My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  (That’s to say: if Midnight Sun wins the Derby, as Dr. Frelicht believes he must, he, Frelicht, will collect an unprecedented $400,000 from a half dozen bookmakers and private parties, to be divided not quite equally among himself and the Warwicks; Frelicht’s share being understandably disproportionate to his modest $1,000 stake. And if Midnight Sun betrays Dr. Frelicht’s astrological prognosis, if the very Zodiac has misled him, then Frelicht will lose his $1,000 and the Warwicks will lose their $43,000 . . . a prospect that doesn’t bear contemplation; so Frelicht refuses to contemplate it.)

  No, he betrays no sign of worry. Only the vulgarian worries in public.

  A tumultuous day of brisk chill winds, and high, fast-scudding clouds like schooners, and a slate-blue sky far, far overhead!—and here below, on time-locked Earth, an amiable confusion of handsome carriages, and motorcars gleaming with newness, and spectators afoot, crowding the narrow streets and lanes leading to the Colonel’s racecourse. Here are splendidly dressed ladies and gentlemen in the clubhouse area—terrace, lawn, shaded boxes—white clapboard and dazzling white-painted stucco—a lawn fine and clipped as a bowling green, edged with rhododendron shrubs and vivid red geraniums. In the grandstand, newly painted dark green, sits the noisy majority of citizens, while the “common-folk,” quaintly so called, of both mingled races, settle themselves in the infield or on low roofs and hills abutting the track. For all are Thoroughbred fanciers on Derby Day in Chautauqua; no one so poor, or in debt, that he, or she, can’t afford a bet of at least $1 on one of these fine racing horses; even children are caught up in the betting frenzy. For all who live humanly are wagerers as Dr. Frelicht is in the habit of murmuring, with that inscrutable expression to his strongboned, ruddy face that some observers have described as philosophic and stoic, even melancholy, and others have described as childlike in yearning. And Americans are, of the Earth’s population, the most wondrously human.

  The band strikes up an exuberant polka, mule-drawn watering wagons make their slow, stately way around the track. By Colonel Fairlie’s proud estimate some forty-five thousand persons are attending this Twenty-third Derby, having converged on Chautauqua Falls from such places as New York City, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, and of course Kentucky, as well as Texas, California and abroad; by highways, waterways, and rail. The Kentucky Derby having lapsed into a decline, the Chautauqua Cup has emerged as the most prestigious of American Thoroughbred races, for a record one hundred eighty-four horses were originally entered for the race, of which nine, from the finest stables in the country, are to start. Every hotel in town is filled, including the palatial Chautauqua Arms, where Lord Glencairn of Scotland (a racing enthusiast rumored to wish to purchase the beautiful chestnut Xalapa) has taken an entire floor; the Pendennis Club is given over to officers of the Eastern Association for the Improvement of Breeds of Stock, and their wives and companions; such famous sporting gentry as James Ben Ali Hagin of Kentucky, and Blackburn Shaw of Long Island, and Elias Shrikesdale of Philadelphia are here, having chartered private Pullman cars for themselves and their retinues. Every bookmaker is happily occupied (though the Colonel has raised their clubhouse fees to $140 for the occasion), as are the Pari-Mutuel betting machines; milling about in the half hour before the race are newspapermen, “amateur experts,” owners, breeders, trainers, jockeys, grooms, and veterinarians. Unattended young boys, both white and colored, run wild in the infield and beneath the grandstand, pursued by security guards. Though “tipster sheets” have been disallowed at respectable tracks, it seems that some persons have them, and that they are being surreptitiously sold; as are Derby Day cards, and frothy pink cotton candy, and lemonade in paper cups, and bright-colored ices. Beribboned parisols and sunshades, gentlemen’s straw boater hats, shoes polished to a piercing high sheen, starched white snap-on collars, watch chains, walking sticks, gloves, ladies’ veiled hats, gentlemen’s white flannels . . . A. Washburn Frelicht, Dr. Frelicht as he prefers to be called, gazes upon the crowd with his single good eye. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

  Dr. Frelicht, keen-nerved as a stallion, would take a quick nip from the silver flask concealed inside his blazer but no—he will have an English toffee instead, how kind of Mrs. Dove to pass the tin, with a smile; both Warwicks are fond of sweets, as indeed is Dr. Frelicht, but sweets do the teeth ill; wreck the smile. The hard bared grin of Teddy Roosevelt, a thousand times pictured, brought teeth, muscled cheeks, and impassioned fists into style among the populace, but so energetic a style displeases ladies and gentlemen. For is not Teddy R. something of a boy, a boy-man, and thus laughable, contemptible? Not a blunt bold baring of the teeth is desired, but a slow, measured smile of manly intelligence, thinks Dr. Frelicht. Like this.

