Gentlehands

by M. E. Kerr

  At three thirty-five my mother answered.

  “Did you just call here a while ago, Buddy?”

  “Of course I didn’t just call there. Wouldn’t you know if I’d just called there?”

  “Somebody called and hung up and your father said he bet it was you.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Where are you?” she said. “Don’t tell me. I know.”

  “Mom,” I said, “they’ve asked me to stay to dinner. They’re having a hot-dog roast.”

  “Your father said you’re to be right here at night, for two weeks.”

  “Mom, he wouldn’t have to know.”

  “What?”

  “He’s not going to be there, is he?”

  “What are you suggesting, Buddy, that I lie for you?”

  “I’d lie for you.”

  “Don’t ask me to lie for you.”

  “I would for you.”

  “You promised Streaker some kind of magic mystery thing, too.”

  “Mom, Streaker is your kid. He’s not mine. I didn’t have him, you did.”

  “I didn’t promise him anything magic or mysterious, Buddy, you did.”

  “Put him on the phone.”

  “Buddy, I can’t lie to your father.”

  “Mom, I’m with nice people at a nice place.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just remember that and don’t worry about me. Tell Streaker he can have my baseball mitt. Tell him it’s his.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just tell him,” I said.

  Then I put the telephone’s arm back in its cradle.

  I don’t know when things started going wrong that night. The nearest I can trace it back is when Mr. De Lucca walked up to our bonfire and sat down. We’d all been back and forth to the beach all day. Some people had left, some had stayed, some had played Ping-Pong up at the pool house or napped, played croquet or swam in the pool, and some new faces had joined the night party. There were little bonfires going all along the beach which the waiters had built, and we all sat around in little groups eating, listening to tapes, wisecracking. I was just getting the hang of carrying on a conversation with Connie and Rachel and the others. It was all a matter of one-liners. Someone would say something about reality, and someone else would say “Reality is a crutch.” Or someone would make a remark about anarchy, and someone else would say “Isn’t anarchy against the law?” I used one of Ollie’s old sayings when Connie told Rachel he thought she was really evil. I said, “Evil is just live spelled backwards.” They all laughed, and Rachel tried to swat me with her espadrille.

  We were going along like that when De Lucca sat down with us, tuning in his hearing aid, his glasses a ghastly yellow by the firelight, his phony cigarette glowing.

  Skye was telling a story about how outraged her Uncle Louie was that there were Jews allowed in The Hadefield Club now. At the sit-down dinner there the night before, there was a table behind the Penningtons filled with the guests of a Mr. Abraham Plotz.

  “I know Samantha Plotz,” Rachel said. “She goes to Wood Hollow with me.”

  “Oh but wait!” Skye said. “She has a sister. Can you guess what the sister’s name is?”

  “Samantha Plotz.” Rachel giggled. “I love her dearly, but what a name!”

  “The sister’s name is worse,” said Skye. “The sister’s name is Regina.”

  “Regina Plotz,” Connie said, and he hugged his knees and rocked as he laughed.

  “Samantha and Regina Plotz!” Rachel said. “The Plotz sisters!”

  Everybody howled, and De Lucca watched us, sucking his fake cigarette, the glow going off and on and off and on.

  “Uncle Louie says Ruth Plotz maybe, Adele Plotz maybe, Sara Plotz maybe—but Samantha and Regina?”

  “I know a girl called Victoria Finkelstein,” Connie said, as though there was nothing at all funny about a boy called Connie Spreckles.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” said Skye. “Did you ever hear the story about the Jewish Santa Claus?”

  “What about the Jewish Santa Claus?” De Lucca spoke up.

  “Well,” Skye said, “this Jewish Santa Claus comes down the chimney, see, and he says, he says—” Skye’s shoulders began to shake and she had to get control to continue. “He says ‘Want to buy any toys, kiddies?’”

  Everyone cracked up but Mr. De Lucca, who never smiled anyway, unless it was a slight, slanted, sarcastic smile.

