He frowned, staring, a look of mute protest in his eyes. He became dismayingly conscious of his nudity; a sense of hot panic flooded mm; he felt as though a huge x-ray eye was glaring into his very soul; and in the same instant he felt that he had shrunk in size, had become something small, shameful...With flexed lips he rattled the knob of the door brutally; the door still held. He knew that his door was locked, but he felt, irrationally, that it would just have to open and admit him before anyone saw him here nude in the hallway...Then his lips parted in comprehension as he remembered that only last month he had had the lock on the door changed, had installed a new system of steel bolts. There had been a series of robberies in the building and he had taken that precaution to protect himself. Now, even if he hurled his whole weight of two hundred pounds against it, that door would stand fast...
“Oh, God,” he breathed.
Again he clutched the knob of his door and shook it with fury, looking with dread over his shoulder as he did so, fearing that someone might come into the hallway. The door remained secure, solid, burglarproof. He glanced down at his hairy legs, his frizzled chest; save for the clumsy hunk of the Sunday edition of the New York Times, he was nude, frightfully nude.
Erskine’s moral conditioning leaped to the fore, lava-like; there flashed into his mind an image of Mrs. Blake who lived in the apartment next to his, the door that was but six inches from his right hand; also there rose up before his shocked eyes the prim face of Miss Brownell, a faded, graying spinster of forty-odd, who lived just across the hall from him; and he saw, as though staring up into the stern face of a judge in a courtroom, the gray, respectable faces of Mr. and Mrs. Fenley—Fenley of the Chase National Bank!—who lived in the apartment which was just to the left of the elevator. Good God! He was superintendent of the Mount Ararat Sunday School; he was a consulting advisor to the Longevity Life Insurance Company; he had a bank balance of over forty thousand dollars in cash; he had more than one hundred thousand dollars in solid securities, including government bonds; he was a member of Rotary; a thirty-second degree Mason; and here he was standing nude, with a foolish expression on his face, before the locked door of his apartment on a Sunday morning...
A fine film of sweat broke out over the skin of his face. Again he grasped the doorknob and strained at it, hoping that his sheer passion for modesty would somehow twist those cold bolts of steel; but the door held and he knew that steel was steel and would not bend. There was no doubt about it; he was locked out, locked out naked in the hallway and at any second one of his neighbors’ doors would open and someone would walk out and find him...They’d scream, maybe, if they were women. Good God, what could he do? His face was wet with sweat now.
He tensed as the faint sound of the elevator door opening downstairs came to him, echoing hollowly up the elevator shaft. Somebody was coming up! Maybe to this floor! He glared about in the sun-flooded hallway, searching for nooks and crannies in which to hide, clutching awkwardly his bundle of Sunday papers. His hairy body, as he glanced down at it, seemed huge and repulsive, like,that of a giant; but, when he looked off, his body felt puny, shriveled, like that of a dwarf. And the hallway in which he stood was white, smooth, modern; it held no Gothic recesses, no Victorian curves, no Byzantine incrustations in, or behind which, he could hide.
The elevator was coming up...He felt that he was in the spell of a dream; he wanted to shake his head, blink his eyes and rid himself of this nightmare. But he remained hairy, nude, trembling in the morning sun. If that was Miss Brownell coming up, she might scream; she’d surely complain, maybe to the police...He felt dizzy and his vision blurred. The muted hum of the rising elevator came nearer. Where could he hide himself? He prayed that whoever was coming up in the elevator was not getting off at this floor. Flattening his back against the cold, wooden panels of his door, pressing the bunch of newspapers tightly against his middle, he closed his eyes, reverting for a moment to the primitive feelings that children have—reasoning that if he shut his eyes he would not be seen. The muscles of his legs quivered and sweat broke out in the matted hair of his chest. He heard the elevator pass his floor and keep on rising...Thank God!
He relaxed, swallowed; then, gritting his teeth till they ached, he whirled and rattled his doorknob again, knowing that the door would not open, but rattling the knob because he had to do something...
