“No,” Virginia said. “And this is a thing that grownups—adults—people like you—can’t explain?”
“It certainly is, Vee.”
“It’s not a separate race?”
“No. There are three races. Caucasian. Negro. Mongolian. We’re Caucasian. So are Jews.”
“So what’s this all about?”
Emily held out her hands helplessly. “I don’t know. I can’t say it’s not about anything because it is. But I don’t know why, Vee. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It never has. We judge people by what they’re like as separate human beings. At least we should. Maybe daddy could explain it to you. He’s much better at explaining things than I am. I don’t know what makes it possible for people to meet Mimi and like her and then suddenly change entirely in their feelings towards her, feel that she’s a completely different person when they find out that her father’s a Jew. Prejudice is a funny thing, Vee. Funnier in Americans than anybody else.”
“I’m kind of relieved you feel the way you do,” Virginia said. “Some peoples’ parents don’t. Hate’s such a peculiar thing, mother. I think Beanie honestly hates Jews without knowing what he’s doing or why. And I hate Beanie. And it makes the inside of my stomach feel all quivering as though it were made of jelly. And it makes my mind blind so it can’t see.”
“Yes,” Emily said. “Hate does that.”
“Do you hate anybody, mother?”
“I don’t know. Right at this moment I really don’t know, Vee.”
“Do you hate Mr. O’Hara?”
Emily looked at her sharply, wondering how much she had seen, how much she knew. “Yes. I’m afraid I do. But it’s stupid of me. It does make your mind blind, Virginia. You’re quite right.”
“Daddy’s students hated Mr. O’Hara.”
Emily shook her head. “They were indignant, some of them, maybe, that he was—well, more or less taking daddy’s place. But hate’s rather too strong a word.”
Connie dropped half her tinfoil beads on the floor and let out a shriek.
“Oh, do be quiet, Con,” Virginia said. “I’ll help you pick them up.”
“I have been being quiet,” Connie said. “Quiet as mices. You said if I listened I’d know what you were talking about and I did listen and I didn’t. Was somebody mean to Mimi? Was somebody mean to daddy?”
“Just extremely discourteous,” Virginia said loftily. “Come on, Emily Conrad, you’re not picking up your share.”
“But I’ve been making it,” Connie said. “I’ve been making a beautiful silver chain for the Christmas tree and you and Mimi haven’t helped at all.”
“We’ll help after dinner.” Virginia reached, under the chair for some beads. She dropped them into Connie’s box, a small battered cardboard one inscribed, OSWALD, Mme. Charles Andrieu, Dentelles, Blouses, Gants, Bas, and rose up onto her knees. “Mother—”
“What, Vee?”
“Should I mention to Mimi what we’ve been discussing?”
“If she doesn’t seem upset I wouldn’t make more of it than it already is. It shouldn’t be important, so maybe the best way not to let it be important is just not to do anything more about it. You’ll know better when you see Mimi.”
“Okay.” Virginia put her arm around Emily and rubbed her cheek softly against her mother’s.
Connie put her chain and her box of beads on the table and came over and climbed up onto Emily’s lap. “Me, too. I want to be loved, too.”
Emily gave her a little shake. “You are loved, you foolish child. Virginia’s been away at school all these months so don’t you think she’s due a few extra hugs and kisses?”
Connie did not answer, but nuzzled into her mother’s neck.
“I’m sorry, Vee,” Emily said. “I’m afraid I haven’t been any help It’s something you have to work out for yourself, like everything else, in the long run.”
“That’s what Mimi says. She says there isn’t anything important anybody can settle for you. You have to do it yourself. She says I’m backward that way. Would you like me to give, Connie her bath?”
Emily looked at her in surprise. “I would adore it. I’ll fill the tub for you.”
“No, I can do it. Come on, Con, let’s go get your night-clothes and hang them in front of the stove to warm.”
When they had gone Emily sat for a moment with her head in her hands.—I sounded pompous and self-righteous, she thought. I didn’t know how to help Vee because I’m almost as backward as she is. Courtney could have done it much better than I. Or Abe.
Abe.
She turned quickly around on the piano bench and held her fingers out over the keys. Then she started to play. Bach, this time. A fugue. A Bach fugue could keep one from thinking better than anything else.
After dinner Gertrude rang up. “Come along and have some coffee and cake with us and listen to some records. Kaarlo has a new Mozart quintet that he’s mad about and he wants you to hear it.”
“Wait a minute,” Emily said. “I’ll ask Court.”
She let the earpiece to the phone dangle so that it knocked against the whitewashed wall by Courtney’s study. She walked in time to the faint knocking, her heart beating quite rapidly, almost as though it had been Abe on the phone because Abe might be going to Kaarlo’s and Gertrude’s, too; it was perfectly logical that they would have asked him.…
“I don’t want to go,” Courtney said. “My throat’s better, but I think I’ll give it another evening of pampering. You go, Em, Kaarlo’ll see you home, won’t he?”
“He usually does, and I would rather like to hear his new Mozart.”
