My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  In a honeyed voice saying to him, as if this were an old quarrel, and Darian quite the crank for failing to come round to common sense, “I s’pose you haven’t respect for composers like Verdi, Rossini, Bellini . . . and who was it wrote The Bohemian Girl . . . Gilbert and Sullivan? And Richard Wagner.” She pronounced the name with the precise German inflection, “Rick-ard,” as Abraham Licht had done.

  “Wagner, certainly,” Darian said shortly.

  “And the others are—old-fashioned? Too easy, too pleasurable to the ear?”

  “Too boring, I would have said.”

  “Well! Boring is in the ear of the beholder, I would have said.”

  “And so you have. And very clearly.”

  Millie’s bee-stung, perfectly painted lips twitched in a smile. He knew she was feeling the sting of discovering her shy young brother not so young any longer, and not so shy. She said, pouring more tea for them both, with a frowning sort of concentration that marred her smooth forehead, “But you must, you know. Eventually. ‘Love’—‘fall in love.’ You may scorn romance, but your music, without it, will be superficial.” When Darian refused to rise to this bait, Millie changed the subject, and asked after his finances. “Are you poor as your clothes, your haircut and that rooming house suggest, or are you, like the proverbial bohemian artist, indifferent to material things? The way you’ve devoured these little sandwiches! If you need money, Darian, I’ll be happy to . . . lend you some. That is, Warren will. I know you’re too proud to accept an outright gift. But—” She made a movement to open her silver lamé purse again, but was deterred by Darian’s look of disdain.

  “Millie, thank you. But I don’t need your money.”

  “Ah! I’ve offended you.”

  “Not at all. I think I’ve offended you.”

  Millie who was Mrs. Warren Stirling with her flashing rings and bright, knowing smile said accusingly, “Darian, you loved me once, in Muirkirk. When he was our father. Is that it? But now—everything has changed. You have changed, and I suppose that I have. And so you’ve ceased to love your ‘pretty’—‘doomed’—sister.”

  “‘Doomed’? Why?”

  Millie laughed. Adjusting the smart cloche hat on her head, with a small violent gesture. Darian saw her gaze fixed beyond his shoulder and, following it, caught sight of his sister’s floating oval face in a wall mirror a short distance away. And there was his own face, narrow and blurred as a face glimpsed from the window of a speeding train. Had Millie been watching herself all along, in a pretext of watching him? “Damned, maybe,” Millie said. Darian looked at her uncomprehending. “Your ‘pretty’—‘damned’—sister, I might have said.”

  Soon it would be time to leave. Darian seemed to know beforehand how he would miss Millie; how he would rage at himself for letting this opportunity pass, without taking his sister’s hands in his and telling her he loved her. He said, fumbling, “D’you ever hear of Thurston?” and Millie quickly shook her head, no. “He is alive, isn’t he?” Darian asked, and again Millie shook her head, this time to indicate she didn’t know. She shivered; she was warming her hands on the teapot, in a gesture Darian remembered from many years ago in Muirkirk, when tendrils of wind came whistling through cracks in the windows and skeins of frost glittered on the panes in blinding, yet freezing sunshine. Darian said stubbornly, “I believe that Thurston is alive. And that we’ll see him again—someday.” Millie shrugged, and wiped at her eyes. In the doorway of the tearoom Warren Stirling stood hesitantly, looking in their direction. Millie had asked him to join them after twenty minutes or so and now, uncertainly smiling, he approached their table; a tall, slightly stocky man of youthful middle age. He’d served as an Army colonel in the Great War and had been wounded in northern France; he’d nearly died of exposure and later of infection; he’d told Millie that in a state of delirium he’d seen her face—that is, the face of the “Lass of Aviemore” he’d confused with hers. “As if I, Millie, who knew so little how to save her own life, could have saved his”—so Millie had confided in Darian, with an expression of half-shamed wonder.

  Quickly, before Warren came within earshot, Millie seized Darian’s hand, caressed the long, powerful pianist’s fingers and murmured in a thrilled undertone, “Thurston is alive. Only no longer ‘Thurston.’ He came to visit Warren and me in Richmond, and gave us his blessing. But Harwood—is dead.”

  “What? Dead—?”

