Reinhart in Love

by Thomas Berger

  Chapter 15

  That his neighbor wore antlers was not, however, amusing to Reinhart, who reflected again on how his own attitudes had changed since marriage: he was now quite the prude and proud of it. He might even have helped stone the woman taken in adultery. He rejected the theory that desire must lead to disorder, never since his nuptial vows having undergone so much as a dream concerning another woman than his wife. What was the point when you had all you wanted at home?, was the coarse but sensible maxim into which his point of view might be condensed. Its only weakness lay in its narrowness of application. What if you weren’t married? Well, have the strength to wait; deprivation is good for the soul.

  Bluenose Reinhart, contrary to his usual custom, slept very late next morning, which was Sunday, in his chaste bed. Ironies abounded. When he had Gen to snuggle with, he had always risen early, eaten a big breakfast, and got to schoolwork; Sunday afternoons were of course assigned to real-estate clients. Now, however, he had appetite for nothing but coffee, and was torpidly looking forward to a scandalous waste of the whole day, which already stood at the meridian.

  A neighbor dog had conveniently destroyed the news section of the Sunday paper, which Reinhart never read anyway: some of the fragments still blew among the nearby hut-tops, like the leaves on which the Cumaean Sibyl wrote her futile data. Safe from news of the world at large, he read the funnies and This Week, and the rotogravure section showing, in sepia, local personalities at bay: philanthropist breaking ground for new hospital; coeds repainting interior of Chi Omega house, and so on—it was Sunday, this is what normal human beings did, read the paper and drank coffee while still in their pajamas. He rebuttoned the fly of his, which as always had come open during the night, and had another cup of instant G. Washington, made with condensed syrup from a little tube bearing the signature of the statesman in question. He scratched himself on the right shoulder blade. The weather was sullenly hot, and the iron shell of his residence exaggerated it further. However he bore up admirably under the disaster, and thought of buying a dog or parakeet so as to have someone around the house.

  That is, Reinhart’s morning-after feeling was one of defiant independence: he would survive even though he might perish. It may have been contradictory nonsense, but a style was established, and when of all people Fedder yelled through the screen door and then entered without permission, Reinhart stayed tough. Where at another juncture he might have been persuaded by the fellow’s cuckoldry to be sympathetic, he was now indignant. Where he might have, as an acknowledgment of having yesterday kicked Fedder’s ass unjustly, showed a certain restraint in addressing him, he was now rather brassy.

  “Fedder! How’s your hammer hanging?” was what he said, and thrust his head back into the funny paper.

  “Hi neighbor!” Fedder had the same old shameless ebullience. Today he wore only a pair of khaki shorts and lowcut Keds without socks; for a shirt he sported his own hairy breasts and soft stomach; his shoulders were narrow and slanting, his legs skinny as straws. Aesthetically speaking, he was a criminal. “Hi!” he repeated, flopping onto the couch above Reinhart, who was lying on a scatter rug. “If you have reached the comics, that means you’ve already read about the predicted tax rise. What’s your position on that?”

  “Frankly,” said Reinhart, “I don’t think I make enough beyond the GI Bill money to pay an income tax.” He petulantly hurled the paper away from him, and it fell like a wind-torn tent near the door to the toilet.

  Fedder’s stomach rolled over his belt. His canvas shoes were near enough to Reinhart’s prone body to have dealt it a return for yesterday’s assault, but no doubt it was characteristic of Fedder never even to have such a thought; he had already forgotten that kick by the time he hit the ground. Had Reinhart wished to apologize, he would first have had to explain what for. Never had he encountered such a nonaggressive person. Suddenly he felt a great warmth for Fedder and wished to give him a trust.

  “I mean,” said Fedder, earnestly baring his lower teeth, “the village tax, which of course applies only to property owners—so you say Why? Well sure, but if we get home rule for Vetsville, we’ll all be property owners!” Guilelessly he passed a hand over his weak features and dried it on his shorts.

