Mysteries of Motion

by Hortense Calisher

  Veronica recalled him as a giant of a man, with a calm maintained at high speed. A parliamentarian since the age of twenty-six, he’d been in the habit of saying that he’d always meant to take time out for race prejudice, but something else always came up. “I have got absolutely no prejudice against myself,” he used to tease. “That’s where people of color get it worst.” But when he was crossed unfairly, or saw unfairness exerted against others of the race, the whites of his eyes turned oxblood. “You ever know,” Vivie said, “the year you were born, your mother and father, he was in Rome for the FAO, they lived in a palace?” The ground floor of it, a UN rental. The girl had been shown pictures of the palely frescoed rooms, scantily furnished with huge pre-Victor Emmanuel sofas whose cracked-gilt curves exploded at the lens. “Your people always lived well.”

  After an attack, high on her crumpled pillows like a deposed queen, earrings awry, Vivie talked faster the more narrowly she’d escaped death; the megalomania was coming out in her, for “my girl.” Like a last tenderness for me, her girl thought, kneeling at the side of the bed, fist clenched over the pill bottle. A tender oozing formed in her, for all the put-upon, living in courage, dying in protest, with all their passion for a wider expanse spread out exaltedly before them. The heart in Vivie’s breast was breaking into floral offering. “Your father said I wasn’t ever to hold you back from your own terrors, just because I didn’t have them.” Eyes closed, Vivie snorted. The heart beat visibly. Her girl laid her other hand on it.

  They’d come back also to an Ollie changed to Ali by the turban whose expertise he demonstrated for them. Standing in front of Vivie’s triplepaneled dressmaker’s mirror with his arms stretched wide holding taut the two ends of snowy cloth, if he wasn’t quite an Indian, nor an angel nor a devil, he did seem of a genus almost his own. When the turban’s fat peak was complete he stuck a glass topaz at the crest, ramming in the stickpin so jauntily that it drew blood from his scalp; all his actions were flawed alike. Full-face, his upper lip was a cupid’s bow nearly touching his nose. Glossy words came often from it, never outright lies. In contrast, when he was in a scrape his silences were thick with little peripheral fears from which Vivie would have to puzzle out what the main chance had been, and what had gone wrong with it.

  Grinding her chair roughly back, she strode to the kitchenette, opened the fridge on the food party waiting there—what had possessed her, to buy two of this, two of that?; she wasn’t hungry for any of it—slammed the door, and poured herself a club soda. To the left of the tiny counter, in the wall just above, a black mouthpiece protruded, the intercom between this flat and Ali’s just above. Quick as that man had been, he hadn’t noticed it. If she let her mind loose on him, she could imagine him and his life in more detail than he would believe, fleshing him out from others of his kind he might be superior to, yet still resembled. But don’t dwell on him. By letting him be the first to come here, hadn’t she already changed this place—since Vivie’s death kept solely for the desk’s contents and all allied broodings—into just that “little suite” she’d downgraded to him?

  Meanwhile, knowing damn well that the idea of such a place, nested in the heart of the city and for her adventures alone, had excited her ever since Ali used to take her to those other more “executive” suites. With her orange lamps and the misty gray curtains shopped for like any bride, she’d made the place a hope chest for illicit weddings with the unknown, a den which only a certain diffidence and leanness of taste had kept short of the sordid. Was there any difference between her and him because this place was primped with books? Or because, unlike Ali, she didn’t use it for livelihood?

  Hers was a woman’s fantasy. On the same level as any roving male’s, but not stopping there—and poignant against her own will. For, in the fantasies of most women, these fests were never communal, jolly and shared, but private; their little magic carpets were still designed for only one guest.

  Her own harsh laugh startled her. He hadn’t liked that laugh—the man. Vivie too had always been at her to change it consciously, the way you’d change a name that didn’t go with your beauty. But the laugh came from her cells, satirical. She put her mouth to the intercom and blew.

