Of course he comes from old money. Ursus Americanus has been in Virginia since before John Smith founded the Jamestown Colony. The family has gone down in the social scale. It doesn’t own as much land as it used to, and what it does own is in the mountains, no good for livestock, no good for tobacco. No good for anything but timber. But there sure is a lot of timber.
Anyway, that’s how Southern families are. Look at the Carters or Randolphs. If you haven’t degenerated, you’re not really old. If you want to join the First Families of Richmond, you’d better be able to produce an insane uncle, an aunt who lives on whiskey, to prove you’re qualified.
We don’t come from that kind of family. Mom is the daughter of a Baptist preacher from Arvonia. There was no whiskey in her house. She didn’t even see a movie until she was seventeen. Dad was a step up, the son of the town’s doctor. Grandpa Barlow didn’t believe in evolution. I don’t think he ever got over learning, in medical school, that men don’t have a missing rib. Mom and Dad met in third grade. They went to the sock hop and held hands in church, while sharing a hymnal. You can see their pictures in the Arvonia High School yearbook. Dad lists his future career as astronaut, Mom as homemaker. They were voted Most Likely to Get Married. They look clean, as though they just stepped out of a television show from the 1950s.
So maybe that’s it, maybe Rosie’s still mad that we didn’t belong to the Richmond Country Club, that Dad didn’t send her to Saint Gertrude’s, where the daughters of the First Families learn geometry and which fork to use with the fish. That he didn’t think of giving her a debutante ball. Mom’s friends would have looked at her and said, with raised eyebrows, “My, isn’t Rosie the society lady?”
And when I see them, the bears sitting on the groom’s side of the church, I have to admit that they are aristocratic, like the Bear Kings of Norway, who sat on thrones carved from ice and ruled the Arctic tundra. (Nevertheless, they look perfectly comfortable in the heat, even in their fur coats.)
IV THE PROCESSION
“What do you call him in private?” I ask Rosie. I’ve never dared call him anything other than Mr. Ursus. When a man—or bear—is six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, he commands respect.
“Catcher,” she says. “That’s his middle name, or maybe part of his first name. Trout Catcher. That’s what his family calls him.”
“How much do you really know about bears?” I ask. “Like, do you know what to cook him for dinner?”
“For goodness’ sake, Blanche,” she says. “Put the brush down, you’re tangling my hair. Some of his relatives eat garbage, all right? I’ll figure it out as I go along.”
I wonder. In the library, I found a book about bears. Ursus Americanus eats acorns, melons, honey (including the bees), and gut piles left by hunters. I don’t know what Rosie’s going to do with gut piles.
I help her with the veil, which comes down to her fingernails, manicured yesterday and painted bubble gum pink. I wonder if bears like bubble gum? I hold her train as she walks along the gravel path from the minister’s house, where she’s been applying a final coat of mascara, to the church. I’m careful not to let her skirt trail on the gravel.
Mom’s and Dad’s friends are standing, the women in dresses from Lord & Taylor, the men in linen suits. The bears are standing, black and brown and the toffee color called gold. “Black bear” is a misnomer, really. They look like a forest of tree trunks, without leaves.
The organist plays the wedding march. This is Rosie’s choice. She has no originality. Which again makes me wonder: why is she marrying a bear?
V THE CEREMONY
Or perhaps I should ask, why is he marrying her?
When she first brought him home, Mom hid in the bathroom. Dad had to tell her repeatedly that bears don’t eat people. That they’re really quite gentle, except when their cubs are threatened. That they’re probably more afraid of you than you are of them.
Still, Mom sat at the edge of her chair, moving the roast beef around on her plate, not reassured to see Catcher eating only peas and carrots, mashed potatoes.
“What do you do, Mr. Ursus?” asked Dad.
He managed the family property. Conservation land, most of it, in trust for future generations. You could call him a sort of glorified forest ranger. He laughed, or perhaps growled, showing incisors of a startling whiteness.
“Your children will never need dental work,” said Dad.
Rosie was mortified. They hadn’t gotten to that stage yet. I don’t think she’d even kissed him good night.
