The History Man Read Online Free Page B

him?’ asks Howard; the stubby red arm is down in front of him. ‘He left a note for her on the table,’ says Barbara. ‘Then he went down the garden, to an old shed, and killed himself with a rope.’ Howard reaches out of the window, and hands the ticket and a coin to the attendant, who sits opposite and above him, in a small glass box. ‘I see,’ says Howard, ‘I see.’ The attendant hands Howard change; the stubby arm rises in front of him. ‘When?’ asks Howard, moving the van forward. ‘Two days ago,’ says Barbara. ‘Is she very upset?’ asks Howard. ‘She’s thin and pale, and she cried,’ says Barbara. Howard carefully eases the van out into the line of rush-hour traffic. ‘Are you upset?’ asks Howard. ‘Yes,’ says Barbara, ‘it’s upset me.’
    The traffic line jams. ‘You hardly knew him,’ says Howard, turning to look at her. ‘It was the note,’ says Barbara. Howard sits behind the wheel, stuck in the line, and looks at the moving collage. ‘What did it say?’ he asks. ‘It just said, “This is silly.”’ ‘A taste for brevity,’ says Howard. ‘What was? The thing with – Rosemary?’ ‘Rosemary says not,’ says Barbara, ‘she says they were going great together.’ ‘I can’t really imagine going great with Rosemary,’ says Howard. Barbara stares ahead, through the windscreen. She says: ‘She says he found things absurd. He even found being happy absurd. It was life that was silly.’ ‘Life’s not silly,’ says Howard, ‘it may be chaotic, but it’s not silly.’ Barbara stares at Howard; she says, ‘You’d like to quarrel with him? He’s dead.’ Howard inches the van forward; he says, ‘I’m not quarrelling with him. He had his own thing going.’ ‘He thought life was silly,’ says Barbara. ‘Christ, Barbara,’ says Howard, ‘the fact that he killed himself doesn’t make it into a universal truth.’ ‘He wrote that,’ says Barbara, ‘then he killed himself.’ ‘I know,’ says Howard, ‘that was his view. That was his existential choice. He couldn’t make sense of things, so he found them silly.’ ‘It’s funny to be existential,’ says Barbara, ‘when you don’t exist.’ ‘It’s the fact that we stop existing that makes us existential choosers,’ says Howard, ‘that’s what the word means.’ ‘Thanks,’ says Barbara, ‘thanks for the lesson.’ ‘What’s the matter?’ asks Howard, ‘are you getting yourself seduced by this absurdist thing? It’s a cop out.’
    The traffic jam unstops. Howard lets out the clutch. Barbara stares ahead through the windscreen, down at the traffic movements on the hill. After a minute she says: ‘Is that all?’ ‘All what?’ asks Howard, moving forward through the peculiar private track that will take him through the traffic lanes and take him back to the terrace house. ‘All you have to say,’ says Barbara, ‘all you can think.’ ‘What do you want me to think, that I’m not thinking?’ asks Howard. ‘Doesn’t it worry you at all that so many of our friends feel that way now?’ asks Barbara, ‘do things like that now? That they seem tired and desperate? Is it our ages? Is it that the political excitement’s gone? What’s the matter?’ ‘He wasn’t a friend,’ says Howard, ‘we hardly knew him.’ ‘He came to a party,’ says Barbara. Howard, driving down the hill, turns and looks at her. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘he came to a party. He was on drugs. He and Rosemary were getting into some crazy magical thing together, the kind of thing that hippies switch into when the trips turn sour. He