Ellis Island & Other Stories (20 page)

The table had been cleared of dishes, and I was the only one sitting there. “He’ll be back,” I answered, regretting that I was drunk, for although I did not know for sure (never having had anything stronger than that grape juice they serve on the Sabbath), I imagined that in such a condition it would be very difficult to run.

I made them wait as long as possible, during which time I heard the headwaiter say, “It’s James Casey, couldn’t you see, doing the Irish trick on another Jew.” Then I was taken up as if on a wave, and tossed out the door. They had taken my coat, my suitcase, and my money, but I still had my pen, my glasses, my razor, and a small briefcase full of books. And because I was so stuffed and drunk, the cold was not too hard to bear.

I began walking into the north wind, thinking to get to the other side of it, where I thought it might be warm. It was as cold as it had been in Europe—perhaps colder. Still, I was unperturbed. I remembered the tale of Rabbi Legatine, who was thrown from a train window in a blizzard onto the uninhabited steppes. All he had was his book of prayer, some roasted chicken, and a double-weight fur hat. But he survived, because—well, that is another story.

The difficulty of going about in shirtsleeves on a January night in Manhattan is hard to describe. If I had not moved fast, I am sure that I would have frozen to death. No one took notice, for they must have assumed that I was dashing from my rooms or my office to fetch a pitcher of beer or a pot of coffee. I dashed and dashed and dashed, until I discovered that I was running the length of a city as long and slim as a serpent. My efforts in the cold had restored some of my faculties, but I was still stupendously drunk, and my course was somewhat wavering. No place would take me in, not even the Harvard Club. The same man in an apron seemed to be in front of every restaurant door, and he made the same negative sign every time he saw me. I lasted about three minutes in the bars, where, it eventually became clear, one had either to buy something or be Irish.

I wondered why it was that in a vast sea of buildings and warmly heated rooms I could find no shelter. As I loped along, I thought of all the empty chairs in large salons, of the empty marble benches by heated pools, of the warm deserted galleries in lovely museums, and of the millions and millions of unoccupied rooms that lay beyond glass as dark and slick as the glistening back of a black ocean fish. If I would not quickly find shelter, I would die. I knew that I could always commit a crime, for which I would be taken indoors almost immediately and given room and board for a time, but that was no way to inaugurate life in a new country.

I gathered my courage about me, and started to pound on a huge oaken door. I didn’t know where I was, but only that it was the biggest, warmest-looking door I had ever seen. I thought to beg of whoever opened it that I might work in the kitchen and sleep in the storeroom. I decided to bribe him with my fountain pen—a beautiful Swiss instrument of ebony, with gold fittings—so I took it from my case and was holding it in my mouth as I fumbled with the books that were trying to fall to the ground. There I was, pen in mouth, in my shirt, my hands full of books, when a servant appeared, half in livery and half in his underwear.

I couldn’t say anything, because the pen was in my mouth. He jumped forward to help me with my spilling case, and, having rescued my books, he said, “Go right in. They’ve been at it for about an hour and a half, but it’s going to be a long night.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“The top floor. They’re all here tonight.”

“Oh.”

“And you’ll be glad to know that Martha is with them.”

“Oh yes,” I said. “What would it be without Martha? She makes things so—how can I say it—so excellent.”

“Yes. Excellent is an excellent word, sir.”

“Excellent!”

“Very excellent, sir.”

I went up the stairs, winding around a large dimly lit well that rose into the darkness for seven or eight stories. As I made my way, I could see stars shining through a skylight. On each level, different musical compositions were being played in unseen rooms. I didn’t know if this were a music school, a boardinghouse for string musicians, or a dream, but I ascended in the warmth until, on the top floor, I saw a row of strong lights. There was no sense in hiding on the staircase, so I entered the night class.

In a room that echoed from the upwelling chamber music, about forty men formed a crescent before a raised platform upon which stood a woman who, in the light that glared upon her, seemed to have the proportions of a classical statue. She clasped a yellow shawl about her in Roman fashion. Her shoulders and arms were exposed in a blaze of waxy pink and beige and white. I sat down at an easel, just like everyone else, and rolled up my sleeves the way they had done.