“Anybody else going to be there?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it. I think Gertrude just called on the spur of the moment.”—A lie in intention if not in actuality, Emily thought, and how easily I seem to be doing it.…
“As long as someone brings you home,” Courtney said. “I don’t like your going down the mountainside alone.”
Emily kissed him. “I won’t stay late. Connie’s all settled for the night, and see that Vee and Mimi get to bed at a reasonable hour, will you?”
When she went into the chalet, through the kitchen, at first she did not see Abe; but he was there, sitting by the fire in his ski clothes, black pants and a yellow sweater, his body strong and younger-looking than his face, which was rough and windburned under his thinning brown hair. Gertrude was still in her bad mood and sat slouched in a chair, smoking and drinking cup after cup of coffee, but nothing else, thank God. Kaarlo crouched on the floor by the phonograph and turned the records and Emily and Abe sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, not speaking, but to Emily the feel of Abe was like a shout in the room and she could not hear the music above it. It was a piano quintet which she particularly loved but the music wove around and about her and she could not reach out with her listening and grasp it; it remained outside her. She wondered, too, if she had ever heard this music with Abe before, and she could not remember what they had listened to those half-dozen times they had gone together to Carnegie or Town Hall.
Kaarlo sat with a rigid, anticipatory look on his face as he changed the records, touching them with infinite care so that his finger marks should not mar the grooves; the records and the gramophone his most precious possessions, practically his only possessions. Emily watched Kaarlo but she could not look towards Abe until after the Mozart was over and they’d each had a couple of cups of coffee and Gertrude said to Abe, “Tell me, how do you and the Bowens happen to know each other? Did you live near each other in New York?”
“Far from it,” Abe said. “The Bowens live up on Morningside Heights and I hang out down in the Village.”
“Morningside Heights? The Village?” Kaarlo asked. “Are they what you would call suburbs?”
“No,” Abe said, explaining quite seriously, ignoring Gertrude’s laughter, “they’re just affectionate names for two of the pleasantest parts of our island of Manhattan. Morningside Heights is famous for students,
and professors, like our friend Courtney; and the Village is supposed to be the haunt of mad Bohemians, full of dope fiends and crimes passionnels and no normal human beings within a mile of Washington Square. However, I live on a quiet street with trees and gentle houses and my only contact with Bohemianism came during the brief tenure of my second marriage.” His face darkened and he paused.
“Abe has a beautiful house,” Emily said quickly, “a whole house on Eleventh Street with a garden and a library that will be Court’s eternal envy.”
“Kris and I had a chance to pick it up for practically nothing when Sam was on the way. We planned on half a dozen children so a house seemed sensible, and we loved this one, though we’d never particularly thought of living in the Village. And Sam and I are very much at home in it, though when Sam’s away I find I rattle about a bit.” He held out his coffee cup for Gertrude to refill. “This seems to be a monologue on the life and times of Abraham K. Fielding. Wasn’t the question how the Bowens and I met?”
“It was,” Gertrude said, “though we drink up any further tidbits of information you have to drop for us.”
“What does the K stand for?” Emily asked.
“How did you and Emily meet?” Kaarlo asked.
Abe hitched his chair a little further from the fire and the shadows moved grotesquely across his face, lengthening his nose, jutting out his forehead, hollowing his cheekbones. “We met in the lobby of Carnegie Hall. We were there to hear Serkin play the Appassionato—my God, how he can play it, Kaarlo—and during intermission we were all indulging the pernicious habit of a quick cigarette—we saw mutual friends, headed for them from different ends of the lobby, and got introduced. And after the concert we all went over to their apartment for a drink, bless their kind souls, and so a beautiful friendship was born.”
“Emily plays the Appassionato,” Kaarlo said. “Maybe not like Serkin, but it’s quite something, isn’t it, Abe?”
“I’ve never heard Emily play,” Abe said. He turned to her, demanding, “Why haven’t I heard you, woman?”
Emily laughed. “I’m very well aware of my pianistic deficiencies. I love to play but I—I play mostly for myself.”
“You’ve played for Gertrude and Kaarlo.”
Emily held out her hands helplessly. “I’ll play for you, Abe. Any time.” She stood up. “Thanks for the Mozart and the coffee. I must be getting along home now.”
“I’ll walk you down,” Abe said, and they bade good night to Gertrude and Kaarlo and went out together through the shed. When they were out in the cold, Abe reached for Emily’s hand and pushed it down into his pocket. “Why haven’t you ever played for me?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact I think I have.”
“When?”
“Those Sunday night parties of ours—you must have been there for some of the singing ones. I always played for those.”
“I don’t mean that way,” Abe said, “with a lot of people happily drowning you out. I mean really play.”
Inside his, her fingers moved a little nervously. She tried to laugh. “I don’t go around giving concerts, Abe.”
“But you do play for people.”
“When the occasion arises. It just—it’s just never seemed to arise with you.”
“You didn’t want it to, did you?”
“I guess not.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t been able to practise much the past few years—since I’ve known you. You can’t play if you don’t practise. You know that. I’ve played for people anyhow when I—when I haven’t cared terribly. I didn’t want to do less than my best before you. You see I—I get terrible nervous and my hands tremble and I play abominably and I’m furious with myself afterwards.”
