1
The room that Lewis entered was crowded and noisy. Everything seemed
to give off sound ... the smoke floating densely overhead, the men's
glistening shirt fronts, like so many instruments for percussion.
Standing in the doorway, too bewildered by the lights to see clearly,
Lewis tried at first to pick out a familiar voice. Someone was
rapping on the piano and shouting: "Ladies and gentlemen, a duet ...
a duet, ladies and gentlemen," and Lewis tried to follow the rest of
it for a while, holding to a special thread in the crazy pattern of
noise. Soon that was too much effort. He shut his eyes and listened
to the voices. They fused at some far-off point into one chord, and
he could hear that chord always on the verge of dissolving; yet
endlessly dragging on, swelling and diminishing endlessly--as if
someone who had fallen asleep were directing it, with slow senseless
motions of the baton. He had almost gone to sleep listening to it,
when the sound of feet scuffling nearby roused him. He opened his
eyes and saw Poldy struggling to free himself from his friends. His
face was wet with perspiration, he kept flapping his elbows backward
and turning from one to the other, pleading with them in the
high-pitched hysterical voice of a child who is ready to cry.
"Listen, Jel, I just want to ask him. What harm can it be if I ask
him? Jel, will it hurt you if I ask him?"
"But Poldy! That's the eighth person you'll be asking tonight."
Poldy looked at him in alarm. "I don't remember," he muttered. He
stopped struggling and stood quietly between them, frowning at the
floor. After a while Jel nodded to his friend, and they released
him. "Go on, then," Jel said and pushed him gently forward. "Ask."
Poldy walked unsteadily. At one time he almost toppled forward. He
blushed then and looked back quickly at his friends. When he was
close to Lewis he put his arm on his shoulder, and peered into his
face with troubled eyes.
"What time is it, Lewis?" he whispered.
"Ten minutes to nine, I think."
Poldy nodded and looked off into the distance, wrapped in profound
calculations. At length he roused himself and turned to Lewis.
"Thank you ... thank you..." he said briskly, and walked away. Lewis
wanted to speak to him further, but Poldy was gone too quickly. He
turned inquiringly to Poldy's friend.
"Oh, don't mind him," Jel said cheerfully. "He's just a little
upset. Thinks he's made a great discovery. He says it takes longer
for an hour to pass than it used to. Claims he's the only one who
notices it, but he says soon everyone will feel it. Now _you_
haven't noticed it, have you?" Jel looked suspiciously at Lewis.
"No, of course not..." he laughed nervously. "Poldy's so clever, you
know, I thought there might be something in it. But say ... suppose
it did take longer for an hour to pass ... can't see how it would,
but suppose it did ... it wouldn't matter anyway, now would it?"
"Why wouldn't it matter?"
"Oh, we could get all the clocks to working faster ... or slower.
Say, which is it? Would they have to go faster or slower? Oh, hell!
It's an awfully mixed up business, and poor Poldy thinks he's got it
all figured out. Just look at him..."
Poldy was standing alone in the center of the room. He had opened
his coat and hooked his right thumb into his vest pocket. In his
left hand he held a watch, and stared at it with a harassed
expression. And as Lewis watched, the feeling came over him that all
the people in the room were behaving with strange detachment ... each
one, like Poldy staring at the watch, wrapped in a special insanity
of talking or laughing or walking about or staring ... and when they
seemed to be aware of each other it was only incidental to their
madness. And now he heard an ominous undercurrent of speed in the
voices, a quickening up to a hysterical tempo. "Ladies and
gentlemen, a duet..." The man at the piano rapped away with greater
frenzy, his voice climbed to a high whining note. "A duet, ladies
and gentlemen, listen to the duet." He stopped and snatched a large
napkin from the table, fixed it on his head like a nurse's peaked
cap, and continued shouting. Nobody listened, and the man's face
grew red, he glared angrily at everyone near him. In one corner of
the room Lustbader was performing tricks with a handkerchief cocked
over his fist. Somebody tried to snatch the handkerchief away, and
others lifted the tails of his coat to see whether he had anything
hidden there. The magician's face contorted with rage. He stuffed
the handkerchief into his pocket and turned on the offenders. "So!
You don't believe me!" he shouted. "Look! I will undress before
you." He took off his coat and collar, and was about to undo his
belt, when one of the men snatched a scarf from the piano, and
wrapped it over Lustbader's shoulders, and led him away, his face
simpering with elaborate modesty. At the piano two musicians were
improvising a duet. They banged out a series of wild arpeggios,
paused and leaned toward each other with maudlin ecstasy, then fell
furiously on the keys again. Now and then they embraced, and with
wracking sobs congratulated each other on the state of harmony
existing between them. One of them had a round flat face with
spectacles attached, and while he played his face seemed to float
over the music, buoyed up by its two circles of glass. Near-by was a
group of artists arguing excitedly and drawing imaginary pictures in
the air. A fat man stood by, his hands on his hips, looking
earnestly at that portion of the air which they had chosen as their
canvas, as if the pictures all remained there in one crazy design.
But one of the painters, waving his arm too freely, upset the
victrola that was painfully and asthmatically unwinding a symphony on
the edge of the piano. It fell to the floor and the record broke.
