He said wearily, ‘Yes, I’d let you have it.’
Stafford insinuated himself a little farther forward until it seemed that he was supported only by the table-top.
‘If you really meant it,’ Stafford whispered. ‘If you really meant what you said . . .’
‘I meant it.’
‘Then you could get the money, Arthur. You could get it, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘From your father, Arthur. He would let you have it. You know he would let you have it.’
Arthur’s eyes widened at the sudden shock he felt run through his body like an electric wave.
‘He wouldn’t refuse you, Arthur,’ Stafford went on. ‘From what you’ve told me, he—’
‘Shut up, Stafford,’ he said faintly. ‘Please shut up.’
‘Don’t start that,’ Stafford snapped. ‘It doesn’t impress me. It wouldn’t hurt you just to ask him. After all, some of that money is yours. You told me your mother left—’
Arthur’s voice sounded hollow and distant in his own ears. ‘Stafford, I told you once never to mention that—that—’
‘You told me once,’ Stafford mimicked. ‘Oh, you make me sick. Stop acting, will you? It wouldn’t kill you to just ask him.’
‘Stafford . . .’
‘You’re afraid,’ Stafford shrilled. ‘Oh, stop that silliness. Ask him. Ask him!’
He could not control his voice. It wobbled and wavered, it broke and fell, but somehow he managed to speak.
‘If you don’t get up and get out of here, Stafford, I’ll—’
Stafford sneered. ‘Are you trying to frighten me? If you are, you’re wasting your time, because—’
The first thing that Arthur’s hand encountered was the half-filled water glass beside his plate. Before he could think, he had dashed its contents into Stafford’s face. Stafford jumped up and stood in front of him, sputtering, gasping, brushing ineffectually at his soggy shirt front and dripping coat lapels.
‘You!’ he quavered. ‘Oh, you—’
His face trembled as if it were threatening to fall apart.
‘I’ll never,’ Stafford declared, ‘I’ll never, never speak to you again as long as I live.’
And he whirled and stalked angrily away, his head held high, the water glistening on his face like freshly shed tears. Arthur watched him go.
Then all anger died in him and left him weak and shaken. He put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. A small paroxysm that was half-giggle and half-sob shook him lightly. He tried to stop, but he could not. He knew that people were noticing him.
A finger touched his shoulder. He heard someone ask carefully, ‘What’s the trouble here?’
He tried to control his voice. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. Don’t bother.’
‘We don’t want any trouble here.’
He turned; and through a distorting mist, he saw the plump, quivering face that matched the uncertain voice. ‘No trouble,’ he said thickly. ‘It’s all right, I . . .’
‘Drunk,’ he heard someone mutter. ‘He’s drunk.’
He jerked his head up at the sound of that voice. ‘No,’ he protested. ‘No, it’s not that. Just leave me alone for a minute, I’ll—’
The plump face above him relaxed, showed a momentary flash of relief, then stiffened. The voice was no longer uncertain; it was hard, sure, managerial.
‘All right. You better pay your check and beat it now.’
Arthur’s face trembled dangerously. ‘But I assure you I’m not—’
The manager leaned down and hissed venomously into his face. ‘Listen. Do you want to make me call a cop? I said to beat it.’
‘Please,’ he said faintly. ‘Just a minute . . .’ He managed to fumble some money onto the table. The manager glanced at it swiftly.
Then he said, ‘What kind of place do you think this is?’ His fat little face shone with indignation. He reached down and tugged sharply at Arthur’s coat collar. ‘Come on, get up from there.’ He snapped his fingers at two waiters who were hovering about, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. At the signal, they sprang forward, pulled Arthur up from the chair, and started walking with him toward the door.
He could hardly speak, and he could not make them understand. ‘I’m all right,’ he was able to say at last. ‘You needn’t do that.’
But they pushed him through the doorway and he stood cringing and blinking on the sidewalk. His shoulders heaved, but no sound came from his dry throat. After a while, he moved on up the street. He wandered aimlessly, hardly knowing where he walked.
