Dark thoughts slowed my pace, thoughts about the murders, about people who lie, about pernicious cruelty and fraud, and the stream of deceit that flows from a corrupt heart. When it starts to wrap around me, this thing, this muffled feeling, it’s hard to free myself from its hoary haze.
We passed a tired dray horse tethered to a post, her ribs prominent, her coat lackluster, her burden a wagon of junk, probably the contents of some poor evicted family’s apartment. Pots and pans hung from rope lines, ready for sale; rags filled a barrel and old tools were stacked in bins.
A few steps away was a fruit market where I bought a couple of apples, which I fed to the aging mare. Her big, brown eyes were gentle, with long, white lashes batting shyly, gratefully; I cannot help but put human emotion to the plight of my fellow creatures. Tenderness arose within me, and I tried not to cry as I brushed away the long hairs of the mane that fell into her eyes. But when do I witness the trials of these creatures that I don’t feel heartbreak? Was I crying about her condition, or my own? I am a bleeding-heart animal lover, and I am grateful to Mr. Ford and the Dodge Brothers for mass-producing vehicles that have eased the burdens of these powerful but gentle beasts.
Worked into a total funk (it didn’t help that I was still hung over from the night before), I continued aimlessly along the way.
The yeasty smell of baking bread seized my attention and I felt the pangs of sudden hunger. I turned to look for the source. A few doors down was a bakery, its windows heaped with loaves of bread, some round, others oblong. Flour-dusted and sesame seed–sprinkled tube-shaped loaves of Italian bread had been gathered in bunches and stuck vertically in bushels. Italian pastries filled the circular displays in the windows flanking the door. There were cakes, some covered with creamy cheese or sugar icings, and some extravagantly garnished with slivers of candied fruit forming artistic renderings of delicate flowers. Hunger overcame me. I walked in.
On the countertop were more incredible edibles, and a pretty Italian woman waited on me with a smile as I tried to decide what should go into the big white box she’d folded at the ready. The choices were almost too much for me to sort through. Pointing, I chose a couple of these, and one of that, until the box was full. As she tied up the square box with string I asked for a plain biscuit for Woodrow, and a pastry for me to eat immediately. I pointed to a confection in the form of a giant clamshell with encircling layers of flakey pastry, which the woman called a sfogliatelle as she placed it on a sheet of white paper. I paid the dollar and sixty-five cents for my purchases and then walked out onto the street.
Standing alongside the shop, away from the flow of pedestrian traffic, I fed chunks of the biscuit to Woodrow and then bit into my own delightful treat, through a crispy shell of pastry wound artistically around in dozens of layers to form something like a seashell, and down into the warm, heavenly tasting interior of firm cheese-cake filling. I liked the crisp texture and flavor of the pastry shell, and began to unwind the layers, slowly, to reveal the cake within. Repeating the process, I would unravel a couple of layers and then sink into the cake interior, before continuing on to the next rows of pastry. There was something hypnotic about the ritual of eating such a masterfully constructed creation. A little like eating an artichoke, layer after layer after layer . . . .
While waiting for traffic to slow, I wiped the crumbs from my mouth and was wishing for a cup of strongly brewed coffee—and was thinking that Woodrow would appreciate a bowl of water—when my eyes alighted on the display in a bookstore window across the cobbled side street.
As we crossed to the corner bookseller, my spirits rose as I gazed upon the cheerful yellow-and-gray dust jacket that graces my newly published book of poetry, Enough Rope.
Woodrow and I stood before the display, which was artfully arranged with a portrait of me on an easel above a board printed in large letters:
DOROTHY PARKER
“A GIANTESS OF AMERICAN LETTERS”
“POETRY LIKE AN ANGEL AND CRITICISM LIKE A FIEND!”
The quotes were from the review in The Bookman.
