Boswell (48 page)

The light in our room shone beneath the door like a bright brass threshold. Margaret was in bed, reading.

“Margaret,” I said, “why did you marry me?”

She pretended not to look startled. It was a princessly gesture but it did not come off. “I had my reasons,” she said at last.

“I’ll bet you did,” I said. It had actually crossed my mind that I might have been a front man in some international plot. “What were they?”

“Why?”

“Because I must understand how I’m being used.”

“You’ll never understand that”

“Ah,” I said.

“Did you enjoy your walk with Mrs. Taylor?”

“I didn’t touch Mrs. Taylor.”

“I know that,” she said.

“You don’t seem very grateful for my fidelity.”

“You have no fidelity,” she said.

I was enjoying the conversation. People with unnamable sorrows touch and awe me. Margaret now struck me as one of these. It was very adult talk, I thought. I had the impression that our voices had actually changed— that my flat, midwestern vowels had rounded and that Margaret’s faint, Italianate English had become somehow Middle-European, the sound of a queen rather than a princess.

“Why did you marry me?” I repeated.

“Oh,” she said, “love.”

Outside the voices swelled. “‘Oh, bury me not,’” they sang, “‘on the lone prair-ee.’”

I waited for her to go on. She sat up in bed, and the sheet fell away from the royal breasts.

“‘Where the coyotes howl,’” they sang, “‘and the wind is free.’”

“A famous American folk song,” I said. “Jesus, these people feel sorry for themselves.”

Margaret was staring at me.

“Let me understand you,” I said. “Did you love me?”

“I’ve just told you.”

“But what was the mystery?”

“That’s the mystery.”

“Just that?”

“Yes.”

“Only that?”

“Yes.” She turned away.

“Well, that ties it,” I said, suddenly exploding. “That really does. That ties it. You’re the one who should have gone walking with Mrs. Taylor.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m harmless.” I giggled. “Like everyone else.”

“What is it you want?” she shouted suddenly.

“What everybody wants,” I said calmly. “What you want, what Mrs. Marvin Taylor wants.”

“Happiness,” Margaret said contemptuously.

“Screw happiness. Immorality.”

It was odd, finally, to be in a position to say no, to deny others with a clear, free conscience. It came with age, I supposed. But really there was nothing to it. It was just an illusion of power. No one had any real power. No one did except maybe suicides in the brief moment between their self-violence and their deaths.

“Well,” I said, “cheer up, Principessa. And move over.”

“I don’t want to make love,” she said.

I shrugged.

“There are other people alive,” Margaret said after a while.

“Millions,” I said. “Zillions. That’s my point. It would be pretty silly to try to care for all of them.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that you care for all of them.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see. One for one. Double up. Like the buddy system.” I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t want to make love, I tell you,” Margaret said.

“In that case, pass the brochure. I want to read the literature.”

IV

Finally I understood what the trouble was. I had been confused by alternatives, overwhelmed by the extraordinary complications of ordinary life. Some men—and I was one—could function only under a pressure, a deadline, a doom. One hones himself against his needs, so he had better understand what those are.

But maybe, too, there had been a certain good husbandry in my bad marriage. There were, after all, natural laws—who knew it better?—and perhaps men, like farms, like phoenixes, had to lie low once in a while. Like Lome’s scrap iron and lint, nothing was ever a total loss; everything went on working for one, counting for something better than it seemed to. There was just so much faith that one could put in serendipity, however, and I decided that it was time to make a change in my life.

Compromises and disguises were out. The King of England walking Harlem in a zoot suit is only a white man in funny clothes. His Highness knows where his Highness’ bread is buttered. The secret agents, with guns, with transistor equipment, are right behind him. There has to be a deep amnesia of the soul. Indigence is the one thing you can’t fake. Low birth is all some of us have.

Still, the solution wasn’t to leave Margaret, only to get away from her. Divorce or separation would just have been a further complication. I had to get outside again, to enter the world like a nun in reverse. I recognized the difficulties. They talk about the
nouveaux riches,
and one knows what to expect, what to avoid, but who ever heard of the nouveaux poor, the nouveaux stricken?

One afternoon I told Margaret I felt guilty about my life.

