The Bells of Hell

by Michael Kurland

  ‘“May you live,” it goes, “in interesting times.”’

  THREE

  Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

  In one self place, for where we are is hell,

  And where hell is must we ever be.

  – Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

  The red-brick building, which had been a warehouse for the DozeWell Mattress company, took up most of the block at the corner of Water and Gold, a few blocks from the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. One room occupied most of the ground floor and, with its high ceilings, much of the second. There was an attempt at a third floor perched on the west corner of the building, clearly an afterthought and about the size of three hotdog stands. The ground-floor room was large in all directions and damp and cold. It was not so much furnished as filled with discards: there were two discarded desks, four file cabinets half full of long-discarded papers, a pile of pallets, three rolled-up rugs, a smattering of discarded office chairs, and one discarded thirty-four-year-old human being named Andrew Blake.

  Andrew had taken residence about six months ago, he wasn’t sure. Time does odd things when you’re out of work, out of friends, and no longer have any family to speak of. When he had first found the place he had moved his two beat-up suitcases, his piece of well-splattered painters’ canvas that served as a mattress, and the red couch cushion that was his pillow into the manager’s office, up a flight of stairs that hugged the north wall, presumably so the boss could oversee the helots working below. It even had its own small bathroom, with a white porcelain sink still with running water, which he scrubbed clean. He had also scrubbed out the medicine cabinet above the sink and arrayed within it his safety razor, soap, shaving brush, toothbrush, and tooth powder. But when his left leg twisted out from under him during an accidental encounter with a patch of slick ice, the resulting sprain made it painful to climb stairs; so he moved himself and his belongings to a small area behind a false wall he had discovered in the far corner, erected during Prohibition to conceal cases of whisky – the real stuff just off the boat – from casual view. This cut his stair-climbing to his once-a-day ablutions, and this is what saved his life.

  He had consumed two not too rotten apples and half a head of cauliflower that he had scrounged from one of the waste bins behind the produce market on Bridge Street and was dozing fitfully on his canvas that Tuesday afternoon when the two men cracked the padlock on the Gold Street side door and pushed their way in. It was a little after two by the Ingersoll pocket watch that was one of the few possessions he refused to part with. The sky was slate gray, the streets still damp from the recent rain, and the produce markets had already closed for the day. Whatever the entrance of these men portended, Blake realized, it was nothing that would be good for Andrew Blake. He shrank back into his hiding place and lay down on his stomach to peer through a small rip at the bottom of the canvas false wall. A small rip? Surely it was the size of a hippopotamus and they couldn’t avoid seeing him. He worked at stifling his sudden almost overwhelming desire to cough.

  The men did a quick look around the large room, one of them speaking in staccato monosyllables like ‘Here,’ and ‘That will do,’ and ‘Not yet,’ and the other not speaking at all. The non-speaking man took a wooden chair from a corner of the room and moved it to the middle. The speaker stared at it critically and moved it six inches to his right and two inches forward. Then he stepped back from it, walked around it once, and nodded his approval.

  It was perhaps five minutes before the door pushed open again and three men came in, two of them urging the third one forward between them. He seemed apathetic and uninterested in his surroundings, and kept his eyes down, staring at the floor.

  His visitors, Blake noted, all wore suits. Three brown double-breasted serge, the fourth, the reluctant man, tweed and even more double-breasted. The fifth, the speaker, was a blond man with a square face, a short beard clipped straight across at the bottom, and eyes that somehow seemed too close together. His suit was a really dark blue or black, with a small collar and a long row of buttons down the front which were all, as far as Blake could tell, buttoned. The two who had been urging the man between them went out again and returned in less than a minute, lugging a pair of large steamer trunks behind them, which they dumped near the door. Then they took the reluctant man by both arms and steered him to the center of the room by the chair.

  As they approached the chair the man being pushed suddenly lifted his head and looked around and, with a spasm of activity, made a violent attempt to twist away from his captors. For a second he broke free, but then the others grabbed him and propelled him further into the room. ‘What is this place?’ he cried. ‘Where have you taken me?’

