Seed on the Wind

“Roundabout.” He grinned. “Since I’ve unearthed the details of your history you think it only fair that I divulge my own, is that it? Nothing simpler. I spent a year in Paris — according to the official Canadian records, at the Sorbonne. I taught mathematics at a college in Ohio. I drove a moving-van in Cleveland. I worked on newspapers in Montreal, Saint Louis, Peoria and Chicago. Two years ago I came to New York. My career has just begun. That, you will notice, is one of the outstanding features of my career, its tendency to keep on beginning. It preserves my enthusiasm and prevents my getting into a rut.”

“You’ve been in New York two years?”

He nodded. “So near and yet so far, is it not? That’s what I was thinking here a little while ago, sitting here, while your boyfriend was trying to stick his tongue out and say boo.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No? How about thinking it?”

“I didn’t think it either.”

“Well, I did.” He had taken the chair nearest her, the one Lewis had sat in earlier in the evening, and now he bent his head and drew his eyebrows down to peer at her. He said abruptly, “I see you’ve got a new watch.”

She stirred a little and put her right hand over her left wrist, then at once removed it again.

“It isn’t new.”

“It’s very pretty. Much nicer than those cumbersome things they used to make. I noticed it, earlier, as soon as I came in the room.” He took his eyes away and directed them at the fire, and after a short silence he went on, “You know, giving you that damn watch was my one undiluted stupidity. I’ve never been able to forget it. It was a symbol, a token of a weakness I disown and the validity of which I deny. Thinking of the watch, naturally I thought of you, I thought of you wearing it—” He broke off shortly, and turned to her, “You did get it? You went back to the room...”

For reply she nodded. His eyes went back to the fire.

“Of course you would. I had no doubt of that. I used to say to myself, well, there was Lora. The pretty little piece who worked in a candy factory and never ran out of money. I used to sing here and there — you can imagine it, you’ve heard me sing: Lora and Petey were lovers, and oh, my, how she could love... Then I’d think of the watch, and I could see you finding it there on the pillow and putting it on... Bah. It made me sick. It interfered with my mitosis, it induced a suspension of function among my viscera.” He turned to her and said abruptly, “Have you still got it?”

“No,” she said, “I’m sorry—”

He said nothing. She went on, “I was in trouble, and I sold it. I was going to have a baby. It was a long time ago.”

She knew perfectly well he would smile with his mouth crooked, but nevertheless she winced a little when she saw it.

“Afterwards, when I got money, I tried to get it back, but it was gone.”

“Splendid!” Pete exclaimed. “You sold it to buy baby clothes. It wasn’t anything to brag about, I suppose by now it’s junk, but if not I’ll bet I know who has it. It is being worn by a clergyman’s wife who lives on Staten Island, and on Sundays when her husband’s watch isn’t running, as it usually isn’t, she lets him take hers to the pulpit with him to time the services by. That’s the watch I bought. Splendid! A worthy fate. It was amusing just now, when you got apologetic. Good lord, have you never heard of the maternal instinct? Its resourcefulness? Its fierce indomitable will? The desperate extremes it will go to? Why, to gain its ends, an instinct like that would sell a grandfather’s clock, even Big Ben himself, let alone one little wristwatch. Which reminds me, on one occasion your instinct seems to have slipped up somewhere. A couple of hours ago you heard me speaking — on a matter of business — regarding some children and their fathers. Four children, and four fathers — probably a record. But why not five? This is just between you and me, it’s not intended for the official dossier. Why not five? The eldest was born in the summer of nineteen-eighteen. There is in the dossier one little hint of the question I’m putting; the man who went west discovered echoes of some old murmurs about infanticide in the inquiry that followed your father’s death; but of course I have other reasons for asking myself, why not five? It occurs to me that you might be willing to help me find the answer.”

He stopped and waited, but Lora said nothing and would not look at him.

“Come,” he persisted, “I don’t claim any rights — even though I’m supposed to have an instinct of my own which should clamor for its destiny — but you’ll admit that my curiosity is valid. I might fairly press for an answer, don’t you think?”

Still she was silent. He was peering at her again.

“I do mean to have an answer,” he insisted. “Do you remember that? The Sunday mornings you would get breakfast at the room, and I would bellow at you, do I get another piece of bacon or do I not, I mean to have an answer, my love. That’s the present situation, I mean to have an answer, my love.”