Voices From the Street

by Philip K. Dick

  “As a painter,” she said, “you should be interested in materials. Inks and papers… We experiment with various processes. We’re especially interested in new methods of reproducing cuts.”

  Hadley nodded. His agreement was part of the fiction he knew was being maintained: she understood he was not a painter, but she chose to speak of him as a painter. It was her pleasure, and it was his to hold up the other end. It was agreeable to him; astonished, he noticed how different it made him feel. And that, perhaps, was the reason for the fiction. Shrewd, watchful, she was creating him. What she said affected and altered him; in a few simple words she had distinctly remolded Stuart Hadley.

  “We want,” she said, “to do more work with woodcuts—with blocks. That slows printing speed, and the number of impressions. But”—again she smiled her thin colorless humorless smile—“we never even began to sell what we printed. We never had that problem.”

  In the corner at his desk, Dave Gold puffed on his pipe, stared down at the floor, listened to what was being said. His soft, flabby body, shapeless in baggy tweeds, impressed heavy fabric, invited attack. A helpless slug to be stepped on. Dave Gold completed the unit of which Sorrell was one part. The hitter and the hit. There was a maddening quality about the Golds; silent or vocal, they culled hostility.

  Hadley had come over to apologize. He had thought he was sorry for them, shameful for what had happened to them. Now he was angered. Instead of being apologetic he was outraged; he believed, suddenly, that he had come to complete what Bob Sorrell had begun. Dave and Laura sat mutely waiting for him to begin on them. The former loud talk had been spurs to goad him on; apprehensively, the two of them sat in their own apartment, prepared to receive whatever was in store for them.

  But he said nothing. He merely ignored them and talked to Marsha Frazier. He recalled what they had said about her; he was amused. They didn’t like her. His amusement increased. For a time he no longer felt sick and unhappy; he was perking up. In the presence of the slim, competent woman, he regained his manhood, preened his feathers. She was interested in him… Then it occurred to him to wonder about the two children.

  “Are you solely responsible for them?” he asked her. “The two children, Timmy and Pat.”

  She laughed. “Parthenogenesis? No—I’m divorced. I was married to an Army major.” After a time she added: “During World War II.”

  Stuart Hadley studied the two children and realized that what she said was not true. The girl Pat was three at the most; and the war had been over seven years. But it seemed all right. It fit in with the leisure of the room: truth had been dissolved by contentedness. The artist in him, the dreamer, the salesman, all responded equally. The little-boy liar spinning his big plans for the future crept to the surface and lay over him, again, like a familiar warm hide. Everything in Stuart Hadley answered to this genial flexibility, where small became large, large became incredible. Gratefully, he was drifting back to a happier age, a primeval core of his life. If Marsha Frazier cared to utter a statement, the statement rang with the higher veracity of pleasantness. It was true, in the old sense, the ancient sense that he remembered so well: it pleased the teller and the hearer.

  “I’ve seen your magazine,” Hadley said, Prometheus unbound. “Nice-looking… I didn’t get a chance to go too deeply into it, but what I saw seemed fine.”

  This was weighed carefully, and accepted. A rapport existed between the two of them, from which the Golds were excluded. “I wish you could see our projected fall issue,” Marsha said, nodding. “We have some of the dummy set up, but we’ve had to mark time until we know where we stand financially.”

  Stuart Hadley listened, contemplated the thought of a layout for a magazine. What kind of magazine? What did he really know about it? But it didn’t matter. He was content to express knowledge, and she was content to hear.

  It was a strange relationship that was building up between them. Neither knew a thing about the other; both had substituted a higher intuitive awareness. To her, he was a painter… What was she to him? He questioned himself, trying to put together the fabric of his own hopes, desires, the stuff of his own world.

  “I used to be active in literary circles,” his usual voice announced, a casual reference that shocked him into almost wakefulness. There was no truth in the statement whatsoever. “I helped put out a college publication, nothing of any importance. I was art editor.”

