Part 16 (1/2)
”Keep the change.”
”Thanks, sir.”
An insane world ... a polite and jovial taxi-cab driver carrying lunatics about the streets.
”Oh, dear, look! Father's sitting up.” She was disappointed. ”And I wanted to kiss and hug you before we went upstairs.”
Dorn unlocked the door of his house. He still had a house and could unlock its door without its meaning anything. To-morrow he would have no house. That was the difference between to-day and to-morrow. The old man would be there. That would make it easier. He s.h.i.+vered. ”I'm going to do something then”.... This was alarming.
Anna's arms were around him before he could remove his coat. She clung, laughing, kissing. Let her.... ”The doomed man ate a hearty breakfast of ham and eggs and seemed in good spirits.” Reporters, with a sense of the dramatic, usually wrote it that way. Ham and eggs were a symbol. Should he mull around for extenuating epigrams--a fervid rigmarole on the mysteries and ethics of life? Or strike swift, short?... ”Death was instantaneous. The drop fell at 10:08 A.M. sharp.” Always sharp. d.a.m.n his reporters!
”Anna ...”
She bloomed at the sound of her name.
”I want to talk, Anna.”
”No, let's not talk. I'm so happy.... Aren't you up rather late, father?”
Thank G.o.d she was getting nervous. One can't kill a smile.
”Anna, come to me.”
An old phrase of their love-making. He hadn't meant to use it. But phrases that have been used for seven years get so they say themselves.
She moved quickly toward him. His father--smiling beyond her shoulder.
Now for the slaughter....
”Do you love me enough to make me happy, Anna?”
”I would give my life for you.”
He was deplorably calm--too calm. His eyes were looking at books on shelves, at chairs, at pictures on the walls, as if everything was of an identical importance.
”I know, but that isn't it.”
”What then, Erik?”
He couldn't say it. Particularly with his father smiling--an irritating old man who would never die. Should he fall at her feet and whimper? He couldn't. Her face was his, her eyes his. It wasn't leaving Anna.
Himself, though. Yes, he was confronting himself. Seven years of selves.
All wonderful. Everything he had said and done for seven years lived in Anna. So he must kill seven years of himself with a phrase. No. Yet he was talking on. It soothed him, untightened the agony in him.
”Listen, Anna. I can't tell you, but I must. My words circle away from me. They run away from what I want to tell you. Anna ... I must go away--leave you.”
Tears in his eyes, over his face. His voice, warm, blurring with tears.
He choked, paused.
”Erik....”
A white sound. Something bursting.
”If I stay, I'll go mad.”