Mysteries of Motion

by Hortense Calisher

  So the voice will go on. That’s something.

  “You ever think of busyness, Mr. Wert?”

  “Often.”

  The card extended has Ordoobadi’s name, four intercontinental offices and a cable line, but no company name.

  “Sell space, eh? Just pure white space.”

  “Eh?”

  Wert repeats it in Farsi.

  “What good Farsi!”

  “Honey-butter style.”

  But Ordoobadi is jubilant. “Listen to this, Manoucher! What do you think we sell? We sell—”

  Manoucher is gone.

  On the women’s side, those two doll-babies, bending over from their four-inch heels with their round bottoms reared, have persuaded his wife from her veil. Her revealed face, rigid as a mask on a neck not its own, is untintable. Clearly even those two don’t dare. All by herself she has a symmetry, of lap and knee, lax hands on them, of black brows dabbed. The blue eyes swim, blinking. There’s a Bellini in the National Gallery looks like that, but it has an infant on its lap.

  On impulse he walks over to her. Her eyes lower at once. She must know the effect they have on him. He’s just identified it. When he kisses her hand, Fateh’s girls breathe in as one. Or does the whole room already know what he’s just found out? That he’s been sent the wrong girl? Had she herself known at once? That they should have sent her to him?

  Poor blue-eyed, bluestocking Machine, with a neck made to arch more under kisses than under doctrine, she does remind him of Jenny, but only because he recognizes that blend of the steadfast and the mercurial—and knows just how far it will go. Of all the people here, she’d have made it quickest to being an American.

  He lets go her hand. In Switzerland, life under Madame’s vengeance will assuage her guilt; it’ll be like being in prison again. But after that, a girl like her must verge toward convicted action. Or toward a man, possibly a family one. Or will she become absorbed in their commerce, one of those muscular, charioteering Dianas in the new high-philosophical, female business style? Before that, he and the other Soraya must send for her. Hope is what she needs.

  “Speak English,” he says to her. “Oh, not to me. But generally. Break a vow, why don’t you? Maybe it’ll help.” Cruel. He’s learning. “And I’ll write you, from America. Letters you might even like.”

  He sees that the other Soraya has vanished. A sharp-eyed chorus in duo at his elbow supplies the answer before he asks.

  “She is waiting outside.”

  “We are ready to eat, she does not want to.”

  “She will help drive; she has international license.”

  “They have pack you a lunch.”

  “A very good lunch.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  What practical girls they are, and she is. Prettier than Manoucher’s wife, the other Soraya is also easier, with talents to more moderate scale. Tough and brave, she’ll have his admiring tenderness forever. Plenty steadfast, too, she sees beyond ideals alone. She is the true heroine. Pink socks.

  Manoucher’s wife would have been—will be—neurotic enough to fight with him, sardonically knowing what is wrong with him. Living with him, or near, she’d wage war against the West in him—and so assuage his guilt.

  Wert wants both of them—in the house. He understands that concept perfectly, wanting at once to talk over this marvel, and his devious progress to it, with the person who would understand each—perfectly. Who would agree that in both these solemnly breathtaking girls there are certain flecks of humor—discernible in each like the flakes in a glass of Goldwasser, which could flourish best in concert—which must be what harem humor is. Who would concede that for the time to come, or maybe for all time, the girl waiting outside for him is now Soraya, Manoucher’s wife being now—the other one.

  Extraordinary, what Bakh has done for him, considering the modern world. And Wert is going to accept. Knowing every nuance of the climb by which he’s come to it—every horizontal traverse, crampon and pickax by which two mountaineers can climb from opposite sides to the top—new snow on old ice being specially dangerous.

  Which top turns out to be a flat space just big enough for two pairs of boots, one of them worn down at the back.

  Does such a space have any credit in the realms of higher conflict?—Probably not. Some human weaknesses are too small for international congresses.

  …Oh don’t be too sure about that, Wert. As I’ve hinted before—there’s an underskin sexual thrill to the changeovers of nations, whether these come by codicil or a landing onshore. Take the spinster British—shrouding supple India in her own muslins and pongees. Or the French with their ferocious dictionaries, seducing Algiers from behind a coy fretwork of civil law. That latex-breasted sponginess of you and yours, Wert, we’ll rape it yet. With our barbarian wedge.

