Quinn's Book

by William Kennedy

  PURITY KNICKERBOCKER

  (Who speaks for a multitude.)

  Quinn, deciding the letter and Gordon’s response to it were fatuous and depressing, let his eye roam over the rest of the page, found an advertisement for hashish candy, exhilarant confectionized: produces the most perfect mental cheerfulness. Also (remembering Magdalena’s five abortions) a medical salute to the Ladies of America: “Lyon’s Periodical Drops! The Great Female Remedy! But Caution!!! Dr. Lyon guarantees his drops to cure suppression of the menses, but if pregnancy be the cause, these drops would surely produce miscarriage and he does not then hold himself responsible. BE WISE IN TIME.”

  “That kind of letter is commonplace, just ordinary jealousy,” Quinn said. “You can’t let it bother you. It carries no more weight than these frivolous advertisements.”

  “Easy to say,” said Gordon, “but they warn of something coming. They’ll try to spoil her birthday party, I’ll wager.”

  “I’m sure Magdalena can take care of herself,” said Maud. “She’s as invulnerable as the Monitor on things like this.”

  “But her heart is weak. You know that,” said Gordon.

  “What’s wrong with her heart?” Quinn asked.

  “She’s had trouble for six months or so. She’s collapsed twice now, but she’s doctoring,” said Maud.

  “I worry she’ll be harmed by this business, whatever it is,” said Gordon.

  “Is she joining us here?” Quinn asked.

  “She and Obadiah will meet us at the track,” said Gordon.

  “Has she kept her looks?” Quinn asked.

  “And her figure,” said Maud.

  “Splendid. She’s one of our national physical treasures.”

  “I agree,” said Gordon.

  “You do?” said Quinn. “I wouldn’t have expected that of you.”

  “I don’t know why not. I’m fond of the whole family.”

  “As am I,” said Quinn, and he leaned over and kissed Maud on the mouth.

  “That’s a bit familiar, I’d say,” said Gordon.

  “With reason,” said Quinn. “I’m deeply and forever beyond familiar, and beyond that, I’m irrevocably in love with Maud, and I intend to kidnap her.”

  Gordon broke into laughter and his tall hat fell off.

  “How wonderful,” he said. “You speak as well as you write. Wasn’t that wonderful, Maud?”

  “It was wonderful,” said Maud.

  “Of course you know I mean it,” said Quinn.

  “Of course you do,” said Maud.

  “Did Maud ever ask you to kidnap her?” Quinn asked.

  “Not that I can remember,” said Gordon.

  “Good. She asked me, but I was never quite equal to it, and she was a vacillating kidnappee. But now I’ve decided to carry her off into the night, out of bondage to money, power, and fame, and do arousing things to her soul. Would you like that, Maud?”

  “I don’t think you should answer that question,” said Gordon.

  “I have no intention of answering it,” said Maud.

  “I think it’s rather insulting,” said Gordon.

  “Love is never an insult,” said Maud. “Let it pass.”

  “I’m not sure I like your attitude,” said Gordon.

  “Oh, you like it, you like it,” said Maud.

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  “Are we going to the track or not?” said Quinn.

  “We’re going,” said Maud.

  “Having professed love for you, am I still welcome or should I engage my own carriage?”

  “Oh, Daniel, don’t be twice a boor,” said Maud.

  Our triumvirate at this point descends the porch stairs and, settling into Gordon’s handsome landau drawn by a pair of matched grays, recedes now, necessarily, into the moving mosaic that Saratoga has become at this hour. The landau moves into a line half a mile long, extending from the front of the hotel on Broadway out past the elms on Union Avenue and onto the grounds of the new Saratoga track. The carriages are a study in aspiration, achievement, failed dreams, industrial art, social excess, tastemaking, advance and retrograde design, cherished fantasy, inept pretension, and more. They are the American motley and they carry the motley-minded denizens of a nation at war and at play. Quinn, aware the Union Army uses up five hundred horses each day of the war, is uncomfortably gleeful to be a part of this many-horsed motley. In his woeful solitude he embraces the crowd, famished for significance that has not been sanctified by blood. Before the day and the night are over, Quinn will observe, speak with, or become friend of, among others en route to the track:

