Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (35 page)

There was a disappointed silence. Everyone felt that something better could be done, something that would involve more furious happiness for recipients and donors: they would double their donations, erase the most anonymous superscriptions, make any concession but that of retiring to bed while their boiling lava cooled overnight in a steel box. “Why don’t we give it to the mayor
right
now
?”
said the elbow-woman. “It’s not too late, eh?” said the man in brown; and someone examined a watch and said: “Hell no; it’s only ten-forty-five.” “Why don’t we then?” “Yes, lets some of us go with it.” “Anyone know the mayor’s name? Anyone know where he lives? Waiter! Waiter!”

But the first waiter was a Frenchman who had barely heard of the mayor until this evening; the second was an ignoramus from Cracow; the third promised to get the information and went off to find a local waitress. While he was gone, the crowd thinned out somewhat; those who remained, paced up and down restlessly, feeling that if anything went wrong, the
buoyant spirit of spontaneity would evaporate into a dull gas. But the waiter returned with a dirty scrap of paper, on which was pencilled a short, impossible name and a long, impossible address. “What the hell; we’ll find it!” exclaimed someone. “That’s just what we won’t do,” said the man in brown sensibly, and rising from his chair he read the name of the street aloud. “Does anyone know where it is?” he cried.

There was silence: they looked at each other with saddening faces.

“I think
I
do.”

The crowd trembled, clapped, fell back. Morgan advanced to the table, rather shyly. “I do a lot of walking around,” he explained, as though his knowledge were indecent.

“Oh, you swell boy; we’re all grateful to you a million times!” cried the spokeswoman, seizing him by his tie. “Now, you lead the way: but we can’t
all
go, a whole mob; so let’s just have it that
you
go, and the gentleman who has the money, and two more—you two there,” pointing to a young couple, “and
we’ll
all stay here until you come back”—and swishing her long skirt under her behind she planted herself on the nearest sofa—“and tell us every word. Now, honey,” she added, patting the next cushion, and addressing the girl who had given fifty dollars, “you sit right down here by me and we’ll wait. Now, off you go, you four.”

The delegates bobbed and grinned at each other and went out into the square. The young man, who wore a tuxedo and a crew-cut, placed his hand behind the elbow of his girl, who was dressed in white satin with tiny high-heel shoes to match and wore an emerald bracelet.

“It’s this way,” said Morgan.

They crossed the square, passed the cathedral and went down Bread Street. A heavy whirring sounded overhead, and God beat the devil eleven times. On this one night the shops were already closed off with thick iron gates, their windows
empty save for their velvet floors and terraces. Grey dustbins, splintered wooden boxes trailing wisps of excelsior, lay waiting for the dawn rubbish-cart; the girl, her white satin shining in the dusk, daintily moved off the sidewalk into the bare street. But halfway down it she stopped under a streetlight with a wincing noise, clutched her young man’s arm, raised one perfect leg and began to ease its satin shoe up and down. She hung thus, snow-pure and delicate against the heavy stone-work, but pouting irritably. Biting her lips with sharp, white teeth she said, in a marked Southern accent: “These cobbles may have suited Roman chariots, but they are death to slippers.”  

To accommodate her, they walked slowly.  

At the end of Bread Street they came to a fork. “Well, Mr. Guide, which way?” said the man in brown. Morgan at once pointed to the left—and had no sooner done so than he was sure that he had picked the wrong road. “So far, so good,” said the man.

They passed the last of the streetlamps and entered the old, dim section of Mell. None of the rooms in the low houses showed any lights: in one window they saw the massive green trumpet of a gramophone blooming between cotton-lace side-curtains. A few moments later, the houses dropped away, the cobbles turned to dust, and Morgan knew they were on the empty road that he had followed to the grove on his first morning in Mell. He stopped and said humbly: “I’m very sorry, but I misdirected you: this road leads nowhere.”  

“Hell!” said the girl, and they all jumped.  

“Why didn’t you say so before?” said the man in brown good-naturedly.

“I didn’t realize. Now, I really do know. It’s back to the fork and down the other road.”

They started back, all walking with the impatient speed of people who are getting bored. At the fork they took the other road. “Yes, this is it,” said Morgan.

