Large bowls of borscht, evidently the specialty of the house, took to the air as if launched from Leningrad. At an altitude of eight feet they overturned, and it was “borscht away.” The big room soon took on the likeness of a butcher shop in Green Bay. The borscht flowed like blood. Noodles hung onto chandeliers. Babkas exploded like hand grenades. Czar Nicholas and Princess Tatiana and Anastasia were being avenged. Steven stood his ground in borscht-soaked disbelief. It had all happened so quickly that he couldn’t quite accept it. Tiger, on the other hand, though furious with Luther’s caper, still went wading and swinging into the crowd in an effort to reach him. “Leave him alone! Leave him alone!” She made some headway but never quite reached him, for someone in the crowd was grabbing her ass. She never saw who it was, but it occurred to her, fleetingly, that in every riot—in every revolution—there had to have been ass grabbers. Robespierre and Marat. Patrick Henry, Castro, Lenin and Che—ass grabbers all.
Women were shrieking as only woman could. Someone shouted “Fire!” But there was no fire because borscht, though it simmers, never burns. Luther was being dragged inexorably toward the door, knocking things every which way with his long, windmilly arms, all the while trying to call to Tiger, his voice towering decibels above the crimson bedlam. “Janice-novnik! Janice-novnik, mine luff!”
Then he was hurt, hit full face with a heavy serving spoon, his nose barely missing being broken. But the blood came gushing just the same, pouring from the twin spigots that once were his nostrils. He was a spouting gargoyle and was about to comment on it to a lady nearby when a heavy fist hit him flush in the face again, and his legs wobbled, and he sagged, and he was going down, except that strong arms held him up, anxious to get him to the door, and in his semiconsciousness he emitted an animal sound so terrible that Tiger would never forget it. It was the sound a beast made upon comprehending its own murder in the slaughterhouse pillory. It reverberated throughout the restaurant so horribly that it immediately caused an instant calm. It had been the last wail of a dumb creature, the all-clear, the bell at the end of a bloody bout.
No sooner had Luther been hauled like a lump from the premises and deposited only God knew where than did sanity and tranquillity come out of the paneled walls to reclaim their places in café society. The diners were aided in their return to civilized comportment by waiters who quickly broke out clean linen and wide smiles. Everything grew quiet again. It was as though the incident had never occurred, the battlefield swept clean, the charnel house boarded shut. All those respectable people, dining with extended pinkies—in spite of the fact that the ceiling dripped stalactites of borscht for twenty more minutes. The elegant tinkle of silver and crystal reintroduced itself into the middle-class milieu, and the diners wanted it that way because they didn’t care to remember how basely they had behaved in the crisis, how grotesquely they had beaten at the nameless pariah as he was dragged, swollen and beaten, to his offstage fate.
Steven found Tiger standing against a wall, borscht dripping down her seemingly uncomprehending face. “Janice? You all right?” She smiled, but just barely, her eyes still traversing the premises—Howes Caverns seen through rose-colored glasses. Nor was she clearly able to distinguish between real and unreal. Because, for a moment back there, a waiter went crazy. And because of his dreadful affliction, the citizens struck him again and again and then threw him away, resuming their bacchanal as soon as the sacrifice had been consummated. Therefore, the question arises: What century is this? Where are we in time? Is there really a Luther? If so, where does he come from and where does he go? And how can he, at any time of his choosing, come through the window of her life, flash his mad smile, and make her sing like Trilby? “Janice? Hey, Janice?” Steadying hands on her arms. Enter reality. She looked into Steven’s face and sent out a smile which she hung on a shrug and then said, “Sorry.”
“Janice…what the hell was that?”
“That was Luther.”
“Who’s Luther?”
“Nobody seems to know.”
“Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“Yes. Indianapolis.”
“Come on.”
