Love Among the Particles

by Norman Lock

  Corrado shivers, as if the cold emanating from Sirki has pursued him. “What does he want?”

  “To study us.”

  Corrado is bewildered.

  “Our fear.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “For all our sakes, Corrado, don’t meddle in this! And unless you want to bring catastrophe to this house, treat Prince Sirki as you would any man.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until tomorrow night. Now I must see to the others. Your room is the safest place for you.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Be afraid, Corrado; be very much afraid.”

  Duke Lambert returns to the salon. His wife and guests are as he left them. They stand with heads bowed before the prince, who also has not moved. They are not, as Fedele appeared to be, asleep. Seeing them now so immobile, Lambert imagines that it is he and not Prince Sirki who directs the action; his consciousness, which contains them all. They are like characters in a play, who, their parts having been performed, go backstage to smoke a cigarette, embrace, or read the newspaper while their fictional lives are in suspension. Their most dramatic selves. Are Stephanie, Alda, Rhoda, Eric, Cesarea—even the prince—waiting for him to set them going again? A pretty delusion! Sirki turns to Lambert, and the others are immediately disenthralled. The duke quails as Sirki faces him. But the prince is smiling and so, too, are the others.

  “I have had a most enjoyable evening,” he says.

  Lambert staggers, as if felled.

  “I look forward to tomorrow,” Sirki continues with the savoir faire of a courtier, which he has acquired during Corrado’s retreat.

  “Where are Grazia and Princess Maria?” the duke asks.

  “Gone home to their beds,” Sirki replies.

  Lambert’s face registers minutely his relief. It does not escape the prince, who says, “They will be back tomorrow night for my farewell party. Grazia will be unable to resist.”

  The guests are laughing. The bond, which joined them with a force stronger than their wills, is dissolved. Each is free to move about the room with another whose interest is, for the moment, mutual. Baron Cesarea and Eric stand by the hearth, smoking cigars. Alda and Rhoda sit on a banquette, vying in their fascination for the prince—all fear of him forgotten. Stephanie goes to her husband to ask what has happened to Corrado. Fedele enters with a tray of brandies. As if the house were his, Prince Sirki proposes, “To the pleasant dreams of my guests.” His toast strikes all but Duke Lambert as presumptuous. Even so, they drink to those dreams, which are theirs—having felt, perhaps, misgivings about the coming night, when they would each leave the shore and drift out onto the black ocean alone.

  Already, Grazia is drifting. She and Princess Maria travel in reverse the road that brought them earlier from Ravenna to the Villa Felicitá; but they are not menaced by shadow, and the sedan presses against the curves in the road almost amorously. Maria watches as the sea (the Adriatic, not the figurative one on which Grazia has set out) approaches and recedes according to the road’s caprice. Entranced by the wind’s mussing the water silver, she thinks of nothing, nor does she wish to ask her daughter how she has answered Corrado’s proposal of marriage or what she thinks of the irascible prince. She herself does not wish to think of him at all. His impertinent gaze disturbed her—how it bore into one! After the driver has brought the automobile to a stop in front of the palazzo, Princess Maria nearly orders him to drive on through the night, the next day and night, until he has traveled the length of Italy, to Otranto, where she and her daughter can board a ship to Africa, to China, to someplace far from the Villa Felicitá and the prince. But she does not give the order, and the driver is now opening the door for her. Maria shakes Grazia awake, gently; for she is not yet so far from shore that she cannot return.

  Prince Sirki rests—he who is never tired; wills himself to sleep,who has never slept.To understand men, he must know the life they lead asleep. He has visited them so often in their beds, but never slept. He has entered their final dreams as easily as one might put a hand through a pane of water and has watched there enactments of human desire and fear—fear of Death, fear of him. Desire, too, for him. But he has never dreamed. He has listened to the cries of passion and distress, the shouts, whispers, riddling speeches concealing so much of interest to occultists and psychiatrists but not to him. Until today, when curiosity for once overcame him—curiosity concerning men: why they should claim to fear him and yet do so much in his service. For his approval and—who knows?—love.

