Kitabı oku: «The Losers»

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi

i

Mrs. Muriel Taylor was thirty-eight years old when she found that she was pregnant. Mrs. Taylor was a pale, almost transparent woman of Canadian background, who, until that startling discovery, had lived in a kind of dreamy reverie filled with semiclassical music and the endlessly reworked verses to which she devoted two hours every afternoon and never allowed anyone to read. The pregnancy ran its normal course, although Mrs. Taylor had miscarried twice before. She laid aside her poetry and devoted herself wholly to the life within her, seeming almost to wish at times that she might, like some exotic insect, be consumed from within by it and fall away like a dead husk at the moment of birth.

She labored with the selection of a suitable name for her unborn son (for he would surely be a boy) as she had never before struggled with the surly intransigencies of language, emerging finally with the one name that would lift her still-womb-drowsing infant above the commonplace, beyond that vast, ever-expanding mob of Joeys and Billies and Bobbies and Donnies. She would, she decided, call him Raphael, and having made that decision, she fell back into her drowse.

And in the usual course of time she was delivered of a son, and he was christened Raphael.

Mr. Edgar Taylor, Mrs. Taylor’s husband, was a man best described as gray—his hair, the suits he wore to the office, even his face. Mr. Taylor was an accountant, much more at home with columns of figures than with people, and the sudden appearance of an heir, the product of his somewhat tepid passion, seemed to stun him. He gave up all outside activities so that he might hurry home each night to watch his son, not to touch him or speak to him, but simply to watch in a kind of bemused astonishment this prodigy that he and his wife had somehow wrought.

The Taylors lived in Port Angeles, a small, damp city on the extreme northwest coast. The peninsula below it is given over in large part to a national park, roadless and pristine; and the city thus has an insular character, cut off from the sprawling bustle of Seattle, Tacoma, and the other population centers of the state by a deep, island-dotted sound. All significant travel to and from Port Angeles is by ferry. The nearest major city is Victoria in British Columbia, a curiously European metropolis where Mr. Taylor had traveled on business some years earlier and had met and intermittently courted Mrs. Taylor. In due time they had married and he had brought her back across the twenty-six miles of intervening water to the dank clamminess of Port Angeles with its rain and fog and its reek of green hemlock logs lying low in the salt waters of the bay.

From the beginning Raphael was one of those rare children, touched, it seemed, by a singular grace that gave everything he did a kind of special significance. As an infant he seldom cried, and he passed through the normal stages of early childhood with a minimum of fuss. His mother, of course, devoted her entire existence to him. Long after he had matured to the point where her constant attentions were no longer necessary—or even desired—she was forever touching him, her hand moving almost of its own will to lingeringly caress his face or his hair.

Perhaps because of that special grace or perhaps because of some long-forgotten gene in his makeup, Raphael avoided the pitfalls that almost inevitably turn the pampered child into a howling monster. He grew instead into a sturdy, self-reliant little boy, gracious to his playmates and polite to his elders. Even as a child, however, he was adept at keeping his feelings to himself. He was outgoing and friendly on the surface, but seemed to reserve a certain part of himself as a private sanctuary from which he could watch and say nothing. He did well in school and, as he matured, developed into that kind of young man his infancy had promised—tall, slimly muscular, with glowing, almost luminous eyes and pale blond hair that stubbornly curled in spite of all efforts to control it.

Raphael’s years at high school were a time of almost unbearable pride for Mr. Taylor as the young man developed into that boy athlete who comes along perhaps once in a generation. Opposing coaches wept on those golden autumn afternoons as Raphael, knees high, the ball carried almost negligently in one hand, ran at will through their best defenses. Important men in the lumber company where Mr. Taylor worked began stopping by his desk to talk about the games.

“Great game, Edgar,” they’d say jovially. “Really great.”

Mr. Taylor, his gray face actually taking on a certain color, would nod happily.

“Young Rafe really gave it to them,” they’d say. “He’s a cinch to make all-state this year.”

“We think he’s got a good chance,” Mr. Taylor would say. Mr. Taylor always said “we” when talking about Raphael’s accomplishments, as if, were he to say “I,” it might seem boastful.

