There was something that he did not like about the morning, something, he thought, almost obscene. It was as if time arose regularly from a nightly grave and stalked the earth, touching the earth and all that walked upon it with clammy hands. There was a moldy, fetid fragrance released by the early dew that assailed his nostrils unpleasantly like the musty odor of dark rooms in forgotten houses.
But now he gave this habitual distaste only a fleeting thought. His small, well-slippered feet made no sound in the deep faded carpet which lined the floor of the hall as he went out of his apartment and descended the dark stairway. As he went down, his fingers lightly touched the smoothness of the dull oaken banister, and he was conscious of an instantaneous respite, of peace. If he disliked his apartment, he sometimes felt overcompensated by the dark friendliness of the long stairway, and he never hastened in his descent. For while going down, he was able to lose awareness of himself in the cloaking anonymity of half-light; if only for a moment, he could merge into the darkness, becoming, somehow, a part of it.
At the foot of the stairway he paused briefly; then he opened the door and ducked hurriedly into the bright morning. Although the weather was not at all cool—it was, in fact, a warm summer morning—he found himself shivering as he went along the street.
The street was very nearly deserted; and as he walked, a familiar and sickening sensation of pure aloneness overtook him, deadening his legs and making his step less springy. An occasional figure hurried past him; he heard the laughter of unseen children playing in back yards ripple across the morning air; he heard the roar of an automobile on another street. But it seemed that none of these had anything to do with him, with Arthur Maxley. The place where he walked was a meaningless, cemented desert with curiously unlifelike configurations all about that obscurely threatened and hemmed him in.
Where should one go in the morning? he asked himself. What should one do? Our Father which art in heaven, give us this morning something to do. To walk in the park. Our Father which art, our Father which art . . .
The rhythmic phrase repeated itself and echoed in his mind; he went a little faster as if that acceleration might drive it away.
Our Father which art in heaven, our Father which art . . .
Father, Father, Father, he said to himself. What an ugly word.
Then, quite suddenly, he knew that he would not go into the park, that he would not keep his promise. Although he did not change his direction, although he went on toward it, he knew somehow that he would never get there, that something would prevent his reaching it.
And he was almost upon it before he realized what it was; then he recognized and remembered it, and he smiled to himself and said silently, You see? You knew you wouldn’t get there. You knew when you made the promise.
This thing which had caused him to pause, which had deflected his course, was a small café nestled furtively in the middle of the block, as if somewhat ashamed of its existence. He had passed it many times before, but he had never gone in.
But now, smiling his contempt and gratitude, he went toward it purposefully, and the thin glassed door yielded unresistingly to his touch. The interior was narrow and quite long. Two old men sat at the counter, unmoving, hunched over thick mugs of coffee. Two housewives, in their housewifey dresses, sat at a table in the rear, whispering to each other over orange juice and toast. He surveyed them skeptically.
He wiped a fleck of breadcrumb from the soiled cover of a chair and sat down at a table near the front. He picked up a limp menu and pretended to study; pretended only, for perusal was next to impossible. The menu was one of those typewritten affairs, and this must have been a fourth or fifth carbon, well-used and smudged by previous customers. He sniffed delicately and dropped it on the table.
A waitress approached. She slouched unbecomingly, lazily, as if she were storing up her strength for an impending ordeal.
‘Good morning,’ she said perfunctorily. It seemed to him that she must have spoken the same two words a million times and had become unutterably weary of their sound. Her pencil was poised above a small pad.
He stared at her blandly. How long dare I wait? he thought. How long before she becomes too uncomfortable and makes a move? It was like toying with a mouse.
But the waitress, standing in time, showed no sign of strain or unease.
At last, deliberately, enunciating very clearly, he said: ‘I want one cup of coffee and one egg—no toast—and a bottle of Tabasco sauce.’ He sat back smugly and waited for her surprise.
But he was disappointed, for neither flicker nor change marred the bored mask of her face. Her pencil fluttered listlessly over the pad. She turned without a word and slouched back toward the kitchen.
