THE CAPTIVITY: IV
In November we began to get fog in the morning, and around six o’clock, when Lawrence got up, the dormitory was like a freighter anchored at sea. The mountains, the campus, even the trees below the windows, had disappeared. Although the fog was very bad for his rackets, and so thick he couldn’t see the lines on the court, Lawrence practiced his serve, fog or no fog, as usual. He would stretch clean towels along the net cord and put up a music stand, with a coat draped on it, to indicate the player in the opposite court.
I’d wake up when I heard Lawrence’s alarm, but in November, if it was foggy, I might lie in bed for another half-hour till the heat came on. It would be another hour or two before Proctor or Lundgren got up.
One morning Lawrence was a little late—he had opened his trunk to get a new pair of rackets—and I heard Proctor say, “Like to give a new man a few pointers, Lawrence?”
I thought he was kidding. Some joke he’d stayed awake long enough to pull. Lawrence stopped twirling the screws on his press, but he said nothing.
“Seriously,” said Proctor, “you think I’m too old to pick up the game?”
“Not at all, old man,” Lawrence said, “but I’m too old to give you any pointers.”
“I was just kiddin’,” said Proctor, “but, as a matter of fact, I’m thinking of tryin’ a little tennis. What the hell can I do with the quarter mile when I get out of school? Can’t take the track along with me. Like to pick up something I can do out of school.”
“I think they do it in the YMCA,” said Lawrence.
“Not me,” Proctor said. “I’m no bald-headed quarter-miler. What I’d like is a game I can play with my friends. Play with my wife, kids, et cetera. I won’t be like you, anyhow. I won’t be too good to play with my wife.”
“Helen Wills strokes a nice tennis ball,” said Lawrence.
“Don’t see her as my wife,” Proctor said. “Ever notice her muscles? Why don’t I just pick up a few pointers myself?”
Lawrence didn’t answer.
“You waste an awful lot of time out there,” said Proctor, “pickin’ up the balls after you hit ’em. Why don’t you let me do that? Why don’t I stand over there and hit ’em back?”
“Old man—” said Lawrence after a bit.
“I know just what you’re going to say,” said Proctor. “You’re going to say I can’t keep my big mouth shut. I swear to God I won’t say a word, not a word—even if I’m hit!”
“You ever play the game?” Lawrence said.
“I know how to keep the score. Look,” he said, “let me do it just once. If you don’t like it you just say so. I swear to God I won’t go near a tennis court again.”
When Lawrence didn’t answer I heard Proctor bounce out of bed.
“Got a racket,” he said. “Borrowed a racket. You wouldn’t happen to have an extra pair of shoes, would you?”
“What size, old man?” said Lawrence.
“I wear any size,” said Proctor.
Lawrence went back into his room, opened a bag, tossed one shoe at a time across the room.
“Right with you,” said Proctor. “Just a sec. How the hell’d I know I’d be takin’ up tennis? Christ, man, these fit me like the eighteenth century!”
“You ready, old man?” said Lawrence, and they left.
As they went down the stairs I heard the frame creak on Lundgren’s bed. He rolled over on his back and said, “Like to give me a few pointers on whoring, Foley? Like to take up something I can do at the office. Christ, man, you can’t pole-vault at the office. Like to take up something I can do with my wife, your wife, or even one that ain’t even married.”
“You think he’s serious?” I said.
“Dead serious,” said Lundgren. “What to do after school is a very serious problem. I was thinking of not doing anything—but how the hell you do that? Takes practice.” I didn’t answer. “Point is, baby, that all we’re doin’ is just thinkin’, but our little friend here is busy doin’. He just goes ahead and does what poor suckers like you and me just think.”
“I wasn’t thinking of taking up the game,” I said.
“Don’t be a goddam boob,” Lundgren said. “He’s not takin’ up tennis, he’s takin’ up Lawrence. The only pointers he wants are on a piece of barbed wire.”
I didn’t reply to that, and Lundgren intoned:
“JESSE PROCTOR
Vice-prexy in charge of
LAWRENCE
BARBED-WIRE EMPIRE OF AMERICA.”
“I don’t know as I’d want that job,” I said.
“Baby,” said Lundgren, “that’s exactly why Proctor is going to get it. He isn’t squeamish. He isn’t afraid of his own thoughts. If something needs running, he’s the man to run it. You notice how nice and smooth he’s runnin’ all of us?”
