The rain hazed the electric lights isolated here and there. An indescribable feeling of shame overwhelmed him. His father was involved in the hills, moving like a wind among the millions of wet leaves.
Then an idea crushed him – he had ancestors! His ancestors reached back and back, like daisies connected in a necklace. He completed circle after circle in the mud.
He stumbled and collapsed, tasting the ground. He lay very still while his clothes soaked. Something very important was going to happen in this arena. He was sure of that. Not in gold, not in light, but in this mud something necessary and inevitable would take place. He had to stay to watch it unfold. As soon as he wondered why he wasn’t cold he began to shiver.
He sent Shell a funny telegram explaining why he couldn’t come.
10
Breavman received a letter from Mrs. Stark, Martin’s mother. It wasn’t customary for parents to reply to the official reports the counsellors were obliged to send.
Dear Mr. Breavman,
I’m sure my son Martin is in excellent hands.
I’m not anxious and I don’t expect any further detailed communications concerning his behaviour.
Very sincerely,
R. F. STARK
“What the hell did you write her?” demanded Krantz.
“Look, Krantz, I happen to like the kid. I took a lot of trouble over the letter. I tried to show that I thought he was a very valuable human being.”
“Oh, you did?”
“What was I supposed to say?”
“Nothing. As little as possible. I told you what she’s like. For two months of every year she doesn’t have to look at him every day and can pretend that he’s a normal boy doing normal things with other normal boys at a normal camp.”
“Well, he isn’t. He’s much more important than that.”
“Very good, Breavman, very compassionate. But keep it to yourself, will you? It was Breavman you were pleasing, not the boy’s mother.”
They were standing on the balcony of the Administration Building. Krantz was about to announce Evening Activity over the PA.
Didn’t Krantz know what he knew about Martin? No, that wasn’t true. He didn’t know anything about the boy, but he loved him. Martin was a divine idiot. Surely the community should consider itself honoured to have him in their midst. He shouldn’t be tolerated – the institutions should be constructed around him, the traditionally incoherent oracle.
Out in the open, tempered by the dialogue, it wouldn’t sound so mad.
Krantz looked at his watch, which he wore on the inside of his wrist. As he turned to go in he caught sight of a figure lying face down in the darkness near a row of bushes at the bottom of the lawn.
“For God’s sake, Breavman, that’s the sort of thing I mean.”
Breavman walked quickly across the lawn.
“What are you doing, Martin?”
“Twenty thousand and twenty-six.”
Breavman returned to the balcony.
“He’s counting grass.”
Krantz shut his eyes and tapped the banister.
“What’s your evening activity, Breavman?”
“Scavenger hunt.”
“Well, get him over there with the rest of the group.”
“He isn’t interested in a scavenger hunt.”
Krantz leaned forward and said with an exasperated smile, “Convince him. That’s what you’re supposed to be here for.”
“What difference does it make whether he goes looking for yesterday’s newspaper or counts grass?”
Krantz leaped down the stairs, helped Martin up, and offered him a piggy-back across the field, to where Breavman’s group was assembled. Martin climbed on gleefully and as he rode stuck his index fingers in his ears for no apparent reason, squinting as if he were expecting some drum-splitting explosion.
Every night, just before he went to sleep, it was Martin’s custom to declare how much fun he had had that day. He checked it against some mysterious ideal.
“Well, Martin, how did it go today?” asked Breavman, sitting on his bed.
The mechanical voice never hesitated.
“Seventy-four per cent.”
“Is that good?
“Permissible.”
11
He marvelled at how still he could lie.
He was stiller than the water which took the green of the mountains.
Wanda was fidgeting, pretending to write a letter in what was left of the light of the day. So her long yellow hair wasn’t quite in the great tradition. Her gold-haired limbs could be worshipped individually, but they did not amalgamate into beauty. Nevertheless, how many thighs could he kiss at the same time?
If I had a really immense mouth.
The flies were very bad. They put on Six-Twelve. Wanda extended her arm to him but instead of applying the lotion himself gave the bottle to her. His fantasy: applying the lotion with greater and greater frenzy all over her flesh.
A light rain swept across the face of the water, veiling it with a silver net. From time to time they heard the cheer of the camp, which had assembled in the mess hall for a Lassie movie.
The rain passed and the still surface recomposed itself.
“I’ve never really lived by a lake,” said Wanda, who was given to walking barefoot.
“Now don’t get into poetry, Wanda.”
He absently caressed her face and hair, which was softer than he had imagined.
An inner eye flying away from the boathouse like a slow high star gave him the view of a tiny plywood box in which two minuscule figures (mating insects?) made inevitable ballet movements to each other.
Wanda was trying to get her head into a position in which she could kiss his caressing fingers.
Finally he kissed her lips, mouth, stomach, all the parts.
Then something very disturbing occurred.
Her face blurred into the face of little Lisa, it was dark in the boat-house, and that face blurred into one he didn’t recognize, that one dissolved into the face of Bertha, maybe it was the blonde hair. He stared hard to make the changing stop, to return to the girl beside
