A Bad Man

by Stanley Elkin

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon. Though no one had left—could leave, the place was shut off—fatigue and hunger seemed to have thinned their ranks. There was little fidgeting, though men got up frequently to move toward some unlocked cell, pee, splash water on their faces, or just to stand and stretch or walk about the cellblock for a few moments. The trial continued without pause, the sense of its having gone on forever, having always existed, emphasized by the sight of the convicts who were briefly ignoring it. Feldman saw that a distinct mood had been created in the place, a mood not of dormitory but of lifeboat, a last-ditch sense of equality as pervasive as the common foulness of their breath. He could lie, sit, stand, jump, run, spit, belch, pee, fart; he could reach out for the last scant handful of potato chips in a neighbor’s bag; he could cadge cigarettes or even plop down beside someone on another cot, or step with his shoes across another’s blanket. But he had drawn further apart from them than ever. He had listened all along to their tales of his offenses in order to recover some scrap of his emotion, but none of that, despite their researches, had been catalogued. They had not understood the simplest things. They had seen his life from the outside, and however accurate their perceptions, they had known him only empirically.

  It was this point perhaps, as much as any that might do his case some good, that he meant to make when he rose and interrupted.

  “What?” the third dining partner asked.

  “I object,” he said wearily.

  “What’s your objection?”

  “My objection is I’m starving,” a convict said behind him. “What about some food?”

  “They’re going to try to bring over some Cokes and snacks from the canteen tonight,” Harold Flesh said.

  “What about the chits? I didn’t bring no chits with me.”

  “Special credits,” Flesh said. “The warden worked it out.”

  “I had an objection,” Feldman said. He was still standing, looking at the third dining partner.

  “Well, I already asked you what it was,” the man said irritably. “Do you need an engraved invitation?”

  “The evidence,” Feldman said. He indicated with a lame backhand gesture the book that the librarian was holding.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s all hearsay,” Feldman said.

  “Yes?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, it’s hearsay.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  Feldman shrugged and sat back down.

  Once more they took up their charges, and again he was conscious of sickness, as if the dry sound of their recitations had power to stir his old fever. Even after he had lost all interest in what they were saying, he made himself listen, but he found he could be attentive only to their mistakes. Some of their statements were contradictory, and he forced himself mechanically to rise and point out the discrepancies. They heard his objections indifferently, and then continued when he had finished, no more concerned or deflected by his words than if they had been coughing spells. After a while he no longer bothered to rise when to make their case or press a point they juggled the truth, but offered his objections from where he reclined on the cot, and then, his strength declining, mumbled them to himself. At last, when even this effort proved too great, he just perceptibly moved his lips, twitching at their calumnies out of some empty but not-to-be-sacrificed form, their deceptions encouraging in him only the last bland energies of superstition, as someone too lazy to seek wood to touch accepts whatever is handy and touches that.

  “How’s it going?” Walls asked. They were standing by the food wagon that he and Manfred Sky had pushed into the cellblock.

  Feldman shrugged. “Can I get a Coke? Do you have sandwiches?”

  “Sure, Leo. Excuse me a minute,” Walls said. “Hey, you guys, where you going with them cups and wrappers? The guard wants the stuff stowed in this litter can.” He turned back to Feldman. “What’ll it be, Leo?”

  “Soda. A couple of sandwiches.”

  “You got the chits?”

  “The warden’s arranged credit.”

  “Well…” Walls said doubtfully.

  “Come on, Walls. What’s going on?”

  “Leo…kid…the rest of these guys’ll be around to pay it back.”

  Feldman nodded. Then the idea had been to deprive him. Psychological warfare, redundant here as the built-in scream of a bomb. He started back to his place.

  “Just kidding, Leo. Here.” Walls tossed him two sandwiches and marked something down in a ledger. Feldman chewed them dutifully, unable to recall five minutes later what he had eaten. Giving him credit could have been psychological too, he thought, inspiring false confidence, like the presence of enemy ministers on visits of state. Their Prime Minister dances with our President’s daughter. Their field marshal kisses the hand of our First Lady. The bombs will not fall tonight, we think. Not much they won’t.

