The fear makers, p.14
The Fear Makers, page 14
I don’t know how long it was, an instant, a minute, a day. Presently, she opened the door. We entered into the warm brightness of the hall. While Aunt Petroushka bustled to her, I laid the portable typewriter on the stair step. Norman was waiting in the hall. The scar was white on his face; the ear seemed more jagged. He said, “Good evening, Elizabeth,” and there was a quiet inflection in the way he said it.
About that white almond kind of complexion Elizabeth had, I should have realized. I should have foreseen. She untied that scarf around her head, slipped off the coat. She said, “We have eaten, Norman,” and repeated it to Aunt Petroushka. All the bright color now showed in her cheeks.
It was too quick and vivid in the smooth line of throat.
Norman said, “Good evening, Captain,” and he didn’t again look at me. When she returned his ironic scrutiny, Elizabeth’s eyes had the same greenness of her brother’s. Aunt Petroushka must have guessed. She came in fast. Her sisters helped. The old one talked in German. The bashful one giggled. She motioned to the table, where plates were set. Aunt Petroushka got on her indestructible look and said we must eat something. Instead of going upstairs, we ate something.
Pretty soon, Dr. Nathan ambled into the dining room. The older sister had hot tea for him. She said kindly, “This is better than so much wine, Doctor, I think.” He was wearing a ragged gray sweater, a stiff collar, and the same pants—those which were too tight. He helped, too. He talked. Perhaps he’d been drinking more of his white wine up in his room. I’d surmise it was tough on him, being officially neutral and a Swiss. He had the front page of the evening paper. All of them discussed our big drive across the Rhine into Germany.
He said, “I do not like having people killed.” He pushed the glasses up higher on his big nose. “Even,” he said, and he swallowed, and he said it with difficulty, “Germans. Kindness and charity are primary philosophies.”
“So?” said Aunt Petroushka.
“Exactly,” said Dr. Nathan, his sallow face becoming flushed. “I say the truth. I am a man of peace. Yes. For this—” he pointed to the headlines, “I am sad. Truthfully, I am sad. Cologne, Mannheim—all the cities of the Rhine in ruins.”
They were talking this way, often slipping into German. My head ached. I finished a slice of apple strudel from a second pan. I said it was fine. Sometimes Elizabeth would glance at me quick, never saying anything to me. I wanted to get upstairs. The dining room was too warm. Slowly it began to swing around, in big, easy circles. The older sister was huddled in a chair, thick, formless. She listened to Dr, Nathan preaching.
Now, the older sister spoke. Most of the time she let Aunt Petroushka do the talking. Leaning forward, she clenched her old hands on her knees. Her accent was heavier than Aunt Petroushka’s. Bitterly, she asked, “And the broken glass tonight? We are not to resent the glass, no? My sister and me, we come from the shop tired and we work hard and must not resent the glass.”
“It is an attitude,” uneasily declared Dr. Nathan.
Aunt Petroushka ordered, “Adah!” The rest was in German.
Elizabeth understood. Sharply she turned. She asked a question in German. The older sister nodded.
I asked what was it?
Dr. Nathan laid his big hands on the table. “Tonight they find broken glass in the driveway when into the garage they drive.”
Something joined together in my head. I stood. The three sisters and Elizabeth glanced at me. Mildly, Dr. Nathan looked around, not realizing there was tension in the room. He adjusted his glasses, “It is so, no? Blease?” His voice faltered.
I asked who scattered broken glass on the driveway? Aunt Petroushka said it was nothing. This summer new neighbors had moved in next door. There’d been trouble. A little trouble. It was nothing. The older sister got up, to clear the table. Elizabeth helped. The handsome sister, the one who couldn’t hear, bent forward. She ceased smiling. She was someone pathetic and lost.
“It is nothing, Captain,” repeated Aunt Petroushka. “Trouble, we don’t wish, here.”
