“So,” said Hammond. “It was a family affair.”
“Sort of,” I acknowledged, “that is if you had one. None of our group had yet but who were we except a bunch of local characters. The one who organized the event was perhaps the biggest character of all. He was an expatriated poet from North Beach, who’d frequented it in its heyday but had graduated to our town when it’d become fallow. And this was peculiar.”
“Why was that?”
“He was a black man in his early fifties, who’d once run for Mayor in the city, a pure showman if there ever was one. He certainly pretended to write though one didn’t know whether he actually did or not. Now and then he’d get up and utter his musings, which somehow weren’t quite all there. He certainly worked at it hard enough for every single day (and night) one saw him in the coffee house, his laptop open, his head topped by a Panama hat, bent over it and his dexterous fingers working the keys. He lived there, literally, though he (all six feet of him) slept in his old Jaguar sedan cramped up like bones in a bag. We didn’t know how he did it. He had a welfare stipend to sustain himself, but arthritis was catching up to him. He’d begun to walk with a stoop. His name was Mercer.”
“Mercer,” we’d say on the appointed night, “think there’ll be a good show?”
“Never can tell,” he’d smile with his perfect (false) teeth, tip his hat and answer coyly.
The job of MC had fallen to him because of his availability and good nature. He was often ribbed about being the only man of color on the scene but he sloughed it off like he belonged there and he did. He’d been accepted. Most white communities have a ‘token black’, he was ours. There was a black community at the north side of town but the residents there kept mostly to themselves. You rarely encountered them in Sausalito.
The bay was unusually warm that year; people were actually swimming in it. At six o’clock in the evening it had begun to expel its invisible waves of heat. The masts of the yachts across from the café were still like tapered spikes set in the bottom of a trap as the first visitors arrived. The five of us grabbed the tall oak table near the window, which nonetheless held a perfect view of the speaker’s platform. We didn’t expect to hear much really. To see a lot, however, was a different matter. The characters who attend those sorts of affairs are worth any ten shows you might see in a nightclub. And during the course of the evening they all seemed to surface though not all of them stayed for Hartwig’s finale.
Sylvia, the mother, arrived with her new adoptee, Gloria and another dapper young man who turned out to be an assistant district attorney in the city. True to her word the mother had brought this eligible friend of hers aboard by introducing him to Gloria though I don’t believe she was exactly his date. Not yet anyhow.
“Why not? Said Hammond. “At this point? If he was attractive, intelligent, had a job. At least he was going somewhere. Whereas Hartwig…?”
“The two’d just met,” I advised him. “They were getting to know one another. The deeper relation takes time if it comes at all. In many cases it doesn’t.”
“But,” said Hammond. “Why’d they come in the first place? How’d the mother hear of a miniscule poetry reading in Sausalito? Certainly her son didn’t tell her.”
“Gloria, of course,” I said. “She and the mother talked it over. Gloria induced her to go. Maybe she wanted to offer one last display of herself to the man she loved before cutting herself off from him forever and she wanted to witness the pride a mother takes in her naturally talented son. The one thing Sylvia always loved about her son was his playing. She came to hear that. Guess who else was there, June, though I don’t know how she found out about it. She came with Marcus.”
“And her other daughter?”
“Jennifer,” I said. “No, she didn’t come either, just like she hadn’t attended the christening. She was still feuding with her mother.”
“Over what now for God’s sakes,” said Hammond? “She attended the play didn’t she? Shakespeare at the beach.”
“Her mysterious disappearances.”
“Mysterious disappearances?”
Yes, you see that’d been the one secret of her persecuted life she’d been able to withhold from her domineering mother, though the poor thing had confided it to Marcus with the proviso,
“You must never tell, promise.”
“Don’t even think of it,” said the ever honest Marcus. Jennifer’d evidently taken to browsing around the little town of Tiburon, which was a short bus ride away from her mother’s house. Anything to get out and about on her own. June refused to let the girl have a car and she didn’t want her straying. At an antique store there the pretty young girl’d walked in one day to find it not busy and had engaged in conversation what turned out to be the owner, a single man in his early forties who’d been educated in Europe and had moved there to set up his business. He was a little Jewish fellow who’d already been here for twenty years, single, shrewd, very bright and of a sensitive if not handsome appearance. His name was Hans Kriebel. He was a German Jew.
Jennifer’s arrival had evolved into a long talk, which in turn begot more appearances and long talks. One thing led to another. The man kept an apartment above the store, which was at street level. She played the piano, which he also had upstairs, he the violin. And while neither of them was particularly good they made a complimentary duo together. The two began an affair, fell in love and he wanted to marry her. Though he was substantially older than she, after being raised by her hounding adopted mother he was a figure she could well respond to, almost like fitting one’s shadow to oneself. The way she talked about her mother, however, he was afraid to ask. They’d be in bed. He’d close the store in the afternoon so she could get home then open it again after dark.
“If only I could once meet her,” Hans’d say to Jennifer when in fact June’d been in his store several times though that’d been sometime prior.
“No,” said Jennifer, “you wouldn’t like her. It wouldn’t work. Can’t we be just like we are?”
What else could Hans say? He’d felt her trembling just when she’d thought her mother might’ve followed her and been outside. It was all the emotional burden she could handle just not to be discovered. The suspicious ever vigilant June knew she’d been up to something but so far hadn’t been able to catch her at it. But to reveal her feelings, she felt’d be suicide. And, of course, it turned out her premonitions were right.
“So?” Said Hammond.
All I said was that she wasn’t at the reading and that was why. Her friend Marcus was. Jennifer’d made him promise to tell her all about it when he got back. It’s tough living on a subliminal basis but that’s all some people have. Remember all of us aren’t so fortunate so as to be able to express our wishes. There are people out there ready to cut you down if you do, free country or not.
