Memoirs Found In a Bathtub (12 page)

Why did he look at my legs? An allusion to my earlier impulse to fall on my knees before him and confess?

“Undercover man!” he wheezed. I sprang to my feet. He flinched and raised his hands.

“Not too close! Stay where you are! Sing me a song, undercover man, sing me a song!” he shouted. I understood: afraid of treachery, the experienced old man was having me sing so that I could hide nothing from him.

I sang whatever came into my head. He pointed to a side drawer and nodded for me to pull it out, which I did as I sang. The drawer was filled with little jars and smelled like an old-fashioned pharmacy. He gestured for me to take the jars out and line them up on his desk, which I did as I sang. He watched me anxiously, then sat up in his armchair, lifted the sleeve of his jacket, and with great caution peeled off his white glove. The hand was withered, spotty, full of veins; it had something on it that looked like a bug. In an urgent whisper, he ordered me to stop singing and hand him a pill from a gold jar. This he swallowed with extreme difficulty. Finally, when the pill was got down, he had me bring him a pitcher of water, pour some into a glass and measure in a liquid medicine.

“Careful, undercover man!” he whispered nervously. “That stuffs strong—don’t spill it!”

“Of course not, Admiral sir! Never!” I cried, touched by his trust in me. The trembling of his spotted, mole-covered hand became more pronounced as I began to add the medicine to his glass with an eyedropper.

“One, two, three, four,” he counted the drops. At sixteen he screeched: “Stop!” I jumped, but fortunately the next drop stayed at the end of the dropper and didn’t fall in. Why sixteen? Apprehensive, I gave him the glass.

Good … good, undercover man,” he said, no less apprehensive. “You … if you don’t mind … you … you try it first, yes?”

I drank a little. It took him several minutes to drink the rest himself. His teeth kept chattering against the glass—he had to remove them. They made a broken white bracelet there on the desk. At last, with a martyred look, he managed to down the liquid. I held his hand to steady it—it felt like small bones loose inside a leather bag. If only he wouldn’t faint on me.

“Admiral, sir…” I said, “would you allow me to present my case?”

He closed his clouded eyes and seemed to shrink behind the desk as he listened to my feverish words. While I talked, he put his hand out—evidently he wished me to remove the other glove. Then he rested this hand on the one with the bug and coughed, listening intently to the rattle in his chest. But I continued to unfold before him my tangled tale of woe. Surely his infirmities would make him sympathetic toward the frailties of others; he would understand. His face, all covered with liver spots and moles, grew smaller between the misshapen ears, assumed more and more that look of patriarchal deterioration that so inspired my filial pity and respect. There were all sorts of growths—one, on the top of his balding head, looked like a downy egg. But were these not the scars of wounds sustained in the battle with implacable time, and did they not give him an air of the utmost venerability?

Wishing my confession to appear as sincere as possible, I sat at his elbow and told him the whole, sad story of my mistakes, my slip-ups and defeats. I didn’t leave out a thing. His measured breathing, his nodding, the occasional smile that played over his open lips—all this comforted me, encouraged me, made me feel he was on my side. As I came to the end of my story, I leaned over and touched his arm—even that departure from regulations seemed to meet with his indulgence. Now filled with the highest hopes and at the same time deeply moved by my own words, I finally made my impassioned plea:

“Will you help me, Admiral sir? Tell me what to do!” Of course, he needed time to reflect on all that I had said. But after an hour or two I thought it prudent to repeat, in the way of a reminder:

“What should I do, sir?”

He continued to nod, as if encouraging me to go on. But his face was turned away. Could it be that he was ashamed of the part he had played in the Building’s plot against me?

Holding my breath, I moved even closer—and saw that he was asleep. He had been sleeping the whole time. The medicine must have helped. Now that I was silent, his sleep became deeper, he began to dream. There was a clicking in his throat, suddenly a whistle, then some cautious hissing, another whistle, a more determined whistle, a bold blast on the horn, a call to the hunt, and then I could hear all the sounds of the hunt, the rustling trees, the shouts, the galloping through dale and glen, an occasional shot carried by the wind, muffled and distant … then silence, then again the horn, and the chase renewed… I got up and tried to brush the bug off his hand. It wasn’t a bug at all.