He stared after her contemplatively. Impertinence, he thought. Blissful, impregnable impertinence. No fighting ground. He could not approach the manager (what would the manager of such a place be like?) and say, This girl is impertinent. She failed to be surprised when I ordered an egg with Tabasco sauce. Fire her. He could not say that. But, nonetheless, it was rudely impertinent. For an instant, he indulged in the fancy that he was her employer. With a few, well-chosen, incisive words he had the poor wretch trembling and weeping before him. Just this one warning, Miss Menu: Mr Maxley is a gentleman. He must be treated as such. The next time he orders an egg with Tabasco sauce, you will be surprised. Do you understand, Miss Menu? And, Miss Menu—try to hide the remnants of last night’s debauch. That is all, Miss Menu. You may go.
Thought broke off abruptly as the waitress shoved the plate before him and put the steaming mug of coffee beside the plate. As she brushed near him, he could smell quite vividly last night’s cheap perfume, so strong that the sickening odor of morning food and the kitchen smell could not obscure it.
He grunted importantly and fumbled with his knife and fork until she moved away. He poised to attack the food; but he stopped, just above it, suddenly fascinated.
From the chipped blue plate, the egg stared up at him like a knowing, evil eye. At first, he was amused by the fancy; but as he stared longer and as the yellow eye glared back at him, he became acutely uncomfortable. He blinked rapidly.
And still the yellow pupil stared senselessly at him from its greasy white orb. He reached for the bottle of Tabasco sauce and poured a bit of the fiery red liquid on the eye. As if it were suddenly irritated beyond all endurance, the white surrounding matter became alarmingly bloodshot and developed a network of liquidly shifting veins, changing the vacant expression into something almost frightening. It looked up at him reproachfully, as if in great agony.
With an effort, he tore his gaze away and forced his lids down to cover his own eyes and he shook his head vigorously from side to side. He tried to laugh at himself. These fancies . . . Why did he allow them to take hold of him? It was only an egg, a simple thing, and for a moment his imagination (it was only his imagination) had made him think that . . .
When he picked up the cup of coffee and lifted it to his lips, he noticed with some surprise that his hand was trembling. He steadied it as best he could by resting his elbow on the table-top. He took a cautious sip. The liquid seared his lips, burned his tongue and throat. But he felt better. He put the coffee down and looked again at the egg. Its aspect was no longer frightening; it was ludicrous to think it could ever have been frightening. But he could not possibly eat it now. It would be indecent, unclean. The thought repelled him.
Then all at once he discovered that he was becoming depressed by the atmosphere of this little café. He could hear the clinking of dishes in the back room, the whispering shuffle of unseen feet, the senile mutterings of the two men hunched over the counter, the mechanical jargon of the gossiping matrons, and the hundred other unidentifiable little sounds which were the property of the café’s routine. And as he listened, these things merged into a primitive, monotonous rhythm that jangled against his nerves and set him to moving restlessly in his chair. From where he was, he could see the out-of-doors through the plate g
lass windows of the café and it seemed to him that they, the sunlight and this interior dimness which shrouded him, were two antagonists, each striving to conquer the other with weapons so equally powerful that they could not destroy. And he was involved in this battle, and he had no wish to be involved.
He was unable now to remember exactly why he had come into this place. It had something to do with the park. Yes: coming in here had made it impossible for him to walk in the park. But it seemed that there was something else. He had not wanted breakfast, so it was not hunger. Or perhaps it was. Perhaps it was a hunger that had nothing to do with his body. Perhaps it was hunger for the sight of an image unframed by a mirror, an alien face that could look into his eye and sparkle, a voice that could pierce like a spear the swollen shell of loneliness that incased him. And the only face and the only eye and the only voice that he had found was that of a sleazy waitress in a faded green uniform who did not know him, could not meet him, who saw him only as a mouth that ordered food and ate it up.