It came as a surprise to me. I mean, the way I couldn’t bail out, the way I got all hung up in that Russian waiter bit and couldn’t shake clear of it. Usually, I can kick an identity as soon as it’s over. But that time—well, it was weird-o-rama. I couldn’t shuck it. I was really the guy, really screaming at them in what, I guess, was Russian. (Shades of a former life, eh?) It was like being trapped in a false face that you couldn’t get off. Yes, somewhere in another life—yes, I may well have been Kerensky or Trotsky. I’m not too pleased with that because I’d much rather be of royal stock. But I have no recollection of a winter palace or a dacha on the Volga, only of long, cold Siberian winters. Come to think of it, I was probably of Mongol stock with just a touch of Magyar. I mean, the way I rode a horse as a kid—crazy and screaming, pretending to decapitate my governess—I’d have to have been one of Attila’s rough riders. The very least that I could have been was a Cossack. The point I’m getting at is that I’m totally convinced that the reason I couldn’t shake off that waiter identity was that in assuming such an identity, I had unknowingly scraped a nerve in my memory that wouldn’t turn off. Freud called it “ancestral memories.” They’re recollections old as time. Passed down from when man first started. Passed through the sperm and the egg and the blood and into the cerebellum. And every once in a while, all of us get a glimpse of what we used to be like maybe eons ago. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that such was the case that night in the restaurant. Borscht must be to me what liquor is to an alcoholic. (Borscht Anonymous?) It just tripped me off, and I was away on a bender. The rotten thing was that those son-of-a-bitching Bolsheviks left me head down in a garbage can. I was drowning in the potato peelings of my origins. I think it took me an hour of flailing to seep out of that fucking quagmire. Also, and this is out-and-out weird, I didn’t go right back to my pad. No, I went to the Russian embassy to claim political asylum. (Play that on your Nikita Khrushchev.) Only I wasn’t allowed in. Those lousy Stalinists, at heart they’re Mensheviks. And you know about them. Anyway, it’s over now, and I’m fine, though my nose is kind of two degrees left of center and my lower lip is so swollen that it looks as if I’m always sticking my tongue out. I passed a woman on the street, I mean with my swollen lip, and she said, “The very idea!” But I’m healing. No sweat. The truly important thing is that, out of it all, has come a greater appreciation of my Russian heritage. And as a result, I’ve been absolutely sopping up all the Russian reading I can lay my hands on. I’m particularly fascinated with the idea of violent revolution. It appeals to me, very kicky. Also, I’ve picked up these pamphlets on Marxism and radical dogma. Most of it’s bullshit, but it’s interesting reading. Also those underground booklets on sabotage and rioting and bomb-making and political agitation—and illustrated yet. If 1936 ever comes around again, I’m going to Spain and fight in the Lincoln Brigade. Shit, Hemingway did it. I don’t say this lightly, none of it, because I seem to have a purpose in life now. I just don’t happen to know exactly what it is, but it’ll come to me. In the meantime, I’m embarrassed to report that I’m wetting my bed again. If you keep it to yourself, I’d appreciate it because it’s not the kind of news a guy likes to have get around. The man who was with Tiger—I know nothing about. He picked her up at the Y, and I followed them to the restaurant in a cab that was driven by, I swear, Moe Hegan. (I trust he was the last of them.) I went for a stroll today, in the park, and I conned a kid into giving me a balloon because no one ever buys me a balloon—I have to get one as best I can. Later—a very strange thing. While I was ambling around, I was kicking this empty tin can, like I was playing hockey. And it rolls under a car. And when I bend down to get it, guess what? Who to my wondering eyes do I discover but Tiger. She was under the car, on the opposite side, leaning on her elbows and smiling at me. It was ultrafantastic. I got up and ran aro
und to hug and kiss her—only she’s not there. Gone. Incredible. I looked under twenty-three cars for her, but she wasn’t there. It was just a glimpse of her, but it was very unsettling because either I imagined her—which would have been very sick because she was so real—or she was there and, after seeing me, ran away, which would have been very sick on her part. Things like that bother me. They immobilize me and cause me to want to do nothing but stay in bed. I’m in bed right now, and it’s—let’s see—it’s past noon. Two of my teeth have been under my pillow for a week—still no presents. Fat comes and goes and is my only contact with the nether world out there. He gets fatter and fatter every day. Perhaps he’s my balloon. That’s an interesting thought. I think everyone should have a balloon. I think life should be a circus. With admission free. See the brave gypsy boy free the animal from her cage. Ergo.