  ‘Remain calm, Herr Steuber,’ the man in the probably black suit said. ‘You have nothing to fear. We merely want some information from you.’

  ‘Information? What sort of information?’ He twisted to look at the man in black. ‘I know nothing. I sell toys, only. My name, it is Lehman. Otto Lehman.’

  The man in black sighed. ‘We have so far to go,’ he said, ‘and so little time.’ He turned to one of the men in brown. ‘Check out the building. Make sure we’re alone.’ The man nodded and trotted off.

  The man in black turned the captive around by the shoulders and casually punched him in the stomach. He grunted and doubled over, and the man pushed him down into the chair. From where Blake lay, his cheek pressed against the cold cement of the floor, peering through the slit in the canvas, he could see that the man’s hands were handcuffed behind him, and he couldn’t be sure but he thought the man had begun to cry. His captors began fastening his arms to the back of the chair with some sort of twine. It seemed to Blake as though they had some experience in tying people to chairs.

  There are some people, Blake found himself thinking, who are worse off than I am. The thought did not cheer him greatly. He couldn’t take his eyes off the other man, the one who was methodically searching through the large room, looking under desks and kicking at the piles of pallets. Once he passed right by the concealed space and, if he had touched the wall, he would have known it was canvas. But he went on by.

  ‘We are alone,’ the man finally announced to his companions.

  ‘And upstairs?’ the man in black asked, gesturing toward the staircase with an upraised chin.

  ‘Upstairs?’ the searcher looked around. ‘Ah, yes.’ He started toward it.

  Blake’s breath caught in his throat. The bathroom! he thought. That goddamn bathroom! What did I leave in the bathroom? The man climbed to the upstairs landing and disappeared into the office.

  After a minute the man reappeared at the head of the stairs waving a toothbrush. Blake’s toothbrush. Blake held his breath and shrank back from his spy hole. ‘I found this, Herr Weiss,’ the man called down. ‘In the washroom. It did not have dust on it.’

  ‘There’s a washroom up there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A small office with a washroom behind.’

  ‘Is there anything in it beyond the toothbrush?’

  ‘No, but the washbowl was free of dust, as was the toilet.’

  ‘Ah!’

  Blake breathed a sigh of relief. The essentially uncurious searcher had not looked in the medicine cabinet, which would have certainly occasioned a more thorough search.

  Steuber twisted around in the chair and peered up at his captor. ‘Herr Weiss? Herr Weiss? They said they were taking me to see Agent Reno! Where is Reno?’

  The man who shrugged. ‘What is in a name?’ he asked. ‘Call me what you like, it is of no consequence.’ He turned to the man upstairs. ‘You are an idiot,’ he told him. ‘Try to remember my name from one moment to the next.’

  ‘Try using the same name from one week to the next,’ the man replied, with a sharp shake of his head as though he were trying to clear it of settling flies.

  ‘We will speak of this later. Whoever cleansed the washbasin may return. Ascertain which door is being used – clearly not
the one we entered, that hadn’t been opened for some time – and watch it.’

  ‘Very well,’ the man said, and started down the stairs.

  Weiss turned back to his captive. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Back to those verdammte questions.’

  ‘Sie sind Deutsch!’ Steuber said, his voice high-pitched and strained. ‘You are not FBI, you are Gestapo!’

  Weiss smiled. It was not a pretty smile. ‘Gestapo? Nein,’ he said. ‘The Gestapo – they have rules. Rules, rules, rules. We have only results.’

  The interrogation lasted for three hours and was, for the most part, conducted in what Blake assumed was German. Blake retreated from the slit in the wall early, unable to watch without throwing up, which would assuredly have given him away. But it was not much easier to listen. The questions were barked, the answers were mumbled, and in between were the screams, horrible high-pitched screams, and the sobbing, and the pleading. And then, for a while, there were only the screams. And then the screams ceased. After a minute there was scrabbling and thumping and a murmured conversation in German. And then more thumping and the sound of opening and closing doors. And then there was nothing.

