The Ninth Wave (47 page)

"It's always tough, Mike," Notestein said. "I'm used to it."
"Your friends have got a lot at stake," Mike said. "Taxes, offshore oil,
railway fares, utility rates. They can't miss. Not even once. And it
would be tough for you, Terence. You being a Hungarian and a Jew. They'd
say you didn't understand American politics. If Cromwell wins they'd
say they made a mistake trusting your judgment."
"But I do understand politics," Notestein said. His voice was wheedling.
Hank watched as Notestein seemed to shrink inside the bulk of his sport
coat. Almost as if he were going backward in time, to an older and safer
level of existence. Notestein wrung his hands together. He smiled slyly
at Mike. His accent thickened and the old European gestures asserted
themselves.
"One thing I really understand is politics," Notestein said. He picked
his nose. His fingers flicked across his chin as if he were caressing a
beard. He cocked his head. His eyes were wide and unfocused with anxiety.
"Sure you do, Terence," Mike said. "But it would still be tough to be wrong
on the next governor. You don't have your final papers, Terence. Don't
be out of a job when they come up for approval. You have to be
self-supporting, remember that."
"But, Mike, what do you give?" Notestein asked and his voice was shrill,
feminine, foreign. "They should the money give and you nothing? That's
honest? I'd spit, but it's not polite. They need the guarantee. That
much money, Mike. That is a lot." He paused and was suddenly abashed.
"Spit? That I wouldn't do. Forget that, Mike. As a friend forget that.
But what could you give in return for that much money?"
"Nothing, Terence."
"Nothing? Crazy, you've gone crazy."
"I don't care what they do. Tell them whatever you want. If they don't
put up the money someone else will."
"Don't rush. I didn't say they would not put up the money. Keep calm,"
Notestein said. His voice went thin and sharp, scratched at Mike's
assurance. "Just something to tell them, Mike. Just something to let
them know that much money is well spent. Come on. As a friend. What can
I tell them?"
"Tell them that I'll know where the money came from," Mike said. "That's
all, Terence."
Notestein stared at Mike for a moment. He slid out of the booth. He
started to walk toward the door, shrunken in his suit, the collar pressing
against his ears, muttering to himself. He was almost to the door when
he turned suddenly. He dashed back and picked up the check. "My treat,"
he said. "I treat everybody. Notestein's treat, understand?"
He grinned at them as he took a bill from his wallet and dropped it on
the table. He turned and hurried out of the restaurant. Hank watched
him through the plate-glass window.
Notestein stood on the curb, watching the traffic pour down Wilshire
Boulevard. He moved crabbedly into the traffic. For a moment he was
caught in the middle of the street, surrounded by the thundering, swift
cars. He looked from side to side and once over his shoulder. His face
was white and strained.
Somehow the traffic, the flashing senseless rushing cars reminded Hank
of a mob. And something about Notestein's hunched shoulders reminded
him d something else. He felt a stab of memory: slight, passing, quickly
gone. Something about Notestein reminded him of a day long ago when he
had walked beside someone who had an accent. They had walked down an empty
street, but it was threatening -- and behind them was a menace. He
remembered that the person had black, frightened eyes, and he had muttered
in German and behind them had been the sound of ominous, tramping feet.
They had escaped somehow . . . but that was all he could remember. Then
the memory slipped away.
Notestein bolted across the street. He stood for a moment at the edge
of a large glittering gas station. He was small and hunched, defensive
and ludicrous. Then he saw the green phone booth and he scurried toward
it. He closed the green folding door behind him and put his hand in his
pocket. It came out full of coins that fell from his hands and glittered
as they fell. He lifted the receiver and his fingers shoved a dime in
the coin slot.
Hank looked away.
CHAPTER 29
The Dream
She watched him on the bed. It was dark and cool in the motel room, but
his body was glistening with sweat. The motel was built on an expensive
curve on Santa Monica Boulevard and as the cars came into the turn, their
headlights threw hard bands of light into the room for a brief moment.
In the flashes of light she could see him, curled up, knees under his
chin. Georgia sat in a chair, in the dark, and watched him sleep.
