Margaret said, “Please shut up, dog-eyed white devil. I’m in no mood for jokes.”
Her eyes want never to leave Rue’s face, she said, but she must concentrate on the road as she drives. The thing is under way for them. I could feel it as she talked, how she was thrilled by the momentum, the invincible rush, the necessity. Resentment built in my sad heart. I thought, Margaret is over thirty years old. She has been around the block. But it’s never enough. Once more around the block, up the stairs, into the room, and there lies happiness.
“‘Why shouldn’t I have abandoned the party for you?”’ he said, she said, imitating his tone, plaintive and arrogant. “‘I wrote a novel.”’ He laughs at himself. Margaret laughs, imitating him, an ironic self-deprecatory laugh. The moment seemed to her phony and real at once, said Margaret. He was nervous, as he’d been onstage, unsure of his stardom, unconvinced even by the flood of abject adoration. “‘Would a man write a novel except for love?’” he said, she said, as if he didn’t really know. He was sincerely diffident, she said, an amazing quality considering that he’d slept with every woman in the world. But what the hell, he was human. With Margaret, sex will be more meaningful. “‘Except for love?’” she said, she said, gaily, wondering if he’d slept with her sister. “‘How about your check from the university?’”
“‘You think I’m inconsistent?’” He’d laughed. Spittle shot from his lips and rotten teeth. She saw everything except the trouble, what lay deep in the psychic plasma that rushed between them.
She drove him to her loft, in the warehouse and small factory district of Emeryville, near the bay, where she lived and worked, and bought and sold. Canvases, drawings, clothes — everything was flung about. She apologized.
He said, “‘A great disorder is an order.’”
“Did you make that up?”
He kissed her. She kissed him.
“‘Yes,’” he said. Margaret stared at me, begging for pity. He didn’t make that up. A bit of an ass, then, but really, who isn’t? She expected Rue to get right down to love. He wanted a drink first. He wanted to look at her paintings, wanted to use the bathroom and stayed inside a long time, wanted something to eat, then wanted to read poetry. It was close to midnight. He was reading poems aloud, ravished by beauties of phrasing, shaken by their music. He’d done graduate work at Oxford. Hours passed. Margaret sat on the couch, her legs folded under her. She thought it wasn’t going to happen, after all. Ten feet away, he watched her from a low-slung leather chair. The frame was a steel tube bent to form legs, arms, and backrest. A book of modern poetry lay open in his lap. He was about to read another poem when Margaret said, in the flat black voice, “‘Do you want me to drive you to your hotel?’”
He let the book slide to the floor. Stood up slowly, struggling with the leather-wheezing-ass-adhesive chair seat, then came toward her, pulling stone foot. Leaning down to where she sat on the couch, he kissed her. Her hand went up, lightly, slowly, between his legs.
“He wasn’t a very great lover,” she said.
She had to make him stop, give her time to regather powers of feeling and smoke a joint before trying again. Then, him inside, “working on me,” she said, she fingered her clitoris to make herself come. “There would have been no payoff otherwise,” she said. “He’d talked too much, maybe. Then he was a tourist looking for sensations in the landscape. He couldn’t give. It was like he had a camera. Collecting memories. Savoring the sex, you know what I mean? I could have been in another city.” Finally, Margaret said, she screamed,“‘What keeps you from loving me?’” He fell away, damaged.
“‘You didn’t enjoy it?’” he said, she said.
She turned on the lamp to roll another joint, and told him to lie still while she studied his cock, which was oddly discolored and twisted left. In the next three days, the sex got better, not great. She’d say, “‘You’re losing me.’” He’d moan.
When she left him at the airport, she felt relieved, but driving back to town, she began to miss him. She thought to phone her psychotherapist, but this wasn’t a medical problem. The pain surprised her and it wouldn’t quit. She couldn’t work, couldn’t think. Despite strong reservations — he hadn’t been very nice to her — she was in love, had been since she saw him onstage. Yes; definitely love. Now he was gone. She was alone. In the supermarket, she wandered the aisles, unable to remember what she needed. She was disoriented — her books, her plants, her clothes, her hands — nothing seemed really hers. At night, the loneliness was very bad. Sexual. Hurt terribly. She cried herself to sleep.
