The Last Supper: And Other Stories

by Howard Fast

  “Mark, dear,” she said, “are you awake or asleep?”

  “Awake, of course. Would I be talking if I was asleep?”

  “Well, some people do talk in their sleep. I never noticed it in you. You do snore, but I must confess that I never noticed you talking in your sleep.”

  “Of course not. I never talk in my sleep.”

  “But it was you talking, Mark?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Mrs. Egleston hesitated for a while, for the obvious question was as obviously improper, and she hesitated so long that her husband began to talk again. Then she felt that it was her duty to ask him.

  “Who are you talking to, Mark?”

  “God.”

  “Oh. Who did you say?”

  “God.”

  “Well—well, I mean—”

  “I suppose you feel it is strange that I should talk to God. That’s quite natural. You would feel that it is strange.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you feel it was strange if you woke up and found me talking to God?” Mrs. Egleston asked plaintively.

  “No, not at all. He is everywhere, isn’t He? He hears you. So why shouldn’t you talk to Him?”

  “I never looked at it that way,” Mrs. Egleston said defensively, her thoughts still somewhat clouded by the sleep from which she had been wakened. She tried to think about it now, but it was too sudden and too unexplored a matter for her to grapple with. “Mark?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Problems. Difficulties. Fears.”

  “Oh.”

  “We are not wholly free of problems, you know.”

  “Yes, I do know, Mark,” she said in a conciliatory tone, for she was in analysis, and it was costing Mark a hundred dollars a week. She always felt that Mark resented the hundred dollars a week her therapy cost, and it did no good for her analyst to reassure her that quite the reverse was true, that the money spent helped Mark, released him, and provided expiation for his guilts.

  “You don’t mind me talking about it, do you, Mark?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well—well, really, I don’t want to pry, but does He answer?”

  “Who?”

  “Well, you know—”

  “You mean, God? Yes, sometimes, He answers. At other times, He does not.”

  “Oh.”

  “What do you mean by oh?”

  “Nothing. Just oh.”

  As she fell asleep, Mrs. Egleston heard her husband declaiming, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want—” And possibly because her night’s sleep had been interrupted, she slept later than usual. Mr. Egleston had already left for his office, and Mrs. Egleston had just enough time, to the minute, to take her bath, do her face, dress, get to the hairdresser, and then meet Mrs. Cabot at the Colony for lunch. It was hurry, hurry all the, way, with no real catching up with herself at any point, and such a morning always unnerved her, and today she knew that her hour with Dr. Vaskivich would be utterly profitless.

  “You don’t look yourself at all, darling,” Mrs. Cabot said to her, after they had ordered. Mrs. Cabot was like a sister to her, not only because they liked each other, but also because Mark and Arthur Cabot were partners down on the Street.

  “I don’t feel myself,” Mrs. Egleston confessed. “I’ve been going in circles all morning because I slept until ten, and with a hairdresser’s appointment—and it all started because of some silly business with Mark last night.”

  “If you think life with Arthur has been any bed of roses since they came back from Bermuda, you’re mistaken, darling. But what happened with Mark?”

  Mrs. Egleston stared at her broiled mushrooms and shook her head. “I think I want a martini.” She ordered what Mrs. Cabot called a breakfast martini, two parts vermouth and one part gin. “It’s either too silly or too something else. I woke up at three o’clock in the morning, and there he was awake and talking.”

  “Talking to whom?”

  “God.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Cabot.

  “That’s just what I said.” Then she told Mrs. Cabot the whole story.

