The Root of His Evil

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Yes, I’m a junior executive, God help me. I’ve got a desk, a phone extension and a title. Statistician. You can’t beat that, can you? It sounds as important as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. But all I can make out of it is slave. In the Army we had slaves and overseers, and I was both. Here I’m one, but I’m supposed to pretend I’m the other. But I’ve accepted my lowly lot. Did you hear me? I’ve accepted it.”

  “I don’t accept my lowly lot. I’m nothing too. I’m only a waitress, but I have ambitions to be something more.”

  “The emancipated slave wants to drive slaves.”

  “All right, but they can get emancipated if they’ve got enough gump.”

  “But you still see no objection to slavery.”

  “It’s not slavery.”

  “Oh, yes, it is, yes, it is.”

  “To me, it’s work.”

  “Suppose you wanted to do work that didn’t pay, and yet they made you be an office worker?”

  “All real work pays.”

  “Oh, no. That’s where you’re wrong. Some work doesn’t pay. And yet you want to do it, and you can choose between going to them with your hat in your hand—a junior executive. Either way you’re their slave.”

  “Whose slave?”

  “All of them. The system.”

  “I don’t see any system. All I see is a lot of people trying to make a living.”

  “Well, I see it. And I accept it. But I’m going to make them accept it too—accept the other side, show them there’s two sides to it. I’ve been trying to organize a junior executives’ union.”

  “Any success?”

  “...No!”

  “Why not?”

  “They won’t admit they’re slaves!”

  “Maybe they’re not, really.”

  “Maybe the dead are not dead, really. They want to pretend they’re something they’re not—white-collar workers thinking they’re part of the system, on the other side. They think they’re going to be masters, too—”

  “Like me.”

  “Like you, and a fat chance—”

  “You can just leave me out. I don’t want to drive any slaves, but one day I’m going to be something, and I can’t be stopped—”

  “You can be, and you will be!”

  “Oh, no. Not me.”

  There was a great deal more, all in the same vein, and finally I got very annoyed. “I don’t like this kind of talk and I wish you’d stop.”

  “Because at heart you’re a cold little slave-driver.”

  “No, that’s not it at all.”

  “And what is it?”

  “Because you sound so weak.”

  He sulked a long time over that and then he said: “I am weak. You’re weak—”

  “I am not!”

  “We’re all weak, that’s why we’ve got to organize, it’s the only way to beat them!”

  “All right, maybe I’m weak, I’m only a girl that came to the city a few months ago, and I’m nothing to brag about. But I’d die rather than admit it!”

  “I admit it! I admit the truth! I—”

  “You stop that kind of talk right now! The idea! A big, strong healthy galoot like you, only twenty-seven years old, admitting you’re licked before you even start!”

  I was very angry. It was completely dark by now, and I knew I could never get to the meeting, so didn’t even say any more about it. I knew that he still wasn’t talking about what was really on his mind, although he certainly felt very strongly about this labor business, but in some way I felt it was important and I wanted to have it out with him.

  When I called him a big strong galoot, I yelled very loud, and then he seemed to realize that there might be neighbors, and subsided for a time. I went out in the kitchen to see what there might be to eat. The icebox was empty, but there was plenty of English biscuit and canned things, so I made some canapes and coffee and served them on a table in the living room, although I had to use condensed cream with the coffee. He gobbled it down, as I did, for we were very hungry. Then I took the dishes out, and he came and helped me wash them, and then we went back. I took his hand in mine. “What on earth is the matter with you anyway? Why don’t you tell me what it’s all about—what it’s really all about?”

  He gulped, and I saw he was about to cry, and I knew he wouldn’t want me to see him doing it. I snapped the lights out quick, and went to the door of the veranda. “Let’s sit out here. It’s such a pretty night.”

  It was a pretty night, with no moon but the stars shining bright and frogs croaking down near the water. We sat in a big canvas porch seat and I took his hand in mine again. “Go on. Tell me.”

  “What the hell? You want the story of my life?”

  Now right there was where I should have said yes, I want the story of your life, it’s most important that I know the story of your life. But at his words something like a knife shot through me. Because if he told the story of his life I might have to tell the story of my life, and I didn’t want to have to say I had been an orphan, that I didn’t know who I was, that I didn’t even know my proper name. Perhaps you think this is far-fetched, but there are many of us in that situation in the world. We form a, little club, and if you ever meet any of them they will tell you the same thing: it is a terrible thing not to know who you are, a secret shame that gnaws at you constantly, and all the more because you are helpless to do anything about it. So I merely said: “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m—just no good, that’s all.”

  “Some people might not think so.”

  “Oh, yes, if they knew it all.”

  “Most of the time I think you’re—a lot of good. And fine inside, I mean. But I don’t like it when you talk this way. I don’t mind what you are. I don’t mind if you’re never anything—of what you mean. But I hate it when you stop fighting. That’s the main thing—to do your best.”

  “I’m blocked off from my best.”

  Again, what was he talking about? I didn’t know, and for my own reasons, I was afraid to ask. So I merely patted his hand and said: “Nobody can be blocked off from their best, if they really try. It’s got to come out.”

