Experiment in Springtime

by Margaret Millar

  He closed the paper. He felt suddenly very tired, and when the waitress brought his butter cakes he ate them without tasting them. He knew it wasn’t physical tiredness, you couldn’t be physically tired after a good night’s sleep. It was something inside his head, something alive, that gnawed at and was gradually severing the vital link be­tween wish and will; it was a conviction that whatever corner he turned, he would confront an obstacle too high to hurdle and too heavy to thrust aside, and whatever he wanted would be out of reach.

  He faced the difficulty squarely—he wasn’t going to do anything about finding a place to live, and it was quite possible that he wasn’t going to do anything about any­thing if it cost him much trouble.

  Sometimes, he thought, you get a plane with my kind of jinx. The machinery’s okay and everything’s oiled and there’s not a damn thing the matter with it except that it doesn’t fly right. Nobody wants to touch it and when the thing eventually cracks up, everybody’s glad of it.

  The waitress brought his coffee. He sipped it, remember­ing the doctor at the military discharge center. He was a small man who gave advice out of the side of his mouth. Most of it was pretty shrewd, too, but the boys were too excited at going home to pay much attention and they all thought the doctor was a sourpuss for handing out a lot of gloomy predictions.

  He recalled clearly what the doctor had told him: “Well, Ferris, we’ve got you on your feet again, from now on it’s up to you. You’re pretty cocky right now and eager to get home. That’ll last maybe a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, if you’re lucky. Then you’ll get a reaction. Yours will probably be a little worse than the others because you’ve been away longer and you haven’t a wife or family to go back to and you’ve been pretty well shot up. You’ll be tense and sorry for yourself and tired, but most of all you’ll be disappointed—the town’s different and so are your friends, and maybe the pool room where you used to hang around has been changed into a movie house. So you’ll go around saying that people over here never realized there ever was a war, and if you say it loud enough and in front of the right people, you’ll be quoted in the newspapers.

  “You’ll say a lot of other things, too, none of them very original, but after a while this grousing period should wear off. That depends on you and what you do in the meantime. You can’t hold down a steady job for a while, but on the whole, you’re very lucky. You’ve got your arms and legs and your sight, enough money to keep going for a few months, and a college degree. About all I can do for you, Ferris, or for any of the rest, is to tell you what to expect and advise you to count your blessings. Don’t expect the key to the city; there aren’t enough to go around. And don’t expect that that little blonde that you treated one night to a chocolate soda at a drugstore in 1941 has been waiting five years for another chocolate soda. And don’t expect allowances to be made for you. That isn’t the way the world is made. A couple of million years ago no allow­ances were made for the fact that

  the dinosaur had too small a brain for his body. The dinosaur is extinct.” He smiled. “And a damn good thing it is, too. Well, okay, Ferris. Goodbye and good luck to you.”

  They shook hands and the doctor went with him to the door. Before Steve left he heard the doctor beginning the same speech all over again with a different name: “Well, Meldrom, we’ve got you on your feet again . . .”

  Steve finished his coffee and thought, it was a good speech. He wondered why it disturbed him to picture the doctor giving it over and over again, day after day: “Well, Smith, we’ve got you on your feet again . . .” “Well, McMahon . . .” “Well, Gilmore . . .”

  Meldrom, Smith, McMahon, Gilmore, Ferris. Thousands of them, and Ferris no better than the rest, no more im­portant. A very ordinary man with no special case of the jinx; not even worthy of extinction, like the dinosaurs.

  He wasn’t special. That idea required some adjustment, but it was comforting, too.

  He called for his check. The inertia that came and went suddenly and without apparent cause had disappeared. When he went out into the street again, he walked briskly, like a man with a destination.

  He didn’t return to the hotel until after dinner. Though he’d been alone all day and hadn’t done anything im­portant, he had the false contentment that fills the lull between decision and execution: I have decided, so I shall rest up today and act tomorrow.

  He went through the lobby and paused at the entrance to the bar, his eyes wandering over the crowd. The tables were all filled and people were lined up two-deep at the bar. Under the dim lights they seemed a fine and merry crowd, but they were all talking at once and no one was listening. Their voices were high, desperate, confused, as if each one of them realized that he had so little time in this world that he couldn’t spend a second of it on any­one but himself.

  “Chaos.” A voice spoke softly behind him. “A sort of cozy chaos, isn’t it?”

  Steve turned. A thin, middle-aged man was standing a couple of feet behind him gazing at the people over Steve’s shoulder with cynical interest.

  “Sorry. I seem to be blocking the entrance,” Steve said.

  “That’s all right. Crowded, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t you used to be a court reporter on one of the papers?”

  “The Star,” Steve said.

  “Been away, haven’t you?”

  “For a while.”

  “If you’re looking for a place to sit, I’ve got a table back there. Come and have a beer.”

  There was no special reason to refuse, though he didn’t recognize the man. “Thanks, I will.”

  “You’re name’s Ferris, I remember now,” the man said, narrowing his eyes. “You reported one of my cases. You got a byline on it.”

  “I remember,” Steve lied. “I’ve forgotten your name, though.”

  “Smith.”

