ONE MORE BODY in the POOL

b y Ra y Bradbur y

I walked across the beach and stood in the hot sun for a long moment, staring down at the man lying there with his head covered by a newspaper.

I took a deep breath, held it, and at last said, "Scottie?"

There was no motion beneath the paper.

I took another breath and said, "Mr. Fitzgerald?"

At last the paper drifted aside and the young old man underneath it opened his eyes.

His face was familiar and young and terribly haunted. The cheeks were smooth and the chin was very fine. The eyes, which were clear blue, seemed to have trouble focusing on me.

"Well?" he said at last.

I replied, "God, I hate to bother you, but I'm a sort of literary agent and, well, forgive me, but I have an idea that I want to offer you."

I stopped, blushing at what I'd said, as the newspaper drifted back over the old young face.

I took another breath and blurted, "Scottie."

There was only silence.

"I apologize," I said. "But Mr. Fitzgerald, please."

The paper drifted aside again and he stared up at me, wait­ing patiently.

"This is ridiculous, I know," I said. "Let me find a way to put it. Do you believe that you can travel back in time just by thinking about doing it? I know we all can do this in our minds, but if you keep thinking about traveling to a specific point in time and then start walking, and keep on walking, oh, a number of days, a number of weeks, maybe you'll really wind up there."

"For God's sake," said the voice under the newspaper.

The man shoved the newspaper aside, propped himself up on one elbow, and watched me as if I were the bearer of bad news.

"You don't look half as loony as you sound," he said. "Continue. Just what is it that you want in the middle of a fine afternoon on a beach in south­ern Florida?"

I could feel my fingers twitching at my side and I had to stop myself from blinking.

"Well, I've been reading the reviews of your latest book, which upset me terribly. I've read all the reviews of your whole life, for that matter, well, for at least the last ten or fifteen years, and, well, I feel you need a literary friend. Don't get me wrong. I mean no insult. I feel that at a time like this—" I stopped, for I was out of breath.

Fitzgerald looked like he was going to lie back down, which panicked me, but then he must have read something in my face, for he sat up again and examined me.

"You're a very nervy fel­low, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "I can't help it. When I like someone's work I feel I should support him. Like is the wrong word. Love is more like it. Tender is the Night is the finest novel written in the last forty years."

"You've just said the right thing."

F. Scott Fitzgerald sat up even further and a smile touched his lips. "Sit down," he said.

I sat down on the warm sand, looked at him quietly, and waited for him to go on.

"Now, just what is it that you want to suggest and why in hell would you want to suggest it?"

"Well," I said, "I have just come from a series of literary travels. First I visited Ernest Hemingway and then I went south and met up with William Faulkner. I won't fill you in on the particulars, as you would probably find them hard to believe, but I will tell you that along the way I came up with ideas for those two and you, because I feel that the three of you have the potential for writing the most popular kind of fiction in the world today." "And what kind of fiction is that?" said F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"Mysteries," I said and stopped, confused. "But no, not anything like Agatha Christie. No, no, that wouldn't do. The murder mystery. I know that sounds strange, but it's become an accepted form among modern writers, and I believe you would bring something special to the field. It's really come into its own just this last half century, but think further back in time. Consider Hamlet, for instance. It's the greatest play ever written, and it's all about the death of the father—the murder—and the mystery behind it. And by the end the stage floor is littered with bodies; there's hardly anyone left. So you've got killings all over the place and mysteries from start to finish. Part of it scares the hell out of you; part of it provokes you. Think."

F. Scott Fitzgerald waited for me to go on, which compelled him to take out a cigarette and light it and puff, waiting.

I swallowed hard and said, "I chatted with Papa. He was willing to think about ideas and Faulkner, of course, has done some weird stories in his time, so he was open to suggestions."

F. Scott Fitzgerald's eyes had begun to shine somewhat and he turned to a hamper nearby and brought forth a small silver flask.

He offered it to me and I shook my head.

He took a great swig from the silver flask and said, "Suddenly I'm fascinated by what you're telling me. I know this chap, Hammett, and I found his characters in The Maltese Falcon fascinating, especially that fat man—what was his name? Gutmann. But what makes you think I could be a writer of murder mysteries?"

"Well," I said, "if people won't accept you as a literary novel­ist like I do, and I really do, then perhaps they will accept you as a mystery writer, the critics being what they are."

"What did you say to Papa?" asked F. Scott Fitzgerald.

"I told him that Africa is a wonderful place for someone to get shot in a mysterious manner."

"And did Papa react?"

"He thought it was a very good idea since he's seen a lot of shooting in Africa, accidental and on purpose. He mentioned some­one he once knew named Macomber. He even bothered to make a note, which pleased me and made me feel less superfluous."

