This Old Heart of Mine

by Thomas Berger

  “I don’t know, Carlo,” said Splendor, sitting down but leaving one arm in his topcoat, as a fervent Mormon does with his ritual underwear while taking a bath. “You just don’t have any sense.”

  “Well damn me,” swore the president and commander in chief. “Wasn’t it you, not more than five minutes ago, who goaded me into doing the honorable thing? What the hell do I care whether or not this town has an efficient drainage system? I’m just motivated by a need to be adequate, like everybody else.”

  “But surely you won’t deny a tendency toward quixotism,” said Don Quixote Mainwaring, with a typical deficiency of self-knowledge: Dr. Goodykuntz! Herman Melville!

  But Reinhart answered him quietly: “I take it you don’t think we’ll win.”

  “On the other hand,” said Splendor, at last removing his arm from the coat, “what have I got to lose?” One thing, he always had plenty of self-pity.

  “Bud,” said Claude, “I see right off I won’t get nowhere with you by mentioning God, Mother, and the U.S.A. I do believe you turned atheist and traitor behind my back. All I can say is, I truly hope your tortures in Hades are as short as your ingrate’s memory, for I never bear a grudge, buddy boy, you know that. Nevertheless I got a bite like a adder, whatever that is. Kindly inform me what a adder is, Mr. Splendor Mainwaring.”

  He spun around to face the vice-president, who quailed. However, Claude himself was none too potent there in the inner office for the first time since he had vacated it in favor of Reinhart. Thus he now had to take a position on Reinhart’s ground, and the fact that he had come to his protégé, rather than vice versa, showed who held the reins. He was surrounded, standing in the center of the room with an executive behind a desk on either side of him. Yet he was far from out.

  And Splendor wasted no time in proving himself of dubious value to the good fight. Claude seemed to have the same effect on him as heroin, with the decent difference that he did not assume the coon accent.

  “I don’t know, sir.” He displayed some extra white of eye, and Reinhart, who would rather have punched him, said: “It’s a type of organism that crawls upon its belly.”

  Taking this personally, Claude faced Reinhart again and gestured with his cavalry hat. “Bud, nobody in my long history of human relations ever turned on me the way you have. I never thought I’d have my own crown of thorns and Judas to taunt me for my big flaw: love of people.”

  “Claude,” said Reinhart, “why don’t you cut it out? All we are going to do is insist that a real sewer be built to serve the citizens of this town. You can even take pride, since it actually represents your own idea before the crooks took over.” He made that excuse available if Claude wished to take it, for he really was sensitive to the charge of ingratitude.

  With a wave of his magic hat towards the windows, Claude transformed the gravel waste outside into a cemetery. “Here lies C. Hum-bold,” he read from the nearest tombstone, “Done to Death Most Foul by the Hand of—here’s a buck to go buy a cold-chisel, bud, and chip in your John Hancock. I won’t say your name: the Lord has paralyzed my tongue in that area.”

  “You never did.”

  “Awright then, I will: Benedick Arnold.” Claude gave a so-there nod to his head, and strutted some. With renewed self-respect, he turned again on Splendor.

  “Just when, may I ask, did you get this idea to defy me, my dear sir? I always knew your principles was very high indeed and your record to match, but I never knew they was suicidal, if you grab my meaning”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Humbold, I understand,” Splendor responded in the quick-syllabled, thick-lipped (though his were thin) mode used by slaves trying to avoid a whipping—Reinhart had seen that in the movies and historical fiction and assumed those also were Splendor’s sources because nobody hereabout ever took a hand to a darky.

  Reinhart addressed the back of Claude’s checkered topcoat: “Think of it this way: as a success of yours, because you trained me.”

  The ex-boss came slowly around, saying: “Benedick, I hope you know what it means to be all by your lonesome behind six foot of rock and steel. Ben boy, you’ll have only the Almighty to talk to where you’re going. Think about it, Arnie, and don’t come sniffling to me when it’s too late and you are already up the river. What is it, ten to twenty for fraud? And then when you get out, Ben, all the good folk spit on the ex-con. Am boy, you lose your franchise, the sanctified privilege and obligation to vote for the man of your choice whatever his creed, code, or color.” At the last word he did a sort of bump and grind for the benefit of Splendor behind him. “And don’t show up at the Presbyterian Church, they don’t want a worshiper bearing the smell of the hoosegow.”

