Quinn's Book

by William Kennedy

  “Look at that mess,” he said, shaking his head.

  “The remnants of beauty,” said Maud, nodding.

  Quinn and Maud were entering a new condition. Despairing of more intimate conversation, Quinn told her of a story he was writing about John the Brawn and that Calvin Potts was interested in printing in his newspaper.

  “You will be very good at what you do,” Maud said. “I myself am riding horses again for the first time since we lived in Spain. Obadiah has wonderful horses.”

  “I’ve never been on the back of a horse,” Quinn said.

  “It’s a majestic experience,” said Maud.

  Quinn nodded, uncertain of the meaning of “majestic,” and how riding a horse could be conducive of that.

  “We ought to walk through the woods,” Quinn said, and in a gesture that defied the static present tense of his life he grabbed Maud’s hand and stepped over the pic-nic leavings and onto a path that led he knew not where.

  “You want me to walk in the woods?” said Maud.

  “Are you so delicate?”

  “I’m not at all delicate.”

  “Then we’ll go into the woods,” said Quinn. “I don’t like what’s been going on with you today.”

  “Nothing has been going on with me.”

  “Nothing indeed, and more nothing. What I expect from you is something. I expect you to love me as I love you. I expect you to want to kiss me and hold me as I want to kiss and hold you.” Quinn thought he might have stolen this line from a poem.

  “Yes,” said Maud. “I understand that. But what happened is that I spent the night baking a dumb cake to find out how to behave with you.”

  “Why would you bake a dumb cake? Why wouldn’t you bake a smart cake if you wanted to know something?”

  “All cakes are dumb.”

  “I think I always knew that.”

  “The true dumb cake helps you discover who will be your husband.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Quinn. “More spirits.”

  “If you like.”

  “What do you do with a dumb cake after it’s baked?”

  “You put your initials on it, you eat some of it, and you wait for your future husband’s double to come and also put his initials on it.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “No,” said Maud, and she paused. “You also show your breasts to it.”

  “You show your breasts to a cake?” said Quinn.

  “That’s part of the ritual.”

  “It would make more sense if you showed your breasts to me, if I’m going to be your husband.”

  “My breasts are too small to show to anyone. Especially you.”

  “A m I so much less than a cake?”

  “It’s not less or more, you ninny. It’s what must be. I didn’t invent this ritual.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” said Quinn, and he grabbed her hand and pulled her along. Suddenly he stopped and threw his arms around her and kissed her with lip and tongue, but could say nothing. He finished his kissing and pulled her toward the street.

  “Your face is very rough,” Maud said to him, stumbling along behind him. “You should shave.”

  “I don’t shave,” Quinn said. “People who are lower than cakes don’t have to shave.”

  “You’re not lower than a cake, Daniel,” said Maud. “You don’t understand my situation, and you don’t understand me.”

  “It’s true I don’t.”

  “If you shave I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Then we’ll go to the barber right now.”

  “No, we’ll go back to Obadiah’s. I’ll get you John’s razor.”

  “I don’t know how to use a razor. I’d cut off my nose.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. If a primitive like John McGee can use a razor, so can you.”

  “John also knows how to use his fists and knock out the champion of the world, and I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Then it’s time you learned,” Maud said, stepping up into their hired carriage.

  Quinn stood before the mirror of the shaving stand in an upstairs bathroom and looked at himself. His shirt was hidden under the towel Maud had tucked into his collar. She had fetched all of John’s shaving gear: soft-bristle brush, mug of soap, bone-handled straight razor, also a jar of alum to cauterize cuts—medical wisdom she had come by while watching John shave. Maud opened the razor and put it in Quinn’s hand.

  “You know how it’s done, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Of course I know how it’s done. I saw my father shave a thousand times.”

  “Well, don’t cut yourself in any vital spots. Go careful till you get the knack of it.”

  “I don’t need to be told.”

  “Then I shall tell you no more for now. Ta ta.”

  And she left.

  Quinn touched the razor to his right cheek, a fly’s weight on the skin, and moved it gently downward. Some of the dry, soapless stubble gave way before the razor’s formidably sharp edge, but with the pain of snagged hair. The truth was that Quinn had never seen his father shave. The man wore a beard. Quinn now looked at John’s brush and soap as hostile objects, for if you cover your face with soap how will you see what you’re supposed to cut? He continued his dry shave. It hurt. Still, he had not gouged himself. He pressed on. It hurt.

  Eck.

  A cut.

  Reluctantly he wet his face and soaped one side of it and around the mouth, making small dabs with the brush, using the circular motion he remembered from watching a barber work. He moved his lower jaw to the left and puckered his lips as he lathered his right cheek, moved jaw to the right and made opposite pucker when lathering left. With his first finger he wiped his lips clean of soap, picked up the razor and began anew the elimination of his downy whiskers. Blood was coloring the soap on his cheek, but he tried not to watch. He shaved on.

  Eck.

  Another cut. More blood.