The red-faced man with the napkin on his head stooped and picked up a
small segment of the symphony, looked at it curiously and then
slipped it into his pocket. From time to time as he rapped on the
piano he took the piece out and consulted it, as if it was his watch.
But nobody noticed this either.
But now Lewis distinguished Bannerman's voice cutting its way through
the others with its peculiar nasal resonance. "You can't escape..."
it was saying angrily, "you can't escape." He went in the direction
of the voice, and saw that Bannerman, slightly drunk and balancing
himself perilously on a sofa, was holding forth to a large audience.
The orator kept glancing about incessantly while he spoke, trying to
catch the eye of everyone in his audience, so that his features ...
small and finely chiseled, and mounted on a liberal map of flesh ...
looked more like a traveling exhibition of a face, than an actual
part of him. There was also a faint air of sniffing about
Bannerman's face ... it may have been the way he kept glancing about,
or perhaps the peculiar modeling of his nostrils that was more
apparent as he stood on the sofa elevated above the others ... the
nostrils not sufficiently raised from the upper lip, slanting back
too precipitously. Lewis hovered on the outskirts of the group,
trying to listen. There were others there whom he knew ... Clandon,
who had the habit of listening to every argument with an intent and
ghoulish expression, until the moment when he could snap up an
opinion and bottle it and label it. And Levine was there, his head
bent forward in an attitude of listening, unconscious that Lewis was
present and watching him.
"No, there's no escape," Bannerman repeated, raising his voice and
looking around self-consciously. "Go through all the frenzies of
experiment that you please, ladies and gentlemen. I tell you, you
won't escape the female nude. Haven't I seen them ... the bunch of
mad artists jumping through all the isms, like a pack of clowns going
through the hoops. And what was the end? The damned bitch just
stood around, waiting until they could stop and look at her."
"Cubism! Cubism!" he cried, after a moment's pause. "Even that
can't shake her. Ever notice how the cubist canvases break out into
violins and vases? Regular eruptions of them. And why? Because a
violin is one of the instruments that happens to approximate the
female figure. It has the hips..." he glared around, waiting for the
laughter to subside. "And a vase ... well, look!" He took pencil
and paper from his pocket, and holding it up for all to see, sketched
a typical cubistic design on it. This he rapidly converted into a
group of plump nudes languidly conversing.
"There you are! There you are!" he shouted, flourishing the drawing.
"Shut one eye and you have what they call the breaking up of objects
into planes. Shut the other, and you see what's really itching them.
An evasion ... pure and simple. Everything new in art is an evasion
... trying to evade the nude. But take my word for it," he bent down
and tapped Levine solemnly on the chest ... "take my word for it,
Levine, it won't work."
Levine removed the finger gingerly. "A rather old obsession ... the
female figure," he said drily.
"Oh, Lord..." someone whispered ecstatically, "did you see Lustbader
shutting one eye and then the other?"
"And once an artist has realized _that_," Bannerman finished grandly,
"then everything else is superfluous."
"Clothes..." they suggested.
"Why, of course," the speaker continued with belligerent agreement.
"Now clothes!" he said impressively, and then stopped and began to
search through his pockets with an expression of great anxiety.
Having brought forth several objects that seemed to surprise him by
their presence in his pockets, he at length extracted four golden
thumb tacks. These he put into his mouth, withdrawing them as they
were needed to tack his paper on the wall. "Now clothes," he
resumed, when the drawing was successfully hung, "are a big hoax.
Started by the pretty women, because they couldn't compete with the
ugly ones in the nude."
"Really, now!" the tall girl who was reclining on the couch turned
and looked up at him with mock surprise. "Do you know," she said,
addressing the audience, "Banney's an awful strain on me..."
"Ladies and gentlemen, listen to the duet!..." the voice rose in a
frenzy of appeal.
"Fancy having to be jealous of the ugly women," the girl continued in
an indistinct sleepy voice. "There are so many more of them." Her
hair was too closely cropped, only a little yellow crest of it rising
unexpectedly from the top of her head; and her face was too
prognathic, shaped as if she might begin whistling any moment.
Bannerman looked down at her thoughtfully, and then turned his mildly
glaring eye once more on his audience. "I'll take an ugly woman for
my model any day," he challenged. "Beauty doesn't belong ... makes
the body insipid."
"But say, Bannerman," a curly-headed fellow on the outskirts of the
group spoke in a high excited voice. "What the devil has all this
got to do with saving the world? That's what we're after, you know."
"Everything, Twinem, everything," Clandon assured him. "Didn't you
hear? 'We can't save the world until we understand the naked--which,
of course, means female--body.' Now stand by, everyone, and
Bannerman will show us how to do it."
The numbers around Bannerman increased, and others in the room
glanced curiously in his direction. Lustbader, who had seated
himself at the chess board rose, and scouted around for a while to
see what was happening. "Oh, it's nothing," he reported disgustedly
to his partner. "Bannerman's helping them to understand the naked
body or something like that."
"Drunk, probably..."
