Trust: A Novel Part 16

"For the drug!" she cried. "What do you think? I couldn't have done without it."

I pursued logically, "If you couldn't do without it then why did you throw it away?"

"What a brat you are, a born little vulture. You'd eat your own mother." But she said this abstractedly, depressed. She was still musing over the triumph of her scene, and I was all at once petrified at the notion that-in spite of her palm reaching out to tap me toward the cobbled road-she would plunge into a review of all the rest of it. Her conscientious but self-absorbed unfolding of it, slangy, quick, always gave me a sense of unease, almost of guilt, as though, beneath the story, some buried and repugnant symbol mouldered. The story itself was foolishness, and was, I learned long afterward, pretentiously based on some Korean myth or other which my mother had gotten, not from a book, but from a guide in one of the upstairs galleries of the British Museum. Two sisters, alike as two rice flowers in beauty but one pledged to evil and the other to good (on different sides in the cla.s.s struggle, in my mother's version), are rivaling for the love of a single hero: they take him captive to their gla.s.s house and tease him into eating strange plants, each to lure him from the other; but alas, the wicked girl, by means of mysteriously sweet and brilliant petals, instead of converting his heart, succeeds only in sending him straight asleep in her sister's arms. "It was a sedative instead of an aphrodisiac," my mother smirked. "I had to know the details of that, didn't I? I couldn't make up a drug out of the thin air without research, could I? I mean it was a question of the chemistry of flowers. Don't think I didn't study all winter about aphrodisiacs in all sorts of queer books!" She pretended, however, to have inadvertently erred: "Don't ask me to explain that word, it's not for you."

But I had already been given a definition, long ago, by my stepfather. "Enoch said they're things to make somebody love you who doesn't. Like the apple Eve picked for Adam."

"Well, if you think you know absolutely everything!" said my mother, exasperated, and at the same time pleased. She was pleased whenever T quoted Enoch, as though it were a particular merit in me to choose to do so, even if it revealed to her that her husband thought Genesis almost as psychoa.n.a.lytical a book as Marianna Harlow. "Besides, you can't make somebody love you who doesn't. If you try, they only love you less. Afterward they hate you and want revenge for your having loved them. Don't drag behind, let's go," she said, tugging at my elbow with a listlessness appropriate to her philosophizings. But I did not follow after. Screeches and bellows enflamed the porch, and turning toward the house I saw the turbulent wedding party dance out barefoot-Guy, Irene, Paul, Therese. They swarmed across the lawn, searching for their shoes in the feathers, lit by midsummer midday, honeyed over by jubilance. They were all of them uncompromisingly, lavishly blond, like a covey of cousins, the bridegrooms long-haired with straight formless columns fluting downward over their brows, the brides shorn short, the division in the nape like a dark ravine as they bent. Their naked heels were black. They raced across the dewy gra.s.s like Greek runners, chasing one another in an impromptu game that half resembled tag, and half something Biblical: the honeymooners cast out from Paradise by two croaking angels, more or less toothless, beating staffs of broken bread upon the lintel of Eden. My mother rounded the hedge; but the girls between them took hold of the rain-barrel by its rusty rings, and displaying exaggerated winces, groaning at its weight, they raised themselves on their strong toes and tipped it. Out ran Niagara-rain, and rags, and fats, and innumerable chicken bones, and fish-heads, and all my sh.e.l.ls one behind the other in a clanging cascade, and the private visitor's ENCHIRIDION like a frigate in that horrendous sea; the laden water sped and spread, tumbling out a crazy river down toward the road, cutting through the coverlet of feathers, now and then lifting one in its current, where it might have been mistaken for a white fern swirling. And "Hurry up!" called my mother from the other side of the hedge; and "What a stench!" I came slowly, reluctant, watchful: the iron barrel fell to the ground dumping thunder, and rocked twice, and lay like a toppled urn. On its side it had a certain mythological beauty-an idol thrown down. The spew trickled off innocently. Meanwhile the bridegrooms had s.n.a.t.c.hed up twigs and were playing at catching the hoops of my sh.e.l.ls over the points, dabbling them in the sluice. The brides took turns aiming their shoes at the hedge-duck's tail. Guy, Therese, Paul, Irene. The sun lived in the flanks of all their sheeny heads; and on the porch, not minding the stink, the concierge's husband stopped up his plaints with a big bite of bread.

But the concierge stamped on the floorboards and howled.

"Barbarians," muttered my mother behind the bush, "they're just what this place deserves"-and her high heels wavered with great delicacy between the cobblestones.

