Well, it looked like dear old Mom and Dad were going to hear Nicolasha's record, after all.
I heard every note of the Suite, but I wasn't listening. All I could think about was leaving school yesterday, and how it felt to have Nicolasha's arm draped over my shoulders. I pictured Nicolasha tucking me into bed and kissing me on both cheeks, like my Dad used to, holding my face in his warm hands as his body pressed against mine. I struggled to keep my own hands outside of the covers and away from my waist, trying to blot the image out of my mind. I turned over to lay on my stomach and my erection. It took me a long time to fall asleep again, and, by the time I did, it was almost light.
*
While walking through the frost-covered park to the train station, I passed a young couple making out on a wooden bench. I remembered she went to the local public high school. She was pretty, too, with short black hair and a full chest that pressed out from her tight leather jacket. I didn't recognize the football jock. He was a beefy red-head with freckles all over the back of his neck. He didn't look very bright. She sat on his lap with her hands deep inside of his lettermen jacket, while he held her waist with one hand and rubbed her legs with the other. I heard a funny mixture of moaning and soft laughter between the sucking sound of their lips.
His eyes shifted to meet mine. I slipped on a small patch of ice and landed painfully on my knees. They stopped kissing for a moment, their faces red from the cold and wet with saliva, staring at me as if I was a clumsy kindergartener. I hurried to my feet and ran to the platform, too embarrassed to look back.
Peeking from around the corner of the platform stairway, I stared miserably at them, kissing each other like a Soviet nuclear attack was imminent. I begged for a train to pull in and take me away from them.
* * *
I V
I never heard so musical a discord,
such sweet thunder
A Midsummer Night's Dream
"Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride."
A couple of dozen intrepid moviegoers and I emerged from the faded and threadbare single-screen cinema near the heart of Hyde Park's business district into the cold and cloudless Friday afternoon. Most of my fellow horror film connoisseurs were unoccupied students like me, enjoying the free day before the gear-grinding stretch leading up to Christmas break. Despite a tatty budget and outrageous re-title job done by the film's third distributor (it was once "The Satanic Rites of Dracula", the final installment of Hammer Films' wonderful series starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing), we all had a good time listening to the British actors confuse the film with a new West End performance of Edward II, and watching sexy vampire girls get staked between their bobbing tits.
The temperature couldn't have been any higher than twenty degrees. The air was thin and sharp, making the exhaust fumes from the passing cars and the rush-hour buses that much worse. The sun was bright, but was already moving to the other side of the apartments and trees that separated Hyde Park from its desperately poor neighbors to the west. I began to wander in the direction of the train station, even though I sure didn't feel like leaving the city anytime soon. I had considered going downtown and seeing some film, any film, in one of the remaining movie palaces left in the Loop, but the thought of doing battle with the hordes of "opening day" Christmas shoppers kept me from going any further north than the odd, integrated neighborhood of the Pilot Institute. And now, having seen the Dracula film and digested a hardy breakfast of unbuttered popcorn, a plain hot dog, and a large Coke, it was time to go home.
And the hordes didn't sound so bad, all of a sudden.
A warm hand reached over the back of my neck and squeezed gently. I stood still, imagining some hulking, deranged Vietnam vet wanting to kill some silly white kid from the suburbs. Nicolasha peeked around my shoulder with a dimpled smile, his right arm dropping across my shoulders as I recognized him and relaxed. I involuntarily wrapped my arm closest to him around his waist and returned his smile with a pretty bright one of my own, before blushing and drawing a few inches away, like everybody around us was suspicious of something.
"I would have thought commuting to school five days a week would be quite enough for anyone. Do not tell me you wanted to see the Dracula film that badly!" Nicolasha stayed close at my side as we walked to the stoplight together while my eyes stared at the train station across the street, as if its terminus were Treblinka.
Nicolasha patted my shoulder, drawing me back to him. "So? How did you like the film?"
