The Elephant Vanishes: Stories, Page 8

  Then it’s husband and wife together. He sits on the sofa, reading the newspaper and talking to me now and then about his patients or something in the paper. Then he listens to Haydn or Mozart. I don’t mind listening to music, but I can never seem to tell the difference between those two composers. They sound the same to me. When I say that to my husband, he tells me it doesn’t matter. “It’s all beautiful. That’s what counts.”

  “Just like you,” I say.

  “Just like me,” he answers with a big smile. He seems genuinely pleased.

  SO THAT’S MY LIFE—or my life before I stopped sleeping—each day pretty much a repetition of the one before. I used to keep a diary, but if I forgot for two or three days, I’d lose track of what had happened on which day. Yesterday could have been the day before yesterday, or vice versa. I’d sometimes wonder what kind of life this was. Which is not to say that I found it empty. I was—very simply—amazed. At the lack of demarcation between the days. At the fact that I was part of such a life, a life that had swallowed me up so completely. At the fact that my footprints were being blown away before I even had a chance to turn and look at them.

  Whenever I felt like that, I would look at my face in the bathroom mirror—just look at it for fifteen minutes at a time, my mind a total blank. I’d stare at my face purely as a physical object, and gradually it would disconnect from the rest of me, becoming just some thing that happened to exist at the same time as myself. And a realization would come to me: This is happening here and now. It’s got nothing to do with footprints. Reality and I exist simultaneously at this present moment. That’s the most important thing.

  But now I can’t sleep anymore. When I stopped sleeping, I stopped keeping a diary.

  I REMEMBER with perfect clarity that first night I lost the ability to sleep. I was having a repulsive dream—a dark, slimy dream. I don’t remember what it was about, but I do remember how it felt: ominous and terrifying. I woke at the climactic moment—came fully awake with a start, as if something had dragged me back at the last moment from a fatal turning point. Had I remained immersed in the dream for another second, I would have been lost forever. After I awoke, my breath came in painful gasps for a time. My arms and legs felt paralyzed. I lay there immobilized, listening to my own labored breathing, as if I were stretched out full-length on the floor of a huge cavern.

  “It was a dream,” I told myself, and I waited for my breathing to calm down. Lying stiff on my back, I felt my heart working violently, my lungs hurrying the blood to it with big, slow, bellowslike contractions. I began to wonder what time it could be. I wanted to look at the clock by my pillow, but I couldn’t turn my head far enough. Just then, I seemed to catch a glimpse of something at the foot of the bed, something like a vague, black shadow. I caught my breath. My heart, my lungs, everything inside me, seemed to freeze in that instant. I strained to see the black shadow.

  The moment I tried to focus on it, the shadow began to assume a definite shape, as if it had been waiting for me to notice it. Its outline became distinct, and began to be filled with substance, and then with details. It was a gaunt old man wearing a skintight black shirt. His hair was gray and short, his cheeks sunken. He stood at my feet, perfectly still. He said nothing, but his piercing eyes stared at me. They were huge eyes, and I could see the red network of veins in them. The old man’s face wore no expression at all. It told me nothing. It was like an opening in the darkness.

  This was no longer the dream, I knew. From that I had already awakened. And not just by drifting awake, but by having my eyes ripped open. No, this was no dream. This was reality. And in reality an old man I had never seen before was standing at the foot of my bed. I had to do something—turn on the light, wake my husband, scream. I tried to move. I fought to make my limbs work, but it did no good. I couldn’t move a finger. When it became clear to me that I would never be able to move, I was filled with a hopeless terror, a primal fear such as I had never experienced before, like a chill that rises silently from the bottomless well of memory. I tried to scream, but I was incapable of producing a sound or even moving my tongue. All I could do was look at the old man.

