by Meyer Levin
“Yah, you’ll pick something up all right.” Artie laughed, but they tried a few streets. Garfield Boulevard he said was good for gash hunting. They drove up and down the length of it, a few times spotting pairs of strolling girls, and once coasting slowly while Artie went through a long conversation with two stupid gigglers. The whole time, Judd’s head was pounding with scenes from Fanny Hill, which Artie had lent him to read. Despite his excitement, he wanted to roar away from the two females, with their smeared mouths. Why should a man have to demean himself to make vapid remarks to such brainless creatures, merely for biological release!
For it was biological. And that was what dragged a man down. From deep in childhood, Judd had the feeling that the entire female mechanism was nauseating. Somehow he knew about the blood, from far back with that fleshy fat governess, Trudy. Occasionally at night the almost suffocating sense of her came over him. More often it was the girl in the war atrocity. In different ways – dragged out of her bed, or huddling in a barn. And dark female blood. Over her, the stiff-necked officer in uniform. Sometimes it was like the military-school uniform Max wore, buttoned to the chin, when he came home for the holidays. And lately Artie, he and Artie running from the cops, the cops firing after them, and Artie pulling him behind the telegraph post in the alley, laughing. And there in the alley, the girl from the war poster… Judd would surrender himself to his excitement, at the same time cursing the terrible need that nature had forced upon an intelligent being, the tormenting, relentless sex need…
That first evening in the car they didn’t have any luck. But one night just before Artie and his folks were going up to Charlevoix for the summer, they connected.
After the girls got into the car you could see they were a little older; they had creases in their necks. Judd’s girl put her hand on his knee right away, and from behind Artie called, “She wants to know if we carry a blanket!” All four exploded with merriment. Still laughing, Judd’s girl lifted his right hand from the wheel and placed it on her thigh.
He drove straight out on 63rd, beyond the new airfield there, and on the way the girl said she hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about her, though she and her friend loved to be taken places, and of course every girl loved to receive presents, but she hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
When they parked, the girls got out on different sides of the car, as if by habit. They kept calling to each other with suppressed but shrieky laughter. It was a sultry night and there were mosquitoes on the field; Judd kept getting bitten. He felt angry at the need in himself to do this. Just as he embraced her, the girl looked into his face in a serious way and said, “You all right? I never had anything, honest; I swear.” It took him an instant to realize that she meant the disease. “Sure, I’m okay,” he gasped, but he was completely invaded by fear, wanting to quit, for probably she did have it, and he thought of Artie on the other side of the car – Artie not caring if he gave the girl a dose, and sure, that was the way to be – the hell with all females – and even as the girl guided him, Judd’s mind was filled with images of Artie giving it, with godlike anger and vengeance, to the twat.
Judd’s climax came instantly. The girl emitted a low, surprised “Hey?” and then an odd little laugh. He didn’t want her to look at him. He had read about the feeling of after-disgust. But he was sure that what he felt was more, much more. Utter nausea. He had done it quickly, to have the least possible contact with her, yet she was trying to hold him to her, to be playful. He couldn’t find a word to say to her. Instead, all the while, he was trying to hear, to see, Artie. And then they heard Artie’s partner. “You had too much gin, sonny.” And then that girl had jumped up, shaking straight her dress, and Judd’s girl stood up as at a signal.
Suddenly the girls began jabbering gaily again, and suggesting places to dine and dance, calling them “sports”. It was as if the intercourse itself had been some minor preliminary. But he didn’t want to go anywhere with them; he didn’t even want to be in the car with them driving them back to where they had been picked up.
Then the girl called from behind, “How about going to the show at the Tivoli? Pola Negri’s playing.” Artie quickly made up a big story in his bootlegger rôle about having to meet a certain connection in a certain spot in Little Italy. No dames.
Judd pulled up at the corner, and just as the girls were beginning to look angry, Artie slipped his a ten-spot, saying that would take them to the show and maybe the Stutz would be waiting when they came out, if he finished his deal.
