Violet and Boris were each with a stranded piece nearby, to begin moving this piece towards the larger one: Boris, using as leverage a stiff segment of cigarette-tobacco, rolled and pushed from behind, while Violet had taken one of her own blonde hairs, and herself ahead, dragged the load in a loop. This arrangement, however, perhaps because of the weight of the mercury, allowed the hair to go under the load, to strain, and slip away.
“It nearly broke then,” said Violet once, thinking obviously of the hair and the moment of strain before the tension broke, and how with that sudden snap of tension she could have fallen over, perhaps even into this near fissure, being near the edge herself and as high as she was.
“It’s probably cooler to roll it,” said Boris then, working close to the edge. And so saying, he drew his first load up sharp just before the silver mother, and around to one side, was pushing from behind, now with his fingernail, as they watched the great silent fusion: how these two surfaces touched, weighed heavily each against the other, arcs flattened, straining black in the silver, and then in an instant’s quaver, bent one over one, and collapsed whole with the great slush of soft cold metal.
By the time Priscilla and Aaron came down, the center place had been cleared of all except the one big piece, and Violet and Boris were working away to the left, bringing, as was necessary now, the outlying pieces of mercury over one, two, and sometimes three wide cracks in the floor.
So that these two, in their turn, began working the other side, Priscilla facile with a bit of broom-straw, Aaron less so, yet very sure, with a matchstick.
But once now Priscilla stopped as speaking to them all, and said:
“If you merge several small ones so they make a large one, then you can take them all in one trip.”
And she sat so erect in the silence while the others went on, heads down, even as unhearing, so engaged was each, that she had to say:
“Don’t you agree?”
And only then could someone speak, as from another room:
“What’s the hurry?”
“Well, no,” said Priscilla, even scowling, “but I mean there’s no sense in being irrational about it, is there?”
“Forget it,” said Aaron with four pieces lined up on the brink of an adjacent crack, driving them across like golfballs. Still the last one failed to clear, rising early in flight, taking the most gradual arc to strike the opposite wall and fall, so slowly, to the bottom of the chasm. And Aaron leaned on his stick there, sullenly, looking after it.
“See,” said Priscilla, who had watched, almost wringing her hands, “if you had put them all together, it would have rolled right over!”
“I topped it,” said Aaron.
“Now we’ll never get it,” the girl went on, hopeless.
Violet, lying on her stomach, put her head down, laughing.
Yet Aaron heard only Priscilla, seeing her face very close for an instant. “Why not?” he said, his voice tense, but at once lighter, as if perhaps in what he had seen there then he had somehow been mistaken. “Of course we’ll get it,” he said, “. . . come on, I see it already.”
And for the moment they worked together, but then Priscilla had to say repeatedly: “You’ve got to pull it! You’ve got to pull it!”
“It’s actually cooler to roll it,” said Aaron, distant, as though to himself, “. . . that way you’re behind it.”
“In case anything goes wrong, that is,” said Violet without raising her head.
Priscilla stopped short. “What do you mean?” she fairly hissed; but when Violet didn’t answer at once, she turned back, haughty, speaking rapidly, as though really unconcerned: “There’s another advantage to merging the small ones,” she said, “they’ll roll right over the crack.”
Now that all the apparent pieces had been returned to the great mother piece, what they continued to do individually took on the nature of a treasure-hunt—with occasional discoveries, in the fissures or behind a nailhead, which excited the attention of the others. Yet once, as perhaps was sure to happen now, Priscilla sat singly, simply staring for a long while down.
“What is it?” asked Aaron when he saw, quietly this time, so as not to involve the others.
“Down there,” the girl said, pointing, while Aaron peered, not really seeing it, not as she did, there in the fissure, as crouched deep dark, glinting in a false-promise of silver blue, gray as death through the snarl of lint.
Then he did see, though surely never as she saw, and he moved to go down with her, yet stopped. “What’s the matter?” he asked gently, nudging her, meaning simply that she should lean over with him.
