Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“That was a mistake,” Lazaar says sadly. “I meant to do you a favor.”

“Some favor.”

“Why? You’ve always wanted me to share a secret with you. This is my only secret.”

“That’s crazy. Nobody’s killing himself for me.”

“Of course not.”

“I’m not to blame.”

“No. Of course not,” Lazaar says.

“Then don’t give me that stuff.”

“I thought you’d be able to use it, to share it.”

“What the hell do I want with your death? I can’t use it. It’s off the record — not for publication.”

“I’m sorry,” he says gently.

There is a knife in his hand. It is ridiculously small, the one he uses to cut his lemons, perhaps. It glints dully in the warm kitchen. Like the dishes and the photographs, it seems familiar. Everything in my friend’s life is an old story to me.

“Maybe you’d better leave me alone now, Boswell. If something should happen, if someone were to see you, you could be accused of my murder.”

I lean across the table almost lazily and strike the knife from his hands. It is as if it has never occurred to him that I would be capable of hitting him. The knife skids on the metal surface of the table. It lands against the sugar bell, clattering faintly, harmlessly. He looks at me, startled, confused; shaking his head as if to clear some false vision from it, he reaches for the knife. I slap his wrist sharply and he pulls it back as if it has been burned. His eyes go dark and suddenly he seems stupid, incapable of any perception. Again he reaches for the knife. I punch him in the stomach and he doubles over foolishly in a classic, almost comic posture. I expect him to say “ooph.” I take up the knife and snap it in two. I drop the pieces on the floor. I have pulled up my chair beside him. He looks at me as if to protest; he has never been hit before. He slides off the chair onto the floor and on his knees grovels for the broken knife. I kick it from him, grazing his chin with my shoe. He falls and turns over on his back slowly. Now he has been hit and kicked for the first time in his life. He seems puzzled by it; violence is a strange food he is judiciously turning over in his mouth for the texture, the taste.

I pick up Lazaar and carry him to the telephone, and call the police.

Lazaar is in Bellevue. They are observing him.

Lazaar has told the doctors that he does not mean to kill himself, that he never meant to kill himself. They will give him psychiatric tests.

Lazaar has convinced the doctors he is sane. His tests show no self-destructive tendencies.

The doctors tell me they will have to let him go tomorrow, that they can’t hold him on my charges. What do I do?

As soon as they release him today Lazaar will kill himself. They won’t let me near him. I have been told that if I try to meet him at the hospital I will be arrested. He has to be watched — someone must be there to overpower him. There is no way of saving another man’s life if he really means to kill himself. Life can be spilled in a minute. With a lousy kitchen knife. With a jump from a building. Or in front of a car. Or a subway. Or by running, head down, across a room and into a wall.

Is Lazaar dead? The genius? The maker of systems? Is Lazaar dead? Has he killed himself? And me not there to see it?

Lazaar does not answer his telephone.

When the phone rang this morning I leaped toward it from my bed. (I am like that. Even in normal circumstances. A ringing telephone, a knock on the door, makes me… not nervous — what bad news can there be? a bachelor, an orphan, disaffiliated — so much as compulsively responsive, insanely anxious to please. Here is something I can do, some way I can be of service. It doesn’t even occur to me that the call will change my life. What can change anybody’s life? We’re not sweepstakes winners, we’re men. I cannot bring myself to disappoint strangers. I have this meaningless humility in small things.) I was hoping, of course, that the call was from Lazaar. I wanted to hear him say, “Boswell, I am alive and I am reconciled to life.”

I dropped the phone onto the floor. At once I knew it could not be Lazaar. On the rug, by my bare foot, there was the sound of a girl singing love songs in the morning.

“Yes.”

Music.

“Please, who is this?”

“Jimmy, did you see the Times yet?”

“Nate?”

“Who, then?”

“Nate, what is it?”

“Did you see the Times?”

“No.”

“Well, there’s a little item about your pal. The genius. Some genius.”

“Lazaar?”

“Jimmy, the company you keep!”

“Lazaar?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“Nate, what is it?”

“Wait a minute. I’ll read you.” He left the phone and I could hear the girl again on Nate’s combination hi-fi, stereo, TV, tape recorder, AM-FM, Short Wave, Long Wave, Living Theater, Puppet Show.

“Jimmy? Wait a minute. Simmons, turn that thing down. I’m reading from the Times to my friend. Jimmy?”

“Come on, Nate.”

“All right, don’t rush me. If you took a classy paper like the Times you wouldn’t have to depend so much on your friends. I’m beginning to read, Jimmy. ‘Dr. Herman Lazaar, Lyman Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College, was released Tuesday from Bellevue Hospital. In the hospital for extensive psychiatric tests and observation, he had been taken to Bellevue by an unidentified companion who alleged that the Brooklyn College professor had repeatedly made attempts on his own life. Hospital officials, satisfied that Dr. Lazaar is not suicidal, have discharged him.

“‘Dr. Lazaar’s work in philosophy, while comparatively unknown to the general public, is highly esteemed in professional philosophic circles. He is the founder of “Yeaism” and “Nayism,” two systems of philosophic logic which, starting from identical premises, lead to exactly opposite conclusions.’ How do you like that? The guy tried to kill himself. Go get a college education… Jimmy?”

“I’m here.”

“You didn’t forget the blast over at the place tomorrow night, did you?”

“No, of course not, Nate.”

“Many famous chicks. Movie stars, the works. Bring your autograph book.”

“Sure, Nate.”

“How do you like that? An ‘unidentified companion.’ The creep’s probably queer. Watch yourself, Jimmy.”

“My eyes are open, Nate.”

“Look, come over a little early. We’re playing Frank’s new record. A premiere.”

“Thanks, Nate.”

Nate said ring-a-ding-ding and I said ring-a-ding- ding yourself and we hung up.

I do not miss the significance of Nate’s call. He was warning me, telling me to choose sides. He knew Lazaar was going to try to kill himself because I told him about the threats. I ran to him with them. What the hell is the matter with me? I sit with Nate and gossip about Lazaar; I sit with Lazaar and gossip about Nate. I make offerings to each of them.

Nate doesn’t approve of my having friends like Lazaar. He says, “If they can’t hit high C, if they don’t do imitations, if they ain’t actors, if they don’t have prime time on a Sunday night, if they ain’t SRO at the box office, if they ain’t show biz, Jimmy, they’re bums.”

I tell him there are many great men who aren’t in the business. “So let them cure cancer,” Nate says. “They got to make it with the public.”