The Precipice

by Hugh Maclennan

  The two friends continued to drink applejack. Presently Lassiter asked, “Is your mother still in New York?”

  “She died two weeks ago,” Bratian said.

  BUT there was still another side of Bratian that made him incalculable. He was a poet. He loved good music – New Orleans jazz played by coloured men and eighteenth-century classics played by the philharmonic orchestras. One night in June in their last term he and Lassiter were walking back to their rooms from a beer party, their hands in the pockets of their beer suits. It was one of those Princeton nights when the air was hot but still fresh, a spring night of moist, motionless air fragrant with the peach blossoms of nearby farms.

  “God!” Bratian murmured. “Oh, God – this is lovely! The most wonderful country in the world.” He began to quote poetry, though he knew Lassiter had never willingly listened to a line in his life.

  “Look, how the floor of heaven

  Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

  There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

  But in his motion like an angel sings.

  Poetry, Steve. Do you want me to apologize for it?”

  Lassiter, thick-headed with beer but filled with so much vitality he would have climbed one of the elms beside the McCarter Theater if anyone had proposed it to him, began to horse Bratian around, and then announced that he himself had a poem to recite. He began in a loud voice,

  “It was down in the Lehigh Valley,

  Me and my old pal Lou

  Were hiking along to a whorehouse

  And a Goddamn good one, too….”

  He went on with the saga through several stanzas before Bratian interrupted him. “Why don't you save that for your first reunion?”

  “What's the matter with reunions?”

  “Mainly that big, dumb, inhibited bastards like you go to them.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Lassiter said cheerfully. “You crazy little son of a bitch. What do you want now?”

  “Have you ever seen the clerks and shop girls on Fifth Avenue looking into the windows at Tiffany's? What do I want? Hell, I grew up on the streets of New York. What do you think I want?”

  A month later both of them left Princeton for good. Bratian never returned for a reunion. A week after commencement he went to work in the advertising department of the Sani-Quip Corporation, getting the job after an interview with Stephen's father. Two years later he left Sani-Quip to enter a small advertising agency on Fifty-Fourth Street. Four years after this he switched to a larger agency, taking one profitable account with him. Meanwhile, Lassiter had entered M.I.T. to take the regular course in mechanical engineering and had left without the degree after his father's bankruptcy. The fortunes of Bratian and himself were then almost directly reversed. Lassiter was starting at the bottom in Sani-Quip while Bratian had already established himself and was rising fast.

  “THE trouble with Sani-Quip,” Bratian said, “is that it's too big. And the trouble with you is that you're not the kind of man who wants to spend the rest of his life making fewer men turn out more bathtubs and toilets.”

  Through the windows of the dining room in the Bessborough Arms the song of a whitethroat burst with lucid joy. Lassiter wished he were out in the sunshine or even at his desk in the Ceramic Company working in peace on his report to Ashweiler.

  “Why did you go in with them anyway?” Bratian asked.

  “It was my father's company. It was a job.”

  “And I suppose you thought Ashweiler and the rest of them would like you on account of your father?”

  Lassiter said nothing.

  “Do you think I liked you the first time I saw you?”

  “I never thought about it at all.”

  “The first time I saw you I wanted to kick you in the guts. What gives you the idea people like me and Ashweiler take naturally to someone like you?” Bratian grinned. “The funny thing is, most people like you in spite of everything. But not Ashweiler. For twenty years that jug-eared Dutchman worked for your old man. Your old man was harder, tougher, cleverer, and sharper than he was. He used to scare Ashweiler's pants off him. Yes, Mr. Lassiter…No, Mr. Lassiter .Just as you say, Mr. Lassiter…I've heard him do it. And now,” Bratian went on, “Ashweiler has you right there in front of his eyes and under his thumb.”

  Stephen thought a moment. Bratian's old power of fascinating him had returned with a rush. The little man made you feel as if the walls of the room you were sitting in were shifting and had no foundations. He made you feel that if you touched them they would jump away and leave you staring into empty space.

  “Ashweiler won't be there much longer,” Lassiter said. “When Stewart takes over, things will be different.”

  Bratian shook his head. “Look Steve – name one big established outfit that isn't filled with men waiting for somebody to die or get out. Then name one that changes its essential nature when somebody does die or get out. Sani-Quip has you taped. You've been with them too long. They won't fire you. They'll let you go on doing the same old stuff till they've sucked you dry.”

  Lassiter was motionless. His big body seldom gave him away by involuntary movements, but every nerve tightened as Bratian's words sucked him out of this quiet Ontario town into the bleak world of calculation for which, in spite of his father's example, he had never been prepared to take a place.

  “A man like you,” Bratian said, “ought to be his own boss.”

  “That's easy to say.”

  “Or get into some new engineering development on the fringes – something small enough so you can own a piece of the business.”

  Lassiter laid both hands palms down on the table and leaned forward. “Look here, Carl – what's the idea of making me feel lousy? I haven't done so badly.”

  “I'm not trying to needle you.”

  “Then what the hell are you trying to do?”

