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The King in the Tree

Page 1

by Steven Millhauser




  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  Revenge

  FRONT HALL

  LIVING ROOM

  DOWNSTAIRS BATH

  KITCHEN

  BACK PORCH

  DINING ROOM

  STAIRS

  UPSTAIRS BATH

  STUDY

  GUEST ROOM

  BEDROOM

  ATTIC

  CELLAR

  TOP OF THE STAIRS

  FRONT HALL

  An Adventure of Don Juan

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  The King in the Tree

  About the Author

  ALSO BY STEVEN MILLHAUSER

  Copyright Page

  To Marc Chénetier

  Acclaim for Steven Millhauser’s

  The King in the Tree

  “An ingenious geometer of love triangles, Millhauser tinkers with tested formulas in these three novellas, while giving full rein to his taste for the fantastical. . . . [His] shrewd sense of psychology makes his characters’ impulses toward romantic excess manifestly believable.” — The New Yorker

  “Coursing through these novellas are such literary ghosts as Byron, Wagner-as-librettist, Matthew Arnold and Alfred Lord Tennyson. . . . But when Millhauser is plumbing the mysteries of the human heart, there’s no question that he is writing after, not before, Sigmund Freud—and Kate Chopin, and John Updike and the sexual revolution. . . . The King in the Tree is a moving, melancholy book about the unlovely toll exacted by love on those it has abandoned.” —Los Angeles Times

  “Ever finish a book that was so good you ached to grab the collar of the next passer-by and shout in his unsuspecting face, ‘Read this! You have got to read this!’? Steven Millhauser writes that kind of book.” — The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Among [Millhauser’s] best. . . . The King in the Tree is a flawless retelling of the story of Tristan and Iseult. . . . Astonishingly, Millhauser creates a version that though modern reads like a newly discovered medieval tale. . . . His story will live with the older versions, and Richard Wagner’s, as part of the myth.” —The Boston Globe

  “Reading a book by Steven Millhauser is like tumbling down Alice’s rabbit hole. In the Millhauser Wonderland, time reels backward, life is but a fairy tale, and figures of mythology rule the universe. . . . All three of the novellas that make up The King in the Tree inhabit eerie realms of the imagination. Here men and women yearn for love, but it’s a poison more often than a tonic.” —Newsday

  “These three tales, each in different ways, confirm Millhauser’s reputation as a master stylist.” —The Star-Ledger (Newark)

  “Millhauser is our most brilliant practicing romantic, for whom surface reality is merely an uninteresting illusion, and ultimate reality is always artifice.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “All three of the novellas have Millhauser’s gifted storytelling voice going for them—a voice that grabs the reader by the ear and makes him pay attention.” —Rocky Mountain News

  “Millhauser’s characters are poignantly likable. They hurt, long and love like the rest of us. . . . Sentence by sentence, Millhauser displays awesome control.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Millhauser’s three novellas are marvels of craftmanship and inventiveness . . . a storytelling tour de force and an emotional rollercoaster ride.” — Richmond Times-Dispatch

  Revenge

  FRONT HALL

  This is the hall. It isn’t much of a one, but it does the job. Boots here, umbrellas there. I hate those awful houses, don’t you, where the door opens right into the living room. Don’t you? It’s like being introduced to some man at a party who right away throws his arm around your shoulders. No, give me a little distance, thank you, a little formality. I’m all for the slow buildup, the gradual introduction. Of course you have to imagine it without the bookcase. There isn’t a room in the house without a bookcase.

  May I take your coat? Oh, I like it. It’s perfect. And light as a feather. Wherever did you find it? It’s so hard to know what to wear this time of year, warm one day cold the next. I worry about my jonquils. They came out last week and then wouldn’t you know it: snow. Luckily it didn’t stick. It’s a miracle they didn’t die. I’ll just hang it right here, next to mine. It must look very empty to you, all those hangers side by side. Those are my late husband’s hats. Funny. One day I cleared out all the coats, all the shoes and galoshes—it just seemed pointless. But I left the hats. I couldn’t touch the hats.

