preserved. A warmer sentiment than esteem filled their
hearts and the unlimited opportunities of intercourse
which were afforded them by the canon who confided in
Abelard’s age (he was now almost forty), and in his public
character, were fatal to the peace of both. The condition
of Heloise was on the point of betraying their intimacy....
Fulbert now abandoned himself to a transport of savage
vindictiveness ... burst into Abelard’s chamber with a band
of ruffians and gratified his revenge by inflicting on him
an atrocious mutilation....
Abelites ... denounced sexual intercourse as service of
Satan.
Abimelech I, son of Gideon by a Sheshemite concubine, who
made himself king after murdering all his seventy brethren
except Jotham, and was killed while besieging the tower of
Thebez ...
Abortion ...
No; his hands were icy and he felt a little sick from stuffing down so
many chocolates.
Abracadabra.
Abydos ...
He got up to drink a glass of water before Abyssinia with engravings of
desert mountains and the burning of Magdala by the British.
His eyes smarted. He was stiff and sleepy. He looked at his Ingersoll.
Eleven o’clock. Terror gripped him suddenly. If mother was dead...?
He pressed his face into the pillow. She stood over him in her white
ballgown that had lace crisply on it and a train sweeping behind on
satin rustling ruffles and her hand softly fragrant gently stroked his
cheek. A rush of sobs choked him. He tossed on the bed with his face
shoved hard into the knotty pillow. For a long time he couldn’t stop
crying.
He woke up to find the light burning dizzily and the room stuffy and
hot. The book was on the floor and the candy squashed under him oozing
stickily from its box. The watch had stopped at 1.45. He opened the
window, put the chocolates in the bureau drawer and was about to
snap off the light when he remembered. Shivering with terror he put
on his bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed down the darkened hall. He
listened outside the door. People were talking low. He knocked faintly
and turned the knob. A hand pulled the door open hard and Jimmy was
blinking in the face of a tall cleanshaven man with gold eyeglasses.
The folding doors were closed; in front of them stood a starched nurse.
“James dear, go back to bed and dont worry,” said Aunt Emily in a tired
whisper. “Mother’s very ill and must be absolutely quiet, but there’s
no more danger.”
“Not for the present at least, Mrs. Merivale,” said the doctor
breathing on his eyeglasses.
“The little dear,” came the nurse’s voice low and purry and reassuring,
“he’s been sitting up worrying all night and he never bothered us once.”
“I’ll go back and tuck you into bed,” said Aunt Emily. “My James always
likes that.”
“May I see mother, just a peek so’s I’ll know she’s all right.” Jimmy
looked up timidly at the big face with the eyeglasses.
The doctor nodded. “Well I must go.... I shall drop by at four or
five to see how things go.... Goodnight Mrs. Merivale. Goodnight Miss
Billings. Goodnight son....”
“This way....” The trained nurse put her hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. He
wriggled out from under and walked behind her.
There was a light on in the corner of mother’s room shaded by a towel
pinned round it. From the bed came the rasp of breathing he did not
recognize. Her crumpled face was towards him, the closed eyelids
violet, the mouth screwed to one side. For a half a minute he stared at
her. “All right I’ll go back to bed now,” he whispered to the nurse.
His blood pounded deafeningly. Without looking at his aunt or at the
nurse he walked stiffly to the outer door. His aunt said something.
He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted
it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists
clenched. “I hate them. I hate them,” he shouted aloud. Then gulping
a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the
shiverycold sheets.
* * * * *
“With all the business you have, madame,” Emile was saying in a
singsong voice, “I should think you’d need someone to help you with the
store.”
“I know that ... I’m killing myself with work; I know that,” sighed
Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long
time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a
marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: “A woman like you,
a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.”
“Ah ça.... I have lived too much in my time.... I have no more
confidence.... Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on
with women a bit!”
“History and literature ...” began Emile.
The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into
the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.
“Now Billy dont be extravagant,” she was saying.
“But Norah we got have sumpen te eat.... An I’ll be all jake by
Saturday.”
“Nutten’ll be jake till you stop playin the ponies.”
“Aw go long wud yer.... Let’s have some liverwurst.... My that cold
breast of turkey looks good....”
“Piggywiggy,” cooed the yellowhaired girl.
“Lay off me will ye, I’m doing this.”
“Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud.... We ave ole cheekens too,
steel ’ot.... Emile mong ami cherchez moi uns de ces petits poulets
dans la cuisin-e.” Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving
from her stool by the cashdesk. The man was fanning himself with a
thickbrimmed straw hat that had a checked band.
