Angel in the Parlor

by Nancy Willard

  “What kind of a job?”

  “In Akton’s darkroom on the second floor. Have you ever worked in a darkroom?”

  “I worked in a camera shop for five months. But never in a darkroom.”

  “You’ll learn. And it’s so terribly convenient. You won’t have to go out of the building at all.”

  “I don’t mind going out of the building,” said Nicholas.

  “In the winter, the wind is excruciating.”

  “But it’s only April! We’ve the whole summer before us.”

  “Oh, dear!” Amyas dropped the spoon in the kettle, and seized both of Nicholas’s hands in his own. “I just thought you’d be happier if you had something to do.”

  “It’s all right,” said Nicholas. “I’ve always wanted to work in a darkroom.”

  “Have you really? You can start any time.”

  He hurried back to fish out his spoon. Nicholas edged his way over to the elevator.

  “Are you going to sing with the dwarf tonight?” he asked.

  “No. I promised the players I’d sing for them. My dear fellow, where are you going?”

  “Outside,” said Nicholas, “if I can get the door open.”

  “We’re boring you,” cried Amyas. “How dreadful.”

  “No. I need—I need exercise.”

  Amyas sighed deeply.

  “Janet, unlock the door for him. Or would you prefer to try the stairs? The other door is by the wardrobe. One thing before you leave—please be back in plenty of time for dinner. It’s going to be an occasion you don’t want to miss.”

  Outside on the landing Nicholas felt blissfully alone. He hurried down the stairs past a precipitous landing and arguing voices behind a closed door. Across the next landing someone had set up a picket fence to prevent accidents. Nicholas quickened his pace but paused at the third landing to read messages scrawled on the doors that seemed to challenge each other from opposite ends of the corridor: CHINESE MEN’S CLUB—PRIVATE. KEEP OUT! LEATHER AND FURS. Presently the corridor grew light, and he plunged out into the street.

  It was a spring day.

  He pulled out his harmonica and tried to recapture the feeling: it was a spring day and he was much younger. He walked slowly up Prince Street, sucking at a tune. Twenty blocks away his wife was eating her lunch alone, or washing her hair, or sleeping. Would she call the police to find him? Would she call up her old lovers? The first week of their marriage all sorts of strange people had shown up at all hours of the day and night, and he had thrown them downstairs. Like a test of strength in a carnival booth. Pizza makers, salesmen, even a piano teacher.

  Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little foot?

  He came to the end of the block. A group of older boys were playing handball on the court. If this were yesterday he would have gone over and joined them, but today he could not make himself do it. He was not tired but shy. Blowing a tune to himself, he turned and walked slowly back to the loft.

  All afternoon he hung around on the roof and listened to the murmur and crying of the doves, still calling to themselves in the forest that years of breeding had not dislodged from their memory. Janet had gone off to rehearse and Amyas was napping. Nicholas settled himself so close to the cages that he could see the brown rings on the throats of the white birds and the irridescent sheen on the breasts of the slate-colored ones and the pale rings around the eyes of all the birds, as black and blind-looking as shoe buttons. He watched until he heard Amyas moving about, then he stumbled inside.

  Dinner was a slow and elaborate affair, punctuated by shouts and crashes from the loft below. On a silver platter in the middle of the table sat the stuffed tripe, like a baked volley ball. The sink held a tower of dirty pots, dishes, strainers, and knives. The five soups, variously made of chicken and crayfish and snails, left Nicholas feeling bloated. He sat solemnly opposite Janet while Amyas served them and kept up a running chatter.

  “I hope you won’t let our neighbors downstairs spoil a good meal. They have the most dreadful arguments. She’s a welder. I don’t know what he does. But I assure you, it’s far worse to be out on the street. Sometimes they throw all their furniture out of the window. Once Janet caught a bottle of olives. We ate them in a salad the next day. Didn’t we, Janet?”

  Janet was sawing a sea urchin with her knife and making terrible faces. Amyas watched her as he beat whipped cream.

  “The meal would have been much tastier if we could have found an udder, I assure you. A meal fit for Caesar, if I hadn’t had to substitute tripe and if Janet hadn’t insisted on serving string beans. Caesar had an aversion to string beans. He said eating string beans was like eating hairs. And we ought to have worn togas. Meals taste better when you dress for them.”

