PARTISAN REVIEW
589
"It's only that I'm always thinking about you," Jekyll says despondently.
"Even when I'm near you."
"But that's just it," she says. "You're not close to me."
Utterson, feeling sudden nibblings of pain on the left side of his chest,
hastily climbs into bed. The figure under the covers rolls over expectantly,
unfurling the blankets. Jekyll switches on the reading lamp and checks his
watch.
Jekyll is thinking of the uncanny ability that Utterson has to transmit
energy from himself to others. Jekyll has experienced this famous power
several times, as well as witnessed Utterson practicing on others,
FLASHBACK,
to less troubled days-days in which Jekyll found Utterson's
conversation extremely funny, when it was not breathstoppingly wise. Once,
years ago, when Jekyll was severely depressed, possibly suicidal, he drove
out-without telephoning first-to Oyster Bay. Utterson, extraordinarily gen–
tle, fatherly that day, received his visitor in his bedroom. Seeing him, Jekyll felt
excited, feverish; his head began to pound, as it's doing tonight,in bed with his
wife.
"You're sick." Utterson put one arm around Jekyll's shoulder. "Don't
talk." He put Jekyll in a chair. "I'll give you coffee," he said, all the tenderness
imaginable in his voice. "Drink it as hot as you can."
Jekyll remembers sitting at a table while Utterson poured coffee from the
old battered thermos he used to keep beside his bed into a saucepan, and put
the saucepan on a hotplate. Jekyll remembers being unable to take his eyes off
Utterson, and realizing that UUerson looked desperately weary: he'd never
seen anyone look so tired. Jekyll remembers slouching over the table, sipping at
his coffee, when he became aware of a sudden uprising of energy within
himself.
It
was as if a violent electric blue light flowed outward from Utterson
and entered into him. As this was happening, Jekyll felt the tiredness leach out
of him; but at the same moment Uuerson's preposterous heavy body sagged
and his face turned grey as if it were being drained of blood. Jekyll looked at
him, amazed.
Jekyll remembers that when UUerson saw him sitting erect, smiling and
full ofenergy, he muttered, an urgent tone in his voice: "You're all right now. I
must go." Jekyll remembers leaping to his feet to help him, and Utterson
waving Jekyll away and hobbling slowly out of the room.
Jekyll remembers UUerson being gone and, while he waited, blankly
savoring an exquisite sense of well-being. He was convinced then (and is
convinced now) that when Utterson transmits energy from himselfto others, it
can be done only at great cost to himself. But it became obvious that Utterson
knew how to renew his own energy quickly, for Jekyll remembers being equally
