by Ann Petry
He handed the magazine back to Lola. “He’s a goddamn Communist.”
“Who?” she said, startled.
“Jubine. The world’s greatest photographer. The crackpot who took that picture.”
“Why do you say he’s a Communist?”
“Because he’s against wealth. Every time he gets a chance he takes a potshot at the wealthy.”
“Well,” she said hesitantly, obviously not wanting to get in an argument with him, and yet determined to show that he was wrong, “I haven’t seen all of his pictures. But I can remember two of them that were anything but potshots at the wealthy. Those photomurals of the river in Treadway Hall, in the entrance hall, are just beautiful pictures of a river and that’s all. And I remember that shot he took of the Treadway girl’s wedding, the wedding party coming out of the church. It was in Vogue four or five years ago. And it was a honey.”
“Yeah. He sold the honey to Vogue. Did you see what he brought me? He brought me the one with what he calls the peons flowing into and around the picture. He never says the people and he doesn’t use the word peasants, no, he says peons, so you’ll get a picture of enslavement, ignorance, racial mixture. And people don’t know whether they ought to laugh or get mad. Yeah, he took the honey to Vogue, all light and shadow, the Treadway girl and that man she married, whoever he was, perfect down to the last jewel, the last cufflink, and stretching behind them the aisle of the church, partial view of the altar. I Thee Do Wed, so that even the impure and the dissolute will wipe away a tear when they look at it.
“But he brought me the shot with the peons crowding into the picture, one with no legs practically sitting in the bride’s dress, squatting in the folds of the wedding gown, and the damn fool who does the society page fell for that torrent of talk that comes out of his mouth, ‘Look at the light, the shadows, the tree branches forming a pattern, look at the contrast, the adoration on the face of the legless man, adoration, same expression on the face of the young groom—but expectancy on the face of the young bride—’”
“It was true,” Lola said thoughtfully. “I remember it now. It was one of the pictures of the year.”
“You mean you didn’t see what he’d done?” He snorted in disgust. “Where’d the Treadway money come from? Munitions, guns, explosives. How’d the man lose his legs? Shot off in the First World War. Jubine wouldn’t miss a bet like that. Contrasts all right but not in light and shadow. He probably paid that legless man to sit outside the church.”
She said, softly, “I suppose it’s all in the way you look at a thing.”
“It is not. It’s the way he arranges things, or waits for hours until they arrange themselves, to fit the pattern of his thinking. Why do you think he leaves Monmouth and his precious river every year to attend the opening of the Met? Because he likes music? Hell, no, because he knows he’ll get pictures of the rich making fools of themselves, riding horses up the steps, taking their clothes off, or of be-diamonded horriblelooking old women with their skirts lifted, their lean shanks exposed, because they’ve got their old legs up on tables. He gets quotes, too, like the time that woman lost her tiara, he had her saying, ‘I’m cold without it.’ You notice none of his poor people, his peons, ever have their mouths open or their tongues stuck out or their behinds bare.”
“But he does show them that way. He takes drunks and prostitutes and murderers and you look at the picture and you know what they are—”
“Oh, sure. But he always gives them dignity, even lying in the gutter. That woman who shot her husband, last year, looked like an avenger, a fury, not ridiculous or silly or simpleminded.”
“Perhaps the poor have dignity because—”
“That’s communism. That’s what he’s saying in his pictures.”
“Wait a minute, Pete. I didn’t say the rich were undignified because they were rich.”
“No. But you were going to say poor people have dignity because they’re poor. Jubine says that all the time in his pictures. And the rich sucker peons eat it up and pay him a fortune for it.”
Rich sucker peons. “I always hope that some day you will realize that you are a poor peon like the rest of us. Then you will be a free man.” Jubine said that when he brought him the shot of the old governor’s funeral cortege. Oh, sure, the Chronicle’s flashbulb boys had pictures, but not like that one of Jubine’s—death in his picture, grandeur in it, and something else that after one hasty glance made you think that you had been an eyewitness to the passing of the last of the aristocrats in government and you were left the poorer because of it.
