The Woman Who Borrowed Memories: Selected Stories Page 9

  “Of course they have. They called a few people, but no one knew anything. What do you want with him?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I want to talk to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Fried said, “but we’ve got better things to do. He left us in the lurch, and now we’ve fixed it. You need to stop brooding about Allington.”

  That same evening the boy appeared, a kid six or seven years old. Stein had put his work away and was ready to leave.

  “It was hard to find you,” the child said. “I’ve brought you a present.”

  It was a large flat package, wrapped with lots of pieces of string. When Stein had untied them all, he found inside a new package tightly circled with tape. The boy stood quietly as he cut and tore it, until he reached yet another package, which was bound together with plastic bands.

  “This is getting more and more exciting,” Stein said. “It’s like a treasure hunt!” The boy was solemn and silent. The packages grew smaller and smaller, but each wrapping was as hard to open as the one before. Sam Stein began to be uneasy. He wasn’t used to children and it bothered him pretending to be Allington. Finally he came to the end and opened a Blubby drawn on silver paper and wearing an astronaut’s spacesuit. He blurted out admiring comments that were much too exaggerated. The child didn’t move a muscle.

  “But what’s your name?” Stein said and knew at once that it was the wrong question, utterly and completely wrong.

  The boy said nothing. Then, in a hostile tone, “Where have you been?”

  “I was on a trip,” Stein said quickly. “A long trip to a foreign country.”

  It sounded idiotic. The boy looked at him very quickly and looked away again.

  “Do you draw a lot?” Stein asked.

  “No.”

  It was awful, totally hopeless. His eyes wandered across the cluttered room looking for help, something to say to this child who admired Allington. He picked up the Wild West from his desk and said, “This one isn’t done yet. I don’t really know how to go on. Come and have a look.”

  The boy came closer.

  “You see, Blubby’s in the Wild West,” he said, feeling suddenly relieved. “The bad guys are trying to take his spring, which is his only source of water. They’ve hired a lawyer, and the lawyer has come up with a wicked plan. He’s going to say that the spring doesn’t belong to Blubby at all. It’s owned by the state.”

  “Shoot him,” the boy said calmly.

  “Yes, maybe you’re right. On the street or in a bar?”

  “No. That’s too ordinary. Have them ride after each other and the lawyer shoots first.”

  “Good,” Stein said. “It’s important that he shoots first, so he’s had his chance. So it’s okay if he dies.”

  The boy looked at him and eventually said, “Your new place is too far away for me. When are you coming to mine? I made an altar for you, with pictures.”

  “How nice,” Stein said. “Maybe I will soon. I’ve got so much work to do right now. Have you ever drawn with India ink?”

  “No.”

  “Give it a try. Write your address and my address. Side by side.”

  “But you already know them.”

  “Yes, but write them anyway. Names and all.”

  The boy wrote, slowly and neatly.

  When he’d gone, Samuel Stein returned all of John Allington’s things to the back room. They were the possessions of a dead man. But he had the address now of the Allington who was alive.

  Allington was living in a hotel in a suburb. He was middle-aged, a perfectly ordinary man, one of the invisible people on a bus. Dressed in something grayish brown. Stein introduced himself and explained that he was his replacement for the comic strip.

  “Come in,” Allington said. “We can have a drink.” The room was clean and seemed very empty.

  “How’s it going?” Allington asked.

  “Quite well. I’m on my fourth outline.”

  “And how’s Fried?”

  “There’s his bad back, of course, but otherwise he’s fine.”

  “Funny,” Allington said. “All of that was so important. How long is your contract?”

  “Seven years.”

  “Sounds right. They don’t want to drag it out longer when the strip’s been running for such a long time. Sooner or later, people are going to want something new.” Allington went out to the kitchen to get their drinks. When he came back, he asked how Stein had found his address.

  “There was a boy, Bill Harvey. He came in with a drawing for you. For that matter, here it is.”

  Allington looked at Blubby the astronaut. “I know,” he said. “He was one of the hardest to answer. Never stopped writing. Did he believe you were me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I pulled it off.”

  “Do you get your mail directly or does it go to Johnson?”

  “To Johnson.”

  “That’s better.”

  “One thing,” Stein said. “It doesn’t feel good pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m not used to it.”

  “I understand,” Allington said. “But you get into the swing of it and it gets to be just another part of the game. You spit out letters faster and faster and they take them at face value. You anticipate their reactions and accept their inexhaustible silliness. The same ideas over and over again. With stupid variations.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Stein carefully, “it’s a question of responsibility, isn’t it? I mean, all these people open their newspapers and read the comics. They read them and they’re influenced. Maybe they’re not aware of it, but they can’t help themselves. You could sneak in a whole lot of stuff that was . . .” He paused. “Positive, somehow. Teach them something. Or comfort them. Or scare them—make them think. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I know,” Allington said. “I did that sort of thing for four or five years.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “We never found your last outline,” Stein said. “Did it get lost?”

  “Probably.”

  “But I found one about the Wild West. I was thinking of using it. Shame to waste it.”

  “The usual story?”

  “More or less. Only sixty strips. Maybe a few more.”

