PARTISAN REVIEW
377
through the side wall of the cabin at the same level as the heater, and
authorities are speculating that the wind, which shifted to the South
Friday night, prevented the exhaust fumes from escaping from the
pipe rand forced them back into the cabin.
An alarm
clock,
set for 7: 00 A.M., was found in the cabin and
it is believed, from the condition of the body when it was discovered,
that Bierdeman died sometime Friday night and that death can be
attributed to asphixiation by carbon
mono~de
fumes.
Inquest into the death has been set for 3: 00 P.M. Tuesday in
the Walworth County Coroner's office.
Dr. Bierdeman is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and an only
son, Owen.
And for everyone concerned except Owen, that was the story's
end.
He went to the studio couch, picked up the passport, folded back
its front cover, and stared at the picture, trying to arrange the random
but vivid scenes from the past, the remembered fragments that held
his
father, into a coherent whole, but there was too much that was
unresolved, there were too many contradictions, too many gaps, there
was too much confusion in Owen's mind - there was no
hope,
he
nearly said out loud, and he felt as though the marrow had emptied
from
his
bones.
He went into the bathroom, the passport in one hand, and held
his
head under the water faucet. He combed back his wet hair. Then,
staring into the mirror, he held the passport beside his face and com–
pared the picture of his father to his own image in the mirror. Though
the resemblance was not that striking, the two faces, over the months,
had become identical in Owen's mind, and now, as he studied them
both, he was so arrested by their similarity of expression that he filled
with the exhilaration he felt when he saw a woman he wanted to
have;
his
heartbeat quickened, his stomach felt as though he were on
a dropping elevator and the objects within his vision, as though as–
suming lives of their own, lifted away from the surroundings and
locked into sharp focus. The third person that he'd once sensed in the
room with his father, he now sensed at
his
side, and he knew
it
would only be a matter of waiting, now with impatience, now with
dread, for the moment when he could no longer tolerate the uncer–
tainty and pressure of the past, and would be freed from it, as he
had convinced himself
his
father had been freed, by the suicide he
felt
it
incumbent upon him to commit.