  We sat around for a while singing to some old sixties song on the tape, and Rachel said she’d written a song. Connie got her to sing it. It was about falling in love with a falling-down fellow (“I’d just be feeling mellow, we’d be doing the town, then he’d fall right down, my falling-down fellow.”) She said it was actually a poem she’d written while she was dating this boy who drank Thunderbird wine all day from a Coke can. She said he was a teenage alcoholic.

  “I love to write poems, and make them songs,” she said.

  De Lucca spoke up suddenly. “I know a poem that should be a song. It was written by a teenager, too, a girl about your age. It’s called Gentlehands.”

  He recited the poem while we all sat by the firelight and listened.

  “I can see your beauty

  But you can’t see mine,

  And you have a gun.

  The only music I hear

  Is what you play for me.

  It is beautiful, too,

  But it does not speak

  To you about me.

  You listen and smile.

  I wait to die,

  And call you Gentlehands.”

  “Wow!” Rachel exclaimed.

  “That’s subtle!” Skye said.

  “What’s it about?” Connie asked.

  “Why does he have a gun?” I said.

  “He has a gun because he’s guarding her,” De Lucca said.

  “But he’s playing music for her,” Connie said.

  “He’s playing music to taunt her.”

  “Is she in prison?” Skye asked.

  “It’s like a prison,” said De Lucca.

  “What did she do wrong?”

  “She didn’t do anything wrong. She was only fifteen years old.”

  “Then what’s she in prison for?” I asked.

  “She’s in Auschwitz,” De Lucca said.

  “Why does she call him Gentlehands?” Rachel asked.

  “Everyone called him that. It was an irony.”

  “In Auschwitz did you say?” Connie said.

  “Yes. Auschwitz.”

  “The concentration camp?”

  “Yes,” De Lucca said. “Her name was Roselina De Lucca.”

  “Was she Italian?” I asked.

  “She was my cousin,” De Lucca said. “She lived in Rome until they took her away.”

  “Who took her away?” Connie asked.

  “The Germans, of course.”

  “Why?” Skye said. “She wasn’t Jewish.”

  “She was Jewish,” De Lucca said. “I’m Jewish.”

  Skye put one hand over her eyes and grabbed my hand with the other.

  “What happened to her?” Rachel asked.

  De Lucca stood up then. He said, “She was murdered.” He gave us a small salute and sauntered away.

  “Get me out of here,” Skye said to me. “I just want to get out of here, Buddy.”

  “I’ve actually got goose bumps,” Rachel said, and Skye and I were already on our feet and starting to run.

  9

  IT WAS SKYE’S IDEA TO DRIVE TO MONTAUK THIS TIME. I phoned my grandfather from Beauregard and he said he’d be delighted to see us again. Skye drove like a bat out of hell, talking a mile a minute all the way.

  “I’m not prejudiced,” she kept insisting, “and no one in my family is but Uncle Louie. Daddy calls Uncle Louie ‘The rich man’s Archie Bunker.’ Did you ever watch All In The Family, the T.V. series with that bigot, Archie, and his ditzie wife, Edith? Sure, we laughed at it—it’s a
comedy—but Daddy knows a lot of Jewish people, they come to our house and everything.”

  “De Lucca was just sitting there waiting for you to hang yourself,” I said, watching the speedometer, praying to God my father wasn’t anywhere near the Montauk Highway that night.

  “How was I supposed to know he’s Jewish? I doubt Mummy knows it. We just thought he was Italian.”

  “He’s an Italian Jew,” I said.

  “I never even think of Italians being Jewish, do you? I thought all the Jews in those concentration camps were Germans. I mean, I’ve always felt terrible about those concentration camps, Buddy. I even did a theme once on that Anne Frank who kept the diary, and got an A plus on it!”

  “Just forget it,” I said.

  “I’m trying to, Buddy. I honestly never tell jokes like the Jewish Santa Claus one. It just popped into my head and I could die!”

  “If you keep talking about it, you won’t be able to forget it.”

  “Don’t mention this to your grandfather, Buddy, promise?”

