With Penelope looking, I stood before a mirror staring at my reflection. The clothes were horrible and exciting, too gorgeous, flashy, expensive-looking, designed. Penelope said, “That looks good. Return these shirts. Keep the two jackets. I like those shoes.” She tossed clothes onto the couch, one pile to return, the other to keep. I was proud when she liked something, embarrassed when she didn’t. Putting clothes on, taking them off, I began to sweat. It was hard work; her eyes on me. I said, “I can’t stand this anymore.”
“Let’s go for the boat ride. I’ll meet you at the dock in fifteen minutes.” She snapped up the clothes to be returned. The door shut behind her. I waited ten minutes, opened the door, and walked out to the dock.
She was at the wheel of a speedboat, standing barefoot, in a black bikini and black sunglasses, not watching for me, just standing there, waiting. I climbed in and stood beside her, holding on to a rail. She turned on the engines and maneuvered slowly into the bay.
The Miami skyline was suspended in the enormous trance of late afternoon as we picked up speed heading into the heart of space. Then she cut the motor and the choppy, pummeling flight gave way to stillness and silence. Stillness and silence, deep and abrupt as when passing through the door of a cathedral into sanctified vacancy, but this was towering air above vast waters.
I wondered, as I often had, why falling in love is so important to everybody — since the invention of the feeling — but, in the ambient grandeur, sense became sensation, and I entered a zone of blood, exceedingly alert, no thoughts. An airliner, lifting slowly above the city, seemed motionless, like our drifting boat in the quiet afternoon. Penelope wasn’t in any hurry to talk. Neither was I. I waited as if for a degree of darkness to descend and make words. Lights went on here and there among faraway buildings, and a moon appeared. Penelope removed her sunglasses. “Please forgive me for what happened earlier. I know what you think of me,” she said.
“I’ve forgotten the business in the car.”
“That’s good of you, but I would do it again. What I’m thinking about, really, is that Sam told you I’m jealous and afraid I’ll be shoved out in the cold, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t say that.”
“Yes, he did. I know the man. He had to say it. Perhaps you don’t listen carefully. He takes the simplest view of everything. That’s what makes him useful to Zev and also dangerous. Well, he’s wrong about me. I’ve no reason to be jealous or afraid. See that one and that one.” She pointed to a cluster of tall buildings. “I own them. I own buildings in New York and Los Angeles, too, and a ranch in New Mexico and a chain of car washes. Except for my brains and my ass, everything I own cometh from Zev Lurie. But I am the owner. And there is always more, more, more. Zev puts a paper in front of me and says, ‘Sign.’ I sign.”
“Why does he do that?”
“So he won’t be responsible for anything. Nobody can sue him, he says, and take his property. But I believe he wants only to feel young. Like a baby. Irresponsible. Property makes you age. So he’s still a baby and I’m five hundred years old — I own so much. Do you know why I’m telling you this?”
“No.”
“Guess.”
“Your heart is broken.”
“You’re less stupid than I thought. What’s she like?”
“You could be friends.”
“What makes you think so?”
“She’s very, very nice, but what’s wonderful is …”
Penelope was wrong. I’m very stupid. I’ve said very stupid things. I’ve lost sleep thinking about them. In a rush of pity — sympathy, affection, hope — I said the most stupid thing ever. Her hands whitened on the wheel. Tendons stood forth in her neck. Her eyes were huge, shining with pain.
“What do you mean, she looks exactly like me?”
“I don’t mean anything. I am too enthusiastic. I exaggerated a trivial coincidence.” I was almost shouting, as if to crush her anger before it gained momentum.
“What do you mean, coincidence? What the hell do you mean? This face? This neck? These arms and legs? What? She has these breasts?” She tore off the top of her bikini and pulled down the pants, flung the pieces at her feet, screaming, “This is me. This is me, not her.”
There wasn’t a lot more to see, seeing her naked. She was less modest than a three-year-old. Desire fled.
