The Tightrope Walker

by Dorothy Gilman

  "How long?"

  "Ten minutes?"

  "Okay. You look like a nice girl, I won't even ask for a deposit."

  "You can hold my raincoat," I told him gravely. "It's the only one I've got."

  It felt like leaving another safety zone as I scurried up the half-rotted stairs and pressed the buzzer under Lamandale, apartment 12

  . Nothing happened and I began pressing all the buzzers until someone finally buzzed me in. I started up the stairs and had reached the second landing when I heard steps racing down toward me. I stopped and waited. A man came into view, taking the steps two at a time, and as he sped past me I said, "Could you tell me where I'll find apartment 12

  ?"

  "Twelve! Who are you looking for?"

  "Robert Lamandale."

  He stopped just two steps below me and looked at me. When I'd first glimpsed him crashing down the stairs toward me I'd thought he was about thirty years old but now I saw that he was closer to forty, or perhaps even forty-five. He was small and slender and very compact, with a friendly, cheerful face, an upturned nose and thin, merry lips. But he dyed his hair too dark a shade of brown and there were hammocks of flesh under his eyes, and small lines etched around his mouth.

  "Look, dear," he said, "I'm Robert Lamandale but I've got a call from my agent. I can't stop. What is it you want?"

  "It's about a hurdy-gurdy you owned once and sold. I'm trying to trace it."

  "Hurdy-gurdy? Hurdy-gurdy? Is that all?"

  "It's terribly important."

  "So is my audition, darling, there aren't that many calls for aging ingénues. Did I ever have a hurdy-gurdy?"

  I handed him the snapshot and he laughed.

  "Oh God, yes.., that. Certainly brings back happier days. I bought it at auction in Maine, back when I had money."

  "But do you remember the name of the auction house, or where it came from?"

  "Oh yes. A relative of mine—a cousin, actually—sold off her entire estate at auction. I bought the hurdy-gurdy as a souvenir, a memento. Purest indulgence."

  "Yes, but what's her name?"

  He was already six steps below me now. "Leonora Harrington," he called over his shoulder.

  "How can I find her?" I called after him. "Is she still alive?"

  "Only semi and quasi, the poor soul," he said, turning at the next landing to look up at me. "In a private hospital near Portland, Maine, somewhere. Psychiatric hospital. Nice meeting you," he added cheerfully, and he was gone.

  I hurried down to the next landing and shouted after him, "But can't you remember the name of the hospital?"

  "Sorry," he shouted back, and I heard the front door slam below me.

  I stood there in a shaft of sunlight watching the dust motes lazily rise and fall, and then I heard the door open and he shouted up the stairwell, "Try Greenwood Hospital. Green something, anyway."

  I called out, "Thanks!" and then I raced down after him, thinking to offer him a lift uptown in my waiting taxi, but when I arrived on the street he had already wheeled out a small motorbike from a locked shed attached to the building. "Thanks," I shouted again. "I mean really thanks."

  He grinned. "No charge," he called, and with a flip of his hand he buzzed off.

  I climbed back into my taxi and gave the driver the name of my hotel. I hoped Robert Lamandale got the job; I really liked him.

  5

  I returned to Trafton on Monday night with, among other things, a first edition of Gruble's The Maze in the Heart of the Castle. I could see that at this rate I was rapidly losing ground; I'd paid sixty-five dollars for the first edition, and counted it a bargain at that, but I certainly wasn't going to show any profit buying out-of-print first editions of a book I already owned and had read as a child until its pages were tattered. I knew I'd never want to sell it. I consoled myself by remembering that a box of Bavarian cuckoo clocks was on its way by truck, as well as a crate of blue willow ware, and that I'd bid next to nothing on a trunk of Indian fabrics that just missed being garish and would make awfully good saris, or bedspreads, skirts, or curtains. I had also experienced my first auction.

