The Night Inspector

by Frederick Busch

  I could imagine the boy as he strode through an Indian encampment, shooting the sick old men and terrified women. I could see him firing a rifle from the seat of a lurching wagon in some Western province, picking off an Indian rider not because they fought each other, but because the man was passing on a horse and made for a difficult shot placement and thus provided the boy with sport. And I saw him, of course, in Mrs. Hess’s parlor, too drunk to remember the fellow with the store-bought face, all but poisoned with the excess of his pleasures.

  M’s red eyes narrowed, and he wiped at them as if the sight he had seen were too exhausting for the very tissue of his flesh. “I did not raise my son to be a lout. Nor to demonstrate my failures in fatherhood before a stranger at our board.”

  “Sir,” Malcolm said, his face seeming to shrink.

  “Whom do you address, boy?” his father whispered.

  “Sir,” Malcolm said to me, “I am heartily sorry. And sir”—he had turned to his father—“I regret my impulsive words. I respect no man as you, sir.”

  M’s eyelids were fluttering, and he seemed not to hear.

  “None,” Malcolm said, as if he were dismissing a servant who proffered food.

  And M lay his large head, as if it weighed fifty pounds and the muscles of his neck had given in, upon his cutlery, and he closed his eyes.

  Again, Elizabeth said, “Oh.”

  “I have stayed too long and exhausted him,” I said. I placed the mask beneath my arm and rose. “I brought brandy,” I said. “It might remain in the pocket of his coat.”

  “He will doubtless find it,” she said. “You were good to sell us the gun.”

  “It is a gift, ma’am. You will tell your husband the Colt is a gift of a former soldier and a grateful reader. Will you say that to him?”

  “Exactly, I think you wish, as you have said it to me.”

  I affected a little bow. It was a botch because the veil began to slide forward and I had to mash my hand, already burdened with my hat, upon the top of my head to keep the veil in place.

  She said, “I have watched him, grinning like a great, pale cat, pat the trees in Madison Square and thank them for growing. I have heard him, on the other hand, look as if into stormy winds and say nothing for a week at a time. He … ebbs and flows. With or without liquor, in the drinking of which he overindulges. His mother was a woman of appetites. His father was said to be a man of such swings of spirit, and I know for a fact it was an affliction of his brother. Sometimes I fear I see it in you, Mal. Oh, Mr. Bartholomew, it is as he said! We burden you. Forgive us.”

  Mal stood behind his chair, staring at her with dark eyes in a white face. He might have wished her dead, for all the affection I saw in his features.

  “I would serve you, ma’am,” I said, and I said it again at the door.

  Someone, at any rate, would be served.

  A little before dawn, when I finally slept, I dreamed a dream, and it wakened me. I dreamed, or I speculated upon, as I fell into sleep, or I was haunted by, the chambered drum of the Colt revolving. I could see it and, though it hung before me in this reverie, I could at the same time feel its weight in my hand. The weight was vast, but the drum turned smoothly, immensely, inevitably. It seemed to me that I felt the tremendous turning of the earth itself in the revolving of the drum.

  She lived on the ground floor, and even her children helped, at dawn, to carry in the water she would use all day. They stored it in wooden barrels from pickled cucumbers and olives and whiskey I had seen her haul, as big around as she, from the alleys behind the merchants. From the steam above the tub, while Chun Ho poured more water in, as her stove roared and heated the room sufficiently to almost send me to sleep, I said, “The future of the nation is in railroads. I will, surely, invest more heavily. It would be useful to you and your children if I could invest some dollars on your behalf. And I would be pleased to extend you credit. May I do so?”

  She had been looking at me. I could tell from the way she turned away as my gaze came up. Her clothing, which resembled a soldier’s union suit, was soaked from steam and spilled water, and it clung to her child’s limbs and womanly torso. Now it was she, with her immobile face, whose eyes interrupted mine and sent them skittering off.

