The Heat of the Sun

by Rain, David

  We were objects of derision, but neither of us cared. With peculiar exaltation I saw the sneers and heard the guffaws as we stood in assemblies side by side, as we made our way along corridors together, as we sat apart from others at meals, sequestered in our special world.

  Fellows gathered to watch Trouble train. Some called him ‘squirt’ or ‘little boy’; some called him worse things, but there came no greater torments. When I said to Trouble that their behaviour surprised me, he looked at me pityingly. Hadn’t Scranway dictated their every move? Only Scranway, in the fight of the century, could deliver Trouble to his fate.

  Elmsley liked to hint at what was coming. He had taken to following us, trailing after us, watching us from a distance, poking his rodenty nose from behind a pillar as we passed. When I warned him off, his ugly mouth smirked, teeth glimmering like a clutch of razor blades.

  One afternoon, as winter gave way to spring, I sat on a bench in the changing room while Trouble showered. From behind a partition came the roar of water. I leaned back against the clammy wall. Smells of ammonia and smells of sweat mingled pungently with the thickening steam.

  ‘You think you’re his one true friend, I suppose?’

  The voice startled me: Elmsley, sliding closer along the varnished bench.

  ‘If you were his friend’ – Elmsley spoke low – ‘you’d make him give this up. But no, you have to have a tragedy, like Cymbeline.’

  ‘That isn’t a tragedy, it’s a romance. It’s different. Mr Gregg said so.’ I thought of Trouble singing with Elmsley in class. And Trouble in the chapel, lying beaten. Understanding flowed through my awareness like a stain. Bitterly, I said: ‘You told Scranway about the song and the applause. That’s why he set Quibble and Kane on to Trouble.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Elmsley.

  ‘Just like you told him what your cousin said.’

  My ashplant rested beside me. Elmsley gripped it, leaped up, and swung it playfully, too close to my face.

  ‘Give that back.’ I staggered to my feet.

  He smirked. ‘I thought we were pals, Sharpless.’

  ‘You’re a spy. Scranway’s spy.’

  ‘You know, I rather like this stick. How’s about a bit of the old soft shoe?’ He clicked his heels together, a song-and-dance man, slapping my ashplant to the tiled floor: one side, then the other.

  I flung myself upon him. I was slow, but bigger, heavier. The floor was wet. He skidded backwards. I pinned him against the wall. He squirmed, squealed. A steamy mirror reflected us: the bulky earnest fool and this mischievous, mocking imp. I dug my nails into his hand, forcing my ashplant from his grip. I blundered back, almost falling.

  He nursed his hand. ‘You bastard, Sharpless!’

  ‘Get out, Elmsley.’

  His voice rose. ‘Do you think anybody likes you? Fellows were sorry for you for a while, that’s all. Pathetic cripple.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I swung back the ashplant.

  Never in my life had I fought another boy. I felt strong and weak all at once. Already, it seemed, I could feel the heavy stick slam, with a sickening crunch, into his ribs. Yes, let him cry out, sinking to his knees, blood vomiting from his astonished mouth! I would kill him: kill him. An instant more and I would have done it: could have.

  Then Trouble was there. He gripped my ashplant. Slowly, reluctantly, I lowered my arm. Tucked about Trouble’s torso was a towel. His blond hair was dark and in tendrils, dripping steadily.

  I said to him, ‘Don’t you know what he’s done?’

  ‘Everyone knows what he’s done. Get out, Elmsley.’

  Elmsley, like a rodent, scurried to the door, but turned back to Trouble with a sneer and said: ‘Scranway’s going to smash your teeth down your throat.’

  My anger at Elmsley left me shaken. I was a bookish boy, and solitary. But I wanted so much to beat Elmsley that afterwards I half-regretted I had not done it. I told myself that Elmsley could bring out murderous passions in a saint. But dimly I realized another explanation for my fury. It was Trouble: Trouble was dangerous. He had in him an excitability that had to go to extremes. And I wanted to go with him.

  As the fight of the century drew near, I lived in a trance of longing. One day Mr Gregg asked me if anything was wrong.

  ‘No, sir. Nothing.’ I mumbled something about Elizabethan lyrics. After Trouble had sung the song from Cymbeline, I had enquired, shyly, of Mr Gregg where I could find more verses like that. My question delighted him, and he pushed into my hands a copy of The Golden Pomp, an anthology of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century verse edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Now I was returning it, endeavouring to thank him.

