Tornado Pratt

by Paul Ableman

  And I—what did I do, Horace? I did something. You can’t refute that. I was somewhere at some time and I did—something. But what? And when? Are you listening, Horace? If you don’t catch it now, you never will and my life will be lost, irretrievably, in the sump of time. We get mashed, Horace, like grapes in a vat to make wine for God. Who knows the truth about the grapes? We say: there was a famous grape called Napoleon or Caesar or—or Beethoven and you read in books that this grape had a couple of wrinkles that made it different from other grapes. But all that’s left in the universe is the wine. And even if you read a whole library about some big, dead grape at the end you don’t know enough to do more than raise a grim smile in that grape if he could come back and hear what you’ve learned. Because he’d know how little you’d really discovered about the blazing, wrenching truth of his life.

  So—don’t bother to listen, son. Even if I’m really talking which I’m not sure I am. How did I get here, Horace? And where’s here? Am I in bed? In a hospital? Could be just a dream, I guess, and I’ll wake up into—life. When I try to look back, I get flashes of life, not as if my life had been a river or a flow but as if it was a big hall filled with paintings and spotlights keep flashing on and showing one painting or another.

  After—what was I—oh yeah, about Nat. She died and then I—I—

  THANKS FOR THE SWELL TIME, TORNADO

  You’re welcome, ma’am. Whoever you might me. I don’t see you as Nat because she wouldn’t talk like that being a member of the British nobility. So—are you Betty? Shit, she wouldn’t talk like that either but would be more likely to say:

  THANKS FOR NOTHING, YOU BASTARD

  And I’m sorry, Betty. You deserved better.

  What happened with Betty, after we took off together? Oh yeah, we never did go roaming in luxury as I’d figured we might. I developed a yen for stability and so we went house hunting. It didn’t take long to find that place on the West Coast and I bought it. It was a swell house for those days with indirect lighting and a sea-gallery where you could watch the otters. But practically the minute we moved into that house, panic took over. I could hardly breathe. I wanted to run, just jack-rabbit out of there and keep going until—

  I heard crazy laughter echoing back through the canyons. I felt like a trapped bear. I felt like someone who strives to achieve a goal and when he finally makes it discovers that the struggle has burned out the part of him that wanted it in the first place.

  It’s crazy. Betty became a kind of vampire, a kind of demon in my mind. It seemed to me she was trying to desecrate Nat’s memory. Each time in that house I spoke Betty’s name, I felt a traitor to my beloved wife. Everything Betty said or did, I thought: Nat would have said that better, done that more sweetly. I tried to reason with myself:

  “You’re crazy, Pratt. There’s nothing wrong with this kid.”

  And I’d succeed for a day, maybe a couple of days, in being gentle. Poor Betty would respond and slowly approach me closer again and relax and smile and that would bring fury gushing into my veins again. I felt she had no goddamm right to mimic gentleness and humour and vitality. They didn’t belong to her. They were the exclusive property of Nat. I felt like thrashing the presumption out of her. But I only actually socked her once. It was about two weeks after we got to Cass Manor (named after the guy that built it).

  Up to then I hadn’t understood my own feelings. The first evening we spent in the house, I’d felt restless and sad, but I couldn’t give a name to it. I prowled in the forest behind the house and took a swim. Betty stood on a high rock and watched me, the wind taking her hair back like a pennant. I recall feeling she looked like a figure-head, unmoving, and I waved joylessly. But I couldn’t figure out why I was so dispirited. We had a slap-up meal and I drank most of two bottles of claret. Then we danced to the radio and Betty playfully undressed me until we toppled together on the soft settee and had a good screw. Then she dragged me upstairs to bed.

