Appointment in Samarra

by John O'Hara

  “That’s right, I did. Well, let me see it.”

  She handed him the slip. She was right as usual; you could not tell from the figures whether Lute had meant 10 or 70. “We ought to use the French seven,” he said. “Then we’d always know. However, I guess we can take a chance that he meant ten gallons. He wouldn’t be signing for seventy gallons all at once.”

  “Well, I just wanted to be right on it. Sixty gallons of gas, that costs money, and we can’t just—”

  “I know, Mary. You’re right.” Somehow her tone filled him with terror, the kind that he felt when he knew he was doing something bad. It was an old experience; he still thought of it in the terms of boyhood: “—when I’m doing something bad.” And it wasn’t her tone alone; it was her manner, and it was not a new manner. For weeks, and probably months, she had behaved like someone, a school teacher, who was meaning to speak to him about his lessons or conduct. She was Right, and he was Wrong. She could make him feel like a thief, a lecher (although God knows he never had made a pass at her), a drunkard, a no-good bum. She represented precisely what she came from: solid, respectable, Pennsylvania Dutch, Lutheran middle class; and when he thought about her, when she made her existence felt, when she actively represented what she stood for, he could feel the little office suddenly becoming overcrowded with a delegation of all the honest clerks and mechanics and housewives and Sunday School teachers and widows and orphans—all the Christiana Street kind of people who he knew secretly hated him and all Lantenengo Street people. They could have their illegitimate babies, their incest, their paresis, their marital bestiality, their cruelty to animals, their horrible treatment of their children and all the other things which you could find in individual families; but collectively they presented a solid front of sound Pennsylvania Dutch and all that that implied, or was supposed to imply. They went to church on Sunday, they saved their money, they were kind to their old people, they were physically clean, they loved music, they were peace-loving, they were good workers. And there they sat, with their back curved in at the small part, their oilcloth cuffs covering their sleeves, their fresh blouse as neat after five hours’ wear as Julian’s shirt after two. And they were thinking what a pity it was that this wonderful business wasn’t in the hands of one of their own men, instead of being driven into the ground by a Lantenengo Street—wastrel. And yet, Julian made himself admit, Lute Fliegler is a Pennsylvania Dutchman and one of the swellest guys that ever lived. Thinking that over Julian returned to his old theory: it was possible, wasn’t it? that Lute’s mother had had a quick one with an Irishman or a Scotsman. A hell of a thing to think about that old Mrs. Fliegler, who still baked the best pie crust Julian had ever tasted.

  Every few minutes Julian would jot down some figures as they came into his head. All the time he looked very busy, and he hoped he was making a good impression on Mary Klein. The sheets of paper that lay before him were filling up with neat, engineering style lettering and numerals. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division….

  * * *

  He did. What’s the use of trying to fool myself? I know he did. I know he did and no matter what excuses I make or how much I try to tell myself that he didn’t, I’ll only come back to the same thing: He did. I know he did. And what for? For a dirty little thrill with a woman who—oh, I thought he’d got all that out of his system. Didn’t he have enough of that before he married me? Did he still think he was a college boy? Did he think I couldn’t have done the same thing to him, dozens of times? Did he know—oh, of course he didn’t know that of all his friends, Whit Hofman was the only one that I can truthfully say never made a pass at me. The only one. Ah, Julian, you stupid, hateful, mean, low, contemptible little son of a bitch that I hate! You do this to me, and know that you do this to me! Know it! Did it on purpose! Why? It wasn’t only to get even with me. It wasn’t only because I wouldn’t go out in the car with you. Are you so dumb blind after four and a half years that you don’t know that there are times when I just plain don’t feel like having you? Does there have to be a reason for it? An excuse? Must I be ready to want you at all times except when I’m not well? If you knew anything you’d know I want you probably more then than any other time. But you get a few drinks in you and you want to be irresistible. But you’re not. I hope you found that out. But you didn’t. And you never will. I love you? Yes, I love you. Like saying I have cancer. I have cancer. If I did have cancer. You big charmer, you. You irresistible great big boy, turning on the charm like the water in the tub; turning on the charm like the water in the tub; turning on the charm turning on the charr-arm, turning on the charm like the water in the tub. I hope you die.

