Place in the City Read online

But now it didn’t matter. When he thought of Anna, he smiled. That was all that mattered.

  He had never had any children, and now he wouldn’t have any. So he loved Anna the way he would have loved a child, and at the same time, as a wife. It was a love that carried him out of himself. If you became great in this way, he began to reason, then it doesn’t matter that you become great in no other way. His love was big.

  He played on in the dark, and if the boy had seen his face now, maybe the boy would have understood.

  The snow fell, and all over the city lights came on. Men walking made tracks in the snow, and many turned around to look at where their feet had dirtied it, almost with regret.

  THE PRIEST walked out into the snow, a tall figure of a man, standing solidly on his two legs. He tilted his face, so that the snow fell on his ruddy cheeks, and he smiled the comfortable knowing smile of a healthy man. Snow is a good thing; and snow coming so near to Christmas is the right thing. Snow cleanses.

  With long, swinging strides he walked toward the avenue, turning over in his mind what Edwards had said. His disease was plain enough. There is no healthy mind without a healthy body, and inside of Edwards, his soul was rotting. Whether the soul would die, or whether Edwards would save soul and body, was entirely up to him. That, indeed, seemed to be the accounting the city demanded of every person.

  Tonight, the city came down to the priest. Windows reaching to the sky, and walking figures without end; yet withal, there was more laughter behind the windows than tears. You had to believe before you could understand. Only—when you didn’t understand, when there was meaning to nothing, you became like Edwards. Then each twilight gathered around you like smoke….

  Meanwhile, the darkness soothed him, and the snowflakes fell on his face like a soft, cool caress. What did he know that the others lacked? What, in the simple fact of being a priest, gave him the courage to look through the dark, to see through it and know that beyond it was something?

  But he didn’t want to be alone this night. A night for knowing, a wonderful, deep, silent night, when people would turn their souls inside out, tell how and why they doubted. He could go now, seek and find. He was all a part of the great mystery that lay in the city, and he was knowing—

  Opposite the house, the priest met Shutzey. Shutzey stood in the snow, smoking a large cigar, one hand held out in front of him, palm up. The hand seemed to fascinate him, the way the snow fell, each flake melting on the warm skin, leaving a spot of moisture.

  “Wonder,” the priest reflected, “all the air is filled with wonder. What a night to know things! If the world goes round, even Shutzey knows—”

  “Hello, Jack,” Shutzey said.

  They were of a size, two mighty men, full of life and strength, with their feet set solidly on the ground. They were even similar in appearance, cheeks shaven smooth, with the ruddiness creeping out from beneath the blue sheen; and now they eyed each other. Two strong men can eye each other like that.

  “There’ll be a pile of snow in the morning,” Shutzey remarked. Then he looked at his hand, wiped it impatiently on his coat, and drew on a pair of yellow pigskin gloves.

  “To cover the dirt,” the priest said.

  “If yu look that way, Jack.”

  “I look straight ahead.”

  “Awright—if yu can. Funny though, I like tu stand in the snow like this, stand and feel cold air. Now what the hell’s got me, huh?”

  “You tell me, Shutzey.”

  “Ahdunno.”

  “You’re not afraid—?”

  Laughing, Shutzey blew out smoke, while frost from his nostrils steamed over his collar. Behind the glow of his cigar, the hard blue outlines of his face stood sharp.

  “Listen,” he said. “I ain’t afraid, Jack; I ain’t cut that way. I’m in a tough racket, an’ I don’t pack no gat. Aw—wot the hell—”

  “What’s eating you?”

  “Let it ride. You don’t gimme no religion.”

  “No—you’re a Godless man, Shutzey, and a bad one. But I like you.”

  “Why? You goin’ tu reform me?” Shutzey grinned.

  “No—”

  “Maybe I’m all bad. All of anything’s nice tu know.”

  “No.”

  “Yer a godamn funny priest. Maybe all yer life without a piece. How the hell do yu do it?”

