Queenie

by Hortense Calisher

  Next in comes Rudolph, ninety-year-old charter member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, on the arm of Martyne, who is in yards of fox, and sighs contentedly, after the compliments, “I just can’t give up the baby-doll stuff!” Rudolph hasn’t been a regular for years, but she’s brought him, instead of her Man from Dixie, on the chance that Tekla, wrestler-in-residence to the UN Secretariat, might be bringing one of her blacks.

  She has, swinging in with that nice turbaned one from Sierra Leone, where those new diamond strikes are. Careless Swede that she is, she’s wearing an old evening ermine, cut shorter. “White,” she says, shrugging. “For summer. And goes well with black.”

  Alba’s late again; she’s always in church, making novenas for some wife. Today she’s wearing a little nothing made of what she says is vicuña—it always infuriates the girls when she has to tell them. She never wears fur. Everything on her gets plainer, as she gets richer.

  “Your clothes are like higher metaphysics, Alba,” says Oscar. “Sooner or later, they’ll disappear.”

  Not Alba though, she’ll be there, with a neck like a Brancusi, and a long bod like two of them. Feet? You’re surprised she has them. Married keep-the-faith bankers go for her—the kind always interested in winged creatures. “Did you confess me?” she says to them. “Don’t forget to.”

  She never brings them here. Like always, she’s with Candido, a package-size panther with double eyebrows and hips like fists, who she claims is homosexual and her brother. We pretend like anyway we believe this last. She keeps showing us his birth certificate. Like Oscar says, “Alba is extra-cautious. Candido is a forgery twice.”

  Candido is wearing mink.

  Meanwhile, Aurine has got herself and me neatly out of this competition. I, the guest of honor, am allowed a sleeveless sportdress, as a gone chick anyway, on my way to being a college girl. “To dress for the weather——” says Aurine, rolling her eyes as she greets the others, “the last privilege of youth!” I know what she hopes for me, by next summer maybe, if I come to my senses. Suffocation—by sable.

  She herself is radiant, in white organdie, and ownership. Yards of both surround her. Who can suspect that the year-long feud in the kitchen has only been settled for the day? Or worse, has come to a head?

  “Marcel will cook, grâce à Dieu,” she’s whispered to me, meaning “young Marcel,” chef fresh last year from Paris, only learning the ropes here en route to a Beverly Hills offer—but if she lets him “marry” me, which he can’t credit isn’t in her power, he will stay. And if my dowry is half the restaurant.

  I’m intrigued by this; no one’s ever wanted me for anything except my looks before. Or for something that serious. I’ve already obeyed instructions to go in the kitchen and sweeten him a little. “No more than a kiss, Queenie, and don’t mention college.” He thinks this is my birthday fete.

  To Oscar, she’s just sighed, “Thanks be to God, Marcel will after all serve.”

  This is “old Marcel,” maître d’ from before her time, and present figurehead. Until today, many have half believed that he may be the owner here, and he has never contradicted it. He’s standing now at the service door, watching us darkly, not a twitch on his bloodhound chops, his artisan fingers stiff at his side. His boast is that he has never shaken hands in his life.

  He is also possibly the only male-male in our world who doesn’t want to sleep with Aurine. Though a crime passionnel might interest him. She’s given him the cut direct, by hiring a chef of his same name. Out of dozens of suitable Jacques’s and Georges’s in the Paris Register, she’s maliciously picked the one to make him “old” Marcel. Out with that one, of course, when he himself buys the place; a son of the Massif Central, and of the greatest food in France, knows how to bide his time. Until today—and that dress—she’s led him to believe she will sell.

  “Simply super, Aurine!” says Potto. “Is it a tea gown? Or a peignoir?”

  It has ribbons, and a train so slight you’re not sure of it. She clasps her hands under her chin and bends her head in dowager welcome, to Oscar, who won’t mind her success of a day, to her beautiful furred friends, in appreciation of theirs, and to me, as the occasion. “It’s an At Home.”

  Still, she’d have caught on that old Marcel was up to something—who could dream what—if the Lord in his wisdom hadn’t sent us a new guest.

