It was only occasionally that they had philosophical discussions. They also had scientific discussions, but they really didn’t interest him. His mind ran in other directions. He could not say why. There was also a genetic or inherited factor that made people different, though this was perhaps not the case in identical twins. Hence they made a useful example, an extreme instance that tested the validity of a general proposition and made possible a preliminary investigation into the forms and symbols buried in the unlived life. Marion’s seriousness was her most endearing quality, causing her to screw up her face when she was thinking, as opposed to the unfocussed look in her eyes when she was dreaming. When she screwed up her face she twisted her mouth into a funny shape and looked at you almost pugnaciously. Sometimes she even clenched her fists. Sometimes she rubbed her nose.
He had seen her walking on the campus. Her hair was red. Her arms and legs were almost thin. She may or may not have been wearing glasses. She held her books against her chest. He imagined she would have a boy’s body and was excited by the thought.
She dressed attractively. She had a turquoise suit that matched her greenish eyes and was perfect for her reddish hair. She had green shoes too and wore frilly blouses. She had shapely legs, even if they were somewhat thin. Her face was delicately made, pixyish you could call it. Her hips were narrow. Her chest was almost flat. Her skin was very fair. People turned to look at her. It was the way she walked. It was the dreamy look. Zupan had looked too. His eyes had followed her down the path until her figure was lost in a sea of women’s bodies. Then he had opened a book and read some Hume and then some Bishop Berkeley.
In that time and that place the world had seemed different. He knew that he had arrived at this other world inch by inch but it seemed as if he had made a sudden leap. One day she had been there, the next day she had not. Where had she gone? He imagined her in various phases and positions, dressed, half-dressed, undressed, mounted. Once he has seen a frog skinned alive, its belly up, its legs spread apart and clamped. The image had stayed in his mind. It had found its place among all the other images crowded into his head and no doubt labeled in some mysterious way, billions and billions of images really, but some more prominent than the rest, forming little nodes of feeling that might be awakened when a plane moved through the sky. Or might not, if the plane was grounded on that particular day, the weather being bad, or the pilot indisposed, and then would lie dormant, perhaps forever. You would carry them within you like a seed. The seed would contain your future, the beginning of a life that would not unfold, as he and Marion had so perceptively noted.
At the university he sat in the last row and seldom shaved or combed his hair. He had no friends. He began each semester by taking notes but then stopped and thought about other things while the lecturer’s voice droned on and on. He thought about Marion and about the nature of time. He saw Marion once or twice a week. She always had that dreamy look. He wondered whom she might be seeing. He followed her one day but she only walked to the dormitories and didn’t come out again. Watching her, he became adept at the art of surveillance and could see himself making a career of it. Of course, he had no need of philosophy courses to become a detective. Common sense and a little experience would be enough. His teachers were passionate. When they were
upset with the students they flung their chalk across the room. Had they been armed they might have shot them too. Zupan imagined shooting a few of the students, what it might be like. The three shots rang out very clearly in his head.
Sometimes he could spend a whole day in his own company thinking these random thoughts. He would look up at the clock and it would be noon, then it would be three, and then it would be six, and all he’d done that day was think his thoughts, sometimes in great flights of the imagination, sometimes in heated conversations with himself. Sometimes, too, his thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. That would be Elizabeth inviting him to lunch or Mrs. Miller with a pot of soup or Spinelli dragging him away somewhere. Outside, he squinted in the sun, shielding his eyes. He had dark glasses but he seldom wore them. Spinelli wore his. Zupan saw his own face reflected in the lenses, two faces in fact, one in each lens. He could hardly make himself out but he saw himself there as in the subway when the train sped by the dimly lit stations in the night. Then he was alone, thinking of Marion. For she was not there. He thought of the report of her heels against the pavement, and of her reddish hair and greenish eyes. It had been late at night when she came back, and she did not speak a word.
Then he took a job and she was with him. They were together then. Her arms and legs were thin and her body was like a boy’s but she had dark hair between her legs and a flat, white belly and a pixyish face, delicately made, with the bone high in the cheek. One day he waited for her on the steps of the Library but she did not come. Instead he saw a girl with a young man smoking a pipe. He seemed to be holding forth. Perhaps he too was a student of philosophy. They had coffee in the Automat. They took the subway home. Her hair was soft against his cheek.
And he waited for her to come back. He washed the dishes and had a cup of coffee and stood by the open window looking into the street. It was summer or winter. They had been in the snow and she had worn a woolen hat. It had rained. The pennants on the boardwalk pavilions blew in the breeze and the ships stood out on the horizon. The streets were crowded.
A policeman with a nightstick moved the pedestrians along. The hall smelled of rotten oranges or fresh paint. The light coming through the slatted blinds threw shadows on the wall. The slippers were underneath the bed.
And he knew that he might search for her forever and never find her, as though she dwelt now in some undisclosed dimension of the world. There was no place that she would be unless he left his world and found another.
