by Meyer Levin
“If that is so,” Ruth said, “then no one is responsible for anything. Even criminals and murderers are not to blame, if there is no free will. It’s all cause and effect.”
“Of course!” said Artie.
“If you talk like that,” I said, “then you might just as well believe in God.”
“What?” Artie cried, falling into my trap.
“A determinist does not believe in God,” Judd corrected me. “He believes in absolute cause and effect, and nothing – no God – can intervene and change anything.”
“That’s right.” Ruth recognized the distinction and smiled to him. “People who believe in God believe God can change things, can punish them for doing wrong. So they still believe in a certain amount of free will.”
“There can be free will,” Judd said, “but it has nothing to do with right or wrong. That’s just old-fashioned moralizing.”
Ruth knit her brows. “What do you mean?”
Judd suddenly began to talk like a whirlwind, with passion, explaining his ideas to Ruth. If you accepted a set of regulations about right and wrong, you might as well believe in cause and effect, for everything was exactly laid out for you, what to do and what not to do – you had no choice. But if you believed in free will, then you had to feel free to choose. You had to say there were no rules. Of course, you might for your own convenience decide to accept some of the minor rules, the minor conventions like wearing clothes. But to prove you were free, you had to know you could break the rules, too.
He went on and on. Sometimes his ideas seemed jumbled, even contradictory, but every time I tried to cut in and argue, Judd would screech me down, throwing in names, labels, Nietzsche, and the Will to Power, and the Greek Stoics, and Kant, in a crazy kind of mixture. About all I could make of it was that the multitudes weren’t strong enough to make use of their free will. Only the few. Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Myra was saying philosophy was her worst subject, she wanted to dance, and Ruth was summarizing like an intelligent student. “Well, according to Artie’s idea, there isn’t any right and wrong because of fate; everything is determined forever.”
“Sure,” Artie said, “you are my fate!”
Ruth laughed, and went on to summarize Judd’s point of view. “But you say there isn’t any right and wrong, but for the opposite reason, because people do have free will and should use it to do exactly as they please.”
“That’s anarchy,” I said.
Anarchy was merely a simple way of putting it, Judd declared, as though to push me out of the argument. Ruth had her eyes intently fixed on Judd’s. The two of them seemed to have forgotten I was there. She asked whether he was really interested in law, in going to Harvard. He was interested in everything, Judd said, in language, in science – his was a universal mind, like da Vinci’s, and it would be a waste to study law.
But wasn’t he interested in law too? Ruth asked. Surely it would be fascinating; there were great lawyers like Jonathan Wilk who gave their lives to justice.
He laughed his clever laugh. After all, being a lawyer meant being able to argue on either side of a case, so a lawyer really couldn’t have any convictions about justice.
That part of it at least fitted with his ideas about right and wrong, Ruth said, so he ought to be interested in law after all.
It was a neat response and I saw his face quicken, for it showed she had followed him. I was beginning really to feel annoyed, and yet was too proud to break up their tête-à-tête. Then Artie and Myra were back at the table, and we all drank and drank.
Some time late that evening, the idea about Ruth could have come to Judd. Ruth was dancing with Artie. I saw Ruth cutting loose; the quietest girl can turn into a flashy dancer when she’s with one. Judd’s eyes were upon them, unwavering.
I imagine there coming to him in that moment a sensation like a double beat of the heart, a knowledge, an intention, a recognition: she is the one to whom he will do it.
Every man and every woman has a testing image, like the photographer’s painted setting with an opening for the sitter’s head. How will she look every morning, across from me at the breakfast table? Orthe girl is pictured in some graceful attitude of undressing. Or in the midst of a kiss, her lips parted. Or mothering a baby.
With Judd, the test image was the fantasy scene of rape that so haunted him. Was this the one to do it to? How would she look afterward, lying overcome, her clothes in shreds? Would he feel touched? Would love spread through him? Would he turn to her tenderly to devote a lifetime to removing the horror of his act?
The image of violence was perhaps a final assertion of his darker self, wrestling him down to keep him from a love that might alter him. And yet the violent fantasy had in it something of that very love. For below the image was a throbbing sense that therein lay release – afterwards he would no longer need Artie. This would be an action entirely on his own, just as Artie had done things on his own.
It was a struggle of wish and counterwish – in the same action to make himself equal to Artie and therefore more than ever a partner, and yet to make himself free of Artie through a woman.
Hardly identified, these images swept through him as he raised his heavy lids and looked at Ruth dancing with Artie, and she sent him a smile.
When we reached Ruth’s house, I told the others I’d walk home from there, and Artie made the expected remarks.
It wasn’t extremely late, about two. We could have gone upstairs. But this hallway was fairly private; only one other family lived in the building, above the Goldenbergs.
We embraced, and she said, “You liked Myra, didn’t you?” I laughed and teased her about Judd. We kissed a real love kiss, tenderly, without opening our lips, and then Ruth had to talk about him. I could sense her frowning a little in the dim hall. That Judd, she said, he was really brilliant. She had never met anyone so brilliant – squeezing my hand – but there was also something disturbing about him, something sad. Then she added, a bit archly, that he had asked her to lunch tomorrow. But of course I needn’t worry about competition, as he was going to Europe in two weeks.
