The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  The church was small and unusually dark, despite the tall windows that glared with color. There was a great deal of elaborately wrought gold and brass. It seemed to writhe and it gave off a dull hard shine, which intensified rather than dispersed the darkness. Clots of shadow formed about small flames of candles along the walls and in niches. A priest was conducting a service, and a dozen or so elderly men and women were gathered in the pews before him, some on their knees, some standing.

  Nachman wandered away from Marie, retreating into the general darkness, absorbing the sensation of deep shadows and scattered brilliance of flame and metal, all of it enclosed in cold, heavy stone. He felt his isolation, his separateness within the church. He settled into the feeling, as if into the obscurity of a densely woven cloak. Long minutes passed before he remembered Marie and looked about for her. She was standing near the door, leaning against a pillar, looking at the priest, apparently absorbed by the ritual. Nachman approached her slowly and stopped a few feet away, waiting for her attention. She looked at him finally, and then moved toward him. As they walked together toward the door, she said, “Maybe I’ll return. I don’t know.” Nachman understood that she meant return to the religion of her childhood.

  Outside, Nachman lit a cigarette, his second of the day. He said, “Would you like to eat something? You must be hungry.”

  “There are no luxurious restaurants.”

  “Any place with heat will do. I’m cold.”

  “It’s still early, but I know where we can have vodka. Eel, too, maybe. The owner is a distant relation. Would you like vodka? You can pay him in dollars.”

  “Vodka would be a blessing. I never in my life felt so cold.”

  The restaurant, a fair-sized, square room with pretty gold-hued wallpaper, was warmer than the church, but Nachman didn’t remove his coat. The two waiters wore dinner jackets and ties. But there were no customers aside from Nachman and Marie. One waiter approached their table and presented menus and left. The other then came to the table. Nachman realized that the waiters were sustaining a ritual of service, for lack of knowing what else to do.

  The menu was printed on large sheets of good, thick paper, and it listed a considerable variety of dishes, but Marie told him not to bother ordering any of them. It would embarrass the waiter. She said, “The dishes don’t exist. If you like to feel nostalgic, you may enjoy reading the menu, but it will have no practical purpose. Vodka and eel. Would that be all right?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  Nachman cared less about eating than simply sitting inside a fairly warm room, at a table with a clean white cloth. Glasses of vodka were set before him and Marie. Nachman picked up his glass and drank it all at once. The vodka went down in a delicious searing flow. He wanted another glass immediately. Two plates of eel, chopped into small sections, were set before them. Nachman ate a section. It went well with vodka.

  Marie finished eating before he did. She sipped her vodka slowly.

  Nachman urged her to take what remained of his plate of eel. She accepted.

  “And two more vodkas.”

  With his third glass Nachman became high, and felt better, almost good. His vision seemed to improve, too. Marie’s plain face took on a glow and looked rather beautiful. What is plain, anyway? Nachman asked himself. Her features were nicely proportioned. Nothing was ill-shaped. Others wouldn’t call her beautiful, but it was a good face, beautiful enough for Nachman. Where you expected a nose, she had a nose, and a mouth, a mouth. Her face looked fine to him. A bit long, perhaps, and somewhat solemn, but normal and unobjectionable, however plain. Nachman was sure he would remember her face with pleasure. Her brown eyes were intelligent and kind. What more could a man want? A beautiful face, afflicting people with passionate love, must be a tragic burden. But why was he thinking this way? In a city where his grandparents had been murdered, and the history of his family lost. The irresponsibility of feelings was a serious problem. But Nachman felt no obligation to define the problem, let alone solve it. For an instant, Nachman wished that he could love Marie, feel what a man is supposed to feel for a woman, but not for the sake of ecstasy. He would have liked something real, true, consistent with his nature, like the vodka, maybe. Pain, but a good pain. After today he’d never see Marie again. He already felt the poignancy of her absence from his life. She’d been an excellent guide. He wanted to kiss her.

  “Would you like another vodka?”

  “No thank you,” her voice was soft and polite as usual.

