Juice (20 page)

Davis grinned euphorically. “I formally offer,” he said to Joe, “two three-year-old cows, a brace of shoats, and a hundred pounds of rice.”

Joe laughed, but he felt some of the warmth of his laugh ebb into anger, or at least irritation. “What about Rhein?”

Abruptly cool, Davis said, “Tonight at eight at the Century Club. He says he knows all about the insurance angles himself.”

“He probably does,” Joe said. “The fewer of us the better, anyway.”

There was an awkward silence. Dave broke it. “Mom,” he said, “Charlie Fry said Dad's picture was on the three-o'clock television.”

And at that moment came the first telephone call.

They had to wait for the five-o'clock news. The children hovered, anxious, unwilling to be sent off, hoping for some slightest opportunity to be useful to the world of adults. There was nothing for them to do; but now and then Joe rubbed Dave's head, or stroked Sally's hair, and when that happened the two helpless children pressed against him, responding like cats, or like hopeless lovers; and once Helen hugged them both and they saw that she had wept. The telephone rang almost incessantly.

Joe refused to answer it; Davis and Mrs. Newbery and Helen shared the chore. The first calls were from strangers. One was from a lawyer; Davis spoke to him, used a good deal of Latin, and threatened him with disbarment on obscure and ancient grounds. Two calls were ugly: one from a soft-spoken young man who tried to clarify the issues of class and caste involved; the other—this one brought Helen to tears—from a strident woman who spoke rapidly of Death and Hell and Damnation, who quoted Isaiah and Jesus and Paul, and who warned that God was everywhere.

By then the Harrisons' friends had reflected, decided not to call, and changed their minds. Words of support came into the house—words of cheer (misguided but welcome), words of understanding (presumptuous but welcome), words of sympathy (distracting but welcome). Two newspapers called; Davis dealt with them summarily. The
Intelligencer
did not call, which worried Joe, meaning as it must that P.A.N.'s coverage would be dictated and approved by Rhein; but Davis shrugged it off. Davis knew that the issue would not be resolved in newspapers or by broadcasts; Davis hoped that it would be resolved by Davis, and became more and more gloomy as his responsibility became more and more apparent. Joe suggested having the telephone service suspended; Davis shrugged and told him that it could not be done on quick notice.

But by five o'clock there was silence again. “It's all over,” Davis decided. “That's because you're not important. If you were a union organizer or a pacifist or a one-worlder they'd still be calling.” The six of them moved to the small alcove which served the Harrisons as a television room. “Get it on some rival channel first,” Davis said. “We already know what P.A.N. thinks.” Dave, at the controls, created a sharp image for them. Helen and Mrs. Newbery were side by side on a small settee; Davis stood nervously in a corner, running a hand through his hair and glaring outraged at the machine; Joe had slumped into an easy chair, and Sally sat on the floor with her head against his knee. Joe was tired, physically tired and morally tired. “Ladies,” the machine said, “this is the
old-fashioned
way to remove excess hair.” Davis said, “The new way is to burn it off with pine faggots. Look at that frump! The flowered print of that dressing gown! Helen, may I light a cigar?” Helen nodded, and Davis swathed himself in smoke. Mrs. Newbery watched him, angry along with him, alert to the sorrows of his changing face, motherly—motherly! She smiled, making fun of herself: motherly. The sorrows of his changing face, she thought; that's from a poem, and he read it to me, the something sorrows of your changing face … pilgrim! The pilgrim sorrows … She looked at Joe, whose eyes were shut, and again felt motherly. I'm promiscuous, she thought; I can feel motherly toward any number of men. I need children. She looked again at Davis. Maybe I've just learned something about men, she thought; maybe they can feel husbandly toward any number of women, and it's unfair to expect them not to. She looked at Joe again, and then at Helen, who was pale.

The station had been identified; the motor oil was being praised. Helen sniffed at the cigar smoke and liked it; she leaned forward to touch Joe's knee, and his hand fell over hers. Things were too good, she thought; it couldn't go on, I knew that. She was vaguely ashamed; Joe had castigated her for that feeling more than once; but now it's true, she thought. In one minute his face will be in that rectangle, in one minute he will—will—will belong to the ages, I suppose.

