Heir to the Glimmering World

by Cynthia Ozick

  Meanwhile I was certain (I believed absolutely) that Mrs. Mitwisser had clipped those shreds of curl from her own head. A head that insinuated; a head that incriminated. A head that spiraled equations. She was a woman of schemes and hypotheses. Thievery germinates, pullulates: a boy is a thief, a man is a thief, a continent is a thief! And if James's bed conceals a secret intimacy, if he means to steal Anneliese for himself, if he is seducer, violator, thief, then will not her husband send him away? And will they not then be free?

  27

  14V2 S.E. State Street

  Albany, New York

  December 2, 1935

  Rosie, hello, you needle in a haystack!

  What a time I've had tracking you down! That swanky Madison Avenue address you sent just before you departed our fair city? Nice picture postcard of designated destination that was: a thicket of skyscrapers. Wrote to said swanky address amid said thicket. Letter came back.

  I admit I never returned the favor—never let you know where I was headed. Your card came and Ninel saw it too. Then we moved over to Ninel's place. No point now letting you know where—she isn't there anymore, and neither am I. More's the pity. You can see from the above where I've landed—in someone's attic. A tiny attic in a big old brown-shingled house. I like it well enough. The owners are a nice Neapolitan family. I've got two windows and one medium-size flowerpot containing four geraniums, courtesy of Mrs. Capolino.

  How did I find you? (If I've found you.) The truth is I owe it to Ninel. She put me in mind of how to get to you. If something collides with her principles, she can be pretty passionate—you used to see this for yourself. She was never against the Quakers, though, since she's a bit of a pacifist anyhow. Who knows if that'll last, the way things are heating up in Spain these days. A bunch of the comrades, Ninel's gang, are thinking about going over there to join the Loyalists and fight the Fascists. It wouldn't surprise me if Ninel went, pacifist or no pacifist, if there's actually a war.

  We were having an argument about it—we were having lots of arguments around that time. I said, You can't be anti-Fascist and still be a pacifist, and Ninel said, What about the Quakers? It's part of their religion and they're anti-Fascist, they save people from the Fascists. I said, What's this sudden esteem for religion? You don't give a damn about religion. And just then, out of the blue, I remembered your telling me, maybe it was in the postcard with the skyscrapers, that the fellow you went to work for used to be involved with some Quaker college around here. So I looked it up, and hied myself over there, and sure enough, it's how I got on your trail. Seems they've been requested to forward any letters for Herr So-and-So to some unlikely boondocks in the outer Bronx. Well, if you're still with Herr Whatsisname, then I've found you.

  The big sad news is that Ninel walked out on me. Too many arguments, I guess. Not that I didn't enjoy watching her blow up! She's got a demon's tongue, and I admire that, even if she did break my heart. She walked out on me, and did it behind my back no less. I got home one night from the hospital with a chicken I'd picked up from the butcher's, and no Ninel. So I threw out the neck and the legs—Ninel usually made soup—and cooked the thing myself and ate it alone. Didn't much like it.

  Let me know if you get this. Tell you why. A piece of mail came for you via Croft Hall, and I've been holding it for months, since even before I moved in with Ninel. (Mentioned it in the letter that got returned.) I'd enclose it here, but it might turn out you aren't really found. I'm coming down to New York one of these days and if you're there can deliver it by hand.

  Yours,

  Bertram

  The letter disappointed. It angered—it did not satisfy, it wounded. Bertram spoke only of Ninel; Ninel and Ninel and Ninel. He was after Ninel; it was on her account that he was coming. He intended to woo her back: he longed for the slash of her demon's tongue. I was barely a side-thought, and Bertram, what was Bertram? He was no better than a postman: "A piece of mail." What was Croft Hall to me? Ninel had thrown me out; Bertram had bribed me to go; Ninel had run away; Bertram was running to get her back. How I wished that Ninel would go and fight Fascism at the other end of the world!

  I answered Bertram. He wrote again. We agreed to meet, but where? I could not think where. The Library, I said finally. The Library is all I know of the city.

  I imagined him appealing to Ninel: I had to come down to give the poor kid her mail. Something to do with that rotten dead dad, she might need someone to hold her hand.

  And Ninel, spitting back: Tell it to the Marines!