  He asked me if I had profited from it.

  ‘Yes, sir. Oh, yes.’ For weeks the little book had sailed beside me, enchanting me with its cargo of Shakespeare and Campion, Sidney and Fletcher, Spenser and Herrick and John Donne. In the rhythms of these pages, clanging like cymbals, exploding like fireworks, meandering like streams, I sensed a connection with Trouble’s magic.

  ‘This enthusiasm for verse is something new, Mr Sharpless?’

  I said, before I could stop myself: ‘I’m going to be a poet.’

  ‘Dear me, it’s as bad as that? Hmm... perhaps, then, this is the place to go next.’ From a shelf behind his desk Mr Gregg brought down another book, larger this time. ‘Sir Arthur again. But now the big picture – the whole story, as it were.’

  The Oxford Book of English Verse was a volume considerably more substantial than The Golden Pomp. Both daunted and grateful, I riffled through the pages. Awkwardly, I thanked him.

  I had reached the door when Mr Gregg called me back.

  ‘Tell me, you seem to be thick with Mr Pinkerton these days. Perhaps you could make him join the Glee Club? It’s not as if they’re overburdened with talent, and that performance of his in class was remarkable.’

  He cleared his throat. Distractedly, he tidied some papers on his desk.

  ‘You know, I’ve never believed this nonsense about being an all-rounder,’ he went on. ‘One should capitalize on one’s areas of strength. A little chap like that will never make a pugilist, for example.’

  ‘No, sir. I suppose not, sir.’

  In Mr Gregg’s eyes was both a certainty and a demand. I knew where he was leading. He had offered a way out, a release from the spell that bound me.

  Fumbling, I reached into my jacket for the challenge. I held it out to him.

  ‘Well,’ he said, when he had read it. ‘Well, well.’

  We were in Geography the next morning when the message came for Trouble to report to the headmaster. Fellows exchanged glances. There were murmurs, raised eyebrows.

  After the lesson I was making my way upstairs, lagging behind the others, when Trouble appeared on the landing. At once a group of fellows surrounded him, quizzing him. One pushed him in the chest. Several jeered. Only with difficulty did he break away.

  I gripped his arm. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was frightful. There was me, there was Scranway, there was the old boy glaring at us over that enormous ugly desk. And those ears of his, have you seen those ears up close?’

  ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘The hairs! Huge sprouty tufts. Wouldn’t you say it behooves a man of his age to remove the coarse hairs that grow from his nose and ears? I’d have said it was common courtesy.’

  I almost shook him. ‘Trouble!’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got to call the whole thing off. Finished. Over. Or we’re both out.’

  ‘No! But how did he know?’ I tried to sound shocked.

  Trouble laughed. ‘It was satisfying up to a point. Mr Scranway, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Well, I’ve always thought that, but not that I’m an imbecile and irresponsible and a disruptive influence.’ He kicked the banisters. ‘Damn it. Damn it to hell!’

  ‘Come on, it’s not so bad, is it?’ I said.

  ‘Who squealed?’

  ‘Ob
vious, isn’t it? Scranway couldn’t go through with it. A job cut out for Elmsley, wouldn’t you say?’

  Trouble grabbed my ashplant. Startled, I let it slip from me. With a yelp, he bounded down the stairs, three steps at a time, slashing at his imagined enemy as he went. The sun, bold with spring, spilled through the tall landing windows and struck his bright hair. In the hall below he pirouetted, bowed, and held my ashplant aloft before his face like a sacred sword.

  I said, amazed: ‘First a boxer! What now, a samurai?’

  McManus II was subdued on the night before the Easter vacation. As I packed my trunk, I thought what a contrast this end of term made with the last: no uproar, no games, no devil-may-care escape into the night. The headmaster’s interview with Trouble and Scranway had left its mark. Masters had been looking in regularly. There would be no slacking of discipline. Lights would be extinguished strictly at ten, just when all of us would have gathered in the gym, fervent for the fight of the century.

  Trouble knocked on the wall of my partition. He mimed a punch, a swift uppercut.

  ‘You’re glad really, aren’t you?’ I asked him.

  ‘What’s to be glad about? Haven’t you heard of David and Goliath?’ He sat, bouncing a little, on my cot. He wore silk pyjamas and a dressing gown that might have been a smoking jacket. Looking at him, I wondered how much I had really come to know him.

  Sometimes I still thought he was a stranger.

  ‘Hey, Trouble.’ Ralph Rex, Jr passed by.