A dark shape soon showed in the centre of the road; it was an old pump wrapped at the waist with burlap and wire, its rusty mouth hanging over a stone trough of dirty water. “This is where I sit,” said the girl firmly: “You others can go on.” Without a thought to her splendid dress, she plumped down on one end of the trough, and her escort at once stirred his immaculate feet and kicked away some rolls of horse-dung. “Don’t worry,” she said, pulling her skirt nearly up to the waist, and unveiling long white haunches to the dark world. She freed and removed her stockings and shoes, and after rubbing her fingers between each pair of little toes, slewed around and dumped her bare legs up to the calves in the black water. The three men were fascinated. “Cigarette, Tommy?” she asked, and her escort pulled out a gold case. “I guess we’d better go ahead,” said the brown man; and the escort, pulling out his gold lighter, gave them a hasty, frowning nod, indicating that while they went on with their envelope, he would stand guard over the treasure.

“I bet she’ll make him pay for every blister,” the brown man said as they walked out of earshot. Morgan had been thinking just the same thing; and he had liked the brown man ever since he first saw him protesting against his conspicuous rôle; so now he looked at the man with respect and warmth, and thought suddenly: Thank God! I’ve found a friend.

The street fell into a steep curving slope; they trotted down in exact, friendly step. The streetlights disappeared again; the dusty road took over. “Some place for a mayor to live,” the man said, glancing at Morgan rather doubtfully.

Ahead of them they saw, one on each side of the road, identical houses with gables and high garden walls. “I know for sure it’s one of these; I don’t know which,” said Morgan. “Here, take this,” said the man, pushing the envelope over to Morgan and running across the road to where a figure had appeared. But the figure only shook its head when questioned,
deaf or ignorant of English. The man came back, looking at his watch impatiently. He and Morgan stared at the gables, with their identical backgrounds of bright stars and running, wispy clouds. “I’ll try this one; you take that, eh?” said the brown man.

Morgan found an iron gate in the middle of the wall and pushed it timidly. The hinges screamed; at once a dog let loose with high, sharp yelps and came tearing out of the darkness, throwing himself at Morgan’s legs, bouncing off them, dashing at them again. “Get down, Goddam you!” he said to it, raising the precious envelope high in the air and peering into the darkness.

But he could only see that he was within one of those garden walls in which the owner takes too much pride to consider how much the shrubs and little trees must struggle to breathe under its crushing height. Morgan marched staunchly first into one bush, then into another: at each snap and crash of boughs and leaves, the dog screamed frantically and tore between his legs. His feet found a path and followed it down one side of the house; it led him to the back door. Swearing, he went on, turned the west corner and followed the third side, where there was only a foot of space between the house and the garden wall, every inch packed with a jungle of bushes, and, for path, a thin groove left in the gravel by dripping rain water. His face stinging, he pushed through, headed by the hysterical dog; and a light came on in the housetop, showing him a front door set under a painted overhang. He found an iron bell-pull and tugged it.

Six inches of old wire came rasping out, a bell tinkled, the dog screamed, a voice roared out from the back door. Morgan roared too, and crashed his way around to the back door; but the person had closed it and was now pulling the bolts and shouting at the front door. He beat on the back door until he heard the steps turn and come down the passage again.

The door opened, the dog raced into the house screaming, a burst of light fell into Morgan’s eyes. Through his blinking lids he saw a huge woman with a large grey moustache, wearing a chocolate dress imprinted with red peonies: hanging menacingly from her right fist was a clawed implement for taking lids off stove-tops.

“How do you do: is the mayor at home? Does he live here? The burgomaster?” cried Morgan, trying gaily to outshout the dog. He waved the large envelope, which was now streaked with dirt and torn at one corner, where the dog had bitten it. Smiling, he held it in the light, pointing his finger at the word ‘Mayor.’

The woman bent, and frowned with enormous brows at the significant words; then she put out a large hand and firmly took the envelope. She gave him a deep bow and a grim smile, and closed the door on him. He heard her walk away down the passage and slowly climb the stairs. A little later the light went out and the dog stopped barking.

