Voices From the Street

  “This is the Hayes District,” Marsha said as the Studebaker reached the top of the hill, wavered, and then began creeping down the far side. “This big dip is called Hayes Hole. I live three-fourths of the way down.”

  Cars were parked on the sidewalks and in driveways. Beyond the dip, the far ascent was alive with lights and the movement of traffic. Buses nosed rapidly upward; at intersections swarms of people packed tightly together pushed across to the other side. Presently Marsha slowed the Studebaker, stuck out her thin arm, and then swerved across the line, through the left-hand lane, and into a narrow concrete passage between two towering wooden houses. The car emerged in a circular parking area, in front of a row of tumbledown garages. Marsha drove the car from the concrete into the tangle of moist grass and dirt that made up the yard of one of the houses. She yanked on the parking brake and snapped off the motor.

  “Well,” she said briskly, “we’re here.”

  Hadley got stiffly from the car. Cold wet fog lay over everything; the sky was overcast. To his right stood a dripping wood fence, enclosing a backyard littered with rusty beer cans and huge weeds. Boxes of soggy newspapers were stacked against the line of garages. An overturned bathtub lay half buried. Around a burned-out shell of an incinerator was strewn charred, burned garbage and refuse. The building itself ended in a jumble of sagging steps, water pipes, cracked slabs of concrete walk, rotting gray porch and railing.

  “Not very pretty, is it?” Marsha observed.

  Hadley remembered the desolate hills between towns; this was the same abandoned ruin. He shivered and moved toward the apartment building. “How do we get in?” he demanded impatiently.

  Marsha led him up a rickety flight of steps, past lines of flapping, mildewed washing, to a screen door. She pushed the door open and led him into a kitchen that smelled of bacon grease and rancid vegetables moldering in dark bins. A light came on overhead, naked and glaring. One side of the kitchen was a massive sink and drainboard; dirty dishes were heaped in great piles all along it. Empty beer and wine bottles filled paper sacks on the linoleum floor. The kitchen table was littered with empty glasses and stuffed ashtrays, crumpled cigarette packages, corks and bottle stoppers.

  “In here,” Marsha said, leading him firmly from the kitchen. Hadley followed glumly into a carpeted hall. The odor of an ancient bathroom drifted through the hall, caught and stagnating in its corners. Into a living room the woman strode, reaching up for a light cord. She found it, and the living room struggled fitfully into being.

  Hadley faced a huge high-ceilinged room that had been repainted by hand. The walls were dark blue; the ceiling was green. Asphalt tile had been laid over the flooring. Instead of chairs there was a wide Hollywood-style bed; on the far side were heaped cushions and pillows tossed about the floor. In the center of the room was a low table made of Arizona sheet slate. On it was strewn a chessboard. In one corner dangled a mobile. Half of the room was a bookcase made of bricks and boards, stuffed with paperbound and hardcover volumes. The walls were obscured by thumbtacked prints. In every corner were stacked bound piles of magazines and newspapers. At the end of the Hollywood bed, Hadley made out a bulging cardboard box of unassembled Succubuses.

  “Sit down,” Marsha commanded. “I’ll pour you a drink. What do you want, scotch or bourbon?”

  “Bourbon,” Hadley murmured as he gingerly seated himself on the Hollywood bed.

  From the floor beneath he could hear the tinny shrill of a radio. Outside, cars honked and swished past noisily. A dull throbbing rattled the lamp and slate table—probably the refrigeration system of the building. The room was cold and damp; he shivered and fumbled in his pocket for his cigarettes. In the kitchen Marsha rooted about for clean glasses.

  While he was sitting and smoking and waiting, an immense white wolfhound padded in and eyed him. The dog sniffed, and then padded back out.

  “Good Tertullian,” Marsha shouted commandingly at the dog.

  The dog halted and turned toward her.

  “Go back to your pallet and lie down,” Marsha ordered it.

  The dog padded past Hadley and into the kitchen. It disappeared under the stove; with a sigh it folded itself up on a hair-filthy mattress and gazed out sightlessly over its pale shaggy paws.

  After an interval Marsha came quickly into the living room carrying two tall whiskey glasses. “Okay,” she said, seating herself on the bed and setting down the drinks in the center of the slate table. “Help yourself.”

