The Cry of the Sloth (13 page)

Apart from my detective work, things here are not shaping up. My novel, which was meant to be comic, is not turning out as I envisaged. It has acquired an overlay of desperation which I doubt readers will find funny. And I spend too much time not doing anything. I sold the television last week. I don’t turn on any lights unless I really have to. I find I can do most things in the dark, and I seldom read or write after sunset. I would like to say, “I sit in the dark and ponder,” but I don’t; I sit in the dark and fret. The rest of the time I sit in the blue and fret. I don’t know how things have arrived at this sorry pass. (I say that, and I see the “things” struggling up a narrow trail in the high mountains toward a pass that is already blocked by snow.) Which decision was the wrong one? Or were there five wrong ones, or a thousand? People like to say that each moment presents us with a fork on our life path: I sit at my desk instead of going to the window, where perhaps I would have been hit by a brick, or going for a walk in the park, where I would have met a beautiful woman, a mugger, a man selling insurance, or no one at all; walking to the store, I turn on this street rather than that street; and everything is different forever. Have you ever wondered if the same thing might be true in the
other
direction? Going backwards, there are also choices to be made every step of the way, each item revived in memory only the first link of a new mnemonic chain, and every new chain recreating a different past, constructing a different album of photos, unpacking another box of forgotten treasures—a different past, which must of necessity be the past of a different present, a different future, a different
person
. The floor seems to drop away beneath us. A thousand personalities crowd onto our little stage. I see now that I can say
anything I want
.

I find myself crying about Mama.

I fret about the literary festival. I foresee a complete bust. I seem to make enemies right and left. Meanwhile the house grows increasingly unmanageable. I had put almost everything up in boxes, but then I had to take it all out again. Now I am trying to put it back in again. I feel overwhelmed by disorder. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Beneath the sills? Through the cracks in the floorboards? Out of the light fixtures? The heat vents? It feels like an invasion of devouring ants. I open my mouth and they swarm out of it all over my shirt.

Love,

Andy

¶

Dear Dahlberg,

Doing those kind of things to your body is not going to make you a writer. NO ONE wants to hear about them. You MUST find someone to help you. But I am not that person. While I wish you happiness and good fortune, I am not going to open any letters you send in the future. Don’t waste your time as they will fly straight into the trash can.

Andy

¶

To the Editor:

I read with interest the stimulating letter from Dr. Hawktiter on the subject of Andrew Whittaker, in which he points out how fortunate we are to have a writer of Mr. Whittaker’s caliber in our midst. That is certainly the case. And it is true even for those of us who are not aware that he is here, for there is something to be said for living in a cultured community even if one does not partake of it personally, choosing TV over the stimulus of a good book. That is their right. However, I am not concerned here with Whittaker the controversial author. Let others judge his literary merits. Let others criticize if they dare his courageous support of struggling artists. No, I am concerned not with Andrew Whittaker, but with Andy, the man who lives across the street.

Six years ago an automobile accident snuffed out the lives of my husband Rob and my infant daughter Clarissa Jane and left me paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair. One doesn’t know how one goes on living after a tragic event like that, but somehow one does. And one can, thanks to small things like bird songs and game shows, and, let me add, thanks to big-hearted people like Andy. The day I came home from the hospital, he was there, a stack of books in his arms. I remember his gentle smile and the moisture in his eyes when he looked at my face, which was terribly mutilated. It was Andy who that very afternoon went through the closets and drawers and carried away all Rob’s suits and shirts so I would never have to face those reminders of happier days.

How many times over the years since have I heard the merry jingle of the doorbell announcing one of his impromptu visits? He always does the shave-and-a-haircut thing on the bell. I laugh to think of it. Such a boyish thing to do, and yet so endearing. He possesses, how shall I put it? a spiritual bounciness that is totally contagious. After his visits I would find myself scooting about the house in my chair until the battery was quite dead. And my attendants love him too, especially the young girls, to whom he shows an old-world courtesy, though even the old ones are cajoled into allowing an occasional peck on the cheek. Dear old Andy. One day he comes with a loaf of raisin bread that he has baked himself, another day it’s a single flower plucked from the park or an autumnal leaf that has caught his eye and that he hopes will bring me a little pleasure, light a match, as it were, in the dark corridor of my days. At other times, particularly on rainy days when there is nothing to be seen out the window, he will read to me from the classics, his sonorous voice wafting from room to room as he strides about the house in dramatic renditions of Ahab or Blind Pew or Count Dracula. He sometimes frightens the young attendants with these performances. We hardly know our gentle friend. But of course it’s all in fun, and eventually they come back inside.

