Edgar Pangborn

“ Why the devil must they stand up? Settling their damn lunches?
Seated, noticing how quickly today the rustle and throat-clearing subsided, his eyes were annoyed by shabbiness. Old stains, scratches on the woodwork, in every corner a pinch of dust; on every face—Callista Blake's, Hunter's, even Mr. Delehanty's—the marks of that peculiarly human strain that people experience in the presence of the heavy institutions they themselves have made. ”

“ That one had come to him by the mind's magic when the night beyond his window was in a moment of supreme clarity and peace, and Trinity's delicate chimes had struck the morning hour of two o'clock, and the wind died: The defense never rests.
The air was still today, pure and sharp, the sky a clean splendor above the smear of the city. Something of it could be felt through the high eastern window behind them. Callista would have looked upward into that strong blue of infinity through the detention cell bars. ”

“ It was simply that, once friendship and communication were established, she was so straightforward and clear-minded that one's own shams and self-deceptions showed themselves up as abominations, and one could only wish to be rid of them, and to exist for a while on her level. She would never have thought of [303] asking a friend to be honest; she merely took it for granted that he would be, took it for granted with an innocence and uncalculated kindness that even Edith says she can't understand.
Never suppose that Callista wanted to die. She wanted life, and all it might have brought her. ”

“ No one can own me, no one can make me over. I was born a heretic and so live. No one can catch me except if I will.' This time I am frankly puzzled, Miss Blake. It is by chance a quotation from something?"
"No."
"You had been writing affectionately—and poetically, I must say—and then all of a sudden you throw this at him: 'No one can own me—born a heretic and so live.' I'm simply puzzled, Miss Blake. Why in the world were you moved to say to James Doherty: 'No one can catch me except if I will'—why?"
Warner saw the violent tension and forced relaxation of her folded hands. ”

“ Then like an old lady she rested her arm on Herb's clumsy hand, and was gone.
Edith found it was now natural, inevitable, to pity Victoria Chalmers—whatever pity might be worth. Earlier, until the jury went out through that doorway, there had somehow not been time. There was time now for every sort of thought, regret and fear and wonder, time for a swarm of [286] thoughts crowding for attention, pity the least of them—time for anything the mind could do except for the discoveries of happiness and peace. Pity, maybe, was no more than a private vice, with varied by-products, some good, some bad. ”

“ But it seemed to Judge Mann that unless they could receive a daylight answer, the doctrine itself was solemn nonsense.
Imagining Society with a capital S to be greater than the individual—no answer there, only a more opaque mysticism. The mental construction "Society" is an achievement of the individual brain, an organ that had better not be too dazzled by products of its own authorship.
The issue of capital punishment had been bound to arise. I knew the laws. I knew that New Essex was no more free than any other state from crime and the balancing crime of punishment. ”

“ Cecil Warner drifted into bewilderment, a sense that at some point there had been an illogical reversal of roles. Must he draw on the strength of this girl who in a few months might be butchered by the State, as if there remained in him no power at all, not even the power of wisdom? As if it were natural, and right, that in her danger and misery, in her green youth too, it should be Callista who possessed a power to heal and save? The defense never rests, but—
Can anyone save another? ”

“ Wandering to the other side of the room, fingering the stacks of sheet music and the bound volumes, Judge Mann reflected that a judgeship is a very damned comfortable thing, to the nerves of pocketbook and of vanity, until a moment of self-appraisal brings you the image of a bewildered monkey in a black gown. An image caught as though in multiple mirrors. No good turning your head aside: a mirror in every wall, and the monkey, poor puzzled well-meaning bastard, in every mirror. ”

“ The only faces of the entire jury that showed any positive liking for Edith Nolan were those of Helen Butler and Rachel Kleinman. He saw Dora Lagovski apparently submerged in moist daydream; recalled that when Callista's drawing had reached her he had seen the damp lips form (in merciful silence) the word "cute." Emerson Lake's jaw was now moving slightly, approximately in time with the mild rise and fall of Edith Nolan's breathing—damn the old buzzard. But what about himself, aged forty-seven and for the last few minutes intensely aware of Edith Nolan as a desirable woman? ”

“ She would retain the look of them as vividly as though each juror had sat in her studio under the clever lights while she examined the faults, planes, good points, chatted with them to let self-consciousness and vanity subside, searched for the portrait they wouldn't see, and at last finished her shots—one to please the customer if possible; one, if lucky, to please herself as a frozen instant of relative truth. ”

“ Since her tasteless sandwich luncheon, the afternoon had been for Edith a desert of echoes, all voices unfamiliar except Cecil Warner's. Fast work, she supposed, to have a jury almost complete, and the hour not quite four. The heat had been turned higher after the noon recess, the courtroom growing sickly with a mustiness of flesh, disinfectant, dust. Edith's head ached, a dull frontal throb. The hard seat nagged at thin buttocks, unpadded backbone. When Callista looked her way, Edith wriggled and grimaced, trying to add a mild humor to her silent message: Head up, Cal! We're going to win. ”