“Why didn’t you phone me?”
“I knew you weren’t too sympathetic. I couldn’t talk to you. I took Gracie out of school. She’s been here for the last couple of days.”
“She likes school.”
“That’s just what you’d say, isn’t it? You know, Herman, you are a kind of person who makes me feel like shit. If Gracie misses a couple of days it’s no big deal. She’s got a lot of high Qs. I found out she also has head lice. Her father doesn’t notice anything. Gracie would have to have convulsions before he’d notice. Too busy advancing himself, writing another ten books that nobody will read, except his pathetic graduate students.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Yes, it is. It’s fair.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“You defending Sloan? Whose friend are you?”
“Talking to you is like cracking nuts with my teeth.”
She told me Rue had asked if she knew Chinese. She said she didn’t. He proposed to teach her, and said, “‘The emperor forbid foreigners to learn Chinese, except imperfectly, only for purposes of trade. Did you know that?’”
“‘No. Let’s begin.’”
Minutes into the lesson, he said, “‘You’re pretending not to know Chinese. I am a serious person. Deceive your American lovers. Not me.’”
She said, “Nobody ever talked to me like that. He was furious.”
“Didn’t you tell him to go to hell?”
“I felt sorry for him.”
She told him that she really didn’t know a word of Chinese. Her family had lived in America for more than a hundred years. She was raised in Sacramento. Her parents spoke only English. All her friends had been white. Her father was a partner in a construction firm. His associates were white. When the Asian population of the Bay Area greatly increased, she saw herself, for the first time, as distinctly Chinese. She thought of joining Chinese cultural organizations, but was too busy. She sent money.
“‘You don’t know who you are,’” said Rue.
“‘But that’s who I am. What do you mean?’”
“‘Where are my cigarettes?’”
“Arrogant bastard. Did you?”
“What I did is irrelevant. He felt ridiculed. He thought I was being contemptuous. I was in love. I could have learned anything. Chinese is only a language. It didn’t occur to me to act stupid.”
“What you did is relevant. Did you get his cigarettes?”
“He has a bald spot in the middle of his head.”
“Is there anything really interesting about Rue?”
“There’s a small blue tattoo on his right shoulder. I liked it. Black moles are scattered on his back like buckshot. The tattoo is an ideograph. I saw him minutely, you know what I mean? I was on the verge of hatred, really in love. But you wouldn’t understand. I won’t tell you any more.”
“Answer my question.”
She didn’t.
“You felt sorry for him. I feel sorry for you. Is it over now?”
“Did it begin? I don’t really know. Anyhow, so what?”
“Don’t you want to tell me? I want to know. Tell me everything.”
“I must keep a little for myself. Do you mind? It’s my life. I want to keep my feelings. You can be slightly insensitive, Herman.”
“I never dumped YOU at a party in front of the whole town. You want to keep your feelings? Good. If you talk, you’ll remember fee
lings you don’t know you had. It’s the way to keep them.”
“No, it isn’t. They go out of you. Then they’re not even feelings anymore. They’re chitchat commodities. Some asshole like Claude will stick them in a novel.”
“Why don’t you just fly to Paris? Live with him.”
“He’s married. I liked him for not saying that he doesn’t get along with his wife, or they’re separated. I asked if he had an open marriage.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Of course not.’”
Margaret spoke more ill than good of Rue. Nevertheless, she was in love. Felt it every minute, she said, and wanted to phone him, but his wife might answer. He’d promised to write a letter, telling her where they would meet. There were going to be publication parties for his book in Rome and Madrid. He said that his letter would contain airline tickets and notification about her hotel.
“Then you pack a bag? You run out the door?”
“And up into the sky. To Rome. To Madrid.”
“Just like that? What about your work? What about Gracie?”
“Just like that.”
I bought a copy of The Mists of Shanghai and began reading with primitive, fiendish curiosity. Who the hell was Claude Rue? The morning passed, then the afternoon. I quit reading at twilight, when I had to leave for work. I’d reached the point where Dulu comes to the brothel. It was an old-fashioned novel, something like Dickens, lots of characters and sentimental situations, but carefully written to seem mindless, and so clear that you hardly feel you’re reading. Jujuzi’s voice gives a weird edge to the story. Neiping suffers terribly, he says, but she imagines life in the brothel is not real, and that someday she will go home and her mother will be happy to see her. Just as I began to think Rue was a nitwit, Jujuzi reflects on Neiping’s pain. He says she will never go home, and a child’s pain is more terrible than an adult’s, but it is the nourishment of sublime dreaming. When Dulu arrives, Neiping wishes the new girl would stop crying. It makes Neiping sad. She can’t sleep. She stands beside the new girl, staring down through the dark, listening to her sob, wanting to smack her, make her be quiet. But then Neiping slides under the blanket and hugs the new girl. They tell each other their names. They talk. Dulu begins slowly to turn. She hugs Neiping. The little bodies lie in each other’s arms, face to face. They talk until they fall asleep.
Did Claude Rue imagine himself as Neiping? Considering Rue’s limp, he’d known pain. But maybe pain had made him cold, like Jujuzi, master of sentimental feelings, master of cruelty. Was Claude Rue like Jujuzi?
A week passed. Margaret called, told me to come to her loft. She sounded low. I didn’t ask why. When I arrived, she gave me a brutal greeting. “How come you and me never happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“How come we never fucked?”
She had a torn-looking smile.
“We’re best friends, aren’t we?”
I sat on the couch. She followed, plopped beside me. We sat beside each other, beside ourselves. Dumb. She leaned against me, put her head on my shoulder. I loved her so much it hurt my teeth. Light went down in the tall, steel-mullioned factory windows. The air of the loft grew chilly.
“Why did you phone?” I asked.
“I needed you to be here.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No.”
The perfume of her dark hair came to me. I saw dents on the side of her nose, left by her eyeglasses. They made her eyes look naked, vulnerable. She’d removed her glasses to see less clearly. Twisted the ends of her hair. Chewed her lip. I stood up, unable to continue doing nothing, crossed to a lamp, then didn’t turn it on. Electric light was violent. Besides, it wasn’t very dark in the loft and the shadows were pleasant. I looked back. Her eyes had followed me. She asked what I’d like to drink.
“What do you have?”
“Black tea?”
“All right.”
She put on her glasses and walked to the kitchen area. The cup and saucer rattled as she set them on the low table. I took her hands. “Sit,” I said. “Talk.”
She sat, but said nothing.
“Do you want to go out somewhere? Take a walk, maybe.”
“We were together for three days,” she said.
“Did he write to you?”
“We were together for hours and hours. There was so much feeling. Then I get this letter.”
“What does he say? Rome? Barcelona?”
“He says I stole his watch. He says I behaved like a whore, going through his pockets when he was asleep.”
“Literally, he says that?”
“Read it yourself.”
“It’s in French.” I handed it back to her.
“An heirloom, he says. His most precious material possession, he says. He understands my motive and finds it contemptible. He wants his watch back. He’ll pay. How much am I asking?”
“You have his heirloom?”
“I never saw it.”
“Let’s look.”
“Please, Herman, don’t be tedious. There is no watch.”
With the chaos of art materials scattered on the vast floor, and on tabletops, dressers, chairs, and couch, it took twenty minutes before she found Claude Rue’s watch jammed between a bedpost and the wall.
I laughed. She didn’t laugh. I wished I could redeem the moment. Her fist closed around the watch, then opened slowly. She said, “Why did he write that letter?”
“Send him the watch and forget it.”
“He’ll believe he was right about me.”
“Who cares what he believes?”
