Man Drowning

by Henry Kuttner

  I carried the luggage to the front door, which she had left wide open. The room hadn’t changed. Soft lights, bright colors, the sick smell of the Count’s cigarette. I looked around for the king snake, but I didn’t see it. Mrs. De Anza was talking in a high, fast voice. She was on the sofa, hunched over a telephone.

  The Count’s face, rouged and powdered, looked up at me over the edge of the grand piano lid. The black glasses gave me a brief, blank look and then lowered again to whatever it was he was doing behind the angle of the lid. Smoke spiraled up from the cigarette in the holder between his teeth.

  I set the luggage down and went back to the car. It took me four trips, with the last one for the record albums. Afterward I put the car away and went back to the living room. There weren’t any other lights on, so I guessed Benita and Rafael had gone to bed. It was a little past midnight. I picked up the groceries Benita had wanted and Rafael’s cigarettes, and took them to the kitchen. All the while the greasy smell of the smoke was getting thicker, and Mrs. De Anza’s high, fast voice rattled on. The Count was making muffled thumping sounds now and then behind the piano lid.

  I said, “I think I’ll make some coffee. Do you want some?”

  He gave me another blank look and then shook his head. I turned to the Countess. De Anza cleared his throat. I glanced back and he shook his head warningly. I shrugged and went out into the kitchen.

  There was a jar of instant coffee in the cupboard. I boiled a cup of water and carried the black coffee back into the living room. Mrs. De Anza had carried the telephone on its long extension cord to the far end of the room. She was saying sharply, “London. No, London. That’s in England.”

  I didn’t know anybody in London, so I picked out a chair and sat down. From here I could see what the Count had been doing. I’ll be damned if he hadn’t got that silver-mounted pistol out again for a cleaning. He had it all spread out on the towel and he’d been going over it as carefully as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a year.

  I don’t know if he saw me watching, but a minute after I’d sat down, he got up and crossed over to the record albums. He opened the package and went through it carefully, slipping out each disc, holding it by the edges, turning it slowly under a slanting light, looking for cracks or flaws. Finally he piled a stack of the records on the phonograph and fiddled with the volume until it was low. The music was bell music, soft, tinkling bells, with different tones. I can identify sweet or hot, but this was something I’d never heard before.

  The Countess said in a high, tense voice, “Well, keep trying, operator. Ring me back.” She slapped the receiver on its cradle and then sat there looking around the room in a feverish sort of way. She made me think of a big cat lashing its tail impatiently and waiting for something to move so she could jump at it.

  The Count looked up. “Ah,” he said. “Welcome back.” Apparently she hadn’t even spoken to him before now. She nodded in his direction without even glancing at him.

  “Did you win?” he went on in a pleasant voice.

  “Certainly I won,” Mrs. De Anza told him. “Thousands. Thousands. Not that I’ll ever see it again. All fairy gold. Tomorrow it turns into dead leaves. Nick, get me a—”

  “Then we’d better take precautions,” De Anza interrupted. “I’ll put it in the safe.”

  “No you won’t,” she said, giving him a direct look for the first time. “I may try my luck again tomorrow.”

  He let a few notes of the bell music tinkle through the room. Then he said, “Nevertheless, we’re out in the desert here. Robbery isn’t unheard of. Better let me have it.”

  “No,” the Countess said flatly.

  De Anza looked around the room, taking his time. No expression showed through the make-up on his face. He located her purse on the sofa, where she must have dropped it when she came in the door. Its sides bulged. He started toward it.

  “Don’t waste your time,” the Countess said. “I gave Nick the money.”

  There was something in the slow way he turned his head that made me think of the king snake. Sluggish but smooth, and no expression showing.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why what?”

  “For what service,” he said, forming the words carefully, “did you give Nick so much money?”

  The Countess put back her head and laughed. The cords in her bony neck stood out and you could see the pulse beating under the leathery skin. All her ornaments twinkled and jingled.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know!” she said.

