After we had settled in, I left Humphrey with some new comic books and went down the hall to Luc and Bridget’s room, which was three doors away from ours and therefore out of earshot. “I just don’t like what’s happening,” I told them. “It’s making me nervous and giving me a mental block I m not sure I can compose any more. It was the same weird old guy waiting after both concerts, I know it was. And each time he knew exactly which note Luc made me change.”
I looked back and forth between them, waiting for a reaction. Luc, reclining against the headboard, the thick folds of fat around his navel protruding from beneath his shirt, shrugged irritably. “I always told you you spoil him,” he said to Bridget “We give him a free hand, and now he’s complaining about the few minor changes I had to make. Next I suppose he’s going to demand that I have no say about the music at all.”
“No, no, you’ve missed the whole point” I turned to Bridget “It’s not the changes that bother me. It’s the fact that somebody else knew about them. And there’s no way he could find out. It’s just impossible. Can’t you see why it makes me nervous?”
Bridget looked at me unblinking for a moment, then went back to braiding her hair. “You’re making too much of this, Sam,” she said, a hairpin in her mouth. “It could hardly be the same person in Venice and Milan; I’m sure you’re mistaken about that And you said yourself his speech was indistinct. You simply interpreted whatever it was he said in your own way, because of the resentment that was in your mind. I didn’t expect you to be quite so petty about it”
I swallowed my howls of frustration. “Please listen to me,” I said, with all the earnestness I could muster. “It’s not resentment All I’m really asking is that Luc write the next one instead of me. That’s all I want He is the professional; he’d probably come up with more convincing music than my stupid stuff.”
Of course, I didn’t really think that Luc would do a better job. Moreover, composing the music had given me more real satisfaction than anything I had ever done. Yet now all I wanted was to wriggle out of the project. I had the faint hope that an appeal to Luc’s vanity might be a means of escape. “I mean it,” I went on. “Any time now, those critics might start seeing through my little things. What we need now is a real professional touch.”
But Luc didn’t seem flattered at all. If anything, he sounded nervous. “Uh, what do you think about that, Bridget?” he said.
“I think Sam’s up to something,” she said, with a knowing little tilt of her head. “And of course these fine musical distinctions are way over my head. But it seems to me that things have been working out quite well just the way we’ve been doing it all along.”
“Which means you don’t want me to start writing the first drafts myself,” Luc said, with obvious relief. “I definitely agree.”
As I should have known, Luc’s laziness took precedence even over his vanity. Why should he bother composing the “first draft,” as he put it, when I was there to do all the hard work, and all he had to do was arbitrarily lift his little finger when I was through and make a con ple of “professional” changes?
“ … refuse to pay any attention to this neurotic self-indulgence and these transparent little stratagems,” Bridget was saying. “It’s all too boring and bogus for words, and there’s no point to it at all. If you pull yourself together and start behaving like an adult human being, all this nerviness will go away and you’ll feel much better, I promise you. Not that you have any choice in the matter anyway. We need a new piece and it’s time for you to get to work on it. You’ve had too much time on your hands, that’s the whole problem. Once you get involved in working on something again, you’ll forget about being jittery, believe me.”
“But I just don’t want to!” I blurted out stupidly. “I don’t want any part of it any more. It’s driving me nuts and ruining Humphrey!”
“Don’t you remember what I told you the first time you balked?” she said quietly, staring at me. “Let me remind you, just in case you have forgotten. You do your fair share, Sam; or you get out. It’s as simple as that.”
“I … oh, just go to hell, both of you!” I shouted, getting in the last word with my usual brilliance, and left them.
