The Ultimate Egoist (3 page)

“With a tiny click it opened. I flung back the lid and wheeled as I heard a step behind me.

“ ‘Hey, Al,’ said Krantz, holding out a puzzle book, ‘what’s an eight letter word for—what the devil are you doing?’ He stared into the case and whistled softly.

“ ‘Pretty slick, eh, Al? You know you had no authority to open this package, no matter what the circumstances. Of course, I’ll have to report this at Savannah. Trouble for you, boy, no matter how you look at it.’

“We were met in New York by two company big shots and an insurance man, as well as a city dick. I sure held the limelight for a while! We all went over to the express desk and waited. Pretty soon a little guy walked up and handed over a baggage slip. The clerk went over the carload that had just come in and found the package. The little guy picked it up and walked off, only to come back on the run.

“ ‘It says on the waybill eleven pounds,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t seem as heavy as that. Weigh it.’

“The clerk tossed it on the scales. ‘Six pounds and three ounces,’ he said.

“Bernard ripped the bundle open. He fished out a key and opened the case. It was empty. The plainclothes man looked at me and pulled
out his handcuffs. ‘Bring the manager!’ Bernard squealed. ‘I’ve been robbed.’

“The insurance man and the dick walked up to him. The former put a comforting hand on his shoulder while the other grabbed his wrists and slipped on the cuffs. ‘You’re under arrest, Mr. Bernard,’ he said.

“ ‘What do you mean?’ Bernard yelled. ‘I’ve been robbed and you arrest me? What is this?’

“ ‘Fraud, Bernard,’ said the insurance man. ‘This messenger (he pointed at me) thought there was something fishy about that shipment and opened it. Luckily for us, the block of carbon ice you insured for thirty grand hadn’t melted when he saw it.’

“Well,” said Al, “that’s about all. They gave me a reward, a bonus and this job—head shipping clerk for the district. The only thing I don’t like about it is the building. It’s more like a jail than an express office. Thanks for coming. And on your way out, tell that watchman who brought you in here that I want to see him, will you?”

I
DON
’
T LIKE
to be poked repeatedly by a hard bony forefinger until I give my attention to its owner, particularly if said owner is a very persistent drunk who has been told to scram twice and still hasn’t got the idea. But this drunk was a woman, and I couldn’t bring myself to slug her, somehow.

“Please, mister,” she droned. I pulled my sleeve out of her fingers. The movement was reflex, the involuntary recoil at the sight of a dead face.

She needed a drink; a fact that made little difference to me. So did I. But I had only enough change to take care of my own wants, and nobody ever had a chance to call me Sir Galahad. “What the hell do you want?”

She didn’t like to be snapped at like that. She almost told me off; but the thought of a free drink made her change her mind. She had a bad case of the shakes. She said, “I want to talk to you, that’s all.”

“What about?”

“Somebody told me you write stuff. I got a story for you.”

I sighed. Some day, maybe, I would be released from people who said a) “Where do you get your ideas?” and people who said b) “You want a story? My life would make the swellest—”

“Babe,” I said, “I wouldn’t put you on paper if you were Mata Hari. Go scare someone else with that phiz of yours, and leave me alone.”

Her lips curled back wickedly from her teeth, and her eyes slitted; and then, with shocking suddenness, her face relaxed completely. She said, “I’d hate you if I wasn’t afraid to hate anything ever again.”

In that second I was deathly afraid of her, and that in itself was enough to get me interested. I caught her shoulder as she turned away, held up two fingers to the barkeep, and steered her to a table.

“That last crack of yours is worth a drink,” I said.

She was grateful. “One drink,” she said, “and I’m paid in full. In advance. You want the story?”

“No,” I said, “But go ahead.” She did.

I always kept pretty much to myself. I didn’t have the looks that other women have, and to tell the truth, I got along fine without them. I had a fair enough job, slapping a typewriter for the county coroner, and I had a room big enough for me and a few thousand books. I ran to seed a little, I guess. Ah—never mind the buildup. There’s a million like me, buried away in dusty little offices. We do our work and keep our mouths shut and nobody gives much of a damn about us, and we don’t mind it.

