The Essential Ellison Part 48

"Who are you?" he asked quietly. "How did you get in here?"

"Report me, go ahead. I don't care if I'm arrested. Someone had to say it. You're shameful! Walking around, pretending to make music-don't you see how awful it is? A performer is an interpretative artist, not just a machine for playing the notes. I shouldn't have to tell you that. An interpretative artist. Artist. Where's your art now? Do you see beyond the score? Do you grow from performance to performance?"

Suddenly he liked her very much. Despite her plainness, despite her hatred, despite himself. "You're a musician."

She let that pa.s.s. "What do you play?" Then he smiled. "The ultracembalo, of course. And you must be very good."

"Better than you. Clearer, cleaner, deeper. Oh, G.o.d, what am I doing here? You disgust me."

"How can I keep on growing?" Bekh asked gently. "The dead don't grow...

Her tirade swept on, as if she hadn't heard. Telling him over and over how despicable he was, what a counterfeit of greatness. And then she halted in midsentence. Blinking, reddening, putting hands to lips. "Oh,.. she murmured, abashed, starting to weep. "Oh. oh?"

She went silent. It lasted a long time. She looked away, studied the walls, the mirror, her hands, her shoes. He watched her. Then, finally, she said, "What an arrogant little snot I am. What a cruel foolish b.i.t.c.h. I never stopped to think that you-that maybe-I just didn't think-" He thought she would run from him. "And you won't forgive me, will you? Why should you? I break in, I turn you on, I scream a lot of cruel nonsense at you-"

"It wasn't nonsense. It was all quite true, you know. Absolutely true." Then, softly, he said, "Break the machinery."

"Don't worry. I won't cause any more trouble for you. I'll go, now. I can't tell you how foolish I feel, haranguing you like that. A dumb little puritan puffed up with pride in her own art. Telling you that you don't measure up to my ideals. When I-"

"You didn't hear me. I asked you to break the machinery."

She looked at him in a new way, slightly out of focus. "What are you talking about?"

"To stop me. I want to be gone. Is that so hard to understand? You, of all people, should understand that. What you say is true, very very true. Can you put yourself where I am? A thing, not alive, not dead, just a thing, a tool, an implement that unfortunately thinks and remembers and wishes for release. Yes, a player piano. My life stopped and my art stopped, and I have nothing to belong to now, not even the art. For it's always the same. Always the same tones, the same reaches, the same heights.

Pretending to make music, as you say. Pretending."

"But I can't-"

"Of course you can. Come, sit down, we'll discuss it. And you'll play for me."

"Play for you?"

He reached out his hand and she started to take it, then drew her hand back. "You'll have to play for me," he said quietly. "I can't let just anyone end me. That's a big, important thing, you see. Not just anyone. So you'll play for me." He got heavily to his feet. Thinking of Lisbeth, Sharon, Dorothea. Gone, all gone now. Only he, Bekh, left behind, some of him left behind, old bones, dried meat. Breath as stale as Egypt. Blood the color of pumice. Sounds devoid of tears and laughter. Just sounds.

He led the way, and she followed him, out onto the stage, where the console still stood uncrated. He gave her his gloves, saying. "I know they aren't yours. I'll take that into account. Do the best you can." She drew them on slowly, smoothing them.

She sat down at the console. He saw the fear in her face, and the ecstasy, also. Her fingers hovering over the keys. Pouncing. G.o.d, Timi's Ninth! The tones swelling and rising, and the fear going from her face. Yes. Yes. He would not have played it that way, but yes, just so. Timi's notes filtered through her soul. A striking interpretation. Perhaps she falters a little, but why not? The wrong gloves, no preparation, strange circ.u.mstances. And how beautifully she plays. The hall fills with sound. He ceases to listen as a critic might; he becomes part of the music. His own fingers moving, his muscles quivering, reaching for pedals and stops, activating the pressors. As if he plays through her. She goes on. soaring higher, losing the last of her nervousness. In full command. Not yet a finished artist but so good, so wonderfully good! Making the mighty instrument sing. Draining its full resources. Underscoring this, making that leaner. Oh, yes! He is in the music. It engulfs him. Can he cry? Do the tearducts still function? He can hardly bear it, it is so beautiful. He has forgotten, in all these years. He has not heard anyone else play for so long. Seven hundred four days. Out of the tomb. Bound up in his own meaningless performances. And now this. The rebirth of music. It was once like this all the time, the union of composer and instrument and performer, soul. wrenching, all encompa.s.sing. For him. No longer. Eyes closed, he plays the movement through to its close by way of her body, her hands, her soul. When the sound dies away, he feels the good exhaustion that comes from total submission to the art.