In his present misery, he forgot his earlier distaste for and rudeness toward the waitress. Why had she not been more friendly? Why had she not smiled at him? Why had she not spoken a cheerful word?
At last he sighed. Oh, well, he thought. Oh, well.
He fumbled in his pocket, extracted a bill, and listlessly dropped it on the table. He got to his feet. His legs were weak, as if he had been running for a great distance. He pushed open the door and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, squinting his eyes against the sun. He plodded up the street.
At the corner there was a bus stop and a wooden bench which accommodated waiting passengers. He draped himself on this bench like a limp rag. His quick breathing began to subside as he filled his lungs with the moist air. He did not move.
He sat there for a very long while. A huge orange-and- yellow bus lumbered down the street toward him and ground to a reluctant halt. He looked at it for a moment, his eyes glassy, unseeing. The driver flung an audible curse into the heavy air and angrily shoved his vehicle on.
Arthur Maxley shook his head as if he were arousing himself from a weighty sleep. He got up with the tired movements of a very old man. Automatically, without thinking, he began to walk back the way he had come, back toward his apartment.
Tomorrow, he said to himself. Tomorrow I will keep my promise and walk in the park. It is something to do. Our Father which art in heaven, give us this morning, our Father which art in heaven, our Father which art, our . . .
Father, he thought. It is a word.
So suddenly that he swerved in sharp surprise, the large brownstone apartment building reared before him. The shutters had been opened and the drapes had been drawn aside to disclose the vapid stare of the windows. They leered down at him as, with a small grimace of repugnance, he mounted the steps and went inside. He paused at his mailbox and withdrew a slender sheaf of letters. Without a further appraisal of them, he prepared himself for his cleansing bath of gloom, the old ritual of the dark stairway.
When he entered his room he noticed that during his absence the carpets had been swept clean and the stray articles of clothing had been cleared from the chairs. The door which connected his parlor and bedroom hung open, discreetly half-way, and he could see the newly restored order there.
He smiled with satisfaction. He pulled a chair to the window, arranged it at a careful angle, and let the sunlight flow over one shoulder.
He glanced through his mail slowly, humming under his breath, lingering over each letter as if debating whether to open it immediately or lay it aside until later, until after he had read the more important mail, if such there was. His mail was always substantially the same: prospectuses from colleges and universities, circulars from book clubs, some magazines, impersonal mailing-list invitations to concerts and lectures, esoteric little notices from a literary society to which he had once belonged—all usual, regular, and expected.
He sighed heavily and permitted the letters to drop and scatter on the floor beside him. He stared into the opposite wall as if trying to penetrate its thickness. He reviewed the uneventful morning, and he thought rather morosely of the afternoon that must follow. Lunch with Stafford Long, perhaps an afternoon movie, a few drinks, then back to the apartment, a book that he would not really read, a few more drinks, and—Usual, regular, expected.
A gentle knock sounded at his door. He roused himself enough to call out wearily, ‘Come in.’
The door swung open, toward him, and a hand slid through the aperture into his view and then a forearm. A face peeped in and whispered, ‘Mr Maxley? You busy? Can I come in?’
He jumped up from his chair. ‘Certainly, Judy, certainly,’ he said. ‘Come right in.’
The woman that he called Judy, whose dust-cap was askew on her wispy head and who clutched a frazzled feather duster (which was her private symbol), came inside and stood before him.
‘Well, Judy,’ he said gaily. ‘How are you this morning?’
She moistened her lips and grinned up at him. ‘I got something for you.’
He laughed vaguely. He stepped a little closer to her. ‘Have you? What is it?’
She grinned again, more widely. He glimpsed two teeth, one black, the other very yellow, side by side. He looked away.
‘Not until you give me a quarter,’ she said.
A game, he thought. It is a game.
‘A quarter, eh? A quarter. And suppose I won’t give you a quarter?’
‘Then I won’t give you the—I won’t give this to you.’
