This Old Heart of Mine

by Thomas Berger

  Reinhart bowed slightly from the waist, which motion caused the turban to pitch forward and strike the top rim of his sunglasses. He adjusted the headdress, being careful not to brush the fake mustache attached to his upper lip with library paste, which was pulling his mouth into a sneer as it dried—a purely physical phenomenon, for this was the first time he had been the cynosure of a roomful of moral lepers and consequently had never felt less disdainful.

  The Maker, priceless man, as good as his word, had given a hundred cents’ value for every dollar; not only had he collected an audience and, tapping the cleaner’s power cable, brought light; he also found boxes, kegs, stacked newspapers, stools, and even a chair or two, for there had not been a seat in the house. He posted the wall-notices he had earlier characterized as essential, adding one that read: GOD IS WACHING YOU. He directed his scouts in a quick policing-up of the store: there were rats to rout, fallen plaster to sweep, and a grocery counter, dating from Big Ruthie days, to find under a Matterhorn of trash. It was behind this counter that Reinhart now supported himself, knee against the lower shelf where stood his half-empty fifth of gin, another provision of the Maker’s.

  Splendor, who was personally responsible for Reinhart’s debut as orator, had proved a complete washout.

  “Splendor, Splendor,” Reinhart had called down to him on the couch. “Are you sick?”

  The nonchemical interne had revolved agate eyes in the light of the torch, moaning “Very.” He rolled against the wall, face to it, the way people show defeat in novels. His turban lay in the debris of the floor.

  “You don’t have stage fright?” asked Reinhart. “Not you. Why, I can recall your Debating Contest speech before the whole high school. I believe you defended war, while that little skinny girl Angelica Slimp took the opposing view.”

  “I cribbed most of that from Henry Five, by William Shakespeare,” Splendor admitted with a faint smile. “‘Once more into the breach, dear friends.’ Ah, but I feel very grisly at present.”

  “Hey,” Reinhart cried, “you can’t sleep now. It’s after eight and the people will be coming soon.” He took the light off Splendor’s face and directed it upon the leprous wall.

  “Nobody’s coming, Carlo. Nobody cares. You strive, and for what? You find the electricity turned off.”

  “But we’re fixing that, and the Maker’s collecting an audience, and you’ll be just great. I thought your idea was pretty punk until tonight. Now I’m enthusiastic. Really! Hahaha.” Reinhart turned and kicked an old carton through the back window.

  With the flashlight on him again, Splendor said irrelevantly: “You don’t know what it’s like not being respectable. Your mother didn’t run off with Henry Bligh.”

  But in sympathy Reinhart fervently wished she had, and he said, “I’m sorry.”

  “My parents used to play cards every Friday night. One evening Seneca Bligh and my father sat there three hours waiting for their partners—who actually had long departed to St. Louis by Greyhound bus. Well, you’ve seen my father.”

  “I’ve met Mrs. Bligh as well,” Reinhart answered. “But it was fortunate that you are grown up and not a little child on whom such a thing would be crushing—that you have your plans and ideas and can’t be fazed.”

  “True,” Splendor said very weakly. Big Ruthie’s sofa had very high ends, and he hung between them like a vacant hammock.

  “Anyhow,” Reinhart went on, “what is respectability? Pretty boring if you ask me and furthermore a false category. What we want is a celebration of life, because we’ve only got one.”

  “True. But now Dr. Goodykuntz writes that the tuition fee I already paid doesn’t cover the genuine parchment diploma with seal of fourteen-carat gold.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-five dollars, and it’s unethical to practice without it. Why can’t we postpone the meeting until next week?”

  “Splendor, Splendor,” chided Reinhart. “Are you losing your faith in Dr. Goodykuntz? I must say you’re disappointing me, my dear fellow. Remember that the weather’s sure to be far worse in Pocatello and if Dr. Goodykuntz has contracted to give an address tonight, he is already at the auditorium, pouring out inspiration and healing multitudes of sufferers.”

