The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 17

  “But I know what you’re really like,” he said. “You should be bouncing around having some fun.”

  “Maybe so,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe I’m used to things now. You get used to all kinds of comforts. They become a dear part of your life.” There was a weary resignation and something hard and cynical in the way she spoke. “Besides, there are times when he seems charming.”

  “After three or four old fashioneds?”

  “You’ve noticed it yourself,” she said.

  Her lovely face, the shape of her breasts, had gotten into his sleep. He began to see Myers’ face drifting through the streets, grinning his shrewd and calculating grin at hundreds of people, estimating them all. One night he rushed into the Waldorf bar, stood a moment at the door staring at Myers’ broad back, and then began to tremble. Myers had turned, his arms open.

  “What’s the matter?” Myers said. “Come on and sit down.”

  “There’s nothing the matter with me.”

  “Why did you stand there pop-eyed watching me?”

  “Because I want to tell you—”

  “That I’m a little too fat, but it’s just an alcoholic fatness . . . A little too fat,” and Max felt a little edge of malice in Myers’ laughter.

  “I’m getting a job in an advertising agency,” Max said. “In a few days. I don’t need to take any more of your money, I didn’t do anything for you anyway.”

  “Sure, you’ve done lots for me,” Myers said.

  “OK, but I’m through now, and thank God I can quit. I know you’ve no use for me,” he said.

  Myers started to laugh. “Aw, come on down off your high horse. You’re not working yet, what’s the matter?” And he took out his wallet.

  “No, it’s no good, if I stay I’ll quarrel with you,” Max said, and he slapped Myers on the shoulder, tried to smile, and rushed out.

  At the café on Twelfth Street, he ran down the steps, stopped abruptly, and looked around as though someone were chasing him. Mrs. Myers, sitting in the corner at the end of the long table, waved to him as if she were expecting him, but he was out of breath and could hardly speak.

  “You’ve been running. What’s the matter?” she asked. “Let’s sit here and talk. Talk about anything.”

  “No. I just left him. It’s not safe,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “The way he grinned at me. He’s watching me. He can’t stand me, I can tell.”

  “It’s not true,” she said. “He let your name drop the other night, and he felt warmly for you. I’m sure he did.”

  “He let me drop?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes widened with excitement. “Oh, you’re so sweet,” she said, “You’re a darling,” and then he saw the bones whiten in her hands as she gripped at the edge of the table, and then she stood up. “You’re right,” she whispered. “He’s followed you.”

  Myers came toward them looking like a contented and vindicated man enjoying a secret happiness. In a sprawling manner, he sat down with them and grinned into their faces.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?” he asked. “And me thinking it was time we had this little get-together.”

  “Stop your stupid grinning,” Max said.

  “I must get out of here,” Myers’ wife said.

  She hesitated, and then got up and went as far as the counter. White-faced and watching, she waited there.

  “Well, you couldn’t resist horning in on what didn’t belong to you, eh?” Myers jeered at Max.

  “Nothing’s gone on, Myers.”

  “Why’d you drop my arm walking along the street the day we met?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Sure you did. I knew you didn’t like me, and I didn’t like you either, even when we were kids.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” Max said. “And you’re wrong about everything. You think you found out everybody’s cheap. You despise everybody.”

  Myers’ face seemed to grow heavy. In the other corner, the Russian girl playing the guitar began to sing. Myers raised his wife’s glass and looked through it at the light. He put it down carefully on the table. He blinked his eyes at Max. “You think you can touch what I want,” and he shot out his fist, hitting Max hard on the jaw, smacking his head back against the wall. Myers swung again, tipping over the table to get close to him, pinning Max against the wall; he let him have three hard short shots and then he stepped back and let him roll under the table. “You touched what I want.” People crowding around were frightened by the leering arrogant expression on Myers’ face. “Get up, stooge,” Myers yelled.

  Pushing her way through the crowd, Mrs. Myers knelt down beside Max. He whispered, “I just wanted to help you.”

  “You have, you have,” she whispered.

  Max went to reach for her arm, but she turned away and was looking at Myers with an expression of grief and tenderness. “Come home, come home,” Max heard her say as she stood up, and then she looked back down at Max and shook her head as if she were about to cry, but not for him as he lay there on the floor, tasting the blood in his mouth. Stunned, he wondered if all along they had needed someone like him to hold them together. When Myers turned away and took a few steps with her, holding her arm, and started to go with his head down, someone slyly tripped him and he stumbled, nearly sprawling, and he looked around with a dreadfully surprised look on his face, feeling the contempt everybody had for him, but he straightened himself and hurried out with his wife, and they were arm in arm.

  The Blue Kimono

  It was hardly more than dawn when George woke up suddenly. He lay wide awake listening to a heavy truck moving on the street below; he heard one truck driver shout angrily to another; he heard the noises of doors slamming, of women taking in the milk, of cars starting, and sometime later on in the morning, he wondered where all these people went when they hurried out briskly with so much assurance.