  He remembered how she said, “He’s not a Jew, Professor Nachman,” and how she’d raised her voice to him in the street walking away from the synagogue. She’d known what Nachman was feeling under the spell of the caretaker and had wanted to protect him. But from the way she looked at him now, he could tell that she had no idea what he was feeling. For her, ordinary life had resumed. She simply looked as if, even in her personal depths, she was polite. She accepted what was there, didn’t wonder. It wasn’t in her to be intrusive, to speculate about his soul, and yet when it mattered, she’d understood and been with him. Nachman knew he was being sentimental, indulging a feeling. It was partly due to the vodka, but Nachman was suddenly awed by this plain girl, and it didn’t seem unrealistic or foolish or morally dubious, and he knew the feeling would outlast this moment.

  Nachman From Los Angeles

  IF NACH MAN WAS GIVEN fifteen cents too much in change, he’d walk half a mile back to the newsstand or grocery store to return the money. It was a compulsion — to make things right — that extended to his work in mathematics. He struggled with problems every day. When he solved them, he felt good and he also felt that he was basically a good man. It was a grandiose sensation, even a mild form of lunacy. But Nachman wasn’t smug. He had done something twenty years before, when he was a graduate student at U.C.L.A., that had never felt right and still haunted his conscience. The memory of it came to him, virtually moment by moment, when he went to the post office or when he passed a certain kind of dark face in the street. And then Nachman would brood on what had happened.

  It had begun when Nachman saw two men standing in front of the library on the U.C.L.A. campus. One was his friend Norbert, who had phoned the night before to make a date for coffee. Norbert hadn’t mentioned that he was bringing someone, so Nachman was unprepared for the other man, a stranger. He had black hair and black eyes, a finely shaped nose, and a wide sensuous mouth. A Middle Eastern face, aristocratically handsome.

  Better-looking than a movie star, Nachman thought, but he felt no desire to meet him, only annoyance with Norbert. He should have warned Nachman, given him the chance to say yes or no. Nachman would have said no. He felt the beginning of a cold sore in the middle of his upper lip. Nachman wasn’t vain, but the stranger was not merely handsome. He was perfect. Comparisons are invidious, thought Nachman, but that doesn’t make them wrong. Compared with the stranger, Nachman was a gargoyle.

  “Nachman, this is Prince Ali Massid from Persia,” Norbert said, as if introducing the prince to a large audience and somehow congratulating himself at the same time. “The prince has a problem. I told him you could help and I mentioned your fee, which I said is in the neighborhood of a thousand bucks.”

  Nachman assumed that Norbert was joking, but the prince wasn’t smiling. With modest restraint, the prince said, “Norbert thinks of me as an exotic fellow. He tells people I am from Persia or Jordan or Bahrain. I’ve lived mainly in Switzerland. I went to school in Zurich, where there were a dozen princes among my classmates. I have noble relations, but in America I am like everyone else. My name is Ali. How do you do, Nachman? It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  Nachman said, “Oh?”

  The little word “Oh” seemed embarrassing to Nachman. What did he mean by “Oh”? He then said, “How do you do? I’m Nachman from Los Angeles.”

  Norbert said, “What is this, the UN? Switzerland, Persia, Jordan — who cares? Ali’s problem is about a term paper. He’ll explain it to you.”


  Norbert walked away, abandoning Nachman and Ali. Nachman grinned at Ali and shrugged, a gesture both sheepish and ingratiating. “I don’t always know when Norbert is joking. I thought I was meeting him for coffee. He didn’t mention anything else.”

  “I understand. Norbert was indiscreet. He is like a person at a seance who speaks beyond himself. He has no idea how these things are done.”

  What things? Nachman wondered.

  Ali smiled in a knowing manner, and yet he seemed uncertain. The smile flashed and, before it was fully formed, vanished. “Norbert is in my city-planning class, and we talk about this and that. The other day, I mentioned my problem, you see, and Norbert said that he had a friend who could write papers. He insisted that I meet his friend. So here I am — you know what I mean? — and here you are. I want to ask you to write a paper, you see.”

  “I see.”

