by C. K. Stead
‘Write what?’ he asks; and then darts forward in the crowd, looking for the white stretch.
‘Of course he won’t ever admit it,’ Gay says in an undertone to Henry.
They get the driver to take them to a famous deli on Broadway where they order a soup of barley and beans, and then pastrami and gherkin sandwiches which are so large they must contain, each of them, a pound of meat. Gay appears to have forgotten that she eats only once a day. Albie jokes with the waitress, who comes from Costa Rica.
‘I like your ponytail,’ she tells him, flipping his tied-back hair with her pencil.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘I don marry no one,’ she says. ‘I was married once and you know what I say? I say marriage sucks.’
‘I see a poem here, guys,’ Albie tells them. When she returns with their orders he asks her what was the worst thing about her marriage.
‘Getting married was the worst,’ she says. ‘I was fourteen. And best was when I leave him.’
It is already dark as they drive away from Manhattan with their brown bags of unfinished pastrami giving the heated interior of the limo a strange salty aroma.
THAT NIGHT ALBIE COMES back with Henry to the Joseph House. He doesn’t work at his typewriter, is restless, seems constantly on the brink of saying something which doesn’t get said. He suggests a walk around the campus and Henry, wanting to be agreeable, goes with him, slipping and skating in the dark along the icy paths.
‘I used to love this place,’ Albie says as they walk under trees and down towards the lake. ‘I’d done that thing in Europe—killed myself off. I didn’t belong anywhere. Didn’t know what I was going to do. The nuns gave me work, didn’t ask too many questions, made me feel at home.’
The tone in which all this is said seems to put it firmly in the past.
‘Joy …’ Henry offers.
‘A wonderful woman.’ Albie says that, too, with a kind of retrospective finality.
They stand staring at floodlit statuary above the lake. It belongs to the time when the grounds and buildings were the mansion estate of a rich railroad-owner. There are classical columns and a naked Graecian youth. On the far side of the water the nuns have added a statue of the Virgin. The Virgin and the boy stare at one another across the ice. ‘For ever wilt thou love and she be fair,’ Albie quotes.
As they head back towards the Joseph House he says, ‘It’s truth time, Henry.’
Henry feels a nervous tremor. ‘Truth time?’
‘My new poems.’
‘They’re good.’ He says it too fast, too brightly, conscious that if he meant it sincerely it would have sounded different. Also that Albie will have registered a lack of conviction.
‘How good, Henry?’
‘I think I need time …’
‘No, you’ve had time.’
‘To assess …’
‘You’re leaving … When?’
‘Next week.’
‘And before that there’s …’
‘Yes, my visit to Princeton.’
‘So let’s have it, man. How do they compare?’
‘Compare?’
‘Compare, for god’s sake. With the earlier stuff. With echt Ashtree.’
‘You wrote them, Albie. They’re good. What else could they be?’
Albie doesn’t press it any further. There’s no need. He knows the thumb has gone down on his new work. They walk on in silence. Back at the Joseph House Albie says, ‘You were supposed to give it to me straight.’
Henry has gathered himself now. He has been brought all this way, it seems at Joy’s expense, and he owes it to the poet to give him what he asks for.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘They’re nice publishable poems. Well turned, sharp observation, some brilliant images. But no, they’re not as good. The range is lost, or the punch, or the guts, or something, I don’t know what. The life. Something’s missing, Albie.’ He thinks Libby Valtraute is missing, but doesn’t say it—says instead, ‘I guess what’s gone is the Snow Maiden, the White Goddess, the inspiration.’
Albie smiles at him. ‘Attaboy,’ he says. ‘The truth. It wasn’t so bad, was it?’
There seems no bitterness. For just a moment, and it’s the only time since they first greeted one another, Albie looks at ease, as if a weight—of doubt maybe, or responsibility—has been lifted. He pats Henry’s arm. ‘Thanks for that, friend.’
He goes to his room and shuts the door. Henry waits for the sound of the typewriter. Or will it be a gunshot? After a time he hears the hissing of Albie’s white-noise machine.
