CHAPTER NINE

 

            NO coffee, no apple pie.  It was dark and the avenue deserted when I hit the air.  I was famished.  With the few cents I had I bought a candy bar and walked home.  A horrendous jaunt, particularly on an empty stomach.  But my head was buzzing like a beehive.  For company I had the martyrs, those gay self-willed birds who had long since been devoured by the worms.

       I dove straight into bed.  Why wait up for them, even though there was a promise of food?  Anything from their lips would be so much gibberish after the biographical fling I had enjoyed.

       I waited a few days before breaking the news to Stasia.  She was dumbfounded when I handed her the cheque.  Never believed it possible of me.  But wasn’t I rushing her a bit?  And the cheque, could she be certain it wouldn’t bounce?

       Such questions!  I said nothing about Doc Zabriskie’s request to call him before cashing the cheque.  No use running the risk of hearing something disagreeable.  Cash it first, then worry – that was my thought.

       It never entered my head to inquire if she had changed her mind about going.  I had done my part, it was up to her to fulfil hers.  Ask nobody nothing, it’s too risky.  Forward, at all costs!

       A few days later, however, came the bad news.  It was like a double-barrelled shotgun going off.  First, as I might have known, the cheque bounced.  Second, Stasia had decided against leaving – for a while anyway.  On top of it I got hell from Mona for trying to get rid of Stasia.  I had broken my word again.  How could they ever trust me?  And so on.  My hands were tied, or my tongue rather.  Impossible to tell her what Stasia and I agreed upon in private.  That would only have made me more of a traitor.

       When I asked who had cashed the cheque I was told it was none of my business.  I suspected it was someone who could well afford the loss.  (That filthy millionaire most likely.)

       What to say to Doc Zabriskie?  Nothing.  I hadn’t the courage to face him again.  Indeed, I never did see him again.  One more name to scratch off my list.

       While things were simmering down a bizarre episode took place.  Knocking softly on the windowpane one evening, looking his same queasy, quirky, disreputable self, stands Osiecki.  It’s his birthday, he informs me.  The few drinks he had stowed away had not had too baleful an effect.  He was slightly out of focus, to be sure, still mumbling in his whiskers, still scratching himself, but, if one could express it thus, in a more winsome fashion than usual.

       I had refused his invitation to do a little quiet celebrating with him.  I made some weak excuses which failed to penetrate the fog in which he was wrapped.  He had such a hangover look that instead of turning him loose I permitted him to break down my resistance.  Why not go along, after all?  Did it matter that my shirt was unironed and frayed, my pants wrinkled and my coat full of spots?  As he said, “Nonsense!”  It was his idea to go to the Village, have a few friendly drinks, and get back early.  Just for old times’ sake.  It wasn’t fair to ask a man to celebrate his birthday all by himself.  He jiggled the coins in his pocket as if to tell me that he was well heeled.  We weren’t going to any fancy joints, he assured me.  “Maybe you’d like to catch a bite first?” he said.  He grinned with all his loose teeth.

       So I gave in.  At Borough Hall I put away a sandwich and a coffee one, two, three.  Then we drove into the subway.  He was muttering and mumbling to himself, as of yore.  Now and then I caught a distinct phrase.  What it sounded like, in the roar of the tube, was – “Ah yes, yes, once in a while indulge … spree and pee … a look at the girls and a brawl … not too bloody … ring round the rosie … you know … shake the bugs out of the rug.”

       At Sheridan Square we hopped out.  No trouble finding a joint.  The whole Square seemed to be belching tobacco smoke; from every window there came the blare of jazz, the screams of hysterical females wading in their own urine; fairies, some in uniform, walked arm in arm, as if along the Promenade des Anglais, and in their wake a trail of perfume strong enough to asphyxiate a cat.  Here and there, just like in Old England, a drunk lay sprawled out on the sidewalk, hiccoughing, puking, cursing, babbling the usual maudlin fuck-you-all shit.  Prohibition was a wonderful thing.  It made everyone thirsty, rebellious and cantankerous.  Especially the female element.  Gin brought the harlot out.  What filthy tongues they had!  Filthier than an English whore’s.

