Meyer Levin - Compulsion

“If that is so,” Ruth said, “then no one is responsible for anything. Even criminals and murderers are not to blame, if there is no free will. It’s all cause and effect.”

“Of course!” said Artie.

“If you talk like that,” I said, “then you might just as well believe in God.”

“What?” Artie cried, falling into my trap.

“A determinist does not believe in God,” Judd corrected me. “He believes in absolute cause and effect, and nothing – no God – can intervene and change anything.”

“That’s right.” Ruth recognized the distinction and smiled to him. “People who believe in God believe God can change things, can punish them for doing wrong. So they still believe in a certain amount of free will.”

“There can be free will,” Judd said, “but it has nothing to do with right or wrong. That’s just old-fashioned moralizing.”

Ruth knit her brows. “What do you mean?”

Judd suddenly began to talk like a whirlwind, with passion, explaining his ideas to Ruth. If you accepted a set of regulations about right and wrong, you might as well believe in cause and effect, for everything was exactly laid out for you, what to do and what not to do – you had no choice. But if you believed in free will, then you had to feel free to choose. You had to say there were no rules. Of course, you might for your own convenience decide to accept some of the minor rules, the minor conventions like wearing clothes. But to prove you were free, you had to know you could break the rules, too.

He went on and on. Sometimes his ideas seemed jumbled, even contradictory, but every time I tried to cut in and argue, Judd would screech me down, throwing in names, labels, Nietzsche, and the Will to Power, and the Greek Stoics, and Kant, in a crazy kind of mixture. About all I could make of it was that the multitudes weren’t strong enough to make use of their free will. Only the few. Thus Spake Zarathustra .

Myra was saying philosophy was her worst subject, she wanted to dance, and Ruth was summarizing like an intelligent student. “Well, according to Artie’s idea, there isn’t any right and wrong because of fate; everything is determined forever.”

“Sure,” Artie said, “you are my fate!”

Ruth laughed, and went on to summarize Judd’s point of view. “But you say there isn’t any right and wrong, but for the opposite reason, because people do have free will and should use it to do exactly as they please.”

“That’s anarchy,” I said.

Anarchy was merely a simple way of putting it, Judd declared, as though to push me out of the argument. Ruth had her eyes intently fixed on Judd’s. The two of them seemed to have forgotten I was there. She asked whether he was really interested in law, in going to Harvard. He was interested in everything, Judd said, in language, in science – his was a universal mind, like da Vinci’s, and it would be a waste to study law.

But wasn’t he interested in law too? Ruth asked. Surely it would be fascinating; there were great lawyers like Jonathan Wilk who gave their lives to justice.

He laughed his clever laugh. After all, being a lawyer meant being able to argue on either side of a case, so a lawyer really couldn’t have any convictions about justice.

That part of it at least fitted with his ideas about right and wrong, Ruth said, so he ought to be interested in law after all.

It was a neat response and I saw his face quicken, for it showed she had followed him. I was beginning really to feel annoyed, and yet was too proud to break up their tête-à-tête . Then Artie and Myra were back at the table, and we all drank and drank.

Some time late that evening, the idea about Ruth could have come to Judd. Ruth was dancing with Artie. I saw Ruth cutting loose; the quietest girl can turn into a flashy dancer when she’s with one. Judd’s eyes were upon them, unwavering.

I imagine there coming to him in that moment a sensation like a double beat of the heart, a knowledge, an intention, a recognition: she is the one to whom he will do it.

Every man and every woman has a testing image, like the photographer’s painted setting with an opening for the sitter’s head. How will she look every morning, across from me at the breakfast table ? Orthe girl is pictured in some graceful attitude of undressing. Or in the midst of a kiss, her lips parted. Or mothering a baby.

With Judd, the test image was the fantasy scene of rape that so haunted him. Was this the one to do it to? How would she look afterward, lying overcome, her clothes in shreds? Would he feel touched? Would love spread through him? Would he turn to her tenderly to devote a lifetime to removing the horror of his act?

The image of violence was perhaps a final assertion of his darker self, wrestling him down to keep him from a love that might alter him. And yet the violent fantasy had in it something of that very love. For below the image was a throbbing sense that therein lay release – afterwards he would no longer need Artie. This would be an action entirely on his own, just as Artie had done things on his own.

It was a struggle of wish and counterwish – in the same action to make himself equal to Artie and therefore more than ever a partner, and yet to make himself free of Artie through a woman.

Hardly identified, these images swept through him as he raised his heavy lids and looked at Ruth dancing with Artie, and she sent him a smile.

When we reached Ruth’s house, I told the others I’d walk home from there, and Artie made the expected remarks.

It wasn’t extremely late, about two. We could have gone upstairs. But this hallway was fairly private; only one other family lived in the building, above the Goldenbergs.

We embraced, and she said, “You liked Myra, didn’t you?” I laughed and teased her about Judd. We kissed a real love kiss, tenderly, without opening our lips, and then Ruth had to talk about him. I could sense her frowning a little in the dim hall. That Judd, she said, he was really brilliant. She had never met anyone so brilliant – squeezing my hand – but there was also something disturbing about him, something sad. Then she added, a bit archly, that he had asked her to lunch tomorrow. But of course I needn’t worry about competition, as he was going to Europe in two weeks.

I told her she was free to marry any millionaire she could get, and we kissed the last kiss, which was always frankly passionate. Then she would say, “Oh, Sid, I wish we really were lovers,” and then we would break because it was too much to endure, and then she would hurry upstairs, though I might pull her back by her fingertips for one more such embrace. Then I would walk home, resisting the impulse to grab a cab and indulge in the traditional after-date release of a whorehouse.

THE BOYS DROPPED Myra at the hotel, and then they picked up a paper. Chief Nolan still maintained that the suicide solved the crime.

“You didn’t give that bum a push?” Judd said to Artie.

“Naw, not this time.” Artie grinned. “We should have thought of it, though.”

It would have been the perfect idea. Again, Judd had that fleeting, melancholy sense that they were not as perfect as they had thought themselves.

Judd felt a sudden sag of energy; he didn’t want anything, not even to stay with Artie. He wanted only some absolute oblivion, perhaps not exactly death, but something cleaner, deeper than sleep, something like a permanent hibernation, crawling away somewhere, some place close and warm, to have no thoughts.

And I see him, remaining quite late in bed, drowsing, and rubbing against the bedclothes, and indulging in fantasies. There comes the image of Ruth. Has he made his date with her in order to do it? But there is a strong counter-feeling about this girl. He feels her almost as not a girl. A person. He has a certain eager curiosity about how it will be with her at lunch.