He's not an easy sleeper, she thought. He grinds his teeth when he
sleeps. And that curled-up position is not the way a child sleeps. It
was the position a boxer might take when he was felled; unconsciously
protective, hands knotted into fists, his breath coming heavily through
his nose.
She would not go to sleep for hours now. She never did. She got up from
the chair and walked over to the bureau. She fumbled for a cigarette. In
the flashing, uncertain darkness she could see her naked body reflected
in the mirror. It was a black reflection with only the curves of her
hips occasionally turning white as the light shattered into the room.
I wonder if he loves me? she thought. If it weren't for the polio I'd
know. I keep thinking I'm awkward; that he sees me limp. Once he said
he liked the limp.
She sighed and walked back to the chair by the window. She looked down
Santa Monica Boulevard, saw the headlights aim for the window, grow from
tiny dots of light to great roaring circles of brightness that veered away
into the curve just before they hit the motel. She put the full pack of
cigarettes on the arm of her chair. Now that she had started, she knew
that she would go through the whole pattern, think it all through again.
First, she thought about Mike's wife. Once, months ago, she had worried
about Connie. She had never seen Connie and Mike never mentioned her. But
Georgia was aware of her; waiting for Mike to come home; waiting with
the children. At first she had wondered what Connie would be thinking
and doing; wondered whether she was anxious.
And then she came to really disbelieve that Connie existed. Because Mike
never mentioned her and because he was never home and because he did not
carry a picture of Connie and the children in his wallet; because of all
these things, Connie faded in outline and importance until finally she was
only a name; not a name that really stood for a person, but merely a name.
But Georgia did not forget the name. For Connie stood for something. She
stood for the fact that Mike could utterly, completely, without
reservation, put a person out of his memory. Connie meant that Mike could
forget you, could draw away and without the slightest loss to himself
leave you abandoned. Connie stood for a puzzled look in Mike's eye that
meant that he quite literally did not remember you; that he could,
without malice or design, simply force a person below the surface of
importance and recognition and remembrance. And once below the surface,
Georgia sensed that a person could never drive above it again. Mike
did not hate Connie, he was not bored with her, he was not cruel to
her. He simply had forgotten that she existed. Georgia wondered, dimly,
how Connie existed. And whenever she thought of it she shivered; not for
Connie, but for the isolation that was more ominous and frightening than
anything that could happen to Connie.
Maybe the important question is whether or not I love him, Georgia
thought. Maybe you can never know if he loves you, so the important
thing is to know if you love him.
It would be a hard thing to know, she thought. Mike was like a stone;
an attractive, magnetic, powerful stone. A stone that was vaguely
translucent; that you could see into for a few inches and then it went
milky and inscrutable. And around the stone, all the little iron filings
gathered, people like herself who did not see anything in the stone, but
could not resist it. When the stone moved they rearranged themselves,
shifted positions, made an intricate complex maneuver to get closer to
the stone.
Once she had said this to Mike. They were walking through Yosemite Park
and they saw a tall white tree with spiky branches beside a huge hulking
rock. It was the first windy day of autumn and they saw the tree rub
against the rock and the stubby branches splintered off their summer's
growth against the flint-hard surface. On the side of the tree that was
toward the rock, the limbs were stunted, raw, splintered.
"That's us," she said and pointed at the rock and the tree. "I keep
splintering against you and I never even scratch your surface. And
wherever I touch you I'm all splintered. Look at the rock. There isn't
even a scratch on it."
Mike looked at the rock and then at the tree. He nodded and they continued
the walk. He did not understand.
Part of the process, part of the inevitable thing that kept her awake, was
comparing Mike to the other men she knew. He was not like Morrie. Morrie
was like a sponge, a big soft sponge with a diamond-hard core. Mike was
not like Harry Amsterdam, her second cousin who had come out from New York
one Christmas and taken her to five night clubs, gotten her drunk on
champagne, seduced her and then put his head on her lap and cried
desperately. And Mike was not like Father. At first she had thought
they were alike. They were both calm and decisive and that had deceived
her. But as she came to know Mike, she realized that her father was
a balance of tensions, that his surface calm was due to a careful
calculation of pressures, a determination to appear a certain way. With
Mike the appearance was the reality: he was not under tension.
