by Philip Roth
The boy was strapped to the toilet seat. When he saw Gabe he let out an agonized scream. He strained to release himself from the seat; his face went from red to white to red again; the odor of the child’s feces was overpowering. Gabe’s eye throbbed. He closed the door, then opened it and was in the bathroom, leaning over the miserable child. The odor was of sickness. He slid the boy’s shirt up and looked for whatever was holding him down. The child began to pull and yank, his arms straining upwards as he screamed and wept.
Wallace!
No one was calling him. But his head grew dark and heavy, as though a blow had been struck upon it. His stomach was turning. He was himself, but this life was another’s. The room was pink; so was the toilet paper; so were the dirty linens stuffed into the bathtub. His fingers worked along the tape that crisscrossed the child’s middle. Minutes passed before he came to a small knot at the side of the seat. He worked at it with what he thought was all his attention. But he had no luck. He kneeled on the floor before the child, and at last he gave in and held his head in his hands. I am here.
Go! Go away!
Suddenly he was flooded with sympathy for Bigoness. He worked helplessly at the tape, feeling only sorrow for the stupid bastard. The law that held him accountable was absurd. Him meaning Bigoness. He heard Bigoness saying that he was not involved. So why didn’t he leave the man alone? Go home. But in that same instant he saw himself strangling Bigoness, squeezing his throat till the face turned colors—and then was no color. He was holding a gun to Bigoness’s head—At that moment the child shot forward, arms and legs whirling. A pain shot through Gabe’s whole body—he had been caught on the side of the head by the little boy’s shoe. His eye! He howled; the child screamed hysterically.
“Shhhh,” he said, shaking. “Quiet, shhhhh …” He wiped the child’s brow, then his own. He hunched over the tape, as though working against time. He should look through all of Theresa’s pockets. He should never have left her alone in that taxi. Why not? How not? His arms were hanging at his sides, three times their own weight. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t handle it. Alone he would only complicate matters further. Call Jaffe. He was at a point with Bigoness where he could save nothing. There was a point beyond which it made no sense to go. That was called prudence—
… She had wanted to smack him. She had planned it, right there on the steps. She had led him on. Always she had led him on, made use of him, tried to rope him—
The child wept, actual suffering, actual tears. Gabe’s fingers were no longer of any use. They were stiff. Revolted suddenly, his stomach turned and turned. He rushed to the window and flung it open. Down in the alleyway below, the little Bigoness girl pedaled back and forth. Call Jaffe.
“Shhhhh, please—just a minute … you’ll be all right.” He had turned back to the boy, a nondescript dark-haired child. He touched the damp hair. He felt sorry again for Bigoness, a man who had stuck by his children. He forced himself to get control, to think straight. He would have taken his coat off, but it did not seem to him that he had time. He searched (telling himself: I am an educated man, I am a decent man) and he searched for the little hook that held the child down—and discovered instead the toilet handle. An educated man, he finally flushed it. The water rushed, the child howled, the smell rose, and diving down one final time, he found the attachment that bound the child, and ripped it open.
He had to pick up the boy. He had to clean him. Flushing the toilet a second time, he carried him from the bathroom. He moved under weights that were only his clothes, his shirt and jacket and coat. All right, he had been imprudent—now was he happy? But there was no backing out, not if he had gone too far. But when had he begun going too far? He told himself, I am here, and it meant nothing.
“What the hell—you crazy—Put that kid down!” Bigoness was flying at him, his arms making great circles.
“I just took him off—”
“Put him down! I know where you got him, you son of a bitch!”
“You left him tied—”
“You son of a bitch! Give him to me!” The child out-howled his father, as he was wrenched away.
“I wasn’t stealing your baby! God damn it, let’s keep this straight—!”
“Get out! Get out, Wallace, before I call the police!”
“Call the police and you’ll make the biggest—”
“—no mistake to throw a guy like you in jail.” He rocked the weeping child in his arms.
