The Man Who Cried I Am (28 page)

“Yes, Mr. Reddick?” Her voice came out through a loudspeaker.

“What time did Mr. Bryant leave?”

“Mr. Bryant? There was no Mr. Bryant here to—”

“An old man and a young fellow.”

“There was a Mr. Wilkinson here.”

There was a Mr. Wilkinson here.

There was a Mr. Wilkinson here.

The voice was no longer female, nor was it really male either. A voice without body. The words spiraled down Max's consciousness and he remembered that as a child he had had to make spirals between the two blue ruled lines on his paper during the penmanship lessons; the white circles where he started and ended the exercise looked like the entrance and exit of a tunnel. Max's eyes shot open in fear and his heart raced like a slipped clutch of a car. He remembered the words, the last line of the last of a series of crazy dreams, dreams which slipped with envious ease back and forth in time:
There was a Mr. Wilkinson here
.

Max stared at the beams in the ceiling of Michelle's house in Leiden. Why ever in the hell was his heart racing because of a dream about Roger? Did it know something? Was it recalling the pieces? Was it blackjack now? Gin? Where else had he been? At the table in Paris where Max, Harry and a few others had had their morning coffees, listening mostly to Harry talk against the roar of traffic rushing down Boulevard Raspail. Roger again, saying that he had gone to one of those Catholic colleges that specializes in prelaw courses and which was always being visited by people from the FBI and the CIA to recruit personnel from among the student body. (“Man, they talked to me, once.”) There had been laughter, stomach-bursting laughter. Talk to a clown like Roger? Desperate, those CIA cats; had to be desperate. Max saw images of Roger: Paris, laughing over coffee, talking his French jam up, beret hung down over one eye. Roger in Rome: standing on the Via Veneto talking Italian to the Italian hippies with their shades, thick heels and eight inches of shirt collar open at the neck. Roger: sauntering down Leidsestraat shouting hip phrases in Dutch to the Dutch hippies cooling past in shades with sticks of pot in their mouths. Roger everywhere. Smiling, laughing loudly, mimicking. Roger: enough to crack your ribs with laughter. Clown. But why, Max wondered, am I thinking of him now? Guilt, maybe. Bad scene last night with that check. Very bad. The only other time he had been sharp with Roger was when he was stalking Regina; Regina now married, kids, their friendship over because she knew as Max knew that there were not too many white American husbands who would not lose sleep if their wives took from the attic a sambo toy from the past. It was, as far as Max knew, a good marriage.

After Shea, Regina had floundered a little through the spring, giving off strong scents of her weakness, which was to be loved, wanted, forgiven for surviving, and Roger, like a dog sniffing the crotch of a woman during her menses, was there. There had been something wrong with it—what, exactly, Max hadn't known—but he made it clear to Roger that he was to stay away from her. Roger had smiled, of course, wisely,
Like, okay, man
, the smile seemed to have said,
I dig she's yours no matter how much you say she's not. If she's yours, well, boss. You the best, baby
.

After that summer, in a way, maybe she had been his, but not in the way Roger meant. In a different way, a bigger way Roger could never understand. Max felt himself relaxing when he thought of Regina, and going back to that summer …

“… and get the hell out of Korea,” Arthur Godfrey had said.

His radio audience had applauded.

Had it been hotter than usual that summer, Max wondered, or had it just been Korea? He had had the postoperative itch bad and the heat had sent him running back to the doctor for a soothing massage and a careful look-see. He had climbed on the table, lowered his chest and raised his rear, waiting for the rubber-coated finger. The doctor had been good; his single failing was that he liked to listen to Arthur Godfrey. But Max had depended on the doctor's finger, the expert massage it gave, the immediate relief from inner torment. “Steady,” the doctor always said. “Relax. Make like you're making a stool.”

