My Present Age (8 page)

Then Jack would say, “Half a day, Frances.”

He was an engineer of some description. His father had been an engineer and he had two brothers who were engineers. He looked like a man raised on girders and graph paper, as if exactitude were bred into his bones. Looking at him put me in mind of a mathematical equation; I got the feeling one could no more argue with him than one could argue with numbers. Throughout the tea party he sat in a distant corner of the room and watched me. Whenever I looked in his direction he averted his eyes and gazed off through the glass patio doors.

Meanwhile Victoria and I made polite conversation with the ladies.

“I understand you and Victoria met at the university, Ed?”

“Yes.”

“Let me guess. Was it at a Mixer Dance? I bet it was. That’s where I met my husband, Harold. You’ll meet him at the wedding.” Etc., etc.

This sort of chatter I could handle with aplomb. In fact, I was on the point of congratulating myself on my poise when one old girl suddenly addressed me very loudly, in the manner of the profoundly deaf. “Young man,” she said, “has my grandniece had the decency to inform you of the family curse?”

With that the room went absolutely still and all eyes settled on the great-aunt. She was a queer-looking old duck, bright blue eyes staring out of a face that had been battered white with a powder
puff. I smiled weakly at her while I tried to balance a teacup on my knee and prayed silently for succour.

“You should be warned of what you’re getting into,” she continued shrilly. “There’s cancer in our family. All kinds of it!”

“Now, Auntie,” said Victoria’s mother, “there’s cancer in all families.”

“Not like ours,” the old girl said, wavering between pride and anger,
“we’re full of it!”

Jack got conspicuously to his feet. “Come along, Ed,” he said, “and have a look at my shooting range in the basement.”

As I followed him out of the living room I heard the great-aunt say, with immense self-satisfaction, “Somebody had to let that boy know. It’s only fair. And another thing, now that he’s been told, he can’t come back at the family and say he wasn’t warned.”

Of course, Jack never made any mention of what had gone on upstairs. That was how he dealt with things or people that failed to please him: he refused to recognize their existence. In the not-too-distant future Jack would make me disappear also, but for the moment he was still sizing me up, forming his opinion of me, and so I was being taken to the firing range.

I had heard a bit about Jack’s marksmanship from Victoria. When I had asked her what her father liked to do, she had said, “Cut the lawn and shoot air pistols in the basement.”

The shooting range wasn’t as elaborate as I had envisioned it, just a white line painted on the basement floor where one took up one’s position to fire. Ten yards distant from the line a wire was hung with bull’s-eye targets; behind the targets a canvas tarp absorbed the impact of the pellets with a resounding
thwack!

Before we commenced gun play, Jack said we had to put on safety glasses to prevent taking a pellet in the eye. How such a thing could occur, unless we let off a salvo at each other, I couldn’t see, but I didn’t ask questions. Once we were suitably goggled, Jack showed me how to load the pistol and demonstrated the two-handed grip and the wide, straddle-legged stance I was to assume
when “discharging my weapon.” Finally I was allowed to approach the line. When I had taken up the prescribed stance and sighted down the barrel of my piece, Jack said, “Ten rounds rapid fire. Commence firing.”

In my nervousness and haste I squeezed off eleven shots instead of ten and hit the target only twice. Jack didn’t use the word cheating, but he carefully explained to me that a score was computed on the basis of
exactly
ten shots. Then he stepped up to the line and showed me how it was done. After peppering his target he solemnly totted up his score and recorded it on a large chart taped to the wall. From what I could see, his records went back to the early sixties.

That’s the way we continued, alternating turns and merrily firing off our air pistols in total silence except for Jack’s terse command: “Commence firing!”, an order he addressed not only to me but also to himself whenever he toed the line and levelled his pistol. This fun had continued for about a half an hour when he remarked, “We’re running low on ammo, Ed. I think I’ll pop off to the store and lay in a few more rounds. Won’t be a sec.”

