Herzog (16 page)

    He smiled a little as he remembered his mother boasting to Aunt Zipporah about him. "What a little tongue it has. Moshele could talk to the President." But at that time the President was Harding. Or was it Coolidge? Meantime the conversation was going on.

    Sissler was trying to make Moses feel at home-I must seem obviously shook up-and Libbie looked concerned.

    "Ah, don't worry about me," said Moses.

    "I'm just a little excited by things." He laughed.

    Libbie and Sissler exchanged a look, but grew easier. "This is a fine house you have. Is it rented?"

    "I own it," said Sissler.

    "Is that so. Wonderful place. Summer only, isn't it? You could winterize it easily."

    "It would cost fifteen grand, or more," said Sissler.

    "That much? I suppose labor and materials are higher on this island."

    "I could do the work myself, sure," said Sissler.

    "But we come here to rest. I understand you're a property owner, too."

    "Ludeyville, Mass.," said Herzog.

    "Where is that?"

    "Berkshires. Near the Connecticut corner of the state."

    "Must be a beautiful spot of country."

    "Oh, it's beautiful all right. Too remote, though. Far from everything."

    "What about another drink?"

    Perhaps Sissler thought the liquor would calm him.

    "Moses probably wants to clean up after his trip," said Libbie.

    "I'll show him his room."

    Sissler carried Herzog's valise up.

    "This is a fine old staircase," said Moses.

    "Couldn't duplicate it today for thousands. They put a lot of work into it, for a summer house."

    "Sixty years ago they still had craftsmen," said Sissler. "Take a look at the doors-bird's-eye maple.

    Here's where you are. I think you got everything here-towels, soap. Some neighbors are coming this evening. One single lady. A singer. Miss Elisa Thurnwald. Divorced."

    The room was wide and comfortable, and had a view of the bay. The bluish beacons of the two points, East and West Chop, were lighted.

    "This is a fine spot," said Herzog.

    "Unpack. Make yourself at home. Don't be in any hurry to go. I know you were a good friend to Libbie when she was up against it. She told me how you protected her from that blow too, Erikson. He even tried to stab the poor kid. She didn't have anybody but you to turn to."

    "As a matter of fact, Erikson had nobody else to turn to, either."

    "What's the diff?" Sissler said, with his rugged face a little averted but only so that his small shrewd eyes might see Herzog from the angle required for the fullest consideration. "You stood up for her.

    To me that's everything. Not just because I love the kid, either, but because there's so many creeps in circulation. You got trouble, I can see that. Jumping out of your skin.

    You got a soul-haven't you, Moses." He shook his head, smoking his cigarette with two stained fingers pressed to his mouth, his voice rumbling. "Can't dump the sonofabitch, can we? Terrible handicap, a soul."

    Moses answered in a low voice. "I'm not even sure I've got the thing still."

    "I would say yes. Well..." He turned his wrist to catch the last of the light on his gold watch. "You got time to rest up a little."

    He left, and Moses lay on the bed a while-a good mattress, a clean comforter. He lay for a quarter of an hour without thinking, lips parted, legs and arms extended, breathing quietly as he gazed at the figures of the wallpaper until they were hidden in darkness. When he stood up it was not to wash and dress but to write a farewell note on the maple desk.

    There was stationery in the drawer.

    Have to go back. Not able to stand kindness at this time.

    Feeling, heart, everything in strange condition.

    Unfinished business. Bless you both. And much happiness. Toward end of summer, perhaps, if you will give me a rain check. Gratefully, Moses.

    He stole from the house. The Sisslers were in the kitchen. Sissler was making a clatter with the ice trays. Moses rapidly descended and was out of the screen door with frantic swiftness, softly. He passed through the bushes into the neighboring lot. Up the path, and back to the ferry slip. He took a cab to the airport. All he could get at this hour was a Boston flight. He took it and caught a plane for Idlewild at Boston airport.

    At eleven p. m. he was lying in his own bed, drinking warm milk and eating a peanut-butter sandwich. It had cost him a pretty penny, all of this travel.