  But now they want him out of here, the whole crowd. Those men he’s met are surrounding him, fiercely suave. He’s theirs now. Those he hasn’t met are smiling allegiances, crude or austere. But like any in-laws they have family secrets to mull over, feelings still to be kept from him. The wedding is over, of him to them.

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  This dark rug-room, spored with their moisture and light, is already growing them a world here, which can go anywhere. They’ll penetrate the contradictory life over here—our bathrooms like hardened blancmange, our pavements dirtied with garbage gone beyond collection, the fat land gone nitrate-rich with wells our farmers themselves daren’t drink from—yet all of it still gassed only with domestic stainings, for generations not browned with mass blood. Into it they’ll insert themselves, arrowheads steelier than are known here, but bazaar people also, who understand merchandise, software, hardware, all the local words for what with them will end up in the clan machine, and in the gems wound like electric lace around the women. Where we bar them from our inns, they’ll buy them. Their keys will grow here as these always grow, iron affecting the host soil.

  It’s nothing new. In London, all the stationers are Pakistani now; in New York, Korean all the fruiterers. Such a movement comes from below the money-mark as well, a lowly surf no United Nations dare legislate aloud, no bourse will bother with. The Bible and Koran are full of it. No diplomacy can hold out against it, it’s the paranoia of what happens. Nations move.

  How very tiring it has been, though, not to admit that ever-third world to consciousness.

  “Good-bye.”

  “Oh, good-bye, Ordoobadi.”

  Ordoobadi’s hand makes a feint at being firm, then lies limp in Wert’s. But it’s merely the bisexual handshake of half the polite men of Europe. “Outer space—it’s the new opium, Misser Wert. You think about it.”

  Wert tiptoes from the room, closing its door behind him. Crossing the empty second room of chairs and screens, he closes that door as well, with caretaker heed. So, Smiley—my village. See you at the Kinkerbocker Club.

  On the landing she’s waiting patiently; a girl without a calendar. Otherwise, that girl has vanished. Or all versions of her yet seen. Brown coat now, brown cap, shoes to match—and stockings, soft plop of brown bag. The going-away clothes, who hasn’t contributed them? Jewels in her ears. Collar up, one can’t see the bandages. She’ll do for him what he’s never been able to do himself. She’ll heal, but not too easily. She’ll keep a sharp lookout.

  But she’s not alone.

  Fereydoun’s valise is at his feet. His hat is on his valise. “You can’t think it, Mr. Beel. That they would let her go alone.”

  “Can’t they. Or only to prison?”

  She’s already sneaking her glasses on, as if they’re contraband.

  “And your cousin. That charming lady. Would she approve?”

  “My cousin has more than charm.”

  “I recall.” Fereydoun squats to his hat. Smoothing it, he looks like a butler stirring a campfire. What bruised-blue bits of human offal, human history, he must grill there from time to
time, some of it his own. There’s a Tory glow about the old man, a stubbornness like the light seen through the stained-glass of badly reconstructed saints. What is it? “Madame—wishes me gone. It was never my house.”

  Why, he’s honest, that’s all. But with such a struggle to show it, under that equivocal voice, plumped countenance. Could one learn to divine it?

  “And Manoucher—wishes not to look at me.”

  How easily Fereydoun might be arranged for, after all. Wert’s cousin is already half in the room, consoling with all her native good: Oh, but, Mr. Fereydoun, your knees are still so good, for our age.

  She, not Wert, could become Ferey’s confidant, more hardened in the hands than Madame but as welcomely imperious. On her antebellum porch in old Athens—with their backs to the gas station—she and he can exchange old civil wars. She learning, for instance, how long before this Sunday in Queens Fereydoun had had to be the silent harborer of bad news. Hearing, too, what Wert only now surmises. Up to now he had visualized the old courtier ever behind a screen work of telephone calls. Now, looking at the old man and the girl, he grasps the collusive innocence which has had to be meted out between them. She had carried the news. Wert looks over at the girl. “In that case—?”

  A brown chirrup from her. “Okeh.”

