Exposition, Chapter 5 (p. 84-92)

Excessively early the following morning, D. awoke to a whine and a lick, with the predawn light just murky enough to see vague shapes in the otherwise inviolable darkness.

"What's the matter boy?" she asked Jim, reaching out and patting his head on the second attempt. Encouraged by the gesture, Jim scurried to the door and looked back and forth between it and the dark mound on the bed.

"You want to go out?"

Hearing Jim shake his tail in a spasmodic affirmative, D. swung her legs from the bed and rubbed her eyes. The damp coolness of the floor on her naked feet made her shiver as she felt her way to the chair and slipped into the robe that lay across its arm.

Jim whined again.

The instant the key was turned and the door open, he darted out onto the balcony and toward the eastern end of the house. D. considered whether or not to follow. With the dog not directly at her side, she experienced a recrudescence of the unease that her Cerberusian protector had allayed.

She glanced around, attempting to pierce the shadows of balconies and courtyard and shivered again from the mist that hung in the air. The panes of the sheltering dome were drooped down in limp acceptance of the weather, awaiting the impetus of a hand at their controlling haft. The shapes of the chair and piano lay vulnerable in the yard. The books aged on silently in the dampness.

Scanning the overhead apparatus for the shutting mechanism, D. was startled into her room by the padded footsteps of Jim returning to beseech her assistance with the front door. She smiled at being so quick to retreat. Her question, however, had been answered for her: she must accompany Jim away from her haven. She wished she had a leash to keep him near.

Once outside, Jim scurried into the nearby bushes, and D. contemplated the most secure stance and position on the porch, her inability to decide leading her to move her arms about as one does when incapable of finding a comfortable posture in an awkward situation. She had just settled, for the moment, on a cross-armed self-hug when the sound of somebody turning the crank to enclose the courtyard caused her to jump skittishly and her arms to spread in the anticipatory gesture of a gunslinger.

Prowling her way quietly toward the doors, she began pushing one open incrementally. Before the gap was a shoulder's breadth wide, the squeal of the steps behind her led her to pirouette in alarm, and the door swung closed with an unjustifiably loud crash.

"I'm sorry," said John. "Did I frighten you?"

D. breathed in deeply and tried to regain the reins of her racing heart. "Oh... no. I just didn't think anybody was out and about."

John, smoothing his wildly tousled hair, crooked his head in mild interest, walked past her to the door, and told her, "There's nothing quite as invigorating as a morning walk."

"I usually find that it's best to wait until it's actually morning for that."

With a perfunctory chuckle, John replied, "Perhaps I'm paying back consciousness for the years that I spent asleep."

As John crossed the threshold into the house, Jim bounded out of the woods and jostled the man's leg. Regaining his balance after a staggering moment, John hissed a venemous allusion to the animal's parentage.

Huck already had the stove heating in the lantern-lit kitchen when the trio entered. "Mornin' ev'rybody. I see I ain't the only one with a hankerin' fer early mornin' vittles. How d'y'all want yer eggs?"

While they ate at a small servant's table in the kitchen, John wiped bits of egg from his beard with one finger pointed into a cloth napkin and announced, "Martin arrived late last night."

Replied Huck, "An' how's th'old red-boy doin'?"

"Pshaw! Do you think he would demean himself to speak to a plebeian such as myself? He just asked if Nathaniel was here and went into his room."

"Aw, yer majesty, it's only hittin' a man that's a'ready down t' hold a grudge 'gainst a body as mis'rble as him."

"He is the author of his own tribulations, and there is no need for him to be spreading his mordacity to anyone misfortunate enough to make his acquaintance."

"Nobody is dispirited without there being an outside societal agent to start them on the path to self degradation," D. interjected.

With lips pinched and nose crinkled, John turned in his chair to face her and snarled, "Until you've met the scoundrel, I don't believe that you are in any position to fling your platitudes at me. Martin is as solemn and serious as an old owl and begrudges anything resembling imagination in anybody besides Nathaniel, whom he follows like a sycophantic puppy dog."

"Now, now," Huck began to defend the absent man, "y'have t'admit that he has his cagey moments."

"Oh yes! He is most cleverly stupid and succeeds in flattery by dressing up a man's own thoughts for presentation to him, but he only thinks he thinks and is otherwise stodgy, galling, and an annoyance."

"Well, whatever it is ya think a' him yerself, y'oughtta let him discov'r himself to the lady here," stated Huck. Then, smiling at D., "Who knows but mebbe she'll actually like him."

"Perhaps she'll save him, as well," rejoined John with a sarcastic nod, and he stalked out of the kitchen.

