Impulse
BY CONRAD AIKEN**************************************
Michael lowes hummed
as he shaved, amused by the \J face he saw—the
pallid, asymmetrical face, with the right .eye so much higher than the left,
and its eyebrow so peculiarly arched, like a “v” turned upside down. Perhaps
this day wouldn't be as bad as the last. In fact, he knew it i wouldn’t be, and
that was why he hummed. This was the bi-weekly day of escape, when he would
stay out for the evening, and play bridge with Hurwitz, Bryant, and Smith.
Should he tell Bora at the breakfast table? No, better not.
Particularly in view of last night’s row about unpaid bills.
And there would be
more of them, probably, beside his plate. The rent. The coal The doctQr who had
attended to the children. Jeez, what a life. Maybe it was time to do a new
jump. And Dora was beginning to get restless again— jgp« But he hummed,
thinking of the bridge game. Not that he liked Hurwitz or Bryant or Smith—cheap
fellows, really —mere pick-up acquaintances. But what could you do about making
friends, when you were always hopping about from one place to another, looking
for a living, and fate always against you I They were all right enough. Good
enough for a little escape, a little party—and Hurwitz always provided good
alcohol. Dinner at the Greek's, and then to Smith’s room—yes. He would wait
till late in the . afternoon, and then telephone to Dora as if it had all come
»up suddenly. Hello, Dora—is that you, old girl? Yes, this is Michael—Smith has
asked me to drop in for a hand of bridge—you know—so I'll just have a little
snack in town.
Home by the last car as usual. Yes. . . . Gooo-bye! ...
And
it all wenf *£ perfectly,
too. Dora was quiet, at bveakfast, but npt hjfctile. The pile of bills was
mere, to be sure* but nothing was
said about them. And while Dora
was busy getting the kids ready for school, he managed to slip out,
pretending that he thought it was later than it really was. Pretty neat, thatl
He hummed again, as he waited for the train. Telooralooraloo. Let the bills
wait, damn theml A man couldn’t do everything at once, could he, when bad luck
hounded him everywhere? And if he could just get a little night off, now and
then, a rest and change, a little diversion, what was the harm in that?
At half-past four he rang up Dora and broke the news to her. He
wouldn’t be home till late.
“Are you sure you’ll be home at all?’’ she said, coolly.
That was Dora’s idea of a joke. But if he could have foreseen—1
He met the others at the Greek restaurant, began with a couple of araks, which warmed him, then went
on to red wine, bad olives, pilaf, and other obscure foods; and considerably later they all walked
along Boylston Street to Smith’s room. It was a cold night, the temperature
below twenty, with a fine dry snow sifting the streets. But Smith's room was
comfortably warm, he trotted out some gin and the Porto Rican cigars, showed
them a new snapshot of Squiggles (his Revere Beach sweetheart), and then they settled
down to a nice long cozy game of bridge.
It was during an intermission, when they all got up to stretch their
legs and renew their drinks, that the talk started—Michael never could remember
which one of them it was who had put in the first oar—about impulse. It might
have been Hurwitz, who was in many ways the only intellectual one of the
three, though hardly what you might call a highbrow. He had his queer
curiosities, however, and the idea was just such as might occur to him. At any
rate, it was he who developed the idea, and with gusto.
“Sure," he said, “anybody might do it. Have you got impulses?
Of course, you got impulses. How many times you think—suppose I do that? And
you don’t do it, because you know damn well if you do it you’ll get arrested.
You meet a man you despise—you want tq^pit in his eye. You see a girl you’d
like to kiss—you want to kiss her. Or maybe just to squeeze her arm when she
staf&fs beside you in the street car. You know what I mean.”
* “Do I know what you mean!” sighed Smith. “I’ll
tell the world. I’ll tell the cock-eyed world! . . .”
| “You would,” said Bryant. “And so would I.”
