Читать книгу Clock Without Hands - Carson McCullers - Страница 3

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Death is always the same, but each man dies in his own way. For J.T. Malone it began in such a simple ordinary way that for a time he confused the end of life with the beginning of a new season. The winter of his fortieth year was an unusually cold one for the Southern town—with icy, pastel days and radiant nights. The spring came violently in middle March in that year of 1953, and Malone was lazy and peaked during those days of early blossoms and windy skies. He was a pharmacist and, diagnosing spring fever, he prescribed for himself a liver and iron tonic. Although he tired easily, he kept to his usual routine. He walked to work and his pharmacy was one of the first businesses open on the main street and he closed the store at six. He had dinner at a restaurant downtown and supper at home with his family. But his appetite was finicky and he lost weight steadily. When he changed from his winter suit to a light spring suit, the trousers hung in folds on his tall, wasted frame. His temples were shrunken so that the veins pulsed visibly when he chewed or swallowed and his Adam’s apple struggled in his thin neck. But Malone saw no reason for alarm. His spring fever was unusually severe and he added to his tonic the old-fashioned course of sulphur and molasses—for when all was said and done the old remedies were the best. The thought must have solaced him for soon he felt a little better and started his annual vegetable garden. Then one day as he was compounding a prescription he swayed and fainted. He visited the doctor after this and there followed some tests at the City Hospital. Still he was not much worried; he had spring fever and the weakness of that complaint, and on a warm day he had fainted—a common, even natural thing. Malone had never considered his own death except in some twilight, unreckoned future, or in terms of life insurance. He was an ordinary, simple man and his own death was a phenomenon.

Dr Kenneth Hayden was a good customer and a friend who had his office on the floor above the pharmacy, and the day the reports were due on the tests Malone went upstairs at two o’clock. Once he was alone with the doctor he felt an undefinable menace. The doctor did not look directly at him so that his pale, familiar face seemed somehow eyeless. His voice as he greeted Malone was strangely formal. He sat silent at his desk and handled a paper knife, gazing intently at it as he passed it from hand to hand. The strange silence warned Malone and when he could stand it no longer he blurted:

‘The reports came in—am I all right?’

The doctor avoided Malone’s blue and anxious gaze, then uneasily his eyes passed to the open window and fixed there. ‘We have checked carefully and there seems to be something unusual in the blood chemistry,’ the doctor said finally in a soft and dragging voice.

A fly buzzed in the sterile, dreary room and there was the lingering smell of ether. Malone was now certain something serious was wrong and, unable to bear the silence or the doctor’s unnatural voice, he began to chatter against the truth. ‘I felt all along you would find a touch of anaemia. You know I was once a medical student and I wondered if my blood count was not too low.’

Dr Hayden looked down at the paper knife he was handling on the desk. His right eyelid twitched. ‘In that case we can talk it over medically.’ His voice lowered and he hurried the next words. ‘The red blood cells have a count of only 2·15 million so we have an intercurrent anaemia. But that is not the important factor. The white blood cells are abnormally increased—the count is 208,000.’ The doctor paused and touched his twitching eyelid. ‘You probably understand what that means.’

Malone did not understand. Shock had bewildered him and the room seemed suddenly cold. He understood only that something strange and terrible was happening to him in the cold and swaying room. He was mesmerized by the paper knife that the doctor turned in his stubby, scrubbed fingers. A long dormant memory stirred so that he was aware of something shameful that had been forgotten, although the memory itself was still unclear. So he suffered a parallel distress—the fear and tension of the doctor’s words and the mysterious and unremembered shame. The doctor’s hands were white and hairy and Malone could not bear to watch them fooling with the knife, yet his attention was mysteriously compelled.

‘I can’t quite remember,’ he said helplessly. ‘It’s been a long time and I didn’t graduate from medical school.’

The doctor put aside the knife and handed him a thermometer. ‘If you will just hold this underneath the tongue—’ He glanced at his watch and walked over to the window where he stood looking out with his hands clasped behind him and his feet placed well apart.

‘The slide shows a pathological increase in the white blood cells and intercurrent anaemia. There is a preponderance of leucocytes of a juvenile character. In short—’ The doctor paused, re-clasped his hands and for a moment stood on tiptoe. ‘The long and short of it is, we have here a case of leukemia.’ Turning suddenly, he removed the thermometer and read it rapidly.

Malone sat taut and waiting, one leg wrapped around the other and his Adam’s apple struggling in his frail throat. He said, ‘I felt a little feverish, but I kept thinking it was just spring fever.’

‘I’d like to examine you. If you will please take off your clothes and lie down a moment on the treatment table—’

Malone lay on the table, gaunt and pallid in his nakedness and ashamed.

