Читать книгу The Lost Weekend - Charles Jackson - Страница 3

Table of Contents

"The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot."

These words, on the printed page, had the unsettling effect no doubt intended, but with a difference. At once he put the book aside: closed it, with his fingers still between the pages; dropped his arm over the edge of the chair and let it hang, the book somewhere near the floor. This in case he wanted to look at it again. But he did not need to. Already he knew the sentence by heart: he might have written it himself. Indeed, it was with a sense of familiarity, of recognition, that his mind had first read through and accepted that sentence only a moment before; and now, as he relaxed his fingers' grip and dropped the book to the floor, he said aloud to himself: "That's me, all right." The book hit the rug with a soft thump and the Scottie looked up from its basket. "You heard me, Mac," he called out. "That's what I said!" He glared at the sleepy dog and added, loudly, burlesquing his fear and his delight: "It's me they're talking about. Me!"

He had been alone for nearly an hour. When Wick left, they had had one of their familiar and painful scenes, a scene in which he played dumb, as usual, leaving to his brother the burden of talking around the subject and avoiding any specific mention of what was on both their minds.

Wick had stood in the open door and looked back and said, "I wish you'd change your mind and come with us, this afternoon."

From the deep chair he smiled at his younger brother. "I know you do," he said, "but I can't. I'll be much better off here." He was aware that he was acting and looking like a romantic invalid and he tried to curb this.

The brother came back in and closed the door. "Listen. We've had the tickets such a long while. And Helen'll be disappointed and I'll be disappointed. You know she's only going because of you."

"I'll hear it on the radio."

"Today's Thursday, not Saturday."

"Oh yes. I forgot."

"And you look all right," his brother went on. "Nobody would think there was a thing wrong with you--it's all in your imagination. You look perfectly all right."

"Wick, I could never sit through it. I'd spoil it for you and Helen and I'd be miserable myself." Unintentionally he made the pathetic, the disarming admission: "Wick, I've only just recovered--it's only been three days. I couldn't concentrate."

The brother looked at him searchingly, almost sadly, he thought. "I wouldn't keep asking you, Don, if I didn't think it would do you good. It would do you so much good."

He smiled again, hanging onto his patience for dear life. "I'd run into someone I know and I can't see anybody."

"You wouldn't see anybody."

"Oh yes I would. And besides there's Helen. I can't have even her see me."

"Helen's seen you like this dozens of times."

"There--you see? I do show it."

"You're exaggerating all this, Don, and just indulging yourself. Listen, Don. If I'm willing to take off the rest of the week, to take you away for a long weekend in the country--just the two of us and Mac--I should think you could do this one thing for me. Please come with us."

He looked at the Scottie curled up in its basket, absently watching the two brothers. After a long pause, while he gathered his breath and his brother regarded him in that worried puzzled way, he said: "I don't mean to be stubborn but I'm not exaggerating and I'm not really indulging myself. Please try to understand. One more day and I'll be all right, but today--I can't go out now and I certainly can't go sit through Tristan. Tonight, when we get together in the car and drive away, fine. But not now.--Wick, I'd go to pieces if I went out now."

"How?" the brother asked. "And anyway, I'd be with you."

He shook his head. "Wick, won't you please go and forget about me? I can't see why you want me to go when you know I don't want to."

"You know why I want you to go," the brother said. "I mean," he added quickly, "I just don't want you to be alone when you're feeling like this."

"I'll be all right," he said, pretending not to notice the slip. He sighed, already fatigued with the familiar argument, but he believed he could keep it up forever if only it ended, finally, with his brother leaving him alone. "Will you stop worrying about me?"

"All right"--and he saw, with relief, that Wick had reached the point where he was afraid of pressing him too far and even now pretended to be pacified. "I'll tell Helen you didn't feel well enough. Will you be ready when I come back?"

"Yes," he said. "I'm ready now. I feel much better since I shaved and dressed." The shaving and dressing was probably what had precipitated this whole tiresome thing, it had given Wick ideas, but he couldn't take it back now.

Wick didn't seem to have noticed. "Mrs. Foley will be in about three o'clock to clean up a little. I've left a dollar on the radio in case you want her to get you anything."

"I won't want anything."

"What are you going to do--you're not going out, are you?"

"Oh no, I'm not going out." He smiled, and added, "You don't believe me, do you?"

The brother looked away. "I just thought maybe you'd be taking Mac out."

"No. Mrs. Foley can, if he wants to go out."

"All right," the brother said again. "I'll have the car sent over and we can get going by six-thirty at the latest. It may be cold down there; after all, it's October; but a weekend in the country will do you a lot of good. Both of us."

Don smiled again. "Thursday to Monday--that's pretty long for a 'weekend.'"

"That's all right, the longer the better. And listen,"--Wick was working it up for his benefit, trying to act enthusiastic, trying to show he had forgotten the tiresome pleading and was convinced that he would stay where he was, safe and sound--"let's not come back till Tuesday, or even Wednesday. Well, Tuesday--I can arrange it all right with the office."

"Sounds wonderful, Wick. Hear that, Mac?" He laughed. "One of those long weekends in the country, that you read about!"

"I'll be late," Wick said, turning. "Goodbye."

"Give my love to Helen."

"You're sure there isn't anything you want?"

"Thanks, Wick, I don't want anything. Have a good time."

"You'll surely be here?"

"Here?"

"When I come back."

"Of course I'll be here!" He was reproachful, hurt, and his brother turned at once toward the door.

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye. Give my love to Helen!"

The door was closed; and he smiled to himself as he realized what an effort it had cost Wick not to look back once more. He smiled because he was relieved to be alone again and because he knew so much more about this whole thing than his brother did. Poor Wick, he thought, and at once he began to feel better. "Well, Mac," he said aloud, "it seems that we're going to the country." He got up and went over to look at the dollar bill lying on the radio. Then he came back and sat down again in the big chair.

There was a small Longines traveling clock on the ledge of the bookshelf at his elbow and it said 1:32. He picked it up and wound it, remembering the generous Dutchman who had given it to him that winter in Gstaad and how the Dutchman's feelings had been hurt because he hadn't got around to thanking him for two days. He set it back on the shelf and looked about the room.

Now that he was alone, with five hours staring him in the face, he began to sense the first pricks of panic; then knew at once it was something he only imagined. "What to do, Mac, what to do?" The dog opened its eyes, lifted its head from the cushion, and relapsed into sleep again. "I get it," he said. "Bored!" He spoke up sharply, not even thinking of the dog now. "What the hell have you got to be bored with!" His eye fell on the gramophone. He walked over to it and lifted the cover. The last record of a Beethoven sonata was on, the Waldstein. He turned the switch and set it going; but before the record was halfway through, its jubilant energy and hammering clanging rhythm oppressed him, and he reached to shut it off. As he lifted the arm of the pickup, the trembling of his hand caused the needle to scrape across the record with a strident squawk that brought the Scottie to its feet. "Relax, dog," he said, and came back to his chair.

