Place in the City Page 9

  “Yeah,” he whispered, “what I say, I mean. God gave me daughters to mock at me. What is Timy but a robber? What are any of them? What is this Danny—?”

  “No—stop it!” Alice blurted out. “I won’t hear any more about him. Stop it. You have no right to say anything about him. You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  Suddenly, Meyer’s eyes fell on the ring. It took him long moments to grasp what the ring meant, and slowly, as he realized it, the blood drained from his face, leaving it as it had been before, white and old and tired. His eyes, fixed on the ring, were wide and incredulous. There was a ring that should mean something, but did the ring mean anything? Did the ring mean that his daughtter had gone ahead without him?

  “Alice,” he said hoarsely. Then he pointed at the ring.

  She looked at it, shaking her head.

  “Alice—don’t lie to me. You married him.”

  She nodded.

  He turned to his wife. Old, beaten, unable to realize what it all meant, he turned to his wife for confirmation. “Bessie,” he said, “look. Look.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bessie, she married him.”

  “I know.”

  He looked down at his hands, looked at the palms, and then at the backs, pushed his hands away from him, and shook his head; his mouth was trembling. He tried to, say something, but he couldn’t speak. Then, in a whisper, he managed to say:

  “Alice—”

  All the defiance was gone. How could you be defiant with two people who were all old and broken? How could you battle against them? Yet it was done, all done.

  “I love him,” she told them, shaking her head wearily. “I married him, that’s all. He’s a good boy. I know he’s a good boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’d think I was a thief, the way you look at me.”

  “No, it’s all right, baby,” Bessie said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Meyer nodded. His head continued to nod, an old gray head with everything lifelike taken from it.

  THE RENDEZVOUS with life begins. The poet looks at the sky, when the clouds are breaking open to show tiny cold stars, and he smiles in a knowing way. Sometimes, men smile like that.

  Finally it stopped snowing, and all over the ground, all over the city, the white blanket lay, cold and shining, broken here and there where people walked, but not broken too much, since the hour was late. The cold wind, coming down from the north and the west, swept the clouds out of the sky, left a black mantle, dotted all over with pin-points of light; and the cold, closing in from the silent cap of the planet, snapped and crackled.

  But the breath of life was on John Edwards. He stamped the snow from his feet as he re-entered his room, laughed and smacked his hands together. The effort made him cough, and coughing he fell into a chair, but he still smiled at the little flecks of pink that stained the hand he held before his mouth. There was death in the bits of blood he coughed up out of his lungs, but he was beyond death, above it, too strong for it now. The consumption inside of him was something that would be fought and destroyed. That, he knew, and he smiled in calm certainty of himself.

  “John Edwards,” he thought. “Everything springs from the words. I am John Edwards, who has done nothing. I am John Edwards with a life before him. Now everything is in my grasp, genius and love and beauty and fame. Peace, too. Contentment. Now I can laugh at the priest. What has he in his smug, muddled mind?—in his twisted conceptions of right and wrong? I’ve found it for myself; there’s no right but beauty and no wrong but ugliness. The good is beautiful and the bad is ugly. All my life I’ve been ugly—smuggish and ugly and rotten. God—how the rottenness has eaten into me!”

  Walking to the window, he looked out. A few feet from the house, there was a lamp post; underneath it, the snow glistened, white and unbroken, showing just a sheen of yellow from the light, turning a pure white further out in the gutter. On the other side of the street, the houses were dim, snow-clad objects, strange objects of fairy mystery in the faint light of the stars, making long, twisted and mysterious shadows. A figure moved across the street, slowly, as if loath to disturb the still beauty of the night, came into his line of vision and then passed out of it. And while he stared, his breath frosted on the window, made unusual and beautiful designs.

  He went back to his chair and sat down, luxuriating in his every movement. “I’m happy,” he thought. The sense of life in him was like strong, strong drink. Deep into his body, he felt himself and gloried in himself; he thought that he could sense the blood moving in his veins, the pumping of his heart, the quivering of his stomach. Blood in his fingertips, and strength there, too.

