Compulsion

by Meyer Levin

  Brother James brought it up on the tennis court, just before starting to play. “Say, Artie, what was your friend so sore about when he left here, that Kornhauser kid?”

  “Why? Has Morty been telling any stories?”

  “Well, he wrote me a letter.”

  “That stinking little crapper. Sure he was sore. We took about forty bucks away from him, shooting craps, up in my room, Saturday night, so he got mad and the little bastard even tried to suggest the dice were loaded-”

  James had on his knowing smile.

  “Is that what he wrote about?” Artie demanded.

  “Oh, it was some junk about you and Judd.” In the look James gave him, everything was included. All the things James had covered up for him – the swiped things, the dose. But he wouldn’t spill this either; James had to imagine himself a real guy, protecting his kid brother. “It’s all a dirty lie!” Artie exclaimed. “Morty’s just a dirty trouble maker!”

  James said, “Listen, Artie, this is for your own good. That Judd’s a freak. You know, funny. Maybe you fellows had better not be seen so much together. People make up all kinds of stories-”

  “Why, that dirty-minded lousy – Why, for crissake I know what it is he made a story out of. Why, we were just horsing around.”

  “You try to let Morty drown?” James asked coolly.

  “Why, he fell out of the canoe. Why, that-” Their eyes met. Artie grinned.

  It was lucky the letter hadn’t been sent to Lewis, because Lewis would have insisted it was a matter for Momsie and Popsie. But James didn’t like trouble. He liked a good time himself. And he couldn’t have already told anyone, or he wouldn’t be bringing it up like this. Christ, if the family knew about this one, it would be worse than that time with the car accident.

  Artie took it easy with James, giving him the boyish wink, and letting him win the set.

  But that was a mark against Judd, Artie told himself, turning down 49th Street toward Judd’s house and casting quick glances right and left.

  Judd’s fault, that time with Morty. First, being such a damn fool as to start playing around, with the door unlocked. Hell, he himself didn’t get any special kick out of it, but he let Judd play around just for the hell of it. Judd was the one who started all that stuff. And then, once Morty had seen them and once they had got him out in the canoe, and when they saw he had tricked them about not being able to swim, they ought to have held the tattler’s head under water. If Judd hadn’t been so scared Morty would have been taken care of right there.

  Instead, they had let him leave. So he not only had the story to tell of catching them fooling around, but, even worse, about their trying to drown him. Morty told everybody he saw that summer. Then, instead of coming back to the frat in the fall, he had to spend a year in Denver, with TB – the reason he didn’t exert himself swimming.

  Even with Morty Kornhauser away from the frat, Judd should never have insisted on coming to Ann Arbour. That was another mistake to charge up against Judah Steiner, Jr. First he had to go and make a whole issue of it with his brother Max, who had received the same kind of dirty letter as James. Instead of simply gabbing his way out of it, Judd had to make an issue, declaring that just for that, the family had to show they trusted him by letting him go to Ann Arbour even though Artie was there.

  And then another mistake. Mr. Judd Steiner had to insist he wanted to get into the frat! Morty heard about it and wrote one of his letters from Denver: to Al Goetz, president of the chapter. “Do you want to have a real pair of perverts, right in the house?”

  The president took Artie aside for a man-to-man talk. Hell, it was so bad, Artie even had to get James to come up, casually, like for a football game, but to remind Al Goetz of a thing or two. And hell, Al finally admitted everybody knew Artie was okay – why, Artie helled around in the Detroit cat houses with the rest of the boys; they knew he was regular. As James said, he’d even caught a dose at fifteen. But after James was gone, Al told Artie, Why not face the facts? The thing wasn’t only because of Morty’s tales. Judd simply was not well liked, so why make an issue of getting him in?

  At least – a point for the defence – Judd didn’t push it. He suddenly was against fraternities. He even made a Hebe question out of it. A principle.

