Beggarman, Thief (34 page)

“No,” Wesley said, “I’m not disappointed.” He wasn’t quite sure he was telling the truth. She must have been a lot different when she was younger, he thought.

“You’re a decent boy,” she said, as they started walking again. “I hope you’re having a better time than your father did.”

“I’m okay,” Wesley said.

“After we—well—after we broke up, in a manner of speaking, although we still lived in the same house and I saw him every day and served him his meals with the family in the dining room, but we never said another word to each other, except for good-bye, he turned ferocious, as though he was tormented. He’d come home bloody from fights night after night, people began to treat him as though he was a stray, dangerous dog, he screwed every little tart in town. I heard about it, of course, I guess it was a kind of revenge, I didn’t begrudge him it, although I knew it would one day catch up with him, in this nasty, hypocritical town. They put him in jail for rape—rape, mind you, when every girl and woman in town with hot pants was after him like kids after a fire engine. Did he tell you about that?”

“Yes.”

“And the twins he was supposed to have knocked up and the father made the complaint?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“He must have loved you very much,” Clothilde said, “to tell you things like that.”

“I guess he did. He liked to talk to me.” Nights on deck, under the stars, or in the dark pilothouse.

“Naturally they would pick on him, his reputation here and all, everybody was glad to believe the worst about him,” Clothilde said bitterly. “Those twins had a choice of fifty fathers! Including the cop who arrested Tom. I see them—the twins—they’re still in town, grown women. I advise you not to look
them
up. One of the kids looks as though he was your brother.” Clothilde chuckled merrily. “Finally, there’s some decent blood running through a few veins in this town. Ah …” she said softly, “sometimes late at night, I take to wondering what it would have been like, how it all would have turned out if I’d listened to his crazy begging and run off with him, a twenty-five-year-old servant and a sixteen-year-old boy, without a penny between us.… I couldn’t do it to him, could I?” she asked, pleading.

“No, I guess not,” Wesley said.

“Ah, I keep on talking. About myself. About ancient history.” Clothilde shook her head impatiently. “What about you? Are you all right?”

“Not too bad,” Wesley said.

“You having a good time?”

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.”

“Still,” she said, “you look as though you’re being taken care of—nice clothes and all, like a young gentleman.”

“I’ve been lucky,” Wesley said. “In a way. Somebody is taking care of me. Sort of.”

“You can tell me all about yourself over dinner. You’re in no hurry to leave town, are you?”

“Not really,” Wesley said. “I figured tomorrow.”

“I’ll make you a roast loin of pork, with mashed potatoes and applesauce and red cabbage. It was one of your father’s favorite meals.” She hesitated. “I have to tell you something, Wesley,” she said. “I’m not alone. I’m living with a nice man, he’s the foreman at the furniture factory. We’re not married. He’s got a wife and two kids and they’re Catholics.… He’ll be at dinner. You don’t mind?” she asked anxiously.

“It’s got nothing to do with me,” Wesley said, “or my father.”

“People’re funny,” Clothilde said. “You never know how they’re going to react.” She sighed. “A woman can’t live alone. At least not me. Ah, you live two ways—every day, with the man coming home and sitting down at night to read his paper and drink his beer and not say anything much to you, and in your memory, the wonderful days you had when you were younger, with a wild boy. Wesley, I have to tell you, your father was the gentlest and tenderest man a woman could ever hope to find in her travels on this earth. And he had the softest skin, like silk, over all those young muscles, that I’ve ever felt. You don’t mind my talking like this, do you?”

“I want to hear it,” Wesley said, feeling the tears come to his eyes now, not for himself or even for his dead father, but for this wide-shouldered, Indian-dark, aging woman, marked by a lifetime of work and disappointment, walking by his side.

“Do you like wine with your dinner?” Clothilde asked.

“I wouldn’t mind a glass,” Wesley said. “I was in France for quite a long time.”

“We’ll stop in at the liquor store,” Clothilde said gaily, “and buy a delicious bottle of red wine to celebrate the visit of my love’s beautiful son to an old lady. Frank—that’s my man, the foreman at the furniture factory, can give up his beer for the occasion.”

«  »

Schultz, his father’s old manager, was, Alice told him, in the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Bronx.