  Price McGrady, John’s gambling partner in New York City, a faro dealer of such renown that John pays him forty-five hundred dollars per month plus fifteen percent of the house winnings at all faro tables, and who is now in a fringe-topped surrey alongside his lady for today, ready for his horse, Tipperary Birdcatcher, to win the principal race of the day, or, failing that, ready for it to lose, either outcome an exercise in ecstasy;

  The Wilmot Bayards of Fifth Avenue, he a horseman and yachtsman, investor in the racetrack with John McGee, and owner of Barrister, a horse that will run in the feature race, Bayard today among the most effulgent presences in the parade, riding in a barouche made in France, drawn by eight horses, and monitored by a pair of outriders who are wearing the silks of the Bayard Stable, gold and green, the colors of money;

  Lord Cecil Glastonbury of Ottawa, the iron magnate (and sympathizer with the Confederacy), in a wine-colored four-passenger brougham, he the owner of Royal Traveler, the horse favored in today’s feature race;

  Jim Fisk, the stock speculator and financial brigand, in a six-passenger closed coach, the largest vehicle in the line apart from certain omnibuses owned by the hotels, in which the brigand carries five cuddlesome women, all six drawn by six horses that follow behind the German marching band Fisk has hired to travel with him for the week;

  Colonel Wally Standish of the 104th Regulars, who rides alone in his two-wheeled cabriolet, proving that the wound he earned in the Second Manassas campaign may have left him with a malfunctional left arm, but that his right is still powerful enough to control his spirited sorrel mare;

  Magdalena Colón and Obadiah Griswold, he the carriage maker and principal partner of John McGee in establishing the racetrack, and for whom the feature race of the day, the Griswold Stakes, has been named—this notable pair riding in Magdalena’s demi-landau with its leather top folded down, she holding the reins of what is known to be the most expensive two-passenger vehicle in Saratoga: Obadiah’s masterpiece, gilded rococo in decor, doors of polished ebony, with Magdalena’s initials inlaid in white Italian marble on each door; she and Obadiah both eminently visible to all whom they now pass, he entirely in white including white cane and white straw boater, she in a summer dress of gray foulard silk with blue velvet buttons, the dress created in the postillon body design with tripartite tail, the new fashion favored by young women with slender figures; and rising from the right side of her straw bonnet the feathered plume of changeable color—gray today—that plume her vaunted symbol of resurrection ever since her time at the bottom of the wild river and which has made her the most instantly recognizable woman in Saratoga, in or out of season.

  Along with these, in assorted buggies, phaetons, chaises, coupes, and chariots, come bankers, soldiers, politicians, Kansas farmers and Boston lawyers, litterateurs from Philadelphia and actors from Albany, reprobates with dyed locks and widows so tightly laced that breathing does not come easy, young women with tapering arms and pouting lips, full of anxiety over the adequacy of their botteries and chausseries, gouty sinners and flirtatious deacons, portly women with matching daughters who are starting their day, as usual, full of high hope that they will today meet the significant stranger with whom the hymeneal sacrifice may at last be offered up—these and five thousand more of their uncategorizable kind all move forward at inch-pace progress into the brightest of bright noondays beneath the suns
wept heavenly promise of life at Saratoga.

  A quarter of a mile from the track the carriage line intersected with a moving crowd of Negroes singing a song to the music of their own marching musicians, the singing spirited and full, the music rousing, the crowd en route to a celebration (to be marked by song, speeches, and prayer, I would discover in tomorrow’s newspaper) of the emancipation of slaves in the rebellious states of the American union, as well as a commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies. The marchers were singing this:

  No more peck of corn for me, no more, no more;

  No more peck of corn for me, many t’ousand go.

  No more driver’s lash for me, no more, no more,

  No more driver’s lash for me, many t’ousand go.

  I observed that the faces of all the marching Negro men brought back, as always, the face of Joshua and his myriad masks of power.

