Sexus Page 8

  A week rolls by and no word from Mara. Then out of the blue a telephone call. She sounds depressed. Could I meet her for dinner somewhere, she wants to talk to me about something very important. There’s a gravity in her voice which I haven’t detected before.

  In the Village, as I’m hurrying to keep the appointment, who should I run into but Kronski. I try to wave him off but it’s no go.

  “What’s the great hurry?” he asks with that bland, sardonic grin he always summons at the wrong moment.

  I explain to him that I have a date.

  “Are you going to eat?”

  “Yes, I’m going to eat, but alone,” I say pointedly.

  “Oh no you’re not, Mister Miller. You need company, I can see that. You’re not in such fine fettle today. . . . You look worried. It’s not a woman, I hope?”

  “Listen, Kronski, I’m going to meet somebody and I don’t want you around.”

  “Now, Mister Miller, how can you talk that way to an old friend? I insist on accompanying you. I’m going to buy the meal—you can’t resist that, can you?”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “All right, shit, tag along then. Maybe I’ll need your help. You’re no good to me except in a pinch. Listen, don’t start any funny work. I’m going to introduce you to the woman I’m in love with. She probably won’t like your looks, but I want you to meet her anyway. Someday I’ll marry her and, since I can’t seem to get rid of you, she might as well begin to tolerate you now as later. I have a hunch you won’t like her.”

  “This sounds very serious, Mister Miller. I’ll have to take steps to protect you.”

  “If you start meddling I’ll crown you,” I answered, laughing savagely. “About this person I’m in dead earnest. You never saw me that way before, did you? You can’t believe it, eh? Well, just watch me. Tell you how earnest I am . . . if you get in my way I’ll murder you in cold blood.”

  To my surprise Mara was already at the restaurant. She had chosen a lonely table in a dark corner. “Mara,” I said, “this is an old friend, Dr. Kronski. He insisted on coming along. I hope you don’t mind.” To my astonishment she greeted him cordially. As for Kronski, the moment he laid eyes on her he dropped his leer and banter. Even more impressive was his silence. Usually, when I presented him to a female, he became garrulous and made a sort of fluttering noise with his invisible wings.

  Mara too was unusually calm; her voice sounded soothing and hypnotic.

  We had scarcely given the order and exchanged a few polite words when Kronski, looking at Mara steadily and appealingly, said: “Something has happened, something tragic, it seems to me. If you’d rather have me go I’ll leave right now. To tell the truth, I’d prefer to stay. Perhaps I can be of help. I’m a friend of this guy and I’d like to be a friend of yours. I mean it sincerely.”

  Rather touching, this. Mara, visibly moved, responded warmly.

  “By all means stay,” she said, extending her hand cross the table in token of trust and confidence. “You make it easier for me to talk being here. I’ve heard a lot about you, but I don’t think your friend did you justice,” and she looked up at me reprovingly, then smiled warmly.

  “No,” said I quickly, “it’s true I never do give an honest picture of him.” I turned to him. “You know, Kronski, you have about the most unlovely character imaginable and yet. . .”

  “Come, come,” he said, making a wry grimace, “don’t begin that Dostoevski line with me. I’m your evil genius, you were going to say. Yes, I do have some queer diabolical influence over you, but I’m not confused about you as you are about me. I sincerely like you. I’d do anything you asked if I thought you meant it—even if it brought harm to someone I dearly loved. I put you above everyone I know, why I can’t say, because you certainly don’t deserve it. Right now I’ll confess I feel sad. I see that you love each other and I think you’re meant for each other, but. . .”

  “You’re thinking that it won’t be so hot for Mara, that’s it, eh?”

  “I can’t say yet,” he said, with alarming seriousness. “I see only this, that you’ve both met your match.”

  “So you think I’d really be worthy of him?” said Mara very humbly.

  I looked at her in amazement. I never suspected that she could say a thing like that to a stranger.