The brown man was waiting outside the iron gate. “I hope
you
struck oil, because
I
didn’t,” he said. “Well,” said Morgan, suddenly starting to feel worried: “I didn’t actually
see
the Mayor.” “Who did you see?” “I guess his wife, or housekeeper.” He described his adventure, and his new friend looked more and more grim. “I hope I’m wrong,” he said, when Morgan was through, “but I got the impression from the owner of
my
house that
your
house was the local insane asylum.”

“Oh, my God!”

“But I probably was wrong,” his friend said.

“By God, I hope you were!”

“No doubt of it.”

They stood together, wondering, and the man added reflectively: “Checking up might be something of a headache. Oh well, let’s have a try.”

They beat on the front and back doors and shouted. High upstairs the dog answered them, but no human voice replied, no light showed in any window. Scratched and breathless they returned to the road, where the man leaned against the wall and said: “Just a minute before we go on. Cigarette?”

“Thank you. I see I’ve made an awful mess. The more I think of it, the more sure I am that when that house was explained to me … But how could I confuse …?”

“Skip it; never mind that. What we must do is figure out what comes next. You look young to me; I guess you are inexperienced. You may not know that people who have donated a lot of dough to a worthy cause expect equal love and gratitude in return. If they don’t get it, the first thing they do is lynch the messenger. See?” Morgan nodded, very much impressed by such wisdom.

At last the man said: “The two babies we left on the road don’t count. They couldn’t make the grade, so they’ve got no right to be nosey. O.K.?”

“Positively.”

“But as for the others …” The man looked at Morgan and said firmly: “Now, for them we’re going to have to do a few little
elaborations
.
We may be the goats, but we don’t have to be the sacrifices. See what I mean?”

“Yes, I do.”

“O.K. Now; I think perhaps you’d better leave that part in my hands. I think I’m more experienced handling people than you are. You keep a steady head and just don’t say a word.”

“I’ll be too glad. I’m truly sorry to have got you in such a mess.”

“My own fault, bud. I’m old enough to know I should have kept my lip buttoned right at the start. This’ll teach me.”

They started up the road.

“Maybe you ought to smile while I’m elaborating,” said the man.

“Yes, I will; that would be right…. Er, are you going to be in Mell a long time?”

“No, sir, I am not. I just took myself a week-end here, and tomorrow I’ve to be in Tutin to take old Senator Fitch home to his folks in Colorado—and it’s going to cost them plenty. I may be dumb at
my
age, but you’d think an old man of eighty-two would know better than to ship himself to Poland in hot weather to orate about democracy.”

“Yes, I thought I read that he died in Warsaw last week.”

“He did just that. I’m an undertaker.”

Soon they saw the red cigarette ends of the girl and her escort. “Well, how did it go?” asked the girl, rising lazily from the trough.

“Ask no questions, you’ll hear no lies,” said the undertaker.

The four of them walked slowly back to the hotel, the girl leaning on her escort’s arm. The undertaker led the way into the lobby; Morgan, following the girl, saw that the hem of her dress was spattered with muck and that there was a broad wet band across her satin behind. The yellow-toothed spokeswoman was exactly where they had left her, on the sofa, but now she was holding one of the fifty-dollar girl’s hands firmly in both her own; the two of them seemed pleased and rather coy. Half a dozen others donors lay sleepily in chairs, but they bounced to their feet on seeing the delegates.

“Well!” they cried, “we’d just about given you up!”

“I can’t wait!” exclaimed the spokeswoman, “and nor can this generous little sweetheart.”

The undertaker shook his head with incredible gravity, and said slowly: “I don’t have much to say … He was one of those simple, kindly old buzzards you read about. It took me and my friend here”—indicating Morgan, who smiled all over his face—“a pretty long while to explain to him what it was all about: he’s not educated, you see, just
good
from
the
bottom
up.
Then, when he got the idea, he just burst into tears. He
stammered, in Polish, I guess, but meantime waved his arms over and over in a way that, believe me, was stronger than any words. I gathered he was asking what he could do in return; and I tried to tell him:
nothing
—that we were too happy. After that, we left him….”