Herzog (3 page)

    "Then what is the matter with you?" said Dr.

    Emmerich. An old man, hair grizzled like his own, face narrow and witty, looked up into his eyes. Herzog believed he understood his message.

    The doctor was telling him that in this decaying office he examined the truly weak, the desperately sick, stricken women, dying men. Then what did Herzog want with him? "You seem very excited," Emmerich said.

    "Yes, that's it. I am excited."

    "Do you want Miltown? Snakeroot? Do you have insomnia?"

    "Not seriously," said Herzog. "My thoughts are shooting out all over the place."

    "Do you want me to recommend a psychiatrist?"

    "No, I've had all the psychiatry I can use."

    "Then what about a holiday? Take a young lady to the country, the seashore. Do you still have the place in Massachusetts?"

    "If I want to reopen it."

    "Does your friend still live up there? The radio announcer. What is the name of the big fellow with red hair, with the wooden leg?"

    "Valentine Gersbach is his name. No, he moved to Chicago when I-when we did."

    "He's a very amusing man."

    "Yes. V."

    "I heard of your divorce-who told me? I am sorry about it."

    Looking for happiness - ought to be prepared for bad results.

    Emmerich put on his Ben Franklin eyeglasses and wrote a few words on the file card. "The child is with Madeleine in Chicago, I suppose," said the doctor.

    "Yes-was Herzog tried to get Emmerich to reveal his opinion of Madeleine. She had been his patient, too.

    But Emmerich would say nothing. Of course not; a doctor must not discuss his patients. Still, an opinion might be construed out of the glances he gave Moses.

    "She's a violent, hysterical woman," he told Emmerich. He saw from the old man's lips that he was about to answer; but then Emmerich decided to say nothing, and Moses, who had an odd habit of completing people's sentences for them, made a mental note) about his own perplexing personality.

    A strange heart. I myself can't account for it.

    He now saw that he had come to Emmerich to accuse Madeleine, or simply to talk about her with someone who knew her and could take a realistic view of her.

    "But you must have other women," said Emmerich.

    "Isn't there somebody? Do you have to eat dinner alone tonight?"

    Herzog had Ramona. She was a lovely woman, but with: her too there were problems, of course-there were bound to be problems. Ramona was a businesswoman, she owned a flower shop on Lexington Avenue.

    She was not young-probably in her thirties; she wouldn't tell Moses her exact age-but she was extremely attractive, slightly foreign, welleducated. When she inherited the business she was getting her M. a. at Columbia in art history. In fact, she was enrolled in Herzog's evening course. In principle, he opposed affairs with students, even with students like Ramona Donsell, who were obviously made for them.

    Doing all the things a wild man does, he noted, while remaining all the while an earnest person.

    In frightful earnest.

    Of course it was just this earnestness that attracted Ramona. Ideas excited her. She loved to talk. She was an excellent cook, too, and knew how to prepare shrimp Arnaud, which she served with Pouilly Fuisse. Herzog had supper with her several nights a week. In the cab passing from the drab lecture hall to Ramona's large West Side apartment, she had said she wanted him to feel how her heart was beating. He reached for her wrist, to take her pulse, but she said, "We are not young children, Professor," and put his hand elsewhere.

    Within a few days Ramona was saying that this was no ordinary affair. She recognized, she said, that Moses was in a peculiar state, but there was something about him so dear, so loving, so healthy, and basically so steady-as if, having survived so many horrors, he had been purged of neurotic nonsense- that perhaps it had been simply a question of the right woman, all along. Her interest in him quickly became serious, and he consequently began to worry about her, to brood. He said to her a few days after his visit to Emmerich that the doctor had advised him to take a holiday. Ramona then said, "Of course you need a holiday. Why don't you go to Montauk? I have a house there, and I could come out weekends. Perhaps we could stay together all of July."

    "I didn't know you owned a house," said Herzog.

    "It was up for sale a few years ago, and it was really too big for me, alone, but I had just divorced Harold, and I needed a diversion."

    She showed him colored slides of the cottage. With his eye to the viewer, he said, "It's very pretty. AH those flowers." But he felt heavy-hearted-dreadful.