I took a closer look: dark spots, growths, myriads of moles, some flat and dry, some like the comb of a rooster, others sprouting hair with unseemly impudence…

His uniform, I knew, was his refuge, his support, the thing that kept him in one piece, held him together—what a risk he had taken to unbutton and loosen it like that—I didn’t realize how great a risk until I saw him now at close quarters! No wonder he insisted on my keeping at a distance! At a distance there was only an innocent snoring, an ordinary flapping in the throat; close up, there was a veritable jungle of growths, wild, abandoned growths, growths that burrowed and spread in stealth. What madness of the skin was this? A dermatological fantasy in the manner of the Baroque? A self-willed, autonomous creation above hardening arteries? No, rather a rebellion, an uprising in the provinces, on the periphery of the organism! An attempt to break away, to escape in all directions! The hairy warts, the moles, the growths all grew, preparing themselves in secret, readying themselves to flee the worn-out biological matrix—as if by this dispersion they could avoid the inevitable end.

A fine situation! Here was the Admiral—and here were these unsolicited pranks of nature, fully intending by their secret proliferation to survive him, survive him in the form of common warts!

This changed things. Obviously, the old man was in no condition to help me. However, if he was unable to show me the way, to give me a sign, then perhaps … perhaps he was the sign himself, perhaps a message was being sent
through him.

An interesting thought. I took another close look at the Admiral: no doubt about it, these bumps and nodules, these neoplasms and lesions went far beyond the bounds of decency; the old man was being used, manipulated, made to sprout and multiply, grow spots and stains and hooves and bugs—see how that meaty birthmark beneath his eye flushed pink like the dawn of a new day! Shameful! Disgraceful!

No, these arrogant claims, boasts to have discovered new forms, new means of creative expression, they led to the dead end of plagiarism. There was a cauliflower, for example, and here was plainly a mushroom, and here an obvious borrowing from poultry.

If that were only all! But this amounted to desertion, treason! A generation of aggressive, hardy dwarfs feeding on a dying man’s sweat! I had before me—was nothing sacred?!—a cruel mockery, a jeering at the dignity of the soon-to-be-deceased.

There was no longer any doubt. Here was no subtle hint, but a clear answer, a brutal rejection of all my lame explanations, excuses and arguments.

I sat down, shattered. It was immaterial now whether that answer came from him or through him. In either case it was the Building that spoke. What fantastic cunning, to utilize even the approach of death, the very marks of its proximity, to conduct official business!

Still, this was no final solution. They were merely letting me know that everything had been taken note of, all my little sins, impersonations, excuses, treasons. I was being given a reprieve; the time for sentencing had not yet come.

Cut the Gordian knot or be strangled by it, be convicted or found pure as the driven snow … as if my destiny was to have some monument raised in my name—either in this Building or the
other!
Any moment now guards could break in and seize me, arrest me, terminate me. But such tactics were out of fashion. Besides, they knew I couldn’t stay here by the sleeping Admiral now that I had received the message, they knew I would take up my wandering again, like a dog nursing its injured paw.

Suddenly angry, I paced the luxurious carpet. The Admiral sat in his armchair, shrunken, so unlike the hale and hearty portraits that stared out fiercely from the walls. I looked around with the impatience of a thief, feeling that as yet I had done nothing of consequence, that even my transgressions hardly counted for anything. If only I could attract attention to myself, do something spectacular, rise or fall, it didn’t matter … even disaster would be a victory … even the worst crime…

The desk had an unusual number of locks; it evidently contained valuable documents. I knelt and pulled gently at one of the drawers. Inside were cardboard boxes tied with rubber bands and marked “one teaspoon three times a day,” and there was a strongbox full of pills. The next drawer had more of the same: nothing but medicine. I found a bunch of keys and proceeded to try them, one by one, in the locks, getting down on all fours behind the desk. No, this they hadn’t foreseen, that I would be capable of such a low deed, rifling the Admiral’s desk, and under his very nose! There was no turning back now; this was not the sort of thing one could explain away later. My hands trembled as I pulled out box after box, tore the wrappings off packages—nothing, nothing but bottles, vials, jars of salve, tranquilizers, Band-Aids, medicine for corns, suppositories, supports and trusses, safety pins, cotton balls and cotton swabs, all sorts of sprays and powders, eyedroppers, tweezers, thermometers. That was all?!

