Boswell (56 page)

“Well, the guy looks at her, not understanding.
1
beg your pardon,’ he pants. ‘Where’s what boy?’ “‘De boy,’ she says,
’de boy.’

“‘Do you mean that grown man I saw in the back seat?’ he asks.

“‘Yeah, him,’ she says. ‘My son, in de beck. Vat’s de matter you didn’ carry him up too?’

“‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the bellboy says, ‘I didn’t realize he couldn’t walk.’

“‘He cen valk, he cen valk,’ she says. ‘Tenk God he doesn’t have to.’”

Morty was gasping for breath. He had run out of pills and was clutching at his chest as if to stop blood that might be flowing from it. The rest of the people in the room hadn’t seen him and were still laughing. I pointed to Morty, who was on his knees now, pulling in terror at his collar.

“Dr. Perlmutter doesn’t get it,” I said calmly.

They stared at him and one by one raised their hands to their faces, to stop their laughter as they would a sneeze. They spread away from him evenly, creating around him an island of space.

On his back now, Morty looked up at me helplessly. Already his death had settled and he had begun to shrink. It was very interesting. His white face was a stain in the room. Gradually, as it had when I had cut myself off from my son, my body began to strengthen. Morty’s vitality flowed into me. I felt myself grow taller. My vision cleared. As he continued to shrink I continued to grow. I was becoming a giant. I filled the room, forcing the others to flee into corners, pressing them hopelessly against the walls, jamming them with my expanding body into tiny
cul-de-sacs
of space, smashed shards of dimension. As they suffocated and died they began to shrink also and so made more room. Others rushed into the space they made only to crash against my irresistible growth, nudged murderously by my expanding shins and enlarging thighs. They too died and shrank, feeding me freedom, precious room, which I needed now as others need air. I was filling out like a balloon—only not hollow. Solid, with a beautiful, felt solidity. I was greater than the room now and expanding into the street itself, where the crowds fell back from me as they would from a tidal wave. There was no place for them to go, and soon I had taken their space as I had taken the others’ before. And still I continued to grow. Whole populations were plunged into a stifling darkness in the shadow of my calves. Races divided into my pockets and no sooner had found room there than my thighs, swelling, smothered them against the lining. Gradually the cries of the stricken began to subside, their great grief silent only when there were no more mourners.

“Ah,” I said, my voice like thunder in the surrounding silence, “a way had to be found, and a way
was
found.!”

IX

Roger brought up the tuxedo I had rented, and waited while I dressed.

“Do you like a cummerbund, sir?” he asked.

He had started to call me sir again when he found out I was involved with The Club. The columnists had been talking about it for weeks, publishing the names of everyone who would be there and somehow making it sound like a journey of Magi. Some papers, taking note in their editorial columns of the diversity of the guests, had indicated a possible conspiracy of the important, a first move of the famous toward some still unstated end. Reading as news of something which had originated with me (though I was mentioned only as someone who would be there), I sometimes found it difficult to believe that I had had anything to do with The Club at all. I was very nervous.

Roger went to the window again and looked out

“Still raining?”

“Very nasty, sir. A cloudburst.”

I struggled with my tie.

“I’d better go down and get you a taxi, sir. Do you have money?”

“Yes.”

“Better not take too long, sir. They won’t wait on a night like this.”

It was almost eight o’clock. The people had probably been arriving for an hour now.

“Roger, can you fix this damn thing?”

He made a deft bow, a knot hard and round as a black button. “Don’t forget your raincoat, sir, or you’ll be drenched just getting into your taxi.”

He left me and I went to the closet. I felt terrible. After a month I was still troubled by my dream. My raincoat was the one I had used when I had been with Lano in the mountains, a great stiff brown canvas coat from some earlier war. I put it on over my evening clothes and shoved the hinged, rusted fasteners through the holes. Going out, I saw myself in the mirror. Years ago in a school play, just before the curtain had gone up, I had felt like this. I had asked myself what the hell I was doing there and had wanted to run.

The phone rang.

“Yes?”

“It’s me,” Margaret said.

“Yes, Margaret?”

“I’ve been staying in a hotel.”

“Yes, Margaret?”

“Well, how are you?”