He said, “I won’t buy any more of his goddamn communist pictures.”
And then changed the subject because with the female to whom you were legally wed you had to be very careful to avoid an argument, otherwise on a Saturday night you would find yourself sleeping alone in the less comfortable of the two guest rooms.
“What have you been doing all day, beautiful?” He ran his hand through her hair—soft, silky, fragrant. The cat looked up and blinked its eyes and he thought, It’s a good house, it’s a good room, it’s a good fire. The cat? Ah, well, as a cat it is a good cat, as a substitute for male and female children it is a hell of a lousy thing. But as a cat it belongs in this room, like the fireplace, and Lola’s hair.
“Love me?” she said.
“I love you. All my life I’ve loved you. And always will.” He put his arm around her waist. “Leave us talk about you.” He thought, Jubine’s face suggests laughter, yet he doesn’t laugh often. Why then? Because it is basically the face of a clown, with a few added touches it would be a clown’s face; the potential was there, the mouth a little too large, the nose too prominent, the eyes bulged, the ears stood out, too big. Clown’s face.
“Let’s go up early,” he said, putting his cheek down close to hers. “Gosh, you smell good.”
When he turned out the light in their bedroom, he thought, Well, at least that pansy who picked out the furniture knew what he was doing when he put a kingsize bed in here, or maybe it was Lola’s idea. And asked her, and she giggled, leaned close to him, then whispered, her mouth in the hollow of his neck, her mouth tickling him as it moved, soft, warm against the hollow of his neck, “Stalin thought it up—part of the Communist plot to hasten the downfall of the capitalist class.”
4
* * *
AT MIDNIGHT, on the same Saturday night, Link Williams stood on the dock, leaning against the railing, waiting for Jubine. Fog was blowing in from the river, soft, wet, clinging, all-enveloping fog. He listened to the water lap against the piling. There was a southwest wind and it lifted the fog now and then, blew it back, lifted it, so that he caught an occasional glimpse of the river, of light reflected in it, could see stretches of the dock itself, then the fog would blow in again, thicker than before, billowing in from the river. When he turned and looked in the direction of Dumble Street, it was as though a cloud, a cumulus, was moving in on Dumble Street.
Fog over the river, fog over Dock Street, the street that ran alongside the river. He heard the chug-chug of Jubine’s motorcycle, way down on Franklin Avenue, going slowly, visualized him, head bent forward, peering, trying to see both sides of the street at once for fear he’d miss something, miss the chance to photograph someone coming into the world, or just leaving it.
As he stood there waiting for Jubine he grinned, thinking about Abbie. She had been all upset at supper because she had found out that Mamie Powther, Mrs. Mamie Powther, was Bill Hod’s cousin. Mr. B. Hod’s cousin. He had been kind of jolted himself. But for different reasons. Cousin, he thought. Yah!
Abbie had been so upset he had felt a little sorry for her. But being upset did not prevent her from reciting her regular Saturday night lines. He knew his by heart too. So the whole thing went off smoothly. They’d been doing it for about two years now, ever since he had come back from the Navy, so that it was never necessary
for one to prompt the other. His lines, her lines, unchanged, unchanging. The only variation occurred in the comments on the weather. In the summer Abbie said, “This heat”; in winter she said, “This cold”; fall and spring, “This wind”; and, of course, rain, snow, fog, hail, whatever form of precipitation fell from the heavens above:
“Those poker games—that man—you get in so late—”
“It’s the shank of the evening—”
“Alone in the house—every Saturday night—hear noises—”
“Noises from the street—”
“Someone walks through the backyard—”
“Probably a dog—”
“Knocks over the ashcan—”
“Probably a dog—”
“You ought to wear a coat—this dampness—”
“Don’t need one”—whistle, hum, sing “I got my love to keep me warm.”
“Those poker games—that man—Saturday night—Dumble Street—the fog—”
He always let that one go without answering it.