  The band’s spirited playing of “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” the old Civil War favorite, is interrupted by the announcement that the race will not start at 4:30 P.M. as planned, but at 4:50.

  And why? No explanation offered. A wave of disappointment, curiosity and apprehension washes over the racecourse.

  Stroking the neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee to which he has only just recently become accustomed, dabbing lightly at the forehead with a fresh Irish linen handkerchief monogrammed AWF. The noble uplifted profile, the glint of the gold watch chain. Dr. Frelicht has not wished to cultivate a reputation for wit in these circles, where he is known as a mystic student of the Zodiac, but he sees no harm in saying, quickly, in a general voice, that others in the clubhouse seats might be amused as well as his hosts the Warwicks—ah, the need of nerves, to perfectly express the mood of a moment—“‘If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’”

  And the ladies and gentlemen respond with delighted laughter at this clever allusion to—“Shakespeare, yes? I believe it must be Hamlet?” Mrs. Dove cries, with the air of a giddily bright schoolgirl of stout middle age; for even the rich are touched by anxiety, when matters of chance and cash are at stake.

  4.

  Not the wealthiest citizens of Chautauqua Falls but well-to-do, indeed, Edgar E. with his inherited fortune in asbestos, ink and sugarcane (Hawaiian), his sister Seraphina with a similar inheritance in addition to her deceased husband’s portfolio. The gentleman, only sixty years of age but looking distinctly older, with a hairless skull, sunken eyes, squat nose and cavernous nostrils—the nostrils darkly alert as the eyes, lost in fatty ridges of flesh, are not; the lady, the widow, well corseted, flushed with health, yet possessed of a cold pale eye and very small pursed lips. Edgar E. Warwick is known for his Lutheran zeal (did he not lead a successful movement to defrock a Contracoeur minister in ’88?), Seraphina Warwick Dove is known for her litigious zeal (did she not, only the previous June, bring suit against her own newly widowed daughter-in-law, to break her son’s “disgraceful” will?) . . . How the parsimonious Warwicks became acquainted with A. Washburn Frelicht, a stranger to the Chautauqua Valley and a person of some ambiguity, no one in their social set knows; why they became disciples of a sort, fervent believers, eager to finance Dr. Frelicht in his astrological stratagems, is somewhat less mysterious: they scented profit, the greediest and most gratifying sort of profit. For it was Dr. Frelicht’s artless contention that they could not lose. His method, which was a scientific one, could not lose. The Derby winner of ’09 was as clearly inscribed in the Zodiac as were the Derby winners of past years, if one but knew how to read the celestial hieroglyphics. “For, in the heavens, ‘future’ and ‘past’ do not exist,” as Frelicht explained enthusiastically, “but all is a single essence, a continuous flowing presence.”

  Edgar E. and Seraphina, hearing such words, exchanged a glance. A twitching of the lips meant to signify a smile. Brother-sisterly complicity. Since the Warwicks as a family strongly disapproved of gambling, they needed to be convinced that, in truth, this was not gambling; it was, however, a delicious opportunity to beat gamblers, as Dr. Frelicht said, at their own game. Could anything be more just—?

&
nbsp; WHERE THE WARWICKS went, in spring 1909, there the “astrological sportsman” must be invited as well. Else Seraphina in particular would have taken offense.

  Colonel Fairlie, reluctantly giving way and including Frelicht in a clubhouse dinner honoring Lord Glencairn, complained that his nerves were rubbed raw by the man’s very presence. Who was this Frelicht, what was his background, had he any decent occupation other than that of self-ordained gambler-mystic? Was he the fool he seemed? Was he simply very clever? Edgar E. and Seraphina teasingly pricked their acquaintances’ curiosity by hinting at coups Frelicht had accomplished at other racetracks, but the details were scant, for the success of Frelicht’s method depended upon its secrecy; and, being but human, brother and sister wanted to keep their find to themselves. Yet there were hints, elliptical and tantalizing, that he had once been a Shakespearean actor, perhaps a singer (hence the power and range of his voice), he had pursued a career in science (hence the Ph.D.); he might have been a seminarian in his youth; a musician; a tiller of the soil; a railroad agent; an explorer; a journalist. (Assuredly he had been a journalist. For, at Colonel Fairlie’s dinner, when the gentlemen retired for brandy and cigars, Frelicht fell to talking confidentially with old Blackburn Shaw and told him, in a sudden rush of emotion, that he had lost his eye to the “Spanish enemy” in the Maine explosion . . . .The New York Journal had commissioned him to write a series of articles on the Cuban revolution, along lines sympathetic to American interests, and, as a special friend and advisor to Captain Charles Sigsbee, he had been aboard ship when the Maine anchored in infamous Havana Harbor. Only imagine, two hundred sixty-six American lives lost! To this day, Frelicht said, he feared for his own life since certain Spanish agents had vowed to kill him.)

