The Troubled Air (17 page)

“I’m listening, Frances.” Archer spoke gravely, in an attempt to get the girl away from the mocking, derisive self-revelation.

“I picked up Communism on my trip abroad,” Frances said, her voice still joking and harsh. “In the Red Cross.” She came over to Archer and stood above him, her hands on her hips and her legs spread wide. “Are you surprised?”

“I give the Red Cross fifty dollars each year at Christmas,” Archer said. “I don’t know what they do with it.”

“I was stationed at a B-17 base in England,” Frances said. “I served doughnuts and wrote letters home to the parents of the dead. I thought I was very patriotic and adventurous and the uniform looked good on me. I teased the men at dances, but I was wholesome as an apple, and slept by myself at night. One boy, he was a bombardier, told me he used to go and make love to an English girl in town after he danced with me, and close his eyes and pretend it was me in bed with him. I told him it wasn’t wholesome; that was a big word of mine in the winter of 1944, but he was flying over Bremerhaven and Schweinfurt and he had his mind on other things. Then I met an older man, a squadron leader, he must have been twenty-six, and I stopped being so wholesome.”

Archer moved uncomfortably. He felt that Frances was standing too close to him to be talking about things like that.

“He was from California,” Frances went on, looking over Archer’s head. “One of those big sunny boys they grow out there. He was quiet and cheerful and dependable. The men in his squadron loved him—and I enlisted in the squadron, privately.” She paused and peered uncertainly at Archer as though she didn’t quite remember who he was or what he was doing in her room. She turned abruptly and sat down on the sofa, her hands between her knees, pulling her skirt in tight lines.

“When you give up being a virgin at the age of twenty-three,” Frances said, “it seems like an enormous date on the calendar, and maybe you attach more importance than you should to the man …”

Twenty-three, Archer thought, in 1944. That makes her twenty-nine now. I didn’t realize she was that old.

“Though I don’t think so,” Frances said, as though she were arguing with herself. “He was brave, he was careful, he took care of his men as though they were precious. Not precious only as soldiers. Precious as human beings. He took care of me. We were going to get married and live in Santa Barbara if he came out alive.” She shrugged. “I’m going to say something funny,” she said. “I’m going to use a funny word. He was a saint. Are you going to laugh?”

“No,” Archer said. “I’m not going to laugh.”

“I don’t think it’s only because he’s dead now that I say that. I felt all this when I saw him every night. After missions and when we went down to London on leave. London …” She stopped and looked blindly away, as though she were remembering what the streets looked like and the ruins and what it felt like to come out of a restaurant in the blackout holding onto a dead boy’s arm. “He was religious,” Frances went on finally, her voice sounding empty and strained. “His father was a minister and he himself had considered, for awhile … So he thought about a lot of things that the other boys didn’t seem to bother about. They all seemed to be thinking only about getting home alive or finding a girl or getting promoted or not cracking up when things got tough. Maybe I’m unfair to them. I guess they thought about other things, too, only they never happened to tell me. Hank had a … a grave turn of mind. He wasn’t solemn, but he wasn’t a kid any more, and he took the war very seriously, and he had a habit of questioning himself.”

Hank, Archer thought. What a name for a saint. Saint Hank.

“I guess he had a lot of time to ask questions, coming back on those long missions,” Frances said, “after the bombs were dropped, after watching his friends go down, sitting there on oxygen, with the co-pilot at the controls, and the wounded lying on the floor of the plane waiting for the morphine to take effect. He kept asking himself what it was all for. Whether it was worth it. What the result would be. What it would be like after it was over. Whether it would happen all over again. He was a freak in the Eighth Air Force. He really began to feel that he was fighting for peace, equality, justice. Those words.” Frances grinned crookedly. “The son of a minister, and from California besides, they grow them queer. And somewhere along the line, he got the notion that that’s what the Communists stood for. Back in college, he’d had a couple of friends in the Party and they’d been very good about Mexicans and Chinese and Jews and Negroes and a living wage for apricot-pickers and things like that. Then, to prove they weren’t kidding, they went off and got themselves killed in Spain. And he felt they’d been right about that, too. They’d warned everybody about that and nobody had listened and it had turned out just the way they predicted. So, aside from everything else, he felt they were smarter than everybody else, that they had the inside track on that information, too.”

