Two Sonnets
Altarwise by owl-light in the halfway house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies ….
Leary examined the book of poems by Kotlikoff, riffled the pages and looked at the poet’s photograph on the back of the dust jacket. “Tall,” said the caption, “cranelike and pensive, Boris Kotlikoff is the celebrant of the forgotten epiphanies in our dreary lives.” Whatever that meant, the gentleman did indeed lie graveward with his furies.
Leary lifted next a manuscript—Lyrics from a Shtetl, by Boris Kotlikoff, Composed in English by the Author—and opened it. The second page held a dedication:
To the Memory of the Prosteh Yidn
And Their Priceless Patrimony:
The Ashkenazi Shtetl
He reached out to his telephone and pushed a series of numbers. “Translation please. Under twenty-five words. I think it’s Yiddish.” He picked up Kotlikoff’s pocket-size appointment book. Tucked into it was the poet’s Registration Card, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization, Number 18,707,493: One-way ticket to sanctuary. He studied the photograph. It was older than the picture on the dust jacket. The eyes were still gentle and sensitive, but now there was a wariness to them, a cautiousness.
“Yes,” he said into the telephone. “I think it’s Yiddish. Prosteh Yidn.” He spelled it. “And Ashkenazi and Shtetl.” He picked up a pencil. “Prosteh Yidn means common people? Okay. Shtetl means village. In eastern Europe? Okay. Ashkenazi—eastern European Jewish culture. Okay. Thank you.”
He looked at the dedication again:
To the Memory of the Prosteh Yidn
And Their Priceless Patrimony:
The Ashkenazi Shtetl
He referred to the translated words on his pad: “To the Memory of the Common Jewish People”—or such—“And Their Priceless Patrimony” (their inheritance): The Eastern European village—the cultural inheritance from the Jewish villages of Eastern Europe….
Leary pictured a limitless rolling steppe deep in frozen snow and, in it, isolated crossroads villages with hovels and half-starved people bundled in rags, beating their arms, waiting for spring and food. There didn’t seem much there to be celebrated in a volume of verse.
There was simply nothing in the attaché case to upset the most doctrinaire Communist zealot.
Enough, he decided. He left the other items unexamined.
“Your airline ticket to Rome will be here tomorrow,” said his secretary.
He looked unhappily at the case. “Call Powell’s office. See if his night messenger has been there yet.”
A moment later she peered around the doorway. “His last pickup is five o’clock. He says he’ll take the case off your hands if you’ll buy him a drink.”
Good. He was rid of it. Kotlikoff was someone else’s problem. He left for the saloon.
When Leary arrived, Powell was already there, sitting up at the bar with his usual scotch and water. And sitting with him was a woman in her mid-fifties, pretty, with mirthful eyes. She watched Leary track wetly around the bar.
One at a time the two rain-wet attaché cases went up on the coatrack next to two pale blue suitcases and a tennis racket in a blue jacket. Leary gave the Kotlikoff case an extra push in farewell: Powell would take it down.
“This is Gloria,” said Powell. “And she’s waiting for her boyfriend, Anthony, who’s teaching her tennis. He says she has the worst backhand in the history of the game.”
“Awful,” said Gloria.
Powell looked at her sidewise. “If I were teaching you tennis, Gloria, I wouldn’t concentrate on your backhand.”
“He’s late,” said Gloria. She looked down at her wrist-watch. “Very late.”
“Anthony,” continued Powell, “is driving down from Pittsburgh to take her for a smashing fun-filled, sun-filled week at a tennis resort. Only he’s late.”
“Tennis?” said Leary doubtfully. He looked out at the rain in the street.
“Oh, they have indoor sports, too,” said Gloria.
Powell chuckled. “I’ll bet you’re an indoor sport, Gloria, all by yourself. A lot of fun, right?”
“Oh, sure.” She slapped a thick thigh. “Tons of fun.” “What’s new?” Leary asked Powell.