‘The spleen is much enlarged. Have you been troubled with any lumps or swellings?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to think what I know about leukemia. I remember a little girl in the newspapers and the parents had her Christmas in September because she was expected soon to die.’ Malone stared desperately at a crack in the plaster ceiling. From an adjacent office a child was crying and the voice, half strangled with terror and protest, seemed not to come from a distance, but to be part of his own agony when he asked: ‘Am I going to die with this—leukemia?’

The answer was plain to Malone although the doctor did not speak. From the next room the child gave a long, raw shriek that lasted almost a full minute. When the examination was over, Malone sat trembling on the edge of the table, repulsed by his own weakness and distress. His narrow feet with the side callouses were particularly loathsome to him and he put on his grey socks first. The doctor was washing his hands at the corner washbasin and for some reason this offended Malone. He dressed and returned to the chair by the desk. As he sat stroking his scant, coarse hair, his long upper lip set carefully against the tremulous lower one, his eyes febrile and terrified, Malone had already the meek and neuter look of an incurable.

The doctor had resumed his motions with the paper knife, and again Malone was fascinated and obscurely distressed; the movements of the hand and knife were a part of illness and a part of some mysterious and half-remembered shame. He swallowed and steadied his voice to speak.

‘Well, how long do you give me, Doctor?’

For the first time the doctor met his gaze and looked at him steadily for some moments. Then his eyes passed on to the photograph of his wife and two small boys that faced him on his desk. ‘We are both family men and if I were in your shoes, I know I would want the truth. I would get my affairs in order.’

Malone could scarcely speak, but when the words came they were loud and rasping: ‘How long?’

The buzzing of a fly and the sound of traffic from the street seemed to accent the silence and the tension of the dreary room. ‘I think we might count on a year or fifteen months—it’s difficult to estimate exactly.’ The doctor’s white hands were covered with long black strands of hair and they fiddled ceaselessly with the ivory knife, and although the sight was somehow terrible to Malone, he could not take his attention away. He began to talk rapidly.

‘It’s a peculiar thing. Until this winter I had always carried plain, straight life insurance. But this winter I had it converted to the sort of policy that gives you retirement pay—you’ve noticed the ads in the magazines. Beginning at 65 you draw two hundred dollars a month all the rest of your life. It’s funny to think of it now.’ After a broken laugh, he added, ‘The company will have to convert back to the way it was before—just plain life insurance. Metropolitan is a good company and I’ve carried life insurance for nearly twenty years—dropping a little during the depression and redeeming it when I was able. The ads for the retirement plan always pictured this middle-aged couple in a sunny climate—maybe Florida or California. But I and my wife had a different idea. We had planned on a little place in Vermont or Maine. Living this far South all your life you get pretty tired of sun and glare—’

Suddenly the screen of words collapsed and, unprotected before his fate, Malone wept. He covered his face with his broad acid-stained hands and fought to control his sobbing breath.

The doctor looked as though for guidance at the picture of his wife and carefully patted Malone’s knee. ‘Nothing in this day and age is hopeless. Every month science discovers a new weapon against disease. Maybe soon they will find a way to control diseased cells. And meanwhile, everything possible will be done to prolong life and make you comfortable. There is one good thing about this disease—if anything could be called good in this situation—there is not much pain involved. And we will try everything. I’d like you to check in at the City Hospital as soon as possible and we can give some transfusions and try X-rays. It might make you feel a whole lot better.’

Malone had controlled himself and patted his face with his handkerchief. Then he blew on his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. ‘Excuse me, I guess I’m weak and kind of unhinged. I can go to the hospital whenever you want me to.’

Malone entered the hospital early the next morning and remained there for three days. The first night he was given a sedative and dreamed about Dr Hayden’s hands and the paper knife he handled at his desk. When he awoke he remembered the dormant shame that had troubled him the day before and he knew the source of the obscure distress he had felt in the doctor’s office. Also he realized for the first time that Dr Hayden was a Jew. He recalled the memory that was so painful that forgetfulness was a necessity. The memory concerned the time when he had failed in medical school in his second year. It was a Northern school and there were in the class a lot of Jew grinds. They ran up the grade average so that an ordinary, average student had no fair chance. The Jew grinds had crowded J.T. Malone out of medical school and ruined his career as a doctor—so that he had to shift over to pharmacy. Across the aisle from him there had been a Jew called Levy who fiddled with a fine blade knife and distracted him from getting the good of the class lectures. A Jew grind who made A-plus and studied in the library every night until closing time. It seemed to Malone that also his eyelid twitched occasionally. The realization that Dr Hayden was a Jew seemed of such importance that Malone wondered how he could have ignored it for so long. Hayden was a good customer and a friend—they had worked in the same building for many years and saw each other daily. Why had he failed to notice? Maybe the doctor’s given name had tricked him—Kenneth Hale. Malone said to himself he had no prejudice, but when Jews used the good old Anglo-Saxon, Southern names like that, he felt it was somehow wrong. He remembered that the Hayden children had hooked noses and he remembered once seeing the family on the steps of the synagogue on a Saturday. When Dr Hayden came on his rounds, Malone watched him with dread—although for years he had been a friend and customer. It was not so much that Kenneth Hale Hayden was a Jew, as the fact that he was living and would live on—he and his like—while J.T. Malone had an incurable disease and would die in a year or fifteen months. Malone wept sometimes when he was alone. He also slept a great deal and read a number of detective stories. When he was released from the hospital the spleen was much receded, although the white blood cells were little changed. He was unable to think about the months ahead or to imagine death.