  It was a taut dramatic moment, precisely timed. For Darian’s gentlemanly brother-in-law was pulling out a chair to sit at their lacquered table, and such confidential exchanges must cease. “May I join you? You’re sure you don’t mind?”—Warren Stirling smiled at Darian. A genial, kindly man, an ideal husband for Millie and an ideal father for her children, who no more knew her than he knew Darian. The expression in his warm mud-brown eyes as he gazed at beautiful Millicent in her cloche hat and pretty clothes told all: to be the object of another’s adoration is to be blessed.

  SO: HARWOOD WAS dead! Cruel Harwood Licht.

  When Darian’s half brother had died; and how; and where; whether of natural or unnatural causes; whether deservedly, or undeservedly—Darian Licht in his innocence was never to know.

  6.

  The twenty-third of May 1928. Near midnight. Darian Licht has returned alone to his room at the shabby Empire State Hotel on Eighth Avenue, where a number of his fellow Schenectady musicians are also staying, when there’s a loud rap at the door; and Darian, in his shirt-sleeves, hurries to answer thinking it might be Thurston—though knowing it can’t be Thurston, of course. “Yes? What?” Darian cries. He pauses to stare at himself in a scummy mirror; irritably brushes his hair out of his face, an alarmingly flushed, mottled, haggard young face, and makes a stab at adjusting his clothing. Since the nightmare recital and the shock of meeting Thurston, and at once losing Thurston, Darian has dropped by several taverns on the way back to the hotel and has had, for him, an inordinate amount to drink, if only beer. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast that morning on the train; he supposes he’ll eat again in the morning on the train, returning to Schenectady with his musician friends. (He dreads seeing them. Their eyes. Their embarrassed smiles. At the Westheath School, none of his colleagues will speak to him of Esopus, the Lost Village except to assure Darian vaguely that his music is too difficult and unconventional for ordinary ears; none will speak to him of the critical notices that appeared in several New York papers, the kindest in the Tribune, beginning “A career other than musical composition is urgently advised for the youthful, earnest but painfully talentless Schenectady resident Darian Licht . . . .” Nor will Darian make any inquiries.) The loud rap is repeated, and Darian opens the door, and sees—who is it?—a couple in evening attire, so handsomely glittering they might have stepped out of the society pages of the Sunday rotogravure.

  “Darian? Darian Licht? Is it you?”

  “No. Yes. I’m not sure. Who are you?”

  “You don’t recognize me, son? Of course you do.”

  A silvery-haired gentleman in his early sixties, it seems; in black tie, and carrying a silk top hat; a much younger woman at his side, in an ankle-length deep-purple velvet gown, staring at him with dark shining eyes he’ll recall afterward as too intense. Who are these strangers? Well-wishers? Musical connoisseurs? In the very wake of defeat and humiliation Darian Licht is vain enough, or naive enough, to believe that, yes, someone took notice that evening of his genius.

  The silvery-haired gentleman steps forward into the room, uninvited. His gloved hand extended. His smile somewhat forced, yet confident. “Of course you recognize me, son. Even after so many years. And here is my wife Rosamund . . . .”

  Darian is deafened by a roaring in his ears like Niagara Falls. As in a distorting mirror he sees a familiar-unfamiliar face leering at him, and the mouth moving soundlessly. And the woman’s face, no one he has ever glimpsed before, a hard chiseled beauty he seems nonetheless to recognize. “Father . . . ?” he manages to say. “Is it . . . ?”


  Abraham Licht, hardly changed. Or if changed, in the shock of the moment Darian Licht hasn’t the capacity to see.

  “We’re aggrieved, Rosamund and I, to have missed your concert,” Abraham Licht is saying, “—but we were held up at an impossibly long, dull cocktail reception at the Astors’ over on Fifth Avenue—the usual thing at that house, I’ve been told; my error, for which I’m deeply apologetic and chagrined, and hope you’ll forgive me. Son!” In Darian’s hotel room which is scarcely larger than an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub, the elegantly dressed smooth-shaven Abraham Licht and his new wife take up so much space, Darian is forced back against the iron bedstead, panting. A few hours previously there was Thurston; and now Father; is he on the verge of death, and his life flashing before his stunned eyes? He has all he can do to keep his balance. The new Mrs. Licht reaches out to steady him with a gloved hand and he shrinks, cat-like, from her touch.

  A woman no older than Darian. With greeny-glistening eyes. Her fine wavy black hair, just perceptibly streaked with gray, brushed back from her angular face and fashioned into a sleek French twist. There’s a charming little knob near the bridge of her nose and her lips are perfectly sculpted, darkened to crimson. Maybe Darian imagines it but isn’t there, in the new Mrs. Licht’s face, an expression of . . . startled recognition?

