Heir to the Glimmering World

by Cynthia Ozick

  "Hey, kid," Bertram said.

  "Are you getting back together with Ninel?"

  "God, she's a force!" He moved up a step and down again; he was restless. "Forget pacifism, pacifism's down the drain, and damn it, she means it. There's a civil war brewing over there, and she means it. She's collecting for it. Money. Uniforms. I think even guns." He almost howled. "She wants me to go with her. And then the next thing she tells me, I'm too soft."

  "Maybe she's too hard."

  "Let's walk around," Bertram said.

  We went up a marble flight, turned down a marble corridor, and entered a small overheated room paneled in polished dark wood. In the middle of the floor stood glass-covered cases holding manuscripts. A librarian's table was in a corner, with an empty chair behind it.

  Bertram peered into one of the cases. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning," he said.

  I looked into another. "Robert Browning. Three letters to Elizabeth Barrett."

  "As good a place as any," Bertram said, and from the deep inside pocket of his overcoat took out the envelope from Croft Hall.

  It contained two handwritten letters: one headed by a gilt crest, the other only a folded sheet of lined school paper.

  To Whom It May Concern, the first read. The enclosed was lately discovered in a Fourth Form teacher's desk, one used by Jacob Meadows during the unfortunate period of his employment here, hence it failed to be shipped with other effects some time ago. We desire to withhold nothing, and herewith return it to his survivor or survivors. It was signed by the headmaster.

  "They want to get shut of all of it," Bertram said. "Bits and pieces included."

  I unfolded the second letter and spread it out across Robert Browning.

  Dear Rose, my father began, This is to let you know that the Tricolor's been after me for $750 he claims he lent me. I wouldn't ask that rich bastard for a potato. I won it off him on a bet, I said my class would beat his class. You're my witness that I had all females at the time. He hasn't the foggiest I'm out here, so if he comes looking for me just keep quiet. Say hello to the Cousin. Your Dad.

  That was all there was.

  "Don't cry," Bertram said.

  "He never answered when I wrote him. Not once. And he never mailed this one. It's horrible anyhow."

  Bertram asked, "What's this Tricolor?"

  "A man who taught with him in Thrace. His name was Doherty. My father was pretty sure he was the one who got him fired."

  "Was he?"

  "I don't know and it doesn't matter." I laid my head on the case. "That headmaster. He sent it for spite. Because of that boy."

  Bertram pulled out a handkerchief. I thought he was going to wipe my face with it, but instead he blotted up the tears that had dripped onto Robert Browning's glass. I remembered the tidiness of his kitchen.

  "I shouldn't have brought the damn thing down to you," he said.

  "You wanted to see Ninel."

  "Well, anything that came from Croft Hall—"

  "Like this lovely keepsake, thank you." I was suddenly angry. My chin was streaming; I had my own handkerchief, and dabbed at it. "I'm not sentimental about my father, you know that. You're the one who's sentimental. That's what Ninel said, that it's all slobber."

  "Slobber?" He blinked. The word struck him across the eyes. "She said that?"

  "She said you aren't serious."

  "The last of that insurance money, the furniture, the lease, the devil knows what else. I've been serious enough to let her clean me out. Believe me, I'm cleaned out. And then she tells me I'm soft."

  This made me relent. "I'm glad you're soft. If you weren't soft you wouldn't have let me stay with you."

  A diminutive gray-haired woman materialized out of a door behind the librarian's table and took her place at it with the authority of a potentate.

  "Please don't lean on the cases, it's not allowed," she ordered, and expelled us from her hot realm.

  We lingered before the Lions. The wind invaded the hollows of our coat sleeves. "Are you going back downtown?" I said, shivering.

  "I'd like to take another crack at her. I'm not giving up. There's something in her, even if it's thunder and lightning."

  "She'll never come back to Albany."

  "No."

  "She's going to Spain."

  "Looks like it. Maybe not."

  "Professor Mitwisser just heard from over there. One of his Karaites got mixed up with the Bhagavad-Gita."

  Bertram whistled. "Is that what you're about these days?"

  "I'm not about anything."

  "Poor kid. Listen, don't worry about that scribble from your pa. He's out of everyone's reach."

