“Wait a minute,” said Weintraub in mock outrage. “I won’t be purged! It’s the ice ax or nothing!”
October 1928
“We have the various churches in Springfield working for us,” said Weintraub. “They regularly encourage liberal thinking and loose interpretation of formerly rigid moral standards. Without our inducement, several local clergymen have preached tolerance and even respect for Communism. Even better for our purposes, they have permitted the youth of the community to engage in just those activities which you have been introducing. Premarital sex, liquor, and even opiates receive less attention from the authorities, for the churches remind them of the imminent flowering of human perfection. Given an atmosphere of freedom, our youth are supposed to choose the path of wisdom. I doubt whether the path I envision is the same one our friends in the clergy foresee.”
“Things are beginning to come together,” said Gretchen. “The seeds we’ve so carefully planted already have sprouted. Soon, the fruit will be ready for the picking.”
CHAPTER 12
As the hours passed, and as the night deepened, the crowds became hysterical. No one knew for sure how long they might have left. Was the disaster natural, on a cosmic scale, coming one year, five years in the future? Or was it man-made? Could it come this very night, at midnight? No one still on the streets seemed to have heard of anyone who had managed to obtain a token. Those fortunate persons who had stumbled onto the locations of the token stations kept their secrets. Soon, everyone learned to ignore the sudden, excited news: Under the bridge! No one would think to look there. The dugout at Shea Stadium! A perfect place! Everyone listened skeptically but, as the situation was that desperate, and as everyone was that unnerved, the rumors were passed…
The tremendous pressure of the crowd disappeared. It was no longer straining in one direction, toward Brooklyn’s deteriorating commercial center. Now Ernest was caught in sudden flurries of movement, spontaneous currents whipping out from the main channel, leading him at oblique angles to his path, down dark residential streets, across brick-strewn empty lots. Sometimes these split-off pocket mobs, tiny reservoirs of desperate power, would reach their goals, only to find another failure. Everyone would stand about for a few moments, sapped of all energy, unable to gather the will to begin another patrol. Then, as though the group were some unthinking collective organism, they would all assemble and push through the main crowd again. Ernest followed dumbly, painfully, unwilling to shoulder the responsibility for his misfortune any longer.
“This is kind of fun,” said a young girl near Ernest.
“Yeah,” he said. “I ain’t never done this before.”
“Me neither,” said the girl. They walked along in silence for a few seconds. “How long have you been out?”
“Since about noon, I guess,” said Ernest.
“I’ve only been looking for a couple of hours. I’m getting real tired. Have you found a token yet?”
Ernest didn’t answer.
“My mother didn’t want me to come at all,” said the child. “She said this wasn’t any place for a twelve-year-old girl. But I’m going to be thirteen in about a month. I’ve been looking forward to that. Being a teenager. Then I won’t be just a baby any more.”
“Thirteen’s an unlucky number,” said Ernest slowly.
“No, not really,” said the girl. “I waited until my mother took her nap, and then I snuck out.”
“I saw another girl about your age,” said Ernest. “She was dead, though. Lying in a lot of garbage.”
The girl frowned at him. “I’ve never seen a dead person,” she said.
“Wait,” said Ernest. “Wait a couple of hours.”
A crosscurrent of traffic took hold of Ernest and bore him away from his young companion. He tried to fight free, but he could make little progress against the wide-eyed, maniacal members of the crowd. “Hey,” he called to her, “get a token for me, will you?”
The girl smiled and waved. “Good luck,” she shouted. “And may God…” Her voice and her face were hidden among the people between them. Ernest tried to spot her again. In a few seconds, he gave up.
“May God what?” he said.
“I’ve wondered about that,” said a woman near him. She was older than most people still in the crowd; that fact alone proved that she had a great store of strength. She looked haggard. Her clothing was torn and filthy. There was a bad cut over one eye, and the blood had dripped down the bridge of her nose and dried, giving her the appearance of a prizefighter after a few tough rounds. She didn’t seem to notice her injury. “I just thought what a job He’ll have, when we all die together.”
