The Grasshopper King Read online

  Of course, I had theories. Here was the simplest one: the Society was right, and Higgs was still wrestling, after thirteen years, with the Henderson problem. Maybe he was too proud, even in this extremity, to admit defeat. It was noble, at least; and it admitted the possibility of a last-second turnaround. Or: he’d forgotten about Henderson altogether; maybe from boredom, maybe from some tiny and irreversible malfunction. There were embolisms no bigger than a flea. All those thoughts we’d been ascribing to him were creatures of our own desire, as phony as the faces people see on Mars. This smacked of easy irony and I rejected it.

  But what if he’d succeeded? That was the idea that started looking better as the week trickled on. He’d found it: the truth about Henderson, distilled into a few neat sentences, or words, or, who knew, one word! Certainly he’d had enough time to pare it to the kernel. I didn’t know why he wouldn’t tell us, unless his conclusion was so disappointing that he thought it better not to release it on the world. Or dangerous—that idea appealed to me a little. The order of things upset, all bets off . . . In any event it did not seem likely that the threat of the electric therapy would change his mind.

  But Ellen and Julia, less susceptible than I to theory-making, were sure that Higgs would save himself; and I was eager to be proved wrong. So over the harried days that followed we tried everything we could think of to spur Higgs into speech.

  On Tuesday it was arguments. “He’ll listen to reason,” Ellen insisted; and we offered him reasons, we pelted him with reasons.

  “All you have to do,” Julia said, pacing out the room’s perimeter, “is say something—anything. It doesn’t have to be the final say-all. Just to let them know you’re still working on it.” I was sucking sullenly from a can of too-sweet lemonade.

  “A reassurance,” Ellen said.

  “You don’t even have to tell Treech yourself,” Julia pointed out. “The tape recorder’s on. Just tell us what you’re thinking.”

  We held still, neither breathing nor swallowing; lemonade pooled brackishly around my teeth and the bottom of my tongue. But nothing. Higgs seemed to be listening to a different station, and intently.

  We presented him with ever more fanciful cases. Ellen unearthed photographs of long-forgotten family, nephews and nieces and in-laws of Higgs who had long since severed all ties with their silent, embarrassing relation; she entreated Higgs to believe that missing the Society’s deadline would condemn them en masse to crippling years of grief. Julia reminded Higgs that his prominent position made him a role model, and that were he to submit without protest to the Society’s treatment he would be endorsing a dangerous precedent for any other professor judged to be underproductive. (Did Higgs have a single colleague at Chandler State who could not reasonably be so judged?) We trotted before him the demands of finance, of Christian ethics, of national security. Higgs did not budge.

  The next day Julia and I were greeted at Higgs’s door by the unmorningish smell of raw meat. Ellen rushed out of the kitchen as we entered, and at the sight of her my first, aghast thought was that we’d lost track of the days; that Higgs had already been taken away, strapped in, shocked down to a smoking ruin before his wife’s horrified eyes; because Ellen smelled like something charred, and her hair was pure white.

  But it was only flour. It was all over her arms and hands as well. “I’m making Beef Wellington,” Ellen said cheerfully. “Stanley’s favorite. It’s been years since we’ve had it. I just thought . . .” She waved one floury hand, vaguely, as if dismissing a social unequal.

  “Sure,” Julia said, “it’s a special occasion.” I nodded uneasily. It was a special occasion all right; but so was an execution, and the parallel was a little closer than I liked. She might as well have invited a priest.

  Julia went downstairs. On impulse, I followed Ellen into the kitchen. It was a bare, bright room with windows looking out over the mesa’s edge; just in front of us the sun was blazing its way upward through pink mats of cloud. The meat lay raw on the counter. Ellen leaned down and pulled open the oven door, releasing a billow of hot, bready air.

  “This part’s done,” she said, lifting the tray of pastry to her eyes. And there, in the sunny, white-walled kitchen, among the reassuring knocks and clatters of the ancient oven, there with Ellen in her apron, I was able for a moment to imagine that it was done; not the pastry shell, I mean, but the whole story, my grand mishap, all the study and worry I had known thus far. I thought I had slipped mysteriously and permanently beyond it into some fixed domestic space.