“You’re just bored,” she said.

“No,” I said, “it would be wrong for me to be bored. I don’t
do
anything. I make no contribution. For the first time in my life I’m uneasy about people less fortunate than myself.” It was true in a way; at least it would have been if such people existed. I told her I had volunteered my services in the Police Athletic League and that I would be teaching Puerto Ricans body-building in a gym on the East Side. I don’t think she believed me. It was not a very inspired lie, but even its baldness served because it announced to Margaret that I was up to
something,
that I did not want to be disturbed.

The next day I took a room in a boarding house off Fifty-eighth Street and went to a pawnshop on Eight Avenue to lay in a wardrobe. I told the pawnbroker that I was an actor, that I needed a certain kind of clothes for the part I was playing, not seedy so much as shabby, and not shabby so much as tasteless, and not tasteless so much as anonymous.

“I see him as a guy in the bleachers,” I said. “He drinks beer. You know? Probably he’s not really from New York at all. Probably he’s originally from Gary, Indiana. He wears black shoes and powder-blue socks.”

“A hayseed,” the pawnbroker said.

“Well, yes and no,” I said. “My conception is more of a guy used to hard work in a factory, or somebody who wraps packages in a stockroom. He likes to watch people bowl. He likes to be comfortable. He wears wind- breakers. His pants turn over his belt.”

“Yeah,” the pawnbroker said, interested. “I think I see what you’re getting at. He could probably afford better but he’s ignorant.”

“That’s it.”

“He’s got underwear with big red ants painted on it,” the pawnbroker said.

“He wears wide ties.”

“There’s a loud pattern on his socks,” the pawnbroker said.

“Oh, an awful one,” I said.

“Yeah,” the pawnbroker said. “Yeah.”

“His wife is a waitress,” I said.

“Sure,” the pawnbroker said, “and now he drives a bus because he strained his back in the factory.”

“His sister’s married to an enlisted man stationed in West Germany,” I said.

The pawnbroker stroked his long jaw. “That’s a tall order,” he said. He came from behind the counter and studied me. “You got some size on you, God bless you.”

“It would be all right if the clothes were a little small,” I said. “That would heighten the effect, you see.”

“Maybe I got something in the back,” the pawnbroker said.

“Go see.”

He brought out exactly what I needed. It was as though the twelve men we had been describing had died back there. “See if these work,” he said, handing me some clothing.

“Have you been in show business too?” I asked.

“I’ve just got an interest,” he said shyly. ’ I tried on the clothes and the pawnbroker leaned back against the counter and admired me. “You look like a different person,” he said.

I laughed. “That’s very funny,” I said.

“To tell you the truth,” he said after I had decided which clothes I would take, “I don’t know what to charge for this stuff. On the one hand it’s all old, unclaimed, but on the other hand it’s a very good costume. What the hell, three pants, shoes, all those stockings, a jacket—say fifteen bucks.”

My hand was reaching for my wallet when I stopped myself. “Listen,” I said, “fifteen bucks is very fair. As you say, these aren’t old clothes, but a very artistic costume. If that’s your price I’ll pay it. But I just thought. You say you’re interested in the theater.”

“I don’t want no passes,” the pawnbroker said, suspicious.

“No, of course not,” I said. “Of course not. I just had an idea. Listen, let me give you your fifteen dollars.” I reached into my wallet and took out the money and extended it, but the pawnbroker hesitated.

“What was your idea?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “you know the
Playbill
they give out?”

He nodded.

“Well, did you ever notice the credits? I mean where it says ‘Furs by Fendrich,’ ‘Jewelry by Tiffany’? Look, I’m no businessman, but I happen to know that that sort of thing is the most prestigious advertising space anybody can get.” I lowered my voice. “It’s payola.”

“I’ve wondered about those credits,” the pawnbroker said.

“Well, of course,” I said. “Now suppose we put it in that Al’s clothes—that’s the character’s name that I’m portraying—were donated by” —I looked through the pile of second-hand cameras and radios and musical instruments to the name inverted on the window—“Charley’s Pawn Shop.”

“My clientele don’t go much to the theater,” the pawnbroker said.

