Voices from the Street Page 8

  “Hello,” she said.

  The store was chill, dismal in its barrenness. In the pallid blue flicker of the night-light the girl’s face seemed not round: a hollow pointed bonelike thing, a rigid frame supporting her features. Her eyes were deep-sunk, far down in her skull. Her hair appeared transparent, a sheet of dry spidery material, a brown cap through which her scalp and ears were visible. She wore no makeup; her lips were pale, thin.

  “What are you doing?” Fergesson demanded, in fright. “Don’t you have a TV at home?”

  After a time Ellen nodded. “I was walking around. I got tired.” She indicated the vast tumor of her belly. “So I came in to sit down.” She added: “Stuart went off with some friends of his . . . for a beer and talk.”

  “I’ll take you home,” Fergesson said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I come down here.” He pushed from the display room, over to the counter. Leaning on his elbows, hands knotted into a stubby massed-fist, he gazed intently at the girl, outlined as she was by the night-light and the TV screen. “I come down now and then to catch up on stuff nobody gets done during the day. Somebody has to keep the place going.”

  Ellen nodded.

  “You and Stumblebum have a quarrel?” Fergesson asked presently.

  “No, not really. I’m cross these days, I guess.”

  “How long will it be?”

  “Oh, they say three weeks. Give or take a few days.”

  “You startled me. I didn’t expect to find anybody here.”

  Ellen smiled. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you warm enough? Want my coat?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Fergesson, gazing across the counter at her, marveled at the miracle of this bloated creature who sat before the television screen, hands folded in her lap, eyes fixed dutifully on the pale-lit shapes. In spite of her vast bulk, in spite of the wan hollows of her eyes, there was a presence about her that awed him deeply. He felt satisfaction in standing gazing at her, like a man contemplating a religious picture, a stained-glass tableau: static, classic, balanced. In the immensity of her body there was a kind of balance, a completeness, an entirety. She was self-contained; she was what he was not. She needed nothing from outside. Everything meaningful was contained in her body, like the wads and layers of fat a hibernating animal stores up to make it self-sufficient.

  “You look pretty smart,” he said accusingly. How did that sound? Not the way he wanted . . . The envy in his voice was audible even to him. “I mean, you look like the cat that swallowed the canary. Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

  She smiled faintly. “Yes, I think so.”

  “It looks good on you. You’re a lot older, this way.”

  “Oh, millions of years.”

  “Do you have any names picked out?”

  “Margaret, if it’s a girl. Peter, if it’s a boy. Stuart always wanted to be called Pete. He never quite made it.”

  “Now he will.” After a moment Fergesson said: “What did you quarrel about?”

  “I don’t really know. Something to do with war and God. I’ll tell you someday. Not now.”

  “Ellen,” he said, “what’s wrong with Stuart?”

  “Do you care?”

  “I know there’s something wrong.”

  Very simply, Ellen said: “He doesn’t know anybody he can trust.”

  “He can trust me. I won’t let him down.”

  “You already have.”

  “I have? How?”

  “Stuart wants to grow up. But what is there to grow up to? What kind of world have you left him?”

  “I didn’t create the world.”

  Ellen smiled. “Couldn’t you have put up something, some kind of show, an attempt?”

  “That’s been done,” Fergesson said. “He’s had that, too. He came along when that was going on. That Man—”

  “Yes,” Ellen agreed. “That Man. And That Man is rotting away underground.”

  Unhappily, Fergesson said: “Doesn’t Stuart like me?”

  Ellen considered. “I don’t think he even sees you. I’m afraid he’s never learned to see anybody. What he wants, what he’s looking for, is much too vague, too remote and abstract. It has no name. A hundred years ago it was called grace. It’s a search for someone he can have faith in. Someone who won’t let him down.”

  “If he could see me, he’d know I want him to trust me.”

  “If he could do that, I think he’d be well. But he doesn’t know how. So he can only keep on searching for something invisible. Something that nobody has ever seen on this earth and nobody ever will.”

