Hunger and Thirst Read online

  He fought again to believe he was dreaming. Every cloud he saw in the room was encouraged. Every blurred outline, every unsteady object was embraced as a sign that he was still asleep. He reasoned it and struggled to convince himself with this reason.

  Well, wasn’t it impossible after all? Could such a thing be? No, for listen, there in the hall someone just unlocked their door and went to the bathroom and, listen, there is the lock on the bathroom door being slid into place.

  He suddenly realized that he was trying, at once, to convince himself that he was asleep and that he was awake. And the confusion of not knowing which way to turn let fear pour into the vessel of his thoughts again. He poured it back out desperately, plunging back to the only salvation he could think of.

  It was a dream.

  He caught at it, held tightly to it. It had to be a dream. Soon to awaken, he was enmeshed in a last flurry of nightmare. Why, that happened very often. He knew that. He reasoned it out. Sometimes, no lots of times, when you were dreaming, you knew you were asleep and that no matter what was happening to you, there was actually nothing to worry about. It was just a nightmare. Yes, you actually told yourself that right smack dab in the middle of the dream.

  The monster loomed over you with its dripping fangs. The spiders started dropping all over you. You were threatened with death, dismemberment, any of the manifold horrors that an unshackled brain can envision.

  And right in the very center of this hideous panic you calmly told yourself—Oh don’t worry about this, you’re dreaming, can’t you see that? Why, you’re dreaming this. You’re lying in your own bed in your own room and all this supposed horror is just an emanation from the brain. That’s all.

  This situation was just like all the others. Oh, perhaps it was a little more notable for details but outside of that…

  He smiled. He forced himself to smile. Let it flow, he thought. A dream is just a dream. It cannot harm me really. He let it flow and did not fight. Instead he tried to flow along with it, see it through to its inevitable conclusion when he would jolt up on the bed in sudden sweating wakefulness, stare at the wall and then, a moment later, chuckle and say—God what an awful dream.

  So it was his room. All right. Fuzzy at the edges, of course, as in all dreams. As seen through a glass darkly. All right though, my room without a doubt. So what? No reason why one couldn’t dream of his own room. So look at it then. Enjoy this dream. Try to remember it. Then when you awake, write down every detail of it and, following Freud’s dictums, you should be able to analyze it and find out what’s bothering you as if you didn’t already…

  He stopped that train of ideas because thinking of what bothered him smacked too strongly of reality and he didn’t wish to dwell on reality now.

  So he looked.

  At the pale green walls. Who said, he asked himself, that you don’t see colors in your dreams? Am I seeing colors or am I not seeing colors? I am seeing colors. Pale green. That’s the color of my true love’s… He looked at the thick steam pipe by the door. He looked at the yellow-brown paneled door with its porcelain knob the color of a fish’s belly. Over the door, he saw the double-paned transom, each pane black with coated dust.

  Well, well, observed some irritating portion of his brain, isn’t it a remarkably realistic dream. Rather overpowering in its detail, isn’t it?

  He felt his chest shudder once. Caught in the need for pretending, he went on, fighting to convince himself at last that it was a dream, knowing that he could if he only took enough time, knowing that at last he could make it so that he really was dreaming.

  He looked at the wardrobe closet at the foot of the bed. It was black and shellacked with two round glass knobs screwed in and fancy plywood curlycues glued to the surface of the door.

  Well, said that part of his brain again, if it’s a dream, why don’t you have Sally come walking in naked and jump into bed with you? You know that anything you want in a dream is yours, you know that the sky’s the limit when you’re dreaming.

  He fought it off. Never mind, he told himself. It’s not clear at all. Yes it is, said the part of his mind, it’s incredible in its detail. Why look at those glass knobs and those curlycues, now come on, ‘fess up, have you ever in your life seen anything so clearly lifelike?