“I’m sorry,” I said, stooping to pick up the bikini pieces at her lovely narrow feet; from there on up, trembling stone flesh. I slipped the bikini top over her head. She didn’t do the rest, just let it hang like a rag necklace. Down on one knee, I held the bottom for her to step into it. She did. I drew it up her legs. We stood face to face.
Desire returned in a rush.
I looked away with a cry, looked back, kissed her, and — to my embarrassment — she merely said, “What’s that noise?”
I let her go instantly and listened.
There was a bumping like my heart against the boat, though duller and trailing hollow reverberations along the bottom, irregular and persistent. We leaned over the side, peering into the water. “Must be a flashlight in the console,” she whispered, as if someone were around to hear us. We didn’t need the light. Sliding into view from beneath the boat, bobbing and bumping against the side, came the head and the gaping, glossy, moon-foiled eyes of White Trash, mouth open as if to suck the world. His right arm was gone, the stump stringy and red.
Penelope groaned, “Sharks,” as a smooth gray snout, tiny eyes and undershot maw, burst from below and took White Trash’s head away in a quick shake and a noise like tearing silk, then a slither, an arcing plunge into oblivion. I grabbed my neck, gagging as if it had happened to me. Penelope staggered to the wheel.
Engines coughed, grumbled, propellers took purchase on the bay. We lurched between white plumes lifting on either side like wings, as we raced toward the lights of Key Biscayne, me yelling against the rage of engines. “I know him, I know him. That’s White Trash,” I yelled, as if it were a great boast, my claim to a life of action. I yelled the whole story, how he followed me from the airport, how he ended in the bay, and then, having spent myself, I said, “I make trouble for everybody, don’t I?”
She laughed. “Not the sharks.” In a sweetly bemused tone, she added, “I hope you haven’t made us late for dinner.”
It occurred to me she was joking. I answered seriously, “You’re going too fast and I don’t want dinner. I don’t want new clothes. I don’t want speedboats. Zev can go to hell with his property. I don’t want any of it — not even you. Tell him that. No, I’ll tell him myself. I see what you’re all doing and I don’t want any of it. NOT EVEN YOU.”
“Don’t say that.” Her voice was low, faintly reproachful. She slowed the boat. “I was only teasing, because I’m turned on. Aren’t you? Don’t bullshit me about your fine character. Tell me the truth.”
What I felt of exhilarating horror diffused into a generalized vibrancy. “I could fuck a seagull,” I said with eerie tenderness, never more depraved or truthful.
“It’s nothing personal?”
The speedboat drifted. Her eyes were strange diamonds, their authority not to be denied.
That night, sharks feasted in the fateful bay, and I loved her and loved the loving of her, which seemed very obvious, perhaps too obvious. She said, “What keeps you from loving me?”
Occasional clouds crossed the moon and were bleached to a glow.
Did she expect an answer?
I thought of Zev and Sam. The desk clerk would say I had gone for a speedboat ride with Penelope and never returned. Zev would be alarmed.
The enveloping night came down like a swirl of black camellias, except for stars and moon and the electric syllables of the Miami skyline singing cheerily against the blackness.
Penelope lay in my arms.
I hadn’t forgotten what she said.
Gradually and gradually, it came to me that Zev wasn’t alarmed. Not at all. My providential uncle hadn’t gone to the hotel. If
he’d bothered to phone the hotel desk, it was to confirm what he supposed.
However my life swerved, it answered to his remote determinations even as the fragrant waters of Penelope opened to me in widening circles like the Red Sea for Moses.
She said, “Do you like my body?”
“Can’t you tell?”
“Why don’t you say it?”
“I see that you aren’t a monster.”
“How sweet of you. But what if I were?”
“It would be a hard test.”
“Then you don’t love me.”
“Not like that. You aren’t my child.”
“I’m young.”
“Make me young.”
It was better the second time. I was better, less eager, and her body spoke to mine in easy dreamy pleasure that seemed to rise from the very navel of the cosmos, flowing through her into me.