When Hartwig and Sandy showed up for instance, the mother and Gloria were already seated. While Sylvia might’ve expected as much she had no idea her son and the concupiscent socialite were about to run off to Europe together. Gloria hadn’t either at that juncture. So you see, despite this unwonted appearance, the mother and Gloria felt there was still hope to bring her son around.
The lights were dimmed, the espresso machine whirred and the poets began reading as the crowd appertained to silence. The bad paintings on the walls were displayed as reminders of what not to be in so many words. And many of them weren’t. Believe it or not some of the poets were actually good. One mother got up and hit it on the mark. She had the crowd clapping with her fin de siècle sentiments while several comics had them cheering. It was good entertainment but what else is poetry, any poetry when it comes right down to it. You’re apprised of what’s been (in life) and consequently what to expect and this applies to death – about which there’s really no mystery, as the great poets have been able to convey.
Among others I recognized Stich, the contractor, though I’d never seen him before. This was mostly from his size though Hartwig’s description of the man had been accurate. He was a big floppy tennis player. His wife, Julia, Marcus’s half-sister stood beside him. She had the tyke, Tod, settled comfortably in her backpack carrier. As they sat at a table (somebody made way for the mother) she removed the child, who by then could walk and cradled it on her lap.
“Not whining this time?” Said Hammond.
“Not whining,” I replied. “June might’ve been there but this was no church. The one year old was sincerely entertained.”
Marcus nodded to her and made a childish sign with his fingers at his nephew in law. The tiny blue-eyed baby waved with his mother’s assistance showing his little burgeoning teeth. So you see those gatherings weren’t all war as poets tend to engage in. They were also where people could get together and share their emotions much like the
encounter groups
of old had once been, although we no longer have them.
When several times June hopped tables to talk to Sylvia and I noticed the troubled look creep across Sandy’s face like a shadow across a plain I could only too well envision the entire evening as it exploded but it didn’t. Hartwig didn’t miss a move. He turned to Sandy and said something; then laughed it off. He hadn’t once gone over to speak to his mother or June. I did notice that.
“You’re kidding?”
“No, he didn’t say a word to his own mother. He obviously still hadn’t forgiven her for the night at the opera and felt it was still too sore a subject for Sandy to handle. Then that told you something else, didn’t it?”
“What was that?” Said Hammond.
“If he was in essence giving up his mother, which is what he seemed to be doing, it must’ve been for something. That told you right there or at least it did to me he had long range plans for his girlfriend … he might’ve even loved her, who knows … whether he ever spoke to his mother again or not.”
When I noticed a surprised and wary look of Gloria’s as she turned to face the door I followed her line of vision and guess who’d popped in, Johansson. And with him was Larsen of all people, his boss at the pottery factory who’d fired him. The Swede who’d been born in the old country appreciated gatherings like this. They were in his bones, but him and Johansson together? The young man had exchanged his typical baseball hat for a sailor’s cap. The new article was still part of his craziness evidently even though we heard his father’d gotten him in the merchant marine and he was soon to ship out. No merchant seamen wore sailor’s caps. Gloria said something to her escort as she looked Johansson’s way, obviously pointing him out. And the Swede, he just smiled like a big happy clown. He knew he’d been defeated. If not by Hartwig then the man next to her perhaps, dressed all up in a suit, costume (as he called it)
he
might wear twice a year. On Christmas and at one of his friend’s weddings.
Just before he was to perform, Hartwig rose to go to the men’s and Gloria followed him. The two met in the hallway all friendly at first.
“How nice you look in your
new
suit,” she told him. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in it before.”
“Yes, it is nice, isn’t it? It’s from Brooks Brothers. And how ravishing you look my dear as always. I’m sure you’re getting along with my mother,” he added dryly. “And I see the
sport
you’re with, I must say it’s an advance from the
newspaper man
.”
“Yes,” she said looking him straight in the eye, “who’s sure more of a help than you. And you’d better not wait too long.” She scolded him. For some reason he got very angry.
“And you,” he said out of a clear blue sky, “you’d better not catch AIDs.” With a look of utter disgust she turned around and left him. Maybe he wanted it that way, thinking it’d make it easier on her.
“Did he really say that?” Said Hammond.
“Yes, he did, but he didn’t mean it. As callous as he was sometimes, Hartwig wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
When his turn came he certainly played magnificently, a little Beethoven, several cantatas by Bach and a piece by Albinoni that I’d never heard before, an Italian jewel. And there he was, his long nails plucking the strings, fingers thumping the sound box and his neck craned about the throat, blue eyes looking out from under his lanky blond hair that had swept across his face. Do you think the women didn’t like that? You should’ve heard the
titters
. Why I’ll bet for a moment there he could’ve had any one of them
He didn’t, of course. After playing several encores he packed his guitar into its case, hugged Mercer and thanked him for the evening. With the handle in one hand, Sandy’s in the other, along with the large crowd he exited. The clear night appeared to be lit by distant sparklers, which, of course, were stars. It’d been so warm the café’d opened all its windows. There’d been patrons standing in the street who’d come to listen but couldn’t be accommodated inside.
Although the group of us bade Hartwig and Sandy
goodnight
, she looked upon us as casual acquaintances of his who’d never gotten to know him very well. Certainly not as well as she had. She definitely didn’t know we knew about the trip nor that we’d put him up to it. As to Hartwig’s mother and her party it went off in the other direction as though two shooting stars had repelled one another. Hartwig and his mother could’ve been Mars and Juno. They hadn’t spoken although he said a few words to June who at that time was still his
friend
.