Bread Upon the Waters (8 page)

“Ah, well.” Hazen spoke in his normal tone. “We’ll do what little we can. If you think it would be of use to talk to the boy, do so. And let me know what he says.”

“I’ll give it a try.”

Almost as though he knew what Strand was thinking as they walked side by side, Hazen said, “Have you ever thought of getting out of the public school system? It must be dispiriting, to say the least—year after year. Perhaps teaching somewhere out of the city, in a small private school where the rewards, anyway intellectually, would be more commensurate with the effort you put in?”

“My wife talks about it from time to time,” Strand said. “I’ve thought about it, yes. But I was born in New York. I like the city. I’m a little old to tear up roots.”

“What degrees do you hold?”

“M.A.,” Strand said. “I took it at night in New York University, while I was teaching during the day.”

“Any writing in the field?”

“Not really,” Strand said. “I’m more of a reader than a writer.”

“You know,” Hazen said, “if I were a trained historian some of the things you were talking about last night—the theory of randomness, especially—would tempt me to examine various periods in that perspective. It could lead to some amusing speculation on how differently great events could have turned out with just the smallest alteration of the elements involved…”

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,” Strand said, “for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the kingdom was lost. That sort of thing?”

“More or less. Although perhaps not quite so primitively.”

“I’ll suggest it to Romero,” Strand said lightly, “and give you the credit for the inspiration.”

“No, seriously,” Hazen said, “I think the reconsideration of American history, especially along those lines, would make a good deal of sense. I’m not an expert, of course, but it seems to me that America—the United States—blundered into greatness; there was nothing foreordained about it. And we’re blundering into decline, back toward Europe, terrorism, factionalism, cynicism in private and public life, and I hope there’s nothing foreordained about
that,
either.”

“You’re a pessimistic man, aren’t you, Mr. Hazen?”

“Perhaps less so than I sound. I’ve been disappointed. Some hopes have been dashed. Institutions I have worked for have not lived up to expectations. People I thought I loved have not turned out as they might have. Characters have been stunted, careers unrealized. But no, I am not pessimistic to the point of surrender. I believe in struggle, intelligence, essential moral values. A night like last night—your daughter’s instant coming to the aid of a stranger in trouble at considerable peril to herself, your family’s unhesitating solicitude, the easy affection I felt flowing from one to the other around the table, the sense of unity without constraint, the absence of any signs of that mortal disease, loneliness—I don’t want to make too much of it, but a night like that in this day and age is a strong remedy for pessimism.”

“I’m afraid you’re laying a very heavy burden of meaning on a simple family dinner,” Strand said, uneasy with all that praise. “You’re going to make me self-conscious each time I take out my key to unlock my front door.”

“I’m talking too much,” Hazen said. “A lawyer’s vice. Never leave well enough alone.” He laughed. “The flowers and the racquet should have been enough. I see I’ve made you uncomfortable. Forgive me. I’m not used to modest men. Oh, that reminds me.” He reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and brought out a small envelope. “I have a pair of tickets for the Philharmonic tonight. They’re doing a concert version of Berlioz’s
Damnation of Faust.
Would you and your wife like to go?”

“There’s no need…” Strand protested.

“I can walk along the street looking as I do,” Hazen said, “but can you imagine the stir at the Philharmonic if I showed up like this? Please take them if you can use them.” He pushed the envelope toward Strand. “They’ll just go to waste, otherwise.”

“But you were taking somebody,” Strand said. “You have two tickets.”

“My guest for the evening decided she had other plans,” Hazen said. “You and your wife do like the Philharmonic, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“Then take these tickets, man,” Hazen said decisively. “You’re not the sort of person who hates Berlioz, are you?”

“Not at all.”

“Some other evening, when I’m more presentable, we can all go together.”

“Thank you,” Strand said, putting the tickets in his pocket. “Leslie will be overjoyed.”

“I consider myself more than compensated,” Hazen said.

They were in front of Lincoln Center now. Hazen squinted at it. “Somehow,” he said wearily, “we have lost the knack for harmonious public building. Still, it’s a useful place.” He looked at his watch. “Well, I must be getting back to the office.”

“You work on Saturday afternoon?”

