Puzzle for Fiends (6 page)

“‘Wouldn’t know?”

“You have lost your memory, haven’t you?” Her refinement was slipping by the second. “Cook told me about it in the kitchen. My, that’s too bad.”

“What’s losing my memory got to do with it?”

“Asking me if the accident improved your looks, Mr. Friend.” She was grinning. The grin showed pink gums veined with red. “Why, I never even saw you. Not before they brought you back from the hospital.”

“You’re new?”

“Sure, I’m new. They hired me right the day after the old—after Mr. Friend died. They fired all the servants then. Except Jan. Mr. Friend fired him the very last day. Then they took him on again.”

I stared. “But my father died a month ago. My accident was only two weeks ago. You had a couple of weeks to see me in.”

“Not you, Mr. Friend.” A suggestive titter had crept into her giggle. “You wasn’t around, sir—not ever, after your father died.”

“Where was I then?”

She hesitated. Then she blurted:

“You, Mr. Friend! The old cook told me just before she left. They said you’d gone off on a visit. But you never even showed up for the funeral. The old cook, she said... Well, she said as it was more likely you’d gone off on one of your...”

She broke off. I felt for a moment that she was going to put her hand over her mouth—a gesture which had surely gone out with the invention of the vacuum cleaner.

“One of my—what?” I said.

She squirmed. “Oh, sir, I really shouldn’t have...”

“One of my—what?”

“Your toots.” She grinned again and, as if this admission had forged a bond of intimacy between us, she moved a trifle nearer. “You’re quite a one for the...” She bent her elbow significantly.

“So I understand,” I said. “So I was off on a blind drunk for two weeks before I had the accident. Why did I pick the day my father died to leave?”

She giggled again. “That old cook. With her imagination, she ought to write stories. The things she hinted at!”

“What things?”

Netti looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Oh, nothing.” The discomfort had become genuine anxiety. “Don’t ever tell them I said anything about you being away and everything. Promise. I didn’t ought to have...”

“Forget it, Netti.”

I didn’t press the point further. I knew she wasn’t going to tell me any more anyway.

She was staring at me uncertainly, as if she was plucking up her courage. Then, with a glance over her shoulder at the door, she whispered: “I suppose you wouldn’t have just a little snort? Carrying that heavy tray from the kitchen and…”

“Sorry,” I said. “They put me on the wagon.”

“That’s too bad. “She leaned towards me and breathed: “There’s times when I get the liquor closet if it’s a sherry dessert or something. Sometimes I sneak maybe a pint of gin. Next time, I’ll slip you some up—okay?”

“Okay.”

I got the gums again. “I like a drop myself once in a while. I know how it is, Mr. Friend.”

She patted at the cap and left the room with a lot of hiprolling.

I’d made a buddy. And was I glad. You never know when you need a buddy.

But somehow the chicken breast in wine sauce didn’t seem so inviting now. They’d fired all the servants after my father died. Why? And they’d kept it from me that I’d been off on a blind drunk for two weeks before the accident. Why?

“I.” I was beginning to think quite naturally in terms of “I” whenever Gordy’s past was discussed. Did that mean that my identity as Gordy Friend was coming back? Or was it just a new habit forming?

I wished I knew more about amnesia. I wished I could be more sure that the stubborn conviction of something wrong was just a normal symptom.

Netti had never seen me. That meant none of the servants had ever seen me. For all they knew, I could be King Tiglath-Pileser the Third.

The dog. The iris. The propellers. Seeing someone off on a plane. San Diego. The Navy.

Why had they fired all the servants after my father’s death? And what were the things at which the former cook with the literary imagination had hinted?

I had
finished my dinner. My mother had turned on the lights and drawn the curtains. In the artificial light, the room had lost some of its frivolous gaiety and seemed almost oppressively luxurious. The cream drapes over the windows were cloying as a fancy dessert. The green chaise longue gleamed richly. The roses seemed larger, pinker than real roses and more heavily perfumed. I tried moving the cast on my left leg. With a great effort, I shifted its position a couple of inches. That was all.

I wanted a cigarette. Selena had smoked all that were in the pack by the bedside. I thought about ringing, but for some reason I shirked another meeting with a member of the family. My thoughts weren’t straight enough yet. I didn’t know whether I trusted them or whether they were enemies.