  She’s gone foreign on him again. Chill spreads in him like Luminal, half pleasurable. “Well then, Ferey—I expect my cousin’ll be proud to have you. She liked you very much.”

  Fereydoun’s already standing, fingertips together. His own story will remain inviolate, except for a tremor of it that Wert can guess at: And I, Fereydoun, will not have to bear the sight of Manoucher.

  “Thank you,” he says low. “Your car’s a rented one, isn’t it? Why don’t we go in mine? It is mine.” He blushes again. “Give me the registration. Fateh will take care of delivering it.”

  “She drives?”

  “Like the wind.” He goes off to take care of it.

  “He’ll have some money of his own,” the girl says. “He doesn’t know it yet. Bakhtiary saw to it. Your cousin will take him in?”

  “For good? You’d want that?”

  “Best for him.” From behind the glasses, and the hat.

  “Possibly she’ll be glad to. They’re about the same age. And tastes.”

  Crazy. How can he know what Ferey’s tastes are, or even his own cousin’s, during those intervals when all creatures are a lone unit of being? He’s merely tired of clocking the differences between people; he wants likenesses. It’s then we can make decisions for others. “And, that house of hers.” With all its assembled family garniture. “He can organize it. Like a palace.” Relieving me of that yoke. Wert finds he can smile. “Look—it won’t take long to get to my hotel. They’ll find rooms, for you and him. The manager’s—a gentleman. Tomorrow you’ll see a doctor.” He’s prepared to insist. No answer. “At my cousin’s—we’ll decide what next. That okay with you?” She has a right to know what to expect. So does he.

  She’s listening, but not to him. To a sound he can’t identify, either what it is or where it’s coming from, except that it’s not coming from the dining room. Pillahil-ilah-allah-ilal. The voice of the wedding presents, wailing from the box-room downstairs? Or all the random birdcalls of his life come to plague him, as men are plagued when they find pleasures too strange for them? Peeah-ee-ahooo-eu-uu-pewi. Balooch.

  No, it’s the call to evening, from the mosque. Do they have an imam, here?

  Together, they follow it.

  In the small room off the hallway a slim figure, white-shirted, is touching its forehead to the floor over and over. It’s a young man, a young man’s voice, rasping and uncertain, new to heavenward allegation, testing it. Or greeting what presently exists. It’s the Ordoobadi boy.

  Finished, he passes their niche without seeing them. Wert has a view of his face. That face knows it is immigrant.

  He checks an impulse to go after it. No more cronies for tea. This girl is bringing him dowry enough. The reasons for violence—he must always have wanted them.

  Wert raises his head, sniffing. He knows that smell, long-grained in the nostril, Caspian, on the edge of char. They’ll eat it anyway, as they always do. This meal is not on camera. Each child shall have a piece of its burnt lace. “The rice is burning.”

  That driver’s cap she’s wearing must be Fateh’s. The long visor projects from her forehead like an antenna, over goggles that watch. He lifts the cap off, the glasses also, half wanting the guises never to end. She’s to lead him to the wilderness.

  Underneath, her eyelids are wrinkled shut in prune misery. Her mouth is moving, in his language. He bends his ear to it. “Make me be here. I am not here yet. Please—make me be here.”

  Ferey, passing them on his way out to the car, lowers his glance respectfully. They seem to be in a passage of love.

  The small room Wert can see over her shoulder has nothing religious in it except an east window. It’s reddening. Old Sol’s going cosmic, once again. In the mean street down below, buildings hulk on their paws before him. South of Vancouver, on the last coast West, mountains slope to the sea, kitten in the starlight. Praise all the path between there and here—his country.

  The game is always to enumerate, to praise, swallowing all ethical or aesthetic disappointment. To traipse across the steppes, the kraals, the wadis of whatever, the golf courses and the health stations of the new, new world, or the old, with heart-warming dinners everywhere. He can’t. No more palaces, except for Fereydoun.

  How give someone your country except by first in faith receiving it, taking it like communion on the tongue? In all its shames and glories.

  He pressed a hard palm against her back, remembering exactly everything. “You’ll dream here,” he said.

  We’re the western approaches, limpid in the starlight. They haven’t really seen us yet.