There was a silence, only snow around them, and mountains, and stars. “As for Kaarlo, he’s not you, and music’s been a bond between us. We’ve both had our—our problems this winter. Music helps. And when I’m easy and comfortable with someone, the way I am with Kaarlo, I can sit down and play without breaking into a cold sweat.”
“You’re not comfortable with me, Emily?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Why?” he persisted gently.
“I care too much.” She tried to make her voice casual to counteract the meaning of the words.
They walked along together, Emily’s fingers still clasped in Abe’s, deep in the warmth of his pocket. Every few steps they slid a little; the ice crackled beneath their hobnailed boots.
“What a hell of a way to make love to you,” Abe said, “trying to tell you each time Kaarlo turned a record that what Mozart was saying was what I wanted to say to you.”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“It should be like Mozart,” Abe said, “simple and pure and happy, instead of all tangled-up and complicated.”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“When you walked into the casino last night, and you were alone, and you told me Court had a sore throat and couldn’t come, it seemed inevitable. It seemed that I had known all along that what happened was going to happen, though I managed to keep it out of my consciousness until it actually did happen.”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“You knew it would happen, too?”
“Yes,” Emily said.
They stood men in silence, pressed against each other, against the cold darkness, and then they started walking again, moving together in silent rhythm almost as they had danced together at the casino the night before. When they came to the villa Abe turned around saying quickly, “Not quite yet,” and they began walking uphill again, not particularly towards Kaarlo’s and Gertrude’s or the sanatorium or the hotel, not anywhere, just uphill for a few moments before turning around and walking back down to the villa again. Their silence as they walked was, Emily thought, almost worse than words because it said more than words, it seemed to cry aloud all the things that she would not and knew must not be acknowledged in words. And at the same time each step she took with his presence there by her side pushed her against her volition into happiness, into a soaring and incredible joy.
They turned around finally on the icy path and started back down towards the villa. They were almost there before Emily said at last, “I promised the children I’d go skating with them tomorrow. Will you come, too?” Because perhaps if they were not alone, perhaps if she were to see him with the children, with Courtney, back in a familiar pattern, perhaps then they could fall back into their old casual way. But it had never been really casual and that was why it was betraying them now.
“Of course,” Abe said. “When?”
“I thought we’d start around four,” Emily said. “It’s more fun after dark. We can skate until the stars are all out and have tea there at the rink.”
“Good,” Abe said.
They were at the villa again.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Abe said. “Good night, my sweetheart, my beloved.” And then, “We’ll work this out some way, Emily. There must be a way, a right way, and we’ll find it.”
“Yes,” she said, still standing close to him so that his coat was touching hers.
“Good night, darling.”
“Good night,” Emily said, and broke away from him and ran into the darkened villa.
In pajamas and robe Courtney moved softly into Connie’s room to make sure that she was covered. Clumsily he tucked the blankets in around her, picked up the eiderdown and the pink teddy bear where they had slithered onto the floor. He stood looking down at her, his baby, the light from the hall shining onto her sleeping face, the face of an angel as all children’s are when they are asleep regardless of what little devils they may be when they are awake. She was breathing with her mouth slightly open, deeply, contentedly, and the sound was reassuring, although when you love there is no security, no safety, only a fleeting comfort from moment to moment; and the sleeping breath of a child is a brief assurance that all is well.
&n
bsp; Was it a feather King Lear put against Cordelia’s lips or a mirror to catch her breath? There had been no need to take a measure of Alice’s breathing; her strangled gasps had seemed to be the only sound in the night. He had thought in one moment of fatigue when his mind had shifted a fraction from the child that it was like the big clock in his parents’ brownstone house on Sunday morning when it needed winding. The ticking of the clock seemed to get slower and slower, and the bell as it struck the hours and the quarter hours seemed strangled with exhaustion until his father came in from his heavy Sunday morning breakfast in the dark, basement dining room and wound it with the big brass key. But his father was not in the hospital to wind Alice and set her chime to ringing clearly once more; and although Courtney had every once in a while to close his eyes to keep from looking at Alice running down and strangling to death with exhaustion like the clock, he could not keep his mind from looking at her, from examining each struggling breath, counting the intervals between each breath and feeling the way each gasp was a little fainter than the last.
He looked down at his sleeping child in the small room in the cold villa and love was a pain, sharp and demanding. He touched the back of his hand gently against her cheek, put the teddy bear close to her hand, and straightened up. In the next room he could hear Virginia and Mimi talking in low voices. As he crossed the hall he tapped gently on their door, calling out good night. Then he climbed back into bed, sliding down into the warm spot he had made as he lay there reading. He pulled his robe off, but left on his heavy sweater, turned off the light and lay down. He had formed the habit of reading until he was consumed with sleep, until his eyes would scarcely stay open, so that he would not have to lie awake and think. But checking on the children had chilled and disturbed him, and as he lay there he felt sleep ebbing from him. An odd thing, this sleep business lately. The need to fall asleep at once. A fear of lying awake with his thoughts. So he read in the cold bedroom until the book fell from his hands, trying to catch sleep as it were unawares.
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