  “The Union Pacific to the West, of course. Mr. Vanderbilt’s New York Central bringing trains across the Hudson. Any number of manufacturies of railroad cars, and steam boilers, and now our own American steel. Soon, Chun Ho, the island of Manhattan will boast an elevated railway from Battery Place up to Thirtieth Street on the western side—near Greenwich Street. Can you imagine? You can be drawn by steam, as I am here parboiled by it, virtually through the air above town. Would your children enjoy an aerial ride?”

  She stood beside me, leaning away, looking away, to hand down a heavy bar of brown soap.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Where are your children?”

  As if exasperated by my mannerliness, she turned toward me her smooth, expressionless face. Her eyes fell, and I felt the fall, as if of cold rain, upon my unmasked face, and then my throat and chest and then the water that covered my lap.

  “Children—mother. Mother of Chun Ho.”

  “In this district? I mean: here? Near this house?”

  She nodded once.

  “Is your father here?”

  She closed her eyes and I watched her control the composition of her face; it stayed as smooth as a painted picture. She shook her head.

  “Your father is dead?”

  She nodded once.

  “How is it, do you think, that your husband and father did not survive this country, yet your mother and you, if she is like you, are tough as alleyway weeds?”

  “Weeds?”

  “Strong flowers.”

  “Woman is strong flower. Yes. You are some of woman, maybe?”

  “Because I survived? Yes, maybe I am. Though I am, as I think you have seen, mostly man.”

  “Not see!”

  “Oh, no?”

  She giggled. She covered her mouth and recomposed herself. “Not see much.”

  “You mean there’s not that much to see?”

  She shook her head, then waved her palm at me, as if we were friends who played at teasing one another. “Plenty enough,” she said, moving her hands to her mouth, then walking toward the stove.

  I closed my eyes and reached up to soap my neck. I felt her fingers take hold of the soap, and I sank back toward her. She poured achingly hot water over my shoulders and I keened.

  “Not so strong flower?” she said.

  “Strong enough, I hope.”

  She scrubbed with a flannel cloth at my shoulders and, when I leaned forward, my back. I leaned against the tub again, waiting to see if she would come around and wash my chest. She did not.

  “So may I invest a few dollars for you and the children? I predict no risk.”

  “Chun Ho give own some money Gongsi Fang.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh! Take care of Chinese man, woman, baby. Many help us. Many is fang—many Chinese people, one bunch.”

  “Group?”

  “Group.”

  “This fang helps people from China?”

  “Sure. Rooms to live. Money. Funeral Chun Ho father. All the time. Group.”

  I lay back again and closed my eyes. From behind me, she reached to scrub at the underside of my left arm, and then along the elbow and forearm, and then the palm and knuckles; she reached for my right arm and did the same. The sound of the roaring stove drowned out the crashing of wheels, the shrieking of infants, the barking and howling of dogs—and I felt as a child while this child-sized woman with strong hands and powerful silences rubbed me clean.

  “Sure,” she said. I opened my eyes to find her large, dark eyes directed at the water that lay above my groin.

  “I am bobbing to the surface,” I said.

  She fetched me a towel, then removed herself to the small table at which she and her children ate, and on which she folded
laundry.

  I stood to dry myself, and Chun Ho said, “Flower.”

  When Mrs. Hess had partaken of what her clients agreed was Lydia Pinkham’s in ruby port wine, her dignified carriage grew famously erect; she looked, in fact, as though she might tip over from carrying herself all but on the balls of her feet in their patent leather slippers. Her mammoth bosom rose and fell rapidly at her prow as if a powdered creature transported into the parlor for applause. She blinked her eyes a good deal and spoke quite slowly, though I could not tell whether to herself she sounded quick and nimble of tongue. Malcolm seemed as spifflicated as she, though he did seem to recognize me, and to turn his face toward the woman to his right, who, at that instant, yawned.

  “You’ve an admirer there, all right,” a stocky man said as he lit his cigar. It was fairly apparent that he had set his sights on the slight, ruddy girl for whose company Malcolm had paid. I wondered what salary his insurance firm gave a boy who at best might be a clerk, that he might spend so much money on liquor and whores.

