The Girl With the Glass Heart: A Novel

by Daniel Stern

  Jay and Elly stood in front of the house and saw them drive away.

  “Look,” Elly said to Jay, putting her arm around his waist. “Like in the movies, in front of our house, waving good-by to our friends.” She laughed.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling, “like in the movies, only one of them is not your friend, he’s your uncle, it’s not our house, and here comes your father from the kitchen.”

  “Feel guilty?” she whispered. He nodded. “Good,” she said.

  Max, pulling at a yellow tattersall vest, approached them complaining: “I thought when they stopped making suits with vests I’d be through with all this. Your mother’s idea.”

  “I think you look very distinguished,” Jay offered nobly.

  “Manufacturers shouldn’t look distinguished. Bankers should. Of course I’m worth more than some bankers I know—Oh, Elly, I forgot to tell you, I heard from John Marron Lang yesterday—a letter. He’s in California and he wants to stop off here on his way back.” He turned to Jay. “He built this house. A great man, a great architect—if I told you what it cost! Won’t that be nice?”

  Elly thought briefly of telling Max she had heard from Lang too, but decided against it.

  “Yes. He left so suddenly that time,” she said, having a feeling she was saying the wrong thing, that she might arouse her father’s suspicions and in some obscure way was obligating herself to tell Jay about herself and Lang. “He was a beautiful man. All that white hair,” she added.

  “I have to go to town, Elly. I’ll see you later at the concert. You’re coming, aren’t you, Jay?” Jay nodded and Max was at the door of the car. He looked back and said: “It’s so nice having Alec here, the family together. I’ll have to ask Harry and Sarah over, if you can stand all that family, Jay.”

  “I like families.”

  “Good. Do you think Alec’s feeling any better? You know—?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Kaufman. I really don’t think so.”

  “Well, it will all work out for the best. See you later.”

  They went back into the house together and Elly drew all the draperies and turned on several lamps in the living room. They kissed, and Elly remembered Mimi and Justin were in the house and she cursed aloud to Jay the wealth that made servants possible and necessary.

  “You seem to have discovered something.” Elly smiled.

  “Discovered? Give me a cigarette. I’m out.”

  “In the box on the coffee table. Well, what is it you’re doing that you haven’t done in such a long time?”

  “Elly, sh-h-h.”

  “Oh, stop it! You know what I mean.”

  “You mean playing?”

  She was half lying against him on the sofa and she nodded. He blew a cloud of smoke all around her and said: “Yes, that is something I never expected. But, of course, I never expected coming here to be anything more than a little visit to accompany my friend Alec home to a difficult situation. I never meant to fall in love with you.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s funny. Look, I love you. But the fact that the word is used everywhere and for everything and to mean so many different things—well, it sort of embarrasses me. Until I know what it means. That doesn’t mean I can’t feel it. I do, but it’s like electricity. I know some things about it—I know what it felt like in the forest with you yesterday—but I don’t know what it is.”

  Jay nodded. “It is used pretty loosely. That’s why I’m grateful that I don’t have any doubt. I woke up in the morning and I was—had, in a sense. There it was. I’d taken you into me.” He kissed her cheek, marveling at how meaningless time was, that he was kissing her gently on the cheek as if he had done so a thousand times before.

  “Taken me into you?” The idea was disturbing to Elly. “You mean absorbed me? Don’t I exist any more?”

  “Of course you do. In the flesh.”

  “Ah, yes, the flesh. I’ll confess I was a little frightened at myself yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  “I seemed to really lose myself. For a moment I didn’t know who I was or where or why.”

  “That’s wonderful if it’s the right moment.”

  “No, it frightened me. It’s like what you said—you took me into you and I, also, I was scooped out like a potato and filled with you. I was only a shell.”

  “But a nice shell.”

  “Don’t joke. All right, joke. I’m being silly.”

  “No, I know what you mean. It’s what every musician would like to have happen when he plays. Himself scooped out and Brahms or Schubert or Debussy poured in.”

