Advertising; he was an advertising agent; a publicity expert. Presumably not a very good or successful one. What did such fellows do? And how could that be found out?
Two girls, one of them with an Alsatian on a leash, walked for a moment parallel with him.
— And from where I was sitting in the front row of the balcony I could look right down on his little pink bald head—
— Was his wife there too?
— Yes, I suppose it was—
— With red hair? and she has very skinny arms, you can see them when she wears—
He turned to the left, entered the rutted and shabby alley behind Beacon Street, paused to let a car pass, looked in and saw an old lady with a black hat and veil — the fierce bird’s-eyes peered at him and were gone. For some reason he stood still, gazed after the retreating car, watched it swing slowly, bumping over the uneven surface, up the left turn which took it to Beacon Street. A final glimpse of that white and hostile Boston profile and it had vanished. Something in it, as in this wind, the rapid shift of cold spring sunlight with gray shadow, brought him an eclipse: his hatred rose suddenly and sharply, the vision returned to him at last night at Gerta’s, it grew like a tree, thrust darkly and venomously above him, spread violent and lethal boughs to right and left over the hated void. As he stood still in the dusty alley, with tightening arms and hands held hard against his sides, it was himself who thus grew and darkened and obscurely multiplied. He had taken possession of the world. Conscious of his powerful arrogance, his half-closed eyes, his out-going intelligence and limitless vision, he looked to right and left along the alley as far as he could, saw the few people in the distance, knew them, dismissed them. They had not noticed him, and even if they had, they were as unaware of his true reality, his malevolence, as the oak tree is of thunder. If they saw him at all, they saw him simply as a man standing still in a dusty alley, a man with dusty shoes, tall and thin, dressed in a dark suit, his dark hair blown in the wind. Perhaps they thought of him as odd and solitary, or even as absurd and self-conscious: as if to be standing there close to the high brick wall, motionless in the swirling dust, was a kind of awkward pose, something either meaningless or ridiculous. Or shabby and mean.…
Mean!
But how could it be that?
He looked quickly upward toward the sound of an opening window, saw a maid shake a dusting cloth with a downward gesture of the white arm, felt for a moment something inimical in the mere notion of height. To be enclosed thus anonymously between high walls, and as if purposeless, at a standstill — this was to be enacting the “unrecognized” Satan, the Satan in disguise. It was that moment when Satan, humbly clad, has not yet declared himself; skulks in the background; pulls the hood low over his marked bright forehead; has not yet pointed toward the victim his mesmeric forefinger. Certainly there might be a kind of meanness in this, — as there was in any mere solitude. To be alone, in an absolute sense, was also to be mean, as the acorn or the toad is mean. But also to be alone was to be magnificent.…
He gave his laugh again, turning, he had come back again to his starting point, the laughter of the gay wisdom, it was all as clear and beautiful and ominous as a black beetle in a golden blaze of light. The scarab! He was the scarab. And with precisely that kind of hard and precious immortality. And its touch, when K. N. Jones felt it, would be cold.
But the telephone call was imminent, he must get to Gerta’s room, be waiting there, listen — for the first time — to the stranger’s voice. Gerta would not be at home of course, she was at the Museum, working in the print-room — perhaps he would leave a note for her. Crossing Charles Street, he ascended Chestnut, stamped the dust from his shoes, heard the sentences of the dialogue forming, listened intently to the new voice which crept all the way over the hill from an office in School Street. Advertising. The Acme Advertising Agency. The Farrow might be mythical. A one-horse show. Bought out, perhaps. And who went to such a firm for advertising?
When Sally let him in, unsurprised by his request to use the telephone and to leave a note, it was ten minutes to eleven. The room was empty, silent, smelt faintly of turpentine. The blue smock hung over the back of an unpainted chair, the green bowl of apples stood on the sill, the notice of an art show was propped against one of the candles. On the corner table, tilted to the wall, was a new painting — a new Gerta — which obviously she must have concealed the night before. Like all of Gerta’s recent work, it was queer, it surprised him — as if abruptly she had begun speaking in a foreign language. It might be the interior of a lunar volcano, — the inside, the wall, — but it was vascular with silver, encrusted as with heavy silver veins which seemed to have a cold and heavy life, and above this, in a light as dead and clear as terror, were two winged things, not birds, not moths, which appeared to be at dalliance. Above these, in turn, was a little hard pale wafer of a sun.
What did Gerta mean by it?
He took it to the window, held it to the light, saw how heavily crusted was the paint, all that veined interior as solid as a honeycomb, but also with a queer phosphorescent unreality. A strange world, as strange as his own, she was a match for him, it was what he had always liked in her: she had secret depths and heights, there must somewhere be a Kay in her family. She had said — aren’t we both mad?
No.
He replaced the picture, then stood still in the middle of the floor. At this minute, perhaps Jones had his watch in his hand, was putting out his arm toward the telephone, pulling it toward him, waiting. Or perhaps he was walking to and fro in the room, in the little dingy office, unable to sit down, wondering what the mysterious note could mean: and whether it meant a job or not, and why it had come by messenger. Perhaps the bottle of whisky stood on the desk, with a tumbler beside it. And an ash tray littered with matches and cigarette ends. Or had he forgotten the message already? was busy, wouldn’t call at all? It seemed unlikely. The very fact that it had come by Western Union messenger would make it appear all the more urgent.…
Urgent! He little knew.
A faint premonitory buzzing, and then the telephone, as if clearing away an obstruction, began its sharp and rhythmic ringing. For a moment he stood and listened to it, gazed down at it, smiled as he put his hand on it and lifted it, the receiver still unremoved. Beware lest, if thou gazest into the abyss, the abyss gaze also into thee!
— Hello?
— Hello? This is K. N. Jones speaking, of the Acme Advertising Agency. I received a note asking me to call this number—
— I beg your pardon?
— I say I received a note this morning asking me to call—