Читать книгу David's War - Herbert Kastle - Страница 5

The dream was remarkably constant all these years, varying only in length. Sometimes it ended with the woman and child walking away from him, the train rocking through the Pennsylvania countryside, the smell of coal-ash strong in his nostrils, the boy staring back with big eyes at the ‘Filthy Jew’.

Sometimes it went on, beyond the true reflection of reality, to the satisfaction he had wanted since 1943, and he followed and caught the hateful young woman between cars and threw her shrieking to her death. In this version the boy had usually disappeared, but not always.

Tonight the boy was there, and the problem of what to do when he screamed his mother’s racial epithet, and turned to run and tell, brought David to an excruciating dilemma.

He had never dreamed the boy to a conclusion. He had begun to conclude, most often speaking of brotherhood, then realizing it was impossible since he had murdered the mother before the child’s eyes . . . at which point he would awaken.

A few times, just a handful over the years, he had begun to throw the seven- or eight-year-old after his mother. And awakened, horrified.

As he awoke now, sitting bolt upright in bed, choking on his own voice: ‘Wait!’

He was shaking.

That woman had been a good Pennsylvania German parent; the boy had been pink-cheeked and well dressed, and smiling before her voice turned hard and she pointed to the thin, uniformed, eighteen-year-old David as they passed his seat and stunned him by saying, “. . . like that filthy Jew there.’ She had gone on, pulling her child to the next car as David sat frozen, as he then looked around to see if anyone else had heard or noticed, as his heart flared with rage as much at her daring to guess at his race that way (because she couldn’t know, could she?) as at what she had said.

He had considered following and confronting her, but had done nothing because two stops away was Reading and the Army Air Corps pre flight training school at Albright College, and he’d wanted a clean record in order to become a bomber pilot and drop fire and death on Germany. So he had allowed the woman and her child to remain unexorcized, to drift into the memory banks, the recesses of his brain, and fester there.

He sighed, losing the sense of immediacy and pain. It was growing light. He had an early meeting – that dragged-out Canadian deal. He got up and walked to the bathroom and turned on the wall heater, then the shower.

He scrubbed his body, thickening around the middle, especially since he had given up the sit-ups and winter swimming. He washed his dark hair, thinning gradually in front and more perceptibly at the crown.

Vanessa had suggested a gym and transplants. He had considered it because he had wanted to please Vanessa. That was a year ago, and he was no longer sure he wanted to please her.

He was beginning to fail sexually with her, that Ten, that epitome of sexuality – which should have frightened him, and didn’t. That frightened him, and he had begun reading the personal columns of the New York Review, checking ads that had West Coast or Los Angeles in the text, telling himself it was more or less a joke because who could take those pathetic paragraphs seriously?

‘L.A. slim mature lady with Masters in Lit. desires intellectual non-smoking male for enrichment of both life styles . . .’ He had answered that one before feeling pathetic himself.

When he came into the kitchen, Mrs Gomez had arrived and was making one of her great cheese and tomato omelettes. So he would cut back on lunch.

A half-hour later he was in his office, reading the L.A. Times. And was reminded of his dream by a sudden pounding in chest and temples. Page four held a story about American Nazis in California, and included a picture of six men in uniform giving the stiff-armed Nazi salute to a swastika flag. This small group, the caption said, was in San Francisco. Another even smaller group was located near Vargas, and a family-sized group was in the tiny farming community of Bethills in the San Joaquin Valley. Bethills, the text stated, was approximatley six hours by automobile from Los Angeles.

Storm-troopers, swastikas and Heil Hitlers six hours from David Howars.

He closed the paper and stood up from his desk.

His secretary Carrie came in just then, but hesitated before speaking. Because Mr Howars looked strangely different.

Trying to think of what it was, Carrie had the feeling that he had grown larger somehow, had been flexing his muscles . . . like Bruce Lee getting ready to chop down an opponent. Or maybe like Arnold Schwartzenegger in Pumping Iron, straining to lift hundreds of pounds.

