Chapter 45
October 24
Project Number 102: Electronic Eavesdropper
The storm in the soul of Augusto ended in a terrible calm: he had resolved to kill himself. . . . But before carrying out his plan it occurred to him, like a drowning sailor who grasps at a straw, to come and talk it over with me, the author of this whole story.
Miguel de Unamuno, Mist
THUNDERING WINDS pummeled the hotel all night, drafts blowing through the windows and under the doors, but by morning, everything was still, and a heavy fog filled the unmoving air. The inmates shuffled listlessly through their morning rituals, exhausted by the pounding wind, baffled by the fog. Lou had become so glum that Elaine was worried about him. I could see her worry. It showed in her expression when she looked at him from a distance, the way her brow furrowed and her lips pursed, and it showed in the deliberate way she teased him and joked with him when she was beside him, trying to cheer him up.
“Hey,” he said, after a while, “cut it out, will you?” He tousled her hair and chucked her chin and said, “I know what you’re up to, and it’s not going to work. There are times when a person cannot be cheered up, and for me this is one of those times.” He looked out toward the bay, but the day was so foggy that the water wasn’t visible from the porch. “I’m going to go for a walk in the fog to be alone with my thoughts,” he announced.
“And when you come back, will you be happier?” asked Elaine.
“Maybe,” said Lou, “and maybe not.”
“But you will come back?” she said, as if it were a joke.
Lou didn’t answer that, just gave her a dismissive look, as if he considered her a silly girl for asking such a question, but there was something in the heaviness of his step that I recognized, something that made me think he might have given the same answer: “Maybe, and maybe not.”
He put a coat on and let himself out the front door into the fog. Elaine looked as if she were considering following him, for his own protection, but I touched her shoulder to get her attention, and when she looked at me I put my finger to my lips, winked, and pointed to myself. She smiled and nodded her thanks. I waited a reasonable interval and then took my coat from the closet and went in search of Lou.
I could just make him out in the fog, as a bulky darkness in the grayness, moving slowly and silently. I had expected him to walk the perimeter of the island, but instead he took the path to the dock, and when he got there he walked to the very end and sat with his legs dangling over the edge, just as I do when I want to be alone with my thoughts. I held back for a while, watching him, looking for some sign of his intentions. Was he going to pitch himself into the water, or was he just going to sit and think? After a while, I decided that he probably wasn’t going to pitch himself into the water, and I also decided that if there ever was going to be a time when I might sell Small’s Island to him, this was it. I walked the length of the dock, sat down beside him, and, looking out into the fog, not at him, asked, “Feeling suicidal?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking out into the fog, not at me.
“Do you have a method in mind?”
“Gunshot. Quick and messy. How about you?”
“Drowning. At least, I used to think of drowning. We had a leaky launch, before Tony T got through with it. A dark night, a foggy night. A leaking launch. The captain runs out of gas in the middle of the bay and sinks slowly into the cold gray water. An accident. It would have been taken for an accident, and Albertine would have collected the insurance money, but now I don’t have any life insurance anymore, so it would be pointless. It would just look like a mistake, just another mistake, one more mistake in a long line of mistakes, a futile gesture of an insignificant man. Might as well leave it all up to time and fate.”
He looked at me, shook his head, and snorted. “Did you come out here to cheer me up?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “What’s the matter? What’s bothering you?”
“Did you happen to listen to Baldy the Dummy last night?”
“Yes. It was — sad — and horrible. That’s what has you so upset?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That. Because it was the last straw. And because it has brought me to the realization that with very few exceptions I hate the world and everyone in it.” Pause. “All of that — ” he said, flinging his arm outward to indicate all of that, everything out beyond us in the fog. “I hate it. I want out.”
[to be continued]
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