—A shame to shoot him, a fine blooded animal like that . . . It was difficult to know if the blonde beside Ellery was trying, but unable, to smile, or subduing that smile which is stupidity’s cordial greeting to matters which its very nature excuses it from attempting to understand: so she looked, not at Esther, but at the silent phenomenon of Esther’s evidence, as though there might be immediately apparent not only the evidence, but the very nature of the case itself, and its disposition not understanding, but dismissal.
—Ellery . . .
—The truck just came around from the Futtybrook Hunt Club, skinned him, cut him up, took him back to the kennels. Dog meat . . . Benny tore from Esther’s grasp, and, stepping forward, he said, —Ellery, what’s the matter with you, good God Ellery will you . . .
—Hell of an end for a thoroughbred.
—Stop it, will you tell us . . . Benny commenced, raising his hands.
—Come on, Benny. You’re drunk, Ellery said, grinning and looking at him, and the blonde looked at Esther, no longer plaintiff but witness herself to the relieving and obvious fact that there was really nothing to be concerned about after all. —He’s gone, Ellery said easily. —I saw him leave a minute or two ago. He put a hand on Benny’s shoulder. —Come on, Benny, Christ. Straighten up. I told you you deserved a drink, but not a whole bottle . . . Benny drew away from him, without even looking at his face; and Ellery shrugged, took a deep inhalation from his cigarette, winking at the blonde as he turned away. Esther and Benny stood silent, as though both listening for denial of Ellery, for explanation of one another.
—That very odd girl with the green tongue has been telling me that it was really the Jews who discovered America, said the tall woman, her back to them. —Isabella’s jewels didn’t have a thing to do with it, backing Columbus I mean, it seems it was Isabella’s Jews . . .
They both looked up, and both spoke at once. But Esther stopped.
—He was a draftsman, wasn’t he. Were you married to him then? He was only a draftsman, and I was a designer. We worked together. He never mentioned me, did he. Well why, why should he, why should he have mentioned me to anybody, why . . .
Over his shoulder, Esther looked up to see the brown eyes of the critic; then she turned back to Benny with a different look on her face. —Don’t you want to sit down somewhere? she said.
—He never talked about me, did he. And why should you care, what would it matter to you? And why should I care now, why should I want to see him, because anyhow everything’s different now. And it’s all different for him too, isn’t it. Why should I want to see him now, any more than . . . why should we have even worked together then, what . . . because everything’s different now, I’m fine now, I’m getting along fine, and is he? What’s he doing now? Is he happy now? Is he getting along fine, like I am? Did everything change for him too, so that . . . Is he doing what he wanted to do now? or like me, is he doing what he can do, what he has to do . . .
—Why don’t you just sit down here? Esther said as they reached the couch. —Can I bring you some coffee? She hesitated, and turned away.
—That’s funny. That’s funny, Benny said, sitting down slowly. —But you didn’t tell me what he’s doing now. That’s funny. God. Benny blew his nose, and looked round him. He saw the back of his own flannel suit, and heard the voice of the man in it saying, —It’s not really my line of work, I’m really a sort of historian, a musicologist, you might say, but I’ve been trying to get permission from the city to operate a public toilet concession in New York . . . Could you hand me those crackers?
The woman in the collapsed maternity dress said to someone, —And you see that person in the green shirt, you see that scar on his nose? Well I understand that he had his nose bobbed, an expensive plastic surgeon did it and some girl paid for it, didn’t leave a mark, and then one night when he was in bed a radio fell off the shelf and gave him that scar, there’s poetic justice . . . heh, heh heh heh . . .
—What’s his name?
—Him? It’s . . . I can’t think of it, but it’s one of those nice names, you know the kind they take, like White, White is a good nigger name.