  Had he a wife? No. Not living.

  Had he children? No. Not living.

  And where, customarily, did he make his home?

  “Where I am honored and respected,” he said, looking his interlocutor full in the eye, “and where I can be of service.”

  A bower of tropical flowers, orchids, descending from the ceiling: purple, lavender, pearly-white, black. Linen-draped tables in a horse-shoe pattern overlooking a pond in which small golden carp swam and cygnets, black and white, nervously paddled. A young woman harpist from Dublin; rose-tinted shades over candles set in antique candelabras; Negro waiters in red jackets with gold brocade, red fezzes with black tassels, immaculate white gloves, serving the Colonel’s sixty-odd guests from seven until midnight . . . .Lord Glencairn and his Lady, the guests of honor; the beautiful Polish actress Alicja Zielinski and her gentleman companion; the L. H. Vanderbilts; the James Ben Ali Hagins; the Blackburn Shaws; Senator and Mrs. Gardner Simms; Elias Shrikesdale; the Cone-Pettys; Edgar Warwick and his sister Seraphina, the widow of Isaac Dove; and many another party including “A. Washburn Frelicht” in white tie and tails, who, to his credit, guessing himself not fully welcome in the Colonel’s clubhouse (being the only gentleman present not a member of the Jockey Club—the only gentleman who did not sport a diamond stickpin in his lapel, a gift of the Colonel’s), ate and drank sparingly, and inclined his handsome head to listen, rather than to speak. Did he, amid the numerous champagne toasts, amid courses of fresh clams, and vichyssoise, and salmon, and squab, and roast beef, and Virginia baked ham, and, at the very end, colored ices in such artful equestrian shapes (Stone Street, and Xalapa, and Sweet Thing, and Glengarry, and Midnight Sun, and Warlock, and Jersey Belle, and Meteor, and Idle Hour, ingeniously rendered at four inches in height) everyone lamented that they must be eaten—did he sense how roundly he was being snubbed by the other sporting men?—how idle and mocking were the questions put to him of his “astrological science”—?

  Not at all. For here, in A. Washburn Frelicht, we have a gentleman. Charming. Amiable. Well informed. Imperturbable. A holder of moderate opinions, political and otherwise. No admirer of Taft—no admirer of a lowered tariff. No admirer, assuredly, of Senator La Follette—the insurgent Wisconsin warrior much vilified in the Republican press for his campaign against the railroads. Dr. Frelicht is well-spoken and witty with the ladies; cultivated, yet not so cultivated to offend; with the men, he is shrewdly deferential. Seeming to suspect no drollery, no scorn, no scarcely suppressed laughter behind his back. If the muscled shoulders tighten beneath the handsome fabric of his blazer, if the goateed underjaw extends itself as if to block an improvident word, if the single good eye emanates chill even as the ruddy cheeks burn with an impassioned fever, is there anyone in this company equipped to see?

  The solitude of the pilgrim. Depend upon it, we are invisible in this world.

  Gradually, at Colonel Fairlie’s table, it becomes clear that Frelicht believes in his own betting stratagem—“In the infallibility of the Zodiac,” as he several times, portentously, declares. The man is a fool—yet a gentleman. A mystic of sorts. The specific details surrounding his and the Warwick’s betting, the amount of cash involved, the horse to win, are naturally not revealed; but Frelicht speaks freely, even rhapsodically, of the Heavens, the astral plane, the “star-consciousness in which Past, Future and Present commingle like flame absorbing flame, or water, water.” It is stirring to hear the man speak, his words are beautiful if purely nonsensical and self-delusory, yet so poetically expressed that many a lady (the Colonel’s own Belinda, in truth) might well be swayed, for suddenly the company is hearing of the Great Nebula of Orion . . . the reign of the Pleiades . . . how Andromeda inclines to Pisces and to the bright bold star of Aries . . . how the rings of Saturn quiver with electric charges . . . how the Moon exerts its secret tides upon the human psyche.