And then there are the marvelous meals he drops off in foil-covered plates, complete with a glass of either
rouge
or
blanc
as the dish may require. He has a discerning palate, though perhaps a bit overbearing when it comes to Indian spices. But this is so much his character that I never say anything, preferring just to do my best and drink a lot of water. Sometimes he stops by just for a little chat, and once when I had swallowed an eraser he saved my life. One of my great regrets is that I had no other children besides Clarissa Jane (and of course now it’s too late). Such a pleasure it would have given them to have “Uncle Andy” drop by for a romp on the rug. As it is, my little dog Charlie is crazy about him as are all my nieces and nephews, though they rarely visit now. Their mother still blames me for Rob’s death, though it was his idea for me to drive. And I was in a lot better shape than he was. Only my cats remain standoffish with Andy. Perhaps this is not because they don’t like him but because they really do, and they sense that he is allergic to them. Poor Andy, he is allergic to so many things, not just cats and trees and flowers, but even to something like Pledge furniture polish which most people consider innocuous despite the warning on the label. You would be amazed at how many people use Pledge. Andy says he feels completely surrounded by it. Many a time I have looked out my window (I often sit at my window) and have seen Andy in one of Rob’s suits, worn now and shiny at the knees, leaning against a telephone pole, his nose streaming, while he struggles to catch his breath. And this is the man certain people would harry from pillar to post! I think we should all join Dr. Hawktiter in saying down with that!

Sincerely,

Dyna Wreathkit

¶

TO ALL TENANTS: MANAGEMENT HAS RECEIVED NOTICE FROM THE FIRE MARSHAL CONCERNING BICYCLES, STROLLERS, AND TOYS IN THE HALLS. THESE ITEMS ARE HAZARDOUS IN HALLS AND NEAR STAIRWAYS AND MUST BE KEPT IN YOUR APARTMENTS OR IN THE BASEMENT AT ALL TIMES. ITEMS FOUND IN VIOLATION WILL BE TRANSPORTED TO THE SALVATION ARMY.

THE MANAGEMENT

¶

Dear Mr. Freewinder,

There is really no need for apologies. I understand perfectly that your first duty is to American Midlands, and well it should be, for I dare say there is no finer bank of its size anywhere, especially now that you have that big new sign. I think making it out of bricks was a grand idea. Bricks, especially stacked several rows thick like that, convey a feeling of solidity, which the people who have entrusted their savings to you must find comforting indeed. I can’t imagine how a sign made of wood—I am thinking of the plywood trifle they have over at First National—could reassure to the same degree. I wonder if the story of the three pigs had any influence on your decision to go brick. If it did, then you will probably think, when you read what I have to say, that I am like the foolish pig who built his house out of straw. If this turns out to be the case—and that will be for you to judge—then Whittaker Company might be so fragile at this time that it would be cruel and unwise of the bank to puff on it—unwise, because if it falls down, you will be left, to use a popular expression, holding the bag; and cruel, because there is someone inside. Inside and hard at work, and not, despite what you have been told, “cutting corners” in order to go “gadding about.”

In better times I would have had my secretary scurry right over with the document you requested. Unfortunately, she has taken a powder, as the saying goes. To New York City, where she has ambitions of becoming an actress. That is not my fault, and I, personally, lay the blame on the movie magazines she found at her hairdresser. What do you think? As for the document, I must reluctantly report that I have not been able to find it in the mess. And now I would like to take a moment to say a word about that, about the mess.

It has been accumulating gradually, even relentlessly, a little each day since she bolted. Two years and sixteen days. Do you have any idea how long that is? To get an idea of the scope of it you have only to look at my desk. It is piled so high with “stuff” that I am not able to use it as a desk anymore. When there is something I must write, I am forced to stand and hold the paper up against a wall. In order to maintain some order I have tried from the outset to prevent the stacks from repeatedly sliding off onto the floor by applying bits of tape. This has been only partially successful and has had the drawback that when a stack finally does go, it goes all at once. Being held together with tape, it topples right over like a felled tree rather than just losing a portion off its top, its crown, as it were, as would otherwise be the case and as sometimes happens to trees in storms, especially pine trees. The presence of the tape also means that I cannot just peek into the middle of a stack and see what is in there. I would first have to dismantle the whole tower, and that, because of the tape, cannot be done without tearing. Some of the stacks have become so tall that I don’t see how the dismantling, if I decide to go that route, can be achieved without creating an even bigger mess, the avoidance of which was, after all, the point of taping in the first place.

