"I have no wife, my wife is mad!"
His wife saw everything. He saw nothing.
41
WILLI BROUGHT ME two letters. He looked disappointed: the post had come, and there were no packages. James's gifts, his surprises, had begun to diminish. Of late there was nothing. But the house was already mobbed by toys and games and boxes of various shapes, some of them barely opened and pushed aside. A corner of the kitchen was blocked by a pyramid of these acquisitions. It seemed to me that the postman's ring, and the shrieks and excited unwrappings that followed, aroused rather than sated the household greed. Only Waltraut was content with her dolls in their coats of many colors. Or at least she did not hope for more.
Willi said, "Somebody wants to marry you."
He was panting a little. He had run up the stairs. His comely head, an unripe version of Anneliese's, was all abandoned hair. It stood over his eyes like a lattice covering darkness; for weeks Anneliese had neglected to trim it.
"It says so in here," he said.
"Is that letter for you?"
"It's for you," he admitted.
"Then why did you read it?"
"The envelope was open. It fell out."
I examined the envelope. The flap was partly unglued. But the rest of it had been torn free.
"It's wrong to read other people's letters. It's wrong to go through other people's things," I said.
"If you get married papa will have to find someone else to take care of mama, and what about Waltraut? Anneliese isn't back, and papa—papa—" It was difficult to tell about papa.
I saw he was afraid. We were sinking still more deeply into wilderness—the boys at war, underwear unwashed, pots boiling over, Mitwisser pacing behind a shut door, his wife finicky in her bed, Waltraut unbathed and growing dispirited. At times she fell into inconsolable howls. If I made order in one part, decay was already seeping into another part. I, the stranger, was all that kept us from the last stages of anarchy—I had become a hidden engine of survival. No one took any notice of this. In that family, Willi alone—this thievish child—showed any curiosity about who, or what, I might be.
"I'm not marrying anybody," I told him.
I recognized the handwriting instantly. But I was cold to it. A letter from Bertram no longer had the power to stir me. He had sent Ninel to take away what had been meant for me. Even his kiss was not meant for me. He was hardly a cousin anyhow.
In the Mitwisser fiefdom a letter was nevertheless an event. Besides being deprived of a radio (the unearthly grumbles in Heinz's earphones didn't count), the house had no telephone. In 1935 almost every American family owned a radio, but a telephone at home was still not a widespread convenience. It was odd that such a thing was not among James's household surprises—had Mitwisser, condemning intrusion, prohibited it? Or had James himself inscrutably withheld it? We ate and slept on an island; we were marooned. The boys were a nation unto themselves. They squabbled and fought, but their loyalty was inward, despite their lives at school. No chum or classmate ever crossed our threshold. The disruptive world had no access to us, except by letter. And letters were rare enough: the cataclysmic revelation from Spain; now and then, in reply to Mitwisser's inquiries (I had typed a handful of these), a contentious Karaite trickle from here or there. Anneliese and Mrs. Mitwisser received nothing. And I—well, here again was Bertram. But I was apprehensive: why was he writing this time? Was it another needling from Croft Hall, was it some further remnant of my father's ignominy?
I took up the envelope Willi had invaded (let Bertram wait, I thought), and drew out a letterhead embossed with a picture of a spool of green thread. The thread wound outward in a long coil; at its end appeared the head of a snake, and out of the snake's mouth these words:
Gopal V.Tandoori, M.A., Ph.D.
Avatar of the Serpent's Philosophy
Fine Custom Tailoring
118 Gravesend Neck Road
Gravesend, Brooklyn, New York
My dear Miss [I read], my dear Amanuensis!
I beg your patience with this missive. Shortly I shall explain. May I hope that Mrs. Professor Rudolf Mitwisser has recovered well from her unhappy injury? And that you yourself continue in good health?
You should know that I have published numerous articles in the International Journal of Historical Metaphysics, situated in New Delhi. I was formerly a consultant to this distinguished periodical, but since my removal to these shores, alas no more. Fortunately, however, copies are stored in the Public Library, through which circumstance Professor Rudolf Mitwisser, disengaging my person from its wonted obscurity, discovered them. Following which, his communication journeyed around the great world! From New York to New Delhi to Bombay and ultimately, may I say happily, to Brooklyn!
