The Man Who Fell to Earth

He found a narrow space at the bar and ordered a glass of beer from a woman with graying bangs and black-rimmed glasses. He had never seen her there before; he was served in the mornings by a taciturn and dyspeptic old man named Arthur. This woman’s husband? He smiled at her vaguely, taking the beer. He gulped at it quickly, feeling uncomfortable, wanting to get out. On the juke box, now behind his head, a record had started playing a folk song, with a zither thrumming metallically. Oh Lordie, Pick a Bale of Cotton! Oh Lordie… Next to him at the bar a white girl was talking to a sad-eyed girl about the “structure” of poetry and asking her if the poem “worked,” a kind of talk that made Bryce shudder. How goddamned knowing could these children be? Then he remembered the cant he had talked, during the year that he had majored in English, when he was in his twenties: “levels of meaning.” “the semantic problem.” “the symbolical level.” Well, there were plenty of substitutes for knowledge and insight — false metaphors everywhere. He finished his beer and then, not knowing why, ordered another, even though he wanted to leave, to get away from the noise and the posturing. And wasn’t he being unfair to these kids, being a pompous ass? Young people always looked foolish, were deceived by appearances — as was everybody else. Better they should grow beards than join fraternities or become debaters. They would learn enough about that kind of bland idiocy soon enough, when they got out of school, shaven, and looked for jobs. Or was he wrong there too? There was always the chance that they — at least some of them — were honest-to-God Ezra Pounds, would never shave the beards, would become brilliant and shrill Fascists, Anarchists, Socialists, and die in unheard-of European cities, the authors of fine poems, the painters of meaningful pictures, men of no fortune, and with a name to come. He finished the beer and had another. Drinking it, there flashed across his mind the image of the theater poster and the giant word, Worldcolor, and it occurred to him that the W of W. E. Corp, might stand for Worldcolor. Or, perhaps, World. And the E? Elimination? Exhibitionism? Eroticism? Or, he smiled grimly, just Exit? He smiled wisely at the red-jacketed girl next to him, who was talking now about the “texture” of language. She could not have been more than eighteen. She gave him a dubious look, her dark eyes serious. And then he felt something hurt him; she was so pretty. He stopped smiling, finished his beer quickly, and left. As he passed the booth on the way out, the Organic Chemistry student with the beard said, “Hello, Professor Bryce,” his voice very decent. Bryce nodded to him, mumbled, and pushed his way out the door into the warm night.

It was eleven o’clock, but he did not want to go home. For a moment he thought of calling Gelber, his one close friend on the faculty, but decided not to. Gelber was a sympathetic man; but there did not seem to be anything to say right now. He did not want to talk about himself, his fear, his cheap lust, his dreadful and foolish life. He kept walking.

Just before midnight he stopped in the town’s one all-night drugstore, empty except for an aged clerk behind the gleaming, plastic lunch counter. He sat down and ordered coffee and, after his eyes became accustomed to the false brilliance of the fluorescent lights, began to gaze idly about the counter, reading the display labels on aspirin bottles, camera equipment, packages of razor blades…. He was squinting, and his head was beginning to hurt. The beer; the light… Sun tan lotion and pocket combs. And then something caught his eyes and held them. Worldcolor: 35mm Camera Film, printed on each of a row of square blue boxes, next to the pocket combs, under a card of nail clippers. It startled him, he did not know why. The clerk was standing near, and abruptly Bryce said, “Let me see that film, please.”

The clerk squinted at him — did the light hurt his eyes, too? — and said, “What film?”

“The color. Worldcolor.”

“Oh. I didn’t—”

“Sure, I know.” He was surprised that his voice was impatient. He wasn’t in the habit of interrupting people.

The old man frowned slightly, and then shuffled over and pulled down a box of the film. Then he set it down on the counter in front of Bryce, with exaggerated firmness, saying nothing.

Bryce picked up the box and looked at the label. Under the big letters was printed, in small letters: A Grainless, Perfectly Balanced Color Film. And below this: ASA film speed: 200 to 3,000, depending upon development. My God! he thought, the speed can’t be that high. And variable?

He looked up at the clerk. “How much is this?”

“Six dollars. That’s for thirty-six pictures. For twenty it’s two seventy-five.”

He felt the box, which was light in his hand. “That’s pretty expensive, isn’t it?”