“Nothing,” she said, “you go,” and she laughed, a little nervous.
Aaron snorted. “Come on,” he said, “well both go.”
And so, heads together, they leaned over, to stare down into this crack in the floor, eyes like diamonds, to see what the girl had found.
It was dark there, and it was narrow—so narrow that Aaron could not use his match, but must take Priscilla’s straw and poke into the very heart of the thing.
“Not like that,” she said, breathless, touching his wrist in something now beyond alarm.
Aaron shook her away, yet would work the straw more gingerly now, less deep, nearer the tangled edge—while Violet, risen to one elbow, watched as mesmerized, and Boris frowned once and shook his head. “You shouldn’t let it bug you,” he said, for it seemed that then, at the point of the straw, just where it disappeared into the gray, there was a sudden treacherous movement, as of the angry living thing inside, and Priscilla screamed at the top of her voice.
Violet and Boris frowned terribly, and for a moment Aaron sat agape, like a stricken mute—but then it was he who had to put Priscilla, sobbing now, onto the bed, and to move around and around trying to calm her and tell her not to worry, baby, that it wasn’t anything, baby, wasn’t anything at all.
“I know, I know,” said Priscilla.
“You shouldn’t let it bug you,” said Boris from the floor, where very high on a heavy straight ledge, he was at that moment bringing two minute pieces together, merging them.
“I know, I know,” said Priscilla, whimpering her gratitude—for she probably thought he was talking to her.
You’re Too Hip, Baby
THE SORBONNE, WHERE Murray was enrolled for a doctorate, required little of his time; class attendance was not compulsory and there were no scheduled examinations. Having received faculty approval on the subject of his thesis—“The Influence of Mallarmé on the English Novel Since 1940”—Murray was now engaged in research in the libraries, developing his thesis, writing it, and preparing himself to defend it at some future date of his own convenience. Naturally he could attend any lectures at the University which he considered pertinent to his work, and he did attend them from time to time—usually those of illustrious guest speakers, like Cocteau, Camus, and Sartre, or Marcel Raymond, author of From Baudelaire to Surrealism. But for the most part, Murray devoted himself to less formal pursuits; he knew every Negro jazz musician in every club in Paris.
At night he made the rounds. If there was someone really great in town he would sit at the same bar all evening and listen to him; otherwise he made the rounds, one club after another, not drinking much, just listening to the music and talking to the musicians. Then, toward morning, he would go with them to eat—down the street to the Brasserie Civet or halfway across Paris to a place in Montmartre that served spareribs and barbecued chicken.
What was best though was to hang around the bar of his own hotel, the Noir et Blanc, in the late afternoon during a rehearsal or a closed session. At these times everyone was very relaxed, telling funny stories, drinking Pernod, and even turning on a bit of hashish or marijuana, passing it around quite openly, commenting on its quality. Murray derived a security from these scenes—the hushed camaraderie and the inside jokes. Later, in the evening, when the place was jumping, Murray kept himself slightly apart from the rest of the crowd—the tourists, the
students, the professional beats, and the French de bonne famille—who all came to listen to the great new music. And always during the evening there would be at least one incident, like the famous tenor-man’s casually bumming a cigarette from him, which would prove Murray’s intimacy with the group to those who observed. Old acquaintances from Yale, who happened in, found Murray changed; they detected in his attitude toward them, their plans, and their expressed or implied values a sort of bemused tolerance—as though he were in possession of a secret knowledge. And then there would be the inevitable occasion when he was required to introduce them to one of the musicians, and that obvious moment when the musician would look to Murray for his judgment of the stranger as in the question: “Well, man, who is this cat? Is he with it?” None of this lessened Murray’s attractiveness, nor his mystery, no less to others, presumably, than to himself; but he was never too hard on his old friends—because he was swinging.
