Conrad Aiken: A Heart for the Gods of Mexico

“Ommernous, that’s what it is, ommernous, every bit of it is ommernous.”

Six o’clock.… The tall man with the Jewish nose, and lean as he was tall, and with clothes that were too large for him, avoided looking at his reflection in the glassy water of the Frog Pond — which he was circling for the fourth time in Boston Common — but thought of it just the same, and, as always, with cynical amusement. He enjoyed walking as close as possible to the pond’s edge, along the familiar granite curbing, and enjoyed the notion of his image there, stalking angularly among budding boughs against a twilight May sky. Blomberg the crane, he thought. Blomberg the derrick — Blom the steam shovel.

“Ommernous,” he muttered again (thinking at the same time how characteristic it was of Key to be late); “need money, always need money, and as soon as they need money I’m supposed to find it; what’s the good of being a Jew if you can’t find money! And even to bargaining with a ticket agent, by God, and him with the name of Albumblatt.…”

He smiled grimly, and looked up at the fading sky over the spire of the Arlington Street Church, and the empty roof garden of the Ritz — bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang — and the image of the snow, but recently melted on the roof, and the awnings and box trees which would soon replace it, came to him as one thing. Where are the snows of yesteryear? and if winter comes, can spring be far behind? He turned once more towards the tall soldiers’ monument, rounding the toe end of the little granite-paved pond, and there before him was Key, coming towards him cockily on his short legs, the derby hat set crookedly like a tiny peanut on the tiny head, the dark glasses looking blind above the already smiling mouth.

“So you want some money, and is that a surprise.”

“It’s not for me. Now look here, Key—”

“You’re wasting your time. Why in hell don’t you go to work? I mean, at a job that pays you something.…”

They turned and walked slowly towards Charles Street, went off the path on to the grass, moved slowly side by side down the slight slope in the twilight. Blomberg smiled at the amusing and cynical little face which leered up at him with affectionate hardness from under the hat’s brim, and took Key’s arm. He quickened his pace.

“Now listen, Key. What I said on the phone is straight: it’s not merely an emergency, it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Where have I heard those words before?”

“Yeah. She wants to take him away on the one o’clock train tomorrow— tomorrow —and me too. To Mexico. Mexico , of all places! It costs money. What can I save out of my twenty-five bucks a week? I’ve got a little over a hundred, laid up against the rainy day and the dentist. And Noni’s got maybe four hundred and fifty.”

“And the boy friend, I suppose, won’t put up a nickel!”

“Don’t be nasty. I like Gil, I admire Gil, you’ve got to hand it to him, he’s an idealist, a real dyed-in-the-wool Puritan, self-sacrificing, honest, everything. Jesus, that man makes me mad! He gives everything away, every cent. Right now, God damn it, he’s probably sitting up there in Joy Street thinking up novel ways of giving away what little money he has left, as if it wasn’t enough that he gives all his time for nothing to the Legal Aid Society! God.…”

They veered by tacit agreement to the left, towards the gravel expanse of the baseball field in the Boylston Street corner of the Common, now beginning to look gray in the vanishing light of evening. The sweet sound of a batted ball, tingling and round and willowy, floated up to them, and they turned their eyes towards the gray-flanneled figures which moved there in the dusk. Even as they watched, one of the players, with arms raised as in some ritual, and small white face lifted to the sky, performed an absurd little crablike balance dance under the heaven-descending ball, until the sharply lowered elbows, and the barely heard clop , showed that it had been caught. Beyond the field, lights were beginning to come out in the Boylston Street shops.

“Well, but why do you come to me ? I don’t even know them.”

“I come to you, because you’ve got a heart of gold.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“Heh, heh, it is to laugh!”

“No.”

Blomberg frowned a little, looking down at their feet, their four feet moving synchronously on the spring grass, and thought the beginning was not too auspicious. But it was as well to avoid undue pressure at the outset, even though his own sense of the shortness of time was becoming so stifling. And especially with Key, who really enjoyed the preliminaries of maneuvering: the trout playing the angler. He said, a shade too nervously, half smiling:

“It really ought to interest you. It’s absolutely the damndest situation I ever heard of, much less got myself involved in! It’s a wonder.”

Key looked up at him speculatively, his face sobered, his guard for the moment relaxed.

“You’ve known Noni for a long time — but what about this Gil? I never heard much about Gil before, did I?”

“She wants to marry him.”

Blomberg pretended not to notice the sharp look which Key gave him on this. His face stiffened, impervious to scrutiny. Key said:

“I thought she was married already. But of course nowadays—”

“She is. That’s the point. You see—”

“God, look at the traffic. Let’s go down through the subway to the Little Building. And then, of course, we’ll be in the alert position for a quick one at the Nip. Would you like a quick one?”

“Does a camel?”

Emerging from the Tremont Street entrance, by the post office branch, they paused a moment on the curb to survey the slowing traffic between themselves and the gay windows of the Nip, with its hospitably open door, then walked swiftly across, to an accompaniment of squealing and squawking brakes.

“Not too far back,” said Key. “I don’t like the odor of sanctity at the back! Dry martinis?”

“Two dry martinis.”

Key swiveled towards him on the stool, his hands in his side pockets; looked up at him smiling, his head tilted to one side. His attitude was one of amused expectancy.

“Well, go on, tell me about the boy friend. Where does he come from at this late day? Kind of a dark horse, I’d call it!”

“Oh, no. Gil has always been around — he’s the old faithful. They’ve known each other since the year one; I guess they played marbles together in the Public Gardens, while their nurses knitted, at the age of two. And then he wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t and married Giddings instead—”

“Giddings?”

“Here’s mud in your eye. Yeah. Giddings. A first-class A-number-one bastard; full of charm, but without an honest bone in his body. He began as a society bond salesman, one of those pretty pink college boys that they have by the hundred at all the best brokerages, with the social register written all over them, and ended by being something damned like a crook. Ran a little private investment pool of his own, and got a lot of Noni’s money into it, and a lot of other people’s as well, and then slipped out from under when it went flooey. And of course it was all very nicely hushed up, and he just went gracefully out West, where, as far as anyone knows, he still is.”

“Ah. One of those. And how long has this been?”

“Ten years.”

“And being a nice Boston gal she didn’t do anything about divorcing him, of course. Of course not! As you were saying.”