  “Like standing in the snow—”

  “Awright—I got enough. You go in an’ see the girls, Jack. They been asking about you. Only remember they’re whores. Yu can’t make a nun outa whores.” Shutzey grinned and walked away. He walked like the priest, strong legs and solid on the ground.

  IF THE night, the twilight and the snow, had made something of other men, then Shutzey saw it, too. There is a mystery in New York, and no two nights are ever the same.

  He walked aimlessly toward the corner, and out of habit he went into Meyer’s cigar store. Meyer wasn’t there, but the girl was behind the counter, and when Shutzey came in, she stared at him in a way that he understood.

  Then, strangely, his thoughts took an abrupt turn to the priest, and he was saying to himself, “Geesus, Jack, how the hell do yu do it?”

  There was once another girl, and they both wanted her. She was eleven years old, dark, and really very beautiful; but where Jack worshiped her, Shutzey knew his way around. That was a long time back, but now Shutzey thought of it.

  Shutzey knew what cellars were for. One day, in Heckel’s Stationery Store—this long time back—he bought a ring for ten cents. He asked her to walk, and they walked all the way to the river and back.

  “Wid me,” Shutzey had told her, “you don’t gotta be afraid.”

  “I ain’t.” Her name was Alice, and if it was not forgotten, perhaps Shutzey still thought of it as a beautiful name, if he thought of the name in that way at all.

  “I kin lick anything.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. ’At’s why yu kin walk wid me—wherever yu wanna.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m pretty strong, ain’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Feel ’at.”

  “It’s hard, ain’t it?” she said.

  “Yeah, lemme feel yu muscle.”

  “No—”

  “Yu lemme take yu someplace, an’ I’ll show yu sumpen.”

  “Where?”

  When he led her to the cellar, she smiled at him in a curiously knowing way, but shook her head. Thinking of it now, Shutzey smiled; the girl behind the cigar counter thought he was smiling at her, and she smiled back at him. But the past still lingered, and staring at the girl behind the counter, Shutzey said: “Gimme La Primadora, dime size.”

  He remembered that finally he had lost his temper, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and said: “God dammit, I’ll show yu,” and even then she wasn’t afraid. She only looked at him, in that funny way of hers. Or was it his memory playing tricks with him now?

  Then he saw Jack coming, all the way down the block, yet when he first saw him, he already knew that it would mean a fight; and then the girl didn’t matter any more, only that he and Jack were enemies sworn to do battle. That was a long time back; but even now Shutzey felt that it would cleanse him to fight with the priest, hand to hand, the way two strong men should fight, right against wrong: and then he would know. But what would he know?

  “Yer a dirty bastard,” Jack had said to him, and when they came together, the girl was watching with dancing eyes; but in the end she lost her nerve and ran away; then Shutzey knew that she wasn’t worth it, for all of her inscrutable smile: since then no woman had been worth it. Now this slip behind the counter looked at him the same way.

  But all in all, that was not why he fought with Jack. He would never forget that fight, because it was bigger in its way than any other fight in his life. He was fighting to show that the strength in him was more than the calm smile the priest had even then. And he knew he would win. Right in the beginning, he knew that he would win, that wrong needed on
ly strength, and that there was a bitter long strength inside of him.

  As he lit his cigar, Jessica eagerly watched his handsome, dark face behind the sheen of smoke, watched his blue eyes, the eyelids fluttering ever so slightly. God, but he was strong! What kind of evil was there in strength?

  He remembered that in the beginning they measured each other.

  “I’m a dirty bastard?” Shutzey said to Jack.

  “Yeller bastard.”

  “C’mon.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yer yeller.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Make me ead it, yu lousy sonuvabitch.”

  “Yeah?”

  Shutzey had measured him, easy. Shutzey had known that in the end it would be his. As he knew now that the priest’s entire philosophy of good was inherently wrong.

