The Fires of Spring (56 page)

But he was so tired that next morning he overslept and Mom found him sprawled on the chairs, his mouth dirty with the smell of stale tobacco smoke. “Ain’t he one hell of a sight?” Mom asked the poet as she surveyed the sleeping form. She kicked one of the chairs and bellowed, “Hey! You! I gave strict orders for bums to sleep outside.” Then, when David rubbed his eyes, she threw up her hands in mock horror and screamed, “My God! It’s Harper!”

The comedy ended when the door opened and a little man in uniform cried with great satisfaction, “Ah-ha! Just as I thought! Sleeping customers in the restaurant.”

“You pismire!” Mom shouted. “You get the hell out of this restaurant!” She started to throw a coffee cup at the little fellow when Claude interrupted her.

The inspector grinned triumphantly and announced, “This
time it’s going to be a fine!” Mom broke loose from Claude’s restraint and leaped at the little man, who ducked out, chuckling to himself.

“Now see what you done!” Mom exploded at David. She would have berated him further but a stentorian voice outside was shouting, “Is this Mom Beckett’s?” She left David and thrust her head out the door. “Who’n hell you think it is?” The loud voice cried back, “But they told me Mom Beckett was an ugly old bag! You’re beautiful!”

“It’s Jensen!” Dave cried, and he brushed past Mom and into the broad arms of the Wild Man. The big football player clapped David on the back and barged into the restaurant. “Some joint!” he said approvingly. He lifted Mom in the air and gave her a kiss. “You’re even prettier than Dave said,” he joked.

“A big boy like you better have a drink!” Mom proposed.

“And I could use one. Even this early.” The Wild Man tossed off a beer and a gin and then took David out into Washington Square.

“What’s up?” David asked.

“Cyril Hargreaves. He’s very sick.”

“In New York?”

“Yes. You see, I wanted to help him, but …”

“I don’t have a job either,” David said.

“Times are sure tough,” Jensen said. “What Cyril needs most is somebody to sit with him.” The wonderful color in Jensen’s face was gone and he seemed worn with the troubles of his times. “You see, Dave, the old boy is dyin’. Alone.”

He led David to a dingy house on West Forty-eighth Street and then climbed four flights of narrow stairs. In a room with no curtains and a single forty-watt bulb they found the old actor. Cyril was thin, very gray, and he was visibly dying. When David entered Cyril nodded and allowed his leonine head to fall upon the pillow. His mouth hung open. He had not been shaved for two days, and saliva dripped from his beard.

“Let him sleep,” the Wild Man said. “He may recognize you later.”

“What’s he got?” David asked in a whisper.

“Pneumonia and old age.”

“Has he had a doctor?”

“Equity sent one. I had no dough.” The Wild Man explained the medicines and added, “You take over, I been here two days.”

“Where you living?” David asked.

“Here and there,” the Wild Man replied. The two friends looked at each other and said no more. While Jensen checked the medicine David looked at the sick man. Tears came into his eyes and he wanted to wipe them away, but he was ashamed to do so while Jensen remained. Cyril Hargreaves, the proud man! Lying in a grimy white bed. The blankets were thin and had been soiled for years. In lusher days lovers had come to this room and had wrapped themselves in those blankets. About the old actor’s face the edges of the blankets were frayed, and they formed a gruesome shroud for the greatness that had once moved that wasted body.

“This is awful!” David muttered.

“Oh, he had a pretty good life,” the Wild Man mused. “I’m going now. I can hardly keep my eyes open. But I’d give my last buck to get my hands on that bitch Mona Meigs.”

David controlled his face. “She missing?” he inquired.

“Yep. They hit hard times, and as soon as the dough was gone, she high-tailed it out. I saw her the other day. She wouldn’t come up to see him. She looked like hell. Ran away from me.”

“You get some sleep,” David said.

“You were in love with her, weren’t you?” Jensen asked at the door.

“Who?”

“Mona. She sure looks like hell now.” The Wild Man shook his head and left.

At dusk Cyril awoke. The newspaper shielding the light had slipped away, and a yellow glare filled his gaunt face. He did not recognize David but called him a stumbling “Mr. J’ns’n.” He hawked and huffed, as in the old days, and said graciously, “I believe I have some med’sin due me. And I’m afraid the lamp needs some adjustment.” He took the medicine and made a wry face. “The theatre has had a very bad season, Mr. J’ns’n. Things … have … been … very … slow … indeed.”

