Hunger and Thirst (24 page)

He drove his right palm into the mattress and pushed.

His teeth clamped together. He squealed and wheezed like a unoiled door opening,
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee …”

His stomach and chest tightened, began to ache almost immediately. Breaths snorted through his mucous-caked nostrils. He pushed, harder, still harder. His right shoulder raised up from the bed, his head lifted.

Jagged pain!

He felt as though he were splitting down the middle, as if all the seams in him were giving. His right leg trembled on the edge of the bed and his right foot raised up and thumped once on the rug.
Mountain coat and piles of money!

The dried up wastes slid from his crotch. He felt it caking off his thighs and buttocks. Every muscle in him throbbed and burned.

No use that way
. Suddenly he threw back his arm. The knuckles crashed against the hard metal head of the bed.

Ignoring the pain he wrapped his fingers around one of the cool bars and pulled with all his might.

His eyes bulged, his nostrils flared wide, his lips distended, his mouth became a tooth-exposing slash. The flesh of his cheeks and chin and neck pulsated as he tried to fight against the drag of his immobile body. Veins stood out like blue worms at his temples and on his hard arm.

His body shifted.
It moved!
His brain exploded with excitement at the first sensation of motion in almost two days. He tried to help it along by jerking his head back, pulling with his neck and shoulder muscles. He tried to ignore the streaks of pain that dug like berserk lightning through his flesh and bones.

Some of his defecation broke open like a crusted scab and filled the air with its overpowering, sickening reek. He closed his eyes and whimpered as he kept pulling. Even though his neck muscles felt as though they would snap and his head would roll onto the floor. Even though every muscle felt as though it were ready to sever and his palm was being bruised and crushed against the solid metal bar.

Get up!

His mind kept screaming it over and over as though it were an insane, wild-eyed old man standing an inch from him and howling the words in his face.
Get up, get up!
He jerked and pulled and ached and tried to scream but couldn’t. And felt strength slipping away, felt himself fast approaching the point where he would be so taut that there would be no resistance left at all and …

His fingers snapped from their grasp.

His hand bounced off his stomach and lay pulsing on his right leg.

The muscles of his right arm and shoulder burned. He felt as though he were about to explode.

He lay there gasping like a caught fish, his mouth wide open, his eyes still spread and staring.

He had moved half an inch.

There were lines on the ceiling and there were faces in the lines.

He lay there throbbing with chills and watched the faces.

That patch of dirty plaster. One side of it was the face of a belligerent bear. There was the black, wet nose. There was the mouth set into an irritated bow. There were the floppy ears. The bear was disgruntled. It was the father bear of a Merrie Melodies cartoon, perpetually scowling, interminably victimized by his idiot son.

The other side of the patch was the face of a hook-nosed general with small black mustaches. The nose of the general was the ear of the bear. The general was talking to a fellow military man and he was saying—I tell you sir, give these dirty heathen a taste of the blade and by gad you’ll see them come to terms soon enough. I know their wily minds, by gad. Force! It’s all they respect, sir!

And that water stain there.

It was a white haired old lady or she had a white scarf over her head. Her nose and her chin came to a point. Maybe she was a witch, cackling incantations to her cat. Maybe she was naked, rubbing magic salves into her ancient, dry pores, making ready for her marriage to the devil.

Or, upside down, the stain was the face of a gaunt, turbaned dowager. A dowdy dowager dripping diamonds. Look at that heavy, overhanging brow. It showed adamantine will, callousness, cruel selfishness. Old bitch I hope you die of bleeding piles.

Then he remembered a book he was going to write once. A book in which he was going to prove beyond sensible dispute that the only reason Alexander wanted to conquer the world was that he had aggravated hemorrhoids and couldn’t sit down. Add on book to the growing stockpile of projected opuses.

