The whir of the fan when the girl had stood there became confused with other memory.
The Rabbi had said that as one studies the Torah, as one reads the same portions at the same times of the year, year after year, one sees in them a change; but, as they do not change, it must be we who change.
But each time he thought of the Saturday he thought of the girl, and it was always the same—the whir of the fan blowing the dress as she stood there and asked for her money.
It blew the dress and, with it, an odor of uncleanliness.
And was the smell magnified by time?
For, at the time, he’d thought how he’d be hard-pressed to have sex with her, as she smelled unclean. That was the factor, then, perhaps, which buried the memory; for, when they’d come and asked him, “Do you know this girl?” he said that he did not.
And when they said, “She works on the line,” he had not.
“There are so many girls here,” he said.
“Waal, this one is exceptionally pretty.”
“Is she?” he said; and shrugged. Not to say, “I am beyond that,” but, he felt at the time, noncommittally; not to say, “You find her so. Perhaps I, being different from you, may not.” No.
And not at all servile, no. Not saying, “You know that I cannot notice your young women,” but, he thought, as he looked back, measured, correct, circumspect, not unmindful that it was a—as he put it to himself—“difficult subject,” but with a certain dignity, he thought—rightly asserting his right not to be interested. He’d shrugged.
“She was quite pretty,” the policeman had said—as if to assert, therefore, what, he thought: that any man would rape and kill her?
No. He had shrugged. And he had not remembered her.
Why had he been disgusted at her smell? Why had he, in fact, noticed her? For she was not that pretty.
“Their notions of beauty,” he thought, “are cheap. How could they not be? (To forgive them.)”
But they’d seen it, he realized later. They’d seen it, in fact, before he had. In that shrug. He had not consciously remembered her, but they had read intuited processes hidden from his very consciousness. Could that be?
Yes. He’d remembered her. Yes. Later. And he’d told them all. Everything except the smell.
Except her smell. For he knew, that would be to invite them to hang him.
Her dress looked so limp, so greasy, blown by the fan.
The yellow ribbon tied to the fan fluttered. It was cleaner than her lank blue dress; and why the hell was she looking at him? He’d paid her. Why did she hesitate? What was it to him that she did? And was he responsible for every girl in the plant?
They’d said he had a reputation as a lecher. One girl and then another had reported overtures he’d made. Events which never happened in the world. But they were made so real.
“Their stories are so real,” he thought. “And they would die the death before they would disclaim them. I know they would. They would go to the rack before they would recant.”
“You, you the Flower of Chivalry. You who’ve come forth Risking All,” the prosecutor had said. Frank snorted, shaking his head at the memory.
What was it they’d risked, who had gained sympathy and notoriety by their lies?
“He came up to me one Saady, and we were going out, by the second floor, and he ast me to stay. So my girlfriends went down, and I thought maybe he wannit to tell me he was going to move me up the line, ’cause I been working there the sixteen months, an’ they said after twelve months there if you was doin’ good they’d move you. But nobody come to me. An’ I don’t know why, ’cause I’m doin’ a good job. So I thought he was goin’ to say that they were movin’ me, when he ast me to stay.”
And here she’d put her head down.
Then the Judge, with more concern than Frank had ever heard in a man’s voice, as if the whole of the unsure advance over savagery were concentrated in those words, said, “Please continue,” then he sighed once and, again, said, “… please.”
She’d raised her head. Brave, quiet, noble—who would not be struck by her courage, he wondered, except the man who was being murdered by her lie.
“Am I going mad?” Frank thought, remembering. “Well, no. Well, no. It’s better. I am better. When I sat there though …” And, at the thought, he was, once again, in that courtroom; as he went back every day. As in a fever dream.
He was once again in that courtroom, and surrounded by his enemies, his mind destroying him as he sat there.
“Not that they’re lying,” he’d thought, “and not that I’m going to die, but that no one will ever know. No one will ever know. No one will ever know,” he’d thought. As they’d applauded her. As she stepped down, and the judge cried for silence, and the bailiff cried for silence, but the courtroom knew they did not mean it.
“They are linked by the unspoken bond. Even in this,” he thought. “Even in this so-small ritual, where each knows that the other knows, and they are delighted by their part in the play. Delighted by that unanimity.
“The poor fucking swine.”
He heard the roaring in his ears, in the courtroom. The timbre changed, as the cheering spectators tried to follow the girl, Alice, the factory girl, as she walked out of the court; and then the crowds out in the corridor began to cheer her, then the crowds on the street. And he could picture her face, her mask of controlled emotion, her humility, her performance of unassuming virtue, of simple honor, unworthy of their accolade but accepting it, in understanding that it was awarded her not for herself but as a representative of Southern Womanhood.
“Yes. As that,” she said, in her step, in her averted gaze, in her demeanor. “As that, yes, I will accept it.”
And he could not rise from his seat and kill her—that was the injustice—who’d killed him. Who’d walked him that much closer to his death through her perjury. He could not burst down the aisle, duck under the arms of the sheriffs, and move through the crowd in the halls. Perhaps he could, scurrying like a rat, so quick as to escape their notice, down the corridors, down the stairs, on to the street, where he would find the slut surrounded—wait, but wait, then he’d be free: turning the other way, he could run to the wharves, onto a ship, or out into the country. …
A runaway slave’s life beckoned to him. He’d sleep in the lofts of barns, and eat—whatever was it that he’d eat? Well, he’d discover it, as he lived. As he lived that life he would discover how to live it. He was small and he was quick and light, and now those attributes would work to his advantage.
He didn’t need much. He needed so little, really. That was his secret. That was his strength.