Herzog (48 page)

    "No, not directly to me. I haven't seen him since last October."

    "To who, then?" The sergeant pressed her.

    Madeleine evidently would do what she could to weaken his position. She was aware that her relations with Gersbach offered grounds for a custody suit and she would therefore make the most of his present weakness-his idiocy. "His psychiatrist," she said, "saw fit to warn me."

    "Saw fit! Of what!" said Herzog.

    Still she spoke only to the sergeant. "He said he was concerned. Doctor Edvig is his name if you want to talk to him. He felt it necessary to advise me ..."

    "Edvig is a sucker-he's a fool," said Herzog.

    Madeleine's color was very high, her throat flushed, like pink-like rose quartz, and the curious tinge had come into her eyes. He knew what this moment was to her-happiness! Ah, yes, he said to himself, Ikey-Fishbones has dropped another pop fly in left field. The other team is scoring-clearing all bases. She was making brilliant use of error.

    "Do you recognize this gun?" The sergeant held it in his yellow palm, turning it over with delicate fingers like a fish-a perch.

    The radiance of her look as it rested on the gun was deeper than any sexual expression he had ever seen on her face. "It's his, isn't it?" she said. "The bullets, too?" He recognized the hard clear look of joy in her eyes. Her lips were pressed shut "He had it on him. Do you know it?"

    "No, but I'm not surprised."

    Moses was watching June now. Her face was clouded again; she seemed to frown.

    "Did you ever file a complaint against Moses, here?"

    "No," said Mady. "I didn't actually do that."

    She took a sharp breath. She was about to plunge into something.

    "Sergeant," said Herzog. "I told you there was no complaint. Ask her if I've ever missed a single support check."

    Madeleine said, "I did give his photograph to the Hyde Park police."

    He warned her that she was going too far.

    "Madeleine!" he said.

    "Shut it up, Moses," said the sergeant. "What was that for, lady?"

    "In case he prowled around the house. To alert them."

    Herzog shook his head, partly at himself. He had made the kind of mistake today that belonged to an earlier period. As of today it was no longer characteristic.

    But he had to pay an earlier reckoning. When will you catch up with yourself! he asked himself. When will that day come!

    "Did he ever prowl?"

    "He was never seen, but I know damn well he did. He's jealous and a troublemaker. He has a terrible temper."

    "You never signed a complaint, though?"

    "No. But I expect to be protected from any sort of violence."

    Her voice went up sharply, and as she spoke, Herzog saw the sergeant take a new look at her, as if he were beginning to make out her haughty peculiarities at last. He picked up the Ben Franklin glasses with the tablet-shaped lenses. "There ain't going to be any violence, lady."

    Yes, Moses thought, he's beginning to see how it is. "I never intended to use that gun except to hold papers down," he said.

    Madeleine now spoke to Herzog for the first time, pointing with a rigid finger to the two bullets and looking him in the eyes. "One of those was for me, wasn't it!"

    "You think so? I wonder where you get such ideas? And who was the other one for?" He was quite cool as he said this, his tone was level. He was doing all he could to bring out the hidden Madeleine, the Madeleine he knew. As she stared at him her color receded and her nose began to move very slightly. She seemed to realize that she must control her tic and the violence of her stare. But by noticeable degrees her face became very white, her eyes smaller, stony. He believed he could interpret them. They expressed a total will that he should die. This was infinitely more than ordinary hatred. It was a vote for his nonexistence, he thought. He wondered whether the sergeant was able to see this. "Well, who do you think that second imaginary shot was for?"

    She said no more to him, only continued to stare in the same way.

    "That'll be all now, lady. You can take your child and go."

    "Good-by, June," said Moses. "You go home now. Papa'll see you soon. Give us a kiss, now, on the cheek." He felt the child's lips.

    Over her mother's shoulder, June reached out and touched him. "God bless you." He added, as Madeleine strode away, "I'll be back."

    "I'll finish bookin' you now, Moses."

    "I've got to post bond? How much?"

    "Three hundred. American, not this stuff."

    "I wish you'd let me make a call."

