“Napoleon also said something about the heaviest artillery, too,” his friend remarked wickedly.
He smiled with complacence. “I am as I am,” he murmured.…
“Especially when it hasn’t been used in some time,” his host continued. He looked like a hurt beast, and the other added quickly: “but are you going to try this scheme tonight, or are you just telling me of an hypothetical case?”
He regarded his watch with consternation. “Good gracious, I must run.” He sprang to his feet. “Thanks for advising me. I really think I have the system for this type of woman, dont you?”
“Sure,” his friend agreed. At the door he halted and rushed back to shake hands. “Wish me luck,” he said over his departing shoulder. The door closed behind him and his descending feet sounded from the stairs. Then the street door; and the other stood on the balcony, watching him out of sight. The host returned to his couch and reclined again, laughing. He rose, turned out the light and lay in the dark, chuckling. Beneath him the typewriter, tireless, clattered and thundered.
Perhaps three hours later. The typewriter yet leaped and danced on the table.
“Morrison!”
The manipulator of the machine felt a vague annoyance, like knowing that someone is trying to wake you from a pleasant dream, knowing that if you resist the dream will be broken.
“Oh, Mor—risooooooon!”
He concentrated again, being conscious that the warm peaceful night without his room had been ravished of quiet. He banged louder upon his key-board to exorcise it, but there came a timid knock at his blind.
“Damn!” he said, surrendering. “Come in!” he bellowed, looking up. “My God, where did you come from? I let you in about ten minutes ago, didn’t I?” He looked at his visitor’s face and his tone changed. “What’s the matter, friend? Sick?”
The visitor stood blinking in the light, then entered falteringly and drooped upon a chair. “Worse than that,” he said despondently.
The large man wheeled heavily to face him.
“Need a doctor or anything?”
The caller buried his face in his hands. “No, no a doctor cant help me.”
“Well, what is it?” the other insisted in mounting exasperation. “I’m busy. What do you want?”
The guest drew a long breath and looked up. “I’ve simply got to talk to someone.” He lifted a stricken face to the other’s heavy piercing stare. “A terrible thing happened to me tonight.”
“Well, spit it out, then. But be quick.”
He sighed and weakly fumbled his handkerchief, mopping his face. “Well, just as I said, I acted indifferent, said I didn’t want to dance tonight. And she said, ‘Aw, come on: do you think I came out just to sit on a park bench all evening?’ And then I put my arm around her—”
“Around who?”
“Around her. And when I tried to kiss her she just put—”
“But where was this?”
“In a taxi. She just put her elbow under my chin and pushed me back in my corner and said ‘Are we going to dance, or not? If we aint, say so, and I’ll get out. I know a fellow that will take me out to dance’ and—”
“In God’s name, friend, what are you raving about?”
“About that girl I was out with tonight. And so we went to dance and I was petting her like I said and she said ‘Lay off, brother, I aint got lumbago’ And after a while she kept looking over her shoulder and then craning her head around to look over mine and getting out of step and saying, ‘Pardon me’ and so I said to her ‘What are you thinking of?’ and she said ‘huh?’ and I said ‘I can tell you what you are thinking of’ and she said ‘Who, me? what was I thinking of?’ still looking and bobbing her head around. Then I saw she was kind of smiling and I said ‘You are thinking of me.’ And she said ‘Oh, was I?’ ”
“Good God,” murmured the other, staring at him.
“Yes. And so I said, like I’d planned, ‘I’m tired of this place. Let’s go’ She didn’t want to go, but I was firm and so at last she said ‘All right. You go down and get a taxi and I will fix up and come on down’
“I ought to have known there was something wrong then, but I didn’t. Well, I ran on down and got a taxi. And I gave the driver ten dollars to drive us out into the country where there wasn’t much passing and to stop and pretend that he had to go back down the road a ways for something, and to wait there until I honked the horn for him.
“So I waited and waited and she never came down the stairs and at last I told the driver not to go off, that I would go back and get her, and I ran back up stairs. I didn’t see anything of her in the ante-room, so I went back to the dance floor.” He sat for a while in lax and silent despair.
