Eustace Chisholm and the Works

by James Purdy

  Awakening in this unusual posture was not too surprising for Masterson, who was frequently brought to consciousness in unfamiliar places and unfamiliar arms. He was now partly reassured by familiar surroundings and by the recognition of his rescuer as the personable “host” he had so often nodded to in the club. He had valued Haws, however, as a model of the male servant rather than someone to spend the night with, but now he found the closeness of his presence a more than agreeable sensation.

  “Mr. Fogarty has suggested we go to my place, sir, in view of it being so late,” Daniel Haws spoke with surly military deference and politeness. He had freed himself from Masterson’s embrace, but waited uncertainly at a convenient distance away from the drunk man as he weaved unsteadily from one foot to the other.

  “Delightful idea,” Masterson complimented him, belching and attempting to focus his eyes as best he could.

  “Do you think you can make it, sir?”

  Masterson considered the question, then throwing his arms emphatically upwards, cried: “If you’ll be around and about to give me a needed hand, don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to make it again and again!”

  Arm in arm the two, after repeated fallings and risings, hoistings and proppings, at last made it to Daniel’s alleyway staircase. Then up those unsteady steps, while Masterson cried out in terror as he looked down the sickening height, and Haws’s neighbors leaned out their windows and shouted and cursed.

  “Never you mind now, sir,” was the phrase Daniel had selected to encourage the reeling man forward, but after hearing it repeated five or six times in a row, Masterson expressed his boredom with it by an acidulous remark which shut Daniel up.

  Inside the apartment Mr. Masterson collapsed on the kitchen floor, and Daniel proceeded to make a pot of coffee. He administered it to his guest, still supine, much in the manner of first-aid. Masterson indicated several times he would appreciate his host’s sharing out of the same cup, but Daniel sullenly refused.

  After more tugging and carrying, Haws landed him on his own bed. Undressing his guest might have been less prolonged had Daniel’s amazement not grown with each article of attire he removed. The son of coalminers had never seen such material, let alone handled it, and his resentment of his visitor’s wealth was finally replaced by pure astonishment: the imported silk cravat, the hand-stitched shirt with monogram, the pure silk undershirt, embroidered shorts, cashmere hose and Scottish shoes weighing like gold (though probably, Daniel muttered to himself, made of a bull’s pizzle), all this finery reduced him at last to sober silence. Stripped bare, Mr. Masterson showed plainly that he had been seriously wounded, one supposed in the war, and these unsightly gashes, together with the traces of what had been an athletic body, counteracted for the moment Daniel’s total dislike of him.

  Just as Daniel was tucking in Mr. Masterson, the magnate’s grandson threw his arms about him ardently and gave him a watery kiss. Drawing back, Daniel wiped the kiss off with slow thorough caution, then somewhat limply set himself down on a small crate he used for a chair. He seemed lost in reverie, or as if reviewing the events of the evening.

  “All right, I’m sorry,” Reuben Masterson spoke up.

  When no reply was forthcoming to his apology, Masterson raised his voice: “See here, Daniel, God damn it, I said I was sorry!”

  “People will do anything when they’re drunk,” Daniel brought out in a whisper, after a struggle to say even this.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, honeybunch.” Mr. Masterson turned ugly. “Don’t think I’d kiss a brick wall do you, no matter how much liquor I’ve put under my belt? No, Haws, it must have been something in you made me . . .”

  Daniel Haws struck Masterson across the mouth. Masterson let out a cry, prompted in part by the spout of blood which now came from his mouth onto the army blanket covering the bed.

  Amos Ratcliffe entered the kitchen just as Reuben Masterson bellowed, and since the door to Daniel’s bedroom was open wide, Amos lingered at the threshold, incredulous at the scene before him.

  Daniel Haws shot a glance at Amos which combined rage and hatred for the drunk man in his charge, and sudden betrayed passion for the boy at the door. Amos, in exchange, gave Daniel a look of injured trust. For a moment the two men stared at one another with no pretense at disguising what they felt.

  Then Daniel’s hands fell at his sides, his eyes shifted to the wall.

  “Mr. Masterson here became sick at the club, and I was asked to help him,” Haws explained lamely, for the first time defending an action of his for Amos’s benefit.