Whom could he call for help? But if he called out, somebody was sure to open a door and he could not control who it would be...God...He felt like vomiting and, on top of it all, through the locked and bolted door, he heard his coffee pot boiling over again.
He stiffened, hearing the telephone ring in Miss Brownell’s apartment. What could he do? The sound of a distant door opening and closing came to him, then he heard the far-off music of a radio. It was getting late; the morning was passing; each second brought discovery closer. Despair made him feel weak as he heard the elevator descending and a minute later he heard the elevator door opening and closing downstairs. Then the soft, low whine of the elevator wafted up; it was climbing towards him once more .. f Lord...Once more he stood with his back glued to the panels of the door, shielding himself with the newspapers, his body as still as a tree, sweat dripping from his chin. The drone of the elevator came nearer; it reached the tenth floor and passed, going upward again. He sighed.
He had to do something, but what? He wanted to run, but fought off the urge, fearing that any move he made would worsen his predicament. Hell, he breathed, giving vent to a curse for the first time in many long years.
Oh, he had an idea! Yes; that’s what he’d do...If he got into the elevator and rode down to the first floor, he could conceal himself in the elevator and call to Westerman, the building superintendent. Yes, that was his only chance...What a foolish, wild, idiotic thing to do—trapping one’s self naked in a building in broad daylight! Get hold of that superintendent; that was the thing...The superintendent had a passkey for every apartment in the building.
He crept on the tips of his toes to the elevator, holding the Sunday newspaper in front of him, feeling that perhaps even the inert metal of the elevator machinery would scorn his nakedness and refuse to obey. But, when he did push the button, the elevator responded and he could hear the dull purr of the electric motor and could see, through the dim square of glass set high in the elevator door, the wobbly steel cables lifting the cage of the elevator upwards, towards him. He kept his eyes on the shut doors of other apartments. God, if only he could get hold of that superintendent...
The elevator finally arrived. He squinted through the door’s dark rectangle of glass; it was empty...He yanked open the door and stepped inside, feeling lost and foolish to be entering an elevator naked like this. He had the sensation of being transparent; he felt vaguely that he had had this same experience somewhere and at some time before in his life. He pushed the button for the first floor and his body shook from the sudden descent of the elevator. God, if he had only five minutes of grace before anyone showed up!
He looked at his watch; it was only eight o’clock, yet he felt that he’d been dodging naked like this for hours...Down; down; down; the elevator moved so slowly that he felt that it would take an eternity to get to the bottom. When he looked at the newspapers that he was crushing against his body, he saw that they showed dark and gray where his sweat, dripping from his chin, was dampening them.
The elevator stopped with a soft bounce at the first floor; he peeped through the cloudy square of glass and saw two laughing young girls, seemingly in their late teens, about to open the door. He sprang and grabbed the door with his right hand and, hugging the newspapers with his left elbow, reached with his left hand, not daring to breathe, and pushed the button for the tenth floor. At once the elevator started up again and he let his breath expire through parted lips. Yes; he’d have to get out of this elevator; it was too dangerous...
But how could he get back into his apartment? The elevator buzzer rang in his ears and he shivered; somebody was ringing for
the elevator...! He kept his teeth clamped and something seemed to be jumping in his stomach, like a nerve cut loose from his ganglion, writhing. He brushed rivulets of water from his forehead, bit his lips, waited, counting the floors: seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth...The elevator halted; he reached forward to open the door, but paused and stared through the murky block of glass to see if the hallway was empty. Then, just as he was about to open the door, the elevator started again, going downward!
He searched frantically for the red emergency button, found it, jammed it fumblingly with the forefinger of his right hand; the elevator stopped. He wanted to scream and bring this spell of unreality to an end; but this unreality was real; he was experiencing this...Now, the button for the tenth floor. He reached out to push it, but, before his finger touched it, the elevator was climbing upward! A chorus of buzzings was now sounding in his ears; many people were calling for the elevator...For a moment he stood paralyzed, realizing that now a backlog of tenants was waiting on several floors, all trying to get possession of the elevator.