  I was Bertram's alibi, his pretext. I was saving his face. Because of me—because of a stray piece of mail from Croft Hall, and what was Croft Hall to me?—he would never have to acknowledge, even to himself, that he was running after Ninel.

  28

  MRS. MITWISSER was a failed prophet. James came back the next day, and Anneliese with him. As Mitwisser had surmised, it was the storm that had kept them, transportation was impossible, lines were down, etc. Anneliese murmured these things, they were quietly accepted, and the house appeared to resume its rhythms—the boys to school, Waltraut to her solitary play.

  Yet if Mrs. Mitwisser had failed as a prophet—here was James, the fog of his breath rising in the doorway, his glasses clouded, his knit cap pulled down over his ears—she was not altogether a false one. Something had altered: it was as if an odorless odor, a fume drifting aslant, was misting the walls. James was here; he had come back. Anneliese had not. Her simulacrum roamed from room to room, from task to task—but whatever she did, she did carelessly. She wore a carapace of remoteness. She was becoming neglectful. Mrs. Mitwisser no longer received her tray. Every day she put on her shoes.

  She had begun to court Waltraut in earnest.

  In the mornings Professor Mitwisser beckoned me into his study and shut the door; he swept up a huge arm and ordered me to my place at the typewriter. The daily journeys into the city were abandoned. His head was erect, drawn forward, a beast sniffing prey on the wind. Adoration of the renegade al-Kirkisani had strengthened him. His voice leaped and fell back, leaped and fell back. He was Vasco da Gama, he was Magellan, he was Marco Polo, he was Columbus! He had found his India—not the illusory land of error and miscalculation, but the real and true India. He saw how logic begets logic, the distant logic inflaming the nearer one. And sometimes he tossed up the lesser Karaites—Salmon ben Jeroham, for instance, that Salmon who followed al-Kirkisani and sang in prosaic verses his rage at the Rabbanites. Mitwisser bellowed, and I beat out on the keys:

  Their words have become void

  and meaningless

  and out of their own mouths

  have they testified

  that they have drawn God's wrath

  upon themselves.

  God's wrath! The acme of wickedness! Mitwisser and I were alone, circling in a lake of marvels and shudders. A daredevil glittering vertigo shimmered around us. No one was permitted to enter—not even James. Or: we were not alone—phantom renegades flew from corner to corner, brushing Mitwisser's heavy skull like imaginary bats. Sweat glistened in the creases of his neck. Al-Kirkisani, ben Jeroham, ben Elijah, al-Maghribi, Basyatchi—ah, Basyatchi of Constantinople, mathematician, astronomer, poet, author of a vanished work on the stars! And Moses of Damascus, the emir's reluctant secretary, forced convert to Islam compelled to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, composer of cantos of thanksgiving when the Almighty restored him to his rightful faith! And the others, jurists, philosophers, grammarians, polemicists! Sahl ben Mesliah of Jerusalem, who called Sa'adia the Rabbanite a scoundrel, the very Sa'adia whom the Rabbanites revere as their Sage and Gaon, accusing him bitterly in words straight as nails. David al-Kumisi, who denied the existence of angels despite their presence in Scripture, defining them merely as fire, cloud, wind. And that earliest of the Karaites, their founder, Anan ben David, whom the Rabbanites charged with building up a hill of heresy, seducing Israel from the tradition of the Sages, inventing books and laws out of his own heart, setting up his own disc
iples! (Mitwisser bellowing, dictating; and I, the emir's secretary, beating on the keys.)

  I collected the morning's work and handed it to Mitwisser. His look, as he took the sheets from me—I felt the excitation of his fingertips—was animated, reckless. The blue eyes released their lightnings. I knew him to be a climber on the hill of heresy.

  He was ready to dismiss me. He turned his back and went to contemplate the window's white brilliance. Threads hung from the cuffs of his sleeves.

  I said, "Your wife seems better today."

  Now he faced me. Elation deserted him. He had forgotten his wife.

  "She comes downstairs to eat."

  He was silent.

  "She's even looking after Waltraut a little—"

  "My wife's nature is reclusive. It is her nature," he said.

  I wondered if I would dare. And then I did dare. "Why does your wife call James a Karaite?"

