The Man Who Cried I Am (11 page)

“Jooby on the sloob pood dooby bloop bah!” Max answered. He turned to watch the streets. Harry and Charlotte were laughing. They drove to their new apartment.

8

EN ROUTE TO LEIDEN

Max let up on the gas and headed the VW toward the side of the road as other cars blasted past him at an ungodly rate of speed. They would be through Leiden and back before he
started
to get there. To bell with them. Where was he now? He felt as though he had been driving all day. “
Sloten,
” a sign read, pointing toward the west. Max pulled up and stopped. His map told him that he was barely outside Amsterdam. He winced; he had not known it would be so uncomfortable. He would have given a fortune for the plush, padded upholstery of an American car. He bumbled around in the tiny car and managed to change the cotton. He took another pill, worked up a glob of saliva and swallowed it. He squeezed outside the car, cracking his knee on the dashboard. He cursed the Germans. Someone bad told him that the British had been offered the VW right after the war for British manufacture and consumption, but they, with characteristic arrogance, so different from that of the Germans, more genteel, not quite so personal, less wearing on the nerves, had turned it down, thereby giving the Germans the single springboard they needed to be catapulted back into economic contention.

Max leaned against the car and, sucking deeply of the air, watched the cars rush by. What the British should have done, he mused, was to take the plans for the VW and jam them right up the Germans' asses. Strange, strange about those Germans. Everyone in Europe
said
they hated them. The Germans seemed to feel that hate; they always traveled in groups, as if for protection. Yet, ass-kicked and stomped to death, they had recovered and were far richer already than any three European countries put together. U.S. dollars, baby. Keep that German fox between the Russian wolf and the lambs of Europe and America.

“We cheat them,” the European merchants said. “We shortchange them or charge them more. We give them the wrong street directions. Oh, yes, we always take advantage of the Germans.” But after all these years they hadn't learned, the Europeans, that any kind of exchange, any kind, led one into a subtle kind of obligation; then, inevitably, a deeper, more meaningful one. Now, all over the continent the road signs read, “
Willkommen.
”

Max watched a police Porsche blaze up the highway after speeders. He leaned his forehead against the metal of the car. A warm wind played with the tail of his jacket. One could condemn Negroes to dancing and fucking and eternal shiftlessness, he knew, by the same standards he judged the Germans. But the things about Negroes were myths and therefore had resisted proof; they could only be propagandized. But the record of the Germans was clear. Moses, if you had known (you Harvard genius) that the Germans and Turks between them had done in four million Armenians in War I, would you have done what you did? You know, man, the fat was already in the fire, the horror commonplace and no lesson was learned. Naturally with nine million dead (the Jews rarely talked about the three million gypsies and political prisoners) everyone jumped screaming and weeping to their feet. Nine million, n-i-n-e
million
. Ah, the world got what it deserved. The lessons had been written on the board in big letters thousands of years ago and repeated several times every century since.

Question:
How many men can I kill if I dig out the Suez Canal?

Question:
How many men can I kill if I build myself a Great Pyramid?

Question:
How many men, women and children can we kill if we retake the Holy Land from the heathens? (We'll call it a Crusade.)

Question:
How many men, women and children can we kill if we establish a slave trade between Africa and the New World?

Question:
How many men can we kill to make the world safe for democracy?

Question:
How many men can we kill to make the world safe for communism?

Answer:
Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions.

And then, we'll start all over again.

No, Moses, your little horror was no match for Hiroshima and history; no match for human lampshades, Zyklon B, cakes of soap made from human fats. (He remembered standing in the Tomb of Destruction in Jerusalem, in the City of David, sandbagged at the top, with Jordanians and Israelis peeking out, with a yarmulke on his head looking at the soap. Yellow it was and big and awkward, like the Octagon soap his mother had used when he was a child; and he had looked at the glass jar with the blue Zyklon B crystals gleaming dully, like wax. Behind him sat the rabbinical students at a little table. They prayed or chanted throughout the days and nights in memory.)

