Youngblood hawke, p.73
Youngblood Hawke, page 73
The Hirsches believed in enormous globular martinis full of ice. Hawke drank one like water and took another. He was touched, and a little embarrassed, by the frank animated admiration of the Hirsches. They had his three novels, bound in blue leather, on a separate table between large brass bookends. After the second drink Hirsch brought out a blue leather portfolio from a drawer and carefully opened it. Hawke saw his own handwriting: four yellow discarded sheets from an early chapter of Will Horne. "The workmen came on these in the cleanup," Hirsch said. "They're not my property and I've always meant to return them to you." Hawke signed each sheet, and told Hirsch to keep them as a gift. The man stammered in gratitude.
They led him and Jeanne on a tour of the house. Only one room did they leave shut, the bedroom where the baby was sleeping, now done over as a nursery; and Hawke was not sorry to pass it by, since this was the room where his mother had surprised him with Frieda. The garret room, the lair where he had written a good part of Will Horne, was now the maid's room. Hawke was astonished to see how tiny it was; he remembered it as a comfortable enough space.
When they came outside it had turned very cold, and a cutting wind blew down Seventy-third Street. Hawke stood in the lamplight, looking up at the façade of the Hirsches' home. "It's not a bad house, you know," he said. "It's a pretty good house, Jeanne, even if it does face north, as my mother pointed out."
"It's a glorious house," Jeanne said. "I must add interior decoration to your talents. I never believed it would turn out like that. It looked absolutely horrible when you left."
"Where do you suppose they'll put the plaque?" he said. "This house not lived in by Youngblood Hawke."
"Arthur, you can do it again any time you want to."
"Can I? You once said that you and I are the kind of people who are destined never to build a house."
"Oh, I just talk. You were too restless then to settle down."
"No, I think maybe houses are for ladies' pocketbook makers like Larry Hirsch, and similar useful people. I'm dying of hunger. I got fearfully hungry at the funeral—why should that be?—and those sublime Hirsch martinis—taxi! Don't you like the Hirsches?"
"Very much."
Hawke helped her into the cab. "I don't think that baby will ever be a writer. Your Jim looks more the type. I thought I saw a gleam of insanity in those blue eyes."
2
They drank so much red wine with their dinner that they had to order a second large bottle. The Italian food was rich and delicious, though the restaurant, tucked in a crooked byway of the Village near Eighth Avenue, was a dim and vulgar room, with plastic table tops, large soft drink signs, and a jukebox. The other diners were mostly morose young couples, who had the look of living together out of wedlock and growing tired of it, the young men tending to beards and the girls to boredom. "This place makes me feel very young," Hawke said. "It dates to the era when Frieda and I were still skulking, mostly because I was so self-conscious. Come to think of it, I could swear it was Karl who first introduced me to it, way back when I first got to New York. Hasn't he ever brought you here?"
"No, Karl avoids the Village."
Hawke said, "Karl's the only leopard I know who's actually changed his spots."
"Oh, Karl has his spots, he just wears them under sheep's clothing. That's quite an antipasto of metaphors. Martinis plus chianti. This spaghetti is extraordinary."
"I'm very grateful to martinis plus chianti. To the Jews and the Italians. I'm coming out of it nobly. Here's to the Hirsches, and may they enjoy my house for fifty happy years. Didn't they seem happy? Married to the teeth, and mad for it. Look about you, Jeanie, and see how stupid sin can get to be."
Jeanne said, "If you don't even believe it's sin, it becomes really dreary. All the devilishness vanishes, and you're just being a slob."
After dinner they were walking toward the red neon glow of Eighth Avenue when they saw a well-dressed stout little man sitting in the gutter under a street lamp. He wore a bowler hat and a rolled umbrella lay beside him, and he did not seem in any distress, except that he was sitting in the gutter. Few cars came through the crooked street, so he was in no immediate danger, but Hawke thought he should probably be helped. He went to the man and lifted him by an arm. The man came up readily, saying in a fuzzy high voice, "You're very kind. I dropped my cigarette lighter, and I retrieved it, but then my legs didn't seem to be working quite as they should."