  “I’ve been up since five,” Ellen said; then her face contracted and drew backwards as if caught in a bright light, and she began to cry, silently, without sobbing or shaking. She turned away from me so that her tears, falling, struck the hot surface of the stove and hissed away.

  “I’m an old woman,” she said. “I can’t be expected to adjust to changes like this. I am an old woman now.”

  “You’re not old,” I said. I had no idea how I could reassure her, and I wished that Julia were there. But then I thought: just as well.

  “I was Stanley’s first girl,” she said. “Did you know that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Before he met me . . . well, he wasn’t much to speak of with girls. Is that an awful thing to say? But it’s true—he told me. When he was in school here, before he found out about Henderson and Gravinic and everything, he was just a nothing. That’s the way he put it to me and that’s the only reason I say it—a nothing. Nobody thought he’d be a genius then or ever amount to anything and for sure you wouldn’t have thought he’d ever leave Chandler City. We’ve had a good marriage.”

  “Of course you have.”

  “I’ll be a widow.” Her voice took on a flavor of wondering contempt.

  “Don’t think about that. He’ll say something.”

  “One way or the other,” Ellen said bitterly, “he’ll say something.”

  I couldn’t stand it: what I’d done, my hypocrisy. I felt the truth hot in my throat like bile, wanting out. It was bile. I thought I might be sick.

  “It’s my fault,” I said.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “No, I mean it. It’s because of me.”

  “‘Because,’” Ellen said, “is a very difficult word to use correctly. A because of B equals Not B implies not A; is that what you mean?”

  This sudden turn to the abstract distracted me, then made me wonder if, in fact, a strict adherence to propositional logic might not moderate my guilt. Had all this happened because Stanley was born? Because Henderson was? Because Chandler City was founded in the first place?

  Ellen, changeable as always, was back in the universe of things. She turned her head so she was looking up at me. “I don’t want you blaming yourself,” she said. “All those other boys sat down there, too. He didn’t talk for any of them.”

  I placed one hand on her shoulder; I meant by the force of physical touch to keep up my resolve. But my resolve was already fading. What good would it do to confess? It wouldn’t change anything; it wouldn’t save Higgs; wouldn’t, that is, redeem me. It would only make Ellen and Julia hate me forever. Why put that on top of everything that had already gone wrong?

  “I’m sorry,” I said lamely.

  “I’m aware,” Ellen replied, “that you’re trying to help.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. The raw tenderloin was stretched out before us on the counter like a prop for the Old Testament, an offering. I could feel the jutting, sail-shaped bone of Ellen’s shoulder, straining against her skin and the thin, rough cotton of her dress. And that was how Julia found us.

  “It smells great,” she said.

  “It sure does,” I agreed. I felt a sudden, desperate need to be hearty. “You’ve got that right. That’s going to be quite a breakfast!”

  And so it was; although by the time the meat was ready it was almost time for lunch. We ate in the basement, exchanging appreciative murmurs, sopping up the juices of the roast with
spongy hunks of sourdough bread, drinking glass after glass of iced tea from crystal tumblers. Ellen had broken out the good china, and covered our little table with a yellowed, creased cloth that smelled of naphthalene.

  Higgs ate methodically and carefully, chewing each bite with the deliberateness advised in bygone health manuals. He displayed no more relish for Ellen’s meal than he did for the packaged sesame sticks.

  “Is it good?” Ellen kept asking him, her voice more tremulous each time. “Isn’t it good, Stanley?” Higgs did not even turn to face her. When the meal was finished, he tilted his head up and allowed Ellen to wipe his lips; that was the extent of his response.

  Discouraged but undissuaded, we pressed on. Julia tried taking away the checkerboard. He was not bothered at all. Ellen presented him with a selection of whiskeys and cordials, all of which he refused. By turns we leapt out from the stairwell, shouting like savages, in vain attempts to startle him.

  There were still two days left, but I was beginning to resign myself to Higgs’s upcoming removal; at the same time I couldn’t stop rummaging around for strategems. Those were two stages of grief; but which ones? I wished I’d stayed a psychology major longer. My legs were achy, I felt like snapping at Julia, and I had to go to the bathroom. What stage was that?

