by Bellow, Saul
When she got back to Park Avenue, the superintendent’s wife, a Latino lady, was waiting. Mrs. Peralta was there too. Clara had asked the cleaning lady to help Gina entertain (to keep an eye on) her friends. The elevator operator-doorman was with the ladies, a small group under the marquee. The sidewalks of Park Avenue are twice as broad as any others, and the median strip was nicely planted with flowers of the season. When the doorman helped Clara from the yellow cab, the women immediately began to tell her about the huge bash Gina had given. “A real mix of people,” said Mrs. Peralta.
“And the girls?”
“Oh, we were careful with them, kept them away from those East Harlem types. We’re here because Mr. Regler called to say what flight you’d be on.”
“I asked him to do that,” said Clara.
“I don’t think Gina thought so many were coming. Friends, and friends of friends, of her boyfriend, I guess.”
“Boyfriend? Now, who would he be? This is news to me.”
“I asked Marta Elvia to come and see for herself,” said Antonia Peralta. Marta Elvia, the super’s wife, was related somehow to Antonia.
They were taken up in the elevator. Marta Elvia, eight months pregnant and filling up much of the space, was saying what a grungy mob had turned up. It was an open house.
“But tell me, quickly, who is the boyfriend?” said Clara.
The man was described as coming from the West Indies; he was French-speaking, dark-skinned, very good-looking, “arrogant-like,” said Mrs. Peralta.
“And how long has he been coming to the house?”
“Couple of weeks, just.”
When she entered the living room, Clara’s first impression was: So this is what can be done here. It doesn’t have to be the use I put it to. She had limited the drawing room to polite behavior.
The party was mostly over; there were only four or five couples left. As Clara described it, the young women looked gaudy. “The room was more like a car of the West Side subway. Lots of muscle on the boys, as if they did aerobics. And I used to be able to identify the smell of pot, but I’m in the dark, totally, on the new drugs. Crack is completely beyond me; I can’t even say what it is, much less describe how it works and does it have a smell. The whole scene was like a milage to me, how they were haberdashed. Gina’s special friend, Frederic, was a good-looking boy, black, and he did have an attractive French accent. Gina tried to behave as if nothing at all was wrong, and she couldn’t quite swing that. I wasn’t going to fuss at her, though. At the back of the apartment, I had three children sleeping. At a time like this your history books come back to you—how a pioneer woman dealt with an Indian war party when her husband was away. So I put myself out to make time pass pleasantly, toned down the music, ventilated the smoke, and soon the party petered out.”
While Mrs. Peralta was cleaning up, Clara had a talk with Gina Wegman. She said she had imagined a smaller gathering—a few acquaintances, not a random sample of the street population.
“Frederic asked if he could bring some friends.”
Well, Clara was willing to believe that this was simply a European misconception of partying in New York—carefree musical young people, racially mixed, dancing to reggae music. In Vienna, as elsewhere, such pictures of American life were on TV—America as the place where you let yourself go.
“Anyway, I must tell you, Gina, that I can’t allow this kind of thing—like scenes from some lewd dance movie.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Velde.”
“Where did you meet Frederic?”
“Through friends from Austria. They work at the UN.”
“Is that where he works too?”
“I never asked.”
“And do you see a lot of him? You don’t have to answer—I can tell you’re taken with him. You never asked what he does? He’s not a student?”
“It never came up.”
Clara thought, judging by Gina’s looks, that what came up was Gina’s skirt. Clara herself knew all too well how that was. We’ve been through it. What can be more natural in a foreign place than to accept exotic experiences? Otherwise why leave home at all?
Clifford, a convict in Attica, still sent Clara a Christmas card without fail. She hadn’t seen him in twenty-five years. They had no other connection. Frederic, to go by appearances, wouldn’t even have sent a card. Generational differences. Clifford had been a country boy.
We must see to it that it doesn’t end badly, was what Clara told herself. But then we must learn what sort of person Gina is, really, she thought. What makes her tick, and if this is the whole sum of what she wants. I didn’t take her for a little hot-pants type.