"Go on, Bannerman, continue," Clandon urged. But as soon as the
lecture began again he seemed to cease listening, waiting for the
moment when with practiced sleight-of-hand he could pounce on an
argument and label it. Levine only locked his hands in back and
smiled to himself. Uttering a prodigious "Now!" and clearing his
throat professionally, Bannerman began once more. But happening at
the same moment to come too near the edge of the sofa, he pitched
forward. His body stiffened as they caught him, and he was rotated
up again into place with the rigidity of a statue. "Now the first
thing to remember," he continued, looking down at them and frowning
severely, "is that you fellows know nothing about it ... you fellows
with your prurient snooping around museums and peeking into the
studios. You can't understand the human body, I say, until you're
steeped in nudity ... steeped in it, mind you. And not the picayune
nudity you see in the pictures. You have to see collective nakedness
... many women sitting around together unconscious of their bodies,
so that the poses they take are ancient and instinctive..."
"Ancient and instinctive ... that's pretty good."
"Yes," Bannerman retorted, "flesh takes its own poses, like stone and
wood."
"Well, continue, anyway."
"Yes, go on, Bannerman."
"Stone and wood..." Bannerman repeated, and then stopped with a look
of extreme alarm. "Levine!" he bent down to him and lowered his
voice to a whisper. "Where were we at? No ... no ... never mind. I
remember now." He lapsed into a contemplation of space, and then
finished sententiously. "Then, and only then, ladies and gentlemen,
do you feel the reality of nakedness, so much so, in fact, that
nakedness no longer exists for you!"
"Hm ... the reality of nakedness. I like that."
"Well, is _that_ all?"
"Ladies and gentlemen, listen to the duet."
"How was it? How was it?" Lustbader called, and receiving no answer
he came trotting from his chess game and looked excitedly from one to
the other. Seeing that the lecture was in danger of ending he
started to applaud for more, a presumption which Bannerman quickly
ended by an imperious motion of his hand. "And then ... then," he
began fluently, and once more found himself looking around
confusedly. "Say, where were we at, Levine?" But here the tall girl
on the sofa rose with a look of disgust, and Bannerman danced three
involuntary steps. "Levine," he said pitifully, "hold my hand. And
then, ladies and gentlemen, you feel a power of fertility ... the
same as you feel in the woods on a damp day..."
"I do _not_," Clandon said sternly.
Bannerman looked at him reproachfully, and continued with added
dignity. "But you never think of stamens and pistils when you're
walking in the woods, do you? Because, of course, we know there is
plant intercourse. Now plant intercourse," he mused ... "queer
thing. And in the same manner, so to speak, you feel that men have
nothing to do with this fertility. It's a different thing, older
than sex ... and then..."
But his audience was growing restive, and Clandon leaped up on the
sofa to prevent a dispersal. "One minute, please," he signalled.
"We're at the power of fertility now. Has everyone got that? Very
well, then, continue."
"Oh, there's nothing to continue," Bannerman finished sulkily. "They
don't want to listen, anyway. But my last point was that then you
understand the livingness of flesh, and then you can't kill anything,
because..."
"Ah! Just as I thought," Clandon interrupted triumphantly. "It all
comes down to the sanctity of human life. Just as I thought."
"Say, Bannerman, that's jolly." It was the curly-headed young man
called Twinem. "You know, it's always fascinated me, this idea of
saving the world, because there are so many ways of doing it. No end
to them, really. This one's great. Naked women hanging around all
the time, so that we feel the what-do-you-call-it? ... sanctity of
human life. Awfully ingenious, don't you think?"
Laughter greeted his outburst, and Bannerman stepped down with a
final and completely-balanced dignity.
"Well ... amuse yourselves," he muttered.
"Bannerman's right! Absolutely!" It was Lustbader calling from the
chess table, as he set up the pieces with rapid plump fingers.
"Haven't I thought of it myself?" He gave the lecturer a consoling
wink. "Haven't I thought of it though!"
He rose and planted himself in the center of the room, his face
flushed and ecstatic. "All the women ... all the women," he began.
"No ... that won't do. Watch me. _I'll_ make a beginning." He made
a rapid survey of the room, then rubbed his Punchinello nose
meditatively. Finally he turned and stared at one corner, at Marah
who was half-reclining in a large chair, and listlessly watching the
proceedings. He advanced to her on tiptoes, pedalling the air with
his fingers. And this stealthy advance caused a sudden silence in
the room, everybody turned to watch it. Marah did not move, but
observed him with wide and curious eyes, her whole attitude
suggesting infinite curiosity for his touch. He came close to her
and tried to lift his hands to her face, but unable to bring himself
to it, he wheeled himself round in a temper. "Can't we do without
that music?" he snapped, turning his red face to the musicians. The
music stopped abruptly, and for the moment there was a complete hush,
during which Lustbader walked unsteadily back to the chess table, and
began to set up the pieces again. Levine, who had been watching
Marah intently, turned away with a faint suggestion of contempt in
the shrug of his shoulders.
"Bannerman," he said loudly, "that confirms my theory."
"Really ... how?" Bannerman's round face flushed with pleasure.
"Every human being ... every human being," Levine began emphatically.
"Yes, yes, go on..."
"Has a favorite form of intoxication. Let me congratulate you on the
extremely original form of yours."
"I don't understand."
"Well, you don't have to. The trouble with you, Bannerman, is that
you're such a confounded sensualist. And you think everyone can
remain on that high plane of sensuality on which you generally exist.
But that's asking a little too much. The average person isn't equal
to it. Besides, that's just where the big mistake lies ... in this
idea of the sanctity of life. Civilization is a nightmare of safety
because of it."