  While he sat there, above him the music master began to play. Very often he played like that, and far into the night; what he did, Edwards did not know, unless he dreamed over the things he might have been, which he was not. Now he would go on and play for hours; now, while he played, Anna would join Edwards. Life would come, like a stream of fire. Together, they would slip out into the snow and the night, vanish forever from the sight of Apple Place.

  He began to pack the few things he wished to take with him, not much, a change of clothes and hardly more than that. Nothing he had written. What he had written was the product of sickness, of a sick mind. Whatever worth there was in it would only serve to remind him of what he had been, what he despised himself for having been.

  Let it be there as a memory of the sick creature who had inhabited the cell. Let it lie and rot as he himself had rotted in the airless cellar room. All that was gone and behind him.

  While he packed, he heard the door open. Turning to her, he saw that she was dressed to travel, in a close-fitting gray tweed suit and overshoes. Over one arm, she had a fur coat, and in the other hand she held a small valise. She put the valise down, threw her coat over a chair; then she crept close into Edwards’ arms. He held her tight, kissed her, pressed his cold face to hers.

  She was trembling, afraid. He knew that she would be afraid—until they were so far from the place that even the memory was broken and hard to gather.

  Finally, she pulled away from him. “Finish packing,” she told him. “There’s time. He’ll sit at the piano like that for hours, now he’s started. I’m really not afraid. I’m just a baby, I guess. Only—”

  “It won’t take but a moment.”

  “It’s cold outside. You’d better dress warm.”

  “Don’t worry, darling.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  Hurriedly, he put his things together, glancing every so often at Anna. Indeed, it was difficult for him to keep his eyes from her. The mere fact that Anna was there and ready to go with him, alive and beautiful, was more than he could grasp.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered. “God, how beautiful you are, my Anna.”

  She started at that. He had never called her that before, but the music master had, almost always. She hardly ever smoked; now she asked Edwards for a cigarette. “I’m nervous,” she explained.

  Holding the cigarette awkwardly, she blew out quick flurries of smoke. Edwards looked at her and laughed. Now he had finished packing, and he stood there, smiling and shaking his head.

  “Darling Anna,” he murmured, “how I love you.” He wasn’t afraid; he was calmer than he had been in weeks. She was his, and nothing the other man did after this would matter.

  “Where will we go?” she asked.

  “As the wind blows. We have no direction, and we have no one to go to. That way is best, Anna. We start life—right from the beginning. It’s our beginning—don’t you see? We do as we please, go where we please. How does it matter, so long as we live?”

  “No, it doesn’t matter,” she agreed. “So long as I’m with you, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You’ll be with me always,” he said.

  “Always.”

  “I only want my watch now. I don’t know where I put it. What�
��s wrong, Anna?” he demanded.

  Her face had turned dead white; she pressed one hand against her mouth.

  “Anna?”

  “He’s stopped playing. I don’t know when he stopped, but he’s not playing now. Oh, I’m afraid, Johnny.”

  “No—no, it’s all right. Come, we’ll go.”

  “Yes—yes, let’s go. Let’s get out of here, Johnny. Never mind your watch. Only let’s get out of here, away from this place. I hate it. I’m afraid of it.”

  “Anna, it’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid any more—not while you’re with me. And you’ll always be with me. You’ll never be alone with him again.”

  “I know—I know. But please come, Johnny. Please—let’s get out of here.”

  He was struggling into his coat, laughing at her fears. She didn’t know; she couldn’t know how strong the current of life was flowing in him, how flushed and strong he was, how confident of life.

  “Hat, coat,” he laughed. He took his grip and hers, and watched her, smiling, while she turned the collar of her coat up around her neck. She clutched his arm, while he opened the door.

  “Quickly, Johnny.”

