Winter in this Latitude

The Headache Occurred on a rainy Saturday afternoon in early November, shortly after Norman Cross came back down from his wife, or more properly his ex-wife, Connie's apartment. He would not have been up there, ordinarily, the divorce proceedings being in their fourth month, but Connie had called and said she had the flu or some kind of a virus, and nothing in the house to eat, and asked him to pick her up some soup and a carton of milk and a dozen eggs. Norman was living just half a block down the street, so it wasn't much trouble for him to go around the corner and get the groceries and take them up to Connie.

When he got there he found her in bed, looking flushed and disheveled and miserable, so the least he could do was heat up a plate of soup for her and make a sandwich. He carried the food into her bedroom, their bedroom four months before, and she smiled weakly and started to eat.

"You're lucky it's Saturday," Norman said. "If I'd been at work you wouldn't have had anything to eat. You haven't a darn thing in the fridge."

"I know it," Connie said. "I haven't been eating much lately."

"You ought to take better care of yourself," he said. "You let yourself get run-down and then you get sick and have to call me."

"I'm sorry I called you, honey," she said.

"That isn't what I meant," he said. "Why do you always accuse me of only thinking of myself? I wasn't complaining because you called me. You can always call me if you need something."

She was lying propped up by a couple of pillows, holding the plate in one hand and spooning in soup with the other, and the blanket slid down, revealing one bare breast. She quickly covered it, but seeing her naked breast reminded Norman of times before they had broken up. She appeared unaware of the effect on him, but it seemed to him that she must know, and have let the blanket slip on purpose, and was even lying there naked in the bed on purpose. She would not admit the real and deep-seated difficulties between them, she only wanted to influence him by twisting his emotions.

"Well, I've got to go," he said. "If you need anything just call me."

"I think I'll be all right, honey," she said.

"Well, don't hesitate to call if you need anything."

He went out and down the half a block to his own apartment. It was raining steadily but not hard, the sky dark gray, more like early evening than nearly midday. The November sun, even if there had been no clouds, would barely have cleared the hills to the south and west of the city. Norman hunched down to keep the rain from getting under his collar. It occurred to him that there were six full months of rain and foul weather ahead, and the thought depressed him.

And when he got home, just as he was taking off his coat, the headache struck, and with it a peculiar sensation in his eyes. He could focus his eyes, but all around the point of focus everything was swimming and moving, a boiling soup of cells and molecules. And his eyes would not stay on one thing, they wanted to move around, as though to escape the chaotic motion around the center of vision. The headache itself was a throbbing, painful pressure centered in his forehead.

The sudden onset of the headache worried Norman. He went into the bathroom and gulped down two aspirins and then returned to the living room and stood wondering what he should do. He tried staring at an ashtray, wanting to smooth out the movement around the center of focus, but his eyes kept sliding away from it. After a moment's thought he decided that he had been reading too much, or had strained his eyes somehow, and that the best thing would be to lie down. He went into the bedroom and lay fully clothed on the bed. He pulled a pillow over his eyes and tamped it around his ears but away from his nose and mouth.

He lay there thinking. He had a briefcase full of papers from the office he had intended to study, and the apartment needed cleaning and he had a load of soiled clothes for the laundromat. He felt that he was not getting anything accomplished, particularly in relation to the papers from work. He could not afford to fall behind, his competitors for promotion were pushing too hard. First the call from Connie and now the headache. He wondered if there was any connection. He remembered the sight of her breast, calling it up involuntarily, pink and brown in his mind's eye. It occurred to him that he might be punishing himself for seeing her body and desiring it. He remembered that when he was in his teens he had suffered a series of sties in his left eye and had believed that they were a form of self-punishment for masturbating. Even though he had never been able to formulate a clear connection between masturbating and having sties, he had thought that there must be a connection.

After a few minutes he lifted the pillow a little and looked about the room. His eyes seemed little if any improved. The sight of the room itself, moreover, depressed him. It was a furnished apartment, much less pleasant than the one where Connie now lived alone, into which they had put considerable labor when they lived there together. His present apartment he had done nothing to improve, accepting the faded wallpaper and dingy furniture as it was. The wallpaper in the bedroom was a pale green with purple flowers, in convolute and continuous patterns that gave the eye no chance to rest. He pulled the pillow back down over his face.

