Текст книги "Rich Man, Poor Man"

Автор книги: Irwin Shaw

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

He was nearly frozen when he got to the slope. The sun, reflected off the snow, dazzled him and he squinted at the brightly colored figures swooping toward him down the hill. Everybody seemed young, vigorous, and having a good time, and the girls, tight pants over trim hips and round buttocks, made lust a healthy outdoor emotion for a Sunday morning.

He watched, enjoying the spectacle for awhile, then became melancholy. He felt lonely and deprived. He was about to turn away and get his machine and go back to town, when Larsen came skimming down off the hill and made a dashing, abrupt stop in front of him, in a cloud of snow.

“Hi, Mr. Jordache,” Larsen said. He had two rows of great shining white teeth and he smiled widely. Behind him two girls who had been following him came to a halt.

“Hello, Larsen,” Rudolph said. “I came out to see that barn you told me about.”

“Sure thing,” Larsen said. Supple, in one easy movement, he bent over to free himself from his skis. He was bare headed and his longish, fine, blond hair fell over his eyes as he bent over. Looking at him, in his red sweater, with the two girls behind him, Rudolph was sure that Larsen hadn’t dreamt about any boat pulling away from a pier the night before.

“Hello, Mr. Jordache,” one of the girls said. “I didn’t know you were a skier.”

He peered at her and she laughed. She was wearing big green-tinted snow goggles that covered most of her small face. She pushed the goggles up over her red-and-blue woolen hat. “I’m in disguise,” she said.

Now Rudolph recognized her. It was Miss Soames, from the Record Department. Jiggling, plump, blonde, fed by music.

“Good morning, good morning,” Rudolph said, somehow flustered, noticing how small Miss Soames’s waist was, and how well rounded her thighs and hips. “No, I’m not a skier. I’m a voyeur.”

Miss Soames laughed. “There’s plenty to voyeur about up here, isn’t there?”

“Mr. Jordache …” Larsen was out of his skis by now, “may I present my fiancée? Miss Packard.”

Miss Packard took off her goggles, too, and revealed herself to be as pretty as Miss Soames, and about the same age. “Pleasure,” she said. Fiancée. People were still marrying.

“Be back in a half hour or so, girls,” Larsen said. “Mr. Jordache and I have some business to transact.” He stuck his skis and poles upright in the snow, as the girls, with a wave of their hands, skied off to the bottom of the lift.

“They look like awfully good skiers,” Rudolph said as he walked at Larsen’s side back toward the road.

“Mediocre,” Larsen said carelessly. “But they have other charms.” He laughed, showing the magnificent teeth in the brown face. He made sixty-five dollars a week, Rudolph knew. How could he be so happy on a Sunday morning on sixty-five dollars a week?”

The barn was about two hundred yards away, and on the road, a big, solid structure, protected from the weather. “All you’d need,” Larsen said, “is a big iron stove and you’d be plenty warm. I bet you could rent a thousand pairs of skis and two to three hundred pairs of boots out of this place a weekend, and then there’re the Christmas and Easter vacations and other holidays. And you could get two college boys to run it for beans. It could be a gold mine. If we don’t do it, somebody else sure as hell will. This is only the second year for this area, but it’s catching on and somebody’s bound to see the opportunity.”

Rudolph recognized the argument, so much like the one he had used that week on Calderwood, and smiled. In business you sometimes were the pusher and sometimes the pushee. I’m a Sunday pushee, he thought. If we do it, I’ll get Larsen a good hike in salary.

“Who owns this place?” Rudolph asked.

“Dunno,” Larsen said. “It’s easy enough to find out.”

Poor Larsen, Rudolph thought, not made for business. If it had been my idea, I would have had an option to buy it before I said a word to anyone. “There’s a job for you, Larsen,” Rudolph said. “Find out who owns the barn, whether he’ll rent it and for how much, or sell it and for how much. And don’t mention the store. Say you’re thinking of swinging it yourself.”

“I get it, I get it,” Larsen said, nodding seriously. “Keep ’em from asking too much.”

“We can try,” Rudolph said. “Let’s get out of here. I’m freezing. Is there a place to get a cup of coffee near here?”