  “No hurry now—it’s waiting for us.”

  They stepped out into the snow, breathing deep of the clean, cold night air. The night was a mother; the snow had been put there for them, whiteness to cover all that had been before. The city, all of the dark, sleeping city, was a benediction.

  He bent to kiss her, gently, just touching her lips, feeling that he was performing the supreme act of sacrifice in his life.

  She glanced at the sky once; then she smiled at him. Her fears were childish, foolish, part of the deep dejection of Apple Place. Now her fear would go. More and more of it would go with each step they took away.

  “Come,” he said.

  They started away into the night.

  SOMEHOW, Danny made his way out of the club. On the steps, he fell, sprawled down half a flight of stairs, and landed at the bottom, a crumpled heap. From a cut on his head, a thin stream of blood poured out and down his face. For perhaps a minute or two, he lay there without moving; then he crawled to his feet, opened the door, and staggered over to his car.

  It took him a long while to start his motor. Once he fell asleep, and he slept with his head on the wheel until the cold awakened him. At last, he started the car and pulled away from the curb, turning uptown. He drove for more than a mile before the cold air sobered him enough to recall Alice to his mind.

  Bit by bit, he remembered. He was still drunk, but he remembered that he had been married, that she was waiting for him. Well, she would still be waiting; she was his wife, so there wasn’t anything else she could do but wait.

  He drove back to Meyer’s store, and he began to blow his horn. The snow had stopped; the night was cold, silent and beautiful, so beautiful that drunk as he was the frantic sound of his horn frightened him. Why didn’t she come?

  He put his head out of the window. “Alice!” he yelled. “Geesus Christ, where the hell are you?” The sound echoed back to him through the silent streets. Old Meyer would be out at his throat now, but he didn’t give a damn for Meyer any more. Wasn’t she his wife?

  “Alice!”

  He heard a door open and close. Then he saw her running across the sidewalk toward him. Opening the door, he waved a hand at her.

  “Over here!” he yelled. “You’re a hell of a wife for any man to have. Geesus Christ, you’d think I was a tinhorn boy friend, the way I got to sit in the car here and yell for you, Alice! Alice! That ain’t no way for a wife to act.”

  “Danny, be still, for God’s sake,” she whispered, climbing into the car next to him. She stared at him, at his torn clothes and his bleeding face. He had been sick in the car, under his feet, down the front of his clothes.

  “You’re drunk, Danny,” she said.

  “Sure I’m drunk. What the hell of it? Am I a man, or maybe you own my body too, now that you’re married to me. Maybe I got nothing to say about it!”

  “You’re drunk—”

  “Awright, awright—I’m sick and tired of having people tell me that. Sure I’m drunk. Don’t you think I know I’m drunk? What about it?”

  A window banged open, and she heard old Meyer’s voice calling her. “Let me drive, Danny,” she said quickly. “You can’t drive the way you are. Let me drive, and I’ll take you home. Please, Danny.”

  “Awright,” he muttered, tears coming into his eyes. “Awright, go ahead. I don’t count no more. I don’t have anything to say. Who the hell is Danny?”

  She crawled past him and started the car. As she pulled away, she heard her father calling; but she might have been in a dream for all the voice mattered. Nothing mattered; everything was broken into very small pieces.

  It was a difficult night to drive, the more so with Danny leaning against her, weeping bitterly and muttering under his breath. Then he fell asleep, sprawled upon her and snoring hoarsely.

  She stopped the car to relieve herself of his weight. Now he sat with his head lolling back, his mouth dropped wide open. Smeared blood was all over him. She had no way of telling how badly he was hurt.

  It seemed an eternity to her before they came to the small apartment house he lived in. She stopped the car, turned off the motor, and stared at him.

  “Danny,” she whispered.

  He slept on, blissfully, unmoving.

  “Danny, wake up. We’re home. You have to wake up, Danny.”

  Stirring slightly, he blinked his eyes; then he rolled back into his sleep.

