My Heart Laid Bare

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Only imagine, Darian—your madman of a father sneaking off without telling me, and placing two thousand dollars on a horse, and returning with ten thousand! And in cash, in all his pockets,” Rosamund cries, nearly faint with laughter, pretending to be thrusting her hands into the pockets of Abraham’s velvet smoking jacket as he laughingly fends her off, “—commanding me to search him! Till all the carpet here was covered in hundred-dollar bills. But I don’t, y’know, approve of gambling. I don’t.”

  “Yes, Rosamund is of old, censorious American-Puritan stock. Her ancestors arrived on these shores in 1641—imagine! Some years preceding our own.” Abraham grows sober suddenly, as if his words have awakened a disturbing memory; but the mood of the evening is such, sobriety can’t endure for more than a few seconds. At once Abraham is on his feet mixing another round of this delicious new drink, new at any rate to Darian—“The ‘Manhattan.’ Smooth as silk going down, yes?” Rosamund brings Darian his drink, their fingers brush as he takes the exquisitely shaped crystal glass, never in his life has he so much as lifted such a glass to his lips, never exchanged such a glance, such a smile from a beautiful young woman so clearly fond of him. (“Am I your ‘stepmother,’ Darian dear? I should have rushed to get well, instead of languishing like a ridiculous old prude, all those years.”) Abraham is informing Darian that he’s invested nearly $1 million in Manhattan real estate. This three-story brownstone residence (at East Seventieth Street and Fifth Avenue); a similar brownstone on East Sixty-third; and a commercial building on Broadway and Forty-fifth. Prices in Manhattan are steep but will continue to rise; in another five years, if all goes well, the price of these properties will have trebled. “You have only to contemplate the stock market to see how prices will rise, rise and rise—like a spouting fountain.”

  For, yes, as Abraham is fond of saying—The island is finite, its promise infinite.

  And its corollary—Manhattan today, all of America tomorrow.

  Still, Abraham Licht’s plan isn’t to remain in Manhattan for long. He and Rosamund are going to make a major purchase sometime before the fall, a horse ranch in the Chautauqua Valley—“That most beautiful region to which I yearn to return, with my bride.” Both are great admirers, it seems, of Arabian horses; Rosamund rode when she was a girl out on Long Island, and Abraham has long been interested in (hadn’t Darian known? surely yes) breeding Thoroughbreds for racing. “Not at all for money,” Abraham says sternly, “—but for the aesthetics of the sport. For nothing, y’know, is quite so splendid as an Arabian in his prime.”

  “Or her prime,” Rosamund murmurs.

  “Certainly, yes. Or her prime.”

  Husband and wife exchange an intimate smoldering glance. Just to witness it is to feel the danger of combustion.

  Darian takes a large, improvident swallow of his Manhattan.

  Abraham Licht is musing how in the Chautauqua Valley, not many miles from Muirkirk, they might lead a secluded and idyllic life; precisely the sort of life suited for their imminent situation.

  Imminent situation?

  No. Yes. Of course. Rosamund is pregnant . . . that explains much that has passed between husband and wife; and Darian, being an adult of nearly twenty-nine, was expected to have understood without having been told explicitly. My father, again a father. And I, another time a brother.

  Rosamund, seeing Darian’s startled glance, blushes. A faint lovely rose rising from her slender throat into her angular, rather narrow face. Her skin is of the hue of ivory; despite her vivacious manner, which may be fueled by alcohol, she’s an abnormally thin woman; shivers often, though perhaps in excitement, nerved-up, as Katrina would say high-strung as a filly in heat; except, being pregnant, Rosamund is assuredly not in “heat.” She has draped a white crocheted shawl over her slender shoulders; her loose-fitting dress is of sea-green silk, falling fashionably to midcalf; not bobbed or shingled in the fashion of the day, her glossy black hair is parted this evening in the center of her head and gathered back in a Grecian twist at the nape of her neck. The proud mother-to-be. Darian would cry, “Congratulations! To you both.” But instead takes another swallow of his drink.

