Back in her apartment, she saw the trap he had laid for her. The conversation in the book was mostly in Sicilian dialect. Libby, who was used to the pure Tuscan, nearly passed away. In fact, she was not even sure it was Sicilian; the characters seemed to be peasants and small landowners, and the village they inhabited could be anywhere. She thought of dashing up to Vassar to consult Mr. Roselli, but, woe was her, he was on sabbatical leave, and the other members of the department, who were not her particular friends, would probably broadcast the fact that she had fled back to college for help. A small voice told her to return the book to Mr. LeRoy and admit that it was too hard for her, but she could not face the thought; this would give him an excuse to tell her that she was through.
Libby took a stance in the middle of her living room, one hand clapped to her brow, the other holding the book outstretched in a declamatory manner. “Lost, lost, all lost,” she exclaimed. “Farewell, sweet maid.” She then staggered to the couch and reopened the book—521 pages! It fell from her pale, limp hand, the leaves sadly fluttering. One of the big features of living alone was that you could talk to yourself all you wanted and address imaginary audiences, running the gamut of emotion. She rose from the sofa now, shaking her head, and went to contemplate herself in the mirror, scrutinizing her features as if for the last time. Then, shifting mood, she gave herself a nudge in the ribs and went to feed her lovebirds some lettuce, reminding herself that she still had a week in which to cope. “Be brave!” she clarioned, popping on her hat, and stamped out to Alice MacCollister’s to dinner, where she saw a girl she knew, eating with a man. Stopping by their table on the way out, Libby instantly confided her problems with this Italian novel, which she showed them, having brought it along, with her pocket dictionary, to work on during dinner. “We saw you!” the girl said. “Gosh, it must make you feel important to have a job like that!” “I may not have it long,” Libby prophesied. “Five hundred and twenty-one pages of the thickest Sicilian. And me nurtured on Dante.”
She did not get her report done till late the following Sunday, though she stayed home nearly the whole weekend and did not even do the Times crossword puzzle. Her summary of the plot was short. Some features of the action had baffled her, despite some heavy work with the atlas and the dictionaries in the Public Library. She described the book as a “study of the agrarian problems of modern Italy, seen against the background of a feudal past. Don Alfonso, the protagonist, representative of the old order, is at odds with the mayor of the village, who stands for progress and innovation. The peasants, who are sharply characterized and who speak a rich, racy idiom redolent of the sty and the barnyard, are divided between the point of view of Don Alfonso and that of the mayor, Don Onofrio. Don Onofrio’s daughter, Eufemia, is drawn into the political struggle and is stabbed by accident during a tumultuous meeting in the piazza. The peasants treat her as a saint and attempt to venerate her remains. The parish priest intervenes. The carabinieri appear, and order is finally restored, after a ‘miracle’ worked at the tomb of Donna Eufemia. This occurs just as the obsequies of Don Alfonso, the last of his race, are being performed and suggests an intended symbolism. There is much curious folklore, well presented, particularly the tapestry or, better, mosaic of pagan belief, Christian superstition, and primitive animism seen darkly glittering in the minds of the peasants, as in some ancient, dim-lit, bat-flittery church with its uneven pavement marked by the worn, sunken tombs of Norman Crusaders and the clerestory upheld by defaced pillars ravaged from Greek temples. The political ‘slant’ of the author is not sufficiently defined. Where does he stand in the struggle? With Don Alfonso or with the mayor? He does not say, but it is important that we, as readers, should know. The place assigned the ‘miracle’ tends to make us believe that he stands with the mayor; ergo, with present-day Italy and Il Duce. The carabinieri enter as virtual deliverers. If we attempt to peer into the cauldron of boiling minestra which this tale constitutes, we are driven back by the steam of pungent, scalding language. But this reader, at any rate, could not escape the suspicion that the author has written an apologia for the corporate state. For this reason, I would register a negative opinion on the book’s chances here.”
Libby had often heard her aunt in Fiesole say that Mussolini was doing the Italians a great deal of good; and she had been thrilled herself as a little girl by the Blackshirt rallies in the Piazza della Signoria. But she had tried to look at the novel from Mr. LeRoy’s point of view, what with Ethiopia and Haile Selassie and the League, and she felt pleased, on the whole, with her “effort” when she brought it in to him on Monday, especially with the way she had managed to suggest that the book was laid in Sicily without actually naming it, in case she might be wrong.
