He was dead. He was dead as hell – he had been dead all along, but what force had flowed through him, like blood in his veins, out to St Paul and back, and was leaving him now. A new outline – the outline of him dead – was coming through the palpable figure that had knocked down Joe Jelke.
He spoke again, with a sort of jerking effort:
‘You get off at Fort Wayne, Jack, or I’m going to wipe you out.’ He moved his hand in his coat pocket and showed me the outline of a revolver.
I shook my head. ‘You can’t touch me,’ I answered. ‘You see, I know.’ His terrible eyes shifted over me quickly, trying to determine whether or not I did know. Then he gave a snarl and made as though he were going to jump to his feet.
‘You climb off here or else I’m going to get you, Jack!’ he cried hoarsely. The train was slowing up for Fort Wayne and his voice rang loud in the comparative quiet, but he didn’t move from the chair – he was too weak, I think – and we sat staring at each other while workmen passed up and down outside the window banging the brakes and wheels, and the engine gave out loud mournful pants up ahead. No one got into our car. After a while the porter closed the vestibule door and passed back along the corridor, and we slid out of the murky yellow station light and into the long darkness.
What I remember next must have extended over a space of five or six hours, though it comes back to me as something without any existence in time – something that might have taken five minutes or a year. There began a slow, calculated assault on me, wordless and terrible. I felt what I can only call a strangeness stealing over me – akin to the strangeness I had felt all afternoon, but deeper and more intensified. It was like nothing so much as the sensation of drifting away, and I gripped the arms of the chair convulsively, as if to hang onto a piece in the living world. Sometimes I felt myself going out with a rush. There would be almost a warm relief about it, a sense of not caring; then, with a violent wrench of the will, I’d pull myself back into the room.
Suddenly I realized that from a while back I had stopped hating him, stopped feeling violently alien to him, and with the realization, I went cold and sweat broke out all over my head. He was getting around my abhorrence, as he had got around Ellen coming West on the train; and it was just that strength he drew from preying on people that had brought him up to the point of concrete violence in St Paul, and that, fading and flickering out, still kept him fighting now.
He must have seen that faltering in my heart, for he spoke at once, in a low, even, almost gentle voice: ‘You better go now.’
‘Oh, I’m not going,’ I forced myself to say.
‘Suit yourself, Jack.’
He was my friend, he implied. He knew how it was with me and he wanted to help. He pitied me. I’d better go away before it was too late. The rhythm of his attack was soothing as a song: I’d better go away – and let him get at Ellen. With a little cry I sat bolt upright.
‘What do you want of this girl?’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘To make a sort of walking hell of her.’
His glance held a quality of dumb surprise, as if I were punishing an animal for a fault of which he was not conscious. For an instant I faltered; then I went on blindly:
‘You’ve lost her; she’s put her trust in me.’
His countenance went suddenly black with evil, and he cried: ‘You’re a liar!’ in a voice that was like cold hands.
‘She trusts me,’ I said. ‘You can’t touch her. She’s safe!’
He controlled himself. His face grew bland, and I felt that curious weakness and indifference begin again inside me. What was the use of all this? What was the use?
‘You haven’t got much time left,’ I forced myself to say, and then, in a flash of intuition, I jumped at the truth. ‘You died, or you were killed, not far from here!’ – Then I saw what I had not seen before – that his forehead was drilled with a small round hole like a larger picture nail leaves when it’s pulled from a plaster wall. ‘And now you’re sinking. You’ve only got a few hours. The trip home is over!’
His face contorted, lost all semblance of humanity, living or dead. Simultaneously the room was full of cold air and with a noise that was something between a paroxysm of coughing and a burst of horrible laughter, he was on his feet, reeking of shame and blasphemy.
