Bread Upon the Waters

by Irwin Shaw

  “No.” The Scotch was his first drink of the week and he was rolling it around in his mouth appreciatively before swallowing it when the doorbell rang.

  “That must be Caroline,” Leslie said, “but she has her key…”

  The bell didn’t stop ringing, a long, loud, constant clamor.

  “Good Lord,” Leslie said. “She knows we aren’t deaf.”

  Jimmy glanced quickly at his father. Strand could see the look of alarm on his son’s face and had the feeling it reflected the expression on his own.

  “I’ll get it,” Jimmy said and hurried out of the dining room. Strand put his glass down and followed him, trying to seem casual. Jimmy was just opening the door when Strand reached the hallway. Stumbling, half-falling, Caroline lurched through the doorway. She was supporting a man, whose head was lolling on his chest, and they were both covered with blood.

  2

  “HE’S EXACTLY YOUR AGE,” he heard a voice saying, or remembered he’d heard a voice say. A familiar voice…

  Jimmy sprang forward and tried to put his arms around both his sister and the man she was holding and Strand lunged to help him. The man groaned.

  “I’m all right,” Caroline said, gasping. “Hold on to him. It’s his blood, not mine.” She was still holding her tennis racquet in her free hand. The sweater and jeans she had put on over her tennis clothes were stained. She released her grip on the man as Strand held him up with his arms around the man’s, waist. He was a big man and heavy, a nasty swollen cut across his completely bald head and alongside his temple and left cheek. The leather wind-jacket he wore was slashed in a dozen places. He struggled to raise his head and stand erect. “I’m all right,” he mumbled. “Please don’t bother, sir. I’ll just sit down for a moment and…” He slumped again in Strand’s arms.

  “What’s happening here?” Strand heard his wife’s voice behind him. “Oh, my God.”

  “Nothing serious, my dear lady,” the man mumbled, trying to smile. “Really.”

  “Eleanor,” Leslie said, “go call Dr. Prinz and tell him he must come over immediately.”

  “No need, really,” the man said, his voice growing clearer. With an effort he stood up straight. “My own doctor will take care of it presently. I don’t want to trouble…”

  “Take him into the living room,” Leslie said crisply, “and put him down on the couch. Eleanor, just don’t stand there. Caroline, what about you?”

  “Nothing to worry about, Mother,” Caroline said. “I’m just spattered, that’s all. Let go of me, Jimmy. I don’t need any stretcher-bearers.” Her voice sounded hard and angry, a new note that Strand had never heard before from her.

  “If you’ll just let me try to manipulate by myself, sir,” the man said, “you’ll see that…”

  Gingerly, still ready to catch the man, Strand stepped back. He noticed that the sleeve of his own jacket was stained from a gash across the knuckles of the man’s hand and then was ashamed of himself for noticing it. The man took a respectable step forward. “You see?” he said, with the dignity of a drunk passing an alcohol test before a policeman. He touched his cheek, looked calmly at the blood on his hand. “A minor bruise, I assure you.” Slowly they all went into the living room. The man seated himself firmly on a wooden chair. “It’s very kind of you, but you shouldn’t take all this trouble.” He was a man, Strand guessed, of about his own age and almost as tall. If he was suffering, there was no sign of it on his slashed, discolored face.

  “Jimmy,” Leslie said. “Go and get some warm water and a washcloth.” She looked at the blood-covered face. The blood was still dripping onto the living room carpet. “A towel. Two towels. You’ll find some bandages and adhesive tape in the medicine chest. And bring in the ice bucket.”

  “No need to bother,” the man said. “It’s hardly more than a scratch.”

  “Caroline,” Leslie said, “you look as though you’ve been through a war. Are you sure there’s nothing the matter with you? Don’t be foolishly brave now.”

  “I told you,” Caroline said, her voice suddenly trembling. “I’m fine.” She was still holding the tennis racquet, as though she would need it for some new and important game in the next few seconds. The steel frame of the racquet, Strand saw, was bloody, too.

  “What happened?” he asked. He had been standing to one side, feeling awkward. He had never seen that much blood before and it made him squeamish.

