Crazy Cock (19 page)

“That isn't it! It's the way you stood there.”

“What did you expect me to do—stand there like
September Morn?
Jesus, what a prune you can be!”

T
HINGS WERE
going swell during the intermission, except that Hildred was getting in dutch at the Caravan. They were threatening to fire her if she didn't mend her ways.

“You'd better nurse the job,” cautioned Tony Bring. “Things'll be going to hell around here otherwise.”

Vanya agreed. Someone had to show a sense of responsibility.

But there was another, a more important reason, why Hildred ought to carry on. Vanya had taken to fiddling around again with plaster and whatnot. She was threatening to make more Count Brugas, more masks and casts. Money was needed. Of course, once Hildred had sold a few everything would go swimmingly. And where was there a better market than the Caravan? Lausberg would probably start the ball rolling; and then there was that big, good-natured slob Earl Biggers, to say nothing of Iliad's mother and the boys with the golden locks who just loved anything artistic.

Hildred was not the sort to nibble at a line. She gobbled it up, hook, bait, and sinker. There was genius in the idea. Naturally! A genius had conceived it. A Romanoff genius.

Now she came home from work immediately. Everyone chipped in. If a visitor arrived, he was given a hammer and saw, or else they instructed him how to tear sheets of brown wrapping paper into thin strips. The floor was a morass: plaster of Paris, sawdust, nails, varnish, glue, pieces of velvet
and satin, dolls' wigs, Mexican dyes . . . the disorder of a burlesque show backstage.

For practice they made casts of each other. Hildred refusing to put up with the ordinary, placid, deathlike composure. Always striving for the grotesque. Instead of likenesses, therefore, they turned out gargoyles, satyrs, orgiasts, maniacs. Now and then a Job or a Hamlet turned up—or maybe a Roman coin.

Tony Bring took it all with extraordinary calm. Let them spin their opium dreams. Let them talk. They couldn't go to Paris on a shoestring. As for their becoming wealthy overnight—fiddlesticks! If only they made enough to meet the rent when it came due. If they could only keep their stomachs from growling. Hildred talked in carload lots, to be sure, but that was her way. Nothing more than thyroid effervescence.

Toward three or four in the morning Vanya would usually steal out in her overalls and snoop around for milk bottles and bags of buns which the tradesmen left at people's doors. The few hours that remained for sleep they would spend in tossing about, in hurling recriminations, in patching things up. Thoroughly exhausted, her nerves on end, sobbing, weeping, cursing him one moment and surrendering herself the next, Hildred would at last fall asleep in his arms and lie there like a stone. Sometimes she awoke with a fright and cried out—“Oh, it's you!” And then she would beg him to desist, tell him he was cruel, that he was killing her.

“But what were you dreaming of just now?”

“God, I don't know . . . don't ask me such questions. I'm dead, I tell you.”

And while he struggled to piece out her dreams, while he
reviewed swiftly all the lies and intrigues that surrounded her, suddenly Vanya would be heard closing the door of her room. Her shadow passed and repassed the heavy stained-glass door. What was she doing out there, that long-maned devil? What new conspiracy was she hatching? As if to protect Hildred from some evil spirit he would seize her and smother her in his arms. And again there would come that nightmarish expression and Hildred would cry out—”O Jesus, leave me alone, will you?”

“But listen, Hildred, don't you hear her?”

“You'll drive me crazy if this keeps up much longer.”

“And what about me—do you think I'm getting fat on it?”

“For God's sake, what do you want of me?”

“You know what I want . . . I want you to get rid of her.”

“If you talk that way I'll run away . . . I swear I can't stand it any longer.”

“But listen, Hildred . . . you say you love me . . . you say you'll do anything for me . . .”

“Yes, but not that!”

“Why not?”

“Because I won't.”

“You won't because you're mad . . . you're a son-of-a-bitch . . . you're crazy! I ought to beat the ____ out of you.”

“Tony . . . Tony! God, what things you say!” She falls on him and suffocates him with kisses. She smooths his brow and runs her hand through his hair. “Tony, my God, how can you talk like that? You're ill. You need a rest. Tony, don't you know that I love you? What would I do without you? Do you want to destroy me?”

“But I'm not mad . . . I mean it. I mean every word of it.”

“Oh, Tony, you can't mean it. You're ill. You're ill.”

