Trust: A Novel Part 49

"They've been downcellar, most of them."

"Well, tell her to pick a glorious hero out of history who hasn't been yet and go downstairs with it. Then dump it in the spring."

"You're offhand with glorious heroes," the other grunted.

"The bottle I meant. To cool. Last month I lost a beaut that way-cork was loose. Washed out. Fresh from the cellar too. Some lackey must've nipped it once. Water turned"-phing!-"claret. Matched the house-mold exactly. Pity to see-perfectly good-spring water-diluted."

At once I knew him. Tilbeck was the one who needed wine.

I was afraid to look at him. I looked at the other man. The other man, whom I had taken for old, was not old. It was only contrast that made him seem so. He had a mouth stern with rigid piety-a hollow mouth, full of teeth but hollow-sucked all the same behind lips puffed and womanishly budded. And a step too quick for a young man, since young men are unashamed about not always showing their nimbleness. They will show it if it pleases them. Yet Purse sped, as though someone had doubted how nimble he could be; he dashed and darted, vigorously in training. It made him seem old. The other laughed and sauntered. The other was lazy, and went after the ball casually, like one of those self-mocking tropical divers who greet incoming holiday-ships with a nonchalant crash to the bottom of the harbor, and all for the sake of a penny. He laughed, and he strolled, and he stuck a toe out to kick the invisible net, and he missed his serve, and he ducked, and he held his racket like a feather-duster; and he panted recklessly all the while, until he vaguely reeled. But he was at play, and Purse was at work. Frenetic repet.i.tions rather than exhaustion aged Purse; he looked what he was, a father. Not so my father. I stared with the rot of disappointment at a man not yet forty who had the enamels and graces of a man not yet thirty. Heedlessness-his shoulders demonstrated how little he cared for anything but the soft inch of pleasure; he did not even care for triumph-heedlessness perhaps it was that had left him immune; but he was not that immune. Time must overtake before it takes away the whole of a man's earliness, and no one had told me how Gustave Nicholas Tilbeck stood with respect to the touch of the withering finger. It had not tapped him. There was still something unrecounted about the stink of my first cell. Dejection seized me. Shame heated my legs. Not even William, sordid puritan, had had the courage of this sordidness. I viewed my father. He might have been a decade younger than my mother; half that surely. Then and there I had to swallow what I was: the merest merest whim. Oh, less and worse: it was not that I was the flaw of chance. Others belong to chance, others have sprung from caprice. It was not that I had never remotely been intended. It was simply that I could never have been seriously believed in. It is bad to fail, but to succeed beyond one's genuine imagination is terrible. It is the spurt of a too great precocity. It surpa.s.ses what is decently normaL A boy of seventeen had made me.

"You! Tourist!" he called to me two-and-twenty years after that moment of his singularity. "I need my dinner. I need my wine. Bring all those counting-houses up from the beach. Tell them their papa laid everything out like a French chef. His missis done? Fixed my outboard?"

"They said it's fixed. They're washing," I answered, and watched the ball go wild.

"Good. This is Purse the digger," he announced. "When he digs into a purse it's not his own. Joke." And then: "This one is my girlie. The kid get you over all right? Didn't soak you, dry enough I see. Though not a looker. What the h.e.l.l, I like my girlies lookers. Expected a looker, the odds were for it Show you around all the same. You show her," he nudged Purse, and s.n.a.t.c.hed the racket from the other's grip and threw it with his own into a bed of rushes. They fell with a sound like a distant sneeze.

"I'd better see to the hand-washing," Purse said nervously.

"Right you are. Germ gets into a Purse, never gets out again. Give that one to the missis with my compliments. Doesn't come up to her standards, I'm only an amateur. The professional product-how can you make a small purse count? Answer: Teach it. Topical joke, unquote Mrs. Purse, so help me sweet baby Jesus."

Purse bolted like a racer, with a noise in his nose.

"Sacre bleu, blasphemed again. Keep forgetting not to. It's all right in front of the kids, they're hypocrites, but it hurts the pa's feelings something awful. Though he won't say anything-I made him promises. He'd recite all the devil's names for the price of an encyclopaedia and a new tin trunk. Fast on his feet, look at that. It's not hands he's going to supervise, believe me. Prayers. That gang never consumes a G.o.dd.a.m.n crumb without first spitting up a blessing. Wear out G.o.d that way. You religious?"

"No."

"Believe in G.o.d?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"Which means Yes. Don't have your mother's shape, now do you?" he said critically. "They teach you something in that college to make up for it?"

"Latin mostly."

He whistled. "Let's go get the bottle. Show you your bed on the way."

We avoided the wilderness I had come by and followed a little path past three large and dirty tents. "Here?" I said.