  Splendor sat up and groped on the floor for his turban. “You’ve shamed me, Carlo. Disregard the foregoing negativism. It’s quite true that I am very ill. I may indeed have cancer. No”—he threw a hand towards Reinhart—“no demonstration. I’m not whining. If this burning pain in my solar plexus gets worse, I may have to go to Pocatello for treatment. You see, the pity is that the physician cannot heal himself; the conjunction of two life forces is called for. But first, my work is cut out for me.”

  He rose to his feet, and at the same moment the lights came on—one ceiling bulb behind the partition and several out front.

  “There you are!” cried Reinhart. “The balloon is going up.”

  Soon they heard noises of the arriving audience. Now that he had called Splendor back to duty, Reinhart again became reluctant to associate himself with the project. His reluctance turned to terror when, spying around the partition, he saw the Maker’s confederates bring in seating facilities and the Maker’s chattering girls prepare to use them. The truth was, whores disturbed Reinhart; turning down their solicitations always made him feel like a great swine. In London during the war, he had frequently been almost moved to counter sidewalk propositions with an offer of marriage. Instead of desire, he felt guilt; for the likes of him and a handful of silver, such a woman would recline and accept penetration. This was the female principle reduced to absurdity.

  When he turned back to assure his friend that prospects were bright, he saw only an empty turban rolling across the floor from the open window; the bee had fled its hive.

  “So what do we do now?” asked the Maker, when that person appeared a moment later from the front of the store.

  Nicholas Graves was uproariously pleased at Splendor’s flight. He chortled so strenuously that he choked, and one of his whores called from beyond the partition: “Baby, you dyin’?”

  He ordered her not to embarrass him, and said to Reinhart: “I tole you, I tole you! He never been with it, man, like you and me. He simply run back to noplace.”

  “Then I guess that does it,” Reinhart said. “Tell everybody to go home—and you can keep the money, you earned it. Too bad. I think he’s got something, though it’s clogged. And you hardly ever run across anybody who believes in anything nowadays. So you can’t exactly call him yellow, since a coward wouldn’t have had the idea in the first place. I suppose he’s just normal, poor guy.”

  “There you are!” the Maker shouted. “Them folks should blow while you shoot me this wisdom in the back room? Man, you got your chance! How often do you find that, nowadays or never?”

  Standing before the audience, Reinhart realized that the Maker’s adjuration had probably been sinister. He could not really believe that Reinhart was eloquent; therefore he undoubtedly played the sadist, and his furnishing the orator with disguise, bottle of Dutch nerve, and extravagant encouragement was but the instrumentation of his malice. His roomful of thugs and bawds were to be amused by a Caucasian buffoon, One White Crow.

  The drying paste had now drawn Reinhart’s upper lip into a pronounced snarl. This was the first time he had ever worn a mask other than that issued him by Nature. He stared through the dark-purple sunglasses, on loan from the Maker’s aide Winthrop, at an especially menacing criminal, almost as big as himself in the front row of seats. This man wore sideburns which ran down to his mouth, and on the remainder of his face someone had scored a chessboard with a very dull knife. It was doubtful that he had obeyed the doorside sign prohibiting weapons; and impractical to brood about, since he secured his trousers with a garrison belt terminating in a six-inch buckle of solid lead and both sets of his knuckles were ranks of iron rings be-gemmed with broken glass. He was a terrible, dreadful, evil sight, and returned Reinhart’s stare thro
ugh protuberant eyes like the business ends of blunt instruments.

  Reinhart ducked beneath the counter and took another quick shot of gin. While he was there he heard a brute comment from the savage he had temporarily permitted to outface him: “Come on, shit or git off the pot!”

  “You!” said Reinhart, bobbing up. “You there, that just spoke. Come up here.”

  If the man had been frightening before, he was now a perfect horror. He licked his lips and spat between his mastodon feet. In a nonchalant movement of his right hand, he plucked up a small brown neighbor and hurled him at the counter.

