Bread Upon the Waters

by Irwin Shaw

  Romero’s mouth was still split and swollen and a bruise on his forehead was lumpy and discolored. But he stood erect and defiant as he glanced once at Strand, then lowered his eyes and stared at the floor.

  “Allen,” Babcock said, “we’ve all been trying to persuade Romero to cooperate with Mr. Hollingsbee. Without success. I’ve told Romero that under the circumstances I have no choice but to expel him from the school as of today. If he is willing to cooperate, I might be able to suspend him provisionally to await the outcome of the trial. Mr. Hollingsbee thinks that with luck he might have Romero put on probation. In that case, I believe I might be able to allow him to come back to the school on probation here, too, to finish his year. Perhaps you can do something with him.”

  “Romero,” Strand said, “you’re playing with the rest of your life. Give yourself a chance, at least. I don’t like reminding you of what you owe to Mr. Hazen and myself, but I have to do it. Between us we have a large investment in you. And I’m not talking about money. A moral investment. It’s callous of you not to feel that you should try to protect it.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Strand,” Romero said, still staring at the floor. “Everyone knows what I did and why. I’ll take the consequences. I’m not going to weasel out. Everyone’s wasting their time arguing with me.”

  Strand shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s it,” he said to Babcock.

  Babcock sighed. “All right, Romero,” he said. “Pack your things and get out. Right now. You can’t stay here even one more night.”

  “I’ll drive the boys back to Waterbury,” Mr. Hollingsbee said. “Rollins, maybe your parents will be able to do something with him.”

  “They sure will try,” Rollins said. He took Romero’s elbow. “Come on, hero.”

  Mr. Hollingsbee and Strand followed the boys out of the room and out onto the campus. They made a little cortege as they walked across to the Malson Residence. “Before you came,” Hollingsbee said to Strand, “Babcock read the riot act to Rollins, too. About not reporting the crap games in the room. He put Rollins on probation for the rest of the year. That means he can’t play on any of the teams. The track coach isn’t going to be happy when he hears about it. Rollins is the number one shot-putter of the school. It won’t help him any getting a scholarship for college, either.”

  “Do you have any children?” Strand asked.

  “One daughter. Thank God she’s married.” Hollingsbee laughed.

  Strand couldn’t help wondering if the man had ever read any of his daughter’s letters to her husband or to any other man she knew.

  “How about you?” Hollingsbee asked. “How many children do you have?”

  “Three. So far they’ve managed to stay out of jail.”

  “You’re ahead of the game.” The lawyer shook his head. “Kids these days.”

  When they got to the house Strand was relieved to see that the common room was empty. Romero started for the stairs, but Strand stopped him. “Jesus,” he said, “one last time…”

  Romero shook his head.

  “All right, then,” Strand said. “Good-bye. And good luck.” He put out his hand. Romero shook it. “Don’t take it too hard,” he said. “Just one more stick on the fire.” He started toward the door, then stopped and turned. “Can I say something, Mr. Strand?”

  “If you think there’s anything more to say.”

  “There is. I’m leaving here, but I don’t think you’ll be here much longer, either.” He was speaking earnestly, his voice low and clear. “This place is staffed by time-servers, Mr. Strand. And I don’t think you’re a time-server.”

  “Thank you,” Strand said ironically.

  “The other teachers are grazing animals, Mr. Strand. They graze in peace on grass…”

  Strand wondered where in his reading Romero had picked up that phrase. Unwillingly, now that he had heard it, he recognized the justice.

  “You hunt on cement, Mr. Strand,” Romero went on. “That’s why you understood me. Or at least half-understood me. Everybody else here looks at me as though I belong in a zoo.”

  “That’s not fair,” Strand said. “At least about the others.”

  “I’m just telling you my opinion.” Romero shrugged.

  “Are you finished?”

  “I’m finished.”

  “Go get your things,” Strand said. He was disturbed and did not want to hear any more. At least not today.

  “Come on, Baby,” Romero said harshly to Rollins, “let’s clear out the ole plantation. Massa’s selling us South.”

  Strand watched Hollingsbee and the two boys go up the stairs, then went down the hall to his apartment. The phone was ringing in the living room. He had almost decided not to answer it but then, thinking that it might be Leslie calling from France to reassure him that she was all right, he picked it up.

  It was Hazen. “Did you read that goddamn story in the Times this morning?” He sounded drunk.

  “I did.”

  “Reliable sources.” Hazen’s voice was thick. “Any two bit shyster lawyer in the Justice Department leaking to a crappy newspaperman and suddenly it’s a reliable source. My God, if you tapped a conversation between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist they could make it sound like a federal offense.”

  “I tried to call you last night and warn you about the Times. There was no answer.”

  “I was at the fucking opera. And when I’m not home my goddamn valet is too lazy to move away from the bar where he’s drinking my liquor to pick up the phone. I’m going to fire the sonofabitch tonight. How did you know about the Times?”

  “There were two FBI men here yesterday, questioning me about you. They told me to look at the Times this morning.”

  “What did they want to know?”

  “If I’d heard you talking to Hitz about a deal.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “What could I tell them? I said I didn’t hear anything.”

