The Tents of Wickedness: A Novel

by De Vries, Peter

  “When is the trial coming up?”

  “A week from Thursday, and I can tell you what’ll happen. He’ll prove to the court’s satisfaction that he committed the thefts, be exonerated on grounds of temporary insanity, sent to a state institution and in fifteen minutes be seen to be so completely sane they’ll have to release him, as the law requires.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the thefts will have resolved the personality problems that led to their execution. Problems of ego, the will to power and to excel—other drives I can’t explain to the layman just like that. Van Kuykens will know what I mean, and I rather feel he’ll back me up. If you want meanwhile to have put the paper in the position of having thrown me down, that’s your risk. But the publicity will, I think, be far more than you expect once Van Kuykens gets here. Because here is one Dutchman who isn’t peddling cocoa.”

  Bulwinkle swung wretchedly back and forth in his swivel chair. He frowned to the top of his skull, which he rubbed with a palm, as though by friction he might generate the thought necessary to cope with this thing.

  “I don’t know why you’re taking bows for the Jekyll and Hyde since you didn’t cure it the way I hear tell—you brought it on.”

  “I don’t see what’s to be gained by splitting hairs. If by that you mean precipitated the inevitable and thus shortened the subject’s cycle, yes—we do that nowadays. Like induced labor in childbirth. Or to put it another way, we don’t hesitate to break bones that must be reset. I acted on Van Kuykens’s theories—new concepts of shock which, again, I’m afraid I can’t go into here. But I think you’re right in suspecting that this case may become a classic of its kind.” I glanced at the clock again, somewhat more impatiently. “Well, what do you say? Want to let things ride as they are for a bit? If you don’t you may live to regret it.”

  “Not the way my blood pressure’s been lately, I won’t!” he said, and exclaiming, “O.K., O.K.,” waved me frantically out.

  As part of his professional defense I was allowed to visit Nickie in his cell. Which was pleasantly cool after the rather muggy summer streets. He was lying on his cot writing on a writing board propped against his drawn-up knee. Some of the college catalogues I had got him were scattered on the blanket. Nickie was very popular with the guards and allowed special privileges and kept under very relaxed watch, so it was no trick for me to slip him the bottle of good brandy I had brought in my briefcase, for which he had asked. He took a drink, smacked his lips appreciatively, and when I declined one, corked the bottle and tucked it under his mattress.

  “I’ve also brought you a banana,” I said, extracting it from my briefcase. “You expressed the hope of one last week.”

  “The urge has waned,” he said, pocketing the fruit, “but thanks just the same.”

  “What are you writing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something in the manner of the Ballad of Reading Gaol?” I asked, trying to get a look at the manuscript which he shoved out of sight in the bedclothes.

  “You certainly have a great sense of humor. It’s not poetry.”

  “No muse is good muse.”

  I crossed my legs and smiled.

  “Well, things are looking up,” I said. “You’ll be judged criminally insane, of that there can hardly be any doubt. A great psychiatrist named Van Kuykens is flying over. He’ll be in our corner. Much better than that droopy alienist the court’s assigned. Of course you’re straightened around now, so they’ll have to release you instantly. So things are sorting themselves out. Soon we’ll have everything tidied up. Lila and I got all the jewels back to the police, so there’ll be complete restitution—that’ll be in your favor. No loose ends. The Jackson Pollock we found behind the tapestry in the city museum where you told us you’d hid it. Thank God for that last recurrence as Johnny Velours or we’d be still looking for it. Have there been any others? Lapses as him I mean?”

  He shook his head, staring rather wistfully up at the ceiling.

  “Then we’ve got you coalesced.” I closed the snaps on my briefcase. “I regret to see his passing too, in a way. But he served his purpose—that of a poultice draining off the infection, so to speak—and truth to tell, some of his charm and sweetness have rubbed off on you. They really have, Nickie. You’re a pleasanter fellow. Mellower, somehow. Now let’s talk of other things.”

