Cross hovered over a vast void. Was this man making fun of him or was he sympathizing with him? What he had feared most had come; there was nothing he could hide from Houston. He kept his eyes on the floor, afraid to look up at Houston’s passion-inflamed face.
“You felt that you were right, but not in the sense that you had to insist upon it. No! Does one explain when he says he wants three teaspoons of sugar in his coffee instead of two? You don’t have to justify that, do you? You had risen—or sunk!—to that attitude toward the lives of those about you…
“But, Damon, you made one fatal mistake. You saw through all the ideologies, pretenses, frauds, but you did not see through yourself. How magnificently you tossed away this God who plagues and helps man so much! But you did not and could not toss out of your heart that part of you from which the God notion had come. And what part of a man is that? It is desire…Don’t you know it? Why didn’t you just live a quiet life like all other men? That’s the correct way of being godless. Why be restless? Why let desire plague you? Why not conquer it too?”
Houston was questioning Cross in a kind manner, like a brother would question him.
“Desire? Why does man desire? It’s crazy, for it’s almost certain that he’ll never get what he desires…Is desire not a kind of warning in man to let him know that he is limited? Is desire in man not a kind of danger signal of man to himself? Desire is the mad thing, the irrational thing. Damon, you peeled off layer after layer of illusion and make-believe and stripped yourself down to just simply naked desire and you thought that you had gotten hold of the core of reality. And, in a sense, you had. But what does one do with desire? Man desires ultimately to be a god…Man desires everything… Why not? Desire is a restless, floating demon…Desire tries to seize itself and never can…It’s an illusion, but the most solid one! Desire is what snared you, my boy. You felt that what brooked desire could be killed; what annoyed, could be gotten rid of…
“Only a man feeling like that could have gone down into that room and seen those two men fighting it out, and then killed the both of them! Not taking sides…Not preferring the lesser evil…Just a sweeping and supreme gesture of disdain and disgust with the both of them! And only a man akin to them could have hated them that much, and you know it, Damon! You slew them just because they offended you…It was just like taking a cinder out of your eye because it stings a bit…”
Houston paused in front of Cross and chuckled, his eyes bright and mischievous. Cross looked at him and said to himself: That must have been how I looked when Sarah saw me laughing at her! Sarah had gotten angry, had leaped to her feet and had tried to beat him with her doubled fists, had shouted and cursed him; but he could not afford to act that way with Houston. Pride held him still. To show resentment would give the game away. No; he would sit and take it all.
“How you must have felt in that awful room! I wish you’d tell me! Did you calculate every movement? Or did you act without knowing it? Did you realize what you were doing? Or did you invent the idea of it afterwards? How did those two men look to you? And which one did you kill first? I’ll bet a million dollars that, even though you’re a free man, you killed Herndon first, eh? You’re a Negro and you know what Fascism means to you and your people. Even a man like you cannot be as indifferent as he would like…Your feet, Damon, I’ll bet, were of earthy clay and you killed Herndon first…Won’t you tell me? No? All right…I’ll not press you; these are unimportant details…
“Ha-ha-ha! Of course, I don’t believe that Eva Blount saw Herndon on those stairs. I can’t prove that she didn’t, but I don’t believe it. She was wrought up; she wished Blount out of her life, wanted him dead…She imagined she saw Herndon. And I’ll bet you you seized upon her fantasy and tried to fool us all with it…
“I know that Blount would not have touched you. He thought he had snared you into his ideological spiderweb and that you were his slave, his moral slave, the slave who believes in the ideas that are given to him…But, if you killed Blount first, Herndon would have killed you the next instant, wouldn’t he? I’m right, hunh? Ha-ha-ha! I’m clever, boy, when I get my sights at last leveled on the right target. And you must certainly have gotten a rich, deep satisfaction out of killing that nigger-hater, Herndon. And Blount’s face must have been a study in amazement when you suddenly turned on him…
“Then you wiped off all the fingerprints; there was none of yours in the room except on the door. And they had a right to be there, for you had been in the room talking to Herndon that afternoon, hadn’t you?
