A High New House

by Thomas Williams

  Then it was over, and the horse nodded, its sleepy, running eyes half open, one forefoot doubled over. But it was more or less upon its feet. They all went to the bright, clean milk house, where the tenant, a quiet man about thirty years old, had a bottle of Canadian Club in the milk cooler.

  They drank out of white enameled cups, and sat quietly, speaking gently like people in a hospital: “Bill, what’s your wife going to say when she sees all that on your nice white shirt?”

  “I’ll tell her it was a damn’ fine lady I was helping out, Jim.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “What d’you say, Doc?”

  “Hard to tell at this stage.”

  But really they were very happy, and their calm words hummed with it; the fact was simply that they were helping each other, and this happiness, not the ritual drink, was the real payment for all their effort.

  Now, in the brightly lighted bar, Richard turned to William Krause and reminded him of that time.

  “Did the horse live, Bill?” he asked.

  William Krause’s face turned genuinely sad for a moment. “No,” he said. “About a week later she died.”

  The Krauses wanted to take them to the Tour d’Argent, a place Richard had of course never visited under the G.I. Bill, and they began walking down Boul’ Mich’ toward the Seine. Just before they came to Boulevard Saint Germaine they were coming up behind a little gendarme (“Ain’t the cops small here!” William Krause murmured to Richard), and just then from around the corner came an Arab boy about fifteen years old—a peanut vendor. Before the boy knew it he was straight up against the gendarme, and Richard had never seen such total fear on any face; suddenly the small, brown, rather withered-looking young face writhed with terror, the eyes bulging and the brownish teeth visible. The gendarme did something like a slow pirouette to the left, and with his white stick pressed the boy against the side of the building. And kept pressing, shoving the end of the stick into the boy’s sternum and leaning on it. All this in silence. They could see the boy’s tongue.

  Richard was not going to stop, but Hannah and William Krause already had, and Phyllis with them. The gendarme sensed their presence and looked around.

  “Eh?” he said, his brows rising. Then he looked up at William Krause and said ominously, “Doucement. Doucement, Monsieur.”

  Hannah Krause said in her most blaring tone of voice, “What are you doing to that boy?”

  The gendarme smiled, his eyes half closed, and said, “Madame, it is none of your business.” Not quite like that; as he said the words he punctuated each with a fierce little shove upon his stick, where it still pinned the boy to the wall. “Madame. Eet. Eeze. None. Of. Your. Beeze. Ness!” The boy’s open, terrified face, like a frieze against the grey stone, never moved.

  “We’ve got to report him,” Hannah Krause said, ignoring the gendarme’s poisonous look. She added in a practical voice, “Look for a number on him, Bill. Has he got a number on him?”

  “My God!” Phyllis said. “Why is he doing that?”

  As if in answer the small gendarme, using his club with great speed, suddenly beat the boy down to the pavement. There were sounds like the beating of a carpet. Head, side, back, anywhere. Harder and harder he beat upon the boy, smashing him down and as out of shape as a bundle of old clothes.

  “Oh, no!” Phyllis screamed. “He’s killing him! He’s killing him! Stop it! Stop it!” Hannah, too, was crying out loud and moaning, and Richard had to hold Phyllis back. He looked down into her desperate face and saw there horror of himself for holding her back. “Let me go!” she screamed at him. “What’s the matter with you?”

  He turned, and the gendarme was gone. Only now, of course, could he kneel and look at the bundle on the sidewalk. As in a nightmare he half expected to find there only a bundle of clothes, no flesh inside at all. But as he knelt, two men pushed him aside, picked up the boy and his peanut tray without a sound, without a word, and carried him off. On the sidewalk there was nothing, not a spilled peanut, not a drop of blood. No one else had stopped to watch, although many must have seen it. And now it might never have happened at all.

  Only the look in Phyllis’ eyes was there.

  They moved on, their faces dreamy with horror.