Afterwards he was surrounded by a zone of loneliness, although his daily life was not much changed. He did not tell his wife about his trouble because of the intimacy that tragedy might have restored; the passions of marriage had long since winnowed to the preoccupations of parenthood. That year Ellen was a high school junior and Tommy was eight years old. Martha Malone was an energetic woman whose hair was turning grey—a good mother and also a contributor to the family finances. During the depression she had made cakes to order and at that time it had seemed to him right and proper. She continued the cake business after the pharmacy was out of debt and even supplied a number of drugstores with neatly wrapped sandwiches with her name printed on the band. She made good money and gave the children many advantages—and she even bought some Coca-Cola stock. Malone felt that was going too far; he was afraid it would be said that he was not a good provider and his pride was affronted. One thing he put his foot down on: he would not deliver and he forbade his children and his wife to deliver. Mrs Malone would drive to the customer and the servant—the Malone servants were always a little too young or too old and received less than the going wage—would scramble from the automobile with the cakes or sandwiches. Malone could not understand the change that had taken place in his wife. He had married a girl in a chiffon dress who had once fainted when a mouse ran over her shoe—and mysteriously she had become a grey-haired housewife with a business of her own and even some Coca-Cola stock. He lived now in a curious vacuum surrounded by the concerns of family life—the talk of high school proms, Tommy’s violin recital, and a seven-tiered wedding cake—and the daily activities swirled around him as dead leaves ring the centre of a whirlpool, leaving him curiously untouched.

In spite of the weakness of his disease, Malone was restless. Often he would walk aimlessly around the streets of the town—down through the shambling, crowded slums around the cotton mill, or through the Negro sections, or the middle class streets of houses set in careful lawns. On these walks he had the bewildered look of an absent-minded person who seeks something but has already forgotten the thing that is lost. Often, without cause, he would reach out and touch some random object; he would veer from his route to touch a lamp post or place his hands against a brick wall. Then he would stand transfixed and abstracted. Again he would examine a green-leaved elm tree with morbid attention as he picked a flake of sooty bark. The lamp post, the wall, the tree would exist when he was dead and the thought was loathsome to Malone. There was a further confusion—he was unable to acknowledge the reality of approaching death, and the conflict led to a sense of ubiquitous unreality. Sometimes, and dimly, Malone felt he blundered among a world of incongruities in which there was no order or conceivable design.

Malone sought comfort in the church. When tormented by the unreality of both death and life, it helped him to know that the First Baptist Church was real enough. The largest church in town, taking up half a city block near the main street, the property on off-hand reckoning was worth about two million dollars. A church like that was bound to be real. The pillars of the church were men of substance and leading citizens. Butch Henderson, the realtor and one of the shrewdest traders in the town, was a deacon and never missed a service from one year to the next—and was Butch Henderson a likely man to waste his time and trouble on anything that was not as real as dirt? The other deacons were of the same calibre—the president of the Nylon Spinning Mill, a railroad trustee, the owner of the leading department store—all responsible and canny men of business whose judgement was foolproof. And they believed in the church and the hereafter beyond death. Even T.C. Wedwell, one of the founders of Coca-Cola and a multi-millionaire, had left the church $500,000 for the construction of the right wing. T.C. Wedwell had the uncanny foresight to put his faith in Coca-Cola—and T.C. Wedwell had believed in the church and the hereafter to the tune of half a million dollars bequeathal. He who had never made a bad investment had so invested in eternity. Finally, Fox Clane was a member. The old Judge and former congressman—a glory to the State and the South—attended often when he was in town and blew his nose when his favourite hymns were sung. Fox Clane was a churchman and believer and Malone was willing to follow the old Judge in this as he had followed him in his politics. So Malone went faithfully to church.

