"Bullet Park" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cheever John)

V

When Tony had been in bed for seventeen days there was a spell of fine weather and Nailles woke one morning feeling wonderful. It was about six. The sun had not yet risen but the sky was brilliant. He shaved and bathed and bounded into Nellie's side of the bed and taking her in his arms he thought she seemed a much younger woman than he knew her to be. They seemed in their loving and being loved to have put down the accumulations of time, as if their baser qualities, like some stern presence, had gone off for an hour or so, leaving them free to sport and revel. When he went to the window the land that he saw looked like a paradise. It was not, he knew. Septic drain fields lay under the grass and that flock of cardinals in the fir trees might have lice, but while the brilliance of their plumage and the clarity of their singing had nothing to do with peace on earth, love or bank deposits, it gave him such a feeling of exaltation he threw his arms apart as if he were going to embrace the landscape and the birds. "Oh I feel so wonderful," he said. "Something seems to have happened while I slept. I feel as though I'd been given something, some kind of a present. I feel that everything's going to be the way it was when it was so wonderful. Tony will get up today or perhaps tomorrow and go back to school. I just know that everything's going to be wonderful."

Nailles ate a big breakfast and then went up to Tony's room. That neither he nor his wife nor his son had ever been ill made the reek of a sickroom, as it flew up to his nose, cutting and strange. The shades were drawn. Tony slept. He slept in his underpants and his shoulders were bare. His skin was a liverish color. His hair was mussed and had not been cut for a month. He embraced his pillow with desperation. "Wake up, Tony," Nailles said. "Wake up. It's a marvelous, marvelous morning. Wake up and take a look." He raised the shades and a brilliant light poured into the sickroom. "Look, Tony, see how bright everything is. Nobody can stay in bed on a day like this. It's like a challenge, Tony. Everything's ahead of you. Everything. You'll go to college and get an interesting job and get married and have children. Everything's in front of you, Tony. Come to the window."

He took his son by the hand and drew him out of bed to the window and stood there with an arm around his shoulder. "See, Tony, how bright it all is. Doesn't it make you feel better?" Tony dropped to his knees on the floor. "Tomorrow, Daddy," he sobbed. "Maybe tomorrow."

Nailles felt, like some child on a hill, that purpose and order underlay the roofs, trees, river and streets that composed the landscape. There was some obvious purpose in his loving Nellie and the light of morning but what was the purpose, the message, the lesson to be learned from his stricken son? Grief was for the others; sorrow and pain were for the others; some terrible mistake had been made. Tony was sobbing violently and then he spoke-he howled:

"Give me back the mountains."

"What, Sonny, what did you say?"

"Give me back the mountains."

"What mountains, Sonny," Nailles asked. "Do you mean the mountains that we used to climb? The White Mountains. They're not really white, are they? Remember how we used to climb from Franconia to Crawford? That was fun, wasn't it? Are those the mountains you mean?"

"I don't know," Tony said. He got back into bed.

"Well I have to go or I'll miss the train," Nailles said. "I'll see you tonight"

Nailles, waiting that morning for the 7:56, fended off any questions about his son's health by saying that he had mononucleosis. He stood on the platform between Harry Shinglehouse and Hammer. Nailles and Hammer read the Times. Shinglehouse read the Wall Street Journal. Since the dinner party Nailles and Hammer had said good morning but not much more. They sometimes took the same train in the morning but Nailles had only once seen his neighbor on the 6:32 home, when Hammer was asleep, either drunk or weary or both. He had a black dispatch case in his lap and was humped unconscious over this in a position that seemed desperate and abject. What is the pathos of men and women who fall asleep on trains and planes; why do they seem forsaken, poleaxed and lost? They snore, they twist, they mutter names, they seem the victims of some terrible upheaval although they are merely going home to supper and to cut the grass. Nailles watched his neighbor and when he did not wake up at Bullet Park he shook his shoulder and said: "Time to get up." "Oh thank you," said Hammer. It had been their only conversation.

This morning they nodded to one another and read their folded papers as down the tracks came the Chicago express, two hours behind schedule and going about ninety miles an hour. Nailles grabbed for his hat, folded his paper and shut his eyes because the noise and commotion of the express was like being in the vortex of some dirty wind tunnel. When the express had passed he opened his eyes and saw the train helling off into the distance, gaily waving a plume of steam like a pig's tail. He had started to read the Times again when he noticed that Harry Shinglehouse had vanished. He swung around to see if Harry had changed his position but he was not on the platform. Looking back to the tracks he saw a highly polished brown loafer lying on the cinders. "My God," he finally said. "That fellow. What's his name. He was sucked under the train."