I walked through the door, suddenly pleased with myself, a stomach filled with pastry, my mood leveling, and expecting to be instantly recognized and applauded by the shop’s staff and patrons. I wanted to ask the clerk how well my book was selling, but when he glanced my way, there was no light of recognition in his eyes, nor did he jump up out of his chair to greet the famous (infamous!) Mrs. Parker; no, his eyes returned to whatever the hell was on his desk—a huge sandwich, with meat sticking out of the bread that looked and smelled like corned beef!
I decided to give the clerk and the browsing patrons another chance. So Woodrow and I made a tour of the shelves, my eyes glancing at the novels of many of my writer friends, Ferber, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. The window display was all about me today, but when I arrived at the shelves labeled poetry, I saw that my books were stacked at shin-level. Would anyone bother to bend to me? Could be worse, I realized: Shakespeare’s sonnets were at my ankles. Of course he’s had a few centuries of name recognition . . . . When the window display was changed for another bestseller, would anyone ever notice my book in these stacks? Ferber, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway commanded the fiction shelves at eye level, damn it. Would I never move up in the world?
I entertained these stupid thoughts as I finished my pastry and wandered through the stalls, occasionally distracted here and there by some fascinating volume by some fascinating author. No one came up to me offering well-deserved flattery.
I was engrossed in a particularly beautiful gold-embossed leatherbound edition of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, with magnificently rendered illustrations by Gustave Doré, when I heard a soft masculine voice, accented with both British and Indian heritage. I looked up from the stand on which the Dante lay open to peer through walls of tall shelves to the front of the store. Rabindranath Tagore stood making a purchase at the register. The clerk handed him the paper-wrapped package. About to leave the shop, and as if sensing he was being watched, he turned.
For a long moment I just stood there, staring at him. We did not acknowledge each other; but then, I wasn’t really certain he had seen me, although he was looking in my direction. I was pretty much shielded by the tall wooden bookrest, which was only a head shorter than I stand.
As he made his way out of the store, I felt the compulsion to follow. At first I thought I had lost sight of him, but then there was a break in the pedestrian traffic and I caught a glimpse of his white trousers between the waving fields of black wool.
Why I followed, and with such determination, I don’t know. Although I could not catch up to him, I was able to trail him closely enough to keep him in sight. He turned a corner and I crossed Sixth Avenue to keep up, my heel slipping on the cobblestones, almost twisting my ankle and nearly losing my grip on the box of pastries and Woodrow’s leash. But that didn’t cause me to lose sight of him.
And when I passed a very old house, a relic from the time when the city was called “New Amsterdam,” I barely slowed, though at any other time I would have gaped in amazement that such a structure could have survived when the cityscape around it had so radically altered. The clapboard, pitched-roofed farmhouse still stood; gone forever were the acres of rolling meadows and woods and streams that had long ago stretched out from its stone foundations.
Christopher Street was sparse of foot traffic, and I watched as Rabindranath walked along the Greenwich Village street. Woodrow would turn and look at me with wonderment every now and then, before bouncing onward, for I was encouraging a pace far faster than he was used to, even by New York City standards.
And then the Indian mystic stepped in through the door of a two-story house, and for the first time in my chase I hesitated. Woodrow pulled me on in pursuit, however, and although I didn’t think that I had guided his leash to turn in toward the entrance of the house, he made the turn and then looked to see if I had followed. I thought it odd that his canine instincts should guide me so. It
was as if he, too, felt the urge to follow this man.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the entryway, but when I looked up the long staircase that stretched before me, I glimpsed the white flutter of his trousers disappearing at the top of the landing and I didn’t hesitate to climb. Arrived at the landing, I turned to face a narrow, dim hallway. One of the several doors along the wall was slightly ajar, a beam of sunlight escaping from the room beyond like a beacon leading the way to my destination.
Intending to knock, I suddenly found myself hesitating in the motion; I had barely touched the door when it slowly and creakily swung open, revealing a sun-flooded space. Woodrow entered; I followed his lead.
