Mysteries of Motion

by Hortense Calisher

  “You didn’t understand, Sonny. I’ll make it. Just that I’m scared.” Gilpin’s eyes bore into his. “Still want to ask me something? Or not?”

  They swing.

  It comes to Mole how precious such a question would be. One of the durable ones likely to go unanswered, even by headmaster Chape. Unasked, it could sustain him through the airlocks ahead. Only clasp it. Is space an opening out? Or a closing in?

  “Sorry about this, Sonny. I’m of the gravity generation.”

  “Name’s Mole.”

  “Sorry, Mole.”

  Pass me the torch, Mole said to himself. To all of them.

  2

  THE COUNTRY BEHIND HIM

  I.

  “SO, YOU FOUND YOUR NEW WIFE over here,” Bill Wert said across their table. All the Garrick’s other patrons were still at the bar. Club London didn’t usually dine at six-thirty, nor Wert either.

  Opposite him, the heavily mustached young Iranian, last seen eighteen years ago as a boy of ten, stared at him unnervingly.

  “I m-mean of course, in N-new York.” Wert sat back, annoyed. To all steadfast career officers in the Department, any place outside the U.S., even one’s own club in London, remained “over there” even when one was there. Normally Wert concealed it better.

  Young Bakhtiary kept silent. “New wife,” said to any modern upper-class Iranian, was tactless as well; monogamy was what was recent to them. To say it to Manoucher, whose father, in defiance of both fashion and palace ukase had taken a second wife at seventy and was now, at over ninety, taking a third (which must be why the son, for five years at the UN without a break, was passing through London on his way home), meant that Wert had jumped nuances and was speaking as family, to which his unique friendship with the elder Bakhtiary entitled him.

  Under that luxuriant mustache, which these days must make him appear old-fashioned even among his own countrymen, the boy eating now looked stolid and alertly stupid, the way all young men of his kind used to. In the thirty minutes since he and Wert had met, he’d seldom spoken without deliberation, as if the two long balloons of black hair on his upper lip gave him that privilege. Their tapered ends, if slightly elongated and tied behind his narrow Aryan head, could serve him as a mask, should he ever need one. All the young men had looked like that, in the provincial Azerbaijan of the younger Bill’s first tour. While there, a tender sprig barely out of Georgia, he’d never met a Bakhtiary socially, or a Pahlevi—the patronymic of the former Shah—either. This young man’s mother, the august first wife, had been a Pahlevi. With a long palace arm.

  “In New York?” Manouch, tall even at ten, must have got this from her side. He wore a Savile Row suit and Hardyman made-to-order shirt—which he wouldn’t have acquired in the present oil-money “Arab” sack of London, but by inherited habit. He put a manicured and wedding-ringed hand on the cloth. A squirt of mock orange, maybe Floris, came from him pleasantly. “No,” he said slowly. “I would not have find a wife there.”

  Wert grimaced, not concealing it. He’d never again seen Bakhtiary the father, or any of the family since that time in Venice, eighteen years ago, when the old man’s whole female clan had been accidental witnesses to Wert’s tragedy—the death of his wife Jenny in the courtyard below the Bakhtiarys’ hotel suite’s window—and the old man had for a spell adopted him. But the letters from Teheran still came regularly, written in the elegant Harrovian script and grammar of maybe 1905—along with slang roguishly Americanized for his correspondent. Bill, I’m getting hitched again, last week’s letter had said. Do you know the Egyptian symbol for life—the ankh? Bakhtiary had drawn it. That’s what a woman is. And the same shape. Adding, as often recently, You’re forty-six, Bill, fourteen years younger than me when I first married. Precocious, you were to us in Venice, married at only twenty-eight. The old man remembered everything—even that the day was a Wednesday, when Jenny Wert’s motorcycle had toppled on the cobbles below the Hotel Danieli’s balcony—and often described it. Never until now saying, or implying as so many friends did, “Bill, why don’t you marry again? It’s time.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t want to find a wife there?” Wert said irritably. Frankness had kept his rank low in the service, though the home crowd had learned that foreigners tended to trust him because of it.