I told her she was free to marry any millionaire she could get, and we kissed the last kiss, which was always frankly passionate. Then she would say, “Oh, Sid, I wish we really were lovers,” and then we would break because it was too much to endure, and then she would hurry upstairs, though I might pull her back by her fingertips for one more such embrace. Then I would walk home, resisting the impulse to grab a cab and indulge in the traditional after-date release of a whorehouse.
THE BOYS DROPPED Myra at the hotel, and then they picked up a paper. Chief Nolan still maintained that the suicide solved the crime.
“You didn’t give that bum a push?” Judd said to Artie.
“Naw, not this time.” Artie grinned. “We should have thought of it, though.”
It would have been the perfect idea. Again, Judd had that fleeting, melancholy sense that they were not as perfect as they had thought themselves.
Judd felt a sudden sag of energy; he didn’t want anything, not even to stay with Artie. He wanted only some absolute oblivion, perhaps not exactly death, but something cleaner, deeper than sleep, something like a permanent hibernation, crawling away somewhere, some place close and warm, to have no thoughts.
And I see him, remaining quite late in bed, drowsing, and rubbing against the bedclothes, and indulging in fantasies. There comes the image of Ruth. Has he made his date with her in order to do it? But there is a strong counter-feeling about this girl. He feels her almost as not a girl. A person. He has a certain eager curiosity about how it will be with her at lunch.
Then as he tries to seize and analyse the sensation, the sex thoughts grow over it.
Suppose only a short time is left to him, in freedom, even in life. Suppose he and Artie may soon be caught and locked up? (He never sees it farther than being locked up in a cell.) But then, if he is locked up for life, what of the things he has left undone, untried?
Most insistent of all is the rape. Much stronger than the pressure had been for that deed with the boy. That deed had not been in him at all; he had told himself it stood for the rape; but in the act itself, no end had come. Had it been a wasted substitute for the deed that was still there in him, clamouring?
Should he tell Artie? Do this one with Artie?
No. Alone. At least, go on a way toward doing it alone.
Judd pictures himself driving to her house to pick her up. Take the pistol along, as Artie would? The lunch date is known; her mother would know. If he did only the rape, without the killing, a girl wouldn’t tell. The soldiers dragging the girls – the killing wasn’t always part of it. But an absolute part of it is the girl being a virgin. He has to find out for sure at lunch. After all, she goes out with this newspaper fellow; you can never know.
The maid knocked.
In an odd voice, constricted, the maid said there were two police officers downstairs who wished to speak with him.
Judd told himself he was delighted to observe there was no panic in him, none whatsoever. Undoubtedly they had traced the glasses. Now everything depended on his savoir-faire. Should he phone Artie, warn him? No, they might already be watching the telephone.
As he dressed, without undue haste, Judd could not help noticing a subtle fleeting sense of pleasure that they had come.
He had slept late; the old man had gone downtown, and Max was out golfing. Lucky they were out. Judd descended the stairs.
Two policemen stood there. On their faces there was nothing to go by; or did he detect a shade of deference for the neighbourhood, the house? The nearer one said Captain Cleary would like to ask him some questions. At the South Chicago station.
The easy way they talked, it couldn’t be that they had anything serious. “South Chicago?” Judd repeated as though completely mystified.
The cops exchanged glances, and now the second one said, respectfully, “He just told us to bring you in for some questions.”
“Is it for speeding or something?” He smiled. They smiled back but didn’t answer. Judd shrugged, and acted indulgent though a trifle worried as anyone should be when called for by the police. If only Artie had been watching!
Feeling the two of them bulking huge behind him, Judd led the way to the door. Would there be a police wagon? No, a Marmon.
One policeman got into the back seat with him. Judd glanced hurriedly around. The street was inordinately quiet; kids were still being kept indoors. Nobody had seen, he guessed.
Judd offered his Helmars. The cop’s fingers seemed almost too thick to grasp a cigarette. With a comforting snort he remarked, “It’s just something routine.”
But why the South Chicago station? From the way the papers had it, the case was being handled by the chiefs downtown.
Then Judd recalled, on our date the night before, my talking about interviewing the captain out there. About nature students. That was certainly it. Somehow they had got his name. Because of that punk reporter. That smart-alec reporter, Sid Silver, had to go nosing around. Rape his girl for him, would serve him right. And Judd imagined himself telling the whole thing to Artie, afterward, and Artie’s laughter.
But something could go wrong. And if they kept him under arrest, there would be no rape; in fact, Ruth would even be stood up on her lunch date.
