Barbary Shore

by Norman Mailer

  I bent over him, but he was sound asleep. A snore of contentment rumbled out of his throat.

  “We ought to do something for him.”

  “Let him be,” McLeod said. “He’s happy.” Taking up a position beside the drunk, he blinked at a red light on the dome of an office building. “I can remember I took a walk over this bridge twenty years ago, and there was a drunk in practically the same place.” He ran his long forefinger back and forth over the narrow bridge of his nose, kneading the tip vigorously between thumb and forefinger as if he were milking it. “How old do you think I am?”

  “You told me forty-four.”

  “I was lying. I’m fifty-near. I was twenty-one when I joined the movement.”

  “The Communist Party?”

  He nodded. “And I was forty when I left. Nineteen years with the wrong woman.”

  “It took you long enough,” I commented. “What position do you have now?”

  McLeod looked at me carefully. “Oh, vaguely sympathetic to them, y’might say. I dropped out, that’s all, became inactive. But vaguely. I wouldn’t fight about it. I’m a retiring man.” He chortled.

  “Then why was Hollingsworth bothering you?”

  “Who knows? Who knows?” We had come to a halt, and McLeod surveyed the girders of the bridge. “You see there was a time”—he was exceptionally casual—“when I was not without importance in the organization. So perhaps that’s why they’re interested in the mind and flesh of Bill McLeod.”

  “How important were you?”

  I sensed that I had gone too far. McLeod’s response was cool. “You know it’s all down on paper in many a file. You just have to look it up.”

  “How could I?”

  He started walking again. “Well, maybe you can’t. There’s no telling. It’s just that it’s difficult to trust … even myself, and that’s the truth.” McLeod began to whistle the snatch of a song.

  I was furious, and from what experience I hardly knew, discovered myself arguing with him. “You were with them for over twenty years,” I demanded rhetorically, sensing this as still another shock for what had been indeed a long evening, “over twenty years, and you’re still sympathetic? What kind of man are you? What about the collectivization famine … the … the …” And I spluttered my indictment: the purges, the pacts, the exploitation of one class against another, the phrases coming from my mouth in a consecutive exposition. I might have been living for years in a house with one room locked, and when at last the door was opened, I found the furnishings complete. “Why,” I cried at last, “they’ve turned socialism inside out, they’ve perverted …”

  “Look, m’lad,” he cut across me, “I’ve never creamed m’pants over the beauties of the land across the sea. I know what it is better than you, hard enough and ugly enough for ten million of your sort, but have you ever tried to jack a peasant from the mud in which he wallows?”

  I was trembling. “Don’t tell me how much blood is necessary to pour a ton of concrete. If you had any theoretical capacity …”

  McLeod had stopped and was looking at me with a fixed smile. “You’re the one who’s had no experience with politics. It bores you, does it? I suppose you get this from a book.”

  “I don’t know where I get it from,” I said stiffly, the effort to remember drenching my back with perspiration.

  “What a stinking two-penny left deviationist you are,” McLeod said. “And you’ll tell me about some friend of yours who was murdered by our men in Spain.”

  “Maybe there was, maybe there was,” I muttered.

  “Maybe a dozen. And do you ever stop to think that it’s you and your ilk who have no theoretical capacity? What do you know of history in your soft, squeamish way? Have you any idea of how many revolutionaries have to be devoured to improve the lot of a common man one bloody inch.” He blew cigarette smoke in my face. “Do you know what a dream that is, and what an agony?”

  “Only you’ve lowered them.”

  “Temporarily. Temporarily. You can’t see history. You can’t understand state ownership, and the absence of all contradictions.”

  We were almost screaming at one another. “State ownership indeed. State ownership for a bureaucratic class at the expense of the others. Who controls the means of production?”

  “How you have the little formulas,” he cried at me. “But to change mankind. How’re you going to do that? It’s the bureaucrat you despise who’s got the job.”

  “It’s all degenerated, it’s been impossible for twenty years.”

  “Go on, go on,” he sneered. “Tell me a tale of the Old Bolsheviks and how they were murdered, tell me about the forced labor.”

  I was almost carried away. For once I grasped him by the shoulder. “Look, that revolution was the greatest event in man’s history, and if it had not been confined to the one country, if it had spread …”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “It didn’t,” I agreed, “and so it died, and ever since, the crisis of the world has deepened, until by now it’s only your bureaucrat who can raise man as you put it, and it’s a measure of the disaster that everywhere the bureaucrat has the magic power,”

  McLeod began to walk again. When he spoke, his tone was lowered, was almost amiable. “You have a little theoretical equipment,” he said slowly in the tone of a headmaster, “but where does it lead you?”

  “Nowhere.”

  He nodded, was about to say something and then paused. But as if our argument had unhinged his resolution to be silent, as if, indeed, he were incapable of holding the words to himself a moment longer, he blurted hoarsely, “It’s out now. They know.” Only by saying this could he feel the complete shock, for he gripped my arm suddenly with tense fingers. “You see, Lovett, for a long time they looked for a man who wasn’t married. And then I got the idea they looked for a man who was married. Although actually it’s unimportant, and how was I to know in any case? What counts is that its out now, do you see? They know me, and I don’t know them. Not yet.” He might have repressed a spasm for the fingers on my arm dug in suddenly and were withdrawn.