“Varm tonight,” said Madame Rigaud.
“It sure is.... Norah we ought to have gone down to the Island instead
of bummin round this town.”
“Billy you know why we couldn’t go perfectly well.”
“Don’t rub it in. Aint I tellin ye it’ll be all jake by Saturday.”
“History and literature,” continued Emile when the customers had gone
off with the chicken, leaving Madame Rigaud a silver half dollar to
lock up in the till ... “history and literature teach us that there
are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of
confidence....”
“History and literature!” Madame Rigaud growled with internal laughter.
“A lot of good that’ll do us.”
“But dont you ever feel lonely in a big foreign city like this...?
Everything is so hard. Women look in your pocket not in your heart....
I cant stand it any more.”
Madame Rigaud’s broad shoulders and her big breasts shook with
laughter. Her corsets creaked when she lifted herself still laughing
off the stool. “Emile, you’re a good-looking fellow and steady and
you’ll get on in the world.... But I’ll never put myself in a man’s
power again.... I’ve suffered too much.... Not if you came to me with
five thousand dollars.”
“You’re a very cruel woman.”
Madame Rigaud laughed again. “Come along now, you can help me close up.”
* * * * *
Sunday weighed silent and sunny over downtown. Baldwin sat at his desk
in his shirtsleeves reading a calfbound lawbook. Now and then he wrote
down a note on a scratchpad in a wide regular hand. The phone rang loud
in the hot stillness. He finished the paragraph he was reading and
strode over to answer it.
“Yes I’m here alone, come on over if you want to.” He put down the
receiver. “God damn it,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
Nellie came in without knocking, found him pacing back and forth in
front of the window.
“Hello Nellie,” he said without looking up; she stood still staring at
him.
“Look here Georgy this cant go on.”
“Why cant it?”
“I’m sick of always pretendin an deceivin.”
“Nobody’s found out anything, have they?”
“Oh of course not.”
She went up to him and straightened his necktie. He kissed her gently
on the mouth. She wore a frilled muslin dress of a reddish lilac color
and had a blue sunshade in her hand.
“How’s things Georgy?”
“Wonderful. D’you know, you people have brought me luck? I’ve got
several good cases on hand now and I’ve made some very valuable
connections.”
“Little luck it’s brought me. I haven’t dared go to confession yet. The
priest’ll be thinkin I’ve turned heathen.”
“How’s Gus?”
“Oh full of his plans.... Might think he’d earned the money, he’s
gettin that cocky about it.”
“Look Nellie how would it be if you left Gus and came and lived with
me? You could get a divorce and we could get married.... Everything
would be all right then.”
“Like fun it would.... You dont mean it anyhow.”
“But it’s been worth it Nellie, honestly it has.” He put his arms round
her and kissed her hard still lips. She pushed him away.
“Anyways I aint comin here again.... Oh I was so happy comin up the
stairs thinkin about seein you.... You’re paid an the business is all
finished.”
He noticed that the little curls round her forehead were loose. A wisp
of hair hung over one eyebrow.
“Nellie we mustn’t part bitterly like this.”
“Why not will ye tell me?”
“Because we’ve both loved one another.”
“I’m not goin to cry.” She patted her nose with a little rolledup
handkerchief. “Georgy I’m goin to hate ye.... Goodby.” The door snapped
sharply to behind her.
Baldwin sat at his desk and chewed the end of a pencil. A faint
pungence of her hair lingered in his nostrils. His throat was stiff
and lumpy. He coughed. The pencil fell out of his mouth. He wiped the
saliva off with his handkerchief and settled himself in his chair. From
bleary the crowded paragraphs of the lawbook became clear. He tore
the written sheet off the scratchpad and clipped it to the top of a
pile of documents. On the new sheet he began: Decision of the Supreme
Court of the State of New York.... Suddenly he sat up straight in his
chair, and started biting the end of his pencil again. From outside
came the endless sultry whistle of a peanut wagon. “Oh well, that’s
that,” he said aloud. He went on writing in a wide regular hand: Case
of Patterson vs. The State of New York.... Decision of the Supreme ...
* * * * *
Bud sat by a window in the Seamen’s Union reading slowly and carefully
through a newspaper. Next him two men with freshly shaved rawsteak
cheeks cramped into white collars and blue serge storesuits were
ponderously playing chess. One of them smoked a pipe that made a little
clucking noise when he drew on it. Outside rain beat incessantly on a
wide glimmering square.
