by Conrad Aiken
The little ball of paper was still lying under the table where the cat had left it, he remembered first his impulse to drop the cat out of the window, and the curious repugnance which had seemed to rise as if from his hands; then the relief with which he had driven the cat out into the corridor. Odd. But the list of names was there, crumpled but still there, and the question with them, the profound question. And it could only be answered by himself: about this, there could be no conferring, not even with Gerta. The decision must be pure. The question was, was it still in fact a question? or had it actually—and as he thought this he stood quite still and stared at the necktie which he was holding—been solved in his sleep? There had been a dream, a queer and deep dream: a series of crisscrossed shadows, shifting and ominous. Further than that, it was vague, but as he had waked from it he had felt a kind of lightness or ease, something spacious but as if lightly etched with lines—analogous—was that it?—to the small script hidden inside the crumpled ball of paper, the list of rejected names. Rejected, yes, but for what, in favor of what? Something more remote, but how remote? He carried the blue necktie to the mirror in the bedroom, tossed it over his head, began to draw it to and fro beneath the collar. The Buddha was behind him on its shelf, the bed was unmade in the silent room, it was his own silence once more beginning to deepen and widen, and as he leaned closer to the glass to look into his black pupils it seemed to him that the sense of limitless silence and peace came from his own eyes. The mystery lay there, the solution lay there, was already known there, it was as if he were looking into an immense depth, an immense distance, and trying to make out some far-off and tiny and incredible action. Had it already taken shape there? But remember, if thou gazest into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee. The abyss will gaze into thee.
But it is your own abyss?
The photograph of Gerta was still in his pocket of course, he removed it, dropped it into the top drawer, speculated idly as to the suspended line of thought which it indicated, dismissed it. That was over. For all major intents and purposes, Gerta was over. Dislocation number five. He said it aloud—dislocation number five—walked quickly to the red table, took two postcards from the upright stand and put them in his breast pocket. Perhaps the Findens would be going down in the elevator at the same time. Or Toppan. If Toppan, he would cut him dead, turn his back, not reply if spoken to.
Clouds and a wind. In Massachusetts Avenue the dust whirled under the bright wheels of a streetcar, a dirty black hat was blowing across the street with a small man in pursuit, rolling on its rim, the noise of traffic came all along the street from the Square, windblown and clamorous. The Merle was empty, the bookshop was closed, three starched shirts lay mute in the window of the one-day laundry, and beside them a pair of patent-leather shoes. Liggett’s drugstore, and the telephone booth immediately to the right of the door, and its directory with splayed leaves: he hesitated. The impulse was clear and sharp, it was an obvious enough association of ideas, he had telephoned similarly the night before. But why now? To get her out of bed, wake her, startle her, remind her of the singular bond which now lay heavy between them. Gerta? Yes. Jasper speaking. Yes? Just to remind you, that’s all.… The booth was unoccupied, it would be easy, he enjoyed thinking of her surprise, her agitation, not to mention the mystification in which she would be left. And it would be as well to add: I’m still without a formula.
The effect of daylight on the situation was odd, a little unnatural, like the sudden opening of wide windows into a secret theater, the stage moonlight abruptly dissipated: a queer sort of falseness was introduced, but also an unlooked-for intenseness: as if the actors all had at once to look in a new direction and for something unknown and terrifying. In this light, the events of the night before all turned like weathercocks, the events and the people too, Gerta and Sandbach and Toppan, and the sad little group in the Temple, it was as if they were all present here in Massachusetts Avenue and all turning simultaneously in the wind. Something new, something strange, was lighting and blowing them, as it was lighting and blowing himself; as if the entire constellation had brightened and shifted slightly to the left. It was because he himself had moved forward into another light, another time: he had turned to the left, and they with him.
Yes: their danger had passed.
He saw this in the haberdashery window, which he always looked into as he passed, he saw the phrase as if written there among the shirts and socks and neck ties. New woven madras shirts. New crochet ties. Boston Brace Garters. Varsity Shorts. Bostonia Hats. Double toe and heel hose, three pairs one dollar. Their danger had passed. Hab Ihr Das.
