Barbary Shore (36 page)

“Oh, there are theories today,” Lannie said in singsong. “There are so many ways to make an apostle and no way to keep one until the princess could weep.” She fumbled through the pocket of her pajamas, and delivered a wrinkled cigarette, half voided of tobacco. I started to light it, and she pulled away her head. “No,” she said, “it’s all I have left.” Between her fingers she kneaded still more tobacco from the paper. “She would have remade the world, giving each to each what was their due, so they should be proud in their vice and know that it is beauty which blossoms on guilt.” Her voice droned on. “But she planted them with roots in the air and buds so deep in the muck. They dripped upon her until she was only their instrument, no more, nothing but their servant, and that she could have borne if they
had been of stature, but they deserted her only too cruelly and tore the bandage from her eyes, and said look upon us for we are mud, and you have altered nothing, and you who are beneath are also mud and not a princess. And thunder came, the sky darkened, and the princess saw herself and screamed, for indeed she was not the princess at all, she was nothing, she was this cigarette with the tobacco falling and afraid of the fire …”

I
N
the middle of the night I had a dream, or did I imagine it while I was awake? I stood with a crowd of men in a tremendous hall, and we rested on one foot and then the other. The speaker had been talking for an hour, and we listened with our eyes down, looking at cigarette butts wrapped in newspaper and the sullen spittle of a dirty floor. Whenever the speaker would pause, a signal must have been given for we would open our mouths and cheer at command. After a while I was able to hear what the speaker said:

“I been called a hack by those who got their reasons, saboteurs and agents of the stinking enemy country. Listen, you men, I spit on sonsofbitching hacks who love another country than our own. If you find one, even one, in this here union, string him up, I say, string him up. I been called a hack, they say I used to be one, but it’s a lie, and I swear it on the sweet dead flesh of my mother, may God keep her.”

So we cheered, for God had been mentioned.

“I work to give you men more money, that’s the Lord loving truth. But there’s a war on, men. Reds and gooks and giminy ginks, we’ve got ’em all to fight. I work to give you men more money, it’s just an accident, so help my heart, that right
now you got to take less. I been hearing that some of you talk revolution. Men, skip that stuff. Labor is respectable now. We don’t need revolution. There’s production for war instead. We submit to the speed-up, but willingly, willingly, that’s the word. And we don’t criticize because the speed-up means more production. And that means we’re making more wealth. Agitators among you are claiming that armaments are not wealth, but I tell you armaments are wealth cause they belong to all of us. So these agitators got to shut their hole.”

Suddenly, he was pointing at me. “You, Lovett, you I mean!” And in desperation I shouted back, “You’re swindling the workers, you’re swindling the workers, you’re swindling …” and I was still crying that as my arms were pinioned behind me and I was hustled from the hall to the street outside where men in uniform were waiting.

Then a wall might have crashed for I was fully awake and fully dressed, my head stuffed into the pillow, my hands gripping the iron posts of the cot.

What time was it? My anxiety, balked in its course, must drive me out of bed for a drunken search to find the alarm clock. There, standing on the floor, with my feet shuddering in my cold shoes, I heard a soft familiar voice.

“McLeod. I say, old man, McLeod.”

It was Hollingsworth. I opened my door a crack and peered out into the hall. McLeod had closed the door to his room behind him, and stood before it, his tall pinched body drooping forward. Although they did not touch, Leroy might have been supporting him.

“Took you a long time to answer,” Hollingsworth complained.

“I’ve been thinking.”

Hollingsworth looked at his wrist watch. “I’m come up here to inform you,” he said apologetically, “that in fifteen minutes you must come down and the transfer must take place.”

McLeod wiped one hand against the other. “You gave me until tomorrow morning.”

“Sorry.”

“I suppose you have your troubles,” McLeod said.

His foot ticking the floor, Hollingsworth shook his head. “A fellow can change his mind, that’s all.”

McLeod grinned. “They want you at their office right away. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“They’re fantastic, they have no right …” Hollingsworth said in a choked voice.

“To suspect you?” He chortled. “They’ve been slow.”