Holding my face, looking into my eyes, she said, “Your turn.”
“No.”
“Didn’t you say that you wanted everything?”
“No.”
“Can I give you something? How about a building?”
“No.”
“Then take them all.”
“That’s nice of you, but I’m not a landlord.”
“Not one little building? Tell you what, I’ll give you five percent of one. You claim depreciation and never pay taxes again in your life. Spend the money on me.”
“Who are you?”
“You’re being cruel.”
Labor and spin, yet everything returns from whence it came in the night. I found myself thinking, yeah yeah, in the manner of Uncle Zev — so who was I falling in love with? A mulatto from Rio — arms, legs — who? Aside from the delicate sweetness of her breathing, who?
The ogling moon hung upon my question. I kissed her neck, which answered me little.
Zev found her dancing in the street.
Now he had visions of a lonely deathbed in Brooklyn, wanting flesh of his flesh beside him.
“It’s nothing personal?” she’d wittily said.
I licked her ears, then she put her tongue in my mouth. Dark, delicate scholarship.
I wondered if there would be another time. There wouldn’t ever be everything, or enough, but there could be more. She lay on her back, eyes shut. She didn’t have to see. I was there, like the night, completely given to her. I sat up and looked around.
A white star burned on the water, as if it were the more I had in mind. It was far away, growing bigger and brighter, an immense dazzling. Then it came toward us, shooting lights, searching the bay. I realized it was no star but some kind of ship, brighter than the stars, too bright to see in detail. Penelope sensed my tension, and sat up, too. We watched it approach.
“Good or bad?” she whispered.
I made out a high sharp prow and three tall masts strung with lights, a great steaming funnel among them, everything blazing white, beautiful as the Taj Mahal. Then I heard the doon-doon throb of conga drums and the sinuous elegance of a Latin flute. With the schooner almost upon us, I read, painted on the side, El Señor.
Two men at the stern leaned over a rail. One was Sam. The other was Zev. Zev shouted, “We’ve been looking for you two all over the bay. Come aboard. We’re going to Cuba.” He said it the Spanish way, “Cooba,” shouting again, “Cooba.” He and Sam laughed as powerful lights spun around our speedboat in crazily hilarious blinding celebration.
Penelope stood up and waved and laughed with them, marveling at the schooner, long and high and glacial, shining on the black water. “Isn’t Zev certifiably insane?” she said, an awestruck child in her voice, very plaintive and adoring. She didn’t care, but I covered her with my shirt anyway.
The Nachman Stories
Nachman
IN 1982, RAPHAEL NACHMAN, visiting lecturer in mathematics at the university in Cracow, declined the tour of Auschwitz, where his grandparents had died, and asked instead to visit the ghetto where they had lived. The American consul, Dirk Sullivan, was surprised. Didn’t everyone want to tour Auschwitz? He probably thought Nachman was a contrary type, peculiar, too full of himself. As for Nachman, he thought Sullivan was officious and presuming. Sullivan said he would call the university and arrange for a guide to meet Nachman at his hotel.
At eight o’clock the next morning, Nachman left his room and passed through the small lobby on his way to the still smaller dining room for coffee. He noticed a girl standing alone beside the desk. Her posture and impassive expression suggested she was waiting for somebody. She didn’t glance at Nachman as he approached, so he assumed the girl wasn’t his guide, but he asked anyway, “Are you waiting for me, miss? I’m Nachman.”
The girl said, “Yes, I know. How do you do? I’m Marie, your guide.”
She knew? She didn’t smile, but Nachman told himself Poles aren’t Americans. Why should she smile? She was here to do a job. She’d been sent by the university, at the request of the American consul, to be his guide. Perhaps she’d have preferred to do something else that morning. So she didn’t smile, but neither did she look unhappy.
They shook hands.
Nachman invited her to join him for coffee. She accepted and followed him into the dining room.