  “Cops!” William Krause said finally, and Richard could tell by his voice that he knew of the inadequacy of what he was about to say. “Cops. Big cops, little cops. Dick, did you see that kid’s face there? Looked like a bunch of angleworms! By God, I’ll tell you one thing, and I ain’t just clacking my gums. If I saw that happen in Des Moines I’d doucement that son of a bitch, one way or the other.”

  “But it does happen in Des Moines!” Hannah said. “We’ve got a report on it, Bill. The League has a report on it.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t do it on the main drag at seven o’clock in the evening, Hannah. They know it ain’t the thing to do.”

  Richard could not get Phyllis to look at him. As they walked down toward the Seine she kept in step with him, but let him know by her quietness and the precision of her steps that she considered herself to be alone.

  They found the Tour d’Argent, and rode up the slow elevator to the dining room. Hannah Krause, too, was not satisfied by the way her husband had handled the gendarme, and neither was she satisfied by his complacency about the police of Des Moines. She tried to overlook these things, but Richard could sense her irritation.

  After they had looked out of the big windows at the Ile they ordered wine and food, then endured with good grace a little lecture by the waiter, who told them that parties who dined at Tour d’Argent did not order four separate entries. They took his suggestion to have pressed duck.

  “It must be goin’ slow tonight,” William Krause said, and laughed. He was still trying to make them forget what they had seen on the street. His wife and the waiter gave him hard looks.

  But Hannah Krause had to say something when William Krause referred to Jewell as a “darky.”

  “You found that friend of yours, Dick? Who lost her husband? Phyl says she’s a darky.”

  “William Krause,” Hannah Krause said evenly.

  “What?”

  “If you don’t know.…”

  “Know what, for God’s sake, Hannah? You look like you smelled something bad.”

  “You don’t use that word when you talk about members of the Negro race.”

  “Hell,” he said, smiling at Dick and then looking seriously back at his wife. “You told me, Hannah, that there wasn’t no Negro race, only the human race.”

  “Dad, it’s not funny!” Phyllis said, and they all looked at her quickly because her voice was almost ugly.

  William Krause was immediately contrite. “Dick, I never meant to joke about your friend, you know? I didn’t mean anything by that word. It’s just that I never know when they’re going to jump on me with both feet, God damn it!”

  From then on he was subdued, although he drank a great deal of wine. Afterwards he insisted that he and Dick take the women back to the hotel and then go have a drink. “I want to have a man-to-man talk with my son-in-law,” he said. He was more than a little drunk, and the women decided they had to humor him.

  Before they left the women off in the hotel lobby Richard took Phyllis aside to try to reassure her.

  “I’ll take care of him,” he said. “I’ll get him back as soon as possible.”

  She stared at him, a re-evaluating look, cold and intelligent.

  “What difference does it make to you?” she said.

  “Phyllis,” he whispered, and tried to put his arms around her, but she stood rigidly, her arms wrapped around her body so that she was nothing to him but a bulky bundle of fur. She shuddered as he touched her.

  “I’ll take care to get him back,” he said.

  “Don’t bother,” Phyllis said calmly. “Really don’t bother yourself.”

  “Come on, Dick!” William Krause said, and they left the women and walked back across the river a
nd up Boul’ Mich’. “Women!” William Krause said. “Women! You can’t live with ’em and you can’t live without ’em.” He strode a little unevenly up the boulevard, and when they came to rue Cujas he found it familiar, so they went into the Cujas and sat at the same booth they’d had earlier.

  M. Claude came over, and they shook hands. Richard did an impulsive thing.

  “Deux finalobes,” he said.

  “Finalobe?” Then M. Claude remembered, and he said,

  “Oui! Monsieur MacGregor!” He smiled sadly. “ Un homme trés gentil.” He shook his head sadly as he went to get the drinks.

  “What’s that about?” William Krause said.

  “A friend of mine used to order brandy and water that way, and Claude remembers. The guy’s dead now.”

  “I’m sorry, Dick.”