  Because it was the end of the working night, Mrs. Hess’s servant, whom we knew as Delgado, made his tour of the downstairs rooms, dimming the lights. He carried a short, thick truncheon in his coat and, although he was of stringy build and quiet demeanor, I had never seen a man stand up to him. Mrs. Hess sat beside Malcolm, on the other side from her girl, and soon she was snoring demurely; that would change, I knew, and we would all be treated to great, gasping noises unless Delgado removed her to her quarters in the back of the house.

  Malcolm was pinching the girl’s jaws with his hand, squeezing hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. I watched Delgado approach him from the rear of the sofa.

  “If you must be a whore, you whore, then have some manners while you’re at it,” Malcolm said.

  The stocky man said, “Do not address her in that wise. And drop your hand from her face.”

  “By jockies!” Malcolm said, trying to stand. The girl rubbed her face, and Malcolm gave up, sitting back, his fists raised, his eyes closed, stupid with drink.

  “Sir,” Delgado said.

  “What is it?” the boy asked, his eyes still closed.

  “It is time to retire, sir.”

  Malcolm opened his eyes. Delgado’s suggestions were almost always accepted.

  “A cabriolet, sir?”

  Malcolm said, “Awoke.”

  Delgado turned to me. I said, “He means to say he’ll walk, I think. But here.” I held up some coins, and Delgado came around to accept them for Malcolm. “Send him home. He’ll never make it on his own. He’ll be lucky, any rate, if he’s admitted at home.”

  “You know the gentleman, sir?”

  “His father and I are, you might say, associates in trade, Mr. Delgado.”

  Delgado raised his sparse brows, took the coins, and lifted Malcolm from the divan as if he were a frail boy instead of a bulky cross between child and adult man.

  “You might have a word with the father about the comportment of the son,” the stocky fellow said.

  I turned to him and stared. He dropped his eyes and attended to the girl whose face Malcolm had bruised. The stocky man addressed her with exaggerated concern, and she shrugged her shoulders and made to smile; it looked more like a leer.

  I walked to the foyer, where I found Delgado about to descend the steps with his charge. “Allow me, Delgado,” I said. “If you’ll help me stuff him into the carriage, I’ll escort him home. What I gave you for fare I hope you’ll use for a drink.”

  “Mr. Bartholomew,” he said. He inclined his head an inch. I had heard a rumor that on a Portuguese cod fisherman, somewhere off the English coast, he had cut a man very badly with a gaff and, while the fellow bled, Delgado had used the hook to keep the crew from coming to the man’s assistance. According to the story, he had never said a word, from start of fight to death by exsanguination.

  It was a mild enough night, but I took the blanket from the driver and laid it on Malcolm’s shoulders and chest, more as a stay against his soiling his clothing if he took sick than as a protection from the night. We made our way south and west through the smells of coffee and bread and, once, the sour stink of a brewery.

  “Mr. Face,” Malcolm said.

  “You’ll be forgiven tonight,” I said. “But Delgado will remember.”

  “Ooh,” the boy said, and he affected to laugh. “Mr. Face,” he said again.

  I placed the thumb and forefinger of my left hand on his nostrils and pinched; the while, I clasped his lips between the thumb and forefinger of my right. He began to struggle, so I slapped with elbow and forearm upon his chest, and he went crimson. I squeezed and then let go with both my hands. “Don’t call me that a third time,” I said.

  He began to go very pale, and I knew that he was about to heave his night’s drink. “Driver!” I called. “To the curbing, if you please, at once!”

  While Malcolm leaned out to the right, I climbed down from the left, gave the driver his instructions and his fare, and I made long strides to escape the sound of the boy’s blubbering and spew.

  I was at Seventy-second Street, and I would have a good night’s walk in which to think. I had been fascinated by Jessie’s tranquillity—not a word about the children until I referred to them, when I said only that I had an eye on an opportunity and that I must devote time to developing it, and hearing in return only her assurance that she knew me well enough to exercise patience. Of course, there was little about Jessie that did not fascinate me: her form, her face, the delicate tattoos and their location, and her ability to work for Mrs. Hess and keep herself fresh and somehow inviolate.