  ‘Hey, Rex.’ Slowly, shyly at first, Trouble’s acolytes were drifting back. That night Earl Pritchard had joined us at dinner; lately, the Townsend twins looked wistfully in our direction. Had Trouble still possessed his phonograph, he could easily have summoned them back to cubicle number thirty: all it would take was Sophie Tucker’s siren songs sounding out again.

  A shout, almost a scream, came from near the door.

  ‘Who did this?’ It was Scranway.

  By the time we got there a crowd had formed. Slumped to the floor, almost sobbing, Scranway cradled in his arms the inert form of Hunter.

  Voices buzzed all around us.

  ‘What’s happened? Is Hunter dead?’

  ‘I saw it all. Scranway was about to take him out for his walk. Hunter couldn’t get up.’

  ‘Then he was sick.’

  ‘There’s a steak next to his basket – half chewed!’

  ‘Someone’s poisoned Hunter? Who’d do that?’

  Wildly, Scranway looked about him. Fellows stepped back. Scranway rose. He was still in all his clothes, with an overcoat on top. For once, he was not immaculate; his hair was dishevelled and his eyes burned. He pushed through the crowd. He pointed at Trouble. ‘You. You.’

  Trouble looked astonished. ‘No.’

  I stepped forward. ‘It’s true. Leave him alone.’

  Scranway shoved me aside. My legs buckled beneath me; I thudded to the floor and could only look on, helpless, as he grabbed Trouble, shaking him, slapping him. Trouble stumbled back. He held up his fists, assumed a boxer’s stance, but Scranway had no time for Queensberry Rules.

  They slammed against one partition, then another. Trouble was lithe, fast on his feet, but Scranway, with his superior bulk, grappled him to the floor.

  They punched, kicked, pummelled.

  I gripped my leg, wincing at the pain, as my gaze ricocheted between the battle on the floor and the onlookers hunkered above. Murderous delight flared in every face. Some bellowed their support for Scranway – then Trouble – then Scranway.

  ‘Thrilling, isn’t it? Eddie just loves that dog.’ The voice insinuated itself into my ear. ‘Well, loved.’

  ‘Get away from me, Elmsley.’ He leaned over me like a secret assassin.

  ‘What, or you’ll beat me with your big stick?’

  I glared up at him. ‘You did it, didn’t you?’

  He was all innocence. ‘Did what?’

  With a cry, Trouble squirmed from beneath Scranway’s weight. He flung off his dressing gown. Again he held up his fists to parry, bounced on his feet. ‘Come on, Scranway! Fight me cleanly.’

  ‘I’ll kill you!’ Scranway’s fist swung out.

  Trouble danced back, dazzling in his silk pyjamas. ‘Coward! Filthy coward!’ He tossed back his head, flicking hair from his eyes.

  Scranway plummeted forward. Trouble darted away, but Scranway grabbed his collar. Silk ripped. Trouble was against the wall, with Scranway’s fist poised to strike, when a voice roared:

  ‘Boys! What do you think you’re doing?’

  Mr Gregg stood in the doorway.

  Scranway, trembling, pointed to Hunter. ‘That little bastard killed him.’ His voice, at first a whisper, became a shout: ‘He killed him!’ And Scranway would have hurled himself at Trouble again, Mr Gregg or no Mr Gregg.

  The pause was fatal. Trouble plunged, punching with the force of a hammer blow.

  Scranway crashed to the floor.

  Seconds ticked by, and he did not rise.

  Wearily, Mr Gregg advanced upon the hefty, supine boy. Trouble doubled over, nursing his knuckles. It was as if he did not yet know what he had done; none of us did. In the end it was Ralph Rex, Jr who skittered forward, spun Trouble around, and grabbed his hand, raising it above his head in a winner’s stance.

  First came one hesitant cry, then another; then cheers, rising up in a joyous surge, ringing against the ceiling, raining down like a benediction upon the benighted McManus II.

