by Frank Conroy
He waited a long time. Snatches of high-pitched conversation, bits of laughter, and murmurs floated in from the other room. He began to wonder if the maid had told anyone he'd arrived. But then Mrs. Fisk emerged, followed by a strange-looking boy of seven or eight years. His head, covered with blond curls, was much too large for his body, and it bobbled as he moved, as if the weight were too much for the slender neck. His eyes were magnified behind thick glasses and moved lazily like great blue tropical fish. His arms were short and his waist very high. He was dressed in a brown velvet suit with a white lace collar, and he carried a small violin case.
"Good afternoon, Rawlings," Mrs. Fisk said, climbing slowly onto the stage. "I see you've found the piano." She flicked a wall switch and the air exploded into brightness. "This is my son, Peter Fisk."
The boy walked over to Claude and extended his hand. Claude grasped it—cool, limp, jelly-boned. The boy withdrew, his body moving stiffly. He went to the music stand, took out his three-quarter-sized violin, and slipped it under his chin. "Give me an A," he said, his voice unexpectedly full, like a mezzo-soprano's.
Claude played an A.
Mrs. Fisk sat down on one of the folding chairs. "Peter has been playing since he was four." Peter tuned his instrument rapidly, skimming the bow over the strings. Claude had very much hoped he'd be playing with Catherine, but his disappointment was muted by curiosity about this exotic creature who now looked up.
"The B-flat Mozart?" Peter asked.
"Yes. It's here on top."
Peter opened his music. "All right. Four-four. Ready. One, two, three, four."
Claude's hands went to the keys like lightning, caught the opening chord, and they were launched. It was a simple piece, a transcription from the Viennese Sonatinas, and Claude played easily, almost automatically as he shifted his attention to the violin, first in order to figure out why it sounded so odd. The boy could play—he was certainly playing the notes, with a thin tone and practically no vibrato—and yet it sounded completely mechanical. The time values were correct, but the notes did not flow into one another. It was one note at a time, laid out flat.
"Lovely," Mrs. Fisk said when they finished.
Claude was bewildered. The child hadn't made a single mistake, and he had even followed the dynamic notations, albeit crudely, and had obviously put in hundreds of hours on the instrument. But why and how could he have done all that work without the slightest musical feeling? Claude stared at the motionless boy, standing there like a machine waiting to be switched on, heard the few delicate claps from Mrs. Fisk, and in a quick, chilling flash understood. The boy was playing simply because he'd been told to play. His accomplishment was only slightly less amazing than that of a deaf person who had somehow, against all odds, learned to play by the senses of sight and touch.
It was pitiful. He felt a mixture of revulsion, respect, and, surprisingly to himself, protectiveness toward this robot child in the velvet suit, as pale as an orchid. Claude wondered if Peter ever went outside. People would certainly stare at him.
"What's next?" asked Mrs. Fisk.
And so they went through the pieces, one after another, Claude adjusting his playing to give the child the most support possible. Now and then, when he saw an opportunity—a few bars of solo piano—he would play with a bit of feeling, trying to nudge Peter toward flexibility, but the child gave no sign that he had heard anything. During the last piece of heavily edited Schubert there was a unison section, and Claude played with rubato to bring out the shape of the line.
Frowning, the child lifted his bow from the strings in mid-course. "What's that? I don't see anything," he said, peering at his music. "Aren't we supposed to be together in here?"
They both looked at Claude—Peter genuinely perplexed, Mrs. Fisk alert, expressionless. For a moment Claude was tempted to tell the truth, but even as he drew his breath he knew that the child wouldn't understand, and that the mother would doubtless hire somebody else to play accompaniment. "Sorry," Claude said, "my fault. Let's start again at the top of the page."
As they were playing, Claude heard the sounds of voices and of the front door slamming. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw Catherine come into the room, glance at the stage, and continue on into the library. A very tall man entered a minute later, stopped, sat down on a chair, crossed his legs, and gave a little wave to Mrs. Fisk. As the piece ended, he joined her in brief applause.
