He closed his eyes. He was keeping books, as usual.
He opened his eyes, grabbed a raincoat from the closet, paused to say, “Now please wait for me,” and dashed dramatically out the door.
A
VRAM DARTED
down the steps of his brownstone with that quick boyishness of his which aroused the sarcasm of so many of the intellectuals who wrote for his magazine.
The street was empty of walkers, lined with parked cars, each dotted with moisture from the half fog, half drizzle that filled the air with tiny drops of light-blurring water—the air had an acrid edge of pollution.
As he loped along the sidewalk, he felt an uplift of spirits. In his life—he was between affairs, and the magazine came out only twice a year—he lately felt a dryness, a dearth of feeling and of interest. The city had lately begun to seem mere walls of brick and glass, channels for soot. But now he looked forward to the evening. He was attempting to help someone; this was an oasis.
How he pitied Annetje for being an acidhead. Avram did not approve
of LSD and had never taken any. At a party given a few years before for two men who wanted to raise funds for a quasi-utopian settlement to be based on love and LSD, the men had spoken at length and incoherently of the evils of the games of ambition, of the evils of success and failure—noticeably charmless failures in a roomful of successful people well on the way to being more successful. Since then, Avram had stubbornly held that LSD was a drug for failures without good sense. He was surprised at Annetje. Yes, her marriages did not last, she was growing older, but why the hell didn’t she simply make up her mind to be a better wife? Annetje had charm.
Annetje and John Herbert kept an apartment in a building just off Lexington Avenue, with doormen and elevator men. Annetje was afraid of being raped. Men on the streets did conceive enormous desire for her; Avram had observed it. Once, he had seen her walking down Lexington Avenue, quite frightened, followed by four men, four men dispersed and straggling, and when she crossed the street to greet Avram the four men had halted, like Secret Service agents, and stared while she spoke to Avram, who then walked her to Bloomingdale’s, a guard.
Once, a man—it had been in the papers—had managed somehow to enter her building; he had thrown himself on her in the hallway; she had broken free and run down seven flights of stairs to the lobby. A passing police car had responded to the doorman’s shout. The two policemen found the would-be rapist crouching on the roof, sobbing. He was a forty-five-year-old truckdriver with a record of sexual offenses, most of which, to Avram’s surprise, were for homosexual assault of one kind or another. Annetje had said, “I am very attractive to homosexuals. I don’t remind them of their mother.” Annetje was thin and had that extraordinary coloring, of course, and an astonishing amount of sex appeal. She had said gloomily, “I could tell the minute he grabbed me he was homosexual. I thought, Just my luck, I am going to be raped by a homosexual.”
Poor Annetje. In the end, no man is man enough for a really pretty woman, Avram thought.
He knocked on her door. She did not answer, and Avram began to worry; he was calculating what he must do if she did not answer—call the police, take her to a sanitarium, get in touch with John Herbert—when he heard footsteps. Tiny, frightened footsteps.
“Who is it?” Annetje whispered.
“Avram.”
“Thank God,” she said.
He heard a series of mechanical noises, of clicks and scrapes; she was unlocking the door. Seconds passed; the noises continued.
“There are so many,” she said through the door. “I can’t work them. I’m a prisoner.”
“Take your time. Don’t be upset,” Avram said with patience.
Abruptly the door opened, and there was Annetje. Bedraggled, uncombed, pale inside a tattered sweater and a heavy skirt that hung lopsidedly and was sliding lower on her hips. Annetje was one of those intensely seductive women who dress stylishly for the street and then relax at home inside shapeless old clothes, clothes they’ve perhaps had since college, or their first marriage—mementos of lost years, vanished fashions, and the emotions that went with the fashions.
Annetje was very thin-waisted, with little cushionlike hips and thin, square shoulders, quite broad, and Avram was always aware of the small of her back; her shoulders and her hips were assertive: it was the small of her back which was private and where her vulnerability truly resided. His hands twitched, anxious to touch her there. So frail, he thought. So needful. His eyes began to film over. He caught himself; he bent semimedically to study her eyes to see if the pupils were dilated or anything like that. But that was a mistake. Avram was susceptible to Annetje; the seaside grayness of her eyes jolted his emotions. Bedraggled or not, she sent out a current of high sexual voltage. She suggested to Avram Swedish movies, summer making the Nordics carnal.