One Sunday in early April Dr Watson delivered a sermon that impressed Malone deeply. He was a folksy preacher who often made comparisons to the business world or sports. The sermon this Sunday was about the salvation that draws the bead on death. The voice rang in the vaulted church and the stained glass windows cast a rich glow on the congregation. Malone sat stiff and listening and each moment he expected some personal revelation. But, although the sermon was long, death remained a mystery, and after the first elation he felt a little cheated when he left the church. How could you draw a bead on death? It was like aiming at the sky. Malone stared up at the blue, unclouded sky until his neck felt strained. Then he hurried towards the pharmacy.

That day Malone had an encounter that upset him strangely, although on the surface it was an ordinary happening. The business section was deserted, but he heard footsteps behind him and when he turned a corner the footsteps still followed. When he took a short-cut through an unpaved alley the steps no longer sounded, but he had the uneasy sense of being followed and glimpsed a shadow on the wall. He turned so suddenly that he collided with his follower. He was a coloured boy that Malone knew by sight and in his walks he seemed always to run across him. Or perhaps it was simply that he noticed the boy whenever he saw him because of his unnatural appearance. The boy was medium-sized with a muscular body and a face that was sullen in repose. Except for his eyes, he looked like any other coloured boy. But his eyes were bluish-grey, and set in the dark face they had a bleak, violent look. Once those eyes were seen, the rest of the body seemed also unusual and out of proportion. The arms were too long, the chest too broad—and the expression alternated from emotional sensitivity to deliberate sullenness. The impression on Malone was such that he did not think of him in harmless terms as a coloured boy—his mind automatically used the harsh term bad nigger, although the man was a stranger to him and as a rule he was lenient in such matters. When Malone turned and they collided, the nigger steadied himself but did not budge, and it was Malone who stepped back a pace. They stood in the narrow alley and stared at each other. The eyes of both were of the same grey-blue and at first it seemed a contest to out-stare each other. The eyes that looked at him were cold and blazing in the dark face—then it seemed to Malone that the blaze flickered and steadied to a look of eerie understanding. He felt that those strange eyes knew that he was soon to die. The emotion was so swift and shocking that Malone shuddered and turned away. The stare had not lasted more than a full minute and there was no seeming consequence—but Malone felt that something momentous and terrible had been accomplished. He walked unsteadily the remaining length of the alley and was relieved to find ordinary friendly faces at the end. He was relieved to get out of the alley and enter his safe, ordinary, familiar pharmacy.

The old Judge often stopped by the pharmacy to have a drink before Sunday dinner, and Malone was glad to see that he was there already, holding forth to a group of cronies who stood before the fountain counter. Malone greeted his customers absently but did not linger. The electric fans on the ceiling churned the mixed odours in the place—syrupy smells from the fountain with the bitter medicinal smells from the compounding section in the rear.

‘Be with you in a minute, J.T.,’ the old Judge interrupted himself to say as Malone passed on his way to the back room. He was an enormous man with a red face and a rough halo of yellow-white hair. He wore a rumpled linen white suit, a lavender shirt, and a tie adorned with a pearl stickpin and stained with a coffee spot. His left hand had been damaged by a stroke and he rested it cautiously on the counter edge. This hand was clean and slightly puffy from disuse—while the right one, which he used constantly as he talked, was dingy-nailed, and he wore a star sapphire on the ring finger. He was carrying an ebony cane with a silver crooked handle. The Judge finished his harangue against the Federal Government and joined Malone in the compounding section.

It was a very small room, separated from the rest of the store by a wall of medicine bottles. There was just enough room for a rocking chair and the prescription table. Malone had brought out a bottle of bourbon and unfolded a desk chair from a corner. The Judge crowded the room until he lowered himself carefully into the rocking chair. The smell of sweat from his huge body mingled with the smell of castor oil and disinfectant. The whisky splashed lightly against the bottom of their glasses when Malone poured.

‘Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters that my grandson plays—’

The Judge sang:

‘Oh, whisky is the life of man—Oh, whisky! Oh, Johnny!’

He drank slowly, pausing after each swallow to move his tongue in his mouth and take a little after-swallow. Malone drank so quickly that the liquor seemed to blossom in his belly like a rose.

‘J.T., have you ever stopped to consider that the South is in the vortex of a revolution almost as disastrous as the War Between the States?’ Malone had not considered, but he turned his head to one side and nodded gravely as the Judge went on: ‘The wind of revolution is rising to destroy the very foundations on which the South was built. The poll tax will soon be abolished and every ignorant Nigra can vote. Equal rights in education will be the next thing. Imagine a future where delicate little white girls must share their desks with coal-black niggers in order to learn to read and write. A minimum-wage law, so outrageously high that it will be the death knell of the rural South, may be forced on us. Imagine paying a passel of worthless field hands by the hour. The Federal Housing Projects are already the ruination of the real estate investors. They call it slum clearance—but who makes the slums, I ask you? The people who live in slums make the slums themselves by their own improvidence. And mark my words, those same Federal apartment buildings—modern and Northern as they are—will be turned into a slum in ten years time.’