  “Be of good cheer, brother,” said Reinhart to the victim, who was apparently carried about by the big man for just such demonstrations of contempt. To the brute he said: “No, I must have you. Denying the power of the Prime Mover is hopeless. That’s what Simon Peter did and he was turned into a rock on which was built the Catholic Church. Now I’m going to count to five and say a bit of Latin, which is the tongue of that faith, and if you’re not off that box by the time I finish and standing up here like a man—”

  “Praise God and not the Devil,” shouted one of the Maker’s male shills from the other side of the room.

  The criminal lowered his eyes and muttered at his shoes: “Ah cut anybody who bruise me with Latin, goddammit.”

  “Listen to him take the Mighty name in vain, brethren and cistern!” said Reinhart. “Poor Simon Peter!”

  “Now don’t you call me that,” warned the thug, fiddling with his leaden buckle. Nevertheless, he was embarrassed, and dug a cigarette from his jacket pocket and broke it into pieces. “Ah dint come here to be called out of my name.”

  “What is your name, brother?”

  “Stony Jack,” answered the big man’s little victim, who had reseated himself.

  “I don’t mean you.”

  “Neither do I,” said the small man, who had a bad right eye like a cracked marble. “I mean him.”

  “Stony!” shouted Reinhart. “What did I tell you about Peter becoming a rock? Your name is already petrified, brother.”

  “All right,” grumbled the monster. “I’m comin’. Just don’t go laying any Latin on me.” Erect, he was larger than Reinhart, and carried his great shoulders as an ox a yoke.

  “Just put your back against the counterfront, brother, and face the audience,” Reinhart ordered, smirking drunkenly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. The Latin I promised was sic transit gloria mundi and that can work as well for the good as for the bad.”

  From the bloc of prostitutes in the center of the audience, a girl sprang up and announced her name as Gloria Monday. Like her sisters-in-law, she was dressed exceedingly drab and had a voice to match; Reinhart saw that streetwalking was a pretty dreary business, not in the least exotic or even sexy.

  “Very well, Gloria, you come up here too.”

  While she was on her way, Stony Jack glowered at Reinhart. “I got to stand here with a hoor? I never been so insulted in mah life.” He brought his iron-and-glass knuckles to the countertop and gouged a peevish mark through its veneer of filthy oilcloth.

  “Gloria Hallelujah!” It was the Maker himself who shouted, immensely pleased that one of his people was making out.

  “Now,” said Reinhart. “Here on my left is Stony Jack, about 250-odd pounds of force, and on my right is Gloria Monday, about 120 pounds of desire. In the middle, representing the mind, is me, Dr. Lorenz T. Goodykuntz of Pocatello, Idaho. This meeting was called by the most brilliant of my students, Splendor G. Mainwaring of this city, but at the eleventh hour he was called away to save a life, and fortunately I was on hand to substitute.”

  Gloria leaned against the counter and watched Reinhart with the open mouth of awe, two front teeth missing. Small wonder that the Maker never had a penny. Very miffed, Stony stared blackly at his little assistant in the front row. Reinhart coughed and got another drink sub rosa, being conscious of his high responsibility, in which Splendor no longer figured.

  He was masked and under a false name. He addressed a roomful of pariahs who had been bribed, threatened, or tricked into coming. The very light that shown down from above was neither his nor theirs; the building was condemned, its late proprietor in durance vile, its latest lessee in flight. The whole situation, indeed, was just like life, and at the same time that it didn’t matter, it was very serious. Though not sober.

  “How many among you wish you hadn’t been born?” Reinhart asked. While the audience labored over this, some persons putting up both hands, some one, and one man, way in the back, apparently three, Gloria whispered to Reinhart: “Sir, you want me to say yiss or no?”

  “Just tell the truth, my dear.”

  “Then I don’t know.” She stuck a finger in her ear.

  Stony Jack complained. “That’s the foolest thang I ever heard.”

  “Ah,” said Reinhart, a bit topheavy from the turban. “Now you see why I picked these two astute individuals.” He asked Stony: “Why is it a fool question?”

  Flattered, the big man scratched his chin with the rings, which were unavailing against his thick hide. Reinhart saw he had made a tactical error in ceasing to provoke Stony, who might begin to fancy himself a thinker—which is death to the intelligence. He hastily gave his own answer.