“It’s just about time for lunch. There’s a place a mile down the road that’s not bad. Why don’t you join me and the girls for lunch, Mr. Jordache?”

Automatically, Rudolph almost said no. He had never been seen outside the store with any of the employees, except once in awhile with one of the buyers or a head of a department. Then he shivered. He was awfully cold. He had to go in someplace. Dancy, dainty Miss Soames. What harm could it do? “Thanks, Larsen,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”

They walked back toward the ski tow. Larsen had a plowing, direct, uncomplicated kind of walk, in his heavy ski boots with their rubber bottoms. The soles of Rudolph’s shoes were of leather and the way was icy and Rudolph had to walk delicately, almost mincingly, to keep from slipping. He hoped the girls weren’t watching him.

The girls were waiting, their skis off, and Miss Soames was saying, “We’re starrrving. Who’s going to nourish the orphans?” even before Larsen had a chance to say anything.

“Okay, okay, girls,” Larsen said commandingly, “we’re going to feed you. Stop wailing.”

“Oh, Mr. Jordache,” Miss Soames said, “are you going to dine with us? What an honor.” She dropped her lashes demurely over freckles, the mockery plain.

“I had an early breakfast,” Rudolph said. Clumsy, he thought bitterly. “I could stand some food and drink.” He turned to Larsen. “I’ll follow you on the machine.”

“Is that beautiful thing yours, Mr. Jordache?” Miss Soames waved toward where the motorcycle was parked.

“Yes,” Rudolph said.

“I yearn for a ride,” Miss Soames said. She had a gushy, cut-up manner of talking, as though confidences were being unwillingly forced from her. “Do you think you could find it in your heart to let me hang on?”

“It’s pretty cold,” Rudolph said stiffly.

“I have two pairs of long woolen underwear on,” Miss Soames said. “I guarantee I’ll be toasty. Benny,” she said to Larsen, as though the matter were settled, “put my skis on your car, like a pal. I’m going with Mr. Jordache.”

There was nothing Rudolph could do about it and he led the way to the machine while Larsen fixed the three pairs of skis on the rack on a brand-new Ford. How does he do it on sixty-five dollars a week? Rudolph thought. For an unworthy moment he wondered if Larsen was honest with his accounts at the ski shop.

Rudolph got onto the motorcycle and Miss Soames swung lightly on behind him, putting her hands around his waist and holding on firmly. Rudolph adjusted his goggles and followed Larsen’s Ford out of the parking lot. Larsen drove fast and Rudolph had to put on speed to keep up with him. It was much colder than before, and the wind cut at his face, but Miss Soames, holding on tighter than ever, shouted in his ear, “Isn’t this bliss?”

The restaurant was large and clean and noisy with skiers. They found a table near a window and Rudolph took off his Air Force jacket while the others stripped themselves of their parkas. Miss Soames was wearing a pale-blue cashmere sweater, delicately shaped over her small, full breasts. Rudolph was wearing a sweater over a wool shirt, and a silk scarf, carefully arranged around his throat. Too fancy, he thought, memories of Teddy Boylan, and took it off, pretending it was warm in the restaurant.

The girls ordered Cokes and Larsen a beer. Rudolph felt he needed something more convincing and ordered an old-fashioned. When the drinks came, Miss Soames raised her glass and made a toast, clinking her glass against Rudolph’s. “To Sunday,” she said, “without which we’d all just die.” She was sitting next to Rudolph on the banquette and he could feel the steady pressure of her knee against his. He pulled his knee away, slowly, so as to make it seem merely a natural movement, but the girl’s eyes, clear and cold blue, were amused and knowing over the rim of her glass as she looked at him.

They all ordered steaks. Miss Soames asked for a dime for the juke box and Larsen was faster out of his pocket than Rudolph. She took the dime from him and climbed over Rudolph to go to the machine, getting leverage by putting her hand on his shoulder, and walking across the room, her tight, lush bottom swinging and graceful, despite the clumsy boots on her feet.

The music blared out and Miss Soames came back to the table, doing little, playful dance steps as she crossed the floor. This time, as she climbed over Rudolph to her place, there was no doubt about what she was doing, and when she sat down, she was closer than before and the pressure of her knee was unmistakable against his. If he tried to move away now, everybody would notice, so he remained as he was.