Malone listened with the trustful attentiveness that he had given the sermon at church. His friendship with the Judge was one of his great prides. He had known the Judge ever since he had come to Milan and had often hunted at his place during the hunting season—he was there the Saturday and Sunday before the death of the Judge’s only son. But a special intimacy had flowered after the Judge’s illness—when it seemed for a time that the old congressman was finished politically. Malone would visit the Judge on Sundays bringing a mess of turnip greens from his garden or a certain water-ground cornmeal that the Judge liked. Sometimes they would play poker—but usually the Judge would talk and Malone would listen. At these times Malone felt near the centre of power—almost as though he too was a congressman. When the Judge was up and around, he came often on Sunday to the pharmacy and they would drink together in the compounding room. If Malone ever had misgivings about the ideas of the old Judge, he smothered them immediately. For who was he to cavil with a congressman? And if the old Judge was not right, who could be right? And now that the old Judge was talking about running for Congress again, Malone felt that the responsibility would be where it ought to be and he was content.

With the second drink the Judge brought out his case of cigars and Malone prepared both of them because of the Judge’s handicap. The smoke rose in straight lines to the low ceiling and broke there. The door to the street was open and a slice of sunlight made the smoke clouds opalescent.

‘I have a serious request to ask you,’ Malone said. ‘I want to draw up my will.’

‘Always glad to oblige you, J.T. Is there anything particular?’

‘Oh, no, just the usual thing—but I want it done as soon as you can get around to it.’ He added in a flat voice, ‘The doctors say I don’t have too long to live.’

The Judge stopped rocking and put down his glass. ‘Why, what on earth! What’s wrong with you, J.T.?’

Malone was speaking of his illness for the first time and the words somehow relieved him. ‘Seems I have a blood disease.’

‘A blood disease! Why, that’s ridiculous—you have some of the best blood in this State. I well remember your father who had his wholesale pharmacy on the corner of Twelfth and Mulberry in Macon. And your mother I remember, too—she was a Wheelwright. You have the best blood in this State in your veins, J.T., and never forget that.’

Malone felt a little chill of pleasure and pride that passed almost immediately. ‘The doctors—’

‘Oh, doctors—with all due respect to the medical profession, I seldom believe a word they say. Never let them intimidate you. Some years ago when I had that little seizure, my doctor—Doc Tatum over at Flowering Branch—began this alarmist talk. No liquor or cigars or even cigarettes. Seemed like I had better learn to pick a harp or shovel coal.’ The Judge’s right hand plucked on imaginary strings and made a shovelling gesture. ‘But I spoke up to Doc and followed my own instincts. Instincts, that’s the only thing a man can follow. And here I am as hale and hearty as a man my age could wish to be. And poor Doc, the irony—I was a pall bearer at his funeral. The irony was that Doc was a confirmed teetotaller who never smoked—although he occasionally enjoyed a chew. A grand fellow and a glory to the medical profession, but like every man-jack of them, alarmist in judgement and fallible. Don’t let them intimidate you, J.T.’

Malone was comforted, and as he began another drink he began to consider the possibility that Hayden and the other doctors had made a mistaken diagnosis. ‘The slide showed it was leukemia. And the blood count showed a terrible increase in leucocytes.’

‘Leucocytes?’ asked the Judge. ‘What are they?’

‘White blood cells.’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘But they’re there.’

The Judge massaged the silver handle of his cane. ‘If it was your heart or liver or even your kidneys I could understand your alarm. But an insignificant disorder like too many leucocytes does seem a little far-fetched to me. Why I’ve lived for more than eighty years without ever considering if I have any of those leucocytes or not.’ The Judge’s fingers curved with a reflexive movement, and as he straightened them again, he looked at Malone with wondering blue eyes. ‘All the same it’s a fact that you look peaked these days. Liver is excellent for the blood. You ought to eat crisp fried calves’ liver and beef liver smothered in onion sauce. It’s both delicious and a natural cure. And sunlight is a blood moderator. I bet there’s nothing wrong with you that sensible living and a spell of Milan summer won’t cure.’ The Judge lifted his glass. ‘And this is the best tonic—stimulates the appetite and relaxes the nerves. J.T., you are just tense and intimidated.’

‘Judge Clane.’

