The Intruder

by Charles Beaumont

  Driscoll shook his head.

  “Flowers! The biggest bouquet of orchids I have ever seen. With us months late in the rent and owing everybody and Mrs. Gottlieb not talking to me, he had gone and spent his entire pay check on a bouquet of orchids!” She lowered her head slightly, then looked up, and her eyes snapped angrily. “I took them and put them in a vase, Mr. Driscoll, and then I finished packing and I left Henry.” She breathed heavily. “What else could I do? He was insane! Of course, I missed his sweet singing for a while, and the sound of his voice when he laughed, but Mother knocked all of that out of me soon enough. She said good riddance, and she was right. I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

  Mrs. Cramer rose. “Henry went to Alaska,” she said softly, “and drank himself to death. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. It’s funny, but I heard about it only a week after I met Adam. Wouldn’t you please have some tea?”

  “Thank you. We’d be glad to have some.”

  “It won’t take a minute. You can look over the photographs.”

  Peter Link walked over and squatted by the chair. When Mrs. Cramer disappeared and the door closed, he snapped the shutter of his camera four times, quickly.

  “Nothing is ordinary,” Driscoll said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I was just thinking.” He studied the photographs, which looked oddly out of place in the heavy family album. At a small snapshot of a child in a striped sunsuit seated by a washpan, fishing pole in hand, he stopped. “Doesn’t look much like a firebrand there, does he?” Driscoll said.

  “That’s all right. Hitler was a baby, once.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ed, it’s not my job, I only take pictures, but I think you ought to turn her off.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because Lubin wants a story on this guy Cramer—not on Lady Macbeth.”

  “I know.” Driscoll nodded. “But Lubin doesn’t tell me what methods to use. I use my own. And they vary. Right now I think I’ll use the listening method.”

  The younger man lowered his voice. “I understand about all that,” he said irritably, “only she isn’t talking about him, for Chrissake!”

  “Isn’t she?”

  Link grunted softly and made a gesture of hopeless, resigned confusion with his hands. Grinning, Driscoll closed the album.

  Several minutes passed, then Mrs. Cramer swept back into the room.

  “These are potted-ham sandwiches,” she said, “and I’ve iced the tea. Do you gentlemen like potted-ham sandwiches?”

  She sat down on the couch and took up the fan. Her skin was as white and delicate as the ivory, almost translucent in the louvered sunlight.

  “Mrs. Cramer,” Driscoll said, “we’d like to hear the rest of your story, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” the woman said. “But, you know, you sounded almost like Adam then. He was always talking about facts and substantial things like that. Good, Mr. Driscoll, that’s what he was. A good man.”

  “Your second husband.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “Tell us about him.”

  “A rock,” Mrs. Cramer said. “A beacon. I’d gone to Tish’s to stay—Tish was a nickname for Mrs. Violet Miller; she ran a boardinghouse in Chicago. Of course, Mother had wanted me to come home. But I was stubborn: I couldn’t come home. Mama was very disgusted. You never knew her, Mr. Driscoll. She and Papa went to Washington to live and for a long time, after he died, there was the bunch of us in that big house that had been a sort of hotel. Five sisters, a brother, and Mama. Wonderfully happy days!”

  Peter Link rubbed his temples and seemed about to speak; then he settled back in the chair with a look of defeat.

  “That was why Mama wanted me back, so it would be like the old days, don’t you see? But I was upset, which is certainly normal, considering. I looked for a job, but I couldn’t find one, and my money was running out—then Adam came to Tish’s to stay. You have never in your life seen a finer-looking gentleman. That’s him, over there, on the piano.”

  Driscoll looked at the picture. A stern man with a full mustache looked back at him. It was a very old photograph.

  “Tish introduced us properly,” Mrs. Cramer continued, “although he had noticed me almost at once. I was pretty then. And young. Still, he was a perfect gentleman. After we were introduced, he waited two weeks before asking me out. We went to a little place called Kitty Kelley’s, which is on the North Side of Chicago, and they have a dog there, it sits at the entrance. The table­cloths are green check. We had steaks, I remember, and baked potatoes. Adam called me Miss Laura. Wasn’t that nice?”