  Her words fired Kronski. “Worthy of him?” he sneered. “Is he worthy of you? that’s the question. What has he ever done to make a woman feel worthy of him? He hasn’t begun to function yet—he’s in a torpor. If I were you I wouldn’t put an ounce of faith in him. He isn’t even a good friend, let alone a lover or a husband. Poor Mara, don’t worry your head about such things. Make him do something for you, spur him on, drive him nuts if you have to, but make him open up! If I were to give you an honest piece of advice, knowing him and loving him as I do, it would be this: lacerate him, punish him, goad him to the last ditch! Otherwise you’re lost—he’ll devour you. Not that he’s a bad sort, not because he means harm . . . oh no! he does it out of kindness. He almost makes you believe that he has your own interest at heart when he sinks his hooks into you. He can tear you apart with a smile and tell you that he’s doing it for your own good. He’s the diabolical one, not me. I pretend, but he means everything he does. He’s the cruelest bastard that ever walked on two legs—and what’s queer about it is this, that you love him because he is cruel, or perhaps because he’s honest about it. He warns you in advance when he’s going to strike. He tells you it smilingly. And when it’s over he picks you up and brushes you off tenderly, asks you did he hurt you very much and so on—like an angel. The bastard!”

  “Of course I don’t know him as well as you do,” said Mara quietly, “but I must confess he’s never revealed that side of his nature to me—not yet, at any rate. I only know him to be gentle and good. I hope to act so that he’ll always be that way with me. I not only love him, I believe in him as a person. I would sacrifice everything to make him happy . . .”

  “But you’re not very happy right now, are you?” said Kronski, as though ignoring her words. “Tell me, what has he done to make you———?”

  “He hasn’t done anything,” she said spiritedly. “He doesn’t know what’s bothering me.”

  “Well, can you tell me?” said Kronski, altering his voice and moistening his eyes so that he resembled a piteous, friendly little whelp.

  “Don’t press her,” I said. “She’ll tell us in due time.” I was looking at Kronski as I spoke. His expression suddenly changed. He turned his head away. I looked at Mara and there were tears in her eyes; they began to flow copiously. In a moment she excused herself and went to the washroom. Kronski looked at me with a wan dead smile, the look of the sick clam expiring in moonlight.

  “Don’t take it so tragically,” I said. “She’s a brave sort, she’ll pull out of it.”

  “That’s what you say! You don’t suffer. You get emotional and you call it suffering. That girl’s in trouble, can’t you see? She wants you to do something for her—not just wait till it passes. If you don’t pump her I will. This time you’ve got a real woman. And a real woman, Mister Miller, expects something of a man—not just words and gestures. If she wants you to run away with her, to leave your wife, your child, your job, I’d say do it. Listen to her and not to your own selfish promptings!” He slumped back in his seat and picked his teeth. After a pause—“And you met her in a dance hall? Well, I must congratulate you for having the sense to recognize the genuine article. That girl can make something of you, if you’ll let her. If it’s not too late, I mean. You’re pretty far gone, you know. Another year with that wife of yours and you’re finished.” He spat on the floor in disgust. “You have luck. You get things without working for them. I work like a son of a bitch and the moment I turn my back everything crumbles.”

  “That’s because I’m a Goy,” I said jestingly.

  “You’re no Goy. You’re a black Jew. You’re one of those fascinating Gentiles that every Jew wants to shine up to. You�
��re . . . Oh, good you mentioned that. Mara is a Jewess, of course? Come now, don’t pretend you don’t know. Hasn’t she told you yet?”

  That Mara should be a Jewess sounded so highly preposterous I simply laughed in his face.

  “You want me to prove it to you, is that it?”

  “I don’t care what she is,” I said, “but I’m sure she’s not Jewish.”

  “What is she then? You don’t call that a pure Aryan, I hope?”

  “I never asked her,” I replied. “You ask her if you like.”

  “I won’t ask her,” said Kronski, “because she might lie to me in front of you—but I’ll tell you whether I’m right or not the next time I see you. I guess I can tell a Jew when I see one.”

  “You thought I was a Jew when you first met me.”

  He laughed outright at this. “So you really believed that? Haw haw! Well, that’s pretty good. You poor sap, I told you that just to flatter you. If you had a drop of Jewish blood in you I’d lynch you, out of respect for my people. You a Jew? . . . Well, well . . .” He rolled his head from side to side with tears in his eyes. “First of all a Jew is smart,” he began again, “and you, you’re certainly not smart. And a Jew is honest—get that! Are you honest? Have you got an ounce of truth in you? And a Jew feels. A Jew is always humble, even when he’s arrogant. . . . Here comes Mara now. Let’s drop the subject.”