Hence my acquaintance with this delightful gentleman, made still more gratifying by the presence of his charming Amanuensis!
During the period of my most pleasing visit, she (my portrait, please note, courteously eschews the second person) remains silent. Nevertheless I observe that she observes. I myself am crucially observant. I observe this silent yet very intelligent young lady. Her eyes are small but respectful. Her upper lip is short, a style most admirable also in our Indian young ladies. Her silence augurs modesty. She neglects easy mirth, displaying a most becoming gravity of disposition. She listens with understanding. She is ripe in perception, yet appears to be robed in melancholy.
Not all freedom is desirable (you may recall that I touched on the subject of freedom). Not all rule is undesirable. One can be ruled by the eye—unexpectedly! One can be ruled by the heart—unexpectedly! It is not always possible to deny the immaterial inward coursings of one's material nature. Hence you deserve to be informed that my wife (who is no more my wife) became thus through family arrangement, according to custom, neither through eye nor heart.
Allow me to clarify. Diligence in my shop, combined with indefatigable hours, has made me not precisely prosperous; but I may say that I want for nothing. It is my plan to curtail my night labors in order to pursue further work on a study already well launched. Indeed, it was begun some years ago, and I am only now inspired (dare I confess?) to bring it to fruition. It extends, until this moment, to one hundred and five leafs, all in the hand you see before you!
In short, my dear Amanuensis, I too am in need of an Amanuensis!
I invite you to my comfortable home.
My flat, on the first floor (in the American count, the second) of a five-story brown-brick building, tidily maintained, contains two rear rooms, a capacious parlor, a well-appointed cookery, and a w.c. (with bath).
Remuneration shall be equal to the remuneration you now obtain from Professor Rudolf Mitwisser, and if a time should come when remuneration is no longer pertinent—when remuneration is superfluous—a time when you are ready to receive the admiration of my eye and the devotion of my heart—then—then (dare I utter it?)—I hope you will accept to be my wife.
You may wish to learn the subject of my study. I have entitled it "Contra the Gods." Note that it is my intention, should you look upon me with favor, to acquire an Underwood. Note also that my tyre has been repaired.
I appeal to you to pardon my forwardness. I reflect on your small lips with rapture!!
Sincerely yours,
Gopal V. Tandoori
What could Willi have made of this?
Like a sharp-eyed bird seizing on a single grain in an expanse of gravel, he had plucked up "wife."
Bertram's letter:
Hi there, Rosie kid!
This is my last night at the Capolinos'. As of tomorrow I'm out. They say they need this place for a newly married niece, but the truth is lately I've been slow with the rent. I don't think this niece actually exists (not that there aren't plenty of nieces! but they all seem to be grandmothers), it's only something Mrs. Capolino says. She doesn't like to hurt my feelings. Up here it's a tight enough squeeze for one, never mind a pair of newlyweds. Ninel said it felt like spending the night i
n a coffee pot. Anyhow I'm headed out for unknown vistas.
Now for the good (ha ha!) news. Got a pink slip from the Administrator. Out with the strikers one time too many, disrupting hospital routine, calls me an agitator. Your own Cousin Bertram, an agitator! I did appeal to some of the bigwig Trustees, but it didn't do any good, and I'm out of a job. Unfair in a way, because it's been a while since last time. I'm not with that crowd nowadays—nobody around to inspire me. So that's how it is, kid. Hard times.
But I hear you're all right. Ninel figures they've got you as some sort of secretary, she saw a typewriter set up with Herr Katzenjammer in charge. A bunch of refugees, a whole howling herd, she said, but you're in tight with them, you're all right, at least you're not strapped for cash. I'm glad you didn't mind helping her out—Ninel told me you didn't mind at all. She's gone off with her crowd, she's over there now, something to do with ambulances, but I'm pretty sure it's guns.
That's about it. I have to get back on my feet somehow, I've pounded enough powders and filled enough capsules for one lifetime. Got any ideas?
