Disturbing the Peace (Vintage Classics) (17 page)

Pamela was waiting for him, out of sound range, and she said “Oh, that was perfect.”

“Well, I don’t know about ‘perfect,’ but I think it’s better.”

“All your ideas are so good,” she said. “You really do have a natural talent for this.”

“Want to take a walk?” It was a warm afternoon on the sixth or seventh day of shooting. What he had in mind was to take her out across a meadow and into some woodland that might have a fragrant, mossy clearing where they could rest, and where she might tell him more about his natural talent.

“A walk?” she said. “Oh, not now; I don’t want to miss a minute of this.”

A little later Julian called for a ten-minute break, and it seemed as good a time as any to suggest an idea that had been taking shape in his mind for days.

“Look,” he said. “I know how you feel about Christ symbolism, Julian, but Spivack – or Klinger – does tell about a man who thinks he’s the Second Coming; says he puts on a show once in a while. And if we’re going to mention the man, why don’t we ever get to meet him? If he puts on a show, why don’t we see it?”

“Mm,” Julian said. “What would he do?” Everyone was listening now.

“I don’t know. He might recite the Sermon on the Mount at the top of his lungs until they shoot him out, or he might – well, try to crucify himself. That’d be better, because it’s more visual. Get a slim young guy, have him strip down to a loincloth kind of thing, have him climb up on the back of a bench against the wall
and – you know – go into the crucifixion pose, until the orderlies have to come and haul him down. See what I’m getting at?”

They all waited for Julian to speak first, and he took his time, frowning. “I don’t know, John,” he said at last. “Might be a little obvious.”

“Oh, I don’t think so at all,” the man playing Klinger said. “It’d be marvelous if it were done right.”

“As a matter of fact,” Jerry said, “I did think of something like that when I was doing the script; trouble was I couldn’t figure out where to put it in.”

“Think of it in visual terms,” one of the actors said. “The audience has been locked into the ward all this time seeing nothing but ugliness and squalor, and then suddenly – wham! – here’s this classical image of the—”

“And the irony!” someone else said. “A crucifixion in a madhouse. I think it’s tremendous. Tremendous.”

Julian paced the floor a few steps one way and a few steps another. “I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s cornball.”

“
Corn
ball!” Pamela cried. “Oh, Julian, you’re missing the whole
point
. It’s the most beautiful idea anybody’s had yet. It could serve as the objective correlative for the whole—”

“Ah, objective correlative my ass. I’m sorry, Pam, but I don’t see it, that’s all.”

Other strident voices were raised against him; when it was clear that the majority opinion would hold, that Julian would give in, Wilder stole away from the set. He had made his suggestion and he felt no need to defend it; now he wanted solitude and he wanted to be outdoors.

He took a cupful of whiskey along, but after the first few sips he found he didn’t want it; he set it carefully on the grass beside the barn and started walking.

He had never seen such beautiful country, but it wasn’t the
landscape alone that increased the pump of his heart as he walked; it was the dizzying rise of his self-esteem in this past incredible week. Epstein saying he was the most admirable man in the venture; Julian deferring to him time and again; Pamela saying “Oh, that was perfect” and “It’s the most beautiful idea anybody’s had yet” – all this and more crowded his head. He had been born for this, for finding order in chaos, and all the wasted years had been a mistake. John Wilder was coming into his own at last –
this
was reality – and he trembled with a pride and pleasure he hadn’t known since he was eleven years old and the soprano soloist at Grace Church.

Glo-o-o-o-ria in excelsis De-e-o
…

To find order in chaos; to find order in chaos. He felt exalted as he trod the grass; he felt tall.

The earth was spongy underfoot and there were hummocks that made him stumble; the stumbling jogged him rhythmically along until a little chant or jingle began to sound in his ears. Even when he stopped and steadied himself with his arm around the trunk of a tree it persisted:

He let go of the tree – it left a spoor of sap on his shirtsleeve – and walked again, beginning to feel as if hundreds of needles were gently pricking his flesh. His vision was distorted too: colorless flecks hung and danced before his eyes; and still the doggerel went on, as real as if someone – Epstein? – were whispering the words beside him:

“Hi, Mr. Wilder,” said one of the minor Marlowe actors on his way to the set.

“Hi. Hey, wait – wait.”

The boy stopped and gave him a long, odd look.

“Can you tell me how to get to Mr. Epstein’s house?”

“Sure. You’re headed in the right direction. See that dirt road? Leads you right up to it – it’s only a couple of hundred yards. You okay, Mr. Wilder? You look—”

“How do I look?”

“I don’t know.” And the boy lowered his eyes like a girl. “No special way, I guess; I just – never mind. By the way, I think it’s a great film, Mr. Wilder. Really great.”

He was headed in the right direction – anyone could walk a couple of hundred yards, even with knees like jelly – and now the words were clearly in Epstein’s voice:

If he comes to me in time and says da da da da dime

That’ll
be the

He didn’t want to look up because he knew the sky had turned from blue to red and yellow, and he didn’t want to look back because Pamela and all the young men were gathered there under the massed trees to urge him on – keep going, John; keep going – so he looked down at his own walking feet. These were the feet that had taken him through years and years of error and falsehood; now they were treading the dirt of the right road at last – the true road, the high, lonely road of self-discovery….

“Well, Mr.
Wilder
,” Epstein said, opening his white door.

He stepped inside and slumped against the vestibule wall, barely able to stand. He stared into Epstein’s calm, wise face and Epstein peered at him closely, encouragingly, as if he’d been waiting for this very confrontation for years.

Go on, John, the young people behind him were saying; go on. Say it.

