Place in the City Read online

  He walked on in that way. He walked and walked, growing wearier with each step. But he had to go on—he had to put more distance between himself and the woman he had killed.

  Only slowly did he realize the fact that he had killed his wife. It was so hard to understand—because he loved her; even now he loved her. If his thoughts wandered back through his life, it was always to arrive at the same conclusion, that he had loved only Anna. Nobody else; in all the years he had lived there was nobody else. That was why he couldn’t believe that he had killed Anna.

  The gun was gone. He kept looking at his hands, yet he knew that the gun was gone. And he didn’t remember dropping it. If there had been no gun—

  No—it was still too clear, too vivid, the way the gun had exploded in his hand, the way the bullets had plucked at Anna and thrown her from her feet. Probably, all four shots had found their mark. He knew that he had shot four times, because in all his rage he had subconsciously counted the shots. Four of them.

  He thought of Anna’s body, which he had held in his arms so many times. It was very thin and frail; a soft-nosed bullet from the heavy automatic would go in and tear its way right through. That meant Anna was dead. She was lying back there in the snow, and the poet would be telling the police that he had done it. They would call him mad. Everyone would call him a madman. They would call him a bloodthirsty Hun; they would call him a murderer and a beast. But most of all, they would call him mad.

  “But I’m not mad,” he whispered. “I’m not mad—I’m not. I’m sane. I killed her. But I loved her. Won’t any of them understand why I killed her?”

  Fear drove him on. He ran and he walked; sometimes he rested, leaning against houses. He knew that he had to get far away, that he would never be able to return; he knew that he had to find a place to hide.

  He saw a policeman. Very suddenly, the blue figure emerged from the haze of the night, walking slowly and swinging a long stick. Claus knew it would be a test; if the officer stopped him, it would be all over; if the officer asked him a question, it would be over. Now anything would break him; he had to be calm; he had to live: it was terribly strong in him now, that desire to live.

  Fumbling in his pocket for a cigarette, he found one, put it in his mouth, and stopped the policeman.

  “Got a match?”

  The officer looked at the long, gaunt figure; then he nodded. He felt in his coat, struck a match, and held it to Claus’ cigarette. He couldn’t fail to notice how the cigarette trembled.

  “Yer cold, ain’t yu?” the officer said.

  “Yeah—cold.”

  “Lookin’ for a place tu sleep?”

  “Yeah—I mean no. I’m going home now. I’m late.”

  “Yeah, it’s late.”

  “Thanks.”

  “O.K.”

  Claus walked on, but he couldn’t keep himself from looking after the officer,’ Hadn’t the man noticed anything—or were they all so stupid? If they were, they would never find him. Now he turned up the collar of his jacket and pulled it close. He was cold now.

  He walked along slowly, because he was very tired. If he had to walk this way all night, his body would break down. He was all torn and trembling; indeed, it seemed to him that the ends of all the nerves in his body tingled separately. Then he thought of the subway.

  It didn’t matter which direction he went in now. As soon as he saw a subway entrance, he went down the steps, paid his fare and stood on the platform. At that hour of the night, or the morning, for it was the morning already, trains did not run frequently. He stood on the long platform alone; there was neither movement nor sound, only the steel supports, the platform and the shining tracks.

  Like a caged beast, he paced up and down, twisting his bird-like head. Why didn’t a train come? Wasn’t it possible that they could trace him right here to the subway? Why was it so silent? Did trains run now? Why was no one else on the platform? The platform was like a tomb, the whole subway was. Then it might be a deserted road, he thought; yet he was unable to forget the man in the change-booth. Could he be a ghost? Was the whole world peopled with ghosts, set there only to plague him?

  He knew that such thoughts were wild and unreasonable. It was deep in the night, and that was why the train did not come, and that was all. There was no other explanation.

