The Unpossessed (5 page)

“I think maybe my mother,” said Emmett shyly, “I know she's interested, I think maybe we could get Merle to give us m-m-money. . . .”

“What, you in the conspiracy too, Emmett?” Bruno groaned. “My God, Mister Demonstrator, I'm framed.”

To
have
the Magazine. . . . But it was the Idea that Bruno was in love with. As he saw his Idea tampered with, taken up, exposed, Filing Cabinets ordered to put it into action, it became less clear, less dear to him. Build it up, concretize it—and one must compromise; face a public; recognize a policy and in thus limiting the horizon deal only with a portion of life instead of perceiving the whole illumined by the Idea; and finally admit that no matter how lofty the hopes, how valid the Idea, reality must consist in dealing mediocre articles to mediocre readers. The Filing Cabinet was yesterday's blushing sweetheart turned coarsely to a bride. . . . But how his images today were colored by Elizabeth's maddening cable (why he should feel that her act in marrying meant treachery to him he couldn't say; but there it was: he felt deserted).

“Listen,” he said persuasively to the salesman's balanced back, “listen, I'm going to take you into my confidence. How long have you been with the Filing firm?”

“Four-star man,” said the salesman thinly. “Star for every five years. My card, professor.” He kept one hand on the neck of the Filing Cabinet as though he were groom to a captious horse, and peering behind a row of patent pencils in his upper pocket selected a card from what seemed a miniature Filing Cabinet within his chest; consulted it; handed it to Bruno and snapped back to his fiery charge. “In the lower right-hand corner, sir. Walter Payton Harrison. With four stars.”

“I congratulate you, Mr. Harrison.” Bruno saluted with the card in his fingers. “A noble name—with a name like that I could get you a job in our English department; they're overstocked at the moment on Jews with Harvard accents. Now listen, Mr. Harrison—are you listening,” he said sternly.

“I'm listening, professor,” Mr. Harrison said and put his narrow Anglo-Saxon shoulder to the wheel. “Just don't want to waste time, sir, yours
or
mine.”

“You sound like a man with his head on his shoulders, Harrison,” said Bruno admiringly. “And I don't want to waste time either, mine
or
yours. Now look Harrison: you understand the system of barter, I'm sure? You're no stranger to the fundamentals of historic materialism? You've been with your firm four-star years; you know they aren't giving me this thing from some ill-judged motive of generosity? No. Your boss, Mr. Harrison, is a crass materialist. He wants money for that God damned thing. Well, I haven't got any money. That's reasonable, isn't it, Mr. Harrison? No sugar, Harrison; no cash; no shekels.” For Emmett's benefit he shaped in the air a series of empty bank accounts.

“Yes sir,” Mr. Harrison said. “But I've got orders to leave her here ten days.
Then
if you don't want her. . . . But might as well look on the bright side, professor.” He stooped and taking strips and pieces of things out of a box began to fit them deftly into place.

“Mr. Harrison is a bigoted realist,” Bruno sighed to Emmett; and was surprised and disconcerted to see the boy's face lit with interest as he watched the Cabinet inexorably emerge. Heresy in the ranks, he thought; would he lose his disciple to Jeffrey? But as he watched, he caught Emmett slowly swinging round, his gaze lingeringly departing from the Filing Cabinet to stare with timid adoration at himself. “Do you think you could help me explain our ideology to Mr. Harrison, Emmett? The superiority of the shadow to the substance, for instance? Look, Harrison. Yesterday was the Idea. Today, because of a literal-minded assistant editor, suffering from a rush of printers' ink to the brain, is the Filing Cabinet. . . .”

The fine aristocratic stupidity of the Nordic! (He felt suddenly certain that if Elizabeth, lost in Paris, were marrying anyone tonight, she would not be marrying a Jew; so he was doubly deserted and doubly left alone.) Jeffrey said Magazine and immediately he saw himself assistant editor of a Filing Cabinet; he saw the whole thing complete, in its concrete form; complete with office desks and typewriters, lavatories, water-coolers, telephones on hinges, office girls named Miss Diamond, waste baskets, desk calendars, erasers tied to drawer knobs, fire extinguishers, supply closet, bench in the reception room, wire baskets for incoming mail, wire baskets for outgoing mail, all ticketed, docketed, billeted, and in all four corners threatening the editorial desk. Filing Cabinets groomed by up-state four-star salesmen swallowing their goiters manfully. . . . Where then was the Idea?