He wanted wine with his steak, but hesitated to order a bottle because he was afraid the others might think he was showing off or being superior. He looked at the menu. On the back were listed a California red and a California white. “Would anybody like some wine?” he asked, putting the decision elsewhere.

“I would,” Miss Soames said.

“Honey …?” Larsen turned to Miss Packard.

“If everybody else does …” she said, being agreeable.

By the time the meal was over they had drunk three bottles of red wine among them. Larsen had drunk the most, but the others had done their fair share.

“What a story I’ll have to tell the girls tomorrow at the store,” Miss Soames, flushed rosy now, was saying, her knee and thigh rubbing cosily against Rudolph’s. “I have been led astray on a Sunday by the great, unapproachable Mr. Frigidaire himself …”

“Oh, come on now, Betsy,” Larsen said uneasily, glancing at Rudolph to see how he had taken the Mr. Frigidaire. “Watch what you’re saying.”

Miss Soames ignored him, sweeping her blonde hair loosely back from her forehead, with a little, plump, cushiony hand. “With his big-city ways and his dirty California wine, the Crown Prince lured me on to drunkenness and loose behavior in public. Oh, he’s a sly one, our Mr. Jordache.” She put a finger up to the corner of her eye and winked. “When you look at him you’d think he could cool a case of beer with one glance of his eyes. But come Sunday, aha, out comes the real Mr. Jordache. The corks pop, the wine flows, he drinks with the help, he laughs at Ben Larsen’s corny old jokes, he plays footsy with the poor little shopgirls from the ground floor. My God, Mr. Jordache, you have bony knees.”

Rudolph couldn’t help laughing, and the others laughed with him. “Well, you don’t, Miss Soames,” he said. “I’m prepared to swear to that.”

They all laughed again.

“Mr. Jordache, the daredevil motorcycle rider, the Wall of Death, sees all, knows all, feels all,” Miss Soames said. “Oh, Christ, I can’t keep on calling you Mr. Jordache. Can I call you Young Master? Or will you settle for Rudy?”

“Rudy,” he said. If there had been nobody else there, he would have grabbed her, kissed that flushed small tempting face, the glistening, half mocking, half inviting lips.

“Rudy, it is,” she said. “Call him Rudy, Sonia.”

“Hello, Rudy,” Miss Packard said. It didn’t mean anything to her. She didn’t work at the store.

“Benny,” Miss Soames commanded.

Larsen looked beseechingly at Rudolph. “She’s loaded,” he began.

“Don’t be silly, Benny,” Rudolph said.

“Rudy,” Larsen said reluctantly.

“Rudy, the mystery man,” Miss Soames went on, sipping at her wineglass. “They lock him away at closing time. Nobody sees him except at work, no man, no woman, no child. Especially no woman. There are twenty girls on the ground floor alone who weep into their pillows nightly for him, to say nothing of the ladies in the other departments, and he passes them by with a cold, heartless smile.”

“Where the hell did you learn to talk like that?” Rudolph asked, embarrassed, amused, and, at the same time, flattered.

“She’s bookish,” Miss Packard said. “She reads a book a day.”

Miss Soames ignored her. “He is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, as Mr. Churchill said on another occasion. He has been reported running at dawn followed by a young colored boy. What is he running from? What message does the colored boy have for him? He is reported as having been seen in New York, in low neighborhoods. What sins does he commit in the big city? Why doesn’t he commit his sins locally?”

“Betsy,” Larsen said weakly. “Let’s go skiing.”

“Tune in on this same station next Sunday and perhaps all these questions will be answered,” Miss Soames said. “You may now kiss my hand.” She held out her hand, the wrist arched, and Rudolph kissed it, blushing a little.

“I’ve got to get back to town,” he said. The check was on the table and he put down some bills. With tip, it came to fifteen dollars:

When they went outside, a light snow was falling. The mountain was bleak and dangerous looking, its outlines only suggested in the light swirl of snow.

“Thanks for the lunch, Mr. Jordache,” Larsen said. One Rudy a week was enough for him. “It was great.”

