As ‘Fax’s ideas about leisure-time, not surprisingly, tended to converge in the more life-threatening areas, he and Kit over this first year of their acquaintance would find themselves well matched, Kit grasping at any piece of the outer and solid world as to flotsam in a furious turbulence of symbols, operations, and abstractions, and ‘Fax, chirping daily hymns to Rooseveltian strenuosity, finding in Kit’s semi-religious attachment to Vectorism a gravity and, for all ‘Fax knew, even a chance at deliverance from what he might have feared to be an idling and shallow life, in which the motif of failure was all too apt to break in.
It had been often commented upon that Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ‘Fax’s brother Cragmont had run away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the wedding being actually performed on trapezes, groom and best man, dressed in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous Æther to meet the bride and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous family.
The third brother, Fleetwood, best man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fast-talking his way onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer” literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe manor on Long Island.
“Say, but you’ve never seen our cottage,” ‘Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend? Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the works.”
“Do I use that tone of voice about the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?”
“I’ve nothing against the newer races,” ‘Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.”
“The one at Smith.”
“Mount Holyoke, actually.”
“Can’t wait.”
They arrived under a dourly overcast sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by some collateral branch of Vibes . . . it was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to previous occupants.
“Someone’s living there?”
“Someone’s there.”
. . . from time to time, a door swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall . . . an ambiguous movement across a distant doorframe . . . a threat of somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level, just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form, at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable . . . all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession, window-drapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze . . . and in the next room, the next instant, waiting . . .
“Real nice of you to have me here, folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except . . .”
Pause in the orderly gobbling and scarfing. Interest from all around the table.
“I mean, who came in the room in the middle of the night like that?”
“You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.”
“They were walking around, like they were looking for something.”
Glances were exchanged, failed to be exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?”
Before Kit could reply, there was a great commotion outside the entrance to the breakfast room. Later he would swear he had heard a symphonic brass section play a lengthy fanfare. “Mother!” cried ‘Fax. “Aunt Eddie!” exclaimed Cousin Dittany. And in, making a rare appearance, swept Mrs. Vibe, the former Edwarda Beef of Indianapolis. She sang mezzo-soprano and had married almost shockingly young, the boys coming along in close order, “the way certain comedians make their entrances in variety acts,” it seemed to her, and about the time Colfax shot his first brace of pheasant, she had abruptly one day packed a scant six trunksful of clothes and with her maid, Vaseline, reinstalled herself in Greenwich Village in a town house floridly faced in terra-cotta imported from far away, designed inside by Elsie de Wolfe, adjoining that of her husband’s younger brother, R. Wilshire Vibe, who for some years had been living in his own snug spherelet of folly and decadence, squandering his share of the family money on ballet girls and the companies they performed for, especially those that could be induced to mount productions of the horrible “musical dramas” he kept composing, fake, or as he preferred, faux, European operettas on American subjects—Roscoe Conkling, Princess of the Badlands, Mischief in Mexico, and so many others. The town was briefly amused by Edwarda’s change of domicile but re-focused soon enough upon varieties of scandal having more to do with money than with passion, a subject more fit for opera in languages they did not speak. As Scarsdale had by then grown adept at covering his financial tracks, and as Edwarda was perfectly content not only to get laced in and decked out to appear at functions as his titular wife but also, as her fame in the theatrical world grew, to sit on boards of a cultural nature and serve as hostess to any number of memorable gatherings, Scarsdale actually began to look on her more as an asset than any possible source of marital distress.
Her brother-in-law, R. Wilshire Vibe, delighted to have her for a neighbor—for “Eddie” was nothing if not a handsome length of goods—soon found amusement in fixing her up with the artists, musicians, actors, writers, and other specimens of low-life to be found in his milieu in such plentiful supply. By force of what were her undoubted dramatic gifts, she soon managed to convince the impresario that, as it was in the nature of a great personal favor to him for her even to be seen with these unsuitable wretches, she wished no recompense other than to . . . well not star perhaps, not at first anyway, but at least to have a go at some second-soubrette part, for example the lively bandida Consuelo in Mischief in Mexico, then in rehearsal—though this did require considerable and often quite frankly disgusting interaction with a trained pig, Tubby, for whom more often than not she found she was there to act as stooge or straight person, “laying pipe,” as the actors said, so that it would always be the ill-behaved porker who got the laughs. By the end of the run, however, she and Tubby were “closest friends,” as she confided to the theatrical gazettes, which were taking by then a keen interest in her career.