Yes, their danger had passed; he resumed his quick walk in the wind, avoided the faces of the early pedestrians, dropped two cents in the cigar box and took a Herald from beneath the brick, turned down Dunster Street. He would be early enough to breakfast alone, in the far corner at the back, a table to himself on which to spread out the newspaper, he could be undisturbed while he prepared the next step. Breakfast dishes. He surveyed the morning list, tray in hand, the firm little packet of linen-rolled silver under his thumb. Tomato Juice, Poached Egg on Corned Beef Hash Browned, Buttered Toast. He could have these things, himself as well as another, he remained strictly anonymous as he watched the waitress dip the poached egg from the boiling water, but just the same it gave him a sense of remarkable power to stand before her embodying a principle which, had she been able to divine it or understand it, would have made her scream. The composition was of a Bachlike perfection, it was the ideal counterpoint of good and evil.
—Graham toast, please.
—Yes, sir.
But if these were safe, if after all it was not to be a friend, or even an acquaintance——?
He dissected the egg as delicately as one might dissect a thought, looked into the moving liquid, paused. At this point one must go slow. One must be orderly. One must avoid all flurry, all agitation, all unnecessary confusion, work the thing out as neatly and precisely as one would a three-mover in chess. If it was a problem in philosophy, or a problem in esthetics, and as a matter of fact it was a little of both, there could be no room for sentiment and no excuse for excitement. Their danger had passed—Gerta’s and Sandbach’s and Toppan’s, and all the others’—simply because, and it was of course at once extremely obvious, the choice of any one of them would immediately introduce extraneous elements. The murder would not be pure. No matter how slight, there would be some little fringe of emotional complication—his disgust at Sandbach, his idle scorn of Toppan, his contempt—if that was it—for Gerta; there would be this minute chemical trace of motive; the anonymity would not have been strict. But if not these——
An acquaintance?
He lowered the newspaper, rested his hands flat upon it, surveyed the half empty room of glass-topped tables. The girl who gave out the checks sat at his left, on a high stool, her back turned: she was in the act of estimating the contents of a tray, hesitating, her hands poised over the keys of her machine. The man who was holding the tray was Mather, in the English department. Not very bright, said to be good to his mother, harmless, defensively amiable, weak. No. Neither of them. Nor any one else in the room. Certainly, at any rate, not a woman. It must be a man, he had really known that all along, but what was now also just as unmistakable was that it must be a stranger. A complete stranger! Some one chosen at random.… Absolutely at random.
Mather came towards him tray in hand, nodded ingratiatingly, said good morning, with any encouragement would have sat down at the same table, but he froze him by staring past him. The weak eyes lifted away, the tray swerved in its anxious course, the cautious footsteps moved away forward in the long room, toward the window. The kind of despicable herd-member who was always on the lookout for some one to sit beside, some one to join and confide in. In a moment he would look round to make sure whether Ammen had really recognized him, unwilling to believe that his coldness could have been intentional. He would do this obliquely and with a little cough. And then lower
his head tenderly over his hurt little breakfast.
No, certainly not an acquaintance, and certainly not Mather, but just the same to consider Mather was useful, for it served to make clearer the essential principles, moral or esthetic, on which the final decision must be made. To look at Mather was to pity him and despise him—or at any rate to want to pity or despise him—he was despicable and pitiful, or pitiable: to remain completely indifferent to him was impossible. And that, of course—and he slapped both hands on the table and laughed—was exactly the point. The stranger must be someone to whom one could be completely indifferent. He must be neither attractive nor unattractive, not to be loved or pitied, nor hated or feared, some one whose strangeness and anonymity (in the sense that one knew nothing about him and felt nothing) was pure. The face must be quite ordinary, just a face, the bearing and gait must be neither offensive nor enviable, the clothes of a sort of universal characterlessness. In short, it must be simply “a man.” A mere lay figure, or drawing of a man, such as you saw in a newspaper advertisement of ready-made suits for sixteen dollars and fifty cents.