"Oh, come, Levine, don't be fantastic again."
Levine looked at Clandon with innocent eyes. He shook the invisible
drop of water from his thumb and forefinger before speaking.
"Anthropology," he continued, "teaches us that a condition of such
abnormal safety as we suffer from now, never before existed. We
know, for instance, that primitive man had innumerable chances for
calamity ... at least while geology was a going concern. Mountains
and rivers, glaciers and even continents, cavorting around like
kittens. And that's what we need nowadays, that's what we miss ...
the sense of extreme terror, which is really the most profound and
religious of human emotions. When primitive man had to pick up his
household goods and keep running, always just a few strides ahead of
the glaciers, looking back at the green wall of ice, and feeling the
chill on his--"
Clandon burst into uproarious laughter. "Lord! What a tableau!"
Hearing it, Lustbader came to the surface again from the depths of
his chess game. "Where ... where's the tableau?" he inquired eagerly.
"Oh, very well, then, he didn't run in front of the glacier. It is,
as you say, only a tableau. However," Levine continued more
seriously, "we may safely posit a more liberal distribution of
catastrophe in primitive times, and it is, as I said, the whole
trouble. Civilization is a nightmare of safety."
"Say, Levine, how about the Day of Judgment?" Twinem asked earnestly.
"That'll be an awful time, won't it?"
"The Day of Judgment," Levine repeated thoughtfully. "No, too far
off. Besides, only an article of faith. Not sound geology."
Twinem looked crestfallen. "I never hit it right," he said.
"No, come to think of it, Twinem, there is something to that. We may
safely say that the Day of Judgment supplied a great deal of the
necessary emotion of fear in the Middle Ages. Yes, come to think of
it, it was very efficient in satisfying that nostalgia for terror, as
we might call it. Only nowadays we're too practical for it, we know
too much. We can't, I'm afraid, get much of a thrill from brooding
over the Day of Judgment."
"Lack the imagination, don't we..."
"Right, Twinem."
"Need something active ... real. War, I should say."
"Twinem, you're a genius." At this verdict, Jel embraced his friend
and they marched fraternally towards the refreshments. Poldy tried
to follow them, but something stopped him on the way. And now, for
the first time, it seemed that a quality of silence came into the
voices, they slackened their rhythm. Two girls were conversing
across the room by means of signals, and the quick weaving of their
fingers seemed to make an area of silence around them. Lustbader
devoted himself to his game, and his spongy little hand suspended
over the board looked like a mute held there to dull the vibrations
in the air. But this lasted for only a little while. Without
warning Lustbader jumped up from his chair, upsetting the board with
his violence.
"I have it ... I have it!" he shouted. He picked up a queen that had
fallen to the floor, blew a speck of dirt from it, and began to
polish it with his sleeve. "Any war that begins can be ended in
fifteen days ... fifteen days at the most. Everybody's been looking
for a way to do it, but nobody ever thought of this."
"Well?"
"All the soldiers ... _all_ the soldiers," he said impressively,
"should be made to strangle each other to death."
"And then what...?" Clandon asked.
"Why in fifteen days, fifteen at the most," he sputtered, "it would
be over. They can't strangle each other forever, can they? They'd
get tired. Killing should be work, hard work."
Nobody seemed impressed, and somewhat forlornly Lustbader turned
away. But seeing Poldy standing near him, he took him aside and
continued to develop his idea more confidentially. "Why, where I was
in the country this summer," he said rapidly, "there were three pigs,
and the farmer's boy used to say: 'You'll never _kill_ that one ...
she's too hard to kill.' And that's how it is. Now in fifteen
days..."
Poldy had been following the motions of Lustbader's hands as if they
were new and fascinating toys. As soon as it was over he began to
cough, putting his hands to his mouth and looking around stealthily.
It had started as a forced artificial cough, but in a few seconds his
face was red, tears streamed from his eyes and his throat kept
trembling convulsively each time he tried to stop. The others stood
by helplessly, while Poldy backed into a chair, always holding his
hands to his mouth with the dainty gesture of a bunny.
"Stop it!" Levine commanded. He caught Poldy's wrists, and drew his
hands away from his mouth. The coughing stopped, and while they were
still standing around Poldy, awkward and self-conscious, they were
startled by the noise of a deafening explosion. It began with a
tearing sound, as of bricks bursting apart, and ended in a series of
long detonations. It seemed to come from the heart of the city, and
the room trembled with the impact of it. Transfixed with terror,
they stood and glanced at each other, and nobody dared to move until
it was over. Then with a concerted movement, they rushed to the
windows and looked out. In subdued voices at first, but later
growing more secure and controversial, they gave their conjectures.
There were two theories ... one, that it was only the ordinary
dynamiting in the course of erecting a building; and the other that
one of the skyscrapers had collapsed.
"But steel..." someone said. "Steel buildings don't collapse."
"Ah ... how do you know? They haven't been up long enough for anyone
to know."
They were silent for a while, considering this and noting the
paleness still on their faces.
"The framework of steel buildings," a low and thoughtful voice was
heard to observe, "is said by some authorities to be undergoing a
hidden but certain process of rotting away."
"That," Clandon said sententiously, "seems to me stupid."
"How..."
"Why, it just seems inconceivably stupid to me that we should be
putting up buildings that were doomed."