“I’ve been sick,” I said. “I’m still quite weak.”

“David told me. I called him.”

“I see.”

“He was beaten up very badly by a queer. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Yes, well he was. He’s better, but I gather he’s living alone now.”

“We all are, aren’t we?”

In the mirror, in the enormous baggage of the rough coat, I looked like a defector, someone running for his life.

“Boswell? Are you still there?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Do you want me to come back?”

“Nah,” I said, and hung up.

Roger had not found a cab for me. “It’s the rain,” he said. “If you’ll wait here, sir, I’ll go around to the avenue again and try to get one.”

“I’m late,” I said. “I’d better start walking.”

“You’ll ruin your clothes.”

“No, it’s letting up.” When I walked out from under the striped canopy, the rain
had
let up. Even if I saw a cab I would not want it now.

I walked toward Nate’s. I was a little calmer but still depressed. I came out on Broadway into the light, within easy range of the exploding signs, the excitement of neon like a kind of war. As I continued toward Nate’s I became aware of the crowds almost congealing round me, seemingly increased at every side street and doorway. We moved slowly, thickly, in a single direction. I had caused this, I thought; I had invented The Club and caused this.

Across Broadway Nate’s red sign flared like the name of a boat above the heads of people looking up at it from a pier. I tried to move faster, using the last of the old great strength, pushing past people who looked up at me resentfully. “Excuse me,” I said. “Will you please get out of my way?” I said.

I made my way toward the curb. There were yellow barricades lining my side of the street; the other side had been roped off and it was clear except for photographers, doormen and police. On this side policemen on horseback patrolled the curbs. Other policemen leaned back into the crowds.

I was surrounded by a sort of incredible democracy. There were lovers, tourists, children, salesmen down from their hotel rooms, students, old people; there were adolescents, strangely brutalized, already unrespectable (I wondered if the boys carried knives, if the girls laid). All of them, jammed together in an anonymous intimacy, glared with a kind of solemn envy into every car that pulled up. Their feelings mixed, their faces showed the surprise and controlled resentment of people watching something which had nothing to do with themselves.

“There’s one,” a man next to me said.

“Can you see who it is?” another asked.

“Some movie star, I think. Jesus, look at all them jewels.”

“A studio paste job,” someone else said expertly.

“That’s the Secretary of State getting out of that limousine,” a man said.

“Where? No, that isn’t him.”

“It is so. That’s the Secretary of State.”

“Look at Nate Lace. He doesn’t know who to shake hands with first. Hi ya, Nate.”

“I never got my invitation,” a large young man said.

“Why’s that?”

“I’m incognito,” he said.

People laughed.

“Listen, plenty will be happening in there tonight. Don’t kid yourself.”

“There’s the millionaire, whatsisname. Look at that Rolls he’s in.”

“It’s like a goddamn housing project.”

“That’s the Governor with him.”

“Something’s up,” a woman said. “I don’t like it.”

“Nah, they’re just going to get each other’s autographs and go home.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “I’ve got to get through.”

“Don’t shove, will you. We’re all trying to see.” o

“Let me by, I’ve got to get over there.”

“He’s representing the old soldiers,” someone said.

“Get out of my way.”

I was about to step between two barricades when a policeman pushed me back. “It’s blocked off, Charley,” he said. “The big shots are throwing a party.”

“I’ve got to get through.”

“Not here you don’t.”

“Look,” I said, “this is ridiculous. I’m supposed to be over there.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” he said. “Who in hell do you think you are?”

“I started it all,” I said.

“He’s Adam,” said the young man who had told us he was incognito.

“There’s one in every crowd,” the policeman said good-naturedly. “I’ve been working these affairs fifteen years and there’s one in every crowd. Gate crashers! If it’s a parade there’s always some nut who thinks he ought to be marching.”

I tugged at my raincoat to show him the dinner jacket beneath it. “There,” I said, “does this look as if I didn’t belong there?”

Clearly I had surprised him. “Well, I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “Who are you?”

It was like old times. Only the doormen were backed up now by cops with guns. It made it a contest. I felt giddy. “You wouldn’t know my name,” I said.

The policeman grinned. “Nice try, Charley, you had me there for a minute.”

“I’m a gentleman of the press.”

