The Man Who Turned Into Himself Read online

  He was just stepping out of his building as I pulled my lovingly restored '67 Mustang to the curb. I had anticipated the sly smile, the hint of mockery on his face.

  'I want to know that you're feeling positive. Are you feeling positive?'

  'Shut the door, Harold.'

  'Just because your first bold leap of the day landed you in a pile of shit . . . '

  'Yeah, yeah . . . '

  ' . . . doesn't mean the next one will necessarily do the same.'

  I pulled out to re-join the traffic. 'It was just compost. You're as bad as Charlie.'

  He sniffed the air ostentatiously. 'Still, another shower might have been a good idea. Just kidding, relax. We're going to get everything we want this morning, I swear it.' He started to laugh. 'Boy, I'd like to have been there with a camera!'

  I decided not to tell him about the near-miss with the truck.

  'And what's all this about getting up in the middle of the night for comfort foods? Hot chocolate, my God!'

  I wondered for a split second if Anne had also told him how and why I never got around to drinking it. Then I smiled. What if she had? He had become her friend just as much as mine. I was glad they got along so well.

  The fact that Harold had never married had made Anne wonder briefly whether he was gay. But I couldn't believe that, if he was, I wouldn't have known. Besides, he'd never lacked girlfriends, some of them very beautiful, some of them very accomplished, many of them both. He was attractive to women in an easy-going, understated sort of way. He knew exactly who he was, didn't come on macho, never seemed to ask more than they were prepared to give. Besides, he was only my age — thirty-four. Time enough.

  ' . . . especially if Chuck Morgan starts "thinking out loud" the way he does,' I suddenly heard Harold saying. 'Don't get drawn into that. Just dig in and stick to what we agreed.'

  'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I didn't quite get all of that.'

  He looked at me. 'Where did I lose you?'

  'From the top down to Chuck Morgan thinking out loud.'

  Harold rolled his eyes. 'Forget it. What you don't know now it's too late to fix. Just nod and smile and let me do the talking.' He had glanced my way as he spoke, and suddenly I was acutely aware that he hadn't turned away. I avoided meeting his gaze, embarrassed and feeling almost guilty for some reason. There was an edge of concern in his voice when he spoke. 'Are you okay?'

  'I'm fine.'

  'You're sure you didn't land on your head . . . ?'

  ***

  Bob Crossfield was a genial man with silver hair and a big shapeless body expertly streamlined by a carefully tailored suit. He crossed to us with hand extended as we were shown into his office. We sat in comfortable armchairs and a secretary appeared with coffee on a silver tray. Harold caught my eye, looking smug. He knew that this greeting from the bank president meant that we were well on our way to getting precisely the terms we wanted. I relaxed a little, but still felt uncharacteristically nervous, unable to pin my uneasiness on anything in particular.

  After a few minutes of conversation Roy Gaines, Cross-field's assistant, came in to say that the rest of the team were assembled in the conference room. I started to get to my feet, but, as I did, something strange and alarming happened. It was as though something snapped, or burst, inside my head, giving me a sudden feeling of being hopelessly cut off from everything around me.

  'A stroke!' was my first panic-stricken thought. 'Brain haemorrhage.' I knew that it could happen even to young and apparently healthy people. My fall that morning had maybe done more damage than I'd realised. I wanted to cry out for help, but no sound would come. The three men in the room with me had become distant, hazy figures, apparently unaware of my plight. Their voices slowed and mixed into a mechanical, meaningless drone, and my own breathing and heartbeat thundered in my ears. Instinctively I grabbed for my head, stumbled, and felt I was about to pitch full length on the floor.

  Then, just as abruptly, everything returned to normal. Sound and vision popped back into focus as though nothing had happened. I realised at once that I hadn't made the exhibition of myself that I feared I had. The hand grab to my head became a polite cover for an improvised cough, the brief unsteadiness passed unnoticed. All the same I needed a moment to pull myself together, take a few deep breaths, get a grip. I asked for the men's room before going into the meeting. Gaines showed me to a panelled door in the back of the office.

  The relief at finding myself alone for a moment was extraordinary, almost as though I was running from some enemy and suddenly found myself in sanctuary. Was I sick? Some kind of virus? I looked at my reflection in the mirror above the washbowl: perfectly normal, neither flushed nor pale. And yet I was suddenly feeling alternately hot and cold. I dowsed my face in water, dried it, and took another look. Nothing had changed. Except —

  I spun around. There was no sign of anyone behind me, and yet I could swear — no, I knew — that I had seen a movement in the mirror. I turned back to it. Nothing. Had someone opened the door to make sure I was all right, then quickly withdrawn? Surely I had locked it. I checked. I had.

  So there was no one in the room. Just myself. And I was seeing things.

  It seemed to me that this was one of those times when the best thing to do is go home, get into bed, and stay there. But whatever the reasons for my distracted jumpiness that morning — mental, physical, real or imaginary — I had an important meeting to get through, and get through it I would!

  I gave my reflection one last, defiant glare, and turned to leave.

  ***

  Seated around the long table in the panelled conference room were five men and one woman. We had all met at least once before, none the less Crossfield made introductions and we shook hands.

