Crazy Cock (11 page)

“But when you're through . . . ?”

“I'll see,” said Hildred. “But not tomorrow, at any rate. Tomorrow I have an appointment with someone.”

These appointments meant money. No way of rebutting that argument.

Oddly enough, the appointment didn't prove important enough to keep. Something else, something of a more important nature, had intervened. Quite spontaneously . . . quite unexpectedly, of course. One of her old customers had dropped in at the dinner hour and offered Hildred a couple of theater tickets which would otherwise have gone to waste.

It was remarkable, moreover, how everyone remembered to bring her violets. At the appropriate moment he brought up the subject of the violets. But he was mistaken again—as he usually was. The man hadn't brought her the violets—he hadn't even taken her to the theater. It was Vanya who went to the theater with her.

“But who gave you the violets then?”

“Someone else.”

“To be sure, but who?”

“Who? Why, the Spaniard.” She said it as if he knew all about the Spaniard, whereas he had never heard of him before. But he must have been mistaken about that, too, because most of the time he didn't pay any attention to what she was telling him.

The story of the violets had an almost plausible ring. There were always plenty of boobs dropping in to hand her flowers. One day, however, after an unusual to-do about the subject (it was one of his bad habits to open up old sores), he decided to have a little chat with the florist whose shop was just around the corner from the Caravan.

It was a Greek who ran the shop. Tony Bring dropped in
and asked quite casually to see the violets which the two young ladies usually ordered of him. The Greek shrugged his shoulders. Which two young ladies? There were lots of young ladies who bought violets.

Tony Bring described them—the long mane, the bare legs, the green face.

“Oh, those two! Sure . . . sure. Here, thees is eet!”

A few hours later he went back and bought a bunch. He felt foolish walking along with a bouquet in his hand. He felt still more ridiculous when he stepped into the Caravan and presented them. It was the dinner hour and the place was jammed. Hildred had spotted him immediately; she had rushed up to him and squeezed his hand. She took him by the arm and ushered him outside. They stood in the little yard fenced in by the iron railing.

He had two seats in his pocket for
Potemkin
. She was going to make an effort to get away, to give him an evening, as he had requested. He walked around the block a few times, as she had suggested. When she came out again he was met with a sorrowful look. “I can't get away,” she said. “We're short of girls tonight.”

“But can't you take sick suddenly?”

Nope. They were on to that game.

He walked off dejectedly. At the corner he turned around. She was waving to him. She seemed to be genuinely disappointed, and yet she was smiling, too.

He stood outside the lobby of the theater and watched the crowds pouring in. It was like a Zionist reunion. No one seemed to come alone. He saw a young couple, shabbily dressed, advancing eagerly toward the box office. He went up to them and offered them his tickets. As they were mumbling
their thanks he turned his back and made off. He was swallowed up by the crowd and borne along at a ridiculous pace. They moved like an army of ants pushing through a crack in the sidewalk. As he drifted with the current, shunted here and there, rudderless, will-less, like a straw riding a whirlpool, he suddenly made up his mind to go back to the Caravan—no particular reason, just a blind impulse.

Anchoring himself at the railing he gazed through the window. He saw the girls weaving in and out among the tables with the huge trays balanced in midair, stopping now and then to chat with some fresh Alec who knew how to put his arm around a girl's waist or pinch her buttocks. But there was no sign of Hildred. He went inside and inquired for her. They said she had gone off.

It was a strange coincidence, as things turned out. Hildred did go to see
Potemkin
after all. That very night. The Spaniard had hopped in—at the last minute—just when one of the girls who had been away ill returned for duty. And, strange as it may seem, he too had tickets for
Potemkin
. Extraordinary it was. Perfectly extraordinary. That's how things happened in life. And, of course, there was no sense in refusing him. Besides, hadn't she gone with the hope of seeing him somewhere in the audience?

But when he admitted that he didn't go she seemed amazed. “You didn't go?” she repeated. She couldn't understand. “Why, it was a marvelous picture! Marvelous! The way those Cossacks descended the stairs leading to the quay, the way they halted, like automatons, and fired into the mob. And the way that mob melted!” She described most vividly how a baby carriage had rolled down the long, white steps, how they dropped, the women and children, how they were
trampled on. It was magnificent. What gorgeous beasts those Cossacks were!