He left so abruptly I didn’t know what to do with myself while I waited. One thing was certain, I didn’t want to go back upstairs and subject myself to the tea party. Out of boredom I started fooling around with the air pistol. I twirled it on my index finger. I stuck it in my pants and practised my draw. I attempted the border roll of the shootist of the wild west. I shot at the target over my shoulder, behind my back, between my legs. I tossed the gun from my right hand to my left hand and snapped off a shot. That’s how I took the light out over the laundry tubs.

It was while hiding the broken glass in the drain in the basement floor that I heard voices. Because of the arrangement of heating vents and ducts in the house, it was possible, from that particular spot, to hear clearly everything that was being said upstairs.

I heard someone ask, “And where will you and Ed make your home, dear?”

Victoria startled me by saying, “We intend to go to Greece.”

I wasn’t the only one startled. Victoria’s mother squealed,
“Greece?”

“Yes, Greece,” said Victoria firmly.

“Isn’t that interesting – Greece,” said someone. “And what will your husband do there?”

“He’s going to write.”

I was beginning to feel very uncomfortable listening to what was going on upstairs. I didn’t like it one bit.

“Write what?” demanded Victoria’s mother. “Will he write for magazines?”

“No. He won’t write for magazines.”

“How do you mean to say he’ll write? Do you mean to say he’ll write like Hemingway, or someone like that?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said someone else, “he must be a very interesting and clever young man to be able to do that.”

“Yes,” said Victoria, “he is. That’s why I’m marrying him.”

No one can imagine how dreadful I felt hearing all that. I had never taken the business of going to Greece really seriously; I thought common sense would finish that idea off when the time was ripe. Until that moment, talk of Greece had been private talk, having no connection with reality. Now Victoria had made a public announcement committing us to something I didn’t want to do. Suddenly I knew I didn’t want anything to do with Greece. I now saw it in an entirely different light; the land of wine and song had become a harsh court of bright light in which I was to be measured and surely found wanting. I couldn’t write. If required to attempt it I would fail; I would reveal myself as neither clever nor interesting. It was an old story preparing to repeat itself; I was going to disappoint as I had disappointed all my life. If that pop pistol in my hand had been the real item, who knows what Jack might have found on his basement floor when he returned with more ammo? I felt pretty low at that moment and afraid of losing Victoria if my true self were to be exposed.

My spirits, however, recovered over the next two days, although they took a dip during the actual wedding ceremony. It was the oddest thing. When the minister asked if I would keep my wife in “sickness and in health,” the image of the great-aunt with the white face and the terrible blue eyes sprang to mind, and I was gripped again with such a fear of losing Victoria that I could hardly answer. Later, jokes were made about the pallor of the groom.

It’s that old bitch who got me worrying about cancer, and cancer is what I’m thinking about remembering Victoria in the Café Nice. But I’m going to stop all that right now, this very minute, and make an end of it.

Creedence Clearwater has sung itself out. The black disc spins mute. I hear the wind rising and stop in my tracks with a groan. Peeling off my damp shirt and then letting it drop to the carpet I limp to the window and thrust my bare chest out to the cold pane of glass to cool myself.

One of those unpredictable February blizzards has poured out of the night with a muffled roar. The two tall evergreens which front the building and give it its name, The Twin Spruce Apartments, lash their tops in a wind which the street lights reveal is streaked with a thin, flying snow. It spatters grittily against the window in fierce gusts, fine and hard as salt.

I’m shivering. I decide I would be better off getting some sleep. In the bedroom I strip and crawl between the sheets, feeling lonely and hollow. I have never cared for these moments of darkness before sleep comes during which the mind is helpless. As a child I would watch the shirt hung on the chair back slowly fill with the horrible, solid flesh of an escaped madman; the criminally insane stalked the night.

I had to light torches against the mind’s blackness. My choice was
Huck Finn
. The book was a favourite of mine. Huck was, like me, superstitious. He lived in a world in which danger could be deflected by signs and ceremonies. Like Huck’s Pap I put a cross of
tacks in the heel of my shoe. I also hung a lucky penny on a string around my neck, which left perfect green circles under my sweaty armpits when I slept.