“All right…Now comes a gap that I can’t fill—I don’t know how Hilton found out that you had killed the two of them…Did you tell him? Hunh? No; you don’t want to answer? All right. You can tell me…No; you must not. Then I’d be bound by my oath of office and I’d have to use it against you…Ha-ha…Get the point, Damon?
“But I don’t think you told Hilton anything. You’re much too clever for that. Anyhow, he found out someway…These Communists eat and breathe suspicion. He had his eyes on you from the beginning, according to the Party, but not for any reason, just in general…And he caught you in your little godly game…
“You went to see him. You must have known that he knew. I must admit that I’m a bit foggy about this part of it. He had asked you to come and talk to him about joining the Party…But I can’t believe that you went there for that. That might have been your excuse…But that was not your purpose. After all, Damon, I’m only human. I can’t know all. I’m not a god and do not claim to be one, or want to be one. Ha-ha-ha…I curb my desires, you see?
“But, if I know the Hilton type, and I do to some extent, I’d expect a deal to be made. Damon, why wasn’t there a deal, an understanding arrived at between you and Hilton? Maybe the reality of this beautiful Eva had begun to enter the picture to some extent then? Maybe you two just hated each other naturally because you were so much alike? You little gods who traffic in human life, who buy and sell the souls of men, why couldn’t you have not made a trade?
“Well, I guess that maybe you couldn’t trust each other, hunh? That’s the big trouble with gods when they get together. Gods cannot share power; each god must have all the power or he’s no god. Logical, hunh? For, what’s a god if he has a rival? So damn much jealousy enters, hunh? Look at Hitler and Stalin…Boy, if they could have been reasonable, they could have divided this whole earth up between them. But, no; each felt that he and he alone had to have the whole earth. So they chewed each other up. When gods fall out, little worms can live…
“But, joking aside…You killed Hilton with his own gun and you didn’t leave a clue. How did you get into the hotel? You were at the hotel desk early that afternoon, but no one remembers seeing you there after that, either entering or leaving. Of course, they have a rather racially liberal policy at the Albert Hotel and Negroes leaving or entering would not be the occasion for anybody’s noticing, would it? And sometimes I suppose all things work together for the loves and desires of little gods?”
Cross felt dead. How could this man lay open his life with such decisive strokes? With such mocking cynicism? Goddamn him to hell!
“Now, these diaries…This girl deceived by the Party…This naïve child made the mistake of thinking that she had found in you something clean, pure, something her heart had dreamed of. In you, of all the men on earth! She looked upon you and your people as her brothers and sisters in suffering…What irony! Hurt, deceived, she projected out upon you her desires! Afraid of deception, she embraced a fount of deception! Full of timid, feminine desire, she flings her arms about a furnace of desire and is consumed in it…Then you, in your desert of loneliness, must have told her what you had done. She’d fought the Party for you, told them upon her life that you were an innocent man…And, in a sense, she was right; you were innocent of what the Party was charging. But, for a reason I do not know, you told her and she leaped…That’s how I figure it. What you told her was too much for her. You made her feel that she could no long
er trust any person on this earth. She leaped from that window to escape the kind of world you showed her! You drove her out of life. What you told her was the crowning horror of all the horrors! The apex of deception…And you had to tell her; you wanted her help. But did you tell her that Gil had not done anything to you? Did you tell her that you killed Gil for nothing? Boy, did you, could you go that far? I wonder…
“Damon, those diaries told me that you were guilty, and that girl’s leaping from that window was proof of it. Will you admit it? No? Your silence is a confession! Your inability to challenge me is proof! I’m waiting…Speak! Tell me I’m wrong…You can’t!”
Houston turned, opened the door of the room and went out. Cross lay watching the door swing a little to and fro on a squeaky hinge. Well, Houston was going to get the cops and they were going to take him to the station now…This was the end. But what evidence did Houston have? What facts to buttress all of this? So far he had cited nothing but psychological facts. Come to think of it, they were not even psychological facts. They were feelings, lightninglike intuitions which only a man who had lived long on that lower (or was it a higher?) level of life could know. He heard Houston’s footsteps coming back. He braced himself.