  I saw John McGee as soon as we came within sight of the track’s entrance, where all carriages were discharging their passengers. Here, looking more prosperous and fit than I’d ever seen him, handsomely garbed in starched white linen, black broadcloth, and patent-leather boots, and with a full and perfectly trimmed beard as black as coal tar, stood the redoubtable God of Water and Horses, guarding the portal like the three-headed dog of Hades. He truly did seem to own three heads, so busy was he greeting and weeding the crowd. Up to a half-dozen people sought to pass through the gate and into the track proper at any given time and John knew many by name. He kept up a steady monologue:

  “Ah, there you are, Mrs. Woolsey, lovely day for the races . . . Mr. Travers, your uncle is upstairs . . . Hold it there, Dimpy, we’ll have no blacklegs among us today [and with a rough pluck of Dimpy’s sleeve, John sent the man back whence he came] . . . And none of yours either, darling [gently turning back a painted doll] . . . Ah, we’ll all enjoy ourselves this afternoon, won’t we, Henry? . . . And welcome, Mrs. Fitz, how’s your mother? . . . You’ve an escort, do ye, Margie, well, so be it, but if I find you with your hands in anybody’s pocket, I’ll whip your hide and put you in rags . . . Your cousin’s horse had a splendid workout this morning, Mrs. Riley, and I’d play him in the pool if I was you . . . Throw that hoodlum off the premises . . .” Etc.

  John left the weeding of undesirables in the hands of two burly associates and came to greet us, shook my hand vigorously, gripped Gordon by both shoulders, then kissed Maud’s hand with tender affection.

  “Ah, Maudie girl, there’s devilish news.”

  “Magdalena?”

  “There’s no news of her except she’s a year older. It’s the Warrior. They poisoned him.”

  “Noooooo,” groaned Maud, and she collapsed into herself so quickly that I grabbed her arm, fearing a fall.

  “They cored an apple, filled it with opium, and fed it to him. But he had the good taste to spit it out, and we don’t think he was hurt.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Ah, now,” said John, “I wouldn’t accuse anyone. But I have my notions.”

  “I want to see him,” said Maud.

  “I thought you would.”

  And so John took Maud’s hand and led us to his carriage and then across the street to the workout track, where we found Blue Grass Warrior coming off a final lap. The jockey, a Negro lad of about sixteen years, rode him toward us, and when John grabbed the reins the jock dismounted. Maud stroked the horse, which was lathered with sweat.

  “Are you all right, baby?” Maud asked the horse, and he dipped his head.

  “He’s doin’ fine,” said the jockey.

  “I’d horsewhip anybody who’d harm such a beautiful animal,” said Maud.

  “It’s dastardly,” said Gordon.

  Maud felt easeful after a time, and so we walked toward the stables with the Warrior and watched other horses being readied for performance. The jockeys were about, and the Negro grooms and handlers, and we had close looks at two of the Warrior’s competitors: Tipperary Birdcatcher, newly purchased by Price McGrady after a particularly fruitful month at the faro tables, the Catcher being a gray colt bred in Pennsylvania by the Dwyer brothers, the noted gamblers and horsebreeders; and Comfort, a bay filly owned by Brad and Phoebe Strong of Slingerlands, an Albany suburb, she a former Fitzgibbon (cousin to Gordon) and an enduring shrew.

  Both animals looked splendid to my uncritical eye, for I had knowledge of horseflesh only at its most general and practical level, and was wanting in the specifics of Thoroughbreds, this an evaluation that could have applied to my entire life: he knew things in general; his specifics lacked direction.

  We bade farewell to the Warrior and, for luck, I stroked the centered white rhomboid above his eyes. John led us then on a brief tour of his racetrack, orienting us to the betting enclosure, where we might make bid on the auction pools, past the several reception rooms and saloons where beverages, viands, and oysters might be had, along the colonnade with its thickening growth of crowds, and up the stairs to the covered galleries, where Obadiah and Magdalena awaited us in their front-row seat at the finish line.

