Part 9

But when he finally did turn his key in the lock, it was as if May, deeply simulating sleep, had been merely lying on the edge of it waiting, so quickly she pounced at him, the castle of her yellow puffs down over one ear and her right eye dragged upward from lying on it.

"May! My dear----"

"Yah, 'dear'--you'd better 'dear' me--leaving me shut up here day after day with a lunatic. Well, you don't need to go no further to hear her side of the story with her lies, lies, lies! You can hear it right here from me. Either that old woman gets out of this house--here--now--to-night--or I go! As God is my witness--I'm through!"

All the little wrinkles came running into his face like sand over paper and he tried to take her in his arms.

"Oh no, you don't! Not this time. A few smooth words can't make up for the all-day hell of living in this house. That old woman goes or I go! I couldn't stand another day of it. You've been a long time choosing, but you've got to chose now! I've tried. I've bit my tongue in two trying. But I'm done."

"Why, May," he said in the sedative tone that must have worn a little rut along his vocal cords from the repetition of it. "I know that Ma's not easy, and there's not a day that I don't think of my girl at home under conditions that aren't just right for her, but she's old, May, and she means well and--and good God, May, a man's mother is a man's mother, little eccentricities and all."

"No--no--we ain't going to argue any more, not while my dress buttons up the back with tiddlywinks. I've been over it all till I'm as crazy loony as she is. You got to decide. This time it's me or her. One of us gets out!"

His nose was like a blade, the nostrils sort of drawn in by the sharpness of his breath, and he stood under the hall light, growing paler and paler as the fatigue lines deepened.

"May! you've never been like this! Has anything unusual happened? My mother--how--where is she?"

"Oh no! Nothing unusual. Just the usual. That's the devil of it! Just the usual, but the camel's back broke to-day. There's no argument. There's just for you to decide which of us gets out." Her body was bent backward in a curve and her head dangling, as if it were a pale lantern weighing down the bamboo pole of her body.

He looked at her and at the shine of her flesh up at him through the lace of her bodice and the old familiar trembling seized him, but he dug with his nails into his palms and his words were all crowded behind his teeth.

"Well then by God--you go!"

It was as if he had stabbed her in the up-thrust of bosom she could always dazzle him with, because she threw out her arms and stood like a great open fan, with the finery of her sleeve drapes falling to the floor.

"Me!"

"You," he said, "yes--yes--you----"

"You don't mean that--Wally."

"I do," he said, still with the jam of words behind his teeth.

For the first time her body sort of unwound itself of its tight theatricalism and she looked at him with her mouth shaped to cry out, but it only quivered.

"If anybody goes out of this house, it's not going to be my mother. Get that! I may be low--but not that low. She stays here!"

"You heard what I got to say," she said.

"Yes, I heard," he said, and looked at her steadily and without the flicker of a muscle. "I heard."

There was a pause that was full of their breathing and then with a lightning gesture she darted out for his hand, but he was too quick for her.

"Wally!"

"No," he said, holding it behind him, "no, none of that."

She darted again and he looked at her coldly and smiled, holding himself on a little oblique that eluded her.

"That don't go this time, May. I'm at the end of my rope here. You have been called upon to make certain sacrifices. I know that. And I don't say they have always been easy ones. But that's part of this game of marriage. Learning to take the hurdles. You haven't taken yours. There's no argument here. Between two women, one of them young and able to take care of herself, and the other seventy years old and--my mother--well, if it's a case of one of them having to go, it's not going to be my mother! This is one of those deadlocks in marriage where there is no solution. A woman either gives in or she--don't. You don't!"

With his body thrust back from her, the words in her mouth were meal, and she knew it and suddenly, with a sinuosity that was rare with her, she had her arms about his knees and her cheek to him and her sobs coming, so that even through the fabric of suiting her warm breath reached him.

"Wally!"

He wrenched himself, but the vise of her arms was relentless, and so with his head held up and his body still tense he stood taut, feeling the tremor of her and finally the wet of her tears--warm--warm--against his knee.

"Get up," he said, with his head back and his body away from her.

"Wally--Wally--for God's sake don't--don't throw me off for her--Wally----."

