For a moment he heard—his body tensed and tightened, but there was only the slap of water against piling and the far-off chatter of a blue jay.
There was something. Yes. Anthony stayed here, diffuse as mist over the water.
For a second Robert saw his unborn English child, saw him floating in the dark womb waters. Then it was Anthony’s thin dark face, floating too.
He had never been found. He had escaped them all; the grave had not caught him and he drifted free. …
Robert lifted his right hand in an Indian salute, silently.
HE SLIPPED smoothly back into his prewar life.
When he walked into the house that October morning, Anna was arranging a great flat bowl of anemones and ranunculus, flaming-red heap. She did not even look surprised to see him. “I didn’t know you were coming, Robert.” And she kissed him gently on the cheek.
He was home.
AT FIRST nothing looked different. Only Maurice Lamotta was gone—dead of a coronary at Sunday Mass. And the Old Man, half healed from his last stroke, walked with two nurses.
After the first weeks, Robert began to see that everything was different. His exclusive relationship with the Old Man was gone; Margaret was always there. The Old Man now had two sons. …
Robert moved into furious activity. I’ve forgotten so much, he thought, all those years, almost four years. I’ll have to catch up.
His concentration was physical; it left him completely exhausted. He was in bed by ten every night, and fell asleep instantly. In the morning his eyes flew open, as if they were strung like a puppet’s, and he bounded wide-eyed into the day. His head spun with figures; he thought he must rattle or whir like a computer.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Margaret asked. “Take it easy.”
“I feel fine.”
He did. His body moved smoothly and obediently like a well-oiled machine. He could almost hear the humming of his joints.
He forgot it was December until he saw a Christmas tree.
December. The child would be born by now. He moved his thoughts carefully along their paths, and he found that they did not hurt too much. He found himself willing to believe that he had no children. Norah had taken this one. God had taken the first.
After December things were much easier … when he knew that the live child moved and breathed air and no longer floated in dark womb waters like Anthony.
DAYS AND months followed each other in their steady procession. Robert’s life was as neat and precise as the pens he kept in perfectly parallel lines on his desk. That worried him: keeping those pens in line. He checked them first thing in the morning—the cleaning woman might have knocked them aside with her cloth—the first thing after lunch, and the very last thing in the evening.
Though he often had dinner with the Old Man, he still lived in his own house, his wife’s honeymoon house, so small, so perfect. (Anna stayed at Port Bella.) It had not changed at all: the same furniture, the same decoration. He did not remember if the walls had ever been painted; probably, he thought, they had, but they were exactly the same color. It was as if fifteen years and one child left no mark; everything still looked as fresh and unlived-in as a house in a glossy magazine. Its emptiness comforted him. Its silent efficient functioning fascinated him. He saw no one, but his breakfast dishes were washed, his bed made. Sometimes to amuse himself he hid his dirty laundry—a shirt stuffed behind the bed, socks tucked away down into the dark toes of his shoes, suits hanging in the wrong closet. The invisible people always found them. And restored the house to its perfect order.
All through that year, the first after the war, his life worked as perfectly as his house. Powered by the invisible force of the Old Man’s planning, their businesses prospered, their holdings grew. Even Anna now had her interest—the Pine Tree Foundation. Almost all (Robert shuddered at the amount) of her father’s wartime profits had gone into that. Anna was redoing the town of Collinsville—she was building a hospital, she would soon begin the first day nursery. She was planning an economic revival. And God knew what else, Robert thought, but it was going to be very expensive. …
It seemed to him sometimes that money was a set of invisible wheels on which he glided through his days. That the Old Man was a magician flicking his cloth and making objects appear and disappear. Always the Old Man. The family’s force and drive and shrewdness came from him. Robert knew and he did not really mind. He even suspected that those successes which he called his own had been suggested to him by the Old Man, deftly, cleverly, invisibly, so that he was not aware of the hint.
(Once he asked Margaret: “Do you think we’ll be able to manage without him?”
