The Tunnel of Love

by Peter de Vries

  But my heart was not in this. Because now I found that I had my wife back on my conscience again—to some extent. And now that she was home I wanted to make some final, resolving gesture of affection, something in the way of a coming-home present.

  The present idea, I thought, turning it all over in my mind, would blend very nicely with the anniversary of our first date, which, searching for some occasion that she probably wouldn’t remember and that would hence put me ahead of her, I recalled was to be Saturday, tomorrow. The day would most likely go unnoticed by her, as she did increasingly forget the incidental occasions she had once set such store by. But this was the eleventh hour, and I was still racking my brains in vain for something to give her.

  I had left the bar and was hurrying through Frank’s drivel to catch the five-thirty home when my eye was caught by something in the window of a liquor store. It was some bottles of a variety of Moselle known as Piesporter, which were on sale as a closeout for three dollars and eighty cents a bottle. The year was ‘37, a great one, which meant that at this price, and thirty-five dollars a case, the stuff was a steal. I went in and snapped up a case.

  “Can you get it out to Avalon, Connecticut, tomorrow?” I asked the salesman, an oppressively natty man in blue pin stripe, and with a blond mustache waxed and twisted into two tines. “I need it tomorrow and I’m not driving.”

  “I’m sorry, we can’t deliver across the state line,” he said. “Regulations.”

  “I see.” I pondered my problem. There was only one solution, short of making a special trip by car for the goods, if I wanted it for the week end. “Il’l take it with me,” I said.

  “The whole case?” the salesman said, boggling at the thought. “Can’t you take a few bottles home at a time—I mean if you come into the city regularly?”

  I explained that the purchase was for a present, and that I did not want to dissipate the gesture by executing it piecemeal. I had made more forbidding portages on Christmas Eve, I had him know, and wasn’t going to be daunted by twelve bottles of Piesporter. Besides, I had a plan all doped out in my mind. “Make two parcels of five bottles each,” I instructed him. “I’ll carry one of those in each hand, and a bottle in each of my raincoat pockets. Make the parcels good and strong with lots of stout twine to hold them by. And I’ll phone my wife while you’re doing that, if I may, and tell her I’ll be on the next train.”

  It was a figure laden on the above lines that the rush-hour throngs saw toiling down the ramp at Grand Central Terminal, bent over double and plashing audibly, his eyes popping and the veins in his neck standing out like whipcord, his hair pelted into absurdity by the sudden downpour into which the all-day drivel had changed. Moselle is a reasonably light wine, but not by avoirdupois, and I was now proceeding on the remnants of strength left by sprints for cabs which had punctuated the quarter-mile walk in the rain (fruitless sprints, with all that ballast), dashes across traffic intersections, and that broken-field running that makes up so much of a commuter’s life. My pace, as a consequence, had slowed to the next thing to a dead stop. My arms felt as if they were coming out of their sockets, and the parcels grazed the floor as I moved. The effect was a little like that prowling gait that is the trade-mark of Groucho Marx, except that it didn’t go very well with a wet sheep dog look. Bangs to my chin, I continued down the incline. I paused and set the packages down to brush my hair back, and also to button my raincoat; the two bottles in it made that feel like a millstone around my neck, and I thought that by fastening my coat they might be less of a “dead” weight. But fastening the coat only made it bind unendurably, and I stopped to loosen it again.

  I had exactly two minutes to catch my train. What remains in my memory is a small nightmare of exertion. Somehow I got through the main waiting room and, strolling exhaustedly through the gate, heard the conductors yelling “All aboard!” A train let out of its air brakes a series of snorts not unakin to my own stertorous pants. How we pay for sex! I thought. Still I experienced a certain pleasure in my pains, feeling them to be giving me “what I had coming” and thus to that extent closing the score against me. Yet had I dreamt that this was not the end of what I was to pay but only the beginning I believe I would have sunk to the floor and died. In a final spasm of effort I swung aboard the forward platform of the last coach of my train, which was the first platform open to me. I dropped my cargo in a corner of it and stood with my back to the door.

