The Hair of Harold Roux (26 page)

“Ah. It was three hundred,” said Foreman, Geoffrey, from the back seat.

“She burns oil,” Allard said sternly.

“A minuscule consumption of oil,” Foreman, Geoffrey, said defensively. “Specifically, one quart of No. 30, SAE, per thousand miles. But shall we say, in order to effect an amicable compromise, two seventy-five?”

Matilda cooled creakily.

“Harold,” Allard said. “Harold …” He laughed, noting the strange, breathless sound, also noting that he was devoid
of anxiousness in this affair. Usually he could not bargain because he could not imply that a stranger was not telling the whole truth. But it must be easier to imply mendaciousness, avarice, or whatever it was, to someone whose very instrument of communication had been self-dehumanized. And then there was Harold’s head of lush, false hair. Matilda, surrounding these actors with her worn plush, was the most honest party to the transaction.

Gravely they got out of Matilda in order to view her again from the outside. They examined her thoughtfully.

“Harold, I’d find it against my conscience to recommend that you pay more than two twenty-five for this friendly but spavined old creature.” He patted Matilda on her hinged bonnet.

Foreman, Geoffrey, was again stopped, disarmed, as if he sensed Allard’s powerful distance from involvement. Helpless for those moments without his voice, he looked pitifully inert, like a cutout silhouette. Then, with a shrug that was uncalculated, he accepted the implied final price of two fifty.

Harold’s voice failed as he agreed. He looked fearfully at Matilda, obviously shaken at the prospect of owning all of her. But, bravely, he would join his fate with hers; he and Foreman, Geoffrey, went off to find a notary public.

Allard, feeling somewhat soiled by the ways of the world and at the same time shamefully proud of himself, proceeded to the student parking lot where he’d left his motorcycle.

Naomi was sitting on it, sidesaddle, reading a book. Her long black hair shaded her face from the sun but spread apart when she looked up at him, as though her face came out from dark curtains. She was good news to him, fresh air compared to the nervous inevitable business of visiting Mary’s home.

“Have you had lunch?” she said. She was all dressed up, for her, in a dark green skirt of shiny material and a white peasant blouse with puffed sleeves. Though her arms were dark and smooth against the starched white, legitimately old-worldish and peasantlike, she looked very young in the outfit.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked, indicating her clothes.

“I have to appear before the dormitory disciplinary firing squad this afternoon, which means I have to wear the enemy’s uniform. Bunch of starved little cunts.”

“Oh-oh.”

“Lest I get evicted and lose my room rent, which the filthy fascists made my parents pay against my will in the first place.”

“Oh my, Naomi! What did you do?”

“I stayed out too late a couple of times. Past the devirgin-izing hour, evidently. I also walked down the third-floor hall to the showers stark-naked, not to mention back to the room. I called the housemother a sneaky fink bitch, to a sneaky fink bitch. There is also the pretty rumor that I’m a lesbian. And I
am
a communist. I suppose it could be worse. Nobody’s accused me of being an arsonist or a kleptomaniac—yet.”

Though Allard laughed, Naomi wouldn’t even smile. She swung her long leg over the motorcycle and tucked her skirt beneath her so it wouldn’t catch in the spokes, waited while he put their books in the saddlebags and then straightened her leg so he could kick down the starter. The machine seemed hers, or theirs; it had taken them off to so many comradely hours—comradely after their immediate forces diffused within each other. She held him lightly, her hands on his ribs.

“You would laugh,” she said. “You’re so disgustingly apolitical.”

He swung the machine away and they curved, leaning, out of the parking lot to the street, then went down the long hill to the business area, not trying to speak over the wind and the engine. With the engine stopped again he said, “But everything isn’t political.”

“It depends on how you look at it. How aware you are. I can’t understand how you can accept, even
laugh
, at a system that’s so viciously exploitive.”

“One that doesn’t want you to walk down the halls naked?”

“That’s part of it. That really is part of it. It’s sick, rotten to the core. I mean there really
are
those poor bitches who’ve
been driven out of their fragile little minds by what they’ve been told, and they do go hysterical when they see me naked. Can you imagine how sick they are? And I’m supposed to be the lesbian. Jesus Christ!”

