So effective was Laskell’s new way of seeing things that he felt no uneasiness at not being available when Gifford Maxim wanted him. And more than that: he now felt none of the unhappiness which had overwhelmed him whenever he thought of how he had failed Maxim at their last meeting.
There had been a Negro cleaning woman in the apartment when Maxim had paid his last visit and Maxim had said, under his breath but sternly, “Get rid of her, will you? Tell her to go home.” It seemed a foolish and melodramatic thing to say. But Maxim knew his business, and Laskell was glad the woman was just leaving anyway. Then, when she had gone, Maxim had asked a favor of Laskell: if there were certain letters that came addressed to Laskell but addressed in a certain way that would distinguish them from his other mail, would Laskell receive these letters and keep them unopened until they were asked for by Maxim or by someone Maxim would send? And would he without asking any questions just simply say yes or no? Laskell had said no, and ever since he had felt ashamed.
Laskell did not exactly know why he had said no. When Maxim had asked him to stand as surety in the leasing of certain offices, he had said yes. When Maxim had asked him to serve on certain committees, he had said yes. He had at Maxim’s request endorsed a note and had even made outright a sizable cash contribution to a tottering periodical, all with the sense that, although he did not wholly agree with Maxim and Maxim’s political party, he wanted them to exist because of their clear relation to the future. When he had said yes to Maxim’s requests, he had a strong feeling of hope. But he had said no to the request about the letters. He had felt tired and depressed after the refusal. In the year that had passed he had often been puzzled and unhappy about it. Now, as he was reminded of Maxim, none of these feelings recurred.
When Laskell began to peel, Paine made a great thing of it. The old skin began to flake and then to come off in strips and patches, leaving the skin beneath fresh and soft. “You’ll be as soft as a newborn babe!” Paine said. “And clean!—the cleanest man in New York.”
Laskell grinned and took a great interest in his new clean skin and in the discarded old one. The calloused skin of his heels came off in single pieces, like cups, and he regarded them half with pride, half with revulsion. His feet were fresh and elegant now, without any mark to show that he had ever worn shoes.
“Well,” said Paine, “this is the beginning of the end. You’ll soon be thinking of getting up, my hearty!”
Laskell politely agreed. But he thought there was still no hurry.
But at last he began the routine of getting up—feet dangling over the side of the bed, a half-hour in the armchair, an hour in the armchair, a tour of the apartment on Paine’s arm, two hours in the armchair in the other room.
He had put off the move as long as he could, for he foresaw no advantage from it. And he was right—the great quiet wisdom of the bed vanished as soon as he got up. His body, recently so light and ordered, felt depressed and grim. In bed he had been young, or ageless, and now he felt old. He tried not to think about his hair. As the doctor had predicted it might, it began to fall out.
Paine applauded each forward step but he was a little sulky.
“I think,” said Paine with professional archness, “I think he doesn’t want to be well again.”
Laskell digested his bitterness as best he could. The white endless peace of the bed was over. There was no getting back the existence in which he understood so much. And Paine, who had been so important in that peace, she too was on the way to being over. She had become casual with Laskell. He was no longer the center of her regard. She was restless. Her function had departed and she too wished now to depart. She lived for the moment when she could enter a new sickroom and say, “I am Paine. Isn’t that a dreadful name for a nurse?”
Her desire to go made Laskell stubborn. She pointed out that he was wasting money keeping her and Laskell replied sharply with a phrase he had never used before in all his life. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said. She said that she had become nothing more than a cook. Certainly she was not a good cook. Now that the connection between them was broken, she was fussy and demanding. She bought expensive cuts of meat for herself and ate them while he picked joylessly at the vegetables to which his diet was limited and which she reduced with a fierce thoroughness to tasteless pulp.
“You don’t need me,” Paine said. “You can do for yourself now.”
“I can’t cook for myself and you don’t expect me to run around to restaurants yet, do you?”
“I’ll get a maid for you. That’s all you need.”
“I don’t want a maid.”
“You ought to go away. The doctor said you ought. You need country air.”
“I have no place to go.”
Laskell did not say this only for argument. He really had no place to go. It seemed impossible to imagine even a kind of place, let alone a particular place. And he had to face the fact that whenever he thought of making a train trip alone he was filled with an intense irritation. It was as if someone were insisting that he do a thing which was not actually dangerous but had some element of danger in it, like riding on a roller-coaster or climbing a very tall ladder. Nothing would happen, but he preferred not to do it.
“Couldn’t you go to Mr. and Mrs. Croom? They’re great friends of yours. Wouldn’t they have you?”
“Yes, of course. They’ve written to ask me.” For he did not want Paine to think he was not wanted.
“Well, then?”
Laskell shrugged. He despaired of making her understand, although only a short time before she had understood so much. He thought that she was being stupid and even vulgar.
But he got out the letter from Nancy Croom and read it over again.
