CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XX

Martin met few people; but there was an atmosphere of tension everywhere he walked. It didn’t make any difference what color their eyes were—blue or brown or clay, there was action. Mostly it was antipathy engendered by something the fulcrum of this hate could not understand. Sometimes, however, it was love—a piercing, shrill movement that fell, ageless and sexless, over his shoulders.

He did well with his work at the printing plant and was finally transferred to a night shift where he found, to his relief, that the hours were shorter, thus giving him precious moments that he could spend with Deane or devote to the perfecting of his type design. He liked also the quality of concentrated activity during these working hours at the plant, occasioned in part by the darkness which enveloped the building and grounds. He had no contact with the men around him except at coffeetime; and they, in turn, sensed an indivisible chasm where their thoughts and his whirled in confusion above them.

Once, during the evening, a machine squirted. Theoperator, swearing loudly, kicked back his chair and was picking the lead from his trousers when Martin glanced up, a phrase from the copy still in his mind. He went to the man at once to help him; but the molten metal, already hardened into splinters, had entered the fleshy part of the operator’s leg, and the man, in considerable discomfort, nodded his thanks to Martin and still swearing, softly now to himself, limped out of the room and down the hall.

It was two o’clock in the morning and time for the men to knock off. In the awkward blue light Martin wiped a smear of oil from his cheek. The mirror was so distorted and the light so penetrating that his face seemed one sided and all the lines about his mouth and eyes were pulling in the wrong directions. He washed his hands and face, glanced again into the crazy mirror, buttoned his pea-jacket and headed for his room in Greenwich Village.

His street was in a dimly lighted section made up of rooming houses occupied chiefly by small tradesmen. He had walked several blocks before he stopped to light a cigarette. It was very quiet and through the shabby elms the night seemed beautiful and lonely. As he started on he heard someone behind him. From the sound of the step, it was a woman. Vaguely, he wondered about her; but he walked on briskly, enjoying this brief, cold freedom, then stopped again, looking with interest straight overhead at the same stars he had watchedmove in different latitudes and from different ships. For the second time he heard the steps behind him and turned round. At this, they broke off sharply, but not before Martin had caught a distinctive note in them. They had a giddy pitch that was not purely feminine. His curiosity was aroused. He started down the street once more, walking slowly now, with a precise, even stride. Then he stopped abruptly. The feet behind him tapped on for a second, fluttered, hesitated and stopped again. Suddenly, in Martin’s mind, the unmusical gait gathered motif, meaning and form. He remembered a repulsively ardent smile.... “Carol!” he shouted. There was no answer. Again he tried. “Hi! Carol!” This time his follower ran quickly toward him.

“How did you know it was me, Martin?” asked the boy excitedly, all smiles.

Martin, chameleon-like, studied the dregs of his memory for similar situations or, he thought grimly, singular opportunities; for this was not an element to be faced, but one to be absorbed.

“We all have our characteristics, Carol,” he answered evenly.

“Do you like mine, Martin?” Carol’s plaintive tone softened the eager, beseeching import of his question.

Again Martin hesitated. He well knew that the middle path was not as the Romans had worked it out—a smooth highway, without deviation. He knew that the middle path must fluctuate with both extremes to deserve theterm—which in this case, he observed to himself further with a certain cynical amusement, was between a bitch and a son-of-a-bitch. He took hold of the young man’s arm and spoke to him in a friendly fashion.

“Let’s go on up to my place, Carol,” he said.

On the dark stairs Carol followed close at his heels. Martin could feel little tugs at his coat as the young man hung on to him in a sort of childish panic and Martin had a distinct impression that Carol was groping for his hand. He could feel the boy’s breath on the back of his neck as they continued to climb; and when they reached the dark landing just outside Martin’s room, Carol was still hanging on to him feverishly. Martin fumbled for the keyhole, succeeded in finding it at last, opened the door and turned on a dim light. Carol followed him into the room, sighed with relief and closed the door quickly behind them.