He had to stop the elevator, but his over-anxiousness warped his judgment and made him lose time. It seemed that he had to look longer than ordinarily to find the right button to push. Again he leaped upon the red emergency button and hit it and the elevator jolted to a halt. His eyes darted and found the button for the tenth floor; he extended his hand to push it, and, before he could touch it, the elevator moved, going down once more.
He groaned. A desire to do nothing to save himself shot through him. But he couldn’t act like that...Again he pounced on the red emergency button and rammed it with his finger, but his hand was trembling so that when he tried to punch the button for the tenth floor, he pushed, by mistake, the one for the fifteenth floor. Damn! Obediently, the elevator was lifting upward. Once more he shoved the red button; the elevator stopped dead, shaking him. He was now between the eleventh and twelfth floors. And, before he could touch the button for the tenth floor, the elevator dropped downward, taking his naked body—dripping as though he were in a Turkish bath—to the first floor where those two young girls were undoubtedly still waiting...
Stupidly, he stared at the rows of buttons. Once again he broke the elevator’s descent by pressing the red button again and quickly indented the button for the tenth floor, and the elevator went into action too quickly, so quickly that he was not certain if he or someone else had pressed the button, if he or someone else had put the elevator into action. In suspense he watched the floors pass. He couldn’t stand it; he had to know who had set the elevator into motion...He stopped the machinery again and, with a dart of his finger that was like the lick of a serpent’s tongue, he flicked the button for the tenth floor; the elevator sank, even and smooth in its glide. The elevator stopped at the tenth floor, his floor.
His knees were bent with tension. Then he sucked in his breath. Through the dingy plate of glass he saw Miss Brownell standing there, her hand stretched out to enter the elevator. A growl rose in his throat and he flung himself against the door. What could he do?
Yes; he had to get to the eleventh floor where the hallway was empty, and leave the elevator! And he’d hide on the stairway until Miss Brownell had gone. He pushed the button for the eleventh floor and the elevator lifted upward and he knew that it was he who commanded the elevator to move this time. There was now a loud banging on the elevator doors...
“What’s the matter?”
“Send that elevator down!” a man’s voice boomed.
“Wait, will you?” Erskine screamed, his body shaking with rage, shame, despair, and a sickness which he could not name.
The elevator came to a standstill at the eleventh floor and, through the cloudy square of glass, he saw his way clear. He opened the door and stepped out, feeling that he was escaping an enormous throng of encircling, hostile people armed with long, sharp knives, intent upon chopping off his arms, his legs, his genitals, his head...Squeezing the wet wad of newspapers close to his drenched skin, he crept down the stairway, leaving dark tracks of water each time his naked feet touched the purplish carpet. His body was so hot that the warm air of the hallway seemed, by contrast, cold. The sunlit hall was quiet save for muffled sounds of radios coming, from surrounding apartments.
He heard the elevator going down. Hugging the cold, marble wall, he descended. There...He could see a tip of Miss Brownell’s wide hat and a stretch of her white dress as she waited for the elevator.
He clung to the wall and tried to master his breathing. Finally he saw Miss Brownell’s white hand reach for the handle of the elevator door; the door opened; she stepped inside; now, at last, the hallway on his floor was free...So long had he waited for this respite that he now, quite foolishly, felt that he had almost solved his problem. He ran to the door of his apartment and, knowing that it was locked, rattled the knob once again, hearing the elevator settling downstairs on the first floor. He heard the door opening and closing; then the sound of the elevator moving into motion again floated to him.
His eyes glistened and he stared about crazily. What could he do? Then his lips opened in surprise. YES, THERE WAS HIS BATHROOM WINDOW WHICH WAS KEPT OPEN ALWAYS A FEW INCHES AND HE COULD MAYBE CLIMB INTO IT FROM THE BALCONY THAT WAS JUST BENEATH THAT WINDOW...Maybe he could get into his apartment that way...? He’d be publicly exposed on the balcony for a few seconds, but that was better than this terror...It was worth trying. He should have thought of it earlier. Now, maybe he had a chance, if only that door leading to the balcony was unlocked.