As if our visit had been expected, Rabindranath appeared, facing us, standing in the middle of the sparsely furnished room; the blinding sunlight pouring in through the windows was broken by his form, which was silhouetted as he placed a bowl filled with water at his feet.
For a few long moments, while Woodrow lapped up his drink, we stood looking at each other, the taste memory of the pastry I had devoured springing to my mind. I was not blind to its metaphor of what I sensed was about to happen, of why I was standing here, in this sunny room. I felt the stir of something within me that needed to come out; there was something to be settled or to be set free, but it would take the gradual unraveling of my own crusty layers—so many layers—before I would know what was there.
“Your coffee will be ready, presently,” he said, while motioning toward a chair for me to sit. Woodrow, dragging his leash, sat obediently before the man, as if awaiting a command.
Rabindranath was dressed entirely in white: A knee-length brocade achkan coat buttoned to his chin over loose-fitting white trousers, and a long white silk scarf draped around his neck, gave his swarthy features an even darker cast. Slim, and broad of shoulders, there was a powerfully raw and compelling sensuality about him. I don’t mean of a sexual nature, but sentient in an almost effortless way that eludes most human beings by the very constraints of our constant mental chatter. That he was of this world, well—there he stood before me. That he was beyond this world, I am certain. The world was his. He and it were at peace with each other. What was, was; what is, is; what shall be, shall be. How I knew all this about Rabindranath Tagore, I can’t say. It took no intellectualizing; it was all intuited.
When he had appeared carrying a drinks tray the other evening, I had been struck by his self-possession, by his gentleness, albeit a captivating power filled the space around him. His manner was neither of servant nor master, and yet I thought him a servant because of his race and the fact that he carried a tray. I recognized now what I hadn’t seen the first time we met, although it was there to be seen if one’s eyes were open: This was no ordinary man. Before me stood humanity transcended.
Everything around me seemed to slow down. With regal detachment he held my eye. I was finding it hard not to be drawn into him. To express it now, using the limited ability of language (because for some things there are no words, only a visceral identification), I believe that I was in fact being guided by an ineffable magnetism. I could only feel, I could only sense a connection without even thinking about why and how.
I felt suddenly calm, a lifting of burdens. I don’t believe that even in my sleep I have ever known such peace, as if all the strings, the sinews of nerves that kept me taut and together and connected to the manic world had suddenly been clipped and I was floating free . . . .
The fragrant, earthy smell of brewing coffee brought a wave of comfort and warmth and loving security, and evoked my earliest memories of early morning in the big kitchen of my childhood, in the days when my mother still lived, and as Cook prepared the breakfast fare. The feelings that the recollection resurrected were so intense that, upon becoming aware of these bittersweet sentiments, I was acutely stung by the impossibility of keeping one’s hold on the treasure of childhood contentment. Cynicism, pessimism, and disparagement had developed in me after living in a world that could disappoint and wound, and early on I learned distrust and how to be the way I am now. That that long-ago time was forever gone, and might be revived only in sudden, devastatingly poignant glimpses brought on by voices, sounds, or familiar aromas assaulting olfactory senses, made me mourn all the more the lost past.
The loss was new again, the grief profound; I was flung from encompassing protection into lonely helplessness in an instant. I can’t recall when I had ever missed my mother so much since the initial pain of losing her when I was only four years old. The pain had been buried all these years, but rose again with a keen sharpness in my heart.
Rabindranath placed the cup and saucer into my hand, and backed into the chair opposite mine. Woodrow kept a devotional watch on the man.
“You thought you were coming to interview me about the death of Madame Olenska,” he stated, “but that is not really why you are here.”
I found it difficult to see through the glare; he was in silhouette. I closed my eyelids against it, and tried to follow the meaning of his words. When I raised them again, my eyes lighted on a copy of my new book, the string of the package untied, the white paper unwrapped and resting beneath it.
“Now,” said the mystic gently, in a rich baritone voice, “tell me why you wish to die.”
Rabindranath
Caroline Mead
Chapter Seven
“I’m just not in the mood for any of your shenanigans,” I said to FPA, testily.