  "She is unwell," he said quietly.

  "She hates him."

  "My wife hates no one. James is our family's good friend. It is our"—he was momentarily frozen—"our situation that makes her unhappy."

  "She wants him to go away."

  "He is very welcome here. My wife is well aware of our affinities." His rough hand was on the doorknob. "The work this morning is finished, Fräulein. Please not again to affront me by exceeding your duties here."

  29

  MRS. MITWISSER did not return to her bed. An abrupt energy inhabited her: she dressed herself, she laced her shoes. She took up the small domestic obligations that Anneliese had abandoned. Waltraut no longer shrank from her.

  Unexpectedly I had become her confidante. Twice she had been unjust; twice I had forgiven her. And more: I too knew what it was to be a Parasit—wasn't I the daughter of my father, yet another dupe of James, yet another Parasit? She was prepared now to alter her tactics. What good had it done to shut herself away, to hide? He had gone off—she trusted they would be free—but he had come back. He had come back! Despite the evidence of that dark curl of hair. Anneliese had brought him back, that was why, and look how subdued she is: she defied him, she denied him, she would not allow him to carry her away, she brought him back, together they came back—how fatigued she is, a sleepwalker, see how quiet, her hair hangs over her face. Now it is Anneliese who hides from him! But the right way is not to hide, not to shut oneself away, not to let the particles fly—a scissors is not a sword. The right way is war. From here on I am a warrior, I will meet him on the battlefield!

  She was electrified; once again she had bitten into the egg.

  "He will go," she told me.

  At night the laughter: James and Mitwisser closeted in Mitwisser's study.

  "You hear? You hear? My husband, he is that one's Sklave." She circled her neck with an imaginary chain.

  I listened. The laughter scraped and gargled. The house vibrated. The boys and Waltraut were asleep; it was eleven o'clock. Anneliese was invisible—she had taken to sitting in a corner of the kitchen, a pencil in her mouth, staring into a smudged notebook: she appeared to be in charge of her own education. But there was no ambition in it. Was she hiding from James? I believed she was waiting for him.

  Mrs. Mitwisser stood in the little hallway, her head tilted, her short fingers braided, her fine teeth clutching her cold lip. "It will stop," she said. "Tomorrow it will stop. Down there," she said, "in my husband's place. It will stop." Her distraught clever eyes challenged me. "You see I am his wife!"

  The next evening, as early as nine o'clock, and wearing a fresh nightgown, Mrs. Mitwisser restored herself to the conjugal sheets. She lay in her husband's bed in her husband's study, and the nightly laughter was banished.

  30

  A FEW CARS had grooved trenches in the middle of our small street, but the aging snow, graying, hung on feebly, mostly in dirty heaps against the curbs. The milk-driver passed through, still with his horse in that period of Model A Fords, and round lumps of yellowish turds, laced with bits of undigested straw, fell steaming onto the icy road. By now the trees had shaken off their white piping, though an occasional twig clung shiveringly to its thin rim of snow. The rickrack roofs of the neighbors' houses pricked at a vacant sky—a sky that seemed never to have harbored the sun since the beginning of the world. Not one of these neighbors was known to us. We were hardly aware of their comings and goings; there was no theater but our own ingrown proscenium. From the window of my room on the third floor—it had become altogether mine since Mrs. Mitwisser had deserted her bed and lamp—I could see the blue-green wintry fuzz on the bronze Victory that lived at the top of the memorial shaft in our Bronx meadow.

  Mrs. Mitwisser had won her night battle against James. Her uneven nipples, peering mutely through her gown, barred him. The foreign spines on the raw shelves across from Mitwisser's bed took on a marital smell—or, if not that, then the smell of a woman usurping her husband's place. She was there so that James should not be there. When Mitwisser called me in to him in the morning, the bed was sometimes made, and sometimes not. I could not tell whether the wilderness of it embarrassed him—his wife's shed nightgown sprawling over the sheets, the blanket left open in the shape of arched petals, out of which a thick body-warmth rose. It was not unpleasant—it had displaced the dim unwelcome waftings of James's teacups—but it affected Mitwisser like an extra presence. He was no longer alone with his cunning old heretics. He felt that his wife had come to poke her finger in al-Kirkisani's eye. She had slept beside him. In her sleep she had thrown her silky arm over his back; a restless leg struck his naked thigh. Had she returned to his nights so that James should keep away, or because she had become normal?