Nachman wasn’t inspired to make conversation at eight o’clock in the morning, but he felt obliged to do so out of politeness, though Marie looked content to sit and say nothing. After sipping his coffee he said, “I like Cracow. A beautiful city.”
“People say it is a small Prague.”
“From what I’ve seen, there has been no destruction of monuments and buildings.”
“Russian troops arrived sooner than the Germans expected.”
Nachman now supposed she would tell him the story of Cracow’s salvation. She didn’t. Again, he was slightly disconcerted, but the girl was merely terse, not rude. Her soft voice gave Nachman an impression of reserve and politeness.
“How fortunate,” he said. “The city remained undamaged.”
“There was plunder. Paintings, sculptures … Is ‘plunder’ the word?”
“Indeed. Are you a student at the university, Marie?”
“Yes. I study mathematics.”
“Of course you do. They sent me someone in my field. I should have thought so.”
“I attended your lectures.”
“You weren’t too bored?”
“Not at all.”
“That’s kind of you to say.”
“You talked about the history of problems, which is not ordinarily done. A student might think all problems were invented the day of the lecture. I wasn’t bored.”
“Your English is good. Do you also speak Russian?”
“I was obliged to study Russian in high school.”
“So you speak Russian?”
“I was unable to learn it.”
“English came more easily?”
“Yes.”
“What else were you obliged to study?”
“Marxism.”
“Did you learn it?”
“I was unable to learn it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not very intelligent.”
Nachman smiled. She’d said it so seriously.
“How old are you, Marie?”
“Nineteen.”
“Are you from Cracow”
“No. A village in the country. The nearest city is Brest Litovsk.”
“I’ve heard of Brest Litovsk.”
“You would never have heard of my village.”
It would be easier to study the girl if she talked and he listened, but Nachman asked questions mainly because he felt uneasy. It was a defensive approach.
The American consul had warned Nachman about Polish women and the secret police. It seemed unlikely that the secret police had employed this girl — less than half Nachman’s age, a peasant with a solemn face — to compromise him and make him vulnerable to their purposes. She claimed to be a student of mathematics. Nachman could have
asked her questions about mathematics and would discover quickly if she was the real thing, but it would be awkward and unpleasant if she wasn’t. She didn’t seem to be lying about her failure to learn Russian or Marxism.
So Nachman lit a cigarette and sipped his coffee. He never smoked at home in California, but it seemed appropriate to his sojourn in the old world, within the shadow of death.
Nachman didn’t test Marie’s knowledge of mathematics, and he decided not to ask anything further about her failure to learn Russian and Marxism. She was neither a police agent nor a village idiot. Beyond that, Nachman assumed, considering her manner, he wouldn’t learn much about her. Not that it mattered. She had answered his questions sufficiently and complimented his lecture. At worst she made his American friendliness seem clumsy and naive, or somehow irrelevant to the purpose of their meeting. If she didn’t trust Nachman, she probably had good reasons, but it was awkward. He couldn’t get his bearings.
The American consul, in his way, had also unsettled Nachman during their interview, and the memory lingered strongly. Nachman had said, “My field is mathematics. Nothing I do is secret, except insofar as it’s unintelligible. I’m of no conceivable interest to the secret police. If they want to ask me questions, I’ll give them answers. I’d do the same with anyone.”
“You know many people, Professor Nachman.”
“They are almost all mathematicians. Our work means nothing to the majority of the human race. I invent problems. If I’m lucky, I solve one and publish the solution before another mathematician. My publications are available to everybody who has access to a library and understands numbers. You needn’t call me professor. Nachman will do.”
“You’re modest, Professor Nachman. You were invited to Cracow because your work has important implications …”
“What important implications?”
“I’m sure you know. Be that as it may, a casual remark about any of your colleagues or acquaintances is recorded and filed. There are listening devices everywhere. Even in my car. I’m sure they are in your hotel room.”
The Collected Stories Page 35