The time had to be filled, he couldn't just sit here. On the bookshelf at his elbow was a collection of monographs on modern painters. He leaned forward to examine the titles, then chose the Utrillo. He pulled the book down and spread it open on his lap. There were a few colored reproductions but these were scarcely more colorful than the black-and-whites. He thumbed through the drab pages, stopping now and again to linger over some scene of a deserted melancholy street, or a little grey lane hemmed in by sad plaster walls, and a feeling of almost intolerable loneliness came over him. Even the village squares or the open places in front of churches had this loneliness, this desertion, as if everyone had gone off for the day to attend some brilliant fair, leaving the town desolate and empty behind. In imagination, in memory, he stood in just such a little street now, as he had when he was a child--at sundown, after supper, on a summer evening, standing alone in the quiet street and listening to a steam calliope playing far away on the edge of the town, at the fairgrounds, before the evening performance of the circus. He closed the book and put it back on the shelf, remembering that moment so clearly and well that tears of pity came to his eyes--for the child, for himself, for the painter, he did not know whom.

"I must be in lousy condition to get so worked up over--over nothing," he said. "Or do I want to?" He addressed the waking dog. "Do I, Mac? You tell me." He stared at the dog. "Well?" The dog stared back. "Am I indulging myself, as your pr-r-r-roud master said"--trilling the "r" like an actor--"am I putting it on, is it all my imagination? Or if not mine, whose?" There's a thought for today, he said to himself. He stood up. "Mac, you're exaggerating, nobody would think there was a thing wrong with you! You look perfectly all right! And when I say you look all right, then, God damn it, you feel all right, do you hear?" He was having fun now, but even as he reached the pitch of his enjoyment he tired of it, and so did the dog. Who's loony now, he said to himself apathetically, as he sat down again.

His fingers touched the edge of a small book tucked in beside the cushion of the chair. He pulled it out and looked at the title. It was a copy of James Joyce's Dubliners his brother had been reading. He opened it and began to read at random, articulating the words very carefully in a whisper, paying elaborate attention to the form of each word but none to what he was reading. It was like the time, on similar occasions, when, keyed-up, desperate, he went out in search of a French movie, and sat in some airless movie-house all afternoon concentrating on the rapid French being spoken from the screen, because he believed a few hours of such concentration, even though he didn't listen to the sense, had a steadying effect. So he read now for some minutes, thinking that he might even read the book right through and then through again before his brother came back. Wouldn't that surprise him? he said to himself with a smile, while his lips formed other words: The barometer of his emotional nature was set for a spell of riot. The smile faded, he stared and read again.

The burden, the oppression was gone. He felt positively light-headed, joyous. The words had released him from the acute sense of suspense he now realized he had been under since his brother left. This is what he had been waiting for, what he had probably known all along in the back of his mind was bound to happen. It was as though a light-switch had been snapped on or a door sprung open, showing him the way. He dropped the book; and after he had exhorted the dog, saying, "It's me they're talking about. Me"--he shrugged, his hands spread open, palms up, in a wide gesture, and said: "Why am I such a fool? Why resist or wait?" He looked around, his eyebrows raised to his imaginary audience, like a comedian--an audience where he himself was every one of the several hundred people staring back at the performer in silent contempt and ridicule. He knew he was thus looking at himself. For his own benefit he exaggerated the action and voice, clowning because of his embarrassment. "I leave it to you, gentlemen, Mac, all," he said aloud; "call me ham if you like, but--there's the part! What can one do about it?"

He dropped the role and stood up. He went to the radio and picked up the dollar bill. "Control! Control, Mac," he said. "There's plenty of time." He lifted his coat from the back of a chair. "All afternoon," he added. "Time to go out and plenty of time to get back. Plenty." The Scottie watched him from its basket. He buttoned his coat and went into the kitchen to see if water had been put down for the dog.

On the kitchen table was an envelope addressed to Mrs. Foley. He picked it up and held it to the light. He tore it open and fingered through four five-dollar bills. "Twenty, my God," he said. "Why twenty?" It must be Mrs. Foley's pay for the month. She came two afternoons a week to pick up and often at noon to take the dog out. He put the bills in his pocket, wadded the empty envelope into a ball and threw it out the window.

He heard the wadded-up envelope rattle along the fire-escape and he stood a moment longer looking absently out at the blank brick wall opposite. Suddenly he thought of Wick. He would be at the opera now. Helen would be there too, sitting beside him in the great nearly dark house (she's only going because of you). The two of them would be looking at the brilliantly lighted sailing-ship scene that was the first act, and now and again one of them would lean toward the other and whisper something about the performance. Not about him; they wouldn't be talking about him now. Chiefly because he was the only thing on their minds and neither wanted the other to know it. Helen would be wondering if he really wasn't feeling well, or was he off again; and Wick would be wondering if Helen had accepted the excuse. She didn't give a damn for the opera under any conditions and he certainly didn't under these. He would be staring at the stage, half-turned toward Helen to catch her next whispered comment, and thinking: "If he isn't there when I go back; if he's gone out--" Don felt sorry for the distraction he knew he was causing them, and yet he couldn't help smiling, too. He was taking their minds off the performance a hundred times more than if he had been sitting there between them and talking loudly against the music.

On his way out he went into the bathroom to see how he looked. "During the next few days," he said, as he straightened his tie, "I'll probably be looking into this mirror more often than is good for mortal man." He winked. "That's how well I know myself. However." Before he left, he looked back at the dog. "Don't you worry, Mac--don't you wuddy--about Mrs. Foley's money. I'll be back in time to hand it to her myself," he said, "in person. Just in case anybody should ask." Then he slammed the door, tried it again to see if the lock had caught, and went down the stairs.

East 55th Street was cool, even for October. He thought of running back for a topcoat, but time was precious; and besides, his destination and haven lay just around the corner.

When the drink was set before him, he felt better. He did not drink it immediately. Now that he had it, he did not need to. Instead, he permitted himself the luxury of ignoring it for awhile; he lit a cigarette, took some envelopes out of his pocket and unfolded and glanced through an old letter, put them away again and began to hum, quietly. Gradually he worked up a subtle and elaborate pretense of ennui: stared at himself in the dark mirror of the bar, as if lost in thought; fingered his glass, turning it round and round or sliding it slowly back and forth in the wet of the counter; shifted from one foot to the other; glanced at a couple of strangers standing farther down the bar and watched them for a moment or two, critical, aloof, and, as he thought, aristocratic; and when he finally did get around to raising the glass to his lips, it was with an air of boredom that said, Oh well, I suppose I might as well drink it, now that I've ordered it.

