Lydia

by Howard Fast

  “You hang onto every last bit of that stuff—and yet you practically force it on people?”

  “Which perhaps is why I hang onto it, Harvey. You know, Harvey, the only really glaring fault you have is in considering yourself so much more clever than anyone else—”

  “That is not so.”

  “No? Perhaps we all change, Harvey. Anyway, your suit is back from the cleaner, and you can change now. Unless you want to tell me what all this nonsense about Sarbine and the necklace and this very nice girl amounts to. Do you?”

  “I do, but I don’t know how to explain it. Not in time for dinner, anyway.”

  “Yet you ask me a question, Harvey, the answer to which would have to explain my whole life, my childhood, girlhood, and all my young loves and dreams and ambitions and what they finally came to—and you want a reply in one sentence. That’s quite unreasonable, isn’t it?”

  I stared at her for a long moment; then I nodded.

  “So just think about this and that, Harvey.”

  “All right, I will,” I agreed, and then I went upstairs to get dressed.

  I was folding one of my deceased uncle’s neckties into a proper knot, when there was a knock on the door. “Come in, it’s open,” I said.

  Then Lydia walked into the room—a woman of twenty-three, but beautiful and very nicely dressed for a change.

  “Well,” she said, “you are overwhelmed, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Your aunt is the nicest woman on earth, Harvey. At first I thought she was in with the Sarbines for divvies on the insurance, but now I’ve changed my mind.”

  “She’s got all the money she needs and anyway it’s a half-witted notion. You’re very appealing in that gown.”

  “What is wrong with you, Harvey?”

  “I don’t know. I am trying to work it out.”

  We went downstairs then, and the Sarbines were already there, established and at ease in the living room, while Aunt Evelyn mixed drinks for them. Lydia clung to my arm while we were introduced:

  “My nephew, Harvey Krim, and this is his friend, Lydia Anderson.”

  Sarbine was both charmed and charming, and I must give him credit for the way he handled the situation. He rose, and bowed to Lydia and then shook hands with me, explaining how delighted he was to see me again, and then he said to his wife:

  “My dear, you know Mr. Krim.”

  “It’s always a pleasure to meet Mr. Krim.” And then to Lydia, “And you, my dear—what did you say your name was? Lydia, isn’t it? What a lovely name!”

  My Aunt Evelyn is a good deal sharper than most people suspect, so I would not be willing to say how much of the charade she saw through. However it was, she played the perfect hostess, easing us over the rough spots and successfully manufacturing the surface impression of a group of congenial people with no other purpose than to have a pleasant dinner together. She played the same game that Helen Sarbine was trained in, but played it a great deal better, with a quarter century of pro experience behind her. When we went in for dinner, I had Mrs. Sarbine on my arm, being her loveliest and most seductive self. They were a disciplined pair, I must admit, and they refrained from making any foolish or obvious remarks about southern accents. We began the conversation, quite properly, about the weather; and as is usually the case, we bewailed the absence of spring—today, at the end of April, being as balmy and warm as summer. My aunt claimed the right of an old woman to cherish summer and warmth, and did not know how she could quite bear another winter in this climate. Lydia smiled and was agreeable without saying very much at all. My aunt mentioned that she had even thought of selling the old stone house, and both Sarbines protested volubly.

  How could she even dream of such a thing, they wanted to know.

  From the weather, we passed over to the food, praising it highly. Helen Sarbine said that she had heard of Mrs. Sokol’s merits, which were shouted through the county, and that she was pleasantly surprised to find that the food was so light and delicious. Usually Czech food was too heavy.

  “But what makes you think Mrs. Sokol is Czech?” my aunt asked.

  “The name.”

  “Oh, the name—of course. But you see in our country, Mrs. Sarbine, names weave a very tangled web indeed. We seem to have lost the clean-cut definitions of Europeans—”

  “More’s the pity,” Mark Sarbine shrugged. I watched them carefully, and decided never to underestimate my aunt again. She had come very close indeed to pinning them down.

