I went unhurriedly through the shade-filled dining room, across the parlor, down the hall to the entry, and opened the door. Before me stood an enormous man, a fellow of incredible girth. So broad was his body that he blocked out most of the daylight, thereby creating a penumbra which obsured the details of his face.
“Yes?” I said.
“Al?” he asked, cocking his huge head.
“That’s right,” I acknowledged, squinting to make out his lineaments.
“Hey—how about that? You don’t recognize me, Al,” said the man jovially. “You don’t know your old buddy any more. It’s me, Norbie—Norbie Hess.”
“Norbie!” I exclaimed. And then my eyes, adjusting to the gloom, gradually distinguished his features. From the shadow his face evolved, the way a snapshot does when it’s dipped in developer. The long mouth appeared, then the protruding eyes beneath the thin eyebrows, then the wide nose and the small ears pressed close to the skull. “Welladay! Norbie Hess!” I went on, grabbing his extended hand. “I didn’t recognize you because it’s been so long.”
“Horseshoe nails! You didn’t recognize me because I’m so damn fat.” He pumped my hand, patted my shoulder and gave me a playful jab to the ribs. “It’s old Norb, all right—three hundred and ten pounds of him. Hey, wait’ll I pay this guy.”
Turning slightly, he waved a hand the size of a leg of lamb and shouted, “Bring the bags!”
I caught a glimpse of a red taxicab behind him on Beacon Street, and of its driver, a bushy-haired youth wearing a mottled polo shirt and a string of beads, standing nearby.
“I couldn’t find you in the phone book,” Norbie said, addressing me again, “so I just came right on out, hoping you’d still be here.”
“I’m delighted you did,” I replied, though in truth I was bewildered by his sudden arrival.
The Bohemian hackie crossed the sidewalk with a pair of sleek monogrammed cinnamon-hued valises. Norbie said, “That’s the boy. Easy with the small one; in there is where I’ve got my bottles of mineral water.” Then he winked and laughed meaningfully.
The luggage in the hall and the driver paid, I closed the front door and guided my guest into the parlor while a lively confusion of memories cavorted in my head.
In 1940, reacting to the fall of Paris, I had joined the Naval Reserve. A year later, when Franklin Roosevelt made his “unlimited national emergency” speech, I was called to active duty and assigned to a destroyer, the Willis N. Davoran, then moored in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. That’s where I met Norbert Hess. We became close friends. Had I a brother, I could not have held him in higher regard than I did Norbie.
It was Norbie who saved my life in the waters off the Solomon Islands.
Even after the war separated us, we corresponded regularly, and there had been three or four occasions—out on the Coast—when we were able to get together once again and paint the town. With the coming of peace, he went back to Michigan and I to Massachusetts. Though I’d seen him a few times after that, our last meeting had taken place more than fifteen years previously.
I steered him to the widest seat in the room, a leather-covered armchair as big as a throne. The change in the man’s physique was astonishing. Hess had always been rather athletic; now he was obese. As he crossed the floor, his legs looked like animated tree stumps. Beneath his thin summer clothing, the fat on his thighs and stomach actually shimmered. He lowered himself into the chair and sighed deeply.
“Isn’t it hot, though?” he asked, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. Except for a crescent of gray hair, his crown was bald. Then he added, “I’ll bet you figured you’d never see me again—eh, buddy? All those years. Where did they go to, Al?”
I shrugged and smiled. He offered me a cigarette, which I took. When his lighter didn’t seem to work, I got matches from the alabaster canopic jar on the mantel.
“I almost didn’t come,” he said after I lit his cigarette. “It was a way-out idea. At the last minute, though, I figured, What the hell! Why not? And so here I am.”
“A good thing, too!” I said. “Many’s the time I wondered how you were, Norbie—many’s the time. A lot of years have passed, is right. How’s the family?”
“They’re fine, but I’m alone this trip,” he answered somewhat abruptly.
“On business?”
He filled his lungs with smoke, then discharged a gray cloud at the ceiling. “No. . . no. I’m taking a vacation, sort of. Yeah, a vacation. Every year we go to Mexico, or some other nutty place, me and Marion, but this year I decided I’d do something I’d really like. So I took off by myself to see my friend Al Pendleton in Boston. Yes sir! And already I feel fine.”