  Reinhart rose from the floor. Before he spoke to Fedder, he couldn’t resist—looking at the mess his neighbor was from the physical point of view—tensing his upper musculature in the manner of Blaine Raven. However, it did no harm: if you can’t damage a man by kicking his ass, you can hardly do it by inflating your chest—or can you? Reinhart had lost faith in his judgment of people, and entertained the idea that far from being his forte, as he had always assumed, it might well be his tragic flaw. For Fedder did seem, all at once, to be a bit leery of him; at once got up from the sofa as Reinhart approached it, and dived into a chair that had its back against the wall.

  “Fedder,” said Reinhart, parking his own behind on the edge of the divan, “Fedder, I wonder whether it would embarrass you if I got serious for a minute.”

  Fedder’s anxiety collapsed into relief. He had been hugging his naked trunk as if in a chill; now he went back to perspiring freely. Reinhart saw that his neighbor had been entertaining the idea that he might be attacked again; yet he had come here of his own volition. This indicated a certain strength, or a certain weakness in the man; only time would tell which. Meanwhile he was the only person available; and of course being privy to Mrs. Fedder’s infidelity did not hurt, either, as an aid to confidence. He felt sorry for Fedder and expected him to return the compliment. Yet Reinhart, by knowing everything, would keep the upper hand over Fedder, whose knowledge must always be partial. With everything thus worked out, Reinhart revealed his desolation.

  “My wife left last night.”

  “Oh,” Fedder asked gaily, misunderstanding. “Separate vacations?” Reinhart squelched instantaneous anger. “No, she walked out on me, Fedder.”

  The neighbor scratched the instep of his foot, sinking a forefinger deep into a tennis shoe, and laughed briefly like Woody Woodpecker, a psychotic character from a popular animated cartoon. This, however, drew no inimical response from Reinhart, who saw it as sheer delicacy; indeed, to relieve his friend he joined him in synthetic amusement.

  Fedder stopped abruptly and asked Reinhart to call him Niles.

  Reinhart asked: “Tell me, Niles, you have children, haven’t you?”

  “Several,” admitted Fedder, who was one of those people that have trouble sitting still; he kept moving his legs fitfully. “I have a year or two on you. Bea and I were married in ’40. And now we have three daughters: Sewell, Frazer, and Trowbridge.” He named them again chronologically, in diminutives. “Trow is five; Sewy, three; and Fray, two. Bea had a flat in San Diego, in case you wonder how we managed it in wartime.”

  “No, I don’t wonder,” Reinhart said wistfully.

  “Of course, Fray did look just like the grocer’s delivery boy!” Fedder laughed wildly again, and again he stopped short. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’ll happen. You are both young and healthy. I’ll ask Bee to send Jenny to her obstetrician. He’ll make her a personalized schedule of the days on which the ovum is fertile.”

  At last he had showed his vanity. Reinhart was relieved to have drawn Fedder into the open, and he was happy for him in what was perhaps only a fantasy of potency—there might be a corresponding delivery boy to each daughter—but he saw no good reason to suppress his own data.

  He shrugged. “Genevieve’s been pregnant for months, so it’s not that.”

  Fedder frowned in a way that warped his upper lip and exposed one tooth. “Why didn’t you say so!” he blurted after a moment of thought. “They’re all like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “When they’re pregnant the first time. Quick to take offense. She’ll be back on the next train. Above all, don’t blame yourself.” Fedder threw his head back and looked at the ceiling.

  Reinhart kept alternating in his judgment of Fe
dder; on the surface the man was 100 per cent fool and nothing he said ever went contrary to that appearance; but notwithstanding that his wife was a harlot, she stayed with him and they had three children besides. That is to say, as a home they were successful—this was something different from romance, sex, screwing, or even foolishness. It was, to be pompous, the continuation of the race. So had marriage, even one that failed, changed Reinhart in his idea of the good life.

  “Is it so hard?” he asked.

  Fedder took the question warily, bringing his head down between his shoulders; he still didn’t trust Reinhart completely.

  “I mean,” Reinhart explained, “maintaining a home. Frankly, Niles, I haven’t done a very good job. I think I probably should blame myself. I don’t believe I ever understood Genevieve or even tried. You see, I found it difficult to readjust to civilian life, because contrary to everybody else I rather liked the Army. Does that shock you?”