He thought again of Wick and Helen. Funny relationship. Closer than if they had been lifelong friends; but not because of any real affinity or interest in each other. In fact, each was the kind of person that the other did not care for at all. The only thing that held them together was him, of course. Aside from himself, they had no common meeting ground. And he was able, by his bad behavior no less than his good, to bind them closer than if they had been brother and sister. How they were one, when things were going well with him. How they were united even more, when he was on the loose. If they could see him now. Or perhaps they knew only too well what he was doing at this very moment. Hell, why wouldn't they? It had happened so many times....

Gloria sidled up and put a hand on his shoulder. Imperceptibly he pulled away, careful not to offend her but cold enough so that she wouldn't get any ideas in her head. Gloria was something new here and he didn't like it at all. Why in thunder should a 2nd Avenue bar-and-grill attempt a "hostess," for God's sake? He didn't like acting snooty about her in front of Sam; and then again he thought it was well that they should be reminded he didn't care for this sort of thing. He was fond of this bar but just the same he was different from most people who came here and they knew it. Gloria was not more than twenty, blonde, not thin, dressed in a brown satin dress that shone like copper. She always asked for a cigarette, so now he placed his pack on the counter with the hope that that would take care of her.

"Hello-o-o," she said. "Where you been? I haven't seen you for days and days." She took a cigarette. "Been away?"

"Yes."

"You look awful nice. That a new suit?"

He didn't answer.

"My, we aren't very chummy today. What's the matter?"

"As a matter of fact," he said, "I was--thinking."

"Okay, that's all right," she said. "I'll come back and have a drink with you later, maybe. Huh?"

"Swell."

She moved down the bar and began talking to the other two men.

His drink was finished and he had not felt it at all. It had been so much water. Funny that he hadn't noticed even the faintest small tingle. He only felt relaxed, for the first time in days--so relaxed that it was almost fatigue. He nodded to Sam and another rye was set before him.

It was true, what he had said about thinking. Ordinarily he enjoyed talking to Sam by the hour--they were old friends; at times he thought of Sam as one of the persons he was fondest of in all the world--but today he didn't feel like talking. He was suddenly very low, all spirit gone. He downed the drink almost at once and asked for another. While Sam opened a new bottle, he looked at his face in the mirror over the bar.

It was an interesting face, no question about it. The mirror was just dark enough so that he seemed to be seeing a stranger rather than himself. Completely objective, he looked at the face in the glass and began to study it so intently that he was almost surprised to see its expression change under his gaze to one of searching concern.

The face showed all of its thirty-three years, but no more. The forehead was good, the eyes dark, big, and deep-set. The nostrils of the longish acquiline nose flared slightly--they were good too; gave the face a keen look, like a thoroughbred. The mustache was just big and black enough; had it been a little larger, he might have been looking into the tragic interesting face of Edgar Allan Poe. The mouth was full and wide, it wore a discontented unhappy expression--interestingly so. He liked the two deep lines that ran down either side of the mouth from just above the nostrils, half-encircling the set bitter half-smile. He liked too the three horizontal lines of his forehead--not really horizontal, for above his right eye they tilted upward to avoid the perpetually raised right-eyebrow, so fixed there by habit that he was never able to bring it down to the level of the other without frowning. He picked up the glass Sam set before him and began to drink.

He remembered a girl who sat behind him in 1st-year Latin class, a talkative girl, the kind who was always wondering what she looked like when she was asleep--things like that. She said to him once, "Faces are interesting, you know it? I was thinking about yours the other day and do you know what I decided? I decided that if someone should ask me what your habitual expression was, I'd say, 'Animation.'" She had paused for the effect, though there was no doubting her honesty. "Even in repose your face looks animated. You always look so alive, and curious--inquisitive, I guess I mean." He had been far from embarrassed, of course. When she asked him to describe what her habitual expression was, he had made up something, he didn't know what, already lost in thought for what she had said. Animation, was it. You could hardly call that face in the mirror "animated, alive." It was set in an expression of studied disillusion which not even the new drink could shake.

He glanced at his watch. Mrs. Foley would be arriving in a quarter of an hour. Time for one more drink--two at the outside. He shoved the glass toward Sam and stared at himself over the bar again.

Mirrors seemed to have taken up a hell of a lot of time in his life. He thought of one now--the mirror in the bathroom, years ago, back home. When he was a kid--fourteen, fifteen--writing a poem every night before he went to sleep, starting and finishing it at one sitting even though it might be two or three o'clock, that bathroom mirror had come to mean more to him than his own bed. Nights when he had finished a poem, what could have been more natural, more necessary and urgent, than to go and look at himself to see if he had changed? Here at this desk, this night, one of life's important moments had occurred. Humbly, almost unaware, certainly innocent, he had sat there and been the instrument by which a poem was transmitted to paper. He was awed and truly humble, for all that he must look in the mirror to see if the experience registered in his face. Often tears came genuinely to his eyes. How had it come about--why should it have been he? he asked himself in humility and gratitude. He read the poem in fear and read it again. Now it was fine; would it be so tomorrow? He raised his eyes from the scrawled re-written sheets and listened to the night. No sound whatever; and he thought of his brothers sleeping in the adjoining rooms, his mother downstairs. They had slept, all unaware of what had happened in this room, this night, at this desk. Scornful and proud, "Clods" he muttered; but proper appreciation of such a moment was beyond them, of course, even if they should know. He forgot them at once--though he did not forget to the extent of going down the hall at his usual heedless pace. He tiptoed, listening breathless for any sound of stir in the dark bedrooms (too often he had been surprised at three in the morning by a waking brother, who reported at the breakfast table that Don had had his light on all night long; and the recriminations that followed then--the bitter reminders of how he mooned at his desk when he ought to be asleep like a normal boy, the savage scoldings for running up huge light-bills--how shameful these were and humiliating, in view of the poem that justified all this, did they but know). In the bathroom he snapped on the light and confronted himself in the glass. The large childish eyes stared back, eager and searching; the cheeks were flushed, the mouth half-open in suspense. He studied every feature of that alert countenance, so wide awake that it seemed it would never sleep again. Surely there would be some sign, some mark, some tiny line or change denoting a new maturity, perhaps? He scanned the forehead, the mouth, the staring eyes, in vain. The face looked back at him as clear, as heartbreakingly youthful, as before.

He was moved and amused as he recalled that moment--a moment that had been repeated dozens and dozens of times in all his long adolescence. He picked up the glass and drank it to the bottom. A fancy came to him. Suppose the clear vision in the bathroom mirror could fade (as in some trick movie) and be replaced by this image over the bar. Suppose that lad-- Suppose time could be all mixed up so that the child of twenty years ago could look into the bathroom mirror and see himself reflected at thirty-three, as he saw himself now. What would he think, that boy? Would he have accepted it--is this what he dreamed of becoming? Would he accept it for a moment? In his emotion and embarrassment he glanced away and signalled to Sam to pour him another.

