The Troubled Air Part 25

G.o.d, Archer thought, I don't have to stand here and listen to this. "All right," he said curtly, "see you in Sardi's. Come on, folks."

"Bundle up, dear," Kitty said, as she prepared to leave.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Archer," Barbante said. "I have a fur robe."

The sonofab.i.t.c.h, Archer thought, prepared for everything. Following Nancy and Kitty out of the door, he pa.s.sed Bruce. Bruce stood rigidly against the wall, his face frozen and hurt. The fool, Archer thought, annoyed with Bruce, too. He might have had the sense to invest a couple of dollars at a florist's.

"Come on, Bruce," Barbante took the boy's arm. "Let's go out and have a smoke while the lady rearranges herself for civilian life."

"I don't smoke," Bruce said, allowing himself to be guided out of the room.

"Lucky man," Barbante said. "It's a dirty habit."

Vic chuckled as they went down the corridor.

Vic ordered two bottles of champagne and they were standing in their frosted buckets when Jane came in. Everyone, thought Archer, your wife, your friend, conspires to rush your daughter away from you into maturity. He tried to be sensible and not jealous at the inevitable process, but he knew that he was hurt and disappointed as he thought of Jane wrapped in the fur robe, speeding down the highway, in the open car under the stars, having chosen to make the trip down from the college not with her father, but with another man. He noted, coldly, that Jane was wearing Barbante's green orchids as she came in. His own plain little tea roses were nowhere to be seen. Probably carelessly discarded on the dressing-room table, he thought painfully, with the cold-cream pots and the box of cleansing tissue.

Jane made a showy entrance, very pretty and young and on top of the world, coming into the famous restaurant flanked by two men, warmly conscious that many eyes were on her as she made her way among the tables. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold and her hair was in the windy, fluffed disarray that no woman over twenty-five would dare to exhibit in a public place.

Vic stood up ceremoniously to greet her and Archer found himself on his feet, too. The first time, he realized, that I have stood up in deference to my daughter. Staring at her, approaching the table, her face flavored by youth and the touch of winter, he thought, Please, not so fast. Don't rush. Please don't rush.

"Oh," Jane said, sitting down in the middle of the three chairs that had been left vacant for her and the two men, "it was lovely. The stars were just cold little bubbles sitting on top of Radio City ..."

Literary, Archer thought glumly. For Barbante's benefit.

Jane touched one of the champagne bottles. "And here's some more bubbles. I don't think I can bear going to sleep until the Fourth of July."

"We ordered milk for you," Vic said gravely. "The champagne is for grownups."

"Vic," Jane said, laughing, "don't be a traitorous old poof."

"Come to think of it," Vic said, "I am a little poof-like."

Jane leaned over and touched his hand in a forgiving, womanly, coquettish gesture. "Not really," she said. "You should have heard what the girls were saying about you when you left."

Vic leaned forward, playing the game, holding Jane's hand in both his. "Tell me," he said. "Repeat every word accurately."

"I will not," Jane said. "Nancy'd never forgive me. But they were absolutely prostrated when they heard you were married."

s.e.xual play, Archer thought heavily, that's what they call it in all those heavy books they sell on Sixth Avenue.

The waiter opened the first bottle and they all toasted Jane and she blushed and for a moment looked childish and fl.u.s.tered. But the first few sips of the wine made her eyes glitter and her cheeks flush redder than ever. Everyone talked animatedly, going over the evening, keeping Jane's triumph alive for another hour. Archer made a conscientious effort to like everybody at the table and joined in the conversation, trying not to be censorious as he noticed Jane ignoring Bruce more and more for Barbante. Bruce gulped his wine gloomily and swiftly, suffering under the burden of his youth and his unprivileged position. His eyes soon became glazed and he laughed stiffly and mechanically at moments when he remembered that he intended to look as though he was a debonair gentleman accustomed to good restaurants, fine wines and frivolous women.