Bigger parts followed, presently with Edwarda’s arias or “numbers” so expanded as to require earlier curtain times to accommodate them. “Spell-bindingly incomparable!” proclaimed the reviewers, “transcendently splendiferous!” too, and soon she was christened in Champagne “The Diva of Delmonico’s.” The adjoining town houses, ever a scene of license and drollery, shimmered within a permanent and agreeable fog of smoke from recreational sources, including hemp and opium, as well as the mists arising from seltzer bottles discharged sometimes into drinking vessels but more usually at companions in what seemed eternal play. Young women attired often in nothing more than ostrich-feather aigrettes dyed in colors of doubtful taste ran nubilely up and down the marble staircases, chased by young men in razor-toed ball shoes of paten
t-leather. In the middle of the bacchanalian goings-on night after night was ever-merry Edwarda, drinking Sillery from the bottle and exclaiming “Ha, ha, ha!”—not always at anyone in particular.
Thus Edwarda and Scarsdale found themselves together every day and yet leading almost entirely unsynchronized lives, inhabiting each his and her own defective city, like partial overlays in some new color-printing process, Scarsdale’s in gray tones, Edwarda’s in mauve. Puce sometimes.
KIT HAD WANDERED down to the stables, where he was presently joined by Dittany Vibe, her eyes sparkling from beneath the brim of an all-but-irresistible hat. In the tackroom she pretended to inspect a sizable inventory of harness, halters, bridles, collars, traces, quirts, crops, buggy whips, and so on. “I do love the way it smells in here,” she whispered. She took down a braided stallion whip and snapped it once or twice. “You must have used these in Colorado, Kit.”
“Few choice words is all we need usually,” Kit said. “Our horses behave themselves pretty good, I guess.”
“Not at all like eastern horses,” she murmured. “You see how many whips and things there are here. Our horses are very, very naughty.” She handed him the whip. “I imagine this one must sting just terribly.” Before he knew it, she had turned, and lifted the skirt of her riding habit, and presented herself, gazing back over her shoulder with what you’d have to call a mischievous expectancy.
He looked at the whip. It was about four feet long, maybe a finger’s thickness. “Seems kind of professional-weight—sure you wouldn’t be happier with something lighter?”
“We could leave my drawers on.”
“Hmm, let’s see . . . if I remember right, it’s how you plant your feet—”
“On second thought,” said Cousin Dittany, “your gloved hand should do quite nicely.”
“My pleasure,” beamed Kit, and, as it turned out, Dittany’s as well, though things got noisy after a while, and they decided to move to an adjoining hayloft.
He tried for the rest of the day to find a moment with ‘Fax to have a word about this matter of his cousin, but, as if the others were conspiring to prevent it, there were always unexpected visitors, calls on the telephone, impromptu lawn-tennis games. Kit began to feel fretful, the way that working on a vector problem for too long could bring him to a state much like drunkenness, whereupon his other or co-conscious mind would emerge at last to see what it could do.
Later that evening, after another breathless ten minutes with Dittany inside a striped palmetto tent during an afternoon croquet party, most of the company having retired, Kit was wandering through the house when he heard piano music coming, he supposed, from the music room. He followed the sound, the unresolved phrases that gave rise to new ones equally unfulfilled, chords he had himself hit by accident, sitting on piano keyboards and so forth, but had never considered music, exactly. . . . He moved through a darkening amber light as if the electric current in the house were being drained away, smoothly diminishing like gaslight beneath a hand at a hidden valve. He looked around for wall switches but could see none. Far down at the end of one of the corridors, he thought he saw a dark figure receding into the invisible wearing one of those pith helmets explorers were said to wear. Kit realized it must be the widely discussed black sheep Fleetwood Vibe, in from one of his expeditions.
R. WILSHIRE VIBE had not endeared himself to his nephew with his current “show” African Antics, featuring the catchy
When those na-tives, run amuck!
When your life-ain’t, worth a buck!
Eyes all poppin, goin ber-serk,
Might even make you late for work, say
Tell me, what-cha gon-na do,
When they come screamin, after you?
Runnin through those jungle trees,
Tryin not to be the, gro-ce-ries! well,
Out there, in that, distant land,
You won’t find no “hot-dog” stand (uh-uh!)
What- they- like- to- eat- in- stead, is
Barbecued brains straight-outa-your-head, so
If you’re trav’lin, out that way,
Listen up to, what I say,
Don’t wan-na be no-body’s meal? Bet-
-ter bring along a real fast
Automo-bile!
Which everybody liked to gather around the Steinway in the parlor to sing along with. All great fun for everybody except Fleetwood, who spent at least thirty-two bars a night trying not to take offense.