Houston entered the room with a glass of water in his right hand. He stood looking at Cross a solemn moment, then he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it thirstily, his humped body resembling that of a huge, waiting spider.
“I was thirsty,” Houston confessed in the voice of a man who had satisfied a physical need. He sighed. “I haven’t spoken so much since I was last facing a jury a month ago.”
Cross could bear it no longer; his lips trembled.
“Get it over with! If you think you’ll drag one word from me, you’re crazy!” he shouted.
“Now,” Houston spoke in a soothing tone, “don’t spoil it all. You were playing your role so well…”
“You’re gloating over me! Okay, start your damned wheels turning to punish me…!”
“Hold on, my friend. I’m not through yet,” Houston said with a feeling of deep relish in his voice. “You’ll be punished, but not in the way you think. Ah, I know…You have visions of lashes, third degree sessions, blinding spotlights in your eyes, questions popping at you for hours on end. You may even think of mobs, for all I know…And all of this because the cops want you to confess. But, Damon, you’ve confessed already…”
Hot tension leaped in Cross. Had he overlooked something silly that would send him to the chair? Had he left some foolish thing undone that would make him look like an adolescent boy stealing apples from a neighbor’s orchard?
“Confession?” he stammered. “What do you mean?”
Houston threw back his head and laughed. “You confessed to me, just to me, to me alone. See? I’ve no concrete evidence to use in court against you…”
Was the man crazy? What was he getting at?
“Listen, Damon, you made your own law,” Houston pronounced. “And, by God, I, for one, am going to let you live by it. I’m pretty certain you’re finished with this killing phase…So, I’m going to let you go. See? Yes; just go! You’re free! Just like that.” Houston snapped his fingers in Cross’s face. “I’m going to let you keep this in your heart ’til the end of your days! Sleep with it, eat with it, brood over it, make love with it…You are going to punish yourself, see? You are your own law, so you’ll be your own judge…I wouldn’t help you by taking you to jail…I’ve very little concrete evidence to haul you into court on anyhow; it’s likely I couldn’t convict you…And I’ll not give you the satisfaction of sitting in a court of law with those tight lips of yours and gloating at me or any jury while we tried to prove the impossible. What the hell could a jury of housewives, like the simple-minded Sarah Hunter, make out of a guy like you? I’ll not give you the chance to make that kind of a fool out of me, Damon! No, sir! I’m much too smart for that.
“These killings will be marked unsolved. And, in a sense, they are. Even now I cannot say why you killed in a rational manner, in a manner that would persuade others…I’ve not told anyone of what I’ve found about you.” Houston tapped his head. “It’s all right here. And it’ll stay there. You’re trembling…Oh, yes; I understand now. You thought that I was going to get the cop to arrest you when I went out for that glass of water…? Ha-ha-ha! Oh, you’re sweating, hunh? Boy, you’ll sweat tears of terror, night and day. That’s the lot of a little god. Didn’t you know that gods were lonely? When you eat, a part of you will stand back, shy and embarrassed. When you make love, a part of you will turn away in shame. From now on, there will be a dead hand holding life back from you…Will you find your way back? I doubt it. To whom could you tell your story, Damon? Who will listen? A psychoanalyst? You have no respect for them, and what the hell could they do for you? They’d be frightened of you; they’d rush out of their consulting rooms, their hair standing on end, screaming with terror. No; they are not for you, my boy. It’s between you and you, you and yourself.”
Houston stood looking down with musing eyes at Cross. And Cross felt sweat running down his face; it was on his chest, seeping down his arms. Even his legs were wet. Suddenly he wanted to beg this man not to leave him. He could not believe that it was like this that it was to end…But he could make no move.
“That’s all,” Houston said. “Whatever nameless powers that be, may they have something like mercy on your tormented soul.”