    He kept Geraldine Portnoy's letter always on his bed table, and he picked it up now and reread it before he fell asleep. He tried to remember how he had felt when he had first read it, in Chicago, after some delay.

    Dear Mr. Herzog, I am Geraldine Portnoy, Lucas Asphalter's friend. You may remember....

    May remember? Moses had read faster (the script was feminine-progressive-school printing turned cursive and the i's dotted with curious little open circles), trying to swallow the whole letter at once, turning the pages to see whether the gist of the thing was underscored anywhere.

    Actually I took your course in Romantics as Social Philosophers. We differed about Rousseau and Karl Marx. I have come around to your view, that Marx expressed metaphysical hopes for the future of mankind. I took what he said about materialism far too literally.

    My view! It's common, and why does she want to make me dangle like this-why doesn't she get on with it? He had tried again to find the point, but all those circular open dots fell on his vision like snow and masked the message.

    You probably never noticed me, but I liked you, and as a friend of Lucas Asphalter - he just adores you, he says you are just a feast of the most human qualities -I have of course heard a lot about you, growing up in Lucas" old neighborhood, and how you played basketball in the Boys' Brotherhood of the Republic, in the good old Chicago days on Division Street. An uncle of mine by marriage was one of the coaches - Jules Hankin.

    I think I do recall Hankin. He wore a blue cardigan, and parted his hair in the middle.

    I don't want you to get me wrong. I don't want to meddle in your affairs. And I am not an enemy of Madeleine's. I sympathize with her, too. She is so vivacious, intelligent, and such a charmer, and has been so warm and frank with me. For quite a while, I admired her and as a younger woman was very pleased by her confidences.

    Herzog flushed. Her confidences would include his sexual disgrace.

    And as a former student, I was of course intrigued to hear of your private life, but was also surprised by her freedom and willingness to talk, and soon saw she wanted to win me over, for some reason. Lucas warned me to look out for something dicey, but then any intense feeling between members of the same sex is often, and unjustly, under suspicion. My scientific background has taught me to make more cautious generalizations, and resist this creeping psychoanalysis of ordinary conduct. But she did want to win me to her side, although far too subtle to pour it on, as they say. She told me that you had very fine human and intellectual qualities, though neurotic and with an intolerable temper which often frightened her. However, she added, you could be great, and after two bad, loveless marriages perhaps you would devote yourself to the work you were meant to do. Emotional relationships you were not really good at. It was soon obvious that she would never have given herself to a man who lacked distinction of intelligence or feeling. Madeleine said that for the first time in her life she knew clearly what she was doing. Until now it was all confusion and there were even gaps of time she couldn't account for. In marrying you, she was in this mix-up and might have remained so but for a certain break. It is extremely exciting to talk with her, she gives a sense of a significant encounter - with life - a beautiful, brilliant person with a fate of her own. Her experiences are rich, or pregnant....

    What is this? Herzog had thought. Is she going to tell me that Madeleine is going to have a child?

    Gersbach's child! No! How wonderful-what luck for me. If she has a kid out of wedlock, I can petition for Junie's custody. Eagerly, he had devoured the rest of the page, turned over. No, Madeleine was not pregnant. She'd be far too clever to let that happen. She owed her survival to intelligence. It was part of her sickness to be shrewd. She was not pregnant, then. I was not merely a graduate student who helped with the child, but a confidante. Your little girl is greatly attached to me, and I find her a most extraordinary child. Exceptional, really.

    I love Junie with more than the usual affection, oh far more, than one has for the children one meets in this way. I understand the Italians are supposed to be the most child-oriented culture in the West (judge by the figure of the Christ child in Italian painting), but obviously Americans have their own craze about child psychology. Everything is done for children, ostensibly.

    To be fair, I think Madeleine is not bad with little June, basically. She tends to be authoritarian. Mr. Gersbach, who has an ambiguous position in this household, is very amusing to the child, on the whole. She calls him Uncle Val, and I often see him giving her a piggyback, or tossing her in the air.

    Here Herzog had set his teeth, angry, scenting danger.