19
Steven had taken her back to the Y after the Mad Waiter scene. He wanted to see her to her room, but of course, he was not allowed up. Tiger assured him that she was all right. He said he’d call later to check, but she told him that she didn’t like to receive telephone calls. He thought he was getting the brush, but she swore that such was not the case. He asked if he could see her again, which was exactly what she figured he’d ask, and she said yes, but would he not call for a week or so. He left, feeling exalted, convinced that a great relationship had begun.
Tiger stood in the warming shower and the threads of borscht went rivuleting down the drain. She remained in the shower for so long that her fingers shriveled into ten tiny prunes. And when she emerged from the shower, it was pushing midnight. She had no way of knowing whether Luther was dead or alive or somewhere in between. She was concerned because at the very end of his bit, he did not extricate himself from his assumed identity. To her that sounded a danger signal. No matter what shtik he performed, when it was over, it was over, and he could drop it as though it had never happened. It was exactly what made him so beautiful—that clock in his head, that wild sense of timing, unerring, never-failing. Why, then, did his clock not report to him that the bit was over before he took that fearful clobbering? What had gone wrong with his infallible timepiece? Worse—what did it portend? And how hurt was he? And where was he? And why hadn’t he called? And should she call him? But he had no phone. She would have to go to his apartment. How could she do that? Damn.
She had a glass of milk. She had no refrigerator in her room, nor was one allowed. But the milk stayed cold on the windowsill at night. She was displeased with herself because the way in which she was reacting was not the way in which she’d have chosen to react. She wanted Luther to recede calmly into the background of her life. She never felt that he’d do it willingly or easily, but she always felt that she could handle it if he proved obstreperous. Well, he was now proving obstreperous, and she was not handling it. At least, she was not handling it as well as she’d like to be handling it.
Twelve o’clock became one o’clock, and one o’clock got to be two, and still the pieces refused to fall into a pattern that Tiger could live with. Questions surfaced that she hadn’t allowed up in quite some time. Self, parents, goals, expectations. All had once been conclusions. Now they had reverted back to questions. And the questions became fears, and the fears became horrors, and the horrors begot more horrors, and where was Luther? In what street? What jail? What hospital? What morgue? Sleep came eventually, deep and catatonic, and in it she found all the answers, but when she awoke, they had flown. She wanted to be sick to her stomach but couldn’t. She wanted to be depressed but failed. She wanted to stay in bed, but she went to work.
She was once again Stella of the Steno Pool, ward of the firm, another of the little orphan girls for whom a home had yet to be found. One foster parent had already sent her back. When, if ever, would she be adopted again? Martha had been adopted. Martha, her only friend, had found a home in the office of a bald legal beagle, and she didn’t see her anymore. Except at coffee breaks, where they pledged faithfully to have lunch soon but never did. Tiger wanted Steven to call, but she panicked because she had forgotten first his name, then his face. She wanted to have coffee and Danish, but she threw up instead. She wanted it to be morning sickness, the result of an impregnation by Luther, but it was indigestion. She wanted to go home, to just outside Indianapolis, sure as God made little green apples, but she didn’t. But she would. Soon. But not until she’d seen Luther again. She’d have to do that—see Luther again. She’d have to manage that somehow, but without being obvious. She was being female again, designing and conspiring, prideful and hurting. How very, very Byzantine.
