The Night of Trees

by Thomas Williams

  “Your father was looking good this morning, Murray,” Saul said. “In the tiptop of health. Someday I will tell him what a good boy. You don’t have any idea how much this is to Mae and Sophie—and Orson. Mae told how we could trust you and depend on you. I believe it.”

  “I always said so!” Mae rushed over to Murray and put her arms around his shoulders, and for a second he had trouble keeping his balance. He felt surrounded, suffocated, and he thought with nostalgia of his dormitory room, with its dented furniture and its hard, impersonal bed.

  When Saul had left, Mae became anxious that Murray have enough sleep. He was in training, all right, as far as she was concerned, and she sent him upstairs to take a bath and then to lie down in the guest room. He found that he could, at least in the bathtub, forget for moments at a time what he had to do. But then it would come back, and he was sure that the abortion part of it was not the thing that bothered him the most. It was the asking part, and even the money they would pay the doctor did not make it any less an act of begging. He had no reservations about the abortion; that was a simple operation and had no bad connotations to him, nor did his having to pretend that he had made a girl pregnant; that was life, and perfectly normal. But he would have to sneak and ask, and he was horrified by that. He could never sell, and could never ask for things which might be given only grudgingly. He had to have a clear and perfect right. If they all thought he was a good friend to them because of what he had to ask, rather than the asking itself, then he was a hypocrite. That was too bad, but he would suffer enough just the same.

  They would go to the two doctors’ offices—providing they couldn’t get the first one to do it—without the imperative of sickness, without the proof of disease or the broken bones that give one a clear right to ask for cure. He rubbed his hand over the unfamiliar bedspread’s little cotton tufts, and they felt like nipples, where he shouldn’t have had his hand; he felt the way he did just after he had first successfully masturbated; a feeling of excruciating shock, as if a current of electricity were constantly running through his body. That, and the horrid but fascinating thrill of possibility. That, and the desire to run back to comforting childhood. In part it was the penalty for growing up, and would be there no matter how wonderful were the rewards.

  Later, when Sophie came in to find him lying there in his shorts, he didn’t want to see her. He wanted to hide himself, but was embarrassed to cover himself up with the bedspread. He couldn’t tell her to go away. She brought her portable phonograph with her, and made him listen to a singer named Herky Fleming, who was fifteen years old, and whom she was mad about.

  She handled the record carefully, her face dedicated; she really wanted him to like it too. The music, when it started, seemed familiar enough. First came the coarse rock ’n’ roll beat, brutal and simple, and the blatting saxophone in mindless, repeated bursts as crude and unmusical as a belch. Sophie moved to this rhythm, her feet tapping, with an expression on her face that was nothing like her—it was an imitation of an imitation of joy; if it had been wholehearted it might have been more believable, but alone, in Murray’s doubting presence, she was subdued, and her little gestures were tentative, even faint. Fingers and thumbs touched, but made no noise; eyes stared back up into the head in imitation of unconsciousness, but remained open, as if they were looking at their own brows. After a while she looked at him questioningly and he shrugged.

  “Wait—wait—wait,” she said rhythmically, and then, knowing the record by heart, she said, “Now!” and suddenly the rock ’n’ roll stopped, and one thin, high note of an organ, so clear and sustained it brought to mind the long nave of a Gothic cathedral, gradually increased in volume, as if the listener approached the altar. Far in the distance, hushed at first by the holy atmosphere of the place, came sweet, virginal strings—violins, cellos, all clear and pure, bound together by a flute that did a dainty obbligato. Only then he realized that the flute and the violins were restating the rock ’n’ roll theme. More instruments were added, and the organ and delicate chimes indicated high holiness and grandeur. Far away a chorus of what must have been vestal virgins sang alleluia, as faint and inevitable as wind, and they faded as the voice of a boy—a voice that was at the same time weirdly immature and yet as smooth and experienced as an elderly castrato’s, sweetly innocent and yet perverted, half sang, half reverently whispered the words:

  “My girl has changed from cotton to silk,

  And now she melts my heart.

