Next day he went around campus like a man in a daze. He had had a long
and heavy sleep, but he looked as if he were stupefied by weariness.
Even Harold Gunnison remarked on it.
"It's nothing," he replied. "I'm just lazy."
Gunnison smiled skeptically. "You've been working too hard. That's the
temptation we're all up against. But it butchers efficiency. Better
ration your hours of work. Your jobs won't go hungry if you feed them
ten hours a day.
"Trustees are queer cusses," he continued with apparent irrelevance.
"And Pollard's more a politician than an educator. But he brings in the
money, and that's what college presidents are for."
Norman indicated that he appreciated the sympathy, but he felt as far
removed from Gunnison as from the hordes of gayly dressed students
who filled the walks and socialized in clusters. As if there were a
wall of faintly clouded glass between. His only aim--and even that was
blurred--was to prolong his present state of fatigued reaction from
last night's events, and to avoid all thoughts.
Thoughts were dangerous. He felt their presence here and there in
his brain, like pockets of poison, harmless as long as you left them
encysted and did not prick them. One was more familiar than the others.
It had been there last night. He felt vaguely thankful that he could
not longer see inside of it.
Another was concerned with Tansy, and why she had seemed so cheerful
and forgetful this morning.
Another--a very large one--was sunk so deeply in his mind that he could
only perceive a small section of its globular surface. He knew it was
connected with an unfamiliar emotion that he had sensed yesterday
more than once, and he knew that it must under no circumstances be
disturbed. He could feel it pulsate slowly and rhythmically, like a
monster asleep in mud.
Another had to do with knots and lightning.
Another--tiny but prominent--was somehow concerned with cards.
And there were more, many more.
His situation was akin to that of the legendary hero who must travel
through a long and narrow corridor, without once touching the morbidly
enticing, poisoned walls.
He knew he could not avoid contact with them indefinitely, but in the
meantime the thought-cysts might shrink and disappear.
The day fitted with his superficially dull and lethargic mood. Instead
of the cool spell that should have followed the storm, there was a hot
foretaste of summer in the air. Student absences rose sharply. Those
who came to class were inattentive, and exhibited other symptoms of
spring fever.
Only Bronstein seemed animated. He kept drawing Norman's other students
aside by twos and threes, and whispering to them heatedly. Norman found
out that he was trying to get up a petition of protest on Sawtelle's
appointment. Norman asked him to stop it. Bronstein refused, but in any
case he seemed to be failing in the job of arousing the other students.
Norman's lectures were languid. He contented himself with transforming
his notes into accurate verbal statements with a minimum of mental
effort. He watched the pencils move methodically as notes were taken,
or wander off into intricate doodles. Two girls were engrossed in
sketching the handsome profile of the fraternity president in the
second row. He watched foreheads wrinkle as they picked up the thread
of his lecture, smooth out again as they dropped it.
And all the while his own mind was wandering off on side tracks. They
were too fugitive, too much like daydreams to be called thoughts.
One began when he recalled the epigram about a lecture being a process
of transferring the contents of the teacher's notebook into the
notebooks of the students, without allowing it to pass through the
minds of either. That made him think of mimeographing.
Mimeograph, it went on. Margaret van Nice. Theodore Jennings. Gun.
Windowpane. Galileo. Scroll--(Sheer away from that! Forbidden
territory.)
The daydream backtracked and took a different turning. Jennings.
Gunnison. Pollard. President. Emperor. Empress. Juggler. Tower. Hanged
man--(Hold on! Don't go any further.)
As the long dull day wore on, the daydreams gradually assumed a uniform
coloration.
Gun. Knife. Sliver. Broken glass. Nail. Tetanus.
War. Mangled bodies. Mayhem. Murder. Rope. Hangman. (Sheer off again!)
Gas, Poison.
The coloration of blood and physical injury.
And ever more strongly, he felt the breath-like pulsations of the
monster in the depths of his mind, dreaming nightmares of carnage
from which it would soon awake and heave up out of the mud. And he
powerless to stop it. It was as if a crusted-over swamp, swollen with
underground water, were pushing up the seemingly healthy ground above
by imperceptible degrees--nearing the point when it would burst through
in one vast slimy eruption.