“He’s that fat old man sitting in the hall with his hat and coat on as though he’s going out,” the attendant told Wesley. “Only he never goes out. He sits like that all day, every day, never saying anything. I don’t know if he’ll talk to you. He don’t talk to anyone else.”

Wesley walked down the bare hall to where an enormously fat man, bloating out of his suit and overcoat, a derby hat squarely on his head, his features little squiggles in the immense expanse of his face, sat on a straight wooden chair, staring at the opposite wall, the eyes half closed, the breath coming in snorts.

“Mr. Schultz,” Wesley said, “can I talk to you for a minute?”

The fat man’s wrinkled eyelids lifted heavily and the eyes slowly turned in Wesley’s direction, although the head, with its derby, remained rigid.

“What’s it to you if I’m Schultz or I’m not Schultz?” the fat man said. His voice was guttural and there was a clacking of dentures as he spoke.

“My name is Wesley Jordache,” Wesley said. “A long time ago you managed my father. Tom Jordan.”

The eyes slowly went back to their original position, staring at the peeling paint of the wall of the corridor. “Tom Jordan,” the fat man said. “I don’t allow that name to be used in my presence. I hear tell he got himself killed. Son or no son, don’t think you’re going to hear old Schultzy say he’s sorry. He had it in him to go someplace and he screwed it away. Two weeks with an English whore, eating and drinking like a pig, after all I did to bring him along. And then, when he was down on his ass I got him a salary in Las Vegas. He got fifty bucks a day sparring with Freddy Quayles—there was a boy, my one chance in my whole miserable life to handle a champion—and what does he do, he shacks up with Quayles’ wife, and then when Quayles goes to his room to object to his conduct, he near murders him. And Quayles couldn’t beat my mother after that. If I hadn’t taken pity on your stupid old man and loaned him my car to get out of Vegas, the mob would’ve cut him to little pieces with steak knives. Your old man wasn’t anything to be proud of, boy, and that’s for certain, but he sure was dynamite in a hotel room. Only, for money, you have to fight in a ring twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet, with a referee on the premises. If they let your old man fight in a closet and charged admission he’d still be the champion of the world, the sonofabitch. My one chance, Freddy Quayles, moved like a dancer, wrecked for cunt. You want to hear about your old man—I’ll tell you about your old man—he let his cock destroy him.”

“But you were with him before that,” Wesley said, “there were other things …”

“Destroyed by his cock,” the fat man said, with the clacking of dentures, as he stared straight ahead of him. “I said my say. Get the fuck out of here, I’m a busy man.”

Wesley started to say something else, then realized it was hopeless. He shrugged and went out, leaving the fat man in his overcoat and derby hat staring at the wall across from him.

«  »

Dutifully, not knowing whether to laugh or cry as he spoke, Wesley made his report of the visit with Schultz to Alice. When he finished, he said, “I don’t know whether I want to talk to anyone else who knew him, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe there are some things a son shouldn’t hear about his father. A lot of things, maybe. What’s the sense in my listening to people smear him all over the country? He must have been a different man while he was in America. There’s no connection between the man I knew and the man these people’re talking about. If I hear one more person tell me how rotten my father was and how glad they are he’s dead, maybe I’ll go back to Indianapolis and let my mother cut my hair and take me to church and forget about my father once and for all.…” He stopped when he saw the disapproval on Alice’s face.

“That’s quitting,” she said.

“Maybe that’s the name of the game,” Wesley said. “At least my game.”

“Clothilde didn’t talk like that about your father,” Alice said, her eyes angry behind her glasses.

“A fat lady in a Laundromat,” Wesley said cruelly.

“Say you’re sorry you said that,” Alice said, sounding school-teacherly.

“All right,” he said listlessly. “I’m sorry. But, I have a feeling I’m just wasting time and money. My time,” he said, with a wry smile, “and your money.”

“Don’t you worry about my money,” she said.

“I suppose,” Wesley said, “the character in your book is a fine, upstanding young man who never gets down in the dumps and he finds out that his father was one of nature’s noblemen, who went around while he was alive doing good deeds and helping the poor and being nice to old ladies and never screwing a friend’s wife.…”

“Shut up, Wesley,” Alice said. “That’s enough of that. Don’t you tell me what I’m writing. When the book comes out, if it ever comes out, you can buy it and then tell me what the characters are like. Not before.”

