The Investigations of Avram Davidson (25 page)

So—

Dong. Dong. Dong.

And—

“Henny?” called old Stucker. “Henny? Hen-ny?” And, finally frightened, louder and louder, “Henny, Henny!”

Thus awakening Mr. Bigelow, in the next bed, to his ungovernable and shameful coughing—coughing which only grew worse as he tried to stop it. Poor, coughing Mr. Bigelow! Where could he go and hide his cough in the cold and hostile night?

So, in a matter of seconds, Mr. Bigelow woke up old Amadeo—who knew on the instant exactly where
he
was, and where he was
not,
and why, and that he could never return—never!—to the nice cool basement store, with a coolness so good for the beautiful fruit, the lovely vegetables, and the sweet familiar smell of them, and the familiar customers whom he had served for more than a generation in the old neighborhood (faults and all) which had been—ah, fatal change of tense!—more than a home. His life—gone, gone forever—urbanly renewed into a giant complex of giant boxhouses, with no crowded streets, no saloons, no restaurants, no little candy stores, no pushcarts—and no basement fruit and vegetable store for Amadeo Palumbo.

“Oh, Gesu,” he wept. “Oh, Santa Mari'…”

And so the cycle would go throughout the whole night. Mr. Richards was not bothered by chimes, he missed no wife, he had no cough, he mourned for no lost occupation or familiar home or place. He wanted only to sleep, and he could not sleep because his roommates could not let him.

*   *   *

“W
AKE UP
! W
AKE
up there, Richards. You getting senile or something, falling asleep while people are talking to you?” Mr. Hammond shook him into wakefulness.

Mr. Richards snapped his head up. Smiled. “Sorry for that,” he said.

“Not very polite, in my opinion,” grumbled Mr. Hammond.

“Now, Harry—” his wife said.

“Don't you
Now, Harry
me, Alice!”

They were all in the sun parlor at the front of the first floor. Mrs. Hammond smiled over her knitting. Mr. and Mrs. Darling looked distressed. “Senile” was not a nice word at the Alexandra Home. Mr. Hammond grunted, creased his newspaper.

“That's a habit I got into many, many years ago,” Mr. Richards began.

“What, falling asleep when people are talking to you?” Hammond wouldn't let go.

“No, taking cat naps. Many times we'd have to march all night through the jungle, and then, in the daytime, set one man on guard, and the rest of us would just fall down and curl up, sleep for oh not more than five or six minutes, then jump up and start marching again.”

Mr. and Mrs. Darling stopped looking distressed and started looking interested. Mrs. Hammond paused in her knitting. Her husband unfolded his paper again and said, “Man writes here—as I was saying, Richards, before you fell
asleep
on me—man writes here—”

But Mr. Darling was evidently not interested in what a man wrote there. His eyes wider than before, he leaned forward and asked, “Was this when you were fighting the Bolivians in that Grand Shako War, Mr. Richards?”

Once again, firmly and loudly, rattling his paper, Mr. Hammond said, “Man writes here that—”

But Mr. Darling, even louder, said, “Hey, Mr. Richards? Fighting the Bolivians?”

With an apologetic smile to Mr. Hammond, who scowled, Mr. Richards said, “Well, point of order, Mr. Darling. In the Gran Chaco War I was fighting
with
the Bolivians. Against the Paraguayans. By that time the cat nap habit had been established for many years, far as I was concerned, and I taught it to my men. Nicaragua, fighting the bandit Sandino—Venezuela, trying to overthrow the tyrant Lopez—” He chuckled, as if reminded of something.

Mr. Darling, his face now bright with vicarious enjoyment, said, “Hey, Mr. Richards? What—?”

Asking the pardon of the ladies for telling a slightly improper story (the ladies at once assumed an expression both surprised and insistent), but reminding them that the Latin race had different customs from our own, Mr. Richards proceeded to inform them that Lopez, though never married, had had many children.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” said Mrs. Hammond.

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Darling, a featureless, dumpy woman, though inoffensive enough; but Mrs. Hammond was a very good-looking person, her skin still firm and pink and her snow-white hair neatly set.

