A spasm went through his body; he covered his face with his hands; he knew that Tony’s body had at last hit the black pavement far below; it seemed that he had been standing here naked on this balcony in the hot morning’s sun waiting for an eternity to hear that awful sound, a sound that would reverberate down all the long corridors of his years in this world, a sound that would follow him, like a taunting echo, even unto his grave...
Erskine groped for the support of the wall behind him, feeling that some invisible power had numbed his body. He suppressed an impulse to weep and tried to understand what had happened. But the event he had witnessed, the horror in which he had somehow participated contained so many shadowy elements that he was baffled. Had Tony fallen because he had been afraid of him, or had that balcony railing simply given way, or what? He stared at the iron railing, then looked about, as though seeking another presence. Finally the reality of it came to him clearly: Tony had been so frightened of his wet, hairy body, of his distorted, sweating face, of his brutal rushing to the balcony that he had lost his balance, had tilted on the railing, and had plummeted...His skull tightened as he pictured, in spite of himself, Tony’s little smashed and bloody body lying on the concrete pavement below, perhaps quivering still...He’d scared that poor child...He hadn’t intended to; but they would say that he had done it on purpose...? GOD! NO! He’d tell ‘em what had happened...No one could possibly blame him, could they? But, if no one had seen him on that balcony, then why tell...? What good could telling do now? Tony was no doubt dead and it was too late to help him...And, if he did tell, what could he tell...? That he’d been trapped naked and had run upon the balcony to climb into the window of his bathroom and had so terrified the child that he had fallen? Who’d believe that?
He was still nude; he had to hide...The yellow sun rekindled his terror. His bathroom window was some three feet above him...Tiptoeing, he found that his fingers were inches short of the ledge. Yes; regardless of what had happened to Tony, he had to seek shelter for his nakedness. That infernal electric hobbyhorse! That fool contraption from which Tony had fallen...Maybe, if he stood upon it, he could reach the ledge of his window? He’d try. He placed the hobbyhorse beneath the window, stepped upon it, feeling it swaying a bit, and grabbed hold of the ledge of his bathroom window. He felt dizzy as his naked body dangled perilously in air; the hobbyhorse slid from beneath his feet and clattered metallically over on its side. He clung to the ledge with both hands, flexed his muscles, hoisted himself upward with a lunge and pushed the resisting window up a little, feeling something hot and sharp biting into the flesh of his left palm. Suspending his weight on his right hand, he took his left hand from the ledge and glanced at it out of the corner of his eye: a deep, bloody gash extended from his thumb across the top of his hand...Already blood was seeping in a red line down his arm...He had to work fast; shoving strainingly with his wounded hand against the window, he slid it up...Yes; now he could make it. Skinning his knees and elbows, panting, he struggled his slippery body up and went head first through the window and fell upon the commode, rolled over and lay still, gasping for breath, relaxing...He was saved...
His rioting impulses slowly grew somewhat quiet. His damp nude body lay huddled on the tiled bathroom floor, his head inclining weakly against the porcelain side of the tub. The soft, pelting drone of water against the shower curtain made him recall that he’d been about to bathe—it was like summoning up something out of the remote past. He became aware of his smarting, bleeding knees which were now doubled under him, and then a wild pain made him suck in his breath; his left palm was throbbing in agony. He inspected the livid gash from which blood was oozing with each beat of his heart. His eyes blinked slowly. What had happened? For a second he yearned to perform a mental act and annul it all; but no, he couldn’t; it had happened; it was real, as real as that red blood running out of his left hand...
He pulled himself up and went to the sink and let cold water flow over the wound. Pinching the flesh together, he held the wound closed with the firm but soft pressure of the tips of his fingers. He looked around, dazed. God, there was blood on the window sill...He grabbed a towel with his right hand, dampened it under the faucet and swabbed the bloody spots away from the sill and the floor. He rinsed the towel clear of stains and left it balled in the sink.