The speed with which the difficulty with his eyes had come on disturbed him. What if he were going blind? How would he make his living if he were a blind man, and how would he get around? Yet many people went blind every year, and somehow managed. He could probably manage somehow. They had education centers where they retrained blind people to do useful work.

He remembered the sight of his ex-wife's breast, and without willing it recalled her entire body, naked. Both breasts, full and dark-tipped, her firm legs and hips, the dark patch at her groin, the wrinkles on her belly from when she was pregnant. She had wanted the child badly, while he had been afraid of the cost and loss of freedom involved, and after she lost it in the ninth month he had made her take her precautions with double care, saying that another pregnancy too soon would be dangerous for her health.

Then abruptly he was ashamed of remembering her body. They were separated, the divorce he had persuaded her to initiate had only two more months until the decree. The time had gone so damn fast. He had wanted the break, but it seemed more proper for her to get the divorce. That was the normal way. Connie had been unwilling at first, but he had persuaded her. And now he was picturing her naked body, white and firm, even feeling excited by it, and he was ashamed.

He thought of how it would be if he were going blind. Life would be difficult certainly, but also simpler. He would not be able to work at his job. A blind man could not be a production expediter. He would not want to run a newsstand, showing his blindness every day to the world and making a living from it. Some monotonous but not unpleasant job of manual labor. Of course he would not want to be a burden to anyone. Blind men lived simple lives. They did not have to make so many decisions. Earning a living was the problem. You would not have to read the papers and worry about the international situation and the possibility of atomic war and the crime rate. Life would be simple; eating and sleeping and working, like it was hundreds of years ago.

Blind people had senses that other people lacked. They noticed each inflection in your voice, or so he had heard, and their senses of touch and taste and smell were improved.

He looked out from beneath the pillow again, but nothing had changed. Perhaps the weight of the pillow is doing some harm, he thought. He got up and went to the bathroom and, opening the medicine cabinet, found the absorbent cotton. Standing up, he felt weak and unbalanced and the headache intensified. He made two balls of cotton and placed one over each eye, adjusting them so that they fit just right, neither too large and heavy nor too thin. Then he took adhesive and taped the balls of cotton down. At first he pulled the tape too tight, and the balls pressed on his eyes, but he adjusted the tape and removed some of the cotton, and finally he had it just right.

Then he walked back to the bedroom. This must be how a blind man feels, he thought, trying to remember where the furniture was. Passing a wall he noticed that there was a sensation on his cheek, as though a sort of radar, the tiny sounds and warmth of his skin bouncing back and alerting him that a solid surface was near. He continued to the bedroom and found the bed, but this time he removed his clothes and put on his pajamas. Then he lay down in the bed and pulled the bedclothes up to his chin.

• • •

At his former apartment, Connie was feeling better. She drank the soup that Norman had heated for her, and after an initial feeling of nausea, it helped. She slept for a few hours and when she awoke she felt much better, so she got up and dressed and began to clean the apartment. On the kitchen table she found the milk and the eggs and beside them a receipt for $1.10. She remembered that she had not paid Norman for the groceries.

It seemed a good enough excuse to go down and see him. Divorce proceedings or no, she still felt herself his wife, and believed that somehow the divorce would not occur. She put on a raincoat and scarf and went down to Norman's apartment.

The place where he now lived depressed Connie. She felt that it did not suit a young man with Norman's future. Most of the occupants of the old redbrick building with its stale food odors were elderly people, retired or about to retire. Living at such an address could hurt his chances for promotion, Connie thought. Of course the question of promotion had been one of the disturbing factors between them, but he had never really understood her feelings. She had only wished that he would leave his work at the office. At first, she reflected, it had been her grievance, his bringing his work home on weekday nights and even weekends, but eventually it had become Norman's grievance, the fact that she disapproved. By the time he had become angry about her attitude she hardly even had the attitude anymore.

Everything becomes so built up, she thought, standing before the door of his apartment waiting for him to answer her knock. The least little thing falls into place beside a long string of earlier little things. It isn't fair. I didn't really care anymore by the time he got angry about it. I had gotten used to it. And anyway, that was a long time ago, long before July.

He did not respond to her knock, so she tried the door. Finding it unlocked, she opened it far enough to put her head in and call his name.