He slapped the arm of the chair, and some puffs of dust seeped from the worn seams of the leather. At the same time he grinned. There had always been a froglike aspect to Norbie Hess’s face; now that he’d grown so stout, the resemblance was more marked than ever before. The drooping eyelids over the bulging eyes (I’m sure an oculist would have judged him exophthalmic), the wide mouth and flat nose, the scarcely noticeable chin that was surrounded by jowls and wattles—all combined to enhance the illusion. There even appeared to be a slight throbbing in his throat, a trait common to all members of the frog order, I believe. It was curious.
Arousing myself from these reflections, I assured him there was no one on earth I’d rather see, which was true enough, and suggested a drink.
“A drink? Hell, we’ll have a hundred!” he responded heartily.
I went to the kitchen.
8
FILLING IN THE YEARS
Of late, I’ve done little drinking. Alcohol in any quantity tends to make me fanciful. Oh, I can manage five or six highballs, but beyond that I drift off into a visionary world. That’s what happened to me one night last winter, when the police from the patrol car paid me a call. I guess I was shouting and raising a rumpus. They nearly carted me off to the town jail. Later I found out that these patrol cars pass any given point on Beacon Street every five minutes. So, rather than risk a second such disagreeable episode, I abandoned my habit of getting merry on Saturday evenings. Even the simplest pleasures of life prove fugitive.
When I offered my friend a drink, therefore, I wasn’t at all sure I had one. I was in luck, however, for the pantry contained two thirds of a bottle of bourbon. This, together with ice and glasses, I transported back to the parlor.
Norbie drank four ounces of the stuff in two gulps, refilled the tumbler and began talking about his recent past. Evidently he had prospered. After more than twenty years of working for a manufacturer of heavy construction equipment—bulldozers and things—he was now a vice-president of the firm. He treated me to a description of his responsibilities, of his innovations and achievements, and of his celebrity in the world of dam building and road laying. I was quite impressed. Though Norbie had always been an estimable fellow—warm, generous and good company—I’d never thought him particularly brainy. His great success surprised me a little but delighted me much. I was impressed, as I’ve said, and I told him so.
Encouraged, he went on, rattling off production figures, sales increases, profit percentages, and other critical statistics—all the while drinking his whiskey. Three glasses he consumed in something less than fifteen minutes. After a spell he realized how much of the conversation he was appropriating and suddenly fell silent. I could see that he was waiting for me to give a similar account of my own career, but for the life of me I could think of nothing to say. The sad truth was that I had no accomplishments of that sort to present. Since the war my life had been a patchwork of miscellany. Growing panicky, I was within an ace of telling him about my bone sculptures in the basement—a topic in which he would’ve had little interest, I’m sure, and might even have considered bizarre—when he sensed my embarrassment and resumed speaking.
“By God!” he exclaimed with a laugh that made his pendulous cheeks tremble. “I’ll bet you’re still chasing the women! You never did put your head
in the noose, did you? Jesus, you bachelors get the best of both worlds. Been to Europe lately, Al? Over to see those señoritas and mademoiselles?”
“Not for ten years, Norb,” I replied, grateful for his ending the clumsy pause. It was nice too that he still thought of me as a formidable ladies’ man. I’d been one—once. “At least ten years, and maybe a bit more.”
“That long? Honest to Pete? Time flies! My kids used to love those postcards you sent. They brought them to school. How come you stopped going over?”
“My mother died. I had to manage the property. I tried renting the house, but it never seemed to work out right.”
“Oh. That’s a shame. We all went to Europe four years ago and I was kind of hoping to run into you in a café or someplace—you know, by chance. Tried to get a little absinthe while I was there, but the liquor-store guys just laughed at me. Europeans are strange, in my opinion. They got funny ways. Near the Eiffel Tower I saw a fellow using a roller—what people call a steam roller, though nobody’s used steam in forty years—to fix a hole in the street. Anyhow, it was the dinkiest damn roller I ever saw. It was the size of a five-gallon drum—no exaggeration, Al. I mean, this contraption was so small it was powered by an air-cooled engine, like a lawnmower. It was pretty stupid. What the hell! If you’re going to make a machine, make a man-sized one instead of piddling around.”