  Just before nine, Ellen came downstairs, smiling nervously, a thin leaf of paper in her hand.

  “Stanley,” she said, “a telegram’s come from London.”

  “Let me see that,” I said, but she waved me away.

  “My goodness, it’s from Henderson!” she exclaimed. “He’s heard about this trouble you’re in.” She looked down at the paper. “He says, Dear Professor Higgs, stop, I must ask you, stop, to break your silence, stop, for the sake of scholarship, stop, and your own well-being, stop. I look forward, stop, to your reply, stop.” She looked hopefully at Higgs. “Did you hear that, Stanley?”

  A cold rush of irritation invigorated me.

  “For God’s sake,” I said.

  Ellen shushed me violently.

  “You can’t seriously think he’d fall for that.”

  “Why don’t you leave if you don’t want to help?”

  “I don’t think it does any good to insult his intelligence with cheap tricks. Which does not mean I don’t want to help.”

  Ellen gazed questioningly at Julia. I stepped in front of Higgs.

  “He’s made up his mind,” I said. “Argue, all right. But no tricks.”

  Julia tugged at my arm. “Let’s go,” she said. “It’s time.”

  And sullenly, with a glance back at Higgs, I went.

  She stayed three strides ahead of me the whole way home, erect as a sentry. As I struggled to keep up with her I could almost see her new image of me, hardening in the forge of her disfavor; I was heartless, a brute, disrespectful of old women.

  “I’m sorry,” I called out. “I do want to help. Really.”

  “Really?” Julia said, without turning, without missing a step.

  I put everything I had into it. “Really!”

  But even as I said it I wanted to take it back. Not, I mean, that I was happy about what now was almost certain to befall Higgs. Yet there was some part of me, I recognized now, that was counting off the hours before Friday noon. I wanted Julia the way she’d been before. Once Higgs was gone—all right, once he was dead, or electroencephalographically so, or whatever—there could be reverses. My faults would amuse her again.

  How could we have been so careless? Good marriage, nothing—the Higgses’ marriage was pathological, toxic, anyone could see that, and we’d exposed ourselves to it, twelve hours a day, like fools. No wonder we fought. We should have been wrapped in lead foil just to set foot in there. We should have worn welder’s masks and taped gauze over our mouths. Ellen—I was warming up now. How much of Higgs’s silence could be traced right back to his half-mad wife? What had she been whispering to him in that poison swamp, their bedroom, all these unrecorded years? Maybe Treech hadn’t been so wrong with his touched-up photographs. Maybe she had a reason to be so cagy about the meaning of “because.”

  But now it was almost the end of all that. We’d have it back the way it had been. I was jumpy with good news. Julia was starting to increase the ground between us; I slowed down and gave my unhardy lungs a rest as she receded, without a look back, down the street. No matter. I’d catch her. The next day—Thursday—we sat, silently, in our customary chairs, out of ideas. The grasshoppers were the loudest I had ever heard them; though that might just have been my nerves. Ellen was crying again, and had been since the morning. Every once in a while she rose and moved to Higgs, leaning on his shoulder, sniffling. Then she would shoot me a furious glare, which I returned in kind. I was still angry about the phony telegram; Ellen’s casual imposture of Henderson’s voice was an affront to me, and, I was sure, to Higgs as well. Who were we to talk him out of this? It was beneath his dignity, and I wanted badly to apologize. But I had to wait until I had him alone. I got my chance late that afternoon, when Ellen and Julia went upstairs to fill the snack bowl and transact some unspecified business. Higgs sat, quiescent, the checkerboard before him set up for a game; but I was through with checkers. I had a speech to give, and by that time I had worked it out in some detail.

  I turned away from Higgs, toward the row of masks and the half-height windows. In front of me was the broad ceramic face of an Asiatic warrior, his nose chipped half away, his once-jeweled helmet stripped by some forgotten vandals. His eyes were rolled upward as if arrested in the throes of violent death, or passion.

