Slowly, carefully, Conradin began to make his way down the arduous path to the beach. When he reached it, some time later, in a driftwood-choked crescent sheltered by the cliff walls, he turned diagonally to the south and the black line of the sea.
He walked the length of Blind Beach for over an hour, listening to the sonorous lament of the winter wind and the crash of the angry foaming black waves hurtling again and again and again upon the passive white sand, like an ardent lover with a frigid mate, evoking no response except that of infinite tolerance, growing more angry with each thrust, and more frustrated and more determined, all for nothing except to come, and to rest, and to begin again—futilely, eternally.
“I wish I knew what to do,” he said aloud, and the wind swirled loose sand against his body and swirled the words away almost as soon as they left his lips. “I wish to God above I knew what to do.”
But he didn’t know; he knew only that he couldn’t go on this way, being slowly torn apart from within, the guilt growing more unbearable with each passing day, seeing Helgerman’s face just as clearly now as on that day eleven years ago; and now this new fear: Helgerman not only as a ghost but as a real and imminent danger, Helgerman as an insane purveyor of vengeance born of a senseless act he, Conradin, had committed out of fear, Helgerman smiting him down as he had smote Helgerman, an eye for an eye, a blow for a blow . . .
Yes, and Kurtz and what he saw when he looked at his own soul and what Jim Conradin was beginning to see in the examination of his soul.
The alternatives were clear, of course.
He could, somehow, through some means, find peace with himself.
He could very easily end up suffering a complete mental breakdown.
He could commit suicide.
The latter alternative was not a new one to him. The idea of taking his own life had first occurred to him two years ago, during a particularly bad winter—constant rain, too much time for the thinking. But he had rejected it, exactly as he had rejected it this afternoon. It was not that he lacked the courage, that his fear of death was inordinately strong-no, it was because of Trina, of what such an act would do to her; he could not sacrifice her happiness and her well-being for his own jaded salvation. Still, with the pressure building now, building almost intolerably, all hope of ever finding an inner peace gone now, death or madness were the only ultimates which he could look forward to—and death was by far the more preferable of the two.
Long walks along the beach here, where he could smell and taste and feel the sea near him, usually served to calm him; but on this night Conradin felt even more strung out than he had before leaving the house in Bodega Bay. The cold had begun to reach him too, sending prickles of ice moving, slithering, across his shoulders, and he shivered and began to walk rapidly through the damp sand toward the pebbled path. A mug of coffee, laced with a little mash, and the warmth of wool blankets and soft sheets and Trina lying close to him—perhaps he would make love to her tonight, perhaps he would find some degree of quietude after that; he might be satiated, relieved momentarily of some of the tensions, yes, yes.
He reached the path and began the ascent, eyes cast on the surface barely discernible beneath his canvas shoes. He climbed steadily, surely, feeling the wind tug at his body, clinging to rocks and craggy overhangs, breathing deeply through his mouth. Finally he reached the ledge-like area at the foot of the dirt slope; he paused there, his back to the path’s edge and to the gray nothingness, drawing air into his labored lungs, not looking up.
And then out of the ashen swirling vapor comes a stealthy shadowed movement and a face appears as if by some strange necromancy, disembodied, floating, a terrible white face Jim Conradin recognizes almost instantly, but before he can think or speak or act, a hand appears below the face and thrusts itself against his chest, thrusts with such tremendous force that Conradin, who is standing flat-footed and unprepared, flies backward to the rim of the precipice and his canvas shoes slip on the moist vegetation and suddenly he is touching air, touching emptiness, falling, falling, turning in a graceless somersault like a puppet with its strings cut, mouth opening to emit a short piercing scream that lasts for only a second or two, ending abruptly as first his torso and then his head strike a jagged outcropping of rock, splitting his head open like kindling under a woodsman’s axe, killing him instantly, and his body plummets off the convexity of the cliff side into space and falls free, slow motion through the sea of fog, to bury itself half-deep in the cold damp sand of the beach one thousand feet below ...
Green Tuesday and Wednesday
8
On Tuesday, the rains came down.
The storm which had been threatening the Bay Area since Saturday broke with vehemence at six o’clock of that morning, and by noon San Francisco and its surrounding counties lay sodden beneath the steady deluge of cold, dark, hard rain. The skies were limned with black threads on a dove-colored background—and the fog had evaporated, as if the downpour had magically triggered some huge and invisible suction machine. The sea wind blew the pungent smells of brine and wet pavement and damp leaves and gray loneliness. Winter, having arrived at last, had come with all its chattels; it would be staying on.
In the small town of Sebastopol, some fifteen miles inland and to the southeast of Bodega Bay, rain, like semi-translucent sheets of heavy plastic, slanted down on a low, modem redwood-and-brick building a few blocks from South Main Street. But the wide rectangular redwood sign on the fronting lawn was easily discernible through the downpour; it read: SPENCER AND SPENCER MEMORIAL CHAPEL.
Inside the mortuary, in a huge and high-ceilinged parlor, an unseen organist played soft dirge music and there was the almost cloying fragrance of chrysanthemum and gardenia. Ringed by variegated sprays and floral horseshoes, an unadorned casket rested on a bier of ferns and white carnations at the upper half of the parlor. The coffin’s lid had been closed and sealed.
To the immediate right, on a dais in a tiny alcove, Trina Conradin sat with her hands clasped tightly at her breast, her head bowed. Her dead husband’s mother wept softly, convulsively, agonizingly, on one of the brown folding chairs beside her; her own mother held Mrs. Conradin’s hand and whispered gentle, useless words in a tremulous voice. Trina’s eyes were dry, like those of her father and Jim’s father, both of whom sat stoically, like Oriental stone carvings, on her other side. She had done her crying in the cold darkness of Sunday night, when Jim hadn’t come home from his drive and the terrible premonition, the fear which had been rising within her, manifested itself and she had reported him missing; and throughout the somber opalescence of yesterday—after a Sonoma County Sheriffs Deputy had found him lying broken at the foot of the cliff at Blind Beach. She was purged now, empty, barren.
Trina lifted her head slowly, with an inaudible exhalation of breath, and looked upon the some two dozen folding chairs which had been set into neat, symmetrical rows on the deep-pile maroon carpet of the parlor. They were perhaps only a third occupied now, and the services were due to begin any moment.