The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  “Mrs. Pokorny,” Archer said quietly, untouched, “if you will come down off the editorial page of the Daily Worker for a moment, perhaps we can talk about this reasonably.”

  “Please, Diana …” Pokorny got up and put his hand appealingly on his wife’s arm as she turned broadside on Archer. She shrugged off her husband’s hand savagely.

  “That’s right,” she said loudly. “That’s the line. I expected it, but it came sooner than I thought. One word of truth and you retreat to your standard argument—Red! Red!”

  “Not so loud, please,” Pokorny whispered troubledly, looking around him as though he half expected to see secret agents spring from the walls. “Please, isn’t it possible to talk in a lower tone of voice …”

  “Hopeless,” Mrs. Pokorny said, louder than ever. “Every once in awhile I let myself be fooled—I think that finally people like you can be educated, that you can be made into useful citizens. Then something like this comes up and I know I’ve been fooling myself. You’re useless. You’re a drag on the future. Finally, you’re always on the wrong side. In the end you and your whole class have to be wiped out.”

  “Diana …” Pokorny murmured unhappily.

  “Wiped out!” she shouted. “Surgery!”

  “Diana,” Pokorny grabbed her arm and shook it like a puppy. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You mustn’t say things like that. It isn’t right. It’s …”

  “You.” Mrs. Pokorny wheeled and stared down at her husband, her face contorted with loathing. “You go to bed. You’re a sick man. You don’t know enough to blow your nose by yourself. If I let you, you’d kiss his boots after he kicked you. You always disappoint me. I listen to your music and I think you’re a great man. Then I listen to you talk and I wonder where the music comes from. You’re not a man. You’re a worm. And worst of all, you want to be a worm.”

  “Diana, darling,” Pokorny said reproachfully, backing off.

  “I’m going inside.” Mrs. Pokorny strode toward the door. “And tell that man I don’t want to see him in my house again.”

  She slammed the bedroom door behind her.

  There was silence in the room for a moment. Embarrassedly, Pokorny fiddled with the towel around his throat. Archer ran his hand wearily over his head. Poor Pokorny, he thought, caught at home and abroad. In the line of fire of all batteries of all armies. Every gun zeroed in on the position he has no interest in holding.

  “Well, Manfred.” Archer went over to him and patted his shoulder. Pokorny smelled of sweat and onions and Archer felt his fingertips uneasy on the soiled rayon of the robe. “I guess I’d better be off.”

  “Yes.” Pokorny looked up at him shyly and painfully. “I’m sorry about Diana.”

  “Forget it.” Archer started toward the front door. Pokorny followed him with nervous little steps.

  “I told you about her,” Pokorny said. “She’s fanatic. She’s a very strong person and she has convictions.”

  Archer couldn’t help grinning. He hid the smile with his hands.

  “But there are other sides to her,” Pokorny said earnestly. “She loves me. No woman has ever been tender to me like Diana …”

  Helplessly, the vision of the Pokornys in bed together crossed Archer’s mind. The pudgy, shabby man and the dreadnought-shaped, ham-handed woman … Impossible, Archer thought, you must never think of things like that.

  “She’s loyal,” Pokorny went on, gathering strength. “She has a deep feeling for art. She gave me back my self-respect.”

  Amazing, Archer thought, the words people use to describe what has happened to them.

  Pokorny bustled around Archer, helping him on with his coat. “Mr. Archer,” he said, “I want to thank you. For taking the trouble. For coming to see me. For telling me the truth. No matter what happens—I will remember this.”

  Archer sighed. “Honestly, Manfred,” he said, facing the composer, “I don’t know what I can do. If anything comes up, I’ll get in touch with you.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself with me. Please.” Pokorny ducked, reaching into a cupboard. He came up with a package. “I wonder if I can give you a gift, Mr. Archer,” he said shyly, offering the package. “It’s a quartet of mine. Records. It was just done two weeks ago. It’s the only piece of mine that’s been recorded in this country. Some time—when you have nothing else to do—you might listen to it.”