  From the lean pickings of his past he had assembled this masterpiece of misinformation. In high school he had contributed a cartoon to the semester yearbook: the Green and Crimson. He had dated a girl who proofread manuscripts. He had been interested in photography: when pictures of the graduates were taken he had fixed the lighting. He had done well in mechanical drawing; he had been interested temporarily in layouts and designs. And he had been on the art staff of his college newspaper; Dave Gold had got him the job. All these were now combined to form a new object. Handled by his mind, the object arose and announced itself.

  “We tried various lithographic techniques,” it uttered, through his vocal organs and mouth. “Of course, for the kind of material we were presenting, there was no general public market. We failed to find a mass response…but that’s not surprising.”

  Slumped over at his desk, Dave Gold gave no sign that he had heard this fantastic invention. Probably he had. Probably he felt helpless to do anything about it. Probably it seemed useless, trivial, to point out that Hadley had done nothing but paste mats to layout sheets. It was beside the point.

  Drowsy with the summer-evening warmth, the glass of wine in his hands, Hadley lay back and conversed with Marsha Frazier. Her son, Timmy, fell asleep; at his desk Dave Gold drooped lower and lower, his pipe out, his body limp. Laura sat like a lump, of stale dough. Outside, along the sidewalk, people strolled back and forth, walking off their night restlessness.

  When Marsha and her children left, Hadley left with them. He carried the little girl downstairs and placed her in the backseat of the Studebaker. Pat stirred and settled against the upholstery. Behind him, down the apartment-house stairs, came Marsha, holding on to Timmy’s hand. The boy peevishly made his way to the car and crawled into the back, where he curled up beside his sister in a sleepy, cross ball.

  Hadley stood uncertainly on the sidewalk as Marsha strolled around to the other side of the car, long-legged, very straight and thin in the evening darkness. “Hop in,” she said briefly. “I’ll take you home.”

  “You’re sure—,” he began. As he protested, he climbed in and closed the door. “It’s not far; I can walk it.”

  Marsha, unlit cigarette between her lips, started up the motor. “Takes a minute to warm.” She leaned over to light her cigarette. “It killed those two to come running to me. Dave and Laura. They were completely demoralized.”

  “I know,” Hadley said.

  “Their ability to function crumbles under the first hard knock. It’s all a sham.” Gazing straight ahead of her, she watched the distant movement of cars and people, the brightly lit cluster of neon signs that was the downtown business section. “Sham, sham, sham.” She started up the car, snapped on the lights, and glided out into the street.

  She parked in front of his apartment building, and they sat for a time, the only two awake anywhere in sight. Both children were sound asleep in the back. No shapes were visible on the dark sidewalks. Up and down the silent streets lights were beginning to snap off one by one. It was almost one o’clock.

  “You’re married?” Marsha asked.

  He told her about Ellen and Pete.

  “How old is the baby? A month?” She dusted her cigarette against the open car window. “You’re lucky. You’ve got a lot ahead of you… I remember when Timmy was a baby. It’s a different world. Every change in him is a change in yourself.”

  “Do you come down the peninsula much?” Hadley asked.

  “Sometimes. When I feel like it. I was down the days Beckheim spoke here… That’s when I met you. You went with D
ave and Laura. You heard him…but only the last part, you said.”

  “I went back the next night and heard it all.”

  “You did?” Marsha reflected. “What did you think of him?”

  “I thought—it seemed to me he was very impressive.” Hadley let put his breath with a rush. “I thought he spoke well.”

  “He’s an unusual man. I’ve been interested in him. Do you know anything about him? I’ll tell you what I know, for what it’s worth. Theodore Beckheim is fifty-five years old, although he isn’t sure that’s exact. He was born in Vinegar Bend, Alabama.”

  “He’s a Negro, isn’t he?” Hadley asked.

  “That’s right. When he was thirteen he ran away to New Orleans. He got a job with a coffee-roasting factory. Every day he rowed out into the bay and climbed aboard coffee ships coming in from Brazil. He sampled the different coffees… He got twenty-five cents an hour for that. When he was eighteen he got married. He had children, three sons. His wife died in 1916. In 1918 he joined the Army; they sent him overseas. He didn’t come directly back… He traveled down into Africa, to the Gold Coast. In South Africa he worked in the mines. He came back to the United States just before the big bust. He had a little money—he invested it in land. He was going to farm, he and his three sons. When the bust came they lost the land; they couldn’t meet the mortgage payments. They left the country—it was in Virginia—and drifted back into town. To Chicago. The Black Belt.”

