The Iceman Cometh (6 page)

It’s funny Mother kept in touch with you so long. When she’s finished with anyone, she’s finished. She’s always been proud of that. And you know how she feels about the Movement. Like a revivalist preacher about religion. Anyone who loses faith in it is more than dead to her; he’s a Judas who ought to be boiled in oil. Yet she seemed to forgive you.

LARRY

Sardonically
.

She didn’t, don’t worry. She wrote to denounce me and try to bring the sinner to repentance and a belief in the One True Faith again.

PARRITT

What made you leave the Movement, Larry? Was it on account of Mother?

LARRY

Starts
.

Don’t be a damned fool! What the hell put that in your head?

PARRITT

Why, nothing—except I remember what a fight you had with her before you left.

LARRY

Resentfully
.

Well, if you do, I don’t. That was eleven years ago. You were only seven. If we did quarrel, it was because I told her I’d become convinced the Movement was only a beautiful pipe dream.

PARRITT

With a strange smile
.

I don’t remember it that way.

LARRY

Then you can blame your imagination—and forget it.

He changes the subject abruptly
.

You asked me why I quit the Movement. I had a lot of good reasons. One was myself, and another was my comrades, and the last was the breed of swine called men in general. For myself, I was forced to admit, at the end of thirty years’ devotion to the Cause, that I was never made for it. I was born condemned to be one of those who has to see all sides of a question. When you’re damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it’s all question and no answer. As history proves, to be a worldly success at anything, especially revolution, you have to wear blinders like a horse and see only straight in front of you. You have to see, too, that this is all black, and that is all white. As for my comrades in the Great Cause, I felt as Horace Walpole did about England, that he could love it if it weren’t for the people in it. The material the ideal free society must be constructed from is men themselves and you can’t build a marble temple out of a mixture of mud and manure. When man’s soul isn’t a sow’s ear, it will be time enough to dream of silk purses.

He chuckles sardonically
—
then irritably as if suddenly provoked at himself for talking so much
.

Well, that’s why I quit the Movement, if it leaves you any wiser. At any rate, you see it had nothing to do with your mother.

PARRITT

Smiles almost mockingly
.

Oh, sure, I see. But I’ll bet Mother has always thought it was on her account. You know her, Larry. To hear her go on sometimes, you’d think she was the Movement.

LARRY

Stares at him, puzzled and repelled
—
sharply
.

That’s a hell of a way for you to talk, after what happened to her!

PARRITT

At once confused and guilty
.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t sneering, Larry. Only kidding. I’ve said the same thing to her lots of times to kid her. But you’re right. I know I shouldn’t now. I keep forgetting she’s in jail. It doesn’t seem real. I can’t believe it about her. She’s always been so free. I—But I don’t want to think of it.

LARRY
is moved to a puzzled pity in spite of himself
. parritt
changes the subject
.

What have you been doing all the years since you left—the Coast, Larry?

LARRY

Sardonically
.

Nothing I could help doing. If I don’t believe in the Movement, I don’t believe in anything else either, especially not the State. I’ve refused to become a useful member of its society. I’ve been a philosophical drunken bum, and proud of it.

Abruptly his tone sharpens with resentful warning
.

Listen to me. I hope you’ve deduced that I’ve my own reason for answering the impertinent questions of a stranger, for that’s all you are to me. I have a strong hunch you’ve come here expecting something of me. I’m warning you, at the start, so there’ll be no misunderstanding, that I’ve nothing left to give, and I want to be left alone, and I’ll thank you to keep your life to yourself. I feel you’re looking for some answer to something. I have no answer to give anyone, not even myself. Unless you can call what Heine wrote in his poem to morphine an answer.

He quotes a translation of the closing couplet sardonically
.

“Lo, sleep is good; better is death; in sooth,

The best of all were never to be born.”

PARRITT

Shrinks a bit frightenedly
.

That’s the hell of an answer.

Then a forced grin of bravado
.

Still, you never know when it might come in handy.

He looks away
. larry
stares at him puzzledly, interested in spite of himself and at the same time vaguely uneasy
.

LARRY

Forcing a casual tone
.

I don’t suppose you’ve had much chance to hear news of your mother since she’s been in jail?

PARRITT

No. No chance.

He hesitates
—
then blurts out
.

Anyway, I don’t think she wants to hear from me. We had a fight just before that business happened. She bawled me out because I was going around with tarts. That got my goat, coming from her. I told her, “You’ve always acted the free woman, you’ve never let anything stop you from—”

He checks himself—goes on hurriedly
.

That made her sore. She said she wouldn’t give a damn what I did except she’d begun to suspect I was too interested in outside things and losing interest in the Movement.

LARRY

Stares at him
. And were you?

PARRITT

Hesitates
—
then with intensity
.

Sure I was! I’m no damned fool! I couldn’t go on believing forever that gang was going to change the world by shooting off their loud traps on soapboxes and sneaking around blowing up a lousy building or a bridge! I got wise it was all a crazy pipe dream!

Appealingly
.

The same as you did, Larry. That’s why I came to you. I knew you’d understand. What finished me was this last business of someone selling out. How can you believe anything after a thing like that happens? It knocks you cold! You don’t know what the hell is what! You’re through!

Appealingly
.

You know how I feel, don’t you, Larry?

LARRY
stares at him, moved by sympathy and pity in spite of himself, disturbed, and resentful at being disturbed, and puzzled by something he feels about
parritt
that isn’t right. But before he can reply
, hugo
suddenly raises his head from his arms in a half awake alcoholic daze and speaks
.