“You just thought that?”
“Yes,” said the woman. “When that lovely child was saying goodbye to you.”
“You just now thought that? What have you been doing all day?”
The woman ignored Ernest. “Heaven will be filled to bursting. We’ll probably have to spend half of eternity standing on line, being processed. We’ll be cheated out of our paradise.”
“Nothing new,” said Ernest.
“Do you mind me talking to you?” she asked. “It makes me feel a whole lot better, if I have somebody to talk to while I’m waiting. If it bothers you, I can go away. I don’t want to make a nuisance out of myself. It’s just that it calms my nerves. God only knows how bad they are now.”
“No,” said Ernest, “it’s all right. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Have you noticed that, too?”
“I started to get the picture about eight hours ago,” he said sourly.
“That was a very nice young lady you were speaking to,” said the woman. “Forgive me. My name is Mrs. Elizabeth Costanza. I’m pleased to meet you.” “You really haven’t, yet,” said Ernest. “My name is Smith. Bill Smith. I used to be a used-car expert. They had me mounting rocker panel cotter pins on old Triumphs. Then they started to bring out these Triumphs, these new ones, they don’t need rocker panel cotter pins. I thought about going into the used-modapt line. A friend of mine told me that changing the hinge plate shield bearings on a modapt is very much like changing the cotter pins on an old Triumph. It turns out this friend of mine didn’t know what he was talking about. Anyway, the Representative found me a job. Nothing terrific; I’m really pretty useless, just something the government made up to lower the unemployment figures. I do old license plate rubbings.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Costanza, somewhat dismayed by Ernest’s monologue. “They wanted to keep you in the automotive field.”
“Sort of. It’s like the rubbings they make of old tombstones. There must be some kind of market for what I do. I haven’t ever heard of it, though. Would you want a license plate rubbing in your modapt?”
“No,” said the old woman, “not really. Of course, I’ve never seen one. But I suppose that sort of thing is for the younger folk. My decorations tend to be more… traditional.”
“Right,” said Ernest. “It’s a shame. I could get you one, cheap.”
“Perhaps. When all this is over.”
“When all this is over.” Ernest glowered at her, amazed by her stupidity. He purposely hung back a little, letting the crowd around him swirl in and separate him from the woman. In only a few seconds he had lost her. “Cotter pins,” said Ernest derisively. “Right up hers, too, man.”
It was impossible to tell where the violence began. The frantic movements of the crowd threw some of its weaker members to the side, off the street, through storefront windows. The crashing drama of the broken glass promised release; the crowd wanted more—bricks, litter baskets, bodies thrown through more windows. Signposts were rocked loose from the pavement. Wires were pulled down to hang like mortified, failed servants of processes no longer of value. Thirty million members of the mindless rabble in the city alone, and diffused among them were the off-duty uniformed services, the usual containing forces of order, themselves given over to anger checked only by lack of operating space.
�
��Let’s all rip down the cardboard buildings, now,” thought Ernest. “It’s time to go home. This bunch of us is getting restless. Time to stop this thing before we really take a beating. Pull off the crummy disguises, get a good laugh, a round of applause for the magicians behind the scenes, and time for a couple of beers at Mike’s.”
He shuffled along the street, paying no attention to where he was going. He imagined the face of the young girl in front of him, filling the sky with her ignorant, happy smile. The face changed slowly into Judy Garland’s, still wide-eyed and astounded. “What a rotten way to die,” thought Ernest. “I have to go, stared at all the way by Judy Garland, for God’s sake.” Judy Garland’s face faded a little and modified again, into the roughed and painted face of Darlaine. “Yeah,” he thought, “I almost forgot. Darlaine, right? The bench. My token.” He began pushing through the people with more force; few other people were moving with any determination now, and he learned that he could make surprisingly good speed on the side streets. It took him a couple of minutes to orient himself, and then he headed straight for Fort Greene Park.