"Why, yes," Twinem said eagerly, "we can't imagine our engineers
doing anything so stupid."
"Or a whole civilization, for that matter," somebody added. "Why,
our whole civilization is founded on steel, and one can't imagine our
being wrong about it."
"On the contrary," Levine cut in, commanding silence by the
seriousness of his voice, "it seems to me that every civilization
must have in it the seeds of its own dissolution. It seems to me
that at the heart of every civilization there must be some colossal
stupidity. It must be there, or there would be no guarantee that the
civilization was to end."
"And is that important?"
"For it to end? Yes."
"Why ... can you tell us why, perhaps?" Clandon said angrily.
Levine shrugged his shoulders and turned away from him. "Study the
history of Greece or Rome, and it will prove what obvious stupidities
these civilizations harbored within themselves. Perhaps this faith
of ours in the eternity of steel, this frantic erecting of buildings
that are rotting away within, is the stupidity that we are furnishing
for the future to marvel at."
"That is," Clandon corrected, "_if_ they are rotting away."
Levine did not answer, and they were silent, lingering uncertainly
near the window or looking uneasily into the street. In this silence
they heard a voice speaking for the first time that evening, coming
in meditatively though somewhat late, like a clock that strikes
pompously after the hour.
"Bannerman's right now..." the voice said. "I know what he means."
The words were slightly muffled by the process of mastication. They
looked into the other room, and saw a short gray-headed man standing
alone at the table, plying the sandwiches and drinks. It had been a
systematic and lengthy procedure, to judge by the extensive ruins of
food around him, and not even the sound of the explosion had
interrupted it. The speaker was eating now with a profound
expression, his round gray eyes always looking at the next object to
be attacked, thus keeping up an uninterrupted campaign.
"Sintz, my child, eating again?" Clandon wagged his finger playfully.
He was usually called Sintz because nobody could remember his real
name, except that it was very long and contained that syllable
somewhere; and "my child" was added because his rosy little mouth and
clear gray eyes made him look like a little boy burgeoning out into
his first rotundity.
"Yes, Bannerman's right," Sintz repeated, and wiped away the crumbs
that trickled down his chin. "I know what he means. Now when I was
a boy we were starving most of the time. But there were some crusts
of bread so old and so moused-at that we had to throw them away. And
I remember that every time I threw one of those old crusts away it
hurt me ... here..." he applied his wine-glass to his heart. "I
couldn't kill anything, either. No, not even to wipe a roach off the
wall, though God knows we had enough of them. Now why have I lost
that feeling? Often I ask myself: how did it happen?"
He stopped and looked around, like a confused little boy who realizes
that an ominous silence has fallen on his elders. Clandon winked to
the others and stepped over to the table.
"Couldn't throw a crust of bread away, you say..."
Sintz nodded.
"Well, Sintz my child, what do you call that?" He pointed severely
to the remains of food.
"Yes, what?" Sintz repeated cordially, and looked at the table.
"Phew! Look how much you've eaten. You contemptible
little--breadbox!" Clandon lunged forward as if to tickle his
stomach, but Sintz caught his arm and held on to it tightly.
"Yes, what do you call that? Look ... just look at that ... A fine
exhibition ... to eat like a garbage can. I eat and eat. Whenever I
see food, I eat. But that's not the worst of it. If it were only
that I wouldn't be so worried. You don't know what I'm capable of."
He whipped himself round to the others. "Yes, you don't know what
I'm capable of," he continued solemnly. "My mother had a little
white dog once called Pierrot. And one day she comes into my room
and folds her hands and says, 'Pierrot is dead.' Do you know what I
did? I burst out laughing. She just sat there and looked at me.
Now was it right to laugh?" he asked sadly.
A solitary chuckle exploded from Clandon, and Sintz fixed him with a
long puzzled stare. "Well, I can see why you laugh," he said slowly.
"You don't know what I used to be. That's the whole trouble."
He was silent, munching his sandwich and regarding them thoughtfully.
But in the midst of it he darted towards Clandon, caught at his
lapel, and lifted his face to him imploringly. "Listen, Clandon,
I'll prove it to you. Only tell me what you want me to do, set me
any task and I'll do it here before all these people. Anything you
say, to show you what I'm capable of..."
Clandon screwed up his eyes and tightened his lips, tasting
beforehand the special flavor of the cruelty he would choose. After
long thought he shook himself loose from Sintz with an angry gesture.
"Hang it all, Sintz," he said irritably, "I can't think of a thing.
I believe you all right, if that's what you want. But damned if I
can think of any way of being specially cruel."
"Look here, Sintz..." it was Twinem, speaking with paternal
good-nature. "I think we could arrange it. I've been awfully
curious ever since I can remember to know how it feels to have drops
of water falling on your forehead at long intervals. Heard about it
once in a book when I was little, as a pet form of torture somewheres
in the East ... China, I guess. And then I got a few boys to try it
on me, only they didn't have the patience to do more than a few
drops, and did them too quick. I even put my head under the faucet,
once when it was dripping a little, to see how long I could stand it.
But the water stopped altogether, and I couldn't regulate it again.
Now, if you're willing..."
Sintz regarded him fearfully, like a child that is a little
suspicious of the new game.
