we’ll keep it.”
“Well not just—”
Whitehead raised his hand to ward off further debate, pleased to be giving this gift.
“We’ll keep it,” he said. “And you can fill it with koi.”
He sat back down in the chair.
“Shall I put the lawn lights on?” Toy asked.
“No,” said Whitehead. The dying light from the window cast his head in bronze, a latter-day Medici perhaps, with his weary-lidded, pit-set eyes, the white beard and mustache cropped nickingly close to his skin, the whole construction seemingly too weighty for the column supporting it.
Aware that his eyes were boring into the old man’s back, and that Joe would surely sense it, Toy sloughed off the lethargy of the room and pressed himself back into action.
“Well … shall I fetch Strauss, Joe? Do you want to see him or not?” The words took an age to cross the room in the thickening darkness.
For several heartbeats Toy wasn’t even certain that Whitehead had heard him.
Then the oracle spoke. Not a prophecy, but a question.
“Will we survive, Bill?”
The words were spoken so quietly they only just carried, hooked on motes of dust and wafted from his lips. Toy’s heart sank. It was the old theme again: the same paranoid song.
“I hear more and more rumors, Bill. They can’t all be groundless.”
He was still looking out the window. Rooks circled above the wood half a mile or so across the lawn. Was he watching them? Toy doubted it.
He’d seen Whitehead like this often of late, sunk down into himself, scanning the past with his mind’s eye. It wasn’t a vision Toy had access to, but he could guess at Joe’s present fears—he’d been there, after all, in the early days—and he knew too that however much he loved the old man there were some burdens he would never be capable, or willing, to share. He wasn’t strong enough; he was at heart still the boxer Whitehead had employed as a bodyguard three decades before. Now, of course, he wore a four-hundred-pound suit, and his nails were as immaculately kept as his manners. But his mind was the same as ever, superstitious and fragile. The dreams the great dreamed were not for him. Nor were their nightmares.
Again, Whitehead posed the haunted question:
“Will we survive?”
This time Toy felt obliged to reply.
“Everything’s fine, Joe. You know it is. Profits up in most sectors …”
But evasion wasn’t what the old man wanted and Toy knew it. He let the words falter, leaving a silence, after the faltering, more wretched than ever. Toy’s stare, now fixed on Whitehead again, was unblinking, and at the corners of his eyes the murk that had taken over the room began to flicker and crawl. He dropped his lids: they almost grated across his eyeballs. Patterns danced in his head (wheels, stars and windows) and when he opened his eyes again the night finally had a stranglehold on the interior.
The bronze head remained unmoved. But it spoke, and the words seemed to come from Whitehead’s bowels, dirtied with fear.
“I’m afraid, Willy,” he said. “All my life I’ve never been as frightened as I am now.”
He spoke slowly, without the least emphasis, as if he despised the melodrama of his words and was refusing to magnify it further.
“All these years, living without fear; I’d forgotten what it was like. How crippling it is. How it drains your willpower. I just sit here, day in, day out. Locked up in this place, with the alarms, the fences, the dogs. I watch the lawn and the trees—”
He was watching.
“—and sooner or later, the light begins to fade.”
He paused: a long, deep hush, except for the distant crows.
“I can bear the night itself. It’s not pleasant, but it’s unambiguous. It’s twilight I can’t deal with. That’s when the bad sweats come over me. When the light’s going, and nothing’s quite real anymore, quite solid. Just forms. Things that once had shapes …”
It had been a winter of such evenings: colorless drizzles that eroded
“Well not just—”
Whitehead raised his hand to ward off further debate, pleased to be giving this gift.
“We’ll keep it,” he said. “And you can fill it with koi.”
He sat back down in the chair.
“Shall I put the lawn lights on?” Toy asked.
“No,” said Whitehead. The dying light from the window cast his head in bronze, a latter-day Medici perhaps, with his weary-lidded, pit-set eyes, the white beard and mustache cropped nickingly close to his skin, the whole construction seemingly too weighty for the column supporting it.
Aware that his eyes were boring into the old man’s back, and that Joe would surely sense it, Toy sloughed off the lethargy of the room and pressed himself back into action.
“Well … shall I fetch Strauss, Joe? Do you want to see him or not?” The words took an age to cross the room in the thickening darkness.
For several heartbeats Toy wasn’t even certain that Whitehead had heard him.
Then the oracle spoke. Not a prophecy, but a question.
“Will we survive, Bill?”
The words were spoken so quietly they only just carried, hooked on motes of dust and wafted from his lips. Toy’s heart sank. It was the old theme again: the same paranoid song.
“I hear more and more rumors, Bill. They can’t all be groundless.”
He was still looking out the window. Rooks circled above the wood half a mile or so across the lawn. Was he watching them? Toy doubted it.
He’d seen Whitehead like this often of late, sunk down into himself, scanning the past with his mind’s eye. It wasn’t a vision Toy had access to, but he could guess at Joe’s present fears—he’d been there, after all, in the early days—and he knew too that however much he loved the old man there were some burdens he would never be capable, or willing, to share. He wasn’t strong enough; he was at heart still the boxer Whitehead had employed as a bodyguard three decades before. Now, of course, he wore a four-hundred-pound suit, and his nails were as immaculately kept as his manners. But his mind was the same as ever, superstitious and fragile. The dreams the great dreamed were not for him. Nor were their nightmares.
Again, Whitehead posed the haunted question:
“Will we survive?”
This time Toy felt obliged to reply.
“Everything’s fine, Joe. You know it is. Profits up in most sectors …”
But evasion wasn’t what the old man wanted and Toy knew it. He let the words falter, leaving a silence, after the faltering, more wretched than ever. Toy’s stare, now fixed on Whitehead again, was unblinking, and at the corners of his eyes the murk that had taken over the room began to flicker and crawl. He dropped his lids: they almost grated across his eyeballs. Patterns danced in his head (wheels, stars and windows) and when he opened his eyes again the night finally had a stranglehold on the interior.
The bronze head remained unmoved. But it spoke, and the words seemed to come from Whitehead’s bowels, dirtied with fear.
“I’m afraid, Willy,” he said. “All my life I’ve never been as frightened as I am now.”
He spoke slowly, without the least emphasis, as if he despised the melodrama of his words and was refusing to magnify it further.
“All these years, living without fear; I’d forgotten what it was like. How crippling it is. How it drains your willpower. I just sit here, day in, day out. Locked up in this place, with the alarms, the fences, the dogs. I watch the lawn and the trees—”
He was watching.
“—and sooner or later, the light begins to fade.”
He paused: a long, deep hush, except for the distant crows.
“I can bear the night itself. It’s not pleasant, but it’s unambiguous. It’s twilight I can’t deal with. That’s when the bad sweats come over me. When the light’s going, and nothing’s quite real anymore, quite solid. Just forms. Things that once had shapes …”
It had been a winter of such evenings: colorless drizzles that eroded
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