“Well, if somebody has to do it,” I said.
“I didn’t think anybody could do it to Lawrence. I thought that kid could wipe his own arse.”
“I’m not too sure he can’t,” I said.
“Mark my words, baby,” said Lundgren, “today marks a change in the barbed-wire empire. If you’re thinking of taking up tennis yourself, the man to get your pointers from is Proctor, not Lawrence.”
I got out of bed, to get away from Lundgren, and took my towel and my toothbrush into the bathroom. I had once left my toothbrush in the rack for them on the wall. We all had. It was Lundgren who said he had found his own toothbrush wet in the morning, with the spearmint flavor Proctor so much admired. I didn’t believe that, but I now kept my toothbrush in my room. I didn’t seem to know, that is, what I really believed. I brushed my teeth, using my Dr. Lyons powder, and faced the billowing streamers of fog that shut off the mountains and hung low over the football field. I could not make out the scoreboard or the curve of the cinder track. I could not see the tennis courts or Lawrence’s yellow car, but when I stopped brushing my teeth I could hear the fog-smothered, cork-popping sound of the racket on the ball. There were no voices at all, and the popping came at the usual intervals.
The following morning the drumming of the shower in the bathroom woke me up. I thought it must be Lawrence and that I’d slept right through his alarm. But Lawrence usually took his shower later, after he’d put in an hour or two of practice, and I was wondering about this when I heard his desk alarm go off. He was still in his bed—I heard him roll over and shut it off. Then I heard Proctor’s wet feet cross the floor. He called out a cheery “Good morning!” to Lawrence, and while Lawrence was getting up I could hear Proctor bouncing a ball on the floor. When Lawrence was ready to go Proctor said, “Hope these foggy mornings don’t warp your rackets, old man,” but Lawrence did not reply, and they went silently down the stairs.
When they were gone Lundgren said, “I do hope, sir, these damp mornings don’t shrink your imported jock straps!” and snapped the elastic band at his pajama waist.
I didn’t want to lie there thinking about it, so I got up, went over to the mess hall, and did a little reading till the cafeteria line opened up.
All that week the fog rolled in from the sea and hung around the treetops until late in the morning, when the warm clothes you’d put on early in the morning were suddenly too hot. One morning Lawrence’s car wouldn’t start. He and Proctor had to walk the half mile to the courts and then walk back. A day or two later, late at night, one of Lawrence’s strung-up frames split open, making a sharp, twanging sound like a broken piano string. Lawrence got out of bed to see what had happened, then went back. In the morning he was up again at six, and Proctor, with the racket he had borrowed, stood out in the hall, fanning it at the air, and waiting for him.
Then we had a short spell of dry wind off the desert, a high brown haze screening off the mountains, and a fine film of dust, like face powder, on everything in the rooms. The glare was bad, and, sitting in the classes, we would turn our eyes from the windows or wear the dark sunglasses they were selling cut-rate in the Co-op. The first morning of the
wind, from the bathroom window, I could see the tennis courts and Lawrence’s car, but I couldn’t see Proctor anywhere on the court. I thought he might be in the wash, looking for a ball that had bounced out. Then I saw him. But he was not on the court. At the number one court they had put up some bleachers to seat about thirty or forty people, and Proctor was seated on the plank at the top. He was leaning forward, on his knees, watching Lawrence serve. Back in the seat of the car I could see his borrowed racket, strung, as Lundgren said, with butcher’s twine, and Lawrence’s white sweater tossed over the steering wheel. Lawrence went on serving until he ran out of balls, then Proctor picked them up.
Over the weekend it was foggy again, and I went to see a night football game with Proctor; the high punts would disappear in the fog and made the game interesting. After the game we walked back across the campus to the Sugar Bowl. Proctor usually liked the girls better than football, and when he’d asked me to go to the game I’d thought I’d better go. I knew there was something on his mind. We sat in a booth at the back of the room where the upperclass dates were dancing, and we could hear the music through the backside of the radio.
Proctor wanted to know if I had noticed anything. I said I had noticed that he’d taken up tennis. He didn’t mean that, he said, and neither did he mean the usual sort of gossip, but he just wondered if I happened to have noticed anything. About what? I said. About Lawrence, he replied. I said the only thing I’d noticed about Lawrence was that he really minded his own business. I guess that does for me then, Proctor said. I said I didn’t mean any more by that than what I’d said. The trouble with a bloke like himself, Proctor said, was that he talked so goddam much all the time that when he finally had something to say, something important, nobody would listen to him. I said I thought there might be a touch of truth in that. Proctor said that what he had to say dealt with Lawrence, and he had picked up the idea that I sort of liked Lawrence.