  Fergesson came around the end of the counter and stood there, temporarily. Outside the store, beyond the locked front door, a man and woman walked past, heels echoing mournfully in the total night stillness. “I’ll take you home,” he said. “I have the car out front.”

  Presently Ellen got to her feet. “Yes, thanks. That would be fine.”

  Fergesson entered the display room and snapped off the television set. The sound had been on so low that only when he bent over the set did the faint tinny blare of it reach his ears. “Were you actually looking at that?” he asked.

  “Not exactly. Just thinking.” She moved toward the door and he followed after her, checking in his automatic way to see if Hadley had turned off all the sets before leaving. He unlocked the front door and stood aside as Ellen pushed through, out onto the frigid sidewalk.

  “It’s cold,” Fergesson said as they got into the car. Ellen didn’t answer. “Damn cold for June. I’ll turn on the heater.”

  She nodded, and he did so. The motor came on with an even hum of power, and Fergesson backed carefully out into the deserted street.

  “Will he be home?” he asked her as they turned onto Cedar Street.

  “I suppose so. I don’t really know.” Ellen gazed calmly out the window at the dark shapes of houses and trees. “You and Alice have never had any children, have you?”

  “No.” He didn’t elaborate; he had been kidded and sympathized with often enough. “My fault,” he finally added. “According to the doctors.”

  “Would you like to have children?”

  “Well,” Fergesson said tightly, “I have my store. And my little flock to watch over.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  Horace Wakefield, the following night, gratefully perceived the exact moment when six o’clock arrived. Released from servitude, Wakefield ran to the door of the flower shop, closed and locked it, turned off the outdoor neon, and hurried back to clear the counters for the night. In this, he had the help of little Jackie Perkins, the child-eyed girl who assisted him in such chores as making up corsages, giving change, wrapping ported plants, selling Ferry seeds, dusting the fixtures.

  “Time to go home!” Wakefield began to cry thinly, rushing about the store in a travesty of efficiency. To the closet he hurried, got down his beaver-style coat, halted for a moment before the mirror to hold up his lower gum and examine the white sores on the soft underside, blew his nose in a Kleenex from his special box under the counter, briefly touched his hernia belt to be sure it hadn’t crept up, and then clapped his hands together loudly.

  “Let’s go!” he bleated. “End of the day! End of the week! Time to go home, kiddies!”

  The flower shop lay in a thick, heavy, sweetly scented fog steamed up by endless hot moist flowers. Jackie began carrying certain ones to the refrigerator for the night, a weak smile on her immature face, long thin fingers carefully gripped around her burden, yellow-red nails digging in like claws.

  “You go ahead, Mister Wakefield,” she said faintly. In her black skirt and gray turtleneck sweater, sandals on her feet and copper bracelets on her wrists, Jackie worked rapidly, happily, back and forth, lips pressed tightly together, a damp line of perspiration beading the faint down beneath her nose. “I’ll lock up,” she called.

  “Thank you, Jackie,” Horace Wakefield
replied, with pleasure. He accepted the tribute to his position with grave dignity. “Yes, I’ll go on. You have your key?”

  Jackie indicated the tiny square of cloth at the end of the counter that was her purse. “I’ll put the money away in the safe; I have to stick around for a while, anyhow. Bill is coming by at half past to drive me up to the City.”

  “Ah,” Wakefield joked, grinning a knowing gold-toothed grin. “Going out tonight? Big doings?”

  A lofty, superior look swept Jackie’s face into a sneer of derision. “Big doings, but not the way you mean.” She made it sound as if Wakefield’s words had dripped coarse innuendo. “We’re going to the symphony.”

  Ha-haing to himself, Wakefield good-naturedly bustled from the store and out onto the sidewalk. He waved gaily and crossed with the lights to the far side. At the mailbox he halted to drop in a handful of bills and cards, straightened his coat, lost his jolly leer, and continued, with an expression of dignity on his face, toward the Health Food Store.

  It was closed, and the shade was pulled down. He rapped twice on the door, then a third quick tap with his knuckles. Lights gleamed under the door and he could hear the sound of people within. After a moment the key was turned and the door moved open just a crack.