Judd’s girl, smiling, offered her mouth, repeating, “I hope you won’t think we’re that kind.” He couldn’t stand to kiss her; he zoomed the car away before Artie was half settled beside him.
Artie shook his head, laughing. What a pair of bags. With a bag like that he never could get really excited.
Only then Judd understood that Artie hadn’t done it. And suddenly his own nausea was gone. Artie kept on talking. It was no kick with a cheap slut, a semipro. And Judd said females were disgusting anyway; all of them were disgusting. It was a foul trick of nature to make a man need to consort with the creatures. They took a swig to get the taste out, and then Artie had an idea for some fun. Back on 63rd were some sheds.
They drove west again and Artie picked out a shed at the end of a vacant lot, just an old shed – couldn’t hurt anybody. He got out of the car and found some old newspapers and cardboard. He lighted a little bonfire against the wall of the shack. They waited till it caught on, then circled the block, coming back to see the whole shed ablaze.
Artie put his arm on Judd’s shoulder, watching. Judd felt cleansed. He wished he had thought of this himself. How Artie’s eyes glittered! He felt the wine of full friendship in them at last.
Soon they heard the fire engines coming.
Lying on his bed, one ear cocked for footsteps, Judd restrained himself. He wouldn’t give himself to the final exciting imaginings, for at any moment Max or his father might come. At last he heard them on the stairs, talking; Max was going to drive downtown to a show, and would leave the old man for a card game at the club.
Good! They wouldn’t be here when Artie came.
And the image was upon him, of the first time with Artie. On the train going up to Charlevoix to be Artie’s summer guest. It was an overnight ride, and Artie had taken a compartment, and once they were in it Artie had unloaded a bottle and a deck of cards – this would be one big night.
Judd had taken along the Perfumed Garden in French, and he translated a few of the best parts to Artie while they played a couple of hands of casino, a nickel a point, Judd winning. And all the time they were drinking, and Artie was getting looser, the way he had of clowning so you couldn’t tell exactly whether he was tight or only pretending to be tight. Artie talked of all the girls they would have in Charlevoix – he had them lined up; he knew some terrific lays on the farms around there; it would be a great summer – and all the while Judd kept feeling freer and bolder, and the pounding was in him.
He hardly knew how – perhaps he was half drunk himself, maudlin – they were patting each other. “Old pal.” Maybe singing. Then they started to go to bed. Artie lost the toss for the lower, but refused to abide by the decision. He dived into Judd’s bunk, and Judd started to push Artie out; and then horsing around like that, wrestling, they lay extended together to catch their breath, and when it began Artie made no sign, pretending to be half-drunkenly half asleep. Then Artie laughingly muttered a few dirty names, and let it happen as if he were too drunk to know or care.
In the morning they said nothing about it. The Straus car was at the station for them, and they drove up to the terrific showplace the Strauses had on the bluff over the lake, a reproduction of a castle on the Rhine.
They had adjoining bedrooms.
“Junior,” Max called from the hallway, and Judd leaped up from the bed and went to the door, to be told about their going downtown. Then he forced himself to sit at his desk again and look at his law notes.
As he hung up the receiver after calling Judd, Artie experienced one of those dark surges of feeling, as if he could have sent a wave of death through the telephone and seen Judd stricken by it, paralysed, turned to stone. Electrocution by telephone. Himself, the master criminal. He’d call up his enemies, and then they would be found dead, telephone in hand.
He saw Judd, sitting like that. And picturing it, Artie felt a flash of comprehension: Judd wanted to be caught and executed. For if you left things around like that, the glasses, the typewriter, you wanted to get caught. Like the kind of girl that leaves hairpins all over the back seat.
So Judd was a terrible danger to him. Rage and grief shuddered through Artie. Why did that punk bastard have to go and spoil the whole thing! All the other things he had done by himself, were done without a trace. The last one in winter, the ice-cold night, the upturned coat collar covering the face, the tape-wound chisel in his pocket, hard against his hand, then the body falling off the pier into the lake. Had he done it, or only pictured it to himself?