       Inside a stompin’ hell on wheels sort of joint we edged our way to the bar, near enough, at least, to give an order.  Gorillas with mugs in their paws were swilling it all over the place.  Some were trying to dance, some were squatting as if taking a crap, some rolled their eyes and did the breakdown, some were on all fours under the tables, sniffing like dogs in heat, others were calmly buttoning or unbuttoning their flies.  At one end of the bar stood a cop in shirt sleeves and suspenders, his eyes half-closed, his shirt sticking out of his pants.  The holster, with the revolver in it, lay on the bar, covered by his hat.  (To show that he was on duty, possibly.)  Osiecki, observing his helpless state, wanted to take a crack at him.  I pulled him away only to see him flop on a table top smeared with swill.  A girl put her arms around him and started dancing with him, rooted to the spot, of course.  He had a far off look in his eye, as if he were counting sheep.

       We decided to quit the joint.  It was too noisy.  We went down a side street ornamented with ash cans, empty crates and the garbage of yesteryear.  Another joint.  The same thing, only worse.  Here, so help me God, there were nothing but cocksuckers.  The sailors had taken over.  Some of them were in skirts.  We squeezed our way out amidst jeers and catcalls.

       “Strange,” said Osiecki, “how the Village has changed.  One great big assshole, ain’t it though?”

       “What about going uptown?”

       He stood a moment and scratched his bean.  He was thinking, evidently.

       “Yeah, I remember now,” he bumbled, switching his hand from his head to his crotch.  “There’s a nice quiet place I went to once … a dance floor, soft lights … not too expensive either.”

       “Looking for a place?”

       “Yeah,” said Osiecki, still scratching, still thinking.

       “Hop in!”

       We did.  The cab started off, like a rocket.  No address had been given.  I didn’t like being whizzed off that way – to a destination unknown.

       I nudged Osiecki.  “Where are we going?”

       It was the driver who answered.  “Take it easy, you’ll find out.  And you can take my word for it, it’s no gyp joint.”

       “Maybe he’s got something,” said Osiecki.  He acted as if he had been charmed.

       We pulled up to a loft building in the West Thirties.  Not so far away, it flashed through my head, from the French whorehouse where I got my first dose of clap.  It was a desolate neighbourhood – drugged, frozen, shell-shocked.  Cars were prowling about half dead on their feet.  I looked the building up and down.  Couldn’t hear any soft music coming through the blind windows.

       “Ring the bell and tell the doorman I sent you,” said the driver, and he handed us his card to present.

       He demanded an extra buck for tipping us off.  Osiecki wanted to argue the point.  Why? I wondered.  What matter an extra buck?  “Come on,” I said, “we’re losing time.  This looks like the real thing.”

       “It’s not the place I had in mind,” said Osiecki, staring at the departing cab and that extra buck.

       “What’s the difference?  It’s your birthday, remember?”

       We rang the bell, the doorman appeared, we presented the card.  (Just like two suckers from the steppes of Nebraska.)  He led us to the elevator and up we went – about eight or ten stories.  (No jumping out the window now!)  The door slid open noiselessly, as if greased with ghee.  For a moment I was stunned.  Where were we – in God’s blue heaven?  Stars everywhere – walls, ceiling, doors, windows.  The Elysian fields, so help me.  And these gliding, floating creatures in tulle and gauze, ravenous and diaphanous, all with arms outstretched to welcome us.  What could be more enchanting?  Houris they were, with the midnight stars for background.  Was that music which caught my ear or the rhythmic flutter of seraphic wings!  From afar it seemed to come – discreet, subdued, celestial.  This, I thought to myself, this is what money can buy, and how wonderful it is to have money, any kind of money, anybody’s money.  Money, money…. My blue heaven.