“Don’t ask. They yanked our whole detail up to Fun City.”
“It’s that serious?”
Powell shrugged. “Who knows? I hear that up in the UN the Russians are goosey as hell. They’re running up and down corridors, making phone calls, jumping into cabs and slamming lots of doors. Their intelligence people are prowling all over the country, and they’re definitely looking for something.”
“What?”
“Who knows? It sure ain’t a book of poems, buddy.”
“What the hell could he have done to them?”
“Yeah. What. Must be something fantastic, hey?”
Thomas, a lawyer from Commerce, backed through the door, collapsing and shaking his umbrella, then rubbing his chilled wet hands. “Hullo, Leary, Powell,” he said. “How you hitting them?”
“Okay,” said Leary.
“Someone told me you two were sitting on Halsey’s committee.”
“Nah. He’s already got half of Washington in that room.”
“You think there’s going to be trouble?”
The bartender leaned over confidentially. “A guy was just in here from Army Intelligence. He says the White House gives them twelve hours to pop that guy or we move.” He looked at their faces. “It’s true. Twelve hours or we spring him.”
“That’s interesting. We don’t even know where he is.”
“They know. They know. The CIA knows. I heard he had a bomb in that attaché case. He was going to lift the bricks on the Russian Embassy. The CIA will get him.”
Leary smiled at Powell. “Geller? He’ll get Kotlikoff?”
Powell looked bleakly at Leary. “Forget him. I told you.”
“How serious is it, Powell?” asked Thomas.
“So far it’s more mysterious than serious.”
Leary looked up at Kotlikoff’s attaché case. He looked at his watch, then at Gloria, who was gazing at him.
“What time is it?”
“Four-twenty.”
Gloria lit another cigarette, then looked blackly at the rain.
“To tell you the truth,” said Thomas, “I half-hope it happens. I’m sick of the suspense. Thirty years of government service waiting for the damned thing to drop and go boom. I’m sick of it. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to fall. Sick of the whole goddam thing.”
“You people are getting hysterical,” said Powell. “So far all that’s happened is that an immigrant poet is missing.” Gloria leaned over behind Powell’s back and waved a finger at Leary. “What do you do?”
“Crossword puzzles.”
“No. I mean, what’s your job?”
“Crossword puzzles.”
She giggled at him. “Oh. Actually I thought you were a lawyer. You look like a lawyer.”
Leary looked at Powell’s smirk. “Did you know that the FBI buys its information—by the shovelful?”
“Yes,” said Gloria. “I knew that.”
Another man entered. “Hey, Leary, you get that Benjamin file from me?” He laughed delightedly.
“You’re good to the help, Clauswitz.”
“Ah, come on. It needs your touch.”
“Sure. And every boy needs a dog.” Leary made a circling motion with his finger to the bartender.
“Five of you? All scotches? You in, Mr. Clauswitz? And the lady?”
Gloria hesitated. “What the hell. Why not? You’re a long time dead.”
Clauswitz looked her over from head to shoe, then sat down, gazing frankly at her blouse. “Hi.”
“Hi. How’s your backhand?”
“It’s great if I stay away from the tennis. Any news on that Kotlikoff? Hey, Charlie, turn on the TV. Get some news.”
More people were entering now, thronging the barroom as the
streets began filling with the evening auto traffic. Voices murmured. Most of the patrons stood scowling at the newscaster on the television screen.
“Here’s looking up your bloody nose, Leary,” said Clauswitz.
Gloria poked Leary’s arm. “How many friends have you got?”
“A lot. A bunch. Multitudes.”
“A lot? Oh, I bet you have a lot. No? Two? No? One? None? Oh, some. You must have some. You care a lot about people, I can tell. How many friends?”
“Tons. Here.” Leary held up his glass. “Here’s to sunfilled weekends.”
“Here’s to friends,” trilled Gloria. She placed a hand at her throat and stretched out her chin to sip. “Yum.”
“Salute.”