  He put his head on my shoulder, and we sat a long time without talking, and then he went to the end of the veranda and sat for awhile with his back to me, looking out over the water. Then he came and stood looking down on me. “There’s one way I can get back at them.”

  “How?”

  “By marrying you.”

  It was like a dash of cold water in the face somehow. Up to then, in spite of all the talk he had been indulging in, I had felt very near him, but now I felt very queer, and must have hesitated for a time before I said anything. “Is that the only reason you want to marry me? To get back at them?”

  “Well—let’s say to get clear of them.”

  “To show your independence?”

  “All right, put it that way.”

  “It doesn’t interest me to be the Spirit of ’76 to your little revolution—whatever it’s about, as I haven’t found out yet.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “There’s only one reason I’d marry you, or anybody. If you loved me, and I felt I loved you, that would be enough reason. But just to get back at them—well, that may be your idea of a reason, but it’s not mine.”

  “There’s plenty I haven’t told you.”

  “I doubt if I’d be interested.”

  I went in, put my wet bathing things back into the bag, put on my hat and went out. He was sitting on the step. “Where are you going?”

  “Well, there seems to be a town or something over there, so I thought I’d take the train back. I was supposed to be brought back long ago, but nothing seems to have been done about it.”

  He threw my bag into a corner, took off my hat and sat me down in the canvas porch seat. Then we started arguing again, and were right back where we started.

  We argued and argue
d, and it was dreary and didn’t make any sense, and he said of course he loved me, and I said he didn’t say it the right way. Then he said his vacation started the next day, and we could have a two-weeks’ honeymoon, and I said I didn’t see what that had to do with it. Then the frogs stopped croaking as though somebody had given them a signal, and it was so still you almost held your breath and everything we had been talking about seemed unreal, and all that mattered was that he was there and I was there, and peace came down upon us. And after awhile I said: “How much do you make?”

  “...Hundred bucks a week.”

  “All right, then, I make eighty-five. That’s enough.”

  “Do you mean yes.”

  “I might as well. I really want to. Do you?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Then yes.”

  Next thing I knew, the sun was shining and I was lying there under a blanket, and he was shaking me. “Breakfast’s ready.”

  I got up and went inside. He was all shaved and fresh-looking, but my sports dress was wrinkled, and my eyes were red and my face shiny, and my hair all rough and ratty. I took a bath, gave the dress a quick press with an electric iron that was there, and made myself look as decent as I could. Then we had the toast and coffee he had made, and when we got in the car the dew was still on the grass. We were before the big Monday rush, and made good time. We parked near Brooklyn Bridge and went over to the City Hall and got married. We were the first couple. We got in the car again and started uptown. I looked at him and realized I had never yet called him Grant, and yet he was my husband.

  Part II KNIFE UNDER THE TONGUE

  Five

  WE DROVE UP TO the Hutton, and I went up and packed and then came down and checked out, and paid with a check. He put my things in the car, and we drove over to his apartment, which was on East 54th Street. It was in a regular apartment building and had a large living room with a view clear over to Queens, and dining room and kitchen, and seemed a great deal more expensive than anybody could afford who made only a hundred dollars a week. But that wasn’t what struck me about it. It was the strangest place I had ever been in, and yet I knew it was interesting and in very fine taste. Except for the furniture itself, which was comfortable and of good quality, everything in it, even the rugs, was Indian. There were Mexican serapes, all very beautiful, hanging on the walls, as well as pictures by Mexican artists, mainly, as I later found out, Rivera and Orozco, all of Indians. There were Navajo rugs scattered around, and Indian silver and gold work, and on the wall a framed collection of arrowheads, ranging in size from tiny little red ones, which had been used to shoot birds with, up to big spear heads, and all arranged beautifully, in order of size, in white cotton batting with a glass frame over them. Then off on a table, under glass, there was a collection of stone instruments, which I later found out were what the Aztec priests had used to hack out the hearts of the sacrificial victims. However, there was something very beautiful about them, made as they were out of a black stone called obsidian, which was capable of being sharpened, as Grant once showed me, merely by holding it in water so that the oxidation or something brought it to a fine edge.

  All this, however, I only partly saw, except to realize I was in a most unusual place, and also to realize that there was something back of all this wild talk of Grant’s that I did not in the least understand. He had the boy take my things to the bedroom, and then began walking around much as he had the evening before. Suddenly it was dismal and hot, and sticky, and completely different from what a bride’s first day is supposed to be. However, I merely said: “It must be getting on toward eleven, so I think I had better go to work.”

  He hardly seemed to hear me. “Ah—what was that?”

  “I say it’s time for me to go to work.”

  “Oh. I suppose so.”

  “Well—shall I come back here then?”

  “Why—yes, of course.”

  “May I have a key?”

  “Why—certainly. Here, take mine.”