  LIVING ROOM

  This used to be my favorite room. Listen to me! Used to be. But that’s the way it is, you know. I don’t have a favorite room anymore. Still, I spend most of my time here. Where else would I go? I’m so glad you like it. One thing we always agreed on, my husband and I, was furniture: it had to be comfortable. As Robert put it, no matter how new it was, it had to look sat in. And of course the piano—what’s a living room without a piano, I’d like to know. Not that I ever touched it. No, I gave up piano at twelve. Don’t know why, really. It’s the sort of thing you later think you regret, without really regretting it. But Robert, now. He quit lessons at fifteen but kept on practicing. He never did like to give anything up.

  It’s a warm room too. When we bought the place it was a little drafty in winter, but first we insulated and then we replaced those drafty old windows that Robert had to put up every fall. Triple-track: it made a difference, let me tell you. When you close the curtains, in cold weather, it’s just as if you’re sealing yourself in. I’d sit on the couch with my feet tucked under, reading, while Robert sat in the chair there, by the bookcase, reading and marking passages. Or we’d talk— you know, thoughts drifting up, turning into words, like, I don’t know, like a way of breathing. Sometimes he made a fire in the fireplace—excellent draft. I meant to tell you I had the chimney cleaned only last month. Was that ever a job. You wouldn’t believe what was in there. I almost fell over when I saw the bill. But hey, can you blame the poor guy? Anyway. When the fire was going, I’d move to that end of the couch, to be near it. I could feel the heat all along my right side. Sometimes Robert would go over to the piano, if the mood struck him. He never played for anyone except me. This wasn’t exactly as romantic as it sounds. He called himself an amateur—harsh word for Robert—said he refused to destroy beautiful things in public. Robert never liked to make mistakes. It upset him. He played for me because he knew I wouldn’t mind an occasional wrong note. Or you could say he played for himself and allowed me to overhear him. But I loved to hear him play, especially his Chopin nocturnes. He was crazy about Chopin, said he was the greatest composer—not ever, but of piano music. Second was Mozart. He’d play those Mozart sonatas over and over—every single one of them. Do you know what he’d do? He’d begin with any sonata and play right through the book, in order, till all of a sudden—right in the middle of a movement—the middle of a phrase—he stopped. “That’s enough of that!” he’d say, as though he were angry at himself, or . . . or disappointed. Robert was hard on himself. You had to know when to soothe him and when to leave him alone. Men are harder on themselves that way than women, don’t you think? Or am I wrong? But when he played, he was able to lose himself for a while, in the music. So imagine a fire going— wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green—the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains—and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys—and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare.

  I hope you don’t mind these littl
e . . . anecdotes of mine. We can just breeze on through the house if you’d rather. Then it’s all right to continue?

  Well. I don’t want you to think of me sitting on that couch for twenty-two years with a look of blissful idiocy on my face. You know, the adoring wife and the happy hubby. Twenty-two years! That was how long Robert and I were married: twenty-two years. Things are bound to be a little imperfect, in twenty-two years. I met him when I was twenty-four, working in a bookstore in Vermont. Robert was thirty. Even back then he had that gloomy kind of handsomeness that just . . . slayed me. A handsome moody man. Doomed, as he was fond of saying. Difficult, was what it boiled down to. Robert was difficult. But you work your way through. Besides, I was a handful myself, back then. Demanding. Temperamental. Robert was very patient. Impatient with himself and others, patient with me. We . . . fell in love, as they say. And stayed there. That was the thing. And I knew him: God, did I know him. I was a student of his expressions, a scholar of his moods. I don’t know when it was, exactly, that I felt something was wrong. It was last year—spring was further along, half my forsythias dead. You remember that late frost. I was sitting on the couch with a book, after dinner, and Robert was sitting in his chair, with a book facedown on his leg, thinking. Brooding, you could say. For no particular reason I asked myself: Am I happy? And I felt a little pause, a little—oh, breath of hesitation, before I answered: Well, yes, of course I’m happy. Of course I am. Happy.