Max went to an air-conditioned movie when he left the doctor's office. The movie would cool him off, make the afternoon's work at the paper a little more bearable. The movie was about Paris, and some wrinkled little old guy with the hots for a skinny little librarian. In a way the movie was about incest too. These old guys, Max thought, loving it up, taking on generation after generation of broads. Gable, Grant, Cooper and the rest. What the hell was going on? There was a new crop coming up: “The Toothies,” the film critic on the
Century
called them, and many were Jewish guys who had changed their names. More freedom to be any kind of racial member now, yes, but, Jeez, Mac, don't bring me the Abie Finklestein bit, okay, baby? Soon “The Toothies” would be the old guys, and they'd take on the chippies for another three generations. No wonder everyone was so screwed up.

But Paris was some place. It made Max think of Harry. New York hadn't been the same since he had left. Max had learned that Harry had been to Africa to see Jaja Enzkwu, then to China, then back to Africa. He was resting in Paris now, awaiting the publication of his collection of articles on Franco Spain, two of which Max had read. It seemed that Harry was spreading out, taking on the world instead of just white America. Oppression was oppression, Max and Harry had once agreed, and there was a relationship between the oppressed Negroes of America, the oppressed Spaniards, the oppressed brown peoples of Asia and the oppressed black peoples of Africa. But Harry's books, which did not deal specifically in fiction or nonfiction form with Negroes, were not well received in the United States. Yet, old Harry had been around the world and was now telling of the Spanish mystique, the extent of police power, the lack of religious freedom, the toppling of the Spanish people from the peak of pride down into doltish stupidity. The Republic had been their last chance and they had blown it. Now there was little else except to trap as much foreign currency as one could and to become, whenever possible, as corrupt as the next
caballero
.

Going back to the office, Max decided that he would write to Harry that afternoon. Enough, this being salty over what white folks said. Harry should have been bigger than that. Max walked into the office and pulled off his jacket. The windows were open and the heavy smell of the river came in. He sat down and loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves. In the aisle behind him the copy boys and reporters brushed past with coffee and sandwiches. “Hey, Max,” some of them said, “going to Korea?” They had asked with laughter and Max laughed back. Then he sat down to write to Harry.

It was no secret that Berg desperately wanted Max to go to Korea and see Harry Truman's integrated Armed Forces take the field against the North Koreans. Berg had broached the idea in a roundabout way and Max had beat a rapid retreat. The joke in the office was, who in the hell was foolish enough to want to go out and possibly die for the
Century?
That was the way the white reporters put it in their discussions. Max could see a white reporter doing it, but not himself. It made no difference that Berg had said he could see a Pulitzer for Max; that the Negro fighting man for the first time in American journalism would be given credit at the moment he deserved it; Berg could see that too. But, Max thought, he could see Berg being beside himself with joy if circulation tripled in Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant and Astoria as a result of the articles. Max used his operation as an out, but he knew that if the pot bubbled over in Korea, he'd have to tell Berg, no. Max assumed he would not have to do that. Berg had sense enough to know that any Negro really aware of his position in American society in the year 1950, if given the chance to refuse to go to a real fighting war and still remain economically and socially solvent, would refuse. Berg should know that, Max thought, Berg the cynical liberal (his own words). Besides, when the white Americans called out, “Gook!” it sounded awfully like nigger. Max had heard about that kind of war in the Pacific; he wanted none of it. But there was no reason why Korea would not turn into that kind of racial war. Instead of the British and French kicking the Orientals in the ass, now it was steady Uncle Sam. Ultimately there would be China to face. Racial wars called something else. The Russians understood the hell out of that. They carried the blood of the Khans and the Timurids. Thus tinged they were the least white of all the major Allies in War II—and suffered most. Could they forget Stalingrad, for example, where they lost more men than were lost by the Americans throughout the entire war? And the Japanese. If ever there came a chance to kick Sam's ass, they wouldn't pass it up. Sure, they were coming along fine, the Japanese, becoming Americanized and all that. But who could forget Little Boy peeled down the sky upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Military humiliations could be forgiven under a military code, but racial humiliations dealt under a military code never could be forgiven. Crazy, these wars.