  It was past ten o'clock when I climbed the stairs to my two rooms over the shop. The refrigerator had gone wild again and I gave it a kick to quiet it; it settled gratefully into a sonorous purr. I opened a can of chowder, made a pot of coffee, buttered two slices of bread and sat down at the battered kitchen table to thumb through the pages of the book I'd so recklessly bought. I was really glad now that I'd bought it; it took away the lingering taste of Colonel Morgan Alcourt completely. Here were the same beloved illustrations by Howard Pyle of Colin meeting the Grand Odium, of Colin fighting alone against the Wos, and of the Conjurer building a rainbow for Colin. When I was eleven years old nobody had ever told me about Winnie the Pooh or The Wind in the Willows or the Hobbits: this was my book.

  My favorite part had always been Colin's meeting with the Despas. When he began his search the Grand Odium had told him, "If search you must, then I can only give you this advice: the important thing is to carry the sun with you, inside of you at every moment, against the darkness. Because there will be a great and terrifying darkness."

  The Despas were the darkest, which is why I loved best of all Colin's outwitting them. When he reached them he was exhausted and ill from his journey and the Despas sheltered him in their dark caves out of the wind. They gave him food and safety and chided him for his precociousness. They told him that beyond their valley lay high cliffs and an intolerable cold, that he was naïve and a fool to think of going on, that he really must give up. Colin listened and believed, finding their dark caves womblike and hypnotic, until one day he remembered the Grand Odium's words and he realized the Despas had nearly extinguished the sun in his heart because they had none at all in their own.

  But when he told the Despas that it was time for him to leave they said that he was theirs now forever, and they would never let him go.

  I turned the pages until I found the illustration I loved most, and I was smiling now. Eleven years later, and grown up, so to speak, I had to concede that the drawing still brought a quickening of my heart: that moment when Colin, trapped and desperate, tears away the animal skins the Despas have hung over every entrance and opening of the cave, and then races to the solitary lantern and lights torch after torch until the Despas are blinded by light, and he escapes them.

  It wasn't until I was twelve that I realized the book was a miniature Pilgrim's Progress, and it wasn't until I met Dr. Merivale that I understood why the Despas had affected me so: I'd been born among them, I'd lived with one for half of my life.

  Carefully, very carefully, I rewrapped the book and put it away in the drawer with my bankbooks, and then I returned to the pile of brochures I'd collected on cars and vans because I'd decided I was going to drive to Portland. I also realized I was growing very interested in life, as if it suddenly had a great deal to offer, but somehow, because of this, I didn't want to call Joe and tell him I was back. I was beginning to feel extremely vulnerable where Joe was concerned. I didn't want to expect anything from him, which of course meant that already I was expecting too much: I was looking forward to seeing him again and terrified that I might not. It is very uphill work being insecure, and profoundly exhausting.

  I didn't hear from Joe the next morning, and so, during my lunch hour I doggedly went out and looked at cars by myself. This whittled down my defenses enough to telephone him from a pay station.

  "I thought you'd never call," he said. "How long are you going to play games?"

  I said weakly that I didn't know what he meant.

  "Of course you do. You got back last night, didn't you?"

  "Yes, but it was late and I thought—"

  "You thought I'd say Amelia Who."

  I decided to ignore this. I said there was a car, a small truck and a van, and I hoped he knew something that might help.

  "I'll be over at five but how was New York, what did you find out? Any luck?"<
br />
  "I saw two people, a hurdy-gurdy collector and an actor," I told him, "and next I have to go to Maine."

  "My God it's like a scavenger hunt," he said. "See you at five."

  It was a busy afternoon. Enoch Interiors arrived with a mechanic and they poked and prodded the in-sides of the old nineteen-forties jukebox. "It's so deliriously camp," gloated Mr. Enoch, rubbing his hands together. The bell over the shop door jangled frequently: one of Mr. Georgerakis' weird bathrobes sold, as well as the stuffed moosehead with antlers, and a box of 78 phonograph records. Suddenly at two o'clock the jukebox lit up with flashing neon lights and roared out the "Beer Barrel Polka." There were six people in the shop at the time; it was like a party.

