Evan Hunter: The Paper Dragon

"May I amend that?" Arthur asked.

"Please do," McIntyre said.

"May I simply say that the names, when reversed, are very similar?"

"Shall I strike the anagram reference?" the clerk asked.

"Strike it," McIntyre replied.

"Please go on," Brackman said.

"Where was I?" Arthur asked.

"You were explaining…"

"Oh, yes, the combining of two characters to form a single character. The final evidence of this is what happened in the film based on the novel. For some unex-plainable reason, the character named Peter Colman in the book has once more become two separate characters in the film. One of them is still Colman the troublemaker, but he is no longer homosexual. The other is a corporal who does not appear in the book, and who is very definitely homosexual. In other words, the screenwriter reversed Driscoll's copying process, and went back to the original play to recreate a character who was in the play but not in the book."

"Are these characters important to the play?"

"They are important to the play, the book, and the movie. Without them, the plot would stand still. In fact, it is Janus in my play and Colman in the book who suggest that the lieutenant be murdered."

"How do they plan to murder him?"

"In my play, a Sergeant D'Agostino volunteers to shoot the lieutenant from ambush. In the book, the men plan to lead the lieutenant into a Chinese stronghold where he will be killed. The motive is identical in both works, only the means differ slightly."

"Does the lieutenant actually get killed?" Brackman asked.

"Again, there is only a very slight difference in story line," Arthur said. "In my play, the psychopathic colonel steals a bayonet and escapes his guard on the night of the planned murder. He accidentally stumbles on Sergeant D'Agostino where he is waiting to ambush Lieutenant Mason. There is a struggle during which D'Agostino is stabbed and killed by the ranting colonel. And there is speculation later as to whether D'Agostino actually sacrificed himself in order to avoid having to murder the lieutenant."

"And how has this been changed in the book?"

"Your Honor," Willow said, "I have let one such allegation pass, but I must object to…"

"Sustained. Please rephrase the question, Mr. Brackman."

"Can you tell us the plot sequence in the book?" Brackman said.

"In the book, Lieutenant Cooper realizes at the last moment that the men are leading him into a death trap. But he also recognizes that his scout, Sergeant Morley, is in danger of losing his life as well. He takes the point from Morley, and sacrifices himself to the Chinese guns."

"How does your play end, Mr. Constantine?"

"It ends when the men in the squad, shaken by the turn of events, come to realize the idiocy of war, and gain a new respect for their lieutenant. The troublemaker, Corporal Janus, is exposed and court-martialed."

"And how does the book end?"

"The book ends when the men in the squad, touched by the lieutenant's sacrifice, come to realize the idiocy of war, and gain a new respect for him. The troublemaker, Private Colman, is exposed and court-martialed."

The courtroom was silent. Brackman looked up at the judge, and then turned away from him, nodding his head as though in silent agreement with an evident truth.

"Does that conclude your testimony concerning similarities of plot?" he asked Arthur.

"Yes, sir, it does."

"Would you tell us now—"

"Forgive me for interrupting, Mr. Brackman," McIntyre said, "but as I indicated earlier in chambers, I have an appointment this afternoon which necessitates my leaving at two-thirty. I was hoping we could take a very short recess now — aren't you tired, Mr. Constantine?"

"Thank you, your Honor, I'm fine," Arthur said.

"Well, I thought we might take a ten-minute recess now, and then perhaps continue without a lunch recess, adjourning at two, or a little after if we have to. Would anyone have any objection to that?"

"We would have no objection," Willow said. "But Mr. Constantine and his attorney may be exceedingly hungry."

"We would have no objection to continuing through the lunch recess," Brackman said dryly. "And we will try to conclude the direct by two o'clock, your Honor."

"I have no objection," Genitori said.

