The Fires of Spring (64 page)

The streets were cold and dark, and Mr. Allegri became afraid. “She’ll know for sure what I was doing!” he wailed. Then he said accusingly to David, “You should have made me come right home.” He grasped David by the arm and said, bravely, “It’ll be all right. Let me do the talking! If she asks you, deny everything.”

There was no necessity to lie. Mrs. Allegri looked at her guilty little husband and said, “You took David for a walk?
Good!” She cooked a big meal and said, “With the money you won at bocce, David, you should take Marcia to a movie!”

They didn’t go to a movie. They walked about the streets and finally sat in a drug store, talking. “I’ve never known so much love before,” David said quietly.

“That’s why I live there,” Marcia said.

“We could be like that,” David said haltingly.

“We could be,” Marcia said. “I’ve always wanted a home like theirs. A home where there was so much love it could spill over onto people. That would be a good home.”

“We should get married,” David said.

“It’s what I long for most,” Marcia replied.

“When can we?” David asked.

He was shocked by her answer. “How can I be sure you’re ready?” she asked. “Have you changed yourself in humility, as I’ve had to?”

“Can’t you see that I have?” he said.

“No. You look merely frightened to me.”

“Watch me for a while,” he said humbly. “If you think I’ve learned, will you marry me?”

“Of course!” she replied. “Why else have these things happened?”

They walked home slowly and David told the Allegris that in the morning he would go back to MacDougal Street and find a job. They were unhappy to have him go, and late that night Mr. Allegri crept to his bedside and whispered, “Any time you need a home, you got one. Right here.” There was a long pause while they shook hands in the dark room. Then Allegri said very slowly. “If you happen to have any change left, I could do a nice piece of business tomorrow at the bocce courts. Why, with a proper stake I could make a living off them damned fools. They can’t play. Did you notice that?”

David pounded pavements for eleven days and finally uncovered a rumor of a job. At Wanamaker’s freight shed the foreman admitted, “Things are better. Some time later this month we may have a job unloadin’ trucks. Pays $18 a week. Keep comin’ back.”

David was so pleased that he galloped directly to Marcia, who was as proud of him as if he had really started work. In search of celebration, he snapped his fingers and said, “There’s a wonderful man I’d like you to meet. But he has fits.”

“Why would that make a difference?” Marcia asked. When they arrived, the immense editor was playing Brahms, and as the rich clean chords sounded he voiced his approval of Marcia. “A lovely girl, much better than the last. Whew! You should have seen her, Miss Paxson. An actress, but she got her man soaked up in concrete.”

“Was it Miss Meigs?” Marcia asked suspiciously.

“Yes,” Binder laughed merrily. “And he put her in his novel, too. She was the heroine.”

“David!” Marcia cried. “I didn’t know you were writing a book.”

“I’m not,” he said abruptly. “Not any more.” Then Marcia understood what surrender David had made. She could see the glory missing from his face, and she became sad, even though he had a job unloading trucks.

But Morris Binder, himself a man who had surrendered, thought David’s new job something to celebrate. He suggested, with great trepidation, “Why couldn’t we go to the symphony tonight? Stokowski is conducting.” He pointed to a clipping from the
Times
which he had tacked above his record player. It gave the program, and David knew that the huge man had intended playing the records that night, imagining himself at the symphony. The editor bowed to Marcia and said, “Miss Paxson, would you risk it?” His big hands were nervously twitching as he stumbled to explain, “We could sit in the back and I’d pay the ushers to watch me. Recently I’ve been able to anticipate … I could hold your hand, David to let you know.” He unfolded a campaign that had obviously been in his mind for a long time. “And Marcia can carry this little pillow to stuff against my face in case …”

He called a cab and they went to Carnegie Hall. He bought three seats in the row near the door and gave two ushers a dollar each to be ready. Then he ponderously let himself down into his seat between David and Marcia and said, “The acoustics of this hall are superb. I came here often as a boy.”

The first part of Stokowski’s program consisted of two numbers David had often heard him play in Philadelphia, the Classical and Mozart’s 39th. He had long appreciated the latter with its quiet rustle of immortality, but until this night he had never fully understood the music. Now, sitting with Morris Binder’s fat hand in his, he could actually feel the impact of music upon the big man’s spirit. Binder’s pulses quickened, and David’s own perceptions were trebled by contact with the trembling man.