Several hours later, when he had left the sidewalk and went through the revolving doors of the Hotel Regency, the clatter and bang of the city’s streets merged swiftly into the muffled noise of the lobby. He stood for a moment at the entrance, getting his bearings. Then he walked across the floor, walked tentatively as if he were an intruder upon a teeming yet depersonalized world. He went to a flight of stairs that led up to a rectangular balcony which framed and overlooked the febrile pit of the lobby. From there, the ominous mutter of the crowd below him became a muted whisper. Looking down, he saw only an anonymous sea of humanity, and it did not seem composed of people at all.
From behind him came the peculiarly subdued clatter of dishes and silverware. And as these sounds reached his ears, soft and surreptitious as in all hotel dining rooms, his heart gave a leap and a bound, and for the first time since he had entered, he realized the enormity of the moment; and that enormity engulfed him like a wave.
He looked at his watch and drew a deep breath. He walked to the dining room doorway. He pushed aside the draped barrier. He entered. A waiter hurried up to him on noiseless feet.
Through numb lips Arthur said, ‘Mr Hollis Maxley’s table.’
As he threaded his way through the colorful forest of the dining room, brushing against incurious backs, he became suddenly and powerfully aware of his father’s presence. He could not see him, but he knew his presence, felt it more strongly with each step he took.
The waiter halted. He sensed more than observed the sweeping hand which pointed to a table. Then the waiter was gone and time rushed about him and he was dull and silent, an immovable rock in a rushing stream. He noticed that his forehead, although cool, was wet and dank-feeling with his perspiration.
A quick, unwilling effort jerked his head up and he forced a smile to twist his mouth and he looked for the first time at his father.
He was tall and his face was handsome and narrow and large white teeth flashed briefly in his smile. There was a smooth well-barbered look about his skin and his hair was brown and he wore it brushed back away from his forehead where it was beginning to thin slightly. He moved quickly, nervously; and about his eyes, which were deep and dark, there played strange glinting lights. Now his forehead was wrinkled faintly with uncertainty and worried perplexity. These things he saw and remembered in his instant’s vision.
When he jerked his eyes up and their gazes met and locked, Hollis Maxley rose involuntarily and half-crouched, half-stood, his knuckles pressed hard upon the table-top. He licked his lips nervously and stood to his full height, put out his right hand, and Arthur found that his own hand had responded to that gesture, had reached out and met him, and he felt the neat pumping motion as his limp fist swiveled senselessly from its wrist.
He recognized the hoarse controlled tone of his father’s voice.
‘It’s good to see you again, Art. Sit down.’
He smiled feebly, politely; and that facile smile hung idiotically on his face as he searched the visage of his father and desperately rummaged the confused closet of his brain for some magic word to ease the growing tension.
‘I got your letter this afternoon,’ he said. His words chased and caught each other. ‘I—I called you here, but the clerk said you weren’t in.’
His father smiled eagerly. ‘There was some business I had to see after. I was only gone for a few minutes. The cl
erk told me you had called while I was gone. I was awfully sorry I missed you.’
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence. Then his father said, ‘I dropped you a line when I was in Buenos Aires, but I didn’t hear from you. The mail situation is pretty uncertain—in Buenos Aires.’
‘I didn’t get it.’
‘I guessed that was it,’ his father said gravely. ‘I guessed that you didn’t get it.’
Then Hollis Maxley sighed and settled back in the chair. His hand encountered the menu on the table, as if by accident. But the movement was too casual, Arthur thought.
He looked at his son with simulated surprise.
‘Are you hungry? I think I am. Shall we order?’
Arthur nodded distantly and picked up the menu which lay in front of him. They buried their gazes in the fine print and did not look up until the waiter approached them.
While the waiter took their orders, he studied his father covertly. He was thinner and browner than he remembered him. The South American sun had burned the soft leather of his skin until it paled startlingly around the edges where it disappeared into the thin scorched hair. Some new lines on his forehead, around his mouth. His movements had grown quicker, more jerky.
