The Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
David pressed his face against Mona’s shoulder and then asked, “Then why did he kill himself?”
“It was coming in like that, and both of us so guilty for ourselves. Even though he knew about us, that was like rubbing his face in it.” She dug her nails into David’s back, right through his coat and shirt, the tips of her polished nails biting at him. “I loved Klim as I’ll never love anyone. I loved him. But I thought that if I ever saw him again, standing by the bed at night, looking at me as if he wanted me more than anything in life, and yet absolutely powerless …” She trembled for a moment, and then David became increasingly aware of the fingernails, and like a different man—not David Harper at all—he pulled himself free and lifted Mona in his arms, carrying her to the gaudy bed.
But when he returned to Dedham late the next afternoon he found that her reassurances had disrupted him even more completely than his own recriminations. Now he wondered not only about Klim, but about himself: “How could I have slept with her again?” he demanded, abusing himself for such an action. I don’t want anything to do with her. All the way in on the train I tell myself that. I tell her that Klim haunts me … and then we go to bed!”
Even this deep disgust had to give way to a greater, for as he recalled events of that night he remembered one of Mona’s explanations: “Klim was good to a lot of people. He sent a French girl to school.” He stopped motionless above the observatory cameras and thought, far away in his mind: “Klim sent me to school, too. Oh, God! What have I done?”
The enormity of his crime ate at him, and for a while he considered leaving Dedham. He even packed the half dozen books he thought he would like to keep, but the prospect of slinking off without sure knowledge oppressed him and he rushed one afternoon into the dean’s office.
“Could you tell me,” he blurted out, “who gave me my scholarship?”
The dean smiled in the reassuring way that deans and undertakers acquire. “It’s an unannounced grant, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then how could I possibly announce it?” he asked, turning his palms up.
“It’s very important, sir!” David begged, but the dean shook his head. Then David asked suddenly, “If he were dead? You could tell me then, couldn’t you?”
The dean made no promise but went to a locked file and carefully procured a folder. He shuffled through the papers. “Harper. Harper,” he muttered. Then he looked up at David and grinned reassuringly. “He’s alive, Harper.” He returned the folder and locked the file. Then he put his arm on David’s shoulder and said, “From what I hear of your work he must be very proud of you. We are, David. Do you mind being told that all the faculty hopes you will do wonderfully well in your exams? Good luck, and don’t let anything trouble you for the next weeks. Not anything.”
David was astonished at how reassuring the dean was, but as soon as he left the office he saw through the stratagem: “That damned liar!” he muttered. “Why, of course it was Klim! That damned liar wouldn’t tell me because he wants me to do well in his lousy rotten exams. Well, to hell with them! And to hell with him, too!”
In fury at the trickery David spent two weeks doing nothing. He could not bear to see Mona and books were an abomination. Then one day in the Philadelphia Ledger he saw the name Doylestown in a date line. He didn’t even read the story, for he was humbled with shame. “I’ve got to pass those exams!” he said. “I could never go home if I were a failure.” He did not think of the poorhouse as home, nor of his Aunt Reba as part of his home; his home was a town with towers, and he could never return to it a failure.
Then he knew what he wanted. He dashed out onto the highway leading past Dedham and flagged down a car. “Could you take me into Swarthmore?” he asked, and when he reached that college town he asked where he might find Marcia Paxson. He was directed to a quadrangle built like an English monastery, and in a few minutes he met Marcia.
“David!” she cried. “It took you four years to get here!”
“Could I talk with you, Marcia?” he asked. She seemed very strong and clean as she stood in the doorway of the monastery, and she knew that David had come to talk with her because she was like that.
“Is it about the singer and Mr. Kol?” she asked. “Were you involved?”
“Well, not exactly,” David began with great reassurance. Then he saw her quiet Quaker face and said, “Yes.”
“Why don’t we walk?” she asked. She led him to a winding path along a small stream, and for a moment he could imagine himself back in the springtime woods of Bucks County. She waited for him to speak, but she was hardly prepared for what he said.
“You and I were pretty lucky,” he finally began. “We grew up in the only town I ever heard of around here that has a real castle. And our town had two of them. I guess it was foolish to waste money building castles, but did you ever see them, Marcia? I guess I saw them in every light and every way there is. When I came to school in the morning I used to look at the red one where the museum is. But the other one was even more … Well, it was particularly mine. I’ve never told another person in the world this, but whenever we had a tough game or an important examination I used to walk out and take a look at that … Well,” he coughed and they were silent for some time.
Then he said, “The night I walked out to see you I got back to Doylestown just about dawn, and I thought I’d seen that castle in about every possible way, but that morning was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Believe me, that was something to see!”
They wandered for a long time through the woods and finally the time came when they had to turn back. “Wouldn’t you like to take dinner here?” she asked. “With me?”
“I’d like to!” David said. “But wouldn’t Harry …”
In the subtle way that Quaker girls have of conveying ideas, Marcia swung her body provocatively sideways and implied without speaking that Harry Moomaugh was no problem. Then she said, “And after dinner I could drive thee back to college.”
