Man Drowning

by Henry Kuttner

  “See if you can detect any difference between the jades,” De Anza suggested. “Shut your eyes and try it.”

  “All right,” I said, dipping my fingers into the water. It was lukewarm. I rolled a few of the beads between my fingers, but they all felt alike to me. Shaking my head at De Anza, I sat back in my chair.

  He dropped a few more beads in the bowl and laid the box aside. Then, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, he fished for a bead, picked up a green one, and rolled it back and forth. Through the water his fingers looked queer, as though they’d been broken.

  “Emerald green,” he said. “I think Peruvian.”

  He dropped it and got another.

  “Black.”

  He tried again.

  “White, the mutton-fat jade…Emerald green again, but Burmese. No, Mogaung. I can’t tell.”

  “It’s emerald green, all right,” I said. “Do the different colors really feel different?”

  “Yellow jade…yes, of course, Nick. Someone with an ear for music and enough training can name any note he hears. Jade is no different. It appeals to a different sense, that’s all. That snake, now—” he moved his head toward the Countess, who was sitting on the couch playing with the king snake, “it would easily differentiate between jades, better than any human, by using its tongue. However, snakes have other gratifications.” He smiled and began playing with the beads in the bowl again.

  “And it frees my mind,” he said, after a moment. “It stabilizes my thoughts. Any semiautomatic routine will do that. Or music. That reminds me, Nick, I have two errands I’d like you to do in Phoenix tomorrow.”

  “I’ll do them. What?”

  “Some records I ordered have arrived. And I want some prescriptions refilled. Do you have a pencil? These are the addresses.” He dictated them. “The pharmacist has my prescriptions on file; he’ll know what I want.”

  “Okay. Is that all?”

  The Count nodded.

  “Phoenix!” he said. He snapped the cigarette butt out of the jade holder and crushed it firmly in the ash tray.

  “It looked like a nice town,” I said.

  “With human beings in it,” he said. “I distrust and dislike human beings. I prefer my own resources.”

  “Well—then you’re living in the right place. Except you can’t get away from people completely.”

  “The Countess, and Benita and Rafael, I know very thoroughly. Nothing they might do would be unpredictable to me. But I don’t wish to live near potential mobs. The people, sir, is a great beast.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “I saw it in Barcelona,” he said. “I saw it in Amritsar in nineteen nineteen. I saw it in Peiping in nineteen thirty-seven.”

  “Wars?”

  “…Violence.”

  He closed his eyes and took a long drag of his cigarette. His carefully rouged cheeks looked a little pinker.

  “A savage race that hoard and sleep and feed,” he said, still with his eyes shut. “Jade is better.”

  His fingers dipped into the bowl beside him.

  I sat there, the queer, greasy smell of that smoke in my nose and throat, watching the slow, unpleasant motion of the snake around Mrs. De Anza’s skinny neck.

  “Yü,” the Count said softly. “It means jade. And it means the five cardinal virtues, too. You won’t find those in a growing civilization. Only in a mature one, where there’s time for charity, modesty, courage, justice and wisdom—yü. I know one such place. It’s on the Tibetan border, a little village on a lake. I lived there once for three years. I should like to go back. Some day I shall.”

  He glanced toward Mrs. De Anza.

  “Bhutan—an exotic name. An exotic place. But so is this—the American desert. And—” he fingered the beads.

  “White jade from Yünnan. Green jade from Mexico. Yü-chi, feits’ui, imperial jade.”

  “You’ll never go anywhere,” Mrs. De Anza said, sitting there with the snake moving gently against her throat. “You’ve found your wasteland, Brother Lawrence. You’ll stay here tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. How long has it been since you went out of this house, anyhow? A year? Pretty soon you’ll take root.”

  “Perhaps,” he said calmly. “But I’ll live longer.”

  “Me for the fleshpots,” she said. “Tomorrow, the world. Phoenix!”

  He smiled and shrugged.

  “As you like. But I should think you’d prefer to rest, after such a long trip.”

  She stared at him.

