“You mean Anatole France, I guess.”
“Yeah, France … that’s the bird. France was his pen name. I suppose you call him a fine writer, heh? Such a wonderful scholar, preening his wings all day in an ivory tower… tryin’ to make believe he was a Socialist, too. Jeez! he makes me laugh. He never did a hard day’s work in his life. Some woman kept him— that’s what I heard. There’s a lot of frogs like him dabbling in literature just to kill time.”
Prigozi had been making several abortive attempts to swallow a forkful of spaghetti during the airing of these critical denunciations. For a time he had put on his best airs, but as the conversation grew more hectic, his table manners began to show symptoms of degeneration. It was noticeable that whenever he made an unsuccessful attempt to’ interrupt Stanley’s flow he would revert to the practice of scratching his head with his broken nails. He became so excited, finally, that he was seized with a violent fit of coughing and choking. It was sheer nervousness,’ together with a frantic desire to jump into the fray with two feet. For no good reason he was now playing with his handkerchief (diligently picking his nose with it), heedless of the fact that one end of it was almost in his plate. Only when he caught Stanley staring at it did he realize the nature of his absentmindedness. He was amazed, when he thrust it back in his trousers pocket, to observe how soiled and crumpled it looked.
Stanley made no attempt to conceal his disgust. It was impossible to get him to go on with Pierre Loti… and Disenchanted. He beckoned to Moloch. “Come out in the hall a minute; I’ve got something to say to you in private.”
Outside, Stanley whispered in his ear; “Say, why don’t you chase that kike home? I can’t talk with him around. Get rid of him, and let’s play a game of chess And say, don’t forget the suit … I need it!”
Moloch hadn’t the least intention of acceding to Stanley’s plain-spoken request, more especially when he noted the wretched, woebegone expression on Prigozi’s face. Nor did he wish to give Stanley any opportunity to take up the cudgel on his own account, as Stanley would upon the least provocation. So he took refuge in talk....
The cataract of words that Moloch unleashed in his mad scramble to restore the semblance of a sufferable equation resembled rather the soliloquy of a drugged Hamlet than the smooth patter of a host concerned with the incommensurable amenities of the dinner table. He began in the grandstand manner of a filibustering Congressman who ingloriously works the law of association of ideas to death in the first three hours of his endurance contest. Blanche looked up now and then with an approving eye as he let fall a few well-turned phrases. It was so seldom they held anything like polite intercourse that she had almost forgotten how well he could speak when he chose. With his eyes fastened on Prigozi, he made a scrupulous effort to exorcise the demons of suspicion he was certain haunted that individual’s febrile brain; at the same time, he made plentiful allusions to things that he and Stanley had in common so as to effectually throttle any dinner-table pogroms that worthy might take it into his head to perpetrate.
It was a funambulesque exhibition sans parasol. To race with deft, sure steps, to grease his way through rather than ponder on equilibrium—that seemed the safest measure. And as he raced … he opened fire (“Are you ready, Griswold?” said Admiral Dewey at Manila Bay) with an account of the throes of authorship, the memory of his morning’s psychic state still warm and powerful. Thence he launched with hermeneutic zeal into the mysteries of phallic worship, inspired by the recollection of church steeples; it was the profusion of these which had first fired his imagination when he set foot out of doors, en route to a destination then unfixed in his mind. Noticing the look of agreeable confusion in Prigozi’s face, yet apprehensive lest Prigozi make an attempt to take over the reins (with an upholstered explanation of the euphorias), he retracted his meanderings and got back to the sparrows in the belfry. He held to the sparrows just long enough to touch upon current theories of heredity, ringing in a brief mention of the work of that famous monk (whose name he had forgotten) who had established his theories through the medium of sweet peas … he thought it was sweet peas, possibly it may have been sweet Williams. Knowing that Prigozi would like to say a few words at this juncture about the experiments of Brown-Sequard, he mentioned the name himself, thinking as he passed rapidly on to the next subject how cleverly he had spiked that imp’s guns. Several alternatives presented themselves after the sparrows had been left to roost in the belfry: he could go on and dwell fulsomely on the varying aspects of life as it was lived in Brooklyn, the street life, particularly (for instance: Myrtle Avenue, the liver of old Brooklyn)—or, he could give twenty-one reasons why the use of Brooklyn as the locale of a novel was an aesthetic as well as a commercial blunder. But he was not so sure at this point (halfway along the line of the second alternative, though still fiddling around with the tag ends of Brown-Sequard) whether one of the two warring factions would not remember some outlandish title of a book to hurl at him and confound him. By this time, you see, he had definitely committed himself to holding the floor until he felt perfectly safe in relinquishing it, and then only with laurel chaplet wreathed about his noble brow. But, at the last moment, after exhausting every crumb of miscellany that he had stored in connection with sweet peas and Brown-Sequard, he decided on a wholly different tack. … It was possible that he was boring his listeners. An anecdote … a dash of cold water! He had none in mind when he made this resolution to dilute his speech, but in glancing down at the tablecloth (the patch in front of Prigozi) an incident from some Russian tale filled the breach.