  The food restored them, and they brought a new spirit to their attack. No longer did they need to refer to the book or take recourse in distortion. Though they had touched on his life with Lilly and their son earlier, they went over the ground now in detail.

  “Once, at supper,” a convict said, “Feldman made them play ‘To Tell the Truth.’ It’s a game on television, where three people, all claiming to be the same person, answer questions about their lives for a panel, who then try to guess the right person. Feldman made Billy be the panel, and he and Lilly were the contestants. ‘My name is Lilly Feldman,’ he told the kid. ‘I married my husband, Leo Feldman, and came to live with him in this city, where he owns a department store.’ Then Billy had to ask questions. ‘Do you have a son?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ Feldman said, ‘his name is Billy.’ ‘Do you have a son?’ he asked his mother. ‘Say “Lilly Feldman number two,” ’ Feldman said. ‘She’s Lilly Feldman number two, and I’m Lilly Feldman number one. You must say Lilly Feldman number one or number two.’ ‘Lilly Feldman number two,’ the kid said, ‘do you have a son?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’ Feldman glowered at her, and she knew he meant for her to lie. So Lilly said, ‘His name is Charles.’ Billy asked more questions, and each time Feldman told the truth and made Lilly lie.

  “Finally Feldman said the time was up. ‘Which is it? Lilly Feldman number one or number two?’ Billy was confused and shook his head. ‘Come on,’ Feldman said, ‘which is it? You heard the answers. Which is the real Lilly Feldman, that lousy imposter or me?’ The kid finally pointed to his father, and Feldman said, ‘Will the real Lilly Feldman please stand up?’ and both of them feinted for a couple of minutes until the kid was crying, and then Lilly stood up and went to him.”

  Feldman was astonished by the disclosures Lilly had had the courage to make, and that now, though their stories were told from some opposed point of view, his life came back easily. He winced at detail. Once, during the narration of a trip they had taken, tears came to his eyes. They made their points so fiercely that he trembled.

  Then, when he thought that even they must see that they had flayed him sufficiently—though it was now past midnight, no one slept; there was little of the shuffling of the daylight hours; men who had taken little interest in the trial were leaning forward, straining to catch everything in the difficult, poollike room—they discovered a new theme: his treatment of Victman and Freedman.

  They dwelled at length on how he had used these two, decoying competitors with Victman’s destroyed career and giving the doctor the sexless, secular horns of cuckoldry, fool’s bells, the ear’s body blows over the telephone. They were unrelenting. They meant to polish him off. They would bring up Dedman next.

  Then, abruptly as it had begun, their attack ceased. A speaker finished, and no one rose to take his place. To this point, the trial had had a marathon quality, an attribute of palm-passed torches, sequenced as choreography. Now, in the silence, Feldman sighed and wondered: Is it over? Is it finished?

  It was almost dawn. He could see
the washed-out night through the barred windows of a distant cell. They sat together like this for several minutes, and he may even have bowed his head. Sent to Coventry, he thought, to die of the silences. Then someone shuffled his feet, and then another did. He looked to see if they had risen, but they were still seated. He wondered if they meant for him to stand, if he was to listen now to his sentence. He rose quietly. No one said anything, and he understood that it was his turn, that none of his objections before had meant anything, that this, now, was all they would ever give him of his chance.

  Feldman drew a deep breath. “Still,” he said finally, “I have not been unstirred.”

  “Come on,” a convict said irritably, “your life’s on the line. What is this?”

  “I have not been unstirred,” Feldman repeated firmly. “I’m accused of my character. This is my character: I’ve been moved, roused. Lumps in the throat and the heart’s hard-on. I’m telling you something.”