  His eyes fled about looking for vindication of his theory. No, the corners weren’t clear, they were fuzzy like in a dream. That’s the sleep in your eyes, that’s myopia. Not so, it’s a dream I tell you, everything is fuzzy, without detail. What about that single bulb hanging down from the high, white, dusty ceiling on a chain with the dusty black wire snaking in and out among the links? It’s not as clear as that, it’s a mile away. It’s the moon. No, it’s not as clear as that, it’s a mile away. It’s the moon. No, it isn’t and what about the dresser, look at how black and chipped and clear it is. See? Only the bottom drawer is pushed in and there’s that white towel on the top and the dusty-surfaced mirror perched up on those two lathed arms. See that? No, it’s a dream! The box of soda crackers and the half-empty jar of peanut butter, look, you can even smell the peanut butter if you sniff hard. I tell you it’s a dream!

  His eyes shifted wildly, twin planets dipping in swimming milky space. It’s a dream, a dream!

  And the chair with the brown hat and the bunched up brown overcoat, see the fine strands, the weave of the wool and the swirling mounds of bills and the stolid white table over against the wall with the black typewriter on it and the yellow, sleeveless sweater and…

  OH, MY GOD!!

  Terror struck him dumb.

  His eyes plunged sight into blackness and the wind on his flesh was cold.

  It was real.

  He was in his room on Third Avenue in the city of New York. He was really there, lying paralyzed. It was his own body he saw on the bed, actually his own paralyzed body. To his left the old woman was in her room wheezing in the heavy slumber of the aged. To his right, the drunk was gagging on his bed, gurgling and coughing and spitting in a waste basket. All there, hard and vital and measurable, now that he could no longer delude himself.

  And, outside, the city, concrete and steel and unseeing in its merciless separation, was stirring itself for another day.

  2

  The building was made of brick.

  It was square, a four-floored dingy box of rooms, sagging and standing off the sidewalk like a fat old woman too tired to go on. Its face was sprinkled with dirty-paned windows and scarred with jagged, rusty scars of fire escapes. It stood on the corner hemmed in on one side by the elevated structure, on the other by a piano factory.

  Its front door led into a dim hallway that smelled of lye and rot and eternal stews. The walls were spattered with all manner of long dry and unidentifiable liquids. The faded rug ran like a colorless fungus from wall to wall and, creeping up the stairs, died at the doorway to the roof.

  The house stood still in the early morning.

  Once, at five a.m., a laborer in hashhouse-spotted work clothes had shuffled out to catch a bus for Jersey. His slamming of the front door had bounced back into the sleepy shell.

  Now it was quiet again, its tenants all tucked away neatly in their respective shells, turning lethargically on bumpy mattresses or lying in stupefied slumber.

  Alone or in arms strange and familiar, they blended together into the flat batter of lost hopes that swelled and ran dead through the halls of the old grey house. On the first floor and on the second and the third.

  And on the fourth…

  3

  He was lying there shivering when it struck him.

  “Uh!”

  His face twisted in agony as exploding heat pressed against the walls of his bladder. His stomach bubbled and contracted. Bolts of fire branded it. Oh my God! His mind cried, I have to get up! His eyes ran over the room as if seeking some sign of rescue.

  Again!

  A flaming mallet pounded against the nerve-sensitive lining of his body.

  “No, this is im…” Impos
sible! His mind finished in a shriek as his tongue was caught up in a rushing tide of hot pain.

  His eyes narrowed and almost closed. His teeth clicked together, clenching. He saw the ceiling ripple through pain-clouded eyes, watched it flow waterlike through his contorted gaze. He sucked in wincing breaths as his bladder shot blunt waves of agony through him again. The pain swept over him like a wind, like a horde of crushing hands pawing at him.

  He tried to look down at his stomach to see if it was swollen as it felt. It felt like a pus-filled gourd about to explode and shower the bed and the walls with its loathsome cream of rot. His shaking gaze ran down over the heap of his body. And, in the center of pain, the thought came again, sickening in its clarity…

  This is real. This is actually happening.

