“Are you masquerading as laryngitis, my good girls, or is it just the latest craze for teasing bulls?” Al Middleton leered down above the buffet girls, foreshortening his creased lean face till it resembled a gargoyle sardonically adorned with gold-capped teeth. “Thought you gals were communists?”
“Sympathizers,” they answered in their quick defensive chorus.
“Ah sisters.” He surveyed them sorrowfully. “What kind of sympathizers do you call yourselves! why aren’t you down there in Washington D. C., marching, starving—sleeping, with our boys.” He leered through his gold-capped teeth and tapped Fisher on the head with his drumstick; “heh heh heh” he said wearily and passed down the table from them, firmly wavering toward the bar.
“Oh!” breathed Lydia, swallowing her giggle and drawing indignation from her comrade.
“Oh!” breathed Ruthie Fisher in genuine disgust; and felt forlorn, abandoned, as though Jeffrey had exposed her, left her out somewhere, a prey to anybody.
Arturo was giving the Boys a rest and looking over the growing crowd approvingly. Pretty fine folks, he thought, at this house. He took a drink from the bottle the host had brought up for the band and swallowed reflectively. The drink was mellowing. The crowd was beautiful. Arturo began to feel pleasantly sorry for himself. It might be that he had indeed that divine gift his teachers had spoken of back in the Music Academy days; it might be that he had never got the breaks. Married too young, for one thing (Mary was a ripe, rich-blooded girl and eighteen none too soon for her); the kids came right away; living costs plenty—was it his fault altogether that he had turned his back on creative music and earned his way as the leader of a little party band? Arturo sipped steadily. He didn’t join in the talk of the Boys who liked parties and used these intermissions for spotting the beauties. “Nifty crowd,” said Frankie Teener, tightening the pegs on his instrument. Arturo smiled sadly and tossed his head for the Boys with Toscanini’s borrowed gesture.
“But I do not,” Mr. Hatcher was saying unhappily, “represent anything in particular, Miss Titcomb; at least as I am here tonight; perhaps you have confused me with someone else. . . .” “Ah that’s impossible,” Miss Laura Titcomb gayly shook her finger (but hadn’t she said something rather funny there?); “and Mrs. Middleton assured us,” she went on by way of covering up, “that you are a ve-ry interesting person, so we think you’re hiding your light,” said Miss Titcomb merrily—and stopped; and blushed; and floundered; and said there was her uncle and she must go and greet him because there he was and he was her uncle.
“Oh Christ, here comes your Negro again,” said Al; “a black fate, Miss Powell honey. I’ll tell him off, we’ll have no raping at this bar. . . . Good evening, kuhnel,” he greeted the impeccable Graham Hatcher advancing behind the cheery vanguard of his smile.
“Who—” began Lydia.
“I really don’t know,” said Fisher, crestfallen. Both of them stared at the Negro. “I wonder,” said Ruthie Fisher, “if he might not be the communist candidate for vice-president; he must be somebody.”
“Have you ever—” began Lydia.
“No, but I do think they’re awfully attractive,” said Fisher thoughtfully.
“Would you ever—” began Lydia.
“Of course, I’m no bourgeois,” snapped Fisher; and thought she saw Jeffrey Blake at last; but no, it was a tall bald man who stooped, who bore no resemblance to her handsome Jeffrey; her heart beneath her turtle-neck sank painfully.
“Whoever said you were,” said Lydia placidly.
Decidedly, thought Mrs. Stanhope, organizing her equine faction about herself and Mr. Merriwell, if Emily Fancher had any guts at all, she would appear. And I’d like to see any of you, she threatened them with her high-drawn mustang countenance, cutting her; just try and let me see you.
“This party,” said the little Doctor, smiling and bowing and kissing hands at the bottom of the stairs, “is society psychoanalyzed, all the cross sections exposed as in a tree. . . .” Oh Vammie was doing his best for her, Merle gratefully knew, but this was agony! why had she not given her usual New Year’s Party and let it go at that? and where was Emmett (whom she had seen just once since that awful night of the meeting, since Doctor Leonard had carried him off)? and where was Jeffrey Blake? . . . “Oh go right in, how nice to see you” (and the Ballisters hadn’t come!) “oh very Bohemian, Emmett’s young socialist friends you know, oh good of you to come Bianca, why yes I really expect Emily Fancher, so embarrassing inviting her you know, whether to address her Mrs. Jim or Mrs. Emily, no not the guest of honor there really is no guest of honor, just one of our more distinguished Negroes. . . .”
