Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (35 page)

I continued up the stairway past the second floor, which housed the main dining room, the bar, and the billiards room, and on to the third floor, which was taken up with card rooms, meeting rooms, and the library, the least frequented areas in the Club. Somehow, perhaps because of the Club’s name, someone had conceived the idea — and others apparently continued more or less to hold to it — that the membership would require a large and well-stocked library. This completely erroneous judgment has proved fortunate for me: hardly any of the members seem to notice either the books or the expense, and the place is nearly always deserted except for a few desks and chairs right by the library entrance to which members sometimes retreat to avoid the censure they theoretically should incur for opening briefcases and conducting business in any other part of the Club.

There were two of them sitting there when I came in, poring over some sort of legal document. I went past them and continued all the way around through the library, which consisted of a maze of small alcoves formed by bookshelves. In the most remote corner, I settled into a large leather armchair surrounded by rows of books. I would sit here for a moment and rest. Then I might want to read for a while, take a look at today’s papers. That would be perfectly safe. I would go back to the table in the main reading room, where all the periodicals in the English-speaking world were neatly laid out, and bring a couple of them back here. In a few hours I would be able to look around and find something to eat. By six-thirty or seven the Club would begin to empty out, and by nine it would be almost deserted — perhaps a few stragglers in the dressing room or the bar and the people in the guest rooms on the fourth floor. I wondered if there was any sort of watchman or security guard or only someone at the door. It was so extraordinarily quiet. If for some reason someone should wander back here, I would hear in plenty of time… Far in the background — it seemed miles away — I could hear the ancient elevator moving occasionally___

When I awoke it was completely dark. It must be… What time was it? I was in the library of the Academy Club. Invisible. It must be the middle of the night. All the lights out. Utterly still now. There had been a lamp beside this chair. I groped about until my hand encountered it, then located the switch and turned it. The light did not go on, but the double click seemed to reverberate through the room like gunfire. I should stop for a moment, be quiet, listen. Make sure there was no one else here. The only sound I could hear was my own movement in the leather chair. The total darkness was claustrophobic. Some master switch must be off somewhere.

I got up and made my way haltingly out toward the middle of the library, guiding myself by running my hand along the rows of books. As I emerged from the bookshelves, I saw that there was some sort of light after all: down toward the other end of the library I could see distinguishable shadows rather than uniform blackness. I stopped to listen again for any movement and, hearing nothing, began feeling my way slowly towards the area of dim illumination. When finally I reached the entrance to the library I found that the light was coming from the main staircase, which wound up through the center of the building.

I would follow the marble stairs down and search for the kitchen. I had not eaten since early morning, and if I were going to be in this club with people wandering in and out all day, then this would be the last time I could risk putting food into myself until tomorrow night. I was startled, however, by the realization that, although I had been in and out of this club all my adult life and eaten here countless times, I did not really know where the kitchen was. I had vaguely assumed that it would be on the second floor with the dining room and the bar, but on entering the dining room, I realized at once that that would be impossible: there was no space left for it in the floor plan. Enough light shone in from the street through the tall windows so that I could make my way easily down the length of the dining room to the double swinging doors through which I had so often watched waiters appear and disappear. Beyond the doors was a small hall with steam tables and dumbwaiters and an open stairway, which I followed down into total darkness.

I groped about helplessly for several minutes in what seemed to be a maze of counters and shelves, until I found the handle of an old-fashioned refrigerator and pulled it open. The small light inside shone suddenly out through an enormous room, creating a patchwork of huge shadows, endless tables, and monstrous antique kitchen equipment. The refrigerator was filled with bottles of fruit juice, and I first gulped down a quart of grapefruit juice, and then, leaving the door open for illumination, set out to explore the kitchen. Glancing down at my stomach, a yellow sack of grapefruit juice, I wondered whether anyone ever came in here during the night. I shouldn’t have drunk anything until I had reconnoitered. Too late. Nothing I could do about it now.

