Elena

by Thomas H. Cook

  There was a smattering of subdued laughter, and Elena waited for it to subside. Then she continued.

  “This distrust of human nature was as deep as Mary’s cynicism ever went, but it was deep enough to hold her in its grasp. It drove her into a life that could only look apathetic to those who viewed it from a distance. She married, as she always said, ‘quite often and quite well’; and to her oldest friends, this seemed emblematic of a larger self-indulgence. But there must be a place in the world for the unbeliever who cannot hide his unbelief or act against it, for the one who loves nature but cannot be a pantheist, who dreams of human community but cannot be a Communist, stands in awe of creation, but cannot leap from bafflement to God. Mary was one of these, and she paid the price of all those like her. She never knew the glory of fighting for a great idea, nor the pain of abandoning it. Such is the penalty of disengagement, and none greater should be asked of anyone.”

  Elena glanced about the chapel, then drew her hands from the pockets of her coat and grasped the sides of the lectern. “The essential quality of goodness,” she said, leaning forward, “is its sense of preservation. Because of that, it must have already seemed an ancient value to the first human being who consciously possessed it. It seems to me that we must judge a life not by what it spent but by what it saved. This is no easy task. It is our duty to know as much as we can of what the mind and heart can teach us. To accomplish this, of course, we have only those powers of thought and feeling which have been given us imperfectly and which remain, as Mary surely knew, at once both crippled and supreme. I will leave the question of the goodness of Mary’s life to you, and I think that you could not more honor her — and certainly not more please her — than by attempting quite seriously to answer it.”

  She nodded slightly to the crowd as she stepped down. Then she returned to her seat and sat silently beside me while the final stages of the funeral were concluded. And I suppose I should have known then what I only learned years later, as I sat in the darkness with Quality on my lap and the memory of Elena’s remarks at Mary’s funeral in my mind. I should have known that for all her outward calm as she sat beside me, her features almost melding with the frozen beauty of the New England countryside that surrounded her, I should have known that her mind was on the road again, that it had turned onto another path, one which had led her to the most difficult of our questions, the one least accessible to our methods of approach: How can our knowledge make us good? In its own way, this was the only question my sister had ever asked, and now she was asking it again, not by going forward, but by returning, first, as a human being, to the rudiments of life, and then, as a writer, to the simplest of all tasks.

  TO DEFINE A WORD

  I did not see Elena for almost a month after Mary’s funeral. Nor did I call her or make any attempt whatsoever to contact her. If I had learned anything at all about my sister, it was that she sometimes needed to be alone. All my life, it seemed to me, I had offered unnecessary aid. There would be no more of it.

  Still, I remained keenly interested in her next step. I knew there would be one, but I had no idea what it might be.

  Then one afternoon when I met Sam for a drink after my classes at Columbia, a little light broke on the matter.

  “By the way, William,” Sam said, “I got a call from Elena yesterday.”

  “Really?”

  “Have you talked to her since we got back from Maine?”

  “No.”

  Sam looked at me suspiciously. “You two didn’t have some kind of argument, did you?”

  I laughed. “Not at our age, Sam. What did she want?”

  “She was asking about that house of mine on the Cape,” Sam said. “She said she might want to buy it.” He took a sip from his drink. “Sort of surprised me, since she hasn’t been up there all that much since she broke off with Jason.”

  “Do you want to sell it?”

  “I told her I’d just let her have it for the summer, if that’s what she wanted, a brief vacation out of the city.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said no, that she wanted something, you know, permanent.”

  “You mean, leave New York?” I asked. I shook my head. “She’d never do that.”

  Sam smiled that old sly smile of his. “Why not, William, you are.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That Harvard offer. You’ll take it.”

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “I have my sources,” Sam said. He gave me a cunning wink. “You’ll take it, William. I know you will. Because you can’t turn it down. Not Harvard. Teaching there will finally legitimate your career, all your work.”

  I waved my hand dismissively. “Ridiculous.”

  Sam watched me knowingly. “You’re still basically a little boy from Connecticut with a traveling salesman for a father and no prospects of your own,” he said. In the twilight years you need a little affirmation. Harvard will give you that. It’s bullshit, but it’s gold plated.”

  “Maybe it’s not that at all, Sam,” I said, weakly defending myself. “Maybe I just need a change.”

  Sam took another sip from his drink. “I need a change myself,” he said. “I’m seventy-two, William, but I can still get it up.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I still have some life, but I’m tired of Parnassus. I’m going to turn it over to Christina.” He scratched his chin. “I’m going to grow a beard, a big white one, just like Santa Claus, and then I’m going to give some things away. Like that little house of mine on Cape Cod.”

  “She would never take it,” I told him.

  “Not free, she wouldn’t,” Sam said. “But — how shall I put it — she’ll get a bargain, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “You know why I’m doing this?” Sam asked. “Because you’re going to Cambridge, and I will not have Elena living alone.”

  “Maybe that’s what she wants.”

  “It’s just a two-hour drive from Boston to Cape Cod,” Sam said. “I’m sure you’ll make it often, am I right?”