No help there, Archer thought, staring coldly at the boy. Not for another ten years.

"It's a nice little play, The Male Animal," Archer heard Barbante saying, his rich, low, condescending voice carrying through the little conversations around him at the table. "But it's a lie."

The word made the others stop talking and they all looked at the writer. Barbante was leaning nonchalantly back in his chair, his deft, dark hands playing with the swizzle stick on the cloth in front of him. He smiled, using his eyelashes, conscious that the audience was now his.

"All comedy is a lie," Barbante went on easily. "For one good reason. What's the definition of a comedy? A play with a happy ending. The hero prospers. He marries the girl of his choice. Virtue triumphs. The audience goes out of the theatre with a false, Utopian sense that the world is better than it really is. In a completely moral society, where the promulgation of truth was mandatory, comedies would be barred from the stage. The authors would be accused of spreading false doctrine and be locked away in jail or beheaded, depending upon the degree of enthusiasm with which the society attempted to keep itself pure. In life, where do we find the happy ending? Who gets the girl of his choice? And having gotten her, how does it turn out? Which one of us sitting at this table believes that the world is arranged for the triumph of virtue? Comedy depends upon the a.s.sumption that most human beings are good at heart. Well, who can look around him today and say, with a straight face, that he believes in that now? Everywhere we see predatory animals, leaping upon each other, tearing each other, dabbling in blood. And, what's more important-enjoying it. Death is our most profound amus.e.m.e.nt. The hunt is the one true symbol of existence-the despair of the victim is the necessary t.i.tillation to the joy of the victor. Pity is a pious afterthought to carnage."

Archer looked around him uneasily, wondering if any of the chattering people at the nearby tables were listening. Was it wise, he thought, for a man whose phone was tapped by the Government to be observed listening to doctrine like this?

"Where is the place for comedy among these ferocious truths?" Barbante demanded. "We put happy endings on the fairy tales we tell children to prepare them for bed, but both we and the children know that we are engaged in fantasy for a sedative purpose. As an adult, I reject that as a function of art. Even if I wanted to accept it, the evidence all around me would prevent it. That play tonight, for example ..." He smiled at Jane. "So persuasively performed. What do you think really would happen if a professor lined himself up so boldly against the established powers? The trustees would demand his scalp, the newspapers would crucify him, his superiors would defend him half-heartedly, then give in to the practical considerations of their own survival. He would be hounded out of his profession, and wind up his life broken and poverty-stricken."

"Oh, Dominic," Vic said lightly, "what a grim fellow you are!"

"Not at all," Barbante said. "I laugh a good deal of the time. That's one of the reasons I never try to write anything more permanent than radio scripts. I'm not properly equipped. I'm too frivolous. I am not in despair, and the only writing that's worth anything must come from the most profound despair. From pain, sickness, hatred, violence, suspicion, loss of hope. It is only the victim who can report the hunt truthfully and I'm too modest to put myself in that enormous role."

"As a father," Archer said, trying to keep his tone light and conversational, "I can't sit at the table and permit my daughter to be exposed to this black religion without saying a word or two on the other side." Jane slowly turned in his direction and watched him, soberly. Neither Nancy nor Kitty, he could tell, were taking the discussion very seriously, merely regarding it as just one more example of the wandering and casuistic theorizing with which men unaccountably amuse themselves late at night after drink. "The idea of comedy," he said, "comes from something that's just as real as despair-the conception that men are fundamentally good-or at least that some men are fundamentally good-that they wish to do good to their neighbors, that over the years they can advance from the jungle philosophy of the victor and the victim-that, in fact, they have advanced ..."

Barbante nodded genially. "I knew you could be depended upon to say something like that, Clem," he said pleasantly. "It does credit to your heart even if it does less credit to your intelligence and powers of observation. Look around you today, Clem ... Can you honestly say that you feel we've advanced, say, from the period of the Pharaohs or the tribal times before that?"

"Yes," Archer said.