Nearby, Mr. Crotcher had settled into an armchair, and begun moaning accompaniment to a harpsichord fraction of the Harmonious Blacksmith. He stopped to look down, and say, —Good heavens, good heavens, where did you come from? Get away. You’re going to have an accident, get away, getaway getaway getaway . . . The baby, with a welt rising on its forehead, had begun to climb up his leg. Out of sight, the girl with bandaged wrists was saying, —After all, this is its first birthday, so this is kind of a birthday party for it too . . .
—Started to call himself Jacques San-jay when he went into interior decorating, someone said. —I knew him when his name was Jack Singer.
—So after that, the old man left me with nothing but fifty tons of sugar that I can’t unload, and they’re forcing me to take delivery. Do you think Esther would mind storing it here?
—Yess, said the dark man in the sharkskin suit, —I was told that the stock market in New York was a complex affair.
—Maybe I ought to have it dumped on the old man’s doorstep. Chr-ahst, after a trick like that. Now all I have to do is sell one of his God-damned battleships . . .
—Ah? How fortunate, said the shark-skinned Argentine. —For a moment I thought I was at the wrong party.
—Dear God no, the tall woman was saying, —my husband hasn’t got any friends. He doesn’t have the time.
—Well look, it’s obvious to any thinking person. The Swiss have banks all over the world. What’s more necessary to a successful war than banks?
Mr. Feddle, concentrating on an open book (it was Frothingham’s Aratos) was bumped aside by someone looking for an encyclopedia. —Got to look up a mutt named Chavenay. Sounds French.
—You have to really live there to understand why France has turned out so many great thinkers, and artists, a girl said. —Just live there for awhile and get a load of what they have to revolt against, and anybody would be great.
The boy who had got an advance on his novel said, —I wanted to sort of celebrate, but what the hell. Where are the nice places? They’re all business lunchrooms, do you know what I mean? Expense accounts. They’re all supported by expense accounts. It’s depressing as hell.
—But my dear boy, why should all this bother you? said the tall woman, who had appeared. —You don’t have to eat in these places all the time. Look at my husband, he has to.
—I know. But it’s depressing as hell, where can you celebrate?
—I’d suggest Nedick’s, said the tall woman.
—I’d suggest Murti-Bing, said the young man with no novel to advance.
—Oh, where is that? said the tall woman. —I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten there.
—Fifty million tons of food a year eaten in New York, what does that mean?
—Something terrible happened, Stanley. Agnes put her hand on his.
—I’m sorry, Stanley said. —If you’ll just give me my glasses . . .
—No, dear, I’m not talking about that, and that was so long ago, that night . . . She was looking in her purse. —Here, she said, —you’ll have to read it yourself. What am I going to do, Stanley? Her hand shook as she dragged the letter from her bag. —It was a terrible thing to do, an unforgivable thing to do to this poor man but he’s got to forgive me, and how can I . . . what can I do to . . . so he will?
Stanley unfolded the letter from the Police Department; and Agnes felt a gentle tap on the shoulder, and turned. —Did you see a kitty-cat here, lady?
—Why there was a kitten here somewhere, Agnes said, looking round her, —but I guess the kitty-cat has gone to bed. What are you doing up so late?
—My mummy sent me up to get some sleeping pills, but I can’t find the lady who . . .
—Now don’t you bother the nice lady, said Agnes, rummaging in the bottom of her large purse, taking out a French enameled thimble case. —I have s
ome right here. Is three enough? You just take these down to Mummy. And I’ve already written him. She looked up at Stanley.
—Thank you, lady. Where’d you get the funny watch?
—Why, Mickey Mouse is my loyal faithful friend, said Agnes. —I can always trust him.
—What have you got the funny things sticking on your face for?
—Where . . . Agnes raised her hand, to feel the strip of tape at her temple, put there to discourage wrinkles when she lay down. —Oh my God, and they’ve been there . . . why didn’t someone . . .
—What are they for, lady? the child asked as Agnes tore them off, and opened her compact.
—Go along down to Mummy now, for God’s sake.
—He would understand, if you went to him, Stanley said, handing the letter back. —If you went to him and . . .
