“You’re nothing of the sort, and I’ve never thought so.”
“Well, thanks. I guess maybe you haven’t. You’ve been a good friend.”
Suddenly Howie made a fist with one hand and began to beat it with a slow and desperate cadence into the palm of the other. Standing, he walked out of the room without another word, and it was not more than fifteen minutes later when Henry heard him scream. The scream was repeated and repeated in almost the same cadence with which the fist had pounded the palm, and the screams were accompanied by the sounds of objects crashing and breaking and overturning in what seemed a systematic plan of demolition. After recovering from the first paralysis of shock, Henry hurried into the hall and down to Howie’s closed door. The student who lived in the room across the hall was already there, staring at the door with an expression of incredulous horror.
“What in God’s name’s the matter with him?” he said. “Why the hell don’t you open the door and find out?”
“I tried to, but it’s locked.”
“Help me break it down.”
They threw themselves against the door together, and the flimsy lock snapped at once. The room beyond was in shambles. Curtains and blinds had been ripped from the windows, mattress and covers torn from the bed, chairs and tables overturned, lamps smashed, books and papers scattered everywhere. In the middle of the shambles, facing the door, was Howie. His shirt was ripped, and his face was bleeding in several places where he had clawed himself. He looked at Henry and saw no one and continued his terrible, cadenced screaming.
“Jesus, Jesus,” the student said. “He’s gone completely crazy.”
“Go call the infirmary,” Henry said. “Tell them to send an ambulance.”
The student left, and Henry waited by the door. He spoke to Howie once, but he got no response, no slight sign of recognition, and with a kind of instinctive feeling for what was right, he made no effort to force himself upon his berserk friend. He only waited and watched to see that Howie inflicted no more damage on himself, and after a while the student returned, and a longer while after that the ambulance came with a doctor and two attendants from the infirmary. As soon as he was touched, Howie, who had become quiet, was immediately violent again, screaming and cursing and fighting with incredible strength. It required both attendants and the doctor to subdue him and administer an injection of some kind of sedative. When they had taken Howie away at last, Henry went into the bathroom and was sick.
He did not see Mandy again until the night before the day the Christmas holiday was to begin. They met in the sitting room of the dorm and walked from there across the campus to the Museum of Natural History and along a path behind the museum to a campanile on a high point of ground above a hollow with a small lake in it. A wind was blowing, and it was cold there, but they sat for a while in the cold wind on a stone bench, and the cold was like a punishment inflicted, a penance borne. He could feel her shivering and heard for a moment the chattering of her teeth, but when he lifted his arm to put it around her for warmth, she drew away from him a little on the bench.
“No,” she said. “Don’t touch me tonight.”
“All right. I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
“Please don’t be offended.”
“I’m not. I think I understand.”
“I should have been kinder to him. It wouldn’t have hurt me to be a little kinder, and it might have helped.”
“You musn’t blame yourself for anything. It was something more than you or I or anyone else ever said or did or failed to say or do.”
“You’re right, I suppose. It must have been something in himself that couldn’t be helped.”
“Maybe now it can be helped.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I only wish that I had been a little kinder. He was in love with me, you know. Last year, before you came, he wanted me to run away and marry him.”
“I didn’t know. He never said anything.”
“I couldn’t do it, of course. I never even liked him very well, to tell the truth, but it wouldn’t have hurt me to be a little kinder.”
“Don’t say that again. Please don’t say it. You couldn’t be expected to know how he was or what would eventually happen to him.”
“Do you think he will be all right?”
“After a while. Someone will help him now.”
“I hope he’s all right. I hope he will be helped by someone who is kinder than I.”
She stood up, shivering and drawing her coat around her. They walked back along the path to the museum and on to the dorm, stopping in the shadow of the leafless hedge.
“Good-by, Henry,” she said.
“Good-by,” he said. “Will I see you after Christmas?”
“Yes,” she said. “After Christmas…”
CHAPTER 6
…Christmas.
And now, he thought, it was almost another one, and between then and now, that Christmas and this, a great deal had happened and he had been many places, but all that had happened and all the places he had been seemed in retrospect to be more remote in his life than the things and people and places of longer ago. Something had somehow ended with the end of Mandy, a quality of intensity, an impressionability, something that was his that she took away. She had left the university at the end of the next year, and afterward he received several letters from her at longer and longer intervals, and finally the one, which was the last, in which she explained that she was getting married to someone she had known for a long time, long before their time, and in the last paragraph of the letter she said, with a kind of gaiety and bravado that must have been intended as a tear and a kiss and a flip of the hand, that she was so happy she had been able to please him, and good luck, and to think of her, please, sometimes.
