "Man dies if he's exposed to six hundred units. Mr. Insect can survive one hundred thousand units and more. And he won't have birds feeding off him. He'll be able to reproduce freely. There won't be any balance in the sense we know it."
Balance, Fife said. "The equality of effective values with respect to the applied number of reduced symbolic quantities on each side of an equation, excluding combined derivatives."
Terry Madden came in and congratulated me on my cocaptaincy. Everybody shook my hand and wished me well. Then Lee Roy Tyler and Ron Steeples came in to look at the insects. Steeples was wearing a red golf glove on his right hand.
Where you going, Gary? he said.
Things to do.
In my room I wrote a long hysterical letter on the subject of spacetime. Even though I knew nothing about spacetime, the letter was fairly easy to write. It practically wrote itself. When I was finished I tried to decide to whom it had been written. This itself seemed the most important thing about the letter. To whom was it going? Whose name would sail, unsuspecting, on that extended text? (Whichever name, it would be minus the word Dear and followed by a dour colon—overly formal perhaps but more unfeigned than the mockcasual comma.) I thought of a dozen, people and concluded that none was worthy. I left the six pieces of paper on the old brown saddle blanket atop Anatole's bed. Bing Jackmin walked in and took a chair.
Did you hear? he said.
What?
He's wearing those sunglasses again. Shaved skull and dark glasses. What the hell does it mean?
I don't know, I said. "It probably doesn't mean anything. He's a remote individual. The dark glasses conceal him. Or conceal whatever's around him. I don't know."
What about the skull, Gary?
I don't know why he shaved. I have no idea.
Don't you care to speculate?
I leave that to the joint chiefs. I'm just a lowly captain.
I heard, Gary. Nice going. Although you'll probably regret it as soon as Coach starts in with the tonguelashings. He saves that stuff for the quarterback and the two captains.
I know, I said. "He told me to expect trouble."
Verbal tonguelashings. Public humiliation.
I know, Bing.
First time it happens you'll wish you never even saw a football. You'll experience total personality destructuring.
We're wasting spacetime, I said. "I have a lot to do."
I'll tell you why I came in here in the first place. I want to grow a beard. I want hair. It's a question of increasing my personal reality. I'm serious about this, Gary.
What color beard?
Gary, I'm serious now.
Because if you want it the same color as the hair on your head, you'll have a lot easier time growing it.
I'd like you to talk to Coach. You're one of the captains now. You've got a power base. There's no word out on excess hair. I want you to find out what the word is.
It's very curious, I said. "All these juxtapositions of hair and nonhair. I half expect Anatole to come walking in with a long white mane down over his shoulders."
Talk to Coach. Talk to him. It's just an ounce of hair but it'll mean a whole lot to me. I'm becoming too psychomythical in my orientation. I need a reality increment. Find out what the word is.
He'll ignore me, Bing. He'll just look away in disgust.
Keep after him. Hound the son of a bitch. I want some excess hair. I'm serious about this. Tell him I'm willing to shave it off when spring practice begins. But I need a beard now. Try to explain personalized reality to him.
These are subglacial matters, I said. "I can't just snap my fingers and decide. Besides I have no real power. He'll just look away in disgust. All I can do for the moment is think about it. I'll think about it."
Think about it, Bing said. "I'll be in Conway's room looking at the insects."
I went for a walk. It had stopped snowing. The lamps were lit along the straight white paths. It was dinnertime and everyone was inside. I inhaled deeply, feeling the air enter and bite. My right shoulder ached from the game in the snow. I rotated my arm slowly. Then I saw Alan Zapalac coming down the library steps, an enormous yellow scarf circling his neck two or three times and terminating at his kneecap. He made his way carefully, using the heel of his right shoe to probe each step for ice beneath the stacked snow. I waited for him at the foot of the stairs. He wore an armband on which was printed the word trees, green on light blue.
Escort me to the administration building, he said. "If I fall down and break my leg, I'll need somebody to tell the others not to move me. If you weren't here and if it happened, breaking my leg, they'd come along and move me, broken bone and all. If you yourself slip, which I doubt will happen with your athletic prowess and tremendous genetic advantages, make sure you don't reach out and grab for me. I know that's everybody's natural instinct but I want you to fight off the urge because if you take me with you with my delicate bone structure I'm as good as dead. They'd probably use me in one of their experiments with hogs or chickens. None of my organs would be safe. Tomorrow you'd go behind that white building that looks like somebody pinned a surgical gown over it and in that pen they've got out back for the inoculated animals you'd see a hog walking along with my kidneys inside it, urinating the last dregs of my life into the alfalfa."
I'm going that way anyway, I said. "Good, good, good. How's the lady friend?" "Myna," I said. "Myna's fine as far as I know." "I'm no good at names. My students are catching on. In one of my classes there's an allout hoax being perpetrated, supposedly at my expense. They've invented a student. His name is Robert Reynolds. After class somebody always comes up to my desk to ask a question. Whoever it is, he makes it a point to identify himself by name. It's a different boy every day but the name is always Robert Reynolds. I get test papers from Robert Reynolds. Yesterday there was a new attendance card in my bunch, very authentic looking, full of IBM holes. It was Robert Reynolds' card. So I called out his name when I took the attendance. Naturally somebody answered. Everybody else said here. But the Robert Reynolds person, said present. You could sense the laughter being contained, the greatness of their mission, how they had banded together to perpetrate this thing at my expense, the teacher, the socalled font of wisdom. For the moment I'm playing dumb. I'm letting them get away with it. They think I don't know what's going on. But there are ploys and there are counterploys. Getting back for a second. Your lady friend. Why is she so fat?"
The responsibilities of beauty, I said. "She thinks they'd be too much for her. They'd cause her to change. I think I tend to agree."
