BOOK FOUR
DESPAIR
The wine of life is drawn; and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.
—SHAKESPEARE’S Macbeth
THE SEDUCTIONS of vanity have lured countless men to destinies that have confounded them, left them straitened and undone. After an arduous journey of experience it is not good to stare in dismay at a world that one was creating without being aware of it, and there is no chastening of the spirit so severely sobering as that rankling sense of guilt that springs from a knowledge of having been snared into the mire of disillusionment when one thought that one was soaring on wings of intellectual pride to a freedom remote from the errors and frailties of the gullible. At times there comes into the lives of men realizations so paralyzing that, for the first time, their hands reach out fumblingly for the touch of another human being.
In Cross’s despair it was upon Eva’s trapped and deceived heart—into whose depths he had stolen a criminal glimpse—that he now instinctively leaned, his wounded pride groping toward that one shelter where he hoped waited someone who loathed cruelty and yearned to place a kiss of fraternity upon the betrayed and victimized. And, as much for a dawning reverence for her as for the protection of his own self-love, he tried desperately to shield her from the shock of rough events that he knew would be soon sweeping on tidal waves toward the both of them. Many despairs and regrets later, via his acutely developed habit of reflection, when he had reexamined his behavior following his bloody snatching of the lives of Gil and Herndon, he could find nothing remiss in how he had deported himself. To an important extent the logic derived from a mixing of his temperament and gratuitous opportunity had determined his attitude. To have fled immediately upon his gory acts would have been to confess his guilt openly, and to have tried to explain either to the police or to the Party the complex composition of the elementary judgment-feeling that had spurred him to such acts of ethical murder would have been to succumb to a gesture of sheer naïveté of which he was far too intelligent to be capable. He reasoned that it was much safer to lie, to dodge, to blend with the changing hues of the foliage of the landscape for safety in eluding his pursuers.
In talking to Hilton over the telephone, Cross was careful to assume the role of a subordinate, a humble outsider, a man speaking for a temporarily incapacitated woman.
“But Eva phoned and told me that you’d gone down to help Gil,” Hilton said in a baffled tone of voice.
“But the door was locked this time—”
“Did you try to get in?”
“Yeah. I banged and knocked and hollered—”
“And Herndon didn’t answer?”
“No.”
“And did you hear anything?”
“Fighting, like I told you—”
“Did you try to get help from anywhere?”
“Eva called you—”
“And the first time you went down, he hit you?”
“Yes, with the fire poker—”
“Where’s Eva now?”
“She fainted. She’s lying down.”
“You hear any noise now?”
“Nothing; nothing at all.”
“And Herndon ran Eva back into the apartment, hunh?”
“Yes; I was trying to phone you and she ran out—”
“He had a gun?”
“She said so. I didn’t see him. I bolted the door when she came running back in.”
“Did Gil seem badly hurt?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. I only got a glimpse of ’im,” Cross was purposefully vague. “Look, you ought to come over and I could explain it all. I just moved in this morning, see? This Herndon jumped me at sight, told me to get the hell out, wanted to pull a gun on me, said he’d kill me—”
“Where was Gil when you first looked through the door?”
“He was lying on the floor.”
“Herndon knocked him down?”
“Seems like it. Herndon had the fire poker in his hand—”
“Did you see him strike Gil?”
“Yes.”
“Was Gil conscious?”
“I don’t know—”
“And you’re sure that Eva saw him on the stairs a few minutes ago?”
“Sure; she said so.”
“Okay. Now, listen, don’t let anybody into the apartment until I come, unless it’s the police or somebody from the Party, see?”
“All right.”
“That’s all. I’ll be right over.” The line clicked.
Not once had any emotion entered Hilton’s voice as he questioned Cross over the telephone, but Cross noticed that throughout Hilton’s inquiries had run a theme that puzzled him. Ah, he knew now! Hilton was already trying to establish the fact that Herndon was the aggressor. Cross, knowing that Gil was dead, decided that his own defense could be best served by his feeding the Party’s hunger for a martyred hero, dead or alive. He marveled at how instinctively Hilton was reacting in terms of the Party’s organizational needs. If, in describing what he had seen when he had looked into the doorway, he said that Gil had seemed to be getting the worst of it, that Herndon had been standing over Gil with the fire poker, then the Party would claim, when it found that Gil was dead, that Herndon, the fascist beast, had killed him, and had later died of wounds which Gil, in self-defense, had inflicted on him during the course of the struggle. And then there was that fantastic windfall of luck of Eva’s thinking that she had seen Herndon after Herndon had been killed and after the door had been locked! Cross knew that he had to be careful in relating what he had seen, had always to keep sternly in mind that he must do no interpreting at all, that the Party and the police had to weigh what had happened and place their own assessment and value upon it. His aim would be to establish in the minds of the police and Party leaders that Herndon had been alive when he had last looked into the room, that Gil had been hurt, unconscious, maybe dying, and after that the door had been locked…
And would not Eva be his unconscious ally? He was convinced that her actions had been determined by an awful sense of guilt toward Gil. Her fantasy of seeing Herndon with a gun on the stairs was but her own feeling that Herndon ought to kill her now that Herndon had done her secret bidding by killing Gil…And Eva no doubt felt that he was, like she, a victim of the Party’s complicated duplicities…Yes, he had a chance to stand clear of suspicion as long as he could manipulate or count upon the guilt-feelings of others.