But he noticed that as she spoke her arm was moving from behind her back, signifying the end of the game. He laughed quickly and moved toward her but not so suddenly that she did not have time to dodge backward.
She smiled uncertainly. ‘Oh, no you don’t, Mr Maxley. Not until you give me the quarter.’
‘A quarter,’ he said. He laughed again, senselessly. For a moment they stood there, considering each other. Then, still laughing, he lunged toward her. He caught at her shoulder and pulled her toward him clumsily, making sure that the pressure he exerted was not sufficient to pull the arm and hand behind her back into his reach. Both laughing mechanically, patronizingly, they struggled for a few moments. She twisted in his careful grasp, pushing herself against him and pulling away. He raised his free hand and let the back of it brush negligently across her breasts. And was it only accident, or did she respond, did she relax against him for a moment? He could not be sure. To make certain, he released his hold very suddenly; and she fell back out of the circle of his arms, against the opposite wall.
He felt an instant of keen disappointment. But then he thought, Perhaps it was the sudden movement, perhaps she did not really intend to jump back like that. He tried to read the answer in her eyes, but he could see nothing. She stood in front of him, the same grin on her face, the same eyes, waiting.
But he knew that the game was over. He thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew a coin. He walked up to her.
‘You win, Judy,’ he panted, pretending more exhaustion than he felt. ‘You win.’
She took her hand from behind her back and showed him a letter. ‘It came this morning while you were out. I gave the messenger a quarter. That was right, wasn’t it?’
‘Perfectly right.’ He took the letter that she offered him and without looking at it stuffed it in his coat pocket. He captured one of her hands and pressed the coin into her palm, closing her fingers about it, kneading the flesh about her knuckles gently, insistently, waiting for her to pull away. She did not move. He wet his lips.
‘Is there anything else you want me to do before I go?’ she asked softly. ‘Can I clean up anything?’
He thought desperately. Was that a signal?
But suddenly it did not matter. He was tired again and angry with himself and ashamed and a little ill. He dropped her hand. He turned away from her and walked back to the center of the room and stood with his head bent, aimlessly following the pattern of the rug with his eyes.
/> ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, everything is fine, Judy. Everything looks very nice.’ He waved his hand, indicating the apartment. ‘Thanks.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Maxley,’ she said, backing toward the door. ‘Just any time . . .’
‘Thanks again,’ he said. But when he looked up, she had disappeared.
He walked to the chair near the window and sat down. With his foot, he tried to push the dropped letters into a neat, orderly pile. Then he remembered the letter that Judy had brought him. He groped in his jacket pocket and withdrew it. He glanced at it incuriously. It was a plain, narrow, white envelope. From the whiteness, his name stood out, patterned in strong black lines. Then, as he stared, his eyes widened. He became painfully aware of his heart. It beat like a heavy stick against the drum of his breast.
With fingers that trembled with ill-repressed haste, he tore and scratched at the narrow missile until it was in virtual shreds, and the sheets of the letter danced nervously in his hands.
His throat was dry and hot. He breathed quickly. During his reading, he was forced to look away several times and blink his eyes before he could continue to comprehend the wavering print.
‘Dear Son,’ (the letter read.) ‘First of all, you must forgive me for not having written you for so long. I guess by this time though you know of my failings as a correspondent. So much of my time is taken up by the business that it is sometimes hard to get a letter off.
‘The South American business turned out well enough. Maybe I was foolish to go wandering half-way around the world, but you don’t want to take chances on the business not being taken care of. I wrote you a letter in Buenos Aires, but I don’t know whether you received it or not. I did not get a reply.
‘We docked in San Francisco a week and a half ago, on the twelfth. It is really good to be back. A year and a half is too long to be away.
‘Even though you haven’t heard from me very regularly, I hope you realize that I have thought about you often, and I hope that your checks are coming through all right. I left instructions with Masters to send them every week, and for him to let you know that you are to call on him for anything you might need. I hope he has done all of this satisfactorily.
Nothing but the Night Page 2
