Barbary Shore (10 page)

“Take a chair,” McLeod told him.

He sat down after hoisting his trousers carefully, and for over a minute we gazed judiciously at one another in unavoidable proximity. Except McLeod. He consumed Hollingsworth with his stare.

I wondered if Hollingsworth had left his place in the same clutter I had seen it last, the clothing upon the floor, the bureau
drawers jammed and overflowing. I could see him giving a last survey, and then convinced everything was in order, turning the key, pausing to listen to us, and scratching for entrance.

He cleared his throat now, and leaned forward, his hands cupped over his knees, the palms arched to avoid deranging the crease of his pants. “If you fellows don’t mind,” he said without preamble, “I wonder if we could discuss politics.”

McLeod grinned, but weakly. “Anything we can clear up for you in a couple of minutes?”

He considered this seriously. “It’s hard to say. I’ve noticed that political discussions have a way of becoming very long and drawn out if you know what I mean.” When we did not respond to this, he said, “It’s mainly about the Bolshevists I’d like to talk. I heard Mr. Wilson and Mr. Court discussing them at the office the other day, and I realized I have a great deal to learn on the subject.” With modesty, his opaque blue eyes upon us, he added, “I have to keep well informed on all subjects, and it makes a fellow hop sometimes.”

“What makes you think I know anything about it?” McLeod asked. Color was returning to his face, but he was still pale.

In the ingenuous voice of a child, Hollingsworth said simply, “Well, you’re a Bolshevist, aren’t you, Mr. McLeod?”

“Do you mean a Communist?”

Hollingsworth looked perplexed. “They’re the same thing, aren’t they?”

McLeod yawned violently. “Call it the egg and the dinosaur,” he said, closing his lips in a cryptic smile.

“That’s an interesting way of putting it,” Hollingsworth said. “And you’d say you’re both?”

Once again McLeod could dissect him with his eyes. There was a pause, and behind the impassivity of their faces, I could sense the rapidity with which their minds were working. “Yes, both,” McLeod said. “Yes, absolutely both. Absolutely.”

His face was impassive, his body draped carelessly upon the chair, but like a safety valve shrilling its agitation, his foot—so disconnected from him—tapped ever more rapidly, ever more nervously upon the floor.

“Well, then you can answer some of my questions,” Hollingsworth said pleasantly.

“Possibly I can,” McLeod admitted. “Yet first let me ask one. What made you decide to do it this way?”

Hollingsworth looked puzzled. His eyes seemed to pinch the thin flanks of his nose as he pondered, and his answer was not exactly responsive. “Oh, I couldn’t say. You talk sort of differently.” He glanced about the room. “And the other time I was here when we talked about the bathroom—I’m awfully sorry we’ve never been able to work out a schedule for that—I noticed you had so many big books on the shelf.” He had withdrawn a tiny pad of paper from his jacket, and this he balanced on his knee, his pencil playing over it in the motions of a man sketching idly. “Would you say then that you’re an atheist?” he asked politely.

“Yes.” The pencil flicked lightly upon the pad.

McLeod, a grin cemented to his jaw, murmured, “As a matter of fact, I’m more than that. I’ve been head of the church dynamiting section in my time. We’ve knocked over several in the past.”

“And you’re against free enterprise?”

“Completely.” As if passing from acceptance of the game to active encouragement, McLeod delivered himself of a long exposition, his voice never altering from the acrid tone with which he began. “You might say that I am against free enterprise because it sucks the workers dry, turns man upon his brother, and maintains the inequities of a class society. This poison may only be met with poison, violence with violence. A campaign of vigorous terrorism must be undertaken to wrest the seats of power from the buh-geoisie. The president must be assassinated, and
congressmen imprisoned. The State Department and Wall Street must be liquidated, libraries must be burned, and the filthy polluted South must be destroyed nigh unto the last stone with the exception of the Negroes.” McLeod halted, and lit a cigarette for himself. The first match went out, and he struck another one, brought it to the tip, his hands cupped in an excess of care. “Do you have any more questions?” he asked.