  The flat black lenses swung around toward me. I set down my coffee cup and looked at the Countess. She just sat there grinning back at me, enjoying the spot she’d put me on. I didn’t know which side I was playing. That story about the trip to New York and the sanity commission sounded like a pipe dream, but it could be true. I didn’t even know who would be signing the checks around here this time tomorrow. I couldn’t choose sides.

  “For what service, Vince—” the Count began to ask me. But the Countess hooted him down.

  “This is Nick, remember?” she shouted in her high, tight voice. “Nick, not Vince. Callahan’s gone and forgotten.”

  I thought it was time to stop the whole thing.

  “I haven’t got the money,” I said. “I never did have.”

  Then they were both quiet, watching me. Her muddy stare and his flat round lenses both bored at me and for a minute there wasn’t a sound in the room except the bell music tinkling and jingling through the smoke.

  De Anza crossed to the sofa where the bulging purse lay. He picked it up and wadded bills spilled out over the cushions. The Countess was laughing again, flat and high. He ignored her. He was counting the money carefully, smoothing out the bills and laying them together with the printed faces all right side up.

  “Nearly seven thousand,” he said, and walked across the rug toward the safe, his moccasins making no sound. He pushed the rug aside with his toe, got down on one knee and opened the safe. As far as he was concerned, our little three-cornered exchange of a minute ago had never happened. I was beginning to build up quite a picture of Callahan.

  Laying the money carefully away under the floor, De Anza said without looking up, “I got a telephone call today I didn’t like, Nick. From the police.”

  I opened and shut my mouth a couple of times. I didn’t know what came next. Things were happening just a little too fast for me.

  “I don’t like to get police calls about my staff,” the Count went on, apparently talking to the safe, which he was now closing up very carefully. “I hope you have a satisfactory explanation.”

  “I—it was just police routine,” I said. “Mrs. De Anza talked to one of their men too. So did I. They’re just checking up on a killing in town.” That sounded too casual, so I added quickly, “Someone I know works in the place where it happened. It’s nothing. I’m sorry you had to be bothered.”

  “Suppose you tell me about it,” the Count said. He stood up and kicked the rug smooth over the safe.

  I told him what I’d already told the Countess, and some extra. I made it sound as good as I could. He just stood there watching me, the smoke spiraling up past his face.

  “The police have made no arrests yet?” he asked when I finished.

  “A couple, I think.”

  “You expect to hear further from them?”

  “Why should I? I didn’t kill the guy.”

  “You have killed men, though, haven’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You were in the South Pacific, fighting?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “An interesting sensation, killing,’ ’ he said casually, watching me. “Don’t you agree?”

  I thought that didn’t call for an answer. I just looked at him, waiting. He smiled suddenly, little creases showing in his pink and white make-up.

  “I have killed men too, you see,” he added. I found I’d been holding my breath. I let it out carefully. I
still waited.

  He watched me a minute longer. Then he turned away toward the piano bench where the silver-mounted gun was spread out.

  “In another war,” he said over his shoulder. “A long time ago now.”

  “I wonder what time it is in Paris?” Mrs. De Anza said.

  De Anza ignored her. He was looking down at the gun. “Do you suppose, Nick,” he said, “there’s much difference in killing—privately, so to speak?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. I found I was beginning to hold my breath again. I made myself let it out evenly. “Why?” I asked.

  “No reason. What do you think?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “The act of killing made no impression on you?”

  I tried to see what he was driving at by looking hard at his face, which was the only clue I could find, but the glasses and the make-up hid every sign of expression. I couldn’t tell. He’d got too friendly too suddenly, but it might mean nothing at all. And it might mean a lot. I didn’t like it, but what could I do?

  “Not exactly,” I said. “But it was war. After I got out of uniform I never had any ideas about solving problems with a side arm, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Have you ever encountered an insoluble problem?” he asked.

  “You mean one that had to be solved by killing? No. There aren’t any.”

  “It would be later than midnight, anyhow,” the Countess said, apparently to herself. “That I know.”