“It’s the goddam Jews. This is all tied in with Israel. We’re going to get dragged into this thing. We’re prisoners of Tel Aviv,” said Clauswitz.
“We are all prisoners anyway,” said Powell.
“Yeah, sure—as you sit there sucking up your scotch.”
“We are all prisoners in our own skins. Our bodies are prisons, our personalities are prisons. Time is a prison. History is a prison. So what the hell’s one more prison?”
“Jesus, here comes the heavy stuff,” said Thomas. “I feel a bad headache coming on.”
“Who do you belong to, Gloria?” asked Clauswitz. “Powell?”
“Who’s Powell?”
“Him.”
“Oh. No. I’m with Anthony.”
“Anthony. Where is he?”
“He’s on the pike between here and Pittsburgh.” She drew back from Clauswitz’s leering face. “He drives nails with his fists.”
“Well, if he doesn’t show soon, you’re mine. I just elected you the girl I’d most like to watch the H bomb with.”
“Gee. Thanks. That’s wonderful. This morning all I had to think about was my tennis vacation, and now I’m sitting here talking about the end of the world.” She turned away and leaned across Powell’s back and beckoned Leary closer. “You should have friends. They’re very important. You have the loneliest face. Do I have a lonely face? You have a nice lower lip. You would never do anything mean. Do you like girls? I mean, do you fool around sometimes?”
Thomas said to Leary: “My grandfather used to say that life is just a dirty Irish trick.”
“No, no. Listen,” Gloria said to him. “I have a theory. Life plays a game—like tennis, see? What it does is to wait until you’re all set up and you think to yourself, ‘Not bad. I’m making it. Not bad. I can handle it.’ And then life comes around with the tennis rackets and hands you one and you’re on. You’re challenged. And at first you think it’s just a game, and then you know it isn’t. See? And then life just plays to your backhand. And until you die, it just keeps playing to your backhand. Isn’t that a good theory?”
“I think that’s a fine theory,” said Clauswitz.
“No, it isn’t,” said Gloria. “It stinks. And life stinks and where is that son of a bitch?” She pulled a wadded tissue from her purse and spilled loose cigarettes on the wet bar.
“It’s like my grandfather used to say.”
Gloria shook her head. “What does Mister What’s-his-name say?”
“Who?”
“Kot-li-koff. What does Mr. Kotlikoff say?”
“One word,” said Powell.
“What?”
“Hellllp.”
Gloria objected shrilly to the sudden laughter. “How can you joke about the poor man? A sensitive, delicate poet.” Her eyes turned a pulpy red, and she wiped the tears on the back of her hand. “We could all die tonight. All the flowers. All the children. Even yours. It’s not to laugh.”
“Forget it, doll,” said Clauswitz. “Tomorrow is opening day for baseball, and that’ll push Kotlikoff back to page one hundred ninety in the paper. Someone will throw the first ball, and the sun will come out. Let’s have another scotch.”
Leary looked up at the attaché case, picturing a weeping Mrs. Kotlikoff, blowing her nose like Gloria. Weepy eyes: an earth filled with Niobes weeping; Mrs. Kotlikoff weeping over her husband’s attaché case.
“It hurts to look at your eyes,” said Gloria. “You need hugs.”
Well before five, the barroom had become overcrowded, the bass rumble and shrill bird chatter of voices all talking about Kotlikoff. One of the bartenders turned on a fan over the door to draw off the tobacco smoke. Leary turned and looked yet again, compulsively, at the two attaché cases on the shelf next to the two baby blue suitcases and the tennis racket.
Gloria saw his look. “What’s in them? You keep staring at them.”
“A genie.”
“A genie? Like in a bottle?”
“Yep.”
“Oh. Let it out.”
“I think it already is.”
The bartender said: “It’s crazy. Why would Russia do it? It could cause a war. The guy’s been walking around loose for years, and all of a sudden they grab him. It just doesn’t make sense.”
An abrupt round of applause was aimed at a face coming through the crowd. “Here’s the mayor of Pittsburgh.”
