The Winter After This Summer

by Stanley Ellin

  “It’s rented.”

  “It costs money to do that, too, don’t it? Where you working?”

  “At Voorhees.”

  “You know Andressen, the super there?”

  “No, I haven’t started yet.”

  “Well, you’ll get to know him all right. He used to live here once when he was nothing but a dumb squarehead kid, kept his money in a little pocketbook like a woman. But he’s all right. Sends men over from the tugs now and then when they’d like a nice respectable place to stay. What’ll you do there, work in the office?”

  “No, I’m starting as a laborer.”

  She blinked at that. “You are? You don’t talk much like that kind. Well, don’t let it bother you. Waterhouse was a pretty classy type himself, and he was a longshoreman most of his life. But not the drinking and carrying-on kind, so don’t get the wrong idea. He was a vegetarian. Ate the goddamdest things as long as they was grass. How many people you know can cook a mushroom steak without any meat in it?”

  “None, I guess.”

  She guffawed, and the cigarette holder wavered dangerously. “You’re wrong. Now you know me, so that makes one. I can cook anything vegetarian you want, and I’ll cook it so you won’t even puke when you eat it. Say, you ain’t vegetarian by any chance. I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings talking like this.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Just the same, people can be touchy when they got crazy ideas. Me, I’m all for tolerance myself as long as everybody stays in his place. That’s the way I run my house, too. Just because somebody pays me rent I don’t have to be warden over him, do I? But I got my rules like anybody else. You drink any?”

  “Now and then.”

  “Well, if you do any drinking in your room, keep it to yourself and don’t make a party out of it. And one of my rules is you don’t throw bottles out of the window when you’re done. Some slob heaved a bottle out of the window once and hit poor Waterhouse on the head with it. Poor bastard had to have eight stitches. And there’s a rule about girls, too. You keep your door shut, nobody’ll be knocking on it to find out what you’re doing. But I don’t want girls waltzing in and out of here all hours of the night so the cops think I’m running a whorehouse. Tolerance, you understand, but only when everything is decent and quiet. Otherwise, I can be real mean. When do you want your room?”

  “Right now. I’m not starting work until Monday, but I’m driving up to the country for a couple of days and I want to leave my stuff here meanwhile.”

  “All right, I’ll take you up there now. But I’m a slow walker, so keep your shirt on.”

  She ponderously climbed the stairs ahead of me, her elephantine butt and the bloated flesh of her legs shuddering at each step like a jelly. On the third floor she opened the door of a room and led me in. It was a small room, dingy but not dirty, furnished with the necessaries, and with a window opening on the sunlit scene beyond. And it was a wondrous scene, as I discovered when I looked out of the window. It was the back yard of the house, and it was bright with flower beds and well-kept lawn and flagstone walks that criss-crossed it. At its far end rose the wall of another building, from the look of it a factory or warehouse, and on that wall was painted in fading colors a whole panorama of river and countryside. A pale blue river winding past brown trees with green leaves on them while in the bright blue sky above, round, white clouds were fixed like marshmallows. It was a scene conceived out of invincible ignorance and set down by the firm hand of ineptitude, and if I had any doubts about taking that room it dispelled them completely.

  “Like it?” said Mrs. Waterhouse, and when she saw by my expression that I did, she said proudly, “Waterhouse done it. Done it all by himself, the whole thing. He hated that goddam wall. Used to sicken him every time he looked at it, so he finally got this book of pictures and copied that one there right out of it. Don’t look as good as it used to though. He used to keep it touched up, but since he’s gone it’s got kind of dim here and there. Even so, it makes a difference. You can look right out of this window and think you’re up in the mountains with all those trees and that river there. You much on the country?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I ain’t. That picture is enough of it for me. Room all right for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got your own little toilet here, too,” she said, opening a door to show me. “Got your own sink and can and even your own shower there behind that curtain. Only thing is, when you take a shower put a towel on the floor so the water don’t drip under that door into the bedroom here. And there’s good electric wiring, too. Waterhouse seen to that, and it’s all union work. You want to plug in a hot plate for some cooking it goes on your bill. Now come on downstairs, and you can pay me in advance and I’ll give you your keys. You’ll like it here; I can tell from the way you went for Waterhouse’s picture. He always thought he could be an artist if he got a chance, poor bastard, and maybe he was right at that. Well, that’s how it goes. A man’s got to work for a living got no time for such nonsensical things. Ain’t that the truth?”