D. and Huck looked at each other and began to clean up the clutter left by their meal.

Beyond the translucent ceiling of the courtyard, the dark sky threatened rain. The romance novel, though unfinished, was no longer of interest to D. Every misunderstanding would be reconciled and wedding bells would toll as surely as detectives, in their own genre, would solve any mystery presented to them, so she determined to find a replacement. After she had passed beneath the grand stairs of the entrance hall, with Jim meandering along behind her, her bare feet brushed against the grass, which was damp yet from the mist.

Finding that the parade of books began winding its alphabetical expedition through the musings of myriad authors in the southeastern corner, D. attempted to locate the place of the book for which she no longer had any desire. The book cases were eight rows high, and though the uppermost ledge held the first authors of "A" precipitously well over her head, a tiny portrait of Sinclair Lewis glared at her from the binding of Arrowsmith at eye level. Reasoning that a comprehensive library such as this would be hard-pressed to cramp eleven letters of writers into three shelves, D. followed the wall of literature to the distant west and back only to discover that the sequence was still interrupted.

Crossing to the spot directly under her room, D. learned that, to follow the books in order would require the aimless browser to perform laps around the entire circumference of the enclosure. Through deductive reasoning, and not a little wandering, she eventually cried a small "hoorah" to the panting dog at her side and slid her book easily into the spot from which John had drawn it, in plain view of her, just two days previous.

This accomplished, D. stared along the broad avenues of possibilities, finding the choice of just one book to be a formidable venture. But the sound of Jim cleaning himself at her side rescued her from the incapacitating irresolution into which she had fallen. Dog and woman each looked into the eyes of the other, and as if some communication had taken place tacitly between them, D. set about finding the works of Mark Twain.

A new book in hand, she retreated to her room, mostly on account of the moistness of the proximate furniture of the yard. Pondering whether or not to close the door, she decided to leave it open but resolved to shut and lock it if Jim should choose to seek out company elsewhere.

The appearance of a shadow across the book on her lap caused D. to glance at the window. The sun had broken a pinhole ray through the clouds, and the single beam stretched the silhouette of a nearby branch across the room to where she sat. She rose, eliciting no more than up-turned eyes under arched brows from Jim, and walked to the window, where she searched the sky for signs of clearing. The glimmer of light proved to be an ephemeral anomaly, only serving to briefly increase the overall sense of darkness that lay on the land.

As she spun to return to her book, D. caught a glimpse of a balding head hanging over the handrail of the hall opposite her room. The face raised, with bottom lip thrust outward as if in disappointment at finding the courtyard unoccupied. The lip drew back into an indifferent line when the eyes caught D. watching, and without any further acknowledgment of her, the man to whom the features belonged marched to a table under the southern counterpart of D.'s window and began poking at a stentorian typewriter. The sounds of the hammers felt to D. as if they were being shot intently across space into her ears.

Not sure whether the time was auspicious for introductions, D. sat down and stared with distant eyes at the open book in front of her.

tacktackclicktacktacktacktackclickclick

After a moment, the sound of typing stopped, stirring D. from her remote meditation, and did not begin again until she appeared in the doorway of her room. The man, still facing away from her, resumed his typing. Considering, briefly, the broad black back of the man's suit-jacket, D. took a step out of view, and the typing ceased again. Upon the instant that her inclined head had broken the plane of the portal, the typing proceeded.

Snapping her fingers to bring Jim to her side, D. strolled around the second story, taking the circuitous route in order to avoid trespassing through Nathaniel's ever unrestricted quarters. When she rapped her knuckles audibly against the stranger's door frame, he paused only stutteringly in his labor.

"Hello?" D. called.

Slanting his head to and fro as if trying to disprove the solicitation of a spirit, the man turned and shook as if in surprise. "Oh," he puffed, "I didn't hear you approach."

"Sorry to startle you," D. apologized. "You must be Martin."

"Why yes, yes I am. Have you heard of me?"

"John told Huck and me that you arrived last night."

In a cross between dejection and slow comprehension, Martin nodded his head. "Oh."

"Did I disturb your writing?"

"No. No, I was finished anyway."

Smiling coyly to affirm her purely facetious intentions, D. told him, "You must be a concise author to convey your thoughts in such a short amount of time."

"Oh," was the response. "Well, yes. Yes, I guess I am."

"I mean to say that you haven't been at it long."

"Well, I've been writing for years. It came quite naturally to me, you know."

"No," trying to salvage her meaning, "I'm saying that you haven't been writing for a very long time this morning."

"Oh." Martin furrowed his brow in thought. "Well, one mustn't attempt to exasperate the spurts of one's inspiration."