“ And if Callista Blake the Weird Woman, Cold Callie the Monkshood Girl, were to create a disturbance, Flannery would be ready, would spread her flat feet and grunt in the same way, like a boar in rut, in the interest of law and order.
"I want more heat, I want more foodibles. I want more heat, I want more foodibles." The old woman down the corridor had been silent a while, the interval like the recession of a toothache. Hearing her resume, Callista dropped her face on her knees, listening more or less. Listening is an act of living. ”

“ Am I occasionally beautiful, Cecil?"
"To me, always."
"I've always loved words, you know. It amounts to a fault. I can't make them do as I wish. I could never write. I don't know enough about people, maybe never shall. But I know the power of words. You say I'm beautiful to you, and that makes me so, I believe it, the words shut away everything foreign to the Abbey of Theleme—no, that's not where we are. But isn't it strange what words can do? Comfort and terrify, heal and kill. Make out of nothing, something, and another word can send the something back to a nothing. ”

“ Unknown indeed—these people knew nothing of Callista Blake. They never could, in the nature of things, know much, never acquire more than a brief distorted glimpse of her, and that under conditions so outrageously far from the daily norm that her actual self appeared to them as no more than the flicker of a shadow. The kindly and badly troubled little man up there on the bench knew far more about her than they did, simply because he was trained to observation and the disciplines of independent thought ”

“ In the past, no work of her own had ever pleased Edith Nolan enough to give her a complete sense of belonging by natural right in that small company who can now and then draw from the confusion of the world's raw material a new synthesis, a work of disciplined imagination worthy to last a while. She knew the company, in books, music, painting; and in at least one other person: Callista, who belonged there so inevitably that the girl had probably never even wondered whether she had a "right" to call herself an artist. ”

“ On her side are one witness—Edith Nolan, her friend and former employer—her defending counsel—Cecil Warner, a sick, aging man who loves her—and Terence Mann, who in his role as judge is obliged to attempt impartiality but, trying his first case carrying the death penalty, is appalled that the fate of a human being can be at the mercy of anything so haphazard as the adversary system and the whim of a jury. ”

“ It did not seem to her that she had actually understood what he said, or what the Sergeant said. "Ann Doherty—killed herself." What? Oh—he was repeating what poor Herb had said to him. Herb could always be trusted to say something idiotic.
Important as testimony?—nobody thinks she killed herself. But the tide might very well be turning. Her eyes were no longer blurred. She could discover the thousand crow's-foot wrinkles in Cecil's face over yonder. Callista understood that she would not faint, nor collapse, nor die for some little time to come. ”

“ For the first time that evening—it had been nowhere near her while she was deep in work—Edith recalled Daumier's "The Jury." She took down the volume of his work, not trusting memory. After the comparison she could say No: a round, unworried, satisfying No. This curious thing of her own, this hating-fearing-loving-pitying distillation of the jury in People vs. Blake, owed no more to Daumier (or to Callista) than any work should honestly owe to whatever the artist has encountered in the past. Conception, development, fulfillment—unmistakably a Nolan original. ”

“ Callista heard Cecil Warner's short involuntary sigh, felt his hostile stiffening and alertness. Detective Sergeant Lloyd Rankin of the Winchester Police came down the aisle and held up a flat hand for the oath, the slab-faced sober man. His gray hair under the cold light glinted like dull steel, his eyes a lighter gray but opaque, oyster gray. Draw him as a bulldozer—Cecil might like it. She ran her fingers softly over the wrinkled hand, lifted away the idle pencil and drew his scratch pad toward her.
A bulldozer has its own squat dignity. ”

“ His first sight of it had been about a year ago, an invitation to the little apartment at Covent Street soon after Edith had done his portrait and Callista's rapid pen had drawn that strangely affectionate cartoon of him, comedy without spite; as if at eighteen the girl could incredibly glimpse the quality of sixty-seven and find something there for the unhurtful entertainment of both of them—and of Edith, who had remarked laconically: "What the hell good is a camera?" ”

“ Not to mince matters, the word is adultery, and I must remind you now, members of the jury, that Callista Blake is not here on trial for adultery. She is on trial for murder, nothing else. The State will prove the fact of adultery to establish motive—which, as you may also know, is not legally required, yet I think a rational mind is bound to demand it. How can we reasonably condemn anyone without at least some understanding of what made him act as the factual evidence says he did? ”

“ Then Callista had made a stumbling approach of blurted hints, Ann gradually comprehending because she had to, gradually perching nearer the edge of her chair, hands not in their usual flutter but folded and tightening in her lap, her lovely face abnormally attentive; listening—she had to, that once!—watchful and still. Not openly resentful or hating, never entirely distorted out of beauty. Incredible, but it must be that Ann had never guessed, and Jim had been a better actor than Callista dreamed. ”

