Duet

by gay walley

  They drove to Seven Central, a stamp-sized restaurant by a brook, and it was quiet as everything was out here, and they had drinks and dinner and he seemed to be comfortable, even amused. She told him a bit about her grandmother. Stories. Oskar seemed to like them, and never took his eyes off her.

  For instance, she told him that after the war Daisy moved to England after being in Israel. She loved the English and Duet had her opinions about that. She thought maybe Daisy felt safe there. They were the people who fought the Nazis.

  “They can be anti-Semitic too,” Oskar said. “They just don’ t talk about it.” Duet realized he was right; she suddenly remembered that during Shakespeare’s time Jews weren’t even allowed in England.

  “Well she was pretty,” Duet said, “and the RAF put her face on a poster. Daisy said she always wanted to serve under the men who fly.”

  Oskar laughed. Duet began remembering other kooky things Daisy would say. “She told Michelle that she didn’t want to be a mother, that she’d be a friend and then she took off. With lovers. Michelle resented it and was a bit overweaning with me because of it. But when Michelle married Dad,she invited Daisy to the wedding. Daisy said, I’ll come to your divorce.”

  “How strange,” Oskar said.

  “Daisy doesn’t believe anything will ever work out…”

  “An inflexible pessimist…”Oskar said, smiling.

  Duet continued, “ Daisy told me she was great with men in the beginning and at the end. ‘It’s in the middle, I fuck up,’ she said.”

  They both laughed.

  “Which camp was she in?” he asked.

  “A small one for children near Vienna. Rarely mentioned. “

  “ I know there was that children’s camp in Pithiviers in France,” he said.

  “Nobody talks about this one. It was an experimental hospital I think. Not really a camp.”

  “Was she ill?”

  “Who wouldn’t have been?” Duet said. “Mother gassed. Father shot. I guess she was ill.”

  Oskar said nothing. The Germans. His people.

  “Is it hard being of German stock and wondering how you could all do it?”

  Duet realized she could be asking him about his family but tonight, she just wanted to stay on hers. Just this one night. Let him know her.

  “The first wave of German literature after the war was all these writers saying to hate your parents. To break with them,” he said. “Now, only now, stories of resistance are coming out. Ordinary resistance where Germans helped Jews for instance, because only now can people take the risk of telling the truth. Before it was too much of a hot potato, too many fingers to point.”

  Duet listened. His family must have been part of the system. Otherwise you were killed.

  “ Are you like most Christians,” she asked, “and think it’s all made too much of by the Jews?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “It’s not the only holocaust, though. Rwanda, Armenia, others.”

  “ It was the most systematic,” she said.

  “Probably.”

  “Anyway Daisy will get more of a lift out of seeing a handsome young man than from all the morphine. Can I introduce you? I mean she’s skeletal –“

  “Duet, I hate that stuff. Hospitals and –“

  “Do it for her. You’ll give a gift to an old woman. An old woman who’s had a hard life.”

  Oskar could see he couldn’t get out of this. Why was he here? Why the hell had he come? Two vaginas? When had one become not enough? No, in a city full of cynical woman, Duet was rather vulnerable and honest. It was refreshing. Most of the women took. Maybe, as someone who was afflicted by not being normal, she felt she had to work harder at pleasing. He wasn’t sure. And she was easy to talk to, and in truth, he didn’t find women easy to talk to. He always thought they were angling.

  “Okay I’ll go,” he gave up.

  “Daisy?”Duet whispered, the next afternoon. She was standing next to the bed, shielding her eyes from the sun flooding into the pale, green room. It was almost too light. “I want you to meet a man I like,” Duet said.

  My god, Daisy actually opened her eyes. “He’s handsome,” Duet said teasingly, stroking Daisy’s arm. “I had to wait till you were this sick so you wouldn’t steal him.”

