Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

Replacing the phone, he thought: That Freedman is dangerous. He ought to be locked up.

With his heavy abortion trade, relieved now and then by the public’s incipient interest in drugs, Feldman managed to remain fairly equable for a while. It was still true, of course, that he was at their mercy and had not yet found any way to deflect their specific demands. Once, when he was still naïve, he might have settled for just these conditions, all sin subsumed in the body’s joy, the nervous system’s reasons, but he had begun to discover in the victims — he could not say his victims — a sense of prior submission, of simple yielded-to, statutory plight. Here were no fearful presences to justify either pistol in drawer or alarm button under the rug to bring help — he felt no real harm in them, and he was annoyed by their indulgence, bothered by the absence of driving pride, the firmer greeds. The truth was, he was haunted by the ghosts of those who had gotten to them first. Jealous as some taken-in bridegroom, he heard the lies still whispering above their heads, the wily lines of truckers in bars, cousins at parties, guests under their fathers’ roofs. Also, he recognized what they did not, that their need of him hung on an ignorance. Why did they need him? What did they use him for? He was merely a distraction for them, his function a ritual, a ceremonial fiction, as though their troubles and their solutions needed channels and red tape to legitimize them.

In the meantime, he was kept busy with referrals from his salesmen, listening to old ladies with some determined memory of a particular pair of house slippers long out of stock or some fly-by-night gadget seen at a friend’s. He could have whiled away the time running some of these down, or even had what he would once have considered fun switching their ardor to some other object, but he dismissed them as quickly as he could, getting them out of the way for the next white-gloved, goofy-hatted girl in trouble — with whose insides, despite himself, he was still in love.

A man came into Feldman’s office, a tall, stern, raw-boned, sinister fellow in his fifties, his hair graying at his temples but black everywhere else. His features were sharp, all angles and bas-relieved bones, the unrecoverable Eskimo or Mongol just under his skin now Anglicized and windburned Christian. He reminded Feldman of conductors on commuter railroads, whose solemn aspect had made him fearful, or of ace pilots now alocholic, or of investors embittered by businessmen, and of businessmen themselves as they were sometimes shown in movies — hard and ruthless and cynical, soft only on their daughters. Feldman thought of the gun he did not keep in the secret drawer he did not have.

“Are you Feldman?”

“Yes,” he said. The man remained standing by his desk, his courtesy a warning. “Please be seated.” The man looked at the chair suspiciously, then back at Feldman, and sat down as though defying some trap. “Yes?” Feldman said. “Yes sir?”

The man scrutinized him, and Feldman thought Cops even as he dismissed the idea. There was something too fastidious about the man’s anger. The father of some girl dead on the abortionist’s table, the sore old man of a kid junkie. But this too seemed unlikely. Something about his bearing was uncommitted, as though he were checking not for some bad quality he knew Feldman had, but for some good quality he was afraid he might have. Waiting him out, Feldman could feel himself posing. He gave him tough, gave him bold, gave him patient, gave him poker, gave him a dozen patent bravuras he did not feel, and was aware that his face was as frozen as his visitor’s, that not a muscle had moved nor a hair stirred. Indeed, it might still have expressed the question of his “Yes sir?” and he settled for that.

There were several buttons pinned to the man’s lapel. As he shifted in his chair he seemed to propel them forward. Noticing them for the first time, Feldman thought impertinently of all strange feats of belief, so many causes inscribed on the head of a pin. On one was an American flag, on another a sort of contemporary minuteman, for which some younger version of the man himself might have served as the model. The rest were the acronyms of unfamiliar organizations. A last badge read: “WDSG.” (“Wealth, Death, Sex and God?” Feldman wondered. Impossible.)

Still the man had not spoken, though Feldman understood that showing him the pins had been a gentle act, a shy feeler like the inexpert flourish of some schoolgirl’s engagement ring. He was inexplicably touched.

Finally the stranger spoke. “Feldman,” he said speculatively. His voice was as arrogant as ever, as if there had been no soft overture from the lapel; indeed, that had somehow been retracted. “Feldman,” he said again, turning the name over with his tongue as if it had been some gunned hood’s suspicious last effect in the hand of a policeman.

“What’s up?” Feldman made himself ask.

“There are some merchants,” the man said, though it was clear, from the tone of rehearsal that he brought to his speech, that they had not entered conversation, “I’ve heard about who, not Jews themselves, affect Jewishness. They do it superstitiously, much as a smithy hangs his first horseshoe above his door or the owner of a tavern frames his beginning dollar. Are you such a merchant, Feldman? Such as I’ve described, trading on your Christian credit to appease some Rothschild Cash and Carry Immanence?”

In a panic Feldman tried to remember Freedman’s telephone number and couldn’t.

“I’ve asked if you’re Jewish, Feldman.”

“Half Jewish,” he said, projecting a disparagement of the Jewish half.

“Oh,” the man said, disappointed, and once more was silent. But the buttons had come out again. Observing the man closely, Feldman saw that as he shifted he raised one shoulder slightly, swelling only half his chest. It was a puzzling, schizophrenic business, and he was not sure what to make of it, save that he knew he preferred the ingenious shoulder to the rigid, brooding one. He had to make the stranger keep the badges forward.

On a hunch he boldly put out his hand and fingered one of the tin buttons, the one with the American flag. “Old Glory,” Feldman said.

The man sat uneasily under Feldman’s touch but did not pull back.

Feldman’s finger moved to another button. “AFSAF,” he said. “FAFAC.” He opened his drawer and rummaged in it for a moment. “Here it is. I knew I had it,” he said, handing his find to the stranger.

“This is a paper clip,” the man said.

Feldman winked and took it back. “ So ,” he said expansively, something settled between them. “ So! ” He nodded forcefully. He had an idea now why the man had come: for a contribution. He leaned forward and glared at him. Then, inspired, he turned to the other lapel, the one without the buttons, and stared at it fixedly. After a moment the man moved his arm across his chest in a long, slow diagonal like some mystic fraternal salute, and taking the edge of the lapel, he turned it inside out. A hidden button was revealed.

“RAFAPACALFAF,” he said.

“How long,” Feldman asked, “have you been, ah…interested?”

“I haven’t seen yours,” the man said.

“I don’t belong,” Feldman said. “I don’t approve of their methods.” A pain swept over the man’s face. “Have you heard about my labor policies?” Feldman asked quickly. “I’m off the charge plate, did you know that?” Then he leaned forward, brushing the buttons contemptuously with the back of his hand. “I’m more comfortable with the renegade than I am with the convert. There are good words that can be said for confessed former Communists. I won’t deny it, but there’s something embarrassing in a new passion. Give me men who keep their instincts. The Northern racist, give me him , whose best argument is his prickling skin, his crawling flesh, his abhorrence fingerprinted in his cells. Give me snarlers who bare their teeth at the soul’s traif . Phooey on the isometric heart, the soul like a cleft palate or unequal feet. Am I taking a chance with you? Am I? ” he challenged.