In the King's Arms

by Sonia Taitz

  “Well, what are you doing in this bloody tourist’s pub?” he bellowed. “Where one is meant to find no one whom one knows! Where one is meant not to be spied on! Haven’t you any sense at all? I tell you this for your own advancement!”

  Lily burst out laughing. Peter had a ridiculous pink face. Then he laughed, too, a trifle reluctantly. He asked Lily if she was a “Yank.” She admitted it. She said she was Austro-Hungarian “by blood,” though, descended from impoverished royals, deposed but proud. Peter actually seemed to believe her. He nodded slowly, approvingly.

  “Do you dye your hair that color?”

  “Yes,” said Lily. “I do. Its natural color is white like Andy Warhol’s. We came over from Hungary together. He’s albino. Mine’s white by accident of fortune. The fright of my family’s sudden departure to the New World turned it overnight. That, and saying goodbye to all the faithful servants.”

  “Do you like New York? Are you a millionairess?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I never ask. I demand. I demand to know. But I suddenly couldn’t care less. You’ve got lovely Magyar cheekbones. Come here. What’s this you’re drinking? Fruit juice?” He stared at Lily’s mulberry wine. “Never drink this vomit again!” Flora fidgeted restlessly.

  “Now,” he said, taking Lily’s glass away and throwing it at the stone wall. “Would you like to have a Pimm’s cup in my room?”

  “O.K.”

  “Flora, if you’re going to sulk like that, just go.”

  “It’s nearly suppertime,” said Flora. “I’m eating in Hall tonight. I had better go.” She played with her scarf. “Will I see you in The Grapes later on?”

  “You might,” he said. “Don’t eat brussels sprouts, just in case.”

  He walked off with Lily. His college was Christ Church, and his room extraordinarily studied. An antique mirror bearing poorly distinguishable comedy-and-tragedy masks hung on the wall over the bed. A sheepskin rug was tossed on the floor, and upon it a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal was exhibited, the moaning nudes writhing on the splayed cover. The wall across the bed was plastered with art postcards from around the world. Peter could identify them all, and liked to. He made Lily a Pimm’s cup. She sat in an armchair that was draped with a ratty fur stole.

  “So you’re new,” he said, draping his bones on the bed. “A fresher.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m fourth year,” he said, proudly. “Modern languages.” Actually, Lily, pursuing a second degree, was no younger than Peter.

  “Which ones?” she prompted.

  “Italian and German. It’s quite tough. Had to go to Munich last year.”

  “Didn’t you like it?” Boy, she thought, her mind humming. Munich. Dachau’s neighbor. And this new chum of mine was there, oh so casually.

  “No. I loathed it. Fatheads. Boors. The girls had thickened calves. You’ve heard of ‘the fatted calf,’ haven’t you? Those girls had two, each. Ankles like tree trunks. It’s no wonder they lost the war. No pretties to die for. None that I saw, at any rate. None like you.”

  Lily was just thinking that she found him sexually repulsive, although otherwise quite genial.

  “I spent my spring vac in Vienna,” he continued. “Even worse, those women. Cows. Nasty, too. A ghastly, fin du siècle feeling. And everyone eats far too much. Schlag. Schlag on their coffee, schlag on everything, schlag on their schlagged-up arses.”

  “Did you know it means ‘beaten’?”

  “Of course I’d know, fish-face. Like ‘whipped’ cream or ‘distressed’ leather. Hmmm . . . What of it? Getting randy, are you now? Pimm’s does that to girls.”

  “No!” she giggled. “It’s just that my mother uses that word when she tells me a particular story about—”

  “Yes, I’m sure I understand. About beating the servants in the Schloss. Poor Austro-Hungarian Royal. You must miss your waltzes now and then. Mein Liebe . . .”

  “Well, not really,” she said calmly. “You see, we’re not all that homesick. You see—we’re—we’re Jewish. So we took the world tour on a flying boot kick. Mother survived the death camps. She uses the word ‘schlag’ to illustrate a tale of being beaten on the head.”

  That shut him up. Peter’s left eye twitched a hair’s-breadth.