  Daisy looked frightened. My God, Duet just figured it out. She swung around. Were they all idiots in her family? This is a hospital. Of course she’s frightened. Where does she think she is when she is loopy on drugs? Oh God. How insensitive her family can be. A nurse came in, whose expression seemed to have more starch than her white uniform. Duet watched Daisy’s face carefully and her grandmother seemed to be alright. Daisy’s eyes followed the nurse suspiciously, but they were not terrorized. Normal suspicion.

  “Do you want some lipstick?” Duet asked.

  Daisy nodded.

  Duet pulled out her own and applied it to her grandmother. With lipstick, they looked vaguely alike. Same small features. “You look great,” Duet said. “Daisy… are you frightened…being in a hospital… does it remind you of …?”

  Daisy’s eyes filled with more terror. Duet put a comforting hand on her grandmother’s chest. “ You are safe. These doctors are trying to make you well.”

  Daisy made a face as if to say, What a waste of time. Duet smiled, “You’re getting better I can see. That sardonicness we have all come to love. You’re getting to be like yourself.”

  Daisy didn’t move, almost frozen.

  Duet said, “So ready to meet Oskar?”

  Daisy nodded, although Duet was pretty sure Daisy had no desire to meet someone in the condition she was in. But she was doing it for Duet, maybe. Maybe Daisy doesn’t have a clue what is going on, Duet thought. Daisy might have nodded if Duet had asked her if she wanted to enter the Miss Universe competition.

  Duet went to the door. Oskar was standing in the hallway, looking as nervous as Daisy did, as he took in all these hospital personnel in motion. Doctors, nurses, support staff. Everyone forcibly cheery since this wasn’t New York.

  “Hi there honey,” the older nurses said to Oskar. Oskar looked back, shocked. Why were they talking to him?

  “Hi,”he answered, as suspiciously as Daisy would have. He should have stayed in New York. What did all this friendliness mean?

  He followed Duet into the hospital room and there in bed was a tiny little Jewish woman, with short red hair, on what looked like life support. The old woman looked at him and he saw the intense dark eyes, he could see yes, he could see that back then, she might have been a looker, and Duet said slowly, in case Daisy could not focus or was a bit whoozy, “This is Os-kar Trem-ba .”

  “Hello,” he said with his financier smile. That smile that had worked magic with so many women. It was the one family heirloom, identical to his father’s, in its breadth, tone, shade and teeth, which meant something to Oskar.“I’ve heard what an incredible wit you are.”

  Daisy stared at him incredulously and then narrowed her eyes with a disturbing intensity, as if thinking. Then she looked up at the ceiling.

  “Do you want to try and say hello?” Duet asked her.

  And then Daisy’s mouth dropped. And then she closed her eyes. Duet panicked and said, “Did she just die?”

  Oskar came closer to the bed but did not want to touch her. “No,” he said, rather professionally, “she is not dead.”

  But Daisy continued to just lie there, eyes closed, as if she was dead. Duet said, “She doesn’t want to talk to us. Maybe we should go.” He couldn’t have been happier.

  Duet turned to Daisy and rubbed her arm again. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Sleep well.” Duet felt like crying. “Don’t die,”Duet said. “You can’t die.”

  Daisy lay there, eyes closed. “Okay, sleep well,” and then Oskar and Duet left.

  As they stood in the elevator, Duet felt a bit guilty. “She’s ill,” she said. “You must excuse her.”

  “No I understand,” he said.

  “Here, I’ll take you
– I’ll take you for a drive and then we can stop for a cocktail. I think my parents arranged a barbeque for you tonight. Good steak out here,” she said – but she was thinking something isn’t right. Something’s not right.

  That night everyone joked and her mother seemed to especially find Oskar charming and her father was just glad that someone was with his daughter, especially a Republican. After dinner, her father said, “Why don’t you play this Mahler that is making you so famous?”

  And so she did and her parents didn’t seem to listen with any comprehension but were impressed anyway. Oskar seemed a bit uncomfortable, but praising when she was finished. She didn’t know what any of them really felt.

