Conrad Aiken: King Coffin

Yes, that was it, it was the discovery, it was as if suddenly an immense fortune had been left him, the whole population of the world had become his capital, the whole world lay before him or under him like an unconscious victim. He slapped the newspaper down in the chair, walked rapidly toward the cashier’s wire cage, smiled over Mather’s head, while he waited for his change to trickle out of the machine drew a postcard and pencil from his pocket, then against the weighing machine in the lobby addressed the card to Gerta and wrote quickly on the other side: Formula found, dislocation number six.… Superb. With each little accretion of definition the situation became tighter, drew them all more shrewdly and painfully into false and unwilling postures, they came along with him willy-nilly and without knowing where, and he could see exactly with what expression of dismay Gerta would read this latest bulletin: the heels of her hands pressed quiveringly to the sides of her head, then quickly dropped, then a few swift steps across the room and back, the somberly curved mouth a little opened, the witty eyes a little dulled. She would want to call him up on the telephone but wouldn’t dare, she would want to come and see him, she would remain paralyzed until she had heard from him again, at most perhaps daring to write him a note of desperate question. Or would she decide to go away, go back to New York?

Clouds and a wind, the morning was profound, from his own tower of vision he looked down at the sordid little human maze far below him, into which his lightning could now strike freely where it willed, and once more, as he proceeded toward the post office, along Mount Auburn Street, the sense as of a deceptive serenity and leisure arose from his own deployed creation. Deceptive, for of course there was much still unsolved if not insoluble — no, not insoluble, but unsolved, waiting, the actual terminus not yet selected. This day, and the next, and the one after — this week, or the next — the question of time was undoubtedly there, the thing could not be timeless, but must have a time; and in this lay of course the necessity for a decision. Today? begin today? Begin with a definite volition? or allow his feet to take him where they wished? or simply stand in midstream, as it were, and allow the human current to divide itself unconsciously against him until the right “moment” came? Deceptive, yes, for to consider this was at once to be immersed again in the feeling of hurry. And there were also the subsidiary problems, the merely practical ones: the choice of a weapon, the choice of method and place, the actual planning of the deed itself, and whether at a long or short interval after the selection of the victim. Whether with contemplation or with suddenness. And whether or not with precautions against detection?

But no, that element need not enter. He himself would be, from the victim’s viewpoint, a complete stranger: the crime would be completely without reason: all of a sudden the fellow would be dead, no one could possibly be suspected, and that would be the end of it. The management of it should be excessively, almost childishly simple. A brief study of the man’s daily habits, his goings and comings, the discovery of his name, some ordinary ruse to get him to the appointed place at the appointed time — Belmont? Concord? — and there it was. A profound surprise.

But how to select him!

He dropped the postcard in the letter box, turned, recrossed Brattle Square; a small cyclone of dust whirled from the open end of the subway, the clock on the police station tower said a quarter to nine.

A telephone directory opened at random, with the eyes shut, a pencil in hand, the sortes Virgilianae ? He smiled, the notion was not unattractive, the merely geographic possibilities were very rich and unpredictable. Even more delicious if, for example, he were to invite Gerta to do it?… But perhaps that would be premature. For the moment, what seemed most of all desirable was the maintenance of his own deep secrecy, his own inviolable privacy and mystery. Gerta and Toppan and Sandbach, and the shabby little haunters of the C Bookshop on the hill, all these people must be kept in the dark, they must be given a sense of some impending action, some continuous but enigmatic and unfathomable activity; like the leaves and twigs which the spider draws imperceptibly but imperatively together in his nocturnal spinning, each in turn bent together, they must feel but not see, only with daybreak would come — if indeed it were permitted to come to them at all — the revelation that they had been organized into an arbitrary pattern by the will of another and for a purpose unknown. They must be touched, used, made to quiver, but kept in ignorance. This would be their fright, this would be a useful part of his own satisfaction. The whole hated city, this alien city of contemptible ones, the vast nest of rats, would become his own property, his own web.

No Peddlers or Solicitors Allowed in This Building .

He followed the gray coat, the round-shouldered gray coat, with the collar turned up under a black velour hat, past the Personal Bookshop to the Square. A green bag depended from the right hand, full of books, the gait was slack and middle-aged, the knees not quite straightening, the spectacled profile, when it turned to inspect the oncoming traffic from the direction of the subway, was gray and dry and mustached. Standing close behind him, it was possible to observe that the under side of the turned-up collar was worn and unbrushed, that there was cigarette ash on the crown and rim of the hat, and that the hand which suddenly rose to steady it against the wind was veined with an unpleasant blue. A professor, with a nine-o’clock, on his way to Sever or the New Lecture Hall. He balanced in the wind, then decided, but with obvious indecision, to turn left across Brattle Street, at the last minute had to make an ungainly little run, when the traffic signal changed: the whistle shrilling, he scuttled, head down, hand on hat, toward the policeman’s canvas box.

To stand and watch him, as he then veered around the box and darted across the tracks toward the subway entrance, his hand still held anxiously against his hat, the green bag bobbing awkwardly at his side, conspicuous among all the rush of morning pedestrians simply because singled out for observation, was to renew and refresh one’s sense of power: it would be child’s play to follow him, find out who he was: in point of fact, it would be too easy altogether: to send a smile after the retreating figure was in itself, for the moment, a sufficient murder. No, this was not the sort of thing, though it whetted the appetite. Much more interesting, and much more fruitful, was the multiplicity of the morning rush itself. In this, as he began to walk slowly toward the subway, conscious of his great height, and conscious of his consciousness, was the real and unspoiled secret: an immense sense of wealth, a multitude of treasure, into which one merely needed to thrust an exploring hand. On the lower platform, where the ramps converged from the Arlington and Mount Auburn cars, it would be at its best. Moreover, there would be telephone booths, and telephone directories.

Descending the stairs, he crossed the stream of hurrying people and pushed towards the row of illuminated boxes, which looked like the lighted cells of a hive. A good point of vantage. He leaned casually against the edge of a booth, took the book in his hand, opened it at random, and while he watched the crowd let his finger fall on the page. There was a name under his finger, but for a moment he didn’t want to see what it was: instead, he quite calmly smiled at one face and then another and then a third of those that passed him. The last, an old man, bareheaded, turned surprised eyes over his shoulder. Then he looked down. Joseph Kazis, 241 D Street, South Boston. South Boston—! A little remote, perhaps, but just the same, by way of experiment—