Eva Trout (18 page)

“Please,” said the other huntedly, “that is not necessary!”

“
We’re
friendly, you’ll see.” Warningly laughing, Joanne captured Eva’s wrist in a handcuff grasp. “You asked for trouble when you ran into us. Didn’t she, girls?”

“She did,” Betti-Mae agreed, if a shade abstractedly. “If you’re through,” she confided to Eva, “we should leave. I have Dad on my mind. He’s Herk’s Dad, making his home with us. My problem is this—Herk’s on the town tonight with a visiting fireman, and if Dad is left too long he gets morose and goes roaming groaning around rousing my children; so let’s get the check.—Where has she gone to now, for Heaven’s sake?”

Closing in round Eva, the girls got her out of the coffee shop under guard.

The Anapoupolis home was some blocks downtown, on this same avenue. They re-entered the maelstrom. Under walloping decorations the crowds were thinning; beset, two homegoing Santa Clauses held their beards on, their garbs ballooning. The Great Lake wind, bored with no more than blowing, had since last met become aggressively cold: one was glad to be out of it, into the subfusc lobby of a building moribund by this city’s standards but still foursquare. Bear and all, they packed into the elevator.

Byegone and recent Anapoupolis family cooking cohabited in the closeness of the apartment, superficially freshened by floral air spray. Betti-Mae headed through a draped arch, vivaciously shouting: “You have company!” Mr. Anapoupolis senior, compact as a toad though degrees more human, probably, sat upright under a beaded lampshade. His skin, back to half of the skull, down into the dewlaps, was curd-pale; currant-black eyes shot forth, magnetically, through pince-nez. A dark ex-business suit continued to brace the shoulders into a business alertness, maintained
in vacuo
, but left belly to downward-ripple, despondent, and thighs to spread. He terminated in tiny, impatient, pointed-toed feet. He indicated, might he be excused from rising?—absolute lack of wish to could be posited, rather than inability. He bowed round, readjusting the pince-nez. “Ladies,” he said, “I am pleased to see you.” It was much to be doubted whether he was. Far from being morose, he’d been deeply occupied burning into the stock market pages of the
Chicago Tribune
; irrelevant parts of the newspaper were strewn round him.—”Here,” Betti-Mae reminded him, deftly advancing Elsinore, “is your Girlie.” Elsinore stood confronting him in a chained way, a doll-size Andromeda, then sat down out of reach. He seemed content that this should be so. “So she is,” he agreed, according his Girlie a lascivious but unambitious lick of the lips. He turned elsewhere, appeased. “How-do, Mrs. Hensch: Herman well?” Now, he inspected the third visitor. Betti-Mae, in hasty aside to Eva, asked: “Is ‘Trout’ your given or your family name?” “Family.” “Dad, this is Miss—excuse me, this is Mrs.— Trout.”

“Ha!” said he, slowly electrified.

“Hi!” tendered Eva.

“She used to know Elsi-Nora, isn’t that wonderful?”

Mr. Anapoupolis hoisted round in his chair to the best angle from which to view the exhibit, “T-R-O-U-T?” he said searchingly. “Where’d she come from?”

“Elsi-Nora says England.”

He dragged off his pince-nez, polished them in a fury, nipped them on again, sited them upon Eva. “You by chance related to the financier?”

She gave him one of her measuring, blank looks, to which she saw no reason to add anything.

“Weren’t you though, Trout, once?” wondered Elsinore. “Or did I dream that up like I did those ravens?”

“How come,” Joanne keenly wanted to know, “he built that sensational castle, if that wasn’t true?”

“It was there,” said Eva. “May I have a glass of water?”

The room was peculiarly hot: an antique steam-system, jacked up by the patriarch during his children’s absence, sizzled and boiled through metal nearby his chair, and not only that but was active elsewhere. One felt built-in also: a great wave of saleroom furniture of nostalgic interest, neo-Second Empire in character, having come to rest here, as had bric-a-brac. Betti-Mae had inserted one or two pieces, such as a coffee table, with laminated surfaces; these did little. Cut velvet and crannied giltwork harboured more dust than energy could extract, and this dust baked. “It is certainly parched in here,” Betti-Mae assented. She searched about for the air spray but failed to find it. “I was about to serve beer, or else
ouzo
—you don’t want water?”