It was easy to understand why no one had noticed me. Their model was hypnotically beautiful, and their teacher, a tall wiry man with a mustache and slanted, almost Oriental eyes, was pacing back and forth in complete control. He was the master, and he knew it. They worked intently, for they dared not shatter the magic of his attention and enthusiasm.

In front of me was a big sketch pad on an easel, a box of charcoals, and a three-quarter view of a goddesslike woman bathed in electric light. This was good for at least a couple of hours, and I decided to try my hand at a sketch. Confident of my invisibility, I calmly opened the box of charcoals and took one out. The instructor, who had had his back to me, wheeled around and said, “We’re just about finished with the shawl. Why don’t you wait.” I put down the smooth stick of charcoal. I was not invisible. In a little while, he said, “All right, Martha, let’s try the standing pose with one arm out a bit as if in motion.”

“With the shawl?” she asked, expressing what appeared to be apprehension.

“No.”

She undid the clasp and the shawl fell about her feet. I had never seen such a ferociously nude woman. I was so astounded, and so drunk, that I gasped and said, “Oh!” I wondered how she felt, standing in full light, unhindered and unrestrained, in front of nearly half a hundred men, as if she had someone with whom to share her apparent mortification. But, apart from that, how wonderfully and extraordinarily beautiful she was, how lovely, how exquisite—how magnetic! Paying no attention to the stares of the other members of the class, I nearly reeled in astonishment. The beauty of a woman’s face is magnified and empowered by the free-flowing shape and color of her body in a way that clothing cannot match. I had never known this for sure, since all the nude women that I had seen had been at close quarters and always in the dark. Now I knew. I thought of falling in love with her, but dared not take such a risk. I assumed, as well, that she was betrothed to the teacher, for he was the pacing tiger—the leader of the band. Nor was he angry. He walked over, put his hand on my shoulder, and looked in my eyes—just as if he were a doctor. The rest of the class began to laugh, but he shot them a glance which, had it been prolonged, might have turned them into brass monkeys.

Then he asked quietly, “Have you never seen a woman without clothes?”

“No sir,” I answered. “Not in this fashion.”

He knew from my accent that I was an immigrant. “When did you come to America?” he asked, cocking his head slightly.

“This evening,” I replied.

“And you came to my class? Why did you—oh, I see. It’s cold out, isn’t it.”

“Very cold.”

“Well,” he said, “America to you now is a big nude woman, and that’s just fine. But! You must understand that we approach the subject here as a thing of beauty.”

“What else?” I interrupted.

He nodded his head. “Good. Tell me, why do you think we draw from the nude?”

I shrugged in ignorance and looked away.

“I’ll tell
you
then. It’s very important. And then you can start drawing, and we’ll see what you can do. After class, you can sleep in the studio if you’ll help to sweep up in the morning. But you’ll have to find somewhere else to go as quickly as you can.” He paused.

“We draw from the nude,” he said, “because the world is full of passionate and confusing colors, all of which can lead us astray. Its forms are so various, its combinations so active, that we often find ourselves in a dissociated dream. We are like that, you see—weak and vulnerable. However,” and here he smiled, “there is one thing that we can know—better than landscape, better than the planets, better than mountains or the sea. That is the human form. If you can render it skillfully, you can render anything. Look at her,” he said. “She’s so beautiful. Have you studied anatomy?”

“No.”

“Then take note.” And he went on, filling me full of ambition and glory, talking about masses of light and shade, about determining the sway of the body (there was a plumb line, he said, that fell through Martha’s ear, her right breast, her hip bone, and her heel), the leading measurements, proportions, the effect of gravity upon the flesh, the subtleties of expression, the motionlessness which held a world of powerful implicit movement, and, above all, the beauty, the holiness, and the Godliness of it.

