The Grasshopper King Page 15

  “Read,” she said. And Julia took the page from Ellen’s suddenly limp hand. When she was finished with it—her face dark—she handed it to me.

  It was a letter from the Henderson Society, on stationery the color of old gauze, informing Mrs. Higgs that said Society, concerned about the continued mental degradation of Professor Higgs, and having been made aware of questionable practices in the guardianship of said Professor—I stopped there.

  “Questionable practices?” I said, bewildered. “What are they talking about?”

  “Read,” Ellen said.

  So I continued: the Society, having been made aware, etc., had filed suit for and been awarded custody of the abovementioned party, effective in one week’s time—noon on Friday, the 11th of October. There followed a solid block of legal hocus-pocus, in eight-point type: I saw the word “exigency,” and the names of several psychiatrists. Below the text were affixed the signatures of the Society’s officers and the relevant funtionaries of the court. I recognized the judge’s name. He’d been a star basketball player at Chandler State, of Coach Mahemeny’s vintage.

  “This can’t be right,” Julia said. “You can’t sue for custody without a hearing or family court or something.”

  “Oh, there was a hearing,” Treech said. “Maybe Mrs. Higgs shouldn’t have skipped the court date.”

  “What court date?” Ellen said.

  “The one you signed the summons for.”

  Ellen seemed to rediscover the dagger in her hand. “That’s a lie.”

  Treech held his hands up, edged backwards. “Hey,” he said, “I’m just a messenger.”

  “Questionable practices?” I burst out.

  Treech drew himself up a bit. He was still speckled with tiny leaves. He looked at me with a little wrinkle in his brow; as if I, not he, were the one talking craziness.

  “Honestly, Samuel, I didn’t think you’d want to belabor the point—not here.” He glanced significantly at Julia.

  “Let’s belabor it,” I said. “For my peace of mind.”

  “If you’re determined to put it all on the table . . .” He produced three photographs from his bag and handed them to me.

  I recognized the pictures immediately as the ones Treech had taken at our first meeting. But to my dismay they had somehow been tampered with. The first photo on the pile was the last one he had taken, with Ellen reaching to block the camera lens. Someone had added a rolling pin, mottled with flour, to Ellen’s outstretched, clutching hand; and the annoyance on her face had been magnified, through a darkening of the brow and a tightening of the cheeks, into a feral grimace. The next picture was the one of Ellen and Higgs. Ellen had been given the rolling pin again, which she now brandished above Higgs as if about to administer a gleeful punishment. Higgs’s gaze had been redirected to meet beseechingly with Ellen’s. Fading bruises were laced artfully up and down his arms.

  All three of us were in the final shot, which appeared, at first, to have been left alone. Ellen and I were standing against the wall, under the row of windows, facing the camera; Higgs was seated at his table. There were no rolling pins, no bruises, no suggestion of violence. But my own face, I saw after a moment, had been subtly changed; with horror, I realized that my expression was one of barely suppressed lust. And Ellen, the recipient of my painted-on ardor, had been given a proud smirk, as if to encourage me, and to mock her cuckold husband, whose oblivious stare had this time been left exactly as it was. The effect was stunningly realistic, and the implicit narrative obvious: Ellen and I had conspired to keep Higgs silent, through threats and corporal abuse, all so that I could remain available for adultery—and on the university payroll. I was almost convinced myself.

  “These pictures are doctored,” I said. My voice, even to me, sounded strident and guilty.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Treech snapped.

  “It doesn’t make sense. If this were going on, why would we let you take pictures of it?”

  “Your poor judgment isn’t any concern of mine.”

  “And what about the tapes?” I asked, jabbing my finger at him. “There’d have to have been some sign on the tapes.”

  “Save it for the judge,” Treech replied. Then he made a show of slapping his forehead. “Oops,” he said. “I forgot about how you skipped the hearing.”

