False Entry

by Hortense Calisher

  “Not—not the waiter part,” I said, and again he tossed back his head and roared, ending up with a sip of the wine.

  “Mmm,” he said, “that’s the stuff I sent you. Must make a note to send you some more next time I go there.” He turned to me. “You’re a canny one, you are.” He had no accent that I had ever, or have ever, heard. Neutral of itself, it seemed to shift with whomever he talked. “What you really like about me is my horse. That’s what all the children like—what I keep in my pockets, and the horse. Here, take a look at it, but don’t prick yourself, its edges are sharp.” He slipped it from his tie and handed it to me. It was made of minute diamonds set so close that one could not see the gold, with a saddle of green stones, and a single, wild red eye that was infinitely laughable yet made the thing move. I held it, looking at the eye and wondering what other marvels he kept in his pockets.

  “It is wonderful wine, Pierre,” said Frau Goodman. “I drink every day a toast to you, and my thanks for all the things you send me. I am beginning not to have room for them.” She waved a hand at shelves lined with goblets and preciosities, over every one of which I had seen her crow and adore. “But I must remind you, one can get all these things even here. I would rather have you.”

  He whistled under his breath. “Why do you not come with me, then?”

  “Leave the family! Du bist verrückt!”

  His eyes crinkled. “Or for a visit, at least.”

  “And what home do you have, that I could visit it!”

  “Right now a beautiful one in the Vieux Carré. Really now, Franziska, you do not think I inhabit the savage parts of the country? And after that, perhaps San Francisco. Why are you not more pioneer?”

  “The winter here is enough pioneer. Like an aquarium nobody cleans. And the maids! Even the boy here dusts better. What would I not give for a Dienstmädchen from home!”

  He laughed. “I’ll send you that too.”

  “Always you send.” She shrugged.

  He reached in a pocket. “Here. Something for this young man. Something he could not get here, even at Fortnum’s.” He opened the packet for me, exposing three immense tan, nut-studded ovals, one of them crumbled, each as large as his palm. “Taste it.” He watched me. “Good, eh? New Orleans pralines. And now perhaps, if I am going to meet my new grandnieces, I must have my horse again.”

  I gave it back, holding it by the stickpin guard at the end. It was indeed very sharp. “You like it, eh?” I nodded. “Better than the candy?” he said. I flushed, my mouth still full. “Don’t answer,” he said quickly, “that was not fair. Besides, I know the answer. But tell me, what is it you like best about the horse? Best, mind you!”

  I smiled at him. He was the easiest man to smile at I ever saw. “The eye!” I said.

  He raised the brows. “Hmm. Not many say that. And he can dust too. And he has conversation. I could use a boy like that, eh, Franziska? Perhaps I ought to take him along with me.”

  “Where?” I said. He was the only person I had ever met for whom I would have deserted that house.

  “Have pity, Pierre,” muttered his sister. “Indeed you have not changed an inch. Do you not see he believes you?” She had forgotten, or never knew, as often the charmers refuse to know, how far she had already taken me herself.

  I flushed again, understanding now that he had not meant it. This time when I turned to go, neither of them stopped me.

  “See?” he said. “She will not let anybody pioneer.” He held out the packet that I had left on the table. “Here, don’t forget these. And be sure to attend tonight; there will be a grand giving-out of presents, and I shall find one for you too.”

  When I had closed the door behind me, I leaned against it. I had never listened at doors in that house, and I was not aware that I was doing so now. I yearned merely to be in his company.

  “And how is my nephew?” I heard him say.

  “Well. He works hard; my God, how hard he works, one never sees him once he gets to that top floor. Today is the day he goes to the museum. He would of course be here to greet you—if you did not always come like the birds. Ach … Pierre.”

  “And Rachel?”

  “She is sleeping. You will see her at dinner.”

  There was a short silence. “Another child?” Again a silence.

  “Always sleeping,” he said. “The last time also. And at dinner, I suppose, those big, pale eyes … Do you not think she sleeps too much … my God … she is not yet thirty-five.”