  “Good evening, Betty,” Wakefield said solemnly.

  “Come in, Horace,” Betty said wearily. She locked the door after him and shuffled over to the counter. “Sit down anywhere. Do you want some tea?”

  “Thank you,” Wakefield said as he seated himself at the counter. Tea was poured for him from a glittering Chinese pot into a fragile cup so tiny that Wakefield had trouble getting hold of the handle. The tea was dark amber; rich vapors drifted up and tickled his nose. A thick, exotic, Oriental tea.

  “Sugar?” Betty groaned. “Lemon?”

  Wakefield sipped the tea. “Just right, Betty.”

  There were others sitting at the counter and at the tables, with their fragile teacups. Mostly women; he was almost the only man. Eight or nine of them, smartly dressed, chatting quietly among themselves. Tension crackled in the air: they were waiting expectantly for eight o’clock, the lecture hour. Posters of Theodore Beckheim hung above the counter. Society books and tracts were on display by the cash register. Free pamphlets, copies of the People’s Watchman . . . The central poster in the window had been reinforced by small informational displays. Theodore Beckheim seemed to be all around the store, in every corner and alcove.

  Wakefield did not specifically object to this invasion of his privacy, but the tension of the women annoyed him. He could tolerate the looming, dark features of Beckheim gazing significantly at him from every part of the store, but he could not bear the unending excited mutter from dry female throats. Normally, the Health Food Store was vacant at this hour; it was after closing and only the employees and a privileged few were supposed to be allowed behind the door. Tonight, a horde perched around him, spoiling his dinner, turning what was customarily a personal ritual into a public spectacle. He resented it. He wished they would leave; hadn’t he come here every night for ten years, eaten his dinner in the dark quiet of the locked-up store?

  “Good evening,” the woman next to him said, in a harsh, dry rasp.

  Wakefield winced, and glanced furtively around at her. She was tall, white-haired, a stern woman in her middle fifties. Her feverish eyes snapped; her thin lips twisted. She raised her cup of tea as if in toast. Wakefield was embarrassed; he turned angrily away and concentrated on the marzipan display above his head. “Evening,” he muttered apprehensively.

  “You manage the flower shop,” the woman stated. “You’ve been there thirteen years.”

  “Fourteen,” Wakefield corrected. The woman made him uncomfortable. She was quite tall; hard-featured like a bird of prey; pebbled yellow skin and tangled brows. Her mane of white hair was coarse and thick; it hung over her ears and neck like an old man’s. Her cheeks were sunken; her dark, unpleasant face burned with a fiery inner fever that made Wakefield think of TB patients.

  “Mrs. Krafft eats no meat,” Betty said. Addressing the white-haired woman she said: “You and Mister Wakefield should get to know each other.”

  Wakefield’s mouth opened slightly; he was suddenly interested. His annoyance vanished and he turned eagerly to face Mrs. Krafft. “Is that right? You don’t care for meat?”

  The feverish glow of the woman’s face increased. “I care for meat,” she cried. “But I can’t eat the flesh of higher creatures who have as much right to live as any human being. In certain respects I admire higher animals more than man. Their ability to bear suffering without complaint and their natural dignity, their nobility and freedom from carnal vulgarity—”

  “Yes,” Wakefield agreed. A flush crossed his own small face; he was embarrassed and pleased, and his hands began to twitch. Words came with difficulty; tides of emotion swept up in his throat and made him cough and turn apologetically away. He removed his steel-rimmed glasses and polished them shakily with his pocket handkerchief. “Yes, I know what you mean,” he managed. “It’s a moral issue.” He replaced his glasses on his nose. “Fat’s unclean. Unhealthy. Every time I see a meat market I think of the city dump, decaying meat and tin cans and rotting garbage.” He broke off. “I can’t stand the sight of meat.”

  “Have you ever looked in their eyes?” Mrs. Krafft said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “When I was a child on the farm my father killed cattle. He hit them on the head with an ax and cut their throats. I had to hold the bowl. As they died I saw into their eyes.”

  “Yes,” Wakefield agreed vaguely. “Their eyes. Terrible thing.”