—I couldn’t face him. To ask forgiveness . . .
—Is a sublime test of humility . . .
—And he’s really rather an awful person I think . . .
—And from your inferiors an even greater trial.
—I want to do something, and . . . but don’t you think I might just send him something? Maybe some sort of nice gift . . . yes, something nice and you know fairly expensively nice for his daughter?
—I think, Stanley commenced soberly, —that really, for your own good . . .
—Oh, let’s stop thinking about it for a little while, she interrupted. —I just get so . . . tired of the terrible things I get in the mail. She smiled up at him briskly, and tightened her grasp on his hand. —Tell me about your music, Stanley, this long whatever-it-is that you’ve been working on for so long. Oh, and your tooth? I’m sorry, I forgot to ask.
—I think it went away, the toothache, it didn’t last, but my work, it’s an organ concerto but it isn’t finished yet.
—But you’ve been working on it for months.
—For years, he said. —And you know, I look at the clean paper that I’m saving to write the finished score on, and then I look at the pile of . . . what I’ve been working on, and, well I can see it all right there, finished. And yet, well . . . you know I never read Nietzsche, but I did come across something he said somewhere, somewhere where he mentioned “the melancholia of things completed.” Do you . . . well that’s what he meant. I don’t know, but somehow you get used to living among palimpsests. Somehow that’s what happens, double and triple palimpsests pile up and you keep erasing, and altering, and adding, always trying to account for this accumulation, to order it, to locate every particle in its place in one whole . . .
—But Stanley, couldn’t you just . . . I don’t know what a palimsest is, but couldn’t you just finish off this thing you’re working on now, and then go on and write another? She ran her hand over his, resting on the chair arm there; and Stanley called her by her Christian name for the first time. —No, that’s . . . you see, that’s the trouble, Agnes, he said. —It’s as though this one thing must contain it all, all in one piece of work, because, well it’s as though finishing it strikes it dead, do you understand? And that’s frightening, it’s easy enough to understand why, killing the one thing you . . . love. I understand it, and I’ll explain it to you, but that, you see, that’s what’s frightening, and you anticipate that, you feel it all the time you’re working and that’s why the palimpsests pile up, because you can still make changes and the possibility of perfection is still there, but the first note that goes on the final score is . . . well that’s what Nietzsche . . .
—All I know about Nietzsche is that he’s decadent, that’s what they say.
Stanley withdrew his hand, and it hung in air for a moment, like an object suddenly unfamiliar, which he did not know how to dispose of. —He was, because of . . . well that’s the reason right there, because of negation. That is the work of Antichrist. That is the word of Satan, No, the Eternal No, Stanley said, and put his hand in his pocket.
Agnes Deigh looked at her own hand on the arm of her chair. Two of the tanned fingers rose, and went down again; and when she looked over to where the critic had joined Benny on the couch, and sat, smoothing down the back of his hair, her face took the expression of the man she looked at, one of contemptuous, almost amused indulgence, though she did not have the dark hollows in her face, nor the brow and the forehead worn so with this expression that it looked natural; rather she looked uncomfortable, saying, —Those two look like they’re discussing the same thing we are, and he should know, that one . . .
—You know what I thought of immediately just now when I looked up and saw them? Stanley said, earnestly. —I thought of El Greco before the Inquisition, arguing the dimensions of angels’ wings. He looks like an Inquisitor, that dark fellow. People laugh at arguments like that now, and how many angels can dance on the end of a pin. But it’s not funny, it’s very wonderful. Science hasn’t explained it, and you know why, because science doesn’t even understand the question, any more than science understands . . . You know, Agnes, this concerto I’m working on, if I’d lived three hundred years ago, why . . . then it would be a Mass. A Requiem Mass.
—Einstein . . . someone said.
—Epstein . . . said someone else.
—Gertrude . . .
—Of course you’re familiar with Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty. Have you ever observed sand fleas? Well I’m working on a film which not only substantiates it but illustrates perfectly the metaphor of the theoretic and the real situation. And after all, what else is there?