  All of this increased the momentum I'd returned with from New York, and between sales I began making plans to go to Maine before I lost my courage. I looked up Portland in the atlas, figured routes and mileage and pondered how to handle four or five days away from the shop. The shipment from New York would arrive Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest; I figured that, allowing for one day to price and sort the new items, I could leave for Maine on Saturday morning. I telephoned Mr. Georgerakis and put my proposition to him.

  "I thought you'd never ask," he said over the phone. "Today I read the newspaper all morning and after lunch I ran the vacuum cleaner for Katina. This is retirement?"

  "How much do you think I should pay you for coming in?" I asked.

  "This is not the question of a businesswoman," he told me, "but I appreciate the delicacy. Listen, I'd do it for free but I have my dignity; pay me ten dollars a day but no vacuuming."

  "Mr. Georgerakis, I don't even own a vacuum cleaner," I told him.

  "God bless you for that, I'll be there Saturday morning eight o'clock sharp. Consider it balm for my soul."

  When Joe came at five I wondered why on earth I'd felt so afraid; he wasn't even as handsome as I remembered, just bony and nice-looking, cheerful and somehow very real. "You look good enough to eat," he said. "What was the chap on Park Avenue like?"

  "A dirty old man, I think."

  Joe grinned. "Innocent Amelia, you are getting around. You handled him skillfully, I trust?"

  "I bolted."

  "And the actor?"

  "Oh, very nice, although we only talked on the stairs. He bought the hurdy-gurdy from a cousin, a Miss Harrington, when her estate went on the market. She's in a private psychiatric hospital in Portland. I suppose she could be mad as a hatter, but I have to try."

  He nodded. "Definitely, since one person's definition of mad as a hatter is entirely different from another's.

  Actually," he added, "I've called my sister mad as a hatter any number of times."

  "And is she?"

  "Oh—absolutely," he said with mock solemnity and reached for my hand as we walked.

  We spent the next two hours peering into and under cars, and another hour excitedly discussing them over meatballs and spaghetti, and in the end I owned a van. It was a really weird one; someone had custom ordered it and then walked out on the deal so that the dealer was very accommodating about the price. It was black as a hearse; with a porthole on either side; and on both the sides and the rear were pale blue ovals on which pictures had been painted of a lighthouse in the moonlight, with thin white lines of surf curling around the gray rocks. The effect of ghostly blues and white on black was altogether spooky, but there was no doubt about what the van would hold: an entire room of furniture if necessary.

  "This will certainly amuse my parents," Joe said. "But I haven't invited you, have I?"

  "Invited me?" I had just unlocked the door of the shop; the bells were still jangling as I reached for the light switch.

  With the lights on I saw that Joe was looking pleased with himself. "They're celebrating their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary on Sunday and I told them I'd bring you. You'll come, won't you? If you close the shop in mid-afternoon Saturday we can be there for dinner and they said they'd love meeting you. I can't wait to have you meet them."

  I looked at him blankly. "This weekend?"

  "Right."

  "But Joe—"

  "What's the matter?"

  I looked at him and said, "Joe, I'm leaving for Maine early Saturday morning."

  "So soon?" He looked startled. "But that can wait, can't it? What's the rush? You can postpone, can't you?"

  I swallowed hard. "I don't—I don't really think I can."

  He stared at me incredulously. "But Amelia, this will be fun, damn it. We can go swimming, there's badminton and you'll really enjoy my sister Jenny. You can't be serious."

  "But I am," I said helplessly. "When you talk about swimming and badminton I—I can't help it, it just hasn't any reality for me. Going to Maine is something I have to do. I've already made all the arrangements, and Mr. Georgerakis is coming in to look after the shop while I'm gone."

  "Amelia," he said in astonishment, "aren't you letting this get out of hand?"

  "I'm sorry," I said miserably. "Truly I am."

  "Sorry!" he exploded. "My God, here 1 am with free time at last and I was hoping, I was planning—I thought we really hit it off tremendously well, and damn it Amelia, this woman's dead, she has to be. But I'm not. Look at me, Amelia, I'm alive and I'm here, and it's summer."

  "I can't help it," I said stubbornly. "I just can't. I have to go to Maine and look for Hannah."

  "You think I invite girls home every weekend to meet my parents?" he demanded.

