Angel in the Parlor (13 page)

Morgon Axel sits up in bed. A young nurse is speaking to him, smiling pleasantly.

“You may go this morning, Mr. Axel. The X-rays of your shoulder show that the wound is superficial. If you take the elevator at the end of the hall down to the ground floor, you'll find yourself directly across from the front entrance. There's a taxi stand outside.”

Morgon Axel climbs unsteadily out of bed. Someone has laid his clothes on a chair. He dresses and rides downstairs in a crowd of doctors and wheelchairs, and chooses a taxi. A nice green checkered one. When he leaves the cab, he hands the driver all the change in his pockets, which isn't a great deal. He travels lightly, this Morgon Axel, without any baggage to hold him down. The sky is clear, the air as sweet as forgiveness. He unlocks his shop, and bending over, he props the door open with an empty spool. The room smells stale and musty. Morgon Axel pulls a chair outside, sits down in the sunlight that dapples the front of his shop, closes his eyes, and waits for his wife to come home.

5

Amyas Axel, His Care and Keep

I

As Nicholas Mardachek turned up Hester Street, he felt his anger lift a little, and when he passed a restaurant full of people, he pushed open the door and walked in.

A wave of warm air and the fragrance of food greeted him. Under posters of ruined Greek temples and photographs of President Kennedy, people were chattering and eating: a few glanced up. Looking about him, he spotted one empty seat in the back, at a table already occupied by an elderly man and woman, who sat opposite one another like strangers, and a girl who sat opposite no one but kept glancing behind her toward the kitchen. Nicholas followed her gaze but saw nothing remarkable. The cook was standing at a counter chopping vegetables, and another fellow in a scruffy hat was pouring wine from fancy jugs into plain bottles. The clatter of dishes rose over a hundred conversations. Nicholas pushed his way down the aisle past the long rows of people eating, sank into the empty seat, and hung his knapsack on the back of the chair. The girl frowned at him. She had a thin, pretty face, and although she wore a velvet headband to hold her long red hair in place, she kept brushing her bangs out of her eyes. She looked close to his own age, or at least no more than twenty. Presently she leaned forward and hissed into his ear.

“That seat belongs to Amyas.”

Nicholas pretended not to hear. He picked up the menu and made a great show of studying it, all the while reaching back to feel for his knapsack, once, twice, three, four times. It contained everything he owned, which was not a great deal—a few books, his razor, toothbrush, twenty-five dollars, and his harmonica, which he made himself play whenever he wanted a cigarette. He had started carrying the knapsack on his back, even in his own house, when he discovered his wife was stealing from him. Or if not stealing, then misplacing things—his comb, his razor, the book he had put away so as to have it when he wanted to read it—believing perhaps that if she tormented him enough, he would rather work than sit around at home.

She was wrong. All those days at his father's filling station in Akron, all those hours of cleaning windshields and pumping gasoline into more cars than he cared to remember, he dreamed of servants, of electric guitars, of a movie projector that he would set up in his bedroom and watch whatever he liked the whole night long. “If you can't make it, you got to marry it,” his mother had told him whenever she caught him lazing around. So he had gone east and worked even harder and married a buxom girl from Long Island who turned out to be even poorer than himself and batty as well. He had ended up waiting on her and carrying his meager goods around in a knapsack.

Suddenly everyone in the room burst into applause. Out of the kitchen marched a dwarf lugging a guitar and after him waddled a man so large that the diners had to push their tables sideways to let him pass. Under his arm he carried a mandolin.

“Gunther! Amyas!”

“Amyas! Amyas!”

The dwarf waved to the two girls who had called out “Gunther.” But the larger man, who seemed much more in demand, smiled over their heads.

“Amyas!”

Amyas was huge. At least four hundred pounds, Nicholas decided. He could not take his eyes off the man; next to the dwarf, Amyas was overwhelming. Where the dwarf was nearly bald, Amyas's brown wavy hair thatched his ears. Where the dwarf was cleanshaven, Amyas had a beard that curled halfway down his chest and forked out like a serpent's tongue. Where the dwarf slouched under the sagging shoulders of his huge tweed jacket, Amyas wore a white shirt and tie and a tiny black vest embroidered with flowers. It hung like a bauble on a Christmas tree.

