Memoirs of an Invisible Man by Harry F. Saint

Author:Harry F. Saint [Saint, Harry F.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780689117350
Published: 1987-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Over the next weeks I set­tled in­to a com­fort­able rou­tine in the Acad­e­my Club. Each even­ing I pre­pared my­self a large meal, which I car­ried up to the fifth floor and ate un­der the sun lamp. Then I washed and shaved—the most dif­fi­cult task of the day. Next to the main dress­ing room there was a large lav­at­ory lined with wash­bas­ins and shelves, on which were ar­rayed ra­zors, scis­sors, combs, brush­es, and every sort of soap and lo­tion—but no elec­tric ra­zors. The shav­ing soap did not ad­here well to my face, but—as much to show my­self ex­act­ly where my face was as to soft­en my beard—I daubed on huge quant­it­ies of it, and, gaz­ing in­tent­ly in­to the mir­ror, carved the lath­er out of the air. Then, since the noise of a show­er would have crashed through the whole build­ing—and would have pre­ven­ted me from hear­ing any­thing, fur­ther­more—I washed my­self stand­ing in front of a basin.

Af­ter­wards I liked to slip in­to the pool and swim re­peat­ed­ly up and down its length in the dark­ness. It is odd how much I swim now: I nev­er much cared for it as a child. Lone­ly and bor­ing but cool and pleas­ant.

Every week or so I did my best to cut my hair around the edges, flush­ing the trim­mings down the toi­let. And every few days I washed out my clothes.

I kept track dai­ly of the re­ser­va­tions for guest rooms, and if there were any emp­ty, I got fresh sheets from the lin­en clos­et so that I could make up my bed in the morn­ing and then locked my­self safe­ly in­to a room for the night. When the rooms were all full, which they of­ten were dur­ing the week, I stretched out on a couch or on bun­dles of fresh­ly laun­dered tow­els.

Dur­ing the day I would read in the lib­rary, se­lect­ing my books ear­ly in the morn­ing when no one was about and pla­cing them on the shelves in my fa­vor­ite al­cove. I was be­gin­ning a sys­tem­at­ic study of phys­ics—or, more spe­cif­ic­ally, of par­ti­cle phys­ics—a sub­ject that in my opin­ion has more in com­mon with theo­logy than with sci­ence and that you should prob­ably avoid un­less, like me, you find it has some im­me­di­ate ap­plic­a­tion to your dai­ly life. The Acad­e­my Club lib­rary was weak in the sci­ences, but it was ad­equate for a start, and I spent long hours work­ing my way through en­cyc­lo­pe­dia art­icles and peri­od­ic­als. When I grew bored, I looked at the news­pa­pers half-heart­ed­ly, al­though what they de­scribed seemed more and more to be ut­ter­ly un­con­nec­ted with my ex­ist­ence. Or I slipped up the fire stairs to the roof and slept un­der the sun.

At first I made a point of go­ing out­side every day, usu­ally at noon, when the Club filled up. I had be­gun to go a bit mad dur­ing those days when I had kept my­self locked up in­side my apart­ment. It had af­fect­ed my judg­ment, made me de­lay leav­ing far too long, and I was de­term­ined now to force my­self out in­to the fresh air, where I would get some ex­er­cise, keep my mind clear.

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