  If her stepbrother, who always proudly referred to himself as “a 4 A.M. person,” did prowl beyond the hours of even his raunchy crowd, this was partly because his milkweed energies collected late. According to Vivie, when he was a boy she couldn’t get him up in the morning either for school or fun, and one exasperated afternoon had brought in all the neighborhood boys to see him drowsing in his tousled bed, hugging the pillow like a girl. The ruse had only put him farther outside the pale of ordinary boys. To Vivie’s rage, he’d liked it there.

  Perhaps there were even certain body rhythms, after-evening cycles, which helped make you a pimp. Ali the grown man complained to his mother that he wasn’t “Garuda evil”—referring to the Thai devil doll he kept to scare the girls upstairs—but merely “fancy-chancy” in his tastes, meaning that his spirit oozed most comfortably into corners where moral standards were relaxed. His ever-pubescent good looks put the seal on that, as Veronica herself knew good looks could, verging with you to emphasize any path you took. Ali’s skin color, though, which could pass for a number of indeterminate races, allowed him more experiment with truth. Long before she’d realized it, her stepbrother had served as her spore collector down among some of the world’s dirty businesses she’d been spared but ought to know about. For this she was grateful to him. He’d saved her from being an aristocrat—the fake one that Vivie otherwise would have made of her.

  As for Ali’s rites with women, luckily his sadisms must be as relaxed as the rest of him, at their worst little social cruelties. Beyond that, there were many males not pimps who liked to have a woman only once. She understood this, or had. She’d brought men “home” in many parts of the world—hotels, apartments borrowed or rented for her travels, only never here. “Slap death a little, after I’m gone,” Vivie had said. Her pupils had glazed, never her brain. “Young ones have to.” Make this place yours, she meant; she’d known how much it wasn’t yet. So—seized by that man’s eyes, so ready to own the city as he stood on those steps, by that lion hair of his so maverick to the “business” rest of him, and most of all by the mane of travel floating behind him so clear—she’d told herself she was courting him as the first candidate, to make the home-place hers.

  Ali wasn’t answering. Barred from here, he probably never now listened for the intercom. After his mother’s death, unable to come to Vivie either for the advice he asked for after the deed like a chaser after whisky, but never took, or for the bail money, which he did, he’d started coming to Veronica, until she’d at last shut him out. The house had been left to them jointly—by that same Vivie who’d sworn “on your father’s head, and mine” to keep her girl from “Ollie’s muck.” After years of waiting for him to change, she’d finally conceded there was nothing to wait for. “When I’m gone, let him go.” Yet in the end she had bound them together, in one of those counter-actions with which people both denied the whole tenor of their lives and admitted it.

  Like me, she thought. Like mine. The unknown is harder for a woman to acquire. When will I learn that mock weddings are not the way to it?

  She bent her head to the next stanza, of which, though it wasn’t done yet, though nothing in the manuscript was final, she was beginning to be proud.

  Upstairs, as the man and I bedlock, the alley panes blaze.

  Is that three zombies combing their hair,

  Or three hairy pots on the windowsill

  Of those boys who give harlequin cookouts?

  (Two pairs of opera glasses lying there, and a riding crop)

  And no wonder, with the MONY time-tower opening its dark

  redoubt

  On a climbing string of light it douses again, dickering

  Like a stepmother letting you in, closing you out.

  Alto night birds scream in the late coffee
shop

  “Look boy, you gave me a nigger cigar!”

  What’s that mean? Why’s there always a 2 A.M. pistol shot

  But never a 6 A.M. corpse?

  Toward morning the harbor’s talking,

  Grave hulls at sea, yawing broad thoughts.

  The avenue rings with heels, like an apse,

  Society shadows the streets, the nation begins living,

  The day ferry jams the pier, the fur stores kneel in prayer.

  This street never wears out.

  Nothing too big for it, nothing too small.

  But how will Lacey come again, to Carnegie Hall?

  With this addition the poem became a poem—she was almost sure of it. And the next stanza—would there be one? From day to day she was never sure. What would happen there? Each stanza so far was an era. One could never see at the time the eras of one's life. To say “Lacey,” not to call her “Miss”—that was a change. She was concerning herself with that when the downstairs buzzer was pressed.