"Hmmmmm," said Hammer, lowering his paper.

"Shinglehouse. He's gone."

"By Jesus, so he has," said Hammer.

"Shinglehouse," Nailles shouted. "He's dead. I mean he was killed."

"What'll we do," said Hammer.

"I'll call the police," Nailles said. "I'd better call the police."

There was a telephone booth at the end of the platform and he ran to this and got the police.

"Patrolman Shea speaking," said a voice.

"Look," Nailles said. "This is Eliot Nailles. I'm at the station. The Chicago train just came through and Shinglehouse was sucked under the train."

"I don't get it," said the patrolman. Nailles had to repeat his story three times. The 7:56 came in and everyone but Hammer and Nailles boarded it. A few minutes later they heard the siren and saw the lights of a police car. Two policemen ran out onto the platform. "He was standing right there," Nailles said. "There's his loafer. He was standing right there and the train came through and he was gone."

"Where's the body?"

"I don't know," Nailles said.

"Well I guess you two had better come back to the stationhouse with me for questioning."

"But we have to go to work," Hammer said. "I have a meeting."

"So have I," Nailles said, "and anyhow we don't know anything about it. Why don't you call the railroad police?" This was a shot in the dark but someone had to do something to make that moment continuous and the police seemed grateful for the suggestion. One of them picked the shoe off the tracks and they went back to the patrol car. Suddenly Hammer began to cry. "There," Nailles said. "There. It's all right. Was he a friend of yours?"

"No," Hammer sobbed. "I didn't know the poor bastard."

"There, there," Nailles said, putting an arm around Hammer. They were merely acquaintances but the casualty had thrust them into an intimate relationship. Hammer controlled his sobbing but Nailles kept an arm around his shoulders and this curious couple were seen by the passengers of the 8:11. Nailles and Hammer rode into the city together, stunned by the mysteriousness of life and death.

The evening paper carried the story. The vanished man had been unemployed and had left a wife and three children. He had once run for town council on the Republican ticket and had formerly been in advertising. Nailles wanted to call the widow but he could think of nothing to say.

The next morning was dark and rainy. He overslept and missed the express train that usually took him to his office. The local that he traveled on made twenty-two stops between Bullet Park and Grand Central Station. The dirty train windows and the overcast sky seemed to have eclipsed his spirits. He remembered Shinglehouse's loafer. He felt peculiar. He read his Times but the news in the paper, with the exception of the sporting page, seemed to be news from another planet. A maniac with a carbine had massacred seventeen people in a park in Dallas, including an archbishop who had been walking his dog. The usual wars were raging. The Musicians' Union, Airplane Pilots, Firemen, Circus Performers and Deckhands were all threatening to strike. The White House secretary denied rumors of a fistfight between the President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. Drought threatened the wheat crop. An unidentified flying object had been seen in Ohio. A hairdresser in Linden, New Jersey, had shot his wife, his four children, his poodle and himself. A three-day smog in Chicago had paralyzed most transportation and closed many businesses. Nailles felt uncheerful and tried the naive expedient of bolstering his spirits by assessing his good fortune. Had he been indicted for grand larceny? No. Had he been murdered in a park? No. Had he been trapped in a burning building, lost on a glacier, bitten by a rabid dog? No. Then why wasn't he more cheerful?

The train stopped at Tremont Point, Greenacres, Lascalles, Meadowvale and Clear Haven. The trip seemed intolerable, but why? He had made it a thousand times. Why should this link between his home and his office seem torturous? His breathing was heavy, his palms were wet, there was a quaking feeling in his gut and the dark rain seemed to beat upon his heart. When the train reached Longbrook, Nailles suddenly grabbed his raincoat, pushed his way past the oncoming passengers and left the car. The train coasted on and he found himself alone in a suburban railway station at half past eight in the morning.

Nailles's sense of being alive was to bridge or link the disparate environments and rhythms of his world, and one of his principal bridges-that between his white house and his office-had collapsed. He stepped out of the rain into the waiting room. What he needed was guts but where could he find them? He could not summon them, that much was clear. Could he develop them in a gymnasium, win them in a lottery, buy them from a mail-order house or receive them as a heavenly dispensation? There was another local in fifteen minutes and commuters had begun to gather for this. Nailles boarded it, trying to sell himself a specious brand of cheerfulness. He stayed on that local for two more stops and got off again. Station by station he made a cruel pilgrimage into the city.