       Escorted by two of the most Islamic of the houris – such as Mahomet himself might have chosen – we boopy-doped our way to the place of merriment, where everything swam in a dusky blue, like the light of Asia coming through a splintered fish bowl.  A table was waiting for us; over it was spread a white damask tablecloth in the very centre of which stood a vase containing pale pink roses, real ones.  To the sheen of the cloth was added the gleaming reflection of the stars above.  There were stars in the eyes of the houris too, and their breasts, only lightly veiled, were like golden pods bursting with star juice.  Even their talk was starry – vague yet intimate, caressing but remote.  Scintillating mush, flavoured with the carobs and aloes of the book of etiquette.  And in the midst of it I caught the word champagne.  Someone was ordering champagne.  Champagne?  What were we then, dukes?  I ran a finger lightly over my flayed collar.

       “Of course!” Osiecki was saying.  “Champagne, why not?”

       “And perhaps a little caviar?” murmured the one of the left of him.

       “Of course!  And caviar too!”

       The cigarette girl now appeared, as if from a trapdoor.  Though I still had a few loose cigarettes in my pocket, and though Osiecki smoked only cigars, we bought three packs of gold-tipped cigarettes because the gold matched the stars, the soft lights, the celestial harps playing somewhere behind or around us, God only knew where, it was all so dusky and husky, so discreet, so ultra-ethereal.

       I had only had a taste of the champagne when I heard the two of them ask simultaneously, as if through the larynx of a medium – “Won’t you dance?”

       Like trained seals we rose to our feet, Osiecki and I.  Of course we would dance, why not?  Neither of us knew which foot to put forward first.  The floor was so highly polished I thought I was moving on castors.  They danced slowly, very slowly, their warm, dewy bodies – all pollen and star dust – pressed tight to ours, their limbs undulating like rubber plants.  What an intoxicating perfume emanated from their smooth, satiny members!  They weren’t dancing, they were swooning in our arms.

       We returned to the table and had some more of the delicious bubbling champagne.  They put a few polite questions to us.  Had we been in town long.  What were we selling?  Then – “Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”

       Instantly, it seemed, a waiter in full dress was at our side.  (No snapping of fingers here, no beckoning with head or fingers: everything worked by radar.)  A huge menu now stared us in the face.  He had put one in each of our mitts, then stood back at attention. The two damosels also surveyed the menu.  They were hungry, apparently.  To make us more comfortable, they ordered for us as well as for themselves.

       They had a nose for food, these soft spoken creatures.  Delicious-looking comestibles, I must say.  Oysters, lobsters, more caviar, cheeses, English biscuits, seeded rolls – a most inviting spread.

       Osiecki, I noticed, had a strange look on his face.  It grew even stranger when the waiter reappeared with a fresh bucket of champagne (ordered by radar) but which was even more refreshing, more sparkling, than the first magnum.

       Was there anything else we would like?  This from a voice to the rear.  A suave, cultured vice trained from the cradle.

       No one spoke.  Our mouths were stuffed.  The voice retreated into the Pythagorean shadows.

       In the midst of this dainty repast one of the girls excused herself.  She had a number to do.  She reappeared in the centre of the floor under an orange spotlight.  A human jack-knife.  How she managed it, the contortions, with the lobster, the caviar and the champagne rolling round in her tripe basket, I couldn’t figure out.  She was a boa constrictor devouring itself.

       While this performance was going on the one at the table plied us with questions.  Always in that soft, subdued, milk and honey voice, but each question was direct, more succinct, I observed.  What she was gunning for, apparently, was the key to our wealth.  What did we do, precisely, for a living?  Her eyes wandered tellingly over our apparel.  There was a discrepancy which intrigued her, if one could put it that way.  Or was it that we were too blissfully content, too heedless of the mundane factors which entered into the situation?  It was Osiecki, his grin (noncommittal), his casual, off-hand replies that nettled her.

       I devoted my attention to the contortionist.  Let Osiecki handle the question-and-answer department!

