I thought it a good idea to put the piece of torn envelope in another section of the book before returning it to the shelf.
A half hour later I had a still better idea. I took down the book, consulted my notes, and then carefully underlined the fragmentary passages she had plagiarized. I realized, of course, that with her I might never hear the truth of the matter till years later—perhaps never. But I was content to wait.
A depressing thought followed in the wake of this reflection. If she could fake her dream life, what about her waking life? If I were to begin investigating her past . . . The enormity of that task was in itself enough to dissuade me from any immediate attempt in that direction. However, one could always prick up his ears. That was not a cheerful thought either. One can’t go through life with ears cocked. Curiously enough, I had no more than told myself this when I recalled the way she had dismissed a certain subject. It was strange how she had succeeded in making me forget that little item. In disabusing me of the idea that I had caught a glimpse of her mother in the back yard, on my first inspection of her home precincts, she had skillfully buried the suspicion by dwelling with artful sincerity on the traits and qualities of the woman I had imagined to be her mother, the woman she insisted must have been her aunt. It was such a commonplace ruse of the liar that I was annoyed at myself, thinking back on it, to have been taken in so easily. This at least was something I could investigate in the near future. I was so positive that I was right that I almost decided to forgo the mechanical task of corroboration. It would be more enjoyable, I thought to myself, not to go there just yet, but to trap her by some clever verbal maneuvering. If I could develop the art of laying traps it would save a lot of useless footwork.
Above all, I concluded, it was imperative never to let her suspect that I was on to her lies. Why was that so imperative? I asked myself almost immediately. To have the pleasure of uncovering more and more untruths? Was that a pleasure? And then another question popped into my head. If you were married to a dipsomaniac, would you pretend that the mania for alcohol was perfectly harmless? Would you keep up the pretense that everything was lovely in order to study the effects of this particular vice upon the person of the one you loved?
If there were any legitimacy in abetting the appetites of curiosity then it were better to get at the root of the thing, to discover why she lied so flagrantly. The effects of this malady were not altogether obvious to me—yet. A little thought and I should have perceived instantly that the first and most disastrous effect is—alienation. The shock of detection, which the discovery of the first lie brings, has almost the same emotional outlines as the shock which accompanies the knowledge that one is confronted by an insane person. Treachery, the fear of it, has its roots in the universal fear of loss of personality. It must have required aeons of time for humanity to raise truth to such a supreme level, to make it the fulcrum, as it were, of individuality. The moral aspect was merely a concomitant, a cover-all for some deeper, almost forgotten purpose. That histoire should be story, lie and history all in one was of a significance not to be despised. And that a story, given out as the invention of a creative artist, should be regarded as the most effective material for getting at the truth about its author was also significant. Lies can only be embedded in truth. They have no separate existence; they have a symbiotic relationship with truth. A good lie reveals more than the truth can ever reveal. To the one, that is, who seeks truth. To such a person there could never be cause for anger or recrimination when confronted with the lie. Not even pain, because all would be patent, naked and revelatory.
I was quite amazed to discern the lengths to which such philosophic detachment could bring me. I made a note to resume the experiment again. It might bear fruit.
12
I had just left Clancy’s office. Clancy was the general manager of the Cosmodemonic Cocksucking Corporation. He was the Cocksucker in Chief, so to speak. He said “Sir” to his inferiors as well as his superiors.
My respect for Clancy had touched zero. For over six months I had avoided calling on him, though it had been understood between us that I was to drop in once a month or so—to have a little chat. Today he had summoned me to his office. He had expressed disappointment in me. He had virtually intimated that I had failed him.
The poor cluck! If I hadn’t been so disgusted I might have felt sorry for him. He was in a spot, I could see that. But he had angled to put himself in that spot for twenty years or more.
