Waltz Into Darkness (13 page)

But
luckily, as he came to a four-way crossing, a gaslit post brooding
over it in sulphurio yellow-green, he spied a carriage just ahead,
returning idle from some recent hire, screaming after it and without
waiting for it to come back and get him, ran down the roadway after
it full tilt; floundered into it and choked out Simms' address.

At
the banker's house he rang the bell like fury.

A
colored servant led him in, showing an offended mien at his
impetuosity.

"He's
at supper, sir," she said disapprovingly. "If you'll have
the patience to seat yourself just a few minutes and wait till he
gets through--"

"No
matter," he panted. "This can't wait! Ask him to come out
here a moment--"

The
banker came out into the hall, brow beetling with annoyance, still
chewing food and with a napkin still trussed about his collar. When
he saw who it was his face cleared.

"Mr.
Durand!" he said heartily. "What brings you here at such an
hour? Will you come in and join us at table?" Then noting his
distracted appearance more closely as he came nearer, "You're
all upset-- What's the matter, man? Bring him some brandy, Becky. A
chair--"

Durand
swept a curt hand offside in refusal of the offered restoratives. "My
money--" he gasped out.

"What
is it, Mr. Durand? What of your money?"

"Is
it there--? Has it been touched--? When you closed at three, what was
my balance on your ledgers-?"

"I
don't understand you, Mr. Durand. No one can touch your money. It's
safeguarded. No one but yourself and your wife-"

He
caught an inkling of something from the agonized expression that had
flitted across Durand's face just then.

"You
mean--?" he breathed, appalled.

"I
have to know-- Now, tonight-- For the love of God, Mr. Simms, do
something for me, help me-- Don't keep me waiting like this-"

The
banker wrenched off his napkin, cast it from him, in sign his meal
was ended for that evening at least. "My chief teller," he
said in quick-formed decision. "My chief teller would know. That
would be quicker than going tO the bank; we'd have to open up and go
over the day's transactions-"

"Where
can I find him?" Durand was already on his way toward the door
and out again.

"No,
no, I'll go with you. Wait for me just a second--" Simms
hurriedly snatched at his hat and a silken throat muffler. "What
is it, what has happened, Mr. Durand?"

"I'm
afraid to say, until I find out," Durand said desolately. "I'm
afraid even to think--"

Simms
had to stop first and secure his teller's home address; then they
hurriedly left, climbed back into the same carriage that had brought
Durand, and were driven to a frugal little squeezed-in house on
Dumaine Street.

Simms
got out, deterred Durand with a kindly intended gesture of his hand,
evidently hoping to spare him as much as possible.

"Suppose
you wait here. I'll go in and talk to him."

He
went inside to be gone perhaps ten minutes at the most. To Durand it
seemed he had been left out there the whole night.

At
last the door opened and Simms had reappeared. Durand leaped, as
though a spring had been released, to meet him, trying to read his
face for the tidings as he went toward him. It looked none too
sanguine.

"What
is it? For God's sake, tell me!"

"Steady,
Mr. Durand, steady." Simms put a supporting arm about him just
below the turn of the shoulders. "You had thirty thousand,
fifty-one dollars, forty cents in your check-cashing account and
twenty thousand and ten in your savings account this morning when we
opened for business--"

"I
know that! I know that already! That isn't what I want to know--"

The
teller had followed Simms out. The manager gestured to him
surreptitiously, handing over to him the unwelcome responsibility of
answering the question.

"Your
wife appeared at five minutes of three to make a lastminute
withdrawal," the teller said.

"Your
balance at closing-time was fifty-one dollars, forty cents in the one
account, ten dollars in the other. To have closed them both out
entirely, your own signature would have been necessary."

20

The
room was a still life. It might have been something painted on a
canvas, that was then stood upright to dry; life-size, identical to
life in every shading and every trifling detail, yet an artful
simulation and not the original itself.

A
window haloed by setting sunlight, as if there were a brush fire
burning just outside of it, kindling, with its glare, the ceiling and
the opposite wall. The carpeting on the floor undulant and ridged in
places, as if misplaced by someone's lurching footsteps, or even an
actual bodily fall or two, and then allowed to remain that way
thereafter. A dark stain, crab-shaped, marring it in one spot, as if
a considerable quantity of some heavy-bodied liquid had been
overturned upon it.

Dank
bed, that had once made a bridegroom blush; that would have made any
fastidious person blush now, looking as if it had been untended for
days. Graying linen receding from its skeleton on one side,
overhanging it to trail the floor on the other. A single shoe, man's
shoe, abandoned there beside it; as though the original impulse that
had caused it to be removed, or else had caused its mate to be
donned, had ebbed and faded before it could be carried to completion.

Forget-me-nots
on pink wallpaper; wallpaper that had come from New York, wallpaper
that had been asked for in a letter; "not too pink." There
was a place where the plaster backing showed through in rabid scars;
as if someone had taken a pair of shears and gouged at them in a
rage, trying to obliterate as many as possible.

In
the center of the still life a table. And on the table three immobile
things. A reeking tumbler, mucous with endless refilling, and a
bottle of brandy, and an inert head, crown-side up, matted hair
bristling from it. Its nerveless body on an off-balance chair at
tableside, one hand gripping the neck of the bottle in relentless
possessiveness.

