A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The Light in the Window

Night, and the soldier stood under the lamp-post watching. High up over his head the arc-light was like a motionless flare-shell, blinding, dazzling, sending out rays; but standing still up there, not settling slowly to the ground the way a flare-shell would. And then down where he was, on the pavement, there was a big round disc of ghost-light, like a thin dusting of talcum on the ground, with him standing in the middle of it, like a phantom spotlight. Halfway down the tall post, between the two, the arc-lamp and him, two flanges stuck out, like a clothes-peg spread wide open. One said ‘14th Avenue’, and it pointed behind his back. One said ‘Second Street’, and it pointed the way he was looking.

He stood there like a statue. Only statues don’t feel. He stood there like a chunk of wood. Only chunks of wood don’t hurt so much.

His back was pressed up against the post; the post was what was keeping it up straight. He had one arm looped behind him, giving him an added grip on the post. The other hung slack. He was young, as soldiers are. But not a boy any more. There were lines on his face that had come too soon. His cheekbones were too pronounced; his jaw needed a little easing. His eyes were steady, and slitted with distant sighting. They never moved, they never wavered. They were on a certain window, diagonally opposite, a number of houses down. They never once left it.

On the ground at his feet there lay a number of things. Things that must have fallen, that didn’t belong there. A cone of thin green tissue paper. The paper was so flimsy it had burst a seam with its own fall, and the head of a rose and a sprig of fern were peering out through the rent. Then there was an oblong box lying there too, also wrapped in paper, with a tinselled string securing it, the way a candy-box is secured. Then there were two or three cigarettes. The peculiar thing about them was they were all still full-length; that is, unconsumed. The tip of each was just a little charred from the first touch of flame. As though they had been dropped by awkward handling in the very act of lighting them, before they had served their purpose, and not just been thrown away.

He didn’t seem to notice that they had fallen. His eyes never left that window.

It was the ground-floor window. It lay alongside the door. Over it there were others in a straight line, a second, a third, a fourth, but he paid no heed to them; it was that one, and that one alone, that held his fixed gaze — his haunted stare.

It was dark, dead, lifeless. It gave him back nothing, not a sign. The one over it, on the second, was lit, was cheerful, was alive. There was even a pot of geraniums on the sill of that one, as if to dress it. But that wasn’t the one he was watching, that couldn’t do anything for him. Then over that, the third was dark again. And then the fourth in turn was lighted. They seemed to alternate. One floor light, the next dark. But those weren’t the ones he was watching. The first, the ground-floor one, was dark.

She was out. But she’d come home soon. He’d watch for her to come home. And then just as she was about to enter he’d call to her and say...

No, that would frighten her. Too sudden, too unexpected after three years; out here in the dark, on the empty street. She’d think she was seeing a ghost. Well, she was; there are ghosts of flesh and blood, just as well as the other kind. Who should know that better than he? He’d wait for her to go inside. He’d let her get in first. He’d know when she was in by the way the window lit up. That would tell him. Then he’d go in after her and knock on the door. Softly, quietly, in order not to alarm her. Then she’d open. Then she’d see him. Then hurting would stop.

He should have told her that they’d brought him back. He should have written and let her know, all these weeks, that he was already over here, in a hospital on this side. But he’d wanted to wait until he was all right, to make it even better, to make it more complete. They’d told him he would be. And now finally he was.

She’d come along soon. Better get ready. He’d have to pick up the candy first, he’d have to pick up the flowers. He started to; he started to bend over slowly towards them. He couldn’t quite make it, though. He went back flat against the post again. Well, not right now, then; in another minute or two, instead. He’d rest up some more first, before doing it. Funny how tired you got. Battle fatigue, they called it at the hospital. They said it would wear off; they said, “You’ll be all right now.”

Under the lamp-post the soldier stood watching.

A car horn gave a sharp tweak as it glided past behind him, and he recoiled against the lamp-post, his head went back and hit it, and the hollow stem sounded with a lazy brazen bong. Then he let out his breath slowly, and it made a soft hiss. He moved his arm, he drew his sleeve across his forehead, and he was all right again.

He said to himself: ‘I think I’ll try again. I’ll try lighting another of those. So that by the time she comes I can show her I have it licked.’

He had only one of each left, one cigarette, one match. He took the cigarette out and put it in his mouth. That part he could always get. Then he pulled off the match and struck it. That part he could do all right too. It was bringing the two of them together.

He started to move the flame closer. He was afraid of it. It was like that one that had burst right in front of him up front that day. It touched the tip of the cigarette, and he couldn’t help it, his face jerked back. The cigarette dropped.

‘I guess I won’t smoke right now,’ he decided ruefully. ‘She’ll light one for me when she comes, and we’re in there together. Like she used to. Only in those days I didn’t have to have it done for me.’

She ought to be home soon now. She ought to be home soon. Please. Out here alone in the dark.

Suddenly his eyes were wide. Something had happened to the house front. The window, the window, had bloomed yellow. And she hadn’t come in from the street. No one had gone in. He’d been right here watching. His eyes hadn’t once left it. She must have — she must have been in there all the time.

