Stories in an Almost Classical Mode

by Harold Brodkey

  Marcus shrugged. “So what?”

  “Ah,” said Rappaport. “So it’s the truth, that’s what. Listen, you think a goy can ever know the truth? You think Jesus is the Son of God? Mary was a virgin? Listen, you believe that when you’re a child and you do something to your mind. A Christian could discover the Oedipus complex? Don’t make me laugh. They want to be Jews, Christians; that’s the direction: from Catholic to Protestant to Unitarian. What’s a Unitarian? A Jew who can get into a country club. What’s a Communist? A man trying to act like a Jew without getting mixed up with God. Listen,” Rappaport said, “a Jew can suffer and a Jew can think—you don’t think those are advantages?” He told Marcus the Jewish hagiology.

  Marcus decided to take Rappaport to Scantuate to open Nanna’s eyes. Rappaport talked about the concupiscence of art: “Anything sensual is an advertisement for sex, let’s face it. Take those bronze things over there. They arouse the senses.” About comparative religion: “Christianity is a debased form of Judaism; the early Christians were uneducated people and added a lot of superstition. That’s why we make them nervous. There they stand with the forgery in their hands.” Marcus explained to Nanna, “Rappaport likes to épater les goyim.” At dinner, Marcus, who thought that intellectual excitement improved Rappaport and made him almost beautiful, encouraged him to talk about the Jewish God. Nanna interrupted Rappaport. “I am not a believer.” Rappaport said, “Don’t you believe God’s weight rests on the world?” “I strongly doubt it.” “But think of God as the principles of physics.” Marcus said, “Do, Nanna.” “When I was a girl,” Nanna said, “it was considered bad form to discuss religion. Perhaps it has become quite common nowadays, but I, for one, am unaccustomed to it.”

  Rappaport said, “Your grandmother doesn’t like me. Nobody’s as anti-Semitic as some of these old Jewish ladies.”

  The next weekend, when Marcus was in Scantuate, Nanna asked him, “Are you cross because I didn’t get on with your friend?”

  “He’s odd,” Marcus said. “But you have to realize he’s free to think whatever he wants—he hasn’t anything to lose.”

  “What he thinks seems to me to redound generally to his advantage,” Nanna said dryly.

  “That’s the ego—but the superego—”

  Nanna said, “I’m afraid I don’t understand.” She said, “I’m rather an old woman and a little behind the times.”

  She said he looked unwell. He said he was worried about his ideas; he didn’t seem to know what was what. Nanna asked if he wanted to see a psychiatrist. Marcus said no, he wanted to meet a philosopher. He said, “A greater Jew was killed in Modigliani than in Jesus.”

  He said at Scantuate, at the dinner table, “The whelk is safe in its shell, and then a sea gull finds it. Sea gulls are marvelous; they have thick strong bodies like little cannons, and strong red beaks. They pick the whelk up and carry it into the air. The whelk doesn’t understand the visitation, the superior force that grips it. My God, he thinks, look how wonderful I am, I’m Olympian, look how high I’ve come, and then the sea gull drops him, usually on concrete or stone but sometimes on wood, to crack his shell so he can be eaten.”

  “Marcus!” Nanna cried.

  “I’m not describing Nature, Nanna. I’m describing feelings and using Nature—” “Marcus …”

  Marcus said, “I’m trying to learn how to think. I’ve got to learn how to think. Where can I practice if not with you?”

  Nanna said, “Marcus, please, talk to a psychiatrist.”

  Marcus said, “This isn’t a neurosis, Nanna. I’m just stupid.”

  He didn’t want a psychiatrist. What good was a psychiatrist? Did a psychiatrist know how to be a genius? A psychiatrist would not understand that being Jewish was a great truth. What did a psychiatrist know about the desire and jealousy he felt for truth, or about learning how to make oneself audible, or about anything, for that matter, except psychiatry? A psychiatrist would frown on drinking and whoring and on being restless and on moodiness, and never realize they were pedagogical aids. They drove the mind into dislocation, into a broken angle where it couldn’t hang on to what it had believed before and was set free to circumnavigate a thought.