He stood there, just inside, his hand still on the doorknob, gazing around him with wide eyes and obviously taking notes. There was a pallet on the floor in one corner, an old couch across from it and a writing desk in the center of the room. He could see a T-square, erasers and jumbled pieces of paper on the desk beside a miniature of Deane. He turned his head away suddenly at sight of the picture. In another corner of the room was a washbowl with a screen half around it. There was a general air of carelessness about the place which apparentlymade him nervous. Martin could see him straightening up things in his mind.

“It’s really more comfortable than it looks, Carol,” he said, trying to put his guest more at ease. “They keep the rooms warm and that bed sleeps better than it appears.” He unbuttoned his pea-jacket and hung it on a nail on the wall. “Take off your coat, Carol, won’t you?—and tell me what it’s all about. Two o’clock’s an odd time to go creeping after people. Why didn’t you call out?”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” answered the boy, biting his lip. He removed his thickly woven plaid overcoat, looked for a moment at the nail where Martin’s jacket hung, then folded his own coat meticulously, gave it a final pat and placed it with the utmost care over the back of the rocker.

“I don’t like it, when it’s handled that way,” said Martin, keeping his voice smooth. “I prefer a ‘hello.’”

Carol spoke softly.

“I had to follow you. Deane told me where you worked.”

“You asked her?” For the first time, Martin was genuinely annoyed.

Carol smiled unhappily.

“I had to, Martin. I think you’re wonderful.” His round face was ruddy and glowing and his eyes, bright and intent, were fixed on his host.

“Sit down, Carol.” Martin opened the window, pulled his own chair from under the desk and sat down facing him. “That’s strange,” he went on, a bit puzzled. “I thought you disliked me.” He brushed back his hair where the cold wind had rumpled it and sat quietly, staring out the window into the darkness.

Carol shuffled uneasily.

“I did at first. You were mean. I nearly hated you.” He sat forward, well on the edge of his chair. “But I don’t now. I’m different now.”

“Not at all,” said Martin, shaking his head quite seriously. “You’ll feel the same at the last as you did at the first. I’m sure of it.”

“I won’t change, dear Martin. I think you’re God,” the boy answered solemnly.

Martin nodded. Through the insufficient light within the room, the bronze tints of his skin deepened.

“Perhaps I am,” he said.

“Please don’t joke,” said Carol. His voice had acquired a pathetic, pleading quality. “I mean you really are—to me.” He shifted his position so that he could not see Deane’s picture.

“She won’t bite,” said Martin bluntly.

Carol twisted his hands.

“Can’t you see it my way a little bit, Martin?” The boy spoke now with a definite urgency, his words forming an aggressive prayer. “Can’t you changesome?”

“No,” Martin answered. “I can’t see the advantage.”

“Iknow the advantage,” said Carol softly. “I wish you’d try and change just a little bit.” He hesitated, his eyes shining. “I can’t tell you—but I could teach you, Martin.”

“How did this begin, Carol?”

The boy gave him a fond, acquisitive glance.

“It began that afternoon at Deane’s. You took my part. And then, at the drag, you were so beautiful in your yellow gown that I fell in love right away. How did you do your hair? It was perfect!”

“Damned if I know,” said Martin. He stared out the window again.

Carol lowered his head, pouting.

“But it wasn’t fixed the same way after you came down with Drew.”

“No?” asked Martin absently.

“No,” said Carol. “It was pinned different.”

Martin smiled.

“Are you sure,” he asked, “that it wasn’t Drew about whom you were concerned?”

“Oh!” said Carol, flushing, “I never felt that way about Drew. I justloveto talk with him and be a pal; but I never felt about him—like this—” His lips trembled a little. “Maybe I was a little flirty—he’s been so sweet to me; but then I’ve been that way before, and I’ve never been in love. It was all puppy stuff before.”

Martin slumped down in his chair.

“I’ve changed quite a bit in my opinions about things too, Carol,” he said. “But it hasn’t boiled over and I don’t believe it ever will. You know, Carol, that I love Deane.”

