The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  Penwad pointed out various luminaries. There was a Cultural Attaché, a Something Attaché, several Somethings from the Department of Something—it was all a matter for experts.

  “And do you see the lady over there?” Joan said, nodding discreetly in the direction of a stunning woman with arched eyebrows and a blood-red mouth. She was bending toward a boy who appeared to be about fifteen. “Our hostess. The reception for you is at her house. And her son. Well, as you see. They’re identical. You’ll enjoy talking to him. Perfect English—he’s going to boarding school up in the States, and he just loves it. He loves to meet our visitors. The father’s cattle, you know. Special, special people. Josefina’s a marvel. You’re not going to believe the house. She’s a real force behind culture here. And, you can imagine, some of these wives…”

  “Wonderful people,” Penwad said. “And of course you two know each other from way back.”

  García-Gutiérrez had joined them, murmuring thanks to Shapiro. He was as handsome as before, though he’d be over sixty—a great tree of a man, at which age was hacking away fruitlessly. His loaflike body was still powerful; his long arms and legs, the musculature so emphatic one felt aware of its operations beneath the very correct clothing, the straining neck and jaws, the hooded eyes. “I feel that you brought something new to my music tonight,” he was saying. “Something of a darkness, perhaps.” In the man’s lingering examination Shapiro felt the blind focussing, adversarial and comprehending, the arousal of the hunter. “Very interesting…”

  Oh, that night seventeen years earlier! When it was reasonable for Shapiro to assume that he himself was going to be one of the favored. That he, too, would be respected, dignified, happy…The audience that night! How gratifying Shapiro had found their ardor then, how loathsome now, in memory. How thrilled they had been, seeing their own bright reflection in all the weightless glitter.

  “We’ll talk more, you and I, at the reception,” García-Gutiérrez whispered, and glided off with Penwad and Joan to a huddle of musicians, who watched their approach with alarm.

  Shapiro’s heart jumped and blazed. People were beginning to float toward the parking lot. He played better now than he had then, but it made no difference—no difference at all. And those nights at the stage door; the faces, golden in the light, diamond earrings winking in the gold light…All the beautiful women. Gone now. No matter. What was it they’d adored? Those ardent glances, warm in the glow of his fame, the first shock, at the stage door, of Caroline’s great, light eyes. Affirm-ing, affirming—oh, what was he to do? They couldn’t even put him in the decent hotel! Caroline was walking down the street. She wore a dainty little dress. The sun was on her hair, but black shadows swung overhead, and battling armies clanged behind her in the dust. Men and women lay on the sidewalk, their torn clothing exposing sticky lesions. One of them shifted painfully and held out a disintegrating paper cup. Caroline paused, opened her purse, and took out a quarter.

  “Are you all right?” someone asked. Shapiro blinked, and saw the boy, the son of the woman who was having the reception. “You must be famished.” He regarded Shapiro with the merry, complicitous look of a young person who anticipates approval. “What a workout for you, I think, that piece of G.-G.’s. But we’ll have plenty of food back at home—the cooks have been racing around all day. Oh! Well, look at this. He’s smart. He brought his own.” The boy directed an amused glance toward Beale, who was ambling toward them, disemboweling an orange.

  “Hello,” Shapiro said. The boy’s tone—despicable. He hoped Beale hadn’t caught it.

  “Would you care for any?” Beale said. “I’m afraid it’s somewhat…” He nodded to the boy, who nodded distantly back. “You know,” he said to Shapiro, “I’m sorry if I lost my bottle a bit last night. I tend to go on, from time to time, about one thing and another. Hope I said nothing to offend.”

  “Not at all,” Shapiro said. It made no difference at all.

  “Good good.” A pink and rumpled smile wandered across Beale’s face. “Goody goody.”

