All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [144]
“Threaten me. That would be next.”
“No,” I nodded, “no that. He couldn’t scare you.”
“That is what he seems to depend on. The bribe or the threat.”
“Guess again,” I said.
He rose from his chair, took a couple of restless paces across the frayed green carpet, then swung to face me. “He needn’t think he can flatter me,” he said, fiercely.
“Nobody can flatter you,” I said, softly, “nobody in the world. And do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Listen, pal, there was a man name Dante, who said that the truly proud man knew his own worth could never commit the sin of envy, for he could believe that there was no one for him to envy. He might just as well have said that the proud man who knew his own worth would not be susceptible to flattery, for he would believe that there was nothing anybody else could tell him about his own worth he didn’t know already. No, you couldn’t be flattered.”
“Not by him, anyway,” Adam said grimly.
“Not by anybody,” I said. “And he knows it.”
“What does he try for, then? Does he think I–”
“Guess again,” I said.
He stood there in the middle of the frayed green carpet and stared at me, head slightly lowered, with the slightest shade–not of doubt or perturbation–over the fine abstract blue of the eyes. It was just the shade of question, of puzzlement.
But that is something. Not much, but something. It is not the left to the jaw and it does not rock them on their heels. It does no make the breath come sharp. It is just the tap on the nose, the scrape across with the rough heel of the glove. Nothing lethal, just a moment’s pause. But it is an advantage. Push it.
So I repeated, “Guess again.”
He did not answer, looking at me, with the shade deeper like a cloud passing suddenly over blue water.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you. He knows you are the best around, but you don’t cash in on it. So obviously, you don’t want money, or you would charge folks something like the others in the trade or would hang on to what you do take. You don’t want fun, or you would get some, for you are famous, relatively young, and not crippled. You don’t want comfort, or you would quit working yourself like a navvy and wouldn’t live in this slum. But he knows what you want.”
“I don’t want anything he can give me,” Adam affirmed.
“Are you sure, Adam?” I said. “Are you sure?”
“Damn it–” he began, and the blood was up in his cheeks.
“He knows what you want,” I cut in. “I can put it in a word, Adam.”
“What?”
“You want to do good,” I said.
That stopped him. His mouth was open like a fish’s gaping for air.
“Sure,” I said, “that’s it. He knows your secret.”
“I don’t see what–” he began, fiercely again.
But I cut in, saying, “Easy now, it’s no disgrace. It’s just eccentric. That you can’t see somebody sick without having to put your hands on him. That you can’t see something rotten inside him without wanting to take a knife in your strong, white, and damned well-educated fingers, pal, and cut it out. It is merely eccentric, pal. Or maybe it is a kind of supersickness you’ve got yourself.”
“There’s a hell of a lot of sick people,” he said glumly, “but I don’t see–”
“Pain is evil,” I said, cheerfully.
“Pain is an evil,” he said, “but it is not evil–it is not evil in itself,” and took a step toward me, looking at me like an enemy.
“That’s the kind of question I don’t debate when I’ve got the toothache,” I retorted, “but the fact remains that you are the way you are. And the Boss–” I delicately emphasized the word Boss–“knows it. He knows what you want. He knows your weakness, pal. You want to do good, and he is going to let you do good in wholesale lots.”
“Good,” he said, wolfishly, and twisted his long, thin upper lip, “good–that’s a hell of a word to use around where he is.”
“Is it?” I asked casually.
“A thing does not grow except in its proper climate, and you know what kind of a climate that man creates. Or ought to know.”
I shrugged. “A thing is good in itself–if it is good. A guy gets ants in his pants and writes a sonnet. Is the sonnet less of a good–if it good, which I doubt–because the dame he got the ants over happened to be married to somebody else, so that his passion, as they say, was illicit? Is the rose less of a rose because