  The next two weeks were better because I kept busy. I went to some horse sales and got riding horses, one beaut called Hummer that used to sail across Knee Creek with me on its back. I located a kid called—what was that kid called? He was of Basque origin and very solemn but good with horses. He came to live with us and mind the horses. I did other things too. I hired a music teacher and started to learn the piano. I got pretty obsessional and for two weeks I practised four or five hours a day. The teacher, who was a cheerful lush, said I was a natural and making fantastic progress. He said if I went on like that, another six months and he’d book me at Carnegie Hall. But—you remember Zanzibar Spitz? Maybe you don’t. He was Chicago’s music man, the classic stuff, when I was the big business wheel around there. Zanzibar also liked pool and broads so our trails had crossed. Then—no, I can’t remember how he came to show up at Cass Manor but I recall playing for him there and asking him if I was good. He said I was a dammed sight better than any trained monkey he ever heard play but on the whole he’d rather listen to a building being wrecked than my playing. So I realized Lenny, my drunken teacher, had just been flattering me, which is always a hazard when you’re signing the cheques and I booted him out. So then, except for the Basque in the stable, Betty and I were alone together. And there was nothing to muffle the explosion.

  “Nothing!” I insisted. “Nothing—nothing at all.”

  She looked sceptical and that made me twitch with anger. I wanted for her just to fix the grub and let’s get this lousy day put to bed. But she went on sitting on the balcony step, knees drawn up, hands on her knees and chin on her hands. Behind her, I saw the bronze sea and shafts of flat gold but not the disk of flame because it had sunk behind the bluff. I was about to insist I was starving when Betty turned her head and said quietly:

  “Okay, but it’s not going to help.”

  “What’s not going to help?”

  “Not telling me. Ever since we got here, you’ve been acting funny. I don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “You haven’t done a thing.”

  “If you want me to split, all you’ve got to do is say so.”

  “I don’t want you to split. Anyhow, where would you go?”

  I felt a shiver as I said it. I thought she’d catch on. It’s not the kind of question you ask someone if you’re really crazy about them. But she didn’t react. She just turned her head back and went on looking out to sea. That made me mad. I roared:

  “Well, where the hell would you go?”

  “I could go somewhere.”

  “Where, for Christ’s sake?”

  But instead of answering, she suddenly jumped up and dashed into the house and towards the kitchen. I twisted up like a cougar and sprang across the room. I swear I picked her off the floor as I twirled her to face me. Then I roared:

  “Goddamm it! Answer me when I ask you something.”

  But she still didn’t answer. She just looked at me and I could see a deep pain and challenge in the depths of her eyes. I shook her and whispered:

  “One last chance—you answer me or—”

  And when she kept silent, my body charged swiftly up like a condenser and I slapped her. It was just flat-hand on the cheek but it sent her staggering across the room till she crashed into the piano. She never put her hand to her cheek but half slumped over the piano, gazing at me triumphantly.

  I gasped:

  “It’s no wonder they burn you and kick you and rip you up. You hear me? It’s no wonder the Jews have goaded every goddamm race of man to persecute them. It’s because you’re so fucking smug, so full of being right and superior. I swear, Betty, I could have killed you. I could have flung you down on to the rocks or I could have choked you with my hands. And that’s not my style. No one ever saw Tornado Pratt pumping up his ego by clobbering women. Now, just give me a straight answer: why didn’t you answer me?”

  And still she didn’t talk. Another pang of rage propelled me a step towards her but expired in a puff of speculation. Is this it, I asked myself. Is this what she
wants? I’d heard about dames that goaded you to kill them. But she’d never given any sign of being that kind of weirdo before. I asked bitterly:

  “You feel better now? Proved what you set out to? That I’m a barbarian? That you live in a jungle?”

  “Why?”

  She’d straightened up but not otherwise moved.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you hate me so?”

  Then she started to cry. Only with her it was more like convulsions. She sagged slowly to the floor, gasping for breath, her body heaving like a netted fish. Immediately I scooped her up and toted her to the sofa. First I tried to lay her down but she shook her head desperately and I caught on that she might choke. So I sat her up. She whooped and squealed louder and louder, her frail body thrilling with tremors. A voice inside me moaned: “no—no.” It seemed as if her terrific wailing no longer issued from the larynx of a startled girl but was a vibration in the air itself. It was as if the sea was lamenting its lack of peace, as if the pines were bemoaning their bondage. Then I grabbed Betty and hugged her and pleaded:

  “Don’t! Don’t! For Christ’s sake, don’t!”