  She turned her head toward him. “It’s something I believe in,” she said, “but I don’t know if I can sustain it…. But enough of all this.” She was sorry she’d told him what she felt. He might want to get back at her for something one day, and the fewer weapons she gave him, the better.

  She dragged out the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes for four hands, and she and Jay played them until lunch, feeling gay and for some reason, possibly because the family was away (Alec had not returned as expected), illicit. Then they had lunch and drove to Crofts for the concert. Elly looked for Alec’s car at the parking area of the college but could not find it. The air of gaiety still clung to them and she introduced Jay to several friends with great confidence, holding onto his arm as she spoke, with an air of great possessiveness.

  In the lobby of the Great Hall Jay stood saying hello to Elly’s friends, people swirling about him; through a half-opened door he saw the slowly filling auditorium and in the pit a few musicians blurring scale sounds into one another’s ears and occasionally whispering. He was so detached from it all that it created a perfect amalgam of the past and this peculiar island existence he had begun two nights ago. Here he was at a concert (albeit a dance concert) and he was taking part in no way, yet it wasn’t Town Hall or Carnegie Hall in New York, where he habitually went to recitals. Out of town one either played or one didn’t go. It gave him an odd sense of the past, as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. He had as well a sense of power whose source he could not isolate.

  Alec hailed him and fought his way through the crowd (everyone turned out for the few cultural events in Colchester) to Jay’s side. Alec’s eyes were bright and his breath pungent with alcohol.

  “Been hoisting a few?” Jay whispered.

  “A few. Feel much better now.”

  “Good. Just don’t let Elly or your brother notice.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Just have a good time.”

  Elly kissed Alec on the cheek but did not appear to notice his alcohol-laden breath. Seeing a dancer dressed in practice clothes and carrying a small valise hurry across the hall near by, Elly ducked her head, but it wasn’t Renée Kert. Professor Lanner and Max struggled toward them.

  “Hello, Elly. How are you?”

  Elly nodded.

  “Dr. Lanner was just explaining the mix-up about the girl who stayed last night. He thought the concert was a week later. So Elly was right.”

  “Elly’s often right.” Lanner smiled his mephitic smile,

  “Not in your classes,” Elly replied quickly, feeling the fine edge of gaiety dulling. Lanner shook his head so vigorously that his yellow hair fell into his eyes and had to be tossed with an impatient wave of the head. Jay saw this and marked Lanner down as a man of great vitality.

  “To be right is nothing. To understand is something else. Elly understands.”

  “In that case I’d better pass.”

  “Elly, my dear, the daughter of a trustee always passes.”

  This kind of joke made Max uncomfortable, and he led the way into the hall. He was glad now that he had voted with the concert committee to have the dance group. Not that he was looking forward to sitting through two-and-a-half hours of the modern dance, but Elly seemed to be so excited by it. Her cheeks were flushed and she was having a good time. With a sudden, quite unexpected rush of emotion, he thought: Anything, I’ll do anything to make
her happy. She seems to want so much, but who can know what she wants.

  The doors were closed and the sealing quality that always takes place before a concert settled over the audience. Elly watched closely for Renée Kert. Finally she appeared, dressed in an ordinary leotard, but Elly could not tell if it was one of her own or a borrowed one. It was just as well. She’d rather not know what had transpired. She would never see the girl again. But Renée was good, Elly realized. No brilliance but a fine emotional projection and good technique. Elly was pleased that she was good. It removed from her the responsibility of having upset the girl and having possibly spoiled her performance.

  When the concert was over, Elly grasped Jay’s hand firmly and led him past those who were lining up to go backstage.

  “I should congratulate Renée,” Jay said hesitantly, aware that Elly did not want to go backstage.

  “Do you have to? Let’s go out and have a drink, just the two of us. Alec is in line. He’ll do it for you.”

  “All right,” Jay said and waved to Alec as they left.

