by Irwin Shaw
“I don’t know anything,” Barnum would say wearily, in a low voice, as they locked him into his cell, but they never paid any attention. Luckily, the district attorney got a good job with an insurance company and gave up looking for the murderer of Sammy Spanish, otherwise Barnum was sure he’d have been kept until either he or the district attorney died.
Walking aimlessly down the street, with the year behind him, homeless, wifeless, childless, jobless, Barnum sighed. He stood on a corner, rubbing his chin sadly, trying to decide which way to turn. A car swung around the corner past him, too close to a car parked just below the corner. There was the sound of the grating of fenders and then the forlorn wail of brakes and the crumpling of metal. A man jumped out of the parked car, waving his hands.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he cried to the driver of the other car, looking wildly at his mashed fender. “Lemme see your license! Somebody’s got to pay for that fender and it ain’t going to be me, brother!” While the reckless driver was getting out of his car, the owner of the damaged car turned sadly to Barnum.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
Barnum looked hurriedly at him, at the fender, at the street around him. “Oh, no,” he said. “I didn’t see anything.”
And he turned and walked swiftly back in the direction from which he had come.
Little Henry Irving
The dice rolled like cavalry across the concrete floor of the academy basement.
“Eight’s the point,” Eddie said, pulling at the high collar of his cadet’s uniform. “Eight, baby, come eight, oh, you eight.” He stood up with a grin, dusting the knife-creases at his knees. “Read them,” he said.
The Custodian shook his head and sat down backward. “I might just as well lay down and die. On Christmas. How can a man be as unlucky as me on Christmas?”
“Roll for the pot,” Eddie offered seductively.
“My better nature says no,” the Custodian said.
“Roll you for the pot.”
“If I lose I’m cleaned. I won’t even be able to buy a pint of beer for my throat on Christmas.”
“O.K.,” Eddie said offhandedly, starting to rake in the silver, “if you want to quit, losing …”
“Roll for the pot,” the Custodian said grimly. He put out his last dollar-twenty with the desperate calm of a man signing his will. “Go ahead, Diamond Jim.”
Eddie cooed to the dice, held warm and cozy in his hands, and rocked soothingly back and forth on his skinny knees. “The moment has come,” he cried softly into his hands. “Little sweethearts …”
“Roll!” the Custodian cried irritably. “No poetry!”
“Four and three, five and two, six and one,” Eddie coaxed into his hands. “That’s all I ask.”
“Roll!” the Custodian yelled.
Delicately Eddie spun the dice along the cold hard floor. They stopped like lovers, nestling together against Fate. “Do we read seven?” Eddie asked gently.
“On Christmas!” the Custodian said despairingly.
Eddie carefully counted and sorted his money. “You put up a good fight,” he said comfortingly to the Custodian.
“Yeah,” the Custodian muttered. “Oh, yeah. A kid like you. Say, how old are you, anyway, a million?”
“I am thirteen years old,” Eddie said, pocketing the last coins. “But I come from New York.”
“You ought to be home with your family. On Christmas. A kid like you. I wish to hell you was home with yer family!”
“In Connecticut,” Eddie said, pulling his skimpy uniform jacket down, “nobody knows anything about crap. I’m telling you for your own good.”
“You ought to be home with yer family,” the Custodian insisted.
A veil of tears came suddenly over Eddie’s large dark eyes. “My Pop told me he don’t want to see me for a year.”
“What’d ye do?” the Custodian asked. “Win his pants from him last Christmas?”
Eddie blew his nose and the tears left his eyes. “I hit my sister with a lamp. A bridge lamp.” His mouth tightened in retrospect. “I would do it again. Her name’s Diana. She’s fifteen years old.”
“That’s nice,” the Custodian said. “You’re a fine little boy, all around.”
“It took four stitches. She cried for five hours. Diana! She said I mighta ruined her beauty.”
“Well, it wouldn’t do her beauty no good, hitting her with a bridge lamp,” the Custodian said reasonably.
“She’s going to be an actress. A stage actress.”
“That’s nice for a girl,” the Custodian said.
“Aaah,” Eddie snorted. “What’s nice about it? She takes lessons from dancing teachers and French teachers and English teachers and horseback teachers and music teachers and Pop is always kissin’ her and callin’ her his little Bernhardt. She stinks.”
“That’s no way to talk about yer sister,” the Custodian said sternly. “I won’t listen to a little boy talkin’ like that about his sister.”
“Aaah, shut up!” Eddie said bitterly. “Little Bernhardt. Pop’s an actor, too. The whole damn family’s actors. Except me,” he said with somber satisfaction.
“You’re a crap player,” the Custodian said. “You got nothing to worry about.”
“Little Bernhardt. Pop takes her with him all over the country. Detroit, Dallas, St. Louis, Hollywood.”
“Hollywood!”
“Me they send to Military Academy.”
“Military Academy is good for young minds,” the Custodian said loyally.
“Aaah,” Eddie said. “Little Bernhardt. I would like to step on her face.”
“That’s no way to talk.”
“She goes in three times a week to see my Pop act. My Pop can act better than anybody since Sir Henry Irving.”
