The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  Archer laughed as he put on his coat. “I don’t have an ulcer to my name.”

  “Good,” Sandler led him to the door, his hand on Archer’s elbow. “Mistrust people with ulcers. Unreasonable prejudice. My wife gets furious when she hears me say it. Her two brothers have ulcers as big as garden baskets, but I can’t help saying it. Ulcers’re the result of a sour constitution, and a sour man is bound to behave in an undependable manner. Stands to reason.”

  They were passing the mulatto girl at the desk by this time. “Back in an hour and a half, Miss Watkins,” Mr. Sandler said. “Have to have my lunch.”

  “Yessir,” the mulatto girl said softly, smiling goldenly.

  “Prettiest girl north of Washington,” Mr. Sandler said in a hoarse whisper. “Wish I was twenty years younger.” He laughed heartily. “Disadvantage of acquired wealth. It comes when the muscle tone is gone. Got scientists working on hormones this minute in there …” He waved vaguely at doors behind him in the corridor. “Rejuvenate the dying cell. Race against time, I tell them when I talk to them. I’m going to be sixty-one next month.” He roared again, plump, bouncy, pink, dapper in his gray coat and soft brown felt hat.

  They went out of the severe main doors, Mr. Sandler nodding briskly to the uniformed guard behind a glass grating. Mr. Sandler stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs and surveyed the lawn. Archer had the feeling that each time Mr. Sandler came out of his office, he stopped in the same place and gazed around him with the same expression of affection and criticism. “Ought to see this place in the summertime,” he said. “An ancestral garden. Phlox, peonies, hyacinth, daisy borders. Three men just to take care of the lawn. Restful to the tired eye. Grass and a few trees. Turn back to your work refreshed. Interior entirely air-conditioned, too. Can’t stand weary summertime factory faces all around me. If I had my way we’d close down May first and send everybody fishing until October. Like to do it, but the competition would murder us.” He grinned and trotted down the steps to a shiny green Ford convertible which was parked just in front of the door. “Here it is,” he said. “My car. Hop in.” He opened the door for Archer and bounced around to the other side. Archer got in and Mr. Sandler hurled himself in under the wheel. They started with a spurt, the gravel spinning loudly behind them. “Like little cars,” Sandler said, driving too fast through the gates. “Like to drive myself. Don’t like the big ocean-liner type of automobile. Feel as though you’re driving an institution. In the summertime I keep the top down all weathers. Get as red as an Indian. Hair bleaches out. Gives me a unique appearance.” He grinned at the wheel. “Surprising, the number of girls who wave at me on the road. Very useful at board meetings, too. I look so energetic I discourage all the vice-presidents and representatives of stockholders who think they want to argue with me. If I drive too fast, tell me. Only man I know who drives faster is my son. He’ll kill himself some day. He was in the Air Force during the war and he’s still trying to cruise at three hundred miles an hour. Ever meet him?”

  “No,” Archer said, watching the road ahead of him worriedly.

  “In New York half the time. Night-club type. Always seems to be going around with singers who don’t get through work till four A.M. Not much good for anything else. His mother said he was ruined by the Air Force. Not true.” Mr. Sandler grinned. “He was ruined at the age of eight. Amusing boy. Big feller, always getting into trouble. Not worth a damn any place but in a B-17.” Mr. Sandler paid attention to his driving for a moment, debonairly. “You’ve got some trouble to lay in my lap, haven’t you, Mr. Archer?”

  “Yes,” Archer said. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Lunch will help us bear it. Lunch has a civilizing influence on trouble,” Mr. Sandler said. “But you can start now. Let’s have it.”

  “It’s about those five people connected with the program,” Archer said carefully. “Hutt said you knew about them.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Sandler was looking straight ahead through the windshield. “I got that piece from the magazine.”

  “Hutt gave me two weeks to investigate them,” Archer said. “Or try to. As much as one man can in that short space of time.”

  “I know,” Mr. Sandler said. “Hutt said an assistant promised you the two weeks and he had to back the man up. Approve of that. No sense having assistants unless you give them some responsibilities.”