  “You read the newspapers, Nick,” De Anza said. “People are killed. Obviously, as you say, the problems of these people could be solved without killing, but that would require intelligence. And even those with a glimmer of mind are badly biased when their emotions are involved. Certainly killing isn’t necessary. Neither are automobile accidents, ideally. But they happen. Why?”

  I shook my head.

  “Momentum. Momentum carries them on. They can’t stop in time.”

  For a minute all I could see before me was a bulging white shirt front lurching toward me, slow, like a cloud, and a glitter of glass that was a broken beer bottle angled toward my face.

  But De Anza’s voice went on calmly.

  “They can’t stop in time. It’s a fascinating subject, murder. It’s really the only noncompetitive career a man can follow, whether he goes in for quality, like Landru, or quantity, like Haarman.”

  “It doesn’t fascinate me,” I said.

  He picked up the revolver and slanted it to the light, making the silver glitter. “What do you think, my dear?” he asked the Countess. “Wouldn’t you say murder fascinates any normal person?”

  “Who’s normal around here?” the Countess said. “Good God, Leo, you aren’t cleaning that damned gun again?”

  “Certainly I am.”

  “Mysophobe!” the Countess said. He gave her one of his blank-lensed looks, his eyebrows showing for a second over the tops of the glasses. He smiled and rubbed a fleck of dust off the silver. He didn’t say anything. The Countess looked at me.

  “In case you wonder,” she said, “mysophobia means a fear of dirt. It ought to mean fear of mice, but it doesn’t. A neurotic symptom, really. Lady Macbeth washing her hands, you know. The blood won’t come off no matter how often you—”

  “Don’t labor the analogy, my dear,” De Anza broke in. “As a matter of fact I’m indulging myself. This gun reminds me of something pleasant. A mistake I didn’t make.” He looked at me over the gun. “Did you ever hear of General Fernandez Silvestre?”

  I thought about it.

  “No.”

  He blew out smoke and smiled. “That was the man who made Franco dictator. There was a military scandal and Silvestre and his staff made the only amends they could for an inexcusable blunder. They blew their brains out.” He smiled in a secretive sort of way. I felt his eyes on me through the dark lenses.

  “Spanish Morocco it was,” he went on. “Nineteen twenty-one. A long time ago. Ten thousand Spanish soldiers massacred by the Riffs, because of a blunder.” He looked down at the revolver.

  “Was that his?” I asked.

  “Oh no. This was mine.”

  He whistled a few notes and rubbed the silver. The bell music tinkled from the phonograph.

  “War was a romantic affair in ’twenty-one,” he said. “I wasn’t a romantic, though, even then. I was a realist. Even when there were only half a dozen of us left. I was on Silvestre’s staff, you see.” He paused and looked up at the blank wall, not saying anything for a minute. After several bars of bell music, he went on, still staring at the wall.

  “The Riffs had us surrounded. At a place called Sidi Dris, it was. We kept sending out little bands with the wounded, trying to get through to Melilla. But not many did. There were too many Riffs. Silvestre stayed behind, with his staff. When he was sure the men had all been evacuated, he…” De Anza smiled. “Only a half-dozen of us left, you understand. He said, ‘Gentlemen, the moment has come for each of us to do his last duty.’ Wasn’t that a fine line? Then we shook hands all around. Every officer answered the roll, as Silvestre called it. Every man. ‘Presente!’ And then”—De Anza lifted the unloaded revolver and made a gesture toward his temple—“‘Presente!’ and blow your brains out,” he said.

  “All but you,” the Countess said in a hoarse voice.

  He made a little bow toward her.

  “When I looked down the gun barrel,” he said, “I remember it was exactly like Silvestre’s eye. He had black eyes, very cold and sharp. A man with a stare like a gun barrel and the romantic mind of a child. When my turn came”—he lifted the revolver again and aimed it a little to one side, past his temple—“‘Presente!’” he said. Then he lowered the gun and laughed.