  He persuaded the dramatic group to make a silent movie, Oedipus Rex: “Changed,” he said, “to Russia in the last century. With Jews.” In the movie, he had Oedipus stolen as a baby and reared in Russian Orthodoxy. The climactic scene, when Oedipus learns he is Jocasta’s son and a Jew, showed Oedipus standing while his nose, with the aid of stop-lens photography, becomes long and hooked. The subtitle said, “Oedipus acknowledges the spirit of God.” The audiences laughed.

  A rabbi wrote him a note: “Your movie is very interesting, but perhaps doesn’t quite touch on the real essence of being Jewish, which is largely a joyous matter.”

  Rappaport said, “You’re a dangerous man. You get everything wrong. That kid is a godless hoodlum. You think he’d grow up without showing a few Jewish traits?”

  “He was attracted,” Marcus said. “He married a Jewess. He was anti-Semitic.”

  “You call those Jewish traits? Your Oedipus is a snob!” Rappaport shouted. “Rex, yet!”

  “What do you know about it? Who made you a chief Jew?”

  “Look at you, a Jew-come-lately,” Rappaport jeered, adding, “When all is said and done, you’re nothing but another hard-nosed rich.”

  Nanna said, “I think that obsessions and theories are only useful if they add passion to a work that already has a formal structure.”

  Marcus said, “I’m ordinary.”

  Nanna said, “I do not see that anything has occurred that we cannot take philosophically. It is not as if we’d lost all our money.” And she laughed. Marcus said that he wanted Nanna to read Camus and Martin Buber and discuss them with him. Nanna said she did not have time left in her life for new philosophers; she had done her reading: “I am not a lady intellectual. You must take me as I am.” She said, “Sukie is such a nice girl. Why don’t you see her anymore?” She said Marcus had been much more cheerful when he was seeing Sukie. She said, “Marcus, would you like a sports car?”

  Marcus stayed at college for the next few weekends. He sought out Rappaport. He did not feel humiliated in Rappaport’s presence. “I hate myself,” Marcus said. He had trouble paying attention in class. “Mr. Weill,” said the lecturer, “I will contribute one cent for your thoughts.” Marcus did not say, “I was just thinking about how big the world is and about death.” He said, “I was thinking how stupid I am,” and drew a laugh.

  Nanna telephoned and asked, “How long am I to be deprived of your company because you’re so busy being unhappy?” She said she hadn’t been feeling well. She said she’d heard from Gamma Foster that Sukie was coming to Scantuate for the weekend. “May I expect you on Friday?” she asked. Her tone was mock-humble; she was an old woman, reduced to dangling the charms of a young girl to draw Marcus to Scantuate.

  Marcus said, “I’m coming to see you, not Sukie.” For the first time, Marcus said to her—over the telephone it was—“I love you, Nanna.”

  But Sukie was there. It was April, windy, and the pulleys on the flagpole banged and clanged against the metal of the pole. Marcus and Sukie went for a walk; they took shelter from the wind on the porch of Nanna’s bathhouse. Sukie said, “Robin doesn’t want to let the family know about him and me. Gamma isn’t well. He’s afraid she’ll change her will. Robin’s so weak.” She said, “Pony, I think Robin’s awful.…” He remembered Sukie in Paris, and he kissed her. “You’re very attractive, Pony. I guess you’re not going through one of your Moses periods.”

  He thought afterward, This is a mistake. I don’t like her. Still, politeness seemed to require him to sleep with her again on Saturday afternoon.

  On Sunday, he said, “Please, for God’s sake, understand—I’m sorry.”

  Sukie’s face went gray and creased; she said, frightened, “Marcus, don’t you want to see me anymore?”

  “My life is
n’t settled. God, Sukie, let’s talk about something else. I’m shaking.” On his way back to school, he told himself, “At least I was kind.”

  Four weeks later, Sukie called from New York and said, “Marcus, I’ve been to the doctor.”

  “The doctor?”

  “I’m—I’m …” She said with a little laugh, “You may be a father.”

  Marcus said to her, “Where are you calling from? What’s the number where you’re calling from? I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.” He hung up, and grabbed a coat and slammed out of the room. He couldn’t think; he went to a bar and got drunk. He spent the night in a friend’s room for fear Sukie would be calling him at his own, and in the morning he telephoned Robin and cautiously asked—his hand was shaking, he puffed furiously on a cigarette—if Robin had heard from Sukie lately.

