The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (28 page)

Biff thought also of death. A curious incident occurred. One day while rummaging through the bathroom closet he found a bottle of Agua Florida that he had overlooked when taking Lucile the rest of Alice’s cosmetics. Meditatively he held the bottle of perfume in his hands. It was four months now since her death--and each month seemed as long and full of leisure as a year. He seldom thought of her.

Biff uncorked the bottle. He stood shirtless before the mirror and dabbled some of the perfume on his dark, hairy armpits.

The scent made him stiffen. He exchanged a deadly secret glance with himself in the mirror and stood motionless. He was stunned by the memories brought to him with the perfume, not because of their clarity, but because they gathered together the whole long span of years and were complete. Biff rubbed his nose and looked sideways at himself. The boundary of death. He felt in him each minute that he had lived with her. And now their life together was whole as only the past can be whole. Abruptly Biff turned away.

The bedroom was done over. His entirely now. Before it had been tacky and flossy and drab. There were always stockings and pink rayon knickers with holes in them hung on a string across the room to dry. The iron bed had been flaked and rusty, decked with soiled lace boudoir pillows. A bony mouser from downstairs would arch its back and rub mournfully against the slop jar.

All of this he had changed. He traded the iron bed for a studio couch. There was a thick red rug on the floor, and he had bought a beautiful cloth of Chinese blue to hang on the side of the wall where the cracks were worst. He had unsealed the fireplace and kept it laid with pine logs. Over the mantel was a small photograph of Baby and a colored picture of a little boy in velvet holding a ball in his hands. A glassed case in the corner held the curios he had collected--specimens of butterflies, a rare arrowhead, a curious rock shaped like a human profile. Blue-silk cushions were on the studio couch, and he had borrowed Lucile’s sewing-machine to make deep red curtains for the windows. He loved the room. It was both luxurious and sedate. On the table there was a little Japanese pagoda with glass pendants that tinkled with strange musical tones in a draught.

In this room nothing reminded him of her. But often he would uncork the bottle of Agua Florida and touch the stopper to the lobes of his ears or to his wrists. The smell mingled with his slow ruminations. The sense of the past grew in him.

Memories built themselves with almost architectural order. In a box where he stored souvenirs he came across old pictures taken before their marriage. Alice sitting in a field of daisies.

Alice with him in a canoe on the river. Also among the souvenirs there was a large bone hairpin that had belonged to his mother. As a little boy he had loved to watch her comb and knot her long black hair. He had thought that hairpins were curved as they were to copy the shape of a lady and he would sometimes play with them like dolls. At that time he had a cigar box full of scraps. He loved the feel and colors of beautiful cloth and he would sit with his scraps for hours under the kitchen table. But when he was six his mother took the scraps away from him. She was a tall, strong woman with a sense of duty like a man. She had loved him best. Even now he sometimes dreamed of her. And her worn gold wedding ring stayed on his finger always.

Along with the Agua Florida he found in the closet a bottle of lemon rinse Alice had always used for her hair. One day he tried it on himself. The lemon made his dark, white-streaked hair seem fluffy and thick. He liked it. He discarded the oil he had used to guard against baldness and rinsed with the lemon preparation regularly. Certain whims that he had ridiculed in Alice were now his own. Why? Every morning Louis, the colored boy downstairs, brought him a cup of coffee to drink in bed. Often he sat propped on the pillows for an hour before he got up and dressed. He smoked a cigar and watched the patterns the sunlight made on the wall. Deep hi meditation he ran his forefinger between his long, crooked toes. He remembered.

Then from noon until five in the morning he worked downstairs. And all day Sunday. The business was losing money. There were many slack hours. Still at meal-times the place was usually full and he saw hundreds of acquaintances every day as he stood guard behind the cash register.

‘What do you stand and think about all the time?’ Jake Blount asked him. ‘You look like a Jew in Germany.’

‘I am an eighth part Jew,’ Biff said. ‘My Mother’s grandfather was a Jew from Amsterdam. But all the rest of my folks that I know about were Scotch-Irish.’

It was Sunday morning. Customers lolled at the tables and there were the smell of tobacco and the rustle of newspaper.

Some men in a corner booth shot dice, but the game was a quiet one.

‘Where’s Singer?’ Biff asked. ‘Won’t you be going up to his place this morning?’