  “You can sit down if you like, Claude.”

  “Never in the presence of the heathen and dissolute, Ben. You know that. Nor will I bare my head before an atheist.” He pulled his hat down so far that his ears were horizontal projections.

  To cap his heresy, Reinhart at this point lighted an enormous green cigar. He said: “I just wanted you to be comfortable while I give you a bit of data.”

  Claude put his features through venomous calisthenics, hissed, and then endeavored to strike like the notorious reptile whose name he had cited—except that the American puffing adder is more properly called the hognose snake and, though it can swell to more than its natural size, altogether harmless.

  “Ben you make me merciless,” he said. “I got them contracts you signed, and likewise your scribble on all them orders, requisitions, invoices, checks, statements, bills of lading, agreements to buy, eminent domains, no! prosses, jus primae noctises, not to mention sub specie aeternitatis and circumspices. Amie, your goose is reamed, steamed, and dry cleaned. The things you done with public moneys would grow fur on a fish! Misrepresentation, Benny, fraud, malfeasance, mayhem, etcetera. Sections 1 through 285 of the charter of every decent municipality in Christendom, violated. Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, Ben. Don’t monkey with it!”

  “That’s what I wanted to point out to you, Claude.” Reinhart seized one of the documents from the litter on the desk, turned it over, and wrote upon it: CARLO B. REINHART. “There you have my legal signature, as used on various Army records which can be found in the files of the Adjutant General’s Office in Washington.”

  “One second, Benny boy,” said Claude, leaning over to study the hen tracks. There was some dampness in the crown of his sombrero. “I would say that was the work of a five-year-old imbecile, didn’t I know any such sympathy was wasted.”

  “Be that as it may,” answered Reinhart, “in point of law I think you will find that signifies me. Now then, here is what I put at the bottom of all those papers you speak about.”

  He wrote CARL L. REINHART, slanting left, letters tall and thin, whereas the genuine were short and fat, went rightwards, and towards the end of the name grew giddy and eventually fell off the line to the next below.

  Claude drew from his pocket the contract Reinhart had signed on accepting the presidency, and compared signatures, lowering his face almost to the paper.

  “What got me,” said Reinhart, “is how you never noticed the missing o.” He looked to Splendor for a little appreciation and saw the vice-president refuse to meet his eye.

  “You say that is an o there?” asked Claude.

  Reinhart grinned. “It really couldn’t be clearer, and you know it. And I call your attention to the middle initial.”

  Great black circles were forming around Claude’s eyes, and his lips were cracking in a kind of instant fever. It was astonishing to Reinhart that he was beating the boss so easily. But it went to show that entrepreneurs were not so tough as alleged. All it takes is a little counteraggression, of course supported with a certain intelligence.

  “Ben,” said Claude in a voice that broke, “I ain’t the one to lead the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death when the Russkies hold the overwhelming odds, and I only mind when someone beats me fair and square, whereas I admire you for winning mean and dirty. A
s a bidnissman, you are rotten to the core, and God bless you.” He reached across and patted Reinhart’s shoulder with his left hand while reaching for the desk set with his right. The set was the one he had left behind, offering pen, mechanical pencil, and between them a little brass clock, all on a slab of green onyx into which was sunk a silver tablet engraved with his name and the compliments of the Southern Ohio Realtors Assn.

  Claude chose the pen, which as a matter of fact Reinhart had used to sign every document at Cosmo, including the original contract.

  “The ony trouble is,” he stated, still lugubrious, “you are so darn dumb, if you will excuse the French.” Then, snorting away his crocodile tears, he spread out the contract and made the necessary improvements in Reinhart’s signature thereon: adding the o to “Carl,” and converting the L to a B by means of two tiny loops.

  “I suppose,” said Reinhart, keeping his chin up, “that you are hardly serious, performing this forgery in the presence of witnesses.”