  In the Great War, men showed a genius for the invention of new forms of extermination. No longer indifferent, Death hastened from muddy ditch to the garlands of twisted wire, to flaming oil spreading mortally on the waves, to the burning cages in which men were hurtled, like angels, from the heavens to a blasted, unlovely earth. On earth, in air, water, and in fire—there was not an element in which men did not bring forth some novelty to enliven the history of slaughter. He was astounded by the eagerness of their complicity and enraptured by the sight of so many caught in attitudes of submission. For him, a death has no moral quality, although it does possess an aesthetic one. Sensuality is his only human aspect. It has enabled him to make of Grazia an object of desire. Her beauty, however, is not a sufficient explanation for his fascination. If beauty were enough, Sirki would be attracted to Countess Alda or the American girl, Rhoda. No, Grazia must possess a fatality—must be in love with Death without knowing it. Perhaps this adoration compels her each morning to pray to the Virgin—not to be delivered from it, as she believes, but unto it; for who among women is more qualified to be Death’s intercessor than she who gave birth to man’s deliverance from it? Her lassitude, her remoteness—what are they but warrants of Grazia’s willingness to be taken? In dreams from which she wakes at once troubled and exultant, like a wife remembering a lover’s embrace—she is ravished by Death.

  In her bedroom in the palazzo, she is dreaming of the prince. She sees him as the medieval allegorists painted Death: faceless, cloaked in darkness, carrying a scythe and an hourglass. She knows, in her dream, that Prince Sirki and Death are one and the same. She is afraid of neither. He comes to her where she lies beneath an azure canopy embroidered in gold thread with astrological signs. She does not find him ridiculous; she does not feel revulsion at his touch. He puts aside the scythe and the glass, removes his cloak as a lover would, and lies beside her. He is a void. An emptiness. Nothing. And like nothing, immensely potent. He ravishes her. She need not part her lips or open her legs to let in her death: It enters as easily as a man does water. Only it is Grazia who drowns. Prince Sirki sleeps—he who has never slept—and dreams this while Grazia rests in his dream, smiles in its sway to be possessed by Death. To be loved by him. To be adored. In the morning, she dresses like a bride and returns to the Villa Felicitá—unable to resist.

  The Love of Stanley Marvel Et Claire Moon

  For Philip Roth

  1916

  It was the day of the boat races, and Stanley Marvel and his friend Rolly were there, sitting on a grassy bank overlooking the river. The river was brown. On it sped the thin, bright shells of the rowing teams. Red, blue, green, and yellow boats coasted over the river. In the stern of each boat, a coxswain rocked, urging his team on through a megaphone strapped to his head. Neither friend could hear what the coxswain said to inspire the oarsmen in their furious paces, but Stanley Marvel secretly believed it was dirty stories.

  Stanley and Rolly were alumni of one of the colleges whose boat crew raced toward the yellow rope stretched between two boats downriver. They were members of the class of ’15. It was Skimmer, an annual college spectacle, which had brought them to sit on the grass.

  Haberdashery

  Rolly wore a striped jacket, boiled white shirt and collar. His school tie waved in the breeze from the river. Stanley Marvel wore his varsity sweater, emblazoned with a capital P. Both men wore straw hats with round, flat brims, known as straw boaters or skim
mers, white duck trousers, and pearl gray spats. Both sported pencil-thin mustaches and gold pocket watches fastened to their waists by fobs and chains. Both wore hair oil, which trickled down their collars in the summer heat.

  From time to time, they took swigs from flat silver pocket flasks. Between races, they read newspaper accounts of the game played the day before between the New York Giants and the Boston Braves.

  Conversation on the Bank

  They had little to say to each other.

  But suddenly Rolly said, “There’s some loveliness over there by the pro bonum publico.”

  Stanley Marvel turned down a corner of the paper and looked.

  “That is a very accurate observation: There is certainly loveliness over there. And I think I shall go speak to it.”

  “You go, and I will see what happens.”