She sat there lacing her fingers as he glanced through her report. “Sounds like a damned opera,” he remarked, raising his eyes from the first sentences. Libby just waited. He went on reading and suddenly shot her a quizzing look from under his bushy brows. He put her blue folder down, pulled the silk cord abstractedly, raised one pained eyebrow as if he had tic doloureux, and slowly lit his pipe. “Oh me oh my!” he commented. He was chuckling. “What book did you read?” he demanded and handed her the first reader’s report. “… a too-little-known classic of militant Italian liberalism tempered with Chekhovian pity and ironic detachment …The author, whose place in Italian letters was made by this one novel, died in 1912. …”
Libby was speechless. “Sound of hollow laughter,” she said finally, venturing a peal of same. “I can explain,” she went on. “It’s not important,” he said. “I can see how you were misled. Probably customs and manners haven’t changed much in Italy in the last fifty years.” “The words out of my mouth!” ejaculated Libby, almost bounding out of her chair with relief. “Time has stood still in the Mezzogiorno. That’s what I was going to say. I thought the author was trying to emphasize the backwardness. You know, that it was part of his thesis. Oh, did you ever hear anything so funny? But I’ll have to redo my report. ‘In the light of recent discoveries’—ha, ha. If you’ll just give it back to me …” She turned her bright face anxiously to him, realizing that she had become horribly nervous, which was the effect his musing silences had on her.
He sighed. “Miss MacAusland,” he said, “I’m going to have to give it to you straight. I think you’d better look for some other kind of work. Have you ever thought of trying for a job with a literary agent? Or on one of the women’s magazines? You’ve got a real writing talent, believe me, and plenty of drive. But you’re not cut out for straight publishing.” “But why?” said Libby quite calmly; now that the blow had fallen, she felt an actual relief; she was only curious as to what he would say—not concerned. He puffed on his pipe. “I don’t know that I can explain it to you. I’ve tried in my own mind to figure out exactly what’s wrong. You just don’t have the knack or maybe the common sense or the nose or whatever it is for picking out a publishable manuscript. Or let’s say you’re not hard-boiled enough. You’re essentially a sympathizer. That’s why I see you with a literary agent. You keep telling me you want to work with authors. Well, that’s what agents do, work hand in glove with them, especially on magazine stuff. Encourage them; ride them; tell them what to cut; hold their hand; take them out to lunch.” “But publishers do that too,” put in Libby sharply. She had often pictured herself, in a snappy hat and suit, taking authors out to lunch on the expense account and discussing their work over coffee. “Those rumors are greatly exaggerated,” said Mr. LeRoy. “You probably think I lunch every day with famous authors at the Ritz. As a matter of fact, I eat at least two lunches a week alone in the Automat. I’m dieting. Today, I lunched with an agent—a damned smart one, a woman. She makes three times what I do.” Libby’s well-arched brows manifested surprise and incredulity. “That’s another thing, Miss MacAusland.” He leaned forward. “Publishing’s a man’s business. Book publishing, that is. Name me a woman, outside of Blanche Knopf, who married Alfred, who’s come to the top in book pub
lishing. You find them on the fringes, in publicity and advertising. Or you find them copy editing or reading proof. Old maids mostly, with a pencil behind their ear and dyspepsia. We’ve got a crackerjack here, Miss Chambers, who’s been with us twenty years. I think she was Vassar too. Or maybe Bryn Mawr. Vinegary type, with a long thin nose that looks as if it ought to have a drop on the end of it, a buttoned-up sweater, metal-rimmed glasses; a very smart, decent, underpaid, fine woman. Our galley slave; pardon the pun. No. Publishing’s a man’s business, unless you marry into it. Marry a publisher, Miss MacAusland, and be his hostess. Or make connections with an agent. Or work your way up in the slicks.”
“What a picture you conjure up,” said Libby thoughtfully, her chin cupped in her hand. “I wonder …Would you let me do an interview with you for the Vassar Alumnae Magazine?” Mr. LeRoy put up his hand. “I don’t think that would be in keeping with the firm’s policy,” he said stuffily. “Oh, but I wouldn’t have to name you, if you didn’t want. I could just take a few notes now. Or, better, if you were free some day for a cocktail …?” But he rudely brushed this aside. “We’re having sales conference this week, Miss MacAusland. And next week, let’s see—” he glanced at his desk calendar—“next week I have to be out of town.” He cleared his throat. “You can write what you want, of course, but I’d rather not be involved in it.” “I understand,” said Libby.
