Voices of a Summer Day (17 page)

Error, Federov thought. Error. The reward of so much human endeavor. The fielder had run as fast as he could, had used his talents, his experience, his nerve, to the utmost, and in the end the error sign had gone up.

He watched the left fielder walking, dejected, his head down, back to his position, and thought of his own son roaming an almost equally exposed outfield, because all games are played in naked arenas where exposure to judgment is constant, even a bumpy high school field on a lazy Saturday afternoon, with only the players and a handful of spectators to say, aloud or in silence, Thumbs up or Thumbs down.

He knew that his son’s team was ahead by one run and he hoped that if anything came Michael’s way in center field he’d hold onto it. His thoughts now on the dark side of men’s adventures on playing fields, Federov remembered the misjudged fly at Camp Canoga that had cost the game and Bryant saying, “And you’re not in the lineup tomorrow, either. You’re a jinx, Federov.”

1946

F
EDEROV HAD SEEN BRYANT
only once since then. It was just after the war and it was in a half-empty subway car going uptown, and Bryant was sitting alone, wearing a dark coat with a velvet collar and a derby hat, like a Tammany alderman or the vice-president of a small American bank who had been befriended by the wrong people on a short visit to London. With all that, Bryant looked surprisingly young and in good shape. For a moment Federov hesitated about going over, but was ashamed of himself immediately and stood up and walked across the car and said, “Hello, Dave.”

Bryant looked up at him, unrecognizingly. His eyes were dull and bloodshot. There was a smell of liquor on his breath. “Hello,” he said.

“I’m Benjamin Federov,” Federov said. “From camp.”

“Oh, sure, hiya, Ben.” Bryant stood up and put out his hand. The second handshake, Federov thought. “Sure, sure, I remember,” Bryant said. “Good old Tris. Tris Speaker.” He smiled his own congratulations to himself for the accuracy of his memory.

Federov had a few more stations to go and they talked of the old days of 1927. “That boy Cohn,” Bryant said naturally. It was a cinch he wouldn’t have failed to recognize Cohn, even fifty years later. “An exceptional human being,” Bryant said portentously. “Exceptional. It’s a shame what happened to him.”

“What happened to him?” Federov asked.

“You mean to say that you didn’t hear?” Bryant asked, incredulous that anyone who had ever known Cohn would be ignorant of the least action of that hero.

“No,” Federov said. “I never heard anything about him since that summer.”

“Amazing,” Bryant said. “I thought everybody knew. He got killed during the war. In 1940.”

“1940?” Federov said. “We didn’t get into the war until ’41.”

“He joined the RAF. He flew his own plane, you know,” Bryant said.

“No, I didn’t know.”

“Uhuh. I flew with him a lot. Weekends. Holidays. All over the place. Lake George. Down to his uncle’s place in Key West. God, we had times. I tell you. The day the war broke out he went up to Canada and enlisted in the RAF. You know Cohn. He couldn’t stay out of anything. He was killed over London.”

They stood in silence for a moment, remembering Cohn. Now that Bryant had told him, what Cohn had done seemed inevitable to Federov, fated. With Conn’s character, which must have only been intensified with the years, the war must have seemed just another athletic event in which he could excel without exertion, another
Bye, Bye, Bonnie,
another holiday in a new town.

“God, he was clever,” Bryant said. “Remember that song he made up—that Sacco-Vanzetti thing”—Bryant began to hum, searching for the words. “God, he was full of laughs. An all-’round boy. A real all-’round boy. How did the beginning go again? I don’t remember, do you?”

“No,” Federov said. He was sorry he had come over to say hello. He didn’t want to hear any more about Cohn. “I was in England during the war, too,” he said, just to switch the subject.

“Were you?” Bryant said without interest.

“How about you?” Federov asked. “Where were you?”

“In Washington,” Bryant said gravely, in the tone that strong and taciturn men use in speaking of sacrifices they have made and dangers they have survived.