My wifetobe is a white Protestant fencepost. A very onedimensional bodyshape. She's rough and tough, a classic Midwest bitch. When we argue she squeezes the flesh on the back of my hand. She really twists it hard, pinching it simultaneously. Her face becomes very Protestant if you know what I mean. A Zurich theologian lives inside her.
I don't understand why you'd want to marry somebody like that. If somebody like that twisted my flesh, to be perfectly frank with you I think I'd hit her. I'd hate to have my flesh pinched and squeezed on any kind of recurring basis.
I've never punched or slapped a woman, he said. "I like to bodycheck them instead, like a hockey player. I smash them into the boards. It surprises them. A bodycheck is something they can't interpret with their normal uncanniness of knowing exactly how to retaliate, with whatever exact giveandtake, the way only women can do, giving back tenfold but with a genius that makes it seem even steven."
But why would you marry somebody like that?
She loves me. I'm the only person she's ever loved. Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the whole world she's capable of loving. She calls me longdistance every other day. I jump with joy every time the telephone rings. She's three inches taller than I am but why quibble over inches when you're involved in matters of eternal import. Speaking of tall and short, notice the length of my scarf. Little men like to wear long scarfs. The reason for this is lost in the mists of time. But to return to love. Love is a way of salvation. It makes us less imperfect and draws us closer to immortality. I want to stir up ecstasy in my soul. I want to ascend to the world of forms. Love basically is the suspension of gravity. It's an ascent to higher places. The very existence of her love will stir me to deep ecstasy. I'll begin to climb. Notice the selfish element in my scheme.
You mentioned salvation, I said. "What kind of salvation?"
I believe in the remission of sins, Zapalac said. "The world's, the nation's, the individual's sins. Do penance and they shall be forgiven. Salvation consists in the remission of sins. Whatever penances can be performed. Whatever denials or offerings up."
Are you serious?
The nation's sins, he said.
That was the administration bunding.
I'm going in the back way. It's part of my overall schemata. I like to turn up behind people's backs. Suddenly there I am, at their shoulder blades, ready to be a friend to the enemies of injustice.
I walked back to Staley Hall. In the dining room I saw Bloomberg sitting with Spurgeon Cole. I put some corn flakes on a tray and joined them.
How's Coach? Spurgeon said.
He's progressing as anticipated.
I have a feeling, Bloomberg said, "that's he's about ready to shuffle off these mortal coils, as they say in show business."
How does it feel being captain, Gary?
I get to go out for the coin toss. I've always wanted to be part of that. It's tremendously ceremonial without being too pompous.
He's wearing the dark glasses again, Spurgeon said. "He hasn't worn them in months. Now he's wearing them."
I know all about it. I have no comment.
It must mean something, Gary. Dark glasses indoors in the dead of winter.
It doesn't mean anything. Look at Steeples. Steeples is going around with a gold glove on his hand. What the hell does that mean?
Steeples has some kind of infection. It's ugly as hell apparently. He was exposed to something. It's a sort of burn plus a sort of infection. He just wants to keep it hidden.
Is that all you're eating? Bloomberg said to me.
It contains vitamin B, iron and niacin.
I'm up to threeosix, he said. "The new mind expands with the old body. I feel more alert every day. I feel revitalized."
Bing Jackmin came over and sat down. His tray held baked ham, mashed potatoes, salad and pound cake. He was looking at me intensely.
Did you talk to Coach?
Give me time, I said.
There is no time.
Can't you start growing it and then either keep it going or terminate it when I find out what the word is?
Terminate what? Spurgeon said.
His excess hair. He wants a beard. Does anybody know what the prevailing attitude is on excess hair?
Excess hair is acceptable if it doesn't exceed accepted standards, Spurgeon said.
There's your answer, Bing.
I am interested in certain aspects of global violence, Bloomberg said.
Pass the salt, Bing said.
This meat, Spurgeon said. "There's something wrong with this meat."
Bloomberg cleared his throat.
I am an anguished physicist. I take long walks in the country. From time to time I have second thoughts about the supermegaroach aerosol bomb which can kill anything that moves on the whole earth in a fraction of a microsecond and which I alone invented and marketed. As I walk the peaceful country lanes of the Institute for Abstract Speculation and Sneak Attacks way out there in an unmarked site somewhere in the Pacific Northeast, a television crew films my every step. The director asks me to gaze up over the treetops and to squint slightly into the late afternoon sun. At such moments I think of my roachbomb and I am filled with a sense of deep humility and also with a feeling of fantastic bloodsucking power. And I am reminded of the comforting words of the famed celestial song of the Hindus. What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? So you see, my friends, I am not without a sense of history nor of personal responsibility. I have a human side and I love the classics. As I smoke my pipe and play a quiet game of chess with my lovely wife, the mother of three fine boys by a previous marriage, I like to ruminate on the nature of man. What brought us forth from the primordial slime? Whither are we headed? What is the grand design? And pondering these vast questions over cheese and port, I come to the realization that one terminal bomb more or less makes small difference in this everexpanding universe of ours.
Would somebody please pass the salt, Bing said.