“The Black Sheep,” said Emmett suddenly at the window. “I think I see them. Yes. They're at the Cross. They must be waiting for the girls—C-C-Cornelia and Kate—to come out of their gym class, Bruno.” His voice grew a little rueful as he recognized his classmates.

The Black Sheep! To have to make their decisions now as well as his own. What right had he to set himself up to solve other lives when his own (and young Elizabeth's, for which he held himself responsible) wavered so hopelessly in a treadmill? The Black Sheep, with their turbulent indignation! incredibly long ago himself and Miles and Jeffrey had been the Black Sheep of this very campus; twelve years had passed since their bold triumvirate had burned the campus with their angry pacificism, since a wakened faculty pinned blame to Bruno for being what he was, a Jew, of German origin. He felt a quick nostalgia for their old meetings, held beyond the Cross, in a wing of the old gymnasium, now torn down. He remembered Miles, painful New England ingrown sprout, clamping an ascetic jaw against temptations of New York. But it was Jeffrey for whom he had felt the most affection, Jeffrey leaving the meetings early for his eternal dates with girls, Jeffrey with his quick and generous blindness plunging into every pool he saw; impossible for Bruno, even now, to stay angry for long with Jeffrey.

“The Black Sheep,” he said, with a certain tenderness. “Maybe that will move you, Mr. Harrison. We are expecting a group of bright, dissatisfied undergraduates. They'll stare at you. They'll glare at you. They'll examine the whites of your eyes to see if you're a proletarian. They'll tap you on the knee to see if you're class-conscious. If you would care,” he urged kindly, “while there is still time, to jump out of the window . . .”

“I'm nearly done now,” Mr. Harrison explained courteously. “You see we learn to set them up in seven minutes. That's the simple ones. But this Mr. J. Blake ordered you a model double nine-two-five, drawers for cards three different sizes besides the regular eight-by-eleven letter containers. . . .”

“The most expensive model, I hope, Mr. Harrison?”

“Why no,” Mr. Harrison admitted, “it's not; not by a long shot. There's eight-one-three for doctors and nine-o-five for lawyers, both comes higher. But this nine-two-five,” he punched it gently, “it's a pip, this model is. You can't go wrong,” he finished didactically, “on nine-two-five.”

“Thank God for that.” He spoke absently, returning in his mind to the curious phenomenon of Jeffrey, still at thirty-odd, plunging headlong into whatever offered itself. No Jew, he reflected, could see anything so straight, so clear; no Jew, if he was besieged by thoughts, could set the thoughts aside and leap, unhindered. A Jew, if he had any brains at all, had twice as much as anyone else; he saw all sides at once and so his hands were tied, his brain stood still, he couldn't leap here and he couldn't leap there. (In this matter of Elizabeth, for instance! Jeffrey would obey his impulse; but Bruno had a hundred impulses, balanced evenly, at once.) A Jew said Magazine and he was content, dancing on the point of a needle for his life thereafter to investigate the concept of Magazine, to explore the function of Magazine, to dream the fulfillment of Magazine conveying the Idea . . . which he knew, from the vantage point of his superior philosophical needle, could never be accomplished in the world. So what it came to in the end (for the Jew died before the end, perhaps even before he presented the world with one sentence clarifying the Idea) was that Jeffrey Blake who could not comprehend the Idea covered it over with Filing Cabinets, that Jeffrey who had no Idea had written seven novels concealing that fact while Bruno Leonard who could conceive behind his desk of The Novel must content himself or not content himself with the knowledge that if he never wrote a book at all it would still be a better book than any written by his colleague Jeffrey Blake. Yes, and you knew the football signals better than the half-back too, in your day (his own bright-boyhood seemed to mock); all the same it was the dumb bastard of an athlete that got his letter.

“Forgive me, gentlemen,” he said, “while I indulge in a little insincere race solidarity. It can't be done except when I'm the only Jew present.” From the very nature of his position in the world, he continued to himself (observing with amusement Emmett's discreet Christian embarrassment, the salesman's four-star hired-man's indifference), the Jew is born to think, as he must live, on two antipathetic levels at once; one the ordinary level and the other his own peculiar subterranean Jew-level. Every Jew a dual nature, split personality; if he coordinated the two levels he got to be a banker, or a jeweler, like the elder Leonard; if he couldn't, if he couldn't reconcile them, couldn't bring himself to sacrifice an iota of the integrity necessary in order to accomplish one concrete fact . . . then he was an idiot, he concluded witheringly. Or a genius—he wavered. A genius, a dementia praecox, a genius, a demented peacock . . . wearily he maintained his balance, teetering on the point of the eternal needle.