The men at the end of the bar had gone. Gloria sat at a table in the back, filing her nails. He watched her, indifferent about her now; then fearing that she might see him looking and take it as an invitation to come forward again, he turned back to the bar, automatically picking up the new drink that had been set before him.

Or wait--of course he would accept it! It was all crystal clear, like a revelation (suddenly he was feeling brighter, more alert and clear mentally, than he ever had in his life). That kid, could he have seen this face, the man of today, certainly would have accepted it--he would have loved it! The idol of the boy had been Poe and Keats, Byron, Dowson, Chatterton--all the gifted miserable and reckless men who had burned themselves out in tragic brilliance early and with finality. Not for him the normal happy genius living to a ripe old age (genius indeed! How could a genius be happy, normal--above all, long-lived?), acclaimed by all (or acclaimed in his lifetime?), enjoying honour, love, obedience, troops of friends ("I must not look to have"). The romantic boy would have been satisfied, he would have responded with all his ardent youthful soul. There was a poetic justice in those disillusioned eyes and the boy would have known it and nodded in happy recognition.

In the next instant came disgust (self-disgust and scorn; self-reproach for inflating the image of himself out of all proportion to the miserable truth); and in the very next, the brilliant idea. Oh, brilliant! As it swept over him and took possession of his excited brain--so feverishly alert that it seemed his perceptions could, at this moment, grasp any problem in the world--he fidgeted in suspense, shifted from one foot to the other, and made an effort to calm himself. Now wait a moment, just let me order another drink and think this out slowly--it's coming too fast....

A story of that boy and this man--a long short-story--a classic of form and content--a Death in Venice, artistically only, not in any other way--the title: "In a Glass." What else could it be?--the glass of the title meaning at first the whisky glass he was drinking from, out of which grew the multitude of fancies; then the idea blurring and merging gradually, subtly, with the glass of the mirror till finally the title comes to mean in the reader's mind only the glass over the bar through which the protagonist looks back on his youth. "In a Glass"--it would begin with a man standing in a 2nd Avenue bar on just such an October afternoon as this, just such a man as he, drinking a glass of whisky, several glasses, and looking at his reflection in the mirror over the bar. Thoughts poured in a rush, details, incidents, names, ideas, ideas. At this moment, if he were able to write fast enough, he could set it down in all its final perfection, right down without a change or correction needed later, from the brilliant opening to the last beautiful note of wise and grave irony. The things between--the things!... The wrench (the lost lonely abandonment) when his father left home and left him--but anything, practically anything out of childhood, climaxed by the poetry-writing and the episode of the bathroom mirror; then on to Dorothy, the fraternity nightmare, Dorothy again, leaving home, the Village and prohibition, Mrs. Scott, the Rochambeau (the Bremen, LaFayette, Champlain, de Grasse); the TB years in Davos; the long affair with Anna; the drinking; Juan-les-Pins (the weekend there that lasted two months, the hundred dollars a day); the pawnshops; the drinking, the unaccountable things you did, the people you got mixed up with; the summer in Provincetown, the winter on the farm; the books begun and dropped, the unfinished short-stories; the drinking the drinking the drinking; the foolish psychiatrist--the foolish foolish psychiatrist; down to Helen, the good Helen he always knew he would marry and now knew he never would, Helen who was always right, who would sit through Tristan this afternoon resisting it, refusing to be carried away or taken in, seeing it and hearing it straight off for what it was as he would only be able to see it and hear it after several years of irrational idolatry first.... Whole sentences sprang to his mind in dazzling succession, perfectly formed, ready to be put down. Where was a pencil, paper? He downed his drink.

The time. Four o'clock. Mrs. Foley would be there now but to hell with that! This was more important. But caution, slow. Good thing there was no paper handy, no chance to begin impulsively what later must be composed--when, tonight maybe, certainly tomorrow--with all the calm and wise control needed for such an undertaking. A tour de force? Critics would call it that, they'd be bound to, but what the hell was the matter with a tour de force for Christ's sake that the term should have come to be a sneer? Didn't it mean a brilliant performance and is "brilliance" something to snoot at? His mind raced on. But how about "As Through a Glass Darkly"?--or "Through a Glass Darkly"? No, it had been done to death; trite; every lady-writer in the land had used it at one time or another, or if they hadn't, it was a wonder. "In a Glass" was perfect--he saw stacks of copies in bookshop windows, piled in tricky pyramids (he would drop in and address the bookseller with some prepared witticism, like, "I appreciate the compliment you pay my book by piling it up in the window like a staple that should be in every home; but couldn't you add a card saying 'Send in ten wrappers and get a free illustrated life of the author'?"--hell, that was too long for wit, he'd have to cut it down), he glanced over people's shoulders in the subway and smiled to himself as he heard one girl say to another "I can't make head or tail of this"--(she had something if she meant "tale"), he read with amusement an embarrassed letter from his mother regretting the fact that he hadn't published a book she could show the neighbors and why didn't he write something that had "human interest"? With a careful glance about him he picked up his glass, offered a silent rueful toast to human interest, and drank.

Suddenly, sickeningly, the whole thing was so much eyewash. How could he have been seduced, fooled, into dreaming up such a ridiculous piece; in perpetrating, even in his imagination, anything so pat, so contrived, so cheap, so phoney, so adolescent, so (crowning offense) sentimental? Euphoria! Faithless muse! What crimes are committed in thy-- There was a line he might use; and oh, another: the ending!--the ending sprang to his mind clear and true as if he had seen it in print. The hero, after the long procession of motley scenes from his past life (would the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?)--the hero decides to walk out of the bar and somewhere, somehow, that very day--not for himself, of course: for Helen--commit suicide. The tag: "It would give her a lifelong romance." Perfect; but now--oh more perfect still--was the line that came next, the new ending: the little simple line set in a paragraph all by itself beneath the other, on the last page:

"But he knew he wouldn't."

How much it said, that line; how much it told about himself. How it disarmed the reader about the hero and still more the author--as if the author had stepped in between the page and the reader and said, "You see? I didn't die, after all. I went home and wrote down what you have just been reading. And Helen--what of her? Did we marry, you ask?" Shrug. "Who can tell?..."