Of course they can't be enemies
, I said.

There was a loud knock on the door.

I called: “Come in.”

The door opened on a giant. It was quite a startling experience. Before when the door opened, I had always caught a glimpse of the passage beyond. Now there was nothing but man.

He came in, shutting the door behind him. He must have been close on six foot five. He was dressed only in brief navy swimming trunks and a sleeveless blue polo shirt. His hair, shining and fair as Selena’s, fell forward over his forehead. His bare legs and arms were solid muscle and burnt by the sun to a light apricot. All I noticed of his face was a broad expanse of teeth bared in a dazzling smile.

It took him about two steps to reach the bed. He looked down at me. His eyes were the blue of denim faded in the sun. His nose was short, almost snub. His mouth, curled at the corners in a friendly smile, seemed amused by everything and by me in particular.

“Jan,” he said, stretching the smile even further.

I knew from Selena that old Mr. Friend’s “only gay thing” spoke no English. I certainly spoke no Dutch. But I tried: “Hiyah, Jan. How’s tricks?”

He shook his head, making his blond forelock slip down over his eyes. He tossed the hair back again into place and shrugged, indicating that it wasn’t worth my time to try to converse. And certainly, simple-minded or no, he seemed to know what to do without being told. Efficiently, he performed all the tasks which my mother had described as “those unfeminine bedroom things”. And all the time he was grinning as if I was an uproarious joke.

When he was through, he suddenly tugged all the bedclothes off me. The great arms slipped under me and, laughing out loud, he picked me up, casts and all, as if I was a bag of popovers, carried me across the room and laid me down on the green chaise longue. He brought a corn-colored quilt from a closet and spread it over me. In spite of his immense strength, he was gentle, almost tender. He made me feel like an elderly dowager with a lot of money to leave.

He crossed back to the bed, and, whistling some monotonous and presumably Sumatran melody, started to remake the bed. He was very careful about hospital corners, making them neat as if for inspection.

When the bed was ready, he came back to me, picked up the quilt, folded it meticulously, and took it back to a closet. He moved to a chest of drawers, selected a pair of opulent red and grey silk pajamas and came back to me. He sat down at my side and started unbuttoning my pajama coat. I protested, but he only laughed his big gusty laugh and stripped the jacket off. He eased the pants off too and then began to slip as much of me as the casts permitted into the clean pajamas.

It should have been pleasant to have such efficient valet service. But I disliked it. It made me so conscious of my own helplessness. As Jan bent over me, his fair hair tickling my chest, I knew that by slipping one arm around me, he could crush me as easily as a python crushes a deer. With only my left arm to protect myself, I would be completely at his mercy, or anyone else’s mercy.

Having tied the cord on my pants in a neat bow, he picked me up again and put me back in the freshly made bed. He tucked the clothes around me and stood, grinning. I resented being thought so funny.

“Jah?” he asked questioningly.

I assumed he was asking me if there was anything else I wanted.

“A cigarette,” I said.

He looked blank.

“Smoke.” I lifted my left hand to my lips and puffed an imaginary cigarette.

His face instantly darkened. He shook his head vigorously. He was mad all of a sudden. I remembered then that Selena had told me he neither smoked nor drank. That’s what Mr. Moffat and my father had liked about him.

On a sudden impulse, I said: “I am Gordy Friend, aren’t I?”

“Jah?”

I pointed at myself. “Gordy Friend?”

He grinned. It was a deliberately foolish grin, indicating that he didn’t understand.

“Let it go,” I said.

He stood a moment, his eyes sliding up and down me, checking up, making sure everything was okay. Then, tossing the blond lock back again, he put a huge hand on my shoulder, nodded and went away.

I had started to brood again over Netti’s admissions when my mother came in, followed by the lounging figure of Dr. Croft.

My mother came up to the bed and smiled. “Well, darling, Jan
has
fixed you up. Those pajamas. You always looked so attractive in them. Doesn’t he look attractive, Doctor Croft?”

The young doctor had strolled by her side. He was looking down at me from his liquid, caressing eyes.

“Hi, Gordy. I was passing, thought I’d drop in and say hello. I got the wheel chair, by the way. It’ll show up tomorrow. How’re we coming?”