  Alec stood tightly wedged in between a fat woman and her husband whom he had inadvertently separated. He was feeling ill, feeling that he had lost himself, this getting drunk twice in one week. He used to joke with Annette about there being no Jewish drunkards and no Jewish homosexuals, and Annette would call him a racial chauvinist in reverse. He was so ill when the line had moved him backstage that he ran toward the rest room instead of the artists who were patiently shaking hundreds of hands.

  The night was sneaking in earlier than the last few had, and Elly and Jay walked from a bluish atmosphere into a real blue-black of evening. The stars were defined icily overhead, and Jay said: “They lie, the ones who say that the summer stars are brightest. They’re never so clear as in fall or winter.”

  Elly nodded. “They’re clear here in the Middle West especially. That’s about the best you can say for it.”

  “Let me dispel that lousy myth, my dear. New York—it’s so real to me now because it’s the after-concert time—New York, in the winter, when you leave Carnegie and it’s cold and you walk around the corner to the tavern or down the block to the Russian Tea Room. You’ve never seen such stars—like chipped ice from a cocktail shaker, and the people in their heavy coats (lots of mink for the women) and the musicians coming around the corner carrying their fiddles or cellos. And that crazy little man who plays the fiddle in front of Carnegie even in the coldest weather, with gloves on and holes cut in the fingertips so he can feel the strings, wearing an overcoat that flops all over—he’s real little—and he looks about sixty years old and he wears a look on his skinny face that’s neither a frown nor a smile but something of both. And there’s such a sense of relief because the concert’s over—and the focal point of the whirlpool of people is you and you have the sense, not of having done something wonderful, but of having, for a short while, been something wonderful, which of course is more important—and over all this the most brilliant configuration of ice-cold stars you ever saw.”

  He realized that they had stopped walking some minutes ago and were standing near a lamppost, and Jay thought: No wonder I never notice particularly where I am—I carry with me a whole landscape of the past.

  “God!” Elly said. “Talk about nostalgia.”

  He nodded and laughed wryly. “I must have saved that one up for a long time.” They began walking again.

  “You’re going to play,” she said.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  The bar was quite crowded and they found a little table near the rear, cluttered with glasses, but available. Elly was glad the place was crowded and noisy. It was as if they were all there, she, Jay and the strangers, to celebrate some event, the nature of which need not even be spoken.

  “The dancing was good,” Jay said, and waved in vain at a waiter.

  The waiters were all occupied.

  “They’ll get to us,” Elly said. “Be patient.”

  She was saying things, simple things she would never have said before. She was the most impatient person in the world and she knew it. She must grow used to this climate of amazement, or rather of self-astonishment.

  As she gazed at Jay, turning this over in her mind, someone appeared at their table, standing there for a moment before speaking so she thought it might be the waiter and, looking up, saw Professor Lanner standing there, a smile on his lips. Elly looked at him and, laughing, said, “I’ll have a gin-and-tonic.”

  “Very well.” He smiled. “May I have a chair? My wife is supposed to join me shortly, which, from experience, I know means I’ll need a chair.”

  “Sit down, please,” Jay said, moving over to make room.

  Lanner settled his long, slender frame into the chair and lighted a cigarette from the candle that flickered near Elly’s gloved hand.

  “What a brawl,” he said softly, gazing at the throng in the room. He turned to Jay and said, “You know, in a town this size we make the most of every stinking cultural opportunity. Everybody shows up and then you can’t get any service.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a stinking cultural whatcha-may-call-it. Some pretty good dancing, I thought,” Jay replied.

  “You don’t have to be polite, Mr. Gordon, just because you’re from New York. These road companies are no Martha Grahams. We of the hinterlands expect that.”

  “In that case I think you got more today than you expected. I liked it.”

  “Well, it’s nice of you to say that, anyway,” Lanner said, refusing to allow Jay any simple sincerity of motive.

  Elly was trying to isolate what it was in Lanner’s voice that made it so patronizing. He seemed to arch his voice at the person to whom he spoke, intent on creating the impression of double entendre, even in the most simple of statements. It was a quality Elly hated. Finally a waiter took their order.