  For a long time after the men left Blake remained as he was. Then he rose and knelt cautiously, weakly, supporting himself by clinging to the wood framing of the false wall. Then he threw up. After a time he pulled himself to his feet and came out into the room. Then he threw up again. The two steamer trunks were gone, but the man was still there. He tried looking at the man – the object; the body – on the chair. It was now naked, he saw, and he wondered when that had happened. But after a few seconds his eyes turned away of their own accord and he decided that that was a good thing. He could not stay in this place any longer.

  He stuffed his few belongings into his suitcases and decided not to go upstairs to retrieve whatever was up there. Hoisting the suitcases, he edged around the room, staying as far away from the chair and its burden as he could manage. He left the building by a door on the far side of the room, a full block away from where the men had entered. Coming out on Water Street, he turned left and walked six blocks to the Taberna Lisboa, the bar where he bought an occasional pack of cigarettes when he had a dime that was otherwise unoccupied and had an occasional glass of beer when it seemed more important than buying food.

  He went in and put his suitcases down beside the door. ‘I must use your phone,’ he told Benedito, the bartender.

  ‘It is at the back,’ Benedito said. He held out his hand. ‘A nickel.’

  ‘It’s to call the police. It’s an emergency’

  ‘A nickel,’ Benedito said.

  ‘You call,’ Blake said. ‘Spring 7-1313. The police.’

  ‘A nickel,’ Benedito said.

  Blake sighed and fished into his pocket for one of his precious nickels. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it over. Then he went back to the phone.

  FOUR

  Others find peace of mind in pretending,

  Couldn’t you?

  Couldn’t I?

  Couldn’t we?

  – Oscar Hammerstein, Showboat

  Patricia fought like a cat, twisting and kicking and clawing, doing her best to dig her long red fingernails into his chest. Marcello worked with grim determination to hold her down on the bed, pinning her slender body between his legs, but she kept squirming and wriggling and bucking up under him until they were both panting with the exertion. Finally he succeeded in getting both of her arms over her head and holding them by their slender wrists in his left hand. With his right hand he worked at the buttons on her silk blouse, and slid the hand under her slip, cupping and squeezing her breasts, first one and then the other, and tweaking the hard nipples through her lace brassiere. He worked his fingers under the brassiere …

  Suddenly she stopped fighting and lay back, motionless under him. ‘Ah!’ she cried. ‘Wait a minute! Stop! Let go!’

  ‘What?’ Marcello Bruzzi paused, looking down at the blue eyes that were glaring up at him.

  ‘Let go,’ she said, ‘for a minute.’

  He relaxed his grip and she twisted free of him and sat up.

  ‘And why, cara mia? What is the matter?’

  ‘You’re going to rip the bra.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps, and so? I will buy you another one just as fine. Finer!’

  ‘Yes, but I need this one,’ she told him. ‘I left the house wearing this one and it is wearing this one that I must return.’

  She stood up, feeling the thick carpet under her bare feet, stepped out of her skirt, and unbuttoned and slid out of her blouse. Unhooking the bra, she shrugged and slid it off from under her silk slip, dropping it daintily on the bureau beside the bed.

  ‘Ah, you women,’ said Marcello, who had sat up in the bed and was watching this operation with interest, ‘how you manage to learn these intricato – these involved maneuvers to take your clothes off …’

  ‘It is because of men like you, my dear Marcello,’ she said with a twisted little smile, ‘that women practice such things.’ She pulled the slip up to her knees, loosed the garter straps holding up her stockings and rolled them down, then stepped out of her frilly silk knickers, and tossed them and the stockings onto the bureau.

  ‘Ah, cucciola mia,’ Marcello moaned, ‘the sight of those garments by themselves, just wantonly lying there waiting for your return, is enough to rise in me a sense of—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see what it rises in you.’ With her palms she smoothed the slip against her belly and hips. ‘I’ll leave the slip on for now,’ she said. ‘I think the feel of silk under the hand is even more exciting than bare skin, don’t you?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Marcello again as he thought this over, and then again, ‘Ah!’