I said I admired him very much.
That wasn’t what he meant, Proctor said. Any goddam fool could admire Lawrence, but liking Lawrence was something else again. He did. He had the sneaking notion I did too.
Well, I wouldn’t say that I disliked Lawrence, I said.
Let’s take a walk, old man, Proctor said, and then I let him pay for my hot chocolate. I knew he was currently sensitive on that point.
The fog was not rain, but the mist was so heavy that it gathered in drops on the leaves, then fell like rain on the gravel along the walk. Where the path cut in between the orange trees on the campus Proctor stopped. “You mind if I smoke, old man?”
“Not at all,” I said, but right up to that point I didn’t know that he smoked. A quarter-miler who expected to run a fifty flat shouldn’t smoke.
“I don’t inhale, old man,” he said, “and I don’t smoke unless I really have to.” He took a single cigarette from the pocket of his shirt, a pack of paper matches, and lit it. When the match flared up I thought his face looked sweaty, but it might have been the fog.
“Old man,” he said, blowing out the smoke, “couple mornings ago we were out on the court—he was out on the court, and I was sittin’ in the bleachers, watchin’ him.” He stopped, then said, “I found it was better to get clean off the court while he was serving, then go in and pick up the balls when he was through.”
“I see,” I said.
“Well, I was sittin’ there waitin’ to do just that. He threw up a ball, caught it, then said, ‘Old man, perhaps I better tell you.’ ‘Tell me what?’ I said. ‘My right arm, old man, is a bit longer than my left one.’ I didn’t know what in the hell to say, so I said, ‘So what?’ ‘It’s from the tennis, old man,’ he said, ‘the right arm is a bit overdeveloped.’ He put his palms together, out in front, and showed me how his right arm was about an inch longer. ‘Well, I’ll be goddamned,’ I said. ‘I’m a little touchy about it, old man,’ he said, ‘so I rest the hand on my hip. You’ve probably noticed that,’ he said. ‘Hell no,’ I said, ‘never noticed it at all.’ ”
“I think you do notice it,” I said.
“Hell yes,” Proctor said, “but I wasn’t going to say so.” He threw the cigarette away and spat out the tobacco crumbs. “You see, Foley?” he said. “You see what I mean?”
“Sure,” I said, although I didn’t.
“It was me that made him do it, old man,” he said. “Me out there sittin’ and starin’ at him. If it hadn’t been for me he might not have noticed it.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said.
“I’ll swear to God,” he said, “he’s never told another human being. I’ll swear to God I’m the only man he ever told.”
“You couldn’t help that,” I said.
“The hell I couldn’t,” he said. “If I hadn’t been there he’d never have said it. If I’d shut my goddam big horsy mouth he’d never said a word.”
I didn’t deny it.
“I feel like hell,” he said. “I guess I just had to tell someone.”
“I know how you feel,” I said and raised my right hand toward his shoulder, but whether he saw that or not he pulled off. I dropped my hand. “Well, I don’t think anybody else needs to know it.”
“What I want,” said Proctor, “what I want is for him to feel that way.”
“I think he probably does.”
“Jesus Christ, old man—isn’t he wonderful?”
“He’s quite a character,” I said. I’d heard somebody call him that.
“He’s got it,” said Proctor. “He’s really got it.”
When I didn’t reply to that he said, “Goddam it, Foley, I don’t mean money. I don’t mean all that goddam barbed wire.”
“I know you don’t,” I said.
“I just wish to Christ I thought so,” he said and suddenly bolted off, running, and I heard his shoes crunch in the wet gravel.
The cigarette he had dropped was still alive in the path. As we were out of bounds for freshman smoking I stepped on it. Not far ahead he stepped off in the grass, where I couldn’t hear him running, and I stood there in the fog, listening to the leaves drip on the walk. When I got near the dormitory I could hear music blowing down from the dance at Phipps and see the car lights on Foothill barely creeping along in the fog. Proctor was in the shower, singing, when I got to the top of the stairs.