  The adults do not understand

  She’s taken a new part.

  “Though just teenage, she has grown up

  Into a lovely thing:

  No matter what they say I will

  Give her a golden ring.

  “When we go to our wedding hop,

  With all the Dee Jays there,

  Then our folks will understand

  We make a perfect pair.”

  Then the chorus of virgins began to rise again, in litany, repeating the words, and subtly the wedding march from Lohengrin appeared, faded, turned minor, and was sustained and finally assimilated by an insistent beat, as if the vestal virgins had begun to stomp. The belch of the saxophone was then appropriate, and came triumphantly down the aisle as the original high A-flat of the organ rose, not to compete, but to join in. Higher and higher the volume and the excitement rose, until the cathedral rocked, and the priests blew hysterical saxophones and fell to their backs to blow crazy, and the choir had bongos. Baal was in the church, gyrating, grinding, ecstatic—and then it was over except for the thin high, holy note which suggested eternity and which faded imperceptibly in the distance, through the years, diminishing until the faint hiss of the needle on the record was all that could be heard.

  With the quiet, subdued air of an undertaker adjusting a necessary crank, Sophie removed the needle; then, still trancelike, she hummed the melody, and swayed. Her dungarees were belted tightly, painfully around the waist, and her boy’s shirt was freshly starched. Murray got up and put on his pants.

  “Well,” Sophie said, “isn’t it?”

  “Isn’t it what?”

  “I mean it just is, isn’t it?”

  “Well, it didn’t quite make me puke, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Oh, Murray!”

  “I don’t understand you, Sophie. Sometimes you seem pretty grown up, and then you go for that sickening goop.”

  “You’re too old, Murray. You’re getting too old,” she said sadly. “All the romance has gone out of your life.” But she didn’t seem too angry about it. “You’re just mean to say that. It happens to be my favorite record!” Then she immediately suggested that they go out in back of the carport and play basketball, and they did for a while, under a basket that had been set up on one of the uprights, until Murray found that the only pair of pants he’d brought were getting dirty. Sophie never hesitated to give him some solid and illegal body checks; she was pretty good, and she wanted to win.

  Dinner wasn’t too painful, although at times waves of actual, physical pain—waves that came with a disconcerting lack of cause—seemed to dash up against him, like ice water, whenever he looked forward to evening. Orson got out an old, half-full bottle of Scotch and made Murray a stiff Scotch and soda before they ate. He had finally managed to be able to look Murray in the eye and to address him directly; he was proud of his seltzer bottle in which he carbonated his own water by means of little carbon dioxide cartridges, and he made much of this process. He didn’t drink very often himself, and so made much, too, of the hearty business of mixing the two drinks.

  Saul had a beer. He had come out on the Long Island Rail Road and by taxi, and would ride back to town with them in Orson’s car.

  Murray made himself eat the steak, but the pudding was too much. By the time of the pudding they were, under Saul’s leadership, talking so determinedly about something other than Sophie’s problems that they hummed and hesitated right in the middle of words. Perhaps most difficult was that occasionally
Murray would look up to see Mae, who had, like a woman, moments of hideous truth she had to act upon in spite of the manufactured talk, staring at him out of wet and loving eyes, her food forgotten even in her mouth.

  He was a boy, and didn’t care for this kind of admiration—not from women; not from women who were old; especially not from women who were related to him. He wanted to deny all the goodness they attributed to him, and ask them what else could he have done? Knowing that much more than dumbly acting out the part of a father would be needed from him, he had to be convincing, too, and that would exactly measure his courage.

  Each completion—drink, dinner, dessert—destroyed their memories and hushed them, and the talk would end in the middle of a word. When they had finished eating they stood, silently. When they had put on their coats they stood, silently. When they had all arranged themselves in Orson’s car they gazed at Orson’s busy, cramped face as he twisted his neck to back the car out into the street.