It was the word thee that David had wanted to hear, that and his own memories of the castles he had watched as a boy. “It’s good to see you, Marcia,” he said.
“There’s no reason why this has to be your only visit,” she said. “That is, after you’ve passed your exams.”
David actually jumped away. He had come twenty-three miles so that Marcia might goad him back to work, and yet when she did just that he was angry and afraid of her. But as soon as he recovered from his instinctive action he took her hand in his and said, “Marcia, you’re more than a castle to me. I haven’t studied for a month.”
“I guessed that,” she said. Then she added, “But you’ve got to! How could you bear to go home if you did less than you could?”
David stopped and kicked at the spring earth. It was rich with the promise of flowers and it was powerfully sweet. Quietly he pulled Marcia to him and kissed her. “I needed someone to say that,” he whispered.
But before he could get started studying, Mona summoned him back to Philadelphia. They met in a cheap hotel he had never before heard of, and she got right down to business. “I’m desperate, Dave,” she said.
“Are the police …”
“Oh, no!” she interrupted impatiently. “But the Hollywood deal has come through.”
“That’s wonderful!” he cried.
“I know, I know,” she half-growled. “But I don’t have a cent of money. Look at me! Look at this dump!”
“I could let you have …”
“How much?” she asked eagerly. “I’ve got to have some clothes. I can’t go out there like a dime-store girl.”
“I could let you have $260.”
Mona dropped her hands and laughed with a touch of hysteria. “You’re sweet, Dave. No wonder I like you so much. But I got to have about five thousand dollars.”
“Five thousand?” David repeated dully.
“Yes!” Mona snapped. “If I go out there looking as if I need money, I’ll get pushed around
She sat heavily on the edge of her cheap white-metal bed and began to bite her lip. She would not cry, but she did have tears in her eyes. “What can we do?” she asked.
David stood above her in acute embarrassment. His mind worked rapidly: “Tschilczynski never had $5,000. Maybe his wife has! Oh, but she’s a Greek and she’d hold on to it in the face of God himself. Joe Vaux has nothing. I can’t ask Marcia. Can’t let her know I came back here after the other night. Her father would have $5,000. But Marcia would surely … Say!” He banged his fist into his hand and cried, “Mona! I know where you can get it!”
“Where?” the actress cried, bounding at him.
“Do you know Max Volo?”
“The big shot?” she asked, obviously impressed.
“Yes. He’d lend me five thousand.”
“Dave!” Mona cried delightedly. “Why, Max Volo is one of the biggest men in Philly!”
“He’d have to know what it was for,” David said cautiously. “It would be bad for you to get mixed up with a man like him.”
“Ho! Ho!” Mona chortled. “You let me take care of myself!”
“You want me to try him?” David asked carefully.
“I’m not afraid of Max Volo,” Mona said evenly. “Not if he has $5,000. I can handle punks like him, just fine.” She shoved David from the door.
“It may take some time for me to find him,” David warned.
“I’ll be here,” the actress said.
On the street David considered what he should do. Volo wouldn’t be in the phone book, and he had no idea how to find him. Then he thought of Betty, with the gold tooth. Hadn’t Max said, “A house on Race Street”?
He walked up Thirteenth Street. Billy Penn’s clock said midnight. On Market the all-night movies were grinding on. At Race he turned right and wandered down that bedizened alley. He looked for the night-prowlers who would know where Betty’s house was. Drunks, old and young, male and female, lurched along the lurid street. A Chinese laundryman locked his door and tucked the key into his pocket. At Ninth Street David approached a young man lounging under a light. “Where’s Betty’s house?” he asked.
“That the one Max Volo runs?” the lounger inquired.
“Yes.”
The lounging man blew smoke through his nose. “The yellow house,” he said.
When David knocked at the door a Negro opened it and said, “We don’t want nothin’.”
“I’m looking for Betty,” David insisted.
“Betty don’t live here.”
“Max Volo sent me.”
“Where you know Max Volo?” the Negro asked suspiciously.
“Paradise.”
“Mis’ Betty!” the Negro called. A handsome woman appeared and asked imperiously, “Who are you?”
“I’m David Harper.”
“Yes!” the handsome woman cried. “I didn’t remember you!” She thrust out a big, firm hand. Expansively she led David through a hallway and into a large, carefully furnished room. There were pictures on the wall, mountain scenes mostly, and expensive furniture. Some men in their fifties, quite at ease, sat about the room talking to four attractive girls who wore perfectly laundered summer dresses.
“This is David Harper,” Betty gushed expansively. “And this is Helen and Patty and Louise and this lovely little girl is Floramae. Floramae is from Charlottesville, down in Virginia.”
Quietly Betty took Floramae by the hand and said, “Max told me that if you ever showed up I was to be very nice to you. Floramae, why don’t you show Dave the place?” The little Southern girl placed her hand in David’s.
“I’ve got to see Max,” David said.
“Why don’t you and Floramae just look around a bit?”
“Thanks, Floramae, but I’ve got to see Max right away.”
