SATURDAY NIGHT, MID-DECEMBER.
He’s standing on the corner of Eighty-third and Broadway, right next to Harry’s Shoes, shivering. It’s a chilly night, but his shivering is caused more by the anxiety of what he’s contemplating than by the cold air. A fear similar to stage fright is making his mouth dry.
He looks like somebody who’s both paralyzed and out of control at the same time. A man capable of doing anything or nothing at all.
The once-clean white bandages on his fingers are now dirty and frayed and have the appearance of makeshift gloves favored by the lunatic fringe of the New York City homeless.
Northbound and southbound, the crowd moves past him along the crowded sidewalk. Christmas is less than a couple of weeks away and the spirit of pre-Christmas is in the air. Shiny, freshly minted shopping bags swing past him heading uptown and downtown. Not far away, to his right, half the width of the sidewalk is taken up by a little forest of Christmas trees for sale. The vendor of the trees has a little black boom box out of which issue instrumental arrangements of Christmas carols. The tape is either stretched or Saul’s ears are playing him false, because the music sounds wobbly and elongated, as if there were no individual notes, just something called music.
People come and go and Saul stands there shivering, waiting for the moment of inspiration or desperation to propel him forward and make him do what he has come here to do.
He tried to do it the night before and failed, just as he failed the night before that.
Even a man who has lost everything still has his inhibitions. They’re the very last thing to go.
His appearance, the dirty, frayed bandages on his fingers, the broken teeth suggestive of some violent encounter, the constant working of his facial muscles as if he is engaged in some ferocious inner struggle with himself, all this causes the people on the sidewalk to give him a wide berth as they walk past.
In a revival of a Jacobean play in modern dress, Saul Karoo would now be perfect casting for an assassin with a dagger in his hand and murder in his heart, waiting in ambush for his victim to appear.
This transformation in his physical appearance took only a few weeks.
Upon his return from Pittsburgh, Saul tried to resume his former life, only to discover that there was no former life there to resume. Whatever story line or plot had driven his life perished on that road in Pennsylvania.
The word had gone out about the accident and while he was lying in a coma in that hospital in Pittsburgh people called and left messages on his answering machine.
Expressions of regret. Condolences. Offers of sympathy.
On his first night back in his apartment, he sat down next to the answering machine and listened to all the messages on the cassette.
Some were long. Some short. But he couldn’t listen properly to any of them.
Somebody was required to be there listening to these messages and he seemed incapable of being the Saul to whom these messages were addressed. The Saul in question.
He sat there listening, but it was as if he were not there at all.
It was was if his responses to the messages he heard were prerecorded themselves, as if he were a machine listening while another machine spoke.
His insomnia began that night.
Even sleep, it seemed, required an identity to be relinquished as one fell asleep. But he could not conjure up an identity to relinquish. There seemed to be nobody to let go of.
So he stayed awake. He walked around the living room. He sat down in the swivel chair by the window and swiveled.
But being awake without being anyone in particular didn’t seem like being awake.
He was neither asleep nor awake, neither this nor that. It was some new state that he was in, some new kind of nonexistence.
He tried, as a way of actualizing himself, to come to grips with his guilt. He tried, as a way of feeling something, to feel the pain of Billy’s and Leila’s deaths.
He could not.
The guilt was there. The pain was there. But he could not get at them. They seemed to be once removed from him, like the sound of a television one hears in a hotel room next door. It seemed to him that he had come out of one kind of coma in that hospital in Pittsburgh only to fall into another kind, the conscious coma of everyday life from which there was no recovery.
There were many phone calls in the days that followed from people he knew and from people he had known a long time ago and almost forgotten. Some who called, like Guido, had already left messages on his machine and were calling again to talk to him in person. Others were calling for the first time.
The McNabs, George and Pat, called.
His former accountant, Arnold, and his current accountant, Jerry, called.
Dr. Bickerstaff, his former doctor, called.
Various studio executives for whom he had worked on scripts at various studios called. Knowing there was nothing they would be asked to do, they asked if there was anything they could do for him. Anything.
Although he initially resented answering the telephone, he discovered that the loneliness of his nonexistence was lessened when he listened to someone talking or talked himself. This led him to look forward to people calling and he spent the intervals between calls waiting for the phone to ring and bring him back to a life of some kind.
It mattered very little to him who called. Since the art of extending telephone condolences tended to make everyone sound alike, it was like getting the same call over and over again. But that was fine with him.