  But it didn’t help. In fact, it made it worse because, while she continued to howl, her eyes opened wide and she stared at me with an expression I couldn’t judge. But I feared that she thought I was going to assail her again. I knew she was past talking, so I desperately tried to comfort her.

  “Hear this: when I was a kid I socked a man for socking his wife. None of my affair but I did it. Now it’s me that’s the brute! The first time, Betty, I swear it—and the last. So don’t be scared. My darling—my angel—don’t be scared of me!’

  And I nearly took off with joy when she shook her head a little, indicating that she wasn’t scared of me. Then I held her head gently until the eruption began to ease. Finally, when she was sitting quietly, her cheek against my chest and only an occasional ripple of gasps still testifying to her huge distress, I asked:

  “Honey, why didn’t you answer me?”

  “Because I was—ssss—scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Of—ssss—your telling me to quit. I don’t want to leave you, Tornado. I—ssss—love you.”

  A frigid hand clutched my guts when she said that because I heard the dungeon door clang shut. But I didn’t want to set her off again. I asked:

  “Where were you going?”

  “How do you—ssss—mean?”

  “Why were you hot-footing it into the kitchen?”

  “To get the tarama.”

  “The what?”

  “The—isn’t that right? The Greek stuff that you like. I got some cod’s roe when we were in town yesterday and I tried to make some this afternoon. I don’t know how it’s come out but—I just had this idea if I could get the tarama you’d be pleased with me and everything would be all right.”

  The tenderness and guilt inspired by this incident lasted a few weeks. Then I began to resent her again. I never hit Betty any more with my hands but there came a time when I pounded her almost daily with words. The thing was, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about Nat. I’d never even told her I’d been married. I knew that if I could bring myself to tell her the whole story, and why I resented her, it would untwist things between us. But part of me didn’t want to untwist them. I didn’t want to consign Nat to the past, revered but dead. So Betty never knew the lesion that was suppurating. All she knew was our relationship was decaying like a gangrened leg. And by the time she’d finally accepted that the good times were over the poor kid was pregnant.

  I had a complicated relationship with the fetus. Part of my attitude came from the fact that I was getting older. Sure, I was at the peak of my mental and physical vigour but I was no longer a young man. I had a dim feeling that I should be a father, that it was in some way a criticism of my completeness that I was without succession. That’s not the whole truth. For instance, there was a Mohawk Indian girl, one of the few female pilots at that time, who was probably tucking a tiny Tornado up each night. We’d clamped loins in a hangar. Then I had a report from an agent in Wyoming about that time that she’d expelled a boy. Something else too—I forget what—made me think it might be mine.

  It wasn’t my virility that was the issue, it was my status. Society seemed to proclaim that the complete man, the admirable man, had a son or two, anyway kids. I was in my thirties and—hell, I saw through the soap-opera image okay. It wasn’t going fishing or knocking a soft-ball about that attracted me to the idea of fatherhood but—something else. Okay, part of it was the old, deep, human sense of wanting to continue in your sons. You die without issue, brother, you die! Your line ends there. No matter how you rationalize and tell yourself that a biological son may be less truly a representative of you, less capable of transmitting what you really mean in the world, than some disciple, say, or adopted kid, nevertheless he’s, that is the biological son’s, a direct line to the future, a physical stake in the world to come. I had that feeling to some extent, although I’m pretty sure I wasn’t thinking about dynasties or genealogies, about family empires or anything like that.

