Place in the City Read online

  “ ’Evening, father.”

  “Good evening. It’s rather hard on you, a night like this.”

  “Now I don’t mind too much, thinking of a warm house to come back to. My shoes do get soggy. Dirty shame—”

  “What?”

  “That house. Now I could handle the like of Shutzey—”

  “Yes.”

  “But with Timy an’ all the rest taking it in hand over fist—Ah, well, will you be walking along, father?”

  “Yes.”

  Then the two broad figures faded into the snow and the night.

  THEY walked to the club together, Timy and Mary White. By the time she got there, Mary knew that it would be a stag, but as yet she had no inkling of what she would have to do. The club always gave its big stag just before Christmas, and there was always some special novelty supplied by Shutzey. She hadn’t been to one before, but she had spoken to girls who had. They told tales that were as wild as they were sickening. It couldn’t be too bad, because men were only men, wherever you went.

  “You’re Mary White, ain’t you?” Timy said to her, while they were walking.

  “Yes, that’s my name.”

  “Well, you pull along with me tonight, an’ I’ll see you’re treated right. Maybe fifty bucks in it for you, and that ain’t bad for an evening, eh?”

  “What will I have to do?”

  “Same old stuff, like at Shutzey’s. Don’t you worry. You got a few hours yet, an’ I’ll send in some supper for you.”

  They went into Kraus’ saloon, and Timy nodded to Kraus, who stood behind the counter in a’ white apron, polishing small whisky glasses and chewing one end of his mustache. He nodded back at Timy, looked over Mary White, from head to foot, and grinned. Kraus was a huge, fat German, with folds of flesh going all the way from his shoulders to his cheeks. When he grinned, his face took on the appearance of a full moon, tiny eyes peering out of the flesh. Being a member of the regular club, he had an interest tonight in Mary White. He studied her carefully, from her ankles to her waist, to her breasts and her face; and his eyes followed her as she went into the back room with Timy.

  There were two men at the bar, Snookie Eagen and Tommy Wooly. Snookie Eagen was just a pimp, but Tommy Wooly was right up with Timy in the ward, beside which he followed the races. He dressed like a sport, in a brown derby, a black chesterfield, checked brown suit, and black patent leather shoes. He was chewing a toothpick, with which, every so often, he cleaned one of his nails.

  Now, after a single glance at Mary White, he turned back to Kraus and said: “Don’t lose yer peepers, Dutch.”

  “Such a woman,” Kraus sighed.

  The door swung open, and a boy came in, his breath steaming. He might have been twenty-five or twenty-six, but he looked younger because his cheeks were all flushed and smooth with the cold. Nodding at the barkeeper, grinning at Tommy and Snookie, he walked over to the bar and ordered a small beer.

  “Hello, Danny.”

  “What’s up, Danny?”

  “Nothing much.”

  It paid to be nice to Danny, if you knew how Timy felt about him. He’d go a long way.

  “Comin’ tonight?”

  “Yeah. I had a date, but I guess I’ll be there. I’ll have a beer, then smooth out the date. Maybe I’ll be a little late.”

  “We’ll save you something, Danny.”

  “Sure, Danny.”

  “Make it a couple of beers.”

  “Naw, you wanna get laid tonight. Do yu good.”

  “Any way you say, boys.”

  Then Timy came out of the back room. He smiled when he saw Danny, came over and squeezed his hand.

  “I’m glad to see yu, kid.”

  “How’re things, Timy?”

  “Awright, awright—I ain’t complaining. I ain’t a congressman yet, but wot the hell. You stick along, kid, and we’ll both have desks in the Senate.”

  “Don’t I know that, Timy?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe I’ll be a little late tonight, Timy.”

  “Awright, Danny. But show up.”

  “O. K., Timy.”

  THE MUSIC MASTER’S playing grew softer and softer, until only a suggestion of the melody came into the room underneath, where the poet sat with Anna. At last, they listened to the wavering strains without considering who was playing.

