The Magician's Girl

by Doris Grumbach

  At two in the morning, after Lowell had left, Minna lay still and nude under the blankets. She was afraid to move, afraid to dissipate the warm flush of pleasure that remained behind her closed eyes, in her thighs, in the flesh at the back of her arms and legs. The weight of Lowell’s wiry, eager boy’s body on her newly young breasts was still there; her stomach was flattened by his ethereal presence, by her sudden conviction while they were making love that they were contemporaries. She was still in the dark, having turned out the light when Lowell got into bed with her so he would not be aware of her blanched triangle of scant pubic hair and the signs of age at her neck, the loosened flesh in her hips and breasts. In the darkness, in the blank isolation of the wide bed, his hands taking the place of sight, he had sprung to life at once. Enlivened by the pressure of his young presence, she greeted his entry with moisture long absent from the unused region of her sex. His clear delight at the prospect, his wild and boyish expectations aroused, she imagined, by her lush, warm flesh in his hands brought their first encounter off quickly, too quickly for Minna’s slower responses. But it did not matter: he was back, again and again, his practiced, careful preparations on her body, giving her time, waiting, using her with gentle hands and a loving mouth. Minna’s eyes were full of tears at his wondrous concern: a boy who cared that much for what she felt. At the end, after their third encounter, she was ready for her part, her contribution to their pleasure. Their union was simultaneous and wondrous, an explosion that shook her body like a great wind and left it shaking with the aftershocks of joy.

  Exhausted, they lay together, his head in the crook of her arm, his hand on her breast. ‘That was lovely. Fine. You are lovely. You were fine. I feel great.’ There was a long silence. Minna savored his presence and the magnificent jolt into the past she had just experienced. Lowell stared into the dark and thought of his luck. Then he said, to cover the oppressive silence, ‘Tell me about some of the other papers you heard.’ ‘Are you serious?’ ‘I’m serious. If I can’t go with you, I’d like to hear what went on.’ ‘Well, someone gave a paper on the Cardiff Giant, who now resides in Iowa. Have you ever heard about him?’ ‘Never.’ ‘Well, he was said to have been discovered on a farm in upstate New York, in the town of Cardiff, in 1869. It was an enormous stone figure of a man and was said by the first witnesses to be a petrified man from biblical times. He was ten feet long and weighed over three thousand pounds. Some smart promoters took the figure to Syracuse, to Albany, and to Boston and charged thousands of people one dollar apiece to view it. Over the figure they strung a banner that read, “GENESIS 6:4. THERE WERE GIANTS IN THE EARTH IN THOSE DAYS.” After the promoters had made a fortune, a nosy scientist discovered that the giant was made of pure Iowa gypsum, and then it was revealed that the promoters had secretly buried him on that farm. But a faithful believer in the giant, convinced it was not a hoax, brought him back here and stored him in a warehouse. In 1934, someone got it out and exhibited it at a state fair.’ ‘I wish I’d been around to see it. Where is he now?’ ‘Somewhere around here, lying in state as a permanent exhibit in some private museum in Iowa, I forget where. So you can still see him, if you want.’ Lowell turned on his side and put his head on her breast. She played with his hair, arranging it behind his ear. He said, ‘You’re full of good stories.’ ‘I’m a historian. That’s what history is, in the main.’ ‘I thought it was a collection of verifiable facts, with some interpretation thrown in.’ ‘So far as fact can be rescued from a past that is overlaid with human fiction and forgetfulness, it is fact. In that way frauds, bizarre events and curiosities are interesting. They start as accepted fact and usually turn out to be invention and hoax that somehow have seeped into the official record. Some of them survive as fact, some of them are revealed to be fraud, like the Cardiff Giant. Pure but lovely fake, in the cause of theological evidence.’ Lowell was silent. Minna thought he was thinking about the unreliability of history. But he said, ‘Could we do it again?’ ‘Not tonight, my fine fellow. I’m tired. You’d better get dressed and move your jalopy from the front of the building.’ ‘I hate to go. I like it here, in this bed, lying with you.’ ‘I love having you here, but there is the maid who arrives early and … and … the disparity. What would be said of me?’ ‘And of me.’ ‘No, you’re safe enough. But I would be—some monstrosity, when they talked about us.’ Lowell laughed. In the near-dark Minna was moved by the charm of his face when he smiled. When his smile expanded into his light, lovely laugh, she wanted to say something wantonly endearing to him. But she held back, reminding herself that this was an impossible, ludicrous, incongruous love. She moved into a safer mode of discourse. ‘Mark Twain once said, “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” My friend Liz Becker used to quote this to me.’ ‘The photographer? You know her?’ ‘Yes, we were roommates in college. Do you know her work?’ ‘I saw an exhibit in Des Moines of her pictures, showing retarded kids dancing in a field, fat idiot twins with jug ears, and Korean veterans with no arms and legs. Hard stuff to look at for very long.’ ‘Yes, I suppose so, but there’s a pride in those people, a sense of the way they value themselves.’ ‘I suppose so.’ ‘Get up, Lowell, my love. ‘I am. I am getting up.’

