“Are you the daughter of that Professor Stone?” he asked. “The one who was attacked in his home?”
I pulled away to see him. No more than seventeen or eighteen, dressed in a baggy white shirt and pants, he continued clearing, as if I hadn’t moved.
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“Ditch the prof after lunch and meet me out back on the loading dock,” he mumbled. “I got to tell you what happened here last Friday.”
I stared at him. He scooped Chalmers’s salad dish into his cart, still pretending I wasn’t there.
“I can’t talk to you here,” he mumbled, his lips barely moving. “Meet me out back in ten minutes.”
The kid finished clearing our dishes and pushed on to another table. I watched him make his way through the dining room, then Chalmers returned.
“Are you coming back to the department?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve got to meet someone at the library.”
Chalmers’s eyes frosted over. “Mr. Sanger? Miss Jaspers, perhaps?”
I shook my head. “An old classmate,” I said.
“Be careful of those two,” he admonished. “They’re schemers, working toward their own ends. One or both may have leaked the story about your father’s manuscript.”
While we’d been inside the Faculty Club, the day had turned gray and wet. The beautiful sunshine that had illuminated my model that morning was gone, replaced by a misty rain, not frozen, but raw enough to turn your bones blue. The loading dock at the back of the Faculty Club dining hall was empty. I leaned against a cement post at the base of the dock.
“I saw your old man last Friday.”
The busboy.
I pushed off the post and turned to see him in the doorway of the loading dock, shivering in shirtsleeves as he pulled a Salem from his breast pocket.
“He came in with one guy, then he noticed another man. That’s when the trouble started.”
I knew Bruchner had been there, but I wondered who the third man could have been. “Tell me what happened.”
“It was a bad scene,” said the kid, huddling over his match to protect the flame. Then he lifted his head, cigarette fuming in the drizzle. “I thought he was gonna have a stroke.”
I took a step closer, just a few feet below the kid, and rested an elbow on the dock. He didn’t look at me as he smoked.
“I didn’t think an old guy could cuss like that.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Your old man,” said the kid, looking at me now. “And he was like Sugar Ray, swinging at that other guy. Took three of us to hold him off. Scratched my arm, right there,” he said, holding out the underside of his forearm for proof.
“Who did he go after?” I asked, wondering if I should apologize for his wound. “The man he was eating with?”
“No, your old man came in with the younger guy. They were eating and talking, nothing special. Then the other guy—the older one—showed up by himself. He sat down on the other side of the cafeteria, and your dad started fuming.”
That was strange. I thought my father had eaten lunch with Bruchner, but this sounded quite different. Bruchner’s story didn’t match the busboy’s.
“Why was he fuming?” I asked.
“Hell if I know. He just kept staring daggers at him from across the room. I was working his table, so I was keeping an eye on him. Jerry, the waiter I work for, makes me watch the tables like a hawk, like we’ll get more tips if we do. But that ain’t happening. No offense, but these profs are cheap motherfuckers.”
The kid laughed, took a puff on his Salem, and blew the smoke high in the air. “I was filling up his water glass while he was talking to the younger guy about it, but they were speaking Italian. You Italian?”
I shook my head. “What happened next?”
“Your old man got up and started charging across the room. The other guy tried to stop him, and asked me to help. So we set off after him, caught him just as he got to the table. He jostled it a little, and the guy eating alone got a lapful of hot soup.” He laughed. “Your old man was pointing at him, saying, ‘Show me your tattoo, show it to me if you’ve got the guts.’ I thought it was strange. Then he started to yell something in a foreign language, but not Italian. I don’t know no Italian, but there’s a couple of guys in the kitchen from Italy. They’re always jabbering in Italian, and your old man didn’t sound like that. One of the guys said it was German or something. Your old man speak German, too?”
I nodded. “Did he show him the tattoo?”