The boy leaned forward eagerly.

“Oh, I know lots of boys that like girls,” he replied, nodding his head wisely. “But they like boys, too.” With a timid gesture he reached out and touched Martin’s hand. The back of Martin’s scalp tingled and he felt like shivering; but he did not move.

“It’s no go, Carol,” he said, with finality. “It damned well gives me the creeps.”

Carol leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

“God,” he said, “I wish you’d try.” He bent forward again, making no attempt to restrain his sorrowful desire.

Martin jumped up, a kind of dull horror building into rage. He took Carol roughly by the shoulders.

“God damn you! What’s wrong with you? What the hell’s wrong with all of you? Don’t you like the feel of a woman’s breast? Don’t you like a mouth that’s soft and sweet, instead of a god-damned beard?” He noticed that he was shaking Carol and stopped. He moved back a pace, his face shaded, the perspiration pouring from his brow in streams. “Do you think it’s smart to be this way? Do you think it’s clever?” He closed his fists. “Give me Eve, god damn you! Give me Eve, and take your Adam!”

Carol was weeping softly.

“God,” he said. “I don’t think it’s smart.... Oh, Martin, I’m so lonely. I can’t help how I feel.... Don’t be mad.... I won’t do anything.... Please—” He was rocking back and forth in his helpless grief.

Martin sat down again. His face, which had hardened in the previous moment, lost its straight lines and the color came back to his cheeks. He ran his hand, which was trembling slightly, across his eyes. He sat very straight and stiff.

“I’m sorry, Carol,” he declared sincerely. “I lost my head. I understand.”

But Carol cried out, his palms against his temples, “You understand?You?You don’t understand at all.... The days! The long, wet days!—I can’t stand them alone again!... You don’t know how I was born. How I was raised. My mother died when I was born—Oh! I’d have loved her.... My father took me to a mining camp. There weren’t any women. Even the cook was a man. They played with me, and gave me money.... After my father died, there were more men.... It’s my first thought, and my last.... I wish youdidunderstand. Then you’d justhaveto love me.”

And Martin looked at Carol, at the tears running down his cheeks, at the pain that locked his face into the unknown agonies. He looked at the desk, at the picture of Deane and back again at Carol. And to himself he saidrepeatedly, “What good is compassion now!—What good is compassion now!”

Strangely, he went to Carol, a dark line between his eyes, although there was no frown except one for himself. For a moment he stood facing the boy so steadily and patiently that Carol wet his lips in nervousness, waiting in a kind of stolid anticipation for whatever was to come. Slowly, but with no hesitation, and still regarding the boy with an indefinable expression, Martin raised his hand and laid it on the other’s with such feeling, yet such weight that Carol stepped away and bent his knee as though he had been struck. Then, unresistant to Martin’s comprehensive look—a look so full of search, and surely pain, and perhaps knowing—and calmed by a hand that had found kindness in its power, Carol stepped forward again and held himself as though he were bemused—for so he was, with all his innocence and limitations conflicting with desire. And all the hopeless libido went out of him before this other one who was so straight and quiet and held him like—Carol thought, and thought again—like—and then quite swiftly it was revealed to him; like one man holds another. This chemical transmutation within him was so rapid that even Martin failed to see it. Just the same, as Carol, firmly gripped by Martin in equality, knew himself another man, he lifted his shoulders, stiffened in his new pride as he beheld new vistas; and in an immediate beautysmiled, unknowing that he had left Martin, who dropped his hand, bewildered.

Martin helped the boy on with his coat.

“Carol,” he said, his arm around him, “I want you to know that I’m your friend.” Impulsively he went to his desk and searched through a drawer. He drew out a snapshot and handed it to Carol. “Here I am,” he said, “climbing a king post at the beginning of a bad day.” It was a plain little picture of a ship at a crazy tilt with the sea, and Martin hanging tightly as he worked with a lashing; but Carol put it carefully in his pocket and smiled happily.

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