  I tried to make conversation that would cheer him up, to chat of things that would get his mind off himself—pleasant, healthy things going on in the outside world.

  “It stood in the paper that the nose might fall off the Statue of Liberty,” I said.

  “Good.” Nickie got out the bottle and took another swig of the brandy, which he then again secreted in his pallet. I hoped sincerely that we were at last, here in this cell, going to have a relaxed little talk, unmarred by any of that vying for superiority in phrasing that had so grievously bedeviled our communion hitherto. My reasons were more urgent than usual. In my present, and mountingly tense, condition it was imperative that I not be upset. I had been experiencing tingling sensations in my left arm accompanied by slight chest constrictions, which the doctor had diagnosed as “false angina,” nothing to worry about, except that I should not deliberately and needlessly court vascular strain. Therefore when we got on the subject of marital problems, branching out into generalizations from remarks on the vast improvement in Nickie’s own that had resulted from the crisis, I trusted he would let a man speak without interruption on a subject that was, after all, a man’s own field, and not indulge this beastly habit of summing up in a brilliant phrase or two what a man was trying to say.

  “What people call disillusionment is usually a rather unsophisticated dismay with the discovery that the wine of romance has lost its sparkle,” I began in any case. “It need not, for that reason, lose its flavor. The two ought not to be confused, and the avoidance of this confusion is maturity. Indeed, when the sparkle has left is the time to begin to appreciate the flavor, and any poor wine can be made tolerable with it. If a wine has soured, that is one thing—throw it out. But do not throw it out just because it is flat.”

  This may not be the peak of human wisdom but it is reasonable counsel. I had thought it out along those lines and worked it up into a series of columns, which accounted for the polish of my disquisition, for I was quoting myself verbatim. Any extemporaneous improvement on its statement would therefore be doubly galling. If he attempted it now with what was, as I have said, my own line of goods, then I would wash my hands of him. Let him rot in jail. He was lying on the cot with his hands under his head, nodding in a familiarly ruminant way as he toyed with the ideas I threw out. I cleared my throat to indicate that I wasn’t through by a damn sight, and hurried on.

  “As for the notion that marriage is dull, let the cynics who to prove it point out the frequency with which it ‘ends in disaster’ realize what they are saying when they say that. For Fitzgerald was never wronger than in that oft-repeated and trenchant-sounding but really meaningless epigram of his that there are no second acts in American lives. The second acts go on in bedrooms, without audiences,” I said, watching him like a hawk. “Of the two ways of making love, adultery must seem the safer, as the aerialist engaged in it swings to an eventual stop, or else lands in marriage itself which is strung out protectively under the highwire. Whereas a man failing in marriage has nothing to break his tumble. Except to find another mate as fast as he can, which is exactly what most divorced people do.”

  Nickie, who had been nodding more eagerly, now sat up.

  “Truer words were never spoken,” he said. “Marriage is like turning somersaults on a net, with a trapeze to catch you if you fall.”

  “Oh, horse manure!” I fairly screamed, bringing both hands down on the briefcase in my lap, which then slid to the floor as I rose clutching at my chest. “Why must you always talk such rot, must you always talk this kind of smart talk in this childish need to create an effect? When will you grow up?” My
words came out between gasps for breath, which went in and out with a kind of dense, baying sound. I walked around the chair, trying to get my wind back and my pulse down. “I just want to get you squared away. I don’t want a heart attack. I just want some peace.”

  “Sit down,” Nickie said, forcing me back onto the chair, “and put your head between your knees. Away down, even lower than that—as close to the floor as you can get. That’s right,” he said when I had arrived at a completely doubled-up position. “Now sit there quietly for some minutes. Don’t move. And above all don’t talk.”

  He soaked his handkerchief from a tap at the washbasin and applied the cold water to the back of my neck, while I loosened my sopping collar and tie.

  “I’ve warned you of this before,” I said in the inverted position. “I don’t know what’s going to become of you if you insist on cow—cow—” I paused till another fit of spluttering had subsided. “If you insist on couching everything in paradox.”