The odd thing was that Bridget, in one respect at least, turned out to be right—though I would never admit it to her. As soon as I began working on the next composition, the miserable uneasiness and the warring emotions I felt really did abate. I was immersed in a puzzle of exceptional beauty and intricacy, a puzzle that only I, out of all the people in the world, was able to solve. Once I had embarked, there was no time to be concerned with anything but the captivating problems at hand. Again I chose an American folk tune, a song called “Pick a Bail o’Cotton,” and this time I tore it apart and slapped it back together again in a more outrageous parody of Magyar’s style than I had had the nerve, or the skill, to attempt before. I no longer cared what Luc or the critics might think about the music, so I allowed myself the pleasure of throwing in jarring, screamingly unpredictable rhythms and harmonies. And since we were earlier this time, and Humphrey would have two full days to learn the piece, I devised some really awkward and mathematically confusing meter changes, chuckling at the thought of how much trouble Luc was going to have trying to beat them into Humphrey’s simple brain.
And at night, twisting on my cot, I tried not to think about the old man. He wouldn’t show up in Geneva, it couldn’t happen, I was only being morbid. With the pillow wrapped around my head in an attempt to dampen Humphrey’s sonorous rumblings, I repeated to myself as the hours slunk by that I had nothing to worry about at all …
ON THE EVENING that we drugged Humphrey the third time, we ate dinner in the hotel room again, clearly the only sensible procedure. On this occasion I was sent to a decent restaurant and brought back a bulging carton of choucroute garni and several bottles of beer and soft drinks. The first thing Humphrey said to me when I walked through the door was, “I want some more Coke, Sam. I hope you brought some.”
It had started to rain while I was on my way home. The paper bag had nearly dissolved, and it was only with great difficulty that I had managed to save what I had. I set down the soggy remains of the bundle and shook some of the water out of my hair. “I’m sorry, Humphrey, but the bag got wet, and the Coke fell out and broke. I almost dropped everything else trying to save it. I even went to two more stores trying to get another bottle, but they didn’t have any.” It was all true; I had gone to a lot of trouble to procure the all-important beverage. Still, it didn’t really tear me up inside to tell Humphrey he wasn’t going to get any. “But there’s some ginger ale and cherry soda. They’re nice for a change.”
“But I want my Coke; I always have to have my Coke. I need it for … for my work. Why did you have to go and drop it, Sam?”
“Oh, come on, Humphrey.” I picked up a greasy, lipstick-stained hand towel from a pile on the floor and made an attempt to dry myself off a little. “Didn’t you have two Cokes at lunch? Anyway, ginger ale goes better with choucroute garni.”
“That’s right, darling,” Bridget said soothingly. “And it’s good for your digestion, too.”
“But I want Coke,” insisted Humphrey, scowling at me.
Humphrey had been such a dim little child that the adulation of the outside world had had little effect on his docile, cowlike temperament But now that he was older and had experienced a barren period, it was only natural that all the recent adulation had caused even as feeble a head as his to swell. And it was equally natural that I should not be particularly generous about forgiving him the foibles of his fame.
“Can it, Humphrey,” I said.
“Well, but why shouldn’t Sam go back out and get some?” Humphrey whined, still scowling, but now edging toward Bridget for protection. “What else does he do? I’m the one that plays all the concerts. I’m the one that writes down the music. Why shouldn’t Sam take care of—”
“Thats right, why shouldn’t I wait on Humphrey, the geni
us? I’m only Sam, the no-talent drudge.” Though he towered over me, he backed away as I stepped toward him. “That’s a flattering, pretty way for you to look at the situation, isn’t it, Humphrey? I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you that you don’t know everything, did it? That maybe I could shatter a few—”
“Sam! Humphrey! Stop it!” ordered Bridget in her most arctic tones. (Though in her voice there might have been—and at the thought I felt an incipient thrill of power—a hot tiny bubble of fear.) “You’re behaving like infants, both of you. Humphrey, you can do very well without your disgusting Coke for once. And Sam, if you ever even think of saying anything at all, uh … disturbing to Humphrey’s creativity, then, I promise you, the consequences will be more unpleasant than anything you can possibly imagine.” She cast me a glare of such menace that she could have been slowly and thoroughly grinding out her cigarette on my tender eyeball instead of in the overflowing, chewing-gum-filled ashtray.