  He pressed on, carefully, learning to let the razor glide over his skin, shearing the whiskers with newfound ease as the blood flow intensified. He finished, rinsed his face in the now pink water, then set about applying alum to the cuts as Maud had instructed him. His blood stopped leaking but he felt new pain from the alum’s stypticity. He dried his face and stared at himself in the mirror. He concluded he would have to shave regularly from now on, a relentless obligation. He would, in spite of all, develop an awesome talent for shaving himself. He could feel that. He would be very good at what he did. Maud had predicted that.

  Life does seem to conspire against the lofting of the spirit, does it not? Quinn came down clean-shaven from the bathroom and looked for Maud. He asked the footman if he’d seen her and the man said he had not.

  Quinn went to the veranda and sat in the largest wicker rocker in North America. In the waning sunlight of the afternoon he mused on beauty, wealth, women, and the brilliance of the person who had invented shaving soap. He studied the architecture of Obadiah’s veranda with its twisted columns and the perfection of its paint, which seemed ever new. He relished the rolling symmetry of the lawn and gardens, the trellises and arches, the beds of roses and lush stands of mature trees. He felt a profound serenity overtaking him and he began to doze. He was awakened by the footman, who asked if he cared for tea. Obadiah had seen him napping and thought the tea might brace him. Quinn smiled and said yes, tea would be pleasant.

  He rocked, no longer worrying where Maud might be. He knew she would be along, probably in a new dress, or in a peculiar costume, or with a new hairdo. Whatever her look, her mood would be the reverse of what it had been when they parted. She would be effusive, flirtatious. She would open her mouth and pretend to kiss him. She would tell him stories of old Spain, or of majestic horseback riding, or of her mother and the King, or she would reveal arcane secrets of love that Magdalena had passed on to her.

  Quinn equated Maud with his Celtic potato platter: both of them agents of change and illusion, both of uncertain origin and significa
nce—the platter waiting underground for another generation to unearth it, quantifying its own value and mystery in the shallow grave; and Maud propounding mysteries of the cosmos with every Maudbreath. Buried, they eluded. Resurrected, they grew lustrous.

  The footman brought tea and cucumber sandwiches. Quinn apologized for not liking cucumbers and asked was there an alternative. The footman said he would speak with the cook, and returned with caviar canapés, diced celery, and raw peppers. Quinn tasted and loathed each in turn, an awareness dawning in him that something was amiss. It was unlikely that so many foods chosen by a chef should all displease him. Negative matter was being imposed on him. He wondered if Maud’s spirits were stalking him. He saw dusk settling on Obadiah’s landscape and imagined himself starving to death while the footman brought him an unending stream of food samplers: lamb’s eyes and bull’s testicles, goat fritters and fried pigskin. These would be perfectly cooked, elegantly off ered. Quinn would reject each, and passersby would soon notice his weight loss.

  Obadiah sat down in the rocker next to him.

  “Enjoying yourself?” Obadiah asked.

  “I enjoyed the tea, but I wonder what’s keeping Maud.”

  “No one has seen her since last night. She’s not in her room.”

  “I was with her today. We took a carriage ride and came back here so I could shave with John McGee’s razor. I sat here to wait for her. She’s a girl of a different sort.”

  “A different sort exactly,” said Obadiah. “No one has seen her since last night.”

  “I was with her today. We took a carriage ride.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What do you mean, if I say so?”

  “Well, you’re a young lad.”

  “I was with her.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do,” said Quinn.

  “A horse is missing. From the stable.”

  “A horse?”

  “One of my horses. A horse.”

  “Where did it go?”

  “Well, that’s certainly a question. Where did it go?”

  “Do you think Maud took the horse?”

  “It’s been suggested.”

  “Maud wouldn’t steal a horse.”

  “Perhaps she’s only out riding. But she’s been gone since last night and so has the horse, and no one has seen either one of them.”

  “I have. I was with her today. We took a carriage ride.”

  “So you’ve said. That’s quite extraordinary. But no one has seen her since last night.”

  “I have. We took a carriage ride.”

  “I think you should stop saying that.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “It’s your truth. It’s certainly not my truth. I wasn’t out for a ride with anybody today.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “But you keep contradicting me. The fact is that no one wants you around here. You come in and use the razor and sit on the veranda and reject my food and now you tell me I’m a liar.”

  “I didn’t say that. Where is Maud, anyway?”

  “We would all prefer it if you went somewhere else and asked your questions.”

  “I want to see Maud.”

  “You’ll have a long wait. She’s run away with my roan stallion.”

  “She knew I was waiting for her.”

  “She took her bag.”

  “She took her bag?”

  “No one has seen her since last night.”

  “I have. Where is Magdalena? Where is John?”

  “They don’t want to see you. You better go along now, like a good fellow. My carriage will take you to the village.”

  “How do I know Maud is gone?”

  “No one has seen her since last night.”

  “I have, we took a carriage ride.”

  Obadiah stood up. Quinn resisted standing, but here was the man ejecting him from his home. Quinn stood.

  Two days later he returned and asked for Maud. The footman said she had not been seen in three days. Quinn asked to see Magdalena and John but was told they were not at home. The footman told Quinn he was no longer welcome at the Griswold estate.