  Now I saw that he was holding something—a tall, narrow, rounded thing that shone white. As I stared at this object, wondering what it could be, it began to take on a definite shape, just as the shadow had earlier. It was a pitcher, an old-fashioned porcelain pitcher. After some time, the man raised the pitcher and began pouring water from it onto my feet. I could not feel the water. I could see it and hear it splashing down onto my feet, but I couldn’t feel a thing.

  The old man went on and on pouring water over my feet. Strange—no matter how much he poured, the pitcher never ran dry. I began to worry that my feet would eventually rot and melt away. Yes, of course they would rot. What else could they do with so much water pouring over them? When it occurred to me that my feet were going to rot and melt away, I couldn’t take it any longer.

  I closed my eyes and let out a scream so loud it took every ounce of strength I had. But it never left my body. It reverberated soundlessly inside, tearing through me, shutting down my heart. Everything inside my head turned white for a moment as the scream penetrated my every cell. Something inside me died. Something melted away, leaving only a shuddering vacuum. An explosive flash incinerated everything my existence depended on.

  When I opened my eyes, the old man was gone. The pitcher was gone. The bedspread was dry, and there was no indication that anything near my feet had been wet. My body, though, was soaked with sweat, a horrifying volume of sweat, more sweat than I ever imagined a human being could produce. And yet, undeniably, it was sweat that had come from me.

  I moved one finger. Then another, and another, and the rest. Next, I bent my arms and then my legs. I rotated my feet and bent my knees. Nothing moved quite as it should have, but at least it did move. After carefully checking to see that all my body parts were working, I eased myself into a sitting position. In the dim light filtering in from the streetlamp, I scanned the entire room from corner to corner. The old man was definitely not there.

  The clock by my pillow said 12:30. I had been sleeping for only an hour and a half. My husband was sound asleep in his bed. Even his breathing was inaudible. He always sleeps like that, as if all mental activity in him had been obliterated. Almost nothing can wake him.

  I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. I threw my sweat-soaked nightgown into the washing machine and took a shower. After putting on a fresh pair of pajamas, I went to the living room, switched on the floor lamp beside the sofa, and sat there drinking a full glass of brandy. I almost never drink. Not that I have a physical incompatibility with alcohol, as my husband does. In fact, I used to drink quite a lot, but after marrying him I simply stopped. Sometimes when I had trouble sleeping I would take a sip of brandy, but that night I felt I wanted a whole glass to quiet my overwrought nerves.

  The only alcohol in the house was a bottle of Rémy Martin we kept in the sideboard. It had been a gift. I don’t even remember who gave it to us, it was so long ago. The bottle wore a thin layer of dust. We had no real brandy glasses, so I just poured it into a regular tumbler and sipped it slowly.

  I must have been in a trance, I thought. I had never experienced such a thing, but I had heard about trances from a college friend who had been through one. Everything was incredibly clear, she had said. You can’t believe it’s a dream. “I didn’t believe it was a dream when it was happening, and now I still don’t believe it was a dream.” Which is exactly how I felt. Of course it had to be a dream—a kind of dream that doesn’t feel like a dream.

  Though the terror was leaving me, the trembling of my body would not stop. It was in my skin, like the circular ripples on water after an earthquake. I could see the slight quivering. The scream had done it. That scream that had never found a voice was still locked up in my body, making it tremble.

  I closed my eyes and swallowed another mouthful of brandy. The warmth spread from my throat t
o my stomach. The sensation felt tremendously real.

  With a start, I thought of my son. Again my heart began pounding. I hurried from the sofa to his room. He was sound asleep, one hand across his mouth, the other thrust out to the side, looking just as secure and peaceful in sleep as my husband. I straightened his blanket. Whatever it was that had so violently shattered my sleep, it had attacked only me. Neither of them had felt a thing.

  I returned to the living room and wandered about there. I was not the least bit sleepy.