  That night she and Oskar went to bed and she realized she’d never had a man in her bedroom, here. David had never come back home with her. Her father could never get past that David had gone to prison for growing marijuana. In some ways, Duet couldn’t either. He did not seem a man who made wise choices. Oskar, on the other hand, did seem a man who made wise choices and it made her feel safe.

  When they went to bed, she snuggled into him. He did put his arm around her which was a bit unusual and made her smile with joy. He is warming up! Soon he moved her hand to him, his signal he wanted to make love and she began to touch him softly and then he moved over inside her, and for some reason, maybe just being at her parents, he stayed in one vagina, so it was almost as if everything was normal. They made love tenderly and she came just because she felt, unusually,he was there,and she could let her heart open. When they fell asleep, for the first time he allowed his body to touch hers.

  In the morning, she said, “Let’s go out for breakfast” and so they got into the car and went to a local café and had great coffees and Oskar had cheese and dark bread and then they drove around and they both were getting more and more relaxed so that she just finally parked by a stream. They sat amid the rocks and the trees and listened to the water running. She picked at a stalk and he said “Don’t do that who knows what’s on it,” and she said, “A city slicker,” and he said, “I am conscious of germs,” and she ignored it and they watched the sun on the stream and wondered if there were trout running (there were), and people began to bike by, and she moved her body closer to him and he said, “Duet this is very lovely. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I would have been so lonely here alone.”

  He stopped a passerby and had him take his photo by the water. He didn’t ask Duet to be in the photo. He is not, she thought, in love with me.

  That’s when they both turned their heads towards a group of boys about 10 years old who seemed to be picking at and stabbing at something with their sticks. “Oh my god,” she said, “that poor squirrel.”

  The boys were torturing a baby squirrel they had caught. Oskar yelled out in a very stern voice, “Stop that! We’ll call the rangers.”

  Duet smiled. What rangers? The boys, at that minute, hearing their fathers in his voice, immediately scampered away. If they were in New York, she thought, they would have ignored him and said, “Fuck you “ to Oskar and began torturing Oskar instead.

  “Let ‘s go over and see what they’ve done,” he said. She was surprised at that. Oskar who was so fastidious about clothes and germs wanted to go see a dying or dead animal? He was already striding over there, so she lagged behind him, a little bit dizzy with the heat, the persistent hum of insects and the theatrical interplay of the birds.

  When they got to the squirrel, it was gashed open, already in shock, trembling. She turned her head. Oskar was now walking around searching for something. He picked up a large rock and trudged straight back to the squirrel and, with a force that shocked her, bashed the squirrel’s head, and then once again, to be sure. The squirrel died immediately.

  “Let’s go,” Oskar said, not looking at her. Once again, she followed him.

  All she said, and she didn’t know what made her say it, was, “That’s a revelation.”

  He didn’t go back to the hospital with her the next day but, instead, decided to leave, saying he had to return to his business, mumbling that “The fish were swimming in his office.” He even insisted he take a taxi to the airport so she could go on and see Daisy.

  She waved him off, once again, not sure if she would see him when she got home.

  Chapter Twenty:

  Now Daisy simply stared at the ceiling, mostly looking distressingly heartbroken. Duet would sit next to her and hold her arm and tell her that she was worried that Oskar really wasn’t in love with her, yet in some way they seemed connected. She told her grandmother that she had to face that maybe her life was meant to be alone, because of you-know. And, come to think of it, even though Daisy had had many lovers, she too, had lived singularly and alone. Daisy never responded to these litanies, did not even look at her.

  A nurse whispered in. Duet asked, “Does Daisy notice you?”

  “No, not anymore dear, I’m sorry.”

  Duet would leave the hospital and go work online from her childhood room. Michelle sometimes went to the hospital and always made the same remark when she got back, “The end is soon.”

  For some reason, Duet surmised Michelle was saying it hopefully.

  With her parents working full time, it was a quiet life in her family’s home. David would skype her to chat. When she saw him there, live on the webcam, large, happy and joking, she felt as if he was with her. “That’s because I am,” he said, laughing. He listened to tales of Daisy and said it didn’t sound good. He suggested she might try discussing with Daisy his golf swing. That’s what she really wants to hear. “I don’t think so,” Duet said, laughing. “It might hasten her death.”

