The Troubled Air (21 page)

“And I don’t eat meat,” Mr. Morris said accusingly. “I eat fruits, nuts and raw vegetables. I do not eat eggs or drink milk, either. I do not live off the flesh of my fellow creatures.”

I wonder if the people at the bank know about this fellow, Archer thought, as he smiled fixedly at Mr. Morris.

“Meat eating,” Mr. Morris said, putting on his trousers, buttoning them with meticulous, small movements of his fingers, “is at the root of the terror of civilization. It is only to be expected. If we kill daily the harmless and innocent, creatures of the field and waters, in person or by proxy, if we get our pleasure from death, if we satisfy our appetites with living agony, what can that do to our moral natures?”

“I suppose,” Archer said agreeably, “a case could be made for that argument.”

“We become the enemy of all living things,” Mr. Morris went on. “The birds dart away at our approach, the deer leaps into the thicket when he sniffs us on the wind. We are the villains in the system of nature, the upsetting element in all of the Infinite’s calculation, the unstable and bloody
x
in God’s arithmetic. We represent tragedy and disorder on the stage of life.”

“You certainly have a lot of arguments on your side there,” Archer said placatingly, putting on his coat and showing as plainly as he could without being rude that he was on the verge of leaving.

“It is the inevitable next step,” Mr. Morris said, in his mournful piercing voice, “to go from killing cattle and fowl and swimming things to killing human beings. The moral restraint is blunted by the act, and the step from the smaller game to the largest game is taken without hesitation, almost without notice. If daily we wage war against the dumb flesh of billions of animals, for the transitory pleasure of our palates, how easy it is to turn our ferocity against our fellows-men and kill them for even more powerful pleasures. The ruins of Berlin and London, Mr. Archer,” Mr. Morris said, his eyes glittering madly behind his glasses, “are the only natural result of our stockyards and slaughterhouses. The full cemeteries of the war dead are the final testimony to our shameful indulgence in table delicacies.”

“I must go now,” Archer said hastily, grabbing his overcoat. “This has been very interesting, but …”

Mr. Morris moved swiftly over to Archer and stood in front of him, very close, looking up at him accusingly. “I am going to live to the age of one hundred,” Mr. Morris said. “I am going to fulfill my destiny. I am going to decide the day I am going to die and I am going to die in full possession of my faculties. I am not going to fall into a coma and I am going to make the transition from life to other-life, understanding every moment of the experience. And experience is knowing and knowing is the only ecstasy. Those who die before the age of a hundred, or those who die unconscious of that supreme act, are perishing incomplete. In sin, error and ignorance. Nourished on death, they succumb to death. As you notice,” he said conversationally, “I do not wear leather shoes and my belt is made of plastic.”

Archer inspected Mr. Morris’s costume and saw that he was speaking the truth. “Yes,” he said edging toward the door, “I noticed.”

“There can be no temporizing and no compromise,” Mr. Morris said, moving imperceptibly with Archer. “There is either the principle of life, which is holy and indivisible, or the principle of death, which is evil. And until now, we have subjected ourselves to the principle of death. We manufacture the pig-sticker’s knife and the atomic bomb, two products of the same machine. Because a principle is a machine, Mr. Archer, and can only turn out the same kind of goods, no matter how different they appear on the surface.”

“Yes,” Archer said, “that’s quite logical. I’m sorry but I’m a little late and I’m afraid I have to …”

“I understand you deal with the public,” Mr. Morris said. “On the radio.”

“Yes.”

“You reach into millions of homes every week. Homes that reek of the smell of death. You could do incalculable good, Mr. Archer, if you wished …”

“Well,” Archer said, “I don’t really set policy and I …”

“The work of enlightenment has to be carried on by all possible means,” Mr. Morris said earnestly. “It does not necessarily have to be overt. I know some of the opposition you would face, powerful forces, the meatpackers, the military.” His face assumed an unclerk-like and conspiratorial air. “In the beginning you would only be able to introduce hints, suggestions, prepare the ground.”

Peace, Archer thought dazedly, is regarded as a conspiracy by everyone, even vegetarians. Nuts and fruits are fraught with peril. Propagandize them at your risk. I ought to introduce him to Frances Motherwell.

