The Troubled Air (60 page)

“You should have been at the meeting Friday night,” Archer said. “I made an interesting little lecture on just that subject. I’m going to be on my own side.”

Vic made an impatient gesture. “I heard about your speech. It wasn’t a lecture. It was a suicide note. You’re so God-damn anxious to be pure that you’re making it absolutely certain that you’ll be cut down without the slightest effort. Because nobody on either side’ll raise a finger to help you. It’s going to take a new invention to service people like you, Clement. A cellophane wall. So that when you go to your martyrdom, the firing parties of both sides can hit you at the same time. You’ve outdated the opaque, non-transparent wall for execution purposes, Clem, and you’ll be remembered for your contribution.” He grinned coldly in the shadowy marble hall. “And you’ve done it the old-fashioned way,” he went on. “With all the old ingredients. Honor. Loyalty. Literal truth. You’d’ve been a big success in the fifteenth century, but this year, kid, you’re just a joke. You’re hundreds of years behind the times and the worst of it is that you’re proud of it. And the sad part of it is that there’re so many like you. You want all the benefits of the twentieth century, you want to ride in cars and fly in the air and have an easy, modern, up-to-date, latest-model conscience, but you can’t grind a cylinder or put in a rivet or do any of the dirty work that has to be done to keep people from starving or wars from breaking out. You’re great on results but when it comes to the techniques you suddenly discover your mother won’t let you get your pretty clothes dirty playing with the grease and the heavy machinery.”

“You’re so proud of yourself,” Archer said. “You’re so sure that you’re right.”

“Well,” Vic said, leaning easily against the wall, his hat tilted down over his eyes, “I am. Why deny it?”

“What if the people you say you’re working for, the people you say you want to keep from starving, to keep from getting killed in wars, what if they don’t want you? What if they reject you, the way you
are
being rejected? What do you do then?”

Vic shrugged carelessly. “Screw them,” he said. “One hundred million slobs. What do they know? They’re stunned from reading their idiotic newspapers and going to their movies and listening to their politicians and preachers. Leave them alone and they wouldn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. You ignore what they tell you and save them despite themselves. Then ten years later they’re creaming your name in ecstasy and they’re ready to tear anyone part who dares to hint you can’t piss to windward.”

Archer shook his head. “Vic … Vic,” he said softly. “Do you remember back in school, when you quit the football team …”

Vic grinned. “That idiot Samson.”

“Remember I told you you were suffering from the sin of pride and maybe that was the worst sin of all …”

“You were a little stuffy in those days, Professor,” Vic said, smiling. “The cloistered atmosphere. Big improvement noticeable in recent years.”

“God help us,” Archer said, “if you ever have your way.”

“Don’t worry, pal,” Vic said. “We’ll all be dead first.”

“Vic,” Archer asked, “why did you come up here tonight?”

Vic sighed. He suddenly looked very tired. “I don’t know why,” Le said. “Maybe because we’ve known each other a long time. I don’t know. Maybe I came to tell you a joke.” He grinned weakly. “You know what started me on my fall from grace? You. The first time I ever read Karl Marx it was in the copy of
Das Kapital
you loaned me from your own library in 1935.” He chuckled emptily. “Don’t worry,” he said, “wild Congressmen couldn’t drag it out of me. Come up to my house some time,” he said carelessly. “I’ll lend
you
a book.” He peered closely at Archer. “You’ve got a very funny look on your face, dear boy,” he said.

“Now listen to me,” Archer said. “I don’t ever want to see you again. But you represent fifteen years of my life. You, Kitty, Nancy … Jane. A third of my life. I can’t let myself feel that I was wrong all that time. I’ve got to make myself remember what I believed about you for many years—that you were an extraordinary man—that you were valuable human material. And, for my own sake, no matter what you’ve done, I can’t believe now that all that fundamental stuff is gone. Tonight,” Archer said, talking slowly and painstakingly, conscious of the set, crooked, meaningless grin on Vic’s heavily shadowed face, “tonight I had to examine myself very carefully. I found out that I was paying for a lot of things. I was paying for being naive and ignorant and lazy. I was paying for all he years I was too timid to examine myself closely. Vic, examine yourself tonight, too, examine what you’ve been doing, what you’re doing to do from now on. Are you going to move away from the magnificent boy you were or are you going to try to move back to him? Because what you are now is no good. You’re corrupt and you corrupt everything you touch. And that’s the worst of it. You use people’s best impulses, their charity, their desire to see justice done, to betray them, just the way the Nazis used people’s worst impulses, their cruelty and greed, to betray
them.
You’ve put a look of suspicion on the face of every decent man in the country. Stand up to yourself. Is that what you want? Is it too late to change?”