In the dark?

There was no other room, only that one overlooking the front; no second room for her to have been in. He’d been in there lots of times before he went away.

It must be — not there. He blinked to make it go away. It stayed bright yellow. He backed his hand across his eyes and held it off a moment, then took it away and looked again. It stayed bright yellow. The one above had gone out by now, but it, the one that mattered, it stayed bright yellow.

It even made a pale reflection out before it on the street, and only real things can make reflections. Something can fool you itself, but if it has a reflection it’s there.

The front door swung out, dropped back, and a man was standing there in front of it.

I’ll wait until he’s out of the way, the soldier said to himself, then I’ll start for over there. He’ll go away in a minute.

The man just stood there, enjoying himself. You could tell he was enjoying himself. You could see his head go back and his chest go out, while he took a deep breath of the fresh air, and held it for a while appreciatively, and then let it go again.

He gave his hat a little shift to make it sit more jauntily. He straightened the shoulders of his coat to make them fit more closely. Then he straightened his tie conceitedly. Then at last he struck out and came down the steps to the sidewalk.

He turned towards the corner the soldier watched from, instead of the other. He was still on the opposite side at first. Then he left it. He was crossing diagonally towards the soldier now, approaching that pallid spotlight of his vigil.

The soldier didn’t move, he stayed there, back to post. He’d be out of the way in a minute, this passer-by, and behind him the window still waited.

He passed behind the soldier, to the rearward of the post, for that was out at the edge.

The footsteps stopped short. Then they came back a pace or two, as if to regain perspective from the side.

“Hey, wait a minute—”

The soldier hadn’t moved, it was just rhetorical.

“Aren’t you Mitchell Clark? Sure. Mitch; that was it. They used to call you Mitch.”

The soldier turned his head and he was standing there right beside him looking at him.

“I thought I knew your face,” he exulted. Then a momentary shade of concern crossed his own. “Don’t you remember me? Art Shearer, from the old neighborhood.” He held out his hand.

“Oh,” the soldier said. He did now; he hadn’t at first. “Oh, sure.” He shook the other’s hand.

“How long is it now? Must be four, five years.” He didn’t wait for the answer. “You’re looking good. Must have agreed with you. Rugged grind, hunh?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “Back for good, or just temporary?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “What are you doing around here, holding up this post?” He glanced briefly up towards the flanges. “Oh, waiting for a bus, I guess. I don’t envy you, brother; you’re going to have some wait, these days.”

He brought out cigarettes, as a spur to sociability.

“Have one.”

They had black bands encircling their waists, up near the tips.

“What are they?” the soldier asked curiously.

“They’re called ‘Black-and-Whites.’ Funny brand, hunh? You don’t often run into them. I stick to them because I got used to them.”

He was prodding into his pockets.

“Gee, I lost my lighter. Or left it somewhere. Can’t find it.” He clicked his tongue worriedly. “What d’you think of that? Never mind, I think I’ve got a match. Yeah, here’s one.”

The small flame, bedded in Shearer’s two hands, yellowed both their faces for a moment as they inclined towards it. The soldier’s eyes came to rest on Shearer’s cheek, at a point offside to his mouth, remained fixed there.

“There’s something on your face.”

“Where?”

“Right there. No, there.”

Shearer took a handkerchief out, touched it with the tip of his tongue, dug at his face. Then he peered at the handkerchief. The smear had transferred itself.

“That stuff gets all over the map,” he smirked, pleased with himself.

Mitch Clark tilted his nose slightly and sniffed. “What’s that?” Then he looked dubiously at the cigarette he was holding.

“What? Oh, that. That’s not the cigarette. It’s probably on me.” He hoisted his coat lapel up towards his own nose, sniffed in turn. “Yeah, it’s all over me,” he admitted ruefully. “Whew! It’s called ‘One Hour Alone.’ Can you imagine; so strong it even gets on you secondhand.” He wagged his head deprecatingly, but he was still pleased, none the less.

Mitch Clark kept his eyes down. He didn’t want to look at the other man. He didn’t want to look at the window, lighted, waiting, there in the background behind him.

He edged his foot forward. The candy box went over the edge of the kerb and into the gutter below. It was damp there. The paper stained dark in patches as it soaked in the moisture. It was no good now.

“What was that?” Shearer asked, glancing down. “Something for the garbage-collector’s truck, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Mitch Clark answered dully. “Something for the garbage-collector’s truck.” He kept looking down.

“What’re you looking at?” Shearer asked finally, following the direction of the look with his own eyes a second time.

Mitch Clark’s mouth twisted briefly, then resumed its normal outline. “You’ve got your — left shoe on your right foot and your right on your left. The hollows are on the outside.”

Shearer chuckled. He waited deliberately for the soldier to look up at him, meet his eyes. Then when he had, he winked portentously at him. “I have?” he drawled, with complete lack of discomfiture. “Well, what d’ya know?”

Mitch Clark shivered a little, bunched his shoulders defensively. “Chilly tonight, isn’t it?” he mumbled.

“Chilly?” Shearer gave him a look of roguish surprise. “Blamed if I can notice it. Don’t ask me to tell you. Not when you’ve just been treated like I have.”

