The Summer House, Later

by Judith Hermann

  Hunter smiles uncomprehendingly, thinks of dogs baring their teeth. Miss Gil sings I’m in love but I’m lazy, and he feels an urge to wring her wrinkled neck, as they do to ducks in the comics. He giggles. The girl giggles too, and says, ‘She’s lost some of her marbles, hasn’t she?’ Hunter stops giggling and says gruffly, ‘She’s old.’

  The girl raises her left eyebrow. Hunter turns the doorknob, ready to retreat to his room, and says self-consciously, ‘Yes, well.’

  Taking a resolute breath and shifting from one foot to the other, the girl says three sentences in a row. Hunter has to make a tremendous effort to concentrate. She says, ‘You know, I’m here only temporarily. Room 95. It was nice to hear your music; you see, they swiped my cassette player.’

  Before she’s even finished saying ‘cassette player’ Hunter says, ‘Who?’ He feels he has to gain time: this is all too much for him, she is much too young for this hotel, she talks so funny. She says, ‘These guys at Grand Central, they swiped my backpack and my cassette player and all my tapes, and now I can’t listen to music any more. That’s bad. Nothing works without music’ She looks at Hunter expectantly and attentively.

  Hunter says, ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ and peers down the dark hallway looking for help. Miss Gil has stopped singing, and he has a faint hope that she’ll come to the elevator and interrupt this situation. Miss Gil doesn’t come. The girl – Hunter senses that she is observing him – says with peculiar emphasis, ‘Do you live here?’ Hunter turns to face her again. The expression around her mouth is almost cruel, and her upper body is bent forward possessively; water is still dripping from her hair.

  ‘Yes,’ says Hunter. ‘I mean, I …’ He breaks off in mid-sentence and is briefly tempted to leave her standing there, to go back into his room and slam the door in her face.

  ‘This is a peculiar hotel, isn’t it?’ the girl asks, one of her hands now in the pocket of her bathrobe, causing the rabbit appliqué to bulge obscenely. Hunter feels totally exhausted. He longs for Glenn Gould, for the blue curtains of his room, for sleep. He is no longer accustomed to this sort of thing; he is no longer accustomed to meeting people, to having conversations. He says, ‘Excuse me,’ and the girl sighs dramatically. She takes her room key out of her bathrobe pocket and smiles reassuringly at Hunter. ‘Shall we go out for supper together? Perhaps tomorrow evening, you could take me to a good restaurant and tell me something about the city, you know what I mean.’ Hunter remembers that he hasn’t eaten out for years, that he doesn’t know any good restaurants, that he can’t tell her anything about the city, that he knows nothing at all. He says, ‘Of course, with pleasure’ – he would have said, ‘Of course, with pleasure,’ to anything – and the girl grins and says, ‘Well then, tomorrow evening at eight; I’ll pick you up. Goodnight.’

  Hunter nods. He watches her back as she unlocks her door, the terry-towelling of her bathrobe wet and dark along her spine. He looks at her closed door and hears her humming behind it, brushing her teeth. He sees the light under the door go out. He is not sure he’ll have the strength to go back into his room.

  The next morning he wakes up because in the hall outside the communal bathroom Miss Gil is arguing with Mr Dobrian. Miss Gil’s high, shrill voice breaks into his room, her voice is shaking and sounds triumphant. ‘You pig!’ Miss Gil yells. ‘You pig, you filthy peeping Tom, you scoundrel! To come bursting into the bathroom when women are washing themselves; I’m going to tell Mr Leach!’ Hunter hears Mr Dobrian’s fragile, tired, old-man’s voice, ‘But you purposely leave the door unlocked, Miss Gil; if you would lock it this couldn’t happen!’ It was the same every day. Miss Gil never locked the door; someone would go in, see her standing there naked, wrinkled, and shrivelled, leave again in disgust, then have to endure her endless ranting. Hunter sighs and pulls the blanket over his head, sleep slipping away from him like a cloth, the face of the girl with the wet hair appearing briefly before him. He thinks of their date, of having supper with her that evening, and feels an ache in his stomach. He shouldn’t have done it. He shouldn’t have agreed to it. He doesn’t know what to talk about with her; she seems a bit naive, and it’s been a long time since he has had any thoughts about women. What a crazy idea, to think of going out with a stranger, a girl much too young for him, and in his condition no less; a grotesque, a ridiculous idea.