“You must not stay in that hot apartment of yours,” Nancy wrote. “You must come to us. The new little house is delightful, but it is still in such a mess that we cannot put you up. Besides, I am not very good company these days because—surprise!—I’m going to have another baby. But just about ten minutes on foot live the Folgers and the Folgers have a beautiful light room which they are willing to rent. Mrs. Folger is a wonderful cook—wins all the prizes at the bazaars and fairs. You can have this room and cooking for ten dollars a week. And you can have or shun company just as you wish. You will have the society of the Folgers, which is a kind of salubrious influence in itself. We have forgotten that there are such people in the world, growing right out of their soil and developing a kind of spirit which in our absurd city life we never see. I know, of course, that the progressive movements are likely to come from the city, but although you will scarcely believe it, Mr. Folger is a socialist! Not that I think much of socialists as such, but it does mean something, doesn’t it, for a farmer to have come even so far? I’m sure you’ll love them as much as we do. Please come. You know how much we want you.”
Laskell read the letter over many times. He did not know why he did not respond to it. He understood from this how sunk in perversity he was, how much the debility of his convalescence was distorting his emotions. He had never before resisted an invitation or an appeal from Nancy. He was not even pleased by the Crooms’ expectation of another child.
When Paine saw him with the letter, she picked up the large framed photograph that stood on Laskell’s dresser and said, “Is this by any chance Mr. and Mrs. Croom?” For all her interest in the Crooms, she had never so far presumed to ask. Her intention was perfectly transparent. She was trying to interest him in the Crooms. He put out his hand for the photograph.
“Lovely looking people,” said Paine. And they were, Nancy with that wonderful modern face of hers, Arthur with his fine ugliness that was not only his beauty but his good fortune, for it somehow indicated all the goodness and intelligence he had.
“She looks so very charming,” said Paine, and for a moment her voice indicated her old accuracy of perception. For she spoke of Nancy’s charm with a sense that it meant something special to Laskell, yet there was no commonplace banter in her
tone. She was paying Laskell a compliment on his friend, but she seemed to know very well what the nature of the friendship was, she implied nothing flirtatious.
As if at Paine’s bidding, Laskell thought about the Crooms, about Arthur’s subtle vigor and Nancy’s charm, her fine moral clarity. They seemed to him like all of affirmative life. And affirmative life was no doubt what he needed now, sunk as he was in negation. Paine was not to be held longer, and although Laskell could now surely be by himself, he could not bear the thought of staying in the city without her. There was nothing else for him to do—he accepted the invitation with the advice to himself to stop behaving at his age like a sulky child.
Paine received the news with pleasure and a change of manner. Here was our Mr. Laskell now, a gentleman ready to go on his travels. It was a thing she understood and she was pleasant as she helped him get his “kit” ready. He was a splendid fellow once again. Now that they were to separate, she regarded him as one ready to take his place, to stand in the battle of life where he belonged, at Khyber Pass or wherever it was that she localized that notable engagement.
But Laskell did not respond to her cheer. He was not in the least interested in putting up a good show. He was, after all, not a splendid fellow. That was one of the delusions of his sickbed. He was much rather, if Paine but knew it, a French poet of a man, sourly regarding his wasted, vanished youth, slack, with a body that felt gray and heavy, bitter over his fallen hair. “J’ai perdu ma force et ma vie.”
Paine had been teasing him about the length and untidiness of his hair and a few days before he left he sent Paine out for a barber. Paine said that he ought to go to the barber shop, that he ought to walk around in the street before making his trip, but he insisted on having the barber in. During the first days of his illness, before he could shave himself, Paine had shaved him two or three times, very efficiently, and the day he had first dressed she had clipped his hair around his ears. As the barber worked, she stood by with an amateur’s interest in a professional’s methods. “He needs a shearing, doesn’t he?” she said to the barber, and the barber said to Laskell, “Yes, sir, you certainly did need a haircut this time.” But he resisted cutting the hair as short as Laskell wanted it, even after Laskell had explained that he was going to the country and his doctor had suggested that he expose his scalp to the sun. The barber supposed it impossible for a customer to have his hair cut without seeing the process in a mirror and, with Paine’s help, had brought in the hanging mirror from the vestibule and had stood it up on a table against the wall. Laskell looked at himself in the glass, saw himself flanked by Paine and the barber, both in white, saw his face in all its unsatisfactoriness isolated above the big white sheet, found nothing in the face to give him comfort about himself. “Admiring himself, is he?” said Paine. “Well, you do have nice ears. There’s a good deal to be learned about character from ears.”
Rummaging among Laskell’s things, Paine emerged from a closet with his fishing rod in its case. “You’ll want this, I have no doubt,” she said. She was pleased by her find. Her pleasure would have been unspeakable had she also found an express-rifle and a boar spear.
“I guess not,” Laskell said.
“Not? Are there no streams where you’re going?”
“Yes, I suppose there are.” He knew there were. The Crooms had talked of streams when they bought their house, making a point of the fishing they could offer him.
“Well, then!” said Paine. “You’ll want your fishing gear with you.”
“No,” said Laskell.
He did not refuse only in order to spite Paine. He simply could not imagine himself on a stream doing and thinking all the small, pleasant, necessary things. He was not a deeply devoted fisherman, nor a particularly skillful one.
“No?” said Paine sharply. “Then what will you do with yourself all day? Most certainly you will take it.” And she flounced back into the closet and came out with his waders. She set them down on the floor with the air of standing no nonsense.
