Lee left his apartment for the Ship Ahoy just before five. Allerton was sitting at the bar. Lee sat down and ordered a drink, then turned to Allerton with a casual greeting, as though they were on familiar and friendly terms. Allerton returned the greeting automatically before he realized that Lee had somehow established himself on a familiar basis, whereas he had previously decided to have as little to do with Lee as possible. Allerton had a talent for ignoring people, but he was not competent at dislodging someone from a position already occupied.
Lee began talking—casual, unpretentiously intelligent, dryly humorous. Slowly he dispelled Allerton's impression that he was a peculiar and undesirable character. When Mary arrived, Lee greeted her with a tipsy old- world gallantry and, excusing himself, left them to a game of chess.
'Who is he?' asked Mary when Lee had gone outside.
'I have no idea,' said Allerton. Had he ever met Lee? He could not be sure. Formal introductions were not expected among the G.I. students. Was Lee a student? Allerton had never seen him at the school. There was nothing unusual in talking to someone you didn't know, but Lee put Allerton on guard. The man was somehow familiar to him. When Lee talked, he seemed to mean more than what he said. A special emphasis to a word or a greeting hinted at a period of familiarity in some other time and place. As though Lee were saying, 'You know what I mean.
You remember.'
Allerton shrugged irritably and began arranging the chess pieces on the board. He looked like a sullen child unable to locate the source of his ill temper. After a few minutes of play his customary serenity returned, and he began humming.
It was after midnight when Lee returned to the Ship Ahoy. Drunks seethed around the bar, talking as if everyone else were stone deaf. Allerton stood on the edge of this group, apparently unable to make himself heard. He greeted Lee warmly, pushed in to the bar, and emerged with two rum Cokes. 'Let's sit down over here,' he said.
Allerton was drunk. His eyes were flushed a faint violet tinge, the pupils widely dilated. He was talking very fast in a high, thin voice, the eerie, disembodied voice of a young child. Lee had never heard Allerton talk like this before. The effect was like the possession voice of a medium.
The boy had an inhuman gaiety and innocence.
Allerton was telling a story about his experience with the Counter-intelligence Corps in Germany.
An informant had been giving the department bum steers.
'How did you check the accuracy of information?' Lee asked. 'How did you know ninety percent of what your informants told you wasn't fabricated?'
'Actually we didn't, and we got sucked in on a lot of phony deals. Of course, we cross-checked all information with other informants and we had our own agents in the field. Most of our informants turned in some phony information, but this one character made all of it up. He had our agents out looking for a whole fictitious network of Russian spies. So finally the report comes back from Frankfurt—it is all a lot of crap. But instead of clearing out of town before the information could be checked, he came back with more.
'At this point we'd really had enough of his bullshit. So we locked him up in a cellar. The room was pretty cold and uncomfortable, but that was all we could do. We had to handle prisoners very careful.
He kept typing out confessions, enormous things.'
This story clearly delighted Allerton, and he kept laughing while he was telling it. Lee was impressed by his combination of intelligence and childlike charm. Allerton was friendly now, without reserve or defense, like a child who has never been hurt. He was telling another story.
Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face.
An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. Now Lee's hands were running down over the ribs, the stomach. Lee felt the aching pain of desire in his lungs. His mouth was a little open, showing his teeth in the half-snarl of a baffled animal. He licked his lips.
Lee did not enjoy frustration. The limitations of his desires were like the bars of a cage, like a chain and collar, something he had learned as an animal learns, through days and years of experiencing the snub of the chain, the unyielding bars. He had never resigned himself, and his eyes looked out through the invisible bars, watchful, alert, waiting for the keeper to forget the door, for the frayed collar, the loosened bar . . . suffering without despair and without consent.
'I went to the door and there he was with a branch in his mouth,' Allerton was saying.
Lee had not been listening. 'A branch in his mouth,' said Lee, then added inanely, 'A big branch?'
'It was about two feet long. I told him to drop dead, then a few minutes later he appeared at the window. So I threw a chair at him and he jumped down to the yard from the balcony. About eighteen feet. He was very nimble. Almost inhuman. It was sort of uncanny, and that's why I threw the chair. I was scared. We all figured he was putting on an act to get out of the Army.'
'What did he look like?' Lee asked.
'Look like? I don't remember especially. He was around eighteen. He looked like a clean-cut boy.
We threw a bucket of cold water on him and left him on a cot downstairs. He began flopping around but he didn't say anything. We all decided that was an appropriate punishment. I think they took him to the hospital next day.'
'Pneumonia?'
'I don't know. Maybe we shouldn't have thrown water on him.'
Lee left Allerton at the door of his building.
'You go in here?' Lee asked.
'Yes, I have a sack here.'
Lee said good night and walked home.