  Robin said, “Oh, did she ask you for money? I told her I didn’t have any. Hell, she has money of her own. I can’t go to my parents—she’s my cousin; Gamma will raise the roof; I don’t know what kind of six-different-ways mess it would be. Christ, I’m a nervous wreck. Are you going to lend her the money?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to borrow it from Nanna,” Marcus said. “You think it’s your kid?”

  “Of course,” Robin said testily. “What the hell!”

  Marcus hung up. He admitted to himself that he had been afraid. He said to himself, “Tough, tough, tough … Tough cookies,” and went back to his room and showered and shaved. The phone rang. It was Nanna’s companion, to say, “Your grandmother wants to be certain you’re coming down this afternoon.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be d-down about f-five o’clock.” His voice sounded odd to him; he hadn’t stammered for a long time. He said to himself, “Keep cool.” Nanna couldn’t know.

  Nanna was in the library. The lamps were lit. The minnow eyes would not meet his. She said, “My friend Gamma Foster spoke to me. From Boston. It would seem that her granddaughter is—is enceinte—by you.”

  Marcus, his forehead damp, stood with one foot thrust out, as if casually. Suddenly he put his hand over his eyes. “Tough,” he said. “Tough.”

  Nanna exclaimed, “Marcus!”

  “Hell, it’s probably not my kid. You don’t know about Sukie. She’s nothing but a—”

  “Marcus!” Nanna said. “Don’t be ugly.”

  Then Marcus realized that Nanna wanted him to marry the girl.

  “Nanna! She’s—it’s t-true!” he exclaimed. Nanna’s eyes were averted. His head went forward the length of his neck to bring his mouth closer to Nanna and give his words more force. “Nanna,” he said, “you don’t know her. She’s trying to get away with—to g-get away with—She’s t-try—” He couldn’t get on with the sentence.

  “I did not expect you to act like this,” Nanna said. She said the Weills were not light people. She said Gamma Foster knew and trusted their honor. Her voice darkened when she said, “Your appetites are not uncontrollable.” She said she and Gamma Foster could give Marcus and Sukie a small allowance, “and you could spend your summers here with me.”

  When she was silent, Marcus, very conscious of his posture, with no intention of being cruel but trying to bring her to her senses so she could listen and he would not be so angry and so lonely, said, “Nanna, this is crazy. You’re being crazy—this is all crazy.”

  Nanna slipped past his voice. “A gentleman would not refuse to talk to a girl after he’s—Gamma Foster said—That’s not how I understand a gentleman—”

  “Like y-you and my f-father with N-Noreen!” he exclaimed. (Not “Nanna, be fair,” or “Nanna, you’re unjust.”) He was upset by the note of accusation in his voice. He tried to be politely ironic, superior, to show how good his manners were, that he was a gentleman. “One of us is d-dreaming,” he said. Nanna’s face was appalled, rigid with distaste, dismay, and the desire not to hear. He looked at her, to hold her eyes while he reasoned with her. “L-Listen,” he said. “Use your head. Wh-Why did Gamma Foster go to you, anyway? Th-They h-have enough m-money to p-pay for an a-abortion without your help. What made her think I’d be interested in marrying Sukie? I’ve shown no signs of it up until now. They’re playing you for a sucker—a Jewish sucker.”

  Nanna said, “This is disgusting.”

  Marcus blinked. He let his breath out. He said, “Have it your way.” He turned on his heel and left the room.

  He told Cook he would not be in for dinner, and drove back to college. He sat in his room and drank. The telephone rang at intervals, but he ignored it. Around midnight, he took off his clothes and lay down and cried. Then he put on a robe. He sat by the window and thought. The housemaster came to his door. “Your father is very worried,” he said. “I think you’d better call him.” Marcus shaded his eyes with his hands to conceal the reddened lids. “It’s all right,” Marcus said. “I’ll call him now. Don’t worry, I’m all right.”

  The housemaster waited while Marcus spoke to the long-distance operator and then when Marcus said to his father, “Hello, it’s me,” he left the room.

  Marcus said, “Please let’s not have a long t-talk. I just called to say I’ve decided to go into the army.”

  His father said, “Oh, Marcus.”

  Marcus said, “If you t-try to stop me, I’ll go c-crazy—O.K.?”

  His father said, “Marcus, it’s time you faced the fact you have a few responsibilities. Nanna is terribly upset.”

