“Cigarettes, sir. And matches.”
“Thank you . . .”
Seigl glanced up smiling and grateful but vague-eyed: he wasn’t remembering Dmitri’s name. It was nearing 11 P.M. He and the elderly professor were in their second hour of chess. Seigl was hunched over the chess pieces, leaning on his elbows. Dmitri cast a veiled glance seeing that Seigl didn’t appear to be winning.
Winning, losing: it never seemed to matter to Seigl. Maybe it was a Jewish thing, such equanimity. Seigl would leave as generous a tip in either case. To show he’s superior. Untouched like the rest of us.
As a student at the city university a decade before, Dmitri had read Shadows. Or was it, The Shadows. Maybe he hadn’t actually read the book but he’d skimmed it, he knew what it was about. The usual Jewish subject: the Holocaust. When certain kinds of things happen to a race you have to wonder why, don’t you? Rotten things happened to everybody if you looked back far enough in history, you didn’t see other people blaming who they were for what was done to them. And maybe, just maybe, they deserved it? Some of them, anyway. Not the Jewish type to which Joshua Seigl belonged (anyway, so far as Dmitri knew) but the other types, the moneymakers and connivers. Dmitri had heard that the Jews of Europe hadn’t made much effort to escape or to fight the Nazis. They’d expected other people, American soldiers for instance, to do their fighting for them. It was like that in Israel now. The U.S. always bailing Israel out, billions and trillions of dollars down that rat hole, well how’s about we don’t bail them out for a change, give the Palestinians a break. At the time of Hitler, Dmitri read, there’d been plenty of Jews who “converted” to Christianity, guess why? To save their skins. Not out of any love of Jesus Christ. (Not that Dmitri was religious, he was not. He didn’t give a shit for religion, God had never given a shit for him.) Whining, bellyaching, blaming people for whatever happened which some historians were doubting ever happened, in fact. The Holocaust might be a hoax. Biggest hoax of the twentieth century.
“Another espresso, sir?”
“Why, thank you.”
Seigl smiled up at Dmitri from the quagmire of the chess game in which most of his pieces, the red, seemed to have disappeared from the board. His face gleamed with an interior heat. His lips were thin and strained inside the bristling black whiskers that seemed to fit him loosely.
Courteously Seigl asked the elderly professor if he would like a drink and the elderly professor said, as if doing Seigl a favor, yes all right: Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Seigl winked at the waiter signaling he’d be paying for both drinks, and Dmitri glided away smiling, but disgusted. Of course you’ll pay, that old fucker isn’t going to pay a dime, none of the bastards do, Mr. Seigl, haven’t you fucking noticed by now?
It infuriated Dmitri sometimes, that Seigl, a Jew, was such a pushover in practice. Maybe he was too brainy for his own good and needed somebody to tell him the score.
For Dmitri did admire Joshua Seigl, in fact. You had to admire the man whatever you thought of the race. And maybe the race wasn’t all bad; Jews were benefactors of charities and libraries and things like that. Dmitri knew from the newspaper that the Seigls were that kind of family: gave money for a new wing of the Mount Carmel Children’s Hospital, for instance. Money for the art museum, the music school. There was Joshua Seigl’s picture in the paper, a man trying to smile but looking trapped. Of course, people like the Seigls have money to give away, which not everybody has, and maybe if you had that much money you’d be a hot-shit benefactor too and get your picture in the paper. Dmitri’s family on both sides—Meattes, Dillehoys—weren’t exactly of that class, that was sure. If they ever got their hands on money, sure as hell they wouldn’t be giving it away.
Dmitri felt a knife blade turn in his gut. Pain like sheer rage.
You had to be an asshole to give your money away, what if you need it sometime and it’s gone? Down some fucking rat hole.
“Here you are, Mr. Seigl. And you, sir . . .”
In his large startled voice Seigl said cheerfully, “Thank you, Dmitri.” The elderly professor, hunched over the chessboard touching his fingertips lightly across his pieces, didn’t trouble to glance up. But he’d take a big swallow of the whiskey in a few seconds, Dmitri knew.
Old mick fucker, Dmitri should’ve spat into the Johnnie Walker.
Next time, for sure he would.
Seigl said, “Dmitri, here. I’d better pay now before . . .” Before he forgot, was probably what Seigl meant to say. Dmitri accepted the bills, which were far in excess of the tab. His heart soared: there were such good vibes between him and Seigl tonight.
