And he furiously ripped the green hat to pieces and hurled them at the gnome.
“I’m really sorry you did that,” the little fellow said calmly, his huge ears treading water without the slightest increase of pace to indicate his anger. “We Little Folk have no tempers to lose. Nevertheless, occasionally we find it necessary to discipline certain of your people, in order to retain our dignity. I am not malignant; but, since you hate water and those who live in it, water and those who live in it will keep away from you.”
With his arms still folded in great dignity, the tiny water gnome flipped his vast ears and disappeared in a neat surface dive.
Greenberg glowered at the spreading circles of waves. He did not grasp the gnome’s final restraining order; he did not even attempt to interpret it. Instead he glared angrily out of the corner of his eye at the phenomenal circle of rain that fell from a perfectly clear sky. The gnome must have remembered it at length, for a moment later the rain stopped. Like shutting off a faucet, Greenberg unwillingly thought.
“Goodby, weekend business,” he growled. “If Esther finds out I got into an argument with the guy who makes it rain—”
He made an underhand cast, hoping for just one fish. The line flew out over the water; then the hook arched upward and came to rest several” inches above the surface, hanging quite steadily and without support in the air.
“Well, go down in the water, damn you!” Greenberg said viciously, and he swished his rod back and forth to pull the hook down from its ridiculous levitation. It refused.
Muttering something incoherent about being hanged before he’d give in, Greenberg hurled his useless rod at the water. By this time he was not surprised when it hovered in the air above the lake. He merely glanced red-eyed at it, tossed out the remains of the gnome’s hat, and snatched up the oars.
When he pulled back on them to row to land, they did not touch the water—naturally. Instead they flashed unimpeded through the air, and Greenberg tumbled into the bow.
“A-ha!” he grated. “Here’s where the trouble begins.” He bent over the side. As he had suspected, the keel floated a remarkable distance above the lake.
By rowing against the air, he moved with maddening slowness toward shore, like a medieval conception of a flying machine. His main concern was that no one should see him in his humiliating position.
At the hotel he tried to sneak past the kitchen to the bathroom. He knew that Esther waited to curse him for fishing the day before opening, but more especially on the very day that a nice boy was coming to see her Rosie. If he could dress in a hurry, she might have less to say—
“Oh, there you are, you good-for-nothing!”
He froze to a halt.
“Look at you!” she screamed shrilly. “Filthy—you stink from fish!”
“I didn’t catch anything, darling,” he protested timidly.
“You stink anyhow. Go take a bath, may you drown in it! Get dressed in two minutes or less, and entertain the boy when he gets here. Hurry!”
He locked himself in, happy to escape her voice, started the water in the tub, and stripped from the waist up. A hot bath, he hoped, would rid him of his depressed feeling.
First, no fish; now, rain on weekends! What would Esther say—if she knew, of course. And, of course, he would not tell her.
“Let myself in for a lifetime of curses!” he sneered. “Ha!”
He clamped a new blade into his razor, opened the tube of shaving cream, and stared objectively at the mirror. The dominant feature of the soft, chubby face that stared back was its ugly black stubble; but he set his stubborn chin and glowered. He really looked quite fierce and indomitable. Unfortunately, Esther never saw his face in that uncharacteristic pose, otherwise she would speak more softly.
“Herman Greenberg never gives in!” he whispered between savagely hardened lips. “Rain on weekends, no fish—anything he wants; a lot I care! Believe me, he’ll come crawling to me before I go to him.”
He gradually became aware that his shaving brush was not getting wet. When he looked down and saw the water dividing into streams that flowed around it, his determined face slipped and grew desperately anxious. He tried to trap the water—by catching it in his cupped hands, by creeping up on it from behind, as if it were some shy animal, and shoving his brush at it—but it broke and ran away from his touch. Then he jammed his palm against the faucet. Defeated, he heard it gurgle back down the pipe, probably as far as the main.
“What do I do now?” he groaned. “Will Esther give it to me if I don’t take a shave! But how?… I can’t shave without water.”