  Sophie sat next to Murray and never said a word as they rode, protected, smooth, past the lights and dismal streets and finally across the long bridge into Manhattan. The evening would always in Murray’s memory be strangely bearable, and he would remember most clearly the feeling that his face was made of cement, and that, oddly, because it was no prow or grill of a car or nose of a fuselage (a memory of model airplanes), his face just kept pushing along, pushing along from one place to another.

  In Saul’s apartment, after they sat down and then convulsively stood up again, came the question of money. Murray was then redoing by nervousness and habit his tour of Saul’s paintings: Peter Blume, Abraham Rattner, George Grosz—wild people, but here to Saul’s taste in their mildest moods. The apartment itself was old, high-ceilinged, and the doorknobs were not knobs at all but fancy molded brass that always made Murray think of old-fashioned bathroom faucets; it seemed unsafe for such an antique set of rooms, with such antique fixtures, to be ’way up on the tenth floor, as if he had found himself flying, in a nightmare, in the Victorian gondola of one of Jules Verne’s airships.

  He was being expected—not actually summoned—back to the family, and he felt their desire to get down to business. As he came back toward them Orson began to take handfuls of hundred-dollar bills from his pockets and to make little piles of them on the coffee table.

  “Wallet,” he said, tapping one pile. “Watch pocket.” He solicitously, with delicacy that was almost love, straightened one bill that was out of line. “Right hand pants’ pocket.” Two more bills here. Saul and Mae nodded; this had all been agreed upon. Sophie looked mildly superior, somewhat bored. She wore her most plain, yet sophisticated black wool dress, and didn’t look quite so young as usual.

  “There!” Orson said, and they all watched Murray put the money in the proper places.

  “A lot of money,” Saul said. There were twelve hundred-dollar bills in all.

  “Start at five hundred,” Orson said, and pulled his pants pockets inside out with a snap. “There’s more money there than I earn in a month, and I keep running!” He held the white linings of his pockets out, and his pants came up above his socks to show the white, hairless cylinders of his calves.

  “You want a receipt? Go ahead, Murray, give him a receipt!” Sophie said this, in her most bitter, nasty voice—the imitation that, from the young, has none of the softening or tentativeness of such words from an adult. It was shocking, naked as a declaration of true hate. Orson took a step and slapped her—not very hard—and her face at that moment was so stiff, so callow and sharp it seemed to Murray that Orson must have hurt his hand on it. It really seemed as though he had, because he began to sob. “Har har har,” he cried, and ran out into the foyer. Because of his pockets—little white wings—he seemed to go hippity-hop. They heard him sobbing out by the coat closet.

  “That was unkind,” Saul said to Sophie. Mae went out to comfort Orson.

  “Well, he didn’t have to hit me,” Sophie said.

  “He didn’t hit you. He could if he wanted knock you out the window.” Saul looked at her steadily. “If I was your father I would hit harder. Like thisl” And unbelievably, Saul took her arm, turned her around, and gave her a solid whack upon the buttock. A good, hard one. Murray could almost feel it himself, it was so quick and made such a flat sound against Sophie’s behind. Now she began to cry herself, and leaned against her grandfather, one arm around his waist, one hand rubbing her buttock. Saul patted her on the back. “Don’t hurt your father,” he said. “Be a good girl and don’t hurt your mother and father.”

  Then Saul brought them all back together again, and Orson told Murray to start low, while Mae worshiped Murray’s nobility with her moist eyes. Sophie stood gravely at his side while they all said goodbye and good luck and we’ll see you later.

  In the taxi his feet danced upon the rubber mat; his palms sweat. Sophie was quiet in her corner, and he watched the people on the streets, all of whom seemed to be going at right angles to him, and whose destinations he envied. The first doctor had his offices in a dark brownstone with polished brass spears and knobs around the steps, and the windows in the door were so clean they seemed not to be there at all. His wife was his receptionist, and she came with a wee face like a bat and questioned them. Her face was dark gray, and her skinny arms grew darker toward the places where they connected to her body, as if she were sick in those places. When he told her that he had been referred by Mrs. Greene of Yonkers—the code words in this instance—her little black eyes began to see. He didn’t bother to remember the words she said, being as he was in such a fit of insecurity. Enough to remember that she truly believed that he and his whore were filthy, had sinned, were damned, would burn in hell, would join in excrement and blackness and hot wind the seventh circle and that their bloody fetus would scream curses at them for its bastardy and murder.