  “I smiled. ‘I’ll try.”

  He slapped the table with his great open hand. “Good.”

  “It’s funny, Sam,” I told him, “I never figured you for early retirement, and certainly not for divestiture.”

  “I’m going to Israel,” Sam said. “I’m going to plant a tree and give away some money and live on a kibbutz and tend the children while their parents farm.”

  “You’re not serious,” I blurted. “For God’s sake, you’re a native New Yorker. What the hell are you going to do in a desert village?”

  “They ship in movies,” Sam said.

  “Do they ship in nightclubs?”

  Sam leaned toward me. “You’ve always thought me a vulgarian, William. And you’re probably right, at least in some ways. But there’s another side to every coin. I’m going to Israel — that’s a fact. And you’re going to Cambridge and Elena is going to Cape Cod.”

  He left for Israel three months later. A huge party was thrown for him at Parnassus, during which he formally turned over control of the house to his daughter.

  “I think Christina may not put up with some of the old guard,” I said to Elena as we stood together in the crowd.

  Elena looked up at me. “I will miss Sam.” She smiled slightly. “And I will miss you, William.”

  I had already accepted the post at Harvard and taken a small apartment on the Charles. Sam had been right about me, but he had been wrong about Elena. She had decided not to move to Cape Cod.

  “Well,” I said, “I have another full week before I move. We should paint the town.”

  Elena surprised me by liking the idea of a farewell celebration. “It could just be the remnants, William, just you and me and Sam,” she said.

  A week later we all met outside Parnassus. Sam was dressed to kill in a black tuxedo. I wore my standard dark gray suit, and Elena wore a long dark dress and black cape. S
he spun around for us, there on the street, the hem of her cape lifting to the air.

  We began with dinner at Le Pavillon, an extravagance I had not expected, even from Sam. Then there was a round of dancing at the Waldorf, and I remember that Elena seemed almost girlish, the way she dipped and whirled in Sam’s arms. We ended the evening with drinks in the Palm Court at the Plaza, while the pianist played the full list of songs that Sam had previously selected. By midnight we were exhausted as we struggled down an all-but-deserted Fifth Avenue. Sam had loosened his necktie, and its separate strands blew gently in the chill night breeze. Elena had slung her cape over her shoulder and was holding it with the peg of a single finger.

  “What I can’t get over,” Sam said, stopping to gaze down the wide, empty boulevard, “is how quiet New York can get on a night like this.” He looked at Elena. “It’s the world’s largest ghost town.”

  “You’ll miss it,” Elena said.

  Sam smiled and draped one enormous arm over her shoulder. “Barney said something a little disturbing to me, Elena.”

  “What was that?”

  “He said you weren’t working on anything.”

  Elena smiled. “Well, that’s Christina’s worry now.”

  “I’m not talking about making more money off you, my dear,” Sam said, “I’ve made enough.” He looked at her very intently. “I’m talking about your health, Elena, your mental health.”

  Elena’s face suddenly darkened. “Let’s not spoil the night, Sam.”

  “I leave tomorrow,” Sam said. “Do you think I should leave without saying a few important words to a friend?”

  “I’m fine,” Elena assured him. She looked at me, as if for aid.

  I stepped forward. “Come on, Sam, let’s not get maudlin.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “Maudlin? I’m talking about Elena’s life.” He squeezed her shoulder. “You don’t travel in a very big circle, Elena. Who do you have in the world? Just me and William. Now I’m going to Israel and William’s off to Cambridge. Where does that leave you?”

  “Please, Sam, I’d really like for you to stop now,” Elena said firmly.

  Sam straightened himself, then pulled an envelope from his coat pocket. “This is a contract, all made out,” he said. He handed it to Elena. “It just needs your signature.”

  Elena glanced at the envelope but said nothing.

  “It gives you that house of mine on Cape Cod,” Sam said, “the one you asked me about. It gives you that, Elena, in exchange for the right to publish your next book. Any book. I don’t care what.”

  Elena smiled softly. “There may not be a next book, Sam.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, I may be dead, shot by some goddamn terrorist, by the time you find that out.”

  Elena shook her head and held out the envelope. “No thanks.”

  Sam did not take the envelope from her hand. ‘There is a custom among the Jews, Elena, called the Year of Jubilee. During that time, all debts are forgiven.” He placed his hand softly on the side of my sister’s face. “I owe you a great deal. You helped to make Parnassus.” He smiled. “But you also owe me, because Parnassus helped to make you.” He nodded toward the envelope which Elena continued to hold out toward him. “You sign that contract, and we’ll call it even.” He drew Elena into his arms. His eyes were glistening. “Tonight is our Year of Jubilee, Elena,” he said. “I want to leave with all my debts paid.”

  Sam Waterman was dead by the time To Define a Word was published, but in at least one passage within that book, he lives. “Perhaps I could have had a perfect friend,” Manfred Owen says of the painter Kramer, “someone the crooked had by force or guile made straight, someone made good by unquestioned zealotries — a voice lost in anthems, a hand lost in salutes; but I had this floating You, Kramer, a beam more strong because composed of scattered light.”

