Although I was no longer a member of the Black Hawks, I was still angry and aggressive. Above all, I was desperately lonely. There were plenty of gangs in New York, from the social gangs to the “bopping” and “jitterbugging” fighting gangs, and yet I didn’t yearn to be among them. That knife wound had taught me two important things: one, that there’s no loyalty among gang members, and two, that I was better off living than dead. So, I turned my back on the violence and concentrated on my work. It was all I had left.
The years passed. I grew less aggressive. I hid my anger and I gathered acquaintances along the way. My good looks drew people to me. Outwardly I was funny. Humor was my way of hiding my unhappiness. I made a joke out of life and I made fun of myself. My dry, cynical wit made people laugh, and laughter is a surer bond than any other. Like my mother, I could be charming when I wanted to be; yet, beneath the charm, I ached so badly I felt as scared as a child.
There was a club around the corner from our apartment called Fat Sam’s. I’d go there in the evenings and meet girls. I slept with countless women, searching for something I couldn’t put my finger on. Each one provided a temporary refuge. Yet, every morning the gnawing would begin again. Something gave me pain, but I couldn’t locate the spot and I didn’t know how to relieve it.
Then, one afternoon I was walking through Central Park. It was summer, particularly hot, I remember. Children were playing, dogs chasing balls, families lying on the grass, their carefree laughter ringing out into the sticky air. I walked with my hands in my pockets, watching them enviously, looking at them in the sunshine, from my dark place in the shadows. I was now in my late twenties, and what had I achieved for myself? I had no deep relationships of any kind, except with my mother; only a thriving business that I shared with her, buying and selling beautiful things that couldn’t reciprocate my affection. I watched those people who all had someone and felt a deep longing to love again. I remembered Joy Springtoe, Jacques Reynard, and Claudine — I didn’t allow myself to recall Coyote because of the pain his memory induced. Suddenly I noticed a distraught young woman striding towards me. Her face was flushed, her brown hair tied in a ponytail, her big eyes shining and anxious.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, but have you seen a little white dog?” I noticed at once that she spoke with a strong French accent.
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” I replied in French. She looked startled for a second and then continued in her own tongue.
“I have looked for him everywhere. I am so worried. He’s only small.” I don’t know whether it was the language or the vulnerable look in her eyes that stirred the chevalier within me, but I offered to help her look for him. “I’m so grateful to you,” she said, forcing a smile. We marched on, calling for him. “My name is Isabel.”
I introduced myself. “I’m Mischa. Where are you from?”
“Paris,” she said. “I came here a few years ago. I’m a photographer. Bandit! I hope he hasn’t been stolen. He’s such a beautiful dog.”
“We’ll find him. Just keep shouting and walking and he’ll come back.”
“I hope you’re right.” She looked up at me, desperation etched around her eyes where the skin was taut. I noticed how lovely she was, her skin smooth and brown, her eyes like toffee. She was petite, like so many French women, perfectly formed, with a small waist and full breasts neatly concealed by a crisp white shirt.
“I know I’m right,” I added confidently. She seemed to relax a little. I sensed I gave her reassurance. She was no longer on her own.
We shouted for Bandit all over the park. I knew we’d find him. I felt it in that old sixth-sense way I used to feel things in France. I knew we’d be lovers, too. I could taste her skin already, as if I had been there before. She was as familiar to me as those fields of vines I used to run up and down with Pistou. My coolness calmed her down, so that we were able to walk and chat at the same time. “How long have you had Bandit?” I asked, knowing that she only really wanted to talk about her dog.
“He’s three. I had him as a puppy. He’s everything in the world to me.”
“Has he run off before?”
“Never. I don’t know what’s come over him. Bandit!”
“Is he a randy dog?”
She glanced up at me and caught my grin. “Aren’t all dogs randy?” she said with a smile.
“Perhaps there’s a bitch in heat in the park. You know what dogs are like. They get the scent and can’t let it go.” A bit like men, I thought to myself. I liked her scent a lot.
“What should I do? They don’t run brothels for dogs, do they? Bandit!”