       The act had now reached that crucial point where the orgasm had to be simulated.  In a refined way, of course.  I had the goblet of champagne in one hand and a caviar sandwich in the other.  Everything was proceeding smoothly, even the orgasm on the floor.  Same stars, same dusky blue, same smothered sex from the orchestra, same waiter, same tablecloth.  Suddenly it was over.  A faint sound of applause, another bow, and here she was returning to the festive board.  More champagne, no doubt, more caviar, more drumsticks.  Ah, if only life could be lived this way twenty-four hours of the day!  I was perspiring freely now.  Had an urge to remove my tie.  (“Mustn’t do that!” said a wee small voice inside me.)

       She was standing at the table now.  “Won’t you excuse me?” she said.  “I’ll be back in a moment.”

       Naturally we excused her.  After a number like that she undoubtedly had to make wee-wee, powder her face, freshen up a bit.  The food would keep.  (We weren’t wolves.)  And the champagne.  And us.

       The music started up again, somewhere in the blue of midnight, discreet, intimate, a haunting, whispering appeal.  Spectral music wafted from the upper reaches of the gonads.  I half rose to my feet and moved my lips.  To my surprise she didn’t budge, our lone angel.  Said she wasn’t in the mood.  Osiecki tried his charm.  Same reply.  Even more laconic.  The food too had lost its appeal for her.  She lapsed into a dead silence.

       Osiecki and I continued to eat and drink.  The waiters had ceased to bother us.  No more buckets of champagne appeared out of nowhere.  The tables about us were gradually deserted.  The music died away completely.

       The silent one now rose abruptly and dashed off without even excusing herself.

       “The bill will be coming soon,” Osiecki remarked, almost as if to himself.

       “Then what?” I said.  “Have you enough on you to pay?”

       “That depends,” he said, smiling through his teeth.

       Sure enough, just as he had said, the waiter in full dress now appeared, the bill in his hand.  Osiecki took it, looked at it long and lingeringly, added it aloud several times, then said to the waiter: “Where can I find the manager?”

       “Just follow me,” said the waiter, his expression unchanged.

       “I’ll be back in a minute,” said Osiecki, waving the bill like an important dispatch from the front.

       In a minute or in an hour, what difference did it make?  I was a partner in the crime.  No exit.  The jig was up.

       I was trying to figure out how much they had soaked us.  Whatever it was, I knew Osiecki didn’t have it.  I sat there like a gopher in his hole, waiting for the trap to be sprung.  I got thirsty.  I put an arm out to reach for the champagne when another waiter, in shirt sleeves, came along and started clearing the table.  He grabbed the bottle first.  Then he cleared away the remnants.  Not so much as a crumb did he overlook.  Finally he snatched the tablecloth away too.

       For a moment I wondered if someone would whisk the chair from under me – or put a broom in my hand and command me to get to work.

       I found the toilet at the end of the hall, just beyond the elevator.  The stars had faded out.  No more blue heaven.  Just plain, everyday reality – with a growth of beard.  On the way back I caught a glimpse of four or five chaps huddled together in a corner.  The looked terror-stricken.  Towering above them was a hulk of a brute in uniform.  He had all the appearance of an accomplished bruiser.

       No sign of Osiecki, however.

       I returned to the table and sat down.  I was even more thirsty now.  A glass of plain tap water would have satisfied me, but I didn’t dare ask.  The blue had faded to cinders.  I could distinguish objects more clearly now.  It was like the end of a dream, where the edges fray out.

       “What’s he doing?” I kept asking myself.  “Is he trying to talk his way out?”

       I shuddered to think what would happen to us if that monster in the uniform should take us in tow.

       It was a good half-hour before Osiecki reappeared.  He looked none the worse for the gruelling I suspected he had undergone.  In fact, he was half smiling, half chuckling.

       “Let’s go,” he said.  “It’s all settled.”

       I sprang to my feet.  “How much?” I asked, as we scurried to the cloakroom.

       “Guess!”

       “I can’t.”

       “Almost a hundred,” he said.

       “No!”

       “Wait,” he said.  “Wait till we get outside.”

       The place looked like a coffin factory now.  Only spectres were roaming about.  In full sunshine it probably looked worse.  I thought of the guys I had seen huddled in the corridor.  I wondered how they would look – after the treatment.