  My first response upon seeing Magdalena after a hiatus of fourteen years was that she was an evolutionary figure. Age had wrinkled her, of course, and comfort had broadened her, her posterior in particular. Her bosom remained handsome, a somewhat amplified garden of promise and romp, but there was an organic pursing to her mouth line, and her hands were birdlike in their animation. Yes. A bird was what she had become. Had she always been a bird? Possibly. Once a ravenously sensuous Bird of Paradise; now, with that upward cascade of throat, an aging swan with fluttering eye.

  “Oh, good,” she said when we neared her. “Daniel is here. He’s smart about these things. On which horse should we wager, Daniel? Maud’s silly animal or the Canadian?”

  “My horse is not silly,” said Maud.

  “I know that,” said Magdalena.

  “You look splendid,” I said to her. “But I’m sorry to say I can’t counsel you on this.”

  “Of course you can’t,” said Magdalena. “You just got here. You haven’t even looked at the program.”

  “He certainly ought to look at the program,” Obadiah said.

  “That’s none of your business,” said Magdalena. “Let the boy alone. You’ve grown up to be beautiful, Daniel.”

  “You’re very kind,” I said.

  “One doesn’t say beautiful to a grown man,” said Obadiah.

  “Will you shut your mouth and let me talk? Sit down here by me, Daniel,” and I did.

  “If you don’t bet on Maud’s horse,” said John, “you’ll be wasting your money.”

  “I heard you tell a woman to bet on another horse, down by the gate,” I said.

  “Well, you can’t have everybody betting on the same horse,” said John, and he excused himself to attend to the pool betting, pledging to return and inviting us to join him if we felt inclined to gamble, which I did, believing only in Maud’s horse, believing Maud could not lose at anything in the world. John moved off into the crowd, which by the day’s peak moment would number five thousand. Bodies filled every seat, seemingly every square inch of space under the covered and roofless galleries. In the open area within the tall fence the crowd was equally dense, the movement to own space on the rail already having begun, the men’s tall hats a liability for those to their rear. Women in clusters of finery their vertical hats also a bountiful obstruction, and women with opera glasses observing the judge, the grooms, the horses, and other women, elevated the day into a vision of royalty and its court of ladies and their courtiers enthusing at races run solely for their relentless amusement. What exquisite privilege! What exaltation, that these animals exist to give us pleasure!

  “Where do you keep your horse?” I asked Maud.

  “She keeps it at my stables,” said Obadiah.

  “He didn’t ask you,” said Magdalena. “You must learn to keep your mouth shut.”

  “I keep him at Obadiah’s stables,
” Maud said.

  “You see?” said Obadiah.

  “It’s very peculiar,” I said.

  “Keeping a horse in a stable?” asked Obadiah.

  “Will you shut up?” said Magdalena.

  “Peculiar that we are all here, and how and why it happened,” I said. “It’s Magdalena’s doing. If you hadn’t died at the bottom of the river, and if you hadn’t accepted Obadiah’s invitation to come to Saratoga, we’d all be somewhere else. Of course it’s possible, even if you’d never crossed the river, that we’d all be here anyway. But that’s a fated way of looking at things.”

  “Daniel is so smart,” said Magdalena. “If I were younger I’d steal his heart away.”

  “Well, you’re not younger,” Obadiah said.

  “Shut up, I know I’m not young. I’m sick and I’m dying and nobody cares.”

  “Who said you were dying?” I asked.

  “It’s my heart. It’s always fluttering and giving me sharp pains. But we all have to die sometime.”

  “Don’t be morbid, Auntie,” said Maud.

  “Especially don’t be morbid on your birthday,” said Gordon. “How old are you?”

  “Older than Methuselah.”

  “You look wonderful,” said Gordon.

  “That’s what I tell her,” said Obadiah.

  “Shut up. I look like a chicken with its neck wrung.”

  “Why are you having a party and calling attention to your age if you feel that way?” I asked.

  “When one is ill,” said Magdalena, “one feels it incumbent upon oneself to say proper farewells to one’s friends.”

  “But what if you don’t die after this farewell?” I asked.

  “She can do another party next year,” said Maud. “It’s all very silly. You’re in excellent health.”