She rubbed his cheek, very gently, with one finger. “Well, Robert, I will. How about you?”)
He began going to Margaret’s parties, found them quite pleasant, though a week later he could not remember who had been there.
It started with a telephone call. Margaret said: “Phil’s sick, Robert, and I’ve got to have a man tonight.”
“Who’s Phil?” Robert asked. “And why?”
“For God’s sake, because the table will be uneven and I can’t get anybody else this late. It’s tonight I’m talking about.”
“I understand that much.”
“Can you stay awake during dinner?”
He felt a twinge of annoyance. “If there’s anything to stay awake for.”
It was strange, seeing a crowd of people he did not know in the Old Man’s dining room, (the Old Man himself retreated to his upstairs apartment; he disliked company), hearing the laughter and the small clinks of china, seeing Margaret’s dark face across the table, split into three by candle flickers. At ten o’clock he was very sleepy. Almost at once, Margaret joggled his arm: “Wake up.” He grinned sheepishly. “Look,” she said, “go sing with them over there.” She pointed to a gray-haired man who was banging the piano.
“I can’t tell what he’s playing.”
“Clyde only knows one song. Don’t you, Clyde, boy?”
Clyde peered through his glasses, nodded. “Good old college song, only thing I learned.” He bent over the keys, concentrating, then threw back his head and sang: “Bulldog, bulldog, bow-wow-wow …”
A tall thin woman in a yellow dress slipped her arm through Robert’s. “You’re nice, let’s sing.”
He let her pull him to the piano and lean against him. Once upon a time, he thought, the pressure of a female body would have made the tips of his fingers tingle and his loins ache, and he would have felt a great urge to push and tear and explode. But he didn’t feel a thing now. The yellow dress was very pretty, she was very attractive, her perfume was heavy and deep and woodsy. And it made no difference to him at all.
He was nauseated with tiredness by the time he got to bed. He felt dreadful all the next day. Never again, he thought, never again. … A few days later, Margaret said: “Robert, I haven’t got a date tonight, and the Blue Room has Frankie Laine; let’s have dinner, I don’t feel like sitting home alone.”
It was, he thought later, the implied insult in her tone that made him accept.
After that it was easier. She took him to parties—a haze of faces—one later than another. Always on the way home, in the early morning, with just a streak of light showing in the east, he would fall fast asleep, leaving her to chatter with the Old Man’s chauffeur.
ABRUPTLY AS it started, his social life ended. His new boat—the fifty-five-foot cruiser he’d ordered the previous year—arrived. He’d had sailboats before, but always with Anthony, that dark-haired boy who’d been the indistinct reflection of his own face—he would never have a sailboat again. Anthony would always be waiting for him there.
This now, this was fine, this was handsome with its teak decks (first of that material since the war), its sleek hull, its comfortable cabin. Every afternoon Robert drove to the yacht club, hurried along the maze of concrete slips to his boat. Through the long soft summer twilight, he sat alone in the cockpit, whisk
ey in hand, watching shadows slowly darken the harbor. When it was completely black, he went home, stopping for dinner at a white-columned grill called Magnolia House. It was always filled with students; they lined the counters, giggling, head to head. In spite of the noisy air conditioning, the place reeked with onions and frying fat and heavy perfume. Robert ate two hamburgers, ordered a chocolate frappe, stared at the huge pictures of white magnolias—feeling all around him the bustle of young lives. There was one seat he particularly liked, the last one against the wall. From there he could see the entire length of the counters; he could see the door, and the cash register. He could feel the vibrations of the girls with their swinging hair and summer shiny faces. He could sniff the metallic sweat of the boys.
As he walked to his car in the dense summer night, heavy with sweet olive, spotted with crêpe myrtle, he thought how healthy they looked, how young. … He’d never looked like that. He’d never been young. He’d only been small. Once, a long time ago.