  “Then all I can say is he come to the right party!” Amos sneered and turned and walked out of the room.

  “Amos,” Daniel commanded, and in a lightning movement caught up with him in the hall, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward him. “You’ll help me with this rich son-of-a-bitch, or I’ll know the reason why. Don’t act to me like you was keeping a big bank account and could afford to be your own boss.”

  “Help him yourself. I scrub the floors, not nurse your pickups.”

  Haws slapped Amos’s face smartly twice. “You’ll help me, or I’ll break you,” he breathed into Amos’s violently flushing face, then turned back to his bedroom.

  Amos stood a moment immobile, his hand making incipient movements to reach up and touch the places where the hard hand had struck him. Then turning suddenly white, his mouth quivering, he walked quickly back into the room where Masterson lay.

  Looking up from a basin held shakily for him by Daniel, Reuben Masterson’s eyes fell directly again on Amos, entering, and he spoke up thickly but jauntily: “Don’t tell me, Haws, we’re to be rewarded with a second glimpse of this angel in one night!”

  Haws instead of replying removed the basin angrily, placed it on a tiny commode, and began wringing out a washcloth stained with blood, a kind of grim satisfaction on his mouth.

  “Daniel, at the risk of getting another wound, may I ask you to introduce me to your god-like young visitor here?”

  Haws snorted a kind of laugh in spite of himself and said, gravely apologetic: “I’m sorry I hit you so hard, Mr. Masterson. I only meant to sober you up, frankly.”

  “You already apologized enough, Daniel, but since you’ve beat me up you may as well call me Reuben from now on. I don’t harbor grudges.” Then speaking directly to Amos, he said: “Let me introduce myself—”

  But at this moment Daniel interrupted by stepping between them with:

  “This is Amos Ratcliffe who rooms here, and, Amos, meet Mr. Reuben Masterson, whose name you must have heard at the university.”

  Both Amos and Reuben were wonderfully struck by the dignity and poise with which Daniel had made the introduction.

  “Now let me bring you some medicine for your cut mouth, sir.” Daniel nodded in Masterson’s direction, and hastily left the room.

  There followed a silence which a casual observer might have thought “embarrassed” but which was explained by Masterson’s contentment merely to feast his eyes on Amos and Amos’s complete absorption in his violent feelings for Daniel—indeed he was barely conscious of where he was at that moment, let alone of the presence of another person.

  “I hate to think what I must look like.” Masterson jarred himself out of his reverie and guffawed.

  In a still deeper reverie, Amos barely nodded in response to the guest in Daniel’s bed.

  “Haws spoke of you as being at the university . . . Did he say your last name was Ratcliffe?” Masterson seemed to be trying to recall something, but got of course no prompting. “I’m over at the club some part of the time,” he proceeded. “I’m on the board of trustees and such,” he laughed again, “but I don’t believe I ever set eyes on you before . . .”

  Still barely attentive to this voluble attempt at conversation, Amos lifted his hand to the place on his cheek where Daniel had struck him to feel a slight welt rising there and replied: “I’m not in school now, for your information.”

  “You didn�
��t graduate certainly,” Masterson spoke heartily. “Not at your age!”

  “Ran out of money.”

  Mr. Masterson giggled, as if the improbable had been wittily mentioned for his amusement. Then he sat up in bed and shouted:

  “But you must be the Amos Ratcliffe Maureen O’Dell spoke of some time back. Of course you are!”

  Amos looked up now, a bit more attentive.

  “Maureen has been promising me an introduction to you for ages, and here we are together before she could plan our formal meeting.”

  Suddenly, whether from the closeness of the room, the unexpected presence of a guest in Daniel’s inviolate bed, or by reason of the sight and smell of blood, Amos felt quite giddy. In order not to fall, he sat down beside Masterson.

  Haws entered at that moment with a tray of medicine bottles and some absorbent cotton.

  Rising from the bed at the stern look of reproach Daniel gave him, Amos stumbled, keeled over and fell heavily to the floor at Daniel’s feet.

  “Christ’s sake, hospital night!” Haws cried in a strange contortion of voice and features. “Now look at that little bastard, would you . . .”

