The General Zapped an Angel: Stories

The Interval

Few will face it, but there is a beginning and an end; that’s the way it is, and after you turn fifty, it stares you in the face. You read the obituary pages and you find that people of your own age and people even younger than you are dying, and then it closes in on you and you can be alone, the way I was. When you are decently married for a long, long while you are fortunate to go first; but if you are left behind, you keep looking at yourself and wondering what you are waiting for.

I went up to northern Connecticut, to the foothills of the Berkshires, to see about putting our summer place on the market; but even as I spoke to the local real estate man, I found that I had no feelings one way or another about the place. I was indifferent to price or terms, and since I was so obliging a client, the broker parted with a few pleasantries and then said obliquely, as many New Englanders would:

“How about them fellers up on the moon?”

These Yankees change the subject to suit them; I was talking about the house but he wanted to talk about the moon—meaning he had regard for me or that he was returning my favor of obliging him, in his peculiar Connecticut manner. He didn’t care what I thought or felt about the moon; he himself felt queasy, and I wondered whether the whole world didn’t feel a bit queasy.

When I didn’t answer, he said, “Fine, full moon tonight.”

I nodded and left him, and then drove along Main Street to Old Turkey Gobbler Road, and then three miles to the house. The house had stood on its knoll for two hundred years, and during that time a dozen owners had cherished it and changed this and added that; and we had cherished it, too, for the nineteen years we had it.

All the time I had looked at it in the past, it had always been a house warm inside, alive, full of the past and the lives and the spirit of all the kids who had played and grown up there and the smell of the good things that had been cooked there and the passion of the sex and the love and the hate that had happened there, the hungers satisfied and unsatisfied, the longings, the fulfillment, the disappointments, the fears, the apprehensions—so it had been all the times I had seen it in the past. But now it was quiet without passion. It was only a box, and inside it was very cold, for the edge of winter had touched it already, and New England winter comes quick and hard in the Berkshires.

But this winter had an edge of icy cold that was furtive rather than literal. You felt it creeping through your bones, and before any frostbite touched your skin, you felt it at the edge of your heart. I had begun to shiver and I wanted a fire desperately, and I went out to the woodbox which I had filled with good, dry kindling the summer before. I made my fire and burned a few papers to start a blast up the chimney, and then added the kindling and put on top of that three thick old pieces of gray birch, or the silver birch, as some call it—and then indeed heat came from the big stone box. But there was still a chill in the room.

It was late afternoon and the light was beginning to fade. I prowled through the old empty house, looking for this or that to take back to the city; but there was nothing I wanted particularly, not even the first manuscripts of my very early plays and books. The battered old typewriter was a good, rare Underwood out of the thirties, but I had another in New York. Some day, perhaps, I would ship away the pictures and books, but not now. Some day when I cared more.

The moon rose, so strong and silver-bright that the day seemed not to fade or perish but only to turn color, and the moonlight turned bright the faces of the mountains to the north of me. Here and there was a thin cover of snow on the hillsides, and where the snow was you could see the distant slopes in detail.

I lit my pipe and smoked and stared at the leaping flames of the fire, and I think that in some way I knew what was coming. Because for me it was no great surprise to glance out of the window and see what I saw. I had knocked out my pipe onto the hearth, and I got up and walked to the broad windows that faced north, and I saw that it was finished and that they were picking up the scenery, rolling it up, either for good and to be disposed of however they dispose of such things, or to be used again elsewhere.

I mentioned before that it was a startlingly clear night, as if they could make white, incandescent moonlight for their own needs, and I suppose I could see a long way north. In any case, I saw clearly how the forested slopes were being rolled up, the way one might roll up a thick and unusual carpet, leaving underneath the gray, sere stuff that the riders to the moon had seen and described with such loathing. The green countryside was being taken up in great pieces, miles wide, and wherever the rolling up and lifting away was finished, the dry, dead gray stuff remained.

I did not watch for long, because I felt almost immediately that I must not witness the finish of this alone. I had to be with others. I had to pass a word. I had to comment, to speculate, to bewail, perhaps, to doubt my own eyes, to plead for some explanation other than the simple and obvious fact that the play was over and the curtain had come down—and because of this I bolted out of the house and into my car.

