In One Person

by John Irving

  "You're early, not late," Karl observed. "Did your girlfriend blow it?"

  "It wasn't her--it was Gerda Muhle," I told him.

  "Blode Kuh!" Karl cried. "Stupid cow!" (The Viennese operagoers who were fed up with Gerda Muhle had called her a stupid cow long before Esmeralda started calling her the Polyp.)

  "Esmeralda must have been too upset to perform--she must have lost it backstage," I said to Karl. "She was a Kennedy fan."

  "So she did blow it," Karl said. "I don't envy you living with the outcome."

  There was already a scattering of English-speaking customers, Karl warned me--not operagoers, evidently.

  "More obstetricians and gynecologists," Karl observed disdainfully. (He thought there were too many babies in the world. "Overpopulation is the number-one problem," Karl kept saying.) "And there's a table of queers," Karl told me. "They just got here, but they're already drunk. Definitely fruits. Isn't that what you call them?"

  "That's one of the things we call them," I told our one-eyed headwaiter.

  It wasn't hard to spot the OB-GYN table; there were twelve of them--eight men, four women, all doctors. Since President Kennedy had just been killed, I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to break the ice by telling them that they'd all missed the c-section scene in Macbeth.

  As for the table of queers--or "fruits," as Karl had called them--there were four men, all drunk. One of them was the well-known American poet who was teaching at the Institute, Lawrence Upton.

  "I didn't know you worked here, young fiction writer," Larry said. "It's Bill, isn't it?"

  "That's right," I told him.

  "Jesus, Bill--you look awful. Is it Kennedy, or has something else happened?" Larry asked me.

  "I saw Macbeth tonight--" I started to say.

  "Oh, I heard it was the soprano understudy's night--I skipped it," Larry interrupted me.

  "Yes, it was--it was supposed to be the understudy's night," I told him. "But she's American--she must have been too upset about Kennedy. She didn't go on--it was Gerda Muhle, as usual."

  "Gerda's great," Larry said. "It must have been wonderful."

  "Not for me," I told him. "The soprano understudy is my girlfriend--I was hoping to see her as Lady Macbeth. I've been listening to her sing in her sleep," I told the table of drunken queers. "Her name is Esmeralda Soler," I told the fruits. "One day, maybe, you'll all know who she is."

  "You have a girlfriend," Larry said--with the same, sly disbelief he would later express when I claimed to be a top.

  "Esmeralda Soler," I repeated. "She must have been too upset to sing."

  "Poor girl," Larry said. "I don't suppose there is a plethora of opportunities for understudies."

  "I suppose not," I said.

  "I'm still thinking about your writing-course idea," Larry told me. "I haven't ruled it out, Bill."

  Karl had said he didn't envy me "living with the outcome" of Esmeralda not singing the part of Lady Macbeth, but--looking at Lawrence Upton and his queer friends--I suddenly foresaw another, not-so-pretty outcome of my living with Esmeralda.

  There weren't many English-speaking operagoers who came to Zufall after that Friday-night performance of Verdi's Macbeth. I'm guessing that JFK's assassination kind of kicked the late-night-dinner urge out of most of my fellow Americans who were in Vienna that November. The OB-GYN table was morose; they left early. Only Larry and the fruits stayed late.

  Karl urged me to go home. "Go find your girlfriend--she can't be doing too good," the one-eyed headwaiter told me. But I knew that either Esmeralda was with her opera people or she'd already gone back to our little apartment on the Schwindgasse. Esmeralda knew where I worked; if she wanted to see me, she knew where to find me.

  "The fruits are never leaving--they've decided to die here," Karl kept saying. "You seem to know the handsome one--the talker," Karl added.

  I explained who Lawrence Upton was, and that he taught at the Institute, but he was not my teacher.

  "Go home to your girlfriend, Bill," Karl kept saying.

  But I shuddered to think of watching the already-repetitious reports of JFK's assassination on that television in the living room of Esmeralda's landlady's apartment; visions of the disagreeable dog kept me at Zufall, where I could keep an eye on the small black-and-white TV in the restaurant's kitchen.

  "It's the death of American culture," Larry was saying to the three other fruits. "Not that there is a culture for books in the United States, but Kennedy offered us some hope of having a culture for writers. Witness Frost--that inaugural poem. It wasn't bad; Kennedy at least had taste. How long will it be before we have another president who even has taste?"