Tony’s dead! He began to tremble and he leaned weakly upon the edge of the bathtub. Good God! What could he do? Tentatively, he lifted the pressure of his fingers from his left palm and at once the blood began to flow again. He’d have to hold the wound shut until the blood had coagulated...
Automatically, his mind sought for someone else upon whom to shunt the blame for what had happened; but, remembering the undeniably accidental nature of the episode, he realized that he didn’t need a scapegoat upon which to dump the responsibility. It had all transpired so quickly, so inevitably, so utterly shorn of any intention on his part that he could have sworn that it had happened to somebody else.
The” incident had thrust him entirely on his own, and nothing he had ever heard of could offer him any guidance now. Clinging to the whole balcony tableau of horror was a hopeless nebulosity, something irresistibly unreal; one moment he felt that he knew exactly what had happened, and yet the next moment he was not so sine. His jaws trembled as he heard again that distant, unmistakably cushy: PLOP! Dread rammed a hot fist down his throat as he wondered if anyone had seen him naked on that balcony...Christ...Maybe somebody was now phoning the police that a naked man had been seen chasing a child! Under the sweat of his face his skin turned gray. What could he do?. Tell his story now, at once? He bowed his head in indecision. But maybe nobody had seen him and if he started babbling now he would only put a frightful idea in other people’s minds. Perhaps he should say nothing...?
He stood and stared again at the opened bathroom window. Yes; he ought to have steeled himself and looked down into the street to see where Tony had fallen. A new idea made him feel that he too was hurtling through space. Suppose, in falling, Tony had managed to catch hold of an iron railing jutting out, had checked the velocity of his descent, had cushioned his fall so that he was now hurt, but alive—? Then Tony would tell how he had come rushing, naked and wild-eyed, out upon that balcony...
A lightning wish seized him; it was a wish that Tony was dead, that Tony had fallen all the way to the street without touching anything, that Tony had died instantly upon his impact with the pavement. Guilt and shame filled him, yet that wish persisted.
He wanted to look through the half-opened window and see if people were looking in his direction, but he had the sensation that some invisible presence was watching him; he felt that looking out of that window supplied proof of a guilt of some kind...His mind was now working rapidly. The window of Mrs. Blake’s kitchen looked out toward his balcony! Good Lord...Maybe she’d seen it all, and was too stunned, too stricken to weep or scream...? He shook his head. The truth was that Mrs. Blake was probably sleeping off a night of high-powered drinking and carousing...He hoped that she was.
He moved to the window, placed his bare feet astride the commode and squinted at an array of shut windows; all was quiet, still. Quickly he shut the window and walked like a drunken man into the kitchen where a cloud of vapor was spouting from the coffee pot and fogging the windowpanes. He turned out the gas; then, mechanically, using his right hand, he replaced the eggs, bacon, butter, jam, and the tin of fruit juice back into the refrigerator and softly closed the door. His appetite was gone...
Still nude, he wandered back into his bedroom and saw his bathrobe lying crumpled on a chair; he snatched it up and struggled into it. His neglecting to put on that robe was the cause of it all...Tears formed in his eyes; he nursed his bruises, feeling that there was something urgent he had to do. The faint wail of a police siren sounded through the Sunday morning calm and his body jerked. Had someone seen Tony’s little body falling, or had someone come across it in the street and phoned the police?
Erskine wilted
. Maybe he’d be arrested in a matter of minutes...He’d been urgently wanting to go to his bedroom window and peer down into the street to see where Tony had fallen, but sheer terror had kept the desire out of his consciousness. He took a step toward the window, then paused. Wouldn’t somebody see him staring down into that street and couldn’t it be said later that that was proof that he already knew what had happened?