They were in the living room, Alice seated in an easy chair and Wesley standing at the window looking out at the dark street. Alice was dressed to go out because she had a date to go to a party and was waiting for the man who was going to escort her.

“I hate this goddamn city,” Wesley said, staring down at the empty street, “I wish I was a thousand miles out to sea. Oh, hell!” He moved away from the window and threw himself full length on the sofa. “Christ, if I could only be back in France, just one night, with people I love and who I know love me …”

“Take your shoes off the sofa,” Alice said sharply. “You’re not in a stable.”

“Sorry,” he said, moving his legs so that his feet were on the floor. “I was brought up uncouth, or so people keep telling me.”

Then he heard her sobbing. He lay still for a moment, closing his eyes, wishing the dry, uneven sound would go away. But it didn’t go away and he jumped up and went over to the chair in which she was sitting with her head in her hands, her shoulders moving convulsively. He knelt in front of her and put his arms around her. She felt small and fragile and soft in her pretty black party dress.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently. “Honest, I didn’t mean what I said, honest. I’m just sore at myself and that’s how it came out. Don’t think I don’t appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I don’t want to let you down, only sometimes, like tonight …”

She raised her head, her face tearstained. “Forgive me for crying,” she said. “I hate women who cry. I had an awful day, too, people were yelling at me all day. You can put your shoes on the sofa anytime you want.” She laughed, through her tears.

“Never again,” he said, still holding her, glad that she had laughed, wanting to protect her against disappointment and people yelling at her all day and the city and his own black character.

They looked at each other in silence, her clear wet eyes magnified by her glasses. She smiled tremulously at him. He pulled her gently toward him and kissed her. She put her arm around him and held him. Her lips were as soft as anything he had ever imagined, the very essence of softness. Finally, she pulled away from him. All tears were gone. “So, that’s what a girl has to do to get a kiss around here,” she said, laughing.

The doorbell rang from downstairs. She jumped out of the chair and he stood up. “There’s my date,” she said. “Entertain him while I fix my face. His field is archaeology.”

She fled into the bathroom.

There was a knock on the door and Wesley opened it. A tall, skinny young man with a domed forehead and steel-rimmed glasses was standing there. “Hello,” the man said. “Is Alice in?”

“She’ll be out in a minute,” Wesley said, closing the door as the man came in. “I’m to entertain you until she’s ready. My name is Jordache. I’m her cousin.”

“Robinson,” the man said. They shook hands.

Wesley wondered how he was expected to entertain him. “You want to listen to the radio?” he asked.

“Not especially,” the man said. “May I sit down?”

“Of course.”

Robinson sat down in the easy chair and crossed his long legs and took out a package of cigarettes. “Smoke?” he said, offering the package to Wesley.

“No, thanks.” He watched Robinson light his cigarette. How did you talk to a man whose field is archaeology? “I saw some ruins in France when I was there,” he offered hopefully. “The arena in Nîmes, Arles, stuff like that,” he said lamely.

“Is that so?” Robinson said, blowing smoke. “Interesting.”

Wesley wondered if Robinson would be so offhand if he was told that just before he rang the bell, Wesley had kissed Alice Larkin, Robinson’s date for the night, in the very chair he was sitting in and that before that he had made her cry. He felt condescendingly superior to the lanky man in his baggy slacks and five-colored, nubbly tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, although maybe that was the way all archaeologists dressed, maybe it was a uniform that commanded respect in those circles. “Where did you dig?” he said abruptly.

“What’s that?” Robinson stopped his cigarette in midair, on the way to his mouth.

“I said, where did you dig?” Wesley said. “Alice told me you were in the field. Isn’t that what archaeologists do—dig?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Syria mostly. A little bit in Turkey.”

“What did you find?” Alice had asked him to entertain the man and he was doing his best.

“Shards, mostly.”

“I see,” Wesley said, resolving to look up the word. “Shards.”

“You interested in archaeology?”

“Moderately,” Wesley said.

There was a silence and Wesley had the impression Robinson wasn’t being entertained. “What’s Syria like?” he asked.