When the Negro pianist Buddy Talbott was hired, along with a French drummer and bass, to play the Noir et Blanc, he and his wife had been in Paris for only three days. It was their first time out of the States, and except for a few band jobs upstate, it was their first time out of New York City.
Toward the end of the evening, during a break, Murray went into the men’s room. Buddy Talbott was there alone, in front of the mirror, straightening his tie. Their eyes fixed for an instant in the glass as Murray entered and walked over to the urinal; the disinfectant did not obscure a thin smell of hashish recently smoked in the room. Murray nodded his head in the direction of the bandstand beyond the wall. “Great sound you got there, man,” he said, his voice flat, almost weary in its objectiveness. Buddy Talbott had a dark and delicate face which turned slowly, reluctantly it seemed, from the glass to Murray, smiling, and he spoke now in soft and precisely measured tones: “Glad you like it.”
And, for the moment, no more was said, Murray knowing better than that.
Although Murray smoked hashish whenever it was offered, he seldom took the trouble to go over to the Arab quarter and buy any himself; but he always knew where to get the best. And the next evening, when Buddy Talbott came into the men’s room, Murray was already there.
They exchanged nods, and Murray wordlessly handed him the smoking stick, scarcely looking at him as he did, walking past to the basin—as though to spare him witness to even the merest glimpse of hesitancy, of apprehension, calculation, and finally, of course, of perfect trust.
“I’ve got a box, man,” Murray said after a minute, by which he meant record player, “and some new Monk—you know, if you ever want to fall by. . . .” He dried his hands carefully, looking at the towel. “Upstairs here,” he said, “in number eight. My name is on the door—‘Murray.’ ”
The other nodded, savoring the taste, holding it. “I’d like to very much,” he said finally, and added with an unguarded smile, “Murray.” At which Murray smiled too, and touching his arm lightly said: “Later, man.” And left.
The hash seemed to have a nice effect on Buddy’s playing. Certainly it did on Murray’s listening—every note and nuance came straight to him, through the clatter of service at the bar and the muttered talk nearby, as though he were wearing earphones wired to the piano. He heard subtleties he had missed before, intricate structures of sound, each supporting the next, first from one side, then from another, and all being skillfully laced together with a dreamlike fabric of comment and insinuation; the runs did not sound either vertical or horizontal, but circular ascensions, darting arabesques and figurines; and it was clear to Murray that the player was constructing something there on the stand . . . something splendid and grandiose, but perfectly scaled to fit inside this room, to sit, in fact, alongside the piano itself. It seemed, in the beginning, that what was being erected before him was a castle, a marvelous castle of sound . . . but then, with one dramatic minor—just as the master builder might at last reveal the nature of his edifice in adding a single stone—Murray saw it was not a castle being built, but a cathedral. “Yeah, man,” he said, nodding and smiling. A cathedral—and, at the same time, around it the builder was weaving a strange and beautiful tapestry, covering the entire structure. At first the image was too bizarre, but then Murray smiled again as he saw that the tapestry was, of course, being woven inside the cathedral, over its interior surface, only it was so rich and strong that it sometimes seemed to come right through the walls. And then Murray suddenly realized—and this was the greatest of all, because he was absolutely certain that only he and Buddy knew—that the fantastic tapestry was being woven, quite deliberately, face against the wall. And he laughed aloud at this, shaking his head, “Yeah, man,” the last magnificent irony, and Buddy looked up at the sound, and laughed too.
After the set, Buddy came over and asked Murray if he wanted a drink. “Let’s take a table,” he said. “My old lady’s coming to catch the last set.”
“Solid,” said Murray, so soft and without effort that none would have heard.
They sat down at a table in the corner.
“Man, that sure is fine gage,” Buddy said.
Murray shrugged.
“Glad you like it,” he said then, a tone with an edge of mock haughtiness, just faintly mimicking that used by Buddy when they had met; and they both laughed, and Buddy signaled the waiter.
“I was wondering,” said Buddy after the waiter had left, “if you could put me onto some of that.”