“Dumble Street—not safe—people knifed—held up—robbed—this fog—”
“Unlikely—know everybody—for blocks around—safe in Dumble Street—safe as a church—my end of town—”
Why as a church? Why did he always say, safe as a church? Who was safe in a church? Safe from what?
“You don’t go to church any more—you ought to go to church—I don’t understand why—that man—”
He’d gone plenty when he was a kid, enough to last him the rest of his life. He could remember how church ate the heart, the life out of Sundays. He could see himself, washed and scrubbed and carrying a Bible, walking always within hand’s reach of the white gloves Abbie wore. She carried a Bible too. They walked side by side, the straightbacked, smallboned woman and the reluctant boy, the carriers of Bibles. And down at the other end of Dumble Street, in the opposite direction, was the river. Every kid he knew was on the dock, near the dock, around the dock, drying off, sunning himself, diving in, swimming, loafing. And he, in Sunday School, and then in church, and the new minister’s prayers were so long, so long, he closed his eyes and tried not to think, to go to sleep, and the voice went on and on, “Look down on us poor sinners, help us, oh, Lord—”
He opened his eyes and counted the panes in the nearest of the stained-glass windows. He stared up at the ceiling and counted the light bulbs in the chandelier, wishing that he could sit in some other part of the church besides the choir loft. Abbie sat in the choir loft because she played the organ so he had to sit there, too, so he wouldn’t “get into mischief.” He dropped the hymnbook just for the exquisite pleasure of hearing the explosive sound it made, pulled his ear, wriggled in his chair, and then slid way down in it until he was half reclining, then, remembering that Abbie could see him in the little mirror with the oak frame that was right above the organ, he would straighten up.
Sometimes he amused himself by wondering what would happen if he stood up quickly and dropped a hymnbook squarely on top of old Mrs. Brown’s head; she wore a squashed-down black felt hat and it would be fun to flatten it a little more. But he never did. It was fidget and twist and turn, put his feet squarely in front of him, turn his ankles in, then out, crack his knuckles, while he contemplated the long expanse of time, limitless, never ending, and he in the middle of it, forced to sit still, when he wanted to run and jump and whoop and holler and land in the river, yelling, “Last one in is a horse’s tail.”
He tried to figure out ways of waging warfare, open warfare, jungle warfare, leap from ambush, guerilla warfare. He would declare war with a shout, declare war on Abbie, the minister, the old ladies dozing in the front pews, the old men who sat in the back pews leaning on their canes, the choir. He would shoot the soprano just at dawn, she had a quaver in her voice and buck teeth, and was always poking at him with her foot. Then he was God and all the angels, he was Gabriel blowing on a horn, blowing for the Judgment, and he was Ezekiel and he saw a wheel and a wheel and wheels, he was Moses leading his people to the Promised Land, booting his people to the Promised Land.
He was never ten-year-old Link Williams trapped in the choir loft on a morning when there was no school, when the sun was shining and the air was hot and the river ran practically in his front yard. So he lifted the hymnbook and sighted down the length of it, then put it to his lips, getting ready to blow that great big final blast for the Judgment, and then would drop it, bang, just to break the monotony.
Every Sunday, after church, Abbie said, “For heaven’s sake, Link, why do you keep dropping your hymnbook? Sometimes I think you do it on purpose.”
The afternoons weren’t much better. He was caged under The Hangman, still within arm’s reach of Abbie. She read the Sunday edition of the Chronicle, all afternoon, and he mostly sat around, restless, at a loss, until six o’clock. Right after supper he was on his own for an hour or so and as he took off his Sunday clothes, exchanging them for an old pair of pants and a jersey, he began to feel free. He went straight across the street, around to the back door of The Last Chance and into the big kitchen, knowing that he was just in time to eat with Weak Knees and Bill. Bill said, “Your aunt must have Jew blood. Sundown and the religion is put away for the night.”
Weak Knees said, “Pull up a chair, Sonny, and start layin’ your lip over this here fried chicken. I know you ain’t had a goddamn thing to eat all day.”