  “Not at all, Carl!” Fedder was quick to asseverate. “I think I can show you your error there, but please don’t take it as a moral criticism. No—”

  “Above all, I got used to it,” Reinhart went on, here and there pulling his shirt away from his damp chest with an adhesive-tape sound. “There’s something to be said for that, isn’t it true?”

  Bright with his own copious sweat, Fedder leaned forward and sought to interpose—

  “Something you can rely on,” said Reinhart. “The messhall three times daily, rather than this goddam business of the grocery bills! Now there’s a strange effect for you: I always feel degraded when I have to pay for food—it seems like something you should have coming to you. But I didn’t mind at all giving money to Genevieve for a new dress. Though here’s what I don’t understand: she never wanted to take it.” He decided to let Fedder speak on that subject.

  “At such times it was your idea, no?” Fedder asked. “Ah, there you have it, there it is. And if I am right, though it may be difficult for you to admit, you offered it with the conscious idea that you were doing her a favor.”

  “I might have,” Reinhart cautiously admitted. “How should I have acted—as if it were really hostility?”

  “Of course it was. Does Proctor give Gamble money for a suit? You and Jenny are in this thing together—incorporated, as it were. Remember, that’s also legally true. That money you gave her was hers to begin with.” Fedder threw himself back into the chair, his chest vibrating flabbily.

  “And the thought behind it?” asked Reinhart in his wounded way.

  Fedder said bluntly: “That is worthless.”

  “You mean to tell me one can’t give his wife a present?”

  Fedder sat up and laid his right index finger into the palm of his left hand. “Why sure. But an authentic one and not a fake. And certainly never in the spirit of an Oriental potentate distributing largesse to his lackeys.”

  The example showed that for all his common sense, Fedder had a romantic streak: Reinhart as Genghis Khan was pretty far-fetched.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Niles?”

  Fedder said yes, he might have one if the pot was already made, and trailed his host to the kitchen area. Not a whisper of air came through the little window over the sink, and the view from there was particularly disheartening: a field of tawny, chest-high weeds that marked the southeastern boundary of Vetsville; above, a pitiless sky, so hot its blue had faded.

  “Oh,” said Reinhart. “No worry about that. This is instant. Isn’t it warm today!” His motive in belaboring the obvious was to distract Fedder for a moment from the analytic mood. No doubt Fedder was right, but it did hurt Reinhart’s pride to be lectured on marriage by a fellow whose own wife slept with other men.

  “Instant,” said Fedder, smiling in the guilty, self-derisive manner that some men affect on approaching an area where food is prepared. “You can sure see you are alone.”

  “No,” Reinhart elucidated, running water into the kettle. “I always used this when Gen was here.” His ready use of the past tense made him feel awful.

  “You used it?” Fedder asked with terrible urgency. “You … didn’t … do … the … cooking?”

  Reinhart quailed a bit. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh gosh. Well. I see.” Fedder snickered nervously.

  Swelling back again, Reinhart said: “Now look, Niles, you know I’m not effeminate. It’s just—hell, I don’t like to be a housewife, but how can you ask a girl to work when she’s going to have a baby?”

  “Uh-huh,” Fedder answered, thinking. He tore a paper towel from the dispenser alongside the sink and patted his wet neck.

  “I felt rather guilty, I suppose,” Reinhart went on. “Women are so little! And what a hell of a big job having a baby is. On the other hand, come to think of it, I seemed more worried than she.” He fitted the whistle-gadget to the spout and placed the kettle upon the back burner. “You want a doughnut, Niles?” He grasped the bag that lay on top of the breadbox (not within, where baked goods sweat and grow soggy in warm weather; outside, they merely grow stale). Having opened the bag and withdrawn a sinker and found it hard, however, he suggested toast.