  What stayed with me was that blink of hesitation. Robert had been acting a little strange lately. I’d noticed it without noticing it, the way you do. His work wasn’t going well again, he was—I mean, all this was nothing new. But there was a new element, something I was suddenly aware of. Robert was very good at giving you his full attention. I’ve never known anyone who was so good at giving you their full attention that way. He would listen with a kind of . . . a kind of alertness, and whatever he said would be at the center of what you were talking about. I realized that I’d missed this for a while—that his deepest attention was elsewhere. Now, listen. There was no question of unfaithfulness between Robert and me. I knew Robert. It wasn’t the sort of thing he did. Not that he didn’t notice a pretty woman. He liked pretty women. He liked me, didn’t he? Was always talking about how pretty I was and all that; I didn’t deny it. And of course women were always noticing him. But noticing’s one thing, and Robert . . . it wasn’t his way. It just wasn’t in the bounds of possibility. Besides, we were happy. Weren’t we? But I found myself thinking, on the couch—or not really thinking, it was more like the shadow of a thought: could it be that Robert . . . ? I immediately felt embarrassed, almost . . . ashamed, as if I’d been caught in some unpleasant act. But there it was. The little thought-shadow.

  This mantelpiece came with the house. I can show it to you in the original plan. Solid marble. Nice, if you like that sort of thing.

  Listen. I’ll tell you a story.

  Once upon a time there was a woman—just like me. She grew up in a small New England town, just like me. She was well loved and cheerful and fond of reading, just like me. She was good at school but not brilliant and went to a small college in Vermont, and at the age of twenty-four she fell in love—just like me. She married the next year, and she and her husband moved into a comfortable old house. The years passed. She was happy. Then one day, do you know what happened? Listen: I’ll tell you what happened. Nothing happened. She was happy, life was worth living, she liked the summer, and the fall, and the winter, and the spring, and she liked all the days of the week. And this woman was not like me, not like me at all.

  That’s my story. Did you like it?

  But—good lord—can you believe it? All along I’ve been holding this envelope. You must have been wondering. Why didn’t you say something? It’s the appraisal. As I said on the phone, I’m selling the house myself. I have no use for realtors— or reelators, as everybody says these days. God, how Robert hated that. Put some water in the perculator for the reelator. Then we can discuss nucular war. Anyway, I had the place appraised, and here’s the report. I won’t ask a penny more, but I also won’t take a penny less. That keeps it nice and simple.

  Now if we step around this way. . . . Door to the cellar. Back porch. I want to show you the back porch. But first the kitchen. That door?

  DOWNSTAIRS BATH

  The downstairs bath. Half bath—tub and no shower—newish WC—everything in fine working order. Please note the bookcase. I promised you a bookcase in every room and, by God, girl—as my grandpa used to say to my grandma—you’ll get a bookcase in every room! I mean, what with Robert’s books and mine. Will you just look at these things. A real mishmash. Wealth of Nations. Jane Eyre. Wizard of Oz. We knew where everything was, it just wasn’t in any particular order, except of course in Robert’s study. The Guermantes Way. Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Now there’s a title I’ve always liked. Screw’s coming out of that towel rack. The paint’s cracking over there; you’d want it redone. When I ordered the new toilet—I was the one who took care of things like that—the man said they came in two sizes: a short one, and a longer one. So I ask him what the difference is. He looks embarrassed, lowers his eyes. “Well, ma’am,” he says, “the longer one is . . . sometimes it’s more comfortable for . . . the gentleman.” Can you believe it? I practically bit my tongue off, not to laugh. “More comfortable for . . . the gentleman.” Robert and I howled over it. Of course I ordered the larger one. We called it The Gentleman. Permit me to introduce you. Lady: Gentleman. Ahm right proud to make your acquaintance, ma’am. To the Lighthouse. Tristes Tropiques. Good God. I spent one night lying on the floor of this room, right here on this old linoleum. Can you imagine? It’s hard to see how anyone could fit.