"When we send a thousand planes over a city to drop bombs on women and children," Barbante asked, "are we better than the warrior who raided the next village for a wife? When we let loose an atomic bomb and kill a hundred thousand people in a moment, are we better, say, than the Aztec priests who ceremonially slit the throats of human victims on their altars and tore open the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the victims to rip out the still-pumping hearts and offer them up as sacrifices to their G.o.ds? Are those highly civilized people, the Germans, who cremated millions of human beings in their furnaces, better than their ancestors who wore horns on their helmets and ambushed each other along the trails of the Black Forest? Would you say that the Russians, with their torture chambers and Siberian concentration camps and their state labor forces, are better than the Arab slave dealers supplying eleven-year-old eunuchs to the markets of Constantinople? Where are the fundamentally good people you spoke of? On what continent do they operate? Or do you see some obscure intention to do good to your neighbor in dropping a bomb on him or putting him in a furnace? Or is goodness a quality that exists by itself, in a pure state, with no necessity to be reflected in action? Or are we better than the jungle merely because we kill at a distance, impersonally, from thirty thousand feet, or with a state regulation, rather than with our own teeth and claws? Are we less bloodthirsty because we kill more expertly and we are too far away from our victims in their last moments to hear their cries? Are we more holy because we offer up our living sacrifices not to a stone G.o.d, but to the State? Do we pretend that we do not feel the hunter's pleasure when we read in our newspapers that our forces have destroyed another ten thousand of the enemy the day before? No," Barbante said, smiling curiously, speaking so smoothly that Archer was confident he had worked out this argument many times before and had claimed the attention of many gatherings again and again with its horrors, "no, I don't believe we're any worse. We're the same. We're human beings, just as they were, with all our airplanes and automobiles and vacuum tubes. We kill because we take pleasure in it. We're vindictive, crafty and violent, and we like the taste of blood, whether we wipe it off a stone knife or the front page of the latest edition of the New York Daily News. If I were asked to put down, in as few words as possible, my reaction to the human race, I'd merely write, 'Beware us.' "

"Beware. Beware." It was Bruce. He was struggling to his feet, his eyes thick, his face flushed. He had been drinking steadily and he teetered, holding onto the back of his chair. "Beware. He's right, I don't like him, but he's right." Bruce turned inaccurately toward Jane. "You're terrible," he said, as though Barbante's diatribe had given him new insight into the characters of the people around him. "You're a terrible girl."

Jane looked up at him puzzledly for a moment. Then she laughed. "You're a funny boy, Bruce," she said. "You'd better go home."

Bruce bowed, stiffly, a little to one side. "The victim and the victor," he said loudly and ambiguously. Then he bowed again to the company at large. "How was I supposed to know I was expected to send flowers?" he demanded. He shook his head slowly and sadly. "I'm a funny boy," he said. "I'd better go home. Thank you very much. Thank you one and all."

He walked out through the crowded restaurant, holding his head carefully straight on his shoulders, containing his anguish and his loneliness. Archer watched him, half-amused, half-pitying. Jane ought to go after him and say good night, he thought. He looked at his daughter. She wasn't even watching Bruce. Her eyes were on Barbante again and her face looked hard and excited and older than when she had come into the restaurant less than an hour before. Somehow, Archer realized, Barbante had captured her imagination with what he had said, perhaps because by saying it in front of her, and in fact directing it almost completely to her, she had been flattered and made to feel grownup. And perhaps she had felt that there was something wickedly pa.s.sionate, lawlessly cruel and strong in his soft-voiced nihilism, something that awoke forces in her that her protected, easygoing schoolgirl life had never touched until now. Archer hated the expression on his daughter's face.

"Clement, darling," Kitty said, "I think Bruce had the right idea. I think it's about time we were all getting home. I'm awfully tired ..."

"Yep," Vic said, "I'm going to go home and practice up on my despair and start writing The Brothers Karamazov tomorrow."