  He kicked Amos with his foot.

  “That’s about enough of that, you goddam brute!” Masterson jumped up. “You can sock me all you want to but don’t you touch him again, or I’ll have you locked up . . . How dare you kick him!”

  Handing the tray to Masterson with a murderous look, the landlord kneeled down over Amos, who was obviously, he saw, not play-acting.

  Something in Daniel’s attitude silenced Masterson also.

  The landlord lifted Amos up in a kind of ritual slow-motion, this time not needing to compute the weight of what he was to carry, then bore him deliberately down the hall and into his own room. Amos was heavier than he looked.

  He put the boy down on his cot, then rose as if in forgetful confusion over something and shut behind him the door unequipped with a lock. Bending over, he first made the motion to undress Amos, but a shudder of such violence went through him that he had to wait until he could steady himself, then merely put the boy with his clothes still on securely under the blanket.

  Suddenly the landlord froze over the unconscious form. A kind of sleep suffused his open eyes. His head bent of its own weight over Amos’s body, and his mouth fell heavily and aimlessly across his cheek. At that moment Amos woke up, and seeing his landlord in his familiar sleepwalking guise, did not hesitate a moment to press his face tightly against Daniel’s.

  The landlord came to with a start, his eyes cleared of sleep.

  “Don’t leave me, Daniel,” the boy cried, terrified. “I need you to stay,” he pleaded.

  Rising, wrathful, Daniel gave Amos a long uncomprehending look, then with something like terror he rushed from the room.

  THE DAY AFTER Mr. Masterson’s departure (the millionaire had remained all day in the grudging care of Daniel Haws), Amos was awakened from a feverish sleep by a surly yell from the landlord, who informed him he was wanted on his office telephone.

  So drowsy that later he was not certain how much he had heard on the phone, or how much he had dreamed when he had got back to his cot, Amos was at least aware that the telephoner was Eustace Chisholm. Since the day he had moved in, Daniel Haws had told Amos that under no circumstances was there to be any incoming or outgoing call except in unusual emergencies, and as Amos now listened to the poet’s cascading voice, he was certain that Daniel, bent over his accounts, heard all that Ace was saying.

  “Guess who has been visiting me and is here right now,” Ace’s voice boomed. “It would seem you are in for a change of luck . . . Speak to your new friend Reuben.”

  They were both drunk, Eustace and Masterson. Terrified of Daniel’s disapproval, Amos could only watch the back of the landlord’s neck, as motes of sunlight played along his dark skin and fine black hair.

  “While the department store king is resting now in my big chair,” Ace went on in stentorian tones, “let me tell you straight from the shoulder, Rat, you’ve captivated him: Masterson. He’s made a formal bid for you right here.”

  “Don’t shout, Ace,” Amos got out, and he imagined a shiver went through Daniel’s spine.

  “I said he’s bidding for outright purchase,” Ace’s voice rose in volume. “And because you don’t know much about the world outside of Greek contract verbs, let me explain to you this fellow is worth only two hundred millions and though he’s been giving me the story it’s all tied up in trust funds, I still gather that about a million a month falls on him from some horn of plenty . . . The mystery is how you captivate hearts, child, but that you do it I’ve got to be the first to admit . . . While your new admirer is out of earshot, let me give you some advice . . . You’ve got to polish yourself up . . . In cold daylight you might not look so good to him, or his grandmother, as you did the other midnight . . . Take your credits, first . . . You’re handsome, lovable, smart as a whip, come of good old American stock, all eyes follow you as you leave a room . . . So much for credits . . . But your debits, Rat. Hear me out and quit groaning . . . I can’t believe you were in such a bad state even when you left your Cousin Ida’s as you are now . . . You’ve gotten common and phony tough and all on account of you will imitate your landlord . . . And where you haven’t followed him, you’ve done, in most cases, worse . . . Let’s quick take one instance, your landlord wipes his fundament forward toward his balls. (I know from the days he came here while courting Maureen O’Dell.) Ditto now you, as I observe, though when you first went to stool at my place here prior to your Haws period, you wiped your ass with a backward swipe like a gentleman . . . You imitate Daniel also in sucking in your guts (his military training) until your navel connects with your backbone. This don’t suit your personality . . . But your worst points are not owing to Daniel Haws. He is the son of a long line of coalminers, an ex-soldier, and scrubs himself clean as only a man who hates himself can—with kerosene and scouring powder . . . You, Amos, on the other hand, who have aristocracy somewhere in your veins, are dirty . . . Look at your nails . . . Or your ears, all beeswax thick, or your downy cheeks, and your neck covered with scurf . . . Only somebody as good-looking as you could retain your charms so soiled and grimy . . . What I’m saying is you’re not salable as you are now, so wake up while you’ve got a lifetime’s gold chance.”