"Off! Good God, what's a man to do--murder an old woman to get her out of the way of a young one--God--God--what mess have I let myself into! God--God--May--don't----."

"Wally"--her hands were up now against his waistcoat, so that the shape of them burned through, and his face, which he kept averted, was reddening, a slow red that ran down into his collar.

"You can't get me that--way--any--more----" he said, and caught her two hands by the wrists and flung her backward, but she was too quick for him again, and, as if from the momentum of the shove, she was back again, with her arms about his neck, and her lips which were shining with tears, straight and pat against his.

"No--No--May--none of that--no--I say--oh----"

Suddenly it was quiet, and when he lifted his head she was crouched in a cradle his arms made for her and the tears were running heavily down his cheeks.

"I'm tired," he said, crying frankly and daubing his eyes with the back of her hand, "--dog tired" and sank down on a chair in the hallway and she dragged up a stool, an outlandish one on the four curved horns of a bull, and her arms were about his knees again and her shining lips always close enough for him to feel the breath.

"You love me, Wally--I love you--what's the use--you can't give me up----"

He beat his knees.

"God. God. Was ever a man in my plight? I can't give you up. Well, where does that get me? I can't give her up, and the two of you together are making my home a hell. I'm cursed _with_ you and I'm cursed without you. God, God, was ever a man in such hell? I'll be the one to get out--by God--I'll end it--I'll be the one to get out----"

"Wally--Wally, that won't solve anything. That will bust it up for all three. I've got a way out for us. Wally, it's the old woman. I tell you she--she's got to go!"

"And, by God, I tell you, no! My mother doesn't pine out her days alone in a rooming house----"

"No--no, Wally, you don't understand. Why I--you think I'd let her pine out her days in a rooming house? The old woman's sick, Wally. Her mind's sick. The old woman needs a hospital--a fine sunny big hospital where they can take care of her----"

"My mother's not sick--she's--she's old--she's orthodox and she believes so strong it makes her eccentric--she's not sick---."

"She is, Wally. Any doctor would say so. You don't see her all day in the house like I do. You're making me live with a lunatic, Wally."

"You--take that back!"

"You don't know it. But I do. She sits all day talking to herself. I'm afraid of her. I wouldn't ask you to throw her out, Wally. I'm telling you she's got screws loose. She can get violent any time and then you will have trouble. There's institutions. Fine sunny clean ones. She ought to be committed. It's the only way, Wally---to save her--and to save us. You want us to go to hell over a--a loon? Lots of people go crazy on religion--the old woman, Wally--has screws loose--it's against the law not to give her medical treatment--there's plenty places, Wally--fine clean places where they don't even know they're in that kind of a place where she can live in peace and we can stay here in peace. Wally, are you going to throw me over for a poor old woman that's lost her mind? I tell you she's crazy, Wally. What'll you have out of it if I get out and leave you here with a loon? You got to support me. No man can get away without doing his duty to me. You got her and you got me any way you look at it. If one of us got to go, the poor crazy old lady ought to be the one. Get her in a--an--asy--a--hospital, Wally--and that'll leave us here--in our home--together. Wally--poor, tired Wally--home alone--here with his May."

His head fell down against the little cove of her shoulder and he could feel her warm kisses through his hair, and finally when he looked up with the stricken eyes of a St. Bernard dog, the tears ran down over his words.

"I can't give you up, May. My poor mother--she's sick--she needs the best of care--best--institution--she's sick--and she's got--to--go----"

***

Tears. Tears. The dining room looked crazy through the blur of them, and setting out the salt cellars and the vinegar cruet Bertha could scarcely find the table. It waved up at her, Tilted. Ran in little ripples that the tears made. Tears. Tears, The old woman----

She ran down the hall. It shot off in a little ell and on the slant of wall was the door. The door that was between the old woman and the knowing. The bitter knowing that must presently creep toward it and under it like a terrible tide. She crashed through the door and stood trembling in the center of the room.

The night light was burning and the old woman flew up in her vast walnut bed with a cry.