‘Come and look!’ he cried. ‘I’ll show you –’
He took a step toward me, then another and it was exactly as if a door stood open behind him, a door yawning out to an inconceivable abyss of darkness and corruption. There was a scream of mortal agony, from him or from somewhere behind, and abruptly the strength went out of him in a long husky sigh and he wilted to the floor …
How long I sat there, dazed with terror and exhaustion, I don’t know. The next thing I remember is the sleepy porter shining shoes across the room from me, and outside the window the steel fires of Pittsburgh breaking the flat perspective also – something too faint for a man, too heavy for a shadow of the night. There was something extended on the bench. Even as I perceived it it faded off and away.
Some minutes later I opened the door of Ellen’s compartment. She was asleep where I had left her. Her lovely cheeks were white and wan, but she lay naturally – her hands relaxed and her breathing regular and clear. What had possessed her had gone out of her, leaving her exhausted but her own dear self again.
I made her a little more comfortable, tucked a blanket around her, extinguished the light and went out.
III
When I came home for Easter vacation, almost my first act was to go down to the billiard parlor near Seven Corners. The man at the cash register quite naturally didn’t remember my hurried visit of three months before.
‘I’m trying to locate a certain party who, I think, came here a lot some time ago.’
I described the man rather accurately, and when I had finished, the cashier called to a little jockey-like fellow who was sitting near with an air of having something very important to do that he couldn’t quite remember.
‘Hey, Shorty, talk to this guy, will you? I think he’s looking for Joe Varland.’
The little man gave me a tribal look of suspicion. I went and sat near him.
‘Joe Varland’s dead, fella,’ he said grudgingly. ‘He died last winter.’
I described him again – his overcoat, his laugh, the habitual expression of his eyes.
‘That’s Joe Varland you’re looking for all right, but he’s dead.’
‘I want to find out something about him.’
‘What you want to find out?’
‘What did he do, for instance?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Look here! I’m not a policeman. I just want some kind of information about his habits. He’s dead now and it can’t hurt him. And it won’t go beyond me.’
‘Well’ – he hesitated, looking me over – ‘he was a great one for travelling. He got in a row in the station in Pittsburgh and a dick got him.’
I nodded. Broken pieces of the puzzle began to assemble in my head.
‘Why was he a lot on trains?’
‘How should I know, fella?’
‘If you can use ten dollars, I’d like to know anything you may have heard on the subject.’
‘Well,’ said Shorty reluctantly, ‘all I know is they used to say he worked the trains.’
‘Worked the trains?’
‘He had some racket of his own he’d never loosen up about. He used to work the girls travelling alone on the trains. Nobody ever knew much about it – he was a pretty smooth guy – but sometimes he’d turn up here with a lot of dough and he let ’em know it was the janes he got it off of.’
I thanked him and gave him the ten dollars and went out, very thoughtful, without mentioning that part of Joe Varland had made a last trip home.
Ellen wasn’t west for Easter, and even if she had been I wouldn’t have gone to her with the information, either – at least I’ve seen her almost every day this summer and we’ve managed to talk a
bout everything else. Sometimes, though, she gets silent about nothing and wants to be very close to me, and I know what’s in her mind.
Of course she’s coming out this fall, and I have two more years at New Haven; still, things don’t look so impossible as they did a few months ago. She belongs to me in a way – even if I lose her she belongs to me. Who knows? Anyhow, I’ll always be there.
Outside the Cabinet-maker’s
The automobile stopped at the corner of Sixteenth and some dingy-looking street. The lady got out. The man and the little girl stayed in the car.
‘I’m going to tell him it can’t cost more than twenty dollars,’ said the lady.
‘All right. Have you the plans?’
‘Oh, yes – she reached for her bag in the back seat – ‘at least I have now.’
‘Dites qu’il ne faut pas avoir les forts placards,’ said the man. ‘Ni le bon bois.’
‘All right.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk French,’ said the little girl.
‘Et il faut avoir un bon “height.” L’un des Murphys était comme ça.’
He held his hand five feet from the ground. The lady went through a door lettered ‘Cabinet-Maker’ and disappeared up a small stairs.
