“That's not what I mean! Look, why did you ask me where I was going? That's what I want to know.”
“Well?”
“Well for God's sake don't be so exasperatingâI'm asking you, you're not asking me!” By this time Polly was fairly shouting in his face; this amused Wesley, for he was now staring at her wide-eyed, with his mouth open, in a fixed, sustained glee which was all at once as mirthless as it was tremendously delighted. It seemed as though he were about to burst into guffaws of laughter, but he never did; he only stared at her with roguish stupefaction.
At a point where Polly was ready to be hurt by this uncomplimentary attitude, Wesley squeezed her arm warmly and returned to his beer.
“Where are you from?” pressed Polly.
“Vermont,” mumbled Wesley, his attention fixed on the bartender's operations at the tap.
“What're you doing in New York?”
“I'm on the beach,” was the reply.
“What's that mean?” persisted Polly in her child's wonder.
“What's your name?” posed Wesley, ignoring her question.
“Polly Anderson.”
“Polly AndersonâPretty Polly,” added Wesley.
“What a line!” smirked the girl.
“What's that mean?” smiled Wesley.
“Don't give me that stuff . . . you all try to act so innocent it's pitiful,” commented Polly. “You mean men don't have lines in Vermont? Don't try to kid me, I've been there.”
Wesley had no comment to make; he searched in his pockets and drew out his last quarter.
“Want a beer?” he offered Polly.
“Sureâlet's drink them at my table; come on over and join the party.”
Wesley purchased the beers and carried them over to the booth, where Polly was directing a new seating arrangement. When they had seated themselves side by side, Polly introduced her new friend briefly as “Wes.”
“What do you do, feller?” inquired the man addressed as Everhart, who sat in the corner peering slyly through horn-rimmed glasses toward Wesley.
Wesley glanced briefly at his interrogator and shrugged. This silence fascinated Everhart; for the next few minutes, while the party regained its chatty frolic,
Everhart studied the stranger; once, when Wesley glanced at Everhart and found him ogling from behind the fantastic spectacles, their eyes locked in combat, Wesley's cool and non-committal, Everhart's a searching challenge, the look of the brazen skeptic.
As the night now wore on, the girls and George Day in particular became exceedingly boisterous; George, whose strange fancy had thought of something, was now laughing with a painful grimace; he was trying to relate the object of his mirth, but when he would reach the funny part of the incident which amused him so, and was about to impart the humor to the rest of them, he would suddenly convulse in laughter. The result was infectious: the girls screamed, Everhart chuckled, and Polly, head on Wesley's shoulder, found herself unable to stop giggling.
Wesley for his part, found George's dilemma as amusing as he had Polly's impatience earlier in the evening, so that now he stared with open-mouthed, wide-eyed astonishment at the former, an expression of amusement as droll in itself as anything its wearer would ever wish to see.
For the most part, Wesley was not drunk: he had by now consumed five glasses of beer, and since joining the party in the booth, five small glasses of straight gin which Everhart had cheerfully offered to pay for. But the atmosphere of the bar, its heavy smoke and odor of assorted
hard liquors and beer, its rattle of sounds, and the constant loud beat of music from the nickelodeon served to cloud his senses, to hammer them into muffled submission with a slow, delirious, exotic rhythm. Enough of this, and Wesley was as good as drunk; he usually could drink much more. Slowly, he began to feel a tingle in his limbs, and he found his head swaying occasionally from side to side. Polly's head began to weigh heavily on his shoulder. Wesley, as was his wont when drunk, or at least almost drunk, began to hold a silence as stubborn as the imperturbability which accompanied it. Thus, while Everhart spoke, Wesley listened, but chose to do so in strict, unresponsive silence.
Everhart, now quite intoxicated, could do nothing but talk; and talk he did, though his audience seemed more concerned with maintaining the ridiculous gravity of drunkards. No one was listening, unless it was Wesley in his oblique manner; one of the girls had fallen asleep.
“What do I tell them when they want to know what I want to do in life?” intoned Everhart, addressing them all with profound sincerity. “I tell them only what I won't do; as for the other thing, I do not know, so I do not say.”