  “Danny.”

  His snores came forth gently as a baby’s breathing, but his breath and the horrid stench in the car sickened her. She opened both windows, shivering with the cold. Outside, the night was cold and silent and silver, tracked snow and tall houses, making with its jumbled shadows a picture of some lost canyon in a mysterious range of mountains. But the silence was as oppressive as the night was beautiful, and the utter loneliness of a city filled with people frightened her; she had never been alone before so late at night.

  “Danny,” she begged. She shook him, slapped his cheeks, and then in a fit of remorse, pressed her cheeks to the dry blood. “Danny, Danny, wake up.” She held his hands, fondled them. “Danny, I’m afraid. Don’t you hear me? Wake up, Danny.”

  Again he stirred, opened his eyes and yawned. “Go ’way,” he muttered.

  “Oh, Danny, it’s Alice—it’s your wife. Don’t you know, Danny? Danny, look at me!”

  He stared, blinked his eyes, and stretched convulsively. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Sure—I know. But it’s all right, honey. Everything’s all right, and don’t you worry. I’m going to do big things for you—best God damn lawyer in this cheap town. Timy and me, just like that.” He pushed one hand in front of her face, two fingers crossed. “Just like that,” he emphasized. Then he grinned sleepily.

  “I know, darling. Come upstairs now.”

  He stumbled out of the car, and half leaning on her made his way into the house. At the door of his apartment, he fumbled for his keys, found them, and then tried to find the lock. Sobbing bitterly, he stabbed at the door; at last, he gave up, holding out the keys to Alice.

  “I’m drunk, baby,” he muttered. “Geesus Christ, ain’t it a damned shame.”

  She opened the door, switched on the lights and followed him in. There were two rooms, nicely furnished, the way a man would furnish them. That reassured her; that was her Danny. “I know him—I love him,” she said to herself. “Nothing else matters but that.”

  Sprawling on the bed, he stretched his arms and twisted his body. When she bent over him, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, baby,” he muttered.

  “I know, Danny.”

  “Why don’t you go away? I’m drunk. I’m no God damn good for anything. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  She began to undress him, while he muttered on, tossing and twisting. When his clothes were all off, she took a wet rag and wiped the
blood and dirt from his face. Then she dressed the cut. By this time, he had fallen asleep again. Covering him with the blankets, she turned off the light and sat down on the side of his bed.

  Now the only light in the room was a faint gray gleam that crept in through the window. In the night, every sound was thin and clear, the tread of a milkman’s horse, the clank of his bottles, the steps of someone passing the house. Soon it would be morning; and then her wedding night would be over.

  She was alone with the man she loved, the man she had married. She hadn’t cried yet; now she attempted to smile. It wasn’t difficult. You moved your lips, and then you smiled, and then you felt better. She felt under the blanket for Danny’s hand, found it, drew it out and pressed it to her face. He moved in his sleep.

  “You see,” she whispered, “it doesn’t matter. I love you, Danny.”

  In his sleep, he said: “Best God damn lawyer in this cheap town.”

  “Surely, surely, darling.”

  She was terribly tired, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. Soon it would be morning, very soon, and then she would go to the school, and take her class as if nothing at all had happened. Nothing had happened, only she was a fool. She had been a fool when she kept the boy in, scolded him. She could see his face very easily, the dumb, hurt look, and the dumb understanding in the eyes that went beyond the hurt, beyond her. If he were only here with her now, she would take him in her arms. It would be good to hold him in her arms now.

  “Danny,” she said.

  “Best God damn lawyer,” he muttered.

  Then she cried easily and gently, cried until it was all gone and she felt dry and empty inside; then she simply sat and stared straight ahead of her, without seeing anything at all.

  Tomorrow she would know what to do. There was always tomorrow, and that was all that made it worth while. So long as there was tomorrow, she could dream.

  “I love you, Danny,” she said. She had to say it to make the fact known to herself.