MOMENT OF TRUTH
“If I Quench Thee...” is a strong, disturbing story which deals with an important social issue of our times—and which offers, in the “moment of truth” faced by its protagonist, Arthur Stern, a significant lesson for us all. The title may seem to have little relation to the tale itself, but in fact is both appropriate and tragically ironic, as may be seen by an examination of its source: Shakespeare’s Othello, Act V, Scene II. (The reader should not look it up until after completion of the story, however, because the exact quote gives away the basic plot.) William E. Chambers is one of the new young writers in the field of crime fiction, a graduate of MWA’s Writing Course, and is currently and ambitiously working on his first two novels for 1976 publication by Popular Library. - B.P.
Arthur Stern looked past his denim-clad daughter at the apartment she had taken in one of Manhattan’s ghettos. It was the first time he had seen it and he frowned critically. A rickety wicker settee served as a couch. The top of an ancient and probably unworkable combination TV-radio cabinet was used as a bar, and held two bottles of cheap rye. The lifelike poster of Communist rebel Che Guevara that decorated the otherwise plain wall behind the bar deepened the hue of Stern’s pink complexion.
Closing the door behind him, he handed her his coat and said, “For God’s sake, Monica, put on a bra. There’s not much to that blouse you’re wearing.”
Monica stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. “Don’t be so old-fashioned. If God wanted these things bound, I would have been born with a Playtex living—”
“Damn it! That isn’t funny!”
“Okay! Okay!” Raising her hands like a holdup victim, Monica retreated backward through beaded curtains to her bedroom. She shouted from inside, “Hey, I’m glad you came to visit, Dad.”
“Thought I’d surprise you, since you never visit me.”
“I was going to get in touch with you—”
“I’ll bet.”
“I was. I’ve got a surprise of my own.”
“Nothing you might say or do would surprise me any more.”
Monica returned, mixed two highballs, and sat on the settee next to Stern. They clinked glasses. He said, “Happy birthday.”
“Whoa. I’m not twenty-four until next week. Don’t rush it.”
“I didn’t know what to give you as a present, Monica, so I thought I’d find out what you needed and write a check.”
“Well, I don’t really need anything—”
“Seems to me you could use everything.”
“Like what? I have my home, my job—”
“Some home.”
“The location’s convenient for work.”
‘‘Toiling for peanuts among a bunch of savages—”
“Daddy—please! I do social work because I have a conscience.”
“What kind of conscience prods a daughter to leave her own flesh and blood for a band of slum dwellers?”
“You don’t need me. These people do.”
“Need you? Do you think your mother—God rest her soul—and I slaved to build that mink farm upstate just for ourselves?”
When Monica failed to answer, Stern continued, “We did it to get you away from the city—the slums—and the kind of people who dwell in them.”
“These kind of people are good people, Dad. All they need is some help—”
“Bull! All they need is to get off their butts and help themselves like I did.”
Monica gulped her drink, took a deep breath and said, “You’ve always been strong, Dad. That’s why you can’t understand people who are weak.”
The shrill buzz of the doorbell interrupted them, and Monica looked a little uncomfortable. Stem said, “Expecting company?”
‘‘No. Not really.” She fumbled with the buttons on her blouse. “It—well—it might be Tod Humbert.”
“Another social worker?”
“Much more than that.”
A second, more insistent buzz made Stem wince.
“Buzz him back, will you?”
The sound of a man coming up the stairs was followed by a vigorous tapping on the door. Monica opened it and said, “Oh—hi, Tod—”
A tall, thin black man wearing a short leather jacket and blue jeans wrapped his arms around her waist, kissed her on both cheeks and said, “You’re looking bad, baby. Superbad!”
Monica gently withdrew from his embrace and turned sheepishly toward her father.
“Tod—I—I want you to meet Arthur Stern, my father.”
A bright smile flashed across the black man’s face. He walked forward, hand extended and said, “Mr. Stern, this is a pleasure, sir.”
Ignoring Tod completely, Stern rose. “Monica, my coat please.”
The girl looked pleadingly at him, then went wordlessly into the bedroom. Tod sat down on the settee and stared silently at his outstretched legs and crossed ankles. Stern wrote out a check and handed it to Monica when she returned with his coat.
“Fill in whatever you need.”
“May I borrow your pen?”
“Of course. Here.”
Monica blinked steadily as she filled out the check and handed it back to him. The amount read: Nothing!
The odor of rancid food that pervaded the hall disappeared as Stem stepped into the cold night air. He crumpled the rejected check in his fist, threw it into the gutter and ordered himself to be calm. However, his stomach churned, and his temples throbbed as he envisioned the black man with his daughter, the black man’s arms around Monica…
Stem strode around the block, trying to decide what to do. He could disown Monica and wash his hands of all responsibility toward her. But the very thought made him shudder. He could go home, and hope time would heal the wounds. But what if that failed? Finally, he decided he could return to her apartment, make apologies and an effort to tolerate Humbert, and start rebuilding their damaged relationship.