  “Easy does it.… Don’t talk.… Shall I call a doctor?”

  “You mean you have a doctor in the jail here?”

  “Yes. He’s in for malpractice, but I’m sure the guard—”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Still now, and away down with the head.” He forced it nearly to the floor, causing me to topple out of the seat. I righted myself, and continued:

  “The reason I think no on the doctor is that ministrations are often disturbing since they certify the gravity of the condition for which they are sought. It’s the William James principle, that we don’t run because we’re scared but are scared because we run. The blood’s all rushing to my head.”

  “That’s where it’s needed.”

  My nose began to bleed. I dug out a handkerchief of my own from a hind pocket which I had no little difficulty in reaching, and put it to my nose, so that I had handkerchiefs wadded at both ends of my head. I held it there till a good deal of blood had soaked into it, then held it out for his inspection. “See? Hypertension.”

  “Easy does it.”

  “Blood is a funny thing,” I said, putting it back. “It stood in the Reader’s Digest—”

  “Please. No popular medicine, please, and above all no mention of that magazine, which makes my own blood boil. It’s the nadir of taste. The Reader’s Digest! Television scripts! Movies! If there’s any one major cause for the spread of mass illiteracy it’s the fact that everybody can read and write.”

  “At it again, are we?”

  “Sorry.”

  The spell passed, and I think bore fruit. I sat up again, taking a sip of the brandy. Nickie watched, sitting on the edge of the cot, his expression sobered, his whole manner chastened, and in his eyes the promise to be less exquisite in future.

  But the incident upset me, and I felt it my duty to report it to Crystal in the hope that I might be spared any unnecessary strain at home as well, for her and the children’s sake, toward whom I had responsibilities which I wanted to be around for some years yet to shoulder. I didn’t volunteer details of my recent medical history, exactly, but rather had them drawn out of me. It began when Crystal came into the bedroom and found me in bed reading a book actually addressed to women, entitled, How to Keep Your Husband Alive, and aimed at showing them how to achieve this by generally relieving strain. There were chapters on “Misunderstandings,” on “Tensions in the Home,” “Nagging,” and so on. I happened to be reading passages dealing with the heart, which brought on her rather alarmed queries.

  “Oh, come now, tut, tut,” I said, putting the book down on the table where she could find it later. “It’s nothing serious. Just using the old bean is all. Come sit by me.” I patted the bed. “How’s your speech going?”

  She picked up the book worriedly. “Are you sure …?” I took it from her and set it farther aside, out of reach.

  “None of that now. You can dip into it later, when you have time. It’s obviously been prompted by so many husbands’ pre-deceasing their spouses, to the, we know, dismay of the latter. This is a rational, impartial word to the wives, as it were, about how to meet the problem by reducing tension-producing situations and generally keeping off a man’s back.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “The author is a John Charles Freemantle.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  My hand crept to my chest and shoulder, as I smiled with a pointed tolerance. “You see? How we’re at it again? Without realizing it, without even trying? These are the things that must be avoided.” I patted the bedclothes again, and this time she sat down. “Now let’s talk about your speech, because I’ve had some ideas for it. Not mine, really, but yours. I was thinking today about the female need to be independent, to realize her own individuality above all else.”

  “I don’t believe I … As I remember it, you said that.”

  “No, I’m sure it was you who said it, and very well, too. That’s why I want to be sure you get them into your speech. Your notions reminded me so much of that play of Shaw’s, Getting Married, that I got it out of the library today. There it is, over there on the dresser. Anyhow, there’s a character in it you must quote, in your remarks on female emancipation, including the right to have a child without benefit of a husband, if she so desires.”

  “What? Wait a minute. I didn’t say that.”

  “You believe it, don’t you? Think about it a minute. Why, just because a woman wants a child, should she take on this snoring, shaving beast known as a husband if she doesn’t want to? Hasn’t she a right to do it by herself if she so desires?”