  How could you do it, marry this man! You, so young and so beautiful, to marry a man old enough to be your father!

  And her green eyes flash defiantly Because I love him. Because he loves me. What right have you to judge us?

  Darian hears himself stammering words he won’t recall afterward, a fumbling faltering performance. It’s like the aleatory moments in Esopus that so baffled and outraged the audience. Abraham Licht cuts Darian off, aggressively praising him though he didn’t attend the recital and hasn’t heard any music of Darian’s in more than a decade, presenting him to the new Mrs. Licht as a “musical genius of a son”—a “musical prodigy”—a “will-o’-the-wisp” whose whereabouts are often unknown even to his family. Darian protests laughingly, “Father? What family?” but Abraham Licht takes no notice; nor does Rosamund seem to hear; as in a performance of a play in which not all the actors are equally familiar with the script or equally well rehearsed, Darian is confusedly aware that something is happening of which he hasn’t any control yet can’t resist; must not resist; there’s a momentum of what might be called audience expectation . . . a sense that, beyond the blinding footlights, in a vast, undefined space beyond this room in the Empire State Hotel, a gathering of witnesses is waiting. With a part of his mind Darian would like to open the door and shove the beaming Abraham Licht out into the hall, with the new Mrs. Licht; yet he stands paralyzed, staring and smiling at his visitors like a fool. Abraham Licht is saying, in a voice of fond reproach, “You might, y’know, son, have notified your own father about your premiere. Here in Manhattan, at Carnegie Hall! Only imagine—a child of mine, making his début at Carnegie Hall! And yet I knew nothing of it until yesterday; it was my darling Rosamund who happened to see the item in the paper. Our name—‘Licht.’”

  Darian manages to protest, mildly, “But—how would I have known you were here? We’ve been out of touch for—”

  “No, no,” Abraham Licht says quickly, with a look of alarm, “—we must put the past behind us. Where is your coat, son? Here? This?” Abraham has taken up the formal jacket with its silly split tail which Darian wore as conductor, and which Darian had tossed onto the floor. “Something less formal, I should think, would be appropriate for the hour. Ah, here—this will do better.” Abraham has discovered another jacket, which Rosamund takes from him and brushes, for it’s dirty from the floor; it seems that Abraham Licht and his new young wife are going to take Darian out on the town to celebrate the world premiere of Esopus, the Lost Village—Abraham has made reservations at the Pierre, a short carriage ride away up on Fifth Avenue by the Park. “But, Father, I’m drunk; I’m exhausted, humiliated, broken—I want only to sink into sleep and into oblivion—please!” Darian protests laughingly but again no one listens. There’s no elevator in the Empire State Hotel so Abraham Licht, Rosamund and Darian descend the stairs, several flights of poorly lit, gritty stairs, Darian finds himself gripped by the arms, protected from slipping and falling, there’s much laughter, good-natured jesting, for both Abraham Licht and his beautiful young wife have been drinking this evening, though assuredly they’re not drunk, such glamorous demigods never get drunk, it’s poor Darian Licht visiting Manhattan from Schenectady, New York, a visiting instructor at the Westheath School of Music who’s likely to get drunk, yet in the open air Darian revives, or almost, managing after two attempts to climb up into the horse-drawn carriage, the driver in tails and top hat grinning at this handsome trio of revelers, he’s hoping for a generous tip, the elder gentleman in evening attire looks well-to-do and magnanimous, crying, “To the Pierre, my man! Posthaste!” in a commanding baritone voice.

  The jostling carriage ride causes Darian’s head to rattle as if pebbles are being shaken inside it. He begins to cry—tears are streaking his face. Where am I being taken, who are these people, Father why did you forsake me for so long! But it’s Rosamund who slips her fingers through his, her gloved fingers through his, to steady and comfort. Darian is seated between the new Mrs. Licht and Father, squeezed upright between them, the ride is jolting, hilarious, the driver wields his whip, the dapple-skinned horse whinnies with excitement, or with pain, as he’s whipped, careening along Eighth Avenue north toward Central Park.

  HOW TO RESIST, you cannot.

  After more than a decade’s estrangement Darian and his father are reconciled. Late next morning when Darian wakes from his comalike sleep, having missed the train to Schenectady, he’ll be unable to recall why he’d ever vowed not to be Abraham Licht’s son.

