‘Him? Who’s ‘him’?’
In the parlour mirror, beyond Clarisse, his skull smiled back at him behind his fleshy grimace of hatred and despair.
Fuming, he popped malt tablets into his mouth. This was one way of gaining weight when you couldn’t keep other foods down. Clarisse noticed the malt pellets. ‘But, darling, really, you don’t have to regain the weight for me,’ she said.
‘Oh, shut up!’ he felt like saying.
She came to him and sat down and made him lie so his head was in her lap. ‘Darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve watched you lately. You’re so — badly off. You don’t say anything, but you look — hunted. You toss in bed at night.
Maybe you should go to a psychiatrist. But I think I can tell you everything he would say. I’ve put it all together, from hints you’ve let escape you. I can tell you that you and your skeleton are one and the same, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
United you stand, divided you fall. If you two fellows can’t get along like an old married couple in the future, go back and see Dr. Burleigh. But first, relax. You’re in a vicious circle, the more you worry, the more your bones stick out, the more your bones stick out, the more you worry. After all, now, who picked this fight — you or that anonymous entity you claim is lurking around behind your alimentary canal?’
He closed his eyes. ‘I did. I guess I did. Oh, my darling, I love you so.’
‘You rest now,’ she said softly. ‘Rest and forget.’
Mr. Harris felt buoyed up for half a day, then he began to sag again. It was all very well to say everything was imagination, but this particular skeleton, by God, was fighting back.
Harris set out for M. Munigant’s office late in the day.
Walking for half an hour until he found the address, he caught sight of the name Mr. Munigant initialled in ancient, flaking gold on a glass plate outside the building. Then, his bones seemed to explode from their moorings, blasted and erupted with pain. He could hardly see in his wet, pain-filled eyes. So violent were the pains that he staggered away. When he opened his eyes again he had rounded a corner. M. Munigant’s office was out of sight.
The pains ceased.
M. Munigant was the man to help him. He must be! If the sight of his gilt-lettered name could cause so titanic a reaction in the deepness of Harris’s body, why, of course M. Munigant must be just the man.
But, not today. Each time he tried to return to that office, the terrible pains laid him low. Perspiring, he had to give up, and stagger into a cocktail bar for respite.
Moving across the dim room of the cocktail lounge, he wondered briefly if a lot of blame couldn’t be put on M. Munigant’s shoulders; after all, it was Munigant who’d first drawn such specific attention to his skeleton, and brought home the entire psychological impact of it! Could M. Munigant be using him for some nefarious purpose? But what purpose? Silly to even suspect him. Just a little doctor. Trying to be helpful. Munigant and his jar of breadsticks. Ridiculous. M. Munigant was okay, okay.
There was a sight within the cocktail lounge to give him hope. A large fat man, round as a butterball, stood drinking consecutive beers at the bar. Now there was a successful man. Harris repressed a desire to go up, clap the fat man’s shoulder, and inquire as to how he’d gone about impounding his bones. Yes, the fat man’s skeleton was luxuriously closeted. There were pillows of fat here, resilient bulges of it there, with several round chandeliers of fat under his chin. The poor skeleton was lost, it could never fight clear of that blubber; it may have tried once — but now, overwhelmed, not a bony echo of the fat man’s supporter remained.
Not without envy, Harris approached the fat man as one might cut across the bow of an ocean liner. Harris ordered a drink, drank it, and then dared to address the fat man:
‘Glands?’
‘You talking to me?’ asked the fat man.
‘Or is there a special diet?’ wondered Harris. ‘I beg your pardon, but, as you see, I’m down. Can’t seem to put on any weight. I’d like a stomach like that one of yours. Did you grow it because you were afraid of something?’
‘You,’ announced the fat man, ‘are drunk. But — I like drunkards.’ He ordered more drinks. ‘Listen close. I’ll tell you —
‘Layer by layer,’ said the fat man, ‘twenty years, man and boy, I built this.’ He held his vast stomach like a globe of the world, teaching his audience its gastronomical geography. ‘It was no overnight circus. The tent was not raised before dawn on the wonders installed within. I have cultivated my inner organs as if they were thoroughbred dogs, cats and other animals.