  He turned on the bed light. Minna watched him dress, loving every jerky, boylike movement, every swift turn of his head. He bent over to kiss her. She wrapped her arm around his head to pull him down and kissed him hard. ‘Tomorrow?’ she asked when she could breathe again. He said, ‘There’s a good revival at the Bijou, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. Liza Minnelli is in it. Want to see it—with me?’ Minna laughed. ‘What a curious title. No, I think not. But you go, and come by later and tell me about it. What is tomorrow, Friday?’ ‘Yes, all day,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Fine,’ she said. As he lifted the chain latch, she suddenly, stupidly, was moved to ask, ‘Lowell, tell me, have you ever heard of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby?’ ‘No, what was that about?’ ‘How about Gertrude Ederle? Do you know who she is?’ ‘Nope. Who is she? What is this? Twenty Questions or something?’ ‘No, I just wondered. I’m still thinking about history. Pretty ancient history by now. The olden times.’ He said, ‘Good night,’ and she said, ‘Good night. Tomorrow,’ and turned out the light.

  Alone, again in the dark, Minna stretched, pulled the blankets to her chin and lay still on her back, her arms folded beneath her head. ‘How old am I now? Seventeen, I believe. I have retreated to that age, psychically, physically. I am full of young desire, wet between my legs. Filled with pleasure at my body—and his. It’s all real, I am an old fool, but I believe it is all real. I am the Cardiff Giant of Iowa history, an ancient gypsum figure passing myself off as Aphrodite, a pure, happy hoax. God help me.’

  Lowell sat in Pete’s having lunch with his roommate, Ivan Horn. Lowell started to talk, and went on and on. Horn asked him, ‘When are you going to shut up and let me say something?’ But Lowell was deaf to anything but his own lyricism. ‘She’s golden. Her hair, the little hairs on her arms are yellow and delicate. I’ve never seen a grown woman so, so elegant and yet so warm and well, lush, I suppose that’s the word. Back east she’s a full professor with tenure and all that, but with me she’s not like that. She’s … she’s … I don’t know, loving and gentle and her lust is as sweet and great as mine. Sometimes I think even greater.’ ‘How old is she?’ ‘I have no idea. I never asked her. I don’t want to know, I guess. Much older than I am, I suppose. She had a son who fought in Vietnam. He died after that, I don’t know how old he was. But what difference does it make? She’s great, she likes making love, she’s got soft hands. When I’m there, it’s like I’m with a girl, a beautiful girl. She’s good to me.’

  Ivan tried to ask more identifying questions, but Lowell would only answer with elaborate myths of womanly beauty and fanciful accounts about his new discovery of the mysteries of love. He talked on, telling Ivan of his adoration. He detailed some of what they did together, what she offered him and what he gave he
r in return. He described a dialogue of love and service, passion and retribution. On and on he went until Ivan became bored by Lowell’s wild, romantic narrative. ‘Where does all this take place? Who is she? What’s her name? How old is she, really? What’s wrong with telling me?’ Lowell said, ‘No. It’s a secret, she’s very private. I don’t believe my luck and I don’t want to spoil it.’ ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Ivan, thinking he might anger Lowell into revealing something. ‘It’s all made up. Why would a beautiful woman professor want you?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand that any more than you do.’ ‘It’s all bunk. You’re full of bull. You’re having fantasies, daydreams. You’re sick, fella.’ Lowell smiled at Ivan, and picked up his check and his books. ‘You’re probably right. I don’t believe it myself. But that’s the way it is.’

  November 28, 1978. ‘Dear Minna: I was very glad to have your letter. I have been thinking of you out there in Iowa and yes, you are right. I have a vision of fields full of brown cornstalks, snow-encrusted pigs and a horizon that stretches everlastingly in every direction. I have now readjusted my interior lenses, even my preconceived negatives. I now picture you, still in your elegant clothes (do you still have furs?) and mink-topped boots hiking up a snowy Iowa City incline to meet your students at the summit.