  I said, “Ba!” A man carrying a heavy burlap sack came abreast and went faster as I spoke. I had addressed not him but myself. I was becoming foolish—inviolate, indeed!—and it occurred to me that I must see her less, or not at all, if I was to remain strong enough to survive in this city, and in my profession, and in, as a matter of fact, my own flesh. When I realized at once that I would not forsake seeing Jessie, and that I felt as if I could not, I also realized that something like my life was now at stake. I walked faster, as if to outrun my thoughts.

  That pace, and the sound of my harsh, rapid breathing against the inside of the mask, reminded me of a story M had told me. I could not remember where it was set, or what the ship was called, but it concerned a man from the Isle of Man. I did recall how, as he said it to me, I reminded myself that I was hearing a tale from the man who had written perhaps the greatest story told by an American about American industry. His Whale was a hymn to the catching of enormous creatures and using them, blubber and ambergris, for the manufacture of oily light and the perfumed scent on golden breasts and dark brown nipples I had just recently left. How the owners failed to hire a captain who would serve their will was a lesson to every man of capital, and how they lost a ship laden with oil was the story’s moral: If you have a plan, you must see it through, and if you have none, you have no business; hire slackly and lose your investment; do not risk your money with a man who covets none.

  The fishing vessel had been caught by a freeze in a cove off Lyme Regis, and the crew had actually watched the salt water thicken, first on the rigging and on the nets, and then on the bowsprit, and then in the sea that slapped, more and more slowly, against the hull itself. Within hours, as M told the story, the ship was halted, ringed with ice that lay tight against her, and the masts were like the limbs of trees in winter—bone-white, glinting. “It made the Ancient Mariner seem like a passenger on a pleasure craft,” he told me, sitting forward to lean his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands as if against the cold that came blowing into the room from out of his story.

  “The captain pitched over dead,” he said, “frozen on the spot. He fell out of his shoes, in fact, and they remained adhered to the deck by inches of ice that now lay over everything. This was—did I tell you?—the winter of 1832, famous for its killing chill. The frail were culled, and only the hearty survived the year, especially along
the English coast.

  “That left a first mate who was too drunk, whether with fear or gin I cannot say, and a second mate who was barely old enough to tell himself what to do, much less a crew of a dozen tars who had long before that, I daresay, considered catching and eating him.”

  “They were cannibals?” I remembered saying, gullible as a lamb in an abattoir.

  “Shipmate, there’s more than one way to devour a boy on a boat,” he told me. “But to the inclemencies, then, shall we? Here they are: worse than becalmed because a ship with no wind can send a cutter out to tow her an inch at a time if needs must. And there’s always the hope of a sudden gust of wind. But this was the dead of winter, mind. And the ship as fixed in the ice as a glass eye in a stuffed and mounted Muscovy duck. And the temperature falling, and night coming on, and the captain dead, the first mate incapacitated and soon enough to freeze to death.

  “ ‘What shall we do, sir?’ calls the cabin boy to the second mate. The men fall about grunting—it would have been laughter in a fairer clime—at the sight of the little fellow thus questioning the fellow not much larger or older.

  “ ‘We’ll make a fire!’ pipes the second mate, intent on doing his duty, and on seeing the crew through the fray.

  “ ‘What shall we burn, then, lad,’ groans an able-bodied, ‘fish in blocks of ice?’

  “ ‘Charts, the log, and every book on board,’ cries the second mate.

  “A fellow known as Button, Sterling Button, called by his shipmates either Silver or Bone, scholarly man with gold-rimmed spectacles tied round the back of his head to keep them on when he’s up in the ropes, says, in his deep voice that matches his broad, manly shape, ‘I’d rather perish, sir.’

  “ ‘But you will,’ the second mate is wise enough to note.

  “ ‘Then I will, but I’ll not burn my books.’

  “ ‘What’s in ’em, then?’ asks one of the rugged net haulers, shivering in his boots and oilskins.