She studied their quizzical looks with alarm and weighed their reactions in her minutest social scale. One thing was certain: her party could not be less than a magnificent failure, if a failure it was destined to be. Sensational—no one could deny it: the banners, the speeches planned for midnight, even the guests’ quixotic costumes; the orchestra, the food—somehow the recollection of the bills was reassuring. . . . “A noble experiment,” said Al’s lawyer bending to kiss her hand; “and a gorgeous experimenter,” said the efficiency expert treading in his wake; “a study in contrasts,” said the efficiency expert’s wife who was so clever that they all suspected she was a Jewess.
“Do you see,” the little Doctor had hit on something new to sell Merle’s party, “they want to blow us up; but they come here and enjoy our company. Also we know they want to blow us up; yet we enjoy theirs.” The little Doctor fairly glittered, polished his moustaches with delighted fingers. “And why?” he asked of himself in his brilliant pedantic Hungarian manner. The Whitmans and the Drapers stood still in their tracks. “Because we are decadent. Because they are decadent. Destroyers and victims drinking to each other from the common bowl, perversion.” The Drapers and the Whitmans bridled in a kind of flattered amusement.
“A study in contrasts, do you see,” Merle plagiarized from the efficiency expert’s wife. Lucius Whitman smiled; thrust his wife toward Henry Draper and ludicrously embraced his old friend’s wife. “Since we’re all decadent,” he said; and led Violet Draper laughing toward the party; “since it’s the end of the world anyway,” he tossed to his own wife over Violet’s shoulder; “why here’s to it,” he said and waved his noble cinema-banker’s head, winked to his wife and gravely escorted Mrs. Draper as his own.
Vammie had brilliantly struck the right note. His words went to everyone’s head like little drops of Tokay. Merle’s own head grew light and gay. The party would be a success, she knew it now, by her proper hostess’ instinct. If only Jeffrey Blake would come! For Merle had a promise to keep to herself. (Not again would she succumb to cowardice, holding her finger to her lips and pretending to hear her husband. . . .) She grew a little reckless; smiled too long at Mrs. Stanhope’s brother-in-law; fairly writhed in charm before the oldest member of the New York City bar; laughed uproariously at Mr. Thayer (who was a wit she generally rebuked) for his suggestion that they act toward Emily Fancher (if she came) as though Jim Fancher were enjoying a rest-cure in the South. . . . “Just as in our fashionable magazines,” Vammie was keeping up a steady stream, “the cruelest caricatures are of society . . .” “idea suggested, do you see,” Merle helped him out, “by my young socialist friends . . .”
“Communist,” said a stern voice coming down the stairs. “Communist, Mrs. Middleton, not socialist.” It was young Flinders (but Jeffrey was not with him!); his wife, Merle supposed it must be, on his arm—a pretty, shabby girl. “Ah Mr. Flinders,” Merle brightly cried and extended her hand, “does it matter, does it really matter, I mean aren’t we all drifting toward the same goal anyhow. . . .”
“Watch them high-hat the Negro,” said Comrade Fisher indignantly; “race-conscious snobs.”
“Just the same I wish,” said Lydia, “that I had on an evening dress cut down to my middle like the bar-keep’s; I’d sell more ham and God knows I’d feel cooler.”
“Upper
class steam,” said Comrade Fisher viciously. “They turn on all they’ve got to show they can afford it.” They drew their hair virtuously behind their ears in deadly contrast to the fluffy Powell’s.
“Fish! Will you promise to pinch me the minute he comes in?”
“God I’m tired of you being a virgin,” said Ruthie Fisher scornfully; and longed with all her heart for Jeffrey Blake.
“I can’t help it if I live at home,” said Lydia humbly.
