The Troubled Air Part 29

"Nothing important," Archer said vaguely, starting out of the room. "Barbante is being foolish ..."

"Clement," Kitty said quietly, "you're going to remember what we talked about, aren't you? I'm in on everything from now on ..."

"I remember," Archer said. "You're in on everything." He smiled sourly. "You'll probably be good and sorry."

"No, I won't," Kitty said. "Never for a minute."

"OK," Archer said, waving, as he started out of the room, "you'll get a full report each night at taps. Satisfied?" He grinned at her from the doorway.

Kitty nodded. "Satisfied," she said.

Archer dressed quickly, putting on his overcoat as he ran down the outside steps to the street. He walked to the corner, looking for a cab. The newsstand on the corner had a fresh pile of newspapers, and after a moment's hesitation, Archer bought a copy of the paper in which he had been attacked the day before. Might as well see what the b.a.s.t.a.r.d has to say about me today, he thought. Looking at the papers spread over the stand, with iron weights on them to keep them from being blown away by the wind, Archer realized that his name was prominent in every one of them. Five million people, he realized, smelling the faint aroma of fresh ink that came from the stand, are reading my name today. Clement Archer, Clement Archer, finally famous after a lifetime of obscurity, well known for one day at the age of forty-five, because of the death of a ninth-rate Viennese musician.

There was a cab parked across the street at a hack stand and he was just about to hail it when another cab swerved in toward him and the driver opened the door. Archer got in and was about to give the driver the address when the driver of the parked cab jumped out of his machine and shouted belligerently across the street, "What's going on here? What the h.e.l.l do you think I park on this corner for? Why don't you use the local people, for Christ's sake?"

"Stuff it, bud," the driver of Archer's cab shouted back. "You don't own the streets." He jerked in the gear shift and the cab spurted up the avenue. Archer looked but the back window. The other man was standing impotently in the gutter, waving his fist angrily, shouting unheard curses over the noise of the traffic. How can a man be so furious, Archer wondered, so early in the morning?

He settled back in his seat and opened the newspaper to the page of columns. He saw his name in the first paragraph and took a deep breath. For a moment, he glanced out of the window at the crowded street.

"Those hack-stand guys," the driver said. "They think they own the cement. Just because they're too lazy to cruise. I'll tell you something. When I take a cab I make it a point never to take one from a stand." The man had a harsh, angry New York voice and he drove the machine as though he had a grudge against it. He was a thin man with gray hair showing under his cap, uneven against his wrinkled neck.

There ought to be a law, Archer thought, looking down at the newspaper which was shaking with the motion of the cab, to make all cab drivers keep their mouths shut while on duty. They're worse than barbers.

Today, he saw, the columnist had decided to be philosophically a.n.a.lytical about Archer. "What sort of man is it," Archer read in the second paragraph, "who is chosen these days to do the dirty work for the yahoos of reaction?" Yahoos of reaction, Archer thought wearily, must they write like that?

"The history of the insignificant hack, Clement Archer," the piece went on, "is a neat case in point. We've done a little research on this frightened little man who tried to hush up the death of a great artist and there are some interesting facts that have come to light."

A great artist, Archer thought dully, staring at the page. Death has promoted Pokorny quickly.

"A nondescript man who wandered from profession to profession," the columnist continued, somehow making a change of jobs sound like a criminal offense, "Archer pretended, in private conversation at least, to be a liberal when it was fashionable and safe, only to jump to the other side at the first crack of his masters' whip; Not content with sending a victim of Hitler's to his grave, this fearful gentleman also lined himself up with the other racist heroes by firing that gifted and beloved Negro comedian, Stanley Atlas, as his very first obedient move. For anyone who happens to believe that Archer was forced into this action, we have absolute proof that Archer has an ironclad contract with the Hurt and Bookstaver Agency which puts ALL HIRING AND FIRING completely in his power."

Archer sighed. It was all so nearly true. He did have the contract, although he would have been fired and paid off if he had attempted to enforce it, and naturally the columnist wouldn't know about that and if he did would not mention it. And Atlas was gifted, and possibly beloved, especially by those who had never met him.