"I'm in the bedroom," he answered. "I'm lying down."

Connie hurried in, noting as she passed through the living room that this apartment was no neater than their apartment had been when they were living together. The problem of neatness had been another source of difficulty. Norman had repeatedly asked her to pick up her clothes, to wash the dishes oftener, to throw away the newspapers as soon as they had been read. Yet she had always kept the apartment well dusted, which seemed more important to her, and he had never commented on that. And when she did make a special effort to keep the place tidy he had not even seemed to notice.

Seeing Norman lying down in the daytime seemed both strange and faintly pleasurable to Connie. She had always been the weaker of the two, often sick and needing his care, and now she saw a chance to care for him.

"Are you sick?" she said.

"No. I just have a headache. I'm lying down to let it go away."

"But you've got your eyes covered."

"Well, the pain seems to be mostly in my eyes."

She sat on the bed and felt his forehead. He did not seem to have a fever. "Tell me how it feels," she said.

"Oh, just some pain in my eyes. Not much. And pressure on my forehead."

"Maybe it's sinus trouble. Angie Pervis was saying ..."

"I don't have sinus trouble."

"Well, maybe you've just started."

"No, it's just a headache. It'll go away soon."

She sat on the bed and watched him. He lay perfectly still, and with his eyes covered there was a vegetable slackness about his face.

"I was thinking about how a blind man feels," he said. "They have extra senses."

"I know."

"I was walking back from the bathroom and I could feel the wall. I mean I could feel the presence of the wall, tell it was nearby."

Connie put her hand near his face. "Can you sense my hand?" she said.

"Can you sense my hand?" she said.

"I think so. It's near my face, isn't it?"

"Yes." She let her hand linger above his face, and then began to stroke his forehead. He had always liked to have her pet him, his hair or his back or even just his arm. Nightly they used to take turns rubbing each other's back, a before-sleep ritual more regular than love-making.

"I'll get your dinner for you," Connie said. "Then you won't have to get up and the headache will go away that much faster."

• • •

Connie did not move in until Monday. (continued on page 86) Winter in this Latitude (continued from page 78) Saturday evening she cooked Norman's dinner and sat on the edge of the bed guiding his fork to the food. Then they talked, or rather she talked, for he did not much feel like it. She told him about the job she had taken and the people she was meeting, and worked around to their marriage and what had gone wrong with it, and finally asked him to let her stay all night with him. He refused, arguing that it would only be a meaningless physical reconciliation that would make it harder for both of them later.

Lying with his eyes covered and listening to Connie's voice, he remembered again her uncovered breast. He waited for the headache to intensify as punishment for the image, but the headache was gone. Probably Connie was right, he thought, it was only a sinus attack. But keeping his eyes covered was interesting. He seemed to see and understand much more that way than with his eyes open.

The idea of the unfinished work in his briefcase made him nervous. Once behind he might fall by the wayside. Both Halvorson and Jacobs would be promoted before him. But then it occurred to him that all his life he had been bringing work home. The briefcase full of work was just like school homework, and viewed in that light the papers suddenly lost their urgency. They want to keep you busy all the time, he thought, never give you time to get off alone and think things out for yourself. Think about what you really want to do.

Connie asked several more times to be allowed to stay. She even offered to sleep on the living-room couch, but he refused. Then, while she was talking of something or other, he fell asleep. And when he awoke in the middle of the night she was gone.

The middle of the night, though he could only assume that it was the middle of the night, seemed a particularly good time to think. The world was at peace, the noises from the street and other apartments stilled now. He lay awake for several hours thinking about the headache and his relationship to Connie and work. During four years of married life it seemed that he and Connie had always been at cross purposes. She never seemed to understand a word he said, not when he was saying something important, and when she talked to him about herself it never made sense. They had tried to change each other, and yet each time one of them changed it was for the worse. And money. They had never managed to save, yet he could not remember what they had spent it for. And sex. His feelings of inadequacy when he could not make love to her as often as he should or when she wanted him and he did not feel excited. And her stupid jealousy about his work. It had simply not worked out, and finally he had had to make the decision. So he had moved out, if only down the block. But down the block was as good as across the country. He seldom saw her. He only looked once in a while to see if her lights were on in the evening, or listened for her footsteps after work.