Tyrant though he was, Lopez was nevertheless in his own way a sort of what-you-might-call a gentleman, and he had legally acknowledged all his natural children (as the expression goes), and had them legitimatized. One day Colonel Lindbergh flew down to Venezuela and was met at the airport by President Lopez and a number of his children, who presented Colonel Lindbergh with a bouquet of flowers.

Lindbergh took the bouquet and asked, “Are they natural?”

And Lopez had replied, “Yes—but legitimate!”

Mr. Hammond snorted, amused despite himself. Mrs. Hammond laughed softly. Mrs. Darling sat absolutely impassive, while her husband smiled and awaited more, obviously not realizing that the anecdote was completed. So Mr. Richards explained, “Lindbergh meant, were the flowers natural flowers or artificial flowers. But Lopez, when he heard him say, ‘Are they natural,' thought he was talking about the children; so…” Finally getting the point, Mr. Darling laughed and laughed and wiped his eyes.

“Well, well, you certainly have led an interesting life,” he said. “How many wars you been
in,
anyway, might I ask?”

Mr. Richards smiled, shook his head. “I really couldn't say. Some of them weren't big enough to count as
wars,
I suppose—”

Mr. Darling started counting on his fingers. “You were in the
First
Balkan War, I believe you said? Yes; and the
Second
Balkan War, too, right? Against those Turks—terrible people they must have been in those days. And the First World War, and the Chinese Revolution, and helping the Polish fight for the independence from the Russians and—” He lost track and began to renumber his fingers.

Giving his newspaper one final slap before thrusting it into his pocket, Mr. Hammond said, “I suppose you call yourself a Soldier of Fortune?”

“Well, I—”

“Well, it seems to
me
—it seems to
me,
Richards—you were nothing more than just a plain hired killer!”

Mr. Darling's mouth went round. Mrs. Hammond cried,
“Harry.”

“A mercenary, a killer, that's all!”

“Harry, shame on you!”

Mr. Richards hesitated, but before he could speak, Mrs. Darling did. Her mind moved slowly, very slowly, and when a word or reference entered, it often took several minutes for the effect to become visible. “Mr. Richards,” she said now, oblivious of her husband's shock, his friend's embarrassment, Mr. Hammond's anger, or Mrs. Hammond's indignation, “I want to ask you something: did those Turkish men really have all those wives locked up in a harmen, like they say, or is that only a story? I would like to know.”

His face clearing, Mr. Richards was ready to answer, but he was forestalled by the canny Mr. Hammond who said, “Chicken for dinner today.”

Instantly forgetting all about every Turk who ever lived, about wives, harmens, and all, Mrs. Darling said, “Chicken for dinner?”

Pursing his lips and nodding deeply, Mr. Hammond said, “Yup. Chicken for dinner. A nice chicken thigh, hmm, Mrs. Darling?”

Eagerly and with animation she said, “Oh, yes, I always say that there is nothing like a chicken thigh because the back is too bony and the breast is too rich and the leg has all those grizzles on it and as for the wing—well, it has hardly anything on it; but the thigh—I always say the thigh is just right.”

“Well, now, look here, Mr. Hammond,” Mr. Richards began; but Mr. Hammond, who had been through this battle before, wasn't ready to retreat.

“Yes, you're absolutely right, Mrs. Darling,” he said. “A nice chicken thigh with a brown crust on it and maybe some mashed potatoes on the side, eh? Wouldn't that just touch the spot?”

She had been listening and nodding and smiling; now she exclaimed, “Why, that's just what I always say, yes. A brown crust on it and mashed potatoes, why—Edgar always used to love the way I made my mashed potatoes, didn't you, Edgar? Edgar?”

Edgar Darling reluctantly shifted his attention from Mr. Richards. Wars! Revolutions! Soldiers of Fortune! Latin Dictators with natural children! And then—right here and now—an insult! Still looking eagerly at his adventurous friend, he began to swivel around to face his wife. “Hey, Mabel? What—?”

