The Man Who Loved Children

by Christina Stead

  “No, no!” She looked at the child for a long time, revolving something in her mind. “If someone would kill it for me—I must! I hate to. Kill a living creature! I can’t kill a fly! And I haven’t the strength, not to, not to get a fresh sheet out of the drawer. I tug and tug. It stays fast. What can I do? You are good, you are so strong, young, and healthy—” she paused.

  “My father would kill it for you,” offered Louie. The old woman refused at once: no, no, that would never do. No one must ever know she killed her cat, only someone she could trust, trust as she trusted no one. (Louie, for instance.)

  “All right,” said Louie.

  The old woman stared, as if in astonishment, “You will.”

  “Yes.”

  The old woman began to cuddle herself, “Such a dear sweet little girl, with her little brown feet—” She paused and said in a businesslike tone, “Tom is out on the front porch.” She immediately led the way to the rarely opened front door and showed the white cat sulking under a bench. Angela had tried to catch him herself. Louie said they had to have a box, and Angela at once produced a suitable box from under the kitchen table, and brought a hammer and nails, in a marvelously efficient way.

  “You will have to give me a piece of your stew meat,” said Louie. The little woman fetched her a piece without a murmur, like the smallest drummerboy to the largest general. And Louie managed, in a very short time, with savant caresses taught her by her animal-catching father, to get the cat and drop it in the box. They slammed down the lid. At once, the cat seemed to know its fate. It seemed to swell to twice the size, its hair stiffened, and its magnificent blue eyes shot rays of fire: its eyeballs turned to flames, and it began screaming in a horrid voice that neither had ever heard from a cat before. Louie felt a fear of the mad beast, and a wicked lust to down it and finish it, just because with all its shrieking it was helpless.

  “In here,” muttered the old woman. She led the way towards the locked door of the passage, unlocked it with difficulty, and put on the light by a string. There was a rusty old bath covered with dust.

  “We’ll fill the bath and drop the box in,” said she. “You do it, my dear. You are so very kind: you do it. I can’t see it,” and she hurried out, leaving the girl with the cat. Louie turned the rusted tap and let the water run: the cat cowered and gleamed in the box. When the bath was full enough Louie got the box and pushed it under. The cat struggled with large floating gestures in its prison. At the first convulsion Louie felt a sort of sickness, then she pushed it hard under and, sitting on the edge of the bath, kept it under with her feet. The box heaved a little. The cat took a long time to drown. Presently she came out to the kitchen to find the old lady sitting there at the table, silent, with her great lamps glowing in her face.

  “I did it,” said Louie.

  The old woman thanked her but rather perfunctorily. “I would give you a cake,” she said, “but I have none, none at all. I will get you a little cake.”

  “Thank you,” said Louie hungrily.

  “Not now, not now. Perhaps your dear mother wants you, dear?”

  “No, she’s out.”

  “I don’t like cream cakes,” said the old lady politely. They had talked some fifteen minutes about cakes before Angela heard her husband’s footsteps on the cinderpath. She bundled the little girl out the front door and directed her round,

  “Come again, soon, soon, darling, little darling!” she whispered.

  Louie was sorry that she had only been invited over for the cat, but she believed that the little woman loved her and that there was peace in her foul cottage.

  2 Intrepid passengers.

  It seemed at first as Louie edged in through the jammed gate that there was perfect quiet in the orchard. The sun shone, there was a flip-flop of leaves, and suddenly a silvery leap of a young boy’s voice. The powwow was still going on! Little-Sam jumped up,

  “There’s Looloo! What did you do, Looloo?”

  “Looloo went without her shoes,” Ernie observed. Sam’s head rose through the grass too.

  “Loochus, why did you go without shoes?”

  “You said it would be better if the whole population went without shoes, it would harden them.”

  Sam looked and suddenly popped with laughter, then cried, “You’re a fathead!”

  He dropped down in the grass again and waited. At last a voice came, “Go on, Pad!”