  I hope you die because you have killed something fine in me, suh. Ah hope you die. Yes-suh, Ah hope you die. You have killed something mighty fine in me, English, old boy, old kid, old boy. What Ah mean is, did you kill something fine in me or did you kill something fine. I feel sick, sick as a dog. I feel sick and I would like to shoot my lunch and I would like indeed to shoot my lunch but I will be damned if I want to move out of this bed, and if you don’t stop being nasty to servants—I said r. I said a word with r in it, and that makes me stop this silly business. I wonder why? I wonder why r?

  Oh, I guess I better get up. There’s nothing to be gained by lying here in bed and feeling sorry for myself. It’s nothing new or interesting or novel or rare or anything. I’m just a girl who just feels like dying because the man I love has done me wrong. I’m not even suffering any more. I’m not even feeling anything. At least I don’t think I am. No, I’m not. I’m not feeling anything. I’m just a girl named Caroline Walker, Caroline Walker English, Caroline W. English, Mrs. Walker English. That’s all I am. Thirty-one years old. White. Born. Height. Weight. Born? Yes. I always think that’s funny and I always will. I’m sorry, Julian, but I just happen to think it’s funny and you used to think so too, back in the old days when I knew you in an Eton collar and a Windsor tie, and I loved you then, I loved you then, I love you now, I love you now, I’ll always love you to the day I die and I guess this is what they call going to pieces. I guess I’ve gone to pieces, because there’s nothing left of me. There’s nothing left for me of days that used to be I live in mem-o-ree among my souvenirs. And so what you did, what you did was take a knife and cut me open from my throat down to here, and then you opened the door and let in a blast of freezing cold air, right where you had cut me open, and till the day you die I hope you never, never know what it feels like to have someone cut you open all the way down the front of you and let the freezing blast of air inside you. I hope you never know what that means and I know you won’t, my darling that I love, because nothing bad will happen to you. Oh, lovely Callie, your coat is so warm, the sheep’s in the meadow, the cows in the corn. “No, I don’t think I’ll get up for a while, Mrs. Grady.”

  * * *

  It was inevitable that every time Al Grecco went to the garage in which Ed Charney kept his private cars, he should think of a photograph one of the boys from the west had shown around. Probably a great many men—and the women of those men—in Al Grecco’s line of work had the same thought, inspired by the same photograph (there were thousands of copies of the photograph), whenever they looked inside an especially dismal garage. The photograph showed a group of men, all dead, but with that somehow live appearance which pictures of the disfigured dead give. The men were the victims of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, when seven men were given the Mexican stand-off against the inside wall of a gang garage.

  “It’d be a nice wall for it,” Al said, as he opened the garage door.

  He went upstairs and lugged a case of champagne down the steps. Then he went up again and lugged a case of Scotch down, and then he lifted them into a dull black Hudson coach, which was used for deliveries. He backed the car out into the street, Railroad Avenue, and then got out and slid the garage doors shut. He took one more look at that blank wall before he finally closed the door. “Yes. It sure would be a nice wa
ll for it,” he said.

  No man could call him what Ed Charney had called him and get away with it. Not even Ed Charney. He thought of his mother, with the little gold earrings. Why, he could remember when she didn’t own a hat. She would even go to Mass on Sunday with that scarf over her head. Often in the far past he had told her she was too damn lazy to learn English, but now, thinking of her, he thought of her as a good little woman who had had too much work to learn much English. She was a wonderful woman, and she was his mother, and if Ed Charney called him a son of a bitch, all right; if he called him a bastard, all right. Those were just names that you called a guy when you wanted to make him mad, or when you were mad at him. Those names didn’t mean anything anyhow, because, Al figured, if your mother was a bitch, if you were a bastard, what was the use of fighting about it? And if she wasn’t, you could easily prove it. What was the use of fighting about it? But this was different, what Ed Charney had said: “Listen you God damn dirty little guinny bastard, I sent you up there last night to keep an eye on Helene. You didn’t have to go if you didn’t want to. But what do you do? You double-cross me, you son of a bitch. I bet English gave you a sawbuck so he could take her out and give her a jump, and you sit back there collecting fifty bucks from me becuss I’m sap enough to think you’re on the up-and-up with me. But no. Not you. Not you. Why, you smalltime chiseling bastard, you. You dirty lousy mother——bastard.” And more like that. Automatically Al had tried to explain: all she did was dance with him; she wasn’t outside long enough to do anything with English (“You’re a dirty liar. Foxie told me she was out a half an hour.”); English was stewed and not on the make (“Don’t tell me about English. I’m not blaming him. I’m blaming you. You knew she was my girl. English didn’t.”), and so on. In his heart Al wanted to tell Ed the real truth; that he could have made Helene himself if he hadn’t been on the up-and-up. But that wouldn’t do any good now. Or it wouldn’t do enough harm. Ed was crazy mad. He was so crazy mad that he said all these things to Al over the telephone from his own house, most likely in front of his wife. Oh, positively in front of his wife. If she was in the same house she couldn’t help hearing him, the way he was yelling into the telephone. So Al just stood there at the phone and took it without making any real comeback. At first he had been stunned by the accusation of being a double-crosser. But in Al’s and Ed’s line of work it is never wise to call an associate a double-crosser; if the associate is guilty, the thing to do is punish him; if he isn’t guilty, it puts the idea into his head. And then when he remembered the bad thing that Ed had called him, that began to put the idea into Al’s head. He hadn’t made any plans about what he was going to do. Not yet. But something would have to be done. “I guess it’ll be me or him,” he said, thinking of that wall.