  “I cannot write well, and I have done badly in one class, which is called Metaphysics. I should never have taken this class. I imagined it had to do with mysticism. Please don’t laugh.”

  “Who’s laughing?”

  “It happens that this class has nothing to do with mysticism, only with great thinkers in metaphysics. I am not interested in metaphysics, you see.”

  Ali nodded his beautiful head as though he were saying yes, yes, making a gentle obbligato to his soft voice, and his hands made small gestures, waving about and chasing each other in circles. It was distracting. Nachman wanted to say, “Stop doing that. Talk with your mouth.” Only Ali’s eyes remained still, holding Nachman’s eyes persistently, intimately, in their darkness.

  “But I don’t write well about anything, not even about mysticism, you see, and I have no desire to try to write about metaphysics.”

  “Why don’t you drop the class?”

  “Good question. I should drop the class, but it’s now too late, you see. I was hoping the professor would eventually talk about mysticism. There are people, you know, who talk and talk and never come to the point. The professor is a decent man and he is doing his best, but if I fail I won’t graduate. This would ruin my plans. Your friend Norbert said that you would be sympathetic. He said that you could write about metaphysics.”

  “I don’t know anything about metaphysics. I don’t even know what it is. I’m a student in mathematics.”

  “Norbert said you could write about anything. He was sincere.”

  Ali sounded as if he were sliding backward down a hill he had just struggled to climb. Nachman felt sympathy. Ali had persuasive force, because of his looks, but also because he seemed to engage Nachman personally, irresistibly. It wasn’t strictly correct to write a paper for someone else, but Nachman already knew that he was willing to help.

  “I’m sure Norbert was sincere,” Nachman said. “Norbert wants to start a paper-writing business. Did he tell you that?”

  “No. But I applaud this idea. Many students need papers. You will be partners with Norbert?”

  “I never said that, but you have to let a friend talk. Talking is Norbert’s way of life. He is always broke, but he doesn’t think about getting a job. He schemes day and night. And he dollars me. You know the expression? ‘Nachman, lend me a dollar.’ He never pays me back. He had the idea about the paper-writing business. I don’t need the money. I have a scholarship that covers books and living expenses.”

  “Even so, you must go into business with Norbert. Because of your friendship. Norbert loves you, and he had a splendid idea. Norbert brings you poor students like me, and you write the papers. He gets a percentage, and soon he will owe you nothing. Will you do it? A thousand dollars.”

  “It’s not a question of money. If I write a paper, it will be a good paper.”

  “So you will help me?”

  “What was the assignment? Let me think about it.”

  “I need a paper on the metaphysics of Henri Bergson. About twenty pages. It’s due in three weeks.”

  “Bergson writes about memory, doesn’t he?”

  “See, Nachman, you already know what to write. If a thousand dollars isn’t enough, I’ll pay more. Will you do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know if you will do it? Or if a thousand isn’t enough?”

  “One, I don’t know. Two, I also don’t know. The money is Norbert’s department. Talk to him about the money.”

  “So we have a deal?”

  With a fantastic white smile in his dark face, Ali put forth his hand. Reflexively, Nachman accepted it. A line had been crossed. Nachman hadn’t noticed when he crossed it. Maybe Ali had moved the line so that, to Nachman’s surprise, it now lay behind rather than in front of him. Ali’s expression was deeply studious, as if he were reading Nachman’s heart and finding reciprocity there, a flow of sympathy equivalent to Ali’s need. For Nachman the reciprocity was too rich in feeling and too poor in common sense. He felt set up, manipulated. But he’d shaken hands.

  “I’ll phone you,” Ali said. He nodded goodbye. Nachman nodded, too, and walked into the library, went to the card catalogue, and pulled out a drawer. He found cards with the name Henri Bergson printed on them, and he copied the titles of several books onto call slips. Half an hour later, Nachman left the library and went to his car, a blue-and-cream-colored Chevy Bel Air.