  Hadley accepted his drink morbidly. “This place gets me down,” he said abruptly. Restlessly, he twirled the cold glass between his palms. “Look, is this on the level—or are you stringing me?”

  Marsha’s cold gray eyes met his. “What do you mean? Is what on the level?”

  “This business about Beckheim. How do I know you’re not stringing me along?” His eyes strayed sullenly around the room. “I don’t see any sign of him; where the hell is he?”

  “He’s not here,” Marsha said sharply. Her voice rose. “Why should he be here? Do you have some reason to expect to find him here?”

  “Calm down,” Hadley said uneasily.

  Marsha sipped her drink. “I don’t understand why you should suspect me,” she said thinly.

  “Suspect you! Of what?”

  “Let it go.” She was trembling violently. “I can’t have you suspecting me. Is that the way you feel about me? Don’t you have any trust or confidence in me?” Eyes bright and swimming, she rushed on: “Have I ever done anything to make you feel this way? No, it’s in you. It’s your fault, not mine.”

  “What the hell’s the matter?” he demanded irritably.

  “Nothing. I just can’t have you feeling this way. Please—” Abruptly she broke off and turned her head away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. Hadley was shocked; it was the first time he had really seen inside the brittle shell she had erected. Now, briefly, the underlying clinging uncertainty of the woman had emerged.

  “You’re terrified,” Hadley said, astonished. “You babble on, tough and ruthless. But you’re terrified of my disapproval.”

  “Forget it.” Blindly, she groped around. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”

  He gave her a cigarette from his pack; she leaned forward convulsively, fingers shaking. For a moment their faces were close together: she smelled faintly of soap and a dull woodsy scent. And of ragged, unstable fear. Then, rapidly, she leaned back, settled her thin shoulder blades against the wall, pulled up her legs and tucked them under her, folded her arms, inhaled from her cigarette, lifted her breasts a trifle, and smiled thinly at Hadley.

  “You’re going to have to learn,” she said, in a weak, hard voice. “You can’t treat people this way.”

  “Take it easy,” he told her. “You’re upset; there’s nothing going on. Nobody’s treating you any way.” Eyes bright, she continued to gaze at him until he got to his feet and paced fretfully around. “I don’t like this waiting, either,” he protested.

  Marsha leaned over to knock ash from her cigarette; the frantic, rigidly controlled grimace remained.

  “How long’s it going to be?” Hadley demanded. “How long do we have to sit facing each other? If I’m going to meet him then let’s get it over with.”

  Carefully, Marsha said: “It won’t be long. Try to stand my company a little longer.”

  “Why not now?”

  She continued to gaze fixedly at him; there was no answer. Was he supposed to infer a cosmic process? An inexorable ritual beyond the control of man? His tension increased; her instability affected him until he was almost overwhelmed. Suddenly he cried: “Let’s call the whole thing off! I’m going back!”

  “Sit down and drink your drink.”

  “No.” He faced her defiantly; they glared at each other with a kind of mute, rising hysteria until finally Marsha shuddered and looked away. “Stuart,” she said wearily, “you look so foolish standing there. Please sit down and
act like an adult.”

  Flushing, he threw himself down, back against the wall, and grabbed up his drink.

  “That’s better,” Marsha said, pleased at having regained the initiative. “What do you want to hear?”

  “Hear!” he bellowed. “What do you mean?”

  Marsha indicated a section of the wall. Controls, and the outlines of recessed doors, were visible. “Custom-built high-fidelity system.” Matter-of-factly, she slid to her feet. “I’ll show it to you; we mounted it in the wall.”

  “I’m not interested,” Hadley muttered angrily; but he watched from where he sat. A section of the wall was shoved back; albums of records were visible. Another section revealed a vast speaker and heaps of tangled wiring. The drawer came out, a complicated record changer and pickup cartridge.

  “Diamond needles,” Marsha explained. “One head for long-playing records, another for the old shellacs.”

  “Fine,” Hadley growled.

  “You have no preference?”

  “Play whatever you want. If you have to play something.”