  “Well, well,” Allington said. “I think it was something they turned down. You can only use the Wild West maybe once a year. But put it in with the rest; it won’t matter. Where do you work?”

  “In your room.”

  “Is it still just as cold?”

  “I’ve put in an electric heater.” Stein was quiet for a moment and then asked what he should do with all the stuff in the closet and the desk drawers.

  “Have someone carry it out in the yard.”

  “But I can’t do that,” Stein said. “After all, it’s a life. You can’t just dump it in the yard.”

  Allington started to laugh, and his face was suddenly very appealing. “Stein,” he said, “not a life. A little piece of a life. See, I’m not done yet. What is it that bothers you? That I quit and just walked away from all of it? You’ve only got seven years. You’ll get through it somehow. You’re not going to hang yourself.” He filled their glasses and said, “There was one who did. A villa on the Riviera and a yacht and all the rest of it, and then he goes and hangs himself. Maybe it’s not that unusual, but he wrote a letter to other cartoonists and warned them against long contracts. They’ve got the letter at the paper in their secret museum. Do you want ice?”

  “No thanks,” Stein said. “I take it straight. What shall I do with this kid? Bill.”

  “Nothing. He’ll grow up and start to admire something else. Believe me, it doesn’t pay to go soft in this game.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Stein said. “I’ve looked in your drawers.”

  “And what did you think?”

  Stein hesitated. Then he said, “That you got very tired.”

  Allington stood up and walked to the window. It was getting dark. He made a movement as if
to draw the curtains but then let them be. He stood looking down at the street.

  “I think I should be going,” Stein said. “Thought I’d go back and work for a while.”

  “It was their eyes,” said Allington without turning around. “Their cartoon eyes. The same stupid round eyes all the time. Amazement, terror, delight, and so on—all you have to do is move the pupil and an eyebrow here and there and people think you’re brilliant. Just imagine achieving so much with so little. And in fact, they always look exactly the same. But they have to do new things all the time. All the time. You know that. You’ve learned that, right?” His voice was quiet, but it sounded as if he were speaking through clenched teeth. He went on without waiting for a reply. “Novelty! Always something new. You start searching for ideas. Among the people you know, among your friends. Your own head is a blank, so you start using everything they’ve got, squeezing it dry, and no matter what people tell you, all you can think is, Can I use it?“ Allington swung around and stared at Stein, suddenly silent, the ice cubes tinkling violently in his glass. His hand had started shaking. Slowly he said, “Do you understand? Do you see that you can’t afford it, that you don’t have time to be in a hurry?”

  Sam Stein had risen from his chair.

  “Every day,” Allington went on, “every week and month and year and new year and it never ends—the same creatures with the same pupils creeping around you and over you and never stopping . . .” Allington’s face was changed, swollen, and a muscle was twitching by his mouth.

  Stein looked away.

  “Forgive me,” said John Allington. “I didn’t mean to . . . Mostly things are fine. In fact they’re getting better and better. I’ve been doing well recently. They tell me I’m much improved. Sit down. Let’s sit for a while. Do you like evening?”

  “No,” Stein said. “No. I don’t like it.”

  “Do you ever see Johnson?”

  “Yes, in the bar sometimes. I like him.”

  “Collects stamps. But only with boats on them. I heard about a man who collected stamps with musical instruments. Funny about collectors. I’m interested in mosses. You know, moss. But then I’d have to live in the country.”

  “They grow very slowly,” Stein said. “And then, as you say, you have to live in the country. And they say the birds destroy them if they have a bad year.”

  He stopped talking. He wanted to go. The visit had depressed him.

  Allington sat and played with a pencil, letting it roll across the table a little way in one direction and then back again.

  He drew so beautifully, Stein thought. No one had prettier lines. So light and pure. It always looked like he was having fun drawing them.

  Suddenly Allington asked, “How do you find the time?”

  “Find the time? Well, it goes along all right. You develop a rhythm.”

  “I just thought,” Allington said, “I just happened to think that, if you get stuck, I might be able to do a couple of strips. Sometime. If you’d like . . .”

  Translated by Thomas Teal

  WHITE LADY

  THEY WERE probably about sixty years old and had clearly dressed for the evening. All three were exhilarated; the man driving the boat guessed they’d had a drink or two before leaving home. As he took them across, they talked a great deal and called him captain, and when they reached the dock they made a great to-do about going ashore and pretended to be afraid of falling in the water.

  The restaurant lay on an islet in the middle of the harbor, an odd wooden pavilion with spire-topped towers and tall, extravagantly decorated windows. Now at dusk, the pale gray building was very pretty in a melancholy way. Ellinor said that it lay like a forgotten dream among its dark trees. Or maybe like a wedding cake on a plate that was too small. Ellinor loved similes.

  “Yes, you’re right!” May exclaimed. “That’s just exactly what it looks like. A decorated cake. A gateau. Isn’t that what we used to call them?”