“It’s you,” she said, pressing fragile, long-boned arms to her breast. “I didn’t think you would come.” Then, with that violence Avram feared in her, she threw those frail arms around his neck.
Avram’s hands fluttered, then settled helplessly on the small of her back; it felt incredibly tiny; he could feel her life coursing in her. He murmured, “I said I would come,” but he was nearly mindless. He had only enough self-possession to calculate that if he tried to make her it would be shameful—taking advantage. Dull honor, he thought, gently massaging the small of her back: I will probably get an ulcer and die young. He heard himself say, “I said I would be here.” It was a deeper voice than he usually used. He had started, he thought, the mating dance. He wondered if Annetje had ever seen a male unexcited by desire, a male in a more normal state.
“But I am paranoid. I told you I was paranoid. I thought you were just lying to get me off the phone. I thought you were angry that I
called.” She flung herself backward, away from him, turned in a half pivot, came to rest with one arm across her chest, gripping her other arm. “Do you have any cigarettes? I’ve been afraid to smoke. I was afraid of setting myself on fire.”
He had his first impulse since her call of genuine sympathy. “Why did you do it? No one should go through such unnecessary …” He didn’t know what word to use: agony, discomfort.
“I am a fool,” Annetje said. “I thought it would help me—I wanted to understand John Herbert. There is nothing to understand. That is what I saw. He is a child, a malicious child. I am a child.” She looked at Avram.
Avram thought, She is right. He himself was well into the dry plateau of growing older, that slow one-way advance into the wastes.
“I could have seen it without the drug,” Annetje said with a little laugh. Suddenly she pressed her hand to her mouth. “I mustn’t laugh,” she said between her fingers. “My teeth will fall out.”
The apartment had a stale, nervous smell. Avram commented on it and Annetje said, “I have locked all the windows. Air pollution will get in. Or I will throw myself out. No, I won’t.”
Avram said, “Let’s go. This place isn’t good for you. Get a raincoat.”
“Sit with me a moment,” Annetje said. “Just for a moment. Us alone.” She spoke wheedlingly, almost in a child’s tone. Avram was impressed by her lips—large Dutch lips, delicately flickering; their soft flutter charmed him.
“What happened with John Herbert?” he asked. He followed Annetje into the green-and-white, airless living room.
“I told him to get out, that bastard,” she said. “ ‘Go away,’ I said. He slapped me. He was furious I had taken the LSD. He said I was a pig. Oh, it was very sordid.” She sat down on an innocently moss-green couch, her knees close together, her hands hovering, not quite touching her temples. “It is time to die. It is the one sordid thing I have not done,” she said.
“Why don’t you settle down, Annetje?” Avram said avuncularly.
“Settle down?” Annetje grimaced. “There are quicker ways to die. I cannot stand it. I have had enough of bastards,” she said. “I do not need any more badness from these bastards. I am through with him. Them. Why do they eat you up? They are such babies. They want to be mothered. I am not a mother.” She gave Avram a heated glance of her gray eyes as if to demonstrate in what way she was not motherly. She
said, “Why can’t he act like a man? Always, it is I who fail him, he says. I think it is my turn to collapse. Let him take care of me, let him worry about me. Last month he has a binge, two weeks—drinking, women, gambling. He comes home in rags, half beaten, bruises on his face. ‘Help me, Annetje,’ he says. I take him in my arms. I wash his face. I sit up with him all night. The next day he is refreshed, he continues with his binge. He comes home, he has nightmares, I hold his head in my lap all night. His nightmares frighten even me. Even now I am not as bad as he was then. He says he is going out of his head. I get him to the doctor. After two days, he refuses to see the doctor again. He says the doctor is stupid. Very well, let him go out of his head. Good riddance. I don’t care. I am tired. I know I am unreasonable. I have had this drug. I am crazy—I know it. I am paranoid. I tell him he wants to destroy me. I tell him to get out. You know what he does? He goes. But I am glad. I want to be alone.”
Avram’s conscience made him say, “But he loves you, Annetje … and you are, I think, still in love with him.”
