The Theoretical Foot (15 page)

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That morning, August 31, Daniel Tennant heard all the knocks on the door. The first was so gentle it had a kind of coyness about it. He woke almost before the knock began and lay there without moving even his eyelids.

The next was somewhat louder, although it still sounded covert, as if a conspirator or even a thickly veiled adventuress was signalling to him. He chuckled to himself and lay waiting for the next, which he knew would follow after a short but tense pause, and now it came: three dramatic pounding blows, echoing with painful force everywhere in the quiet house. Daniel winced, opened his eyes just enough to see the bottom of the door and the floor between it and his bed.

There was now a sharp sigh out in the hall. Then the door swung open noisily. François's large grimy tennis shoes stood on the green tiles.

“What?” the man asked. “Still asleep, my God!”

Daniel closed his eyes imperceptibly and—as a slight change in the morning routine—snored once.

“Ah, youth,” he heard François mutter just as Daniel's toes were being seized and shaken from side to side, his eyes becoming wild as he stared up now into François's face.

“Arsjanashbousyen,” Daniel gabbled thickly as recognition seemed to flood back in. He sank upon his tousled bed, panting slightly. “It's you,” he murmurred in his vile French. “Thank God!
For one terrible moment, one minute, I thought I was back in the dungeon in Istanbul.”

François cackled, eyes shining, almost dropping the tray he had balanced rather expertly along one forearm.

“Oh, Monsieur Daniel,” he said, “Yesterday morning you said Cairo.” He cackled again and leered down, with a roguish look, his face creased darkly under his four-day bristle.

“Cairo? Istanbul? What does it matter? I'm safe now that I'm here.” Daniel sighed brokenly, then asked, “What is there for breakfast?”

François's face fell for an instant at Daniel's abrupt shift from romance to reality, then brightened as he picked his way daintily over rumpled clothes and books and shoes to the bedside. He rested one end of the tray on the edge of the little table as he pushed the lamp, ashtray, more books, and a pile of sticky peachstones casually onto the floor.

The crashing gradually subsided.

“Flute! How careless I've become! Pardon! And here Monsieur Daniel has his little breakfast! This morning I have created a new dish, eggs as all Americans love them!”

He settled the tray onto the table and whisked the cover of a large silver vegetable dish off a plate. There indeed were four fried eggs, all curled about with at least a half pound of beautiful broiled bacon. Daniel, looking at this and the pots of hot milk and hot coffee, the plates of toast and dishes of butter and jam, the bowl of grapes, and even the pitcher of water, wondered weakly how there was enough china left in the pantry for the other trays.

The food spread so elegantly before him made his stomach quiver, faintly but unmistakably, and he wondered idly if he had a slight hangover. He remembered with an almost ghastly pleasure the last drink he'd drunk the night before, after Sara and Honor had gone off to bed, when he and Tim had gone tidily out to the kitchen with the glasses of their unexpected bout and had had one last snort. They had not meant, any of them, to sit drinking and talking all night. Each was tired and Nan and Lucy had long since
disappeared. But it had been good to sit there talking of food and people and pacifism and . . .

“Thank you, thank you, old fellow,” Daniel said. “Now if only I had a cigarette I could almost forget the horrors of my past. I could almost forget that night in Cairo, or was it Pago Pago?”

François stiffened, stood trembling slightly like a melancholy pointer.

“. . . but no, enough of that.”

“Would Monsieur Daniel accept one of my cigarettes? Of course they are not like American ones, mine being slightly perfumed. They are called The Pride of the Harem. Perhaps they would remind Monsieur Daniel of . . .?”

“Other days? Thank you, François. I shall accept one. My memories will be most pleasant, I assure you.” Daniel smiled as lasciviously as he could manage and lay the cigarette beside his coffee cup. Then as François stood looking down at him eagerly, he sank back and closed his eyes again.

A long silence, then Daniel snored almost too faintly to be heard, and François sighed.

Dan heard him tiptoe to the door, stopping as he went to pick up a pair of slacks and to fold them over the back of a chair with a disapproving cluck of his tongue. The door closed.

Just outside his room the little fountain poured out its thin constant stream, monotonous and musical. A breeze changed its notes, flattening the water for some moments against the stone before the water flowed straight again. Daniel listened without knowing, not only there at that moment in his tousled bed, but everywhere about the house. Sometimes he would forget to understand what Sara or the others or even Nan were saying while his ears pricked toward the ancient trickle of the fountain. In his dreams the rhythm of those waters beat like his own heart or the pulse of blood. Away from it, anywhere out of hearing, he felt uneasy now.

Daniel stretched, then rolled so that his feet could hang down comfortably over the end of the bed.

When he was old and filthy rich, he'd decided, he would command a bed three meters long. It would have sheets of striped pajama silk, these suspended above his toes with a delicate framework of wrought silver so that his feet could point straight upward without being dragged at by the weight of bedding. There would be blankets, of course, of the very softest materials and they'd be fixed in a way that when he was cold they'd automatically unroll from the foot of the bed and cover as much of him as needed warmth.

It might be a little difficult to work that one out—he'd have to have one of his brilliant young secretaries devote himself to the problem. Then by a series of subtle blackmailings he would get the poor devil in his power entirely and buy the idea for a pittance or perhaps a small monthly pension, an idea that would then add another cool million or two to his pocket.

People all over the world who were as tall and as bony as Daniel—for in spite of his advanced age at that far-distant time, he would still be lean and hard and in perfect physical condition—people who for countless generations had been forced to sleep folded into uncomfortable positions or with their feet dangling over the bed-end and people of all lengths who had spent wretched nights when they were too sleepy to pull up an extra blanket over their chilled bodies, when it would inevitably be too short, would bless his name.