Of course, no one was being bored. The three of them were flabbergasted. Had he turned psychopomp and conducted them on a tour to Hades they could not have been more thrilled. What prompted this strange access of eloquence? Each one invented for himself a thoroughly personal, plausible explanation. Stanley, for example, was convinced that it was all a result of his whispered suggestion in the hallway—this was Moloch’s erratic way of shoving Prigozi out, by talking him out of the house.... However, to get back to the anecdote. What was it but a rather pointless, long-drawn-out affair, in the true Russian style, about a moujik who was inordinately parsimonious, even as moujiks go. It occurred to him, after he had used the word “parsimonious,” to add that modifying phrase “as moujiks go,” because he had forgotten, in his haste to make them laugh, that moujiks are not celebrated for their parsimonious qualities. But it went over quite unnoticed....
“You may think it absurd,” he was saying, “this use of tablecloths in a peasant’s home; it was that way in the story, and I assume the author knew what he was talking about. Briefly, it seems that after this peasant had thought of every possible economy which might be effected…” Thus the story progressed until the point was rammed home. The point? Oh . .. that the tablecloth did double duty. “Fancy,” he wound up, “the sensation of sleeping on dirty tablecloths, of tossing around all night on dry breadcrumbs!”
At this point his audience broke out in a rash.
Said Stanley bluntly: “I don’t believe that yarn at all.”
Moloch accepted the several reproofs with good grace and was off again, like an old corsair, for deeper waters. He had some unexpected nonsense on his chest about his grandfather’s appetite for metaphysics. He narrowed it down to a matter of cosmogony. The grandfather had some curious views about the constitution of the universe.
But Stanley could contain himself no longer. “Haven’t we had about enough of this twaddle?” he said.
Blanche pushed her chair aside with a decisive gesture and informed them that she was off to bed. “I’m sure you won’t miss my presence,” came her chill voice. “I really can’t contribute a thing about… er, cosmogony.” She mouthed the word as though it were as meaningful as “sesquipedalian.”
They permitted her to leave without remonstrance. Then Stanley took the floor again.
“Speaking of philosophy”—he looked down at them like the muzzle of a six-shooter—”I was reading a
bout a character the other day in the newspaper. Some character! A philosopher, too, in his way. From what I could gather, he prided himself on the fact that he had never killed a man unless it was absolutely necessary. ‘I gave every man a chance,’ he told the reporters just before leaving the death cell. It appears, however, that few people had availed themselves of this chance he talked about. He had killed something like twelve or thirteen men in cold blood At the last minute they tried talking religion to him. First they shoved a priest onto him; after that, they trotted out a Methodist preacher. But this guy had his wits about him. He told them all to go plumb to hell. ‘I’m a self-respecting atheist,’ he says to them. ‘I never had any need for a God so far … guess I won’t need him where I’m goin’.’ They weren’t frightening him with any bogeyman stuff about the hereafter. ‘If you guys want to do something for me,’ he tells them, ‘buy me a Corona-Corona and the last edition of the newspaper.’ It seems foolish, but a dying man’s requests are generally listened to. They brought him what he wanted He walked to the death chair without assistance, sat down calmly, lit the Corona-Corona, and turned to the last page of the evening paper, where an advance illustration of his execution was depicted. Then he looked at them as if they were a bunch of imbeciles and said: ‘Go ahead … shoot the works!’ … Now a chap like that I call a thoroughbred. He had the courage of his convictions.” Whereupon he appended a few caustic remarks about the great scoffers of literature who repent on their deathbeds and die with a crucifix in their hands.