* * * * *
Starting home, Norman fell in with Mr. Carr.
"Good evening, Norman," said the old gentleman, lifting his Panama hat
to mop his forehead, which merged into an extensive bald area.
"Good evening, Linthicum," said Norman. But his mind was occupied with
speculating how, if a man let a thumbnail grow and then sharpened it
carefully, he could cut the veins of his wrist and so bleed to death.
Mr. Carr wiped the handkerchief around his beard.
"I enjoyed the bridge thoroughly," he said. "Perhaps the four of us
could have a game when the ladies are away at the faculty wives'
meeting next Thursday? You and I could be partners, and use the
Culbertson slam conventions." His voice became wistful. "I'm tired of
always having to play the Blackwood."
Norman nodded, but he was thinking of how men have learned to swallow
their tongues, and when the occasion came, die of suffocation. He tried
to check himself. These were speculations appropriate only to the
concentration camp. Visions of death kept rising in his mind, replacing
one another. He felt the pulsations deepen, become unendurably strong.
Mr. Carr nodded pleasantly and turned off. He quickened his pace, as if
the walls of the poisoned passageway were contracting on the legendary
hero and, unless the end were soon reached, he would have to shove out
against them wildly.
From the corner of his eye he saw one of his students. She was staring
at him puzzledly. He brushed past her.
He reached the boulevard. The lights were against him. He paused
on the edge of the curb. A large red truck was rumbling toward the
intersection at a fair rate of speed.
And then he knew just what was going to happen, and that he would be
unable to stop himself.
He was going to wait until the truck was very close and then he was
going to throw himself under the wheels. End of the passageway.
That was the meaning of the fifth stick figure, the tarot diagram that
had departed from tradition.
Empress--Juggler--The truck was very close. Tower--The lights had
started to change but the truck was not going to stop. Hanged man--
It was only when he leaned forward, tensing his leg muscles, that the
small flat voice spoke into his ear, a voice that was a monotone and
yet diabolically humorous, the voice of his dreams:
"Not for two weeks, at least. Not for two more weeks."
He regained his balance. The truck rushed by. He looked over his
shoulder--first up, then around. No one but a small Negro boy and an
elderly man, rather shabbily dressed, carrying a shopping bag. They
were waiting to cross in the opposite direction. A shiver settled on
his spine.
Eyes shifting warily from side to side, he crossed the street, and
proceeded home. He no longer thought of death, except to fear it. As
soon as he was inside, he poured himself a more than generous drink.
Oddly, Tansy had set out soda and ice. He mixed the highball and gulped
it down.
So he had been given two weeks? Two weeks in which to pick his life
slowly apart, savor each stage of doom, before he should walk again the
narrow corridor at the end of which a truck was always rumbling by.
Anger surged in him at the idea.
But perhaps that was what he was supposed to do--get angry.
He mixed himself another drink, took a gulp, then looked at it
doubtfully.
Perhaps that was part of the plan, too.
* * * * *
Tansy came in, carrying a bundle. Her face was smiling and a little
flushed. With a sigh of relief she set down the bundle and pushed aside
the dark bangs from her forehead.
"_Whew_, what a sweltering day. I thought you'd be wanting a
drink. Here, let me finish that one for you."
When she put down the glass there was only ice in it. "There, now we're
blood brothers or something. Mix yourself another."
"That was my second," he told her.
"Oh, heck, I thought I was cheating you." She sat on the edge of the
table and wagged a finger in his face. "Look, mister, you need a rest.
Or some excitement. I'm not sure which. Maybe both. Now here's my
plan. I make us a cold supper--sandwiches. Then, when it's dark and
nobody can see us, we get Oscar out of the garage, and sinfully waste a
half gram of rubber off his tires in driving to the Top of the Hill. We
haven't done that for years. How about it, mister?"
He hesitated. Helped by the drink, his thoughts were veering. This was
a crazy situation. Half his mind was still gripped by a sickening,
panicky apprehension for his immediate personal future. The other half
was coming under the spell of Tansy's gaiety.