Martin was wearing a drab black suit with a plain blue tie. Drawing a handkerchief from his breast pocket, he wiped across his double chin, down his flabby neck, and along his beaded forehead. Above his eyes, which seemed to have been squeezed to their bulging and too narrow position by excessive pinching at the bridge of the nose (during attempts to alleviate the arduous strain of thought, presumably), the sweat burst through his skin in three tiny bulbs identical to those that he had just swept away. He replaced the kerchief and ran a hand through his greasy graying black hair.

Striving to redirect her attention to conversation, D. prompted, "So are you named after Martin Arrowsmith?"

"Who?" came the reply.

"Martin Arrowsmith? From the book Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis."

"Oh," Martin looked confused. "No, I've never read that one."

"So what Martin are you?"

"Hmm? Oh. Why Martin Eden, of course," answered Martin, evidently believing himself to be stating the obvious. Then, D.'s reaction not being what he had expected, "by Jack London."

"I haven't read much London, but I did like The Call of the Wild when I was younger."

"Oh," Martin remarked. "I haven't read that one."

The conversation came to a silent halt. D. leaned over to scratch behind Jim's ears, and Martin repeated his handkerchief exercise with repetitive futility. The faint patter of rain fell on the dome. After smiling absently at the dog, Martin blurted out, "He was a writer! Like me!"

"Who?"

"Martin Eden."

"I imagine Jack London was one as well," D. joked.

"Yes, I imagine. But I hadn't given it much thought."

"So you're a writer?" D. reeled slightly in the midst of bafflement.

"Oh, yes! Well, not by trade, yet. But I'm trying to get my works published. Editors are a mass of boors, don't you agree?"

D. was struck suddenly with the impression that she had seen this man before and did not respond.

"You do agree," stammered Martin, "don't you?"

"Oh," D. said, recovering, "I'm sorry. Uh, yes, I guess. Yes. What did you ask me?"

"Don't you believe editors to be a collection of ignoramuses?"

"I don't think I'd be the best person to answer that."

He nodded in condescending comprehension, "Well take it from a real writer: they are."

Allowing the potent resolution of his point to linger in the air undisrupted, Martin swiveled in his chair and tore the sheet of paper from his typewriter, knocking over a standing mirror on the desk in the process. Opening a drawer, he flung the paper among a heap of brethren. The brash manner in which he had thrown open the compartment left the pages agitated, preventing closure. Martin mashed his works in progress out of the way with two fat fingers and rammed the drawer shut.

"So what made you want to be a writer?" inquired D., clearing her throat.

Without hesitation, Martin responded, "I want to be one of the eyes through which the world sees, one of the ears through which it hears, and one of the fingers through which it feels."

D. opened her mouth to speak, but Martin smiled, held up his beefy hand, and continued, "I know what you're thinking, and yes, I really do understand that there are many many people who would aspire to that disposition. But I am peculiarly constituted to write. You see," he went on, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his writhing fingers intertwined, "I am capable of making something, sometimes even a great deal, out of nothing at all. For example, there are two men who work in the laundry that I own..."

Covering his mouth in a nakedly aghast reaction to his faux pas, Martin said, with a pleased gleam in his eye, "Oh my! I have slipped, haven't I!"

"How so?" queried D., not sure what the blunder had been.

"Why, we're not supposed to divulge details of our normal lives," was the explanation. "But masquerade is foreign to my nature. I must be real! As I am constantly telling my tenants... well now, I've done it again. Now you know that I own an apartment complex." He leaned back in his chair, satisfied at his rebellious honesty. "But to Hell with conventions! Tell me, what is it you do on the outside."

Squirming, D. told him only that it was difficult to explain. Before she was through, Martin interjected, "Say, you look awfully familiar to me."

She glanced at Jim, who was greatly interested in an ant struggling to carry a moth, then down the hall, and finally assured Martin that he was mistaken. He didn't look convinced, so D. changed the subject slightly by asking, "What do you plan to do if it becomes apparent that your career as an author is not to be?"

Martin smacked his hand good-naturedly upon the desk and declared, "Well then life would be an aching weariness. You know, it's always been my intention that the instant I know, I'll cease to know. If you get my drift."

"When you know what?"

"Hmm... well, I suppose when I know that people would be more willing to accept my originality were I unable to create any more, I guess. Yes, that's most definitely the answer. I guess that's why I return here every spring: to make sure that there's enough of my works to be published when I'm departed. As I've said, when you own a laundry, an entire apartment complex, and a liquor store, managing to write becomes a challenge, even if all of your operations are on the same block."

"Have you been coming here long?" asked D.

Martin lurched to his feet and, motioning toward his chair, said, "How discivil of me. Have a seat, have a seat, and I'll tell you about it."

Looking around the visible areas of the house, D. acquiesced. Jim, swatting the ant carelessly, sauntered into the room and plopped himself down in front of her.