After a while he fell asleep again, and when he awoke Connie was there and she cooked him breakfast.

All day Sunday she bustled about the apartment, cleaning and rearranging, so that on his way to the bathroom he crashed in quick succession into a chair and the coffee table. He ordered her to return the furniture to its place and she did so apologetically. Sunday night she asked again for permission to stay, and he refused. But Monday evening when she came to cook him dinner she told him instead of asking him that she could not take care of him and continue to live elsewhere, so he had to give her permission to stay. And when she climbed into bed and he felt her warm and naked beside him he gave way to impulse and desire and they made love with quick intensity. His blindfold forced him to concentrate more on the tactile sensations, and actually helped him to enjoy it more.

On Monday morning he had called his office and told them that he was not feeling well, that he did not know exactly when he would be in but would be in touch with them. Until the moment of the phone call he had assumed that he would say that he would be back in a couple of days, but talking to his boss he found himself being vague about the date of his return, and realized that he did not really intend to go back to work in the near future. As he spoke he found himself comparing the sweet indolence and freedom of bed with the rush and pressure of work, the constant aggravation, the fear of failure, the angling for commendation or promotion. In fact, the meaningless and distasteful franticness of his entire life.

After that telephone call he was unwilling to entertain serious thoughts about the future. By simply floating along he found that he could receive all sorts of images and little stories, not particularly stories about himself but merely events and scenes, without apparent meaning. He labeled these stories Film Clips. Occasionally he tried to consider the future, but the nearest he got to any serious decision was the realization that he did not like work, had never liked work, and was not likely in the future to like work. He had always accepted it as something one had to do to make a living, and working for a business or corporation as the proper thing for a college graduate without training in the sciences or some specialized field. But now it seemed easier and more pleasant not to work, to simply lie in bed and watch Film Clips.

• • •

For Connie the first few weeks of her return to Norman's bed were charged with pleasure. She hummed little songs to herself at work and spent her lunch hour searching for gifts to take home to him. She had long talks with her mother and her friend Angela Pervis about the situation, but she refused to let their alarm at Norman's actions influence her. She was living with him again, she told them, and he needed her as he had never needed her before. She agreed with Angela that he was probably psychologically sick, but if that was what was necessary to make him need her, then she could find no objection to it.

She was working as a secretary, the work she had done before she and Norman were married, and working all day and then hurrying home to take care of her husband kept her too tired to think much. In any case, it had always been Norman who did the serious thinking. She had always been content to go along with his plans, dreaming only her own vague dreams of some distant time when they would have a house of their own and babies and he would be a full executive, graying at the temples, with martinis before dinner and perhaps a maid to help her.

But when the first week passed, and the weekend, and the second week started without Norman's showing any inclination to get out of bed for any more serious purpose than going to the bathroom, she began to feel concern. She had a long talk with Angela Pervis, and they decided that it might be a good idea for Angela and Larry to drop by in the evening. Larry had always had a good effect on Norman, bringing him out of his depression when he was feeling low and calming him down when he was excited. Larry Pervis and Norman had roomed together at college. Larry worked as an engineer for an electronics firm now, though he was in the process of being trained to move up to sales work.

When she told Norman about the visit he seemed moderately pleased, but when she suggested that he get up and put on his clothes he refused.

"I don't want them to see me blundering around like a blind man," he said. "I'll just stay here, and they can come in and see me in bed."

"But you're not blind," Connie said. "And anyway, seeing you in bed is worse than seeing you bump into things."

(continued on page 216) Winter in this Latitude (continued from page 86)

"No," Norman said, "I'll just stay in bed."

The invitation had been for dinner, but since Norman refused to leave his post, Connie was forced to change it to later in the evening. When the Pervises arrived they all gathered in the bedroom and sat talking of general things, skirting the fact that Norman was in bed. After a while Connie and Angela withdrew to the living room. Connie could hear the conversation from the bedroom and she waited for some sort of argument or discussion about Norman's prolonged stay in bed.

"I don't get it, old buddy," she heard Pervis say finally. "It doesn't seem like you to take to your bed like this. What's wrong with you, anyway?"

"Nothing's wrong with me," Norman said. "I just feel like staying in bed for a while. Haven't you ever felt like staying in bed?"