  “Good heavens, how pretty this is,” Regina said. “Just look at the boats.” They had walked onto the lawn, May, Ellinor, and Regina, and were standing in a row on the wet grass. The harbor lights were soft and blurred in the evening fog, and against this backdrop of quivering lights, boats were gliding past, all of them on their way out to sea. Black coasting smacks and ketches, their sails like swans’ wings, as Ellinor put it. And behind them came the overnight boat to Stockholm, tall, radiantly white, adorned with glowing strings of pearls. Slowly, slowly the great luxury liner glided out from the harbor with all the other boats around it, and every one of them had to swing wide to get past the islet where the three ladies stood. “Now let’s go in,” Regina said. “It’s getting chilly.”

  The restaurant was empty; the season was almost over. They asked each other if they’d been here before, but only May remembered one time with her father, who’d been a member of the yacht club and had had his own boat berthed in the marina. The stairs were broad and the ceiling unbelievably high, almost like a church. Highest up, under the tower, was an intricate network of timbers. It was a warm evening, and the windows stood open along the entire length of the veranda. Fog drifted in across the empty tables.

  “It’s like some film I saw,” Regina said. “A big castle with empty rooms and people who didn’t know what they wanted.”

  “Marienbad,” Ellinor said. “That was an awfully good movie. But why are you whispering?” They took seats at the far end of the veranda. The waiter came, and while they were ordering they found their way back to their initial exhilaration. They were going to eat and drink well, and for this one evening they had left everything behind and were going to enjoy themselves in a new, unusual place, an island from the turn of the century, a building that was almost old when they were children.

  “That’s what’s so exciting,” Regina said. “Having it all ahead of us. I’ll have a White Lady. I’m wearing a white dress, so I want a White Lady.”

  “Is that strong?” May asked. “I’ll have the same.”

  Regina called back the waiter to say she’d changed her mind—she wanted the pepper steak instead. And the wine should be at room temperature.

  “Did you notice?” May said. “Did you notice how young the waiter was? In a place like this, they ought to be old. But he’s young and quick and hears everything you say.”

  “I’m hungry,” Ellinor said. “I’m always hungry. And I never have the nerve to order what I really want. I’m getting fat! And right now, after a real ocean voyage, I’m really especially hungry!” They all laughed, and then she said, suddenly sentimental, “The man driving the boat . . . Just think! He’d been a captain on the seven seas. And then they let him go. He told me. Isn’t that awful?”

  May said, “You could use that in a book.” She fished out her compact and quickly powdered her troubled little face, puffed up her hair, and put the purse on the floor beside her chair. “You’re not a bit fat. You’re sturdy.”

  “Junoesque,” Regina said. “You know one time in Venice I drank a White Lady, or rather actually it was outside Venice in that casino, whatever it’s called. That was my first White Lady. Cheers, girls! Anyway, there I was and I was so young they wouldn’t let me in without an escort. Well, along came this bank director from Fiume—”

  “What?”

  “Fiume. A bank director from Fiume. And I was young and sweet, so he invited me in and told me to bet as much as I wanted on roulette, because beginners always have such good luck, he said. It was foggy outside, just like this.”

  “Here comes the food!” May cried. “Girls, girls, this is going to be a real feast!”

  The waiter smiled and asked which of them was to taste the wine.

  “I’m the eldest,” Ellinor said. “I’m several weeks older than any of you! I’m the Grand Old Lady.” She sipped the wine and smiled at him and said, “Perfect. The temperature is just right. What shall we drink to?”

  “To you!” Regina cried. “To your young people’s books.”

  �
��How nice of you,” Ellinor said. “Cheers. Though I don’t know that anyone reads them anymore. Have you noticed how the air smells of night?”

  Regina said, “You have such beautiful thoughts. But it smells of the city. The sewers. It did in Venice, too, and it was just beautiful, beautiful . . .”

  May said they ought to change places. It was Ellinor who should sit opposite the window. The boats and all. “It could give you new ideas,” May said. But Ellinor thought it was unnecessary. After a while they started talking about their friend the Count. It was some time since he’d called. “When was the last time he called you?”

  “I don’t know. Last spring. He’s always so busy.”

  “Time,” said Regina. “Speaking of time, that bank director from Fiume told me that the only thing he no longer had was time. He had everything else, money and everything, but he no longer had time. I didn’t want to bet on roulette. I thought it was awful, so we went into the bar instead. ‘Dear child,’ he said. ‘Pretty little child. Order whatever you’d like. Green, white, red, yellow.’ That’s exactly what he said. ‘I have everything, but I also have a bad stomach.’ ”

  “I know,” said Ellinor.

  “Do you also have a bad stomach?”

  “No, but you’ve told that story before.”

  “Not to me,” May said. “What did you order?”

  “White. A White Lady. I thought it sounded so pretty. There was a little rim of ice on the glass. Look, there still is.”

  “About the Count,” Ellinor said. “Has he called any of you?”

  “Never,” Regina said. “He’s forgotten us. He’s way too famous. We danced once. No, twice. Why don’t they have any music here?”

  Ellinor said, “They’ve been playing music the whole time—you just haven’t heard it. Slow stuff on tape for the old folks. Ti-di-di-da, ti-di-di-da. Like in Marienbad.”

  “And foghorns,” May said.

  They listened. “Okay,” Regina said, “it’s foghorns. They’re howling. How are they howling, Ellinor?”