  Over a cold supper of oysters Rockefeller, filet mignon, creamed potatoes, Stilton cheese and glazed apricots, served by a Filipino woman in black, Abraham Licht takes up the subject, perhaps a familiar one to him, though unfamiliar to Darian, of the philosophical consequences of physiological experimentation in identity. “Whether, that is, an individual being identical and fully present in either half of his brain might be ‘divided’ into two separate individuals to be housed in two separate bodies. As William James believed, we are as many ‘selves’ as there are individuals who know us; so it may be that . . . ” Darian nods, trying to follow his father’s abstruse logic; yet distracted by Rosamund’s presence, her daughterly attentiveness to Abraham as if every word of his were sacred, to be committed to memory. Darian feels a pang of jealousy; of loss; that Abraham and Rosamund hadn’t attended his recital . . . for, surely, Rosamund would have found something to admire in Esopus; Rosamund would have recognized Darian’s heartfelt yearning, the very music of his soul, beneath and beyond the playful experimentation of sound. My music was written for you. Will you hear my music . . . someday?

  Abraham is musing on the paradox that identity seems to reside in the head; in “consciousness”; yet we don’t really identify with our physical selves—“For this, we say, is ‘my’ hand, implying that it’s a mere possession, and we’re possessors. ‘My’ arm, ‘my’ head; even ‘my brain.’ Isn’t it paradoxical that we’re in the habit of referring to ‘my’ soul as well?”

  Darian, aroused by wine and by Rosamund’s presence, laughs nervously; saying he doesn’t know, he’s never given much thought to it, if you’re a musician you’re immersed in music night and day, day and night, hour following hour, like a lover obsessed with his beloved. “And possibly, Father, it’s only just a convention of language, peculiar to English.”

  “No. Hardly peculiar to English. ‘Moses Liebknecht’ is both psychologist and linguist, a polyglot in fact, and informs us that such patterns of speech indicate a universal human habit, of separating, as Descartes did so methodically, ‘mind’ from ‘body.’ What interests me is why we resist identifying even with our souls.”

  “Assuming, darling, that we have souls,” Rosamund says. “For perhaps not all of us are so burdened.”

  But Abraham Licht, brooding upon his own thoughts, pays her no heed; nor notices how his long-lost Darian is gazing at him, and at her, with an expression of infinite yearning.

  SHORTLY AFTERWARD, ROSAMUND excuses herself to retire for the night; and Darian’s father persuades him to stay another hour, in fact to stay the night—“We can finish this bottle of burgundy. There are so many things we need to speak of, son!”

  And naturally Darian consents. Though he’d planned—vaguely—to return to Schenectady on the earliest train out of Penn Station. (Already he’s delayed returning by two days; has missed classes at the Westheath School, with no explanation or apology to Myrick Sheffield; the past forty-eight hours have sped by in a dream.) What pleasure in Abraham’s—and Rosamund’s—company! What riches! It’s as if the humiliating “premiere” at Carnegie Hall had never occurred, nor had ever been envisioned by an arrogant young composer. When Father focuses his attention so exclusively on Darian, Darian can feel his heart swell; his “ailing” heart; and knows himself far stronger than he’d imagined. For so Zeus might breathe the spirit of life into a mere clay vessel. The first music of all is breath.

  So Darian remains for another hour in the handsome brownstone on East Seventieth Street, tempted to stay, as Abraham has invited him, the night; yet wanting to maintain some measure of independence . . . some distance from Abraham Licht and his young pregnant bride, despite the dreariness of the Empire State Hotel. Eagerly he listens to his father’s conversation, which is as usual one-sided; Darian would like to ask Abraham how he and Rosamund met, how long the
y’ve been married, what are the circumstances of Rosamund’s life . . . but he’s too shy to interrupt. All too briefly Abraham remarks that Rosamund is a remarkable woman whom he loves deeply, far more than he’s loved any other woman; as he believes she loves him—“For it’s her conviction, Darian, that I saved her life. Which perhaps I did.”

  “I hope to play some of my music for her soon. If only you had a piano here . . . .”

  “We’ll buy a piano. Tomorrow morning. Well—tomorrow afternoon! There’s a Steinway showroom on Park Avenue, close by. And Rosamund, I know, loves piano music.” Abraham Licht smilingly snaps his fingers. Almost, Darian can see the magnificent gleaming piano materialize in the adjoining drawing room.