The car started easily, and I sent it plunging over the dirt road toward Route 22, over the shortest way, which would connect through the Wankhaus Overpass, a dirt road over a shoulder that linked the Old Turkey Gobbler Road with South Pike Road and so to Route 22. But they took up the Wankhaus Overpass; they had humor, and they could be bothered with small games, but I don’t suppose they were vengeful. They left me alone there, and I sat in my car, staring through the windshield at the gray pumice that remained after they had taken up the road and the trees and the rocks, rolling it back and away and then casting it off somewhere in the wings. I mean, they let me back up, which wasn’t vengeful, while the wind blew gray powder over my car and filled my nostrils with the dry, dead smell of it. I had to back up for over two hundred yards before I was able to turn into South Pike, but with three miles more to drive than would have been the case the other way, and then they let me find my way to Route 22. They were busy to the north and the west, and there I saw a whole town, factories, motor lodges, main street, Civil War monument, new business machines plant, car dealers—everything rolled up and dragged away. But silently. Well, my windows were up and I was too far away to hear people screaming. If they screamed; I didn’t know, you see, because I had not uttered a sound, never protested or wailed or prayed or pleaded.

It surprised me as I drove south along Route 22 and then onto the Saw Mill River Parkway that I saw no other cars. Was it later than I could have imagined? I felt for my watch, and then I found that I had left it behind at the house, so I really had no idea at all of what time it was.

I was impressed myself by how well I drove, how fast, and with such quiet control—all things considered—and without undue excitement and panic. The Saw Mill River Parkway is one of the older Westchester parkways, two rather narrow lanes in each direction and not built for speed, but rather meandering over the hills like an old carriage road; yet I was able to build my speed up to and past seventy miles an hour—and still in my rearview mirror I could see tracts of houses rolled up and flung aside, hillsides stripped, and even the road behind me rolled up as I left it. But not at seventy miles an hour, and by the time I reached the Hawthorne Circle I could no longer see where they were gathering up the scenery and putting it away.

Even at the circle there were no cars, and past the circle I cut into the Tappan Zee approach, and then, crossing it, down onto the Thruway. Never before had I seen the Tappan Zee approach without traffic, without the endless stream of heavy trucks thundering to and from it, yet tonight the road was empty—and I had a sudden stab of fear that they might have picked up the Thruway as they had picked up the connecting road back in the foothills. If I thought of them at all, I thought of them as stagehands with a gross, bulky physical sense of humor, stagehands who loved nothing better than the embarrassment of this or that actor; for whatever the stagehand is, he creates nothing and performs nothing, only watches with the knowledge that his only mark of superiority is that he will be there for the next show and the show after that.

But the Thruway was there, alone, empty, as if this night had seven strange hours when all the world slept; and my car alone raced down it, seventy, eighty miles an hour, the wide lanes empty and bright in the moonlight.

I braked to a screaming stop where the tollgate was, but to no purpose. The booths were empty, and there was no one to pay or to ask for the toll. Beyond that, where the big complex of the Cross County Shopping Center had been, was the dry, windblown pumice of the moon; a big strip had been sliced out, rolled up and taken away, a strip that curved around to include the racetrack. But when I reached the city, nothing had been disturbed or moved. Except that mostly the city was dark. Here and there, in this apartment house or that one, a lighted window shone; yet mostly the city was dark and the Major Deegan Expressway was empty—empty all the way to the Triborough Bridge, where there was light but no cars and no toll takers. I came to the East Side Drive and drove downtown, no longer racing, but slowly and all alone, and then I left the drive and crossed through the city streets where I saw a slow-moving prowl car but nothing else alive or moving. I felt an impulse to drive up alongside the prowl car and tell them or let them tell me; but I knew it was wrong to do that.

I went where I knew I would go—to the Mummers’, where I had been a member for thirty-three years. I drove down Lexington Avenue to Gramercy Park, and there was a parking space directly in front of the club. I had been so anxious that it might be dark, as almost every other building was, but no, not at all; it was well-lit, and the door was opened by old Simon, the doorman, who welcomed me gravely and took my hat and coat as if this night were no different from any other night and said very quietly:

“There are quite a few members here, sir—mostly down in the bar. We are still serving in the dining room, nothing very spectacular but sandwiches and hot soup.”

“That’s odd,” I remarked. “Dining room at this hour.”

“Well, it’s an odd night, sir. You will admit that.”

“Quite odd. Yes, indeed.”