"Sam, I'll have one more rye." To celebrate, he said under his breath. To celebrate what?--and a fit of boredom, of ennui so staggering descended upon him with such suddenness that he was scarcely able to stand. He wanted to put his head down on the counter, in the wet and all, and weep: tears, idle tears, I know damned well what they mean--for he was seeing himself with unbearable clarity again and he could beat his fists together and curse this double vision of his that enabled him, forced him, to see too much--though all the while, all the long time he had been at the bar, he knew that to the casual spectator he had changed or moved by not so much as a hair or had a thought more troubling than the price of his drinks. Cloudy the place, who was drinking now with him, in him, inside him, instead of him, he loved and hated himself and that Sam, and groped to think of it again, clearly like before. To live and praise God in blessed mediocrity (Tonio! spiritual brother!), to be at home in the world--how with bitter passion he envied that and them, people like Sam here, pouring the rye. Can they imagine the planning of a story like that, the planning alone, much less the writing? Can they imagine how, being able to plan it, being able to master the plan and the writing, can they understand how you would fail--fail merely by failing to write it at all--why, how? The answer was nowhere, the drink was everything. What a blessing the money in his pocket, he must get more, much more for the feast of drink ahead. Ignorant Sam, sweaty man, how far from thy homeland hast thou come, from thy fair Irish county to this dark whisky-smelling mirrored cheap quiet lovely haven! Surely the most beautiful light in all the world was the light on the bricks out there, under the L, the patches of gold edged in black shadow, a street paved with golden bricks truly, with beams of light slanting upward fairer and purer than rays of sun through cathedral glass. Why should Cezanne have painted the blue monotonous hills and fields of France, let him paint this for Christ's sake! Or me--let me do it--for he knew now just how it could be done, and downed his drink in an inspired impulse to rush out and spend all his money on painting materials and try. He ordered a drink and drank it and looked again, to fix the scene and the light in his mind: the gold was gone, the rays out, the bricks red and black with neon night.

Gloria was there, her hand on his shoulder. He turned, startled.

"Why don't you come sit down and eat something with me? I'm going to eat now."

"Why? What's the time?"

"Quarter past."

"Five?"

"Six."

"I've got a--dinner engagement. Sorry." In a moment he was gone, in panic to be home before Wick.

At the corner he stopped in the liquor store to buy a pint. He pretended to deliberate a moment, considering the various brands, knowing all the while he would buy the bottle that was just under a dollar as he always did, no matter how much money he had in his pocket; for he had a dread of running out of cash and being cut off from drink and so bought only the cheapest, to make it last. Liquor was all one anyway. He scanned the shelves, self-conscious as always in a liquor store--he could never overcome the idea that he had no right to be there, that the clerks and customers were eyeing him and nodding to each other ("Sure, look who's here, wouldn't you know"), and he envied with a jealous envy those who could come into a liquor store and buy a bottle with the nonchalant detachment of a housewife choosing her morning groceries. He pointed to the brand he wanted and put down a dollar bill.

The Lincoln was in front of the house, the ancient Lincoln that looked as though it might belong to a Beacon Hill dame or a Sugar Hill dinge. He wondered if it meant that his brother was home and then remembered that the garage was to send the car over at about this time. He had to know if Wick was there before going up, had to see that the pint was well concealed in his inside pocket, had to prepare his greeting, his expression, before he walked in. He went in the front door and straight through the hall to the back garden.

The lights were on in the apartment, showing in the two windows of the living room and the window of the one bedroom, his bedroom because he was the older brother (Wick slept on the living room couch). He sat down on a bench in the dark at the back of the garden and looked up. He would wait a few minutes in the freshening air, gathering his strength, cooling off. The night was chill, but he had to open his vest and take off his hat. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and took the heavy pint out of his pocket and set it on the bench. Immediately he put it back again, afraid that he might walk away and forget it.

He remembered the time they had first looked at the apartment, standing in the bare flat and looking through the windows at the little garden down in back. There was a high board fence around three sides of it, painted white with large flower designs in yellow and a fantastic huge green vine. His brother had laughed in delight and so had he. "God, such quaint," Wick had said, and he knew that that had decided him: they would take the place because Wick had liked it and it was Wick's money he was living on now. He didn't mind; he was grateful; it was one of those times--a period of several weeks--when he was not drinking at all, when he felt that he would never drink again and said so; and Wick, to help him out, had taken a chance, leased the apartment for them both, and with elaborate gaiety and many plans for the winter (to assure each other that neither had a worry in his head) they had moved in.

How long had it lasted? He couldn't think of that now, mustn't think of it, wouldn't. He sat by the white fence looking up at the lighted windows. Wick would be alone with Mac. They were waiting for him. He buttoned his vest, stood up and shifted the pint to his hip-pocket, then felt to see if it bulged too much. It was all right if he didn't button the jacket. He sat down again. Why the hell hadn't he bought two pints, as he usually did, so that if one was taken away he would have the other? He always planted one in his side pocket, the bulk of it showing conspicuously, and protested with passion and outrage when it was discovered and taken--then retired in a huff to his room, there to produce the other pint from his hip and hide it. Where had he not hidden bottles in his time? In the pocket of his old fur coat in the closet, the coat he never wore; behind books, of course; in galoshes, vases, mattresses.

His brother appeared in the bedroom window. He saw his shadow on the pane, and then the silhouette of his head and shoulders as he sat at the desk, his desk. He trembled with excitement but there was no need for fright. Wick was not looking out. He appeared merely to be sitting there, looking straight ahead at the front of the desk. He couldn't be writing, for his head was erect. What was he doing there, what in thunder was he doing all this while?--for now he realized Wick had been there ten minutes, fifteen, there was no telling how long. The suspense was intolerable. His heart pounded, he ached to open the bottle and take a drink, but he did not dare move--though he knew he was invisible to his brother in the dark of the garden even if he should look out.

He wanted to go in, he wanted now to go up and walk into the apartment and say, "See, here I am, I'm not out, I'm not wandering around God knows where, don't worry, you don't need to worry now"--but he couldn't if his life depended on it. Or he wanted to toss a stone up against the window and shout, "Wick! Here I am, see? Out in the garden, sitting here on this bench, getting the air, please don't worry, this is where I am, you can go on to the farm now, or you can wait a little while longer, just a few minutes more, and I'll go with you." He began to cry.

It was probably a moment he would remember all his life long, with tears; or was he just being maudlin, now, in drink? No, it was a moment of awful clarity, it was too real for that, his heart almost died in ache for his brother and for himself, for the two of them together, and he wept as he had not wept since he was a child. Would nothing stop the weeping? His brother sat there above, so near him, so unaware that all the time he was sitting here below, watching, knowing that Wick was wondering where he was, wondering what to do about him, how to help--go or stay? He could not watch any more. He bent down and put his head on the bench and cried. He buried his face in his crossed arms to smother the sobs. He must stop. I won't look again for minutes, minutes, he'll be gone by then--and with an effort he quieted himself, shifted the bottle to his side pocket, lay over on the bench on his back, with closed eyes, and began to wait. When he looked up again, the windows were dark.