Well, he did that. He thought of her sometimes. But after the last letter, which came in the spring of his third year at the university, it no longer seemed quite worth his while to stay where he was and do what he was doing, and so he left in June after taking his examinations and did not return. He pulled his hitch in the army instead, and one day in the hills of Korea, when he was thinking about what he would do next, if he lived to do anything, he decided definitely, like Saroyan, that he must be a writer or be nothing, and although he had worked at it very hard ever since on the side of a variety of jobs in various places, he sometimes thought, unlike Saroyan, that it was nothing that he would turn out to be.
And now it was almost another Christmas. And now he stood at the window and looked down into the street below, and the bell of the soldier of salvation rose and fell, rose and fell, and he felt the striking of the clapper that he couldn’t hear. Three people were crossing toward Adolph Brennan’s bookstore from the other side of the street. One man and two women. Their arms were linked, the man in the middle, and they picked their way carefully through the slush. One of the women was carrying a paper bag in the arm that was not linked with the man’s. “Someone’s coming,” Henry said.
“Coming?” There was a high note of alarm in Ivy’s voice. “Coming here?”
“I think so. Yes, I’m certain of it.”
“What makes you think so? How do you know?”
“Well, they’re crossing the street in this direction, and they happen to be three people I know, and so I assume that they’re coming here.”
“Who are they?”
“A man named Ben Johnson. He writes Western stories for slick magazines and makes quite a lot of money. And two women named Clara Carver and Annie Nile.”
“How do you happen to know them?”
“Well, damn it, I do know a few people, you know. Do you imagine that you are the only person I’ve ever met in my life? As a matter of fact, though, if you must know, Ben and I were in the army together. When I came here later, I looked him up. He lives in an apartment
not far away. Besides writing Westerns for money, he writes poetry for the good of his soul. Clara lives with him, but they aren’t married. She’s very pretty and friendly but rather stupid. I like her.”
“What about the other one. What did you say her name is?”
“Annie Nile. Her father owns a shoe factory. She lives by herself and paints pictures, but fortunately it isn’t necessary for her to sell any in order to live, for she isn’t very good at it. Sooner or later she’ll give it up and go home and marry someone richer than she is, but in the meanwhile it amuses her, and so do Ben and Clara.”
“Do you amuse her too?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
“God only knows. I’ve learned already that it’s impossible to know what you really mean by anything you say.”
“Why are you so sensitive about it? It was only a perfectly natural question. Do you think I give a damn if you amuse her, or what method you use in doing it?”
She was sitting erect on the edge of the sofa, and he was puzzled and a little concerned by the ferocity of her expression as she looked at him.
“Look,” he said. “Will you please behave yourself? There’s no need to be offensive, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t be.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to hurt the feelings of your precious friends. It may be interesting to watch their expressions when they discover me here. What do you suppose they will think?”
“They’ll probably think the same thing that Adolph and George think, thanks to your admirable compulsion to explain matters.”
“Do you think so? It’s very funny, isn’t it?”
They could hear the trio tramping up the stairs from the street. The sound of their voices in words and laughter rose clearly ahead of them.
“They seem to be gay enough,” Henry said.
“Or drunk,” she said.
“Both, probably,” he said.
He went over and opened the door in response to banging and his name called out. The two women came into the room ahead of the man. Both were wearing fur coats and fur hats to match. One of them was also carrying a fur muff, but the other one wasn’t. The one without the muff was carrying the brown sack, and it was obvious from the sounds that came from it that it contained bottles. The one with the muff was prettier than the one with the sack, but you felt almost at once, after the first concession to superior prettiness, that the one with the sack would be more attractive to most men in the long run. The prettier one was a redhead, the deep red known as titian, and the more attractive one in the long run was a brunette whose hair below the fur hat had the color and luster of polished walnut. There was about her, the more attractive brunette, an air of being present by accident in circumstances and company that she accepted in good humor. She leaned over the sack of bottles and kissed Henry on the mouth.
“Darling,” she said, “where have you been forever? It’s shameful, the way you’ve been avoiding me, and I ought to be angry, but I’m not. As you see, I’ve come with Clara and Ben to wish you a merry Christmas.”
“He’s a genius, Annie,” Ben said. “It’s impossible to be angry with a genius.”
He was a stocky young man with a broad, homely face dusted across a pug nose with freckles. A thin, sandy mustache on his lips was just faintly discernible when the light was favorable. He removed his hat and coat and relieved Annie Nile of the sack.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if he could sell something and make a lot of money?” Clara Carver said. “Don’t you wish Henry had a lot of money, Annie?”
“Yes, I do,” Annie said. “It would make things much more pleasant and simple all around.”
“It isn’t expected of a genius to sell anything,” Ben Johnson said. “A genius is never appreciated until he’s dead. Everyone knows that.”
“If it’s true that a genius never sells anything, then I must be a genius too,” Annie said, “for I’ve painted pictures and pictures and never sold a one.”
“Darling,” Clara said, “you already have nearly all the goddamn money in the world. You must leave a little for the rest of us.”