He unbuttoned his paisley sport shirt and blew on his pink hairless chest. “Boy, it’s hotter than a June bride in a feather bed,” he declared. Then he swallowed some whiskey. “The money they have there,” he went on, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. “Ever notice how torn and dirty it is? When I first saw it I said to Marion, ‘These people will never get anywhere with money like that. Who’s going to work hard for such crummy-looking paper?’ Later on we met this stockbroker from Virginia, and you know what he says? He says that France is the only country in the world where the money falls apart in your hands, and you can’t tear the toilet paper.”
With this, Norbie chuckled vehemently. It sounded like the rumble of a locomotive in a long tunnel. I laughed too, but knowing how the French place their faith in gold and other tangibles rather than in printed paper, I really didn’t think it quite so amusing.
Becoming serious again, my friend said, “The morals over there—that’s another thing. You know me—I’m no Holy Willie. But just the same, there’s limits. Pornography, whores all over the streets, gambling—and they all drink like fish. I don’t mind a grown man guzzling, but old women and children? Take London. I was in a pub having a glass of that watery Scotch they give you when a boy about fourteen comes in and orders a beer. Fourteen, Al—maybe not even that.”
“Well, Norbie,” I said hastily, before the opportunity vanished, “I can understand the reason for it.”
“You can?” he asked, surprised.
“Certainly,” I declared craftily. “Fourteen—that’s the age of pub-erty.”
A moment passed before the joke registered, but then he exploded in guffaws. “Oh, you dog! I walked right into that one. The age of pub-erty! By God, you still have that funny sense of humor, buddy. I’ll have to remember that one.”
In this fashion we passed the better part of two hours. He carried the burden of the conversation, but now and then Ì contributed my mite. Old escapades were resuscitated, and though they were usually amusing, they were not invariably so. One episode—a brawl in a San Jose bar during which I’d broken a bottle over the head (luckily helmeted) of an S.P.—I’d just as soon have forgotten forever.
The whiskey dwindled, though I was still sipping my initial glass. Nevertheless, my guest showed no signs of inebriation. I decided that in such a leviathan, in such a monstrous body, so small a quantity of liquor was bound to become hopelessly lost—to vanish without a trace.
“Listen, Al,” he said to me when the banjo clock in the hall struck five. “How about calling up a hotel—one that’s nearby—and reserving a room for me?”
“A room? Whatever for?” I said, pretending indignation. “I’ve got a houseful of rooms. I insist you stay here.”
He protested, of course, but only perfunctorily. When I squelched his last argument, relief was patent on his full-moon face.
Toting his two valises, I led him up the stairs and showed him into the summer guest room, which, facing north, was comparatively cool. The quilted armchair he sat in cried out in alarm but managed to support the weight. With some difficulty he untied and removed his shoes while I quickly made up the fourposter bd. I gave him towels and he went out to the bathroom to take a shower.
After counting the money in my wallet, I skipped down the stairs and hurried off to the package store a couple of blocks away. I then went on to the supermarket.
He was still showering when I returned with two quarts of Canadian whiskey and a shopping bag full of groceries. I hoped the hot water would hold out.
It was after six before he finally came down. I was standing in the kitchen, not sure what to do.
“Something smells good,” he said.
“Oh? It does?” I asked, puzzled. “I haven’t begun to cook. What could it be?”
“I don’t know, but it smells great. Can’t you smell it, Al?”
Suddenly I realized what it was. “Oh, that!” I said. “It’s. . . it’s just some. . . some canned stew I had for lunch.”
I don’t like telling lies, but the truth in this case might only have upset him. I continued rapidly, “I’ve got a couple of good steaks, Norbie. Give me a half an hour and I’ll have them—”
“Oh, hell!” he interrupted me. “You don’t want to cook in weather like this. Horseshoe nails! Listen, a guy on the plane told me about this terrific Italian restaurant—the Cafe Gubbio. Ever hear of it? No? Well, it’s only supposed to be the best in Boston. Let’s head for there.”