That made her smile. Mr Howars with his conservative suits, shirts and ties from Mr Guy on Rodeo Drive, his greying hair and soft voice, his kind, fatherly face and gentle personality, breaking heads or straining to lift hundreds of pounds? Not likely!

Besides, he seemed normal again.

She told him that Mr Jitzler and the three men he called ‘the Canadians’ were here.

Jitzler was Swiss, old and fat, but he had the quickest pinch this side of Rome and she had learned never to turn her back on him. She had even complained to Mr Howars, who’d said, ‘Slap him . . . after we make the deal. He’s guaranteeing foreign distribution.’

She sent them in. Jitzler said, ‘Call me Johan, darlinggg. I could do wonders for you!’

Maybe five minutes later Carrie heard shouting in Mr Howars’s office. She couldn’t believe it – had heard nothing like it in her two years here. The door flew open and Jitzler came out, fast. He was so red in the face, he was almost purple. Carrie gasped as she saw that it was Mr Howars who was shoving him out with a hand at the back of his neck and another at the seat of his pants.

‘. . . mine lawyer!’ Jitzler was shouting.

‘Fine,’ Mr Howars said, panting, white-faced, and threw him toward the hall door. Jitzler bounced against the door, got it open and ran out, still shouting about ‘mine’ lawyer and bringing suit.

Carrie stared at Mr Howars, wondering at his being strong enough to handle a blimp like Jitzler so easily. He looked bigger again, as he had beside his desk. And then he didn’t. Then he rubbed his face, which was oily, and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ to no one in particular. And walked out.

When one of the Canadians, a tall, thin man named Bevins, came to the doorway, she said, ‘Mr Howars had to see someone down the hall for a moment.’

‘Incredible,’ Bevins muttered. ‘Jitzler’s a boor, yes, but still an incredible reaction.’

She had caught him looking her over a few times when Jitzler had been making passes, knew he was shy and uncertain with women, and so was emboldened to ask, ‘Just what happened?’

‘Jitzler told a joke. How do you get twenty Jews into a Volkswagon?’

She said she didn’t know.

‘Four in the seats and sixteen in the ashtray.’

She frowned. She didn’t get it. ‘I’ve got a Volkswagon,’ she said.

‘You’re too young. And not Jewish. The Nazi ovens . . .’

‘Oh,’ she said, and began to smile; then heard footsteps in the hall and put a finger to her lips. Bevins disappeared back into the office.

Mr Howars came in, looking embarrassed. He went into his office, head down, and closed the door. She wondered if he had blown the deal on Coast to Coast, the movie based on the novel he had under option. She hoped not. She planned to ask for a small part – that girl in the motel, maybe. She had been attending Estelle Harmon’s school of acting and felt she could handle it.

At seven that evening, after eating far more of the chicken and rice dinner Mrs Gomez had prepared than he should have, David went to the study where the housekeeper left his mail. He put on his glasses. Three letters lay on the desk. One was from home, as he still thought of the big old apartment on lower Park Avenue, just south of the Pan Am Building. Arlene continued to live there with their son, Mark, because New York’s rent control law made it not only affordable but the best deal she could find by far.

The second envelope held an advertisement pitching high-priced hair-pieces.

The last envelope had a name and return address unfamiliar to him: Miss Rita Goran in Santa Monica. It was hand-written, or rather printed, in small, very neat letters in deep blue ink. Inside, the hand-printing continued on a book-folded sheet of fine, off-white linen stationery with the letter G embossed at the top. There was a faint scent of perfume, very faint, as if passed on by chance from Miss Goran’s fingertips.

He re-examined the thick envelope and matching sheet of stationery. ‘Nice,’ he said conversationally. ‘Some actress has a good background, or is studying it.’

He heard his voice. It didn’t bother him. He’d been talking to himself for quite a while now; generally evenings, as he grew tired; sometimes in the car. He watched himself in the office.

He sat down in the swivel chair, tilted the goose-neck lamp, and read:

Dear Mr Howars

Thank you for answering my advertisement in the New York Review so promptly and courteously. I apologize for being less prompt, and plead an attack of embarrassment. You did not give a phone number. I suppose it is up to the initiator of the project to do that, so you will find mine at the bottom of this letter.