"And what about the old drunk?"

"Faulkner?"

"That one."

"He has contacts in Hollywood and I told him that he would be a natural to write something of a murder mystery for the screen if he moved ahead in that area."

F. Scott Fitzgerald nodded and took another swig. "And what makes you think I would be a proper writer of such fictions?"

"Because of the people you've known," I said. "You've encountered a much wider swath of characters from every level than Faulkner or Hemingway, men and women from a dozen countries and many strange cities. You've known the rich and you've known the poor. You've been in and out of the movie studios, where you've been put upon by maniacs who should have been murdered long ago. You know women very well and you know crazy young men and you know the environment in which they survive, sometimes New York, sometimes Long Island, sometimes Biarritz, or lost away down here in southern Florida. Your knowledge of the human condition could help you write a terrific murder mystery, if you put your mind to it."

F. Scott Fitzgerald leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "Are you a literary agent then, as you claim?"

"No, I don't claim that," I said. "I guess you might say I'm a provider, a manufacturer of ideas would be more like it."

"Well then, what sort of idea are you offering me?"

I took a notepad from my pocket and glanced at it.

"Well, sir, I have a title here. The Body in the Pool."

F. Scott Fitzgerald laughed quietly. "That doesn't sound Very original."

"Well, if it's a rich man's body, and a rich man's pool, and the rich man's body has a bullet in it, perhaps that would be more interesting to you," I said. "There's a lot to think about it you find a rich man's bullet-pierced body in a rich man's pool. Everyone would wonder how he had gotten there and why someone would shoot him and how long he'd been in the water before he was found and why he deserved to die at all in such a manner."

F. Scott Fitzgerald glanced at the notepad in my hand and reached out and took it. "Can I keep this?"

"Yes," I said.

He studied the pad, then lit another cigarette and smoked it quietly. "I know you won't believe this," he said, "but my mind has wandered in similar directions in recent years. I got around to reading some Dashiell Hamrnett last year and it was very good stuff. I've won­dered about people like that and what sort of ends they come to."

"Well," I said, "if you accept what I've suggested, I will have done my job. I worry about my favorite authors and their lives and want everything to come out right for them in the end. It seems to me that if you wrote a murder mystery now, you could reestablish yourself as a first-class writer in American letters, even though people make a good deal of fun about detective stories."

There was a long silence.

The sun somehow seemed brighter and hotter and I felt sweat move down my face.

F. Scott Fitzgerald offered me his silver flask again and this time I took a sip. I winced and handed it back to him, then somehow managed to get to my feet.

Fitzgerald watched me do all this, then suddenly reached out his hand.

I took it and held on, very quietly, because I hated to leave.

I stared down into that young old face and said, "I think it's time for me to go."

"Much thanks for dropping by," said F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I backed off and walked across the sand, waiting for him to say a final thing.

Before I was very far away I heard him call.

I turned and he said thoughtfully, "I was wondering. Wouldn't it be wiser to not have the body in the pool at the start of the story? How about finding the body there at the very end of the novel?"

I hesitated a moment, nodded, and said, "Now you're cooking!"

He raised his flask in a toast to me.

Somehow I managed to turn and walk away. ♦

PERHAPS WE ARE GOING AWAY (1953)

It was a strange thing that could not be told. It touched along the hairs on his neck as he lay wakening. Eyes shut, he pressed his hands to the dirt.

Was the earth, shaking old fires under its crust, taming over in its sleep?

Were buffalo on the dust prairies, in the whistling grass, drumming the sod, moving this way like a dark weather?

No.

What? What, then?

He opened his eyes and was the boy Ho-Awi, of a tribe named for a bird, by the hills named for the shadows of owls, near the great ocean itself, on a day that was evil for no reason.

Ho-Awi stared at the tent flaps, which shivered like a great beast remembering winter.

Tell me, he thought, the terrible thing, where does it come from? Whom will it kill?

He lifted the flap and stepped out into his village.

He turned slowly, a boy with bones in his dark cheeks like the keels of all birds flying. His brown eyes saw god-filled, cloud-filled sky, his cupped car heard thistles ticking the war drums, but still the greater mystery drew him to the edge of the village.

Here, legend said, the land went on like a tide to another sea. Between here and there was as much earth as there were stars across the night sky. Somewhere in all that land, storms of black buffalo harvested the grass. And here stood Ho-Awi, his stomach a fist, wondering, searching, waiting, afraid.

You too? said the shadow of a hawk.

Ho-Awi turned.

It was the shadow of his grandfather's hand that wrote on the wind.