They all laughed and Jane finished her champagne while Barbante insisted upon taking the check and Archer helped Kitty on with her coat. Standing outside, on the windy street, with all the other lights extinguished and the taxis ranked along the curb, Jane looked up to the faint stars above the glow of the city in the sky. She stretched her arms and said, "I can't. I just can't go home and try to sleep tonight."

"Why try?" Barbante asked. He looked at his watch. "It's early yet. Everything's open but the museums. Why don't we all just keep going?"

"Not me," Vic said. "Thank you very much. My sons wake me at six-thirty every morning. Come on, Nancy." He took his wife's arm. "The old folks're going to retire and leave the new generation to their revels."

Archer waited for Kitty to say something, order Jane, as tactfully as possible, to come home with them. I've acted the policeman enough tonight, he thought resentfully, let her take on some of the responsibility now.

But Kitty, who was half-asleep, standing up and leaning against his arm, merely tried to hide a yawn. "All right, darling. Have a nice time. Just don't come home too late ..."

Archer set his face. Coldly, he said good night to Barbante and to his daughter. He could tell that Jane knew he was angry and he hoped that that realization would drive her home after a half hour or so in a night club or wherever Barbante was taking her.

He got into a cab with Kitty, leaving Barbante and Jane standing on the sidewalk, debating where they wanted to go. Kitty fell asleep immediately against his shoulder as the cab rattled downtown through the dark streets.

At home, Kitty went to bed like a sleepy infant, hardly conscious as Archer helped her undress and tucked her in. Drowsily, she reached up her arms and pulled his head down for a kiss. She smelt warm and soapy and her hair was tumbled around her because she had been too tired to put it up. "Wasn't it nice?" she murmured. "Champagne. Wasn't that boy silly?" She giggled drowsily. "Wasn't Jane beautiful?"

She dropped her arms and closed her eyes. Archer stood up and put out the lamp. He wasn't sleepy. He went downstairs and into his study. The evening papers were there, but they looked stale. All the news, he thought, happened a long time ago. Since then new editions have come out and everything is different.