Sitting there with welcome silence between them, Arthur wondered what he was thinking now. Behind that high narrow forehead what chemistry was working? Were his, too, thoughts of the past? Did he remember? Or had he been able to do what his son could not; had he been able to erase from the slate of his memory that image of that night; the horror of that moment?
He did not believe it possible. On the ‘business’ trips— those wild excursions into distant places—he was sure that even on those journeys the remembrance followed his father, followed him as a ravenous animal follows its wounded prey.
What were his thoughts during those long hot nights when sleep was impossible, when he lay upon a sweaty bed in a strange room in a strange country? Did he roll and toss and think of another night, long ago? Did those familiar images rear up out of the stifling darkness to terrify and haunt him?
Running, always running, he thought; fleeing interminably, days without end, and never escaping. Waiting out the years while the forehead heightened and the frame sagged and the blood cooled and the lines became deeper about the eyes and—
His father interrupted a sudden, warm, unreasonable impulse of pity that had begun to flow out and toward him.
‘Well,’ he said with forced joviality, and the brash impact of his voice scattered Arthur’s young pity and warmth, ‘well, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a chance to talk like this.’
Quietly, ‘Yes, it has.’
‘I regret that, I really do.’ His father’s voice was earnest. ‘But the business—it takes so much of my time, you know.’ At the lie, he turned his eyes down to the table and smiled nervously.
His father talked on in aimless starts and stops. Arthur was grateful for his talking, glad that he was not really expected to answer, happy to sit back and listen to the droning voice while he ignored the words it said.
But at last meaning intruded upon his consciousness as he heard his father say, in a tone whose quality demanded response, ‘. . . but here I am, shooting off my mouth about me, and I haven’t given you a chance to get a word in edgewise about yourself, about what you’re doing.’
He shot his father a look of annoyance and displeasure.
‘I’m—I’m not doing much right now,’ he said. ‘There’s really nothing to tell.’
‘Well,’ his father said, ‘that’s all right. Take your time. You’re young yet. I guess you’re keeping up with your studies?’
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ he replied vaguely. ‘I do quite a bit of reading.’
Then there was another silence which threatened the precarious balance that they had exercised during their conversation. But the waiter came up with their food and, as they busied themselves with that welcome distraction, the silence was no longer awkward and it was not necessary for them to talk. They looked their separate gratitudes at the waiter, and after a few perfunctory words, they settled to their meal.
As he picked absently at his food, Arthur was able to capture momentarily an elusive and fragile sensation of detachment. It seemed to him that he was alone and solely important in this vast rich room. The figure in front of him signified nothing, nor did the figures about him have any meaning. The only reason for their existence was his lofty consideration.
A small orchestra was playing somewhere in the room, and the diners were beginning to drift onto the floor. Looking at them, it seemed to him that he saw a bright, living garden, a riot of moving color that shimmered and changed before his eyes. The varied hues of the women’s gowns, the ivory tint of flesh and the scarlet of lip, the subtle shadings of hair—these soft colors were set off by the sobriety of masculine attire and ruddy skins; and he could close his eyes and these figures and colors merged and swam together and were many colors in one involved pattern, much like some of the canvases he had seen in Max Evartz’s place.
The waiter had removed their plates and dishes before he fully realized that they had finished eating. The waiter dispensed coffee from a large silver pot and they lit cigarettes and sipped slowly.
And still there was no need for words. As they smoked and drank their coffee, a warm feeling of comfort passed between them. Arthur dreaded the moment when their cups would be empty, when they would have no barrier between themselves and speech.
But at last his cup was empty and he could dawdle no longer. He looked up; and his father’s eyes, which had been regarding him intently, shifted. He knew that one of them must speak, for the silence was tangible and oppressive again.