"I love all those Hammer Films! That wasn't a very good one, though." His nose and ears were red from the chill, and his hair was its usual mess. His face looked so kind and happy, sticking out from the plump woolen scarf wrapped around his neck. "I'm glad I saw it, all the same."
"So am I. At University, we all used to stay up to watch them on late-night TV. I like the Frankenstein movies best."
I laughed. "Besides, stuff like that never plays out where I live, and I wanted to get out of the house." My teacher noticed the slight change of tone and expression as I mentioned home. His eyes looked sadly into mine. I think he understood... something.
"Are you enjoying this very Russian weather?"
"It's OK." I looked at my Dad's hand-me-down Omega watch, a neat golden job with a worn but elegant brown leather band that was a souvenir from my rather quiet fourteenth birthday. The boxcars would be arriving in a few minutes. I avoided Nicolasha's baby-blue eyes, but not the feel of his hands on my shoulders.
"I can tell something is bothering you, little friend." Friend. Damn. I had never thought of Nicolasha as a friend. I guess my only other friends were the guys I played baseball with during the summer. We hung out after our games, and I got invited to all their houses for barbecues and sleepovers and birthdays, but when we finished playing, I mostly just went home. Damn. "Would you like to go someplace and talk about it? The lake is just there. Or perhaps over some warm tea?"
Two pedestrians hustled past us into the street, cutting off a station wagon in the middle of a turn. I shook my head and glared at the pavement. "I don't usually talk about stuff like that, with anybody." I suddenly felt very empty again. It never occurred to me to talk to anyone about how I felt. It always seemed safer to keep it in and wait for my thoughts to go away.
"I know what you mean. That is why I listen to so much music." Nicolasha sighed. "It is much easier than trying to say all the things I want to say, and the music never talks back or argues. It just listens to my heart, and makes me feel better. After all, it is hard to find somebody who you want to talk to, and wants to listen, at the same time."
"No shit." I watched my train roll to a halt on the platform up ahead, looking packed, as usual. Oh, well, I mused, there would always be the next one. "I guess that's what parents are supposed to be for." Or the next one after that.
"And yours are not?"
"I don't know. I've never tried to find out." Well, you know, booking months in advance for a heart-to-heart can really be hard for a sixteen-year-old, even an intelligent one like I used to think I was. What would I have said, anyway? Ask my Dad what he thought a good dad was? Or why I didn't think he was a very good one, nowadays? Ask my Mom how to love people? Or why I wasn't sure she could answer that question anymore? To hell with that. I'd rather have just gone to bed, maybe cried a little bit, and hoped I forget everything by the next morning. I felt like I wanted to cry right then, too, damn it.
Nicolasha wrapped an arm inside of mine and turned us around, heading back toward the city dusk. The creepy orange street lights had switched on. I missed the plain white ones the city used to have. He pointed to a small storefront a block down from the movie theater. "They have an excellent used record selection in there. Let me buy you something to cheer you up."
"Get out of here, Nicolasha. My Dad buys me off with a big allowance, and I don’t get most of the music you really seem to like, Ligeti for one. I mean, I love the stuff, but it's all pretty sad, you know?"
Nicolasha put hi
s lips close to my ear. I could feel the warmth of his breath near my neck. My legs practically locked where I stood. "Life cannot always be like a Strauss waltz, little friend." He tried to smile me out of the dirty look I didn't really mean to give him.
"It shouldn't always be like the Trauermusik, either."
"No," he admitted, acknowledging my reference to a past lecture on Hindemith with a respectful glance. Nicolasha kept our arms together as we trotted across the street to the store, whose large front window was safely locked behind decaying riot bars and was filled with posters of mostly dead jazz and rock musicians. A scruffy ex-hippie store clerk winked at us as we headed to the back of the densely stocked shop, where the massive rows of classical recordings awaited us. My eyes gleamed. There was the rest of my fifty-dollar holiday allowance, I concluded with a thin smile.