  Breathing heavily, I thought of the affectionate dedication behind the production of such wine as this, how the workmen in the German valleys climb the steep terraces on which the vineyards grow, nursing the fruit into maturity by constantly rearranging individual pieces of slate in the soil so that each grape will get the benefit of reflected sunlight, effort more painstaking and back-breaking than what I was going through on this end to acquire the product, but not much. But now I had the bottles, to take home and lay at my wife’s feet, which, God knew, would be about as high as I could lift them.

  Lurching through the tunnel, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” a man asked. I saw out of the tail of my eye, as I turned my head a little, that it was a conductor.

  “I’m O.K.,” I said. When he hovered, solicitous, I repeated testily, “I’m O.K.”

  “All right. I was only trying to be helpful. It’s my duty when somebody looks—” He hesitated, then went on, “Last week we had a case of acute indigestion.”

  “This is a case of Piesporter,” I said, without turning around.

  My arms still hung in a simian fashion for I hadn’t yet straightened my back—I couldn’t. Add to this the fact that he was seeing me from behind, and I suppose there was sufficient ground for his anxiety.

  “A case of what?”

  “Piesporter”

  “That’s a new one on me,” the conductor said, removing his cap and rummaging in his hair. “Piesporter. What’s it like, if I may ask?”

  “It’s a growth in the Middle Moselle.”

  So apart from the stiff back I was quite myself again, such as that may be, and by the time we rumbled out of the tunnel and up the grade toward the 125th Street stop I was seated in the car, near the front door where I could keep an eye on the vestibule, for I had left the packages out there. My coat with the two bottles in it was folded carefully on the luggage rack overhead.

  The walk from the Avalon platform to the station wagon in which my wife was waiting for me was no problem, being only ten feet. Though I could feel the parcel cord biting into the crop of water blisters I had sprouted in the course of my New York heats. The rain had stopped.

  “What are those?” my wife asked me as I stowed the packages in the back of the car.

  “Don’t you know what for?” I asked mysteriously. I set my raincoat out of sight on the back seat. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what day it is tomorrow,” I said, springing into the front seat beside her.

  “Tomorrow?” she puzzled, starting up. “What day is it?”

  “Why, the anniversary of our first date.” I looked wounded. “You’ve forgotten.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “It is at that, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Oh, don’t feel too bad about it,” I said, reaching to take her hand. “Anybody could forget.” Everything was going well; going according to plan.

  “What did you get me?” she said, withdrawing her hand.

  “Now, now, just be patient. Tomorrow’s the day, not today.”

  However, that evening as we sat in the living room reading, I began to wonder what the Piesporter was like, and a marked thirst came about. I put my book down and rose.

  “Look, I know you’re dying with curiosity,” I said. “It’s only an hour and forty-five minutes till midnight and, well, I wouldn’t mind. It’s also a kind of coming-home present for you. So want to open it?”

  “Could I?”

  Well, nothing would do but that I get the packages out of the closet where I had them hidden and bring them into the livin
g room. I kept the two separate bottles out of sight as they would have tipped the present off. “I can’t wait to see the expression on your face,” I said as, with an eager smile, she knelt on the floor to open the first of the parcels. She drew out one of the bottles.

  “Well, wine,” she said. She read the label. “Piesporter?”

  “It’s that Moselle you’re so crazy about.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. We had it at Hans Hoffman’s that night—remember?”

  “I see. Well, gee, thanks.” She looked over at the other package. “Now I’ll open this one.”

  “That’s Piesporter too,” I said. “I got you a whole case. You’ll notice it’s a ‘37. A great year for German wines, and for a lady too,” I added prettily. She got to her feet and dusted off her skirt. “Also, it’s a Spätlese,” I pointed out, tapping the label of a bottle which I had picked up. “That means it’s from selected grapes which have been allowed to become dead ripe, which is another—where are you going?”

  “Just back here and sit down.”

  “Which is when those grapes are at their best,” I continued. “It’s a condition the Germans call edelfaul, when the grapes are edelreif.”

