He strode angrily, grabbed the jar so it sloshed, and would have flung it on the floor, but he stopped trembling, and let it down softly on the spindly table. He leaned over it, sobbing. If he lost this, the world was gone. And he was losing Thedy, too. Every month that passed she danced further away, sneering at him, funning him. For too many years her hips had been the pendulum by which he reckoned the time of his living. But other men, Tom Carmody, for one, were reckoning time from the same source.
Thedy stood waiting for him to smash the jar. Instead, he petted and stroked and gradually quieted himself over it. He thought of the long, good evenings in the past month, those rich evenings of friends and talk, moving about the room. That, at least, was good, if nothing else.
He turned slowly to Thedy. She was lost forever to him.
‘Thedy, you didn’t go to the carnival.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You’re lyin’,’ he said, quietly.
‘No, I’m not!’
‘This—this jar has to have somethin’ in it. Somethin’ besides the junk you say. Too many people believe there’s somethin’ in it, Thedy. You can’t change that. The carny-boss, if you talked with him, he lied.’ Charlie took a deep breath and then said, ‘Come here, Thedy.’
‘What you want?’ she asked, sullenly.
‘Come over here.’
He took a step toward her. ‘Come here.’
‘Keep away from me, Charlie.’
‘Just want to show you somethin’, Thedy.’ His voice was soft, low, and insistent. ‘Here, kittie. Here, kittie, kittie, kittie—HERE KITTIE!’
It was another night, about a week later. Gramps Medknowe and Granny Carnation came, followed by young Juke and Mrs Tridden and Jahdoo, the black man. Followed by all the others, young and old, sweet and sour, creaking into chairs, each with his or her thought, hope, fear, and wonder in mind. Each not looking at the shrine, but saying hello softly to Charlie.
They waited for the others to gather. From the shine of their eyes one could see that each saw something different in the jar, something of the life and the pale life after life, and the life in death and the death in life, each with his story, his cue, his lines, familiar, old but new.
Charlie sat alone.
‘Hello, Charlie.’ Somebody peered into the empty bedroom. ‘Your wife gone off again to visit her folks?’
‘Yeah, she run for Tennessee. Be back in a couple weeks. She’s the darndest one for runnin’. You know Thedy.’
‘Great one for jumpin’ around, that woman.’
Soft voices talking, getting settled, and then, quite suddenly, walking on the dark porch and shining his eyes in at the people—Tom Carmody.
Tom Carmody standing outside the door, knees sagging and trembling, arms hanging and shaking at his side, staring into the room. Tom Carmody not daring to enter. Tom Carmody with his mouth open, but not smiling. His lips wet and slack, not smiling. His face pale as chalk, as if it had been sick for a long time.
Gramps looked up at the jar, cleared his throat and said, ‘Why I never noticed so definite before. It’s got blue eyes.’
‘It always had blue eyes,’ said Granny Carnation.
‘No,’ whined Gramps. ‘No, it didn’t. They was brown last time we was here.’ He blinked upward. ‘And another thing—it’s got brown hair. Didn’t have brown hair before!’
‘Yes, yes, it did,’ sighed Mrs Tridden.
‘No, it didn’t!’
‘Yes, it did!’
Tom Carmody, shivering in the summer night, staring in at the jar. Charlie, glancing up at it, rolling a cigarette, casually, all peace and calm, very certain of his life and thoughts. Tom Carmody, alone, seeing things about the jar he never saw before. Everybody seeing what he wanted to see; all thoughts running in a fall of quick rain:
My baby. My little baby, thought Mrs Tridden.
A brain! thought Gramps.
The black man jigged his fingers. Middibamboo Mama!
A fisherman pursed his lips. Jellyfish!
Kitten. Here kittie, kittie, kittie! The thoughts drowned clawing in Juke’s eyes. Kitten!
Everything and anything! shrilled Granny’s weazened thought. The night, the swamp, death, the pale things, the wet things from the sea!
Silence. And then Gramps whispered, ‘I wonder. Wonder if it’s a he—or a she—or just a plain old it?’