    "One can have a marvelous time there. And you really ought to get some cheerful summer clothes. Why do you wear such drab things? You still have a youthful figure."

    "I lost weight last winter, in Poland and Italy."

    "Nonsense-why talk like that! You know you're a good-looking man. And you even take pride in being one. In Argentina they'd call you macho commasculine. You like to come on meek and tame, and cover up the devil that's in you. Why put that little devil down? Why not make friends with him-well, why not?"

    Instead of answering, he wrote mentally, Dear Ramona - Very dear Ramona. I like you very much - dear to me, a true friend. It might even go farther.

    But why is it that I, a lecturer, can't bear to be lectured? I think your wisdom gets me. Because you have the complete wisdom. Perhaps to excess. I do not like to refuse correction. I have a lot to be corrected about. Almost everything. And I know good luck when I see it....

    This was the literal truth, every word of it. He did like Ramona.

    She came from Buenos Aires. Her background was international-Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, and Jewish. She had gone to school in Switzerland and still Spoke with a slight accent, full of charm. She was short but had a full, substantial figure, a good round seat, firm breasts (all these things mattered to Herzog; he might think himself a moralist but the shape of a woman's breasts mattered greatly). Ramona was unsure of her chin but had confidence in her lovely throat, and so she held her head fairly high.

    She walked with quick efficiency, rapping her heels in energetic Castilian style. Herzog was intoxicated by this clatter. She entered a room provocatively, swaggering slightly, one hand touching her thigh, as though she carried a knife in her garter belt. It seemed to be the fashion in Madrid, and it delighted Ramona to come on playfully in the role of a tough Spanish broad- una navaja en la liga; she taught him the expression. He thought often of that imaginary knife when he watched her in her under-things, which were extravagant and black, a strapless contrivance called the Merry Widow that drew in the waist and trailed red ribbons below. Her thighs were short, but deep and white. The skin darkened where it was compressed by the elastic garment. And silky tags hung down, and garter buckles. Her eyes were brown, sensitive and shrewd, erotic and calculating. She knew what she was up to. The warm odor, the downy arms, the fine bust and excellent white teeth and slightly bowed legs-they all worked. Moses, suffering, suffered in style. His luck never entirely deserted him. Perhaps he was luckier than he knew. Ramona tried to tell him so. "That bitch did you a favor," she said. "You'll be far better off."

    Moses! he wrote, winning as he weeps, weeping as he wins.

    Evidently can't believe in victories.

    Hitch your agony to a star.

    But at the silent moment at which he faced Ramona he wrote, incapable of replying except by mental letter, You are a great comfort to me. We are dealing with elements more or less stable, more or less controllable, more or less mad. It's true. I have a wild spirit in me though I look meek and mild.

    You think that sexual pleasure is all this spirit wants, and since we are giving him that sexual pleasure, then why shouldn't everything be well?

    Then he realized suddenly that Ramona had made herself into a sort of sexual professional (or priestess were. He was used to dealing with vile amateurs lately. I didn't know that I could make out with a true sack artist.

    But is that the secret goal of my vague pilgrimage? Do I see myself to be after long blundering an unrecognized son of Sodom and Dionysus-an Orphic type? (ramona enjoyed speaking of Orphic types.) A petit-bourgeois Dionysian?

    He noted: Foo to all those categories!

    "Perhaps I will buy some summer clothes," he answered Ramona.

    I do like fine apparel, he went on. I used to rub my patent-leather shoes with butter, in early childhood. I overheard my Russian mother calling me "Krasavitz." And when I became a gloomy young student, with a soft handsome face, wasting my time in arrogant looks, I thought a great deal about trousers and shirts. It was only later, as an academic, that I became dowdy. I bought a gaudy vest in the Burlington Arcade last winter, and a pair of Swiss boots of the type I see now the Village fairies have adopted. Heartsore?

    Yes, he further wrote, and dressed-up, too. But my vanity will no longer give me much mileage and to tell you the truth I'm not even greatly impressed with my own tortured heart.

    It begins to seem another waste of time.