For Mrs. Taylor, however, the whole period was a time of anguish. There was always the danger of injury, and with morbid fascination she collected gruesome stories of fatalities and lifelong maimings that occurred with hideous regularity on high-school football fields across the nation. And then there was the fact that all the sportswriters and the disgusting man who broadcast the games over the local radio station had immediately shortened her son’s name to Rafe—a name that smacked of hillbillies or subhuman degenerates slouching along in the shadows and slobbering over thoughts of unspeakable acts. Each time she heard the name, her soul withered a little within her. Most of all, however, she feared girls. As Raphael’s local celebrity increased so did her dread. In her mind

Mrs. Muriel Taylor saw hordes of vacant-minded little trollops lusting after her son, their piggish eyes aflame with adolescent desire and their bubble-gum-scented breath hot and panting as they conspired—each in her own grubby little soul—to capture this splendid young man. Mrs. Taylor had, in the dim reaches of her Canadian girlhood, secretly and tragically suffered such pangs for an oafish campus hero, so that she knew in her heart of hearts to what lengths the predatory adolescent female might go, given such a prize as this most perfect of young men, this—and she used the word only to herself in deepest privacy—this angel.

Young Raphael Taylor, however, avoided those girls his mother most feared as adroitly as he avoided opposing tacklers. This is not, of course, to say that he was celibate. It is merely to say that he devoted his attentions to certain local girls who, by reputation and practice, were in no position to make lasting demands on him. For the most part he avoided those girls who might, by the sacrifice of their virtue, have been able to make some kind of viable claim upon him. Once, though, in the summer of his sixteenth year, there was a girl whom he had deeply and desperately loved; but her family had moved away, and he had suffered, but had been safe.

During the fall of Raphael’s senior year in high school, Mr. Taylor developed a serious shortness of breath. Despite his wife’s urgings, however, he put off visiting the family doctor, maintaining that his condition was just a recurrence of an old bronchial complaint that had plagued him off and on for years.

On a splendid Friday afternoon in late September Port Angeles hosted their traditional rivals from across the sound. As had been the case since his sophomore year, Raphael dominated the game. Although it was obvious from the very beginning that he would carry the ball at least twice during every series of plays, the opposing players were unable to stop him. He scored three touchdowns during the first half, and when the visitors opened the second half with a booming kickoff, he scooped up the ball deep in his own end zone, reversed direction, and feinting, spinning, and dodging with the grace of a dancer, he started upfield. Every opponent on the

field, even the kicker, tried to stop him, but he was unstoppable. For the last thirty yards before he crossed the goal line, he was absolutely alone, running in solitary splendor with all tacklers hopelessly far back.

The home fans, of course, were screaming wildly. And that was the last thing that Mr. Taylor ever heard. He had risen excitedly to his feet to watch his glorious son run the full length of the field, and the sound of the cheers surrounded him. The massive heart attack was like a great blow to his chest, and he toppled forward, dying with those cheers fading like distant thunder in his ears.

The funeral was very sad, as funerals usually are. Mrs. Taylor bore up bravely, leaning on her golden-haired son. After all the ceremonies and condolences, life once again returned to near normal. Mr. Taylor was so close to being a nonentity that he was scarcely missed at the place where he had worked, and even his widow’s emotion at his passing might best be described as gentle melancholy rather than overwhelming grief.

Raphael, of course, missed his father, but he nonetheless played in every game that season. “He would have wanted it that way,” he explained. He was touched, even moved almost to tears by the moment of silence dedicated to his father just prior to the game the Friday after the funeral. Then he went out onto the field and destroyed the visiting team.

Mr. Taylor’s affairs, of course, were in absolute order. Certain wise investments and several insurance policies provided for the security of his family, and his elder brother, Harry, a Port Angeles realtor, had been named executor of his estate. Harry Taylor was a bluff, balding, florid-faced man with a good head for business and a great deal of sound, practical advice for his brother’s widow. He took his responsibilities as executor quite seriously and visited often.