“He hurt me.”
“Oh, just send him the watch.”
“He hurt me, really hurt me. Three days of feeling, then that letter.”
“Send it to him,” I said.
But there was a set look in Margaret’s eyes. She seemed to hear nothing.
Viva la Tropicana
BEFORE WORLD WAR II, Cuba was known for sugar and sex, but there was also a popular beach with sand imported from Florida, and grand hotels like the Nacional, where you could get a room with a harbor view for ten dollars, and there were gambling casinos organized by our glamorous gangsters whose faces appeared in Life magazine, among them Meyer Lansky and my uncle-by-marriage, Zev Lurie, a young man who could multiply giant numbers in his head and crack open a padlock with his hands. Habaneros, however, celebrated him for his dancing — rumba, mambo, cha-cha — rhythms heard nightly in New York, Miami, Cuba, Mexico, Central America, and much of South America, where Zev toured as an exhibition dancer before he went to Cuba and caught the fancy of big shots in the mob.
The first time I heard mambo, I was in a Chevy Bel Air, driving from Manhattan to Brooklyn with Zev’s son, my cousin Chester. We’d just been graduated from high school and were going to a party. To save me the subway ride, Chester came to pick me up. He wore alligator shoes, like Zev’s dancing shoes, and a chain bracelet of heavy silver, with a name tag, on his left wrist. It was a high school fashion, like penny loafers and bobby socks. Chester had spent time in Cuba, but mainly he lived with his mother in Brooklyn and hardly ever saw his father. Uncle Zev, I believe, didn’t love Chester too much, or not enough. This accounts for an eccentric, showy element in his personality, which distinguished him in high school as a charming ass, irresistible to girls, obnoxious to boys. As we drove, he flicked on the radio. The D.J., Symphony Sid, began talking to us, his voice full of knowing, in the manner of New York. He said we could catch Tito Puente this Wednesday at the Palladium, home of Latin music, Fifty-third and Broadway. Then Symphony Sid played a tune by Puente called “Ran Kan Kan.”
Chester pulled the Chevy to the curb, cut the motor, and turned the volume way up. “You know what this is?” I shrugged, already afraid Chester was about to do something show-offy. He lunged out of the car and began to dance, his alligators flashing on the asphalt. “Cuban mambo,” he cried, pressing his right palm to his belly, showing me the source
of the music, and how it streams downward through your hips and legs into your feet. He danced as if he had a woman in his arms, or the music itself was a magnificent woman, like Abbe Lane or Rita Hayworth, with mammalian heat and substance, as required by the era. Chester’s every motion displayed her with formal yet fiery adoration. His spine was straight, shoulders level, and his head aristocratically erect, the posture of flamenco dancers, but the way he moved was more fluid and had different hesitations. “This is Cuba, baby. Ritmo caliente.” He looked very macho. I could see why girls liked him.
I envied his talent and succumbed to his love of this music and dancing, in which I saw the shadow of Uncle Zev, greater dancer and friend of gangsters, who moved in a greater life, far away in the elegant casinos of Havana, where beautiful women and dangerous men took their nightly pleasure. I began yearning to go to Cuba, but over thirty years would pass before I had the chance. America was almost continuously at war or on the verge of war, and there was the revolution in Cuba. Then, in 1987, I was invited to a film festival in Havana. I’d be in the American contingent, which included film directors, screenwriters, photographers, and journalists.
The night before I left, I received a phone call from Uncle Zev, who for the past twenty years had lived in Brooklyn with his wife, Frances, my mother’s sister. I lived in Berkeley.
“You’re going to Havana.”
“How did you know?”
“I know.”
In this way, with his old-fashioned gangsterish manner, he intimidated me.
“I need a favor,” he said.
“Of course. Anything.”
“There’s a woman in Havana. Consuelo Delacruz. I am saying this once, which is already too much, so listen. Go to Consuelo. Identify yourself. Get down on your knees. Then say …”
The Collected Stories Page 31