Stanley Elkin - Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers

He shifted under her direct stare. She had recovered her stentorian coloratura and for this he was grateful. She was running true to form again and her elegy or whatever it had been was only a kind of interlude, as though the woman caught her breath not by ceasing to talk but by lowering her voice. However, her question still hung in the air. He didn’t want to answer it but that didn’t seem to make any difference to these people. At least, then, he could give his testimony on the side he believed in.

“All right, Mrs. Frankel,” he said. “What is it? All morning you’ve been hinting at some dark secret. Is it that the lifeguard wasn’t old enough?” His voice sounded louder than he had intended. He heard it as though he were listening to a recording he could not remember having made. “Is that what’s bothering you? Is that the little secret you’re determined to let everyone in on? Well, relax, it’s no secret. Everybody knows about it. It’s too bad, but even if the kid had been eighteen instead of sixteen the little girl would still have drowned.”

“The lifeguard was only sixteen?” the woman asked. It was impossible that she didn’t know. She must have guessed, must have suspected it. That had to be the reason for her outrage.

“The lifeguard was only sixteen?” she repeated. It was too much; he couldn’t be the one she learned it from. “Only sixteen ?” she insisted.

“I don’t know how old he is,” he said, reneging. “That’s not the point. It was an accident. What difference does it make how old he is?” Only now was he conscious that the boy had not left them. He was standing about twenty feet away, listening. Preminger remembered seeing Bieberman stand in the same attitude just that morning, his head bowed low under the weight of his embarrassment, buffered from his enemies by the social director. He was waiting for Preminger to go on with the defense.

Blithely, however, he changed the subject. For no apparent reason he began to tell Mrs. Frankel of the walk he had just taken, of his vague plans for the future. She listened politely and even nodded in agreement once or twice to things he said. He remained with her in this way for about ten minutes, but when he started to leave he caught for a moment Mrs. Frankel’s angry stare. “It’s better we should all get out,” she said.

He lay beside Norma beyond the closed-in tennis court. He watched the moon’s chalk-silver disintegrate and drift icily to the lawn. They had not spoken for a quarter of an hour. He did not know whether she was asleep. The ground was damp. He could feel, beneath the blanket, the evening’s distillation like a kind of skin. He raised himself on one elbow and looked at Norma’s face. Her eyes were closed and he lay back down again and watched the sky.

The lawn was deserted; the exodus of late that afternoon had ended; the last cars from the city had gone back. He thought of Bieberman, alone beside the pool, and could still see the old man’s awful face as he waved at the departing guests, pretending it was only the natural end of their vacation that took them back.

He pulled a blade of grass from beside the blanket.

“The slob,” he said.

Norma stirred, made a small sound.

Preminger only half heard her. “He stood in the driveway and waved at them. He shook their hands and said he’d save their rooms. He even told the bellboy where to put everything.” He tore the grass in half and threw one piece away. “The slob. I was ashamed for him.”

He rolled the grass between his fingers. Feeling its sticky juice, he threw it away in disgust. “Even the social director. Did you hear him? ‘I’m sorry, Bieberman, but I’ve got to have people. I’ve got to have people, right?’ And Bieberman told him, ‘You’re a fine actor. You give a professional performance.’ It made me sick. And Mrs. Frankel didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. He gave himself away.”

“The poor thing,” Norma said. Her voice was low and cool, not sleepy at all. He turned to her and smiled”

“ Bieberman? ”

“I meant the little girl,” she said. Her voice was flat. He studied her pale face and the skin, which looked cooler and softer than he remembered ever having seen it. She seemed smaller somehow, and, in a way he did not mind, older. It’s the moon, he thought.

He touched her cheek with his fingers. “You would have gone with them, wouldn’t you?” he asked softly. “You would have gone with them if I hadn’t asked you to stay.” She didn’t answer. She turned her head and his hand dropped to the blanket. “You’ve done that twice today,” he said.

“Have I?”

He looked at her body. She lay straight back, her arms at her sides. He rolled toward her quickly and his arm fell across her breast. She tried to move away from him, but he grabbed her arms and pinned them to her sides and kissed her on the mouth. In a few minutes, he thought, my vacation begins. A nice abandoned Jewish girl in a nice abandoned Jewish hotel. She shook her head ferociously. His face fell on top of hers and he forced it with his weight toward the blanket. He felt her body stiffen, her arms go rigid. Then her arms shook in a rage against him and he was helpless to hold them at her sides. She was very strong, and with a sudden convulsive movement she threw him off. She sprang up quickly and stood looking down at him. She seemed unsure of herself.

“Get away from me,” he said.

“Richard…”

“Get away from me.”

“Richard, I didn’t want to go back.”

“Get away.”

“All right,” she said quietly. She turned and started away.

“There she goes,” he called after her. “Don’t touch her, she’s in mourning.” His anger rose in him. “Hey, come back, I’ve got an idea. We’ll have a lynching. We’ll string the kid up to the diving board and hang Bieberman from a beach umbrella.”

She was moving from him quickly, back to the hotel. He got up and ran after her. He put out his hand to stop her but she eluded him and he saw himself stumble forward, his empty hand reaching toward her. He recovered his balance and walked along a little behind her, talking to her. He felt like a peddler haggling, but he couldn’t help himself. “The drowning loused things up, didn’t it? It killed a stranger, but nobody around here knows from strangers.” She broke into a run. From the way she ran he could tell she was crying. He ran after her, hearing her sobbing. “Let’s blame someone. The lifeguard. Bieberman. Me . You want to know what to blame? Blame cramps and lousy Australian crawl.” As he approached the hotel Preminger halted. Norma walked into the hotel and Preminger slumped on the steps. He clapped his palms together nervously in raged applause. That kid, that lousy kid, he thought. He thought of his tantrum as of a disease which recurs despite its cure.

When the world had quieted again he knew that he was not alone. He realized that he had been aware of someone on the porch when he turned from Norma and let her go inside. He looked around and saw in the shadows about twenty feet away the silhouette of a man propped against the side of the porch. In the dark he could not make out his face.

“Bieberman?”

The man came toward him from the dark recesses of the porch. He walked slowly, perhaps uncertainly, and when he passed in front of the hotel entrance he was caught in the light slanting down from the interior like a gangplank secured to the building.

“Ah, Preminger.” The voice was deep and mocking.

“Mr. Bieberman,” he said softly.

The man stayed within the light. Preminger rose and joined him there nervously. “It’s about time for bed,” he said. “I was just going up.”

“Sure,” Bieberman said. “So this will be your last night with us, hah, Preminger?”