  “Yes. Well, thanks a lot. That’s wonderful.”

  She picked up the magazine she’d been reading, from the floor where she’d dropped it; but it lay unread in her lap. At last she said:

  “Did you mean that women are at their best too, when they’re—what did you call that when the grapes are dead ripe? Gestalt?”

  “No, no—edelfaul. I believe that’s the way Hans pronounced it. Hans went into the whole thing with me after dinner while you and Elsa were playing duets. It’s a fascinating subject. I’d like to know more about it. Why, certainly women are at their most attractive when they’re mature. That goes without saying.”

  “Then why say it?”

  “I didn’t say it.”

  “No, but you implied it. With that remark about the vintage year and age and all.” She dropped the magazine on the floor again; I put the bottle back and sat down. “This is the fifteenth anniversary of that first date already. Do I look thirty-seven?”

  “You do not,” I answered with sincerity and alacrity.

  “When are you supposed to be middle-aged? Thirty-five?”

  “Oh, I don’t think till forty. And even then . . .”

  “Even then what?”

  “Even then a woman is only just beginning to get into her, to get into this—” I wriggled restively up in my chair. “Well, into this Gestalt—I mean gefülte—Oh, damn it, you’ve got me doing it now. The French have a term for it too. What do they call it again? Oh, yes—pourriture noble, I believe. It means a noble ripeness. When the grapes get so they’re ready to fall off the vine.”

  There was a silence.

  I said: “Age is a guarantee of body and perfume.”

  The silence deepened. She looked over at the cellaret on top of which stood a bottle of Canadian Club. “I think I’d like a drink,” she said. She rose and started for it.

  “Why not open one of these?” I said, indicating the Piesporter. “Come on, let’s start celebrating! I’ll have one chilled in a jiffy,” I added, picking a bottle up and bustling into the kitchen with it. “I can’t wait to see the expression on your face when you taste it.”

  We sat regarding one another moodily across an ice-filled saucepan from which the neck of a bottle of Piesporter protruded like the muzzle of a gun. However, I had a fresh white napkin if not a wine cooler, and I poured and served the Moselle with style. I toasted the occasion, and we drank.

  “God,” I said, working my lips. “Beautiful?”

  “Mm,” she agreed, nodding. “Quite nice.”

  “Get that delightful fruitiness characteristic of all your fine Moselles.” I was relieved to find the wine good, because I’d suddenly remembered something about Moselles having to be drunk young, which meant that mine was pushing senility, and also shed a little light on it as a shopping coup.

  “What did you do while I was gone?” my wife asked, looking at the largess strewn about the floor.

  “Oh, nothing much. Like I told you—movie or two, dinner here and there, and once I ran into Al Standard and had drinks with him. Like I said. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, stroking the stem of her glass be tween her fingers.

  Holding my wine aloft and appraising its hue, I said, “A very funny thing happened at one of the restaurants I tried, down in the Village—a misprint on the menu. It was one of those hectograph menus? It said, ‘Dreaded veal cutlet.’”

  She shook a cigarette out of a package and took another tack. “You’re really getting to like wine, aren’t you? Especially white wines.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean you like white wine,” she answered, a flintiness in her voice which recalled the great Chablis. “You’d love to lay in cases of it, have a cellar, but it’s too expensive. Unless you’re buying a present for somebody that you’d be expected to spend that much money on anyhow—”

  “I think that was uncalled for,” I said, going over and giving her a light. But it was what I wanted. I moved cautiously in quest of a grievance, luring her inch by inch toward saying something she would be sorry for. “I remember distinctly you were crazy about the wine we drank at Hans’s. You exclaimed about the Piesporter we had first, and you exclaimed about the bottle he opened later. It was a 1937 Rüdesheimer Hinterhaus Riesling Auslese—”

  “You have to exclaim at Hans’s. Or he sulks.”

  “I’m not through yet. I remember that bottle because I memorized the label, as a sort of a gag.” I started over from the beginning. “It was a 1937 Rüdesheimer Hinterhaus Riesling Auslese Wachstum und Original Abfüllung Grafen von Francken-Sierstorpff.”