Listening to the person at the other end created, if nothing else, the illusion that Saul too was a person. Since it required two people to carry on a conversation, it stood to reason that he was, if nothing else, one of the two.
The banalities that the callers by necessity used in expressing their sympathy did not seem banal to him. Far from it. He embraced them wholeheartedly and he became whoever it was the caller said he was.
“It’s very hard for you right now, I know, but as hard as it is, you must …,” a caller would say, and to Saul’s mind the caller seemed to know the exact quality of hardness that he, Saul, was experiencing.
And so, while the call lasted, Saul became a Man Who Had It Hard.
“I know you’re suffering right now,” another caller told him, “but you must be strong and see this thing through. It’s times like these that test us and make us stronger so that when we come out at the other end we can …”
And while the caller talked and Saul listened, he became a Man Who Was Suffering, but a man who had to be Strong because he was being Tested. He had to See This Thing Through so that when he came Out at the Other End … and so on.
And there were calls that, as long as they lasted, made him behold the possibility that somewhere in the future another story line awaited him. It didn’t matter to him what the story would be so long as he could hitch a ride.
And then Cromwell called.
And he called himself, with no Brad, white or black, to announce him.
“Saul,” he said. “Jay.”
“Jay,” Saul cried out as if he were being rescued.
It had been a bad week. The calls had gradually dried up. Yesterday there had only been one. It was early evening now and Jay Cromwell was the first person to call that day and extract him from his nonexistence.
Cromwell made it seem that it had taken enormous self-discipline and consideration not to have called earlier. As he explained, “I knew what you were going through and I knew that you didn’t want to talk to anyone for a while.”
Saul thanked him for not having called. Although Saul would have gladly talked to anyone on the face of the earth who wanted to call him, he had no difficulty in molding himself now around the banality Cromwell offered and seeing himself as the man Cromwell thought him to be, a Man Who Had to Suffer in Silence because That’s the Kind of Man He Was.
This version of himself was just as valid as its opposite or any other version in between. The beauty of banalities, as Saul was discovering, was that they allowed you to be somebody for a while. The horror of truth was that it didn’t.
“What can I say,” Cromwell said, “what in the world can I say? I’m still in a state of shock over the whole thing, so I can only imagine how you feel.”
Tell me, Saul felt like asking, please tell me how you imagine I feel so I can feel it too.
“The only thing I can tell you,” Cromwell told him, “is that I feel humbled by the awesome proportions of your tragedy. I truly feel humbled just to be talking to you. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”
Saul assured him that he didn’t.
“I hope I’m not intruding.”
Saul assured him that he wasn’t.
“If I am, just say so.”
Even in his current condition of psychic disintegration, Saul still had the presence of mind to remember that he should be grateful to Cromwell. After all, it was Cromwell who had made the necessary arrangements to have Leila’s mother flown to Pittsburgh and then back to Charleston with Leila’s remains.
Saul tried to thank him, but Cromwell refused to be thanked.
“Please,” Cromwell cut him off in mid-gratitude. “Surely you’re not going to thank me for acting like a simple, decent human being. I did nothing that somebody else would not have done in my place, so, I beg you, Saul, out of respect for our friendship which I treasure, let this be the last time that the subject of gratitude of any kind comes up between us.”
“All right, Jay, but still …” Saul stammered.
They talked some more about life and pain and the inexplicable manner in which catastrophes occurred in the lives of men.
And then, after inquiring several times in several ways into Saul’s current spiritual state and after listening patiently to Saul’s replies, Cromwell segued, but almost as an afterthought, into another but tangential topic.
There seemed to be a growing interest in Leila’s story, he told Saul. In the story of this ill-fated actress who was struck down suddenly on the way to the screening of her first film.
“I know, I know,” Cromwell said. “I realize that I must sound ghoulish to you to be talking about newspaper stories at a time like this, and to tell you the truth I feel a little ghoulish about it myself. I can’t think straight. That’s why I’m calling you. I need some help in this matter. Some guidance. You see, the way I feel is this. Leila was someone special and people should know about her and her movie. I guess what I’m saying is that, in my opinion, anything that we can do to make sure that as many people as possible see her in her one and only film is a duty we cannot ignore. We owe it to her …
“I’m not talking about publicity,” Cromwell went on. “That really would be ghoulish under the circumstances. No, all I’m talking about is having her story known, because I think her story deserves to be known. What I’m talking about here is something on the order of a testament to her and her tragically aborted career. However, if you think I’m off base here and if, in your opinion, the whole thing seems inappropriate, then just say so and I’ll never mention it again.”