No. The grandfather made the sign for silence. His tongue moved soft in a toothless mouth. His eyes were small creeks running behind the sunken flesh beds, the cracked sand washes of his face.

Now they stood on the edge of the day, drawn close by the unknown.

And Old Man did as the boy had done. His mummified ear turned, his nostril twitched. Old Man too ached for same answering growl from any direction that would tell then only a great timber fall of weather had dropped from a distant sky. But the wind gave no answer, spoke only to itself.

The Old Man made the sign which said they must go on the Great Hunt. This, said his hands like mouths, was a day for the rabbit young and the featherless old. Let no warrior come with them. The hare and the dying vulture must track together. For only the very

young saw life ahead, and only the very old saw life behind; the others between were so busy with life they saw nothing.

The Old Man wheeled slowly in all directions.

Yes! He knew, he was certain, he was sure! To find this thing of darkness would take the innocence of the newborn and the innocence of the blind to see very clear.

Come! said the trembling fingers.

And snuffling rabbit and earthbound hawk shadowed out of the village into changing weather.

They searched the high hills to see if the stones lay atop each other, and they were so arranged. They scanned the prairies, but found only the winds which played there like tribal children all day. And found arrowheads from old wars.

No, the Old Man's hand drew on the sky, the men of this nation and that beyond smoke by the summer fires while the squaws cut wood. It is not arrows flying that we almost hear.

At last, when the sun sank into the nation of buffalo hunters, the Old Man looked up.

Birds, his hands cried suddenly, are flying south! Summer is over!

No, the boy's hands said, summer has just begun! I see no birds!

They are so high, said the Old Man's fingers, that only the blind can feel their passage. They shadow the heart more than the earth. I feel them pass south in my blood. Summer goes. We may go with it. Perhaps we are going away.

No! cried the boy aloud, suddenly afraid. Go where? Why? For what?

Who knows? said the Old Man, and perhaps we will not move. Still, even without moving, perhaps we are going away.

No! Go back! cried the boy, to the empty sky, the birds unseen, the unshadowed air. Summer, stay!

No use, said the Old One's single hand, moving by itself. Not you or me or our people can stay this weather. It is a season changed, come to live on the land for all time.

But from where does it come?

This way, said the Old Man at last.

And in the dusk they looked down at the great waters of the east that went over the edge of the world, where no one had ever gone.

There. The Old Man's hand clenched and thrust out. There it is.

Far ahead, a single light burned on the shore.

With the moon rising, the Old Man and the rabbit boy padded on the sands, heard strange voices in the sea, smelled wild burnings from the now suddenly close fire.

They crawled on their bellies. They lay looking in at the light.

And the more he looked, the colder Ho-Awl became, and he knew that all the Old Man had said was true.

For drawn to this fire built of sticks and moss, which flickered brightly in the soft evening wind which was cooler now, at the heart of summer, were such creatures as he had never seen. These were men with faces like white-hot coals, with some eyes in these faces as blue as sky. All these men had glossy hair on their cheeks and chins, which grew to a point. One man stood with raised lightning in his hand and a great moon of sharp stuff on his head like the face of a fish. The others had bright, round tinkling crusts of material cleaved to their chests which gonged slightly when they moved. As Ho-Awl watched, some men lifted the ganging bright things from their heads, unskinned the eye-blinding crab shells, the turtle casings from their chests, their arms, their legs, and tossed these discarded sheaths to the sand. Doing this, the creatures laughed, while out in the bay stood a black shape on the waters, a great dark canoe with things like torn clouds hung on poles over it.

After a long while of holding their breath, the Old Man and the boy went away.

From a hill, they watched the fire that was no bigger than a star now. You could wink it out with an eyelash. If you closed your eyes, it was destroyed.

Still, it remained.

Is this, asked the boy, the great happening?

The Old One's face was that of a fallen eagle, filled with dreadful years and unwanted wisdom. The eyes were resplendently bright, as they welled with a rise of cold clear water in which all could be seen, like a river that drank the sky and earth and knew it, accepted silently and would not deny the accumulation of dust, time, shape, sound and destiny.

The Old Man nodded, once. This was the terrible weather. This was how summer would end. This made the birds wheel south, shadowless, through a grieving land.

The worn hands stopped moving. The time of questions was done.

Far away, the fire leaped. One of the creatures moved. The bright stuff on his tortoise-shell body flashed. It was like an arrow cutting a wound in the night.

Then the boy vanished in darkness following the eagle and the hawk that lived in the stone body of his grandfather.

Below, the sea reared up and poured another great sail wave in billions of pieces which crashed and hissed like knives swarming along the continental shores.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29