  The fact was, the Delts had taken him for a ride. For a couple of days he had the idea he was going to show up Alpha Beta by getting into a real gentile fraternity. Some Delt had made the mistake of inviting Judd over because of his being a genius prodigy and a millionaire too. But then they dropped him cold, and Judd suddenly made a principle out of it. He was against the idea of Jewish frats and non-Jewish frats. Being a Jew was simply an accident of birth. So now he was anti-fraternity. He would never join a Hebe frat either, on principle. Moreover, frat men were all a bunch of rubber stamps, Judd declared. They would come out a bunch of Babbitts. He would drop over to the house and spout this stuff, and some of the fellows would laugh, but a lot of them didn’t like it. They started telling Artie to keep his friend away from the place. On account of Judd he’d almost become unpopular.

  Artie walked a little faster. He thought of an idea that suddenly made him feel bubbly, even gay. He would go in through the basement and up the back stairs. He would give Dog Eyes the scare of his life.

  Judd was sitting erect, unable to study. He detested being at the mercy of a physical need. It seemed never to leave him. Others didn’t have it so bad. Artie didn’t have it so bad. Those two years at Ann Arbour, near Artie, had nearly driven him crazy.

  None of the coeds would put it out. The cat houses weren’t enough. He had to have it all the time – oversexed, he guessed.

  And that was the time when the image of Artie began to get in the way. Even when he was with a girl. Inside himself he would be saying to a drunken, laughing Artie, “You goddam whore! You goddam whore!” Whoever she was, he would make her into Artie, and he would be tearing in a rage at his own bondage, at having to have it, at the flesh being stronger than the intellect.

  The times he had waited, in agony like tonight, always waiting for that capricious bastard – “See you at nine” – and you’d wait, getting more and more excited, imagining what you would do to him as soon as he came in.

  Then, like some damn girl, Artie would behave as if the two of you had never done it at all, as if an idea like that never entered his thoughts.

  The house was safe now. If only Artie would show up, they could be alone to themselves in the house, in this room. For two hours, even longer, without the worry of someone walking in.

  Artie was already late. You could never be sure with Artie. But under Judd’s fretful impatience there was an almost gratified feeling. Artie, superior, should acknowledge no convention of punctuality.

  Judd touched the typewriter. He felt a dreadful reluctance to part with it, to destroy it. It was the one thing he had kept from all they had done together; it was like a token of their pact. Perhaps instead of getting rid of it, they could hide it somewhere?

  Judd had an impulse, tender and tragic, to write a farewell note on the machine, a lone confession, taking all the blame. He could mail the note and then disappear. They would recognize the typing. If one could vanish, truly vanish, dissolving into nothingness as though never even born! Would Artie feel regret, appreciate what he had done?

  For, caught or not, Judd had a heavy presentiment that it was over now between Artie and himself. And parting with this machine would be like closing the circle.

  The night they had got the typewriter was the night they had made their pact. Only last fall. Both of them were back living in Chicago. A bunch of Artie’s frat brothers from his old Ann Arbour chapter had come down for the football game. And Artie had got into their pool on the Big Ten. Then after getting back to Ann Arbour they had ruled him out. He claimed he was the winner. Was he burned! He’d show those bastards! And suddenly the inspiration struck him. “Hey, Jock, we’ll drive up there and clean out the whole frigging house!”
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br />   They could do it the following Saturday. Leave at midnight, three hours of travel, twenty minutes for the job, home by daylight. If anybody wondered where they had been, they’d had a big Saturday night and wound up on 22nd Street, and boys will be boys!

  In Artie’s room, they had plotted it. A lazy November late afternoon, with Judd stretched out on Artie’s bed – one of those afternoons when he felt his energy ebbed, when he didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything. And Artie, relaxed in his Morris chair, his face in a desk-light glow, the petulant lips full-blown in his anger at the frat – in that moment Artie was Dorian Gray.

  And as though recognizing a new closeness, in his anger at the lousy bunch up there in Ann Arbour, Artie suddenly offered, “Hey, you want to see something?” Artie went to his closet. There, under a jumble of junk, which he swept aside, was a treasure trunk that Artie had from when he was a kid. Opening it, he dug beneath a cowboy suit and broken toy guns. Underneath was his loot.

  Not merely from the Five and Ten. That dime-store game of Artie’s wasn’t much of a secret. You walked through a crowded store with Artie, and he lifted items off the counters. Or at a party Artie would whisper, “Watch this!” and lift a wallet from the pocket of some half-crocked idiot.