The man and the little girl looked around unexpectantly. The neighbourhood was red brick, vague, quiet. There were a few darkies doing something or other up the street and an occasional automobile went by. It was a fine November day.
‘Listen,’ said the man to the little girl, ‘I love you.’
‘I love you too,’ said the little girl, smiling politely.
‘Listen,’ the man continued. ‘Do you see that house over the way?’
The little girl looked. It was a flat in back of a shop. Curtains masked most of its interior, but there was a faint stir behind them. On one window a loose shutter banged from back to forth every few minutes. Neither the man nor the little girl had ever seen the place before.
‘There’s a Fairy Princess behind those curtains,’ said the man. ‘You can’t see her but she’s there, kept concealed by an Ogre. Do you know what an Ogre is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this Princess is very beautiful with long golden hair.’
They both regarded the house. Part of a yellow dress appeared momentarily in the window.
‘That’s her,’ the man said. ‘The people who live there are guarding her for the Ogre. He’s keeping the King and Queen prisoner ten thousand miles below the earth. She can’t get out until the Prince finds the three –’ He hesitated.
‘And what, Daddy? The three what?’
‘The three – Look! There she is again.’
‘The three what?’
‘The three – the three stones that will release the King and Queen.’
He yawned.
‘And what then?’
‘Then he can come and tap three times on each window and that will set her free.’
The lady’s head emerged from the upper story of the cabinet-maker’s.
‘He’s busy,’ she called down. ‘Gosh, what a nice day!’
‘And what, Daddy?’ asked the little girl. ‘Why does the Ogre want to keep her there?’
‘Because he wasn’t invited to the christening. The Prince has already found one stone in President Coolidge’s collar-box. He’s looking for the second in Iceland. Every time he finds a stone the room where the Princess is kept turns blue. Gosh!’
‘What, Daddy?’
‘Just as you turned away I could see the room turn blue. That means he’s found the second stone.’
‘Gosh!’ said the little girl. ‘Look! It turned blue again, that means he’s found the third stone.’
Aroused by the competition the man looked around cautiously and his voice grew tense.
‘Do you see what I see?’ He demanded. ‘Coming up the street – there’s the Ogre himself, disguised – you know: transformed, like Mombi in “The Land of Oz”.’
‘I know.’
They both watched. The small boy, extraordinarily small and taking very long steps, went to the door of the flat and knocked; no one answered but he didn’t seem to expect it or to be greatly disappointed. He took some chalk from his pocket and began drawing pictures under the doorbell.
‘He’s making magic signs,’ whispered the man. ‘He wants to be sure that the Princess doesn’t get out this door. He must know that the Prince has set the King and Queen free and will be along for her pretty soon.’
The small boy lingered for a moment; then he went to a window and called an unintelligible word. After a while a woman threw the window open and made an answer that the crisp wind blew away.
‘She says she’s got the Princess locked up,’ explained the man.
‘Look at the Ogre,’ said the little girl. ‘He’s making magic signs under the window too. And on the sidewalk. Why?’
‘He wants to keep her from getting out, of course. That’s why he’s dancing. That’s a charm too – it’s a magic dance.’
The Ogre went away, taking very big steps. Two men crossed the street ahead and passed out of sight.
‘Who are they, Daddy?’
‘They’re two of the King’s soldiers. I think the army must be gathering over on Market Street to surround the house. Do you know what “surround” means?’
‘Yes. Are those men soldiers too?’
‘Those too. And I believe that the old one just behind is the King himself. He’s keeping bent down low like that so that the Ogre’s people won’t recognize him.’
‘Who is the lady?’
‘She’s a Witch, a friend of the Ogre’s.’
The shutter blew closed with a bang and then slowly opened again.
‘That’s done by the good and bad fairies,’ the man explained. ‘They’re invisible, but the bad fairies want to close the shutters so nobody can see in and the good ones want to open it.’