“Yeah. Pulled his sleeve up and showed him a bunch of numbers on his left wrist. That’s when your dad jumped at him, reaching for his throat, and snagged the guy’s shirt at the collar, right here,” he said, pointing to his left collarbone. “Tore the shirt right open. The guy near fell out of his chair, trying to get away. ‘The other one!’ your father was yelling, ‘I want to see the other one!’ Then he hollered some more in German.”
“I don’t suppose my father got to see the other tattoo,” I said.
“Naw,” he drew on his cigarette. “But I did. I wasn’t the only one your dad scratched. The other guy got it too, right across his upper chest. So Jerry sent me into the kitchen with him to fix him up. When I was wiping alcohol on him, I noticed the tattoo on the left side of his chest, up near the shoulder.”
“What was it?” I asked, leaning farther forward.
“Looked like a couple of sticks. Kind of dark and complicated. Lots of heavy ink lines. Pretty ugly, I thought. Nothing I’d like to have on my chest.”
“Just two sticks?”
“That’s right. Sticks, maybe with a couple of vines twisting around them, like on the back of a dime. Except his sticks were leaning a little to the side, not straight up and down. About yea big,” he said, showing me about two inches with his fingers.
“What about my father? Did he leave right away?”
“The guy he came with hustled him out while I was in the kitchen. Man, I never seen white boys mix it up like that, not at the Faculty Club, anyway.”
“Who else saw what happened?”
“Everybody in the place,” said the kid. “We don’t get big crowds on Friday afternoons, but there was probably ten profs in there.”
“Do you know who the other two men were?”
“Naw. I only remembered your old man’s name, Stone, ’cause I see him around here from time to time.”
“How did it end?”
“The guy with the tattoo left, said he didn’t want to cause no trouble for nobody.”
“Why couldn’t you tell me this inside?”
He chuckled. “Niggers ain’t supposed to talk to the diners,” he said, then flicked his cigarette high in the air. It fell several yards beyond the edge of the loading dock. He opened the door behind him and disappeared inside.
Gualtieri Bruchner was the enigma of Columbia’s Italian Department. He had arrived in New York only six months before and was no social animal. Miss Little told me he had left for the day, so I questioned anyone who would stand still about him.
“Quiet,” said Miss Little. “Keeps to himself.”
“A misanthrope,” pronounced Chalmers. “On the rare occasions when he shows up at a function, he’s always the first to leave. Doesn’t talk to anybody, except about the driest scholarly topics.”
Ironic that Victor Chalmers was accusing anyone of boring behavior. This was the man who delivered a five-minute monologue in Latin on the occasion of his daughter Ruth’s Confirmation. Dad had related the incident to my brother and me that evening at the dinner table.
“The strutting ass stood up, cretin’s grin smeared over his face, and explained that he was going to toast the grand occasion with a parable of his own invention. Then he started in with Olim puella erat (There once was a girl), or some such nonsense. It was embarrassing, I tell you. Only the priest and I understood what he was saying! And he droned on for five minutes, laughing at his own wit.”
“Is Dad exagg
erating again?” Elijah asked Mother.
Ever kinder than my father, Mom searched for the delicate answer to Elijah’s question. But in the end, she gave a quick shake of her head and said, “No, your father’s account is accurate.”
“Poor little Ruth,” said Dad. “She was more embarrassed than anyone. None of the other parents felt compelled to humiliate their children.” He shook his head in disgust and turned his attention back to his dinner.
And I turned mine back to Gualtieri Bruchner.
Bernie Sanger said: “He’s creepy. Reminds me of Dracula. Like he never goes outside in the daylight.”
Roger Purdy, after some coaxing, contributed: “Professor Bruchner is a fine scholar, though not much of a conversationalist.”
I phoned Franco Saettano to get his opinion. He had none, claiming he’d only spoken to Bruchner a few times, and that his memory was not so sharp that he could recall the slightest impression the visiting professor had made on him.
I opened my father’s office with the brass key Miss Little had provided me. After browsing through some drawers and files, I pulled out my Leica. Inside, the exposed film of the sleeping Gigi was still there, beckoning me silently. I rewound the roll, placed it carefully in a metal canister, and slipped it into my coat pocket. I loaded a new roll and opened the portfolio of my father’s drawings. I was bent on preserving the collection, if only on celluloid.