  “The two weeks’re up Thursday,” Archer said.

  “I know.” Imperceptibly, Archer noticed, Mr. Sandler was slowing down as they wove through traffic. There was no way of knowing what his attitude was at the moment. His tone was distant, noncommittal, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

  “I’ve been talking to the people,” Archer said. “I learned a few things about them. But when I tried to get in touch with Hutt, they told me he was down in Florida. They don’t know when he’s coming back. And he left word that his position had not changed.” Archer consciously tried to keep a tone of injury or complaint out of his voice.

  “Very important,” Mr. Sandler said. “Vacations for executives. Believe in it. Keeps the brain fresh for decisions.”

  “I understand that,” Archer said, too hastily. “It’s just inconvenient that it came just at this time. That’s why I was forced to come to you.”

  “No apologies necessary,” Mr. Sandler said. “That’s what I’m paid for. To deal with the uncomfortable situations. I can hire people to deal with the easy ones.”

  Archer didn’t feel that he had made any apologies, but he didn’t go into it. “Hutt left word,” he said, choosing his words with care, “that my resignation would be accepted if I insisted on pushing the matter.”

  There was silence in the car as Mr. Sandler slowed down for a red light. “Is that a threat, Mr. Archer?” he asked flatly, staring straight ahead. “Are you trying to push me?”

  “No,” Archer said, surprised that Mr. Sandler felt he was important enough to be in a position to threaten anyone. “I just wanted you to have an absolutely clear view of the situation.”

  “I have a clear view of the situation,” Mr. Sandler said. The light turned green and he started with a spurt. “I talked to Hutt and I told him that he could let you go if necessary. Clear enough?”

  “Clear enough,” Archer said. He hesitated. “Maybe you don’t want me to go on. Maybe I’m just wasting your time.”

  “If you were wasting my time you wouldn’t be here,” Mr. Sandler said, without emphasis. “You’ve worked for me a long time. You’ve sold my product. You’ve earned your money. You have a right to state your case.”

  “First of all,” Archer said, “all five people have done their job well. Two or three of them have done it extremely well …”

  “Understood,” said Mr. Sandler. For the first time, there was a note of impatience in his voice, as though he felt Archer was bringing in irrelevant material.

  “Whatever their political opinions may be,” Archer said, “they’ve performed loyally for your company. As you put it in my case, they’ve earned their money.”

  “I said that was understood.” Sandler stepped on the accelerator and the car lurched around a truck.

  “Beyond that,” Archer said, trying to organize everything neatly, “they have just been accused. They haven’t been found guilty of anything. And the magazine that accused them has made some very queer charges in the past and has been forced to retract publicly when the people they’ve accused have been strong enough or wealthy enough to afford to fight. Also, the idea that any man who happens to run a two-by-four magazine can set himself up as a judge on a whole industry and prepare blacklists which force people out of work is an unpleasant one.”

  “Unpleasant,” Mr. Sandler said. “Yes.”

  “Each case is different, too.”

  “It always is, Mr. Archer …” For the first time in the car, Mr. Sandler looked over at him. His face was grave and his eyes were cool. “For my own information, I’d like to know what your relationships to these five people are. To orient my
self. Is that a fair question for me to ask?”

  “Yes,” Archer said. “I think so. They vary.”

  “Of course.”

  “First—the composer. Pokorny. Professionally—I admire his music. He’s very good. You’ve heard his stuff …”

  “Yes.”

  “Personally—” Archer almost smiled. “I find him somewhat trying. He’s rather—emotional. Unstable. I pity him. He’s a Jew …” Archer saw the lids go down for a half-second over Mr. Sandler’s eyes. “He’s had a hard time. His parents were killed by the Germans. He’s terrified … He’s married to an obnoxious woman.”

  “Member of the Communist Party,” Mr. Sandler said. “Very active.”

  “Yes,” Archer said, wondering how much Mr. Sandler knew about the others, too. “Then there’s Frances Motherwell.”