Clancy’s model of behavior was the soldier, the man who can take orders and give them, if necessary. Blind obedience was his motto. Clearly I was a poor soldier. I had been an excellent tool so long as I had been given a free hand, but now that the reins were being tightened he was chagrined to learn that I was not responsive to the behests of those to whom he himself, Clancy, the general manager, had to bow deferentially. He was pained to hear that I had been insulting to one of Mr. Twilliger’s henchmen. Twilliger was the vice-president, a man with a heart of cement who had risen from the ranks, just as Clancy himself had.
I had swallowed such a lot of shit in that brief interview with my superior that I was regurgitating. The conversation had terminated on a most unpleasant note, to wit, that I was to learn to co-operate with Mr. Spivak, who had now definitely become Mr. Twilliger’s go-between.
How can you co-operate with a rat? Especially with a rat whose sole function is to spy on you?
Spivak’s entrance upon the scene, I reflected as I stepped into a bar to have a drink, had only preceded by a few months my resolution to walk out on the old life. His coming had precipitated that event, or conspired to bring it about, I now felt. The turning point in my cosmococcic life had come at the moment of plenitude. Just when I had put everything in order, when the machine was working like a clock, Twilliger had summoned Spivak from another city and installed him as an efficiency expert. And Spivak had taken the pulse of the cosmococcic machine and found that it was beating too slowly.
Since that fatal day they had moved me around like a chess piece. As if to threaten me, they had first changed my quarters to the main office. Twilliger had his sanctum in the same building, about fifteen floors above me. No shenanigans now, as in the old messenger bureau with the dressing booths in the rear and the zinc-covered table, where now and then I had knocked off a fugitive piece of tail. I was in an airless cage now, surrounded by infernal contraptions that buzzed and rang and gleamed every time a client put in a call for a messenger. In a space just big enough for a double desk and a chair on either side (for the applicants), I had to sweat and shout at the top of my lungs to make myself heard. Three times, in the course of a few months, I had lost my voice. Each time I reported to the company doctor upstairs. Each time he shook his head in perplexity.
“Say Ah!”
“Ah!”
“Say E-e-e-e!’
“E-e-e-e!”
He’d shove a smooth stick, like a suds duster, down my throat.
“Open your mouth wide.”
I’d open it wide as I could. He’d swab it out, spray it if he felt like it.
“Feel better now?”
I’d try to say yes but the best I could do was to give him a vocable piece of phlegm. Ooogh!
“There’s nothing wrong with your throat that I can see,” he would say. “Come back in a few days and I’ll have another look. It may be the weather.”
It never occurred to him to ask what I did with my throat all day long. And of course, once I realized that to lose my voice was to enjoy a few day’s vacation, I felt that it was just as well to leave him in ignorance of the cause of my affliction.
Spivak however suspected that I was malingering. I enjoyed talking to him in an almost inaudible whisper long after I had recovered my voice.
“What did you say?” he would rasp.
Choosing the moment when the din was at its height I would repeat some highly unimportant piece of information in the same inaudible whisper.
“Oh that!” he would say, highly irritat
ed, exasperated that I made not the slightest effort to strain my voice.
“When do you think you’ll get your voice back?”
“I don’t know,” I would say, looking him straight in the eye and letting my voice die out.
Then he would talk to the call clerk, pump him behind my back to find out if I were putting it on. As soon as he had gone I would resume my natural tone of voice. If the telephone rang, however, I would have my assistant answer it. “Mr. Miller can’t use the phone—his voice is gone.” I kept that up in order to foil Spivak. It was just like him to leave my office, go out the front door, step into a booth and ring me up. He would have been jubilant to catch me off guard.
It was all such a lot of shit, though. Child’s play. In every big corporation these games go on. It’s the only outlet for one’s human side. It’s like civilization. Everything geared up to function smoothly in order to destroy it with a little bonfire. Just when your impulses have been given a shine, a manicure and a tailor-made suit, a rifle is stuck in your hand and in six lessons you’re expected to learn the art of sticking a bayonet through a sack of wheat. It’s bewildering, to say the least. And if there’s no panic, no war, no revolution, you go on rising from one cocksucking vantage point to another until you become the Big Prick himself and blow your brains out.