  Beale was making a complete mess of his orange. A small piece of peel had lodged in his webby tie. The boy was looking at it. “Oh,” Beale said, glancing up. “Sorry. Difficult to handle. You know, it’s strange about oranges, isn’t it? They’re so alluring. Irresistible, really. I mean, that color, for example—orange. And the glossiness. And that delicious smell they have. But it’s all very strange. I mean, what good does it do them? They can’t enjoy it. At least, so one supposes. All their deliciousness, do they get any fun out of it? No. It only gets them eaten. Isn’t that strange? I mean, what is it for, from their point of view? I suppose you might ask the same of a flower. Flowers have sort of got it all, don’t they. Looks, scent…But they have absolutely no way to appreciate that!” He giggled. “For all we know, they think of themselves as grotesque.”

  The boy was considering Beale with a dreamy, meditative look. His stare idled among the stains on Beale’s suit. “Excuse me,” he said. He smiled briefly at Shapiro. “I should go find some of our”—he glanced at Beale—“guests.”

  Beale gasped. “Did you hear that?” he said. “Little swine. Vicious little prick. As if I were going to crash the party! As if anyone could crash their fucking miserable party—they’ll have half the fucking army at the gate.”

  “Mr. Shapiro, Mr. Shapiro,” someone was calling.

  “It’s Joan,” Shapiro said, hesitating. He heard his name again. “Just a moment!” he called out. “Just a moment,” he said to Beale. “I’ve got to—”

  “Little putrid viper,” Beale was saying, as Shapiro hurried off.

  “We’re ready to leave now,” Joan said cheerily as Shapiro approached. “Everyone’s gone down to the parking lot.”

  “Just a moment,” he said. “I’ll be right—”

  “Don’t be long,” she sang with warning gaiety, and tweaked the lapel of his tuxedo.

  “I’ll be right—” he said. A tuxedo! He might just as well be wearing grease-stained overalls with his name embroidered on the pocket. “One more minute.” He hurried back to find Beale, but Beale had disappeared.

  “Hello?” Shapiro said. “Hello? I just wanted to—” But where could Beale have gone to? How arrogant that young boy was! How—Well, and the fact was, Shapiro thought, a man in livery could hardly afford to turn up his nose at a sloppy suit. “Hello?” he said again.

  For a moment there was just a gentle surf of night noises, but then Shapiro made out Beale’s voice, faint, very faint. Following the sound, he saw Beale, a dark shape, crouched in the corner of a concrete trough that must have been intended as some sort of reflecting pool.

  Beale was speaking into his tape recorder. His voice had a stealthy, incantatory tone. “And now…” But the little noises of the night were washing away his words. “…take you to the party I promised you. It’s…prominent family here.”

  There was an oily stain, or fissure, Shapiro saw, at the bottom of the trough. “And any important artist from…And what a beautiful…high, white…and tasteful objets d’art. But tonight…to take you out into the…”

  Shapiro stood as still as he could and strained to hear.

  “How lovely it…” Beale crooned into the machine. “Fountains, flowers…And…of chirpings! Croakings! Can you hear, my darling?”

  Beale held the tape recorder up in the lifeless trough. Shapiro shuddered—a slight chill was coming down from the mountains.

  “And those other sounds—do you hear?” Beale said. His voice was growing louder or Shapiro’s ears were adjusting, seeking out the words. “The little plashings?” Beale said. “The fountain, yes, but what else? Not Spanish. But a language, yes! Just so. A language that’s much, much older.

  “Yes, because we’re right across from the servants’ quarters. And right there, on the servants’ portico, the children are playing. The Indian children. Their mothers are all inside, serving little goodies to the guests. Can you hear the chatter behind us, of the guests?” Sha
piro closed his eyes. Yes, he could hear it, the chatter, the pointless chatter. And smell the orange-scented garden. Yes—and he could see the children, just beyond the fountain, with their black, black hair, and shrewd, ravishing little faces.

  “Good,” Beale said. “Yes. And one of the children has a piece of stone or crockery. The others whisper together. They’re joining hands—they seem to be inventing a game, don’t they? Or reinventing. Some sort of game. Maybe they remember…”

  Shapiro’s name floated up from the parking lot. They were beginning to shout for him. Yes, yes, he thought fiercely, and held up a hand as though both to forestall and to shush them. In a moment…He sat down, as quietly as he could manage, on the cool concrete. Another moment and he’d go.