“It would be easy,” said
Hurwitz, “to give in to it. You know what I mean? So simple. Temptation is too
close. That girl you see is too damn good-looking—she stands too near you—you
just put out your hand it touches her arm— maybe her leg—why worry? And you
think, maybe if she don’t like it I can make believe I didn’t mean it . . .”
“Like these fellows that slash
fur coats with razor blades,” said Michael. “Just impulse, in the beginning,
and only later a habit.”
| "Sure. . . . And like these fellows that
cut off braids of hair with scissors. They just feel like it and do it... Or stealing.”
I "Stealing?” said Bryant
1 “Sure. Why,
I often feel like it. ... I see a nice little thing right in front of me on a
counter—you know, a nice little knife, or necktie, or a box of candy—quick, you
put it in your pocket, and then go to the other counter, or the soda fountain
for a drink. What would be more human? We all want things. Why not take them?
Why not do them? And civilization is only skin-deep. . . .”
|; “That’s right. Skin-deep,” said Bryant.
“But if you were caught, by
God!” said Smith, opening his eyes wide.
“Who's talking about getting caught? ... Who’s talking about doing
it? It isn’t that we do it, it’s only that we want to do it. Why, Christ,
there’s been times when I thought to hell with everything, I’ll kiss that woman
if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It might be,” said Bryant.
Michael was astonished at this
turn of the talk. He had often felt both these impulses. To know that this was
a kind of universal human inclination came over him with something like relief.
“Of course, everybody has those
feelings,” he said smiling. “I have them myself But suppose you did yield to
them?”
“Well, we don’t/' said
Hurwitz.,
“I
know—but suppose you did?” I___ I
Hurwitz shrugged his fat
shoulders, indifferently.
“Oh, well,” he said, “it would
be bad business."
“Jesus, yes,” said Smith,
shuffling the cards.
“Oy,” said
Bryant. ^
|
The game was resumed, the glasses were refilled,
pipes were lit, watches were looked at. Michael had to think of the last car
from Sullivan Square, at eleven-fifty. But also he could not stop thinking of
this strange idea. It was amusing. It was fascinating. Here was everyone
wanting to steal—toothbrushes, or books—or to caress some fascinating stranger
of a female in a subway train—the impulse everywhere—why not be a Columbus of
the moral world and really do it? . . . He remembered stealing a conch- shell
from the drawing room of a neighbor when he was ten—it had been one of the
thrills of his life. He had popped it into his sailor blouse and borne it away
with perfect aplomb. When, later, suspicion had been cast upon him, he had
smashed the shell in his back yard. And often, when he had been looking at
Parker's collection of stamps —the early Americans—
The game interrupted his recollections, and
presently it was time for the usual night-cap. Bryant drove them to Park
Street. Michael was a trifle tight, but not enough to be unsteady on his feet.
He waved a cheery hand at Bryant and Hurwitz and began to trudge through the
snow to the subway entrance. The lights on the snow were very beautiful. The
Park Street Church was ringing, with its queer, soft quarter-bells, the
half-hour. Plenty of time. Plenty of time. Time enough for a visit to the
drugstore, and a hot chocolate—he could see the warm lights of the windows
falling on the snowed sidewalk. He zigzagged across the street and entered.
And at once he was seized with a conviction that his real reason for
entering the drugstore was not to get a hot chocolate—not at all! He was going
to steal something. He was going to put the impulse to the test, and see
whether
(one)
he could manage it with sufficient skill, and (two) whether theft gave him
any real satisfaction. The drugstore was crowded with people who had just come
from the theatre next door. They pushed three deep round the soda fountain, and
the cashier's cage. At the back of the store, in the toilet and prescription
department, there were not so many, but nevertheless enough to give him a fair
chance. All the clerks were busy. His hands were in the side pockets of his
overcoat—they were deep wide pockets and would serve admirably. A quick gesture
over a table or counter, the object dropped in—
Oddly enough, he was not in
the least excited: perhaps that was because of the gin. On the contrary, he was
intensely amused; not to say delighted. He was smiling, as he walked slowly
along the right-hand side of the store toward the back; edging his way amongst
the people, with first one shoulder forward and then the other, while with a
critical and appraising eye he examined the wares piled on the counters and on
the stands in the middle of the floor. There were some extremely attractive
scent-sprays or atomizers—but the dangling bulbs might be troublesome. There
were stacks of boxed letter-paper. A basket full of clothes-brushes. Green
hot-water bottles. Percolators—too large, and out of the question. A tray of multicolored
toothbrushes, bottles of cologne, fountain pens—and then he experienced love at
first sight. There could be no question that he had found his chosen victim.