There was barely enough space for the four of us in the room, and we sat uncomfortably close together as we ate. Humphrey sipped resentfully at his doped ginger ale, toying with the delicately spiced, wine-flavored sauerkraut as though it were mere rotten cabbage. I didn’t have much appetite myself. Though I tried to remain aloof, I couldn’t keep my eyes away from Humphrey. I didn’t like what success was doing to him. His previous indifference to acclaim, which I had always regarded as a sign of gross stupidity, now began to seem charmingly naive. He hadn’t been such a bad little dolt after all. Angry as I was, for a moment I almost felt worried about him.
“Mama, why is Sam looking at me like that? Make him stop looking at me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Humphrey,” I said, reaching for a magazine. “You know I wouldn’t look at you while I was eating.”
But I still kept my eyes covertly on him. It wasn’t only the changes in his ordinary day-to-day behavior that were morbidly fascinating. I was also watching for signs of the drug taking effect and wondering what nutty things it was going to make him say this time. There was a chance that he might even do something bizarre enough to alarm Bridget and Luc, if I could keep all of us together long enough for them to observe it.
But before we had finished eating, Humphrey pushed his plate away with a deep belch and said, “I don’t want any more. I want to go back and read my comic books.”
“Letting all that, good food go to waste?” I said disapprovingly. “That’s not like you, Humphrey.”
“But I don’t like it It’s … icky,” Humphrey said.
“Yes, but if you go away, then I might get some of yours,” I said. The brat he was turning into might well eat something he didn’t like just to keep it away from me.
“Leave him alone, Sam,” Bridget said. “I don’t think we have to worry about Humphrey being undernourished.”
“And he needs his rest,” Luc put in. “He’s been working very hard.”
“Oh, I know,” I said quickly. “I was just going to say … uh, it might be good for him to get his mind off his work for a while.”
“It’s too crowded here. I’m going back to my room,” said Humphrey, getting up.
But I couldn’t let him go. I was determined to keep him in the same room with Bridget and Luc until the drug started to affect his behavior. If they saw how gruesome he could be, then they might begin to understand why the situation was worrying me. Just describing how he had laughed at the comic book wasn’t enough. They would never take me seriously until they saw him do something equally fiendish with their own eyes.
In the past, I could simply have asked him to stay up with us, and he would have happily obliged, thrilled that I wanted his company. But these days he was too ornery and pigheaded to pay any attention to a request of mine. I had to create a diversion, to come up with something interesting enough to make him want to stay.
“Wait a minute, Humphrey,” I said.
“Wait for what?” he said, moving toward the door.
What could we all do that he wouldn’t want to miss? “Well, if you just stayed we could …” I searched my mind desperately. “We could all …” Then it hit me. “I know! We could all play a game. Wouldn’t that be fun, Humf?”
“A game?” Humphrey blinked down at me, puzzled but interested. Playing together was a concept that had never occurred to anyone in our family. “What kind of game?” Humphrey said.
Of course it couldn’t be anything with complicated rules, like cards, or that required imagination, like charades, because in either case Humphrey would be lost immediately. It had to be simpleminded but intriguing. “Welt, uh …” I almost said “Ghost,” but quickly reconsidered. Not only did that particular word bother me somehow, but the game also required a modicum of spelling ability, once again eliminating Humphrey. Was there any game at all that he could play? “Um … I know, twenty questions,” I said at last “That’s loads of fun.”
“Now what’s he trying to put over?” Luc asked Bridget “Does he actually expect you and me to participate in this infantile nonsense?”
“I just thought Humphrey might get a kick out of it He hardly ever gets a chance to have fun, like other kids. Do you, Humphrey?”
Bridget frowned at me, but Humphrey had been hooked. “How do you play?” he demanded, sitting down again.