  “Who said it was a long trip?”

  “No one. But you were tired when you got back.”

  “Maybe I walked,” she said. “Try working it out with a slide rule. I’m not going to tell you where I’ve been.” She yawned. “Oh, I guess I’ll buy a lot of clothes tomorrow. Then what about New Orleans? After all, I haven’t seen Mardi Gras for years. Or the Cinco de Mayo, for that matter.”

  The Count began to finger his jade beads again.

  “You’re a Californian, Nick?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What made you decide to emigrate?”

  “Everybody and his wife are moving in. I figured I’d have a better chance somewhere else.”

  “Like Arizona, you mean?”

  “Arizona, New York, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have any home. The desert suits me all right.”

  “Oh? It’s a bloodless place.” He turned the dark lenses on me. “It’s a good country for bloodless people, I suppose.”

  “Leo, will you stop playing with that jade?” Mrs. De Anza asked abruptly. “I can’t concentrate.”

  “May I help you?” he said, with a kind of smooth mockery. “What word…”

  She was writing down a letter, but the pencil point snapped, and she said sharply, “Just put the jade away, Leo, if you please.”

  “Soon, my dear.”

  “God damn it, Leo, I can’t concentrate!”

  He took the cigarette out of his holder, put it into the ash tray, and ground out the coal slowly. He kept on till the cigarette was mashed flat. Then he said, “Of course, Irene. But I find jade especially relaxing tonight.”

  “Can’t you relax somewhere else? Or read a book?”

  “I practically had to use clairvoyance to read Nick’s letters of recommendation,” he said, and put up his hand toward his dark glasses. The Countess watched him.

  “Good night, Leo,” she said.

  De Anza lowered his arm. He was smiling, but that didn’t mean anything. He stood up, took the bowl and the towel with his silver-mounted gun wrapped up in it, nodded slightly to me, and went out of the room. I sat there, feeling uncomfortable. The Countess ignored me. Finally I went over to one of the bookcases, picked out The Complete Sherlock Holmes, and settled down to read that, figuring that not everything that went on in this house was my business.

  Mrs. De Anza finished her crosswords and said good night a little after twelve, so I went to bed too, in the room Rafael had showed me, after a stopover in the patio to get some fresh air into my lungs. I pulled off my clothes, got into bed, and lay there, waiting for sleep.

  I couldn’t sleep. All I could think of was Sherry.

  I told myself: You can see her tomorrow. Relax. Forget about it for now. It’ll only be a few hours. You can wait that long, can’t you?

  After a while I knew that I couldn’t.

  I got up and dressed in the moonlight. I let myself out quietly. There weren’t any lights on in the house that I could see. I walked around to the outside of the U, where the garage was, and stood there, looking in at the two cars, thinking it over. I turned around and there was the driveway, slanting down over the crest of the hill and meeting the highway some place down below, where I couldn’t see it. The highway itself was dead black in that queer, watery brightness that lay over everything.

  The Buick was pointed the right way. I checked up and saw there was plenty of gas. The
n I reached in, released the emergency, and shoved, bracing my foot against a joist in the wall. The car started to move. I pushed harder. It rolled out of the garage and started down the slope.

  I jumped in, leaving the door open, and got my hands on the steering wheel. I just coasted, guiding the big car down the driveway, glancing at the rear-view mirror to see if any lights showed in the house. I was beginning to coast pretty fast, so I clicked on the ignition, pulled out the choke halfway, and slipped the gearshift into high, keeping the clutch pressed down to the floor boards. In that bright moonlight, it was easy to steer; I didn’t need lights. When I looked at the mirror again, the rise of the hill hid the De Anza place.

  I was going fast when I made the turn to the highway, but the grade was still with me, so I kept on for a quarter mile before I let out the clutch and used my headlights. Right away I started listening to the motor. It was good, but it could have sounded better; somebody had driven the devil out of it. Still, it would get me into Phoenix and back without any trouble.

  I warmed it up for a while and then gave her the gun.