That was the sad part of doing things all by yourself, on your own. You lost them. You really needed someone else to be in a thing with you so that the deed stayed alive between you.
Then all the little things he and Judd had done together, the fires and the thing at the frat house in Ann Arbour – all those things rose up in Artie and pleaded for Judd. Pleaded for dog-eyes Jocko. But Artie wasn’t sure. He would decide about Judd after they had got rid of the typewriter. Perhaps, if the feeling came over him… He put his automatic into his pocket.
Artie did not fail to call out good-bye to the family, flashing a charming smile at Mumsie’s guest. Then, though it was the wrong direction for Judd’s, he walked past the Kessler house.
In that house, were they getting any clues leading to him? Ah, let them follow him now! Instead of leading them to his accomplice, he would throw them off the track! And Artie turned up Hyde Park Boulevard, toward Myra’s. Let Judd sit waiting, worrying.
In the gilded lobby of the Flamingo there sat the usual two groups of little ladies in retirement, and Artie could sense the buzz among them as he passed toward the elevators: there goes the brilliant Straus boy, youngest university graduate, they were saying, and surely plotting about catching him for their nieces and granddaughters.
Myra’s mother herself opened the door, welcoming him, but with an air of confusion. “Why, Artie! Hello, Artie. It’s so nice to see you, but you know Myra’s just going out.”
Myra bubbled out from her room; she had not quite finished dressing, and was holding a sash for her beaded green frock. He and she always laughed as soon as they saw each other, a kind of guilty conspiratorial laugh, like the times as kids when they were almost caught playing doctor. Yet despite the laughter, Myra’s eyes were always melancholy, befitting a poetess, and she talked in breathless rushes of words, curiously like Artie.
Her date was a goof, she said, a football player. She had been roped in, but “When he is silent, I can imagine he is a Greek god. Oh, I want to have lots of lovers, like Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
While Myra rushed back to her room to find a poem she had just written, Mrs. Seligman managed to inquire conventionally about his family. How was his mother? How was his father’s blood pressure?
Fine, Artie said, everyone was fine, but Mumsie was rushing to Charlevoix tomorrow morning with little Billy, because of that terrible crime – wasn’t it a monstrous thing? And spying a huge box of candy, Artie poked his finger into one of the chocolates. “Aha! Liqueur!” he cried, sucking the finger, and then poking it down the entire row of candies while Mrs. Seligman giggled in horror – “Really, Artie!”
“He’s wacky!” Myra called. He walked into her room.
Myra thrust herself up against him and kissed him briefly, moving the tip of her tongue, and gyrating her abdomen to show she knew how to be wicked. She broke off and pulled back, looking at him intently with her huge brown eyes. “Is anything wrong, Artie?”
The girl made him impatient sometimes with her understanding looks. He said, “Nah, I just got the willies,” and she said he had to hear her new sonnet. “My Unfaithful Lover” was the title; Artie picked it up and read out loud. “I share my lover with the wingspread sail-”
She shared her lover with the sleet, the gale. He said it was swell.
They were, of course, not lovers. And yet she was in love with Artie; she had loved him since she was a little girl. They were remote relatives, fifty-eleventh cousins they called themselves, Myra always explaining, with a bubble of laughter, that anyone whose family owned Straus stocks was a cousin. Her father had been one of the founders.
She called Artie “lover”, as a kind of promise within herself that it would one day be he. She was sure she knew the Artie others didn’t know; she knew an Artie who was not always shining and being smart, but who was torn. This she cherished as a love secret. Artie was much deeper than he let on.
So now he said there was nothing wrong, he just was sick of the world, had a touch of the blues, and that reminded Myra of a terrific place she had heard about, downtown, where they had a wonderful blues singer. It was in a cellar on Wabash. Why not go there tomorrow?
He agreed; maybe they would make it a double date.