Grown Boy had entered the room and stood there waiting. He was the nephew of Verily the coloured woman who worked for the Judge, and he was a tall fat boy of sixteen who did not have his share of sense. He wore a light blue suit that was too tight for him and pointed tight shoes that made him walk in a gingerly crippled way. He had a cold and, although a handkerchief showed in his breast pocket, he wiped his running nose with the back of his hand.

‘It’s Sunday,’ he said.

The Judge reached in his pocket and gave him a coin.

As Grown Boy limped eagerly towards the fountain, he called back in a sweet slow voice, ‘Much obliged, Judge Clane.’

The Judge was looking at Malone with quick sad glances but when the pharmacist turned back to him he avoided his eyes and began to massage his cane again.

‘Every hour—each living soul comes closer to death—but how often do we think of it? We sit here having our whisky and smoking our cigars and with each hour we approach our final end. Grown Boy eats his cone without ever wondering about anything. Here I sit, a ruin of an old man, and death has skirmished with me and the skirmish has ended in a stalemate. I am a stricken field on death’s old battleground. For seventeen years since the death of my son, I have waited. “Oh, Death where is thy victory now?” The victory was won that Christmas afternoon when my son took his own life.’

‘I have often thought of him,’ Malone said. ‘And grieved for you.’

‘And why—why did he do it? A son of such beauty and such promise—not yet twenty-five and graduated magna cum laude at the University. He had already taken his law degree and a great career could have been open to him. And with a beautiful young wife and a baby already on the way. He was well-to-do—even rich—that was the zenith of my fortunes. For a graduation present I gave him Sereno for which I had paid forty thousand dollars the year before—almost a thousand acres of the best peach land. He was the son of a rich man, fortune’s darling, blessed in all ways, at the threshold of a great career. That boy could have been President—he could have been anything he wanted. Why should he die?’

Malone said cautiously, ‘Maybe it was a fit of melancholia.’

‘The night he was born I saw a remarkable falling star. It was a bright night and the star made an arc in the January sky. Miss Missy had been eight hours in labour and I had been grovelling before the foot of her bed, praying and crying. Then Doc Tatum collared me and jerked me to the door saying, “Get out of here you obstreperous old blunderbuss—get drunk in the pantry or go out in the yard”. And when I went out in the yard and looked at the sky, I saw the arc of that falling star and it was just then that Johnny, my son, was born.’

‘No doubt it was prophetic,’ Malone said.

‘Later on I bustled into the kitchen—it was four o’clock—and fried Doc a brace of quail and cooked grits. I was always a great hand at frying quail.’ The Judge paused and then said timidly, ‘J.T., do you know something uncanny?’

Malone watched the sorrow on the Judge’s face and did not answer.

‘That Christmas we had quail for dinner instead of the usual turkey. Johnny, my son, had gone hunting the Sunday before. Ah, the patterns of life—both big and small.’

To comfort the Judge, Malone said: ‘Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Johnny was cleaning his gun.’

‘It wasn’t his gun. It was my pistol.’

‘I was hunting at Sereno that Sunday before Christmas. It was probably a fleeting depression.’

‘Sometimes I think it was—’ The Judge stopped, for if he had said another word he might have cried. Malone patted his arm and the Judge, controlling himself, started again. ‘Sometimes I think it was to spite me.’

‘Oh, no! Surely not, sir. It was some depression that no one could have seen or controlled.’

‘Maybe,’ said the Judge,’ but that very day we had been quarrelling.’

‘What about it? Every family quarrels.’

‘My son was trying to break an axiom.’

‘Axiom? What kind of axiom?’

‘It was about something inconsequential. It was a case about a black man it was my duty to sentence.’

‘You are just blaming yourself needlessly,’ Malone said.

‘We were sitting at the table with coffee and cigars and French cognac—the ladies were in the parlour—and Johnny got more and more excited and finally he shouted something to me and rushed upstairs. We heard the shot a few minutes later.’

‘He was always impetuous.’

‘None of the young people these days seem to consult their elders. My son up and got married after a dance. He woke up his mother and me and said, “Mirabelle and I are married”. They had eloped to a Justice of the Peace, mind you. It was a great grief to his mother—although later it was a blessing in disguise.’

‘Your grandson is the image of his father,’ Malone said.

‘The living image. Have you ever seen two boys so shining?’

‘It must be a great comfort to you.’

The Judge mouthed his cigar before he answered: ‘Comfort—anxiety—he is all that is left.’

‘Is he going to study for the law and enter politics?’

‘No!’ the Judge said violently. ‘I don’t want the boy in law or politics.’

‘Jester is a boy who could make his career in anything,’ Malone said.