“Everyone needs someone, even dogs.” The words came out of my mouth without thought. My whole body tingled with excitement. I needed someone to love, it was as simple as that. Everybody needs someone. Finally, I had recognized where the ache came from — where else but in my heart? That mere acknowledgment of the problem made it go away. I blinked in the dazzling light of the summer’s afternoon and felt my spirits soar.
It didn’t surprise me one little bit when Bandit eventually scuttled over, covered in dust, wagging his tail with happiness. Isabel fell to her knees and gathered him into her arms, kissing him all over his face. “You naughty boy!” she cried, but clearly she didn’t mean it. Bandit obviously hadn’t a clue of the worry he had put her through, for he looked so pleased with himself, as if he deserved an award.
“How can I ever thank you for helping me find him?” Isabel said to me, standing up. She still had the dog in her arms. Her face was no longer drawn, but glowing pink, and her eyes were bright, but not with tears. I knew exactly what she could do to thank me, but decided to be a little more delicate about asking for it.
“Let me take you out for coffee,” I suggested. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
“I know just the place. A little French café on West Fifty-fifth street where they make fresh croissants and chocolatines.”
“Chocolatines?” My head was spinning with the memory of the patisserie in Maurilliac.
“My favorite.”
“Mine too,” I said. “I could kill for a chocolatine!”
The taste of pastry and chocolate, the smell of cigarettes and coffee, transported me back to my childhood in France. I could almost feel the eucalyptus-scented breeze against my face and hear the crickets in the undergrowth. Isabel and I spoke French together, making a small island of the round table where we leaned across to talk like old friends. I felt I knew her already. I had smelled her before, heard her voice, run my hands through her thick brown hair. She had come from somewhere long ago and I welcomed her like a man lost at sea.
Isabel had a dusting of light freckles on her cheeks and nose and when she smiled, her whole face opened up and radiated sunshine. She made me feel light-headed, as if I had drunk the wine of France and grown drowsy with nostalgia. We laughed until our bellies ached, about nothing at all, but everything I said was brilliantly witty and hilariously funny. Bandit sat on her knee, eating bits of pastry out of her hand the way Rex had done on Daphne Halifax’s lap, and she stroked his head and kissed him, as she might a child.
She invited me back to her apartment and we made love all afternoon. In that bold French way, she considered love-making a pleasure to be taken when desired. She wasn’t saving herself for marriage like so many American girls I met. She had enjoyed lovers before. Besides, she was made for it, both brazen and nonchalant. There was little she hadn’t tried and the more I caressed her the more she wanted.
Beneath her clothes she wore pretty silk panties trimmed with lace, and a matching brassiere. Her skin was smooth and smelt of tuberose. We fell on to the sofa and I traced my hands all over her body, savoring the slight dampness against my fingers, like the morning dew in the gardens of the château. I licked her all over, tasting the salt of the sea on my tongue. I celebrated the end of my search. I took Isabel in my arms and reclaimed the country I had lost. In the brown undulations of her flesh I found France.
That night I dreamed of Claudine. We were on the bridge. It was a hot summer’s day. Not a cloud in the sky. Small flies hovered over the water and birds whistled gaily in the trees. I felt serene by her side. We didn’t need to speak, for we understood each other perfectly. We stood there watching the flies and the little ripples of water where the fish swam. I thought of Monsieur Cezade and the dead fish, and Claudine looked at me as if she was remembering too. She smiled that familiar toothy smile and her face was warm and gentle. Then she took my hand and her eyes spoke to me. “I’m here, Mischa. I’ll always be here.” I squeezed it and felt my eyes fill with tears. When I awoke I pulled Isabel into my arms and kissed her. In her kiss I tasted France.