Nicolasha stood beside me as I rifled through the stacks of records, nodding at works or readings he thought were good enough to buy. We each ended up carrying a large box filled with my purchases out onto the dark street, where it had gotten even colder. I was flushed with the odd thrill of spending a lot of money on things I knew I would love and my parents would hate. Hell, I wouldn't have time to listen to half of these by the end of the weekend!
(I saw Nicolasha checking out a boxed recording of Massenet's Thais and snuck it into my haul without his notice. He would appreciate that, I thought.)
"I do not think you will be able to take all of these home with you, little friend." Oh, man, I hadn't even thought about that. I could see myself, lugging the boxes out onto the platform in my old neighborhood to change trains and getting jumped over my thin supply of Al Green. "I can give you a ride home, if you would like."
A gust of Arctic wind hit us, almost blowing my beret off of my head. To hell with the train, I thought. "That would be great. Thanks, Nicolasha." I didn't know he even had a car. I hoped it was in better shape than his wardrobe.
*
Nicolasha led the way to a clean, attractive block, lined with thin trees and a collection of vintage, World War One-era dwellings. Despite the bulk of my record haul, we walked quickly, driven on by the frightful wind chill in the air. He stopped at an imposing three-flat walk-up that would fit right into any of the Hammer films I've seen. “Here is my flat. It often reminds me of my old home.”
A silver Volvo sedan that looked brand new was parked in front of the granite-faced building. Nicolasha set his box onto the edge of the Volvo's bumper, opened the trunk, and put the records into the tidy compartment. I did the same. He wrapped a heavy blanket over the boxes and slammed the trunk shut.
"Cool car."
Nicolasha smiled proudly. "My mother and father gave it to me when I earned my doctorate. It is my first car, so I treat it like a baby." He gestured to the passenger door. "Are you ready to go, little friend?"
"Can I use your bathroom first?" My breakfast Coke had become painful, and I suddenly wondered what his apartment looked like.
Nicolasha slapped his forehead gently. "I am sorry for being so rude. I should have invited you in. Please." He practically ran up the porch stairs to hold the front door open for me. The entryway was small and dark, lined in aging pine. There were three brass mailboxes on the wall. The staircase, set against the side of the wall, was even darker than the vestibule. Nicolasha unlocked the door to his first-floor apartment, switched on a light, and beckoned me in.
He took off his black loafers and set them beside the door. "The bath is in there," pointing to the half-open door in the middle of the narrow hallway. "I will make some tea to warm us up." I smiled at my teacher as he headed to the kitchen and I pulled off my cold hiking shoes.
The room was spotless, even though the bathroom fixtures showed the age of the building. Everything was done in bulging, white porcelain. The bathtub was gigantic and stood on four legs, like the one in our old Roseland apartment. The light switch was at the end of a thick, fabric-covered wire that hung from the middle of the high ceiling. The chilly floor was made up of hundreds of tiny white and black square tiles. Good Lord, Nicolasha had a bottle of Mr. Bubble near the tub. Did Soviet Russia produce a rival equivalent, I trifled? What did they call it? Comrade Bubblevitch?
The harsh echo my pee made was embarrassing.
I passed through the plain dining room to join Nicolasha at a small coffee table set against the wall of the kitchen, just in front of the apartment's back door. He poured the hot tea from a stainless steel pot into a pair of small, clear glasses with ornate copper bases and finger-holders. The kitchen was small but fluorescently bright. The gas stove, sink, cupboard, and refrigerator all looked fairly antique. I couldn't help but think of one of the bakery ladies, Antonia, and the constant warmth of her little apartment near the train tracks. She always had me and my Mom over for huge Sunday dinners, wonderful dinners, when Dad was still off in the Navy, defending democracy or some stupid thing.
Nicolasha spooned some honey into our glasses. "This will take the chill out of you." The tea was delicious. He pulled a small loaf of black rye bread and a block of dark orange cheese from the oven and cut them in half. A wave of contented warmth swept over me. "I am sorry I cannot offer you dinner, little friend, but I usually eat out on the weekend, and do not go to the store until Sunday night."
