Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  The boy grew up stupid, puny and stubborn, greedy and miserable. To the home’s hilarious young athletics director he suddenly said: “You hate me. You think I make the rest of the boys look bad.”

  The athletics director blustered and laughed, and later told the doctor over coffee: “I watch myself around the kids. They’re sharp—they catch a look or a gesture and it’s like a blow in the face to them, I know that, so I watch myself. So how did he know?”

  The doctor told the boy: “Three pounds more this month isn’t bad, but how about you pitch in and clean up your plate every day? Can’t live on meat and water; those vegetables make you big and strong.”

  The boy said: “What’s ‘neurasthenic’ mean?”

  The doctor later said to the director: “It made my flesh creep. I was looking at his little spindling body and dishing out the old pep talk about growing big and strong, and inside my head I was thinking we’d call him neurasthenic in the old days and then out he popped with it. What should we do? Should we do anything? Maybe it’ll go away. I don’t know anything about these things. I don’t know whether anybody does.”

  “Reads minds, does he?” asked the director. Be damned if he’s going to read my mind about Schultz Meat Market’s ten percent. “Doctor, I think I’m going to take my vacation a little early this year. Has anybody shown any interest in adopting the child?”

  “Not him. He wasn’t a baby doll when we got him, and at present he’s an exceptionally unattractive-looking kid. You know how people don’t give a damn about anything but their looks.”

  “Some couples would take anything, or so they tell me.”

  “Unapproved for foster-parenthood, you mean?”

  “Red tape and arbitrary classifications sometimes limit us too severely in our adoptions.”

  “If you’re going to wish him on some screwball couple that the courts turned down as unfit, I want no part of it.”

  “You don’t have to have any part of it, doctor. By the way, which dorm does he sleep in?

  “West,” grunted the doctor, leaving the office.

  The director called a few friends—a judge, a couple the judge referred him to, a court clerk. Then he left by way of the east wing of the building.

  The boy survived three months with the Berrymans. Hard-drinking Mimi alternately caressed and shrieked at him; Edward W. tried to be a good scout and just gradually lost interest, looking clean through him. He hit the road in June and got by with it for a while. He wore a Boy Scout uniform, and Boy Scouts can turn up anywhere, any time. The money he had taken with him lasted a month. When the last penny of the last dollar was three days spent, he was adrift on a Nebraska prairie. He had walked out of the last small town because the constable was beginning to wonder what on earth he was hanging around and who he belonged to. The town was miles behind on the two-lane highway; the infrequent cars did not stop.

  One of Nebraska’s “rivers”, a dry bed at this time of year, lay ahead, spanned by a railroad culvert. There were some men in its shade, and he was hungry.

  They were ugly, dirty men, and their thoughts were muddled and stupid. They called him “Shorty” and gave him a little dirty bread and some stinking sardines from a can. The thoughts of one of them became less muddled and uglier. He talked to the rest out of the boy’s hearing, and they whooped with laughter. The boy got ready to run, but his legs wouldn’t hold him up.

  He could read the thoughts of the men quite clearly as they headed for him. Outrage, fear, and disgust blended in him and somehow turned inside-out and one of the men was dead on the dry ground, grasshoppers vaulting onto his flannel shirt, the others backing away, frightened now, not frightening.

  He wasn’t hungry any more; he felt quite comfortable and satisfied. He got up and headed for the other men, who ran. The rearmost of them was thinking Jeez he folded up the evil eye we was only gonna—

  Again the boy let the thoughts flow into his head and again he flipped his own thoughts around them; it was quite easy to do. It was different—this man’s terror from the other’s lustful anticipation. But both had their points . . .

  At his leisure, he robbed the bodies of three dollars and twenty-four cents.

  Thereafter his fame preceded him like a death wind. Two years on the road and he had his growth and his fill of the dull and stupid minds he met there. He moved to northern cities, a year here, a year there, quiet, unobtrusive, prudent, an epicure.

  Sebastian Long woke suddenly, with something on his mind. As night fog cleared away he remembered, happily. Today he started the Demeter Bowl! At last there was time, at last there was money—six hundred and twenty-three dollars in the bank. He had packed and shipped the three dozen cocktail glasses last night, engraved with Mrs. Klausman’s initials—his last commercial order for as many months as the Bowl would take.