“Didn't you used to love the way I made my mashed potatoes? Mr. Hammond was just saying, oh, a nice chicken thigh with a brown crust and some nice mashed potatoes would just touch the spot right now, and I was telling him how you used to love the way I made my mashed potatoes. The way I made them was,” she explained to the smiling, interested Mr. Hammond, “after I mashed them I used to put in a little milk and a little
butter
milk, too, and salt and pepper and a nice big lump of butter. Edgar used to say, You sure don't stint or skimp on the butter, do you, Mabel, and I'd say, No, I don't believe in it and meanwhile I'd be frying a nice onion chopped up fine and then I'd mix it all together and, oh, Edgar, he just
loved
it! Didn't you, Edgar? We had such a
nice
home,” she added, her mood suddenly destroyed.

“The Turks—”

“An apple turnover is very nice,” Mr. Hammond observed.

Old Mrs. Darling's mouth, which had begun to quiver, slowly began to smile. “Yes,” she said. “I always say that a nice apple turnover is
very
nice, provided the
crust,
” she said earnestly, “the
crust
is
flaky,
and the way to make a nice flaky crust is that you take—”

*   *   *

L
ATER IN THE
afternoon the sun was overcast and many of the residents who had been on the sun porch went into the lobby to sit near the coal fire or went into the music room to watch television. A number of people were taking naps in their rooms, among them Mr. Harry Hammond.

Mrs. Alice Hammond came into the lobby from the elevator and looked around. Stanley C. Richards was sitting at one end of a sofa, gazing at the play of colors among the glowing coals in the grate. He seemed depressed. She sat down next to him, and he looked up. He smiled, but only for an instant.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Hammond. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Richards. It's gotten quite misty out, I see.”

“Yes. Yes. Quite misty,” he agreed absently.

“Of course, now it's just making everything dark and dull outside, but this morning—were you up early this morning? Did you notice from your window how enchanting it was—the view of the Cathedral and the Park, with that very nice light mist over everything?”

He smiled, rather wryly, but again his smile did not last. “Afraid not, Mrs. Hammond. My window doesn't have a view of anything except the airshaft.”

“Oh, that's a pity. We have such a lovely view, and it's so nice and quiet, too. Well … And I
am
sorry that I never got to hear your answer to Mrs. Darling's question about the Turkish women, either.”

“In the harmen?”

“In the harmen.”

Their eyes met, sharing the joke for a moment. Then she looked down, fumbled for her knitting, and said, “I'm afraid Harry wasn't very nice to you this morning. We had quite a quarrel about it—the biggest one we've had since the one we had about the cemetery. Do you know about that one?”

She was surprised he didn't—she thought everyone in the Home knew about it. Many members of Mrs. Hammond's family and many of her friends were buried in Greenlawn Cemetery. It was quite a ride by public transportation, true, but there was a nice clean coffee shop only a block from the grounds, where you could stop and have a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

And Greenlawn was so beautiful.… Not that she wouldn't want to go if it weren't; that made no difference. Family was family, and friends were friends, and you didn't stop caring for them just because they were gone, did you? What harm was there in going once a month—or even once a week—to pay your respects? To take a few flowers, to find comfort in how nicely everything was kept, to say a little prayer from the heart—was there anything wrong in that?

“None that I can see, Mrs. Hammond.”

“Nor I. But—Harry. He won't go, he just will not go, and he won't let
me
go, either. Oh, not that he ever says, ‘I forbid you to go' or anything like that. But he gets so nasty, so unpleasant, and he carries on so whenever I so much as mention it that—well, much as I want to, I don't go. Not any more. And it's the same way about funerals. He won't go. Last month a very old and dear friend of ours passed on. We were indebted to her for many kindnesses. And she had asked me to take charge of the funeral arrangements—that is, everything was paid for—things like the flowers and the hymns and the guest list and things like that.

“I don't mind saying that in the past I did take care of such arrangements for the funerals of various friends and relatives—I liked to see that everything was carried out nicely. It's the last thing, almost, that you
can
do, you know. But Harry wouldn't let me. ‘Jenny asked me to, Harry,' I said. ‘She was your friend, too. Who else helped you with those Liberty Bonds, and took such a loss, too, if not Jenny?' I asked him. But he said she wouldn't know the difference and he got so angry he worked himself into one of his attacks and so of course I couldn't take care of any arrangements and so it was all left to strangers.… I hope you don't mind my telling you all this?”