by Y. Euny Hong
“Most of my share goes directly to paying off my debts to Madame Tartakov,” I said, dipping my hand into the bathwater and swirling it around nervously.
Yevgeny said, “Don’t touch the water, please? You’ve got sticky fingers.”
I removed my hand and dried it on the bath mat. “Sorry. Anyway, Madame Tartakov made sort of a loan-shark arrangement for me. And I’m not really good at saving. I only really started when I realized I needed the surgery.”
“You’re asking me for a lot of money.”
“But it’s not that much for someone like you. I spend a lot more than that in a single month on clothes and such, using your credit cards.”
“This is different,” he said, exfoliating his kneecap with a loofah. “I’m stretched as it is. I’m already spending the maximum amount possible without requiring my wife’s cosignatures.”
“This hotel room must have been five hundred dollars, right? We’ll just go to less posh hotels, and I won’t put another penny on your store cards.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Can’t you take out a bank loan?”
I shook my head. “My credit is very poor.”
“The fact that I have money is not in itself a reason why I should give any to you,” he said. “I thought you understood these things, Jude. There will always be people richer than you and people poorer than you; that doesn’t mean that everyone has to pass money down the chain. Because then the poor would become rich and the rich would become poor, and you’d be no better off than you were before. You forget yourself, Contessa.”
I then lost all shame. I got down on my knees, placed my elbows on the rim of the tub, and begged, my bathrobe falling down my shoulders. “I’m not asking for money in order to achieve economic parity,” I said, tears streaming down my face. “I can’t stand the pain anymore. I had to go to the emergency room at one point. Please.”
“I’m really sorry about your situation, Jude, but I can be of no assistance. It’s not just the expense. I can’t let myself be taken advantage of by a common prostitute. First it’s the surgery, then where does it end?”
“I’m not a common anything. Yevgeny, you and I are united by the belief that what we are courses through our blood, remember? That blue-bloodedness is something you are, not something that you do. We are the same; we understand each other.”
“You and I, the same?” he said. Droplets of bathwater hung from his eyelashes, giving him a harmless appearance that belied his cruel tone. “What if you remove the clips and then get pregnant? Do you think I’d allow a child of mine with a freakish cleft toenail to see the light of day? I’d hunt you down and scrape it out myself with a coathanger, if necessary.”
I was about to lose my lunch. My innards rumbled. I clutched my belly.
“Oh, please, that’s enough,” said Yevgeny, shampooing his hair.
I leaned over the bathtub and grabbed on to the rim to balance myself.
He said, “Please don’t touch the bathwater,” just as I began to vomit into the tub, with him still in it. Buckets and buckets of vomit. Yevgeny screamed.
How very Jean-Paul Marat, I thought, pleased with myself. I wiped the barf driblets from my mouth using the bundle of clothes he had placed, neatly folded, on the bathroom stool.
19
Walpurgisnacht
Wo Es war, soll Ich werden.
Where Id was, there shall Ego be.
— SIGMUND FREUD
AFTER the hurling episode, it seemed likely that I had fallen out of favor with Yevgeny. Yet this offered me no solace, as it would be just a matter of time before Madame would begin to pair me with other unsavory types until my debt to her was paid. And in the interim between Yevgeny and the new client, Madame would be charging me for room and board at a secret, extortionate rate that was being added to my tab.
I apologized profusely to Yevgeny for my outburst. To Madame Tartakov I was as alacritous as ever. But secretly, I conspired to get out of the game.
Joshua was the last bastion of integrity — or was it mere sanctimony? I called him and asked him to accompany me to Zadie’s annual costume party to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, the eve of May Day, when the witches come out and do their final mischief before their summer holiday.
I would have to tell him everything, and see whether he would still have me. I would test the boundaries of his goodness.
JOSHUA picked me up from my house and we headed to Zadie’s loft in the West Village. She was dressed as her namesake from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, wearing some belly-dancing outfit she’d picked up on a trip to Turkey years ago. Her man, Natalie, was dressed, unconvincingly, as Che Guevara. His mustache looked like some kind of furry slug.
“Very original,” I said. “But do you really think that Che Guevara would have worn a Che Guevara T-shirt?”
“Hi, you guys!” Zadie shrieked at me and Joshua. “Come inside. My navel ring is getting cold. What are you supposed to be? Oh, Lord of the Rings!”
Joshua said, “No, I’m Diogenes,” gesturing at his toga and his lantern. “I’m supposed to be looking for an honest man in Athens and then I fail to find any. I’m sorry, I’m not good at this costume thing.”
“No, you look great!” Zadie squealed. “And Jude! Whoa, who are you?”
“Holly Golightly,” I said.
“Huh? Is that someone I should know?” Zadie said. “Oh, duh! Right, the call girl from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
I was kind of annoyed that she didn’t recognize me as Holly; I’d streaked my hair, and accoutred myself with an onyx cigarette holder, pearls, and a tiara and even a real Givenchy dress.
“Sorry, sweets,” Zadie said. “I thought you were supposed to be Miss Scarlet.”
“Who the fuck is Miss Scarlet?” I asked.
