Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [34]
Tod didn’t wait for the undertaker to answer. He had seen Faye pass the door on the arm of one of the Lee sisters. When he caught up with her, he didn’t know what to say. She misunderstood his agitation and was touched. She sobbed a little for him.
She had never looked more beautiful. She was wearing a new, very tight black dress and her platinum hair was tucked up in a shining bun under a black straw sailor. Ever so often, she carried a tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes and made it flutter there for a moment. But all he could think of was that she had earned the money for her outfit on her back.
She grew uneasy under his stare and started to edge away. He caught her arm.
“May I speak with you for a minute, alone?”
Miss Lee took the hint and left.
“What is it?” Faye asked.
“Not here,” he whispered, making mystery out of his uncertainty,
He led her along the hall until he found an empty showroom. On the walls were framed photographs of important funerals and on little stands and tables were samples of coffin materials, and models of tombstones and mausoleums.
Not knowing what to say, he accented his awkwardness, playing the inoffensive fool.
She smiled and became almost friendly.
“Give out, you big dope.”
“A kiss…”
“Sure, baby,” she laughed, “only don’t muss me.” They pecked at each other.
She tried to get away, but he held her. She became annoyed and demanded an explanation. He searched his head for one. It wasn’t his head he should have searched, however.
She was leaning toward him, drooping slightly, but not from fatigue. He had seen young birches droop like that at midday when-they are over-heavy with sun.
“You’re drunk,” she said, pushing him away.
“Please,” he begged.
“Le’go, you bastard.”
Raging at him, she was still beautiful. That was because her beauty was structural like a tree’s, not a quality of her mind or heart. Perhaps even whoring couldn’t damage it for that reason, only age or accident or disease.
In a minute she would scream for help. He had to say something. She wouldn’t understand the aesthetic argument and with what values could he back up the moral one? The economic didn’t make sense either. Whoring certainly paid. Half of the customer’s thirty dollars. Say ten men a week.
She kicked at his shins, but he held on to her. Suddenly he began to talk. He had found an argument. Disease would destroy her beauty. He shouted at her like a Y.M.C.A. lecturer on sex hygiene.
She stopped struggling and held her head down, sobbing fitfully. When he was through, he let go of her arms and she bolted from the room. He groped his way to a carved, marble coffin.
He was still sitting there when a young man in a black jacket and gray striped trousers came in.
“Are you here for the Greener funeral?”
Tod stood up and nodded vaguely.
“The services are beginning,” the man said, then opened a little casket covered with grosgrain satin and took out a dust cloth. Tod watched him go around the showroom wiping off the samples.
“Services have probably started,” the man repeated with a wave at the door.
Tod understood this time and left. The only exit he could find led through the chapel. The moment he entered it, Mrs. Johnson caught him and directed him to a seat. He wanted badly to get away, but it was impossible to do so without making a scene.
Faye was sitting in the front row of benches, facing the pulpit. She had the Lee sisters on one side and Mary Dove and Abe Kusich on the other. Behind them sat the tenants of the San Berdoo, occupying about six rows. Tod was alone in the seventh. After him were several empty rows and then a scattering of men and women who looked very much out of place.
He turned in order not to see Faye’s jerking shoulders and examined the people in the last rows. He knew their kind. While not torchbearers themselves, they would run behind the fire and do a great deal of the shouting. They had come to see Harry buried, hoping for a dramatic incident of some sort, hoping at least