  He shifted from nightshirt to denims, gulped coffee, boiled an egg but was too excited to eat it. He went to the front of his shop-workroom-apartment, checked the lock, waved at neighbors’ children on their way to school, and ceremoniously set a sign in the cluttered window.

  It said: “NO COMMERCIAL ORDERS TAKEN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.”

  From a closet he tenderly carried a shrouded object that made a double armful and laid it on his workbench. Unshrouded, it was a glass bowl—what a glass bowl! The clearest Swedish lead glass, the purest lines he had ever seen, his secret treasure since the crazy day he had bought it, long ago, for six months’ earnings. His wife had given him hell for that until the day she died. From the closet he brought a portfolio filled with sketches and designs dating back to the day he had bought the bowl. He smiled over the first, excitedly scrawled—a florid, rococo conception, unsuited to the classicism of the lines and the serenity of the perfect glass.

  Through many years and hundreds of sketches he had refined his conception to the point where it was, he humbly felt, not unsuited to the medium. A strongly-molded Demeter was to dominate the piece, a matron as serene as the glass, and all the fruits of the earth would flow from her gravely outstretched arms.

  Suddenly and surely, he began to work. With a candle he thinly smoked an oval area on the outside of the bowl. Two steady fingers clipped the Demeter drawing against the carbon black; a hair-fine needle in his other hand traced her lines. When the transfer of the design was done, Sebastian Long readied his lathe. He fitted a small copper wheel, slightly worn as he liked them, into the chuck and with his fingers charged it with the finest rouge from Rouen. He took an ashtray cracked in delivery and held it against the spinning disk. It bit in smoothly, with the wiping feel to it that was exactly right.

  Holding out his hands, seeing that the fingers did not tremble with excitement, he eased the great bowl to the lathe and was about to make the first tiny cut of the millions that would go into the masterpiece.

  Somebody knocked on his door and rattled the doorknob.

  Sebastian Long did not move or look toward the door. Soon the busybody would read the sign and go away. But the pounding and the rattling of the knob went on. He eased down the bowl and angrily went to the window, picked up the sign, and shook it at whoever it was—he couldn’t make out the face very well. But the idiot wouldn’t go away.

  The engraver unlocked the door, opened it a bit, and snapped: “The shop is closed. I shall not be taking any orders for several months. Please don’t bother me now.”

  “It’s about the Demeter Bowl,” said the intruder.

  Sebastian Long stared at him. “What the devil do you know about my Demeter Bowl?” He saw the man was a stranger, undersized by a little, middle-aged . . .

  “Just let me in please,” urged the man. “It’s important. Please!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the engraver. “But what do you know about my Demeter Bowl?” He hooked his thumbs pugnaciously over the waistband of his denims and glowered at the stranger. The stranger promptly took advantage of his hand being removed from the door and glided in.

  S
ebastian Long thought briefly that it might be a nightmare as the man darted quickly about his shop, picking up a graver and throwing it down, picking up a wire scratch-wheel and throwing it down. “Here, you!” he roared, as the stranger picked up a crescent wrench which he did not throw down.

  As Long started for him, the stranger darted to the workbench and brought the crescent wrench down shatteringly on the bowl.

  Sebastian Long’s heart was bursting with sorrow and rage; such a storm of emotions as he never had known thundered through him. Paralyzed, he saw the stranger smile with anticipation.

  The engraver’s legs folded under him and he fell to the floor, drained and dead.

  The Mindworm, locked in the bedroom of his brownstone front, smiled again, reminiscently.

  Smiling, he checked the day on a wall calendar.

  “Dolores!” yelled her mother in Spanish. “Are you going to pass the whole day in there?”

  She had been practicing low-lidded, sexy half-smiles like Lauren Bacall in the bathroom mirror. She stormed out and yelled in English: “I don’t know how many times I tell you not to call me that Spick name no more!”

  “Dolly!” sneered her mother. “Dah-lee! When was there a Saint Dah-lee that you call yourself after, eh?”