  7.

  “The island is finite, its promise infinite.”

  Abraham Licht confides this wisdom to his youngest son Darian who’s so unworldly, he’d been drinking the “Manhattan” his father had prepared for him as if it were merely beer, to be swallowed quickly down. Even Rosamund laughs at him, with sisterly mock-censure. “Oh, Darian! Do go more slowly.”

  Since being taken up by Father and Father’s new young wife, Darian Licht has been, you might say, careening . . . wild crashing chords up and down the keyboard, hands crossed over so the left is pounding the treble and the right, the bass. Am I in love? Or just drunk?

  Though trying to remain sober. Trying to remain . . . Darian, the skeptic. Caring for nothing but his music, which is to say his solitude; the solitude required for the composing of . . . music.

  He hears his own laughter, often. A harsh raw boyish laughter as of a violin long out of tune, half its strings broken.

  Abraham Licht is in a mood to confide. He’s forgiven his youngest son, apparently, for ten years’ estrangement—“The stubbornness of youth, I suppose necessary if analyzed in Darwinian evolutionary terms.” He has forgiven Darian, and Darian has evidently forgiven him. (“Why did we ever quarrel?” Darian wonders, genuinely baffled. He believes it may have had something to do with the Vanderpoel Academy . . . what a difficult adolescent he must have been, tormented by emotions as by acne. “But no more!”)

  Almost, it’s a litany that might be put to music. In fact it is a litany that might be put to music. Darian envisions kettledrums, a B-flat cornet, a baritone voice in Gregorian-chant style. Bethlehem Steel. Mexican Seaboard Certificates. Pan American Western Corporation. Cole Motors, Indianapolis. American Telephone & Telegraph. Fleischmann’s Yeast. New York Central. Fisk Insurance. Standard Oil of New Jersey. Kennecott Copper. “All very conservative stocks,” as Abraham Licht says. “For, despite his exemplary broker’s tips, ‘Moses Liebknecht’ is too cautious to gamble his hard-earned money.” Exactly who “Moses Liebknecht” is, Darian isn’t sure though he’s been told; both by Father and by Father’s new young wife, laughingly. “When we’d met, it was ‘Moses’ I first loved,” Ro
samund says, shaking her head in wonderment. “Little did I know that ‘Abraham’ was guiding us both.”

  Apart from the stock-market profits which, Darian gathers, are considerable, in this careening season of summer 1928, Abraham Licht and the beautiful young Mrs. Licht are beginning to make a fair amount of money from the sale, increasing weekly, of Liebknecht’s Formula. “At the outset, I’d marketed it as an ‘elixir of health’—that sort of thing. But, y’know, there are many competitors; too many; what’s wanted is a specific property. It was staring us in the face all along: fertility.”

  Darian isn’t sure he has heard correctly. “‘Fertility’—?”

  Abraham says, smiling happily, “Human fertility, Darian. Babies—to be blunt. Some couples are unable to conceive. It’s a medical predicament of which few persons wish to speak—at least at this time—yet of course it exists, and women are aggrieved at being ‘barren,’ and men at having failed to ‘sire.’ One can’t blame them, for it’s a biblical injunction Increase and multiply! ‘Liebknecht’s Formula’ is being promoted as a fertility elixir, manufactured and distributed by Easton Pharmaceuticals in Pennsylvania. It is something of a wonder drug, I would swear to it.”

  At this, Rosamund begins laughing like a young girl, and has to leave the room; Darian hears the sharp tattoo of her high-heeled shoes on the parquet floor, and her melodic voice raised at the rear of the brownstone (she must be speaking to the housekeeper); in a minute or two she’ll return, giddy and flush-faced, for she’s never out of Abraham Licht’s presence for long, and possibly she’s drawn to Darian as well. Am I in love, certainly not. My own father’s wife. What a joke! Darian too begins laughing, and coughing; Father slaps him between the shoulder blades; telling him of a whim of a bet he’d placed the previous Sunday, on a filly running at the Preakness, odds 5 to 1, he’d had a hunch she might win for her name was June Hardy and the month is June and some years ago—“Someday, son, I will tell you in full”—Abraham had been a dear friend of the former president Warren Harding, a good-hearted soul for all his failings and his deeply American ignorance; and so, with such stars in collusion, Abraham had known the filly would win.