Glumly, he shut off the bath, undressed and stepped into the tub. He lay down to soak. It took a moment of horrified stupor to realise that he was completely dry and that he lay in a waterless bathtub. The water, in one surge of revulsion, had swept out onto the floor.
“Herman, stop splashing!” his wife yelled. “I just washed that floor. If I find one little puddle I’ll murder you!”
Greenberg surveyed the instep-deep pool over the bathroom floor. “Yes, my love,” he croaked unhappily.
With an inadequate washrag he chased the elusive water, hoping to mop it all up before it could seep through to the apartment below. His washrag remained dry, however, and he knew that the ceiling underneath was dripping. The water was still on the floor.
In despair, he sat on the edge of the bathtub. For some time he sat in silence. Then his wife banged on the door, urging him to come out. He started and dressed moodily.
When he sneaked out and shut the bathroom door tightly on the flood inside, he was extremely dirty and his face was raw where he had experimentally attempted to shave with a dry razor.
“Rosie!” he called in a hoarse whisper. “Sh! Where’s Mamma?”
His daughter sat on a studio couch and applied nail polish to her stubby fingers. “You look terrible,” she said in a conversational tone. “Aren’t you going to shave?”
He recoiled at the sound of her voice, which, to him, roared out like a siren. “Quiet, Rosie! Sh!” And for further emphasis, he shoved his lips out against a warning finger. He heard his wife striding heavily around the kitchen. “Rosie,” he cooed. “I’ll give you a dollar if you’ll mop up the water I spilled in the bathroom.”
“I can’t, Papa,” she stated firmly. “I’m all dressed.”
“Two dollars, Rosie—all right, two and a half, you blackmailer.”
He flinched when he heard her gasp in the bathroom; hut, when she came out with soaked shoes, he fled downstairs. He wandered aimlessly toward the village.
Now he was in for it, he thought; screams from Esther, tears from Rosie—plus a new pair of shoes for Rosie and two and a half dollars. It would be worse, though, if he could not get rid of his whiskers—
Rubbing the tender spots where his dry razor had raked his face, he mused blankly at a drugstore window. He saw nothing to help him, but he went inside anyhow and stood hopefully at the drug counter. A face peered at him through a space scratched in the wall case mirror, and the druggist came out. A nice-looking, intelligent fellow, Greenberg saw at a glance.
“What you got for shaving that I can use without water?” he asked.
“Skin irritation, eh?” the pharmacist replied. “I got something very good for that.”
“No. It’s just—Well, I don’t like to shave with water.”
The druggist seemed disappointed. “Well, I got brushless shaving cream.” Then he brightened. “But I got an electric razor—much better.”
“How much?” Greenberg asked cautiously.
“Only fifteen dollars, and it lasts a lifetime.”
“Give me the shaving cream,” Greenberg said coldly.
With the tactical science of a military expert, he walked around until some time after dark. Only then did he go back to the hotel, to wait outside. It was after seven, he was getting hungry, and the people who entered the hotel he knew as permanent summer guests. At last a stranger passed him and ran
up the stairs.
Greenberg hesitated for a moment. The stranger was scarcely a boy, as Esther had definitely termed him, but Greenberg reasoned that her term was merely wish-fulfillment, and he jauntily ran up behind him.
He allowed a few minutes to pass, for the man to introduce himself and let Esther and Rosie don their company manners. Then, secure in the knowledge that there would be no scene until the guest left, he entered.
He waded through a hostile atmosphere, urbanely shook hands with Sammie Katz, who was a doctor—probably, Greenberg thought shrewdly, in search of an office—and excused himself.
In the bathroom he carefully read the directions for using brushless shaving cream. He felt less confident when he realised that he had to wash his face thoroughly with soap and water, but without benefit of either, he spread the cream on, patted it, and waited for his beard to soften. It did not, as he discovered while shaving. He wiped his face dry. The towel was sticky and black, with whiskers suspended in paste, and, for that, he knew, there would be more hell to pay. He shrugged resignedly. He would have to spend fifteen dollars for an electric razor after all; this foolishness was costing him a fortune!