  “Eggs-actly,” Claude answered ruthlessly. “It is a joke, like what you wrote in front of Honorable Bob J. and C. Roy.” The balloon of his face was again inflated smooth. He replaced the pen in its socket, put the contract inside his suit, and smiled but failed to jeer. “It’s swell to work with fellows who will stand up like a man and admit it when they’re wrong. Bud, I wish you a happy Halloween and Mr. Splendor Mainwaring, Your Honor, the same goes to you.” He fluttered his fingers at the V.-P., who had begun to grin toothily. “And I am sure glad, bud, that with a baby coming soon you won’t have to leave that nice home on Buena Vista.”

  Reinhart remained in a state of shock for some time after Claude left. To Splendor’s credit, the vice-president did what he could in the way of consolation.

  “You see, Carlo,” he said, “your trick would never have stood up in a court of law, anyway. Whatever name you wrote, it was definitely you who signed it, and not, I believe, under any type of duress. Perhaps if you had arranged for some other evidence that you intentionally used a pseudo-signature so as to gain the confidence of the guilty parties to a swindle—say a registered letter to some individual not involved….”

  “Ah,” said Reinhart, “what do you know about it?”

  Splendor winced. “If I were as rude as you, I could point out that it might have helped if I had been taken into your confidence.” Reinhart’s failure to alter expression offended him further, and he expanded his charges: “Why did you give me this job if I was not to have a function? It destroys a man to sit here day after day, accepting money for doing nothing. You talk of the big swindle, but ignore the little frauds of which—”

  “No,” Reinhart at last interrupted, “no, that’s not what concerns me this moment…. I am just struck by the realization that for the sake of my own pride I almost got my wife and unborn child turned out into the cold. You can talk all you want to about a man’s honor, but it is different things to different people, or even the same person in different situations.”

  Splendor agreed, and added: “If I may be so bold, Carlo, you will make a commonplace discovery into an enterprise of great pitch and moment.”

  “Well it is, for me,” Reinhart admitted. By his failure he had let himself open to a certain amount of impudence from his friend and colleague, and it would have been too shamefully easy to point out Splendor’s inadequacies.

  The latter had gone into quite a good mood and was rubbing his beige palms together.

  “Now,” he said, “we can get to work.”

  “On what?” Reinhart asked in a clipped, sarcastic manner. “No irony, please. I may have to accept the status quo at present, but as soon after the baby is born as is feasible, I’m going to resign. I will not permanently remain in a job where I have lost face.”

  The vice-president left his desk and took up Claude’s late position in the center of the room. Reinhart recognized the old fanatical look he had not seen since the days of Dr. Goodykuntz.

  “Isn’t this what we’ve always wanted?” Splendor cried, his lower jaw continuing to tremble between sentences. “Our backs to the wall, no hope of succor, food gone, and ammunition in short supply. What do we do now, boys?” he asked an invisible Lost Battalion, and gave the answer as if from them: “We attack!”

  “Take it easy, Splendor. Don’t you remember? We just did that.” Reinhart unobtrusively reached towards the water carafe which was part of his desk equipment, meaning to dash its contents at the Negro if reason would not calm him. He absolutely would not again join in any extravagance.

  “I beg to correct you. And don’t drench me until you’ve heard me out,” Splendor said more moderately. “What we have seen is an attempt at negotiation, and its inevitable failure. Now for the frontal assault.” He hastily waved Reinhart down. “O.K., disregard the military idiom: I use it only because you have always shown an adolescent taste for glory.”

  “Yes,” said Reinhart, “at one time that was certainly true about me; but the very fact that I can listen to you sneer at it now without punching your snoot proves I have matured.”

  Chapter 21

  “You’ve got me wrong,” Splendor said evenly. “You’ve always had me wrong from the first, but I don’t mind.”

  “Well, why don’t you mind?” asked Reinhart. “If anybody had always had me wrong, I would mind. It’s the normal thing to do. Go on, mind.”