Time was passing too quickly. Time flew by: hours days weeks. Now it was Monday, now it was Friday. He was alone. Mrs. Miller brought him soup. The gun was heavier than he thought it would be. It had a telescopic sight. He saw Marion at the other end. She was walking in her dreamy way. She was wearing a woolen suit and nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes. She had shapely legs. The calves were round and taut. It was morning, then it was evening: another day, one of many sitting at his window and waiting.
Then it was summer, then it was winter. He found a job, he went downtown every day. He had lunch in the Automat, beets and peas and mashed potatoes from the little windows where you put your nickels in. A girl in a white smock leaned across the table to take the dishes away. Sometimes he walked uptown to the Library. Then he walked back home.
In that time and that place they had been together. Then she was gone. He looked for her everywhere but she was not to be found. He made inquiries, he exercised his powers of deductive reasoning. What had she worn? What had she left behind? He wondered if she was not perhaps right there under his very nose, as the saying went. He looked in the closets, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, but he did not look in the bed. He was not sure if she had slept there. He
remembered getting up. And then she was gone. But that had been long ago.
Then he went to the Library and waited on the steps. She did not come. He was disappointed but didn’t let anyone know. He continued to peer into the street while other people similarly waiting to keep appointments came and went. Then he went to the Automat and had a cup of coffee. Then he took the subway home.
So much time had passed and yet it was like yesterday. He considered the paradox. It was like a marathon, the runners coming into the stadium one by one, in a certain order, and then all of them there together as though the race had never been run, milling about, chatting, giving interviews, being photographed. Only the memory of the race remained. And then the stadium became part of memory too and you were left sitting at the window with the gun cradled in your arms and the lights going on in the building across the yard as night fell and the streets grew quiet and the music began to play. And you saw her in the window
, beneath the half-drawn window shade, you caught a tantalizing glimpse of her bare flesh beneath the short white robe. She has taken a bath, you thought. Her skin will be damp. Her hair will be wet. She will toss her hair and it will fly into her face and she will look out the window and see you sitting there. What will she think?
It was Christmas. He was a student of philosophy. They ate in the Automat and saw a play. They went to a party and had too much to drink. He felt his senses becoming
deranged. He felt free. They danced in the dark room. Her hair brushed his cheek. And then they rode home in the subway, or he rode home alone and she came later, the report of her heels on the pavement telling him that she had come, and his heart had leaped, but she did not say a word.
In that time and that place they had been together. He watched her dress in the morning and listened to the heavy trucks in the street below. She threw off her gown in a single, fluid motion. Her chest was almost flat but the nipples were big and brown and she had dark hair between her legs. Her legs, though thin, were shapely and the calves were round and smooth. She may or may not have worn glasses. She was a student of the sciences and often rubbed her nose. Once, when they were together, they watched a film crew on Times Square, and afterwards they saw a play. He couldn’t remember what the play was about. He had seen a number of plays, some on Broadway, some off Broadway. In the theater he had been enthralled. He would have liked to be in the play himself, to burst in from the wings and speak his piece, to introduce a discordant note, to tell the story of his life. Afterwards they had coffee and then they took the subway home.
It snowed heavily that winter. Cars were buried in the street and the trains stopped running. They built a snowman and warmed themselves in front of a fire. She wore a woolen hat and a checkered scarf. She wore boots and gloves. In the heated room they heard the music of a violin. These images assailed his senses, drifted through his mind. They were linked together like the electric wires that produce an incandescent light at given times unless shrouded in a funereal cloth. But then on a certain day, as he turned a corner and saw a woman in the street, everything was illuminated all at once, though had he lingered for a moment the vision would be lost. Then it would reside in him forever, dormant, unperceived.
And then it was summer and the streets grew still in the sweltering heat of lazy afternoons and the salt sea air filled his nostrils and he lingered in the street and talked to a young woman for a long while. She was a neighbor, it seemed. And he hoped to see her again but then apparently she moved and he never spoke to her again. It was a magical day that ended softly in the still night air and he had a sense of the things that might come and he was at peace.
But the gun was in the closet. The shells were in the magazine. She came home and undressed and went to bed. She must be tired, he thought. She slept with the sheet twisted between her legs and her arm thrown across her face and the knit-wool suit was draped across a chair and her slippers were underneath the bed. The day was hot. He watched her sleep. She breathed evenly. There were beads of perspiration on her brow and a tiny bubble formed at the corner of her mouth. That was charming. She was like a child. He sat by the window and looked across the yard. There were sparrows in the trees and now a little breeze. He heard children’s voices too. He would have sat there forever if he could, dreaming of other summer days. He looked at the bed. There was a wall between them that he could not see. Behind the wall there was a woman whom he could not touch.
He took the gun and looked down the sight. He pointed it at himself. He heard the crack of the whip and saw the knife and heard the scream. In the other room he made a cup of coffee and drank it standing up.
He began to dress. He wore black pants and a white shirt. It was an informal gathering, he understood, though he had no idea what this meant in the circles frequented by the Horns and certainly not what it was appropriate to wear at a theater party of this sort. He supposed he might wear an ordinary sports jacket but not a tie. His shoes were scuffed, so he put on another pair. He combed his hair. It was already eight o’clock. It seemed like a good time to go upstairs.