Federov managed not to smile. Bryant, he thought, you’re a born, irrevocable, third-string man. “Sorry,” he said, “here’s my station.” He hurried out, making a pretense of being afraid of having the doors close on him, so that there would never be a third handshake…

Why, when it’s two out and I’m pitching,
the clever, persuasive voice argued out of the cool blue mountain dusk,
and the ball’s hit out toward center field, I don’t even look around, no matter where it’s going. I just throw away my glove and start walking toward the bench because I know Benny’s out there, and if Benny’s out there that ball’s going to be caught.

I took her cherry under a cherry tree in Lake-wood, New Jersey.

From this and other missions, twenty-seven of our aircraft are missing.

1964

T
HE DOOR TO THE BAR
opened, and Michael came in, swinging his glove and spikes. He was wearing tennis shoes now. “Hi,” he said, sitting down next to his father. “Can I have a coke?”

“One coke, Vinnie,” Federov said. “How’d the game come out?”

“We won,” Michael said.

“Anything happen in the last inning?”

“A little confusion and alarm,” Michael said. He gulped at the drink Vinnie put before him. “They got two men on base and Cerrazzi was up.” Michael drank again.

“What’d he do?” Federov asked.

“He walloped it. Baby, can that Cerrazzi hit that ball,” Michael said. “Only this time he hit it right at Buddy Horowitz on first base, and Buddy only had to take two steps and there was the ball game. Say, Dad, do you mind if I don’t ride home with you? There’s a volleyball game at Andy Robert’s house. You know the way home yourself, don’t you, Daddy-o?”

“I know the way home all right,” Federov said. “And don’t be such a wise guy.”

Michael laughed. He jumped from the stool. “Thanks for the coke.” He started out, then stopped. “Do you mind throwing this junk into the back of the car, Dad?” He waved the spikes, tied together with their laces, looped over the back strap of the glove.

“Give them to me,” Federov said.

Michael came over and put the spikes and glove on the stool next to his father. “Good old Dads,” he said. “See you at dinner.”

“Did you do anything in the last inning?” Federov asked. Now that he knew his son’s team had won, he didn’t really care about the details, but after the long, sunny afternoon, he wanted to be able to look at the young, beautiful face for thirty seconds longer.

“One grounder,” Michael said carelessly, moving toward the door. “I stopped it and threw it in to second base. Nuthin’.” Then a curious, experimental look came over Michael’s face. “Nothing spectacular like you,” he said, his voice sounding cool and suddenly mature.

“What do you mean?” Federov asked, not remembering.

“That catch,” Michael said. “With one hand. And bowing.” There was no doubt about the reproof in his voice.

“What was wrong with it?” Federov asked.

“You know,” Michael said. “I don’t have to tell you.”

They were two grown men now, maneuvering, ready to attack.

“I don’t know,” Federov said.

“Sure you do,” Michael said, standing tall in front of his father. “You were showing off. All the fellows knew it.”

“Maybe I was,” Federov admitted. “Is there anything wrong with it?”

“It’s conspicuous,” Michael said. “Unnecessary. Nobody likes his father to be conspicuous.”

Federov nodded. “I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll see you later.”

There was a last, cool look, to see how much damage had been done, and then Michael was gone.

Federov swung on his stool and stared at the bottles behind the bar. Childhood was over. The unbreakable automatic approval was over and had probably been over for years, without his having noticed it. Now the critic and competitor was present in the family, feeling for his opponent’s weaknesses, testing his own powers to wound, to shape, to subjugate, to conquer, to stretch love to its breaking point.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Federov thought. I did it myself to my father.

He remembered how he used to hate family celebrations, when Israel would get gay on two drinks, dance whirling nimble waltzes with girls and fat cousins or, as a special crowning performance, do a Russian
khazatsky,
a difficult spectacular dance in which the dancer crouched in a sitting position, folding his arms across his chest, and kicked out his feet in an impossibly fast rhythm while everybody stood around watching, shouting and clapping time. His father would get red in the face and do it for what seemed an impossibly long time, beaming and sweating, giving himself over, for a few moments in America, to all that was young and Russian in his soul, unfettered by the drab restraints, observed but only half-understood, of a heavy-footed Anglo-Saxon society.

Benjamin had gone out of the room once while his father was dancing like that, with thirty people clapping and shouting and cheering him on. Sophie Federov had noticed the look of scorn, of disapproval, on her son’s face, and had followed him out of the room. He was only eleven at the time.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mrs. Federov had asked.