  Crash! Something fell over in the room below and the table gave a violent twitch. Nicholas filled his mouth with rubbery pieces of tripe and washed them down with great gulps of wine.

  “Tomorrow I want to try carp à la Napoleon. Only think how you would feel having to eat with a peruke on your head. Once Monsieur de Souze, the Portuguese ambassador to Paris, was dining at the house of Talleyrand, prince of Benevento, and as the servant placed the soup before him, he caught the gentleman’s wig in his cuff button. Whisk! The ambassador was completely bald. Do you know that story?”

  He turned his eager eyes on Janet, who was staring off into space and chewing as if to a secret tune.

  “I could teach you so much, but you fall asleep,” he whispered into her ear, pinching her lightly. “What an actress I could make of you, my little dove!”

  “Amyas, sit down with us,” exclaimed Nicholas. “You’ve cooked a big dinner and you don’t sit down to help us eat it.”

  “I eat as I go,” said Amyas, and he began to clear the plates. “You may well imagine, Nicholas, when I sit down, I don’t do it lightly. It involves making a sort of commitment to the chair.”

  Raucous singing came up from the corridor below, then died away.

  “What time is the play?” asked Nicholas.

  “Eight o’clock,” said Janet. “It’s seven now.”

  “Seven! That leaves us barely an hour to dress and get there,” cried Amyas. With a grand sweep of his hand he pushed all the dishes into the sink. “We’ll do them tomorrow morning. I hope you’ll excuse me. We haven’t the advantage of an elevator when we visit others in this building.”

  And he hurried back to his end of the loft. Janet followed him in silence, leaving Nicholas alone at the table. His stomach sighed loudly. He got up and lay down on the sofa to wait for the others.

  “The only inconvenience of this loft is not having bathing facilities,” called Amyas’s voice from the wardrobe. The words sounded curiously muffled, as if he had clothed them in one of his tweeds or caftans. “It’s a nuisance having to bathe at the houses of friends or drawing tubs of water. I should like to get something installed.”

  When he finally appeared he was wearing the white shirt and flowered vest he had worn in the restaurant the evening before. But now he had added a kelly green ascot and red suspenders. For a few moments he studied Nicholas appraisingly.

  “Have you nothing else to put on?”

  “No,” said Nicholas. His old chinos and sweat shirt and his ragged windbreaker suddenly embarrassed him.

  “We must buy you some clothes. The man who runs the fur and leather shop downstairs sells suits. I’ve asked him to stop by tomorrow.”

  Janet emerged from behind her bed looking very demure in a high-waisted print dress with full sleeves and a high collar. Amyas beamed approval.

  “My little dove,” he whispered, and stroked her hair. “Go and fetch my mandolin.”

  They set out down the stairs. It was certainly easier for so large a man to go down rather than up, thought Nicholas. But two flights in any direction were too much for Amyas. He huffed and groaned and leaned first on Nicholas and then on Janet, not because he couldn’t manage the stairs but because he was afraid of losing his balance. He trembl
ed and gasped but never broke off his shrill chatter.

  “One can’t be too careful—there’s no light and nothing to take hold of,” he panted. “This is where the lady welder lives. A club for Lithuanian refugees used to meet there. And do you know, whenever a Lithuanian met a Chinese from the club downstairs, they passed without speaking. Ah, if I could only fly!”

  A sense of deep injustice filled his voice, as if he alone of all men had been born with the defect of gravity. Breathing heavily, he held Janet’s arm and clutched at Nicholas’s shoulder, and soon they heard voices and saw a light that fell on the railing of the fourth floor landing. A man was leaning over and looking up at them.

  “Amyas!”

  As they reached the bottom of the stairs they heard singing:

  You and I and Amyas

  Amyas and you and I,

  To the greenwood must we go, alas!

  You and I, my life and Amyas.

  Puffing and limping, Amyas entered the loft with his two faithful servants. Several dozen people were sprawled on both sides of the doorway, leaving a center aisle free. Down the aisle walked Amyas, so joyfully he might have been walking in his own wedding. Nicholas felt a brief surge of pleasure that he was part of this procession, though even before he could name it as pleasure, it turned to quiet anger.