She left off abruptly, lit herself a cigarette, and sat on the edge of the table, swinging her leg.

“Do you know what a real pogrom is like?” she asked suddenly.

He knew that the answer to this was no. He said no.

She thought as much. He ought to hear Vanya talk. Vanya had taken part in more than one pogrom. . . .

“Where?” he demanded.

In Russia, to be sure. Where did he suppose?

“She's a Russian, then?”

She was not only a Russian, he learned, but she was a princess, a Romanoff, a bastard Romanoff. So that's how it was! Not only a genius, but a princess to boot. He couldn't help but think of another Romanoff who had once given him a bad check for three dollars. He was a genius, too, in a way . . . and a bastard, to boot. He wagged his head, like a Jew who has just been informed of a fresh calamity. No wonder he was not romantic enough for them; he was neither a genius, nor a Romanoff, nor a bastard.

The scene came to a termination on the bed. It was marvelous the way Hildred could pour out her love. The man who could doubt such a love was an idiot. Body and soul she gave herself. A complete surrender. Not like those half-women in the Village, whom Willie Hyslop consorted with, but like a real woman with all her organs intact, all her senses unstrung, all her heart on fire and her passions burning to cinder . . . a veritable pogrom of love.

At the very climax Vanya had to return.

“Oh, you're
there!”
she cried. She could smell them in the dark, like a dog.

No sooner than she heard her voice Hildred jumped out of bed. The princess had arrived. Time to sing another tune.

Tony Bring slipped out the back door into the outhouse. The dirty dishes were lying in the sink. He moved about aimlessly, glancing through the window now and then to see if they took any notice of his absence. No, they seemed not to notice anything. Hildred was cold-creaming her face while the princess sang to her. They sang in English, in German, in French, in Russian. Vanya went to her room and came back with her Barrymore makeup. Swagger and strut. Hildred sitting by, like an empress of emotion, doling out applause.

The roof of the outhouse was supported by three iron poles. Tony Bring raced around the poles like an electrified rabbit. Each time he passed the window he glanced inside. They were still singing . . . caroling away like a couple of drunken molls. “Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you-ou-ou . . .” Over and over they sang it. George Washington should have been there—and Abraham Lincoln and Jean Cocteau and Puvis de Chavannes and Moholy-Nagy and Tristan Tzara. . . . He was there and he was not there. He was like a ghost at a banquet, like a hero without a medal, like an uninvited guest at a wake, like a slack-wire walker without a bamboo pole or an umbrella. He was a lunatic at large with a chronometer hidden in his socks. There was a transparent window but he was invisible to them. If they couldn't see him they could at least hear him thrashing about like a maniac, or couldn't they? Were they deaf, too? Yes, they were deaf. They were deafening themselves with song and laughter. The world was empty but for them. Their song filled the world, filled the starry space beyond, made the stars and planets hum and the moon drunk and the heavens to sing.

“You bloody devils!” he groaned. “If I only knew the way
to sink my hooks into you! If I could only teach you to dance a few steps!”

This night, sure as hellfire, there will be a poem—a poem about the veils of night, about the hours grinding and hacking away at space with their sandy arms. O earth! thou art a breathing tomb, a chamber to torture these living dead with their widespread guts and their hidebound hands gaping to heaven for succor. In that frowsy cubicle where the Danish sisters bulge from the wall the pen will soon be scratching feverishly. Through the drunken verses they will reel and totter and the room will be split with grunts and squeals. While the music gurgles from the drains and spiders crawl over their black stockings the pen will dance. . . . Take away these cadavers that are growing in my brain! Give me back my soul and the sockets of my eyes!

T
HE
C
ARAVAN
has added another hostess to its staff: one of the Romanoff family! God, if people only realized that they were being served by a princess! The way she poured the soup! The way she balanced the tray!