He had never been to the Horns’ apartment before. He climbed the stairs and stared at their nameplate on the door. Though the apartment occupied the same relative position to Mrs. Miller’s as his own apartment occupied relative to Spinelli’s, and Mrs. Miller’s apartment was directly above Spinelli’s, he could not say for certain that the Horns’ apartment was directly above his. This did not mean it wasn’t. Occasionally the mind fails to make the leap from like to like, there is a gap or blank that cannot be bridged, a flaw in logic that cannot be overcome. Zupan stared at the door for a long while. From within he thought he heard the pounding rhythm of a drum but could not be sure. The bell chimed very softly. Almost immediately William Horn opened the door, his face flushed, a towel draped over his arm and an apron tied around his waist. He seemed so overwrought that one might have imagined he had torn himself away from a houseful of demanding guests.
“Edward, my boy!” he exclaimed. “So good to see you! Come right in!”
Zupan went inside expecting to find the Horns’ party in full swing, though he had come early as instructed and had no reason to believe that anyone else was there at such an early hour. And in fact there was no one inside, though some music was being played on an ancient Victrola. There were dishes of pretzels and salted peanuts and potato chips laid out on doilies on otherwise bare tables. But the room was cluttered with cumbersome pieces of dusty mahogany furniture and overstuffed armchairs, all jutting out at odd angles and so crowded together that it was questionable whether it could accommodate just the three of them, that is, the Horns and himself, let alone the multitude of guests that had no doubt been invited. Was there perhaps another, more suitable room in the house, one perhaps already filled with people clinking glasses and murmuring in quiet, intimate voices?
“Elizabeth will be out in a minute,” Horn said. “Do sit down and make yourself at home. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to have you here. We know how busy you are. We know you have other commitments and obligations. The press simply won’t let you breathe. They hound us from morning till night. You were wise to choose such an out of the way place to reside. It’s a cozy corner here in the busy metropolis. I understand that all of Broadway is beating at Mr. Spinelli’s door to pick up the lease, or at least to have a look at his charming wife. Let me get you a drink.”
Horn darted off as if he did in fact have other guests to attend to, coming back and handing Zupan his drink on the run. “Be with you in a sec,” he said. Zupan took a handful of peanuts and chewed them slowly, thinking of footsteps on a gravel path. Horn rushed by with some drinks on a tray. “Whew,” he said, rolling his eyes as though to elicit Zupan’s sympathy for his harried state.
He sipped his very tall drink only vaguely aware of Horn as he dashed in and out of the room with dishes of food and empty ashtrays, the towel on his arm and the apron flying. Zupan craned his neck to see what was going on in the other room, but as far as he could see, no one was there. The other room would have been the bedroom, so it seemed unlikely in any case that it was intended to accommodate guests and it was not entirely clear to Zupan why Horn was bringing food and drink there, unless Elizabeth had asked for something to eat or drink while she was getting ready. Perhaps she had been having her bath and Horn had brought her a glass of champagne as in certain films Zupan had seen, often of a comic nature, but sometimes tragic as well when the heroine’s fortunes took a downward turn, though not necessarily in any connection with the bath, which was generally an entirely gratuitous affair intended to offer the moviegoer a tantalizing glimpse of the heroine’s breasts or bare thigh. Generally it was the hero who brought in the champagne, sitting on the edge of the tub and chatting with the heroine for a while. Sometimes he wore a tuxedo, indicating that the two were going out.
Finally Elizabeth came into the room. She was dressed elegantly in a l
ong black gown with a sparkling comb in her hair at the back of her head and tiny gold earrings and a pendant between her breasts. He could smell her perfume from where he sat. The gown rustled as she walked as though she was wearing layers and layers of tinselly petticoats and her heels clicked like castanets. “Oh, Edward,” she said. “I’m so glad you could come. Let me look at you.”
She took both his hands in hers and made him stand up, holding him at arm’s length and scrutinizing him with moist, beaming eyes as though not a day but years had passed since she had seen him last. Horn, stopping short in midflight, also observed him fondly.
“Let’s all just sit down for a minute,” Elizabeth said. “It’s been such a hectic day.”
Horn sat down too. “Let me tell you, Edward,” he said, “we’ve been on the go since eight in the morning. You have no idea what it takes to put together an affair of this magnitude. And on top everything we had a shoot this afternoon. And that’s not the half of it. But look at Liz. Ain’t she a doll.”
“Well, a girl’s got the right to feel beautiful every now and then, is what I say,” Elizabeth said, and squeezed Zupan’s hand, bringing her face up very close to his so that he could smell her breath and all the sweet, sticky confection of her paints and powders and her strong perfume and even the newness of her gown.
“Just listen to her,” Horn said, nudging Zupan in the ribs with his elbow. “Next thing she’ll be telling you is that she ain’t the most alluring female creature on the face of this earth.”
Basic Forms Page 18