  I considered drinking another glass of brandy. In fact, I wanted to drink even more alcohol than that. I wanted to warm my body more, to calm my nerves down more, and to feel that strong, penetrating bouquet in my mouth again. After some hesitation, I decided against it. I didn’t want to start the new day drunk. I put the brandy back in the sideboard, brought the glass to the kitchen sink and washed it. I found some strawberries in the refrigerator and ate them.

  I realized that the trembling in my skin was almost gone.

  What was that old man in black? I asked myself. I had never seen him before in my life. That black clothing of his was so strange, like a tight-fitting sweat suit, and yet, at the same time, old-fashioned. I had never seen anything like it. And those eyes—bloodshot, and never blinking. Who was he? Why did he pour water onto my feet? Why did he have to do such a thing?

  I had only questions, no answers.

  The time my friend went into a trance, she was spending the night at her fiancé’s house. As she lay in bed asleep, an angry-looking man in his early fifties approached and ordered her out of the house. While that was happening, she couldn’t move a muscle. And, like me, she became soaked with sweat. She was certain it must be the ghost of her fiancé’s father, who was telling her to get out of his house. But when she asked to see a photograph of the father the next day, it turned out to be an entirely different man. “I must have been feeling tense,” she concluded. “That’s what caused it.”

  But I’m not tense. And this is my own house. There shouldn’t be anything here to threaten me. Why did I have to go into a trance?

  I shook my head. Stop thinking, I told myself. It won’t do any good. I had a realistic dream, nothing more. I’ve probably been building up some kind of fatigue. The tennis I played the day before yesterday must have done it. I met a friend at the club after my swim and she invited me to play tennis and I overdid it a little, that’s all. Sure—my arms and legs felt tired and heavy for a while afterward.

  When I finished my strawberries, I stretched out on the sofa and tried closing my eyes.

  I wasn’t sleepy at all. Oh, great, I thought. I really don’t feel like sleeping.

  I thought I’d read a book until I got tired again. I went to the bedroom and picked a novel from the bookcase. My husband didn’t even twitch when I turned on the light to hunt for it. I chose Anna Karenina. I was in the mood for a long Russian novel, and I had read Anna Karenina only once, long ago, probably in high school. I remembered just a few things about it: the first line, “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” and the heroine’s throwing herself under a train at the end. And that early on there was a hint of the final suicide. Wasn’t there a scene at a racetrack? Or was that in another novel?

  Whatever. I went back to the sofa and opened the book. How many years had it been since I’d sat down and relaxed like this with a book? True, I often spent half an hour or an hour of my private time in the afternoon with a book open. But you couldn’t really call that reading. I’d always find myself thinking about other things—my son, or shopping, or the freezer’s needing to be fixed, or my having to find something to wear to a relative’s wedding, or the stomach operation my father had last month. That kind of stuff would drift into my mind, and then it would grow and take off in a million different directions. After a while I’d notice that the only thing that had gone by was the time, and I had hardly turned any pages.

  Without noticing it, I had become accustomed in this way to a life without books. How strange, now that I think of it. Reading had been the center of my life when I was young. I had read every book in the grade-school library, and almost my entire allowance would go for books. I’d even scrimp on lunches to buy books I wanted to read. And this went on into junior high and high school. Nobody read as much as I did. I was the third of five children, and both my parents worked, so nobody paid much attention to me. I could read alone as much as I liked. I’d always enter the essay contests on books so that I could win a gift certificate for more books. And I usually won. In college, I majored in English literature and got good grades. My graduation thesis on Katherine Mansfield won top honors, and my thesis adviser urged me to apply to graduate school. I wanted to go out into the world, though, and I knew that I was no scholar. I just enjoyed reading books. And even if I had wanted to go on studying, my family didn’t have the financial wherewithal to send me to graduate school. We weren’t poor by any means, but there were two sisters coming along after me, so once I graduated from college I simply had to begin supporting myself.

