New Yorkers (49 page)

“You think so?” She shrugged. “What marvelous chairs.” She let herself sigh, and before their eyes made her own outlines melt and soften. …Watch, Pauli. Yes, admire. Leni, poor jointed Leni who can’t any more, remember how this is done. …“Wherever did you get them, Simon? I shall fall asleep.” She already knew the answer. Why he wanted her to ask these things wasn’t her concern. Men were always wanting one to pull at the thorns other women left in them, and one did it, a whore’s job too.

“We used to sit here a great deal, in Mirriam’s time. She got them. Mirriam. My wife.”

They all had a moment’s general silence in which to recall, as happened at such dinners, that they were not really a very close company.

“Austin, do me a favor. Get me that bottle from the sideboard.”

Austin carried it over reverently. “I’ve never had it, sir.”

…Bit of a prig, sirring, aren’t you. But you’ll call me Simon in the end. …“In praise of several occasions,” said the Judge, and checked his watch. He settled back. Now that those other two had left, the rest had the relaxed look of nationals left to themselves—all except Austin, too young a Fenno yet to admit that a black man or a slum-born one were different from him. Even a black man whose grandfather heard everything.

“Well now, Austin,” said the Judge. “Tell us about the war.”

On the instant, he knew his mistake. In their faces, he caught it. He wasn’t of their breed, or wouldn’t have asked that spectator’s question. They’d all been to the wars in one way or another, even Leni. He was the foreigner here.

Blount came to his rescue. “No, I will.” His job excused it. “Bet none of you know the term ‘hot pursuit’ isn’t just a newspaper head.” He culled a murmur of assent from the Judge, blank looks from the two women, the proper silence from Austin.

But Pauli stood up, fondling the glass of yellow liqueur against his cheek, over the saber cut his mother had always been so proud of. “I do, why, of course.” Journalists who hung around opera houses in hope of “notices” to write were his whole experience of Blount’s trade. He had the European indifference to it, vaguely connecting it with Paris and women like Nana—whom he thought real. “In the academy, we learned it. When we studied that old von…who was it, the adviser of Bismarck? ‘Jawohl, meine Herr’n’, the teacher used to say. ‘Kindly remember “hot pursuit” has nothing to do with the study of love.’” The cuff around the dandy wrist he pointed at Blount shone like all the linen one couldn’t get any more. “Your State Department, it keeps asking the allies for permission to go across the river, but it won’t get it, am I right?” He sipped from the glass without emphasis; such wines were his due. “Excuse me.” His smile was deferent. “My State Department too.”

“Von…was it a von…who was that man…?” said Blount. “No—they won’t. I was with the Eighth in North Korea in January, when it was driven out of there.”

“Ahh…you were
with.”
Paul interpolated a sip. “Pyongyang. Once I was near there.”

“With the
army?”

“
Ach,
no, no. After my home service. Long before we came here, eh, Leni?” The women, in adjacent chairs, were deep in their own talk. “With an opera troupe. We got stranded.” God knows we did, I and the woman. She was worth following out there, a whole troupe in herself.

“But you’ve
been
there.” Blount turned to them all. “Yanggu, I want to go. The Communist capital. A Peiping broadcast to solicit guns for them came through yesterday. Through Reuters, Hongkong. Everything’s open enough.” He turned back to Pauli. “You’ve
been
there. Tell me now…”

Under cover of an exchange in which Blount, once again happily moving the world about in question (“North bank of the Hwachon reservoir…? Hyon-Inye road cut…?”), was in return being given a tour of the Chinese provinces via
L’Elisir d’Amore,
Austin—who’d been near enough the main defense triangle three weeks ago—heard himself addressed by the Judge.

“‘Scratch any Austrian,’ my father used to say, ‘and underneath the waltzes, you’ll find war.’”

“Scratch any refugee, too.”

He’d never seen the Judge flinch, before.

“Ah yes, the ultimate medal. To have been—with.”

“I only meant—my father. His line of work.”

He weighed that, scanning Austin’s face as if it couldn’t see him do it. What children those two might have. …“You’ll follow your father’s line, when the war’s over?”

“I hope.” The face bent over its uniform, raised eyes very slightly widened—allowing itself to be scanned. “In London, I hope. I have a—promise.”