I went downstairs to the bar, which was quite crowded, and at the pool table half a dozen members sipped beer and seriously watched a serious game of pool. I don’t know why, but it was always the thing to have beer if you watched at the pool table, only I had never remarked on it before. I did now, thinking what an excellent setting for a first act this would make. I don’t remember that anyone had ever staged the first act of a play as the basement at the Mummers’, yet there was no one in the theater—no male person, that is—who had not spent at least an evening here. The game was between Jerry Goldman and Steve Cunningham, both of them hustlers of a sort and good enough to make a living off it if they had to. I watched them for a moment or two, nodding to old acquaintances, and then I edged into the bar between Jack Finney and Bert Avery, the stage designer, and asked Robert, the bartender, for a double rye whiskey over ice.

“Old Overhalt?” Robert asked.

“That will do nicely.”

Finney was quietly drunk. He greeted me gently and politely; he was a great Irish gentleman with the blood of knights in his veins, like all Irishmen whom one loves, and a splendid character actor. Bert Avery asked me if I had just driven down from Connecticut.

“Yes. Thank heavens I am here. It was cold and lonely up there.”

“Were they taking it up?”

“Yes—from the hillsides, you know, and then behind me on the Saw Mill River Parkway. They had taken out most of New Rochelle, from the shopping center right back in.”

“Irv Goldstein flew up from Miami,” Finney said sadly. “His was the last flight. They had taken up most of Florida. I’ve had good times in Miami; some don’t like it, but I always have, for it is a fine place of loose-living, easygoing people. But it is flat, you know, oh, devilishly flat, and Goldstein says that they were rolling it up from the north, just nasty and uncaring, the whole length of the state rolled up like an old piece of carpet.”

“Goldstein said it looked like the moon underneath,” Bert Avery added, “with craters and things like that that had been covered over, I guess the way you have a lousy floor on a stage so you carpet it, and what the hell, it’s a few hundred dollars more, and that’s not going to make the difference between closing first night or running for a decent while.”

“You are a fine manager,” said Finney. “You are a gentleman at it. It is an honor to work for you.”

Robert came over with another whiskey sour for Bert Avery, listened to the last of our conversation, and then asked whether we did not think that they might be putting it away and saving it for another performance.

“Somewhere else?” I thought about it for a moment. “Then they would be changing the cast, wouldn’t they?”

“That’s very sad, sir.”

“The kids come to the theater with joy,” Finney observed, “but in all truth it’s a sad profession. One day you look up at the scenery, and it looks just as shoddy as all hell, and damnit, you say to yourself, has it always been this way, or is it turning lousy or is it inside of my own aching head?”

“All of them,” Avery agreed.

I finished my drink and went over to the pool table, where Steve Cunningham was making one of those damned impossible cushion shots and no one was even breathing.

Of course, people never behave the way you expect them to, and these were all people who knew about it, and as a matter of fact, there was Goldstein standing very close to Cunningham, his eyes fixed upon the ball as if nothing in the whole world was as important as gauging the angle of ball to cushion and ball to side pocket; and yet they all had relatives, children, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers; but against all of that, the same thing had apparently brought them here as had brought me.

Cunningham made his shot, perfectly, ball to cushion to pocket, and there was a whisper of approval but no applause. I nudged Goldstein.

“Hungry?”

He nodded.

“They have soup and sandwiches upstairs, I hear.”

“All right.”

We climbed the stairs to the dining room, picking a quiet corner table. The room wasn’t empty, but then neither was it crowded—oh, maybe a dozen members eating or simply relaxed and talking. One of them had lit a cigar, and I saw Goldstein frowning in disapproval. I agreed with him. There was an unwritten rule that while a cigarette or a pipe was proper at the table, cigars were to be taken to the lounge where one could have coffee or brandy or whatever one wished. I saw no reason to break the custom tonight, and I guess we were both rather pleased when one of the waiters came over and whispered something to the member, who then nodded and put the cigar out. Our own waiter said to us:

“I’m afraid there’s very little choice at this point. The soup is canned. We have ham sandwiches or ham and Swiss, but only white bread, which you can have toasted. We also have some Canadian cheddar and Bath Biscuits. And the coffee is very good, sir. We keep making it freshly.”

“I’ll have the cheese and biscuits,” I said.

“And you, Mr. Goldstein?”

“The same—yes. Would you have any Italian coffee?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Goldstein. You know, we make it only for dinner.”