“I really enjoyed it, Mr. Jordache,” Miss Packard said, practicing to be Larsen’s wife. “I mean I really did.”

“Come on, Betsy,” Larsen said, “let’s hit the slope, work off some of that wine.”

“I am returning to town with my good and old friend, Rudy, on his death-defying machine,” Miss Soames said. “Aren’t I, Rudy?”

“It’s an awfully cold ride,” Rudolph said. She looked small and crushable in her parka, with her oversized goggles incongruously strapped onto her ski cap. Her head, especially with the goggles, seemed very large, a weighty frame for the small, wicked face.

“I will ski no more today,” Miss Soames said grandly. “I am in the mood for other sports.” She went over to the motorcycle. “Let us mount,” she said.

“You don’t have to take her if you don’t want to,” Larsen said anxiously, responsible.

“Oh, let her come,” Rudolph said. “I’ll go slow and make sure she doesn’t fall off.”

“She’s a funny girl,” Larsen said, still worried. “She doesn’t know how to drink. But she doesn’t mean any harm.”

“She hasn’t done any harm, Benny.” Rudolph patted Larsen’s thick, sweatered shoulder. “Don’t worry. And see what you can find out about that barn.” Back in the safe world of business.

“Sure thing, Mr. Jordache,” Larsen said. He and Miss Packard waved as Rudolph gunned the motorcycle out of the restaurant parking lot, with Miss Soames clinging on behind him, her arms around his waist.

The snow wasn’t thick, but it was enough to make him drive carefully. Miss Soames’s arms around him were surprisingly strong for a girl so lightly made, and while she had drunk enough wine to make her tongue loose, it hadn’t affected her balance and she leaned easily with him as they swept around curves in the road. She sang from time to time, the songs that she heard all day in the record department, but with the wind howling past, Rudolph could only hear little snatches, a phrase of melody in a faraway voice. She sounded like a child singing fitfully to herself in a distant room.

He enjoyed the ride. The whole day, in fact. He was glad his mother’s talk about church had driven him out of the house.

At the outskirts of Whitby, as they were passing the university, he slowed down, to ask Miss Soames where she lived. It wasn’t far from the campus and he zoomed down the familiar streets. It was still fairly early in the afternoon, but the clouds overhead were black and there were lights to be seen in the windows of the houses they passed. He had to slow down at a stop sign and as he did so, he felt Miss Soames’s hand slide down from his waist, where she had been holding on, to his crotch. She stroked him there softly and he could hear her laughing in his ear.

“No disturbing the driver,” he said. “State law.”

But she only laughed and kept on doing what she had been doing.

They passed an elderly man walking a dog and Rudolph was sure the old man looked startled. He gunned the machine and it had some effect. Miss Soames just held on to the place she had been caressing.

He came to the address she had given him. It was an old, one-family clapboard house set on a yellowed lawn. There were no lights on in the house.

“Home,” Miss Soames said. She jumped off the pillion. “That was a nice ride, Rudy. Especially the last two minutes.” She took off her goggles and hat and put her head to one side, letting her hair swing loose over her shoulders. “Want to come inside?” she asked. “There’s nobody home. My mother and father are out visiting and my brother’s at the movies. We can go on to the next chapter.”

He hesitated, looked at the house, guessed what it was like inside. Papa and Mama off on a visit but likely to return early. Brother perhaps bored with the movie and coming rattling in an hour earlier than expected. Miss Soames stood before him, one hand on her hip, smiling, swinging her goggles and ski cap in the other.

“Well?” she asked.

“Some other time, perhaps,” he said.

“Scaredy-cat,” she said, and giggled. Then she ran up the front walk toward the house. At the door she turned and stuck out her tongue at him. The dark building engulfed her.

Thoughtfully, he started the motorcycle and drove slowly toward the center of the town along the darkening streets. He didn’t want to go home, so he parked the machine and went into a movie. He hardly saw the movie and would not have been able to tell what it was about when he got out.

He kept thinking about Miss Soames. Silly, cheap little girl, teasing, teasing, making fun of him. He didn’t like the idea of seeing her in the store next morning. If it were possible he would have had her fired. But she would go to the union and complain and he would have to explain the grounds on which he had had her fired. “She called me Mr. Frigidaire, then she called me Rudy and finally she held my cock on a public thoroughfare.”