  Anna put her head on the poet’s breast and forgot. He smoothed her light hair, moved his lips over her face. He said:

  “Do you know, Anna, what tonight is?”

  “I’m happy.”

  “For us, it’s the night of all nights. Do you understand, my darling? Until tonight, I was dying. But I’m not afraid now. I won’t be afraid.”

  “You won’t die.”

  “No, I won’t, my Anna. Now I know that. Do you know what we’ll do?—go someplace where the air is clean and thin, where I can stay alive and be better. We’ll work and write. Would you like people to say, ‘There’s the wife of a great man’?”

  “It would be nice.”

  “We’ll have children, Anna. You know, tonight I was thinking of how much just a small life can hold. And I always come to the same picture. There’s a giant of a fire in a big stone fireplace, with the flames flickering all over the room. Beams overhead, and beyond the beams deep shadows. And a deep rug before the fire. You sit there—perhaps you knit. I have the picture, light running from your hair, and shadows all over your face. You see, your head is bent a little to look at your knitting …”

  She laughed and buried her head deeper; he could feel her whole body trembling with her laughter. Her whisper came, muffled: “I couldn’t be happier then, Johnny.”

  “You would—”

  “Do we have many children, Johnny?”

  “Three, four—too many?”

  “Never too many.” She glanced up, kissed him, and whispered: “What else do you see, Johnny?”

  “Still you. I sit on the other side of the fire, but I can’t take my eyes from you. You are beautiful—”

  “He’s stopped playing.”

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  “No, no, but I’d better go to him for a while. Then I’ll be back, later, I promise you. I’ll have everything ready. I promise you.”

  “All right.”

  Then she was gone, and Edwards sat without moving, looking at the window where the snowflakes appeared like spots of light from the dark. Then he took his diary, wrote:

  “Tonight seems as long as all the time I’ve lived, perhaps because I’ve abandoned a philosophy, found a new one. Anna told me I’ll live, and I believe her. I wonder why it took me so long to discover what the priest knew all the time.

  “I’ve been chasing shadows for too long, and now it’s almost too late—but not entirely. Anna loves me. I know that, and I know that I love her. All that is real, and out of it I shall make a real life.

  “I don’t know where we’ll go—but somewhere where life depends upon work, work with one’s body. Where I can make things over.

  “Now I’m tired, but I can’t stay here any more. I’ll go out, walk for a while in the snow, and when I come back, Anna will be there, waiting.”

  But when he put the diary away, he knew that he wouldn’t write in it many times more. Already, he was able to smile at what he had written.

  ANNA,” he said. “Is that you, Anna? Do I hear you?”

  “Yes—but put on a light, Claus!”

  From the door, she heard the music master turn in the piano-seat, and now he could see her where she was, standing, a dark, slim figure against the light, her skirt flowing out from her narrow waist, her small straight shoulders. He smiled, gently, easily, while one hand reached back to caress the keys of the piano. A faint, high note floated through the room.

  “I was playing in the dark,” Claus said, speaking very slowly—“in the dark, Anna, because I find that I can dream along with the music. That is silly, yes?—and I am too old to be silly. But I sit at the piano, and I
have fancies. What kind of fancies? I am in—what do you call it—a great hall, where there is one single piano, a long concert grand. I play, and then there is the ovation—and then there is my Anna. When I am in my dressing room, triumphant, people come in, but they have no eyes for me, only for my Anna. She is so beautiful, you see, that nobody will look at someone who is only a great pianist. Is it right?”

  “Claus—Claus—”

  “Now what, my Anna? Tell me, do I frighten you when I speak about my dreams? No, no, my Anna. Don’t think about me eating out my heart any more, because now I have all that I will ever want. I have you.”

  “Yes—you have me.”

  “Like my own child. You know—you never will be but my own. Like God led me to you, where you were, so that when I have you, I have everything. Come over here to me, my Anna. Come here.”

