Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“I’m cold,” Feldman said.

“I’m sorry,” the warden said, getting up. “I have to open the window.” He opened it and came around the front of the desk to where Feldman was sitting.

“Mr. Feldman,” he said, “I’m Warden Fisher, a fisher of bad men.”

Feldman stood up to shake hands. The warden turned away and went back to stand by the open window.

“Be seated, please,” the warden said. “In this first interview I like to get the man’s justification.”

“Sir?”

“Why are you here?”

“They say I’m guilty.”

“Are you?”

Feldman answered carefully. There was some question of an appeal, of getting his case reopened. Probably there was a tape recorder going someplace. The warden was trying to disarm him. “No, of course not,” he said, undisarmed.

The warden smiled. “I’ve never had an affirmative answer to that question.” Feldman, disarmed, at one with all the robbers, bums, murderers and liars in the place, felt he needed an initiative.

“You may want me to put this in writing later,” he said, “but I feel I have certain legitimate complaints about the way I was treated coming up here.”

The warden frowned, but Feldman went on. He explained about his watch and the money. Telling it, he knew he sounded like a fool. He didn’t mind. It added, he felt, to an impression of innocence. “I have reason to suspect, too, that the deputy took money from certain enemies of mine in exchange for showing me off to them in my humiliation.”

The warden nodded. “Go on,” he said.

Feldman felt the warden was bored by the story, but he couldn’t stop. When he came to the part about the toilet he tried to get outrage into his voice. Somehow it sounded spurious. He finished lamely with an allusion to the final proddings and shoves.

“Is there anything else?” the warden asked.

“No sir,” Feldman said.

“Do you have any proof? Would Dedman or Freedman or Victman testify to any of this?”

Feldman admitted they probably wouldn’t. “I’m not lying though,” he added helplessly.”

The warden opened a second window. “The deputy’s a pig,” he said suddenly. “He ought to be in prison. Without proof, however—”

Feldman shrugged sympathetically.

“He ought to be in prison too, I mean,” the warden said, turning to Feldman.

“I’m innocent,” Feldman said mechanically.

“All right,” the warden said, “that’s enough.”

It was. He regretted having spoken. He didn’t know what it was tonight. Every action he had taken had been ultimately cooperative. It was a consequence of being on the defensive. Feldman knew how easy it was to accuse. That was the trick the warden had been playing on him. He had to assert himself before it was too late. If he had the nerve it would be a good idea to push the warden, to run behind his desk and sit in his chair. Then he seized on the idea of silence. To speak, even to speak in accusation was, in a way, to fawn. Let the warden make the mistakes, he thought. Mum’s the word. He folded his arms.

“It’s easy for me to believe you’ve been wronged,” the warden was saying. A trap. Shut up. Forewarned is forearmed. “There are enough bad men in the world. We all have our turn as their victims.”

Not me, Feldman thought.

“What I want to know,” the warden said, “is what you’ve done.”

Feldman said nothing.

“Answer me,” the warden said.

“I’ve done nothing.”

“All right,” the warden shouted, “I said that’s enough. Since you’ve been here you’ve spoken only of your own injuries. Granted! What else?”

It was no contest. He wasn’t free to remain silent. The thing to do was to yield, to throw himself not on the warden’s mercy but on his will. He wants words, Feldman thought, I’ll give him words. He wants guilt? Let there be guilt.

“It says in that paper on your desk what I did,” Feldman said hoarsely. “It says I did favors.”

“What else?”

“That I was a middleman, a caterer. That they came to me. That I didn’t even have to advertise. Ethical. Like a doctor.”

“This is nothing,” the warden said. “You’re wasting time.”

“All right. I filled needs. Like a pharmacist doing prescriptions. Did you ever know anyone like me? The hell. A woman needed an abortion, I found a doctor. A couple needed a kid, I found a bastard. A punk a fix, I found a pusher. I was in research.”

The warden shuddered.

“Wait,” Feldman said, “you haven’t heard anything. In my basement. In my store. In a special room. Under the counter. I’ve found whores, and I’ve found pimps for whores. You don’t see it on the shelf? Ask. You have peculiar tastes? Feldman has a friend. What I said about the doctor and the pharmacist — that’s wrong. I was like a fence. I was a moral fence. That’s what it says I did.” He stopped talking. “One more thing,” he said in a moment, looking around, “this isn’t a confession.” He raised his voice. “Warden Fisher wanted me to talk, so I’m talking. I’m just repeating in my own words what’s written in his paper. None of it is true.”

The warden stared at him.

“That last takes care of your tape recorders,” Feldman told him. “And if you’re thinking of clipping it just before I added that, let me point out that I wasn’t speaking in my natural voice.”

The warden shook his head.

“I never took a penny,” Feldman whispered.

“I can’t hear you,” the warden said.

I never took a penny, he mouthed. “I did favors. I helped people. The whole case against me turns on whether I accepted money. I never did. And if you want to know my justification, it was for fun I did it,” he told him softly.

He spoke again in his normal voice. “According to your records, Warden, I accepted money from a Mrs. Jerome Herbert for arranging an interview with a judge who was to hear a case against her husband. Mrs. Herbert had a charge account at my store. We had just installed a new billing system. She received an unitemized bill for five hundred dollars, which she paid with a personal check made out to me. God knows what she bought from me for five hundred dollars, but it wasn’t an interview with any judge. God knows, too, why she would pay an unitemized bill or why she would make the check out to me, but that’s what happened. That’s why I’m here now. It was the machine’s mistake.”

“I smell you,” the warden said quietly.

“What?” Feldman asked. “What’s that?”

“I smell you.”

The pee, Feldman thought, embarrassed. He looked down at his pants and touched one palm of his trouser leg. It was still damp. The altitude — pee didn’t dry. That deputy bastard.

“I told you,” Feldman said, “you want evidence? There’s evidence. Send my piss to your crime lab.”

The warden moved suddenly and grabbed Feldman’s trousers, bunching the damp material in his fist, squeezing it. “That,” he said, “that’s nothing. I smell you .”

“What do you mean?” Feldman said, genuinely angry. “What kind of thing is that to say? What kind of way is that for a warden to talk? The deputy was ignorant, but you’re supposed to know better. I won’t be insulted by you, by someone in authority. I’m warning you. I have plenty of friends in this state.”

“You still think this is a game, don’t you?” the warden said. “You still think some philosophical cat and mouse is going on here. You bad clown, you wicked fool with your nonsensical impersonations and your miming and your boastful confessions. You bad, silly man, this is no game. Can you understand? You’re here for a year in this state’s licensed penitentiary, and it’s no game. There are no tape recorders. When I want you to confess I’ll have you beaten up and you’ll confess. Do you understand?”