I am interested in the violent man and the ascetic. I am on the verge of concluding that an individual's capacity for violence is closely linked with his ascetic tendencies. We are about to rediscover that austerity is our true mode. In our future meditations we may decide to seek the devil's death. In our silence and terror we may steer our technology toward the metaphysical, toward the creation of some unimaginable weapon able to pierce spiritual barriers, to maim or kill whatever dark presence envelops the world. You will say this seems an unlikely matter to engage the talents of superrational man. But it is precisely this kind of man who has been confronting the unreal, the paradoxical, the ironic, the satanic. After all, the ultimate genius of modern weapons, from the purely theoretical standpoint, is that they destroy the living. We can go on from there to frame any number of provocative remarks but we will resist the temptation. We all know that life, happiness, fulfillment come surging out of particular forms of destructiveness. The moral system is enriched by violence put to positive use. But as the capacity for violence grows in the world, the regenerative effects of specific violent episodes become less significant. The capacity overwhelms everything. The mere potential of one form of violence eclipses the actuality of other forms. I am interested in these things. I am also interested in the discontinuation of contractions. Medial letters are as valid as any others. I have already begun to revise my speech patterns accordingly.
We were all laughing, not knowing exactly why. Maybe we thought Bloomberg was crazy. Or maybe we laughed because it was the only reaction we could trust, the only one that could keep us at a safe distance. Anatole, replying to the laughter, tapped his spoon against the plastic tray to his right. I finished my corn flakes and proceeded, as arranged, to the library.
Myna was sitting alone in one of the rooms downstairs. Her table was covered with books, all abandoned there, many left open (a breach in their solemnity), massive volumes in tiny lines of print. Beyond the table were long high stacks, reeking a bit of perspiration (presumably human), the 900 series, history in its smelliest caparisons, each dark aisle boobytrapped with a metal stool or two. It was fairly pleasant to be there, the library as womb, fluorescent refuge from chaos or rain. Myna was reading Zap Comix. I sat next to her, then reached across the table and pulled a book toward me. It was a dictionary, opened to facing pages that began with Kaaba and ended with kef. Myna looked different somehow. I hadn't seen her in about a week and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that her face was much more clear, almost completely blotchless. She leaned toward the dictionary. We read the definitions to each other for a while. Some of them were extremely funny. Then we selected certain words to read aloud. We read them slowly, syllable by syllable, taking turns, using at times foreign or regional accents, then replaying the sounds, perhaps backward, perhaps starting with a middle syllable, and finally reading the word as word, overpronouncing slightly, noses to the page as if in search of protomorphic spoor. Some of the words put Myna into a state of mild delirium; she thought their beauty almost excessive. We kept reading for half an hour. The words were ways of touching and made us want to speak with hands. We went into a far corner of the high stacks. There I started taking off her dress. The great cumulus breasts came rolling out of handbeaded blue Victorian velvet. We laughed loudly, then tried to quiet each other with soft punches to the arm. A button fell to the floor, rolling unsteadily into a distant corner. I made bubbling noises, rubbing my face in her breasts, scratching an itch just under my eye with her left nipple. Together we got the dress down over her hips, hitting each other lightly to warn the laughter off, and in time it was at her feet. I made strange noises of anticipation (gwa, gwa) and this made her hit me with both hands, but weakly because of the laughter rocking inside her. We heard something at the doorway and made faces at each other, exaggerated frightmasks, and I looked past her and through the slightly tilted rows of books, tilts and countertilts, angles commenting on other angles, centuries misplaced by slumbering hands, the entire selfcontradictory mass looming humorously over my darling's epic breasts. There was no one in the doorway. I plucked a chord or two on the tense elastic of her iridescent panties. Sign of tiny pink ridges, waveshaped, about her buoyant waist. We kissed and bit. She tickled certain vulnerable areas below my ribs. We touched, patted and licked. It may be impossible to explain why it seemed so very important to get her completely naked. Our hands rolled the pants past her hips and thighs. To mark the event I brought new noises to the room, vowel sounds predominating. Myna stepped away from the clothes, aware of the moment's dynamics, positing herself as the knowable word, the fleshmade sigh and syllable. She was beautiful, broad as a manysectioned cubistic bather, conceptually new, cloudbosomed, ultimate. To be forever loved in ways unworthy. In seconds we would be ingathered, amassment of hair and limbs, unbrokenly focused, hunting each other in the melting cave. Some one or thing at the doorway's edge. No: closer. A woman lurking in the stacks. I could see her, four rows away, shoulder to nose between the shelves. I gestured to Myna of the danger nearby. Then I tried to help her get into her clothes, accidentally bumping her once with my knee so that she fell forward over a stool. We looked at each other, not knowing whether to be alarmed by the approaching footsteps, or amused, or merely indifferent. I directed her toward a small alcove in which was placed a bust of some unnamed immortal. Then I opened a book and began to read in a soft voice a number of reflections on an ancient war I had never even heard of until that moment. The woman was Mrs. Berry Trout, an administrator of some kind. She gave me an unloving look.
What's your name, young man?
Robert Reynolds, I said, slipping into my southern accent.
one night the major and I played a crude form of war game in his motel room. He sat facing me, about four feet away, a small table between us. On the table were pencils, pads, maps, and a chart that I was having a great deal of trouble trying to read upside down. The major said that one of the big problems with war games, whether they were being played at the Pentagon, at NORAD or Fort Belvoir, at a university or think tank, was the obvious awareness on the part of all participants that this wasn't the real thing. (What we were playing, he added, was barely the simulated thing; we had no computer, intelligence reports, projection screens, and only a few numerical estimates of troop units, missile inventories, production capacities.) The gaming environment, as he called it, could never elicit the kind of emotions generated in times of actual stress; therefore gaming was probably just a secondrate guide (hopefully not too misleading) to what might be expected from governments when the armies were poised and lithe missiles were rising from their silos. As I sat there, listening, I wondered why we were meeting in a motel. It seemed to me that the major's house should have been ready for occupancy by this time and that his family should have joined him. However, it did not seem appropriate to comment.
He looked through the material in front of him, then glanced around the room before spotting what he wanted, a world atlas. It was on the bed, about eight feet away. He asked me to get it for him.
