This Old Heart of Mine

by Thomas Berger

  Now what? Futile to call the police, since C. Roy Gibbon had probably arranged for the beating. Anyhow, Reinhart would have been humiliated to ask a cop to defend or avenge him. In the good old days, Americans carried each his own weapon, and there has been a certain debilitation of fiber since that practice was outlawed in favor of a man with blue uniform and nightstick.

  Nor did he wish to hear Gen’s consolation for his hurts. Your wise husband appears before his wife only as victor, especially one as large as Reinhart: winning was his only justification for eating so much, for expatiating so readily, in short, for being boss.

  That left Dad. So Reinhart called the old homestead. Luckily his father answered rather than Maw, who might have made some rough banter utterly inappropriate.

  “Hi, Dad. I’ve just been beaten up in the lot back of the office. My clothes are ruined, and I have a few scratches, but appear to be O.K. in the main.”

  “Ah,” responded Dad. “Sure you have the right number?”

  “I said it’s Carlo. What’s the matter?”

  “You must have been hit in the mouth, then, for your voice is changed. Sorry, Carlo. How’s your supply of mercurochrome?”

  Reinhart cleared his throat. “Sorry, Dad. No, they seem to have missed my mouth and concentrated mainly in the midsection. I can hardly stand up, but outside of that, it’s essentially my coat and hat that suffered. I never told you that I was in a bad fight once in Germany and hurt my head though not irreparably. That’s also where I received that slight scar on my cheek, in case you noticed.”

  “I wonder,” said Dad, “where you ever got so pugnacious, because I should think such a talker as you wouldn’t have to rely on the fists. But I don’t want to criticize.”

  “A funny thing: I swear to you that none of these fights has ever been my idea. They are kind of thrust upon me. Anyway, I didn’t do very well in the present one. I soon fell down. I don’t have a taste for that sort of thing any more, and don’t know whether it is because of what I did to the other guy in Germany or he did to me.”

  “What was it you wanted to know, Carlo?” asked Dad somewhat impatiently. He had probably been called away from a radio program, perhaps Gangbusters, and he tended not to take exterior damage as seriously as maladies due to germs.

  “Well,” said Reinhart, “simply this: I took your cue on the sewer, and told Claude I meant to build a good one. Then he pressured me to renege. However, later, I found a way that he could be defied, and had barely started to plan it when this assault occurred. Now, he didn’t know of my latest decision, so why would he have me beaten up? The same applies to Johnny Reo. Uh, excuse me. …” he shifted his position in the chair, but when you are bruised all over, nothing much helps. “Now, as regards Reo, the irony is that I arranged to have him—” But he supposed he shouldn’t tell that to Dad. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he wound up. “Just wanted you to know I’m O.K.”

  “That’s sure swell,” Dad droned. “Always cooperate with Claude Humbold and stay out of vacant lots, is my advice. There are fellows hanging out there who just like to pick on people, and if you couldn’t see their faces in the dark, they were probably coons.”

  All this while Reinhart had been astonished at his father’s apparent unconcern, but at last he understood. Beset his life long with fantasy-fears, Dad was happily immune to real dangers, seeing them as anti-climactic. All dark alleys to him were filled with assassins: an idealist in the true sense of the word, he was only bored by your sauntering up one and getting murdered anachronistically.

  “My best to Maw,” Reinhart told his father. “And thanks, Dad. In your own way, you always tell me what I want to know, though never what I ask. The deficiency is all mine.”

  Hardly had he lowered the instrument than the bell summoned him to lift it again, and the operator announced a person-to-person line from Hamhurst, New Jersey.

  “Carlo Reinhart, you goddam old buddy, you,” cried Marsala from six hundred miles away. “Your troubles should be over. Some friends of Mr. Esposito was supposed to discuss matters with this Reo a couple of hours ago.”

  “Thanks for clearing things up,” groaned Reinhart. “Your boys just kicked the hell out of me.”

