“Why ‘quite simply?’ ” Mrs. Evans inquired.
“I beg your pardon—”
“You said—’depicting quite simply . . . ’ ”
“Oh!” Laughter. “Merely because, that was all; I mean, just the two of them, against nothing in the background, only white space.”
“I see,” said his patroness. (He dared, even now, so soon, so wildly, ridiculously premature, to think of her as that, having decided the moment she entered the room that it would be she to whom he’d dedicate—entirely in italics, of course—his very first and at present work-in-progress, though exactly how the inscription should read would require days, perhaps weeks of contemplation).
“But it isn’t ‘simple’ at all,” Mrs. Evans admonished; “the drawing, perhaps: a pen-and-ink sketch, but not the idea—as symbol, or allegory.”
“You misunderstand,” the tiny boy said with a shrug of his angel’s stunted wing. “It is simple if you don’t allow it to become complicated. To me, it expresses or represents the possibility of love, or at least shared joy and enjoyment, between two creatures one could not possibly imagine more antithetical or incommensurate.”
Incommensurate! Mrs. Evans smiled, hiding it behind a few contemplative fingers. He had quite a vocabulary for a mere eighteen.
“Incommensurate,” she repeated for the pleasure of giving the word back to him. “Yes, I see.”
Actually, it was quite simple and easy to “see” because he was the crocodile reared up on its small hind legs; and she (so soon!), the beautifully smiling girl, “graceful and calm,” with whom he hoped to “dance.”
“I enjoy—” and now he was shy in his manner, yet bold in his speech, “I enjoy, at least hearing or reading about clandestine loves: those forbidden or impossible. Quasimodo’s for Esmeralda, for example, and the priest’s too—what was his name?— though that was an insane, tragic love. I could mention Romeo and Juliet, but that is too easy and familiar and in no way—truly abnormal. I don’t mind the love of a man for a man, if it’s passion, and genuine, and not merely sex. Or a woman for a woman. Or how about—” he had become quite playful now “—how about, old, old men and extremely young, young girls. Of whom do you think? All the giants in their graves: Picasso, Casals! Oh!—there are dozens! A child, also, madly in love with an adult . . . to the point of suicide if desire remains unrealized. How is that? A mother in love with her son; a father with a daughter, or the other way around—to pique our interest. I was positive at first that Flora was in love with Quint, and Miles with Miss Jessel, but then, James being the secret devil he was, I knew it was Flora with Miss Jessel and Miles with Quint. Of course! How could it be otherwise? Do you remember the play . . .”
And then the sweet-faced boy intoned in his deep man’s voice:
What shall I sing
To my Lord from my window?
What shall I sing?
For my Lord will not stay—
What shall I sing?
For my Lord will not listen—
Where shall I go?
For my Lord is away . . .
A face sickly pale, a smile grossly fixed—for Mrs. Evans knew the ghastly poem, she begged: “Bruno, please—” desperate for him to stop.
He misread her request, thinking she was enjoying it, and continued, eerie and dramatic—
Whom shall I love
When the moon is arisen?
Gone is my Lord
And his grave is a prison—
What shall I say
When my Lord comes a-calling?
What shall I say
When his feet enter softly . . .
“Bruno—!”
Leaving the marks
Of his grave on my floor?
Enter! My Lord! Come from your prison!
Come from your grave!
For the moon is. . . .”
Before he got to “ . . . arisen!” he was astonished to see Mrs. Evans’ head nod, her eyes roll, body loosen as if all her joints were undone, and fall back upon the couch. She had fainted.
The day, or rather the night, for Graciela Felecita Rivera to die had arrived, and she knew it. Not when she woke that morning, because she no longer slept at all, sleep being consigned to those imbued with living, not trafficking borderline with death.
She knew it because her body—what remained: the fragile chrysalis after the winged insect has flown—had told her so, as it told her that if something, anything had to be done consistent with the peculiarities of human nature (rituals, prayers, confessions, forgiveness) then it had to be done quickly, for there were only minutes of possible mobility left.