“Pop,” Benjamin had said. “Why does he have to be so
Jewish?
Why does he have to behave like a fool, with all those people laughing at him?”

Mrs. Federov had grabbed his wrist hard. “Get this straight,” she said. “Your father is not behaving like a fool. Nobody is laughing at him. They are laughing with pleasure and admiration because your father is so happy and can dance so well and because he reminds them of some of the good things of their old life. And don’t you ever say a word to him about it. And don’t you grow up to be an Englishman.”

Remembering, in the dark bar, Federov smiled. He wondered if Peggy would be as wise with Michael or if it would do any good. An Englishman. Were they all growing up to be Englishmen?

He finished his beer, paid, and went to the car. He tossed the spikes and glove onto the back seat and drove toward home, sniffing the faint, lifetime-familiar summer odor of leather and sweat.

Peggy still wasn’t home. The gray-shingled house shook with the pound of the surf. There were too many magazines piled all over the living room.
Esquire,
January 1959. Seven
New Yorkers
from 1958, 1960, the summer of 1962. Three
National Geographics,
with their covers torn off. The
Foreign Affairs Quarterly,
a symposium on a crisis Federov barely remembered. An issue of
Encounter
from 1961. Federov picked it up. Hemingway had just killed himself and a critic spent many pages parodying and mocking Hemingway. Three issues of
Playboy.
One by one, Federov thumbed through them, opened the folded pages with the full-length glossy color photographs of plump, naked girls. How did they get girls to pose like that? Anything to get your name—or your ass—into the papers. The twentieth century. He looked at the girls. One blond, two brunettes. Waxed fruit. He collected all the magazines that had been issued before 1964 and carried them into the garage. Too damn many magazines.

He went back into the house and looked into the refrigerator to see what there was going to be for dinner. There was a pitcher of iced tea and a lot of eggs and oranges and butter and yogurt, but no meat or fowl or fish. He closed the refrigerator. He wished Peggy was home so he could tell her he didn’t want to go out for dinner and to telephone for a roast of beef before the shops closed.

He went into the bedroom, vaguely thinking of lying down and taking a nap. “A nap every day will prolong your life, Ben,” the doctor kept telling him. Is prolonging your life necessarily good? And until when? Fifty-one? Fifty-two? Ninety? Anyway, he couldn’t take a nap. There were bills spread all over the twin beds. Peggy always did her accounts that way, spreading the bills on the beds in neat little piles. The only trouble was she would spread them all out, then leave them there and go do something else, and they would remain on the beds all day and all night until it was time to go to sleep. Then Peggy would have to gather them up and put them in a drawer and do the whole thing over again the next day. Peggy hated to do bills and the little piles of paper from Bloomingdale’s and Saks and the telephone company would be spread out on the beds at least ten days a month. She was always late in paying and from time to time Federov would get a sorrowful letter from a company saying that he was in danger of being considered a bad credit risk. He didn’t mind being considered a bad credit risk, but the sight of the bills spread out for years on the beds annoyed him. I
make
the money, the least she can do is spend it on time.

There was a letter on her makeup table. Federov didn’t mean to look, but he saw that it was written in a man’s handwriting and that it started “Dear Friend” and that it covered several pages. Because he was alone and annoyed by the bills he made a movement toward the letter. Then he stopped. He hadn’t ever read any of her letters and he wasn’t going to start now.

He went out of the room. Dear Friend. Hah! Somebody sneaking around his wife. Some coward. Lord Chesterfield’s injunction to his stupid son—“Never write a letter to a woman you can’t cool a bottle of beer on.” Or was it Lord Chesterfield? Anyway, a coward.

Who knows what a woman did with her time all week down here? Like the ski resorts. The men coming up from their offices on trains every Friday night. The one from Zurich to Davos. The Cuckolds’ Special. Swiss humor. Federov had never been in Switzerland, but one of his clients had told him about it. The client had had tuberculosis and had stayed more than a year in a sanitarium there. No skiing. Plenty of naps, morning
and
afternoon. Prolonging his life. He’d been cured of tuberculosis, then he’d been killed a couple of years later, driving drunk in the rain after a party in Westport.