No, that was not completely right, she thought. Mike was under tensions.
But he did not calculate or worry or scheme. The pressures were from
the inside, not from she outside. They were Mike's pressures, his own.
A covey of MG's came down the boulevard. There was a boy and girl in each
roadster and a little flag was fastened to the rear of each car. They
whirred past, jockeying for position. From a few of the cars came
wind-shattered laughs.
Mike woke up and rolled over on his back.
"I was dreaming," he said.
"I didn't know you dreamed."
"I do. For years, ever since the war, it's been the same dream. Exactly
and precisely the same dream. I know it like I know the palm of my hand."
"Tell me about it, Mike."
"Why would you want to know about a dream?" he asked sleepily. "That's
funny about women. A woman is curious about a man. She wants to pull out
everything private, see everything inside of him. And when she does she
loves him; when his privacy is gone she loves him. Doesn't matter. I'll
tell you about the dream."
He pulled the pillow under his head.
"The dream has no color," he said. "Everything is gray. There is a landscape.
Somehow I know it's round and limited, has boundaries. At the edge of the
landscape are hills, sharp, angular hills, studded with rocks. On the tops
of the hills are trees. The trees are huge and tough like no trees I've
ever seen. They're the boundary. In between the hills is a valley and
I always walk through that.
"The whole thing, the whole landscape, is held together somehow. It trembles
as if it might come apart. The whole thing is like one of those airplane
wings that engineers test under stress. When the strain gets great
enough the wing starts to vibrate, and finally a single little rivet
goes or a pucker appears in the foil and the whole thing twists itself
to pieces. The landscape is like that: under stress and barely holding
itself together.
"I walk through the valley and come onto a street. It's a regular city
street. There are dried palm trees hanging over the street and they make
a gray thin shade. In front of some of the lots there are 'For Sale'
signs. In the scorched grass two cats are fighting. I can hear them
hiss, but can't see them. Then one cat backs out of the grass, arched
and walking on its nails, spitting into the grass. The other cat comes
after it in long oily leaps. They circle around for a few minutes and
then one turns and runs.
"The nails of one of them scratch the surface of the landscape. I can
see it very clearly . . . a long, very thin rent. Through the rent I
can see something whirling and turning, like the circle of burning gas
you see around a planet.
"The landscape starts to tremble, wrinkles run out from the tiny rent.
Somewhere, far away, up in one of the hills, a tree crashes down and
I know that if I don't stop it the whole thing will crumple up, twist,
tear itself to pieces. So I run to the rent and patch it together. The
material is tough and hard, like a ripped open tin can. My fingers bleed
as I try to get it back together. The cats come back, terrified at what
they have done. They crouch down and watch me, pleading with their eyes
for me to fix the rent. And finally I get it back together. The trembling
stops, everything steadies down. And I wake up."
"That's all?" Georgia asked.
"That's all," Mike said. "Not very exciting, is it?"
He looked at her for a moment. He turned over and at once he was
asleep. In a few moments his teeth began to grind softly together.
Georgia thought of Hank. Hank never became angry with Mike, but the
things that Mike said upset him.
Why did it upset Hank so much? she thought. Mike never forced his ideas
on anyone. He just believed some unpleasant things and acted on his
beliefs. It was one of the attractive things about Mike. He didn't try
to be fashionable or popular or easy. He said just what he thought. Hank
exaggerates things, she thought. He worries too much. He's like me.
The next day Georgia asked Morrie the name of a good psychoanalyst. She
made an appointment. The psychoanalyst was a German and he was very
gentle. He spoke with a very thick accent. She told him Mike's dream. Once
or twice he asked her to repeat episodea in the dream, very slowly.
"Are those the same words, the identical words, that your friend used?" he
asked her.
Exactly," she said.
He nodded and she went on. He asked her some questions about Mike's age and
his occupation and his family.