  “Thanks, Manfred. It’s very nice of you …”

  Pokorny waved deprecatingly. “It’s just a small piece. Unimportant.” He opened the door. “It will give me pleasure to think of you sitting in your nice study in New York, listening to it. Play it in the evening. When it begins to get dark. It’s nice music for that time of day.”

  They shook hands and Archer went out. As he descended the steps he looked up and saw Pokorny standing at the opened door, his faded, long thin hair catching the dim light of the hall lamp.

  Outside, Archer looked at his watch. It’s not too late, he thought, maybe there’s still time to take Kitty to the movies. For the late show.

  13

  THE REHEARSAL HAD GONE BADLY ALL DAY. THE SCRIPT WAS DRAB AND lifeless and Barbante, who usually could be depended upon to make helpful last-minute changes, seemed languid and disinterested, yawning widely again and again, as though he had been up all night. The lines he suggested seemed to Archer consistently worse than the ones that had to be replaced. The girl who had been chosen to play the part which Frances Motherwell ordinarily would have done turned out to have a cooing ingénue’s voice, cloying and calculatedly sweet and Archer made a mental note that he was never going to use her again. Alice Weller was nervous and came in late on cues. In the final rehearsal she skipped a whole page and forced Archer to start the show all over again. Atlas was slow and outrageously broad and kept looking up at Archer sardonically after each offense, as though daring him to object. Only Vic Herres seemed immune from the general jitters. He looked very tired, but he played as usual, calmly, with quick intelligence, making the scenes he was in seem vigorous and truthful. He had come in late in the afternoon, directly from the airport, and Archer had only been able to speak to him for a few moments. His mother had passed the crisis and seemed on the road to partial recovery.

  Ironically, Pokorny’s score had been one of his best, very clever and useful, bridging gaps in the script with nimble arrangements, making flat scenes seem dramatic and tense. Pokorny wasn’t in the studio. Archer had called to invite him to the rehearsal, but Mrs. Pokorny, who had answered the phone, had said, coldly, “He can’t come. He’s sick. He can’t get out of bed.”

  Archer had hired a new composer, a man called Shapiro, who sat uneasily at Archer’s shoulder, tapping nervously with his fingers on a stiff notebook all day. Shapiro was a pale young man with lank hair and he did not look promising. As Shapiro listened, Archer could sense the man’s spirits almost visibly sinking. Shapiro, it was obvious, knew his talents well enough to realize that he could never do as well as Pokorny. Without saying a word to each other, both Archer and Shapiro knew that there were going to be bad moments ahead in the musical department.

  O’Neill came in late, red-faced, moving with elaborate solidity, and smelling of liquor. It was the first time Archer had ever caught O’Neill drinking on the day of a program, so he knew that O’Neill was feeling the strain, too. O’Neill was not wearing his mink-lined coat. He only wore it when he was feeling humorous and satisfied with himself. There’s nothing humorous about him today, Archer thought, watching O’Neill sit very straight, bulky in a small chair, keeping his eyes exaggeratedly wide open and making an obvious business of listening to everything that was going on and reacting too often and too energetically. Maybe it has nothing to do with the program, Archer thought, looking for comfort. Maybe he’s having trouble with his wife. That’ll keep a mink coat in the closet and make three Martinis before five o’clock seemed like a necessity for survival.

  Hutt had not appeared all day and there was no sign of the s
ponsor.

  Uptown and downtown, it had been a bad week. Thursday, Archer thought, is a day that one should occasionally be allowed to drop from the calendar. All his life, he remembered, Thursday had been a special day. Somehow, his mother always seemed to take him to the dentist on Thursday. And for the two years that she had forced him to take lessons on the piano, the teacher, a sharp, unpleasant woman with pockmarks, had come on Thursday. And examinations in high school in geometry and algebra, subjects which had baffled him, seemed inevitably to come on Thursday. And the worst fight he had ever been in, which had cost him two teeth, had been on a Thursday afternoon, after a piano lesson. Probably, Archer thought, the day I am killed will turn out to be a Thursday.

  Archer gave the cast a break a half hour before the program was scheduled to go on. Most of them left the studio. O’Neill stood up and went out heavily, without talking to Archer. Shapiro left, saying almost apologetically, as though he were not quite sure that he deserved it, “I think I’ll get a cup of coffee. Can I bring you anything?”