  “Did—he start the Society?”

  “No,” Marsha said. “There was a lot of religious activity in Chicago in the early thirties. There was even a cult of Mohammedan Negroes… There was a Middle Eastern heresy, called Baha’i. A lot of sects, mystical movements. The Watchmen Society was founded back in 1887. A splinter fundamentalist group, split off from the Baptists. A little old man, a Negro, was running if. John Middleton Frisbey. They had a soup kitchen…gave out food as a come-on. To get the food you had to listen to their story, read the People’s Watchman. Beckheim and his sons wandered into the mission, got the food and the pitch along with it. Those were tough times… You don’t remember that.”

  “Do you?” Hadley asked her.

  Marsha smiled, started to answer, then smiled again. “What do you think? How old do I look? An old woman with two kids…”

  Hadley made a guess. “About—thirty.”

  “I’m twenty-six. Timmy was born when I was sixteen. I’ll tell you about that sometime. No, I don’t remember those days. But I’ve heard Beckheim speak about them.”

  “In private? In conversation?”

  She nodded. “Oh, yes.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In San Francisco. He had a heart attack early this month.” She spoke dispassionately. “He’s resting up…then he’s going north, to Sacramento, up to Oregon and Washington.”

  “Will he be all right?”

  “I think so. But he’s got to take it easier. He does too much… He doesn’t realize he’s getting old.”

  “How do you fit in with the Society?” Hadley asked her.

  Presently she said: “I can’t give you an answer. I don’t know, myself. I’ve done a lot of thinking about the Society. In the next issue—if it ever comes out—we want to run an account of it. We have good photos, and drawings, I think.” She glanced at him. “Tell me what you think of this idea. Sketches of the types of people who make up the Society. Listening to Beckheim…drawn at the meetings. Of course, we can take all the photographs we want. But I want to capture more.”

  “Yes,” Hadley agreed.

  “Part of the dummy is made up, part isn’t. We still have blanks here and there. Since there’s no rush…no deadline to meet.” Abruptly she tossed her cigarette out the window. “Well, another day.” She reached over and pushed open the door on his side. “Maybe I’ll see you again. Good night.”

  Without warning, Hadley found himself standing on the sidewalk. The car started up, Marsha waved briefly, and the car roared off into the darkness.

  For a time he stood. Then he turned and walked slowly toward the apartment building. All the things that had happened, all that had been said and seen, flowed through his mind out of control. He gave up battling; there had been too much for him to assimilate just yet. Maybe later. Or maybe not. He found his key, unlocked the heavy front door, and entered the lobby.

  Under his door there was only the dim glow of the night-light. Sally and Bob had gone back up the coast in their magnificent green Nash. He let himself in, grateful for the silence. The bedroom door was open; Pete lay in his bassinet. Ellen was a vague heap in the center of the double bed. Sound asleep… He locked the door and began untying his shoes.

  He was out at lunch, the next day, when Marsha brought the copy of Succubus.

  At the counter, Olsen stood with the telephone pressed to his head, conversing angrily with a customer. Fergesson was in the TV display room, showing a big Westinghouse combination. Hadley hurried downstairs to the crapper. He urinated rapidly, washed his hands, smoothed down his hair and examined his face, teeth, and appearance in the mirror. He picked at his teeth, spat into the bowl, unbuttoned his shirt and rubbed a trifle more Arrid into his steaming armpits, and then raced back upstairs.

  Olsen was off the phone and on his way down to the service department. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded gruffly. “Some twat was in here looking for you—not your wife.” He jerked his thumb at the counter. “Left something for you—waited around and finally took her can out of here.”

  “Who was she?” Hadley asked, his heart thudding.

  “Never saw her before.” Olsen disappeared down the stairs three at a time. “Anyhow, turn them upside down and they’re all alike.”

