Eleven (19 page)

“I don’t see that I’m bothering anyone,” Merrick said. This was all he said, but even this seemed to bother them.

Finally, a single new man came out, and said he was a doctor. He sat on a chair and talked calmly to Merrick, but Merrick was not interested in anything he had to say.

“I prefer the garden,” Merrick said.

The man went away.

Merrick knew what would happen if he enjoyed the garden much longer, however, so after smoking a cigarette he got up, went into the lobby and asked for his bill. Then he sent a telegram of confirmation to the Denises about Munich. The next leg of the journey.

THE BARBARIANS

Stanley Hubbell painted on Sundays, the only day he had to paint. Saturdays he helped his father in the hardware store in Brooklyn. Weekdays he worked as a researcher for a publishing house specializing in trade journals. Stanley did not take his painting very seriously: it was a kind of occupational therapy for his nerves recommended by his doctor. After six months, he was painting fairly well.

One Sunday in early June, Stanley was completing a portrait of himself in a white shirt with a green background. It was larger than his first self-portrait, and it was much better. He had caught the troubled frown of his left eyebrow. The eyes were finished—light brown, a little sad, intense, hopeful. Hopeful of what? Stanley didn’t know. But the eyes on the canvas were so much his own eyes they made him smile with pleasure when he looked at them. There remained the highlight to put down the long, somewhat crooked nose, and then to darken the background.

He had been working perhaps twenty minutes, hardly long enough to moisten his brushes or limber up the colors on his palette, when he heard them stomping through the narrow alley at the side of his building. He hesitated, while half his mind still imagined the un-painted highlight down the nose and the other half listened to find out how many there were going to be this afternoon.

Do it now
, he told himself, and quickly bent toward the canvas, his left hand clutching the canvas frame, his right hand braced against his left forearm. The point of his brush touched the bridge of his nose.

“Let’s
have
it, Franky!”

“
Yee-hoooo!
”

“
Ah, g’wan! What dyuh think I wanna do? Fight the whole goddam
. . .”

“Ah-ha
-haaaaaaaah!
” “Put it
here
, Franky!”

Thud!

They always warmed up for fifteen minutes or so with a hard ball and catchers’ mitts.

Stanley’s brush stopped after half an inch. He paused, hoping for a lull, knowing there wouldn’t be any. The braying voices went on, twenty feet below his window, bantering, directing one another, explaining, exhorting.

“
Get the goddam bush outa the way! Pull it up!
” a voice yelled. Stanley flinched as if it had been said to him.

Two Sundays ago they had had quite an exchange about the bushes. One of the men had tumbled over them in reaching for the ball, and Stanley, seeing it, had shouted down: “Would you please not
go against the hedge?” It burst out of him involuntarily—he was sorry he had not made the remark a lot stronger—and they had all joined in yelling back at him: “What d’yuh think this is, your lot?” and “Who’re you, the gardener?—Hedges! Hah!”

Stanley edged closer to the window, close enough to see the bottom of the brick wall that bounded the far side of the lot. There were still five little bushes standing in front of the wall, forlorn and scraggly, but still standing, still growing—at this minute. Stanley had put them there. He had found them growing, or rather struggling for survival, in cindery corners of the lot and by the ash-cans at the end of the alley. None of the bushes was more than two feet tall, but they were unmistakably hedge bushes. He had transplanted them for two reasons; to hide the ugly wall somewhat and to put the plants in a spot where they could get some sunshine. It had been a tiny gesture toward beautifying something that was, essentially, unbeautifiable, but he had made the effort and it had given him satisfaction. And the men seemed to know he had planted them, perhaps because he had shouted down to watch out for them, and also because the superintendent, who was never around and barely took care of the garbage cans, would never have done anything like set out hedge bushes by a brick wall.

Moving nearer the window, Stanley could see the men. There were five of them today, deployed around the narrow rectangular lot, throwing the ball to one another in no particular order, which meant that four were at all times yelling for the ball to be thrown to them.

“Here y’are, Joey,
here
!”

Thud!