Everhart finished his drink hastily and went on: “My knowledge of life is negative only: I know what's wrong, but I don't know what's good . . . don't misinterpret me,
fellows and girls . . . I'm not saying there is no good. You see, good means perfection to me . . .”
“Shut up, Everhart,” interposed George drunkenly.
“. . . and evil, or wrong, means imperfection. My world is imperfect, there is no perfection in it, and thus no real good. And so I measure things in the light of their imperfection, or wrong; on that basis, I can say what is not good, but I refuse to dawdle about what is supposed good. . . .”
Polly yawned loudly; Wesley lit up another cigarette.
“I'm not a happy man,” confessed Everhart, “but I know what I'm doing. I know what I know when it comes to John Donne and the Bard; I can tell my classes what they mean. I would go so far as to say I understand Shakespeare thoroughlyâhe, like myself, was aware of more imperfection than is generally suspected. We agree on Othello, who, but for his native gullibility and naiveté, would find in Iago a harmless little termite's spite, as weak and impotent as it is inconsequential. And Romeo, with his fanciful impatience! And Hamlet! Imperfection, imperfection! There
is
no good; there is no basis for good, and no basis for moral. . . .”
“Stop grating in my ear!” interrupted George, “I'm not one of your stupid students.”
“Blah!” added one of the girls.
“Yes!” sang Everhart. “A high hope for a low heaven! Shakespeare said that in
Love's Labour's Lost
! Ay! There it is! A low heaven, and high-hoped men . . . but fellows and girls, I can't complain: I have a good post in the University, as we are fond to call it; and I live happily with my aged father and impetuous young brother in a comfortable apartment; I eat regularly, I sleep well; I drink enough beer; I read books and attend innumerable cultural affairs; and I know a few women. . . .”
“Is that so!” cried George, leaning his head to sleep through the monologue.
“But that is all beside the point,” decided Everhart. “The revolution of the proletariat is the only thing today, and if it isn't, then it is something allied with itâSocialism, international anti-Fascism. Revolt has always been with us, but we now find it
in force.
The writing of this war's peace will be full of fireworks . . . there are two definitions for postwar peace: The good peace and the sensible peace. The sensible peace, as we all know, is the business man's peace; but of
course
the business man wants a sensible peace based on the traditions of Americaâhe's a business man, he's in business! This the radicals overlook: they forget the business man depends as much on business as the radicals depend on private support . . . take each away from each and the two classes disappear as classes. The business
man wants to exist tooâbut naturally he's prone to exist at the expense of others, and so the radicals are not blind to wrong. What I want to know is, if the radicals do
not
approve of economic liberalism, or laissez-faire, or private enterprise. . . .”
“Or what you will!” added George.
“Yes . . . if so, what do the radicals approve of? Plenty, of course: I respect their cognizance of wrong, but I fail to see the good they visualize; perfect states, as is the case with the younger and whackier radicals. But the older ones, with their quiet talk about a country where a man can do his work and benefit from this work; where he can also exist in cooperative security rather than in competitive hysteriaâthese older radicals are a bit more discerning, but I still doubt if they know what's good: they only know what's wrong, like me. Their dreams are beautiful, but insufficient, improbable, and most of all short of the mark.”
“Why is that so?” Everhart asked himself. “It is so because the progressive movement makes no provision for the spirit: it's strictly a materialistic movement, it is limited. True, a world of economic equality and cooperative cheer might foster greater things for the spiritâresurgences in culture, Renaissancesâbut, in the main, it's a materialistic doctrine, and a shortsighted one. It is not as
visionary as the Marxists believe. I say, spiritual movements for the spirit! And yet, fellow and gentlewomen, who can deny Socialism? Who can stand up and call Socialism an evil, when in the furthest reaches of one's conscience, one
knows
it is morally true? But is it a Good? No! It is only a rejection, shall we say, of the no-Good . . . and until it proves otherwise, in the mill of time, I will not embrace it fervently, I will only sympathize with it. I must search on . . .”
