“He’s a native-born Southsider, and he’s been known to claim—at different times, of course—every nationality in the world. He used to run around with the newspaper crowd in the early twenties, that wild, gorgeous bunch of geniuses. It’s said that Billy ghosted some of their best columns on nights when they were drunk enough to let him.”
George shrugged, but good-naturedly, and waited. He was scarcely more sanguine of the man, meeting him: he had little faith in “characters,” much less in ghosts. Kirk was small and sinewy, wrinkled of face and jacket, his watery eyes veined like geographic globes. He smoked a pipe that hadn’t been scraped out since his days of regular employment on the Drovers’ Tattler, some fifteen years out of print. It was soon evident that Kirk felt as much affinity with George as George felt with Kirk’s pipe.
“You know, Miss Fields, none of the respectable spectacles of publishing will hire me. Not that they wouldn’t like to. It’s their lawyers who stand in the way. There’s nothing more squeamish than a lawyer before the fact—or less after it.”
“Mr. Bergner is our lawyer,” Sylvia said with mischievous relish.
“Well, I knew the minute I saw him he wasn’t going to hire me.” Kirk threw down his whisky neat.
Sylvia laughed. “It was not my idea to tie you down to regular employment, Billy. Rather, I was hoping to interest our people in leasing two or three pieces from you a week.”
Billy gazed mournfully into his empty glass. “I suppose you’d want nothing but hilarity.”
“I don’t know. I’m fond of some of your sad stories, that one, for example, about the man who shot his horse in the tavern doorway.”
“That was a saloon, my dear. The only thing you can shoot in a tavern door is your wife if you’re lucky enough to see her first. Ah, but you’re right: that is a sad story. I’ll wager all the same it would make Mr. Berger here laugh.”
“Bergner,” George corrected. “And I doubt it.”
Billy Kirk smiled at him disarmingly, showing a row of strong, yellowed teeth. He brought a dirty Manila envelope up from under his chair, and took out several neatly and freshly typed pages, the condition of which was not what George had expected. He divided the stories between Sylvia and Bergner. “Frogs along the Potomac,” he read the title aloud of the top story he gave to George. “That’s an idea on how to sustain a filibuster without wear and tear on Senatorial rhetoric. It came to me one night listening to Bertie Rice trying to tell a story at the Rotary banquet. Every few sentences he would suppress a burp and politely excuse himself before going on—and you know, before he finished, I would have given anything to hear just one good belch out of him.”
George was amused in spite of himself. The story had bite and grace. He asked Kirk, “Do you write things like this to specifications?”
“If we got the same specifications,” Kirk said, almost with a drawl. “I write shaggy dogs and dirty dogs, and yalla dogs. And then, some of them are just plain dogs. It takes a heap of livin’ to make a Kirk a house.” He circled his lips with the tip of a very red tongue.
Afterwards, when she and George were driving back to the office, Sylvia said, “I also know a writer of children’s books. He’s awfully good, illustrates them himself—clever, fantastic things, yet real. The kind of creatures children talk to in gardens when they’re alone.”
“Uh-huh,” George said.
“I guess I’ve said that badly, but I have an idea he could do a really good comic strip. What I should like to see one day, George, a Star Syndicate. Let’s give them back something for the trash they’ve given us. Why not?”
George glanced at her. “As your brother always says when he wants something done: ‘Siccum, Sylvia.’”
6
IT WAS AN EVENING in late June when Louise Bergner called, a time easily remembered afterwards because when the phone rang, Marcus and Martha were listening to the news of Germany’s invasion of Russia. Louise sounded distraught or possibly drunk, but when she said at the end, “Marcus, please don’t let on I called you,” he sensed the urgency behind her vague message. Martha rode out to Lakewood with him.