  Mrs. Cabot wasn’t surprised. “Darling,” she said, “I know—believe me. I had it at breakfast. Arthur said grace. Not that I’m one of these hideous atheists, but one has to do these things decently. Kathy and Joey just watched him, and then Kathy complained that she hadn’t done her homework in arithmetic, and she has that horrible Miss Bixbey, and what do you think Arthur said? He said, just pray, my dear, just open your heart to God. Well, He won’t do my arithmetic, will He, Kathy asked. He can move mountains, said Arthur. Kathy pointed out that the trouble was with Miss Bixbey and not with mountains, and could He move Miss Bixbey? Well, it was so cute, my dear, you would think any normal person would just laugh and take it from where it comes, but Arthur flew into a towering rage, and said that this was the final result of communism in the schools, and what we ought to do about Formosa is to move right into China and give the lot of them the what for, although what on earth it had to do with Formosa, I don’t know, and since Kathy’s at Bently, I should think we’d be safe from subversives, but there you are, darling.”

  “What is it?” asked Mrs. Egleston.

  “It’s that book they took with them to Bermuda. You remember how Arthur was having a heart attack every day and got so he didn’t dare breath, and Mark with cancer—”

  “Every time he got a pimple or a boil or an ingrown hair.”

  “—and we felt it would be the best thing in the world for both of them to go off to Bermuda alone and get it out of their system and have a fling and maybe sow some late wild oats and let us have some peace?”

  “Yes?”

  “Late wild oats! Darling, they sowed the wind, and we’re reaping the whirlwind.”

  “Honey, I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.”

  “You wouldn’t know. Mark may talk to God at night, but no woman, especially his wife, ever heard him be frank. Arthur’s different. First thing, he gave me the book.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you know that bond salesman in their office—I think his name is Straus or Strickland or something, anyway the one who’s been married four times and has the tic on his lower lip?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “Well, darling,” Mrs. Cabot continued, “he read The Power of Positive Thinking, and the tic went away, and his sales tripled, and he’s been after Arthur and Mark to read it for months. Well, he gave it to them as a going away present, and they read it to each other aloud—all the way to Bermuda and back, yes, darling, read it aloud and behaved like a pair of eunuchs according to Arthur, and for once I believe him. He not only says grace before each meal, but he prays for at least ten minutes before he, shaves.”

  “Does he talk at night?” Mrs. Egleston asked, unable to shake the incident.

  “If he does, he talks softly.”

  “Have you read the book?”

  “No, and I’m not going to,” Mrs. Cabot said emphatically.

  Mrs. Egleston looked at her watch, and discovered that she had only twenty minutes to get to her analyst. Since her analyst was at 83rd and Park Avenue, she fled from the Colony, and there it was again, all day, hurry, hurry, hurry. She had to wait for a cab, and as a result was a minute or two late. It was certainly nothing very serious, but she knew that Dr. Vaskivich, who set such a great store on punctuality, would be annoyed. She felt the greatest respect for and dependence on Dr. Vaskivich. She had been with him four years now, and in all that time, her trust in him had been shaken only once, when she discovered from an acquaintance that Dr. Vaskivich’s real name was Harry Simpkins and that he was a graduate of Flower Hospital. After that, for at least a month, she made no progress at all in her therapy; but it was a tribute to Dr. Vaskivich that she finally worked out the problem herself, coming to a full understanding of how necessary the proper name and manner were to a practicing psychiatrist.

  Today, bec
ause she was late, there was not a word of greeting from Dr. Vaskivich. He merely motioned to the couch, and silently seated himself in the chair behind it; and the result was that Mrs. Egleston felt so forlorn, so much like a lost child that she just lay there in silence for more than five minutes, unable to think or speak a phrase until Dr. Vaskivich cleared his throat and said,

  “Well, I suppose you couldn’t help being detained.”

  That opened the floodgates. “Hurry, hurry, hurry all day long, and you know how that unnerves me,” she said, almost in tears. “I seem to go to pieces progressively, leaving a little piece of me here and there and everywhere until there’s nothing left.” And then she told him everything, more than she could possibly tell Mrs. Cabot.

  “But why should it be so disturbing that Mark talks to God?” Dr. Veskivich finally inquired.

  “But he never has before.”

  “And isn’t it precisely the, purpose of your therapy here that you should form habits of thought and action that you never possessed before?”