She’ll kiss him now, certainly, and I wait to see how it will happen: whether she will be swallowed by that enormous and powerful jaw. But he kisses her on the cheek. I can see his whiskers tickling her ear. I suppose the devouring will begin later.
VI THE PHOTOGRAPHS
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he’s going to eat her. Bears don’t eat people, remember?
But I know the facts of life. When Mom married at eighteen, Grandma told her, “Just close your eyes and pray for children.” When I was fifteen, Mom taught me what happens between men and women. Though I have to admit, she never said anything about bears.
When our photographs are taken, I stand next to the best man—or bear, Catcher’s younger brother. He looks at me and grins, unless he’s just showing his teeth. He’s not as tall as his brother and only a few inches taller than me, so maybe he’s not fully grown. Bears take five years to grow to maturity. I wonder where he goes to school, then decide he probably doesn’t go anywhere. Bears probably home school. Otherwise, they’d have to go through several grades in a year, to make it come out right. I wonder how old I am in bear years, and if he’s older than me.
VII THE RECEPTION
Before she met with the caterer, Mom asked me, “For goodness’ sake, what do bears eat?”
There are ham biscuits for the people and honey biscuits for the bears, melon soup for everybody. Trout with sauce and au naturale, as they say in French class. Raspberries. She didn’t take my suggestion to serve the honey biscuits with dead bees. I’m sure the bears would have appreciated that.
The bears drink mead, which is made from honey. I try some. It feels like fire going down my throat, and burns like fire in my stomach. Like a fire on the altar of the Bear Goddess. Her name is Callisto. Once, by accident when she was hunting in the forest, she killed her son, Arcas. So she put him in a cave for the winter, and when spring came again, he emerged healed. That’s why bears sleep through the winter.
This isn’t what it says in Bullfinch’s Mythology. But Catcher says Bullfinch got it all wrong. He says Bullfinch is a bunch of bull—. You know what I mean. He doesn’t curse often, but when he does, Mom clutches the hem of her dress, as though trying to hold it against a wind that will lift it over her knees.
VIII THE DANCING
Dad doesn’t remember how to dance, so he and Rosie sway back and forth, like teenagers at prom. The bears know how to dance, of course. They begin a Virginia Reel, whirling down the line in each other’s arms, then go into figures I don’t recognize. To punctuate the rhythm, they growl and stamp their feet.
Frog Biter asks me to dance. I guess he was checking me out, too, when the photographs were taken. I’m worried about following the bear dances, but he swings me out in a waltz. I never knew anyone could be so strong.
Yeah, he tells me. And I’m only four and a half. Wait until I’m fully grown. I’ll be taller than Catcher.
Hearing this makes something burn in the pit of my stomach, which may be the mead.
IX THE CAKE
Catcher cuts the cake, which is shaped like a beehive.
“What a charming couple they make,” says Mrs. Ashby.
“I’m surprised she wore white,” says Mrs. Coates. “I heard her relationship with the lawyer was pretty hot and heavy.”
He feeds a slice to Rosie, then licks frosting from the corner of her mouth. His tongue is the color of raspberry ice cream.
“Do you think
their children will be black?” asks Mrs. Mason, the minister’s wife. She walks with a cane and must be over eighty.
“There are bears in the ladies’ room,” says Mrs. Partlow. “Do you know they go just like a man?”
“I think he’s sexy, with all that fur,” says Alison Coates. She’s in my French class.
“I don’t know how she caught him,” says Mrs. Sutton. “All that real estate, and I never thought she was pretty in the first place.”
She feeds him a slice. Her hand disappears into the darkness between his teeth.
X THE HONEYMOON
Biter promises to stop whenever I want to.
When Rosie left on her honeymoon, everyone threw rose petals. They stuck to Catcher’s fur. I could see her brushing them off through the limousine window.
It’s nothing like when Eddie Tyler felt me up under the bleachers. His fur smells like rain, his mouth tastes like honey. I run my tongue over his incisors, and he laughs—or growls, I don’t know which. And suddenly we’re rolling around in the vestry, my fingers gripping his fur, trying to pull out brown tufts. It doesn’t hurt him a bit.
I want to sleep with you, I say, and I mean through the winter, with the snow above us and branches covered with ice, creaking in the wind. While the deer are starving, searching for grasses under the snow, we’ll lie next to each other, living off our fat, sharing body heat. I’ll even cook him deer guts.
