TWENTY-ONE
WE all sat staring foolishly at one another. McLeod got out of his chair, stepped carefully over Lannie’s legs, and sat down beside me on the bed. The hair at his temple was moist, and in a reaction he was incapable of controlling, his spectacles had fogged and he was obliged to remove them and wipe the lens.
Hollingsworth yawned again. “I wonder if it would be permissible to excuse myself for several minutes?” he inquired, and when there was no answer, he stood up, buttoned his jacket, nodded formally to each of us and stepped out of the room.
Lannie and McLeod were absorbed in regarding their legs. McLeod looked up. “Now that your boy friend is listening outside,” he murmured, “I suppose it’s time for you to begin.”
Lannie trembled. With a nonchalance she bore poorly, she turned slowly to survey the cold lines of the room. And when she spoke it was with an utter disregard of sequence so that one might have thought she had not been present during the last half-hour. “Your wife told me this room was open,” she said to McLeod, her eyes raising at last to gaze into his, “and that I could have it for a song, and I told her my pocketbook sings a dreary dirge.”
Even this effort apparently exhausting, her voice dropped. “You see this place is so much cheaper than my own, and if I move over, your wife promised me out of her graciousness that I would be refunded on a pro-rata basis which comes to so many dollars, and I have need of money now.” Her eyes crossed his and darted away again.
“But I cannot bear this room,” she said abruptly. “It is dreary, and there is the smell of dry dry rot. No one has ever lived here and no bird sings.”
McLeod had been examining her with a blank stare, his mouth sucking with contempt at the imaginary lemon-drop. “No bird sings,” he muttered to himself, and laughed with caustic glee. Deliberately, he lay down on the mattress, his body behind me, crooked his arms in back of his head, and lay there, inert, the articulation of his limbs a foil to anything Lannie might say.
Apparently she could not bear to remain seated a moment longer. I watched her pace the length of the room, stand facing the door for almost a minute, and then return to the window. “Oh, there was a period long enough when I wanted to meet you,” she said over her shoulder so that at first I thought she was talking to me, “all the time the girl with the eyeglasses was in the corner taking notes for the green filing cabinet, and laying hands upon me were all the others in their white uniforms. They are the rulers of the earth, and I wondered at the face of their chief, but I should have known it would be like yours with the eye socket and the jaw socket sucking at the bone, for you are the undertaker of the revolution, and now it is too late, and all the slugs wallow in the bar, and men live by the clock and give a three times three hurrah as they bind the chains about them. There are only people left, people here and there.”
McLeod was very pale. With an effort he sneered, “A true revolutionary.”
“Yes,” she breathed. “People here and there with a look in their faces, and those I would revolutionize so they can live. But there is too much grass and it’s all withered and I have only a teaspoon of water.” By an effort she choked off what she was saying, and returned to the cot, staring down upon McLeod. “They told me that I would find you at last, his Mr. Wilson and his Mr. Court, and they were kind and took me aside and told me all, and I begged to be the one to see your face.
“And, now seeing, I know … I know,” she cried, “that I could sit by and watch cutthroats club you to the grave, and I would shout them on, for I know that you are wholly irredeemable. I was afraid. I thought that I might have pity, that most crippling of the sentiments, or that looking into your face, I would say, he has suffered, or—and this is what tormented me most—that in helping them, what did I help? But you have buried the revolution, and it is fitting that they who exist because of you, they who rise to eminence here because you destroyed the revolution there, should have the right to flay your bones. And I shall cheer them on.”
McLeod began to titter. He held a fist to his chin and rocked back and forth through a small arc. “I saw it, I saw it,” he muttered. “I saw you from the beginning, m’girl.” Deep within his body, violence may have been stirring, but the summons too terrifying to measure, he merely shook his head.
“So long as he lived,” she whispered, “then everything didn’t belong to the man with the pipe, and Soso hated the idea of that, and he sent his messenger and I was the one who introduced them, and after that I had to give myself to the people with the white uniforms and now without me they cannot exist for if I’m not there to torture they must be at each other’s throat. They’re all that’s left and so I must love them, for if I cannot be in love …” She held her finger to her mouth.
“He was the man I loved, the only man I ever truly loved with heart and not with body, the man with the beard because he was a fool—a brilliant man and I loved his beard, and there was the mountain ax in his brain, and all the blood poured out, and he could not see the Mexican sun. Your people raised the ax, and the last blood of revolutionary mankind, his poor blood, ran into the carpet.” By now her face only a short distance above his, she seemed to press each word upon his supine figure, McLeod the effigy to her incantation. “Have you,” she asked, “have you ever opened the door to the assassin outside?”
“Leave off!” McLeod shouted. But the effort emptied him for he lay back again, a tight smile imprinted on his face, his narrow body held with rigidity.