  They shook hands without enthusiasm. Then Smith led the way back to the booth. He had a cautious way of moving; he seemed to compress himself into the smallest possible space, his shoulders hunched together, his hands in his pockets. It was the walk of a man who had learned by experience to distrust not only the people around him but the very floor he walked on.

  They sat down and Smith said, “What’ll you have?”

  “Van Merritt.”

  “Two Van Merritt,” he told the waiter. He settled back with a faint sigh. “I’m glad I ran into you. I felt con­spicuous sitting here alone, and I prefer not to be, right now.”

  “Working?”

  “Keeping an eye on an old friend of mine. I don’t want him to notice me for a while.” The beer arrived and Smith drank a full glass before he spoke again. “Do you see the lieutenant over there on the left side of the bar arguing with his wife?”

  Steve looked. The lieutenant was a broad, handsome man with clipped grey hair and an authoritative manner. The woman with him was short and plump. She wore a tight black dress and a great deal of jewelry that looked expensive. Her eyes were fixed glassily on the man as he talked.

  “What about them?” Steve asked.

  “I’m waiting to find out what they do next.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the uniform isn’t his, and unfortunately, neither is the wife. The lady’s real husband is very cut up about the whole thing.” Smith smiled in anticipation of his own joke. “Literally. He’s in an accident ward out at Western Hospital. When he’s conscious he claims his wife didn’t have a thing to do with knifing him. But it’s pretty clear from what he says in delirium that she did it, all right.”

  Steve couldn’t resist another glance at the plump woman. “It seems incredible,” he said.

  “Violence usually does, to the outsider. What makes the whole affair more poignant is that she doesn’t know her lieutenant is a phony and the phony lieutenant doesn’t know she used a knife on her husband. At least, he didn�
�t know an hour ago, but judging from the way his jaw is working now I figure she’s told him and he doesn’t like the idea. Wearing a uniform illegally is a few degrees removed from attempted homicide, so he’s probably in­forming the lady that this is where he came in.”

  The woman leaned forward and put her hand on the lieutenant’s arm. She began to talk very quickly.

  “As for the lady,” Smith said, “she’s a little upset, and not thinking clearly, so she’s very unwisely pulling the one about how she did it all for love of him. And Henley, being a sensible man, is thinking of plane timetables.”

  “If he’s sensible, why the uniform?”

  “He just likes uniforms, that’s all. Every couple of months he tries to enlist in some branch of the service and when they turn him down, he goes out and buys a uniform anyway. Then we pick him up, he pays a fine, and we get the uniforms. If there’s still a market for uniforms by the time we hold our next police auction, we should get a good price for them. He patronizes the best tailors.”

  Steve laughed. “It sounds crazy to me.”

  “Well, that’s because you haven’t lived long enough to develop any detachment. It’s a perfectly sensible ar­rangement. It makes Henley happy to throw away his excess money on uniforms, it makes the taxpayers happy when he pays his fines, and it makes us happy when we hold our auctions. Joy all around, see?”

  Smith picked up his bottle, saw that it was empty and beckoned the waiter. Whatever he did, he did with a minimum of movement. It deepened the impression he gave of profound distrust, and of invulnerability. Watch­ing him made Steve uneasy. He had the feeling that if he should suddenly pull a gun and threaten to shoot Smith, Smith would sit perfectly quiet, without surprise, as if he’d known all along what to expect.

  Steve lit a cigarette to cover his nervousness. The story of the lieutenant and the plump woman was interesting, but he didn’t like the way Smith told it. He seemed to be enjoying it too much, as if he liked to see other people displaying their inanities and weaknesses because he had none of his own, like a teetotaller watching a drunken party.

  “We don’t want Henley to get into any trouble,” Smith said. “That’s why I’m hanging around.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The damnedest kind, woman-trouble. The lady might object if he walks out on her. My guess is, though, that she’ll take it quietly. She’ll fling herself on the mercy of her husband and he’ll be dope enough to take her back, and in a couple of years, she’ll try it again, maybe.”

  “Can’t you bring her to trial?”

  “Certainly. Then they’ll both swear she didn’t do it, and they’ll dream up a dark stranger in a mask and she’ll go home to poppa. The most we can do for poppa is to promise him a postmortem free of charge.”

  The woman had stopped talking and was concentrating all her attention on the drink she held in her hand. The lieutenant turned suddenly and began to walk unsteadily toward the washroom. He looked very pale.

  “Henley always had a weak stomach,” Smith observed calmly. “Come on. This ought to be fun.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “So few cases have any element of humor in them. You wouldn’t want to miss one, Ferris. Come on.” He got up.

  Steve followed him to the washroom. They found Henley propped up against the wall, being sick. After a time he washed his face and hands.

  Smith went over and said, “Boo!”

  Henley jumped and began to look green again.

  Smith said, “Where do you pick up your women, Henley?”

  “Oh, my God, get me out of here,” Henley cried hoarsely. “All I want to do is get out of here. I’ve got to . . .”

  “Well, don’t strain your voice. You can’t scream your way out. Use the door.”