  “—and retain only a sort of blurry handful of threads. Mrs. Sokol is old Pennsylvania Dutch—not Dutch at all, as I am sure you know, living here yourselves, but rather an Americanization of Deutsch or German. But generically, they think of themselves as Pennsylvania Dutch, as a grouping rather than a nationality—but I am sure you know all this much better than I do.”

  “Not at all. Please go on.”

  “There’s nothing to go on with,” my aunt smiled. “She married a young farmer named Sokol, but I believe that was a contraction of a Polish name. Names are very misleading. I would be hard put to guess what nationality Sarbine represented.”

  “Oh?” Sarbine shrugged. “American, Mrs. Bodin. Purely American.”

  “Well, now—there is a pleasant answer. Yet you will admit that it is an unusual name?”

  “Perhaps. But any more so than your name, Bodin?”

  “Ah, my name,” Aunt Evelyn sighed. “Bodin—it doesn’t mean a blessed thing, does it? As a matter of fact, it’s another one of those small appellative lies that we indulge in so frequently in America. My husband was half Jewish. His father’s name was Bodinski, and the old man changed it.”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Sarbine.

  Mr. Sarbine changed the line of the conversation rather abruptly at this point, beginning a discussion of plays he had seen in the current season. It amazed me to hear how many of the season’s plays my aunt had seen and how definite her opinions were. The talk became quite animated, but Lydia and I listened without taking part.

  “It cannot be that the theater and youth have parted company in this day and age?” Sarbine finally asked Lydia.

  “My profession,” Lydia said apologetically, “did not give me much time for the theater, Mr. Sarbine.”

  “Ah—understandable. But you, Mr. Krim?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not my dish of tea entirely,” I told him. “Not that I don’t enjoy the theater now and then, but I think the whole of the theater today has fallen under the spell and the curse of the probable—and has thereby become deadly dull.”

  “What do you mean, Harvey, the probable?” my aunt asked.

  “Just that—the probable, the usual, the tedious. There is so much inner examination that the whole notion of incident and adventure, the whole cult of the improbable has vanished.”

  “Cult of the improbable?” Sarbine smiled. “That is an odd notion. Just what do you mean? As far as I can see, life is probable, predictable and most frequently dull. Fiction is something else. Would you restrict the theater to fiction?”

  “I don’t think that oddness must be relegated to fiction, not at all. Take this case I am on now—you know, I am sure, that I am an insurance-company investigator—”

  “I should think he would know,” my aunt broke in. “It is his necklace, Harvey.”

  Sarbine smiled with appreciation. The meal was onto the coffee now, and Sarbine held up a cigar. “If the ladies will not object? Will you have one, Krim?”

  “Please do smoke,” my aunt said.

  “Thank you. I do think,” Sarbine said, “that Mr. Krim was merely approaching himself in the third person. Yes, this case of the necklace, Mr. Krim. The improbable would have you recover it and return it triumphantly. But you won’t, will you?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I don’t think I could ever recover it. Yet if I were to turn up its exact duplicate—that would be rather improbable, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarbine smiled. �
�Sometimes the so-called improbable or impossible is simply the obvious. For instance, people who have very precious jewels frequently do have copies made. It would hardly be surprising to turn up one in such a case.”

  “Perhaps that is exactly why the improbable is so enticing—because it is obvious. Take the case of an old man who walks out of his house, just as he does every other day, steps off the curb and is run down and killed by a car.”

  “Harvey!” my aunt cried. “That is just what happened yesterday to poor Mr. Gorman!”

  “Terrible thing,” Sarbine said. “Terrible thing. Yet old men—slow reactions—”

  “I think,” my aunt said, rising, “that we will go into the living room, seeing that the conversation is a little less than pleasant. No, Harvey”—I had begun to leave the table—“I prefer that you and Mr. Sarbine have your cigars here. You know where the brandy is.”

  I nodded, and when the women had left, I said something about my aunt and cigar smoke. “Terribly sorry,” Sarbine said. “I should not have lit it.”

  I poured brandy.

  “To the necklace!” Sarbine noted raising his glass.