  “Because, simply because I want to get on to more important things.” You couldn’t say that Splendor struck a pose; he always stood like that if you were seated.

  Reinhart said: “Personally, I find your nobility irrelevant, or perhaps just late. What I cannot understand, to put it as decently as possible, is why your high principles are reserved only for me. And not ten minutes ago you backed down disgracefully from Claude Humbold. Is it unfair to mention Dr. Goodykuntz? Whose head wore the turban at the moment of truth? Who had to endure being accused as a plagiarist by the editors of The Midland Review? I can tell you right now that two things in all the world that I do not want to be are nonchemical physician and writer. I was deeply humiliated on both occasions, and the latter almost broke up my marriage.”

  Splendor continued to stand between the desks, untouched, in the neat pinstripe with a white handkerchief above his heart.

  “I’ll tell you, Carlo, some other time we’ll draw up your bill of particulars against me, but at the moment I ask you to put aside my delinquencies, your plans for wreaking revenge, Dr. Goodykuntz, et al., the whole kit and caboodle.” Splendor spoke with some passion, and his saliva spray could be seen against the light. “I ask us now to go beyond all these petty specificities, to move out of the strait passages onto the broad plains where are enacted the events of magnitude and scope which give our civilization its peculiar character. Materialism, my dear Carlo, the superstition that we consist in no more than three yards of intestine beginning with an open maw and terminating in a rectum, is our enemy, and not its poor disreputable advocates, the victims of the delusion so coarsely expressed in the maxim you and I both heard while serving with our armed forces in the late conflict: ‘If you can’t eat it or copulate with it, urinate on it.’“

  Splendor wiped his mouth with his breast-pocket handkerchief and replaced it messy. His eyes were preoccupied. He resumed: “You know why we must build this sewer, more than ever now that Mr. Humbold will oppose us with all his might?”

  He was the only person in the whole organization, not excluding the secretaries or the guy who came to read the electric meter, who addressed Humbold in the polite style—no doubt for the simple reason that he had never been told “call me Claude.” But Reinhart suddenly liked to think that Splendor would have been formal anyway: the last gentleman on earth, with his back against the wall, and nobody else here but us Visigoths.

  “Certainly not to benefit the population,” Splendor answered himself. “The present sanitary facilities will be adequate until at least 1980, according to the statistical projection made last year by the county engineers. T
he average town resident unit produces 1,512.7 cubic feet of sewerage annually. The annual percentage of increase for the next 35 years, allowing for a steady rise in the number of automatic washing machines, extra bathrooms, exterior water hydrants, etc., added to existing homes, allowing even for the construction of more additional residences than the town has space for—as you know, because of surrounding communities we cannot grow much—this on the one hand, and on the other, our only real industry, the Amalgamated Pencil Company, providing it expands beyond the wildest dreams of avarice on the part of its management”—Splendor cleared his throat—“could increase its present flow of sewage by 150 per cent without overencumbering the present mains, which after all date only from 1932, with a new treatment plant in ‘38.”

  He stopped here, in full cognizance of the effect on Reinhart.

  “You know all this for a fact?” asked the latter, in lieu of anything more striking.

  “For three months,” said Splendor, “I had nothing to do as vice-president but study the field. In all modesty I can describe myself as a sanitary engineer in all but the certificate.” He returned to his desk and produced from its drawers sundry volumes, graphs, and charts that Reinhart was willing without argument to accept as the last word on the theme. He had always wondered what Splendor was reading while he, Reinhart, signed requisitions for Johnny Reo.

  “You did not get these by mail from Pocatello, Idaho?”

  Splendor laughed politely—that is, not in Reinhart’s face but towards the windows. “Never fear. Ah, no, the county engineer’s office, with its excellent library, is very cooperative on such matters.”

  “Yes,” said Reinhart with no malice, “and that office would be in the courthouse, whose location you would know, having been in jail there last spring.” Splendor nodded benignly. Reinhart then chuckled, though feeling as exhausted as if he had run a mile. With approaching fatherhood, he suffered a marked diminution of the old endurance; yet he would not let this make him mean. “Well,” he said, “I guess you have showed us.”