He turned and strode out of the room. Cross could hear him speaking in low tones to Sarah, then there came the echo of his footsteps along the hallway; then he heard the front door open and close. He was alone. He felt like screaming for Houston to come back, to talk to him, to tell him what to do. But he clamped his teeth and held still. I’m alone, he said to himself. He felt dizzy. Terror wrapped him around in a sheet of flame and his body wept tears…The prop had gone; Houston had gone; the world against which he had pitched his rebellion had pitied him, almost forgiven him…The thing he had been fighting had turned its face from him as though he was no longer worthy of having an opponent and this rejection was a judgment so inhuman that he could not bear to think of it.
He had broken all of his promises to the world and the people in it, but he had never reckoned on that world turning on him and breaking its promise to him too! He was not to be punished! Men would not give meaning to what he had done! Society would not even look at it, recognize it! That was not fair, wasn’t right, just…The ludicrous nature of his protest came to him and he smiled wryly at his own self-deception. Always back deep in his mind, he had counted on their railing at him, storming, cursing, condemning…Instead, nothing, silence, the silence that roars like an indifferent cataract, the silence that reaches like a casual clap of thunder to the end of space and time…
He had to talk to somebody! But to whom? No; he had to keep this crime choked in his throat. He, like others, had to pretend that nothing like this could ever happen; he had to collaborate and help keep the secret. He had to go forward into the future and pretend that the world was as tradition said it was…
His head dropped senselessly to the bedcover and he drifted off into that state of bleak relaxation that comes after an exhausting strain. He was not sleeping, not fully awake; he was existing with an alien world looming implacably over and against him. But all of his compulsions were gone, leaving him empty of even desire…
He did not stir from his room until late the next morning, and when he did emerge, it was to go into the kitchen with Eva’s diary. Since Houston had laid his self-hate and his self-love so mockingly naked, he felt that he no longer had any right to keep the diary and he was resolved to burn it. He opened one of the notebooks and tore out a sheet; just before touching the page to the flame of his lighter, he let his eyes stray listlessly over the lines, reading:
“March 3rd
“Last night was in Harlem and had dinner with Bob and Sarah Hunter. A tall, sensitive young Negro, Lionel Lane, was there; he was tense and seemed to be seekin
g for something in life. He struck me as one who would leave no stone unturned to find his destiny. Gil was taken with him and asked him to come and live with us awhile…Will he too be ‘used’ as I have been? How can I warn him? I dreamed of him after going to bed—I thought he asked me to come and see him and I was afraid because he lived in Harlem—Then I became so ashamed of my fear that I decided to go anyhow. I dreamed that when I got to Harlem there was, for some reason, a huge crowd of people waiting to see me and I felt quite embarrassed and lost…I was trembling, fearing to be asked to explain why I was in Harlem. Lionel came and rescued me; he was so magnificently himself, so self-assured among his own people who loved and respected him. The moment he arrived the crowd changed its attitude toward me…Then he took my arm and led me down the street; he was smiling as we passed in front of the masses of strange people. A wave of happiness flooded me and I fainted…Is not all virtue with the oppressed who are not corrupted? I must find some way of saving this boy from the muck in which my life has become bogged…But how can I do it?
“March 4th
“Lionel is now in the apartment and I’m filled with a sense of dread. I’d planned to remain in all day, but since he is here, I’ve decided to go out. I’ll go to a concert in the afternoon. That is as good an excuse as any to get away…But I must try to save him from his own naïveté…He is so quiet, trusting, sensitive…What is he thinking all the time? I see him sitting and brooding and his eyes hold the most self-absorbing look I’ve ever seen in a human being…God, he must be suffering…? Is he mulling over the past wrongs done to him and his people? I wish I could help someone like that.”
Cross crumpled the sheet, held it to the flame, and watched it burn. Once he turned his head sharply, feeling that Eva was standing near, watching him…Slowly he burnt the pages, dropped the charred remains in the sink, ran water over them and flushed them down the drain. When he finished he lifted his eyes and looked out of the window.
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