That they were waiting for him before beginning supper was, he knew, only a gesture for the sake of company. Without changing her hard, brilliant smile, Esther whispered: “Wait! I’ll get you later—”
He smiled back, his tortured, slashed face creasing painfully. All that could be changed by his being enormously pleasant to Rosie’s young man. If he could slip Sammie a few dollars—more expense, he groaned—to take Rosie out, Esther would forgive everything.
He was too engaged in beaming and putting Sammie at ease to think of what would happen after he ate caviar canapes. Under other circumstances Greenberg would have been repulsed by Sammie’s ultra-professional waxed mustache—an offensively small; pointed thing—and his commercial attitude toward poor Rosie; but Greenberg regarded him as a potential savior.
“You open an office yet, Doctor Katz?”
“Not yet. You know how things are. Anyhow, call me Sammie.”
Greenberg recognised the gambit with satisfaction, since it seemed to please Esther so much. At one stroke Sammie had ingratiated himself and begun bargaining negotiations.
Without another word. Greenberg lifted his spoon to attack the soup. It would be easy to snare this eager doctor. A doctor! No wonder Esther and Rosie were so puffed with joy.
In the proper company way, he pushed his spoon away from him. The soup spilled onto the tablecloth.
“Not so hard, you dope,” Esther hissed.
He drew the spoon toward him. The soup leaped off it like a live thing and splashed over him—turning, just before contact, to fall on the floor. He gulped and pushed the bowl away. This time the soup poured over the side of the plate and lay in a huge puddle on the table.
“I didn’t want any soup anyhow,” he said in a horrible attempt at levity. Lucky for him, he thought wildly, that Sammie was there to pacify Esther with his smooth college talk —not a bad fellow, Sammie, in spite of his mustache; he’d come in handy at times.
Greenberg lapsed into a paralysis of fear. He was thirsty after having eaten the caviar, which beats herring any time as a thirst raiser. But the knowledge that he could not touch water without having it recoil and perhaps spill, made his thirst a monumental craving. He attacked the problem cunningly.
The others were talking rapidly and rather hysterically. He waited until his courage was equal to his thirst; then he leaned over the table with a glass in his hand. “Sammie, do you mind—a little water, huh?”
Sammie poured from a pitcher while Esther watched for more of his tricks. It was to be expected, but still he was shocked when the water exploded out of the glass directly at Sammie’s only suit.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Sammie said angrily, “I don’t like to eat with lunatics.”
And he left, though Esther cried and begged him to stay. Rosie was too stunned to move. But when the door closed, Greenberg raised his agonised eyes to watch his wife stalk murderously toward him.
Greenberg stood on the boardwalk outside his concession and glared blearily at the peaceful, blue, highly unpleasant ocean. He wondered what would happen if he started at the edge of the water and strode out. He could probably walk right to Europe on dry land.
It was early—much too early for business—and he was tired. Neither he nor Esther had slept; and it was practically certain that the neighbors hadn’t either. But above all he was incredibly thirsty.
In a spirit of experimentation, he mixed a soda. Of course its high water content made it slop onto the floor. For breakfast he had surreptitiously tried fruit juice and coffee, without success.
With his tongue dry to the point of furriness, he sat weakly on a boardwalk bench in front of his concession. It was Friday morning, which meant that the day was clear, with a promise of intense heat. Had it been Saturday, it naturally would have been raining.
“This year,” he moaned, “I’ll be wiped out. If I can’t mix sodas, why should beer stay in a glass for me? I thought I could hire a boy for ten dollars a week to run the hot-dog griddle; I could make sodas, and Esther could draw beer. All I can do is make hot dogs. Esther can still draw beer; but twenty or maybe twenty-five a week I got to pay a soda-man. I won’t even come out square—a fortune I’ll lose!”
The situation really was desperate. Concessions depend on too many factors to be anything but capriciously profitable.