  “He was mugged and…” Caroline began.

  Eleanor came in. “Dr. Prinz isn’t in. His answering service said he’d call back within the hour.”

  Leslie groaned.

  Eleanor put her arms around Caroline and cradled her. “Baby,” she said, “it’s all right now, it’s all right. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

  Caroline began to sob, her shoulders quivering. “I’m ff—ff—fine,” she cried. “I just have to wash my face and change my clothes, that’s all. Oh, I’m so glad everybody’s home.”

  Jimmy came in with the bowl of hot water and the towels and bandages and the ice bucket. As Leslie soaked a towel and began gently to clean the wound on the man’s scalp, he said, “You’re all too kind. I apologize for making such a mess and being so much trouble.” His voice was surprisingly calm now, as though he were excusing himself for ringing the wrong doorbell by mistake. His speech had the accent of good Eastern schools. He didn’t move or wince as Leslie wiped the blood away, then worked on the raw flesh of the wounded hand, the towel becoming a sullen rusty iron color. She worked swiftly, without fuss, as though caring for damaged strangers were a commonplace event in her home. “I’m afraid there will have to be some stitches,” she said matter-of-factly, “when the doctor comes. I hope I’m not hurting you.”

  “Not at all,” the man said. “I trust my appearance doesn’t shock you. Things always look worse than they actually are.” He managed a smile, meant to reassure her.

  “Caroline,” Strand said, “how did all this happen?”

  “If I may,” the man said, “I’d like to explain. My dear young lady,” he said to Caroline, “I’m sure you want to get out of those gory clothes.”

  “Eleanor,” Leslie said, “take her into the bathroom and put her under a warm shower.” Leslie was a firm believer in the efficacy of warm showers in all emergencies. “And tell Mrs. Curtis to hold dinner.”

  “Oh, dear,” the man said, “I’m spoiling your dinner. Do forgive me. I really can get up and go home, you know.” He made a move to stand.

  “Sit still,” Leslie said briskly, as Eleanor led Caroline, still gripping her racquet, toward the bathroom. Leslie began wrapping lengths of bandage around the man’s head, her hands moving deftly and efficiently.

  “Allen,” she said, “put a lot of ice in the clean towel and make a compress of it.”

  As Strand followed her instructions she said to the man, “There’s going to be some swelling on your cheek. Hold the ice to it and press. It’ll help keep it down.”

  Docilely, the man put the towel-wrapped ice to his cheek. To Strand he looked absurdly like a small boy who had been in a fight and now was allowing his mother to repair the damages.

  Jimmy peered curiously at the man. “Somebody gave you an awfully good whack, mister,” he said.

  “It’s not the first time,” the man said. “It could have been worse. Much worse. If it hadn’t been for the young lady charging to my rescue. The avenging angel.” He laughed softly. “Quite the reverse of the usual situation.”

  “Where did it…?” Strand asked.

  “In the park. I was a little later than usual this evening. Pressure of business. The old trap.” Leslie had gotten most of the blood off him by now and he looked sedate and confident of himself, slightly florid, but with a strong, well-formed face that reminded Strand of the portraits of Spanish conquistadors, confident and used to giving orders. “I was on my usual daily spin around the park, the advice of my doctor—you know how fussy they are about men approaching middle age who lead sedentary liv
es in offices…”

  Leslie stepped back to examine her handiwork. “That’s about the best I can do for the moment for the upper works,” she said. “It doesn’t look too bad. Now for the hand.” She began to wrap bandages across the knuckles and under the palms, tearing strips of adhesive tape with a ripping noise.

  “I lost my hat somewhere,” the man said. “I imagine that would help my appearance.”

  “What were you hit with?” Strand said. “Maybe you need a tetanus shot.”

  “The…the instrument,” the man said dryly, “looked immaculate to me, although I wasn’t in the position to make certain at the time. I’m sure my doctor will do whatever is necessary.”

  “What instrument?” Jimmy asked curiously.

  “From my reading,” the man said, “I would expect it would be a piece of lead pipe. Oh, I’ve been remiss. Let me introduce myself. I’m Russell Hazen.” He said the name as though he expected it to be recognized, but as far as he knew, Strand had never heard it before.