He wanted the soldier to know. He wanted him to get it. He wanted to brag about it. He wanted to hammer it into him, by every means except the direct statement.

He even turned his head and glanced briefly over his shoulder, towards where he’d come from. Then when he’d brought his face forward again, there was that smirk of self-esteem all over it.

It faded slowly. His audience wasn’t appreciative enough. This conversation hadn’t been any fun.

“You’ve changed some, haven’t you?” he let Clark know critically. He threw his cigarette away rather curtly. “Well, I guess I’ll be moving. No use hanging around here all night.” He didn’t offer his hand in parting. Then, from a pace away: “Hope you get your bus. Take it easy.”

The soldier didn’t answer, didn’t move. He heard the footsteps dilute with distance, blur and expire. Silence all around him now. His back wasn’t upright against the post for its entire length any more; the upper part was curved forward, as if it had started to peel off it. But he hadn’t answered; didn’t move.

Only his thoughts moved. But not in a straight line; circularly, round and round, like wisps of bunting caught in the wings of an electric fan. I’m more tired than I was before. I’ve got to get away from this post. I’ve got to go. But where? Turn, go back, before you know. You don’t know yet. Turn, go back, before you do. No, it’s too far away. And they don’t want you to come back, they said you were all right. You’ll have to — go forward, across the street, that’s much nearer. But then you’re liable to know. Isn’t there any place where you can go except just those two, forward and back? No, none. Some people have so many places to go, and you have just two, and you don’t want to go to either one of them. Why did you, how did you, happen to run out of places, get lost like this?... I’m more tired than I was before. I’ve got to get away from this post. Like this. That’s it. Now pull. Pull hard—

He broke from it, and was on his own. He went the way the other man had come, diagonally towards the far side. He staggered twice, but he made it. He got up on to the opposite kerb. He wanted to stop again, but there was no post handy. He went over to the steps that led up to the door and stopped there, bending his stomach over the ornamental iron knob that flanked them.

He stopped a long time. I’ve got to get away from these steps. I’ve got to go in. In there, right in front of me. He went up the three or four steps and then he stopped again, this time leaning against the door embrasure, head down as if he were listening to the stone.

Then suddenly he made a neat, deft little move, an economical half-turn, on one shoulder against the stone, and went in, slipped in like a shadow. Like a shadow when the light changes on a stone facing and drives it away.

The door was white. A pure colour, an innocent colour. The push button beside it was white too; of bone. His finger, held rigid to the push button, was white — with pressure, with strain. The nail was white, all the blood had been forced away from under it. Across the knuckle were livid white cicatrices, ugly to look at, produced by the flattening tension.

The sound of a bell ringing mutedly came through the wood; it was curiously like the whimpering of a sick, puny child.

Over the button there was a card held fast in a rack. On it was printed ‘Miss Constance Sterling.’ It, the card, would have been a blameless white too, but for one single blemish. The print of somebody’s grimy thumb had been left on it; had soiled it, marred it, stained it. It stood out across the ‘Constance’, dimming it somewhat. It was large, could only have been the print of a man’s thumb.

His finger trailed off the push button; his whole arm dropped to his side, and swayed with its own weight, then hung inert. The puling sound behind the wood stopped.

He let his head sink forward until his forehead touched the door. It was as though he were saying a prayer.

He heard something and drew it back.

The door opened and a girl stood there, her face now where his had been only a moment ago.

Her hair was dishevelled. On one side of her face it stood too far forward, almost enclouding one eye. On the other side it was pushed too far back. It was as though her head had been reclining sideways upon a pillow, in sleep or — indolent dalliance. The lower part of her form was enshrouded in soft clinging drapery, that fell too slack, overhanging even the tip of her foot; that had not yet been adjusted properly to her figure, for above it failed to cover one shoulder entirely, and clung to the outermost curve of the other by sheer grace of accident. Her hand was busy with it, trying to support it, to retrieve it.

Two fever-spots of red stood out upon her cheeks that were not rouge, for they were too sharply defined, not graduated enough about their edges.

Her eyes were large with fright. White ships pierced with tremendous black holes, and about to sink at any moment.

They danced about, trying to get in step with his, the man’s, as though there were a form of dancing performed by the eyes alone, in which, just as in the bodily form, the man led, the woman followed. She was out of step in this dance.

They stood there, faces close. So close that only a kiss could have brought them closer. There was no kiss.

“Why don’t you speak to Mitch?” he said poignantly. “Why don’t you say hello to Mitch?”

“Mitch,” she answered. She was all out of breath, even with just that one word, so it must have been something else that had robbed her of it.

She panted a little, lightly. “For a minute I thought I was seeing a ghost.”

“Maybe you are,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.” His jaw was still tight, and it made the words come out flat. Everything he said had a toneless, pressed quality to it.

“Are we — just going to stand like this?” he said.

She moved backward, and drew the door with her. Two sides of a room expanded into view, like a strip of picture postcards being opened to form a single scene.