    As the sergeant silently directed him to take one of his own dimes, Moses still had the time to note what a powerful police-face he had. He must have Indian blood-Cherokee, perhaps, or Osage; an Irish ancestor or two. His sallow gold skin with heavy seams descending, the austere nose and prominent lips for impassivity, and the many separate, infinitesimal gray curls on his scalp for dignity. His rugged fingers pointed to the phone booth.

    Herzog was tired, dragged out, as he dialed his brother, but far from downcast. For some reason he believed he had done well. He was running true to form, yes; more mischief; and Will would have to bail him out. Still, he was not at all heavy-hearted but, on the contrary, felt rather free. Perhaps he was too tired to be glum. That may have been it, after all-the metabolic wastes of fatigue (he was fond of these physiological explanations; this one came from Freud's essay on Mourning and Melancholia) made him temporarily light-hearted, even gay.

    "Yes."

    "Will Herzog in?"

    Each recognized the other's voice.

    "Mose!" said W.

    Herzog could do nothing about the feelings stirred by hearing W. They came to life suddenly at hearing the old tone, the old name. He loved Will, Helen, even Shura, though his millions had made him remote.

    In the confinement of the metal booth the sweat burst out instantly on his neck.

    "Where've you been, Mose? The old woman called last night. I couldn't sleep afterwards. Where are you?"

    "Elya," said Herzog, using his brother's family name, "don't worry. I haven't done anything serious, but I'm down at Eleventh and State."

    "At Police Headquarters?"

    "Just a minor traffic accident. No one hurt.

    But they're holding me for three hundred bucks bond, and I haven't got the money on me."

    "For heaven's sake, Mose. Nobody's seen you since last summer. We've been worried sick.

    I'll be right down."

    He waited in the cell with two other men. One was drunk and sleeping in his soiled skivvies. The other was a Negro boy, not old enough to shave. He wore a fawn-colored expensive suit and brown alligator shoes. Herzog said hello, but the boy chose not to answer. He stuck to his own misery, and looked away. Moses was sorry for him. He leaned against the bars, waiting. The wrong side of the bars-he felt it with his cheek. And here were the toilet bowl, the bare metal bunk, and the flies on the ceiling. This, Herzog realized, was not the sphere of his sins. He was merely passing through. Out in the streets, in American society, that was where he did his time. He sat down calmly on the bunk. Of course, he thought, he'd leave Chicago immediately, and he'd come back only when he was ready to do June good, genuine good. No more of this hectic, heart-rent, theatrical window-peering; no more collision, fainting, you-fight-"im-'e-cry encounters, confrontations. The drone of trouble coming from the cells and corridors, the bad smell of headquarters, the wretchedness of faces, the hand that turned the key of no better hope than the hand of this stuporous sleeper in his urine-stained underpants-the man who has eyes, nostrils, ears, let him hear, smell, see. The man who has intellect, heart, let him consider.

    Sitting as comfortably as the pain in his ribs would permit, Herzog even jotted a few memoranda to himself. They were not very coherent or even logical, but they came quite naturally to him. This was how Moses E. Herzog worked, and he wrote on his knee with cheerful eagerness, Clumsy, inexact machinery of civil peace.

    Paleotechnic, as the man would say.

IF a common primal crime is the origin of social order, as Freud, Roheim et cetera believe, the band of brothers attacking and murdering the primal father, eating his body, gaining their freedom by a murder and united by a blood wrong, then there is some reason why jail should have these dark, archaic tones. Ah, yes, the wild energy of the band of brothers, soldiers, rapists, etc. But all that is nothing but metaphor. I can't truly feel I can attribute my blundering to this thick unconscious cloud. This primitive blood-daze.

    The dream of man's heart, however much we may distrust and resent it, is that life may complete itself in significant pattern. Some incomprehensible way. Before death. Not irrationally but incomprehensibly fulfilled. Spared by these clumsy police guardians, you get one last chance to know justice. Truth.

    Dear Edvig, he noted quickly.

    You gave me good value for my money when you explained that neuroses might be graded by the inability to tolerate ambiguous situations. I have just read a certain verdict in Madeleine's eyes, "For cowards, Not-being!" Her disorder is super-clarity. Allow me modestly to claim that I am much better now at ambiguities. I think I can say, however, that I have been spared the chief ambiguity that afflicts intellectuals, and this is that civilized individuals hate and resent the civilization that makes their lives possible.