He shook his head. No; he would look out of the window because he’d heard the sirens howling; and that howling was now rising to a scream that was coming nearer and nearer. He stanched the flow of sweat on his brow by wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his bathrobe. The sun’s heat was now spreading in the room, filling the air. If anyone questioned him about Tony, he must not let himself be caught off guard and blurt out something that would entangle him in a bog of contradictions. In his insurance work he had dealt with criminals enough to know that to be caught in even a trivial lie might lead to complications. For example, if he’d known that Tony had fallen and had made no outcry, would that not imply that he possessed a guilty knowledge of a deeper nature than what had actually happened? Just what, then, would his story be? But wasn’t this question idle, premature as long as he didn’t know if Tony was dead or alive? He had first to determine what the facts were.
Yes; everything hinged upon a dead Tony that would leave him free to invent any story he liked, or remain silent, whichever course suited him more. In his tortured cogitations, Erskine felt that it was imperative to separate two distinct sets of facts: his running half-crazed and naked upon that balcony was one thing; his seeing Tony fall and his inability to save him was another thing. And his consciousness protested violently the putting of the two of them in any way together for, when associated in his feelings, these compounded events swamped him with a sense of guilt that was deeper than that contained in the accident which his panic had brought about.
At last he went to the window and tried to see down into the street, but he was much too far away to make out anything save a patch of pavement on the opposite side. He leaned out cautiously now and stared down and at once he saw a small black knot of people gathered directly below him on the sidewalk near the curb, forming a circle about something which he could not see. Yes, that must be the body of Tony they were gaping at...More sirens were screeching now; a moment later a police car tore around the corner and pulled to a stop athwart the throng of people.
Without knowing it, Erskine covered his mouth with his right palm. His fate was down there where those people stood; he stifled an impulse to rush down and join the crowd. What if Tony was still alive? He’d read in newspapers about how relaxed children were when they fell, that children had been known to fall six floors and still live...And if Tony was alive, what would he say? He leaned weakly against the window casing, hearing Tony’s piping voice telling the police that he’d been playing alone upon the balcony and then Mr. Fowler had come running, panting, wild-eyed, naked, and angry upon him and he had been so frightened that he’d fallen...
And what would be his rebuttal to Tony’s story? Could he tell the police that he’d tried to get his paper and that his door had slammed shut and he’d been trapped in the hallway and had been dodging naked and terrorized through the building and had Anally rushed to the balcony like that...? Erskine knew instinctively how others would regard that story and his knowing made even him protest against believing it. And if he didn’t believe it, would others? Yet it was an objectively true story; it had happened just like that...
Such a story would be the ruin of him. What would the Daily News or the Mirror think of it? What would his friends and relatives think? They’d think that he was “queer”...As the word queer came to his mind, he felt again a tight cap of something like steel pressing down upon his skull and he all but collapsed. Yes; these days everybody was talking about “complexes” and the “unconscious”; and a man called Freud (which always reminded him of fraud!) was making people believe that the most fantastic things could happen to people’s feelings. Why, they’d say that he’d gone deliberately onto that balcony like that, nude...
He saw Westerman, the building superintendent whom he had sought so futilely and frantically half an hour ago, running toward the crowd, pulling on his coat. Another police car arrived, its siren screaming and its brakes whining as it came to a halt beside the crowd. Policemen poured out of it. An ambulance came. Erskine lifted his eyes and scanned the other windows of the apartment building; no one had as yet looked out. Again his vision plunged down and he saw the policemen driving the crowd back. Ah, there was little Tony...A tiny, dark, oblong object, like a broken doll, sprawled in the midst of a vast pool of blood...The body lay half on the curb and half on the sidewalk, about five feet from a fire hydrant.
“He’s dead” he whispered with relief, then whirled guiltily, expecting to find that someone had overheard him.
Suddenly he was aware of white blobs of faces in the crowd turning upward and he shrank quickly back into his room; he glanced at the other windows. Yes; other people were looking down now, but no face had turned to look at his window. He sank upon his unmade bed; tears of remorse and relief clogged his eyes. He whimpered:
“Oh, God, why did this have to happen to me...?”
Erskine was undone and, had there been anyone at that moment to hear his confession, he would have spilled out more than he knew. His life had gone deadly wrong and, in his extremity, he was trying to give up and find repose in some higher wisdom that he felt vaguely was in his heart.