  "Now it is enough," Mitwisser said finally. He was, as always, agitated by the peculiar rapture of his exertions. His breath was perilously quick. "Please to shut the door as you go." I had endured the typing for three hours. My shoulders ached. The tender balls of my fingers tingled, as if sparks had shot up from the keys; their glass shields had captured the light, and sent violet streaks into my pupils. My last glimpse backward was of Mitwisser bowed like a courtier, immersed in the worship of his ghostly papers.

  James stood on the landing.

  "You," he said.

  I passed him by: the man who had gambled with my father.

  "You're the one, you're behind it, you're the one who runs that woman. No one else knows how, so it's you. You told her to sleep in there." He flashed a ribald thumb toward Mitwisser's study. The backs of his hands were stippled with short rust-colored hairs: he held them up like semaphores. The amber odor of teacups drifted from him.

  "Mrs. Mitwisser does as she pleases—"

  "Somebody runs her."

  "Her mind runs her," I said.

  She had begun to rule the house; she seemed normal enough. She had once been accustomed to speaking to servants: her instructions were unanswerable ("Waltraut must be fed," "My husband must have his button there"), and I took them as I had taken Anneliese's. Anneliese was in retreat. The twist of her neck under her loosened hair was desultory. She riffled the sheets of her notebook; I caught sight of tidy numbers and diagrams. Her father had forgotten his pupil. But Mrs. Mitwisser was fashioning herself into a semblance of motherhood. In galloping German she pressed on Waltraut a dozen endearments: Spatzi, Schatzi, my little sparrow, my treasure, my prize, my birdlet ... for Waltraut these were only noises. She pulled away at the sound of a German syllable. Mrs. Mitwisser was unperturbed. She had laced up her shoes for a purpose. She had laced up her shoes, she had tidied her dress, she had remembered her servants, she had placated her child—she had thrust herself into the middle of things, the little one's supper, her husband's missing buttons, the dust on the floor. For a purpose! Her vigilant eye turned a furious maroon; inside her head (she had combed the outside to a decent smoothness) an engine pumped darkened blood, and her warring look went trailing after James.

  In the city it was different—not a hint of snow anywhere. It was as if there had never been a storm at
all. The manholes breathed fitful steam. The pavements were dry and clear. Cars and pedestrians hurtled by. No one wore galoshes. On Forty-second Street an icy wind fractured the air like a tuning fork, vibrating with every step and sigh. In front of the Library the steadfast Lions squatted; the paw of one of them still carried a faded red stain.

  I found Bertram in his overcoat, leaning against the marble balustrade of a marble staircase. There was old grime between the balusters, and little light overhead.

  "Not much traffic, great spot for a lovers' tryst."

  I sat down next to him. "Bertram," I said. "Oh Bertram!"

  "Oh Rosie." He gave me his sidewise grin. I saw three crinkly white hairs, new to me, snaking over his ears. "Well, how's life with Herr Krautenheimer?"

  "They've mostly stopped speaking German. They don't want to be German."

  "They? How many are there?"

  "A whole family. I tried to write you about them once, only ... I didn't."

  "Couldn't. Well, that's Ninel. Likes to cut the umbilical cord." He stood up and stretched. I had forgotten that Bertram was a short man; I had been living with giants. "I was down in the Village this morning," he said. "Over on Ninth and Broadway. She's got a little flat down there."

  "When I met her she was with someone—"

  "You met her? Ninel, you saw Ninel?"

  So Ninel had said nothing to him. What was I to Ninel?

  "Didn't she tell you? A march was breaking up."

  Bertram laughed. "What have I wrought? I should never have handed you that piece of liturgy. What were you doing in a Bolshie march?"

  "I wasn't in it. I was ... here. With Professor Mitwisser. There was a man throwing paint out there, and Ninel had a sign—" Here I stopped. I wanted to tell Bertram about Professor Mitwisser; I wanted to tell him about the Karaites, and about the Bear Boy. But he would speak only of Ninel. "I still have it," I said. "That pamphlet you gave me, with the pink cover? I kept it because you gave it to me."