  3

  MYSTERIES OF MOTION

  THE FREE ROOM

  “OH, MY HONIES—” Mulenberg writes to his daughters. The word processor has already corrected him—“honeys.” After spending three of his daily Free Room hours in mute session with it, he isn’t about to argue. Those are his first written words.

  Behind him, Gilpin hunches in one of the silvery Easy Chairs, so labeled by its distant manufacturer. An easy chair shouldn’t be luminous, he said the first day. He always has a book. Sometimes he annotates rapidly in what he says is a form of speed-writing but each day he politely refuses use of the processor. “Bravo,” he says now. “Don’t stop for me.”

  “I’m not. If you’re sure you don’t want it.”

  “Hath too lean and hungry a look for me. We won’t have them at The Sheet.” At mention of his newspaper his face gives its usual gaunt twitch.

  “Shakespeare—” the man now known to them as Cohen-Lievering says, making it out the airlock in one eel-hipped slide. His large head, bobbing on its rubber neck, recedes last.

  “Some exit line,” Mulenberg says.

  “He once had to recite whole plays, for his stuttering.” Gilpin nods toward the shelves of personal-history folders which line the forward wall. “Moves like an angel, though.”

  “Or like a bat. Extra-sensory vibrations in his nose. Where’d he go?” Mulenberg has no further reason to be envious of Lievering on Veronica’s account, unless one is stupid enough to be envious of history. The man to be jealous of, for commanding love he hasn’t sought, is sitting across from him.

  “Second crew’s cabin, next to the cockpit. He and Mole.” Gilpin’s face lights up. “That’s where they’ve berthed the boy. The whistlers’ cabin, Mole calls it.”

  “Kid’s kind of their mascot, eh?”

  “You might say—everybody’s.” Gilpin hunches further into the offending chair. He and Mulenberg are both in their more comfortable fatigue suits. He looks up from his usual brooding, the space pencil on its wrist-clip dangling idly. There’s gravity here, but no loose objects are allowed. “According to Mole, Ship
’s Commander Captain Dove thinks Lievering looks like Jesus. A Jewish Jesus, the captain said.” Gilpin grins until the joke takes.

  “Mole—” Mulenberg says. “That the boy’s name? Or his situation.” He’s not been too dazed by his own affairs to see that there is one.

  “He was born to it.” Gilpin shuts his lip.

  The man can’t lie; he even dislikes chairs for pretending to be Easy. But he can be sloppy about the facts. “Dove isn’t the ship’s commander,” Mulenberg says gently. “Commander’s an air-force cross-over none of us in Ordnance has met yet. Don’t know if even Wert has. Keeping him under wraps.”

  Gilpin smiles at himself—the kind of man who would see his own drawbacks in perspective. “Should’ve known they’d never stand for a commander named Dove.”

  So even Gilpin isn’t idealist enough to assume there are no military aspects to this mission? “The Civilian Courier,” Mulenberg says with a smile. Their brand of hype. So simple it works. For the great mass of the simple. For whom he has no contempt but no special feel, either. Except for his travels, he might have been one of them.

  “Wert says that word acts on me like a glass of wine. Civilian.”

  “Wert doesn’t get to go forward much, does he. For a man who’s going to be administrative officer.” Some show of equality was usually made by the military, when they wanted a man’s services. There had been—for Mulenberg.

  “Wert has—a lot of background. Old government man.”

  “Pretty dated, eh?”

  The answer is just a headshake, but with more cussedness than maybe shows. Anyway, a man not to be lifted up by his own lapels. Yet accessible. Gilpin may make it his business to know about you, but this is why you can talk to him. Mulenberg sighs. “Wert had daughters, he’d know how dated he really is. Especially if they’ve got the idea you travel light.” Veronica crosses his mind, like a wraith which can’t get away this time. Where is she? Not far. “Promised to write them a full account. So as not to be just a—you know. Passenger freight. Maidie’s the emotional one, though to see her you’d never know. Married to that town she lives in. Keeps their home on firehouse discipline.” Though that broker husband of hers will never find the brass pole to slide down on for getaway. “I did something to shock her years ago, at her mother’s funeral. Well, you might as well know. I tore the dress—from the body. She hadn’t spoken to me since. Until the corridor.”