The telephone reflected the light of the desk lamp blackly. He looked at it curiously. Somewhere, in a bright room, connected to the line, there was a wakeful instrument, ready to note down each inflection of his voice, each word, to be a.s.sayed and put in an obscure future balance. He felt a crazy desire to communicate with the man who finally would listen to what he said over the phone. The blank invading presence lurking behind the instrument should be addressed, questioned, exhorted. "This is the suspect speaking. This is Clement Archer. What am I suspected of? What do you expect me to say? What do you want me to do? What information can I give about myself? I'm forty-five years old and I'm tired. My life is complicated and I'm worried about age, love, money, work, the health of my wife, the virtue of my daughter, the end of the world. As far as I know, I have committed no crimes, but perhaps you have a secret list of actions which have not yet been revealed as crimes but which will be in good time. How do you avoid committing crimes of whose existence you are ignorant? How do you purge yourself of sins which could only exist in the future? I contemplate nothing. I contemplate merely living. From a loftier point of view that is perhaps the grossest sin of all, but I doubt you were linked to my phone to convict me of that. What are your sins? The man who listens to the intricate private conversations of another man necessarily sits in judgment. What standards do you judge by, where are the books of law you use, what is your rect.i.tude, what judgment do you record? Will I ever be told? What are the penalties? Or is the only penalty the knowledge that every time I pick up the instrument to call a shop or tell my daughter I love her, I am overheard? What do you think of me, having heard me speak so often and so candidly, not knowing before this that you were listening? Do you think I am sinful? Do you believe I am guilty-and if so, of what? Have you been moved to pity? Have you chuckled from time to time over the easy jokes I've exchanged with my friends? Do you approve of my wit? Do you sometimes feel like warning me when you discover that I am going to be involved in a business venture that you feel will turn out badly or that I have accepted an invitation to a dinner that you are sure will be boring? Do you hate me? Do you have any feeling or is it requisite to your particular craft to divorce yourself absolutely from all feeling? Have you learned anything from me? Have you pa.s.sed me in the street and said to yourself, 'Why, he looks surprisingly decent.' Is it possible that after listening for a certain length of time, to record after record of unconsidered conversation, you will finally report to your superiors, 'I find the suspect to be an admirable and charming man and fully intend to make his acquaintance and invite him to my home for a drink. He likes Martinis and beer on tap.' Or is it never possible to come to a benevolent conclusion in your field of work? We were talking about hunting this evening, unfortunately out of earshot from you, and one of the gentlemen at the table pointed out that the pleasure of the hunter is only fulfilled with the pain of the hunted. Now, certainly, you are hunting me. Can you only be fulfilled at the price of my pain? Or are you engaged in a particular and curious kind of hunting in which gratification can be gained from the escape of the prey through innocence? On the subject of innocence, what can I say? It is a subject which I have not studied exhaustively as yet, since I have only known that my innocence was at question since 6 o'clock last evening. As far as I know, as I have said, I am innocent, but I must confess that I am no good judge of the matter, since I am committed to using rules and standards that have been made public and are no doubt obsolete. You, sitting in your secret room, wherever it is, have modernized guilt and innocence and operate only under the most up-to-date regulations, which, of course, cannot be revealed. Naturally, my first reaction was one of anger when I discovered that you were observing me. I had two childish and complementary impulses. 'Well,' I thought, like an unfairly punished child who resolves to commit the deed after the punishment in a blind approximation of justice, 'well, if that's what they think of me, I'll show them. I'll give them something really to worry about. If they believe I am disloyal, I will be disloyal.' But, then, what could I do? Go out into the streets and call for the overthrow of the Government? I do not believe in the overthrow of the Government, regardless of what the agents of the Government believe about me. Caught in my own reasonableness I am frozen in inaction. My other impulse was to leave. Abdicate. Go to another country, since my own country had shown its mistrust of me. But, even overlooking the hardships and impracticality of this self-exile, I had to reject it. I am part of the nation. I have profited in it; I have had my fair chance to influence its actions. Feeling grandiloquent, I remember Socrates, who, when he had the opportunity, refused to leave the prison in which he was awaiting the poison, because of his attachment to the state which had doomed him. The laws are my laws-you, sitting in the room listening to the circling wax on which my voice, unknown to me, may already have convicted me-you, as the politicians put it, are my servant, my employee, the extension of my will. In other matters, I rely upon you implicitly. I rely upon you to protect the peace of my home, to defend me against kidnappers, counterfeiters, fraud through the mails, corrupt business practices, domestic riot and political murder, against the peddlers of narcotics, the infringers of copyrights, the adulterers of foods and drugs; a good part of my life is based on the almost unexamined a.s.sumption that you are busy and competent. Now when I find that in the course of what I must consider your proper business I am under your scrutiny, can I fairly say that you are my enemy and that I reject you? If it were in my power to abolish your office, could I, believing that I am an honest man and a responsible citizen, could I properly bring myself to force you to halt, your activities?