In the corner stood the bed. It was tortured, had been used. One pillow overhung the side, as if all but swept off with the sudden inquiring departure of its occupant. The other was reared slightly upward against the headboard, in opposite direction to the first. Orange light leered dimly over it, from under the silk shade of a lamp that stood low beside it. This shade had a single rent or ‘run’, as in a taut silk stocking, close beside one of its supporting ribs, and there the light came through less dissembling, less evasive, in a clearer tone of yellow.

A still-kindled cigarette lay under the lamp, causing the orange light to seem to flicker at times as its invisible exudation filmed it. A book lay there too, on its face in sudden discard, pocket-sized and paper-covered, its backbone reared and not heavy enough to force itself flat.

“I shouldn’t let you in,” she said. “Like this, the way I am. But you’ve been away to war. You’ve been hurt.”

“You shouldn’t let anybody in,” he said tightly. “Not just me; anybody.”

He moved slowly past her, through the gap she allowed him, she offered him, and then she closed the door behind him.

“Here, sit down here,” she said, and her hand speared at a chair, sketchily readying it for him. Some pinkish garment that had been slung across its back whipped rearward from sight and never reappeared again, as though done away with by sleight of hand.

“Just let me — fix this,” she said, and sat down before the mirror of a dresser, at the opposite wall from the bed. She drew the garment higher about her shoulders and fastened it with something, some pin or something, in front, out of his sight — her back was to him — so that it stayed primly secured from then on.

She took a comb and touched it to her hair in a place or two, then set it down, and touched the places she had touched with it with her hand instead.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said. “The last letter, you were still over there. Why did you walk in like this?”

He was fumbling for a cigarette. He didn’t answer.

She must have seen him in the mirror. “There are some over there,” she said.

He got up and went slowly to the place she had pointed out. He found the package. There was only one left in it. He took that one out. But then he kept looking at the package, even though it was now worthless, empty. He did everything very slowly, as though he were infinitely tired and had scarcely the energy to do it.

Again, she must have seen him in the mirror, for she didn’t turn her head.

“What’s the matter?”

“Do you always smoke this brand?” he said thoughtfully. “ ‘Black-and-Whites’?”

“Oh, those—” The way she stopped, for a moment he had an impression she was almost as surprised as he at their being there. “No, I—” Then she said: “It’s the first time. They were all I could get. I had to take what he’d give me. There’s been a shortage, you know.”

He picked up an ashtray and looked at it pensively.

“Why are you doing that?”

He put it down again. He said dully, as though it were entirely unimportant: “You must have smoked some with your lipstick on — and some without it. Some are pinkish at their tips. And some are still white.”

She turned round and looked at him over her shoulder, ingenuously blank. “Some must be from earlier in the evening, when I first came home and still had it on. Then after I cleaned it off I went ahead smoking, and those are the others.” She laughed apologetically. “I should have emptied it out.”

“That’s a good answer,” he said sadly. And then he agreed wistfully, “Yes, you should have.” His fist slowly closed, and the empty cigarette package pleated into a curlicued pod, and then dropped from it.

He watched it intently even after that, as though expecting it to re-form and fill out to its original shape again. Then he seemed to notice that he was still holding the cigarette in his hand. For he looked at it, in a rather helpless, dubious sort of way, as though wondering what it was there for, wondering what was meant to be done with it.

“Wait,” she said eagerly. She jumped up from the mirror. “Let me. Like I used to. Remember? You go and sit down. I’ll do it for you.”

He returned to the chair.

“I was trying to outside on the street before, and I—”

She was standing before him now, holding a small enamelled lighter. She bent over towards him with fond intentness, flicked her thumb against it a number of times. Only an arid spark resulted.

“Oh,” she said impatiently, “it’s always out of fuel just when I want it. Wait, here’s another.” She had gone, was back again. A generous, spiralling flame leaped up this time.

“That’s a man’s, isn’t it?” he said indifferently.

It was squat, bulky, coated with rough-grained simulated leather.

He smiled astringently, raised sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes towards her. “What are you doing with it?”

“I don’t know whose it is. I found it. I was coming home one night, and it was lying there, big as life, outside my door there in the hall. So I picked it up and brought it in with me. There’s nothing on it to show whom it belongs to.”

“No, there isn’t, is there?” he agreed forlornly. “Not a thing, not the slightest.” He shook his head, as if in melancholy accord with her negation.

He had neglected to raise the cigarette to proper position. She was waiting, inquiringly. “I don’t want to smoke,” he said muffledly. He let that fall from his fingers, as the package had before. Then he stroked them unnoticeably against the side of his thigh, as if he were wiping them, or removing some foreign, unworthy tincture from them.

She quenched the flame with a click and put the little implement aside. Then she turned her face back towards him again, querulously worried.

“I know we’re a little strange to each other yet. Just at first. They told me it might be like— But — we’ll be all right, won’t we, Mitch?” She brought her face closer, her lips towards his. “Don’t you want to — say hello to me, the right way? Our old way? You haven’t yet, since you first came in, you know.”

Her hand went up and traced his hair back, lingeringly. Then when it rose a second time to repeat it, his head wasn’t under it any more; it had shifted or swerved somehow, without her actually seeing it do so. She was stroking barren space.