“Take my picture,” he said.

“I’m the caterer.”

“Give me a sandwich,” he said.

“I’m the entertainer.”

“Sing me a song,” he said.

“You don’t believe I belong over there, do you?” I said.

“No, sir, I don’t. Now quiet down. These folks are trying to get a look at the big shots.”

“So you don’t think I’m a big shot?”

“All men were created equal, fella. Just quiet down, now.”

“You’re an idiot,” I said. In a minute I could tell him who I was and it would be all over.

“What’s that?”

In a minute I could tell him who I was, but I felt a weird pressure, as though at last I was about to do something infinitely mad, press a claim infinitely untenable. “I said you’re an idiot,” I said.

The policeman turned away. “I’m having trouble with a guy,” he said to another policeman. “Signal the wagon.”

“You still don’t know who I am?” I said.

“I only know what you are,” he said.

“Then look!” I shouted. I thrust my face to within inches of his own, holding it like a fist before his eyes.

He backed off uncertainly, startled. “Listen,” he said uneasily, “if you really are with that crowd, why don’t you just tell me who you are and we can check? Then I’ll guide you personally across the street.”

I turned to the people around me and winked. “He wants to know who I am. Fifteen years he’s been working these affairs and he wants to know who I am.”

They laughed, in, they thought, on the gag. “Shall I tell him, sir?” the young man asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Give him another chance.” I turned back to the policeman and stared at him. I would do it with my eyes, I thought; I would use my vision as a battering ram. In the gym, in the old days, it had been a mistake to lift bar bells, pull against heavy springs. People need people to work out against. I held my face in front of him, balancing it as steady as a weapon.

“Look,” he said nervously, “let’s stop all this. Just tell me your name.”

Across the street cars continued to discharge the famous onto the sidewalk in front of Nate’s, the men and women like secular gods—imperious, flattered, giving nothing. All that stood between us was my name. It was incredible that anyone should ever get what he wanted, and I experienced, sharp as pain, deep as rage, a massive greed, a new knowledge that it was not enough, that nothing was ever enough, that we couldn’t know what was enough or want what was enough. It wasn’t even a question of deserts. Everybody deserved everything.

I had been working these affairs for fifteen years myself, I thought. In all that time I never once used a false name. It had been an incredible burden, a useless loyalty.

Now I used one. It came out of my mouth like the words of a song, like a poem, like a beautiful, triumphant idea, a piece of the truth. I said it recklessly, like someone stepping from behind his shield to throw a spear. I felt light, relieved, free.

The policeman shrugged helplessly. “Do you have any identification?” he asked.

“Not with me,” I said arrogantly.

He looked at the other policeman. “We’d have to see some identification,” the second policeman said.

“I don’t have any.”

“That’s just what I thought,” the first policeman said. “Now come on, stand back. The joke’s over.” He turned his back to me.

I nodded indifferently and made a face behind the policeman’s back. I grinned and the people in the crowd clapped me on the shoulder.

“There’s a cardinal getting out of that car,” someone, said.

“Look who just pulled up in that Cadillac.”

“Now that’s the Secretary of State!”

“Yes,” a man said, “you’re right.”

So I watched. Peacefully, with the others. The self at rest, the ego sleeping, death unremembered for once.

I had lived my life like someone bereaved, keeping over it always a sort of deathwatch. And why not? I was always dying. I had a disease. It was neither metaphysical nor psychosomatic, and it was less immoral, finally, then simply unhygienic, pathological. It was a disease, this gluttony of the ego—a lifelong feast on the heart, wounding, tearing, devouring, leaving it in a ruin, disgusting as the scraps, the indigestible bones and fats that smeared the plate. That baffled our chances and wasted our hope and used up our lives.

But what’s this, what’s this? What was I thinking of? The ego, the ego.
Sleeping?
Say, I thought, who was I kidding? Why, I was like Nate’s zebra fillets. With me, too, the stripes went all the way through, all the way down. They were my longitudes and my latitudes. I know where I’m going.
Nowhere I’m going!
I
made
The Club. I know about creation. Everybody dies, et cetera.
Well,
not yet, not just yet. Rise and shine, I thought. Rise and shine, old sleepy slugabed of a self.