  But here in the closet as they knelt down close together, Artie let Judd finger the wallets, emptied now, and some women’s purses, too. Dozens. The trunk bottom was covered with loot.

  To no one else, Judd felt, had Artie ever revealed this secret.

  That was when Artie made the plan for cleaning out the frat house in Ann Arbour.

  That day, Judd felt their intimacy sealed as never before. What his Dorian was revealing to him might be interpreted by the superficial as a mild kleptomania. But these trophies were, instead, tokens of a laughing superiority to the little rules of little men. An adroit theft was like a daring insult. It would be their retort to the whole frigging frat, for everything!

  And to do it was to do something real. This Saturday would be the real thing, Artie said. With real guns. Judd could take Max’s. Artie knew where it was kept, in Max’s desk. And Artie let Judd handle his own, an automatic.

  Saturday would be a cinch, because the big game was in Ann Arbour. Win or lose, the brothers would be stewed and dead to the world. Even if they heard anybody moving around the house, they’d think some guys had gone to a cat house and were pulling in late, or merely that someone was going to the can. And when they woke up in the morning -! Artie only wished he were still living in the house, so he could watch the hullabaloo and the guys accusing each other!

  Whispering, kneeling in the closet, they made the plans.

  On Saturday, Artie came over. While Artie stood in the hall, lighting a cigarette, Judd walked into Max’s room and put Max’s pistol into his pocket, feeling a little silly, and yet somewhat scared. Because he was sure Artie would go the limit if anybody tried to interfere. And Artie was right; if you were extending your sphere of experience into this kind of deed, then you did the deed in its own terms, all the way.

  There came a quick vision of himself and Artie, pistols out, backing down a hallway as they held off a crowd of men, of himself holding them at bay while Artie ran to the car…

  “Let’s go!” Artie snapped, and when they got into the Stutz, Artie fished in his pocket, pulled out two black silk handkerchiefs, and gave one to Judd.

  On the way, they didn’t talk much of the adventure. Instead, Judd brought up the subject of New Year. Judd was anxious about New Year’s Eve. Willie Weiss had dropped a remark that he and Artie would be double-dating, Artie dragging Myra. Judd couldn’t believe it. That Artie would leave him out of New Year. Perhaps Willie Weiss had been needling him. So now Judd proposed his own idea, for Artie and himself, just the two of them. Instead of loading themselves down with girls, they could go out on the town, crash one party after another. Artie said sure, that’s what they would do. The two of them. No sense getting tied up with broads. New Year was the best time to pick up new gash.

  It was then, on that ride in the November night, that Judd experienced the sense of the two of them in their unity apart from the world. A light snow began to fall, and traffic died away until theirs was the only car on a long stretch of road.

  Then the thought came to Judd that at this moment no one in the whole world, only he, knew where Artie was. The night was between them alone. If something should happen right now, an auto accident, and they should be killed together, then their folks might wonder what were they doing way out here. If someone, even Myra, should want Artie right now, she wouldn’t have the ghost of an idea where to look.

  He glanced at Artie, who was unusually silent, and saw that Artie had passed out, in the way he sometimes did, his mouth hanging a bit open. And a thrill of happiness went through Judd, to be riding like this as though he were carrying Artie with him into infinity.

  Their adventure would be a continuation of their separation from the world. For in the theft tonight, in the masked silence of it, they would be even more as they were now, united in space and time, enclosed in an action that no one else might know of, no one else might ever share.

  It was as though for this length of time they indeed escaped the world and inhabited their private universe together.

  A thought intruded. Judd found himself wondering whether this was what happened between men and women when they were in love. Was this the secret feeling of a honeymoon? Would he ever repeat some feeling of this kind with a girl? He could not imagine it with any girl he had met.

  As they drove into the outskirts of Ann Arbour, Artie woke. The timing so far was perfect. It was exactly three o’clock, and the streets were still; only an occasional car passed silently on the snow. Judd parked in an alleyway close to the Alpha Beta house.