He gazed, fascinated, at the delicious object—a de luxe safety-razor set, of
heavy gold, in a snakeskin box which was lined with red plush. . . .
It wouldn’t do, however, to
stare at it too long—one of the clerks might notice. He observed quickly the
exact position of the box—which was close to the edge of the glass counter—and
prefigured with a quite precise mental picture the gesture with which he would
simultaneously close it and remove it. Forefinger at the back—thumb in front—
the box drawn forward and then slipped down toward the pocket—as he thought it
out, the muscles in his forearm pleasurably
contracted. He continued his slow progress
round the store, past the prescription
counter, past the candy counter; examined with some show of attention the
display of cigarette lighters and blade sharpeners; and then, with a quick
turn, went leisurely back to his victim. Everything was propitious. The whole
section of counter was clear for the moment—there were neither customers nor
clerks. He approached the counter, leaned over it as if to examine some little
filigreed “compacts” at the back of the showcase, picking up one of them with
his left hand, as he did so. He was thus leaning directly over the box;
and it was the simplest thing in the world to clasp it as planned between thumb
and forefinger of his other hand, to shut it softly, and to slide it downward
to his pocket. It was over in an instant. He continued then for a moment to turn
the compact case this way and that in the light, as if to see it sparkle. It
sparkled very nicely. Then he put it back on the little pile of cases, turned,
and approached the soda fountain—just as Hurwitz had suggested.
He was in the act of pressing forward
m the crowd to ask for his hot chocolate when he felt a firm hand close round
his elbow. He turned, and looked at a man in a slouch hat and dirty raincoat,
with the collar turned up. The man was smiling in a very offensive way.
"I guess you thought that was
pretty slick," he said in a low voice which nevertheless managed to convey
the very essence of venom and hostility. “You come along with me, mister!”
Michael returned the smile
amiably, but was a little frightened. His heart began to beat.
“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” he said, still smiling.
"No, of course not!”
The man was walking toward the rear of
the store, and was pulling Michael along with him, keeping a paralyzing- ly
tight grip on his elbow. Michael was beginning to be angry, but also to be
horrified. He thought of wrenching his arm free, but feared it would make a
scene. Better not. He permitted himself to be urged ignominiously along the
shop, through a gate in the rear counter, and into a
BY CONRAD AIKEN 21
small room at the back, where
a clerk was measuring a yellow liquid into a bottle.
“Will you
be so kind as to explain to me what this is all about?” he then said, with what
frigidity of manner he could muster. But his voice shook a little. The man in
the slouch hat paid no attention. He addressed the clerk instead, giving his
head a quick backward jerk as he spoke. “Get the manager in here,” he said.
He smiled
at Michael, with narrowed eyes, and Michael, hating him, but panic-stricken,
smiled foolishly back at him.
“Now,
look here—” he said.
But the
manager had appeared, and the clerk; and events then happened with revolting
and nauseating speed. Michael’s hand was yanked violently from his pocket, the
fatal snakeskin box was pulled out by the detective, and identified by the
manager and the clerk. They both looked at Michael with a queer expression, in
which astonishment, shame, and contempt were mixed with vague curiosity.
“Sure
that’s ours,” said the manager, looking slowly at Michael.
“I saw
him pinch it,” said the detective. "What about it?” He again smiled
offensively at Michael. “Anything to say?”
“It was
all a joke,” said Michael, his face feeling very hot and flushed. “I made a
kind of bet with some friends. ... I can prove it. I can call them up for you.”