  KITCHEN

  Lots of sun through those windows. Kitchens should be bright, don’t you think? You ought to see the light coming through the window onto the table, on a good summer morning. Of course it’s terribly old-fashioned. Not nearly enough cabinet space. I know, I know. And I’m the only woman in America without a dishwasher. But really, where would you put it? I refuse to give up my sunny table. I could put one there—and cramp up the whole room. No, let it go. Besides, what would my friends do if they couldn’t say: Oh, you poor thing! You’ve just got to redecorate. Of course I understand a new kitchen’s a selling point. But I’ve told you about that. I’m sticking to the appraisal, no matter what.

  You see up there? On top of the cabinets? Complete works of James Fenimore Cooper. Library sale. They were practically giving it away.

  I could use a cup of tea. Would you care to join me? Oh, good. Good. I’ve been talking a blue streak, haven’t I? And that’s strange, because I’m known as a more or less quiet person. I calmed down after a few years of marriage. As I say, I was happy. It quiets you down. So: Robert’s quiet wife. And now, isn’t it odd, I have a desire to talk. Of course I don’t talk to just anyone. But there’s something about you . . . a sympathy, I think. I could sense it when you first entered the house.

  Milk? Sugar? I’m afraid I’ve only got whole. I can’t stand that two-percent stuff. Tastes like bad water, if you ask me. They say it isn’t much different from whole anyway, you have to have one percent to accomplish anything. Accomplish what, I’d like to know. Of course someone with your figure doesn’t have to worry. But I suppose it’s always the ones who don’t have to worry who do. No milk? I hadn’t thought of that. Solves the problem nicely, doesn’t it?

  Mmm, that’s good. That’s very good. Tea calms me. Selling this house rattles me—it’s like stirring a pile of leaves with a stick—you never know what’s going to come slithering out— but tea, now. Tea calms me. Especially on an afternoon like this, the sun in and out—a little on the cool side. I do worry about my jonquils. Last year I lost half my forsythias. Just look at those clouds. Well. After that evening I told you about—the evening when a doubt crossed my mind—things continued as usual—except that they weren’t as usual. I knew something was wrong. Believe me, I
knew. Robert was withholding something from me. You have to understand that Robert was a secretive man. I mean, he was a combination of secretiveness and . . . openness. It’s one of the things you get to know about a man. But this withholding, this, this awkwardness—well. It was new. Something had changed. It upset me. He knew it did. I still thought it was the book that was harming him. He’d taken a semester off, he was putting tremendous pressure on himself, and it wasn’t going well. He told me very little about it. Typical Robert: bottle it up, fight it alone. Be a man! I knew it had to do with things, American things—I think he was even planning to call it American Things—familiar household objects that were supposed to reveal something about American life in the late nineteenth century. Robert taught history and American studies at the community college. Have I mentioned it? They paid him nothing. It was a crime. Anyway: things. Fountain pens, tin cans, bottle caps—he kept reading about these things, searching for something deep. He wanted everything to mean something. So of course I thought it was that. I wanted it to be that. I could hear him scraping back the chair in the study, pacing around. Sometimes he left the house on long walks, or rode to the supermarket late at night, where he’d spend hours studying boxes, cans—or so he said. I felt estranged from him. And, funny as it sounds, I began drinking a lot of tea. I liked the ritual, I suppose. One evening last summer I was sitting right here at this table, alone, drinking tea. Iced tea, it was, with a slice of lemon. I heard Robert’s footsteps coming down the stairs. He came through the dining room into the kitchen and sat down, right where you’re sitting now. He had his sad, doomed look but also something else, a tension, an energy. I had the impression of a dangerous electrical wire—touch it and you’re dead. In a clipped, haughty way, angry and cold but weary, broken—oh, who knew what it was—he told me. He confessed. It was a withheld kind of out-pouring, a strangled eruption. But he confessed. He’d been seeing someone. You won’t believe this, but I thought he meant a therapist. A shrink. Robert? But of course he meant a woman.

 

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