“I suppose things are done differently in Vienna,” Clara said. “As to bringing strangers into the house…”
“No. But then you’re personally friendly with the colored lady who works here.”
“Mrs. Peralta is no stranger.”
“She brings her children here at Thanksgiving, and they eat with the girls at the same table.”
“And why not? But yes,” said Clara, “I can see that this is a mixture that might puzzle somebody just over from Europe for the first time. My husband and I are not rashists….” (This was a pronunciation Clara could not alter.) “However, Mrs. Peralta is a trusted member of this household.”
“But Frederic’s friends might steal…?”
“I haven’t accused anyone. You couldn’t vouch for anybody, though. You’ve just met these guests yourself. And haven’t you noticed the security arrangements—the doors, the buzzer system, everybody inspected?”
Gina said, speaking quietly and low, “I noticed, I didn’t apply it to myself.”
Not herself._ Gina hadn’t considered Frederic in this light. And she couldn’t al-low him to be viewed with suspicion. Clara gave her a good mark for loyalty. Ten on a scale of ten, she thought, and warmed toward Gina. “It’s not a color question. The corporation I’m in has even divested itself in South Africa.” This was not a strong statement. To Clara, South Africa was about as close as Xanadu. But she said to herself that they were being diverted into absurdities, and what she and Gina were telling each other was only so much fluff. The girl had come to New York to learn about such guys as Frederic, and there wasn’t all that much to learn. This was simply an incident, and not even a good incident. Just a lot of exciting trouble. Then she made a mental note to take all this up with Ithiel and also get his opinion on divestiture.
“Well,” she said, “I’m afraid I’m going to set a limit on the size of the group you can entertain.”
The girl nodded. That made sense. She couldn’t deny it.
No more scolding. And a blend of firmness and concern for the girl. If she were to send her away, the kids would cry. And I’d miss her myself, Clara admitted. So she stood up (mistress terminating a painful interview was how Clara perceived it; she saw that she really had come to depend on certain lady-of-the-house postures). When Gina had gone to her room, Clara ran a check: the Jensen ashtray, the silver letter opener, mantelpiece knickknacks; and for the лth time she wished that there were someone to share her burdens. Wilder was no good to her that way. If he got fifty speech commissions he couldn’t make up the money he had sunk in mining stocks—Homestake and Sunshine. Supposedly, precious metals were a hedge, but there was less and less principal for the shrinking hedge to hedge.
The inspection over, Clara talked to Antonia Peralta before Antonia turned on the noisy vacuum cleaner. How often had Gina’s young man been in the apartment? Antonia jabbed at her cheek with a rigid finger, meaning that a sharp lookout was necessary. Her message was: “Count on me, Mrs. Velde.” Well, she was part of a pretty smart subculture. Between them, she and Marta Elvia would police the joint. On Gina Wegman herself Antonia Peralta did not comment. But then she wasn’t always around, she had her days off. And remember, Antonia hadn’t cleaned under the bed. And if she had_ been thorough she would have round the missing ring. In that case, would she have handed it over? She w
as an honest lady, according to her lights, but there probably were certain corners into which those lights never were turned. The insurance company had paid up, and Clara would have been none the wiser if Antonia had silently pocketed a lost object. No, the Spanish ladies were honest enough. Marta Elvia was bonded, triple certified, and Antonia Peralta had never taken so much as a handkerchief.
In my own house,” Clara was to explain later, “I object to locking up valuables. A house where there is no basic trust is not what I call a house. I just can’t live with a bunch or keys, like a French or Italian person. Women have told me that they couldn’t sleep nights if their jewelry weren’t locked up. /couldn’t sleep if it were.”
She said to Gina, “I’m taking your word for it that nothing bad will happen.” She was bound to make this clear, while recognizing that there was no way to avoid giving offense.
Gina had no high looks, no sharp manner. She simply said, “Are you telling me not to have Frederic here?”
Clara’s reaction was, Better here than there._ She tried to imagine what Frederic’s pad must be like. That was not too difficult. She had, after all, herself been a young woman in New York. Gina was giving her a foretaste of what she would have to face when her own girls grew up. Unless heaven itself were to decree that Gogmagogsville had gone far enough, and checked the decline—time to lower the boom, send in the Atlantic to wash it away. Not a possibility you could count on.