E
VERYBODY ON
pins and needles. Everybody out of sorts, touchy, jumpy, irritable. Supersensitive. Like a man complaining of cold feet after his legs have been amputated. Vanya, the Stoic, remarking to Tony Bring one day—“It's good for you, this suffering . . . it'll improve your writing.”

His writing! A pleasant way that was of twitting him about his slothfulness. The great book whose synopsis had required sheets and sheets of wrapping paper was no more. Gone up the flue, with the chairs and whatnot. One could always start another book, of course. Hadn't Carlyle rewritten his
History of the French Revolution
when the manuscript was lost? But he wasn't a Carlyle. Nevertheless, something was gathering again in his crop. There were scraps of paper and little notebooks—a sort of Sherwood Anderson nonsense, except that there was no wandering from flop to flop, no brewery jobs, no tossing things out of the second-floor window.

Or was it just another way of killing time? One could read just so much of Spengler and Proust and then there was an end to it. Joyce too gave one indigestion. In France there were clever fellows who used the needle every once in a while. A new book every six months—with illustrations too.
No limits to their fecundity. But in America, somehow, a cocaine atmosphere wouldn't produce literature. America was producing gunmen and beer barons. Literature was being left to women. Everything was left to woman, except womanhood.

What was he scribbling anyway? And why did he have to go to the Caravan to make his notes? Vanya was getting all wrought up about it. If he were thinking of writing a book about her he'd better watch his step. One could bring suit against people for—she didn't know what exactly. Hildred too was urging him to be careful. Heavens, but they were squeamish—and he hadn't written a line yet. Good, nevertheless. Maybe the old cow would really get panicky and bump herself off. She was getting so uneasy nowadays that she hung a knife and a hammer on her door. What was she doing that for? Was she trying to egg him on?

The drama didn't amuse Hildred anymore. She was fagged out. Playing the hostess all day and at night carving wooden legs or dyeing wigs. As for the lord and master, he couldn't even drive a nail in straight. All he did was scribble notes, or think up new arguments to drive them all crazy. No, it couldn't go on much longer—for Hildred. She was worn out, exhausted. Too exhausted even to pretend to make love. And the lord and master—why, he was wide awake when they went to bed. Naturally, since he hadn't done anything all day except to wash the dishes and sweep the floor. Even that was too much for him. It interfered with his scribbling.

There were times now, when they'd gone to bed, that he got up and went for a walk. Hildred didn't even stir when he climbed over her. She was dead to the world.

It was getting to be a habit. He couldn't fall asleep anymore
unless he had taken his walk. One night—night? It was almost dawn. He had been walking along the waterfront, turning things over. Deeply engrossed, he wandered into the narrow, canyoned street just back of the warehouses. A deathlike stillness, shattered now and then by the blast of a tugboat. Suddenly there was a shout followed by the sound of scuffling feet. He turned sharply and caught a glancing blow in the neck. The next moment he was in the gutter, rolling over and over. When he got to his feet there was a man standing against the wall. “Come here, you_____!” He began to run. “Stop, you bastard, or you'll be sorry!” He quickened his pace. He was running as fast as his legs would carry him. Then bango! There was a shot and he heard a dull splatter against the wall. He almost collapsed. For a moment there was again the deathlike stillness. And then there came the familiar sound of a nightstick pounding the pavement. That frightened him even more. Supposing the damned fools took it into their heads . . . it was like them to fire away at the first thing they saw. . . .