“It’s my favorite time of the week. The office is empty and quiet, the telephone doesn’t ring, there’s a neat pile of papers waiting for me on my desk, I buy a sandwich and a bottle of beer and take my coat off and loosen my collar and I feel like a boy studying for an exam he knows he’s going to pass. What do
you
do on Saturday afternoons?”

“Well,” Strand said, “in the springtime, like now, I’m afraid I indulge in my secret vice. I watch ball games on the little portable TV set in the bedroom, while Leslie gives her lessons in the living room.” The TV set had been a present from Eleanor, although Strand didn’t feel he had to tell Hazen that. “I love to watch the Yankees play. I was a dud at sports when I was young and I suppose that when I see Reggie Jackson striding to the plate, all power and purpose, I somehow feel that I know what it’s like to be dangerous and gifted and knowing that millions of people are cheering you or hating you.” He laughed. “Leslie rations me. Only two games a week.”

Strand felt that this man, whose idea of pleasure was to pore over a pile of legal papers in a deserted office, was looking at him curiously, as though he had come upon a species that was new and unfamiliar to him.

“Do you get up to the Stadium often?”

“Rarely.”

“I have a standing invitation to use the owner’s box there. Maybe on a nice Saturday afternoon I’ll forget my office and we could sneak up and watch a game. Would you like that?”

“I certainly would.”

“Maybe when Boston comes to town. I’ll look at the schedule. How about the winter?”

“What?”

“I mean what do you do on Saturdays in the winter?”

“Well,” Strand said, “when they’re showing an old movie I like at the Modern Museum, I try to get in.”

Hazen smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand. “That’s it. The Modern Museum. That’s where I’ve seen you. The Buster Keaton picture.”

“You like Buster Keaton?” Strand asked, a little incredulously.

“I mark his pictures on the schedule they send me and if it’s at all possible I sneak off and see it.” Hazen grinned, which made the various colors of his battered face take on new patterns. “Anybody who doesn’t appreciate Buster Keaton,” he said with mock gravity, “should be denied the vote. However,” he added, “I try to see all the Garbo pictures. She reminds me of how the times have deteriorated. We used to have a goddess as our ideal and now what have we got? Carhops. Doris Day, that Fawcett woman.” He looked at his watch again. “I like to keep to my schedule. I arrive every Saturday at the office at one o’clock sharp. If I’m two minutes late, the watchman downstairs who checks me in will call the police. We’ll talk about the beauties of the past some other time. I hope. And if you want to see a Yankee game, let me know.”

They shook hands.

“I’ve enjoyed our walk,” Hazen said. “Perhaps, if we’re both in town next Saturday morning, we can do it again.”

“I’ll be in town,” Strand said.

“I’ll call you. Enjoy Berlioz.”

Strand watched as Hazen got spryly into a cab, his big form filling the doorway.

Buster Keaton, for God’s sake. As the cab sped away Strand took the envelope out of his pocket and looked at the tickets. They were for fifth row orchestra. The glorious uses of money, he thought. He put the tickets back into his pocket with a tingle of pleasure and started toward home.

B
ERLIOZ. A ROARING FLOOD
of dark sound. Unfairly treated by posterity.

A cool, woman’s hand on his forehead. “I need you,” someone had said. He tried to open his eyes to see whose hand it was on his forehead, but the effort was too great. Whoever
…

“I don’t get it,” the boy was saying in Strand’s little office. Strand had told Romero that he would like to see him for a moment after classes were over and had been a little surprised when the boy actually appeared.

“I explained to you,” Strand said, “that I mentioned you to a…a friend of mine, a new friend, who happens to be an influential man, and he said that if you were interested in continuing your education he would try to get you a scholarship…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Romero said impatiently. “I heard all that. I mean, man, why’s he picking on me?”

“I said you were promising,” Strand said.

“I’m not making any promises,” Romero said sullenly.