After dinner that night Nailles poured a strong whiskey and took it up to Tony's room. He sat in a chair beside Tony's bed as he had done so many times in the past when he used to read to the boy Treasure Island.

"How do you feel, Sonny?"

"About the same."

"Did you eat any supper?"

"Yes."

"There was a long thing in the paper on Sunday about how your generation thinks the world is terribly compromised. Do you think the world is terribly compromised?"

"No, I don't think it's compromised."

"You don't think this has anything to do with your trouble?"

"I love the world. I just feel sad, that's all."

"Well I suppose there's plenty to be sad about if you look around, but it makes me sore to have people always chopping at the suburbs. I've never understood why. When you go to the theater they're always chopping at the suburbs but I can't see that playing golf and raising flowers is depraved. The living is cheaper out here and I'd be lost if I couldn't get some exercise. People seem to make some connection between respectability and moral purity that I don't get. For instance, the fact that I wear a vest doesn't necessarily mean that I claim to be pure in heart. That doesn't follow. All kinds of scandalous things happen everywhere but just because they happen to people who have flower gardens doesn't mean that flower gardens are wicked. For instance, Charlie Stringer was indicted last year for sending pornography through the mails. He claims to be some kind of a publisher and I guess dirty pictures is his business. He lives in one of those Tudor houses on Hansen Circle and he has a pretty wife and three children. Flower gardens. Trees. A couple of poodles. The critics would say: Look, look, look what a big facade he's constructed to conceal the fact that he deals in obsceneness and corruption, but what's the point? Why should a man who deals in filth have to live in a cesspool? He's a bastard for sure but why shouldn't a bastard want to water his grass and play softball with the kids?

"We talk an awful lot about freedom and independence. If you were going to define our national purpose I don't guess you could avoid using words like freedom and independence. The President is always talking about freedom and independence, the army and navy are always fighting to defend freedom and independence and on Sundays at church Father Ransome thanks God for our freedom and independence but you and I know that the blacks who live in those firetraps down along the river don't have any freedom or independence in the choice of what they do and where they live. Charlie Simpson is really a great fellow but he and Phelps Marsden and a half a dozen other prominent and wealthy men around here make their money in deals with Salazar, Franco, Union Minière and all those military juntas. They talk about freedom and independence more than anybody else but they furnish the money and the armaments and the technicians to crush freedom and independence whenever it appears. I hate lying and I hate falsehoods and when you get a world that admits so many liars I suppose you've got something to be sad about. I don't, as a matter of fact, have as much freedom and independence as I'd like myself. What I wear, what I eat, my sex life and a lot of my thinking is pretty well regimented but there are times when I like being told what to do. I can't figure out what's right and wrong in every situation.

"The newspapers are sometimes very confusing. They keep running photographs of soldiers dying in jungles and mudholes right beside an advertisement for a forty-thousand-dollar emerald ring or a sable coat. It would be childish to say that the soldier died for emeralds and sables but there it is, day after day, the dying soldier and the emerald ring. And homosexuality. You read a lot about that these days and it bothers me. I wish it didn't exist. Before I joined the Chemists Club I used to have to pump ship in Grand Central and I almost never went into those choppers without getting into trouble. Once when I was going up the stairs this guy came along and took my arm. I had on a Brooks suit and a Locke hat and Peal shoes and the reason I had all this stuff on was to make my intentions clear. So I walked away from him. I didn't hit him. I didn't see his face. I've never seen any of their faces. The only reason I joined the Chemists Club was so that I could have a place in midtown where I could pump ship without getting into a moral crisis. Of course I'm not really a chemist and pushing mouthwash isn't a very inspiring life but when you think of the things we need you realize that someone has to make them. I mean razor blades and soap and bacon and eggs and gasoline and train tickets and shoes. Somebody has to make all that stuff. Tony? Tony?" Tony slept.

Nailles finished his drink and looked lovingly at his mysterious son. Tony was born in Rome, where Nailles had worked as a chemist for FAOU. Nailles had taken Nellie to the international hospital across the river late one afternoon. The doctor was a very fat man. He timed Nellie's pains and told Nailles to return to the hospital at half past ten. When Nailles returned he was taken into an office to have his blood typed. There was no explanation. Later a friend appeared with a bottle of scotch and a package of American cigarettes, both of which were difficult to get at the time. The nuns seemed to have no objection to their drinking; in fact they brought them glasses and ice. Nailles's friend left at midnight. The doctor came in at three. He was sweating and seemed worried. 'Is she in danger," Nailles asked. "Yes," the doctor said harshly, "she is in danger. Life is dangerous. Why do Americans want to be immortal?"