A
tap at the door, but with no accompanying sound of approach, as
though someone had been standing there for a long time, listening,
trying to gain courage.

No
answer, nothing moved.

Again
a tap. A voice added to it this time.

"Mr.
Lou. Mr. Lou, turn the key."

No
answer. The head rolled a little, exposing a jawline pricked with
bluish hair follicles.

Once
more a tap.

"Mr.
Lou, turn the key. It's been two days now."

The
head broke contact with the table top, elevated itself a little, eyes
still closed. "What are days ?" it said blurredly. "I've
forgotten. Oh--those things that come between the nights. Those empty
things."

The
knob on the door turned sterilely. "Lemme in. Lemme just
fraishen up your bed."

"It's
just for me alone now. Let it be."

"Don't
you want a light, at least? It getting dark. Lemme change the lamp in
there for you."

"What
can it show me? What's there to see? There's only me in here now. Me,
and--"

He
tilted the brandy bottle over the tumbler. Nothing came out. He held
it perpendicular. Nothing still.

He
rose from his chair, swung the bottle back to launch it at the wall.
Then he stayed his arm, lowered it, shuffled to the door on one shoe,
turned the key at last.

He
thrust the bottle at her.

"Get
me another of these," he barked. "That's all I want. That's
the best the world can do for me now. I don't want your lamps and
your broths and your tidying of beds."

But
she was brave in the cause of housekeeping cleanliness, this old,
spare, colored woman. She sidled in past him before he could stop
her, put down the fresh lamp beside the one that had exhausted its
fuel, in a moment was pulling and tucking at the bedraggled bed
linen, casting an occasional furtive glance toward him, to see if he
meant to stop her or not.

She
finished, made haste to get out of the room again, coursing the long
way around, by the wall, in order not to come too close to him. The
door safely in her hand again, she turned and looked at him, where he
stood, bottle neck riveted to hand.

And
he looked at her.

Suddenly
a tremor of unutterable longing seemed to course through him. His
rasping bitter voice of a moment ago became gentle. He put out his
hand toward her, as if pleading with her to stay, now, to listen to
him speak of her, the absent. To speak of her with him.

"Do
you remember how she used to sit there cleaning her nails, with a
stick tipped with cotton? I can see her now," he said brokenly.
"And then she would hold her fingers up, like this, all spread
out, and quirk her head, to one side and to the other, looking at
them to see if they would do."

Aunt
Sarah didn't answer.

"Do
you remember her in that green dress, with stripes of lavender? I can
see her now, with the sunlight coming from behind her, breeze
stirring her gown, standing there on the Canal Street dock. A little
wispy parasol open over her."

Aunt
Sarah made no reply.

"Do
you remember that way she had, of turning in the doorway, each time
she was about to leave, and bending her fingers backward, as if she
were calling you to her, and saying 'Ta ta!'?"

The
old woman's taciturnity burst its floodgates at last, as if she were
unable to endure hearing any more. The whites of her eyes dilated
righteously and her withered lips drew back from her teeth. She flung
up her hand at him, as if enjoining him to silence.

"God
must have been angry with you the day He first let you look into that
woman's face!"

He
stumbled over to the wall, pressed his face against it, arms straight
up over his head as if he were trying to claw his way upward toward
the ceiling. His voice seemed to come from his stomach, through
rolling drums of smothered agony--that were the weeping of a grown
man.

"I
want her back again. I want her back. I'll never rest until I find
her."

"What
you want her back again for?" she demanded.

He
turned slowly.

"To
kill her," he said through his clenched teeth.

He
pushed away from the wall, and lurched soddenly to the bed. He
overturned an edge of the mattress, and reached below it, and drew
something out. Then he slowly raised it, held it in strangulated grip
to show her; a bone-handled, steel-barreled pistol.

"With
this," he whispered.

21

The
audience was streaming out of the Tivoli Theatre, on Royal Street.
Gas flames in the jets on the foyer walls and in the ceiling overhead
flickered fitfully with the swirl of its crowded passage. The play
had been most enjoyable, an adaptation from the French called Papa's
Little Mischief, and every animated conversation bore evidence to
that.

Once
on the sidewalk, the solid mass of people began to disintegrate: the
balcony-sitters to walk off in varying directions, the boxholders and
orchestra occupants to clamber by twos, and sometimes fours, into
successive carriages as they drew up in turn before the theatre
entrance, summoned by the colored doorman.

The
man lurking back from sight against the shadowy wall, where the
brightness failed to reach, was unnoticed, though many passed close
enough to touch him.

The
crowd drained off at last. The brightness dimmed, as an attendant
began to put out the gaslights one by one, with a long,
upward-reaching stick that turned their keys.

Only
a few laggards were left now, still awaiting their turn at carriage
stop. There was no haste, and politeness and deference were the rule.

"After
you."

"No,
after you, sir. Yours is the next."

And
then at last one final couple remain, and are about to enter their
carriage. The woman short, and in a lace head-scarf that, drawn close
against the insalubrious night air, effectively mists her head and
mouth and chin.