Now this scenario is premised on futuribles, he said. "The basic situation as I've set it up for us is definitely in the area of what we know to be projected crisis situations. It could happen. Tensions. Possible accidents. Unrelated hostilities. Or maybe not so unrelated. Precedents: one act of aggression tending to legalize another. Then finally a showdown between two major powers. That's the basic situation, the starting point or premise as I'll conceptualize it for you in a minute. What happens after that is up to us. Now, before I forget, the two major powers are just who you might expect them to be except I've changed their names slightly, just to make them a little less appealing or distasteful to our emotions, as the case may be. COMRUS is one and AMAC is the other. It's not supposed to fool anybody and it just gives you a glimpse of what we might be able to do in the future in terms of totally our own situations, not depending on existing bodies or preconceptions. So it's just to neutralize our emotions a little bit. In fact I haven't bothered to change much else, just a designation here and there since I'm just beginning to get into this. So we're a little bit disorganized and inconsistent this first time and we'll probably have to improvise as we go along. But to get back, what happens after I introduce this thing is up to us. We might become wildly implausible or we might run right through the crisis game from escalation to escalation with absolutely traditional military logic—if there is such a thing and I'm not sure there is. We might not even get to the point of using nuclear weapons. Or we might start pitching right off."
The major outlined the crisis.
It begins in the Sea of Japan. An AMAC destroyer of the Seventh Fleet, on maneuvers, is strafed by two NORKOR MIGs. Damage is light; there are no casualties. Two days later a Polaris submarine in the East Siberian Sea is reported missing. In Germany three highranking agents defect to the West; unmarked planes drop leaflets over East Berlin, over Prague, over Budapest. There are a dozen explosions of suspicious origin at military bases throughout Spain and Turkey. An unmanned AMAC intelligence plane is downed by COMCHIN missiles in the Formosa Strait. Fires break out on successive days at the atomic power laboratory in Los Alamos and in the civil defense command center at Cheyenne Mountain. The commander of an AMAC truck convoy, following orders, fails to stop at an East German roadblock along the Autobahn; shots are exchanged and the convoy breaks through. A Dutchbuilt factory ship, being delivered to NORKOR, is struck by torpedoes and sunk outside Chongjin. COMRUS objects strongly. Several explosions damage NikeHercules installations on Okinawa. COMCHIN negotiators suspend talks with the Japanese over ownership of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Within a timeframe of ten hours there are over a dozen small clashes, involving demonstrators and troops, on both sides of the Berlin wall. Messages are exchanged. There are reports that Egyptian troops have retaken El Arish. COMRUS demands gradual allied withdrawal from West Berlin. COMRUS demands withdrawal of all AMAC auditors in Indochina. NATO reports largescale troop movements west of Leipzig, east of Lübeck, near Klatovy. COMRUS claims an overkill factor of three in relation to Western Europe. A dozen light bombers of the Warsaw Pact air forces are spotted over Bonn. An RAF reconnaissance plane is shot down by MIG23s after violating East German airspace. More ultimatums. Troops of the Warsaw Pact nations, using conventional weapons, clash with NATO forces at three different locales along the West German frontier. SAC is put on alert. Twelve COMRUS infantry divisions—about a hundred twenty thousand men—are moved to Western Europe from Lake Baikal north of Mongolia. AMAC navy jets from the carrier Kitty Hawk engage COMRUS aircraft two hundred miles south of Vladivostok. COMCHIN explodes a thirtymegaton device at its test site in northern Tibet. The use of tactical nuclear weapons by an AMAC ground unit in West Germany is at first denied and then claimed to be accidental. A brief cessation of hostilities. Charges and countercharges. COMRUS (Staley) and AMAC (Harkness) are approaching a state of war.
The major went through this scenario very slowly. He referred to his maps at least ten times, showing me the precise locations of certain countries, cities, military bases. Often he paused during these map readings as if waiting for me to comment, perhaps on the subtle geographic patterns he had devised for the various conflicts. I had trouble finding any particular pattern but I could tell quite easily how much tune and work he had put into the project. It seemed almost sad. I was hardly a competent enemy. I had no experience in this sort of thing. I had been plagued by joyous visions of apocalypse but I was not at all familiar with the professional manipulations, both diplomatic and military, which might normally precede any kind of largescale destruction. All I could do was try to react intelligently, if that word can be used, to whatever the major did with his divisions, his air force, his warships, his missiles. I wasn't feeling very involved. In fact I considered the scenario somewhat boring despite all the frenzy and tension. At this point the major set down the rules for the second and final part of the game, the part in which I would participate, and he also invited me to share an elaborate chart he had prepared, using information taken from a study by some military research institute. Before we started, he said he was working on a totally simulated world situation—seven major nations of his own making, seventeen major cities, an unspecified (secret) number of military installations, fairly complete demographic, economic, social, religious, racial and meteorological characteristics for each nation. He would have it ready for us in two or three weeks; it would be a much more pure form of gaming than the one we were using now.
At length we began. It took only twelve major steps or moves to complete the game and yet we were at it for more than three hours. It was the strangest thing I had ever taken part in. There were insights, moves, minor revelations that we savored together. Silences between moves were extremely grave. Talk was brief and pointed. Small personal victories (of tactics, of imagination) were genuinely satisfying. Mythic images raged in my mind.
(1) Nuclearpowered COMRUS submarines enter the Gulf of Mexico. An AMAC carrier of the Sixth Fleet is badly damaged by enemy aircraft in the Mediterranean.
(2) Seven COMRUS trawlers are sunk off the coast of Oregon. Missiles fired by Vulcan surfacetoair batteries destroy two MIG21 fighter planes near Mannheim.
(3) COMRUS troops invade Western Europe. The atomic test site at Amchitka in the Aleutians is believed wiped out.