I swallowed another drink and took a glance at the big clock on the Metropolitan Tower. Funny that that clock had inspired the one and only poem I had ever written. That was shortly after they had moved me uptown from the main office. The tower framed itself in the window from which I looked out on to the street. In front of me sat Valeska. It was because of Valeska that I had written the poem. I recalled the excitement that had come over me the Sunday morning I began the poem. It was unbelievable—a poem. I had to call Valeska on the telephone and tell her the good news. A couple of months later she was dead.
That was one time, however, that Curley had managed to get his end in. I had learned that only recently. Seems he used to take her to the beach. He did it, by God, in the water, standing up. The first time, that is. Afterwards it was just fuck, fuck, fuck—in the car, in the bathroom, along the waterfront, on the excursion boat.
In the midst of these pleasant reminiscences I saw a tall figure dressed in uniform passing the window. I ran out and hailed him.
“I don’t know whether I ought to come in, Mr. Miller. I’m on duty, you know.”
“That doesn’t matter. Come in a minute and have one drink with me. I’m glad to see you.”
It was Colonel Sheridan, the head of the messenger brigade which Spivak had organized. Sheridan was from Arizona. He had come to me in search of work and I had put him on the night force. I liked Sheridan. He was one of the few dozen clean souls I had raked in among all the thousands I had put to work on the messenger force. Everybody liked him, even that piece of animated cement, Twilliger.
Sheridan was absolutely guileless. He had been born in a clean environment, had been given no more education than he needed, which was very little, and had no ambition except to be what he was, which was a plain, simple, ordinary individual accepting life as he found it. He was one in a million, so far as my observation of human nature went.
I inquired how he was getting on as drillmaster. He said it was discouraging. He was disappointed—the boys showed no spirit, no interest in military training.
“Mr. Miller,” he exclaimed, “I never met such boys in all my life. They have no sense of honor . . .”
I burst out laughing. No honor, God!
“Sheridan,” I said, “haven’t you learned yet that you’re dealing with the scum of the earth? Besides, boys aren’t born with a sense of honor. City boys especially. These boys are incipient gangsters. Have you ever been to the mayor’s office? Have you seen the crowd that hangs out there? Those are grown-up messenger boys. If you were to put them behind the bars you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them and the real convicts. The whole goddamned city is made up of nothing but crooks and gangsters. That’s what a city is—a breeding place for crime.”
Sheridan gave me a puzzled look.
“But you’re not like that, Mr. Miller,” he said, grinning sheepishly.
I had to laugh again. “I know, Sheridan. I’m one of the exceptions. I’m just killing time here. Someday I’m going out to Arizona, or some place where it’s quiet and empty. I’ve told you, haven’t I, that I went to Arizona years ago? I wish I had had the sense to stay there. . . . Tell me, what was it you did back there . . . you weren’t a sheepherder, were you?”
It was Sheridan’s turn to smile. “No, Mr. Miller, I told you, don’t you remember, that I was a barber.”
“A barber!”
“Yes,” said Sheridan, “and a darned good one too.”
“But you know how to ride, don’t you? You didn’t spend your life in a barbershop, I hope?”
“Oh no,” he answered quickly. “I did a little of everything, I guess. I’ve earned my own living ever since I was seven.”
“What made you come to New York?”
“I wanted to see what it was like in a big city. I had been to Denver and L.A.—and Chicago too. Everybody kept telling me I had to see New York, so I decided I would. I tell you, Mr. Miller, New York is a fine place—but I don’t like the people. . . . I don’t understand their ways, I guess.”
“You mean the way they shove you around?”
“Yes, and the way they lie and cheat. Even the women here are different. I can’t seem to find a girl I like.”
“You’re too good, Sheridan. You don’t know how to treat them.”