At once, instinctively, automatically, he was wary. He sat up, alert. Was it a trick? Was Wick waiting for him there in the dark, waiting for him to walk in? He smiled. That would be easy to find out. With the caution of a burglar--feeling the excitement, the game of it--he tiptoed craftily across the garden, through the hall and to the front steps. The car was gone.

In high spirits, completely happy now, he went upstairs. The cool evening air of the garden had freshened him and he looked forward to a drink. The moment he switched on the light he looked for the Scottie. The basket was empty. On the living room table there was a note:

I'm so sorry. Please be careful. I've gone to the farm. I would like to leave Mac for you but I thought you might forget to feed him. If you want anything, call Helen. About Mrs. Foley's money, it should be enough to take care of you till I come back. Do be careful, won't you.

Did Wick know that he was making him feel it just that much more because the entire message contained not so much as a syllable of reproach? Of course he did! But he wasn't going to feel it, wasn't going to allow himself to think of it--I can't; I can't think of that now, he said to himself. He had other problems at the moment: chiefly, money.

It was seven-thirty. Wick had got a late start for the long drive to the farm but he couldn't think of that, now, either. He took the wad of bills from his pocket and counted them. There was more than fifteen dollars. He would get more. He went into the kitchen for a glass, opened the pint and poured a drink.

The problem of money. He knew that if he had money--was suddenly left a lot of money, or found it, or stole it--he would kill himself in a month. Well, why not, what difference did it make, that would be his own affair. If he wanted to drink himself to death, whose business was it but his own? But this way, with his rightful allowance coming to him through his brother, his younger brother at that--driblets handed out to him as if he were a child, not being able to get a suit pressed without finding out first if it was all right with Wick, not being able to tip in restaurants where Wick paid the check, charging everything, never paying cash, getting fifty cents a day for cigarette money--it made him wild to think of it, he would get money and more money, buy as many pints as he liked and still have more money to buy more. How? There were dozens of ways, he had never yet been unable to find a way, even a new way he had never tried before, except when he was physically unable to get up and go out. But he wouldn't fall into that trap again; he'd have it in the house, bottles and bottles--for once be prudent enough to provide himself with a sufficient supply.

After the second drink he was ready. Before he left, he went into the bathroom to see how he looked. He smiled in the glass. He looked all right--in fact he looked wonderful. "But don't forget," he said aloud, "you're skirting danger." He nodded in agreement with his reflection, smiled, winked, and switched off the light. He lifted his topcoat from the rack in the hall and reached for the doorknob. At that moment he heard the two women who lived in the front apartment come up the stairs with their dog. The dog stopped at his door and sniffed, and one of the women said, "Stop that, Sophie. Come here!" The dog ran down the hall and he heard the door to the apartment shut. He listened a moment more, then knew that now he could go out.

Mrs. Wertheim's laundry, in the middle of the block, was closed, but he could see the light on in the back of the shop and Mrs. Wertheim working there, alone, over the ironing board. He rapped on the glass. She looked up from the board, put the iron aside, hesitated, then came forward slowly, uncertain, peering to see who it might be. (This is the Student Raskolnikov.) He tapped again to reassure her. She came up to the glass and shielded her eyes with her hands. He smiled back. When she saw who it was, she nodded with her funny German bow and unlatched the door.

"Guten abend, gnädige Frau," he sang out, speaking loudly as he always did when addressing a foreigner.

"Mr. Birnam, how do you do?"

"I wonder if you can do me a favor, bitte?"

"Okay? What is it?"

"My brother's gone away for the weekend and I find he's taken the checkbook."

"Oh? Do you want a blank check?"

"No, don't bother, danke. Instead could you let me have a little money till Monday? Just for the weekend."

"Let's see--how much?"

"Oh, twenty dollars, bitte schön. That should be enough."

"Oh dear." She smiled, but she frowned too, as if puzzled. "Okay, I guess I can, Mr. Birnam--only, are you sure it's all right?"

"Just till Monday, Mrs. Wertheim."

"I mean," she said--and then seemed to change her mind. "One moment, please. Here, step in." She went to the back of the shop, stood there a moment counting out some bills under the light while he waited in unbearable excitement, and returned. She handed him the bills, shaking her head ever so slightly in a puzzled frown.

He took the money without looking at it and shoved it into his pocket. He smiled cordially at her. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Wertheim," he said. "Mille fois," and he turned back to the street.

In the back of the cab that was rushing him down to the Village he smiled to himself--smiled in triumph. How easy it was. Poor Mrs. Wertheim--she wouldn't have turned him down, of course. He knew Europeans enough to know that. He had played the aristocrat before the peasant--the peasant who never dared refuse the aristocrat anything; who expected nothing less; who felt it an honor to be imposed upon by that privileged charming irresponsible class; who kept himself and his family in lifelong debt to guarantee the aristocracy its birthright; who would have lost faith, perhaps, if he and his fascinating kind should settle down and become sober, industrious and productive, like themselves: who smiled indulgently, admiringly, even affectionately, at foibles which, in their own children, would have deserved nothing but a beating. This, for the brilliant moment, was his vision of himself and Mrs. Wertheim now that he had twenty more dollars in his pocket. "Jack's, in Charles Street," he called out, and sat back, pleased with the glimpse of highlife he had given the grateful Mrs. Wertheim.

This was absurd, of course; he knew it; the episode had meant no such thing; he knew it even as he daydreamed (Mrs. Wertheim had no use for him whatever, she only did it because of his brother); and he cursed this mocking habit of his which always made him expose his own fancies just as they reached their climax. There was never any pleasure in them beyond the second or two of their inception: they sprang into being, grew, and exploded all in the same moment, leaving him with nothing but a sense of self-distaste for having again played the fool. He didn't mind playing the fool, that would have been all right--he minded knowing it, hated knowing it. It made him seem a kind of dual personality, at once superior and inferior to himself, the drunk and the sober ego. In neither role could he let go, be himself; in neither did he feel in control.

What trick was it now, for instance, that was taking him on to Jack's--when had the drunk suggested that? Or rather, the sober ego?--for he was well aware that when he was drunk he preferred to be and drink alone; only sober did he ever drink or begin drinking with others; and soon, certainly within the hour, he found some pretext to excuse himself from the company (temporarily, of course, he thought as well as they) and disappeared for the rest of the night or the week. Was it some vestige of social sense that took care of this, warning him to drink alone and so minimize the danger of trouble? Did some last scrap of pride intrude on his intoxication to remind him that he was never himself when drunk? He knew he wasn't sober enough now to want to go to Jack's and drink with others at the same bar, even if they were strangers. Why was he doing it, then? And why the Village--why Jack's of all places in New York (he hadn't been there since its fashionable days as a speakeasy)? He was wary, for the moment, as if he suspected a kind of trick; he felt a presentiment of trouble ahead, a premonition and hint of that danger he had warned himself about in the mirror; and then wondered: Was he only imagining this, dramatizing again, having fun?