There was only one thing she desired to do. Since she could no longer continue her blackmail, which had failed to wrest from Aurelio the love that was so rightfully hers, then the time for retribution had come. If not in her husband’s arms, she must lie dead at his feet, for, of course, this was murder, not suicide, and she wanted to be as close to him as if he had reached out his hands and strangled her.
So it was not strange, really, that a vaguely human if somewhat grisly arrangement of bones and skin, the nightgown so rotted it all but shredded from the body as she rose, found the strength to slide from the bed.
Oddly, she troubled to put a foot into each open-heeled slipper, then, half-naked, spindly, she staggered, each sliding slipper a soft sigh, from bed to door, from door to hall, from hall to living room where she saw but did not comprehend the pale blue blinking eye of the television screen lighting the room.
If she did not “understand” the TV, her mind long ago having lost much of its power to name things, how much less she understood what was happening on the floor as she leaned forward to look.
There a naked man and a naked boy entwined more intimately than ivy to ivy, lay in shuddered embrace, both so imminently orgasmic they could do nothing but dream-eyed and choking with passion, ride the crested break of the wave that shattered them. Egoless, mindless, they watched with a secret, careless eye as the bones in the doorway moved forward, then, all its queer parts collapsing at once, fall over them, a heap of blackened debris.
Ultimately—Aurelio solemn, Angel aghast—they twisted their depleted bodies from under the corpse and, shoulder and foot, carried the weightless shell to the couch.
Before they covered it with a sheet, Angel’s bizarre autonomous moment of thought was that his mother was so light and empty inside, he could, if he desired, attach a long clever string to her breastbone and, if the day were windy, take her out and fly her like a kite.
Ammonia: strong and biting. Mixed with it, a cheap scent, usually found in lavender sachet, together with a vibration in her head like a thousand nesting bees.
Mrs. Evans woke to a circle of constrained faces bending over her. Dori! Cook! Rose! But who was the fourth: the youngest, the most handsome, with eyes so wide and frightened?
It was Bruno David Carlson-Wade, of course, standing on a chair and three thick books that he might be tall enough to wave a over-sized paisley-print handkerchief above her face as life surged back, eyelids fluttering like the wings of a dizzied cabbage moth.
Once awake and up, she impatiently pushed all the servants away, thanking them, as usual, for their care and concern.
Yes, she was quite all right; yes, she was fine.
“Rose-dear-Rose . . . ” (which was the girl’s sometimes nickname) “ . . . how many times have you seen me faint?”
—The time Jamie had pretended to be dead and was found floating face down in the Palm Beach pool, a small secret tube in his mouth, a hidden snorkel, in order to breathe.
—The time—how many years ago?—when her one and only volume of poetry (half an inch thick) had arrived from the publisher. The moment Doves and Jackals was placed in her hand, she was unconscious on the floor.
—The time Jamie’s nose was broken from the swing of a baseball bat, and he ran to her screaming, drenched in blood from head to foot: a tunic of glistening scarlet.
—The t
ime . . .
Well, the times were too numerous to recall. But so reminded and reassured, the servants sauntered out like soldiers after squad drill, leaving the convalescent Mrs. Evans in possession, perhaps at the mercy of, the (to them) minuscule man, horrid homunculus, weird, bizarre gentleman caller of the day.
He would not get down, but kept standing there like a misshapen, melting snowman: stricken, solemn, guilty, tall on his books and chair.
“It was not your fault,” Mrs. Evans assured him, her face still pinched, bled of its color. And it wasn’t. How was he to have known how often, with what wild, sick passion she had prayed and still prayed for her Lord to come from his prison, grave-marks or no on the floor?!
“Your tea is cold,” she complained. “And we haven’t opened your petit-fours!”
That brought him down: at least he consented, for she had to lift him bodily, for fear he would fall, from the books and dried-out, glue-weak antique chair.