“Now take you, Mr. Harrison,” he said. “I ask you, I beg you, to take that thing out of my sight. Your reaction is to continue ruthlessly to hammer it together. Why? Because you believe in the God damn thing—you believe in the Filing Cabinet as in an eternal verity. No room for doubts in your mind—I find you, even, a trifle narrow there—but let's not speak of that. No hedging for you, no seeing the other fellow's point of view till you can put it better than you can your own. . . . My assistant editor's the same kind of animal. Now if you were a Jew, Mr. Harrison, God forbid! you'd have a little streak of madness, you'd want to smash those things sometimes instead of putting them together. And if you were a bright enough Jew you'd stay home wondering whether it would be better to smash them or better to put them together, and after a while you'd stay in bed wondering, unable to get up because you couldn't decide . . . and then you'd get a cable from Paris and think of so many answers you wouldn't send any . . . and by the time you got to the office you'd find someone else had your job; an Anglo-Saxon named Walter Payton Harrison.”

“I'm very nearly done now,” said Mr. Harrison solicitously.

All right, get married, young Elizabeth, he thought; go on and get married; live in Paris too. Everybody's doing something but Bruno—who has sat on his ass for twelve years now planning a Magazine, running everybody's life except his own. The voices of the Black Sheep floated clear across the campus. The children coming to their mentor, the live seeking help of the dead—all at once he was plunged in such depression that a great weight sat on his chest, his breath came and went in a small constricted area in the bottom of his lungs, it was difficult to draw a fresh one. For all of them, all of his friends, Jeffrey, the youngsters, Emmett, even Miles to some extent, the poor gentle salesman bowing a narrow back before him, and finally Elizabeth—they lived in such a different world from his. They crashed up against the rocks while he floated safe and obscure among the shadows. Little dents would be left where their lives had smashed; his own would make no mark, floating down through a series of whirlpools, sinking through the shadows, sinking to the dense bottom in pursuit of the illusory Idea. . . .

“Listen Emmett,” he said rapidly, “I can't see the Black Sheep today, I can't do it, I—I'm too busy. Run down, Emmett. Stop them. Tell them next week, any time; not today.” He covered the cable with a sheet of paper to hide it from his sight. “Hurry Emmett, catch them at the door, make my apologies. Tell Firman I'm sorry. . . .”

“They'll be awfully disappointed,” said Emmett generously; and glowing with self-importance he scrambled for the door.

In a minute he would see their backs, he would hear their voices, growing dimmer, as they retreated over the campus. So vulnerable, so terribly vulnerable! The weight on his chest made it difficult to breathe. He felt a sadness so wide it included everything democratically; even inanimate objects, so that the Filing Cabinet, shiny and new and confident as it was seemed a blustering projection of Jeffrey shouting for recognition, and at the same time the symbol of wan Mr. Harrison's modest four-star life; so that the cablegram actually resembled Elizabeth—Elizabeth, wandering in Paris, reaching over human abysses bravely for his hand. What did she want of him? he could give her nothing because he had nothing to give; yet he felt guilty as though he knew he owed her something. Perhaps better if he let her go her way, let them all go, let them go plunging and smashing while he . . .

“I suffer, Mr. Harrison,” he heard his voice unnaturally rising from the grave, “from a touch of the Christ complex now and then. Whenever I get it I crave whiskey. Will you have a spot with me?”

“Thank you, no,” said Mr. Harrison compassionately, “not on the job, professor. In my game,” he said meagerly, “it's best not—in my game,” he repeated vaguely.

“But what in the devil—” Bruno was frantically pulling at the cork; exorcizing by a spurt of physical energy the strange visions that beset him—“what in the devil is the object of the game? Ah there's a sticker, Mr. Harrison! When do you reckon they give us the low-down? Who in the hell is supposed to let us in?” His hand holding the bottle shook. “Well, life goes on, as the Chinese were noted for saying. Sure you won't have a drink, Harrison? Well—have a drink, professor! thanks old man, I will. . . .”