  The girl snarled a Spanish obscenity at her mother and ran down the tenement stairs. Jeez, she was gonna be late for sure!

  Held up by a stream of traffic between her and her streetcar, she danced with impatience. Then the miracle happened. Just like in the movies, a big convertible pulled up before her and its lounging driver said, opening the door: “You seem to be in a hurry. Could I drop you somewhere?”

  Dazed at the sudden realization of a hundred daydreams, she did not fail to give the driver a low-lidded, sexy smile as she said: “Why, thanks!” and climbed in. He wasn’t no Cary Grant, but he had all his hair . . . kind of small, but so was she . . . and jeez, the convertible had leopard-skin seat covers!

  The car was in the stream of traffic, purring down the avenue. “It’s a lovely day,” she said. “Really too nice to work.”

  The driver smiled shyly, kind of like Jimmy Stewart but of course not so tall, and said: “I feel like playing hooky myself. How would you like a spin down Long Island?”

  “Be wonderful!” The convertible cut left on an odd-numbered street.

  “Play hooky, you said. What do you do?”

  “Advertising.”

  “Advertising!” Dolly wanted to kick herself for ever having doubted, for ever having thought in low, self-loathing moments that it wouldn’t work out, that she’d marry a grocer or a mechanic and live forever after in a smelly tenement and grow old and sick and stooped. She felt vaguely in her happy daze that it might have been cuter, she might have accidentally pushed him into a pond or something, but this was cute enough. An advertising man, leopard-skin seat covers . . . what more could a girl with a sexy smile and a nice little figure want?

  Speeding down the South Shore she learned that his name was Michael Brent, exactly as it ought to be. She wished she could tell him she was Jennifer Brown or one of those real cute names they had nowadays, but was reassured when he told her he thought Dolly Gonzalez was a beautiful name. He didn’t, and she noticed the omission, add: “It’s the most beautiful name I ever heard!” That, she comfortably thought as she settled herself against the cushions, would come later.

  They stopped at Medford for lunch, a wonderful lunch in a little restaurant where you went down some steps and there were candles on the table. She called him “Michael” and he called her “Dolly.” She learned that he liked dark girls and thought the stories in True Story really were true, and that he thought she was just tall enough, and that Greer Garson was wonderful, but not the way she was, and that he thought her dress was just wonderful.

  They drove slowly after Medford, and Michael Brent did most of the talking. He had traveled all over the world. He had been in the war and wounded—just a flesh wound. He was thirty-eight, and had been married once, but she died. There were no children. He was alone in the world. He had nobody to share his town house in the 50’s, his country place in Westchester, his lodge in the Maine woods. Every word sent the girl floating higher and higher on a tide of happiness; the signs were unmistakable.

  When they reached Montauk Point, the last sandy bit of the continent before blue water and Europe, it was sunset, with a great wrinkled sheet of purple and rose stretching half across the sky and the first stars appearing above the dark horizon of the water.

  The two of them walked from the parked car out onto the sand, alone, bathed in glorious Technicolor. Her heart was nearly bursting with joy as she heard Michael Brent say, his arms tightening around her: “Darling, will you marry me?”

  “Oh, yes, Michael!” she breathed, dying.

  The Mindworm, drowsing, suddenly felt the sharp sting of danger. He cast out through the great city, dragging tentacles of thought:

  “. . . die if she don’t let me . . .”

  “. . . six an’ six is twelve an’ carry one an’ three is four . . .”

  “. . . gobblegobble madre de dios pero soy gobblegobble . . .”

  “. . . parlay Domino an’ Missab and shoot the roll on Duchess Peg in the feature . . .”

  “. . . melt resin add the silver chloride and dissolve in oil of lavender stand and decant and fire to cone zero twelve give you shimmering streaks of luster down the walls . . .”

  “. . . moiderin’ square-headed gobblegobble tried ta poke his eye out wassamatta witta ref . . .”

  “. . . O God I am most heartily sorry I have offended thee in . . .”

  “. . . talk like a commie . . .”

  “. . . gobblegobblegobble two dolla twenny-fi’ sense gobble . . .”