  “I won’t.”

  “I think it’s Uncle Louie’s influence,” she said as we turned onto Old Montauk Highway, and speeded along with the moon shining down on the ocean in the distance. “Uncle Louie really hates anyone ethnic, I mean, he does: blacks, Jews, even the Irish.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “He’s the family joke he’s so prejudiced. Daddy says it’s because he’s short and the only way he can look down on people is by looking down on their race or religion. Do you know Daddy even gave money to Israel?”

  “Just forget it,” I said. “We’re here.”

  One of the first things my grandfather commented on was my new sweater, which really pleased Skye. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and tan corduroy pants, with boots that looked like he’d just polished them. There was a bottle of wine on the table next to his chair and a nearly empty glass. He was carrying this very fancy long pipe with what looked like flying horsemen sculpted on it.

  “Daddy collects pipes,” Skye said. “Daddy’s got a Charatan, Mr. Trenker, do you know what a Charatan is?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Skye said to me, “A Charatan is the most expensive pipe in the world. It costs twenty-five hundred dollars!”

  My grandfather smiled. “Well not exactly.”

  “It really did cost that much, Mr. Trenker.”

  “A Charatan is a straight-grain briar,” said my grandfather, “and it would sell for around the figure you mentioned, but it’s not the most expensive pipe in the world. This pipe, for example, is worth a great deal more, not that I’m practicing one-upmanship…. This is a hand-carved block meerschaum, imported from Turkey.”

  “What did it cost?” I said.

  “It would be worth about eight thousand dollars,” said my grandfather, and Skye hit her forehead with her hand and let out a long whistle. I just sank my hands into the pockets of my pants and strolled around basking in the idea I had a grandfather who could top the Penningtons on something.

  He put an opera on for Skye called La Traviata, and then he asked us if we’d like a Coke.

  “Love one!” Skye said.

  My grandfather started to go and get two, and I said, “I wouldn’t mind having a glass of wine.” Sometimes when my mother and father are celebrating something like a promotion for my father, or their wedding anniversary, they have Cold Duck for dinner, and I have a glass.

  “I didn’t know you drank wine,” said my grandfather.

  “We have it with meals,” I said.

  “I’ll bring a glass for you,” said my grandfather.

  “I love it here,” Skye told me when he went into the kitchen. She began singing along with this character on the tape, “Un di felice,” and I watched her, happy that she was getting into a more relaxed mood. I loved it there, too. It was sort of my answer to Beauregard. I didn’t even mind the music, and I remembered all the times my mother and I would make fun of the opera we’d sometimes get by mistake on the radio Saturday afternoons. My mother would pretend she was an opera singer and sing in this falsetto, throwing her head back and beating her bosom with her fist, and I’d pretend to keel over and die from a poison dart or whatever it was men died of in those things. If my father was home he’d call in, “Turn off the screech owls!” and we’d yell back, “Don’t you want any culture?”

  My grandfather appeared again carrying a Coke for Skye, and an empty glass for me.

  “Pour yourself a glass,” he said.

  I put my hand around the bottle and began pouring, and he said, “Wait a minute, Buddy.”

  “What?”

  “Always grab a bottle of wine by the neck,” he said, “and never fill the glass to the top.” I couldn’t remember how my father grabbed the Cold Duck, but he always poured the wine to the top of the glass.

  My grandfather watched me while I did it the way he’d suggested. Some wine dribbled down to the tabletop, and he said next time I should turn the bottle just so, to catch the drippings before they spilled on anything.

  Then I tasted the wine and it wasn’t at all like Cold Duck; it was pretty bitter, but I pretended it was the best wine I’d ever had, which it probably was.

  I suppose when you live alone you become a creature of habit, because after we’d sat around for a while talking, my grandfather jumped up and said it was time to fill the bird feeders. He said the raccoons didn’t come until very late on Sunday nights because a neighbor down the way was out on weekends and left his garbage out. “But I have to attend to the feeders,” said my grandfather, “because I do every night at this time.”

