Changing the Past

by Thomas Berger

  “In a word,” said Philbin, “I’ve bought the story. Now please leave. And kindly don’t go about town saying I’m queer, because I’m anything but, as I think I’ve proved conclusively.”

  In the succeeding months Kellog wrote more stories but, having had enough of Philbin, sent them all elsewhere and sold none. Daphne began to swell and had to leave her employment, for in those days women whose pregnancies were showing did not work at jobs dealing with the public. In consequence, the Kellogs were running low on money. At length Daphne made a decision, though it was heartrending, to go home and live with her parents in upstate New York while she had the baby, and of course be prepared to return as soon as John was successful, for she insisted that he stay where most books and magazines were published. Though she could not help him as much as she had formerly done, she hoped to persuade her father to advance her a few dollars, of which she would send what she could to John. Her father had given her sister and brother-in-law the down payment on a house, but he was not a rich man; nor did he, she admitted, like what he had heard of John, whom he had not met.

  Kellog had begun to regret that he ever became intimate with Daphne. And he simply could not entertain the idea of being a father. Yet he felt sorry for himself when he was left alone in a New York that had yet to grant him recognition. Getting a job was unthinkable: he could never write again if he had to squander the best hours of the day on earning a salary.

  Then Philbin sent him the issue of Budding in which his story was printed. Though the worst of the assaults upon it contemplated by “Jamie Quill” had not been carried out, the text had been considerably altered: e.g., the first two paragraphs of the original were gone and rewriting had taken place throughout, usually for no discernible reason, “little” might well be changed in favor of “small,” or vice versa, and “raised” to “elevated,” and here and there John found the gratuitous use of words which were not part of his vocabulary, such as “sapient,” “droll,” “glabrous,” and “canescent.”

  He was at work on a furious letter to Philbin when the phone rang. Speak of the devil.

  Philbin said, “I’ve got sensational news. Someone very influential is crazy about your story and wants to meet you. We’re booked for lunch tomorrow at Soulange. Twelve-thirty. Jacket and tie.” He rang off.

  John had seen the façade of the restaurant on his nighttime walks: it was a fancy place of which simply the name had aroused his hate and envy, but immediately his feelings changed. He belonged there, if invited. And he was ready to suspend judgment on Philbin’s editing of his story.

  Philbin, well dressed in suit and clean shirt and tie, was already at the table when John arrived. His companion was a slender, angular, dark-haired woman who looked well into her thirties.

  “Meet Elaine Kissell,” Philbin said.

  “Hi, John,” said Elaine, giving him a sinewy handshake and, owing to her elongated jaw, a somewhat vulpine smile. She took one more deep drag of the cigarette currently in play, extinguished it in the ashtray, and lighted another with a nervous match.

  “Elaine,” Philbin said, “happens to be the best literary agent in town. She’s very impressed by your story.”

  Elaine’s hair was pulled tightly into a bun at her nape, so tight it made John feel even more uncomfortable than he would have been made by her face alone: to him a bony countenance, especially on a woman, signified severity, and when one was encountered on a character of his creation, its possessor tended to lack warmth, reflecting his bias in life. Despite what Philbin had said, he was wary of this person and suspected she would be critical of his work.

  How astonished he was when after exhaling a great deal of smoke she said solemnly, “I want to see everything you’ve written to date. If it is anywhere near as good as this story, mister, you’ve got yourself an agent”—she brought her thick eyebrows together—“that is, if you want one.”

  He did.

  Elaine urged him to be more ambitious and abandon those little ten-page stories, really sketches, that came so fluently from his typewriter: none went beyond the piece published by Philbin. It was time now for longer and more complex narratives, of which the subject would be not the lone sensibility but rather the social interplay of several and varied characters. When John confessed that at twenty-one he had not yet known enough real people on whom to base fictional characters, Elaine pointed out that he obviously came from a family made up of persons, he had gone to school at several successive levels, and he had surely had some experience with the opposite sex (she was not aware he was married, that being a state too unsophisticated to reveal at this point, if ever).

  Without her encouragement he might have remained too squeamish to use intimates, relatives, and close associates as sources for his work. His father’s little appliance-repair business had failed during the Depression, the poor guy had gone bankrupt and had never recovered emotionally or financially. An uncle was the town drunk, and his daughter was commonly known as the local bad girl with whom most young males had had their sexual initiation. His mother had a way of babbling foolishly and was notoriously stingy; he knew people laughed behind her back. But it was precisely that sort of dirty linen that Elaine urged him to wash in public. When he protested against what he assumed, given her commercial role, was vulgar sensationalism designed solely to make a buck, she asked him to reflect on the work of the masters of fiction, the Balzacs, Dostoevskis, and Stendhals, whose candid portraitures must have drawn on their families and friends.