    What they love is an imaginary human situation invented by their own genius and which they believe is the only true and the only human reality. How odd!

    But the best-treated, most favored and intelligent part of any society is often the most ungrateful.

    Ingratitude, however, is its social function.

    Now there's an ambiguity for you!... Dear Ramona, I owe you a lot. I am fully aware of it. Though I may not be coming back to New York right away, I intend to keep in touch. Dear God!

    Mercy! My God!

    Rachaim olenu... melekh maimis....

    Thou King of Death and Life...

    His brother observed, as they were leaving police headquarters, "You don't seem too upset."

    "No, W."

    Above the sidewalk and the warm evening gloom the sky carried the long gilt trails of jets, and the jumbled lights of honky-tonks, just north of 12th Street, were already heaving up and down, a pale mass in which the street seemed to end.

    "How do you feel?"

    "I feel fine," said Herzog. "How do I look?"

    His brother said discreetly, "You could do with a little rest. Why don't we stop and have you looked at by my doctor."

    "I don't think that's necessary. This small cut on my bead stopped bleeding almost immediately."

    "But you've been holding your side. Don't be a fool, Mose."

    Will was an undemonstrative man, substantial, shrewd, quiet, shorter than his brother but with thicker, darker hair. In a family of passionately expressive people like Father Herzog and Aunt Zipporah Will had developed a quieter, observant, reticent style.

    "How's the family, Will-the kids?"

    "Fine... What have you been doing, Moses?"

    "Don't go by appearances. There's less to worry about than meets the eye. I'm really in very good shape. Do you remember when we got lost at Lake Wandawega? Floundering in the slime, cutting our feet on those reeds? That was really dangerous.

    But this is nothing."

    "What were you doing with that gun?"

    "You know I'm no more capable of firing it at someone than Papa was. You took his watch chain, didn't you? I remembered those old rubles in his drawer and then I took the revolver too. I shouldn't have. At least I ought to have emptied it. It was just one of those dumb impulses. Let's forget it."

    "All right," said W. "I don't mean to embarrass you. That's not the point."

    "I know what it is," Herzog said. "You're worried." He had to lower his voice to control it.

    "I love you too, W."

    "Yes, I know that."

    "But I haven't behaved very sensibly. From your standpoint... Well, from any reasonable standpoint.

    I brought Madeleine to your office so you could see her before I married her. I could tell you didn't approve. I didn't approve of her myself. And she didn't approve of me."

    "Why did you marry her?"

    "God ties all kinds of loose ends together. Who knows why! He couldn't care less about my welfare, or my ego, that thing of value. All you can say is, 'There's a red thread spliced with a green, or blue, and I wonder why." And then I put all that money into the house in Ludeyville. That was simply crazy."

    "Perhaps not," said W. "It is real estate, after all. Have you tried to sell it?" Will had great faith in real estate.

    "To whom? How?"

    "List it with an agent. Maybe I'll come and look it over."

    "I'd be grateful," said Herzog. "I don't think any buyer in his right mind would touch it."

    "But let me call Doctor Ramsberg, Mose, and have him examine you. Then come home and have some dinner with us. It would be a treat for the family."

    "When could you come to Ludeyville?"

    "I've got to go to Boston next week. Then Muriel and I were going out to the Cape."

    "Come by way of Ludeyville. It's close to the Turnpike. I'd consider it a tremendous favor. I have to sell that house."

    "Have dinner with us, and we can talk about it."

    "Will-no. I'm not up to it. Just look at me.

    I'm stinking dirty, and I'd upset everyone. Like a lousy lost sheep." He laughed. "No, some other time when I'm feeling a little more normal. I look as if I'd just arrived in this country. A D. p. Just as we arrived from Canada at the old Baltimore and Ohio Station. On the Michigan Central.

    God, we were filthy with the soot."

    William did not share his brother's passion for reminiscence. He was an engineer and technologist, a contractor and builder; a balanced, reasonable person, he was pained to see Moses in such a state. His lined face was hot, uneasy; he took a handkerchief from the inner pocket of his well-tailored suit and pressed it to his forehead, his cheeks, under the large Herzog eyes.