  “In New York?” the son repeated, then logjammed again, in the remembered provincial style. Had he been brought up in the provinces? Was he a smart Bakhtiary, exported to the UN, or only a rich one whose way in had been bought for him? Could this son ever grow up to the thunderously willful style of his father? Who’d fallen from governmental grace a hundred times, and always on his feet—a dapper man, clean-shaven even then, who talked fast English and moved slow, clearly accomplishing mountains of the intrigues they called work, and twinkling all the while over “our little corruptions”—teasing all Anglo-Saxons within range.

  Manoucher was staring at him again. Wert saw him as he would have been in Meshed or Tabriz early on, walking along pinky-linked with another boy, not ogling the girls, but falling into quenched, agonized pashes confided only to each other, or even for each other, marriage being so long delayed that it was said these belated husbands often preferred sodomizing their wives. What could one say of him now except that at twenty-eight, Wert’s own age that time in Venice, but surely married early for an Iranian male, he was not precocious? He was the son. Some kind of duty plainly exuded from him.

  “In New York,” Manoucher said unexpectedly, “girls are only to be met…or is it…meet?” He laughed. Not a horse-laugh. A careful rumble. In a handsome voice. Displaying himself, as the young blades who’d come to Bill’s offices in Meshed or Tabriz had used to do, half in the prime hope of being cronies with the young American.

  “‘Met’ will do.”

  “I go to school in Germany. My mother insist. She went there.” He shrugged. And suddenly, he recited:

  Uber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh

  In allem Wipfeln spürest du

  Kaum einen Hauch.

  Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.

  Warte nur, balde

  Ruhest du auch.

  Manoucher’s eyes were now full of tears, probably because he’d done it so beautifully. Like the would-be cronies. Who had wept, reciting lines from the poet Firdousi, which Wert could barely understand, then had pressed his hand, grabbed up a last tea cake, and left. “Goethe. The most beautiful short poem outside of Greek, my father say…Over all hilltops…ist hush. In allem treetops, not even a…the birds sleep, the little birds…wait thou soon.” He shook his head. “Ist about death, yes? Though it says not the word. Even my father say—not translatable.”

  “I agree. I know a little German.” Wert smiled for the old man, who wrote poetry the way they all did, but in French. “When I was in Iran, the Bank Melli in Teheran had a resident poet. There’s a Bank Melli in the General Motors Plaza in New York. Whenever I pass it, I always want to go in and ask, ‘Your staff poet—may I speak to him?’”

  Manoucher whipped out a hand, pointing it at Wert so like a gun that the head of the Garrick’s dining room, a slim, finicky woman dressed like the governess in “The Turn of the Screw” but much more ladylike of course, turned her pleated bosom toward them. A diner or two, lately trickled in, turned also. “You are the same!” this Bakhtiary boomed at him. Pleasure stretched his mustache. “Ewig the same. As you were then.”

  “B-but how do you know?” Bill said. “You were ten years old, maybe. And I caught sight of you only once.” You having been sent out and away from the women when I was brought to them.

  “And the speeching. Exactly the same.” The young man sat back happily, his tie askew. He was one of those from whom Western dress, even when worn from birth, parted creakily in installments from neck to belly, pushed by fluid bones meant for the saddle or the squat. “B-bakhtiary, you called us, my father say. And he always call you—Buh-beel.”

  So he had, mocking Wert’s accent. Come in, Buhbeel, and talk,
he’d say, summoning Wert every day for a month after Jenny’s funeral. Wert’s office, briefing him on the old boy’s power and riches at home, had thought it wise for him to obey; even though the Middle East wasn’t yet Wert’s line, they’d said, any bright day in a department of state it might be; he already knew Farsi. In their kindness—he now suspected—they’d also thought it good for him.

  So it had been.

  “How is your father?”

  He knew at once, from the plumed drop of the boy’s face.

  “When did you last see him?” Wert said grimly, quite aware that this shouldn’t have been said—and had nothing to do with nuance. This had to do with the son himself. A beloved only son. The second wife had had only daughters, five of them. Yet although these days the world’s air spaces were fairly perfumed with “Arabs” traveling deluxe, with all their children and servants as was their custom, this son of one of the wealthiest—of a man who flew to Switzerland on a whim for a watch or a mountain walk, each being valued equally—hadn’t seen his father for five years, Wert couldn’t hazard why, except that it must be connected with the fact that the father himself, for all his travel, would never come to the States. Had young Manoucher been banished for offenses unimaginable—although what could offend such a philosophical father? What son could fall from the graces of a man whose mildly just letters reminded Wert of Lord Chesterfield’s?