“They don’t actually know I’m here,” he confided to Kit. “If they do, it’s only in the way some can detect ghosts—though you may have noticed already these are not the most spiritual of people. I once had hopes that Dittany could escape the general corruption, but not so much lately.”
“She seems straightforward enough to me.”
“I’m less and less qualified to judge anyway. In fact, you shouldn’t trust anything I have to say about this family.”
Kit laughed. “Oh, good. Logical paradoxes. Them I understand O.K.”
They had reached the top of a steep hill, emerging from a stand of maples and black walnuts, some of them already old when Europeans first arrived—the mansion hidden in foliage somewhere below. “We all used to come up here in the winter and bobsled down this thing. Back then it seemed damned near vertical. And look at that out there.” He nodded westward. Through the miles of coalsmoke and salt haze, Kit could make out a few semivisible towers of the city of New York, descended upon by radial shafts of late sunlight from behind and among clouds that seemed almost their own heavenly prototypes, what photographers called a “two-minute sky,” destined rapidly to cloud over and maybe even start dropping some rain. “When I came up here by myself, it was to look at the city—I thought there had to be some portal into another world. . . . I couldn’t imagine any continuous landscape that would ever lead naturally from where I was to what I was seeing. Of course it was Queens, but by the time I had that sorted out, it was too late, I was possessed by the dream of a passage through an invisible gate. It could have been a city, but it didn’t have to be a city. It was more a matter of the invisible taking on substance.”
Kit nodded. “And . . .”
Fleetwood stood with his hands in his pockets, shaking his head slowly. “There are stories, like maps that agree . . . too consistent among too many languages and histories to be only wishful thinking. . . . It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it. In a single great episode of light, you remember everything.”
“Home.”
“Oh . . .” Following Kit’s glance, downhill, toward the invisible “big house,” the late sun on the trees. “There’s home, and there’s home, you know. And these days—all my colleagues care about is finding waterfalls. The more spectacular the falls, the better the chance for an expensive hotel. . . . It seems all I’m looking for now is movement, just for its own sake, what you fellows call the vector, I guess. . . . Are there such things as vectorial unknowns?”
“Vectors . . . can be solved for. Sure. But maybe you mean something else.”
“This one always points away from here, but that”—indicating the shimmering metropolis with a sidewise lift of his head—“is where the money is.” He did not pause then so much as wait, as one might before a telegraph sounder, for some affirmation from the far invisible.
“You know,” he continued, “out there you run into some queer characters. You see them go in, they don’t come out again till months later, sometimes never. Missionaries, deserters, citizens of the trail, for that always turned out to be what they’d sworn their allegiance to—trail, track, river, whatever could carry them to the next ridgeline, the next bend in the river emerging from that strange humid light. ‘Home,’ what could that possibly mean, what claim could it have on them? I’ll tell you a story about the Heavenly City. About Zion.”
One nig
ht in eastern Africa, he was no longer sure where, exactly, Fleetwood met Yitzhak Zilberfeld, a Zionist agent, out traveling in the world scouting possibilities for a Jewish homeland. They promptly got into discussion about the homeless condition vis-à-vis the ownership of property. Fever, abuse of local drugs, tribal blood-warfare ubiquitous and never-ending, the thousand threats to white intrusion here, many of them invisible, turned the colloquy increasingly deranged.
“What is the modern state,” Yitzhak declared, “but a suburban house-lot taken up to a larger scale? Anti-Semitism flows directly from the suburban fear of those who are always on the move, who set up camp for a night, or pay rent, unlike the Good Citizen who believes he ‘owns’ his home, although it is more likely to be owned by a bank, perhaps even a Jewish bank. Everyone must live in a simply-connected space with an unbroken line around it. Some put hair ropes, to keep snakes out. Any who live outside property-lines of any scale are automatically a threat to the suburban order and by extension the State. Conveniently, Jews have this history of statelessness.”
“It’s not dishonorable to want your own piece of land, is it?” Fleetwood objected.
“Of course not. But no Jewish homeland will ever end hatred of the unpropertied, which is a given element of the suburban imperative. The hatred gets transferred to some new target, that’s all.”
And would there ever actually prove to be, right in the middle of the worst of the jungle, some peaceful expanse of rangeland, unsettled as yet, free of all competing claims, high, fertile, disease-free, naturally defensible, so forth? Would they come around a bend in the trail, or over a ridge, and abruptly be taken through the previously hidden passage, into the pure land, into Zion?
They sat as the sun declined over the blessed possibility. “Is this real?”
A shrug. “Yes. . . . Or, no.”
Against the Day Page 21