“I thought you liked them too much,” Mark said, smiling blandly the way he always did when Leo referred to Mark’s own predilection.
“I need them,” Leo said, “but I can’t stand them. Can’t bear them. They make me positively, physically sick.” He thrust back the flowered sheets, and now he was like an exasperated whale flailing about among the bedclothes; but when he managed to disentangle himself from them and get out of bed, he tottered a bit, for the legs on which he supported his weight were feeble, an old man’s legs. Mark solicitously helped him sit down again on the edge of the bed.
“Can’t stand them, can’t bear them,” Leo muttered, holding his head between his hands. “I must have a place of my own.”
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Mark said.
It was in fact the purpose of his visit. He explained that, after attending Leo’s lectures and workshops, he had come to the conclusion that Leo’s work had reached a stage where he needed a communal center. In order to be brought to their full potential, his followers had to live together, work together, be together, under Leo’s guidance, for twenty-four hours a day. For this, of course, they needed a house; a big house; and Mark, having studied Leo’s needs, knew just the place.
Mark enjoyed arranging for the purchase of the Victorian house in the Hudson Valley; and then establishing Leo and his community in it. Leo, it turned out, was very timid when it came to taking such a large practical step; he was especially timid about risking his bit of capital—as Louise said, he had always been a miser—and Mark had to coax it out of him. Mark himself was very bold; this was his first property deal, and he managed it with ease and pleasure. In order to have his own stake in the property, he took various loans from his mother and grandmother and juggled them along with contributions from Leo’s followers and with Leo’s own money. He also undertook the necessary remodeling of the house. It was as solid as a fortress, with massive outer walls and crenellated parapets; the inside walls and the ceilings were covered with a carapace of oak paneling. Within this sturdy shell Mark installed a new heating system and transformed the Victorian attics and cellars into living spaces for modern disciples. Of course, all this took further loans, and Leo wrung his hands and said they would be bankrupt and ruined, Mark soothed him and carried on, supervising everything himself until he was satisfied; so that in the end Leo had his Academy of Potential Development and Mark had collateral with which to raise further loans and mortgages and launch himself on his career.
Established as the partriarch of this domain, Leo took charge of it with panache; but he still relied on Mark to look after practical details, and when anything went wrong, with the boiler, the electric wiring, the plumbing, he straightaway sent for Mark. But Mark was not easy to locate: his personal life had always been secretive and convoluted, and as the years passed and his business interests grew, his professional life also began to diverge into intricate and mutually exclusive paths. Often it took Leo days to find him, and he even had to call on Louise for help. On such occasions, this was the way their conversation might go:
LOUISE:
What do you want with him?
LEO:
Is he there or isn’t he there?
LOUISE:
That depends on what you want—no, don’t hang up! Leo!
LEO:
All right then, last chance: where is he?
LOUISE:
I don’t know.
This last would be in a voice sufficiently small to satisfy Leo; and from this point on their conversation became quite amiable and ranged over topics beyond Mark’s whereabouts. Louise was very eager and curious to be allowed to visit the Academy of Potential Development, but Leo discouraged her. Mark too was evasive, telling her to wait until everything was set up; so that Leo had already been settled in there for over a year before they would allow her to come and see the place.
Mark drove her up from the city. She commented on everything they saw, and as the city and its suburbs were left behind and the landscape unfolded into views of fields, river, and distant hills, her rapture mounted; so that by the time they arrived and Mark drove through the gates, between two pillars topped by concrete spheres like cannonballs, Louise was so excited that she leaped out of the car before it had come to a standstill. There on the steps leading up to the porch stood Leo, flanked by a few followers whom he so completely overshadowed that they might as well not have been there.