"Oh sure, I suppose I have. When the world has gotten to be too much of a hassle, I've felt like climbing into bed and pulling the covers up over my head. But I didn't do it. I get nervous even staying in bed when I'm sick. Why, when I was in that Army hospital for two weeks I nearly went off my rocker."

"Well, I like being in bed," Norman said. "I like to think about things."

"Yeah, but I mean, what are you planning to do? You aren't planning on staying in bed for the rest of your life, are you?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it much."

"Well then, what the hell are you thinking about?"

"Oh, nothing much, really. Nothing terribly important. Just things."

"Goddamn it, Norman, you're running away from life. That's what you're doing. Running away. You're a quitter."

"All right. So what?"

"Well, Christ, don't you want to get out there and fight?"

"Not particularly."

"Well, what are you going to do? Just let Connie support you? I mean, what are you going to do?"

But Larry's voice trailed oft, and Norman did not even bother to answer. Connie could tell from the tone of Larry's voice that he was confused and disgusted by Norman's attitude and lack of response.

"He's returning to the womb, that's what he's doing," Angela whispered to Connie. "I've read about cases like this."

"All right, so I'm returning to the womb," Norman said from the next room. "So what?"

"It isn't any of my business," Angela said. "Forget I said it."

"But the thing is, why are you all so concerned?" Norman said. "If I'm returning to the womb what difference does it make?"

"Well, you might think of Connie," Larry said.

"Oh, I don't mind," Connie said. "That is, of course I mind, but for Norman's sake, not mine. It isn't hurting me."

Angela and Larry stayed for another hour, but the conversation drifted away from Norman's problem and they talked of the international situation and business and gossiped about mutual friends. When they left, Connie felt a sense of strain, not a coldness but an inability and an unwillingness to be exposed to Norman's betrayal of some sort of basic rule of life.

That night after making love and before sleep Norman complained about the bandage over his eyes. Connie felt a quick surge of hope, but he continued that he would appreciate it if she would shop around and find him one of those black sleeping masks that people wore to keep the light out of their eyes. Something that covered a minimum of space, he said, like two eye patches rather than one large shield.

She wondered for a while what would become of them, but her last thoughts before sleep were about how much more vigorous a lover Norman had become now that he only lay in bed all day with nothing to do. In the two weeks since they had been sleeping together again they had made love every night instead of the usual every other or every third night, and several times he had made love to her in the morning as well. In addition, he had become inventive and sensuous again, as he had been when they were first married.

• • •

In the daytime Norman lay in bed and thought and dreamed and listened to the sounds of the apartment house and the street. He tried listening to the radio, but the popular music jarred his ears, and even the city's one good music station was unsuitable, for just as he was beginning to lose himself in the music a commercial announcement would bring him back to reality. When it rained, as it did almost every day through December, he liked to listen to the rain on some solid surface. He wished for a metal roof, but discovered that if one of the bedroom windows was opened a crack at the bottom, the patter of the rain on the sill made a pleasantly monotonous background sound.

He began to worry occasionally about the future. It came to him one day with quick clarity that he did not want to return to his job, or for that matter to any similar job. He thought of his old work as paper shuffling and office politicking. But he had no other skill, could not think of what else he might do to earn his living. It was easier to shove the problem into one of the back compartments of his mind and darken the screen for a Film Clip or two.

His thoughts were often of sex. He constructed elaborate sexual fantasies. Several times he dreamed of large older women who dominated him, forcing him to perform sexual services for them. But other times he was the aggressor, committing near-rape on small, defenseless young girls. He did not take either type of fantasy seriously, realizing that they were merely entertainments of a long idleness, and the pressure never built up, since he was making love to his wife so much more frequently than before.

For a brief period he concerned himself with dreams of glory. He was the leader of a partisan band in a conquered country, doomed to defeat but continuing the fight. Or he was a singularly brave individual soldier. He was a furtrapper, striding West toward the frontier. But these visions soon paled, and he went through a period of halfhearted analysis, attempting to understand and interpret his dreams, walking and sleeping, and his retreat to bed.

At night he slept on the other side of the bed now, that is to say, on his wife's left. Previously she had slept on his left, himself on the side toward the bedside table and alarm clock. But since she was the one now who went daily to work, they changed sides. At first his dreams were confused, he felt that he was in a strange bed and in his sleep, reaching out for Connie, he found only the wall. Several times he dreamed that he was the woman and Connie the man. He tried to lead Connie into being the sexual aggressor a few times, but though she went through the motions she was basically passive and he had to lead her by indirection.

