Moving abruptly, he walked to the corner and read on an iron post the names of the streets. He was able then to orient himself in relation to Donna’s apartment, which was an astonishingly long distance away, and he was dully incredulous that he had walked so far. He began to walk in the direction he needed to go, lunging forward again with the awkward, loping gait that carried him with remarkable swiftness over asphalt and concrete; and he reached the doorway in which he had stood before, just as a Chevrolet drove up from the opposite direction and stopped. He stood quietly and watched as Tyler got out and went around the car and opened the door for Donna. He felt within himself the silent, unbearable beat of pain that was somehow coordinated with the beat of his blood but was separate and stronger and not at all the same. In the brick wall of the apartment house light came up where darkness had been, from Donna’s windows. Time passed, and Tyler reappeared and drove away, and the time that had passed was no more than ten minutes, though it seemed longer than a night could be. After waiting yet a little longer in the distorted night where time, and all things, were deceptions, he crossed the street and went up to the floor on which Donna’s apartment was and pressed the button beside the door.
“For God’s sake,” Donna said, “what’s happened to you?”
She was shocked at his appearance, almost frightened. He wore no hat, and his hair was tousled, as if he had raked his fingers through it in every direction. His clothes were rumpled and stained in spots, his trousers torn at the knee. The side of his face where he had been clawed was smeared with blood and a little swollen. It was perfectly apparent to her that he had been making some kind of fool of himself, and it was quite likely that he had been impelled to do it simply because she had not been at home to meet him. This made her react immediately with compassion and anger, which were ambivalent, which was a kind of reaction she resented strongly because she had had too much of it and wanted no more of it.
“You had better come in,” she said.
He walked past her into the room and sat down. Turning away from him, glad for the moment of the necessity for petty action that would delay her facing fully what was now apparent, that she had taken upon herself an intolerable burden and perhaps a greater responsibility than she had imagined, she went into the bathroom and returned with a wet washcloth and a bottle of merthiolate. She cleaned his face and painted the scratch and carried the cloth and the antiseptic back into the bathroom. Returning, she stood and inspected him from a distance of two paces, feet spread and hands on hips, in a posture that seemed to suggest between them a difference of at least two generations.
“Now, then,” she said, “please tell me what kind of idiocy you have been up to.”
“You weren’t here,” he said, “and you didn’t come, though I waited for a long time, and so I went for a walk and walked for a long way.”
“Did you get yourself in such a mess merely by walking?”
“I fell down. I don’t quite know how it happened. Somehow or other I slipped off a curb and fell down.”
“How did you get your face scratched?”
“A woman did it. I went into a bar, and she wanted me to buy her a drink, and I didn’t want to. It made her furious because I didn’t want to buy her a drink.”
“Jesus Christ, are you completely without any kind of capacity to cope with things? Do you intend to go on forever letting every little emotional disturbance threaten you with ruin?”
“Why weren’t you here? You said you’d be, but you weren’t.”
“I know. I’m sorry. There was something I had to do.”
“You were with a man. I was outside, across the street. I saw him bring you home.”
“All right. I was out with a man. I’d have told you so, if only you’d given me time. We had some drinks and went to dinner, but it was really a matter of business. This man may loan me the money to buy the shop, which is very important to me. Right now, it is the most important thing that could happen to me.”
He did not respond, would not even look at her, and she resisted a compulsion to kneel beside him and hold his head against her breasts. This would have been a concession, she knew, which would not be good in the long run for him, and perhaps be worse for her. It was clear that she must, this night, refuse to carry any further something that had already been carried too far. Now that her life had taken the direction and gained momentum in the last few hours, he was clearly impossible. He was quite incapable of being reasonable or of accepting a simple and undedicated relationship that might have been pleasant for both of them and possible to maintain, and it was practically certain that he would destroy all her chances absolutely if he were allowed to hang on. She had been disturbed all the way home by the fear that he might be waiting in the hall to create a scene in front of Tyler. She did not wish to be unkind — actually she would have preferred not to give him up entirely — but it was essential she act decisively, in spite of her feelings, for the sake of what otherwise might be lost.
She got a straight chair and placed it directly in front of him and sat down and took one of his hands in both of hers.
“I want to talk with you,” she said.
“All right.”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
“You must understand that all this is impossible. Don’t you see yourself that it is? For a while it has been all right, and I hope it has even been good for us, something we can remember later without regret. But neither of us is committed or bound to each other, and it will surely be the worse for us from now on if we permit it.”
He looked up at her with eyes which were curiously flat.
“Do you mean that you don’t want to see me any more?”
“I mean, at least, that I don’t want to see you any more in the way that I have been. I don’t deny that I wanted it and was largely responsible for it. I admit also that even now I wish it were not necessary to say what I am trying to say, but it will be better for both of us if we do not try to go on any longer.”
“Can’t I stay tonight?”
“No. Not tonight. Nor any other night.”
He drew his hand slowly from hers and looked down at it with his flat eyes, turning it over and over and peering at it intently, inspecting it, it seemed, for marks or stains or some strange sign of contamination. Suddenly, without warning, he folded the fingers into a fist and struck out with the fist savagely, emitting at the same time a hoarse cry of animal anguish.
The blow caught Donna on the side of the head above the ear and knocked her to the floor, the straight chair falling after her. She was stunned for a few moments, blind and deaf, and when she recovered he was already gone. Reaching out for the chair in which he had sat, she pulled herself into it and put her head into her hands and sat quietly for some time.
She was thankful he had struck her. She felt a little better because he had.
Chapter VII
1.
She awakened one morning, about three weeks after sending Enos Simon away. Her first thought was of that other morning when she had awakened in the house of Aaron Burns. There were certain things about the two mornings that were the same, but there were other things that were different. She had the feeling now, as she had had then, that it was late and that she would have to get up at once and go to the shop. But that other day had been a Sunday, with no urgency about going anywhere. This morning was Friday and it was necessary to go to the shop, although there was after all, perhaps, no particular urgency. The other morning of awakening had been in early January, and it had been snowing; and this morning was at the end of April, with over a hundred other mornings and awakenings between, and it was a clear day with a bright scrubbed sky which she could see by turning her head on her pillow and looking up through the window of her room. Now, as then, she was a certain kind of person with a certain kind of day ahead of her, but she was a different certain kind of person and the day was a different certain kind of day, for no person is the same when there have been over a hundred days between what they were and are.