“Frank?” said Mr. Benchley, leaning over me to whisper at FPA, “I’ll take those shenanigans, since Dottie doesn’t want them.”
Harpo and Aleck threw me a weary glance; Heywood was nodding off in his seat. The play we were watching was dreadful and I wanted nothing more than to leave. And to sulk—alone.
The events of the past couple of days had me in a funk. Death was all around me; people were dropping faster than Condé Nast’s trousers. I’d fallen into more self-doubt about the course my life had taken. Where I might have rejoiced in the publication of my book of poetry a few years ago, I felt only despair that my legacy would be a silly little nine-word phrase: Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. And now, as I am considered the literary genius of the well-turned phrase (yes, I am hailed for my amusing repartee at dinner and in print, but serious humor is never really seen as serious work), it would be expected that I go on producing trite shit forever! Easy enough, but where is the goddamned novel? Why can’t I write a serious novel? I had once aspired to be the Edith Sitwell of my generation!
But that was a long time ago when I was young.
Why can’t I just forget that dream? Or, why can’t I just write myself into that dream? Why do I need a dream, anyway? I always wake up from dreams, and how do I wake up? Alone and with a whopping hangover, proving that nothing, neither career nor love nor hard liquor, satisfies for very long. Call me a malcontent, but it’s hard looking on the bright side when you’re in the dark. Thirty-three years old, a failed marriage, failed affair, failed child. And all I really had to show for my efforts was my book of poetic complaints. Crap!
And now the boys were acting up, as they are used to doing, the skunks! I’m usually no better, to tell the truth. It’s just that I’m in a foul, nasty, self-pitying mood. And although the sorry melodrama we are watching is bad enough to raise vicious vitriol to revitalize my spirit of vengefulness against playwright, producer, and cast, instead I find my mind wandering through the debris of my life, and my buddies keep interrupting my trip.
Mr. Benchley was wearing that fixed smile and had that particular stillness that preceded an outrageous act of rebellion. The impetus came when the telephone on the stage set began to jangle. As the actress crossed stage left to pick up the receiver, Mr. Benchley bolted from his seat, raised his hand and said, “That call’s for me!” and up the aisle he hurried, out through the doors to the lobby. A wave of startled laughter and applause followed him out, which prompted Harpo to race up the aisle after him, excl
aiming, “I want to listen in on the extension!”
Mr. Benchley’s frustrations over the silly sexual themes in recent theatrical productions hit their peak several weeks ago at the opening-night performance of The Squall, in which half the “native” cast spoke in Pidgin English. When a dark-skinned native girl slithered across the stage on her knees and grabbed the skirts of her white mistress, and then spoke the lines, “‘Me Nubi. Nubi good girl. Nubi stay here,’” Mr. Benchley responded with, “‘Me Bobby. Bobby bad. Bobby go,’” and up the aisle he’d marched.
My gentle and kind Mr. Benchley does not suffer fools lightly.
Their behavior was no less outrageous than vaudeville heckling, but the audience deserved to be entertained, even if the play, which promised to do so, had failed.
As the stage darkened during the next scene change, I hustled out of the audience. The play stank and that was that; I would endure not another second of it. Mr. Benchley was leaning against a marble column next to the ticket office when I came out the doors.
“Are you unwell, Mrs. Parker?” asked the house manager.
“Not any more, thank you, dear man.”
Mr. Benchley handed me his flask, and then produced his cigarette case. “That’ll put the bloom back on those sallow cheeks,” he said, as I swigged from the flask.
“My bloom is forever gone, I fear.”
“‘Why so pale and wan, fond lover; prithee, why so pale?’”
“Poetry! That’s what’s got me down.”
“Now, now, Li’l Missus, I can see you want consoling. But what you really need is a little bit of mindless cheer.”
“I could do with less mind and more cheer.”
“How about a spin over to Tony’s for reinforcement first.”
[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong Page 13
