A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago. Ben Hecht
Lights in windows. Some guys on the corner. Hunting him? Sure. And they were coming his way. Straight down the street. They were looking up. What for? A gun crept out of Tommy O'Connor's pocket. He pressed himself carefully against the wall. He waited. The minutes grew long. But this was the hunt closing in. They were coming. Black figures of men floating casually down the street. All right—let them come.
Lucky Tommy O'Connor's eyes stared rigidly out of the smeared window at a vague flurry of figures that seemed to be coming, coming his way.
MR. WINKELBERG
There was never a man as irritating as Winkelberg. He was an encyclopedia of misfortune. Everything which can happen to a man had happened to him. He had lost his family, his money and his health. He was, in short, a man completely broken—tall, thin, with a cadaverous face, out of which shone two huge, lusterless eyes. He walked with an angular crawl that reminded one of the emaciated flies one sees at the beginning of winter dragging themselves perversely along as if struggling across an illimitable expanse of flypaper.
It was one of Winkelberg's worst habits to appear at unexpected moments. But perhaps any appearances poor Winkelberg might have made would have had this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking forward to Winkelberg, and thus the sight of his wan, determined smile, his lusterless eyes and his tenacious crawl was invariably an uncomfortable surprise.
* * * * *
I will be frank. It was Winkelberg's misfortune which first attracted me. I listened to his story avidly. He talked in slow words and there was intelligence in the man. He was able to perceive himself not only as a pain-racked, starving human, but he glimpsed with his large, tired eyes his relation to things outside himself. I remember he said, and without emotion: "There is nobody to blame. Not even myself. And if I cannot blame myself how can I blame the world? The city is like that. I am no good. I am done. Something worn out and useless. People try to take care of the useless ones and they would like to. There are institutions. I was kicked out of two of them. They said I was a faker. Somehow I don't appeal to charitably inclined people."
Later I understood why. It was because of the man's smile—a feeble, tenacious grimace that seemed to be offering a sardonic reproof. It could never have been mistaken for a courageous smile. The secret of its aggravating quality was this: In it Winkelberg accused himself of his uselessness, his feebleness, his poverty. It was as if he were regarding himself continually through the annoyed eyes of others and addressing himself with the words of others: "You, Winkelberg, get out of here. You're a nuisance. You make me uncomfortable because you're poor and diseased and full of gloom. Get out. I don't want you around. Why the devil don't you die?"
And the aggravating thing was that people looked at Winkelberg's smile as into a mirror. They saw in it a reflection of their own attitude toward the man. They felt that Winkelberg understood what they thought of him. And they didn't like that. They didn't like to feel that Winkelberg was aware that deep inside their minds they were always asking: "Why doesn't this Winkelberg die and have it over with?" Because that made them out as cruel, heartless people, not much different in their attitude toward their fellow men from predatory animals in their attitude toward fellow predatory animals. And somehow, although they really felt that way toward Winkelberg, they preferred not to believe it. But Winkelberg's smile was a mirror which would not let them escape this truth. And eventually Winkelberg's smile became for them one of those curious mirrors which exaggerate images grotesquely. Charitably inclined people, as well as all other kinds of inclined people, prefer their Winkelbergs more egoistic. They prefer that unfortunate ones be engrossed in their misfortunes and not go around wearing sardonic, philosophical smiles.
* * * * *
Winkelberg dragged along for a year. He was past fifty. Each time I saw him I was certain I would never see him again. I was certain he would die—drop dead while crawling across his flypaper. But he would appear. I would pretend to be vastly busy. He would sit and wait. He never asked alms. I would have been relieved if he had. Instead he sat and smiled, and his smile said: "You are afraid I am going to ask you for money. Don't worry. I won't ask you for money. I won't bother you at all. Yes, I agree with you, I ought to be dead. It would be better for everybody."
We would talk little. He would throw out a hint now and then that perhaps I could use some of his misfortunes for material. For instance, the time his two children had been burned to death. Or the time he had fallen off the street car while in a sick daze and injured his spine for life, and how he had settled with the street car company for $500 and how he had been robbed on the way to the bank with the money two weeks later.
I refused consistently this offer of "material." This offended Winkelberg. He would shake his head and then he would nod his head understandingly and his smile would say:
"Yes, yes. I understand. You don't want to get involved with me. Because you don't want me to have any more claims on your sympathy than I've got. I'm sorry."
Toward the end Winkelberg's visits grew more frequent. And he became suddenly garrulous. He wished to discuss things. The city. The various institutions. Politics. Art. This phase of Winkelberg was the most unbearable. He was willing to admit himself a social outcast. He was reconciled to the fact that he would starve to death and that everybody who had ever seen him would feel it had been a good thing that he had finally died. But this final plea came from him. He wanted nothing except to talk and hear words in order to relieve the loneliness of his days. He would like abstract discussions that had nothing to do with Winkelberg and the Winkelberg misfortunes. His smile now said: "I am useless, worn out and better off dead. But never mind me. My mind is still alive. It still thinks. I wish it didn't. I wish it crawled around like my body. But seeing that it does, talk to me as if it were a mind belonging to somebody else and not to the insufferable Winkelberg."
I grew suspicious finally. I began to think there was something vitally spurious about this whole Winkelberg business. And I said to myself: "The man's a downright fake. If anybody were as pathetic and impossible and useless as this Winkelberg is he would shoot himself. Winkelberg doesn't shoot himself. So he becomes illogical. Unreal."
* * * * *
A woman I know belongs to the type that becomes charitable around Christmas time. She makes a glowing pretense of aiding the poor. As a matter of fact, she really does aid them, although she regards the poor as a sort of social and spiritual asset. They afford her the double opportunity of appearing in the eyes of her neighbors as a magnanimous soul and of doing something which reflects great credit upon her character. But, anyway, she "does good," and we'll let it go at that.
I told this woman about Winkelberg. I became poignant and moving on the subject of Winkelberg's misfortunes, his trials, sufferings and, above all, his Spartan stoicism. It pleased me to do this. I felt that I was making some amends and that the thing reflected credit upon my character.
So she went to the room on the South Side where Winkelberg sleeps. And they told her there that Winkelberg was dead. He had died last week. She was upset when she told me about it. She had come too late. She might have saved him.
It was a curious thing—but when she told me that Winkelberg was dead I felt combatively that it was untrue. And now since I know certainly that Winkelberg is dead and buried I have developed a curious state of mind. I look up from my desk every once in a while expecting to see him. In the streets I sometimes find myself actually thinking: "I'll bump into him when I turn the corner."
I have managed to discover the secret of this feeling. It is Winkelberg's smile. Winkelberg's smile was the interpretation of the world's attitude toward him, including my own. And thus whenever his name comes to mind his smile appears as if it were the thought in my head. And in Winkelberg's smile I hear myself saying: "He is better off dead."
A SELF-MADE MAN