  So he sat down on a bench and waited. He started to smoke a cigarette, and then he saw the No Smoking sign. It didn’t pay. The station agent might be suspicious. Then he realized how thin his nerves were, how he was trembling. If he didn’t stop, he would betray his guilt to every person he met. And it wasn’t so cold down here—not enough to make him tremble.

  “Take a grip on yourself, Claus,” he said to himself. “You murdered your wife—but you have to live.”

  Thinking of Anna, he knew that now it would be the way it was before he met her; only worse. Now he would have an image of Anna in front of him always; he would think of how she was for all the time he had had her: he would think of her at the different times of the day, Anna in the morning, Anna coming to him while he sat at the piano, Anna at night, letting down her hair, Anna walking from one room into the next.

  Sometimes, even, he would remember that he had murdered her.

  Then he leaned over and put his face in his hands.

  His bird-like face was as lean and hard and leathery as Anna’s had been soft; Anna’s skin was like silk. But if he continued to think of Anna, he would go mad. He wasn’t mad now. Regardless of what others said and thought, he was not mad. Only, he had to stop thinking of Anna. Anna was gone. He couldn’t bring her back by thinking of her.

  While he sat there, it seemed to him that the lights were alternately fading and growing brighter; it gave an impression of night creeping into the subway station. Perhaps the night was flooding in there, drifting into himself. Night and death were the same thing, grim hooded masters whom you served, whether you willed it or not.

  He tried to laugh at himself, and his laugh sounded weak and hollow. Probably, his glasses were clouded; so he removed them, peered at them, turned them over and over, and then began to wipe them studiously. He looked like a long secretary-bird, bent over the bench, nodding his head. When he replaced his glasses, the lights were no longer fading. Naturally, it had been no more than an illusion; he was nervous and unstrung, and it was no wonder that he was subject to strange ideas.

  Then his hands were cold. He clapped them together, rubbed them and breathed on them, and then bent the fingers, one by one. He watched the play of his fingers, the subtle beauties in the tendons and muscles, the cleverness with which they moved; and watching them, he recalled how Anna used to hold up a hand against his, to show him how small hers was in comparison. They would always laugh over that.

  What would he say to her? Wasn’t there something he would always say to her at those time? Yes, he would say:

  “My Anna—you are a child with a beautiful woman’s face. That is all you are, my Anna.”

  He always said the same thing to her. Why not? He was a man growing old, and set in his ways.

  The train was coming. Now his ears were unnaturally keen, and he heard the train when it was no more than a distant mutter. Everything seemed to depend on the train. When he stepped into the train, all his worries would be over, all his doubts and fears. No more shadows would plague him. He would be able to step into the train and leave his crime behind him. He would be free of thoughts of Anna.

  Smiling, he nodded; best that Anna should not enter his mind again. Had he told her once that he would go mad without her? But he was not going mad. He didn’t need her; in himself, he was great and strong. He did not even have to think of her, if he did not wish to.

  He would be safe when he was in the train. Then he would go away. If only he had the piano. He needed the piano—

  The train was almost in sight now. Whenever he played and Anna was there, she simply stared. Sometimes the music would change the expression upon her face; but she never understood.
It was the same way when he told her about the war—about the old country. She stared, but she never understood. Probably, when she went with the poet, she went in the same way, believing, but not understanding—

  The noise died away. There was no train. Silence settled over the station, the same deep, terrible silence that made the tumult inside of himself so unbearable. But what of the noise he had heard? Where was the train? What had become of it? Was he really mad?

  He sprang to his feet, stared about him wildly, and then he saw the train come around the bend, roaring, drowning out his thoughts with its noise. Of course, it was there, and he had heard it all the time.

  He was weak and sweating when he stumbled into the train. He sat down in a corner seat, leaned back, and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. He was going to put the handkerchief away when he saw that it had blood on it. It fell from his hand, and he watched it dumbly as it fluttered to the floor of the car.