“That was in 1944,” Archer said gently. “Do you think he’d still feel the same way today?”

Frances shrugged. “All I know is that he told me that the day after he got out of uniform, he was going to look up the nearest Party headquarters and join up. Should I tell you his name so you can drop him from something, too?”

“Don’t take it out on me, Frances, darling,” Archer said quietly. “Please.”

“His name was Vaness. Major Henry Vaness,” Frances went on. “Maybe you could have him dropped out of the American military cemetery at Metz. Conduct unbecoming a dead pilot.” Her eyes were glistening, but she didn’t cry. She wasn’t acting now. Her voice was flat and lifeless. “He was the only complete man I’ve ever found,” she said, “and nobody can say I’ve been lazy about looking since then.” There was sour self-mockery and self-disgust in her voice. “And do you know why he was complete? Because he had love in his heart. Love for everybody. For his men, for his little silly Red Cross girl, for the people he was forced to kill … Twenty-one missions and good-bye. Should I tell you what the men in his squadron did for me the day his plane went down? Ah—what for? You’re like all the rest. You’re more polite and maybe you’ll struggle a little longer—but finally you’ll be snowed under, too. It’ll just make it harder for you if you have to hear that somebody who believed in Communism was a great man and that everyone who ever knew him loved him. I’ll make it easy for you,” Frances said challengingly. “I’ll tell you I was a famished little virgin and I fell in love with a dashing Major and I picked up my politics in bed. Anyway, the day after I took off
my
uniform I went to the nearest Party headquarters and told them I wanted to join. Guilty as charged. That’s what you came to find out and you’ve found it out. Now I must ask you to leave, Clement. I expect somebody up here any minute and I’d rather you didn’t meet him …”

She stood up. Her hands were clenched at her sides and her face looked drawn. Archer rose from his chair uncertainly.

“Thanks,” Archer said lamely. “I want to thank you for being so frank.”

“Sure,” Frances waved her hand carelessly. “I’ll tell anybody anything. I’m famous for it.” She started toward the door.

“I’ll keep you posted,” Archer said, following her and picking up his hat and coat. “Whatever develops.”

“By all means.” Frances opened the door for him. “Keep me abreast.”

The phone began to ring in the bedroom and Frances said, “I’d better answer it. Good-bye.” Her tone was remote and cold and as though she had no connection with Archer and her pose at the door was plainly impatient.

Archer wanted to say something gentle, hopeful, persuasive, something that would show he had been moved and that he wanted to be her friend. But Frances looked hurried and forbidding, standing at the open door, and all Archer could manage was, “Good-bye, Frances. Good luck on the play.”

Then she closed the door crisply behind him. He could hear her hurrying through the room to the phone as he put on his hat and began to work himself into his coat.

“Motherwell speaking,” he heard her say through the thin partition. “Oh. Hello. Yes. I’m alone now.” Archer buttoned his coat and started down the stairs. Faintly he heard Frances’ voice saying, “How’re the measles today?” Then he was out of earshot on the dark stairs. He stopped, reflecting on what he had heard. He realized that he was straining to hear the rest of the conversation, but at that distance there was just the low, indistinguishable murmur of Frances’ voice. Then he was ashamed of himself and descended the stairs swiftly. The pianist on the floor below was still working on the same run.

Archer emerged into the sunlight, blinking his eyes a little. No, he thought, it’s ridiculous, probably ten thousand families in New York at this moment have a case of measles somewhere on the premises. And even if, by a wild chance, it was Vic, now in Detroit, who was calling her, what of it? There might be a hundred reasons, all innocent, for such a call. And whatever the reason, it certainly was none of his business. Forget it, he told himself, forget it, it’s just because you’re so shaky after that weird half-hour with the girl, forget it. But he knew that the next time he saw Vic and Frances together, he would look at them curiously, with new speculation and doubt. He was committed, he began to realize, to an endless task. Once you began to inquire into the fundamental and hidden motives of human beings, you were confronted with an infinite number of clues. And there was never any time off and there was no one whom you weren’t ready to suspect. The bloodshot detective within you was on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

He looked curiously at the faces of the passers-by, wondering whom they had questioned that morning and who was going to question them that night. He wondered if they felt as trapped and uncertain as he.