When he got back to the house he sat down in a chair and began to pant. He was wet and limp. He removed his things slowly, with great effort. He got into bed and lay there trembling. Hildred was lying there like a log. He dozed off. His feet were sticking out of the window. A man came along with an ax and chopped them off; he buried the stumps in the snow which covered the grass plot and then it began to rain and the rain tickled the frozen stumps but he couldn't get out of the window to drag the stumps inside because the window was barred. A car drove up and three men jumped out with shotguns; they rested the guns on the railing and began to spray the window. The window was full of holes through
which the sun poured in; it was tantalizing to lie there with the sun in your eyes and your feet stuck in the grass plot. He was walking. So then his feet must have been restored. He was walking again between the high walls back of the warehouses. And his feet were firmly glued to his legs, because he was running. Back of him was a mob armed with scythes and shotguns. And as he ran the walls started closing in on him. At the end of the street there was just a bare streak of light, as if a curtain were parted. It was growing thinner and thinner. He had to turn and edge between the walls. The walls were scraping his shins. A shot rang out, and then another, and another . . . a grand fusillade. The bullets flattened out above his head, ricocheted from wall to wall, and dropped like stars at his feet. There were cries of “Stop! Stop!” but he wriggled on, stumbling, ducking, scraping his shins and elbows. Suddenly the walls opened up, moved back like automatic doors, and the sky burst forth with a tremendous, blinding light. “Saved! Saved!” he cried. But there, barring the way, all dressed in gleaming armor, stood a body of foot soldiers with long, piercing spears thrust forward. Behind him the mob charging with shouts and curses on their lips. He could hear their scythes clattering against the walls, almost feel their breath upon him. A fear so great came over him that he was paralyzed, rooted to the spot. Feebly he tried to raise his hands. “See . . . see!” he murmured weakly, “I surrender.” The growl ceased. There was a moment of deep, shattering silence. Then, stiff as automatons, the men with the huge, outthrust spears advanced. When they were almost on top of him they halted. Slowly they drew back their huge, mailed arms. “I give up! I give up!” he cried frantically, and as the words left his mouth—perhaps they were never heard—there
came a blinding rain, a sharp, cruel rain of spears plunged deep and quivering. “Jesus, they've killed me!” he screamed.

When he opened his eyes Hildred was bending over him with a towel in her hands. She looked so sad and gentle. There were tears in her eyes. “What is it?” he asked, and then he saw that there was blood on the towel.

At breakfast he told them what had happened. They looked at him unbelievingly. “What the devil!” he said. “What do you think happened, then?” It was queer the way they regarded him. Hildred looked glum, ravaged. Vanya had put on her Barrymore smile.

“Do you think I tried to pull the Dutch act?”

Vanya was still smiling. “You tried, all right,” her smile seemed to say, “but you didn't have the guts.”

He looked down at his plate. There were no tragedies anymore, there were only disappointments. He was failing them. He was not a
romantic
, as Vanya used to say. A man who didn't get himself killed when he had everything to die for was a disappointment. A man like that would go on living even if you stuck his feet in the grass plot. He would go on living because he hadn't brains enough to die. It didn't require guts so much as imagination. He was living an amputated life. His imagination had been removed. And without imagination a man could live forever, even though he be a man no longer, even though he have no arms nor legs—as long as there were pieces left that you could sew together and throw in a wheelchair.

T
HE PLACE
looks like a toy shop that has just been sacked. Arms and legs lying around, monsters in velour jackets, Neros with green wigs sprawled out on the floor like drunken sailors. Overproduction. Unemployment. All hands out hunting for grub, for cigarettes, firewood. Hildred, sadly discouraged, goes to the cinema frequently and sits in the dark to collect her thoughts. No telling what time they'll come these days. But midnight is sure to find them in the cafeteria on Sheridan Square, the same old joint where Willie Hyslop and his gang used to congregate, where they still meet, to be sure, but not with the enthusiasm and frequency as of yore. So it's here at Lorber's that Vanya and Hildred come after midnight to shake someone down for a little chicken feed. The same old gang—Toots and Ebba, Iliad and her mother, bull-dykers, pimps, poets, painters and painters' whores. . . . Amy, too, drops in once in a while, usually with a shanty on her eye, a gift from that connoisseur of anatomies Homer Reed, him who isn't content with an ordinary bun on, but must needs stretch it out for a year at a time. And then there's Jake. . . . Every few minutes someone pops in to ask where Jake is. And if Jake's there, everything's Jake, as they say.

Who's Jake? Well, Jake is a locksmith—but then that doesn't tell us a thing about him, about his temperament, his great heart, his roguish ways. A Maecenas, would be better . . . a Maecenas with a small
m
. He's a bit of an artist, too, this Jake the Maecenas. That is to say, he keeps a studio hard by—a studio equipped with everything an artist would require. Which means a velvet jacket as well. When he has need of a model—there are always plenty to be had at Lorber's—Jake picks up the check, pays for it, and there you are. Besides being acknowledged an artist he is also considered a good meal ticket. Since it is always the same thing he paints—perhaps painting is too dignified a term for the daubs he makes—Jake economizes by using the same canvas over and over. Vanya, who never had any scruples about posing in the nude, is one of the models Jake knows by heart.