While your note was terse, it was the only one among the four answers I received that seemed honest, that did not suggest a headlong gallop toward intimacies, that did not make me wince at gaucheries and excesses. So even if we go no further, I thank you for that.

Sincerely, Rita Goran

The signature was thin, spidery, far less attractive than the printing, and perhaps explained the printing. But on the evidence of her letter, he felt he would like Miss Goran.

He read the phone number and glanced at his watch. Eight thirty. A good time to call.

He decided to read his ex-wife’s letter first; then felt he was avoiding that call, was afraid of that call, he who dealt with beautiful women every working day.

‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘She may not be beautiful. She may be older than “mature” implies. She may be worn and lost and pitiful. What will you do then? How will you get through your date without hurting her?’

And even that wasn’t it, wasn’t the bottom line.

‘What if she finds you worn and pitiful?’

He opened Arlene’s letter. Mark was doing well at Columbia after a rather shaky freshman year.

Arlene’s wealthy older brother was suffering from high blood pressure caused, he claimed, by the approach of the tax season. Her younger brother was considering divorce . . .

He put aside the letter, lifted the phone and dialled, his palms sweating.

The woman’s voice was high and tremulous. For a moment he thought it an aged voice. ‘Hello?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘Now who is this?’ crisply, losing the old-woman tremor.

‘David Howars, Miss Goran. In reply to your letter.’

It was her turn to be silent.

‘The New York Review, you know?’

‘Yes, of course. I was . . . taken aback.’

‘You gave me the number. Didn’t you expect my call?’

‘I . . . I find myself surprised at everything that happens in relation to that foolish ad.’

He chuckled. ‘I’ve forgotten which ad was yours. Was it “Slim mature lady with masters . . .”?’

‘Please don’t repeat it! I wrote it as quickly as I could. The slim . . . that’s a Freudian response of some sort. I am slim, or relatively slim, now, but I wasn’t always. So I tend to overemphasize the quality. As for the rest . . . I based it on what the other ads said. Silly, wasn’t it?’ She laughed painfully.

‘Good enough to get me to answer.’

‘I didn’t mean to link you to the silliness . . .’

‘Look, Miss Goran, would you like to have lunch?’

‘Lunch is a fine idea. Lunch doesn’t commit us . . .’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘I can’t on a weekday. I teach elementary school.’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you available on weekends?’

Which was a way of asking if he was married. ‘Saturday or Sunday?’ he asked.

‘Saturday.’ And then, ‘We could meet half-way. From your zip code, I gather you’re in the Hollywood Hills or thereabouts. It’s a long drive to the shore.’

Which could have been consideration, or fear that he would end up in her apartment making a ‘headlong gallop toward intimacies’.

‘Whatever you’d like. But as long as you’re willing to drive in . . . Scandia, Ma Maison, Bistro Gardens, the Polo Lounge, just about all the fine restaurants are in my area. Pick one and we’ll meet there.’

‘I’ve never been to the Polo Lounge. It’s in the Beverly Hills Hotel, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Saturday noon, the Polo Lounge.’

‘I didn’t expect to be so royally treated . . . David!’

‘That’s all right, Rita.’ The excitement in her voice was the reason he had offered the well-known restaurants. She would see the way he dressed, the way the captains and waiters recognized and treated him; would learn his occupation, his position; would see the car he drove and the house in which he lived, if it went that far. So that there would be no chance of her finding him worn and pitiful.

‘Could I have your telephone number, David? In case I have to cancel at the last minute?’

‘Home or office?’ he asked, thinking she was still questioning his marital status. He supposed married men answered those ads often enough.

‘Well . . . home, unless you’re at the office on Saturdays.’

He gave it to her.

She said, ‘Thank you! I’m looking forward to meeting you!’

He said, ‘The same here,’ and, ‘Goodbye.’