       It was dawning when we stepped outdoors.  Nothing in sight except over-stuffed garbage cans.  Even the cars had disappeared.  We headed swiftly for the nearest subway station.

       “Now tell me,” I said, “how in hell did you manage it?”

       He chuckled.  Then he said: “It didn’t cost us a penny.”

       He began explaining what took place in the manager’s office.  “For a crazy man,” I thought to myself, “you’re as adroit as a quirt!”

       Here’s what happened…. After he had fished out what cash he had on him – a mere twelve or thirteen dollars – he offered to write a cheque for the balance.  The manager, of course, laughed in his face.  He asked Osiecki if he had noticed anything on his way to the office.  Osiecki knew damned well what he meant.  “You mean those guys in the corner?”  Yeah, they too had offered to pay with rubber cheques.  He pointed to the watches and rings lying on his desk.  Osiecki understood that too.  Then, innocent as a lamb, he suggested that they hold the two of us until the banks opened up.  A ‘phone call would verify whether his cheque was good or not.  A grilling followed.  Where did he work?  At what?  How long had he lived in New York?  Was he married?  Did he have a savings account as well?  And so on.

       What really turned the tide in his favour, Osiecki thought, was the calling card which he presented to the manager.  That and the cheque book, both of which bore the name of a prominent architect, one of Osiecki’s friends.  From then on the pressure weakened.  They handed him his cheque book and Osiecki promptly wrote out a cheque – including a generous tip for the waiter!  “Funny,” he said, “but that little touch – the tip – impressed them.  It would have made me suspicious.”  He grinned, the usual one, plus a little spittle this time.  “That’s all there was to it.”

       “But what will your friend say when he discovers that you signed his name to a cheque?”

       “Nothing,” was the calm reply.  “He’s dead.  It happened just two days ago.”

       Naturally, I was going to ask him how he happened to be in possession of his friend’s cheque book, but then I said to myself – “Shit!  A guy who’s nuts and cunning at the same time can explain anything.  Forget it!”

       So I said instead: “You know your onions, don’t you?”

       “Have to,” he replied.  “In this town, anyway.”

       Rolling through the tube he leaned over and shouted in my deaf ear – “Nice birthday party, wasn’t it?  Did you like the champagne?  Those guys were simple … anybody could take them.”

       At Borough Hall, where we rose to the air again, he stood looking at the sky, his face one broad beam of pleasure and contentment.  “Cockadoodledoo!” he crowed and then he jingled the coins in his pocket.  “What about breakfast at Joe’s?”

       “Fine,” I said.  “Bacon and eggs would go good with me.”

       As we were stepping inside the restaurant – “So you think it was pretty clever of me, do you?  That was nothing.  You should have known me in Montreal.  When I ran the whorehouse, I mean.”

       Suddenly I panicked.  Money … who had the money?  I wasn’t going through that performance a second time.

       “What’s eating you?” he said.  “Sure I’ve got money.”

       “I mean cash.  Didn’t you tell me you doled out the bills you had in your pocket?”

       “Shucks,” he said, “they gave ‘em back to me when I signed the cheque.”

       I sucked my breath in.  “Cripes,” I said, “that beats everything.  You’re not clever, you’re a wizard.”

 

Our talk is of nothing but Paris now.  Paris will solve all our problems.  Meanwhile everyone must get busy.  Stasia will turn out puppets and death masks; Mona will sell her blood, seeing as mine is worthless.

       Meanwhile, busy leeches that we are, new suckers are offering to be bled.  One of them is an Indian, a Cherokee.  A no good Indian – always drunk and nasty.  When drunk, however, he throws his money away…. Someone else has promised to pay the rent each month.  He left the first instalment in an envelope, under the gate, while we were sound asleep a few nights ago.  Then there is a Jewish surgeon, also of a mind to help, who is a judo expert.  Rather odd for one of his standing, it strikes me.  He’s good for a last minute touch.  And then there’s the ticket chopper whom they’re resurrected.  All he asks in return for his offerings is an occasional sandwich on which one of them must make a little pipi.