  Chapter 8

  I parked near the Green Lantern, got out of the car, and started walking toward the bar. Before I got there, the neon signs blinked out. The Venetian blinds were turned so I couldn’t see in, but there was a light inside. Both doors were closed. I tried the latch of the bar door; it was locked.

  Okay. I knew where Sherry lived, now. She wouldn’t be asleep yet, if the bar was just closing. I started to walk back to the car. As I reached it, a voice behind me said, “Hi, Mac.”

  Footsteps sounded hollow on cement. I turned around. A man was coming toward me, cupping his hands around a match flame so I couldn’t see his face very well. Then he stopped in front of me, lowering the match so the flame hung there between us, lighting his face. His pale blue eyes looked at me, squinting a little, the loose mouth drawn down, the cigarette hanging from one corner. He was the big, buttery blond guy I’d met in the Green Lantern last night—the bartender, Ed Gavotte.

  He looked me over carefully. His breath smelled stronger than ever. His eyes would have been red, white, and blue, if there’d been enough white left to show.

  “Nick,” he said. “Nick Banning. That’s right, eh? I got a good memory. What do you say, Nick?”

  “Looks like I missed the boat. Closing up?”

  He studied me.

  “I got to talk to you, Nick,” he said. “Can you spare some time?”

  “Tomorrow do?”

  “What you need is a drink. That’s what I need, too. Suppose we have a little talk now, and then everything’ll be settled. Do it the easy way. Sherry—I got to look out for Sherry.”

  “What about Sherry?”

  “I thought you were Mac,” he said. “That bastard McElroy. You don’t know about him, though, do you?”

  He drew in on his cigarette. The red glow lit up his face. He was crying.

  “Jesus, Nick,” he said. “Don’t do this to me, will you?”

  “Do what?”

  “I’m no dope. You’re the guy Sherry used to be married to. I had the angles figured right from the start, don’t fool yourself about that. Only I never bothered to check up. If I’d wanted to, I could of made Sherry spill it before now.” He looked at me hard, trying to sell me the idea that he’d been a smart apple all along. Then his face crumpled. “Nick, what the hell do you want to come back for? Didn’t you make trouble enough? She’s not in love with you. She’s in love with me.”

  “What’s the tie-in?” I said. “You and Sherry?”

  He was off on another track.

  “I’m a nice guy,” he said. “Sure I am. Good old dependable Ed. Nice, helpful guy. You can always depend on Ed. Like a big brother. Even in bed they treat me like that. Oh, hell. Sherry isn’t in love with me. But she’s going to be, sometime. Business, she said. A straight business deal. When it’s finished, no hard feelings either way. I said okay. She was straight, even when Mac came along. God-damned orchids. I want a drink. Some nights I come down here and just stay. She’s a fine girl, a swell girl, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing to her. You think I like that? I come down here and drink. I got me a bar. Nobody can—” He broke off impatiently. “Well, are you coming in and have a drink with me? I want to straighten this out.”

  “I guess so.”

  He got a key out of his pocket, opened the bar door, and reached in. Lights came on. He backed up.

  “Go ahead, Nick.”

  I did. Gavotte followed me, shutting the door behind him. The Venetian blinds were angled so that nobody could see in from the street.

  “Down to the end. That last stool. I keep my own liquor there.”

  “You’re calling them,” I said, and did what he wanted. I sat down on the last stool, bracing my heels on the metal footrest, and Gavotte circled around me, lifted the hinged flap at the end of the bar, and let it bang down. He stood there for a while, looking at me across the mahogany barrier, his pink face twisted, his mouth drawn down.

  “It’s that bastard’s fault,” he said. “I got nothing against you, Nick. Nothing personal. That guy McElroy—I’d of killed him. If he’d—my God, Nick, he’s the skunk that’s causing the trouble.” He shook his head vaguely. “Crazy business. Here.”

  He set a three-quarter-empty fifth of Old Crow on the bar, poured drinks and slid a shot glass toward me.