  Marcus said, “Nanna c-can cheer herself up—she can go have a n-nice long chat with G-Gamma Foster. Look, I’m not in a m-mood to talk.”

  His father said, “Do you realize how much you owe Nanna?”

  “Well, why don’t you p-pay it back for me,” Marcus said. He shouted, “It’s not my child! You can all go to hell!”

  There was a silence. His father said, “I see. All right, Marcus. Maybe the army’s best right now. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marcus said. “G-Give my best to your family.”

  At first, in the army, he suffered from moments of fright, defiance, and remorse. Then he began to forget. Sometimes he felt that his skull had become a darkened, quite silent movie theater; what his mind thought and senses saw appeared in the very center of his attention, easily decipherable, distinct. Nanna sent him a Christmas card and a check—no note—and he mailed the check back to her.

  The army put him in the Signal Corps, and stationed him at an air base in France. He became highly popular with the other men in his unit. They took up his habit of referring to certain officers, and to the army itself, as Grandmother: “Grandmother wants this in triplicate.…”

  When the army released him, he migrated to Paris. His sexuality proved valuable; Paris took him in and gave him adventures. After a while, he turned against the life he was leading and became the guardian and ward of his work. He put together a small serious movie, and his career and reputation began. When, after eleven years, he saw Nanna and spent a week with her in Paris, he thought, How Euclidean—she does not know how to behave with me. He himself was helpless with irony. He thought, I can’t fend off death for her. I haven’t time. That’s how Marcus saw the story.

  HE SAYS to the reporter, “You see, when I was a young man I thought life was—was wet, a liquid thing, like the ocean. I didn’t know I didn’t mean life but only childhood. I thought a man had no leverage and had to swim all his life—currents, tides; one floated and was swept here and there. But then you come to dry land. One knows what one is doing. One makes decisions.” He breaks off; it is nearly noon. He has been keeping track of the position of the sun and the quality of the light. Now the sun is striking almost directly downward on the walls of buildings. The glass of the shopwindows ripples with reflections of traffic. The palms rustle like flags overhead, and the brilliant Roman light, so different from the light in Scantuate, pours heavily upon walls, glass, birds gliding like fish in the air. Marcus says, “Dry land. I’ll tell you something terrifying about life—it makes sense.” He has be
en keeping track of the sunlight. He says, “Excuse me. It’s time for the next shot,” as flatly as if he has not been on a flight of emotion, and walks off.

  He calls Whitehart and Alliat to him, says, “The sun’s right. Let’s get moving, boys and girls.” He is crying.

  “What is it?” Alliat asks in French.

  “My grandmother. She was such a stupid woman. Let’s go.…” Everyone is dispatched to his position.

  Marcus and Alliat seat themselves on the boom, and the boom rises. “Jehane comes from the Sistine Chapel as from her mother’s womb,” Marcus says. Alliat nods and sights the camera. The streets open to Marcus’s eye as the boom reaches its greatest height. Halfway down the Via Condotti, Jehane starts to walk. In a white kerchief and sunglasses, she walks in the Roman sunlight. Two boys, extras—unwashed, skull-eyed, large-mouthed—racket on a motor scooter past her, shouting, “Ciao! Bella!” then an obscenity. Jehane flinches and walks on. She comes to the curb and makes her way out into the stream of traffic. She breaks into a trot, nears the camera, starts up the Spanish Steps—the stone waterfall. She climbs past the extras, who enact their assigned motions, to the stretch that has been cleared and waits deserted in the sunlight. She moves farther from the street, Rome, the camera; alone on the wide Baroque sweep of the Steps, she climbs. She climbs with indignation, in solitude. The bystanders grow quiet. They stand silent and involved. Marcus sighs. She mounts, and it is the human spirit mounting. He presses his hands together. A stillness accompanies her ascent. Does Jehane enjoy silence as acclaim? She climbs—ah, the successful aerialist—and reaches the landing, where she will meet Oskar descending.

  ON

  THE

  WAVES

  IN THE churning wake of a motorboat from one of the luxury hotels, the gondola bobbed with graceful disequilibrium. The tall, thin, handsome man sitting in the gondola gripped the sides of the small wooden craft and said to his seven-year-old daughter, “Hold on.” He thought, Gondolas are atavistic.