  “I'm suggesting you get out of the Sani-Quip Corporation.” He lit another of his Greek cigarettes and eyed the fine white ash critically. “You just don't happen to be a politician. In any big established outfit you've got to be a politician to get to first base. Even at Princeton the professors had to be politicians if they wanted to get beyond the rank of assistant.”

  Lassiter pushed back his chair and picked up the breakfast check, signed it, and left it there.

  “You grew up thinking you'd own millions,” Bratian said.

  “Okay,” Lassiter said, “you've made your point.”

  They left the restaurant and passed out the narrow hall to the front of the hotel. Near the door a group of American tourists, schoolteachers on holiday, were telling each other how amazing it was to find weather in Canada as hot as it was in Iowa. Lassiter stood on the veranda and looked at the street. The air above the asphalt was shaking with heat and an ice truck in front of the hotel had a puddle of water underneath it.

  “This present job of mine,” Lassiter said doggedly, “is pretty important. Our stuff will soon be selling all over the world. We've already got branches in Germany.”

  Bratian strolled out to the curb, then came back with his thumbs in the pockets of his Norfolk jacket.

  “Was it your idea, getting over the tariff wall of the British Empire?”

  Lassiter made no reply and Bratian changed the subject. “I'll drop you a note when I get back to New York. I've got some ideas.”

  They went upstairs together and while a porter took Bratian's grain-leather suitcases downstairs, Carl went into Stephen's bathroom and presently came out with the bottle of shaving lotion in his hand.

  “You own the place that makes this stuff, don't you?” he said.

  “It was all the old man had left. I told you about it.”

  Bratian unscrewed the top and smelled carefully. Then, with a delicacy that made him look more foreign than ever, he took out his folded handkerchief and sprinkled a few drops on it. He smelled again, his big nose sniffing like a dog's. Then he waved the handkerchief in the air and smelled once more. />
  “It lingers. At breakfast my face still felt good from it and I could still smell it.”

  Lassiter was impatient to get away. He was already more than an hour late at the office. “It's only some stuff a Rahway barber mixed up years ago. He's been bottling it ever since. It's nothing but alcohol and a smell.”

  “That's all it is now.” Bratian screwed the top on the bottle and slipped it back into his pocket. “But I like the smell and there's oil in it besides alcohol. It could be called masculine. It could even be called American.”

  Lassiter broke into a heavy laugh. “You ought to get out of your own business. You guys talk so much balls for a living you believe it yourselves.”

  Once again the ancestral look appeared on Bratian's face. “How long have you been using this stuff, Steve?”

  “I don't know. Years, I guess.”

  “Okay, that's all I wanted to know.”

  Five minutes later Stephen saw Bratian off to New York. A mechanic drove a shining black Cadillac roadster from a nearby garage and Carl slipped a dollar into his hand as he took his place behind the wheel. As Lassiter watched the back of the car disappear around the corner he felt empty and alone. Bratian was returning to that fabulous world of New York of which he had once been a part himself. He was going back to the city, where, no matter how many people pretended otherwise, the really successful men chose to live.

  WORK made Stephen feel better and by the time the noon whistle blew he was in a much more confident frame of mind. His secretary, who had come up from Cleveland with him, left the office with enough dictation to keep her busy the rest of the afternoon. The first section of his report to Ashweiler was completed, and he was fairly well satisfied with it.

  Restlessly, he got to his feet and looked out the window at the lake-boat which lay in the U-shaped dock that belonged to the Ceramic Company. Stevedores were eating out of lunchpails on the fo'c’sle head. It must be as hot as hell out there today on that deck.

  As he returned to his desk, he felt a spurt of resentment against Bratian. Until this morning he had been feeling better than he had felt in years. Usually he detested small towns, but he had found Grenville pleasant. Up here he could have an illusion of being his own boss, even though he had come up fully briefed by Ashweiler and was now recommending in his report that Sani-Quip do exactly what it had intended to do anyway.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, Lassiter, let's say you've had a nice summer and let it go at that.”

  Three weeks more and he would be back in Cleveland again, looking at the same faces, going around in the same treadmill. There was not a single person in that whole city he cared if he ever saw again; a few girls, perhaps, but most of them were the kind you spent an evening with and then forgot about until you felt lonely again. He wished he worked in New York instead of Cleveland. In New York the splendour of the city belonged to everyone in it, and made a man feel larger than life. He thought of the sunset light streaming over Columbus Circle and the trees of the park, women passing, softly lit bars mysterious with women; and then taxis crawling down darkened side streets to the theatres. The theatre cabs in New York had always seemed to him to throb with a thousand secrets and expectations. They made him feel lonely as he watched them pass, yet glad of his loneliness because it was so much larger than himself, being his own response to the vibrant life around him.

  As he thought about New York, the prospect of still another empty evening lying before him in Grenville became intolerable. The features of the girl he had met in the library fell into place in the front of his mind. A rare girl for a town like this. He remembered the soft curve of her throat as her chin had lifted, the skin white and soft, the shy eagerness in her eyes, and the feeling of surprised pleasure their brief meeting had given him.