"Wally--who? Ach, Berthie, how you frightened me. I must have been dreaming. My Wally. My Julius--Berthie--it ain't nice you should rush in so on me. You've made me a pain--here. What is it, Berthie--nothing ain't wrong--Wally--home yet? Nothing ain't wrong?"

"Why--no--Mrs. Wallenstein--nothing--I yoost looked in a minute--maybe you want something?"

"No--I--Berthie--you shouldn't rush in so--a pain here--from the fright you gave me--such a pain--my heart--ach no--Berthie--I can't lay down--it's a knife in me--you frightened me so--my heart----"

Her face was so little, and back in the frill of her cap a pointed sort of receding look had set in, and she writhed up from the support of Bertha's arm, against the pain of lying back on the pillows.

"My drops--quick, Berthie--my drops. I--you shouldn't have frightened me--quick--my drops from the doctor."

There they stood, the little colorless phial of them on the table beside the bed. Five of them. Bertha knew how--drop-drop-drop-drop-drop--into a tumbler.

"Berthie--please----"

"No, Mrs. Wallenstein--no--yoost--lay still---- No, not any drops this time--sleep--sh-h-h--no drops--sleep."

"I--my drops--pain--I--I'm so tired, Berthie--hold me--you frightened me so--I was dreaming--my boy--she didn't get him--away from me--she tried, Berthie--I dreamed--but she didn't--he wouldn't--my boy--he stuck to his mama--she's old--she's in the way--but he stuck--why don't you give me my drops, Berthie? I--he stuck by his mama, Berthie----"

"Yes, Mrs. Wallenstein--he stuck----"

"I--I was never so tired--my drops--you should give me my drops--dark--Berthie--yes, Julius--tired--he stuck--my boy--to his mama--didn't he, Berthie?"

"Yes, Mrs. Wallenstein--yes----"

"--tired--my--drops. Wally--oh--God--ouch--oh--oh--ah----"

A sudden lurch forward in Bertha's arms, so that her torso rounded up and left an arch of space between it and the bed.

It was hard to unbend it, because the body had stiffened, and with her cheek to Mrs. Wallenstein's heart, Bertha pressed, pressed gently until the little attitude of convulsion had straightened. It was so quiet there with her cheek to Mrs. Wallenstein's dead heart.

***

A doctor folded the brittle hands. Little gulls skimming the old breast. The preliminaries of death were set in motion. A soul had been set free and mortals were solemn. Almost immediately the shades somehow were down and there was a new odor. The odor of death.

May had gone out like a flame. Her face seemed suddenly very small between the two enormous blobs of pearl earrings, and she had pinned up the flowing sleeves so that she had the plucked, necky look of a fine bird that had lost its feathers, revealing the long pores of dingy flesh.

"Poor Wally. Poor Wally."

He looked at her through tear-scalded eyes that did not see her at all.

"My mother--my poor little mother--gone without a word----"

"Lots of them go that way, Wally. My old woman died in her sleep----"

"God--God, what her poor little life must have been here alone in this room--nights. Mama forgive me. Mama, forgive me."

"She was a good sleeper, Wally. I used to hear her snoring and always tiptoe by the door. I was always careful not to wake her."

May, craven with death.

He looked at her with his eyes full up with misery, and kept repeating over and over again his phrases--"Mama forgive me. Poor little life. I knew what you suffered, mama. There wasn't an hour of the day or night it wasn't over me. I did it. I did it. Mama, mama forgive--why did you leave me----?"

"Wally, you've got your May. Poor, poor Wally, don't cry--ain't you got your May?"

He kissed her wildly, his wet lips smearing over her cheeks and the twisted, crazy look in his eyes.

"Help me--help me to bear my remorse. I used to snap her off. I never had patience with her. We left her alone when we went to the country--alone here--she might have died like a dog--she did die alone--like a dog--alone----"

"No, Wally. No. Bertha was with her!"

"Bertha! Then why didn't she give my mother her drops? She let her die like a dog. That's what the doctor asked--why didn't the person in whose arms she died, give her the drops? Murderer--where is she--get out--where is she--I want her to get out!"