“Repent, ye sinners,” Vic said, “because everybody’s doing it this year at all the best parties. You make me feel sorry for you. Because you’re trying so hard to make yourself believe I’m a villain, and you can’t manage it. Because, deep down, you have to ask yourself—what’s he doing it for? What’s in it for Vic Herres? Am I getting rich out of it? No. I’m losing everything, and you know it, and I don’t give a damn. Do I expect medals, honors, prizes from it?” Vic laughed sardonically. “I’ll be lucky if I stay out of jail six more months. What do I want? Power?” Vic grinned. “How much power do you think the Communists’re going to have in this country in the next ten, twenty years? Is it revenge I’m after? For what? Ever since I was a kid America’s flopped on the bed for me and spread its legs and said, ‘Do it again, baby, do it just the same way to me again.’ Do you think I want revenge for that?” He chuckled harshly. “So you’re down to the bedrock horror about me. The one thing you can’t bear to believe. That I’m doing all this not for myself, because I got mine, but for the hundred million poor, tortured, screaming, beat-up, shot-up, scared, bomb-happy slobs out there …” He made a stiff, awkward flinging gesture toward the city, toward the dark, stretching country outside the hospital. “I despise them, but I feel responsible for them and I want them to live a little happier and die a little later. And that’s my villainy, and maybe they’ll hang me for it in the end, but you’ll never get it out of your craw. And finally, it’ll poison you, because you’ll never be able to digest it.”

Archer looked at him hazily, as though Vic was far away, obscured in mist. Virtue, he thought thickly, everyone is so certain of his virtue. Vic, Hutt, Sandler, Motherwell. The torturers of the Inquisition were also sure of their virtue, applying the fire, smelling the searing flesh, tearing the breasts and testicles,
their
vision of the ultimate good always there beyond the screams and the devoured bone, breaking how many bodies for the soul’s salvation, enlisting recruits for heaven at the stake, confident, serene, impervious, unmoved by agony, confident in their bloodstained dungeons that they were in the service of the angels. Only the angels change. The inquisitors are always present. Always grinning, their certain, dedicated, fanged grin, always pitiless, always inhuman, always armed, always to be fought. Sometimes to be beaten, sometimes to be lost to, but always to be fought. …

“All right,” Archer said. “We’re not through with each other. Because I’m going to fight you. From now on, everything you do, every word you say, I’m going to challenge. Me. Personally. Privately, publicly. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going go do it. Maybe it took me a long time to wake up, but I’m awake now, and watch out for me. I’m going to be dangerous to you and every one like you, at home and abroad. You educated me and the process hurt, but I thank you for it. You’ve made me real useful and I’m going to use myself to destroy you. Every disguise you put on, I’m going to rip off, because you finally took me backstage and showed me how you did it. Every time you open your mouth I’m joining to pin the lie on your lips. And in the end, if it comes to it, I swear to God I’ll pick up a gun and kill you. Remember. Now get out of here.” He walked around Vic and rang for the elevator. Down below, in the shaft, there was an iron clanking.

Vic turned and they faced each other. There was no grin now and he seemed weary and regretful, no longer like a young man, not quite so impervious. “I never thought you’d say anything like that,” Vic aid.

“I said it.” Archer stared at Vic, far away in the distant mist.

“Look me up,” Vic said. “Twenty years from now.”

Archer said nothing.

They were silent for a moment, listening to the low whine of the mounting elevator. They stood there, not quite looking at each other, with nothing to say to each other.

“Well,” Vic said, and Archer could see that he was trying to smile, “good-bye, dear boy.”

“Good-bye, Vic,” Archer said. They didn’t shake hands and Archer watched Vic walk slowly across the lobby toward the door. He had his hands in his pockets and his head was bent and his shoulders seemed tired. Then, half-way across the lobby he suddenly straightened up, throwing his shoulders back, and crossed the rest the distance quickly, with the easy, jaunty, pleasantly arrogant air that Archer remembered so well. Then he threw open the door a went out into the darkness.