"That's fine," he said, when the last silence was gone. "That was very lovely." A catch in his voice. His hands were still trembling; he was afraid to applaud.

He reached for her, and this time she took his hand. For a moment he held her cool fingers. Then he tugged gently, and she followed him back into the dressing room, and he lay down on the sofa, and he told her which mechanisms to break, after she turned him off, so he would feel no pain. Then he closed his eyes and waited.

"You'll just-go?" she asked. "Quickly. Peacefully."

"I'm afraid. It's like murder."

"I'm dead," he said. "But not dead enough. You won't be killing anything. Do you remember how my playing sounded to you? Do you remember why I came here? Is there life in me?"

"I'm still afraid."

"I've earned my rest," he said. He opened his eyes and smiled. "It's all right. I like you." And, as she moved toward him, he said, "Thank you."

Then he closed his eyes again. She turned him off.

Then she did as he had instructed her.

Picking her way past the wreckage of the sustaining chamber, she left the dressing room. She found her way out of the Music Center-out onto the gla.s.s landscape, under the singing stars, and she was crying for him.

Laddy. She wanted very much to find Laddy now. To talk to him. To tell him he was almost right about what he'd told her. Not entirely, but more than she had believed...before. She went away from there. Smoothly, with songs yet to be sung.

And behind her, a great peace had settled. Unfinished, at last the symphony had Wrung its last measure of strength and sorrow.

It did not matter what Weatherex said was the proper time for mist or rain or fog. Night, the stars, the songs were forever.

Knox In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me-and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-PASTOR MARTIN NIEMoLLER.

They flushed the n.i.g.g.e.rs from underground bunkers, out near the perimeter, and Charlie Knox killed his because he thought the boogie was going for a gun. As it turned out, he wasn't: but Knox didn't know that when he let fly.

Earlier that day Knox had gone to a fitness session and the ward Captain had reprimanded him for haste in firing. "These aren't shootouts, Knox. The idea is to level the weapon and point it in the right direction, not blow off your own leg. Now take it again. Another hour on the range, Sat.u.r.day."

Even earlier that day, Knox had had lunch with his wife; he had done the cooking himself, and they had discussed how difficult it had become to get fresh vegetables, particularly carrots, since the new emergency measures had been put into effect. "But it's necessary," Brenda had said. "At least until the President can get things under control again." Knox had said something about radicals and Brenda had said, you can say that again.

And at the start of that day, Knox had found sealed instructions from the Patriotism Party in his readout tray at work. He slit open the red, white and blue plastic packet and saw he was scheduled for an operation that night.

Now they came up out of the ground like potato bugs, black and fat from living off starches, and clouds of infiltration gas billowed out after them. Knox's flus.h.i.+ng team waited with truncheons raised, catching the first two across the skulls with beautiful back swings. They dropped, half in and half out of the hole, and the flushers grabbed them by their collars. They pulled them out fast and slung them across the gra.s.s so those who followed wouldn't find the pa.s.sage blocked.

They hadn't counted on more than a couple of exit holes. Suddenly the ground started to erupt spooks and they were jumping up and out all around the team. The flushers let their truncheons hang by the lanyards and went to more effective weaponry. Knox saw Ernie Buscher uns.h.i.+p his scattergun and blow two of the jigs to pieces as they scrambled out of the ground. Pieces of n.i.g.g.e.r meat went east in a spray.

That was the moment when an owl hooted in a tree off to Knox's right, and he turned his head to look. "Behind you, Charlie!" Knox heard Ted Beckwith's warning. He turned back from the owl sound and right behind him the turf had popped open and there was a dinge crawling out like an earthworm. There wasn't enough moon to see what he looked like, but Knox took a swing with his truncheon and missed. "Stop!" he yelled, but the jig went right on getting to his feet and blundering away. "I said: stop, nigguh!"

And the boogie half-turned, and in the dim light Knox thought he was reaching inside his jumper jacket for a gun. Knox reacted with twice his best drill speed, had the banger off its Velcro pad and working before the s.h.i.+ne could pull his hand out of his clothes. The spook's head opened up like a piece of overripe fruit and Knox was startled to see the stuff inside sparkled in the night. Then it went all over the place.

"Oh my G.o.d," Knox said. He heard his voice as though it had come from someone standing very close beside him; but it had been himself.

He heard the words repeating themselves, fading away, dimmer and dimmer, a canyon echo disappearing in his mind.

There was firing going on all around him now. The bright golden flashes of scatterguns and bangers lighting up the clearing and reflecting off the perimeter. Then suddenly there was the shrill whistle of the ward Captain's warning, three shorts and a long, and the blasting became more sporadic, then finally stopped.

"All right, you men! That's enough! No one authorized--this! Now knock it off, right this minute. We'll take these people in."

