A Bad Man

4

It did.

Two days later when Feldman returned from his noon meal there was a brown paper parcel on his cot. He unwrapped it quickly. Inside was a blue suit like the one he wore but of a vastly cheaper quality. He understood that these were to be his prison clothes. The thick rich wool of the original had been vulgarized into a thin cotton blend, but the color and cut and shape were enough like his own that except for the feel Feldman suspected that even he couldn’t tell them apart.

“The crooks,” he said, “they forged a suit.”

He tried it on. There was no mirror, but he knew something was wrong. He felt oddly unbalanced, almost as if he had just put on new eyeglasses. When he walked across the cell he was aware from how it felt — coming suddenly up against a trouser leg with his thigh, or feeling a shoulder slip slightly from under a plank of cloth, experiencing as he moved in it an almost orchestrated series of tugs, clingings, pulls and slacknesses — that it was not so much a copy of his suit as a clever parody of it.

He handled the pearl-gray buttons on the jacket. They were just too small for the buttonholes, which were just too large. On the sleeves, buttons big as watch crystals were sewn in a crooked line. He shoved one hand into a trouser pocket, blunting his fingers against its incredibly shallow bottom. On the other side the pocket was as deep as a third pants leg.

He found one of Bisch’s pencils and wrote a note to the warden:

I may be a bad man, but I am not a clown.

This he gave to a guard, requesting that it be shown to the warden.

Within an hour he had a reply:

Don’t be ridiculous. Every bad man is a clown. All evil is a joke. And vice versa. Don’t send me notes; we are not pen pals.

The guard came into the cell and confiscated Bisch’s pencils.

“They’re not mine,” Feldman said worriedly. “They’re Bisch’s. He’ll kill me.”

The guard shrugged and took the pencils.

That very night Bisch wanted to write a letter. “Where’s my pencil?” he asked darkly.

“The guard took your pencils,” Feldman said. It was the first conversation they had had since Feldman suggested that they draw straws.

“The guard’s got his own pencil,” Bisch said, grabbing Feldman’s suit. “He gets them from supply.”

It was very quiet. The men in the other cells had stopped talking. Feldman could sense them straining to listen. He thought of himself at the window.

“Where’s my pencil?” Bisch roared.

“Look,” Feldman said. “I’ve got a big department store. How would you like new pencils? A whole bunch of them.” Bisch loosened his hold on Feldman’s collar. He seemed interested. “And maybe a nice pencil box with special drawers?” Feldman said quickly, following up his advantage.

“Crayons?”

“Sure, crayons. Absolutely. Crayons.”

“Scissors?”

“You bet, scissors. Scissors it is.”

“Shit,” Bisch said, “they’d never let me have scissors in here.” He grabbed the suit again.

“No, no,” Feldman said, “these are blunt scissors. For a child.”

“What do you mean for a child?”

“No, not for a child. I don’t mean for a child. But a child could use them. Safety scissors! Look, for God’s sake, don’t touch me. I didn’t take your pencil. I used it for a minute to write a note. We’re cellmates. Guys in the same cell use each other’s pencils. I wrote a note to the warden and he got sore and the guard took them.”

“What’d you say in the note?” Bisch asked. “Was it about me? If it was about me—”

“I swear it wasn’t. Of course not. It was about me. I swear to God.”

“What’d you say?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It was about me.” He pulled Feldman closer to him.

“No,” Feldman said, terrified. “It was about me.”

“What did you say?”

“That I’m not a clown,” he said helplessly.

Suddenly there was laughter. The big hands released Feldman’s suit, and he sank weakly to the cot. All the men in the cellblock were laughing. Some guards had come in. They were laughing too. Bisch, choking, had tears in his eyes. He sat down heavily on the cot and wrapped his big arms around Feldman’s shoulders.

“That I’m not a clown,” he sputtered between fits of laughter. Inspired, he let go of Feldman’s shoulders and began to button the buttons of his suit coat. They tumbled out of the wide buttonholes.

“Pleased to meet you,” Bisch said when he had regained control of himself, “I’m your tailor.”

There was a second burst of laughter, like a round of applause.

Feldman slumped backwards, falling against his pillow.

“ALL RIGHT, LIGHTS OUT!”

Feldman lay in the dark with Bisch beside him. The man was still giggling. Feldman moved against the wall.

Bisch stood up and turned Feldman on his back. He leaned down and patted Feldman’s chest and went back to his own cot.

He knows about the homunculus. They’re going to kill me.

Feldman knew he had to get away from them. He was astonished to be contemplating escape. No, he thought. Solitary confinement, he thought. Could he be alone for a year? To stay alive? He’d be Robinson Crusoe. He would wait until Bisch was asleep. He could use his shoe. Heavy blows across the bridge of Bisch’s nose. Against the temples. Under the jaw, on the throat. What am I thinking of? he thought. They’d add to my sentence. Then it would be two years. Every few years they’d get me to do something else. I’d be here forever. That’s what he wants.

He meant the warden. It was amazing. They knew everything about him. Feldman was the trade they’d learned. Some warden. Some penologist. Some Fisher of bad men. Remote control. Brothers’ keepers. Con against con. King Con.

He remembered how the warden had by-passed certain cells. Bad men were in them. How many were there? What was up? He had to talk to them. He had to get to the men in the street clothes.

Who was he kidding? What am I, a hero? Spartacus? They had him. They had him covered.

He grieved for the year. In a strange way, to lose freedom meant to become visible — to ignore inspiration, always to have second thoughts. It was to live with the passions down, to move through the world like someone sick whom the first cigar, binge, fuck could kill. Finally — oh God, this was astonishing, terrifying — it was to be good. They had surfaced him, materialized him — Feldman flushers. He was their man in the blue fool suit. Under surveillance. Under. And before, who was he? A cat burglar, a man in carpet slippers, Boston Blackie, Jimmy Valentine. In what did happiness subsist? In darkness.

All at once Feldman missed his home. He remembered the wine-dark carpets and thought of the master bedroom with its silken bed. He remembered the mahogany apparatus on which he hung his clothes when he took them off, the built-in trays for cuff links, studs. He sighed for the master toilet, the glassed shower, the cunning lights. He thought of the long curves of pale blue sofas, of Thermopane picture windows wide as walls, of the clean white margins of his Ping-pong table, its crisp green net. He thought of his color television set, his air conditioning, his stereo, of the clipped turf that was his lawn. He wept for lost comfort and missed his wife.

Oh, Lilly, Lilly, Lilly. He wondered if he would ever see her again. Oh, Lilly, he thought, almost praying, I swear, never again will I betray you. He tried to remember her face, and got a sudden fix on a beautiful girl. It was Barbara, in his wife’s car pool. He strained and brought up Marlene. He saw Joyce in Curtains, Olive in Cosmetics, Harriet in Ladies’ Leather. He saw his models, his buyers, one or two of the high school girls who worked part-time in Sporting Goods because he liked to watch them stretch the bows. He saw Miss Lane. But where was Lilly? All right, he thought fiercely—Lilly. Come on. Come on, Lilly! Lilly was tough, but maybe piece by piece he could do it.

Her glasses came to him first — gold-rimmed. Then he could see doctors’ bills, organs she’d had removed, surgical bandages, the cream-color crisscross of hernia tape. Now he had her — the wide lap, the thick thighs she couldn’t remember to close, the monstrous tits. It was Lilly! It was Lilly, goddamnit! But where was Miss Lane?