Prigozi clanked like a radiator. Voltaire, Ingersoll—he had a half-dozen names on his lips.
“I mean the whole shooting match,” said Stanley.
“When it comes to being an absolutely heartless, conscienceless rogue, you take the cake yourself,” Moloch threw in.
Stanley was not at all displeased over this broadside. He accepted the declaration as an encomium.
“Admitting that there may be some truth in what you say,” he replied, unable to suppress a broad grin, “did I ever tell you about the time I was working in the Navy Yard, and they sent me to Washington to petition Secretary Daniels? No? Well, that’s a yarn you’ve got to listen to. Talk about nerve—I was chock full of it in those days.”
A soupcon of encouragement, and Stanley was down the stretch.
“It was after I got fired at Ellis Island this happened. I spoke Polish fluently then. All in all I was pretty capable of holding my own. This job at the Navy Yard was a regular lead-pipe cinch. Night work: not a damned thing to do but look wise. The other lads used to pass the time away playing cards, telling dirty stories, and stuff like that, but I got tired of that in short order and soon began to avail myself of the idle time by doing some scribbling. It was nothing very much, what writing I did, but it gave me excellent practice. I used to compose long letters, witty ones, too, even if I say it myself. At least, those dubs thought so. Before I mailed them I would pass them around and give every one a chance to laugh his head off. Often I conveniently forgot to post the letters … because they were generally addressed to fictitious individuals. I would sit down and write on whatever subject happened to interest me at the time, and when I was through, I’d stick a phony name at the top: ‘Dear Frederick,’ or ‘Dear Jose’. For sheer devilment, sometimes, I’d rake up queer-sounding names, like Moscow Fife or Melchoir Svengali. It didn’t matter .. . nobody knew the difference. Well, after this flapdoodle had been going on for some time … oh, yes, I forgot to say that I also invented ingenious answers to my letters—just to make things more plausible. Anyway, after a time I became quite a figure around the Yard. It was conceded that I was rather a brilliant chap, a little eccentric, perhaps, but ambitious. When I had been there about a year—I had been keeping a close mouth, understand, about the past—the fellows asked me one day if I wouldn’t represent them at the capital: they were petitioning Secretary Daniels for an increase. I told them I’d think it over. …”
He cleared his throat and lit a Turkish Trophy.
“I figured, you see, it would be more diplomatic on my part to show some hesitancy rather than snap at the proposition immediately. Meanwhile, you can bet your boots, I began to prepare a speech which I intended to deliver to this here Secretary Daniels. Sure enough, one day a gang of them walked into my cubby hole with a list of names for the petition. ‘You’re the man, Stanley,’ they said, and gave me a hundred-dollar bill to defray the expenses. I blushed and stammered as though I were overcome with emotion. I had expected it to happen right along, of course. Anyway, I shoved the hundred-dollar bill in my pocket; it was a brand-new bill, smooth and thin as a wafer. To this day I can feel the way that bill slid into my pocket… so easy, and me saying all the while, ‘Sure, I’ll take the first train out in the morning.’”
“I can well imagine the rest of the story,” said Moloch slyly.
“Keep your shirt on. You don’t know what happened. This isn’t an O. Henry story. I’m goin’ to tell you about it.” He sniffed and looked at Prigozi pompously “When I left the office that evening, as I was saying, I felt like a drum major. Everybody in the Yard had stopped in to shake hands with me and wish me luck. It was Stanley this and Stanley that. You’d think I was Hamilcar Barca…. Naturally, I felt pretty jubilant. I was quite a youngster, then, and this here trip to Washington seemed like a pretty important piece of business to me. (You know how Lincoln felt at Gettysburg!) Leastways, I knew I’d have to come back with an O.K. or take a back seat forever afterwards. The peculiar thing about it was (it first began to dawn on me after I had accepted the money for the trip) how difficult my mission was going to be. I thought I’d get by the Secretary’s door all right, but after that, what? That pretty little speech I had prepared … holy smokes! I was positive then and there it wouldn’t go. I realized all of a sudden that it was the sort of speech a schoolboy might make on graduation day: it was full of rhetorical flourishes, allusions to Plato, Mark Antony, and Napoleon—I don’t know whether I had down Napoleon or Nelson—on board the Bellerophon. Even Pontius Pilate was dragged in … I don’t know why, except that I admired him a great deal … always thought he got a raw deal. But that’s another story…. The more I thought about that speech, and all the cuts I’d have to make, the more depressed I began to feel.