My mother should have been pleased that I had found love. She should have enjoyed my happiness. But perhaps my bursting heart emphasized the gaping hole in her own heart. The Coyote-shaped hole into which no one else could fit. I thought she would love Isabel as I did. Not just for me, but because Isabel was French. She was a part of the country we had both loved and left behind. France was in our veins and no amount of America could supplant it. But she didn’t. She closed up like a flower in frost, shutting her petals and withdrawing. She wasn’t intentionally rude, but her unwillingness to welcome Isabel caused offense. My mother never mentioned her name. It was as if Isabel didn’t exist. I wanted to share my happiness but I sensed it was making her bitter.
I encouraged my mother to go out with the men who tried to court her. She was a beautiful woman. But she insisted Coyote would come back one day. She kept that shrine of a place laid for him at the table with grim determination, as if the place itself would draw him back, and I know she prayed. In their bedroom she knelt beside the bed and put her face in her hands as she had done in the church in Maurilliac. Perhaps she believed the power of prayer would lead him back to us. Sometimes she sat at the window as if she hoped the wind that had brought him to us in the first place would blow him home. She waited for him and saved herself for him, but Coyote never returned.
My mother had loved twice: first my father and then Coyote, and both men had left her. Was it madness that sent her dancing to the record player, alone in her bedroom in the middle of the night? Had my father and Coyote merged into one? Was it that confusion that provoked the tumor that eventually killed her? My mother needed me, and while I cared for her I took my eye off Isabel. I thought I loved her, but perhaps I just loved France. Maybe I wasn’t ready to trust again. I grew possessive, suspicious, and the initial excitement dulled into squabbles and accusations. “I can’t get close to you, Mischa,” she said, over and over until I wanted to break the record. “You won’t let me in.” So I didn’t confide in her. I didn’t share the past. I thought I could share, but I was unable to. I kept it all to myself, and once more I was alone. Once again it was just us: Maman and her chevalier.
23
New York, 1985
But that was all in the past now. I pushed myself up and stretched, heavy with sorrow. I walked stiffly over to the window and leaned on the sill. Outside, the snow on the ground was still crisp and white, except on the street where the traffic had already turned it gray and slushy. The patches of sky above New York were pale and wintry, the trees bare, crippled with cold. If I closed my eyes I could smell the heat of France.
I was jolted from my trance by the telephone; its ring was loud and intrusive. I jumped, as if afraid it would wake Death who slept there in that silent apartment.
“Hello?”
“Stan told me you were there.” It was Linda, the girl with whom I had shared my life for nine years.
“Now’s as good a time as any to go through her things.”
“I see.” Her voice was tight. “Do you want any help?”
“Thanks, but I’m better on my own.” There followed a pause that weighed heavily with disappointment. I felt bad. I had been rotten company lately. I’d barely spoken to her, so added reluctantly, “Well, if you’ve got nothing better to do.”
“I’ll be right over,” she replied brightly. I hung up and sighed. I didn’t want to share this with her. I didn’t want to share it with anyone. My mother had closed chapters and so had I. I found a bag and put the photo album and letters inside to take home with me. The little rubber ball I put in my pocket.
I was in the hall when Linda arrived. She had walked. Her face was scarlet and her blue eyes glittered from the cold. She took off her woolly gloves and hat and shook out her blond mane. “It’s freezing out there!” she exclaimed with a sniff.
“You want a drink?” I asked.
“Yeah, what have you got?” She followed me through the living room to the liquor cabinet. “It’s ghostly in here. Why don’t you open the curtains, let some light in?” I shrugged. “You’ll get even more depressed in the dark.” The reference to my supposed “depression” irritated me. Of course I was depressed. My mother had just died. I poured her a glass of bitter lemon. “It’s really bizarre,” she continued. “Nothing’s changed in here, I mean, everything’s in the same place and yet it feels so different, like the breath has gone out of it.”
“It has,” I replied, helping myself to another glass of gin.
“I see she’s still getting mail. Do you want me to go through it for you?”
“No, I’ll get around to it.”
“Mischa, I want to help.” Her voice was beseeching. I braced myself for what was to come. “Don’t hunch your shoulders like that,” she said. “It’s rude. Like I’m the enemy.” She stifled a sob and opened the curtains with vigor, pulling the rings across the pole. The light tumbled in, exposing the dust on the furniture. I recoiled like a vampire. “That’s so much better, don’t you think?” she said, breathing deeply.
