The October Country

“Don’t you?” he said.

Somebody walked down below in the plaza, faintly, fading away.

“Eh?” he asked her, brushing his teeth.

She lay there, staring up at the ceiling, her breast rising and falling faster, faster, faster, the air going in and out, in and out her nostrils, a little trickle of blood coming from her clenched lips. Her eyes were very wide, her hands blindly constricted the bedclothes.

“Eh?” he said again behind the door.

She said nothing.

“Sure,” he talked to himself. “Pretty as hell,” he murmured, under the flow of tap water. He rinsed his mouth. “Sure,” he said.

Nothing from her in the bed.

“Women are funny,” he said to himself in the mirror.

She lay in the bed.

“Sure,” he said. He gargled with some antiseptic, spat it down the drain. “You’ll be all right in the morning,” he said.

Not a word from her.

“We’ll get the car fixed.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Be morning before you know it.” He was screwing caps on things now, putting freshener on his face. “And the car fixed tomorrow, maybe, at the very latest the next day. You won’t mind another night here, will you?”

She didn’t answer.

“Will you?” he asked.

No reply.

The light blinked out under the bathroom door.

“Marie?”

He opened the door.

“Asleep?”

She lay with eyes wide, breasts moving up and down.

“Asleep,” he said. “Well, good night, lady.”

He climbed into his bed. “Tired,” he said.

No reply.

“Tired,” he said.

The wind tossed the lights outside; the room was oblong and black and he was in his bed dozing already.

She lay, eyes wide, the watch ticking on her wrist, breasts moving up and down.

It was a fine day coming through the Tropic of Cancer. The automobile pushed along the turning road leaving the jungle country behind, heading for the United States, roaring between the green hills, taking every turn, leaving behind a faint vanishing trail of exhaust smoke. And inside the shiny automobile sat Joseph with his pink, healthy face and his Panama hat, and a little camera cradled on his lap as he drove; a swathe of black silk pinned around the left upper arm of his tan coat. He watched the country slide by and absent-mindedly made a gesture to the seat beside him, and stopped. He broke into a little sheepish smile and turned once more to the window of his car, humming a tuneless tune, his right hand slowly reaching over to touch the seat beside him …

Which was empty.

THE WATCHFUL POKER CHIP OF H. MATISSE (#ulink_de969382-3ba9-5556-b4ca-44fa771cc9fc)

When first we meet George Garvey he is nothing at all. Later he’ll wear a white poker chip monocle, with a blue eye painted on it by Matisse himself. Later, a golden bird cage might trill within George Garvey’s false leg, and his good left hand might possibly be fashioned of shimmering copper and jade.

But at the beginning—gaze upon a terrifyingly ordinary man.

“Financial section, dear?”

The newspapers rattle in his evening apartment.

“Weatherman says ‘rain tomorrow.’”

The tiny black hairs in his nostrils breathe in, breathe out, softly, softly, hour after hour.

“Time for bed.”

By his look, quite obviously born of several 1907 wax window dummies. And with the trick, much admired by magicians, of sitting in a green velour chair and—vanishing! Turn your head and you forgot his face. Vanilla pudding.

Yet the merest accident made him the nucleus for the wildest avant-garde literary movement in history!

Garvey and his wife had lived enormously alone for twenty years. She was a lovely carnation, but the hazard of meeting him pretty well kept visitors off. Neither husband nor wife suspected Garvey’s talent for mummifying people instantaneously. Both claimed they were satisfied sitting alone nights after a brisk day at the office. Both worked at anonymous jobs. And sometimes even they could not recall the name of the colorless company which used them like white paint on white paint.

Enter the avant-garde! Enter The Cellar Septet!

These odd souls had flourished in Parisian basements listening to a rather sluggish variety of jazz, preserved a highly volatile relationship six months or more, and, returning to the United States on the point of clamorous disintegration, stumbled into Mr. George Garvey.

“My God!” cried Alexander Pape, erstwhile potentate of the clique. “I met the most astounding bore. You simply must see him! At Bill Timmins’ apartment house last night, a note said he’d return in an hour. In the hall this Garvey chap asked if I’d like to wait in his apartment. There we sat, Garvey, his wife, myself! Incredible! He’s a monstrous Ennui, produced by our materialistic society. He knows a billion ways to paralyze you! Absolutely rococo with the talent to induce stupor, deep slumber, or stoppage of the heart. What a case study. Let’s all go visit!”

They swarmed like vultures! Life flowed to Garvey’s door, life sat in his parlor. The Cellar Septet perched on his fringed sofa, eyeing their prey.

Garvey fidgeted.

“Anyone wants to smoke—” He smiled faintly. “Why— go right ahead—smoke.”

Silence.

The instructions were: “Mum’s the word. Put him on the spot. That’s the only way to see what a colossal norm he is. American culture at absolute zero!”