Not like his ancestors, this Jew. Couldn’t be. More like some holy fool. Turning the other cheek, giving away possessions.
“Sir, thank you.”
In the Rochester Sun-Times the other day, Dmitri read that his customer Seigl had endowed a scholarship at the Eastminister Music Conservatory. “Endowed”: that meant a lot of money. Dmitri hadn’t read anything of Seigl’s after that first book, but he had a dim awareness that Seigl had written others, and that he gave talks and lectures in the area, and he’d had a play produced somewhere. New York? Dmitri wasn’t into reading much lately. His job wore him out, made him cynical and impatient with just words. When he’d been a student at the university he’d wanted to be a writer, composing his own performance pieces, monologues and lyrics like Bob Dylan (except Dmitri had a better voice than Dylan and was better looking, and sexier), also he’d wanted to make movies from his own screenplays. What came of his plans he didn’t know, it was a combination of bad luck, bad timing, bad vibes, drugs messing up his head. But he did remember drifting into the rear of an auditorium and hearing a talk by Joshua Seigl titled “The Problem of Evil: Theirs, and Ours.” The point of it was that there was no actual problem because there was no evil, and there was no devil, only a misuse of language, and people “demonizing” one another, Dmitri didn’t remember what Seigl said too clearly but he remembered being impressed, the speaker had a forceful but warm way about him, and was obviously some kind of genius, the fact he was a Jew-genius didn’t enter into the picture. That’s what I am meant to be, somebody like that, Dmitri thought. Too fucking bad he’d been stoned for most of his year and a half of college.
It was 11:30 P.M. Half an hour until closing. Dmitri checked that Alma, his girl for the night, who knew for how many nights, was still slouched in the booth where he’d placed her, like a big boneless rag doll comatose with her head resting on her arms and her blemished face hidden.
“Alma.” Dmitri mouthed the name aloud, tasting it. Probably that wasn’t the poor cunt’s name, she looked like a girl who’s lost her name but still it tasted good. “Al-ma.”
That stiff ash-blond hair did look like a doll’s hair. Not a human-hair doll, but the cheap kind.
The other waiter spelled Dmitri for a few minutes: he used the toilet, had a quick joint out the back door with the kitchen boys. When he returned to The Café, there was somebody hanging over Seigl’s table, clearly annoying him. Dmitri heard “Excuse me? Are you Joshua Seigl? I—” This happened sometimes, mostly when Seigl was having dinner, and Seigl usually responded with embarrassment, annoyed but too polite to send the stranger away, and if Dmitri was in a position to intervene he always did, deft as a bodyguard. Saying, as he did now, “Excuse me, the gentleman does not wish to be interrupted. This is a private game.” The man, not a regular customer, began to argue with Dmitri, and Dmitri repeated, “This is a private game. The gentleman does not wish to be interrupted.”
Seigl had risen awkwardly to his feet. He’d nearly upset the chess table. His face was flushed with annoyance, and a look like guilt; his hands were shaking. But he didn’t intervene as Dmitri led the man away.
At the chess table, Seigl’s opponent sat motionless, staring at the pieces as if catatonic. He hadn’t heard the interruption, or was choosing to pay no heed. Very slowly, with claw-like fingers, he lifted a chess piece, deliberated for several
seconds, then returned it to its square. By this time the board was nearly emptied of pieces. It was endgame, the time of crisis.
Seigl picked up his cigarettes and went outside, pacing on the sidewalk and smoking. When Dmitri came to join him, he appeared to be muttering to himself, exhaling smoke agitatedly. He stared out at Mount Carmel Avenue, where traffic was sparse at this hour. Across the street and at nearby Trinity Square the shops and boutiques were darkened; a Starbucks up the block was brightly lighted, and Mount Carmel’s last remaining independent bookstore, the Book Seller. Dmitri said, in a voice keyed low to placate, to soothe and to assure, “Mr. Seigl? I’m sure sorry about that. But it won’t happen again, I promise.”
Seigl muttered, “It’s nothing. I overreacted.”
“In the middle of a chess game, anyone would be upset . . .”
“Not the middle. The end. I’m not upset. It was utterly trivial.”