Just for a flash he saw the small old man he’d been as a child. …
Now he was old. He’d lived through a war. He’d seen his own son’s grave. And his own dead manhood: In the absence of lust there was only a great emptiness, a windy lightness, a giddiness.
I see and I think but I don’t really feel. I have a life and a business and a good wife to take care of me; people stand up to shake my hand. I am respected. I watch my money grow, I can feel it grow like grass under my care. Even the Old Man nods now and then. I am his son, the one he looked for and found.
When he was little, people tripped over him, pushed him aside. “Tais toi!” Shut up. Not now. They made room for him now. He’d wanted it when he was young; he got it when he was old. … And he was old. He could see it, all different ways. … His body still functioned, his joints still moved without pain, but his skin had lost its shiny elasticity. However strong he was, however powerful his arms and his shoulders, it was the heavy bunched muscle of middle age, not the ribbon smoothness of youth. His body was square and heavy, like a crate. Its sleekness was gone. … He found himself wanting to finger that smooth young skin, to rub it between his thumb and forefinger, to test its shiny surface. Either skin, male or female. …
THE OLD Man got his own plane and pilot so that he and Robert could both go regularly to Anna’s house at Port Bella. The Old Man left on Thursday afternoon, returned Monday evening. He’d taken these long weekends ever since his second stroke, a mild one, left his mouth slightly twisted, his hand slightly stiffened. And he enjoyed the time at Port Bella, enjoyed it very much. Robert, on the other hand, came only for Saturday and Sunday and only because the Old Man expected him to. He was always bored and restless, impatient for Monday morning.
“Why don’t you bring your boat over?” Anna asked. “Wouldn’t it be more fun here than in that lake?”
“I will,” he said. “As soon as I’m ready.”
“I bet he hasn’t even started the engine.” Margaret grinned at her father. “He just pets it.”
“It is a very handsome boat,” the Old Man said.
“Papa, you always take up for him.” Margaret flicked the side of his cheek, gently, grinned into his eyes. “If he’s going to spend all his time with that boat—and there are times I absolutely must have an escort—he’s going to make me get married again.”
The Old Man said dryly, “That prospect can’t be so frightening to you.”
“Oh, stop insulting your baby girl.”
Anna said: “Robert, you don’t have a name for the boat.”
“You pick one,” Robert said to the Old Man.
He thought a minute: “Condor.”
“For God’s sake,” Margaret said.
Anna asked: “What’s a condor?”
“A big bird,” the Old Man said. “In the old days people used to carry gold dust in the feathers.”
“A golden bird,” Anna said slowly. “How nice.”
The Old Man shook his head. “A black bird. They used to fill the feathers with gold after he was dead.”
THE NAME went on the stern the next week. Margaret drove out one afternoon to see. “It looks nice, Robert.”
“Why do you suppose he wanted it?”
“Hell, Robert,” Margaret said, “my father always has a lot of complicated reasons, even to name a stupid boat. …” She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Wish me a happy vacation.”
“I didn’t know you were leaving.”
“I didn’t tell you? New Orleans in the summer gets me, Robert. And life with Anna in that gothic mansion is pretty bad too. I’m taking three weeks off for a look at Mexico. I’ve never seen it.”
“Nice,” Robert said, “nice.”
HE MISSED her. In the morning at the office he found himself asking for news of her. He lifted his phone, eagerly, expecting to hear her demanding that he take her to lunch; saying that she needed an extra man for dinner. He missed her strident laugh in the corridors. Even evenings on the boat were different. The quiet harbor, the slap of the halyards, the nibbling sucking of water on the pilings, the slight gentle movement of the deck under his feet—they only made him vaguely uneasy. One evening he fell fast asleep, highball in hand. The club’s watchman shook him shortly after midnight, and he drove directly home, forgetting dinner, hurrying along with a vague feeling of disquiet, as if he’d misplaced something.
HE BEGAN taking the Condor out of the harbor and into Lake Pontchartrain. He went alone, and cruised methodically up and down the shore.