  We’ve been expecting her, poor thing—being what she is, and on such an errand, even for a ranee. Taffy has wired: “Coming to Mt. Sinai, for a slight alteration.” And sending ahead a companion for her stay. One of her war orphans. “The sweet little Indo-Chinese one, remember?” We think we recall the sad little stick—Taffy had eight. “The only one who’s turned out well. Out of all that correspondence! It’ll be so nice to have somebody near who’s family. Loves America. Or plans to. And will have the key to my flat. Do meet the plane one of you. And don’t let the dear brood.”

  The girls rather fancy themselves as foster mothers. Also gladly cleaving to any request from Taffy, who otherwise reports herself “Still on a pearly cloud” with the rajah—and might someday ask them out.

  The “alteration,” being what they think it is, isn’t mentioned, even among themselves. Touch wood. Change is their enemy, and they’re all nearing the age for it. Well; you can’t lie to God; some of them are there. As Gran said once, when I asked a leading question in that department, “Gynecology’s so catching, love. Lower your voice.”

  “Well, the little one will take Taffy’s mind off things,” Aurine, the frankest, is just saying. “And you girls can all take turns at her.” Since she herself will have the restaurant.

  The girls agree, putting on their tenderest expressions—and not yet taking off their coats. Oscar says what those girls won’t take off often surprises him.

  So when the airport limousine draws up in front of L’Alouette, we’re all gathered round the door to meet her. In the rear of the circle is a fine, positive, UN selection of uncles of all ages, black and white, fat and thin—tall Potto, tiny Rudolph, the beaming turban, hostly Oscar, and Candido, who has taken off his coat—he’s a man. And out front for her, a selection of mothers right out of Aesop: a vicuña, an ermine, a fox and a seal. And an At Home.

  And here she is, she is, on the arm of Juan, the dazed busboy, who is all we could spare to meet the plane. He can’t bear to release her, we see that at once. The limou sine doesn’t seem to want to leave either; half the heads are out the window. Probably the plane at Kennedy is still grounded, hoping she’ll come back.

  She’s tiny, but molded. Her legs are those Oriental bamboo ones look so well in boots. Gold kid ones, up past what in us Goths would be hips. Above that, a short tunic, in a kind of sheer chain mail. We don’t know it’s real gold, yet. And underneath it all, pure, matchless—pelt.

  On her head, when we get that far, is a kind of frail tiara we know is gold right away. On top of a short bob so nutty simple Picasso would want to investigate. The face is Kwan-Yin, but newer. The pearl on one hand is no larger than an oyster. When she shimmers, she smiles, or vice versa. Eyes by Save-A-Child. And two sets of star-point lashes. And when she speaks, at least to her foster mothers, it’s Li Po.

  She bows deep, in reverence. “Honowable Wadies.” Then twirling round to me with a tinkle of kinship, “Hai, hai. We must be same age!”

  Oh, Oriental manners are the end, aren’t they, I signal Oscar. He’s not looking. Our orphan has turned to the gents, hands pressed together, head bent, eyes concentrated on a spot of her humble self. She is apparently introducing her crotch to them. “It is Nym.”

  “We-elcome, mmmm,” says Oscar, in the most impresario voice recent hard times has had from him. “Welcome, mmm, to our new recruit!”

  So how can anybody bother to watch old Marcel? Who is serving exquisitely what we’ve been told to expect—something new. The young one bears the old one no ill will and has let the maître d’ choose the meal. From the Maître’s native province. “Today,” he says, in his
hoarse, rock-candy French, “we are in Perigord.” And starting off, young Marcel, through the glass arcade that separates us and him, waves across the sea at me.

  But who listens, who watches, who even tastes at first?—when Potto is telling Nym, “Do let me help you with your l and your r while you’re here, I’m an old China hand, haw haw, not very old.” Candido clearly wants her to trust her p’s and q’s to him?

  She agrees to everything, and promises nothing. “Oh I am so bad, bad, bad with the alphabet.”

  “Cou farci,” old Marcel says. “Gooseneck estoffed by foie gras et porc.” After that, a strange strangled phrase from him which nobody pays heed to, under the spell of hearing how Nilowan, half-Thai leftover of a Seoul army officer and an “honowable wady from Kowea”—a sweep of the starpoints here—has become, with U.S. assistance and some foreign travel—Nym. “I have so manee sponseurs!” Nym sighs.

  Dulcy rouses. “Yes dear. And do you travel with them all?”

  “SOUPE A L’EAU DE BOUDIN!” Marcel announces. “Of the blood-pudding vawter made. Specialité de Carnaval!” And again that half hoot, half snuffle.