  But she continued to stand at the door, and unable to see her face, he fancied she was smiling, for no other reason than that he was so quietly glad inside of himself.

  “When you are quiet with me, coy, my Anna, does it mean that I should go to you and take you in my arms?”

  “Claus—”

  “What is it? Come over here, Anna.”

  Then she walked over to him, and he reached up, drawing her down into his arms. She tried not to resist; she tried to make herself loose and willing in his arms; but it was woefully hard, and when at last she was there, close against him, she felt her lips trembling.

  “Claus,” she whispered, “Claus—”

  “Yes.”

  “Without me, what would happen to you? Tell me. Wouldn’t it be just the same as if you hadn’t ever known me?”

  “What a little fool you are!”

  “But tell me, Claus, please—”

  “I should scold you, perhaps, for having ideas like that.”

  “No, don’t scold me, Claus. But sometimes you must think—you must think of how it was before I was with you, how it would be if I were to go—”

  “Where, where?”

  “No, no,” she explained hastily. “I’m going nowhere, Claus. But if something were to happen to me—”

  “—Yes—if something happened—”

  “Then what would you do?”

  “I don’t know. I think about it sometimes, but not too much. I have no one, my Anna—but you.”

  “Yes—”

  “Then maybe you understand me—a little? You don’t understand much, because you are only like a little child. But if you were to go away and leave me—listen—” He pushed her from him, swung abruptly to the piano, and brought down his hands in two crashing chords. Again and again, until she fancied that the room had turned itself inside out, that it had filled itself with all the senseless, mad, rushing turmoil of the city. It was discord, direct and terrible counterpoint, rushing into her ears until her senses seemed to be leaving her. Then he stopped. He turned back, and took her hand.

  “Anna—did I frighten you?”

  “A little—”

  “There is a boy I teach. This is what I’ve come to. His mother’s a common woman of the streets, but I teach him because I need the few poor dollars he can give me. Just a tattered little brat, but with something inside of his head. Maybe he’s mad. So today, when he came in, he struck those two chords, and I thought that I would lose my senses, only listening. But you see what would happen—”

  “I see—”

  He smiled, throwing his arms around her. “But why do we talk of such things, my Anna? I love you, and we are happy, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  A little later, she was alone in her room. Looking at herself in her mirror, she tried to smile. When she smiled, she was as beautiful as they all said; her face was clean and open, the large space between her eyes giving her an appearance of simple honesty.

  “Only because I love him,” she said. “God forgive me, because I know that it’s wrong.”

  She walked to the window and looked out into the night; she tried to think, but it was hard to measure right and wrong. Before, always before, right and wrong had appeared as simple as day and night, but now—

  She slipped back quietly, but when she opened the door to the front room, and heard him at the piano again, she stopped. When he sat at the piano, it appeared to be alive. The piano was part of him, part of his soul, part of his body; and it seemed to her that if she went away the piano would join in his madness. But wasn’t he mad already?

  Then she hated herself for even thinking that, when she of all people should have understood him. She didn’t love him, and most of the time, she was afraid of him, but at least she understood him.

  The more she thought, the more it hurt her. Her head ached, and she felt her nervousness throughout her body. But whether she was afraid or not, she would go through with it. Right or wrong, she had to. Life had suddenly extended itself out of the small, dark rooms of the music master. Outside, the snow and the beating cold wind was calling to her just as it called to the poet.

  If this was love, it was real and terrible, strong, too; in that way, it made her strong.

  O’LACY thumped his hand with his nightstick, kicked at the snow with the square toe of his boot. “Now, father, wouldn’t you say that there is a judgment coming on this city of ours, a great judgment to pay for its wickedness?”

  “Wickedness,” murmured the priest. “Then is it more wicked than another city?—I don’t know. What man is doing, he has always done, and you wonder why—why?”

