AT THE FOOT OF THE PAGE
283
I considered the matter settled and went home to tell my wife.
"I had it out with Smertenko today," I informed her, "and
just as I thought, you were entirely wrong about him. Do you
know what happened? He attacked me. He made some rather
wild criticisms of certain of my ideas, yet we parted on the best
terms imaginable."
"I don't believe it," she replied.
The next time I saw Smertenko my wife was with me. But it
was from a distance. He saw me too, while we were still half a
block away, turned around, and hurried off in the opposite direc–
tion. These manreuvres did not escape my wife's notice.
"He likes you!" she said in that sarcastic way she has, some–
times. "He's criticising your ideas. Can't you see? Or are you
foolish enough to think he is trying to avoid you?"
2. A LECTURE UNDERGROUND
Smertenko, I heard, had moved to Brooklyn. At first I was
furious. The insolent sneak! To make off like that to another
borough! But the motive ... his motive.... My wife said he
disliked me. I bullied him a bit, not meaning to, just naturally.
Had he taken offense? Impossible! Possibly....
He resented my bullying. It seems he was writing. A book
li
some sort. Lacking talent and inspiration, what he needed to
set
on with it-and needed in quantity-was gumption. The fool
m
shrewd in his folly, such people always are. A Smertenko
with
gumption had become his objective. He must have felt that
in
my
neighborhood this could not be realized. Hence Brooklyn.
So that was it.
Smertenko's wife, a school teacher, supported him. They
justified this arrangement by believing that he was an author.
Could she have accepted a Smertenko-not-an-author? Flo, if
lhe
truth
be told, was not much to look at. Flo was just so-so. And
Smertenko? Undersized and longnosed, pale, frail and jowly, his
apression was at once morose and trivial.
Smertenko had only to speak of something casually to make
J01l
feel it must be worthless. His toneless note and constant grin
amtributed to this effect. And when he was forced to deal with