“You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”
“I’m calling the cops. I’ll give you three.”
Quickly Gabe said, “You’ll bring your creditors right down on your head.”
“I’ll bring them down on yours, you crook!”
“Look—look, this is absurd! You know it is! I’m not connected—listen to me, will you? You’d better calm down and think over what’s best for you.”
“I know what’s best … Ah quiet down, Walter honey—oh you son of a bitch, I know what’s—Come on now, Walter, willya? You’ll be all right, boy …” He paced the floor with his child, a worried parent.
“Why don’t we make some kind of deal, please—”
“Why don’t you bug off!”
“Why don’t we make a cash deal?” He put himself in Bigoness’s line of vision. “I want a favor and you need money.”
“I don’t need your money. I got a deal coming up with Vic, my buddy. I’m going to have myself some work in just about two weeks. Three weeks.”
“Your phone call didn’t work out, did it?”
“Why don’t you keep your nose out of my business, you wheedling son of a bitch.” He placed his child, who had howled himself almost to sleep, down on the sofa.
“I’ll give you”—he reached for a figure—“fifty dollars more.”
Bigoness turned; Gabe had a second thought. “A week from Monday, as soon as you and Theresa have signed the papers, fifty dollars more.”
“And this ain’t the black market, huh? What are you trying to do, get me all fucked up with the union?”
“Fifty dollars for an hour’s work. Yes or no?”
“… That’s no big offer, is it, for me taking such a big chance?”
“You’ve already taken forty-five dollars.”
“I didn’t take—you gave. You tried bribing me already.”
“Well—” he said, uncertainly, having still a third thought, “it was just as big a chance then.”
“And that’s why I don’t want nothing to do with it, you understand?”
“Look, yes or no? Fifty dollars.” He had nearly said a hundred.
“Twenty-five now, and twenty-five then?”
“Nothing now.”
“Nothing now never helped nobody’s troubles.”
“You’ve had forty-five already.”
“Jesus! I thought we were going to forget about that. Boy oh boy! First you tell me you’re going to forget it, and I say I’m even willing—and now you keep bringing it up again!”
In the morning Gabe had cashed a check so as to have money for the weekend, for the present, for dinner that evening. He had with him a little under a hundred dollars. What prevented him from handing it all over to Bigoness was only the word bribe. But fifty was surely not less of a bribe—and a hundred might do the trick. A hundred right now. No!
Nevertheless, he saw one door closing, saw it shut. Jaffe could no longer go into court and claim abandonment; a subsequent investigation would uncover Bigoness, uncover this moment. Deep, he had to go deeper. He could not now give Bigoness nothing; of course he couldn’t.
“—want to be surer, then fifty later too.”
“I don’t follow you.” He had to pretend an inability to comprehend, when in fact their two minds—one moving down, one moving up—had apparently met.
“—what I suppose is the best thing, for you to feel safe and me to feel safe, that we ain’t either going to get screwed, is you give me fifty now and then you hold out another fifty f
or then, see, and then …”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“More when it’s over,” Bigoness was saying. But his voice had dropped.
Gabe used Bigoness’s own phrase. “Are you done now?”
“Well … yeah, I’m done.”
“Didn’t you get a letter today, from Mr. Jaffe?”
“I don’t get no mail.”
“You got a letter telling you when and where to show up.”
“What do you think, that’s all I got to worry about?”
“What I’m asking is, do you know what’s wanted of you exactly—the place and the time?”
“I don’t know nothing.”
He took out his billfold. Bigoness sat up. Gabe took from it an old dry-cleaning receipt and wrote on the back the necessary information. He offered the slip of paper to Bigoness, continuing to hold his billfold in the other hand. “Take it,” he said. He pushed it in Bigoness’s direction; Bigoness extended his hand—and then it was fluttering to the rug. Gabe had opened his hand, but Bigoness had not closed his. Very faintly, Bigoness grinned.
“Pick that up.”