  “I guess it is,” I said.

  TEN

  I reached Maartenskill late that afternoon and parked the car behind the Gennaro house, near the long shed that served as a garage. The sliding doors of the shed were open, and so I could see Ben’s white convertible there—I had last seen it on the street outside the Iobacchoi house—and next to it Aldo’s old jalopy which I had worked on with him the summer before, and beyond that the big Cadillac that the Gennaros used for family expeditions. But Mia’s little sports car was not there. Looking at the empty space reserved for it I had the feeling of an actor who has been studying his role to perfection and then finds that there may not be any performance at all just as he expects the curtain to go up. I was sorry then that I had not let Mia know I was coming.

  I crossed the yard to the house, chickens cut-cutting underfoot and a dozen cats and kittens around a tin basin of milk and bread paying them no attention, and I hesitated only a moment outside the screen door of the kitchen. Then I pulled open the door and went in. Mrs. Gennaro was there, wearing a rusty black dress that must have seen many a time of mourning before, and when she saw me and came to me I knew that the explanations and apologies I had prepared for her were unnecessary. She put her arms around my waist, a stout little woman whose head barely reached my chest, and hugged me hard, clinging to me like that, and then patted my arm, and reached up to brush back my hair, and then patted my arm again, and all with such affection and with such an effort to comfort me that I felt as if something were going to burst inside of me.

  “You took so long,” she said, and when I started to explain my past two weeks, she looked puzzled and said, “No, no, I mean today. It took so long for you to drive up here I thought maybe something happened. The driving maybe. Ah, pericoloso. I was scared.”

  “But how did you know I was coming?”

  “But how? Margarita said so. Early this morning she called on the telephone. She and Mia, they talked a long time.” She smiled. “Ann, you know Mia on the telephone. La sua bocca—” she said, and made a gesture with her fingers of jaws rapidly moving up and down.

  It was a lucky thing for Margaret then that she was out of my reach. “What did they talk about?”

  Mrs. Gennaro shrugged. “Who knows? What do girls talk about on the telephone?” Her eyes evaded mine, and I didn’t like that. “Anyhow,” she said hurriedly, “you eat something now. I got it all ready.”

  There were pots bubbling on the stove and a strong smell of olive oil and spices in the kitchen, but I had no appetite. “I’m not hungry,” I said. “Where is Mia now, Mama?”

  “Kingston, in the big store. What do you mean, not hungry? Sure you’re hungry. Look what I fixed for you.”

  “No, later maybe. Is Aldo here? I saw his car outside.”

  “He’s here. He’s with that new bull. Suo figlio, that bull. You talk to him, you’ll see. But first eat something.�
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  “Later, Mama. When Mia comes tell her I’m with Aldo.”

  She looked around the kitchen helplessly. It was unthinkable that anyone should enter her home and not eat. “Un bicchiere dell-acqua,” she said, pleading with me to do her that favor at least. “Fa caldo.”

  So I drank the glass of water though even that tasted bitter to me in my black mood, and she hugged and patted me again and stood at the door watching me as I left, as if I were the one she mourned. Maybe I was, I thought, and then was ashamed of myself for thinking it.

  The bull pens lay at the far end of the apple orchard, and as I walked down the road toward them I saw a gang of men working among the trees, smelled the acrid reek from their sprays mixed with the pungency of ripening apples and fresh-cut grass. In the distance the river moved by with sunlight flickering on its ripples, and as I looked at it I wondered how it would be to make my life here. If Mia rejected me on my terms—terms which Margaret must have described to her at length—I could make a compromise. I could make a place for myself on the farm here, share her family with her, manage to live somehow with the spirit of Ben Gennaro close at my heels all the time. I would rather not do that, but if I had to, I would. The decision consoled me. It felt good to know that whatever else I might have inherited from my father, I had not inherited his blind intransigency, his stiff-necked inflexibility.