  I saw he had no curiosity about my life. He cared only for thunder and lightning. We shook hands. Then he put his arms around my waist and kissed me as he had last kissed me in Albany. His mouth was warm, and I imagined he was thinking of Ninel.

  At the Forty-second Street subway station I spotted a trash bin at the end of the platform and tossed in the envelope from Croft Hall. The Number Six local came grinding in, and I returned to the remnant snows of the Bronx.

  31

  AT NINETEEN the Bear Boy fell into the hands of lawyers. It was an ambush he had not foreseen. He had already chopped off his bangs (he did this on the day his father's obituary appeared in the Herald) and attempted a bonfire of the very first blouse his mother had sewn for him, which she had so carefully stored away in tissue paper. He opened a drawer and discovered it, and crushed it, together with the tissue paper, into the largest of his mother's china pots, and threw in a match and watched it ignite. The paper flamed and quickly ebbed, but the cloth only charred and gave off a bad smell.

  Then the lawyers arrived, it seemed in herds, though they were only three: Mr. Brooks, Mr. Winberry, and Mr. Fullerton. He did not understand their language, no matter that they explained and explained; he wondered that they were never exasperated and never lost patience and never accused him of obstinacy. His father would certainly have been exasperated; his father had growled at him for so much as squinting, when he was only trying to see across the room. The lawyers spoke of "trusts," "instruments," "indentures," until he was as immobilized by tedium as when he was obliged to pose for his father, standing stock-still and forbidden to squint. They told him, very respectfully, that he was free to do whatever they in their counsel thought wise, now that he had so much money. It was money they meant, though they never said the word; he was learning how many ways there are to speak of riches, if you happen to be very rich, without once mentioning money, and it came to him one afternoon, when he was caught in the manacles of their language, that it was only his riches (those trusts and instruments and indentures, all the names his money went by) that inspired their forbearance and their deference. Under the caressing weight of so much respectfulness he felt their contempt: how unripe he was, how raw, he was no better than a child, he was that child, the Bear Boy, and look, look at the unreasoning foolishness of that bonfire, childish, gone up in smoke! He had no inkling of the value of his things; he had no inkling of the value of the estate; he had no inkling of the value of Messrs. Brooks, Winberry, and Fullerton.

  In the end he dismissed them with an "arrangement": everything they termed "inventory" would be his to dispose of as he pleased, and the money, under whatever names they gave it, was to be placed in a very large teakettle, which he could pick up and pour out whenever he liked. It wouldn't be a real teakettle, of course; it would be a legal thingamajig, the sort of contraption he declined to understand. He was scornful of contraptions; he feared them. He had lived nineteen years as his father's contraption, and that was enough. But it did not escape him that, whatever shape such a legal kettle might finally take, there would be teacups aplenty for Mr. Brooks, Mr. Winberry, and Mr. Fullerton.

  Very patiently, very respectfully, Mr. Winberry asked him how he would begin.

  "Begin what?" he said.

  "Your new life," Mr. Brooks said.

  "Your independence," M
r. Fullerton said.

  "Oh, I know what I want. I've always wanted one of those, the kind with pockets all over, only my father would never let me have one, because he said it would spoil my..." He tried to remember what his father said it would spoil: something to do with his back, the fall of his blouse over his back. "I think it was my posture," he said.

  He let the lawyers sell the house that the Bear Boy had grown up in and made famous, and went out and bought a knapsack and a steamship ticket, and sailed for Cairo.

  32

  JAMES HAD COME to believe that my foremost obligation in that household was to control the madwoman; all the rest—my service to Professor Mitwisser—was pretext. He concluded this partly from observation, but mostly, I surmised, because Anneliese had told him so. She may have suspected it; it may even have been true. James blamed me for Mrs. Mitwisser's confidences. He saw them as conspiracies. He blamed me especially for the little paper packet in Mrs. Mitwisser's shoe.

  "You put her up to it," James said, "that trashy stunt."

  "She told me she found it under your pillow."