“One person thinks of something. An object, a person, anything at all. The others try to figure out what it is by asking questions. They get twenty questions, and they can only have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as the answer. If they guess what it is, they win. If they don’t, the one who thought of something wins.”
“That sounds pretty silly to me,” Bridget said. “Humphrey, you don’t really want to waste your—”
“I thought of something, I thought of something!” crowed Humphrey, clapping his hands. “You’ll never never guess what it is. Come on, ask me a question. Ask me!”
The object Humphrey was so sure we would never think of was “piano.” Though I tried to be as dense as possible, we got it in six questions. But rather than being discouraged by his defeat, Humphrey was eager to keep the game going until it was his turn again.
Luc came up with a metronome, which we got in ten questions. Bridget’s choice was the Star of India diamond, which required sixteen. And I thought of a breaded veal cutlet, Holstein, served with a fried egg and anchovies, which nobody got at all, and Luc insisted was unfair.
By now, Humphrey was getting that self-absorbed, giggly look. “It’s my turn, and I already thought of one,” he said, interrupting Luc in the middle of a petty argument about the rules. (He just couldn’t tolerate not having guessed my word.) “I’ve got one, and you’ll never guess it. Come on, guess!”
We established that it was animal, smaller than a breadbox but bigger than a mouse. I immediately thought of food. “Is it something people eat?” I asked.
The question struck Humphrey as peculiarly funny. “Something to eat?” He laughed, rolling back his head. “Oh, I can just see you munching on it, Sammy! I wonder how you’d like the taste.”
“Just answer the question, Humphrey,” I said.
“No, no.” He sighed. “Nobody eats it … I mean them.”
“What do you mean, ‘them’?” Luc demanded. “Are you thinking of one thing or two?”
“Is that supposed to be a question?” said Humphrey astutely. “Because if it is, it has to be yes or no.”
“But I don’t think it’s fair to think of two things,” Luc protested. “Guessing one is difficult enough.”
“Stop worrying about that and play,” I said. “I’ll ask the question. Are you thinking of two things, Humphrey?”
“Yes.”
“Then what you’re thinking of is a little animal and its mate, isn’t it, Humphrey dear?” Bridget asked.
“No,” said Humphrey complacently. “That makes ten questions.”
“Come, Humphrey, it must be,” she said. “It’s two cute little hamsters, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Humphrey. “That m
akes eleven.”
“You’re wasting questions,” I said. “Now, Humphrey, these two animals, are they—”
“I never said it was two animals,” Humphrey chuckled, bursting with glee at how he had all of us fooled.
“But you said it was animal and there were two of them,” said Luc. “So it has to be two animals, doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Humphrey said, grinning smugly. “That makes twelve questions.”
“We’ll never get it if you two keep wasting questions,” I said. “Let’s see … two things of animal origin but not two animals. Okay, Humphrey, are they alive or dead?”
“Has to be a yes or no question,” trilled Humphrey, in an especially irritating singsong voice.
“Okay, okay. Are they alive?”
“No, they are not alive,” Humphrey said.
“But they’re not food?” I murmured, then added quickly, “That’s not a question, Humphrey.”
“Are they something that might be used around the home?” Bridget asked.
This question sent Humphrey into more paroxysms of amusement. “Around the home?” he managed to gasp. “Around whose home, I wonder?”
“Just tell me yes or no,” said Bridget, beginning to sound annoyed.
“No, no, not around the home,” he said.
Two dead things of animal origin … Something unpleasant hovered at the edge of my consciousness, but I couldn’t get a firm hold on it. No one else was doing any better. In the end we had to give up, completely stumped. “Okay, Humphrey, you win,” I said at last. “Just tell us what it is.”
Once again Humphrey was helplessly besieged by laughter. It was only after a full minute of struggling, tears streaming down his face, that he managed to choke out the words, “Two dried up, uh, wr-wr-wr—” And he was off again.
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