Blount’s face turned dark and sullen. He jerked his head forward. Had they quarreled--but how could a dummy quarrel? No, for this had happened before. Blount hung around sometimes and acted as though he were having an argument with himself. But pretty soon he would go--he always did--and the two of them would come in together, Blount talking.

‘You live a fine life. Just standing behind a cash register. Just standing with your hand open.’

Biff did not take offense. He leaned his weight on his elbows and narrowed his eyes. ‘Let’s me and you have a serious talk.

What is it you want anyway?’

Blount smacked his hands down on the counter. They were warm and meaty and rough. ‘Beer. And one of them little packages of cheese crackers with peanut butter in the inside.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Biff said. ‘But well come around to it later.’

The man was a puzzle. He was always changing. He still drank like a crazy fish, but liquor did not drag him down as it did some men. The rims of his eyes were often red, and he had a nervous trick of looking back startled over his shoulder. His head was heavy and huge on his thin neck. He was the sort of fellow that kids laughed at and dogs wanted to bite. Yet when he was laughed at it cut him to the quick--he got rough and loud like a sort of clown. And he was always suspecting that somebody was laughing. Biff shook his head thoughtfully. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘What makes you stick with that show? You can find something better than that. I could give you a part-time job here.’

‘Christamighty! I wouldn’t park myself behind that cash box if you was to give me the whole damn place, lock, stock, and barrel.’There he was. It was irritating. He could never have friends or even get along with people. Talk sense,’ Biff said. ‘Be serious.’ A customer had come up with his check and he made change. The place was still quiet. Blount was restless. Biff felt him drawing away. He wanted to hold him. He reached for two A-1 cigars on the shelf behind the counter and offered Blount a smoke. Warily his mind dismissed one question after another, and then finally he asked: ‘If you could choose the time in history you could have lived, what era would you choose? ‘ Blount licked his mustache with his broad, wet tongue. ‘If you had to choose between being a stiff and never asking another question, which would you take? ‘ ‘Sure enough,’ Biff insisted. ‘Think it over.’ He cocked his head to one side and peered down over his long nose. This was a matter he liked to hear others talk about. Ancient Greece was his. Walking in sandals on the edge of the blue Aegean. The loose robes girdled at the waist. Children. The marble baths and the contemplations in the temples. ‘Maybe with the Incas. In Peru.’ Biff’s eyes scanned over him, stripping him naked. He saw Blount burned a rich, red brown by the sun, his face smooth and hairless, with a bracelet of gold and precious stones on his forearm. When he closed his eyes the man was a good Inca. But when he looked at him again the picture fell away. It was the nervous mustache that did not belong to his face, the way he jerked his shoulder, the Adam’s apple on his thin neck, the bagginess of his trousers. And it was more than that. ‘Or maybe around 1775.’

‘That was a good time to be living,’ Biff agreed. Blount shuffled his feet self-consciously. His face was rough and unhappy. He was ready to leave. Biff was alert to detain him. ‘Tell me--why did you ever come to this town anyway? ‘ He knew immediately that the question had not been a politic one and he was disappointed with himself. Yet it was queer how the man could land up in a place like this.’ It’s the God’s truth I don’t know.’ They stood quietly for a moment, both leaning on the counter. The game of dice in the corner was finished. The first dinner order, a Long Island duck special, had been served to the fellow who managed the A. and P. store. The radio was turned halfway between a church sermon and a swing band. Blount leaned over suddenly and smelled Biff’s face. ‘Perfume? ‘ ‘Shaving lotion,’ Biff said composedly. He could not keep Blount longer. The fellow was ready to go. He would come in with Singer later. It was always like this. He wanted to draw Blount out completely so that he could understand certain questions concerning him. But Blount would never really talk--only to the mute. It was a most peculiar thing. ‘Thanks for the cigar,’ Blount said. ‘See you later.’

‘So long.’ Biff watched Blount walk to the door with his rolling, sailor-like gait. Then he took up the duties before him. He looked over the display in the window. The day’s menu had been pasted on the glass and a special dinner with all the trimmings was laid out to attract customers. It looked bad. Right nasty. The gravy from the duck had run into the cranberry sauce and a fly, was stuck in the dessert.