Jack's had an upstairs as well as a downstairs bar. He walked through on the street level to the stairs at the back. Piano music drifted down the small stairway, and laughter. He ascended and came out into the upstairs bar. There wasn't much of a crowd; perhaps it was still too early. Two young men, looking like football players, stood at the bar. He thought for a moment of standing there too, but instead went over to one of the small tables and sat down on the long bench that ran the length of the room. A waiter came and he ordered a gin-and-vermouth, suddenly sentimental about his favorite bar in Zurich, though he hadn't drunk a gin-vermouth since he came home. The waiter asked if he might take his coat. No, he kept his coat on--with a bored air he said he was only going to stay a few moments. He permitted himself a few amiable words of French. To his surprise, the waiter pursed his lips like Charles Boyer and replied volubly, with such a super-Parisian accent that it sounded obscene--a series of nasty noises in the front of his mouth, as if he were mentally indulging in fellatio, pedicatio, irrumatio and cunnilinctus. This observation struck him as so comic that he had to turn his head away to hide his smile. Then he looked about the room, feeling apart, remote, above it all. He began to think of himself as a spectator making a kind of field-trip in sociology, and he believed the others, perhaps, might be wondering who he was. Tonight he would be aloof, detached, enjoying his anonymity.

There were couples at some of the tables, a few fellows and girls. He studied them, and studied the football heroes at the bar. Their shoulders were wide and straight, so much like boards (another wonderful notion!) that it looked as if their necks were sticking out of pillories. He watched in turn the bartender, the waiters, the pianist.

A fattish baby-faced young man--Dannie or Billy or Jimmie or Hughie somebody--sat at the tiny piano, talking dirty songs. The men and girls strained to anticipate the double-meanings; and when the off-color line was delivered, they stared at each other as if aghast and laughed hard, harder than the joke warranted, vying with each other in appreciation. There were songs called "The 23rd Street Ferry" and "Peter and the Dyke;" camping, queen, faggot, meat were words frequently played upon; the men and girls looked at each other and roared; the two athletes shifted uncertainly at the bar, not getting it; the baby-faced young man half-smiled, half-scowled about the room, his fat fingers rippling over the keys in a monotonous simple accompaniment like a striptease; he himself felt nothing but amused contempt for the cheap sophistication of the place--provincial, nothing short of it; and he ordered another gin-and-Italian.

He was enjoying himself now. He speculated on how he appeared to the others. If anybody was wondering about him or looking at him, they must have decided that here was that rarity, an American who knew how to drink. He drank quietly and alone--an apéritif at that. He took his time, and did not bother with others. Obviously he was used to drink, had probably had it all his life, at home--wines at table, liqueurs after dinner, that sort of thing. Drink was no novelty to him--nothing to order straight, or in a highball, gulp down at once so you could order another, get in as many as possible between now and midnight.... This was the impression he believed he gave and was consciously giving. With money in his pocket, with several days to go before Wick came home, he had plenty of chance to play the solitary observant gentleman-drinker having a quiet time amusing himself watching other folk carouse, the while he sipped gin-vermouth which, for all they knew, might have been a Dubonnet or a sherry.

A couple came in and sat down at the next table, on the bench beside him, another young man and a girl. He took them in, subtly, not staring, watching his chance to observe them unobserved, as if it were some kind of delightful game of skill. The girl took off her fur and put it on the bench with her handbag, between herself and him, not more than a foot-and-a-half from where he sat. He tried to place the kind of girl she was, mused on where she came from, what she did. It was a good enough fur--marten. He looked at the handbag. Brown alligator, with a large copper clasp, and a metal monogram in one corner: M. Mc. The young man wore a grey tweed suit, an expensive one, so rough and coarse that it looked as if small twigs were woven into it, chunks of rope and hemp, pieces of coal--he smiled with pleasure at such an idea. Isn't that exactly the kind of suit he'd be wearing? he said to himself--and then smiled again, for of course he wouldn't have said it if the young man hadn't been wearing that kind of suit. He was delighted with this observation--it told him that his mind was working keenly and at the top of its bent, with that hyper-consciousness that lay just this side of intoxication. Well, he'd keep it this side, because he was having a good time, enjoying his own aloofness to the scene around him.

He eyed the handbag again. What was in it? Lady-trifles, probably; immoment toys; God what marvelous expressions, what felicity, who else could have thought of them!--and suddenly, for an instant, he had a craving to read Shakespeare, rush home and sit down with Antony and Cleopatra and enjoy the feast of language that was, perhaps, the only true pleasure in the world. But that was irrational, irresponsible: Shakespeare was there, would always be there, when he wanted him; the thing to do was appoint a certain period, regularly, perhaps two hours every day, every evening, why not, he had plenty of time, nothing but time--his eye went back to the handbag.

M. Mc. Irish or Scotch? She was an attractive girl; black hair, beautiful fair complexion. Were they sleeping together? Was he nice to her? They probably didn't begin to appreciate each other physically, they were too young. The young man would be carried away in his own excitement, she in hers, with no thought of each other's sensations. Did he know what his body did to her? Did she forget herself long enough to prize his, did she lay her head on his stomach, feel his chest and thighs, was he big? The questions suddenly seemed important, they were all that mattered in the room--important, dangerous and exciting. He felt reckless and elated, larger than life. If she were not there, if the young man were alone, he would advance and find out a thing or two, amused at his own daring, amused at the young man's shock. Or if the young man should go, leaving the girl, if she should look over and see him, let him speak to her, if he should move closer, if they should leave together, go home--how he would teach her what it was to be with a man! It was all one to him, for the moment he was like a god who could serve either at will. The handbag caught his eye and he puzzled about its contents.

He signaled for another gin-vermouth and turned his attention to the room. Odd how he could sit there unobserved by others; he was the only one alive in the place, the only one who saw. Their preoccupation with each other, his own solidarity, completeness, self-sufficiency, aloofness, gave him a sense of elevation and excellence that was almost god-like. He smiled with tolerance at the room, and felt so remote and apart that he might have been unseen. He was unseen; for he had had to signal for minutes before he got the attention of the waiter, the bartender had never glanced his way, no, not once since he had sat down, the baby-faced pianist had eyes only for the couples of men and girls, and they for each other. If he should melt into air, dissolve and leave not a rack behind (why had he never looked up what a rack was?), no one would notice. Some time later the waiter would come upon the empty glass at the empty table and wonder when he had gone.