The three
men looked at him in silence, all three of them just faintly smiling, as if
incredulously.
“Sure you
can,” said the detective, urbanely. “You can prove it in court. . . . Now come
along with me, mister.” Michael was astounded at this appalling turn of events,
but his brain still worked. Perhaps if he were to put it to this fellow as man
to man, when they got outside? As he was thinking this, he was firmly conducted
through a back door into a dark alley at the rear of the store. It had stopped
snowing. A cold wind was blowing. But the world, which had looked so beautiful fifteen minutes before, had
now lost its charm. They
walked together down the alley in six inches of powdery snow, the detective
holding Michael’s arm with affectionate firmness.
“No use
calling the wagon,” he said. “We’ll walk. It ain’t far.”
They
walked along Tremont Street. And Michael couldn't help, even then, thinking
what an extraordinary thing this was! Here were all these good people passing
them, and little knowing that he, Michael Lowes, was a thief, a thief by
accident, on his way to jail. It seemed so absurd as hardly to be worth
speaking of! And suppose they shouldn’t believe him? This notion made him
shiver. But it wasn’t possible—no, it wasn’t possible. As soon as he had told
his story, and called up Hurwitz and Bryant and Smith, it would all be laughed
off. Yes, laughed off.
He began
telling the detective about it: how they had discussed such impulses over a
game of bridge. Just a friendly game, ana they had joked about it and then,
just to see what would happen, he had done it. What was it that made his voice
sound so insincere, so hollow? The detective neither slackened his pace nor
turned his head. His business-like grimness was alarming. Michael felt that he
was paying no attention at all; ana, moreover, it occurred to him that this
kind of lowbrow official might not even understand such a thing.... He decided
to try the sentimental.
“And good Lord, man, there’s my wife waiting for
me—l”
“Oh, sure, and the kids too.”
“Yes, and the kids!”
The detective gave a quick leer over the collar
of his dirty raincoat.
“And no Santy Claus this year,” he said.
Michael saw that it was hopeless. He was wasting
his time.
“I can see it’s no use talking to you,” he said stiffly. “You’re so
used to dealing with criminals that you think all mankind is criminal, ex post facto ”
|
A atn
was
|
Arrived at the station, and
presented without decorum to the lieutenant at the desk, Michael tried again.
Something in the faces of the lieutenant and the sergeant, as he told his
story, made it at once apparent that there was going to be trouble. They
obviously didn’t believe him— not for a moment. But after consultation, they
agreed to call up Bryant and Hurwitz and Smith, and to make inquiries. The
sergeant went off to do this, while Michael sat on a wooden bench. Fifteen
minutes passed, during which the clock ticked and the lieutenant wrote slowly
in a book, using a blotter very frequently. A clerk had been dispatched, also,
to look up Michael’s record, if any. This gentleman came back first, and reported
that there was nothing. The lieutenant scarcely looked up from his book, and
went on writing. The first serious blow then fell. The sergeant, reporting,
said that he hadn’t been able to get Smith (of course—Michael thought—he’s off
somewhere with Squiggles) but had got Hurwitz and Bryant. Both of them denied
that there had been any bet. They both seemed nervous, as far as he could make
out over the phone. They said they didn’t know Lowes well, were acquaintances
of his, and made it clear that they didn’t want to be mixed up in anything.
Hurwitz had added that he knew Lowes was hard up.
At this, Michael jumped to his
feet, feeling as if the blood would burst out of his face.
“The damned liars!” he
shouted. “The bloody liars! By God-1”
“Take him away,” said the
lieutenant, lifting his eyebrows, and making a motion with his pen.
Michael lay awake all night in his cell, after
talking for five minutes with Dora on the telephone. Something in Dora’s cool
voice had frightened him more than anything else.