I noticed a certain tenseness in my mother. I was almost sure that the doctor’s visit was not as casual as he made out. Quickly, my mother put in:

“He had a funny feeling this afternoon, doctor, a feeling that he wasn’t himself, if you see what I mean. That he wasn’t my Gordy.” She patted my hand. “Tell the doctor about it, darling.”

Her frankness in bringing that out should have disarmed me, but it didn’t. For some reason, my suspicions flared up again. Almost psychopathically sensitive, I seemed to feel a falseness in my mother and in the quiet unconcern of the doctor.

“It’s nothing,” I said evasively.

“No, tell me, Gordy,” said Dr. Croft.

“Okay,” I said. “I felt I wasn’t Gordy Friend. I still feel it.”

My mother sat down on the edge of the bed. “You mean, dear, that you think we’re lying to you?” She laughed. “Really, baby, isn’t that rather strange? That your mother and your wife and your sister and...”

Dr. Croft raised his hand. He was staring at me steadily. “No, Mrs. Friend, don’t laugh. It’s perfectly understandable. Perfectly normal.” He smiled at me vividly. “Listen, Gordy, there’s a certain split in your mind. The result of the concussion. Now maybe there’s a lot of memories that you subconsciously don’t want to have back. I guess that would apply to all of us. Part of your mind is fighting against remembering. A mind can be a pretty sly thing, Gordy. One of its ways of fighting is by trying to invent other plausible memories. A scrap maybe from here, a scrap from there—ingeniously the mind links them together and tries to present you with a completely false identity… Say your dog’s called… Peter. Say you had a vivid recollection of—oh, a town where you had a good time, a boy maybe who you palled around with at school. Your mind can suddenly forge them into something and seem to give it an immense significance. It’s worrying to you, of course, but I can assure you it’s all an illusion.”

He moistened his lips with the tip of a sharp pink tongue. “Get it, old man?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“No, Gordy. Come clean. If you don’t get it, tell me.”

My mother was watching me anxiously. What Nate said was plausible. What Nate said always was. Maybe I was convinced.

“Sure I get it,” I said. I turned to my mother. “Where was I for the weeks before I had the accident?”

“Where were you?” My mother looked at her most serene. “Why, you were here, of course, darling.”

“I stayed on right here after my father died? I went out in the Buick from here when I had the accident?”

“Why, of course, Gordy. You...” My mother broke off suddenly, a flush spreading her cheeks. “Marny hasn’t been telling you things, has she?”

I had promised Netti not to give her away, but since my mother assumed I’d got the information from Marny I had no scruples.

“I heard,” I said, “that I disappeared the day my father died and that I never showed up again until I was found in the wrecked car. I heard,” I added, “that I was on a prolonged and colossal bat.”

My mother’s smooth white fingers were tapping agitatedly on her lap. I caught a flash of anger blazing in her eyes. She wasn’t the sort of person I had thought of as getting angry. But she controlled herself superbly. Almost immediately the old soothing smile was in command.

“Darling, whoever told you that was awfully naughty. Yes, I’m afraid I lied. You were off on one of your… er… jaunts.” She glanced swiftly at Dr. Croft. “Nate and I decided it was best to keep quiet about it for a while. After all, it’s not a very nice memory and it does you no good to be told.”

“Don’t worry, Gordy, old man.” Dr. Nate Croft was smiling his reassuring smile. “We all of us go on a bender once in a while.” His face was serious. “Maybe that’s the memory you’re trying to suppress, Gordy. Getting tight, missing your father’s funeral... You know, it the sort of thing a guy wishes he hadn’t done.”

I asked the question to which Netti had given me so darkly cryptic an answer. “Why did I pick the day Father died to go off on a bat?”

Mrs. Friend was in entire control of herself now. She watched me serenely. “Really, dear, I wouldn’t know, would I? I expect you were depressed about your poor father being sick. Or”—she shrugged—“you never were particularly reasonable about the times you chose, you know.”

“But I walked out while he was actually dying.”

Mrs. Friend patted my hand. “Darling boy, don’t start nagging yourself about it. After all, it wasn’t as if you knew he was dying. It happened after you left.”

“Suddenly?”

“Yes, dear, quite suddenly—with no warning.”