  Frelicht concludes by saying with a deferential smile that he sympathizes with those who are doubtful of his beliefs, as, until very recently, he was a doubter himself; a kinsman of Shakespeare’s Cassius, who so arrogantly claimed that man’s fate lay not in the stars but in himself. “Now, however, it has been revealed to me that any man, or woman”—with a glance at the beaming Seraphina across the table from him—“sufficiently initiated into the science of the sky is at the same time initiated into the science of the Earth. ‘As above, so below’—this is but ancient wisdom.”

  Luckily, Colonel Fairlie changes the topic before one of the scowling gentlemen at the table can ask Frelicht a rude question, such as why the Heavens were to be interpreted through him, and risk insulting Seraphina.

  YET AFTER DINNER, when the gentlemen gather together in the Colonel’s oak-panelled smoking room, over brandy snifters and Cuban cigars, things look up for Frelicht, indeed yes.

  For there is ninety-year-old Blackburn Shaw, of the famous Shaw Farm, a patriarch of the racing world, revered by all, laying a proprietary hand on young Frelicht’s arm, angrily lamenting the decline in Thoroughbred racing and breeding since the War, no horses like the great horses of his grandfather’s day, Diomed, Arisides, Ten Broeck, Lexington, Hindoo (“Hindoo!—there was a horse!—did you know, Dr. Frelicht, that Stone Street is sired out of Hindoo, the greatest stallion of all?”)—now times are changed, even gentlemen are breeding horses not for sport and beauty but for the market, in fact there are fewer and fewer gentlemen remaining in America—why, did Frelicht know that in the old days the highest qualities in a Thoroughbred were vigor, stamina, courage, sheer stubborn heart—if an animal couldn’t do three four-mile heats in less than eight minutes, why sir he would be turned out to pasture and his trainer with him—but now—since the War—since the turn of the century—now all that matters is “dash”—and a race is no sooner started than it is over. In the early years of the sport, too, stallions were far more virile than they are now: Hindoo, for instance, put out to stud at the advanced age of twenty, was so unquenchable in his appetite, so fired with lust, he would gallop out of his stable as if at the starting post!—serving all mares at his disposal with unflagging zeal, and siring one prizewinner after another. Whereas now, Shaw says pettishly, while his companion frowns in sympathetic disapproval, “Foals are half the time aborted in
the womb, it seems; and stallions lose their virility almost as soon as they lose their racing legs.”

  Frelicht, stroking his goatee, murmurs sadly that he had not known, sir, things were at such a pass.

  What is even worse, jockeys can no longer be trusted: those agile little colored boys who’d performed so well in the past! Nor could grooms be trusted, white or black. Nor trainers. It was common knowledge that races were being bought and sold every day—horses, poor dumb innocent beasts, were being fed drugs to slow their heartbeat, or stimulate it—any low trick to upset the “odds”—as if “odds” were king!—jockeys cunningly held their mounts back, the more skilled jockeys the more likely to pass off such trickery undetected—or they set their mounts too cruel a pace—threatened one another—sometimes assaulted one another—turned up at the stables drunk, or themselves coked to the gills. Worse yet (here the old man tugged at Frelicht’s arm, whispered fiercely into his ear), owners could not be trusted, even those who prided themselves on being gentlemen—“Even certain members ‘in good standing’ of the Jockey Club.”

  At this charge, however, Frelicht respectfully demurred; though he wasn’t a horseman himself, and not a member of this prestigious club, yet he could not allow himself to believe . . . (Speaking earnestly, quietly, with no sign that he guessed how most of the gentlemen in the room were listening. Stroking his goatee with meditative fingers.)

  This, the deaf old patriarch chose not to hear; and continued for several minutes more, lamenting the passing of the old days, the stability of the Union, before the rabble-rouser Lincoln went to war, and men were confounded to be told, like it or not, that they were but descendants of apes! In the end, though, smoking the heavily fragrant cigar his host had given him, pleased by the avid attentiveness of A. Washburn Frelicht, Mr. Shaw pressed upon that young man one of his business cards, and extracted from him a promise that, when Frelicht’s affairs next brought him to New York City, he would be a guest of Shaw’s at his Long Island farm, to stay as long as he wished.