The door opened and Hollingsworth walked in. “The recess is over,” he announced.
Lannie seemed not to have heard him. She almost fell upon McLeod. “Assassin,” she whispered.
“Take her away,” McLeod said.
“Assassin!”
Hollingsworth shouldered Lannie aside. “The recess is over,” he repeated, and stood looking judiciously at McLeod as though to assay whether the explosion were a success and foundations had shifted.
“What do you want?” McLeod asked hoarsely of him.
“Where do you keep it?” Hollingsworth asked.
“I don’t have it,” McLeod said.
“Sit up!”
With what an effort Hollingsworth restrained himself from using force. Slowly McLeod drew himself up on the bed. “What do you want?” he asked again. “Take me in, and be done with it.”
“Do you know where it is?”
For a moment I thought McLeod was going to nod. He rested stock-still, his head down, his eyes on the floor. “No, I don’t know,” he said in a low voice.
“Well, what is it? What is the little object?” Anxiety was perceptible in Hollingsworth’s voice.
“I would have no idea,” McLeod said painfully.
Hollingsworth stood erect, the point of his pencil jammed into the palm of his hand. “This is intolerable,” he said, half to himself. He seemed deliberating how to proceed, and ten seconds might have passed while he stood alone in the room, in contrast to Lannie who sat with her head supported by her hands, still shaking, while McLeod, making every effort to recover composure, knit a crease in his trouser, the long fingers running forward and back in restless pressure upon the cloth.
“A fellow can assure you,” Hollingsworth began at last, clearing his throat, “That I’m not nearly so hard on you as some of my colleagues might be, and among the reasons”—a hint of passion might have been heard in his voice—“is that you’re a man who’s been quite an actor in his time, and it makes it more interesting, so to speak, in my line of work, when there’s a challenge. You have the feeling I don’t like you, and that’s not correct. I might even have a certain … delicacy of feeling, more or less, about the situation in which you find yourself.”
Lannie looked up, startled at first by his words, and then a crafty smile came over her face, and she shook her head in agreement.
“You think there’s no hope at all for you,” Hollingsworth continued, “but it’s my purpose to convince you of the opposite.” Saying this, he crossed around the desk, and whispered, by the length I judge, several sentences in McLeod’s ear.
McLeod began to laugh. “Cooo,” he said mirthlessly, and then stood up and moved away, so that Hollingsworth was left bent over, an expression of curious intensity upon his face.
“That’s how it is then,” McLeod said.
“As I’ve told you, a fellow hasn’t made up his mind yet, but he can.”
“I had an idea of this,” McLeod said slowly.
“You’re not a dull fellow,” Hollingsworth answered warmly.
McLeod was twisting a piece of waste in his hands. “Perhaps we had better go on.” And across the strain of his face, an irritable excitement cracked his mouth into a smile. “Something you want clarified?” he asked.
“Well …” Hollingsworth consulted his notes. “What would you say, critically speaking, of the story you told about how the little object was lost.”
“I would say there’s not a bit of truth in it.”
The blond hair nodded, and into the opaque blue eyes a glint of satisfaction might have appeared. “Check,” he said.
“Of course,” McLeod added with a wan attempt at a grin, “sifted, analyzed and re-examined, there is still a core of metaphysical truth.”
Hollingsworth allowed himself to look pained. “What is that word … metaphysical?”
“You needn’t bother yourself. Call everything I told a lie.”
“I don’t pretend to have your learning,” Hollingsworth said, “and one would have to think it commendable the way you employ a big word, but you see I’m a simple fellow who concerns himself with the facts, and that’s not so bad in its own way, because I’m sitting where I am, and you’re sitting where you are.”
“I apologize,” McLeod said.
“There’s no use crying over spilt milk. Now, to continue, and as I have said so often, frankness is the best approach to me, what is the little object and where is it kept?”
McLeod shook his head. “You see, Leroy, there comes a time when your theoretical incapacities act as a hobble instead of a shield. Suppose I ask you: What is a tin can?”
“It’s a tin can.”
“It’s not a tin can unless one adds to it the knowledge that it’s made from stolen labor. For example, what would you say if I told you that the entire physical world at this stage of history—all the houses, all the factories, all the food—are merely a coagulation of stolen labor from the past.”
“I think we’re getting pretty far afield.”
“Hew to the point. What if there is no point and only a context?”
“It’s my job to remind you.” Hollingsworth was playing with the silver-and-black cigarette lighter. “You still haven’t answered the question.”
“I’ll answer, but I prefer to do it in my own way.” He popped a cigarette into his mouth, reached across the desk for Hollingsworth’s gadget, and lit it with some nonchalance. “To begin with, the little object so-called, is completely a problem in context. What is it and where was it born? Oh, I’ll answer your questions, Leroy. But wait. First I want you to take into account the vast structures which created it. An end product one might say, delivered into the world trailing corruption and gore, laden with guilt, a petrifaction of all which preceded it. Do you get me?”