‘Death,’ said the old Judge, ‘is the great treachery. J.T., you feel the doctors believe you have a fatal disease. I don’t think so. With all due respects to the medical profession, the doctors don’t know what death is—who can know? Even Doc Tatum. I, an old man, have expected death for fifteen years. But death is too cunning. When you watch for it and finally face it, it never comes. It corners around sideways. It slays the unaware as often as it does the ones who watch for it. Oh, what, J.T.? What happened to my radiant son?’

‘Fox,’ Malone asked, ‘Do you believe in the eternal life?’

‘I do as far as I can encompass the thought of eternity. I know that my son will always live within me, and my grandson within him and within me. But what is eternity?’

‘At church,’ Malone said, ‘Dr Watson preached a sermon on the salvation that draws a bead on death.’

‘A pretty phrase—I wish I had said it. But no sense at all.’ He added finally, ‘No, I don’t believe in eternity as far as religion goes. I believe in the things I know and the descendants who come after me. I believe in my forebears, too. Do you call that eternity?’

Malone asked suddenly, ‘Have you ever seen a blue-eyed Nigra?’

‘A Nigra with blue eyes you mean?’

Malone said, ‘I don’t mean the weak-eyed blue of old coloured people. I mean the grey-blue of a young coloured boy. There’s one like that around this town and today he startled me.’

The Judge’s eyes were like blue bubbles and he finished his drink before he spoke. ‘I know the nigger you’re thinking of.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He’s just a nigger around the town who’s of no interest to me. He gives massages and caters—a jack-of-all-trades. Also he is a well-trained singer.’

Malone said, ‘I ran into him in an alley behind the store and he gave me such a shock.’

The Judge said, with an emphasis that seemed at the moment peculiar to Malone, ‘Sherman Pew, that’s the nigger’s name, is of no interest to me. However, I’m thinking of taking him on as a houseboy because of the shortage of help.’

‘I never saw such strange eyes,’ Malone said.

‘A woods colt,’ the Judge said; ‘something wrong between the sheets. He was left a foundling in the Holy Ascension Church.’

Malone felt that the Judge had left some tale untold but far be it from him to pry into the manifold affairs of so great a man.

‘Jester—speaking of the devil—’

John Jester Clane stood in the room with the sunlight from the street behind him. He was a slight limber boy of seventeen with auburn hair and a complexion so fair that the freckles on his upturned nose were like cinnamon sprinkled over cream. The glare brightened his red hair but his face was shadowed and he shielded his wine-brown eyes against the glare. He wore blue jeans and a striped jersey, the sleeves of which were pushed back to his delicate elbows.

‘Down, Tige,’ Jester said. The dog was a brindle boxer, the only one of its kind in town. And she was such a fierce looking brute that when Malone saw her on the street alone he was afraid of her.

‘I soloed, Grandfather,’ Jester said in a voice that was lifted with excitement. Then seeing Malone, he added politely, ‘Hey, Mr Malone, how are you today?’

Tears of remembrance, pride and alcohol came to the Judge’s weak eyes. ‘Soloed did you, darling? How did it feel?’

Jester considered a moment. ‘It didn’t feel exactly like I had expected. I expected to feel lonely and somehow proud. But I guess I was just watching the instruments. I guess I just felt—responsible.’

‘Imagine, J.T.,’ the Judge said, ‘a few months ago this little rapscallion just announced to me that he was taking flying lessons at the airport. He’d saved his own money and already made the arrangements for the course. But with not so much as by-my-leave. Just announced, “Grandfather, I am taking flying lessons”.’ The Judge stroked Jester’s thigh. ‘Didn’t you, Lambones?’

The boy drew up one long leg against another. ‘It’s nothing to it. Everybody ought to be able to fly.’

‘What authority prompts the young folk these days to act on such unheard of decisions? It was never so in my day or yours, J.T. Can’t you see now why I am so afraid?’

The Judge’s voice was grieving, and Jester deftly removed his drink and hid it on a corner shelf. Malone noticed this and was offended on the Judge’s behalf.

‘It’s dinnertime, Grandfather. The car is just down the street.’

The Judge rose ponderously with his cane and the dog started to the door. ‘Whenever you’re ready, Lambones.’ At the door he turned to Malone. ‘Don’t let the doctors intimidate you, J.T. Death is the great gamer with a sleeve of tricks. You and I will maybe die together while following the funeral of a twelve-year-old girl.’ He pressed his cheek to Malone and crossed the threshold to the street.

Malone went to the front of the place to lock the main door and there he overheard a conversation. ‘Grandfather, I hate to say this but I do wish you wouldn’t call me “Lambones” or “darling” in front of strangers.’