But he was paralyzed with indecision. If he said what seemed so clearly to be expected it might be all over. He would be himself, but he might be –

“Yes, sir?”

Then he said it: “Brother, can you spare a dime?”

And Epstein didn’t seem at all surprised. “A dime? Why, certainly; I’ll be happy to oblige. Won’t you come in while I—”

“No – no, thanks. I’ll wait here.”

Epstein went into his study for a moment and then he came back. “One thin but very shiny dime,” he said, and he looked straight into Wilder’s eyes as he gave it to him; then, smiling, he held out his right hand for a ceremonial handshake.

If the dime hadn’t done it the handshake would, and Wilder hesitated again. Go on, John; let it happen.

Epstein’s smile had given way to a troubled look, but his hand was still there and Wilder shook it.

“You’re – all right, aren’t you, Mr. Wilder?”

“Yes. I’m all right.” He had taken the man’s hand at last, and because there should have been a thunderclap of recognition he provided one, or at least a sound deep in his throat like the tolling of a great bronze bell.

Epstein looked puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t – Can I get you a glass of cold water? We have wonderful fresh spring water here.”

“No. No water. Nothing.” He couldn’t move from his slumped position against the wall until he’d made a moist fist
around the dime and sunk it deep into the pocket of his wrinkled summer slacks. He was being tested and he hadn’t yet passed the test. There was more to this; there had to be more. “Thank you,” he said. His mouth was almost too dry for speaking. “I’m sorry if I—”

He turned and walked down the short path to the road, feeling Epstein’s eyes on his back.

He was careful to go back the way he had come, holding the coin tight against his pocketful of loose change. There had to be more to this, and all at once the weather changed as if to confirm it. The sky darkened quickly as he walked, or stumbled; then there was a quick brilliant tree of lightning and a roll and crash of thunder of exactly the kind he’d expected on shaking Epstein’s hand. The earthbound trees flew violently in the sudden, wet wind, all their leaves turned inside out and pale, and the rain came in a cold pelting that drove him to the nearest shelter – a telephone booth set in a cement block on the grass beside the road. Now he knew the purpose of the dime, and he knew that Epstein knew it too.

When you see a fellow waiting in a phone booth

With a dime he doesn’t quite know how to use …

The overhead light came on when he shut the folding door, but he had to rest on the little bench and wait for his heart to slow down and his throbbing head to clear. Then very carefully he pressed the dime into the tinkling slot.

He was dialing, careful to stop after seven precisely measured digits, and he listened to ten rings before he hung up and let the coin fall through the machine. Wrong; but if he tried again it might be right. Wait, Epstein’s voice counseled him. Wait and have courage, John. There is time. He shut his eyes and seven vivid numerals appeared behind the closed lids; he dialed them quickly but carefully, and on the seventh ring there was a click.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice said.

“Hello. Is this – Are you my mother?”

“I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

“No I don’t. Please stay on the phone. Listen. I’m doing the best I can to put all this together and I’ve only got one dime, you see.”

“Young man?”

“Yes. I’m still here but my time is running out. Please just wait.”

“Well, I’d like to help you but I’m afraid you have the wrong—”

“Please. Just wait. I know you think I’m crazy but I’m not. I’m very, very serious and this is important. Wait. I’ll get the right question in a minute.”

“Young man?”

“Yes. I’m here. Please don’t hang up.”

She did, and the dime was lost, but that didn’t matter: he had plenty of dimes. The only important thing was to keep trying, to try again and again until …

There was a rapping on the glass pane and he looked around to find a young girl standing there. The rain must have stopped because her hair and her clothes were dry; she was trying to open the door of the booth and he had to get up from the seat to help her.

“John? Do you know how long you’ve been
in
there?”

“No.”

“And you haven’t even been
talking
; just putting in money and dialing and – oh John, are you all right?”

“And who are you? Are you some kind of half-assed Mary Magdalene?”

“Am I
what?
”

“Wait a minute.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Who are you, then? Are you Ginny Baldwin?” Ginny Baldwin was the first girl he had ever loved; if she said yes to this it might at least mean he was seventeen again, with his whole life ahead of him and all his terrible mistakes unmade.

“John, will you stop this? You
know
me, for God’s sake.”

“No, I don’t. What time is it?”

“It’s almost six.”

“You mean six in the morning or six in the—”

“John, if you’re kidding I’ll never forgive you for this. You’re either kidding or you’re – oh, God. Come along with me; we’re going home.”

And he allowed himself to be led away across the grass. “Then you mean it was all a delusion,” he said, trying to keep up with her.

“What did you say?”

“I said none of it was real.”

“None of
what
was real?”

“Never mind.”

“John, do you know who I am now? Do you know where you are and everything?”

“No, I – no.”

“Well, listen carefully. I’m Pamela Hendricks. It’s August Nineteen Sixty-one and we’re at Marlowe College in Vermont.”

“Vermont?” That was when he started to cry, because what
she said did have the ring of reality; and if this was real and all the rest was a dream, then he’d made a colossal fool of himself and everyone at Marlowe College knew it, or would know it soon. He could feel their stares on him as he walked and tried to hide his tears with his knuckles – stares of contempt and ridicule from the very people whose encouragement he’d felt on the road and in Epstein’s doorway; Epstein would be laughing at him too.

Back in the wood-smelling dormitory room she acted like an efficient nurse. First she told him to take off all his clothes and get into bed; then she came and sat beside him in a creaking bedside chair.

“John,” she said after he’d stopped crying, and it could have been noon or midnight, “are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“If I leave you alone for a few minutes, will you promise not to leave this room?”

“Yes. Now promise
me
something.”

“All right, dear.” She was stroking his brow with cool fingers, like a young mother trying to tell if her child has a fever.