  After the first stinging exchange of blows, Shutzey felt nothing. They fought toe to toe, steady and hard. Boys hardly ever fight like that. And after a while, they were surrounded by a circle of eager, waiting faces. Strength was the only good. Now Shutzey smiled at the girl, really noticing her for the first time. He took the cigar out of his mouth.

  It had seemed to Shutzey, then, that they fought for hours. But he always knew what the end would be. When the other boy finally lay at his feet, he was grinning, still.

  “Yu yeller bastard,” he whispered.

  THE GIRL grew up, and Shutzey forgot, only remembering now as he looked at the girl across the counter, in whom there appeared to be some resemblance. She might have said to him: “It was my sister,” if she had known.

  Alice Meyer forgot, too; and now when she saw Shutzey, something inside her made her slightly sick; but she never thought of Shutzey as the boy who had once tried to take her down into a cellar, to explain in his way what mysteries there are in the making of life.

  Thus, through Alice, Danny comes into our tale. School teaching, for four years, made Alice prim, all drawn up and together. She was naturally tall and thin anyway, and she had always worn her dark blond hair in a bun at the back of her head. And after four years she had fallen into a rut that was as long as the road that leads down through life, into whatever comes after. If she hated anything—she didn’t hate easily—she hated Apple Place, to which she was as surely connected as any one of the brownstone houses. That was before Danny fell in love with her, even though he was a year younger: and he thought that she was beautiful.

  Today, when she came home to the place over the cigar store, through the early winter twilight, she was still trembling, weak as a child, and longing with all her heart for Danny: and for no good reason, all because of a silly little incident at school that day. If she were wiser, she reflected, she would have passed it over easily. But she wasn’t wise. How could you be wise in a world that leaped at you, no matter what way you turned your face?

  This is what had happened. She had come back to class after the noon recess, and there was the thing lying upon her desk. It had taken her almost a minute to realize what it was, and then she felt so faint and ill that she had to sit down, leaving it where it was. She couldn’t touch it; it was too evil. And then, there was no child in her class who was more than twelve; that was what added to the horror of it.

  She sat there behind her desk, staring at the class, and they looked at her too, eagerly. If only she had had some inkling of it before she entered the room, she might have gained the upper hand; she might had sent in one of the men teachers. But now she had lost out entirely, and she would never be able to look at the class with clear eyes again. They were actually laughing at her, those who were not all tight with the tension of the moment.

  She wanted to cry; she wanted to scream, but nevertheless she had to hold up: so she merely said, in as quiet a voice as she could muster: “Who did this?” And then she looked around the room, from face to face.

  The boy who couldn’t meet her gaze was Peter White. He tried to. The others looked at her, knowing from long experience that it was fair proof of innocence to look a teacher in the eyes, but when she came to Peter White, he turned his face away. She noticed that his lips were quivering, that his small white fists were clenched tightly upon the desk. And he couldn’t look at her. Now wouldn’t that be proof enough for anyone?

  “Peter,” she said, still trying to keep her voice cold and level.

  He still didn’t look at her, but he rose trembling from his seat, and she had not even asked him to rise. Now wasn’t that further proof?—and was it entirely her fault?

  “Come up here,” she said to him, and she looked at him very sternly, as sternly as she knew how to look at anyone. Perhaps it had some effect, because the tittering died out, and the class became as still as death. Slowly, oh, so very slowly, Peter marched up to her desk, but when he was there, he would not look at the thing on her desk, averting his eyes from that and from her.

  “Look at me,” she commanded.

  He turned his face to her, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes.

  “Pick it up!”

  He shuddered.

  “Throw it in the toilet, and then go back to your seat.”

  He picked it up, but when he came back, he stared only at the floor. He walked to his seat, and sat there with his head bent over. Every so often, she noticed, his shoulders would heave in a dry sob.