  In front of each one of us was a water glass and carafe, plus a legal pad and felt-tipped pen with the bank's name on it. Also everyone was supplied with a copy of the bank's report on Hamilton Publications Inc., a tight little document full of words like growth curve, profit projection and all the rest of the jargon-riddled double-talk that experts use to dress up their guesswork. Crossfield made introductory remarks, I delivered a short prepared speech about how glad I was to be sitting around a table with them all, then began doodling on my legal pad as Harold launched into the details.

  Obviously I knew every dot and comma of what was under discussion, but I remember being struck at one point by my remarkable lack of attention to what was actually being said. I thought as I glanced up that I caught an odd look in Bob Crossfield's eye. Chuck Morgan was also looking my way. He was only a couple of years older than me, but almost completely bald and with a tennis player's wiry physique. I put down the pen and made a show of paying close attention.

  Crossfield asked me if I had anything to add to what Harold had said. I knew he would, and I said I hadn't. The discussion was then opened out to include the whole group. Sure enough Chuck Morgan started 'thinking out loud' in a direction which, if unchecked, would have significantly lowered the bank's risk and increased their control. Harold, with infinite grace, quickly circumvented him and looked to me for murmurs and nods of agreement, which I readily supplied. The 'thoughts' were abandoned.

  Others had little to add, and it became clear that the meeting was indeed a formality, there to give its imprimatur to what had already been decided. I reached out to pour myself a glass of water. I don't know why but my mouth was suddenly very dry, my lips sticking together so that I felt if I had to speak the words would come out incoherently. It was as the glass was halfway to my mouth that I caught sight of what I had been doodling a few minutes ago.

  I am not gifted artistically, and anything I draw usually resembles the work of one of those chimpanzees you see in learning experiments in TV documentaries. But I was startled by the clarity of what I was looking at now. I had drawn the same figure several times, first small then growing larger, as though approaching. It was the figure of a woman running. She was holding out her arms as though reaching for som
ething or someone. She was obviously in terror, and in the third sketch had fallen to her knees and was crawling. In the fifth she was stretched out on the ground, though still apparently trying to move. In the sixth she was pinned down like a specimen of some insect on a slide, or else crushed by some immense, unseen weight. The seventh sketch was a dark and horrible thing, a Goya-like glimpse of something too terrible to contemplate, an impression of pain, dismemberment and death.

  'Rick? Rick!' Harold repeated my name louder. I must have been called upon to make some response, but I hadn't heard a thing. Without looking up I knew that all eyes were on me. A silence had fallen on the room. It was obvious to everyone that something was wrong.

  The crash that the glass made as it slipped from my fingers was like an explosion. It was followed by the sound of my chair sliding back violently. By the time it hit the floor I was racing for the door, oblivious of the astonishment and alarm all around me.

  But none of it mattered. All that counted was what was in my head, the knowledge that was suddenly planted there. Maybe 'planted' is the wrong word. It was knowledge unveiled, as though it had been there all along and I had been suppressing it.

  At any rate I knew for sure, just as surely as though a voice had spoken, what it all meant.

  Maybe even that isn't accurate. Maybe instead of knowing I was simply gripped by a compulsion. Instead of thinking I was responding, though without any knowledge of what I was responding to. I was propelled — yes, that was it, propelled — by a force that wasn't physical or even mental. What I was doing had to be done. It was stronger than conviction. It was inevitable.

  And yet there was uncertainty. Not uncertainty of purpose, but of whether I could achieve what I knew I must attempt. If I had been stopped then and made to explain what I thought I was doing, I'm not sure I would have been able to. All I knew was that the woman I had drawn was Anne. I knew she wasn't reaching out for me but for Charlie. I had drawn the desperation of a woman trying to save her child.

  But from what?

  Without knowing how I got there, I found myself in the underground parking lot with my car keys in my hand. As I drove out with squealing tyres I caught a glimpse of Harold and Roy Gaines, who must have followed me, waving at me to stop. I ignored them, as I ignored the flimsy wooden barrier that the startled gate man would have raised for me had I paused to hand over the validated parking ticket in my pocket. It scraped along the Mustang's hood, shattered the windshield, then flew off its hinge and spun towards the ceiling.

  For some time — again I don't know how long — I must have driven with the opaque labyrinthine pattern of my shattered windshield blocking any view of where I was going. I remember that eventually I punched a fist through it — and found I was exactly where I expected to be, approaching a stop sign at an intersection of three roads. Ignoring the sign I swung through protesting traffic and took the first exit. Even then I didn't know where I was headed. I just knew that I was headed somewhere.

  How I got away with so many infractions of the law in so short a space of time I shall never know. Speed and luck, I suppose. But even if there had been police cars chasing me with flashing lights and wailing sirens, I probably wouldn't have noticed. I doubt I would have noticed anything short of gunfire, with bullets thudding into the upholstery all around me. And maybe not even that.