Mrs. Capolino says the geraniums are mine to keep—a goodbye present.
Take care of yourself, kid.
Bertram
In the dimness of the hallway mirror I studied my face. Was my upper lip very short? Was my mouth very small? I could not decide. But it was as plain as could be that the amanuensis in the looking glass was robed in melancholy.
By now a whole week had passed since Anneliese and James had left the house.
42
UPSTATE SUITED HIM: upstate, half decayed, with its dilapidated farms, barns and silos rotting, and in the towns tired frame houses with warped porches pleading for paint, town after town sluggish in the dazing summer glare, the business district—three streets lined with sickly stores darkened by canvas awnings—surrendered to exhaustion. He thought of trampled and abandoned anthills—it was a picture that kept recurring. Months ago, in Clarksville, hadn't he ragged those fussing old ladies with talk of anthills? And that sly fellow in Thrace, an insect of a man, with the bulging eyes of a praying mantis, a fool who didn't have an inkling of the Bear Boy's worth. Drenched in money. Good! The Bear Boy hidden away, buried, maybe trashed. Thrace behind him, Clarksville behind him, all those hiding places—he had hidden himself, he had buried himself through a winter and a spring, and had done it without the kif (the kif was long ago), though with a bit of help from the bottle. Mostly he slept the days away, but now and then he cleaned up and took the bus to Albany. Albany had more of what a man's nature needs: certain small hotels with bad reputations.
At noon on a warm June day he woke up in one of these, groggy and vacant-eyed. The woman had been gone for hours, and the room smelled of what the two of them had been drinking. He had no bill to pay (you had to pay in advance), and walked out into unfamiliar streets. Walking seemed to mend him—his legs, anyhow; the torpor, the masculine self-incrimination that follows hurried sex, drained out of his calves and thighs and knees, and he discovered, almost without noticing it at first, that he was running. The more he ran, the more he felt anointed, partly by the sunlight, partly by sweat. The liquor flew off him like pasted-on feathers whooshed away by the wind he was raising in the pure speed of the run. Whatever last night had left him with—a mood, a sensation, a dread, but not unhappiness, because unhappiness was his habitat, he lived inside it, it was no different from having eyes to see out of—his muscles on the move could evaporate. He ran! The neighborhoods were altering now, turning from seedy to creditable. He hurtled past the white columns of a white building, a square lawn before it, a black fence with iron staves: it was a college of some kind. He slowed and went back to look: a Quaker college. And then ran on.
Three days later he came to Albany, if not to stay really, then to stay for a while. He was led there by surprise. Albany had surprised him. It had flattered him: it restored his esteem for his body; it was an antidote to lassitude. It had thrust on him fifteen minutes of exhilaration. A block from the Quaker college he found a modest little hotel—its reputation was pristine, though here too you paid in advance, a month at a time. The sun was hot on the windowsills, and put him in mind of Algiers. Not since the dandyism of Algiers had he risen to the status of a wide bed in a hotel, where the sheets were changed daily, and a maid piled up fresh towels. Except for this—the plain fact that a hotel was not a rooming house—the William Penn had nothing in common with the Promenade. He learned quickly enough that a lady of the night would not be welcome here, and neither was the smell of a bottle. The communal breakfast parlor was austerely furnished: three long tables and a sideboard whereon baskets of brown bread and thick china bowls were set up in a row. Simple furnishings, simple food: the William Penn was an annex of the Hudson Valley Friends College down the street.
In the mornings the early sun, piercing through curtainless panes, woke him. He passed through the breakfast parlor, seized a bun, and was on his way. Running! It was the thrilling heat that propelled him, summer at the boil, steaming off his skin; or else it was those curious worn-out neighborhoods veiled by ancient unknown histories, or the strangely cold runnels of sweat dribbling down his shins. He was a flying bath, he was a fish hugging the tide, he was a wave! Intoxicated by weightlessness, a hundred times lighter than before. It took him back to the night he'd gotten free of the Bear Boy, on an impulse palmed it off on a nobody in nowheresville. An old, old scheme of his, brought off in an instant. Unless, well, loaded dice; then who'd conned whom? Anyhow the fellow had no idea.
