Living with Snakes

Wild Geese

Wild Geese n his dreams she was always going away from him— going down corridors, going down escalators, jumping off buses. Of course he knew what that was all about, but the dreams went on anyway. Not that he was surprised. Even awake he couldn't accept the fact that he wanted to leave her. She was running down the long stairs at the Shepherd's Bush Station, at the bottom while he was still at the top. She gave up her ticket and turned right and went into the street. When he came out, she was nowhere to be seen. "What do we do at this point?" he said distinctly. "We take the 31 bus home," he replied. So he ran to the bus stop but didn't find her. It was all wrong, of course. When he went to Shepherd 's Bush, he went alone to the Rangers' stadium. The 31 bus didn't go there at all. He would walk along Loftus Street laughing at the bearded satyr face on the keystoneof each window and each door. He called the face Loftus after a friend in New York. Sometimes he dreamed about geese, high wavering lines of them, their cries coming faintly down like the belling of enchanted hounds. Sometimes they were very low and loud, just above the treetops as he had seen them one night. He knew what that was all about, too. "Geese," she said, "are monogamous. They mate for life." She always had the facts. i Wild Geese 51 But mostly she was going away. They had got as far as New York together. They had gone through customs and had got on a bus to be taken into the city. It looked like Pier 40 to him. Holland-American Line. "Wait," she said and got off the bus. They all waited a long time. Then the bus drove off. She had the tickets and the hotel reservations. He didn't know where he was supposed to be going. "What is it you really want to do?" his therapist said. "I don't know," he said. "I think you do," the therapist said. "He wants to leave me," she said. "Whose dream is this anyway?" he said. "It's mine. It's mine. It's mine." He tended to say things three times in his dreams as if to make them really his. They were all his, of course. Every one of them. For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. He was on his knees in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was looking at his disciples asleep around him. He looked them up and he looked them down and he said, "One of you will betray me." It wasn't so easy for him. He didn't know about Judas. He only knew that one of them was out to get him. And their names weren't names like Simon or Peter or Thomas or Matthew-Mark-Luke-and-John. Their names were Heart and Kidneys and Liver and Lungs. And one of them had already sold him out. Gallbladder was already dead, the lousy bastard, so he wasn't the one—he'd made his move and it wasn't good enough. He was down on his knees in that garden, sweating blood, knowing he'd had it. Actually, that Gallbladder business had been a very close thing. It nearly did for him. And the rest of them were no help either. They werejust standing around looking, except for the one who was banging away left and right, more likely to cave in his ribs than anyone else's. The others would havejumped him if they had dared. He saw it happen to the man in the next bed. They choked him and turned him 52 Living with Snakes blue. His breathing was awful. Unforgettable. He knew his own gang was taking it all down and filing it away. But they didn't quite dare yet, although they were sullen the next day when he tried to call them to order. When he was let up to go to the John for the first time, he said, "All right, you scum, where are you?" He sat there sweating and weak and sending out all the messages he could think of, but they took their time and let him know he was slipping. "It is only what you must...