by Irwin Shaw
“As a matter of fact, she is.”
“As a matter of fact,” Kitty repeated. She has a very irritating way of arguing, Archer decided.
“That big, gushing slob of a woman,” Kitty said. “And I’ve been worrying about saving five cents a pound on butter.”
Archer stared coldly at Kitty, hating her lack of charity. From time to time, in arguments, this trait came out in Kitty, but only when she was angry, and she was always repentant later for the things she said and Archer made a point of forgetting those ugly disclosures as soon after as he could. “Kitty,” Archer said, “this is my business. I don’t want to talk about it tonight. I’ll tell you about it some other time.”
Kitty riffled the checkbook. “Two hundred dollars this morning,” she said. “To cash. Have you got the money now?”
“No.”
“I suppose you gave that away to somebody who was out of a job, too.”
“I did.”
“I suppose that’s your business, too?”
“Yes,” Archer said flatly, “it is.”
“Will it be your business when we haven’t got a cent to our names, the way it was when we first got to New York,” Kitty asked, “or will it be my business, too?”
“Kitty, darling,” Archer said wearily, “why don’t we go to sleep now? I’ve had a terrible day and I don’t feel like talking any more. Tomorrow …”
“I want to know what’s happening,” Kitty said. “You’re throwing our money away like a drunken sailor. I know I told you you didn’t have to tell me anything—but it’s getting unbearable. Every time I talk to you or ask you a question, I can see you figuring out how to avoid talking to me … I haven’t felt I was really married to you for a month. Don’t shake your head. It’s true,” Kitty wailed. “It’s true. Don’t try to deny it. It’s not a marriage any more. You’ve put me outside. I wish I wasn’t going to have this child! I didn’t want it! You wanted it, not me, and now look what’s happening …”
Archer got up and went over to the bed. He sat down and put his arms around Kitty. She wasn’t crying. She pulled away from him fiercely.
“Listen, Kitty,” he said softly, “I gave that two hundred dollars to Manfred Pokorny to try to save his life. Listen carefully, darling. When I went over to his house tonight, he was dead.”
Kitty sat absolutely still. Then she turned her head and stared, frozen, at Archer.
“What?” she whispered finally.
“He killed himself. While we were eating dinner. While I was walking across town to see him. I didn’t take a taxi because it was such a nice night.” Saying it hurt. He had avoided phrasing it for himself before this.
Kitty suddenly put her arms around him and held him, hard. “I’m sorry. Oh, dearest,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Archer kissed her cheek. “I don’t want to talk about it now,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” Kitty began to shiver violently. Gently, Archer took her arms down and said, “Get under the covers. You’re freezing. Try to sleep.”
Kitty nodded, her eyes wide, staring, frightened. She lay back and Archer wrapped the blankets around her. She didn’t stop shivering and the silk coverlet rippled over her body. Archer gathered together the scattered bills, the canceled checks, the envelopes with Kitty’s child-like scrawl on them, and put them on her desk. Then he went over and kissed her forehead.
“I’m going downstairs for awhile,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
Kitty didn’t say anything.
He put out the lights and went out. He descended the steps slowly and went into his study. The whole house seemed sentimentally neat and cosy after the Pokornys’ apartment. Chintz, shining brass student lamps, flowers in bowls, gay, striped draperies, polished wood, none of the garish disorder of the composer’s home. If anything tragic happened here, Archer thought, looking around him, it would seem out of place.
On his desk there was the album of records of Pokorny’s quartet. After Archer had come back from the bank that morning, he had taken it off the shelf, intending to play it, to make up for the sense of guilt he had had when Pokorny had asked him how he liked the piece and he had lied and said that he liked it very much. But the telephone had begun to ring before he could put it on the machine and he hadn’t had time to listen to it.
Archer picked up the album. The one piece of music of Pokorny’s that had been recorded in this country, he remembered. Pokorny’s contribution to the culture of America. Three records, on both sides, from a man who was dead at the age of fifty. Suburban Themes, the album said. Probably some clever young man at the recording company had suggested the title. It didn’t sound like Pokorny.