Late in December sounds began to bother him: the harsh noises of the street, trucks rumbling by, screeching voices and radios playing in other apartments, children screaming, brakes squealing, the city's roar. The sounds made him nervous and particularly loud ones caused him physical pain.

I'm retreating further, he thought. Into the womb. He asked Connie to buy him a set of earplugs.

• • •

With the request for earplugs, Connie's fears forced themselves to the surface. She was unwilling to think of the course of Norman's malady, but it seemed she could not stop herself. He's becoming a vegetable, she thought. A woman can't love a vegetable. But in fact her love for him grew. Nightly she delighted in bathing him and applying talc to prevent bedsores. But I don't really have a husband anymore, she thought, not in any true sense. Still, he needed her and at the same time fulfilled her needs for love and affection and someone to take care of. And he would listen to her in the evenings instead of retreating into the work he had brought from the office.

But she was aware that the earplugs, which she bought the next day and he began using in the daytime when she was not there, were a definite sign of deterioration. At Christmastime she made an effort to reawaken his interest. She described the color and activity of the center of the city. She erected and decorated a tree and tried to induce him to remove his blindfold and look at it. She cooked and baked and did everything she could think of to interest him in the real world, but though he listened to everything she said, he would not get up and look.

In January he began to wear the earplugs even when she was in the apartment. At first he would simply forget to remove them, but soon he began to pretend that she was not there talking to him at all, and to insure his aloneness by rolling on his side, facing the wall, and burrowing his head under a pillow.

"You can't do this, honey," she said one evening when he was not wearing the earplugs. "You're letting yourself withdraw further and further."

"It isn't important," he said."I just feel like doing it. Don't worry about it, Connie. When I feel like getting up again I'll get up again."

"But you can't do this. You're ... you're ..."

"Returning to the womb?" he said.

"Well, Angie says ..."

"Yeah, I know. Hey, listen, I'm kind of tired. I think I'll get some sleep now. We'll talk about it later."

"But Norman, you've slept all day."

But he was already burrowing under the pillow, he would not listen to her. The next day she called the doctor, an act that she had been putting oil ever since he first took to his bed.

She arranged the appointment so that she could be off work when the doctor came. He was their regular doctor, Connie's family doctor, an older man with salt-and-pepper gray hair and a little pencil-line mustache. He had always seemed to Connie to have a great fund of understanding and philosophy.

"Now this isn't really in my line," he told Connie. "You should really consult a psychiatrist about this. Though of course a psychiatrist might overlook the physical causes in favor of the mental. Metabolic rate and that sort of thing."

"I know, I know," Connie said. "But I just can't bring myself to call a psychiatrist. It isn't as though he were violent. He just won't get up."

The doctor talked to Norman for nearly an hour, and Norman removed his earplugs and listened politely. The doctor tried to describe to Norman what was happening to him, and then attempted to persuade Norman to talk about his problems. He even had Connie leave the room so that Norman could speak more freely, but Norman denied that he had any serious problems.

"I just feel like staying in bed," he said. "And I feel like keeping my eyes covered. The light bothers my eyes. Besides, when I pretend that I'm blind all of my other senses seem to get sharper."

"Yes, Yes, I understand all that," the doctor said. "We all feel unable to cope with a world as complex as this occasionally. We feel defeated by the difficulty of interpersonal relations, like with your wife, and the impossibility of defying the vast forces in society that manipulate us. But you have can't give way to this feeling. You have to fight it."

"Why do I have to fight it?" Norman said. "I'm not doing anybody any harm."

"Well, you've got to think of Connie."

"She's happy. She's happier than she was before."

"Well, perhaps she seems that way.But deep underneath, I'm, sure ..."

"Ask her, if you don't believe she's happy. If she isn't she can go away. We were getting a divorce before this started, anyway."

"Yes, but you've got to think of the future, Norman."

"Why?"

"Well, just because. You can't escape it. Why, dealing with the future is what differentiates human beings from the lower animals."

"I thought it was being able to read and write. Or the thumb."

"Well, yes, certainly those things are important, too. But, my boy, the future ..."