  “You could have sworn, for Christ’s sake, that you were with me every minute and you knew damn well I didn’t say a word about any kind of business with Hitz.”

  “We went through this before, Russell,” Strand said wearily. “I told them what I knew. No more and no less.”

  “Go to the head of the honor roll, Sir Galahad,” Hazen said. “When are you going to come down out of the clouds and hang your halo on the door and learn to play with the big boys on the street?”

  “You’re drunk, Russell. When you’re sober, I’ll talk to you.” Strand quietly put down the receiver. He was shivering. The cold of the day seemed to be embedded in his bones. He went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water in the tub. He inhaled the steam gratefully as he started to undress. There was a ring on the doorbell. He turned the water off, put on a bathrobe and went barefooted to the door. Dr. Philips was standing there, with his little black bag in his hand.

  “Do you mind if I come in, Mr. Strand?” Strand had the impression that the doctor was on the verge of putting his foot in the door for fear that it would be slammed in his face. “Please.”

  Philips came in. “I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he said. “But Mr. Babcock called me a few minutes ago and said he thought I ought to take a look at you.”

  “Why?”

  “May I take off my coat?”

  “Of course. Did Babcock explain…?”

  “He said he was worried about you, he thought you didn’t look too well,” Philips said, as Strand helped him off with his coat. “He told me about your history with a heart problem and if it’s all right with you I’d like to do a little checking.” He glanced obliquely at Strand. “The truth is your color isn’t all it might be today. I know you’ve been under stress and…”

  “I’ve lost a little sleep the last few nights,” Strand said curtly. “That’s all.” He was certain that no matter what happened he didn’t want to be put back in a hospital again.

  Dr. Philips was taking a stethoscope out of his bag and the apparatus that Strand h
ad become all too familiar with, to take his blood pressure. “If we can just sit over here at the desk,” Philips said, sounding, Strand thought, like a dentist assuring a patient that probing for a root canal nerve wouldn’t hurt, “and if you’ll take off your robe…” Strand threw the robe over a chair. He still had his pants on so he didn’t feel as foolish as he would have sitting naked in his own living room. “You certainly aren’t obese,” Philips said dryly as he put the cold stethoscope to Strand’s chest. The instructions were familiar, too. Cough. Hold your breath. Breathe deeply, exhale slowly. Aside from the brief commands, Philips said nothing. After the chest he put the stethoscope to Strand’s back. Then he wrapped the rubber sleeve of the blood pressure machine around Strand’s arm and pumped it up, let the air out, watching the gauge intently, then repeating the process. Your life on a bubble of air, Strand thought, as he watched the doctor’s impassive face. Or on a slender column of mercury, that unstable element.

  When Philips was through he still remained silent while he put the gadgets away in his bag. Shivering, Strand put on his bathrobe again. “Mr. Strand,” Philips said, “I’m afraid Mr. Babcock is a keen diagnostician. Your breathing is very shallow and there’s a worrisome sound to your lungs. Your heartbeat is irregular, although not too bad. Your blood pressure is very high. Do you remember what it was when they released you from the hospital?”

  “I don’t know the numbers, but my doctor said it was high normal.”

  “It is no longer within the normal range, I’m afraid. Are you taking anything to keep it down?”

  “No.”

  Philips nodded. “If you’ll come by the infirmary tomorrow morning I’ll give you some pills that should work. Just one a day should do the trick.” He dug into his bag and came out with a small bottle. “Here’s something to help you sleep. Don’t worry—it’s not addictive.”

  “I’m really not afraid of becoming a drug addict at my age,” Strand said.

  “Addiction is not only a teenage disease, Mr. Strand,” Philips said coldly. “There’s some liquid in your lungs, too…”

  “It’s a wonder I’m still walking around, isn’t it?” Strand said, trying to sound amused at the minor misfunctions of his refractory body.

  “A little walking is fine. It’s even prescribed. Although I’d stay indoors until it gets a little warmer. I’ll give you a diuretic, too. I don’t want to alarm you. You’ve recovered remarkably from what Mr. Babcock has told me was a massive attack. But emotion—stress, as I mentioned before—plays a great part in conditions like this. If possible, I’d like to see you take things more calmly.”

  “What should I have done when I saw one of the boys in my house chasing another with a knife—sat down and played the flute?”

  “I know, I know,” Philips said, reacting to the ring of anger in Strand’s voice by talking more slowly and calmly than ever. “There are situations when what a doctor advises sounds foolish. I’m not an extravagantly healthy man myself, but there is advice I give myself that I can’t hope to follow. Still, if possible, try to put your problems into some larger perspective.”

  “How do you make out when you put your problems into some larger perspective?”

  Philips smiled sadly. “Badly.”

  Strand knew from what Babcock had told him that Philips was a widower. His wife had been killed in an automobile accident five years before. He had had a prestigious practice in New York City and had been a professor at Cornell Medical Center. When his wife had died he had given it all up, practice, hospital, office, apartment, friends, and the rest of his family, and had gone off for a year to live alone in a cabin in the Maine woods. He had come to Dunberry, where he had frankly told Babcock that he wanted to have a practice that made minimum demands on him and where his responsibility was limited and where none of the friends and associates he had known when his wife was alive would crop up to remind him of his happier days. As he had just confessed, when he had put his problems into a larger perspective he had fared badly.