Archer went over to the phonograph and put the records on. He turned the dials down low, so that the sound wouldn’t disturb Kitty upstairs. Then he sat down in an easy-chair, facing the machine.
The music was gay, small, clever, full of charming, unpretentious passages. You could imagine children dancing to it and grownups smiling a little as they heard it. There was no trouble in the music. It was pure and bubbling, even rather elegant, and the last movement was serene and evening-like, nothing big, no grand sunsets, no clouds in the sky, no fear of the night, just people meeting each other at suburban stations, after the day’s work was over, kissing each other placidly, turning on the car headlights and carefully going up small hillside roads to comfortable houses and family dinners. Somewhere in Pokorny there had hidden a lyrical householder who worked in a small garden and went sleepily to bed at ten-thirty, surrounded by children.
The music came to an end. Archer sat for a moment in the silence, broken only by the minute swishing of the circling turntable. Then he got up and put the records on once more and listened again to the dead man’s music.
20
YOU COULD LOOK AROUND THE STUDIO AND SEE WHO WAS GOING TO THE funeral by picking out the dark suits and black ties. Pokorny had, as a last awkward and troublesome gesture, chosen to be buried on a Thursday, in the middle of rehearsal. There was only time for one preliminary reading of the script in the morning, with everyone sitting in a semicircle on collapsible chairs, and the grave color made a wintry pattern among the dresses of the women and the slacks and corduroy jackets of the younger actors. Barbante, Archer noted, Levy, O’Neill, and, surprisingly, Brewer, the engineer, were dressed in honor of the corpse. None of the women was going, Archer saw from their costumes, but, then, none of them had had anything to do with the composer. Vic had on a gray flannel suit with a red tie. Vic hadn’t known Pokorny well, but he had spoken to him more often than Brewer, and had frequently told Archer how much he liked Pokorny’s music. Archer had taken it for granted that Vic would go to the funeral and he found himself staring at Vic’s colorful tie during the reading and concentrating on it to the point of missing a half page of dialogue at a time. At least, Archer thought unreasonably, taking his eyes away from Vic, he might have worn a plain tie today.
When the reading was over, Archer stood up. “There’ll be a break now,” he said, “until one o’clock, so that anybody who wishes can attend the funeral of Manfred Pokorny, who used to do the music for this show.”
The cast stood up soberly, without the customary joking and conversation that ordinarily came at a recess in rehearsal. Everyone looked solemn and reserved, giving Pokorny a polite farewell by speaking in near whispers for a minute or so as they filed out of the studio.
“Clement,” Brewer said, “could you wait for me for five minutes? I have to go upstairs. Then I’d like to ride down with you.”
Archer nodded. “I’ll wait for you here.” Brewer went out, looking like a lumberjack dressed for church in his blue suit.
Archer drifted over toward Vic, who was reading a newspaper. “Vic,” Archer said, “aren’t you coming with us?”
Vic looked up from the paper. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Funerals lost their charm for me during the war. I don’t get any message from cadavers any more.�
�� He grinned crookedly up at Archer. “Too much of a good thing, I guess. Make my apologies to the survivors for me.”
“Still,” Archer said quietly, “I think you ought to go.”
“I’m not dressed for the occasion,” Vic said, touching his tie.
“We can stop in on the way downtown,” said Archer, “and buy you a black tie.”
Vic shook his head. “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I could be dressed like an undertaker and I still wouldn’t go.”
“Out of respect for Pokorny,” Archer said stubbornly. “Out of respect to his friends.”
“Respect for what?” Vic asked derisively. “A hundred and sixty pounds of dead meat. And I don’t respect Pokorny. He was a gutless little man and he blew up the first time anybody took the trouble to poke him. As for his friends …” Vic laughed harshly. “They’re feeling mournful and guilty and they think going down and sitting for an hour while somebody moons over the corpse is going to give them back that bright, innocent, empty-boweled feeling. Well, I don’t feel guilty and I have too many other things to be mournful about. And when I die, I hope somebody has the sense to throw me into a wagon quietly and dump me somewhere with the other garbage.” He smiled mirthlessly at Archer. “Getting my message, Jack?” he asked.