  Glancing about him quickly, he saw that the car was empty; nobody had seen him. Quickly, he bent down, grasped the handkerchief, and crumpled it up in his hand. Then, stealing glances at it through his fingers, he tried to decide how blood had gotten onto it; then he remembered that he had had a nosebleed. He put it away and laughed. What a fool he was becoming, afraid of his own shadow! He was safe—he was even safe from his own thoughts here in the train.

  At the next station, one person entered the car, a mulatto woman whose face was powdered to a death’s shade of gray, and whose lips were heavily rouged. She sat down opposite him, crossed her legs, and stared. As the train started again, she smiled.

  He turned his eyes away, closed them, and then opened them again; she was still staring at him and, smiling. Then she nodded at him.

  What did she want with him, when Anna—

  “Anna’s dead,” he muttered.

  The mulatto continued to smile and nod. At the next station, he sprang to his feet and ran out. When the train pulled away, he was alone on a subway platform once more.

  Dazedly, he found his way to a bench, and dropped down on it. He put his head in his hands, pressed his glasses into his face.

  “Anna,” he whispered.

  “I didn’t want to,” he went on, “but I had to. I loved you, my Anna. Now you could go; now I’d let you go—but I wouldn’t even speak; I wouldn’t try to stop you. Only I loved you so much. How much you won’t know. It is not in you, with your small simple mind to understand how much I loved you. I would do anything in the world for you. I would come to you on my knees and ask your forgiveness. I would do that, my Anna. Believe me—that I would do anything in the world, only to have you forgive me—”

  He shook his bird-like head from side to side.

  EDWARDS was conscious of rushing feet, of a world and a street coming together. Where there had been silence, a babble of hungry voices filled the air; and it seemed to him that a thousand hungry hands were plucking at him …

  The boy had picked himself out of the snow, brushed it from him. He stood erect in a world of cold and beauty; and in him there was a great wonder, for when he came out of Shutzey’s house he had been sick and disgusted with himself. Now something had happened; it happened just before his father struck him.

  There was no hate in Thomas O’Lacy because his father had struck him. The pain of the blow, which he still felt, was still good. He rubbed his face.

  But his father would have to understand; he would have to understand what had happened to him then, and he would have to know that they were both on the same footing now, both together.

  He knew now that he couldn’t boast about what had happened in Shutzey’s house; and he wondered how he could explain that to his father. But however he explained it, he would come to his father as man to man.

  He walked away; he was some distance from the street when he heard the shots; but he was deep in the splendor of his own thoughts, and he walked on.

  It woke Meyer. Tossing restlessly, dreaming, the slightest sound would have wakened him. As it was, the shots blasted into his slumber, and brought him abruptly awake. He sat up.

  He sat up afraid and anxious, wondering what had drawn him out of his sleep. At first, it might have been any night, and then he remembered what had happened. Alice had gone away—but what was the use of thinking now? “Go back to sleep, Meyer,” he told himself. But still he was puzzled, thinking that he had heard shooting.

  Was there a sound outside in the hall? He bent forward and listening, cupping a hand around his ear; then he sighed wearily. Nothing—yet it still seemed that somewhere, outside perhaps, a confused murmur was making itself up.

  The night, the shadows, and the mystery weighed on him like the presence of near death. He was cold and afraid, old. He moved over against his wife, and then he touched her shoulder. Bessie sat up, rubbing her eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked him.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “You’re imagining things,” she told him. “Go back to sleep, Meyer. You have to get up and open the store. So go back to sleep now.”

  “Yeah—but I heard something. I thought maybe someone was in the store.”

  “Nobody’s in the store.”

  “All right.”

  He attempted to compose himself for sleep, but it was useless. The moment he closed his eyes, countless pictures flooded into his brain, large distorted pictures that turned him into a very small man, such a small man. He shivered and trembled with his own smallness.

  “Bessie,” he moaned desperately, “I’m afraid.”