       During this new burst of frenzy the walls have been redecorated: the place looks like Madame Toussaud’s now.  Nothing but skeletons, death masks, degenerate harlequins, tombstones and Mexican gods – all in lurid colours.

       Now and then, whether from excitement or from their frenetic exertions, they get vomiting spells.  Or the trots.  One thing after another, as in The Ramayana.

       Then one day, disgusted with all this senseless activity, a bright idea visited me.  Just for the hell of it, I decided I would get in touch with Mona’s brother – not the West Pointer, the other, the younger one.  She always described him as being very sincere, very straightforward.  He didn’t know how to lie, that’s how she put it once.

       Yes, why not have a heart to heart talk?  A few plain facts, a few cold truths would make a pleasant parenthesis in the steady stream of phantasy and clabberwhorl.

       So I call him up.  To my astonishment, he is only too eager to come and see me.  Says he has long wanted to pay us a visit but Mona would never hear of it.  Sounds bright, frank, altogether sympathique over the phone.  Boyish, like he tells me that he hopes to be a lawyer soon

       One look at the freak museum we inhabit and he’s aghast.  Walks around in a trance, staring at this and that, shaking his head disapprovingly.  “So this is how you live?” he repeats again and again.  “Her idea, no doubt.  God, but she’s a queer one.”

       I offer him a glass of wine but he informs me that he never touches liquor.  Coffee?  No, a glass of water would do.

       I ask if she had always been this way.  For answer he tells me that no one in the family knew much about her.  She was always on her own, always secretive, always pretending that things were other than they were.  Nothing but lies, lies, lies.

       “But before she went to college – how was she then?”

       “College? She never finished High School.  She left home when she was sixteen.”

       I insinuated as tactfully as I could that conditions at home were probably depressing.  “Maybe she couldn’t get along with a stepmother,” I added.

       “Stepmother?  Did she say she had a stepmother?  The bitch!”

       “Yes, I said, “she always insists that she couldn’t get along with her stepmother.  Her father, on the other hand, she loved dearly.  So she says.  They were very close.”

       “What else?”  His lips were compressed with anger.

       “Oh, a lot of things.  For one thing, that her sister hated her.  Why she never knew.”

       “Don’t say any more,” he said.  “Stop!  It’s the other way round.  Exactly the opposite.  My mother was as kind as a mother can be.  She was her real mother, not a stepmother.  As for my father, he used to get so furious with her that he would beat her unmercifully.  Chiefly because of her lying…. Her sister, you say.  Yes, she’s a normal, conventional person, very handsome too.  There never was any hate in her.  On the contrary, she did everything in her power to make life easier for all of us.  But no one could do anything with a bitch like this one.  She had to have everything her own way.  When she didn’t she threatened to run away.”

       “I don’t understand,” said I.  “I know she’s a born liar, but…. Well, to twist things absolutely upside down, why? What can she be trying to prove?”

       “She always considered herself above us,” he replied.  “We were too prosaic, too conventional, for her taste.  She was somebody – an actress, she thought.  But she had no talent, none whatever.  She was too theatrical, if you understand what I mean.  But I must admit, she always knew how to make a favourable impression on others.  She had a natural gift for taking people in.  As I told you, we know little or nothing of her life from the time she flew the coop.  We see her once a year, maybe, if that often.  She always arrives with an armful of gifts, like a princess.  And always a pack of lies about the great things she’s doing.  But you can never put a finger on what it is she is doing.”

       “There’s something I must ask you about,” I said.  “Tell me, aren’t your people Jewish?”

       “Of course,” he replied.  “Why?  Did she try to make you believe she was a Gentile?  She was the only one who resented being Jewish.  It used to drive my mother crazy.  I suppose she never told you our real name?  My father changed it, you see, on coming to America.  It means death in Polish.”

       He had a question now to put me.  He was puzzling how to frame it.  Finally he came out with it, but blushingly.

       “Is she giving you trouble?  I mean, are you having marital difficulties?”