"To satisfy my curiosity, I would like to ask you several other questions. How did you happen to decide to tap my line? While listening secretly to another phone, did you hear my number called or my name mentioned? And whose phone would it be? Frances Motherwell's, Mrs. Pokorny's, Hutt's, O'Neill's? And how far have you gone in your supervision of my activities? Are you content with the morsels you glean over the wires or do you read my mail and have me followed by the clever young men I see in the movies? If I look behind me suddenly on the street tomorrow, will I see a figure turning into a doorway or ostentatiously inspecting a window thirty paces away? Have you had a skeleton key made for my front door and have you deftly entered and quietly and expertly gone through my papers some week-end, when the house was empty? Have you read my old, unproduced plays, neatly stacked on the shelf over there? What did you make of the play about Napoleon III, with its study of the tragedy of the weak man who believes he is powerful because he is in a powerful position? Did you think it was hopeless or did you think that with a little polishing, as they say in the theatre, it would run for a season? How complete is your surveillance and how deeply have you gone into my past? Do you remember that I belonged to organizations whose names I have forgotten which raised money or medical supplies or pity for the defenders of Madrid? Do you know for certain that I signed a pet.i.tion to a Southern governor to stay the execution of a Negro boy who was convicted of rape? I remember vaguely that the mimeographed sheet was on my desk a long time ago, but whether I put my name to it or neglected it, I'm not sure. If I write to you or to your superiors in Washington, would you be good enough to send me a resume of my past, succinct, complete and more accurate than my own aging and fading memory can supply me? In the same letter, can you offer for my study the contradictory statements that I have made over the years on so many subjects? Or, to present a character that, in the field of the drama, would be called artistically consistent, do you conscientiously weed out the contradictions, so that the finished product is comprehensible and logical, a character who in Act III can be depended upon to do nothing that could not be predicted in Act I by any intelligent observer? Does your organization, as an agency of the Government, supply this information free of charge, as the Department of Agriculture supplies pamphlets on soil conservation and animal husbandry and as the Department of the Interior supplies charts of channels and sandbanks in inland waters to the owners of pleasure boats? I have seen posters inscribed 'Know Your Government' and when I was a schoolboy I sat through what seemed interminable lessons in a course called Civics, which were designed to teach me the mechanics of democratic rule. Legislative, Executive, Judiciary, the system of checks and balances, I still remember. For I'm afraid I've been lax about my civics lessons in recent years, for I actually know very little about how your organization operates. I know, of course, from admiring newspaper and magazine articles, about the wonderful file of fingerprints in Washington, and the movies have demonstrated again and again how courageous and ingenious your colleagues are in tracking criminals and bringing them to justice, but in these other matters I must confess ignorance. If, as an interested citizen, I were to write a polite letter to the head of your Bureau, asking for clarification and enlightenment, would I get a civil and informative reply? Or, being suspected of treason and espionage, as I must be to warrant the attention you have already paid me, have I forfeited my rights to information about my Government?

"Finally, I must ask, one more question. Are you serious? Do you honestly believe that a man can commit treason or perform the duties of a spy for a foreign government without being conscious of it himself? Is there a new philosophy, created for these confused times, which is based on the concept of unconscious crime? Is this interesting and probably defensible theory the foundation of your activities in my case? Or is your vigil at some midpoint between my study-desk and the telephones of my friends and a.s.sociates the result of that proliferating process of a bureaucracy which blindly and almost biologically enlarges itself by a constant increase in function, however socially useless that increase may be? So, having noted that I was called two or three times on some telephone that you had already tapped, did you conclude that I must be watched and listened to? And, continuing the process, do you find yourself forced to apply clips to the wires of all the people you hear me calling more than once or twice? And, going on from there, do you repeat the process to the instruments of those people who are called by those friends of mine to whom my calls have led you? Where does it stop? What does this gigantic, overheard, secret conversation teach you? What truth have you extracted from this humming torrent of talk? Can you bear it? If you revealed it to us, could we bear it?"

The lamplight glittered on the telephone. Archer stared at the instrument, feeling almost hypnotized in the quiet, shadowed room by the reflection of light from the dial. He stood up wearily and switched off the lamp. He climbed the stairs slowly, looking at his watch. It was three-fifteen. Jane hadn't come in yet, but he was too tired at the moment to worry about that.

Kitty was sleeping soundly, breathing softly. Through the open window, in the distance, came the sound of a siren. An ambulance or a police car wailing on its errand of violence and pain along the dark streets of the city.

Archer undressed quietly and got into the bed which was separated from that of his wife by a small table on which Kitty had piled a book, her gla.s.ses, a sewing basket. The siren sounded far off, anguish dissolving remotely in a sleeping world, as Archer closed his eyes.