  I usually went to work on the subway, but I felt so miserable I took a taxi, first taking care to note the number of the apartment house, which made me feel still worse, as it was really supposed to be my home, and yet I had to remember it as though it was the address of some stranger. I cried in the taxi all right, and I was still crying when we came in sight of the restaurant. Then I saw it was being picketed, with a lot of the girls out there carrying placards, and arguing with people that started to go in. So I knew the strike had come as a result of the big meeting. But I was too sick at heart even to think about the union, or anything, and I told the driver to go on without stopping, and then I told him to turn around and take me back where he had picked me up.

  He had to go down to the Battery to turn around, and then was when I heard newsboys screaming the name Harris and saw the big headlines. I bought a paper out of the cab window and there it was:

  HARRIS JILTS DEB, WEDS WAITRESS

  Underneath was a big picture of Grant, with the caption Heir to Railroad Millions, and a smaller picture of a girl named Muriel Van Hoogland, with a brief item in very big type saying their engagement was announced last June, the wedding to take place in September, but that when she flew in from California that morning, she found he had just two hours before married me. I began to see things a little more clearly, or thought I did. I looked to see if there was any more, but there wasn’t except for a small item about the Karb strike. It had started, apparently, only a few minutes before I drove up there. The demands adopted at the big meeting had been presented to the management, which refused even to consider them at all, whereupon the girls had been called out on strike.

  By now, I realized that except for the coffee at the shack, I hadn’t had anything to eat, so instead of going at once to the apartment, I had the driver let me out at Times Square, and went in a restaurant for a sandwich. But while that was coming I went to the phone booth and called NBC and checked on the programs that had gone on ahead of Bergen on that station. And one of them was the young man who does interviews with people boarding planes at Lockheed Airport, in Burbank, California.

  When I came out on the streets again there were later editions, with longer items in them. One was an interview with Muriel Van Hoogland, in which she said she didn’t care a bit, and then burst out crying and slammed the door in the reporters’ faces. One was about me and my work at Karb’s and in the headline of that occurred for the first time the nickname, Modern Cinderella, which stuck. So by now I was not only feeling miserable, but afraid and worried, and I wanted time to think. I didn’t feel glad I had married a rich man. That part hardly entered my head, important though I hold money to be. I merely felt in some bitter way that I had been made a fool of, and when I ate my sandwich I walked up to the Newsreel Theatre and went in and sat down. There was nothing about me on the screen that day. I suppose it was too soon, though there was plenty later. I don’t know how long I sat there, but finally it all seemed to focus that I had to have it out with Grant, and yet I even hated the idea of going back to the apartment. So after a long time I left the theatre, and it must have been three or four o’clock.

  When I came out into the sunshine, I was startled to see my own picture in the papers, very big, with Grant’s picture much smaller, and Muriel Van Hoogland’s just a little circle down at one side. It was the picture I had had taken when I graduated from high school in Nyack, and that meant it must have come from there, and that frightened me. And sure enough, there was a whole long item about the orphan asylum, and being a waitress in the hotel, and all the rest of it that I had wanted to keep to myself.

  But what made something turn over inside of me was the big headline at the top of the page:

  CINDY EMBEZZLED, CHARGE

  And the main story was all about how Clara Gruber said I had absconded with the union funds, and had sworn a warrant out for my arrest.

  I went to a drug store and called the Solon, and told them I was quitting. I didn’t take a cab ove
r to the apartment. I didn’t want to go that fast. I went clumping over on my two feet, and the nearer I got the slower I went. I went up in the elevator, let myself in, and Grant was in the bedroom making a phone call. It took several minutes, and seemed to be about somebody that was ill, whom I took to be Muriel Van Hoogland, but that was a mistake. I sat down and waited. He hung up, and came out and began marching around again, and seemed to be under a great strain. He went to the window and looked out. “It’s hot.”

  “Quite.”

  “By the way, I was thinking of something else this morning when you went out and didn’t realize what you meant. You don’t have to bother about that job. There’s no need for you to work.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You—oh. That’s good. It’s terribly hot.”

  “They’re on strike.”

  “Who?”

  “The girls. The slaves. Remember?”

  “Oh. Oh, yes.”

  The bell rang, and he answered. It was a reporter who had come up without being announced. “Well—I suppose you’d better come in.”

  I remembered what Muriel Van Hoogland had done, and thought that was a pretty good idea myself. I went and slammed the door in the reporter’s face, then went back and took my seat again. “Now—suppose you begin.”

  “About what?”

  “About all of it.”

  “I don’t quite know what you mean. If there’s something on your mind suppose you begin.”

  “Who was that you were so concerned about just now?”

  “My mother. This thing seems to have upset her.”

  “You mean your marriage?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “To a waitress?”

  “—All right, to a waitress, but if I’m not complaining, I don’t see that we have anything to discuss.”

  “I do, so we’ll discuss. Who are you, anyway?”

  “I told you my name. In case you’ve forgotten it, you’ll find it on the marriage certificate. I believe you took it.”

  “You seem to be a little more than Grant Harris, Esquire. May I ask who the Harrises are—why the newspapers, for example, give so much space to the marriage of a Harris to—a waitress?”