  Following this, Abraham begins to make inquiries, tactful enough but edged with paternal concern, about Darian’s present circumstances. Abraham has to confess he’s never heard of the Wheatsheath—the Westheath?—School of Music; nor does he know anything of Schenectady, New York. “To speak bluntly, son: have you much of a future in such a place? Will you perhaps be moving on to a more prestigious school—like Juilliard, here in Manhattan?”

  Darian, giddy from wine, says carelessly, “To hell with Westheath—and Juilliard, too. I want to compose, Father. I want to alter the sound of American music.” Yet in his own ears how childlike these words echo; a mere proposal, and not a statement of fact.

  “Do you, son? I wish you well.” Abraham raises his wineglass in an oddly restrained gesture, and drinks.

  Darian feels himself subtly rebuffed.

  He doesn’t believe me. He has no faith in me.

  Long ago pronouncing me unfit for The Game.

  The evening is fast waning. Darian will not stay with his father and his father’s bride but must return to the Empire State Hotel; and fall into bed, and sink into another oblivion. He’s both relieved and disappointed that Abraham hasn’t asked him more about his life, especially when Rosamund was still at the table. What tales Darian had to tell, long prepared to be told in such a way, to Abraham Licht, of riding the rails in the Midwest, shabby, unshaven and reckless as any hobo; of scraping together a living however he could, as he had reason to think Abraham had done as a young man; of Colonel Harris’s Needham Silver Cornet Band . . . and many more. “Well, there will be other evenings,” Darian thinks. “Many more.” It is only relief he feels that Abraham hasn’t inquired after Millie or Thurston; assuming no doubt that Darian hasn’t heard of them or from them in years.

  Abraham offers Darian a cigar, which he unwisely accepts; the men smoke together in thoughtful silence for a few minutes; Darian, who has only smoked cigarettes in the past, and few of these, knows he must not inhale the powerful smoke but isn’t quite sure how to smoke without inhaling. He begins to cough, and his head begins to swim. Abraham, fortunately, doesn’t notice; he’s speaking dreamily of his plans to move to the Chautauqua Valley, and to raise the finest Arabian horses to set “records of the future”; there’s a possibility, Abraham confides in Darian, in a lowered voice as if he fears being overheard, of his purchasing the renowned stallion Black Mars who’d won last year’s Kentucky Derby, sired out of the 1925 Triple Crown winner Crescent, in turn sired out of the great Midnight Sun of years past. “If only I can realize this dream,” Abraham says, exhaling smoke in a bluish vaporous cloud. “What prizes, what glory for my wife and my family!”

  Darian listens, fascinated. Or would be so except his head is swimming.

  “For I am ‘family’ too, am I not?” he thinks.

  Darian rises to leave, and stumbles; but rights himself, with a thrill of pride, before his father can assist him; for he won’t have it said (in jest, even if in affection) by Abraham to Rosamund that poor Darian was incapacitated in the slightest. Another time Abraham invites Darian to stay the night, and another time Darian politely declines; Abraham promises to telephone him in the morning, before his train leaves; and promises to keep in touch with him, in Schenectady; even to visit, soon—“For we won’t miss another of your concerts, Darian, I vow.” (Darian is confused: hadn’t Abraham planned to buy a piano the next day, so that Darian could play it for Rosamund? Or had Darian misunderstood? He blames the cigar for his muddled head and discreetly lays it aside.) Then they’re out on the street, and strolling arm in arm in the direction of Fifth Avenue, where Abraham will hail a cab for Darian, to take him to his hotel. When they part, Abraham embraces Darian impulsively. “Bless you, son!”

  “And you, Father. Bless you.”

  8.

  Next day, Darian can’t move from his bed until early afternoon.

  He has never been so sick . . . so deathly sick. As if his insides, from his lungs to his bowels, were crammed with a corrosive substance like lye. And his head filled to bursting with broken glass.

  No telephone call comes from Abraham Licht.

  When Darian tries to telephone Abraham Licht, he’s informed by an operator that “no such party” is listed in the directory.