"Please tell me," Nailles said.

"I will tell you that when this is over I would advise her not to have any more children."

There were some peacocks in a park across the street. They began to shriek as the sun rose. This sounded to Nailles portentous. The doctor came in again at eight. "Take a walk," he said to Nailles. "Divert yourself. Breathe some fresh air." Nailles walked down the hill to St. Peter's and said his prayers. Then he climbed the stairs to the roof where all the gigantic saints and apostles stood with their backs to him. He had liked the city of Rome. Now it seemed sinister; the city of the wolf. Rome would kill Nellie. The bloody history of the place seemed to have some bearing on her Me. Rome would murder Nellie.

He walked across the city on foot, trying to sweat out his pain. In some back street he encountered an old man selling phallic symbols and death's heads. He walked to the zoo and had a Campari at the cafe. Beside the caf6 was a cage of carnivorous birds, tearing at raw meat. Leaving the cafe he saw a hyena; then a cage of wolves. When he got back to the hospital a nun told him that he had an eight-pound son and that his wife was out of danger. He howled with relief and banged drunkenly around the waiting room. He saw Nellie and his son that night and Tony seemed to him then to be brilliant, impetuous and strong. Much later they had discussed the possibility of adopting a brother or sister for Tony, but a foundling would have challenged Tony's sovereignty and this was something they did not want.

He had no way of judging his worth as a father. They had quarreled. When Tony was nine. He had suddenly given up all his athletics and friendships and settled down in front of the television set. The night of the quarrel was rainy. Nailles came into the house by the kitchen door. Nellie was cooking. Nailles kissed her on the back of the neck and raised her skirts but she demurred. "Please darling," she said. "It makes me feel as if I were in a burlesque skit. Tony's report card is on the table. You might want to take a look at it." Nailles mixed a drink and read the report. The marks were all C's and D's. Nailles walked through the dining room, crossed the dark hall to the living room where Tony was watching a show. The tube was the only light, shifting and submarine, and with the noise of the rain outside the room seemed like some cavern in the sea.

"Do you have any homework," Nailles asked.

"A little," Tony said.

"Well I think you'd better do it before you watch television," Nailles said. On the tube some cartoon figures were dancing a jig.

"I'll just watch to the end of this show," Tony said. "Then I'll do my homework."

"I think you'd better do your homework now," Nailles said.

"But Mummy said I could see this show," Tony said.

"How long has it been," said Nailles, "that you've asked permission to watch television?" He knew that in dealing with his son sarcasm would only multiply their misunderstandings but he was tired and headstrong. "You never ask permission. You come home at half past three, pull your chair up in front of the set and watch until supper. After supper you settle down in front of that damned engine and stay there until nine. If you don't do your homework how can you expect to get passing marks in school?"

"I learn a lot of things on television," Tony said shyly. "I learn about geography and animals and the stars."

"What are you learning now?" Nailles asked.

The cartoon figures were having a tug of war. A large bird cut the rope with his beak and all the figures fell down.

This is different," Tony said. "This isn't educational. Some of it is."

"Oh leave him alone, Eliot, leave him alone," Nellie called from the kitchen. Her voice was soft and clear. Nailles wandered back into the kitchen.

"But don't you think," he asked, "that from half past three to nine with a brief interlude for supper is too much time to spend in front of a television set?"

"It is a lot of time," Nellie said, "but it's terribly important to him right now and I think he'll grow out of it."

"I know it's terribly important," Nailles said. "I realize that. When I took him Christmas shopping he wasn't interested in anything but getting back to the set. He didn't care about buying presents for you or his cousins or his aunts and uncles. All he wanted to do was to get back to the set. He was just like an addict. I mean he had withdrawal symptoms. It was just like me at cocktail hour but I'm thirty-four years old and I try to ration my liquor and my cigarettes."

"He isn't quite old enough to start rationing things," Nellie said.

"He won't go coasting, he won't play ball, he won't do his homework, he won't even take a walk because he might miss a program."

"I think he'll grow out of it," Nellie said.

"But you don't grow out of an addiction. You have to make some exertion or have someone make an exertion for you. You just don't outgrow serious addictions."

He went back across the dark hall with its shifty submarine lights and outside the noise of rain. On the tube a man with a lisp, dressed in a clown suit, was urging his friends to have Mummy buy them a streamlined, battery-operated doll carriage. He turned on a light and saw how absorbed his son was in the lisping clown.

"Now I've been talking with your mother," he said, "and we've decided that we have to do something about your television time." (The clown was replaced by the cartoon of an elephant and a tiger dancing the waltz.) "I think an hour a day is plenty and I'll leave it up to you to decide which hour you want."