They were all men of thirty or more, and two had the beginnings of paunches. One of the paunchy men was redheaded and he had the loudest, most unpleasant voice, though it was the dark-haired man in blue jeans who yelled the most, really never stopped yelling, even when he caught and threw the ball, and by the same token none of his companions seemed to pay any attention to what he said. The redheaded man’s name was Franky, Stanley had learned, and the dark-haired man was Bob. Two of the others had cleated shoes, and pranced and yelled between catches, lifting their knees high and pumping their arms.

“
Wanna see me break a window?
” yelled Franky, winding up. He slammed the ball at one of the cleat-shod men, who let out a wail as he caught it as if it had killed him.

Why was he watching it, Stanley asked himself. He looked at his clock. Only twenty past two. They would play until five, at least. Stanley was aware of a nervous trembling inside him, and he looked at his hands. They seemed absolutely steady. He walked to his canvas. The portrait looked like paint and canvas now, nothing more. The voices might have been in the same room with him. He went to one window and closed it. It was really too hot to close both windows.

Then, from somewhere above him, Stanley heard a window go up, and as if it were a signal for battle, he stiffened: the window-opener was on his side. Stanley stood a little back from the window and looked down at the lot.

“Hey!” the voice from upstairs cried. “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to play ball there? People’re trying to sleep!”

“
Go ahead’n sleep!
” yelled the blue jeans, spitting on the ground between his spread knees.

An obscenity from the redhead, and then, “Let’s go, Joey, let’s
have
it!”

“Hey!—I’m going to get the law on you if you don’t clear out!” from the upstairs window.

The old man was really angry—it was Mr. Collins, the nightwatchman—but the threat of the law was empty and everybody knew it. Stanley had spoken to a policeman a month ago, told him about the Sunday ballplayers, but the policeman had only smiled at him—a smile of indulgence for the ballplayers—and had mumbled something about nobody’s being able to do anything about people who wanted to play ball on Sundays. Why couldn’t you, Stanley wondered. What about the no ballplaying written on the side of his own building and signed by the Police Department? What about the right of law-abiding citizens to spend a quiet Sunday at home if they cared to? What about the anti-noise campaign in New York? But he hadn’t asked the policeman these questions, because he had seen that the policeman was the same kind of man the ballplayers were, only in uniform.

They were still yelling, Mr. Collins and the quintet below. Stanley put his palms on the brick ledge of the windowsill and leaned out to add the support of his visible presence to Mr. Collins.

“
We ain’t breakin’ any law! Go to hell!
”

“I mean what I say!” shouted Mr. Collins. “I’m a working man!”

“
Go back to bed, grampa!
”

Then the redheaded man picked up a stone or a large cinder and made as if to throw it at Mr. Collins, whose voice shut off in the middle of a sentence. “
Shut up or we’ll bust yuh windows!
” the redheaded man bellowed, then managed to catch the ball that was coming his way.

Another window went up, and Stanley was suddenly inspired to yell: “Isn’t there another place to play ball around here? Can’t you give us a break one Sunday?”

“Ah, the hell with ’em!” said one of the men.

The batted ball made a sick sound and spun up behind the batter, stopping in mid-air hardly four feet in front of Stanley’s nose, before it started its descent. They were playing two-base baseball now with a stick bat and a soft ball.

The blond woman who lived on the floor above Stanley and to the left was having a sympathetic discussion with Mr. Collins: “Wouldn’t you think that grown men—”

Mr. Collins, loudly: “Ah, they’re worse than children! Hoodlums, that’s what they are! Ought to get the police after them!”

“And the language they use! I’ve told my husband about ’em but he works Sundays and he just can’t
realize
!”

“So her husband ain’t home, huh?” said the redheaded man, and the others guffawed.

Stanley looked down on the bent, freckled back of the redheaded man who had removed his shirt now and whose hands were braced on his knees. It was a revolting sight—the white back mottled with brown freckles, rounded with fatty muscle and faintly shiny with sweat. I wish I had a BB gun, Stanley thought as he had often thought before. I’d shoot them, not enough to hurt them, just enough to annoy them. Annoy them the hell out of here!