  “So you don’t find it too bad, here in the sticks?” Lanner filled the silence that fell after the drinks had been served as if he, as the visitor, felt the obligation.

  “Not too bad,” Jay said pleasantly.

  “You know, there’s only one thing more exasperating in a visitor from the big city than being intolerant of small-town ways, and that’s being tolerant of them.”

  “The question of tolerance never occurred to me, Dr. Lanner.”

  “Oh, it’s just that your determination not to be superior is a little superior. But perhaps you’re trying to be nice because you like one of our girls.”

  Elly saw what Lanner was doing, saw that Jay was under attack, and her first impulse was to remove herself from the situation. She shut the voices out and, running her index finger along her thumb, she felt that the swelling she had noticed the other day had developed into a hard little lump. She pressed it hard, almost hoping to feel some pain. If it was a growth, she thought, it was probably nonmalignant. It was nice to have it there, like a friend who couldn’t possibly leave her unless she chose to force it to leave. She pressed it gently and closed her eyes. She hoped it wouldn’t disappear overnight. It was something she would tell no one about. After all, there were people who nursed emotional wounds without disclosing them. Well, this was her wound, although, pleasantly enough, without pain. That’s what she wanted—a wound without pain. She tried to feel out its shape, but it wasn’t clearly enough defined. Just a lump. The thought that Jay was under attack by Lanner intruded on her consciousness. She came to the surface of the self-imposed anesthesia and heard them talking.

  “I’ve heard that you gave up a very promising career a while back. It’s to be expected, I guess, that you would bury yourself in a place like this.”

  “Dr. Lanner, I’m only visiting here until the end of the week.”

  “And,” Elly put in, “he hasn’t given up anything. I don’t know where you get your information, but Jay has been accompanying dancers instead of giving his own concerts, that’s all.” Her anger was growing. “You can be vindictive to your pupils—that’s all right—but Jay i
s our guest.”

  “I’m not—” Lanner began, but Elly continued:

  “You’re a nasty person—always manufacturing conflicts and then cashing in on them.”

  She was amazed at her courage. It wasn’t the liquor. It must have been the more and more withdrawn look on Jay’s face that had frightened her into making the counterattack. And perhaps somewhere involved was a feeling that Lanner was doing what she could possibly do to someone else, except she had thought that she was the only one who felt imprisoned here in Colchester.

  “Elly,” Jay was saying, “I’m sure Dr. Lanner didn’t mean any—”

  “No,” Lanner interrupted, rising unsteadily, and it occurred to Jay that he had been drinking before joining them. “No, she’s probably right. And people from the big city do something to me—as if I was a farmer. It’s the way my wife—” he bent over Jay and breathed in his face—“it’s the way my wife likes to think of me. Just a hick professor in a hick town. Why should you have the luck to be free?”

  “Nobody’s free, Professor Lanner.”

  “Young man, I teach philosophy. I have also read Immanuel Kant, and I know that whatever it is one Kant or can do—a tired joke, sorry—no one is free. However, since Miss Kaufman feels I’m nasty, et cetera, I’ll wait for the proof that no one is free—that is, my wife, at the bar. Good-by.”

  “Elly, why were you so hard on him?”

  She grasped his hand. “I wanted to defend you suddenly. And it felt good. I’m glad I did.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, but—I don’t know, he was a little high and—”

  “He’s that way when he’s sober, too. Don’t worry about him.”

  “No.” Jay glanced at the crowded bar where Lanner sat sipping his drink. “No, I think it’s too late to worry about him.”

  I actually made the effort, Elly was thinking, to leave myself. I left myself to defend him. So that’s what it is to be in love. You have to leave yourself.

  On the way out they met Alec and a group of people among whom was Renée Kert. Elly looked straight at her and waited, while the others all babbled hello and this and that about the concert. The dancer returned her stare for a moment and finally turned away.