  “Amyas!”

  There was a round of applause. Bearded and costumed, Amyas waved. He was a play unto himself; what need have we of players? thought Nicholas. Amyas smiled his kingly smile and shook the hand that reached out to him. A boy in a striped poncho hurried up to Nicholas.

  “I’m Homer Sax. Welcome to the city of strangers and dreamers. Mike, bring Amyas his chair.”

  As if by magic, an upholstered armchair appeared in the front row. It was the only chair in the room. Amyas sank into it graciously. Nicholas sat on the floor to his left, feeling embarrassed. He looked around for Janet but she was nowhere to be seen.

  Suddenly Homer Sax stepped out in front of them and clapped his hands for order. Gradually the voices stopped and everyone fell quiet. Three men and three girls sat down in a line to the right of him. Nicholas was startled to see Janet at the far end.

  “This is our workshop of dreams,” said Homer Sax, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “Anyone from the audience can come up and tell his dream. Afterwards we’ll have music and dancing—” he turned toward Amyas—“and wine. Did someone bring the wine?”

  A few snickers from the back.

  “Yaaas!” shouted a voice.

  Everyone laughed. Homer Sax took off his beads and threw them on the ground.

  “Well, who wants to go first?”

  No one moved. At last a shuffling sound in the back row broke the silence, and a pimply blond boy lumbered up to the front, hopped up on a little wooden box at the back of the stage, and cleared his throat.

  “I dreamed I was looking out of the window. Looking down at Prince Street. It was early in the morning.”

  A black boy in jeans and a sheepskin vest leaped up from the line of actors, picked up the beads and hung them around his neck, and stared over the heads of the audience, keeping his hands behind his back.

  “It was cold. Down in the street people were beating each other up.”

  The boy wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. Janet got up and limped out of the line, leaning on her cane. A red-haired boy in black pants and a black sweater seized the cane and pretended to beat her with it. She cowered and sank to the ground. Amyas made a strange noise in his throat. Nicholas looked at him. His enormous hands were gripping the arms of the chair.

  “Then I heard the humming of many bees. I looked up the street and saw a procession of animals, all holding each other’s paws and dancing the hora down the street.”

  The rest of the players scrambled to their feet and began to bow and skip.

  “And it stopped being cold. And people stopped beating each other. And I woke up.”

  Janet rose and shook hands with her assailant. Leaning on her cane like an old woman, she hobbled across the stage. Janet the old woman, Janet without Amyas, living out her days alone, turning into Norma Mardachek. Nicholas tried to shake her from his mind, but she hung with sharp claws like a fierce bird.

  Now everyone was clapping. The dream teller plumped down on the other side of Amyas.

  “A splendid dream, sir. A splendid dream.”

  Slowly the players returned to their line.

  “Amyas,” shouted Homer Sax, coming to the front of the stage. “You tell us a dream. Yours must be extraordinary.”

  Amyas glanced at Janet who was sitting on the floor among the players. She was drawing circles on the floor with her cane.

  “Nicholas,” he whispered, “help me up.”

  Nicholas jumped up and offered his hand.

  “Steady the chair,” whispered Amyas.

  Nicholas held the back of the chair. Amyas rocked to and fro several times; then giving a great heave, he threw himself on his feet and thudded across the stage. Somewhere behind him empty wine bottles clinked their heads together. He mounted the box and faced the audience like an elephant on a barrel. There was a sharp splintering sound. Nobody laughed. Amyas stepped off without embarrassment. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and began to shout as if he were delivering a sermon into the wind.

  “I dreamed I was a shepherd, leading a flock of sheep across the red desert.”

  The black boy in the sheepskin vest threw down the beads and walked slowly across the stage, leaning on an imaginary staff. Janet and three other girls crawled on all fours after him.

  “Then I saw an old woman and a little boy whom I knew to be very evil.”

  A tall, skinny girl led the red-haired boy to a place in front of the shepherd. Crouching on the floor, they grimaced and pointed to him.

  “To prevent them from destroying us, I changed my entire flock into stones.”

  The sheep curled up into four limp mounds.

  “Yes, I even changed myself into a stone, except for my right ear, which I left unchanged so that I could hear if any evil was being plotted against us.”