He lapsed into a coma and for one frantic moment David thought he had died. But when the breathing seemed to have stopped completely, the old voice said, “I’ll take a little nap.” David pulled the worn blankets about the foam-flecked beard.

This was the end of the artist! This was how artists and poets and actors and novelists died! In a lonely room, with rented furniture and a shaky bed. This was the echo of applause,
the true face when the masking was ended. Bitterly, and without comprehension, David recalled the endless towns Cyril Hargreaves must have played in his long career. Now they were shadows, and the laughter had ceased. He was dying in a dirty room on West Forty-eighth Street.

For a moment David’s consuming preoccupation with experience came back and he remembered the night he had lain in the truck while Vito and the Wild Man had gone inside for hot dogs. That same feeling of infinite remoteness now attacked him, and he knew that whether he willed it or not, his avaricious mind was noting each shred of the raveled blanket exactly as it had recorded sounds on that distant night, or as it had studied the light falling across barren bricks outside his window.

Hargreaves moved, but David’s mind continued to note the peculiar shape the blankets took as they rested upon the dying man. And the four bottles, they could be described like this: “Near the curve of the scarred bedstead rose four bottles like the pediment of a Greek temple.” David blinked his eyes. “For God’s sake!” he cried at his mind. “Stop! Stop!”

The night wore on, and the room became familiar. David studied the way in which the wallpaper was soiled. Some man with much pomade had often sat in that chair with his feet upon the bed, resting his greasy hair upon the wall. Over there a man—perhaps the same one—had blown his nose with his finger, and again the wall was stained. He was not frightened by these things. He did not fear that he himself might one day die in such a room, for he knew that he was as deeply committed to the world of art as Cyril Hargreaves had been. This barren room with its obscene stains might be the end of the artist, but it would never be the end of art. He remembered consolingly a long-forgotten name he had seen scrawled upon a rafter, God alone knew where: “Robert Mantell. Hamlet. February 3, 1907.”

At four o’clock the dying man awoke and immediately recognized David. “Mr. Harper!” he called feebly. “It’s so very good of you to visit with me!” He extended a thin, worn hand in exactly the gracious manner he would have used had David been visiting him in an expensive suite. Yet his quick mind saw that David was shocked by the quality of the hand, and he laughed, “So much can happen in two years.” He lay back and smiled at his visitor. “I’ve seen several of my old friends,” he said, mentioning names David did not know.
“But one person has been much in my mind. What happened to Miss Emma Clews?”

“I don’t know,” David said.

“I’ve been chuckling over her superb performance … What were we playing, Mr. Harper?”

They recalled events from that last Chautauqua. “We were fortunate to share that final tour,” the old actor said. “I would not have missed it. Is it day or night?”

“It’s day,” David replied. “It’s dawn.”

“Could I prevail upon you …” He fell back. A very thin finger rubbed his chin and he said, “… Yesterday I could not shave. I have a feeling that Miss Meigs may call today. Could I prevail upon you to help me?”

The process was almost unbearable. David held the old man up, a bundle of tired bones held tenuously together by will and undead tissues. He felt as if he were being dragged against his will into the stratagems of death. For a moment he thought that he would be sick, like the old women in the poorhouse, but Lord Cyril rubbed the fresh cheeks and said, “It’s a superb feeling, to be fresh shaven. I have a decided presentiment that Miss Meigs will call today.”

At eight Jensen banged noisily into the room and cried, “If it was summer, Cyril, we’d go out to a ball game.” Then he whispered to David, “Get some sleep and come on back about six. He’ll die for sure tonight.”

Tired, and with sand in his eyes, David rushed to his room, where Mona still lay in bed. She had cold cream on her face and her hair was in curlers. She had been sleeping in her underwear. “What brings you here?” she asked.

“Get some clothes on!” David commanded with sudden fury.

“What goes on?”

“I just left Cyril Hargreaves.”

Mona thew her hands over her face. “Don’t! Don’t!” she wailed.

“Get up, damn you!” David shouted. He ripped the bedclothes from her, and she stood defiantly by the bed.

“I can’t go up there!” she protested. “I saw him once in that awful room. He understands, Dave.”

Mona!” David shouted. “He won’t live through the night. Get your clothes on.”

“No!” she screamed, and when he grabbed her, she became hysterical. Mom and Claude hurried upstairs.