  “It certainly was,” Link said, glancing defiantly at Driscoll.

  “Yes, and I called him Mr. Cramer. There was no funny business, either, you know. Once he touched my hand and he went beet-red. Beet-red! He was twenty-six years older than I, you see, and probably that had something to do with it. He’d lived with his mother until she died, at the age of eighty-three, and I can’t think of anything finer or nobler than that. He wouldn’t get married or even go out with girls as long as his mother was alive!” Mrs. Cramer sighed and dabbed at her eyes with a small, diaphanous handkerchief. “Adam was everything that Henry wasn’t. He worked for the railroad and had already made a considerable name for himself in that line. People respected him, which was the thing. Everyone respected him. When he asked me to marry him, he told me how he had figured it all out and decided that we would be happy.” Mrs. Cramer laughed. “I hardly had a thing to say about it! Mama came to Chicago to meet him, and she told me this was the sort of man I ought to have. Tish said it, too. So we were married.

  “Adam did not laugh much, and he never sang at all, and of course with me only seventeen and him forty-three, there were certain little difficulties, times when I would lie awake and think —But I soon realized how fortunate I was to have a substantial man like Adam. On our honeymoon we went around the country—by train. He had a pass, you know. You couldn’t believe the places we visited, and in only two weeks! He had planned it very carefully a long time in advance, with timetables and maps. I was so scatterbrained, too. I’d say to him, ‘Adam, let’s stay another day in Yellowstone!’ and he’d smile and say, ‘Of course, my dear, if that’s what you want. But if we do, we’ll miss seeing Seattle and Tacoma.’ And we wouldn’t stay. More tea?”

  Driscoll shook his head. “Mrs. Cramer, when did you have Adam Junior?”

  The woman did not seem to hear. “He treated me like a doll, like a pet, Mr. Driscoll. No one could have been more thoughtful and considerate. When we came back from our honeymoon to Chicago, I was surprised with a beautiful red brick house—built especially for us. Can you imagine? Then Adam gave me a check for five thousand dollars and said, ‘Laura, now I want you to go down to the Loop this afternoon and spend this money on furniture and whatever else you might like. It’s your house.’ I loved antiques so I went to antique stores and—this is what’s left. It looks sort of pitiful, doesn’t it?” She gestured about the room. “This is all that’s left,” she repeated.

  Driscoll waited patiently.

  “Life was so fine then,” she said. “Adam hired a colored girl to do the work, and gave me enough money to buy anything I might want. He never bothered me with details—I never saw where he worked or knew how much he had in the bank or anything like that. ‘That’s business,’ he’d say, ‘that’s business. My job is to bring home the bacon, Laura. Your job is to stay pretty and happy. That’s all you ever have to do for me. It’s payment enough.’ Oh, the lovely things, the friends I had . . .” She tossed her head.

  “Then I found out that I was going to have a baby. I had been healthy and there wasn’t anything wrong, the doctors said, but I got sick. Very sick. The baby was born in seven months. Little Adam, young Adam. He lived less than a month.”

  Driscoll took out a cigarette and lit it. Link continued to rub his temples.

  “A year later I had twins,” Mrs. Cram
er went on. “They were born dead. Doctor Abrahams told me that I could never have a child, ever. It would kill me, he said. Adam wanted a child, though. He wanted a son. So we tried again, and Adam Junior came.

  “It turned out that Dr. Abrahams was right, or almost right, because I nearly did die. I went down to eighty-nine pounds, and had to stay in bed for six months.

  “I gave up my health for both of them, Mr. Driscoll. Nothing could ever be the same for me. I couldn’t go downtown to shop, or go to the opera clubs and socials with Edna, or even to a movie. Everything taxed me terribly. My blood pressure went sky-high at the least little excitement, and—well, never mind that. I’m not one to wish my troubles off onto another person.”

  “Tell us about Adam,” Peter Link said, in an almost desperate tone. “Junior.”