“Search on!” cried George, waving his arm dramatically.
“And in the process, I shall be free: if the process denies me freedom, I will not search on. I shall be free at all times, at all costs: the spirit flourishes only in the free.”
“Time marches on!” suggested Polly wearily.
“Do you know something?” posed Everhart.
“Yes I do!” announced George.
“The socialists will fight for freedom, win and write the peaceâin this war or the next, and they will die having lived for the inviolable rights of man. And then will come the Humanists, when the way will have been paved for them, and these Humanistsâgreat scientists, thinkers, organizers of knowledge, teachers, leaders . . . in short, builders, fixers, developers . . . shall lay down the foundations, in the days of no-war, for the future world
of never-war. The Humanists will work and pave the way for the final and fabulous race of men, who will come on the earth in an era which the world has been bleeding toward for centuries, the era of universal peace and culture. This final, fabulous, and inevitable race of men will have nothing to do but practice culture, lounge around in creative contemplation, eat, make love, travel, converse, sleep, dream, and urinate into plastic toilets. In brief, the Great Romanticists will have arrived in full force, free to fulfill
all
of the functions of humanity, with no other worry in the world except that Englishmen still prefer Shakespeare while the world reads Everhart!”
George looked up briefly from his position under the table, where he had gone in search of an errant dime: “Why Bill, why didn't you tell me you were going to be a writer.”
Bill Everhart waved an nonchalant palm: “After all this, don't you think I'd make a splendid writer?”
George made a wry face: “Stick to teaching. I think you'd make a smelly writer. Besides, Everhart, you're a hopeless pedagogue, and academic pain in the neck, and an officious little odious pedant.”
“In short, Bill,” added Polly with a dry smile, “you're a louse.”
“And a bull-slinger to boot,” said George. “A little knickknack pouting on the shelf of time,” snuffing down his nose with obvious relish, “and a nub on the face of things.”
Polly began to giggle again, her long white neck craned downward revealing the fragile crucifix chain she wore. Wesley gazed at her affectionately, and placing his hand about the back of her neck, he turned her face toward his and kissed the surprised, parted lips. He found them instantly responsive and frankly passionate. Polly laughed and buried her face in his lapel, her bobbed hair a lavish brown pillow for his leaning cheek.
“Day, I still think you're a scullion,” accused Everhart.
“Oh for gossakes stop this crazy talk! I'm tired. Let's go!” This was spoken by Eve, the girl who had fallen asleep. She turned to her companion, yawning: “Aren't you tired, Ginger?”
Ginger, who had maintained a bored silence most of the night, except to occasionally exchange kisses with her escort, Everhart, now yawned an affirmative reply.
“Hell no! We were supposed to get stinking drunk tonight,” objected Polly from Wesley's shoulder. “We haven't done any drinking!”
“Well, let them get a bottle . . . I want to get out of this place, we've been here long enough,” said Eve, removing
a small mirror from her purse . . . “Oh heck, I look fiendish!”
“You haven't said much tonight, feller,” said Ginger, smiling toward Wesley teasingly. She was rewarded with a thin, curving smile.
“Isn't he cute!” cried Polly, delighted.
Wesley lifted his hand playfully, as if to strike her.
“Where do you want to go now?” asked George of Eve.
“Oh let's go up. We can play the portable and dance. Besides, I've got a pair of rayons to wash for tomorrow morning.”
“I thought you washed them this afternoon!” said Ginger.
“I started to read a True Story Magazine and forgot all about them.”
“Dopey!”
“Let's be frolicsome!” suggested Everhart, slapping the table. “I want to get blind loaded.”
“You are already, shortypants,” said Ginger. “Eve, will you wash my silk stockings while you're at it . . . I need them for tomorrow night.”
“I will if you pick up my toaster at Macy's tomorrow.”
“Oh but I have to model tomorrow afternoon from two till four,” protested Ginger, turning full body toward the
other. They both reflected for a few moments while George Day yawned. “But you can pick it up after!” cried Eve.