“Of course,” said Annetje. “I am always in love with bastards. It is not easy to stop loving. But if I don’t see him I will be all right. I would rather die than see him.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Ah,” Annetje said seriously, “you understand me.”
Avram wriggled in his chair, blinded by her regard.
She said, “I am very tough. I am tougher than he is. He is weak!” She spoke with large-scale contempt.
Avram thought, I am afraid of her. He said, “You’re not actually
tough.”
“No. You’re right,” she said docilely, tensely. “That is true. I am not. But they always think I am. I need a man. I
need.
I want a man to take care of me—a strong man.” She glanced at Avram. “I think you are strong.”
“Not strong enough,” Avram said mournfully.
Annetje said, “Why do men think women take their strength from them?”
“Well, women do, in a way,” Avram said, weakly amused. “I mean, I sometimes feel very weakened by you.”
Annetje’s mouth turned downward with sadness. “You find me boring.”
“No, no. I think you are afraid of being loved. You are tired of it.” He passed his hand over his eyes. “You are not pleased when people lean
on you. You don’t like it, and you are afraid, too, you won’t be strong.”
Annetje smiled slowly; her eyes widened. She said, “You understand me. You are a lot like me—you are more like me than John Herbert is.”
She sat on the couch, fragile and exposed. She seemed to hold his regard to her breast, to her cheek. For comfort. If he embraced her, she would explore her feelings of similitude to him in kisses that would be like waves—suffocating, soft, private, dense. And then?
Avram thought with self-distaste that he was too scrupulous in his lechery. She had taken LSD, she was out of the question. But he did not want to fall in love with Annetje anyway; I can’t afford it, he phrased it inwardly.
“Yes,” he said. “We are very much alike, like brother and sister.”
“You would be good to me,” Annetje said.
“No,” Avram said. “I would be less patient even than John Herbert. I am very demanding.”
“Like Allan!” Annetje exclaimed with sudden comprehension. Allan was the professional skin diver, her second husband. “Ah, God, I was
miserable
with him!” Annetje said. “The sweet-tempered men are the worst. How he nagged! And jealous! My God, he was jealous. There I was, cooking all day, sewing, and he was jealous.”
“He probably thought you liked him as a rest cure rather than for himself,” Avram said, with a touch of petulant identification.
Annetje said, “Ah. No.”
“He might have thought that,” Avram argued.
“But no,” Annetje said. “He did not. You don’t know everything, I see. I will tell you something. You have the story all wrong. I loved him more than he loved me. You see, when I was younger and I admired a man, I slept with him, but sleeping was not important to me. You understand when I say sleeping I mean the other?”
“Yes,” Avram said.
“I loved the man whoever he was. But I belonged to myself. You understand? But with Allan that changed. My God! I was crazy with it,” Annetje confided. Averting her eyes, spiritually drawing away from him, she said, “Now it is dangerous for me to go to bed with a man. I feel too strongly.”
Avram said as if studying a cue card, “But you do love John Herbert!” He did not like it that Annetje’s retreat strengthened his desire.
“Yes,” she said. “No. It makes no difference. I am through with that bastard. Perhaps I should put my head in the oven. It is a gas oven.”
“Don’t be stupid, Annetje,” Avram said.
“Yes, it is stupid, but I am a stupid woman. I have had no life. I have been eating tranquilizers all day—six, ten, twelve of them.”
“You fool!” Avram exclaimed. “We must call a doctor.”
“I did. He said I was a fool. He came. He checked my heart.”
Avram was glad he had not kissed her. He stood up. “Come,” he said, all solid reason; even the palms of his hands were drying. “Get your raincoat. We must go. It will be good for you to get out of this apartment. My friends are very stable, middle-class people. They are just what you need at this point.”
“No. Let us stay here and—” Annetje began.
“Please,” Avram said firmly.
“Oh yes. I see. You don’t want to be rude to them. Now, where is my coat? Let me go comb my hair.”
He nodded. She left the living room. The trouble with women like Annetje, he thought, was that they did not want a man to put his life into their hands; they wanted to put their life in his. Then when he mismanaged it, they could righteously assert that they had earned their freedom. Their men’s wrongdoing gave them the little freedom they had from their guilt.
“Hurry,” he called. He did not want her to be in the bathroom too long. Twelve tranquilizers! “Come on.”