I went methodically through the kitchen trying every cupboard and door, confident of finding every food known to man, since, although the food at the Academy Club is less than exquisite, the menu is nevertheless quite comprehensive. Instead I found only locked doors and cabinets and padlocked coolers. It seemed that nothing had been left out in the open but endless stacks of plates and dishes, jumbled masses of flatware, racks of glasses. If I were going to live here, I would need keys. When finally I found a bin of dinner rolls, I greedily devoured three of them without a thought of how they would look collected in my belly. Then on a counter I found a large metal bowl of sickeningly sweet fruit salad, which someone had forgotten to put away, and I unhesitatingly shoveled that into myself as well: it seemed unspeakably delicious.

I was altogether unsightly now, and with my appetite satisfied, I began to worry again about who else might be in the building. There would at the very least be someone at the door all night for the people who were staying in the guest rooms. Perhaps other staff as well. I would have to avoid the ground floor and the fourth floor, where the guest rooms were, but I should be able to explore the rest of my new home in safety. I went back up the stairs, resolved to begin my reconnoitering by finding the staff entrance to the bar, but everything was locked there as well. Obvious: alcohol is always the first thing you lock up. Where would there be a complete set of keys?

I walked back out through the dining room and into the dark, cavernous lounge. With its enormous leather-upholstered sofas and armchairs and its massive tables, and with the ghostly light from beyond the twelve-foot-high windows sending faint but immense shadows slanting upward across the walls, the room seemed meant for some gloomy tribe of giants, and I felt like a small child sneaking through a dark house. Crossing to one of the windows, I peered down into the pale, empty avenue. No sound inside or out.

I walked into the billiards room, a long row of massive rectangular shadows. Nothing of interest here. These vast spaces can be extraordinarily lonely. I turned back and started up the broad marble staircase, which was the only part of these floors kept lit all night. On the landing I paused to look at the grandfather clock. Two-thirty in the morning. Somehow that fact, or perhaps the clock itself, disheartened me, and I stood listening to the tick and watching the abrupt little lurches of the minute hand along the Roman numerals. On the edge of my vision I became aware of something moving, and, looking down, I saw again the yellow and brown filth piled up in my stomach. I should not be standing in the one illuminated part of the building.

Hurrying up to the next floor, I turned down a dark corridor which I thought should lead away from the main library rooms and toward a vaguely remembered back stair, but it turned several times inexplicably, until I had quite lost any sense of which way I was proceeding. When I encountered on my right a small marble staircase with a metal railing, I followed it up. It doubled back several times on itself and then opened into a corridor on what must be the fourth floor, without continuing up any further. This was worse. There were overhead lights running the length of the passage, and anyone appearing now would have seen me clearly. I hurried past a succession of numbered doors, which I decided must be to the guest rooms. I thought enviously of the people safely locked inside, lying in beds with clean sheets. The corridor took a turn and ended at a metal door beneath an exit sign. I pulled open the door, eased it shut behind me, and, finding myself in a fire stair, began climbing again.

Completely disoriented, I had already forgotten my plan of systematically searching the building: I only wanted to find some dark, obscure place where I could rest in safety until I was invisible again. I pulled open the first door I encountered and found myself in a small tiled washroom lined with washbasins and shower stalls. I remembered that in addition to the main dressing room there were several other smaller rooms on this floor, but I was sure that I had never seen this particular room before. I walked through it and out into a narrow passageway. It was darker here, but to one side I could see through an open doorway into a room with windows which admitted enough street light to reveal chairs and tables and mirrors. Why was this so unfamiliar? How was it possible that in all the times I had been on this floor I had never seen these rooms? I continued down the passageway, turned a corner, and came up against a dead end in total darkness. Running my hands along the wall in front of me, I located a door. It was locked. I tried the adjacent wall and found another door. Pushing it open, I stepped through onto what felt like a tiled floor.