  “He is preparing to die.”

  “Die?”

  The female maître d’ sent Mr. Wert, such a quiet gentleman usually, a reproachful hint; under her eye, the waiter brought cheese. On second glance, with that fall of chainy gold among her blousings, she looked Viennese, and less governess-y—more like a patient of Freud’s. One of those same complicated bourgeoisies with nipped waists, but who instead of having her pulings immortalized had gone and found her proper job. She looked nothing like an ankh. A pang knifed him, for the old man, and already a gentle, flowery hurt for the old man’s letters, sheafed like a wreath of fathers and uncles—Wert lacked male family—in their special box. He’d been planning a second box. He blamed the boy.

  “Oh, Mr. Wert—not for a year.”

  Soothing him, no less, this phlegmatic poem-quoter, product of too much wisdom at home. “Something—besides age then.” Bakhtiary had long promised to live past one hundred. And believably.

  “Cancer of the mouth.”

  No wonder Freud had come to mind. For the last year, Bakhtiary had been reporting on reading Freud for the first time, gently mocking most of the way, once or twice furious over trifles—and suddenly the subject had been dropped.

  “Ankh.” Wert croaked it. “Know what that is?”

  Manoucher smiled. “Anyone who know my father, know that…He didn’t tell you about her? This wife? He is so excited.” He shook his head, tenderly, the mustachios floating. “She is sixteen. Like my own mother was. Like the second wife, too. From Ardebil, this one.” He pursed his lips. “But from a good family. A very proper choice.” Yet some cloud now came over Manouch; he hung his face in acknowledgment. Recalling to Wert the oddly open charms of that household whose ward he had been for a month.

  The women of course had been only a background mist, except for the servingwoman, a body merely, which served tea like a walking veil, holding itself in bas-relief, producing from its cloth depths an entire silver tea set balanced on one snaked-out palm—hot pot included. Nine youths, all cousins, had lounged in and out, half of them living at the hotel, the others daily visiting. All of them had had personalities as supple as water; one could see their thoughts. The older men, of whom there were three contemporaries of the old man, were desiccated, powerful and opaque. Two middle-aged ones were lesser versions of the same. This young man, clouding over so openly, was still certainly nearest the youths. “And she is not a Universität graduate,” Manoucher said, the cloud clearing. “My father is so excited.”

  “The wedding will go on?” Wert heard his voice crack; let it. Some prejudices deserved to be shown.

  Young Bakhtiary leaned back, straightening. “And why not. She already chews the nun—the bread—for him. He so tires of custard. Lamb he can no longer take, though she tries. From her mouth to his. She is a good girl. It is unusual, yes, for her to be already in the house.” The maîtresse just then passing, Manoucher’s eye flicked once over her fortyish but tiny shape, as his father’s would have. “Of course, he is not yet—” He hesitated, but only for the word. “Entstellen?”

  “Disfigured.” Wert shuddered, hating the German, wishing somehow that Manoucher’s second language—no, third—had been French, which was his own second-best. Ordinarily the Iranians of his day hadn’t been linguists, as his colleagues on the Teheran desk had early informed him. Not a matter of talent. Too unbending, they’d said. Too proud.

  “No,” Manouch said. “The clinic assure us. Too deep.”

  “He’s in hospital?”

  “After the wedding. She will go with him.”

  “To chew,” Wert said, to the depths.

  “To Isfahan,” Manouch said stiffly. Had his English improved, suddenly or not?

  “Roses of Isfahan,” Wert grunted. He had an ancient record of that name, sung by Maggie Teyte. He’d never been back to Iran; though he’d have been welcomed. He’d preferred the letters. Knowing too well what a tour back there might do to them.

  “Indeed magnificent. And a good hospital.”

  “As good as Shiraz?”

  “As good, sir.” The eyes lowered. Did that mean that his father had given this second hospital to the nation as well? From certain profits received?

  “And the girl, will she—?” An idle question. A Western one.