  He picked up a letter he had received that morning from Ashweiler and left the office with it in his hand. Jim Craig should still be around, for he never went home to lunch until nearly one o'clock. Lassiter entered Craig's office and the secretary showed him through. He handed Ashweiler's letter to Craig, and after they had discussed it for a few minutes he put the question he had come to ask.

  Craig answered with demoralizing slowness. “Well, there is a family of that name. Three sisters, as a matter of fact.”

  Lassiter could feel Craig's surprise at his question. He was annoyed to realize that he might be in danger of losing face with the older man. But unless he knew the girl's first name, he didn't see how he could get in touch with her without a great deal of difficulty.

  “I suppose it was Nina you met,” Craig said thoughtfully. “Yes, it must have been her. They say she's turned into quite a pretty girl.”

  Lassiter liked Craig well enough, but the manager was fifty-five years old and took his position in Grenville too seriously. He was so careful he even chewed Sen-Sen after taking a drink.

  “She's only a kid, Steve,” Craig said, and waited.

  Lassiter grinned. “I met the kid too. But the one I mean is well past the age of consent.”

  It took Craig several seconds to get the point of this remark, and when he did get it, he wasn't sure whether it was a joke or not.

  “I didn't mean to suggest – well, to suggest that you –”

  “I didn't, either,” Lassiter said, with another grin.

  They both relaxed, and Craig regarded Lassiter with a new interest.

  “Well, I wish I could help you out, but the fact is, I'm pretty sure you got the name wrong.” He chuckled as if at a private joke. “You know, the idea of a man like you being interested in Jane or Lucy Cameron –” He chuckled again, a small-town man safe on his own ground. “You should have seen their father. Old John Knox Cameron would have taken the hide off a man who even asked one of his girls to a Sunday School picnic.”

  “Is the old man still around?”

  “No,” Craig said, with an amused thoughtfulness which annoyed Lassiter. “No, he's been gathered.” After another chuckle he added, “What I'm trying to figure out is who you did meet.”

  A few minutes later Lassiter left the office in a state of mild frustration which abated as he realized he had at least come close to discovering the girl's name. It was either Jane or Lucy.

  When he reached the hotel for lunch he found the hall crowded with local businessmen, and then he remembered he was supposed to be an honoured guest at the Rotary Club that day. He went upstairs to his room and washed. When he came down he heard the buzz of conversation, and listening to some of it he gathered that the news in the papers that morning had been worse than usual, for they were all talking about Hitler. They were so similar in appearance to Rotarians in any old-fashioned town in New England that he was somewhat startled to hear one of them remark to another that in politics the Americans were children and always would be, and that there was no point in anyone expecting Roosevelt to make them internationally responsible overnight.

  Lassiter grinned and turned to a man he knew. “I wish you'd hurry up and join the States,” he said. “Then maybe a guy like me could know where he stands. Right now I feel as if I were looking at a state of the Union just enough out of focus to make me feel cross-eyed.”

  THE dark hall of the Cameron house was quiet in the mid-afternoon when Nina came home from her daily swim in the lake. She let the screen door fall closed behind her and called to Lucy. There was no answer. She went through the house to the garden and saw her sister among the phlox.

  “For heaven's sake, can't you ever let them alone! You can't do anything with flowers in August except pick them.”

  “That's exactly what I was going to do.”

  Nina went down the steps to the garden. “It was wonderful in the water today. You know, Bruce is a marvellous swimmer. Isn't it funny that a man who can swim like that should be such a rotten dancer?” She bent over to sniff the open blossom of a muskmallow. “I love these things. They're as rich as velvet. Bruce is taking me to the dance tonight. I wish he'd let me teach him some steps, or somet
hing. It's so dull dancing with a man who just walks around the floor and talks.”

  Faintly through the warm afternoon air the telephone tinkled.

  “I'll get it!” Nina said, and ran back up the steps.

  The telephone had been installed in the most public part of the house, in the front hall between the table and the umbrella stand, directly underneath a line-engraving showing the death of Nelson. It was an old-fashioned wall instrument with the mouthpiece on the end of a long arm. Nina unhooked the receiver and stood there, small, neat, snub-nosed, and expectant.

  “Hullo!” she said.

  A male voice asked if this was Miss Cameron.

  “This is Nina Cameron speaking.”

  “Hullo! Steve Lassiter.”

  “Yes, I know,” Nina said daintily.

  A faint chuckle sounded over the wire. “I believe I met you in the library last Saturday?”

  “Why yes – yes, you did.”

  There was a brief pause. “Well, it's another fine day.”

  Nina's posture relaxed as the pleasure of her anticipation grew. “Yes,” she said smiling, “it certainly is.”

  His voice came through again. “I hope you don't think it's rude of me to call you like this.”

  “Oh, no. I was…I hope you're not finding Grenville too dull.”

  The still air brooded in the hall. Under the sombre line-engraving Nina stood smiling, her neat figure wiggling a little because it could never be still.

  “I understand there's a dance at the boat club tonight,” Lassiter said. “They've given me a guest membership, you know.”