  “Ask him what they’re going to do to Stanley when they take him away,” Ellen said, startling me.

  I turned inquisitively back to Treech.

  “Well,” he said. “He’s obviously in need of psychological therapy. Communicative breakdown. Possible aphasia. Possible regression.” He ticked off the symptoms on his palm.

  “They’re going to shock him until he talks,” Ellen said.

  “Oh my God,” said Julia.

  “It’s an established medical procedure,” Treech said mildly. “Your husband’s health is extremely important to us. As I think this whole episode demonstrates.”

  Ellen raised the knife again. Treech dipped into his bag, came out with his camera, and squeezed off a series of shots.

  “Why, you,” she said, “don’t you—”

  “You have to admit,” he said, pocketing the camera, “that’s not going to look good.” And he turned officiously and strode off into the campus, a bouncing arrow pointing at the sky.

  There was a sharp crack. On the walk at Ellen’s feet lay the dagger; the impact on the flagstone had snapped the handle neatly from the blade.

  “Oh my God,” Julia said again.

  I had begun to form a terrible suspicion which I wanted very badly to dispel.

  “I’m going after him,” I said.

  I caught up with Treech not far from the house, in a little tiled plaza adjoining the biology labs. He was sitting on a bench, his bag beside him, watching a loosely organized volleyball game. The sun pressed down on my shoulders; the breeze carried past me the languid cheers of the volleyball players. A tiny plane banked overhead. It was difficult to keep the gravity of my mission in mind.

  When Treech saw me he shoved his bag aside and slapped the slats of the bench where the bag had been.

  “Come here and sit down,” he said.

  I came, I sat.

  “You made good time,” Treech said.

  “You were expecting me?”

  “Well, I assume you’re here demanding an apology. Of course you’ve got every right to be angry.”

  “Yes,” I said, disarmed.

  “You should have been notified earlier. It’s not that we don’t recognize your contributions. But we couldn’t risk your letting something slip. He doesn’t miss much.”

  “He?”

  Treech gave me that wrinkle-browed look again. “Higgs.”

  “Notify me now.”

  “What’s left to say?” Treech said. “Once we found out he was holding out on us it was just a matter of deciding on a response.”

  “He, Higgs. Was holding out on you.”

  Treech peered at me, staring into my eyes as if searching for some flaw there, a burst blood vessel that would account for my behavior.

  “Don’t you remember telling me?”

  So my suspicion was confirmed. I was Iago after all.

  “All I wanted was for you to put a microphone in the bedroom,” I said weakly.

  “We considered that. But he and his wife could have just gone outside at night, after you’d gone.”

  “He doesn’t go outside.”

  Treech went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “We could have just had you stay through the night, of course, or just hire another informant. Probably that’s what we should have done all along; as in, to hell with the dean, to hell with his daughter. But who knows? He could have written her notes under cover of darkness. Thrown them in the fire when he was done, or eaten them. Even if you slept in the same room he’d have chances. Finger spelling. Things you’d never detect. Best just to get him out. That makes it simple.”

  “But you said—something concrete. I didn’t bring anything. Ther
e isn’t anything. I thought you’d forgotten all about it.”

  “You know,” he said, “things move slowly. There are certain elements within the Society that were resistant. The older professors. It’s sentimental; respect for our stricken comrade, and all that. And I won’t say I don’t understand that way of thinking.”

  “No, of course not.” I was dazed. Behind Treech a shirtless boy leaped, hollered, spiked.

  “And frankly,” Treech continued, “when you first told me what was going on I didn’t think much of it. After all, who were you? Honest truth here: nobody. All that’s changed now.”

  “The Sethius letter.”

  “You’re worth quite a bit more than you used to be.”

  “But listen—”

  “I know,” Treech said, “the photos.” He waggled his head slowly. “An unavoidable measure. We needed it for the hearing; the judge wanted some cover. In addition to what we paid him. You can’t believe how much these guys ask for! Thank God for Kosugi.”