Princesses have a way of being disappointing, but this one . . . ! Not a full-blooded princess, of course. Somewhere there had been a little slip. Somebody had hitched his horse to the wrong post—during a pogrom or a snowstorm.

Hildred felt like another person. She jerked Vanya out of bed more tenderly. A princess was such a delicate thing. Arm in arm they left the house each day. They returned when it suited them.

When they are gone Tony Bring closets himself in the sanctuary left vacant by the princess. He reviews what her alter ego has lucubrated during the night, for between two and six in the morning it is not a Romanoff but a Madame Villon who inhabits the holy of holies. Madame Villon writes in a childish scrawl, as if she had been mesmerized. Not having a slate she writes on matchboxes, on menus and blotters; sometimes nothing will do but toilet paper. Having
written, she tosses her poems on the floor. Walks off in the morning like a dog leaving its dung.

This morning, fresh from the griddle, Tony Bring finds a hymn to ammonia. “You held yourself like a fallen queen . . . your eyes, three eyes, spirits of ammonia.” It was written on the back of a menu from Lenox Avenue. “Swaying chalk arms blacked with life passed over my eyes. . . . I looked to you, Hildred, through the weaving green lights, and I wondered. . . . You were drunk last night, Hildred.”

Last night! That was the night Vanya came home raving about the Spaniard's wasted skull floating in a sea of navels, glossy brown navels smudged with lip rouge. That was the night they were to raise the rent money and there were violets again and the Spaniard had said jokingly, “Someday I weel keel her!” He read on. . . . “Thick gold chains clinked in my brain, the music roared in a trickling flood over my ginger ale. The floor is rocking, the ice water is freezing my ankles.”

H
E SWOOPED
down on the Caravan at dinner hour. The ceremony with which he was received embarrassed him. They insisted on waiting on him together. Such deference they paid him! One would think he was a celebrity who had chosen to dine in this humble place for the express purpose of shedding over these two devoted creatures the aura of his august personage. They even went through the farce of creating a little scene, pretended to be jealous of each other because he was distributing his favors unevenly.

He deliberately prolonged his stay. Already Hildred was betraying evidences of impatience, though with admirable and unwonted restraint. It was obvious that there were plans afoot for the evening. They were simply marking time.

He lingered over the dessert, ordered a second cup of coffee, fiddled around with his notebook, jotted down a few meaningless phrases. Hildred was on the verge of exasperation. She sat down beside him and began to plead with him to go. Vanya stood behind her, taking in every word, yet managing somehow to preserve a dreamy, rapt expression as if it were all of no consequence to her.

“Don't you think it's silly,” Hildred was saying, “to come here and spy on me? Do you think you'll learn anything by hanging on here?”

“But I haven't come to spy on you,” he said. “I've come to take you out.”

Hildred frowned, then shot a quick glance at Vanya that said: “For Christ's sake, get me out of this!”

But to the amazement of both of them Vanya responded promptly: “He's right, Hildred . . . I think it's your duty to go with him tonight.”

“But we had an appointment. . . .”

“Oh, I'll take care of that,” said Vanya. “Forget about it.”

“Can't you come along with us?” said Hildred, a sulky, pouty look on her face.

No, Vanya couldn't. She was resolute about it. Moreover, she simply couldn't bring herself to intrude upon their pleasure. She spoke so sincerely that for a moment Tony Bring actually felt grateful to her. Meanwhile his resentment toward Hildred was growing to such proportions that it was only by summoning all his powers of will that he managed to persuade himself to see the thing through. He wondered what fresh excuses would rise to her lips. And, at the same time, there grew in him a stronger and stronger determination to impose his will.

Finally, after she had gulped down a cup of black coffee
and lit a fresh cigarette, Hildred gave in. At the door she pulled Vanya aside. A prolonged, agitated conversation went on in whispers. At the conclusion of it Vanya was beaming.

The very way she held her cigarette, the way she puffed at it silently, vengefully, galled him. He had a mad desire to tear it from her mouth, to fling it in the gutter. The next moment, however, he found himself searching feverishly for some word that would dissolve this feud, some gesture that would bring her close to him.