He left for the food, and Goldstein said, smiling slightly, “You know, we’re good actors. All of us. Naturally, there’s a difference between the dilettante and the professional, but we’re all quite good, don’t you think?”

“I never thought of it quite that way.”

“No, of course not. But this thing of Italian coffee only for dinner—well, now!”

“Yes, oh, yes,” I agreed. “I hear you flew up from Miami.”

“Yes. Very good flight. Very smooth. I dislike flying, but this was very smooth.”

“Vacation?”

“No, no indeed. You know, I thought I would do one of those Jewish comic-tragic things about a Miami Beach hotel. You know the kind of thing, mostly schmaltz and bad jokes and maybe two percent validity so your audience will shed a tear or two if they’re in the right mood. It’s very much my line, and having done one on a Second Avenue restaurant and two on the Garment District, I find it the path of least resistance. Oh, it’s not playwriting in your terms, but it does want a bit of skill and a bit of staging, and there’s never been a good one about Miami. I found some delicious stuff—” His voice trailed away.

“And on the way back they were rolling up Florida?”

“Yes.”

“It must have been an odd thing to see. From the air, I mean.”

“Damned odd. Oh, yes. I mean, it was like an old piece of carpet. You know, at twenty-five thousand feet your whole scale changes.”

“I wonder what they’ll do with New York?”

“I suppose it’s been done already in some places—I mean Rome or London or even Boston. You drove in from New England, I hear. Boston?”

I shook my head. “We could call someone—”

“No one does. You know how you can never get at a phone on a busy day. All four of them are yours to choose from.”

“I just don’t like to think that they’ll roll it up.”

“No. I can see that.”

“They might move it aside somewhere.”

“I’d like to think so. You were born in Maine, weren’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well, I’m the third generation born right here in the city. I hate to think that it will be all smashed up.”

“We’re simply being sentimental. That’s no use, is it?”

“No use at all.”

The waiter brought our food. The cheese was good and I’ve always liked Bath Biscuits, and I was hungry; but Goldstein barely touched his food. He sat in silence for a while, and then he said:

“I get a bit indignant over it, and then I remember our profession. We have no right to be indignant over it, have we?”

“You know, I read a good bit of history,” I replied, “and the people of the theater always occupied a very special position. A place of privilege, you might say. Oh, I don’t mean that there weren’t times when they were looked down upon, and respectability was never truly a part of it; but they always had a path of privilege. They were a sort of class apart from all other classes and they hobnobbed with kings and dukes and all that sort of thing. It gave them a rather distorted view of themselves—oh, all of them, writers, scenic designers, stagehands, actors—and they would find it blurring. You know what I mean—which is the play and which is for real. Am I asleep and dreaming that I am awake, or is it the other way around?”

“Yes, I’ve had the feeling,” Goldstein agreed.

“You’ve acted?”

“The coffee’s delicious,” Goldstein said, tasting it. “Yes—when I was a kid, I had three years of summer theater and road show. I know exactly what you mean. You look at the footlights, and there’s nothing there but that blur of light, and then your eyes adjust and you see them out there and there’s that moment of confusion as to place and part.” He closed his eyes a moment, and then he went on, “You don’t mind if I go back downstairs, I really think that Cunningham will take Jerry. It never happened before and the money on Cunningham is very attractive. Will you come along?”

I shook my head. Goldstein signed for both of us and then left, and after I sat for a while, I decided to go upstairs to the library. The Mummers’ is very old, and the library is still full of overstuffed leather chairs and nineteenth-century portraits. There were five members there, all of them the older type and therefore very much like myself. Two of them nodded and the others never looked up from their reading. I dropped into one of the big chairs, trying to think of something I wanted very much to read—but my interest had lagged, and the night had been so long that now finally I felt weary and hardly able to keep my eyes open. I was dozing when I heard the kind of distant crash that might have come from a tall building shaken badly, so that its brickwork and stonework tumbles away; but in that nowhere between sleep and awakeness I might have been dreaming.

I opened my eyes then. The other members were still absorbed in their reading.

I leaned back and allowed myself to doze off again. How annoyed I would have been if someone had done that during a scene of one of my own plays! Yet I always had a nod of sympathy for the older folks, many of them lifelong devotees of the theater, who nevertheless caught forty winks during the intermission, when the set was being changed.