  “I’m beginning to ramble,” McLeod said quickly. “Let’s leave discussion to the side.” He took a breath, and in what was almost a chatty voice, said, “Perhaps I’m not as sympathetic to the New Jerusalem as I’ve portrayed. I’d just rather not go into it, and prefer to ask a question instead. You’re not politically active, are you?”

  I shook my head. “It’s hopeless.”

  “The period of revolutions is past, eh?” he asked. “To attempt to continue is merely catering to a myth?”

  “I suppose so.” The fog had thinned sufficiently for us to discern the darker bulk of skyscrapers against the night.

  “And so you accept what you have here.”

  “I don’t accept. I just recognize that we’ll have no better. At least one’s allowed a corner in which to write a book.”

  “For the moment.”

  “For the moment,” I admitted.

  “Of course the condition which allows you to write a book rests upon the continued exploitation of three quarters of the world, and the living standard of a worker here depends on the Chink and the black man missing a meal.”

  “It’s no use,” I said again.

  He nodded. “Let’s leave it this way. I was curious at the range of your political vocabulary, that’s all. And I would caution you that your own problems are not the problems of the world, and one’s state of mind may well determine one’s political outlook. But we’ll have discussions, you and me.” He whistled the snatch of song again. “When I’m permitted leisure.” And clapping me on the back, he said, “You see, laddie, we’re excrescences, and we’re waiting for the stones to grind us between them. Let’s not fight, you and I.”

  We had come to the trolley station at the foot of the bridge. Beneath a street lamp I could see his face more clearly, and he was haggard. There was moisture on his forehead, and his long black hair for once was unkempt
. “Do you feel all right?” I asked.

  “Passable.” He gripped my hand and shook it formally. “I’ve enjoyed our little talk, but you must remember to have pity on the poor retired bureaucrat.” He gave his short laugh. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to walk by myself and think awhile.”

  “Take it easy,” I muttered.

  “I’m always careful.” Tossing up his hand in a mock salute, he strode off into the darkness of the streets.

  I returned alone across the bridge.

  It was a long walk. I was exhausted from the argument we had had, so pointless, so stereotyped, and so demanding upon me. I had not talked like that for how many years? And with the labor of parturition, a heartland of whole experience was separating itself to float toward the sea.

  I was an adolescent again, and it was before the war, and I belonged to a small organization dedicated to a worker’s revolution, although that dedication already tempered by a series of reverses was about to spawn its opposite and create a functionary for each large segment of the masses we had failed to arouse. I was young then, and no dedication could match mine. The revolution was tomorrow, and the inevitable crises of capitalism ticked away in my mind with the certainty of a time bomb, and even then could never begin to match the ticking of my pulse. There was a great man who led us, and I read almost every word he had written, and listened with the passion of the novitiate to each message he sent from the magical center in Mexico. Of all the students in the study group, none could have been more ardent than I, and for a winter and a spring, I lived more intensely in the past than I could ever in the present, until the sight of a policeman on his mount became the Petrograd proletariat crawling to fame between the legs of a Cossack’s horse, and a drunken soldier on a streetcar merged into the dream I was always providing of the same soldier on the breast of the revolution, shaking his fist in an officer’s face as he cried, “Equality. I can’t explain it to you, vile exploiter, but equality, that’s what I want.” There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality, and knew with what passion to be later buried that our revolution would beget the others, and in a year, in a week, we the ignorant giant would bestride the earth and refashion it until there was nourishment and love for every man our brother.

  More than two decades later I could have the dream in all its purity, and if from the tenets of the organization which taught me, I could also learn how the great wave had crashed and the revolution been betrayed, our leader persecuted, those twenty years were thrown into a minute, and I from my own need and own hunger listened to the time bomb I had fashioned and was certain that tomorrow the people would crowd the streets, and from the barricades would come the victory that meant equality for the world.

  So the memory came down to the sea, and across my back scar tissue burned ever new circuits with its old pain. Things had altered this night. With a pain throbbing in my head I continued slowly home.

  FIFTEEN

  AT the foot of the bridge I sat down to rest in a bare little park with concrete paths and a stunted tree. It was well after midnight, but a few automobiles still clattered over the broad cobblestone paving, and across the avenue a bum wavered out of an all-night bar, performed a slow blundering dance around an ash can and staggered down the street. An old man had gone to sleep on a bench near by.

  In the distance, the sound carrying mournfully through the darkness, I could hear the El grinding over the rails as it approached a station, and for a moment I thought of the long ride out to the end of the line, and the Negro slums along the way where children sleeping on the fire-escape would turn in their slumber as the train passed, moaning a little in acceptance of its fury even as artillerymen will drowse beside their howitzer while a night mission is fired. And from the third-story windows, level with the track, the Negro women, arms upon the sill, would stare into the night, their liquid eyes passive, lidded with weariness.