  I know, I know--this is not the most appealing way to present Larry. But what was wonderful about the man was that he spoke the truth, without taking into account the context of other people's "feelings" at that moment.

  Someone overhearing Larry might have been awash in sentiments for our slain president--or feeling shipwrecked on a foreign shore, battered by surging waves of patriotism. Larry didn't care; if he believed it was true, he said it. This boldness didn't make Larry unappealing to me.

  But it was somewhere in the middle of Larry's speech when Esmeralda got to the restaurant. She could never eat before she sang, she'd told me, so I knew she hadn't eaten, and she'd already had some white wine--not a good idea, on an empty stomach. Esmeralda first sat at the bar, crying; Karl had quickly ushered her into the kitchen, where she sat on a stool in front of the small TV. Karl gave her a glass of white wine before he told me she was in the kitchen; I'd not seen Esmeralda at the bar, because I was opening yet another bottle of red wine for Larry's table.

  "It's your girlfriend, Bill--you should take her home," Karl told me. "She's in the kitchen." Larry's German wasn't bad; he'd understood what Karl had said.

  "Is it your soprano understudy, Bill?" Larry asked me. "Let her sit with us--we'll cheer her up!" he told me. (I rather doubted it; I was pretty sure that a death-of-American-culture conversation wouldn't have cheered up Esmeralda.)

  But that was how it happened--how Larry got a look at Esmeralda, as we were making our exit from the restaurant.

  "Leave the fruits with me," Karl said. "I'll split the tip with you. Take the girl home, Bill."

  "I think I'll throw up if I keep watching television," Esmeralda told me in the kitchen. She looked a little wobbly on the stool. I knew she would probably throw up, anyway--because of the white wine. We would have an awkward-looking walk, all the way across the Ringstrasse to the Schwindgasse, but I hoped the walk would be good for her.

  "An unusually pretty Lady Macbeth," I heard Larry say, as I was steering Esmeralda out of the restaurant. "I'm still thinking about that writing course, young fiction writer!" Larry called to me, as Esmeralda and I were leaving.

  "I think I'm going to throw up, eventually," Esmeralda was saying.

  It was late when we got back to the Schwindgasse; Esmeralda had thrown up when we were crossing the Karlsplatz, but she said she was feeling better when we got to the apartment. The landlady and her disagreeable dog had gone to bed; the living room was dark, the television was off--or they were all as dead as JFK, the TV included.

  "Not Verdi," Esmeralda said, when she saw me standing undecided at the phonograph.

  I put on Joan Sutherland in what everyone said was her "signature role"; I knew how much Esmeralda loved Lucia di Lammermoor, which I put on softly.

  "It's your big night, Billy--mine, too. I've never had vaginal sex, either. It doesn't matter if I get pregnant. When an understudy clutches, that's it--it's over," Esmeralda said; she'd brushed her teeth and washed her face, but she was still a little drunk, I think.

  "Don't be crazy," I told her. "It does matter if you get pregnant. You'll have lots more opportunities, Esmeralda."

  "Look--do you want to try it in my vagina, or don't you?" Esmeralda asked me. "I want to try it in my vagina, Billy--I'm asking you, for Christ's sake! I want to know what it's like in
my vagina!"

  "Oh."

  Of course I used a condom; I would have put on two of the things, if she'd told me. (She was definitely still a little drunk--no question.)

  That's how it happened. On the night our president died, I had vaginal sex for the first time--I really, really liked it. I think it was during Lucia's mad scene when Esmeralda had her very loud orgasm; to be honest with you, I'll never know if it was Joan Sutherland hitting that high E-flat, or if it was Esmeralda. My ears weren't protected by her thighs this time; I still managed to hear the landlady's dog bark, but my ears were ringing.

  "Holy shit!" I heard Esmeralda say. "That was amazing!"

  I was amazed (and relieved) myself; I'd not only really, really liked it--I had loved it! Was it as good as (or better than) anal sex? Well, it was different. To be diplomatic, I always say--when asked--that I love anal and vaginal sex "equally." My earlier worries about vaginas had been unfounded.

  But, alas, I was a little slow in responding to Esmeralda's "Holy shit!" and her "That was amazing!" I was thinking how much I'd loved it, but I didn't say it.

