The Brass Bed

“Unless she’s schizzy or something,” he said.

“What?”

“Schizophrenia, old boy. The truth is, old Jolly’s always been pretty damn dippy in lots of ways. If you’re fair about it, you’ll have to concede that. I’ve read a little about these schizzy characters, and you can’t always tell off hand just how far gone they are, and sometimes one or another of them will go off the deep end and get all crafty and violent, and the funny thing is, they seem to think whatever they care to do is perfectly justified. Do you think something like that would be worth considering relative to Jolly?”

“No, I don’t think so, Harvey, God damn it. What the hell are you trying to do?”

“You’re pretty vehement about it, aren’t you, old boy? I can see clearly that you’re not inclined to be objective in the matter, so there is no use in discussing it further.”

He was silent and a little sulky, and I tried to drink some more of the coffee, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to offend Harvey, and I tried to think of something to say that would make things all right.

“Did you have a pleasant time last night?” I said.

“Yes, I did.” The sulky look left his face, and it was apparent that he was remembering things that had happened. “That Fran knows how to make things as pleasant as you could want.”

“I know,” I said. “She’s passionate.”

“That’s right. She certainly is passionate.”

“You’ll probably miss her while you’re on the farm.”

“I’ll miss her, all right, but it will also be pleasant to be on the farm for a while.”

“I’m sure it will, and I hope it is an exceptionally good year for watermelons.”

“Thanks, old boy. The truth is, however, I am now wondering if I shouldn’t stay on for Sid’s funeral. I don’t want to do it, to be honest about it, but perhaps it should be considered a kind of obligation, especially since I missed Kirby’s.”

“I don’t think so, Harvey. I’m sure it would be all right for you to go on to the farm.”

“Good. I consider your judgment on these things to be sound. On your advice, I’ll just go on to the farm tomorrow as I planned.”

He stood up and counted some money onto the counter in payment for what he had eaten.

“Are you going back to your place?” he said. “If you are, I’ll walk with you to the corner where I turn.”

“I’m going,” I said.

We went out together and walked along and once he said, looking down at his feet, “Old Sid. Just imagine something like that happening to old Sid,” and he sounded suddenly rather sad, and I didn’t answer. At the corner we shook hands and said goodbye, and I went on alone to the apartment and got through the night and most of the next day, and in the afternoon Jason came around to see me.

He came up into the hall and knocked on the door, and I thought at first that it might be Jolly, but when I opened the door it was Jason standing there waiting. He said hello and came into the room, and I invited him to sit down, and he did, laying his hat on the floor beside his chair and looking for a while without speaking at the typewriter on its table in the corner.

“You’ve been doing a lot of typing,” he said at last.

I looked at the thin stack of paper beside the machine, and it might have looked like a lot to him, but it was actually only about sixty pages, and it wasn’t much.

“I’ve been trying to write a novel,” I said.

“Is that so?” He shifted his eyes from the typewriter to me. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about a goliard and the things that happened to him.”

“I never heard of a goliard before. What is it?”

“Goliards were twelfth century poets.”

“Oh. In that case, it’s no wonder I never heard of them. It must take a lot of education to write a novel, especially one about someone like a goliard. I never had much education myself.”

“Lots of people without much education write novels.”

“I find that hard to believe, and probably you’re just saying it. Anyhow, I’ve gotten to be a pretty good reader, what with having a lot of time to kill and all, and I’ll make a point of reading about the goliard when the book gets published.”

“It may never get published. It may never even get finished.”

“That would be a shame after all the work you’ve done. Actually, however, not intending to knock the novels or anything, I mostly read books about what makes people do things. Crazy things, you understand. I get a lot of odd balls in this lousy work, and I thought it might pay me to know what makes them tick, if possible.”

“Abnormal psychology, you mean? That kind of thing?”

“Yes. That’s it. I don’t always understand all about it, but it’s pretty interesting trying. The characters who get me are the ones who act one way part of the time and another way the rest of the time. They used to call them split personalities, but now they got a fancier name for them. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, it seems like a lot of people have got killed by other people like that, and mostly it’s been because no one ever got the idea, until it was too late, that these split characters had anything like that in them.”