  “There will be anagravitational ships, a word I made up myself,” said Sam, “the ease with which gravitation could be cut off is so simple to us nowadays—of course we’re in the year 3001, Loo-loo!—that it seems absurd—excruciating!—that twentieth-century brains which did show some signs of awakening out of the medieval torpor could have been so slow to grasp it—in fact, it was not even hinted at till 1994. Why? Their so-called minds were preoccupied with what might be truly described as self-destruction—pansewerpipes or universal self-destruction. And a few are still seen, in museums, the cavorite ships of Wellsian cavorite, I mean, but in the main they had long been thrown into the discard even in the year of our Ford 2050, because of the simplicity with which gravitation could be cut off and taken in, to a major or minor extent at will, by a simple turn of a few levers or the pressing of buttons—the physical and practical application I will describe to you later, kids, or perhaps Ernest-Paine or Little-Sam themselves will be the ones to really work it out in some laboratory later on—and now I’m speaking of the year of our Ford 1936,” he ended solemnly.

  “Oh, gee, let’s go and get on the job, Pad,” said Saul.

  “Directional Towers were then necessary for the stages of the cavorite ships,” dictated Sam. “They were stationed here and there throughout the earth on high places, all done by our friends of the American Geographical Society and introducing the true Surplane Life, or Age of Surplaners. These Surplaners utilizing the Stratosphere Stations attained terrific speed—1200 mph was attained in 2050 as even little Tomtom learned in his kindergarten physics book. Our experimenters now reach 3800 mph, and we will soon supersede the need for vessels at all—it is fairly safe to predict that in ten years, say year of our Ford 3011, there will be projection by dematerialization; the cartridges in which the passengers will take their places will be sundered, smashed to smithereens, and so shot through space, as gas or lighter than gas, avoiding friction.”

  “But the passengers?” inquired Ernest, aghast.

  “Also smashed to smithereens and reassembled,” Sam expounded coolly.

  “How?” asked Little-Sam in trepidation. His utter faith in his father made him believe that this would really take place.

  “In tubes,” said Sam airily. “Each passenger will be shot into a tube and decomposed.”

  “No one would travel,” declared Ernest.

  “That’s what they said when the locomotive came in,” Sam was contemptuous. “We are people of 3001. Each one has a formula and is reassembled according to that minutely correct formula. We haven’t the freaks and neuroses of the Dark Ages. We were born according to formula: we are not a hazardous aggregation of mean genes. We approximate a mean, the mean of our intellectual class. When we are born, we are studied, and deviations, if noxious to the species, are suppressed; good deviations are preserved. And furthermore, we bear our formula on our arm band!”

  “But the arm band would be decomposed in the tube,” Louisa discovered triumphantly.

  Sam grinned and bit his lip. “The formula for each passenger would be radiotelegraphed ahead with the notice of his having taken a ticket,” said he. “Thus,” he suddenly cried, “Looloo, you meant to be mean and clever, but actually you merely gave me another idea—thus, you could resurrect the dead from the residue of fires, after accidents—resurrection would be real, not a faded dream.”

  “That is wonderful,” said Louie, much struck.

  “Slightually,” Sam smirked, “slightually, your poor little Sam is wonderful, but a prophet in his own mud puddle”

  After a silence of digest
ion, Saul said, “Let’s do our job, Pad, go on.” He started dragging Sam to a sitting position.

  “O.K. Looloo, I been giving the boys their places in my Planned Economy. Ernest-Paine is my lieutenant while I’m away and Louie ain’t a looie, she’s going to run the women for me.”

  “I won’t do what Ernie says,” yelled Saul.

  “You got to do what you’re own legally elected chief says,” gently said Sam. “And you’re free to elect your own boss, you know, boys, as long as it’s Ernie; and if there’s complaints you kin throw him out en eleck another as long as it’s Ernest-Paine, just like the Bolshies.”

  “I won’t,” said Little-Sam.

  “I’ll make ya,” Ernest was calm.

  “You shut up, you rat,” Saul called lazily from the orchard path.

  Sam softly admonished, “Don’t call humans rats—rats are superior.”

  “I’ll knock you into the middle of next week if you call me a rat,” Ernest replied.

  Sam chuckled and winked at Louie.

  “You stink,” drawled Saul, “you stink like Mr. Gardner, you stink like Mr. Kydd on ice; you stinkurate!”