“I wasn’t using the word in that sense,” said Strand. He found it difficult, after the long day, to keep his patience with the short, ragged boy, his face hard and suspicious under his tangled hair. Dressed in shapeless blue jeans, dirty sneakers, and a faded football jersey that was much too large for him and had probably been stolen from some locker room seasons ago, Romero lounged carelessly against the desk, impudently fingering an unlit cigarette. The number on the jersey was 17. The boy wore it to school every day, and sometimes in Strand’s dreams the number 17 crossed against a confused cloudy background. “What I meant was that of all the students in my classes who might not otherwise go on to college, on their own, that is, you showed the most original intelligence.”

“You’re kidding, ain’t you, Professor?” Romero said, smirking. “What’d you really say—that you got a kid in your class who proves that Puerto Ricans’re all some kind of nuts? What’s the game?”

“It isn’t any game,” Strand said shortly, regretting that he had ever said anything to Hazen about the boy. “And leave the Puerto Ricans out of it, please. My friend is interested in education, he has useful connections, he feels that out-of-the-ordinary students should be given a chance…”

“I still don’t get it, Professor,” Romero said stubbornly.

“Don’t call me Professor. I’m not a professor.”

“Okay—Mr. Strand—I mean, like what’s in it for him? Some guy I don’t even know.”

“There’s nothing in it for him,” Strand said. “Except perhaps some personal satisfaction if you do well and embark on a successful career later on.”

“What do I have to do—sign a contract or something giving him half of what I make for ten years?” Romero took a battered Zippo lighter out of his pocket, then thought better of it and put it back. Strand shook his head sorrowfully. The boy obviously did not confine his reading to books on history and science. The gossip columns about Hollywood and show business and agents clearly had not been neglected in his choice of reading matter. “Romero,” he said, “did you ever hear of charity?”

“Charity.” The boy laughed, meanly. “I sure have heard of charity. My old lady’s on welfare.”

“This has nothing to do with welfare. I’m not going to sit here and argue with you all day. If you want to devote a year or two of your life to really studying hard—there’s a good possibility you can get a scholarship for a college. I think you can make it, if that means anything to you. I suggest you go home and talk it over with your mother and father.”

“My father.” The boy laughed again, his teeth gleaming white in the dark, smudged face. “That man’s long gone. I ain’t seen him since I was nine years old.”

“Your mother, then.”

“She won’t believe me. She’ll beat the shit out of me for making up stories.”

“Then consult with yourself, Romero,” Strand said angrily. He stood up. “If you decide you want to make something of yourself, come and tell me. If you want to be a bum all your life, forget it.” He collected some papers and stuffed them into his briefcase. “I’ve got a lot of work to do at home. I have to leave. I’m sure you have many important things to do yourself this afternoon,” he said sardonically, “and I won’t keep you any longer.”

Romero looked at him, smiling, as though making the teacher angry gave him some points in a secret competition with his classmates.

“Get out of here, get out of here,” Strand said and then was ashamed because he had spoken so loudly.

“Whatever you say, Professor,” Romero said and went to the door. He stopped there and turned. “I can take care of myself, understand?” he said harshly. “Nobody has to lose any sleep about Jesus Romero.”

Strand went over to the door and closed it, hard. Then he went to his desk and sat down and put his head in his hands.

As he loped down the steps of the school building Strand overtook Judith Quinlan, of the English department. He had overheard some of the students calling her Miss Quinine, although as far as he knew not to her face.

“Good afternoon, Judith,” Strand said, slowing down. She was a small woman and when they walked to the bus together, as they did frequently, there was no way for her to keep up with his usual pace unless she trotted along beside him. She had a delicate but nicely rounded body and a sad little indoor face, and she used no makeup. Her favorite color, at least for school, was a dun brown. Her reputation as a teacher was good and he liked her and they occasionally lunched or had a cup of coffee together. He never could make up his mind how old she was—somewhere between thirty and forty, he thought.

“Oh, Allen,” she said as they reached the sidewalk and she automatically began to walk faster, “how nice to see you.” She glanced sidewise at him. “You look as though they’ve been grinding you today.”

“I didn’t know it showed. It was only the usual.” Strand slowed down even more. “Thirty lashes.”

She laughed. She had a nice laugh, low and unforced. She wasn’t really pretty, but she had pale gray direct eyes that squinted a little as though in an effort to find out exactly what he was saying to her. “I know what you mean. I was going to stop for a coffee. Would you like to join me?”