“What goes on here?” Mom demanded. Mona continued to scream.

“Tell her to get dressed!” David commanded.

“No! No!” Mona cried. She fled to Mom’s strong arms, and the big woman protected her from David.

“What is it, Dave?” Mom asked.

“An old man is dying. She lived with him until his money was gone.”

“You better leave her alone,” Mom said quietly.

“By God, I won’t!” David swore. “I held that old man in my arms while he shaved, hoping that she’d come see him today …” His voice broke and in despair he lunged at Mona, but with a big, firm hand Mom pushed him away.

“Beat it, Dave,” she counseled. Stubbornly he tried to reach Mona, but the landlady would not permit him to do so. “Some things,” she said firmly, “you can’t make a person do.”

“But that lousy tramp …”

“Dave!” Mom pleaded. “Doin’ some things ain’t of much significance. I guess I’ve seen more’n three hundred people die, more or less, and it never made a bit of difference who was there or what fine things anybody said, because when a person dies … Wheeeewt!” She made a horrible, low, whistling sound, as if a stubborn lamp had been extinguished.

That night the doctor said, “The old fellow’s very weak.”

“Any change in the medicine?” Jensen asked.

“No. I’ll drop by tomorrow,” the doctor replied. He paused as if about to say something more. Then he left.

Cyril was fully rational and seemed glad that David and Jensen both were to stay with him. “And in the seventh hour,” he said, “men of the village came to sit with him.” He laughed weakly at David and cackled, “Don’t ask me who said it. I said it.”

David inquired which of his many roles he had most enjoyed. He thought for a minute, accentuating his fallen cheeks by sucking in their remnants. “It would have to be Polonius,” he admitted. “An actor can do a great deal with Polonius.”

“You played him in John Barrymore’s company, didn’t you?” David asked.

And Jensen sighed loudly and said, “John Barrymore! There was a man who could act!”

The worn old trouper turned onto his right elbow and with difficulty stared at Jensen. “Did you say John … Barrymore? Really, Mr. Jensen! I should have thought a summer in stock
would have taught you some discrimination.” He fell back on his pillow and stared sadly at the greasy wallpaper. “But I suppose,” he mused, “that the movies have corrupted you.” Then he snorted. “Simply because a man has a profile! Let me tell you, Mr. Jensen …”

He fell asleep, and the watchers kept each other awake by various means, so that his medicine would not be missed. At midnight they awakened him. He was extremely weak, and Jensen supported him so that he could swallow. The Wild Man was exquisitely tender and kidded Cyril along as if he were a child, “Now Goddamnit, Sir Cyril, open your mouth and let this good li’l ol’ stuff trickle down!” He laid the frail old man back on the pillow and adjusted the blankets so that the frayed ends would not tickle.

“I hoped that you might find Miss Meigs,” Cyril said. “If you ever do, see that she has a place to stay until she gets a part. She’s a superb actress. We’ll all be proud of her one day.” He looked about the room as if he might find her where the others had failed. Seeing only shadows, he drifted back to sleep.

The watchers slumped forward in their chairs. They were now in the lonely hours when the darkest night gasped bitterly to hold back the dawn. The noises of the wakening city had not yet begun, and there were no birds.

In spite of their intentions, the two young men fell asleep, and toward four Cyril awoke in delirium and started to whisper hoarsely, “Watch that broken pole! Mr. Harper! I beg you! Watch that pole!” He mumbled for some minutes and failed to waken either of his friends. Then his mind slowly cleared. He saw them slumped forward in their chairs. His old mouth moved in uncontrolled starts. “Let them sleep,” he said, and died.

David would surely have brooded upon Cyril’s death had not the great MacDougal brawl intervened. Fights were common in the cosmopolitan Village, where fiery Italians assaulted one another and white men beat up Negro men for dating white women. Gay blades from uptown often took a few drinks and discovered themselves to be witty, irresistible Lotharios, whereupon someone bashed them in the face and taught them otherwise.

But a brawl on MacDougal Street had a special quality. It was louder and rougher than the others because Mom Beckett was usually involved. And across from Mom’s lived an immense
fat lady with a voice like a klaxon. Since she was too heavy to move about, she sat on a soap box in a second-story window and spied upon the restaurant. Whenever a good fight seemed imminent she whipped open her window and shouted in piercing screams. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Then all of MacDougal Street poured out to watch the ruckus.