  Hunter sits up. He looks briefly through the window at the sky, which is grey and overcast. Easter Saturday, a free day, a terribly free evening. Miss Gil’s voice, still nagging, is moving farther down the hall. Hunter gets up, washes, dresses, pulls open the window and stares briefly down at the wet, early-morning street. A fat child carrying a box under his arm trips and falls, gets up again, walks on. Hunter takes the elevator to the ground floor, hurries to reach the front door, hurries to escape Leach’s voice, but is too slow.

  ‘Mr Tompson!’ Leach’s voice is both enticing and offensive. Hunter stops in mid-stride and turns halfway toward the reception desk. He doesn’t answer.

  ‘Have you seen her already, Mr Tompson?’

  ‘Have I seen whom already?’ says Hunter.

  ‘The girl, Mr Tompson. The girl I put into Room 95 for you!’ Leach succeeds in placing such a loathsome emphasis on the word ‘girl’ that a cold shiver runs down Hunter’s back.

  ‘No,’ he says, his hand already on the glass pane of the swinging door. ‘I haven’t seen her yet.’ Leach triumphantly calls after him, ‘Oh, but you’re lying, Mr Tompson! She herself told me this morning that she talked with you. She was very impressed, Mr Tompson!’

  Hunter lets the swinging door slam shut, steps out into the cool street air and spits. The girl seems to be more stupid than he thought. He walks along 85th Street to Broadway. Even though it’s Saturday and early morning, there’s already heavy traffic. The traffic lights flash green and red, and crowds stream out of the stores. A nightmarish giant Easter rabbit stands on the corner of 75th and throws chocolate eggs into the crowd. Hunter walks around aimlessly, absorbed in his own thoughts; the sky is heavy with rain and there’s an icy crackling in the air. People bump into him; at the corner of Broadway and 65th he stands around for five minutes until the newspaper vendor points out to him that the light has just turned green for the third time. He turns and starts walking uptown again, heading toward the park, and buys a sandwich and a take-away coffee at a little coffee shop. A tattered beggar approaches people and tugs at their shopping bags. Hunter steers clear of him but bumps into an enormously fat black woman. He excuses himself, and she smiles and says, ‘It’s nothing, honey.’ The crazy man in front of Filene’s Basement yells, ‘Too much electricity!’ He’s been standing there as long as Hunter can remember, yelling, ‘Too much electricity makes people crazy!’ Passers-by laugh and throw dimes at his feet, but he never picks them up. Outside Zabar’s some workers eat salads out of plastic containers, sitting next to each other, their feet equal distances apart. Hunter turns into a side street. It’s quieter here, green wreaths with yellow ribbons hang on the front doors of four-storey brick town houses. In the park he sits down to drink the coffee, cold by now, and eat the sandwich. The day glides by. Towards noon a gentle rain begins to fall.

  Hunter continues to sit there. Pigeons peck at rat-poison-yellow grains, a girl on rollerblades whizzes by, black nannies holding the hands of sickly and haughty-looking white children sit down next to him. Hunter’s eyes remain fixed on the pebbles between his feet, grey pebbles with white dots. He feels an uneasiness in his joints, in his hands, he has never felt before. It is an uneasiness that has nothing to do with the snow, although yesterday’s chilly prickling has increased. The park, which usually makes him feel calm and tired, today seems inaccessible, unfriendly. An old Asian woman pokes around in the garbage cans with a wire coat hanger, babbling to herself, before, morosely and without any booty, disappearing among the trees on the other side of the lawn. In front of Hunter’s bench a pigeon keels over, claws twitching, then is still. Hunter moves to the next bench
. The clouds part, revealing a pale, dull March sky. Perplexed, he thinks, ‘Time. And time,’ and then he thinks about nothing. He leaves the park as long shadows stretch out between the benches and walks back to Broadway, the evening traffic just as idiotically heavy as in the morning. He turns into 83rd Street, the indoor garage near the corner recklessly spits out cars. Hunter crosses to the other side of the street, and feeling cold thrusts his hands deeper into his coat pockets. There’s a light on in Lenny’s store.