  He would have preferred Elaine not to be so cultured lit-erarily (having had too much of that with Daphne) and to have been instead a procuress for mercenary hacks, for money was what he needed now, not mere assessments of his promise, but he had no other option, and anyway when she learned of his want, she was willing to extend him a series of loans that were modest each by each but in the aggregate reached about four hundred dollars before his next sale: to one of the better literary quarterlies, published at a university with a recognizable name and printed on thick, book-paper stock. The fee was less than a quarter of what he owed Elaine, but she was good enough to take only the agent’s ten percent and let the loan ride for the moment, believing in his future as she did. And not only that. She took him to an expensive dinner to celebrate and then back to her apartment for Irish coffee.

  “I told you,” she said. “Strike blood.”

  The story was a portrait of his paternal aunt, Connie, who for literary purposes he called Marie and who was persistently unlucky in love. Even as a young girl, according to his mother, Connie was always being dumped by a guy for whom she had done everything. But in John’s story Marie finally rebels against her own character, and it is she who hurts the boyfriend badly. Of course he proves to be the only decent man she has ever known—as she realizes once he is irretrievably gone.

  “You’ve learned to penetrate where it hurts,” Elaine said, her eyes slightly glassy. “That’s good writing.”

  She had put at least as much whiskey in the drink as coffee; John had as yet never developed much taste for either. Nor did he smoke. Elaine lighted one cigarette from the butt of the last, and he came slowly to understand that though she was speaking as rationally as ever, she was physically somewhat drunk and showing a lack of coordination in her movements. Finally, lowering the glass cup with an intention of meeting the coffee table, she missed it entirely. Though the vessel did not break, the rug was drenched.

  John lent moral support from above as she brought some dampened paper towels and knelt to deal with the mess. The whipped cream was especially troublesome, with more of it forced into the pile of the rug than was removed.

  “I’d better wait till tomorrow,” Elaine said at last. “I’m too woozy now.” She put up a hand from the floor.

  After a moment John realized he was supposed to take it. But he did not like to touch his agent, and furthermore the hand was probably sticky with coffee and cream. Yet she had been generous with him, and in fact the ending of this lates
t story had been suggested by Elaine, the fact being that he had found himself unable to go beyond a fairly literal account of his aunt’s career in love.

  He helped her up. It was the least he could do. But somehow it became the most. She lost her balance, to recover which she embraced him fiercely, thrust her tongue deep into his mouth, and moaned. The tobacco residue on her lips burned his, and he had never found her attractive anyway, not to mention that she was surely a decade and a half older than he, but he had not had any sexual activity since Daphne went home—and perversely enough, now that he was free to be as promiscuous as he had been in his fantasies of freedom, he had forgotten his desires—and almost immediately he responded now to Elaine.

  That he was for the first time in a superior role, or anyway what he considered a situation of dominance (as it was she who had applied to him and he who mounted her), whereas she had had the upper hand in his career, a certain brutality characterized the fucking, for it was certainly that and not true lovemaking—as in fact it had been with Daphne as well. When he had been in love, with Cissy Forrester, he was impotent. From the perspective of later years, he was to recognize how characteristic had been that early equation.

  Next morning he was embarrassed to wake up and identify his agent as the sharer of his bed—actually, her bed, and he was her guest. Elaine looked no younger in the morning light. He tried to come to terms with their now personal arrangement, and had just about decided discreetly to slip out of the sheets and into his clothing and steal from the apartment. But before he could act on this plan, Elaine’s fingers stole over his thigh and into his groin, and he had no alternative but to relieve the resulting pressure.

  They stayed in bed till well after noon, because it was Sunday, the only day as luck would have it that sex, love it though she did, could keep Elaine from her work. Between couplings he heard an account of her history of men. Elaine had been married twice but divorced only once. Though long separated from him, she was still legally attached to her second husband and in fact emotionally connected as well, in a complex way: as many of his attributes were objectionable to her as were to be admired.

  Too exhausted in mind and body to listen carefully to this, yet not able to resist her hunger for him, which was even more desperate than that of Daphne, John remained, and only after some time did he understand that Elaine’s second and still current husband was Ross Philbin.

  “He’s not all queer,” said she, propped up on one elbow. “Far from it. But he does have that side, definitely. Imagine my shock when I found that out.”

  “Look,” John said in some concern. “I didn’t have—”

  She waved her finger at him. “I know. He tells me everything, now that we don’t live together any more. He always did keep a secret second place for his other life.”

  “As Jamie Quill?”

  “That actually makes sense,” said Elaine, whose position enlarged her nearer breast, though not enough. John really liked fleshy fair women of a vulgar culture, but invariably ended up with skinny brunettes who were brainy though emotionally vulnerable. “Ross’s family would disown him if they ever found out. He picks up the most awful people sometimes. Imagine if they knew his background.”

  “Rich family?”

  “Godamighty, yes.” Elaine’s voice tended to be husky, especially when she spoke with emphasis. “There’s a skyscraper in midtown named the Philbin Building.” Since their latest screw she had smoked an entire cigarette and now turned to fetch another from the bedside table. John’s throat was sore from smoke.

  “He certainly doesn’t seem to spend much.”

  In what was intended as a considerate gesture, Elaine blew a blast of smoke over John’s head, showing him the prominent cords in her neck. “He’s horribly stingy. Do you know, I supported him for an entire year? I actually thought he was a starving poet.”