  “But I never thought of it just that way.”

  “Isn’t it time you should think of it that way?” Dr. Vaskivich asked, his voice strangely gentle.

  “But really, even if God hears him, God can’t answer him, and he was talking as if God did answer him—”

  With remarkable modesty, Dr. Vaskivich said, “And aren’t there many of our hours when you talk, and I don’t answer you?”

  “But that’s different. I’ve pleaded with Mark to go into analysis—”

  “But he cannot,” Dr. Vaskivich said softly, “and your pleading will not help. His way is his way and your way is yours. If you understand that, it will mark a long step forward on your part.”

  Mrs. Egleston was not absolutely certain that she did understand, but when she rose up from the couch and left Dr. Vaskivich’s office, she felt as light as a feather, and all the hurry, hurry, hurry was left behind her. She walked to Madison Avenue, and then down Madison Avenue, window-shopping with the delightful, easy familiarity of a person who belongs and who knows as an old acquaintance every shop every step of the way to 59th Street. She had that good feeling which she once described to Dr. Vaskivich as the feeling of a butterfly who has just broken free from the cocoon.

  Dignity

  FIRST WE WERE PUT INTO A LARGE IRON CAGE, IT SEEMED impossible, because it is always impossible when things are done to you that are outside of the personal plausibility of your own experience. A man lives in two worlds; one is his own world, which he can touch and smell and taste and see and hear; the other world is one which exists in stories, newspaper headlines and in the theatre and the motion pictures. Since you are so sure that it is a world that never was or will be, it is rather unbelievable to become a part of it.

  We were put in an iron cage, and the door was closed and locked behind us. There were eleven of us, and up until a short time ago, we were busy people whose lives held many interests and who planned each hour of full days. But now there was nothing more to plan, and the edges of the future became fuzzy and indistinct. We were not told why we were put in the cage or how long we were to be there or what would be done with us, and the privilege of knowing or asking any of these things had been taken away from us.

  The cage was about thirty feet square, and there were some benches in it and about a dozen other men. We pretended to be cheerful and smiled and made small talk with each other, but the men who were already there did not smile or make small talk. The men who were already there were most of them deeply depressed, unshaven, dressed in old, dirty and sometimes ragged clothes. Two had been badly beaten, and there was blood and ugly bruises on their faces. Interest remained with us and showed in our eyes and upon our faces, but the men who were already there were most of them without interest in their eyes or on their faces.

  We stood and sat in the cage and time passed—and almost imperceptably and just a little bit, we became like the men already there. They sensed this, and one by one, they began to talk to us. Mostly they asked us what we had done, because they were puzzled over what could be done by a group of physicians, lawyers, trade-unionists, teachers, and a writer. The physicians had healed the sick; the lawyers had upheld the law. The trade-unionists had done what any trade-unionist should do, and the teachers were philosophical in their projection of a principle. I said to the man who asked me, that we were asked to give up names to a committee of Congress, and we would not give up the names.

  “Then you’re reds,” he said.

  “Then we’re reds.”

  Prisoners are gentle; we discovered that. Perhaps all men were made to be gentle, and something happens to them and they became otherwise, but when you lock them up in a cage and take away hope and dignity and all expectation of tomorrow, they bring forth a pathetic simplicity that lay somewhere deep inside of them. But something else goes. The human thing in man is a quality of being free, not locked up in a cage.

  We stood and sat in the cage, and time, passed and time changed. That time changed was one of the first things we discovered; for until now time had been precious, time had been the golden substance of our lives. Until now, time was measured with so many seconds and so many minutes and so many hours as against the span of our own existence, and each measure of time was our defiance of the universe and of death, rich and rewarding, filled with pleasure and knowledge and struggle and toil and love and sorrow and hope and anticipation; but now time reversed itself and turned into its opposite, and each second was an enemy, each minute an antagonist, each hour a cynical and implacable foe, and time had no use, no purpose, no function—except that as our enemy it had to be killed, vanquished, destroyed.