  “She was off the program this week,” Mr. Sandler said.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you said they were going to have two weeks.”

  “She quit,” Archer said. “She got an offer for a play.”

  “I didn’t like the girl you replaced her with,” Mr. Sandler said. “When I was a young man I used to avoid girls with voices like that like the plague. Sex with marshmallows all over it. For the high-school trade.”

  Archer grinned. “On the target,” he said. “She has cooed her last coo for University Town.”

  “Delighted to hear it,” Mr. Sandler said. “What else about Frances Motherwell?”

  “Professionally?”

  “I know all about her professionally,” Mr. Sandler said. “Top-grade. The real thing.”

  “Politically,” Archer said slowly. “Politically …” He hesitated.

  “Go ahead,” said Mr. Sandler.

  “Well, she’s a Communist. She admitted it.”

  “The magazine was right about her, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Archer said. “She doesn’t hide it. She’s proud of it. She’s very romantic. A man she knew who got killed in the war converted her. She’ll meet someone else finally and she’ll get converted to something else. Anyway, she’s out of the picture. She quit before she could be fired.”

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Mr. Sandler asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Damn fool.” Sandler made a decisive move between two cars. “What do you feel about her?”

  Archer thought for a moment. “She scares me.”

  Mr. Sandler looked surprised. “Why?”

  “I’m a married man.”

  Mr. Sandler chortled once, briefly. “Know what you mean,” he said. “We live in the damnedest world. Girls who look like that turning Red. Early marriage,” he said firmly. “Only solution. What about the colored man? The funny man?”

  “Atlas?” Archer waited, realizing that he wanted to say something unpleasant about the comedian, and annoyed with himself for the impulse. “What do you think about him?”

  “He makes me laugh,” Mr. Sandler said. “I’m going to miss him.”

  “You’re not the only one,” said Archer.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you get out of him?”

  “Nothing. He just laughed at me. He’s hipped on the color thing. If your skin’s white you’re his enemy. He says he’s going to live in France.”

  “Business is getting too complicated,” Mr. Sandler said. “Twenty years ago, your colored help didn’t threaten to go live in France when you asked them a question.”

  “Twenty years ago they didn’t make twenty thousand dollars every thirty-nine weeks, either,” Archer said.

  “I suppose not. You’re not fond of Atlas, are you?”

  “Not very,” Archer admitted. “He’s a lot of trouble. And he makes it perfectly clear that he despises me. He’s not an engaging character.”

  “Actors,” Mr. Sandler said. “Baffling. Too much for a drug manufacturer, really. He sounds so pleasant on the radio, you want to wrap him up and take him home with you.”

  “Talent,” Archer said, “is the best disguise in the world.”

  “What would you want to do with him?” Mr. Sandler asked sharply.

  “I’d like to keep him,” Archer said. “He’s awfully important. And I have a feeling he’s not a Communist. He’s not anything. He’s out for himself and that’s all.”

  “In the last presidential election he spoke for that feller Wallace,” Mr. Sandler said, “and he’s signed some very lively petitions of one kind and another.”

  “Anything,” Archer said, wondering how Mr. Sandler had discovered these facts, “that means trouble for the white folks. That’s his motto. But I don’t think it’s even political with him. It’s a reflex action.”

  “Can you replace the sonofabitch?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Sandler grunted, over the wheel of the car, and Archer for the first time had the feeling that he was getting somewhere.

  “How about the others?” Sandler asked. “The Weller woman?”

  “If she were on the stage,” Archer said slowly, “she would be what the critics would call adequate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Not especially good,” Archer said. “Not especially bad.”

  “She’s replaceable, then?”

  Archer hesitated. There’s no sense in this conversation, he thought, unless I’m absolutely candid with the man. “She’s replaceable,” he said, “but I don’t want to replace her.”

  “Nice lady?” Mr. Sandler hooted his horn impatiently at a woman driver ahead of him. Waveringly, the woman swung over to the side and Mr. Sandler sent the Ford past her.