“Ah. London…. Austin—would you do me a fav-vor?”

“Sir?”

“When Ruth and that crew come, take care of her for the evening? Air travel excites. I know them—they’ll never want to go to bed. Ruth and I—we’ll talk tomorrow.” He allowed himself a glance in Ninon’s direction. “I want to talk to Madame first.”…Was there scorn in the boy’s face? No, this boy wouldn’t allow himself…bright…

“I may have—competition.”

“Eh?”

“Everyone’s fond of Ruth.”

“But the boys have just seen her, eh? David, Walter.”

Austin said nothing. He was good at it, the family always said.

The Judge’s lips opened…but closed in time. …No. He’s like a son to me. Edwin.
No.
He’ll never—dare. He comes here for
me.
And I…why…I’m
leaving.

Judge Mannix’s face hardened. “We may all meet in London yet, Austin. All of us. Say nothing yet. But I may be leaving this house of mine.”

“Do my best.” Opposite Austin, for one second the eyes seemed to be pleading, an intenser variation of his father’s. …I’m old; I may be evil. Get to me in time, Austin. I wouldn’t wish to disappoint you. Get to me in time. …

Then they turned back to the others, Leni was saying, “Hot pursuit—and not love?” She shrugged happily. “What could that be? You never told us.”

Austin spoke ahead of Blount. “Military term. Von Clausewitz.” He bowed at Leni, smiling at a point above her head. “The brief pursuit of an enemy, to finish him off.”

“War.” Leni gave it the proper, chapfallen stare, then tossed her head. “Half the time, I never know who the enemy is.”

“I
al
ways know,” said Madame.

Unlike as the two women were, and in spite of their words, they smiled a rare smile at each other. Like women always, like cats bringing prey in to master, they had frivolously brought in the aspect of eternity, useless anywhere to daily living, and now left it there, on the hearth.

There came upon the dinner party a longer silence. Leaning forward, they communed with themselves—and took their rising warmth for intellect.

Leni, in that heaven of possibility which was her present, felt her lingerie, silken on her haunches. Beauty was her topic. She no longer felt awed here. Each one of her gaucheries had been successes; she was dimly conscious of arranging them—the nigger, the bidet—like a girl her baubles. One of her sets of eyelashes dragged on the cheekbone like a bird-wing. Sitting there, she saw deeply into her own perfume, a woman who was loved.

Austin’s rivalry was engaging all his mind. As a Fenno, he was thinking practicably, not of his feelings but of his rivals. In Edwin, he saw a fellow who could never take on more antagonists than two, himself and another. Edwin had to have an answer to his status here. A low answer was what the Edwins would expect. Yet, in Austin’s own line of work, oughtn’t he to know how it felt—to
feel
status? As for the Judge—since a boy, Austin had viewed the Judge with question; now he could let irony fall for sure, like a headsman the black cloth. The Judge, a man who beld toward holy things perhaps more than Fennos could, was not yet by any means eating with God. … He himself could sit stock-still in his chair now, clasping his good glass with a look almost of middle age, as if he had text already sewn on him: Waiting for Ruth. He waited for her like a rival.

Pauli, proud of Leni, proud of the Judge, “breathing away” in so far as life had let him teach it to, offered Blount a cigar.

Blount took it “for later.” Clearheadedly was the only way for the wasp to buzz, politically continuous round the world. Dinner tonight is
here.
He made a digestive sound, fondling questions-to-come like lances. Even a buffoon knew his effect was to remind each person of what the person was privately in pursuit of. Sufficient unto the day, the news.
That
was his answer.

The Judge was telling himself what he always did whenever talk of war entered his house seditious as gun smoke, further clouding the citizen-guilt of houses. Civilization is
here.

Ninon was hardest for the silence to crack. Finally she got up and walked about, stiletto heels held back in tribute, as an animal retracts its claws. Though the dress she wore was a clinging one, her waist dipped with each step as if it peacocked a crinoline. But her head bore its own rhythm like any other woman. Victorianly away from the cigars. …I’ve never been
home
with a lover. Never known love-terror, nor the terror-lack of love. Follow no love; love follows. Dip to the cigars, but avoid the smoke. Always know the enemy in time.