“Well, maybe deep down inside you are a great wild bull dyke, Naomi.” He laughed, and to irritate her still more took her hand to help her off the motorcycle.

“I think
you’re
hysterical,” she said, pulling her hand away. “I don’t know why I spend any time at all with you. You’re not serious.” They went into the varnished wooden interior of the Coffee Shop, found an empty booth and sat down, their elbows careful among the damp plates, cups, spills and ashes of its previous occupants. Allard took the side of the booth where he could see an always amazing wall panel of marquetry, its wood veneers depicting in warm tones a castle, clouds and mountains in Bavaria, probably—Schloss Wittgenstein or something. The grains of the various woods so precisely gave clouds, meadows and forested hills their reality. The truest precision here was random, accidental. When he looked closely at those lines made by the jigsaw they were not good at all; the perspectives were crude, the human choices bad. But he felt almost inside that wooden world, feeling its heights and depths in his centers of balance.

“I’ve been asked why I spend so much time with you,” Naomi said. “It’s been discussed.”

He knew why she did. It was the simplest thing in the world—they loved each other. When they looked at each other strange things happened in their middles. It was simple. Only he was going to marry Mary. But that didn’t sound exactly right because then he couldn’t make love to Naomi when he wanted to and she wanted to. Perhaps he was insane. Polygamy was the obvious answer but that was somewhat illegal, which was bothersome. It was all bothersome and took time away from his work, so-called. Maybe the only thing he was truly good at was making women want him around. The term for that occupation was gigolo.

“Is love political?” he said.

“Love, phooey,” she said. “If you want love get on your motorcycle and go see Mary. She’s sick with it.”

“Well, there’re different kinds of love, aren’t there?”

Naomi waited while the student waitress cleared off the dirty dishes. Then she said, “Love is a euphemism, in our case, for sexual gratification.”

“I’ll bet it isn’t.”

“You make me sick!” She seemed quite angry, and her real anger made him apprehensive, as though something real might be in danger.

In spite of his apprehension he couldn’t stop. “Is anger political?” he asked.

“Phooey!”

“Is phooey political?”

“Herbert’s right! You’re worthless! You’re a waste of time!” She got up, tall, neat and furious. People were looking at them. Her eyes glittered. He appreciated her lean waist, the firm dark muscles of her neck. She had a little red pimple on her temple, with another, embryonic one below it. Lustrous black hair grew out of her head. She was alive, this functioning organism. What force and presence she had! She. That word wasn’t powerful enough for Naomi. From her skin came invisible moisture, scent, living gross precious effluvia. This complex, feeling animal was part of the atmosphere he breathed. She left. Of course he was worthless. Insane, insane.

He ran out and caught up with her down the street just as she was about to go up the stairs to Herbert Smythe’s apartment. He grabbed her from behind and held her in a bear hug so hard she couldn’t struggle loose. People stopped to watch.

“Are you alive?” he said into her black hair.

She wouldn’t answer so he turned her around and picked her up in an undignified fashion, his arm through her crotch, and carried her upstairs. “I’m real,” he said in the dentist’s-oflice-smelling upstairs hallway. He kicked Herbert’s door open and carried her inside. Herbert and several of his troops, including the deprived boy in GI spectacles, and Use Haendler,
looked up from pamphlets, a purple-ink-spattered mimeograph machine, chairs, tables, coffee cups, earnestness palpable as putty. Overflowing wastebaskets. Naomi was hitting him on the head with her fists, which was mildly confusing, but he had something he wanted to say. He held her tightly in the same undignified but secure, right-feeling way, his right arm between her legs, his hand firmly spread across her spine.

“I have brought Naomi,” he began. The deprived boy in GI spectacles attacked him, but he paid no obvious (he thought) attention, merely turning so that Naomi’s back protected him from the deprived boy’s sharp little knuckles.

“I have brought Naomi in order to recover Naomi’s brain. I will not leave until you return Naomi’s brain! Do you hear? I will pull off your heads, one by one, as I have done to rabbits, until Naomi’s brain is returned!”

“You son of a bitch! Put me down!”