  Marsala for a long while cursed furiously in Italian, and then told Reinhart: “Ya know what? They were probably stoopid Sicilians.” He was almost hysterical with shame. “Buddy, I wish you was here so you could hit me right in the mouth. C’mon, I pay ya a plane ticket so you can kick me inna ass.”

  “Now, now,” said Reinhart, who was curiously free of indignation. He hated to see anyone embarrassed. “Obviously it wasn’t your mistake. These fellows were incompetent. Thinking I was Reo, they administered the beating but didn’t say one word about the sewer. It should have been just the other way around.”

  “I lost face, pal.”

  “You’ve been going to too many movies about the Japs,” Reinhart assured him. “Lose face today, regain it tomorrow, Jim.”

  “That’s what happens when you send an order to a crummy hick organization wid a couple of slot machines and nothing else goin’ for them but to sit around and jerk off. Whyn’t ya move up here someplace and build your sewer, buddy? Jersey, New Yawk, or Bridgeport, Conn, huh? I could take care ya like a baby.”

  Reinhart realized that Marsala intended to do nothing further, being one of those persons whose resolution can be summoned for a single effort which will succeed or fail without encore. He thanked him sincerely, mentioned a few reminiscences to cheer him up, and broke the connection. He would rather have taken ten beatings than been made so aware that friendships are at the mercy of current conditions.

  Chapter 22

  “Ah, Carlo,” what was Splendor said when apprised of the failure of Reinhart’s strategy, next morning, “whatever could have been in your mind? If we forsake reason, my friend, we have regressed to the level of the brute beast.” He had showed up at the office a few minutes earlier, overladen with rolls of blueprints and sketches on transparent paper, and dressed in riding pants and boots such as engineers always wore in the popular conception.

  “Not to mention the moral aspect,” Splendor went on, suddenly dropping all his rolls to the floor of the office, where they tumbled every which way. He was also wearing a military khaki shirt with shoulder straps and paneled pockets, and a trenchcoat hung over his left forearm.

  “Anyway, it didn’t work,” Reinhart admitted sourly, “and before you get too sanctimonious, reflect on the fact that I was the one who took the beating.”

  Splendor, at his best when given an adjuration of this kind, did consider the point, becoming for a few moments all forehead. Then he said: “I’m sorry. I hope you weren’t hurt too badly”; and limberly, without flexing his knees, bent to gather up the blueprints. He placed them carefully along the broad sill of the window, but indifferently threw the coat over his revolving chair and sat upon it. There was a Negro for you: the garment would be ready for the ragbag before the last installment was paid.

  “No doubt,” said Reinhart, “I should have discussed it with you beforehand. But you’d sing a different tune if it had been a success.”

  “Though what that would have proved is at least arguable,” Splendor answered.

  Reinhart ached all over from the beating, and sat upon a cushion so as not to be damaged by vibrations.

  “You know, the interesting thing is that not only was my skin not broken, but I haven’t been able to find a single wound anywhere on my body. These professional hoods are artists at their work. There’s a lesson in that for us, Splendor my boy: Precision. They knew exactly where to strike and how: hurt, but don’t mark. So here I am, apparently sound, but I can hardly move. I crawled to work this morning only because my wife’s curiosity might have been aroused by the sight of me sitting around home, groaning. That’s hardly a good example to set. Remember that if you ever get married: for peace in the home, never show an Achilles heel.”

  Splendor raised one eyebrow and, a
fter a moment, did likewise with the other.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Reinhart. “You don’t agree?”

  “I beg your pardon.” Splendor put a hand to his closed mouth and looked blankly at the window.

  “Well, good,” said Reinhart. “I was afraid for a moment that you were opposed to precision. Now, let’s see where we stand. It’s clear that we can expect no cooperation from Reo, and my attempt to force it from him has, as we have seen, miscarried.” The word reminded him of Gen and her condition, and he superstitiously hurried on. “Fortunately that whole disaster began and ended with me, with nobody the wiser.” He spoke this hoarsely through a cupped fist, as he had when telling Splendor earlier about the beating, lest the secretaries be listening behind the door. “We were right to concern ourselves first with Reo, because of the various individuals involved, he is the one who would dig the sewer—this doesn’t interest you?” Splendor had not yet turned back.