"Put you in the house. With me. You're no tramp. This way-back door. Through the kitchens. Show you my bed."

It was a sofa pushed nearly into a fireplace. Minuet dancers paraded on the cushions in bubbles of frocks the color of gra.s.s. Gra.s.s underfoot nipped strangely, in knots, out of gaps in the tile. A lobster glow prowled through the windows; some were boarded; here and there a few gla.s.s teeth still hung. On the lip of the hearth lay a silken pillow ragged with raveled rosettes. Black enormous surfaces of stoves stretched into mediaeval distances. There was a bad smell-dampness, feces of mice. Wax candles leaned like stalagmites. Under the sofa a heap of charred table-legs. Against a rotting wall something-a cube the size of a cottage, with its door swinging free; perfectly square; gigantic; breathing caged heat: a terrifying refrigerator. "Pantry. Laundry. Back there the bakery. Rows of sinks like-elephant troughs, see 'em? Burned all the bread paddles last winter. Break your heart, hah? All dead and finished. See that clump? Behind you. Right up through. No bas.e.m.e.nt under this part of the house, that's why. The power of gra.s.s. Takes over in the end. Gloria was sick on the bus last Monday, you follow?"

I did not know how to answer.

"Tourist! No? Don't get it? Thought you had Latin. Sic transit gloria mundi as they say. Come on, I'll show you the kings."

The kings matched the kings on the chairs under the trees. Grotesque noses, awkward rough little snarls, wicked wicked foreheads leering with the minute grain of the crafty wood; he went from dark guileful panel to dark ingenious panel of an empty room, empty and immense, empty and inhabited by the heads of kings. He polished wooden foreheads with his wrist-bone. I pursued him through a litter of newspapers and peered upward: "There must be three hundred of 'em-I never counted," but he did not mean the prisms that showered from the chandelier like a brilliant bundle of kaleidoscopes; "see?" he said, "up near the ceiling? That whole row up there? Half a dozen of 'em? Those are the Six Philips of France. Heard of Philip the Fair?-that's the crackpot-looking one: crosseyed. On the other side-there's plenty of light left, come on-those are the Five Philips of Spain. Murderous, hah? The way I understand it the old man imported these walls direct from somebody's Hungarian castle. Filthy-minded old man. These are only the heads-figure for yourself what they would've done with the torsos. Well, come on, 111 show you a piece of filth!"

Now a room larger than the last; a bereft drawing-room plainly; a hall. Sky, zodiac, cherubim and seraphim; trumpets, scrolls, lofty harps encrusting the vault But unlike the room of the kings, this one is furnished. A piano and a sofa. The sofa is identical with the kitchen sofa, only the dancers here wear red boots, red bodices, red waving ribbons. A woolen blanket is folded on the arm. "You sleep here. Quite a little instrument, hah? Ever see anything like it for filth? Works all the same. B flat below middle C nice and dead, but you'd expect that, leather gave out Miracle all the rest are O.K. Sounds like a trapdoor slamming half a mile off." He struck a key: out flew a quick tiny metallic cry. The eighteenth century flocked across the piano's grand flanks-courtiers and courtesans, princes and dogs, orchards and mazy streams, all in gilt and pastel, the buckles gold foil, the wigs all silver, the rouge on every cheek a delicacy of brushwork; and lions on the legs, and bronze claw feet, and green fields and mounted hunters dreaming straight across the music-rack. "Filth!" he said. "More of the same upstairs; sailor's filth."

I was moved to speak: "You're not fair," I said faintly.

"No? You want to prove it with the upstairs? Elevator cage is nice and dead. Full of stuffed birds anyhow. Two flights up though I can show you a dozen dressing-tables that this d.a.m.n piano doesn't nearly come up to for filth. Genuine filth. A tourist, I knew it!"

"You call everything filth," I said.

"Why not? This place look better than filth to you?"

"I don't judge places."

"That's nice. Tourist's view-pure. All the picture postcards have the same value. You're a pure one! What do you judge, people?" he demanded.

"History," I said, and thought of Enoch. "Records."

"They tell you to come with that? Look, don't try on masks with me, I see right through them. I might surprise you, I might not be what the high and mighty Mrs. Vand says I am. The high and mighty Mrs. Vand could be one high and mighty fake."

The frightening familiarity of these words shocked me into memory; he had said the same long ago, while I crouched listening on the ledge of Europe. He had come for terms and said these words; it was history I was hearing, and a record emended to eliminate the laugh. He was not laughing now. He stabbed the piano with a finger: down went a black bar, but it was silent. "Don't say high and mighty," I begged.