I went dismally down the hill behind her, and halfway along spied the flag. It was not a true flag. It was only an old handkerchief printed over with Stars and Stripes, not even the right number of each, and a long rip in the middle where the stick had pierced it. A car had run it over; it was ragged and soggy, and I left it where I found it. Ahead of me, my mother's back was sentry-straight-only her ankles were unsure. She picked her way down the hill and never noticed this patriot's handkerchief, although she had been talking of loyalty and Oth.e.l.lo only yesterday. "Why are you hanging back like that?" she shouted, vexed at the honeymooners and at me for having interrupted Marianna. With admirable exact.i.tude she resumed. "The fact is"-she balanced just then on the crown of a stone-"I mean, what with the three of them locked in the greenhouse, and the lightning stabbing through the gla.s.s walls and flooding all the flowers and the erotic scent of the flowers, and both sisters in love with the same man, and him not only of another cla.s.s but, well, actually out cold and lying limp, no wonder they said it was spine-tingling!" she praised herself. We had come to the bottom of the road. Without warning two taxis jumped into being, begging at the curb. Their rear doors gaped. My mother waved off the first as a sign of vengeance, and leaned down to rub her shin until she was satisfied the walk down had left her without a crack; then we drove off to the station with the favored man. The seats were threadbare plush and alive with heat. Asthma choked the driver. "To think that I could write of eating flowers, just flowers, and scare myself, and call it horror! When it was all just flowers, and I never saw them really, just colored pictures in a book..." My mother's forefinger ticked against her cheek. "I didn't know what horror was!" Inside the cab, for an act of mercy and as though it were a flower, she took my hand. But sweat ran from the underside of my knuckles and she surrendered me to myself with a grunt. "Ah, you're clammy. You don't feel clean." She sat in silence, listening to the driver cough for his lungful of air, while the wheel wobbled and a vein at his wrist bulged. I suppose we were in danger of dying of his disease (we had joggled over to the wrong side of the narrow road and were struggling to joggle back again) and wondered whether my mother would construe this as a punishment for having snubbed the other taxi, but the windows did not draw her eyes; she kept them for herself, and let her anger loiter where it pleased, and was all at once stung by the worse danger of enlightenment-she seemed to see: "He brought it in case I didn't remember! As though I couldn't remember without his little showpieces! The tools of his trade!" And she spat out the window, although we were within two yards of the station.

So I could not decide whether Nick's lost flag were a tool of his trade too. But on account of it-because, although it was abused and torn, a painted rag, I felt somehow its optimism and lighthearted power, and imagined that it had been flung off its stick for my feet to find as a sort of glorious and healthful omen of America, of everything that was not Europe-on account of this despised swatch and remnant, I could not hate his trade, whatever it might be, and however threatening.

10.

Although my mother had predicted worse, on the ship going home I was sick for only a day. After that my stomach made its peace with the horizon: both were unstable, but both were eager not to be noticed. The sky over the ship was tall and narrow, like a vertical tunnel or chute through which the horizon seemed to be perpetually escaping. Every twilight we heard the birds, not seeing them. Their cries were smoky, as though upon some far pyre live human babies wailed.

My mother pa.s.sed the time making lists. Most of them were insipid, but some were brilliant. The longer they were, however, the more ordinary they were. She wrote down, for instance, the names of all the places outside of the United States she had ever visited, divided into three parts: 1. Capitals. 2. Cities and Towns 3. Villages, and this list was very long. So was the one cataloguing Favorite Dishes and Beverages. The smallest list of all was headed Books I Have Written. Another one, showing three items, was called Books I Intend to Write. Below this appeared the following: 1. Moods and Memoirs of the Emba.s.sy, by Allegra Vand, Well-Known Connoisseur. 2. Capitalism and Communism, A World Struggle as Witnessed by a Partic.i.p.ant, by Allegra Vand, LL.D. ("Well," she justified this piece of imagination, "my father had one, a Doctor of Laws degree; it was honorary. He got it because he gave them the money to build the new Alumni House, and if I'm his heir, I suppose I'm just as ent.i.tled to call myself LL.D. as he was!") And finally, 3. Forward the Bold Haven: A Historical Novel of Old New York, by Allegra Vand, author of the Best-Seller Marianna Harlow, listed in Drilling's Famous Compilation, "Best Literature of the Ma.s.ses, 1937."

"What's it going to be about?" I said.

"The novel? Oh, I'll never write another novel. It's just to round out the list. Biography, politics, fiction."

"No, I mean this," I said, pointing to Number One.

"Oh, that. That'll be about my life."

"But it's got something about an Emba.s.sy."

"Well, where do you think I expect to spend my life?" she retorted.

The most inspired list of all was called Celebrities I Should Like to Have Known, and Why. Among the "celebrities" were Napoleon, Catherine the Great, and Booth Tarkington, and from each she drew an admonition for herself.

Gandhi [she wrote]. Type of pure

national saint. Because would not

eat meat or drink goats' milk.

(Give up goats' milk.)

Mme. Curie. Because dedicated

scientist. (Devote more time to

Dedication.)

St. Joan. Ditto Dedication.

The Buddha. Enlightenment and

Union. (Think more of non-Matter.)

Wright Brothers. Daedalus' dream.