  "Billy?" Esmeralda asked. "How was it for you? Did you like it?"

  You know, it's not only writers who have this problem, but writers really, really have this problem; for us, a so-called train of thought, though unspoken, is unstoppable.

  I said: "Definitely not a ballroom." On top of what a day poor Esmeralda had had, that was what I told her.

  "Not a what?" she said.

  "Oh, it's just a Vermont expression!" I quickly said. "It's meaningless, really. I'm not even sure what 'not a ballroom' means--it doesn't translate very well."

  "Why would you say something negative?" Esmeralda asked me. " 'Not an' anything is negative--'not a ballroom' sounds like a big disappointment, Billy."

  "No, no--I'm not disappointed. I loved your vagina!" I cried. The disagreeable dog barked again; Lucia was repeating herself--she had gone back to the beginning, when she was still the trusting but easily unhinged young bride.

  "I'm 'not a ballroom'--like I'm just a gym, or a kitchen, or something," Esmeralda was saying. Then her tears came--tears for Kennedy, for her one chance to be a starting soprano, for her unappreciated vagina--lots of tears.

  You can't take back something like "Definitely not a ballroom"; it's simply not what you should ever say after your first vaginal sex. Of course, I also couldn't take back what I'd said to Esmeralda about her politics--about her lack of commitment to becoming a soprano.

  We would live together through that Christmas and the first of the New Year, but the damage--the distrust--had begun. One night, I must have said something in my sleep. In the morning, Esmeralda asked me: "That rather good-looking older man in Zufall--you know, that terrible night. What did he mean about the writing course? Why did he call you 'young fiction writer,' Billy? Does he know you? Do you know him?"

  Ah, well--there was no easy answer to that. Then, another night--that January of '64, after I got off work--I crossed the Karntnerstrasse and turned down Dorotheergasse to the Kaffee Kafig. I knew perfectly well what the clientele was like late at night; it was all-male, all-gay.

  "Well, if it isn't the fiction writer," Larry might have said, or maybe he just asked, "It's Bill, isn't it?" (This would have been the night he told me that he'd decided to teach that writing course I had asked him about, but before my first couple of classes with him as my teacher.)

  That night in the Kaffee Kafig--not all that long before he hit on me--Larry might have asked, "No soprano understudy tonight? Where is that pretty, pretty girl? Not your average Lady Macbeth, Bill--is she?"

  "No, she's not average," I might have mumbled. We just talked; nothing happened that night.

  In fact, later that same night, I was in bed with Esmeralda when she asked me something significant. "Your German accent--it's so perfectly Austrian, it just kills me. Your German isn't that great, but you speak it so authentically. Where does your German come from, Billy--I can't believe I've never asked you!"

  We had just made love. Okay, it hadn't been that spectacular--the landlady's dog didn't bark, and my ears weren't echoing--but we'd had vaginal sex, and we both loved it. "No more anal for us, Billy--I'm over it," Esmeralda had said.

  Naturally, I knew that I wasn't over anal sex. I also understood that I not only loved Esmeralda's vagina; I'd already accepted the enslaving idea that I would never get "over" vaginas, either. Of course, it wasn't only Esmeralda's vagina that had enslaved me. It wasn't her fault that she didn't have a penis.

  I blame the "Where does your German come from" question. That started me thinking about where our desires "come from"; that is a dark, winding road. And that was the night I knew I would be leaving Esmeralda.

  Chapter 6

  THE PICTURES I KEPT OF ELAINE

  I was in German III my junior year at Favorite River Academy. That winter after old Grau died, Fraulein Bauer's section of German III acquired some of Dr. Grau's students--Kittredge among them. They were an ill-prepared group; Herr Doktor Grau was a confusing teacher. It was a graduation requirement at Favorite River that you had to take three years of the same language; if Kittredge was taking German III as a senior, this meant that he had flunked German in a previous year, or that he'd started out studying another foreign language and, for some unknown reason, had switched to German.

  "Isn't your mom French?" I asked him. (I assumed he'd spoken French at home.)

  "I got tired of doing what my alleged mother wanted," Kittredge said. "Hasn't that happened to you yet, Nymph?"