  It appeared that Fedder, like so many flabby people, was not interested in food. He neither accepted nor declined, but when the coffee had been poured and they sat at the card table, he ate three of the four pieces of bread that Reinhart had toasted, heaped them with butter and jam, and yet could not be said to have paid them any real attention. But he was profoundly concerned with the love-problems of his neighbor, who on the other hand now regretted having made the disclosure and was chewing his own toast with the greatest care.

  “You see, Carl,” said Fedder. “Doesn’t it occur to you: there may not have been enough sharing in your marriage. From what you say about guilt, and from this thing about your doing the cooking”—he stopped to wipe his bejellied hands upon a paper napkin, then balled the napkin and left it sitting redly, stickily before him—“I just wonder what you left to Jenny. What was her role? You see, washing the dishes is all right for a husband to do, some drudgery like that to relieve the wife of. But cooking is creative. Deprive a woman of this function and—Well, in my opinion the unhappy marriage occurs when everything interesting is done by only one of the team.”

  Reinhart went to make more toast, as much from curiosity as to how many pieces Fedder would absent-mindedly stow away, as from hospitality. “Genevieve doesn’t care at all for the kitchen,” he said en route. “If it was up to her, she would live on soda crackers and rattrap cheese. And that’s just fine with me. Who wants a wife to have an enormous appetite? I don’t think I could get sexually interested in the most beautiful girl who gorged.”

  “Ah yes,” cried Fedder, “but make her cook for you, boy. Don’t you see it gives her the upper hand to control your sustenance?”

  Reinhart noticed an island of green mold in the center of the bread slice he took from the wrapper. He tore the paper and thumbed through the rest of the loaf; the mold was a vein running through to the heel—which meant that Fedder’s three pieces and his own one, now in their respective stomachs, had probably also been contaminated, and that Fedder might be poisoned unless the toasting had counteracted the properties of the fungus that were unfriendly to man. For himself he had no worries; he currently doubted his powers only in the matter of a wife.

  He cut the center from each slice before dropping it into the toaster, and said to Fedder: “When all is said and done, wouldn’t you call intercourse an act of aggression?”

  Fedder looked uneasy and drank what would have been the grounds, had it been real coffee, from his cup. “I see it as a mutual endeavor, Carl. I don’t understand this strain of bad feeling that is so important for you.”

  “You don’t think there is an underlying strife?”

  “I can’t see it.” Fedder had his index finger on the blade of the butter knife.

  “Don’t we resent those we love?” asked Reinhart.

  Fedder smiled and asked why.
/>   “I don’t know, I’m just trying to get to general principles.” He returned to the table with the new toast, which Fedder soon seized. “Because everything I did with Gen, I did sincerely. I never contrived anything. I felt she needed to be taken care of, though it is true that before we were married I thought of her as efficiency personified. But she is so young. You know there are some girls whom the physical side of marriage frightens. Have you ever read any of those articles in the women’s magazines? At one time, in the Victorian era, it was far worse. Certain young ladies, having led protected lives up to then, were driven insane on their wedding night when their husband dropped his pants.”

  “Go on,” said Fedder, waving a crust at him, “you exaggerate.”

  “And this tie with their fathers. What about that?”

  “Bee,” Fedder said, “happened to be raised as an orphan, so I can’t speak from personal experience. … I don’t want to sound smug, Carl, but she and I just haven’t had any troubles at all in six years. And as it happens, she isn’t a college girl.” Reinhart started to speak but waited while Fedder said: “Six and a half, really.”

  That was surely one way, then, to preserve the home: share your wife with other men. Reinhart kept reminding himself of the shameful data he had on Fedder, yet he got great comfort from talking to him and still respected his counsel.

  “But tell me,” Fedder went on, masticating the crust he had been waving, “tell me about this coming child.”

  It struck Reinhart as a foolish comment coming from a three-time father. “What is there to tell? Gen has been pregnant since May.”

  “Ah then,” said Fedder, wiping his mouth with the whiskbroom of his fingers, “she’ll be getting big soon.” He pushed his chair away from the card table, and lifted one hairy haunch across the other.

  “So soon?” asked Reinhart, with a pinched feeling in his bowels. How humiliating! Gen enlarging in her parents’ house, he shriveling up in Vetsville.