The familiar face of the commentator danced before her. She sensed Davis' stiffness, Mrs. Newbery's rigidity; Joe's eyes were open. A general sat before them, kindly and competent, touching the scale model of an intercontinental bomber; his lips moved, but the words were meaningless. They watched relief crews bring life to the victims of an upstate flood; a helicopter hovered, descended, ingathered a woman described as pregnant. A familiar building, a familiar square, stood before her; she heard the words “Los Pinos,” and she was looking at Joe; and the awareness that it was not Joe but an image of Joe was like a sharp slap. She sat up.

“But the local drama remains unresolved,” the voice said, and Joe thought it was rather flowery language. “The witnesses agreed in saying that Mr. Harrison was blameless in the accident. The case was about to be dismissed, and apparently, the report alleges, it was Mr. Harrison himself who protested. None of the principals in the case has been available for comment. The accident was the first fatal accident in Ashford since 1937. Meanwhile, three thousand miles away—”

It was over. Davis stepped forward and turned the dial: nothing; nothing; an old film; nothing; Joe Harrison surged out at them. This time it was almost unbearable for Helen. She was short of breath.

The new voice said, “It has been confirmed that Mr. Harrison was suffering from shock and strain, and that he was confused and upset during the hearing. Network officials have announced that the case will be disposed of tomorrow morning if Mr. Harrison's health permits,” and then it was not Joe but Joe and Helen, a small Sally and a smaller Dave, the classic pose, the family portrait; and Helen—this one, sitting here, me—heard their names recited tenderly, saw them all heaped on the ritual fire of cheap sentiment, and realized that she was weeping again. “The bastards!” Davis breathed. Joe stood up and touched Helen's hair and said coldly, “That's all.” Dave extinguished the image, and Mrs. Newbery felt helpless.

“I want a drink,” Joe said. “My mind was made up; but if it hadn't been, this would have done it. Davis—” the lights were on and they were all looking at Joe, who was not tired now but angry, taller and wider in the small room—“now do you know where you stand?”

Davis was still glaring satanically at the machine. His lips drew back in a smile wholly without joy; an assassin's smile; he did not answer.

14

At ten minutes of eight—the sun had not yet set—Joseph Harrison and John James Davis mounted a low, wide flight of stone steps, nodded to the doorman (black uniform; red-and-white piping; black garrison cap), and passed into the lobby of the Century Club. “These columns inside,” Davis was saying, “are much more impressive than those outside. Outside we have the maculate white of concrete—rough, streaked by the elements. Within, we have marble. Italian marble and Vermont marble. I call your attention particularly to the mosaic of the ceiling right here.” Joe Harrison looked heavenward; he was standing beneath a small dome, inlaid indeed. “It's customary to scoff,” Davis went on, “but the mosaic is, I think, in perfect taste. Spanish Renaissance, if anything. The blues are beautiful against that baked-earth color, and the red is used sparingly. And the pillars, as I say, are very good. The real thing. None of your Lally columns, nothing simply functional. Although function can be complex. Do you know the National Gallery? In Washington? Absolutely the perfect building for an art gallery. Its over-powering structural beauty is one of its functions. Which is remarkable only in that the gallery is a public building. This club, on the other hand, was built by nineteenth-century millionaires, among whom were necessarily a few who had received a classical education and knew beauty when they saw it. Presumably they hired good workmen. Presumably you couldn't reproduce this building for under a couple of million today. Presumably this man is going to ask us what we want.”

A white-haired gentleman in white tie bore down on them. “Good evening,” he said. “Mr. Davis. Mr. Harrison.” Davis nodded. “Mr. Rhein telephoned ahead and asked me to make you comfortable in the bar.”

