“I’ll give you one to take home with you. As thanks for this evening. I’ll get it now.” She stood up. “Would you like to see my study?”
“Yes. Yes.”
She led him through the southern wall’s fully open door down the lighted corridor (past a peripherally glimpsed bedroom) to a three-windowed corner room atmosphered, like a scholar’s carrel, of a sequestered seriousness and patience. Residing on a hip-high, double-backed, lion-clawed pedestal were two venerable dictionaries. Against the room’s only blank wall (shelves of books its other walls) was an immense rectangular desk, its surface covered with a strew of sharpened pencils and paper clips and erasers a pushed-back typewriter a feather duster a carved wooden tortoise pages of lined foolscap paper containing handwritten words words words—“It’s the hugest desk I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Like an acre of prime land.”
“It was my father’s.”
“I know I know I’m overusing the word, but it’s all wonderful, the room, the desk, the books, the privacy, everything—you. You’re wonderful.”
She visibly shied, and in a low, sharply dissenting voice said: “If only I were.”
In his own way sensitive, he felt put at a distance, as if he’d been too raptorial, too—sudden. But sudden was the state he was in: his plight the mischief that he had so suddenly not been able to not display it. He retreated into silence until, after a period of time that in terms of all he was thinking and feeling was not long, she said: “One has about one’s own life so many regrets to account for. That’s what I meant when I said—‘If only I were wonderful.’”
Another unclockable moment.
Then she took a few steps forward and opened one of the desk’s drawers and withdrew a manuscript and handed it to him. “It’s a strange tale. I hope you like it, Morgan.”
They returned to the living room and stood again for a moment (this one clockably terminate) by the windows.
“It’s stopped raining…. The next time we meet, I’ll ask all the questions.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow to fix a date. I hope you’ll let the next time be soon.” He said this quietly, with a certain internal anxiousness, aware that she had an established life: friends, plans, a work routine, commitments. “It’s late. I must go.”
In the hall, when he put on his overcoat, he slipped the pages of the story (thick, loosely folded) into the coat’s deep, interior breast pocket. “Where no last drop of rain can reach it,” he said. He took her extended hand. “Good night. Good night, Sylvia.”
“Good night, Morgan.” And then: “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
To his ears, those words sounded of a marvelous yield. He looked at his watch. “It’s ten past midnight—”
“Today, then,” she said.
In the building’s lobby, the doorman said: “I’ll try whistling for a cab, sir.”
“Thanks, but don’t trouble yourself. I want to walk for a bit.”
He pulled down the brim of his hat and turned up the collar of his coat and pushed off, left, to Seventy-ninth Street; then he turned right, faced into the wind, treading the same route the cabbie had driven over at the evening’s beginning, walking the long blocks away: East End Avenue to First Avenue to Second Avenue to Third Avenue, Lexington next behind him, then Park, forward to Madison—walking in a condition of sober inebriation, wind and distance no matter—
He was, of course—and he knew it—already marked by love for her.
…The long trek was a physical release and sufficiently tiring to send him straight to bed when he got home. Well, almost straight to bed. He went first into the library and put the story she’d given him on his desk and smoothed out its pages, the number of which, on examination, surprised him. Fifty-four single-spaced typewritten pages. Enough pages, when folded (as he had carried them in his overcoat pocket) to have stopped a late-night miscreant’s knife from a frontal penetration of his heart. Curiosity drove him to read the story’s title and its first paragraph.
A NIGHT AT DSIATZDAVO
ONE
In the autumn of the fiftieth year of the nineteenth century, Count Alexandre Rodzanski was returning with his wife from his country estate in Litzbark to his winter residence in Warsaw when, because of the Countess’s acute fatigue, he was forced, with his entire retinue, to stay for two days’ time at the inn in the remote municipality of Dsiatzdavo.
He disciplined himself not to read on. Wait, he told himself.