When he finished, he looked at me with an understanding that I had seen before only in the eyes of the deeply religious, the suffering insane, or children—an openness through which everything can flow. I shuddered with inspiration, and took up my tools. For the next two hours, I exhibited the passion of a great symphony conductor. Whereas the other students worked quietly, touching their own faces now and then as they contemplated what they had done, I knitted my brows, clenched my fists, hummed, groaned, and moved my arms in sweeps of ecstasy. I had never drawn before; I had never contemplated so brazen, dignified, and statuesque a nude; and I had never been marinated in a quart and a half of whiskey. The lights shone in gold from under conical tin shades; the wind outside howled as it had done on the sea and on the Isle of Tears; and I drew with the fiercest, tenderest, most genuine emotion. After two hours, when half the students had finished and stood talking by a thundering wood stove, I sank back and spread my tired arms.

How can I explain what I had drawn? It looked like an angry dragonfly with huge breasts. Representations of stars, moons, comets, and great moments of history littered the background. For some reason, the dragonfly was fitted out with aviator goggles and a broadsword. As I stared at this peculiarity, the immense pride and satisfaction I had accumulated while creating it began to drain from me as if I were a tub and someone had pulled my plug. The instructor glided over. I could see that he wanted badly to discover a prodigy. He was anticipating history, and although he was not Jewish (I think), he looked like a rabbi on Rosh Hashanah.

As he rounded my easel, I smiled weakly with one side of my mouth. He stopped short as if petrified. The petrification became disbelief, and then (it seemed) almost fear. He turned to me and asked, “What did you say your name was again?”

I was ashamed, and did not want to give my real name, so I made one up. “Hershey Moshelies,” I said, trying to be American, and yet not too American.

He took me by the shoulder (when I was young, everyone always took me by the shoulder—as if it were a banister or a bath rail): “Look, Hershey. You know, you really can’t draw.” My head sank in despair. “I mean you
really
can’t draw.” He looked at my work again, and shook his head in dismay. “Hershey, a
cat
can draw better than that.”

I walked down the long gallery and looked at the sketches that the others had drawn. I nearly cried, for they had done Martha so much more justice than I had. What was I doing? I asked myself. Where was I, where had I been, when they were intently rendering? I resolved that in whatever I might come to do I would mind the real beauty of things and pay less attention to my own dreams—which is not to say that I intended to abandon them but, rather, to use them in a more disciplined fashion.

I returned to the easel, rolled up my picture, and brought it to the fire. As it burned—sword, stars, comets, and all—I felt as if I had been in America not for a few hours, but for years. In what other country do lessons and beauties arise, strike, and disappear so fast?

While I stayed in the darkness, generating resolutions faster than the fire sparked, the art students clustered about the stove and talked in fast, idiomatic English. As I watched them, I saw that they themselves were a painting, and I guessed that, in seeing it, I was already on my way, although I did not know where. Martha had put on her shawl and was speaking to them. She seemed to know them quite well. How jealous I was; that is, until they left, a few at a time, and only Martha, the instructor, and I remained in the studio.

Martha sat on the edge of a cot at the side of the room, watching the instructor go to each electric lamp and turn it off. Finally, there was only the rolling red-and-yellow stove-light, and starlight coming in through the ice-covered windows. The instructor moved in shadow as he put on coat and scarf, but Martha remained on the edge of the bed, the shawl having slipped to her lap.

“Good night, Martha,” he said, and then vanished into the darkness.

I was hidden deep in the shadows, and I thought that he had forgotten about me. As he opened the door to the hall, a dim square of yellowish light appeared, and then disappeared.

Martha shielded her eyes as if the stove were the sun, and said, “Where are you?”

I moved into the light. The moon had cleared a cliff of dark buildings, and now it silvered all the windows in a blinding glare. I realized that I was shaking. The loft was dancing in firelight, flickering in black, orange, and white. She was only five feet away from me, sitting straight, as white and nude as alabaster.

“Is your name really Hershey Moshelies?” she asked.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because my name isn’t really Martha.”

Then she held out her hand, and took me into her bed.

In the night class, and afterward as the loft had danced before my eyes in stove-light, I had forgotten the cold on the street. Though in Martha’s warm bed I had no need to think of the frigid January lying in wait outside the ice-covered windows, perhaps it was in the back of my mind.