He gave up the idea of firing Miss Soames. One thing it all proved—he had been right all along in having nothing to do with anybody from the store.

He had dinner alone in a restaurant and drank a whole bottle of wine by himself and nearly hit a lamp post on the way home.

He slept badly and he groaned at a quarter to seven Monday morning, when he knew he had to get up and run with Quentin McGovern. But he got up and he ran.

When he made his morning round of the store he was careful to avoid going near the record counter. He waved to Larsen in the ski shop and Larsen, red sweatered, said, “Good morning, Mr. Jordache,” as though they had not shared Sunday together.

Calderwood called him into his office in the afternoon. “All right, Rudy,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about your ideas and I’ve talked them over with some people down in New York. We’re going down there tomorrow, we have a date at my lawyer’s office in Wall Street at two o’clock. They want to ask you some questions. We’ll take the 11:05 train down. I’m not promising anything, but the first time around, my people seem to think you got something there.” Calderwood peered at him. “You don’t seem particularly happy, Rudy,” he said accusingly.

“Oh, I’m pleased, sir. Very pleased.” He managed to smile. Two o’clock Tuesday, he was thinking, I promised Denton I’d go before the board two o’clock Tuesday. “It’s very good news, sir.” He smiled again, trying to seem boyish and naive. “I guess I just wasn’t prepared for it—so soon, I mean.”

“We’ll have lunch on the train,” Calderwood said, dismissing him.

Lunch on the train with the old man. That means no drink, Rudolph thought, as he went out of the office. He preferred to be gloomy about that than gloomy about Professor Denton.

Later in the afternoon, the phone rang in his office and Miss Giles answered. “I’ll see if he’s in,” she said. “Who’s calling please?” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Professor Denton.”

Rudolph hesitated, then stretched out his hand for the phone. “Hello, Professor,” he said heartily. “How’re things?”

“Jordache,” Denton said, his voice hoarse, “I’m at Ripley’s. Can you come over for a few minutes? I’ve got to talk to you.”

Just as well now as later. “Of course, Professor,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” He got up from his desk. “If anybody wants me,” he said to Miss Giles, “say I’ll be back in a half hour.”

When he came into the bar, he had to search to find Denton. Denton was in the last booth again, with his hat and coat on, hunched over the table, his hands cupped around his glass. He needed a shave and his clothes were rumpled and his spectacles clouded and smeared. It occurred to Rudolph that he looked like an old wino, waiting blearily on a park bench in the winter weather for a cop to come and move him on. The self-confident, loud, ironic man of Rudolph’s classrooms, amused and amusing, had vanished.

“Hello, Professor.” Rudolph slid into the booth opposite Denton. He hadn’t bothered to put on a coat for the short walk from the store, “I’m glad to see you.” He smiled, as though to reassure Denton that Denton was the same man he had always known, to be greeted in the usual manner.

Denton looked up dully. He didn’t offer to shake hands. His face, ordinarily ruddy, was gray. Even his blood has surrendered, Rudolph thought.

“Have a drink.” Denton’s voice was thick. He had obviously already had a drink. Or several. “Miss,” he called loudly to the lady in the orange uniform, who was leaning, like an old mare in harness, against the end of the bar. “What’ll you have?” he asked Rudolph.

“Scotch, please.”

“Scotch and soda for my friend, miss,” Denton said. “And another bourbon for me.”

After that, he sat silently for awhile, staring down at the glass between his hands. On the way over from the store, Rudolph had decided what he had to do. He would have to tell Denton that it was impossible for him to appear before the board the next day, but that he would offer to do so any other day, if the board would postpone. Failing that, he would go to see the President that night and say what he had to say. Or if Denton disapproved of that, he would write out his defense of Denton that night for Denton to read before the board when they considered his case. He dreaded the moment when he would have to make these proposals to Denton, but there was no question of not going down to New York with Calderwood on the 11:05 tomorrow morning. He was grateful that Denton kept silent, even for a moment, and he made a big business of stirring his drink when it came, the noise a little musical barrier against conversation for a few seconds.