  The shepherd hunched himself up like a beetle but laid his hand against the side of his head.

  “Then I heard one of my sheep escaping.” Amyas’s voice trembled a little. “Yes, indeed, I heard one of my sheep escaping. And I thought, have I not changed them all into stones?”

  No one moved on stage. Amyas’s eyes glittered and seemed to bulge from his head. Not a sound could be heard but Amyas’s heavy breathing and the clump clump of Janet’s shoes, like an animal dragging a trap. When Amyas spoke his words hissed out like steam.

  “Then I said to myself, though I am stone, yet I will fly!”

  He let out a yell and lunged toward the door. Nicholas flew after him, sprang on his back, and hung on. They tumbled through the doorway together in time to see Janet running down the stairs. Amyas heaved himself this way and that but Nicholas locked his arm around the other man’s neck and pinned him against the railing.

  “Janet, run!” he shouted.

  A terrible cracking followed. The railing snapped and split and Amyas dropped to the stairs below, with Nicholas riding him like a boy on a dolphin. It felt stranger than any dream, this sudden loss of weight and support, this falling through space, this turning into a pair of struggling swimmers who suddenly hit rock at the bottom of the air. Then Nicholas saw only Amyas’s eyes staring past him and a gush of blood from his head spreading over the floor.

  Far away he heard cries.

  “Call an ambulance!”

  “Don’t move him! For God’s sake, don’t move him!”

  Hands lifted Nicholas to his feet. He ached in a hundred places but he knew he was not hurt. Amyas had cushioned the fall, and now he lay with bloody head and twisted limbs like a drowned man, bloated and washed up on a strange shore. Janet was wailing like a child. Homer Sax’s voice rose over them all.

  “Give him air. Clear out, al
l of you!”

  Nicholas staggered upstairs. The tall, skinny girl took him by the arm and tried to wipe away a thin trickle of blood that flowed from a cut over his left eye. Something unpleasant was thumping inside his skull. He sat on the floor where the players had been but a moment before, and obstinately refused to move. But a little while later when Homer Sax came to help him back up to the sixth floor loft, he took his arm meekly enough. The stairway was littered with broken pickets like toy swords. Amyas and Janet had disappeared.

  III

  Nicholas woke up suddenly. Someone was pounding on the door.

  “Coming!” he shouted. As he eased himself painfully out of bed, he heard a discreet cough. By the elevator door stood a small, dark-haired man with large teeth. He was leaning on a rack of trench coats, slacks, and jackets.

  “Excuse me. Your door was open. I assumed that Mr. Axel left it open so that I could deliver the suits.”

  “What suits?” said Nicholas. The man was staring at his sweat shirt and chinos, torn from the struggle on the stairs and wrinkled from last night’s fitful sleep.

  “You’re supposed to pick out whatever you like. I got some nice Harris tweeds here and some good slacks if you don’t like anything so fancy as a suit.”

  “Not now,” said Nicholas. “Come back tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that,” cried the man nervously. “I have no idea what we’ll come across tomorrow. These may be gone. And we might not get any more tweed in for a week. You don’t find so many in the spring.”

  “Please go,” said Nicholas.

  “Listen,” persisted the man. “I can’t go unless you pick one. Mr. Axel has paid for two suits, and he wanted them brought up right away. He’s very fussy about his orders. Do you mind if I pick some things for you?”

  The man pulled a corduroy jacket and a pair of slacks off the rack and hung them on the open doors of Janet’s bed. Then he pushed the rack into the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.

  There was no point in going back to bed. Nicholas put on the jacket and noticed a cigarette hole in the left sleeve. He felt he should return it at once, but to whom? Furthermore, the loft had grown chilly without Amyas. Nicholas opened the door to the roof and heard the chimes from the church on Sullivan Street, like the twelve clocks of God that his wife once told him would ring the elect into paradise. A man at Bellevue heard it three times a day: the passing of time depends, he said, on the three golden bells that turn slowly inside. Nicholas started to open the first cage, then decided it was too risky. He went back inside and scooped a bowlful of cracked corn from one of the bags under the sink. He was on his way out to feed the doves when he heard voices ascending the elevator.