  There was no answer that I could hear, but he must have been walking around the room, for I could hear the well-known clink of certain pieces of bric-a-brac as he handled them, the wooden shove of others. “You are right. I send too much. But this time I have brought small things. For you—a little French box … so … with nothing in it. You could keep an angel’s tear in it. Point lace—I do not even know the name of it. And a lavaliere … you would be surprised what washes up over there. Some of the pieces I have brought—I have never seen anything like, even in Mamma’s time.”

  “I go out so much? I should wear them?”

  “You will hoard them then. Für die Familie … you think I don’t know you? There was another silence. “Of course … I could always sell them … at Sotheby’s.” And then they burst out laughing together.

  “Be now serious for a little,” she said. “What must I do … to keep you here? They need us downstairs, you know, even if they do not notice it. The old ones are still needed … even if only to quarrel with … to keep a house together. The day comes maybe I would need you, and not for a visit—eins-zwei-drei and away again … Here, have some more wine, dinner is not until eight.” I heard the shifting of chairs, and after the bottle was set down, a long pause.

  “And I,” she said, “I am getting younger, yes? There was Minna Faber, you remember … she used to come like clockwork every afternoon. She is gone. And both the Kleebergs—the wife, and Emil too. I go out now only to funerals … Last week, even the old Weil’s daughter, you remember that rascal’s stupid Rosa, she comes to us for years yet, always with her hand out, and we support her, because what else can one do, because her father stole from Papa in eighty-nine … Even that old stupid … even she.”

  “Ach, Franzie, Franzie.” His accent had thickened. “The devil is not so choosy.”

  “Not he. Your sister neither. Nowadays I talk to anybody … One has to have somebody to remember with, you will see for yourself someday.”

  For what seemed endless minutes, neither of them spoke. Then her voice came, with the warmer timbre it sometimes took on with the wine. “Wonderful to have you here. Wonderful. What must I do to keep you, hmmm? Maybe I should steal from you that horse.”

  He laughed. It was his voice I listened for. Hers, so available, I scarcely heard. “I have to make them like me—children. I don’t know why. I cannot bear it if they do not.” He laughed again, on a different tone. I did not know him well enough to know whether he was teasing—perhaps no one ever did. “I have been thinking … perhaps I must marry, hmm? Before it is too late.”

  Someone’s footsteps came up the stairs then, and I could not stay. Through the door as I left, I heard her cry—“Pierre! You would not … you have not been thinking—from over there!”

  Afterwards, after he had left London again, she spoke less of him, at first not mentioning him at all, and if he did marry, or when he came again, I never heard, for within the year we ourselves had gone.

  But for that night and days after, he reigned in the house, with his saturnalia of gifts, his amnesty—for children—of all ukases. He knew how to use the treasure-scent to set the demurest of them very near to riot, as if he had brought back with him a renewed sense of how close the scalping-party lurked beneath the skin. There were hunts on the stairs, caches tumbling from corners, under napkins and pillows, and just as they had begun to tire of what Martin, the oldest, called “geographical” presents—the water flowers, butterfly kites, anomalous belts, birchbark canoe
s and papier-mâché masks that he took more pleasure in perhaps than they—there would be a round of real thumpers from the stores, like the polar-bear-on-wheels that stood alongside Hannschen’s bed one morning, and James’s inflatable raft.

  That night the grandmother, who always took her meals alone, came down for dinner, and when my mother brought me in as requested, after the savory, Frau Goodman was there between her son and her brother, her eagle face curving beneath lace pinned with a jewel to the flyaway hair that one of the maids had marcelled. I was afraid that she might embarrass me before the others, the circle of children, with our private greeting, but she had no eyes for anyone but Pierre as he gave my mother her present—a bit of lace that she told me later was Honiton, that she laundered yearly thereafter with sugar water, and laid away. I did not notice what he had brought Lady Goodman, but his present to his nephew was extraordinary—a long cape of quilted harlequin feathers that Sir Joseph, his sallow face tinted, said was literally a prince’s, was archaeological, and must have a glass case or be lent to the museum, but that tonight, sitting outside the circle of his children around the uncle, he wore. For me there were other presents later, store-bought and forgotten, but that night he gave me a conch shell of the kind that used to be kept in drawing rooms, a large one with the water sheen still on it and colors like the cloak’s in its nacre—a prince too among shells.