“Nevertheless,” Annie said, “it would be encouraging to sell a picture as a matter of principle.”
“The only principal you need be concerned with,” Ben said, “is the one you draw your interest on.”
While they were talking, they were also disposing of hats and coats and dispersing a little in the room. Ben set the sack of bottles on Henry’s work table and sat down in Henry’s chair. Annie and Clara sat beside each other on the frieze sofa. Clara stretched her long nylon legs in front of her and stared at them with an air of appreciation. It was clear that she admired them and considered them her most valuable asset, which was a judgment just as clearly shared by Ben. Ben also stared at the legs with an air of appreciation.
Ivy stood quietly in a corner and was ignored. Everyone had seen her there, but no one had spoken or recognized her presence by any sign or word, and there seemed to be a conspiracy instantly in existence among then to establish the pretension that she wasn’t there at all.
“Ben,” Clara said, “why do you simply sit there staring at my legs? Why don’t you open one of the bottles and give us all a drink?”
“I prefer to look at your legs,” Ben said. “Let Henry open it.”
“It’s sparkling burgundy,” Annie said to Henry. “I prefer champagne myself, but Clara and Ben insisted on sparkling burgundy. It’s a peculiarity of theirs. Do you like sparkling burgundy?”
“I like it all right, but I hardly ever drink it.”
“Why don’t you drink it if you like it?”
“Because it’s too expensive.”
“Don’t forget he’s a poor genius,” Ben said.
“I don’t object to his being a genius,” Annie said, “but his being poor is a great bore. Henry, why must you be so depressingly poor? If you had a lot of money we could go to Florida or someplace for the winter and have fun.”
“Why don’t you pay the expenses?” Ben said. “Have people quit wearing shoes all of a sudden?”
“I’d gladly pay the expenses if Henry would go,” Annie said. “Henry, will you go to Florida with me if I pay the expenses?”
“No,” Henry said.
“You see?” Annie said. “He won’t go.”
“He’s crazy,” Ben said, “that’s what he is.”
“No,” Clara said, “he’s merely proud. Henry, I don’t blame you for not going. If Annie wants to sleep with you she can do it right here.”
“I’ll think about it,” Annie said. “In the meantime, Henry, please open a bottle. There are four of them, as you will see. It was our intention to have a bottle for each of us.”
This was the first oblique reference to Ivy, who still stood in the corner, and everyone turned his head to look at her in unified abandonment of the conspiracy of neglect. Ivy came out of the corner reluctantly and returned their looks with an expression of somewhat surly defiance. She had been prepared to be compatible if possible, for the sake of Henry, but it was now apparent from her expression that she considered compatibility, if not impossible, extremely unlikely.
“This is Ivy Galvin,” Henry said. “Annie Nile. Clara Carver. Ben Johnson.”
Each of the three, watching Ivy, nodded in turn. Clara looked curious and rather friendly, Ben looked faintly salacious, as though he were mentally dispossessing Ivy of her clothes, and Annie looked carefully and blandly remote.
“Ivy Galvin?” Annie said in a careful voice that matched her careful expression. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Henry mention you. Are you old friends? Are you old friends, Henry?”
“No,” Henry said.
“On the contrary,” Ivy said, “he picked me up on
the street only two weeks ago.”
“How interesting,” Annie said.
“It hasn’t been so interesting, as a matter of fact,” Ivy said, “but it has been convenient.”
“I should think so,” Annie said.
“It isn’t what you think,” Henry said. “She had no money and no place to go.”
“Disregarding your assumption that you know what I think, Henry, darling,” Annie said, “it’s absolutely unnecessary for you to explain anything. It makes you sound as if you were feeling rather nasty about something.”
“Balls,” Henry said.
“I think she’s pretty,” Clara said. “Don’t you think she’s pretty, Ben?”
“In a famished kind of way,” Ben said, “she’s lovely.”
“Well, you needn’t be an extremist about it.”
“Damn it, I am not being an extremist. I only said that she’s lovely in a famished kind of way. I distinctly qualified my judgment.”
“The trouble with you, Ben, darling, is that you are constantly in heat, as I know better than anybody. It’s disgusting.”
“Heat? Do males get in heat? I thought it was only females who get in heat.”
“In your case, an exception has been made. Henry, will you please pour the sparkling burgundy? Ivy, you must sit down here beside me on the sofa where Ben can get a good view of your legs. It will keep him entertained. Henry went into the other room for glasses. Ivy sat down beside Clara and smoothed her skirt down over her knees. After a minute or two had passed, Henry came back with the glasses. He had been forced to rinse out the one that held the toothbrushes in the bathroom in order to get enough to go around.
“I only have water tumblers,” he said.
“I don’t believe I care to drink sparkling burgundy from a water tumbler,” Clara said.
“Who you trying to kid?” Ben said. “You’ll drink anything from anything.”
Take Me Home Page 10
