Shakespeare's Kitchen (10 page)

“All right,” said Leslie. Ilka said nothing.

“Leslie, park behind the institute. We have new hubcaps. God Almighty, what would the first president have said to barbecuing on his front lawn—The grass will never be the same.”

Now Ilka said, “Bad for the grass, nice for the human beings.”

Eliza said, “Puerto Ricans out in their Hawaiian duds.”

Ilka said, “And the provost in his cricket whites, everybody walking together. It’s the Peaceable Kingdom!”

“God Almighty!” Eliza said once more.

“And if he existed,” said Ilka, “he would be in his heaven.”

Here came the provost, a light, upright figure in white slacks and shirt, and his pleasant wife in chiffon with a modified garden hat, to pass the time of day with the new director of the institute and his formidable wife.

“We haven’t had such a thoroughly splendid day for our fiesta since—” the provost mentioned a year within the present decade.

“What about . . .” said Eliza Shakespeare naming a random year. “That was fair to middling.”

The provost’s countenance held steady.

“As for—” and Eliza named yet another year, “that was a bummer.”

Leslie introduced Ilka. “One of our junior members.”

“Nineteen hundred sixty-nine,” Eliza said, “that was another year.”

“Well,” said the provost. His wife aborted a squeak. The provost had pinched her, meaning “Start walking,” forgetting she bruised easily.

“Let us hope and pray,” Eliza said, “that next year will be—” and she mentioned the year that only doomsday could prevent it from being. “At least,” Eliza said to the provost’s diminishing back, “he keeps his shirt on. Why does the element want to run around naked?”

“Because the sun is out,” Leslie said.

Eliza said, “I’m going to bite the next person who mentions the weather. Hello, Bernstines. Hello, Teddy. Cassandra,” she told the barking animal, “I know just how you feel.”

“It’s she saw a squirrel,” Teddy said. Joe said, “Cassandra feels her responsibilities. There are dogs who smile. Cassandra frowns. Be glad, Cassandra! The sun is out, the sky is blue and everyone is walking together and eating and sitting on blankets. Cassandra, shut
up
! Did anybody see Bethy? Hello, Nat.”

Nat Cohn was bent over a blanket on which an African student had spread neck chains, brooches, bangles, seeds, beads, small carved animals, chunks of amber.

“Ethnic, after a while, gets to all look the same,” said Eliza. “Where’s Nancy?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nat said. “We are not talking.”

The Bernstines walked off to look for Bethy. Joe said, “The Shakespeares have a new adoptee.”

“I like Ilka,” Jenny said and frowned anxiously.

Nat Cohn walked beside Ilka who said, “Hide me! There’s Gerti Gruner from Conversational English. She keeps inviting me to supper and I never go, and there goes Sylvia Brandon. I invite her for a cup of coffee and she doesn’t answer. She never remembers who I am.”

Nat and Ilka had dropped a little behind. Nat said, “The Shakespeares have adopted you.” The observation displeased Ilka. “We’re friends.”

“You and Leslie are friends.”

Ilka said, “Leslie, Eliza, and I are friends.”

“Yes, you are,” Nat said. In a moment he added “I bet that at any given moment, in any room, you know Leslie’s whereabouts, and whether he stands or sits, and who he’s talking with, am I right?”

Ilka knew that she should deny the implication but it gratified her. “That’s clever of you.”

“I’m a very clever man,” said Nat, “cleverer than Leslie. I’m the most empathetic man you have ever met. There’s Nancy. I’m going to go so she can tell me how badly I am behaving. Maybe it’s you and I who should be having that cup of coffee?”

Ilka caught up with the Shakespeares. “Nat is extraordinary. He walks into my head and tells me what I didn’t know that I was thinking.”

“Infernal cheek!” Eliza said. “Anybody walks into my head uninvited, I’d turf them out so fast!”

“It’s sort of thrilling!” said Ilka.

“It’s invasive,” said Leslie unpleasantly.

“It’s conversation,” Ilka said.

Leslie said, “Conversation is not a sleight of hand, not a performance in which one shows off one’s penetration at the expense of the other person. Conversation is a willing exchange of just as much as the participants are willing to expose to each other.”

“Well, I think he’s the best talker I have ever known. Why are you angry?”

“I’m not angry,” said Leslie angrily.

Ilka looked to catch Eliza’s eye but Eliza had spotted Bethy Bernstine. She said, “Like Jephtha’s daughter wandering on the mountains.”

“Do I know Jephtha’s daughter?” asked Ilka.

“Jephtha won the Lord’s battle after he promised to sacrifice the first thing that ran to meet him when he returned home, which, of course, happened to be not his puppy dog but his only daughter. ‘Grant me two months,’ Jephtha’s daughter says, ‘so that I may go and wander on the mountains and bewail my virginity, my companions and I,’ and she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity in the mountains. Except Bethy has no companions. Hello, Bethy. Your father is looking for you. You have the kind of hair I want to get my hands into. Make your parents bring you round. I’m going to brush it for you. Hello Alicia! Alvin, don’t go around looking so cheerful.”

“We’ve come from the students’ jazz combo, and they are
so
good.”