  Who?…My name is Mulenberg…Oh no, you don’t. The night’s over. I’ve shut you out.

  Then she heard the elevator, sighing upward. To get to it, if no one upstairs answered your buzz, you had to have a key.

  Ollie, then. She was glad—that she was glad.

  Sly, loose, mean—though never to her—and sweet (for until her teens he’d been the most beguiling companion), yes, he lived in the mulch between good and bad, and had taught her it was there. Yet he had an odd loyalty to what he was, a need to be consistent with it. Reject him from your life, as she and Vivie, clasped in desperation, had once tried to do, and you carried him like a stone in your consciousness, as if you’d resisted a natural force—which perhaps you had. The elevator passed her floor, sighing. Why’d he rung the buzzer then? Here it came, the old confusion, hot and binding, the shifty yoke Ollie always brought along with him. Behind her, the intercom sibilated. “Sister?”

  He’s safe. He’s home. But don’t answer. Don’t get into it. Better to carry the stone.

  “Y-yes, Ollie?”

  “Shhh-h-h. I must come down. And speak to you.”

  She clasped her hands tight. “Okay.”

  “Lis-sen. Doose the lights.”

  How Irish the Bejan accent sometimes sounded. It could pass for Anglo-Indian, leftover Hindustani or what-have-you; the old Empire on his tongue served him well. Whenever he had to light out, he fled to corners of that empire, small islands or outposts, never to the continents. In her own travels she’d encountered other people who too were bits and drifts of the Empire, as she was in part herself. Empires didn’t stop all at once, but turned human and fragmentary.

  Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. Twenty. One of the things Ollie always did was to make you wait. Learn to wait.

  He was there, scratching at the peephole. The minute she opened up and let him into the room he grabbed her wrist and led her quickly into the walk-in closet in the bedroom. He was always at ease in the dark; was that why his friends kept him on?

  “There—” he whispered. “You can turn on the light now.”

  She fumbled unwillingly for the string. Disaster from his second-rate crimes never touched his Roman-silk suits. Would blood have fallen on Ollie? Did she want to see that, or not?

  He’d changed to his flight uniform, so who could tell? The vanilla suit and turban were gone. Sharp jeans and two sweaters now, the string one and the cardigan, and the Fendi shoulder bag. An admiring twinge pricked her. He dressed for travel better than anybody. Except her.

  “You forgot to change shoes.” Tawny suede, high-heeled and buckled.

  He hadn’t been able to bring himself to. Or to divest himself of his rings. Garish ten-carat love knot or true green-gold scarab, fake solitaire and dim carnelian Greek seal from the first century, he’d kept them all.

  Why was he looking at her that way? Pityingly.

  “You’ll have to get out of here,” he said hoarsely. “By tonight.”

  When he saw she couldn’t answer, he smoothed her cheek. “They’ll be coming to wreck this place.”

  Vivie and she had lived under the shadow of many such “theys.” “So you got out of the washroom.”

  His neck arched like a cat’s. “She came here, the c—?” He always curbed his tongue to her. She was Sister. “Where’d she go?”

  “Back to her Queens bar. In Mamma’s gold dress.”

  “Mamma’s—The one I gave her? What the hell you—?”

  “She had to change too.”

  He put his hand to his mouth.

  “You help kill him?”

  He shook his head. “But they know I know who.” From behind the hand, sludgily. Above the hand his eyes, brown and humid, were from a father Vivie’d never identified. Veronica’s own father hadn’t much wanted to give him their name, confiding wryly, People’ll think he’s mine.

  “I’ll have to make a clean break,” he said. “This time.”

  This time. He’d never said that before. The times were always separate, always a surprise to him.

  “Where’ll you go?”

  “Better you don’t know.” He always said that, heroically. Then came the letters for money, loud and plain, in between hints of return. Money to come back, money to stay—all the same money, Vivie said, and said. By the time he did come back it was all over, for one more time.