“I hate to drag you away from your work like this, Jordache,” Denton said, not lifting his eyes, and mumbling now. “Trouble makes a man egotistic. I pass a movie theater and I see people lined up to go in, to laugh at a comedy, and I say, ‘Don’t they know what’s happening to me, how can they go to the movies?’” He laughed sourly. “Absurd,” he said. “Fifty million people were being killed in Europe alone between 1939 and 1945, and I went to the movies twice a week.” He took a thirsty gulp of his drink, bending low over the table and holding the glass with his two hands. The glass rattled as he put it down.

“Tell me what’s happening,” Rudolph said, soothingly.

“Nothing,” Denton said. “Well, that’s not true, either. A lot. It’s over.”

“What are you talking about?” Rudolph spoke calmly, but it was difficult to keep the excitement out of his voice. So, it was nothing, he thought. A storm in a teacup. People finally couldn’t be that idiotic. “You mean they’ve dropped the whole thing?”

“I mean I’ve dropped the whole thing,” Denton said flatly, lifting his head and looking out from under the brim of his battered brown felt hat at Rudolph. “I resigned today.”

“Oh, no,” Rudolph said.

“Oh, yes,” Denton said. “After twelve years. They offered to accept my resignation and drop the proceedings. I couldn’t face tomorrow. After twelve years. I’m too old, too old. Maybe if I were younger. When you’re younger, you can face the irrational. Justice seems obtainable. My wife has been crying for a week. She says the disgrace would kill her. A figure of speech, of course, but a woman weeping seven days and seven nights erodes the will. So, it’s done. I just wanted to thank you and tell you you don’t have to be there tomorrow at two P.M.”

Rudolph swallowed. Carefully, he tried to keep the relief out of his voice. “I would have been happy to speak up,” he said. He would not have been happy, but one way or another he had been prepared to do it, and a more exact description of his feelings would do no good at the moment. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“I have been thrown a lifeline,” Denton said dully. “A friend of mine is on the faculty of the International School at Geneva, I’ve been offered a place. Less money, but a place. They are not as maniacal, it seems, in Geneva. They tell me the city is pretty.”

“But it’s just a high school,” Rudolph protested. “You’ve taught in colleges all your life.”

“It’s in Geneva,” Denton said. “I want to get out of this goddamn country.”

Rudolph had never heard anybody say this goddamn country about America and he was shocked at Denton’s bitterness. As a boy in school he had sung “God shed his Grace on Thee” about his native land, along with the forty other boys and girls in the classroom, and now, he realized that what he had sung as a child he still believed as a grown man. “It’s not as bad as you think,” he said.

“Worse,” Denton said.

“It’ll blow over. You’ll be asked back.”

“Never,” Denton said. “I wouldn’t come back if they begged me on their knees.”

“The Man Without a Country,” Rudolph remembered from grade school, the poor exile being transferred from ship to ship, never to see the shores of the land where he was born, never to see the flag without tears. Geneva, that flagless vessel. He looked at Denton, exiled already in the back booth of Ripley’s Bar, and felt a confused mixture of emotions, pity, contempt. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked. “Money?”

Denton shook his head. “We’re all right. For the time being. We’re selling the house. Real estate values have gone up since I bought it. The country is booming.” He laughed drily. He stood up abruptly. “I have to go home now,” he said. “I’m giving my wife French lessons every afternoon.”

He allowed Rudolph to pay for the drinks. Outside on the street, he put his collar up, looking more like an old wino than ever, and shook Rudolph’s hand slackly. “I’ll write you from Geneva,” he said. “Noncommittal letters. God knows who opens mail these days.”

He shuffled off, a bent, scholarly figure among the citizens of his goddamn country, Rudolph watched him for a moment, then walked back to the store. He breathed deeply, feeling young, lucky, lucky.

He was in the line waiting to laugh, while the sufferers shuffled past. Fifty million dead, but the movies were always open.

He felt sorry for Denton, but overriding that, he felt joyous for himself. Everything from now on was going to be all right, everything was going to go his way. The sign had been made clear that afternoon, the omens were plain.

He was on the 11:05 the next morning with Calderwood, composed and optimistic. When they went into the dining car for lunch, he didn’t mind not being able to order a drink.