  “My father hid underground in Poland,” said Lily. “A Polish family told on him. They’d dug up the grave of his infant son, saw that the baby was circumcised, and found my father, not ten yards away, hiding under a barn. He went straight to Dachau. It’s conveniently situated near Munich. Where you had such a bad time with your fatted calves. Small world,” she concluded, with a thrill.

  “What do you want me to do about all of that?” he said sharply. “It’s you who’s small. Dragging your wretched family into my anecdotes. I’m really rather impatient with ‘tragedy’ anyway, particularly when borrowed. Look at you, unscathed. What did you suffer?”

  “Well, looking at all the corpses hanging on my family tree hasn’t always been fun. I’ve lived in that world all my life. And they’ve always reminded me that I could have been born earlier, in Europe. You’d have watched me taken away.”

  “But you weren’t born then. And neither was I.”

  “Anyway, you’re not Jewish,” she muttered, “and nothing truly shattering ever happens to inbred Aryans like you.”

  “What rot. We have our tragedies.”

  “Not mass ones.”

  “Oh, shut up, you envious, grudge-bearing witch.”

  “No, you shut up, you pretentious snot ball. I don’t like you anymore.”

  “I don’t like you either. What’s your name, smiley?”

  “Lily.”

  “Lily—quite a pretty name. I find this conversation tiresome. You take things too much for granted. I try not to. What are you reading?”

  “Medieval English Literature.”

  “That’s respectable. Learning to speak properly is always a challenge, not that I would know, as I was born articulate. Are you at all clever?”

  “Clever enough to be here without centuries of family connections.”

  “Parvenu. I’m the cleverest one in my family.”

  He got up suddenly and put a record on the turntable.

  “You’ll like this,” he said.

  The singer screamed:

  They call me Trevor!

  I ain’t half clever!

  They call me rod!

  But I’m a sod!

  They call me Rick!

  I’m good and thick-

  -’Eaded!

  “Don’t like music?” Peter lay back on his bed, laughing. Lily’s face was scrunched up amusingly, as though she’d sipped quinine. “Wait. There’s a ballad coming up. You’ll love the ballad.”

  The ballad went like this:

  When I look into your face

  Of all the human race

  I see our petty pacing

  To my bed, my friggin’ bed!!

  When I look into your eyes

  Which futilely disguise

  You’re achin’ to be taken

  To my bed, that friggin’ bed!!

  But when I looked inside your ear

  My dear, it seemed so drear

  To think of pig-hogs cheerier than we. . . .

  And when I looked between your lips

  I saw them apple-pips

  Which told me you’d had tips

  From knowledge-tree!!

  So darlin’ look at me

  I’m randy and you see

  My pretty poetry can’t last all night

  Unbutton all them clothes

  Rip off them panty-hose—

  “Enough,” said Lily.

  “It’s not over yet.” Peter shot her a look that made her nervous.

  “Peter, I’m leaving.”

  “All right, I’ll turn it down.”

  “Off!”

  He turned it off.

  “You’re really very pretty,” he said. “Very tasty.” He had one hand on
his lips, sizing her up. She noticed that his fingernails were black.

  “Peter, you have a girlfriend.” And thank God for that, she thought.

  “But Lily, I don’t know what you could mean.”

  “Well, who was Flora, then, your niece?”

  “Flora! She’s just—she’s not even a possibility. I’ve known Flora for ages. Centuries. I grew up with Flora. I played doctor with her. I have seen her prepubescent vagina. I saw it at five. I saw it at ten. I couldn’t bear to see it again. God, it must be huge now.”

  “Well, you won’t see mine now either,” said Lily, defiant, laughing.

  “Oh, hell!” he said, “I’ve seen a million twats.”

  “Besides, I don’t believe a word you say. You don’t make out in an alley with a childhood friend.”

  “I do!” He screeched. “And there’s an end to it!”

  He took down a straw hat from the cupboard and put it on his head. It was a Mexican hat, the sort with bobbling tassel-balls.

  “My dad thinks I’m bent, anyway. Got this on your backwards continent. City called Acapulco. Shat all day, under this very hat.”

  “I don’t think you’re bent.”

  “Thanks, acorn.”

  “Crazed, yes, but not bent.”

  “You’re darling.”