The house, when they approached it, was lighted from attic to cellar, a sign Marcus thought as ominous as total darkness. In the best of times, George and his father living under one roof was not an easy arrangement, and now that the old man was ailing and difficult—as Marcus well knew from his weekly visits—there was almost constant friction. What Dr. Albert wanted of his son, Marcus did not know any more than he thought George himself knew. George was more successful at the moment as general manager of the Star than most men’s sons at his age. Marcus did not like him, but decency compelled him to defend the son to the father, the more for knowing that Dr. Bergner made no secret of his preference for Marcus to his own flesh and blood.
Martha waited in the car.
Going up the walk Marcus saw George at the window, shading his eyes, trying to see who had driven in. Behind him in the room, Louise was squeezing her nose in a limp handkerchief. Marcus glimpsed a quick gesture of impatience on George’s part, a brusque admonition to his wife. It was easy to imagine him trying on his father’s disposition where he could get away with it. Marcus gave the bell knob a hard, long turn. Since he had come, he wanted everyone in the house to know it.
George opened the door to him. “Well,” he said with scant hospitality, “isn’t it late for you to be on the road?”
Marcus said: “Martha’s in the car. I thought as long as we were out this way I might save myself a trip tomorrow.”
“He’s asleep. Old men keep better hours than we do.”
Louise came up and offered Marcus her moist hand. The sweet scent of it lingered on his own afterwards. “He’s awful low tonight, Marcus. I’m glad you’ve come.”
“High, low, jack and a spade,” George said impatiently. “He’s what he wants to be.”
And at that moment from the room upstairs came the violent ringing of a hand bell. George turned and started up the steps two at a time.
Louise, her voice on the edge of hysteria, cried, “Don’t aggravate him any more, George. He’ll die tonight. I know it. Doctor Reiss said he might.”
George stopped abruptly and came down the steps again. “Why don’t you go up to him, Louise? You understand him so much better than I do. Your Doctor Reiss said that too, didn’t he?”
“I should never have told you,” Louise said.
Marcus said: “Do you have any objection to my going up, George?”
“His own doctor said he’s not to be disturbed,” George said.
Marcus moved by him on the stairs, saying: “I’ll try not to.”
George followed at his heels.
Propped up on the pillows, Dr. Bergner looked to have shrunk since Marcus had last seen him. His eyes were sunken and the once ferocious mien looked merely choleric. There was an unhealthy ruddiness to his cheeks.
“Marc?” The old gentleman squinted, straining to see without his glasses. His mouth hung open slightly. He grunted a couple of times before he was able to speak again. Then his speech was slurred. “Out of town, eh? I didn’t think it likely.”
“He’s here. That’s the important thing, isn’t it, father?” George said.
The old man made a dry, almost crackling sound with his tongue and lips as though trying to coax saliva into his mouth. Marcus felt his pulse: too fast, and he knew his blood pressure to be up. He helped him to drink a little water.
The elder Bergner said, “You think so, George Allan? Did he call you, Marc? Did he?”
“Martha and I were in Lakewood,” Marcus lied. “Lean back and take it easy. You’ve got a long way to go yet.”
“Pah! Hear my breathing? How far will I go on that?” He lay quiet for a few seconds. “Why don’t I have my grandchildren standing round—waiting to catch their first glimpse of death? I remember the death of my grandfather. He was so shriveled up they could have buried him in a shoe box.” Dr. Bergner gave several wheezes of att
empted laughter.
George gazed down on him, his distaste undisguised.
“Nowadays if there is anything important, they send the children away.”
“It was you wanted them in camp,” George said.
His father ignored him, or rather his remark. He might not have heard it. “Look at George Allan—look at him. Never had a better time in his life than tonight. He was a colonel in the Mexican War. What do you think of that?” Marcus realized that he was again talking about the grandfather. “That was a war, let me tell you: the war to make Mexico safe for democracy.” George started to walk away. “You don’t like my history either, eh, my son? But I will teach it all the same. The country that makes itself guardian of another country is a tyrant. Guarantee a man his freedom and you make a slave.” His speech became inarticulate and Marcus observed a little sagging at one corner of his mouth. It was like a hole beneath one side of the dark, drooping mustaches.
Marcus pressed his hand. “Rest, Doctor Albert.”