“Now that,” went on Mr. Anapoupolis, not relaxing his ocular grip on Eva, “was a mysterious thing. Set up a worldwide panic, when the news broke. Shook the market. That man had interests everywhere. False alarm, all O.K. Never been stabler. O.K., then—why’d he do it?”

“Why did he what, Dad?”

“Take his life,” he snapped. “Wasn’t out on a limb. That beat comprehension. I ask, why should he?”

Eva stared away, at the bronze clock with prancing horses: the clock had stopped. The inquisitor went on, with cheated avidity, tinged by disparagement: “Somehow thought, you might tell me.”

“She’s embarrassed,” Joanne said.

He was not budging. “ ‘Trout’s‘ not a usual name except for a fish. More than that, she closely resembles him. Could be his daughter.”

“Dad,” rhapsodised the daughter-in-law, “the way you used to get around, didn’t you! All the big contacts you made, the people you knew!”

The old man, with some scorn, told her: “I knew his picture.” He snorted. “I followed his story”—the pointed feet executed a tiny, static, impatient dance. Excitement ran out; he showed signs of bladder unease. “Ladies,” he announced, “you’ll have to excuse me.”

“There is a horrible old Greek,” Elsinore said, not more
sotto voce
than usual, as Mr. Anapoupolis left their midst.

“Herman’s father did that. That age, they do.”

“
What
did Herman’s father do, Joanne?”

“Discourse on the past. They become confused.—But wasn’t that quite a coincidence?” Joanne asked Eva. “Was that ever your relative?”

“Yes.” Eva went to the dead clock, prised its glass face open and stood moving the hands round to imaginary hours. Their hostess melted from view, gone for the beer. “Elsinore,” said Eva, over her shoulder, “in a minute I have to go. I must get back; I expect a long distance call.” Elsinore, to give reason for saying nothing, brought her lipstick out, faced into a mirror and, hand not trembling, added frost to her lips.

“In connection,” Joanne pursued, “with that important call; would it be, about getting your little boy?”

“No.—Yes.”

“You’ve got to go far to get him? By plane? Just where exactly?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“
My
…!”

Mr. Anapoupolis re-joined them. He detoured by Elsinore, mock-pounced, licked his lips longingly more than lusciously, shook his head resignedly, sought his chair. As a wolf, he was finished. “And how are you ladies doing?” he asked generally.

“
I
just had a shock,” admitted Joanne. “Mr. Anapoupolis, would you believe this?—this Mrs. Trout is going after her little boy and does not know where on earth he is now. Maybe in the East it’s different, maybe in England, but I do have to admit that surprises
me
. Any such uncertainty would about kill me. Or am I neurotic? Tell me, am I?”

No: Mr. Anapoupolis did not think so. He himself took an exceedingly grave view. He arraigned Eva: “What do I understand?”

“I’m to be told,” said Eva defiantly.

Elsinore sighed, in support: “A long distance call.”

“Be that as it may”—he knifed “that” through with a gesture. “What voice do you expect to hear on the telephone? A voice known to you? Have you proof your child is in proper hands? If he was, have you reason to know he has not passed out of them? Much goes on in this country, I am sorry to tell you—nor dare I say it is limited to this country. Of kidnapping, with extortion, I need hardly remind you; moreover, ma’am, there could be various persons for whom your family name spells top-bracket wealth. At a cost, your child could be likely to be recovered. But there’s a racket more deadly—are you aware? There’s a black market in infants, unknowing babies: are you conscious they can be purchased, they can be traded? Are you aware, those who cannot by law adopt, due to ineligibility, become buyers? Are you aware that this is a market in which demand has come to exceed supply? Have you ever conceived, ma’am, the means resorted to that demand may be met?—How old is your child?”

“Three months,” Eva replied—having thought rapidly.

“
The
age,” he declared, in a dooming tone.

“And,” moaned Joanne, “not just to leave him around but then to propose to smother him with that outsize bear.” She averted the octagons from Eva.

“This network I speak of,” Mr. Anapoupolis went on, in awesome crescendo, “does not hesitate to traffic in kidnapped babies, when those to be got by bargain have given out. This network asks astronomic prices—as well it may. It is organised on a scale which could be admired. It deals with clients happy to ask no questions; or, should they ask, wanting the happy answer—which is supplied. And not only does it operate, with diabolic impunity, from coast to coast, it has machinery in continents other than this. It has agents in many an unsuspecting city, contacting and able to be contacted by means of passwords, code signs. It is absolutely expert in frontier-running. You put down money, it goes ahead. It gives you first rate service; it fixes, fakes. Birth certificates, visas, details of origin, blood-group documents. You’ve got no trouble coming. You’ve got your little baby, same as you just gave birth to it, personally, in a high-class hospital. You’re all set, everything taken care of. What was the one thing you had to do? Put down money. You—”

“—What did I miss?” Betti-Mae wanted to know, coming in with the tray. She eased the tray down. “You’re tense in here.”