  “The flash burned a little. I prudently fell down like the rest. I heard Silvestre call his own name, and there was a shot, and that was all. Except for the little problem of escaping from the Riffs. I managed.”

  He looked reflectively at the revolver. “Honorable suicide,” he said. “Nonsense. How childish to expect a man to kill himself for an abstraction. The Code of Hammurabi—expiation. A life for a life. What fools men are!” He blew on the silver and polished the mist away on his sleeve. “The breath of life remains to me,” he said.

  “For what it’s worth,” the Countess added in a flat voice. When he didn’t say anything more, she shrugged. “Divert it to the purpose of the worm.” She got up and began to pace restlessly around the room. I began to have the feeling this session would never come to an end. “A rose is a rose is a rose,” she said in an angry voice. “Four roses make a drink. Fix me a highball, Leo. What’s this?” She had got to the end of the room. “Good God, more letters?” She swooped back toward me, dropping a handful of envelopes over my knees. “I’m going to phone New Orleans,” she said. “Or maybe London’s clear now. Take care of those letters, will you, Nick?”

  I was feeling a little dazed. Things went by pretty fast here.

  “You still haven’t signed the last batch,” I said.

  She laughed as if I had said something funny, and began to dial with nervous jerks of her finger.

  De Anza put down the gun and crossed slowly to the bar. Over his shoulder he said to me in a soft voice:

  “I don’t want to hear from the police again about you, Nick. Keep it in mind.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  He gave me an expressionless look. I turned my head a little and saw that Mrs. De Anza was looking at me too. All three of us were quiet. The two pairs of eyes watched me without a motion. Somehow I didn’t like it at all.

  Then the record-changer clicked, and the tableau broke up. De Anza mixed his drink. The Countess began squabbling with the telephone operator.

  I looked through the letters, all addressed to Mrs. De Anza or Countess De Anza. There were only a few, a couple of bills, a brief letter of thanks for a donation to some charity, and a note written in a slanting hand
that was signed Vincent Callahan. I reread that one. All it said was that Callahan had left a suitcase behind him when he quit, and he’d appreciate having it kept for him till he had a forwarding address.

  Mrs. De Anza was phoning London again by the time the records were finished. I said I’d put them back in their albums, and the Count said thanks, he’d appreciate it. Then he lay down on a couch and shut his eyes. I guess he went to sleep after a while.

  Chapter 14

  Sure, he could sleep, what did he have to worry about, now? When I got into bed a couple of hours later, I was ready for a bad night. Because I was worried about the questions De Anza had been asking.

  Now I didn’t dare walk out. It would have made De Anza suspicious right away, after what we’d been talking about. I might get away with it, sure. I might climb a freight and pull out—would the police be watching the freights, after the Gavotte killing?—but suppose I fumbled? Suppose a railroad dick got me by the arm and asked questions? All I could say would be, “A guy named De Anza gave me a job, so I ran away.” Oh, sure.

  Anyway, Lieutenant Hobson had told me not to leave town.

  And he’d fouled up my chances even more by calling De Anza about Gavotte’s death, and asking a lot of questions. Maybe I’d wind up with no job and on charity—the barred window kind. But they couldn’t prove anything—not even if Sherry told them about my—my temper.

  Hell! Everybody’s different. Some people get mad easier than others. The way the world’s made, you’ve got sheep and wolves. If you’ve enough dough, you can be a wolf and pay your way out of any jam. But if you’re an ordinary guy, if you don’t have the dough behind you, then by God you’d better be a sheep. Your job’s to get clipped as soon as you grow more wool, and finally you’d better follow the Judas goat into the killing pen. Because if you don’t, then you’re breaking the rules, and, somehow or other, they’ll get you.

  Maybe I was a black sheep. Maybe I wasn’t a sheep at all. Whenever that hot burning started in my chest, pouring through me till it was ready to blow off, then I knew I wasn’t a sheep. And when it did blow off, I was bigger than the world. That was the time when I could hit back. All I ever needed was to find the right…enemy.