“The Emperor’s clothes,” Eliza said. “The years I persuaded myself I liked jazz! If it just didn’t have that thump thump.”

“Dear Eliza!” said Alvin cheerfully. “There’s Bach for you around the other side of the library.”

The Shakespeares and Ilka went to find Bach. “There are the Zees,” said Eliza waving. “Trust Maria to have a camp stool to sit on.” The music was starting. When next Ilka looked, Eliza was transformed. Everything quick and malicious had drained out of the face she lifted to meet Bach in the air.

 

 

“What happened to Leslie?” Ilka and Eliza walked among the goods set out on trestle tables. “Carrot bread! Chhhh!” said Eliza. “Raw baking soda.” She hissed at a display of pottery. “Why must we encourage the talentless to create. There he is.” Among
the toys on the next table, an electrified Santa raised his right arm simultaneously lowering his head with a sort of stammer, down, hesitate, down, stop. As the arm descended the head rose, hesitated, rose, stopped. Leslie Shakespeare, Director of the Concordance Institute, watched with head tilted and parted lips. Becoming aware of the two women watching him, he said, “I bought you a camp stool.”

“Who is going to carry it?” asked Eliza.

“I will,” said Leslie. “I bought it from our garbage thief. That’s his table.”

“Why is he wearing your Vayella shirt?”

“I gave it to him. It is too small for me.”

“He takes our old junk and he sells it!”

Now Ilka said, “How wonderful! He makes use of things of no use to you.”

“It’s disgusting.”

“It’s entrepreneurship. The honorable profession of peddling. Some of my cousins peddled themselves into the American dream.”

“You gave him my little green bucket?” Eliza said to Leslie.

“You said it leaked.”

“We brought it from Amherst. That’s a good roll of copper wire.”

“Do we need copper wire?” asked Leslie.

“No. Mother would have liked the mahogany coat hangers the size of a man’s shoulders. Don’t come like that any more. Mother’s teapot. Una broke the lid. When I asked my mother where she got me, she said, ‘from the junk man.’ She said she asked what he would take for the skinny baby in the bunting and the junk man had thrown me in with the spool-legged towel horse because she had bought a number of larger items that day—who could remember what all? I have the spool-legged towel horse in the upstairs bathroom.”

Nat called Ilka on the telephone. “Nancy and I have separated.” Nat and Ilka had dinner in town.

“I told the Shakespeares you walk in and out of my head,” Ilka reported, making mischief.

“And Leslie got huffy.”

“Why should he get huffy?” asked Ilka. “When Jane Austen describes Mr. Knightly, one of the things she tells about him is that he is sensible. Leslie is a sensible man.”

“And that turns you on,” said Nat. “The beauty of common sense escapes women with less imagination.”

“Oh, don’t do that!” Ilka said. “Compliments aren’t as much fun as everybody thinks.”

“Then I will tell you some things you are no good at. You have no sense of direction, right.”

“None. I don’t understand maps. Was that a random guess?”

“You don’t know which way to turn the clock at which time of year.”

“I don’t always know what year it is. Nat, do you have extrasensory perception?” she flattered.

“Extrasensory perception is nothing but observation past the point where the five senses tell you how things connect—the kind of thing you and I are more than ordinarily good at. So why don’t you know why Leslie got huffy?”

The following week Nat moved back in with Nancy.

A year had passed. The return of the garbage thief harbingered the Summer Fiesta. Leslie and Ilka looked through the living room window and saw Eliza with a broom staring at an object on the sidewalk. They went out to her.

Eliza said, “We don’t eat porterhouse. This has got to be the Wentworths’ next door.” The three friends bent over what had been a beefsteak. Maggots recreated the shape they had eaten entirely away. The albino mass roiled internally. Each gyrating animal was held in place by the adjacence on its every side of others that precisely replicated it in motion, size, the absence of color or feature.

“Here we are then,” said Eliza.

“It’s fascinating!” Ilka bent closer. “Do they ever sleep? They’re so vigorous—or desperate? What will they do now they’ve eaten up everything except each other? Where will they go?”

“Turn up in Yorick’s skull,” said Eliza.

“How do they know where to go? How do they know how to get there? Do they walk? In a phalanx? Single file?”

“It’s your nitty gritty!” Eliza said.

“Eliza. It’s not. It is really not,” Leslie said to her.

“That one there—that’s you,” Eliza said to him. She pointed the broom.

“Eliza, come inside,” said Leslie.

“This is Ilka. That one is me.”

Leslie said, “Eliza, which one is Bach?”

“He ’s dead and the worms have eaten him. What I don’t know is which one is the baby. The baby has to be somewhere. Do you understand that there has to be some one place where she has at any one moment got to be, alive or dead?” Leslie walked over and stood beside Eliza. Her hair stood away from her head. Her mouth was open in the square grin of one who has been touched by lightning.

Leslie took Eliza’s elbow. She stumbled up the last step not having lifted her foot high enough to clear the riser. Leslie’s hand guided her through the front door into the kitchen where she stood and seemed not to recognize the geography. Leslie led her
to the table where she stood without an agenda. Leslie made her sit down.