  What interested John most here was her obvious proclivity for supporting men. He had not been aware that such women existed until he met Daphne. Already in life he had met two such. He really didn’t like the type; they made him feel uncomfortable though never inadequate. But he seemed to have no choice.

  While Elaine was knocking the ash off her cigarette into a saucer on the bedside table on her side, he slipped out of bed.

  She groaned. “You’re going?”

  “It’s twelve-thirty.”

  She pouted. “But it’s Sunday. I’ll make us breakfast.”

  “I’ve got to work.”

  She fluttered her lashes at him, which called attention to her crow’s-feet. “That’s commendable, darling. But oh all right, come over here and let me kiss you good-bye.”

  When he arrived, she was sitting on the edge of the bed. Before he could bend down, she had leaned forward and taken his member into her mouth.

  After a while she removed it to say, “My oh my, there’s nothing like youth!”

  He did not get back home until Monday morning. Scarcely had he finally forced himself to sit down at the typewriter when the telephone rang. Certain it was Elaine, and furious about the invasion of his privacy, he answered in sullen humor.

  But it was Daphne, and she was overwrought. “Thank God! Are you all right?” It appeared that she had been trying to reach him for two days and by Sunday had attempted to get the aid of the New York police in determining whether he was still alive, but had been sidestepped. Knowing no one else to ask—in true New York style she had not met their neighbors—she had been about ready to fly in, swollen belly and all, to make a personal search.

  “Oh, come on,” John chided her. “I’m hardly the suicidal kind. Besides, my work is really going well.” He told her of his latest sale.

  “I guess you were out walking a lot.”

  “That’s right. And Philbin took me to dinner to celebrate. He’s settled down. He’s really been a good friend to my work.”

  Daphne was silent for a moment, and then she said in a voice that seemed to be under restraint, “Look, John, I think you should come back here till the baby’s born. I’m sorry, I can’t send any more money. And then I really need your presence. My parents just don’t understand. Nobody does. The neighbors think it’s illegitimate!” She was growing more emotional.

  “I can’t,” John said firmly. “I just can’t. I’m about ready to break through. I’ve got influential contacts now. You don’t have to send money. I’m getting regular advances from my agent. One of these days I’ll send something to the slicks. Then maybe I’ll be able to send something to you for a change—”

  Suddenly his wife cried, “You’re disgusting! You’re being kept by that fairy, aren’t you? You’ve become a male prostitute!”

  He had heard that pregnant women easily become hysterical and made the mistake of defending himself on the charge, which was so outlandish that he could not believe she was being sincere in making it, not to mention that it could be said he actually was, in effect, being kept by Philbin’s estranged wife, who as it turned out was not exactly estranged but was in some other category that obviously he could not define to Daphne without disclosing his association with Elaine.

  Without warning, a disagreeable male voice came on the line. “You little pansy, I’ll give you a good horsewhipping! Mother and I have always hated everything our girl has told us about you, but you’re even a worse skunk than we thought.”

  John had yet to meet Daphne’s father, who in snapshots was bald and pudgy. It was an outrage that such an ugly old mediocrity would have the nerve to speak in such a manner to one of the foremost talents in the latest generation of American writers, and he gave as good as he got.

  “Go to hell, you illiterate slob.” And hung up. He felt bad about Daphne, but then he always had.

  In the ensuing months John wrote some more stories, and finally Elaine placed one of them with a slick magazine, the fiction editor of which rewrote every third sentence and provided another ending than the original version. John was angry about this, but Elaine took the editor’s part
and effectively made the point that the fee, fifteen hundred dollars, gave the payer thereof a certain authority in matters of style and form. Looking at the situation realistically, John had to agree, though with Elaine’s extraction of her commission, what he got was really thirteen hundred and fifty dollars. Of course by now he probably owed her a goodly portion of the remainder as well, but he left it to her to keep an account of those things and do what she would about them. As it happened, she did nothing, but in view of the sexual service he rendered her, he was not notably grateful. The fact is that by now he had begun to assume that the monetary debt would be forgotten, as more or less had been the case with the money he owed Daphne, at least on his part.

  He proceeded to write three more stories of the same sort as the one purchased by the magazine, and yet each was turned down by the man who had been so enthusiastic about the first.

  “That’s the way they are,” said Elaine, shrugging. “It’s hopeless to try to understand an editor’s taste.” She grinned self-indulgently. “God knows, I can’t, and I used to be one!”

  John was getting awfully tired of her, even in professional matters. It turned out that she hadn’t told him that several book editors had written him in response to his story, but as the letters were sent him in care of her, Elaine had intercepted them.

  “How dare you open my mail?”

  “Come now, darling, that’s my job. Yours is creating.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They want a novel. That’s always what they want. But you’re not ready yet. Keep going with the stories. It won’t take many more, maybe only two or three in good magazines, enough to show you’re no flash in the pan. By then their tongues will be hanging out. We’ll be able to make a nice deal on a novel.”

  “If anybody else gets in touch,” John said coldly, “I want you to show me the letters. And I’d like to meet somebody for a change. I don’t know anyone connected with writing or publishing, except you and Ross.”