Leo, standing in welcome on his front steps, was an impressive figure. He wore the costume he had devised for his comfort—a long robe like a monk’s, girdled by a studded cowboy belt which drooped over his low-slung stomach. Louise rushed out of the car and up the steps to meet him. She was in her way as impressive as he. Tall and stately, she wore a dress of heavy plum-colored silk swathed in loops over her breasts and hips. Her hair, disordered from the drive and the excitement, had got loose from its pins and gave her the somewhat frantic air of a prophetess. Her voice boomed in greeting and his boomed back again as they met—collided—like two giants on the steps.
That was a wonderful day for Louise. Leo devoted himself to her entirely, and secure and proud of his possession, took pleasure in showing her around it. He was the beneficent deity, not only of the house and all its inmates, and of the acres of ground that belonged to it and had been left wild and romantic as a Victorian garden; but also beyond that of the entire countryside rolling pale green and gold in summer sunshine, with here and there a patch of dark wood and a ribbon of crystal water. He showed her everything and beamed as she admired and exclaimed; and truly, it was wonderful that all this land, wrested from Indians by Dutchmen and Scotsmen, should now belong to him, Leo Kellermann: as though all that fighting and treachery, endurance and thrift had led up to the high tide of history that was the Academy of Potential Development. She was as proud as he—of all this and of him—and they wandered together through his domain without quarreling once, which was an absolute record for them; so that it was not only a high tide of history but also of their relationship—by this time itself a piece of history or even, so primeval was it, of archaeology.
Natasha’s first visit to the Academy was nowhere near as enjoyable. She wasn’t, of course, a guest of honor—in fact, Leo took very little notice of her. He never did have much time for Natasha, seemed hardly ever to see her, and maybe he didn’t—it would have been quite natural, for he was physically very large and she very small.
Poor Natasha! Her presence among them was a result of Marietta’s search for identity; or rather, Marietta’s rejection of her husband’s identity. Tim’s family was as American as one could get—they had come, on his mother’s side, from Scotland, on his father’s, from Ireland—and when, after less than a year of marrige, Marietta became disillusioned with Tim, this feeling extended itself to his family, and from them, to their entire race and nation. Then she wanted to get back to her own roots, though she had to disentangle them first, since Louise, her mother, was a German Protestant, and Bruno, her father, a German Jew. Marietta decided on this latter part of her heritage: and when, in one of the spurts of energy with which she followed herself through, she decided to adopt a sister for Mark, she set about finding a one-hundred-percent-guaranteed Jewish child. This Natasha turned out to be. But Marietta had tended to mix up Jewish and Russian, and when she thought of a Jewish girl, it might have been more a Russian one that she had in mind: a Turgenev or Chekhov heroine, an embodiment of music, moonlight, and poetic feeling. Natasha, however, was short and thin, with thin dark hair and hair on her upper lip that had to be taken care of; her nose was curved and so, on account of bad posture, was her spine. She had absolutely no idea of how to dress. But her eyes were truly one-hundred-percent-guaranteed Jewish: shortsighted, inward-looking, liquid mirrors of her soul.
Growing up, Natasha had problems—as was to be expected of a young girl; what was unexpected was the nature of her problems, for they were entirely different from those either Louise or Marietta had known when they wer
e her age. At twenty-four, Natasha had never had a boyfriend, or any other friends either; she had got into college and got out of it again without distinction; she appeared to have no inclination or aptitude for any kind of career. She didn’t need to have; she could live with Louise or with Marietta, and she was happy to do that: they, and Mark, were her home, her life, everything she knew and cherished. And yet, every now and again, she deliberately drove herself out and away from them and made herself do things for which she had no aptitude.
She did not look for dreadful sights, but saw them everywhere. It had started when she was a small child. One day Louise had found her lying facedown on her bed, in tears. It took some time to persuade her to come out with what had happened, and then all she could stammer was, “There’s a man—”
“What? Where?”
“At the corner, sitting on the trash can.”