  “When I first came to this country,” Beale was telling the tape recorder, “the sky was a blue dome over the highlands. People had more food then, and weren’t so afraid. When you went hiking through the villages, suddenly there would be a waterfall, and fifty, a hundred, two hundred women, swaying along the mountain, coming to do their washing.”

  Ah! Along the mountain, coming closer. Their faces were in shadow still, and indistinct. But any minute, any minute now…

  “I wanted to speak to them,” Beale said. “But how could I? I was only an apparition! But—are you listening, my darling? I know they’re still there—they’ll always be there, beyond the curtain of blood.” Beale stretched himself out in the trough, tucking the tape recorder under his head like a pillow, and a delicious sensation of rest poured into Shapiro’s body. “I’m tired now.” Beale patted the tape recorder. “I think I’ll sleep. But it’s going to be all right. Because the first thing. In the morning. When the sun is up again and shining? I’ll start back off to them. And finally we’ll speak. Please be there with me. They’ll be so happy. I know they will. Because everyone has something, some little thing, my darling, they’ve been waiting so long to tell you…”

  Tlaloc’s Paradise

  The young American at the door was looking for a place to rent; Jean knew that as soon as she saw him. No, almost that soon, but in fact she was first seized, facing him there, by the violent and irrational certainty that he had come to tell her something—that he’d come down from the States to tell her something about Leo.

  It was a moment before she began to thaw out and catch up with the boy’s disorderly excuses. His name was Mark something, he was telling her; he’d been talking to a man in a café near the square. This man had said she and her husband were likely to know if there were a place available. He was sorry to just show up at her home like this, but he’d gone to the shop earlier and found it closed. He’d tried to phone, of course, but the phones just didn’t seem to work, and since the man in the café had given him directions to the house…How did people manage, by the way, with these phones? Though that was part of the charm of the country, wasn’t it?

  He looked at her, and immediately began to apologize again: a cliché it must be no end irritating to hear this sort of thing constantly. And the fact was, he rarely found himself anyplace where phones did work. But sometimes one just opened one’s mouth, and out came some—

  “Of course,” Jean said. “Well, and besides.” He was large, and almost puffy, as though with fatigue, or some mild, chronic inflammation. “Anyhow, I don’t think anyone would argue that malfunction and charm are related, at least here.”

  “Hmm.” The boy frowned. “‘Related.’ Right. Complicated…”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know of any places at the moment,” she said. “Leo would, probably, but you’ll have to come back. I’m sorry. I’m afraid he’s up in the States right now.”

  “Ah,” the boy said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jean said. “You just missed him. He only went up this morning.”

  “Well.” The boy frowned again, nodding. “Thanks. Too bad. Oh—Should I come back sometime? Yes, you said that, didn’t you.”

  “Some other time,” Jean said. “Yes.”

  “So,” he said. “I’ll try again next week?”

  “Fine,” she said.

  He was so big, just standing there.

  He ducked his head. “Well,” he said. “Thanks.”

  She sighed. “Would you like to come in?”

  Inside, he seemed even larger, and more formless, as though her fatigue were allowing him to spread into the far reaches of the large room. “Did you take the bus?” she asked, attempting to anchor her attention to one spot.

  He had. He was pleased to be asked, she saw; the ride was short—she and Leo were no more than twenty minutes from town—but it was confusing, and, for strangers, difficult to negotiate. Clearly the boy was a good traveler—he’d found her after only one day in town. Though he’d been in the country, he seemed to be saying now, for several weeks.

  As he talked, his shadowy bulk moved here and there, beyond the soft canopy of lamp- and candlelight, vaguely inspecting her emissaries, as it amused Leo to call them—the tall figures she’d constructed over the years, of various materials. “The man in the café mentioned you were a sculptor,” the boy said, as though it were astonishing that this should, in fact, be so. Mark, she reminded herself. They looked like they were loitering there, in the dim margins, or massing.

  “Welded?” the boy said.

  “That one, yes.” Fine, something she could talk about almost automatically. “A number of the early ones are, but I haven’t worked in metal for years.”