  Hunter carefully pushes the small glass door open. He gets tangled up in the felt curtain behind it and trips in the dark. He can hear Lenny laughing softly. He disentangles himself from the curtain and laughs too, much against his will; Lenny is sitting in his dusty rocking chair behind the cash register holding his hand in front of his mouth like a girl. ‘Stop that,’ Hunter says. Lenny, exaggerating, takes a deep breath, and disappears as he reaches down to a shelf below the cash register. He reappears with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. It is warm in the store. Filaments of dust flicker in the yellow light, and there is a smell of paper and damp wood. Lenny’s rocking chair among books, picture frames, Halloween masks, mouldy little boxes and bolts of fabric, plastic flowers, canned food, yellowed postcards. Umbrellas, wigs, baseball bats. Hunter brushes a stack of ancient lottery tickets off a garden chair and sits down. Lenny pours the whiskey; dust seems to have settled in the folds of his face, and the eyes behind his thick lenses have a moist gleam. He says, ‘You were here only the day before yesterday, Tompson.’ Hunter smiles and says, ‘I’m leaving right away.’ Lenny doesn’t answer and rocks his chair back into the darkness of the store. The whiskey tastes salty. Somewhere water is dripping; the noises of the street are far away. Hunter is beginning to feel warm. He no longer knows why he’s here. He no longer wants to know why he’s here, he just wants to keep on sitting here the way he always sits here: quietly, for a long time, without a reason, then leave. Lenny, watching him, senses this. Lenny is clever. He clears his throat, spits the mucus into an old tin bowl, and says, ‘Tompson. You don’t mean you actually want to buy something, do you?’

  Hunter sits up straight. The garden chair creaks, and he can hear the blood roaring in his ears. He says, ‘I need a cassette player. Nothing special, just one of those little portable ones, I thought maybe you’d have something like that.’ He tries to give his voice a casual, carefree note. Behind his glasses Lenny’s eyes become small, narrow slits. ‘But you already have a cassette player, Tompson. Why do you need another one?’

  Hunter clears his throat. He would like to evade Lenny’s gaze, and already regrets having asked at all; he is unable to lie. He says, ‘I want to give it as a present.’ Lenny looks away. He rocks back and forth, slowly, idly, whistling briefly to himself, shaking his head. Hunter breathes carefully. Lenny gets up and disappears in the depths of the store. Glass shatters, books fall, dust rises. Lenny coughs and curses, tugs at something, comes back; in his knotty, brown-flecked hands he holds a small, almost dainty tape recorder with a silver cassette deck.

  Hunter is perspiring. The collar of his winter coat chafes his neck and the wool scarf itches. Hunter finds it’s unbearably hot. Lenny puts the cassette recorder next to the cash register and busies himself wiping it with a dust rag. He looks concerned. He actually looks concerned. Hunter turns his head away and moves his garden chair back into the murky twilight. Lenny leans forward and says, ‘You know that I don’t sell things anymore. I just sit here. I don’t sell anything anymore.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hunter says weakly. ‘I know.’

  Lenny sighs indulgently, spits again, then chortles softly. ‘I’m surprised at you, Tompson. I’m really surprised. I guess you’re not planning to give this recorder to Leach. Or to Miss Gil.’ He eyes Hunter through his thick lenses, a dust flake quivering on his bald head. ‘Now, Tompson. Who’s this recorder supposed to be for?’ Hunter makes no reply. He feels the weariness unfolding between his shoulder blades and wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Lenny comes out from behind the cash register, kicks over two piles of books, and puts the little recorder in Hunter’s lap. He says, ‘Take it. I don’t need it any more. If you change your mind, bring it back. Tompson …’ Lenny breaks off and shuffles back to the rocking chair. He sits down and looks at his spit in the tin bowl. Hunter touches the silver tape deck. It is cool and smooth. He wishes Lenny would say something else. He wishes Lenny would take the recorder back again, he wishes he were back in his room, in his bed, in the darkness. Lenny is silent. Water is dripping. Somewhere paper rustles. Hunter gets up, takes the cassette recorder and goes to the door. He says, ‘Thanks a lot.’ ‘It’s nothing,’ says Lenny from the depth of his rocking chair, Hunter stands there with his back to him, waiting, feeling his heart beating. Lenny says, ‘Tompson?’ Hunter clears his throat. Lenny says, ‘Will you come again, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow?’ Hunter says, ‘Sure.’ He pushes the felt curtain aside, opens the small glass door and smells the snow. ‘I hope so,’ Lenny says, as Hunter steps out into the cold, dark street.

  At the Washington-Madison Leach is sitting behind the reception desk, reading the Daily News. He doesn’t look up. Hunter, die recorder concealed under his coat, takes the elevator up, tiptoes through the hall, unlocks the door to his room and locks it behind him. His knees are shaking. It is 6.45. It is quiet in the hallway and in Room 95.