Again her lips diffidently approached his. He drew in his breath, sharply. “What is that?”

“What?”

He drew in breath a second time.

“Oh, that. ‘One Hour Alone’.”

“So strong,” he said, as if repeating something from memory, “it even gets on you secondhand.” She saw his eyes go up towards the ceiling, as if trying to determine whether he had recited it right.

“I may have used too much,” she admitted. “Just now I was so excited, seeing you sitting there in front of me, by way of the mirror.”

“Just now?” was all he said.

She withdrew herself slowly from him, reluctantly straightened to her feet. “You’re tired,” she said mournfully. “We’ll have to get used to each other all over again. But we will. I’m going to make you some coffee, that’ll help. I have it right here.”

“I don’t want anything,” he said, with a dull, sightless shake of his head, staring before him towards where she had been until now.

She stopped again, baffled. “What is it, Mitch, what is it?” she pleaded in a low, coaxing voice. “What have they done to you?”

“I ask that,” he said absently.

They remained without speaking for a moment after that. She, standing in arrested departure, sideways and rearward of him, looking back at him. He, seated, vacant-eyed, looking forward at nothing.

Then suddenly, as if revivified, he stood, went over to the bed. He picked up the paper-backed book, reversed it, glanced into the two exposed pages.

“I saw your light go on, about ten or fifteen minutes ago,” he said, without raising his eyes towards her, continuing to scan the page.

“I’d been lying awake in the dark,” she said. “Worrying about you, as I always do. I couldn’t sleep. So I got sick of it finally, and put on the light and tried to read.”

“This?” He raised the book slightly with both hands, lowered it again. But without taking his eyes off it, seeming to peruse it absorbedly.

“Yes, that.”

“What was the last line you read, just as my knock came? What was the last thing of all?”

“Oh, Mitch—” she laughed reproachfully.

He kept staring at the book. “I’d like to find the place. To put my finger on it, and say: ‘Up to here, she was alone. And then I came in.’ ”

Her hand sought her hair, strayed into it baffledly. “I can’t,” she said. “Your knock drove it out of my mind, and now it won’t come back. I wasn’t interested in it, anyway.”

“But you were reading,” he said placidly, as if in reminder of something she herself had forgotten, and was supposed not to.

“Yes, I was reading it.”

“Can’t you give me just the sense of it? Just a word?”

“Oh, but Mitch, this is childish.” She smiled, but again her hand went to her hair. “I can’t think for the life of me... No, wait, I have it! He was asking her if she remembered a woman in the theatre-audience wearing the same kind of hat she herself had on.” She chuckled with a mischievous sort of satisfaction. “It just came back to me now.”

“That’s not here,” he said stonily. “Not on here anywhere.” He began to turn the pages. Endlessly, he seemed to go on turning them in reverse, from back to front. Suddenly he stopped again, retraced his course by a single page. “It is in here,” he said. “I see it. It’s the chapter before. You must have been reading it some other night. Not tonight.”

“No, I read it tonight. I’m sure of it now. When I threw the book down, the pages must have slipped over and carried my place too far forward.”

He turned it in his hands so that it was now face down; he parted his hands and let it fall that way, so that it fell from a greater height than if one had merely discarded it in haste at reading level.

Then he took it up and looked.

“It’s still at the same place,” he said, with all the objectivity of a physicist.

Then he closed it for good, and thus arbitrarily ended the story it held.

Her face had sobered. “I’ll fix that coffee,” she said.

“There won’t be time.” He put his hand out towards her, dissuadingly, but in a lazy, enervated sort of way. And yet the half-hearted gesture was enough to stop her, hold her there, half in, half out of the little recess or wall alcove she had evidently intended using for the purpose.

There was a moment’s pause, while he seemed to be thinking what to say, his head held contemplatively downward. “I’ve been standing out there ever since half past nine. You didn’t go by. I didn’t see you come in.”

“But I was here already. I’ve been here since nine, a little after. Why didn’t you come to the door and—”

Like a drowning man grasping at straws he suddenly blurted out, “You’ve been visiting somebody upstairs. Somebody in the house that you know, you ran up there first, like girls do, when you first came home...” and beat out a sort of agonized time to it by striking his own knee with his clenched fist, once to almost every word, as if by repetition, by rhythm, he could rid himself of pain. “Some girl-friend, some chum, that lives in the building... Then you came down here, after that.” And made a bitter mouth, through which, all incongruously, emerged a throb of happy, almost vacant, laugher.

“I don’t know anyone upstairs.”

“You’ve been visiting on the third or fourth, then. Way up. Think.”

“I don’t know anybody in the house. Not a soul in the entire house.”

“Say you’ve been visiting somebody upstairs,” he pleaded. “Say it.”

“Why should I, when I haven’t?”

He got up from the chair suddenly, started towards the door, as if in desperate urgency to get out, to leave her. Then the impulse wavered, and he stopped and turned towards her, parenthetically. As if still intent on carrying out the idea of departure, but only waiting to be reassured on some point first before doing so.