  He did so now, saying, as if there had been utter silence since Reinhart commented on his quizzical look, “I am married.”

  “Is that right?” said Reinhart. “Isn’t that swell.” He would have liked to go over and shake hands, but—with reference to his hurts, which stopped throbbing so long as he didn’t move—thought he had better postpone that salute until later, combining it perhaps with a trip to the john. Anyway: “Congratulations! A sudden elopement, I take it?”

  “More or less,” Splendor admitted dolefully.

  “Here I thought you were poring over sewer specifications in the county engineer’s office, all the while.”

  Splendor answered resentfully, pointing to the blueprints on the window sill. “You haven’t even perused them, yet stand ready to bring a charge of malingering.”

  “The longer I know you, the more touchy you get,” said Reinhart. “So you had time for both. I admire you. And it goes without saying that I wish you and your new bride every happiness.” He started to repeat his earlier promise to have Splendor, and now the Mrs. as well, to dinner when Gen was over her confinement.

  “New?” asked the vice-president. “I got married when I was nineteen years old.”

  Reinhart glared at him for a while. “How the devil was I supposed to know that?”

  “Now who’s touchy?”

  “All right, forget it.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Splendor. “My wife ran off last year.” He gave Reinhart a keen eye. “I recall telling you.”

  “I could bite off my tongue,” Reinhart said. “It was just one of those meaningless things one says from time to time—forget about it.”

  “I suppose I have the right to talk as much about my private life as you do yours.”

  “Look, if you’re going to take that tone … you told me it was your mother who ran off. I don’t want to be snide, but I remember it very well.”

  “Then,” said Splendor, “I must have been out of my head, because my dear mother passed away when I was five.”

  “It’s not the kind of thing I would make up,” Reinhart pleaded. “But I could have heard wrong—in fact, I’m sure I did.” He smiled weirdly.

  “Set yourself at ease,” said Splendor. “Your memory must be accurate. There are moments when I am capable of uttering absolute fantasy without a basis in temporal existence. Indeed, how ironical that this quirk should be made evident in a discussion about my wife—this very foible could be found at the crux of her objection to me. She was a tasteless woman, but there was some justice in her complaint. She fled with a pianist—one of those putty-colored, spiritually impoverished individuals who affect long sideburns, a thin mustache, and alligator shoes.”

  Reinhart wagged his head in sympathy regardless of the pain that issued in radial filaments from the base of his neck: his body was now at that post-punishment stage where those parts ache most that were not touched, as if they had jealously sucked the hurt from those that were.

  “Yes,” said Splendor, apparently taking it as agreement. “This woman was not notable for her cerebral vitality. She could not find an address by number. One had to say: ‘Two beauty shops past the Baptist church till you reach a jewelry store, then cross the street towards the bakery and proceed to the mailbox, turning then in the direction of the motion-picture marquee, at which count six doors along, and if you see a green awning, you are there.’“

  “It is well known of women,” Reinhart said, “that they tend towards the concrete. Now in thinking that over, I have arrived at the conclusion that that is because they must literally carry the child for the first nine months of its life, towards the end of which time it is a burden of some substance. Whereas being a father is rather abstract if you think about it.”

  “I have six offspring,” Splendor stated dispassionately. “Whom I never see because they went along with their mother to Biloxi, Mississippi, and the aforesaid trumpet player.”

  Reinhart called him on it: “Six kids? You were married at nineteen and you had six kids? You can’t be more than a year or so older than I. And I heard you say the man was a piano player.”

  “That type of individual can perform on any musical device known to man, Carlo. He starts at ten with a piece of paper on a comb or perhaps a stolen tambourine, and will do a little tap dance on the sidewalk. He will go throughout life without one solitary higher impulse, and when he isn’t drumming in the compulsive manner of a cretin imbecile, he can be found in the nearest restaurant devouring barbecued ribs.”