"Well done, Peter," he called from his chair. Dewman Fisk had a rosy face, thin dark hair graying at the temples, pendulous earlobes, and quick pale eyes. His hands, now folded over his knee, were large.
"Thank you," said Peter, loosening his bow.
Mrs. Fisk got up and, moving carefully, stepped down from the stage to join her husband.
"How was the rehearsal?" she asked.
"Splendid." He stood up. "Balanchine says they're ready."
They moved together into the library.
Peter placed his instrument in its case.
"Did your teacher...," Claude began. "Did you have trouble learning to sight-read?"
The child looked up. "No. Did I play wrong notes?"
"I didn't hear any."
"That's because they were correct," the child said, closing the case. "After I play a piece two or three times, I don't make mistakes."
"You play very well."
"Thank you."
There was an awkward silence, and then they climbed down from the stage. Peter moved to the library, and Claude, not knowing what to do, followed. He stepped into the room cautiously. The maid was serving tea. Mrs. Fisk sat in a wing chair, Mr. Fisk and Catherine sat on the couch, and Peter knelt on a small striped pillow at the low table.
"He said I could come to the studio and watch them run through the new thing," Catherine was saying eagerly. "The duet where she has to run away, and he wants to go with her."
"That's nice of him." Mrs. Fisk picked up her teacup with both hands.
Suddenly Catherine looked up and saw Claude standing motionless just inside the doorway. After a moment she gave a little laugh. "Look at his tie."
Mrs. Fisk whispered something Claude could not hear, and the girl turned her attention to a plate of small sandwiches, held her hand over them for a moment, and picked one. Her teeth were very white as she bit off a corner and gave a small toss of her head. Dewman Fisk appeared to be reading the afternoon paper, his smooth face expressionless. Mrs. Fisk lowered her cup and half turned in her chair. Without actually looking at Claude, her faintly trembling body in three-quarter profile, she said, "That was fine. Will the same time next week be convenient?"
"Yes." Claude was blushing because of Catherine's remark. He wanted to say something sharp to her, something to break her composure, but his anger was no more than a surface reflex. Deep down, he felt she was so beautiful she obviously had the right to say anything she wanted. Deep down, he felt gratified that she had noticed anything at all about him. It was a peculiar sensation.
"Very good, then," Mrs. Fisk said. "Peter, will you show Rawlings to the door, please?"
The child got up immediately.
In the hall Claude paused. "What's wrong with it?"
"What?"
"Your sister doesn't like this tie."
"Oh, she says things like that all the time. She's always trying to be so grown up. Anyway, she's only my half-sister. Her father died a long time ago."
Claude pondered this information. He resisted the urge to ask more about her, aware that Peter, dulled by familiarity, probably took her for granted. Also, he didn't want to give away the fact that she fascinated him. She would doubtless amuse herself by using it against him somehow.
At the door, just before Claude stepped out, Peter glanced at the tie in question. The blue eyes drifted upward.
"It may be too shiny," he said. "My father's ties aren't that shiny."
Claude understood that the movies were not real. They were fabrications, delightful concoctions, shaped and formed to achiev
e an effect. Life, on the other hand, simply happened. Movies were metaphors in various realities beyond his ken, and gave him the exhilarating sense of being lifted out of his own petty and narrow surroundings. He did not go to learn, but inevitably lessons from Hollywood seeped into his bones.
Westerns. Do not approach a campfire without first announcing yourself from a distance. Do not brag, bully, or lie. Do not draw on an unarmed man, shoot anyone in the back, or steal a horse. Be respectful to women, regardless of their situation in life.
War movies. Democracy is worth dying for. Germans are intelligent, arrogant, ruthless, and sadistic. Japanese are treacherous, cowardly, fanatical, and devoid of individuality. Russians are brave, emotional, and crude. Chinese are simple, domestic, gentle, and the keepers of ancient wisdom. Italians are childlike, the French weak, the British brave and noble. War could be conducted in a civilized manner. American soldiers are the best because of obedience to authority, without any concomitant sacrifice of individual initiative and courage.