Of course if I knew for certain that your document was inside one of the stacks, I would have no qualms about just going at them a stack at a time, hacking and tearing my way through until I found it. But that is not the case. And just imagine how bad we both would feel if, at the end of it, I came up empty-handed. For we are not talking here about just a few thousand loose papers strewn across the floor; we are talking about thousands of loose papers with bits of sticky tape attached to them. Just picture people, perhaps children, desperate to get to the bathroom, having to cross over all that, the soles of their shoes picking up paper after paper. And though none of these papers may turn out to be the document you want, they are still important papers, poems and pieces of short stories and book reviews and the like, over which creative writers have sweated blood or worse, even if they, the papers, are, as of course they will be by that time, crumpled and sticky. And what do you think those people, now thoroughly irked and exasperated, are going to do with these important papers once they are in the bathroom with the door locked? I know you will agree that before letting this happen we have an obligation to dig to the bottom of every other possible hiding place, no matter how dubious or remote.

The filing cabinets, for example. Five sturdy steel ones. Together they contain seventeen drawers, if we still count as “drawer” one which has lost its front part or “facing” (the part that had the handle), and which is now a kind of sliding tray. I suppose, in the case of this one, “ex-drawer” might be better than “drawer,” in which case the sum of genuine drawers drops to sixteen.

Currently, from my present position in the room, leaning a shoulder against a wall next to the door, I am able to survey all five cabinets, and it strikes me that, if we take the word “contain” in its strict and proper sense, then they in fact contain only twelve drawers, since four of the drawers are so overfilled with
stuff
it is impossible to push them shut, and in that condition, hanging out over the floor like that, they cannot, without a laxity of speech which in my view we ought to avoid, be described as
contained.

Earlier this year, when my health permitted exertions of that stripe, I endeavored to force those drawers back in with my feet. By kicking, of course, which was completely ineffective, but also by lying supine on the floor, knees bent, and pushing with the flat of my feet against the front of the drawer. The outcome was not as I had hoped. When I straightened my knees and shoved, my whole body slid, indeed shot, across the linoleum floor in the opposite direction. I tried this with all four drawers, and in every case the same thing happened, and in no case did a drawer budge so much as an inch. I did succeed, however, in bending in the front part or “facing” of all four drawers and flattening the silver-metal pull handle tightly against it. Now, on further reflection, this—the fact that the drawers did not slide in—seems to me a fortunate accident. Had I succeeded in forcing them shut with my feet, I can’t imagine how, without handles, I could ever have opened them again, in which case your document, if it is in one of them, would be irretrievable.

Yet even as things stand and by virtue of no footwork on my part, the cabinets already contain three drawers firmly stuck in the “in” or “shut” position. In fact they have been stuck in that position since before she bolted, a period when I was not “in charge.” I really ought to have subtracted those three from the drawer list at the outset, since, functionally speaking, they are ex-drawers. Making this belated correction, we find the total number of genuine drawers actually contained has shrunk to nine, which probably sounds like a manageable number to you, as it did to me when I first arrived at it yesterday morning. I was lying on the sofa after a sleepless night, listening to the first birds calling plaintively from somewhere. Despite exhaustion, my initial impulse on finally reaching this number was to jump right in, just spring up from the sofa and excavate those nine drawers, one drawer at a time, one sheet of paper at a time. But scarcely had I swung my feet to the floor and planted them firmly there (resolved, as I said, to dig in), than it dawned upon me that in my enthusiasm at getting there at last I was about to behave in a manner which was anything but rational. You see,
I had nothing to go on
—nothing, that is, more substantial than a wild hope that the document was, somehow, somewhere, in one of the nine. Yet for me actually to
know
that this was the case—and not merely an illusion born of wishful thinking—would necessitate hours, even days, of tedious labor carried out from an uncomfortable posture. And at the end of it all, should I choose to go that route, I might still come up empty-handed, since it is possible, even plausible, that the document is not in any of the drawers that are accessible to me but in one of the three that are presently stuck hopelessly shut or even, as I said before, in one of the stacks on the desk. And if that is the case, as now seems likely, then all those hours, even days, on my knees, practically up to my hips in waste paper, would be just precious time squandered. In short, I considered it crucial at that point in my enquiry, even before I started looking
anywhere
, to make certain that I could look
everywhere
, including in the stuck drawers. Then, though I might still not find your document, I could in good conscience at least write you a letter beginning, “After an exhaustive search, I regret …”