“Well?” the other prompted.
He sighed. “I swear, I think I’ll give it up: never have anything to do with women any more. When I went back in again I looked around for her. And at last I saw her, dancing with another man, a big one like you. I didn’t know what to think. I decided that he was a friend of hers she was dancing with until I should return, having misunderstood what I said about waiting for her on the street. But she had told me to wait for her on the street. That’s what confused me.
“I stood in the door until I caught her eye finally, and signalled to her. She kind of flipped her hand at me as if she wanted me to wait until the dance was over, so I just stood there. But when the music stopped they went to a table and he called a waiter and ordered something. And she never even looked at me again!
“I began to get mad then. I walked over to them. I didn’t want them and everyone else to see I was angry so I bowed to them, and she looked at me and said ‘Well, well! if here aint Herbie back again. I thought you had left me and so this kind gentleman was kind enough to offer to take me home.’ ‘You damn right I will,’ says the big one, popping his eyes at me, ‘who’s he?’ ‘Why, he’s a little friend of mine,’ she says. ‘Well, it’s time little boys like him was at home in bed.’
“He looked at me, hard, and I looked at him and said ‘Come on, Miss Steinbauer, our cab is waiting.’ and he said ‘Herb, you aint trying to take my girl, are you?’ I told him that she was with me, quite dignified, you know, and she said ‘Run along, you are tired of dancing. I aint, so I am going to stay a while.’
“She was kind of smiling: I could see they were ridiculing me, and then he laughed out loud—like a horse. ‘Beat it, brother’ he said. ‘She’s gave you the air. Come back tomorrow.’ Well, when I saw his fat red face full of teeth I wanted to hit him. But then I thought of creating a scene and having it in the papers with my name, so I just gave her a look and turned and walked out. Of course everybody around had seen and heared it all: there was a waiter said ‘Hard luck, fellow, but they will do it’ as I went out the door.
“And on top of all that, the taxi driver had gone off with my ten dollars.”
The other looked at him in admiration. “God, regard your masterpiece! Balzac, despair! And here I am wasting my life, trying to make people live by means of the written word!” his face became suddenly suffused. “Get to hell out of here,” he roared, “you have made me sick!”
The visitor rose and stood in limp dejection.
“But what am I to do?”
“Do? do? Go to a brothel, if you want a girl. Or if you are afraid someone will come in and take her away from you, get out on the street and pick one up: bring her here, if you want to. But in Christ’s name, dont ever talk to me again. I am trying to write a novel and you have already damaged my ego beyond repair.”
The large man took his arm and thrusting the door open with his foot, assisted him kindly but swiftly into the street. The blind shut behind him and he stood for a space, listening to the frantic typewriter, looking at planes of shadow, letting the night soothe him. A cat, slinking, regarded him, then flashed a swift dingy streak across the street. He followed it with his eyes in a slow misery, with envy. Love was so simple for cats—mostly noise: success didn’t make much differen
ce. He sighed, and walked away, leaving the thunderous typewriter behind him.
His decorous pace spaced away streets interesting with darkness; he walked, marvelling that he could be so despairing inwardly and yet outwardly be the same. I wonder if it does show on me? he thought. It is because I am getting old, that women are not attracted to me. Yet, that man tonight was about my age. It is something I haven’t got: something I have never had.
But it was unbearable to believe this. No, its something I can do, or say, that I have not discovered yet. As he turned into the quiet street on which he lived he saw two people in a dark door-way, embracing. He hurried on.
In his room at last he slowly removed coat and vest and stood before his mirror, examining his face. His hair was getting thinner daily (cant even keep my hair, he thought bitterly) and his thirty years showed in his face. He was not fleshy, yet the skin under his chin was becoming loose, flabby. He sighed and completed his disrobing. He sat in a chair, his feet in a basin of warm water, slowly chewing a digestive tablet.