  They got to be good friends. The next morning, when Lily sat down for breakfast in her usual seat, amongst the dullest young people she’d ever known, Peter (who’d apparently spent the night with Flora) came to her rescue again. A thick-nosed Scot had turned his huge head to her, explaining some of the chemical and physical properties of eggs. His spectacles kept sliding down, and he kept patiently bringing them back up. Luckily, this gave Lily something upon which to fix her attention as she pretended to listen. He seemed to have a little crush on her.

  “You take yourrr scrambled,” he burred into her face. “Yourrr harrrd-cooked. Yourrr thrrrree-minute egg. It’s all the same prrrin-ciple, lass!”

  “Oh, is it?” she asked, trying to be pleasant.

  The “Pseuds” (Peter’s group), had they heard the exchange, would have laughed heartily. Their laughter was rich and unchained. Peter’s arms were spanning the air like Nijinsky’s. His long unbuttoned cuffs trailed theatrically behind the gesture, into his oatmeal. He caught Lily’s eye, stared at her tablemates, and gestured, “Why them?” with a gorgeous grimace of sympathy. She excused herself and took her teacup over to Peter’s table.

  The conversations she heard there were hard-hearted, Nietz-chean. They shocked and delighted her. Poets laureate and doddering dons got no pity. Everyone was laughable: the very poor, the very rich, the very clever, the very dim. Everything was ludicrous; everyone had a filthy little secret. What did Peter’s tender yellow gloves conceal? Nicotine stains, those dirty nails, or the ink of his own secret poetic efforts? He never admitted being a dandy or a scribbler, but he smoked with an ivory holder between his dingy teeth, and hinted of folios.

  Lily enjoyed these snide deductions. They were a relief from her own sympathies, which had sworn that the knowable world was worth knowing and good. It was a relief from the Judaic tyranny of logic, law and fairness.

  The Pseuds seemed to like her. The best thing about her was her accent. New Yorkers were tough, like Jimmy Cagney. They said “gimme” and “yeah” and “gonna” and “gotta;” they could dance. As though Lily weren’t milk-fed. As though she belonged to a gang that wore lead-lined berets and shouted at “cops.” Michael, Peter’s boy-Friday, was a lover of movies (he spoke of “the Coast” with a deep and innocent longing). He asked Lily about Lenny Bruce as though she had nodded in hazy dives for decades.

  Peter observed her kiddingly bluff her way. He found her enormously sweet.

  3

  LILY CONTRACTED MONONUCLEOSIS during the second week of term. (The English called it “glandular fever,” as though to comment on the unchecked, yearning humors of the afflicted.) At first, it had offered an opportunity for understanding the strange new world at a distance. Nothing was demanded, tutors sent good wishes, and Peter and his friends came bearing gingerbread men and anemones. She slowly improved, rising into the midst of enterprises she had never consciously begun. Where was she? England? Were these her friends? Was she truly expected to know anything about Alexandrine verse? Then, of necessity, she adapted. These were her chums, these English kids, whose verses, whose cultural history, she knew so much about. Sure.

  Mononucleosis, or “glandular fever,” struck Lily as largely a psychogenic disease. It fed for a long time on her mind. Lily wondered at herself when relapses recurred and recurred. Her body felt defeated just when her mind seemed bent on doing well. Everyone advised her to “breathe deeply,” that fatigue would vanish if only one breathed deeply, but each time Lily breathed deeply, she seemed to draw inside herself a large filthy bag of vapors that weighed her down like ballast.

  Mrs. Dancer brought her breakfast on the worst days. She seemed to know when Lily was feeling wretched. She’d sit on the edge of her bed and chat as Lily chewed.

  “It’s no wonder to me that you’re poorly, Lee-lah,” she’d say. (Lily liked this novel pronunciation of her name; it was like a pet name for her; only Mrs. Dancer had “discovered” it). “You been travelin’ far. You be homesick now.”

  Lily was too tired to agree; she thought she might cry if she did. Looking into that open, kindly face (so unlike her mother’s, so motherly) filled her with childish longings. That and eating lumpy porridge while wearing smelly flannels.

  When Mrs. Dancer left her to clean other rooms, Lily would feel pinned to her bed, like a brooch in cotton. She could be found just lying there, mid-morning, half-asleep, suspended. On one such day, she jogged herself harshly and marched over to The King’s Arms for lunch. That pub, she reasoned, could rouse the dead. The King’s Arms was in fact a jolly, sprawling, lively pub. It was the epicenter of Oxford. Perhaps Peter would be there.