“That’s not the point. For one thing it would be a gag. On the other hand it would polish the image of the profession.”

He thought about it for a while. “What’s the name of your show?” he said finally.

“The Dying Gladiator.”

“It’s not very catchy,” he said.

“Those things are worked out in New Haven.” I held out the money again. The pawnbroker looked at it for a second and then waved it away. “What the hell,” he said, “it’ll be a good joke.”

“It will,” I said. “It is.”

I went back to my room with the old clothes. Already I felt better. There are certain people who are not happy unless they get something wholesale; others, like myself, do not possess a thing unless they have had it for nothing. It was the old water into wine principle, a little harmless miracle-making. That afternoon I felt as if I were making a comeback.

Each morning I kissed Margaret like someone going away to the office and walked the few blocks to my shabby rented room. In my old clothes I was a new man. In a week I was ready.

I went into a restaurant and strolled by a table the waitress had not yet cleared. I picked up her tip for courage, for luck. Using the dime I had stolen, I went into the phone booth and called the Ford Foundation.

When I gave a secretary my name and asked to be put through to the director she hesitated, so I gave her a little razzle-dazzle. “This is Detroit calling, baby,” I said. “Get it?
De
-troit!”

She said she’d try to connect me; she must have been a new girl. Years before I had discovered the uses of the big Foundations. We were on good terms. I had suggested projects to them and they regarded me as an interested amateur. I was on their mailing lists. I knew, for example, where all the young poets were, the novelists. At one time I used to keep a map with little pins in it, like something in a War Room. I could put my finger on any of those fellows, any time I wanted.

“Harley,” I said, “it’s Jimmy Boswell. I’m sorry I had to scare the little girl, but it was urgent. I’ve had a scheme, Harley, which you people might be interested in. My word of honor, Harley, I haven’t gone to The Guggenheim with this yet.”

I told him about The Club. He was very interested, but vague when I tried to pin him down.

“Could I get a commitment on this right away, Harley? Twenty-five thousand a year is all it would take.”

“It’s cheap, Boswell,” Harley admitted, “but you must appreciate how the Foundation works.”

“My God, Harley, I’m only talking about twenty-five thousand dollars a year. You could take it out of the stamp fund.”

“Well, it’s not that, Boswell.”

“Bring three poets back from Yucatán,” I said. “Call off two musicologists. You don’t really believe there’s a future in that electronic stuff, do you?”

“Boswell, believe me, it isn’t the money.”

“Well,” I said a little more softly, “the truth is I’ve never known you people to be mean. What is it, Harley? Is the plan no good? I’d like a straight answer on this.”

“Boswell, the idea
is
good—it’s sound. But don’t you think it’s a little, well,
snobbish?”

“Ah,” I said. I was grinning.

“Well, after all,” Harley said.

“The Rockefeller may not be so fastidious, Harley,” I warned.

“Now, Boswell…” Harley said.

“The Guggenheim and The Carnegie may have different views.”

“Boswell…” Harley said.

“The Fund for the Republic people may think along other lines.”

“Please…” Harley said.

“Well, dammit, Harley, if it’s not too snobbish for The Fund for the Republic people, I don’t see what you have to be so squeamish about.” My grin had folded into an open smile; I couldn’t keep a straight face; I almost doubled up; my nose was running. Here I was in a phone booth in the Columbus Circle subway station, with the little rubber-bladed fan whirling merrily away, and the light going on and off as I opened and shut the door not fifty feet away from the mad faggot in the stall in the men’s toilet peeping through a hole at the businessmen standing before the urinals; here I was, James Boswell, orphan. Herlitz-placed, Mr. America in second-hand pants, lawful husband of the Principessa Margaret dei Medici of All the Italies, being apologized to by the director of The Ford Foundation.

“Why are you laughing?” Harley asked.

“What’s that? Excuse me?”

“What are you laughing at?”

“Well, you’ll forgive me, Harley, but your remark about snobbishness strikes me as just a little absurd.”

“Does it?” Harley said coolly.

“Well, figure it out,” I said. “You and I are both dedicated to a kind of talent elite. Anyway, Princeton and Palo Alto have been doing this sort of thing, only on a bigger scale, for years.”