"Hack-stand cabbies," the driver said loudly, over the traffic turmoil. "They cost me thirty-six hundred dollars. I hate them all."

Archer kept quiet, hoping that the man would be discouraged. But he wasn't. "I had a collision," he went on, hunched angrily over his wheel. "With a trolley car. In Brooklyn. Right in front of a stand. Five cabs. The drivers all there, standing in front of the first cab beating their gums. The trolley was beating the light, those trolleys think the sun rises and sets on them, n.o.body else has a right to breathe. I was going with the green, and this G.o.d-d.a.m.n trolley just plows into me. Wreckage. I was scattered for fifty yards. I was laid out in the street like icing. There wasn't enough left of the cab to make a kiddie car. I was blood all over, if you want I could still show you some of the scars. They thought I was dead when the wagon came for me, the doctor was surprised I could breathe, he told me later. My own cab, all paid for. I was in traction eleven weeks and it was summertime, too. I thought my leg was going to drop off. The trolley company sent a man from the insurance, he made me an offer. Four hundred and fifty dollars. For the cab and the personal damages. I spit in his face. If I could've moved I'd have choked him with my bare hands."

The driver honked his horn and jerked the car fiercely, hurling it between two trucks. Occupied, he didn't talk for several moments, and Archer went back to the column.

"But timidity is this gentleman's banner," Archer read, "and he sails under the flag of surrender. He gave up being a teacher, he gave up being a writer, and he gave up being an artist, a liberal and a friend. I do not wish to be uncharitable. In 1942, I have learned, he was rejected by the Army. Since that time, he has taken up Yogi, trying to escape from his sense of failure in deep breathing, vegetarianism and half-baked mysticism. A fellow devotee of Indian culture, a man with whom Archer engages in the weird Oriental rites, is at the moment circulating an appeal for a million names in an effort to present to the UN a motion to outlaw all slaughter animals for food. This gentleman, whose name I am at present withholding to spare him embarra.s.sment at his place of business has a.s.sured me that Mr. Archer shares his sentiments and has offer to add his name to the pet.i.tion."

Archer felt himself beginning to sweat in the cold taxi, as read on. "Ordinarily," the columnist went on, "these high jinx would be dismissed as the harmless if distasteful aberrations of foolish bookworm. But if the believer in Yogi and the crusade against meat suddenly turns up doing the sinister hatchet-work the Imperialist warlords, it is the duty of any honest journalist print the facts. The fact is that the man who was chosen to put the finger on honest and talented artists, is an unstable dabbler outlandish religions who was found unfit to serve his country time of war."

Archer dropped the paper to the floor, unable to read any more He felt dazed and helpless. Where did he get this information, Archer thought heavily. Who could have told him these sad and ludicrous secrets? Why does he want to print them? What did ever do to him to make him hate me this much?

"So I went into court," the cabbie said, glancing over his shoulder to fix Archer's attention. "The lawyer said I had a open a shut case against the company. He subpoenaed the five cabbies as witnesses and we asked for a hundred thousand dollars. And what you think happened? You guessed it, brother. The company paid those five b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Gave them ten bucks a day to testify against me. I got b.a.l.l.s. Eleven weeks in traction in the hospital and I'm still on a cane in the courtroom and I didn't get the sweat off the judge's left nut. In 1936. In Brooklyn. It convinced me," the cabbie said powerfully. "Since that day I volunteer every chance I get for jury duty. I served nine times already. And every time a hand comes up in front of me, I give it to him between the eyes. No matter he's right or he's wrong, no matter if he got hit and got be his legs fractured by a truck going the wrong way on a one-way street-I find against him. With satisfaction. I hate every hackie who ever lived."

"Shut up," Archer said thickly.

"What's that, brother?" The driver turned around in surprise.

"I said shut up and drive. That's all."

"Christ," the driver said obscurely, "you're one of those." He mumbled for the rest of the trip, but not loud enough for Archer to hear him, and he didn't say thank you, even though Archer gave him a quarter tip.

Those are the people who read the newspapers, Archer thought, as he went into the huge gray building where O'Neill and Barbante were waiting for him. Those're the people who make up the juries and hand out justice without fear or favor. G.o.d, what chance does a man have any more?