  She put out her hand and closed it over his, understanding something of his fear. Poor small man—he was beaten finally. What use is it for a small man to struggle, when he has to give up in the end? Nothing was left, no money, no children, just the two of them alone in bed, realizing that their lifelong dream had burst like a swollen bubble. Money—after all, say what you will, money is the breath of life; but now he had nothing.

  “Poor Meyer,” she thought, “you’ve lost yourself.”

  “Bessie, I’m afraid,” he whispered.

  “I know—I know, Meyer, but it’s nothing. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Yeah—I’m afraid of everything. Soon, I’ll die, Bessie. I’m an old man—”

  “Nothing to be afraid of, Meyer. Soon, it’ll be morning, and in the morning, you’ll feel better …”

  The poker game, up in the regular club, went on. Kraus had dropped out, but Mickey the louse had taken his place. Now Shutzey was winning; he had been winning for a half-hour already, steadily, deal after deal, and it occurred to him that never before had he known such good luck in cards. It seemed that the cards were enchanted. He played blind, but if there were kings on top, it always turned out that there was a king under. If someone else had a pair of kings, and he had an ace up, he knew that when he turned over, there’d be an ace under. Luck like that doesn’t come often, and Shutzey bet high. The others bet high, too; they knew that Shutzey’s luck couldn’t last forever.

  “Yer a sonovabitch,” said Mickey the louse. “I never knew a guy what had a run like that.”

  “Put up, put up,” Timy said. “Maybe you guys oughta get clinched, like Danny.”

  “Aces,” Shutzey said. “Look.”

  “Yer a sonovabitch.”

  “Danny’s all right,” Shutzey nodded. “Danny’s a good kid—a damn good kid. You ain’t got no leg to stand on without Danny, Timy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. You ain’t no lawyer.”

  “When I’m a supreme court judge, Shutzey, I’ll pull you outta stock with a dozen of your whores.”

  “O.K., Timy.”

  Then they heard the shots. In that silent night, they were heard much further than Kraus’ place; in the club they were clear and sharp.

  “Wot the hell—”

  “Someone shootin’ up.”

  “Deal out.”

  “Who the hell’s shootin’?”

  “Over o
n the Place.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Deal out.”

  “We oughta see.”

  “It ain’t none uv yer business.”

  “I’m going—”

  “Comin’, Timy?”

  “Yeah—the game’ll wait.”

  It was almost in front of Mary White’s house that Anna was shot, but the noise hardly penetrated into her lethargy. She stirred, moaned once or twice, and then lay still.

  But it woke Peter and Sasha. Peter stirred, opened his eyes once, and then closed them tight; he attempted to think of the dream he had been torn out of, drove his fists into his eyes, and wondered whether there had been shooting in the dream or not.

  He was in bed, but he couldn’t remember going to bed. Also, he was vaguely disturbed; he didn’t remember his mother coming home.

  He wanted to see whether his mother was home, yet his bed was so warm and comfortable that he hated to stir. On the other side of the room, someone was moving; that meant Sasha was awake, too. He peered across the room, tried to make out her form, but found it impossible because of the darkness. It was funny to be in a place so dark that you might just as well be blind. The idea fascinated him, and he held his hand up before his face; nothing there, nothing at all. The he commenced to feel afraid; he was hardly awake.

  “Sasha?” he whispered.

  “You awake, Pede?”

  “Yeah—bud I can’t see my hand. Maybe I’m blind.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Yu think yer blind, Sasha?”

  “I dunno.”

  “I god my hand ride in fronta my face. I can’t see nothin’.”

  “You scared, Pede?”

  “A liddle.”

  “What are you goin’ to do?”

  Peter slipped out of bed and felt his way over to Sasha. Hearing him coming, she reached out a warm, small hand, and Peter found it. For a moment he held it; then, feeling cold, he crawled in beside her, head first. Under the covers, he twisted around, so that they were face to face. Sasha clasped her arms around him, and they snuggled close to one another. Sasha was drowsy with sleep; mechanically, she kissed Peter. Then she was dozing off, when Peter said: