by Alan Isler
‘Yeah, Gabe. He’s got this great new Mongo Demon, y’know, the motorbike, the Mark III? So he’s giving me this ride in, and like in the Heights we go over this pothole, and his rear tyre blows, I mean it’s like Gonzo City, and we’re stuck in the boonies. You think he worries about me? No, he’s worried about his Mongo. I coulda been killed, and he starts screaming and yelling like maybe it was my fault, for Chrisakes. I mean, Jesus! So I told him what he could do with his fucking Mongo, and I took a bus. That’s why I’m like late.’
‘And you left Princip in the Heights?’
She smiled. ‘Yeah, hey.’
‘Well, never mind. Do come in.’
Kraven followed her down the hall and into the living room. She had exchanged her adorable jeans for a denim mini-skirt. The blouse appeared to be the one of their first encounter. On her stockingless feet she wore sneakers, dingy grey and frayed. Kraven’s heart thumped in its cage.
‘Hey, what a great apartment! Gee, all them pictures!’ She ran over to the wall and examined the photograph of the Divine Sarah in Le Passant (1869). ‘A relative?’
‘My mother. She was a great actress.’
‘That’s definitely cool, I mean that’s beautiful.’ She scanned the wall, whirled around to take in the rest of the room, spotted the dining table and leapt gloriously towards it. “Look at all that stuff, will ya? Cream cheese and chives, wow! Howja know?” A forefinger by Praxiteles plunged into the bowl and conveyed a generous dollop to her exquisite mouth. Her eyes closed in ecstasy. “M-m-m-m-m.” The tip of a delicate pink tongue emerged and licked her lips, trembled for a moment and disappeared. Kraven supposed the thumping of his heart audible and raised a hand to still it.
Nimuë’s demeanour underwent a change, a curtain closed across the source of light. She walked shyly towards him, her head bowed, and thrust into his hands her sheaf of papers. ‘Here’s all my stuff, my pomes, and that.’ She took a step backwards, blushed, and the world grew roseate.
‘Good, good. I’m eager to read them.’
He sat down on the couch, but Nimuë stayed where she was, her head still bowed, refusing to look at him.
‘Why don’t you sit next to me?’
‘Okay if I like move around a bit? Just while you’re reading, I mean?’ She spoke in a small voice and addressed her sneakers.
‘If that’s what you’d rather.’
He watched her wander, pause now before this photograph, now before that. She held her hands behind her, resting them on firm love-apples, luscious fruit of the new Hesperides. She stepped back before the Lorenzacchio print (‘Your mother! O wow!’), then resumed her wanderings. She left him and made for the bedroom. His heart leaped up. He heard the screech of curtains pulled back on unoiled rollers. His heart sank.
Kraven began to read the uppermost of the papers he held in his hand.
‘Fathership (I)’
by
Nimuë Berkowitz
For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always been true,
As firm as the Rock of Gibraltar.
Trusting and kind, like the Red, White, and Blue,
Hey, you’ve never been known to falter.
Ever our pal, both in gut-ache and health,
Respect from your family’s your lot;
Whether in poorness or yet in wealth,
Even so, it is honor you’ve got.
Low in IQ? Sure. But high grades in love.
Only for us you have striven.
Very determined to earn from Above
Each buck of an honest day’s livin’.
Yes, I mean YOU,
O dear father, so true.
Unto you we will all stick like glue.
Curious sounds were emerging from the bedroom: Sproing, a pause of perhaps three heartbeats, spuh-roing, another pause, spree-oing, pause, sup-a-roing. Kraven hurried to the bedroom, poems in hand, and stood at the open door. Nimuë rose from the bed, majestic, legs together, arms held out. She executed with awesome grace, her head flung back, her body arched, a backwards mid-air somersault, her tummy almost grazing the ceiling, and returned with perfect balance to her feet. Sproing. She bent her knees, tightened the muscles up her perfect legs, articulated her pelvis, her tummy, then pushed off, and she was up again, over, down. But now she saw him standing entranced in the doorway and so permitted herself, in an exquisite series of diminishing bounces, to come to rest.
‘Wow, that’s great! I’ve never seen a bed this size. D’you get sheets made special?’
Nimuë dropped on her back and sinuously, using elbows and rump, made her way to the top of the bed. She leaned against the pillows, near leg bent under, right arched pyramidally over it. In this position her mini-skirt afforded Kraven a view of her panties, a delicate Aegean blue, a surprisingly wide strip between her legs. He hurried into the room and sat beside her, an intrepid Argonaut in search of the Golden Fleece, his prow ostent and seaworthy.
‘I’ve read “Fathership (I),” Nimuë, and I’m impressed. It takes a courageous writer nowadays to attempt acrostic verse, a difficult device, one usually fatal to poetry. But you’ve pulled it off. And with no loss of sincerity or sense. Where have you been hiding? The English Department’s your proper milieu.’
Such was his enthusiasm that he grasped her near leg on the inner thigh, within centimetres of the Aegean. Undisturbed by his gesture, perhaps as unaware of it as he, she leaned towards him, bringing the Aegean all but to his hand. He felt the warmth of the south, even a stray tendril of the Fleece itself caressing his thumb. Much hoped he to travel in the realms of gold.
‘Hey! I mean, you liked it? O wow! And like I’m what you said, a poetess?’
‘Nimuë,’ said Kraven fervently, ‘you are yourself a poem.’
The bedside phone began to ring, shattering the mood of intimate revelation upon whose brink he had believed himself poised.
O Stella, how like you!
But could she really have known?
‘Gonna answer it?’
He picked up the receiver. ‘Kraven.’ His tone was surly.
‘Yeah. Gabe Princip. From your Shakeshit class.’
‘Perhaps you are unaware, Princip, that an unsolicited phone call from a student to a professor in his own home is bad form, to put it kindly. I maintain office hours. They are posted. Use them.’
‘Is that Gabe?’ Nimuë, her eyes alight, leaned forward, plunging Kraven’s bent thumb into the Aegean itself.
‘Cool it, man,’ said Princip. ‘I mean, maintain. Like, why you always hassling me? You listening, man? I mean, you hear me? You think hassling’s all you gotta do, right? Talk muscle, right, and you’ll make out with the chicks? I know where it’s at. I’m not bugging you; I’m talking nice and polite. So how come right away you take a crap on me?’
‘Was that you lurking about my building yesterday, you and a gaggle of hooligans? Next time, I assure you, I’ll call the police.’
‘You gonna need more than the pigs, motherfuck.’
‘Princip, you attend one lecture in three. At the moment you’re carrying a C- in the course, a grade laughably above the actual value of your work. Your contribution to class discussion is virtually nil. And now you have the temerity to phone me in my own home, to utter vague threats, to insinuate distasteful innuendos, to insult me in any depraved way that occurs to you. Are you making a special effort to fail the course?’
‘I didn’t even wanna speak to you, asshole. Nome Berkowitz is there, right? Yeah. Well, I was phoning her, so like I say, maintain. But seeing as how you brought it up, my grade and shit like that, I’m no English major, man. All you gotta do is give me a Pass, y’know what I mean? I don’t need no grade, just a Pass. Then I can tip. Nobody’s hurt. All you gotta do is play it cool.’
‘The Dean of Students will be fascinated to learn of this conversation. Like me he might wonder whether your presence on campus adds much to the lustre of Mosholu.’
‘Yeah? You kidding me, right? Well, try this o
n for size: you think he’s gonna be fascinated to learn that one of the perfessors is humping his students? I mean, we gonna talk lustre, we gonna have to talk faculty. I know this particular perfessor can’t even get it up, but the thing is, will he know? I mean, will the Dean know? Like, what about these private sessions in this particular perfessor’s pad and all? Where you right now? The bedroom? You ever tried it on the kitchen table? Man, when Nome pops on the kitchen table, you know you had your ashes hauled.’
‘It is Gabe.’ Nimuë snatched the receiver from Kraven’s hand. ‘Let me talk.’ She frowned, scratching with her free hand in the area of her left nipple. ‘You fixed your bike yet? Where the fuck you calling from? … No kidding? … Aw, c’mon, Gabe, you can pick me up… I dunno, an hour maybe … All you gotta do, you just like stay there… Gee, you know what that does to me, when you talk like that…’ She looked at Kraven and giggled. ‘Who, him? You gotta be kidding… Yeah, I dig … sure… No, just reading my stuff … For fuck’s sake, Gabe. Jee-sus! … Okay, okay…’
She returned the receiver to Kraven, who replaced it in its cradle. They sat silent for a while, immobile.
‘So Gabe is in your class, gee… You shoulda heard what he said about you. But he won’t hurt you really. He’s kinda nice when you get to know him. Okay, so he’s a jerk, but he really turns me on. All the way, I mean all. Like, y’know, he’s a piston, pow-pow-pow! The trouble with Gabe, he don’t understand a Plutonic relationship.’
‘Pla-tonic,’ said the teacher faintly.
‘Huh?’
‘Pla-tonic.’
‘We say Plu-tonic in America.’
Nimuë, shifting slightly on the bed, became aware of Kraven’s hand still trembling in her crotch. She looked at him with wonder, with curiosity, and then with startled understanding. Her eyes lifted now to his. Mouth agape, hovering on a shy little smile, she looked down at his hand again. ‘Gee…’
Kraven removed his hand and sighed. He placed it over his eyes and inhaled willy-nilly her perfume. Alas. Posed now like Rodin’s Thinker, his panic scarcely gave him leisure to philosophize constructively. Princip was a source of danger to him, perhaps of violence … Nimuë was reduced to an aroma on his fingertips.
But what was she doing squirming about on the bed? He peeked at her through his pensive fingers. Arching her body and giving her weight to her shoulders and heels, she had hitched her thumbs into her panties and was even now engaged in rolling them down.
‘I never had it off with an old guy before.’
Kraven leaped to his feet and backed away from the bed, blushing. On her face he thought he saw that mixture of irritability, pride, lightly veiled disgust, and, yes, pity he had often seen on the faces of other pretty young girls when men of a certain age sought to charm them, daft old peacocks, shorn of all but the dingiest plumage, striving nevertheless to spread a show. Never before had he been the recipient of such a look. Thanks to Princip, of course, he had long since shrunk. Now he felt the last tickling relaxation of the scrotum.
‘Look, Nimuë, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel your, um, tutorial today. I’ve just remembered that, um … well, I’m sorry to have brought you down here for nothing. It’s just that, um…’ In desperation he plucked gratefully from Papa Doc’s trendy vocabulary a word he knew she would understand. ‘The vibes, you know. The vibes aren’t right at all. No point in going on.’
There was a savage, a maniacal pounding at the front door coupled with the insistent ringing of the doorbell. The hateful expression disappeared from Nimuë’s face; she placed a protective hand over her venereal tuft. At the same time, the racket eased Kraven out of his shame and into a comforting anger. ‘If that’s your boyfriend out there, he’s in more trouble than he realizes.’
Anger sustained him as he made his way to the door but quickly abandoned him as he opened it, scampering off at the sight of a mightier anger. For there stood not Princip but Stella, a Stella haggard and furious. Her eyes were swollen. She seemed not to have changed her clothing since last he saw her. She pushed him aside and stormed into the apartment. He could only follow.
‘Where’ve you been, you rotten swine? I’ve been trying to reach you since Friday night. If I hadn’t gotten a busy signal just now, I wouldn’t even have known you were in. I’ll bet you were holed up in here all weekend, letting the phone ring, having a little laugh at stupid Stella, while I’ve been going out of my mind up there…’ Suddenly noticing the dining table with its careful arrangement of delicatessen offerings, she stopped in mid-stride and whirled on him. ‘Expecting someone?’
‘A student’s here. For a tutorial.’
‘Since when do you give tutorials? And what about the food? You’re feeding students all of a sudden?’
‘For pity’s sake, just some odds and ends I found in the refrigerator.’
‘I know the odds and ends you keep in your refrigerator, remember? You must have kept this stuff well hidden. Anyway, where is he?’
‘There’s absolutely no need to shout. It’s a she, actually. She’s in the, um, bedroom.’
Stella laughed bitterly. ‘Should I ask what she’s doing in there?’
‘Making a phone call. Private, I suppose.’
Nimuë, clutching a scrap of Aegean blue nylon in her hand, chose this moment to appear. She waved it shyly at them.
‘Oh, hi! This your wife?’
‘This is Mrs Poore-Moody, a friend and neighbour. Stella, this is Nimuë Berkowitz, a Mosholu poetess.’