  “Most modern music is degenerate,” Marsha stated as she lifted out a handful of LPs. “The Schönberg circle…atonality. All of the Viennese Jewish stuff.” She slid a record from its stiff jacket; carrying it by its edges, she placed it on the changer and started the mechanism. “See what you think of this.”

  Violently, high-pitched and metallic, the phonograph screeched out the ponderous sounds of a massed symphony orchestra.

  “A transcription of a Schubert piano work,” Marsha explained as she reseated herself. “Schubert never lived to score it… Isn’t it lovely?”

  “Beautiful.”

  For a while the two of them were silent. Facing each other, they listened to the blare of the high-fidelity sound system. In the kitchen, glasses and cups rattled in response to the din. At first the crashing concussions of sound beat furiously against Hadley’s brain; his head hurt and his eyes smarted. He winced and tried to tense himself against them. But gradually the sound deadened his brain; the sound receded and became a muffled noise in the distance, without form or meaning. It blotted out thought and concern; for that he was grateful. Everything in the room was taken up and absorbed into the music; the room and its contents jiggled and vibrated excitedly. In time, Stuart Hadley surrendered and gave himself over to the music. Tired and resigned, he ceased resisting. After that it was almost pleasant.

  The room dulled. Objects lost their shapes and fused together indiscriminately. Probably it was optical fatigue; he sat staring blankly straight ahead, partially hypnotized, his cigarette dying away in the ashtray on the table. The frenzy of the phonograph became partly visible, manifest in the colors of the walls, the pattern of the asphalt tile. A kind of darkly metallic blur effused itself around him, and he accepted it. In the kitchen, on his pallet under the stove, Tertullian dozed.

  At the end of the record side, Marsha got to her feet and crossed the room to the amplifier. With an abrupt twist of her fingers she turned off the intricate equipment. The noise withdrew back into the speaker, and the room was freed. Nervously, Marsha paced back to the bed; she was as taut as Hadley.

  Hadley felt that he had undergone some kind of vague and cruel ordeal, the purpose of which was unknown to him. Perhaps it was unknown to Marsha, too. In any case, it was over. He took a deep breath and reached to take up his drink. He blinked, resettled himself, drank a few swallows.

  “Where are your children?” he asked. “I don’t see them around.”

  “They’re away.” Jerkily, Marsha dusted the ash from her cigarette. “Up in Sonoma County, at summer camp.”

  “Do you live here alone?”

  “No.”

  “You just rent this place, don’t you?”

  Marsha nodded rigidly. Suddenly she leaped up and crossed to the phonograph. She turned it back on, flipped the record over, and left it to play quietly, withdrawn into the background. Again she seated herself, stiff and tense. Hadley felt purged of his tension; the music had done it. Having endured, he had now passed into a stage of feeling the inevitability of things. It was obvious that things were proceeding by their own laws; concealed dynamics were at work. He could not expect to hasten or postpone: he could sit and wait. Gracefully, he waited.

  While Stuart Hadley lay listening, the door of the apartment opened and a man entered. It did not seem surprising or strange that the man was Theodore Beckheim. In a dark blue suit, a hat on his head, a heavy coat over his arm, the huge Negro latched the door after him, laid his coat and hat down on a table in the hallway, and then entered the living room.

  Hadley arose to his feet. The two men came toward each other, and Marsha hastily put aside her drink to introduce them.

  Theodore Beckheim held out his hand and the two men shook. He was old, round-shouldered, and immense, in his antiquity; his suit was rumpled and threadbare, a hard suit, very ancient, stiff and formal, too tight around the wrists, too short at the cuffs. His old-fashioned black shoes were shiny, scuffed, dignified. He wore a vest, buttoned, in the middle of summer.

  “How do you do, Mister Hadley.” Beckheim regarded the blond-haired young man without expression; his dark eyes were large and vaguely discolored. Yellow fluid swam around the intense pupils. He glanced briefly at Marsha, then back at Hadley. The old man’s skin was as rough and pebbled as leather, dried and horny, a thick hide stretched tight against the knobby bones of his skull and cheeks. His black lips were thin and chapped, drawn back from his gold-filled teeth. His hair was dark gray, short and woolen. He gave off a faint musty scent, the odor of old garments; and behind that the stale sweat of his body. He was a heavy, tired old man. It seemed to Hadley that he was at least seventy. It was hard to tell. There was very little of the vitality visible now, the fire that had streamed out of him that night in the auditorium.