Ernest was still caught up occasionally in the confusion as he tried to force his way toward the park. Even in the night-shaded patches of the grounds there was little peace. Ernest avoided the noisy fighting as he headed for the meeting place; he had not given up. Somehow, he had found the tenacity to keep looking. Giving up now, handing himself over to the pointless disorder would be, effectively, suicide. “Good,” he thought, as he warily observed the brawlers in the park, “it keeps them off the streets.”
Ernest stayed in the heavier shadows, shunning the paved walk. Beneath the occasional pole lamp, tiny individual dramas were running; the furtive but unfamiliar urban violences of previous nights had all come together, jammed into the usual dangerous places and spilling out brashly into plain view. Men who had been victims now relished the attacker’s role. Women who had lived in fear of rape clubbed strangers senseless with jagged chunks of concrete. Among the children’s swings, knots of people fought wordlessly, with all identifications of friendship and hostility dimming in their fury.
At ten o’clock, he was at the bench, alone. At ten-thirty. At eleven, he began to panic. At eleven-fifteen, he left. According to reports, the destruction would begin at midnight; half an hour to find a token, if any were left.
“Darlaine,” he thought, “I would have been a little disappointed if you had come. Then I would have had to do a lot of thinking. What if you had found a token, after all? What if you had been telling the truth, and laid down the challenge once and for all? Would I have gone with you? Would I really have tried to build up a new life, with you in Gretchen’s place? Darlaine, it must have sounded as stupid to you as it did to me. Thanks a lot, you bitch.”
Ernest had a few ideas, all incomplete, all sad, hopeless details to take care of in the half hour before he died. He wanted Mike to be in the bar, and Suzy, and Eagle, and the others. If Gretchen were any kind of rational person, she would know enough to meet him there. If not, well, if he had the time, he would try to get home.
“I’m as good as dead,” he told himself. “I’m as good as dead. It’s all over. I’m dead.” After a while, he stopped thinking even this. He was whimpering softly when he thought he saw Darlaine.
He was certain that it was she, fighting through the crowd just a little way in front of him. Maybe she had gotten the token after all. Maybe she just couldn’t get through the throng to meet him.
“That’s the way!” he thought. “Good old Darlaine. It just goes to show who you can depend on when it counts. Your own wife, you’ve known her since the days when you grabbed her tits behind the water tower in high school, she can’t do a thing for you. Some dumb-ass girl you pick up on the street comes through, though. You just never know.”
There were hundreds of dead souls between him and her. Ernest cut them aside with his fists and elbows. “I don’t have time to fool around, woman,” he muttered. “It’s fifteen minutes. Let’s get that token and find the shelter. Come on, let’s not play games. I only got fifteen minutes, you stupid broad!”
“Hey!” he screamed, knowing that she probably wouldn’t hear or pay attention. “Darlaine, wait a minute! It’s me, Ernest Weinraub.” The girl did hear, and turned back to look at him. Her expression was terrified, and instead of attempting to make her way back to join him, she pushed on, trying to lose herself among the people.
“What the hell,” said Ernest. “She has one.”
He struggled against the crowd, trying to overtake the girl. He caught up with her, thanks to the vicious tactics he used in pursuit. He forced her to one side of the street and into a doorway.
“Let me go,” she screamed.
“Why didn’t you show up? Where’d you get the token?”
“What do you mean? I don’t have one! Who are you?” She was sobbing now.
“Let me have your purse,” said Ernest.
She stared at him, horrified. “No!” she cried.
He tried to take it from her and she kicked his knee. He smashed his fists into her face, and she collapsed in the doorway. Ernest searched the purse carefully, hopefully. There was no token. Meanwhile, the scene had been watched by the members of the crowd nearby. They quickly interpreted its meaning.
“She had one!” someone yelled.
“He’s got it now…”
Ernest turned and fled through the lobby of the modapt building. He hurried down the arcadelike hallway, followed by scores of shouting people. He left the building at the other end of the hall, hiding himself in the crowded street.