  Each morning he wakened a little earlier and was wide awake. But this time he was more restless than ever and he thought with despair. “We’re unlucky, that’s it. We’ve never had any luck since we’ve come here. There’s something you can’t put your hands on working to destroy us. Everything goes steadily against us from bad to worse. We’ll never have any luck. I can feel it. We’ll starve before I get a job.”

  Then he realized that his wife, Marthe, was no longer in the bed beside him. He looked around the room that seemed so much larger and so much emptier in that light and he thought, “What’s the matter with Marthe? Is it getting that she can’t sleep?” Sitting up, he peered uneasily into the room’s dark corners. There was a light coming from the kitchenette. As he got out of bed slowly, with his thick hair standing up straight all over his head, and reached for his slippers and dressing gown, the notion that something mysterious and inexorable was working to destroy them was so strong in him that he suddenly wanted to stand in front of his wife and shout in anger, “What can I do? You tell me something to do. What’s the use of me going out to the streets today? I’m going to sit down here and wait, day after day.” That time when they had first got married and were secure now seemed such a little faraway forgotten time.

  In his eagerness to make his wife feel the bad luck he felt within him, he went striding across the room, his old, shapeless slippers flapping on the floor, his dressing gown only half pulled on, looking in that dim light like someone huge, reckless, and full of sudden savage impulse, who wanted to pound a table and shout. “Marthe, Marthe,” he called, “what’s the matter with you? Why are you up at this time?”

  She came into the room carrying their two-year-old boy. “There’s nothing the matter with me,” she said. “I got up when I heard Walter crying.” She was a small, slim, dark woman with black hair hanging on her shoulders, a thin eager face, and large soft eyes, and as she walked over to the window with the boy she swayed her body as though she were humming to him. The light from the window was now a little stronger. She sat there in her old blue kimono holding the boy tight and
feeling his head with her hand.

  “What’s the matter with him?” George said.

  “I don’t know. I heard him whimpering, so I got up. His head felt so hot.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” he said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  She seemed so puzzled, so worried and aloof from even the deepest bitterness within him, that George felt impatient, as if it were her fault that the child was sick. For a while he watched her rocking back and forth, always making the same faint humming sound, with the stronger light showing the deep frown on her face, and he couldn’t seem to think of the child at all. He wanted to speak with sympathy, but he burst out, “I had to get up because I couldn’t go on with my own thoughts. We’re unlucky, Marthe. We haven’t had a day’s luck since we’ve come to this city. How much longer can this go on before they throw us out on the street? I tell you we never should have come here.”

  She looked up at him indignantly. He couldn’t see the fierceness in her face because her head was against the window light. Twice he walked the length of the room, then he stood beside her, looking down at the street. There was now traffic and an increasing steady hum of motion. He felt chilled and his fingers grasped at the collar of his dressing gown, pulling it across his chest. “It’s cold here, and you can imagine what it’ll be like in winter,” he said. And when Marthe again did not answer, he said sullenly, “You wanted us to come here. You wanted us to give up what we had and come to a bigger city where there were bigger things ahead. Where we might amount to something because of my fine education and your charming manner. You thought we didn’t have enough ambition, didn’t you?”

  “Why talk about it now, George?”

  “I want you to see what’s happened to us.”

  “Say I’m responsible. Say anything you wish.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you what I feel in my bones. Luck is against us. Something far stronger than our two lives is working against us. I was thinking about it when I woke up. I must have been thinking about it all through my sleep.”

  “We’ve been unlucky, but we’ve often had a good time, haven’t we?” she said.

  “Tell me honestly, have we had a day’s luck since we got married?” he said brutally.

  “I don’t know,” she said with her head down. Then she looked up suddenly, almost pleading, but afraid to speak.

  The little boy started to whimper and then sat up straight, pushing away the blanket his mother tried to keep around him. When she insisted on covering him, he began to fight and she had a hard time holding him till suddenly he was limp in her arms, looking around the darkened room with the bright wonder that comes in a child’s fevered eyes.

  George watched Marthe trying to soothe the child. The morning light began to fall on her face, making it seem a little leaner, a little narrower and so dreadfully worried. A few years ago everybody used to speak about her extraordinary smile, about the way the lines around her mouth were shaped for laughter, and they used to say, too, that she had a mysterious, tapering, Florentine face. Once a man had said to George, “I remember clearly the first time I met your wife. I said to myself, ‘Who is the lady with that marvelous smile?’”

  George was now looking at this face as though it belonged to a stranger. He could think of nothing but the shape of it. There were so many angles in that light; it seemed so narrow. “I used to think it was beautiful. It doesn’t look beautiful. Would anybody say it was beautiful?” he thought, and yet these thoughts had nothing to do with his love for her.

  In some intuitive way she knew that he was no longer thinking of his bad luck, but was thinking of her, so she said patiently, “Walter seems to have quite a fever, George.” Then he stopped walking and touched Walter’s head, which was very hot.

  “Here, let me hold him a while and you get something,” he said. “Get him some aspirin.”

  “I’ll put it in orange juice, if he’ll take it,” she said.

  “For God’s sake, turn on the light, Marthe,” he called. “This ghastly light is getting on my nerves.”