  “Yes. Yes, indeed.”

  “You astonish me sometimes, Krim.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes, you certainly do. You haven’t been near the police since yesterday, have you?”

  “No.”

  “In other words,” Sarbine smiled, “the deal you made with your company precludes the police.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Oh, no,” Sarbine said. “Not at all, my dear boy. You’re after a fee, and a great big fat fee it is. What have they offered you—twenty-five thousand?”

  “Why don’t you give me the necklace?”

  “No.” I started to speak, and he interrupted me sharply. “No—just listen to me, Mr. Krim. I am going to collect the insurance on that necklace. Now if you will give me your word of honor that from here on, you will not interfere, I shall be perfectly willing to pay some nominal sum—perhaps five thousand dollars—in exchange for your cooperation. If you are unwilling to make such a commitment to me, I shall have to eliminate you. Such a prospect does not bother me—believe me. I have a situation here that I must see through. It was unfortunate that the old fool, Gorman, recognized the necklace as an imitation. It caused the improbable to happen to him. Now, I will not allow anything else to stand in my way—not anything, Mr. Krim. So have we an agreement or not?”

  It was an enormous temptation. I don’t claim to have had a cause or a principle or a loyalty to anything more than fifty thousand dollars. Lydia said afterward that I hated him and everything that he stood for so intensely that I could not have made a deal with him, and I will confess that I was by no means crazy about him. On the other hand, when he promised to eliminate me, I had absolutely no reason to doubt him.

  So I thought about it for a while, and then I said, “No—I am afraid not, Mr. Sarbine. We have no agreement. I want the necklace.”

  “And that’s your last word, Mr. Krim?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You’re a stupid ass, Mr. Krim. You are a miserable, wretched and sniveling ass. I don’t even feel sorry for you. You are nothing but an extension of the chaos—the money-grubbing, Jew-inspired disorder that in your country parades under the title of civilization. You disgust me.”

  I nodded, because I couldn’t think of any adequate reply to so complete and unrestrained a statement. He rose and went into the living room, and I followed him. I was not surprised when he made his excuses for so early a departure.

  “But it’s only ten o’clock,” Aunt Evelyn said.

  “Well, early rising and much to do—you know. Terribly sorry, Mrs. Bodin.”

  There was some handshaking and the appropriate social efforts, and then my aunt took them to the door. I lit a cigarette and sipped my brandy, and Lydia watched me.

  “Not so good, Harvey?” she finally asked.

  “No. Not so good.”

  I heard their car start.

  “They going to scrag us?”

  “What do you mean, scrag us? Why can’t you ever say what you mean?”

  “It’s just an old-fashioned term for murder. I hate to keep saying murder.”

  “I should think so,” my aunt said, returning to the room. “It’s not a terribly civilized expression, yet I think I could murder the Sarbines if I were put to it.”

  “I do wish you could murder them before they murder us,” Lydia sighed.

  “Are you serious?” my aunt demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she, Harvey?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I think she is.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, if that’s the way you feel about it, why don’t you get in touch with the police?”

  I shook my head.

  “Harvey and the police—well, it’s sticky,” Lydia explained. “They don’t get along.”

  “Don’t you think you ought to tell me the whole story?” Aunt Evelyn asked.

  “No.”

  “All right. But let me just say that I think it is damned ungrateful. You came squalling down here for refuge. You slept in my beds, wore my clothes, ate my food, drank my liquor—”

  “I know,” I said miserably.

  “But you can’t—”

  I shook my head and bent a finger at Lydia, “I know. I’m a sort of louse, Aunt Evelyn. I’ll write you a letter or something about this. Meanwhile I think the wisest thing for us to do is to leave.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now, I’m afraid.”

  “All right,” my aunt said tartly. “If you must, you must. But don’t think, Harvey Krim, that I am going to enjoy thinking about your behavior.” Then she said to Lydia, “Darling, I want you to have that dress. There’s a chest full of sweaters upstairs, and I want you to take one, just in case the night chills off.”