And Leni, the specialist, leaning forward into her own heliotrope, said with dreamy, sure emphasis: “I remember very well your wife, Judge Mannix. Much more beauty than all these pictures. Even at a restaurant party—such presence. We all met once together. Remember. Before she…was killed.”

A lesion opened, not in their quiet—in the silence of the house.

…That’s the feel of it, at that word, like something you see, marsh gas or summer lightning, but think you hear. The house, opening its years like a wound, gives to each the echo he is prepared to hear. …

So she was
killed. So he
killed her.
Who?
The husband? The lover? A hireling?

Who?…
Yes, which was I?…

Which?
All the same under the tsetse fly—accidents are all the same. …

Where?…
So this is you at home, Disraeli. …
What…
did you see; my dollhouse doll? Breathe it away. …

How…
may I serve you, my sister, my rival is suffering?…

Why?…
So that you might kill yourself, Mirriam—and still stand by…

Sometimes the years of a house opened to no listener but a passerby or the wind, or a mercury-blot of light gilding an attic window shade. Or to that great legatee of houses, the inheriting dust. Or some houses were left wisely early. But this house, in the old-fashioned way, was dining with its retinue.

Before pictures could fall from walls, or echoes cease, Austin Fenno, in the cold, cordial voice of a son-in-law who learns too quickly what is expected of him, began to tell them about the war.

“Down there is the Cen-tral Park, yes? Let us walk there.”

“I never go there. OK.”

Strangers here, they listened to the ring of their own steps and said nothing, the city an intermediary which didn’t need to move to stay with them. Now that it was summer, the streets were wetted and softer, the exudate of some long, listless dragon who lay just beyond.

Edwin’s head was clearing, but he let Krupong lead the way. Few were on the streets. At those who were Krupong nodded approvingly. Under his breath he was chanting or humming, in a nasal language that might be any. When they reached the Fifth Avenue corner, he stopped. “Has a constant shimmer, this city.”

Across the way, the line of young or stunted trees was abloom with mist, as if, with apple or oleander. Nothing was on their branches. Edwin knew his city, full of other evasive seasons, any time of year. Tonight had fallen from first expectation, but this was the fault of his monologue, not the city’s. He had always kept them separate. “Don’t they all?”

“The ones by the sea. Naples. Constantinople.”

Behind them as they crossed, the great, protected avenue looked as usual, glittering idly on its own repose. He’d never thought of this city as a living organism before. That idea belonged to
them.
The city was an arena to be coped with, and not to starve in. That other was the romance of the rich. Deep behind the sternum an examining army doctor had identified as the barrel chest of early hunger, he let out a laugh.

“Eh?”

“I was thinking that the
poor
never say what
they
are.” Down there he’d never once heard the word itself. They spoke of it between the wishes. “I’d like to cover this dirt floor, some day. With linoleum.” Those dumb wishes, which sometimes couldn’t
let
themselves be satisfied—his mother, unless commanded, still wore her old coat. He hadn’t yet dared dispose of it, as the aunts had advised.

“So…but the rich hide their condition too. Look there.” Krupong pointed back at the eastern side of the avenue, at a set of shrouded windows, hoarding their inner light. “He’s not letting you see what paintings he’s got, man.”

“Right. It’s only the middle who’re always telling you what they are.” His head was clearer, but the wine was still in his shoulders.

Krupong laughed. “That young warrior. Clever, what he said.”

“Austin? Pacifist.” One had to be fair, even if classified for home by a healed TB spot one never’d known one had.

“Fight like the devil, some of those do.”

“Quaker family.”

“Woo-oo, yes? I rowed with an English one of those. Curious people. Very objective about Africa.” Krupong faced the park. “I would like to go in—it is permitted?”

“Supposed to be full of knives. But in New York, you’ll find the sinister street is always just beyond the one where you are.” Or the golden one. It took a foreigner to make one feel ownership here. He followed Krupong in.

After a twisting of byways he hoped his companion would know how to return through, they stood facing the great south wall of buildings that bordered the park. Above that pride of light, the sky was smeared to white, as if foghorns had just left off sounding. The buildings shifted continuously, as stars did in the tear of the eye. “But it is humming too!” Felix said.

It was, the whole spectacle. It always had. “In winter, the lights snap—like twigs.” He looked about him mazedly. He felt his ambition inside him, a cautious song.