Banzai, live a thousand years, cried the little gray men
of the fourth platoon of Japanese sappers as they advanced
to repair the bridge over the Yalu River ... Special
correspondent of the New York Herald ...
“Checkmate,” said the man with the pipe. “Damn it all let’s go have a
drink. This is no night to be sitting here sober.”
“I promised the ole woman ...”
“None o that crap Jess, I know your kinda promises.” A big crimson hand
thickly furred with yellow hairs brushed the chessmen into their box.
“Tell the ole woman you had to have a nip to keep the weather out.”
“That’s no lie neither.”
Bud watched their shadows hunched into the rain pass the window.
“What you name?”
Bud turned sharp from the window startled by a shrill squeaky voice
in his ear. He was looking into the fireblue eyes of a little yellow
man who had a face like a toad, large mouth, protruding eyes and thick
closecropped black hair.
Bud’s jaw set. “My name’s Smith, what about it?”
The little man held out a square callouspalmed hand, “Plis to meet yez.
Me Matty.”
Bud took the hand in spite of himself. It squeezed his until he winced.
“Matty what?” he asked. “Me juss Matty ... Laplander Matty ... Come
have drink.”
“I’m flat,” said Bud. “Aint got a red cent.”
“On me. Me too much money, take some....” Matty shoved a hand into
either pocket of his baggy checked suit and punched Bud in the chest
with two fistfuls of greenbacks.
“Aw keep yer money ... I’ll take a drink with yous though.”
By the time they got to the saloon on the corner of Pearl Street Bud’s
elbows and knees were soaked and a trickle of cold rain was running
down his neck. When they went up to the bar Laplander Matty put down a
five dollar bill.
“Me treat everybody; very happy yet tonight.”
Bud was tackling the free lunch. “Hadn’t et in a dawg’s age,” he
explained when he went back to the bar to take his drink. The whisky
burnt his throat all the way down, dried wet clothes and made him
feel the way he used to feel when he was a kid and got off to go to a
baseball game Saturday afternoon.
“Put it there Lap,” he shouted slapping the little man’s broad back.
“You an me’s friends from now on.”
“Hey landlubber, tomorrow me an you ship togezzer. What say?”
“Sure we will.”
“Now we go up Bowery Street look at broads. Me pay.”
“Aint a Bowery broad would go wid yer, ye little Yap,” shouted a tall
drunken man with drooping black mustaches who had lurched in between
them as they swayed in the swinging doors.
“Zey vont, vont zey?” said the Lap hauling off. One of his hammershaped
fists shot in a sudden uppercut under the man’s jaw. The man rose off
his feet and soared obliquely in through the swinging doors that closed
on him. A shout went up from inside the saloon.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch, Lappy, I’ll be a sonofabitch,” roared Bud and
slapped him on the back again.
Arm in arm they careened up Pearl Street under the drenching rain. Bars
yawned bright to them at the corners of rainseething streets. Yellow
light off mirrors and brass rails and gilt frames round pictures of
pink naked women was looped and slopped into whiskyglasses guzzled
fiery with tipped back head, oozed bright through the blood, popped
bubbly out of ears and eyes, dripped spluttering off fingertips. The
raindark houses heaved on either side, streetlamps swayed like lanterns
carried in a parade, until Bud was in a back room full of nudging faces
with a woman on his knees. Laplander Matty stood with his arms round
two girls’ necks, yanked his shirt open to show a naked man and a naked
woman tattooed in red and green on his chest, hugging, stiffly coiled
in a seaserpent and when he puffed out his chest and wiggled the skin
with his fingers the tatooed man and woman wiggled and all the nudging
faces laughed.
* * * * *
Phineas P. Blackhead pushed up the wide office window. He stood looking
out over the harbor of slate and mica in the uneven roar of traffic,
voices, racket of building that soared from the downtown streets
bellying and curling like smoke in the stiff wind shoving down the
Hudson out of the northwest.
“Hay Schmidt, bring me my field glasses,” he called over his shoulder.
“Look ...” He was focusing the glasses on a thickwaisted white steamer
with a sooty yellow stack that was abreast of Governors Island. “Isn’t
that the _Anonda_ coming in now?”
Schmidt was a fat man who had shrunk. The skin hung in loose haggard
wrinkles on his face. He took one look through the glasses. “Sure it
is.” He pushed down the window; the roar receded tapering hollowly like
the sound of a sea shell.
“Jiminy they were quick about it.... They’ll be docked in half an
hour.... You beat it along over and get hold of Inspector Mulligan.