(4) SAC bombers assume maximum attack posture. The President leaves the White House situation room and boards Air Force One.
(5) COMRUS explodes a onemegaton nuclear device high in the air over territory west of Brussels, causing virtually no damage to property.
(6) SAC bombers attack a limited number of COMRUS military targets, using lowyield kiloton bombs to reduce collateral damage.
(7) Partial evacuation of major COMRUS cities. ICBMs hit strategic targets throughout Europe. COMRUS mediumrange bombers attack AMAC air bases in England. Longrange missiles hit Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota.
(8) AMAC ICBMs, B52s and B58s strike at air bases, dams, bridges, railroads and missile sites deep inside COMRUS territory. The Tallinn missile defense system is hit and partially destroyed. The antimissile complexes on the western outskirts of Moscow are badly damaged. AMAC orders almost total evacuation of major cities.
(9) COMRUS orders almost total evacuation of major cities. Three Polaris submarines in the North Atlantic are destroyed. Radar installations in Alaska and Greenland are wiped out. Titan installations surrounding Tucson in Arizona are hit by COMRUS SS9 missiles with warheads totaling nearly 100 megatons. Tucson is rendered uninhabitable by fallout.
(10) The citybusting begins. Selected population centers within COMRUS borders are hit by Minuteman 3 ICBMs carrying MIRV warheads. Polaris submarines in the North Sea and the Baltic fire missiles at selected sites. SAC bombers raid selected cities from Murmansk to Vladivostok.
(11) Washington, D.C., is hit with a 25megaton device. New York and Los Angeles are hit with SS11 missiles.
(12) SIMcap dictates spasm response.
The telephone rang. Major Staley turned quickly in his chair, terrified for a long second, and then simply stared at the commonplace black instrument as it continued to ring.
myna returned from christmas vacation many pounds lighter. When I saw her, I didn't know how to react. She was having coffee with the Chalk sisters in the student lounge and I stood in the doorway a moment, trying to prepare a suitable remark or two. She was wearing a white cotton blouse; her hair was combed straight back and ribboned at the nape of the neck. Vera Chalk saw me and waved me over, gesturing urgently, her face expressing news of colossal wonders. The sisters put their hands on me as soon as I sat down, scratching at my arms and chest in their glee at finding an object toward which to direct their effusions.
Look at her, Gary.
I'm looking. Hi. I'm virtually speechless.
Hi, Myna said.
It's just the beginning, Esther said. "She's got twenty more pounds to go. She's lost twenty and she's got twenty to go. In other words she's halfway there."
Just look at her, Vera said. "She's like a new person. She looks unbelievable. I'm so happy for her. I can't believe how much better she looks. Gary, what do you think?"
I think it's unbelievable.
I'm ecstatic on her behalf. I really am.
Don't use that word, Esther said.
Ecstatic.
You know how much I hate that word, you spiteful bitch.
Ecstatic.
Now quit it, Vera.
You're not supposed to call me that. Gary, she knows how much I loathe and despise my name.
Vera.
Ecstatic. More ecstatic. Most ecstatic.
Vera beera. One little lira for a glass of Vera beera.
Ecstasy of ecstasies.
Enough, I said.
I'll stop if she will, Esther said. "Besides we're supposed to be discussing Myna. Gary, don't you think it's unbelievable?"
It's unbelievable. It really is.
Are you just saying that? Or do you really think it?
I'm just saying it. I don't know what to think. It's too early yet. I need time to reflect.
Don't be such a picayune shit, Vera said.
"I had to do it, Gary. It became a question of selfdefinition. I was just moping along like an unreal person. I used to look forward to nothingtype things. I never really faced my own reality. I was satisfied just consuming everything that came along. But after only twenty pounds, things are already starting to be different. I'm beginning to catch my own reflection everywhere I go. I'm being forced to face myself as a person instead of somebody who just mopes along consuming everything that's put in front of her. Gary, I've spent too much time on nothingtype things. I used to think three meals ahead. I used to be satisfied figuring out which dress I was going to wear with whichever dumb shoes. I used to work these things out in my head for hours. It really made me happy working out my combinations. These shoes, that dress, this bracelet. The sweater with the purple star and the dumb blue boots. The sculptured brass peace symbol strung on rawhide and the turquoise dishrag tunic with drawstring neck and full sleeves. These things were my doggy treats. I did a good trick and I got a doggy treat. The whole process took me further away from myself and made my life a whole big thing of consumption, consuming, consume. Purplestar sweaters, antique pendants, beaded chokers, organic nuts, horoscopes, sciencefiction movies, fourdollar transparent soap, big English cars, Mexican villas, ecology, pink rolling paper, brownies, seaweed with my pork chops, soy noodles, dacron, rayon, orlon acrylic, Fortrel polyester, Lycra spandex, leather, vinyl, suede, velvet, velours, canvas. I shoveled it all in and all I did was bury my own reality and independentness. The whole business of going to Mexico to do nothing but smoke dope was all part of the fatness thing. Gary, I know you liked me fat but at least with the responsibilities of beauty I'll have a chance to learn exactly or pretty exactly what I can be, with no builtin excuses or copouts or anything. I'm not just here to comfort you. You can't expect to just come searching for me for comfort. I want other thing now. I'm ready to find out whether I really exist or whether I'm something that's just been put together as a market for junk mail.
"It's all very existential.
Don't use words, Esther said. "Either you h'ke her this way or you don't. You can't get out of it with words."
I have to get used to the new situation. I need time to get accustomed.
Are you sure that's all it is? Myna said.
That's all.
Are you sure it's not that you're definitely against it? Because if you are, it would be better if you said so now.
I have to get used to it. Time. That's all. I need time.