  “You were talking about me, weren’t you?” said Mara, as she sat down. “Why don’t you go on. I don’t mind.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Kronski. “We weren’t talking about you at all. . .”

  “He’s a liar,” I broke in. “We were talking about you, only we didn’t get very far. I wish, Mara, you’d tell him about your family—the things you told me, I mean.”

  Her face clouded up. “Why should you be concerned about my family?” she said, with an ill-disguised show of irritation. “My family is thoroughly uninteresting.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Kronski blankly. “I think you’re concealing something.”

  The look that passed between them gave me a jolt. It was as if she had given him the signal to proceed cautiously. They understood one another in some subterranean fashion, in a way which excluded me. The image of the woman in the backyard of her home came vividly to my mind. That woman was no neighbor, as she had tried to insinuate. Could it have been her step-mother? I tried to recall what she had told me about her real mother but immediately became lost in the complicated maze she had woven about this obviously painful subject.

  “What is it you’d like to know about my family?” she said, turning to me.

  “I don’t want to ask you anything that would make you uncomfortable,” I said, “but if it isn’t indiscreet would you mind telling us about your step-mother?”

  “Where did your step-mother come from?” asked Kronski.

  “From Vienna,” said Mara.

  “And you, were you born in Vienna too?”

  “No, I was born in Roumania, in a little mountain village. I may have some Gypsy blood in me.”

  “You mean your mother was a Gypsy?”

  “Yes, there’s a story to that effect. My father is said to have run away from her on the eve of his marriage to my stepmother. That’s why my mother hates me, I guess. I’m the black sheep of the family.”

  “And you adore your father, I suppose?”

  “I worship him. He’s like me. The others are strangers to me—we haven’t anything in common.”

  “And you support the family, is that it?” said Kronski.

  “Who told you that? I see, so that’s what you were talking about when . . .”

  “No, Mara, nobody told me. I can see it in your face. You’re making a sacrifice of yourself—that’s why you’re unhappy.”

  “I won’t deny it,” she said. “It’s for my father I’m doing it. He’s an invalid, he can’t work any more.”

  “What’s the matter with your brothers?”

  “Nothing. Just lazy. I spoiled them. You see, I ran away when I was sixteen; I couldn’t stand the life at home. I stayed away a year; when I returned I found them in misery. They’re helpless. I’m the only one who has any initiative.”

  “And you support the entire family?”

  “I try to,” she said. “Sometimes I want to give up—it’s too big a burden. But I can’t. If I were to walk out they would starve to death.”

  “Nonsense,” said Kronski heatedly. “That’s the very thing you ought to do.”

  “But I can’t—not while my father is alive. I’d do anything, I’d prostitute myself, rather than see him in want.”

  “And they’d let you do it, too,” said Kronski. “Look, Mara, you’ve put yourself in a false position. You can’t assume all the responsibility. Let the others take care of themselves. Take your father away—we’ll help you look after him. He doesn’t know how you get the money, does he? You haven’t told him that you work in a dance hall, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. He thinks I’m in the theater. But my mother knows.”

  “And she doesn’t care?”

  “Care?” said Mara, with a bitter smile. “She wouldn’t care what I did so long as I keep the house together. She says I’m no good. Calls me a whore. I’m just like my mother, she says.”

  I interrupted. “Mara,” I said, “I had no idea it was as bad as this. Kronski’s right, you’ve got to extricate yourself. Why don’t you do as he suggests—leave the family and take your father along with you?”

  “I’d love to,” she said, “but my father would never leave my mother. She’s got a hold over him—she’s made a child of him.”

  “But if he knew what you were doing?”

  “He’ll never know. I won’t let anybody tell him. My mother threatened to tell him once: I told her I’d kill her if she did.” She smiled bitterly. “Do you know what my mother said? She said I had been trying to poison her.”

  At this point Kronski suggested that we continue the conversation uptown at the home of a friend of his who was away. He said we could spend the night there if we liked. In the subway his mood changed; he became again the leering, bantering, diabolical, pale-faced toad that he usually was. This meant that he considered himself seductive, felt empowered to ogle the attractive-looking females. The perspiration was pouring down his face, wilting his collar. His talk became hectic, scattered, altogether without continuity. In his distorted way he was trying to create an atmosphere of drama; he flapped his arms loosely, like a demented bat caught between two powerful searchlights.