‘Hey, Louis!’ he called. ‘Take this stuff out of the window. And bring me that red pottery bowl and some fruit.’ He arranged the fruits with an eye for color and design. At last the decoration pleased him. He visited the kitchen and had a talk with the cook. He lifted the lids of the pots and sniffed the food inside, but without heart for the matter. Alice always had done this part. He disliked it. His nose sharpened when he saw the greasy sink with its scum of food bits at the bottom. He wrote down the menus and the orders for the next day. He was glad to leave the kitchen and take his stand by the cash register again. Lucile and Baby came for Sunday dinner. The little Md was not so good now. The bandage was still on her head and the doctor said it could not come off until next month. The binding of gauze in place of the yellow curls made her head look naked.

‘Say hello to Uncle Biff, Hon,’ Lucile prompted. Baby bridled fretfully.

‘Hello to Unca Biff Hon,’ she gassed. She put up a struggle when Lucile tried to take off her Sunday coat.

‘Now you just behave yourself,’ Lucile kept saying. ‘You got to take it off or you’ll catch pneumonia when we go out again.. Now you just behave yourself.’

Biff took the situation in charge. He soothed Baby with a ball of candy gum and eased the coat from her shoulders. Her dress had lost its set in the struggle with Lucile. He straightened it so that the yoke was in line across her chest He retied her sash and crushed the bow to just the right shape with his fingers. Then he patted Baby on her little behind. ‘We got some strawberry ice cream today,’ he said.

‘Bartholomew, you’d make a mighty good mother.

‘Thanks,’ Biff said. ’s a compliment’ We just been to Sunday School and church. Baby, say the verse from the Bible you learned for your Uncle Biff.’

The kid hung back and pouted. ‘Jesus wept,’ she said finally. The scorn that she put in the two words made it sound like a terrible thing.

‘Want to see Louis?’ Biff asked. ‘He’s back in the kitchen.’

‘I wanna see Willie. I wanna hear me play the harp.’

‘Now, Baby, you’re just trying yourself,’ Lucile said impatiently. ‘You know good and well that Willie’s not here. Willie was sent off to the penitentiary.’

‘But Louis,’ Biff said. ‘He can play the harp, too. Go tell him to get the ice cream ready and play you a tune.’

Baby went toward the kitchen, dragging one heel on the floor.

Lucile laid her hat on the counter. There were tears in her eyes. ‘You know I always said this: If a child is kept clean and well cared for and pretty then that child will usually be sweet and smart. But if a child’s dirty and ugly then you can’t expect anything much. What I’m trying to get at is that Baby is so shamed over losing her hair and that bandage on her head that it just seems like it makes her cut the buck all the time. She won’t practice her elocution--she won’t do a thing. She feels so bad I just can’t manage her.’

‘If you’d quit picking with her so much she’d be all right.’

At last he settled them in a booth by the window. Lucile had a special and there was a breast of chicken cut up fine, cream of wheat, and carrots for Baby. She played with her food and spilled milk on her little frock. He sat with them until the rush started. Then he had to be on his feet to keep things going smoothly.

People eating. The wide-open mouths with the food pushed in.

What was it? The line he had read not long ago. Life was only a matter of intake and alimentation and reproduction. The place was crowded. There was a swing band on the radio.

Then the two he was waiting for came in. Singer entered the door first, very straight and swank in his tailored Sunday suit.

Blount followed along just behind his elbow. There was something about the way they walked that struck him. They sat at their table, and Blount talked and ate with gusto while Singer watched politely. When the meal was finished they stopped by the cash register for a few minutes. Then as they went out he noticed again there was something about their walking together that made him pause and question himself.

What could it be? The suddenness with which the memory opened up deep down in his mind was a shock. The big deaf mute moron whom Singer used to walk with sometimes on the way to work. The sloppy Greek who made candy for Charles Parker. The Greek always walked ahead and Singer followed. He had never noticed them much because they never came into the place. But why had he not remembered this? Of all times he had wondered about the mute to neglect such an angle. See everything in the landscape except the three waltzing elephants. But did it matter after all? Biff narrowed his eyes. How Singer had been before was not important. The thing that mattered was the way Blount and Mick made of him a sort of home-made God. Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have. Yes. But how could such a strange thing come about? And why? A one-armed man came hi and Biff treated him to a whiskey on the house. But he did not feel like talking to anyone.