Meanwhile 6
” ‘Allo, again, akkei Weinraub, man of mysterious desires,” whispered a thin voice.
” ‘Allo to you, youngest scoundrel, apprentice felon. My desires are not so hidden, after all. It is only that you will not open your eyes to them. My most supreme desire, at this particular unpleasant moment, is to have you sunken to your lice-ridden ears in that vast ocean of sand.”
“That will happen to me, no doubt,” said Kebap. “That is the sort of thing that occurs to such as me, who has chosen the life of the shadow, the way of the murmured delights. I shall probably pass a good portion of my life bound to creaking wooden racks; or with right wrist chained to left ankle I shall languish forgotten in damp cells, throughout this municipal fantasy; or perhaps someone such as yourself will capture me on an aristocratic whim and compel me to violate my principles.”
Ernst laughed. “You are doubtless in error,” he said loudly, drunkenly. “You shall not be the violator of those principles. You will be the violatee.”
“Ah, akkei, I must take exception. One cannot make such forthright statements as that. One cannot foresee the odd pleasures of the leisured class. You, yourself, are an example of that.”
“I was merely deceived,” said Ernst angrily.
“Of course, akkei.”
“And if you do not cease exaggerating the incident, I shall grab you by your scruffy neck and imprison you on a rooftop of grass, where you can munch your life away like the mythical sheep of your babyhood.”
Kebap sighed. “Were you then so impressed by my tale?”
“No,” said Ernst. “But it gave me some interesting glimpses of the shiny new cogwheels of your intellect.”
“Then I will tell you of another town,” said the young boy. “This village will wipe all memory of the Armenian town from your thoughts.”
“A not overly difficult feat.”
“There is a town in nearer Hindoostan,” said Kebap in a low, monotonous voice, “which has only one remarkable feature. The area around the city is infested with wild beasts of all kinds. Tigers roam the plains, fearing neither animal rivals nor human guile. Huge beasts somewhat like elephants browse the lower branches of the slender dey trees. There are other curious things about that plain, but my story does not concern it other than to say it has caused the citizens of the village to erect a large gray wall. This mud-brick barrier is s
upposed to be for protection. It does serve to keep out the beasts at night, of course. But it also reminds the townspeople of the dangers beyond, and jails them in their city as surely as if the gates were permanently locked.”
“How curious,” said Ernst scornfully. “Do you know, I don’t care at all?”
“The principal occupation of the people of this city, in light of their self-imposed imprisonment, is to build and change their town, to provide entertainment both in the labor and in the enjoyment thereafter. And the model they have chosen to follow is our city, here. It was the wall that inspired them. You must know that the major’s office here receives a letter from this village perhaps eight times yearly, asking for instructions on how they may reproduce the newest alterations in our city. I have seen their version, and it is so exact a rendition that it would give you the nervous ailment peculiar to white Europeans. You would lose all sense of reality and orientation. This café has been built, table by table, tile by tile, bottle by bottle. The very crack in the mirror inside is reconstructed perfectly, attention having been paid to angularity, width, depth, and character. A man owns the café, from whom Monsieur Gargotier could not be differentiated, even by M. Gargotier himself. And, do you think, there is a dejected drunkard sitting at this table, many thousands of miles away, whose eyes have the same expression as yours, whose hands flutter just as yours, whose parts smell as foul as yours. What do you think he is doing?”
“He is wishing that you would go away.”
“That is mildly put,” said Kebap. “I wish I could know what you really thought to say.”
“You may find out easily enough,” said Ernst. “Ask that solitary winesop in Hindoostan.” Ernst had been observing a dimly lit tower across the square. He turned to look at Kebap, to fix the teasing boy with a venomous stare, perhaps to frighten him away at last. But Kebap was not there. Ernst sighed; he would ask the proprietor to do something about the annoyance.
Relatives Page 18
