Читать книгу Dagger of the Mind - Kenneth Fearing - Страница 5

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CHRISTOPHER BARTEL

It was about noon when I decided to quit work, for the time being, on the new canvas. I’d set the easel near the window that overlooked Endor, and was doing a view of the valley and the town. I decided to call it “Cloud Shadows,” “Peaceful Valley,” or possibly “Eldorado.” Then I noticed the sound of the typewriter in the adjacent studio, occupied by Nathan Biernbaum, had stopped some time ago. Biernbaum, of course, was the historical novelist, probably the most successful of the whole school. When I yelled “Come in,” in response to a knock at the door, I was not surprised to find it was he. He seemed to stop working at about the same hours I did.

He said, “I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but I’ve run out of matches. Got any?”

I handed him a card of them and said, “I was through for the morning anyway. Sit down and have a drink?”

“Thanks.”

He sat down in one of the indestructible Maplewood armchairs with which most of the Hall’s studios were furnished. Biernbaum, in the neighborhood of forty, did not much resemble what one would think a famous novelist of his type of work would look like. He was about five feet one, to begin with, and gave the impression of being a particularly attentive but not very bright waiter in some obscure businessman’s lunchroom on 50th Street. The perfect symmetry of his small but unmistakable bald-spot belonged to a man who has at least five children, though Biernbaum had none, and his clothing might have been the castoffs of some generous but misguided servant.

He said, while I mixed a highball with the last of the Bourbon:

“Did you hear about the massacre in the dining room this morning?”

“No.”

“Seems that some dope—I’m sorry I had an early breakfast and missed it—seems that some dumbbell hauled off and slugged Nichols, that poisonous bastard, smack in the puss.” When I handed him the highball he said, again, “Thanks. You didn’t see it, by any chance?”

I said, “I was the dope that socked him.”

“Really? The maid told me about it, but she didn’t say who did it.” He sipped his highball. “She simply said Nichols had been razzing some guy, and he didn’t seem to want to take it.”

“What else does the grapevine have to say about it?”

“Oh, just that Nichols was criticizing this man’s work—yours, evidently. I admire your courage, Bartel, but I must say, I damn your judgment. Nichols, you know, is a very influential person, and he can make himself most unpleasant.”

I said, “It’s a pleasure to smack a heel anywhere, any time, under any circumstances I happen to run across one, and I don’t give a damn if he has a drag with God in person, I’ll do it anyway.”

Biernbaum, sipping his drink, stared absently across the studio. He said, presently, “What’ve you got there, Bartel? What do you call that thing?”

I followed his gaze, and said, “It’s called ‘Farewell’.”

“My God. Is that a mermaid, sitting on those over-grown dornicks?”

I walked across the studio to the picture, lifted it up, looked at it carefully, and said, “It was done by a former student of mine. He gave it to me, and I had to accept it, of course. Not bad composition.”

“Frightful,” said Biernbaum. “Unless you love geometry.”

I put the picture down, this time with the face to the wall, and said, “I don’t think I agree with you.” Biernbaum sighed and sipped his highball. “I have to look at quantities of stuff by younger artists, of course. Everything from etchings to murals.”

Biernbaum set his drink down, lit another cigarette with the card of matches I had given him.

“Speaking of Nichols,” he said. “When do you plan to lay his wife?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He gestured tolerantly.

“It’s none of my business, of course. But everyone does. It’s a tradition at the Hall.” He exhaled, sampled the drink again. “I might say, one of the best traditions.”

I could see that getting homey with Biernbaum was not going to pan out. Small as he was, and well-meaning though dumb, as he might be, I had a strong urge to pick him up and heave him out of the door. Or simply to sock him one. But I had already smacked one phony this morning, and to take a poke at another one seemed, somehow, to be overdoing it. I said, instead, “Are you trying to tell me, in your subtle fashion, that you have—what shall I say?—observed the traditions of Demarest Hall?”

He gave me the look of a waiter who has brought in a perfectly done sirloin steak when filet halibut had been ordered.

“No,” he said. “Unfortunately, no. But to tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking of doing so. Confidentially, Bartel, what do you think of this current crop of females that our major-domo, Peter Carlyle Cooke has brought in? I mean, I’ve been here during three other seasons, and I realize this is your first visit, but what do you think of the women?”

“The women?”

“The women who are guests. What do you think of them?”

I stopped and thought about them. I went over those whom I had met and already knew, those whom I had met but knew only slightly. I said, “Well, to tell you the truth, not so hot. Most of them.”

Biernbaum slammed his empty glass down upon the arm of his chair.