  Then, as the spasm passed for a moment, he cried out in his mind—Get up! You have to get up!

  He fought. He panted, trying to move, his teeth grating together until he thought they would grind each other to dust. Breaths whistled through his nose and mouth. His eyes bulged out from their sockets as titanic effort screamed for the maximum from his body. His right hand trembled, his legs ached and burned. Only his upper back and shoulders were still cold and damp.

  Now there was a numbness running around his waist and moving into the small of his back. He ignored it, thinking only that he must get up and wash his face. He had to get up. It was the only thing left to do in the world. What was to be done after he got up didn’t matter. But he had to get up.

  Get up, damn you! He raged and fumed at the stubborn mass of his body. Get up, get up, get up! His entire body trembled spasmodically like a land suffering earthquake. He almost expected to see his chest yawn open like severed earth and see his innards spout out like lava.

  Suddenly. A click in his throat.

  Everything went. His straining muscles let go without his wish, helpless to obey his will. He slumped back on the pillow and felt a large drop of sweat trickle down his right temple and get crushed between his cheek and the pillow.

  It seemed beyond belief. Now he became incredulous with outrage. He was the dumbfounded one. “I can’t do it!” he gasped as though the information were utterly astounding.

  My God, I can’t move myself!

  Abruptly his mind plunged into investigation. Come on, get it figured out. He could not accept that there was no hidden key, no ridiculously simple and uninvolved answer to all this. Some minute panacea which could be instantaneously applied and thus enable him to rise and walk as if the entire thing had never happened.

  Let’s see now. The old man said—Stop! Yes, that much was clear. But he didn’t stop. And then the old man had coughed. No, it just sounded like a cough. The old man shot at him. That was it. And he ran and ran. And he got back to the room. But there was more to it than that. His brow drew itself together into long wavering lines. There had to be more. Why wouldn’t his brain wake up so he could get it all solved and get up to wash his face?

  He had to get up.

  There was no question about that. For Christ’s sake he had to get up and go to the bathroom and then he had to pack and put on his hat and coat and stick the money in his wallet and leave. He blinked and tried to remember why. But he knew he had to leave anyway. The reason would come later. Right now what mattered was that he get up and wash his face.

  But he couldn’t.

  He tried to understand that, searching in repressed fright for the answer.

  It was a race. Either fear or realization would come first. It had to be realization. There was an answer and he would find it. Let’s see.

  He couldn’t leave. As of now, of course, he meant. He wanted to leave. He willed himself to leave. To get up and walk out of there. But something kept him from it. What? Was something torn or split? Was something broken, shattered, severed? Because he couldn’t move his body. Yes, that was better. There was a bullet in him and it had done something to his system. Simple enough.

  Then, fear came again. Knowing it was hardly enough. Knowing he could not move wasn’t much help in getting him to move. And what was going to happen? Hours in the room?

  Days?

  His mouth fell open. But there was no water and no food and he was hungry and thirsty. And his body, what about that? Already it was swelling with undischarged wastes. What was he to do?

  His throat contracted. It was so easy to go over the facts. So hard to accept and understand them. Paralyzed. It was an easy word to speak and to think. But what did it mean? It meant he couldn’t move. Did it mean he would never move again …?

  No!

  He heard the word shouted out in his mind and it echoed down the corridors.

  It was impossible that such a thing be true. He wouldn’t believe it. He couldn’t afford to believe it. He was just in a state of shocked exhaustion. How many times had he read about men in shock? They were like this too, their functions gave way, they couldn’t move.

  Well, that’s all it was. What he needed was rest and sleep and warmth. He couldn’t pull the blanket over himself true. He was right on top of it. But it wasn’t cold. The sun was coming up now and the window was only open a little and not much wind was coming in.

  Anyway, it was April.

