It was Quasimodo in his old age, lost in a visitation of cancer and a prolongment of leprosy.
And behind that face was a soul who would have to live there forever. Forever! I thought. Hell never get out!
It was our Beast.
It was all over in an instant.
But I took a flash photo of the creature, shut my eyes, and saw the terrible face burned on my retina; burned so fiercely that tears brimmed my eyes and an involuntary sound erupted from my throat.
It was a face in which two terribly liquid eyes drowned. A face in which these eyes, swimming in delirium, could find no shore, no respite, no rescue. And seeing that there was nothing to touch which was not reprehensible, the eyes, bright with despair, swam in place, sustained themselves at the surface of a turmoil of flesh, refused to sink, give in, and vanish.
There was a spark of the last hope that, by swiveling this way or that, they might sight some peripheral rescue, some touch of self-beauty, some revelation that all was not as bad as it seemed. So the eyes floated, anchored in a red-hot lava of destroyed flesh, in a meltdown of genetics from which no soul, however brave, might survive. While all the while, the nostrils inhaled themselves and the wound of mouth cried Havoc, silently, and exhaled.
In that instant I saw Roy jerk forward, then back, as if he had been shot,
and the swift, involuntary motion of his hand to his pocket.
Then, the strange ruined man was gone, the screen up in place, as Roys hand came out of his pocket with his small sketch pad and pencil and, still staring at the screen as if he could x-ray through it, never looking at his hand as it drew, Roy outlined the terror, the nightmare, the raw flesh of destruction and despair.
Like Doré, long before him, Roy had the swift exactitude, in his traveling, running, inking, sketching fingers, that required only a glance around at London crowds and then the turned faucet, the upside-down glass and funnel of memory, which spurted out his fingernails and flashed from his pencil as every eye, every nostril, every mouth, every jaw, every face, was printed out fresh and complete as from a stamped press. In ten seconds, Roys hand, like a spider plunged in boiling water, danced and scurried in epilepsies of remembrance and sketch. One moment, the pad was empty. The next, the Beast, not all of him, no, but most, was there!
Damn! murmured Roy, and threw down his pencil.
I looked at the Oriental screen and then down at the swift portrait.
What lay there was close to being a half-positive, half-negative scrawl of a horror briefly glimpsed.
I could not take my eyes away from Roys sketch, now that the Beast was hidden and the maitre d was taking orders from behind the screen.
Almost, whispered Roy. But not quite. Our search is over, junior. No.
Yes.
For some reason I scrambled to my feet. Goodnight. Where you going? Roy was stunned.
Home.
How you going to get there? Spend an hour on the bus? Sit-down. Roys
hand ran across the pad. Stop that, I said.
I might as well have fired off a gun in his face.
After weeks of waiting? Like hell. Whats got into you? , Im going to throw up.
Me, too. You think I like this? He thought about it. Yeah Ill be sick, but this first. He added more nightmare and underlined the terror. Well?
Now Im really scared.
Think hes going to come out from behind the screen and get you? Yes!
Sit down and eat your salad. You know how Hitchcock says, when he finishes having the artist draw the setups for the scenes, the film is finished? Our film is done. This finishes it. Its in the can.
How come I feel ashamed? I sat back down, heavily, and would not look at Roys pad.
Because youre not him and hes not you. Thank God and count his mercies. What if I tear this up and we leave? How many more months do we search to find something as sad, as terrible as this?
I swallowed hard. Never.
Right. This night wont come again. Now just sit still, eat, and wait. Ill wait but I wont be still and Im going to be awfully sad.
Roy looked at me straight. See these eyes? Yes.
What do you see? Tears.
Which proves I care as much as you do, but cant help myself. Simmer down. Drink.
He poured more champagne.
It tastes awful, I said.