Only something happened to me. I was coming out of the borough hall one afternoon when I ran into a man. He was thin and sallow, and when I bumped him he folded up, gasping like a fish. I caught him and held him up. He couldn’t have weighed more than about ninety-four. He hung onto me for a minute and then he was all right. Grinned at me. Said, “Sorry, miss. I got used to a bad heart quite some time ago, but I wish it wouldn’t get in other people’s way.”

I liked his attitude. A pump like that, and he wasn’t crying any. “Keep your chin up that high and it won’t get in anyone’s way,” I told him. He tipped his hat and went on, and I felt good about it all evening.

I met him a couple of days later, and we talked for a minute. His name was Bill Llanyn. Funny Welsh name. After a few weeks it didn’t sound funny any more, I’d like to have had it for my own. Yes, it was that way. We had practically everything in common except that I have a constitution like a rhinoceros. Had then, anyway. He had a rotten little job as assistant curator in a two-for-a-nickel museum. Fed the snakes and tarantulas in the live-animal corner. He only got cigarette money out of it, but managed to eat on his wages because he couldn’t smoke. I knocked together a supper one evening in my place. He went mad over my books. It was all I could do to pry him loose. Oh, the poor man! It used to take him ten minutes to get up
the one flight of stairs to my room. No, he was no Tarzan.

But I—loved that little man.

That was something I thought I didn’t know how to do. I—well, I’m not going to talk about it. I’m telling you a story: right? Well, it’s not a love story. Mind if I finish your drink, too? I—

Well, I wanted to marry him. You might think it would be a joke of a marriage. But God, all I wanted was to have him around, maybe even see him happy for once in his life. I knew I’d outlast him, but I didn’t think about that. I wanted to marry him and be good to him and do things for him, and when he got his call, he wouldn’t be all alone to face it.

It wasn’t much to ask—oh yes—I had to do the asking. He wouldn’t—but he wasn’t having any. He sat on my armchair in front of the fire with an ivory-bound copy of Goethe in one hand, and held up his fingers one by one as he counted off his reasons why not. He wasn’t making enough money to support both of us. He was liable to drop dead any second. He was too much of a wreck for any woman to call husband. He said he loved me, but he loved me too much to hang himself around my neck. Said I should find myself a real live man to get married to. Then he got up, put on his hat, said, “I’ll get out now. I never loved anyone before. I’m glad I do now. You won’t see me again. I haven’t got much longer to be around; I’d just as soon you never knew just when I check out. That’s the only thing left in the world that I can do for you.” Then he came over to me and said some more, and be damned to you; that’s for me to remember and for you to think about. But after he left I never saw him again.

I tried to get back into the old routine of typing and books, but it was rough. I did a lot of reading, trying to forget about it, trying to forget Bill Llanyn’s wasted face. But everything I read seemed to be about him. Guess I picked the wrong stuff. Schopenhauer. Poe. Dante. Faulkner. My mind went round and round. I knew I’d feel better if I had something to hate.

Hate’s a funny thing. I hope you don’t ever know how—how
big
it can be. Use it right, and it’s the most totally destructive thing in the universe. When I realized that, my mind stopped going round and round in those small circles, and it began to drive straight ahead.
I got it all clear in my mind. Listen now—let me tell you what happened when I got going.

I found something to hate. Bill Llanyn’s heart—the ruined, inefficient organ that was keeping us apart. No one can ever know the crazy concentration I put into it. No one has ever lived to describe the
solidness
of hate when it begins to form into something real. I needed a miracle to make over Bill’s heart, and in hate I had a power to work it. My hate reached a greatness that nothing could withstand. I knew it just as surely as a murderer knows what he has done when he feels his knife sink into his victim’s flesh. But I was no murderer. Death wasn’t my purpose. I wanted my hatred to reach into his heart, sear out what was bad and let him take care of the rest. I was doing what no one else has ever done—hating constructively. If I hadn’t been so insanely anxious to put my idea to work, I would have remembered that hate can build nothing that is not evil, cause nothing that is not evil.