You're really sure, Gary?
Myna, we've known each other for a number of months. We've been very close to each other. We've shared some unforgettable moments. Would I lie to you?
No, I don't think you would, Gary. Not in a pinch.
Define pinch.
He's being picayune again, Esther said. "If he can't see what's staring him in the face, he needs more than time. I think he's being real dippy about this."
So do I, Vera said.
He's being ridiculous beyond belief.
For once I have to agree with you. It's nice to think alike for a change. In fact the situation makes me ecstatic.
Oh you bitch. You damn rotten bitch.
Ecstatico.
And you're the one who's into the gospels. Who's into charity and love thy neighbor. Who comes around yapping to me about the power of miracles.
Without belief in miracles, we are like reeds shaken with the wind, Vera said.
She's into miracles real heavy.
I'm a miracle freak, Gary.
I walked back to Staley Hall. It was a blank afternoon, windless and pale, not too cold, the sun hidden, a faint haze obscuring the reduplicated landscape beyond the campus. I went to my room. Bloomberg was in bed, neatly blanketed, reading one of my ROTC manuals.
They use simple declarative sentences, he said.
I put my coat away and looked out the window for a while. Then I stared at my right thumb. It seemed important to create every second with infinite care, as at the beginning or nearing the end of momentous ordeals. I spent ten minutes learning a new word. Finally, in my gray corduroy trousers and gray shirt, I went down the hall to Taft Robinson's room.
I paused in his doorway, realizing suddenly that I spent a good deal of time in doorways, that I had always spent a lot of time in doorways, that much of my life had been passed this way. I was forever finding myself pausing in a doorway or standing before a window, looking into rooms and out of them, waiting to be tapped on the shoulder by an impeccably dressed gentleman whose flesh has grown over his mouth.
Taft sat crosslegged on the bed, his back to the wall, a sagging newspaper spread from knee to knee. I took a chair by the door. The room seemed slightly more bare than it had the last time I'd visited. Perhaps there was one less chair now or something gone from the floor, a wastebasket or magazine rack.
Taft wore his dark glasses. We were silent for a time. He looked at the newspaper. I didn't experience any particular sense of tension in the room. Sooner or later one of us would say or do something. Then either or both of us would be in a position to decide exactly what had been said or done. I thought of going to stand by the window so that I might assess more clearly and from a somewhat greater altitude the relevant words or action. Then I realized that the very act of going to stand by the window would be the action itself, the selfsame action subject to interpretation. Taft continued to look at the newspaper. I was getting annoyed at the direction of my thoughts. My eyes attempted to focus upon the room's precise geometric center—that fixed point equidistant from the four corners and midway between ceiling and floor. Then Taft's left shoulder twitched a bit, an involuntary shudder, a minor quake in some gleaming arctic nerve. That faint break in basic structure was enough to alter every level of mood. It was all I could do to keep my lips from inching into a slight smile.
A hundred thousand welcomes, he said.
Thought I'd drop by.
Come right in. Find a chair and make yourself right at home. I see you've already got a chair. If I'm not mistaken, you're already in the room and you're already seated.
That's correct. I'm here and seated. What you see, in fact, is exactly what you think you see.
We might as well begin then.
Begin what? I said.
The dialogue. The exchange of words. The phrases and sentences.
I don't really have anything to say, Taft. I just came by to visit. I like it here. It's a nice room. It appeals to me. I really like it. We don't have to talk unless you want to.
I wouldn't mind talking. But what's there to talk about?
I was thinking the same thing when I came down the hall. That's why I say we don't have to talk unless you want to. Or unless I want to. One of us at any rate.
I'm not very talkative, Gary. I go whole days without saying a word. Although there are times when I get the urge to babble. No subject in particular. Just babble on. Any kind of talk just to talk. But I don't think this is one of my babbling times. So we may have to work at it. I mean what'll we talk about? If we can get together on what to talk about, I'd be willing to talk.
So would I, I said.
Should we think separately about possible subjects for conversation and then report back to each other? Or what? I'm open to suggestion.
There's always the common ground. There's football. I'm sure there's something in the whole vast spectrum of football that we can discuss for a few minutes to our mutual profit. For instance, I might point out that time is flying right along. In three months, you know what— thwack, thwack, thwack. We'll have the pads on. We'll be hitting. Three months plus a few days.
Spring practice, he said.
Boosh, boosh, boosh. Thwack, thwack.
There's not too much for me to say on the subject of spring practice, Gary.
Why not?
I won't be there. I'm all through with football. I don't want to play football anymore.
That's impossible. You can't be serious. What do you want to do if you don't want to play football?
I want to concentrate on my studies.
Studies? Concentrate on what studies?
There are books in this room, he said. "I go to class every day. I think about things. I study. I read and formulate. There's plenty to concentrate on. I'm instructing myself in certain disciplines."
Taft, you can always fit it in. I mean it's football we're talking about. Nobody reads and studies all day long. You can easily make time for football. I mean it's not swimming or track or some kind of extracurricular thing we're talking about here. It's football. It's football, Taft.
Great big game, he said. "I'm after small things. Tiny little things. Less of white father watching me run. Prefer to sit still."
He did a curious thing then: untied his shoelaces. I took a moment to scan the walls for taperemnants. Poster of Wittgenstein, I thought. Maybe that's what he'd had up there, or almost had. Dollar ninetyeight poster of philosopher surrounded by Vienna Circle. Two parts to that man's work. What is written. What is not written. The man himself seemed to favor second part. Perhaps Taft was a student of that part.
You have to admit that football represents a tremendous opportunity, I said. "There's money at the end of all this. And what money can't buy."
You mean the crowd.