  “Don’t make so much noise,” she shushed with a warning jerk of her head toward the sleeping children. “Why, do you bone up on the subject during those tough three-hour lunches you have to go through in New York every day?”

  Now she was close. In a moment she would wound me, if I worked it right. Then I’d be in the catbird seat. Carefully, I cued her; carefully because this called for egging, and a hair’s-breadth too much could in a twinkling reverse the advantage by making the other one the injured party.

  “You mean while you’re curled up here reading a book? Like that one there?” I said, pointing to a volume spread-eagled on the ottoman.

  “Not curled up with it, exactly, but trying my best to wade through it—it and the rest of that set of Trollope you bought me on my last birthday because you were dying to reread him.”

  That did it. That was the shaft that went home.

  I turned a hurt face to the window and said, “I don’t think that was a very nice thing to say. What puts you in such a defensive mood? I don’t understand it, darling.” I faced about with a hand spread. “Is it because you thought I’d mind your forgetting our little anniversary? How could you know me so little as to think I would?”

  “And speaking of anniversaries, there hangs my last wedding-anniversary present.” She nodded to a Reginald Marsh over the mantel. “That painting you just had to have. I can’t wait to see what I get on the next one. A nice silver ice bucket probably.”

  That stung me to the quick; so much so that I could not be content with wounds but must take up spears.

  “This is the thanks I get for carting this whole damn case home,” I said. My arms still ached for me to wave them to any great extent. “Are we going to start appreciating some of the finer things of life, or are we going along on the level of taste here in Subourbon Heights?” Since the gag was a visual one it made no sense to her whatever, and I was too proud to spell it out. I expanded on the subject of the portage. “All the way across town during the rush hour and in a downpour, and then halfway across two states. At least the conductor on the train showed some concern—he was really worried. Why, the distance I lugged this stuff to g
et it home on time is big enough to put in all the vineyards between Braunsberg and Schweinfurt!”

  She may have thought I was swearing at her, because she ground out her cigarette, rose and started to leave the room. I stepped athwart her path.

  “Take a look at these,” I said, spreading both hands to display the rows of blisters I had acquired. “Talk about edelfaul!”

  My wife passed around me, after an accommodating glance at the lesions, and marched on into the bedroom with great dignity.

  “Good night,” she called back satirically. “Sleep tight.”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” I said, drawing the Piesporter from its ice even as I reached with my other hand for my glass.

  Well, I patched it up though. I smoothed it over. I smoothed it over with another present. It was a series of recordings, by Casadesus, of all, but all of Ravel’s piano music. Three records—six sides, that is, and long-playing—which I was lucky enough to pick up in Avalon the next morning. It made a nice remembrance, I think, because it’s the sort of thing I can’t abide.

  And a couple of weeks later Terry McBain phoned me in an absolute tizzy to say that the Digest had bought her Most Unforgettable Character.

  “Episode,” I said to myself, “closed.”

  Sixteen

  SO things were back to normal again. And back to normal up at Moot Point too.

  With what nostalgia had I not in the interval hankered for its enveloping graces, and how tonic now the resumed hours there among my growing ranks of guests! It was on one of the evenings soon after my return that we invented, a group of us, in a spate of extemporaneous mirth, something we called Loony Latin, the idea of which was, of course, later pirated and transposed into Gallic as Fractured French. It was basically the same thing. For example, a hic jacet was, we said, a sport coat worn by a person of provincial, or corny, taste; ad nauseam meant a sickening industrial advertisement, and the like. We didn’t mind the theft; indeed, we followed with amusement the solemn commercialization of what had sufficed us purely as an evening’s toy. “Limitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” I laughingly observed to my circle as we passed the plagiarism around one night. But we never publicly belittled the volume, or the foolish napkins and highball glasses that succeeded it either, as that would have been rather a breach of suavity in the brightest constellation, as our set had by now come to be called, in the Eastern social skies.