  “No, thanks,” Archer said. He sat at the control desk, feeling inelastic and slow, staring through the window at Herres, who was talking desultorily to the sound man.

  “Mother,” said Brewer, the engineer, who was sitting next to Archer, “we are carrying a full load of gremlins tonight. Look for headwinds and foreign matter in the air. What’s the matter with everybody?”

  “The approach of spring,” Archer said shortly, worried that the engineer had noticed it too and wishing that the program was already behind him.

  “Something’s approaching. That’s a cinch.” Brewer got up and stretched enormously. “I’m going to go into the hall and get a smoke for my aching nerves. Call me if the wires begin to smoulder.” He grinned and patted Archer comfortingly on the back. He started to go, then stopped. “Say, Clement,” he said, in a low voice, “what’s with this fellow, Shapiro?”

  “What about him?” Archer asked defensively.

  “You going to use him from now on?”

  “Yes.” Archer pretended he was busy looking at the script, hoping that Brewer would leave.

  “What’s the matter with Pokorny?”

  “We’re trying a change,” Archer said. He made a busy, meaningless mark on the page in front of him.

  “I’m just the big stupid engineer,” Brewer said, “and all my brains are in my fists, but I think Pokorny’s job tonight is one of the nicest little things I’ve heard.”

  “It’s not bad,” said Archer. He turned a page ostentatiously.

  Brewer looked at him puzzledly. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. He went out, rolling his sleeves down over his huge arms.

  Left alone, Archer took off his glasses, closed his eyes and rubbed them gently with his fingertips. I’ll have to explain to Brewer, too, he thought wearily. He’s too decent a man to be lied to. A vista of explanations loomed before him. To Brewer, to Barbante, to Herres, to friends, to enemies, to people who would approve and to others who would disapprove, all of them curious, all of them with a right to know why he was doing what he did. All my life, Archer thought gloomily, I will probably find myself explaining away these two weeks.

  He heard the door click and opened his eyes resentfully.

  “Amigo …” It was Barbante. Archer swung slowly in his chair and nodded to the writer. The control room filled with the scent of his toilet water as he sat down in an armchair, his legs sprawled luxuriously in front of him. “I saw you sitting here lonely and deserted,” Barbante said, yawning, “and I came in to cheer you up.”

  “Consider me cheered,” Archer said.

  “God,” Barbante said, yawning again, “I’m sleepy.”

  “I know,” said Archer grimly. “That’s been plain enough.”

  Barbante grinned. “I wasn’t my usual glittering self today, was I, amigo?”

  “You certainly weren’t.”

  “Clement Archer,” Barbante said, still smiling comfortably, “the master of the soft answer. Candid Clem, with the cast-iron conscience.”

  “This script is dead on its feet tonight. And you might just as well have stayed home in bed for all the good you did today.”

  “You can’t win them all, amigo,” Barbante said carelessly. “Don’t give it another thought. Next Thursday’s another week.”

  “Would it be ungentlemanly on my part,” Archer said, “to suggest that you get to bed before three o’clock in the morning next week?”

  “OK, Coach,” Barbante said, “I’ll eat at the training table, too, and I’ll do pushups every morning. Say—what’re you doing Saturday night?”

  “Why?” Archer asked suspiciously.

  “I’m giving a little party. Vic’s coming. O’Neill. A few other people.”

  “Thanks,” Archer said, a little surprised at the invitation. Barbante had never invited him before. “I’ll check with Kitty and see if we’re free.”

  “Oh …” Barbante said offhandedly. “Jane’s coming, too.” He took out his cigarette case and offered it to Archer. Archer looked down at the heavy gold box. There was an inscription on the inside cover. He couldn’t read the words, but he saw a signature engraved there, in a woman’s flowing handwriting. Probably, he thought, he has a whole collection of gold objects at home, suitably inscribed from satisfied ladies. He must have to search his memory carefully before he goes out each night, to make sure he matches the correct trophy for the particular date.

  “No, thanks,” Archer said. He watched Barbante put a cigarette into his mouth and flick a gold lighter, no doubt also inscribed.