And Bertha, carrying down through the gloom of the hallway the seven branch candlestick for the foot of old lady Wallenstein's bed, stood hearing, her face picked out in light above the pointing flames. A white face, floating in shadow and shining out of the darkness that poured around it.

A clear, prophetic face above the seven lights.

It was then, gazing upon her, that Wally turned on his wife and struck her three times on the very cheek that his lips had smeared. "Mama," he screamed, "forgive me," and smoking hot off his lips came words that had long since lain dead like dried roseleaves in his memory.

Then he turned around on May.

"You go," he said, with his fingers curling inward to form little cages, "go--go--while God gives me strength not to kill you. My mama--my God--my darling, heartbroken mama--you made me a traitor to her--you--you--you! Go--go--or so help me God--if ever I see you again--God strike me dead if I don't kill you."

"Wally--for God's sake--don't--don't! Let me loose. I'll go, Wally. Leave me go, Wally--for God's sake. You hurt! I'll go--Wally."

After a while it was quiet in the house. There was still the little frangipani scent of May in her room, where she had fussed about in the hysteria of packing. It followed her trail along the hallway as she backed down it in terror, her little valise, with a twist of lace caught in the fastening, held out before her. Then the hall door--and out.

Quiet. With the light from the seven candles burning against the transom and out palely into the hall, and Wally silent in there hour after hour, cramped up against the bedside of his dead.

At midnight the first Mourner sprang up. One of the Old Testament women off the stoop in Division Street, and from behind the closed door, when she slid in beside Wally, her cry went down like a rapier into the heart of the silence. A cry that stuck there to the hilt.

Toward morning when the Mourner dozed in a rocker at the foot of the old woman's bed, Wally, who had never moved from his crouch at the headboard, sprang up suddenly, his hair torn down over his face, but his eyes clear.

"Bertha," he called, and ran out to the hallway and into her room. "Bertha--you--you knew! Bertha--you cook! Bertha--Bertha--come--back--Bertha--I see it now--Bertha----"

At that moment, in a dawn that ran thinly along the edge of the roofs, Bertha with her carpetbag hooked to her fingers was walking. East. A wettish wind, the wind before the dawn, blew her all forward. Her skirts. Some strands of her paling yellow hair and the terribly dilapidated old rose on her hat.

There were no pedestrians. Not even milk carts yet. Only Bertha, walking before the wind.

***

Annie Wennerberg was on her back. Tied in a knot there on a cot of a rheumatism that made bulbs of her knuckles, and swelled up her legs as if they had been great goatskin water bags.

It was horrid, coming out of the clear morning, to walk in on her, tucked way back in the lurking room she shared with the Australian sailor when he was in port.

An iron shutter from the warehouse next door blocked the window, so that it was dark and the jet of gas burned in there all day and kept the smells warm. A sickening, stinking room, with Annie knotted into it as fast to its walls as a fungus.

And Annie in all her knots of pain, looked fat--a swollen fat that was the color of the goatskin water bags.

There were several pillows in their dingy tickings stacked behind Annie's back, and a gray blanket wrapped around her legs that were as lifeless looking as an old bundle. Jocko slept up against them.

A child of about fourteen, with a three-cornered face and a three-cornered shawl spanning her little shoulders that were held in as if from the shivers, was spreading a thick paste along a bit of cloth. Antiphlogistine.

Bertha knew. The poultices like those she had made for Annie when she herself was a child! And the cry that met Bertha as she entered. She knew that, too. A whinny.

"I'm sick as a dog--lying here nine weeks come next Monday. My joints won't untie. Nobody to do a turn. You're a lunk or you'd look in on a body year in and year out. Me that raised you and fed you when your tongue might have been hanging out for want of a home. Clean me up--Bertha. There's eight cots upstairs walking away with themselves, and only this brat doing the work of 'em. There's a fruit freighter of boys in to-morrow--clean me up--Bertha."