“All right,” I agreed.
Norbie grinned like a cartoon bullfrog. “You couldn’t cook up enough food for me anyhow. It takes a hell of a lot of chow to keep my ass as fat as this,” he chortled, slapping his rump loudly.
9
THE WAIF
Stories are so easily read, one is apt to surmise they are easily written as well. I am learning that this is not the case. No matter how steadfastly I try to stick to my narrative, extraneous elements continue to intrude. Eulalia mentioned the dog, I see, and now I’ve spoken of the odor in the kitchen. Bear with me while I explain.
Roughly a week ago a puppy appeared in my driveway. He was three months old perhaps—a gray, short-haired mongrel with the blunt face of a boxer and the enormous droopy ears of a spaniel. His movements were awkward; I assumed he was sick or had suffered an injury of some sort. It was not until I picked the little fellow up and examined him closely that I discovered he was blind. His eyes were a watery beige in color and quite without pupils. Motions in front of them elicited no reflex whatsoever.
Where had he come from? Heaven knows. Since he could scarcely have traveled far by himself, and since he wore no identifying collar, I concluded that a passer-by had abandoned him there—a heartless act, in my opinion.
I took him in and kept him for the next several days, during which time he gorged himself on milk and chopped meat. Despite his affliction he was as gleeful and frolicsome as any puppy in this world. As he had never known the blessing of eyesight, he had no cause to regret the lack of it. How many senses do men lack, I wondered, without ever suspecting their absence. We are all blind to much that is around us.
I enjoyed the company of the pup immensely. What a lively creature he was! He would lick my hands, nibble my fingers, stoutly oppose me in tugs of war over a bedroom slipper, gambol about the parlor as best he could and bark and bay as energetically (if not as ferociously) as the wildest of dingoes. Homer was the name I gave him, because though sightless, he both played and sang. His tail, which was ridiculously long and as pointy as a newly sharpened pencil, oscillated unceasingly and with a force that set his entire torso into sympathetic motion.
Literally, the tail wagged the dog.
We had great fun together, yes. It was a pity Eulalia objected to him. The trouble lay in that Homer blundered into everything, and she was fearful that he’d knock her off the rope-legged table, I suggested keeping the library door shut, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“Why not hide me away in a cupboard?” she asked sarcastically. “You close my door too often as it is, and you know I like it open so I can listen to what’s going on. No, what you must do is get rid of that ugly animal. Get rid of him, Al. After all, you’re not a schoolboy any more—are you?”
And she was adamant. I was unable to persuade her to change her mind.
Thus, on the day before Norbie came, I carried poor Homer down cellar and did what I had to do. While he rolled on his back with his paws dangling in the air and his stiletto-tipped tail wagging passionately, I fired my Navy .45 automatic into his head. There was no other course, really. Had I turned him loose, a car would soon have run him over. As for the S.P.C.A.—they’d surely have gassed him, and that I felt was a much less humane method of extinction. Though the deed saddened me, I experienced no guilt. It was so marvelously swift; one second he was with me, and the next he was gone. I was also comforted by the incontrovertible belief that the little beast would attain elsewhere a sounder body than the one he was forsaking here. That was a silver lining to the cloud.
I had planned to bury his carcass in the backyard, but then I realized I might make good use of his skeleton for my osteo-art. It would provide exactly the kind of material I most needed. Osteo-art, or the fashioning of sculpture from bones, is a cherished hobby of mine. Years back I read about it in a magazine, and having an abundant supply of ribs, vertebrae, shoulder blades and kneecaps ready to hand in to the charnel house, I resolved to give it a whirl. I soon turned out some creditable pieces, too. Once stimulated, it’s astonishing how inventive even an untrained person can become. On my first attempt, using only a split thigh-bone and a scapula, I created a lovely sailboat. Afterward I made a tortoise from foot phalanges and a broken hipbone, and then a chess set—a strangely beautiful one—out of a batch of finger bones.
The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton Page 3