Barbante was standing at the window of O'Neill's office when Archer came in. The writer needed a shave and he looked as though he had slept in his suit. There were cigarette ashes on his jacket and he was playing with the Venetian blinds on the window, flicking them up and down in jittery, clicking little movements. O'Neill was seated at his desk, doggedly trying to read a script. They weren't talking and it looked as though they had said everything they possibly could say to each other long ago.

"Welcome," said O'Neill grimly, "to Playland." He stood up and made sure the door was closed.

"Good morning, Dom," said Archer quietly. On the way up in the elevator he had made a conscious effort to compose himself. I must behave, he had decided, as though that piece had never come out in the paper and as though no one had ever read it.

"First of all, Clement," Barbante faced slowly around from the window, "I want you to understand that I didn't ask to have you come up here. You didn't have to disturb yourself on my account."

"OK," O'Neill said. "It was my idea. OK."

"I made up my mind," Barbante said, his voice lacking its usual deep timbre and sounding with the first tones of age that Archer had ever noticed in the writer. "I made up my mind to quit last night at exactly ten forty-three in the men's room of Twenty-One."

"Forgive me, boys," Archer said, taking off his coat and throwing it over a chair. "I came in late and I don't know the plot."

"I met Lloyd Hutt over a basin," Barbante said flatly. "He was washing his hands and he was dressed in a becoming shade of blue and I made up my mind."

"What're you talking about, Dom?" Archer asked, trying to be patient, wondering if Barbante had read the paper that morning.

"He was leaning over, being sanitary, and he saw me in the mirror," Barbante said, "and he said, 'What the h.e.l.l is the matter with you anyway, Barbante? I thought I told you to stay away from that funeral.' "

"What?" Archer asked, puzzled. "Did he?"

"It's my fault," O'Neill said. O'Neill looked stubborn and frightened, sitting behind his desk. "Hutt told me to pa.s.s the word around that he didn't want anybody from the program to be seen at the funeral."

Archer took his eyes off Barbante and stared at O'Neill. "But you went yourself," Archer said, feeling that there was a misunderstanding here that would never be unraveled.

"So I did." O'Neill sounded defensive.

"I didn't hear you tell anyone to stay away from the funeral."

"Didn't you?" O'Neill asked flatly. "That's queer. Because I never did say it."

"Insubordination," Barbante said. "There will be a court-martial of trusted lieutenants in the morning for the crime of affection for the dead."

Archer began to understand and pity O'Neill and like him more than he had ever liked him before. "What the h.e.l.l," Archer said to Barbante, "you're not going to quit because Hutt shot off his mouth a little, are you? You went, it's over, Pokorny's buried, at there's nothing Hutt or anybody else can do about it."

"Oh, yes, I'm going to quit," Barbante said in a curious sing-song Archer suddenly realized that the man was drunk. "My golden type writer is withdrawn from the service."

"It's breach of contract, Dom," O'Neill said warningly. "And don't think Hutt won't use it against you. He'll keep you from working anywhere else in radio, or maybe anywhere else in anything."

"I had a vision among the handbowls," Barbante said. "I suddenly saw that I couldn't live if I couldn't go to funerals of my choice, if that's the only way you can sell liniment and foot powder the days, I'm not interested any more."

"In a way," O'Neill said pleadingly, "you can't blame Hutt. He splitting a gut trying to save the program and it's marked lousy in every paper in town this morning with all our pictures and Pokorny being called the Red composer of University Town and juicy excerpts from that b.a.s.t.a.r.d's funeral oration in black type getting a big play from the hyenas. If I had known we were going to get a performance like that, I don't think I would've gone, either."

"Emmet," Barbante said gently, "don't lie. Please-you did a nice thing-don't p.i.s.s on it now."

"I'm not lying," O'Neill shouted. "I mean it. I went to say goodbye to a poor slob who'd had some bad breaks. I didn't think I was going to May Day at the Kremlin."

"Save it," Barbante said, "for your interview with Hurt. You'll need every alibi you can lay your hands on."

"Oh, shut up," O'Neill said. "I'm tired of you."