1.
Dead before Death
by Erick Linstrom

2.
The Cannibal Mind
by Erick Linstrom

3.
Bloody Alexander
by Erick Linstrom

And that huge plastered patch over there above the typewriter. That sickly green patch. That was Chef Boyardee rustling up a batch of spaghetti. Or the chef’s hat was Long Island and that white spot was Northport where he went once with his mother and Grace and swam in the sound and almost drowned. And that other patch was that island off Long Island. What was it again? Oh yes, Gardiner’s Island. Where people went to hunt for Morgan’s lost treasures. Not lost. Passed from Henry to J.P., pirate to pirate, and back to all in the form of securities and savageries.

And that dirty line of exposed wall board. That was a grim line of battleships out in the Atlantic Ocean on maneuvers. And that patch down there was Merrie Englande and the table was Europe and his typewriter was France and the shift key was Paris.
The Shift Key is Paris
. Good title for a book he’d never write.

And what did that make the fat steam pipe?

That was the path of Christian virtue that ran straight and true from Tammany Hall to the governor’s chambers in Albany. Hurrah for the legislators and the judiciary and the mustachioed administration.

And the transom panes were the Great Lakes and the door was the United States and he was Mars looking down through bloodshot canals and laughing at the whole roaring, stinking mess of it.

He looked down at the money on the floor.

You see now how little it’s worth? he asked himself.

There it is. Maybe two or three hundred dollars. And what good is it? It may as well be pussycats of dust, as Mom used to call them. For the money was worthless. He couldn’t buy anything with it. There it lay in a supine, monetary coma. Proud mute currency. How many battles have you started? He shook his head. It struck him suddenly and with strange power how utterly fantastic it was for those scraps of green printed paper to cause life to be bought and sold like any old commodity.

He stopped thinking of it.

It doesn’t matter, he thought. I’m going to get away from it. I’ll get me an island in the Pacific and swim in a lagoon and eat fish and fruit and screw dusky maidens until I’m bowlegged.

He stopped.

Somewhere in the world, he thought, there was actually a place as he imagined; with white sands and limpid blue lagoons like mirrors and green forests bursting with life and warm sun all day and diamond tiaras of stars and a great glowing pearl of a moon at night, all glittering on velvet cushioning.

And he could have that. It was
possible
. That place
was
and he
was
and it was only physical motion on his part that was needed to bring the two of them together. It had been that way all the time. He could have left the city long ago and gone there somehow. Worked his way there. Somehow he could have been there now instead of here. Why was he here? Was there any sense in being here with a bullet in his back when he could be there, healthy and tanned and happy?

No answer but one.

He hadn’t gone there.

And, now, he
couldn’t
go there.

It had come out. He hadn’t meant for it to come out but it did. And since it had, he lay there, eyes closed and had to think about it.

He knew it was true he was paralyzed. But, still, he prayed hopefully, forcefully, regaining for a moment the true confidence in God that his mother taught him to acquire.
Our father which art in heaven
. We say,
which
, darling because God is not a person. Yes, mother.
Hallowed be thy name
…

And at the end of the prayer he asked God quite simply to let him walk again.

He told God—I have to get up God. Don’t you see? I’m sorry. Of course you see it. I simply must get up though. I must wash my face and put on my coat. I can’t stay in the city. Leo is …

He stopped the thinking and looked up at the ceiling with dry, hollow eyes. He couldn’t believe any more. Years of cynicism had scraped him clean of simple faith.

Stop that unutterable whining, sneered his mind, unaided by will, you know that you’ll never walk again. You know you’ll never see your precious Pacific Island. You’ll never even see Third Avenue again.

For a second, the last resources of fight welled up into him. He half raised his arm to try and struggle up. He pressed the palm down and made the first motion toward a new battle with his sagging helpless body.

But then he let his hand slide back slowly, defeatedly. He rolled his head to the left on the pillow and looked in utter despair and defeat at the oil-stained wall.

His voice was soft and dry and rasping.

“I’m going to die,” he said.

And he believed it.

When he woke up he was very hungry and very thirsty.

He reached out and took the glass from the table. He held it upside down over his mouth. But it was empty, dry. He stared into its bleak, unpromising interior.

A thought.

It almost made him cry aloud with excitement.