And when Dora came to talk to him the
next morning at nine
o’clock, his alarm proved to be well-founded. Dora was
cold, detached, deliberate. She was not at all
what he had hoped she might be—sympathetic and helpful. She
didn’t
volunteer to get a lawyer, or in fact to do anything— and when she listened
quietly to his story, it seemed to him that she had the appearance of a person
listening to a very improbable lie. Again, as he narrated the perfectly simple
episode—the discussion of "impulse” at the bridge game, the drinks, and
the absurd tipsy desire to try a harmless little experiment—again, as when he
talked to the store detective, he heard his own voice becoming hollow and
insincere. It was exactly as if he knew himself to be guilty. His throat grew
dry, he began to falter, to lose his thread, to use the wrong words. When he
stopped speaking finally, Dora was silent.
“Well, say something!” he said angrily, after a
moment. "Don’t just stare at me. I'm not a criminall”
“I’ll get a lawyer for you,” she answered, "but that’s all I
can do.”
“Look
here, Dora—you don’t mean you—”
He looked at her incredulously. It wasn’t possible that she really
thought him a thief? And suddenly, as he looked at her, he realized how long it
was since he had really known this woman. They had drifted apart. She was embittered,
that was it—embittered by his non-success. All this time she had slowly been
laying up a reserve of resentment. She had resented his inability to make
money for the children, the little dishonesties they had had to commit in the
matter of unpaid bills, the humiliations of duns, the too-frequent removals
from town to town—she had more than once said to him, it was true, that because
of all this she had never had any friends—and she had resented, he knew, his gay
little parties with Hurwitz and Bryant and Smith, implying a little that they
were an extravagance which was to say the least inconsiderate. Perhaps they had been. But was a man to have no
indulgences? . ..
“Perhaps we had better not go into that,” she
said. “Good Lord—you don’t believe me!”
“I’ll get the lawyer—though I don’t know where the fees are to come
from. Our bank account is down to seventy- seven dollars. The rent is due a
week from today. You’ve
got some salary coming, of
course, but I don’t want to touch my own savings, naturally, because the
children and I may need them.”
To be sure. Perfectly just.
Women and children first. Michael thought these things bitterly, but refrained
from saying them. He gazed at this queer cold little female with | intense
curiosity. It was simply extraordinary—simply astonishing. Here she was, seven
years his wife, he thought he knew her inside and out, every quirk of her
handwriting, inflection of voice; her passion for strawberries, her ridiculous
way of singing; the brown moles on her shoulder, the extreme smallness of her
feet and toes, her dislike of silk underwear. Her special voice at the
telephone, too— that rather chilly abruptness, which had always surprised him,
as if she might be a much harder woman than he thought her to be. And the queer
sinuous cat-like rhythm with which she always combed her hair before the mirror
at night, before going to bed—with her head tossing to one side, and one knee
advanced to touch the chest of drawers. He knew all these things, which nobody
else knew, and nevertheless, now, they amounted to nothing. The woman herself
stood before him as opaque as a walk “Of course,” he said, “you’d better keep
your own savings.” His voice was dull. “And you’ll, of course, look up Hurwitz
and the others? They'll appear, I’m sure, and it will be the most important
evidence. In fact, the evidence.” “I’ll ring them up, Michael,” was all she said, and with
that she turned quickly on her heel and went away. . . .
Michael felt doom closing in upon him;
his wits went round in circles; he was in a constant sweat. It wasn’t possible
that he was going to be betrayed? It wasn't possible! He assured himself of
this. He walked back and forth, rubbing his hands together, he kept pulling out
his watch to see what time it was. Five minutes gone. Another five minutes
gone. Damnation, if this lasted too long, this confounded business, he’d lose
his job. If it got into the papers, he might lose it anyway. And suppose it
was true that Hurwitz and Bryant had said what they said—maybe they were
afraid of losing their jobs too. Maybe that was
it!
Good God. . . .