Knox realized he was standing where he had been standing for a long time. Ted Beckwith came to him and said, "You okay, Charlie?"

After a few moments Knox turned his head to stare into Beckwith's really handsome face, and he heard that self that was himself saying, "My G.o.d, he just split open..."

Charlie Knox is. A man.

Who.

Stands 1.9 meters, weighs 191 pounds, has brown wavy hair cut short, squints slightly out of brown eyes, wears a mustache that is thick and brown and is kept neatly trimmed but not obsessively so, works out with 50 lb. barbells twice a day for ten minutes each session, drinks milk when he can get it and nothing but water when he can't, has had whooping cough, measles, mumps, chicken pox and twice broken his left forearm but otherwise is healthy.

He is thirty years old, does not like rings or other jewelry, has been married to Brenda for nine years, has two children (Rebecca, 8 and Ben, 7), never wears a hat, likes cold weather, shuffles his feet through the fallen leaves when he walks, has perfect pitch when he sings, likes to whistle, has never read a book all the way through, joined the Party two years ago at the compulsory outside age limit, has a diamond-shaped birthmark on his right thigh, and never learned to swim.

There are many things about the past Knox cannot remember. If. He ever knew them.

"Charlie?""Yeah?""Do you love me as much today as you did when we were married?""Sure.""As much as, or more than?""Same.""Not even a little less or more?""Nope. Exactly the same.""How can that be?""I don't like changing a good thing.""Oh, you."Then there was silence for a few minutes.Then:"You've started having bad dreams.""How do you know?""You talk in your sleep.""What do I say?""I can't make it out, a lot of it. But you whimper.""I don't whimper.""It sure sounds that way, Charlie."Silence."Brenda, you ever wonder where the materiel comes from?""What?""The materiel. The stuff we make on the line?""I don't know, Charlie; it's your job."Silence.

"You going over to the ward tonight?"

"For a while."

"What are you reading?"

"Names. I'm memorizing."

Silence, as Knox memorizes. He almost has it down perfect now. He's been memorizing for weeks. n.i.g.g.e.r, spook, jig, c.o.o.n, shade, dinge, spade, s.h.i.+ne, boogie, darkie, burrhead; sheenie, mockie, hebe, yid, shonicker, kike; greaser, beaner, chili-belly, pocho, spic, wetback, meskin, halap.e.c.k.e.r; wop, guinea, dago, mackerel-snapper, bead-counter, poper, ring-kisser, vattik; kraut, dog-eater, redskin, gut-eater, polack, bohunk, mick, frog, limey, canuck, nip, c.h.i.n.k, slanteye, gook, slope, creamer, d.i.n.k, splib, shater, jungle bunny, christ-killer.

"What's all that you're memorizing?"

"Just some stuff."

Silence.

"I don't think you love me."

"I love you."

"Then why don't you pay some attention to me?"

"I want to get ahead in the Party."

Silence.

"I love you. I really do."

"I know. It's just sometimes you ignore me."

"I want to get ahead in the Party."

Silence.

"What do I say?"

"When?"

"When I'm dreaming?"

"I don't know. I wake up and say something and you go back to sleep."

"Do I ever talk about anything in particular?"

"That man you killed."

"I don't talk about that."

"I wouldn't lie about that to you, Charlie. You do."

"No."

Silence.

"I wonder where it all comes from."

Silence.

"Are you unhappy, Charlie?"

"No, I'm okay."

"Why don't you stay home tonight?"

"I can't. I want to get ahead in the Party."

Silence.

"But I love you, Brenda. Honest to G.o.d, I do."

"Sometimes I think you're chasing something."

"I'll see you later. I'll wake you when I come in."

On the a.s.sembly line, two weeks later, Knox was fitting rectangular green blocks into the appropriate rectangular holes in yellow bases, when the Line Supervisor stopped to congratulate him.

"Heard you had your first kill a couple of weeks ago, Knox," he said. He waved to the next man on the line to pick up the beat while Knox talked. "Heard you really comported yourself like a champ. Top stuff, Knox."

Knox smiled shyly. He had never really learned to accept compliments graciously. "Thanks, Mr. Hale."

The music playing in the background was Sousa's Was.h.i.+ngton Post March, interpreted by the Oval Office Strings. It swirled softly through the air above the a.s.sembly line, and Knox found his speech-patterns keeping time.

"Knox," Hale said, "come on over here where we can talk. I want to talk to you about something."

Knox unbuckled his harness and slid out of the formfit. He followed the Line Supervisor to a corner of the manufactory. near the towering stacks of a.s.sembled block/bases, ready for disa.s.sembling and re-feed input at the other end of the line.