  “When did you talk to Jane?” Archer asked, carefully keeping his voice flat.

  “Last night.” Barbante put the lighter away. “On the phone.”

  Why did he say that? Archer thought. Am I supposed to believe him? Is he making fun of me?

  “I told her to bring that nice boy, too …” Barbante wrinkled his forehead. “What’s his name? Bruce. I remember when I was a kid, I’d have given anything to get invited to a party like this. Actresses, figures in the literary world …” His voice was mocking, making little of his guests two nights in advance. “Debutantes with the bloom rubbed off. Divorcees in Dior dresses, equipped with fashionable alimony. Give him something to think about in the physics laboratory.”

  “Dom,” Archer said slowly, “why don’t you leave Jane alone?”

  “What?” Barbante sounded incredulous, but the look of secret amusement on his face was still there.

  “She’s only eighteen years old.”

  “Some of my best friends,” Barbante said, “are only eighteen years old.”

  “She’s only a child.”

  “Why can’t we use that line in the script, amigo?” Barbante’s tone was not playful and he was staring coldly at Archer, his eyes half-closed, the thick black lashes almost hiding the pupils. “That’s a dandy little old line and the script tonight could use something interesting and original like that. All poppas always think their daughters’re only children. I once went out with a woman of forty whose father had bedcheck at eleven-thirty every night. And the lady was a nymphomaniac. She’d worked her way through the entire list of the Dramatists’ Guild and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra by the time I caught up with her.”

  “I think it would be more friendly if you left Jane alone, Dom,” Archer said stubbornly, feeling that he was in the wrong, sorry that he had begun this conversation, and hoping that Jane would never hear of it.

  “I’m beginning to worry about you, Clem,” Barbante said. “The last week or so you’ve been acting very un-Clem-like. I find you slipping in my estimation, amigo, and I hate to see it happen. You’re beginning to behave like all the rest of the frightened little people I know—and I’m surprised and disappointed. I’m not kidding now. Anyway—what’re you worried about? You and Kitty’re going to be there Saturday night and I told Jane to have Bruce escort her to the party. How much harm do you think I could possibly be planning?”

  “
OK,” Archer said. He stood up. “Forget it.” He went out of the control room and into the nearly empty studio. The sound man was crushing cellophane in his hands, making a noise that might be ice breaking or ladies opening candy-boxes at a matinee. Herres had drifted over to the piano and was desultorily picking out “We’re Off to See the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” with two fingers, hitting the white keys only.

  “Hi,” Herres said as Archer approached him. “I saw you conversing with that talented literary chap, Barbante. Did you give him the word on tonight’s little gem of wit and poetry?”

  “It isn’t one of the best, is it?” Archer leaned wearily against the piano.

  “You could bottle it and sell it to cure insomnia.” Herres used a third finger in a triumphant arrangement. “Put the pheno-barbital people on the rocks in two months.”

  “I was acting like a father,” Archer said. “He’s been taking Jane out and I filed a protest. I’ve never felt sillier.” Herres pursed his mouth. He concentrated on the left hand for a moment. “Barbante,” he said, “not only vicious himself, but the cause of vice in others.”

  “I wish Jane was thirty-five years old,” Archer said.

  “Soon enough. Soon enough,” Herres said. “I really wouldn’t worry, Clement. She’s a solid girl.”

  “I suppose so.” Archer sighed. “The trouble is, Barbante got insulted when I told him to quit, and I couldn’t help feeling he was right.”

  Herres chuckled. “The dilemma of the modern man,” he said. “He sees all sides of every question.” He stopped playing. He sat and stared for a moment at the keyboard, his head bent, his thick, slightly disarranged blond hair very bright against the mahogany.

  “What’re you doing tonight,” Archer asked, “after the show?”

  “Going home,” said Herres, “and sleeping for twelve hours. I haven’t seen Nancy or the kids yet. And I’ve had a rugged week, and there was an old lady who puked all the way home from Detroit sitting right next to me in the plane. I’m a tired man.”

  Archer nodded. “How about tomorrow?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to you for an hour or so.”