  “He was a good child at first, but frail, so frail, and sensitive. A beautiful child, as you’ve both seen. Adam loved him . . . sometimes I think perhaps more than he loved me. Lots of things changed then.” She went to the window and adjusted the shade carefully. “Adam Junior,” she said, “was what you might call normal for a little while. Then, I think it was when he was seven, he suffered a burst appendix; and that was the beginning of his illness. At nine we had to operate on his tonsils, and they were rotted and he was confined to bed for eight weeks. We grew closer then, you see, while he and his father drifted farther apart. I can’t explain that, exactly. Adam never did understand illness too well, I suppose that’s most of it. He was seldom sick, himself. Hadn’t ever missed a day at the job! He just didn’t . . . grasp the idea of not being healthy, if you see what I mean. He felt that his son was letting him down, I think, by being ill so much of the time. Betraying him.

  “Well, though he’d stolen my best years away, I gave the boy all the love anyone could ask. I tended to him day and night until, you can see for yourself, I was a physical wreck. Doctor Abrahams couldn’t understand how I managed to go on. But, if I hadn’t—that child would never have lived, I can say that to you right here and now! Ask anyone!

  “When he was twelve, he had spinal meningitis, and we were sure he was finished. No one had any hope, in particular Doctor Abrahams and the specialist he called in from I don’t know where. But I sat up, in the same room, holding Adam’s hand, and he lived through it, Mr. Driscoll. Thanks to me.

  “But—everything seemed to change then. Adam Junior became a different boy, a different person. He didn’t get along at school; sat in the house reading most of the time, reading, reading; and talking smart to his mother. To me! Why? The God above, I was the best friend he ever had; the only friend, really; and I tried to make him see this. ‘I’ve given up my life for you,’ I told him, ‘and you’re all I have. You’re my own baby.’ But it got worse and worse. Until it got so we had a stranger in the house, Mr. Driscoll; someone we didn’t understand at all and didn’t understand us.

  “Then Adam had his first coronary. It struck him down and he never recovered. It was the boy did it to him, though, that boy! And he’ll kill me, too. You wait!”

  She was weeping now, her face red and wrinkled.

  “I came here,” she said, “just to be near him, hoping he’d come back to me, hoping I would have my child, Mr. Driscoll. But except to get some money once, he never even bothered to visit me.”

  The room was still for a long time. Then Driscoll set his glass of watered tea down upon the carved coffee table. “Do you want us to print that, Mrs. Cramer?” he said.

  “Yes,” the woman said firmly. “I certainly do. Mothers all over the world ought to be warned that this can happen to them. They should know that you can work your heart out and give your child everything and then have him turn on you like a serpent. Perhaps if they know, it won’t be such a terrible shock.”

  Peter Link stood up. “Would you mind, Mrs. Cramer, if I took a picture of you?”

  “Not at all.” She struck a pose. The camera flashed four times. Before the fifth shot, Mrs. Cramer picked up the photograph of the boy and held it to her breast. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you,” she said, blinking.

  “You’ve been more help than you know,” Driscoll said. “Before we wind it up, however, I’d like to ask if you can tell us anything about his current activities. That is, why do you feel he has made segregation such a personal cause?”

  “I don’t have any idea, Mr. Driscoll.”

  “Will you answer a rather touchy question?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “What, Mrs. Cramer, are your own views on desegregation in the South?”

  The woman shrugged her shoulders. “I really couldn’t say. I don’t read the papers much, you know. You mean mixing them up, don’t you?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean.”

  “Well, of course that might mean the whites marrying the Negroes­ and I’m certainly not for that. But . . . well, I haven’t thought much about it. And we never discussed it, or anything, before.”

  “Then you never taught your son to be prejudiced?”

  “Absolutely not! We had two lovely colored maids, in the old days, and they—in particular, Rachel—just adored little Adam. Prejudice is something I can’t have any use for.”

  “I see.” Driscoll rose. “One last question, Mrs. Cramer. When he was young, in the, you might say, formative years—did you ever encourage him in any of his ambitions? Or his father, did he? You know what I mean: give the boy a feeling of self-confidence?”

