Taking down a book at random, he clapped it closed and put it back again, not yet settled enough for that. Most nights, they had worked late on Church Street, burning up their weekends together in restaurants, theaters and bars, speaking loudly when drunk of their yearning for home and family, hiding from each other and themselves, when drunker, their reluctance to return. Treating this place like a hotel room, he had done the same. Soon he would furnish it, hire a cleaning woman, buy a big desk for that corner, get a job, make all the moves. Outside now, it was still raining, colors shimmered into it from all sides, a prettily Yuletide rain. Six years later, it was the season that made him feel like a new graduate, standing, his themes all tangled, on the brink of confusion, ready to move at once, as was expected of him, as he expected of himself—just as soon as told where. It was the season, together with the end of war, an earned sense that all dragons were done with. They had all had the same one—one head it has, one neck, “’Ware!” and in a single “Pouf!” dreadful as that was—it was done with. Six hundred men—he knew that now—were St. George. Now there was only that village dragon, spice o’ the world, death in time.
Behind him, in the dusty trunk, there was a raincoat which would do for wherever he might be going—how could he know where, in a world once more of such scope that, going out for a constitutional, one might find oneself Alexander? It had been years since he had even thought of that private word “themes,” his word, he supposed, for that deep, voiceless knowledge he refused to think we were not born with—which could not set us right but only let us know when we went wrong—an invincible ache that could once in a while be touched, for the sore comfort it was, with the timid tongue. On top of the raincoat, he came upon a fedora bought his first summer here, put aside with a blush the first day he’d walked into college. He placed it on his head and found that it still fitted; somewhere he had read that the head and eyes gain full growth out of all proportion early, the reason why in children these often looked so large. His head had not much grown, then, since the first innocences rattled there. In the mirror, he saw that the hat looked ugly on him, but no longer gauche. Giving it a grimace, he reminded himself that the man he expected to see would not reveal himself altogether, so soon. I still want to live, that’s all I know, he told the mirror. Turning away, he told himself. I still want to live, he said to himself, and clung to this as if it were holy. An image returned to him, of the small boy he had seen through the door of the enlistment office, crossing the marble floor, carrying his stamps.
An hour or so later, he was still in the chair, hat on head, raincoat in the crook of his arm, telephone book on his knees. Canny rememberer that he was, he would never be able to recall the moment at which he had taken up that book and sat down. We are, at any given moment of our lives, all we are. The problem is how to take stock—with every aside, tangent, kernel duly present and accounted for, for that moment—of all we are. In that one blank moment, he had made a journey longer than any from Portsmouth to Montreal.
A minute before it, on his way to the door, he’d been stopped in his tracks by the thought that he ought to call Eckerman—Eckerman, who had gone to Los Angeles to be debriefed three days before he himself had left for Boston, who was even now in his plane seat over the central plains on his way home to Rochester, if he wasn’t already home. Who, coffee-beer intimate that he had been, tic intimate, up to three days ago, had already been as far from him, when they all said good-by, as next year’s Christmas card, farther than any telephone could ever reach. If pressed, each of the men there might have admitted that military life only exaggerated the droppings-off that in peacetime were made every day less openly—else how get through life with such a roster, a telephone book of every hand once clasped, girl slept with, all the names once known? Was that what he was after, with Eckerman? Else, how get through?