  “How does it feel?” she whined triumphantly. “ Do you feel hot now? Do you, girly? Do you feel like spreading your legs now?”

  They left soon, and Murray never knew if he had failed a test or not. “Goodbye,” he said in a polite, even friendly voice, “good night.” He looked back once, and she was watching them through the spotless glass. Maybe it had been a test of his need; he should have begged a little, and asked to see the doctor, anyway. But he never told that to Sophie.

  The next doctor’s name was Stein, and he had his offices in the theatrical district. They had to wait with many others in a small, bright waiting room furnished with Swedish chairs. There were real, original oil paintings on the walls: one of them looked almost like a Pollock, one almost like a Miró. After the nurse took their name (just one, and they had decided upon Berman) and Murray had looked quickly at the paintings, he sat imprisoned in his chair and wouldn’t look at Sophie or any of the people. He looked only at Life magazine, as if his head were in a vise, and never afterward could he remember one thing about the other people who sat there, except that they were all adults and all quiet.

  One of the pictures in the magazine was of a couple who stood on the beach where their child had just drowned; he came upon the page unaware, and he looked at their faces as they looked at the sea and it seemed all at once that life was far too dangerous. He wanted to cry for the two stricken people, and he wanted to hide. In another copy of Life he came, similarly naked, exactly as unprepared, upon the picture of a sad, sick dog, and on the sad dog’s shaved, bloody neck was sewn the amputated upper body, just the front half, of another, smaller dog—a mutt, a stunned, white-haired mutt with his paws awry and his long tongue hanging out. And Murray was deeply sick, deeper than nausea, as if he had been shown too much of a perverted sweetness, a heavy sweetness composed of his own brutal fascination and the unlimited sadism of the human race.

  They waited for nearly an hour, and then the nurse called for Mr. and Mrs. Berman and they went into the doctor’s office. The nurse took them in and then withdrew with what seemed to Murray to be a knowing discreetness. Dr. Stein, muscular and middle-aged, sat at his
desk and looked them over. His face and balding head seemed to be nothing but various shades of red, all pale, as if he were nearly an albino. He asked them to sit down, and his light brown eyes, too, seemed washed-out and reddish. He wore a light green surgical smock, short-sleeved, and his big red-freckled arms glistened. While Murray decided how to begin, the doctor watched, and though he hadn’t had much luck with the code words before, Murray decided to use them immediately—Dr. Stein, at least, was not a woman.

  “We were referred by Dr. Diamond,” he said.

  “Which Dr. Diamond do you mean?” the doctor asked, raising his big arms. “There’s a hell of a lot of Dr. Diamonds. New York’s full of Dr. Diamonds.”

  “I don’t know which one,” Murray said, and Dr. Stein bugged his eyes at him. It seemed almost as if he had little muscles just for eye-bugging; his eyes slid out as if on stalks, while his reddish face stayed behind.

  “Who referred you to Dr. Diamond? Who gave you his name?”

  “I can’t tell you, Doctor,” Murray said, and was aware that he pretended more frustration than he actually felt. He pretended to be strangled. “I’d like to, but I can’t! I promised not to.”

  “Ah,” the doctor said, and his eyes went back in. He lowered his arms, finally, to the desk, and no longer looked as if he were about to catch a basketball. “I take it that the young lady is in trouble.”

  “Yes!” Murray said, relieved.

  “My advice is to get married.”

  “We can’t do that,” Murray said quickly. It seemed to him that he had begun to fail again, that he was too calm. No, he was neither calm, nor calm looking, he was sure, but his symptoms were cold and incorrect, and would not please Dr. Stein.