‘Yes, you kept telling us about exactitude and observation. You used to send us out of the room and change objects in the room while we were out. You made Sherlock Holmeses out of us.’
‘Why do you speak about that now? It was all so long ago.’
‘I have a reason.’
‘What is your reason?’ said Gordon sharply.
‘Oh, something that happened to me. Some years ago.’
‘And what was that? Or don’t you want to talk about it?’
‘I don’t see why not. Not that it’s very complimentary to me.’
‘I have reached the age now,’ said Gordon, ‘when I am not concerned with honour, only with people.’
‘I see,’ said John, ‘but suppose you can’t separate them. Well, I’ll tell you anyway.’ He walked over to the window, standing with his back to the room and looking out at the empty road. It was as if he didn’t want to be facing Gordon.
‘I was an editor for some time as you know,’ he said. ‘Your training stood me in good stead. It was not a big paper but it was a reasonable paper. It had influence in the largish town in which I stayed. It wasn’t Washington, it wasn’t New York, but it was a largish town. I made friends in this town. One was a lecturer in a university. At least that is what we would call it here. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t a lecturer in English. He was a lecturer in History. It was at the time of the McCarthy trials when nobody was safe, nobody. Another of my friends went off his head at that time. He believed that everyone was persecuting him and opening his mail. He believed that planes were pursuing him. In any case this friend of mine, his name was Mason, told me that files had been dug up on him referring to the time when he was a student and had belonged to a left wing university club. Now there were complaints that he was indoctrinating his students with communism and, of course, being a History lecturer, he was in a precarious position. I told him that I would defend him in my paper, that I would write a hard-hitting editorial. I told him that I would stand up for principles, humane principles.’ He stretched out his hand for the whisky and decided against drinking it. ‘I left him on the doorstep at eleven o’clock on a Monday night. He was very disturbed because of course he was innocent, he wasn’t a communist and anyway he had great integrity as a teacher and lectured on communism only theoretically as one ideology among others. But the McCarthy people of course were animals. You have no conception. Not here. Of the fog of lies. Of the quagmire. No conception.’ He paused. A cow outside had bent its head to the grass and was eating.
‘Anyway this was what happened. I walked home because I needed the exercise. The street was deserted. There were lampposts shining and it was raining. A thin drizzle. I could hear the echo of my feet on the road. This was the kind of thing you taught us, to remember and listen and observe, to be aware of our surroundings sensuously. By then it had become a habit with me.
‘As I was walking along two youths came towards me out of the shadow, from under the trees. I thought they were coming home from the cinema or from a dance. They wore leather jackets and were walking towards me along the sidewalk. They stayed on the sidewalk and I made as if to go round them since they were coming straight for me without deviating. One of them said, “Daddy.” I stopped. I thought he was going to ask me for a light. He said, “Your wallet, daddy.” I looked at him in amazement. I looked at the two of them. I couldn’t understand what was going on. And something happened to me. I could feel everything very intensely, you see. At that moment I could have written a poem, everything was so clear. They were laughing, you see, and they were very casual. They walked like those cowboys you see on the films, physically at ease in their world. And their eyes sparkled. Their eyes sparkled with pure evil. I knew that if I protested they would beat me up. I knew that there was no appeal. None at all. One of them had a belt, and a buckle on it sparkled in the light. My eyes were at the level of the buckle. I took out my wallet and gave them the money. I had fifty dollars. I observed everything as you had trained us to do. Their boots which were shining except for the drizzle: their neckties: their leather jackets. Their legs which were narrow in the narrow trousers. And their faces which were looking slightly upwards and shining. Clear and fine almost, but almost innocent though evil. A rare sort of energy. Pure and bright. They took the wallet, counted the money and gave me back the wallet. They then walked on. The whole incident took perhaps three minutes.
‘I went into the house and locked the door. The walls seemed very fragile all of a sudden. My wife had gone to bed and I stood downstairs thinking, now and again removing a book from the shelves and replacing it. I felt the house as thin as the shell of an egg: I could hear, I thought, as far away as San Francisco. There was a tap dripping and I turned it off. And I didn’t write the editorial, I didn’t write anything. Two weeks after that my friend killed himself, with pills and whisky.’
The whisky which Gordon had given him was still untouched.
‘Observation and exactitude,’ he said, ‘and elegance of language.’ There was a long silence. Gordon picked up a chess piece and weighed it in his hand.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and that’s