“Shit, that ain’t a fifty-dollar bill. Don’t look like it to me.”
“You know what it is. Pick it up.”
“Hey, what am I, a carpet sweeper to you? Huh? Your slave?” Bigoness sat down on the sofa beside his child, who moaned now in his sleep. He started tapping his fingers together before his mouth; inspired, he whistled “Here Comes the Bride.”
“Twice I’ve asked you to pick that paper up.”
Nothing.
“I thought you were concerned about your family.” Bigoness’s eyes were on his billfold; deliberately he had not put it away: had that been a mistake? “I thought you were a man who worried about doctor’s bills.”
“All dressed in white … da-da da-da-da …”
This stubbornness! This thick head! To think that he had put the idea of a bribe into this dumb ox’s head!
“Look, what kind of bastard are you—”
“Watch—” Bigoness began.
“We’re talking about a baby. Pick that money up!”
“It ain’t money.”
“Paper! Pick it—”
“I didn’t ask for this recession, Wallace, before you blow a gut. I never asked for hard times.”
“What kind of—”
“Ah shit, what kind are you? Huh? I’m taking the big risk, while you guys make thousands.”
“Can’t I get it into your head—”
Bigoness waved one hand. “Okay, you’re the happy father then, what do I care? I’m giving you a kid for the rest of your life. Don’t you appreciate that, Poppa? A little—what? Boy? Girl?”
“—beside the point.”
“Well, I got a right to know what it is. Here you keep telling me that kid really belongs to me, I got a right at least to know what it is.” He waited.
“A girl.”
“… Well, maybe I’d like another little girl around here. Just to even things up. Man, you give me a hard enough time, in the end I might just as well move the little bastard right in here with the rest of ’em.”
Gabe said nothing; no muscle moved.
“At least that’d be the legal thing, right? You got to consider that, don’t you?”
“Adoption is perfectly legal. Don’t be sly.”
Bigoness shook his head as though he knew better. “That may be and then it might not be, given the way things are. But if I’m willing to give up a little baby, seems to me you ought to have a little more respect. A hundred dollars more for a whole little baby—man, that’s not bad.”
“Either you pick up that paper or I leave. I didn’t make this recession either, don’t be a God damn fool. I didn’t give you your hard times. I’m sorry about all your marital difficulties, I’m sorry you’re out of a job—”
“Oh yeah, you’re sorry.”
“Either you pick it up—” He felt silly, picky, quibbling; he felt he was missing the point himself. Was everything to come down to this—his having his way? “Or I leave and you get nothing.”
No response.
“I mean that.” No word from Bigoness, no movement at all. No whistling. Without any clear impression of what would follow, Gabe took a step toward the door. And Bigoness ducked down; his hand swooped across the rug; he twisted the paper around in his fingers, then shoved it into his shirt pocket.
They were silent, however, as though it were not quite over. Bigoness said, “You’re getting me cheap, Mister. When a man is down,” he said sourly, “you sure do know how to make him crawl around for you.”
But even as Bigoness spoke, Gabe felt moved to thrust the entire billfold at him. Everything. Go all out. What was the difference? He just wanted it over! He looked at Bigoness, Bigoness at the billfold. Gabe thought: he only wants what I put it in his head to want.
Bigoness whined, “What about expenses?”
“I gave you forty-five—”
“Oh shit—”
“Here.” He did not think, did not reason. He jammed a bill into Bigoness’s hand. He hoped it would be a ten; it turned out to be a twenty. What difference? “The rest you get after you sign.”
“You ain’t going to subtract—”
“No. No!”
He turned, just as the little boy rolled over and woke up. Of course Bigoness had known that he had not been stealing the child. Yes, Bigoness was smarter than he was, smarter under pressure. Why shouldn’t he be? He moved through the door, so weary that he could not have put up much resistance had the extortionist, the thief, the miserable bastard chosen that moment to attack him from behind for the rest of the money. But no one laid a finger on him as he passed out the door and down the stairway. All the violent thoughts had been his own.