The everything, I said. "The sense of living an inner life right up against the external or tangible life. Of living close to your own skin. You know what I mean. Everything. The pattern. The morality."
Maybe I crave the languid smoky dream, he said, slowly and softly, with barely evident selfdirected humor, dressing the words in black satin. "That's living close to yourself too. You talk about bringing the inside close to the outside. I'm talking about taking the whole big outside and dragging it in behind me. What's the word they use in northern parts of Africa for that stuff they smoke? Not that I'm planning any kind of holy weed mysticism. I'm too hard edged for that. But there are rewards in contemplation. A new way of life requires a new language."
All right then, damn it. Money aside. Metaphysics aside. It becomes a question of pursuing whatever it is you do best. It's a damn shame to waste talent like yours. It almost goes against some tenuous kind of equilibrium or master plan. Some very carefully balanced natural mechanism. I'm serious about that.
If I don't play football, the bobcat will become extinct in Wyoming. "You're an athlete, Taft."
So are you, Gary. But I'm not going to talk you out of quitting if you want to quit.
As an athlete I have serious lapses. I don't play football as much as drift in and out of cloud banks of action and noise. I'm not a onehundredpercentintheAmericangrain football player. I tend to draw back now and again in order to make minor discoveries that have no bearing on anything. I conduct spurious examinations. I bullshit myself.
Gary, you're a credit to your race. He looked down at the newspaper. I took this as an indication that we had reached the end of the introductory phase. I went to the window and stretched. A twopart yawn elongated the faint reflection of my face. There was little movement to be seen on the campus. It wasn't quite dark yet. A man (perhaps a woman) stared at me from a window of the nearest building. It disturbed me that I couldn't be sure of the person's sex. It's always interesting to stand by a window and exchange looks with an unknown woman in another building. But in this case I couldn't be sure whether I was looking at a man or woman. Therefore it seemed dangerous to get interested. It was definitely much too delicate a matter to involve myself with at the present time. I went back to the chair and sat down. Hunched forward I studied my shoes. I thought of going down to the equipment room to check out the rumor about new uniforms. According to the rumor, the coaching staff had decided on a few slight design changes for next season's uniform. At this very moment people were probably crowding into Billy Mast's room or Randy King's room to talk about the rumor, to embellish it, to swim and play in it. I could go down to the equipment room, check things out, then rush up to Billy Mast's room with whatever information or misinformation I had managed to gather. Then we could all discuss it for an hour or so. I wondered whether the designation capt or cocapt would be included on my uniform below the right shoulder or above the number 44 on my back. I hoped the rumor turned out to be true. At the very least I hoped we'd get new headgear. I didn't like the old helmets much. I'd be satisfied with new headgear and with the designation cocapt above my number.
Here's the way I have it figured, I said. "I have it figured that you came here because of Creed, because he convinced you that he could make a complete football player out of you. Or more than that. It was more, wasn't it? There was something in Creed that appealed to you. Not appealed to you—hit you, struck you as being important. He conveyed some kind of message that caught you just right, the same message I got, the sense of some awful kind of honesty that might flow back and forth between you. There's something chilling about Creed. He seems always to be close to a horrible discovery about himself. He's one of those men who never stops suffering, am I right, and he takes you in on it. If you're in his presence at all, you're almost sure to perceive that he's in some kind of pain. He allows you to get fairly close to it, not all the way but fairly close. And this is what makes you trust him or at least relate to him if you're even slightly sensitive to the man's reality, to that awful honesty he conveys. Am I right or not?"
I'd have to put that whole subject in historical perspective, Taft said.
I'm anxious. I'm eager to hear it.
When it became known that I was leaving Columbia, a whole bunch of people started coming around. An aggregation. Just a whole bunch of them. Prospectors. Canny little men. Appraisers. All with wrinkles around their eyes and friendly enough smiles that you could see them put the brakes to. They came from all over. They came from the swamps, from the mountains, from the plains, from the lakes. In ten days I heard every variation on every regional accent you can imagine. And it was football all the way. It was facilities, plant, tradition, pride, status. It was which conference is best. It was intersectional rivalry and postseason games. Those people could talk football for six hours straight, ten hours, one whole complete weekend. All but Creed. Those people were all the same, compilers of digits, body counters. Friendly enough. But all in that area.
Then Big Bend walked in.
Creed was too much. He was part Satan, part Saint Francis or somebody. He offered nothing but work and pain. He'd whisper in my ear. He'd literally whisper things in my ear. He'd tell me he knew all the secrets but one—what it was like to be black. We'd teach each other. We'd work and struggle. At times he made it sound like some kind of epic battle, him against me, some kind of gigantomachy, two gods at war. Other times he'd sweettalk me—but not with prospects of glory. No, he'd tell me about the work, the pain, the sacrifice. What it might make of me. How I needed it. How I secretly wanted it. He was going to work me into the ground. He was going to teach me how to get past my own limits. Mind and body. He stressed that more than once. Mind and body. And it would be all work, pain, fury, sweat. No time for nonessential things. We would deny ourselves. We would get right down to the bottom of it. We would find out how much we could take. We would learn the secrets.
He sold you on pain and sacrifice, I said. "You have to give the man credit for a novel approach. He knew his quarry. He knew how to get you, Taft. No brothers down here. No sisters. No sporting press to record your magic. No cameras. He got you on pain. He knew just what he was doing. I give the man credit. He got you on selfdenial, on being alone, on geography."
Don't make it sound so unnatural, Gary. This place isn't as bad as all that. There are counterbalances of one kind or another.
I know, I said. "I'm very aware of that. But tell me how it ended. Did you and Creed teach each other? Did you get down to the bottom of it? Does he know you're through with football?"