‘The good fairies are winning now.’
‘Yes.’ He looked at the little girl. ‘You’re my good fairy.’
‘Yes. Look, Daddy! What is that man?’
‘He’s in the King’s army too.’ The clerk of Mr Miller, the jeweller, went by with a somewhat unmartial aspect. ‘Hear the whistle? That means they’re gathering. And listen – there goes the drum.’
‘There’s the Queen, Daddy. Look at there. Is that the Queen?’
‘No, that’s a girl called Miss Television.’ He yawned. He began to think of something pleasant that had happened yesterday. He went into a trance. Then he looked at the little girl and saw that she was quite happy. She was six and lovely to look at. He kissed her.
‘That man carrying the cake of ice is also one of the King’s soldiers,’ he said. ‘He’s going to put the ice on the Ogre’s head and freeze his brains so he can’t do any more harm.’
Her eyes followed the man down street. Other men passed. A darky in a yellow darky’s overcoat drove by with a cart marked The Del Upholstery Co. The shutter banged again and then slowly opened.
‘See, Daddy, the good fairies are winning again.’
The man was old enough to know that he would look back to that time – the tranquil street and the pleasant weather and the mystery playing before the child’s eyes, mystery which he had created, but whose lustre and texture he could never see or touch any more himself. Again he touched his daughter’s cheek instead and in payment fitted another small boy and limping man into the story.
‘Oh, I love you,’ he said.
‘I know, Daddy,’ she answered, abstractedly. She was staring at the house. For a moment he closed his eyes and tried to see with her but he couldn’t see – those ragged blinds were drawn against him forever. There were only the occasional darkies and the small boys and the weather that reminded him of more glamorous mornings in the past.
The lady came out of the cabinet-maker’s shop.
‘How did it go?’ he asked.
‘Good. Il dit qu’il a fait les maisons de poupée pour les D
uponts. Il va le faire.’
‘Combien?’
‘Vingt-cinq. I’m sorry I was so long.’
‘Look, Daddy, there go a lot more soldiers!’
They drove off. When they had gone a few miles the man turned around and said, ‘We saw the most remarkable thing while you were there.’ He summarized the episode. ‘It’s too bad we couldn’t wait and see the rescue.’
‘But we did,’ the child cried. ‘They had the rescue in the next street. And there’s the Ogre’s body in that yard there. The King and Queen and Prince were killed and now the Princess is queen.’
He had liked his King and Queen and felt that they had been too summarily disposed of.
‘You had to have a heroine,’ he said rather impatiently.
‘She’ll marry somebody and make him Prince.’
They rode on abstractedly. The lady thought about the doll’s house, for she had been poor and had never had one as a child, the man thought how he had almost a million dollars and the little girl thought about the odd doings on the dingy street that they had left behind.
One Trip Abroad
I
In the afternoon the air became black with locusts, and some of the women shrieked, sinking to the floor of the motorbus and covering their hair with travelling rugs. The locusts were coming north, eating everything in their path, which was not so much in that part of the world; they were flying silently and in straight lines, flakes of black snow. But none struck the windshield or tumbled into the car, and presently humorists began holding out their hands, trying to catch some. After ten minutes the cloud thinned out, passed, and the women emerged from the blankets, dishevelled and feeling silly. And everyone talked together.
Everyone talked; it would have been absurd not to talk after having been through a swarm of locusts on the edge of the Sahara. The Smyrna-American talked to the British widow going down to Biskra to have one last fling with an as-yet-unencountered sheik. The member of the San Francisco Stock Exchange talked shyly to the author. ‘Aren’t you an author?’ he said. The father and daughter from Wilmington talked to the cockney airman who was going to fly to Timbuctoo. Even the French chauffeur turned about and explained in a loud, clear voice: ‘Bumble-bees’, which sent the trained nurse from New York into shriek after shriek of hysterical laughter.
The Fantasy and Mystery Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald Page 22