A minute after, he was there with the telephone book, fresh and unthumbed, in the chair. First, as was natural, he looked up people like Lovey, who was no longer in it, Serlin, who was—but with no thought of calling, merely for eternal gossip’s sake. He knew them already; as was perhaps more guiltily pertinent, they knew him. Second, as was natural also, he riffled through the book’s pages, as one idly will. A name caught his eye in the “A’s”—Aiello. At once, a picture was presented to his mind, an entire story. “My mother won’t send me a snap,” Seaman D. Aiello, Jr., had said. “She’s sick with the eyes, it ain’t fatal. But it makes the eyes lay way out, on the cheek. So she wouldn’t give me a snap. But here’s everybody else.” Here had been everybody else, the family ramifying before him in the bar-restaurant, the tenement house owned, the girl, a little tale of Sicily at the Brooklyn Bridge end of town. There was a column of them in the book, beginning with the father, Dominic, all the uncles and cousins. No Dominic junior, dead of scarlet fever in Chicago. There, at the tip of the bridge, a whole fief and its stories, known to him, did not even know he existed. It was the gothic image of the woman who would not send her son a “snap” that had made him always remember. Musing, he passed on to the “B’s,” no such fief there. Then, suddenly, not from his navy life but from college—Belden. John Charles Belden, whom he had never seen, never met (except in the story spiraled up from the chair next his in the two o’clock dark of the frat house lounge), about whom he knew so much more than would appear to be safe for J. C. Belden, Major, U.S.A. ret., First World War, member Sons of the American Revolution and the Society of the Forty-eight, on all evenings, for all meetings except those on Thursdays in the rear of his bookshop, owner of a taste for applejack that spanned both. “Applejack Belden,” Amos Gillette had said, from the chair beside his. “Alias, of course, ‘Chad.’ They thrive on aliases.” He heard Amos’s voice again, Virginia slow, his short, pained laugh, “Even Anzia has one, pore girl. It’s ‘Betty,’” and his final whisper—“Damned spider.” Amos had married his pore girl, poor stupid little fly caught in such a net, and Norfolk money had presumably made her safe from aliases forever. “Amos and Anzia—so pretty,” the relatives had said. He had attended the wedding. For curiosity’s sake, he looked up both their names separately, but of course they weren’t in it, long since out of any acrostic that might interest him. Not so Belden. He could imagine him, if he still had his bookshop, a curdled soldier-scholar in a green eyeshade. The name wasn’t there, unlisted of course, but the shop was, such a jaunty spur to memory: Unity Book Shop, University Place.
Jaunty was the word; he’d forgotten the prankishness of a mind left to its solitude. Before the hour was out, he had found several more small clusters, minor worlds one could enter without warning, for a penn’orth of exertion, if one would. For a penny’s worth of nothing. No doubt anyone with a mind to, and an approximate mind, could do the same. The book on his knees was heavy with it. An assemblage of life for the asking. But scarcely anyone in his right mind—and he was sure he was, never holding the pulse of his queerness, like so many nowadays. In the upstairs world he did as well as the next one, nor shivered at what he glimpsed in the down. According to the “quanta” peculiar to this hour and its history—never question the quanta, and you are sane. Accordingly. Meanwhile, there must be many men of such approximate mind. Dobbin, if an old guess had been right, had been one, merely channeling his faculty elsewhere. And his uncle, the unrecognized—what he had done. Do not think of it; do not question. So many words beginning with q. Scarcely anyone. So many words beginning with a.
Heavy, heavy lay the book, the acrostic. The adventures of anonym. So many names beginning with A. He was asleep, could feel himself asleep and unable to rise, the hat still on his head, the crushed raincoat on his arm. He did not rise to greet any newcomer. For a while, even when awake, he would not see him. The man he had come to meet was there.
The rest was private—for fifteen years. How to tell the secret of those years? It seems to me that I must already have done that, almost plain. Or am I like a conjurer who doesn’t want to show his poor rabbit, who says to himself as well
, over and over—“See, how magnificent this sleeve”? The page itself answers me.
Suppose us, then, to be reading an imaginary but possible report, say from the files of the Bureau of Missing Persons of the Police Department of the City of New York, from the year 1946. We of course know the identity of the missing man. Like this:
On a date roughly between Christmas of 1946 and the early New Year, the missing man first made his appearance in Pasquale’s Bar, 18½ Cherry Street. Bar owned for past twenty years by Dominic Aiello (aged sixty-nine, infirm), who runs it with the help of goddaughter Stella Agostino (aged twenty-four, fiancée of Aiello’s dead son, in this country five years). This pair are parties who have requested search. The Aiellos, several branches of whom own small businesses in the Bridge district, are a respectable family, well known in the precinct. Rest of family would like Dominic to sell the bar, which does a poor trade, mostly with local relief recipients for whom the girl cooks in the back. Building worth nothing, but possible value as part of a parcel. Old man feuding with family re this.
