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"Well?"
"Well what? My lovely wife killed me. Poisoned me, like salting the soup."
He saw the shock on Mr. Rebeck's face and enjoyed it. He felt very human. He smiled at Mr. Rebeck again.
"I would like to play chess," he said, "before sundown."
Chapter 3
"We could go for another walk," Mr. Rebeck said.
"I don't want to go for another walk. We've walked all the grass off this place. Where we walk the bare earth follows. Like locusts."
"But you like it. You said you did."
Michael thought hard about scowling and was pleased when he remembered the feeling. "I do like it. But I don't like watching you get tired."
Mr. Rebeck started to say something, but Michael cut him off. "Because I can't. I can't get tired, and watching you breathe as if you were drinking the air bothers me. So let's not walk anywhere."
"All right," Mr. Rebeck said mildly. "We could play some chess, if you like."
"I don't want to play chess." Michael remembered petulance. "You have to make the moves for me. How do you think that makes me feel?"
Mr. Rebeck gazed at him pityingly. "Michael, Michael, you're making this so hard."
"Damn right," Michael said. "I don't give up easily." He gri
"I could read to you."
"Read what?" Michael asked suspiciously. "I didn't know you had books."
"The raven steals a couple for me down on Fourth Avenue every now and then," Mr. Rebeck said. "I've got some Swinburne."
Michael tried very hard to remember if he had liked Swinburne, and felt something only a doorstep away from terror when the name made no sound in his head. "Swinburne," he said aloud. He knew Mr. Rebeck was looking at him. My God, he thought, is it all going, then? Frantically he grabbed for the first familiar thing at hand, which happened to be his office number at the college; 1316, he thought, trying to curl up into the number, 1316, 1316, 1316. When it suddenly became 1613, he said quickly, "Swinburne. Yes, I know Swinburne. Didn't he once do a very long poem on the Circe theme?"
It was an old trick, one he remembered from every discussion and bull session he had ever taken part in: If you don't know, make it up. Nobody ever admitted he didn't know a quotation, or a book, or an essay on something. The rule also had a corollary: If you're not sure, it's Marlowe.
He rationalized it, as he always had. He might very well have, he said to himself. How would I know, now?
"Circe?" Mr. Rebeck frowned. "I never read it. But that doesn't mean anything," he added, smiling shyly. "There's a great deal I haven't read."
"I'm not sure it was Swinburne," Michael said. "It might have been somebody else."
"The one I was thinking of was 'The Garden of Proserpine.' You know." He quoted the lines, a little haltingly, but with an eager savoring of the words.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never—
"I remember," Michael said abruptly. "I don't like it."
"I'm sorry," Mr. Rebeck said. "I thought you might."
"Pat," Michael said. "Very pat. Anyway, Swinburne wrote it while he was alive." He looked up and saw the sun walking slowly up the sky like a tired old man. It interested him, and he stared hard at it. While he looked, Swinburne passed quietly out of his mind forever, unloved and unhated.
"Let's play chess," he said.
"I thought you didn't like chess."
God damn you, Michael thought. He spoke with exaggerated clarity of diction. "I like chess. I am very fond of chess. I'm crazy about chess. Let's play some chess."
Mr. Rebeck laughed and got up. "All right," he said and started for the mausoleum door.
"We can use a pebble for the black rook," Michael called after him.
Mr. Rebeck was digging absently in his hip pocket. He stopped and smiled at Michael a little ruefully.
"For nineteen years," he said, "every time I come back here I reach for the key to let myself in. The lock's broken, you know, but I always expect to find myself locked out."
He pushed the door open and went into the mausoleum. Michael sat down with his back to one of the white pillars; rather, he imagined himself sitting down and, for all practical purposes, he was. He had felt himself losing touch with the physical over these last three days, and it frightened him. Whenever he wanted to walk or smile or wink he had to remember very sharply what walking or smiling or winking was like. Otherwise he remained still, completely out of contact with his body-memories, a raindrop of consciousness hanging in the air. That had happened two days ago, and Michael remembered it.
His memory was still good, and his imagination clear. He felt human and bored, and the very boredom relieved him because it was such a human emotion.
Mr. Rebeck came out of the mausoleum, carrying a chessboard backed with torn green oilcloth. He sat down beside Michael and began to drizzle chess pieces. Three fell out of his shirt pocket, another five from his right pants pocket, and so on until the set was complete, with the exception of the black rook.
None of the pieces were from the same set. Most were made from various yellowing woods, a few were red plastic, and two, a black bishop and a white rook, were carved from a sullenly beautiful mahogany. Their bases were weighted and felted, and where the other pieces wobbled, staggered, and sprawled all over the chessboard, these two stood facing each other from behind opposing lines; and when the wind or Mr. Rebeck's knee scattered the other pieces, the bishop and the rook nodded gravely to each other.
Michael liked looking at the chess pieces. They made him laugh without the rubber-band sound that had been creeping into his laughter over the last three days.
"Motley bunch," he said to Mr. Rebeck, "aren't they?"
"The raven stole them piece by piece," Mr. Rebeck said, "and it took him quite a while because I made him steal them from department stores. He wanted to get them from the old men in the park, but I feel better this way. The black rook was beautiful too, but I lost it and I don't know where it is. Probably still around here somewhere." He held out his two clenched hands to Michael. "Want black or white?"
"White," said Michael, pointing at Mr. Rebeck's right hand. Mr. Rebeck opened the hand and a black pawn rolled out. He began to set up the pieces, humming softly as he did so.
"Where did the raven pick up the chessboard?" Michael asked suddenly.
Mr. Rebeck looked up. "I don't know. He staggered in with it one morning, and when I asked him where he got it he just said he'd been a good boy." He finished setting the pieces in place. "It worries me sometimes. I try not to think about it."
He began the game by moving his king's pawn two squares forward. "I'm very orthodox," he said. He had said this twice during the eight games they had played previously, but Michael did not remember it.
"Make mine the same," Michael said. "I'm not proud." Mr. Rebeck leaned forward and duplicated his own move on Michael's side of the board. He considered his own pieces at some length and finally jumped his knight two squares in front of his king's bishop. Michael made the same move with his queen's knight, and they settled down to the game.
They played quietly. Mr. Rebeck swayed back and forth over the board, moving for both of them, his breathing becoming harsher as the game went on. Michael burrowed into the luxury of wrapping his whole mind around one subject to the exclusion of all others. On the ninth move there was a quick flurry of pawn-exchanging, and again on the fifteenth, when one of Michael's knights and both of his bishops swirled angrily around a pawn of Mr. Rebeck's and left it untouched. Two moves later Michael vengefully picked off one of Mr. Rebeck's knights; after that the game moved slowly and warily.