  So was Richard; it seemed such a trite, sentimental thing to have done.

  But he did wish himself back there again, back in time. He would, at least, not find himself in the wrong with a woman. Why had Phyllis suddenly turned rigid? It was not only unfair, it was boring, a pain in the ass. Now if it were only four or five years ago he might be sitting in this same booth, the red-headed MacGregor coughing into his sauce, fat Perry doing most of the talking. Eva would be sitting next to Richard, not saying a word, but with her hand lightly upon his thigh beneath the table. He would have no explanations to make to Eva. She was there, so soft, so agreeable, so passive, in whom his manhood never found resistance, in whom he was the only agent of force. Later they would go to Jewell’s to hear the Dixieland, that crazy imitation of joy, and to observe Jewell’s dangerous political euphoria, half wanting to believe it (Did he? That was a surprising thought). Or they might listen to those voices from Warsaw, those eternal American innocents.

  “Women!” William Krause said. “I don’t envy you, Dick. She’s just like her mother, hardnosed. Half the time Hannah treats me like a goddam imbecile.” He looked at Richard, and he was much drunker than Richard had thought. His forehead’s translucent skin was pale, now, and shiny, and his pale eyes were filmed over, the whites now pink as his cheeks, so that the irises looked as though they were pasted right on skin.

  “I mean she wants to improve me, for Christ’s sake, Dick!”

  To Richard’s embarrassment there were tears in the man’s eyes.

  “I love that woman, Dick. I love that woman.”

  That woman, Richard thought. He could see that valuable, dangerous woman’s face—both of their faces—and he felt his anger rising. After all, there was absolutely nothing he could have done to protect that Arab boy from the cop. Nothing. If he’d tried to interfere the cop would have beat the boy all the harder, just to show his power. Couldn’t Phyllis realize that? He could explain it to her. Explain that he knew what the end result of any such interference would be, that he had seen the flics beat people to the ground before, that it was natural, that the human race was made that way and there was nothing the Des Moines Chapter of the League of Women Voters could do to change it. He would explain this to her; he would present this case with all his skill, using the fantastic precision and breadth of his memory for precedents. It was suddenly more important than anything that he win this one case; it was the only case he had ever really cared about.

  And yet as he looked across the table at the sad, big man, he was terribly angry. He had never been in this kind of trouble before; if anything of the sort had ever developed—that a woman, or anyone, claimed worry from him—he had always gone on to somewhere else, to another country, to another kingdom. He could not make himself owe justification to anyone. But now he seemed to be in a trap, and he was frightened because he knew that he had to go back to Phyllis. But not like this; where would he find the energy for it? How could William Krause bring his manhood back, intact, to the tall woman who waited to judge him?

  “I guess we’d better go home, Dick,” William Krause said.

  Richard thought: But why should I have to? I will find Eva (with her sleeves rolled up, scouring a chipped bidet in a room of mildewed wallpaper). I will find another Eva, then; there are plenty of Evas around.

  “Come on, Dick. Show me the way to go home.”

  “OK, Bill,” Richard said.

  “I’m tired and I want to go to bed,” William Krause said, half singing the words, his eyebrows raised sadly but humorously. “Us old married men got to face the music.”

  Suddenly Richard despised the man, and as he spoke his voice took on a hard sound he hadn’t heard in it for years.

  “Face the music,” he said. Did he see a change in the dull eyes across the table? Yes, maybe there was a glint of answer, hard and wary. But he thought, So what? If the man wants to be a rug, a worm.… He went on, probing a little: “So we’ll crawl back.”

  But William Krause was not too easily made angry. He said, “I hope we don’t have to crawl, Dick. I can still walk, I think.” Trying to make it funny.

  Richard could feel the slightest part of a sneer on his own face—a tightness in his nostrils.

  “Have another drink, then,” William Krause said, “but I’m afraid I’ve had it for tonight.”