She started to get up then, till it dawned on her that she was just tamely accepting her dismissal without having heard one adequate reason. He was only talking in generalities, not telling her frankly where she had failed, so that she could have a chance to correct it. And if she did not think of something fast, she would have no excuse, like the interview, for seeing him again. What did you do in a case like that?
She lit a cigarette. “Couldn’t you try me at something else? Writing blurbs, for instance. I’m sure I could write blurbs.” He cut her short. “I fully agree that you could write very passable jacket copy. But that’s one of the mechanical trades in this business. No honor attaches to it. Everybody pitches in. I do it; all the editors do it; my secretary does it; the office boy does it. It comes down to this, Miss MacAusland; we really have no work that you’re uniquely qualified to do. You’re one of thousands of English majors who come pouring out of the colleges every June, stage-struck to go into publishing. Their families back them for a while; a year is about the limit. Till the girls finally find somebody to marry them and the boys go into something else.”
“And your opinion,” said Libby, “is that I’m just one of those. Those anonymous hordes.” “You’re more persevering,” he said, with a glance at his watch and a sigh. “And you say your family isn’t supporting you. Which makes your perseverance more redoubtable. And you do seem to have some eerie relation to literature. I wish you luck.” And with that, he was standing up and vigorously shaking her hand across the desk. Her lighted cigarette dropped on the rug. “Oh, my cigarette! Oh, horrors!” she cried. “Where is it?” “Never mind,” he said. “We’ll find it. Miss Bisbee!” he called, to his secretary, who promptly poked her head in the open doorway. “There’s a lighted cigarette in here somewhere. Find it, will you? And see that Miss MacAusland gets her check in the mail.” He grabbed up Libby’s coat and held it for her; the secretary was on her hands and knees scrabbling around the floor; Libby’s head was reeling with the shock and confusion. She took a step backward and, girls, can you imagine it, she fainted kerplunk into Mr. LeRoy’s arms!
It must have been the overheated office. Mr. LeRoy’s secretary told her afterward that she had turned quite green and the cold sweat had been standing out on her forehead. Just like the summer day her aunt was with her when she passed out cold in the Uffizi in front of “The Birth of Venus.” But Gus LeRoy (short for Augustus) was convinced it was because she was hungry—she confessed she had not eaten any lunch. He insisted on giving her $10 out of his own pocket and a dollar for a taxi besides. Then the next morning he rang her up and told her to go to see this literary agent who needed an assistant. So that now, lo and behold, she had this snazzy job at $25 a week, reading manuscripts and writing to authors and having lunch with editors. She and Gus LeRoy were the best of friends; he was married after all, she learned from her boss.
Nine
GUS LEROY MET POLLY Andrews at a party given by Libby in May the following year. It was 1936, and half the group were married. Of the old crowd, Libby had invited only Priss, who couldn’t come, and Polly and Kay; the others, she had rather lost sight of. She was serving a May bowle, made of Liebfraumilch and fresh strawberries and sweet woodruff. There was a special store where you could get the woodruff, dried and imported from Germany; it was over on Second Avenue, under the El, a dusty old German firm with apothecary jars and old apothecaries’ scales and mortars and pestles in the window. Polly could not possibly miss it, Libby said on the phone; it was right around the corner from where she lived, and she could stop and get the woodruff for Libby any day on her way home from work. If she brought it the day before the party, that would be in plenty of time; it only had to steep overnight. Polly worked as a technician at Cornell Medical Center, giving basal metabolism tests chiefly, which meant that she had to be at the hospital the first thing in the morning, when the patients woke up. But she got off early in the afternoons, which Libby didn’t, and took the Second Avenue El home quite often—she lived on Tenth Street, near St. Mark’s Place, almost catercorner from St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie, where the rector, Dr. Guthrie, had such beautiful liturgy, though Polly never took advantage of it and slept Sunday mornings.
