Conrad Aiken - King Coffin

This was becoming decidedly unpleasant. What was needed was a longer view, a wider horizon, something farther off on which to rest one’s eyes, a voice at the other end of a telephone, the simple reassurance of something known and familiar, even if hated. Gerta? Sandbach? Toppan? A rapid walk to the Square, to Fresh Pond, perhaps the getting out of the Buick and a drive into the counrty? The time-problem, in this fashion—

To think this was automatically to begin moving. Without any clear reason for it, he walked quickly to the street, passed the doctor’s car, then turned up the next path, proceeding thus again to the grotesque shape of the clothes-line in the back yard; and before he knew, had walked completely round the house without once looking at it. There was no sense in this; it was stupid and meaningless, it might even be dangerous; nothing was now to be gained from loitering here, despite his reluctance to go away in the very middle of what was so obviously a “scene.” He could ring the doorbell, of course, making some pretense of an inquiry, participate thus more intimately, perhaps even converse with his victim face to face — but to look up once more at the lighted windows on the third floor, to observe that now everything there was still, no shadows in motion, was also to decide that this too would be meaningless. The smell of ether had sharpened, he turned and walked rapidly towards Huron Avenue, feeling oddly defrauded, oddly reckless. It was curiously as if Jones had deserted him; as if the alliance between them had been denounced; as if he were now, precisely, walking away from the very thing which most clearly symbolized his own reason for living. This was the center, and to walk away from it—

An empty streetcar clattered past the corner, on its way to Harvard Square, he cursed it and turned in the other direction, already finding the angry phrases to telephone to Gerta. I really mean it. Gerta . What exactly did she think she meant? That she had discussed the whole thing, finally, with that dirty Jew Sandbach, told him all about it, cried with her face on his greasy shoulder and his ridiculous short arms about her? That they were working with Toppan? That they had told the police? Toppan would be here again tonight, no doubt, sitting in a car somewhere to watch him. Damn them all, and to hell with them. If they thought for a minute they could match their wits against his genius, against his freedom from scruple — the idea was crazy, he could laugh at it, and as he closed himself into the telephone booth in the drugstore at Gurney Street he was already feeling amused.

— Hello?

— Your dear Jasper speaking. I just wanted to thank you for your card: very kind of you.

Gerta’s voice was very cool, very detached; she said slowly—

— Now look here, Jasper—

— I’m looking with all my teeth.

— I don’t think you are taking quite the right attitude, do you ? I’d be a little more concerned — for you I mean — if I didn’t know of course that the whole thing is a fake.

— Oh, so it’s a fake, is it?

— Obviously, isn’t it, my dear?

— Oh, obviously! I’ve just, for example, been in his house — in his cellar. I suppose that’s a fake. You and your Sandbach make me laugh!

— Of course it’s a fake! I don’t believe a word of it.

— Believe what you like. I assume, of course, we’re talking about King Coffin?

— You and your King Coffin!

— Yes, me and my King Coffin! Size five by two! Silk-lined and silver-handled; you’d be surprised! If you want to come out here, I’ll prove it to you. Is it a bet?

— Thanks, my dear, I’m afraid I’ve got better things to do.

— Suit yourself.

— And incidentally, I thought you were going to the Orpheum tonight.

— Certainly. I did!

— I see. You combined theater and cellar.

— Exactly. It’s been a great success! You’d find a full account of the evening very entertaining, I assure you.

— No, thank you. I’d rather not!

— I might have known you’d get cold feet—

— Call it what you like, my dear—

— I said cold feet .

— And when you come to your senses drop me a picture postcard, won’t you? Good night!

— Gerta — listen—!

He heard the click, listened, she was gone; she had played his own trick on him; he gave a little annoyed laugh, hung the receiver softly on its hook. A fake! It was an ingenious line to take, it did her credit, Gerta was no fool. She had calculated it cunningly to drive him out into the open, force him to show his hand. And so cool about it too. But behind this were other things, other shapes — imponderable but perhaps for that no less definite. She had not yet said anything, or much, to Sandbach, perhaps very little to Toppan. She was still hoping to bluff him, still hoping that she could manage the thing by herself. This much loyalty could still be counted on, to this extent she was loyal in spite of herself, or in spite of Sandbach; and to this extent by implication she was keeping open for him, if he should want it (or as she put it, come to his senses), a line of retreat. She had suggested New York — a holiday in New York. New York! But that was far away, impossible, it was another shape and another design, it was not and could never be in this pattern at all: for better or worse the thing had now taken its own deep direction. Jones was not in that world, nor New York in this, he and Jones were here together, more than ever together — and if the pressure of their queer relationship was becoming hourly more obscure, and hourly more subtle in its underground ramifications, it was perhaps for that very reason all the more tyrannous and inevitable. There could now be no New York, or “other” thing: any more, for example, than there could be life after death.

Life after death!

Exactly. It was like making an engagement for a party, or to meet a friend, or to go to a show, at eight-thirty on the evening following one’s death. Gerta, with her New York, her Sandbach, her painting, her print-room at the Museum, the bowl of apples on the window sill, the life-class at Belmont, the smile from under shaded eyes in the two-year-old photograph, Gerta with her Gertadämmerung and her Russian blouse — this was now already another world, whirled away diminishing into the past or the future, beyond all contact or reality. To think of it was simply to think of an amusing contrapuntal device in time, a synchronization of the impossible. It was an act of laconic leave-taking, a laconic farewell, the cry of a sea gull over the last whirl of froth that marked a sunken ship. The thing was gone.

He found that he was tapping with his fingers against the glass side of the telephone booth, looked down at his stilled hand as if suddenly it belonged to some one else, gave a little shiver. He noticed that he was again standing, as in the path of the Reservoir Street house, in a slightly unnatural way, and with an unnatural tenseness, like an animal that is frightened. The slight surge of the body which is being electrocuted! Relaxing deliberately and angrily, he opened the door, went out, pondering the other project, the idea of ringing up Jones. But this would be better when he got back, this would be better from Hampden. In the meantime—

The man in the white jacket behind the soda fountain was saying to a customer:

— fired for wearing a colored shirt and a wrong haircut.

— What? fired for what?

— For wearing a colored shirt and having the wrong kind of haircut.…

He went out, smelt the smoke from the burning-dump at Fresh Pond, the stars above the mean houses were like sparks borne on the cool north wind, a man and a girl were talking in low voices in a car which was parked at the corner. At the sight of this he stiffened, and turned quickly to the right, as if some sixth sense, some dark animal instinct, had given him warning. It was of course just the sight of people sitting in a parked car, that was all; but it reminded him just the same of Toppan, he had felt sure, he felt sure still, that Toppan was somewhere about, somewhere near. It had the simplicity of a conviction: it was just the right time for Toppan: he had in fact arranged for Toppan: and Toppan would be there. He might be in a car in the southern end of Reservoir Street, or in Huron Avenue itself; but more likely he would be on foot, and near Wyman Square. Or possibly he was even now in the act of walking up from Hampden, but had got quite close, was slowing down and moving cautiously as he drew near the neighborhood. This was excellent in its way, but it was also tedious, it was the little extra something of annoying and belated complication with which, for some reason, he felt reluctant to deal. One’s own past witticisms and ingenuities, one’s own history, in short, could become tiresome. To see Toppan, but to avoid him—