"It can't be any worse than my Mom's turkey." Nicolasha laughed. I took a bite of the rich, salty bread and the sharp cheese. Where was the vodka? "They're great." I finished my glass of tea in one gulp. My teacher smiled and served up another for me. "Where do you get bread like this?"
"Three old brothers from Brody have a delicatessen over on 55th Street. They bake it fresh for me when I come in, which they enjoy doing, because we gossip in Russian."
We finished our bread, cheese, and pot of tea without further discussion, alternating our eyes between the food and each other.
*
Nicolasha retreated to his bedroom to make a phone call while I checked out his small living room. A few history and music books lined the top of an unused fireplace, surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of records, neatly filed on wide shelves cut directly into the wall. An easy chair, reading lamp, and end table pointed outward from the corner of the apartment's picture window to my right. There was no TV, which explained a lot about Nicolasha. What looked like an expensive stereo system, including a reel-to-reel tape machine, lay to my left. I sat underneath a broad, discolored mirror on a worn-out and uncomfortable beige couch, with another end table and lamp pressed to its left armrest.
I tried to listen into Nicolasha's conversation without success, but noticed a drawer at the base of the couch's end table. Below a swamp of bills, cancelled checks, and letters, I discovered a photo album. I opened the cover and stared downwards at an 8x10 black and white portrait of my Nicolasha. His hair was in its usual chaotic state. His eyes and face looked directly into the camera, and at me. Half of his Slav nose was cut off in a shadow, and his smile was wide and happy, his dimpled cheeks pulled upwards, showing a neat line of upper teeth. His body was turned, facing sideways from the camera. His left arm was wrapped over his lower abdomen, his hand rested flat on his stomach, pulling the white, sleeveless t-shirt away from his exposed breast. A tangle of hair was visible in the upper corner of his arm. His left leg was raised, like he was about to take a large step, disappearing beyond the frame right before the knee, while the bottom of the picture ends just below Nicolas Mikhailovitch Rozhdestvensky's bare buttocks.
I slammed the album shut and shoved it inside the bundle of my pea coat as I heard my teacher hang up the phone. I closed the drawer and hurried back over to the record shelves before Nicolasha came into the room.
"I am sorry to keep you waiting, little friend. I was supposed to visit a friend this evening, and I wanted to let them know I would be late. Are you ready to go?" No, I growled to myself, I want to sleep over tonight. He walked up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I nodded, trying very hard not to show any reaction to my own thoughts. "Do you
like my record collection?" Yes, Papa Nicolash, I do. My smile said that. It's almost as impressive as you in that t-shirt. The sinking feeling in my throat and chest and the warmth below my belt said that.
"It's really fantastic! Now I know where all your money goes!" He beamed, in an exact replica of his smile in the picture. And I was trapped there, somewhere in the shadows behind Nicolasha's naked body. I didn't want to go home.
"We better go. It is getting late."
I didn't want to, damn it.
* * *
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
Hamlet
It wasn't surprising that the Volvo's radio was tuned to the mom and pop classical channel. We reached the southbound expressway as the station began playing a pair of gentle, almost pastoral horn concerti by Richard Strauss, which I thought sounded like they were written by Mozart or Schubert. The music kept Nicolasha company. My mind was on my lap, where the photo album was wrapped inside of my coat, and the biggest, longest, most painful erection I ever had smashed against the fabric of my underwear and jeans.
It faded the moment I saw Dad's white Stingray in our driveway.
Dad walked out into the endless cold to greet us. Huh. Nicolasha introduced himself, explaining how we ran into each other outside of the movie theater, my record store shopping bonanza, and our walk back to his flat. The entire sequence inside of his apartment was neatly omitted. Dad smiled at me and turned on his considerable charm, thanking Nicolasha for his kindness and inviting him in for a drink. I couldn't tell if it was one of his perfect lawyer performance smiles or a real one. Of course my young teacher swallowed the bait, and they went off together as I was left to unpack the records and carry them up to my room.
Miles Page 3