  It was while he clasped me to his knee, showing me how to listen, with the shell to my ear, for the sea, that I noticed the other children’s feet, all pointed toward the hub of the circle, all clad in beaded moccasins now instead of sharp-toed red leather, and understood then that he was the “uncle from Gibraltar.” I pointed my foot in too, and he saw me, bending down half to me, half to the others, with a brilliant air. “We must have your measure, and send you a pair too,” he said, and the promise lodged in my heart long after I could have used the slippers had he ever sent them, like the invisible stitch, ultimately melted, that the surgeon does not remove.

  Just then I caught the look on Sir Joseph’s face, turned on his uncle, a quizzical look almost of censure, but he was outside the circle, and I, though standing awkwardly, was inside it, left by the uncle for its center, where he was acting out the tale that was to be our favorite—the story of Alphonse and the pig who spoke Creole.

  “So the judge say to Alphonse: ‘Alphonse, for why you steal ze leetle peeg?’ And Alphonse, he say, ‘Oh no, m’sieu le juge, I no steal ze leetle peeg. I say to ze leetle peeg: Peeg! You weesh to come home wiz me? And ze leetle pig, she answer Oui!’”

  He squealed it, and all the children gave a delighted shout, except me.

  “‘And I ask ze leetle peeg: Peeg! S’all we run? And ze leetle peeg, she say Oui! So I take ze leetle peeg zat speak such good Creole, and she say to me Oui! Oui! Oui! all ze way home.’”

  Each time he made the squealing noise all the children made it in concert with him, and only I stood silent, mystified, my eyes hot, for I had not spent holidays in France, and I did not know what the joke was. As I stood there, I felt a bit of paper slide into the hand I held behind me, and glancing round, I saw Sir Joseph tucking his scholar’s pencil back into his waistcoat under the cape. On the paper he had written in precise script: The pig said “Oui,” which is the French for Yes, and sounds just like what a pig does say—Wee. When I looked up again, his chair was empty except for the long bright blur of the cape. But later, when we came to go, we found that a cot had been ordered set up in the nursery, and that night, with the shell beside me, I slept again in the house in which I had been born.

  And here, on the untidy work desk beneath Mr. Fourchette’s cramped window, was the shell, although it was not mine. Mine—overlooked in the packing and buried since in those archives whose key I myself had thrown away—had never been carried here. But here was its brother, its thousandth cousin, resting silky pink and serene on the scrabbled mess of Junior Fourchette’s papers, the same regal pearl thrown up again by the ceaseless repetition of the sea. I picked it up and held it to my ear. The sound was the same hollow, supersonic sigh, the monster sigh of some being with an infinite supply of breath, but the burden had changed. In the interval, life—mine—had secreted there. I could still hear the Goodman household, but now I could hear the restless undertones beneath the solid C major, the single haven-note I had heard as a child. I saw the family’s genitive impatience with what it must love, for husband for wife, for brother for sister, for Pierre, the flitting inciter of children, and I thought of how canny a dilettante one had to be if one could not trust oneself to be loved or saw its limits too clearly—how careful, just in time, to move on. All that next week of his visit, I remembered, I had been the one to laugh loudest at the story of the pig, but he had never noticed it, never again preferred me after that brief election of our first meeting. I had waited in vain for him to give me the horse to hold again, vowing that when he did I would prick my finger with it, secretly leaving him some of my blood to carry away. He had never done so, and I could smile at myself for that now. And at him too, I found with surprise, for it seemed that although he had carried away no blood of mine, I, with the long prong of memory, had drawn his. I smiled at him in triumph, the smile with which we decorate the graves of those who have escaped us, and I put down the shell.