       “Oh,” I replied, “we have our troubles … like every married couple.  Yes, plenty of trouble.  But that’s not for you to worry about.”

       “She’s not running around with … with other men, is she?”

       “No-o-o, not exactly.”  God, if he only knew!

       “She loves me and I love her.  No matter what her faults, she’s the only one – for me.”

       “What is it, then?”

       I was at a loss how to put it without shocking him too deeply.  It was hard to explain, I said.

       “You don’t have to hold back,” he said.  “I can take it.”

       “Well … you see, there are three of us living here.  That stuff you see on the walls – that’s the other one’s work.  She’s a girl about the same age as your sister.  An eccentric character whom your sister seems to idolize.”  (It sounded strange saying “your sister”.)  Sometimes I feel that she thinks more of this friend than she does of me.  It gets pretty thick, if you know what I mean.”

       “I get it,” he said.  “But why don’t you throw her out?”

       “That’s it, I can’t.  Not that I haven’t tried.  But it won’t work.  If she leaves, your sister will go too.”

       “I’m not surprised,” he said.  “It sounds just like her.  Not that I think she’s a Lesbian, you understand.  She likes involvements.  Anything to create a sensation.”

       “What makes you so sure she might not be in love with this other person?  You say yourself you haven’t seen much of her these last few years….”

       “She’s a man’s woman,” he said.  “That I know.”

       “You seem awfully sure.”

       “I am.  Don’t ask me why.  I just am.  Don’t forget, whether she admits it or not, she’s got Jewish blood in her veins.  Jewish girls are loyal, even when they’re strange and wayward, like this one.  It’s in the blood….”

       “It’s good to hear,” I said.  “I only hope it’s true.”

       “Do you know what I’m thinking?  You should come to see us, have a talk with my mother.  She’d only be too happy to meet you.  She has no idea what sort of person her daughter married.  Anyway, she’d set you straight.  It would make her feel good.”

       “Maybe I’ll do that,” I said.  “The truth can’t hurt.  Besides, I am curious to know what her real mother looks like.”

       “Good,” he said, “let’s fix a date.”

       I named one, for a few days later.  We shook hands.

       As he was closing the gate behind him he said: “What she needs is a sound thrashing.  But you’re not the kind to do it, are you?”

 

A few days later I knocked at their door.  It was evening and the dinner hour was past.  Her brother came to the door.  (He was hardly likely to remember that a few years ago, when I had called to see if Mona really lived there or if it was a fake address, he had slammed the door in my face.)  Now I was inside.  I felt somewhat quaky.  How often I had tried to picture this interior, this home of hers, frame her in the midst of her family, as a child, as a young girl, as a grown woman!

       Her mother came forward to greet me.  The same woman I had caught a glimpse of years ago – hanging up the wash.  The person I described to Mona, only to have her laugh in my face.  (“That was my aunt!”)

       It was a sad, careworn-looking countenance the mother presented.  As if she hadn’t laughed or smiled in years.  She had something of an accent but the voice was pleasant.  However, it bore no resemblance to her daughter’s.  Nor could I detect any resemblance in their features.

       It was like her – why I couldn’t say – to come straight to the point.  Was she the real mother or the stepmother?  (That was the deep grievance.)  Going to the sideboard, she produced a few documents.  One was her marriage certificate.  Another was Mona’s birth certificate.  Then photos – of the whole family.

       I took a seat at the table and studied them intently.  Not that I thought they were fakes.  I was shaken.  For the first time I was coming to grips with facts.

       I wrote down the name of the village in the Carpathians where her mother and father were born.  I studied the photo of the house they had lived in in Vienna.  I gazed long and lovingly at all the photos of Mona, beginning with the infant in swaddling clothes, then to the strange foreign child with long black ringlets, and finally to the fifteen-year-old Réjane or Modjeska whose clothes seemed grotesque yet succeeded somehow in setting off her personality.  And there was her father – who loved her so!  A handsome, distinguished-looking man.  Might have been a physician, a chancellor of the exchequer, a composer or a wandering scholar.  As for that sister of hers, yes, she was even more beautiful than Mona, no gainsaying it.  But it was a beauty lost in placidity.  They were of the same family, but the one belonged to her race while the other was a wild fruit sired by the wind.