  The window before me was at ground level, facing away from the cliff; beyond it, a gentle rise obscured most of the world outside. Over the little hill I could see only the roofs of the dormitories, and, off to the left, the skew, patinated figure of Tip Chandler, my old perch. What would the hoary miner, sponsor of learning, thirst-crazed envisioner of the second Athens, have thought of the place his hacked-out veins of gold had built? Even to me, a native, it was strange; that the pursuit of knowledge could have come to this, a young man and an old one in a basement room, both specialists in an ornery language, neither quite willing yet to speak. The warrior mask rolled its flaking eyes at me. Athens, I was certain, was never like this.

  With some effort I called my planned remarks back to mind.

  “Professor Higgs,” I said, “we’re all very sorry about what’s happening.” I felt like I was dictating a letter. “I don’t know exactly what conclusion you’ve come to about this—I’ve given it some thought, haven’t settled on anything, but anyway, I know that if you’ve decided not to reveal what you’ve come up with, or haven’t, you have your reasons. I won’t—wouldn’t—try to change your mind. And I’m sorry about the way they’ve been behaving; your wife and Julia, I mean. They mean well. But they don’t understand the other issues here, the academic issues, the—well, I don’t have to explain it to you.” I laughed—as I had decided earlier I would laugh—meaning to indicate fellowship, inexpressible shared experience. “But be assured that I’m behind you on this, and I think what you’re doing is—well, I’m embarrassed, a little, but it’s brave; really brave. And I’ll try my best to carry on the way you would want.”

  There, I’d said it, and discharged my last responsibility. I took a deep, satisfied breath. And when I turned back into the room Higgs was staring at me.

  Shocked, I stumbled backwards, as if his gaze possessed a component of physical force. I realized instantly that everything I had just said, everything I’d thought since the day before, was a lie; an embarrassing, pretentious lie. The academic issues—what did I care? What were they, even? Perspective fled me, my cool remove drew away like scrim. All that mattered was rescuing Higgs, getting him to talk, excusing him from the Society’s therapy. If he didn’t speak now, he never would; they would shock him and shock him until he died—I knew this.

  Higgs’s face had taken on an expression of frank interest; his lips pursed, he cleared his throat. The grass
hoppers chirped feverishly. Anticipating, I thought of Higgs’s voice, the few sentences I’d heard on that decaying reel of tape: Henderson between the wars . . .

  Then Ellen and Julia came back down the stairs. I spun to warn them off; but it was too late. At their appearance, Higgs’s head had snapped back to his accustomed position, and his countenance had once again gone blank. I was dizzy with rage. I moved unsteadily toward Ellen, my hands clenched, murder in mind.

  “Any luck?” Julia said, and at this all my fury slumped inward on itself. There was nothing to be gained from it. The chance was lost, through nobody’s fault, my flush of hope as quickly gone as formed. At least I could spare the women the knowledge that they’d ruined everything.

  “Only the usual kind,” I said.

  “Will you listen to those grasshoppers,” Ellen said mildly. “Sounds like that rain is finally coming.”

  That night I saw McTaggett. He’d called me at home and commanded me in a thick, hoarse voice to meet him at a bar downtown, the Tooth and Nail. It was a single solemn room, done up in velvet and dark wood, like the front parlor of a funeral home. For some reason there were little ceramic dogs everywhere: lined up along the bar, nestled between the dusty stoppered bottles, arrayed in twos and threes atop the drink-ringed tables, frozen in their sundry poses like a circus act surprised by a kitschy Medusa. I had never been there before; the bar was unpopular among the undergraduates. Its clientele tended toward the aging and the broad, bourbon-drinking people, people for whom casual tippling was a distant, gauzy memory. Students found it depressing. McTaggett was the only person under sixty in the place.

  He had evidently been there for some time. He sat heavily on a stool, his red-rimmed eyes focused with apparent fascination on the mirror behind the bar, and on the counter to his left was a heap of wadded napkins. As I sat down beside him, he plucked a fresh one from the dispenser on the bar, blew his nose dramatically into it, and added it to the pile. A ceramic dog was perched on a miniature stool in front of him, balancing a ball on its nose. The dog’s eyes were fixed in an attitude of painful concentration.