[This was crossed out.] Courage? [So

was this.] Poetry of the machine.

(Develop for separate list.)

"Are the Wright Brothers priests?" I inquired, putting down the paper.

"They invented the airplane, stupid. Besides, I don't think brothers are priests in the Catholic religion anyway. Fathers are. Here, give me that, I'm going to add one more."

"Was the Buddha a Catholic?" I pursued.

"Naturally not, he was a Buddhist. Now be quiet and let me think. Ssh, I need a composer-for G.o.d's sake go away. Why don't you take your game and find somebody on deck to play with-" for in an access of last-minute remorse over her arbitrary dissolution of the ENCHIRIDION, she had bought me a box of checkers and a board.

When I left her she was wavering between Stephen Foster and Wagner.

On the first-cla.s.s deck I dutifully set up the checkerboard in my lap and waited for a partner. A few pa.s.sengers, mostly in military uniform, strolled by, intent on the water or their cigarettes. Nearby a foreign-looking baby just learning to walk came hobbling between its mother's legs, holding her thumbs with its fists and dribbling onto its shoes; it might have been either male or female-its haircut and the shirt over its little pants gave no clue, the one being too short for a girl and the other too long for a boy. "Volodya. Volodya," crooned the mother, urging it on with gentle kicks of her knees. "Okean," she said, pointing beyond the rail, "voda."

In an unoccupied chair next to mine someone had forgotten his sungla.s.ses. I picked them up and looked through the wrong side of the lenses, with the ear-pieces standing out before my face, while the deck-boards turned dark green and the big jellying waves changed to gra.s.s. The black gra.s.s fled my gaze like a long, long field, shimmering and trackless. It was the middle of the night behind those gla.s.ses; I did not like it there, and leaned out to drop them down again upon their seat, but a bristly-knuckled hand reached out to intercept them, and upset the board. The checkers spilled out on my skirt and rolled away. One skittered across the deck and under the railing and into the sea, and one the baby caught on the way and put into its mouth. I had to go after them all, avoiding the legs of the walkers, who were glad enough of the diversion. There was nothing to do on the decks of that homeward-heaving ship but think where it was taking us: so the walkers walked, in the landlubber's illusion that the more they walked the sooner they would arrive. Only my mother, sticking to her cabin and missing Enoch, did not walk. It was as though she rode against the tide.

The baby cried when I opened its jaws to force out the checker; and to win it over I smiled at its mother and said, "Is it a boy or girl?" The baby bawled louder and wider at the sound of my voice so close to its face, and inadvertently spit out the checker. "Yes," said its mother, grinning silver teeth-fillings back at me, "that is you know true." So I put the last checker, wet with the baby's spittle, into my box, and was about to close the lid: but the brindled fingers slipped a coin under the cover. "That's half a dollar for you."

"What for?"

"To use instead of the piece that went overboard. It was my fault it went in but I can't tell you how to fetch it out again. This isn't an admiral's suit, you see."

I observed his b.u.t.tons with modified scorn; I knew perfectly well and at first glance what sort of uniform he wore. He was a colonel. On account of Enoch I had seen many colonels, and they all dressed alike.

"Don't you have to stay in Europe?" I wondered.

"Not when there's not a war," he said, and hid behind his sungla.s.ses the froggy skin-scallops that circled his frog-eyes. Over his speckled scalp limp rows of white thread lay stretched, trained upward from where they grew at the side of his ear; they covered his skull like a very bad wig. He hinged the knees that were concealed somewhere in the long tubes of his military trousers and sat down in the deck-chair beside me.

"Are you being retired?" I asked, imagining the greyish pits in his skin to be the acc.u.mulation of very old age.

"Nope. Just going home to get some lawyers. Then I have to come right back to Nuremberg. Do you know any riddles?"

I said I did not.

"Okay, then why does a chicken cross the road?"

I said I knew that one.

"Never mind, I've got another. What didn't come into Noah's ark in pairs?"

I gave up.

"Worms," said the colonel. "They came in apples."

"What do you need the lawyers for?" I said.

"To present the evidence. What has no legs and runs?"

"A train," I ventured.

"Nope."

"A ball."

"Nope."

"A watch?"

"Nope. Ice-cream cone on a hot day. Like that one?"

"It's all right," I said politely. "My stepfather had to go to Zurich. Is that near the place you said?"

"Different country. Your stepfather Army?"

"Nope," I said, catching on. "He sort of works for the Government."

The colonel laughed. "Don't you think the Army does too?"

"I don't know much about the Army," I admitted, remembering the three English soldiers at the border, how they had carried back the cut-down giant, the big head dangling loose.

"Neither do I. You'd make a good colonel," said the colonel. "How about the five copycats sitting on a fence? One went away, so how many were left?"

"Four," I said promptly.

"Nope. None. They all copied the first one, and that's all the riddles I ever heard of. Except the Riddle of Life. Your stepfather in refugee work?"