"Don't say filth, don't say high and mighty! Who are you, girlie? Not a judge, only a general. Tell me," he said, "you don't think I've got my side of things too? That's ail you have to know about people, their side."

"I don't want to take sides-"

"That's right, the disinterested observer. Sit in the center. It so happens that most things can't be seen from the center. You have to go into the thick of one side or the other to get the truth. Nothing's really disinterested but logic, and what's logical isn't what's true, verstehst? There isn't any disinterred truth, there's only partisan truth, comprends? What do you know about your grandfather?" he said suddenly.

I looked with shame at the harps on the ceiling. "He tried to get my mother to live here after she was married. But she wouldn't, she didn't like it."

"So?-That's it?" He waited.

"Well, then he traveled around a lot. Toward the end he got interested in science-sea things. I don't know much else," I faltered: "he died before I was born."

"After you were born."

"No, before-"

"All right, see what I mean? There you are in the center, keeping your mitts nice and clean behind your back, and you don't know a d.a.m.n thing. After. When I tell you after better take it as gospel."

"But it isn't true, my mother had only just married William-"

"Your grandfather was a Swedish longsh.o.r.eman and he died frozen drunk in the streets of Seattle in 1946. Now tell me different."

I said hesitantly, "Your father, you mean? That's who you mean?"

"Don't try to step back from it that way. Blood is blood. Gustavus Tilbeck. He couldn't read a word of any language on this earth, but he was named after a king and me he named after a king and a czar, so you can see he had the imagination of an aristocrat. Your mother never told you that?"

"No."

"All those lawyers and accountants she has, they never mentioned it?"

"No," I said.

"People like that avoid what's interesting, that's why. Me it strikes as something interesting that the high and mighty Mrs. Vand's girlie is all mixed up with a Swede with the proclivity. I've got the proclivity myself, but I stick to wine. Kings I like too, you've noticed it. Did you know about that, that I was named for a king and a czar?"

"No," I said again.

"Because actually I was named for my father and for a dog he was very fond of in his boyhood. Dog's name was Nick. A wolfhound. My father spent his boyhood on a fine wholesome prosperous farm just outside of Upsala. He was a graduate of the University of Upsala, as a matter of fact."

"But you said he couldn't read-"

But now he gave a long laugh I queerly recognized. "n.o.body who graduates from the University of Upsala can read. They don't teach reading there, they teach theology. Old Gus couldn't swallow the Trinity, so he settled down on the docks instead. The reason he picked the Seattle docks is because in Sweden they advertise American opportunity. Well, it's a success story. It hasn't embarra.s.sed you?"

I said: "You're not the way I expected."

"Better, I hope. This is a first-cla.s.s shirt I'm wearing. Observe the fine st.i.tching. Observe my excellent shoes. Extraordinary knitted socks. Observe the structure of my knees below my fashionable tennis-shorts. Superlatively hinged knees. The entire costume courtesy of the high and mighty Mrs. Vand, clothier by appointment to my humble origins. Except for the knees, which are also gratis, but from another source. G.o.d. Now you have it all."

I persisted, "I thought you were older. Enoch's age."

"No, no, I've got a few years on the Amba.s.sador."

"But you must have been very young-"

"You mean you want gossip. Right. I was an absolute boy when I slept with your mother. Does that satisfy? I wasn't of age, I had to write home for permission. My father stirred in the gutter and said Go ahead, my child, which made my mother and sisters weep for a month. Your grandmother and your aunts. All members of the Lutheran Ladies' Aid Society, though one of them gave up tea and converted to Mormonism. My mother always read to my father out of the Sunday supplements and he was shocked at the modern neuroses he learned about that way. That's why he told me to go ahead and pursue the rich. The illiterate are very clean-minded. You're sure I'm not embarra.s.sing you?"

"I think you are," I said.

"Tourists are easily embarra.s.sed, especially by just the thing they've come to see. The scenery isn't antiseptic enough for you, that's the trouble? You don't like the smell of the ruined abbey? You want the reconstructed cinderblock replica with indoor plumbing for visitors?"

"Why do you keep calling me tourist?" I asked.

"You hate a place where you have to do your duty behind a tree? Is that what's embarra.s.sing?"

"No," I said. "It's not knowing what's real and what isn't."

"A philosopher-tourist!" he cried. "You're like your mother in that They're the worst."

"Some of what you say isn't real-"

"-and some is. Brilliant beginning. I put a cinderblock replica and a ruined abbey in everything I say. The ruined abbey is real."

"No it isn't, not if it's kept that way just for show, like a museum-"

"A museum? You've heard of that? They were going to turn this place into a museum, you've heard of that?"

"Yes," I said.

"And a man killed himself here."

"I know."