  “When I see some of the people walking around—worse than any jungle beast.” Mrs. Krafft’s voice rose shrilly. “Pigs! Obscene creatures that ought to be put away. No dumb animal could sink to the depths of viciousness and brutality of man. Man is the cruelest animal, the wickedest animal. The only really disgusting animal. You see them with their big cigars, spitting and laughing and slapping each other on the back. Telling dirty jokes and belching and swilling down their beer and fried oysters.” She managed to control herself with difficulty. “When I’m taking dictation at conferences sometimes they start laughing and joking with each other. Coarse, bestial creatures . . .” On her thin, feverish face gleamed a lifetime of resentment. Mrs. Krafft had dearly suffered at the hands of men, degraded to a second-class citizen, forced to creep about in the shadows.

  But there was more to it than that. Mrs. Krafft, he realized, was reacting to the vulgarity of the world as was he; both had come to the Watchmen Society to escape cruelty and viciousness, to enter into an environment of spirituality. He thought of it as a venal, corrupt society; but being a woman, Mrs. Krafft identified it with men. He wondered which of them was right. If it was men, then Horace Wakefield carried the taint. It was all right for a woman to feel that way, but if he listened to that philosophy . . .

  Suppose a man did revolt at vulgarity and coarseness, at animal passions . . . and saw those not in society around him, but in his own masculine nature. What then? The revulsion would be for one’s self; the struggle would be internal. Where would a man go? What would become of him? Driven across the face of the world, wandering restlessly, tormented, hating his own nature; his lower parts, as it were.

  Wakefield considered his own lower parts and saw nothing there but pale pink skin, the same as the rest of him. He had no lower parts: it was all right. He relaxed and sighed. Horace Wakefield had but one nature, and that nature was pure.

  He finished his Chinese tea and pushed the fragile cup away. “Very tasty,” he said to Betty.

  “How long have you been in the Movement?” Mrs. Krafft asked him fiercely.

  “I heard Theodore Beckheim speak late last fall, when I was down in Los Angeles,” Wakefield answered, examing his carefully manicured nails. “I believe the Movement originated in that area.”

  Mrs. Krafft caught her breath and was engulfed by emotion. “Los An
geles! You heard the Los Angeles speech? I’d give ten years off my life to have been there.” Her voice rose to transcendental levels. “That was when he cured the girl of paralysis. He had her up on the stage. That was when he was just beginning to understand his power of healing.”

  “Oh,” Wakefield agreed, “that was in the early days. We were just beginning. I mean, it was just healing then. We hadn’t found God.” He added: “We’ve worked up from there. In those days Mister Beckheim was a practitioner.” Mention of Los Angeles recalled to him all the old aspects of the Movement: the magnetic belt which he himself had purchased and worn, the special radioactive waters in which he himself had bathed, Beckheim passing his vast hands over the naked bodies of children to cure them of various catarrhs and hay fevers. “It was just bodies then. Now we know the body is nothing.” In Wakefield’s mind there was a dim fog when it came to thinking about bodies. “It’s the soul that counts.”

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Krafft agreed. “Disease is a manifestation of improper mental attitudes.”

  Wakefield didn’t know about that. “Well now, I suppose in a way you’re right,” he murmured grudgingly. “But it’s always seemed to me that disease is the result of improper diet, although I suppose a person with the wrong mental attitude would eat the wrong food. But it seems to me that it’s what you put into your stomach that determines your mental attitude; do you see what I mean? You are what you eat, do you see? Eating meat causes bestial attitudes—eating fruit and clean vegetables purifies the mind. It seems to me, and of course I might be wrong, but it seems to me that states of consciousness are the result of diet.”

  Mrs. Krafft couldn’t go along with that. “I agree with you about meat, of course. But I don’t recall having had any coarse thoughts in my childhood, when I still ate meat. It’s the killing of animals—nobody with a pure mind could destroy a helpless animal. When we’ve brought real purity to mankind there won’t be any slaughtering of dumb animals. Murder, hate, disease, will be wiped from the earth. They’re all the same thing, anyhow.”