I watched her stride across the room, her leather boots clicking on the wooden floorboards. “We need to organize this with military precision. I’ll get a couple of trash bags.” I heard her rummaging around in the kitchen, cupboard doors opening and closing, and felt my irritation mount. She appeared in the doorway with her sleeves rolled up. “I’ll go through the kitchen. I don’t imagine there’s much that’s sentimental in there. You start in her bedroom.”
I was unable to control my temper. “Just stop, Linda. I don’t want you to do the kitchen. I don’t want you to do anything. I should never have let you come.” She didn’t look hurt, as she usually did when I shouted at her, but angry. She exploded like a pressure cooker.
“No, Mischa, you stop. I can’t take any more of this. You’re like an ostrich. If I don’t help you, all this stuff will just sit here for months. You’ve got to get a grip. Sort it all out. Keep what you want, dump what you don’t want, sell the place. Get rid of it. Move on.” I was astonished by her sudden outburst. It was so out of character. “You’re bad-tempered and rude. I’m tired of riding your moods like I’m at the rodeo, playing the glad game to humor you, mothering you like a slave. You’re the most selfish human being I’ve ever come across. All you think about is yourself. You know what? You’re wallowing in self-pity. You’re in so deep you can’t even see the way out. But I have needs too, Mischa. I need someone to take care of me as well.” I stared at her as she threw her complaints at me, layer by layer, like the leaves of an artichoke, until, finally, she reached the very heart of the matter. “I can’t reach you, Mischa. I’ve tried, I really have, but I can’t get close to you.”
I sat down, elbows on my knees, and rubbed my temples with my fingers. I didn’t need this right now. She sank onto the sofa and began to cry. “I don’t know what you want from me,” I said, but of course I knew. She wanted me to tell her I loved her. How could I? I wasn’t capable of loving. She wanted commitment. Didn’t they all? She wanted communication, but I didn’t want to let her in. I couldn’t give her what she wanted and, what was worse, I hadn’t even the desire to try.
“I want you to let me love you. That’s all,” she said in a small voice, pulling her knees up to her chest. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“If I’m such a miserable bastard, why would you want to?”
“When we met nine years ago, I saw this giant, angry man with smoldering blue eyes and enough charisma to set the city alight. You were funny too, when you weren’t angry. Then, when I got to know you a little better I saw how vulnerable you really were underneath. The angry person was just masking the pain. It sounds silly now, but I believed I could save you. I was young, barely twenty-eight, and all I wanted was to make you happy. I thought in time you’d let me in.” She shook her head and her forehead creased into a frown. “But you never did.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Sometimes love isn’t enough. A person can give and give and give, but if she doesn’t get any back she runs out. I’ve run out, Mischa. I haven’t got any left.”
“You’re too good for me, Linda.”
“Oh, don’t throw that at me like it’s a criticism. It’s not true. I’m not too good for you. I’ve just lost patience and my reserves have dried up. You know, I thought when your mother died things would change for us. She never liked me. She wanted you all to herself. But they haven’t changed. Even in death she won’t let you go, and I don’t think you want her to. You’re still holding on to her, aren’t you? I can’t believe we’ve been together for nine years and I barely know you any better now than when we met.”
“I’m not very good at talking about the past. I don’t even want to think about it myself.”
Her voice hardened. “Well, you’re not going to be able to move on until you confront it. Share it, then let it go. If you can’t talk to me, get a shrink.” When she saw that I had nothing to say on the matter she launched her final attack. She stood up and placed her hands on her hips. “While you wallow in the stagnant pond that is your life, I am going to move on. I want to get married, have children, make a home. I want to grow old surrounded by grandchildren. I’ve given you the best years of my life, Mischa. But I’m not going to give you any more, that would be suicide. I’m still young and there’s somebody out there deserving of my love.” And with those words Linda left the apartment and my life. I wasn’t even sorry to see her go.
The Gypsy Madonna Page 20