  “Go on,” whispered Sam, letting out a kick at Ernest who was hopping over “the grave” (a depression in the orchard where seedling boxes had once been). “Go on, Ernest-Paine!”

  “I’ll murder you for that,” yelled Ernie at once, “I’ll push in your daylights.”

  Sam flattened the grass with both hands and squatted down in a flat place, saying gleefully, “Go on, Sawbones, give it to him; go on, Ernest-Paine, attaboy!”

  Saul could never keep his temper and had flushed. Ernest came up to him coolly and said, “C’mon, c’mon, you coward!”

  “Sawbones ain’t no cowyard,” said Sam gently. Saul rushed up from his position below Ernest, as if about to take flight, and rolled into Ernest with both fists going, landing both, though, on his chest.

  “He’s fightin mad, Ernest-Paine,” cried Sam, “you’ve got him! Keep your temper, Sawbones! You’ll never down him, Ernest! They’ve gone into a clinch! They love each other! Break! Get him on the point, or you’ll never do it. Sawbones, a foul!”

  The two boys separated, Saul tottering aside in his misery. He was crimson, and tears of rage and humiliation were running down his cheeks. Ernest kept dancing at him, a thing that infuriated him. Saul had more solid muscles but always lost his temper, so that Ernest always beat him by first goading him into a paroxysm of resentment.

  “Now,” cried Sam, “Sawbones, go on, bust him wide open!” He laughed genially, more like his eldest sister Jo than himself.

  “Daddy, don’t let him,” cried Tommy, frightened. Sam laughed, putting his great arm round Tommy,

  “Men must fight, Tomahawk (but only for the right). Sawbones must learn to keep his temper. Ernest must learn to hold his own.”

  With a great effort, Saul had for the moment held back his temper and was going at Ernest like a windmill, his eyes wide open and glaring like jellies, his red lips pressed back over his teeth. Ernest, his conceit taken by surprise, was breathing hard, somewhat flustered.

  “Go it, Sawsidge, you’re getting there!” cried Saul’s father. “You’re getting Ernie down. He’s getting woozy.” He turned aside to Little-Sam and remarked very audibly,

  “You see, if Sawbones keeps his temper, he’s got Ernie beat a million, because Sawbones has a better fighting kit!”

  Saul, with a deeper flush and half a smile, lunged at Ernest’s cheek, missed, and himself received a painful blow on the upper arm which made tears of pain come into his eyes.

  “Good hit!” recorded Sam.

  Saul lowered his eyes and began rubbing his arm and stamping his feet and bellowing miserably.

  “Daddy,” said Little-Sam, “make them stop now.”

  “Take it like a man, you fathead,” cried Sam to Saul. “Fight him: what are you bawling for?” He shoved him forward. Saul automatically sent a soft blow wide, and then suddenly, with a loud bellow, turned and ran up the orchard as fast as he could. But his legs were shaking, and he stumbled at every step. Sam shouted,

  “Sawbones, Sawbones!” and impulsively, yanking Tommy to his feet, Sam crowed, “Come on, boys, after him. The boy who ran away! C’mon! Give him the fright of his life!” With shrieks, they started after the fugitive, Sam in front dragging along Little-Sam whose face was anxious. Saul gave a look behind, saw the pack after him, darted sideways through the grasses, and went sprawling behind a young pine tree. He lay there face downwards, sobbing into the earth. Sam came up, with the boys slightly astern, and stood there, for a moment, then poked his son with his toe,

  “Get up, son!”

  Quite broken, Saul began to pick himself up, dispersedly, as if his skeleton had become disarticulated and floated off in impossible directions. Sam got out his handkerchief and wiped Saul’s eyes on it, then said,

  “C’mon, kids: job! Work heals all sorrows!”

  With an occasional sob, Saul tailed along, and in a quarter of an hour it seemed as if there had never been a cloud in the sky. When they were shifting their ladder so as to get on the roof itself, Sam sat down on the edge of the path and, drawing them round him into one of his powwows, said, with his arm along Saul’s shoulder,

  “Kidalonks! When there is bad blood in this family, I want you to get it out of your system by a man-to-man fight. Then we’ll all be very happy and love one another. Nothing is worse than a nursed grudge. Our tempers are our worse natures and when they come along, we give ’em a good physical shakeup and hey, presto! we’re wholesome and clean again, good citizens and good brothers.” He looked round the little manhood with satisfaction. “My good boys,” he said. And then began the difficult, exciting, and dangerous business of climbing on the roof. From it they saw the Cathedral and the capital city.