HUGO

Quotes aloud to himself in a guttural declamatory style
. “The days grow hot, O Babylon! ’Tis cool beneath thy villow trees!” parritt
turns startledly as
hugo
peers muzzily without recognition at him
. hugo
exc
la
ims automatically in his tone of denunciation
. Gottammed stool pigeon!

PARRITT

Shrinks away
—
stammers
.

What? Who do you mean?

Then furiously
.

You lousy bum, you can’t call me that!

He draws back his fist
.

HUGO

Ignores this
—
recognizing him now, bursts into his childish teasing giggle
.

Hello, leedle Don! Leedle monkey-face. I did not recognize you. You have grown big boy. How is your mother? Where you come from?

He breaks into his wheedling, bullying tone
.

Don’t be a fool! Loan me a dollar! Buy me a trink!

As if this exhausted him, he abruptly forgets it and plumps his head down

on his arms again and is asleep
.

PARRITT

With eager relief
.

Sure, I’ll buy you a drink, Hugo. I’m broke, but I can afford one for you. I’m sorry I got sore. I ought to have remembered when you’re soused you call everyone a stool pigeon. But it’s no damned joke right at this time.

He turns to
larry,
who is regarding him now fixedly with an uneasy expression as if he suddenly were afraid of his own thoughts
—
forcing a smile
.

Gee, he’s passed out again.

He stiffens defensively
.

What are you giving me the hard look for? Oh, I know. You thought I was going to hit him? What do you think I am? I’ve always had a lot of respect for Hugo. I’ve always stood up for him when people in the Movement panned him for an old drunken has-been. He had the guts to serve ten years in the can in his own country and get his eyes ruined in solitary. I’d like to see some of them here stick that. Well, they’ll get a chance now to show—
Hastily
.

I don’t mean—But let’s forget that. Tell me some more about this dump. Who are all these tanks? Who’s that guy trying to catch pneumonia?

He indicates
LEWIS
.

LARRY

Stares at him almost frightenedly
—
then looks away and grasps eagerly this chance to change the subject. He begins to describe the sleepers with sardonic relish but at the same time showing his affection for them
.

That’s Captain Lewis, a one-time hero of the British Army. He strips to display that scar on his back he got from a native spear whenever he’s completely plastered. The bewhiskered bloke opposite him is General Wetjoen, who led a commando in the War. The two of them met when they came here to work in the Boer War spectacle at the St. Louis Fair and they’ve been bosom pals ever since. They dream the hours away in happy dispute over the brave days in South Africa when they tried to murder each other. The little guy between them was in it, too, as correspondent for some English paper. His nickname here is Jimmy Tomorrow. He’s the leader of our Tomorrow Movement.

PARRITT

What do they do for a living?

LARRY

As little as possible. Once in a while one of them makes a successful touch somewhere, and some of them get a few dollars a month from connections at home who pay it on condition they never come back. For the rest, they live on free lunch and their old friend, Harry Hope, who doesn’t give a damn what anyone does or doesn’t do, as long as he likes you.

PARRITT

It must be a tough life.

LARRY

It’s not. Don’t waste your pity. They wouldn’t thank you for it. They manage to get drunk, by hook or crook, and keep their pipe dreams, and that’s all they ask of life. I’ve never known more contented men. It isn’t often that men attain the true goal of their heart’s desire. The same applies to Harry himself and his two cronies at the far table. He’s so satisfied with life he’s never set foot out of this place since his wife died twenty years ago. He has no need of the outside world at all. This place has a fine trade from the Market people across the street and the waterfront workers, so in spite of Harry’s thirst and his generous heart, he comes out even. He never worries in hard times because there’s always old friends from the days when he was a jitney Tammany politician, and a friendly brewery to tide him over.

Don’t ask me what his two pals work at because they don’t. Except at being his lifetime guests. The one facing this way is his brother-in-law, Ed Mosher, who once worked for a circus in the ticket wagon. PatMcGloin, the other one, was a police lieutenant back in the flush times of graft when everything went. But he got too greedy and when the usual reform investigation came he was caught red-handed and thrown off the Force.

He nods at
JOE
.

Joe here has a yesterday in the same flush period. He ran a colored gambling house then and was a hell of a sport, so they say. Well, that’s our whole family circle of inmates, except the two barkeeps and their girls, three ladies of the pavement that room on the third floor.

PARRITT

Bitterly
.

To hell with them! I never want to see a whore again!
As
larry
flashes him a puzzled g
la
nce, he adds confusedly
. I mean, they always get you in dutch.

While he is speaking
willie oban
has opened his eyes. He leans toward them, drunk now from the effect of the huge drink he took, and speaks with a mocking suavity
.

WILLIE

Why omit me from your Who’s Who in Dypsomania, Larry? An unpardonable slight, especially as I am the only inmate of royal blood.

To
PARRITT
—
ramblingly
.

Educated at Harvard, too. You must have noticed the atmosphere of culture here. My humble contribution. Yes, Generous Stranger—I trust you’re generous—I was born in the purple, the son, but unfortunately not the heir, of the late world-famous Bill Oban, King of the Bucket Shops. A revolution deposed him, conducted by the District Attorney. He was sent into exile. In fact, not to mince matters, they locked him in the can and threw away the key. Alas, his was an adventurous spirit that pined in confinement. And so he died. Forgive these reminiscences. Undoubtedly all this is well known to you. Everyone in the world knows.