Winkelburg dragged along for six months. He was past fifty-five.
Each time I saw him I was certain I would never see him again. I was
certain he would die--drop dead while crawling across his flypaper.
But he would appear. I would pretend to be vastly busy. He would sit
and wait. His consideration was an affront. It said, “Oh, yes, I know
you are a very busy man. You are part of the world. But Winkelburg
has nothing to do. Nothing but wait. Wait until he dies. So don’t
hurry. I have plenty of time.”
He would never ask alms. I would have been relieved if he had.
Instead he would sit and smile, and his smile would say:
“Ah, my friend, you are afraid I am going to ask you for money. Don’t
worry, please. I would rather die of hunger than ask you. Because it
would interfere with our friendship. And I value your friendship more
than a bite of food. I won’t ask you for money. I won’t bother you
at all. Yes, yes, I agree with you. I ought to be dead. It would be
better for everybody.”
We would talk little. He would throw out a hint now and then that
perhaps I could use some of his misfortunes for material. For
instance, the time his two children had been burned to death. Or the
time he had fallen off a street car while in a sick daze and injured
his spine for life, and how he settled with the street-car company
for five hundred dollars, and how he had been robbed on the way to
the bank with the money a month later.
I refused consistently and somewhat curtly his offer of material.
This offended Winkelburg. He would pick up the day’s paper and sit
reading my story through with a show of critical deliberation. Then
he would put it down and look at me as if to say:
“This thing you’ve written about is all right in its way. But it must
be obvious to you that, from a purely literary point of view, the
material I have to offer is vastly superior.”
I saw that his vanity was piqued. I would not have minded this. In
fact it was a bit droll. But there was his smile. Winkelburg’s
smile rose above his vanity. When I had returned to the typewriter,
feigning industry in the hope that the man would pick himself up and
crawl away, I would catch a glimpse of the inevitable wan grimace
that came to his lips and the smile would say:
“Yes, yes, I understand. You refuse my material because you don’t
want to get involved with me. Because you don’t want me to have any
more claims on you than I have. Not that you’re afraid I’ll ask you
for money. But if I gave you something you’re afraid that it would
establish a closer relationship between us. I’m sorry, but you
shouldn’t feel that way.”
Toward the end Winkelburg’s visits grew more frequent. I gave
instructions that he shouldn’t be admitted, and that whenever he
called, “I was out.” Futile. There were three things that the rich
man couldn’t keep out with his high fence, says the poet--rain, death
and tomorrow. And Winkelburg was gifted with an almost similar aloof
tenacity. He crawled past barriers. He melted through walls. And
regardless of subterfuges and instructions, I would hear his dragging
step in the corridor leading to my desk.
He wished to discuss things. He had become suddenly garrulous.
He wished to talk about the city. About its institutions. About
politics. About people. About art. This phase of Winkelburg was the
most unbearable. He was willing to admit himself an outcast, a thing
on a scrap heap. He was reconciled to the fact that he would starve
to death, and that everybody who had ever seen him would feel it was
a good thing he had finally died.
But he made one plea. He wanted nothing except to talk and to hear
words in order to relieve the loneliness of his day. He would like
abstract discussions that had nothing to do with Winkelburg and the
Winkelburg misfortunes. His smile now said, “I am useless. Worn out
and better off dead. But never mind me. Never mind Winkelburg and
his troubles. My mind is still alive. It still thinks and works.
I wish that it didn’t. I wish it was crippled like Winkelburg is,
and that it crawled around like my body. But it doesn’t. So talk to
me as if it were a mind belonging to somebody else, as if it were
an impersonal machine able to pronounce ideas and to argue and to
appreciate what you say. Talk to me as if I weren’t this insufferable
Winkelburg, but somebody of whom you have never heard.”
I grew suspicious finally. I began to think there was something
vitally spurious about this whole Winkelburg business. And I said to
myself, “The man’s a downright fake. If anybody were as pathetic and
impossible and useless as this Winkelburg is he would shoot himself.
Winkelburg doesn’t shoot himself. So he becomes illogical ... unreal.”