“You said it. About five good-looking women among the whole damned lot.” He crushed out his cigarette and lighted another one, from an entirely different card of matches, I noticed, than the one I had given him. “I wonder where the committee finds them. Somebody ought to talk to Cooke about it; you’d think he was trying to run a monastery. Somebody ought to do something about Cooke, just on general principles. He’s got an entertainment schedule twice as heavy, this year, as it was last.”

I said, “I read the announcement, but I didn’t pay much attention to it.”

Biernbaum sighed and stood up.

“You will, though. Some hot June afternoon when you find yourself listening to a violin recital in the music room. Or some hot July night when you’re watching a dance group in the open-air theater, and wondering why.”

“What the hell,” I said. “This is still a free country. I don’t have to be there if I don’t want to.”

Biernbaum turned on a look of superior knowledge.

“No, but Cooke thinks it’s good for your soul to be there, and things have a way of happening to people who tangle with Cooke’s sense of propriety. If you like to go for a swim before breakfast, you’re apt to find that’s just the hour they’ve chosen to drain the pool and repair the filter system. If Cooke asks you whether there’s any special dish you’d like to request, and you’re stupid enough to tell him you like crab-meat ravigotte, for instance, then that’s the one thing we’ll never have. If he knows you have certain favorite radio programs, at the hour they’re on every electric gadget in the place is going to be working and you’ll think your radio’s been hit by lightning. Oh, yes, he has ways and means of winning his arguments.” Biernbaum moved to the door. “Fact is I think P. C. Cooke has a deep, secret grudge against writers and he’s never so happy as he is when he’s just thought up something especially unpleasant to happen to one of his best-hated novelists. Well, I think I’ll have a walk before lunch. Thanks for the matches. Drop in and have a highball with me soon.”

I said, “Thanks, I will,” though I didn’t think I would, and he went out. After he’d gone I sat down on the edge of the bed and began to think. I thought, for a moment, of packing up and leaving Demarest Hall. Then I decided not to. In the first place, I could keep pretty much away from Nichols and Connors in the future, and similar pests, and probably Biernbaum was exaggerating about Cooke, if not lying. And in the second place, I could imagine what Geraldine would say and what she’d do if I left here and went someplace else for the spring and summer. After the fight we had about it, and she told me she didn’t believe that I intended to work, actually to work on the things that I really wanted to do, no place but Demarest Hall was really safe. I knew, too, that if I did walk out now it would mean that she had been right. And I’d never again try to do the serious thing.

There was a knock at the door, this time the steward. He had the things I ordered, and after he’d put the packages down in the kitchenette I tried to give him a tip. Embarrassed, he refused it.

He said, “Thank you, sir, just the same. Mr. Cooke doesn’t like that sort of thing, except at the end of the season. But I’ll tell you what you might do, sir. Have you a drop to drink? I might have that.”

I had an idea. I said, “Certainly, Albert. What would you like?”

“Bit of Scotch, if you have any, sir. And soda.”

I went into the kitchenette and opened up the liquor, mixed two stiff highballs. If anybody had the lowdown on the people of the Hall, it ought to be Albert. I came back with them and said, “Sit down, Albert. You must be pretty hot, running around with the shopping and all.”

“Thank you, sir. Terrible hot.” He tried the high-ball. “Hits the spot, this does.”

I said, “Mr. Cooke objects, does he, to your receiving tips?”

“Not objects, exactly. But he wants the guests to feel more as if they were at home, like.”

“A very good idea, too. Still,” I said, casually, “he wouldn’t necessarily know about it. I mean, this is a large place, and Mr. Cooke must have his hands too full to check up on every little move the servants make. I don’t mean you, I mean all of them.”

“He certainly does have his hands full. It’s a job, his.”

“Yes, he has to be a combination of diplomat and magician, I imagine. Or a mind reader, I should say.”

Albert winked perceptibly above his highball.

“He’s deep, he is.”

“But you don’t believe that nonsense about Mr. Cooke being able to read anybody’s mind, do you?” I asked.

“Certainly not, sir. But he’s a fine man, sir. A wonderful gentleman to work for. And deep. You wouldn’t believe it, if I told you how deep.”

I said, “Well, how deep?”

“Generous, too.” Albert nodded. “Always thinking of others. Puts himself out a great deal for the guests, sir. More than most people gives him credit for. If there’s anything you want, and it’s in reason, just ask him. Or you could ask me, for that matter. We like to see our guests happy and comfortable.” We finished our highballs in a dead heat. “If you’d like a few articles of furniture you haven’t got in the studio, I could speak to George, the carpenter, and he’d be glad to get it for you out of the storeroom.”