The idea of a testament to Leila struck a responsive chord in Saul’s heart. He had no idea what story it was that Cromwell considered to be Leila’s story, but if it was a testament of some kind, then he was all for it.
And he said as much.
Cromwell accepted his approval as the authoritative statement on the subject and thanked Saul for helping him out of this moral dilemma.
“In that case,” he told Saul, “if you’re for it, we’ll proceed.”
The rest of the conversation was devoted once again to topics of life and pain and the inexplicable manner in which tragedies occurred in the lives of men.
“What a tragedy,” Cromwell kept saying.
“It’s a real American tragedy is what it is,” he said, and he said it in a way that implied that there was something inherently more tragic about American tragedies than there was about tragedies of other nations.
The conversation ended with Cromwell’s plea for Saul “to hang in there.”
Saul promised to try.
Hanging in there seemed like a vivid and a purposeful activity until he hung up the phone and then, alone again, he had no idea what it meant “to hang in there” nor how such an activity was to be carried out by him.
Nor did he have any idea about what it was that had been concluded in his telephone transaction with Cromwell.
And then the telephone calls dried up completely.
Nobody called.
His insomnia made him nervous and edgy.
The noose of privacy tightened around him. Sometimes it seemed like an actual noose around his throat.
A phone call would save him, but the phone didn’t ring.
He considered calling somebody himself but couldn’t decide who it should be.
After much thought, he resolved to call his mother in Chicago. He picked up the receiver and extended his index finger to dial.
But then he just sat there with his index finger frozen in midair, because he didn’t know who was calling her.
He had to be somebody in order to make the call, but he couldn’t decide who to be.
Life of any kind, existence itself, seemed impossible.
Privacy suddenly revealed itself to him to be a dying planet that could no longer sustain life.
His only hope for survival was to flee. To go public. Which was what he did.
It’s still the same Saturday night in mid-December and Saul is still standing shivering outside Harry’s Shoes on the corner of Eighty-third and Broadway.
Snatches of monologues roll through his mind, and his lips move as if he is rehearsing them aloud.
Monologues addressed to all kinds of people, alive and dead, including several to himself.
Right across from Harry’s Shoes, where he is standing, is a public pay phone.
His nerve failed him last night and the night before that but, as if in compensation for his failure, his need to give voice to his monologues has grown as well.
He goes to the pay phone and picks up the receiver, but he suddenly becomes confused. He forgets completely that he doesn’t need to put any money into the box, or actually dial any number in order to have the conversation he plans to have. But for verisimilitude he drops a quarter into the slot and dials his own number.
The telephone rings five times and then it stops. The answering machine comes on.
“Hi, this is Saul Karoo. I can’t answer the phone right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
The recording he hears was made when he first moved to his new apartment on Riverside Drive. His former voice, at the time the recording was made, now sounds to his ears like the voice of some happy, innocent fool living happily in a fool’s paradise.
The innocence and optimism in that voice cause Saul on the pay phone to gasp in pain for the poor man who made the recording.
Although he doesn’t feel that he knows him well, or ever did, his heart now goes out to him for the reverses and losses he has suffered.
“Oh, Saul,” he says. He starts out softly, still lacking confidence as a phone freak, but his voice rises as he goes on.
“God, Saul, I just heard what happened! Is it true? Tell me it’s not true. It is. Really! Not both of them. Oh, no. Oh, dear God, not both of them, Saul. Not Leila and Billy as well. Both dead. No. How? Why? …”
Initially hesitant to give expression to his pain in public, Saul feels all hesitation fall away as he goes on.
“But they were both so young, so very young, and their whole lives were …”
It’s not that he’s so carried away by his performance as to become blind to the people, the spectators, the audience moving past him in both directions on the crowded Saturday-night sidewalk. Just the opposite.
He sees the people who see him. He sees them looking at him and he feels transformed into a living entity.
He feels something very elusive and very personal, very private, on the corner of Eighty-third and Broadway, something that had refused to materialize in the privacy of his own apartment.
As if privacy were now possible only in public, where it could both be brought into being and verified in the eyes of passing strangers.
“And you were there when all this happened? In the car. You were driving? Oh, Saul …”
He feels his heart breaking for the poor man and he starts to weep.
His weeping is restrained at first but then it gradually becomes unrestrained.
“What are you going to do now, Saul? I can’t imagine what in the world you will do with yourself. How will you live, knowing that both Leila and Billy are dead? How in God’s name will you live with yourself? I feel so sorry for you. So, very, very …”
He can’t speak anymore for the sobbing.