Murray yawned. “Why don’t you meet me tomorrow,” he said quietly. “I could take you over to the café and, you know, introduce you to the guy.”
Buddy nodded, and smiled. “Solid,” he said.
Buddy’s wife, Jackie, was a tall Negro girl, sort of lank, with great eyes, legs, and a lovely smile.
“What we’d like to do,” she said, “is to make it here—you know, like live here—at least for a couple of years anyway.”
“It’s the place for living all right,” said Murray.
Murray was helpful in much more than introducing them to a good hash connection. Right away he found them a better and cheaper room, and nearer the Noir et Blanc. He showed Jackie how to shop in the quarter, where to get the best croissants, and what was the cheap wine to buy. He taught them some French and introduced them to the good inexpensive restaurants. He took them to see L’ge d’Or at the Cinémathèque, to the catacombs, to the rib joint in Montmartre, to hear Marcel Raymond speak at the Sorbonne, to the Flea Market, to the Musée Guimet, Musée de l’Homme, to the evening exhibitions at the Louvre. . . . Sometimes Murray would have a girl with him, sometimes not; or on some Sundays when the weather was fine he would get someone with a car, or borrow it himself, and they would all drive out to the Bois de Boulogne and have a picnic, or to Versailles at night. Then again, on certain nights early, or when Buddy wasn’t playing, they might have dinner in Buddy and Jackie’s room, listening to records, smoking a piece of hash now and then, eating the red beans and rice, the fish, ribs, and chicken that Jackie cooked. The most comfortable place in the small room was the bed, and after a while the three of them were usually lying or half reclining across it, except when one of them would get up to put on more records, get a drink, or go to the bathroom, everything very relaxed, not much talk, occasionally someone saying something funny or relating a strange thing they had seen or heard, and frequently, too, just dozing off.
Once Murray bought a pheasant, had it cooked, and brought it up to their room, along with a couple of bottles of chilled Liebfraumilch, some wild rice, asparagus, and strawberries and cream.
Jackie was quite excited, opening the packages. “You’re too much, baby,” she said, giving Murray a kiss on the cheek.
“What’s the grand occasion, man?” asked Buddy, beaming at him.
Murray shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to dream one up,” he said.
“I guess we will,” said Buddy smiling, and he started slicing up a piece of hash.
Afterward they lay across the bed, smoking and listening to music.
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” said Murray, while they were listening to Billie, “that there aren’t any great ofay singers.”
The others seemed to consider it.
“Anita O’Day is all right,” said Jackie.
“Yeah, but I mean you wouldn’t compare her with Billie, would you,” said Murray.
“Some of the French chicks swing,” said Buddy absently, “. . . Piaf . . . and what’s that other chick’s name. . . .”
“Yeah, but I mean like that’s something else, isn’t it,” said Murray.
Buddy shrugged, passing the cigarette, “Yeah, I guess so,” he said, sounding half asleep; but his eyes were open, and for several minutes he lay simply staring at Murray with an expression of mild curiosity on his face.
“Murray,” he asked finally, “did you want to learn piano . . . or what?” Then he laughed, as though he might not have meant it to sound exactly like that, and he got up to get some wine.
Jackie laughed too. “Maybe he just likes you, baby—ever think of that?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Buddy, making a joke of it now, pouring the wine, “that ought to be considered.” He was still smiling, almost sheepishly. “Well, here’s to friendship then,” he said, taking a sip.
“You’re making me cry,” said Murray in his flat, weary voice, and they all laughed.
Then it was time for Buddy to go to the club.
“I’ll make it over with you, man,” said Murray, slowly raising himself up on the bed.
“Stick around,” said Buddy, putting on his tie. “Nothing’s happening there yet—you can come over later with Jackie.”
“That seems like a good idea,” said Jackie.
Murray sat there, staring at nothing.
“It’s cool, man,” said Buddy smiling and giving Murray an elaborate wink of conspiracy, “it’s cool. I mean, you know—make it.”
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