  ‘Now,’ she said, lying back against the bolster, ‘where were we?’

  ‘I forget,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should begin again?’

  They were lying on their backs staring at the ceiling some time later when the ornate gold-plated clock on the mantel chimed eleven times and tinged twice and hiccupped and was still.

  Patricia rolled over and stared at the clock. ‘The witching hour approaches,’ she said, running her hand over his thigh. ‘I must go before I turn into a pumpkin.’

  He turned and raised his head, leaning his chin on his hands. ‘What is this pumpkin?’

  ‘Zucca.’

  ‘Ah! A squash. That would be interesting. I have never, I think, made love to a squash. And why is it that you will turn into this squash?’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll take a shower now. Are you going to stay here?’

  He considered. ‘No, I think not. I must strive to arrive early at the embassy tomorrow morning. The ambassador, he is beginning to think that I may be dispensable.’

  ‘You mean “indispensable”?’

  ‘No, cara mia, dispensable. He is forming the opinion that he can, perhaps, do without my assistance. And that would create for me a catastrophe.’

  She smiled and patted his face. ‘But you are indispensable. Trust me. Perhaps I shall speak to your ambassador.’

  Marcello pushed himself up and stared seriously at her. ‘You would do such a thing. I know you. When you get an idea into your head …’

  ‘But it is a good idea, is it not?’

  He shook his head. ‘No!’ He shook it again. ‘Positively not. Just think. The wife of the British Cultural Attaché, she is telling the Italian Ambassador that his military attaché he is indispensable. I shudder!’ He shuddered.

  She stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Phooey on your mores and your customs and your stuffy Catholic Church.’

  ‘And your Anglican Church, she is so much more tolerant of such things?’

  ‘Phooey on that too. And phooey on sneaking up to hotel rooms or lying to room clerks – who know perfectly well what we’re doing.’

  ‘Ah!’ Marcello said. ‘But you must remember that they desire to be like the monkeys—’

  She giggled. ‘You mean, “monkey see, monkey
do”?’

  ‘No, cara mia, the other monkeys. The ones that see and hear not the evil.’

  ‘And your friend who loaned us his apartment for tonight, is he also a monkey?’ she asked.

  ‘Not at all. He has been called back to Rome to consult with Il Duce. He is important. I must water his plants while he is gone. And in return …’

  ‘And the military attaché is not important?’

  He shrugged. ‘We are not going to war with the United States sometime soon, I think.’

  ‘And if you did?’

  ‘I? Why should I do such a thing?’

  ‘Italy, you silly zucca. If Il Duce were to declare war on America?’

  ‘If such a ridiculous thing were to happen I should resign my commission, quit my post, and move to Brooklyn, New York, US of A.’

  ‘Brooklyn?’

  ‘And why not? There are more Italians living in Brooklyn, I am told, than in Napoli.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  He shrugged. ‘In this, perhaps, I am mistaken. It is what I have heard, I have not myself counted the noses.’

  Patricia pulled herself up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, her feet just touching the floor. She bounced on the mattress. Marcello enjoyed watching her bounce. ‘You would not fight for your country?’ she asked, letting the bouncing subside.

  ‘You are thinking that I am the coward? Not so. I was awarded the Medaglia d’Argento al Valore Militare after the Great War. It is a very big deal medal, much like your British Military Cross.’

  ‘Well!’ she said, hunching toward him like a cat. ‘That’s exciting! What did you do?’

  He shrugged. ‘It is perhaps I should not have told you that,’ he said. ‘I was stupid. Also, I admit, brave. But mostly stupid.’

  ‘But you won’t fight the United States?’

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘That depends. If the United States were to attack my beloved Italy, I would fight. But if Il Duce, in his arrogance and egotismo … egotismo?’

  ‘Egotism,’ she supplied.