Sean McDunnough was sitting on an aluminum chair next to my father’s bed, reading the Racing Form. His pose was oddly graceful: the huge man with chicken legs, crossed daintily at the knee.
“How is he?” I asked.
McDunnough shrugged. “The doctor was here about an hour ago. Said he was no worse.”
“Any visitors?”
He shook his head. “I’ll be back at ten,” he said, folding the Racing Form and clamping it against his side beneath his bearish right arm.
I settled into the chair to sit vigil. It was four thirty, and I had forgotten to buy a paper. No crossword.
Hours spent bedside in a hospital rarely figure among the happiest of your life. If the patient is unconscious, time can drag your spirit to the basement, bouncing you down each step on the way. All you can do is watch. Nothing to say, no way to help; your sense of usefulness runs out like dirty bathwater swirling down a drain. My father looked hollow. He looked dead. The only signs of life were artificially generated, compliments of Saint Vincent’s Hospital: the pumping of the ventilator and the tiny beeps of a heart monitor wired to his chest.
I fell asleep and dreamt of a siren, who beguiled me with her song from across a wide, stormy river. Remotely indifferent to the dangers, I pushed my skiff toward the sweet sound of her singing, ever closer to the rocky shore and crashing waves. The siren lay languid on the highest of the half-submerged rocks, her breast heaving with each beckoning note. Her skin glistened in the spray and moonlight as if the river had licked her from head to toe. I steered closer, squinting through the mist to see the emerald-gold sheen in her hair, until a streak of lightning blazed across the sky, illuminating the hideous gnarl of her lip and hump on her back. Her hair was the green of eel retchings, and her stench was so potent it cut upwind. I dunked my oar in the river, straining against the surge of the tide, to pull back from the onrushing rocks. But it was too late. My fragile vessel rode the river’s swell and crashed against a crag. The skiff splintered, and I pitched over the bow into the black water. My thrashing summoned no one, and the cold river closed over my head. I cursed her for her perfidy just as a nudge on my shoulder roused me.
“It’s after ten, miss,” said Sean McDunnough. “Come on, give us a seat.”
I shook the nightmare from my eyes, happy to see a dry, ruddy face, and stood to stretch my back.
“Sorry if I startled you,” said McDunnough, unfolding a paperback copy of Ulysses—of all things—as he assumed his position on the chair. “See you in the morning.”
I headed straight for 26 Fifth Avenue and a warm bed. My back hurt and my head ached, perhaps due to the weather, or maybe the dream of cold water and treachery.
“A young lady dropped by to see you earlier, Miss Eleonora,” said Rodney as we rode up the lift. “Left this number for you.” He handed a slip of paper to me. “Said her name was Ruth. She wants you to phone her tomorrow.”
“I see.” Then, I absently muttered aloud that I thought it might have been Miss Jaspers. I figured I was due a visit from her.
“Oh, no,” said Rodney. “I haven’t seen Miss Jaspers in more than a week.”
FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1960
The following morning, I lay in my father’s bed, thinking about Ruth Chalmers. I had first met her at a Columbia family picnic sixteen or seventeen years earlier. She was a precocious girl of six—a year younger than I—with light-brown hair pulled into two brain-tugging pigtails behind her ears. She wrestled with her blue chiffon party dress, trying to disengage some of the hooks to free herself to roughhouse with the boys at the party. Her mother, Helen, slapped her hard on the cheek to stop her. It was a sharp crack that startled everyone within earshot. Silence descended upon the gathering, as everyone turned in horror to watch. But Ruthie didn’t cry. She pinched her reddening face together, brave in her pain, as she teetered on the brink of tears. I thought she was a remarkable child, even then, when I was no more than seven. In subsequent years, Ruth and I often ran into each other at university functions. Then, when I was a sophomore at Riverdale Country School, a precocious freshman named Ruth Chalmers enrolled and became the toast of the English and Art Departments. Ruth was a poetess and painter; quite a good one, if the faculty of Riverdale was to be believed. She edited the Riverdale Philomathean that year, and later on, so I heard, founded an alternative review that published students’ poetry and art work. From Riverdale, Ruth shipped out to Wellesley, where she graduated in May 1959. I understood she had published some poems in several literary journals whose names I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know what she was up to now.