Charlie glanced up, satisfied, tamping his cigarette, shaping it to his mouth. Then he looked at Tom Carmody, who would never smile again, in the door, ‘I reckon we’ll never know. Yeah. I reckon we won’t,’ Charlie shook his head slowly and settled down with his guests, looking, looking.
It was just one of those things they keep in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you…
The Small Assassin
Just when the idea occurred to her that she was being murdered she could not tell. There had been little subtle signs, little suspicions for the past month; things as deep as sea tides in her, like looking at a perfectly calm stretch of tropic water, wanting to bathe in it and finding, just as the tide takes your body, that monsters dwell just under the surface, things unseen, bloated, many-armed, sharp-finned, malignant and inescapable.
A room floated around her in an effluvium of hysteria. Sharp instruments hovered and there were voices, and people in sterile white masks.
My name, she thought, what is it?
Alice Leiber. It came to her. David Leiber’s wife. But it gave her no comfort. She was alone with these silent, whispering white people and there was great pain and nausea and death-fear in her.
I am being murdered before their eyes. These doctors, these nurses don’t realize what hidden thing has happened to me. David doesn’t know. Nobody knows except me and—the killer, the little murderer, the small assassin.
I am dying and I can’t tell them now. They’d laugh and call me one in delirium. They’ll see the murderer and hold him and never think him responsible for my death. But here I am, in front of God and man, dying, no one to believe my story, everyone to doubt me, comfort me with lies, bury me in ignorance, mourn me and salvage my destroyer.
Where is David? she wondered. In the waiting room, smoking one cigarette after another, listening to the long tickings of the very slow clock?
Sweat exploded from all of her body at once, and with it an agonized cry, Now. Now! Try and kill me, she screamed. Try, try, but I won’t die! I won’t!
There was a hollowness. A vacuum. Suddenly the pain fell away. Exhaustion, and dusk came around. It was over. Oh, God! She plummeted down and struck a black nothingness which gave way to nothingness and nothingness and another and still another…
Footsteps, Gentle, approaching footsteps.
Far away, a voice said, ‘She’s asleep. Don’t disturb her.’
An odor of tweeds, a pipe, a certain shaving lotion. David was standing over her. And beyond him the immaculate smell of Dr Jeffers.
She did not open her eyes. ‘I’m awake,’ she said, quietly. It was a surprise, a relief to be able to speak, to not be dead.
‘Alice,’ someone said, and it was David beyond her closed eyes, holding her tired hands.
Would you like to meet the murderer, David? she thought. I hear your voice asking to see him, so there’s nothing but for me to point him out to you.
David stood over her. She opened her eyes. The room came into focus. Moving a weak hand, she pulled aside a coverlet.
The murderer looked up at David Leiber with a small, red-faced, blueeyed calm. Its eyes were deep and sparkling.
‘Why!’ cried David Leiber, smiling. ‘He’s a fine baby!’
Dr Jeffers was waiting for David Leiber the day he came to take his wife and new child home. He motioned Leiber to a chair in his office, gave him a cigar, lit one for himself, sat on the edge of his desk, puffing solemnly for a
long moment. Then he cleared his throat, looked David Leiber straight on and said, ‘Your wife doesn’t like her child, Dave.’
‘What!’
‘It’s been a hard thing for her. She’ll need a lot of love this next year. I didn’t say much at the time, but she was hysterical in the delivery room. The strange things she said—I won’t repeat them. All I’ll say is that she feels alien to the child. Now, this may simply be a thing we can clear up with one or two questions.’ He sucked on his cigar another moment, then said, ‘Is this child a “wanted” child, Dave?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘It’s vital.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is a “wanted” child. We planned it together. Alice was so happy, a year ago, when—’
‘Mmmm—that makes it more difficult. Because if the child was unplanned, it would be a simple case of a woman hating the idea of motherhood. That doesn’t fit Alice.’ Dr Jeffers took his cigar from his lips, rubbed his hand across his jaw. ‘It must be something else, then. Perhaps something buried in her childhood that’s coming out now. Or it might be the simple temporary doubt and distrust of any mother who’s gone through the unusual pain and near-death that Alice has. If so, then a little time should heal that. I thought I’d tell you, though, Dave. It’ll help you be easy and tolerant with her if she says anything about—well—about wishing the child had been born dead. And if things don’t go well, the three of you drop in on me. I’m always glad to see old friends, eh? Here, take another eigar along for—ah—for the baby.’