Yes, that was it, it was the discovery, it was as if suddenly an immense fortune had been left him, the whole population of the world had become his capital, the whole world lay before him or under him like an unconscious victim. He slapped the newspaper down in the chair, walked rapidly toward the cashier’s wire cage, smiled over Mather’s head, while he waited for his change to trickle out of the machine drew a postcard and pencil from his pocket, then against the weighing machine in the lobby addressed the card to Gerta and wrote quickly on the other side: Formula found, dislocation number six.… Superb. With each little accretion of definition the situation became tighter, drew them all more shrewdly and painfully into false and unwilling postures, they came along with him willy-nilly and without knowing where, and he could see exactly with what expression of dismay Gerta would read this latest bulletin: the heels of her hands pressed quiveringly to the sides of her head, then quickly dropped, then a few swift steps across the room and back, the somberly curved mouth a little opened, the witty eyes a little dulled. She would want to call him up on the telephone but wouldn’t dare, she would want to come and see him, she would remain paralyzed until she had heard from him again, at most perhaps daring to write him a note of desperate question. Or would she decide to go away, go back to New York?
Clouds and a wind, the morning was profound, from his own tower of vision he looked down at the sordid little human maze far below him, into which his lightning could now strike freely where it willed, and once more, as he proceeded toward the post office, along Mount Auburn Street, the sense as of a deceptive serenity and leisure arose from his own deployed creation. Deceptive, for of course there was much still unsolved if not insoluble—no, not insoluble, but unsolved, waiting, the actual terminus not yet selected. This day, and the next, and the one after—this week, or the next—the question of time was undoubtedly there, the thing could not be timeless, but must have a time; and in this lay of course the necessity for a decision. Today? begin today? Begin with a definite volition? or allow his feet to take him where they wished? or simply stand in midstream, as it were, and allow the human current to divide itself unconsciously against him until the right “moment” came? Deceptive, yes, for to consider this was at once to be immersed again in the feeling of hurry. And there were also the subsidiary problems, the merely practical ones: the choice of a weapon, the choice of method and place, the actual planning of the deed itself, and whether at a long or short interval after the selection of the victim. Whether with contemplation or with suddenness. And whether or not with precautions against detection?
But no, that element need not enter. He himself would be, from the victim’s viewpoint, a complete stranger: the crime would be completely without reason: all of a sudden the fellow would be dead, no one could possibly be suspected, and that would be the end of it. The management of it should be excessively, almost childishly simple. A brief study of the man’s daily habits, his goings and comings, the discovery of his name, some ordinary ruse to get him to the appointed place at the appointed time—Belmont? Concord?—and there it was. A profound surprise.
But how to select him!
He dropped the postcard in the letter box, turned, recrossed Brattle Square; a small cyclone of dust whirled from the open end of the subway, the clock on the police station tower said a quarter to nine.
A telephone directory opened at random, with the eyes shut, a pencil in hand, the sortes Virgilianae? He smiled, the notion was not unattractive, the merely geographic possibilities were very rich and unpredictable. Even more delicious if, for example, he were to invite Gerta to do it?… But perhaps that would be premature. For the moment, what seemed most of all desirable was the maintenance of his own deep secrecy, his own inviolable privacy and mystery. Gerta and Toppan and Sandbach, and the shabby little haunters of the C Bookshop on the hill, all these people must be kept in the dark, they must be given a sense of some impending action, some continuous but enigmatic and unfathomable activity; like the leaves and twigs which the spider draws imperceptibly but imperatively together in his nocturnal spinning, each in turn bent together, they must feel but not see, only with daybreak would come—if indeed it were permitted to come to them at all—the revelation that they had been organized into an arbitrary pattern by the will of another and for a purpose unknown. They must be touched, used, made to quiver, but kept in ignorance. This would be their fright, this would be a useful part of his own satisfaction. The whole hated city, this alien city of contemptible ones, the vast nest of rats, would become his own property, his own web.
No Peddlers or Solicitors Allowed in This Building.