"Briefed. Perfect! Tourist-with-guidebook, knows all princ.i.p.al points of interest beforehand, knows when guide skimps on tour, behaves honorably all the same, tips guide even though he cheats, but vows privately to boycott Rome next time round. I know the type! You think Rome misses you, girlie? All right. On with the tour. What other sights did they tell you to look for especially, hah, tourist?"

"I'm not a tourist," I said.

"The h.e.l.l you're not. Allegra sent you to look around. The high and mighty Mrs. Vand, an old hand at tourism. Hasn't got the nerve to come and see for herself. Can't look me in the eye. Wants a report. Tell her"-again he laughed his long laugh, a chain of laughs-"tell her I'm finally letting the gra.s.s grow under my feet!"

"She didn't send me for that."

"No? Not to get a look at Nick? See if he's comfortable and all? Check on his health?"

"No."

"She feels guilty about me, y'see. She owes me a lot"

"She's paid you a lot."

"Aha. Just what I said. I knew there was something else you might mention. A quotation from the fine print-a renowned spire, so to speak, that they've made famous for you back home by keeping a picture of it framed on the wall. Or a picture of the ravens that come to nest in the vine-covered nave of the ruined abbey. So to speak. You've heard of those? You've heard of everything then. You've got a very good guidebook, pictures aside. Who wrote it? The Amba.s.sador himself?-No, no, your mother's a woman of honor, she pays her debts, if she's paid me a lot it's because she's owed me a lot. Right from the start. In her whole life she's done only one thing on her own, and she didn't do that on her own. 'Hollow Marianna: The Girls' Own Das Kapital.' Or: "The Double-X: Se- and Mar-.' You think that treatise would've gotten done without me? She'd've had the discipline for that sort of thing? I kept her at it, I made her do it. It's a tutorial fee she's paid me. That's how she ought to look at it It's how I look at it. -Getting dark. Around here you need a flashlight. You bring a flashlight?"

I shook my head.

"The Purses know where I keep 'em. Ask the Purses. Meanwhile I'll descend for the bottle. You like port? No, out the other way. Front door, excellent sample of Mixed Renaissance filth. Take you right out to the Purses at prayer. You might be on time to see them pa.s.s the plate. Mrs. Purse has soap if you want it-they brought their own-she probably made it out of tallow in a vat. Slaughtered an ox herself to get at the fat. Undoubtedly forged the steel for the knife. Fine woman. If you have to do your duty, pick a tree."

He vanished behind a brown door, and I heard his languid pressure on the stair. I went the way he had pointed, and discovered the Purses ranked palely around the table under a sunset of rose and purple smears, clouds like colored ships, each child with a king's snout in its back. The spit was restored to the flame, and a second fowl dripped its fragrant shine from it like a candle dripping wax. And there was Purse carving away at the bird on the board, delicately-a man who knew his bones and meant to keep them in order. The children sent up a babble. Mrs. Purse looked all around her and smiled and smiled; then she stared at her fork as at a captive. "Oh why won't you all be quiet," she murmured to the air-"it's bad manners to jangle Purses in public," "public" being her salute to me as I came up; one child only responded with a quick shrill howl.

It was an idyll.

8.

The child who laughed was Ralph Waldo Emerson Purse, the humorist; he laughed again when Mrs. Purse, handing round paper platefuls of chicken parts, moved her short teeth and low gums into shadow and observed (this too was for my entertainment)-"We like to keep our Purses well filled, you see." "A thought we've already digested," responded the humorist. "Oh shut up," said Harriet Beecher crossly. "I want a drumstick," said Throw. But Purse said: "You know Dee always has the one, you shouldn't be always claiming the other. That's greed." "It's greed in Dee. He gets one all the time." "Dee is only two, remember that." "Is that why he eats for two?" said Sonny. "It's my turn for the drumstick," Foxy said. "It is not." said Al; "I haven't had one ever." "Liar!" said Throw. "Lyre has nothing to do with it," Sonny said complacently-"all he cares about is lute. He wants to grab the 1-o-o-t." "If you're going to be silly and wrangle-" Purse began. "They don't wrangle, they jangle," said his wife. "-n.o.body at all will get it," he ended severely, and took a greasy bite of it down to the bone. "There," said Mrs. Purse, banging her fork: "That's what happens to a bone of contention. n.o.body at all gets it," and looked at her husband as if she were looking at n.o.body at all.

The wine having arrived-two bottles sprouting like antennae from under Tilbeck's arms-it was set to swim in the spring.

"You'll have the water in its cups," Mrs. Purse chided brightly.

"Can't I have you the same?" asked her host.

"Ah, but we don't, you know."

"We don't," said Purse with emphasis. "It loosens the will."

"Chacun a son gout. Better the will than the bowels."