“What are you doing here,” Al said sternly (Graham Hatcher blanched); “why aren’t you storming our nation’s Capitol where men are men and women hungry?” (Graham Hatcher revived.) “Aha Mr. Middleton,” he vented an operatic gesture and smiled effusively at Miss Bee Powell, “I am not—” “What, you’re not?” said Al; “then I suppose you are a Duke.” “N-no,” said Mr. Hatcher renewing his smile. “Well then, a commissar,” said Al impatiently; “everybody here is something if it’s only a God damn fool, we’ve all got titles of some kind, haven’t we, Miss Powell darling?” The Negro had French manners or else some pullman porter blood, Al reflected (suddenly anxious about that fool son of his, why the devil wasn’t he here?); he accepted his drink in exchange for his money, bowed, saw that his presence was no longer required, thanked them for something and vanished backwards leaving his smile like the cheshire cat’s in the air behind him. “Makes mah southern blood boil,” said Al. (His eyes roved the ballroom looking for Emmett.) “Well, he don’t mine,” said Miss Powell wittily; and gave him a Junior League flash from the incredible violet eyes. “One more look like that,” Al said firmly, “and I’ll forget that I’m just an impotent old man and ask you to meet me behind the potted palms.” “What, sell my beautiful white body,” said Miss Powell rolling her eyes. “Remembah our stahving boys,” said Al wearily; (it was two weeks surely since he’d seen his boy); “I wonder where in hell my son is. . . .”
“There ought to be a special machine,” said Bruno returning from the telephone and pulling his suspenders over his collarless dress-shirt, “for filtering Comrade Blake’s enthusiasms. . . . That was your classmate and peer, Emmett—young Firman, who apparently sleeps with both eyes open and has gone into the detective business. . . .” He stood before them lost in thought for a moment, looking at his watch and not perceiving it; started as though it suddenly came to life and exclaimed: “My God! it’s half-past ten! Climb onto the Remington again, Emmett, and help me remove the Fisherisms from my speech”; he swayed and rolled his eyes like a Harlem blues-singer; “for Fisher isn’t kosher an-y mo-o-ore.” Emmett, who loved being Bruno’s amanuensis, and more than ever now because it was something Elizabeth couldn’t do for him, asked no questions; he snapped up the lid of the typewriter and sat with his fingers at the keys, a righteous example to Elizabeth, his eyes upturned to Bruno.
But Elizabeth—sitting in her party slip with Bruno’s smoking-jacket pulled about her shoulders—burst into gleeful laughter. “I thought Fisher and Jeffrey owned the revolution!” (What the devil right had she—wearing Bruno’s clothes—to sit in as though she were a man on their last-minute conference!)
“That was last week,” Bruno told her. “The latest bulletin—according to young Firman who has crashed communist newspaper headquarters, the only true organ of the holy church. . . . God knows what honest mischief that kid’s up to! Well, anyway, he ran into somebody who knew somebody who slept with somebody else who states that Fisher is nothing more than an ex-camp-follower, a hanger-on. It seems that the ‘fellow-travellers’ are a little band of disgruntled off-shoots who didn’t get elected commissar . . . oh, I don’t know; the whole thing begins to look like playing mud-pies. . . .” That look that passed between them (filling Emmett with the pain of being left out)! They laughed the same laugh, Bruno and Elizabeth, raised the same eyebrow; broke off short on the identical note.
From the first he had seen how those two fitted together or almost fitted together, like the jagged halves of a coin torn apart and facing one another. Elizabeth could finish Bruno’s sentences; Bruno could cap Elizabeth’s; sometimes it was not even necessary to finish a sentence in words. They laughed uproariously at jokes he couldn’t see; they grew suddenly silent as though they knew, as though they shared, some secret thing between them; and they resembled each other like a large and a small branch growing from the same tree.
It seemed to rouse them now, that identical laugh, to some high pitch of mutual glee and understanding. For Elizabeth jumped up with Bruno’s smoking-jacket flying (Emmett tried not to see her shoulders shining bare under the straps of her party slip), seized Bruno as her partner, and the two of them went whirling round the table, singing in the same falsetto: “For Fish-er is-n’t kosher any mo-o-ore.” Round and round laughing they flew as though they had forgotten Emmett, forgotten everything but themselves, as though they would never stop. . . .
“If she doesn’t go and dress,” cried Emmett pettishly, “we’ll all be hitting the b-b-bathroom at the same time again.” They stopped short like two children rebuked by their elder, their arms dropped, their song died instantly.