Finally the car halted in front of the two-story brick station. It looked a lot like the Hyde Park station where he had been taken as a kid when some cops picked him up in Jackson Park with his.22, shooting birds. The old man had straightened that out quickly enough. Dragging a well-brought-up boy of good family into a police station! Indeed, Pater practically had the police apologizing, afraid of what he could do to them with his influence. “Why, this boy is already a recognized ornithologist!” And the old man had got him the only permit in the entire city, to use his gun in the parks. “You see?” His father had wanted him to be impressed. Judah Steiner, Sr., could handle anything, get anything he wanted in Chicago. Well, let the old man get him out of this one! And there arose in Judd that curious mixture of resentment and expectancy that came when he thought of his father. This whole thing was like a final challenge between them.
He walked with the cops into the vacant-looking room, with the railing and the desk and the pale bare floor and the stale smell. He still could not be sure but that this represented the remainder of his life.
A cop in shirt sleeves stood by a window, gazing out on a vacant lot, his gun important-looking in the hip holster. Turning, he said, “The captain wants you, inside,” motioning to a partition, with a door. Judd reached over the railing to undo the catch on the gate, and walked across to the private office.
The captain was writing at his desk. Giving Judd a glance, he motioned to a chair. He was middle-aged, fat, even easy-looking. “Judah Steiner, eh? Well, I’ll tell you, you been around out in Hegewisch quite a lot, the game warden tells me.”
“Yes, sir.” It would be nothing at all, he already felt sure. Judd spoke of his bird-watching classes, and told how he had conducted the last group out there only a week ago. With respectful curiosity, the captain inquired just what they were studying about birds, and Judd spoke of the mating habits of several species at this season. The captain became interested. Oh, and who was in the class?
Judd would be glad to supply a full list. In this particular group there were several young married women. The captain chuckled. The mating season, eh? Then, returning to business: “Ever been out there around the Pennsy tracks, there by that culvert?”
“You mean where the Kessler boy was found?” Judd said easily. “I know the precise spot quite well, as it happens.”
“How does that happen?”
“Only the last time I was out there, I recall climbing over the tracks, because I slipped, coming down, and got my feet wet. It’s quite swampy there.” Thus, Judd felt, he had paved the way for discovering he had lost his spectacles, in case they had already been traced to him. They might have fallen out of his pocket when he slipped.
“You ever know of this Kessler kid going out there?”
“He certainly wasn’t in any of my groups, but he might have gone out with a school group. It’s used quite a lot, as you know. It’s the nearest place to the city where you find so much wild life.”
The captain had picked up a file card of some kind, and he tapped it against his desk. He swivelled and faced Judd. “You use glasses?”
Perhaps this was the moment to say, “As a matter of fact, those glasses found out there were mine. I must have lost them last week, but I didn’t notice it until I read about the case, and then – I guess it’s quite natural – I was rather frightened of becoming involved.”
Instead, he heard himself saying, “You mean field glasses?”
“No, I mean regular eyeglasses.”
“Why, yes, I do – or did. For reading, at home. I had them prescribed for headaches last year, but the headaches stopped, and I haven’t used my reading glasses for several months.”
The captain nodded. “Any of those people with you, or anybody you know goes out there, wear eyeglasses?”
Judd gave himself time for reflection. “Well, as a matter of fact, a few of the women wear glasses, and I have an assistant, occasionally – Jerry Harris is his name. He wears glasses. He was with us last week. But I’m sure he would have mentioned it to me, if he had lost his glasses.”
The captain took down the name and address, writing slowly, in a schoolboy hand. He didn’t ask for the phone number, and it occurred to Judd to call up Jerry and warn him.
Then the captain just sat there as though trying to think of more questions. Judd didn’t want to appear anxious to leave. He was indeed beginning to enjoy the situation, beginning to form an account of it in his mind, for Artie. Still, the silence became somewhat tense, and he allowed himself to glance at his watch. “As a matter of fact,” he remarked, “I have a date to take a girl birding this afternoon, but I guess we won’t be going to Heg
ewisch.” The captain’s flesh wobbled with his chortle. “That’s a new name for it. Birding!”
Judd took a full breath.
“Okay,” the captain said, pushing a sheet of paper toward him. “Tell you what, son. You write me out a little statement, all you just said, the facts you just stated, for the record.”
As he opened his fountain-pen, Judd felt in himself, perhaps a little more faintly but still quite recognizably, that shiver of elation he had experienced when he had first read in the papers of the glasses being found. For he had after all come under suspicion. This had been a mild third degree. He had acquitted himself. He had gone through the sieve.
“I’ll have the boys drive you home, so you won’t be late for your date – birding.” The captain chortled again.
Judd watched himself, so as not to write too much. A paragraph. He wrote fast in a careless hand; one thing was sure, this wouldn’t match his lettering on the envelope of the ransom letter. “This all right?” He passed the sheet to the captain.
The officer read it over slowly; he was a lip-reader, but concealed it by mouthing a cigar. He nodded.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been of much help,” Judd said, rising. A clear, mathematical conviction of superiority had come back to him. Against such people, it was a certainty he and Artie had to succeed.
“Well” – the captain leaned back – “it’s a downtown job now. But we’ve all got to give them all the help we can.”
Judd went to the door, opened it, even enjoying a fluttery feeling that a peremptory voice could still halt him. His two escorts were sitting, idle. They arose as though they had expected him, and led him out to the car.