Behind them came a waiter, carrying a chair which he set up against the jukebox on the other side of the room, directly opposite Nicholas's table. The dwarf began to tune his guitar, holding it high against his cheek as if he were sighting through a gun. Amyas seated himself and rested his mandolin against his belly. Looking at each other, they thumped out several measures of a fast tune in a minor key. Then the dwarf opened his mouth and shouted a refrain, which Amyas punctuated with hoots and cries:

You and I and Amyas,

Amyas and you and I,

To the greenwood must we go, alas!

You and I, my life and Amyas.

The elderly couple had stopped eating to listen. The girl sat rapt, her mouth repeating the words ever so lightly as she rested her chin in her hands. But now they were playing the verses, which told at great length of a faithless wench whose lover caught her at her tricks and threw her out of the house. There were a few titters from those who knew the song and looked forward to the last words of the angry lover.

Who's gonna shoe your pretty little foot

with boots of Spanish leather?

The dwarf, singing at the top of his voice, was making as many gestures as his music would let him. Nothing of Amyas moved but his fingers, plinking the strings.

I'll go no more to her bedside

so let the devil take her!

Let the devil take her!
roared the audience, stamping its feet.

Then the dwarf lifted his hands from the strings, Amyas stroked a final chord, and everyone applauded. All over the room, purses snapped open and silver rang on the tables. The dwarf skipped nimbly about, thrusting a breadbasket decked with paper flowers into the midst of the crowd, and the money rang in. Amyas laid the mandolin on his chair and hailed the waiter, who at once slid an extra chair between Nicholas and the girl.

“Move over,” she said, tapping his arm. “If Amyas sits in the aisle, the waiters can't get by with the food.”

Grabbing his knapsack, Nicholas eased his way out and let Amyas through. The great belly brushed him, the brown eyes peered at him over the forked beard, and Nicholas shuddered. Amyas's gestures were grander than anyone else's in the room, his smile wiser as he drew up the chair and sat down, and his courtesy to the girl and to Nicholas seemed to overflow from some kingly largesse. As if summoned by mutual understanding, the waiter laid out before him a basket of bread, a bottle of wine and two glasses, a bowl of clear soup, and half a sheep's head cut lengthwise, its eyeball shining, on a bed of cooked cabbage leaves. Amyas rubbed his fleshy palms together and smacked his lips.

“My little dove,” he exclaimed, pinching the girl's cheek as he poured two glasses from the anonymous bottle of wine. Then he noticed Nicholas's empty place and shouted, “George! Another glass here!”

“Thank you,” said Nicholas.

“Has the waiter taken your order, sir?”

“No,” said Nicholas.

“May I recommend the specialty of the house? Clear soup for an appetizer, then a plate of roast kid or—” he pointed to the dish in front of him—“baked head of lamb.”

“I think I'd just like the soup,” said Nicholas. “I'm a vegetarian.”

Amyas's beard twitched into a smile.

“Soup and a plate of spaghetti,” he murmured into the ear of the waiter, who flashed away like a bird.

Then Amyas gave himself over to eating his dinner. Nicholas stared at him appalled. His sleeves glided into the soup like sops of bread. He slurped it away in a twinkling and, giving a satisfied grunt, he pushed the empty bowl aside; then, picking up the lamb's head, he began to scoop it out with his fingers, stuffing his cheeks full and popping the eyeball into his mouth like an olive. At the same time he held out tidbits to the girl, who nibbled from his fingers like a sparrow. When he had scraped the skull bare, he set it on the table, seized the plate, and licked it till it shone. His tongue was as pink and elastic as a cat's. Then he replaced the skull, belched a little, and turned to Nicholas.

“Have you a handkerchief, sir? I seem to have lost my napkin.”

Nicholas unbuckled the knapsack, rummaged through it, and brought out a toothbrush and a battered copy of
Moby Dick.
Amyas smiled.

“Do you always carry so much?”

“It's all I have,” said Nicholas and giggled, for the wine had gone to his head. “I've just left my wife. So I've no place to go.”

“And making up again is so pleasant, isn't it?” said Amyas.