  Delicious maybe, if a little strong—but we’re hanging on Nym’s reply. “Hai, hai,” Nym laughs, with a blinding shimmer, “Nym is orphan.”

  Meanwhile, Tekla’s man from Sierra Leone is much struck by Nym’s pearl. “From Burma?” he says, holding the finger it covers. “I have two, very like. One of course belongs to my wife.”

  “So luckee, your wife.”

  The girls by now have their coats off, and knuckle-dusters on.

  “I love geography,” Martyne says. “When it doesn’t get too closee. I’m from Dixie, myself.”

  Only Aurine has her mind on the meal. She wonders aloud whether old Marcel hasn’t made the menu too hearty. Or whether young Marcel mightn’t have gone too far with the spices? But for once, she suffers the fate of hostesses. No one is minding her. She’s At Home.

  “Cepes à la Perigordine,” Marcel says, this time soft and insinuating. “Mawshroom with-ah le baykonne, ay le pahrrsley, ay le——” His voice dwindles. Again that snigger.

  “And with—what?” says Aurine.

  “But with the garleek and le grape-uh joos, like always, Madame!” He’s surprised she should ask. It is the true recipe, he can swear to it. Or ask of the other Marcel. He stands there, his long cheeks haughty with the contempt for human interest that has made him the best maître d’ on Ninth Avenue.

  But Nym is saying Taffee is the sponsor she loves best.

  “You’ve met her?” Oscar’s sniffing the wine.

  “Hai, hai.” Yes yes, or no no, or my my or up yours as the case may, the butterfly on her head wags just the same. “Nym is ranee before Taffee.” It seems they take turns at it.

  And that takes care of the poularde truffée, soused in cognac, and the tournedos à la perigordine, sauce Madère.

  “This wine is very acid,” Oscar says. “Or something is.”

  “From Perigord,” Marcel says, “not from Bordeaux.” Each time he trots through the arcade from the kitchen, which is glass only from waist-height up, we see him stop and bend over the waiter’s station, where trays are rested, salad mixed, wine supplied, et cetera. He runs through again, and comes out redder-faced, with a new bottle. “I have corrected it.”

  “He’s drinking,” Aurine whispers. And Oscar says, “Well, why not, but which one of them’s buying your wine?”

  And Nym says, “Taffee so much looking forward alteration!”

  “Artelation” is what she says, actually, but who’s quibbling? Not Potto, who’s raising his brows in that tic tic which jumps his tortoise-shells. Not Rudolph, whose tiny old pan scarcely has room for the distress on it; at ninety, he values this crowd because they’re so young. And not me.

  Up to now, I’ve been sunk under the pall of my Ninth Avenue personality, of years and years here as a jeune jeune fille. Now and then, I wave back, at young Marcel. Who Aurine has reminded me now and then is very good-looking, and on the way to a grand career. Of course don’t marry him; she happens to know he already is. But I could break down and let him ruin me; it’s getting late.

  He is good-looking, in that Frenchy sharp-nosed way, and I’ve reason to know his lashes are even longer than mine, though he didn’t even take off his hat. Today’s cooking is not to my taste, but maybe I’m the trouble with it. Meanwhile I’m squinting at him, through the same cautious virgin lens I direct on all candidates: In years to come, will I be able to bear looking back at you, thinking you were the first one? Father, I don’t suppose there are many such lenses left—and I sure wish mine were rosier.

  I blame my background, of course—the same as anybody. And right now, all of it, the girls that is, and Aurine included, are looking glum. They might be looking at a pâté of women’s organs, all of which have had to “come out.” At a certain age. Which, until Taffy, no man has dared associate with theirs. And this interests me. Women’s insides, what makes them common property?

  Alba says hushed, “I’ll burn a candle for her.”

  Tekla, who’s been eating herself into a Swede stupor, is the only one able to look mortality in the eye. And punch it. After all, she had that rajah once. “He eats yohimbim, it’s called, before love. Tell her to get some. It works. Or that melon the Filipinos won’t let be shipped on trains, it smells so….Come to think——” she says, widening her nose over her dish, “this stuff reminds me of it. Durian, that’s it.” She points her fork at Nym. “Taffy eats some of that, no matter what she’s had out, she won’t miss a thing.”

  “This is a bit gamy,” Oscar says. “What is it, Marcel?”