HENRY IS AWAY for most of a week. He spends three days at the Princeton University library, enjoying his new status as ‘Professor’, studying books and manuscripts. There are a couple of days in New York, looking at libraries, visiting museums and art galleries. When he gets back to Woodlake he notices changes in the Joseph House. Albie’s room, looked at from the passageway, has become more orderly. The clutter of books and papers seems reduced. The old Olivetti is down on the floor, replaced on the desk by a laptop. There is a cardboard box piled high with discarded files.
The bench press and weights are gone from the front porch. In the living room the Algonquin shield and spear are missing from the walls; so are the Utamaro print and the wall-hanging representing a phone box.
‘I was getting tired of those things,’ Albie says. ‘Time for some changes.’
He does no work at his desk, apart from more tidying and clearing of old papers. That night he borrows two video movies and they watch them. Both are about life in prison. In one the hero is found guilty of a double murder he didn’t commit and locked up for life. Most of the movie takes place in the prison where he spends more than twenty years. It’s a bleak story, but at last he escapes, gets right away to start a new life for himself in some idyllic place with a long white beach, blue water and palm trees.
The other, said to be based on a true story from the old San Quentin days, is much darker. A prisoner, guilty only of stealing five dollars from a post office, tries to escape and as a consequence spends three years in solitary confinement, only taken out at intervals to be beaten and tortured by a sadistic prison superintendent. Driven mad by this treatment, he murders the inmate who gave away his escape plan. His defence lawyer reveals the nature of the torture he has undergone and the prisoner is found not guilty. He is returned to San Quentin to serve out his other sentence and three weeks later is found murdered in his cell.
After four remorseless hours of prison life the interior of the Joseph House looks strange to Henry; to Albie too, it seems, because he says, ‘Prisons aren’t like that any more.’ And then he adds, ‘They’re more like this place, I guess.’
He opens a bottle of whisky and insists on a nightcap. It’s not something Henry likes or wants, but he accepts one drink, then a second, to be sociable. He sleeps soundly but wakes some time after 3 a.m. and heads for the bathroom. There is a light on in Albie’s room and the door is open. The bed is unmade and the room wildly untidy, as if stirred by a gigantic spoon. The rolled-up towel has been pushed back by the opening of the door. The white-noise machine is issuing its insistent hissing static.
Henry tries to think of a rational explanation—that Albie has gone out for a walk, that he has gone to his office, that he has driven over to Joy’s house. But the word that springs into his half-asleep brain is ‘Escape’. He looks out to the street and sees that Albie’s car is still parked there.
Next morning nothing has changed. Henry calls Joy but Albie is not at her house. He is due to give classes but he doesn’t turn up for them.
TWO DAYS LATER HENRY is ready to leave Woodlake, and there is still no sign of Albie. He has vanished. Everyone is worried. The nuns are saying prayers for his safety. The police have been notified. There is talk of dragging the lake.
Joy comes to say goodbye. It is early March and a Jewish festival is taking place. All the children in the neighbourhood are in fancy dress. T
he men wear their usual black suits and hats, but some have put on red noses, funny face-masks, Batman cloaks. The women bustle about carrying cakes in boxes and string bags. The big old bent and broken station-wagons go up and down, filled with shouting children. An ambulance decorated with balloons and streamers is driven around the streets broadcasting music.
Henry’s bag is packed and he’s ready to leave. He stands with Joy looking out into the street, waiting for the Gofar Limo car that will take him to JFK. Another snow storm is coming through and he’s worried he will miss his flight.
‘But these storms delay the flights too,’ Joy tells him. ‘They have to plough the runways and de-ice the wings. If you’re late, they will be too.’ She gives his hand a reassuring squeeze.
‘I’m sorry to be leaving you right now,’ he says. ‘I wish I could be of use.’
She shakes her head. ‘He’s gone.’
‘You mean …’
‘Not passed …’
‘Passed?’
‘Passed away. Not that, no. Just gone. I figure I won’t see him again.’
‘Did he say …’
‘No. Nothing. Not a thing. There was no warning. Maybe that’s why I feel so sure.’