He’s all fixed.... Dont take your eyes off him. Old Matanzas is out on
the warpath trying to get an injunction against us. If every spoonful
of manganese isnt off by tomorrow night I’ll cut your commission in
half.... Do you get that?”
Schmidt’s loose jowls shook when he laughed. “No danger sir.... You
ought to know me by this time.”
“Of course I do.... You’re a good feller Schmidt. I was just joking.”
Phineas P. Blackhead was a lanky man with silver hair and a red
hawkface; he slipped back into the mahogany armchair at his desk and
rang an electric bell. “All right Charlie, show em in,” he growled at
the towheaded officeboy who appeared in the door. He rose stiffly from
his desk and held out a hand. “How do you do Mr. Storrow ... How do
you do Mr. Gold.... Make yourselves comfortable.... That’s it.... Now
look here, about this strike. The attitude of the railroad and docking
interests that I represent is one of frankness and honesty, you know
that.... I have confidence, I can say I have the completest confidence,
that we can settle this matter amicably and agreeably.... Of course you
must meet me halfway.... We have I know the same interests at heart,
the interests of this great city, of this great seaport....” Mr. Gold
moved his hat to the back of his head and cleared his throat with a
loud barking noise. “Gentlemen, one of two roads lies before us ...”
* * * * *
In the sunlight on the windowledge a fly sat scrubbing his wings with
his hinder legs. He cleaned himself all over, twisting and untwisting
his forelegs like a person soaping his hands, stroking the top of
his lobed head carefully; brushing his hair. Jimmy’s hand hovered
over the fly and slapped down. The fly buzzed tinglingly in his palm.
He groped for it with two fingers, held it slowly squeezing it into
mashed gray jelly between finger and thumb. He wiped it off under the
windowledge. A hot sick feeling went through him. Poor old fly, after
washing himself so carefully, too. He stood a long time looking down
the airshaft through the dusty pane where the sun gave a tiny glitter
to the dust. Now and then a man in shirtsleeves crossed the court below
with a tray of dishes. Orders shouted and the clatter of dishwashing
came up faintly from the kitchens.
He stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane.
Mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll go back to school.
“Say Herfy have you learned to fight yet?”
“Herfy an the Kid are goin to fight for the flyweight championship
before lights.”
“But I dont want to.”
“Kid wants to.... Here he comes. Make a ring there you ginks.”
“I dont want to, please.”
“You’ve damn well got to, we’ll beat hell outa both of ye if you dont.”
“Say Freddy that’s a nickel fine from you for swearing.”
“Jez I forgot.”
“There you go again.... Paste him in the slats.”
“Go it Herfy, I’m bettin on yer.”
“That’s it sock him.”
The Kid’s white screwedup face bouncing in front of him like a balloon;
his fist gets Jimmy in the mouth; a salty taste of blood from the cut
lip. Jimmy strikes out, gets him down on the bed, pokes his knee in his
belly. They pull him off and throw him back against the wall.
“Go it Kid.”
“Go it Herfy.”
There’s a smell of blood in his nose and lungs; his breath rasps. A
foot shoots out and trips him up.
“That’s enough, Herfy’s licked.”
“Girlboy ... Girlboy.”
“But hell Freddy he had the Kid down.”
“Shut up, don’t make such a racket.... Old Hoppy’ll be coming up.”
“Just a little friendly bout, wasn’t it Herfy?”
“Get outa my room, all of you, all of you,” Jimmy screeches,
tear-blinded, striking out with both arms.
“Crybaby ... crybaby.”
He slams the door behind them, pushes the desk against it and crawls
trembling into bed. He turns over on his face and lies squirming with
shame, biting the pillow.
Jimmy stared through the tiny glitter of the dust on the windowpane.
DARLING
Your poor mother was very unhappy when she finally put you
on the train and went back to her big empty rooms at the
hotel. Dear, I am very lonely without you. Do you know what
I did? I got out all your toy soldiers, the ones that used
to be in the taking of Port Arthur, and set them all out in
battalions on the library shelf. Wasn’t that silly? Never
mind dear, Christmas’ll soon come round and I’ll have my
boy again....
A crumpled face on a pillow; mother’s had a stroke and next week I’ll
go back to school. Darkgrained skin growing flabby under her eyes, gray
creeping up her brown hair. Mother never laughs. The stroke.