He sketched out his plan of action, visualizing each move, listening with dread to the drone of the machinery as it lifted the elevator...God, it was stopping at this floor...!
Springing into action, he dropped the newspapers, bolted down the hallway and veered for the door as fast as his naked feet could skim across the carpet. In one vicious, sweeping movement, he seized hold of the knob of the door and yanked violently at it and felt it opening in his wet hand. He was fronting a brightly lighted balcony and his eyes were staring straight into the full morning sun and he was blinded for a moment. His momentum now carried him out upon the balcony and he was turning his naked body in the direction of the window of his bathroom even before he saw where he was going.
His right leg encountered some strange object and he went tumbling forward on his face, his long, hairy arms flaying the air rapaciously, like the paws of a huge beast clutching for something to devour, to rend to pieces...He steadied himself partially by clawing at the brick wall and then he saw, in one swift, sweeping glance, little Tony’s tricycle over which he had tripped and fallen and also there flashed before his stunned eyes a quick image of Manhattan’s far-flung skyline in a white burst of vision and also, like a crashing blow against his skull, Tony, his little white face registering shock, staring at him, clad in a cowboy’s outfit, standing atop his electric hobbyhorse near the edge of the balcony, his slight, frail body outlined, like an image cut from a colored cardboard, against a blue immensity of horizon...
The physical force that had carried him through the doorway now propelled him towards little Tony who was holding a toy pistol gripped in his right hand...Erskine checked himself in his blind rush; his naked foot slipped on the concrete and he fell against the top railing encircling the balcony, feeling it shake, sway, and wobble as his two hundred pounds struck it. He was lying now with one of his shoulders resting against the railing...Tony, poised atop the electric hobby-horse, opened his mouth to scream and then, slowly—it seemed to Erskine’s imagination when he thought of it afterwards that the child had been floating in air—little Tony fell backwards and uttered one word:
“Naaaaaw...!”
The child went backwards, toward the void yawning beyond the edge of the balcony, his left hand lashing out, clutching for something to grab hold of, to hold onto, and his right hand still gripping the toy pistol. Erskine sensed that Tony was trying to seize hold of the top iron railing that encircled the balcony; and, as he struggled to say something, to yel
l a warning, to move, he saw little Tony fall onto the top iron railing and for a split second the child was poised there. The electric hobbyhorse had also fallen against the iron railing which still trembled under Erskine’s shoulder. In the glare of golden sun the tableau was frozen for a moment, with Tony staring at Erskine with eyes of horror. Erskine’s hand reached hesitantly towards Tony and Tony’s little body convulsed with panic, Erskine’s hand dropped; he felt that Tony feared him...Tony! he screamed without words and wanted to take hold of the child’s leg, but he was afraid to move. Then, impulsively, he stretched out his arms toward Tony and Tony’s little left hand groped flutteringly for the top iron railing; he actually saw Tony’s tiny fingers close over the iron railing and then the railing began to sag and bend under the combined weight of Erskine’s body, Tony’s body, and the electric hobbyhorse; the railing gave way...Erskine saw a brick come loose from the wall and Tony went from sight, plunging downward, the fingers of his left hand loosening about the iron railing and finally leaving it; Tony was gone downward, down ten floors to the street below...
“Tony,” Erskine sang out in a low moan.
Then he was still, nude, dripping wet, not breathing, his senses refusing to acknowledge what had happened all too clearly before his eyes. Tony had fallen off the balcony! No; no...! He’d be killed...!
He forgot that he was naked and stood staring at the loosened iron railing, his hands lifted in midair, the fingers curved and turned inward toward his hirsute body that gleamed wetly in the brilliant sunlight. Then he moved slowly and hesitantly toward the iron railing which now dangled loose and protruded over the side of the balcony. He wanted to look down there, but the mere thought made him dizzy...Mechanically, he glanced at his bathroom window. He was straining his ears, waiting to hear some sound—a sound that he thought would surely stop the beating of his heart. Then he heard it; there came a distant, definite, soft, crushing yet pulpy: PLOP!
Savage Holiday Page 4