Hollingsworth scratched his head. “Well, you’ve given me a great deal to think about. This is all extremely interesting I should say.” Carefully he brushed a cowlick from his forehead. “Oh, yes.” He leaned forward, phrased the next question diffidently. “Would you feel that your first allegiance is not to the Stars and Stripes, but to a foreign power?”

McLeod betrayed no humor. “I would admit that is generally correct.” He stared at his hands in a curious way, as if resigning himself to whatever he saw portrayed there. After a moment he looked up. “Does this conclude the political discussion?” he asked.

Hollingsworth nodded. “I must say you have it all at your finger tips.”

“I’ve prepared it,” McLeod said. “For years.”

“I appreciate your co-operativeness.”

McLeod leaned toward him. “Wall Street is interesting, isn’t it?” he asked in an amiable tone.

“Oh, yes. Very much so. I really feel as if it’s an education.”

Subtly, perhaps unconsciously, McLeod was parodying him. “Yes, that could be said.” With a sudden motion, he reached forward and flipped the pad from Hollingsworth’s knee. “Don’t mind if I look at this, do you?” he asked.

But Hollingsworth performed the ritual of a man who obviously did mind. He started in his chair, his arm extended in pursuit of the pad, his fingers closed and opened to articulate his frustration. Slowly his tongue licked over his lips. “Do you think a fellow ought to play that kind of trick on one?” he asked
me quietly, his neutral voice washed faintly by righteousness.

I was watching McLeod. He sat back in his chair and studied what Hollingsworth had written. From time to time he chuckled without amusement. Then he passed me the pad, and I read it with my heart beating stupidly. Hollingsworth had made the following list:

Silently, I handed the pad back to McLeod. In a flat voice, not without mockery, he said to Hollingsworth, “You made a mistake. I never advocate the use of poison.”

Hollingsworth had recovered. Diffidently, but not without firmness, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t like to disagree with a fellow, but you did say that. I heard you.”

McLeod shrugged. “All right, leave it in.” He took a long puff at his cigarette. “Tell me, old man,” he drawled, “is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Why, yes.” Hollingsworth adjusted the belt of his trousers. He leaned forward again, and his face which had been in shadow entered the cone of light cast by the bulb hanging from the ceiling. Upon his mouth he exhibited his apologetic smile.

But there was little of apology in his other movements. Firmly, he pointed to the pad. “I wonder if you would affix a
signature to this,” he said formally. “I would like to keep it as one of my souvenirs, and that would”—he searched for a word—“enhance the value thereon.”

“Sign it?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.”

McLeod smiled, tapped the pad upon his knee for a moment, and then to my astonishment, took a pen from the breast pocket of his shirt, scribbled a few words, and scratched his signature. He read aloud, “Transcript of remarks made by William McLeod—signed—William McLeod. Does that do?”

“Oh, that’s fine,” Hollingsworth said. “It’s nice to meet people who are so co-operative.” When neither of us replied, he looked at his watch with great seriousness. “My, I’ve stayed longer than I thought.” He stood up, and took the notes which McLeod extended to him. “Well, I’d like to thank you fellows for being so nice about it all.”

“Any time we can help you, any time,” McLeod nodded.

Hollingsworth still remained at the door, fingering the pad. With a certain gentleness, he ripped off the top sheet on which they had written, and tore it in two. “You know,” he said, “on second thought perhaps I really don’t want this souvenir.”

“It is valueless,” McLeod drawled again.

“Yes, so it is.” He dropped the pieces to the floor, and was gone.

When the door had closed, McLeod rested his head on his hands and laughed wearily. Upon his head beat the glare of the light bulb, seeming to burn through the frail thin hair at the peak of his scalp, and thrusting beyond him across the floor a distorted shadow of himself, elongated and bent, eloquent in its shadowed head and emaciated forearms. I became aware that the shades were down, and in this stifling room, nothing moved, nothing stirred, the books along the wall in silent witness beside myself. He raised his head and stared at the light as if he must excoriate himself like a fakir searing his vision into the sun.

