The slave was no common slave, but had been purchased because of his learning. He was crouched, reading to his master, and the master laughed at the tale, a witty account of an ass, making love to a woman.
As Judd read, he looked up to his master, and saw the half smile, the beginning of excitation. The master’s arm lay free, and a short whip dangled from Artie’s hand. Artie caught his slavish eyes, and laughingly commanded him, “All right, you bastard, you sucker,” and flicked the whip. The slave put aside his parchment and…
Then a tumult. An attacker plunged into the room, more, three, five, a dozen assassins. Judd leaped up, defending his master, with his bare hands wresting the sword from one of the villains, charging them, forcing them backward, plunging the sword.
Excited beyond endurance, Judd arose, circled the room, trying to keep away from the bed. It would be an hour before Artie came. Then, making sure the door was closed, he lay down.
He let himself slide completely into it, without fixing on any one image, letting the images come one upon the other: a street in Florence, and a young man, blond – Artie – rushing into a shadowed alleyway, a grinning backward, inviting glance, and then it was yesterday and the little girls scattering in twos and threes on the street, and why had Artie always been against making it a girl? Maybe that would finally have rid him of the need, but now he still had something left over that he must do. The girl… and there came the image of the Hun and the girl, the war poster in the hallway when he was at Twain – the young Frenchwoman with the dress half torn crouching against a wall, her arm up in defence, and the Hun with the slavering mouth coming toward her, then grabbing her by the hair and doing it to her…
With an effort, Judd pulled himself up from the bed. The typewriter. It was standing against the wall, beneath the glass cases of his mounted birds. For this second terrible mistake, Artie would be through with him. Artie would erase all their times together, as though they had never met.
It had been one of the last occasions when Mother Dear had been well enough to go out. Indeed, she had probably overstrained herself, Judd imagined, in arranging the visit for his sake. He had known it was a little plot, of the kind Mother Dear and Aunt Bertha loved to arrange.
For a long time he had been aware of their whispery worryings about him. Poor Judd, he ought to have more friends. He’s alone with his books too much.
Poor Judd, they meant, the kids all hate him. The kids all think he’s conceited. But poor Judd, they said, all the boys in his class are three years older than he is, and at that age three years makes a great difference. And he’s really not interested in baseball and such things. If we could only find someone…
And then they had cooked up the meeting with Artie. Of course Judd knew about Artie, the paragon who had skipped through Twain a year ahead of him, and was even a few months younger. He would have got to know Artie at Twain, most likely, if Artie hadn’t transferred to University High in his last year, to go right into the university at fourteen.
But when people talked about Artie Straus, the brilliant prodigy, Judd always remarked that entering a university at fourteen was not necessarily a criterion of intelligence. Any parrot with a large enough medulla oblongata could absorb the kind of knowledge that was required in a classroom. Judd could easily have done it at fourteen instead of fifteen, if he had not been out of school with his terrible skin rashes and boils, for weeks at a time. And besides, Artie Straus, as everyone knew, had had special tutoring from his governess.
Yet Judd admitted to himself a certain curiosity about Artie Straus. He therefore accepted the pretence that it was just a casual afternoon bridge party at the Strauses, to which he was escorting his mother and aunt. And if there had been hushed telephone calls between the ladies, to arrange this meeting for the two brilliant boys who really ought to be great friends, he pretended not to have noticed. Judd disregarded too the thought that although his own family was worth several million dollars, his mother and aunt would consider it advantageous for him to become the close associate of one of the Strauses, with their ten million and their palatial new mansion with the private tennis court. Only the best, as his father always said.
There was another uneasiness about meeting Artie. While Artie was brilliant like himself, Artie was more. He was an athlete, a fellow who had fun with the crowd. Tall, a lively figure on the tennis court – instead of a bookworm.
Still, Judd was aware that on his side he was supposed to exert a steadying influence on Artie, because the moment he had got into the university, young Straus had started running wild, with collegians who were several years older than himself. And recently Artie had had a bad smash-up in a car.
It was a warm, sweet day in May, and as they left the house Mother Dear paused to sniff the air. Judd offered her his arm, and she gave him the smile he had identified far back in childhood when his Irish nurse had taken him into a church with stained-glass windows. “Is this Heaven?” he had whispered, and of the glowing Lady in the window: “Is she God’s wife?” Then the nursemaid had told him who the Madonna was. The Mother of God. And though as soon as he began to grow up he knew himself an atheist, the Madonna image persisted as someone in whom he believed, and as his mother.
That day of the bridge party, as Judd helped his mother down the cement steps to the walk, his aunt gushed about the fine-appearing pair they made. Mother Dear was in something grey, grey silk – he wished he could recall precisely – and he, nearly fifteen, was still in knickerbockers, although they were tailored wide, to look more like golf plus-fours.
“You will meet Artie Straus,” Aunt Bertha insisted again. “I asked Mrs. Straus if Artie would be home. You know, Judd, dear, Artie can give you lots of pointers about the university, what teachers to take.”
“Professors,” he corrected her.
Aunt Bertha had come in her electric, and now gave him a chance to drive it the few blocks to the Straus mansion. Driving the Edison always gave Judd a kick, though he already could drive a regular car.
“I hear Artie is a nice fun-loving boy, and I hope you will become friends,” his aunt kept on, not realizing how a remark like that could push a fellow in the other direction. Especially if they were working on Artie the same way.
But Artie came running out of the house as the electric drove up. With a politeness that might have had some mockery behind it, he opened doors.
At first sight, Judd felt disappointment. It was an instant feeling that Artie wasn’t for him, Artie wasn’t the one. His long narrow face was like tallow. And everything about him was too long – his arms, his neck, his fingers. Even before emerging from the car, Judd knew he would scarcely reach to Artie’s shoulders. A shrimp in any crowd, beside Artie he would look like a midget… Artie would never be anything to him. Judd even felt a kind of triumph that he had come along as Mother Dear and Aunt Bertha wished, but had proven immune to their plotting. He would remain his solitary and superior self.
It was a small bridge party of ladies, several of whom Judd had seen at his own house – Mrs. Seligman, Mrs. Kohn with a K, and Artie’s mother, a thin, energetic-looking woman, with great, clear blue eyes. Judd remembered that she was not Jewish and was always held up as an example, when Hyde Park talk turned on mixed marriages, of a Catholic who fitted very graciously into the South Side Jewish circle – indeed, took the leadership.
There were three tables. Mrs. Straus warned everybody that Artie was a whiz, a shark. Oh, yes, since the two brilliant boys were going to be partners, the ladies had better watch out!