  ACT TWO

  Telemachus, Stay

  Fame is not always bestowed fairly. Take my Aunt Toolie: she has never enjoyed the legendary status that should, I think, have been hers. Several times during my career as a biographer I have tried to write about her, but always it seems she evades my grasp. Years ago, following the success of Auntie Mame, I proposed to my publisher a life of Tallulah Sharpless, the angle being that here was a real-life Auntie Mame, one quite as formidable as Mr Patrick Dennis’s creation. Aunt Toolie, the one-time Queen of Bohemia, should tell her story in her own words; my role would be to arrange them. The book, I hoped, might become a classic of sorts: the story of a shy, gawky Southern girl who parlayed the small legacy that enabled her to live independently into a position as grande dame of Greenwich Village, something between landlady, hostess, procuress, and matchmaker for all manner of Village types: writers, artists, actors; drunks, derelicts, dope-fiends. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes absurd, Aunt Toolie fostered, even created, the career of more than one celebrity. She deserved to be more than a behind-the-scenes figure, a bit player in the biographies of others. My editor was enthusiastic; alas, Aunt Toolie was not. By then, her Village days were far behind her. Why dwell on the past? There is only the future.

  Such perpetual anticipation is, of course, typical of Aunt Toolie.

  So it is left to me to recall who she was in those ramshackle days when I struggled to make my way as a writer in New York. Then (as now) my aunt is at all times onstage: a clattering assemblage of earrings, brooches, and bangles, in myriad shapes of brass, glass, and celluloid, and long swinging ropes of faux pearls. Stabbing the air with a cigarette holder that juts up at forty-five degrees, she flaunts flowing gowns of purple, orange, emerald, or gold, wrapped in stoles (often moth-eaten) of sable, mink, or ermine. Her lipstick is bright red, her powder corpse-pale; somewhat above where her eyebrows used to be she has pencilled surprised semicircles, and a spangly band holds back her hennaed, bobbed hair.

  Her age? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Impossible to guess.

  Her talk is all of young friends. She calls them her protégés and each, she insists, is bound for fame: Misses Maisie and Daisy Mountjoy, the Songbird Sisters – golden-haired Maisie, copper-haired Daisy – who one day will fill Carnegie Hall (in fact, to my aunt’s delight, they fill many a burlesque theatre); Miss Inez La Rue, the choreographer, Doyenne (so she calls herself) of Modern Dance; Mr Danvers Hill, her principal dancer (who decamps, disappointingly, to Tripoli, in pursuit of an Arab sailor); Mr Co
pley Wedger, a rich boy going through a Bohemian phase, whose talents remain unknown but undoubtedly will be prodigious, or so Aunt Toolie assures us; rumour has it that he is prodigious in other ways.

  Of Aunt Toolie’s circle, some were failures, some successes, but she loved them equally: Miranda Cast, the sculptor; Jackson Daunt, the songwriter; Benson Roth, acid-tongued critic (in later years, a New Yorker legend); Zola May Hudson, leading light in the Harlem Renaissance.

  In those days, I regarded myself as a poet. More truly, I was a jobbing hack, a filler writer and book reviewer, though I might (with more accuracy still) have been called Aunt Toolie’s secretary. Day after day I lit her cigarettes, mixed her cocktails, answered her letters, received her guests, and tramped the streets with piles of her invitations, which she inscribed on little silver-edged cards embossed with what she insisted was the Sharpless crest. The century was in its twenties, and so was I. Naturally, on leaving Yale, I had headed back to the place I called home since my days in France: Aunt Toolie’s huge shabby apartment above a speakeasy in an alley off Christopher Street. When my father died on the Pont Saint Michel, Aunt Toolie became all the family I had.

  Wobblewood, as her apartment was known, took its nickname from its treacherous floorboards. Half of them had buckled with damp or in places rotted through, and supplementary planks, sheets of cardboard, old doors, a legless table, several prone bookcases, and an antique Russian chessboard did their best to supply the lack, with ratty carpets flung on top. At Wobblewood, the energies of Greenwich Village gathered to a point. There, I wrote the poems that I imagined would make me famous. There, I first grew drunk on bathtub gin, and woke up for the first time with a stranger in my bed. And there, one blustery November evening in 1926, I met again the boy – the man – whom I would always call Trouble.

  Aunt Toolie had thrown one of her many parties. Each party had a purpose, or began with one. The goal this time was to premiere that now-celebrated atonal composition (the beginning, critics said later, of modern American music), Arnold Blitzstein’s Sonata in No Key. Blitzstein, a wiry, wild-haired Austrian who, at that time, spoke barely a word of English, was my aunt’s latest discovery. She had found him sleeping rough one night in Washington Square Park and, upon learning he was a composer, became at once convinced of his genius. ‘It’s frightfully moderne,’ she told her guests, enthusing about the work they were shortly to hear. ‘Oh, the bit where he beats on saucepan lids... a commentary, Arnold says, on the alienation of the worker from the means of production.’