What if he hurled the glass against the old lady’s door? Mightn’t she come in and—no she couldn’t get in. But mightn’t she call the superintendent?

Of course!

He’d never thought of it. Incredible but he’d never thought of contacting the old lady. The drunk yes and decided against it. But never the old lady.

All he’d been thinking of was the money and jail. Well, it was past that now. Strange how the drawing back was gone. As if it were a binding rope which time and necessity had loosened completely.

All right, so he went to jail. It was highly possible. So what? Was that worse than death? Not likely. In jail at least he’d be cured, they’d fix his back and he could walk again, even if the walking were only from cell to mess to work and back again.

At least it was walking, wasn’t it?

By God!
He slapped his palm against his forehead as a gesture of amused and incredulous surprise with his complete obliqueness. How could he have missed it? He’d already decided that the money was worthless. Well, getting away was worthless now too. That Pacific island looked like a stupid pipe-dream. What the hell was a Pacific island anyway to a man who was paralyzed on Third Avenue in New York?

Less than nothing.

So he lost the money. He lost a few years of his life. At least he’d be alive and cared for. Free of the goddamn draft too. At least he’d have food to eat and water to drink and he’d be able to walk again. He couldn’t imagine it but there’d come a time when he could push away a glass of water again. Impossible yet possible day!

How could he have been so stupid as to miss the obvious? That was almost the story of his life, he thought for a moment. To miss the obvious from the day of birth. That expressed his place in the world. A tolerant smile raised his lips. It was all right now. Jail? Nothing. He was going to cheat hunger and thirst. That was important. He was going to cheat death. That was everything. It wasn’t many people that got the chance.

He hurled the glass against the door that led to the old lady’s room.

It shattered into twenty pieces at the rim. The heavier bottom part fell onto the bed.

He thought he heard the old lady gasp.

Then he waited nervously, expectantly, holding his breath tight, feeling his heart thump loudly.

His teeth clicked together.

“What’sa matter with you?” asked the old lady.

Her voice was high-pitched and cracked. She started to talk to herself immediately. She began a grumpy soliloquy. “Sot,” he heard her grumble, “Drunkard.”

He tried to call her.
“No, you don’t understand!”

But his voice was too soft, too garbled for her to hear with her senile hearing.

“Sot,” she said again.

No!

He drove his fist into the mattress. He’d go out of his mind if she didn’t hear him! He threw back his right arm and grabbed hold of one of the bed bars. He shook the bed violently. The springs squeaked and rattled.

The old lady didn’t hear it. Her ears were closed up with the clogging of years. He tried to cry out. It was a hollow mockery of sound in his cohesive throat.

He picked up the bottom part of the glass and flung it again. It bounced and landed on the bed like a faithful, dogged handball.

He heard her gasp this time.

“Not goin’ to stand for this,” said the irate, old lady.

His face grew exultant. His heart’s embrace flew out and swept in the world.

She was getting up!

He heard the floor boards creaking under her heavy trudge. He didn’t dare breathe or move. He was suspended on the edge of shaking expectancy.

She moved to the door of her room. He followed her steps, his heart hammering like a frenzied prisoner on the dungeon door of his chest. That’s right, that’s right, go on! His spirit flew between the cracks and pushed her anxiously in the back, prodding her into quickness.

The old lady’s door opened.

All sounds faded from his ears but the sound of her footsteps in the hallway.

“Yes,” he gasped, “Yes, that’s it, that’s it!”

She was outside his door. A living, moving being, outside his door and conscious of his presence inside.

She rapped smartly on the door panel. He could almost see her standing there with her pouting, greyish lips, her small eyes like dark jade beads, her straggly white hair, the skinny hand knocking on the door, the other one clutching the robe at her turkey throat in an absurd gesture of modesty.

“Yes!” he called.

But it wasn’t a call. His throat was dry, the sides were coated with fur. The sound was like that of an animal choking to death with an arrow in its throat. He summoned up strength, tried to wet his mouth, tried to force enough moisture into his throat to speak and swallow the obstruction.