  He began to list all the things that had ever moved him, all the things which might have moved them. “Anthems of any nation. Anthems do. The Polack mazurka and male Greek side step. The national dances. Ethnic stamping and the fine, firm artillery of the clog dance. A certain kind of amateurism. The abandon of drunk elder uncles at weddings. There is a clumsy rhythm in me, I tell you, the blood and heart’s oom-pa-pa. So I have not been unstirred, that’s all.

  “Girls blowing kisses, cold on floats.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said the man who had stepped on his heels.

  “Overruled,” Feldman said.

  “Hold on a second,” the man said.

  “Overruled! I’m telling you about my heart. You asked and I’m telling you. I’ve been moved.

  “The beards of real estate men in centennial summers,” he began again desperately, “their barbershop convictions. Movie stars on telethons for charity. The sweetness of conservationists. Professors emeritti who talk about their field in the afternoon on the radio. I hate the fire that the forest ranger hates. What do you think? It’s not so difficult to break matches before throwing them away, or to make certain your campfire’s extinguished. What does it cost a person to carry a litter bag in his automobile? I am stirred that these should be causes.

  “I saw a movie on the Late Show. It was made in the thirties, the Depression. One of the characters opened the front door of his apartment to bring in the paper and the milk. There was a picture on the front page of his ex-wife, who had just gotten engaged to his law partner. They showed a close-up of the paper, and while he was reading the story about his ex-wife’s engagement, I read the headlines on the stories around it: ‘Grand Jury Brings in True Bill on Gangland Slaying’; ‘Shipyard Heiress Elopes with Swami, Grandpa Seeks Annulment’; ‘Arctic Expedition Arrives South Pole.’ This was the news. Do you understand? This was the news. I wept.

  “And vulgarity. Spangles, brass and all the monuments of the middle class. Luxury motels—listen to me—cloverleaf highways, and the polite wording of signs along the route apologizing for construction, the governor’s signature big at the bottom. The charities of businessmen. Their attentions to the blind, their fresh-air funds, and the parades of their brotherhoods. Their corny clowning and their tossed candies.

  “The classic struggles of artists. The genius’ rejections, but more, his first success. Hammerstein out front and the comic drunk backstage, his girl shoving coffee in him and making him walk.

  “And though I am not a religious man, the windows of department stores at Christmas time.

  “The cook on educational television. Likewise the dedication of weathermen and the seriousness of the officer giving the traffic conditions from the helicopter. Soldiers marching off to World War One, and singers who come down into the audience.

  “Glamour, magic and plenitude, I tell you. Plenty of plenitude. High waste in restaurants. Steaks no man can finish by himself, bottomless cups of coffee and lots of butter. Balloons for the kiddies, and the waiter passing mints. Ditto the individual machinery of motel rooms: Vibrabeds and the chamois for shoes, packets of instant coffee and powdered cream—the gizmo to boil the water. The paper ribbon in deference to my ass across the toilet seat breaks my heart. The magician’s shy stooges and the tears of Miss America and her runners-up. Listen. ‘Happy Birthday’ in night clubs and the ‘Anniversary Waltz.’ God bless people who take their celebrations to night clubs, I say. Listen. Miracle drugs, the eye bank, and the first crude word of mutes. The moment they unwrap the bandages four weeks after the operation. Listen. Listen to me. The oaths of foreigners for their final papers. Night-school graduations. A cake for the new nigger in the neighborhood. Towns chipping in for anything. People cured of cancer, and the singing in the London Underground during the Blitz. Listen, listen to me now. Listen to me! Sheriffs shaming lynch mobs. Boys who ask ugly girls to dance, and vice versa. Last stands of individual men, and generosity from unexpected quarters.”

  “I like New York in June, how about you?” Harold Flesh said. “I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?”

  “That’s why the lady is a tramp,” Bisch said.