It was a bright spring afternoon. Their car hummed along wide, tree-lined boulevards. Blue sky, flowers, a warm wind. David talked a lot, lit his cigar, talked some more. Alice answered directly, softly, relaxing a bit more as the trip progressed. But she held the baby not tightly or warmly or motherly enough to satisfy the queer ache in Dave’s mind. She seemed to be merely carrying a porcelain figurine.
‘Well,’ he said, at last, smiling. ‘What’ll we name him?’
Alice Leiber watched green trees slide by. ‘Let’s not decide yet. I’d rather wait until we get an exceptional name for him. Don’t blow smoke in his face.’ Her sentences ran together with no change of tone. The last statement held no motherly reproof, no interest, no irritation. She just mouthed it and it was said.
The husband, disquieted, dropped the cigar from the window. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
The baby rested in the crook of his mother’s arm, shadows of sun and tree changing his face. His blue eyes opened like fresh blue spring flowers. Moist noises came from the tiny, pink, elastic mouth.
Alice gave her baby a quick glance. Her husband felt her shiver against him.
‘Cold?’ he asked.
‘A chill. Better raise the window, David.’
It was more than a chill. He rolled the window slowly up.
Suppertime.
Dave had brought the child from the nursery, propped him at a tiny, bewildered angle, supported by many pillows, in a newly purchased high chair.
Alice watched her knife and fork move. ‘He’s not high-chair size,’ she said.
‘Fun having him here, anyway,’ said Dave, feeling fine. ‘Everything’s fun. At the office, too. Orders up to my nose. If I don’t watch myself I’ll make another fifteen thousand this year. Hey, look at Junior, will you? Drooling all down his chin!’ He reached over to wipe the baby’s mouth with his napkin. From the corner of his eye he realized that Alice wasn’t even watching. He finished the job.
‘I guess it wasn’t very interesting,’ he said, back again at his food. ‘But one would think a mother’d take some interest in her own child!’
Alice jerked her chin up. ‘Don’t speak that way! Not in front of him! Later, if you must.’
‘Later?’ he cried. ‘In front of, in back of, what’s the difference?’ He quieted suddenly, swallowed, was sorry. ‘All right. Okay. I know how it is.’
After dinner she let him carry the baby upstairs. She didn’t tell him to; she let him.
Coming down, he found her standing by the radio, listening to music she didn’t hear, her eyes were closed, her whole attitude one of wondering, self-questioning. She started when he appeared.
Suddenly, she was at him, against him, soft, quick: the same. Her lips found him, kept him. He was stunned. Now that the baby was gone, upstairs, out of the room, she began to breathe again, live again. She was free. She was whispering, rapidly, endlessly.
‘Thank you, thank you, darling. For being yourself, always. Dependable, so very dependable!’
He had to laugh. ‘My father told me, “Son, provide for your family!”’
Wearily, she rested her dark, shining hair against his neck. ‘You’ve overdone it. Sometimes I wish we were just the way we were when we were first married. No responsibilities, nothing but ourselves. No—no babies.’
She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face.
‘Oh, Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil—’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren’t laws, then love does the protecting. You’re protected from my hurting you, by my love. You’re vulnerable to me, of all people, but love shields you. I feel no fear of you, because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, harreds and immaturities. But—what about the baby? It’s too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the meantime be vulnerable to it.’
‘Vulnerable to a baby?’ He held her away and laughed gently.
‘Does a baby know the difference between right and wrong?’ she asked.
‘No. But it’ll learn.’