“No, I don’t want any more furniture, thanks.”

“Or if there’s some special kind of food you’re especially fond of, I could speak to the cook.”

“Well, in hot weather I always like ...” I rattled the ice cubes in the glass, and thought.

“Yes, sir?”

“Nothing.”

“Something you’d care for in particular, sir?”

“No. I was simply going to say, in hot weather I always like to have hot-weather dishes.”

“That’s best, sir. Absolutely right.”

Albert stared reflectively into his empty glass. The score was zero so far, but it might be worth another try. Ordinarily, I don’t believe in hobnobbing with the help, but I was considerably puzzled, not to say uneasy, by some of the things I’d heard and seen at the Hall. Another drink or two might prompt Albert’s confessional instincts. I said,

“Another one, Albert?”

“If you’re sure it’s all right, sir. Mr. Cooke might not like it. He doesn’t like the staff to disturb the guests any more than we can help.”

“It’s all right with me, I’m sure. And as far as Mr. Cooke is concerned, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Will it?”

“That’s right, sir.”

I brought out the Scotch and soda and some ice cubes, and we mixed up another couple of stiff ones. Albert raised his and said, “Hoping you have a pleasant summer, Mr. Bartel.”

“Thank you, Albert. I’m sure I shall. There’s no reason why one shouldn’t, is there?”

“None, none at all.”

“I mean, does anyone ever, now and again, for one reason or another, fail to enjoy a season at Demarest Hall?”

“Not often, sir.”

“Sometimes, though?”

“I’d hardly say that. It’s as you might say, every summer is a different summer at the Hall. Some good. Some not the best, if you see what I mean.”

“No, I don’t see what you mean.”

“Like this, sir. Mr. Cooke, he’s tried everything. One whole season he had the muck-a-mucks that run the Hall invite only gentlemen. Another time, he tried ladies, exclusively.”

“Work out all right?”

“No, sir, it didn’t, either way. Mainly, though, he mixes them, like this year.”

“I suppose that’s better.”

“No, sir, that’s not exactly what you’d call better, either. It don’t seem to work out for the best, any way. Some years he has mainly writers, other years mostly artists, like yourself, sir. Once we had radicals, there must have been two dozen of them, you couldn’t hear yourself think, and another time Mr. Cooke and the directors invited a very high society type. They didn’t talk so much, but they broke an awful lot of furniture; we were sweeping up the pieces morning, noon and night.”

“Well, by and large, nothing really unpleasant ever happened, would you say?”

“Offhand, I can’t recall anything.” He gave me a significant look. “No, I can’t recall, offhand, any time before now when one of the gentlemen handed a trustee a black eye. No, that never did happen before.” He said it with a note suggesting regret. “The guests, yes. They’ve had it out between themselves. But a trustee, no.”

I wasn’t surprised that Albert knew all about the argument in the dining room this morning.

“Has Mr. Nichols got a shiner?”

“A beauty, too.”

“Well, that’s too bad. But I really think—never mind. Have another drink, Albert?”

“I wouldn’t mind, sir.”

We mixed another round. I said, “How would Mr. Cooke take that affair at breakfast this morning, do you suppose?”

Albert studied his drink.

“Hard to say,” he finally decided. “Might not like it. On the other hand, he might see it your way. Mr. Cooke, he’s really deep. Not like you or I would be, sir, but deep in his own way. He’s a very generous and understanding man. But not worldly. He’s more the innocent type, with his head in the clouds. He’d see things you and I wouldn’t, but again, he wouldn’t see things, plain as the nose on your face, that we would.”

Albert tilted the glass, and the phone rang. Answering it, I said, “Yes?”

“Mr. Bartel?”

I said, “Yes.” It was P. C. Cooke. “This is Mr. Bartel.”

“This is Mr. Cooke, Mr. Bartel. I was wondering if perhaps Mr. Page was in your studio?”

“Yes, he’s here.”

“Well, I wonder if you’d mind seeing to it that he leaves for the kitchen on time to make the usual lunch basket distributions at the usual hour we have here of one o’clock? He’s sometimes a little lax, under certain circumstances.”

I said, “I’ll tell him.”

“I don’t want to interrupt your conversation, Mr. Bartel. I know you must be very curious about some of the people and the various aspirations we have here at the Hall. But at the same time, it’s most important that Albert delivers lunch to the guests at a punctual hour. And you can talk to him later, of course. You understand, I’m not criticizing you, Mr. Bartel, it’s just that geniuses get hungry, like everyone else,” he sounded a windy, humorless laugh to go with the banality, “and they hate it when the steward doesn’t bring them their lunches on time.”