  But Hadley was not disappointed. He was awed. That night, Beckheim had been an impersonal instrument speaking to an auditorium of people. This night, Beckheim was a human individual; and the transition moved Hadley more than any repetition of the dynamic oratory. It seemed to him that this was more than he could have hoped for; Beckheim was a man who could be talked to, spoken with. The gap between Hadley and Beckheim could be bridged—at least at this moment. Beckheim, tired and rumpled, had stepped down. Here was no public posture, no declamation or prophetic oratory. This was only a hulking black man in an old-fashioned suit and vest, holding on to Hadley’s hand and gazing at him curiously.

  “I heard you speak,” Hadley said.

  Beckheim’s thin lips moved, twitched faintly; a nervous spasm that was almost a smile, almost a grimace. “Where?” he asked.

  “Down in Cedar Groves. Last month.”

  Beckheim nodded wryly. “Oh, yes.” Vaguely, he moved away from Hadley, letting go of his hand. “You came up with Miss Frazier?” Beckheim and Marsha drew off together in the corner of the room; Beckheim began talking to her in low, rapid tones. At first Hadley thought he was being discussed; he thought Beckheim was asking her about him and his presence. Then he realized that Beckheim had not seen her for a while; he was giving her information on general topics and asking questions that had nothing to do with Hadley. For an interval the impersonal, public figure reemerged.

  Then Beckheim and Marsha moved out of the room entirely, into the hallway and then the kitchen. Hadley was alone.

  Embarrassed, tense, he moved aimlessly around the room, hands in his pockets, doing nothing, waiting and not looking or listening. Finally he threw himself shakily down on the Hollywood bed and got out his cigarettes. He was jerkily lighting up when Marsha reentered the room, smiling her bloodless, imperative smile down at him and reaching for the two whiskey glasses.

  “Back they go,” she said briskly. “Ted says so.”

  She was gone, and the drinks with her. From the kitchen came sounds of activity. The huge, looming dark shape of Beckheim crossed back and forth before the doorway of the kitchen; as it momentarily cut off th
e light, Hadley involuntarily glanced up. Beckheim had taken off his dark jacket and tossed it over his arm. He wore a light blue shirt and black tie. His cuffs were visibly frayed. Under his arms were vast dark moons of perspiration. Without his jacket he was even more hunched than before. He plucked at his chin, murmuring, strode here and there, glanced once at Hadley, smiled slightly, and then again looked away.

  The two of them came from the kitchen together, walking as a pair, without touching each other, faces rapt with reflection. “I’m sorry,” Beckheim said to Hadley, turning his attention away from whatever it was he had been discussing. “Society business…of no interest. There was no intention of excluding you.” The preoccupied look returned. Beckheim’s words were clearly not a spontaneous statement; they were a carefully measured, almost formal utterance that Beckheim had decided upon.

  “That’s okay,” Hadley murmured huskily, rising to his feet awkwardly and facing the two of them. He was trembling; it seemed to him that now Beckheim had really come toward him. Now Beckheim was really seeing him; he had caught the man’s attention.

  “Sit down.” In a kindly way, Beckheim indicated the bed, and the three of them seated themselves. Some of the room’s tension slipped away, and Hadley smiled nervously.

  “Coffee’s heating on the stove,” Marsha said faintly, in a withdrawn, diffident voice. She sat stiff and prim; not nervous now, but silent, obedient, attentive, like a carefully trained child. “We’re going to have shortbread cookies with it. In a couple of minutes.”

  Beckheim sat with his huge black hands resting on his knees. His nails, like his hair, were gray and luminous, and partly transparent. The black flesh was visible beneath, as if seen through water. “Do you live in Cedar Groves?” Beckheim asked. His voice was low, hoarse, without racial or regional accent.

  There was no special quality to it; except for its depth, its unusual lower timbre, it was an ordinary man’s voice. He spoke informally; Hadley felt very near to him, for this finite interval, this thin section of time cut out of the limitless flow.