The water mounting warmly through his thin body soothed him, the pungent tablet between his slowly moving jaws gave him release from his misery. “Let’s see,” he pondered to his rhythmic mastication, calmly reviewing the evening, “where did I go wrong tonight? My scheme was good: Morrison himself admitted it. Let me think.” His jaws ceased and his eyes brooded upon a photograph on the opposite wall. “Why is it they never act as you had calculated? You can allow for every contingency, yet they will always do something else. I have been too gentle with them: I should never give them a chance to make a fool of me. That has been my mistake every time—giving them a dinner or a show right off. The trick is to be bold with them, bring them straight here, dominate them from the start. By God, that’s it.”
He dried his feet swiftly, thrusting them into his bed-room slippers, and went to the telephone. “That’s the trick exactly,” he whispered to himself exultantly, and in his ear was Morrison’s sleepy voice.
“Morrison? So sorry to disturb you, but I have got it at last.” There was a muffled inarticulate sound over the wire, but he rushed on: “I learned through a mistake tonight. The trouble is, I haven’t been bold enough with them: I was afraid I would be too bold and scare them off. Listen: I will bring her here at once: I will be cruel and hard, brutal, if necessary, until she begs for my love. What do you think of that?.… Hello! Morrison?”.…
There was an interval filled with a remote buzzing, then a woman’s voice said:
“You tell ’em, big boy; treat ’em rough.”
A click: he held dead gutta percha in his hand and dead gutta percha was a round O, staring at his mouth.
Peter
Here was spring in a paved street, between walls, and here was Peter sitting on a stoop, kicking his short legs in brief serge, banging his heels rhythmically against a wooden step. Behind him an arching spacious passage way swam back between walls of an ineffable azure into which one passed as into sleep, sweeping back into light again and a shabby littered court and something green and infernal against a far wall.
“Hello,” says Peter easily, above his thumping heels, above the raucous syncopation of a victrola in which has been prisoned by negroes all the tortured despair of negroes. Peter’s face is round as a cup of milk with a dash of coffee in it.
“My brother is white,” Peter remarks conversationally, in his sailor suit. “Are you going to draw some more?” he asks us, and an old friend stops beside us. An old friend of Peter’s, that is. His flat Mongol face is as yellow as Peter’s and he says: “How, Petuh? You plitty nice boy t’day? Your momma home?”
“Yes, she up stairs talkin’ to man.”
“Your pa home?”
“Naw,” replies Peter. “I aint got no paw, I got a brother, though. He’s white. Like you,” he added to Spratling, whom Peter likes.
“You are pretty white yourself. Aren’t you white enough?” I ask.
“I dont know. My brother he’s little. When he is big like me he wont be so white, I reckon.”
“Pitter,” the Chinese interrupts. “Your mamma talk to man. You go tell her she talk to man enough. You tell her? You nice boy.”
“Ah, you go tell her. She dont mind. She say she can get ’em out quick as any. Sometimes she says she dont let ’em take off their hats. I guess she cant never tell when Eagle Beak’s coming home.”
The Chinaman, his face rife with sex, stared down that ineffable azure passage to where sunlight was like golden water between walls.
“Eagle Beak?” I repeated.
“Yes, that’s right. He’s the one that sleeps with mamma. He works on Dock 5. He can move more cargo than anybody on Dock 5.”
“Do you like Eagle Beak?”
“Sure, he’s all right. He brings me candy. The other one never done that.”
“Never done that?”
“No. He never brought nothing. So mamma run him away.”
The Chinaman entered the passage, we saw his dark figure gain a nimbus of sunlight and turning, disappear.
“Eagle Beak’s all right. We like Eagle Beak,” he added and Hercules in dark bronze passed us. “Hi, Baptis’,” said Peter.
“Hi, big boy,” replied the negro. “How you comin’?” he asked. The light flashed briefly, arcing downward and Peter pounced on a nickel. The man walked down the street, and a corner took him. Spring, scorned by wood and stone, took the air, filled the atmosphere itself, fretful and troubling, and Peter said: “He’s all right. That’s the way he always acks. You got to treat ’em like that, mamma says. And we do.”