From the kitchen door, Elizabeth said in a flat tone, “Tell him about when you painted the house last month. Perhaps he would like to know. Perhaps the Captain would be interested.” Elizabeth was doing something to me, there; she was hurting herself and hurting me. Odd thing was, I didn’t know yet how she was doing it. Darkness gathered in the room, lifting higher. It was lifting through wood and plaster out into a darkness of night.
“It is the boy next door,” said Aunt Petroushka, very short and formal.
“You should inform the Captain,” said Elizabeth, smiling. He is not Jewish. He will not be biased against the people next door by hearing our gossip. He—”
“Du, Elizabeth!” warned Norman. “Du—”
She became still.
= 2 =
It must have been close to 2230 hours when I went upstairs. I deposited the portable typewriter on the card table. I looked at the work sheets. Perhaps it was the headache. I don’t know. It might have been because the sisters were old and kept their house too warm. I opened a window, smelling the wet rawness of rain.
A little later, the puppy commenced wailing. By and by I stripped, pulled on the worn dressing gown, and tried the cold bath treatment. The thin wails from that puppy next door seeped into the bathroom. When I came out, I noticed Dr. Nathan’s door was partly open. I knocked. “Blease,” he said. I entered. He was sitting at the study table, in shirt sleeves held above the elbows by thick, old-fashioned pink bands, nickel tipped. He still wore the tight pants. The bottle of wine was half full.
I said I agreed with some of the remarks he’d made at the dining table, downstairs. I wanted him to know.
“Captain,” he uttered. He arose; he bowed. He blinked blindly and I reached down and recovered the spectacles.
He returned them to the high nose. He opened a bureau drawer and fetched out another glass, and filled it, handing it to me. “This is authentic Swiss wine. I have plenty. I welcome you. I wish to you a bleasant trip.”
I sat down and I thanked him. The wine was good. Together we sat there, hearing the faint wails from the puppy. By and by, Dr. Nathan remarked, “It is lonely, the bubby.” I guessed Dr. Nathan had been sitting in his room alone for quite a spell, drinking. The puppy wasn’t the only one who was lonely.
Next he said, “Officially, I am neutral and Swiss. You combrehend? I ask as a question, merely.”
I replied fine, for him to ask it.
“Did they run, the Germans?”
I told him the kind we’d met usually didn’t, at least not at first. It hadn’t been easy. With the war nearly finished in Europe and our armies slashing through almost to Berlin, the Germans were running now—sure. But they were licked. They knew it.
He drank from his glass. He wiped his mustache. He asked, “More, blease? It is free. I drink to you going home.” That one we drank on…
I don’t know how long Norman had been in the room before we became aware of him. Probably, not very long. Dr. Nathan lifted the bony, yellow head. He said, “So?”
Quietly, Norman sat himself in a nearby chair, wrapping the pipestem legs around the rungs. Dr. Nathan returned from the bathroom with a third glass. He filled all three glasses. Norman raised his glass, “To the officially neutral.” I told Norman, “I leave tomorrow, this time without fail. You won’t have to worry any longer.”
With his sleeve, Dr. Nathan wiped the fringy mustache. “It is necessary for one to combrehend the mentality of an individual such as Norman. He is the scientist. He is without the emotions. Tonight,” he said, “I laugh at Norman. You bermit, blease?” he asked of Norman. “It is without malice.
I have no malice when I laugh.”
To me, Norman calmly said, “Elizabeth has told me about your Mr. Megassum. I agree with you. Nothing can you do. It is best to leave.”
“What is ‘nothing,’ blease?” asked Dr. Nathan.
Perhaps it was because he’d given me wine when I was lonely. I told him, very briefly.
Dr. Nathan listened. Norman lit a cigarette and finished one and lit a second and afterwards, when I was done, he lit a third.
Norman said, “Elizabeth is distressed. She is a romantic. She has no basic understanding of the inevitable that must happen to our people wherever we are.” He took a small drink from the glass. His face was ivory white. In the electric light the scar showed more clearly; he looked sick. He started to get up.