"To hell with the future. The future can take care of itself." He put the earplugs one at a time back into his ears and rolled over toward the wall, and the interview was over.

• • •

The rains of late autumn ended and there was snow on the ground. Norman could no longer hear, but he could feel the difference in the air, crisp and vibrant instead of limp and moist. He liked a window open so that lie could know that it was cold out and that he was snug and warm under the electric blanket. He cherished the electric blanket, so light and cozy. He would turn it up to high and roast for a while and then turn it entirely off and feel the heat leave, until he was beginning to shiver. Then he would turn it on again and bask in the warmth.

If I'm returning to the womb I ought to go the whole route, he thought. Though he did not believe that he was. Returning to the womb seemed a catchy phrase that someone had invented for a magazine advertisement. He wanted no cramped wet cell. He was content in his warm dry bed. He was resting.

The snow melted and the rain returned and Norman became impatient for the process to complete itself. So, while he still enjoyed odors, he had Connie buy him a pair of swimmer's nose plugs. The speed-up process seemed a good joke somehow, as though he had defeated someone. It was February and he was way ahead of them and he lay in bed smiling at his private joke.

He no longer got out of bed much. Connie left a bedpan and a bottle next to the bed. He learned to control himself so that he did not have to defecate all day, but he urinated whenever he felt like it. He discontinued eating lunch, too. Connie fed him in the morning and again when she returned in the evening, and between those times he simply lay and thought and dreamed. With practice his dream life had become incredibly rich. He willed or planned nothing, only received the images as they occurred, and his subconscious outdid itself in creating extravagant productions. He was seldom the hero but only an observer. Nor did he want to control the stories and be the hero. He realized that his own mind was creating the stories, but it was doing so in such an indirect way that he never had the feeling of authorship.

Hurrying the process still further, he ordered Connie to cook him only bland foods, to leave out salt and pepper and spices. Boiled eggs were too flavorful, meat too juicy. He ate bland things, tasteless and smooth, and he knew that he was nearing some kind of goal. He believed himself happy.

• • •

Connie, too, was happy, and felt guilty about it. Her mother came to visit her often now, and sometimes stayed overnight on the couch. They had long talks. Her mother was disgusted with Norman, labeling him selfish, and therefore was disgusted with Connie for standing for his foolishness.

"Listen, sweetie," Connie's mother said, "just stop waiting on him hand and foot. You'll see how fast he'll get out of bed when he gets hungry."

"But, Mom, I don't want him to suffer," Connie said.

"It's for his own good. Why do you stay with him, anyway?"

"Because I love him. He's my husband."

"He's no husband. He's no man at all. He's a puddle of flesh, that's all. Does he make love to you anymore?"

"Yes, he does. He's just running away from the world, Mom. There were too many problems so he ran away, like a little boy. I have to understand him."

"I don't see why you should. Let him understand himself. You aren't getting any younger. If I were you I'd go find myself another man."

But they did not always argue. Much of the time they simply sat and talked about the occurrences of the day, and gradually fell back into the mother-and-daughter relationship of before Connie's marriage.

"Norman, Mom's here," Connie would shout, forcing her voice through the earplugs.

"Hello, Mother," Norman would say, smiling good humoredly. But he never offered more than a casual "How are you?" and he never removed the earplugs to hear what Connie's mother had to say.

Angela and Larry Pervis still visited occasionally, but after a quick duty visit into the bedroom they sat with Connie in the living room and talked. They were still her friends, but it was increasingly awkward, three an unwieldy number. Once they invited Connie over and when she arrived she found that they had invited a bachelor friend to make a foursome. She suffered through the evening, not quite sure that the idea of an affair with a strange man did not attract her and angry with herself for her near-weakness, and the next day she bitterly accused Angela over the telephone of trying to destroy her loyalty to Norman. But the storm blew over and they still visited her, though it was clear that they had decided that Norman's actions were sheer weakness. They did not try again to introduce her to a man.

Connie thought about calling a psychiatrist to see Norman, but she could not bring herself to do it. At work she was quiet and solemn now, but increasingly efficient, and she received a promotion and raise the first of March. She told Norman about it and he smiled his approval, but she could see that he was not really very interested.