Missing man (descr. below) unusual type for district, first taken to be possible purchaser or scout for same, or relief investigator checking habitués. For six months has visited bar three or four times weekly, afternoons and evenings, eating there, etc. Quiet habits, moderate drinker. Gained confidence of Aiellos and regulars as well. Treated like member family, sometimes tended bar. Apparently unemployed, but not in want of funds. Rest of family tried investigate, on gossip man was after girl or old man’s savings, but old man would not let their representative, his own nephew (Jimmy Guardini—son Dem. distr. Capt. G. Guardini), in door.
Old Aiello and girl interviewed through interpreter this date. Deny any but friendly connection with man; suspect relatives of frightening man off, or foul play.
Descr.: Age about 30, hgt. well over six ft., wgt. (approx.) 185. Coloring: Fair, hair light brown, brows dark, eyes gray-blue. Features median, no distinguishing marks. Might be Irish. Speaks some Italian, acquired in bar. Some education—always read newspaper cover to cover. Good listener. War service unknown—perhaps 4F, since never spoke of same. Clothing: one good suit, which always wore, from old man’s descr.—Brown, some kind tweed, herringbone, label not N.Y. Answered name “Joe.”
Period Missing: Six weeks. No communication.
Interested Parties: As above.
Note: To Detective Nicolo Motta.
Nick, no need to run your hide off on this. Checked Guardini, Sr., who says old man been a little off ever since only son died while in service—won’t believe dead, etc. Girl brought over to marry son, not very bright, does whatever old man says. As far as the G.’s can tell, savings and girl both O.K., think man some casual, ideas all probably in old man’s head.
Report: (30 Days)—No inf. received. Two calls by original parties.
(60 Days)—As above. One call.
(90 Days)—As above. No calls. Case closed.
Or, suppose us to be reading, as in mystery stories of a certain kind, the handwritten notes of the amateur inquirer (himself not without mystery), in which the quarry appears as a shadow behind the recording shadow, and only the reader sees all. Like this:
From the personal notes of J. C. Belden:
He addressed me as “Chad,” and let drop the word “applejack.” This in itself means nothing, being only what we allow open members, who think they meet here so importantly, to know. Outer contacts must be left open somewhere; he might have got those almost anywhere on Union Square. But it suggests that he has been out of touch—if he has ever been in—for some time, since that word has been out of use here since 1940. Or else that he wished to give that impression? I asked if he had a card of introduction perhaps; his answer: “I carry no card.” Meaning, on the simplest level, that he wasn’t yet? Or that he had long since passed the level where one needed—to the highest? Which would explain the use of old key word. Age—not much past thirty; I judge him one of those who intangibly present themselves as older than they are. Appearance—if it conceals—superb. Eyes as frank as a golfer’s, or one of those new-style rookies the police college always sends to check on us, in their off-duty Ivy League gray, which is what he wore. I led him straight for what I call my “duck blind”—the shelves of “progressive literature,” Marx, Engels, pamphlets displayed to show them that we are only what they are convinced we are. He went past them, nothing to be deduced from that, that first time. Left without undue haste—but markedly?—when an ordinary customer came in. Himself—an ordinary pleasant young man, to the life. Not even too much to the life. On the simplest level, then, for all but old dogs, wise fools. Except for the one thing which, when sniffed, puts everything else wrong. I smelled the intelligence there, underneath.