“You don't understand,” said Nicholas, and he suddenly felt himself growing very agitated. “I've left her for good. She just got out of Bellevue last week. A whole month she stayed there, and she's worse now than when she went in. Spying on me, nagging at me, telling me she hears voices that say I'm no good. ‘Nicholas Mardachek is the scum of the earth!' ‘May his teeth break in his head!' ‘May a black dog devour Nicholas Mardachek!'”

His own voice choked him. He wanted to lay his head on Amyas's huge shoulder and burst into tears.

“How old are you?” asked Amyas.

“Nineteen,” said Nicholas, and he opened his blue eyes very wide.

Amyas shook his head and looked up at the ceiling as if he were praying.

“I know nothing about you. You might be a thief, for all I know. A thief and a cutthroat. And indeed, I have made such mistakes before. I once gave shelter to a man who stole one of my boots. Now that was odd, wasn't it? For of course he couldn't wear one boot. He might have taken my mandolin. Or my wallet. But he stole only one boot. I never found another pair to fit me. And we had talked and sung the whole night together too. He was a fighter pilot during the war and flew a record number of missions over Germany. He showed me his medals in a little box. You, sir, do not look like a cutthroat. But I might be mistaken. Nevertheless, I can offer you my chambers if you are without a bed and without means.”

When they rose to go, Amyas pulled an elegant cane down from the coatrack and gave it to the girl. Only then did Nicholas observe that her left foot was several inches shorter than the other. She wore a shoe with a built-up sole.

“Janet, my little dove,” said Amyas, and handed her his jacket.

He planted himself in the aisle while she hung it over his shoulders, as if she had long since abandoned the task of easing his arms into the sleeves. My God, thought Nicholas, the smallest things are impossible for him. The girl leaned on her cane and Amyas leaned on her arm, and together they made their way to the door. Clutching his knapsack, Nicholas followed. The waiter handed him the mandolin at the door.

In the taxi Nicholas sat next to the driver, for Amyas filled the entire back seat. Janet perched herself on his huge thighs and whispered like a running brook into his ear, so that Nicholas only caught a few words now and then. Her voice was as high pitched as a child's.

“So I got the green one. That was right, wasn't it, Amyas? Green was the color you wanted?”

“Green was exactly right,” whispered Amyas, and nibbled her ear.

“And then I didn't know whether I should buy one or two. It's so hard to find them that I thought I should buy several. On the other hand, it's not very economical, because they don't wear out very fast. Was it right of me to buy two?”

“It was very wise of you to buy two,” said Amyas.

“Good,” said Janet, and turned to look out the window.

When the taxi drew to a stop, she pulled a little leather coin purse out of Amyas's coat pocket and counted out the fare. A wave of sleep pulled Nicholas down; he could hardly find the energy to open the door, and he shivered in the night air. But how much more difficult it was for Amyas! His grunting and wheezing shook the entire cab. Slowly, as if he were being born, Amyas emerged feet first from the darkness. Then he turned and offered his arm to Janet, who glided out like a feather and, leaning ever so lightly on her cane, tucked the purse back into his pocket again.

“My place is up there, sir,” said Amyas.

And he pointed to the top floor of the building in front of them.

“Where are we?” asked Nicholas.

For he saw no sign of life except themselves, no apartment windows with bars and curtains, no stairway leading up to the front door, and no cars lining the curb. Some papers blew down the sidewalk and swirled over their heads. It was one of those empty streets given over to printing companies, warehouses, and wholesalers.

“Prince Street,” said Amyas.

Janet took a key ring from her own pocket and unlocked the door. In the vestibule hung an outdated poster for an art show, four small mailboxes, and one large one lettered with two names: AMYAS AXEL, JANET WEST. Beyond them an elevator door stood open. They entered, closed the gate, and rode up slowly. Nicholas watched the layers of plaster fall away under them as they ascended.

“Do you know the Akton Photographic Company?” asked Amyas suddenly.

“No,” said Nicholas.

“They have their main darkroom on the second floor. I'm on the sixth. It isn't so bad when you ride up. I knew a man on Spring Street who had a loft on the ninth floor, and there was no elevator. He was always tired. I believe he's dead now.”