  I was beginning to feel high, not on the wine, particularly, but because it was such a great place, and he was the way he was, and Skye kept smiling at me, trying to hold my eyes with hers for long looks. When my grandfather carried the sunflower seeds out to the feeders, I went over and sat beside Skye, and I guess it was the wine then that made it easy for me to start kissing her. We just kissed and held each other while the opera played, and the sound of the waves crashing on the beach below came through the open windows.

  “I’m crazy about you,” I whispered into her soft, long black hair.

  “Oh Buddy.”

  “I am.”

  “I am, too.”

  We were both whispering, and excited, and I sat back and tried to get control of myself, because I didn’t want to be embarrassed when my grandfather returned. I looked at her face and she wasn’t smiling and neither was I. I couldn’t stop myself and reached for her again, and I don’t know how long our lips pressed together while we held each other very hard, but I heard my grandfather clear his throat and we both sprang away from each other.

  “Don’t be uncomfortable,” he said, because I guess we both looked that way. He went and sat down in his chair and smiled at us.

  “I never really knew anything about that sort of thing when I was your age,” he said.

  “Didn’t you have a girlfriend?” Skye asked.

  “I was too busy being educated. I was raised a Catholic, very strictly, and it was my father’s wish for me to be a priest. It was a very long time before I ever loved a woman.”

  “How old were you when you finally did?” Skye asked.

  “Much too old,” he chuckled.

  “Were you out of your teens?”

  “I was divorced, and no longer a young man.” He had one of his pipes in his hand and he was filling it the way someone does before launching on a story. Skye sensed that and urged him on.

  Then he told us that he’d traveled a lot and very long distances until he met the only woman he’d ever loved, in Cuba. He said she was very beautiful, with long black hair like Skye’s, only she was a woman, not a girl, and she had a mystic quality about her, a “fatalism” my grandfather called it. She loved all animals, as my grandfather did, particularly birds.

  “Carla was her name,” he said. “She believed that birds were in tune with nature, that they had more psychic dime
nsions than man. Man, she would tell me, is too busy computing data from his five senses to pay any attention to his supersenses. The reason man, most men, seem to think telepathy and such psychic phenomena are strange, is because there is just too much to cope with. Their brains receive so many impressions they can’t grasp the deeper knowledge of life as animals can.”

  “Fascinating!” said Skye. “Mummy would love you, Mr. Trenker!”

  “The birds that came to Carla’s yard were unlike any I have ever seen before or since, rare and extraordinary ones of many colors and songs. We watched them for hours. We were just happy watching them together, as though it was our own special pageant.”

  “Did you marry her?” Skye asked.

  He shook his head. “I wanted to, though. I wanted nothing more.”

  “What happened?” Skye asked.

  While he got his pipe going, I poured myself another glass of wine.

  “One day at dusk we saw these two very large white birds gliding over the water. We’d never seen anything like them. Were they swans, some form of giant seabird? I don’t know. We watched them, entranced, and Carla said they seemed like omens; they had a dazzling brilliance and their great white wings were spread but seemed unmoving, and they soared and dipped and glided in the wind, beautiful!”

  “And then?” Skye said.

  “And then the next day I came up the hill, after being in the city for many hours, and I smelled something very familiar that I didn’t want to believe was the odor, the stench of something burnt-out. But it was. Her house had burned, and she hadn’t been able to escape.”

  “Oh no,” Skye said.

  “I stayed there for a long while. A month? Two? Maybe more, living in a part of the house that had survived, continuing to feed our birds. I never saw the large white ones again.”

  I was thankful Skye was with me when my grandfather told that story, because I was never good at listening to anything like that. I was never able to think of anything to say. I just kept drinking the wine and letting them talk, half hearing what they were saying after a while. My grandfather was telling her about some famous psychiatrist named Carl Jung who believed there was an intelligence beyond individual intellect, what our American Indians called “deep-knowing.” My grandfather said he believed it was how animals and birds perceived life, and he talked again of the great white birds, and the woman’s death, and the relation of the two things.