PARTISAN REVIEW
591
televised daily doses ofatrocity, three-week tours by helicopter are available for
civilians to observe it at first hand on their vacations·. Endless numbers oflittle,
small-boned, dark, fine-featured people, the men with smooth hairless faces,
the women with long black hair down their backs, still youthful-looking even in
middle age, carrying rifles and spears, get massacred day after day. How are
they replenished?
Jekyll, more monogamous than ever, starts thinking about his wife's legs
and decides they are notjust shapelier than the nurse's but may be the prettiest
legs he has ever seen in his life. The nurse leaves the room with instructions
about 5 cc. of a new medication for the patient still lying unconscious in the
recovery room.
Utterson declares it is a waste of spirit to fret about the war, that human
folly will always persist, that most people are idiots who sleep right through
their whole lives, and that the sole duty of the few who are struggling to
become awake is self-cultivation. For the treatment of melancholia brought on
by thinking about the war, Utterson recommends several strenuous exercises,
spiritual and physical, and a re-reading of Ch. 109 of
The Strange Case of Cain
and Abel.
Deciding that he is tired of trying to cultivate himself, improve him–
self, transform himself into a well-rounded, balanced person, Jekyll also
decides that even if he can't be Hyde he can still seek his help.
"Hey, look who's slumming!" Hyde shrieks gaily through a broken win–
dowpane, as the taxi deposits Jekyll next
to
themailboxbytheroad.alittle
outside of Plattsburg, New York. The gaping mailbox, flag down, is crammed
with ads. Jekyll strides across the large square of ragged crabgrass, gains the
porch, then steps over a heap of wet newspapers, each folded and held
together by a rubber band, busily decaying into one another at the threshold of
the blistered front door. Another windy day, and rain in the wind.
Hyde is spinning about at the open door (equipped with neither bell nor
knocker), seizing Jekyll's gabardine raincoat and hurling it onto a hook next
his black cape in the corner of his seedy lair. When Hyde slams the door shut,
Jekyll half expects to hear the clank of a lock and chain.
"Let's take a look at you, buddy," Hyde growls, continuing the mock
cheerfulness. "Just as good-looking and uptight as ever. You haven't changed a
bit!"
Jekyll can't return the compliment.
If
it is a compliment.
In
the three
months since Jekyll last saw Hyde, trotting round and round the World Trade
Center, the younger man has aged fearfully. More of his thinning stringy hair
has fallen out. Right this minute, with several days' growth of beard on his
haggard face, he looks as old as Jekyll actually is. Jekyll feels a pang of paternal
concern.