  “You’ve had it,” Richard said, and when he looked up at the big man it was like that dream in which you are looking at a painting, a portrait, and suddenly your bowels turn cold because the painted eyes are not really paint, they are deep and real.

  “Listen to me, boy,” William Krause said in a clear, steady voice. “Don’t try to shit on me in any way. You ain’t big enough yet.” He looked steadily at Richard for a moment, observing him without any worry or fear at all, and Richard knew it. “I ain’t crawling back to my wife, but I would if I had to, and it wouldn’t make me small.”

  Suddenly he laughed out loud, reached across the table and hit Richard playfully on the shoulder. “Dick, let’s have another drink! Christ, you can carry me home!”

  Richard wanted to answer the man’s forgiveness, to recognize his friendship, but he was in that frozen state, compounded of meanness and embarrassment, where he didn’t know how to say the words he knew he should say. And it didn’t help to know that William Krause knew it all, saw him clear through and pretended that the words of recognition had been spoken.

  They did have another drink, paid and left the Cujas. The air was still damp and cold, and as they started down toward the river William Krause put his big arm around Richard’s shoulder for a moment and said, “Hell, Dick. Don’t you think she knows why you can’t hit a cop?”

  “I don’t know, Bill.”

  William Krause laughed. “God Bless ’em!” he said, and now he seemed very happy to be going back. He hummed as he walked along, his overcoat open. “Goddam, look at that pot!” he said, patting his middle. “I’ve plainly got to lose some weight.”

  “I could never explain it to her,” Richard said.

  “Sure, sure. You can’t explain nothing to a woman, Dick. If it gets to the point where you have to explain, you’re licked.”

  When they reached the hotel the elevator had been turned off for the night, and they walked up the narrow stairs, William Krause ahead, his powerful haunches slowly but surely moving, his broad back solid, his brown overcoat hooked over his shoulder by a finger, as a boy does it.

  They came to William Krause’s door. “Goddam, look at that key,” he said, taking the big brass key from his pocket.

  “It’s a deadly weapon. It’s a goddam blunt instrument.”

  “Good night, Bill,” Richard said.

  “Good luck, Dick.” William Krause grinned as he felt around for the keyhole, and Richard went on alone down the dark hall toward his own room, where she would be waiting.

  At the door he stopped. By the transom he could see that the light was on, and why should he have to prove himself? Did he really have a case after all? There was the quiet light above the door, waiting, and he must go in. But he paused, and he was afraid. It was as though he were about to be admitted to a mystery he had long postponed
, and it would be terribly painful at first. The first plunge, the first breath. He unlocked the door and went in.

  I Cannot Tell a Lie

  It was a quarter to eight, and Willis was getting ready to go to school, a process Harry Hosmer had never quite managed to get used to; Willis, who was six, lay near the living-room arch, supposedly pulling on an overshoe. He had managed, however, to insert his head into the living room just far enough so that he could see the television, and now it was clear to Harry and his wife, Lois, who sat at the dining-room table finishing their coffee, that Willis’ arms and hands, though still connected to the overshoe, had lost all their strength. Willis had been told three times that he had to hurry, and now it was Lois’ turn to tell him again. She did, her voice harsh this time, and Harry watched closely to see what effect that precise note of harshness would have. Perhaps it would work, perhaps not. Because he could never tell what his little son would do, these morning scenes would send him off to work in a curiously unsure state of mind. What did he know, anyway? He was an assistant professor of English—that repository of half-answered questions—and he had the rather sinking feeling that any loss of the quality of didacticism was bad for him.

  Ellie, who was three, was further inside the living room watching Captain Kangaroo. Mr. Moose was trying to keep Mrs. Worm from singing—she sang so badly even Ellie knew it was funny to hear her—and of course Mrs. Worm would sing, because on that program no one’s feelings were ever deliberately hurt. It was quite obvious that even Mr. Greenjeans didn’t want Mrs. Worm to sing, but he wouldn’t come right out and say so. Ellie didn’t understand all this, but Willis usually did.