Hollingsworth looked at him, his thin lips moist, his forearm extended in the futile gesture of a man who has something difficult to say, and frustrated, may only pinch his finger against his thumb. “No, you must listen to me,” he piped suddenly, his dull eyes expressive at last in the tears which clouded their surface. A whimper, small and involuntary, came from some depth within. “Everybody wants to hurt me,” he said like a boy of twelve.

“You’re tired, too,” McLeod said quietly.

“I can’t go back to working for them,” he burst out suddenly. “They go at a fellow so. You ask yourself, ‘Who am I anyway?’ Do you understand? But of course you do. You are so understanding,” he said tenderly. “Why the dear experiences I’ve had with some of my colleagues, and now they’re persecuting my friends and myself. And they’re just like us although they don’t realize it.” His outpour halted momentarily, and he took off his straw boater, and reached down to massage the toe of his pointed orange moccasins. “I must apologize for hurting you the other day, but you see I knew you gave your talk for Mr. Lovett, and my feelings were terribly hurt. I can’t express the admiration I feel for a gentleman like yourself. I think if conditions had been more, so to speak, propitious, we could have been dear friends.” He put his hand on McLeod’s arm.

Subtly, McLeod disengaged it. “I’m sorry,” he said stiffly, “but I’m afraid I have strong prejudices.”

Hollingsworth would not make it a rebuff. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. We’ll see each other I hope when all this is quiet. And I’ll take good care of your wife. Opposites attract, as she says, but then at bottom they’re so much the same.” He hesitated, but this was the last opportunity, and it must be said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to give it to me. Because otherwise I would have had to bring you in, and that would have made me feel very bad. You know, I think I first had the idea for my offer when it occurred to me that I could also save you.” And he said this with passion so suppressed that the effort made him lean almost against the body of McLeod. “You’re such a stern sort of fellow,” he murmured. “I’ve always liked your type. And deep down, now don’t answer cause I know better than you, I feel that you could get to like me.” He caught himself short.

“All this is by the bye. Will you be down in fifteen minutes?”

“You’ve told me once.”

“And you take care of yourself. Make plans to leave at the same time I do. It’s not advisable to wait.” He seemed about to shake hands, and then turned around, walked quickly down the stairs.

McLeod went back into his room. I waited to cross the hall until the sound of footsteps had completely disappeared. Pushing forward the door which was open, I found McLeod sitting in a chair. Across from him was the desk and the empty seat which had belonged to Hollingsworth.

McLeod looked up at me. “You heard it all?” he asked.

I nodded, and he plucked some lint from his trouser leg. “I’ve finally made a decision,” he stated.

“Yes.”

“I’m not giving it to him.”

We were both silent after this. “Well, what are you going to do?” I asked.

“In a few minutes I’ll go down to see him.”

“Why don’t you …” I began.

“Disappear?” He laughed softly to himself. “Well, for that I’m afraid I don’t have the strength. You see he’s waiting down there, and his ears are not inconsiderable. No, he waits with the woman who was m’wife and the child, even the clothing’s been packed, and there’s only the last detail to be finished.”

“What about Guinevere?”

He shrugged sadly. “All my life I’ve loved ideas. So I loved the idea of loving my wife. And perhaps the child as well. I may face it now. No, Lovett, I’ve killed the alternatives. It seems to me I wanted to fail in every case, for it’s the alternatives cut your will to make the decision I have come to.” He shivered suddenly. “Except for one.”

“What will happen in the next few minutes?” I asked.

He jeered at me. “Oh, you assume too much. There’ll be a scene and threats, and then I’ll be on my way.”

The way he said this gathered my flesh. “And you leave nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you give it to me?” I said carefully.

He was out of his chair and squeezing my arm. “Are you sure?” he asked in a tense voice.

My heart was beating so powerfully, I did not know if I could speak. “I’ve thought about it,” I managed to say. “I’m not a brave man, I know that …” It was expressed at last. “I have no future anyway. At least I can elect to have a future. If it’s short, small matter.”