Henry thinks of Libby Valtraute, the Snow Maiden, the Muse. Is she waiting for him at some secret location? But he says only, ‘He must be mad.’
Joy looks up and, recognising what he means, smiles and shakes her head. ‘If you mean to flatter …’
‘I mean to praise.’
She pats his arm. ‘Well thank you. But I’m not what he needs.’ Henry resists an urge to tell her that Albie Strong is Alban Ashtree. A few minutes later the car draws up in the street. Snow is falling fast now.
He hugs her and they say their goodbyes. He has his suitcase halfway across the porch and is handing it to the driver when she asks, from the door, whether Albie checked their lottery tickets.
Henry tells her he doesn’t know, hasn’t given it a thought. ‘He didn’t tell you?’
‘I forgot to ask.’
‘Well, I guess we didn’t …’
She says, ‘Mom tells me she heard someone say the winning ticket was sold in Brick.’
‘Really. You sure?’ Henry thinks about that. ‘Seventeen million?’
‘She says it was eighteen.’
‘Wow—that’s a lot of millions.’
They stare at one another, not speaking. Anything is possible is what they don’t say.
All the way to New York the snow goes on falling, the ploughs along the highways and on the turnpike working to clear it and scatter salt. For a time it freezes as it falls and the driver can’t go faster than twenty. The vehicles keep a respectful distance from one another. Now and then a car up ahead goes into a graceful slow-motion skid, sliding and circling away out of the traffic into trees or bank or ditches.
Then, quite suddenly, the surface seems to thaw. The snow falls and melts. They pick up speed. ‘We’ll make it,’ the driver calls over his shoulder, as Henry takes his last look across the water at Manhattan’s alphabet on a pale page of sky.
When they reach the terminal Henry pushes twenty dollars into the driver’s hand. The driver thanks him. ‘And I’m to give you this, Professor Bulov.’
It is a sheet of paper with a typewritten message, in capitals and with no signature:
DEAR HENRY:
ASHTREE IS DEAD, AND STAYS [REPEAT: STAYS] DEAD UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE—OR MAYBE FOR EVER.
HE KEEPS HIS FAME AND YOU KEEP THE FLAME—BEST FOR US BOTH, NO?
REPUTATION IS AN INVENTION. WE, YOU AND I, HAVE THE PATENT ON THIS ONE. LET’S KEEP IT THAT WAY.
ME, I GO AWAY, A LONG WAY, FOR A LITTLE R & R AND A LOT OF
QUIET COMFORT.
BEST OF LUCK FOR NEW PROMOTIONS—YOUR OWN, AND ALBAN ASHTREE’S.
By the time Henry has absorbed this and its implications the driver has taken his bag out and put it down on the sidewalk. ‘When did he give you this?’ Henry asks.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m not free to talk about it.’
‘It’s from Albie. Albie Strong.’
The driver is getting back into his seat and closing the door.
Henry says through the window, ‘You drove him up here in the night.’
The driver looks away. ‘I’m sorry. Please excuse …’ He presses a button and the window slides up between them. He puts the car into drive and slides gently away from Henry, forward, and out into the traffic.
HENRY — PROFESSOR BULOV —international expert on the poetry of Alban Ashtree, a scholar of modest means but rising reputation who always travels Economy, or as American Airlines calls it, Coach, finds at check-in that he has been upgraded to Business.
He asks how this has happened. The young woman at the counter is unsure. ‘It’s on the computer,’ she says.
‘Well thank you. Good news. I won’t argue with the computer.’
She labels his bags and prints out boarding passes. He turns away, looking at the second boarding pass for his flight on from LAX, and turns back. ‘This upgrade—it’s not just for one leg?’
She checks. ‘All the way to New Zealand, sir.’
He nods thanks—‘Even better!’—and moves on towards Security.
About the author
C.K. (Karl) Stead is a distinguished, award-winning novelist, literary critic, poet, essayist and emeritus professor of English of the University of Auckland. He is the current New Zealand Poet Laureate, has won the Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction, and is a Member of the Order of New Zealand, the highest honour possible in New Zealand.