e coat hangers, though I had no coat to hang up. Severin surprised me; he sprang into the living room naked, ready to maul the housebreaker. 'It's just me, for Christ's sake,' I said. His wang, I was relieved to see, looked more or less like anyone else's. Utch came up behind him and handed him his pants; she'd already slipped into her robe. I guess they could tell something was wrong by the way I looked.
'Edith's upset,' I said. 'It's probably my fault. I told her that you two had gone to the wrestling room.' Severin shut his eyes; Utch touched his shoulder. 'Well, no one told me not to tell her,' I said. They just stood there, Severin with his eyes shut and Utch looking at him. It was clear that they both knew what Edith was upset about. I was angry that I was the only one in the dark. 'Who's Audrey Cannon?' I asked angrily. Utch took her hand from Severin's shoulder and sat down on the couch. 'Come on, Severin,' I said. 'You used to take her to the wrestling room, too.' I may have sounded bold but when I looked at Utch, I got scared. She was looking at me with the kind of pity which could only be knowledge. She was telling me that I didn't really want to know, but I asked anyway: 'Who is Audrey Cannon?'
8
The Wrestling-Room Lover
IN SEPTEMBER THE wrestlers who didn't play football or soccer ran laps at the stadium track or plodded through the leaves on the cross-country course. Later they would have plenty of laps to run on the board track in the old cage; as long as the weather stayed warm, they ran outdoors. They were not all cut in the curious mold of George James Bender.
They played basketball together - funny, stumpy-looking figures bungling the ball, missing the basket cleanly, jarring the backboard. Two of them took up handball until one of them ran into the wall. Other sports appeared to frustrate and bore them, but by October they took on many restless sports, built their wind and lost some weight - and when they'd finished exercising they'd make for the wrestling room, turn up the thermostat and 'roll around'.
Unless they'd been wrestling through the summer months - and only the Benders of the world did so - Severin did not allow them to actually wrestle. It was too early, he said; they weren't in shape. They cooperated, putting each other through moves and holds at half-speed. Occasionally they got playful and brief flurries of real combat would erupt, but for the most part, they just drilled. They also sat on the soft mats, with their backs against the padded walls, letting the temperature rise to eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five, moving around just enough to keep loose.
Anyone seeing them in the wrestling room would have thought they were a parody team miming wrestlers, moving with an exaggerated gentleness antithetical to their purpose. They lumbered and rolled and carried each other around in an almost elderly fashion. Some of them, tired from running in the woods or straining against the weight-lifting contraptions, actually slept. They came to this hothouse wearing double layers of sweatsuits with towels around their heads, and even as they slept they kept a sweat running. Tight against the wall and in the corners of the room where they would not accidentally be rolled on, they lay in mounds like bears.
Severin Winter, their coach and German professor, came by the wrestling room just to look in on them - like a father observing his children in some incubator phase. He did not really believe that these hibernating metabolisms represented life as he knew it; not yet. He appeared almost embarrassed for his wrestlers, as if, in the shape they were in, there was nothing he could offer them but hope and a few words to enhance their German vocabularies. (At this time of year, he did hold occasional German classes in the wrestling room.)
But in the pre-season before Bender was on his team - the same pre-season before he and Edith knew us - Severin was low on hope. 'I knew he was low on hope,' Edith told me, 'because he talked a lot about going back to live in Vienna. That's a low-on-hope sign with him.'
'No, no,' Severin disagreed. 'First it was the insomnia. It all started with the insomnia.'
I could have told him that insomnia after eight years of marriage is very little trouble. If I'd known him then, I could have recommended some remedies less drastic than the one he chose. (When my typist, the History Department's secretary, was typing the manuscript of my third historical novel, I couldn't sleep and knew I wouldn't until it was done. I found that the only place I could sleep was in her tiny apartment while listening to her typing new pages. Her name was Miss Ronquist. I told Utch I was using the department's big office typewriter to type the manuscript myself, and that the only time I could use the typewriter was at night, when the office was closed. It was impossible to reach me by phone because the university switchboard shut off all calls after midnight. It took a long time to type that manuscript. Miss Ronquist was tired all the time and could manage only about five pages a night. Slow for a typist, but she found other ways to help me sleep. And when the book was finished, I went home and slept very well with Utch. Nothing was amiss; no one was upset.)
But Severin was inexperienced with insomnia, and his reaction was typically unreasonable. You can tell a lot about someone by how he deals with insomnia. My reaction - to insomnia and to life in general - is to give in. My best-trained senses are passive; my favorite word is yield. But Severin Winter would not yield to anything, and when he had insomnia, he fought it.
It began one night when he was lying awake beside Edith after they'd made love. She was drowsy, but he lay there like an overcharging battery. 'I have nothing to do,' he announced and got out of bed.
'Where are you going?' Edith asked.
'I can't sleep.'
'Well, read something,' Edith said. 'The light doesn't bother me.'
'There's nothing I want to read right now.'
'Well, write something and then read that.'
'You're the writer,' he said. 'One's enough.'
'Why don't you wait until I fall asleep,' Edith said, 'and then very gently see if you can make love to me again without waking me up.'
'I tried that last night.'
'You did?' said Edith. 'What happened?'
'You didn't wake up,' he said. He put on his running shorts and track shoes, then stood there as if he didn't know what to do next. 'I'm going to ride the bicycle around,' he decided. 'That will make me tired.'
'It's after midnight,' said Edith, 'and you don't have a light on the bike.'
'I can see the cars coming. Or I can hear them if they're sneaking around with their lights off.'
'Why would they be doing that?' Edith asked.
'I don't know!' he shouted. 'Why am I doing this?'
'I don't know!' Edith confessed. I'm the writer, she thought. I should have his energy, I should be as crazy.
But I don't think either of them really understood it. When I told Severin that I sympathized with his insomnia, he told me that I understood nothing. 'I'm not like you,' he said. 'I was simply unable to sleep. I went out to ride my bike. That's how it started.'