  Of course it’s gamy, says Marcel, it’s a ballantine of hare. Made with a rabbit of course, what else can one do in America? But he has corrected it.

  He is beside himself now, a luminous red, standing in his circle of presentations, his exertion reaching us under his cologne.

  We too are steaming with wine, and the strange, dark food. “Marvelous, and a little mad,” I whisper to Oscar. “I’m not sure what Beverly Hills will think of it.”

  For I’ve made my verdict. “Poor Marcel,” I say to Aurine, who answers, “Which Marcel?”

  But Potto is just explaining to Nym the double meanings of “miss.” And Nym has caught an exchange between Alba and Martyne—oh, she’s fast on the catch—and is asking him what means “having things out.”

  Tic tic-ing all the way, he explains that too.

  “Hai, hai—no!” says Nym. She’s put out her hands and is flapping them up down, very pretty. “No no, Taffee is having——” Her chain mail runs riot with the strain of it, whatever it is.

  “A lift!” Dulcy shouts suddenly. “That’s all it is, girls!” She turns to Potto. “Da-arling, you’re such a wonderful translator!” She smooches him all over, mmm, mmm. “Oh, I’m so happy for her. Taffy’s only having a lift.”

  Everybody’s happier, all considering. Even Aurine, who’s for face peeling, when her time comes.

  Everybody also agrees that it’s really much too soon, that Taffy has always been restless.

  “Cain’t think of anything Ah look forward to more myself,” says Martyne. “In about twenty years.”

  “Nuts, her face was good enough,” Tekla growls. “What’s India done to it?”

  Nym is looking from face to relatively perfect face. A little string of hai hai’s wobbles her butterfly, turning into no no no. She shakes her pearlfinger in front of each honorable lady—not you, not your face either, nor. Nobody here needs a face lifting. “No Taffee either. She fine.”

  The ladies stare at her. Where then is the alteration to be?

  She curves her palms over two tiny places on herself. “Teets.”

  And the man from Sierra Leone reaches out a long black finger to her tunic. “But that is real met-al, wooman, that is heavy, that is re-al go-old.”

  We hang on her reply.

  “Hai, hai, yes yes,” says our orphan, “and so hea
vee.” Dowries are. She droops her head. She wish from the beginning, to take it off.

  From half the table, there is encouragement.

  “Customs offiseh will not come heah? Examination is oveh?” We are suah? She goes round the table for reassurance, or round half of it. Potto is suah? Oscar, Rudolph? She spares the ladies, but no one else. Especially not Candido. She’s quicker at verdicts than me.

  Words make him sleepy. He has to lean across Alba. “Ya safe with me,” says Candido.

  So, in complete quiet, without a hai hai, she takes it off. She’s wearing something underneath—we’ve misjudged her. Still, getting her home like that may be a problem. Two large pearls are taped to her front in very proper places, one to each. She taps them, giggling. “Fwom Buhma. Weal thing.” Then holds up the finger with the oyster. “Taffy say, good decoy. Offiseh will know wight away is oney Jap.”

  “Burma!” Potto jumps as if struck from behind. “Dear me, I know what they do there. Their smuggler’s tricks. My dear girl—if by chance you’ve swallowed any. Or——”

  “Translate any more, Potto,” Dulcy says, “and I’ll turn you in.”

  Rudolph, with tremoring hands, is trying to pick up the tunic. Not for the gold of course; he’s rich. Martyne has to help him. “Fourteen carat, at least,” she says. But Alba is the disdainful authority. “That soft Oriental stuff. Twenty-two.”

  So there we are with our orphan, when young Marcel, holding high the tray, and flame-throwing me glances—I’m glad to catch somebody’s—brings in my cake.

  It has all the sweetness of France in it, I’m sure. It’s made to be ruined. And enjoyed. It has my name on it. And it’s in the shape of a heart.

  “Speech! Speech!” Rudolph quavers. He loves them, like opera.

  “Oh Rudie,” Martyne says fondly, “you’re such a listener!”

  “Toasts first,” Oscar lifts his glass of another wine old Marcel has just poured for us. “To——” He looks round the table, and then grins at us. At Alba, Dulcy and Martyne in unholy alliance. At our golden girl. And at Potto, Candido and the man from Sierra Leone—each clearly weighing what will be the best action for a lone wolf who is unfortunately accompanied. Oscar is trying to do the impossible—sum us up.