“Say you haven’t waited. Say you haven’t been true to me, Constance, and I’ll go. I’ll go right now. Without a word, without a whimper. Only don’t fool me. Respect me, even if I am — what I am now. Say it.”

Her eyes were brimming, but she gave no other sign of stress. She shook her head, but with such leniency of motion that the gesture was scarcely discernible at all. As though the phantom of a contradiction was even too substantial to give to such a non-existent idea. “I haven’t looked at another man since you’ve been gone.”

A retch of risibility seemed to course from his stomach, and he even placed his hand towards it for a moment as if to quell the pain implicit in it. “I forgive you, Constance. I overlook it. I–I understand. The war was long and — and hopeless. What am I now — and what was I before? It’s happened to others, why not to me? Only just say it with your own mouth. Is that asking too much? Hurry up, Constance, while I can still take it.”

She came towards him slowly. Her voice was choked with compassion. “You’re so sick. Oh, what is it, what’ve they done—?”

Her arms went towards him, and she slowly twined them about his neck, and looked into his face. Then she tried to bring her own closer, to find his lips with hers, and kiss them in consolation.

He breathed heavily. “So strong it even gets on you secondhand,” he whispered stonily. He swerved his head violently aside, without otherwise moving, and she was left there pendant, unable to reach him with her lips.

The embrace unravelled, and her arms slipped over his shoulders and fell down like loose ropes.

“I’d better make that coffee,” she said almost inaudibly. “There doesn’t seem to be — anything else I can do for you.”

She turned away and went into the alcove, passing from sight for a moment. A tin container clashed briefly, as it was shifted from a higher to a lower level. There was the scratch of a matchstick against sandpaper, the feathery puff of ignited gas.

His hands went towards his waist, and with a sort of introspective leisureliness he began to separate the fastening of his belt.

She had come back to the alcove opening, was staring at him.

“Mitch, what are you doing? I don’t like that. Don’t do that here. I don’t like that here. Mitch, what are doing that for?”

He had withdrawn it now from the loops that held it. His wrists moved with the sort of absent dexterity one gives to the act of disrobing. Mechanical, oft-repeated, with the thoughts elsewhere. “I’m making it small. I’m making a loop of it. So it’ll go around you.” He had made a slipknot of it. The horror was in the way he looked at it, not at her. As though his whole preoccupation were with it, to see if it were satisfactory or not, and she were just an onlooker, an admiring feminine observer to his typical masculine skill at such problems as this.

“Will you say you haven’t been faithful?”

She didn’t answer. She moved suddenly, and to move was death. She darted forward to get to the outer door, swerving outward to get past the place he stood.

He, on the contrary, didn’t move from it. Simply pivoted on his heels to face the other way, while she made the longer outward progress. Like a ringmaster halting some small animal prancing about him on a given radius that cannot be altered.

It dropped over her head just as she reached the door. Her outstretched hand, one moment inches from the knob, was drawn slowly backward, as the pressure of the throng arched her back away from it. The second hand, futilely reaching out to take the other’s place, was again too late. It likewise fell short, strained tremblingly against inexorable backward draw, stretched out on empty air, then at last receded to a distance that could no longer hope to be bridged.

Then, no longer their own masters, they both flew up to ease the stricture, like mechanical things that, once bent back that way, could no longer open out again.

She dropped to her knees, close up against his legs. He kept doing something with his wrists, with deft economy of movement. Her face turned towards him, but whether puppeted by his hands or in last despairing plea of her own volition, it was no longer possible to determine. They were too inextricably entwined. They were what he had wanted them to be: one.

Death came sectionally, not totally.

Her arms died first. Then her legs died, dancing against air. Then her heaving breast. Her eyes died last, after everything else was gone. The lights went out, but they stayed open. He bent his head slowly. He found her agonizedly parted lips with his and kissed them. Lingeringly, devoutly. The kiss of homecoming, the kiss of parting. Then he let go of the belt, that he was gripping behind her head, holding her up as by a halter, and she seemed to fall away from him. She dropped suddenly on to the bed. The bed shook and she seemed to shake with it, but it was only the bed shaking, not she.

“Now I’m alone,” he whispered, baffled. “Now she’s not here any more. Now I’m without her anyway.” A puzzled expression creased his forehead. “What good did that do?” Then the answer he was groping for seemed to come to him, belatedly, and it partially eased him. “Now she has to be true to me, whether she wants to or not.” The lover that had her now, he never gave them back again.

He wanted the belt back. There was some sort of dim precaution involved in this; but it wasn’t at all coherent to him. Don’t leave your belt on her, was all it seemed to say; don’t leave your belt on her. He wasn’t sure why, but it nudged at him insistently in the twilight of his reflexes.

It was hard to get it off. He’d stop each time, afraid that he was hurting her; then he’d remember that she couldn’t feel it now, and go ahead a little more.

It was hard to straighten, too, even after it was off.

He paid it off in a straight line along the floor, and then he smoothed it by treading on it with his foot, and drawing his foot slowly along it, as if he were pressing it with an iron. Then he picked it up.