  He closed his eyes. With all his will he refused to believe that he couldn’t move at all. Maybe for the moment, yes. But that was shock. That meant only that it was a matter of waiting a while until he was rested up. Until he’d gathered a little strength. That was all.

  “I’ll rest a while.”

  He said it to himself, casually, straining to believe it was all a thing of simple values.

  He turned his head and looked at the rose on the table.

  It was drying up. The petals were shriveling and moisture was leaving them. In the glass, the still water was filled with tiny bubbles that clung to the sides like minute glass balloons.

  There was something else on the table. He tried to see. Two things. One was a little higher than the other. He couldn’t make them out because he couldn’t focus out of the corners of his eyes.

  He turned his eyes back and listened to the traffic sounds.

  A car bellowed like a tone-deaf calf bawling. A truck ground up the block in first gear, its gears spinning faster and faster, the pitch of its driving engine rising until it sounded like a human groan. He listened intently until the truck switched into second gear.

  He wanted to listen intently to all sounds.

  It seemed as though he must be in complete tune with everything so that he could understand and thus adapt his state to the entire state of things and find the way to move again. There was only the trick of learning that held him back from motion.

  So he listened and tried to find the pattern behind all the noises so that they would fit into the puzzle and he could see how to rise up and walk.

  It didn’t make sense. The better part of his judgment knew it was senseless. But he went on with it anyway, like an intellectual with his religion, blindly devoted to those regimentations which he realizes are anathema to the slightest application of reason. Just a little more and you’ll find the key, he thought, and then you’ll rest and you’ll be fine, you’ll see.

  Through his lowered eyelids, he saw the increasing light of day. I wonder what time it is—he thought. And, automatically, tried to raise his left arm so he could look at his wrist watch. His hand stayed limp and still at his side.

  He drove down rising fear as one would drive a rising ant hill into sidewalk cracks with a rubbing stamp of ones sole. All right, all right, he told himself, shutting his eyes tightly. Never mind that, in a little while you’ll be out of this. Never mind what time it is, it doesn’t matter what time it is.

  Breathing heavily, he listened to the drunken man in the next room, snoring. He tried first to ignore, then to quell the insistent throbbing in his bladder. I wonder if it’s distending or anything, the annoying, grating portion of his brain asked.

  Think of something else! he yelled back defiant
ly.

  And forced repose on himself.

  Now you listen to me, he lectured smugly. You’re going to be all right, do you understand that? In a while, in a little while. All you need is some rest do you see that, you do see that, don’t you? You’re in a state of shock from that small wound in your shoulder or back or wherever it is. And you need rest. That’s all. Then you can get up and wash your face.

  His throat tickled.

  I could use a little water, he thought.

  4

  He opened his eyes.

  He thought it must be about ten o’clock. It was five minutes to seven. In the sky, the sun climbed. The streets were growling with morning activity.

  He looked down at himself.

  His pants were tented at the crotch. His pupils expanded. He was very surprised. He hadn’t been thinking about sex, he wasn’t sexually aroused at all. What the hell is this, he thought, why is it so hard?

  He blinked at it, couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t understand. It was like some strange construction in the crotch of his trousers going on without his knowledge. An unbidden erection effected by invisible builders.

  He kept staring at it. He lay there and looked at it dizzily. He kept blinking. He kept looking at that lump down there and not understanding what had caused it.

  It moved.

  He was fascinated.

  He lost interest.

  Somehow it was like the rest of him; detached, something that belonged to another person. In his plight, of what interest was anything that had to do with another person? That bulge in his trousers simply had nothing to do with him.

  He looked around the room again. There was no attempt to convince himself that it was a dream now. He knew he was awake, very much awake. The pain in his back was more severe. It felt like a cramp; as if he must raise up and twist his shoulders to unknot the kinks in his back muscles.

  He tried at first, when he forgot that he couldn’t move. Then he lay there trembling again, trying to force a screen of blankness on his mind so that the fears would not return and the debilitating imaginations not clutch at him so.