Yes, I failed. My boss came into the office one afternoon last week with a sheaf of morgue notes for me to type in triplicate and file away. Post mortems on stiffs that had been picked up during the last forty-eight hours. William Llanyn was there. Cause of death, heart failure. I stared at the notes for a long time. The coroner was standing looking out of the window. Noticed my typewriter stop without starting again, I guess. Without turning around, he said,

“If you’re looking at those heart-failure notes, don’t ask me if there isn’t some more to it—pericarditis, mitral trouble, or anything. Just write ‘heart failure.’ ”

I asked why. He said, “I’ll tell you, but damned if I’ll go on the record with a thing like that. The man didn’t have any heart at all.”

The woman got up and looked at the clock.

“Where you headed?” I asked.

“I’m catching a train out of here,” she said. She went to the door. I said goodnight to her on the sidewalk. She went down toward the station. I headed uptown. When the police emergency wagon screamed by me a few minutes later I didn’t have to go down to the tracks to see what had happened.

T
HEY SAY
, “Ever been in jail?” and people laugh. People make jokes about jail. It’s bad, being in jail. Particularly if you’re in for something you didn’t do. It’s worse if you did do it; makes you feel like such a damn fool for getting caught. It’s still worse if you have a cellmate like Crawley. Jail’s a place for keeping cons out of the way a while. A guy isn’t supposed to go nuts in one.

Crawley was his name and crawly he was. A middle-sized guy with a brown face. Spindly arms and legs. Stringy neck. But the biggest chest I ever did see on a man his size. I don’t care what kind of a shirt they put on him. The bigger it was, the farther the cuffs hung past his hands and the tighter it was over his chest. I never seen anything like it. He was the kind of a lookin’ thing that stops traffic wherever he goes. Sort of a humpback with the hump in front. I’m not in the cell two weeks when I get this freak for a jail buddy. I’m a lucky guy. I’m the kind of lug that slips and breaks his neck on the way up to collect a jackpot playing Screeno in the movies. I find hundred-dollar bills on the street and the man with the net scoops me up for passing counterfeits. I get human spiders like Crawley for cellmates.

He talked like a man having his toenails pulled out. He breathed all the time so you could hear it. He made you wish he’d stop it. He made you feel like stopping it. It whistled.

Two guards brought him in. One guard was enough for most cons, but I guess that chest scared them. No telling what a man built like that might be able to do. Matter of fact he was so weak he couldn’t lift a bar of soap even. Hadn’t, anyway, from the looks of him. A man couldn’t get that crummy in a nice clean jail like ours without leaving soap alone right from the time they deloused him when they booked him in. So I said, “What’smatter, bull, I ain’t lonely,” and the guard said, “Shut the face. This thing’s got his rent
paid in advance an’ a reservation here,” and he pushed the freak into the cell. I said, “Upper bunk, friend,” and turned my face to the wall. The guards went away and for a long time nothing happened.

After a while I heard him scratching himself. That was all right in itself but I never heard a man scratch himself before so it echoed. I mean inside him; it was as if that huge chest was a box and sounding board. I rolled over and looked at him. He’d stripped off the shirt and was burrowing his fingers into his chest. As soon as he caught my eye he stopped, and in spite of his swarthy skin, I could see him blush.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

He grinned and shook his head. His teeth were very clean and strong. He looked very stupid. I said, “Cut it out, then.”

It was about eight o’clock, and the radio in the area below the tiers of cell-blocks was blaring out a soap opera about a woman’s trials and tribs with her second marriage. I didn’t like it, but the guard did, so we heard it every night. You get used to things like that and after a week or so begin to follow them. So I rolled out of the bunk and went to the gratings to listen. Crawley was a hulk over in the corner; he’d been here about twenty minutes now and still had nothing to say, which was all right with me.

The radio play dragged on and wound up as usual with another crisis in the life of the heroine, and who the hell really cared, but you’d tune in tomorrow night just to see if it would really be as dopey as you figured. Anyway, that was 8:45, and the lights would go out at nine. I moved back to my bunk, laid out a blanket, and began washing my face at the little sink by the door. At ten minutes to, I was ready to turn in, and Crawley still hadn’t moved. I said:

“Figurin’ to stay up all night?”

He started. “I—I—no, but I couldn’t possibly get into that upper bunk.”

I looked him over. His toothpick arms and legs looked too spindly to support a sparrow’s weight, let alone the tremendous barrel of a chest. The chest looked powerful enough to push the rest of him through a twenty-foot wall. I just didn’t know.