Hawke was himself too full of chianti to be more than mildly surprised at finding that he had picked the fearsome Quentin Judd out of the gutter. "Well, hello, Mr. Judd," he said, recognizing him in the lamplight.
The critic peered at him out of heavily filmed eyes, in which the spots of bright blue stood out clear and scary as ever. "I'll be damned. Our Kentucky Dickens." He squinted at Jeanne on the sidewalk nearby. "And of course, his Agnes. How are you, Jeanne?"
"Just fine, Quentin."
Judd said to Hawke, "I think I'm quite all right, thank you." He disengaged himself and took a few tottering steps. "Yes, I'm fine. I live just a few doors from here, so thank you very much."
"We'll walk with you," Jeanne said.
"Better yet, come up and have a drink."
He lived in a renovated Village apartment house, with a clean lobby and a new automatic elevator. His flat was a model of order, decorated in cool blues and greens, with some excellent antiques and a large array of African sculpture. Judd touched a match to a fire that was already laid, and brought brandy and glasses. Once in his own home he seemed to steady up; he did not stumble against furniture, and he poured the brandy with a controlled hand. He said, settling into an armchair by the fire opposite the sofa where Hawke and Jeanne sat, "You wrote a pretty good play, and I'm going to say so in the Dandy next week."
"Well, you told me once never to thank a critic, so I won't," Hawke said.
Judd nodded, and parted his lips in a short smile at Jeanne. "Novelist's memory. I never remember anything."
There was a silence, and then Judd said archly, "Well, now, shall I show you my new baby? Don't worry, Jeanne, it's not another novel. I'm cured, though I'll always hate you for being so right about it."
Jeanne said, "It's an editor's job to tell an author what to expect."
"Very good. And critics and editors will always earn nothing but hatred for telling the truth. That's how the world wags, Jeanie, you're a hard woman, just as I'm a hard man."
"I'm a frightened doe inside," Jeanne said.
Judd giggled. "Well, since I have to leave the novel field to our clumsy but irresistible strong man, I'm off on another tack, and that's why I lured you two up here." He pushed himself carefully out of his chair, took from a bookshelf a bundle of thick cardboards tied with tape, and laid the bundle on the coffee table before them. "This is still top secret, but the word will be out soon."
He turned the boards one by one. It was a paste-up dummy of a proposed new magazine, called The New York Rambler; a severe journal of solid columns of small print on coarse paper, almost of newspaper size, without photographs, or cartoons, or advertising, much on the European style of intellectual reviews. The leading article, a statement of purpose, was by Judd: he had written a couple of other pieces; and there were many blank columns with headings for articles about books, painting, and music by celebrated composers and novelists as well as critics. Jeanne said, "Gosh, that's an exciting list."
"It would be more exciting if I could add Youngblood Hawke to it."
Hawke said, "I can't write literary criticism. A target isn't supposed to come alive and start shooting back."
Judd giggled. "That's cute, but it's just an Americanism. The theory of my Rambler is that we're going to have some civilized discourse in this town, at least in my modest journal. The people who know most about the arts are going to start writing about them. I think the vein of weary hard-to-please superiority is about worked out. The Dandy is choked in fat, one can't read the copy for the ads, and to tell the truth the ads are often a hell of a lot brighter than the copy. I'm bored, I'm bored. Moreover I'm tired of getting paid small fees for my work while the Dandy advertising office takes in huge sums and forks the cash over to various stupid bastards who happen to have inherited the stock of the magazine. We won't take advertisements in the Rambler at first. But of course if the agencies come pounding at our doors—and I think they will after a while—why, we'll damn well accept the money. But we'll give it to our writers. How does it sound?"
"Wonderful," Jeanne said. "When's the first issue?"
"When I find fifteen thousand dollars. Getting started is the problem. I've raised thirty-five so far, putting up most of it myself. I believe in this thing."
"So do I," said Hawke, turning the cardboards. "Can I be counted in for five thousand?"