Tony had been threatened before but either his mother's intervention or Nailles's forgetfulness had saved him. At the thought of how barren, painful and meaningless the hours after school would be the boy began to cry.

"Now crying isn't going to do any good," Nailles said. The elephant and the tiger were joined by some other animals in their waltz.

"Skip it," Tony said. "It isn't your business."

"You're my son," Nailles said, "and it's my business to see you do at least what's expected of you. You were tutored last summer in order to get promoted and if your marks don't improve you won't be promoted this year. Don't you think it's my business to see that you get promoted? If you had your way you wouldn't even go to school. You'd wake up in the morning, turn on the set and watch it until bedtime."

"Oh please slap it, please leave me alone," Tony said. He turned off the set, went into the hall and started to climb the stairs.

"You come back here, Sonny," Nailles shouted. "You come back here at once or I'll come and get you."

"Oh please don't roar at him," Nellie asked, coming out of the kitchen. "I'm cooking veal birds and they smell nice and I was feeling good and happy that you'd come home and now everything is beginning to seem awful."

"I was feeling good too," Nailles said, "but we have a problem here and we can't evade it just because the veal birds smell good."

He went to the foot of the stairs and shouted: "You come down here, Sonny, you come down here this instant or you won't have any television for a month. Do you hear me? You come down here at once or you won't have any television for a month."

The boy came slowly down the stairs, "Now you come here and sit down," Nailles said, "and we'll talk this over. I've said that you can have an hour each day and all you have to do is to tell me which hour you want."

"I don't know," Tony said. "I like the four-o'clock show and the six-o'clock show and the seven-o'clock show…"

"You mean you can't confine yourself to an hour, is that it?"

"I don't know," Tony said.

I guess you'd better make me a drink," Nellie said. "Scotch and soda."

Nailles made a drink and returned to Tony. "Well if you can't decide," Nailles said, "I'm going to decide for you. First I'm going to make sure that you do your homework before you turn on the set."

"I don't get home until half past three," Tony said, "and sometimes the bus is late and if I do my homework I'll miss the four-o'clock show."

"That's just too bad," Nailles said, "that's just too bad."

"Oh leave him alone," Nellie said. "Please leave him alone. He's had enough for tonight."

"It isn't tonight we're talking about, it's every single night in the year including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Since no one around here seems able to reach any sort of agreement I'm going to make a decision myself. I'm going to throw that damned thing out the back door."

"Oh no, Daddy, no," Tony cried. "Please don't do that. Please, please, please. I'll try. I'll try to do better."

"You've been trying for months without any success," Nailles said. "You keep saying that you'll try to cut down and all you do is to watch more and more. Your intentions may have been good but there haven't been any noticeable results. Out it goes."

"Oh please don't, Eliot," Nellie cried. "Please don't. He loves his television. Can't you see that he loves it?"

"I know that he loves it," Nailles said. "That's why I'm going to throw it out the door. I love my gin and I love my cigarettes but this is the fourteenth cigarette I've had today and this is only my fourth drink. If I sat down to drink at half past three and drank steadily until nine I'd expect someone to give me some help." He unplugged the television set with a yank and picked the box up in his arms. The box was heavy for his strength, and an awkward size, and in order to carry it he had to arch his back a little like a pregnant woman. With the cord trailing behind him he started for the kitchen door.

"Oh, Daddy, Daddy," Tony cried. "Don't, don't, don't," and he fell to his knees with his hands joined in a conventional, supplicatory position that he might have learned from watching some melodrama on the box.

"Eliot, Eliot," Nellie screamed. "Don't, don't. You'll be sorry, Eliot. You'll be sorry."

Tony ran to his mother and she took him in her arms. They were both crying.

"I'm not doing this because I want to," Nailles shouted. "After all I like watching football and baseball when I'm home and I paid for the damned thing. I'm not doing this because I want to. I'm doing this because I have to."

"Don't look, don't look," Nellie said to Tony and she pressed his face into her skirts.

The back door was shut and Nailles had to put the box on the floor to open this. The rain sounded loudly in the yard. Then, straining, he picked up the box again, kicked open the screen door and fired the television out into the dark. It landed on a cement paving and broke with the rich, glassy music of an automobile collision. Nellie led Tony up the stairs to her bedroom, where she threw herself onto the bed, sobbing. Tony joined her. Nailles closed the kitchen door on the noise of the rain and poured another drink. Fifth, he said.

All of this was eight years ago.