Peter with his face round and yellow as a new penny, brooded briefly. What does he see? I wondered, thinking of him as an incidental coin minted between the severed yet similar despairs of two races.
“Say,” he said at last, “can you spin a top? There is a boy lives in that house can spin one end and pick it up on the string.”
“Haven’t you got a top?” I asked.
“Yes, the Baptis’ give me one, but I aint had time to learn to spin it.”
“Haven’t had time?”
“Well, you see, I got so much to do. I have to sit here and tell ’em when mamma’s busy talking to some body. And the others, too. I got to watch out for ’em.”
“Watch out for what?”
“I dont know. Just watch out for ’em. They are nice folks here. Baptis’ says we got the nicest girls in town here. But say, aint you going to draw no pictures today?”
“Yes, I am going to draw a picture of your stair case. How about coming along?”
“I might as well,” Peter told Spratling. “I can see ’em just as well. But you aint going up to mamma’s room, are you?”
“No, no. I’ll draw the passage. But why do you ask?”
“Well, she’s busy talking to that Chink that just went in. She dont like to be bothered while she’s talking to some one.”
“Then I wont bother her. I’ll just draw a picture of the stair case.”
“Well, that’ll be all right, I guess.”
We moved inside: it was like drowning in a sweet and azure sea. “Can I watch?” asked Peter.
“Surely you can. By the way, how would you like to be drawn?”
Peter— I dunno. Can you draw me?
Spratling— I expect so.
Peter— But say, you cant put me in a picture, can you?
A voice— Wait until that chilly breeze catch you in your B.V.D.’s.
Spratling— Certainly I can, if you want me to.
The victrola again broke into a tortured syncopation. Here were dark trees, and stars on an unknown water—all the despairs of time and breath.
A voice— Baby!
Another voice— Break dem springs, if you can.
Peter— That’s Euphrosy: she got more sense than any of these gals, mamma says.
Here was a salmon colored stairway swelling upward, as satisfying as a woman’s belly. Negroes brushed by us: black and tan and yellow faces wrung to an im
minence of physical satisfaction. They passed us—Peter in the throes of a self-consciousness and Spratling spreading paper and choosing a crayon, and other negroes passed us, going out, slow with completion and the compulsion of imminent labor (which is worse) all having a word for Peter posing and wrung to a tortured caricature of himself.
A voice— Baby, wrap me round!
A voice— You goddam whore, I’ll cut your th’oat.
A voice— And yo’ heart within you melt, for the sorrows you have felt.
Steps thundered on the stairs, washed clothing flapped in a faint breeze. Negroes came, flushed and gray with sex, negroes went, languorous with repletion. The Chinaman descended. “How, Peter? You plitty boy,” and went away. But Peter did not remark him.
Spratling— Lean against the wall, Peter. Stop wiggling so much! Stand as if God was looking at you.
Peter— Like this? His dark sailor suit took an impossible shape against the azure restful wall. His young body was impossible and terrible.
Spratling— Oh, hell. He cant stand that way, anyhow.
“Go ahead and draw,” I advised, but he was already busy. “If you want to move, Peter,” he said, “go ahead and move.”
But it was a point of honor with Peter not to move. Spratling drew, squinting at him; and I knew that Peter was going to cry. The sunlight was immaculate as a virgin: hanging washed garments were planes of light and a washing line took the golden noon like a tight-rope dancer.
Voice— Baby, sun on me like a gold jail-suit. Makin’ dem barrels roll. Rollin’ dem barrels for you, baby.
A voice— Win th’ee hundred in a crap game last night.
A voice— Come on, big boy, git done. I cant lay here all day.
A voice— All I done, I done for you. When you sad, I’m sad; when you laugh, I laugh.
A voice— Oh, Christ, dont! I never meant it! Dont!
Peter (weeping)— My arm hurts.
Spratling— All right, move then.
Peter— I cant! You wont draw me no more.
A voice— You damn whore.
Peter— (changing his position, thinking Spratling will not notice it.) That’s Joe Lee. He’s always beatin’ Imogene up. Joe Lee’s bad.