Gangster movies. Crime does not pay. Low criminals are stupid and brutal. High criminals are greedy, reckless rebels against the beneficent forces of organized society. The police are good, unless corrupted from below by money or from above by political power. Women are weak, venal, decorative, and irrelevant. Guns, large automobiles, conspicuous consumption in public places, and familiarity with the uses of terror are potent symbols of real power.
Horror movies. Death is obscene. The unknown is dangerous. Destructive forces surround the visible world, and protection is afforded by religion, moral purity, light, and banding together in groups. Luck is an important factor. Courage is foolhardy.
Private-eye movies. The individual is isolated in a hostile world. Anyone may shoot anyone else in the back at any moment. Everyone lies. Greed prevails. It is necessary to be extremely careful at all times.
Cartoons. The weak can prevail over the strong through applied intelligence. Humiliation is intrinsically comic.
Claude went to at least three double features a week. The theaters were huge, with vaulted ceilings, two balconies, and large screens. Hundreds of people were scattered through the darkness. In the evening, especially Fridays and Saturdays, it could be hard to find a good seat in an audience of more than a thousand. He preferred the late afternoon, and the thrill—having entered in the daytime—of emerging at night, as if the world had recognized the compressed, high-velocity emotional rides he had just experienced, and transformed itself accordingly. He liked the familiar kinds of movies, variations on tacitly understood themes, but he particularly relished movies that attempted to define their own terms. These peculiar movies came along once or twice a week.
Up in the balcony, slouched in his seat, feet up, he peered down through his knees and entered fabulous worlds in which, for the most part, virtue was rewarded and love, delirious, puissant love, sacred and profane at the same time, conquered all. Romantic love was deeply interesting, not only because it promised an end to loneliness, but because it suggested an elevated state of existence, a transcendence. Sometimes when lovers kissed on the screen it meant little to him, but sometimes, when the people were right and the story was right and the music was right, he felt as if his heart would break. Aware of the hisses and catcalls from the remote children's section, hearing the snores of the fat man asleep in the next row, he nevertheless soared, flying out of himself toward the unbearable beauty of the kiss. When the images faded he would cover his face, as if to keep them a moment longer.
He stepped out of Loew's Orpheum into the early evening bustle of Eighty-sixth Street. On the sidewalk people walked quickly, shifting vectors, angling their shoulders, slipping through the traffic. He added himself to the side of the stream and moved toward Lexington Avenue, smelling beer, sauerkraut, and meat from the steam table as he passed a German bar, hearing Rosemary Clooney singing the oriental strains of "Come On-a My House" from the record store arcade, walking through the bright light spilling from the white interior of Fannie Farmer Candies. There was a stiff breeze, and men held down their hats. Paper swirled in the gutter.
He turned at the Automat and pushed through the revolving doors. Holding his change in one hand, he slid a tray along the chrome bars and looked into the compartments. Hot franks and beans in an oval dish. He dropped in a quarter, twisted the handle, and the door sprung open. Moving to the back of the room, he bought a hard roll, a glass of milk, and a cupcake. Someone had left a New York Post at an empty table, and he moved quickly to get it, putting down his tray in the center to establish his territorial rights. He ate unhurriedly, turning the pages of the newspaper with his left hand.
As he lifted a forkful of beans to his mouth, he saw a thin young man in a black topcoat, buttoned to the throat, approaching the table. The man carried a saxophone case and walked leaning forward, as if about to fall. He pulled up a chair and sat down, staring off into the middle distance. His long face was pale, the eyes heavy-lidded, his hair black with a pompadour over his brow, and brilliantined brushed-back sides in the style called a DA. The man sighed heavily and looked back to see an older man, also in a black topcoat, following with two cups of coffee. The older man also pulled up a chair from the next table.
"Drink this, for Christ's sake," the older man said.
They were sitting opposite Claude.
"I can't believe it, Vinnie." The older man's voice was pained. "What're you gonna do? Nod out on the fucking stand?"