‘I’ve been thinking about going back to college,’ he said rapidly. It was a falsehood, but the necessity for speech forced it precipitously out of him. ‘I—I don’t want to go back to Boston. I want a different school, but I can’t quite make up my mind about any other. I would have to move, of course, there’s nothing here.’ And he rambled on, hardly knowing what he said.
When at last his breath ran out, Hollis Maxley considered gravely for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was grateful, as if he had been flattered.
‘Well, what do you want to study?’
Arthur winced at the expression. It seemed rather vulgar to him.
‘Oh, the usual things. I don’t feel that I got enough while I was in Boston. I might take a degree. I thought perhaps you might have a good school in mind.’
His father’s brief smile was toothy and eager. ‘Well, let me see. Been a long time since my college days, but—Well, we should be able to figure something out.’ He paused; then he brightened perceptibly. ‘Say—I have an idea. I’m going to see Ralph Harkins tomorrow. You remember Harkins, don’t you? Anyway, he’s on some educational advisory board or something, and he should have the latest dope—or, information—on these colleges. How about talking to him? How about that?’
‘Well,’ Arthur said uncomfortably, ‘that really isn’t necessary. It was just an idea.’
‘Why not? Old Ralph would be glad to help. Say tomorrow night . . . We could have dinner tomorrow night and we could talk the whole thing over.’
‘I—I’d like to think about it a little longer.’
‘Ralph could dine with us. We could have dinner with Ralph, and you two could get together and really decide something.’
Arthur twisted about in his chair, embarrassed. ‘No. No, don’t bother. Anyway, I’m—I’ll be busy tomorrow night. There’s something I had planned.’
‘Oh,’ his father said flatly. ‘Well, you see, I had hoped that—’
‘Yes,’ he said quickly, ‘but this is pretty important. I’ve made plans and everything.’
‘Of course,’ his father said a trifle bitterly. ‘That’s all right. It’s just that—tomorrow is my last day in town, and—’
Then he was silent. He was silent for a long while, looking at the table. At last he raised his
eyes and they were so filled with pain that Arthur flinched back from them instinctively.
‘I get so tired sometimes,’ his father said. He was not looking at his son, and it seemed that he was neither speaking to him nor to anyone else. ‘Chasing around over half the world, always on the go, never stopping. Why can’t I be still? Why can’t I settle myself? I don’t have to go. I’m fooling myself when I say no one else can do the work. Always getting away . . . run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit. What’s the sense, what’s the reason? The business. What the hell is the business? An excuse. That’s all it is. I don’t like it, not really. Did you know that? I hate it, I think. But it takes up my time.’ He laughed and shook his head wearily. ‘It takes up my time.’
Arthur swallowed. He could not speak.
‘Australia, South America . . . now India again. Six months tagged off, four more ready for the plucking. Just waiting for me to fritter them away. We’re both waiting, time and me. It’s a game, you understand. It’s a race to see who can outwait the other. And when it’s over, no one’s the winner. That’s the final pay-off. Neither one of us wins.’
Arthur closed his eyes. He did not have the strength to move to interrupt his father. He could only sit, unwillingly transfixed and hypnotized by that droning and helpless voice.
‘Sometimes I think I’ll have to stop, quit, give it all up. Just stand still for a while. But it’s no use. I tried it once. If I had never started, it would have been different. But once you start running, you can’t stop.’
Arthur made an involuntary movement, a start forward, but his father did not notice.
‘I saw a logger once, up in the north woods,’ he continued. ‘He was in the middle of a river, standing on a log. As long as he was still, he was all right; but he must have got tired of standing still because he began to run on the log and the log went round and round in the water and he ran faster and faster. As long as he ran, it was all right, but the log was going so fast that he couldn’t stop. If he stopped, he would fall off, douse himself in the water. That’s the way I am. Maybe it was a game to him. But I started going and now I can’t stop, or I’ll fall off. And if I fall off, I’ll drown, because I’ve forgotten how to swim.’
Nothing but the Night Page 5