But he takes it another way, and that’s all right too. His curved claws are good at climbing trees, and unbuttoning dresses. And I finally understand why my sister is marrying a bear. Maybe if Eddie Tyler had been a bear, I would have let him get to third base.
XI THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Our June brides include Miss Rosalie Barlow, who was married in the First Methodist Church to Mr. T. C. Ursus. The new Mrs. Ursus has a B.A. from Sweet Briar College. Mr. Ursus manages his family’s extensive property in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The maid of honor was Miss Blanche Barlow, the bride’s sister. The best man was the groom’s brother, Mr. F. B. Ursus. The bride carried white lilies and wore her mother’s wedding dress of peau de soie decorated with seed pearls. The bride’s mother, Mrs. Elwood Barlow, is the former Miss Buckingham County, 1965.
LETTERS FROM BUDAPEST
The sun had set over the mountains, leaving János Pál in a late autumn darkness that faded the gilding on the eighteenth-century chairs and turned obscure Italian masters into patches of ocher and sienna. He rose from his desk, where he had been balancing accounts, and walked to the shop door. The glass, on which was painted (backwards, from his perspective) Pál Arts and Antiquities, provided a view of the river, flowing slowly between banks that kept it from flooding the village each spring. Higher up the mountain, he thought, the river fell in cataracts and rushed down rocky slopes. Farther down it joined the Beszterc, flowing to Galati and eventually the Black Sea. They had camped at the meeting of the rivers when he was a boy—he and his brother István, with their father.
He sighed and opened the door, making the bell ring. He stepped out to see how far ice had covered the edges of the river, but something in front of the door crunched under his foot. It was an envelope, overstuffed and dirty from lying on the ground. He stooped to pick it up, cursing the Postal Department under his breath. But when he saw the handwriting, he breathed in sharply, although it only said,
Pál János
Pál Arts and Antiquities
Erdélyország
With a trembling hand, he pushed open the door, then stumbled to the back of the shop, knocking over and hastily righting a chair from the time of Napoleon, with armrests carved to resemble swans. He sat at his desk, put his elbows on his book of accounts, and stared at the envelope, as though afraid to open it. There was no return address, and it was missing a stamp. Slowly, methodically, he reached into a drawer, pulled out a paper knife, and slit the envelope. The pages were crumpled and closely-written. He flipped the switch on a lamp by his elbow, but it failed to come on. Electricity might not be available until later in the evening. He pulled a candle out of the drawer and tried to decide whether to pull out his pipe, stuffed into a back corner beside a box labeled Finest Yenidje Tobacco. He started to shut the drawer, then opened it and pulled the pipe out. He lit the candle, stuck it into a wooden holder, lit his pipe, and then looked at the letter again. In the flickering light, with smoke curling around his mustache, he began to read.
MY DEAR JÁNOS,
I’ve tried to begin this letter three times now. The wastebasket is almost full, but I can’t afford more paper, so this had better be the last time. At first, I tried to write how sorry I am that I left the University without telling you. I know you wanted me to stay in Szent Imre, to help you run the shop. It was generous of you, writing to the Director himself about my application. But I thought about how angry you must be to hear that I left, and I didn’t know how to continue. Then I tried to write that I’m at a hotel in Budapest, nearly out of money. But I thought about Mother’s bureau, how you sold it so I could afford brushes and paint. János, I’m so sorry. Once I explain, you’ll understand why I couldn’t have done anything else. I have an hour until Antoine arrives. That should be enough to explain almost everything. He promises that he’ll take this letter to you himself, so I don’t need to worry about what I write. The Postal Department will never see it.
The morning I left for the University, you warned me about Kolozsvár. “It isn’t like Prague or Budapest,” you told me, “but it’s big enough for a boy from the mountains, like you, István, to get lost in. Keep your mind on your classes, stay away from bad companions, and wear a warm hat once winter comes. You don’t want to catch a cold there, with no one to make you cabbage soup.” I remember laughing at your advice, kissing you on both cheeks, then lifting my rucksack to my shoulder and climbing into the train, feeling like a man for the first time.