  “You going east tomorrow?”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. Don’t try to bull me about what happened last night. Don’t you suppose I know the score? It’s been like that all along. I don’t mean a thing to Sherry—I’m a man, don’t kid yourself about that, but with a girl like Sherry—hell! It don’t mean anything to her. She’s nice, she tries to be nice, but you can’t fool a man about that. Not if he’s in love with the girl.”

  “She’s living with you.”

  “Yeah, she’s living with me. She’s having it better than with you, too. I don’t know what happened between you, but a girl don’t get a divorce when she likes things the way they are. When I met her, she was making peanuts. You didn’t give a damn. You never even looked her up to see she was all right.”

  “I—okay.”

  “I don’t know what happened between you, but I see as far as the end of my nose. Things Sherry’s said. And then the minute you walked in here last night, I had you tabbed. I’ve seen too many like you across the bar.”

  I didn’t say anything, and he showed me his teeth.

  “Sherry don’t mean a thing to you,” he said.

  I still didn’t answer him.

  ‘A man’s got a right to expect a few things. What the hell did you ever do for her? I been good to Sherry. I played it straight with her, all down the line. I got a right to expect her to keep her pants on when a guy like you comes sniffing around. You want two bucks for a lay, I’ll give it to you.”

  I looked at him.

  “You poor bastard,” I said.

  He shrugged and poured more whisky.

  “I’ll tell you one thing that’s as true as I’m standing here. You’re no good to Sherry.”

  “You are, though.”

  “The books balance, anyway. I’ve played it square with Sherry since we started. Because I liked her, from the beginning. That’s why I played it straight. I liked her a lot. I only met her a few times at parties, but she was…I liked her. She was working in a hash-house. That was in ’Frisco. It’s a tough job, slinging hash. I…kept seeing her. It was a vacation for me, see? Day before I had to come back here, I laid it on the line. Yes or no, I didn’t put any pressure on. I wouldn’t of. I told her straight what I wanted, and she could take it or leave it.”

  “So she took it.”

  “Yeah, she took it. But—” he shook his head like a bear, “she’s scared of marriage. I guess you’d know more about that than me.” He scowled. “Another thing—she’s just plain scared. You know anything
about that?”

  I drank my whisky and pushed my glass over. Gavotte refilled it, and his own, under the bar, his mouth moving. He tossed the drink down.

  “Good old Ed,” he said bitterly. “Nice, easygoing Ed. I never had a woman that gave a good goddam about me. For a while, maybe, until Mr. Right came along. Then it was always—Ed, it’s been swell, but you understand. You’re such a swell guy.” He showed me his teeth. “Yeah. Sure. What is it I don’t have? You tell me. Why does Sherry run after you the minute you snap your fingers?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s better than Mac, or maybe it isn’t. With him, it’s dough. Do you know what that bastard does? Every night or so he sends Sherry an orchid, with a card. There isn’t a damn thing on that card but a price. Every time it goes higher. What do you think about a guy like that?”

  “Who does he think he is?”

  “He’s got dough. I think he’s crazy as a bedbug. First off, he didn’t care, one way or another. Only when Sherry turned him down, that set him off. I heard things about McElroy. He’s like a kid, he’s got to have his own way. And—I don’t know. All he wants is to sleep with her once. There’s something funny about it. The way he acts toward her.”

  He brought up a box from under the bar, opened it, and took out the brown orchid. It must have been on ice, or another one, for it wasn’t wilted. He started picking it apart.

  “Sherry’s straight. She likes dough, she’s saving—I told you about that. Only it isn’t just the money with her. It’ll help her get what she wants. There was a while when I thought she might give in to McElroy. But then he kept on raising his price, and she got mad. I know damn well that he could have had her then, if he’d even tipped his hat or said please. But he’s a funny jerk, it’s like he’s got to buy her on a package deal, and he won’t have it any other way. Sherry isn’t taking that. She’d feel like a—well, you know. McElroy’s a crazy bastard, but he isn’t going to keep on sending these orchids forever. There’s some price where it won’t be worth it to him and then he’ll stop.”