(From _The Smart Set_)
I
There was never a man as irritating as Winkelburg. He was an
encyclopedia of misfortunes. Everything that can happen to a man had
happened to him. He had lost his family, his money and his health. He
was, in short, a man completely broken--tall, thin, with a cadaverous
face out of which shone two huge lustreless eyes. He walked with an
angular crawl that reminded one of the emaciated flies one sees at
the beginning of winter. That was Winkelburg to a dot--a creature
perversely alive, dragging itself across an illimitable expanse of
flypaper.
It was one of Winkelburg’s worst habits to appear at unexpected
moments. But, perhaps, any appearances he might have made would have
had this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking
forward to him, and thus the sight of his wan, uncomfortable smile,
his lustreless eyes, his tenacious crawl was invariably an irritating
surprise.
I will be frank. It was Winkelburg’s misfortune which first attracted
me. I listened to his story avidly. He talked in slow words and
there was intelligence in the man. He was able to perceive himself,
not only as a pain-racked, starving human, but he glimpsed with his
large, tired eyes his relation to things outside himself.
It appeared that the man had been lying in a hall bedroom for two
weeks dying. An embittered landlady to whom he owed three months
rent had tended him. I fancy she was torn between a hope that the
miserable fool would die and give her a chance to rent the room to
a more profitable customer and a more optimistic greed. He might
recover, get a job and pay her the three months rent he owed.
Winkelburg wrote to me about it. It was my first knowledge of the
man. He offered his experiences as material for one of the daily
stories I was writing for the _News_. His letter was a document. In
it he recounted in good English and in a few lines the history of his
life.
“I have had hard luck all my life,” he wrote. “I have no friends or
relatives. My health is broken and I am without money. I once was
somebody, but that doesn’t matter now. I am dying. Lying up here in
my room and hearing the noises in the street all day and all night
I got to thinking about things. I don’t mind dying, but to die all
alone in a cheap bedroom with nobody around is too much. So I got
dressed. It took me almost all day to dress on account of the pain. I
had twenty cents left. I finally managed to walk out of the house and
get on a street car. It was a torture. But I figured if I could reach
the County Hospital they would put me in a bed and give me treatment,
and, anyway, it would not be so bad to die in a hospital.”
Then he went on to relate his experience. He had arrived at the
hospital and been ushered into a receiving room. Here a group of
internes stood around cracking jokes. One of them finally advised
him to take his clothes off. He retired into one of the booths and
stripped. When he came out the room was empty. So Winkelburg crawled
up on a dirty table and lay there waiting. He waited for an hour.
After an hour an interne popped into the room and looked at him with
some surprise and inquired what the devil he was doing lying naked
on the table. Winkelburg, more dead than alive, moaned something in
reply. Whereupon the interne examined him. Winkelburg wrote:
“He moved my legs up and down and felt over me for a minute and then
said, ‘You’re all right. I’ll give you a prescription to fix you up.’
And he wrote out a prescription. I put my clothes on slowly and asked
him what I should do. ‘Go home,’ he said. I told him I couldn’t.
Then he asked, ‘Well, how did you come here?’ I told him it was a
torture. So he grinned and said, ‘Torture back, then.’ I am back in
my room now, in bed. I feel worse. I’ve been thinking about all this.
It doesn’t make me angry. The world is like that. It has no time for
its unfortunates. There are too many healthy ones to take care of.
This interne was possibly not a bad fellow. When he talked to me I
realized how it was. I was just one of a thousand poor fools, and he
was busy with his career and his plans. He didn’t mean to be cruel,
but that’s just human nature, don’t you think?”
I wrote the story, adding a few lugubrious details for good measure.
I drew a picture of Winkelburg lying on his back, staring at the
ceiling and thinking of the busy city whose noises floated in through
his window. The next day brought a flood of letters. Philanthropists
offered to care for Winkelburg. The hospital authorities denied the
incident described by Winkelburg, but offered to make amends and to
give him treatment and a bed.
A week later I received a letter of thanks from him. He was in the
hospital. Three weeks later another letter came. He had been given a
home by an elderly couple. Luck had turned. He had all he wanted. Two
more weeks brought another letter. He was living somewhere else now
and he would like to hear from me. And then he appeared in person. It
was the first time I had ever seen him.
He sat down beside my desk and I looked at him. Death stared out of
the man. And I noticed at once the curious kindliness of him. He
talked slowly and told me of his experiences. He was courteously
brief, and even better than that, he spoke without emotion.
“There is nobody to blame,” he said. “Not even myself. It is just
the way things go. And if I can’t blame myself, how can I blame
the world? The city is like that. I’m no good. I’m done. Worn out,
useless. People try to take care of the useless ones. There are
institutions. Well, I had two good homes and was in two institutions,
thanks to the thing you wrote. But they kicked me out. They said I
was a faker. Somehow I don’t appeal to charitably inclined people.”
Later I understood why. It was because of the man’s smile--a feeble,
tenacious grimace that seemed to be offering a sardonic reproof. It
could never have been mistaken for a courageous smile. Philanthropy
had taken Winkelburg up and then dropped him. Quickly and definitely.
Because of his smile. The secret of its aggravating quality was this:
in it Winkelburg accused himself of his uselessness, his feebleness,
his poverty. It was as if he were regarding himself continually
through the annoyed eyes of others and addressing himself with
the words of others--“You, Winkelburg, get out of here. You’re a
nuisance. You make me uncomfortable, because you’re poor and diseased
and full of gloom. Get out. I don’t want you around. Why the devil
don’t you die?”
And the aggravating thing was that people looked at Winkelburg’s
smile as into a mirror. They saw in it a shrewd reflection of their
own attitude toward the man. They felt that Winkelburg understood
what they thought of him. And they didn’t like that. They didn’t like
to feel that Winkelburg was aware that deep inside their minds they
were always asking, “Why doesn’t this Winkelburg die and have it
over with?” Because that made them out as cruel, heartless people,
not much different in their attitude toward their fellow-man from
predatory animals in their attitude toward fellow predatory animals.
And somehow, although they really felt that way toward Winkelburg,
they preferred not to believe it. At least, they disliked accusation
where there should have been only gratitude.
Not that Winkelburg was ungrateful. He was thankful, obliging and
properly humble. But his smile persisted. And his smile was a mirror
that would not let his benefactors escape the truth. And eventually
Winkelburg’s smile became for them one of those curious mirrors that
exaggerate images grotesquely.
Charitably inclined people as well as all other kinds of inclined
people prefer their Winkelburgs more egotistic. They prefer that
unfortunate ones be engrossed in their misfortunes and not go around
wearing sardonic, philosophical smiles.