  An hour. Another hour, then she will come. Hunter sits on the chair by the window and stares at his closet. He has wrapped the cassette player in newspaper and tied a woollen thread around it. It’s now on the table, and it looks ridiculous. Hunter turns away, then goes over to the closet and takes out a suit. It is black and smells of dust, worn at the knees and elbows, the collar shiny. The last time he wore the suit was to Mr Wright’s funeral, it’s his Washington-Madison funeral suit, and the thought that he’s going to wear it tonight makes Hunter explode in hysterical laughter. He feels sick. He feels sick to his stomach, around his heart, and in his throat; he throws the suit on the bed and runs hot water into the sink. The girl isn’t going to make him wash in the communal bathroom. The girl won’t make him wash at all, he’ll just shave and comb his hair; it’s all hopeless anyway. In front of the mirror above the sink Hunter opens his eyes very slowly. The mirror is small, misted over with steam, Hunter looks at his face in the merciful white steam. He shaves carefully, but his hands are shaking too much. He cuts his chin slightly, causing some blood to ooze out, its colour a strange, sickly red. Hunter gags. He takes a deep breath, runs cold water over his wrists, counts. He can smell the shaving foam, the soap, peppermint. He staunches the blood with a small scrap of newspaper, puts on his suit; the sleeves are too short, a button is missing. Hunter feels as though he is in a dream. Sleepwalking. Almost apathetic. He lights a cigarette, hitches up his trousers, and sits down on the edge of the bed. He coughs. It’s 7.45. He waits.

  The square of sky between the grating of the fire escape turns pale, then black. It’s raining a little. The clock on his night table is ticking, and the water gurgles in the heating pipes. For a moment the building lurches in a strange unaccustomed motion. ‘Like a ship,’ Hunter thinks. ‘Like a ship, it has cast off, has left shore a long time ago, I just didn’t notice.’ All the sounds, as though coming from far away. The hand of the clock wanders in a circle, drawing the hours and hours. The girl is not coming, of course she’s not coming. Hunter lies on his bed and smiles, looks up at the ceiling, water stains up there, cracks in the plaster – disappointed relief. After all, what would it have been like? What would it have looked like, this evening in a good restaurant, the mocking smiles of the waiters, the coins in his pocket, his trembling hands, his difficulties swallowing. She would have had to do the talking. He would have been unable to speak, would only have listened to the beating of his heart, the heartbeats getting faster and faster, until … Hunter lies on his bed and smiles. ‘Time,’ he thinks. ‘Time and time.’ The clock says eleven. He pulls the blanket up over his knees an
d rolls over on his side, his gaze touching the objects in the room, their worn, soft familiarity. It is warm. His tiredness is heavy and pleasant.

  Around midnight the door to Room 95 slams shut. Hunter hadn’t heard the girl, her light springy step in the dark hall, a sound probably too unfamiliar. He sits up and listens, everything remains still. He gets up, feels dizzy, and things go black before his eyes, then it passes. He takes his suit off again, the jacket, the trousers, wrinkled now and crumpled, carefully hangs them up in the closet. He stands in front of his cassettes, Mozart and Bach, sad Schubert and soft, gentle Satie. The Portuguese fado songs for Sundays and the voice of Janis Joplin for which he is too old, has always been too old. Sometimes, in an upbeat mood, Astor Piazolla. And that American, that big, crazy, ugly bird from California whose ‘Jersey Girl’ is the only song he has ever heard him sing, but he had loved it. And again Mozart and Schumann, between them a recording by Stevens, where did that come from? Hunter slides his hand over the cassette cases, shakes his head, smiles, confused. Tango music. Callas arias. Music and time, time, Die Winterreise, the strange African songs he bought at the flea market in Tompkins Square seven years ago, or was it eight or ten? Hunter doesn’t cry. He turns the cassette cases over in his hands. He can’t read his own writing any more, jazz and poetry, the voice of Truman Capote. Then he packs them up, getting a small shoebox out of the closet, putting the cassette cases into it, very neatly, side by side; some have no writing on them, let her find out for herself. Also the Glenn Gould cassette that was in the player. That one too, Hunter forgets nothing. The girl knocks on the door, it’s already late, so late, so late. Hunter puts the cover on the shoebox and places the box on top of the little package containing the cassette player. He opens the door a crack and slides both out into the hall.