  When the three o’clock bell rang, she said: “Peter White, remain in your seat.” He didn’t move. All that afternoon, he hadn’t changed his position, and now it seemed to her that he hadn’t even heard her.

  The rest of the children left, and then the two of them were there alone, and still she didn’t know exactly what to do. If she went with Peter to the principal, it would all be simple. Then the matter would be out of her hands and in his. But how could she, and how could she tell the principal what had been on her desk?

  But if she handled it herself, how could she punish him enough, make him feel what she had felt? And then, why had he done it? Why did he hate her? He wasn’t just a bad boy, only quiet, and rather dull.

  “Come up here,” she said to him; but he only sat where he was.

  “Peter!”

  Now he looked up, and she saw that his face was wet and dirty with tears.

  “Come up here to me.”

  When he stood next to her, she looked at him. He was thin; his face was very white, and the way he looked at her was worse than anything he had done to her before. Then, for the first time, looking into his eyes, she realized that perhaps he had not done it. She wanted to cry, too, but she said:

  “Why did you do it?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have to be afraid of me. Only tell me why you did it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me before?—why couldn’t you look me in the eyes?”

  “I was sorry—”

  “Why?”

  But then they looked at each other, and she understood, and he understood. Impulsively, she clasped him in her arms, and then when she realized that she was crying, she whispered for him to go. After he went, she sat and cried. It was good for her to cry that way.

  She was sorry that she had told Danny not to meet her outside of school today; meeting her too often made a bad impression on the other teachers. By the time she left the building, the early twilight was beginning to fasten down, and the first heavy flakes of snow were falling. It was cold. Wrapping her coat about her, shivering, she hurried home, wanting nothing now so much as Danny, someone who loved her, who would let her be weak and small, the way she really was.

  Walking along, she whispered: “Danny, Danny, get me out of this—someplace where we can be real and clean and honest. I don’t want our children to suffer like that boy …”

  I’M TIRED now,” the priest thought, “all of a sudden, or because Shutzey said that?” He turned around, and then he went slowly as he walked toward Shutzey’s brownstone house. Two thousand years now since the man other men speak of had walked on the earth
, and yet it was no different. Shutzey sold his women in the greatest city in the world.

  He stood in the drifting snow in front of the house, and looked at it. When a priest went in there, he cast caution to the wind. How many priests would, and why did he? In the end, it made no difference, and he was as alone and lost as any single flake of snow. Presently, they would unfrock him; nor would he blame them, knowing the godless world and the godless people in it. Then he laughed; he walked up the steps, his deep laugh booming out over the street.

  Susie, who opened the door for him, was only a child; she clung smiling to his large wet hand, while he shook the snow from his coat.

  “Come in, come in,” she laughed. “We’ll have a party now.”

  He went into the blue sitting room, and the girls flocked around him. He was terribly conscious of how large he was and how small they all were. Stretched out in front of him, his big shoes made great wet blots on the carpet; but nobody seemed to mind that, and everybody was pulling chairs close to him. Minnie the storage vault, who was madam, stood in front of him, nodding and smiling. She was always smiling, a round, fat, yellow-haired woman nearing fifty. She went out, and then in a little while she was back with a tray of tea things. She poured tea for him, and they all forced bits of cake on him. He ate and drank and laughed and talked. He felt warm, and he was curiously happy, as if he had been looking for this all, through the evening.

  “You’ll pardon us, father,” Minnie the storage vault said, “we ain’t dressed. You see, we didn’t know you was coming.”

  They plucked at his clothes, sitting close to him. They listened to every word he said. When he left, they trailed after him to the door.

  “Come soon—”

  “I’ll come.”

  It was only when he was out in the cold of the night again, the snow stinging him in the face, that he was able to think of the house, and consider it for what it was. For some time, he stood there silently, just looking at it. He was standing there like that when O’Lacy came by. O’Lacy had the beat on that block, and he walked quickly because it was cold; but he stopped to have a word with the priest.