  "I don't know."

  "You happen to be the first," he said, and we stared at each other across a vast chasm. "I don't get it, I honestly don't get it," he said furiously, "but I hope you enjoy your damn trip very much." Giving me a glance to match his voice he stalked out of the shop and closed the door so hard the bells hanging over it kept clanging and jangling for a full minute.

  Well, of course I'd known it would have to happen. I'd really been expecting it, hadn't I? A part of me whispered, 'Hurry-run after him and say you'll go' but I only stood there, feeling numb. This was the thing about people: they either rejected you or they swallowed you up, and you couldn't be your own self. If you tried to be yourself, if you asserted, they went away, which is what my mother had always done to punish me, so why not Joe? I had long ago learned anyway that everything I became attached to either went away, changed, or died. Suddenly all my inadequacies rose in me like vomit. I felt guilt at daring to do what I wanted, bruised at hurting Joe and, worst of all, a crushing fear that I might be losing my mind over what could only be an insane search for a dead woman.

  Frightened, I reached for a sweater and locked the door of the shop, knowing that this time I was going to Amman Singh as a supplicant, a beggar of alms. I hadn't seen him for a week; there was so much to tell him and so much I wanted from him. Whatever it Was I wanted it badly.

  The smell of curry and spices hung in the air outside his door. He was mercifully alone, except for the ubiquitous relatives whom I could hear poking about in the kitchen, talking in low voices. After five flights of stairs I said breathlessly, "Amman Singh, I have to talk to you. Please?"

  "I have been expecting you," he said courteously, and gestured me to sit down beside him.

  I sat facing him, my legs crossed under me. "I think I have to tell this like a story."

  He nodded. "You know I enjoy stories."

  I told him about the hurdy-gurdy and about the note I'd found inside of it, and I told him about the people I'd visited and met since I last saw him. Only when I'd finished did I look at him, and I saw that he had closed his eyes to listen. I remembered his saying once that it wasn't just to the words he listened, but to what lay behind them, and I wondered what nuances and inflections he heard in my voice to give away my loneliness, my doubts and my sudden terror. I pleaded, "Amman Singh, why am I doing this? Is it destructive? Am I right to do this?"

  "Right?" he repeated. "Right?"

  "I don't understand myself, I don't understand this— this need, this compulsion. Hanna
h surely has to be dead by now."

  He was silent for a long time and then he opened his eyes. He reached out for my hand and touched it; his grasp felt dry and cool, scarcely flesh at all. "Please," he said.

  "Please what?"

  "When the wind frees the seed from the flower," he said, "and the seed is driven on the breeze across the fields it is not compulsion. The seed is obeying laws we cannot see or know. Trust the wind. One day you will understand."

  "But will I find her?" I asked.

  He said, "You will find something."

  "But it's Hannah I must find!" I cried.

  He looked at me and his smile was tender. "Is it?" he asked softly. "Is it?"

  I felt better after leaving Amman Singh, although I didn't understand what he meant, not then at least. But he had said I would find something, and since I had just lost Joe that was better than nothing. Still, it was astonishing how impoverished and dull my life suddenly looked without Joe. I had thought I'd found a friend. Until now I'd had only one friend, except that I'd never had any illusions about the bond between Shirley Newcomb and me in junior high school. Shirley had been as fat as I was scrawny, and just as unnoticed. We were united only in our envy of cheerleaders, by our invisibility to everyone in our classes, and our penchant for flunking algebra. I'd never brought her home with me; at best it had been a sickly friendship and when, in our freshman year at high school, she and her family moved away it was almost a relief. After all, we'd never had anything in common but our deficiencies. It seemed kinder to face loneliness alone.

  But a grayness, a lack of sun, hung over everything like smog the next day. I tried to go back in time to my life before I met Joe; I tried reliving my gratitude at finding the Ebbtide Shop, and my excitement over buying it, but Joe stood there like a wall, dividing the two worlds. Finding Hannah's note in the hurdy-gurdy had brought him into my life and now, with equal dispatch, it had removed him. How treacherous fate was!