  Claire Moon: An Inventory

  white linen pleated dress

  white high-necked shirtwaist

  white chemise (“shimmy”) w/pink ribbons

  black cotton stockings

  black kid boots

  black wide-brimmed hat

  a string of dime-store pearls (Woolworth, 79¢)

  strawberry-blond hair

  green eyes w/gold flecks (“pretty eyes”)

  upturned nose

  small mouth

  small breasts w/large, pink aureoles

  slender (“waspish”) waist

  narrow hips

  a beauty mark on the inside of the left thigh

  2 legs

  2 arms

  2 feet

  10 fingers

  10 toes

  32 teeth

  Claire Moon: Health

  “Corn-fed.”

  Her Statement

  “I was riding the trolley car on my way home from Gimbals. I’m a salesgirl there, in lingerie. Today was my Saturday to work. I sat on the river side like I always do to look at the boats. And it looked so cool there by the river. So when the trolley stopped to give the horses a drink, I thought I’d just get off and have a nice cold drink of water from the fountain by the horse trough and then go and have a look at the boats.”

  They Meet Watching Boats

  Stanley looked up from the newspaper. A lovely girl leaned over the stone trough and filled a tin cup. She had removed her hat and with a dampened handkerchief was mopping her forehead and neck. Her forehead was high and wide, her eyes set rather far apart.

  He went to her.

  He tipped his skimmer and said, “Hello. My name is Stanley Marvel.”

  She said nothing, but instead looked away to where a shell from the Vesper Boat Club sliced through the river.

  “Do you like the races?” he asked. He was confident with shopgirls.

  “Yes,” she offered.

  “Those boats there, with the crimson-and-blue bands slanting diagonally on their hulls, represent my alma mater.”

  “Oh, you’re a university man!”

  He pointed to the capital P made of thick felt sewn onto the chest of his college sweater.

  “Would you care for a lemonade?”

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  They bought lemonade and cakes in the basement of one of the boathouses. Then they went and strolled along the pavement that followed the river and looked at the boats sliding crisply through the dark river as the sun dropped behind the heroic statue of the Union soldier on horseback.

  Fireworks

  And then all was dark.

  Stanley held Claire Moon’s hand in the darkness.

  There were around them little fires where the racing crews and their girls cooked hot dogs.

  Someone played “Where the Mountains Meet the Moon” on a ukulele.

  Suddenly fireworks. Over the black river. Showers of bright sparks. Pinwheels of flame. Whoosh. In the light of the fireworks, they could see boat crews putting their boats away in the boathouses. Bang. Claire Moon moved into Stanley Marvel’s arms and was enfolded there.

  Conversation in the Dark on Boathouse Row

  “I am a rising young man. I have my own business—the butter and egg business. I have a truck, and there are not many men in the butter and egg business who have a truck.

  “Would you care to take a ride? I have a can of milk that should still be nice and cool. You could drink milk and ride in the truck. I’ll drive you home.”

  Riding Through the City at Night

  Stanley Marvel guided his butter and egg truck through the park and into the street. On Dauphin Street, Negroes sat on steps, drinking and laughing. Under a streetlamp, a man was retching.

  Stanley Marvel: “We have given them a part of the city in which to live. They should not soil it with the way they live.”

  Proposal of Marriage

  “And why not marriage between you and me?”

  The Wedding Day: 9:00 A.M., His Toilet

  He scraped his cheeks with the Gillette and then swished it in the gray shaving water. The Gillette was heavy in his hand. Tiny whiskers marked where the shaving water lapped against the porcelain sink. They showed the high-water mark made each time the Gillette displaced its equal volume in water.

  Bay rum on his cheeks, neck, the back of the neck, just where the hair begins, brushed into his hair with his fingers.

  He brushed his hair with a pair of tortoiseshell military brushes. Hair oil. A rakish sweep of dark hair over his forehead achieved with a comb.

  “I want a girl just like the girl …”

  Then he gargled thoroughly with Listerine.