“Atta boy. Better late than never.”
“The sun-filled tennis weekend’s here.”
Gloria wiped her eyes and hugged Anthony wetly, bending his eyeglasses. “Bastard.”
He patted her back. “Pile-up on the pike. Traffic backed up for twenty-six miles. Goddam rain.”
He pulled her baby blue bags and her tennis racket down from the rack as she stepped down from her stool, bracing herself heavily against Powell’s back. “Doll,” she said to Leary, breathing on his cheek. She pressed a ball of paper into his hand and kissed his cheek and upper lip. Her kiss was soft and surprisingly sensuous.
“Have a great weekend, Gloria.”
“Gloria, keep the sun shining.”
“Bye-bye. Bye-bye.”
They pressed through the crowd to the door just as the bartender banged the ship’s bell on the wall. “Five o’clock. Happy Hour. Five o’clock. All drinks half price until six. Who’s first?”
Everyone applauded.
Then Powell stood up. “That the case, Leary?”
Leary went over to the rack.
A middle-aged man was talking to a young woman who leaned against the rack and nervously flicked ashes from her cigarette with one hand and jiggled the ice in her drink with the other.
“The Russian schoolteacher,” said the man. “Can’t remember her name. Back in the forties. She went to Tolstoy’s daughter’s house up in White Plains. And Russian agents kidnapped her and brought her back. And she climbed out of a window in the Russian Mission and jumped and ended up in a hospital, but she escaped. Remember? She broke her ankle or something.”
“I don’t know,” said the girl. “I wasn’t born until 1954.”
Leary reached the case down in the din of the Happy Hour and walked back to Powell.
Altarwise by owl-light in the halfway house
The gentleman lay graveward with his furies….
“Five o’clock. Happy Hour.” The bell rang again. Behind him the TV newscaster talked of Armageddon.
“Forget it, Powell,” said Leary. “I’ve decided to take it myself.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. And I don’t even like poetry.”
It was still raining heavily. The inevitable blown-out umbrellas were stuffed into wire trash baskets, and the office throngs were struggling onto buses with their newspapers that shouted crisis.
Heads down, bodies averted from the slanting rain as they filed onto the buses from the puddled streets, they struck Leary as survivors clambering into the lifeboats of a foundering ship.
When he got home, he made a pot of coffee and sat in an upholstered chair in the living room with a crossword puzzle.
A crossword puzzle was a miniature, reasonable world. For every question an answer, a single correct answer; for diligence, the reward of completeness. Yet all the words together signified nothing;
grammatically they didn’t blend into a thought. After a day with words of profound import—legal words, political words, legislative words, dangerous words—it was a relief to use words simply as toys.
But he couldn’t concentrate on the puzzle. Kotlikoff’s attaché case drew his eye repeatedly to where it lay in shadow on the chair in the kitchen: a bearer of secrets. “Come on. You can tell me. What did he do?” In the silence, rain pelted his window.
Softly, with stateliness, the ceramic French clock chimed nine times. In its long, violent history, the world had staggered through yet one more hour intact—an astonishing feat.
Irritated, he went over to the case. Alone with it now, away from the atmosphere of the office and committee room, he was even more reluctant. There was something intensely personal about another man’s case. It was a private communications system: back and forth like a shuttlecock between home and office, the attaché case was the bearer of the impedimenta of civilization. It carried everything from shoelaces and broken watches to—in Kotlikoff’s case—some of the great lines of poetry in the language. He looked at the hypodermic syringe, the insulin needle—life-giver.
The spiral-bound stenographer’s pad was filled with miscellaneous entries in Kotlikoff’s large and firm handwriting, done in a thick flowing line with, like his speech undoubtedly, a foreign accent. Many of the entries concerned the English language, which obviously fascinated Kotlikoff. “Too many s’s slow down the line”; “consonants have light, have color.” And there were numerous comments about other poets, with lines of their poetry.
Catch Me: Kill Me Page 3