  As I did so, Junior Fourchette came in the door. Seeing him around the courthouse, in the wake of his father, one thought instantly that he must have had a blonde mother, and then forgot him. On the streets of the town one sometimes saw him lumbering alone, always bent forward with the puzzled, side-to-side heave of a behemoth following a whip-tease too low for his bulk to catch. Here in the office he swayed too, standing still, blinking at me as if I traveled an orbit that would not settle down. He wore no jacket or tie, but his shirt was sharply laundered, fine-seamed, and the odor that walked with him was deep, overpleasant, like a barber’s essence. Years later I knew other drunks like him, gin or whisky drinkers to his Pernod, who kept themselves in the same way assertively clean and shaven, holding themselves up in the vertical, mannerly world by the strength of their shirt fronts, the sight of their cuff links, while their secret life evaporated steadily from them in that deep cologne.

  “Truly sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, peering humbly into the room’s general shadow. “Truly sorry.” And looking back at him in the light of those others, I can see what comfort he must have taken in the excessive graces of Southern convention, through which he could spend the endless fund of apology, of placation, that was his own.

  Resting against the door, his shoulder rustled against the note pinned there. He bent to read it, nodding. “Recollected I was to be here, but the time escaped my mind.” His drawl was like his father’s, clearer than the glottal, cotton-candy speech of the region, but with a curious added stammer to it, not of consonants but in the vowels. Between its pauses his voice came surprisingly soft and golden, the way the voice of the stammerer often does. He nodded again. “Ticely!” he said softly to himself. “Yes sir—ee. You wait now. Recollect I changed that writ this forenoon.”

  “I’m not from Ticely,” I said. “I’m not your appointment. I came for something else.”

  He moved past me with a peculiar lightness of foot, a heavy man stepping across brinks with a special adroitness, and stood over the desk, puzzling on the papers there. “Had it in mind it was somewhere here. I do beg your pardon.”

  “You didn’t keep me waiting,” I said. “I came for something else—for the petition.”

  “Saw you through the window,” he said, still fumbling. “Occupying yourself with that shell. Thought to myself—no telling how long I’ve kept him.” He looked up. His eyes were yellow-brown, large and full-lashed, his nose and mouth shapely above a square chin well clefted. If one could have torn from him the bruin haze of his humility, he would have been a handsome man.

  “Petition?” His hand trembled over the papers. “I surely had it in mind it was a writ.”

  I explained.
It was like squaring a circle that submitted mutely and yet remained gently evasive. But I got through to him in a way.

  “Change your name?” he said. “That’s a wise move. If you young enough. Recollect handling that petition. Thought—only eighteen, too; he’s a wise one. Thought that to myself at that time.” His hand, in passing over his forehead, trembled so violently that his other hand, in a movement of which he seemed unaware, reached up for it and guided it into his pocket. He sat down at the small desk that held the typewriter. The tremor was still visible in his upper arm.

  “Made some mistakes on it, did I?” He reminded me of a shopkeeper taking back an article he well knows had a flaw when sold. “Tell you what. Give it here; I’ll do it over. Then you come round for it some morning. Morning’s my time. Or tell you what. Some evening. Around nine.”

  Sweat stood out on his forehead. Then, as quickly, for he had been a damp white, his face revived to its usual freckled bronze-red. His eyes brimmed. It was painful to watch him, a man-baby naked to the ebb and flow of thought. “Got the name wrong, maybe?” Laughter racked him silently. A profound gravity replaced it. “I can fix it; you give it here.” The hand in his pocket emerged, fingers protruding, managed to close round the shell and held itself there, violently still. He regarded it. “Truly sorry,” he said. “Can’t oblige you at the moment. Morning’s my time.”

  I explained that the petition had been signed and returned the day before. He shook his head. “Not here then,” he said. “In there.” He pointed to the wall that joined the office to the courthouse. “Gone into the file. For the court.” Off his feet, he seemed to regain a certain sobriety, almost more intense than the real, as if his balance, reaching for the norm, had slipped past it. His eyes, large on me, were not for me. “’Twas a bad job, eh?”

  I spoke across him, an overreacher too. At the moment our logic was not unlike. “How do we get it back?”

  “Pa has the key. And he’s gone to Montgomery.”