The dim shrill of Mrs. Blake’s phone brought him to his feet; his eyes stared as though trying to see through the far wall of his room. He listened as the phone pealed again and he pictured her rising sleepily from bed, rubbing her eyes, struggling to overcome last night’s drinking, and reaching for the phone...No; the phone was ringing again. In the midst of its sixth ring, it stopped abruptly. He tiptoed into the living room whose left wall formed a common partition with her bedroom, put his ear to the cool white plaster and tried to listen, but could hear nothing. Then he flinched as a scream came to his ears. Yes; she knew now...The scream came again, then again. He heard the elevator door opening and closing in the hallway and then there came the sound of Mrs. Blake’s doorbell ringing insistently, repeatedly.
Ought he to look into the hallway? He had the right to find out who was doing all that screaming, hadn’t he? Composing himself, still clamping the tips of his fingers over the wound of his left palm, he went to the door, opened it and saw Westerman, the building superintendent, standing in the open doorway of Mrs. Blake’s apartment, with his back to him. He could not see Mrs. Blake, but he could hear her voice:
“No; no; no...What are you saying?”
Mrs. Blake pushed Westerman aside, ran out of her apartment in her nylon nightgown, and stopped in the middle of the hallway; she looked around blindly, her eyes wild and her face white with shock. She rushed on bare feet toward the balcony.
“Mrs. Blake,” Westerman called helplessly to her, “he’s not there. I tell you he fell...”
Mrs. Blake paused and, without turning around, she screamed. Then she whirled and clapped her hands to her face.
“Tony,” she moaned.
Westerman was staring at the crazed, half-nude woman.
“Somebody find Tony!” Mrs. Blake wailed.
“But Mrs. Blake...” Westerman began again.
The elevator door opened and Mrs. Westerman came running out.
“Oh, God, you poor woman!” she cried.
Erskine noticed that Westerman was staring about with a dull, stupid expression.
“What’s happening?” Erskine asked in a whisper.
Westerman lifted his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
“It’s Tony...Poor little Tony,” the man said.
“What about him? Is there anything wrong?” Erskine asked.
Westerman turned away, blinking, unable to speak. Mrs. Westerman now glanced toward Erskine and shook her head sadly. Mr
s. Blake was struggling to break free from Mrs. Westerman, straining toward the elevator.
“Take me to Tony,” she whimpered.
“Mrs. Blake,” Westerman was pleading, trying to help his wife hold the woman.
Erskine could see that Westerman was a little shy about handling Mrs. Blake, for the blurred outlines of her plump, curving body were distinctly visible through her sheer nylon nightgown.
“Poor little Tony’s dead!” Mrs. Westerman wailed, gulping. “He fell...Dear God in Heaven...The little thing’s all crushed and bloody...Angels of God, help us all...”
“No!” Erskine found himself saying, shaking his head. He wondered if he were acting naturally enough...
“Mary!” Westerman called to his wife in a tone of protest. “Get her back into her apartment...She’s got to put on some clothes...She can’t go down there like that.”
Mrs. Westerman stared, finally comprehending what her husband meant. She grabbed the struggling Mrs. Blake firmly in her arms.
“Darling, please...Come back into your apartment...You must put on something...”
“I want my baby...Oh, God, my little baby...What’s happened to my child, my baaaaaaby...? Toooony,” she sobbed, her palms cupped and held tremblingly before her red, weeping eyes.
Erskine watched Westerman and his wife pull the hysterically weeping woman back into her apartment, the door of which still stood open. Across the hallway the door of the Fenley apartment opened and Mr. Fenley, tall, gray, clad in a bathrobe, looked out and asked: “What’s going on here?”
“Seems like something has happened to Mrs. Blake’s child,” Erskine told him with raised eyebrows. He didn’t know how naturally he was acting; his manner was coming without any conscious effort on his part.
Savage Holiday Page 5
