“That’s not actually so,” Barbara went on. “On the way down I was almost ready to go with him—for a moment. Run and dance, leap and roll. And early this morning when the sun came up, when I woke up—”
She stopped.
“Go on,” Verne murmured.
“No. Anyhow, I was almost ready to follow him across the countryside. But then all of a sudden I felt like a fool. I froze up around it. For a moment I felt myself in sympathy with him, and then the next minute I was disgusted. At myself. As if I had been lured by—by marbles and hopscotch again.”
“I get the picture.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m working it out in my mind. I didn’t intend to talk about it. I started thinking out loud. The door to the hall made me think about Carl. The way he stood out there.”
“All right. We’ll forget it. I’m just as glad.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t fascinate me to any unusual degree.”
“Have you forgotten your own youth?”
“I don’t see that it has anything to do with my youth.”
“Easy, easy. Forget it.” They were both silent for a time. Barbara rubbed her bare arms. “God, but it’s miserable! Like a Finnish bath house.”
“By six o’clock it’ll all be gone.”
Barbara looked at the clock. “Almost six hours. We’ll die. At least, I will. I can’t stand just sitting in the heat like this. I want to do something.”
“A shower would be fine. But actually, it’s not unusually hot. It’s always like this in the summer. But we’ve been busy before, working at our jobs. We never had time to notice the heat. We had something to do. When you get right down to it, we’re really bothered by not having anything to do. The heat is only incidental.”
“Oh?”
“We’re being paid to sit here and do nothing. So we feel all upset. First we stand up, then we sit down. We blame it on the heat, but it’s really because we don’t know what to do with ourselves.”
“I suppose so.”
“We’re restless. Our work filled up most of our lives. Now that’s gone. Behind us. We don’t know what to do without it. We’re too strongly involved with it; it’s too much a part of us. Like old fire horses. We won’t live long, now that the Company’s dead.”
“Carl’s doing all right, running around outside.”
“He’s younger. There’s a slim chance that he might live through this. You might, too. You’re young. You might be able to adjust to this, the fall of our world, the old world. Want to go out and start exploring?”
“Too hot.” She wiped her neck. In the amber half-light of the room he could see her twisting in an agony of discomfort. Suddenly she leaped up. “Let’s do something!”
“I already have made my suggestion.”
“What’s that?”
“Take a shower.”
“There’s nothing but a big pot of a tub here.”
“Then take a bath.”
“Oh, hell! Who ever took a bath at noon? Anyhow, that’s not what I want. I feel restless. As if there’s something I should be doing. Something undone. Some kind of work or something uncompleted. You’re right, I suppose. It comes of having sat at a desk for years.”
“You must try to adjust Realize that it’s over. The old life is gone. Dead.”
“I guess so.”
“This is a moment of importance. The moment of decision. We’ve shed an old life, for the moment. We’ve just gotten out from a dying world. Now we stand at the brink, looking around us. Like those crabs that aren’t always in the same shell.”
“What kind of crab is that?”
“I don’t know. I read about them, once. They chase around, getting into empty shells. After a while they get tired of one shell and go on to the next.”
“That’s us?”
“In a way. We’ve lost the old shell; it wore out. Now we have to find a new one. We have to live in some kind of shell. We can go in several directions.”
“What are the directions?”
“One is back.”
“Back?”
“To whatever we’ve always done. To what existed before. The was”
“What’s the other directions?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t worked it all out yet. You wait a while and I’ll have the rest.”
Barbara laughed. “A hell of a place to stop.” She stood in the middle of the room, first on one foot, then the other.
“I know. But that’s the trouble. We’re at a time of decision, and we don’t know what the decision represents or what choices we have, or even where they lead. Our world is gone, our old world. We can turn and go with it, die with it. The crab can stay in his worn-out shell and perish. We’ve been fortunate, the three of us. We’ve been pushed out to the lip of the shell. We can stand and look around us. The others have already left, gone with the old. Soon we can follow them. Or we can find something else.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Well, if we don’t we simply die with the rest. Our being picked out this way, the three of us, gives us a chance to escape. We become free agents for a moment. The cosmic process hangs poised. We can start it spinning in any direction we want. Like the figure in the Greek play. He looks around him. What is he going to do?”
“He always does the wrong thing. That’s why it’s a tragedy.”
“He does the greater thing. That’s why it’s tragedy. What he does brings personal ruin on him, but it had to be done. Duty. He recognizes what’s at stake and does what he should do. Just like a man plunging into a burning building. He does it because he feels he should. Even if he is burned up. The tragic figure does what he must, and is burned up. But burned or not, the thing must be done.”
“Why does the right choice always have to bring destruction on the person? It isn’t fair.”
“Well, if it brought him fortune, it wouldn’t be tragedy. It would be just sound business.”
Barbara was silent. “Anyhow, it makes an interesting topic for discussion.”
She wandered over to the doorway and stared out into the hall. The hall was dark and silent. All the way along it the doors were closed. Nothing moved. There was no sound. Except for the musty, clinging smells, the hall was empty.
“What do you see?” Verne said, from the bed.
“Silence and immobility.”
“Is that good?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why good?”
She did not answer. She continued to stand at the door, leaning against the dooijamb, her hands in her pockets. Verne gazed at her, square and supple under her slacks and her heavy cloth shirt. Her golden arms.
“You look pretty good,” he said.
“What?”
“You look all right.”
She did not answer, but she shifted a little onto her other foot. Her body straightened out. Some of the supple lines melted and disappeared. She was standing rigid and stern, because of what he said.
“What’s the matter?”
She turned around. “Nothing’s the matter.”
“You don’t want me to tell you that you look nice?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t! Do you understand? I don’t want any more of that. None. None at all.”
Verne was surprised. “But—”
“Anything but that. Don’t invent nice things to say. I don’t want to hear them.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“No doubt.” Her chin was up. “I have no doubt.”
“Get off it,” Verne said slowly. “I thought we made an agreement.”
Barbara relaxed. “Sorry. I’m divided up into a whole lot of parts. I want this, then I do that.”