"Cut it out," Archer said authoritatively. "We're not going to get anywhere by yelling at each other. Dom," he said, "I don't want you to quit. We're tottering as it is. There's n.o.body else who can write this program at the moment and by the time we work in a new man, even if we can find one, we'll be off the air. You'll be responsible for putting fifty people out of work."

"Sorry, Clem," Barbante said. "Every man for himself from here on in. Maybe next week there'll be another funeral I'd want to attend that Hutt didn't approve of. Maybe you'll die, or my father, or Joe Stalin, and I'd get the itch to go even if Hutt thought it was bad for drugs."

"Will you for Christ's sake stop talking about funerals?" O'Neill shouted.

"Freedom of speech, press, religion, and lamentation," Barbante said stubbornly. "The Barbante bill of rights. No death without mourners. For the new Atlantic Charter."

"What're you going to do?" Archer asked, hoping to lead Barbante into more reasonable fields.

"I'm glad you asked that question, Mr. Archer." Barbante smiled theatrically, like a lecturer. "I'm retiring to California to take up two projects that have long been dear to me. I'm going back to my father's ranch and I'm going to get married and write a book ent.i.tled The Dialectics of Atheism." He nodded, smiling insanely.

"Well," O'Neill said heavily to Archer, "you see what I've been getting since nine o'clock this morning."

"I wrote a letter to the Times last night," Barbante said, "outlining my main points. A trial balloon. You might be interested in the opening sentence, O'Neill-'The time has come to consider the abolition of religion before it abolishes us.' "

O'Neill put his head in his hands and groaned. "That's great," he said. "That's all we need now. We'll all be lynched."

"Don't worry," Archer said curtly, wondering how he could get Barbante out of the room. "He didn't write anything. He's kidding."

"Oh, no, I'm not." Barbante smiled like a lunatic child. "I wrote it. Four pages. Closely reasoned, as they say in legal circles."

"When that comes out," O'Neill said, looking up, "you won't have to quit. You'll be busy running."

"Don't be silly, Emmet," Archer said testily. "Even if he wrote it, n.o.body'll print it."

"Maybe I'll have it privately printed," Barbante said dreamily, "and dropped over Radio City from an airplane. A new use for airpower. The attack of reason. Don't be alarmed, O'Neill. It's nor Communist propaganda. The Communists're the worst of all, because in this day and age they're the most religious of all. Faith-faith is the most destructive element because it can't permit dissent or deviation. So the Communists kill the non-Communists or the almost Communists or the doubtful Communists, just the way the Jews killed the Christians and the Christians killed the Jews, and the Catholics killed the Protestants and the Protestants killed the Catholics, and the Crusaders killed the Mohammedans and the Mohammedans killed the Hindus. And right here in this country-the Puritans cut the ears off Quakers and nailed them to the church doors. Faith in a G.o.d or faith in a state or a system of government frightens me and if you had any sense it would frighten you, because one way or another you will be asked to die for it, either fighting against it or defending it. The only way out, the only way we have a chance to survive, is not to believe in anything. Not in G.o.d or our ideas or our people or our anything. The important thing is not to feel too strongly about anything, not have any belief that can be insulted or endangered or that has to be defended."

"Oh, G.o.d," O'Neill said, "do I have to listen to this?"

"I'm sorry," Barbante said mildly. "I thought Clement asked me what I intended to do from now on."

"Dom," Archer asked gently, "when was the last time you had any sleep?"

Barbante smiled weakly. Then he put his hand over his eyes. "Three, four days ago," he said in a whisper. "I don't know. You think I'm a little crazy, don't you, Clem?" he asked slyly.

"Maybe a little." Archer nodded.

"You're right." Barbante chuckled weirdly. "I think you're absolutely right. And if I stayed in this town, in this sinkhole, they'd cart me away in a strait jacket and they'd be giving me the electric-shock treatment morning, noon and night." Suddenly he was pleading with Archer. "I have to quit. You see that, don't you, Clem? I can't go through three more days like this again, can I? A man has to be sure he's got something left, something besides the gold cigarette cases and the nice fat check every Friday. How about you, Clem?" Barbante moved away from the window toward Archer. He didn't walk steadily. He stood close to Archer, short, dull-eyed, creased, smelling stale and liquorish and unperfumed. "What've you got left, Clem? Take stock. Take that good old half-century inventory, Clem. What've you got on the shelves this year, Clem, besides foot-powder and penicillin, Clem?"