That winter, when the question of college arose, Mrs. Taylor faced the issue with dread. Money was not a problem, since her husband had carried a special insurance policy with some very liberal provisions to guarantee his son’s education. There were also scholarship offers from as far away as southern California, since Raphael had twice been named to the all-state football team. In the end, however, the question was deferred by the young man’s rather surprising decision to attend the local junior college. He had many reasons for the choice, not the least of which was his full realization of what anguish an abrupt separation would cause his mother, coming as it must so soon after her bereavement.

And so it was that Raphael continued to play local football, his uncle Harry basked in reflected celebrity, and his mother enjoyed the reprieve the decision had granted her.

At the end of two years, however, the decision could no longer be put off. Raphael privately considered his options and independently made his choice.

“Reed?” his uncle said, stunned.

“It’s a good school, Uncle Harry,” Raphael pointed out, “the best school in this part of the country. They say it’s one of the top ten colleges in the United States.”

“But they don’t even have a football team, do they?”

“I don’t know,” Raphael replied. “I don’t think so.”

“You could go to Stanford. That’s a good school, too.”

Raphael nodded thoughtfully. “Yes,” he agreed, “but it’s too big.”

“They’ve got a good team. You might even get a chance to play in the Rose Bowl.”

“Maybe, but I think I’d rather go to Reed. I’ve had a lot of fun playing football, but I think it’s time I moved on to something else, don’t you?”

“Where is this college located?” Mrs. Taylor asked faintly. “Portland,” Raphael replied.

“In Oregon?” Mrs. Taylor asked even more faintly.

Raphael nodded.

Mrs. Taylor’s heart sank.

ii

Portland, the city of the roses, bestrides the banks of the Willamette River near where that stream joins the Columbia. It is a pleasant city, filled with trees and fine old Victorian houses. The campus of Reed College, where Raphael was enrolled, lies somewhat to the east of the river, and has about it a dreamy, timeless quality. The very buildings that rise from the broad lawns identify the place as a college, since such a random collection of Georgian manors, medieval cathedrals, and starkly modern structures of brick and glass could exist for no other reason.

In his car of recent vintage with its backseat filled with the new and expensive luggage his mother had bought and tearfully given him, Raphael Taylor pulled rather wearily into the student parking lot and stopped. The trip had been quite long, and he was unaccustomed to freeway driving. There was, however, an exhilaration about it all. He was on his own for the first time in his life, and that was something.

Thanks to his uncle’s careful correspondence with the registrar and the bursar, all arrangements had been made well in advance, and Raphael knew precisely where his dormitory was located. With his jacket under his arm and two suitcases rather self-consciously swinging at his sides, he walked across to the manselike solidity of the dorm, feeling a certain superiority to the small crowd of bewildered-looking freshmen milling uncertainly around in front of the administration building.

His room was on the third floor, and Raphael was puffing slightly as he reached the top of the stairs. The door at the end of the hall was open, and billowing clouds of smoke were rolling out. Raphael’s stomach turned cold. Everything had gone too well up until now. He went down the hall and into the smoke.

A young man with olive skin and sleek black hair brushed by him carrying a large vase filled with water. “Don’t just stand there, man,” he said to Raphael in a rich baritone voice. “Help me put this son of a bitch out.” He rushed into the room, bent slightly, and threw the water into a small fireplace that seemed to be the source of all the smoke. The fire hissed spitefully, and clouds of steam boiled out to mingle blindingly with the smoke.

“Damn!” the dark-haired man swore, and started back for more water.

Raphael saw the problem immediately. “Wait,” he said. He set down his suitcases, stepped across to the evilly fuming fireplace, and pulled the brass handle sticking out of the bricks just below the mantelpiece. The damper opened with a clank, and the fireplace immediately stopped belching smoke into the room. “It’s a good idea to open the chimney before you build the fire,” he suggested.

The other man stared at the fireplace for a moment, and then he threw back his head and began to laugh. “There’s a certain logic there, I guess,” he admitted. He collapsed on the bed near the door, still laughing.

Raphael crossed the room and opened the window. The smoke rushed out past him.

“It’s a good thing you came by when you did,” the dark-haired man said. “I was well on my way to being smoked like a Virginia ham.” He was somewhat shorter than Raphael, and more slender. His olive skin and black hair suggested a Mediterranean background, Italian perhaps or Spanish, but there was no Latin softness in his dark eyes. They were as hard as obsidian and watchful, even wary. His clothing was expensive—tailored, Raphael surmised, definitely tailored—and his wristwatch was not so much a timepiece as it was a statement.

