There was about all those dreadful cocktails, that illicit wine poured from a crockery teapot into a crockery teacup, the most peculiar effect. It gave a sharpness, an attentiveness to everything and everyone surrounding her. She seemed closed in with her guesses and intimations. It might be her fancy, probably was, but remembering it now she thinks it was about this moment that something extraordinary took place in her as though she had somehow been supplied with a new equipment of nervous feelers—picking up the messages, the intimations, the way one looked and stared, received the sudden answers, exposed oneself to insolence and to initiation.
They were a noticeable couple, Felix with his marked Semitic countenance, his rather intense way of talking, obviously in love with her and she so much older. Even the way they talked arrested attention. They were interested; they liked discussion. The young were around in those days, very conspicuous indeed, determined to squeeze to the last drop of enjoyment their suddenly acquired reputation for belonging to a lost, a desperate generation. They were alert to everything; they had their ears back like little bird dogs, listening to scraps of conversation, making their quick appraisals, requiring but a glance or two to come to their conclusions. They regarded the two of them with their straight assessing stares. You could positively hear what they were thinking—“ The man’s a Jew. Talks well. Where did he get the blond beard and those arresting gestures? The woman is no slouch on looks. A good-looker. Getting on in years but she’s got something.”
It was a curious thing but at just that time she was aware that she did have something. There were sympathies and curiosities brewing in her which in a most subtle manner flowed out and brushed the minds, the hearts of these young people and in particular went out from her to the young men. There were many influences, strong currents of repressed emotion that set afloat upon the air an intricate network of inquiries and invitations and on these tenuous lines of communication she drew the young men’s glances. Stare for stare, they set up the wordless exchange. She seemed to hear them saying to her, “You’ve got something; give us what you’ve got,” and from the hungers of her heart, out of the love that had never found a place to rest, the questions wandered from this young man to that as though she asked of all of them “Have you something to tell me of my son? Do his nerves resemble yours? Has he this same acuteness of perception, this awareness, quick and sharp and new and born apparently of your generation—does he frequent these places and drink himself night after night into the same state of drunken sensibility?” They were in the oddest way drinking from her wells of sympathy and not without a realization of the interest their lost condition inspired they played right up to her; they dramatized their plight.
Felix was definitely averse to these glances and exchanges. He seemed actually to think that she was carrying on some kind of airy intrigue with these charming, tipsy, rather disreputable young men. Considering how little she had ever permitted him to display his amorous inclinations his jealousy was, if these were his suspicions, understandable. It made for something of a strain between them.
There was a place in Morton Street they used to go to occasionally, Dante’s Inferno, and most appropriately named it was. Goodness what a hole. Approached by dark area steps, dimly lighted, never aired, phooey how it smelt. The food was good, the drinks were cheap. It was very hushed and not too well policed. She had a preference for it because it was the hangout of a little group of young people in whom she had become specially interested. Felix objected to it strongly and on the night which she has never ceased regretting he had protested vigorously as they groped their way down those infernal stairs.
They were all of them there, the young man with the chestnut-colored hair, the young man with the dark countenance, tall, slender, distinguished, the nondescript boy with the freckled face and red hair; and there were the girls she’d seen before except that the young man with the chestnut mane had acquired a new partner. She was slight and exceedingly pretty—difficult to make out. Was she just another of those girls one saw so much around the Village, their youth already frayed, burning their candle as swiftly as possible at both ends? She obviously responded with joy and immediacy to the attentions of her young friend whose lovemaking appeared to be very explicit indeed. Charming he was if one ever saw a charming young man, easy, graceful, witty, with an air about him of having issued, like Venus from her shell, full-fledged from his lost, his desperate generation.
The group pricked up their ears and laid them back as soon as she and Felix got seated and began to talk. They listened attentively and seemed ready at any moment to break into the conversation with or without invitation. Felix was talking about Ulysses. He didn’t like it—a dangerous tendency, to reduce a novel to the stream of one man’s consciousness. The Russians were for him the greatest of all the novelists. They had, he believed, exhausted the novel, drained it of about all that could be said. Weren’t they the first to explore the subconscious mind, the angel country and the devil territory? They’d broken down those neat integuments, they’d let in the dark, the new dimension and managed to keep it all within the framework of a novel, a novel, mind you, he said, in which men and women play their various parts, display their characters, move around, do this and that, get something going, action, situation, denouement. But this kind of thing, no good, he said, and he threw his arm out in that abrupt arresting manner. Why, it’s an association test, a matching up of literary associations. To really get it, to understand it and follow it to its source you’d have to know every book that Joyce had read, to have seen and heard everything that he had seen and heard and thought about. God, you can’t make a novel out of that, the flow and eddy of the individual mind. You can’t get order out of that chaos.
“Hell,” said the young man with the chestnut-colored hair, and he drew out the hand which under the young girl’s blouse had been caressing her pretty, slender breasts. “Why can’t you? He has reduced it all to order.”