  Then he glanced at me slyly. “Oh—but I know what you’re worried about. Nobody thinks that you and Ellen—you know! I hope you’re not in too much trouble with your girlfriend!”

  He clapped his hand to my shoulder, like a comrade. The volleyball game was breaking up; I imagined one of those tanned and bright-toothed players catching sight of us on the bench, and I realized with a little horror that we would look perfectly natural, Treech and I. We made sense together.

  “I noticed that the girl seems to have developed an attachment to him,” Treech went on. “Well, that’s the way. You know women; they go for the vulnerability. Woundedness. She’ll get over it. Buy flowers, that usually works.”

  “There’s been a mistake,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  Confessing was easier than I would have thought.

  “I made it up,” I told Treech. “I didn’t hear him saying anything. I just wanted to get back at Ellen.”

  Treech stood up and began to pace out a slow, wobbly circle.

  “I’ll tell you what, Sam; I’m inclined to believe you.”

  I buckled a little with relief. “I’m so sorry for all the trouble this must have caused.”

  “And I will believe you—as soon as our results at the clinic back you up.”

  “I’m serious!”

  “How did he get to you?” Treech asked sharply.

  “He?”

  “Higgs!”

  “Higgs?” I said. “Higgs doesn’t get to anybody!”

  Treech gazed back at me, coolly.

  “I’ll find a way to stop this,” I said.

  “That’s easy enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All you have to do,” Treech said, “is get him to talk.”

  That night I sat on the bed, unable to concentrate, trying to force down an egg salad sandwich that tasted like dirt, like accusation. My gaze crawled from the yolk-flecked wax paper to our swaybacked, sweat-yellow mattress to Julia at her desk, her back to me, bent ostentatiously over a stack of folios. I’d told her I hadn’t been able to find Treech, no better lie having occured to me. And she’d believed me; no surprise. Hadn’t I already proved myself a liar of the first class?

  “Stop staring,” she said, without turning around.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “It’s too hot in here. You’re not working.”

  “I am working.”

  A little while later she stood up, set her hands on her hips, and stretched backwards, cracking her waist.

  “Well, let’s go,” she said.

  We walked up Epimenides into what had been the industrial section of town. It wasn’t any cooler than in our apartment; but outside, at least, one could dangle before oneself the false promise of a cooling wind, and the scenery was somewhat less familiar. The sun was still up, barely. It wouldn’t start to cool down till well past dark. We walked, hand in damp hand, past the empty warehouses with their painted-on pediments and columns, over the cracking streets, through intermittent clouds of gnats and flies. Julia was reading the faded emblazons of commerce off the bricks, one by one: McHenry Bros. Joseph Parson Sinks. Dry Goods. Sons of Jacob Henneman. The column of quiet smokestacks ahead of us seemed part of a gigantic municipal pipe organ, three-quarters submerged, poised to explode at an appropriate moment into song.

  “Do you think we should get married?” I said.

  “You mean now?”

  We walked another block.

  “I mean eventually. Sometime specific.”

  “Maybe.” Another block, then: “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s obviously of some interest to me.” Wry was what I was going for but it came out stuffy, as if we were negotiating a bank loan.

  “I mean why do you ask now,” she said. “Because of Treech?”

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I had proposed, if proposal it was, almost before it had occurred to me that I was going to speak. But it must have been Treech; because all day I’d been thinking of his hand on my shoulder. And You know women, he’d said, as if admitting me with these words into some unpleasant fraternity with him, with the Society, with garreted, scheming men everywhere. I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted to marry Julia; wanted to move away somewhere, maybe take up psychology or art history again. I could learn to respect that. What I wanted most of all was to drive down the conviction I’d felt, there on the bench, bubbling up in me like crude oil, that Treech had me pegged; that at my cloistered heart I was one of his. I nodded: it was Treech.

  “What do you think will happen?” she said.