  “. . . just a nip and fill it up with water and brush my teeth . . .”

  “. . . really know I’m God but fear to confess their sins . . .”

  “. . . dirty lousy rock-headed claw-handed paddle-footed goggle-eyed snot-nosed hunch-backed feeble-minded pot-bellied son of . . .”

  “. . . write on the wall alfie is a stunkur and then . . .”

  “. . . thinks I believe it’s a television set but I know he’s got a bomb hi there but who can I tell who can help so alone . . .”

  “. . . gabble was ich weiss nicht gabble geh bei Broadvay gabble . . .”

  “. . . habt mein daughter Rosie such a fella gobblegobble . . .”

  “. . . wonder if that’s one didn’t look back . . .”

  “. . . seen with her in the Medford restaurant . . .”

  The Mindworm struck into that thought.

  “. . . not a mark on her but the M.E.’s have been wrong before and heart failure don’t mean a thing anyway try to talk to her old lady authorize an autopsy get Pancho—little guy talks Spanish be best . . .”

  The Mindworm knew he would have to be moving again—soon. He was sorry; some of the thoughts he had tapped indicated good . . . hunting?

  Regretfully, he again dragged his net:

  “. . . with chartreuse drinks I mean drapes could use a drink come to think of it . . .”

  “. . . reep-beep-reep-beep reepiddy-beepiddy-beep bop man wadda beat . . .”

  WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?”

  The Mindworm withdrew, in frantic haste. The intelligence was massive, its overtones those of a vigorous adult. He had learned from certain dangerous children that there was peril of a leveling flow. Shaken and scared, he contemplated traveling. He would need more than that wretched girl had supplied, and it would not be epicurean. There would be no time to find individuals at a ripe emotional crisis, or goad them to one. It would be plain—munching. The Mindworm drank a glass of water, also necessary to his metabolism.

  EIGHT FOUND DEAD

  IN UPTOWN MOVIE;

  “MOLESTER” SOUGHT

  New York (CP)—Eight persons, including three women, were found dead Wednesday night of unknown causes in widely separated seats in the balcony of the Odeon
Theater at 117th St. and Broadway. Police are seeking a man described by the balcony usher, Michael Fenelly, 18, as “acting like a woman-molester.”

  Fenelly discovered the first of the fatalities after seeing the man “moving from one empty seat to another several times.” He went to ask a woman hi a seat next to one the man had just vacated whether he had annoyed her. She was dead.

  Almost at once, a scream rang out. In another part of the balcony Mrs. Sadie Rabinowitz, 40, uttered the cry when another victim toppled from his seat next to her.

  Theater manager I.J. Marcusohn stopped the show and turned on the house lights. He tried to instruct his staff to keep the audience from leaving before the police arrived. He failed to get word to them in time, however, and most of the audience was gone when a detail from the 24th Pet. and an ambulance from Harlem hospital took over at the scene of the tragedy.

  The Medical Examiner’s office has not yet made a report as to the causes of death. A spokesman said the victims showed no signs of poisoning or violence. He added that it “was inconceivable that it could be a coincidence.”

  Lt. John Braidwood of the 24th Pet. said of the alleged molester: “We got a fair description of him and naturally we will try to bring him in for questioning.”

  Clickety-click, clickety-dick, dickety-click sang the rails as the Mindworm drowsed in his coach seat.

  Some people were walking forward from the diner. One was thinking: “Different-looking fellow, (a) he’s aberrant, (b) he’s non-aberrant and ill. Cancel (b)—respiration normal, skin smooth and healthy, no tremor of limbs, well-groomed. Is aberrant (1) trivially. (2) significantly. Cancel (1)—displayed no involuntary interest when . . . odd! Running for the washroom! Unexpected because (a) neat grooming indicates amour propre inconsistent with amusing others; (b) evident health inconsistent with . . .” It had taken one second, was fully detailed.

  The Mindworm, locked in the toilet of the coach, wondered what the next stop was. He was getting off at it—not frightened, just careful. Dodge them, keep dodging them and everything would be all right. Send out no mental taps until the train was far away and everything would be all right.