18.

THERE WAS A LULL FOR THE NEXT THREE WEEKS. THE PROGRAM WENT along in much the same manner as it had before, the only noticeable difference coming in the parts that Atlas had usually played, which were now being performed by a white man O'Neill had found who was acceptable but ordinary. O'Neill was as polite and agreeable as possible when Archer submitted the lists of actors he wished to cast each week and apologized gently when he told Archer the next day which ones were not acceptable. There were only one or two of those, and not in important parts, and Archer silently and without protest took the subst.i.tutes whom O'Neill offered him. Hutt was never in evidence, and as far as Archer could tell the program neither gained nor lost in popularity because of the shuffling of talent that had taken place. When Archer submitted Alice Weller's name for the fourth week's show, O'Neill made no comment on the choice and pa.s.sed it. Shapiro had turned out to be hopeless in the music department and Levy, the musical director, had asked no questions when Archer had fired Shapiro and hired McCormick, Levy's earlier choice. Barbante seemed to want to avoid Archer after the night of the play at Jane's college, but he turned in clever enough scripts and didn't seem inclined to press Pokorny's case, for which Archer was grateful.

For long periods of time, Archer even forgot that his telephone was tapped, and talked quite normally over it. Even when he remembered, he didn't censor his conversation. Neither Alice nor Pokorny called him during that time, and Archer felt that there was nothing that he might ever say, himself, that could incriminate him in the slightest. From time to time he told himself that he should be angry about the tap and perhaps take steps to have it removed, although just what steps a man could take he couldn't imagine-but finally, he found himself disregarding it, like a soldier in the army in wartime who ignores the fact that all his letters, even the most intimate ones, are being read by an anonymous lieutenant at base headquarters. The despair that had settled on him on the night of the play seemed to have vanished. The magazine that had threatened to expose the people on the program had not run the article, its editors probably placated by the disappearance of Motherwell, Atlas and Pokorny, plus whatever a.s.surances Hutt must have given them. The alarms and disputations of the preceding month now seemed distant and almost unimportant. The question which was discussed most often at the dinner table was whether to go to Cape Cod or Long Island for the summer.

Then, one morning, while Archer was still in bed, Pokorny called. Archer reached over, noticing that Kitty was moving uneasily in her sleep, disturbed by the muted ringing. As he picked up the phone he saw that it was only eight o'clock. For a nickel, he thought angrily, any d.a.m.n fool can annoy you at any time of the day or night.

"h.e.l.lo," he whispered, trying to defend Kitty's rest. "Who's this?"

"Mr. Archer." Archer recognized the high, excited voice immediately. "This is Manfred Pokorny. I hope I have not wakened you, but I wanted to be sure to get you before you went out. I, myself, have been up since five-thirty."

"Yes, Manfred," Archer whispered, annoyed at this customary excess of information. "What do you want?"

"I must see you, Mr. Archer. Right away." Pokorny's voice sounded shrill and urgent, but he sounded urgent about everything, even when merely asking the time of day, Archer remembered. "I would like to come over immediately. I am just around the corner. I could be there in five minutes."

"Manfred," Archer complained, "I'm still in bed."

"Oh. I am so sorry. A thousand apologies. I have been up since five-thirty and I. ... Go back to sleep, Mr. Archer. I will call you later. I didn't mean to ..."

"That's all right, Manfred," Archer said crossly. "It's time I got up anyway. What do you have to see me about?"

"I need some money," Pokorny said shrilly. "I am desperate for funds. Today. I have borrowed from everyone else. You are the last one I can turn to."

Archer hesitated before answering. He looked down at the phone, remembering that every word of the conversation was being recorded. Kitty turned over in bed and opened one eye, frowning.

"Tell him to call later," Kitty said, pressed into the pillow. "Whoever it is."

"Mr. Archer, Mr. Archer ..." Pokorny was almost screaming into the phone. "Are you still there, Mr. Archer?"