"I'll be fine," Vinnie said, holding the case on his lap. "Polka. Um-pah-pah, um-pah-pah. See?" He gave a slow little giggle. "I can do it."
"Drink the coffee. We need this gig. We gotta look sharp. The owner's no dummy."
"Look sharp, feel sharp, be sharp." Vinnie raised the cup and drank. "Bong."
"Oh, shit." The older man looked down at the floor. "You were doing so good there."
"Don't be mad," Vinnie said.
"I'm not mad."
Vinnie considered this and said, "Okay."
The older man pushed forward the second cup of coffee. "This one too."
"I haven't finished the first one yet," Vinnie said. "Don't rush me."
During the long silence the older man stared at Vinnie and checked his wristwatch. Neither of them so much as glanced at Claude, who began carefully to peel the paper from his cupcake.
"You okay?" The older man asked Vinnie.
"Sure. I'll play my ass off."
The older man seemed to think for a moment and then make up his mind. "Okay. Stay here. Drink coffee. I'll come back for you, okay? You read me?"
"You're a good man," Vinnie said. "I love you."
The older man walked away.
Claude ate his cupcake and drank his milk, moving as little as possible. After a while Vinnie took some coffee, shivered, and leaned back in his chair.
"I love the Automat," he said, as if his friend were still there. "All the different things to eat, everything tucked away in its own special little box. Like the special little creamed corn all cozy in the creamed corn box, just sitting there waiting. And when somebody takes it out, another little creamed corn comes along to take its place. It's very nice." He reached up lazily and scratched his jaw. He began to hum softly. Claude was finished now, but he sat motionless. "All the brass shining like that," Vinnie said. "Nice and warm and cheerful. All the people happy, eating their food and not bothering anybody, everything smooth, everything mellow." His body gave an almost imperceptible jerk, his eyes widened for an instant, and he lowered his head to drink some more coffee. When he finished he unbuttoned his topcoat. He was wearing a tuxedo. He started searching his pockets, leaning this way and that, his movements slow and studied. When he finally extracted some change he stared at it, lying there in his palm, for some time. He picked out a nickel and placed it in the center of the table near the edge of Claude's tray.
"Listen," Vinnie said, "do me a big favor and get me a refill, would you? I'm a little under water here." His eyes took a moment to focus. Hi
s expression was gentle and he gave Claude a wry smile with the corner of his mouth.
Claude picked up the coins and the empty cup and went over to the coffee spout. He pulled the lever and hot black liquid came out of the mouth of a brass dolphin. He carried the cup back to the table, put it in front of Vinnie, and sat down again.
"So what's your story?" Vinnie asked. "Are you Italian? You look kind of Italian."
"No."
"That's how I got in the union. Because I'm Italian. I was just a kid and I screwed up the test, but he gave me a break. Sweet old goombah he was, that guy." He started searching his pockets, repeating all his previous moves. In his breast pocket he found what he was looking for, a drugstore inhaler. He took two quick sniffs. "Ahh." He shook his head as if to clear it, and put the plastic tube on the table. "You live around here?"
Claude nodded.
"I'm from Brooklyn." Vinnie said. "We're playing that German dance joint down the block. I could get you in. You like music?"
"Yes, I do. But I have to go home."
"Do you play?"
"The piano."
"Longhair," Vinnie said. "I bet you play longhair. I wish I could. A lot of that stuff is good. But I got the wrong ax."
"I like boogie-woogie too."
"Oh yeah? Well, it's the blues, and the blues, well, that's where everything starts." He picked up the inhaler, grasped the base with one hand, the tube in the other, and with a grimace, broke them apart. "You probably play F, B-flat, F, C, B-flat, and F. Am I right?" He examined the broken tube and the yellow cotton packing now revealed inside.
"Mostly I play it in C," Claude said.
"Yeah, C is okay." With two fingers, he carefully extracted the yellow cotton. "But F is the blues key." He dropped the cotton into his coffee and stirred it with a spoon.
