Сол Беллоу - Dangling Man

"Joseph," Ira called in a strained voice.

She had come into the hall. "Joseph!"

"It's about time I told him off. I'm fed up.

Completely.

Do you think you can get away with it forever?" I shouted at. him. "Kicking up a racket in the middle of the night, hoicking, forcing us to listen when you make your busisy crowbait? Iggidn't you ever learn to shut the door when you went to the toilet?

By God, you kept it shut tight enough the night you set the house on fire!"

"Mister!" I heard Mrs. Bartlett cry from the stairs. A door dosed. Ira had gone back into the room, and similarsounds told me that either Mrs. Fessman or Miss Ling had come out to listen and then had quickly retreated. There were further noises from Captain Briggs' apart. ment. I heard a man's tread in the passage above. "And stealing, besides," I went on. "Steal?" he said weakly.

"Stealing," I repeated. "Then going before the priest at St. Thomas the Apostle and standing in my socks and stinking of my wife's perfume. I've got a good mind to go and tell them about it there. How would you like that?" He stared dumbly, his head a long blob of shadow in the pewter gleam of the mirror on the medicine chest. Then he came forward a pace, hopefully, for the Captain was behind me in his dressing gown.

"What are you doing?" he said sternly. Mrs.

Briggs appeared at his side. "Fasten yourself up," he ordered Vanaker, who thereupon took shelter behind the door.

"Either he moves, or my wife and I We refuse to put up with him," I said.

"Now," said the Captain. "You've done enough shouting. Calm down. They can hear you all over the house."

"It's an outrage," his wife breathed. "With my mother downstairs."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Briggs," I said in a lower voice. "But I had as much as I could stand from him. I admit I lost myself."

"I should say."

"Just a minute, Mil," the Captain interrupted. And then to me: "We can't allow behavior of that sort here, and @.@. @.@?

"What about his behavior?" I said excitedly.

"It seems he can do as he pleases, but if I protest I am the one who's blamed. Why don't you ask him about it? What's he skulking in there for?"

"If you had complaints, you should have brought them to me or to my wife instead of making a row. This is not a tavern'

"I put up with his indecency. I don't care.

It's that kind of inconsiderateness," I said disconnectedly. "This is terrible, shameful," said Mrs. Briggs.

"We can't have this," said the Captain, "we can't have it. It's the worst kind of rowdyism!"

"Howard," remonstrated Mrs. Briggs.

"You're the one that's shouting now, Captain," I said. "Don't tell me how to talk," the Captain exploded.

"I'm not your subordinate. I'm a civilian. I don't have to take this from you."

"By Jesus, I'll take a swing at you in about a minute!"

"Try itt" I said, stepping back and tightening my fists.

"Howard, please. Howard," said Mrs.

Briggs. "Joseph," said Ira, appearing in the doorway. "Come here. Come into the room." I edged by them, guardedly. "Get in," commanded Ira.

"If he touched me, I'd murder him, soldier suit or no soldier suit," I growled as I went in.

"Oh, keep quiet," said Iva. "Mrs.

Briggs, please, just a moment." She hurried toward them.

I put on my shoes, snatched my street clothes from the closet, and flung out of the house. I walked rapidly through the drizzle. It was not late, certainly not more than ten o'clock. The air was dense and black and pressed close on the hourglass figures the street lamps made. I could not have slowed my walk; I was not sure of my legs. So I went on for some time, until I came to an open place, a lot with a wire backstop for baseball games. The ground was flooded, a wind-blown sheet of water, utterly dark. Behind the backstop was a white drinking fountain and water from it flurring into the warm air. I drank and then I went on, not so fast as before but just as aimlessly, toward the static shower of lights in the street ahead, a spray of them hanging in the middle distance over the shine of the pavement. Then I turned back.

I could not even imagine what Ira's misery must be, nor the state of the house. Ira must be trying to explain; Mrs. Briggs, if she was listening at all, was listening frostily; while Vanaker was making his way to his room, meek but vindicated, and probably wondering what had happened. Once more he seemed to me, as in the early days, simple-minded, perhaps subnormal.

I walked over the cinders of a schoolyard and came into an alley approaching our windows. I looked for Ira's shadow on the blind. She was not there. I had. halted near a fence against which a tree leaned, freshly budding and seething under the rain. I made an effort to dry my face. Then it occurred to me that the reason I could not see her was that she was lying on the bed again. My skin was suddenly as wet with perspiration as it had been a too- with rain. I turned and started back along thementago schoolyard fence. A steel ring on a rope whipped loudly against the flagpole. Then, for a moment, a car caught me in its lights. I'stood aside for it and followed its red blur. It was gone.

Something ran among the cans and papers. A rat, I thought and, sickened, I went even more quickly, skirting a pool at the foot of the street where a torn umbrella lay stogged in water and ashes. I took a deep breath of warm air.

I believe I had known for some time that the moment I had been waiting for had come, and that it was impossible to resist any longer. I must, give myself up. And I recognized that the breath of warm air was simultaneously a breath of relief at my decision to surrender. I was done. But it was not painful to acknowledge that, it was not painful in the least.

Not even when I tested myself, whispering "the leash," reproachfully, did I feel pained or humiliated. I could have chosen a harsher symbol than that for my surrender. It would not have hurt me, for I could feel nothing but gratification and a desire to make my decision effective at once.

It couldn't be later than half. past ten now. The draft board often held late sessions. I set out for its office in the Sevier Hotel. As I was walking across the old. fashioned lobby, trying to remember on which side the office 183 was, the clerk cagg'led me over. He guessed what I wanted.

"If it's the board you're after," he said, "everybody's gone home."

"Can I leave a note? Oh, never mind, I'll mail it."

I sat down at a desk in a corner, near one of the portieres, and wrote on a sheet of stationery: "I hereby request to be taken at the earliest possible moment into the armed services."

To this I added my full name and call number, and across the bottom: "I am available at any time."

After I had posted this, I stopped at a tavern and spent my last forty cents on a drink.

"I'm off to the wars," I said to the bartender. His hand hovered over the money. He picked it up and turned to the cash register. The place, after all, was full of soldiers and sailors.

March 27

Tins morning I told Iva what I had done.

She made only one comment, namely, that I should have consulted her. But I said, "I'm doing myself no good here." There was no answer to that. She took the check downtown to cash. I waited for her on the library steps, sitting among the pigeons, reading the paper. She came down at noon, and we had lunch together. She did not look well. There was a blemish on her face that always shows up when she is disturbed. I felt weak myself, standing in the sunlight.

Mrs. Briggs had asked both parties to yesterday's disgrace to move.

"You can stay on alone," I said to Ira. "She won't object."

"I'll see about it. When do you think you'll be called?"

"I'm not sure. I think in about a week."

"I don't think you ought to spend your last week moving," she said. "We'll stay on for a while. I'm sure Mrs.