  Suddenly Eustace’s voice faded on the wire, and Maureen’s boomed.

  Daniel threw down a piece of eraser.

  “Don’t forget our date together, honeybunch,” Maureen reminded Amos of his promise to her.

  “It’s a blowout!” Amos appealed to his landlord.

  Springing up from his stool, Daniel, who had obviously heard every word coming from Eustace’s end of the wire, strode into the kitchen, where he still kept within earshot.

  Eustace now came back on the wire.

  “Why should you let yourself go down the drain now, Rat?” the poet’s voice boomed again. “You’ve got everything to bargain with. Will you be a drudge to your landlord when you could be sporting a diamond ring and twelve changes of suits? . . . If you won’t look out for yourself, then old Ace Chisholm has got to . . . You adopted me when you began giving me Greek lessons. There’s this ancient tongue between us. You don’t need a coalminer glorying in his power over you.”

  Coming into the cubicle now, Daniel took the phone and slammed the receiver down.

  Amos stood silently and bent down his head either to show gratitude or allow himself to be cuffed.

  Back in his own room, some hours later, Amos woke from a hectic fevered sleep and saw Daniel coming toward him bearing a tray of food. Uncertain whether this was dream or reality, the boy waited, then heard Daniel’s full-bodied voice say, “Here’s your supper, try to taste some.”

  7

  When “pay day,” as Maureen, in her cups, liked to call it, finally arrived, it found her in her studio, white-faced and mum, completely sober, clutching Amos by the hand. She kept her eyes car
efully peeled on the dime-store alarm clock, ticking loudly away. Her appointment with the abortion doctor was in just one hour.

  Amos did not try to break her silence. His eyes roved about. Maureen’s studio, divided into two rooms, was located on the sixth floor of a tenement that looked out on another tenement as like it as two peas in a pod. The part of the studio where they waited contained her easel, paints, bottles of turpentine, and her bed (“whence all the joy and trouble stems,” Eustace Chisholm had said of it). This commanded a central position, and covered now with a handsome flower-embroidered quilt, it suggested a bier.

  Amos’s own favorite of the two rooms was the one that now adjoined them. Her “waiting-room” Maureen named it because nearly everybody who “waited” there ended up in bed with her. This room contained a collection of ancient rockers, wood statues of Indians and of blackamoors holding rings for horses. There were also her own unsold oils whose subjects ranged from Maureen herself at midnight to scenes of ruined slaughter-houses, pool-room interiors, prairies and corn fields, skies and lawns without depth or perspective. On the floor and walls of the rooms battered linoleum and calcimine, respectively, met in grimy embrace.

  Breaking into speech at last, Maureen wondered nervously if this were her third or fourth “pay day” coming up. Liquor had begun to tamper with her memory, she felt, and that was the reason she was not going to take a nip today before going to the “doctor.” Of course it had all been Eustace Chisholm’s doing, she claimed. He had been her mentor for sexual freedom, had preached and preached she must give herself without stint or measure. Of course he had not been as serious, ever, about her as he was now about Amos and Daniel. True, Eustace had freed her from her Christian Science mother, and from the deadly existence she had led in virginity up to the late age of 23. But perhaps she would have been happier as an old maid in Christian Science, who knows now? Whether, however, it was her third or fourth abortion, today it was somehow her most important, and probably her last. She felt fatality in the air, that’s why she had purposely made the bed a kind of flower-covered couch in case it would be the end. She hoped she would die. Anyhow look, she was getting on, she was 27 years old, an old woman by her own standards of judging.