While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [63]
The stranger bared his teeth dangerously in the sunshine. “I swear by all that’s holy,” he said tautly. “I have no kiddleys.”
“What happened to ’em?” said Sweeny. “Bright’s disease?”
“Sweeny’s disease,” said the stranger.
“Same name as me?” said Sweeny, surprised.
“Same name as you,” said the stranger. “And a horrible disease it is.”
“What’s it like?” said Sweeny.
“Anybody who suffers from Sweeny’s disease,” snarled the stranger, “mocks beauty, Mr. Sweeny; invades privacy, Mr. Sweeny; disturbs the peace, Mr. Sweeny; shatters dreams, Mr. Sweeny; and drives all thoughts of love, Mr. Sweeny, away!”
The stranger stood. He put his face inches from Sweeny’s. “Anyone suffering from Sweeny’s disease, sir, makes life of the spirit impossible by reminding all around him that men are nothing but buckets of guts!”
The stranger made barking sounds of frantic indignation. He snatched up his book of sonnets, strode to another bench twenty feet away, and sat down with his back to Sweeny. He snuffled and snorted and turned the pages roughly.
“The forward violet thus did I chide:” Shakespeare said to him, “Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,/If not from my love’s breath?” The excitement of battle began to subside in the stranger.
“The purple pride/Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells/In my love’s veins thou hast too grossly dy’d,” said Shakespeare, still chiding the violet.
The stranger tried to smile in pure, timeless, placeless pleasure. The smile, however, would not come. The almighty here-and-now was making itself too strongly felt.
The stranger had come to Tampa for only one reason—that his old bones had betrayed him. No matter how much his home in the North meant to him, no matter how little Florida meant to him—his old bones had cried out that they couldn’t stand another winter in the snow and cold.
He had thought of himself, as he accompanied his old bones down South, as a silent, harmless cloud of contemplation.
He found himself instead, only hours after his arrival in Tampa, the author of a savage attack on another old man. The back that he’d turned to Sweeny saw far more than his eyes. His eyes had gone out of focus. His book was a blur.
His back sensed keenly that Sweeny, a kind and lonely man of simpleminded pleasures, was all but destroyed. Sweeny, who’d wanted to go on living, even if he had only half a stomach and one kidney, Sweeny, whose enthusiasm for life hadn’t diminished an iota after he’d lost his spleen in nineteen hundred and forty-three—now Sweeny didn’t want to live anymore. Sweeny didn’t want to live anymore, because an old man he’d tried to befriend had been so savage and mean.
It was a hideous discovery for the stranger to make—that a man at the end of his days was as capable of inflicting pain as the rawest, loudest youth. With so little time left, the stranger had added one more item to his long, long list of regrets.
And he ransacked his mind for elaborate lies that would make Sweeny want to live again. He settled, finally, on an abject, manly, straightforward apology as the only thing to do.
He went to Sweeny, held out his hand. “Mr. Sweeny,” he said, “I want to tell you how sorry I am that I lost my temper. There was no excuse for it. I’m a tired old fool, and my temper’s short. But the last thing in my heart I want to do is hurt you.”
He waited for some fire to return to Sweeny’s eyes. But not even the faintest spark returned.
Sweeny sighed listlessly. “Never mind,” he said. He didn’t take the stranger’s hand. Plainly, he wanted the stranger to go away again.
The stranger kept his hand extended, prayed to God for the right thing to say. He himself would lose the will to live if he abandoned Sweeny like this.
His prayer was answered. He became radiant even before he spoke, he was so sure his words were going to be the right ones. One regret, at least, was going to be wiped off the slate.
The stranger raised his proferred