“Wait, Norman; I ask, blease.” Dr. Nathan extended a long arm across the table. “The romantic is egocentric and it is not Elizabeth who is the egocentric. You do not care if brobagandismus is to come to this country, blease? It is not your concern if the small people of this country are persuaded by brobagandismus it is bad for them to work together and be happy? You do not object if the small people fight among themselves? You are pleased if they distrust each other because one is Italian perhaps, and one is Jew, perhaps, and one—”
“Basically,” said Norman, pushing away from the hand, “that is an emotional attitude, Dr. Nathan.” His white face was concealed as he lit himself another cigarette. “I can not permit myself to care, Dr. Nathan. I can not permit myself any longer to become emotionally involved in affairs that will interrupt my work.”
He drank from the glass, the light reflecting on the glass and on his round, white skull. “I advise you to depart tomorrow as you have planned, Captain.”
Dr. Nathan’s long, shambling walk carried him over to Norman. He revolved, asking, “One question, blease? These beoble who talk. These beoble who spread the rumors? I do not understand.”
I said they were hired by the day, probably by one of the men in Megassum’s office.
“For money they say such things here? In Germany, also beoble were paid money at first.” He gripped Norman’s arm, detaining him. “Norman, now you are of this country and you do not care? Bersonally, although I am officially neutral I say it is not right.”
Gently, Norman said, “Good night, Dr. Nathan,” and tried to remove the long, tight-gripping fingers.
I leaned across the table, facing Norman. I said to Norman he hadn’t given me the real reason he advised me to depart? I wanted him to know I understood the real reason; I was going, but I wanted him to know…
Norman said, “You are mistaken, Captain.”
I said what was the reason, if it wasn’t because of Elizabeth?
Norman said, “I will tell you the reason. You have no desire to attempt to stop Megassum and without a real desire, you will only receive more frustration and unhappiness in remaining. You have asked me. I am sorry.”
I asked did he expect me to try to change a statistical breakdown overnight in order to load Megassum’s poll on the wage-earner’s side? I asked if he expected me to produce a miracle in the few hours I had remaining to me in Washington, D. C.?
He said, “I expect nothing from you, Captain,” and he went out and he entered his own room.
I returned to my room and read the uncompleted memorandum and started to tear it up and didn’t. I thought of what Norman had said.
An emotion like anger, yet not exactly anger, came. He was unfair. No one could revise a statistical breakdown for
Pont Dulac overnight. Besides, they wouldn’t use a revised breakdown.
Or would they?
I had the work sheets with me. These were the work sheets going direct to the typists, to be sent to the field. Suppose these sheets were changed, and they were typed with the changes. It’d be a chance. They might go through.
Revising the work sheets wouldn’t stop Megassum’s whisper factory and boilerplate publicity and radio broadcasts—but it might be handled to make the poll honest in Pont Dulac, reduce its propaganda effectiveness enough to disgust the clients who were paying for it. That made me excited…
It must have been a couple of hours later. I was typing when Elizabeth softly knocked. She came in quick and closed the door behind her. She was wearing a thick blue dressing gown and fur mules. I don’t know why, but it seemed perfectly natural to have her come in. I ceased typing. I didn’t think about what time it was.
She said, “I could not sleep. I heard your typewriter.”
I said I didn’t know she could hear it. I was sorry.
She replied it wasn’t that; it wasn’t my typing that kept her awake.
I turned around in the chair and said, “With luck, publishing such a poll will cost him his clients, Elizabeth. He’s contracted to publish the poll. He won’t have time to run another before Pont Dulac elects a mayor. If an honest poll cuts Megassum off from his financing, Megassum can damn well be done for. A bad break will ruin his play for a few wealthy clients. You watch.”
She asked, “You wish to do this tonight?”
Next, she advanced to my chair and asked me not to move, please. She hadn’t meant to disturb me. It was about my headache. She was concerned because I was typing with the headache.
I looked up at her and said the headache was all right. It was fine, now. I looked at her again and saw her hair.
Like a mantle of black silk it fell down her back. For us both that night, everything was a little unreal, I’d guess. I can’t explain it.
I asked had she curled the ends?