“Who says so?” the Custodian wanted to know.
“My Pop,” Eddie said. “He’s a Polack, my Pop. He’s got feeling. Real feeling. Everybody says my Pop’s got feeling. You oughta see him act.”
“I only go to the movies,” the Custodian said.
“He’s actin’ in The Merchant of Venice. With a long white beard, you’d never know it was my Pop. When he talks people laugh and cry in the audience. You can hear my Pop’s voice for five blocks, I bet.”
“That’s the kind of actin’ I like,” the Custodian said.
Eddie threw out his arm in a tragic, pleading gesture. “Hath not a Jew eyes?” he demanded in tones of thunder. “Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Like that, that’s the way my Pop does it.” He sat down slowly on an upturned box. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, the way my Pop does it,” he said softly.
“You shouldn’t’ve hit yer sister with a bridge lamp,” the Custodian said morally. “Then you could’ve been seein’ him act tonight.”
“He smacked me for fifteen minutes, my Pop. He weighs two hundred and fifteen pounds an’ he’s built like Lou Gehrig, my Pop, like a truck horse, an’ he was swingin’ from his heels, but I didn’t cry an’ I didn’t tell him why I hit her with a bridge lamp. I didn’t cry one tear. I showed him. His little Bernhardt.” Eddie got up with determination. “What the hell, I might just as well spend Christmas in a Military Academy as any place else.” He started out into the bleak December afternoon.
“Lissen, Eddie,” the Custodian said hurriedly, before Eddie could get through the door, “I wanna ask you a question.”
“What?” Eddie asked coldly, sensing what was coming.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” the Custodian said, preparation in his voice.
“All right,” Eddie said, “it’s Christmas Eve.”
“I’m an old man.” The Custodian brushed his white mustache pitifully. “I’m an old man without kith or kin.”
“All right,” Eddie said.
“Ususally on Christmas, Eddie, I buy myself a little pint of something, applejack usually, and I warm my old heart in a corner to forget that I’m deserte
d by the world. When you get older you’ll know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said.
“This year,” the Custodian shifted uneasily, “this year you happen to’ve won all my money. Now, I was wonderin’, if you would …”
“No,” Eddie said, starting out.
“On Christmas Eve, for an old man, Eddie.”
“You lost,” Eddie said without heat. “I won. O.K.”
He left and the Custodian settled down in his carpet-seated rocker next the furnace. The Custodian rocked mournfully back and forth and shook his head as he watched Eddie go up the cellar steps out into the gray afternoon.
Eddie shambled aimlessly around the winter-bare school grounds. “Military School! Aaah!” he said to himself. He should be home in New York City, blazing with lights, green and red and white lights, filled with people hurrying happily through the streets with packages done up in colored ribbon, and Santa Clauses ringing their little bells on the street corners for the Salvation Army and the thousand movie houses gaping invitingly along the sidewalks. He should go watch Pop act tonight and go to dinner with him afterwards on Second Avenue, and eat duck and potato pancakes and drink spiced wine and go home and listen to Pop sing German songs at the top of his voice, accompanying himself on the piano loudly, until the neighbors complained to the police.
He sighed. Here he was, stuck at a Military Academy in Connecticut, because he was a bad boy. Ever since his sixth birthday he’d been known as a bad boy. He’d had a party on his sixth birthday and he’d had a fine time, with cake, candy, ice cream and bicycles, until his sister Diana had come into the middle of the room and done a scene from As You Like It that her English teacher had coached her in. “All the world’s a stage,” she’d piped in her imitation Boston accent that the English teacher gave her, “and all the men and women in’t merely playahs …” At the end of it everybody shouted “Bravo!” and Pop grabbed her and swung her up and cried on her blonde hair and said over and over again, “Little Bernhardt, my little Bernhardt!”
Eddie had thrown a plate of ice cream at her and it had spattered all over Pop and Diana had cried for two hours and he’d been spanked and sent to bed.
“I hate Connecticut,” he said to a leafless elm, leaning coldly over the dirty snow on the side of the walk.
Since then he had thrown Diana off a porch, tearing ligaments in her arm; he had run away in a rowboat off the coast of New Jersey and had had to be rescued by the Coast Guard at ten o’clock at night; he had played truant from seven different private and public schools; he had been caught coming out of burlesque houses with older friends; he had disobeyed his father on every possible occasion, and had been beaten three times to the month, standing there proud and stubborn, conscious in those moments at least, as Pop stood over him angry and terrible, that, actor or no actor, he was getting some attention, some evidence of paternal love.
He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. He was in his Pop’s dressing room at the theater and Pop was in his silk bathrobe with pieces of beard stuck here and there over his face and his hair gray with powder. Beautiful women with furs came in, talking and laughing in their womanly musical voices and Pop said, “This is my son, Eddie. He is a little Henry Irving,” and the women cried with delight and took him in their arms, among the scented furs and kissed him, their lips cool from the winter outside on his warm red face. And Pop beamed and patted his behind kindly and said, “Eddie, you do not have to go to Military School any longer and you don’t have to spend Christmas with your aunt in Duluth, either. You are going to spend Christmas in New York alone with me. Go to the box office and get a ticket for tonight’s performance, Row A, center. ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs …’ Yes, Pop, yes, Pop, yes …”
Eddie blinked his eyes and looked around him at the mean wood walls of the Academy. Prison, prison. “I wish you burn,” he said with utter hate to the peeling paint and the dead ivy and the ramshackle bell tower. “Burn! Burn!”