  “Come on, tie it!” Artie turned his head for Judd to knot the black handkerchief. All alive now, alert. “If we get into trouble, give it to them!” The revolvers were against their hands, in their pockets.

  They walked up the front stairs. Artie still had his key, but the door was open. Judd followed, across the living room and up to the second floor. They could hear snores. His eyes were adjusted now; he could make out the walls, the door spaces, Artie’s form, his beckoning arm.

  Now Artie used his trick fountain-pen flashlight, the beam pointed to the floor. They entered Morty Kornhauser’s room first. The snitching sonofabitch was back from Denver. He and his room mate lay on their beds, dead to the world.

  Judd’s fright was almost paralysing, but greater than his fright was a pride. He was mastering his fear.

  Artie picked up Morty’s pants and went through the pockets. Judd went for the other fellow’s clothes, found the wallet, a watch. Artie seized them from his hands, indicating Judd was only to act as guard.

  After his first shock of resentment, Judd put down the clothes. Just then, he saw the portable typewriter, in its case by Morty’s bed. Artie was already moving out of the room. Judd picked up the typewriter. Teach that snitch to write letters.

  In the hall, Artie muttered, “For crissake. Loading us down with junk!” Judd set the typewriter near the stairs, to be picked up later.

  They went through several rooms. In one, the guys were away. Home week-enders, Artie said. He prowled through their drawers at ease, finding a pair of gold cuff links, a fancy fountain-pen set, even stopping to read a love letter.

  “C’mon!” Judd whispered urgently, but Artie lingered over the letter. Somewhere a door opened. Artie stepped quickly into a closet. They heard a guy shuffling to the bathroom, heard the plumbing, Judd all the while feeling murderously angry at Artie.

  The guy was back in bed. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Judd said. At last they were in the corridor. What if the guy had seen the typewriter, even stumbled over it! “You frigging boob!” Artie snapped. But Judd picked up the machine.

  As they got into the car, Artie let out a big laugh. They pounded each other. Success! Artie began to flip open the walle
ts. “Wait! Jesus, not here!” Judd pulled out and down the block. The plan had been to do another house, too, and for his turn Judd had picked the Delts.

  It was nearly four o’clock – some furnace tender might begin to stir. But Artie was lit up, excited. Judd didn’t want to seem a coward. Besides, he owed it to the snotty Delts. Jews and dogs not allowed!

  The door was unlocked there, too. Yet it seemed somehow more dangerous; robbing from gentiles was real.

  Even while they were on the stairs, they heard a light switch snap on in one of the bedrooms. Judd turned and hurried back downstairs. He tangled with something, a lamp cord; he managed to catch the lamp before it fell, but it made a noise.

  “I’ll kill you!” Artie snapped. They stood stock still in the hall. On the table lay some books, a camera. Artie picked up the camera. Things had become quiet upstairs. Artie started for the stairs again, but Judd held still. “You nuts?” he hissed. Towering over him black-masked in the dim hallway, his partner gave Judd a fleeting, shuddery, delicious thrill of suffocation, of death. “Somebody’s up,” Judd muttered. Artie growled, “You stink, you punk,” and pushed him out of the door. “Christ, that’s the last time I take you anywhere!”

  “There was someone awake. We’d have been caught, sure,” Judd objected.

  Artie grabbed the wheel, and the car leaped away. “Take it easy,” Judd begged. What a time for a smash-up, with all the stuff on them.

  Suddenly Artie let out a wonderful laugh as he toyed with his pistol. “Morty! The way he was laying there, you could have stuck a rod up his ass, he’d never wake up!”

  Judd had to laugh at the picture. He reached for his flask, opened it. Artie grabbed it from his hand, took the first swig, and in that moment Judd felt young, young, crazily happy; he felt the way a guy should feel!

  Artie pulled into a side road to examine the haul. One of the wallets had a twenty-dollar bill in it. “The lying sonofabitch!” Artie complained. “He brags he always carries a fifty.” Altogether, there was nearly a hundred dollars. Saturday night. They should have figured the guys would have been out spending. As for the rest of the haul, several pretty hot-looking stickpins, cuff links, a couple of good watches, along with several cheap turnips. And the typewriter, Judd reminded Artie.