Hollingsworth blinked slowly. Every curve of his posture announced that he could afford to wait.
“Supposing I possessed it. Where would it be? You assume woodenly that I’ve got it wrapped in brown paper, and it’s in one of m’pants pockets. Or perhaps it’s buried in the ground. But you’ve got no call to assume either. I might be keeping it here”—and he pointed to his head. “Or maybe nobody knows what it is. That’s possible too. You don’t have to know what something is to appreciate its value. You can still trace its relation to other things.”
“Would you help a fellow out with some practical examples?”
McLeod looked offended. “I’ve explained the possibilities. If you insist I can belabor them. But what difference does it make? The theory I lean to is that nobody knows what it is.”
Hollingsworth shook his head. “Ridiculous.”
“Makes perfect sense. Do you know what it is?” Before Hollingsworth’s silence, McLeod chuckled. “No, of course you don’t. You’re sent out to bring back something you couldn’t even recognize, and that’s fitting. The processes all produce elephants, and we’re only allowed to touch small pieces of the hide. You see, you’re in a position where you can’t be trusted, and so you get a hair from the tail. And your chief, does he know any more? Not appreciably, for he’s no more to be trusted than you. Like everything else the little object creates about itself a circle of acquaintance and can be understood only collectively. For such is the nature of knowledge today.”
“How do you know what it is?” Hollingsworth asked.
“I don’t. You’re the only one makes such claims for me.”
“There’s reason to believe you’re not telling the truth.”
“I’d have been a fool to pick that up as a playmate. What furies would pursue me for such a sacrilege.” He was looking at Lannie now. “In the modern heavens what is the condition most unbearable for the Gods?” The question was answered with hardly a pause. “Why it’s a little object whose whereabouts is unknown. Something unaccounted for? No God can stomach that when He is collective.”
“You make it sound like a fellow would wish he were rid of it,” Hollingsworth suggested.
“Yes, I imagine a man could spend his life trying to find someone to pass it on to. Yet with what difficulty. For who could fulfill the specifications?”
They sat smiling at one another.
“Of course, this is all academic,” McLeod went on, “for I don’t have it. In outlining the situation, I think I’ve made it clear that a man would be mad to accept such a responsibility. Why should I do such a thing?”
“Guilt,” Lannie croaked suddenly. She had come forward in her chair and was staring at him, her wide eyes ringed by their dark circles, her hand twisting through her lank hair.
Each of the men stiffened at the interruption. By a slight inclination of his head, Hollingsworth indicated that he wished her to be silent. “Yes, yes indeedy,” he mused aloud, “you’ve given me great food for thought, and although you’re a stubborn fellow, I’d have to mark you down as generally co-operative.” Once more he gathered his papers. “We’ll continue this upon further notice, and in the meantime, think it over.” He looked at Lannie. “Will you come with me, Miss Madison?”
Lannie stood up, but she was not to leave without incident. Hollingsworth’s hand was on her shoulder, and she flung it off. Staring at me, she said in a voice thick with anger, “You’re a fool, Mikey, go away.” And as our eyes locked, she said with an even greater passion, “Come with us. There’s no place else to be.”
Hollingsworth tried to guide her from the room, but she evaded him again, and pointed her finger at McLeod. “He corrupts,” she shrieked, “he corrupts everything.”
“Get out of here,” Hollingsworth barked. Almost forcibly he pushed her to the door, and whatever it was that had made her speak failed her, and Lannie was docile. She went into the hall without another word.
“I must beg your pardon,” Hollingsworth said.
McLeod nodded.
“A fellow knows you have it,” Hollingsworth smiled, “but it might be impolite to ask you once again.” He ducked his head toward me and followed Lannie.
When they were gone, McLeod walked to the window and stood looking out. Several minutes passed, and I had at last decided to leave when he turned around.
“You know, Lovett, maybe you ought to follow her advice.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t you have any idea of what’s to come?”
“But that’s exactly what I must find out,” I said with conviction.
“To what purpose?”
“I hardly know. When you feel something strongly …”
“No, I’m not certain of that. I can’t be with them, but to take you on trust … I can’t do that.”
McLeod massaged his chin. “And rightly so. Look, friend, don’t mistake me, I want you here very much. In a way. There may come a time when I ask you to leave the room.”
“Yes?”
“You have no idea what he whispered to me, and how it’s tempting,” McLeod said suddenly.
“Then why do you want me to be here?” I asked.
He nodded his head to himself, and when he replied I did not understand him.
“Conscience,” McLeod said.