  "It's all stupidity. She cut a piece of her own damn hair—"

  He had pulled me aside; in that narrow house it was a feat to talk without witnesses. But it was morning; the snow had receded, the boys were back at school, and Mitwisser, already closeted in his study, had not yet summoned me. On the third floor Mrs. Mitwisser and Anneliese were bathing Waltraut. I could hear splashing and angry cries. Waltraut disliked baths; she fought them.

  "She wants you out," I acknowledged.

  "Well, Rudi doesn't. He handed me that stupidity and laughed."

  "You always make him laugh."

  "He laughs when he's embarrassed."

  "In that case," I said, "you must embarrass him a whole lot."

  "That clinches it. You're aiding and abetting—"

  "Mrs. Mitwisser follows her instincts. I told you she has a mind of her own."

  "A mind that's shot. He laughed when she cut up my pillow, what else could he do? And that bit of hair ... what else could he do? The kids like me, I like the kids—"

  I thought of Bertram's kiss. "Anneliese's not a kid," I said.

  "You ought to just do what you're asked to do and keep your nose out of things. And remind the Frau Doktor that without James they'd all be out in the street."

  "She knows that. She scratches at it all the time."

  "I could have you out in the street too," he said, "in half a minute."

  "No you couldn't. Professor Mitwisser wouldn't let you, he needs me."

  "You? There's a joke. It's me he needs."

  I could not dispute this: he was paying for the running of Mitwisser's household; for the running of Mitwisser's brain. He had paid for the retrieval of that fragment of al-Kirkisani. He was paying for everything. He was paying for me.

  "You've made me rich," I said.

  "Eighteen a week's not bad for nowadays."

  "I mean when you gambled with my father."

  "That was upstate and a while ago. Anyhow it was his dice."

  "You let him win, isn't that what you said?"

  In James's look a small distracted smile flickered. I believed it was satisfaction. He had run into a fellow who was no one in particular, who supposed he was no one in particular, and in no time at all had rid himself of a thing that had once belonged to the Bear Boy: he had foisted it on some ne'er-do-well who would put his hopes in it.

  "Could be he figured I'd burgled it. Bum dice maybe, not that I cared. I told him hold on to the thing, all those crazy collectors, they're bound to cough up a pretty bundle."

  I imagined my father waiting, year after year, for someone suitable to sell the Bear Boy to. In Thrace? In Troy? The boys of Croft Hall? My poor wayward father, compelled to embrace a treasure—a treasure taken on faith—until the day of his death: what did he know of collectors? Where would he find one?

  "And I'll be damned, the damn thing pops up again down here. Like some goddamn voodoo you can't shake off. Listen," he said roughly, "just keep that thing out of my sight."

  I saw that he had chosen me for an enemy. And in the way one puts a question to an enemy I asked, "Why did you stop Anneliese's lessons?"

  "What?"

  "You got in the way of them. Before you came she was in there every night with her father."

  "That's just the point. Rudi keeps her shut up. She ought to see more of the world."

  "She's seen a lot of it," I said.

  "The old one. I'm talking about the new one."

  "Professor Mitwisser lives for what's old. It's all he thinks about."

  A grin. "He thinks about me."

  "Because of the money."

  "He likes the money, sure, I don't deny that—" He stopped and looked around, like a man suspecting spies. But there was only the watery clamor upstairs. "It's not old that counts for Rudi, it's throwing things over. He's got appetite, he's out to upset the apple cart. He works at it."

  "You don't know anything about his work."

  He took off his glasses, blew a speck off one of the lenses, and restored them. "I hear things, I pick things up. I tutored his boys, didn't I? Even Annie, for a while. Rudi knows I do him good."

  From the top of the stairs came a slippery padding noise: Waltraut, naked and shining, escaped from the bath, a fugitive river-nymph spilling downward.

  "Here's old Wally!" James said, and caught up the gleaming little body.

  "I'm a mouse!" the child cried.

  "A very wet mouse. And I'm the cat that's got you!"

  To me James said, "Tell the Frau Doktor I'm here to stay until I decide to go."