    Soberly deliberating, Herzog decided it would be better not to accept Ramona's offer. She was thirty-seven or thirty-eight years of age, he shrewdly reckoned and this meant that she was looking for a husband, This, in itself, was not wicked, or even funny. Simple and general human conditions prevailed among the most seemingly sophisticated. Ramona had not learned those erotic monkeyshines in a manual, but in adventure, in confusion, and at times probably with a sinking heart, in brutal and often alien embraces. So now she must yearn for stability. She wanted to give her heart once and for all, and level with a good man, become Herzog's wife and quit being an easy lay. She often had a sober look. Her eyes touched him deeply.

    Never idle, his mind's eye saw Montauk-white beaches, flashing light, glossy breakers, horseshoe crabs perishing in their armor, sea robins and blow-fish. Herzog longed to lie down in his bathing trunks, and warm his troubled belly on the sand. But how could he? To accept too many favors from Ramona was dangerous. He might have to pay with his freedom. I Of course he didn't need that freedom now; he needed a rest. Still, after resting, he might want his freedom again. He wasn't sure of that, either. But it was a possibility.

    A holiday will give me more strength to bring to my neurotic life.

    Still, Herzog considered, he did look terrible, caved-in; he was losing more hair, and this rapid deterioration he considered to be a surrender to Madeleine and Gersbach, her lover, and to all his enemies. He had more enemies and hatreds than anyone could easily guess from his thoughtful expression.

    The night-school term was coming to an end, and Herzog convinced himself that his wisest move was to get away from Ramona too. He decided to go to the Vineyard, but, thinking it a bad thing to be entirely alone, he sent a night letter to a woman in Vineyard Haven, an old friend (they had once considered having an affair but this had never materialized and they were instead tenderly considerate of each other). In the wire he explained the situation and his friend Libbie Vane (libbie Vane-Erikson-Sissler; she had just married for the third time and the house in the Haven belonged to her husband, an industrial chemist) telephoned him promptly, and very emotionally and sincerely invited him to come and stay as long as he liked.

    "Rent me a room near the beach," Herzog requested.

    "Come and stay with us."

    "No, no. I can't do that. Why, you've just gotten married."

    "Oh, Moses-please, don't be so romantic. Sissler and I have been living together three years."

    "Still, it is a honeymoon, isn't it?"

    "Oh, stop this nonsense. I'll be hurt if you don't stay here. We have six bedrooms. You come right out, I've heard what a rough time you've been having."

    In the end-it was inevitable-he accepted. He felt, however, that he was acting badly. By wiring, he had practically forced her to invite him. He had helped Libbie greatly about ten years before, and he would have been more pleased with himself if he had not made her pay off. He knew better than to ask for help. He was making a bore of himself-doing the weak thing, the corrupt thing.

    But at least, he thought, I don't have to make matters worse. I won't bore Libbie with my troubles, or spend the week crying on her bosom.

    I'll take them out to dinner, her and her new husband. You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it. Then why be halfhearted?

    Ramona is right. Get some light clothes. You can borrow more dough from brother Shura-he likes that, and he knows you'll repay. That's living by the approbative principle-you pay your debts.

    Therefore, he went shopping for clothes. He examined the ads in The New Yorker and Esquire.

    These now showed older men with lined faces as well as young executives and athletes. Then, after shaving more closely than usual and brushing his hair (could he bear to see himself in the brilliant triple mirrors of a clothing store?), he took the bus uptown. Starting at 59th Street, he worked his way down Madison Avenue into the forties and back toward the Plaza on Fifth. Then the gray clouds opened before the piercing sun. The windows glittered and Herzog looked into them, shamefaced and excited. The new styles seemed to him reckless and gaudy-madras coats, shorts with melting bursts of Kandinsky colors, in which middle-aged or paunchy old men would be ludicrous. Better puritan restraint than the exhibition of pitiful puckered knees and varicose veins, pelican bellies and the indecency of haggard faces under sporty caps. Undoubtedly Valentine Gersbach, who had beat him out with Madeleine, surmounting the handicap of a wooden leg, could wear those handsome brilliant candy stripes. Valentine was a dandy. He had a thick face and heavy jaws; Moses thought he somewhat resembled Putzi Hanfstaengl, Hitler's own pianist. But Gersbach had a pair of extraordinary eyes for a red-haired man, brown, deep, hot eyes, full of life. The lashes, too, were vital, ruddy-dark, long and childlike.