  Elena signed the contract then and there, with a pen I handed to her. She used Sam’s back for a table, and she kissed him when she was through.

  We took him to the airport a week later. He was in a jovial mood. He talked about how he was looking forward to the life he imagined lay ahead. He seemed oblivious to what it implied — the boredom and routine, the heat and dust, the petty squabbling of the kibbutz council — everything so trivial, it would seem, compared to the enterprises in which he had been so long engaged. I laughed and quoted Byron as the plane taxied away: “Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”

  Elena turned toward me. “You have grown cynical, William.”

  “Mark my words, Elena, Sam will be back in New York within a year.”

  She nodded. “Maybe.”

  “Where else can he get really first-rate Châteaubriand?”

  Elena laughed and took my arm. “When are you leaving for Cambridge?”

  “First of the month,” I said. “Care to come along?”

  “No.”

  “May I leave you with a little advice then?” I asked, keeping the lightness in my voice.

  “Please do.”

  “Find something to work on. Start a new book, a new short story. Start a new essay. Start something, anything.”

  She looked at me and smiled. “Is speed everything, William?”

  “Elena, at our age, to hesitate is to die.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s true. At our age, or any other.”

  “You haven’t written a word that I know of since you finished Quality,” I said.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “May I ask, as a brother, why that is?”

  “Because I haven’t found anything I particularly want to write.”

  “Are you looking?”

  “Yes, I am,” Elena said. “But not quickly. Not anymore.” It was clear that she did not intend now or ever again to be rushed ahead. Not by me; not by anyone. Later, she would make this explicit in chosing a line from Chaucer as the epigraph for To Define a Word: “He hasteth well that wisely can abide.”

  It was in the dead of winter when Martha came to Cape Cod for her last interview with me. I picked her up at the airport in Hyannis, then drove her back to Elena’s house in Brewster, the house I owned now, since she had left it to me.

  Martha was bundled up in a host of coats and scarves and sweaters. She had flown in from California, and the East Coast seemed all the colder to her. “How do you stand this weather?” she asked as soon as I came through the doors of the terminal. She was bobbing on her feet and slapping at her shoulders with her gloved hands. “The cold and the isolation,” she went on. “Did Elena really want this?”

  I nodded. “In her last years, I think she did.”

  Martha quickly grabbed her two bags. “Well, let’s go.”

  There was a thick fog that day, gray and persistent, the sort that, after a time, makes you feel that the earth you stand on has somehow been torn out of the planet and that you are now suspended eternally in a ball of clouds.

  Martha peered out the window as we drove slowly down Route 6A. “I’ve run into a blind spot,” she said.

  “What kind?”

  “Eight years in Elena’s life. The time between when you left for Cambridge and she spent her first winter up here.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean.”

  Martha turned toward me. “She didn’t decide to live on the Cape year round until she … she … how should I put it?”

  “Until she began to die.”

  Martha nodded delicately. “That winter she spent here — that would have been the winter of 1975 — that’s when she began To Define a Word, right?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, I’ve found out a lot about that time,” Martha said, “but the eight years immediately before it, they elude me, William.” She looked worried. “I really hope you can help me. After all, we’re approaching the finish line now, aren’t we?”

  It did not seem the most felicitous of terms, finish line, but I suppose it had to do. “If you’re looking for tragedy in the
end, Martha,” I said, “disillusionment and hopelessness and all that sort of thing, then I’m afraid you’ve studied the wrong life.”

  Martha shook her head. “I’m not looking for anything except the truth.”

  We rode on silently for quite some time. In my mind I could see Elena standing on the curb outside my apartment on the day I left for Cambridge. It was in the fall, and she was wearing one of those heavy sweaters she always preferred, the ones with the deep pockets and thick collars. This particular one was buttonless, with a belt tied at the waist, and I remember that it seemed better suited to a younger woman than my sister. Her hair was almost completely white by then, though her skin remained very soft and smooth. She always looked very much as David once described her, like a young actress trying for the part of an older woman.

  I glanced over at Martha. “Those years you’re talking about,” I said, “I think Elena wanted them entirely to herself.”

  Martha instantly snatched a pen and notebook from her coat pocket. “Go on.”

  I shrugged. “Go on to what?”

  “With your story.”

  I tightened my grip on the wheel, steadying the car as we headed into a pocket of denser fog. “I’m not sure I have a story.”

  “Well, you said that Elena wanted those years,” Martha said, coaxing me on. “What did she want them for?”

  I could feel my mind pushing backward again. Elena was there on the curb, wrapped in her enormous sweater. David was bustling about the car, strapping boxes to the top. Elena smiled and said that we looked like a couple of refugees, and then David stepped over to me, put his arm around my shoulder, and said to Elena, “You’ll miss this scholarly old buzzard, won’t you?” And I remember that Elena’s eyes moved slowly toward me, her face very calm and thoughtful as it silently answered my grandson’s question: no.

  I relaxed my grip on the wheel as we came out of the fog. “I think she wanted to be entirely alone,” I said. “She wanted to think, Martha, just to think deeply and for a long, long time.”