“Sure,” Archer said, unpleasantly. He started to turn away to talk to Barbante, who was sitting three seats away, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, his short legs stretched out in front of him. Barbante hadn’t said a word all morning. As usual, in the morning, he seemed sleepy.
“Did you see this?” Vic carelessly offered Archer the newspaper he was holding. It was a so-called liberal paper that wound back and forth across the Communist Party line on most issues. The paper was folded back to the. page on which the columnists held forth. “This feller,” Vic said, tapping a column with his finger, “is taking a bite out of your ass this fine morning.”
“What?” Archer took the paper and stared at the column. He saw his name several times scattered throughout the piece, but for the moment he somehow couldn’t start to read it.
“J. F. Roberts,” Vic said. “He does think pieces for unthinking readers. He doesn’t like you this morning at all. You’re the vanguard of Fascism, he says; you killed the musician. He’s been talking to Mrs. Pokorny, and she seems pretty peevish.”
Vic lit a cigarette and watched Archer closely as he read the column. The whole thing was in there. Mrs. Pokorny had obviously not held back anything. The column was written in harsh, newspaper prose and Archer and the Immigration Department shared honors in it for dogging Pokorny to death. Reading it, Archer could not help but feel how righteous the columnist made the piece sound. If it had been anyone but himself, he realized, he would have approved of the column completely. The columnist heaped scorn on the Immigration Department for wishing to exile a man who twenty-seven years ago in a foreign country had flirted with the Communists for only two months. The arguments, Archer realized, were exactly the ones that he himself had used to defend Pokorny. As for Archer, the columnist contemptuously dismissed him as a timid hack so eager to keep his job and do the bidding of his masters that he leaped at their slightest signal and committed artistic murder at a snap of the corporate fingers. The entire article, Archer realized dully, was written in exactly the same exasperated and belligerent tone as the articles in Blueprint on the other side of the question. Style, he thought, is interchangeable on political questions. Political articles these days, he decided, all sound as though they had been dictated by Mrs. Pokorny or an opposed twin.
Archer read slowly. It was difficult to go through the untruths that were impossible to contradict, the facts that were slightly and fatally twisted, the biting epithets that were attached to his name, the reasonable-sounding half-truths that were so false and so damning. Mrs. Pokorny, Archer saw, had also revealed that Archer had tried to persuade her to disguise the fact that Pokorny had killed himself and there was a literal and quite accurate account of his conversation with her about the pills and the robe. God, Archer thought, she must have a notebook on her at all times. In print this way, with the shadow of the dead man hovering over the page, Archer’s action, which he had attempted almost automatically and out of a protective instinct for the composer and his wife, now seemed like the most callous maneuvering and concealment. If it was about anyone else, Archer thought, I’d think he was the most despicable coward in the world.
His hands were shaking when he finished the article. The columnist promised to supply new and equally damning evidence the next day. Suddenly, staring at the page, Archer hated the sight of his name in print. Clement Archer, Clement Archer … The name had a tainted ring to it after its use ten times in ten paragraphs. Archer blinked, checking himself consciously from blurting out what he felt. He handed the paper back to Vic. He tried to smile. “This fellow,” he said, “really lays it on, doesn’t he?”
“Great little old circulation builder,” Vic said carelessly, taking the paper. “You still going to the funeral?”
Archer hesitated. Everybody at the funeral would probably have read the piece. They would be friends and relatives of the dead man and in the moment of grief and anger almost certainly would share Mrs. Pokorny’s estimate of Archer’s share in the tragedy. And there would undoubtedly be photographers there from the newspapers to catch the look of guilt on Archer’s face as he confronted the widow. I wish I was sick, Archer thought. I wish I was sick in bed with the doctor in the room telling me it would kill me to go out today.
“Yes,” Archer said to Vic. “Yes, I’m going to the funeral.”
“You don’t like to let yourself off anything, do you?” Vic said. Somehow he sounded cold and unfriendly and Archer wondered if he believed what was in the paper this morning, too. Vic stood up. “I’m going to get my hair cut,” he said. “See you at one. Do you want this?” He waved the newspaper a little.