Or if he should lift this handbag, pull it toward him, cover it with the skirt of his coat, who should see? What could be in it, how much money? What would it be like to steal a purse ('tis something, nothing, 'tis mine, 'tis his), how would you feel? Would it be fun, what kind of satisfaction would it give you? A dozen excitements possessed him: he was ridden with curiosity to know what was in the handbag, he could use the money (possibly a fair sum), he wanted to see for his own satisfaction if he could get away with it--commit the perfect crime. Absurd! But on a tiny, on a very small scale that's exactly what it would be. He would return the bag to the owner afterward, having removed and used the cash. Her address was bound to be inside and he would send the bag back in the mail, with a witty, charming anonymous note, signed, perhaps, "Mr. X--and sometimes W and Y." Oh, he could use the money (he wondered how much there was, he had to know), but mostly he wanted to see how it would feel to get away with it, he wanted to prove to himself that he could. It would be a new experience, unlike anything he had ever done; certainly that made the risk worthwhile, for how else was a man's life enriched if not by new experience, letting oneself in for all the million possibilities of various existence, trying everything, anything--"live dangerously"? He lost interest in these philosophies, however, as he now bent all his conscious will, all the keenness and alertness of his over-alert brain, to the attempt.

He had never been so sure of himself in his life, so much the master of his every smallest move, gesture, muscle; he was so calm, so thoroughly at ease and at home, that now he meant to prolong the moment as long as possible, savoring its every second to get the most out of it. He would take the bag and then stay--linger, not leave at all, not hurry, never move, possibly even order another drink in the assurance and security that no one knew what he was doing, that even if the bag were missed, it would be impossible to think that he had it. One look at him would show them it could never have been he. Preposterous that such a man, well-dressed, composed, a gentleman--he reached the bag with the tip of his fingers and pulled it a few inches his way.

Nobody saw, of course; he pulled it nearer, then signalled the waiter for another gin-vermouth. The waiter came and set it down before him. He watched the waiter's face. There was the bag, resting beside him, touching his coat, under the very eyes of the waiter, yet the man had seen nothing. He picked up the drink by the thin stem of the glass and slowly sipped; sweet and sharp and thick, a wonderful drink, why did he ever order anything else--but it was too slow, too subtle for his taste, he liked the immediate effect, the instant warmth, of liquor straight. Still, this was nice, it was all right for now, the stronger drink could wait, there were hours and days ahead, he twirled the stem slowly between his thumb and forefinger, and with the other hand he lifted the skirt of his coat and covered the bag.

It could go on forever, he could sit here all night, hiding the bag; he could even put it on the table in front of him and examine its contents then and there, for all that anyone would notice. How careless people were, and unobserving--how crafty, subtle, all-seeing himself. An idea struck him. It might be fun, after he got out in the street, say half an hour later--it would be fun to come back, ascend the stairs again, approach the surprised couple and address them, saying, "Here is your bag, see how easy it was, you didn't even know it was gone, did you?" The young man would half rise, the girl would look down at the bench beside her and exclaim, "Well of all--!" What would be the fun of getting away with it if you couldn't tell about it, show how clever you were, how easy it had been? Otherwise it would all be wasted. But he needed the money too, he wanted it now; and afterward his only concern would be to get rid of the bag, leave it in some impossible fabulous place where it would never turn up, never again, in his or anyone else's life.

The suspense was intoxicating, he was filled with admiration for his own shrewd, adroit and disarming performance, knowing that to an observer (but there were none) he gave only the impression of disinterest, thoughtful melancholy, ennui. He pulled the bag against his hip, adjusted the coat closer about him with a casual movement, and sipped the drink.

For some minutes after he emptied the glass, he sat there, his studied expression (wrinkled brow, faint pout, faint tilt of the head) showing that he played with the idea of ordering another drink. With an all but imperceptible shrug he made his decision--called the waiter, examined the check with care, paid with a bored air, tipped well. The waiter thanked him and left. He pulled the bag up under his arm, inside his topcoat, and sat a moment or two longer, stripping the cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, wadding it up, tossing it on the table, selecting a cigarette, tapping it down, lighting it. Reflectively he watched the match burn to his finger-tips, then dropped it just in time. He reached for his hat and got up, pushing the table away with a scraping noise. He nodded goodnight to the bartender.

Near the stairs was a poster about some Village dance. He stopped to examine it, as if concerned to see who was the artist. Behind him, a wave of laughter swept the room. He turned and looked back with a philosophical smile at the men and girls convulsed with hilarity over some new double-meaning of the singer at the piano; then turned again and went down the stairs, his hat in his hand.

The bar below was crowded. He walked through the long room toward the street, slowly, regarding the huddled drinkers in a manner detached and aloof. He was the spectator still, unseen--truly he might have been invisible, the figure out of mythology, so unmarked was his passage through the crowded room, his very presence amid all the festivity. Near the end, he stopped and looked at himself in the mirror over the bar through a gap between two men on bar-stools. He smoothed back his hair, then put his hat on and adjusted it carefully. He gave the effect a last approving look and went on.

He saw the big doorman holding open the door for him. He reached into his pocket for a tip. He dropped a dime into the gloved hand, and someone behind him touched his shoulder. He turned. There was the bartender and waiter, the young man and girl from upstairs. His eyebrows went up, his mouth lifted in an enquiring smile. "Give us that bag," one of them said in slow, heavy, even tones--and he noticed that the entire room was quiet, every face at the bar turned toward the door and himself.

"Why certainly," he said, pleasantly, "here it is," and he produced the bag from under his coat and handed it directly to the girl herself with a faint bow.

He would never remember what was said then, who said it, or the order in which it was said. The young man was muttering in threat, the waiter said "Call a cop, Mike's on the corner," the girl said "Never mind, never mind, I've got my bag, that's all I wanted, please let him go," the bartender said "If you ever come back here again, if I ever see--" He stood there puzzled in the middle of it all, his polite patient half-smile trying to say for him, What's all the fuss, it's only a joke, I'm sure I didn't realize, truly I wasn't serious, I was only having a little--The doorman put big hands on his shoulders, turned him around, gave him a shove that made his neck snap, and he was in the street.

He recovered and adjusted his coat and hat and walked slowly, leisurely, away, trying not to hear what the doorman called after him, trying not to see the little group of cabbies staring at him in silent contempt. By the time he got to the corner and out of sight, moving as slowly and leisurely as he was able, his legs were shaking so violently he could hardly stand. He thought he would collapse, he wanted to collapse, wanted to give way, fall down, pretend to be very drunk, be picked up and taken care of by someone, a stranger. He thought of Helen in Bleecker Street and recoiled in terror. He stumbled into a cab in Sheridan Square, gave his address, and fell into the dark backseat as if it were his bed, his own bed at home. During the drive uptown, the blessed oblivion of time-out, he became so calm, so deathly relaxed and still, that he was barely able to respond with gratitude as he remembered the nearly-full pint at home. Was this what he had been seeking? He had reached the point where always there was only one thing: drink, and more drink, till amnesty came; and tomorrow, drink again.