She toyed with the idea of doing as her mother had suggested, making him shift for himself. Not for her own sake, she assured herself, but for his. Finally one Friday evening she did not fix him dinner. She sat lonely and sad over her own dinner, tasting each morsel as though to make up for Norman's lack of it, feeling all of the pain of separation that she had felt when he left her. By bedtime he had said nothing. She climbed into bed beside him, waiting for him to mention food, but he did not. By Sunday afternoon when he had still not mentioned being hungry she could stand it no longer. She cooked him an enormous meal, some of which he ate. But he made no comment one way or the other about the day and a half of abstinence.

The following Wednesday he told her that he did not want her to sleep with him any longer. It disturbed him, he said; the touch of her flesh through his pajamas was like sandpaper. He wanted to cut off the last contact, the sense of touch. He said it quite unselfconsciously, as though clinically describing someone else's case. She cried, but he was firm, and she moved into the living room to sleep on the couch. He would not even let her bathe and powder him anymore. She waited for him to change his mind, hoping each evening that he would relent, but each time she asked he remained firm.

• • •

Now he lay in the bed and tried to seal off the last sensations from hands and face and feet. He cultivated boredom with sensation and even boredom with the Film Clips of his mind, willing a white screen of blankness before his inner eye. He saw himself as on the last stage of a dangerous journey. He was entering unexplored country and wondered what he would find. Life was placid, life was clean, life had no content. Am I happy? he asked himself. Well, am I sad? Am I in pain? The answer was no to all three questions.

It was March and then it was the first of April. He counted his heartbeats and at 100 he fell asleep. He no longer tried to analyze his dreams. Sometimes he listened to and counted his own breathing, but that he found painful. When he concentrated on breathing he held his breath too long and his chest hurt.

I'll get up when I feel like getting up, he told himself. But when he did finally get up it was not because he wanted to.

The weather had turned hot and Connie had begun to open the windows. It was an unseasonable early warm spell. He asked her to keep the windows closed, but after a day of that he found himself sweaty and uncomfortable and had to allow her to open them.

He lay on his bed in only his pajamas without a sheet, and a vagrant spring breeze came in the window and teased his skin. He could not keep his mind from it, the wind blowing the hair on top of his feet, the hair of his head, caressing his face. He willed his mind to deep calmness but the breeze was not to be ignored. He became angry with it.

For the first time in nearly two months he got out of bed and started toward the offending window. His legs would hardly hold him and he had forgotten the exact location of the furniture. He stumbled on unresponsive legs and fell to the floor, his forehead striking the chair. Growing angrier, he pulled himself to his feet and lurched toward the window, and this time he struck his shin against the table. Reaching out to keep himself from falling, his hand found only air, and then the glass of the window, but by then he was falling and his hand smashed the glass. Pain sliced across his arm and he felt warm blood run down toward his fingers.

Now he was furious. He tore the mask from his face and looked down at his arm to find a long clean slash angling across the back of it. Blood was dripping on the rug and on his pajamas and the window was broken so that he would not be able to close out the breeze no matter how he tried. His legs would not support him and his eyes were stabbing centers of pain from the unaccustomed light, the colors so vivid that they shocked him. The blue of sky, the chartreuse and blue-green and green-black of trees and bushes and grass, the whites and reds and yellows. He could not breathe properly, so he tore out the plugs that held his nostrils closed and then, as an afterthought, yanked out the earplugs.

It suddenly occurred to him, amid the welter of pains and sensations, harsh sounds and too-bright light and strong odors and feelings all over his body, that he should give Connie a baby. She deserved a baby. And it might be a boy; that would be interesting. Thinking about having a baby and making love to Connie, he discovered that he had an erection. "Oh, Jesus Christ," he said, aloud.

He wrapped a T-shirt around his forearm to stop the bleeding. Then, steadying himself by the bureau, he began a first tentative and creaky deep knee bend. What was to stop him from finding any kind of job he wanted? Pumping gas or driving a Cat or even learning to be a carpenter?

And when Connie returned from work she found him sitting in the living room reading a week-old sport section and drinking a highball, a crude thick bandage covering his arm from elbow to wrist. She did not quite know what to say or do, or even to think, she was happy and at the same time sad with loss, so she stood in the doorway and cried, the mascara-dark tears running down her face, until Norman told her to shut up and start cooking his dinner.