  He shrugged. No, Wert thought—not pond water, that look of his. “She has never been to Isfahan. Or anywhere. She is very excited. And she may have a child. It is still possible.”

  “Artificially?” It would be a most modern hospital.

  “Not at all.”

  Wert was being scrutinized to the pore, like some precious quarto under a lens.

  As he reddened, Manoucher said softly, “Mr. Wert. My father want me to tell you that. And more. Much more. But in particular ‘Tell him about the child,’ he say. That it is possible.’”

  “You spoke to him?”

  “We speak daily.”

  So the son wasn’t after all exiled. Or else peculiarly so. And now he was going back. In the middle of revolution. For a wedding.

  “And—m-more?” Wert said, softly cooperating—as he had by God, in his replies to the letters all these years. Discussing anything under the sun, and whatever the old man called the tune on. Sometimes going so near the edge in matters of nations, or national philosophies, that once or twice Wert had felt compelled to show portions of the correspondence—by habit he kept carbons of his own letters—to his closest friend in the department.

  I don’t see any conflict, Nosworthy had said, chin tucked in at Wert rather too keenly. Unless anything from antiquities to the Roman satirists—to the preferred methods of coitus interruptus, was important to the national defense…As he supposed they were, of course. Still, Nosy, as he was called, had leaned fascinated over the letter on the aforesaid methods: Of course, I see you’ve given advices from time to time…As I see he’s given you, here. Hah! No more than friendly. He’d slapped the letter admiringly.

  “And more? What more?” Wert found himself speaking in the old Danieli rhythm in which, during successive afternoons of talk, he’d floundered further into Farsi. Like walking half a mile out off the Lido, it had been—into a sea which never had the decency to cover your head.

  “He wants you to know,” the son said, answering also in Farsi. “He wanted you to know especially. ‘Tell him I will smell like roses till the end,’ he said. ‘She will see to it. Be sure to tell him that—And I suppose you will have to tell him about the food. Manouch,’ he said, ‘tell him that the saliva of a young girl is sweet as sugar; he still won’t like it; they think that unclean. T
hough they keep their own unclean body hair. So tell him this. Persuade him,’ he says. ‘That in the evening in hospital, in the last dusk, she will still do for my body what it can no longer do to her.’” Manoucher blushed. But perhaps at the maîtresse, whose skirt, flouncing near, like her glance on both of them, had brushed Manoucher’s elbow.

  “Why couldn’t he tell me those things himself?” Wert said in English. “Write me, I mean. We never spared words. And I’d just had a letter.”

  “Oh he meant to. Vielleicht he meant to, Mr. Wert.” Manouch gave him the gliding look they always did when they wanted you to know they were lying for courtesy’s sake. Nosy would have called the look insincere. When it was just the opposite.

  The boy’s eyes were that extraordinary Kurdish blue. Some mountain infiltration, way back when? Though one wouldn’t lightly imply Kurdship to a Bakhtiary-Pahlevi, except in family teasing. He began to remember the protocol, every item of which, the old man had said, had a desert reason. “Like our obsession with roses and fountains,” he’d said, in his stiltedly perfect-spoken English. Slang he only wrote. “You Anglo-Saxons have the same, Beel. Climatic habits, I mean. Once, in the long vac, while I am at Harrow, I am invited to a school friend’s family in the Cotswolds. After that, no one has to tell me why English parliamentarians have that sheep-snuffle. Or why their wives neigh like mares…You must have the same cause and effect in America; what would they call it there—print-out?”

  Bakhtiary was always subscribing to dictionaries of slang and obscure academic publications, as well as to dozens of the little magazines, cultist bulletins and pulp rags he called “Yo-yo.” “Because after a time, it doesn’t bounce.” He loved all the new American euphemisms, the new graphs, as the fresh green evasions of a civilization reluctant to examine itself—“Dangerous, not to, yes, but it happens to you people every time.” Why didn’t he come to the States and see for himself?—Wert had often written, but this was never responded to. Just as for some years now—ever since the tenth anniversary of their meeting, on which date Bakhtiary had sent him a spray of the same small green sherbet-colored orchids he’d sent to the undertaker’s parlor in Venice—he had no longer mentioned Bill’s wife.