“By no means,” said Clara. “I will ask you, though, to take full charge when Antonia is off.”
“You don’t want Frederic here when the children are with me?”
“Right.”
“He wouldn’t harm them.” Clara did not see fit to say more.
She spoke to Ms. Wong about it, stopping at her place after work for a brief drink, a breather on the way home. Ms. Wong had an unsuitably furnished Madison Avenue apartment, Scandinavian design, not an Oriental touch about it except some Chinese prints framed in blond wood. Holding her iced Scotch in a dampening paper napkin, Clara said, “I hate to be the one enforcing the rules on that girl. I feel for her a lot more than I care to.”
“You identify all that much with her?”
“She’s got to learn, of course,” said Clara. “Just as I did. And I don’t think much of mature women who have evaded it. But sometimes the schooling we have to undergo is too rough.”
“Seems to you now_…”
“No, it takes far too much out of a young girl.”
“You’re thinking of three daughters,” said Ms. Wong, accurate enough. “I’m thinking how it is that you have to go on for twenty years before you understand—maybe understand—what there was to preserve.”
Somewhat dissatisfied with her visit to Laura (it was so New York!),_ she walked home, there to be told by Mrs. Peralta that she had found Gina and Frederic stretched out on the living room sofa. Doing what? Oh, only petting, but the young man with the silk pillows under his combat boots. Clara could see why Antonia should be offended. The young man was putting down the Veldes and their fine upholstery, spreading himself about and being arrogant.
And perhaps it wasn’t even that. He may not have reached that_ level of intentional offensiveness.
“You talk to the girl?”
“I don’t believe I will. No,” said Clara, and risked being a contemptible American in Mrs. Peralta’s eyes, one of those people who let themselves be run over in their own homes. Largely to herself, Clara explained, “I’d rather put up with him here than have the girl do it in his pad.” No sooner had she said this than she was dead certain that there was nothing to keep Gina from doing whatever they did in both places. She would have said to Gina, “Making the most of New York—this not-for-Vienna behavior. No boys lying on top of you in your mother’s drawing room.”
“Land of opportunity,” she might have said, but she said this only to herself after thinking matters through, considering deeply in a trancelike private stillness and moistening the center of her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. Why did it go so dry right at the center? Imagining sexual things sometimes did that to her. She didn’t envy Gina; the woman who had made such personal sexual disclosures to Ms. Wong didn’t have to envy anyone. No, she was curious about this pretty, plump girl. She sensed that she was a deep one. How_ deep was what Clara was trying to guess when she went so still.
And so she closed her eyes briefly, nodding, when Marta Elvia, who sometimes waited for her in the lobby, pressed close with her pregnant belly to say that Frederic had come in at one o’clock and left just before Mrs. Velde was expected.
(There were anomalies in Clara’s face when you saw it frontally. Viewing it in profile, you would find yourself trying to decide which of the Flemish masters would have painted her best.)
“Thanks, Marta Elvia,” she said. “I’ve got the situation under control.”
She shouldn’t have been so sure about it, for that very evening when she was dressing for dinner—a formal corporate once-a-year affair—she was standing before the long mirror in her room, when suddenly she knew that her ring had been stolen. She kept it in the top drawer of her dresser—unlocked, of course. Its place was a dish Jean-Claude had given her years ago. The young Frenchman, Ithiel’s temporary replacement recklessly chosen in anger, had called this gift a vide-poches._ At bedtime you emptied your pockets into it. It was meant for men; women didn’t use that kind of object; but it was one of those mementos Clara couldn’t part with—she kept schoolday valentines in a box, too. She looked, of course, into the dish. The ring wasn’t there. She hadn’t expected it to be. She expected nothing. She said that the sudden knowledge that it was gone came over her like death and she felt as if the life had been vacuumed out of her.