Roy drew and the face was there. It was a face that was in an entire stage of collapse; as if the occupant, the mind behind the apparition, had run and swum a thousand miles and was now sinking to die. If there was bone behind the flesh, it had been shattered and reassembled in insect forms, alien facades masked in ruin. If there was a mind behind the bone, lurking in caverns of retina and tympanum, it signaled madly from out the swiveling eyes.
And yet, once the food was placed and the champagne poured, Roy and I sat riven by the bursts of incredible laughter that ricocheted off the walls behind the screen. At first the woman did not respond but then as the hour passed, her quiet amusement grew almost to match his. But his laughter at last sounded true as a bell, while hers risked hysteria.
I drank heavily to keep myself in place. When the champagne bottle was emptied, the maitre d brought another and waved my hand away as I groped for my empty wallet.
Groc, he said, but Roy did not hear. He was filling page after page of his pad, and as the time passed and the laughter rose, his sketches became more grotesque, as if the shouts of pure enjoyment drove his remembrance and filled a page. But at last the laughter quieted. There was a soft bustle of preparatory leavetaking behind the screen and the maitre d stood at our table.
Please, he murmured. We must close. Would you mind? He nodded toward the door and stood aside, pulling the table out. Roy stood up. He looked at the Oriental screen.
No, said the maitre d. The proper order is you depart first.
I was halfway to the door and had to turn back. Roy? I said. And Roy followed, backing off as if departing from a theatre and the play not over.
As Roy and I came out, a taxicab was pulling up to the curb. The street was empty save for a medium-tall man in a long camels-hair coat standing with his back to us, close to the curb. The portfolio tucked under his left arm gave him away.
I had seen that portfolio day after day in the summers of my boyhood and young manhood in front of Columbia studios, Paramount, MGM, and all the rest. It had been filled with beautifully drawn portraits of Garbo, Colman, Gable, Harlow, and at one time or another a thousand others, all signed in purple ink. All kept by a mad autograph collector now grown old. I hesitated, then stopped.
Clarence? I called.
The man shrank, as if he didnt wish to be recognized.
It is you, isnt it? I called, quietly, and touched his elbow. Clarence, right?
The man flinched, but at last turned his head. The face was the same, with gray lines and bone paleness to make it older.
What? he said.
Remember me? I said. Sure you do. I used to run around Hollywood with those three crazy sisters. One of them made those flowered Hawaiian shirts Bing Crosby wore in his early films. I was in front of Maximus every noon in the summer of 1934. You were there. How could I forget. You had the only sketch of Garbo I ever saw, signed My litany only made things worse. With every word, Clarence shrank inside his big camels-hair coat.
He nodded nervously. He glanced at the door of the Brown Derby nervously.
Whatre you doing here so late? I said. Everyones gone home. You never know. I got nothing else to do said Clarence.
You never know. Douglas Fairbanks, alive again, might stroll along the boulevard, much better than Brando. Fred Allen and Jack Benny and George Burns might come around the corner from the Legion Stadium, where the
boxing matches were just over, and the crowds happy, just like the old times, which were lovelier than tonight or all the nights to come.
I got nothing else to do. Yes.
Yeah, I said. You never know. Dont you remember me at all? The nut? The super-nut? The Martian?
Clarences eyes jerked around from my brows to my nose to my chin, but not to my eyes.
N-no, he said. Goodnight, I said. Goodbye, said Clarence.
Roy led me away to his tin lizzie and we climbed in, Roy impatiently sighing. No sooner in than he grabbed his pad and pencil and waited.
Clarence was still at the curb, to one side of the taxi, when the Brown Derby doors opened and the Beast came out with his Beauty.
It was a fine rare warm night or what happened next might not have happened.
The Beast stood inhaling great draughts of air, obviously full of champagne and forgetfulness. If he knew he had a face out of some old long-lost war, he showed no sign. He held on to his ladys hands and steered her toward the taxi, babbling and laughing. It was then that I noticed, by the way she walked and looked at nothing, that
Shes blind! I said. What? said Roy.
Shes blind. She cant see him. No wonder theyre friends! He takes her out for dinners