During intermission Binder sat very still and would not talk, as if he were saving his energies for the inward battle. But when the musicians returned to the stage and the bassoon practiced the important notes it would soon play, he opened his lips with almost childish delight and said, “It’s the first live music I’ve heard in nineteen years.”

Tears filled his eyes when Stokowski began to conduct Beethoven’s Pastoral. David did not like this symphony. He felt that the deaf master had allowed his mind to dwell upon trivial items, so that the second movement especially seemed repetitious. He had often thought that the long-windedness of the first two movements was the only evidence Beethoven ever gave of his increasing deafness. But tonight, sitting beside an immense hulk whose mind was somehow crippled, listening to music by a man whose ears were stopped, David experienced the terrible meaning of mortality. Men are actually living chunks of matter that some day die. He forgot the music and remembered his first acknowledgment of this fact. It had occurred three days after Cyril Hargreaves had engineered it so that Max Volo’s men assaulted him. He had hated Cyril desperately and had plotted rich revenge. But he happened to open a door and saw Cyril sitting on the toilet. The pompous actor, the vain man, the strutter, and the false accent all disappeared in that brief moment. From then on Cyril Hargreaves was only a man. He ate and slept and went to the toilet, and all the men in the world were like him.

A tremor passed along Morris Binder’s hand and surged upon David’s, so that the presence of mankind was strong upon David. He thought of Beethoven in the streets of Bonn. The ugly deaf man had loved and hated and been despised. He had boils and indigestion and he liked beer and he went to the toilet, sick with fear. Yet his music transcended all this, but if one listened closely one could hear the tread of a real man, on this whirling earth, tormented as only men on this earth can be.

Now the lusty bassoon uttered its peasant dance, and Morris Binder grinned with pleasure. The storm came, and with it the storm of fear across Binder’s face. David could feel his muscles tighten, and for a moment the huge man looked panic-stricken. His hand began to shake, and the ushers moved into position.

But David put his arm about Binder’s huge neck and pressed close to him. “No!” he whispered. “You can stick
it out.” The big man relaxed, and closed his eyes as the storm ended. Almost at the same instant Beethoven’s storm passed, too, and from the orchestra came the wonderful and stately rhythm of thanksgiving. There was a flood of noble sound, as if the angry deaf man had cried, “I’ll make the world sway!” The closing movement became so wooded and entrancing that it reminded Morris Binder of the days when his parents had taken him to the Catskills. David saw the valleys of the Delaware, and Marcia thought of her father’s fields, where she had tended cattle. Like Beethoven, they were people of the earth.

Slowly, magnificently, the symphony came to a close. The hall and all the people were transfused with sunlight from the splendid chords, but when the last note sounded, Morris Binder and David slumped forward in their seats. The ushers came up and whispered, “We’ll carry him out,” but the giant editor grunted and said, “Thank you. I’m all right.” He rose slowly and walked with great precision to the street. In a taxi he sat upright, as if he were a girl going to her wedding in a stiff gown, and even when he climbed his stairs, he moved like an automaton.

But once at home, he collapsed into his chair. His eyes became glassy and he stared ahead, his huge mouth agape. Marcia went to find a damp cloth and David, preparing to help the editor to bed, took off his coat. Then Binder saw the gray arcs of nervous sweat under David’s arms. “Was it as bad as that?” he asked.

“I never heard music before,” David replied.

“I felt the same way! I wish we could …” But the worst attack of all began. He reared from his chair in one violent lunge toward the ceiling and uttered a shattering scream. He crashed to the floor, and even though David and Marcia had been waiting for this great attack, they held back aghast.

The space was clear, therefore, when Miss Adams burst into the room, “You took him to the theatre!” she screamed at David hysterically. “You’re killing him! Get out, you good-for-nothing. Get out!”

The next morning at ten-thirty a taxi rushed up to Mom Beckett’s, accompanied by two policemen. A white, trembling Tremont Clay jumped out and began to cry, “Where’s Mr. Harper?”

From her door Mom, her hair plastered down with pomade,
peered inquisitively. “Hey, you!” she cried. “What’s all the noise?”

“I’ve got to see Mr. Harper!” the excited publisher answered.