"Would you, now? That's right. Clandon, old boy, dive into the
medicine chest and get an eyedropper or ear syringe or some suitable
instrument."
Twinem placed a chair in the center of the room, tucked a large
napkin under his chin, sat down and shut his eyes. The others
gathered round as if they were about to witness an operation. But
Clandon signalled them away and took charge of it. He looked at
Sintz critically, and announced, "He needs gloves." Someone
furnished a pair of gloves that were too big for him and drooped at
the finger-ends, giving an appearance as if all his fingers had been
broken at the tips. Sintz looked at his hands in alarm. He
flourished them about and when he saw that this caused everyone to
laugh he gave a few extra flourishes, folded his short arms in front
of him, and looked at Clandon defiantly. "He needs a mask," Clandon
said. Lustbader produced his handkerchief, and tied it tightly over
Sintz's nose and mouth.
"You have to turn him around and see which way he faces when he's
through."
"He ought to have an apron."
"Right. We'll turn him."
"Why?" Sintz's voice was muffled and alarmed behind the handkerchief.
"Never mind why," Clandon answered. "It's always done." He raised
Sintz's gloved hands in an attitude of astonishment and whirled him
around. But in the midst of his gyration Sintz caught at Clandon's
arm, and they almost fell together with the effort to steady
themselves. "Sure this isn't a trick on me?" Sintz asked in a
terrified whisper. The handkerchief began to vibrate over his mouth
as if a tiny white muscle were set in motion there. "Take it off,
Clandon," he pleaded. "I can't breathe."
Again Clandon put his head on one side and regarded him critically.
"Twinem, I've an idea," he announced solemnly. "The water must be
hot."
"Oh, I say, Clandon, that's ridiculous." Twinem raised his head and
opened his eyes. "You're not going to heat the water specially, are
you?"
"Why not?"
"Because it's ridiculous ... heating water specially..."
"Why is it ridiculous?"
Twinem removed the napkin and rose angrily. "It's absurd, that's
all. Besides, I never heard that the water was hot."
"That may be," Levine said. "But then consider, Twinem. A man
devoted his whole lifetime to being killed, in those times. But no
one would think of wasting time that way nowadays. We've just got to
hurry it a little."
"Oh, all right then, go ahead. Only it's carrying things a little
too far." He sat down sullenly and put his head back, whistling up
at the ceiling until they were ready.
Sintz took the eye-dropper with trembling hands. He brushed the
curls back from Twinem's white forehead and stared at it, as if it
had turned into a strange object.
"How can I do it when his eyes quiver that way?" he burst out at
length. "Make him stop moving his eyes that way."
"Now, Sintz, I'll count three..."
The little white muscle over Sintz's mouth began to vibrate
frantically. He flashed an imploring look at Clandon, poised the
eye-dropper over Twinem's forehead, and ended by dusting it lightly
with the loose finger-tips of his left hand.
"One." Clandon scored it off by raising his forefinger.
"It makes me nervous ... his eyes quivering that way."
"Two."
"I'll do it, the minute he stops screwing up his eyes that way."
Clandon wagged two fingers in the air, and was about to declaim the
last number, when Sintz turned to him. "Do you know what..." he said
quietly, as if it had just occurred to him. "I can't do it. I can't
do it ... that's all." He put the eye-dropper away and took off the
handkerchief and gloves. His forehead was wet with perspiration, and
he fumbled nervously for his handkerchief. "Lustbader, can I use
yours?" he asked humbly.
"It's a damned messy business," Twinem announced, sitting up with a
disgusted grimace. There was water trickling down from his forehead
and he wiped it hastily with the back of his hand. "Takes too long
anyway. Thank God, we kill people much quicker."
"We do ... we do!" Lustbader hugged himself gleefully. "I said that
was the trouble. Now in fifteen days ... fifteen days at the most,
if everything is done by strangling. That's the only condition I
make ... all killing to be done by strangling. Oh Lord, how simple."
He picked up the chess board and waltzed around with it, while the
pianist accompanied him with a furious scherzo. "Stop it!" Lustbader
commanded breathlessly from the midst of his whirling. "How can I
keep up with that?"
But here the man who had been rapping on the piano raised his voice
in a final effort. "Ladies and gentlemen, a quartet. Clear the
floor for the quartet."
* * * * * * *
The players were old and German-looking. They played with curious
indifference, looking as if they were half asleep over their
instruments. Only the second violinist looked up alertly each time
that a new instrument came in. He had a sharp archaic profile, the
full eye almost completely visible in profile; and the sculptured
down-turning mouth that gave a slight sourness to his expression.
Whenever one of the instruments was due to make its entrance he would
look at the player watchfully, almost suspiciously, until the new
motif was merged with the others. While the others plied their
strings in enchanted detachment, he seemed to have a secret joy in
the playing from his foreknowledge of the moves, from being part of
the intricate mechanism of the music.
For the first time since he had entered the room Lewis was able to
look around him and to take stock of his confused impressions. He
realized that he had been avoiding Poldy, that there was something
offensive to him in the green pallor of Poldy's face, and that he
felt in some way degraded by Poldy's presence. He remembered too
that several times in the course of the evening Levine had fixed his
eyes on him with grave thoughtfulness. Now he was conscious of a
painful buzzing in his head, and though he felt unnaturally hot, his
forehead was damp and cold when he touched it. He tried to listen to
the music, but he was too weary to follow it as melody and rhythm.