  Hadley rummaged around behind the counter until he found a flat manila package. Trembling, he laid it on the counter and, opening it, slid out the contents. At first he was disappointed. Advertising? A free sample? It was a periodical, a magazine. And then he identified it. The back of his neck twitched and shuddered as he read the black hard lines of type.

  SUCCUBUS

  a magazine for

  people who want to know

  He turned it over. A slip of paper fluttered from it to the floor; he grabbed it up. In neat, precise woman’s pencil it read:

  “…couldn’t wait. See you tomorrow at noon. You owe me one dollar for the copy…m.f.”

  He pocketed the note deep in the cavity of his wallet. Silting down on the bottom drawer of the tube cabinet, he began leafing nervously, tautly, through the copy of Succubus: the magazine for people who couldn’t stand not knowing.

  It was not what he had expected. For the rest of the day he took his free minutes to pore over it.

  This was not a college publication. There was no musty academic timbre, no critical articles on Henry James. He began to breathe slowly, shallowly, as he turned the pages.

  Succubus was a political sheet.

  For a long time he stood holding it in his hands, wondering what came next. When customers entered, he dropped it behind the counter, reassembled himself, and headed out to wait on them. As soon as they were gone he was back poring over it.

  Not political in the ordinary sense: not a newsmagazine, or a party organ. Not a “journal of interpretation,” with contributions by Elmer Davis, Clifton Fadiman, John Flynn, Frieda Utley, or any names he knew. It was slick—that much fitted his expectation. The cover was glossy, multicolored, a work of art. It showed a medieval alchemistic flask of some kind as a backdrop; superimposed on the flask in bold thick strokes of ink was a symbolistic Communist figure.

  It took him a long time to unscramble the cover, and even then he wasn’t sure he had it all. Apparently, it was to show the infiltration of Communists into colleges: the Communist was posing as a savant. Within the alchemist’s trappings (symbols of knowledge) were the beard and bloody hand, the dripping hammer and sickle.

  Inside was a lead editorial. The paper was glossy, heavy; the type was black and clean. The f
ormat was routine, but satisfactory. It was not arty: it was firm and solid. At random, he found a whole section of photographs of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings. And after that, schematics of what Berlin would have been like had the Nazis won the war.

  One section contained a section of a mural; or rather, a projected mural. Stiff, heavy figures. Workers, soldiers, holding flags and standing together. Mothers with children. Big-faced peasants. All very sturdy and healthy. Terribly healthy. Men tilling the soil, sorting grain.

  He skimmed an article on Hollywood: a photo of Sam Goldwyn stared fleshily up at him. A cut of Barney Balaban. A cut of Bernard Baruch. A cut of Henry Morgenthau.

  JEWISH CONTROL OF THE FILM INDUSTRY:

  FIVE BILLIONS IN POISON

  Another article couldn’t be ignored:

  INSIDE WALL STREET: THE INTERNATIONAL

  PLUTOCRATIC CONSPIRACY

  And another:

  KARL MARX—PROPHET OF ZIONISM

  Weakly, Hadley slid Succubus back into its manila folder. He could understand why Dave and Laura disliked Marsha, why they had been completely demoralized by having to ask help from her. He could understand now the depth of the conflict between them, why Dave did no work for Succubus.

  Succubus was a racist, neofascist tract.

  But it didn’t look like a racist, neofascist tract: it wasn’t crude and bombastic. He would have expected a racist tract to be printed on cheap newsprint: a disreputable, ugly four-page throwaway with glaring headlines, insulting to intelligence and taste. He would have expected fantastic filth: wild charges, half-crazed assertions and denouncements. Something that reeked of the crackpot, slimy with violence. A militant, fanatic sheet, pornographic and disgusting, words misspelled, faulty grammar: the work of ignorant, vitriolic men, wizened little men bitter and acid with hate. A sour, ranting sheet. A vulgarity.

  Succubus was expensive, tasteful, beautifully printed. It was not avant; there were no experiments with format or type. It was heavy, conservative-like the men and women shown in the murals. It was not daring, artistically; it was a solidly built object, well bound and well organized. The articles were written lucidly, with erudition and poise. No ranting. No fantastic charges; the overall impression was one of moderation. Could a fascist, racist sheet be moderate?