After a shower and a cup of coffee, I called the Chalmers residence and asked for Ruth.
“Who’s calling?” asked a male voice—Billy, I presumed.
“This is Ellie Stone. Is that Billy?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Hi.” He was an odd one.
“Hi, Billy. Is Ruth in?”
He put down the phone, and a few moments later I heard another extension pick up.
“Hello, Ellie,” came the clean, measured voice from the other end. “Thank you for calling.”
“How’ve you been?” I asked. “You seemed a little under the weather the other night.”
She spoke slowly and deliberately—she always had—as if every word were precious to her.
“It was so horrible. I was very upset by the whole thing, and after what happened to your father . . . How is he?”
“The doctors don’t know yet.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Then I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in meeting me this afternoon. I need to talk to someone.”
I wondered why she didn’t speak to her family, but then I remembered her insufferable parents and strange brother.
“Sure, I’d love to meet,” I said. “I’d like to talk to someone, too. Just say where and when.”
“Your place,” she said abruptly. “Let’s make it five thirty. Good-bye, Ellie.” And she hung up.
I held the phone in the crick of my neck for another few seconds as I jotted down the appointment. As the moments passed, I realized there was no new dial tone. I listened a few moments longer, waiting for it. Ten, fifteen seconds, then a quiet click from the other end of the line, and a fresh dial tone.
Miss Little informed me by phone that Professor Bruchner had called to say he would not be in the office this day. I asked for his telephone number and address.
“He lives in midtown, in one of those big apartment houses. Let me check his card.” A rustling of papers. “Here it is: 145 East Thirty-Eighth, apartment 2210. MUrray Hill-6
-2391. Any other numbers you need, Miss Stone?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Bernie Sanger’s, Hildy Jaspers’s, and Roger Purdy’s. And do you still have Professor Petronella’s number?”
She waited a moment, as if she expected me to ask for someone else. “Why, no. When he left Columbia he moved from his address on the Upper East Side. I think he’s living somewhere in the Bronx, but he didn’t give us a new address.”
She dictated Bernie Sanger’s address: 110th Street, near campus; Purdy lived on East Eighty-Second, just off the park. Hildy lived in Chelsea on Nineteenth Street.
“Anyone else? she asked, her voice loaded with suggestion. “Oh, but you must already have Mr. Lucchesi’s telephone number.”
“Thanks, I’ve interviewed him already,” I said, ears burning from the censure.
I rang off and dialed Bruchner’s number. No answer. I buttoned a cardigan sweater over my white blouse, wriggled into my tweed overcoat, and grabbed my purse and camera. Then I made for the elevator.
When I was a girl, I used to gaze in awe at the lions guarding the entrance of the New York Public Library. I still give them a smile when I climb the stairs. They sit serenely, with majestic bearing, their proud heads raised, giant paws posed so tidily before them. I had spent many afternoons in the cavernous reading room, digesting the first volumes of the education that stretched out before me. The public library had been for me a kind of cathedral—like Yankee Stadium—different only by virtue of its custodial responsibility for Knowledge. Lined up like bricks in some colossal wall, millions of volumes waited for the next pair of hands to pluck them from their shelves and open their wisdom to the light.
The library also has an impressive collection of telephone directories. I wasn’t looking for anything exotic, like Bombay or Peking; just the Bronx.
I located an Anthony Petronella on Garrison Avenue in Hunts Point, the Bronx. Fishing for a dime, I sat down in a phone booth and tried the number. An elderly Italian woman answered, and after some word wrangling, I established that Anthony Petronella was her son.
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