Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

It won’t matter, because they’ll say I was weak. But I don’t care now, do you see? I can face anyone now, do you see?” He bent to look into Owen’s face, but Owen seemed scarcely to see him. Owen’s head was sagged sideways, resting in his hand. Guy stood up straight. He couldn’t make Owen see, he could feel that Owen wasn’t understanding the main point at all, but that didn’t matter either. “I’ll accept it, whatever they want to do to me. I’ll say the same thing to the police tomorrow.”

“Can you prove it?” Owen asked.

“Prove what? What is there to prove about my killing a man?”

The bottle slipped out of Owen’s fingers and fell onto the floor, but there was so little in it now that almost nothing spilled. “You’re an architect, aren’t you?” Owen asked. “I remember now.” He righted the bottle clumsily, leaving it on the floor.

“What does it matter?”

“I was wondering.”

“Wondering what?” Guy asked impatiently.

“Because you sound a little touched—if you want my honest opinion. Ain’t saying you do.” And behind Owen’s fogged expression now was a simple wariness lest Guy might walk over and hit him for his remark. When he saw that Guy didn’t move, he sat back in his chair again, and slumped lower than before.

Guy groped for a concrete idea to present to Owen. He didn’t want his audience to slip away, indifferent as it was. “Listen, how do you feel about the men you know who’ve killed somebody? How do you treat them? How do you act with them? Do you pass the time of day with them the same as you’d do with anybody else?”

Under Guy’s intense scrutiny, Owen did seem to try to think. Finally he said with a smile, blinking his eyes relaxedly, “Live and let live.”

Anger seized him again. For an instant, it was like a hot vise, holding his body and brain. There were no words for what he felt. Or there were too many words to begin. The word formed itself and spat itself from between his teeth: “Idiot!”

Owen stirred slightly in his chair, but his unruffledness prevailed. He seemed undecided whether to smile or to frown. “What business is it of mine?” he asked firmly.

“What business? Because you—you are a part of society!”

“Well, then it’s society’s business,” Owen replied with a lazy wave of his hand. He was looking at the Scotch bottle, in which only half an inch remained.

What business, Guy thought. Was that his real attitude, or was he drunk? It must be Owen’s attitude. There was no reason for him to lie now. Then he remembered it had been his own attitude when he had suspected Bruno, before Bruno had begun to dog him. Was that most people’s attitude? If so, who was society?

Guy turned his back on Owen. He knew well enough who society was. But the society he had been thinking about in regard to himself, he realized, was the law, was inexorable rules. Society was people like Owen, people like himself, people like—Brillhart, for instance, in Palm Beach. Would Brillhart have reported him? No. He couldn’t imagine Brillhart reporting him. Everyone would leave it for someone else, who would leave it for someone else, and no one would do it. Did he care about rules? Wasn’t it a rule that had kept him tied to Miriam? Wasn’t it a person who was murdered, and therefore people who mattered? If people from Owen to Brillhart didn’t care sufficiently to betray him, should he care any further? Why did he think this morning that he had wanted to give himself up to the police? What masochism was it? He wouldn’t give himself up. What, concretely, did he have on his conscience now? What human being would inform on him?

“Except a stool-pigeon,” Guy said. “I suppose a stool-pigeon would inform.”

“That’s right,” Owen agreed. “A dirty, stinking stool-pigeon.” He gave a loud, relieving laugh.

Guy was staring into space, frowning. He was trying to find solid ground that would carry him to something he had just seen as if by a flash, far ahead of him. The law was not society, it began. Society was people like himself and Owen and Brillhart, who hadn’t the right to take the life of another member of society. And yet the law did. “And yet the law is supposed to be the will of society at least. It isn’t even that. Or maybe it is collectively,” he added, aware that as always he was doubling back before he came to a point, making things as complex as possible in trying to make them certain.

“Hmm-m?” Owen murmured. His head was back against the chair, his black hair tousled over his forehead, and his eyes almost closed.

“No, people collectively might lynch a murderer, but that’s exactly what the law is supposed to guard against.”

“Never hold with lynchings,” Owen said. ‘“S not true! Gives the whole South a bad name—unnec’sarily.”

“My point is, that if society hasn’t the right to take another person’s life, then the law hasn’t either. I mean, considering that the law is a mass of regulations that have been handed down and that nobody can interfere with, no human being can touch. But it’s human beings the law deals with, after all. I’m talking about people like you and me. My case in particular. At the moment, I’m only talking about my case. But that’s only logic. Do you know something, Owen? Logic doesn’t always work out, so far as people go. It’s all very well when you’re building a building, because the material behaves then, but—” His argument went up in smoke. There was a wall that prevented him from saying another word, simply because he couldn’t think any further. He had spoken loudly and distinctly, but he knew Owen hadn’t been hearing, even if he was trying to listen. And yet Owen had been indifferent, five minutes ago, to the question of his guilt. “What about a jury, I wonder,” Guy said.

“What jury?”

“Whether a jury is twelve human beings or a body of laws. It’s an interesting point. I suppose it’s always an interesting point.” He poured the rest of the bottle into his glass and drank it. “But I don’t suppose it’s interesting to you, is it, Owen? What is interesting to you?”

Owen was silent and motionless.

“Nothing is interesting to you, is it?” Guy looked at Owen’s big scuffed brown shoes extended limply on the carpet, the toes tipped inward toward each other, because they rested on their heels. Suddenly, their flaccid, shameless, massive stupidity seemed the essence of all human stupidity. It translated itself instantly into his old antagonism against the passive stupidity of those who stood in the way of the progress of his work, and before he knew how or why, he had kicked, viciously, the side of Owen’s shoe. And still, Owen did not move. His work, Guy thought. Yes, there was his work to get back to. Think later, think it all out right later, but he had work to do.

He looked at his watch. Ten past 12. He didn’t want to sleep here. He wondered if there was a plane tonight. There must be something out. Or a train.

He shook Owen. “Owen, wake up. Owen!”

Owen mumbled a question.

“I think you’ll sleep better at home.”

Owen sat up and said clearly, “That I doubt.”

Guy picked up his topcoat from the bed. He looked around, but he hadn’t left anything because he hadn’t brought anything. It might be better to telephone the airport now, he thought.

“Where’s the John?” Owen stood up. “I don’t feel so good.”

Guy couldn’t find the telephone. There was a wire by the bed table, though. He traced the wire under the bed. The telephone was off the hook, on the floor, and he knew immediately it hadn’t fallen; because both parts were dragged up near the foot of the bed, the hand piece eerily focused on the armchair where Owen had been sitting. Guy pulled the telephone slowly toward him.