This made just the opportunity the young people were looking for. Suddenly they were all of them shouting and Felix found himself the center of their attack. It was impossible to make out what anyone was saying, no one listening to anyone—new phrases, new names, new reputations that had got suddenly circulating in this strange postwar world where everything, even the books one read and the thoughts one had, seemed to have expanded and taken on a new dimension, were thrown vigorously about. The young man with the red hair was giving a monologue on Freud. He insisted on being heard. “Hell,” he said, “wasn’t it Freud who’d thrown the fat into the fire?” Felix reminded him and pretty irritably that Freud had come into the picture long after the Russians. If it hadn’t been for them there might never have been a Freud. They’d started the analysis and investigation, they’d begged for this descent into Hell, or if you wished to express it according to Freud—the subconscious. Nobody appeared to listen much to him. Each of the young men seemed to be an advocate for something or for somebody. The young man with the chestnut-colored hair shouted an inquiry which brought her quickly to attention recalling that slender little volume Lucien had taken from his pocket that afternoon at the Plaza. Had his friend with the beard ever heard of Marcel Proust? There was a novel to put an end to all novels—the greatest novel ever written, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. He waved a graceful hand and draped his arm around the pretty girl beside him. “Have to wait to finish it,” he said, “still waiting for it to come off the presses. The stream,” he glanced at Felix with his mocking eye, “of one man’s consciousness. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.” He kept repeating the title not without awareness of his fine French accent. The dark distinguished-looking boy shouted the loudest and apparently most effectually, for presently an actual conversation was under way.
She had not contributed a word to the general babel, but now that the shouts and monologues had more or less yielded to discussion she realized that the young people were expecting something from her and was uneasily aware that they had taken it for granted that she
was somehow or other lined up with them, indeed that they expected her to understand the habits of their thoughts, the associations they shared and the predilections they espoused. How they could have believed this to be the case she couldn’t imagine, but it was evident to her from their glances, from those curious tremors and vibrations that passed on their tenuous lines of communication, that they did. She hadn’t at that time read a single one of the books about which they’d been shouting and wrangling, she’d been in no position to enter the fray, but now they were talking about a book which Felix had lent to her only a few days since. Now I shall be called upon to say something, she’d thought, remembering how she had agreed with Felix that the book was difficult—very nearly impossible to understand, and that she had shared to some extent his indignation.
The young men had conceded him the floor and he was expressing himself in no uncertain terms. “A pedant,” he said, “his poem is another example of the association test—trotting out all those private incommunicable references. Who wants to be jerked around on the vehicle of one man’s wandering reflections?” He turned to her. “Why don’t you speak up, Margaret? You’re familiar with this masterpiece.” “Well,” she replied, and she can never think of that answer without acute regret, “after all, Felix, it is their waste land. If these young men can find their way around in it, and it’s clear enough they can, maybe we’d better back down. It’s a landscape with which we are not as familiar as they—it’s the world we made for them. We ought to have some respect for the disgust and grief they feel in having to inhabit it.”
She can see now the gesture with which Felix summoned the waiter. Her answer had not only been ambiguous and trite, it had lacked a decent loyalty, for surely the future towards which he had worked and aspired was not, he was intimating as he paid the bill, counted out the change and tipped the waiter, this land of Eliot’s poem, and if these young people wished to indulge themselves in their drunken and conspicuous sorrow that was no reason for her to imply that he didn’t suffer too. It was not a world he had made and he didn’t like it any better than they did, and as for this infernal hole, he seemed to be implying as he helped her on with her coat and bade goodbye to the young people, he hadn’t wished to come and he did not intend to return.
It was over a fortnight before she saw him again. When he finally telephoned her his voice showed no sign of injured feeling. There was no reference to the night at Dante’s save for the fact that he said “We won’t go to any disreputable hole in the ground.” Mori’s on Bleecker Street was the place he chose.
It had been recently done over and there was an air of elegance about it, with the big spacious dining room and an open gallery above, the walls white and severe and all the appointments in excellent taste. The tables were against the wall and they sat next each other, which lends a peculiar poignancy to her memory of that night. They had cocktails and wine served here as elsewhere in crockery pots and teacups. Felix was gentle and quiet but she saw at once that he was agitated. She knew that some kind of an outburst was coming and was preparing herself for one of those painful proposals. Dear me, she’d thought, why must he keep this up for so long. He ought to know by now it’s hopeless.
“Margaret,” he finally began. She waited, reluctant to help him out.
“I have something to tell you,” he stammered, and laying down his teacup spilled his Chianti all over the tablecloth. “I am going to be married.”
It was like a blow straight between the eyes. “Oh, Felix,” she exclaimed, aware that her voice expressed more consternation than delight, “I am so glad. It’s what I’ve always wanted for you.” She placed her hand on his. “Is she young?” she inquired. “Do I know her?”
“She’s not so very young,” he replied, attempting to disguise his agitation. “Yes, you do know her, or at least you’ve seen her once or twice. You’ve talked to her over the telephone.”
“But who is she, Felix?”