The putt-putt of Jubine’s motorcycle had stopped, he hadn’t heard it for quite a while. He must have found his picture though, because it began again, a staccato sound, immediately recognizable, despite the sound of busses starting and stopping, the clang-clang of the Franklin Avenue trolley.
The fog kept lifting and closing in, and he thought that the bleat of the foghorn kept changing with the rolling in of the fog, perhaps it was a change in pitch or in volume due to the shifting of the wind, first it was like a groan, on one note, and then it had two notes, now up, now down, Groan-sigh, groan-sigh, groan-sigh.
He could tell from the sounds that Dumble Street was all set now for Saturday night. It had passed the yawning, stretching stage, was now out of the house, wearing its best pants, razor-edge crease in the pants, clean shirt on its back, had long since patted its hip pocket to make sure the wallet was there, had adjusted its hat brim on its wellgreased hair, run its fingers over its just-shaved jowls, fingertips smelling of carnation talc and lilac aftershave for a good half-hour after contact with the jowls. It had long since taken stock of the potentialities, the possibilities, offered by this stretch of time, payday time, no-work-in-the-morning time, money-and-plenty-of-places-to-spend-it-in time, stay-up-all-night time and lie in bed half the next day, luxuriating in the memory of the conquests of the night before. Dance in the Dance Hall. Yes. Those that didn’t want to dance were standing hipdeep in The Last Chance, just drinking and talking. He’d have to duck back in there pretty soon and check the cash register again. The Moonbeam would be packed right straight back to the door. There was, if you listened for it, a kind of hum and buzz in Dumble Street, later there would be fights and holdups and violence—largely unpremeditated.
Whenever the fog lifted he caught glimpses of the street, the harsh redorange neon sign of The Last Chance, the frame houses, the no longer used trolley track, could even see where the sidewalks were broken, broken by coal trucks and moving vans. He turned his back on the river, fog over it, so thick you couldn’t see anything, wouldn’t know it was there.
He heard the roar, the staccato beat, the putt-putt of a motorcycle. Jubine was getting near the dock; recording angel on a motorcycle, on the prowl, at night, hunting for death, the ones dead by their own hands, the ones dead by knife or gun in some one else’s hand. Then motor cut off. Headlight cut off. Silence. He heard him walk across the dock, knew that he was standing still, trying to see the river.
“You’re late, Jubie,” he said.
“
Link?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, you must be wearing sneakers. You practising cops and robbers or somep’n?”
“The fog deadens sound. But it’s a good night for it.”
“A lovely night. Night for murder. Night for rape. Night for sabotage. Night for all the poor peons to cry, to wail, to gnash their teeth. The poor peons. It’s the nights that get them.” His voice soft, compassionate.
Fog all around them, lifting, swirling, now concealing, now revealing, drifting, intangible, wet, there, not there, touching their faces, touching their hands, cold and wet, warm and wet, soft and wet.
Jubine lit his cigar and the sudden spurt splash flare of light, brief, gone suddenly, illumined his face, revealed the popeyes which seemed to be staring at the match, cataloguing it, prying into it. Link thought, It’s the face of a born snoop—got to know, want to know, got to see, want to see, ears that are big and out of shape, the mouth, well, the lips full, got to talk, see all hear all, talk about himself, the nose, a flare at the nostrils, as though the nose must smell all, too, and the hands big, capable, black hair on the backs, hands feel all. But the eyes were what held you, embarrassed you, bold bulging eyes that made no pretense of not looking, that couldn’t get enough of looking. It was not the childlike concentrated gaze that stared without comprehension; it was the child’s unwinking gaze with a lively intelligence added. His voice always came as a shock, it should have been a hoarse tough voice, instead it was soft cajoling—voice of a mother comforting a child, You’re all right, I’ll put cold water on your knee, and a bandage. See? It’s all right now. Tender, compassionate voice, and so people turned toward him and he got his picture.