The critic swung his head at Hawke and squinted suspiciously. "Are you serious?"
"Sure."
"But I don't want money from you, I want copy. You're a hell of a name, however much my colleagues abuse you."
Hawke said, "I don't think I can write for you, but this city can use the Rambler. I'd be willing to put money in it. I want to be one of the stupid bastards who own stock."
Jeanne was furrowing her brow at him.
"Well good lord, you're in," said Judd. "Let's have a brandy on it and then I think I'll go out and roll in the gutter again. That's obviously the way to get backers."
He gave Hawke the prospectus of the magazine, and pressed them to stay with him and talk, but Jeanne declared that she had to get home to her baby. When the elevator door closed she said, "Why in God's name did you do that?"
"I don't know. I think I wanted to get out of his apartment quickly."
"Do you realize that you're in a money tangle now with Quentin Judd? Why didn't you go up to the zoo instead and crawl in with the cobras?"
"What money tangle? At worst I'll lose five thousand dollars. It'll be mostly tax money. Anyway I think the Rambler may work. It looked fresh, and Judd's the most brilliant man around for that kind of thing."
3
When he opened the door of his hotel room, Frieda's letter with its special delivery stamps lay just inside on the carpet: a thick packet in her small blue-gray stationery, engraved with her Fifth Avenue address. Hawke picked it up and stared at it. "It would probably be an excellent idea if I tore this up without reading it."
"Probably."
He threw the letter on the bed, and as he hung up their coats she saw his eyes move again and again to the envelope, which seemed to glare on the brown bedspread. "Tear it up," she said. "You know what's in it. The boy died."
"Why is it so thick?" Hawke said. "She wouldn't have had time to write a long letter. I'll read it later. Let's go to work. Shall I get out my typewriter and make notes?"
"If you want to," Jeanne said, but she was not surprised when he went to the bed and picked up the letter.
He said, "Get it over with," ripped open the envelope, and pulled out one sheet of blue paper. Two doubled-over lined sheets of white loose-leaf paper, with holes for ring binders, fell to the bed. He glanced at Frieda's letter and his face contorted. His fingers trembled as he picked up the white sheets.
"Arthur, what does she say?"
Jeanne might not have spoken. He read Paul's letter through. The suffering written on his face filled her with alarm. "What is it, darling? What is it?"
He handed the two letters to her and dropped on the bed, burying his face in the crook of an arm. The first words she saw in Frieda's letter sent a red-hot stinging through her body.
Dear Arthur:
Paul hanged himself at school last night. They called us at the theatre, that was why we left. When we got there he was dead.
He left this letter. Very fortunately the corridor master kept it unopened, and nobody has seen it but me. You must see it. After that do with it what you will.
Paul loved you very much. I know that, though he was so inscrutable. I know that you loved him, too. His memory must be a tie between us as long as we live. I'm going back up there now to bring his body home, and my office will let you know about the funeral. We're going to say it was pneumonia. The children at the school will talk, of course, but I think it won't get into the newspapers. Thank God nobody read his letter. My husband has collapsed and I must do everything.
I love you,
FRIEDA
Jeanne managed to say, "Arthur, am I to read Paul's letter?"
He mumbled, face down, "Of course, go ahead."
Jeanne straightened out the creased sheets. Paul's handwriting was oddly neat and small for a boy's, with as many words as possible crowded into each line:
Dear Mother:
The other fellows including my roommate Charlie Carmel are having a spread in Room 7. I wasn't invited. A few days ago I heard some fellows talking and fooling around in the corridor. I guess they didn't know I was in my room. They were talking about me and about you, saying that my mother was a famous celebrity and all that. Then I heard my roommate Charlie say, "There's only one thing wrong with Paul Winter's mother, she's Youngblood Hawke's whore and I don't like whores." Charlie is always being a big shot, saying that famous movie stars and stage actresses are whores. All the fellows laughed. I wanted to run out into the corridor and smash him one even though he's a lot heavier than me, but I didn't. I just let it go by. I got real sick when I heard Charlie say that especially since he's my roommate and I thought we were friends. Charlie said something to me tonight at dinner about he wished he could see Youngblood Hawke's new play tonight, with a big sneer. I wanted to smash his rotten face with a plate or something. I feel so sick and tired of everything. I have so many demerits I'll never work them off. It won't be different at any other school. Bennett got through this school all right. It's just me. I'm no good for anything, and I can't stand the way they talk. I even dream about it sometimes. Maybe I'm just a coward but I can't fight a whole school. The masters won't even let me telephone home. I hope Arthur's play is a hit. I'm sorry about this.