  Because Kittredge was so witheringly smart, I was surprised he was such a weak German student; I was less surprised to discover he was lazy. He was one of those people things came easily to, but he did little to demonstrate that he deserved to be gifted. Foreign languages demand a willingness to memorize and a tolerance for repetition; that Kittredge could learn his lines for a play showed he had the capacity for this kind of self-polishing--onstage, he was a poised performer. But he lacked the necessary discipline for studying a foreign language--German, especially. The articles--"The frigging der, die, das, den, dem shit!" as Kittredge angrily stated--were beyond his patience.

  That year, when Kittredge should have graduated, I didn't help his final grade by agreeing to assist him with his homework; that Kittredge virtually copied my translations of our daily assignments would be of no help to him in the in-class exams, which he had to write by himself. I most certainly didn't want Kittredge to fail German III; I foresaw the repercussions of him repeating his senior year, when I would also be a senior. But it was hard to say no to him when he asked for help.

  "It's hard to say no to him, period," Elaine would later say. I blame myself that I didn't know they were involved.

  That winter term, there were auditions for what Richard Abbott called "the spring Shakespeare"--to distinguish it from the Shakespeare play he had directed in the fall term. At Favorite River, Richard sometimes made us boys do Shakespeare in the winter term, too.

  I hate to say this, but I believe that Kittredge's participation in the Drama Club was responsible for a surge in the popularity of our school plays--notwithstanding all the Shakespeare. There was more than usual interest when Richard read aloud the cast list for Twelfth Night at morning meeting; the list was later posted in the academy dining hall, where students actually stood in line for their opportunity to stare at the dramatis personae.

  Orsino, Duke of Illyria, was our teacher and director, Richard Abbott. Richard, as the Duke, begins Twelfth Night with those familiar and rhapsodic lines " 'If music be the food of love, play on,' " not ever needing any prompting from my mother on that subject.

  Orsino first professes his love for Olivia, a countess played by my complaining aunt Muriel. Olivia rejects the Duke, who (wasting no time) quickly falls in love with Viola, thus making Orsino an overproclaiming figure--"maybe more in love with love than with either lady," as Richard Abbott put it.

  I always thought that, because Olivi
a turns down Orsino as her lover, Muriel must have felt comfortable in accepting the role of the countess. Richard was still a little too much leading-man material for Muriel; she never entirely relaxed in her handsome brother-in-law's company.

  Elaine was cast as Viola, later disguised as Cesario. Elaine's immediate response was that Richard had anticipated Viola's necessary cross-dressing of herself as Cesario--"Viola has to be flat-chested, because for much of the play she's a guy," was how Elaine put it to me.

  I actually found it a little creepy that Orsino and Viola end up in love--given that Richard was noticeably older than Elaine--but Elaine didn't seem to care. "I think girls got married younger back then," was all she said about it. (With half a brain, I might have realized that Elaine already had a real-life lover who was older than she was!)

  I was cast as Sebastian--Viola's twin brother. "That's perfect for you two," Kittredge said condescendingly to Elaine and me. "You've already got a brother-sister thing going, as anyone can see." (At the time, I didn't pick up on that; Elaine must have told Kittredge that she and I weren't interested in each other in that way.)

  I'll admit I was distracted; that Muriel, as Olivia, is first smitten with Elaine (disguised as Cesario) and later falls for me, Sebastian--well, that was a test of the previously mentioned disbelief business. For my part, I found it impossible to imagine falling in love with Muriel--hence I stared fixedly at my aunt's operatic bosom. Not once did this Sebastian look in that Olivia's eyes--not even when Sebastian exclaims, "If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!"

  Or when Olivia, whose bossiness was right up Muriel's alley, demands to know, "Would thou'dst be rul'd by me!"

  I, as Sebastian, staring straight ahead at my aunt Muriel's breasts, which were laughably at eye level to me, answer her in a lovestruck fashion: " 'Madam, I will.' "

  "Well, you best remember, Bill," Grandpa Harry said to me, "Twelfth Night is sure-as-shit a comedy."

  When I grew just a little taller, and a little older, Muriel would object to my staring at her breasts. But that later play wasn't a comedy, and it only now occurs to me that when we were cast as Olivia and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, Muriel probably couldn't see that I was staring at her breasts, because her breasts were in the way! (Given my height at the time, Muriel's breasts blocked her line of vision.)