“She’s the, uh, Asian character from the board game Clue, the one with the cigarette holder.”
Key and Jung were at the party, too; I recognized them instantly because they were the only guests out of costume. “Hello, Tante, Oncle,” I said. “You know, Zadie should stop allowing you to attend these costume parties if you’re not going to dress up.”
Key, clearly high, said, “Holly Golightly. We all know what happened to her, right? Where she was, there shall you be. German: Wo sie war, sollst du werden. French: Où elle était, y deviens tu. Latin: Quo ea fuit…Shit…I can’t remember. Hey, Thor? How do you conjugate ero?”
“Excuse me,” said Joshua, who had little patience for this. “Judith, you want some of this orange-and-black punch?” He walked away without getting my answer.
I hit Key on the arm. “What’s the matter with you? Thank God Joshua’s too innocent to divine your meaning.”
I went to go find Joshua, who was with Zadie. She was showing him her navel ring. Scheming hussy! Fickle fake lesbian!
Zadie whispered in my ear, “He is besotted with you.” I felt guilty.
I said, “Joshua, can we talk in the stairwell? Behind the fire exit? I want to tell you about something.”
“Woo-hoo!” said Zadie. “You can always use my bed, you know.”
“Uh-oh,” Joshua said. He held my hand worriedly; I released it to get out my cigarettes. I led him out Zadie’s front door and through the fire door in the hallway, a cigarette dangling from my lips. The filter was so drenched with my nervous spittle that I had trouble inhaling through it.
We sat on the steps of the stairwell between floors four and five, he two steps higher than myself, among cigarette butts and broken beer bottles. I could feel the vibrations of Zadie’s party music through the steps. “There’s something I should have told you long ago,” I said. “But I hope you’ll understand why I couldn’t.”
“This sounds worrisome,” said Joshua, nervously hugging his knees.
“Far worse than you could ever have imagined. You may have wondered why I have no visible source of income, aside from the translation work, which as you noted is very infrequent…” At that moment, I fell forward and collapse
d over the steps.
“Should I call an ambulance?” said Josh. He knelt over me and wiped the beads of sweat from my brow.
“No. Just hand me the pills from my bag.” He complied swiftly. I swallowed one without water. “It’ll pass; it always does. Just stay with me a minute.”
“Where would I go, silly girl?” he said, continuing to dab my forehead with his sleeve. When the pain subsided, he said, “Is there anything you can do about gallstones?”
I said, “Well, this is part of what I wanted to tell you. I don’t have gallstones, and my appendix is fine. That scar on my belly is from getting my fallopian tubes clipped. It’s the clips that are putting pressure on my intestines and causing this pain.”
“Why did you lie?”
“I was embarrassed.”
“Why’d you have to have your tubes clipped?” asked Joshua, confused. “Were you…did you have a cyst?”
“No, it’s not that sort of problem. I didn’t have to do it at all. I’m just an idiot.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” asked Joshua. “Can you remove the clips?”
“Yes, but I can’t afford it.” I started to cry. “I’m such a bad person. You don’t know the first thing about me.” Was I feeling sincere contrition, physical pain, or was this all playacting? Do you always become what you pretend to be? I thought of the Yeats line Joshua once quoted to me: “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
“Shhh,” he said. “How much do you need?”
“For what?”
“To untie…to remove the clips from your fallopian tubes.”
“Eight thousand,” I wailed.
Joshua bit his lip. “I’ll get it for you,” he said.
“No, Spinoza. How?”
“I can take out a student loan. I’ll just have to teach an extra class over the summer; it’s not a big deal.”
“I can’t let you do that,” I said. “You who have so little.”
“I want to do this,” he said. “Please let me do this, Jude.”
He was dead earnest. “All right,” I said. I nestled my head in his lap. “I’ll pay you back.”
I just couldn’t tell him about my being a courtesan. It would have seemed almost rude at that moment, a slap in the face, after his unbelievably generous offer. More pertinently, I was also in a great deal of pain.
Joshua said, “You know, I often fantasize about your death.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s the logical extension of romantic desire. It’s a common literary trope. As in Wordsworth’s poem —
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover’s head!
‘O Mercy!’ to myself I cried,
‘If Lucy should be dead!’
I smiled, teeth clenched with agony, and said, “In your fantasies, how did my death come about? A murder-suicide, after you catch me with another lover?” The compulsion to confess grew stronger, but I was finding it difficult to breathe.
“No,” he replied. “I imagined you sort of like this, except in my fantasy you are a consumptive like Mimí in La Bohème, coughing up blood and passing away limply in my arms.”
“You know I hate bohemians,” I said. At that moment, something in my head seemed to spiral downward, and all was black. I had fainted from the pain.
20
The Reluctant Shiksa
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber…
…da ist keine Stelle, die dich nicht sieht.
Du musst dein Leben ändern.
We could not know his fantastic head,
where eyes like apples ripened. Yet…
there’s not one spot that doesn’t see you.
You must change your life.
— RAINER MARIA RILKE, “Archaischer Torso Apollos” (Archaic Torso of Apollo)
I HAVE BEEN etherized upon a table — twice. Once to have my tubes tied, once again to untie them.