I talked to myself then, I talk to myself now.

The bed I lie on is a raft, a raft riding the silt-laden, chocolate currents of the Mississippi. The darkness which surrounds me is the southern night, warm and still, enriched by the heavy, fertile smells of growth and decay. Far away on the river bank to starboard a dog barks sharply, once. The sound is strange, distant yet distinct across the water. A brief light shows itself high on the bluffs, a kerosene star shining behind oilskin in a cabin window. Water rips languidly round a snag unseen in the blackness, the raft spins a quarter-turn when the current coils momentarily like a snake.

There are two people on this raft, the boy Huck and the man Jim. I play both parts, modulating voice and accent as required. Ed is bound for the Gulf and for the moment I know no impulses but the river’s. Borne on its broad, strong back through a night of huge, flaring stars an arm’s length above me, and soothed by the faint music of the river’s surge, I feel a great peace. For several minutes I lie silent, lulled by the gentle tugging of the current. I clear my throat and speak softly into the night. “A body gits to feelin’ mighty low, ’n po’, ’n lonesome come night on dis ribber, doan he, Mars Huck? A body gits to feelin’ der hain’t no pusson in de worl’ tall dat cares nuff’n fur ’n ole nigger like Jim.”

“Drat you, Jim! I was most asleep! How you carry on!” Huck cries. Victoria used to reply in a similar vein but in a more modern idiom when I carried on like this.

“Dat sho is a turrible lonesome feelin’ when you onliest fren’ doan wants to keep you comp’ny on no raf’. Sho nuff is, Huck honey. Hain’t ole Jim bin good to you, chile?”

“Ain’t you
s’posed
to be good to me? Why d’you think I brung you along, if it warn’t to be good to me?”

“Dat’s de troof, Huck. Dat’s a fac’.”

The raft glides around a bend in the Mississippi and a riverboat comes into view, sparks tossed into a sky of pitch by the handful, deck lights blazing like the eyes of angels.

“Lookee thar, Jim! What you speckilate that is a-makin’ fur us? Sidewheeler or sternwheeler?”

“Doan ax Jim. Doan ax an ole burrhaid nigra, chile, to speckilate on dat.”

“Sternwheeler!” cries Huck, triumphant.

“I calc’late dat’s de
Natchez
boun’ fur St. Joe.”

“Could be,” allows Huck, topped, crestfallen.

“Dem sparks a flyin’ out ub de smoke stack am a wonder, hain’t dey, Huck?”

“ ’Deed they are.” A long silence follows. The great floating hotel of gaiety and pleasure blazes a stately progress down the river, a snatch of music wafts to our bobbing raft, tiny handsome men and stunning women lean against the railings of the upper deck and gaze into the sombre evening, their faces white. Then the sternwheeler churns out of sight and the great train of light spreading from its stern flickers, disappears.

“Goodnight, Jim,” says Huck at last.

“Goodnight, Huck honey.”

A little conversation before sleep is a comforting thing. And that’s not a bad sight to hold in the mind, those sparks streaming upward from a riverboat chimney into the dense, blue-black canopy of an Arkansas night. As Huck notes at one point in the relating of his
Adventures
, “There warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped and smothery, but a raft don’t.”

No, a raft don’t. And experience has taught me it rides the dark a good deal easier and lighter when it carries two.

I
t would be hard to imagine a worse day. To begin with, the weather is foul. Snow fell until nine o’clock this morning with a stupefying persistence, strangling side streets and burying sidewalks in the old white and crisp and even. I predict at least a two-heart-attack afternoon when the shovels come out. Minimum. Jesus, it’s even several degrees colder than it was yesterday, despite the fact a storm usually brings milder temperatures. But when the snow ceased falling, the mercury started. Even now, at noon, the sun hasn’t managed to burn a patch of blue out of the zinc sky. It stares down, a blurred eye of milky, diffused light.