  “I tell you, I hardly even know her. For Christ’s sake, I tell you I hardly know her! I picked her up last week in a movie and took her out a couple of times and now she—she . . .”

  He managed to get his handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his face. He was shaking all over.

  Smith said, “Sure, sure,” and winked at Steve.

  “She wants me to run away with her, she says if I don’t, she’ll drag me into it. She might even say I did it, and if the man dies . . . A knife, that’s what gets me—a knife . . .”

  “What did you expect her to use? You can’t slice people up with a fountain pen.”

  “Oh, my Jesus! What am I going to do?”

  “Walk out the way you came in.”

  “She’ll see me. She’ll—she might . . .”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Doris.”

  “Doris will be okay. She won’t try to stop you. Matter of fact, she might be pretty glad in the long run if you do walk out on her. It will give her a chance to go back to—what’s his name?”

  “Arthur. She told me she was divorced. I’d never touch a married woman, you know me, I . . .”

  “Arthur’s all ready to let bygones be bygones.”

  “He is?” Henley sounded incredulous. “He must be crazy.”

  “Well, it’s his funeral.”

  Henley had stopped shaking. He took the cigarette Smith offered him, drew on it a couple of times and threw it away.

  He said, “Do I look okay to go out on the street?”

  “The uniform is positively stunning,” Smith said dryly.

  “I’ll send them all back. I promise. I’ll never buy any more, that’s a promise, Mr. Smith.”

  He began brushing one shoulder of his tunic vigorously with the flat of his hand. Smith watched him, smiling. A minute ago Henley had been afraid of death, now he was equally afraid of appearing on the street with a piece of lint on his uniform.

  “Okay,” Smith said. “You look fine. See you later.”

  He beckoned to Steve and they returned to the booth.

  Doris was still at the bar. Someone had given her a seat and she sat with her plump legs twisted around the bar stool. She wasn’t watching for Henley to come back. She was playing with her drink, swishing it around and around the glass.

  After a while she opened her purse and took out a compact. Very carefully she remade her face. Then she paid the check. Without waiting for any change, she slid off the stool and made her way to the door. When she passed Steve’s table he saw that she didn’t appear upset or nervous at all. Her face was blank and her eyes looked bruised and blind. She didn’t glance around the place for Henley.

  When she reached the door she stood there for a minute, as if she’d forgotten how to open it. Then a couple of men came in and held the door open for her. She went out.

  “Well,” Steve said. “I wonder what’s going to happen to her.”

  “What’s going to happen to any of us?” Smith said. “We’ll continue to proceed on trust. Considering the intri­cacies of the human brain we are very trusting mammals. We have to be. In order to live for this next hour we have to trust the men who made this beer, these chairs, this building. I have to assume that you will behave at a fairly civilized level and that my apartment is not on fire, or if it is, that the fire department will arrive promptly. Which means I also have to trust the men who made the fire engine, and before that, the metal workers, and before that the blueprint engineers.” He smiled wryly. “Aren’t we lucky to be alive?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “As a policeman I’ve seen so many unnecessary deaths. If my own isn’t one of them by the time I retire, I have my prescription made up for a nice, long life. I’d stay away from cars, lakes, guns that I thought weren’t loaded, air­planes, and women with husbands.” He got up. “Well, I’d better go and check up on Doris.”

  “Thanks for the beer.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Steve drank another beer alone. Then he took the elevat
or up to his room. He lay down on the bed without undressing. He didn’t want to go to sleep because he had a lot of things to think about and going to sleep was final. It was burying an old day. In the morning it would be resurrected; it wouldn’t be a new day, it would be the same one, freshly painted and primped like an old floozy. Only the children, the near-sighted, the anemic, could fail to see last year’s grime beneath the cracking powder, and smell the sweet sickly decay beneath the perfume.

  He turned over on his back and clasped his hands be­hind his head. The ceiling light was brown but im­mediately above his bed there were several black marks on it like the toeprints of a man’s shoe. He was too tired to feel much surprise that someone should have tiptoed across his ceiling, but he wondered how it could be done. Suction shoes? Stilts?

  No, that wouldn’t be it. Perhaps the marks weren’t shoe prints. Something else than that? A fly swatter.

  That was it, a fly swatter. Someone (a man? woman?) had stood on the bed and slapped at the ceiling with a rubber fly swatter.

  He felt pleased with himself for figuring this out, but somewhat disappointed, too. It would have been interest­ing to go on thinking about someone tiptoeing across the ceiling. It would have excluded other thoughts.

  But now he became acutely aware that the green lamp­shade was the color of Beatrice’s dress. (I’ll phone Beatrice, I’ll make it up to her, not that I did anything. I’ll take her out sometime; she is very clean and kind.) The light itself reminded him of the shiny pendant Doris had worn around her neck. (I wonder what will happen to her. She was not like Martha, but all the time I kept thinking of Martha.)

  The shiny pendant began to waver, gently at first, then faster and faster until it spun and whistled and burst of its own energy, scattering stars of steel. He stood in a glass rain

  and watched the blowing bones, the leaves of skin, the twigs of hair.

  Out of the bomb-hole in the earth Martha came. She didn’t see him, she passed by.