I continue to instruct myself in certain disciplines. So in that sense I'm still working my way down to the bottom of it. Creed knows I'm not playing football anymore. He's known for quite a while. He said he was expecting it. I told him I knew he was. We were in that room of his. He's so inside himself, that man. I don't think he sees any need for mobility. I mean whatever it is, it'll come to him. I think that's the way he sees it. It'll come or it won't. I doubt he cares very much. But I'm feeling better about things now that I'm through with football. It was time to cut it loose. I feel better every day.
What did you teach each other?
That kind of question gets us into areas where it's hard to avoid sounding ridiculous. In short we taught each other nothing. That summarizes it pretty neatly, I think. And now it's almost time to face Mecca.
You're staying here, I assume. Football or no football. There are so many arguments against this place that I assume you're staying.
I've got this room fixed up just the way I want it.
Of course. This room. Absolutely.
I'm not being evasive, Gary. Or keeping traditional distances. I want you to take me literally. Everything I've said is to be taken literally. I've got this room fixed up just the way I want it. It's a wellproportioned room. It has just the right number of objects. Everything is exactly where it should be. It took me a long time to get it this way. Before I came here, I told Creed there was one condition. I room alone. I had to have that, I told him. I guess everybody thought they kept me separated in the name of racial sensitivity. But that wasn't it at all. It was my idea from the beginning. It was the only demand I ever made of Creed. I room alone.
Two clocks, I said.
Only a seeming excess. They correct each other. Between them, a balance is arrived at, a notion of how much space has to be reconstructed. Space meaning difference between disagreeing hands.
Three gray pencils in an exmarmalade jar on a small, probably oak desk.
A certain play of shapes. The words on the old marmalade jar. The fact that pencils diminish with use. Affinity of materials.
A radio.
The place where words are recycled. The place where villages are burned. That's my Indochina. I listen only at certain tunes of day for certain periods of time. When time's up, I bring it into silence. It's almost a ceremony.
Small mark on wall left by tape.
I believe in static forms of beauty, he said. "I like to measure off things and then let them remain. I try to create degrees of silence. Things in this room are simple and static. They're measured off carefully. When I change something slightly, everything changes. The change becomes immense. My life in here almost resembles a certain kind of dream. You know the way objects in dreams sometimes acquire massive significance. They resound somehow. It's easy to fear objects in dreams. It gets like that in here at times. I seem to grow smaller at times and the room appears almost to lengthen. The spaces between objects become a little bit frightening. I like the colors in here, the way they never move, never change. The room tone changes though. There's a hum at times. There's a low roar. There's a kind of dumb brute chant. I think the room tone changes at different times of day. Sometimes it's oceanic and there's other times when it's just barely there, a sort of small pulse in an attic. The radio is important in this regard. The kind of silence that follows the playing of the radio is never the same as the silence that precedes it. I use the radio in different ways. It becomes almost a spiritual exercise. Silence, words, silence, silence, silence."
My roommate wets the bed, I said. "It's a little hard for me to evolve any kind of genuine stasis under the circumstances. Somehow pee is inimical to stasis. Although I wouldn't want to have to prove it phenomenologically, if that's the word I want."
I can see your difficulty.
What about books, Taft? How do they enter into the scheme? I have a problem in that regard. I like to read about mass destruction and suffering. I spend a lot of time reading stuff that concerns thermonuclear war and things that pertain to it. Horrible diseases, fires raging in the inner cities, crop failures, genetic chaos, temperatures soaring and dropping, panic, looting, suicides, scorched bodies, arms torn off, millions dead. That kind of thing.
I like to read about the ovens, Taft said.
What do you mean, the ovens? Are you serious?
Atrocities. I like to read about atrocities. I can't help it. I like to read about the ovens, the showers, the experiments, the teeth, the lampshades, the soap. I've read maybe thirty or forty books on the subject. But I Like kids best. Putting the torch to kids and their mamas. Smashing kids in the teeth with your rifle butt. Laying waste to villages full of kids. Firing into ditches full of kids, infants, babies, so forth. That's my particular interest. Atrocities in general with special emphasis on kids.
I can't bear reading about kids.
I can't either, Gary.
The thought of children being tortured and killed.
It's the worst thing there is. I can't bear it. But I've read maybe eight books on it so far. Thirty or forty on the ovens and eight on the kids. It's horrible. I don't know why I keep reading that stuff.
There must be something we can do, I said.
It's getting to be time to turn toward Mecca. The black stone of Abraham sits in that shrine in old Mecca, the name of which I'll have to look up again because I keep forgetting it. Not that it matters. A name's a name. A place could just as easily be another place. Abraham was black. Did you know that? Mary the mother of Jesus was black. Rembrandt and Bach had some Masai blood. It's all in the history books if you look carefully enough. Tolstoy was threeeighths black. Euclid was sixfifths black. Not that it means anything. Not that any of it matters in the least. Lord, I think I'm beginning to babble.
He took off the dark glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in true weariness. His eyes were shut. He began to laugh quietly into the newspaper between his knees, preparing in his own way for whatever religious act was scheduled to follow.
I went downstairs to see what I could find out about the rumor concerning new uniforms. There was nobody around and no sign of uniforms, new or old. I decided to walk over to Zapalac's office, which was located in a cinder-block structure only a hundred yards away. I didn't bother getting a coat. It wasn't very cold and I took my time walking over there. The building was full of small dark rooms, all unoccupied. The walls of Zapalac's office were covered with posters, printed slogans, various symbols of this or that movement. His scarf was there but he wasn't.
In my room at five o'clock the next morning I drank half a cup of lukewarm water. It was the last of food or drink I would take for many days. High fevers burned a thin straight channel through my brain. In the end they had to carry me to the infirmary and feed me through plastic tubes.