  “Once, on shipboard,” Feldman said, “coming home from Europe, I was standing at the rail, looking down at the people who had come to greet their relatives and friends. There was a small band, and people were throwing streamers, confetti, pitching this bright storm of festival like a gay weather. And each person at the pier was pointing up at the great ship to see if he could find the person he had come to meet. And when he did, he would leap and make an involuntary shout. Or extend his arm and point up with one lengthened finger of welcome.

  “Meanwhile, we on board were rapidly exchanging places with each other, shifting our positions along the rail, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever had come to meet us. The extended arms of those who, unspotted, had spotted the better targets of their friends would then follow the friend, all the energy of welcome confounded at the same time by the effort to set things straight, to get the person on board to stand still and look back at the person on the pier.

  “And it worked. No one was there to meet me, and I could stand back and watch it all. Again and again I saw these great, straining magnetic fields of friendship click off contact after contact, the now mutual gestures leaping great distances, touching their loved ones with flung lines of force before they actually touched. The ship still had to dock, there was customs to clear, but they couldn’t wait, and so they pantomimed love, made the signals of lovers and the heart’s semaphore. No longer impatient even, already home, already in each other’s arms.

  “And then, after a while, everyone had found everyone else. The arms ceased to crisscross in the air, ceased to sway, and a hush had fallen over us all, and though there was no room actually to do this, there was a kind of hands-on-hips gesture of standing back in estimate and appreciation. Appreciation. Yes. Appreciation. Pride. Making the eyes’ small talk that people do who have not seen each other in a long while. Feasting greedily on each change, making an inventory of differences and then discounting them, accepting the small betrayals of time in the windfall of their returns. Love moved me then.

  “Do you understand? How about you, you? I’m decent. I’m decent too!”

  He was wringing wet. His face had undergone a remarkable change—his passion visible now, open wide as the groan on a tragic mask. They had never seen him like this. Some of them couldn’t look at him; they stared down at their laps or toyed with the edges of their blankets.

  Now it was Feldman’s silence, not theirs, as before it had been theirs and not his. A man, sighing, broke the quiet only to confirm it. There was one absolutely soundless moment of preparatory breathing in, drawing up and looking around, as if to gather up fallen gloves or paper cups on a lawn after a concert—precisely this sense of performance’s end, and a calm in the room like good weather, a lowered-pressure, washed-air quality of folly wised up. He saw he might make it and didn’t dare breathe, still hadn’t moved but remained, posed frozen, a little un
comfortable, wrenched, as though demonstrating a follow-through, on not taking chances with a beast.

  He was still thinking he might just make it when the warden spoke. “But he’s kidding,” the warden said.

  “I’m not,” Feldman said. “I swear it.”

  “He is. He made it all up.”

  “I meant it. I meant it all.”

  “He’s selling you a bill of goods,” the warden said.

  “We didn’t believe him, Warden,” a convict said.

  “It’s true,” Feldman said.

  “Objection not sustained,” the warden said sweetly. “Contempt of court,” he added, smiling.

  Here was justice, Feldman thought, watching him. The man’s dapper, discreet power seemed to be on him like a form of joy. He had never seemed so charming; he had the look of one unarmed, a sort of chairless, whipless, unpistoled lion-tamer rakishness, or of a general in civvies.

  “Take him,” Feldman shouted suddenly. “Take him!”

  But they hadn’t understood. Only the warden knew what he had said. “That will do, Leo,” he said softly. “Now then, men, where do we stand? Thus far I’ve been able to keep this quiet, but it’s Thursday morning already, and if the court doesn’t finish its work soon I may have to put out a cover story. It’s a good thing I came in when I did. He had you going there. Well, brief me, please.”

  “We’ve heard the evidence, Warden,” a convict said.

  “What, all of it? About his family?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “About Victman?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Freedman?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You’ve heard the evidence, and he’s still alive?” the warden said cheerfully. “Have you heard about Dedman then?”

  “Not about Dedman, sir. No, sir.”

  “Well then, that explains it. Tell us about Dedman, Feldman.”