The old man’s penetrating eyes focused on his son while he groped at his own neck. Marcus, assuming he was looking for his glasses, took them from the bedside table and offered them to him. He pushed them away. “I want to talk to Marc, George Allan. Go down and console Louise. She will miss me.”
George stood for a moment, truculent, and then yielded to his father’s command. “Call me if you want anything,” he said, and went out.
The old man’s eyes followed him until the door closed. “An admirable sort, my son, eh?”
Marcus said: “Whatever it is between you, you’re letting it kill you. You know that.”
“Oh no. You did that, Marcus Hogan. How long ago? The day I gave over to you, that was my end.” He began again to grope at his throat and Marcus helping him found the cord beneath the collar of his pajamas. There was a key on it. The key had turned green with the sweat of his body as had the skin where the key had lain against it. “I want you to get something and take it with you tonight.” He lowered his voice. “We must not let George Allan interfere. Go into my study. Through there.” He indicated the door to an adjoining room. “The binders—in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. Bring them.”
Marcus knew then that he was speaking of his work on genetics. In the five years of their association, he had said every now and then that he must show it to Marcus. Marcus was reasonably sure that no one had seen it in its entirety except its author. It was a work that would never be finished so long as the man was alive. He was himself unsure of it, forever pulling out a section to research it further, for all that he talked constantly of it and offered parts of it for publication.
Marcus discovered the door between the two rooms locked.
Bergner became agitated. “Go round through the hall then. Go quickly.”
Marcus found George Bergner in the study sitting at his father’s desk. George said imperturbably: “I thought I ought to stay close by in case you needed me. Our wives have each other down there.”
Marcus said nothing. He went directly to the filing cabinet.
“Martha looks fine,” George said chattily. “Pregnancy becomes her. I remember Louise used to puff up all over—cheeks, bust and belly. She used to cry all the time. She likes to cry. Some women do.”
He fell silent, watching Marcus lift out one after another, five binders. “Magnus opus,” he said. He leaped to his feet when Marcus closed the file drawer. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Whatever he wants me to,” Marcus said.
George hastened to the door between the study and the bedroom and unlocked it while Marcus waited. “Let me take it in to him, will you?”
“I’d better do it,” Marcus said, “since he asked me to.”
Without a word George crossed the room and left him, going downstairs. Marcus regretted his own intransigence in following the old man’s dictum. He knew that the socio-political views, presumably reflected in the papers he carried, had long been an issue between father and son. George called them Fascistic. But what harm in letting him carry the book to the bedside? There might even have come of it a moment’s rapprochement. It would have suited Marcus better to serve as mediator than the role he now took up.
Dr. Bergner was muttering to himself. Marcus made out the words: “No ballast …”
“No ballast to what, Doctor Albert?”
“A ship without ballast … menace on a stormy sea.”
Marcus agreed cajolingly. “I have the book here, Doctor Albert.”
“Put on my glasses for me, will you, boy?” He caught hold of Marcus’s hand. “We haven’t had a good laugh in a long time, Marc. All those puns. I can’t remember a one. I’ve been lying here all day trying to remember. Not a one.” He released Marcus’s hand and, the glasses on, he immediately shook them off. “Pah! I can’t see with them and I can’t see without them. No ballast … I wish you would put something under the feet of this damned bed. I keep sliding off.” Marcus realized he had lurched to the side again. It had happened several times. The bed itself was perfectly straight.
Marcus bunched the pillows a bit more tightly beneath him. He wanted now to know the opinion of the doctor attending Bergner that evening. There was no doubt the old man had had a partial stroke. Dr. Bergner put his unsteady hand on the folders which Marcus had set on the edge of the bed.
“I want these published … if …” There was a long pause and then what Marcus was sure was a complete non sequitur: “You’re a good boy.” He could tell by the change in the eyes, the old man’s mind had spun off somewhere else.
Marcus felt his pulse. “Easy, easy, Doctor Albert. Rest awhile. Then we can talk.”