  “Allen Strand,” Strand said. “And this is my wife, Leslie. And my son, James.”

  “I’m honored.” Hazen made a small, sitting-down bow. “I hope we meet again under more auspicious circumstances.”

  Bloody or not, Strand thought, he had the vocabulary of a lawyer. My honorable colleague, who has just hit me over the head with a lead pipe…

  “You don’t have to talk, you know,” Leslie said, “if you don’t really feel up to it.”

  “I want you to know,” Hazen said, ignoring Leslie’s invitation to silence, “that you have an extraordinarily courageous daughter…”

  “What did she do?” Jimmy asked. He sounded disbelieving, as though of all the virtues he might think his sister might possess, physical courage was not one that would immediately come to his mind.

  “As I was saying, I was making my daily spin around the park…”

  “Spin?” Jimmy asked. “What kind of spin?”

  For the young, Strand thought, wishing Jimmy would shut up, the facts came first and compassion after, if at all. Jimmy sounded suspicious, as though if the truth were finally to come out, his sister’s condition, the blood on her clothes and the hysterical sobbing in Eleanor’s arms, were at bottom Hazen’s fault.

  “On my bicycle,” Hazen said. “Excellent exercise. One does not need a team or a partner and especially on a fine spring day like today one can enjoy the bounty of nature.”

  He must have learned how to speak in the eighteenth century, Strand thought, without changing his expression as he listened to the man.

  “I stopped for a little breather,” Hazen continued. “I went off the path a little and leaned against a tree and I smoked a cigarette, I’m afraid. My doctor would undoubtedly say I was undoing all the good the exercise had done me. Still, a lifetime habit, comforting at certain moments…. I was thinking about a problem that had kept me at my office a little later than ordinary and I thought that perhaps five minutes or so of reflection…”

  “Then they jumped you?” Jimmy was not one for reflection, his or anyone else’s.

  “It was dusk,” Hazen went on evenly. “I was enjoying looking at the lights in the buildings on Central Park West in the calm air.” He stopped, touched the wound on his cheek lightly. “Then, as you say, James, they jumped me.”

  “The bastards,” Jimmy said.

  “Young, deprived people, with ugly racial memories,” Hazen said, shrugging. “Lawlessness the order of the day, property a flaunting of unearned privilege…”

  Speech for the Defense, Strand thought. Your Honor, let me introduce certain extenuating circumstances…

  “You mean they were black?” Jimmy said harshly.

  Hazen nodded soberly. “I have been warned by my friends from time to time. Especially after dark.”

  “Damnit,” Jimmy said to his parents, “how many times have I told you Caroline should stay out of that goddamn park?”

  “How many times, Jimmy,” Strand said, “have I told you you ought to stop smoking and you ought to get to sleep before five o’clock in the morning?”

  “Stop wrangling, you two,” Leslie said sharply. Then to Hazen, “How did my daughter get involved in this?”

  “She appeared out of nowhere,” Hazen said. “Through the bushes, I imagine. The three men—boys, actually, no more than fifteen, sixteen, I imagine—had crept up behind me. The first I knew I was hit on the head, I was staggering a bit, but holding firmly on to my bicycle, which was the object of the assault. My hat flew off, they hit me again along the cheek and one of them pulled out a knife and began to slash my jacket…” He looked down, fingered the tattered leather. “I doubt they actually wished to stab me, merely to frighten me into letting go of my machine, the cut on my head came at this moment…. I was shouting, although it was with some difficulty, as one of them had his arm around my throat. Amazingly strong, a boy that age.”

  “And you held on to that bicycle all that time?” Jimmy asked incredulously.

  “It was my property, James,” Hazen said mildly.

  “Christ,” Jimmy said. “For a bicycle. How much did it cost? A hundred? A hundred and fifty?”

  “Slightly more than that,” Hazen said. “It is a French machine. Ten gears. But the money was not the point. As I said, it was my property, not theirs.”

  “And you were willing to take the chance that they’d kill you for a lousy bicycle?”

  “The principle is not open to question,” Hazen said with dignity.