You were right about Kolozsvár. When I saw it for the first time from the train window, with apartment buildings and automobiles everywhere, I almost wished I were back in Szent Imre, fishing by the river and sketching the willow trees. Do you remember how I used to draw them, as though women were stepping out of them, like in old fairy tales? You never liked those pictures. I suppose you found them too strange. I wonder what you would think—but I’m getting ahead of myself. I found my way to the University and the School of Art, a modern building built from concrete the color of dried mud. The Director’s secretary looked exactly like the Russian teacher at my high school in Szent Imre, with dyed hair and too much rouge. She sent me to a dormitory that had holes in the floor as large as soccer balls. I went back to her with the chocolates you had given me, and she moved me to another dormitory. This one had no holes, but only one water heater. After the first week I gave up on hot showers. My roommate was a boy named Petru, from Temesvár, who was in his second year. We took turns standing in line for books and bread. The food in the Art School cafeteria was even worse than your cooking!
The semester began well enough. I was busy with Art History, and Life Drawing, and Social Representation. Petru went drinking, and sometimes gambling, with other students, but I never joined him. I had a couple of dates with a figure model named Anna, who was studying to be an economist. She modeled to make money so she could afford black market clothes. We went to a café, and she told me her father would kill her if he found out she was posing naked for art students. Petru and I got along well. He was good, better than me—probably the best painter in school. But he didn’t care about art. When he had won enough money from gambling, he bought a motorcycle. He spent most of his time skipping classes and taking girls out to inns in the country, where no one cared what they did.
When the leaves started falling in the park across from the Art School, our professors started talking about the art exhibit at the end of the semester. We were each supposed to submit a painting, and the best paintings would be chosen by the Party Art Committee for a student display in the National Museum.
On
e day, while Petru was putting on his goggles for yet another motorcycle trip, I asked him, “So, are you working on anything for the exhibit?”
He laughed. In his goggles, he looked like a frog. “Don’t you know what the exhibit is about, village boy?” He held out a pack of cigarettes. “Lucky Strikes. American. A friend of mind buys them in Galati on the black market.”
I shook my head. “What do you mean about the exhibit?”
He sat down on his bed. “They tell us the exhibit is about art, and that the Committee’s job is to pick out the best paintings submitted. Right?”
I nodded.
“Goat piss. The Committee’s job is to pick out paintings that don’t threaten the Party’s standards on Social Representation. You think I’m going to paint another picture of village girls picking melons? I’d rather spend my time getting drunk. You want to see real art? Take a look at this.”
He pulled a magazine out from under his mattress. On its cover was a naked girl and the English word Playboy.
“No, thank you,” I said. I would have looked at it another time, but I was angry, and didn’t want to take anything from him.
“Don’t be an idiot.” He flipped open the cover. Under it was another cover. Even upside down, I could tell it was a painting. Sprawled across it in snaking letters was the title Les Fantaisistes.
“Here.” He thrust it toward me. “I have to go screw a ballerina. If you ever need a girl, István, you just tell me. Or maybe you prefer boys!” He laughed and walked out of the room on his long frog-legs, banging the door behind him.
I sat on my bed and opened Les Fantaisistes. In spite of the French title, it was in English. You remember I always did well in my English classes. But I didn’t need to read the writing to understand. This was what our professors had warned us about when they told us not to develop a decadent style. I saw a painting of a woman sitting on a rock by the sea shore. Her legs, down from the knees, were the tails of fish. Her head was covered with scales, and there were gills on her neck. She stared at me with eyes as flat and silver as the eyes of fish in the market. I turned the page and saw a painting of a man with the head of a bull. He stood in the corridor of a maze, his arms and legs tangled with gold thread. His mouth was open, and I could almost hear him bellow. There was a charcoal sketch of a city filled with towers. Their roofs were covered with swallows’s nests, and there were swallows in the sky, but the towers had no doors. It reminded me of a painting I told you I had seen once, in Father’s office. I think it had towers too, without doors. But you told me Father had never sold modern paintings. The paintings in Les Fantaisistes meant nothing. They existed only for the pleasure of the artist. They were like riddles without answers.
In the Forest of Forgetting Page 9