    But I have to report one disagreeable thing, and I talked this over with Lucas. This is that, coming to Harper Avenue the other night, I heard the child crying. She was inside Gersbach's car, and couldn't get out, and the poor little thing was shaking and weeping .1 thought she had shut herself in while playing, but it was after dark, and I didn't understand why she would be outside, alone, at bedtime.

    Herzog's heart had pounded with dangerous thick beats at these words. I had to calm her, and then 1 found out that her Mama and Uncle Val were having a quarrel inside, and Uncle Val had taken her by the hand and led her out to the car, and told her to play a while. He shut her up and went back in the house.

    I can see him mount the stairs while Junie screams in fright. I'll kill him for that-so help me, if I don't! He reread the concluding lines.

    Luke says you have a right to know such things. He was going to phone but I felt it would be upsetting and harmful to hear this over the phone. A letter gives one a chance to consider - think matters over, and reach a more balanced view.

    I don't think Madeleine is a bad mother, actually.

    He was at his letter-writing again in the morning. The little desk at the window was black, rivaling the blackness of his fire escape, those rails dipped in asphalt, a heavy cosmetic coat of black, rails equidistant but appearing according to the rules of perspective. He had letters to write. He was busy, busy, in pursuit of objects he was only now, and dimly, beginning to understand. His first message today, begun half-consciously as he was waking up, was to Monsignor Hilton, the priest who had brought Madeleine into the Church. Sipping his black coffee, Herzog in his cotton paisley robe narrowed his eyes and cleared his throat, already aware of the anger, the pervasive indignation he felt. The Monsignor should know what effect he had on the people he tampered with.

    I am the husband, or ex-husband, of a young woman whom you converted, Madeleine Pontritter, the daughter of the well-known impresario. Perhaps you remember, she took instruction from you some years ago and was baptized by you. A recent Radcliffe graduate, and very beautiful....

    Was Madeleine really such a great beauty, or did the loss of her make him exaggerate-did it make his suffering more notable? Did it console him that a beautiful woman had dumped him? But she had done it for that loud, flamboyant, ass-clutching brute Gersbach. Nothing can be done about the sexual preferences of women. That's ancient wisdom. Nor of men.

    Quite objectively, however, she was a beauty. So was Daisy, in her time. I myself was once handsome, but spoiled my looks with conceit...

    Her complexion healthy and pink, fine dark hair gathered in a bun behind and a fringe on her forehead, a slender neck, heavy blue eyes and a Byzantine nose which came straight down from the brow. The bangs concealed a forehead of considerable intellectual power, the will of a demon, or else outright mental disorder.

    She had a great sense of style. As soon as she began to take instruction she bought crosses and medals and rosaries, and suitable clothes. But then, she was just a girl, really, just out of college. Still, I believe she understood many things better than I.

    And I want you to know, Monsignor, that I am not writing with the purpose of exposing Madeleine, or attacking you. I simply believe you may be interested to find out what may happen, or actually does happen, when people want to save themselves from...

    I suppose the word is nihilism.

    Now then, what does happen? What actually did happen? Herzog tried to understand, staring at the brick walls to which he had fled again from the Vineyard. I had that room in Philadelphia-that one-year job-and I was commuting to New York three or four times a week on the Pennsylvania train, to visit Marco. Daisy swore there would be no divorce. And, for a time, I was shacked up with Sono Oguki, but she didn't answer my purpose. Not serious enough. I wasn't getting much work done. Routine classes in Philadelphia. They were bored with me, and I with them. Papa got wind of my dissolute life, and was angry. Daisy wrote him all about it, but it was none of Papa's business.

    What actually happened? I gave up the shelter of an orderly, purposeful, lawful existence because it bored me, and I felt it was simply a slacker's life. Sono wanted me to move in with her. But I thought that would make me a squaw man. So I took my papers and books, and my Remington office machine with the black hood, and my records and oboe and music down to Philadelphia.

    Dragging back and forth on the train, wearing himself out-the best sacrifice he could offer. He went to visit his little boy, and faced the anger of his ex-wife.