Hannah followed him into his bedroom. She had formed the habit of sleeping at night on his bed, curled in a ball beside him. He liked having her there; liked her living presence. She slept soundly through what remained of the night; he slept fitfully; shallowly. The alarm clock rang as usual at seven-fifteen. He got up and showered and shaved and dressed. At eight, as usual, Elsa served him breakfast. As he ate, he skimmed the pages of the New York Times. His mind was on the story: the novella, described by Sylvia as “a strange tale.” By noon, he had finished reading it…. The genesis of its action was a peasant uprising (revolt) in the 1850s, in the Polish province of Krajovoitz. Its lead characters: the Count Rodzanski; Nicholas Simienski (mayor of Dsiatzdavo), and the mayor’s wife, Madame Simienski; a youth, Maarko—the story’s tragic hero.
After lunch, he dialed her number.
“Hello,” she said.
He disguised his voice (or tried to). “Can you hear me? Can you hear me? I’m—”
“Is this Morgan?” she quietly, very quietly asked.
“Can you hear me? I’m desperate to reach S. K. P. Dobson. I’m calling prior to the invention of the telephone—calling from a village in Poland, pronounced I think Dee-zee-atz-davo—”
“Morgan,” she stopped him.
“Sylvia. When may I see you? To tell you of my enjoyment and admiration of the story. When?”
They secured the date: Saturday evening, October 31. “A week from today,” he repeated. “Here at my home, at seven, for dinner.”
“I’ll be there,” she said. “I’d be there even if you hadn’t read the story, even if you didn’t like it.”
He hung up, euphoric.
He went through the week terribly conscious of the symptoms (all internally experienced) of weightlessness and float and dream. He wondered at himself, a forty-eight-year-old man, that he was sensationed so. Externally, he functioned effectively, lawyering at pitch, with energy to burn and both feet on the ground (yet all the time, at all moments, feeling—secret).
He spent one evening with Geoff, sounding out Geoff’s thoughts about a new case that had come his way the previous week. The case involved a malpractice claim against a famous psychiatric hospital. At issue was the hospital’s sloppy care of a prominent scientist (an astrophysicist) who had entered the hospital as a patient for treatment of a depression so profound he had twice attempted suicide. When the scientist had been admitted to the hospital, it was understood that he would be under constant surveillance: under what the hospital’s presiding chief had called “an around-the-clock suicide watch.” But the hospital’s doctors and nurses had been fatally lax: ten days after the scientist entered the named hospital, he was found dead in his room: by means of the sturdy laces taken from the two pairs of shoes he had brought with him to the hospital, he had hung himself. It was the scientist’s widow, left with two young children to rear and educate, who wished to file against the hospital a suit for wrongful death…. When Morgan finished summing up the facts of the case, Geoff’s first words were: “Lord, what a tragedy.” Then: “If you take it on, Morgie, and if it goes to trial, it’ll make news. Big news. More legal fame for you, boy…. And you were the guy who once upon a time was going to practice rural law in a quiet county-seat town in Ohio. Remember?”
“Vaguely.” Morgan laughed.
“You are going to take the case, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am—going to—take the case.”
…That was the week, too, when the severe black marble mantel was removed from the living room and the Leig
h mantel installed in its place. The task took two men three days to accomplish. He arrived home from the office on Wednesday evening and was greeted by Elsa: “Mister Shurtliff, they have finished! Go see!” He didn’t even put down his briefcase. He strode ahead of her, hurrying to the mantel existently myriad of fern and flowers and ivy and memory all entwined, seen not through tears, but boldly, for what it was: connection. And beautiful. Beautiful.
…On Friday he received from Miss Sly a letter in response to his October 19 note to her.
My dear Mr. Shurtliff,
It’s lovely to anticipate being with you in mid-November.
I’ve made several sketches of Hannah, one of which I’m quite proud of. But with the hope of amusing you, I’ll show ALL of the drawings to you.
I’ve been concerned about our meeting at the airport. I think I must have seemed to you quite addle-brained. Please put down my admitted confusion to the surprise of seeing you in such a restless, unsociable milieu. I’ve been spoiled by the quiet, ever pleasant circumstances of our accustomed meetings, such as the one I look forward to in November. Interim blessings to you.