“I know it, Mr. Miller.” He dropped his head. He acted shy as a faun.
“You know,” he began falteringly, “I guess there is something wrong with me. They laugh behind my back—everybody does, even the youngsters. Maybe it’s the way I talk.”
“You can’t be too gentle with the boys, Sheridan,” I put in. “I warned you—be rough with them! Give ’em a cuffing once in a while. Swear at them. Don’t let them think you’re soft. If you do, they’ll walk all over you.”
He looked up softly and held out his hand. “See that? That’s where a boy bit me the other day. Can you imagine that?”
“What did you do to him?”
Sheridan looked down at his feet again. “I sent him home,” he said.
“That’s all? You just sent him home? You didn’t give him a thrashing?”
He was silent. After a few moments he spoke, quietly and with simple dignity.
“I don’t believe in punishment, Mr. Miller. If a man hits me I never strike back. I try to talk to him, find out what’s wrong with him. You see, I was knocked around a lot as a kid. I didn’t have an easy time of it. . . .”
He stopped dead, shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“I always wanted to tell you something,” he resumed, summoning all his courage. “You’re the only man I could tell this to, Mr. Miller. I know I can trust you. . . .”
Again a pause. I waited attentively, wondering what it was he was trying to get off his chest.
“When I came to the telegraph company,” he continued, “I didn’t have a dime in my pocket. You remember that, Mr. Miller . . . you had to help me out. And I appreciate everything you did for me.”
Pause.
“I said a while back that I came to New York to see the big city. That’s only half true. I was running away from something. You see, Mr. Miller, I was very much in love back there. I had a woman who meant everything to me. She understood me, and I understood her. But she was married to my brother. I didn’t want to steal her from my brother, but I couldn’t live without her. . . .”
“Did your brother know that you were in love with her?”
“Not at first,” said Sheridan. “But after a time he couldn’t help but notice. You see, we all lived together. He owned the barbershop and I helped him. We were doing first-rate too.”
Another awkward pause.
“
The trouble all started one day, a Sunday it was, when we went on a picnic. We had been in love all the time, but we hadn’t done anything. I didn’t want to hurt my brother, as I told you. Anyway, it happened. We were sleeping outdoors and she was lying between us. I woke up all of a sudden and felt her hand on me. She was wide awake, staring at me with big eyes. She bent over and kissed me on the mouth. And right there, with my brother lying beside us, I took her.”
“Have another drink,” I urged.
“I guess I will,” said Sheridan. “Thank you.”
He continued in his slow, hesitant way, very delicate about it all, and obviously genuinely disturbed. I liked the way he talked about his brother. It was almost as if he were talking about himself.
“Well, to make it short, Mr. Miller, one day he went plumb crazy with jealousy—he came after me with the razor. You see that scar?” He turned his head slightly to one side. “That’s where I caught it, trying to dodge him. If I hadn’t ducked he would have sliced the side of my face off, I guess.”
Sheridan slowly sipped his drink, looking thoughtfully into the soaped mirror before him.
“I calmed him down finally,” he said. “He was frightened of course when he saw the blood running down my neck and my ear almost hanging off. And then, Mr. Miller, a terrible thing happened. He began to cry, just like a boy. He told me he was no good, and I knew that wasn’t so. He said he oughtn’t to have married Ella—that was her name. He said he would get divorced, go away somewhere, start all over again—and that I should marry Ella. He begged me to say I would. He even tried to lend me some money. He wanted to go away immediately . . . said he couldn’t stand it any longer. Of course I wouldn’t hear of it. I begged him not to say anything to Ella. I said I would take a little trip myself, to let things blow over. He wouldn’t hear of that . . . but finally, after I showed him that that was the only sensible thing to do, he agreed to let me go. . . .”
“And that’s how you came to New York?”
“Yes, but that’s not all. You see, I tried to do the right thing. You would have done the same, if it had been your brother, wouldn’t you? I did all I could. . . .”