  Quinn returned to Mrs. Trim’s rooming house on Phila Street and stood looking out of the window of his room at people walking and talking with one another on the sidewalk. He grew irrationally jealous of these amiable strangers and decided to lie upon his bed until the jealousy passed. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, until he felt the energy of his hostility wane. He perceived that he was not angry with Maud. He dwelled on that and felt humiliated, abandoned, and lost yet again. This condition sickened him, an emetic to his soul.

  He went back to the window and looked down at the people on the street. They had become normal. He liked them now, liked the way they preened in their finery: fashion on the hoof, style on parade.

  He framed Maud’s face in his memory.

  This girl, he said to himself, is beyond your control. She has excluded you from her future. Well, so be it. Forget her. This part of my life is over and I will suck up to no one. I am done with all the tattered nonsense of first love. The word itself caught in my throat: love. In the years ahead I would be unable to abide all the fatuous love palaver that would assault my ears. Humming “Kathleen Mavourneen,” I packed my bag. But I caught myself humming and knew what it meant. I stopped humming, thinking: Done. Yes. Done.

  The malevolent and terrifying thing shall of itself strike such terror into men that almost like madmen, while thinking to escape from it, they will rush in swift course upon its boundless forces.

  — LEONARDO DA VINCI

  WE WILL NOW TALK of events that take place in fact and memory after Daniel Quinn, that orphan of life, now twenty-nine years of age, arrives by train at Albany from the mudholes of hell. Quinn, for more than two years, has been traveling with the Union Army, interviewing generals, captains, and soldiers of the line, writing about their exploits at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Monocacy and elsewhere, describing their casualties, camp life, army food, the weather, incompetent surgeons, Southern women.

  The day in Albany is intermittently sunny and overcast, and the clerk of the weather says no rain is expected, that Albany’s long drought will continue, and that passing rain clouds are merely illusory elements in a dry world. Quinn has already bought a horse and saddle, the mode of travel that has become part of his being, and is riding, at an ambling gait suited to the slowness of his mind, toward the Staats mansion of revered history. The waters of the Staatskill course toward him as he ascends the hill, arousing in him thoughts of time spent near other water . . .

  He was then riding with the Forty-fourth out of Albany, camped on one bank of the Rappahannock, with rebel troops camped on the other. For two days men of both camps swam in the river under an unspoken truce. Jim Lynch from Saratoga broke the silence when he swam to the rebel shore and yelled to the nearest reb, “You got a newspaper we can read?” The reb waved one at him and Lynch waded to shore, naked, took the paper and thanked the reb, swam back with one hand high, and gave the paper to Quinn. It was from Richmond, only days old.

  In a day’s time the swimmers were killing each other. In three days’ time Quinn, walking the battlefield seeking survivors among the dead thousands, heard a wounded reb ask for water. Quinn gave him his canteen and let the reb drink his fill. Then he wet the reb’s leg wounds with the remaining water. Quinn considered this a fair exchange for the Richmond newspaper. The reb could not move, but he would not die of his leg wounds. The water will cool, it will loosen, it will cleanse. It will be interesting, important to the reb. But do not touch him.

  The reb thanked Quinn by telling him of his optimism before battle. Such optimism was an inversion. It was based upon the vision of his wife beckoning him into the barn with their secret love gesture. The reb knew this was a temptation sent to him by the devil. He knew the barn was death and that his wife would never invite him into death’s hayloft.

  The reb was of
North Carolina stock, strong of face and form, and Quinn knew he had farmed all his life. He revered Longstreet and grieved over the outcome of the battle. He had not known defeat in two years of war. Quinn covered the reb’s legs with a blanket taken from a dead reb’s bedroll, then found a rebel canteen and filled it for the reb in the river. He filled his own canteen and rinsed the taste and touch of the reb from its neck. He walked across the darkening field, where the broken artillery was strewn, but found no other survivors. Six horses stood hitched to a limber, all with limp necks, all erect in harness: twenty-four legs in an upright position, dead.

  Quinn patted the neck of his new horse of the Albany instant, thankful for its life, trustful of its strength. It may be that I am coming out of death, he thought, though he sensed this was untrue, or at least a confusion. Probably he was still in death’s center and losing ground. But even the possibility of leaving death behind cheered him, and always there was the banal reality: he had survived and others had not. Such a thought made him as optimistic as the wounded reb before battle. Rubbing elbows with optimism calmed Quinn and he rode on toward the mansion.

  At first glimpse he knew the mansion had grown. More rooves and towers rose up from it, more porches spanned its new girth. A Chinese roof topped one new wing and on another rococo carvings spun and curled upward and around new doors and archways, new pillars and dormers. Hillegond and Dirck are manic builders. Lost in a house suited for multitudes, they create yet more space for their solitary comings and goings.

  Quinn circled the mansion to see what had become of the structures and gardens of his memory. Amos’s tomb and the pump and boat houses were as he remembered. A small, elegant structure was new (this was the shooting villa), but the gazebos and trellises looked as they always had, and today were brilliant with flowers, though the lawns that surrounded them were brown from the drought. All buildings were newly painted in the uniform colors of yore—a rich brown with beige trim—and all the brickwork was that same pale, rusty red.