As ever,
Zenobia Sly
Between them, Sylvia’s name remained conspicuously unwritten.
Saturday evening: October 31
“Sylvia—”
“Hello, Morgan.” And, “Good evening,” this latter greeting to Elsa.
For Elsa was there too. It would not have occurred to Elsa to be otherwise than in the front hall when a guest arrived, to show herself ready to attend upon the guest. To suggest that she spare herself the effort of this self-imposed “duty” would have offended her.
He introduced them, Elsa, to Miss Phelps, and, true to the old adage that a good master is the slave of a good servant, he did what Elsa would have him do: he handed her Miss Phelps’s coat. She took it, hung in the hall closet, then dismissed herself and returned to the kitchen. End of that ritual.
Now they were alone—though briefly, for Hannah came meowing down the hall. “A cat!” Sylvia exclaimed, stooping to pet. “What a gorgeous little creature.”
“Hannah,” he informed.
“May I hold you, Hannah?”
“You can try,” he spoke for Hannah.
Hannah then, belly-up in Sylvia’s arms. “How old is she?”
“Five months, give or take a bit. We’re not sure.”
“Where did you get her?”
“That’s a story—”
“I want to hear it.”
“In a minute,” he smiled. “Come.” He touched her elbow and guided her toward the library.
…“A real library,” she said. “How fine!”
He mixed her prescribed drink: bourbon on ice with a bit of soda. He had Scotch, neat. They sat down opposite each other, the space of a small table between them. Hannah had wriggled out of Sylvia’s arms and was acting cat: idling about, rubbing against chair legs, being snobbish, ignoring the humans.
Sylvia’s dress was a mossy shade of green that influenced the color of her eyes, made them more gray than blue, and in the white field of her gaze, more immense. She was looking at him in a pending way, waiting, he supposed, to hear Hannah’s story. But he couldn’t seem to organize his thoughts, there seemed suddenly so much to say—Hannah only a fractional part of it.
Perhaps she interpreted his silence as a sign that she should be the first to speak, for she did, then, and definitely: “I hope you remember my telling you that at our next meeting, I’d ply you with questions—”
“I have some left-over ones to put to you,” he countered.
“We might be up all night, asking and answering.”
“It’s possible.”
“Let’s begin again,” she said. “Where did you get Hannah?”
Which, for him, meant beginning with Julia and Julia’s friend, Bruce Wilson: of how Julia and Bruce found Hannah last July while they were walking in Central Park; of their hearing a kitten’s pathetic cries and their tracing the sound to a set of rocks—the small cave where Hannah was cowering—and of Bruce’s nervy act of reaching into the cave and bringing Hannah out, and of Julia’s later words: ‘When Bruce handed her to me, when I held her, she didn’t move, didn’t meow again—only sighed.’ He stopped; smiled: “The rest is obvious.”
“A story with a happy ending,” Sylvia said. “One thing leads to another, in this instance Hannah to your daughter Julia. I wondered if your daughters, Julia and—”
“Caroline,” he reminded.
“—if they would be here tonight.”
“Ah,” he breathed, freshly conscious of their ignorance about most every aspect of one another’s lives, but eager to fill the gaps, wanting to, to bring her closer: “They’re away at college, in their junior year at Bryn Mawr. They’re not the adolescent girls you met at Carnegie Hall four years ago.”
“Four years ago.” She put her hand to her forehead. “I hadn’t dated that meeting as being that long ago.” And: “What tremendous changes for them, for you, since then.”
He wondered if these last words were an antenna reference to Maud; to Maud’s death. But what he said was: “Tremendous changes for you too…yet here we are.”
“Here indeed. ‘Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying.’” Her voice was soft. And, after a moment: “Before we go any further, I’ve a sort of confession to make to you. It’s to do with your surname.”