The old man merely stared, but not quite at him.
George opened the door. He hesitated only a second on the threshold. “Marcus, will you come here a moment? I think you ought to go down and take a look at Martha. I don’t like her color at all.”
Marcus was out of the room and downstairs more quickly than he knew himself. He was a moment or two discovering where the women were. He found them in the conservatory. Both of them turned, startled, when he appeared.
Louise got up, her eyes wide. “He’s dead!”
Marcus knew instantly that George had created the ruse to get him out of the bedroom, had in fact set it up in his father’s study, soft-talking about Martha’s condition. Martha was quite as she had been when he had last seen her. Without a word he ran back upstairs. Dr. Bergner was alone, a perplexed but unwrathful look upon his face. His fury was spent forever. Nor was he likely to speak again. It was doubtful that he now knew him from George or had known George from him in those last few moments, but George and the binders were gone from the room.
Marcus went to the door and called downstairs to Louise that she had better come. He returned to the bedside and lowered the dying man so that he could not tumble from the bed. The breathing was heavier and Marcus thought then as he had many times before that there was truly a rattle to death. And soon there would be the smell of it also in the room, for proud men who die in bed go as ignominiously as cowards on the field of battle. If we have not spirits it is no great privilege to have been born human.
Louise came, weeping softly, and sat at the side of the bed, gazing at the old man. Marcus looked in the study: somewhere in the house he could imagine George leafing through the pages, uncritically critical.
Martha reached the top of the stairs, climbing slowly to protect her own.
“Stay with Louise till I come,” Marcus said. “I’m going to call the Winthrops and Doctor Albert’s physician. And I’ve got to find George.”
Marcus phoned from the hall. Then he went from room to room calling out George’s name. The only response was the reverberation of his own voice. That George was deliberately concealing himself or had left the house sped Marcus the quicker through it. The basement door was locked when he reached it, the key on the inside. Marcus pounded and rattled the knob. He could see light shining from beneath the door.
He cursed George aloud as though that might summon him. Then bracing himself against the wall, he kicked the door free of the lock. But the basement also was empty. There, however, George, coming in from outdoors, found him. He carried the empty binders in one hand, a fuel can in the other, and as Marcus moved past him he could smell the reek of kerosene. Marcus went up the outside steps only as far as ground level. In a wire incinerator, the kerosene-soaked manuscript was shooting up flames far past extinction. Even as he observed it, the blaze passed its height, the flaking ashes scattering like snow in the wind.
Marcus went indoors and upstairs again. George had already returned to the sickroom, adding the stench of kerosene to that of the dying. He was standing behind his wife, his face now serene as was no other in the room. Martha was at the window, her mouth close to the frame where she could draw in a little fresh air to her lungs and keep herself from being ill. Dr. Albert lay as Marcus had left him except that the lids had drooped, half-closing the perplexed eyes. The labored breathing sawed across the stillness. Louise wept silently. Marcus took Martha from the room and bade her wait in the car until he came. He waited only for Dr. Albert’s physician to arrive.
George came downstairs just before Marcus left. “I did something that had to be done. You see that, don’t you?”
Marcus was a few seconds answering him. “No, but you did something that’s fashionable these days, anyway.”
Martha had the car radio on: the Germans had already penetrated two hundred miles into Russia.
7
THE SUMMER OF 1941 was a troubled time for many Americans of conscience and for none more than Jonathan Hogan. He had the feeling of being pushed into the sea. “Thou’dst shun a bear, but if thy flight lay toward the raging sea thou’dst meet the bear i’ the mouth.” And still he could not bring himself to it. He could find no praise for war, however gallant the allies, however just their cause. His was an incredible position in most eyes, a bitter one in his own. His persistent cries for peace, for arms embargo, made him tolerable only among the men whom he loathed the most: Americans of the extreme right. They could justify him even as they could ignore Hitler. Even his friend Mueller was no longer comfortable in his company. He almost invariably found a reason not to see Jonathan.
Evening of the Good Samaritan Page 23