  “Well … I suppose so …”

  “Well then say it!”

  “But it would be a little outside the scope of the panel—”

  “Oh, scope! Give it scope. And a little resonance and dimension.”

  “But the clubwomen—”

  “Oh, bother the clubwomen! This is no time to pussyfoot! We’re in a time of ferment, an exciting time with new ideas in the air, which should be examined in the court of public opinion. Go on, set the ladies on their ears. Get some pizazz into your old forum!”

  Crystal laughed nervously.

  “Dare I? After all it is the debating team idea, of giving all extremes a hearing …”

  “That’s the stuff! And I’ll bet there won’t be a woman in the audience who doesn’t respond to your tocsin call. Every female secretly hates the slavery of her lot, and any man worth the name appreciates the fact. How they dress you in little aprons and put you in the Chintz Prison. I feel awful. So even if you don’t come right out and endorse the position, state it anyway as something that very much needs saying. You’ve got Shaw behind you, and me too. I’ll back you up. So have no fears whatever.” I got out of bed and into my slippers. “Come on down in the kitchen and let’s have some beer and cheese while you take notes. I’ll find the scene in the play where Lesbia makes this ringing plea for the bachelor mother. Gives the ringing defense for that.”

  We had a wonderfully companionable evening, there in the kitchen, working on Crystal’s speech and drinking beer while we discussed it. I wheeled the typewriter in from my study and wrote most of it out for her. We didn’t get to bed till long after midnight, when, tired as we were, we collided in the dark bedroom while undressing.

  “Ought we to in your condition?” she said.

  I slid to my knees, whinnying, my hands lapping her cool curves. I called what they sought “a fringed exclamation held in a sweet parentheses of loins.” The quality of the poetry injected a note of shame into the skirmish that curiously quickened our passion. When it was spent, we lay staring up at the ceiling, our bodies like balloons that had floated back to earth, though I refrained from stating as much this time. Crystal’s head was on my breast, my arm around her, as we murmured of this and that.

  “Lambswool, I’ve been wondering,” I said, “if we shouldn’t invest in some property. Decency is growing, and real estate’s the thing to put your money in—not leave it lying around in the bank or in low-rate
government bonds.”

  “Who’s doing that?”

  “I was thinking if we bought another house and rented it at the prices they’re getting these days, we could clean up.”

  “We don’t have any money lying around.”

  “I could borrow some.”

  “I see. Borrow some spare cash.”

  “I could take a mortgage on this house—that is, spread it over the two. Lots of people do that. Plow it back into improvements or into other property.”

  “What house did you have in mind?”

  “Not so fast,” I laughed. “Don’t rush me into this thing. None in particular, but I’d be perfectly willing to keep an eye open for a good bargain, if you feel that’s what you want. I mean for that much more security, for your and the children’s sake. There are always sacrifice sales, as they call them, one thing and another, that you can pick up cheap. Because the people have to get out of town for one reason or another. I’ll keep an eye peeled, then.”

  “So you’ll have two houses to maintain, when I can’t even get you to fix a plug in this one.”

  “I don’t think it’s that bad. The thing is, Decency is growing by leaps and bounds as a city of families, and I think a man should own a part of the growth of his community. Oh well, we’ll talk about it later. Don’t bother me with it now.”

  We settled down for sleep, relaxing a little away from one another and bouncing into new positions. Presently we lay on our sides. The dog’s chain clanked faintly under the open window. In the distance could be heard the thrum of trucks going to Boston and New York on the Thruway.

  I raised my head. I said, “Come to think of it, I do know of one house that’s for sale, now that you ask. The old Appleyard place. I understand you can pick it up for a song.”

  Crystal mumbled something indistinguishable. Then the bed-spring creaked sharply as she awakened momentarily, and I could sense her leaning on her elbow behind me.

  “By the way,” she said, “have you heard about Sweetie Appleyard?”

  “No. What?”