The touch of him in her gathering arms brought a chill of slight revulsion and delight, but such a rush of wild pity she had to blink back sudden tears. How thin! how pathetically frail he was! under those ill-fitting clothes; so light, virtually weightless, it broke her heart: a doll filled with down, a puppet of jointed styrofoam.
Worse: she had the queer feeling that he had stuffed himself here and there—with bunched-up cloth fixed to boney flesh with scotch tape—to fill him out, broaden his shoulders, create the illusion of muscle where none grew at all, giving him a final fullness and shape that resembled (though it remained a mockery of) the normal.
So what choice was there?—what choice remained?—after she had gutted herself with a petit four so densely rich and sweet, the first bite almost choked her!
Not goodbye (forever). No, no!—instead: “come back! come back!” I am guilty. I am responsible. Therefore, I must love you, pity you, dance with you . . . Crocodile!
Mrs. Evans received a charming little card from Bruno: flowered and, good heavens! yes—as she held it to her nose—scented.
“What are you laughing at?” Rose wanted to know.
“Oh—? Nothing. Just a card from the person you love most in the world.”
The girl paused in her dusting. “And who might that be?”
Mrs. Evans affected astonishment. “You don’t know! Rose-dear-Rose! From Mr. Carlson-Wade, of course, thanking us for a lovely afternoon. And, asking for another.”
The maid shrugged off the insult.
“If he visits again, I’ll supply myself with a magnifying glass.”
“Now, now. We mustn’t be unkind. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.”
To which Rose had to agree, being Irish-Catholic, though admittedly, charity often had to be deliberate, painful and forced.
“I don’t mind the other one so much—the black one.”
“Angel? He isn’t black! What makes you say that? If anything, he’s lighter than Jamie. And like Jamie’s father, his father is pure Castilian.”
“I don’t mean his skin; his features.”
“But they’re perfect! And beautiful!”
“Well, it’s all in a viewpoint, I suppose.” And, overly polite: “What about his mother, if I may ask?”
“But of course you may ask! When haven’t you! She died, I would guess, months ago; and I didn’t inquire. About her color.”
“Black as a scuttle of coal.”
“Perhaps.” Mrs. Evans waved the scented card under Rose’s nose. “Angel has a cousin name Furie. Isn’t that fine?”
“That’s a name? I thought it was an emotion.”
Mrs. Evans laughed. “Rose-dear-Rose!”
But Rose-dear-Rose, busy and bored with her employer’s rare frivolous mood, swept by and beyond her in her dusting.
She remembered to ask, however: “Are any more coming? I mean—like we’ve already seen—so I’ll be prepared. We’re not getting Furie?!”
“No no. No more. No more boys, only Angel. Certainly Angel. And Bruno I do suppose, perhaps . . . from time to time.”
Mrs. Evans had forgotten entirely the name Martin Dzierlatka. But the following day was the 15th of October, when he was destined to appear, exactly on time as promised, ringing the doorbell as the clock struck four.
The phone rang, well after midnight. Roused from a drugged sleep, Mrs. Evans took some moments to answer. It was a slightly thin-voiced Rose.
“Ma’am—I’m sorry, but it’s the boy. Angel.”
“On the phone?”
“Yes. On Two. I told him you were asleep, but he keeps calling back. Now he’s woke Cook and she’s angry.”
“I see.” She paused. “Give me a moment.” She sat up, breathing deeply, trying to shake off her dizziness. “All right. I’ll take it now,” and she pressed the little light on Two. Someone else, Dori probably, must have been using One.
“Hello? Angel?”
After they’d finished their odd conversation, Mrs. Evans tried to piece it together.
Someone had died. Who? “Well—a relative, you might say; like an aunt.” Was it an aunt? “Well—you could say that.” Impossible child!
Anyway, he couldn’t visit her. On Sad’day. Like he promised. He was sorry. ‘Cause he really wanted to take that ride to the country and see the autumn leaves, all gold, like she said. Only that was the day the funeral was. And burial.