There was a public toilet in a bend in the lobby just outside the breakfast parlor. He washed up—a radiant odor, just short of a stink, fumed out of the damp small of his back and his armpits—and went to reconnoiter one of the long tables. An attendant had begun to clear off the sideboard. He was late, it was half past ten, the hours allotted for breakfast were ending. As he made his way to the coffee urn, the last guests were leaving. A pair of (he guessed) businessmen carrying leather briefcases. A white-haired, hump-backed woman with a pince-nez and a cane. A swarm of children—too many children all in a cluster, and all boys. No, there was a girl among them, taller than the rest. It annoyed him that the food was being carted off; everything in this orderly hotel was precise. Yet the brown liquid in his cup was nasty: the very bottom of the pot, bitter and gritty with grounds. He determined to start his run earlier. It had become the center of his concentration—because it relieved him of concentration. It was its own relief.
At eight o'clock the next day the breakfast parlor was bustling but hushed (everything here was hushed, earnest, churchlike). The coffee was fresh, the buns warm. Traces of cinnamon hung in the air. He came in gleaming, as if soaked from head to toe in olive oil. His face was pink, and he felt he was panting like the little dog who had galloped after him, a little nervous thing yipping at his heels, though only as far as the curb, where it halted with a kind of Quaker decorum. Decorum ruled the breakfast parlor, so at the sideboard he stepped back to allow a small dark bundle of a woman to ladle a spoonful of blueberries into a dish; but her hands shook, the dish shook, and the berries scattered. At once a man—very tall, and somehow grim—hurried over and drew her toward one of the long tables on the far side of the room. The mob of children he had noticed the day before were seated there: a family mob, though quiet, even the baby, not what you'd expect of kids. The girl got up (there was only the one girl, unless the baby was female—from this distance he couldn't tell), approached the sideboard, and filled another dish with berries. But when she returned to the family table, the father had risen (he supposed it was the father), and was persuading the mother (he supposed it was the mother) to go with him. He gathered this from the father's expression, troubled and imploring, but mainly because the father had grasped the mother by the arm, attempting to pull her up. The woman only peered down at the berries the girl had placed before her. Then she dug her knuckles into them and ground them round and round in the dish. The girl began to cry. The other children
stared and said nothing. But the woman spoke, and the man spoke, and the woman spoke more loudly, and the man appealed to her with an impatient sound, and finally the man took the woman by the shoulders and maneuvered her out the door.
They were foreigners. Their speech was indistinct: Swedish or Norwegian or such. He would be interested if they were Swedish. They didn't look like Swedes: all the children were dark, and the mother could almost pass for a Jew—but what would Jews be doing here? He saw that the children were growing agitated, though their voices were still low. German. It was German he was hearing, and Germanic wails out of the baby, who wasn't actually a baby: it scampered away from the others. A tiny girl, panicking. The older girl snatched the child up and led them all away. They were dressed oddly, the boys in short pants and high socks, the tall girl womanlike, dark hair wound in braids over her ears. Jewels in the lobes: this shocked him, it was so foreign.
The next morning it rained. He lay back in his nice laundry-smelling bed, with its pair of thick soft pillows, and watched the rivulets collide on the panes, two or three wayward tributaries coalescing in one decisive stream. The sky was flat and chalky-gray, bitten into by zigzag lightnings, like a sudden showing of teeth. And then the guttural tardy thunder, miles away. It threw him into a doze. When he woke again, the velvety drumbeats of thunder were even fainter, but the rain was insistent, flowing in opaque sheets against the windows.
He was curious to see them again, the woman who had resisted the man, and the man especially—that huge Teuton. There was something not right about the woman. There was something not right about the whole crew. A hauntedness, a precariousness. He knew how to recognize precariousness. The girl when she picked up the small child. Ancient eyes in a young face. But the breakfast parlor was deserted. The food had already been removed, the coffee was dregs, he had slept away the time.
Heir to the Glimmering World Page 20