“Well, he’s sleepin’!” Mom replied. “He may get a job next week and he’s restin’.”

“Please call him!” Clay pleaded. One of the policemen appeared.

“Dave!” Mom bellowed. “Haul ass down here! The law!”

David appeared, unshaved and blinking. “Mr. Clay!” he mumbled. The publisher gripped him by the forearm and hustled him into the street. A crowd had gathered and suddenly the fat woman’s window shot up. “Fight! Fight!” she screamed. From a dozen doors people catapulted into MacDougal Street.

“Stand back!” the two policemen ordered, but from above them came the deafening exhortation, “Fight! Fight!” A crowd of loungers stared in the cab window at David and started to cry. “He did it! He’s the one!” Slowly the cab pulled away, and in the rear seat David stared at Mr. Clay. The little publisher licked his lips.

“Miss Adams just killed Morris Binder,” he said hoarsely.

“My God!” David gasped.

“He had a tremendous fit. She seemed to lose her head.” He covered his thin face with his hands. “It was horrible. She stabbed him at least a dozen times.”

“Why?” David demanded.

“Why!” the specialist in crime echoed. “Why does anybody …” He lowered his voice and said, “She saw that he was going slowly crazy. She …” He hammered his forehead and shouted accusingly, “Don’t ask me why! Figure it out for yourself!”

“What will they do to her?” David asked in a whisper.

“Miss Adams?” The tense little man looked angrily at David and said, “Nothing. They won’t do a damned thing, because she killed herself, too.”

“Ugh,” David grunted, as if he had been struck. “Oh, God!” His face grew dark and he cried, “Mr. Clay, I …”

“Son!” Mr. Clay interrupted, grabbing David by the shoulder exactly as David had grabbed Morris Binder the night before. “Pull yourself together. I don’t want to hear anything. You’ve got a tremendous job to do. Five magazines. I’m giving you forty a week, right now! Better times are coming, kid. This is your big chance.”

David pulled away in disgust as the taxi entered Lafayette Street. “But why would she …”

Clay gripped him furiously. “I’ll get you a helper, too. You can have practically anything you want, Harper. But you and I have got to pull these magazines through.” The little editor took a deep breath. “Here we are,” he said. “Now play the man! You’ll see a rough scene, but keep your wits.” He banged open the taxi door and muscled his way through the mob. David followed him and heard men whispering, “That’s Clay himself. He found the bodies.”

Photographers were busy in the editorial office. There was a noisy confusion of policemen and intruders, and for a moment David could see nothing, and then slowly the noise ceased and a pathway was made for Tremont Clay. Down it David saw the tragedy. His finest friend lay shambled across the floor. Blood dripped indecently from unnecessary wounds, and the huge, expressive face was distorted in its final passion. The tongue from which David had learned so much wisdom—the very tongue David had sometimes held—was protruded and purple. Death, in triumphant confusion, possessed Morris Binder in all possible ways. Tears gushed to David’s eyes, but a firm hand gripped him. “Take it easy,” Mr. Clay commanded.

Then more flash bulbs exploded, and with an impulsive gasp the late comers saw the long steel paper knife protruding from Miss Adams’ body. Her trim gray suit was smeared with blood. There was a sickening moment as the flash bulbs defined her hard features, and then a young policeman whispered, “I guess she was the other woman.”

David started to protest, but to his horror he saw Mr. Clay directing the photographers how to take additional pictures which would show both bodies. And then David saw what was in the little man’s mind. This story could run in the Clay magazines for years. It had everything! A brilliant criminologist, a sex-starved clerk, mania, passion, a long steel knife, and superb pictures. Why, this story could go on forever!

“Take a couple more from here,” Mr. Clay stage-directed, and inadvertently David looked down at the bleeding hulk of the betrayed giant, the proscribed lawyer, the great detective who functioned from a grubby desk, the opera savant who heard no operas, the man who loved all people and who lived alone. Now he had found his Valhalla, immortalized in Tremont Clay’s murder magazines. In death Morris Binder
would become like a prehistoric monster, imprisoned forever in the glacial moraine of a filth he had helped to create.

When the last photographs were taken, when the limp bodies were dragged away, a charwoman came in to wash the defiled floor. When she was done, Mr. Clay said, “Now the place is yours!”