Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

He laughed again. Then, as the shopkeeper, angrily flushed, took a step forward, he took a step forward to meet him.

“Listen,” he cried, “you’re insane! insane! and you know it.”

A look of desolation, of horror, relaxed the Jew’s face—the jaw sagged, the large mouth opened. He sat down, still holding the rope.

“That’s right—sit down. And don’t you dare to move till I’m out of this house—do you hear? Sit still! Or I’ll report you to the police.”

He took the candle, and walked slowly to the door through the aisle of dusty furniture. At the door, a thought suddenly struck him. He set down the candle, took out a card, wrote on it, and put it on a table.

“Here’s my name and address,” he said. “Send me, in the morning, the set of the Twelve Disciples!… Goodbye!”

The shopkeeper, whom he could only dimly make out in the now almost unlighted jungle of bric-a-brac, made no answer. Dace turned, went down the stairs, put the candle on the floor, and let himself out.

V.

When three days had passed, without his having had any signal from the Jew, Dace determined to go and see him. The adventure, he thought, must be an anticlimax; but there were one or two possibilities about which he was curious. Was it not conceivable, for example, that the wretched man, in some obscure sort of religious ecstasy, might have done himself a violence?… It was in bright sunlight that he passed this time through the square and turned into the shopping district; not yet noon. Missing, for a fraction of a minute, the shop, which was small, he had a renewal of his excitement—it seemed to him not too incredible that the shop, and its singular proprietor, might never have existed at all. But here it was.

What startled him was that the Jew did not recognize him; not in the slightest. He had uttered no greeting, on entering, had merely looked at the shopkeeper, expecting that the result would be an exclamation. But the Jew simply looked up from his glass case, which was opened at the back, and where he seemed to be arranging a small plush tray of jades and corals—looked up with a mild, polite interest. And as Dace, surprised, stared at him, it was the Jew who was the first to speak.

“Good morning!” he said. His tone was friendly—not intimate, not obsequious. “Is there something I can show you?”

Dace looked very hard at those green eyes under their sleepy lids.

“I am looking, as a matter of fact, for something odd in the way of a set of chessmen.”

The shopkeeper was suavely interested.

“Chessmen? Certainly.… Had you anything particular in mind?”

Dace’s heart gave a leap. The Jew was putting away his jades, unconcerned.

“Well—what I should really like to get hold of is a set I’ve heard called the set of the Twelve Disciples.… Do you happen to know anything about it?”

The shopkeeper tapped his fingers idly on the glass.

“No, I can’t say I do. Twelve Disciples! No.… Very curious.… Do you know where it was made?”

Dace leaned forward against the case.

“I don’t; no.…” He stared at the shopkeeper, who was very close to him. “Tell me—haven’t we met before?”

The Jew returned his stare perplexedly.

“I don’t think so—have we?… I have a good memory for faces—bad for names. Still, I may be at fault!”

“I think you are—I think you are!” Dace said—and laughed. “You’re wearing glasses today—you weren’t before.”

“Oh?” The Jew’s smile was friendly, but vague.

“Yes.… Don’t you remember taking me to your room upstairs? You showed me a crucifix in a cupboard.”

“Did I?” The shopkeeper smiled, wagged his ugly head, shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, then I am at fault. I take so many people up there, you see, to look at things—you must forgive me!”

“Oh, I forgive you!”

They chuckled together, amicably. Then Dace bought a Chinese set of carved ivory and bade the Jew good morning.

Michael Lowes hummed as he shaved, amused by the face he saw—the pallid, asymmetrical face, with the right eye so much higher than the left, and its eyebrow so peculiarly arched, like a “v” turned upside down. Perhaps this day wouldn’t be as bad as the last. In fact, he knew it wouldn’t be, and that was why he hummed. This was the biweekly day of escape, when he would stay out for the evening, and play bridge with Hurwitz, Bryant, and Smith. Should he tell Dora at the breakfast table? No, better not. Particularly in view of last night’s row about unpaid bills. And there would be more of them, probably, beside his plate. The rent. The coal. The doctor who had attended to the children. Jeez, what a life. Maybe it was time to do a new jump. And Dora was beginning to get restless again—

But he hummed, thinking of the bridge game. Not that he liked Hurwitz or Bryant or Smith—cheap fellows, really—mere pick-up acquaintances. But what could you do about making friends, when you were always hopping about from one place to another, looking for a living, and fate always against you! They were all right enough. Good enough for a little escape, a little party—and Hurwitz always provided good alcohol. Dinner at the Greek’s, and then to Smith’s room—yes. He would wait till late in the afternoon, and then telephone to Dora as if it had all come up suddenly. Hello, Dora—is that you, old girl? Yes, this is Michael—Smith has asked me to drop in for a hand of bridge—you know—so I’ll just have a little snack in town. Home by the last car as usual. Yes.… Gooo-bye!…

And it all went off perfectly, too. Dora was quiet, at breakfast, but not hostile. The pile of bills was there, to be sure, but nothing was said about them. And while Dora was busy getting the kids ready for school, he managed to slip out, pretending that he thought it was later than it really was. Pretty neat, that! He hummed again, as he waited for the train. Telooralooraloo. Let the bills wait, damn them! A man couldn’t do everything at once, could he, when bad luck hounded him everywhere? And if he could just get a little night off, now and then, a rest and change, a little diversion, what was the harm in that?

At half-past four he rang up Dora and broke the news to her. He wouldn’t be home till late.

“Are you sure you’ll be home at all?” she said, coolly.

That was Dora’s idea of a joke. But if he could have foreseen—!

He met the others at the Greek restaurant, began with a couple of araks , which warmed him, then went on to red wine, bad olives, pilaf , and other obscure foods; and considerably later they all walked along Boylston Street to Smith’s room. It was a cold night, the temperature below twenty, with a fine dry snow sifting the streets. But Smith’s room was comfortably warm, he trotted out some gin and the Porto Rican cigars, showed them a new snapshot of Squiggles (his Revere Beach sweetheart), and then they settled down to a nice long cozy game of bridge.

It was during an intermission, when they all got up to stretch their legs and renew their drinks, that the talk started—Michael never could remember which one of them it was who had put in the first oar—about impulse. It might have been Hurwitz, who was in many ways the only intellectual one of the three, though hardly what you might call a highbrow. He had his queer curiosities, however, and the idea was just such as might occur to him. At any rate, it was he who developed the idea, and with gusto.

“Sure,” he said, “anybody might do it. Have you got impulses? Of course, you got impulses. How many times you think—suppose I do that? And you don’t do it, because you know damn well if you do it you’ll get arrested. You meet a man you despise—you want to spit in his eye. You see a girl you’d like to kiss—you want to kiss her. Or maybe just to squeeze her arm when she stands beside you in the street car. You know what I mean.”