  Later, much later when I had time to reflect on it all, I went back over the road and measured the distance I drove that morning. It was exactly 3.9 miles from the exit of the bank parking lot to the spot where the traffic jam started. I don't remember any sense of frustration when I saw the long tailback starting under the bridge and winding up Pilgrim Hill and out of sight. It was obvious that the road was totally blocked somewhere up ahead. What I don't know — honestly don't know despite the number of times I've tried to recall the moment — was whether I knew then what had happened; or whether I was still simply hurtling forward in an unthinking trance. Certainly there was no doubt in my mind by then about where I was going. I sprang from my car leaving the door open and the engine running, and started scrambling up the grassy slope to the left of the road. People watched me from below, wondering who this madman was, and where he had to be so urgently.

  At the top of the slope, sweating, clothes torn and muddied, fingernails ripped and bleeding from the final hard-won, steepening yards of the climb, I stopped and looked towards the head of the jam. I knew exactly where it was, of course. But did I know what it was? From where I stood I couldn't see much aside from a general confusion, people running, a crowd forming, an odd scattering of vehicles that suggested an accident. I ran towards it as fast as I could.

  There were a few token grunts and protests as I shouldered my way through to see what was at the centre of it all. But by then I think I knew. I had known for a split second in the conference room when I dropped the glass and ran out. I had glimpsed the awful thing that confronted me now, but the image had been pushed to the back of my mind while I negotiated the journey here. Now there was no turning from it.

  A huge refrigerated rig, much larger than the one that had almost killed me that morning, had gone out of control and jumped the central divide. It had jackknifed and turned over. The back had sprung open and deep-frozen carcasses of meat were scattered everywhere. Beneath the vehicle a small car lay crushed. It was pale green and still, though only just, recognisable as the imported 'Deux Chevaux' that Anne had wanted ever since our first trip to Europe. They had stopped making that model, and it was a while before I found a specialist dealer who supplied me with one for her thirtieth birthday.

  She had been so happy, thrilled like a child, when she came downstairs and found a key on the table with a huge bow attached to it, then saw the car through the window parked outside. I had put a picnic hamper on the back seat, filled with French bread and champagne and a bottle of wine and some foie-gras and a birthday cake with her name on it. All we had to do was drive out to a spot I'd already chosen and . . .

  . . . and now she lay dying, trapped, bleeding, pushed back as though recoiling in some impossible cartoon-like exaggeration of shocked outrage. Except this was no cartoon, and no exaggeration. It was simply the literal truth of what massive, unstoppable force had done to her.

  I don't know whether I cried out, said anything, in any way communicated who I was, but people suddenly made way for me, let me go forward, lowering their voices, bringing a strange stillness to the scene.

  A man was on one knee, struggling with what remained of the car's rear door. If I saw his face I don't remember it. All I remember is a broad back with a cheap grey suit stretched tight across it as his fleshy shoulders worked. He had a thick neck with a roll of fat above the collar. His hair was reddish-brown, short and greasy, brushed back flat on his head. And suddenly, as he turned, he had my son in his arms.

  Charlie was deathly white but alive. And, I realised as he clung to me and I felt the sobs racking my body, he was unhurt.

  I don't remember if I handed him to someone or if someone prized him gently from me. At moments like that there is, I think, an almost psychic understanding between people. Things are said, things are done, without reflection and with a sureness that is lacking in more normal times. Charlie was taken from me to be cared for, and he knew this was right. He didn't cry, he didn't cling, he knew what he must do.

  I turned to Anne. She could move her head only slightly, barely more than an inch; but her eyes made the rest of the journey to meet mine, and she saw her own death in my anguish.

  Her lips moved and I bent closer. But she wasn't trying to speak; only to give me a faint last smile, a loving goodbye, a reassurance that she knew and accepted what was happening.

  The agony of not being able to hold her as she died was unbearable, but she was trapped in a vice-like coffin of steel that left me outside, a helpless onlooker. Somewhere distantly I heard a siren drawing close, then a voice saying it would be hours before they could cut her free.

  Only we didn't have h
ours. These were our last minutes. Perhaps seconds.

  I reached for her face, almost afraid to touch in case the contact brought back the physical pain which she seemed mercifully to have slipped beyond. But she gave a faint sigh, almost of pleasure, as my fingertips caressed her cheek and lips. I leaned forward to kiss her, but her eyes glazed over. Where there had been stillness there was now only the emptiness of death.

  Somehow, as I slumped forward with a howl of unfathomable loss that seemed to come from somewhere so deep in my being that it was almost outside of me, my hand found hers. She must have thrown it up, instinctively trying to protect herself from the impact, and now it protruded, fingers splayed, from the appalling inch-wide gap between the dash and the seat on which she lay.

  The people around us let me be, knowing that my grief must have this moment, letting the sobs shake free unhindered from my body. Then, very gently, I felt hands taking hold of me, pulling me away.

  I said yes, let them, this is right. Don't spoil the dignity of her going with your own self-centred torment. Just do what must be done. Think of your son, he is alone, he needs you.

  But I had reckoned without the rage, the senseless, aching rage that swept through me like a flame. Against my will I hunched forward, clung to what remained of her, my eyes shut tight against a truth I could not tolerate. As though in slow, slow motion my head arched back and I roared into the blackness of my inner universe: a roar of terrifying, primal, primitive defiance.