  The weak bulb shone down on him.

  So many things they knew of together, no matter what. For a moment she dreamed there, discounting what he’d said about the place. One of his little fears, which were relieved the minute he’d confessed them. “You hungry?” she said absently. What Vivie always said to either of them—the only way she showed her feelings. Before you go, let me pack you a lunch.

  “I ate,” he said, listless. “After they left. The restaurant. Safest place.”

  She recoiled. Garments hung behind her pressed against her, clustering. “You—ate?”

  “He took them for four hundred thousand,” he said. “I introduced him. I never thought he couldn’t pay.” His head swiveled away, then back. “I didn’t have my gun, you know. By the way—where is my gun?” He fisted her lightly above the breast, half grinning winsomely. Vivie had always been stealing his gun, for his own protection. His sister was becoming the surrogate in spite of herself. He knew.

  “I’ll have to turn on the bedroom light.”

  “Okay, dolly. I’ll stay here.”

  In the bedroom, taking the gun from the corner where she’d blindly stashed it again, she was arrested by the calling card lying on the bed. Smiling, she picked it up. So that’s how he spells his name, without an h. And yes, there it was—the address: One Gulf & Western. She gave it a peculiar smile. She knew well enough that you couldn’t see it from here.

  How clean the card looks, how businesslike, almost chill. Just the name and the address, not even the company. A million miles away, and who knows how many dollars, from lives full of—clean breaks. She left it on the bed. Dousing the light.

  Ollie was looking up at all her old files, stacked on shelves built around pipes which led upstairs to his kitchen. Not a good place for them, as she knew. “Here—” she said behind him.

  He whirled around. “Jesus…Oh…I’m all jumps…Thanks.” The gun went in a sweater pocket at a crazy angle. At once he was nonchalant. “Now, promise me. Two hours, no more, you be out of here, okay?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It has to do with me, girl. I told you. They can’t conceive of loyalty.” The word purled. “Sure as Christmas, they’ll come.”

  “For you. Not for me.”

  He stamped his foot. “Jolly damn.” An island oath. Vivie’s.

  “It’s your mouth they want to shut.”

  “Mouth?” He shuddered. “They are not so discriminating.” Drawing her into the closet, he bunched her hands in his. “Honey—” It was almost an embrace. “For the house. They’ll go for the house.” He was sweating. “I have it on good authority.
We have till 5 A.M.”

  It was the “we” half-convinced her, and that he was shivering. The clothes she and he were pressed against smelled hot of her own scent, lost between their two bodies, which were front to front as if to copulate, though he and she had always been sibling dead to each other. She saw that his face at last had no girlish pout anymore. Ten years from now, at fifty-odd, he would be what? She had no doubt he would be alive, somewhere. But this was the way she would see him, the two of them, closeted. She saw the buckle of his shoe.

  He’s all provocation. Yes, why not? They’ll bomb the house.

  He watched her glance out at the room, at her bookshelves and up at the files. She saw herself blown out of here into that freedom from possessions which so few could achieve on their own.

  “Look, sis. You want the house, you can have it. There’s enough insurance, you want to repair later. The land is yours, from now on. I shan’t ever claim, I swear. But you must go now.”

  Moving her head carefully not to knock the bulb, she broke away from him and flicked on every light in the house. Shrinking back from the glare, his face worked like a bladder. She saw the Garuda he would be.

  “Never, then?” she said. “Ever? No money from me to you? No letters for it. For bail, for anything? Not from jail, not from anywhere. Understand? I’m not to be Vivie to you? Ever?” She wasn’t fool enough to ask his promise. Only enough to promise herself what maybe Vivie after all foresaw. That the stone itself, by its own doing, might relieve her of it.

  “A—real clean break?” His big lip actually quivered. When she said nothing he whistled. “I’ll—miss that rocker.”

  “You want to wait with me here instead?” she said, dry. “Bull it through, together?”

  He did blanch at that. So it was true then. They would come.