  Another consideration was: this kid was going to be a foreigner. It was going to be half Jewish. Now, I mentioned the squaw a while back. That was just cute. It was great to have a son that was an Indian brave, to know that somewhere a jet of my loins had grown war feathers. It was cute because it was remote. It didn’t compel me to think deep and long about race and strife and the roar of history. This did. It had been great to have a Jewish girl-friend. I was for everyone screwing with everyone else. But a real son, an acknowledged son, a son to be reared and communed with? I tried to laugh off the unease: what was a Jew anyway? Was this kid going to arrive in a skull cap and prayer shawl? I mean, was he going to lisp in Hebrew? Crazy, sure—but I couldn’t shake off a sense of the strangeness of a sperm of Tornado Pratt squirming into an egg of Israel. Sometimes, gazing at the manifest egg that Betty’s belly soon became, I’d feel a pang of alarm at the thought that a new Moses might be coiled in there.

  Oh, I had one hell of a complex relationship with that fetus! But as soon as he gave up being a parasite and moved into the world, we hit it off right away. All the portenteous notions glanced off his little gurgling form and the only thing he’d absorb was love. I guess he was a cute boy. I guess most fathers, and mothers, think their kids are cute, but in your case, Horace—

  Hey!

  You weren’t called Horace.

  Where’d I get that name?

  You were christened Norman Peter Tornado Pratt, Peter after Betty’s father, Norman after my uncle, the state senator and—

  So where the hell did I get Horace from?

  Fan out the faces of a lifetime, I don’t see any Horace. Of course, a lifetime’s a pretty long moment. Maybe a Horace, or maybe a couple of Horaces, are dodging in the long grass some place, but I can’t isolate one. So how did you get to be Horace, Horace? Makes me uneasy. Makes me feel that all is not well with Tornado Pratt and that his mighty strength is now crumbling like an ancient loaf of bread.

  I’ll continue.

  You were born, Horace—Peter—Pete—what the hell did I call you? Had a special kind of nickname and—Pip! That’s what I called you, Pip. Betty never knew but that was a tribute to Nat who always called boy-babies, Pip.

  You gave me a good year, Pip. We moved into Frisco to be near hospitals. Betty was having trouble with her womb. There were bad flakes left in it and she had to be scraped out. You were delicate at first too. You had a stubborn cough and then you got an infection of the ass. You were only six pounds at birth and your ass wasn’t much bigger than a plum. You howled from the pain and there was this danger you’d infect the sore with your own shit. So we had to bathe you carefully in disinfectant and then ten minutes later, the familiar gurgle and you were all smeared with syrup-thin shit again. Hell of a time we had. But I didn’t want any nursemaids. I wanted you to be the work of Betty and me and it was mainly
me for the first couple of months because she was pretty sick too.

  Then you began to get strong and fat. At six months you were crawling. I was crazy about you. We led a family life. With the fresh breeze venting from the bay, and the sun beaming down, I’d wheel you round Frisco. I made friends with cosy, married couples so they could admire you. I never got drunk or lusted after broads. I kept waiting for the first signs of your mighty intelligence. I figured one day I’d come home and find you writing a book. I had the whole future planned. I didn’t want you to be a pale weakling, so I had a programme of athletics mapped out but I was sure you’d shoot to the top. When Betty was in the hospital for a week, I flew you to Chicago, looking after you myself the whole time, and showed you off to Harvey. He commented:

  “A fine boy.”

  But when Harvey tried to engage me in serious business discussion I shrugged him off. I raced you round Chicago, showing you to pals. I think it is true to say, Horace—that is, Pip—I think it is true to say that I loved you as much as any father ever loved his son. So you can imagine how I felt when I found out you weren’t mine at all. Funny thing is, my fists never clenched, my Tornado rage never started to roar—I just felt sick, numb misery. I asked her:

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You’re not his father.”

  “Then who is?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps a boy—called Hamish.”

  It happened at breakfast. We had a fine apartment and always ate in the niche looking out over the bay. I could see a ship steaming in and became kind of hypnotized by it. I guess I was near tears and scared to talk because—I didn’t want to break down. I watched that ship slipping through the Golden Gate. Betty asked:

  “Do you want some marmalade?”

  “Betty, are you insane?”

  “Maybe.”

  It suddenly came over me very strong that she was insane, or moving that way. Suddenly, a lot of indicators that I’d noticed but not interpreted flashed on in my memory. I tried to ask calmly.