But there remained something haunting and curious about the chance to go to a war in which you yourself did not have to carry a gun or suffer in the foxholes; a war in which you were not the primary target counting off with every fearful stride the seven seconds it takes the enemy to get you in his sights and kill you. Given the chance, most men preferred war that way. It was true that correspondents were killed during wars, but those often were the ones who forgot, after all, that wars were only current news, that they were simply reporting the extensions of national policies foisted upon the shoulders of a poor pfc eating regularly for the first time in his life, or a second looey trying to wrest command from his sergeant. War II wasn't quite five years dead and they were at it again, the French, the poor, stupid, losing French.
Now
they were in Vietnam, and losing their shirts. And Israel, surrounded by Arabs and the Mediterranean. How long would
that
last?

The thought of Israel made him think of Bob Loewenstein; he had interviewed Bob the day before for a “Portrait” because he was donating the proceeds from his current show to Israel. There were some loose ends Max had to tie up. He ripped the letter to Harry from the typewriter, reread it and put it into an envelope which he addressed by hand. Wars, he thought, as he picked up the phone to call Bob, I want no part of wars. How can one write intelligently of an act that is basically stupid? Somebody would; lots of somebodies would, but I'm not going to be one of them.

Then, he had believed that.

Max glanced over his notes as he dialed. Bob was doing great. Making all the money and still had his art and it was not commercial. Bob hadn't spoken about Regina, but Max knew that he (Max) wasn't supposed to know about her. The meeting aboard the ship when Harry and Charlotte were leaving had been by chance, Bob would have him believe. Max hadn't mentioned Regina either, of course. After, he had marveled at how easily one passes through the cuckoldry circus of Manhattan. If you choose to become involved in the games, you must honor the rules. Bob had had a hacking cough yesterday and had taken many cough drops along with a few martinis to ease a sore throat, but nothing seemed to help. When Bob got on the line Max would inquire about his cold, of course.

“Hello.” Letitia, Max thought, Bob's wife. The voice sounded hollow, as if she were speaking in a great cathedral to no one in particular.

“Max Reddick,” Max said, “How are you, Mrs. Loewenstein?” He'd never met her. He went on. “I've got a couple of questions to finish up with Bob. Is he there or at the gallery?”

“Mr. Reddick? From the
Century?
Yes he told me. Mr. Reddick, Bob's in the hospital.” Her voice now sounded very small and very hurt.

“What's happened?”

There was a pause, then she said, “He came home late last night, went to sleep, but didn't wake up this morning. He was in a coma. He's still in a coma.”

“What hospital?”

She gave him the name of the hospital, but added, “You can't see him. Just the family.”

“Can I call you to find out what's going on?”

“Yes, yes, of course, Mr. Reddick.”

“Do they know what it is?”

“They think it's an aneurysm.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I've got to go now.”

“Yeah, sure. I'll call later.”

Max pressed a button on the phone and got the “Portraits” editor. “Loewenstein is in the hospital with an aneurysm. Coma. Want to switch it to city desk?”

“No. Not a big enough name. If he dies we'll run the portrait with the copy we have. Hold it for now.”

Max hung up. Should he call Regina or let her find out? If Bob had seen her, he probably told her about the “Portrait” and she would have asked which reporter on the
Century
was doing it. Max called her. She sounded very cheerful, having just come in from work and having seen Bob the night before, she told Max. And he thought, Oh, God. He imagined Regina, calmed and sated, perhaps combing her hair while she talked. Then he thought of Bob, lean and spare, as still as the death he was moving toward under an oxygen tent. For Regina, it had always been Bob, even when she was seeing him, Shea and the others. Always Bob with the blue eyes, the head that looked sort of squeezed in from the sides, the thin broken nose, the sandy hair. Bob with the hip phrases. “Yass, baby, how you doin'?”

“How's Bob's portrait going?” Regina asked, slyly.

Max had guessed right. “Baby, I got to talk to you,” he blurted. “Can I come over?”

“‘Baby, I got to talk to you,'” she mocked him. “What's the matter, horny?”

“Naw, hell no,” Max said, suddenly wishing he were and that was all he had to see her about.

Suddenly the cheerfulness was gone and in its place was a urgency. “What is it, Max?”