“My surname—”
“Yes. I got to thinking this past week about the geographical oddity of re-meeting you in Cleveland. And then I recalled your saying that you have cousins living in Cincinnati. And then, late but logically, it dawned on me that you’re not just any garden variety of Shurtliff, but one of them—an Ohio Shurtliff, and—”
“God, is that all?”
“Stop laughing. Hear me out…. The basis of my confession is a strong memory of hearing my father talk about a Shurtliff with whom he worked. Oscar Shurtliff—”
“Old Oscar! The banker,” he interrupted. “Did your father think well of him?”
She smiled. “So well that whenever he said Oscar Shurtliff’s name, it was with the same praise-be, doxology voice he’d say Glore Forgan. To my father, Glore Forgan was a mighty name because it was the investment firm he was associated with.” Her smile deepened: “Personally, I’ve always thought Glore Forgan sounded like a name Grimm might have dreamt up for a fairy-story about a fast-eyed Norwegian troll.”
She made him laugh. “Two fast-eyed Norwegian trolls, as I’m sure you know. J. Russel Forgan and Charles Glore. A pair of naturals. Big trolls in the money world. But those two aside, I have to tell you it gives me great pleasure to think that your father and one of my relatives were friends.”
“In the dim past,” she mused again in that soft voice. “Anyhow, Morgan, that’s my confession—that I finally located you in the firmament of Ohio Shurtliffs.”
His laughter came fresh. “In the Ohio Shurtliff clan—it’s so large—there are some of our number who are awfully earthbound.”
She feigned a nonsense grandeur: “Be assured, sir, that in my view, you are among the elevated Ohio Shurtliffs.”
“Ah, ma’am: those are kind words.”
“But now, Morgan, as I’ve told you about my parents, tell me about yours. Are they still among the living?”
“My father’s marvelously extant. My mother died when I was twelve.”
“Twelve’s a terrible age to be half-orphaned. A nowhere time of life.” Then: “Do you have brothers? Sisters?”
“No. Do you?”
“No.”
He got up and busied himself replenishing their drinks, and while he was standing, removed from a nearby bookshelf a framed photograph. She reached for it. “I’m no good with a camera, but this will give you a hint of Caroline and Julia as they look now.”
In the snapshot, they were sitting, sunstruck, on the trunk of a tree that had fallen at the base of a waterfall, Julia in profile staring at the cascading wa
ter, Caroline alert and poised, posing for the focused camera. He had taken the picture last summer on one of their week-end picnics in the Hudson Valley. Sylvia looked hard at the picture. “They are beautiful. The one facing the camera—”
“That’s Caroline.”
“—comes across as particularly vivid. Is Julia shy?”
“In a sense, yes. She’s an observer. Caroline’s a brilliant participant…. But here: I’d like you to see this picture too.”
Again, she held out her hand to receive the second photograph, and after a first fast look, spontaneously said: “What an elegant guy.” And after a longer look, amended: “Elegant man. And how you do resemble him. Is he your father?”
“Yes. And thank you. I’ll take as a compliment any resemblance to him you’ll grant me.”
“Is it a recent picture of him?”
“Yes.”
“What does he do? His profession, I mean.”
To which question, he gave a long-way-around answer, starting with Ansel Shurtliff’s temperament, his serene, quiet nature, and from there went on to say that he was an avid reader of history and a collector of old books storied of the eternal plights and losses and ambitions and achievements of long-deceased people whose lives are prophesies of everybody’s life of whatever era—that while he astutely performed all his responsibilities to family and fortune—he would, if asked what he did with his own life, what his major occupation was, he would reply: “I’m an orchardist.” And then he described to her his father’s acres and acres of apple trees that bloomed in the springtime over the land like a great, fragrant, white, descended cloud, the sight so beatific as to be, in his father’s word—“Elysian.” He had never talked about his father to anyone in quite this way; he was somewhat surprised at the approach he had taken in answering her question, and he said as much to her now, then further surprised himself by the more personal statement: “Between him and me, there’s a remarkable lack of Freudian frenzy—not that the usual father-son psychometrics don’t exist in our relationship: they do, but not in a way that’s ever divided us.”
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