“Ladies and gentlemen! Distinguished guests!
Kameraden
!” He wanted to tell them that, no, really, he was a man of peace, that he wanted to be reasonable, but then he had to kick the deprived boy in the shin just to keep him quiet so he could speak, and they were all overly impressed by this act of mere self-protection. The deprived boy fell down, moaning and holding his shin. Allard knew, finally, that their disapproval, reinforced as it was by every belief they held, precluded any communication at all. Herbert Smythe stared at him, disgusted and horrified.

“Herbert, it has been discussed in FBI circles why I spend so much time with Naomi. There are those who think it bad for my character, that it might jeopardize or soften my ideological discipline. Well, fuck them, Herbert, I say! I’m going to take Naomi away. Naomi is mine; I am Naomi’s. You can have her brain. Keep it. She can grow another one. Goodbye!” He turned as if to leave.

“No! No! Don’t take her!” Herbert shouted.

“Put me down, you bastard! You
shit
!”

Suddenly it was all real. He had no right to treat them
this way. He was brutal, he was a brutal shit, so he put Naomi on her feet—gently, he thought—and left. He skipped and slid down over the stairs as if he were skiing. The incident, left behind but with him, was so profoundly boring and shameful he decided not to think about it. He started the Indian Pony and rode recklessly around the little square, his footrest scraping and sparking on the pavement, then back to the dormitory, where he slewed around to a stop like a Harley-Davidson show-off.

He went into the dormitory, pushing open the institutional door that never closed tightly, its brass hardware evidently a compromise between strength and precision so that its thousands of violent openings and closings would neither break it nor close it firmly. No one cared about the door or the dormitory, or much about anything here. It was temporary to all of them. Knuck Gillis was thinking of going back into the Marines. Nathan wanted to get his degree and get the hell out into the real world. Most of Allard’s classes seemed to be for someone else in the classroom, as though he were a slightly bored visitor who could attend or not attend as he wished. He read so he could pass examinations, and maybe he got something out of the reading.

He ran down the long corridor, cubicles of rooms on each side, up the grimy stairs where a banister rail had been pulled loose from the wall and gray cement dust sifted from the bolt holes. He had two hours before he would leave for Concord. With a pang of pity and revulsion he saw Mary at home getting everything nice for him, dusting, polishing the silver. The little wife-to-be at her domestic arts, her soul humming with innocent happiness. B. Maloumian: What’s the difference between a woman coming out of church and a woman getting out of the bathtub? A woman coming out of church has a soul full of hope. Also, if a mechanical pump sucks and sucks and never fails, what does the Swiss Navy do?

No one was in the room. On Knuck’s bed was one of his atavistic nests of soiled clothes. Nathan’s desk was neat, his bed made, his sharp suits and jackets hung neatly in his third
of the open closet, his polished shoes lined up neatly beneath, toes out. Allard went to his own footlocker, a sturdy, joined wooden box made for him by a Japanese cabinetmaker, and opened its combination padlock. At the bottom of the box was a bottle of Suntory whiskey with only a few drinks out of it. “Medicine for the fiance,” he said, and took a drink of it. It reminded him of Japan. That smooth bite of the demon brought back temples and torii, the land’s misty promises, most of which it kept. Also a girl named Yoshiko Nakamura to whom he’d lied because he was only a soldier overseas and therefore did not exist in terms of permanence. Ancient history. But did he exist even here in terms of permanence? By now he could have had Mary near or over the cliff of damnation if he’d really wanted to. Perhaps he was kind and didn’t want to hurt her. But how do you not hurt women?

He put the bottle of Suntory back, next to the dark leather holster of his Nambu pistol, then covered them both up with the GI suntans he’d been issued shortly before his discharge. He locked the footlocker, locked away all that, and got undressed to take a shower.

Short Round appeared. Maybe the door had been left open a crack. Here was Paul Hickett in his army clothes—field jacket and OD wool pants bloused over well-dubbined combat boots. The day was balmy; warm waves of air came through the open windows, but Short Round lived dryly within his heroic clothes, the texture of his skin a moistureless wrinkled gray.

“Man!” Short Round said. “Did you hear what Boom and me got going?”

Allard was gathering up towel, soap and other necessities, including one of Nathan’s razor blades. “No. What Boom and you got going?” Allard said. One shouldn’t treat even Short Round this way, especially because Short Round would never notice it.