  “It will be a judgment, sure,” said O’Lacy. “When women paint themselves, and then parade the streets openly to sell what they have, when they live in such a house as that with a man of my race selling their bodies and souls—I think, and I say to myself, Marcus O’Lacy, it is time to make your peace for a great judgment that is coming.”

  The priest smiled, very slowly, but the officer, staring straight in front of him, saw nothing of the smile. He hardly heard him say, softly: “The air is clean and the snow is cold. Tomorrow, you will see your children, O’Lacy, and then you will not be so hard on them. If they believed—”

  “In the dollar and the gut!”

  “No—not all. Sometimes there’s a light, and then they stagger out with the burden still on their shoulders. If they only knew which way to go; if I only knew. But if I have faith, I still don’t know.”

  “They are rotten already. Look how Timy has the whole ward under his thumb, and if I were to say this to any other man, where would my job be tomorrow? Heelers—they’re all heelers, and cursed with it.”

  “Yes—”

  “Now I am with two boys growing up, and what shall I say to them when they go to Shutzey’s house to take in the disease and the women?”

  “You will tell them that it is wrong—”

  “And will they believe me, when they see Shutzey riding around in his big shiny car, and living in one of them places uptown? Will they believe me?”

  “They’ll believe you.” But there was no conviction in the priest’s voice, and when he left the officer to go to his mission, he was wondering how long his faith would last, how long he could stand up in his cassock and tell people that he believed.

  On the next block, next door to Kraus’ saloon, was the mission house. It had been, formerly, a livery stable; now it had some benches, two coats of buff paint, and a pulpit.

  The priest went through the big door, and walked straight to the pulpit, still wrapped up in his thoughts. When he turned around, he saw that all the benches were taken. Well, that was the way things went on a cold, bitter night. There was no place to go, and the missions were always full.

  He took off his hat and his coat, went to the stove and threw some more wood into it, and then looked at the people who sat on the benches. They were always the same, men whose eyes held nothing at all, women who could no longer walk the streets, and a sprinkling of well-dressed sightseers. For a moment, he looked at them; then he smiled; then he went into the room behind the pulpit. When he saw that the
girl was there already, waiting for him, he felt suddenly and completely rested. She turned around, a girl with yellow hair and a smile as eager as his own. Her name was Marion Meyer; she was the third daughter of the man who kept the cigar store.

  This room, an L behind the stable, was a combination living room, kitchen, and office. There was a coal stove, a couch, two big chairs, three small chairs, a desk, and a red carpet. There were some pictures on the walls, but the walls themselves were not in such good repair. The paint curled, and it was yellow with age. And there were cracks in the plaster where the wind came in from the outside. On the stove, a two gallon coffee pot bubbled and steamed, and the whole room was heavy with its fragrance.

  “I have a cup for you,” she said. “Look, cream, one lump of sugar, and two pieces of toast with butter. You’re wet and you’re tired.”

  She put her two hands in his, and for a moment he simply looked down at them; then he raised them to his lips, then let them fall abruptly. He sank into a chair, and she brought the coffee over to him.

  “Does your father know you’re here again?” the priest asked her.

  “He didn’t ask me where I was going, Jack. But if he had, I would have told him. Don’t you think I would? If you want, I’ll make a point of telling him tomorrow. He knows I come here to sing and help you. Is there anything so terribly wrong in that?”

  “No—”

  “Then eat, and then we’ll give out the coffee. Isn’t it a frightful night, cold and wet. Your feet are soaked, and of course you would never think to put on overshoes. No—just like now. What are you dreaming about now? If the coffee gets cold, you won’t like that, and you’ll scold me. I work hard all day, and then I come here to be scolded by you. Ah—please drink your coffee. Wonderful, I made you smile. Tell me what happened, where were you? You’ll have to change your shoes. Here are the others. Jack, do you ever get new shoes?”

  She brought him a pair of shapeless, patched black shoes, and while he drank the coffee, unlaced the ones he was wearing. After he had changed, he stared at her; then he clasped her in his arms and kissed her.