I could see nothing whatever. I had set out to search methodically through a building I thought I knew, but here I was, stumbling about aimlessly. Why had everything been laid out in such a maze? It was pointless to do this is the dark. No idea where I was half the time and half the doors locked. Stay calm. Figure out where you are. I listened for a moment. No sound anywhere. I ran my hands over the wall along the door frame until I found a light switch and snapped it on. I was in a small, completely white room with a tiled floor and tiled walls, which I recognized as the anteroom to the steam room. Off to the right would be a door leading into the pool. Straight ahead would be the steam room itself, and to the left would be a small room with massage tables and sun lamps and beyond that a corridor that would lead around to the main dressing room.

I looked down at my viscera, an ugly swirl of vomit, and, suddenly remembering my experiments at the apartment, an idea came to me. Taking a good look at the room and the position of the first door on the left, I switched off the light and made my way across the pitch-dark room and through the door into the massage room. I got the lights switched on and set about studying the sun lamps. There were two long rows of them on a fixture which was suspended over a massage table by a system of pulleys and counterweights, and on the wall there was a control panel with timing dials and separate switches for ultraviolet and infrared light. I switched absolutely everything on, lowered the lamp fixture as far as it would go, and climbed up onto the table underneath it.

I felt the light only as a vaguely pleasant, penetrating warmth, but its effect on my appearance was dramatic and immediate. The filth in my digestive tract began to disappear at once, seeming to melt away like ice under hot water. Soon there were only a few small lumps and swirls of color, and then, within minutes, nothing whatever. It was a wonderful discovery. I would be able to eat and restore my invisibility almost at will. A pity that the sun lamps were not located closer to the kitchen, but still, I felt my confidence suddenly growing into a feeling almost of invulnerability.

Slipping off my clothes and putting them in a neat pile up on top of a cabinet where probably no one had ever before put anything, I walked back through the neighboring room and into the windowless room containing the swimming pool. Next to the door was a row of switches. I flipped one of them up, and a bank of lights came on along one wall, illuminating the small body of quivering, blue, chlorinated water. Kneeling down at the edge of the tiled pool, I slipped quietly in and pushed off into the cool water. It felt wonderful. I swam up to the other end and back. Somehow, the act of swimming seemed almost effortless — as if I now floated more easily than before — and I felt a sort of power and pleasure in my own movement, as I propelled myself up and down the length of the pool.

I could see, though, that to an observer the effect would have a very different quality. I was creating a large amorphous cavity or bubble, which moved awkwardly across the surface of the water, expanding and contracting with my strokes in a rhythmic sequence of convulsions. It was a bizarre effect. One that would certainly hold the attention of anyone who happened into the room. I climbed out. The water beaded instantly on my body and seemed to drain magically from the air like a miniature rainfall cascading down onto the edge of the pool. Footprints appeared mysteriously on the tiled floor as I walked.

Switching off the lights as I went, I returned and put on my clothes again. I felt wonderfully refreshed by my swim, calmer and clearer. Abandoning any idea of further explorations in the dark, I stretched out on a huge leather couch in the main dressing room and drifted into a deep, serene sleep.

At around seven o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the sound of doors banging in distant parts of the building, followed by voices and the faint clanking and grinding of the elevator. Soon there would be staff here and members getting in a swim or a game of squash before work. I climbed off the couch and went in and washed up quickly. As I climbed up the stairs to the sixth floor, I could hear the whine of vacuum cleaners from the lower floors.

I set out again to make a thorough inspection of the building now that there was light, and by midday I had toured as much of it as I could get at. There were locked storerooms and closets scattered throughout the Club, especially on the top floor and in the basements. And as I moved about, I had to be constantly watching for the Club employees, who by now had spread out through the building to clean and repair it or to prepare in various corners their various concessions — the cigar stand, the massage room, the bar, the laundry, the barber shop. And because behind the huge public spaces there was such a labyrinth of unexpected little rooms and passages and stairs, I was never quite sure what I would find on the other side of a door. It would take days of such expeditions before I grasped the layout of the building with confidence, and it would take many more days of careful surveillance before I began to recognize the dozens of employees and to know roughly where they would be over the course of a day or a week. The members, on the other hand, did not create much of a problem for me. Most of the time there were very few of them in the Club, and their movements were perfectly predictable. No member would ever burst suddenly into an unused room to dust the furniture or replace a light bulb.