  3 Henny downtown.

  The capital city, always duller than hard-working, mercantile, familiar Baltimore, is detestable on Sundays, dull and Pharisaical, thought Henny. Nothing but an emergency would have induced her to go downtown on a Sunday: the department stores were shut, there was no obsessed crowd of women on Seventh and Eighth Streets in which she could hide her garments, shabby bag, untended hair, and old skin. Her poverty was naked on the empty streets, and if no one walked abroad she felt all the more ghastly, like a wretched sinner in the sight of God. For Washington is Heaven, and Henny, disfigured, burdened with shameful secrets, felt like a human being would feel on first entering the sight of the angels. She detested perennial Heaven, Sinai’s thunder, the new Jerusalem’s powerful hierarchy; she felt it was the Eden of fleshpot men and ugly women striving for God knows what ugly, unhewn, worthy ends, not for the salvation of miserable creatures like herself. When she had first come to Washington, she had come with no more sense of married life or of social life than a harem-reared woman, being then a gentle, neurotic creature, wearing silk next to the skin and expecting to have a good time at White House receptions. Here she was, Collyer’s youngest spoiled daughter, haggard, threadbare, over-rouged, worrying about how to indebt herself, going to meet a coarse fellow who was her lover merely because she could not get him into trouble. She rarely cried now, but she felt her eyes smart.

  Where, in all the self-righteous lying world, could she turn for a friend? She even thought angrily of her children—they were simply eating up her flesh as they had when they were at the breast, no less. Did they know or would they ever know what a torture cell her life had been for them, borrowing money to buy them clothes, to avoid quarrels with their father, the quarrels already too many and already making cowards and sneaks of them? What would have happened if I’d never been born? she thought; they would never have been born. That hypocrite would have got some other woman with his yellow hair and big smile, but I should not have been responsible for their calvary, nor had even this toothache!

  She thought bitterly about all men, most of all about her brother-in-law, her beautiful sister Eleanor’s husband. He had loved Henn
y first and then discovered that Eleanor was the favorite and would get a bonus as well as her share of the estate; or that was how Henny put it to herself.

  How hot it was in Washington! It was a hundred degrees in the shade, at least, thought Henny, and she seemed already to smell herself; she was no better than the painted young girls who buzzed round the journalists in the cafe. She looked in open kitchen windows, at the suits worn by little boys, at their scuffed shoes. She swept along without looking at adults, thinking of her children and the mounting cost of keeping them. They were such fine big children (as everyone said constantly) that a suit of clothes lasted a boy about three months. She thought of her big house on the hill and snickered bitterly. Even Bert Anderson, who had known her for so long, would give a lot to get inside it, to be able to say,

  “I was up at Sam Pollit’s the other Sunday, you know he married the Collyer clam-and-oyster money, young Henrietta, she was a Baltimore belle at one time, and they certainly have a crowd of fine little kiddies—was kidding Sam telling him his Roosevelt, the Great Democrat, would soon be the forgotten man,” etc. This little preview of Bert Anderson, her stand-by from the Department of Internal Revenue, made Henny smile a little. This red-cheeked, lusty, riotous giant was not a gentleman, but he treated her as a single girl, listened to every word she had to say, always seemed eager, gave her advice, and was fascinated by money matters. He called her jocosely “young Henrietta,” too, tried to improve her appearance in his brutal style, behaved like a grizzly-bear cub, and had no morality, character, ambitions, or way of life that she need respect.

  Henny went upstairs when she came to the bar and restaurant near Twelfth Street and was glad to see that it was after one already. Bert would be there promptly at one-fifteen. She fiddled with the table silver and the menu, wished she had dawdled longer, muttered, “But I feel too conspicuous parading up and down the streets smirking nicely at mothers with children: and I might run into one of the Commissioner’s fine friends, too. Bert is never late.”