“But you never know, sir. That other time—”
Dmitri was recalling a ridiculous exchange of some months before. Two mildly inebriated women had approached Seigl as he was having dinner with friends in the bistro; they wanted autographs from him, but also attention from him. When Seigl tried to discourage them, one of the women became incensed. It had been a distressing incident at the time, like all such scenes in public places, but not without its comic elements.
Dmitri, not Seigl’s waiter that evening, had had to watch from across the restaurant. He’d been disgusted that the maître d’ hadn’t intervened more readily. A good way to lose a celebrity customer.
Seigl wasn’t listening. No doubt, Seigl had forgotten this incident.
Seigl took a final suck of his cigarette and snapped it into the gutter. “Utterly trivial. I should shake hands with anyone who wants to shake hands with me. Except,” he said, with a harsh laugh, “I seem incapable of doing it.”
Dmitri protested, “You don’t have to shake hands with anybody you don’t want to, Mr. Seigl. Who ever said that?”
Lost in thought Seigl stood plucking and scratching at his beard, staring at the street. Looking like a man, Dmitri thought pityingly, waiting for his pocket to be picked. He wore a sporty khaki vest with numerous pockets and zippers, over a rumpled white dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves exposing brawny, wiry-haired forearms. The shirt was untucked behind. The vest was unbuttoned, revealing the beltless waist of Seigl’s trousers which were baggy yet of good quality lightweight wool. Seigl looked like a man who has dressed quickly in the dark, a man who avoided mirrors. On his feet were his usual jogging shoes, water-stained and gleaming dull white in the shadows, enormous as hooves. A big ungainly man with a curious kind of grace.
Seigl sighed. He’d been running his hands impatiently through his hair that stood up now spiky, disheveled with a lunatic energy. His wiry black beard glistened moistly around his mouth. He said, in a tone meant to be amusing:
“A mere trifle consoles us, Dmitri, for a mere trifle distresses us. Pascal knew.”
“Pascal . . . ?”
“A luminous soul in a crippled body.”
Dmitri pretended to understand. Waiters are primed to such duplicities. He’d been a waiter for more years than he cared to acknowledge. Waiter: waiting.
“Pascal” had a familiar ring. Didn’t sound Jewish but maybe. Seigl was stuck on that Nazi-Jewish crap, poor bastard’s brainy head must be stuffed with it.
Seigl returned to the café and went to use the men’s room at the rear. You’d have thought the man was slightly drunk, the way he moved brooding and swaying like an accident about to happen. Dmitri watched as Seigl lurched by the booth in which Alma was sitting. Nearly colliding with a chair, shoving it out of his way with both hands. Dmitri woke Alma with a rough shake of her shoulder. She groaned, confused. “Don’t h-hit me . . .” Dmitri closed his fingers in her straw-hair and shook her until her bruised doll’s eyes popped open. “Baby. It’s all right. It’s Dmitri, your friend. Nobody’s going to hit you.” Alma flinched at these words as if in fact they were blows. Her face was puffy and sallow-skinned, her mouth looked less sensual now than merely hurt, swollen. Dmitri asked how Alma felt and she shook her head dazed. She wasn’t feeling too good. He hadn’t medicated her—he had a half-dozen oxycodone tablets loose in his pocket—but she was behaving as if he had. “We’ll be out of here pretty soon. Twenty minutes. Hang on, honey. Dmitri’s gonna take care of you real well.” When Seigl returned from the men’s room he saw Alma, and paused. She was yawning, a wide humid yawn, unconscious as a cat. Stretching her supple arms. And the heavy breasts inside the man’s shirt, suddenly straining at the cloth. On her boneless white baby face the mothstain quivered as if it were alive. Dmitri, hand on the girl’s shoulder, stroking her, said in a low suggestive voice, “My friend Alma, Mr. Seigl. She’s new to Carmel Heights.” But Seigl was already backing off, as if he’d seen too much.
Dmitri smiled. Seigl the Jew bachelor. Sexy look but (probably) a momma’s boy.
Or was Seigl gay? That would explain a lot.
Still, you could see that Seigl had been struck by the girl. Surprised. The Tattooed Girl had a look about her like she wasn’t wearing any clothes but didn’t know it. But you knew it. Seigl wasn’t the type to betray curiosity, though. Too canny. His social class, living on the Hill. Jew snobs. Looking down their Jew noses at slut white trash.