  9:25

  Rolly was downstairs. He wanted to take Stanley downtown to a taproom where he knew some girls, so he would forget all about this wedding business. But Stanley wouldn’t let him upstairs. Rolly left.

  10:00 A.M.

  And then Stanley rode to the grocer’s and bought two wooden boxes of big strawberries. He put these in the icebox of their new house. He also put a bottle of champagne on ice.

  The Wedding

  Stanley Marvel: “It was over before I knew what happened. The organist played the Purcell thing, and then next thing I knew I was knocking rice out of my hat. I wanted to walk out with Claire on my arm with a certain … dignity, like I was used to all the fanfare; but I forgot all about it. I may have shuffled out.”

  Rolly: “He shuffled out, the chump.”

  The Recessional

  Leaving the church, Stanley noticed his friend Rolly at the back. He was standing with some colored people. They were dressed flamboyantly. They each had one of the woven straw (rattan?) fans that had been donated to the church by a neighborhood funeral parlor. It was hot. Rolly and the colored people stole the fans.

  Leaving the Church

  Rolly had tied the butter and egg truck to an orange fireplug. When Stanley and Claire pulled away from the church, waving to family and friends, the truck yanked the hydrant out of the pavement like a tooth. Water burst from the stump and fountained into the blue air.

  Several well-wishers were soaked through to the skin. Stanley Marvel’s mother dropped her flowers onto the pavement. They lay there, pink and white carnations, in a puddle.

  Rolly: “I did it because I wanted to marry Claire Moon myself. I’ll breakup this marriage yet.”

  Changing Clothes

  They drove to their new house and parked the butter and egg truck outside. Stanley carried Claire inside and kissed her. They sat in the kitchen, eating strawberries and drinking champagne. Then they went upstairs and changed from their wedding clothes into their traveling clothes.

  “Not yet, Stanley,” said Claire as she went into the bathroom.

  His Poem

  Stanley read Claire a poem through the bathroom door. The poem was called “A Vow,” by Edgar Guest. It goes like this:I might not ever scale the mountain heights

  Where all the great men stand in glory now;

  I may not ever gain the world’s delights

  Or win a wreath of laurel for my brow;

  I may not
gain the victories that men

  Are fighting for, nor do a thing to boast of;

  I may not get a fortune here, but then,

  The little that I have I’ll make the most of.

  Honeymoon

  They stopped at Haddon Hall in Atlantic City. There was a white bar of Clover Leaf soap in the soap dish on the Belgian marble-topped sink. There was a clean water tumbler. There was a small brownish bouquet of roses with a little card: From the Management.

  “How thoughtful!” said Claire.

  She went into the bathroom to change. She wore a robe that reached to the floor. She wore underpants with lace edging for her bridal night. She sat before the mirror and combed her hair one hundred times. Stanley marveled at its length and shininess. He bent and sniffed it.

  “It smells like lilac, your hair does.”

  Claire smiled secretly. Then she unstoppered the bottle of Thelma, “Queen of Perfumes,” her sister had given her for a wedding present. Claire moistened the heel of her hand with Thelma and dabbed the sweet fragrance onto her neck and temples.

  Claire Moon’s Portrait (I)

  She left school after the tenth grade. She worked for a while as a filing clerk in the Contagious Hospital. In those days, there were lepers behind high stone walls. She worked next in a downtown department store as a salesgirl.

  Occasionally, she bought fancy underdrawers. She was a virgin until her wedding night, although she once permitted John Grabowski, an orderly in the Contagious Hospital, to put his hand under her shimmy.

  She wanted several things in life:1. to be married

  2. to have a motorcar

  3. to ride in an airplane

  Stanley Marvel promised her all three.

  The Air Circus

  They went to the Air Circus outside Atlantic City. They drank a mixture of lemonade and beer and ate hot dogs while they looked at the sky. It was a cloudless day. Red, blue, green, and yellow biplanes purred and putted above them. The airplanes banked and turned and dived at the grandstand and buzzed the fairgrounds. Clowns rode on the bottom wings, holding on to the struts.