Sobs tore Natasha apart, and she could say no more. An awful suspicion dawned on Louise: “What did he do? . . . No, you must answer: what did he do to you? Tell Grandma, tell Grandma!” Snatching Natasha to her bosom, she cried out in fear. “Oh God!” she implored, as was her habit, to someone she didn’t at all believe in. She became somewhat hysterical herself, so that Natasha, forgetting her own feelings, had to try and calm her: “He didn’t do anything, Grandma, only he’s sitting there.” She did her best to suppress the lump of grief that rose up in her again, but it escaped her in a cry of pain—“He’s hungry!” broke from her, in overwhelmed pity for all the hungers of humanity.
It took Louise no time at all to put on her hat and gloves—she would never have gone down the street without them—and to accompany Natasha into the elevator and through the lobby of her apartment building. Natasha led her to the corner: the awful vision was still there. He sat enthroned on the trash can, like a god wafted up from its depths. He was enormous and red in the face and wore a hat without a crown on his wild hair; a pair of stiff black trousers encased one massive leg but was ripped open on the other, exposing a surprisingly soft, lily-white expanse of thigh. His trident, or escutcheon, was an empty bottle held aloft in one hand, and he was alternately shouting and singing to passersby. Louise turned away in disgust: “He’s not hungry.”
“He says he is”; for he was lustily thrumming his stomach to proclaim its emptiness. “And thirsty,” Natasha said, tears rising to her eyes again.
“Yes, that I believe,” Louise said. “I’m going to call the police . . . Upsetting you like that; what a sight for a little child to see. Tcha. Disgusting. In the middle of West End Avenue. I’ll get the police right now.”
“Grandma, Grandma, I’m not upset!”
Grasping Natasha’s hand, Louise marched off with her to the phone booth on the opposite side of the street. Natasha continued to protest and implore; when Louise lifted the receiver, she hung on to her arm. “You can’t,” she said. “You mustn’t.” Finally, leaning against the phone booth, she brought out amid her tears: “He looks just like Leo . . . What if it was Leo?”
Louise replaced the receiver. She looked back again at the Dionysian figure on the trash can: there was something of Leo about him. Louise hid her face in her glove.
Natasha looked up at her in amazement: why should Louise be laughing at someone hungry and thirsty and in rap? “If it were Leo, you’d give him money,” Natasha reproached. “You’d take him home and cook for him and take him to bed.”
Louise’s shoulders continued to shake. She opened her big purse, and Natasha was reassured. They crossed the street again. Louise thrust some coins on the man, but at the same time she showered him with homilies and reproaches which made Natasha anxiously pluck at her sleeve. But the man didn’t seem to mind at all; on the contrary, he pursued them down the street with cries of gratitude and blessing, upsetting Natasha all over again because they were so undeserved.
If Natasha suffered in the streets, she suffered no less at home: and here again impotently, unable to do anything to help. She had always been used to hearing Louise fight with Leo. At one time—when Natasha was about six—Leo came to live with Louise. Terrible monster fights broke out continuously. Natasha was the only other occupant of the apartment at the time—Marietta was in India, and it was one of those periods when Mark, who pretty much took charge of his own education, had checked himself into a boarding school. Natasha was often frightened by the violence of the scenes she overheard, even though the two protagonists took care to shush each other in her vicinity. They were less careful at night when they thought she was safely asleep. Then they gave full rein to their passions, and since both of them were large and had powerful voices, the effect was loud enough to raise the dead, let alone frail little Natasha sleeping across the hall from them. One night the row was so dreadful that she made herself overcome her fear and marched bravely to the door. She found it locked, so she rattled the handle and called for her grandmother inside. It took some time for her voice to penetrate and she had to reinforce it by drumming her fists on the door. Finally, a deadly hush fell inside. Then Louise called: “Sweetheart? Darling? Is that you?” in a quavering voice she tried to make normal.
She unlocked the door and looked out. Her hair was disheveled and wild. Behind her, Leo loomed in a white nightshirt, his hair on end like a bush in flames.