  “Very nice lady,” Archer said. “The one thing against her that I’ve been able to find out is that she lent her name to a peace conference that was sponsored by the Communists.”

  “That the only thing?”

  Archer had a troubled feeling that perhaps Mr. Sandler knew some more damaging evidence against Alice, since his information seemed to be so complete about the others. “As far as I know,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t hide anything from me about the lady, would you, Archer?” Mr. Sandler leaned forward, his hands manicured, plump and pink on the wheel.

  “I’d be tempted to.” Archer smiled a little. “But I don’t think I would.”

  “Uh,” Mr. Sandler said. “Why?”

  “She’s a widow. She’s not getting any younger. She supports a fourteen-year-old son.” Archer spoke rapidly. “Her husband was a good friend of mine and I feel responsible for her.”

  “Uhuh,” Mr. Sandler said. He turned and glanced at Archer. He looked serious, but approving, as though pleased with Archer’s honesty. “You still feel responsible for her?”

  “I feel sorry for her,” Archer said, remembering the sagging face, the clumsy clothes, the sandy skin.

  “What about the other feller,” Mr. Sandler asked, “Herres?”

  “He’s a very good actor,” Archer said, feeling nervous for the first time since they had started in the car. “They don’t come any better.”

  “That’s what my wife says. She listens every week. Religiously. She’s a good judge, too. She goes to New York and sees all the shows. Very smart woman. She thinks he’s a very handsome feller, too. Met him at a party somewhere last year. She’s social.”

  Maybe, Archer thought, Victor Herres is going to be spared because of the effect he had over a drink on an aging Philadelphia housewife who came to New York to see all the shows. The close blond hair, the easy, white-toothed smile, the automatic good manners with ladies would pay off now. …

  “What else do you know about Herres?” Mr. Sandler asked.

  “He was in the Army,” Archer said. “He was discharged as a captain. He was wounded and he won the Silver Star in Sicily.” Mr. Sandler frowned over the wheel. “Silver Star, eh?” He drove in silence. Archer could see that this was news to the old man. “My youngest son was killed in the war,” he said. Archer had the feeling, liste
ning to him, that Mr. Sandler gave that bit of information automatically as soon as any mention was made of the war. “Tunisia. I got a very nice letter from his captain. Said Arnold—that was his name, Arnold—was very well liked, very popular in the company. He was up to corporal by the time he died. Stepped on a mine, the captain wrote. Just walking along and stepped on a mine. I wrote to the captain to thank him for his letter, but by the time it got there, the captain was dead, too. Taft, the captain’s name was. Same as the senator’s. My wife blames me because the boy is dead.” Mr. Sandler was talking to himself now, staring out through the windshield, mumbling, going over this old loss and this continuing intimate injustice. “She said I forced him to join up. His draft number was high and he could have hung back a long time. But I couldn’t stand seeing him staying at home, sleeping till noon every day, with the war on. Make it or carry it, I said. Get a job in a war plant or pick up a gun. Never worked a day in his life, so he enlisted. My wife insisted on having his body brought home after the war. Goddamn fool sentimental thing to do, I told her, no wonder the income tax is up to eighty-six percent, disturbing the bones of the dead. But she wouldn’t listen for a minute. Nothing for it but a great big funeral, with relatives weeping by the dozen, all over again. Women get their satisfaction out of the God-damnedest things.”

  Mr. Sandler lapsed into silence, his face aggrieved as he thought of elderly, bereaved, unreasonable women and dead, twice-buried sons. He seemed to have forgotten that Archer was sitting beside him and what they were talking about. But, a moment later, he said, “What else about Herres? You know him a long time?”

  “Yes,” Archer said. “Fifteen years. He was a student of mine in college.”

  “You taught in a college?” Mr. Sandler asked.

  “History.”

  “I know a couple of professors,” Mr. Sandler said. “That’s the life. They all live to the age of eighty.”

  Archer laughed. “I guess I’m not interested in living to eighty.”