He, of course, would have one improvement in his own bed that would not be for general sale. Each night, or for as many nights as his whim dictated, a beautiful woman would be tucked somewhere into the mighty expanse of those striped-pajama-silk sheets and electrically regulated blankets. She would be of whatever size he wanted and of any color from moonbeam to a deep purplish brown. One of his most trusted secretaries would make it his sole responsibility to see that she was sweet smelling and in all other ways delightful.

Daniel yawned, then opened his eyes, struggling to stay awake.

“‘“Hot dog!” cried Mr. Pennyfeather!'” he quoted, then rolled toward the little table, looking as if it might sag under the heavily
laden tray. He lay looking at the clutter of food for a moment before pouring himself a cup of sloppily put-together coffee.

Why in hell had François brought him all this food? The man was madly in love with him, of course. That was obvious from the way he giggled, fluttered, blushed like a schoolgirl at Dan's faintest look in his direction. But was there also a maternal feeling hidden somewhere in that hollow chest, along with all those girlish throbbings? Do I bring out the mother in him? Dan wondered irritably. Does he long to plump me up, to make me big and strong enough to fight life's battles?

Daniel spread strawberry jam thickly on a piece of his now cold toast and—while he was deciding whether it would be a good idea or not to eat in bed, watched three large drops of jam drip from his toast onto the pillow.

Damn and blast! What would Sara say?

For a moment Daniel felt almost panicky, then remembered he was no longer a small boy and that Sara, even in those far-distant days, had never beaten him nor even given him what might be called a tongue lashing. You'd think she was a demon, he thought, the way I cringe at the thought of her seeing this spotted pillow case. Anyway, she'll probably never see it and besides she's too polite and decent to mention it. Do I think she'd wait until the parson came to supper and then point at me and laugh stridently and tell everyone what I'd done? That I was a naughty rascal? You'd think so from the way I act.

Sara has me buffaloed is all, and she always has. She's thoughtful and never shouts or scolds and she's never cruel, yet I am still scared to death of what she'll say, even after all these years of being away at school and not even seeing her. She was good to me when I was little. Honor and I worshipped her and that's the trouble: We still do, even if we don't want to. We resent her importance to us; we'd rather spend all that admiration and consciousness on other people and she's there taking it.

Does she even want it? Daniel wondered. Does she even know that we are both obsessed with her?

But I never really thought of any of this before, that she might not even want us to think she's so almightly goddamned wonderful—I took it for grtanted that she loved us that way but I don't know that she does. In fact, I know she doesn't, as she doesn't seem to ask anything from us. And yet we're always thinking about her, wondering what she'll do and say and wear and whether she'll be in good spiritrs or pale and closed-mouthed as she sometimes is. That isn't right. We should be thinking more about women. I'm a man and should be thinking more about my future wife. I do, of course, but Sara's always there making me wonder what she'll think of the way my girl stands or eats cold chicken or gets drunk.

Daniel finished his coffee, then poured warm milk into the cup and drank that. He then carefully scraped at the red blotches on the pillow with the butter knife, licking it off, while his mind circled lazily around the surprising idea that his older sister might not find him as important as he found her.

He'd ask Honor. She was a quiet girl but she had pretty good ideas about some things. It would be rather embarrassing talking that way about Sara, of course. But Daniel felt he must find out, that a man should not live as long as he had without clarifying some of his more youthful impressions.

He stuck a fork into one of the eggs, which was quite stiff by now, then sighed with exasperation. What would he do with the damned things? François always looked so completely crushed when Daniel sent food back that he'd tried to hide them, putting them down the toilet, but that was disgusting. He'd even tried hiding his unwanted eggs in the clothes, which became even more disgusting when they were forgotten. He decided he might make a couple sandwiches for later.

Except he knew he would never eat them and that they would be put away and grow progressively nastier. Food was something to be enjoyed in public in this house, not nibbled in secrecy. He had never had such good things to eat before in his life and by God he was not going to start acting as if he were a sneaky child again in prep school, even to protect the heart of his slave from misery.

He ate three of the cold eggs, which did not take long. He then laid a piece of toast over the fourth egg so François might not notice it. Daniel wondered what had come over him that he no longer enjoyed the breakfasts that would have delighted him only a few months before. He was the type who matured rapidly, Daniel knew, and now ham and eggs were almost as odious to him as the liverwurst sandwich with chocolate malted milk that he'd so hungered for only a couple of years before. Daniel wished, almost passionately, that he had gone down to the wine celler before François had brought in this ghastly tray. Tim might have been there. They would have cracked two bottles of beer, had maybe had a wee nip of gin first, and a bowl of pretzels for something light from the icebox.

At the thought of the cold stream of beer washing from his throat the cloying taste of the jam and milk and stiff cold fried eggs, Daniel almost moaned aloud. He stretched back jerkily under the sheets and his eyes closed.

Why do I feel so different today? he wondered. It's a little like Christmas morning when I was a little kid. Are we going somewhere today? To Chamonix or Châtel-Saint-Denis? No? But something else very nice, but then everything is nice here. Last night, lighting a little fire so late at night after the long ride from Dijon and sitting there getting just a wee bit tight and talking with Tim and Sara was so good. Is it that we're all going to get dressed up tonight, at least the women are, and are having a party? I doubt this is what my excitement is about, I'm too old to get excited over things like this, but maybe we'll dance. Oh God! I can ask Nan to dance with me!