  “You were willing to get killed?” Jimmy repeated.

  “I didn’t reason it out calmly at the moment,” Hazen said. “But I imagine the thought must have crossed my mind. Luckily, your sister appeared, completely surprising the young rascals. She screamed before she struck and the noise froze them for a moment. In that moment—it all went so fast I couldn’t follow it—she laid about her with her tennis racquet. With the side. It must be quite a weapon. Sharp edged and all that. She smashed the hand of the boy with the knife with her first blow and he cried out and dropped the knife. With her second blow she opened the face and I’m afraid did grave damage to the eyes of the boy with the lead pipe and he dropped the pipe and bent over and staggered away, with his hands to his eyes. Then she struck the boy who had the knife across the face twice and he fell to the ground. You never think of a tennis racquet as a weapon, do you? The third boy merely ran away. All this time, your sister was screaming—wordlessly, I must say—although no one seemed to hear it, or if they did, paid no attention to it. She said, ‘Hold on to me,’ and she seized the handlebars of the bicycle and we ran—I believe we ran—out of the park. And here I am.” Hazen smiled up at Leslie and Strand.

  God, Strand thought, that little girl! “I’m glad now,” he said, “I gave in when Caroline asked me to buy her a steel racquet.” He had to make the little lame joke to keep from showing the emotion he felt, the fear that had swept through him for his daughter as Hazen told his story.

  “I, too,” Hazen said gravely. “More than glad. It is not perhaps too much of an exaggeration to say that I owe my life to your daughter. Tell her, if there is any way I call show my gratitude…”

  “I’m sure she’s happy you’re safe and sound,” Leslie said. “Comparatively speaking.” She permitted herself a little smile. “That’s reward enough.” She looked at Strand, her eyes wet. “What do you know about our baby girl?” she whispered.

  “More than I knew twenty minutes ago,” Strand said. He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Someone was trembling, but he didn’t know whether it was Leslie or himself.

  “Did you call the police?” Jimmy demanded.

  Hazen laughed flatly. “The police? In this city? I’m a lawyer, James. What could they do?”

  I guessed right, Strand thought. Lawyer.

  Hazen started to push himself up from the chair. “I’ve kept you from your dinner long enough. Now, I’d better be getting ho—” He staggered and sat down, hard, a puzzled look on his face. �
��Perhaps another few minutes of rest,” he said in a choked voice.

  “You stay right here,” Leslie said, “until the doctor comes.”

  “Perhaps,” Hazen said weakly, “it might be advisable. If you don’t mind.”

  “Do you want me to call your home,” Strand asked, “and tell them where you are and that you’ll be home later?”

  “No matter,” Hazen said. “Nobody’s expecting me. I’m alone for the weekend.” His voice sounded cold and distant as he spoke.

  He had trouble at home, Strand thought, as well as in the park. “I was just having a drink before dinner when you came in,” he said. “I think you could use a drink, too.”

  “Thank you. That would be useful.”

  “Straight? Or with water? All we have is Scotch.” He didn’t mention the sherry. After what Hazen had been through, Strand doubted that sherry would do much good.

  “Straight, please,” Hazen said, leaning his head against the back of the chair and closing his eyes.

  “Better pour a whiskey for me, too,” Leslie said as Strand started toward the dining room.

  The phone rang in the hallway as he was pouring the drinks. He left the glasses on the sideboard to answer it. It was Dr. Prinz, irritated. He stopped sounding irritated when Strand told him briefly what had happened and he said he’d come over as soon as he could, he was with a patient who had just had a heart attack and it might take some time.

  When Strand came back with the drinks Leslie said, “Jimmy’s gone downstairs to get Alexander to lock the bicycle in the cellar for the night.” Strand nodded. It would be foolish to have it stolen now.

  Hazen was still sitting with his head back and his eyes closed. “Here we are,” Strand said, hoping his voice sounded cheerful. “A little bit of Highland sunlight.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Hazen opened his eyes and took the glass in his good hand. Nobody offered a toast and Hazen finished his drink in two gulps. Leslie drank hers quickly, too, and then sat down as if she suddenly had realized how tired she was.