A roar from five throats shocked him, shattered his thoughts and left him shaking.

He went into the bathroom and wet his face at the basin. Then he came back and closed his other window. The closed windows
made very little difference in the sound. He bent toward his easel again, touching the brushtip to the partly drawn highlight on the nose. The tip of his brush had dried and stiffened. He moistened it in the turpentine cup.

“
Franky!
”

“
Run, boy run!
”

Stanley put the brush down. He had made a wide white mark on the nose. He wiped at it with a rag, trembling.

Now there was an uproar from below, as if all five were fighting. Stanley looked out. Frank and the other pot-bellied man were wrestling for the ball by the hedges. With a wild, almost feminine laugh, the redhead toppled onto the hedges, yelping as the bushes scratched him.

Stanley flung the window up. “Would you please watch out for the hedge?” he shouted.

“
Ah
, f ’Chris’ sake!” yelled the redhead, getting up from one knee, at the same time yanking up a bush from the ground and hurling it in Stanley’s direction.

The others laughed.

“You’re not allowed to destroy public property!” Stanley retorted with a quick, bitter smile, as if he had them. His heart was racing.

“What d’yuh mean we’re not allowed?” asked the blue jeans, crashing a foot into another bush.

“
Cut that out!
” Stanley yelled.

“Oh, pipe down!”

“I’m gettin’ thirsty! Who’s goin’ for drinks?”

Now the redheaded man swung a foot and kicked another bush up into the air.

“Pick that hedge up again! Put it back!” Stanley shouted, clenching his fists.

“Pick up yer ass!”

Stanley crossed his room and yanked the door open, ran down the steps and out. Suddenly, he was standing in the middle of the lot in the bright sunshine. “You’d better put that hedge back!” Stanley yelled. “One of you’d better put all those bushes back!”

“Look who’s here!”

“Oh, dry up! Come on, Joey!”

The ball bit Stanley on the shoulder, but he barely felt it, barely wondered if it had been directed at him. He was no match for any of the men physically, certainly not for all of them together, but this fact barely brushed the surface of his mind, either. He was mad enough to have attacked any or all of them, and it was only their scattered number that kept him from moving. He didn’t know where to begin.

“Isn’t any of you going to put those back?” he demanded.

“
No!
”

“Outa the way, Mac! You’re gonna get hurt!”

While reaching for the ball near Stanley, the blue jeans put out an arm and shoved him. Stanley’s neck made a snapping sound and he just managed to recover his balance without pitching on his face. No one was paying the least attention to him now. They were like a scattered, mobile army, confident of their ground. Stanley walked quickly toward the alley, oblivious of the ball that bounced off his head, oblivious of the laughter that followed.

The next thing he knew, he was in the cool, darkish hall of his building. His eye fell on the flat stone that was used now and then to prop the front door open. He picked it up and began to climb
the stairs with it. He thought of hurling it out his window, down into the midst of them. The barbarians!

He rested the stone on his windowsill, still holding it between his hands. The man in blue jeans was walking along by the brick wall, kicking at the remaining bushes. They had stopped playing for some reason.

“Got the stuff fellows! Come ’n get it!” One of the pot-bellied men had arrived with his fists full of soft drink bottles.

Heads tipped back as they drank. There were animal murmurs and grunts of satisfaction. Stanley leaned farther out.

The redheaded man was sitting right below his window on a board propped up on a couple of rocks to make a bench. He couldn’t miss if he dropped it, Stanley thought, and almost at the same time, he held the stone a few inches out from his sill and dropped it. Ducking back, Stanley heard a deep-pitched, lethal-sounding crack, then a startled curse.

“Who did that?”

“Hey, Franky!
Franky!
Are you okay?”

Stanley heard a groan.

“We gotta get a doctor! Gimme a hand, somebody!”

“That bastard upstairs!” It came clearly.

Stanley jumped as something crashed through his other window, hit the shade and slid to the floor—a stone the size of a large egg.

Now he could hear their voices moving up the alley. Stanley expected them to come up the stairs for him. He clenched his fists and listened for feet on the stairs.