Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“What the devil do you mean?” he answered. “Intellectually I’m a child by comparison with you. I’m an adolescent.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean—all this,” and Jones gave a short ugly sweep of his arm toward the blazing haystack and, beyond that, the city. The moon came out, resting her perfect chin on a tawny cloud. The two men regarded each other strangely.

“Nonsense!” Smith then exclaimed. “Besides you’ll have the satisfaction of killing me. That ought to compensate. And Gleason! think of Gleason! She’ll be glad to see you. She’ll revel in the details of my death.”

“Will she?”

“Of course, she will.… She’s a kind of sadist, or something of the sort.… How, by the way, do you propose to do it? We’ve never—come to think of it—had an understanding on that point. Would you mind telling me, or do you regard it as a sort of trade secret?… Just as you like!”

Jones seemed to be breathing a little quickly.

“No trouble at all—but I don’t know! I shall simply, as you suggest, wait for an inspiration.”

“How damned disquieting! Also, Jones, it’s wholly out of character, and you’ll have to forgive me if, for once, I refuse to believe you. What the deuce is this walk for, if not for your opportunity? You’re bound to admit that I was most compliant. I accepted your suggestion without so much as a twitter—didn’t I? Very unselfish of me, I think!… But, of course, it had to come.”

The two men were walking, by tacit agreement, at opposite sides of the road; they had to raise their voices. Still, one would not have said that it was a quarrel.

“Oh yes, it had to come. It was clearly impossible that both of us should live!”

“Quite.… At the same time this affair is so exquisitely complex, and so dislocated, if I may put it so, into the world of the fourth dimension, that I’m bound to admit that while I recognize the necessity I don’t quite grasp the cause.…”

“You’re vulgar, Smith.”

“Am I?… Ah, so that’s it—I’m vulgar, I seize life by the forelock!… I go about fornicating, thieving, card-cheating and murdering, in my persistent, unreflective, low-grade sort of way, and it makes life insupportable for you. Here, now, is Gleason. How that must simply infuriate you! Three days in town, and I have a magnificent planetary love affair like that—burnt to a crisp! Ha ha! And you, all the while, drinking tea and reading Willard Gibbs. I must say it’s damned funny.”

Jones made no reply. His head was thrust forward—he seemed to be brooding. His heavy breathing was quite audible, and Smith, after an amused glance toward him, went on talking.

“Lots of lights suddenly occur to me—lights on this extraordinary, impenetrable subject—take down my words, Jones, this is my death-bed speech!… I spoke, didn’t I, of the beautiful obscene, and of the inextricable manner in which the two qualities are everywhere bound up together? The beautiful and the obscene. The desirable and the disgusting. I also compared this state of things with an organism in which a cancer was growing—which one tries to excise.… Well, Jones, you’re the beautiful and I’m the obscene; you’re the desirable and I’m the disgusting; and in some rotten way we’ve got tangled up together.… You, being the healthy organism, insist on having the cancer removed. But remember: I warned you! If you do so, it’s at your own peril.… However, it’s silly to warn you, for of course you have no more control over the situation than I have, or Gleason has. The bloody conclusion lies there, and we walk soberly toward it.… Are you sorry?”

“No!”

“Well then, neither am I. Let’s move a little faster!… Damn it all, I would like to see Gleason again! You were perfectly right about that.… Do you know what she said to me?”

Smith, at this point, suddenly stopped, as if to enjoy the recollection at leisure. He opened his mouth and stared before him, in the moonlight, with an odd bright fixity. Jones, with the scantiest turn of his head, plodded on, so that Smith had, perforce, to follow.

“She said she’d like to live with me—that she’d support me. By George! What do you think of that?… ‘You’re a dear boy,’ she said, ‘you fascinate me!’ ‘Fascinate!’ That’s the best thing I do. Don’t I fascinate you, Jones? Look at my eyes! Don’t I fascinate you?… Ha, ha!… Yes, I have the morals of a snake. I’m graceful, I’m all curves, there’s nothing straight about me. Gleason got dizzy looking at me, her head swayed from side to side, her eyes were lost in a sort of mist, and then she fell clutching at me like a paralytic, and talking the wildest nonsense. Could you do that, Jones, do you think?… Never! It’s all a joke to think of your going to see Gleason. And if you told her what had happened she’d kill you. Yes, you’d look like St. Sebastian when Gleason got through with you.… Say something! Don’t be so damned glum. Anybody’d suppose it was your funeral.”

“Oh, go on talking! I like the sound of your voice.”

“And then to think of your pitiful attempt to set that barn on fire! Good Lord, with half a dozen matches.… That’s what comes of studying symbolic logic and the rule of phase.… Really, I don’t know what you’ll do without me, Jones! You’re like a child, and when I’m dead, who’s going to show you, as the wit said, how to greet the obscene with a cheer?… However, I wouldn’t bother about that rock if I were you—aren’t you premature?”

This last observation sounded a little sharp.

Jones had certainly appeared to be stooping toward a small loose fragment of rock by the roadside, but he straightened up with smiling alacrity.

“My shoelace,” he said, cynically. “It’s loose. I think I’ll retie it.”

“Pray do! Why not?”

“Very well! If you don’t mind waiting!”

Jones gave a little laugh. He stooped again, fumbled for a second at his shoe, then suddenly shot out a snakelike hand toward the rock. But Smith meanwhile had made a gleaming gesture which seemed to involve Jones’s back.

“Ah!” said Jones, and slid softly forward into a puddle.

“Are you there?”

Smith’s query was almost humorous. As it received no reply, and Jones lay motionless in his puddle, Smith took him by the coat-collar, dragged him to the edge of the ditch, and rolled him in. The moon poured a clear green light on this singular occurrence. It showed Smith examining his hands with care, and then wiping them repeatedly on the wet grass and rank jewelweed. It showed him relighting his pipe—which had gone out during the rain—with infinite leisure. One would have said, at the moment, that he looked like a tramp. And, finally, it showed him turning back in the direction he had come from, and setting off cheerfully toward the city; alone, but with an amazing air, somehow, of having always been alone.

Five o’clock. He looked at his watch, hoping that it was later—late enough for dinner. That was characteristic. He was always hoping that it was later than it really was, hoping that an hour had gone, a day had gone. Other people were anxious about being too late—he was anxious about being too early. Supreme, everlasting, devastating boredom. His watch was a symbol of that, and now as he put it back in his pocket, cherishing its warm smoothness, he cursed the hour and a half that yawned like a chasm before his next “action.” He walked wearily along the gravel path. Piles of leaves were burning, and the smoke came heavily over his face. Wet leaves; there had been a shower. He was irritatingly conscious of his stick, which kept entangling itself with his coat, and which was so light that it would not properly thrust against the gusty wind. Besides, it was too long, struck the ground too sharply, and was particularly annoying in a deserted street, where its rhythmic clack on the stones made him feel like screaming. In a moonlit street it became positively portentous, and it seemed to him that he was trying to balance a telegraph pole. It scraped now against an unforeseen rise in the path, and he drew it up under his arm, regaining a little of his composure. Then he stepped off the path onto the grass, swung the stick triumphantly, and thrust it into the ground, at every step, with delight. He impaled an empty match-box. He impaled a yellow leaf. He aimed it as if it were a gun at a robin, who took no notice, but, with suddenly lowered head, performed a little mechanical run and then stood still, listening for a worm. “Fly away south, old man! No worms here, unless you listen to my head.” His face did not change expression—he was conscious that it didn’t—but in imagination he heard himself laughing loudly.