Myra groaned. Not Judd.
Well, he had sort of agreed to help Judd celebrate his Harvard exams tomorrow. Why did she always have to pick on Judd?
“Maybe I’m jealous.” Myra laughed without meaning anything. But she simply couldn’t see why he let that dreary drip hang around.
It was not a new argument. Especially if you went in a crowd, she said, Judd was so unlikable, with his conceited ideas, and his eyes that never blinked.
Aw, Artie told her, Judd was a brilliant little sonofabitch, and the reason he was so unpopular was that people knew they were inferior to him.
“I don’t care how brilliant he is, he gives me the creeps,” she said.
Well, Artie admitted, maybe he let Judd hang around so much partly out of pity because the guy had no friends.
The bell rang; it was her date. Artie grabbed the sash from Myra, and holding it around his waist, shimmied into the other room. Her mother had just opened the door, and Artie swayed toward the young man there, announcing, “I’m your date. Myra has just been kidnapped.”
“Don’t mind him. He’s my wacky cousin, just dropped in from Elgin,” Myra said, taking the sash, and then Artie solemnly declared that he was sorry he couldn’t join them on their date – he had an appointment to hijack a shipment from Canada. He gave her a passionate kiss in front of the young man and her mother. “Don’t drink any wood alcohol,” he admonished, whisking out of the apartment, laughing.
Why did he let Judd hang on to him? Her question resounded as he walked. Ever since the beginning, every piece of trouble had been on account of Judd, and now Dog Eyes had brought him to the edge of real danger.
Walking on Stony Island, purposely past the police station, Artie was now conducting the trial of Judd Steiner. All-powerful, in his hands was the life-or-death decision.
Take the second summer Judd came up to Charlevoix. They hadn’t seen each other much that year, because that was the year Artie had transferred to Ann Arbour. Morty Kornhauser, from the Ann Arbour chapter of Alpha Beta, was visiting him just then, too.
Sunday morning, Judd had to walk into Artie’s room through the connecting bathroom, to wake him up. They were going canoeing to an island where Artie knew a couple of girls – fishermen’s daughters. As Judd started pulling him out of bed, Artie made a playful grab, and then they were wrestling and fooling around.
And Morty had to walk in. Morty had a sneaky way of slipping around. Who the hell knew how much he had watched, before Judd finally noticed him standing there with his mouth open like at some goddam stag show?
Artie made the best of it and said, “Want to join the fun?” But that prig Morty said, “No, I don’t indulge, excuse me” – and walked out.
Their eyes caught, and Judd let out his giggle. With three boys in a canoe, anything could happen.
They hurried down to breakfast, so as not to give Morty a chance to talk to anyone. Then, rather sullenly, he walked down with them to the boathouse.
When they were a good way out on the lake, Artie stood up, complaining, “For crissake, Judd, you don’t know your paddle from your asshole,” and Judd insulted him back and started a scuffle. Before Morty knew what was happening, they were all in the water.
They saw the bastard come up thrashing. He glared at them, and with his mouth full, sputtered, “…on purpose!” and then went under, thrashing. They swam away. But Judd looked back, treading water. Morty was flailing, but keeping his head up.
Artie saw it, too. The whole damn thing was Judd’s fault, he swore. He’d heard the bastard wrong. “I don’t swim” didn’t mean “I can’t swim”.
Morty came ashore some distance from them, and they hurried over to him solicitously. Panting, he gasped out. “You did it on purpose. I know, you filthy degenerates!” His eyes were narrow, meaningful.
When they told the story of the accidental overturning of the canoe, he was silent. And that night he discovered he had to cut his visit short and return to Lansing.
Then the bastard wrote his letters.
He sent them to their brothers. One to Max Steiner, and one to James Straus. They were neatly typed, sanctimonious letters – “unpleasant as the subject may be, I feel it is my duty” and “by chance came upon an exhibition of unmentionable character” and “not my place to give advice but perhaps you are unaware of-”