  At first, she didn’t see him. She ordered a half-pint of lager (disobeying doctor’s orders) and sat down in one of the noisy smoky rooms, eavesdropping and making concentric rings on the wooden table with her glass. The weather was still warm, and people spilled out onto the street, like bubbles from a pipe.

  She got up and took a walk herself, down Broad Street, stared up at the gargantuan stone noggins surrounding the Sheldonian, and enjoyed feeling tipsy and small and idiotic. As she turned to go back to the pub for a refill, she saw the most incredible looking Boy.

  Incredible: black hair shining in lazy waves, throat covered by a faded, brick-red Indian cotton scarf, white shirt billowing, Hamlet-like, dissolving into soft, slate corduroy trousers. His jacket, voluminous and tweedy, trailed the heady smell of French tobacco. He noticed her, too: his eyed were brilliant, alert. A shade of blue. She followed him into The King’s Arms, and stood near him inside, by the bar, transfixed as Titania. Oh Boy!

  A Moorish ingénue begged him for one of “those delicious Gauloises,” and he lit it for her. She told him her name: “Sabina.” Lily wanted to rush up and tell him hers: “Lily.”

  “Sabina,” he acknowledged distractedly, craning his lovely neck. Sabina looked at him through half-closed eyes, as though smoke had gotten into them. He asked her a question.

  “Yes, a bit,” she replied, silkily. Her head, tilted back. Appraising.

  Sabina had a long brown body and thick dark hair to the waist, rough horse hair. Her eyes were amber-colored and slightly crossed, as though sexually dazed. An electric current razzled palpably through her limbs. Perhaps that was what made her hair so wild and her eyes split tracks.

  “A bit?” he said. “What’s that?”

  “A bit,” said Sabina, licking her lips as she thought, smiling, of a retort, “is what they put into the mouth of a horse so that he won’t bolt, isn’t it?”

  Wow, thought Lily. Take that, you fine Boy.

  He looked directly at Sabina. “Hmm,” he said, “what are you, an Arab?”

  “An Arab
ian stallion. Prize.”

  “La mare.” He touched her horse hair.

  “La fille.”

  “La filly?” He had his finger between her teeth.

  “La filly mignon.”

  “I shall have you for dinner, then,” he said.

  Good God! They sat down at a nearby table, and Lily sat right by them, ears cocked.

  “Oh, yes,” she heard Sabina say. “I’m reading metallurgy. Ask me about alloys. Smelting. Welding. What college are you in, Julian?”

  Julian. A lilting, faraway sound. The Boy was named “Julian.” If she said the name, he’d turn his head.

  “And what are you studying?” There was nothing arch in Sabina’s voice now. That puzzled Lily. Now that they’d moved a bit in on each other, would she be all frank and open? That would bore him, doubtless. Metallurgy, of all things. Perhaps this Sabina-woman was a bit of a twerp. Lily took a seasoned look at her. No; she wasn’t.

  “Actually, I’m Ethiopian,” she was saying. She was wonderfully mannered at moments, actressy; she seemed to accommodate Julian’s hard gazes with an array of poses. In the way that a kneaded muscle yields luxuriously to the hand, in the way that a neck caressed curls vine-like, or a cat’s stroked belly yearns its length across the floor, Sabina surrendered to Julian’s eye with an exercise of parts beheld. He took in her hair: she hung her head sideways, and locks of the stuff dripped coolly on his arm (looking for a hairgrip she’d dropped, she said). He looked at her puff-lips: she placed a nut in her mouth, chewed it thoughtfully, licked salt off the tip of her thumb. Her waist (as she stood at the bar to get the next round) was long and sinuous; she leaned on one leg, then swung to the other, then back. A sort of hula. And when he stared at her eyes with his handsome eyes, hers widened, as though with pleasure or fear. She towered over him, holding their drinks, and then sidled over, sitting closer than before.

  “She’s been staring at me,” said Julian abruptly, pointing to Lily. Lily spun her head away, burning with self-consciousness. Sabina turned around to see her. She burst out in peals of laughter. Very funny. She arched her head back so that her throat could be seen.