Max opened his eyes and lifted his head from the car. He felt now a strange, steady jubilation. He was going to die. Maybe he would be screaming out of his skin at the end, but he was going to die and he would be out of it; it would touch him no more, none of it, none of the stink, stupidity, hypocrisy. Relief. He placed his back to the car, took out his penis and, gritting his teeth, urinated. His eyes watered. Metastasis. Why couldn't nature in her wisdom have foreseen carcinoma, advanced carcinoma, and put the penis sticking out of the belly button instead of so close to the rectum where those cats sympathized with each other at the slightest provocation? He wiped his eyes and zipped up his pants. He sighed deeply when he was settled in the car.

Further down the road he thought, Jesus! He wished he were well enough to take on Michelle Bouilloux. Just ten minutes! Just one more time! Somebody just once more, Maggie? Tonight? Yeah, sure. He would scream getting it up and just die when all those things inside started winking and blinking and carrying on. Forget it, Max. Close your dirty mind, you've had all the pussy you're going to get. Besides, Michelle was Harry's. But whatever had happened to Charlotte?

9

NEW YORK

He had come home on leave from Oklahoma, scheduled to report to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, at its conclusion. He was staying with Harry and Charlotte. Harry had not been drafted. His fourth novel was just being published and there was a party. Max had called on people he knew during the day and all had commented on his uniform, how nice he looked in it: Crockett and Mary, who were now lovers, Big Ola Mae who ran the steaming chili house down the street, Sweet Cheeks, the flighty, sassy bartender at the Nearly All Inn. Even Police Sergeant Jenkins, the most evil-looking black man Max had ever met, called to him on 125th Street and, rocking on his heels and looking down at Max, said how nice he looked. Tricky Dick Ricketts, a good friend of Sergeant Jenkins and the policy czar, had even bought Max a drink in the Theresa Bar.

But now Max felt out of place in his uniform. It attracted clichés and platitudes. Except for Zutkin and one or two others, Max knew none of Harry's guests. His circle's gettin' bigger, Max mused, and the contacts better. After the first couple of seemingly unconcerned perusals of the room, Max decided that there was no woman there for him. He hadn't wanted to date someone he knew that first night; that was the Hollywood wartime cliché too. Boy goes home. First night on the town, the old girlfriend or an old girlfriend. Max wanted to enjoy that first night without encumbrances, at least old ones. But he was feeling horny as hell. Zutkin was talking to him, but Max found that he could not keep his mind on what he was saying. Instead, his eyes kept picking up legs, and buttocks and breasts. Finally, he excused himself and went into the kitchen to sneak some of Harry's good whiskey.

Charlotte came in. “So you finally came home. Did you eat out? We saved your dinner.”

“I ate, thanks.”

She went to the refrigerator for ice. “Does it feel good, Max, to be in the Army?”

“Rotten.”

“Are you trying to get out?”

“Too late for that.” He shrugged. “What the hell, it may teach me something.” Max tried to avoid looking at her. God, she was wholesome! Long legs, hips just right, breasts just large enough to get you on the verge of lockjaw, rosy mouth—damn you, Charlotte! Get the hell out of here. She closed the ice box and bumped him in passing, came back, stood close to him. “Harry's writing well and all? I've been here a whole day almost and haven't said more than three words to him. Out all day, he's been out, and now the party,” Max said.

“Harry always writes well. He drives himself, but he thinks he's doing a good job of using the Framework to describe the color conflict instead of the class differences.”

Max nodded and sipped his drink. Inevitably Harry would find that the color conflict contained the class conflict too, even among those of the same color. Hell, maybe he knew it already.

“That suit becomes you, Max. I'll bet you're in good shape. Harry's started to get soft around the edges.”

“Don't you ride and play tennis anymore?”

“That lasted a month.” Charlotte started out of the kitchen. “Got a girl while you're on leave?”

“Not at the moment. Have you any suggestions?”

Charlotte smiled. With deliberate casualness, as though she were measuring, she looked down at Max's pants. “I might.”

Max crossed his arms and eased his pelvis forward. “I'm all ears.”