Abruptly he became quiet. His eyes narrowed and the cast of thought came over his face beneath the stiff short visor of his military cap. He regarded the dreary buildings intently, his lips moving silently over deep, unmentionable thoughts, the expression on his face a hunter’s expression, marking down prey for the kill far off in the tangled jungle.
If the school burned down he couldn’t sleep in the December woods, could he, they would have to send him home, wouldn’t they, and if he was rescued from the burning building Pop would be so grateful that his son was not dead that … The school would have to burn down completely and they would never send him back and fire burns from the bottom up and the bottom was the cellar and the only person there was the Custodian, sitting lonely there, longing for his Christmas bottle …
With a sharp involuntary sigh, Eddie wheeled swiftly and walked toward the cellar entrance, to seize the moment.
“Lissen,” he said to the Custodian, rocking mournfully back and forth next to the furnace. “Lissen, I feel sorry for yuh.”
“Yeah,” the Custodian said hopelessly. “I can see it.”
“I swear. An old man like you. All alone on Christmas Eve. Nothin’ to comfort yuh. That’s terrible.”
“Yeah,” the Custodian agreed. “Yeah.”
“Not even a single drink to warm yuh up.”
“Not a drink. On Christmas!” The Custodian rocked bitterly back and forth. “I might as well lay down and die.”
“I got a change of heart,” Eddie said deliberately. “How much does a bottle of applejack cost?”
“Well,” the Custodian said craftily, “there’s applejack and applejack.”
“The cheapest applejack,” Eddie said sternly. “Who do you think I am?”
“You can get a first-rate bottle of applejack for ninety-five cents, Eddie,” the Custodian said in haste. “I would take that kindly. That’s a thoughtful deed for an old man in the holiday season.”
Eddie slowly assorted ninety-five cents out in his pocket. “Understand,” he said, “this ain’t a usual thing.”
“Of course not, Eddie,” the Custodian said quickly. “I wouldn’t expect …”
“I won it honest,” Eddie insisted.
“Sure, Eddie.”
“But on Christmas …”
“Sure, just on Christmas …” The Custodian was on the edge of his rocker now, leaning forward, his mouth open, his tongue licking at the corners of his lips.
Eddie put out his hand with the coins in it. “Ninety-five cents,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”
The Custodian’s hand trembled as he took the money. “You got a good heart, Eddie,” he said simply. “You don’t look it, but you got a good heart.”
“I would go get it for you myself,” Eddie said, “only I got to write my father a letter.”
“That’s all right, Eddie, my boy, perfectly all right. I’ll take a little walk into town myself.” The Custodian laughed nervously. “The clear air. Pick me up. Thank you, Eddie, you’re one of the best.”
“Well,” Eddie said, starting out. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” the Custodian said heartily. “Merry Christmas, my boy, and a happy New Year.”
And he sang “I saw three ships go sailing by, go sailing by,” as Eddie went up the cellar steps.
Five hours later Eddie walked down Forty-fifth Street, in New York City, without an overcoat, shivering in the cold, but happy. He marched across from the Grand Central Station through the good-natured holiday crowds, reciting gaily to the lights, the neon signs, the bluecoated policemen, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?” He crossed Sixth Avenue, turned into the stage-entrance alley of the theater over which the huge sign read in electric bulbs, The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. “And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” he shouted thickly at the alley walls, as he opened the stage door and ran upstairs to his father’s dressing room.
The
door was open and his father was sitting at his make-up table, applying grease and false hair carefully, close to the mirror. Eddie sidled in softly.
“Pop,” he said, standing at the door. Then again, “Pop.”
“Uh.” His father touched up an eyebrow with a comb, making it bush out.
“Pop,” Eddie said. “It’s me.”
His father soberly put down the grease-stick, the small comb, the false hair, and turned around.
“Eddie,” he said.
“Merry Christmas, Pop,” Eddie said, smiling nervously.
“What’re you doing here, Eddie?” His father looked him straight and seriously in the eye.
“I’m home, Pop,” Eddie said quickly. “I’m home for Christmas.”
“I am paying that money-grabbing Military Academy forty-five dollars extra to keep you there and you tell me you are home for Christmas!” The great voice boomed out with the passion and depth that made audiences of fifteen hundred souls shiver in their seats. “A telephone! I want a telephone! Frederick!” he called for his dresser. “Frederick, by God Almighty, a telephone!”
“But, Pop …” Eddie said.
“I will talk to those miserable toy soldiers, those uniformed school-ma’ams! Frederick, in the name of God!”
“Pop, Pop,” Eddie wailed. “You can’t call them.”
His father stood up to his six-foot-three magnificence in his red-silk dressing gown and looked down on Eddie, one eyebrow high with mockery on the huge domed forehead. “I can’t call them, my son says. Little snot-nose tells me what to do and what not to do.”