Cross took a deep breath and tried to keep the facts straight in his mind. This thing had come upon him so suddenly that its reality had not sunk home to him in all of its fullness. Had he killed them or was it a teasing fantasy? He was counting on their both being dead, or his whole plan was crazy. Or, if Gil lived, he was in trouble, both with the police and the Party. He longed to creep downstairs and make sure that they were both dead, but he feared complications would ensue if he broke open the door and looked in…And suppose someone saw him in the lower hallway now? But those men must be dead. God knows he had pounded them hard enough. Gil would have to be a superman to live after the many slashes that Herndon had rained down upon him and the heavy whacks he had showered upon his defenseless head at the end…Of Herndon he could be certain; that Fascist was dead…
“Lionel…” Eva’s voice was calling.
“Yes?”
He went in to her; she was half leaning on her elbow in bed and she looked at him with eyes brimming with fear and guilt.
“Did Gil seem badly hurt?”
“I don’t know,” he answered her softly.
“What did Hilton say?”
“He said for us to stay here; he’s on his way over now. He’s phoned the police and the Party.”
“But we should try to do something for Gil—”
“The door’s locked, Eva—”
“Oh, God,” she wailed, “I wish Hilton’d come. You hear anything down there now?”
“No,” Cross said. “I was listening in the front hall, but I couldn’t hear anything.”
>
She broke down again and began weeping. “I can’t stand this life—This deception—This everlasting violence—Is there no way to be human any more…?”
Before he could stop her, she had sprung from the bed and was running on swift feet down the hall to the door.
“Gil! Gil!” she was screaming.
“Eva!” he yelled and started after her.
“He’ll blame me if we don’t help ’im,” she sobbed hysterically. “And the Party’ll want to know why we didn’t help ’im…” She sobered quickly and stared at him, realizing that she was trying to explain something that he could not possibly understand.
Yes; she, like he, was wondering if Gil was really dead. A wounded Gil, a living Gil, would be a calamity for the both of them. He longed to put her at peace, to tell her that she was free. But he could not. He caught her on the landing, about to descend the stairs. He grabbed her shoulders.
“Herndon’s dangerous,” he argued. “And Hilton said for us to keep from down there—”
“Gil may be hurt,” she whimpered. “We could help him—”
“The door’s locked!” he insisted. Yes, he would stress that she must be loyal to the Party, something which she feared more than she feared Gil. “The Party will perhaps make a test case of this, see? We can’t interfere…” A better idea leaped into his mind; she felt that he was a victim of the Party and he would try to exploit her delusion. That’s it…“Look, Eva,” he argued solemnly, “this is complicated. The reason that Hilton doesn’t want me to go down there is that I’m colored, see? You know the police…They’d try to frame me…”
She wilted, turned, and buried her face on his shoulder. Hers was a world ruled by fear. He led her back into the apartment and bolted the door; sweat stood on his forehead. He guided her steps to the bed and gently helped her upon it. They were silent; there came the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Eva strained, lifting herself almost to a sitting position. Could that be the police or Hilton? Cross heard the footsteps mount the stairway. No; it was somebody who lived upstairs.
“The Cushmans,” Eva whispered. “They’re anti-Party.”
Cross stared at her in amazement. To her the world was either Party or anti-Party, and all in between did not count. He sat on a chair at the side of the bed. Eva was shaking; he could hear her teeth rattling. He longed to take hold of her and soothe her, but dared not.
“You think they’ll blame us if Gil’s badly hurt?” she asked in a whisper.
The Party ruled her not only positively but negatively. It was not only what she did that would make her guilty, but also what she did not do…
“We did what we could,” he told her. “This was not our idea, Eva. They should have sent someone to help Gil…And he wouldn’t let me go down with ’im…”
Her sense of guilt was a hot bed of coals and she was squirming on it. Cross rose and Eva reached impulsively and grabbed his hand and clung to it.
“Don’t go,” she begged.
“I was going to try to listen at the door—”
“Don’t leave me here,” she pled in a whisper of panic.
