The Outsider (64 page)

Complications arose at once; the puzzled captain telephoned Houston and Cross was instructed to go back home and remain there until further notice, and he was informed that a police guard would be placed at the front and back doors of the apartment.

When he emerged from the police station, Sarah and Menti had gone. He walked back to the apartment
alone, climbed the steps and found a cop on guard in the hallway.

“You live here?” the cop asked.

“Yeah.”

“If you go in, you can't come out 'til the D.A. says so,” the cop informed him.

“I know that,” Cross said.

The cop let him pass. He let himself in and went straight to the room he had shared with Eva and stood staring at her comb and lipstick on the cluttered top of the dresser. A few strands of her blonde hair still clung curlingly to the bristles of the hairbrush. There was her purse, an ashtray of cigarette stubs whose tips showed the rouge she had worn, a delicately scented handkerchief, a crumpled wad of face tissue…His throat ached and he fell upon the bed, burying his face in the pillow and lay as still as death, longing for oblivion, for the world to close in on him and swallow him forever.

He started when the door opened. It was Menti; he had not bothered to knock. Resentment flooded Cross and he did not care to rise to receive him. Menti left the door ajar and came to the bed and sat upon it, a few inches from Cross. These sonofabitches! They presumed they owned him, that they could come upon him when they liked, that he had no inviolate, private world of his own into which they could not penetrate at will. He clenched his teeth and kept his eyes averted and waited for Menti to speak. Then he was forced to look at Menti, for Menti gave forth a series of low, contented chuckles.

“You
are
an important man,” Menti said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Cross demanded.

“The whole Central Committee is meeting just about you,” Menti informed him. “You sure bring trouble.
You've been in this city just a few days, but wherever you show your face, death's not far behind…” Menti rubbed his chin meditatively and continued: “Why did Eva jump?”

“You ought to be telling me,” Cross hedged; he wanted to know what had been said when the Party questioned Eva. “She was terribly upset when she came in. She said she'd been to a Party meeting—”

“Did she tell
you
that?” Menti asked.

“Sure. Why not?”

“She was instructed
not
to.”

“By whom?”

“The Party—”

“But why?”

“Well,” Menti said, ignoring Cross's question, “she was never really a Bolshevik, you know.” Menti shook his head in wonder. “She was a self-centered bourgeois artist…Say, do you know that the Party estimates that only about thirteen percent of all artists and intellectuals ever make the grade with us?” Menti smiled, indicating that Eva was no great loss. He continued: “Eva broke a decision when she talked to you. But what did she say…?”

Cross saw an opportunity to sow confusion in Menti's mind by interpreting Eva's words to his advantage.

“She was horrified,” he said. “She said that the Party was trying to convince her that I'd killed Gil to get her—But she knew that that wasn't true. I'd never said a word to Eva until after Herndon had killed Gil—It was Eva who made the advances. She came to my room that very night—”

Menti was impressed; he nodded his head.

“Hilton told the Party that,” he admitted. “I don't get this.”

“I didn't kill Gil to get Eva,” Cross went on. “Any
body who thinks that is crazy. You and your Party are looking for the wrong
motives
, Menti…I ought to be hopping mad at you and your comrades for putting the D.A. on me. But he's no fool. Do you think a guy walks into a man's apartment and that very night kills him to take his wife? Good Lord, Menti,
think
a little. Do you think I'd risk my neck doing a thing like that? All right, maybe someone
did
go in there and kill the two of them. But how do you know they did it just to get Eva? Think of the many people the Party has wronged…They might have had a motive…A woman could have done it…”

“What woman?” Menti asked slyly.

“Look, Menti,” Cross said shrewdly, “don't think everybody's naïve. Eva was a victim…”

“How do you know that?” Menti demanded. “What kind of a victim?”

“The Party tricked her into marrying Gil—”

“Who told you
that
?”

“Eva did,” Cross lied readily. “Even Eva had a motive for killing Gil…But, of course, she was with me when Herndon killed Gil—”

“And you were with her when Hilton was killed?” Menti asked, fishing.

“No.”

“Where were you then?” Menti tried to tie him down.

“In a bar. I've accounted for myself with the police,” Cross maintained. “Look, I'm just as worried about the motive that could have made anybody go in there and kill Gil and Herndon as you are…But to say that getting Eva was the motive…Why, that's underestimating people, Menti…” Cross could barely repress a smile as he argued gently. “Maybe Gil had en
emies with strange motives, motives which only the Party could understand…Did you ever think of that?”

Before Menti could answer, Cross saw the form of Blimin come through the door and head for the bed. He understood why Menti had left the door ajar; it was to give Blimin a chance to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“I see I won't have to repeat what I've said,” Cross said to Blimin.

Blimin smiled coldly, planted himself in front of Cross and studied him for some time. Cross met the stare calmly, waiting.

“Well, at last we know
who
you are, Damon,” Blimin said.

“So?”

“What are you up to? What's your game?”

“I'm trying to live, Mr. Blimin—”

“Do you want to join our Party?”

“Frankly, no.”

“Menti says you promised Hilton that you would.”

“That was before I'd met you, sir,” Cross said.

“What did you tell Mrs. Blount?”

“Nothing,” Cross said, looking Blimin straight in the eyes.

“Tell me, have you ever been outside of the continental boundaries of the United States?” Blimin asked.

“No. I've not been to Russia, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, or Spain…”

“Now that Mrs. Blount's dead, what do you intend to do?”

“I don't know.”

“May I ask what arrangements did you make with the District Attorney?”

“None. He put me through the paces, but he had no evidence to hold me on,” Cross explained good-naturedly.

“Don't you consider it an honor to be asked to join the Party?” Blimin was smiling now.