With what seemed an intense effort, he tore his eyes from the light, and looked at his hands. “You ever wait for anybody?” he asked quietly.

I did not understand at first what he meant, but from some recess of my mind leaped again the image of the stranger, the door opening, the obscured face hovering above my bed. “I don’t know,” I said.

He stood up and leaned against the bookcase, the end of his cigarette still pinched against his fingers. When he looked at me there was small recognition in his eyes. “One thing I’d like to find out,” he said. “Which team does he come from?”

“I don’t follow you,” I said.

Something flickered in his stare. Perhaps he was aware of me again. “That’s right, you wouldn’t know, would you, Lovett?” And then for an instant he grasped my wrist. “Of course it’s one of the techniques to leave the innocent behind, and he’s the one who carries away the valuable piece.” But as I met his look, he relaxed his grip upon me. “No, you’re not in it, I’m certain of that.” He snickered. “I suppose I have to be.”

I stammered out a question and McLeod made no response. Instead, he laughed again to himself. “I’ll tell you, Lovett,” he said, “I’m tired. Do you mind leaving here? I want to think for a while.”

I went away with McLeod sitting in the chair in the middle of the room, the light bulb above his head, his eyes looking without expression at the peeling plaster upon his wall. I had the impression he would remain in this position for hours.

T
HAT
evening I lay awake for a long time and watched the random play of city lights across my ceiling. And in such an abstract game with nocturnal sounds as my only diversion—a woman’s heels clacking slowly upon the sidewalk, a window somewhere being opened and shut again—I found myself constructing an imaginary childhood.

Could it not be possible that I was born in an old house in the center of a Midwestern city, the house going quietly to seed, while the distinction of being one of the oldest families became less important to everyone but ourselves? This would be a city whose suburbs were constantly expanding and whose industry, nurtured by congenial tax rates and an amiable political machine, could grow and double within a decade. Institutions altered, and with them, men, and there would be a new country club and insurance brokers who peopled it. My parents would talk about such things with distaste for they lived in the memory of an earlier world, illumined in the transitory splendor of a calendar sunset, and they would assure me that forty years ago the city was lovely, adorned by small quiet streets and brownstone houses in the first rich maturation of their colors, small gardens between the buttressed stone stairways, and the inevitable corner grocery which lasted beyond its time like an old
relative on pension until it emitted at last only the rich odor of unground coffee out of a once-magical assortment of smells. Spring mornings the men would walk to work, and on Sundays the entire family was in black, the quiet afternoons in the back yard annotated only by church bells.

It is a sweet picture, but it is a false shore. The only brownstone houses I ever knew were in disrepair and skived by landlords. I was born into a world which would move forever faster, and if I had to create for myself a tropical isle, I could not render it perfect, for I would always find the darkening clouds of typhoon, and hear the surf lashing the shore. It was possible to engage in such a voyage, but only to return to the hard cot beneath the dirty window of my narrow room.

So I lay there that evening while McLeod across the hall must also have stared at the ceiling, and I dreamed that I was in another room in a vast dormitory for children, and while we slept a fire had begun in the cellar and was sweeping along the dry wood of the walls and through the deep vent of the staircase. Soon it would reach the great room in which we slept and sear a passage through the door, and we would awake to the sound of children’s screams and hear our own voice.

Thus, restlessly, I slept.

In the morning Guinevere came to visit me, and as I might have expected she was not alone. Behind her, more vivid than a shadow, yet linked as inseparably, followed Monina. They came in together after a cursory knock, Guinevere’s arms laden with a pile of sheets which she deposited quickly upon my bed. “How’re you doing, Lovett?” she bawled.

I nodded a greeting. There was nothing to suggest that the last time we parted she had been screaming at me. Monina, no more abashed than Guinevere, ducked her head, babbled something, and then proceeded to examine the room. She did this with great care and some insolence as though she were unobserved, lifted a corner of the rug and looked under it, peered
behind my armchair, and finally, paused at the desk and went through my papers, clucking to herself in some child’s game of words.