"Manfred," Archer said, "it's eight o'clock now. Give me time to dress and have breakfast. Come here at nine o'clock."

"Oh, G.o.d," Kitty groaned into her pillow.

"I knew it," Pokorny said earnestly, "I knew there was one man I could depend on. Good appet.i.te, Mr. Archer."

"What?" Archer asked, puzzled.

"Good appet.i.te. For breakfast," Pokorny explained. "I will be there on the dot. Promptly." He hung up.

Archer put the phone down slowly and looked longingly at his bed. He had been up late the night before reading, and his eyes felt hollow. He stood up, sighing.

"Go to sleep," Kitty whispered, out of her doze. "You'll be dead all day."

Archer didn't answer her. He went into the bathroom and took a cold shower and for a little while he felt wide awake.

He ate his breakfast quickly. He didn't want to be at the table when Pokorny came and have to offer the musician any food or drink. He felt bad enough, Archer decided, without having to watch Pokorny eat so early in the morning.

He was reading the newspaper in his study when the front doorbell rang. The newspaper was no help. Spies were being arrested in Philadelphia and Hungarian officials were disappearing from Budapest, the usual Congressmen were calling the usual Cabinet officers Communists and traitors and the officers were making the usual replies. The jails were slowly filling with college graduates and people you had met at nice parties in the East 60s and 70s.

"I'll get it," Archer called in to Gloria as he stood up and went to the door. The bell was ringing wildly, as though Pokorny felt that he was being pursued and had to get into the house before his pursuers caught up with him.

Pokorny was wearing his pink raincoat and black velour hat. Behind him the day was cold and gray. It was windy and Pokorny was holding onto his hat as he stood outside the door.

"Come in, come in," Archer said. Pokorny took off his hat and trotted in, his face red from the cold, his hair long and uncombed, his eyes, behind the little gla.s.ses, nervous and searching. He was carrying his brief case, and as usual it was bulging.

"Thank you, Mr. Archer," Pokorny said. "It is so good of you to ..." He blew on his hand. "The warmth is welcome," he said. "It's going to snow."

Archer glanced out into the street. All the houses were shut tight under the weight of winter. An old man was walking slowly on the opposite side, blending into the dead colors of the old houses. Archer shivered a little and closed the door.

"Let me have your coat," he said.

"I don't wish to absorb your time," Pokorny said anxiously. "You are, of course, very busy, and what I have to say will only take a minute."

"Give me your coat, Manfred," Archer said irritably. "We can't stand here in the hall." He went behind Pokorny to help him. Pokorny put his hat and brief case down carefully and wriggled fatly out of the trenchcoat. He took the brief case with him when Archer led the way into the study. Pokorny stood in the middle of the room uncomfortably, looking out of place, like a man who knows he is not welcome in most of the rooms he enters.

"Sit down," Archer said, indicating a chair.

"After you," Pokorny said, bowing insanely.

Archer repressed a sigh and sat down behind the desk. Pokorny seated himself on the edge of a stiff wooden chair, keeping his knees together primly, his pudgy hands holding onto the scuffed brief case on his lap.

"This nice room," Pokorny said, looking around him and nodding his head swiftly. "So warm, such evidence of culture ... I always enjoy coming into this room."

"Manfred," Archer said firmly, to lead Pokorny away from his role of the effusive guest, "what were you talking about on the phone?"

"Yes. Of course. Once more I must apologize for the hour. I trust I didn't awaken Mrs. Archer ..."

"That's all right," Archer said, trying to keep the note of impatience from his voice. "Don't worry about it. Now, let's have it ..."

"First of all, Mr. Archer," Pokorny leaned forward, his short legs curving under him so that only his toes touched the floor, "I would like you to understand that it is not a loan. It is an investment. It might be a very good investment, you might look back on this morning and say, 'Thank you, Manfred Pokorny for giving me this excellent commercial opportunity.' "