“Tell the bottle-baby,” said Elizabeth, drawing the jacket soberly about her shoulders, “to mind his business—don’t I live here too?”
“Don’t mind me, children,” said Bruno wearily (a little gray, thought Emmett, as though the dance had worn him out); “I don’t count, I’m not a man, I’m just an interpreter . . .” but he sat down, to Emmett’s relief, and picked up the red pencil again. “The boy is right, Betsey; when in a madhouse do as the mad-men do: take yourself very seriously. All right, Emmett: take out that line, fifth from the bottom, about fellow-travellers. . . .”
But she had spoiled, again, his peace. She was always doing that, stepping in to make her presence felt, disturbing the harmony which (he had known since that one remarkable night with Bruno, before her boat arrived) could exist between himself and Bruno. “Won’t be bad, will it, kid,” (so Bruno had apologized for her appearance) “to have a woman in our house?” But it was bad; it was terrible; it was agony.
She was the first woman beside his mother with whom he had lived intimately in the same few rooms, whose half-clad person he had seen, lounging, fussing over things, as women did in the privacy of their home. Even more than he hated her standing as a barrier between himself and Bruno, he hated her persistent feminine presence. There was no escaping her, or some suggestion of her; the bathroom bore her scent; in the living-room her drawing materials lay scattered possessively day and night, occasionally too some article of her clothing; from where he slept he could now and then hear her sigh or move or laugh; her voice was the first thing he heard in the morning. Once Bruno had left the apartment, leaving Emmett alone with Elizabeth; she had stayed quietly in her room—her indifference to him was patent—but even so the whole place was so pervaded by her that after twenty minutes of restlessly trying to forget her presence, he had found it necessary to leave the house (slamming the door behind him) and paid his only visit to his parents. . . .
“as intellectuals,” Bruno was dictating; Emmett fell with more content into the rhythm of the keys and Bruno’s voice, “it’s time to take our stand; it is our belief that this Magazine, providing . . .”
“Bruno!” Her voice was shrill—they jumped, all three of them; even Elizabeth, Emmett observed, as though her own voice were a shock to her.
“What is it, Betsey?” “I c-c-can’t work with her in the room,” Emmett burst out, almost against his will. “What is it, Betsey,” Bruno said.
“Nothing,” she said, laughing. “Only tell the bottle-baby to pass the whiskey my way.”
“She’s been drinking since three o’clock this afternoon,” said Emmett, loathing himself.
“Since ten o’clock in the morning three weeks ago,” Elizabeth corrected without a glance in his direction.
Bruno reached patiently for the bottle at Emmett’s elbow. “Sure that’s all you wanted, Elizabeth?”
“What more could anybody wa
nt?”
“Good ole whiskey,” said Bruno and Elizabeth in the same breath, the same tone, the same inflection. And laughed; withdrawing from each other as the whiskey bottle passed between them as though by sulky mutual consent.
It was this deadly similarity, he thought, that hurt him most. He remembered having thought once, clearly, that if Bruno ever married, he would kill himself. But this was worse; Elizabeth was closer than a wife. With a wife, Emmett vaguely felt, there would be at some point in the day a climax from which Bruno and a wife would then retreat, becoming their separate selves again. This thing had no crisis; there was no union, hence no separation; they bent along together closely parallel, following each other’s devious routes—and how then could it ever end?
They were most, he thought, like a brother and sister; yet not being brother and sister brought them closer still. The mystery of their belonging to each other in the same family—that was it. He was a child who had grown from the beginning feeling no sense of belonging to his father or his mother; surprised, he had discovered as early as his nursery days, that both seemed strange to him and strange to one another. He had spent his lonely childhood dreaming of a brother or a sister, someone to whom he could, most intimately, belong: belong mutually, on equal terms. No one came; and he had tried, in various chronologic stages, to establish a relationship with Merle. But she treated him alternately with indifference and with the detailed passion of a woman for her lover, and both things froze him out, left him passionately indifferent too, or passionately jealous. . . .
“but the time has come,” Bruno dictated, “when it is no longer possible to hesitate. . . .”
The Unpossessed Page 22