“I am working on a document,” Mr. Morris whispered, “that I intend to present to the United Nations through the proper channels. I hope to get a million signatures. Will you sign?”

“Well, I’d have to see it first,” said Archer, thinking, Everybody wants a million signatures.

“The exact wording is most important,” Mr. Morris said. Unaccountably, he winked at Archer. “It’s a document of historic importance. I’ve been working on it for more than a year. It has to be just right before you can expect people to give their names to it. They’re afraid of the consequences and you have to make the arguments irrefutable in black and white before you can shame them into signing. I’m going to call on the United Nations to make meat illegal.” He smiled triumphantly at Archer. “By solemn compact of the nations of the world. Humanity’s pardon of the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea. I have great hope for the government of India,” he said obscurely, “now that the British are out. After that, peace is inevitable; it is the next logical step. You can forget politics, forget the jockeying for power. Get to the heart of it, the essential crime, the universal moral wound. You can imagine what a bombshell it will be,” Mr. Morris said complacently, moving back, away from Archer, “when the document is made public.”

“Yes,” Archer said, “you must show it to me when you have it ready.”

“Of course,” Mr. Morris said. He inclined his head graciously, his eyes a glitter of prophetic light. “I know you won’t be able to resist signing. It will be ready in a month or six weeks, at the outside.”

“I look forward to it,” Archer said, opening the door.

“I’ll leave a copy of it for you with Mrs. Creighton,” Mr. Morris said. “She’s helping me.”

“Thanks,” said Archer. “Good night, Mr. Morris.”

“Good night, Mr. Archer. We must talk again.” Mr. Morris put on his hat, which was made of nylon, and bowed to Archer. Archer went out hurriedly. The contralto upstairs was singing something from Bizet, her voice sweet and sad. Archer could hear her even after he got in the elevator and started to drop down toward the street level.

On his way home in the crowded subway, Archer found himself chuckling as he thought of the bank-teller who was going to live to the age of a hundred. Then he was conscious that the people around him were watching him curiously, and he arranged his face soberly. There were lunatics on all sides. Peace had its madmen, just like war. No doctrine, however noble, was without its supporters who would be more at home in padded cells than loose on the streets. Death, the principle of evil … Well, that wasn’t too different from what Alice Weller had been trying to tell him that afternoon in her shabby living room. He wondered if Mr. Morris’s superiors at the bank would fire him when he came out with his international proposal of nuts and berries. How far did the zone of moral disapproval extend? Was your money safe with a man who did not believe in killing anything and wore canvas shoes and a plastic belt? Could the State survive Mr. Morris’s success? How much leeway could you give a man who challenged the very foundations of society, starting with its basic diet? Especially if he turned up with a million signatures!

Archer smiled again, trying to imagine Mr. Morris as a sinister figure. Still, anything was possible. If Alice Weller could be considered suspect and marked for punishment, why exempt the bank-clerk? Then Archer remembered that he had promised Alice that she would not be dropped. He grew sober again. He had done it out of pity and without thought, but now he was committed to it. Committed. It was a clipped, final, responsible, menacing kind of word. He sighed and tried to assure himself that somehow matters would work out all right. When the train stopped at his station he was annoyed with the people who shoved their way in as he tried to get out of the door. Nobody gives an inch these days, he thought, as he pushed against a large, fat woman in a lynx coat, who charged implacably into the car, searching, iron-eyed, for a vacant seat.

Kitty was downstairs, in his study, sitting at his desk, working on the monthly bills, when Archer came into the house. She was wearing one of her shapeless, tent-like maternity dresses and her head looked very small and frail over the billowing cloth. He could tell from the expression on her face that she was adding figures. When Kitty had to add a column of numbers, her face grew stern and cross, as if she suspected treachery at every step. Archer went over and kissed her lightly on the top of her head.

“ … three and nine and carry two,” Kitty said aloud. “One more minute, darling. Seventeen, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-four.” She wrote down some numbers with a dashing gesture and swung around in her chair, smiling. “Actually,” she said, “we can’t afford to live any more.”

“I know,” Archer said. He kissed her forehead and rubbed his hands alongside her cheeks.

“The butcher,” Kitty said, “ought to be arrested by the Government.”