  ‘You write of your new “unsuitable and unnatural youth.” Well, it may seem so to you, not to me. It is a commonplace of everyone’s experience, I am sure, that one’s friends always remain the age and shape they were in the time you were most together. Perhaps it is because we have not seen much of each other since that last year at college, that it comes as no surprise at all to me to hear that you are still young. I never thought of you as aging at all.

  ‘Maud, of course, is frozen in time for me. Even if she had lived, my recording eye remembers her in only one way, in her bed with the pongee spread pulled up over her big self on that afternoon after Luther had left her room and we had just come back from photographing—who? I don’t remember who. Even the sight of her coffin in that church in Ravena cannot erase that memory, set in some kind of eternal aspic. Why is it that in all the time we lived together, I never photographed her (or you, for that matter)? Every time a biographer or writer comes by, I regret the omission publicly, but privately I rejoice, because that memory would have been wiped out by the photograph. I want one view of her: covered up on that narrow Barnard bed, for once without those distorting glasses, and a new, knowing little smile on her face.

  ‘I have been distracted from writing that your youth is not unnatural to me. I envy your finding love, a boy with the fine, poetic name. I hope all your evident pleasure goes on for a long time, a very long time. Forever, I almost wrote, but of course, not forever. The odds are never very good for an enduring relationship of any sort, let alone this one. Enjoy it while you can. How great it must be to have something so good now that you might have expected only at the start. Relish your illusion of being young. I used to have a dream, a queer one, that I found myself growing younger by the moment. I could see the changes in my face, my body. The spots and wrinkles left my hands, like a film running backward. But I always woke up before the regression stopped. I never have that dream now. Reality has invaded even my sleep.

  ‘Some small personal news: I have a new exhibit at the House of Photography in Manhattan. Hilton Kramer, who is now very taken with photography, was complimentary in the Times. A few other reviews were effusive and so, naturally, gratifying. All the signed prints were sold the first evening, which augurs well for the book Aperture will publish next spring. So it goes, in that department of my life.

  ‘The sad news is that in July Helene returned to Kings County Hospital to be told she had a recurrence of her cancer. We thought she was safe, had beaten the odds, but then, who ever beats mortality? Her second breast was removed, but there was evidence that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. She stood the second operation well, considering that she is almost seventy and radical surgery is not simple at her age. In a few weeks she was back home. Since then we have had four extraordinary months together. With the heavy sense of fatality hanging over us, we were able to renew physical and psychic ties I thought had been worn out in the more than thirty-eight years we have lived and loved together. She jokes about her new, flat-chested physique, saying she is now the boy she had always felt she would like to be. The scars are dreadful, but I forget them when I lie close to her, luxuriating in her brave and humorous person.

  ‘The prognosis is poor, we both know that, even the time we have is in deep shadow. So we are now living a kind of crammed, charged, encapsulated life with each other. We feel suspended in time and space, we are re-creating an unnatural youth, as you say. And as with youth, we know it will pass quickly. Quality of time and love has been offered us, not quantity.

  ‘Thank you for the postcard. I had not seen the giantess photograph. I love it, especially the rapacious hooded vulture look in her eyes, as if she were about to consume all the lesser, shorter mortals around her.… Write when you can, and remember us in your prayers, if you have some good ones. I have none, but every now and then I shut my eyes and ask the powers that be to be kind to Helene. Beyond that, I don’t know much to ask for. Love, Liz’

  Every Sunday morning Richard telephoned Minna. ‘How are you?’ ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘How are you?’ ‘Oh, very good. I miss you. How’s the new car doing?’ ‘Very well. It’s a great car, but it’s cold here now so the top has to be up all the time. Even with it up, the canvas doesn’t keep out the cold.’ There was a long silence, and then Richard asked, ‘What do you think of that supersonic plane that went from New York to Paris in three hours, and goes regularly?’ ‘Amazing.’ ‘We ought to plan a vacation to France on it, maybe over New Year’s. What do you think?’ Minna was silent. ‘I may not be back by then.’ ‘What? Why not? When does the semester end?’ ‘Before Christmas, but there’s other things, the research I am in the middle of.…’ Richard said nothing. Then he said, ‘It’s a season of disasters, isn’t it, first the flood in India that now is said to have killed thousands, and then the earthquake in Iran. Twenty-five thousand died, the Times says.’ ‘Yes, we get the Times here every afternoon. Even out here.’ ‘Oh, of course.’ ‘Have you seen The Deer Hunter yet?’ Minna asked. ‘No. Why? Is it good?’ ‘Not very, but it made me think of Grant. I could hardly sit through it.’ ‘I avoid war movies,’ said Richard in a dry voice. ‘Well, when can I expect you home?’ ‘I don’t know, Richard.’ ‘Are you coming back, Minna? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? ‘I just don’t know.’ ‘I see. Well, good-bye. Do you want me to call you next Sunday?’ ‘If you wish. Good-bye.’ ‘Good-bye,’ he said, and hung up.