       When at last I raised my eyes I found the mother weeping.

       “So she told you I was her stepmother?  Whatever made her say such a thing?  And that I was cruel to her … that I refused to understand her.  I don’t understand … I don’t.”

       She wept bitterly.  The brother came over and put his arms around her.

       “Don’t take it so hard, mother.  She was always strange.”

       “Strange, yes, but this … this is like treason.  Is she ashamed of me?  What did I do, tell me, to cause such behaviour?”

       I wanted to say something comforting but I couldn’t find words.

       “I feel sorry for you,” said her mother.  “You must have a hard time of it indeed.  If I hadn’t given birth to her I might believe that she was someone else’s child, not mine.  Believe me, she wasn’t like this as a girl.  No, she was a good child, respectful, obedient, eager to please.  The change came suddenly, as if the Devil had taken possession of her.  Nothing we said or did suited her any more.  She became like a stranger in our midst.  We tried everything, but it was no use.”

       She broke down again, cupped her head in her hands and wept.  Her whole body shook with uncontrollable spasms.

       I was for getting away as fast as possible.  I had heard enough.  But they insisted on serving tea.  So I sat there and listened.  Listened to the story of Mona’s life, from the time she was a child.  There was nothing unusual or remarkable about any of it, curiously enough.  (Only one little detail struck home.  “She always held her head high.”)  In a way, it was rather soothing to know these homely facts.  Now I could put the two faces of the coin together…. As for the sudden change, that didn’t strike me as so baffling.  It had happened to me too, after all.  What do mothers know about their offspring?  Do they invite the wayward one to share his or her secret longings?  Do they probe the heart of a child?  Do they ever confess that they are monsters too?  And if a child is ashamed of her blood, how is she to make that known to her own mother?

       Looking at this woman, this mother, listening to her, I could find nothing in her which, had I been her offspring, would have attracted me to her.  Her mournful air alone would have turned me from her.  To say nothing of her sense of pride.  It was obvious that her sons had been good to her; Jewish sons usually are.  And the one daughter, Jehovah be praised, she had married off successfully.  But then there was the black sheep, that thorn in her side.  The thought of it filled her with guilt.  She had failed.  She had brought forth bad fruit.  And this wild one had disowned her.  What greater humiliation could a mother suffer than to be called stepmother?

       No, the more I listened to her, the more she wept and sobbed, the more I felt that she had no real love for her daughter.  If she had ever loved her it was as a child.  She never did make an effort to understand her daughter.  What she wanted was for her daughter to return and on bended knee beg her forgiveness.

       “Do bring her here,” she entreated as I was bidding them goodnight.  “Let her stand here in your presence and repeat these evil things, if she dares.  As your wife, she ought to grant you that favour at least.”

       I suspected from the way she spoke that she was not at all convinced that we were man and wife.  I was tempted to say, “Yes, when we come I will bring the marriage certificate along too.”  But I held my tongue.

       Then, pressing my hand, she amended her speech.  “Tell her that everything is forgotten,” she murmured.

       Spoken like a mother, I thought.  But hollow just the same.

       I circumnavigated the neighbourhood on my way to the L station.  Things had changed since we last made the rounds here, Mona and I.  I had difficulty locating the house where I once stood her up against the wall.  The vacant lot, where we had fucked our heads off in the mud, was no longer a vacant lot.  New buildings, new streets, everywhere.  Still I kept milling around.  This time it was with another Mona – the fifteen-year-old tragedienne whose photo I had seen for the first time a few minutes ago.  How striking she was, even at that awkward age!   What purity in her gaze!  So frank, so searching, so commanding.

       I thought of the Mona I had waited for outside the dance hall.  I tried to put the two together.  I couldn’t.  I wandered through the dismal streets with one on either arm.  Neither of them existed any longer.  Nor did I perhaps.