He walked slowly across town, grateful for the pale winter warmth of the sun on his skin. Well; he thought, smiling weakly, Interview Number One is over, now where are you? The magazine had been right about Frances Motherwell, at least in calling her a Communist. That had been no surprise. But did that mean they were right about the others? And after listening to her, did he feel she was dangerous, that she deserved to be punished? A neurotic, unstable girl, theatrically given to attitudinizing, making out of her politics a romantic monument to a man she’d loved and who had been killed in the war. Spouting the stalest slogans and the most passionate personal revelations in the same breath, all mixed with a night-club glitter and fashionable vulgarity. A new development in political circles—the elegiac Communist in a cashmere sweater shakily recovering from the champagne of the night before. The unwed widow of the crashed hero, hopefully presenting herself for martyrdom and never finding it because she was too rich, too talented, and too pretty to be picked for sacrifice. The placarded mind under the permanent wave, convinced by a voice from the grave that she was in the vanguard of those who were standing for the equality of men, whatever that was. A liar on the telephone to a desolate suitor, fiercely certain that she was privy to the only truth. A lost prowling girl hunting for a lost boy among later beds, making up with a substitute devotion for what she knew in her heart she would never find. An indiscreet, nervy performer whose hands shook when she lit a cigarette, natural casting for the part of a woman who had a mad scene toward the end of a play, confident that she and her friends formed a solid core of reason and virtue in an insane and villainous world. God help those friends, though, Archer thought, if she ever thinks that they have betrayed her.

She’s indigestible, Archer thought; there’s no nourishment there for either side. Attack or defend her at the risk of your own confusion. Still, and Archer sighed relievedly as he thought of it, this time I’m sharing in her luck. By a fortunate coincidence, the question of Frances Motherwell need not be debated at the moment. Moving on to better things, the girl had neatly removed her problem to the field of theory. Practically, you could forget about her, knowing that she was above harm. It was too bad the others could not be disposed of as happily. As for the principle … Archer shrugged. Time for that, later on, later on. Get the survivors off the wreck now, and bring in the boat at another time, when the water was calmer.

Now—who next? Archer stopped in the middle of the street. Pokorny? Herres? Atlas? Weller? He really ought to see Pokorny as soon as possible, because he was already suffering. But Pokorny was bound to be the most painful of them all and Archer still felt shaken after Frances. Atlas, he thought selfishly, there’s the toughest of the bunch; he doesn’t give a damn about anything. He’ll give as good as he gets and you can check your pity at the door.

Archer went into a phone booth and called Atlas’ number.

“Hello, Stanley,” Archer said when he heard Atlas’ voice. “This is Clement Archer.”

“Yes?” Atlas said, not friendly and not unfriendly.

“I have to see you, Stanley. Today. As soon as possible.”

“Oh.” There was a pause on the phone and Archer could almost picture Atlas coolly deciding whether to be agreeable or not. “Why?”

“I can’t talk about it on the phone.”

“Got a nice tip in the seventh at Hialeah you’re just dying to give me, Clem?” Atlas asked.

“I’ve got to see you. Right away.” Archer tried to keep the note of impatience out of his voice.

“Where?”

“Well …” Archer hesitated. He couldn’t ask Atlas to meet him at O’Neill’s office for this particular conversation and he didn’t know of any place where he could take a Negro in for lunch without a fuss. “Well,” he said, “how about Louis’ bar?” He had never seen any Negroes there, but he was known there and he probably could arrange something.

“Massa Clem,” Atlas began, his voice rich and Southern, “don’ you-all know what shade I am?”

“Don’t be silly, Stan,” Archer said, with false confidence.

“Last time I was in Louis’ bar for ladies and gentlemen, Massa Clem, they done break the glass I was drinkin’ from after I was finished. I sure would hate to put those nice white folks to any more expense on my account.”

The trouble with him, Archer thought, sweating in the cramped phone booth, is that he
enjoys
telling me these things. “OK, Stan,” Archer said, “I won’t argue with you. Why don’t you come down to my house?”