The idea was not new, he had thought of it in fact at the very beginning, though not perhaps in quite such terms or so neatly. The structure of evil had been manifest and omnipresent, the evil in himself he had always quite recognized, or had at all events wanted to recognize: it needed no justification, was natural and right, and the whole action had in the end revolved quite properly around his decision to face the real shape of the world and to shape his own deed accordingly. But it seemed to him that he had never actually seen the vision, the tree-shaped vision, the lily-shaped vision, so clearly and perfectly as now. It was something of this that he had tried to put down in his rapid notes, the orderly sheets of which lay on the table beneath the map — but to look at them now was only to realize that vision is one thing, action or speech another. He said aloud, tearing the paper with deliberate hands:
— Many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics. Few are the mystics! I must have a drink, and I must go slow.
But he made no move toward the kitchenette, where the whisky stood on the shelf, he stood still, aware that he was looking at nothing, he thought for a moment that perhaps the best thing would be to write, quite suddenly and quite simply—as if for the renewal of a lost contact with a swiftly sinking world — to Gerta. My dear Gerta, if it is not now, not already, too late — if now with the impediment in my speech removed—
Impossible.
It was not the conversation on the telephone with Jones which had done this — how could it be? It was not even clear that the conversation with Jones had anything to do with it. The logic of that, the logic of the consequences of that, was flawless: there had been no mistake: the whole thing now stood, from beginning to end, as perfect as a theorem in algebra. Jones, Karl Jones, would meet him on Friday, they would drive together to Concord — to meet the mythical partner and discuss the mythical advertising campaign — Jones had assented to the plan almost with alacrity — and with this was concluded the final pure curve of the idea. The ultimate cutting-off had thus been accomplished, the separation from humanity; the individual had asserted himself, stood alone in the full horror of a light which permitted no moral shadows: or none, at any rate, save those created by his own will and for his own purpose. The stranger had been identified — hadn’t he? — as Jones, and as such could thus be destroyed: the strangeness in Jones had been recognized, with its terror and its pure desirability; it had been observed carefully and inimically as the thing-that-wants-to-be-killed; it could be killed. There is no compromise with the object, no placid or reasoned acceptance of it. It is seen, understood, and destroyed. The vision is pure.
Yes!
But suddenly he felt that he must close his eyes; and opening them again, he as suddenly felt, for no clear reason, that he must clap his hands sharply together before him, turn quickly, look at something else, something new—do something, go somewhere. He clapped his hands together again, walked toward the waterfall without seeing it, revolved quickly away from it, and made as he did so a gesture with his hands such as he knew (and painfully) he had never in his life made before: a queer forward thrust of the hands, stiffly parallel, the fingers tensely apart, as if he were in fact reaching for something. It lasted only a moment, his arms fell limply to his sides, limply and a little self-consciously, almost perhaps ashamedly. This wouldn’t do, this wasn’t right at all! Once more he began to feel as if he were in some subtle way being indecently hurried; like a person who in stepping on to an escalator miscalculates its speed. It was as if one were rather cruelly and undignifiedly yanked, dislocated — and with that feeling of disgust with oneself which makes one disinclined for the time being to look at oneself in a mirror. To lose control—
He stepped into the dark bedroom, approached the dressing-table mirror and without turning on the light leaned on his hands towards the obscure image which he saw coming forward to meet him there. For a second, the face that looked out at him was not his own face, but the face of Jones. It looked at him merrily, impertinently — exactly as if it were going to wink. It was only a trick of the light — it was because the light was behind him — the sharp illusion was gone as soon as it had come — but the effect was nonetheless extraordinary. The face was his own, of course, he leaned again towards it on trembling hands, feeling weak and shaken, and as he examined his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks, the wide and pallid forehead, it seemed to him that his face had somehow changed. It seemed, in fact, in some subtle and dreadful way, to have lost its meaning. There was no character in it, no significance — it had become a more featureless area: a kind of mask: something seen from outside …
Had Jones done this?…
It was as if Jones, in that moment of vision, had said something, or been about to say something: as if, in thus interposing himself, he had somehow managed to make some preposterous sort of statement or claim. He had been about to say “I am no stranger than you are”; or perhaps “Aren’t you really a stranger yourself? Have you thought of that?”; or else, simply, “Now you know what it is to be a stranger.”
The words seemed actually to hang in the air; and it was with a feeling of automatically echoing them that he said aloud:
— Now you know what it is to be a stranger. Now you know! Jasper Ammen.
And certainly, now, he was looking at himself from an immense distance, and with a detachment which amounted really to cruelty and enmity. Or was it fear? Or was it amusement? One could say calmly, now, that the face was absurd, one could say that it was just an arrangement of lines and planes and colors, that it was obscene, that it was ugly. It was as surprising and as mean, as vital and objectionable, as definitely something to be suspected and distrusted and perhaps destroyed, as some queer marine creature which one might find on overturning a wet rock by the sea. It was conscious and watchful, its eyes looked out of the pool of the mirror with a hard animal defensive sharpness, clearly it was dangerous and alert. It might have to be killed. If one were to put out a hand or a stick and touch it—
But the thought was unbearable, he flung himself on the bed and said:
— I must try to sleep. I must try to get a few hours sleep.
He closed his eyes, and immediately the conversation with Jones on the telephone began to repeat itself. Not tomorrow, no. I’m sorry. You’ll have to excuse me. I can’t talk to you now, you see everything is upset, we’ve had an accident, my wife has just had a stillborn baby, and tomorrow is impossible as the funeral is in the morning at Mount Auburn. Yes, I’m sorry. No, I’m sorry.… Perhaps Friday. Yes, Friday would be all right.… The dreadful shameless gentleness of the voice, the soft accent of concern, in which nevertheless there was no self-pity: the naked raw glibness of the confession on the telephone, the awkward glibness — the ordinary humble unavoidableness of the calm voice having to say such things on the telephone—You’ll have to excuse me now—as if he merely had an engagement for lunch, or had to go to the toilet. It had seemed so entirely simple, so almost meaningless, this series of tragic and placid statements, there in the corner of the marble-floored hall, beside the wrought-iron grill of the elevator; as if they might have been discussing the weather, or the prospects for the baseball season: except, of course, for the careful gentleness of Jones’s voice, the rather unsophisticated and surprised gentleness, calculated for the occasion. Not quite calculated, either — for what had been really disconcerting was the natural sound of the sorrow in the voice, as if Jones, taken off guard, didn’t know how to conceal his suffering. And thus, the whole scene had come to him over the telephone — the smell of ether in the garden, the revolving clotheshorse lifting its spiny arms in the lamplight, the empty ash can waiting at the curb, the doctor’s car, the shabby cellar, the coal-bins, the swiftly moving shadows on the ceiling of the upper bedroom, and then that moment when the shadows had suddenly ceased to move, and finally the woman’s cry, so queer, so quavering, so soft—