Right away, that put color in her cheeks. She shook her head. She replied I hadn’t noticed before. Her hair was that way. It was always that way.
Before I said anything else about her hair, she asked where it hurt and told me to rest back against the chair. I showed her where it always hurt. She stood behind the chair. She placed her hands against my head, her thumbs at the base of my neck. She explained she used to do this for her mother.
I shut my eyes. She rubbed gently. She rubbed against the hurt. The wail of the puppy entered the room; the wail came high and sobbing. I could feel her hands. Her fingers tensed. She said she didn’t realize the puppy’s noises came in so clearly into my room. I said it was probably because of the way the house next door faced this house, with my window near some window over there.
I asked her about the people next door.
They’d moved in during August. From the first they’d tried to annoy Aunt Petroushka. Mostly, the annoyances were small, petty and mean. Garbage would be tipped. Overnight, sometimes, Aunt Petroushka would find signs or words roughly painted on the sidewalk in yellow paint, for the passers-by to see. She’d usually managed to scrub them out with kerosene or used a brick, to rub off the paint. Lately, it had been worse. She’d had several punctures, driving into the garage, because of broken glass or nails.
I asked that was what had happened to my tire, then? That was why Aunt Petroushka and all the others in this house had acted so mysteriously when I’d found the tire slashed? Why did they stand it? They didn’t have to. They could report it. They could do something.
“And cause more trouble?” said Elizabeth. “Aunt
Petroushka is old. She does not wish to go to the police about neighbors next door.”
We were talking that way to each other, while she stood behind me, rubbing away part of the hurt. We weren’t doing anything wrong. If we spoke in low voices it wasn’t because we were hiding anything. It was because we had the sense of something evil and ugly outside in the night, accentuated by the shrill yelping of that puppy, unimaginable in its terror.
Probably the puppy was merely lonesome, put in a new place. Don’t ever tell me a puppy isn’t sensitive. Somewhere across the way, a puppy was scared. The reason it was scared doesn’t matter. It could be a simple, ordinary reason, like being away from its mother—not that anything horrible was happening to it, actually. But the puppy’s wail was horrible.
We were talking that way, to each other, being with each other briefly again. Elizabeth said, “It is better now, the headache?”
I said it was much better. I said tomorrow I’d drive in for the last time to give the office the revised statistics. I stood. I asked her would she drive in with me tomorrow morning? Could I telephone her tomorrow noon, and perhaps we might have early lunch together before I started to drive south?
She nodded.
I didn’t touch her. She knew I wouldn’t touch her. She knew she could come in this room and try to help my headache; and she must have known how I felt. Knowing that, having that knowledge together, it was important. It was good. I think she was turning to leave when Norman slid in through the door and stated unemotionally, “It is quite late, Elizabeth.”
Like someone crying the eerie wail of the puppy came in upon us.
Hands in the pockets of his dingy dressing gown, Norman remained where he was. His head was tipped. His cocked eye might have been more off-center than usual, but there wasn’t any other indication he was troubled or holding anything tight and terrifying inside him. Just having him walk in as he did, saying what he did, changed everything.
Elizabeth’s face became like white stone. To me, she said, “Good night, Allen,” and walked to the door. Norman held the door open for her. When she was outside, he closed the door, with himself in the room.
= 3 =
In one side of a pale mouth, he stuck a crumpled cigarette. He said, “Please understand. The puppy held me awake.”
Quickly, he struck the match; I didn’t see the flame. His hands cupped the flame, lifting to his scarred face, hiding the face. Behind his hands his voice continued. “I went into the bathroom and from the hall, upon emerging, heard Elizabeth’s voice.” He lit his cigarette.
He said, “I make the request, Captain. It must not again happen. She is naive and inexperienced. I say this with no anger toward you or her, Captain. Believe me, please. But she is my sister.”
I said she was his sister but was she someone whom he knew?
Norman said, “She is a scholar. Her father was a great scholar. One of her grandfathers was a famous mathematician.”
Because I was thinking of Elizabeth’s mother, I asked what was her other grandfather, a musician?