Betty sent Floramae back to the other girls. “You in trouble, Dave?” she asked.
“No!” he insisted, reassuringly.
“Then what do you want to see Max for?”
“A friend of mine’s in trouble,” he explained.
“A girl?”
“Yes.”
Betty laughed heartily. Her gold tooth sparkled brilliantly. “A friend in trouble. A girl friend. Dave, we hear that every day. She going to have a baby?”
“Heavens no!” David laughed. Somehow he never thought of Mona having a baby.
“I don’t get what you’re driving at, Dave, but Max has never forgotten how you behaved at the fire. He said you could see him any time. I’ll send you over with Hampton.”
The Negro shrugged his shoulders and left to get a car. Soon David was riding up Race Street toward the center of town. Hampton parked the car and led David to Volo’s expensive suite of rooms. Max was there.
“What’s up, kid?” the little man asked brusquely.
“A very beautiful girl I know has a chance to bust into pictures. She needs a five-thousand-dollar stake.”
“Five grand! Just like that!”
“She’s a good risk. She has talent.”
“You been sleepin’ with her? Guys sleepin’ with dames always think they have talent.”
“No, Max. I met her up at Paradise. You know her. The girl who sang with Klementi Kol.”
“I don’t know Kol,” Max snapped in an extremely businesslike manner.
“The orchestra leader.”
“Dance band?”
“No, Max!” David explained. “The good musician who took Sousa’s place each summer.”
“Oh! That Kol! The guy who croaked himself. That dame! Hell, kid! That girl’s got all kinds of class!”
“She needs five thousand.”
“What for?” Volo asked suspiciously.
“It may sound funny,” David said slowly. “She has an offer from Hollywood. But she has no money. She says that if she goes out there broke, they’ll treat her like nobody. She wants to make a splash so she’ll be too big to be pushed around.”
Volo snapped his fingers loudly. “That girl’s smart. Where is she?”
There was a long pause during which David thought: “I shouldn’t let Max meet her.” But the hour was late and Max Volo was in a hurry; so against his better judgment David led Max to Mona’s dingy hotel. When he knocked on her door, Mona threw a thin robe about her shoulders and allowed her nightgown to twist awry as if she had just risen from sleep. She pulled at it until her bosom partially showed. Slowly she opened the door.
“Oh, Dave!” she cried. “You shouldn’t have come here!” Quickly she pressed her nightgown against her throat. Then slowly she brought her other arm across her bosom and stood with her wrists crossed. She was tenderly exquisite and blushed in embarrassment. “This awful room!” she said.
Max closed the door and proceeded to business. David was astonished at how quickly Max and Mona understood each other. “Miss Meigs,” Max said graciously after the loan had been arranged, “I got friends in Hollywood. Important people, I can assure you. When you get there I arrange flowers, cars, and even should you want it a band.”
“That’s sweet of you, Mr. Volo,” Mona said. “I’m scared, and I’m going to need all the luck I can scrape together.” She smiled brilliantly at Max, showing her iridescent teeth.
Then Volo did a very silly thing. He bent low and kissed Mona’s hand. David was already in the hallway and did not hear what happened next, but Mona permitted her hand to linger in the little man’s and said softly, “But all you get out of this is the five thousand paid back. That’s all, Mr. Volo.”
“I’m willing to gamble on that,” Max replied. He was smiling happily when he overtook David. “Any time you want favors like tonight, look me up! It
When the list of visiting examiners was posted David received a jolt. In American legal development, Thurman Arnold. In English history, Mr. David Dalling, of Oxford. David looked at the list and whistled. “I’m to be examined by such men!” He became panicky and hurried off to study in all directions. “Boy!” he grunted when his long absence from books started to tell. “I waited too long!”
But Joe Vaux helped him to get organized. Joe reviewed the books that Dalling had written and pronounced the man to be archconservative, anti-Macaulay, pro-Walpole, anti-Earl Grey, and pro-Sir Thomas More. Following this analysis he tracked down a dozen books and joined with David in a systematic summary of the great writers: Ostrogorski, Dicey and the rest. But at night Joe snarled at the men on his hall: “It’s a damned disgrace to bring a man like Dalling to America. Reactionary, Troy, anti-labor. And an Englishman! Well, here’s one Boston Irishman that don’t give a damn if he graduates or not. Wait till you see what I do to Mr. David Dalling!”
The written exams came first, ten days of them with three-hour papers each morning and afternoon. On the first day David felt chilly and truly afraid, but then he saw Mr. Dalling’s exam. It was one question: “What events in British constitutional history might be studied in an effort to understand Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln in their defense of union?” David grinned at the question and a sweet sense of power came upon him. “I could write for days on that one!” he muttered.
He did well for eight days, and when students compared notes, word flashed across the campus: “Dave is knocking them dead.” He was not sure, but he did know that few questions were asked which he and Joe had not studied. At the beginning of each exam they nodded gravely to each other; and then on the eighth afternoon David was handed a telegram as he left the examination room: “Must see you tonight. Dinner. The Bellevue. Mona.”