The herbal firm was nine blocks from Polly’s place; trust Polly, who could be prickly in her mild, smiling, obstinate way, to let that transpire when she appeared with the woodruff at Libby’s apartment. But they were nine short blocks, dear, Libby retorted, and Polly could use the fresh air and exercise. When she heard Polly’s description of the shop’s display of pharmacopoeia—all the old herbs and simples and materia medica in big stoppered glass jars with the Latin names written in crabbed Gothic lettering—she was sorry she had not gone herself, in a taxi. But to reward Polly for her pains, Libby had taken them both out to dinner at a new place in the Village, and afterward they had come back to the apartment and got the bowle started and everything organized for the party. Polly had a passion for flowers (she did wonders that evening with Libby’s mountain dogwood), and she was efficient in the kitchen. Libby had persuaded her to make Mr. Andrews’ famous chicken-liver pâté, a receipt he had brought back from France, and, having splurged on chicken livers at the market, she stood by watching Polly sauter them and laboriously push them through a sieve. “Aren’t you doing them too rare?” she suggested. “Kay says she always cooks everything fifteen minutes longer than the recipe calls for.” Libby was scandalized by the amount of fresh print butter Polly mixed in afterward, plus brandy and sherry—no wonder the Andrews family was insolvent. But Polly was sweet to do it and tenacious about having her own way, once she started on something. All the Andrews were like that. Mr. Andrews, Polly said, clung to making his own stock and boiling it down for the glaze, but Polly consented to use Campbell’s consommé to line the mold, thank Heaven; otherwise, they would have been up till dawn. As it was, Libby was completely exhausted by the time Polly left. Just pushing those livers through a sieve had taken nearly an hour. She would not hear of Polly’s washing up; a colored maid was coming the next afternoon to clean and serve at the party.
Fortunately, Polly could take the Eighth Street bus home; it was a long walk from Libby’s place, just west of Fifth Avenue, and you had to pass some pretty sinister lofts and warehouses. Polly’s apartment, though in a fairly decent block, was not as attractive as Libby’s, which had high ceilings and a fireplace and windows almost down to the floor. In fact, it was flattery to call Polly’s an apartment. It was really a furnished room and bath, with a studio bed, which Polly had covered with a pretty patchwork quilt from home, and some worn Victorian chairs and a fu
nny old marble-topped table with lion’s-claw feet, and a two-burner hot plate and some shelves covered with bright-blue oilcloth in one white-curtained-off corner, and an icebox that leaked. At least it was clean; the family were professional people (actually, the wife was Vassar, Class of ’18), and Polly had made friends with the other lodgers—two refugees, one a white Russian and the other a German-Jewish socialist—and always had funny stories to tell about them and their violent discussions. Polly was a sympathetic soul; everybody she met told her their troubles and probably borrowed money from her. Yet, poor girl, her family could not afford to send her a cent. Her Aunt Julia, who lived on Park and Seventy-second, had given her some china and a chafing dish, but she did not realize how the other half lived; for one thing, she had heart trouble and could not climb Polly’s stairs. In her day, St. Mark’s Place had been a nice neighborhood, and she did not know that things had changed. Still, Polly’s apartment would be perfectly suitable if she did not have this habit of letting herself be imposed on by strangers. The German-Jewish man, for instance, Mr. Schneider, was constantly bringing her little presents, colored marzipan in the shape of fruits (once he brought her a marzipan hot dog, which for some reason delighted Polly), chocolate-covered ginger, a tiny pot with a St. Patrick’s Day shamrock, and in return Polly was helping him with his English, so that he could get a better job. This meant that almost every evening he was tapping at her door. Libby had met him one night—a dwarf, practically, with frizzy grey hair in a mop and a thick accent but old enough (Libby was glad to see) to be Polly’s father, if Mr. Andrews had not been almost old enough himself to be her grandfather. You found the most curious visitors at Polly’s, most of them ancient as the hills: Ross, her Aunt Julia’s maid, who you had to admit was a sketch, sitting there doing her knitting, having brought Polly some lamb chops from her aunt’s butcher on Park Avenue; the White Russian, poor devil, who liked to play chess with Polly; the iceman. Well, that was a bit exaggerated, but Polly did have an awfully funny story about the Italian iceman, a veritable troglodyte, coming in one day with the ice on his shoulder this last March and saying “Tacks” over and over and Polly offering him thumbtacks and him shaking his head saying “No, no, lady; tacks!”; it turned out, believe it or not, that he was having trouble with his income-tax return, which he whipped out of his back pocket with his horny hand—only Polly would have an iceman who paid income tax. Naturally, she sat down and helped him with the arithmetic and his business deductions and dependents. Yet when one of her friends asked something of her, she might suddenly flush up and say, “Libby, you can perfectly well do that yourself.”
The Group Page 23