Then the young man looked at Raphael as if seeing him for the first time, and something peculiar happened to his face. His eyes widened, and a strange pallor turned his olive complexion slightly green. His eyes narrowed, seeming almost to glitter. It was as if a shock of recognition had passed through him. “You must be Edwards, right?” His expression seemed tight somehow.

“Sorry,” Raphael replied. “The name’s Taylor.” “I thought you might be my roomie.” “No. I’m two doors up the hall.”

“Oh, well”—the stranger shrugged, making a wry face—“there goes my chance to keep the knowledge of my little blunder a secret. Edwards is bound to smell the smoke when he gets here.” He rose to his feet and extended his hand. “J. D. Flood,” he said by way of introducing himself.

“Rafe Taylor,” Raphael responded. They shook hands. “What were you burning, Flood?”

“Some pieces of a packing crate. I’ve never had a dormitory room with a fireplace before, so I had to try it. Hell, I was even going out to buy a pipe.” He raised one eyebrow. “Rafe—is that short for Raphael?”

“Afraid so. It was a romantic notion of my mother’s. You wouldn’t believe how many school-yard brawls it started.”

Flood’s face darkened noticeably. “Unreal,” he said. That strange, almost shocked expression that had appeared in his eyes when he had first looked at Raphael returned, and there was a distinct tightening in his face. Once again Raphael felt that momentary warning as if something were telling him to be very careful about this glib young man. In that private place within his mind from which he had always watched and made decisions, he began to erect some cautionary defenses. “And what does the J.D. stand for?” he asked, trying to make it sound casual.

“Jacob Damon Flood, Junior,” Flood said with distaste.

“Jake?” Raphael suggested.

“Not hardly.”

“J.D. then?”

“That’s worse. That’s what they call my father.” “How about Damon?”

Flood considered that. “Why not? How about a martini?” “Is it legal? In the dorm, I mean?”

“Who gives a shit? I’m not going to start paying any attention to the rules at this late date.”

Raphael shrugged. “Most of my drinking has been limited to beer, but I’ll give it a try.”

“That’s the spirit,” Flood said, opening one of his suitcases and taking out a couple of bottles. “I laid in some ice a bit earlier. I make a mean martini—it’s one of the few things I’ve actually learned.” He busied himself with a silver shaker. “Any cretin can swill liquor out of a bottle,” he went on with a certain brittle extravagance, “but a gentleman boozes it up with class.”

Flood’s language seemed to shift back and forth between an easy colloquialism Raphael found comfortable and a kind of stilted eastern usage. There was a forced quality about Flood that made him uncomfortable.

They had a couple of drinks, and Raphael feigned enjoyment, although the sharp taste of nearly raw gin was not particularly to his liking. He was not really accustomed to drinking, and Flood’s martinis were strong enough to make his ears hot and the tips of his fingers tingle. “Well,” he said finally, setting down his glass, “I guess I’d better go get moved in.”

“Taylor,” Flood said, an odd note in his voice. “I’ve got a sort of an idea. Is your roommate up the hall an old friend?”

“Never met the man, actually.”

“And I’ve never met Edwards either—obviously. Why don’t you room in here?” There was a kind of intensity about the way Flood said it, as if it were far, far more important than the casual nature of the suggestion called for.

“They don’t allow that, do they?” Raphael asked. “Switching rooms, I mean?”

“It’s easy to see you’ve never been in a boarding school before.” Flood laughed. “Switching rooms is standard practice. It goes on everywhere. Believe me, I know. I’ve been kicked out of some of the best schools in the east.”

“What if Edwards shows up and wants his bed?”

“We’ll give him yours. I’ll lie to him—tell him I’ve got something incurable and that you’re here to give me a shot in case I throw a fit.”

“Come on.” Raphael laughed.

“You can be the one with the fits if you’d rather,” Flood offered. “Can you do a convincing grand mal seizure?” “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

“The whole point is that we get along fairly well together, and I don’t know diddly about Edwards. I know that you’re white, but I haven’t got any idea at all about what color he is.”