  He hovered near one of the figures, peering. “Interesting,” he said.

  His caution made Jean smile. “You don’t have to…I have no great stake in their quality, as it turns out.”

  Each had represented—witnessed and represented—pressing matters; attitudes, preoccupations…Pressing at the time. But eventually each figure was merely subsumed into the slowly expanding crowd. “It’s just something I enjoy.”

  “Mmm.” Mark frowned. “Enjoy…”

  It wasn’t his size, exactly—it was his obstacle-like quality. Still, Jean reminded herself. New places. Things abruptly inflating with a puzzling significance, or, just as suddenly, draining of any significance at all. She remembered: Herself and Leo, sitting gingerly, like this boy, wary lest some chance phrase burst into flames…“There shouldn’t be much of a problem with a house for you,” she said. “You’re off-season, and there are a few vacation places Leo’s been looking after.”

  Actually, there were probably some things she should take care of herself—plants, lights to outwit the tireless thieves…Neither she nor Leo had given any of that a thought in all the chaos of booking his ticket, getting in touch with friends in San Antonio, getting him on the plane. “When Leo’s back he’ll…” She sighed.

  “I’d hate to have…I mean, well—a house. I hadn’t really been thinking of a whole—And I’d hate to have…your husband go to trouble if—”

  “Leo likes it,” Jean said. “Can you imagine? Well, who knows. Maybe that’s the sort of thing you like, too. I can’t stand it myself. Dealing with the propane, dealing with keys, dealing with cleaning girls. But I suppose it makes Leo feel…” She picked up a cushion near her on the sofa, looked at it, then let it drop. “Well, he likes it, that’s all. That’s all.”

  Mark took a deep breath. “Also, the price is something I’d…I mean, I don’t have all that much—”

  “Of course,” Jean said. No, obviously this boy wouldn’t have any money. “Well, that’s something everyone down here…Anyhow, owners tend to want someone just to…Actually, you know, I’ve probably got all kinds of keys around here somewhere. Of course, even if I could find them I wouldn’t know what key was what. Leo always says he’s going to label, but you know how it is. Years go by…” Her head felt rubbery. She pushed her hair back; she’d forgotten to wash it in the morning.

  The boy was watching her. “Oh, listen,” she said. “Would you—How stupid I am tonight. Mark. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Sure, great. O
h, but maybe you—God, it’s late. I hadn’t—”

  “No,” she said. “Believe me. I never sleep till two.”

  “Well, great, then,” he said.

  He kept his eyes lowered; he seemed almost afraid to look at her. But when he did, the intensity of his scrutiny was outrageous, practically comical. What did he suppose it was that licensed him to display such curiosity? The fact of his youth? His status as newcomer? There was nothing to prevent her from being annoyed, Jean thought, just as he blinked, and turned his gaze to the French doors.

  She watched his large, moist eyes. “So,” she said. “What’s up?”

  He shook his head and turned back to her, looking bewildered. “Lots of stars…”

  “Oh, lots,” Jean said. “Always. Very busy at night.”

  So busy. She’d never gotten over it—that sky, this room, dim and glossy with tiles and Mexican mirrors; all the faces amid the complex refractions—the faces of those figures of hers, of the pre-Columbian pieces and the masks she and Leo had scattered around; the brilliant Mexican night beyond the doors, with its festive, agitated stars and roses. Sometimes she and Leo stood here stricken, with all of that right around them, as though it were something that had eluded them…“Oh, heavens,” she said. “Sorry. Usually I’m a bit more—Listen, all I can offer you is Canadian Club. Well, there’s beer or tequila, but you’ll get deeply sick of those if you’re sticking around. We always used to have these great, sloshing reservoirs of alcohol, but I’m afraid we seem to be down to bedrock. The dreadful truth is, we’re utterly at the mercy of whatever anyone grabs on the way through duty-free.”

  He’d picked up a small stone carving from the coffee table. “Actually, I don’t really drink,” he said, turning the figure over in his hand. “Do you have a Coke, or something like that? But really, I don’t want to keep you up.”