He came out with it quickly, a little defiantly. “She’s my secretary, Rachel Weil.”
“Oh,” she exclaimed again, “oh, how nice.”
“Yes, Rachel Weil, my secretary,” he stammered again, grabbing his napkin and mopping up the wine. “She’s been,” he blurted it out painfully, “my mistress for over ten years.”
Again she felt as though he’d struck her between the eyes and, it was utterly lacking in decent appreciation of what he had endured at her hands, she’d felt grieved, shocked, indignant. Felix of all people! Such infidelity from him. And there it all was written across her face as plain as day. “All these years?” she asked when she had gained her breath.
“Yes,” he said, “all these years. She’s a warm and passionate woman. I have asked her now to marry me.”
She is certain she would not have experienced so accurately all he underwent had she not been seated so close to him. He was determined if it was humanly possible to control himself, but all the restraint she had so long imposed upon him broke down. His feeling surged up and mastered him. He put his hands before his face and succumbed to a succession of sharp, convulsive sobs. A more distressing moment it is impossible to imagine. He did his best to pretend that something he had eaten was choking him and seeing this she summoned a waiter and asked for a glass of water. “This gentleman has swallowed a fish bone,” she said.
What with the commotion the little drama had stirred up, getting and gulping down the water, the waiter hitting him, vigorously on the back and each of them engaged in carrying off the pretense, it wasn’t too long before Felix had himself well in hand, and presently they appeared to be conversing in the calmest possible manner.
Then there had been all that intimacy, that gentleness between them, which each had tried desperately to cling to and prolong. Her indignation had passed as swiftly as it had come and how humanly, how exquisitely Felix had understood her shame and chagrin for having felt it. It was upon that core of finesse, delicacy, and depth of feeling in him she’d rested gratefully. He had allowed her to feel that he rested and reposed on what he knew he had in all fullness and sincerity—her friendship and affection. She was concerned about everything he told her of his plans. He was moving to Washington to go into partnership with a friend. A good arrangement for him he believed and he had high hopes that his knowledge of labor relations might result in a government appointment. That was as she knew well what he had always wanted most. There was on the whole a better future for him in Washington than in New York. To this they both agreed. She kept assuring him that he was not old, that he would have a successful and a happy life. She hoped that he would have a family. Was Rachel she asked too old to bear him children? No, he said, and with the greatest earnestness, he hoped, he trusted not. They both of them desired children. And so they talked together there at Mori’s until the waiters began to whisk the tablecloths off the empty tables, positively inviting them to leave.
He took her home as he had so many, many times before. They walked up Sullivan Street and crossed Washington Square. It was a pleasant April night and the spring mist hung about in the trees and shrubbery. The pavements were wet and gave off a smell of spring. There was a special smell they both agreed that hung about the Square. It was a bit too damp to sit down. They were very loath to leave a place so crowded with memories, with nostalgia for an epoch—beliefs and hopes they knew had gone past all recall.
Outside her stoop on Twelfth Street he took her hand and held it for some time. “Good night, Margaret,” he said, “goodbye.”
“Good night,” she said, “goodbye, my dear, dear friend.” And that was the last time she ever laid her eyes on Felix.
EIGHT
That feeling she had had of being somehow protected from anonymity and rootlessness suddenly gone from her heart. The long accustomed habits, calling Felix up, knowing that Mary was always at hand with her wisdom and her companionable wit, the basic reliable love still regulating the behavior of her thoughts (I must tell this to Mary—Mary would adore that, I’ll call
up Felix) and on the brink of all these feelings, thoughts and impulses the knowledge that she would not see her friends again and the great need to see, to hear, to have the usual talk, the old exchange.
Gone they were, vanished before she was prepared for losing them, and the shock of Mary’s death the more unbearable because it might so easily have been avoided. If she had taken the train as everyone advised instead of going over those bad roads in that rattling old Ford, the day so wild and rainy; or better, if she hadn’t gone at all. It had been unnecessary to attend that hearing, everyone had told her so, but determined she had been to go and in that car she so adored. Why, the moment the boy had brought the telegram and before she’d even opened it (what an uncanny thing) she’d known exactly what had happened—all day long that heaviness of heart upon her, that foreboding.
She’d been the first to get to Beacon and only just in time. Clear enough from the look on the doctor’s face and the looks on the faces of the nurses that there wasn’t a chance, and Mary waiting for her in that immaculate bed, whiter than the sheets that covered her, had conveyed the same intolerable message. She was conscious still and fully aware that she was dying. “Are you scared, Margaret? Well, don’t be, darling. I am not,” she’d whispered as though she were husbanding her strength for further conversation. She had taken her hand, but she’d been unable to utter another word. She’d closed her eyes. What could she possibly have said to Mary? Just being there with her, holding her hand while she lay dying seemed enough for both of them. The great experience had been rounded off by Mary’s words. Gallant she was in her life and in her death. Beloved Mary Morton. Miss Sylvester drew a long breath as though she wished for a moment to hold her love and close it in her heart.
Many Mansions Page 12