  To my disgust Mara appeared to be amused by this spectacle. “He’s quite mad, your friend,” she said, “but I like him.”

  Kronski overheard the remark. He grinned tragically and the perspiration began flowing more freely. The more he grinned, the more he clowned and aped it, the more melancholy he looked. He never wanted anybody to think him sad. He was Kronski, the big, vital, healthy, jovial, negligent, reckless, carefree fellow who solved everybody’s problems. He could talk for hours on end—for days, if you had the courage to listen to him. He awoke talking, plunging immediately into hairsplitting arguments, always about the fate of the world, about its biochemical nature, its astrophysical constitution, its politico-economic configuration. The world was in a disastrous state; he knew, because he was always amassing facts about the shortage of wheat or the shortage of petroleum, or making researches into the condition of the Soviet Army or the condition of our arsenals and fortifications. He would say, as if it were a fact beyond dispute, that the soldiers of the Soviet Army could not make war this winter because they had only so many overcoats, so many shoes, etc. He talked about carbohydrates, fats, sugar, etc. He talked about world supplies as though he were running the world. He knew more about international law than the most famous authority on the subject. There wasn’t any subject under the sun about which he did not appear to have a complete and exhaustive knowledge. As yet he was only an intern in a city hospital, but in a few years he woul
d be a celebrated surgeon or psychiatrist, or perhaps something else, he didn’t know yet what he would elect to be. “Why don’t you decide to become President of the United States?” his friends would inquire ironically. “Because I’m not a half-wit,” he would answer, making a sour puss. “You think I couldn’t become President if I wanted to? Listen, you don’t think it takes brains to become President of the United States, do you? No, I want a real job. I want to help people, I don’t want to bamboozle them. If I were to take this country over I’d clean house from top to bottom. To begin with I’d have guys like you castrated. . . .” He’d go on this way for an hour or two, cleaning up the world, putting the big house in order, paving the way for the brotherhood of man and the empire of free thought. Every day of his life he went over the affairs of the world with a fine comb, cleaning out the lice that made men’s thinking lousy. One day he’d be all heated up about the condition of the slaves on the Gold Coast, quoting you the price of bullion on the half shell or some other fabulous statistical concoction which inadvertently made men hate one another and created superfluous jobs for spineless, weak-chested men on financial dope sheets, thus adding to the burden of intangible political economies. Another day he’d be up in arms about chromium or permanganate, because Germany perhaps or Roumania had cornered the market on something or other which would make it difficult for the surgeons in the Soviet Army to operate when the big day arrived. Or he would have just garnered the latest dope on a new and startling pest which would soon reduce the civilized world to anarchy unless we acted at once and with the greatest wisdom. How the world staggered along day after day without Dr. Kronski’s guidance was a mystery which he never cleared up. Dr. Kronski was never in doubt about his analyses of world conditions. Depressions, panics, floods, revolutions, plagues, all these phenomena were manifesting themselves simply to corroborate his judgment. Calamities and catastrophes made him gleeful; he croaked and chortled like the world toad in embryo. How were things going with him personally—nobody ever asked him that question. Personally it was no go. He was chopping up arms and legs for the moment, since nobody had the perspicacity to ask anything better of him. His first wife had died because of a medical blunder and his second wife would soon be going crazy, if she knew what we were talking about. He could plan the most wonderful model houses for the New Republic of Mankind but oddly enough he couldn’t keep his own little nest free of bedbugs and other vermin, and because of his preoccupation with world events, setting things to right in Africa, Guadaloupe, Singapore, and so on, his own place was always just a trifle upset, that is to say, dishes unwashed, beds unmade, furniture falling apart, butter running rancid, toilet stopped up, tubs leaking, dirty combs lying on the table and in general a pleasing, wretched, mildly insane state of dilapidation which manifested itself in the person of Dr. Kronski personally in the form of dandruff, eczema, boils, blisters, fallen arches, warts, wens, halitosis, indigestion and other minor disorders, none of them serious because once the world order was established everything pertaining to the past would disappear and man would shine forth in a new skin like a newborn lamb.