The second time, we began with the usual literary discussion—he might have been any customer eager to show himself a bibliophile. The stray ones interested in pornography often begin so, clumsily, with De Sade. He wasn’t one of those, nor clumsy, and his range, rising alphabetically as we ambled from shelf to shelf—Burke, Hobbes, Ricardo—was large. I complimented him on it. His reply: “I had an unusual education.” Accent peculiar, a ragbag. Used as I am, I couldn’t place it, or rather, just as I did, it moved on. Now we were standing in front of the duck blind, “Russia—Lit., Pol., Econ.” Bazarov, nihilism, revolutions in general were what he spoke of, the stuff with which a contact might wish to show himself a parti pris. But then it came, as we passed on to the travel books. A quote from Arabia Deserta. Then from the Marquis de Vogüé. None of the ordinary members can lay claim to that particular marquis. I took his real range then, plus the powerful impression that he had already taken mine.
Since then he’s come regularly to our Thursdays, making no overtures beyond them. I’m quite sure he finds them as laughable as I do. I am also quite sure he comes for something, and goes away each time to a point satisfied. To a point, whatever that is. One can only go as deep with a man as he has gone with himself, and how far he has is what I don’t yet know. If I were reporting on him to the others, I should say ‘Honest, in respect to something. The appearance of a quite different honesty on top. Between the two—a devious middle ground. For us, as temperaments go, the best combination that exists.’ But this is my report to myself. I am both worried—and drawn. The highest level, yes, in himself—no worry there if he also belongs to ours. I’m all but sure that he does. But if he does not, but if he does not—then I am still drawn. And that is terrifying to a man like me. To find a man of equal mind, to whom one is tempted to speak fully, and to find it not inside our circle, where I never have, but without. Age makes no difference between us. Or rather, I sometimes feel like a father before a son who has inherited his talents. An odd thing occurred after yesterday’s meeting, he already gone. His voice still in my ears together with my own, I suddenly placed his accent. The hair rose on my spine. My accent is its own mixture. And his? It was mine—precisely mine.
I shall find some way of remarking on it, next Thursday.
But the next Thursday, I did not come back.
Now is it clear, the mechanism of what I did, and continued to do? Is it clear that the two accounts above, written last night, though imagined by me, concern true events which happened, which were made to happen by the man who moved, in a double way, through them?
And from above, behind, comes the verdict—from the owl on my shoulder, that ex-human pocket-of-outer-space which makes us human: “So. Still trying your somersaults, even in the confession box. You did better when you spoke ex tenebris, ‘as a child.’ No, it is not clear. Your business is not to make it so, but to speak. Speak then. And point the pen a degree nearer the skin.”
So, here then is the secret as plainly as I can say it. With the Aiellos and Belden, I first began my practice of visiting, from the mists of preknowledge, other people’s lives. In each little world I remained for a time, trailing my mists but warmed, always in the end moving on. As I grew more practiced, these excursions formaliz
ed themselves, developing their own little habits, easements, even a code of manners, all of which I came to recognize. There were times when I merely “visited” as it were for an evening, dipping into some environment that teased me to know it casually, satisfied to stay there like some tourist with a personal introduction he never disclosed, watching the people there in the light of it, never making himself known. For more complicated excursions, where it seemed likely that my stay would be longer, I rehearsed my disguises more thoroughly, sinking myself well in the role beforehand, like an actor with a two-hour make-up to apply. Such wigs and grease paints as I used were of course always “mental”; as I saw how, when skillfully applied, the barest hints furnished me by memory and predilection could turn into life-size effects, I began to appreciate, in the true spectrum of their possibilities, all the delicately japanned pigments of the mind. That range forever widened as I used it. At its farther end (though to be avoided) are illusions which can become as concrete as the whirling atoms which compose a stone; at its nether point are all the thin, common glazes used every day by the least calculating, the least shrewd. My difference—or so I told myself—was only in degree, and in control, for it was my pride, of course, that I never lost sight of my artifices, precisely because they were more conscious than other people’s, more formed. By means of them, I should never step into that web where the artifices become the man. These were to be my tricks of leisure, my avocation, my hobby, kept for myself as others kept more displayable connoisseurships, my trick of defense—beneath it all, the self, that naked contemplative, safe in his grove!
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