“No, thanks.”
Vic nodded and tossed the paper onto a chair. Then he strolled out, a tall, youthful man in a fine tweed suit, heading for the barber who would clip his thick blond hair close around his well-shaped head, so that he would look like a gentleman who had been graduated not too long before from a good college, a man who was too lucky to have to attend funerals.
While the door was still open, Woodrow Burke came in. He saw Archer and waved and came over quickly. The ex-commentator was fatter than ever and his collar was too tight for him now, giving his face a pale, strangled look. In America, Archer thought, adversity adds weight. The highest standard of living in the world, operating to put double chins on the country’s failures. Burke had a copy of the newspaper under his arm and Archer thought that he could tell from the expression on Burke’s face that the commentator had read the column. But at least he wasn’t drunk.
“Good morning, soldier,” Burke said. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He just stood in front of Archer, fat, rumpled, pale, his hair thinning, pretending he wasn’t a failure, pretending he didn’t have a hangover, pretending his suit wasn’t too tight for him. “How’re things?”
“Great,” Archer said. “How’d they happen to let you in?”
“They told me there was going to be a break for a couple of hours and there’re still one or two of the guards around here who remember when I was a big shot, so they passed me in. Do you mind?”
Archer shook his head. “Delighted,” he said. “Always pleased to see old friends and debtors.”
“Oh.” Burke smiled fleshily. “I guess I had that coming. I never wrote and thanked you for the check, did I?”
“I don’t seem to recall that you did,” Archer said slowly. He wanted to get away from Burke. It made him nervous to talk to a man with that paper folded under his arm, with the name Clement Archer, Clement Archer, all over the inside page.
“Regrets,” Burke said. “I must mend my manners. I meant to. I really did. I even wrote myself a memorandum.” He dug in his pocket and got out a crumpled piece of paper. He smoothed the pap
er out, his hands shaking minutely, and peered at it. “Here,” he said, thrusting it at Archer. “See for yourself. My intentions were of the best.”
Archer took the paper. “Write Archer this week,” he read. “Bread and butter note.” Archer rolled the slip into a ball and flipped it at a wastebasket ten feet away. It didn’t go in. “Thanks,” Archer said. “I’ll file it away to remind me of you.”
“Look,” Burke said, “I didn’t come up here to talk about that. I forgot and I’m sorry and I apologize and I don’t want you to hold it against me. I’m working on something that’s very important for you and just because I forget things these days and you’re sore at me, I don’t want you to …”
“I’m not sore at you,” Archer said. “Forget it. I haven’t got much time now, Burke. This is burying day for radio musicians and I’ve got to go to the funeral. So if you’ll call me some other time, I’ll try to …”
“Don’t brush me off, Archer,” Burke said, his tone half-pleading, half-pugnacious. “I’ve read this little hymn of hate this morning …” He waved the newspaper. “And I happen to know that worse is coming from the other side, and you’d better start to worry about building character. Fast. And I want to help you. You’ve got to believe me, Clem.”
“What do you mean—worse is coming from the other side?” Archer tried to smile. “What’re they going to do—say that I murdered my mother with an axe?”
“Something along those lines,” Burke said. “I’ve got an advance copy here.” He dug in his inside pocket and brought forth a thick mess of papers, old envelopes, bills, newspaper clippings. He sorted through them with his thick, shaky hands. “Friend of mine who’s a press agent at a night club. Gets the dope early. They’re going to hang you with a nice, thick rope … God damn it,” he muttered petulantly, “I could have sworn I had it on me.” He went swiftly through the sheaf of papers again, not finding what he was looking for. “Well, I don’t have it,” he said, stuffing the papers back, making a big bulge in the front of his jacket. “But they have you listed as belonging to everything but the Sicilian national guard. Listen to me, Clem …” He stood close to Archer, holding onto his sleeve, peering earnestly at him, his eyes yellowed and opaque from ten years’ drinking. “Tomorrow it’s going out that you’re a Red, a Red sympathizer, a defender of Reds, and it’ll be all over town, and unless you do something about it, you won’t be able to get a job sweeping out the men’s room on the 22nd floor.”