"You said you were going to get married," Archer said. He didn't want to talk about himself this morning. "Who's the lady?"

Barbante looked sly and amused. He put his finger beside his nose and squinted craftily. "Haven't decided yet. Circling over the field. Observing the candidates, lying in bed having their breakfasts now, twitching their long, pretty, unsuspecting legs. Got to get something that fits the terrain. California type that can survive in a dry country. Careful choice necessary for experiment in G.o.dless monogamy. We're introducing Brahma bulls. From India. Can live on dew and sagebrush, and even so, an extra hundred pounds of meat in one year. Circling, circling ..." Barbante waved his hand, his fingers pointing down, in a round, insane gesture. "Circling over the pretty little bedrooms."

"The h.e.l.l with it," O'Neill said. "I'm going to tell Hutt we don't want Barbante any more. He's had it."

"Barbante's had it," the writer chanted, moving back toward the window. "Excellent phrase. Descriptive. Slang from World War Number Fourteen. In which we fought. Except me. Except Clem. Except good old Yogi Clem." He winked intimately at Archer. "Secret, Clem. Secret between you, me, and anybody with the price of a nickel newspaper."

"I'm sorry, Clem," O'Neill said soberly. "That sonofab.i.t.c.h Roberts ..."

"Forget it," Archer said curtly, feeling, This is the first time. I have to get used to it. I have to practice not showing anything.

"Don't worry, Clem," Barbante said, "the scientists're at work. Machines to do the work of a thousand men. A thousand scriptwriters. Probably one in the patent office right now. Call up International Business Machines and they probably can deliver one this afternoon. Plug it into the wall and watch the lights blink on and off and take out the next ten copies of University Town two minutes later. Perfect. Untouched by human hand. No trouble with the mechanism that a screw-driver can't fix. Machine guaranteed: to believe in G.o.d, not stay up late at night, not have any political opinions, not get on any blacklists, never want to go to anybody's funeral."

"Oh, G.o.d," O'Neill said, "we're back on that again."

The door opened and Hurt came in without knocking. He looked fresh, as though he had just had a cold shower, and his suit was wonderfully pressed. Whenever Hutt came into a room, Archer realized, you always were struck by the thought that here was a man who was at least ten years older than he looked.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Hutt said. O'Neill stood up and Hutt waved graciously at him to sit down. "It's good of you to arrive so promptly." He smiled, gently at Barbante and Archer as he seated himself on the edge of O'Neill's desk.

His ears have stopped peeling, Archer noticed.

"The well-pressed tyc.o.o.n," Barbante said. "Tell me, Mr. Hutt, who is your tailor?"

Hutt glanced sharply at Barbante, then at O'Neill. O'Neill shook his head. "Not a chance," O'Neill said.

"Have you talked to him, Archer?" Hutt asked.

Archer nodded. "I'm afraid O'Neill's right."

"Barbante's had it," the writer said. "We took a vote."

"Perhaps you'd like to think it over for another day," Hutt said, his voice friendly. "Calmly."

"Haven't got the time to think anything over calmly," said. Barbante. "I'm busy circling." He chuckled.

Hutt looked puzzled for a moment, then, shrugged, and turned to O'Neill and Archer. "How many scripts ahead are we?" He asked.

"Two," said Archer.

"Posthumous Productions, Incorporated," said Barbante gravely. "Additional dialogue by departed writer."

"Perhaps," Hutt said easily, still friendly, to Barbante, "you'd like to go back to your place and rest, Dom. You look all done in."

Barbante shook his head stubbornly. "I like it here. I'm interested in the grownups' conversation."

Hutt examined Barbante coldly, his pale blue eyes taking in the untidy hair, the rumpled, suit stained with cigarette ash, the purplish beard on the pale chin. Then he turned his back on Barbante. "Archer," he said mildly, "there seems to have been some confusion about my instructions yesterday about the funeral."

"There wasn't any confusion, Lloyd," O'Neill said in a low voice. "I didn't tell him."