Seigl returned to his chess game. Elderly professor emeritus smiled a small cruel smile moving a knight at last.
Seigl murmured, “Shit.”
It wasn’t like Joshua Seigl the classy Jew. He would pretend he hadn’t said it, saying now, louder, laughing, “Touché, my friend. I knew it was coming but not so soon.”
THE CAFÉ WAS CLOSING. Seigl had bought everybody drinks, and now the motley crew of chess players was departing. Seigl had disappeared in his usual abrupt way leaving behind a small wad of bills for Dmitri to count eagerly. “Alma baby, it’s worth the wait sometimes.” Though there was a turn in his heart as of a small tarnished key: he’d get his revenge on the Jew, someday.
The Tattooed Girl rose swaying on her feet. She looked like a girl with two flat feet and the kind of boobs, she’d waddle like a duck if she didn’t watch it. In this state, she wasn’t going to watch it. Cringing and making a soft cooing noise, guided by Dmitri’s hand (gentle, not-so-gentle) at the nape of her neck. The best kind of female meat, that would move in the direction in which she was nudged, unresisting.
Not toward the front of the restaurant where it was darkened and locked up and the closed sign in the door but toward the rear red-light exit, into the alley smelling of rancid greens and a short dreamy walk to Dmitri’s car.
If drugs hadn’t messed up his life, fuck it. He’d have graduated from college and maybe he’d be making films by now, he’d be making CDs and performing in places like Madison Square Garden. He had the talent, hadn’t had the fucking breaks. Genius is ninety-nine percent breaks. The females he’d be screwing would be rich men’s daughters or wives not slut white trash and he’d have married one of them by now. He was twenty-nine years old.
5
. . . friend Alma. New to Carmel Heights . . .
Sure he’d dreamt of the Tattooed Girl. Waking with an erection painful as toothache. But it faded, fled. Blood leaking out of it like a ticking clock. Already he’d ceased thinking of her. His brain churned with more pressing matters.
6
BUT IF IT’S A ‘nerve disease,’ what causes it? Diseases have causes, surely.”
A pain in the ass. Seigl could hear himself. He’d become one of those distrustful patients who, intelligent and educated and accustomed to being deferred to, can’t accept the passive role but must press their doctors for information, facts; interrogating instead of listening, like lawyers.
Of course, Seigl was uneasy, too. No matter his poise.
The neurologist told him that numerous causes have been suspected. But no single cause has yet been isolated.
In any case, Seigl’s tests we
re “inconclusive.” There was no reason to believe that he had the illness they were speaking of. There was no reason to believe that Seigl had any illness at all.
Seigl heard this. With a pounding heart he heard.
Nonetheless he asked, as if the pursuit of facts was the goal of this conversation and not the assuaging of an individual’s private anxiety, “But this disease you call a ‘congeries of symptoms.’ Is it hereditary?”
Seigl was thinking of his father’s melancholy, that deepened with the years. Faint tremors in his eyelids and hands. Karl Seigl had been a large, imposing, dignified man and yet: something had hollowed him out from within, you could see.
The slowness of his speech. As if sometimes he had to summon words from a distant place and time.
Munich, Germany, in the 1930s. And then Dachau in the 1940s.
No, the neurologist said firmly. It isn’t believed to be inherited.
Seigl persisted. “Surely there must be a gene? There’s a gene for everything now.”
If so, this gene hasn’t been isolated.
“Well, is it contagious? The illness.”
No. It’s certainly not contagious.
“Except in spirit, possibly?”
To this, the neurologist pondered a reply. He regarded his distinguished but irascible patient as if Joshua Seigl were speaking in code or alluding to some commonly shared joke which he, an educated and cultured man himself, ought to recognize.
But the neurologist could only repeat that no nerve disease or condition is “contagious.” And that Seigl should recall that his test results were “inconclusive.”
Seigl said, “ ‘Inconclusive.’ I should be grateful, I suppose.”
Yes, the neurologist said, you should.
Blood work. Electrocardiograph. Colonoscopy (in a blissful sedated state, he’d wanted this one repeated). Tests for collagen disorder (two Steadman relatives had died of quirky, deadly dermatomyositis) and for thyroid imbalance (in late middle age, Seigl’s mother had had a thyroidectomy). “Magnetic resonance imaging” that left him exhausted and rueful.
The Tattooed Girl Page 4