“No, no—it’s just that you were quoting the wrong sales pitch. The one you gave is the one for pistols, you know, like on TV.” He made shooting motions with thumb and forefinger. “That’s a rifle. You’re supposed to look at it in a combination of the ways you would look at a Patek Philippe watch and a . . . and a jet plane.”
“Oh,” said Bernie. He appeared to think for a moment. “You know, it’s impossible to buy a pistol in this city. I tried and tried, and it was like trying to get permission to buy ten pounds of heroin. It’s not just the red tape; it’s the attitudes of the people you have to go to. Pure Kafka.” He means Orwell, thought Clinton. He just doesn’t know the difference.
“What’s to tell? Why don’t you just go and find out for yourself? Monica was telling me about you just this morning, Clint. Monica is very upset about you.”
“Monica should have her mouth washed out with soap. Come on, tell me what happens in there after you go in and they take your ticket and you sit down.”
“Oh, you mean, the technical part? That’s funny ... because afterward you just don’t remember very much of that. It’s not just a . . . you don’t just sit there, I mean. And it goes on for a month, so there are intermissions, only you do exercises instead of just walking around. And you eat a little bit, just to keep the internal muscles in trim, because they feed you intravenously while you’re out. But nobody really pays much attention to the . . . technical part.”
“So tell me the story, then,” Clinton said. “Come on, Bernie, gimme the plot.”
“But, Clint, that’s impossible. It’s too big . . . there’s too much, it would take a year. And some of it I’m not even smart enough to explain. I haven’t got the . . . I’m not a wordsmith, Clint. Could you imagine somebody painting a Rembrandt from a wooden mannikin, for chrissake?”
“Very easily,” said Clinton softly. Bernie opened his mouth and then closed it again and looked doubtfully down at the floor. “Bernie, there are people who can paint Rembrandts from mannikins,” Clinton said.
“And I can’t, you mean? Well, all that has changed, let me tell you!” Bernie stopped, looking at Clinton, who beat down the sudden, betraying intensity.
“By all means, tell me,” Clinton said.
“It was the greatest experience of my life,” said Bernie, in a holy voice. “It shook my very foundations and rearranged them. It made me realize, absolutely, what I had been doing wrong.” He looked at Clinton, not defiantly, but as a man looks who has told the truth, and is awed by it.
“Bernie, what are you painting now?” Clinton asked, and sighed for saying it; he had had to.
“It’s over there by the window,” said Bernie. Clinton got up and strolled toward the easel. He did not have to force himself to stroll; he knew in advance almost exactly what he would see.
It was on the easel, and unfinished—and yet it was finished beyond necessity or sense. On the very large canvas, two big young people, boy and girl, held hands and gazed out over the viewer’s head. They were handsome and muscular and clean; he bare to the waist, she in blouse and shorts. Behind them, vibrant with early-morning light, stretched a pastoral landscape; high in the sky was the meticulous glint of an airplane; Clinton would have described their expressions as being that of cows who have just lifted their muzzles from a pond—cows who have been told to express Calm Courage, High Ideals. Every square inch of the canvas was painted as realistically as a photograph, and yet, it was obviously unfinished; it would be finished when it resembled one of those German photographs, in which everything is incredibly sharp and dramatically three-dimensional, realler than real.
“What’s it called?” Clinton said.
“It’s called New Horizons. Do you like it?” Clinton’s mind swallowed the title, swished it around a little, and spat it up slightly changed. Earth Mother, Here We Go! he thought, giving it a last steady stare. He strolled, whistling softly as he might in some bright hospital, to the door.
“Goodby, Bernie,” Clinton said.
Closing the door, he glanced back. On the wall, Kinsey listened as each devil told how it had done absolutely everything with every other devil, had always done so and would always continue to do so, world without end, so that all the case histories were exactly the same, and all the lines of all the columns of all the tables held the same number.
His apartment was dark; he did not bother calling out. He walked to the kitchen and found the note, one corner held down by a large unopened can of tomato juice, in the middle of the table. He read:
“I’m a conformist and a moral weakling and a coward. Everyone else has gone, and there seems to be provision for those of us who weren’t cut out to be noble. I’m not strong enough, Clint; I can’t fight everyone and myself and you, too. This way I’ll just have to fight you. Or maybe I’m brave; we’ll still be in love a month from now.”
There was no salutation, and it was unsigned. A jar next to the can held a bouquet of brushes and pencils; he selected a grease pencil from it and wrote, on top of her note, I love you, in thick black letters. Then he drew a heart around it.
He opened a cabinet, took down a bottle of scotch and sloshed some in a glass. He lifted the glass to his lips, where the rim made an unexpected, musical trill against his teeth. He regarded his hand with considerable surprise. “Well, well,” he said aloud, in tones of sprightly interest.
He emptied the glass in one long swallow, sloshed rather a lot more into it, and put the bottle away. Whistling softly, he strolled through the dark apartment to the bedroom. Bedrooms in which only men have slept smell of socks; bedrooms in which men and women have slept smell only of women. At least, to men. He lay down on his side of the bed, occasionally sipping at his drink, for quite a long time. He stared at the ceiling, and let his mind wander, as men under such circumstances are prone to do, back over the good times, the very good times. He closed his eyes . . .
Janet came back, still in love with him, still loved; he told her, “You look older,” which was a lie, because she looked younger, like a nineteen-year-old product of Dachau instead of a twenty-four-year-old product of Smith.
They were at somebody’s place—when were they not at somebody’s place?—and it was necessary that he stay by the TV set, to check up on a commercial. He sat near it, waiting for the station break, paying no attention to the party in the background. In midscene, the television set made a hideous, quite unconscionable noise; the screen broadcast scanning-patterns. Behind him there was a faint stir, a tension. The screen made a visual burp, and was occupied by a small man; not literally a small man, but a man you knew had a small soul. He had nasty glittering eyes and a pinched weak mouth, and every inch of him reeked of a perverted intimacy with, and knowledge of, power. The small man said, in a prim, defiant voice, all stand. To the sound of scraping chairs behind him Clinton turned, to see Janet standing, all of them standing, blank-eyed and loose-mouthed, standing waiting for the next order.
Clinton opened his eyes; he had not been asleep. It had been a waking dream, differing from a daydream in that it needed no will’s push to help its progress. It was familiar; he had had it many times.
Clinton sat up on the bed; if he were a clairvoyant, where, oh where, would he find an honest medium? Boy, what a director you’d make, he thought. Picking up his drink, he stood and then walked to the bedroom’s french windows, opened them, and went out on the small terrace. He tilted his head and rocked back; above him to all sides were sheer cliffs, terraced escarpments, of thousands upon thousands of lighted windows. High above, the stars invisible because of the diffusion of light from the windows, was the sky. Clinton thought of Noordberg, innocently lecherous and then pretending innocent lechery; in his mind he looked again at Bernie’s picture, the two big children in front of their pastorale, and wondered what it was that lurked beneath, that must needs insist so loudly that it was not there.