Besides, his father needed him now. “He wants me to be, sort of, aroun’ more than I use t’be. That is, he wants . . . ” Angel’s voice broke, and the breaking contained such an eerie quality, a nuance of hidden content, that Mrs. Evans felt a rush of cold across her shoulders and back. She was wide awake now, the effects of the drug worn away.
“My father . . . ” Angel repeated,
“Your father what?” she demanded, distraught.
“Well—like I said. He wants me aroun’.”
And that was the most she could get out of him. But if it stopped there, if she couldn’t see this boy again, soon, very soon, if she didn’t have that to look forward to, plan, keep her sane, she’d be prowling the night and the Village streets again, before the week was over, or back at Jamie’s tomb, stumbling through the dark in a passion of grief, or, worse, planning, believing—her fantastic delusion returning—that soon she would have enough power to raise the dead.
I’ll find a way!
“Angel—!” She steadied, calmed her voice, and it couldn’t have been more emphatic. “When will you be free? What day shall we drive to the country?”
“Well . . .” Silence. “Maybe Sad’day after nex’. I might be able to get away by then.”
“No no.” She was firm. “That won’t do. You must promise. I must be able to count on it. Because if you don’t—” (had she become so desperate so soon?) “—if you aren’t here when you say, then I’ll have to drive by, I’ll find out where you live, someway, and I’ll go and speak to your father. I’ll simply tell him that you and I—that we’re friends. How could he mind that? And that we’re going to . . . “
“Oh no”—a tremor in his voice. “You mustn’t do that! My father wouldn’t—My father— Look. I promise. I swear. God can kill me dead with lightnin’ if I don’t. I’ll be there Sad’day after nex’. Early, before the sun, like we said. So’s we can have the whole day.”
“You promise?”
“I swear.”
But days before the drive to the country—to see the golden leaves, to visit briefly the Long Island house where a small “but, man, perfeck” feast awaited Angel, to walk through the grounds where the boy on that glorious Indian summer’s day found the afternoon sun warm enough to want to strip to his jockey shorts after declining, oddly, any of at least twenty swim trunks that had belonged to Jamie, and splash happily (though he couldn’t swim) in the shallow end of the leaf-scattered pool; finally to talk about, answer his shy strange questions regarding the tomb, barely visible in the distance where her beloved son lay—before any of this, there was the astonishing, unexpected Ma
rtin Dzierlatka.
What happened, was that this unprincipled young man—his brash, bold nature evidently a product of his years “in the theatre”—had persuaded a friend as immoral as he who worked at the Village Station Post Office to supply him, illegally, of course, with the name and address of the Occupant of Box 89.
And, at his self-appointed hour, Rose announced his arrival with a face just a bit too straight. A Mr. Deer-lot-ker (she said, pronouncing each syllable separately) had arrived.
“Who?”
Rose repeated the word and then broke down, confessing fretfully: “I made him repeat it four times, and I still didn’t know—” with rare profanity “—what the hell he was saying. It sounded something like I said. Anyway, if he isn’t expected, as he said, he’s here, all but pushing his way in, and is sitting, smoking a cigarette—” one of the cardinal sins of the household “—in the living room.”
“Well . . .”
Mrs. Evans appeared perplexed. “Is he selling something? Sometimes they go mad when they fall short of their quotas. Or is his head shaven? And is he wearing a saffron robe? If so, he’s a Hare Krishna, or some other religious, begging for alms.”
Wordless, Rose stared in disbelief at her employer, unable, always, at such “playful” moments to decide whether or not the woman was high or profoundly depressed, the latter sometimes so disguised and mixed with grief (plus idleness and boredom) that she was ready to play any game at hand for a moment’s relief.
In any event (Mrs. Evans said) salesman or priest, get rid of him, and his cigarette. “Afterward, be sure you air out the room. If he’s any trouble, call Dori; let him do it.” Then she stopped the girl, who was almost out the door. “No! Wait!”
It was such a dreary, rainy afternoon. Almost as much as ever, she had awakened that day aching with grief and loneliness. It was a day to lose one’s mind. But how well she had learned to play sly tricks on madness!
Bereavements Page 9