I got myself invited to a meeting of some revolutionaries. It was in the Village somewhere. This guy I knew, Thaxter, made this speech and people who called themselves brothers all agreed violently. We had wine and pot, and everybody shook hands—and it was over. But through it all, Tiger kept occurring to me. And I came up with a plan that was magnificently meritorious. Like so. It was reasonable to assume that whatever she was doing, she’d have to think of me and the old pad from time to time. The trick, then, was for me to be in the pad at the moment when she was thinking of me. If I could do that—a contact could be made. All that remained for me to do was to have enough Lorna Doones and Oreos on hand so that I would never have to leave. This I attended to via some deft shoplifting at a nearby Grand Union. And I headed home with enough provisions to hole up for a month. Okay, so you have the scene. I’m loaded up with cookies and milk and I’m climbing the stairs to my pad, got it?…Now…As I get to the top of the stairs, I hear the unmistakable sound of a typewriter. And damn it, if it isn’t coming from my apartment. I had arrived not a moment too soon because not only Tiger had thought of me, but she was there waiting for me. So…I open the door and the typewriting is louder than ever. And I’m convinced that Tiger is actually sitting there, typing away, three thousand times, “Fuck you, Luther.”…Only she’s not. She’s not there. Not at all. And there’s no typewriter there either. And the reason is—she’s in the shower. It wasn’t a typewriter I heard; it was the water running, in the shower…The bathroom door was open, just a little, and I heard her singing the song I winged in the restaurant, the Russian song. So I grabbed my trusty guitar, and sat down on the floor outside the bathroom, and I played and sang the song with her. And then the bathroom door opens all the way, and I could see her sweet smile, aimed at me. And I could see her sleek body, coming nude out of the bathroom. And when she arrived in the room with me, she had the bad manners to turn into Fat Chance…Well, that truly lumbered me. It just wasn’t funny. It wasn’t her style. It was beneath her to turn me on like that and then turn me off. Fat had this towel of his, with a design on it like a splashy bird, a big sunblast of orange on a field of electric blue, very rococo, very gay. And for the first time I noticed that the son-of-a-bitch-bastard didn’t really walk—he minced. Little Jap lady steps…I stopped playing and singing immediately, and tried not to watch him get dressed in that hysterical pink jumpsuit of his, but I had to look because it was fascinating, like watching the Liberty Bell squeezing into a condom. Fat waves this chubby, disapproving finger at me, like a merry old soul, and he proceeds to tell me he’d like a hit on whatever it is I’m puffing. He goes on to say that he thinks I’ve kicked my pail and that the landlord’s been looking for me and that all the electricity’s been cut off. Then he says that his butterfly shirts are back from the cleaners and that he sees no more reason for tarrying any longer since he’s not being utilized. Then he suggests that instead of mooning around for Tiger, I get a new wench because that is obviously my perversion. To all of that I said, “Fuck you.” And the Jumbo Jet buzzes the room a few times before coming to a roost in my best chair, and then he produces an emery board and proceeds to file his nails, which looked to me like the spikes you hook onto a chicken’s legs when you sign him up for a cockfight. And since cockfighting was not my long suit, I did not accept his unsubtle challenge. Instead, I just picked up my guitar and began playing, casti
ng not an eye in his direction. So he got up in a snit, and he left, and I’m not sure if I ever saw him again…The point I’m making is this: Tiger had come back. But at the last minute she got scared off, or embarrassed, or something. So she turned herself into Fat, which is why Fat seemed so minty all of a sudden. I mean, you just don’t stick a very sexy little girl into a body of a man and expect him to go out and knock over a building…Anyway, I felt very good because progress had been made. And so I stayed there and played and sang for I don’t remember how long. When it got dark, I went to turn on a light, and Fat was right—they’d turned off my electricity. I didn’t like that, not one smidgeon, because I’ve always been a wee bit afraid of the dark. But gradually I got used to it and soon came to realize that it was another trick of Tiger’s. She was in the room with me and didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of knowing she was there. Then, around midnight, she went out the window, across the fire escape, down the telephone pole, and slunk back to her goddamn Y. Is that not a grabber?
20
The big morning. It had come. Huzzah. Tiger was adopted. Word had come down from the personnel tower for her to report to the office of one Walter Miller and she was all a-dither. It was $20 a week more, and she’d be out of the lobster pond. She wondered if Walter Miller would be another Fred Douglas—i.e., an octopus with eight knobby knees. But she just couldn’t believe that every member of that firm could be all that horny. There had to be at least one man who was there to do what he had gone to law school for. Time alone would tell.
A Glimpse of Tiger Page 15