Wilder, already in evening clothes, was reading one of his thrillers in a corner where the back end of the grand piano hid him. With her rapid, dry decision-maker’s look, Clara went to the kitchen, where the kids were at dinner. Under Gina’s influence they behaved so well at table. “May I see you for a moment?” said Clara, and Gina immediately got up and followed her to the master bedroom. There Clara shut both doors, and lowering her head so that she seemed to be examining Gina’s eyes, “Well, Gina, something has happened,” she said. “My ring is gone.”
“You mean the emerald that was lost and found again? Oh, Mrs. Velde, I am sorry. Is it gone? I’m sure you have looked. Did Mr. Velde help you?”
“I haven’t told him yet.”
“Then let’s look together.”
“Yes, let’s. But it’s always in the same place, in this room. In that top drawer under my stockings. Since I found it again, I’ve been extra careful. And of course I want to examine the shag rug. I want to crawl and hunt for it. But I’d have to take off this tight dress to get on my knees. And my hair is fixed for going out.”
Gina, stooping, combed through the carpet near the dresser. Clara, silent, let her look, staring down, her eyes superdilated, her mouth stern. She said, at last, “It’s no use.” She had let Gina go through the motions.
“Should you call the police to report it?”
“I’m not going to do that,” said Clara. She was not so foolish as to tell the young woman about the insurance. “Perhaps that makes you feel better, not having the police.”
“I think, Mrs. Velde, you should have locked up your valuable objects.”
“In my own home, I shouldn’t have to.”
“Yes, but there are other people also to consider.”
“I consider, Gina, that a woman has a right in her own bedroom… it’s for a woman herself_ to decide who comes in. I made it explicit what the household rules were. I would have vouched for you, and you must vouch for your friend.”
Gina was shaken. Both women trembled. After all, thought Clara, a human being can be sketched in three or four lines, but then when the sockets are empty, no amount of ingenuity can refill them. Not her brown, not my blue.
“I understand you,” said Gina with an air of being humilia
ted by a woman whose kindness she counted on. “Are you sure the ring isn’t misplaced again?”
“Are you_ sure…?” Clara answered. “And try to think of my side of it. That was an engagement ring from a man who loved me. It’s not just an object worth x_ dollars. It’s also a life support, my dear.” She was about to say that it was involved with her very grip on existence, but she didn’t want any kind of cry to come out or to betray a fear of total slippage. She said instead, “The ring was here yesterday. And a person I don’t know wandering around the house and—why not?—coming into my room…”
“Why don’t you say it?” said Gina.
“I’d have to be a fool not to. To be too nice for such things, I’d have to be a moron. Frederic was here all afternoon. Has he got a job somewhere?”
The girl had no answer to this.
“You can’t say. But you don’t believe he’s a thief. You don’t think he’d put you in this position. And don’t try to tell me he’s being accused because of his color.”
“I didn’t try. People are_ nasty about the Haitians.”
“You’d better go and talk to him. If he’s got the ring, tell him he has to return it. I want you to produce it tomorrow. Marta Elvia can sit with the girls if you have to go out tonight. Where does he live?”
“One hundred twenty-eighth Street.”
“And a telephone? You can’t go up there alone after dark. Not even by day. Not alone. And where does he hang out? I can ask Antonia’s husband to take you by cab…. Now Wilder’s coming down the corridor, and I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll wait here for the concierge.”
“For Marta Elvia. I’ll talk to her on the way out. You_ wouldn’t steal, Gina. And Mrs. Peralta has been here eight years without a coffee spoon missing.”
Later Clara took it out on herself: What did I do to that girl, like ordering her to go to Harlem, where she could be raped or killed, because of my goddamn ring, the rottenest part of town in the rotten middle of the night, frantic mad and (what it comes down to) over Ithiel, who balked at marrying me twenty years ago! A real person understands how to cut losses, not let her whole life be wound around to the end by a single desire, because under it all is the uglitude of this one hang-up. Four husbands and three kids haven’t cured me of Ithiel. And finally this love-toy emerald, personal sentimentality, makes me turn like a maniac on this Austrian kid. She may think I grudge her the excitement of her romance with that disgusting girl-fucker who used her as his cover to get into the house and now sticks her with this theft.