FOLEY: 4
Above the pyramid of oranges, grapefruit, and bananas interlarded with sheets of tissue paper and tinfoil, the hands of the clock said 10:17. Foley took out his father’s watch, saw it was three minutes fast, said, “Ahhhh,” and returned it to his pocket.
“Black coffee, right?” said the clerk.
“Right,” said Foley.
Clerk smiled and winked. Foley returned it. Big, raw-boned Swede, three kids out in Queens, always asked Foley how things were growing in the country. Seemed to have picked up the idea that Foley was some sort of country gentleman.
“How’s the country?” he said.
“Little warm,” said Foley. “How’s it in Queens?”
“Hot,” he said. “Plain Danish, right?”
“Right,” Foley replied and watched him turn and flip tongs, flip plate to go under Danish, turn and flip fork before spearing chip of butter, flip knife before placing it on counter. As if trying its weight, dipped, then raised coffee cup beneath spout of coffee, spilled some into the saucer, emptied saucer into drain, spilled a little more from cup sliding it down the counter, followed by cup of sugar cubes that caromed off menu rack. Waste motion? No. Male lead in the Schrafft’s midmorning ballet.
Into his coffee Foley dropped one cube, stirred, then crunched it with his spoon. Three lumps of wrapped sugar he dropped into the coin pocket of his coat. Habit formed during war. Needed it himself. Single man and bachelor expected to give his sugar coupons to faculty wives with sweet-starved babies. Faculty men lost weight, fattened wives explained by sharp starch rise to get same food value. On the raw end of the Danish he had sliced Foley spread the butter, took a bite. Turned over i
n his mind, while chewing, the problem of a lonely lunch. Lou Baker was out. Proctor was out. (They were in bed, that is, together.) Which left Richard Dickie Livingston or Allen Blake. Dickie Livingston had money, time, and excellent taste but required a rather strong palate. The last time Foley had called him, at his New York place, his wife’s Filipino had answered, Foley had given his name, then heard the voice of Dickie.
“Finkel’s Fortifying Leechbake on the Hudson, good morning! Patrick O’Casey speaking.”
“Look—” Foley had said.
“Fear of sex and Semitism,” Dickie had continued, “allergic symptom nine-oh-nine! Refer you to Glossary, New and Revised Edition of ‘Livingston’s Manual Modern Semitic Warfare.’ There you will find that Livingston is a bastard, Lou Baker is a bitch, Foley a spineless egghead, but Jesse L. Proctor is a long-suffering, wall-weeping Jew. He cannot be a bastard, an egghead, or a bitch, because that would be anti-Semitic. All men are brothers, saith Saint Gide, except those who are really fond of each other.”
“You through?” Foley said.
“Sonny,” Dickie said, “I’m the only man you know without a trace of concealed anti-Semitism. All out in the open. Clear and sunny as a day at Jones Beach. Where’ll we eat lunch?”
They went to Town and Country, where Foley liked the popovers, and Dickie talked for an hour or more about this guy Proctor. He couldn’t leave him alone. He couldn’t leave him alone because Proctor had never struck back. Not a blow. As much as any man might, Dickie Livingston had shot another man down, like a bird in flight, clipping him in a way that left him living but without use of his wings. And what had Proctor done? Nothing. He had not struck back or taken another shot at himself. He had become, after twenty years, J. Lasky Proctor, importer. So Livingston’s prank, the neatest trick of the decade, had proved to be the trauma of two lives. Life seemed to have stopped, for prankster and victim, right at that point.
Dickie had proved to be a very durable playboy, gray at the temples and the liver, yet a boy at heart; but it had always been the 4th of May, 1929. The night before the big prank, like the rally before the big game. But now something had happened, the obscure Jew was in the eye of the TV camera, and the revenge he had put off for twenty-three years was there in his lap. All he had to do was mention, no more, the name of Richard Livingston. The Park Avenue playboy, sometime husband of Pamela Crowley, the tin-can heiress, who had had her pretty hands in all the good causes long, long long ago. Just mention the name, that was all, and leave the rest to the Senator from Wisconsin. But J. Lasky Proctor mentioned no name but his own. Was he protecting Lou Baker, Dickie—or his own buried past? The one that they had waited, for nearly twenty years now, to sprout. Foley didn’t know, he had no idea, but with the pictures of Proctor in the morning papers he would not be having lunch with Richard Livingston.
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