He turned back suddenly into the room, threw himself on the bed with
a thin leather book in his hand. The surf thundered loud on the
barrier reef. He didn’t need to read. Jack was swimming fast through
the calm blue waters of the lagoon, stood in the sun on the yellow
beach shaking the briny drops off him, opened his nostrils wide to the
smell of breadfruit roasting beside his solitary campfire. Birds of
bright plumage shrieked and tittered from the tall ferny tops of the
coconut palms. The room was drowsy hot. Jimmy fell asleep. There was a
strawberry lemon smell, a smell of pineapples on the deck and mother
was there in a white suit and a dark man in a yachtingcap, and the
sunlight rippled on the milkytall sails. Mother’s soft laugh rises into
a shriek O-o-o-ohee. A fly the size of a ferryboat walks towards them
across the water, reaching out jagged crabclaws. “Yump Yimmy, yump; you
can do it in two yumps,” the dark man yells in his ear. “But please I
dont want to ... I dont want to,” Jimmy whines. The dark man’s beating
him, yump yump yump.... “Yes one moment. Who is it?”
Aunt Emily was at the door. “Why do you keep your door locked Jimmy....
I never allow James to lock his door.”
“I like it better that way, Aunt Emily.”
“Imagine a boy asleep this time of the afternoon.”
“I was reading _The Coral Island_ and I fell asleep.” Jimmy was
blushing.
“All right. Come along. Miss Billings said not to stop by mother’s
room. She’s asleep.”
They were in the narrow elevator that smelled of castor oil; the
colored boy grinned at Jimmy.
“What did the doctor say Aunt Emily?”
“Everything’s going as well as could be expected.... But you mustn’t
worry about that. This evening you must have a real good time with your
little cousins.... You dont see enough children of your own age Jimmy.”
They were walking towards the river leaning into a gritty wind that
swirled up the street cast out of iron under a dark silvershot sky.
“I guess you’ll be glad to get back to school, James.”
“Yes Aunt Emily.”
“A boy’s school days are the happiest time in his life. You must be
sure to write your mother once a week at least James.... You are all
she has now.... Miss Billings and I will keep you informed.”
“Yes Aunt Emily.”
“And James I want you to know my James better. He’s the same age you
are, only perhaps a little more developed and all that, and you ought
to be good friends.... I wish Lily had sent you to Hotchkiss too.”
“Yes Aunt Emily.”
There were pillars of pink marble in the lower hall of Aunt Emily’s
apartmenthouse and the elevatorboy wore a chocolate livery with brass
buttons and the elevator was square and decorated with mirrors. Aunt
Emily stopped before a wide red mahogany door on the seventh floor and
fumbled in her purse for her key. At the end of the hall was a leaded
window through which you could see the Hudson and steamboats and tall
trees of smoke rising against the yellow sunset from the yards along
the river. When Aunt Emily got the door open they heard the piano.
“That’s Maisie doing her practicing.” In the room where the piano was
the rug was thick and mossy, the wallpaper was yellow with silveryshiny
roses between the cream woodwork and the gold frames of oilpaintings
of woods and people in a gondola and a fat cardinal drinking. Maisie
tossed the pigtails off her shoulders as she jumped off the pianostool.
She had a round creamy face and a slight pugnose. The metronome went on
ticking.
“Hello James,” she said after she had tilted her mouth up to her
mother’s to be kissed. “I’m awfully sorry poor Aunt Lily’s so sick.”
“Arent you going to kiss your cousin, James?” said Aunt Emily.
Jimmy shambled up to Maisie and pushed his face against hers.
“That’s a funny kind of a kiss,” said Maisie.
“Well you two children can keep each other company till dinner.” Aunt
Emily rustled through the blue velvet curtains into the next room.
“We wont be able to go on calling you James.” After she had stopped the
metronome, Maisie stood staring with serious brown eyes at her cousin.
“There cant be two Jameses can there?”
“Mother calls me Jimmy.”
“Jimmy’s a kinder common name, but I guess it’ll have to do till we can
think of a better one.... How many jacks can you pick up?”
“What are jacks?”
“Gracious dont you know what jackstones are? Wait till James comes
back, wont he laugh!”
“I know Jack roses. Mother used to like them better’n any other kind.”
“American Beauties are the only roses I like,” announced Maisie
flopping into a Morris chair. Jimmy stood on one leg kicking his heel
with the toes of the other foot.
“Where’s James?”
“He’ll be home soon.... He’s having his riding lesson.”
The twilight became leadensilent between them. From the trainyards came
the scream of a locomotivewhistle and the clank of couplings on shunted
freight cars. Jimmy ran to the window.
“Say Maisie, do you like engines?” he asked.
“I think they are horrid. Daddy says we’re going to move on account of
the noise and smoke.”