He punched me lightly on the chest. “Old sonofabitch Lovett.” A smile illumined his face. “Ah, there’s so little time and so much to tell you. You’re romantic, boy, and you must guard against it. And you’re innocent, and you have much to learn.”
He walked around nervously in a circle. “It’s impossible to give all advice in a minute, and even then you must learn yourself.” Able to contain himself no longer, he caught me in a bear hug and wrestled me about the room. “I’m proud of you,” he said loudly almost before he had thought the words, and laughed in pleasure. “Here.” He sat me down at the desk. “We’ve only a minute or two, and I must explain it to you. The details, the conditions, and the characteristics you can work out at leisure if you have any.”

When he was done he looked sternly across the table and said, the pedagogue again, “As Lenin said to the priest Gapon, ‘Study, little father, or you will lose your head.’ You hear, Lovett?”

I nodded.

“All right. Then I’ll be going down.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

McLeod was on his feet. “Oh, no. No, no. You don’t ruin it now.” He was suddenly furious. “You come down and that’s the finish of both of us. No, look, m’bucko”—and he had me by the shirt, his pale eyes glaring—“I’m an old hand, you know, and you don’t think I’ve spent the last few days without working over certain tactical questions for myself”—his breath coming hot against my face—“I mean, you don’t think I’d walk down there with no more than m’legs and not an idea in my head. No, I have a procedure, you see I discovered it today, and I can tell you that your presence, oh, I assure you, it would be the worst thing possible.” Releasing me, he muttered, “No, you stay here, and if something goes wrong, there is the chance, clear out and I’ll meet you in the alley at the end of the street.”

“If you … If you’re sure?”

As though he were drunk he bent forward with a half-comic, half-conspiratorial gesture, and said, “Mind you now, boy, don’t come down, or ruin it you will. When I get back, I’ll enumerate how the old fox McLeod has stolen the grapes again.”
With that he pressed an envelope in my hand. “Just a few words. I was going to slip them under your door. Don’t read it now.” Lighting a cigarette, he passed into the hall, patted the banister rail, and moved out of sight.

For many minutes I obeyed his injunction, sitting in the darkness of the room, while slowly, my body motionless, heat drained from my limbs, the walls grew cold, and the stagnant attic air which had oppressed me for so many weeks, lost its warmth. My nose leaked, my hands were ice, and the silence of the house worked relentlessly at my nerve. I waited, until my ears selecting at last the momentous rhythm of water dripping from a pipe, I must attempt to determine from where it came—was it only across the hall, or could I hear it even from the cellar of another house?—and received each drop as though I were bound and the water tapped upon my skull. So, in the cave I waited, while stalactites offered their deposit to the floor.

The silence no longer endurable, I left his room for my own, and in the hall, my ear at the stair well, thought I heard the cadence of Hollingsworth’s voice. I descended a half-flight, and a footstep might have been heard. Or in its weariness did a timber creak? Thus, deploying at the end of a rope for certainly I would return, I passed the third-floor landing and then the second, pausing beside Lannie’s door. On the other side, in her room, the light would be on, the bulb burning into the darkness, while her windows still damp with their wound would stare at her face as she lay on the bed, and the paint not yet cold would voyage downward in its thick slow passage upon the glass. There I waited for another minute, tarrying at the last familiar outpost.

In the downstairs hallway a dusty lamp sat on a battered table, and encouraged an insect which circled above misaddressed bills and dead letters bearing the name of people who could no longer be found. Weight on my toes, body clenched, I paused there too, my fingers shuffling the envelopes, my eyes reading nothing.

They were talking. Now, on the stairs which led to the door of Guinevere’s suite, I could detect their voices, each whispering, and yet the rapidity with which they spoke and the lash of one whispered voice upon another betrayed their haste. Whisper to whisper and a low cry from Guinevere, Monina’s voice breaking out once in a whimper and silenced immediately. My head was at the keyhole, and they muttered back and forth, each voice becoming more resolved until the threat at last specific, the defiance was even clearer, and Hollingsworth’s voice was shrill for a single instant, crying out with the pain of a boy.

“You gypped me. You gypped me,” I heard him say.

“Crybaby, cry,” Monina sang.

What they were doing I hardly knew, but silence descended again, so filled, so complete, that I might have been upstairs in the other room frozen by the sequence of water falling, drop upon drop.