‘But a baby is so new, so amoral, so conscience-free.’ She stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. ‘That noise? What was it?’
Leiber looked around the room. ‘I didn’t hear—’
She stared at the library door. ‘In there,’ she said, slowly.
Leiber crossed the room, opened the door and switched the library lights on and off. ‘Not a thing.’ He came back to her. ‘You’re worn out. To bed with you—right now.’
Turning out the lights together, they walked slowly up the soundless hall stairs, not speaking. At the top she apologized. ‘My wild talk, darling. Forgive me. I’m exhausted.’
He understood, and said so.
She paused, undecided, by the nursery door. Then she fingered the brass knob sharply, walked in. He watched her approach the crib much too carefully, look down, and stiffen as if she’d been struck in the face. ‘David!’
Leiber stepped forward, reached the crib.
The baby’s face was bright red and very moist; his small pink mouth opened and shut, opened and shut; his eyes were a fiery blue. His hands leapt about on the air.
‘Oh,’ said Dave, ‘he’s just been crying.’
‘Has he?’ Alice Leiber seized the crib-railing to balance herself. ‘I didn’t hear him.’
‘The door was closed.’
‘Is that why he breathes so hard, why his face is red?’
‘Sure. Poor little guy. Crying all alone in the dark. He can sleep in our room tonight, just in case he cries.’
‘You’ll spoil him,’ his wife said.
Leiber felt her eyes follow as he rolled the crib into their bedroom. He undressed silently, sat on the edge of the bed. Suddenly he lifted his head, swore under his breath, snapped his fingers. ‘Damn it! Forgot to tell you. I must fly to Chicago Friday.’
‘Oh, David.’ Her voice was lost in the room.
‘I’ve put this trip off for two months, and now it’s so critical I just have to go.’
‘I’m afraid to be alone.’
‘We’ll have the new cook by Friday. She’ll be here all the time. I’ll only be gone a few days.’
‘I’m afraid. I don’t know of what. You
wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I guess I’m crazy.’
He was in bed now. She darkened the room: he heard her walk around the bed, throw back the cover, slide in. He smelled the warm womansmell of her next to him. He said, ‘If you want me to wait a few days, perhaps I could—’
‘No,’ she said, unconvinced. ‘You go. I know it’s important. It’s just that I keep thinking about what I told you. Laws and love and protection. Love protects you from me. But, the baby—’ She took a breath. ‘What protects you from him, David?’
Before he could answer, before he could tell her how silly it was, speaking so of infants, she switched on the bed light, abruptly.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing.
The baby lay wide awake in its crib, staring straight at him, with deep, sharp blue eyes.
The lights went out again. She trembled against him.
‘It’s not nice being afraid of the thing you birthed.’ Her whisper lowered, became harsh, fierce, swift. ‘He tried to kill me! He lies there, listens to us talking, waiting for you to go away so he can try to kill me again! I swear it!’ Sobs broke from her.
‘Please,’ he kept saying, soothing her. ‘Stop it, stop it. Please.’
She cried in the dark for a long time. Very late she relaxed, shakingly, against him. Her breathing came soft, warm, regular, her body twitched its worn reflexes and she slept.
He drowsed.
And just before his eyes lidded wearily down, sinking him into deeper and yet deeper tides, he heard a strange little sound of awareness and awakeness in the room.
The sound of small, moist, pinkly elastic lips.
The baby.
And then—sleep.
In the morning, the sun blazed. Alice smiled.
David Leiber dangled his watch over the crib. ‘See, baby? Something bright. Something pretty. Sure. Sure. Something bright. Something pretty.’
Alice smiled. She told him to go ahead, fly to Chicago, she’d be very brave, no need to worry. She’d take care of baby. Oh, yes, she’d take care of him, all right.
The airplane went east. There was a lot of sky, a lot of sun and clouds and Chicago running over the horizon. Dave was dropped into the rush of ordering, planning, banqueting, telephoning, arguing in conference. But he wrote letters each day and sent telegrams to Alice and the baby.