He was only vaguely aware of its turnings, of the weaving in and out
of musical patterns ... he had the feeling of watching dancers from a
great distance, seeing faintly the joining and parting in a long and
tireless dance. But there were times when he seemed not to hear at
all, when he found himself staring at the players until they took on
the appearance of a quaint instrument working with a symmetry of arms.
But now, on the high note of its long obbligato, the cello came to an
abrupt stop, and the rest of the music spilled over suddenly into
silence, little odds and ends of sound tumbling after it.
"What's the trouble?" the man at the piano asked impatiently. "You
were doing fine."
"No, I can't play with him any more," the cellist began, rising
wrathfully and pointing his bow at the second violinist.
The second violinist looked at him in consternation. "Why, what have
I done? Roth, you're crazy."
"You look at me as though you were afraid I didn't know it was my
turn. It's humiliating."
"I ... _I_ look at you..."
The cellist loosened his bow and shook the hairs violently. "No, I
won't worry you any more," he said bitterly. "Get some one you can
trust." He picked up his instrument and stalked out of the room.
"Isn't that too bad," the man at the piano said sadly. "I thought
they were doing so nicely."
But now there was a commotion at the door, and they saw Poldy trying
to get out, Jel struggling with him and trying to save his cigarette
at the same time. At last he had Poldy pinned to the wall. With his
free hand he signalled for help.
"Damned fool!" he said. "Now he wants to run down on the street. He
says the first person he meets..."
Poldy nodded. "Yes, the first person I meet," he repeated solemnly.
"What about it ... what about it?" Levine put his hands on Poldy's
shoulders and spoke with hypnotic rapidity.
"The first person he meets will save him, he says."
"Can I go?" Poldy looked at Levine, his lips trembling.
"Yes, go," Levine said gently.
"Where's my hat, Jel?"
"_I_ don't know ... How should I know where you put it?"
"I need my hat."
"Well, where is it?"
Poldy turned to Levine. "I need my hat," he whispered.
They found one that was too small for him, that perched absurdly on
his head. Lustbader burst out laughing. "O God ... O God, that's
clever," he gasped. "The first person he meets--will be a woman."
They heard the door close and a silence fell on them. Some stood
awkwardly at the door, others ran to the window.
"Well, what do you see?" Levine snapped.
"Wait ... wait," Lustbader called gleefully. "I made a bet with Jel
that the first person he meets will be a woman. Sure enough ... sure
enough! He's passing up the men. God! but that was clever."
"Where's he going?"
"Heading for the park, now."
"No, he's standing still."
"He'll be run over."
"Going to pieces that way ... I always thought Poldy had more--" Jel
stopped with a low horrified whistle. "Well, if that wasn't a close
one!"
"Look! Look!" Lustbader flung his arms out ecstatically. "He's
going up to a woman ... he's talking to her. Hell! But that was
clever. 'The first person I meet...' What a game!"
"That was my hat," someone said thoughtfully.
"No, she's walking away. Wouldn't have him. Now what is he waiting
for."
"A peculiarly Biblical obsession," Levine observed drily. "To take
the first person one meets as a sort of godhead. Business of
Jephtha's daughter."
"But you know, I think there's something in it." Bannerman settled
himself in an easy chair and lit his cigarette with luxuriant
slowness. "It came over me, once. A hot evening, I remember, when I
was sitting in my studio and seeing all the people passing my window,
and somehow I began to feel sorry for them. And it came over me with
overpowering strength that I should rush out and follow the first
person I met, and be content to serve that person all the time. I
don't know what it was. A sort of desire to love all the people in
the world by--"
"Wallowing in one," Levine finished.
"Wallowing?"
"Yes. You're such a subtle nature, Bannerman, that you have to
wallow in the coarseness of other people ... or rather in their
ordinary-ness. Besides, you wouldn't choose an ordinary person at
all."
"Ah ... but that's where you're wrong. The whole secret of the
feeling lies in that ... that I'd follow the most ordinary person.
One who--"
"Picks his teeth?"
Bannerman frowned, nettled. "Well, why not? Picks his teeth or
his--"
Levine laughed heartily. "Oh, _that_. Just as I thought. So that's
your idea of an ordinary person."
"Why not? Why not?" Lustbader called from the window. "Suppose he
picked any part of his body..."
"Now tell me, Bannerman. Is Lustbader an ordinary person?"
"Well, now ... yes. I've seen him pick his nose."
"Again just as I thought! No, Bannerman, you don't know what an
ordinary person is. A person's being ordinary you consider a great
curiosity, and you ask for a visible sign of it ... a token. It's a
prurient interest, peculiar to people of your kind ... withdrawn,
oblique natures--"
Sintz's bright round eyes had been looking from one to the other.
"Now _I_ once followed a man on the street," he observed importantly.
"There you are!" Bannerman triumphed.
"No, wait ... not so fast. Now, Sintz, tell us ... why did you
follow him?"
"He picked up a cigarette butt from the street," Sintz began
reminiscently, in the manner of a very important witness, "and put it
in his pocket, and I followed him."
"But I object," Bannerman said. "The cigarette butt means nothing."
"Did you see him smoke it?"
