The marriage itself, as a formal fact, lasted on to the end (in this case, J’s), which did not come early, lasted for the most part because nothing was done to stop it. The boy played but a small part in the process, did of course draw away the mother’s attention for quite some while, but little more. As for J, in spite of his general willingness to love the boy, he could never bring himself actually to do so in any thoroughgoing manner, and for this or other reasons, the boy showed complete indifference to J from an early age. Just as well; J grew to prefer not being bothered to any other form of existence.
One thing did happen, though perhaps too trivial even to report here, maybe not even true as a number no doubt hold, even though J himself talked of it freely to those close to him (or perhaps he dreamt it, he could never deny it, it might have been one of those beautiful dreams from that earlier magical night, thought for gotten): namely, that some four or five months after the boy came, J did at last consummate his marriage. He had frankly forgotten about doing so, had come to take life as it oddly was for granted (a carryover from his prolonged illness and consequent cure), had turned in, weary from work, when she came into the room, her breasts still exposed from having nursed the baby, and sat down on the bed beside him. She smiled wanly, perhaps not even at him, he couldn’t be sure, didn’t even wonder, and then she began to bathe her breasts with a small damp sponge she had brought along for the purpose. J rose up casually, as he might have done time after time, took the sponge from her hands (she surrendered it willingly, sleepily), washed her breasts (it was curious they held so little interest for him: had he kissed them with such terrible rapture so recently? it was really very long ago) and then her neck and back. He undressed her, her exhausted body compliant, went out to the well, still unclothed himself (later this struck him as extraordinary, lent the odd element that caused him doubts about the event’s reality), dipped the sponge in fresh cool water, returned to complete her bath. As though nothing more than the rest of a customary routine, he then penetrated her, had a more or less satisfactory emission, rolled over, and slept until morning. She had fallen asleep some moments before.
J died, thus ending the marriage, unattractively with his face in a glassful of red wine on a tavern table many years later, and not especially appropriately, since not even in his advanced years was he much of a drinker. He had just remarked to somebody sitting near him (keeping to himself the old bubbling wish that there might have been a child for him that time, a kind of testimonial for him to leave) that life had turned out to be nothing more or less than he had expected after all, he was now very inept at his carpentry, had a chestful of consumption, was already passing whole days without being able to remember them afterwards, urinated on the hour and sometimes in his pants, separately or additively could make no sense of any day of his life, and so on, a tavern-type speech, in short, but he added that the one peculiarity he had not accurately foreseen, and perhaps it was the most important of all, was that, in spite of everything, there was nothing tragic about it, no, nothing there to get wrought up about, on the contrary. Then, without transition, a mental fault more common to him in later years, he had a rather uncharacteristic thought about the time she, the wife, fell asleep, or apparently so, that morning following the wedding night; he laughed (that high-pitched rattle of old men), startling the person who had been listening, and died as described above in a fit of consumptive coughing.
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7
The Wayfarer
I came upon him on the road. I pulled over, stepped out, walked directly over to him where he sat. On an old milestone. His long tangled beard was a yellowish gray, his eyes dull with the dust of the road. His clothes were all of a color and smelled of mildew. He was not a sympathetic figure, but what could I do?
I stood for a while in front of him, hands on hips, but he paid me no heed. I thought: at least he will stand. He did not. I scuffed up a little dust between us with the toe of my boot. The dust settled or disappeared into his collection of it. But still, he stared obliviously. Vacantly. Perhaps (I thought): mindlessly. Yet I could be sure he was alive, for he sighed deeply from time to time, He is afraid to acknowledge me, I reasoned. It may or may not have been the case, but it served, for the time being, as a useful premise. The sun was hot, the air dry. It was silent, except for the traffic.
I cleared my throat, shifted my feet, made a large business of extracting my memo-book from my breast pocket, tapped my pencil on it loudly. I was determined to perform my function in the matter, without regard to how disagreeable it might prove to be. Others passed on the road. They proffered smiles of commiseration, which I returned with a pleasant nod. The wayfarer wore a floppy black hat. Tufts of yellow-gray hair poked out of the holes in it like dead wheat. No doubt, it swarmed. Still, he would not look at me.
Finally, I squatted and interposed my face in the path of his stare. Slowly — painfully, it would seem — his eyes focused on mine. They seemed to brighten momentarily, but I am not sure why. It could have been joy as easily as rage, or it could have been fear. Only that: his eyes brightened; his face remained slack and inexpressive. And it was not a glow, nothing that could be graphed, it was just a briefest spark, a glimmer. Then dull again. Filmy as though with a kind of mucus smeared over. And he lost the focus. I don’t know whether or not in that instant of perception he noticed my badge. I wished at the time that he would, then there could be no further ambiguities. But I frankly doubted that he did. He has traveled far, I thought.
I had begun with the supposition that he feared me. It is generally a safe supposition. Now I found myself beset with doubt. It could have been impatience, I reasoned, or anger — or even: con tempt! The thought, unwonted, jolted me. I sat back in the dust. I felt peculiarly light, baseless. I studied my memo-book. It was blank! my God! it was blank! Urgently, I wrote something in it. There! Not so bad now. I began to recover. Once again, I supposed it was fear. I was able to do that I stood, brushed the dust off my trousers, then squatted down once again. And now: with a certain self-assurance. Duty, a proper sense of it, is our best teacher: my catechism was coming back to me. He would enjoy no further advantages.
I asked him about himself, received no answers. I recorded his silence in my book. I wrote the word aphonia, then erased it. True, I could have determined the matter, a mere palpation of the neck cords, but the prospect of dipping my fingers into the cavities behind that moldy beard revolted me, and the question, after all, was not of primary concern. Moreover, a second method then occurred to me: if I could provoke a sound out of him, any sound, it would prove that the vocal mechanism was still intact. Of course, if he uttered no sound, it would not establish that he was mute, but I felt confident I could provoke a sound and have an end to the problem.
I unstrapped my rifle from my back and poked the barrel under his nose. His gaze floated unimpeded down the barrel through my chest and out into indeterminate space. I asked him his name. I asked him the President’s name. I asked him my name. I reminded him of the gravity of his violation and of my own unlimited powers. I asked him what day it was. I asked him what place it was. He was adamant I lowered the barrel and punched it into his chest. The barrel thumped in the thick coats he wore and something cracked, but he said nothing. Not so much as a whisper. He did not even wince. I was becoming angry. Inwardly, I cautioned myself. And still that old man refused — I say refused, although it may not have been a question of volition; in fact, it was not, could not have been—to look at me. I lowered the barrel and punched it into his groin. I might as well have been poking a pillow. He seemed utterly unaware of my attentions.