  When Darian is well enough to venture forth, in the early evening, he takes a cab to the brownstone on East Seventieth Street, or is it East Seventy-first Street . . . he can’t quite remember. The brownstones resemble one another, very like brownstones on East Seventy-second and East Seventy-third. When he rings the doorbells at two of these residences, no one answers; at the third, a soft-spoken woman in a uniform, possibly Filipino, opens the door to inform him that “Mister and Missus” are away. Darian asks if Abraham Licht resides at this address, and the woman shakes her head wordlessly, and quickly shuts and bolts the door.

  “Wait!” cries Darian. He stumbles down the steps, and out into the street, in order to see the upper stories of the handsome house more clearly. He cups his hands to his mouth—“Father? Father! It’s me, Darian.” But the upstairs windows are darkened. No face appears.

  Next morning, he takes the train north to Schenectady. Praying that his “visiting instructorship” still remains at the Westheath School.

  Sitting alone in the day coach staring dry-eyed out the window hearing no music in his head, scarcely even the thump! thump! thump! of the train wheels and the intermittent melancholy whistle; seeing nothing of the majestic landscape along the Hudson River. Could I console my idiot self thinking I am headed home except Schenectady is not my home. I have none.

  . . . A VAST FEATURELESS Silence against which elliptical patterns of Sound define themselves: overlapping, drawing apart, rippling, shuddering, running together as wayward currents of water join in a larger stream, rushing together at varying speeds; the rising of voices (of the lost souls of Esopus, of all of the dead) displaced in Time; a gradual fantasia of broken melodies, incantations, children’s voices, chants; and always the beat, the blood-heavy beat, the relentless primitive blood-heavy beat, hardly discernible until the final fading unresolved notes.

  “PROPHET, REGENT & EXCHEQUER . . . ”

  1.

  When Prince Elihu speaks all of the world, white no less than Negro, is obliged to listen: for it is Elihu’s teaching that Africa is the birthplace of all civilization, and black and dark-skinned peoples, descended from Ham, are the origin of mankind; of whom the white man is but a fallen, diseased, and doomed specimen, who, by an ironic reversal of history, has come to assume a temporary sovereignty. And Africa, and the black and dark-skinned peoples of the world, shall rise again, to reclaim in righteousness the lost grandeur of that civilization—whether with the cooperation of the white race, or no.

  (For the Caucasians are but a tribe of vicious cannibal-devils, as the recent World War made clear; and within a decade or two, according to Elihu’s calculation, there will follow yet a second world war waged by Caucasians, against Caucasians, which will destroy their degenerate civilization entirely.)

  Thus, speaking as the Prophet, Regent & Exchequer of the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union, Prince Elihu commands that the United States Government prepare to deliver to the Negro people within its territorial boundaries either a portion of land (of th
e size of Oklahoma), including a waterfront; or restitution of no less than $5 billion as indemnity for the outrage of slavery, that the entire Negro population of the North American continent might one day migrate en masse back to Africa, to colonize a pure black republic . . . and to prepare for the eventual overthrow of the white-controlled regions of the entire continent.

  Liberty or Death! was the watchword of the martyred Gabriel Prosser, a twenty-two-year-old slave tortured to death in 1800 by his white captors—Die silent as you shall see me do.

  So with Prince Elihu, it is Liberty or Death; and Death Before Humility.

  AND: BROTHERS BY blood are brothers by the soul.

  And: All white men are our enemies, then and now.

  IT IS WHISPERED through Harlem that Prince Elihu is possessed of immortal powers: that he was born with the gift of voodoo-telepathy; of mesmerism; of slipping out of his skin and entering another’s, by way of the secrecy of Night. Though born in Jamaica, or Haiti, or, perhaps, the Windward Islands, some forty years ago, he is nonetheless believed to be the avatar of the ancient African king Elihu (himself related to Egyptian and Turkish nobility)—he who, according to legend, arose out of the fiery flood of a volcano’s eruption, and led his people to military glory as conquerors of the region now known as the Ivory Coast. Thus, though numerous attempts have been made on his life, by both Negroes and whites, he cannot be killed.