“Is that all, Max?” she said and left. Max poured another drink. What was that all about? He returned to the main room; perhaps some additional guests had arrived. He looked around the room. There had to be a chick who wanted to give a little something away, or get something, it didn't matter. Where in the hell was she? Step forward, baby, two paces forward, hut-two! But no one stepped forward, and Max was in a foul mood when Harry came over. Harry looked the same, but his eyes were like hallways with deepening shadows. “You look like hell in that suit, Max. You really didn't try to fight it, did you?”

Knock it, Harry, Max thought, I expected you to. But I'm away from the stink of police blotters and food joints, whores, pimps, the whole ghetto scene; I'm away from the predictable smell, look and acts of people caught in the perpetration of predictable acts, criminal and otherwise. That's good, Harry. In the Army, when they give you your suit, the criminals and faggots, all the bad guys, look just like the good guys, Harry. So far, it's not bad. But Max said aloud, “No, man. I got all my marbles, no syph, and I'm hale and hearty.”

“And you can lift ammunition all day. Go, Max.”

“Screw you, Harry.”

“What do you think you'll be doing, Jack, leading a charge against the Germans? Uh-uh. Don't let that little old suit cloud reality for you; you'll get hurt if you do.”

“Listen, Harry, I'm happy for you. New book, so on. I'm jealous and I'm drunk. I don't feel tremendous because I've got this suit on, it's a condition, you see, around the world. But right now, I just want to forget it. I want a girl and that is all. Point me where she is, dear friend, just point me and I'm sure I'll catch the scent and be off and running.”

Harry laughed. “You got a filthy mouth when you're drunk, Max. You want a little tonight?”

“Please, ol' Harry. I'm
hurting.
” Clowning, Max looked frantically around the room. “I'll take that one and that one and that one and—oh, yes, that one.”

“How about a redhead?”

“I looked already, you jive clown. There aren't any.”

“When this breaks up, I'm going out to the Island with some of these people. Charlotte's got some business to take care of in the morning, then you can come out with her or stay, as you like. But I'll send a girl to your room, one who thinks you have more talent than me. You got to talk about writing first, you know.”

“I don't care as long as she's got ‘dat t'ing.'”

“Man, I tell you, she's got ‘dat t'ing.'”

“Just like that,” Max said, “she'll be there?”

Harry who had started to move away, stopped at Max's touch. “Yes, like that. She likes niggers, Max.”

The mock eagerness, the pretended nervousness fled from Max; he felt suddenly drained. “Ah, no, Harry, don't tell me that shit. I don't want to hear it.”

Harry took one angry step back toward Max. “You goddamn fool, why do you think she's
here?
”

“No, naw, you're nuts.”

“But you haven't even
seen
her yet, Max.”

Max was shaking his head.

“Come off it, Max, you want the girl or you want to be righteous?”

“Let's do it like this, Harry, forget it, okay? Let's just forget it, all right?” Max stumbled away to his room. He stripped and piled into bed. You'd like to forget, he thought. Damn them, anyway, the hunted who thought they were the hunters. He thought about the trip to New York.

He was once again on the moving train feeling the sway of the car and, when he stood at the end of the observation car, seeing the twin cold ribbons of steel pouring out swiftly from under his feet, back endlessly back through grades and valleys, around curves. He did not know what time it was when his mind registered too late that someone was in the room. He had a moment of panic, but he remained motionless. There was movement at the foot of the bed, then a weight upon the center of the bed. The fresh sheets slipped and whined. The nude body was cold and hot at the same time. It settled and became motionless also.

“Charlotte, don't be a fool,” Max said. “Get out of here.” There were no sounds in the house. It seemed that the party had been over a long time.

“Don't be silly, Max.”

Without much conviction, Max said, “Suppose Harry came back?”

“Why do you suppose he
went?
To talk literature? To walk along the beach at night listening to the waves crash? To meditate before the fireplace? He's got some woman, some woman who was here tonight. Have you ever had to try to guess which one of your guests is shacking up with your girl? That one who seems so shy? Or that handsome one who carries himself so well? Or that creep over there?”