  He tried talking to his son while Marthe was away. “Hello, Walter, old boy, what’s the matter with you? Look at me, big boy, say something bright to your old man.” But the little boy shook his head violently, stared vacantly at the wall a moment, and then tried to bury his face in his father’s shoulder. So George, looking disconsolately around the cold room, felt that it was more barren than ever.

  Marthe returned with the orange juice and the aspirin. They both began to coax Walter to take it. They pretended to be drinking it themselves, made ecstatic noises with their tongues as though it were delicious and kept it up till the boy cried, “Orange, orange, me too,” with an unnatural animation. His eyes were brilliant. Then he swayed as if his spine were made of putty and fell back in his mother’s arms.

  “We’d better get a doctor in a hurry, George,” Marthe said.

  “Do you think it’s that bad?”

  “Look at him,” she said, laying him on the bed. “I’m sure he’s very sick. You don’t want to lose him, do you?” and she stared at Walter, who had closed his eyes and was sleeping.

  As Marthe in her fear kept looking up at George, she was fingering her old blue kimono, drawing it tighter around her to keep her warm. The kimono had been of a Japanese pattern adorned with clusters of brilliant flowers sewn in silk. George had given it to her at the time of their marriage; now he stared at it, torn as it was at the arms, with pieces of old padding hanging out at the hem, with the light colored lining showing through in many places, and he remembered how, when the kimono was new, Marthe used to make the dark hair across her forehead into bangs, fold her arms across her breasts, with her wrists and hands concealed in the sleeve folds, and go around the room in the bright kimono, taking short, prancing steps, pretending she was a Japanese girl.

  The kimono now was ragged and gone; it was gone, he thought, like so many bright dreams and aspirations they had once had in the beginning, like so many fine resolutions he had sworn to accomplish, like so many plans they had made and hopes they had cherished.

  “Marthe, in God’s name,” he said suddenly, “the very first money we get, even if we just have enough to put a little down, you’ll have to get a decent dressing gown. Do you hear?”

  She was startled. Looking up at him in bewilderment, she swallowed hard, then turned her eyes down again.

  “It’s terrible to have to look at you in that thing,” he muttered.

  After he had spoken in this way he was ashamed, and he was able to see for the first time the wild terrified look on her face as she bent over Walter.

  “Why do you look like that?” he asked. “Hasn’t he just got a little fever?”

  “Did you see the way he held the glass when he took the orange juice?”

  “No. I didn’t notice.”

  “His hand trembled. Earlier, when I first went to him, and gave him a drink I noticed the strange trembling in his hand.”

  “What does it mean?” he said, awed by the fearful way she was whispering.

  “His body seemed limp and he could not sit up either. Last night I was reading about such symptoms in the medical column in the paper. Symptoms like that with a fever are symptoms of infantile paralysis.”

  “Where’s the paper?”

  “Over there on the table.”

  George sat down and began to read the bit of newspaper medical advice; over and over he read it, very calmly. Marthe had described the symptoms accurately; but in a stupid way he could not get used to the notion that his son might have such a dreadful disease. So he remained there calmly for a long time.

  And then he suddenly realized how they had been dogged by bad luck; he realized how surely everything they loved was being destroyed day by day and he jumped up and cried out, “We’ll have to get a doctor.” And as if he realized to the full what was inevitably impending, he cried out, “You’re right, Marthe, he’ll die. That child will die. It’s the luck that’s f
ollowing us. Then it’s over. Everything’s over. I tell you I’ll curse the day I ever saw the light of the world. I’ll curse the day we ever met and ever married. I’ll smash everything I can put my hands on in this world.”

  “George, don’t go on like that. You’ll bring something dreadful down on us,” she whispered in terror.

  “What else can happen? What else can happen to us worse than this?”

  “Nothing, nothing, but please don’t go on saying it, George.”

  Then they both bent down over Walter and they took turns putting their hands on his head. “What doctor will come to us at this house when we have no money?” he kept muttering. “We’ll have to take him to a hospital.” They remained kneeling together, silent for a long time, almost afraid to speak.

  Marthe said suddenly, “Feel, feel his head. Isn’t it a little cooler?”

  “What could that be?”

  “It might be the aspirin working on him.”

  So they watched, breathing steadily together while the child’s head gradually got cooler. Their breathing and their silence seemed to waken the child, for he opened his eyes and stared at them vaguely. “He must be feeling better,” George said. “See the way he’s looking at us.”

  “His head does feel a lot cooler.”

  “What could have been the matter with him, Marthe?”

  “It must have been a chill. Oh, I hope it was only a chill.”

  “Look at him, if you please. Watch me make the rascal laugh.”

  With desperate eagerness George rushed over to the table, tore off a sheet of newspaper, folded it into a thin strip about eight inches long and twisted it like a cord. Then he knelt down in front of Walter and cried, “See, see,” and thrust the twisted paper under his own nose and held it with his upper lip while he wiggled it up and down. He screwed up his eyes diabolically. He pressed his face close against the boy’s.

  Laughing, Walter put out his hand. “Let me,” he said. So George tried to hold the paper moustache against Walter’s lip. But that was no good. Walter pushed the paper away and said, “You, you.”