He was no longer nervous . . . until he considered what could happen if Miss Goran turned out to be less frightened and shy than she seemed, and herself made ‘a headlong gallop toward intimacies’.

Then again, that was one of the reasons he had read the New York Review personals – wanting to try an intellectual, non-showbiz woman in a complete relationship.

It was time to shower, then relax with one of the novels he read in his continuing search for movie properties. After which he would watch the late news and go to sleep.

Dreamless sleep, he hoped.

Rita Goran also had occasional nightmares. They concerned William Goran, her late husband, and he would be beating her, as he had in real life, though real life was twelve years in the past.

An over-reaction, she felt, the dreams being far worse than the actual beatings.

Even labelling them ‘beatings’ was an over-reaction, an exaggeration. Only that once, during the February blizzard, when she had suggested he sell the business before it ruined them, had he done more than shout obscenities and slap her a few times. During the blizzard he had ‘experienced a breakdown’, as he termed it. He had punched her in the face with his fist, three times, so that she’d had to call Dr Giles. Giles rather than their regular doctor for two reasons: he was within walking distance that stormy winter’s day, and he didn’t know many of the people she and Will knew.

She was ashamed, terribly, that Rita Goran who had been brought up in a loving home, who had received a fine Hunter College education, who had thought she knew the man she had married, should have cuts and bruises and broken teeth.

Will had been so contrite, so sorry afterwards, weeping, kissing her hand, pleading for her forgiveness. Of course she forgave him, and of course she understood the terrible pressure under which he had been living since Goran’s Electrical Supply Depot had begun failing.

But he had continued to throw good money after bad, as Daddy used to say, some of it money Daddy had left her and which she had put aside for his grandson’s education. Her only child, Roger, who to this day couldn’t believe his father had actually done what he had seen on his mother’s face. Roger, who nevertheless suspected his mother in his father’s death.

The inheritance, as she called Daddy’s money, was in her name and couldn’t be withdrawn without her signature. Will had talked and talked, mostly at night in bed, wheedling it out of her a thousand or two at a time (and, yes, frightening it out of her by clenching his fists as he talked, by bending his face over hers, eyes bulging, neck muscles protruding, coming close to another ‘breakdown’) until nine thousand was gone and only eleven thousand remained of what was to send her brilliant son through medical school.

It was spring, a fragrant afternoon in May, and such days were magnificent in New York’s Hudson Valley; such days had helped Will convince her to move, from her beloved Manhattan with all its cultural advantages, sixty miles north to the outskirts of Fishkill. At three o’clock he came home in a frenzy and said she had to give him the entire eleven thousand ‘or the business is lost’.

She said she would put a second mortgage on their jointly owned home before robbing their son. He laughed wildly, clenching his fists (and she watched those fists, fighting the fear, the need to give him whatever he asked for). He said he had already put a second on the house, forging her signature on the bank papers; said he would forge her signature on a withdrawal slip the next morning if she didn’t ‘come to her senses and save the business’.

‘The business is beyond saving,’ she said. ‘I spoke to Mr Lowell at the bank . . .’

He slapped her, swiftly, before she could see it coming. He slapped her again, and though she anticipated this second slap she didn’t move, held by the strange lethargy his violence produced in her.

He pushed his face into hers, whispering, ‘If you make trouble, I’ll kill us both, I swear it. That business is my life. My life, understand, you stupid, selfish bitch?’

He would apologize later. He would cry and kiss her hand. But right now he was clenching his fists, and she said, ‘Yes, all right. In the morning we’ll save the business.’ When she knew the business was finished. When she knew he was a weakling unable to face a new start.

When she knew she hated him for what he was doing to their son; and even more for what he was doing to her.

She made dinner. Roger came home and they ate together and he went to his room to study, her brilliant son who, all the teachers said, was destined for medicine.

He had changed after his father’s death. He had lowered his goals, his dreams. He’d become an instructor in the New York State college system. He was now an associate professor . . . but what he could have been!

She hadn’t seen him since coming to California three years ago. She never heard from him unless she phoned. And those calls had become too unpleasant because of his long silences.