He followed the gray coat, the round-shouldered gray coat, with the collar turned up under a black velour hat, past the Personal Bookshop to the Square. A green bag depended from the right hand, full of books, the gait was slack and middle-aged, the knees not quite straightening, the spectacled profile, when it turned to inspect the oncoming traffic from the direction of the subway, was gray and dry and mustached. Standing close behind him, it was possible to observe that the under side of the turned-up collar was worn and unbrushed, that there was cigarette ash on the crown and rim of the hat, and that the hand which suddenly rose to steady it against the wind was veined with an unpleasant blue. A professor, with a nine-o’clock, on his way to Sever or the New Lecture Hall. He balanced in the wind, then decided, but with obvious indecision, to turn left across Brattle Street, at the last minute had to make an ungainly little run, when the traffic signal changed: the whistle shrilling, he scuttled, head down, hand on hat, toward the policeman’s canvas box.
To stand and watch him, as he then veered around the box and darted across the tracks toward the subway entrance, his hand still held anxiously against his hat, the green bag bobbing awkwardly at his side, conspicuous among all the rush of morning pedestrians simply because singled out for observation, was to renew and refresh one’s sense of power: it would be child’s play to follow him, find out who he was: in point of fact, it would be too easy altogether: to send a smile after the retreating figure was in itself, for the moment, a sufficient murder. No, this was not the sort of thing, though it whetted the appetite. Much more interesting, and much more fruitful, was the multiplicity of the morning rush itself. In this, as he began to walk slowly toward the subway, conscious of his great height, and conscious of his consciousness, was the real and unspoiled secret: an immense sense of wealth, a multitude of treasure, into which one merely needed to thrust an exploring hand. On the lower platform, where the ramps converged from the Arlington and Mount Auburn cars, it would be at its best. Moreover, there would be telephone booths, and telephone directories.
Descending the stairs, he crossed the stream of hurrying people and pushed towards the row of illuminated boxes, which looked like the lighted cells of a hive. A good point of vantage. He leaned casually against the edge of a booth, took the book in his hand,
opened it at random, and while he watched the crowd let his finger fall on the page. There was a name under his finger, but for a moment he didn’t want to see what it was: instead, he quite calmly smiled at one face and then another and then a third of those that passed him. The last, an old man, bareheaded, turned surprised eyes over his shoulder. Then he looked down. Joseph Kazis, 241 D Street, South Boston. South Boston—! A little remote, perhaps, but just the same, by way of experiment——
He closed the door, dialed with his pipestem, listened to the far-off ringing, heard the click of the lifted receiver, and the slow Jewish drawl, a woman’s voice.
—Who iss it?
—Is Mr. Kazis there?
—No, Mr. Kazis has gone to work now, who iss it please?
—Can you tell me where I can get him, it’s most important.
—Well, of course, you could try the paint shop on Stuart Street, but they don’t like for——
—Can you give me the name——?
—Why, it’s the Vacuum Paint Shop and Upholstery——
He hung up the receiver, laughed, dropped in another nickel, waited.
—Hello?
—Ammen speaking.
—Why, Jasper——
—I’ve just had a vision. Dislocation number seven, or is it eight! And listen——
—Yes?
—Here’s a funny name just to remember, and then forget: Joseph Kazis. Came over in the Mayflower.
—What? Hello, Jasper——?
—But we shall see! No, it will not be Kazis. It will be someone else.… Someone strange!…
VI The Stranger
To say that he was unmistakable, when he came a few minutes later, was not quite the truth: it happened, when it happened, very quickly, very lightly, there was really nothing in the little man’s appearance which particularly answered to any previous notion. In that respect, it might even be said that it was not the man; the face was certainly not the face which he had vaguely foreseen. No, the decision was made automatically, somatically, with a mere physical gesture: he had simply, and before he knew it, stepped away from the telephone booth, against which he was leaning, and begun to follow him. This was no Joseph Kazis, no abstraction, nothing so remote as a mere name in South Boston, and in that sense it was already possible to feel an acute disappointment, a definite derangement of the basic idea. But of course, the minute he thought about that, he saw that it was inevitable; and what the little man supplied was exactly what mathematically would have had to be supplied—a real and surprising existence. He was actual.