  Nachman’s apartment was in the basement of a house in the Hollywood Hills, near Highland Avenue. It had a bedroom and living room, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, and low ceilings. It was cramped, but not unpleasant. The windows, approximately at ground level, looked down a steep hillside to a narrow winding street. Nachman could see ice plants, cacti, rosebushes, and pine trees.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Nachman picked up a book by Henri Bergson. According to the jacket, Bergson had won a Nobel Prize in Literature and had influenced the intellectual and spiritual life of the modern age. He’d intended to convert to Catholicism, but when the Nazis invaded France and began rounding up Jews, Bergson elected to remain what he was, a Jew. His story was heartbreaking, but seemed irrelevant to Nachman from Los Angeles. To Nachman, all religious institutions were frightening. Read the books, Nachman thought, just read the books.

  That evening when the phone rang, Nachman picked it up and shouted, “Norbert, are you out of your mind?”

  “A thousand dollars, Nachman.”

  “Ali wants me to write a paper about Henri Bergson.”

  “Who is Henri Bergson?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested and I don’t want to talk about him. If you think writing a paper is easy, you do it.”

  “Nachman, I once tried to keep a diary. What could be easier? Little girls keep diaries. Every night I opened my diary and I wrote ‘Dear Diary.’ The next thing I wrote was ‘Good night.’ Nothing comes to me. I’m a talker. Believe me, Nachman, I can talk with the best, but I can’t write.”

  “What does that have to do with me, Norbert? You did a number on me.”

  “Come on, man. A thousand dollars. We’ll take a trip to Baja, hang out on the beach. It’ll be great.”

  Norbert’s voice had a wheedling, begging tone. It was irritating, but Nachman forgave him. Although he came from a wealthy family in Beverly Hills, Norbert needed money. He carried books around campus and even went to classes, but wasn’t a registered student because he couldn’t pay his fees. His father had cut him off when he’d gotten a small tattoo on the side of his neck. There had been a dreadful scene. Norbert’s father, an eminent doctor, considered tattoos low class. Norbert still lived at home in Beverly Hills and drove one of the family cars, a Mercedes convertible. He paid for gas with his mother’s credit card. But until the tattoo was removed he wouldn’t get a cent. For months he’d wandered around campus with his tattoo and no job. He didn’t want a job. He could survive in an original manner. He had business ideas.

  “I don’t know anything about metaphysics,” said Nachman.

  “What do you have to know? It’s all in a book. You read the book and copy out sentences and make up s
ome bullshit. Finito. That’s a paper. Do me a favor, Nachman, look at a couple of books. Flip through the pages and you’ll know all you need.”

  “I’ve been reading for hours.”

  “That’s good, that’s good.”

  “Norbert, have you ever read a book?”

  “Ali told me you promised. He is very happy.”

  “It’s not for the money, and not because I want to go to Baja and hang out on a beach.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m doing it because I like Ali. He’s a nice guy.”

  “I feel the same way about him.”

  “After this, no more. I’ll do this one time.”

  “You’re O.K., Nachman.”

  “You’re an idiot, Norbert.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. But don’t get too sentimental about Ali and forget the money part. Ali is very rich, you know. I would write a paper for All every day, but I can’t write. You should see Ali’s girlfriend, by the way Georgia Sweeny. You ever go to football games? She’s a cheerleader. An incredible piece. I’d let her sit on my face, man.”

  Nachman hung up.

  Norbert was shockingly vulgar. Nachman felt resentful, unwilling to write the paper, but then he remembered the look in Ali’s eyes. It had nothing to do with the cheerleader or with being rich. Nachman’s resentment faded. He went back to the books and read through the night.

  For the next three days, he did none of his own work. He read Henri Bergson.

  At the end of the week, Ali phoned.

  “How are you, Nachman?”

  “O.K.”

  “That’s wonderful news. Have you given some thought to the paper?”

  “I’ve been reading.”

  “What do you mean, reading?”

  “I can’t just start to write. I’m in math. It’s not like philosophy. Math you do. Philosophy you speculate. Did you ever hear of Galois? He was a great mathematician. He fought a duel. The night before the duel, he went to his room and did math, because he might be killed in the duel and not have another chance.”