“He’s only been curdling our blood!”

Elsinore said: “The things they think of to do.” She yawned.

“Now, Dad!—Been scaring you, Mrs. Trout?”

“No,” said Eva, “thank you.” She had in fact been listening with marked imperviousness. “But in a minute, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“She expects a call.”

Overheard, that drove Mr. Anapoupolis frantic. “Ma’am,” he expostulated, launching forward his torso at Eva with great earnestness, “you, of all people, should hear me out! Before you take that call, I am warning you. I must draw your attention to what you may, not unlikely, be up against. You desire to see your child again?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then I must impress upon you, proceed cautiously. Double-check. Question everything you’re told. You may be about to hear, he’s sick, he’s down the street with a neighbour, his aunt stopped by and took him away, a hitch has arisen as to bringing him in, or, should you go get him, a hitch will prevent his being there. Nor could that be all: so great can be inhumanity, you
could
be informed, he all at once passed away. Shed no tears, make no bones—take action instantly! He could have been kidnapped.”

Betti-Mae wondered: “But why should that be?”

“You missed the feature,” Joanne said. “Herk’s Dad’s been illustrating to us how they purchase babies.”

“You don’t say!—I’d call that degraded.”

“It’s pathological.”

Mr. Anapoupolis all at once switched sides. “Ladies, it behoves you to make allowance. Nature dowered you with maternity; some she did not. Law is also capricious, debarring many who would have wished authentic adoptive parenthood. Where a primitive need is devouring, it is baulked at peril. Those perils we see. Exploitation: a vile, a filthy way to make money.” He again grabbed off his pince-nez, again polished them—doing so, blinked reflectively. “Money, it surely makes,” he had to concede.

“And to think,” murmured his Girlie, “you never thought of it!”

“Now, now, now!”

His daughter-in-law, making passes over the tray preparatory to serving what was on it, chanted: “The evils Dad has laid bare! What beats Herk and me is, how he’s taped the vice rings. The research he’s done. Now he has time on his hands, he loves to probe.—Don’t you?”

He looked at her with some venom.

Eva rose, saying: “Goodnight. Thank you very much.”

“But these girls count on walking you back!”

“Thank you, no.”

“You want me to call a cab?”

“No, thank you.”

Elsinore too had risen. She picked up her cape from the floor and huddled it round her, over the wispy black dress— also out of an acting box? “Elsi-Nora,” the girls asked, “what are you doing? Your friend doesn’t need company, she just said so.” Elsinore’s frosted lips moved desperately; not a sound came from them. She stared across, in appeal, at the old man. Mr. Anapoupolis took over. “Let her go,” he commandingly said, referring to Eva. “
She
can make her own way; she’s an able woman, out of an able family—though I don’t say she’s not an unfit mother. Let her get back and handle that call: it’s of vital importance. That is the Trout heir. And you, Girlie” —he beheld with compassion, comprehendingly, his thistledown plaything—”you go down with her. Tell her
Bon Voyage
. See her to the street.”

Elsinore and Eva went down in the elevator. Elsinore knocked her cigarette out and lit no other.

No one was in the lobby. Elsinore ran ahead to the glass doors, to make certain the avenue still was there. She came back and flung herself against Eva: the bottomless, nocturnal sobbing began. “
Take me with you, Trout
!” The ungainly tear-wetted fur slithered and heaved between their two bodies. “
You never left me, you never left me before
!” The despairing clutch upon Eva, round Eva, was not to be undone till, most of all despairingly, it undid itself. “No,” reasoned Elsinore, “you can’t have me come with you, and I can’t go. No, however could I?” She buried her forehead in Eva, then pulled it back—looking down, Eva saw the purplish membraneous eyelids, the cast-out fledgling’s. The terrible, obstinate self-determination of the dying was felt also. Eva cried out: “Elsinore,
don’t—don’t,
will you?” Both of them froze together. Then Elsinore shook again: a consuming giggle. “Oh God. You forgot the bear.”