“Dont lie; there’s no reason why you should. … I think I’m going to kill myself tonight.”
“Heavens! dont do that. … What’s the matter?”
“You have no right to tell me not to kill myself. You dont know anything about me. If I was a woman you wouldnt be so indifferent.”
“What’s eating you anyway?”
“I’m going crazy that’s all, everything’s so horrible. When I first met you with Ruth one evening I thought we were going to be friends, Herf. You seemed so sympathetic and understanding. … I thought you were like me, but now you’re getting so callous.”
“I guess it’s the Times. … I’ll get fired soon, don’t worry.”
“I’m tired of being poor; I want to make a hit.”
“Well you’re young yet; you must be younger than I am.” Tony didnt answer.
They were walking down a broad avenue between two rows of blackened frame houses. A streetcar long and yellow hissed rasping past.
“Why we must be in Flatbush.”
“Herf I used to think you were like me, but now I never see you except with some woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never told anybody in the world. … By God if you tell anybody. … When I was a child I was horribly oversexed, when I was about ten or eleven or thirteen.” He was sobbing. As they passed under an arclight, Jimmy caught the glisten of the tears on his cheeks. “I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasnt drunk.”
“But things like that happened to almost everybody when they were kids. … You oughtnt to worry about that.”
“But I’m that way now, that’s what’s so horrible. I cant like women. I’ve tried and tried. … You see I was caught. I was so ashamed I wouldn’t go to school for weeks. My mother cried and cried. I’m so ashamed. I’m so afraid people will find out about it. I’m always fighting to keep it hidden, to hide my feelings.”
“But it all may be an idea. You may be able to get over it. Go to a psychoanalyst.”
“I cant talk to anybody. It’s just that tonight I’m drunk. I’ve tried to look it up in the encyclopedia. … It’s not even in the dictionary.” He stopped and leaned against a lamppost with his face in his hands. “It’s not even in the dictionary.”
Jimmy Herf patted him on the back. “Buck up for Heaven’s sake. They’re lots of people in the same boat. The stage is full of them.”
“I hate them all. … It’s not people like that I fall in love with. I hate myself. I suppose you’ll hate me after tonight.”
“What nonsense. It’s no business of mine.”
“Now you know why I want to kill myself. … Oh it’s not fair Herf, it’s not fair. … I’ve had no luck in my life. I started earning my living as soon as I got out of highschool. I used to be bellhop in summer hotels. My mother lived in Lakewood and I used to send her everything I earned. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am. If it were known, if there were a scandal and it all came out I’d be ruined.”
“But everybody says that of all juveniles and nobody lets it worry them.”
“Whenever I fail to get a part I think it’s on account of that. I hate and despise all that kind of men. … I dont want to be a juvenile. I want to act. Oh it’s hell. … It’s hell.”
“But you’re rehearsing now aren’t you?”
“A fool show that’ll never get beyond Stamford. Now when you hear that I’ve done it you wont be surprised.”
“Done what?”
“Killed myself.”
They walked without speaking. It had started to rain. Down the street behind the low greenblack shoebox houses there was an occasional mothpink flutter of lightning. A wet dusty smell came up from the asphalt beaten by the big plunking drops.
“There ought to be a subway station near. … Isn’t that a blue light down there? Let’s hurry or we’ll get soaked.”
“Oh hell Tony I’d just as soon get soaked as not.” Jimmy took off his felt hat and swung it in one hand. The raindrops were cool on his forehead, the smell of the rain, of roofs and mud and asphalt, took the biting taste of whiskey and cigarettes out of his mouth.
“Gosh it’s horrible,” he shouted suddenly.
“What?”
“All the hushdope about sex. I’d never realized it before tonight, the full extent of the agony. God you must have a rotten time. … We all of us have a rotten time. In your case it’s just luck, hellish bad luck. Martin used to say: Everything would be so much better if suddenly a bell rang and everybody told everybody else honestly what they did about it, how they lived, how they loved. It’s hiding things makes them putrefy. By God it’s horrible. As if life wasn’t difficult enough without that.”
“Well I’m going down into this subway station.”
“You’ll have to wait hours for a train.”
“I cant help it I’m tired and I dont want to get wet.”
“Well good night.”
“Good night Herf.”
There was a long rolling thunderclap. It began to rain hard. Jimmy rammed his hat down on his head and yanked his coatcollar up. He wanted to run along yelling sonsobitches at the top of his lungs. Lightning flickered along the staring rows of dead windows. The rain seethed along the pavements, against storewindows, on brownstone steps. His knees were wet, a slow trickle started down his back, there were chilly cascades off his sleeves onto his wrists, his whole body itched and tingled. He walked on through Brooklyn. Obsession of all the beds in all the pigeonhole bedrooms, tangled sleepers twisted and strangled like the roots of potbound plants. Obsession of feet creaking on the stairs of lodginghouses, hands fumbling at doorknobs. Obsession of pounding temples and solitary bodies rigid on their beds.
J’ai fait trois fois le tour du monde
Vive le sang, vive le sang. …
Moi monsieur je suis anarchiste. … And three times round went our gallant ship, and