He turned his back on her, with some dim instinct of delicacy, and inserted it through the loops of his waistband. And then buckled it.

Now he was very tired, now he could sit down and rest.

He sat down on the chair, and supported his head for a while with one hand. It was quiet in the room, soothing. His eyelids started to droop closed once or twice, but he would blink them open again, go on resting again, contemplative, motionless.

She stared at the ceiling, he at the floor. It was as though they had had a quarrel and were sulking, pretending indifference to each other.

After a while something bothered him. There was something still wrong, something left undone. He couldn’t think what it was at first. He looked over at her. “My belt is not around her throat.”

Then suddenly he knew what it was. “I am still in here with her. I am still in the same room with her. I should be outside somewhere, away from here.”

Questions, that was all he was afraid of. Too many questions. He was too tired.

He struck the arms of the chair with his hands, as the preliminary stage of rising. Then enervated, tired, did nothing else.

(More than that, that’s not enough. You just moved your hands. You’ve got to pull your whole body up.)

He thrust one foot backward, under the chair seat, to gain leverage for rising. Then followed it with the second. Then again did nothing further.

(Still not enough. Now this is the hard part. This comes next. Want to, like they told you at the hospital. Want to bad.)

He pulled himself erect. He stood there just forward of the chair. He swayed. He sought backward-flailing support of the chair-arms and found himself sitting again.

He grimaced and his eyes got wet.

(All right then, do it over. You’ll have to start in from the beginning and do it over again. Ready? Rested? Now.)

He was standing again. He fixed his eyes on the door.

(Now go over there.)

Midway to it he stopped. Looked back.

(But why do I have to leave her? There was some reason, but I’ve forgotten.) He half turned, about to retrace his steps. (No, keep going, and try to remember it on the outside, if you must. It won’t come to you here. The air’s clearer out there.)

He got to the doorknob, and punched it into his stomach with both hands, and that held him for a while, as though he’d skewered himself on to it bodily. Then he got the door open and crept around it to the outside.

He closed the door with infinite, tender slowness, holding her face fixed within view to the last. “Little Connie,” he whispered, as if reassuring her of his fondness. “We’ve known each other such a long time, haven’t we?”

He touched two fingers to his lips, in what, had it been completed, would have been the gesture of wafting a kiss.

But the kiss faltered, and the fingers dropped, and the door closed.

Outside in the open, it was cool and still and dark. The only sound was the scrape of his foot on the steps of the house. He stood there for a moment on them, as he remembered once having seen some other man do — he couldn’t remember who, couldn’t remember when — on leaving a house that he had stood watching.

The freshness of the air helped him. He felt a little less tired. He knew the respite was temporary, it would come back again. He knew that when it did, this time it would be for good. He knew, somehow, that before it did he must get as far away from here as he could.

He would have liked to stay there in the doorway, but he forced himself to leave it. He crossed to the other side of the street, at a rather faltering, shaky gait. There was about the way he lifted and set down his feet (almost seeming to free them with a lingering shake each time) a faint suggestion of a struggling fly, already trapped but still able to move, trailing over flypaper.

He stopped and looked back from there. The light was still on in her window. He knew that she was dead in there. He knew that he should go away from it as far as he could. Those two things were clear and distinct. They were all that were.

Then he looked up higher, to see if anyone was looking out. No one was. The last thing he saw was the geraniums, on the window-sill over hers. They were black, but he could still see their outline.

They should be down below, he thought vaguely. Flowers are for death.

The first block wasn’t so difficult. He was conscious of going steadily forward. Though he didn’t know in what direction forward lay, still he did not stand still, and he kept going away from where he had been. That much was a gain.

Fatigue began creeping back. Not fatigue of the limbs, that can be overcome by resting; fatigue of the senses, that leads into nonawareness, into nothingness. His mind was like an exposed photographic plate, still clear in the centre but beginning to blur all around the edges. In the clear patch in the centre there remained but one sharply defined image or message: Keep going, keep going far away.

The second block he was stopping more frequently now, coming to an erratic standstill every so often, then going on again. As though an enormous hand had been cupped upon him suddenly, holding him where he was; then lifted again, as inexplicably, letting him continue. He was like a mannikin, or something wound with a key, that follows a mechanical trajectory. He would even continue stiffly facing in the one set direction, while the halt lasted; even though it might be on the bias to the guiding-lines of pavement edge and building base. Then continue on it when he resumed going.

It was fairly horrible; night charitably covered most of it.

Once he passed a sentry, and the man studied him suspiciously, but there was no challenge, so he gave no recognition. No halting shot followed, either, though his neck was bent defensively for some time after. He went on until he was past that area.

The swirling blur had all but closed over the clear space in the centre now. One twinkling point of light remained, like a glimmering star. Keep on, farther away.

He stumbled over some hidden kerbstone hazard, went down. A screaming shell went by just then, trailing blinding light. He could feel the air flurry of its passage, so the fall must have saved him. There was no concussion; it never exploded. It simply whined itself out into far distance. It seemed to skim the surface of the earth without ever descending to it to detonate, without its arc ever coming to an end. He’d never experienced a shell like that before.