  “Sprained ankles and adolescent acne,” he had told Babcock. “That’s about as deep into medicine as I want to go for the rest of my life.”

  Remembering this dissipated Strand’s irritation with the man for coming over unasked to examine him and highhandedly prescribing for him, meddling, as Strand had felt when he saw the doctor at his door, with matters that were not really any concern of his. After all, Strand was not a child and he had his own doctors to whom he could appeal if he felt it necessary. He tried to imagine what Hazen’s reaction would have been on the phone if the doctor had answered it and counseled him to put Washington and the FBI into a larger perspective.

  “I understand from Mr. Babcock,” the doctor was saying, “that you’re the most conscientious teacher in the school. That has to mean overwork and overworry. If I may make a suggestion, be less conscientious. Try to let things slide here and there. And don’t run after boys with knives if you can help it.” He smiled as he said it. “Rest as much as you can. Mentally even more than physically. One more question. Do you drink much?”

  “Hardly at all.”

  “Take a whiskey now and then. It can put things into a rosier light, aside from opening up the capillaries.” Philips struggled into his coat. Just at the door, he turned. “What do you think will happen to the Romero boy?”

  Strand thought for a moment. “Rollins says that if he goes to jail he’ll wind up on the street and he won’t be carrying a knife, there’ll be a gun in his belt and dust in his pocket. I guess what he means by dust is heroin or cocaine. My feeling is that it’s either that or he’ll lead a revolution somewhere.”

  Philips nodded soberly. “Mercy is the scarcest virtue on the market,” he said. “We’re all such bunglers, aren’t we? Well, sir, good night. And sleep well.”

  Sprained ankles and adolescent acne, Strand thought, as the door closed behind the doctor. Romero hardly fitted into those categories.

  Strand went into the bathroom and put the small bottle of pills Philips had given him on the shelf. Nepenthe by the nightly dose, he thought. Retreat to forgetfulness. Civilization’s answer to religion and ambition.

  He turned the hot water on again, once more grateful for the swirling steam, taking deep breaths. Then the phone rang again. Annoyed, he turned the tap off and went back into the living room. “Hello,” he said brusquely.

  “You don’t have to snap my head off.” It was Leslie, her voice amused though far away. “I know you don’t like to talk on the phone but you might as well tear it out of the wall if you answer it like that. Nobody will ever dare call you twice.”

  “Hello, dearest,” he said. “God, it’s good to hear your voice. Where are you? The last I heard from Air France, you were wandering all over European air space.”

  “We finally landed at Nice,” Leslie said, “and now we’re in Linda’s place in Mougins. She said as long as we were so close it would be a shame if I didn’t see it. It’s heavenly. I wish you were here with us.”

  “So do I.”

  “How are things on the battlefield?”

  “Picking up,” he said ambiguously.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Romero’s out on bail and he’s staying with Rollins’s family in Waterbury.”

  “Who put up the bail?”

  He hesitated. “Friends,” he said.

  “Was it Russell?”

  “He’s not Romero’s friend.” Strand did not add that at the moment Romero didn’t think Strand was his friend, either.

  “I guess it’s better all around that way, don’t you?”

  “Much better.”

  “Are you taking care of yourself? Are you lonely?”

  “I hardly notice that you’re not here,” he said, laughing, or at least making an effort to laugh. “Mrs. Schiller is pampering me outrageously.”

  “I worried about you all over the Atlantic.”

  “You should have worried about the pilot. You’re lucky they didn’t put you
down in Warsaw. I’m fine.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “It’s the connection. I intend to take up skiing tomorrow. The paper promises snow.” It took an effort to be flip, but he made it. If Leslie had been there, he would have told her all, or almost all, of what he had been through that day. But worries, he knew, were multiplied by the square root of distance and Leslie was three thousand miles away.

  “What are you doing now?” Leslie was saying. “I mean at this particular minute?”

  “I’m about to step into a hot bath.”

  “And I’m going to jump into Linda’s pool tomorrow. Imagine being able to swim in November. When we retire I think we ought to live in Mougins.”

  “If you find a nice little place for around a million dollars while you’re down there, put a deposit on it.”

  Leslie sighed. “It would be nice to be rich for once, wouldn’t it?”

  “Thoreau never saw the Mediterranean,” Strand said, “and he was happy on a pond.”

  “He wasn’t married.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “If I let myself go,” Leslie said, “I think I would turn into a frivolous, luxury-loving woman. Would you be able to bear me?”

  “No.”

  She laughed again. “I do like a man who knows his own mind. I’ve talked long enough. This call is costing Linda a fortune. Are you happy?”

  “Never happier,” he said.

  “I know you’re lying and I love you for it.” There was a sound of a kiss over the scratchy wire and Leslie hung up.

  Strand put down the phone and went into the bathroom and finally sank into the warm water of the bath. My private small sea, he thought as he dozed in the steam. Like Thoreau, he would be content with a pond.