  “I’ve heard the later ones aren’t too tough,” said Reinhart, “but how about the first? Was your wife in labor long?” He disbelieved that Splendor was father of six, but neither did he charge him with lying 100 per cent: two or three, was more like it.

  But Splendor took no more account of Reinhart’s obsession than Reinhart did of his.

  “Carlo, these details are not important. One day we will get beyond animal life as it is now known, for was it not incredible just a century ago that a human being could fly? You may jeer, but I think it wholly possible that man may in time be able to take off his body as we can now doff a coat, and pursue an existence of sheer thought.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Reinhart advised him, not being the sort you could rebuff with impunity. “But I think even you will admit that since that time has not yet come, that as of this moment man still must dispose of his wastes, we had better get back to the sewer.” So much for trying to communicate with Splendor; the longer he tried, the more difficult it was, like pursuing spaghetti with a tableknife.

  Splendor’s head fell, and he seemed to be peering into his crotch. Then he said: “Perhaps I was wrong.”

  Reinhart was instantly sympathetic. “Never blame yourself for things past and done. Just think that she would have run off regardless. If she had been married to the musician, she would have run off with you.” He thought he had put it very nicely, but Splendor still sat grimacing.

  “I should have apprised you, Carlo, I realize that now. But you did appoint me company engineer, and it was in accordance with my conception of that office that I proceeded as I did.”

  Reinhart laughed considerately. “I doubt that I could have done much to help. One has to be left pretty much to himself in matters of love. Nor can I see that being company engineer is related to your marital troubles, which, believe me, have also been known by king and potentate.”

  Splendor got up and went with his springy step to the window sill.

  “You see,” he said, indicating the blueprints and the rolls of semi-transparent tracing paper, “I have evidence of good faith. Those are copies of the plans for the Chessville sewer, dug in 1939, Chessville being, as you can verify, our suburban neighbor to the west and, again a matter of record, a community of approximately the same size as ours.”

  “I know where Chessville is,” Reinhart said impatiently.

  “Well then.” Splendor struck one of the rolls, and its open end pointed towards Reinhart became oval for an instant and then recovered round. “There they were in
the county engineer’s files, ready to hand. Why spend months drawing up new ones? Especially since we determined to start with a mere half-mile branch through the West Side, joining the trunk north of Mayberry Place. I have here,” grasping the roll he had just flattened, “precisely such a branch line from the Chessville system, with a few differences from our needs that can be adjusted by simple mathematical computations. For example, the Chessville branch is nearer two miles than a half, services more large institutions than ours would, and so on.”

  Reinhart shook his head, forgetting, until it did, that it would hurt him. “Splendor, you are a marvel, but for the first time since we have been closely associated, I believe I have some hope of understanding you eventually. For example, am I not right in taking the foregoing commentary on your marriage as a red herring?”

  The vice-president pantomimed surprise.

  “Intended,” Reinhart went on, “temporarily anyway, to lose me in the bushes while you pursue some monkey business on the main highway. But this I say to you: you might as well come clean now without further equivocation, because I’ll know it in the long run. Anyway, I am too weak at this moment to protest very much—but also, I should add, to play Dr. Goodykuntz again.”

  “I suppose you’ll never let me live that down,” said Splendor, in a rare resort to the vernacular. He looked tired, and suddenly rested his narrow behind against the sill. “Contrary to what you may think, I am capable of embarrassment…. I’ll put it to you candidly, Carlo, if that’s what you wish. You are a man of good will but little faith, and thus more gifted in the critical area than the creative. You know how to deal with what already exists, but are altogether without the power to bring something new into existence. Not even your remarkable courage can overcome this natural limitation, for it is primarily an instrument of defense. You are like the present-day English, who cannot be defeated and at the same time never win. I admire you enormously, and if I did not, would hardly dare to be so frank.”