Behind Archer, the door of the elevator slid open and he went and said, “Fourth floor, please.”

The soft-faced nurse was at the desk, with the green lights winking on and off above her head. “Mr. Archer,” she said, as he passed her, and he stopped. She stood up and came out from behind the desk. “We were trying to find you,” she said softly, and Archer knew what she was going to say. “The little boy died,” she said. “At one thirty-two.”

“At one thirty-two?” Archer repeated insanely.

“I’m terribly sorry,” the girl whispered.

Archer nodded and walked down the dark corridor toward Kitty’s room.

There was no light on in the room, but there was a glow from the street lamps that filtered through the window. The window was open a little and Archer could hear the river-wind going softly by the building.

“Clement?” It was a low whisper out of the deeper darkness the bed.

“Yes, Kitty.” Archer worked carefully at keeping his voice ordinary and cheerful. He took off his hat and went over to the bed and sat down on it without taking his coat off. He could see the pale shape of Kitty’s face on the pillow and ghostly tiny reflections of light in her wide-open eyes. He didn’t put out his hand to touch her because his hands were still cold. “How are you, darling?” he asked.

“I heard,” Kitty said, but her voice was even. “I called the nurse and they told me.”

“Yes, Kitty.”

“I’m not going to cry. I’m all done crying,” Kitty said.

“You ought to try to sleep.”

“Later. Did you have a drink?”

“No. I. … I just took a little walk.”

“It’s cold out. isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t tell from the way your coat feels. It’s windy out, too, isn’t it?”

“Not too bad.” Archer said.

“The wind sounds funny in this room,” Kitty said. “It sounds like nurses walking outside the window.” She lay silent for a moment. “Clement,” she said, her voice sounding childish and tired in the darkness, “Clement, are we all right?”

“Yes, Kitty,” Archer said gravely.

“You’re not just saying it—because this is a bad night.”

“I’m not just saying it.”

“If you’re disappointed in me, if you feel you can’t go on with me after what I’ve done, you can tell me,” Kitty whispered. “You don’t lave to pamper me any more.”

Archer put his arms around her and pulled her toward him, holding her tight, kissing her throat, in a tangle of blankets and hospital nightgown.

“I’m so glad,” Kitty whispered. “I’m so glad.”

Holding her, feeling dry, helpless tears somewhere deep in his throat, feeling the frail, drained, exhausted, loved body through the clumsy material of his coat, Archer was filled with a bursting sense of relief, of reunion, of unreasonable hope. This has survived, he thought confusedly, this good, precious, battered, necessary thing has survived, so I shall survive.

“I’m going to be better from now on,” Kitty said softly into his hair, and she put up her hand to stroke the back of his head. “Now I know what I have to guard against in myself. Before this I was so proud, I thought I was so strong, I thought that I would always do the right thing automatically. Now I know—nothing’s automatic. There are horrible places in me, horrible streaks, and I have to fight them, fight them, every minute. Darling, we’re going to try again,” he whispered, “aren’t we? We’re going to try everything again?”

He kissed her. “Yes, Kitty,” he said. “Everything again.” He let her down gently to the pillow. Her eyes were shining in the darkness.

“Clement,” she said drowsily, “will you watch me fall asleep?”

“Yes, Kitty.”

“Good night,” she said, almost inaudibly.

“Good night, dearest.”

Archer moved silently over to the window. In a moment, he heard Kitty’s even breathing. He looked out the window. The city fell away from him in the darkness, waiting for the first and final siren. Softly, Archer closed the window and pulled down the shade. Then he sat down and watched his wife, deep in her healing sleep in the quiet room.

Irwin Shaw (1913–1984) was an award-winning American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer. His novel
The Young Lions
(1948) is considered a classic of World War II fiction. From the early pages of the
New Yorker
to the bestseller lists, Shaw earned a reputation as a leading literary voice of his generation.

Shaw was born Irwin Shamforoff in the Bronx, New York, on February 27, 1913. His parents, Will and Rose, were Russian Jewish immigrants and his father struggled as a haberdasher. The family moved to Brooklyn and barely survived the Depression. After graduating from high school at the age of sixteen, Shaw worked his way through Brooklyn College, where he started as quarterback on the school’s scrappy football team.