  There were three stoutly timbered pens outside the small barn where the bulls were quartered, and near them Aldo stood giving instructions to a small boy, a kid of about twelve whom I recognized as Frankie, the Gennaro cousin who lived in the house at the last turn of the driveway. Watching the way the kid listened and tested his grip on the pitchfork as Aldo talked to him I could see myself long ago, the first time Ben had taken me down here to help him clean the pens. But that was long ago. Now Ben was Aldo and I was little Frankie, and it was strange to see that before me.

  When I came up to him Aldo gripped my hand hard. He gave me the feeling that like his mother he would have wanted to hug me and pat my back. He was big and rangy, even bigger than Ben had been, but without any of the easy grace and hard smooth finish and potent sense of command that Ben had had, and he was the gentlest soul I knew. “It’s good to see you,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Too long.”

  “That’s all right,” he said awkwardly. “I knew how it was. Everybody here did. Once Mama got hold of herself only thing that worried her was you might do something to yourself. She gets all kinds of ideas, Mama. You seen her already, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. She’s a wonderful woman.”

  “She’s all right. She was pretty bad for a while, but once all the excitement was over she came around fine. Funny thing,” he said reflectively. “Maybe she can take it so well because she went through it a hundred times before it happened. When Ben was in Korea she’d wake up in the morning a lot of times sure he was dead, and she’d cry about it all day. She’d have all kinds of dreams and saints showing her where he was laying, and it broke her up because she’s kind of superstitious about that stuff. So when it really did happen, maybe she was ready for it. And you know how Papa is. He’s all backbone, and he knows how to handle her. You know Frankie here? Frankie, this is Danny Egan. He used to be a real expert with a pitchfork.”

  I said hello to Frankie who was watching us with his mouth open. “How’s Mia taking it?” I asked Aldo.

  He was suddenly deaf. “What we gotta do now,” he said to Frankie, “is get the drop gate down the middle of the pen so the big cheese can’t come over and hook you in the pants while you’re working. Then when you’re done with this half of the pen we’ll chase him over here, and you can work the other half.” He turned to me. “How do you like that baby?” he asked, and gestured fondly at the bull.

  “It’s big enough.” It was a Black Angus, sleek and full grown, looking as powerful as a locomotive as it stood facing us from the far end of the pen, its head lowered, drool dangling in a long string from its mouth. I saw it had no ring in its nose. Its nostrils were slit open as neatly as if a knife had slashed across them. “What did he do, pull the ring out?”

  “First day I got him in here,” Aldo said. “But it was my fault. The drop gate stuck so I chained him up to that post while I was fixing it, only I gave him too much slack. Son of a bitch ripped loose with the first pull. Must have leaked a gallon of blood over the place. He’ll never be as pretty as he was, but what the hell he’s still worth five thousand bucks on the hoof. That’s a lot of money, man.”

  I wanted to ask about Mia again, but I was afraid to. “Got any cows for him?” I asked. “You don’t figure on breeding him with those tired Holsteins of yours, do you?”

  “Got four heifers in the back pasture for him. All blooded Angus.”

  “A real going concern. Is that all they teach at Cornell Aggies nowadays—how to raise restaurant meat?”

  “What’s wrong with that, the way prices are? Nah, but you can learn plenty there. It’s a great place.”

  “How are you making out?”

  “Oh, about the middle of the class. You know me, slow but steady. Trouble is,” he said unhappily, “I got some ideas for this place now, but I can’t sell ’em to Papa. The dairy layout we got here is twenty years out of date, even if it does make money. And he still thinks it’s crazy to start breeding Angus stock. If it wasn’t for the way Ben told him to let me try it, I’d never stand a chance. Ben could always make Papa do what he wanted. It’s the same with Mia.”

