It was this point perhaps, as much as any that might do his case some good, that he meant to make when he rose and interrupted.
“What?” the third dining partner asked.
“I object,” he said wearily.
“What’s your objection?”
“My objection is I’m starving,” a convict said behind him. “What about some food?”
“They’re going to try to bring over some Cokes and snacks from the canteen tonight,” Harold Flesh said.
“What about the chits? I didn’t bring no chits with me.”
“Special credits,” Flesh said. “The warden worked it out.”
“I had an objection,” Feldman said. He was still standing, looking at the third dining partner.
“Well, I already asked you what it was,” the man said irritably. “Do you need an engraved invitation?”
“The evidence,” Feldman said. He indicated with a lame backhand gesture the book that the librarian was holding.
“What about it?”
“It’s all hearsay,” Feldman said.
“Yes?”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Well, it’s hearsay.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Feldman shrugged and sat back down.
Once more they took up their charges, and again he was conscious of sickness, as if the dry sound of their recitations had power to stir his old fever. Even after he had lost all interest in what they were saying, he made himself listen, but he found he could be attentive only to their mistakes. Some of their statements were contradictory, and he forced himself mechanically to rise and point out the discrepancies. They heard his objections indifferently, and then continued when he had finished, no more concerned or deflected by his words than if they had been coughing spells. After a while he no longer bothered to rise when to make their case or press a point they juggled the truth, but offered his objections from where he reclined on the cot, and then, his strength declining, mumbled them to himself. At last, when even this effort proved too great, he just perceptibly moved his lips, twitching at their calumnies out of some empty but not-to-be-sacrificed form, their deceptions encouraging in him only the last bland energies of superstition, as someone too lazy to seek wood to touch accepts whatever is handy and touches that.
“How’s it going?” Walls asked. They were standing by the food wagon that he and Manfred Sky had pushed into the cellblock.
Feldman shrugged. “Can I get a Coke? Do you have sandwiches?”
“Sure, Leo. Excuse me a minute,” Walls said. “Hey, you guys, where you going with them cups and wrappers? The guard wants the stuff stowed in this litter can.” He turned back to Feldman. “What’ll it be, Leo?”
“Soda. A couple of sandwiches.”
“You got the chits?”
“The warden’s arranged credit.”
“Well…” Walls said doubtfully.
“Come on, Walls. What’s going on?”
“Leo…kid…the rest of these guys’ll be around to pay it back.”
Feldman nodded. Then the idea had been to deprive him. Psychological warfare, redundant here as the built-in scream of a bomb. He started back to his place.
“Just kidding, Leo. Here.” Walls tossed him two sandwiches and marked something down in a ledger. Feldman chewed them dutifully, unable to recall five minutes later what he had eaten. Giving him credit could have been psychological too, he thought, inspiring false confidence, like the presence of enemy ministers on visits of state. Their Prime Minister dances with our President’s daughter. Their field marshal kisses the hand of our First Lady. The bombs will not fall tonight, we think. Not much they won’t.
The food restored them, and they brought a new spirit to their attack. No longer did they need to refer to the book or take recourse in distortion. Though they had touched on his life with Lilly and their son earlier, they went over the ground now in detail.
“Once, at supper,” a convict said, “Feldman made them play ‘To Tell the Truth.’ It’s a game on television, where three people, all claiming to be the same person, answer questions about their lives for a panel, who then try to guess the right person. Feldman made Billy be the panel, and he and Lilly were the contestants. ‘My name is Lilly Feldman,’ he told the kid. ‘I married my husband, Leo Feldman, and came to live with him in this city, where he owns a department store.’ Then Billy had to ask questions. ‘Do you have a son?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ Feldman said, ‘his name is Billy.’ ‘Do you have a son?’ he asked his mother. ‘Say “Lilly Feldman number two,” ’ Feldman said. ‘She’s Lilly Feldman number two, and I’m Lilly Feldman number one. You must say Lilly Feldman number one or number two.’ ‘Lilly Feldman number two,’ the kid said, ‘do you have a son?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’ Feldman glowered at her, and she knew he meant for her to lie. So Lilly said, ‘His name is Charles.’ Billy asked more questions, and each time Feldman told the truth and made Lilly lie.
“Finally Feldman said the time was up. ‘Which is it? Lilly Feldman number one or number two?’ Billy was confused and shook his head. ‘Come on,’ Feldman said, ‘which is it? You heard the answers. Which is the real Lilly Feldman, that lousy imposter or me?’ The kid finally pointed to his father, and Feldman said, ‘Will the real Lilly Feldman please stand up?’ and both of them feinted for a couple of minutes until the kid was crying, and then Lilly stood up and went to him.”
Feldman was astonished by the disclosures Lilly had had the courage to make, and that now, though their stories were told from some opposed point of view, his life came back easily. He winced at detail. Once, during the narration of a trip they had taken, tears came to his eyes. They made their points so fiercely that he trembled.
Then, when he thought that even they must see that they had flayed him sufficiently — though it was now past midnight, no one slept; there was little of the shuffling of the daylight hours; men who had taken little interest in the trial were leaning forward, straining to catch everything in the difficult, poollike room — they discovered a new theme: his treatment of Victman and Freedman.
They dwelled at length on how he had used these two, decoying competitors with Victman’s destroyed career and giving the doctor the sexless, secular horns of cuckoldry, fool’s bells, the ear’s body blows over the telephone. They were unrelenting. They meant to polish him off. They would bring up Dedman next.
Then, abruptly as it had begun, their attack ceased. A speaker finished, and no one rose to take his place. To this point, the trial had had a marathon quality, an attribute of palm-passed torches, sequenced as choreography. Now, in the silence, Feldman sighed and wondered: Is it over? Is it finished?
It was almost dawn. He could see the washed-out night through the barred windows of a distant cell. They sat together like this for several minutes, and he may even have bowed his head. Sent to Coventry, he thought, to die of the silences. Then someone shuffled his feet, and then another did. He looked to see if they had risen, but they were still seated. He wondered if they meant for him to stand, if he was to listen now to his sentence. He rose quietly. No one said anything, and he understood that it was his turn, that none of his objections before had meant anything, that this, now, was all they would ever give him of his chance.