There was none of the smart drum major in me after I had walked a few blocks and some of the conceit had evaporated. Between you and me and the lamppost, I felt like a flat tire. I says to myself: ‘This ain’t gonna be a matter of writing a grandiloquent epistle to someone who don’t exist.’ No, Secretary Daniels was flesh and blood, and from all that I had heard of him, he was no soft-boiled egg. In the midst of my gloomy misgivings I happened to pass a saloon. Without giving the matter a second thought, I turned instinctively and pushed through the swinging doors. It was an A-l joint! It was like a house of mirrors: what a blaze of light! And a cheap Wurlitzer going full-blast… some tipsy bozo feeding it nickels all night. It looked good to me, gave me a new lease of life. The bartender—I mustn’t forget to tell you about him—proved to be a well-educated chap. Later on I learned that he was a Harvard man. He didn’t boast about it. All in all I took quite a fancy to him. I liked the cut of his jib....”
Really warming up to Stanley, Prigozi spilled over: “He wasn’t just a smart aleck, eh?”
“Now you’re talking. No, he was a modest, unassuming cuss who knew how to mind his own business. What’s more, he knew how to pour a drink!”
“A Harvard man, you say?” came from Moloch.
“Yeah.... Don’t interrupt me, I forget what I was saying.”
“You were talking about pouring drinks.”
“That’s right. … It was like this: at the start I told myself to take it easy. After all, I wanted but a glass or two to collect my thoughts. I had some of my own money in my pocket—enough for all the drinks I wanted—so I drained a few small beers. You could get a swell glass for a dime … big schooners, you know. For that matter I guess a dime’d get you a scuttl
e of suds in those days…. After I had downed a few schooners—I switched at the bartender’s suggestion—I noticed my mind wasn’t getting any clearer. The bartender was asking me every few minutes to have one with him. I wasn’t exactly befuddled… a little tight, maybe. Anyhow, I know I wasn’t drunk. This bartender char;—he was so damned polite, such a suave, well-spoken cuss, I didn’t have the heart to refuse him. So I had another one or two—maybe three or four with him …on him. Along about there I remember a discussion taking place at my elbow. A couple of dudes in spats and butter-colored gloves commenced a palaver about evolution. One of them was studying for the priesthood … can you make that out? A genuine dude, too! He was telling his friend what a fraud Darwin was, how it was all a theory, and damned weak in the major premises, or some crack like that. I saw the bartender prick up his ears, and pretty soon he gives me the high sign. ‘Ask that sky pilot,’ he said, nodding toward the divinity student, ‘ask him if he ever heard of Ernst Haeckel.’ He didn’t want to be embroiled … guess he was afraid of losing his job. So he eggs me on—’Go on, tell them about the morphological evidences; give ‘em a little spiel on embryology’—and he keeps winking slyly all the while. I don’t know what led him to suppose that I was an evolutionist, but I tackled them just the same. I couldn’t say much about Haeckel for the simple reason that I didn’t know a hell of a lot about him and his morphological evidences… not then, anyways. But I handed them a great line about Huxley. (I used to read Huxley for breakfast!) Say! Before I got through with my argument, they walked out on us. Well, I just looks at the bartender and he looks at me, and then we laughed like hell. “Have one on Thomas Huxley,’ he says good-naturedly, and fills up a couple of big schooners. We downed that quickly enough, and then I popped up: ‘What about having one on Ernst Haeckel?’ So it went. We had a few more on ‘embryology’ and ‘morphology’ respectively, and by that time I was pretty well tanked.... Mind you, for two years I had been on my good behavior … never touched a drop in all that time. And just when I needed my wits, bango! I fall off the water wagon! But while I was falling off the water wagon I didn’t take it so much to heart. The truth of the matter is, I never gave the trip to Washington a thought. After a while, of course, I had emptied my vest pockets of all the loose coin I had on me. Eventually I fished out the hundred-dollar bill. That was rich! I pulled it out like a man who has been doing that sort of thing for years. The bartender was taken back. You know what he said when I slapped it on the bar?