“Go to bed, little worm,” Louise coaxed in over-sweet tones. “Grandma is coming.” And from behind her, Leo also fluted: “Shall I come and tell you a story?”
Natasha said yes, so that they would stop fighting. Leo came and sat on the edge of her bed. Actually, he didn’t like children, but he could, if he wanted to, tell wonderful stories. This one was about two princesses, a tiger, and a horse, in the course of which three generations grew up and several kingdoms were won and lost. It ended happily and with the following moral: “And just because they were angry with each other and fifty years passed during which they were not on speaking terms, do you think they could stop loving each other?” Natasha was too sleepy by this time to answer. She also felt safe and snug in her bed, with Leo sitting on one side and Louise on the other. Louise held a bar of chocolate from which, during the course of Leo’s story, she broke off pieces and popped them into Natasha’s mouth, where they melted.
“How could it be?” Leo urged. “Even if one hundred years had passed, still they’d go on loving each other. Isn’t that true?” he appealed to Natasha.
“Leave her alone, she’s sleeping,” Louise said from the other side of the bed.
Leo said something to her that Natasha couldn’t hear properly (maybe it was in German). It made Louise laugh—she laughed a lot during those days when Leo lived with them.
But afterward, when Leo moved out—packed up his things and left after one of their fights—then it was very difficult for Natasha to do anything for Louise except climb on her lap and put her arms around her neck and beg her not to cry. And Louise tried very hard not to; she unclasped Natasha’s hands, she kissed them as though she wished to eat them—she pretended to eat them like a big bad wolf, and Natasha laughed and Louise laughed, even while tears continued to pour out of her eyes.
Once Natasha had had tall dreams for herself. She had wanted to be a doctor. But she couldn’t do science subjects, so that had to be put aside. Then she wanted to be a nurse. Whoever knew Natasha couldn’t help smiling at that dream, for she was the clumsiest person imaginable. “Oh, my Lord, those poor patients,” Mark said. He described what she would do to them, and it was true, she would. So that had to go too. Then her ambition became smaller. She wanted to do something humble but useful: useful to humanity, she thought at first, but afterward she reduced that to just wanting to be part of humanity, a tiny worker bee in its vast hive. So she took a succession of jobs—in a kindergarten, as a waitress (this was especially disastrous), in an ice-cream parlor, a bookstore, a summer camp. She never lasted long anywhere; even those employers who liked her had, in the end, to let her go. Besides being clumsy, she was dreamy and absentminded; and though she tried hard,
her physical stamina was not up to her mental resolution.
The final disaster had been a job in a camp for retarded children. The campers were not really children but adults, at least in age and size. Many of them were incontinent, some were violent, others epileptic: they needed care day and night and craved affection. This latter Natasha was eager to give, but she was incapable of giving much else. She was clumsy with them. When she had to change their soiled clothes, she tugged and pulled and had such difficulty that they became exasperated and she desperate. Sometimes they hit her, and she had to hide this from the camp managers. One young woman had such love for her that she wanted to sit constantly in her lap and, though grossly fat through ill-functioning glands, insisted on being carried by her. Once, when Natasha tried to pick her up and totter a few steps with her, they both fell, the girl on top, Natasha underneath. Screaming with shock and rage, the girl seized Natasha’s head and banged it violently on the floor. Someone blew a whistle; the counselors and manager of the camp came running. Natasha was rescued, and the girl had to be tied to a bed. A day later another camper threw a pan of boiling water at Natasha, and though she jumped aside more smartly than was usual with her, it became evident that she had an irritating effect on the patients, so she lost that job and Mark had to come take her away.
It was then that Mark arranged with Leo to create a job for her at the Academy. Leo didn’t like it, but he rarely said no to Mark. Natasha didn’t like it either. “I don’t believe in his work,” she said. But Mark guessed that this might act for rather than against his plan: if living at the Academy was the most unattractive prospect she had, then very likely it would be the one that, after serious thought, she would choose for herself.
In Search of Love and Beauty Page 2