"Did I!" Sintz slapped his thigh. "What did I follow him for?"
"Exactly," Levine nodded. "The first thing you know, Bannerman, that
very ordinary person you were following would have to commit murder
or suicide or incest, or you'd lose interest in him. Smoke the
cigarette butt, so to speak. Yes, even if his being ordinary
consisted merely in sporting a pimple on his face, you'd have to get
thrills of horror every time you looked at it. Now isn't that true?"
"The most average person ... the most average..." Bannerman repeated
weakly.
"Ah ... again ... the most average. Take it from me, Bannerman, your
real wish, that you're not aware of, is to patronize some form of
abnormality. And if your person isn't abnormal, you console yourself
by saying he's at least the most average. But then, being most
average is a form of abnormality in itself."
Bannerman yawned and looked towards the window.
"How's Poldy?" he asked. "Damn him, why doesn't he come back? We
can't wait here forever."
"Oh, he'll come back," Lustbader said disgustedly. "Couldn't decide
which was the first person he met."
Lustbader turned away from the window, and after a moment's profound
thought, he took out his handkerchief and tied it over his eyes.
They watched, expecting a trick.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, mimicking Poldy's voice. "The
first person I meet ... the first person I meet, I shall..."
He advanced slowly as he had done before, walking on tiptoes and
pedalling the air with his fingers. First he made for the wall, but
there he turned abruptly and pedalled himself to the corner where
Marah was sitting. He stood before her, and after looking down at
her with his blindfolded eyes, he lifted his hands to her face and
felt it with stiff, heavy movements of his palm. She did not move or
close her eyes, her features were frozen in an expression of
curiosity about which there was something more abandoned than desire.
And at last, baffled by her immobility, Lustbader tore the
handkerchief from his eyes and wheeled himself around, and walked
heavily back to the chess table. His face was red and he avoided
looking at anyone.
"Well, I think I'll be going," Bannerman said. He signalled to the
tall girl reclining on the couch, and she rose and followed him out
of the room. Jel and Twinem marched about in a loose but
affectionate embrace, looking for Poldy's hat. The man who had to
wear it found that it was too big for him, and he walked out
scowling, nothing visible of his face but the indignant nostrils and
compressed lips. Sintz slipped away, looking unhappy and forlorn.
When they thought he had gone he reappeared in the doorway and said
timidly, "Coming, Clandon?" Soon there were only a few people in the
room, and the chairs were visible in their various attitudes ... some
close to each other for private dialogue, some in groups, or some off
by themselves, looking like the negative of a picture.
And now Levine went over to Marah, and bent down to her and spoke in
a low voice. "Why did you let him?" he asked earnestly. "Why did
you let him, Marah? Weren't you afraid?"
She looked up at him a long time before answering. "And if I wanted
that ... if I wanted to be afraid?" In the slow smile that curved
her lips there was a suggestion of triumph and challenge.
"_I_ know what she wants to be afraid of," Lustbader called loudly
from his game of chess. He was playing with himself this time,
trying to keep his left hand directly opposite him so that it might
move like a separate entity.
Levine's voice rang with unhappy reproach. "But Lustbader ...
Lustbader..."
"Why not?" she countered lazily.
"Then that counts me out?" He looked at her with a stupid protracted
smile.
Marah nodded.
"You're afraid, perhaps, that you will forget yourself again?
Perhaps I have become too desirable, and because of your pact..."
But she rose and stretched herself, an angry muscular stretching of
her arms, hands clenched. "I don't know..." she said with sudden
petulance. "I only wish I could be happy. The only thing I know is
that I am not happy."
"But you were happy that time with me, Marah," he urged in a low
voice. "You said you were."
She stood uncertainly before him, her gray eyes searching his face
with an expression in which there was both hope and weariness. "No,"
she said sharply, "I don't think it's true."
In the confused moment that followed, Levine tried to speak, tried to
lift his hand and touch her. But he finished by clapping his palm
and fist together, with the gesture of having concluded an important
transaction. "So be it," he said, bowing ceremoniously. "It only
confirms my theory..." his face, raised to look at her while his body
was still bowing, seemed dwarf-like and malicious ... "that all women
insist on remaining virgin. When they lose the gross virginity of
the body, they find themselves a new way to be inviolate. I think,"
he added, standing erect and looking directly at her, "that you will
continue to remain unhappy. Well, I wish you joy of him."
But when he had reached the door she ran to him swiftly, and laid her
hand on his arm. "Are you going?" she asked in a low incredulous
voice, her lips suddenly tremulous.
"I think, Marah, I had better go," he said gently. "It's really..."
he hesitated, looking away from her with a twisted smile ... "it's
really no use. I knew it wasn't, from the beginning."
Simultaneously with Levine's shutting the door, Lustbader set up a
clicking motion of the tongue and surveyed the game more intently.
* * * * * * *
For a long time Poldy remained sitting in the park. A woman came and
sat down next to him, and when he did not speak she turned and peered
curiously into his face. "Is that the dipper?" she asked, pointing
up at the sky, and bursting into a laugh at her own question. But
Poldy looked in the direction of her finger without speaking.
Meanwhile Lewis Orling and Levine walked through the deserted
streets. Lustbader and Marah went home together. Marah was crying
softly to herself, and Lustbader glanced at her unhappily, wondering
what he could do.