His throat was fiery and his soft brown eyes held a fierce glaze when the gas and electric were turned on, the beer pipes connected, the tank of carbon dioxide hitched to the pump, and the refrigerator started.
Gradually, the beach was filling with bathers. Greenberg writhed on his bench and envied them. They could swim and drink without having liquids draw away from them as if in horror. They were not thirsty—
And then he saw his first customers approach. His business experience was that morning customers buy only soft drinks. In a mad haste he put up the shutters and fled to the hotel.
“Esther! ” he cried. “I got to tell you! I can’t stand it—”
Threateningly, his wife held her broom like a baseball bat. “Go back to the concession, you crazy fool! Ain’t you done enough already?”
He could not be hurt more than he had been. For once he did not cringe. “You got to help me, Esther.”
“Why didn’t you shave, you no-good bum? Is that any way–”
“That’s what I got to tell you. Yesterday I got into an argument with a water gnome—”
“A what?” Esther looked at him suspiciously.
“A water gnome,” he babbled in a rush of words. “A little man so high, with big ears that he swims with, and he makes it rain—”
“Herman!” she screamed. “Stop that nonsense. You’re crazy!”
Greenberg pounded his forehead with his fist. “I ain’t crazy. Look, Esther. Come with me into the kitchen.”
She followed him readily enough, but her attitude made him feel more helpless and alone than ever. With her fists on her plump hips and her feet set wide, she cautiously watched him try to fill a glass of water.
“Don’t you see?” he wailed. “It won’t go in the glass. It spills all over. It runs away from me.”
She was puzzled. “What happened to you?”
Brokenly, Greenberg told of his encounter with the water gnome, leaving out no single degrading detail. “And now I can’t touch water,” he ended. “I can’t drink it. I can’t make sodas. On top of it all, I got such a thirst, it’s killing me.”
Esther’s reaction was instantaneous. She threw her arms around him, drew his head down to her shoulder, and patted him comfortingly as if he were a child. “Herman, my poor Herman!” she breathed tenderly. “What did we ever do to deserve such a curse?”
“What shall I do, Esther?” he cried helplessly.
She held him at arm’s length. “You got to go to a doctor,” she said firmly.
“How long can you go without drinking? Without water you’ll die. Maybe sometimes I am a little hard on you, but you know I love you—”
“I know, Mamma,” he sighed. “But how can a doctor help me?”
“Am I a doctor that I should know? Go anyhow. What can you lose?”
He hesitated. “I need fifteen dollars for an electric razor,” he said in a low, weak voice.
“So?” she replied. “If you got to, you got to. Go, darling. I’ll take care of the concession.”
Greenberg no longer felt deserted and alone. He walked almost confidently to a doctor’s office. Manfully, he explained his symptoms. The doctor listened with professional sympathy, until Greenberg reached his description of the water gnome.
Then his eyes glittered and narrowed. “I know just the thing for you, Mr. Greenberg,” he interrupted. “Sit there until I come back.”
Greenberg sat quietly. He even permitted himself a surge of hope. But it seemed only a moment later that he was vaguely conscious of a siren screaming toward him; and then he was overwhelmed by the doctor and two interns who pounced on him and tried to squeeze him into a bag.
He resisted, of course. He was terrified enough to punch wildly. “What are you doing to me?” he shrieked. “Don’t put that thing on me!”
“Easy now,” the doctor soothed. “Everything will be all right.”
It was on that humiliating scene that the policeman, required by law to accompany public ambulances, appeared. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Don’t stand there, you fathead,” an intern shouted. “This man’s crazy. Help us get him into this strait jacket.”
But the policeman approached indecisively. “Take it easy, Mr. Greenberg. They ain’t gonna hurt you while I’m here. What’s it all about?”
“Mike!” Greenberg cried, and clung to his protector’s sleeve.
“They think I’m crazy—”
“Of course he’s crazy,” the doctor stated. “He came in here with a fantastic yarn about a water gnome putting a curse on him.”
“What kind of a curse, Mr. Greenberg?” Mike asked cautiously.
The Dark Side Page 7