“The bar is something else again,” Davis said. “I may be boring you; you've been here often, I'm sure. But this building is more than the sum of its parts. It stands for—almost exudes—the spirit of an age. The bar, for example, is a men's bar, as bars should be. A nude therefore hangs over the center section of bottles, appropriately enough brandy bottles. The nude is none of your naïve modern pornography, with huge breasts just hidden and a leg crossed to hide the pubic hair; no indeed. Look at her,” he said as they entered the bar. “Same pose as the ‘Maja Desnuda.' Breasts somewhat flattened, as breasts tend to be when a woman is supine. Not too narrow a waist; and magnificent hips. Functional, so to speak; we sense the articulation. And a veritable jungle between them, thinning to sage-brush toward the navel. Now look across the room.” They turned. The gentleman in tails waited patiently. “Stag at bay,” Davis said. “Fourteen points. Fornication and death, those two paintings, because this is a men's bar. Now we can sit down. You see,” he said as they seated themselves, “there used to be a world inhabited exclusively by men. A man of the middle class or better could be a model father, a kind husband, a respected vestryman; and when he needed violence—we all do—he had the violence of competing in business, slaughtering animals, and futtering women—women who had a vocation, who possessed all the opulence, all the blatant femininity that is, in the end, what a man wants from a woman. No virtues, perhaps; they'd have been helpless with children, or running a house-hold; but they had the one virtue that so few emancipated women have: they were ineradicably and inextinguishably feminine; they were the objects of man's desire.”

“They got old and raddled like anybody else,” Harrison said.

“Of course. And I suppose their tragedy was that they were specialists; when they became obsolete there was nothing left for them. Although a good many managed to marry into the upper crust. And now we have none of that. Violence in business is out because everything is done by committees, meetings, conferences, and because the empires are all built; because it takes too much money to start a new one, and too much education for one man. Hunting has become ridiculous; the hunter has every modern comfort, and laws have had to be passed banning the use of machine guns on terrified herbivores. And women have become so generalized—so capable, so equal—that you aren't simply sleeping with a woman; you're sleeping with a bridge expert, or a magazine executive, or an art critic, or—God save the mark!—a doctor, or a mother, a modern mother, insanely competent, an amateur psychiatrist, and going to bed with one of them is fearfully complicated: you have to figure the mental stresses, the psychological strains, the quality of courtship and foreplay, the possible emotional, social, economic, and historical consequences—by which time, of course, you wish you were home in your own bed with a legible edition of Fielding. Ah, there you are!”

Joe Harrison looked up in alarm; but it was not Rhein. It was the waiter. “Scotch on ice,” he said.

“Two,” Davis said. The man nodded and left them. “So men are restricted as women become liberated,” Davis said. “I suppose that's not true. I suppose I'm an animal, and anything that keeps me from expressing my elemental emotions seems restricting. The philosophers of course tell us that only by dominating our coarser elements can we arrive at true wisdom, or peace, or whatever; but I have blood and bones and glands and I'm not sure I want wisdom and peace.”

“But you're a rarity,” Harrison said. “You can afford to be an anarchist and an animal because you live alone. Physically, I mean. You have no wife, no children, no company, no money troubles. If the world depended on you, it would come to an end. You can propagate, all right; but your children would be left to die. Unless you restricted the women to motherhood, and denied them even wifehood.”

Davis grinned. “Now you're talking.”

Harrison was silent.

“You look puzzled,” Davis said.

“I am. For a minute I thought I'd seen something about you, something important. But it slipped away.”

“Don't analyze me,” Davis said.

“I wouldn't think of it,” Joe said. “It would be a gross impertinence.”

“You're a man of marked taste and intelligence,” Davis said. “I don't believe I know three people who would recognize it as an impertinence. It's supposed to be ‘helpful,' you know. A friendly gesture. People who can't change a tire without calling a mechanic won't hesitate to tell you all about your unconscious. I like the unconscious, by the way. Makes me feel as though I'm sitting on an overheated boiler; if I let down for a minute, if I don't keep a sure hand on the switches and valves and what not, the explosion comes.”

“Yes,” Joe said. “That's what I did. I let down for a minute. It wasn't even unconscious. Just stupid.”

“I agree with you, you know.” Davis greeted the waiter with a smile. “And I hope we can work it out. I don't believe that stupidity ought to be punished. Corrected; or if it's incorrigible and chronic, locked away somewhere, with a few comforts and a chance to change slowly. Let us, however, keep off the morbid until our host gets here. We'll have a bellyful of it before ten o'clock.”