  Until now, we had fought against many things, but now we would struggle against only one enemy, time.

  Time moved to noon, and they threw sandwiches into the iron cage the way meat is thrown to animals in a zoo. The sandwiches were wrapped in paper, and when we unwrapped them, we found a cold piece of boloney between pieces of old bread. We had no appetite, and we gave our sandwiches to the others. A sodden chill was taking hold of us, and normal desires were going away.

  Again we turned to time and faced time. It was very hard at first; later, it would be easier to battle time. But time passed, and finally, they opened the door of the cage. Two by two, they handcuffed us, and they marched us down a long corridor, the walls of which were covered with dirty and ancient yellow paint.

  I remarked to the college professor that it was hard to feel like a man, like a human being, with iron bands on your wrists.

  “But you can maintain your dignity,” he answered.

  The word was curious now and somewhat strange; it was not like a word I had ever heard or thought about before; it was a strange word, and it seemed now that I had never considered it carefully enough to know the meaning of it. But there is something very special about dignity, I admitted to myself. And something very important that is worth thinking about.

  From the twilight of our cage and the corridor, we were brought out into bright daylight and we walked between armed guards who kept their hands on their guns. We walked to a bus and filed into it, two by two; but the bus was also a cage, bound around all over with iron bars and iron screening, with armed guards at the back of it. The doors were closed and locked, and we sat in’ the cage as the bus drove across the city to the prison.

  We had to cross most of the city to reach the prison, and during this bus ride, the limits of incongruity were reached and then snapped. We began the bus ride smiling at the insanity of it. That was only natural, for if a sharp enough contradiction is presented against the even course of an entire life, the very inability to believe must generate a degree of mockery. We were Americans who had been raised in the essence of the American tradition; as children we had repeated the pledge of allegiance to the flag endless times; we had been filled with the traditions of freedom and liberty until they in turn had shaped the set courses of our nerves, reactions, subconscious thoughts, and we i
n turn had shaped our lives in terms of these traditions. We were moral people, or we would not have been where we were, yet the first architect of our morality was our own land and what it gave us and taught us. Thereby, what was happening to us was impossible, ridiculous, and somewhat humorous; for our only crime was that we would not turn over the names of Spaniards who had fought for the Republic of Spain to those who worked hand in hand with the dictator Franco.

  But people in the United States of America were not sent to prison for such actions; we knew in every fibre of our being that in the United States of America, people were honored for such actions. But we were, going to prison.

  So for a while, we smiled, but’ then we stopped smiling.

  The sun was shining. It was a warm, early summer day, in. the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia. The trees were greener than trees can be. The white buildings reflected the sunlight, and the tourists walked around with their cameras. The women on the streets wore summer dresses, and the children we saw laughed and cried. And we were on our way to prison.

  Some of the people, on the streets looked at us, but not many, and those who did looked at us without seeing us. A criminal is unfortunate, and misfortune is rarely seen, especially by happy people, and these were happy people. That thought came to me for the first time, but it was to come many times again. To the man in the cage, the uncaged person is happy. There are then no other requirements for happiness; only, release me, and I will be happy. Let me walk where I want to walk and go where I want to go, and then I will be, happy. Only that.

  It took about fifteen minutes for the bus to reach the prison, which stood at the edge of the city, a tall, forboding pile of red brick and steel, walled, piled in ugliness and despair. The gates opened to let the cage-bus go through, and then the gates closed, and we were taken out of the bus. With armed guards watching us, our handcuffs were taken off, an electrically-controlled door slid back, and we entered a dark, tight passage where electric eyes examined us, probed into our pockets and flesh and brains. Every few paces in that passageway, it seemed, there was an electric door that rolled back for us and then returned to place with a crash, the better to underline and seal and settle the fact that this was a one-way corridor, that there was no returning.