Inwardly mystified but trying to sound hearty, I said, “Certainly, I’ll tell him.”

“He can start with the lunches,” said Mr. Cooke, “as soon as he finishes his drink.” I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see P. C. Cooke, but I saw, of course, only Albert. He was finishing his drink. “Thank you, Mr. Bartel, and may I say again I hated to call this way. It’s only that the steward is sometimes not quite as punctual as he might be. Mr. Page has a cross of immoderate thirst to bear.”

I hung up, and when I turned around Albert was on his feet.

“That was Mr. Cooke,” he said. “He must have been phoning from the Valley Club. I drove him to the town and left him there. Was there a message for me?”

“Mr. Cooke was afraid you might be late with the lunches.”

Albert somewhat unsteadily peered at his wrist watch.

“I’m no bargain,” he declared. “I’m no bargain, I’ll admit, but I do all right with the lunches. They’re supposed to be delivered to the studios by one o’clock, and here it is, only a quarter after. Takes ten minutes to get up to the kitchen, five minutes to get the wagon ready, and twenty minutes to make all the deliveries. I might be a half hour late, or an hour, but what difference does that make to a bunch of loafers—I beg your pardon, sir, and present company excepted—who went back to sleep right after they had breakfast, and they’ll go right back to sleep again the minute they’ve had lunch?”

I have never swallowed a whole ice cube at one gulp, but I could imagine how it would feel, and I felt as though I had. I said, “Did you say Mr. Cooke was in Endor?”

“That’s right, sir. I drove him there when I did the shopping this morning. Left him at the Valley Club in town where he was having lunch with the mayor.”

I stepped to the window where the easel had been set up and looked out. The valley dropped away sheerly, about a hundred feet from the window, and showed Endor in the very bottom of it, looking like a cluster of not very promising fly-specks. Most of the valley was bright with sunlight, as I’d painted it, but here and there one could see the shadow of a small cloud, swift and faint. I said, “You don’t think Mr. Cooke has a telescope down there, and maybe he keeps it trained on the studios up here, when he’s away?”

Albert looked blank.

“Of course not, sir. What makes you say that?” I shrugged, and Albert moved to go. “Thank you for the highballs, sir. Most pleasant. If there’s anything I can do for you. Anything a little extra, Mr. Bartel, just say the word.”

I waved him out and went back to the window. The city was easily fifteen miles away, in the hollow of the valley, and more likely twenty. I knew there must be some rational explanation for P. C. Cooke’s unholy accuracy regarding Albert. The only trouble was, that rational explanation just escaped me. Of course, the studio might be wired. Just to make sure I went over the whole place rather carefully, looking behind the curtains, under the rugs, the mattress on my bed, the drawers of the dresser, the kitchenette and even the icebox. There was nothing, anywhere, to suggest that a microphone had been installed. By the time I’d finished, I saw Albert, through one of the studio windows, wheeling around the wagon that carried the lunch trays. He’d reached the Doghouse, by then, staggering a little, and my studio would be next. I poured a stiff drink for myself. There are times, I’ve noticed, when a fellow has to be sober and think like lightning, and if you happen to be drunk, or a little drunk, the only thing to do is take three or four more shots and, well, to put it simply, drink yourself sober. Then, after that one, I had another one, hoping I’d be still more clear-headed.

But I realized, after the last one began to take effect, that it would be a waste of time to try to rationalize this latest business. In fact, it would probably be a waste of time to try to explain any of it. I was sobering up, all right. The soberer I became, the more I realized I was over my depth. Perhaps, after all, it would be better simply to leave Demarest Hall.

Then I heard Albert’s cart creak past the studio, the wheels crunching on the gravel of the drive, and I heard a thump as he delivered the basket at the door of my studio. I went to the door and opened it. As I did so, I saw Biernbaum in his own doorway, looking at his lunch with some surprise. He said, “Albert must be drunk again. I got Lucille Nichols’ tray.”

I looked down at mine. The card on it said “Claudia Attelio” and what food it contained I don’t know, except that it seemed to consist mainly of lettuce and whole-wheat bread. Evidently, Miss Attelio was dieting. If I looked far enough, I didn’t doubt, I’d have found ant-eggs and Swedish bread. I booted the basket across the drive and picked up the one in Biernbaum’s door.

“I’ll take this to Miss Nichols,” I said.

“Don’t put yourself out,” he said. “I’ll be glad to do it myself.”

I didn’t answer him. I was halfway across the quadrangle, to the Fountain house, before he’d finished speaking. What the hell, I felt, what I really needed was the feminine touch. There might be something, after all, in that feminine intuition stuff.