Love,
PAUL
The handwriting grew less distinct on the last page, wavering across the ruled lines in a scarcely legible scrawl.
Hawke rolled over and sat up, his face pasty and creased. "Well?"
"It's pitiful. The boy was extremely sick before he ever went to the school."
"I killed him."
Jeanne said sharply, "That's a lie! You're never to say it again or to think it. The masters were completely to blame. They should have seen his condition and sent him home."
Hawke said in a toneless tired voice, his shoulders sagging as he sat on the edge of the bed, "Darling, Paul was very hard to figure out. He was bright, very very bright. He made a career of being impassive and stoical. I'll bet his roommate never had the faintest notion that Paul had anything against him." Hawke rubbed his eyes, went to his work valise and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He poured half a water glass full, drank it off as though he were taking a pill, and did not offer Jeanne any. He set the glass down quite hard on the table top. It broke, and blood welled from his hand. Jeanne jumped off the bed and came to him. He was sponging his hand with a handkerchief saying, "It's nothing, it's a scratch," but the handkerchief was crimson. He had a deep gash at the base of his thumb. She got a first-aid kit from his work valise and bandaged his hand in the bathroom. Blood dripped on the white tiles.
She said, "Are you going to do any more imbecilic things like this?"
"It was an accident, Jeanne."
"I mean I can't very well stay with you all night, Arthur, but I'm not sure you should be left alone."
Hawke laughed in a terribly melancholy way. "My darling, do you suppose I'm going to cast myself out of the window? I'm not little Paul. I have a lot of work to do. I'm a hundred and twenty pages into Boone County and if I can't sleep, which I undoubtedly can't, I'll work through the night. It'll be no service to Paul for me to damage myself any further. He's dead and buried." He sat at his desk and pulled the work pad to him. Jeanne went to the closet for her coat, watching him anxiously all the while. He began to write like an automaton.
She said, "I'm glad to hear you're that far along into Boone County."
"Yes, I expect I'll have something to show you before I leave."
"How is it going?"
He made a wry face. "As it always has, darling. Good days and suicidal days."
"All the same, I suspect it will be your best book."
"I think so. Before the main job. I'm grateful that you were with me today."
"I was glad I was with you. I'd hang around some more but it doesn't make sense, does it?"
"Of course not. Go home. Jim's probably shrieking for his seventeenth bottle."
She lingered in the doorway, hesitating to leave the small room. The two letters lay scattered on the broad wrinkled bed, the whiskey bottle stood on the bureau. She saw him take up the pen again with his bandaged hand. She said, "It's a pity you had to cut your right hand."
"Oh, I bleed, but I heal real fast. Go home, Jeanne. I swear I'm okay."
"All right, Arthur."
Still she stood in the doorway. He stared at her; put down the pen, came to her, shut the door behind her with his foot, and there at the doorway took her in his arms. She could not fight him. She did not want to. They kissed with hard passion, many times. He swept her in a powerful gesture, his arm around her slight shoulders, back into the room. There on the brown cover of the bed lay Frieda's blue sheet and Paul's creased white loose-leaf papers. He halted, and she felt his arm stiffen.
He said in a voice like an animal's growl, "Christ Almighty, this is a big contribution, isn't it?"
"I don't know. Do what you want."
"You're not a candidate for the vacant office of Youngblood Hawke's whore, are you?"
"No, I don't want to be your whore. I give good service as your editor."
He let her go. "Jeanie, won't you leave Karl and marry me? Won't you let me hope for it? Don't you want to?"