Archer grinned and moved over to his easy chair and sank into it gratefully. “Man I met today,” he said, “is going to present a petition to the UN outlawing meat.”

“Tell him,” Kitty said, “he has my support.”

“Anybody call?”

Each day when he came home he asked the same question, with subdued eagerness, as though he expected, in his hours of absence, some delightful magic to be worked by the telephone company, a sudden honor, a glorious invitation, a surprising windfall to be included in the afternoon’s messages, changing the evening and indeed the whole course of his life for the better. Examining his feeling as he waited for Kitty’s reply, he knew that this sense of bright expectation marked him once and for all as an optimist. At the age of forty-five, with ten thousand telephone calls behind him, a great many of them announcing sickness, loss, trouble of all kinds, he still connected the ringing of the telephone bell with possible joy. Fundamentally, he thought comfortably, my glands must be functioning well, the bile low, the acid under control, the hormones properly regulated.

“Well,” Kitty said, pursing her lips, “let me see. Mary Lowell called to ask us to their house for dinner next Wednesday. Black tie.”

Archer made a face.

“Teague Brothers called. Your suit is ready for a fitting. And Mr. Burdick called. He wants to do something with your insurance policy and he wants you to go to the doctor for another examination. Also, he says this quarter’s payment is overdue and would you please …”

Archer grimaced again. Joy had been absent from the wires this afternoon, at least. Wait for another day.

“A good wife,” he said playfully, “would have a better collection of messages waiting for the breadwinner when he got home. That reminds me.” He stood up. “I have to make a call. I’ll be right back.” At the door he stopped. “Vic didn’t call from Detroit, did he?” Kitty shook her head.

He went out into the hall, where the telephone was, and dialed Pokorny’s number, feeling self-righteous that he wasn’t putting it off any longer. A woman’s voice answered.

“Hello,” Archer said, looking at himself in the mirror, noticing that he had rings under his eyes, “Mrs. Pokorny?”

“Yes?”

“This is Clement Archer. May I speak to Manfred, please?”

There was silence for a moment on the other end of the wire. “What do you want to speak to him about?” Mrs. Pokorny asked. She had a flat Middle-Western accent, cold and unmusical, and her voice was suspicious now and wary.

“I’d have to tell him,” Archer said, sighing, and feeling that nothing you did with the musician was uncomplicated. “In person.”

“He can’t come to the phone now,” Mrs. Pokorny said. “He’s not feeling well.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Archer tried to inject a tone of sympathy into his voice. “I really must talk to him.”

“You could tell me,” Mrs. Pokorny said. “We have no secrets.”

“I’m sure not,” Archer said, laughing falsely, feeling cornered by the resentful prairie voice. “But it’s really too long a story to be relayed by anyone else. Actually, I’d like to see him for a half-hour or so.”

“The doctor says he can’t leave the house,” Mrs. Pokorny said, accusingly, as though Archer were to blame. “He has a fever.”

Archer thought for a moment. “Would it be possible,” he asked, “for me to come and see him this evening?”

“He shouldn’t be disturbed.”

Pokorny, Archer thought, exasperated, with all his other troubles, is married to a watchdog. “It’s really very important, Mrs. Pokorny,” he said, trying to keep his voice mild.

“I’m sure it is.” Mrs. Pokorny made it sound like a threat.

“I’ll make it as short as I can,” said Archer. “We really shouldn’t delay any longer than necessary. It’s about his job.”

“What job?” Mrs. Pokorny laughed stonily into the receiver. “He doesn’t have any job. You ought to know that. Why don’t you leave the man in peace?”

“Please,” Archer said, “will you ask him if it’s all right for me to come over and see him around eight o’clock? I’m sure he’ll want to talk to me.”

“I’ll ask,” Mrs. Pokorny said unpromisingly. She put the phone down hard and the wires crackled in Archer’s ear. He waited, conscious that Mrs. Pokorny, whom he had never seen, was his enemy. After what seemed like a long time, he heard her steps, heavy and forbidding, approaching the phone.

“All right,” she said curtly. “He’ll see you. You mustn’t stay more than thirty minutes. He has blood pressure.” She hung up before Archer could say anything.

Blood pressure, too, Archer thought. That poor man isn’t let off anything. He walked slowly back to his study, wondering what he was going to tell Kitty.