Conrad Aiken: King Coffin

But it is your own abyss?

The photograph of Gerta was still in his pocket of course, he removed it, dropped it into the top drawer, speculated idly as to the suspended line of thought which it indicated, dismissed it. That was over. For all major intents and purposes, Gerta was over. Dislocation number five. He said it aloud — dislocation number five — walked quickly to the red table, took two postcards from the upright stand and put them in his breast pocket. Perhaps the Findens would be going down in the elevator at the same time. Or Toppan. If Toppan, he would cut him dead, turn his back, not reply if spoken to.

Clouds and a wind. In Massachusetts Avenue the dust whirled under the bright wheels of a streetcar, a dirty black hat was blowing across the street with a small man in pursuit, rolling on its rim, the noise of traffic came all along the street from the Square, windblown and clamorous. The Merle was empty, the bookshop was closed, three starched shirts lay mute in the window of the one-day laundry, and beside them a pair of patent-leather shoes. Liggett’s drugstore, and the telephone booth immediately to the right of the door, and its directory with splayed leaves: he hesitated. The impulse was clear and sharp, it was an obvious enough association of ideas, he had telephoned similarly the night before. But why now? To get her out of bed, wake her, startle her, remind her of the singular bond which now lay heavy between them. Gerta? Yes. Jasper speaking. Yes? Just to remind you, that’s all.… The booth was unoccupied, it would be easy, he enjoyed thinking of her surprise, her agitation, not to mention the mystification in which she would be left. And it would be as well to add: I’m still without a formula.

The effect of daylight on the situation was odd, a little unnatural, like the sudden opening of wide windows into a secret theater, the stage moonlight abruptly dissipated: a queer sort of falseness was introduced, but also an unlooked-for intenseness: as if the actors all had at once to look in a new direction and for something unknown and terrifying. In this light, the events of the night before all turned like weathercocks, the events and the people too, Gerta and Sandbach and Toppan, and the sad little group in the Temple, it was as if they were all present here in Massachusetts Avenue and all turning simultaneously in the wind. Something new, something strange, was lighting and blowing them, as it was lighting and blowing himself; as if the entire constellation had brightened and shifted slightly to the left. It was because he himself had moved forward into another light, another time: he had turned to the left, and they with him.

Yes: their danger had passed.

He saw this in the haberdashery window, which he always looked into as he passed, he saw the phrase as if written there among the shirts and socks and neck ties. New woven madras shirts. New crochet ties. Boston Brace Garters. Varsity Shorts. Bostonia Hats. Double toe and heel hose, three pairs one dollar. Their danger had passed. Hab Ihr Das.

Yes, their danger had passed; he resumed his quick walk in the wind, avoided the faces of the early pedestrians, dropped two cents in the cigar box and took a Herald from beneath the brick, turned down Dunster Street. He would be early enough to breakfast alone, in the far corner at the back, a table to himself on which to spread out the newspaper, he could be undisturbed while he prepared the next step. Breakfast dishes. He surveyed the morning list, tray in hand, the firm little packet of linen-rolled silver under his thumb. Tomato Juice, Poached Egg on Corned Beef Hash Browned, Buttered Toast. He could have these things, himself as well as another, he remained strictly anonymous as he watched the waitress dip the poached egg from the boiling water, but just the same it gave him a sense of remarkable power to stand before her embodying a principle which, had she been able to divine it or understand it, would have made her scream. The composition was of a Bachlike perfection, it was the ideal counterpoint of good and evil.

— Graham toast, please.

— Yes, sir.

But if these were safe, if after all it was not to be a friend, or even an acquaintance—?

He dissected the egg as delicately as one might dissect a thought, looked into the moving liquid, paused. At this point one must go slow. One must be orderly. One must avoid all flurry, all agitation, all unnecessary confusion, work the thing out as neatly and precisely as one would a three-mover in chess. If it was a problem in philosophy, or a problem in esthetics, and as a matter of fact it was a little of both, there could be no room for sentiment and no excuse for excitement. Their danger had passed — Gerta’s and Sandbach’s and Toppan’s, and all the others’—simply because, and it was of course at once extremely obvious, the choice of any one of them would immediately introduce extraneous elements. The murder would not be pure. No matter how slight, there would be some little fringe of emotional complication — his disgust at Sandbach, his idle scorn of Toppan, his contempt — if that was it — for Gerta; there would be this minute chemical trace of motive ; the anonymity would not have been strict. But if not these—

An acquaintance?

He lowered the newspaper, rested his hands flat upon it, surveyed the half empty room of glass-topped tables. The girl who gave out the checks sat at his left, on a high stool, her back turned: she was in the act of estimating the contents of a tray, hesitating, her hands poised over the keys of her machine. The man who was holding the tray was Mather, in the English department. Not very bright, said to be good to his mother, harmless, defensively amiable, weak. No. Neither of them. Nor any one else in the room. Certainly, at any rate, not a woman. It must be a man, he had really known that all along, but what was now also just as unmistakable was that it must be a stranger. A complete stranger! Some one chosen at random.… Absolutely at random.

Mather came towards him tray in hand, nodded ingratiatingly, said good morning, with any encouragement would have sat down at the same table, but he froze him by staring past him. The weak eyes lifted away, the tray swerved in its anxious course, the cautious footsteps moved away forward in the long room, toward the window. The kind of despicable herd-member who was always on the lookout for some one to sit beside, some one to join and confide in. In a moment he would look round to make sure whether Ammen had really recognized him, unwilling to believe that his coldness could have been intentional. He would do this obliquely and with a little cough. And then lower his head tenderly over his hurt little breakfast.

No, certainly not an acquaintance, and certainly not Mather, but just the same to consider Mather was useful, for it served to make clearer the essential principles, moral or esthetic, on which the final decision must be made. To look at Mather was to pity him and despise him — or at any rate to want to pity or despise him — he was despicable and pitiful, or pitiable: to remain completely indifferent to him was impossible. And that, of course — and he slapped both hands on the table and laughed — was exactly the point. The stranger must be someone to whom one could be completely indifferent. He must be neither attractive nor unattractive, not to be loved or pitied, nor hated or feared, some one whose strangeness and anonymity (in the sense that one knew nothing about him and felt nothing) was pure. The face must be quite ordinary, just a face, the bearing and gait must be neither offensive nor enviable, the clothes of a sort of universal characterlessness. In short, it must be simply “a man.” A mere lay figure, or drawing of a man, such as you saw in a newspaper advertisement of ready-made suits for sixteen dollars and fifty cents.