Stella crinkled her nostrils. ‘Nicholas, I’ve got to talk to you.’
‘Nimuë, I’m sure you’ll understand. An emergency, you see. Dreadfully sorry about the tutorial.’
‘Gee,’ said Nimue, wiping her nose with the scrap of the Aegean.
‘I’m going to put you in touch with Smilow Thirkell, our Resident Poet. I think you’re ready for him.’
‘O gee, but –’
‘And once again, my apologies.’
‘But where’s my pomes and that?’
‘Ah yes, I’ll get them.’ Avoiding Stella’s eyes he went to the bedroom. When he returned Nimuë was stepping into her panties. Stella, her back to the room, was staring out of the window. He thrust the papers into Nimuë’s hands. ‘Here they are. Excellent. Keep up the good work.’
‘Great meeting ya, Stell,’ said Nimuë politely.
‘Nicholas,’ said Stella. Her voice was grim. She kept her back turned.
Kraven hurried Nimuë up the corridor and out of the door.
‘Off you go, then.’
‘Have a nice day.’
He closed the door and, experiencing a moment’s vertigo, leaned his forehead against it. And now for Stella. Taking a deep breath, he returned to the living room. Stella was pacing, clenching and unclenching her fists.
‘Not that I care, darling, but just to satisfy idle curiosity, could you explain why Miss Bitchertwit had her panties off?’
‘God, I don’t know, Stella. The girl’s clearly unstable. She must’ve taken them off when I let you in. Talking to her boyfriend on the phone, you see. Perhaps they get their jollies that way.’
‘No doubt.’ Stella’s voice dripped acid.
‘But what happened with Robert? You can’t imagine how worried I’ve been.’
‘No, in fact I can’t.’
‘I could hardly get in touch with you,’ said Kraven reproachfully.
‘But I might’ve with you, if I could’ve found you, you crud. Where’ve you been since Friday?’
‘Stand still for a minute, you’re making me giddy.’ He held out a hand to her, but she slapped it angrily aside.
‘Well?’ At least she had stopped her pacing.
‘I didn’t get the position, Stella, it collapsed under me. The President was very polite about it. We’ve been a little too precipitous, he said. The budget crunch, and rot of that sort. He said that before founding an Institute of our own we ought perhaps explore the possibility of becoming an East Coast wing of
the one already in place at UCLA. Even in the Ivory Tower, he said, we have to heed the warnings of the crass accountants. Christ, it’s not as if it was my idea.’ Kraven was beginning to believe in the imaginary Institute. He felt hurt, even angry.
Stella’s eyes softened. She placed a comforting hand on his arm. ‘Oh Nicholas, I am sorry.’
‘He’s sending me to LA in a week or so to sound them out. Something may yet come of it.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Are you going to tell me about Robert, or aren’t you?’
That was a mistake. Stella resumed her pacing. It was apparent she was restoking her fury. Damn, damn, damn. Kraven stood by helplessly.
‘But after the meeting, then what? Jesus Christ, that was forty-eight hours ago!’
‘Yes, it was. Well, I went to the party anyway. Remember, I told you. How could I avoid it without looking even more of an ass? Thought it best to face the bastards down, you know. The truth is, I got drunk, totally pissed.’
‘No, don’t tell me, let me guess. Afterwards you wandered the streets, a victim of amnesia, and came to yourself this morning on a bench near Columbus Circle.’
‘That’s most unfair, Stella.’
Stella stopped short and faced him, her fists tight-clenched at her sides. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh Nicholas, you’re such a liar. And now you’re all I’ve got. I suppose I deserve you.’
She fell sobbing into his arms, clung to him, buried her face in his chest. He felt his shirt grow wet. She shook against him. He held her tightly, trying to comfort her. They swayed together for a little while, until her shaking stopped and she pulled back, turning her bruised eyes to his, the tears still streaming down her cheeks.
‘He’s left me.’
‘What!’
‘He’s gone.’
She collapsed on to the couch behind her and began again to sob, quietly now, her head up, ignoring her tears, twin rivulets ceaselessly flowing. He sat down beside her, drew her to him, gently kissed her wet cheek, her earlobe, her neck, lifted her hands clenched primly on her lap, took them to his lips, gently, gently. After a while her sobs subsided, ceased altogether.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a small voice.