He sat again on the edge of the bed and felt nervous tremors going through her body. If only he could tell her that she was free! But, no…If he told her that he had killed, the horror she felt for the Party would be transferred to him…
He was aware of her slim, willowy figure on the bed, the legs that tapered with such a long, slow curve, the suggestively dramatic roundness of her hips, the small but firm breasts, the long and delicate neck, and the hazel pools of her eyes now dark and anxious with dread; and desire for desire rose in him for her for the first time. Oh, God, he must not think of that now…He felt the soft pressure from her thin, almost transparent fingers on his hand and she became woman as body of woman for his senses. The depths of him stirred as he realized that she was now alone in the world and did not know it; in a peculiar sense she was at his mercy. What he did or did not do, what he said or did not say would affect her more profoundly now than anything that would ever happen to her. Already she was his in a deeper sense than the sexual, in a sense that included the sexual. At this moment she was again an orphan; she had only him to depend upon and he could now, like Gil had done with Bob, ravage her entire being without any resistance from her. From the poignant pages of her diary and from the fact that Gil was dead and she did not know it, he possessed a comprehension of her existence that she had not the capacity to imagine. Would she suspect him? Could she suspect him? She believed that colored people were caught up in life, healthy, untouched and unspoiled by the cynical world of political deceptions…Had she not referred to “us” when she spoke of her fear of the Party?
For the first time since he had killed, he felt guilty. It was not a guilt for his having murdered; it was because he now saw that he held over the life of Eva a godlike power and knowledge that even Gil or the Party had not held. He had killed Gil and Herndon because they had wanted to play god to others, and their brutal strivings had struck him as being so utterly obscene that he had torn their lives from them in a moment of supreme conviction that he and he alone was right and that they were eternally wrong. And now Gil lay still and dead downstairs amid the trembling red shadows and he sat here holding Eva’s hand, desiring her body. And the wall of deception which he had begun to erect to conceal the nature of her husband’s death would throw her, perhaps, into his arms…
If the actions of Gil and Herndon were monstrously inhuman, then was not what he was doing also devoid of humanity? If there was a valid difference, just where did it lie? Was the innocence of Gil and Herndon the less because they had millions of supporters, because time and tradition, law and religion had mounted a shield of justification before them? And his guilt, was it the more because he was alone and had no counsel but his own? If Gil or Herndon had done what he had done, would it have worried them? Was not his worrying proof that he was wrong? Did he not need about him the sanctioning buttress of the faces of his brothers in crime to make him feel at home with his deed?
His sense of despair deepened and he yearned for the first time to be free of this circling, brooding that filled his skull, this elusive shadow of himself that tortured him. To go on killing would only sink him deeper into these quicksands of guilt which he wanted so much to avoid. What way was there out of this? The desperately naïve idea of confessing everything to Eva came to him. Might not she, being another victim, understand and help him? No! That was crazy…She believed him an innocent victim, not a guilty one! No; he could talk to no one now; he had to tread this guilty treadmill alone…
He recovered himself as the fingers of Eva’s hand tightened about his own.
“Are you frightened, Lionel?”
“No.”
“What can we tell them?”
“The truth. We’ll tell them what happened…”
He knew that, childlike, she was already thinking that maybe a lie would be a better kind of truth to tell than to try to conceal the guilt that had so long smouldered in her heart. Why was he mulling and hesitating? Ride this thing out and take this lovely girl and live with her…
“What are you thinking, Lionel?”
“Nothing,” he breathed.
“They’ll say we acted wrongly, won’t they?”
“How could they?” he asked. “We couldn’t do any more than we did—”
“Oh, why did the Party push you into this?” she wailed.
“We’re in it together,” he told her.
“Gil may be wanting us to help him; maybe he’s hurt,” she began to weep again.
The doorbell rang.
“Go, Lionel!”
Cross ran and let in Jack Hilton and another man. They stared at one another for a moment in silence. Eva came running from the bedroom.
“He’s still down there, Jack—Can’t you do something?” she implored. “Maybe he’s hurt…”
Hilton’s face turned pale and he spun to Cross.
“But the polic
e? Aren’t they here yet?”
“No,” Cross told him.
“And Gil’s still down there?”
“Yes.”
“And that door’s still locked?”
“I guess so,” Cross stammered.
“My God—” Hilton said, whirling and going through the door. He halted, turned, and beckoned to his companion. “Come on, Menti!”
They thundered down the stairs. Eva followed Menti; and Cross, lingeringly, followed Eva, watching Hilton’s movements, wondering what his tactics would be. They paused momentarily in the downstairs hallway. Hilton advanced to the door of Herndon’s apartment.
“Is this the door?”
“Yes,” Cross told him.
Hilton grabbed the knob and rattled it.
“Gil! Are you there?” Hilton called loudly.
“Gil! Gil!” Eva yelled, hammering on the panels of the door with her fists.
“You’d better break it down,” Cross said. “I’ve called and called—”
Hilton hesitated, then ran to the rear door and tried the handle. He walked back toward them with worried eyes.
“Put your shoulder to it, Menti,” Hilton said.
“Okay,” Menti agreed eagerly.
Menti, tall, black of hair, with a nervous, too-white face, backed off to the bottom of the stairs, quickly hunched his shoulders and sent himself toward the door and in the second of his body hitting the panels, the door burst in, banging loudly against a wall inside. Menti blocked Cross’s vision and he could see nothing; he remembered the room lit by flames and dancing shadows, but the wood fire had died down and, though he had forgotten it, the light on the ceiling had gone out when Gil had accidentally struck the chandelier with the fire poker. Eva pushed past him, then stopped, her face gazing at the floor of Herndon’s study.