And so that morning, with her carpetbag and coat on a chair in the kitchen, Bertha moved Annie out of the hot, unaired nest of her blanket, rubbed her with a liniment the doctor from the clinic had left, combed out the gray dribble of hair, and got her back somehow into the knot that was easiest for her to lie in. Poor Annie cried out at Bertha lifting her ever so gently from her huddle, and the little girl's shoulders shivered narrower together, and Jocko let himself be dragged along with the blanket sooner than uncurl out of his warmth. Annie wanted gin terribly and screamed for it. Its acid was what was burning in her joints, but at noon she finally fell asleep, shuddering and groaning. That afternoon, on her hands and knees, Bertha washed down two of the dirty flights of stairs, did the unmentionable chores of slops and bedding, turned over a drunken sailor on his cot, and washed open his grit-bound eyes.

For eleven months, while Annie slowly untwisted and the swelling went down, Bertha scrubbed these floors, tended the twenty cots, and helped countless drunken sailors to bed by pulling off their heavy shoes and piling them, like great lolling sacks of potatoes, underneath the thin gray blankets, sometimes hoisting them upstairs by the armpits, with an occasional boost of her knee from the rear.

One boy died up there one night of delirium tremens. No one could get hold of his arms to twist them behind him. Bertha did finally, squatting on his head as if he were a fallen horse, while a sailor sat on his feet and still another on his middle. He was a Scandinavian with a thin blond beard and a neck as lovely as a woman's. With his wrists tied together he lay back in Bertha's arms. She held him across her lap, he kicking and plunging his shoulders this way and that. It was horrible to feel his great body fling back against her knees and the strange foreign words flying on flecks of foam from his lips. She began to croon to him one of the Polish melodies that she knew somehow with her heart. He turned his eyes to her, and watching the little beating movement her throat made as she sat singing there in the dirty gas light, began to grow quiet. She unloosed his hands. Finally, when the ambulance came he was asleep, with his cheek to her heart and one arm about her neck, like a child. Dead.

Months of these fantastic, sailor-infested nights. Night after night of brawl after brawl. The slapping of hands against the walls of the narrow hallways from the lurching this way and that. Little yellow seamen with eyes that could seem to hang in the darkness of those halls long after they had passed through it. Slant gashes. The squawks and cries of men bestial in their sleep or dreaming of thirst and typhoon, mutiny and sudden death.

The lowing of steamers. Enormous cries, as if a strange breed of sea cattle were swimming in with the tide.

Wide, impersonal nights that the sense of the nearness of the sea could make seem vast and booming. And all these little men of every clime groping in its enormous darkness, dreaming their puny bestial dreams into it, cowing away from the stars, most of them, on their bellies up there on Annie's cots, their lids granulated and their breathing sour.

***

Chita, the little slavey, came every day. She was one of fourteen children in a Minetta Lane tenement and she was as wiry as Jocko and as quick upstairs and down. She never ran her errands but rode her way, curled up in a little cocoon on the back of a truck and dodging the driver's each crack of the whip. She could sidestep a blow from Annie with one beautiful curve of her little body, and once she ran up Bertha's great flank, for all the world like Jocko, and turned a double somersault down off her shoulder.

In winter her hands bled from chapping and her little nose was horrid and her eyes grew into great disks as her face became smaller under the pinch of cold.

Bertha bought her a reefer and mittens at the Sailors' Supply Store and hemmed her two muslin handkerchiefs, which she bunched into dirty little wads, and immediately lost.

She was as incessant as a buzz. Quick, capering, noiseless on her feet. Never actually ill, but always with the head colds and her little arms so skinny that it hurt to see them strain to lift a pail.

This was little Chita who came, as that slow damp winter wore on, to live in the big, dim shadow of Bertha. She was fourteen and Bertha, who knew what the sailors could say in their bestial dreams, kept her close.

It was not a cold year, only sullen and penetrating and full of soot. Bertha and Chita were covered with it. It blew in on the plumes of smoke off the harbor tugs. The furnace belched it out at them. Chita's little face was like a feeble light behind her mask of this soot and, looking in a straight line down her own nose, Bertha could see the black marks, smeared along the flesh.

Sometimes the sailors sent Chita out for stogies or tobacco or beer. She was greedy of the pennies and foreign coins they threw, sometimes sucking them up under her tongue all day and holding her mouth grim and tight when Bertha tried to pry in a finger to force them out.