  “Look, when do you expect her back, anyhow? If she knew I was on my way up—”

  “She ought to be back pretty soon. She went shopping in Kingston. She always takes a lot of time when she goes shopping.” He turned abruptly to Frankie. “Let’s get on the job, kid,” he said. “You wait until Danny and me get the drop gate down and then you go over the side here. And don’t lean up against the gate while you’re working. If that big boy rams it he’ll knock you right out of the lot.”

  I helped Aldo lower the gate which kept the bull locked within his half of the pen, the bull snuffling heavily, rolling his red eyes toward us as he observed this. Then at Aldo’s signal Frankie climbed into the empty half of the pen and went to work with a maximum of energy, if not efficiency.

  I said to Aldo, “You know something about Mia that I don’t know. What is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but he had no talent for duplicity.

  “Yes, you do. Now I want to know, too. Has she been taking Ben’s death so hard that everyone around here is worried about her?”

  “That’s a funny way to put it. Sure, she took it hard. You know how she felt about Ben; she’s been going to church every morning with Mama because of it. But nobody’s worried about her.” Then at the sound of a car approaching he said with evident relief, “Here, you can ask her about it yourself now.”

  The car was a small red Austin-Healy, a toy car with Mia at the wheel, and she pulled it to a skidding, jolting halt almost against the pen. There was a pile of boxes, dress boxes, on the seat next to her, and I had to lean over them to kiss her. It was not our usual kiss. It was cool and discreet, and Mia drew away from it very quickly. “Long time no see,” she said to me and patted my cheek. “You’ve been having a bad time of it, haven’t you, Danny?”

  “Not good.”

  “I can imagine.” She was wearing a black dress, but it did not seem to exude the aura of mourning that her mother’s dress had. It was a long-sleeved, high-necked dress, but subtly designed and very sheer, suggesting the bal masque rather than the funeral. “But I wanted to see you so much. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  “We can do it now.”

  “Not right now. You go down to the dock and wait there. I’ll be down in fifteen or twenty minutes. I want to show you something, but Mama mustn’t see it. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No.” I couldn’t make out her mood. It seemed affectionate, but I wasn’t sure. Whenev
er we met after one of our long separations I wasn’t sure.

  “Good.” She patted my cheek again and put the car into gear, backing it up with a rush preparatory to swinging it around to the road. “I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

  “Jesus,” said Aldo, who loved cars, “did you have to bring that thing down here? You’ll bust an axle on these rocks.”

  Mia cheerfully thumbed her nose at him. “Bye-bye, baby brother,” she said, and shot away in a sudden furious burst of speed, pebbles and dirt spraying from the wheels as she took the crest of the hill.

  Aldo marked this departure with a philosophical shrug. “She’s hard to keep up with,” he said. “I pity the guy who gets her.”

  “Meaning me?” I said. My effort to make it sound jaunty was a dismal one.

  “Maybe.”

  “Only maybe?”

  He said defensively, “How do I know? All I said was anybody gets her is getting a handful. And it ain’t even her fault. What the hell, the way the family handles her she knows she’s the queen around here.”

  I left him brooding over this and walked slowly toward the river to do my own brooding in solitude. The way led past fields green with new corn where children—other Gennaro cousins and nieces and nephews—were on duty against the crows that wheeled and cawed overhead, past the stony pasture where a flock of goats lined the fence to stare at me with vacuous, lunatic eyes, past huge fields of tomatoes fast ripening in the valley heat, and through the stand of ancient trees that overlooked the river. It was a fair and fertile domain, this kingdom of the Gennaros, but it seemed to me then as bleak and hostile as a wasteland.

  Near the water’s edge a canoe rested upside down on a pair of sawhorses. Two rowboats were tied to the dock, the current bumping them gently into it, and beyond them, moored to the buoy which Aldo and I had set there long ago, lay Aldo’s precious Flea, the little motorboat which had, in its time, been the Phyllis and then the Wanda and then the Betty. It rocked in the water, its deck covered with a protective tarpaulin, the fresh paint on its hull gleaming, everything shipshape the way a true Gennaro liked it. I knew that if I got into it and turned over the motor it would start immediately. Slow but steady Aldo. Quick but unpredictable Mia. And what, I wondered, was I.