  “I think Treech’ll take him away on Friday. I guess I’ll have to get a new job for a while. Maybe work in the restaurant. My mother said we could move in.”

  “We are not moving in with your parents.”

  But she must have known we would have to; our rent had gone up again, and there was no way I could make enough at the restaurant to pay my share. Not even if I worked nights at the copy store besides. That and my plasma wouldn’t be enough.

  “Anyway,” she said, “what I meant was once they take him. With the shock treatment.”

  I knew, of course, what she’d meant.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” I said. “Could be he’ll be brain damaged. Could be he’ll die. I guess there could be no effect at all. Could be he’ll talk.”

  “You’re awfully calm about it.”

  “There isn’t much we can do.”

  It was true; Julia had talked to every lawyer in town and none was inclined to take us on, not for what we could pay. Not that it mattered; I didn’t doubt the Society would buy as many judges as they needed to, if it came to a fight.

  Julia laced her fingers up behind her and lifted her gaze to the tiny, faraway clouds. “It’s terrible,” she said.

  Once we’d laughed about suicide: remember? And not just that, but floods and earthquakes, girls down wells, the situation in the Middle East, widow-burnings and ritual mutilation, the way a teenager might shoot you for a parking spot. We’d sent half the world down to Davy Jones. There wasn’t anything awful enough to sober us up—until now. With a little perspective it made no sense. One old man and a few thousand volts against the great parade of suffering we’d already allowed to go by: it was nothing. And yet there she was, cloud-gazing, pronouncing it terrible, her lips set without a trace of joking. It’s my fault, I thought suddenly. Not the whole catastrophe with Higgs, though that was my fault too, but her seriousness. I’d exhausted something in her. Whatever it was that was meant to lift me up had dragged her down instead, to the gloomy, hot, humorless land of me and people like me.

  Anyhow, it was clear enough what I had to do. I took Julia’s hand and ordered myself to commiserate, with all the gravity that I owed her. But what I said was “Although.”

  “Although?” she said, stopping, letting my hand go. “Although what?” We had come into the shadow of the cloverleaf; ahead of us, a finger of road swung upward and traced a dramatic gesture over
our heads, on its way to join the interstate on its charge to the Pacific.

  “Although there’s not really anyone to blame,” I said. “When you look at it rationally. It’s not as though they want to hurt him.”

  “But?”

  “But he’s getting old. That’s all it’s about. What if he dies without saying what he’s going to say?”

  “Somebody else would figure it out.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “And so what anyway?”

  “I’m not trying to defend it,” I said. “All I’m saying is that they want the same thing we want; for Higgs to talk again.”

  “The same thing you want.”

  “So what do you want?”

  She shrugged. I felt duplicitous, weak as a reed. How had it come out this way?

  “To get married?” I suggested.

  “I said maybe.”

  I was sorry I had brought it up again. It would now be more difficult to raise the next point at hand.

  “I hope you understand Treech changed those photographs,” I said.

  “That’s obvious.”

  “At this point I feel very close to Ellen,” I pressed on. “But you can’t think that anything’s gone on between us besides what’s natural.”

  At this Julia made a noise very much like a gargle.

  “Could you not,” she said, “be a complete idiot.”

  “I worry.”

  “Just don’t say anything.”

  And the rest of our walk passed in silence. The air was as thick and soggy as hot milk.

  When we got to our door, Julia said, “What if he talks before Friday?”

  “Then they won’t take him.”

  “And do you think he will?”

  I sensed the opportunity, a drab consolation, to be reassuring. “I do.”

  “You really think so?”

  “In his situation,” I said, “wouldn’t you?”

  But he didn’t say anything: not the next day, not Sunday, not Monday, and my optimism—forced, let’s face it, even at the time—began to seem ill-considered, even meaningless. “In his situation,” I’d said; but what was Higgs’s situation? How could I, or anyone, begin to guess?