In the weeks following Zadie’s Walpurgisnacht party, Joshua’s loan came through, and I booked an appointment to have the clips removed from my fallopian tubes. It was a fairly quick procedure, easier to undo than to do, apparently. There was still no verdict as to whether I would have trouble becoming pregnant in the future, but at least the irritable bowel syndrome would probably subside, or so I was told.
Yevgeny sent flowers to the hospital but did not visit.
Jung, the very girl who had enticed me into this wretched life, could not be bothered to visit either. My only visitors were Joshua, Heike, Boswell, and Chester from Maurice Hall.
Chester had sat by my hospital bedside and said in a Cary Grant voice, “Ju-dy, Ju-dy, Ju-dy. Boy, you look really different without makeup.”
“Asshole,” I said.
“I mean, you look really young. You’re really just a kid. I had no idea. You shouldn’t be doing, you know, your day job. Can’t you forget all that other stuff and come work at Maurice Hall full-time?”
I shook my head no, eyes hot with tears.
“Oh, come on, don’t cry. We’ll sort this out when you’re all better, okay?”
I FINISHED my convalescence at Madame’s house. I told everyone I had pinkeye and wore an eye patch to perpetuate the story that bought me a great deal of privacy, though of course Heike knew the truth. During this time I read and read and read, buying books I thought Joshua would want me to read. Like those of Benedict de Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher who, like his latter-day namesake, forsook his faith in favor of proper reason. On the same shelf I spotted The Guide for the Perplexed, by Maimonides, the medieval Spanish Jewish mystic. When I saw the title, I thought, That’s for me, and bought it.
SEVERAL WEEKS had passed since the surgery; I healed nicely. I resumed work at Maurice Hall, coming in two or three days a week. My hours were flexible, so I was able to avoid arousing Madame Tartakov’s suspicion. And the company was good; the club members would solicit my occasional opinion on such matters as the merits of allowing Armani to exhibit at the Guggenheim, or whether it was acceptable for opera productions to use microphones onstage. There was usually a lull between tea and supper, during which Chester and I would play backgammon, and on occasion he would steal away for a nap while I manned the front desk.
It was during one of the latter periods, when I was alone in the club’s anteroom, that Yevgeny entered the building.
I had not seen him in weeks. He looked preened as always, wearing a paisley silk scarf. I froze on the spot, then said, “How did you find me?”
I could not decipher his expression. He smiled the sort of crooked smile that people have when they are feeling gassy, and said, “Why are you here?”
“Why are you following me?” I asked.
“I wasn’t following you. Why are you here?” he repeated.
“Are you a member?”
“No. I thought you had pinkeye.”
Chester, who apparently had been roused from his nap, shouted from the back room, “This conversation is lacking in irony.”
“Shut up, Chester,” I shouted.
“Do you work here, Jude?” asked Yevgeny, trying to peer into the office. I leaned over and shut the office door.
“No, I’m just filling in for a friend,” I said, tremulously. “You here to see somebody?”
“Who’s on the premises now?”
“I am not at liberty to disclose that,” I said, trying to sound officious and failing.
“Aren’t you going to offer to take my coat, or are you going to vomit all over it?” Yevgeny goaded.
I said, “You might as well tell me why you are here; as you see, I am the troll guarding the bridge at the moment, and you’ve no chance of getting farther without making yourself quite plain.”
Yevgeny looked thoughtful and cocked his head toward the front door, signaling for me to step outside. I nodded, shouting to Chester through the office door that I would return shortly.
We stood on t
he front steps of Maurice Hall. The wind whipped through his locks, making him look more than ever like a portrait of Bacchus. He said, “I’m here to discuss my membership application.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Do you know what manner of club this is?”
“Of course.”
“I happen to know that you’re not gay.”
“What are you going to do, out me as a hetero?”
“It’s not just that you’re a hetero, although that strikes me as reason enough for you not to join a gay salon. It’s also that you deeply resent gay men for supposedly having created some sort of classical-music cabal for the sole purpose of thwarting your musical career. Or, are you in fact here to rectify that somehow?”
Yevgeny put his hands in his coat pockets. “You were always the smart one, Judith. I went around town asking, ‘Whom do I have to blow in this town to get an audition for the Metropolitan Opera orchestra pit?’ and I was directed here, to meet with a certain Mr.—”
I said disgustedly, “That’s quite enough. This isn’t that kind of club.” I wasn’t sure whether he was serious.
Yevgeny said, “Really, Jude? Because I have a hard time believing that you could be connected with any institution that did not somehow involve an exchange of sex for favors.”
I was too busy cooking up a scheme to be wounded by his barb. I said, “Perhaps we can exchange favors of a different sort. Neither of us particularly wants much to do with the other at this point. If you continue to keep up appearances, however, and pay Tartakov her fee, I will agree to help you with membership at Maurice Hall, or at least get you in touch with the right people here.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Intriguing,” he said.
I added hastily, “Of course, these things take time. I have only just started working here, and have to earn their trust.”