He emerged from the front door as a woman with a shopping bag was struggling up the porch steps, one at a time. He held the door open for her.
“Oh, how is little Walter?” she asked.
“Oh—I—”
“Aren’t you …?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, I saw you going in …”
“Yes?”
“I thought you were Harry’s doctor.” She giggled. “You look like a doctor.”
“I’m just—”
“Well, isn’t it something?”
“Yes.”
“We never cared for her, you know. Not a bit. I’ve never myself liked Southerners. And my husband, well, he spotted her right off.”
“Well, yes—”
“Harry, on the other hand, is good to those children as gold.”
“Yes—I have to be going—” He showed her that he was about to release the door.
“It’s a shame, a hard-working boy like that, and, well, I won’t even say the sort she is. Maybe she’ll work out this time, but she’s no proper stepmother even,” she said hopelessly. “Just running off—”
“Excuse me, I have to go—be going—”
“—better off without her, if you want my opinion. Don’t you believe—”
“I think—” said Gabe, and breaking away, he let fly the door.
He drove back to Chicago as madly as he had left it. He went immediately to the doctor’s office, and by the time he got to the Loop for drinks it was nearly six. A slender, dark-haired girl had sat alone at a table for half an hour, the waitress told him, then paid for her drink and left. He drove home; not till he was there did he remember that he had forgotten the quilt. At nine Libby called. She asked if he would fill in for their baby-sitter on Christmas Eve; their regular girl had gone home for the holidays. He said yes. It would give him something to do the night before he left. It would please Libby and it would please him—if not now, then. He said yes, and then he did not let Libby hang up. He talked and talked; he said more words to her than he had in years. He told her he had gone to the doctor in the afternoon and gotten the second of three penicillin shots. He told her how he had leaned over in a movie and
hit his head on the corner of the seat. He had dropped his billfold, tried to pick it up, and whack. He should have gone off instantly to wash it out but had neglected to. He hadn’t realized he had broken the skin. However, had he not gone to the doctor the next day, he might well have wound up with a serious case of blood poisoning. So near the brain … He did not ask to speak to Paul. He saw no way of getting around to it, no cool, calm way even of his making the request that might not send Libby screaming down the hall. And he did not call Jaffe. He had called a day or two before to say that everything was fine, just perfect. There was no sense in calling again. After all, there was nothing for Jaffe to do; he had himself done everything.
He went to bed earlier than he should have, with the result that he slept badly. His head ached all through the night. The doctor had assured him that he would not expire in his sleep; the doctor was a humorous man who took minor ailments lightly. Of course, Gabe had only raised the question lightly—he did not really expect to die. Nevertheless, for long stretches he did not sleep because he would not allow himself to. It was as though his illness might overpower him were he not awake to protect himself. But dozing, he had dreams of struggle and loss, dreams of falling. He was wrestling with Bigoness over a pit alive with monsters. They rolled and rolled, arms locked about one another, and then they fell, onto Bigoness’s rug.
He awoke. The room was dark. He set his mind a task. He tried to figure out the amount of money that would have been appropriate—safe—wise—binding—right—to have promised Harry Bigoness.
5
Gabe:
We will be at the Cape Cod Room (splurge! our sixth anniversary!) of the Hotel Drake (AM 3-4582) from 7-8:30. At Surf Theater (AM 4-9724) till 10:20. Meet train at LaSalle St. Station 10:45. Home by 11:15 thereabouts. Be charming to Mrs. Herz when we bring her home. Very charming. I am nervous—but have not been so expectant in years. Oh brave new world and so on. If Rachel wakes up (she will), expect you to read to her. Bottle may help.
L.
On her way out she handed the note to him. “Here’s where we’ll be,” she had said. At seven-thirty, while they were still at the Drake he wrote a memorandum to himself on the back of Libby’s note.