Impossible! It was a trick! Camouflage! I tapped the remaining drawers. I felt around, heard the click of a hidden spring, reached in and pulled out—a cap, a stick, a slingshot, a spotted stone, a dried leaf, and—aha!—a sealed packet. I broke the seal and several cards fell out, the kind that come with bubble gum. What else? Nothing else.

They were animal cards: a donkey, a zebra, a buffalo, a baboon, a hyena, and an egg. A donkey? That meant… I was an ass? What about an elephant? Awkward, thick-skinned. Hyena? Let’s see, a hyena fed on carrion … the old man? And a baboon? Baboon, monkey, monkey business, ape—an ape apes, of course! Then … they had anticipated my attempted burglary … and the egg? What did the egg say?

I turned the card over. Ah! The cuckoo. The cuckoo puts her egg in another bird’s nest—an act of treachery, falsification! What then? Assault? Murder? But how could I murder that poor old man with moles? Anyway…

“Peep,” he mumbled under his breath and began to snore in a tremolo, like a nightingale, a very old nightingale.

That was the last straw. I threw everything back in the drawers, brushed off my knees, stepped over a puddle of spilled medicine, and collapsed into a chair. Not to deliberate on what I should do next, but just to collapse—to collapse in despair and exhaustion.

I have no idea how long I sat there. The old man gave an occasional snort in his sleep, but that couldn’t rouse me from my stupor. Several times I got up and went to see Major Erms, and it always turned out to be a dream. Then the thought occurred to me that I could simply sit there, just sit there—they’d have to do something about it eventually. Except what about those long, long hours I had spent in that horrible reception room? No, they’d let me rot first…

Quickly, I gathered up my papers and went to Major Erms. He was at his desk, writing something with one hand and stirring coffee with the other. He lifted his blue eyes and looked straight at me. There was a cheerful strength in those eyes, the joyful attitude of a puppy pleased with everything, a puppy … a dog … was there something in that? But he interrupted my thoughts by saying:

“You’re late! I was beginning to think—poof!—into thin air! Where were you?”

“With the Admiral,” I said, taking a seat. He tilted his head in a gesture of mock respect.

“Indeed,” he said. “You don’t waste time. I should have known.”

“Cut that out!” I yelled, rising from my chair, my fists clenched.

“What?” he gasped, astonished. But I didn’t let him speak. The dam had burst and my words came pouring out and nothing could stop them—I told him about my first meanderings through the Building, about the Commander in Chief, about the suspicion which even then had taken hold of me like an illness, and I told him how that suspicion had affected all my subsequent actions, how I was ready to accept the role of martyr, an innocent man convicted on circumstantial evidence, a man without a single blot on his record, and how I had prepared myself for the worst, but even the worst had been denied me and I was left to myself, always to myself, always infernally alone, and I told him how I wandered from door to door on business that made no sense, no sense to anyone… I told him everything, but even as I told him, I knew it was in vain. I repeated myself, I groped for words, circled, feeling something was missing, something didn’t quite hold together… Then a thought hit me, and I began to think out loud, think the whole thing out—that is, if I were to be of any use at all (putting aside all personal claims, illusions, hopes), then wasn’t it foolish, even criminal, to waste me in this way? What would the Building gain if I fell to pieces? Nothing! Then what purpose did all this nonsense serve, and wasn’t it about time they called it quits and gave me back my instructions, acquainted me with at least the general idea of the Mission, whatever that might be? For my part, I could guarantee that I would endeavor, with all my heart and soul, above and beyond the call of duty, pledging loyalty, faith, devotion…

Unfortunately my speech, chaotic enough to begin with, did not improve towards the end. Out of breath, shaken, I stopped in mid-sentence. Major Erms’s blue eyes stared at me in consternation. Then he lowered them and stirred his coffee, fumbling with the spoon—ah, he was embarrassed, embarrassed for me!

“Really, I don’t know…” he began in a quiet and friendly way, though I thought I detected a note of severity in his voice. “I don’t know what to do with you. To take such risks … such schoolboy pranks … opening medicine chests, really! It’s painful even to mention it! How could you let your imagination run away with you like that?” He was increasingly stem, yet somehow still maintained that incredibly sunny disposition of his.