Cross had watched Blimin's mood change; the man had assumed a debonair attitude, as though all of his previous questions had not been as important as he had pretended. But Cross was not to be taken in by this belated pretense of cordiality; he knew that it meant simply that the Party was more baffled about him and his motives than ever; and they were trying to get closer to him in order to learn more about him. How free these men were! How they could turn, change; how they played make-believe with human emotions! They sensed, as Houston had, that in some as yet unknown and oblique way he was related to them and, being of their moods and temperament, he could too sense this in them. One had to be sensitive here; one had to realize that one was to some extent understood, and one had to act in a way that would not completely kill their trust; yet, at the same time, one had to be in a position not to let them make one pledge more than one was willing to yield. If he refused to promise to join the Party now they might suspect that his finality and abruptness had back of it something fatally serious; yes, he would make his attitude more equivocal…

“If you're not anti-Party, then why do you so flatly refuse to consider the Party's invitation to become a member?” Blimin asked.

“Look, man,” Cross protested. “I've just undergone a prolonged grilling at the hands of the District Attorney…And it was you and your friends who egged the D.A. to pin something on me…Now, I ask you:
don't you think I'm right when I hesitate to embrace you? Haven't you a sense of balance?”

“Come now, Lane or Damon,” Blimin chided him unctuously. “We admit we put you through the paces. But we were trying to protect ourselves. Can you really blame us for that?”

Cross bowed his head in thought. He wondered why Menti and Blimin had been allowed to enter the apartment and talk to him? They must be trying to get information from me for the police, he reasoned. He could not trust anyone now…

“I can't give you an answer now,” he hedged, leaving the door open. “I'm just too tired and upset. I've got to get my bearings—Look, as soon as I hit this city and touched the Party, my life's turned upside down—”

“I understand,” Blimin said softly.

Cross did not believe that Blimin understood, and he knew that Blimin knew that he did not believe it; they had reached that point where mutual lies made further communication impossible. But at least they had arrived at a truce. Cross smiled and said:

“Can't we talk about this later?”

“Of course,” Blimin agreed readily, his mind busy elsewhere. “You're staying here?”

“Yes.”

“Then we'll see you, hunh?”

“Of course.”

Menti and Blimin left. They've gone straight to the police to report, he assured himself. They had been gone barely two minutes before Sarah came to him.

“I know there ain't no use asking you what it's all about, 'cause you ain't gonna tell me,” she protested tearfully.

“Sarah, I'm tired; sit down, though,” he said, lying back on the bed.

“What happened to Eva? And what is your name? You make me scared…” She let her voice trail off in confusion. Then, as though she did not expect him to answer, she said: “I'm sick of all this. I'm alone. I'm thirty-five years old. And what have I got? Nothing. Bob's gone; they took 'im from me. The Party? The hell with it. I'll never work with them again. Listen, Lionel, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do what my mother told me to do when I was sick and tired and didn't know where I was going—”

“What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to confession.”

“Are you Catholic?”

“Yes,” she said. “I ditched the church 'cause I felt they were doping me…But, now—I give up…I'm lost; I don't know if I'm going or coming…Bob and Gil and Hilton and now Eva…Why? It scares me…Only God can answer all this…Don't you think so?”

She was completely rattled. Her eyes had that restless, desperate look of one tired and confused and unable to support the feeling of it any longer.

“What are you talking about, Sarah? Only God can answer what?”

“These killings…” She groped for words. “Life doesn't make sense any more; it's crazy…People getting killed and nobody even sorry about it…It ain't
right…
I can't understand it. You know, Menti really laughed about Eva?” she stated in a half-questioning tone.

Poor Sarah…She was crushed and scared. She had to rest, to find support, a master; she was yearning to submit.

“What are you going to do, Lionel…?” She paused, shook her head and looked at him with wonder.
“Your name's Cross; that's what Menti said. I don't like it; I like Lionel better…”

She was reacting to him now as woman; she knew that he was alone and she was wondering if she, maybe, could somehow team up with him. How movingly simple this woman was! She, like Eva, would recoil in horror (or maybe laughter; who knows?) if she knew the kind of man she was letting her dreams mull over.

“Forget me, Sarah,” he told her directly.

“But what must I do?”

“What do you want to do?” he asked her.

“Oh, no,” she murmured, shaking her head in fear. “You asked Bob that question just before they took him away. You told him to do what he wanted…No; no; I don't want to do that. Look what it brings!”

She did not want the responsibility of her life any longer. Why was life given to man if man could not handle it?

“Sarah, what I'm trying to ask you is this: What helps you most? What makes you feel better, good, ‘sent' as you call it?” he asked her gently.

She brooded a bit, her face soft with memory.

“When I was a child I was happy,” she mused. “At least, I thought I was…”

Cross wanted hotly to dispute that; he was convinced that there were no happy childhoods, that the myth of the happy childhood had been invented by middle-class people to show that their parents had had money when they were children, or by people whose memories of unpleasant days were so defective that they could delude themselves into believing that they had come into this world “trailing clouds of glory”. Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and the best accounts of childhood in all the serious and responsible literature of mankind depicted the child as coming into the world as
a nasty, stinking little criminal savage (charming because it was harmless!) wholly intent upon the gratification of its own egoistic pleasures and satisfactions. Its criminality became subjective in relation to the checking of its unbridled impulses, and it was not until its imperious will had been subdued that it became civilized in some sense. And enough of the child-criminal had survived in Cross to make him know that criminal-consciousness, which is another name for childhood, could never be happy.

But why argue with Sarah about all of this? Her case was urgent and truths of this nature would serve but to make her more unhappy.

“And what do you think made you happy when you were a child, Sarah?”