This suspicion was confirmed, when, hours later,
the lawyer came to see him. He reported that Hurwitz, Bryant and Smith had all
three refused flatly to be mixed up in the business. They were all afraid of
the effects of the publicity. If subpenaed, they said, they would state that
they had known Lowes only a short time, had thought him a little eccentric, and
knew him to be hard up. Obviously— and the little lawyer picked his teeth with
the point of his pencil—they could not be summoned. It would be fatal
The Judge, not unnaturally
perhaps, decided that there was a perfectly clear case. There couldn't be the
shadow of a doubt that this man had deliberately stolen an article from the
counter of So-and-so's drugstore. The prisoner had stubbornly maintained that
it was the result of a kind of bet with some friends, but these friends had
refused to give testimony in his behalf. Even his wife's testimony— that he had
never done such a thing before—had seemed rather half-hearted; and she had
admitted, moreover, that Lowes was unsteady, and that they were always living
in a state of something like poverty. Prisoner, further, had once or twice
jumped his rent and had left behind him in Somerville unpaid debts of
considerable size. He was a college man, a man of exceptional education and
origin, and ought to have known better. His general character might be good
enough, but as against all this, here was a perfectly clear case of theft, and
a perfectly clear motive. The prisoner was sentenced to three months in the
house of correction.
By this time, Michael was in a
state of complete stupor. He sat in the box and stared blankly at Dora who sat
very quietly in the second row, as if she were a stranger. She was looking back
at him, with her white face turned a little to one side, as if she too had
never seen him before, and were wondering what sort of people criminals might
be. Human? Sub-human? She lowered her eyes after a moment, and before she had
looked up again, Michael had been touched on the arm and led stumbling out of
the
courtroom. He thought she would of course come to say goodbye to
him, but even in this he was mistaken; she left without a word.
And when he did finally hear from her, after a week, it was in a
very brief note.
“Michael,” it said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t bring up the children
with a criminal for a father, so I’m taking pro- ; ceedings for a divorce. This
is the last straw. It was bad enough to have you always out of work and to have
to slave night and day to keep bread in the children’s mouths. But this is too
much, to have disgrace into the bargain. As it is, we’ll have to move right
away, for the schoolchildren have sent Dolly and Mary home crying three times
already. I’m sorry, and you know how fond I was of you at the beginning, but
you’ve had your chance. You won’t hear from me again. You’ve always been a good
sport, and generous, and I hope you'll make this occasion no exception, and
refrain from contesting the divorce. Goodbye— Dora.”
Michael held the letter in his hands, unseeing, and tears came into
his eyes. He dropped his face against the sheet of notepaper, and rubbed his
forehead to and fro across it...
Little Dolly!... Little Mary! ... Of course. This was what life was. It was
just as meaningless and ridiculous as this; a monstrous joke; a huge injustice.
You couldn’t trust anybody, not even your wife, not even your best friends. You
went on a little lark, and they sent you to prison for it, and your friends
lied about you, and your wife left you. . . .
Contest it? Should he contest the divorce? What was the use? There
was the plain fact: that he had been convicted for stealing. No one had
believed his story of doing it in fun, after a few drinks; the divorce court would be no exception. He
dropped the letter to the floor and turned his heel on it, slowly and bitterly.
Good riddance-good riddance! Let them all go to hell. He would show them. He
would go west, when he came out—get rich, clear his name somehow. . .. But how?
He sat
down on the edge of his bed and thought of Chicago, He
thought of his childhood there, the Lake Shore Drive, Winnetka, the trip to
Niagara Falls with his mother. He could hear the Falls now. He remembered the
Fourth of July on the boat; the crowded examination room at college; the time
he had broken his leg in baseball, when he was fourteen; and the stamp
collection which he had lost at school. He remembered his mother always saying,
“Michael, you must learn to be
orderly”; and the little boy who had died of scarlet fever next door; and the
pink conch-shell smashed in the back yard. His whole life seemed to be composed
of such trivial and infinitely charming little episodes as these; and as he
thought of them, affectionately and with wonder, he'assured himself once more
that he had really been a good man. And how, had it all come to an end? It had
all come foolishly to an end.
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