“Is that important?” Raphael said it carefully.

Flood’s face suddenly broke into a broad grin. “Gotcha!” he said gleefully. “God, I love to do that to people. Actually, it doesn’t mean jack-shit to me one way or another, but it sure as hell does to old J.D. Sooner or later somebody from back home is going to come by, and if words gets back to the old pirate that his son has a nigger roommate—his word, not mine—thee shit will hit thee fan. Old J.D.’s prejudiced against races that have been extinct for thousands of years—like the Hittites—or the Wends.”

“It won’t work out then, Damon,” Raphael told him with a perfectly straight face. “My mother’s Canadian.”

“That’s all right, Raphael. I’m liberal. We’ll let you come in through the back door. Have Canadians got rhythm? Do you have overpowering cravings for northern-fried moose?”

Raphael laughed. The young man from the east was outrageous. There was still something slightly out of tune though. Raphael was quite sure that he reminded Flood of someone else. Flood had seemed about to mention it a couple of times, but had apparently decided against it. “All right,” he decided. “If you think we can get away with it, we’ll try it.”

“Good enough. We’ll drop the Rafe and Jake bit so we don’t sound like a hillbilly band, and we’ll use Damon and Raphael—unless you’d like to change your name to Pythias?”

“No, I don’t think so. It sounds a little urinary.”

Flood laughed. “It does at that, doesn’t it? Have you got any more bags? Or do you travel light?”

“I’ve got a whole backseat full.”

“Let’s go get them then. Get you settled in.”

They clattered downstairs, brought up the rest of Raphael’s luggage, and then went to the commons for dinner.

Damon Flood talked almost continuously through the meal, his rich voice compelling, almost hypnotic. He saw nearly everything, and his sardonic wit made it all wryly humorous.

“And this,” he said, almost with a sneer as they walked back in the luminous twilight toward their dormitory, “is the ‘most intelligent group of undergraduates in the country’?” He quoted from a recent magazine article about the college. “It looks more like a hippie convention—or a soirée in a hobo jungle.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Indeed they can, Raphael, Angel of Light”—Flood laughed—“but appearance is the shadow at least of reality, don’t you think?”

Raphael shrugged. “We’re more casual out here on the coast.”

“Granted, but wouldn’t you say that the fact that a young lady doesn’t wear shoes to dinner says a great deal about her character?”

“Where’s your home?” Raphael asked as they started up the stairs.

“Grosse Pointe,” Flood said dryly, “the flower on the weed of Detroit.”

“What are you doing way out here?” Raphael opened the door to their room.

“Seeking my fortune,” Flood said, flinging himself down on his bed. Then he laughed. “Actually, I’m putting as much distance as possible between my father and me. The old bastard can’t stand the sight of me. The rest of the family wanted me to go to Princeton, but I preferred to avoid the continuous surveillance of all those cousins. A very large family, the Floods, and I have the distinction of being its major preoccupation. All those dumpy female cousins literally slather at the idea of being able to report my indiscretions back to old J.D. himself.”

Raphael began to unpack.

“J.D.’s the family patriarch,” Flood went on. “The whole damned bunch genuflects in his direction five times a day—except me, of course. I suppose I’ve never really forgiven him for tacking that ‘Junior’ on me, so I set out to be as unlike him as I could. He looks on that as a personal insult, so we don’t really get along. He started shipping me off to boarding schools as soon as I lost my baby teeth, though, so we only irritate each other on holidays. I tried a couple years at Pitt, but all that rah-rah bullshit got on my nerves. So I thought I’d saddle up old Paint and strike out for the wide wide west—What do you say to another drink?” He sprang up immediately and began mixing another batch of martinis.

Their conversation became general after that, and they both grew slightly drunk before they went to bed.

After Flood had turned out the light, he continued to talk, a steady flow of random, drowsy commentary on the day’s events. In time the pauses between his observations became longer as he hovered on the verge of sleep. Finally he turned over in bed. “Good night, Gabriel,” he murmured.

“Wrong archangel,” Raphael corrected. “Gabriel’s the other one—the trumpet player.”

“Did I call you Gabriel?” Flood’s voice had a strange, alert tension in it. “Stupid mistake. I must have had one martini too many.”