  Oskar rarely emailed and it upset her. She wondered again where he had gone. Didn’t he want to reach out to her? Apparently not. David kept pointing out Duet seemed quite happy in this solitude of being out of the city, inferring she could be quite happy living in his small town with him. Maybe she could, she thought. Why did she hold on to Oskar who was interested, but only mildly so.

  When Oskar returned to New York, he went back to his daily exercise and business regimen. His neighbor had left his wife, as had another pal down the hall so they were in frequent touch, now that they all were bachelors, often dropping by his penthouse wrap-around terrace and drinking entire bottles of wine by themselves. Oskar was a bit shocked. They seemed to be having quite a wild time of it, one in love with a prostitute, the other finding women whom he used his money to attract. They kept suggesting Oskar meet one of them. “Have some fun, O. They’re lookers.”

  So he did meet Katrina, a supposed model, maybe she was, they all were supposed models, and she was indeed tall and graceful and her long neck was particularly heartbreaking and he imagined she looked pretty dashing in a swimsuit, for a colt, but he missed Duet’s guileless intelligence. She seemed to accept him and she had her own interests. Not caring about the answer but out of boredom, he asked Katrina if she liked Mahler’s music, and she said, “Who? Fats Waller?”

  Yet something told him he just couldn’t handle Duet. It only stood to reason and he was a reasoning man. Her appetite, her desire had to be larger than the average woman and even though he was a lusty guy, he didn’t want that pressure. Where would it lead eventually when she got tired of him, as everyone does with someone whom they are with constantly? He thought, Move on and go back online, god there are thousands of women, a lot of them accomplished, a lot of them beautiful, all of them built to a regular design and a lot of them less maintenance. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  Some part of him was tied to her. He just, in a way, didn’t like it.

  Twenty one:

  Maurice arrived home late from his law practice only to find his wife, Adele, wasn't back yet from dinner with her friend. He decided not to eat, he'd had a big business lunch. He had been an athlete when young but that muscularity was now turning into something wider and not like him at all. He could work on the legal motion that was due the nex
t day, but god he was tired of it, so instead he went to his music collection, which his wife couldn't bear to look at without wincing. Yes, he admits he reads music catalogs as Orthodox rabbis read the Talmud. He pulled out Mahler's Fifth. He had listened to approximately two thousand versions of it in his lifetime and, still, even now, the romantic emotion makes him cry. Maurice put on his ear phones in case she came home.

  He sat down by the window overlooking the Hudson River, in this apartment where he has lived with his books and cds for over twenty-five years, since he and his first wife split up. When he bought this place in Battery Park before it became fashionable, he was virtually alone here, with a series of women coming through in all variations of sexual passion. He was sexual in those days. Now he has Adele, whom he loves. He turned up the volume. Leonard Bernstein's was the best. Maurice remembered when Bernstein chose Mahler's Third for his final performance, and Maurice was there in the fourth row at Lincoln Center, even though he was in the middle of his law finals. When it ended, no one moved or spoke, and then Bernstein hugged his principal violinist of over 30 years, whereupon they both, including the audience, started sobbing. Maurice had written many articles on the various performances and, as he listened, holding his scotch and closing his eyes, he imagined that it was he who was conducting. Soon he began thinking about that girl, Duet.

  He decided to get up from his armchair and look Duet up on the internet. Nothing. A good sign. She does not follow the herd. He has been friends with many musicians and writers, of course, but the burden of estrangement he feels, for having these passions by himself, is an almost crushing weight. These people at the Mahler Society really don’t have a clue about music. Duet seems to not be part of any particular school or movement. Imagine, putting Mahler to piano music. Only someone incredibly brave and sure of herself would do that. Even the way she dresses, he reflected, seems to march to her own drum, soft dresses and high heels. Women don't do that anymore. Not to mention those slender legs…