He dropped the protective arm with which he’d shielded his eyes, and picked himself up, and went on.

Another one came at him, this time from the opposite direction. He must be in the centre of a cross-fire. Again on a blinding trail of light that preceded it. He stood still, paralysed. It swerved violently to one side of him, snaking its comet-like glare with it, skimmed past, then straightened back upon its former trajectory. A smouldering red spark marked its recession. Again there was no thud. His nerves cried out for it, and it never came.

These were the worst kind; there was no sundering of tension after them. They never hit anywhere.

He began to run now, at a sort of tottering trot, to get away from them. No more came for a minute. He stopped, panting and clutching at his stomach with both hands to keep it from rejecting.

Suddenly a voice said: “Anything wrong? Anything I can do for you, buddy?”

His lieutenant, giving him an order.

“Yes sir,” he said crisply, and saluted mechanically, and went forward, walking rapidly in a straight, unerring line.

He went face first into a wall, and felt it blindly with the flats of his hands for an opening, then, finding none, and not knowing how to overcome it, lieutenant or no lieutenant, allowed it to deflect him and followed it instead. They often sent you places like that, where there was no way through. You had to go, though, just the same.

The wall turned, and he did with it. Then it left him, and he was on his own again.

They were starting to come around him thick again. Some of them screeched, and some of them hummed, and some of them gave ear-slitting honks, like flying metal geese. He’d better hurry and get a hole dug.

He dropped to his hands and knees, keeping his head low, as he had learned to do, and raked with his bare nails, in long strokes in two parallel rows.

The surface was hard, he couldn’t seem to break it, to get through to the fill. He tried harder, faster. His arms flailed in and out.

They kept dropping around him. The flash would come, but then it wouldn’t go out again. It would sort of slide to a stop, to one side of him, and then just stay there with a sort of purring throb, that even shook the ground he was grovelling on.

Voices came from them, and doors cracked, and feet thrust suddenly down into view from on high, then took root.

“What is it? What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know. I been following him for several blocks. Something wrong.”

“Oh, my God, Charlie! Don’t just stand there watching him. Help him. Look at his hands.”

There were narrow, dark, glistening tracks appearing now in the wake of his fingers, freshly renewed each minute.

Arms went round his middle. The arms of medicos, they must have been. He was lifted up, held propped. Hands fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, and he could feel his dog-tag being twisted, drawn out through the opening.

“From — Convalescent Hospital,” a muffled voice said. “Better get him back there, right away.”

His hand groped upward, trying to find his forehead in a salute.

“I couldn’t make it,” he sighed inaudibly.

“Easy, easy,” a sympathetic, sob-thick voice murmured. “The war’s over, soldier.”

The war’s over, soldier. He took that with him down into the long sleep that follows battles. Constance was his girl, safe, waiting, three thousand miles away. Someone to go back to...

It was warm in the sun, on the park bench. It went through your clothes, and found your skin, and felt good; you didn’t hurt any more. There were green leaves, and under them a film of pale-blue shade, off that way in the distance, but it was even better here, out in the open, out in full sun.

You just sat, and the blue shade slowly circled round on the ground under the trees, from one side all the way over to the other. Let the shade move. You didn’t. You just sat. There was nowhere to go but here. He knew now all the places to go — he wasn’t lost or uncertain any more, his mind was clear — and he knew there was no other place but this to go.

There was no going back now, either. He knew that too. He was all right now. You couldn’t always go back. He could light a cigarette now. Watch. See? He could walk as long as he wanted to without stopping. And that was all-right. That was all it would ever be from now on. If there had been other things, there weren’t any now.

There was no place to go, nothing to do. Sit in the sun, watch the shade go round. You grew old, like the shade. You had to wait for it, what else could you do? It was an order, from a lieutenant. A different one, you never saw. But he’d given it just the same; you had to obey.

The man over at the other end of the bench got up, left his newspaper lying there behind him.

After a while he reached over and picked it up. He rearranged it and started to pore over it patiently. It took a long time, it said so many things. It helped the shade go quicker; it helped in carrying out the lieutenant’s order.

It said so many things. Some of them were large, some of them small. He got to even the smallest eventually, after the large ones were done.

It said: ‘Forecast for Thursday: Clear and warm, with variable winds, lowered humidity. Maximum temperature—’

It said: ‘Extraordinary Values! Mail and phone orders filled while quantities last. Come early to be sure of a full selection—’

It said: ‘Cards Strike Out in Second—’

It said: ‘Killer Pays Penalty. Orville Johns, 32, went to his death last night in the execution chamber of the State Penitentiary at — for the murder of Constance Sterling, in June of last year. Johns was the janitor of the building in which the slain girl lived; a number of her belongings were found in his basement apartment shortly after the discovery of the crime. He disappeared at the time, and was not apprehended for some months afterwards... Protesting his innocence to the last, the condemned man entered the chamber at 11.10 and was pronounced dead at 11.15.

“For acid indigestion, use Bell-ans. Twenty-five cents at all drugstores.”

I did that, he said to himself, squinting thoughtfully up at the sun. That was me.

He’d known he’d done it, for some time now.