“ The Judge found he was again studying faces on the jury. Emmet Hoag bored, half asleep by the look of him. Ancient Emerson Lake neither bored nor hostile, his gaze rigid, vaguely vulturine, apparently hypnotized by the swell of Edith Nolan's breast, under the tweed suit hardly more than hints of fullness and softness, but evidently enough to set an old man dreaming in his rank and lonely antiquity; would he be hearing what she said at all? Young LaSalle seemed indecisively friendly, Mr. Fielding remote behind an unreadable pallid front. ”

“ Spotless law and order was taking the oath. Sergeant Shields of the State Police would never allow any dust on the sparkle of his shoes; undoubtedly he could dissect his .32 and reassemble it in the dark. Yet he was also young, and human. A sidelong glance gave Warner Callista's face, composed, neutral. As usual, too remote. During the police testimony, the jury might not resent that too much, might vaguely understand her need for self-control. Later on he must make another attempt to persuade her that you can't just brush off the human race—not when it's after you. ”

“ In this case Cecil Warner— (Edith understood it fully today for the first time) —was not interested in the fee, the publicity, or the abstraction of justice. He was there because, with the curious devotion of an old man, he loved Callista. To use one of his own worn phrases, it was that simple. Since a woman of thirty-one does not live in the world of a battle-worn man of sixty-eight, Edith knew she could grasp the quality of that love from the outside only, with the mind only: enough, to accept the fact. But didn't a defense counsel need some inner coldness to sustain him? ”

“ Be jealous, damn you.
"Are we so terribly far apart? I'm beginning to understand there's plenty about me you don't even like. It's not strange. Didn't I tell you at the start, or try to, that I'm not easy to get along with? I often have a bad enough time trying to get along with myself. But Jimmy, Dearest, all people are far apart in a lot of important ways. No exceptions. And all people have elements in common too, things they can share, use to bridge the gulf between self and self, if they only knew it. ”

“ No thought is finished until the thinker dies, then only blotted out, the death rattle a throat-clearing for what's not to be said. Mother, the morphine not helping yet, certain she'd left something on the stove to boil over, couldn't convince her. For thought is action. What's this, Edith? Philosophy A, Radcliffe, Class of '48 and all that?
All the same, she reflected, it is action, and the hell with Plato the Father of Half-Truths. So why wonder that an earlier self becomes a creature of mystery? Where was the cross thin woman who talked sharply to Jim Doherty a few minutes ago? ”

“ You're a headshrinker, Jack—why do so many minds cling to unreason with such a sullen fury? I am thinking of people like Judge Cleever, or people who can read the entire transcript of the Sacco-Vanzetti trial and still declare briskly and earnestly that the innocent are never punished. How do they do it? What's the faculty of the mind that makes it possible for an intelligent being to look directly on a glaring fact and somehow will it out of sight? ”

“ Even a kind of friendliness behind the rebuke he had been forced to make. He would be harder to photograph than any of the jury, or ambitious Hunter. Harder than anyone present except Callista herself, and Cecil Warner who had posed for Edith in actuality a year ago.
And Cal had drawn one of her three-minute cartoons of Warner, which delighted the Old Man—their first meeting. Had he adored her then? Why, then, a year ago, Cal's ordeal of love with Jim Doherty had not even begun. It occurred to Edith that for the human race a magic power of foresight would be a burden unendurable. ”

“ They looked at her now, bloated Hoag and ancient Emerson Lake and cloth-brained Emma Beales and kindly Helen Butler, and by a trick of her exhausted mind they made her no longer Edith Nolan but a woman at the defense table, whose life would end or begin afresh somehow according to the will of those twelve imperfect beings. Who meant well; who wanted to "do the right thing," whatever that was; who (except maybe Hoag) wouldn't dream of turpentining a dog or pulling the wings off flies or starving a child. ”

“ Peter Anson long-hairs and especially long-hair intellectual women were one big pain in the ass. You could understand it. Anson was a man who liked things simple and comfortable; he wanted larger issues settled by authority and formula, and you could say the wish derived from an honest humility, inarticulate awareness of his own mental limitations; unfortunately it meant that anything not covered by authority and formula must be brushed aside, or ignored—or hated. Confronted by a manifestly human Callista Blake or Edith Nolan—well, Anson was a good little joe and would try to be fair about it ”

“ But there was a depth, Miss Nolan, something you don't discover right away. All that polish, glitter, gracefulness, word-play, that was something they produced after accepting the squalor and danger and confusion of seventeenth-century living. They knew what they were doing. Reading the avant-garde stuff of nowadays, usually the contrast is merely grotesque, still I keep finding parallels. Here and there. It keeps an old man interested. Well, I'm babbling like second childhood. Telling dreams, at my age! Look, can I get you anything? I think I'll take a walk around the block, can't sit still. ”