  Lydia wiped her eyes as she went upstairs for the sweater. My aunt sat on the couch and glared at me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  WE WERE IN THE CAR and moving slowly up the driveway toward the road—a good two hundred yards, the way those houses are set back from the road—and Lydia was telling me that if she had an aunt like my Aunt Evelyn, she would think twice before insulting her, and the very least she would attempt would be to treat her like a human being. I was trying to assemble some appropriate rejoinder, something that would make it plain that the best and kindest thing I could have done for my Aunt Evelyn was exactly what I had done—get out of there as quickly as possible—when my lights picked up a car blocking the road—that is, parked crosswise to the road.

  I slowed down, and then came to a stop. Mark Sarbine walked through the lights, across the front of my car, and opened the door on my side.

  “Get out, Krim,” he said shortly. His order was backed by a fat, ugly .45-caliber automatic pistol he held in his right hand. “You too, Southern Comfort,” he said to Lydia. “Get out on your side and stand there beside the car.” Now his wife appeared in the headlights behind him, tall and gorgeous and unperturbed by our impending assassination. “You stay exactly where you are, Krim. Don’t move.”

  “I understand you,” I agreed. “I am not moving. But this doesn’t make any sense at all, Mr. Sarbine.”

  “Suppose you let me decide what makes sense.”

  “I mean—after all, what are you going to do with us?”

  “Kill you.”

  “No,” I grinned weakly. “You don’t mean that.”

  “Why not, Krim?”

  “Because it’s stupid. You’re an intelligent man. Intelligent people don’t go around killing people who frustrate them. That’s just a stupid, neurotic way to solve problems.”

  “Harvey,” Lydia said. “He means it, Harvey.”

  “No—you don’t.”

  “Well, what’s my alternative, Krim? You tell me.”

  “But it’s a stupid way to go about anything. It’s not just killing us. What about my a
unt?”

  “I’ll have to kill her too. And the cook.”

  “What is this, some crazy joke?” I asked him.

  “Harvey,” Lydia said, her voice strangely hard and as cold as ice, “it’s no joke. You have about sixty seconds to grow up, Harvey, and to face the fact that all of us die sooner or later. You too, Mr. Sarbine.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Sarbine demanded. “Helen, keep that kid quiet—”

  “No!” Lydia cried. “Don’t move, Helen—not one step! And you too, Sarbine—don’t move! Don’t move the gun! Don’t move your body! Just look over this way! Do you see? I am holding a Luger in my hand, a dependable German pistol, cocked and with a bullet in the chamber. It is trained on you, Mr. Sarbine—and at this range, I could hardly miss. I know this pistol. It is the same one my father used to blow his brains out with when you drove him to his death, and since then I have been practicing with it every week. Yes, every Thursday, on her day off, your foolish little southern hillbilly spent on the police pistol range, practicing with this Luger. Do you know, I am a better shot than any cop at the 457th Precinct. I don’t have to think or aim—I am on target. I am always on target—” There, in the headlights, she held the pistol on Sarbine—steadily, her small hand very firm.

  “What the devil are you up to?” Sarbine demanded. Helen Sarbine took a step toward Lydia, who snapped:

  “Oh no! Tell her, Mr. Sarbine—or you’ll be a widower! Tell her that I’d have no more compunction killing her than I would a snake!”

  “Helen—damn it, stay where you are!” And then to Lydia, “Suppose I believe you. Then we’re at an impasse. Drop your gun and I drop mine.”

  “No. Not at all, Mr. Sarbine—or is it Von Kesselring?” Lydia said. “We are not equal by a long shot. You can kill Harvey—true enough. But then I kill you. You can’t kill me before I kill you. Move the barrel of your pistol just a fraction, and I shoot. That’s a promise, and please give me the justification.”

  “Lydia!” I whispered. “Do you know what you’re saying? Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Indeed I do. I’m playing my own superman game. Come, my fat and loud-mouthed Nordic friend—let’s have a test of courage. Let’s see if you have enough guts to pull that trigger. Suppose I were to count to three, and then pull the trigger of this Luger?”