Сол Беллоу - Dangling Man

"Too bad. Is he hurt much?"

"Oh, no, he damaged his looks a little, that's all."

I said I was sorry to hear it.

"That's the way the breaks run," said Steidler.

"Doesn't make much difference, now that he's married. It won't interfere with his wolfing around."

"I didn't know he was married."

"How would you? It didn't make the front pages."

"I'm trying to say that I'm surprised.

Who… @8@? "Wilma. He married the kid."

"The girl I saw him with at the Paxton?"

"That's the one."

Whenever I meet Steidler, I think of

Rameau's nephew, described by Diderot as @?' But, less emphatic, more sentimental (after his own fashion), and not nearly as shrewd.

He carried a match to the stump of his cigar, sucking.

His black hair, freshly cut, was combed back in the usual way, as though painted on, flush against the rising hump of his head. It gave his face, with its contrasting long cheeks, jutting bones and fleshy nose and lips, a curious bareness. He looked very pale, almost limy in the dusty sunlight under the E1 pillars. He was shaved and powdered, and he wore a new striped tie. But his once natty coat was frayed, the brown belt looked greenish.

"How's our old school chum Morris?" he asked.

"Abt? He's doing very well; he's in Washington."

"And what about you?"

"I'm waiting for the Army call. What are you doing, Alf?"

"Oh, the same. Still trying to lead a genteel life. WPA folded, you know. It was good going for a couple of years. I was an honored artist of the republic. First I was in the theater, you remember.

Then I organized a water ballet for the parks system, and after that I led a chorus in a settlement house. Say, but I started at the bottom. My first job was digging up a street. I had to explain to the people who asked me what I was working at that I was a geologist.

Ha, ha! Then I was a smoke watcher."

"I don't understand."

"Up in the West Side factory district I sat on a roof with a chart of six shades of smoke and watched the chimneys eight hours a day. Then the theater project. Anyway, the whole business folded up, and I went out to the Coast. Say, there's a Thompson's down the way. How about a cup of coffee? Good. It's been years since I saw you. The gay old Coast. I went out with some deas and tried to get in to see Lubitsch, but I couldn't find anyone to introduce me. Christ, it's mad out there. It's the world's greatest loony-bin. Ever been on the Coast?"

"Never."

"Christ, stay away from it, it's murder. But then, if you want to see what the life of the country can wash up, take the trip. I've been around a little bit. But in L. a. they conned me for my fifty bucks as though I'd been a baby. Of course, I'm drawn into different circles than you.

Well, I was broke, so I wired my mother and got twenty bucks and a note about how slow the beauty-parlor business was. That was a tricky week. I had to go to work for a while, to raise some money." He looked at me somberly, a decayed Spanish prince with a splayed nose and a long upper lip covered with bristles. His blue eyes grew darker. "I didn't have it easy.

"One nice thing about the Coast, ough," he added, brightening, "the nooky sit"'.@ccation is awfully good where there aren't too many soldiers. You whistle for it. Did you read about that silly trial? Now, there was something really funny. If we were more civilized we'd put it on the stage. This Canadian officer kept that girl in a hotel. But it was just brotherly, she said. He called her his little strumpet.

"Crumpet, you mean," said the prosecutor.

Right then and there he must have known his case was gone.

"No," she insists. "strumpet. It's a kind of biscuit the British like."

" Alf laughed, holding the sugar shaker and spoon suspended over his cup. "Well, they wouldn't convict anybody on that sort of evidence." He reached forward to hand me the sugar, revealing a rolled copy of Variety in his coat pocket. He was lulled by the joke; musing, smiling, he stirred and sipped, and then wet a fresh cigar along his underlip.

At twenty-eight, he was old-fashioned. He had all the ways of a theatrical generation that was already at the point of death when, in his high-school days, he had cut classes to admire its aging comedians in the mangy splendor of the Oriental. He grew up behind his mother's beauty shop. When I knew him well, at sixteen, he was already a stage gentleman, and rose at two every day to breakfast on tea and sardines. He spent his evenings at the Arrow, amid amateur talk of Magda and Desire Under the Elms. He played in all the local productions, was Joxur in ('. uno and the Paycock and did Cyrano for a triumphant week (which he never forgot) at the school auditorium.

"I wouldn't have come back from the Coast," he said. "But my number came up; the board called me. It's a good sign for the country that I was rejected. They'd deserve to lose if they put me in their Army. The psychiatrist asked me what I did, and I replied, "To be perfectly frank, I've been a deadbeat all my life." He said, "How do you think you'll get along in the Army?"' and I answered, "Now, what do you think, doctor?"' @?

"You said that?"

"Sure, I was being honest. I'd never be any damned good to them. I'd set an all. time record for goldbricking. It's up to you normal bastards to do the fighting. I said, "What do you think?"' and he took another look at my papers and said, "They've got you down for a bad heart, here.

Well, this will make it final." And he wrote down, "Schizoid Type." That would mean I was in the split. pea soup, wouldn't it? I looked it up. You think a guy can tell by looking at you? Or because you tellhim you're a deadbeatthThat isn't enough, is it?"

"No," I said, "

"they need more evidence than that; it isn't enough. Don't worry about it."

"Oh, I'm not worried, don't kid yourself."

His glasses duplicated the triangular flame of another match. "They wouldn't know what to make of me, because I'm not your average guy. I know that.

Why, I couldn't fight. It isn't my line. My line is getting by."

"How do you get by, Alf?"

"It's a wonder to me. But every January swings around, somehow, and there I am; I've come through. But I don't know how. I work a little, sponge a little, gamble a little.

II am a. deadbeat. Or will be till I what I wantsuppose to become. Well, I entertain the people I sponge from. That's something, anyhow."

"You expect me to pay for your coffee?" I said.

"You, Joseph? This is Dutch treat. What a corny joke!" He looked offended.

"I was referring to the entertainment."

"Oh. One of these days I expect an opening @?

"I didn't mean anything by that," I said.

"Forget it. Who holds your bad jokes against you? Did you see me in any of the Federal productions?

"I wasn't bad. A big improvement over the old days. Roxanne! Remember? Ha, ha!

Well, it's in the family. Have you ever heard my old lady sing, were you ever around when that happened?

Oh, you've missed something. My brother writes songs, too. He just wrote one for the United Nations. It's called "Let's Link Hands Across the Ocean." He keeps bothering me to do something about it. He's sure it would make the Hit Parade. Now he wants me to go to New York on the insurance money. Wilma's against it."

"Do you intend to go?"

"A year ago I would have gone like a shot. But since Wilma's against it… I owe the girl a good turn. I got her into trouble a few years ago. Phil hung a shiner on her when they were living together for taking twenty dollars out of his pocket. Only she didn't take it.

I took it."

"Did you confess?"

"Confess! It would spoil my credit with him forever. I was sure they'd make it up by and by. He gave her an awful pasting. She cried '@.

"Were you there when it happened?"