  “Exactly, because nobody can do anything about it. But kindly observe, my friends, the differences of response between the female and male of the species. The man, pugnacious, positive, dominant, strikes out at the fate which dooms him—because nobody lives forever, everybody eventually fails. Yet he will not admit it. No, he says, meaning Yes. But the woman, not an instrument but a receptacle, is unable to answer at all, which is as much as to say Yes, meaning ‘You’re not asking the right question.’ If you have observed, women never answer questions. This is because they are capable of producing new life—a capability which men fiercely resent, so sooner or later they throw the woman down and punish her with the weapon Nature has given them for the purpose, and the result of course is that she produces the very new life the resenting of which caused her to be knocked down and jabbed in the first place. Therefore love is a battle with each side winning a Pyrrhic victory.”

  Gloria Monday never took her loving eyes from his false face. On the other hand, Stony had begun to grouse in Anglo-Saxon expletives. As to the audience, Reinhart had lost even the Maker, who was edging out the street door. Normally inarticulate, Reinhart felt he could talk all night through the mask, just throwing things out and letting them naturally gravitate into order. But when drunk he also had a fine sense of the lines of communication between human beings. Unworried—being neither a Southerner nor a humanitarian, he cherished the differences among races—at this point he reached under the shelf and brought forth his gin bottle, drained it into his throat, and broke it on the counter with a splendid noise and spray of fragments.

  “So much for that. I’m not here to bury life but to recognize it. If I learned one thing from the sovereign of Andorra when I served as his medical advisor, it was: Above all, do no harm and always uphold the dignity of human life. That’s as easy, and as hard, to do whether you’re a king or a criminal. So all of you have a good chance. Listen to me tell you about the kingdom of Andorra. The palace, which sits on a hill above a green plain, is made out of porphyry, a red stone that gets its color from the blood that is shed in battles and soaks into the earth. The particular stones for this palace were mined at Thermopylae, a place in Greece where centuries ago a handful of Spartans fought to the last man against a horde of Persians and thereby saved their dear country from the foul invader. But the towers, which are really minarets and take after the great temples of Islam, are made of alabaster so white that the snow looks yellow by comparison.

  “But it seldom snows there except at Christmas time and then the sun comes out hot soon after and dries it up so that there’s no slush to get into your boots or sidewalks to be shoveled. The rest of the year it’s warm enough to swim all day, and sufficiently cool at n
ight to sleep under one blanket only. The vineyards, heavy with purple and golden grapes, stretch down the slopes behind the palace and on to the horizon, and are thronged with winsome young women with amber hair, who wear only a thin kind of short toga to the midpoint of their supple thighs.

  “Now, the Andorrans were a brave, warlike people centuries ago, as everybody was at one time or another—for example, take your Assyrians, who are now extinct; or your Swedes, who fought in the Thirty Years’ War but haven’t done much since except lie in the sun and turn brown—there’s a bit of irony for you folks who were born with a tan…. The problem always is how to maintain the spirit while indulging the body. The Andorrans have done this by a shrewd device, having discovered that there are two kinds of people, which we may call the hurters and the hurtees. The first get their satisfaction by working their will on somebody else. The second like to be imposed upon. So every Saturday in Andorra, the entire populace comes to the great square before the palace and line up, according to type, on one side or another, and the hurters proceed to kick the piss out of the hurtees…. I apologize to the ladies. I was carried away by enthusiasm for the point I was making.”

  His sunglass lenses were dirty, and several times he caught himself about to clean them, to do which he would have had to reveal his face. Though he was too drunk to worry for his own sake, and too humble to suppose he would be recognized as other than what he claimed to be, he dared not risk exposure for fear of the deleterious effect it would have on the dear audience, who had absolute faith in Dr. Goodykuntz. He saw respect on those brown faces: either that or noncomprehension; anyway, not pain.

  “Ah,” he shouted, “how grand it is to be a Negro! Wonderful, just wonderful. You people have more fun than anybody. And while they are frequently niggardly to you, there’s not a white person alive who doesn’t see in you a symbol of romance and adventure. What is the synonym for ‘exciting’? Colorful!”