  I stared at the few people who rested in the park. There was a girl sprawled upon a bench not fifty yards away, and I passed her by, only to return with a start. It was Lannie, her face illumined in the cone of a street light. She lay stretched to full length, her body upon its side, cheek supported by her fist. I was certain she had not stirred for minutes.

  I approached slowly, cautious not to invade her fancy too roughly. “Lannie,” I said at last.

  She looked up slowly, her legs drawn beneath her, her torso straining for an upright position. For the first instant Lannie’s eyes contained no recognition. “Oh,… Mikey,” she said and passed her hand before her forehead. “You know I didn’t know you,” she muttered; “sit down, I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been lonesome.”

  “I tried to see you again,” I told her, “but you were out.”

  She nodded disinterestedly. “I took a walk. I guess I’ve been gone for a while.” Her fingers patted my breast pocket. “Give me a cigarette.” I placed it in her mouth, for her hands were trembling, and struck a match. She puffed deeply, and then exhaled without force so that the smoke eddied about her face seconds afterward. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It’s almost one.”

  “That late?” She gave a helpless laugh. “What have I been doing all these hours? Oh, I’ll never get up tomorrow.”

  “What about your job?”

  “Who cares. I wouldn’t like it anyway.” She tossed her head. “If you must know, I lost it this morning.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “They fired me.” She shrugged. “Mr. Rammelsby called me in, and said somebody had been complaining about my work, and I told him that I would leave because I could not support whispers and discontent, and tonight I’m free. No one can force me to do anything tomorrow for it’s mine.”

  “Why did you tell me you had a job?”

  “Oh, because you’re so solemn and serious, and you would have been disapproving.” She yawned.

  Abruptly I realized that she was dressed in the pajamas she had been carrying in her handbag. Of heavy cotton, they billowed about her slim body, at least a size too large, and wretchedly wrinkled. Her matted hair fell to her shoulders. In the litter of these externals, the delicate lines of her face were almost lost.

  “Do you like my pajamas?” she asked.

  “I was just looking.”

  “I feel wonderful in them. I feel so free. I was walking down the street a little while ago, and I knew that if I wanted to, I could let them fall, and I would be naked.”

  Various objections appeared. “You’ll be arrested if a cop sees you,” I said.

  “But they can’t. I’ll say to a cop, ‘Sir, these are beach pajamas, and I sport beneath them a fully equipped set of lingerie. If you do not believe me, you shall have to strip me, and are you, sir, prepared to bear the consequences?’ and then his red face will swell, and I’ll punch him in his ugly nose, and scream, ‘Police.’ ”

  “You’re not wearing anything underneath?”

  She shivered in answer. “Don’t scold me, Mikey. I’m warm. I’ve had a wonderful evening.” She picked up a bottle which had been placed beneath the bench, and jiggled the inch of liquid still remaining. “I went into a store, and I said in my worst voice, ‘Give me a pint, kid, and make it the roughest, cheapest brand you got.’ And I’ve carried it all night. I feel just like a bum. I would love to be drunk in a gutter, covered in my own spew, my head in filth, and then I would feel like Christ. What a happy man he was. All night I’ve been thinking about the crucifixion. You put your arms out and you’re at rest, and if people spit at you then you can pity them.” Arms folded, she hugged herself. “Oh, something has happened, something happened today, and then there’ll be more tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  Lannie
shook her head. Instead of answering directly, she told me something else. “You know a couple of months ago no one would talk to me, and I didn’t see anyone. Once in a while I’d hear somebody yelling, and I remember that I used to cry a lot. And then one day I was in a room all locked up by myself”—she went on, her voice devoid of color—“and in the corner there was a big fat woman with a hard face because all the girls were frightened of her, and this used to make her feel so terrible she would slap them. This time she was changing my linen, and her face wasn’t cruel at all. It was a sad face.” Lannie watched the smoke of the cigarette crawl along her fingers. “I went and looked at her, and she said, ‘You know who I am now, don’t you?’ and then she put her arms around me, and she took me in her lap and ran hands through my hair, and she kissed me. I never loved anyone, Mikey, the way I loved her then. She was beautiful.”

  I twisted uncomfortably on my seat. “Why do you tell me this?”

  “Because tomorrow and then after and then so long after I pull the cord and hang a man, and that’s what they make me do.” She trailed off listlessly, and I could barely comprehend her. A sodden breeze stirred through the park, and the newspapers which littered the concrete path yawed sluggishly before its passage. I could hear a drunk snoring on one of the benches, saw another right himself momentarily to shake his fist at a passing car.

  “What time is it?” Lannie asked again.

  I told her, and she nodded dumbly, her dark, stained fingers playing at her throat. “Oh, Mikey, I don’t know,” she said at last.

  “What?”

  She stared at me, and in her eyes apprehension stirred like the faun aware of distant hunters. “Will you take me home tonight?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I knew you would”—this impulsively—“I wonder if you know, but of course you can’t. You’re the kindest man I’ve met in so long.”