  But meanwhile he had his work to do. Little jobs here and there. Odds and ends, daily routine work. Ed had been in such a rage, so burnt up, that he had forgot to fire Al, and despite everything he had said, he had not indicated that he intended to fire Al. In their line of work it was one thing to have a scrap, a mouth fight, or to be angry for a day or two at an associate. But to fire a man was something else again. You didn’t just fire a guy like that (finger-snap). Not even in Gibbsville, which was not Chicago.

  That was the trouble, in a way. In a way maybe it was a break that it wasn’t Chicago, because out there they knocked each other off with less excuse than a fight over a dame. But in another way Al was sorry it wasn’t Chi. In Gibbsville they never had a gang war, because Ed Charney simply didn’t have any competition. Whereas on the other hand, in Chi they did. They had gang wars all the time. They were used to it. In Chi you could get away with it. In Gibbsville it would be just a murder, and they would have to make a pinch and have a court trial and all that, and the juries around here were so screwy, they might even send you to the chair. “That Rock View, I don’t want any part of that,” said Al.

  So now he had a nice little job to do. A little odds and ends. He had to take this champagne and this Scotch out to where English lived. English, the mugg that caused all the trouble in the first place. Although as he drove along he could not stir up any very strong hatred of English, because the truth of the matter was, if you wanted to know who was responsible, it wasn’t English or it wasn’t even Helene with her hot pants. It was Ed Charney himself. A married man with a kid, and absolutely haywire on the subject of another woman not his wife. That was where the trouble was. He wanted everything, Ed did. Well, that remains to be seen, as the elephant said.

  “I’m above this kind of work,” Al said, as he lifted first one case, then the other, out of the Hudson and laid them down on the kitchen porch of the English house. He rang the bell.

  “How much is it?” said the old woman.

  “You don’t have to pay me,” said Al, who knew that English had credit with Ed.

  “I said how much is it?” said the old woman, the cook, he guessed she was.

  “A hundred and seventy-five. A hundred for the champagne, seventy-five for the Scotch.”

  The woman closed the door in his face and in a few minutes she came back and handed him a check and a five-dollar bill. “The cash is for you. A tip,” said the woman.

  “Stick it—” Al began.

  “Don’t you say that to me, you dago wop,” said the old woman. “I got two boys would teach you how to talk. If you don’t want the money, give it here.”

  “The hell I will,” said Al.

  * * *

  “Aw, my goodness. Where you going, beautiful lady? You going somewhere?” said Foxie Lebrix.

  “Can that stuff,” said Helene Holman. “Will you phone down to Taqua and get me a taxi? I’ll pay you for the call.”

  “Aw, but I hate to see you leave. I t’ought you and I—”

  “I know you thought, but we ain’t, see? If you don’t want to get me a taxi, say so and I’ll walk it,” said Helene.

  “Wit’ all dose bags?”

  “You’re damn right. The quicker I get out of this place the better I like it. Well, what about the taxi?”

  “Wall, I would not see you walking in the snow. Maybe we see each other in New York some day, and you get me a taxi when I leave your place, eh? Sure I get you a taxi.”