At that moment Malone hated Jester. He was hurt at the term ‘stranger’, and the glow that had warmed his spirit in the presence of the Judge was darkened instantly. In the old days, hospitality had lain in the genius of making everyone, even the commonest constituents at a barbecue, feel that they belonged. But nowadays the genius of hospitality had disappeared and there was only isolation. It was Jester who was a ‘stranger’—he had never been like a Milan boy. He was arrogant and at the same time overpolite. There was something hidden about the boy and his softness, his brightness seemed somehow dangerous—it was as though he resembled a silk-sheathed knife.

The Judge did not seem to hear his words. ‘Poor J.T.,’ he said as the door of the car was opened, ‘it’s such a shocking thing.’

Malone quickly locked the front door and returned to the compounding room.

He was alone. He sat in the rocking chair with the compounding pestle in his hands. The pestle was grey and smooth with use. He had bought it with the other fixtures of the pharmacy when he had opened his business twenty years ago. It had belonged to Mr Greenlove—when had he last remembered him?—and at his death the estate sold the property. How long had Mr Greenlove worked with this pestle? And who had used it before him? . . . The pestle was old, old and indestructible. Malone wondered if it wasn’t a relic from Indian times. Ancient as it was, how long would it still last? The stone mocked Malone.

He shivered. It was as though a draught had chilled him, although he noticed that the cigar smoke was undisturbed. As he thought of the old Judge a mood of elegy softened his fear. He remembered Johnny Clane and the old days at Sereno. He was no stranger—many a time he had been a guest at Sereno during the hunting season—and once he had even spent the night there. He had slept in a big four-poster bed with Johnny and at five in the morning they had gone down to the kitchen, and he still remembered the smell of fish roe and hot biscuits and the wet dog smell as they breakfasted before the hunt. Yes, many a time he had hunted with Johnny Clane and had been invited to Sereno, and he was there the Sunday before the Christmas Johnny died. And Miss Missy would sometimes go there, although it was mainly a hunting place for boys and men. And the Judge, when he shot badly, which was nearly all the time, would complain that there was so much sky and so few birds. Always there was a mystery about Sereno even in those days—but was it the mystery of luxury that a boy born poor will always feel? As Malone remembered the old days and thought of the Judge now—in his wisdom and fame and inconsolable grief—his heart sang with love as grave and sombre as the organ music in the church.

As he stared at the pestle his eyes were brilliant with fever and fear and, transfixed, he did not notice that from the basement underneath the store there was a knocking sound. Before this spring he had always held to a basic rhythm about life and death—the bible rhythm of the three score years and ten. But now he dwelt on the inexplicable deaths. He thought of children, exact and delicate as jewels in their white satin coffins. And that pretty singing teacher who swallowed a bone at a fish fry and died within the hour. And Johnny Clane, and the Milan boys who died during the first war and the last. And how many others? How? Why? He was aware of the knocking sound in the basement. It was a rat—last week a rat had overturned a bottle of asafetida and for days the stench was so terrible that his porter refused to work in the basement. There was no rhythm in death—only the rhythm of the rat, and the stench of corruption. And the pretty singing teacher, the blond young flesh of Johnny Clane—the jewel-like children—all ended in the liquefying corpse and coffin stench. He looked at the pestle with a sick surprise for only the stone remained.

There was a footstep on the threshold and Malone was so suddenly unnerved that he dropped the pestle. The blue-eyed nigger stood before him, holding in his hand something that glinted in the sun. Again he stared into those blazing eyes and again he felt that look of eerie understanding and sensed that those eyes knew that he was soon to die.

‘I found this just outside the door,’ the nigger said.

Malone’s vision was dimmed by shock and for a moment he thought it was the paper knife of Dr Hayden—then he saw it was a bunch of keys on a silver ring.

‘They’re not mine,’ Malone said.

‘I noticed Judge Clane and his boy was here. Maybe they’re theirs.’ The nigger dropped the keys on the table. Then he picked up the pestle and handed it to Malone.

‘Much obliged,’ he said. ‘I’ll inquire about the keys.’

The boy went away and Malone watched him jay-walk across the street. He was cold with loathing and hatred.

As he sat holding the pestle there was in him enough composure to wonder at those alien emotions that had veered so violently in his once mild heart. He was split between love and hatred—but what he loved and what he hated was unclear. For the first time he knew that death was near him. But the terror that choked him was not caused by the knowledge of his own death. The terror concerned some mysterious drama that was going on—although what the drama was about Malone did not know. The terror questioned what would happen in those months—how long?—that glared upon his numbered days. He was a man watching a clock without hands.

There was the rhythm of the rat. ‘Father, Father, help me,’ Malone said aloud. But his father had been dead for these long years. When the telephone rang Malone told his wife for the first time that he was sick and asked her to drive to the pharmacy and take him home. Then he sat stroking the stone pestle as a sort of comfort as he waited.