“It’s no big thing. Good night, Damon.” Once again, however, something in the very back of his mind seemed to be trying to warn Raphael. Flood’s inadvertent use of the name Gabriel seemed not to be just a slip of the tongue. There was a significance to it somehow—obscure, but important.

In the darkness, waiting for sleep and listening to Flood’s regular breathing from the other bed, Raphael considered his roommate. He had never before met anyone with that moneyed, eastern prep-school background, and so he had no real basis for judgment. The young men he had met before had all come from backgrounds similar to his own, and the open, easy camaraderie of the playing field and the locker room had not prepared him for the complexity of someone like Flood. On the whole, though, he found his roommate intriguing, and the surface sophistication of their first evening exhilirating. Perhaps in time Flood would relax, and they’d really get to know each other, but it was still much too early to know for sure.

iii

Raphael’s next few weeks were a revelation to him. Always before he had been at best a casual scholar. His mind was quick and retentive, and neither high school nor the community college he had attended had challenged him significantly. He had come to believe that, even as on the football field, what others found difficult would be easy for him. His performance in the classroom, like his performance on the field, had been more a reflection of natural talent than of hard work; everything had been very easy for Raphael. At Reed, however, it was not so. He quickly discovered that a cursory glance at assigned reading did not prepare him adequately for the often brutally cerebral exchanges of the classroom. Unlike his previous classmates, these students were not content merely to paraphrase the text or the remarks of the instructor, but rather applied to the material at hand techniques of reason and analysis Raphael had never encountered before. Amazingly, more often than not, the results of these reasonings were a direct challenge to the authority of the text or of the instructor. And, even more amazingly, these challenges were not viewed as the disruptions of troublemakers, but were actually encouraged. Disturbed and even embarrassed by his newfound inadequacy, Raphael began to apply himself to his studies.

“You’re turning into a grind,” Flood said one evening. Raphael pulled his eyes from the page he was reading. “Hmmm?”

“You study too much. I never see you without your face in some damned book.”

“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”

“Not hardly.” Flood threw one leg over the arm of his chair. “A gentleman does not get straight A’s. It’s unseemly. Haven’t you ever heard the old formula? ‘Three C’s and a D and keep your name out of the newspapers’?”

“No. I hadn’t heard that one.” Raphael’s mind was yearning back toward the book. “Besides, how would you know here? They won’t let us see our grades.” That was one of the peculiarities of what was called the “Reed experience.”

“Barbarous,” Flood snorted. “How the hell can we be expected to maintain a proper balance if they don’t let us see our grades? Do you realize that a man could screw up? Stumble into so many high grades that his reputation’s ruined for life?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Damon. I don’t think you’re in any danger.”

“Don’t get shitty.” Flood got up quickly. “Let’s go out and get drunk—see if we can get arrested or something.”

“I’ve got an early class tomorrow.” Raphael turned back to his book.

“Talk to me, goddammit!” Flood said irritably, snatching the book from Raphael’s hands. “What the hell are you reading, anyway?”

“Kierkegaard.” Raphael reached for his book.

“The Sickness unto Death,” Flood read. “Now there’s a cheery little tide. What class is this for?”

Raphael shrugged. “It came up in a discussion. I thought I ought to look into it.”

“You mean it’s not even required?” Flood demanded incredulously, tossing the book back. “That’s disgusting, Raphael, disgusting.”

“Different strokes,” Raphael said, finding his place again and settling back to his reading. Flood sat watching him, his black eyes as hard as agates.

And then there was the problem of the girl. She sat across the room from him in one of his afternoon classes, and Raphael found his eyes frequently drawn to her face. It was not that she was exceptionally beautiful, for she was not. Her face was slightly angular with strong bones, and she was quite tall with a coltish legginess that made her seem somehow very young. Her voice, however, was a deep, rich contralto with a vibrance, a quality, that stirred Raphael immeasurably each time she spoke. But she spoke infrequently. Sometimes a week would pass without a word from her. While others in the class talked endlessly, arguing, discussing, pushing themselves forward, she would sit quietly, taking occasional notes and now and then stirring restlessly as Raphael’s gaze became warmly obvious.