  Minna dressed for her luncheon appointment with a new acquaintance, the painter Lester Dickens, whom she had met the week before at a dinner party. Her closet was filled with proper skirts, blouses and dresses. These she pushed aside to reach the twice-washed blue jeans that hung at the back. She kicked against the bottle of gin on the floor, sending it farther back against her row of shoes. ‘Good shot,’ she said to herself. Hanging over the blue jeans was a heavy wool turtleneck sweater. She put it and the jeans on, and pulled on her leather boots, which laced up the sides. Her Eskimo jacket with its warm fur hood was hard to maneuver over the sweater but she managed it. With scarf and fur mittens she felt like some small child being sent out into the snow bundled up so tightly she could barely move. ‘All I need is clips to hold my mittens on to my sleeves,’ she thought. When she was ready to leave she reviewed herself in the bathroom floor-length mirror. She saw, as if by X ray, her twenty-year-old self, slender and delicate-looking within the layers of clothing, straight and vigorous. There was no extra flesh, she imagined, her arms and legs had their old languorous curves, the skin on her face was devoid of the marks of age or weather, her eyes were very bright. She smiled at her image: her mouth still curved tenderly, in the old way. What she saw, she understood, was what she remembered, what she believed
existed under the heavy winter clothing, what Lowell had persuaded her he saw. Only her hair. She smiled at herself and looked closely, understanding why his vision failed him. Strands of her hair escaped the hood. It was not Lowell’s night-blinded, love-besotted light blond, but white. ‘Sein und Schlein,’ she told herself, and went out, slamming the door behind her.

  Lester Dickens ordered a large pizza and two beers for them. Angelo’s was a favorite eating place for students and rushed teachers. It offered three choices of food, but pizza was its specialty. Lester, a heavyset fellow with a protruding belly and a cheerful, homey, uncomplicated face, had intrigued Minna at dinner one evening with his talk about circuses. He in turn had silently admired her sparkle, her luminous, interested blue eyes, her slender liveliness ‘at her age,’ as he put it to his daughter when he got home. ‘She must be sixty or so. Yet she has the grace and movements of a young woman. Something uncommon about that. Even odd.’ His daughter had looked puzzled and unconvinced.

  Minna looked at her watch. ‘I thought this was to be an instant pizza.’ ‘Nothing is that fast at lunchtime in Iowa City. Do you have a class or something?’ ‘No, but I want to get to the pool for my daily workout. I overslept this morning.’ Lester watched Minna doodling on her napkin with a ballpoint pen. Her drawing was unusually regular, he thought, and in perspective. She was covering the rectangular paper with steps, the treads colored in, the risers carefully striated up and down. While she doodled, she asked him to tell her about his circus paintings. ‘I’ve been mad for circuses all my life, boy and man, and now in middle age, my passion for them is even greater. I go whenever there is one within three hundred miles. My preference is for the small traveling circuses with sideshows. By now I know many of the performers, animals, the wonders and oddities. I’ve painted many of them, the half-man/half-woman, a sword-swallower, a snake charmer, a contortionist.’ ‘I’ve seen those paintings at the museum. Strange, isn’t it, how we feel such sympathy for what a friend of mine calls “singular people?”’ ‘I often think about that. A bear by itself is not interesting to me, but a performing bear, centered in a spotlight, all four feet planted on a small ball, muzzle pointed into the air, incredibly poised: that is something. It’s as if his presence were raised to a special height. He is reaching beyond his animal self, to the act.’ ‘Yes, I like that. It’s the same, I suppose, with the eccentrics of the world. We, the onlookers, the painters, and photographers, are commonplace and ordinary. The fat lady, the midget, the giant, they are the exceptional departures. We are cold and contained, they are full of the passion of their differences, on proud display. They give it away in their acts, too.’ Lester said there was something in that. ‘Everything in the circus is stretched and charged. Nothing is real. Normal life is scorned, really, at every turn. The lights, the round formation of every act, the tinny music and drums, the clowns making fun of the acts, of themselves. For me there is a heightened sense of idyllic, innocent life. I love it. I’m never bored when the acts are poor, only full of sympathy. I breathe faster, my heart beats hard. And later, when I am in my studio painting the sounds, the lights, the people and animals, I feel the same way.’