Now when he stopped for a sandwich late in the evening, he was conscious that his sun-tanned wind-burned face looked healthy and alive, and less out of place among the students. When his hands rested on the counter or reached for the shaker of sugar, they were tanned too, and marked by occasional rope burns from his lines. He could even smell a faint salt air from his clothes, a freshness rising from him. He knew it was all veneer, that the tan covered aging skin, that the salt tang came from brackish water. But still he felt protected by it. He felt he looked a little better.
ONE THURSDAY evening he stayed quite late on the boat—even the summer-lengthened light was completely gone. He was in the galley, putting back the ice tray, wiping up the splashes of water. He had turned on only a single small light.
“Well, sail ho, or ahoy or something!” Margaret shouted.
He heard the clack of her heels on the deck.
“Take off your shoes,” he called automatically.
“What sort of a way is that to greet me?” She popped over the edge of his circle of light, her curly hair fuzzier than usual, her face thinner, her eyes larger.
“You’ve lost weight,” he said immediately.
“Aztec’s revenge.”
“What?”
“You could at least look happy to see me. I came straight from the airport, cab’s waiting out there now with my bags.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “I missed you.”
“You did?”
She was standing very close; he could feel the warmth of her body penetrate the cloth of his shirt.
“It’s very quiet without you,” he said.
“My father and Anna think that’s a very good thing.”
“Would you like a drink?”
She stood perfectly still, without moving, directly in front of him. She stood without blinking, her brown eyes more like holes than anything else. … He took her arms to move her aside politely so that he could reach the highball glasses. Her arms were so thin under his fingers, his hands went around them, fingers touched. His own body was so big, so thick, it bulged like a balloon; she was miles away, at the edge of himself. Her shiny curly black hair was wet; there must be a fog tonight. He thought of curling pubic hair, and little red lips. He remembered driving her home once, a long time ago; she had just left her first husband, she seemed small and frail that night too.
She stepped back, pulling away from him. She turned and walked into the forward cabin and sat do
wn on the bunk. He could see her slowly begin to undress, tossing her clothes across to the other bunk.
I can do nothing with a woman, he thought, and went to stand and watch.
She had taken off everything but her bra; she was just twisting to release the snaps. “The last time it was freezing, Robert, and the whole place smelled of mildew.”
“I didn’t think you’d remember.”
Naked now, she waited on the edge of the bunk. He sat across from her. “Look, I’m trying to tell you. It isn’t like it was.”
“It isn’t?”
“No.” The loss of weight made her breasts seem enormous. And the nipples were twisted up. Like squinched-up eyes, almost. He began to laugh. “You sitting there bare-assed, and me with my tie on.” He giggled again.
She waited, not smiling, not angry. Just patient. When his giggles ended in little catches of breath, she reached across the cabin, half rising, took his hand and pulled him across to her. He sat on the floor between her legs and her murky odor flowed out and around him.
I wish I could, he thought. She knows. I’ve told her. So plainly. You’d think she’d let me alone. After that.
It was a fine soft odor, like quince flowers. Where had he, years ago, smelled a whole branch of these pale pink flowers?
His pants were too tight. They must have gotten twisted. He squirmed. She was holding him firmly on the floor. Damn strong woman.
She slipped to the floor beside him. It was almost completely dark there; the small galley lamp sent its dim rays above their heads.
“Jesus,” he said, “I told you I can’t.” The pants hurt now. He squirmed: “Damn balls got twisted.”
She bit him, hard, through the cloth of his shirt. “Quit, god damn it.” She bit him again. Then caught the tip of his ear in her teeth, dodging his backhand slap.
She held on, pain ran down his neck. And a quick warmth flooded his body, a twitch, a burn. Familiar. Blind in the dark and rooting.
“NEXT TIME,” she said, “take your pants off. The zipper hurts and I’m sure I’ve got a bruise from your belt.”
He almost couldn’t hear her.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve got a cab out there waiting for me.”
The Condor Passes Page 28
