Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“Oh,” Feldman said. And the sofa pillows are sprinkled with Spanish fly, he thought. And the lamp is a camera. And the coffee table is a plainclothesman. Everything goes on, he thought. Why do you let everything go on? he prayed.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s face the music.” She tried to take his hand, but he wouldn’t let her have it. At the door she passed through first, and he followed sheepishly.

They were all gone; the room was empty. Mona went to the sideboard and made herself a sandwich. Feldman stood beside her as she spread mustard on a roll. “Where is everybody?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, her mouth full. “Gone home, I guess. Tomorrow’s a working day.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said.

“Are the jails closed?”

“Well, what do we do now?” he asked.

“How do you mean? Have a sandwich.”

“They’re all gone .”

“Well, I know that. They’re all gone. They’re a bunch of party poopers. Have a sandwich.”

“I don’t want a sandwich,” Feldman said. “Listen, how do I get back to jail?”

She shrugged. Feldman left her impatiently and looked into another room. No one was around. He went into all the rooms he could find, and it was the same. The idea of being alone in Warden’s Quarters terrified him; somehow it seemed to be the ultimate defilement. There wasn’t a more serious crime. He sat down in the library and put his head in his hands. Then he remembered that the guard had said he would be waiting in the kitchen. He found Mona again. She had finished her sandwich and was making another. “Change your mind?” she asked. “Want a sandwich?”

“Where’s the kitchen?” Feldman demanded.

“What do you need the kitchen for? There’s plenty of stuff right here. Look, here’s some meatloaf. Here’s eggplant. What do you want? Shall I pour you a glass of Vegemato?”

“Where’s the fucking kitchen? Tomorrow’s Saturday. I have to get back to jail.”

“Well, listen to him,” she said. “Oh, all right, follow me.”

They went down a service hall Feldman had missed. Mona stopped at a wide white door. “In here,” she said, and pushed open the door.

“Look,” Feldman said, following her, “I’m sorry I’m late. I was off by myself and—”

The warden was counting desposit bottles and arranging them in neat rows.

“It’s me,” Feldman said softly.

The warden looked up and saw them, and Feldman whimpered. The warden’s face seemed momentarily to fall, as though some symptom he had not felt for months had suddenly recurred. In a second he had recovered, but when he opened his mouth it was to Mona he spoke. “You know each other,” he said. Feldman noticed her ring for the first time.

Mona nodded nervously.

Were they married? Oh Christ, was she his wife? The thief’s armful, he thought awfully. His mouthful. How do I get back to jail? he wondered. Crime and punishment, he thought. Punishment and punishment. Suddenly he felt compelled to offer the warden a confession, to admit everything, sign papers. He did not exactly feel moral obligation, but a necessity to flatter the warden with his crimes. It was what the man thrived on, what he deserved. The urge to plead was strong, but he did not yet know what he should plead to. He shrugged helplessly and smiled and tamped down a yawn. “Late,” he said.

“Your guard has been dismissed,” the warden said. “The prison’s closed.”

“Closed?”

“It’s sealed until morning. A warden’s danger is at night,” he said, and looked at Feldman.

“I drank like a pig,” Feldman blurted.

The warden nodded, bored.

“I drank like a pig, and I hated the food. It was too wet.”

“Was it?”

“It was too wet. There wasn’t any delicatessen. I hoped there would be delicatessen, and there wasn’t. If there was I would have had six sandwiches.”

“I see,” the warden said.

“You do?” Mona said.

“He’s copping a plea,” the warden said.

“No,” Feldman said, “I’m not.”

“You’re copping a plea,” the warden said.

“I coveted my neighbor’s wife.”

“What else?” the warden said.

“Everything else,” Feldman said. He saw that it made the warden wince to look at him, and he felt like someone with no nose, with reamed hollows where the eyes went. He stared out from behind the holes in his face, beneath his singed queer brows. “What happens now?” he asked.

“You can’t stay here,” Fisher said.

Feldman nodded. He understood. Fair was fair.

“Come with me,” the warden said.

He was comforted. People said “Come with me” to him, and he followed them down long, twisting corridors, through crowded rooms, a content sense of irresponsibility in his trailing footsteps, of abeyance, things held off. You climbed stairs and went to doom by degrees. You waited for elevators at the end of hallways; you crossed bridges that connected buildings. Then, at the end of it all, there were comfortable chairs; you could smoke; there were magazines to read. It surprised and disappointed him then when the warden merely walked across the kitchen to a narrow metal doorway and took some keys from his pocket. “Go in,” Fisher said. Feldman had seen the doorway when he had first come in, and thought that it must be some kind of freezer. He hesitated, then saw that the warden had produced a gun. “ Go in ,” the warden commanded. Feldman walked through the doorway; the door slammed behind him, and he heard the key turn in the metal lock.

Automatically he began to stamp his feet and rub his arms. He still thought he was in a freezer. “I’ve got to keep moving,” he said, but saw at once that the words had produced no visible breath. “I’m not cold,” he said, testing to make sure. Then he saw that he was in a kind of areaway and that a few feet in front of him was an arch and a stairway leading down, probably to the basement, though he had never gotten over the impression that Warden’s Quarters, like the solitary-confinement cells, were already below ground. “I can’t stand here all night,” he said, but that was an excuse. He knew that he wanted to go down the stairs and that the warden probably expected him to. He stood at the head of the stairway and looked down. The stairs declined at a rude angle. He could not see the bottom, although a line of naked bulbs — incredibly dim, like those drained lights before the curtain rises in a theater — hung from the narrow, curved Conestoga ceiling that canopied the stairway. I’m a fool, he thought, and began to descend the stairs.

There was no rail, and the rough stone walls felt damp, a thousand years old. A bad smell covered the walls like a tapestry. The lights overhead were spaced further and further apart. Soon he had left the last light behind him and entered the darkness. At the bottom he could see nothing, and stepped off the last stair as into space. The underworld, he thought.

He stopped where he was and listened, afraid to go further. He might be on a narrow stone apron, above water perhaps, although he couldn’t hear water. Perhaps it was a pit he stood over. He imagined enormous drops, plummets of miles. He took a cautious step, holding one foot in place and sliding the other carefully forward. Then he brought the other foot up. He tried to stand with his feet together — he imagined himself on a small platform about the size of a man’s handkerchief — but the strain of keeping his balance in so constricted a space was too great for him and he fell. He hit the floor abruptly, and because he had expected to tumble forever—“Come with me,” the warden had said; he recalled the leisurely fate he had anticipated — the impact knocked the breath out of him. He lay on the stone floor until he got his wind back, and then stood up slowly. Again he put one leg out, sliding it forward along the ground and then bringing the other leg up with it. In this way he proceeded for about five minutes. He had lost the stairway. He decided to throw something to see if he could judge from the sound if he was above a pit. He looked in his pockets for something to throw. He had nothing. What a poor man I am, he thought. He tugged a button off the jacket of his blue fool suit and threw it in front of him. It clattered on the floor. That doesn’t prove anything, he thought; I might have thrown it too far. He tossed the next button gently, and heard it drop a few feet in front of him, roll a foot or so and stop. He removed another button and flipped it to his left. It fell heavily. The remaining buttons, which he took from the sleeve of his jacket, he threw all around him. One rolled up against what was possibly a wall off to his left. The last button he threw behind him; it hit almost at once. “Well,” he said, “no pit.” Boldly he did a little dance, finishing with a daring leap in the dark.