  33

  ON CERTAIN DAYS —there was no pattern to them—James and Anneliese left the house together and did not return until evening. Mrs. Mitwisser had become resigned: she no longer hoped that James would vanish on one of these outings. If James should vanish, so might Anneliese, and then what? Her husband had dismissed the curl of hair—if it was a stratagem it meant nothing to him, and if it was not a stratagem it also meant nothing. It was no more than commotion. He resented and despised commotion. Since his wife had come back to his bed commotion had increased. His children were safe, there was no one to harm them, why all this commotion? She was in his bed; that was commotion enough. No conjugal heat warmed that bed. I knew this—wasn't I witness to Mitwisser's true coupling? His ardor was for the fever fuming out of the fragment that had been sent from Spain, those two thin sheets, purchased (by now this was hardly a mystery) with James's money. But the miraculous fragment was only a copy. He lusted after the original, a scribe's hand on rolled and pitted parchment; it was plain that the archive's new director was susceptible. A large enough offer—a superior bribe—might secure it, supposing James was generous, and when was James not generous? All that was needed for James to be generous, Mrs. Mitwisser confided, was for Mitwisser to cosset him, to work up that awful mirthful howling; to laugh and laugh and laugh. Thank God she had at least put an end to the laughter. And what did the terrible laughter signify? Ah, the fireflies. This James and her husband, they adore the fireflies, the fireflies blind them, her husband is blinded by this James!

  No bribe, not all the money in the world, could now loosen the rough thing Professor Mitwisser had felt with his fingers in that filthy slot the old Moroccan had overlooked. And who, after all, will credit a fresh copy, so patently subject to fraud, who will dare to put his trust in it? Nevertheless here it was: the worldly al-Kirkisani, author of "A Survey of Jewish Sects," scornful of the Mishawites yet entranced by Hindu thought! No one had ever dreamed it. Erudition was against such a finding; intuition was against it. But Spain was in turmoil, and when Mitwisser inquired again, this time by telegram, the director replied that he was fortunate to be alive. The archive had been burned to the ground. The director was a Falangist; the arsonists, he said, were a criminal gang of Loyalists. The copy was all there was. Mitwisser's grand discovery—if anyone cared!—was doomed. They would say
he had invented it; they would call him a forger. They were ready to accuse him of anything. Still, his children were safe, his Anneliese, his boys, his beloved tall Heinz, who was so ingenious with his hands.

  Mrs. Mitwisser said, "Erwin Schrödinger, he also was tall. Tall like my husband."

  And she said, "This James, he takes away my daughter."

  "He always brings her back," I said.

  "One day he will perhaps not."

  She opened her narrow nostrils. She was afraid for Anneliese. She feared the illicit, she smelled the illicit. My husband, she said, he cannot so much as wind his watch to set the time, he is clumsy at such things, his big fingers, how clumsy and thick they are—so gross und dick!—whereas Heinz ... dieser verdammte Mann und seine verdammten Geschenke, er gibt, er gibt! The boy Heinz, twice he pulls to pieces the funny clock James gives to him, and twice he fits the pieces together again. .. .

  Her nostrils opened, she was exerting tiny rapid sniffs. Did she want me to think that Heinz was not her husband's child? She had shown her husband the curl of hair; he had turned away. And when, after childbirth, she had shown him Heinz, did he turn away? The curl of hair was her own; Heinz was her husband's own son. So I believed. But she was a purveyor of hypothesis, of possibility. She was a theorist. She had made me suspect Heinz. I often stared at him. He had the long bones of the other boys, and eyes as brown as theirs.

  The weather was milder now, and still the Library did not draw Mitwisser into the city. Under that gilt ceiling he had hidden his futility; or else the Library had itself withered to futility. His intellect—his desire—was a greater repository than any other; was there any archive extant in the world that knew of a Karaite link to India? Not New York, not Cairo, not Istanbul! Only he possessed this potent, this seductive, fragment—or if, elsewhere, someone had got hold of the rest of it, what difference, how could it matter? What greater master of Karaism was there? Al-Kirkisani had condemned the rival Mishawites: There is not a single man skilled in knowledge and speculation among them, al-Kirkisani wrote (and I had transcribed). And wasn't this precisely Professor Mitwisser's opinion of those other scholars of Karaism—if in fact there were any worthy of his esteem remaining in our century?