  8

  Mary Klein had gone home to lunch and Julian was alone in the office, with a small array of sheets of paper on which were rows of figures, names, technical words: Number of cars sold in 1930; our cut on new cars sold; gas and oil profit 1930; tires and accessories profit 1930; profit on resale of cars taken in trade; other profit; insurance on building; ins. on equipment; ins. on rolling stock; interest on bldg.; taxes; advertising; graft; expenses; light; other elec. outlay; heat; tool replacement; licenses; office stuff, incl. stationery; workmen’s compensation; protective association; telephones; bad debts; stamps; trade-in losses; lawyer & accountant fees; building repairs; losses not covered by ins.; plumber; depreciation on bldg.; deprec. on equipment; depr. on trade-in jobs; depr. on new cars not moved; contributions to charity; cash advance to self; notes due at bank; cash needed for payroll…. As a result of his figuring Julian announced to the empty room: “I have to have five thousand dollars.”

  He stood up. “I said, I have to have five thousand dollars, and I don’t know where I can get it…. Yes, I do. Nowhere.” He knew he was lying to himself; that he did not need five thousand dollars. He needed money, and he needed it soon, but not five thousand dollars. Two thousand would be enough, and with any break in the beginning of the year, after the auto shows in New York and Philadelphia (which are attended by a surprising number of Gibbsville automobile enthusiasts), he would be able to get back on his feet. But he reasoned that it was just as hard to get two thousand as five, five thousand as two. It was easier to get five, he told himself; and as he had argued less than a year ago, when he had gone to Harry Reilly for a loan, he might as well go for a neat, convenient-sounding sum. The question seemed to be: Where to get it.

  Tempers are better in summ
er than in winter, in Gibbsville; Julian’s summer life had included a good deal of Harry Reilly last summer, and it was easy enough to get away from him. If you didn’t want to play golf with Harry, you said you had promised Caroline to play a match for blood with her, which did away with the necessity of asking Harry to play along. On the other hand, it was not bad to drink with Harry in a party of undershirted convivials in the locker-room, and Harry was a fair tenor and even knew songs about the roll of Delta Kappa Epsilon, Lafayette was Lafayette when Lehigh was a pup, the Lord Jeff of Amherst, and a lot of other college songs. Of course Harry got the words wrong sometimes, but Julian was no purist who would discourage the progress of a fair tenor. No, a good tenor, as locker-room tenors go.

  He thought of these things. Harry must have changed since then, become obnoxious or something. Julian reasoned that he could not have asked the Harry he now knew to invest so much money in the business. Well, maybe the winter had something to do with it. You went to the Gibbsville Club for lunch; Harry was there. You went to the country club to play squash on Whit Hofman’s private court, and Harry was around. You went to the Saturday night drinking parties, and there was Harry; inescapable, everywhere. Carter Davis was there, too, and so was Whit; so was Froggy Ogden. But they were different. The bad new never had worn off Harry Reilly. And the late fall and winter seemed now to have been spoiled by room after room with Harry Reilly. You could walk outside in the summer, but even though you can walk outside in winter, winter isn’t that way. You have to go back to the room soon, and there is no life in the winter outside of rooms. Not in Gibbsville, which was a pretty small room itself.

  Well, what was the use of trying to build up Harry now as having been a swell guy last summer. Last summer Julian had needed money, and Harry Reilly had money, so he had asked Harry. And Harry had said: “Jesus, I ain’t got that much cash at this present minute. Do you need it right away?” Julian had said he needed it pretty soon. “Well, I don’t see how I can get it for you before tomorrow…. Oh, hell, sure I can.” Julian had almost laughed in his face: in one minute the little worry that Harry wanted to have a month to think it over and raise the cash had come and gone. Julian had had a lot more trouble in college, trying to borrow forty-four cents to go to the movies…. Harry had been no different then from the Harry he knew today. Might as well face that. As for the Caroline angle, Julian believed in a thought process that if you think against a thing in advance, if you anticipate it—whether it’s the fear that you’re going to cut yourself when you shave, or lose your wife to another man—you’ve licked it. It can’t happen, because things like that are known only by God. Any future thing is known only to God; and if you have a super-premonition about a thing, it’ll be wrong, because God is God, and is not giving away one of His major powers to Julian McHenry English. So Julian thought and thought about Caroline and Harry, and thought against them, against their being drawn to each other sexually, which was the big thing that mattered. “By God, no one else will have her in bed,” he said, to the empty office. And immediately began the worst fear he had ever known that this day, this week, this minute, next year, sometime she would open herself to another man and close herself around him. Oh, if she did that it would be forever.