  When had I really read a book last? And what had it been? I couldn’t recall anything. Why did a person’s life have to change so completely? Where had the old me gone, the one who used to read a book as if possessed by it? What had those days—and that almost abnormally intense passion—meant to me?

  THAT NIGHT, I found myself capable of reading Anna Karenina with unbroken concentration. I went on turning pages without another thought in mind. In one sitting, I read as far as the scene where Anna and Vronsky first see each other in the Moscow train station. At that point, I stuck my bookmark in and poured myself another glass of brandy.

  Though it hadn’t occurred to me before, I couldn’t help thinking what an odd novel this was. You don’t see the heroine, Anna, until Chapter 18. I wondered if it didn’t seem unusual to readers in Tolstoy’s day. What did they do when the book went on and on with a detailed description of the life of a minor character named Oblonsky—just sit there, waiting for the beautiful heroine to appear? Maybe that was it. Maybe people in those days had lots of time to kill—at least the part of society that read novels.

  Then I noticed how late it was. Three in the morning! And still I wasn’t sleepy.

  What should I do? I don’t feel sleepy at all, I thought. I could just keep on reading. I’d love to find out what happens in the story. But I have to sleep.

  I remembered my ordeal with insomnia and how I had gone through each day back then, wrapped in a cloud. No, never again. I was still a student in those days. It was still possible for me to get away with something like that. But not now, I thought. Now I’m a wife. A mother. I have responsibilities. I have to make my husband’s lunches and take care of my son.

  But even if I get into bed now, I know I won’t be able to sleep a wink.

  I shook my head.

  Let’s face it, I’m just not sleepy, I told myself And I want to read the rest of the book.

  I sighed and stole a glance at the big volume lying on the table. And that was that. I plunged into Anna Karenina and kept reading until the sun came up. Anna and Vronsky stared at each other at the ball and fell into their doomed love. Anna went to pieces when Vronsky’s horse fell at the racetrack (so there was a racetrack scene, after all!) and confessed her infidelity to her husband. I was there with Vronsky when he spurred his horse over the obstacles. I heard the crowd cheering him on. And I was there in the stands watching his horse go down. When the window brightened with the morning light, I laid down the book and went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. My mind was filled with scenes from the novel and with a tremendous hunger obliterating any other thoughts. I cut two slices of bread, spread them with butter and mustard, and had a cheese sandwich. My hunger pangs were almost unbearable. It was rare for me to feel that hungry. I had trouble breathing, I was so hungry. One sandwich did hardly anything for me, so I made another one and had another cup of coffee with it.

 
TO MY HUSBAND I said nothing about either my trance or my night without sleep. Not that I was hiding them from him. It just seemed to me that there was no point in telling him. What good would it have done? And besides, I had simply missed a night’s sleep. That much happens to everyone now and then.

  I made my husband his usual cup of coffee and gave my son a glass of warm milk. My husband ate toast, and my son ate a bowl of cornflakes. My husband skimmed the morning paper, and my son hummed a new song he had learned in school. The two of them got into the Sentra and left. “Be careful,” I said to my husband. “Don’t worry,” he answered. The two of them waved. A typical morning.

  After they were gone, I sat on the sofa and thought about how to spend the rest of the day. What should I do? What did I have to do? I went to the kitchen to inspect the contents of the refrigerator. I could get by without shopping. We had bread, milk, and eggs, and there was meat in the freezer. Plenty of vegetables, too. Everything I’d need through tomorrow’s lunch.

  I had business at the bank, but it was nothing I absolutely had to take care of immediately. Letting it go a day longer wouldn’t hurt.

  I went back to the sofa and started reading the rest of Anna Karenina. Until that reading, I hadn’t realized how little I remembered of what goes on in the book. I recognized virtually nothing—the characters, the scenes, nothing. I might as well have been reading a whole new book. How strange. I must have been deeply moved at the time I first read it, but now there was nothing left. Without my noticing, the memories of all the shuddering, soaring emotions had slipped away and vanished.