Choice number three was most logical, of course, so Stern swallowed his pride and marched back to his daughter’s building. An elderly man who was leaving held the inner door open as Stem entered, making it unnecessary for him to ring the bell. A shaft of yellow light slanting from the recessed hall at the top of the stairs indicated a partially opened apartment door.
The sound of familiar voices made him hesitate at the foot of the landing. He heard Tod Humbert say, “Don’t feel bad, honey. It’s good to be snubbed occasionally. Humbles the ego.”
“Thanks for being so understanding, Tod.”
“You’re extra-special. Marrying you will be the greatest thrill of my life.”
A sudden upsurge of blood pressure made Stem grip the bannister rail for support. He had visions of friends and business associates sporting lewd grins and knowing leers. Damn it! He could stand her seeing Humbert, but not this—not marriage, a black son-in-law.
Fists clenched, teeth grating, he left the building again and ducked into the doorway of an abandoned house diagonally across the street. The burning hatred he was feeling now conjured up remembrances a quarter-century old. His mind filled with reflections of Korea, of another people different in skin color, an alien race that had threatened him and his fellow commandoes. A threat he had eliminated with bullets, piano wire, and bare hands.
Once again, after twenty-five years, he felt threatened. But this type of threat was different, wasn’t it? New York wasn’t a jungle-or was it? You couldn’t react here the way you could in Korea-or could you…?
If the sight of Tod Humbert emerging several minutes later from Monica’s hallway stimulated Stern’s adrenal glands, he showed no sign of it. He remained still until the black man disappeared around the comer, then he followed. After walking a deserted block, he called out, “Mr. Humbert!” Tod Humbert glanced warily over his shoulder. “It’s me, Arthur Stern.”
Stem broke into a trot to catch up, then feigned breathlessness. He said, “I hope you can forgive my rude behavior. Monica and I had angry words before you arrived, and I let my emotions get the best of me. I was just returning to apologize when I happened to see you.”
The black man chuckled, extended his hand and said, “We all have our faults, don’t—”
He never finished his sentence. Stem gripped his outstretched hand, jerked him forward and kneed him in the groin. As Tod’s legs buckled, he clawed wildly. Stem felt a burning sensation on one side of his face and beard cloth tear. Both men collapsed against a row of foul-smelling garbage cans lined up before a run-down tenement. The clatter of metal and the screech of an exasperated cat shattered the night.
Stern crawled on top of Humbert, gripped his hair with both hands and pounded his head against the sidewalk. An edge-of-the-hand chop across the black man’s throat ended the conflict.
Stem lumbered to his feet, glanced about, then twisted his tie and tore his shirt. The facial cut he had received before falling bled enough to satisfy him. He knew muggings occurred with startling regularity in this section of New York City. He imagined how Monica would feel when her own father was victimized. It would be The Lesson that would teach her to despise the ghetto dwellers for the depths to which most of them sunk, and bring her home again to her own kind. Especially when be proved his attacker was Tod Humbert!
Yellow squares of light began flashing in various tenements, and somewhere nearby a window rattled open. Stern clutched his wounded face with one hand and staggered into the gutter, shouting for the police.
Arthur Stern gestured in disbelief as he spoke to the bored, flat-faced detective sitting across the desk from him. “As I told the patrolmen, I was just walking along when this man attacked me. I came back to the neighborhood because I wanted to talk to my daughter again. You can imagine my shock—my—my horror when the mugger turned out to be the man my daughter had introduced me to only an hour earlier. The man—my God—the man she was going to marry—”
A detective put his head through the door. “His daughter’s here.”
“Send her in.”
Monica, complexion drained, entered listlessly. Stem went to her and gently squeezed her shoulders, saying, “Thanks for coming, baby.”
She stood stiffly, not returning the embrace. Instead, she said coldly, “I thought they handcuffed murderers.”
Stem felt a sudden chill on his back. He clutched her harder. “It was self-defense,” he said. “Humbert tried to mug me.”
“Tod could never raise his hand in violence to anyone. It would be against his principles, his way of life. If there was violence, you caused it. And I’ll tell that to a jury. You murdered someone very dear to me.”
“It isn’t murder when…someone like that…” Stem looked at the flat-faced detective, who was watching him closely. Then he shook his head, hissed air in through clenched teeth and said, “Damn it! How could you even think of marrying him, Monica!”
“Marry him? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend! I came back to apologize tonight and overheard your conversation from the hall. He said marrying you would be the greatest thrill of his life.”
Monica stared at him for a long moment. Then she shrugged his hands from her shoulders, fumbled through her purse and produced a snapshot of a blond man in an army medical uniform. “This is the surprise I had for you, Dad. Next month, when he gets discharged, I’m going to marry this man.”
Stem’s eyes grew wide as they rested on the picture. He tried to speak, but his voice failed him. For the first time in his life, Arthur Stem knew fear as Monica’s tear-stained face moved from side to side and he heard her say, “Tod was going to marry me, all right. He—he was an ordained minister…”