—Who was it that said, “a little lower than the angels”?
—That? it’s in that poem about “What is man, that thou art mindful of him.” That was Pope.
—Which one?
At this point, Anselm, in a shirt torn at the shoulder, his hair tousled and on end, unshaven, and clutching a magazine and two books, appeared in the door. No one seemed to notice him; and he stood there silent for some time.
The music had got quite loud. —There, you see? said someone more loudly, —I told you. It is Handel. The Gods Go A-Begging, so there!
Benny’s face was fleshy. Moreover, though it was not puffy, it seemed to be flesh recently acquired, and his expressions seemed, if such a thing were possible, to have difficulty in reaching the surface or, once arrived, to represent with conviction the feelings which had risen from within. So it appeared; though it may be that this want of precision pervaded the source itself, and his amorphous façade faithfully expressed confused furnishings, broken steps mounting deep stairwells, rooms boarded up, in disuse, and rooms of one character being used for new and timely purposes in the interior castle, whose defenses were not yet adjusted to the new tenancy but being constantly hastily altered in the midst of skirmishes, before that battle which would be the last.
—God is love, telling that to a Welsh Corgi in labor, isn’t that divine? the girl with Boston accents laughed, and Benny, who had heard her remark about a lost horizon, drew away from where she toppled near his end of the couch, pulling the book to him as he did so. It was a book on bridge design, largely the work of Robert Maillart, and his finger marked a picture, diagram and description of the bridge at Schwandbach. He had picked it up after his words with Esther, and sat trying to appear absorbed with it while he collected himself. But he was interrupted by the figure in the green wool shirt who had joined him on the couch with, —I hear you’re in TV. Smiling with effort, and already perspiring freely, Benny answered, —That’s right, what can I do you for? . . . offering a cigarette, which was accepted without thanks.
They were being watched by the two who remained posted near the door, where they would be the first to greet, and snare, the guest of honor. Don Bildow, apparently supported upright by the lusty design of his necktie, watched through plastic rims. —What’s he talking to him for, that television person? —He’s just giving him a hard time, his companion answered, the same baleful satisfaction glittering under his brows, that poetic look of inner contemplation, charish, shot through with beams where some, hi
s mirror among them, read a charismatic luster: all very well for the dust jacket of some slim volume (though no such had appeared), or the moment of inspiration itself, reflected in the eyes of someone else’s wife, but, for moments like this, scarcely practical, for he could see nothing clearly more than a few feet away. —He said he was going to ask him for a job writing TV scripts.
It was evident that Benny was having a hard time. He’d just given his glass a brave, unsteady toss in his hand, and started to stand up, but he was stayed by the critic’s hand, put forth in an annoying gesture as though to soothe where the irritating voice continued, speaking then of television as corrupting tragedy, now of the writer’s integrity, of human suffering . . .
Benny had hardly looked at the face of the man who was talking to him: in contrast to his own it was a detailed fortification, every rampart erected with definite purpose, their parapets calculated to withstand repeated assaults from any direction, tried in innumerable skirmishes where many had approached so close as to tumble between scarp and counterscarp, an arrangement so long in the building that, though every bit of it had been erected for defense, in finished entirety it assumed aggressive proportions; inviting strategy, it might only be taken by storm.
All this time, Benny’s smile had not failed. His smile was his first line of defense. But even as he’d started to his feet, that defense was being abandoned, and so it remained, unmanned, as empty as gaping breastworks relinquished before unexpected onslaught.
—So tell me the truth, the harassing voice went on, as its owner came far forth from his walls, openly besieging. —Do you guys really give this same crap to each other you’re giving to me, pretending it’s a cultural medium? or do you just admit you’re all only in it for the money, that you’ve all sold out.
Benny’s smile was gone. He sat silent for a moment, studying the features of this attack. Then he said, —Why do you hate me? Did I ever do you a favor?