My stomach is a fat pink Persian tom slumbering, rousing at intervals to purr, mew, growl, and cry for chocolate titbits. I feed it well, it will almost sit up for me. And, my dear fellow, my intestines are the rarest pure-bred Indian anacondas you ever viewed in the sleekest, coiled, fine and ruddy health. Keep ‘em in prime, I do, all my pets. For fear of something? Perhaps.’
This called for another drink for everybody.
‘Gain weight?’ The fat man savoured the words on his tongue. ‘Here’s what you do; get yourself a quarrelling bird of a wife, a baker’s dozen of relatives who can flush a covey of troubles out from behind the veriest molehill. Add to these a sprinkling of business associates whose prime motivation is snatching your last lonely quid, and you are well on your way to getting fat. How so? In no time you’ll begin subconsciously building fat betwixt yourself and them.
A buffer epidermal state, a cellular wall. You’ll soon find that eating is the only fun on earth. But one needs to be bothered by outside sources. Too many people in this world haven’t enough to worry about, then they begin picking on themselves, and they lose weight. Meet all of the vile, terrible people you can possibly meet, and pretty soon you’ll be adding the good old fat!’
And with that advice, the fat man launched himself out into the dark tide of night, swaying mightily and wheezing.
‘That’s exactly what Dr. Burleigh told me, slightly changed,’ said Harris thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that trip to Phoenix, now, at this time — ‘
The trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix was a sweltering one, crossing, as it did, the Mojave desert on a broiling yellow day. Traffic was thin and inconstant, and for long stretches there would not be a car on the road for miles ahead or behind. Harris twitched his fingers on the steering-wheel. Whether or not Creldon, in Phoenix, lent him the money he needed to start his business, it was still a good thing to get away, to put distance behind.
The car moved in the hot sluice of desert wind. The one Mr. H. sat inside the other Mr. H. Perhaps both perspired. Perhaps both were miserable.
On a curve, the inside Mr. H. suddenly constricted the outer flesh, causing him to jerk forward on the hot steering wheel.
The car plunged off the road into deepest sand. It turned half over.
Night came on, a wind rose, the road was lonely and silent with little traffic. Those few cars that passed went swiftly on their way, their view obstructed. Mr. Harris lay unconscious until very late he heard a wind rising out of the desert, felt the sting of little sand needles on his cheeks, and opened his eyes.
Morning found him gritty-eyed and wandering in thoughtless, senseless circles, having, in his delirium, gotten away from the road. At noon he sprawled in the poor shade of a bush. The sun struck into him with a keen sword edge, cutting through to his — bones. A vulture circled.
Harris’s parched lips cracked open, weakly. ‘So that’s it?’ he whimpered, red-eyed, bristle-cheeked. ‘One way or another you’ll wreck me, walk me, starve me, thirst me, kill me.’ He swallowed dry burrs of dust. ‘Sun cook off my flesh so you can peek forth. Vultures lunch and breakfast from me, and then there you’ll lie, grinning. Grinning with victory. Like a bleached xylophone strewn and played by vultures with an ear for odd music. You’d like that. Freedom.’
He walked on through a landscape that shivered and bubbled in the direct pour of sunlight; stumbling, falling flat, lying to feed himself little mouths of flame. The air was blue alcohol flame, and vultures roasted and steamed and glittered as they flew in glides and circles. Phoenix. The road. Car. Water. Safety.
‘Hey!’
Somebody called from way off in the blue alcohol flame.
Mr. Harris propped himself up.
‘Hey!’
The call was repeated. A crunching of footsteps, quick.
With a cry of unbelievable relief, Harris rose, only to collapse again into the arms of someone in a uniform with a badge. . .
The car tediously hauled, repaired, Phoenix reached, Harris found himself in such an unholy state of mind that the business transaction was more a numb pantomime than anything else. Even when he got the loan and held the money in his hand it meant nothing.
This Thing within him like a hard white sword in a scabbard tainted his business, his eating, coloured his love for Clarisse, made it unsafe to trust an automobile; all in all this Thing had to be put in its place before he could have love