  “That,” said Mrs. Cramer, “would have been wrong. Don’t you understand—he was frail, and sick. We knew that he’d never be fit for any kind of job. But my husband had saved a good deal of money, enough to last us a long time, so there wasn’t—he’d invested it in stocks, too—any need for Adam Junior to worry.” She looked at the men. “Why, if I’d encouraged him, the way you say, he’d have gone out in the world and failed! I wanted to shield him from that. Any decent mother would have done the same.” She folded her hands tightly. “Can you blame me for wanting to protect my only child?”

  “No, Mrs. Cramer,” Driscoll said. “I don’t blame you. I don’t blame anyone for anything.”

  “I did what I thought was best.”

  “Of course.” Driscoll walked to the door and motioned to Link. “Thank you very much for your time,” he said. “We’ll send you a copy of the story.”

  Mrs. Cramer sat quietly on the couch. “If you see him,” she said, “tell him he can still come back. If he wants to.”

  Driscoll nodded and closed the door.

  He and Peter Link got into the car and did not speak until they had pulled out into the flow of traffic.

  Then Driscoll looked over at his friend and smiled. “Well?” he said.

  “Well what?”

  “What do you think of our little dictator now?”

  Link loosened his collar. “Christ, I don’t know,” he said. “With a dame like that for a mother . . . At the moment, I’m confused.”

  Driscoll laughed. “That’s the trouble with this goddamn job, Linker,” he said. “It muddles your thinking. A couple of hours ago we hated the guy’s guts. He was a pure son of a bitch, that’s all. Everything was nice and clear and tidy. Right? Well, nothing has changed. He’s still raising hell in the South and he’s still a pure son of a bitch. But—it isn’t so nice and clear and tidy any more, is it?”

  Link was silent. He fingered his camera.

  “You know something?” Driscoll said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I was in Nuremberg during the trials. It was a great assignment. All of the monsters: Schacht, Speer, Streicher, GÖring, all of them; going to get the works. You’re not too young to remember those trials, are you?”

  Link shook his head. “I read about them,” he said.

  “Well, see, I’d visited some very pleasant resort spots in ’45—Belsen and Dachau, to name two. And I was around even earlier, when the Nazi organizations—the Gestapo, the SS, the Reich Cabinet, the OKW—were great big things. I saw what they could do. And
I got to really hating them. Everybody did. And it was such a strong hate, see, that maybe it was this that kept the people going. As long as we could despise those symbols, with their black uniforms and swastikas and shiny boots, we could go on fighting them. As long as we could believe that they were inhuman, soulless creatures of absolute evil, we could hope for victory. Actually, we didn’t see much more of the Gestapo or the Storm Troopers than the kids at home did in the movies. But the German propaganda boys were doing a great job, a great job. They kept telling us that they weren’t human: they were super­human. They were the Master Race.

  “So it didn’t even occur to me, or anyone else, that these guys were real people who got hungry and lonely sometimes, who got colds in their noses and farted at parties. No muddled thinking there, boy. No confusion. Just a nice, steady hatred building up. And, of course, the same thing—even more so—was happening with the Japanese. God knew they weren’t real people!

  “Anyway, I went to the trials feeling the way you do in the last reel of a Western, where the villain is going to get his guts shot out by the hero. I wanted to watch those bastards crawl and whine and cry . . .”

  Driscoll turned left and pointed the car down the long, crowded Los Angeles freeway.

  “I wanted to see them get it, too. But something went wrong, Linker. I arrived at the courthouse, and I couldn’t find a single goddamn monster. Not one. All I could find was a bunch of tired, scared, neurotic old men. Ribbentrop was getting roasted by a smart-ass lawyer, and I thought that was swell, because Ribbentrop deserved it if anyone did; but the more I watched him, the more human he got. Even GÖring, the most hated of them all, the one we used to dream of boiling in hot blood—he wasn’t a monster, either. Shifty, shrewd, unctuous; yes. But mostly just nuts. Just crazy.

  “A couple of weeks went by and suddenly the trials began to lose their meaning. The people, all the outraged people whose families had been broken up, even they started to get bored. They started feeling almost sorry for these poor misguided bastards. Poor Ribbentrop, you know, he’s way too old to sit there and get pounded by that lawyer. Somebody ought to get him a drink of water, or something!