He had received what he supposed were stock words of encouragement from Brackman — You're doing fine, Arthur, you're coming across very well, I think the judge is considerably impressed — and then had left him in the courtroom with his partner. Now, standing near a door marked stairway at one end of the gray corridor, he lighted a second cigarette and glanced briefly at the closed courtroom doors. He honestly did not know how he was coming across, he had never been very sure of himself as a speaker. He felt that Willow was objecting too much and too energetically, and he suspected that Brackman was losing more points than he was winning, but he was completely ignorant of his own performance, grateful only that his earlier nervousness had miraculously dissipated.

Willow and his assistant came out of the courtroom and walked toward Arthur, heading for the men's room, he supposed. Willow was a tall ungainly man, and he moved with the uncertain awkwardness of a large water bird, neck craned forward, head bobbing, hair uncombed and hanging on his forehead, black-rimmed spectacles reflecting the pale light of the ceiling fixtures. Arthur supposed he was in his late thirties, but there was about him a boyish vitality that made him seem even younger. Neither he nor his assistant, a squat, very dark Negro wearing a gray tweed suit, even glanced at Arthur in passing. They were in animated discussion as they walked by, but all Arthur could hear was a reference to "the evidentiary question." He watched as they pushed open the door to the men's room, and then he looked at his watch.

It was twenty minutes past twelve.

He felt alone, utterly and completely alone, he had never felt so isolated in his entire life. He thought it odd that he should have come through thirty-nine years of family togetherness, surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins and compares to find himself here and now, at what was possibly the most important juncture of his life, entirely alone. How do you come through it all, he wondered, and suddenly find yourself standing on the edge of the universe waiting for the waves to crash in, maybe to get washed out to sea, without Aunt Louise telling you every other week that you were "her baby," meaning she had served as midwife when you were delivered to your mother in a coldwater flat on East 118th Street? I could use Aunt Louise now, he thought, silly Aunt Louise who accompanied Italian immigrants when they went for their first papers, who was an active member of the Republican Club, who wrote songs in her spare time and claimed that they were all later stolen by the big band leaders — a family trait? — and who sent Queen Elizabeth a hand-tatted bonnet for young Prince Charles when he was born. "Look, Sonny," she had said, "I got a thank-you note from the Queen's secretary, a personal thank-you note," and Arthur had thought to himself it was probably a mimeographed note sent to all the Aunt Louises of the world who tatted bonnets for infant princes. And yet he could use Aunt Louise now, he could use her quiet strength and penetrating eye, God but that woman was a dynamo of energy, what the hell was it she concocted — Aunt Louise's Ointment, did she call it? And wasn't it really and truly sold in drugstores all over Harlem, the indefatigable Louise running around selling her product the way she plugged her terrible songs, she'd have made a great rumrunner, or in recent times an excellent dope pusher.

They called him Sonny when he lived in Harlem. I grew up in Harlem, he always told people, and they looked at him as if wondering whether or not he had traces of Negro blood flowing in his veins, whereupon he always felt compelled to explain that there were three Harlems. You see, there is Negro Harlem and there is Italian Harlem and there is Puerto Rican Harlem. They are all very different and they are all identical, they are all bug-ridden and rat-infested, those are the three Harlems. But that of course was a mature judgment, a qualified appraisal by a man who was now thirty-nine years old, and not the way he had seen it as a boy. There were no rats in Harlem for Sonny Constantine — he still did not know why they had called him Sonny, he supposed there was a Sonny in every Italian-American family that ever existed. Or perhaps Al Jolson was hot at the time of his boyhood, perhaps any kid became a Sonny Boy and then a Sonny all because of Al Jolson singing through his goddamn nose like a Harvard man, perhaps that was it. But there were no rats in Harlem — well, once a mouse was in the toilet bowl, but only a mouse. It scared hell out of his mother, she came running, out of the bathroom with her dress raised and her bloomers down, her behind showing, he wanted to look, but didn't dare, yelling to his father that there was a mouse in the bowl. So his father just flushed the toilet, naturally, goodbye mouse, out to sea where all good mice eventually go. His sister was terrified. He had called her a baby and a dope and a silly jerk, and then had listened to her crying in her room, really in his parents' bedroom because that was where she slept on a little cot against the wall near the window that looked down on 118th Street four stories below.