“Those mean another bag to carry,” Laskell grumbled. But he was mollified and he himself found his fly book and his leadercase, his old hat and his knife, and all the odds and ends of equipment that used to give him pleasure. Paine discovered the creel and got a rag to dust it.
“No,” Laskell said. “Now that I will not take. It’s too big to fit into the suitcase with the other stuff.”
“No need for it to fit,” said Paine and held it up by its strap. “You’ll hang it on your shoulder, as is meant.”
And she continued to dangle the willow basket by its strap, as if tempting him. Laskell had always admired his creel, so finely shaped and so closely woven. But he was not tempted.
“You’ve already made me take an extra bag and the rod,” he said. “The creel isn’t necessary.”
For answer, Paine simply and decisively put the creel down by the open suitcases and the rod. “You can make up your mind when you’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. She had the air of not deigning to argue further.
“Paine, I won’t take it! I just won’t!” he said fiercely. And he might have succeeded in forcing the squabble on Paine if at that moment the bell had not rung from downstairs.
Paine went to push the button. She stood at the door, waiting for the caller to climb the two flights and she admitted Gifford Maxim with his huge body and scarred face, with his ironic, revolutionary eyebrow and the ready, almost maternal, look of solicitude with which he habitually gazed upon human suffering, called forth now by his friend Laskell attended by a trained nurse.
Laskell did not know whether he was very glad or very sorry to have Gifford Maxim’s visit. If what he wanted was to have his connection with life renewed, Maxim was the man to do it. For that he was in some ways even better equipped than the Crooms. And Laskell did want to be taught again what it meant to be affirmative and full of hope. Yet it seemed to him that he could not now sustain the enormous moral pressure that Maxim exerted. Maxim stood there in his tight suit and damp shirt, huge and strong, straining his clothes, big and untidy with what he contained, the great events to come, the bloody and apocalyptic and moral future.
But when the visit was over Laskell knew that he was wholly sorry for it. There was no more moral pressure from Maxim by the time they had finished talking. There was no more morality in Maxim to exert the pressure. His connection with the moral future was gone forever.
It was not merely that Maxim had broken with the Party. That would have been disturbing but bearable. People did break with the Party and Laskell had met a few who had. They had seemed decent enough and they often took pains to indicate that they were not reactionary, yet Laskell had always had to check a feeling of revulsion. He told himself that it was not fair to have such a feeling. There was a large element of theory in such matters. He himself was not involved in theory, but those who were involved were bound to have differences and to act on them. But it was always difficult not to feel that a personal treachery had been committed. And perhaps if Maxim had dealt with theory, Laskell would have been sorry and deprived, but he would not have felt the disgust he did feel. But Maxim scarcely touched on theory. By the time the visit was over, Laskell’s disgust was touched with pity, but that made the interview even more painful.
Maxim sat there smoking Laskell’s cigarettes. He was a frightened man, but not so frightened that he did not conduct the whole business in his high, dramatic way. When the purpose of the visit had become apparent, Laskell saw that not a single detail of it lacked its purpose. He had been a little surprised that Maxim had made a point of introducing himself to Paine and by his own name, even going so far as to impress it on her by making a joke about it to cap Paine’s joke about her name. And then Maxim had involved Paine in that long debate on whether today was the twelfth of July or the thirteenth. All this was part of the method of Maxim’s madness, for it was exactly his identity that he wanted to establish, the fact of his existence on a certain day. It had slowly appeared that what h
e had come for was to enlist Laskell’s influence with Kermit Simpson to get a job on Kermit’s rather foolish magazine. Any job was what he wanted, any job that would put his name on the masthead of The New Era. And the mad, the disgusting, reason for this was his belief that he was not safe unless he acquired what he kept calling an existence by becoming a public fact. He had vanished as a person, and now he could easily be done away with. The idea was so extravagant that Laskell received from it his first intimation of the break in Maxim’s reason; he had tried to reassure him that things had not yet gone so far that a radical was in danger of being murdered by the police. It was then that Maxim had given evidence of his insanity by his quiet explanation that he did not fear the police but the very Party he had once lived for. No incredulity could shake him, no argument could move him. And in weariness and pity Laskell had telephoned Kermit Simpson at Westport and had used the influence he knew he had with Kermit.
It had made an inappropriate ending to the period of Laskell’s illness. It had made a distressing ending too, for when Maxim had learned that Laskell was leaving for Connecticut the next morning, he had insisted that they travel together. There was no missing his fear of going alone, his certainty that Laskell’s company would be a protection.
3
MRS. FOLGER looked up bright and capable as Laskell came into the kitchen.
“Well!” she said, and stared at him as if he were a surprising though not unwelcome phenomenon. “And how did he sleep? And now I suppose he wants his breakfast?”
“He slept fine and he certainly does want his breakfast.”
It was very successful. The naughty boy that Mrs. Folger had called him when they had first met was now Laskell’s role at all mealtimes, especially at breakfast. A chief element of his naughtiness was the ravenous hunger he was supposed to have.
The Middle of the Journey Page 10