Just before she had flown from Kennedy Airport to Los Angeles, he had asked her, ‘Did you kill my father?’

She had laughed shrilly and burst into tears. He had muttered an apology, saying it was a ‘paranoid delusion’ of his. At the last moment, boarding pass in hand, she had kissed him, clung to him, feeling she would never see him again; that she didn’t deserve to see him again. Because the answer to his question was yes, she had killed his father.

That beautiful spring day of the slapping, that mild May evening and later, during the cool black-morning hours, she had searched desperately for a way to avoid handing over her son’s inheritance. And there was no way, unless she went to the police. Even that might not do any good because Will wouldn’t let her out of his sight until after they went to the bank and she gave him the money and he took it from the cashier’s window to the loan department, so that he would have a few more months in which to lose everything.

Would she get the eleven thousand back if she went to the police after he made the loan payment?

Could she go to the police; tolerate the shame of accusing her own husband of forcing her to hand over money?

Would anyone believe her after all the years of model marriage?

She didn’t know what she was going to do until she did it. He was in the shower. She was at the sink, staring at her face with the little white scar at the left eye, at her mouth with the new caps on the front uppers. She saw the back of the counter-top heater reflected in the full wall mirror. She wondered if it could shock him into unconsciousness and so give her time to talk to the police.

She didn’t allow herself to think it could kill him.

She went to the bedroom and found the extension cord in the dresser. She returned and plugged in the heater, and now it reached the shower tub. She hoped he had the water running full blast, because then it would form two or three inches at the bottom of the tub, coming up over his ankles, the sluggish drain needing replacement, not Draino. She pulled the curtain aside at the back end, just a little, and remembered at the last moment to throw on the heater’s switch. There was a soft whirring sound as the fan started. He must have heard it over the shower’s hissing because he began to turn.

She dropped the heater, coils downward, into the few inches of water. There was a sizzling sound, a little flash, and he screamed and fell backward. He hit his head with a fleshy thump on the tub’s rim, and almost immediately began to bleed from the mouth and nose. The bathroom lights had gone out and the heater had stopped sizzling in the water, lying half under his left arm.

She wanted to run, but forced herself to disconnect the extension cord and take the heater out of the tub. She put the heater back on the counter and the extension cord back in the drawer, drying both with a towel. She went downstairs where the remains of Roger’s breakfast were on the table. She went into the little service area where the washer and dryer stood, and opened the circuit-breaker box. She found the lever Will had sticker-marked Bth. It was tripped. She reset it, and when she walked upstairs, the bathroom lights were on and the heater was working away with just a little sizzling. She waited until it stopped sizzling and turned it off.

She went downstairs and had coffee and a cold piece of toast Roger had left on his plate. She cleaned up the kitchen and swallowed two aspirins for the very nasty headache that had crept in behind her eyes. Then she returned to the bathroom and took a good look at her husband. He was a big, fleshy man and now he seemed enormous, filling the tub. He lay with one leg twisted under him, the other straight out, his eyes wide open, his lips slightly parted, looking very naked and very surprised. She couldn’t be certain, but she felt he was dead – his penis had never been that shrunken before.

She walked slowly to the bedroom and lifted the phone. By the time she reached Dr Levin, she was hysterical, begging for help. The hysteria was real, as she feared they would find signs of the electrocution – but they didn’t.

Dr Levin later explained that Will could have died of two separate causes. ‘He either had a heart attack and fell backward, striking his head and dying of a subdural haematoma caused by a depressed fracture of the skull. Or he slipped in the tub and fell, striking his head, and died of a resultant myocardial infarction – heart attack – brought on by shock. Or he died of more or less equal portions of both. If it’s any consolation, he couldn’t have had more than a few seconds of pain.’

In bed Monday night, a few hours after having spoken to David Howars, she asked herself how she could have been so wrong about Will; how she could have loved him; how she could have married him. Which, with variations, were questions she’d asked herself about several men since Will.

Time was running out. She was almost fifty. She prayed she wasn’t wrong about David Howars.