The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg

by Deborah Eisenberg

  Shapiro took a sip of water. He would have liked a drink, too, but alcohol affected him unpredictably. Even Beale’s alcohol seemed to be making Shapiro mentally peculiar. “Let me ask you,” he said. “It isn’t actually dangerous here, I suppose.”

  “Dangerous?” Beale said. “Why? What do you mean? Not for you, it isn’t. You know”—he sat back and looked at Shapiro with drunken coldness—“I find it most comical. How Americans come down here, and they talk about danger. And they talk about this, and they talk about that. Well, I don’t endorse slavery and torture myself, but who are you, may I ask, to talk? Dare I mention who kicked off all this ha-ha ‘counterinsurgency’ business here in the first place? Dare I mention whose country it was that killed all their Indians?”

  “Now, look—” Shapiro began.

  “A thousand apologies,” Beale said. “How true. You’re no more responsible for your country than I am for mine. But all this simply jerks my chain, I’m afraid. It simply does. And I mean dangerous! I mean this place is hardly in the league of—I mean, one’s forever reading, isn’t one? How some poor tourist? Who’s saved his pennies for years and years and years. Who then goes to New York, to see a show on your great Broadway, and virtually the instant he arrives gets stabbed in the…” He took a violent gulp of his drink. “The—”

  “Liver,” Shapiro said.

  “Subway,” Beale said. “Yes.” He beamed at Shapiro in surprise. “I don’t know why that’s so difficult to…Oh, look,” he exclaimed, as the waiter set down their plates. “Oh, my darling! That is nice.” He extracted a pair of glasses from his pocket, put them on to peer at his plate, then removed them to clean them on his ropy tie.

  Shapiro took a bite of his meal, but Beale’s grubbiness had damaged his appetite.

  “Of course the highlands are another story,” Beale said. “The highlands, the whole countryside, really—still sheer carnage. But here in the city it’s just sporadic violence. Of a whatsit sort. Really, about the worst that can happen to you here is Protestants. Random. Of a random sort.”

  “Protestants?” Shapiro said.

  “Evangelicals,” Beale said. “So bloody noisy. Haranguing in the streets, massive convocations every which place, speaking in tongues—YAGABAGABAGAGABAGAGA.” He sighed. “Now, don’t think I’m prejudiced, please. I’m Protestant myself. But that’s the point, isn’t it? That one can slag off one’s own group, though one would never—That is, I, for instance, would never, oh, say, call…a Jew, for example, a ‘kike’—that’s your prerogative. But all that shouting is simply not the point of speech. I mean, the point of speech is—Well, that is just very simply not the point. And it can be terribly, just terribly annoying when you’re trying to conduct an interview or what have you, as you and I are here today.”

  “Perhaps…” Shapiro began with difficulty. “That is, perhaps, speaking of the interview, perhaps there’s something you’d like to ask me.”

  “Ah,” Beale said. “Right you are.” He smiled, then frowned. “But the thing is, old man—I’m afraid I’m not all that familiar with…If you could help me out a bit. That is, perhaps we’d best stick to rather general concepts.”

  Shapiro nodded. “If you wish. What…for example, were you thinking we might—”

  “Yes,” Beale said. “Hmm. Well, I suppose we might talk about your…oh, impressions, for example, of the country…”

  Shapiro looked at him. “I only arrived last—”

  “Last night,” Beale said impatiently. He drummed his fingers on the tape recorder. “Well, but just generally, you know. Just something…spontaneous.”

  Shapiro pressed his fingers to the corners of his eyes.

  “Not acceptable. I see, not acceptable,” Beale said, bitterly. “Well, in that case…we could talk, for example, about what it feels like to come down here as an American.”

  “As an American?” Shapiro said. “I’m not down here as an American. I’m not down here as anything. I’m down here as a pianist.”

  “Yes,” Beale said. “Quite.”

  Heat began to creep over Shapiro’s skin as Beale stared at him.

  “You know,” Beale said, “I’ve always wondered. And this is something that I think would be very interesting to the radio audience. How do instrumentalists feel about their relationship—that is, via music, of course—to the composer?”

  “What are you—” Shapiro began.

  “Well, the very word—” Beale said. “That is, the word literally, well, it literally means—well, instrumentalist. I mean, you’re a—”

  “Excuse me,” Shapiro said. “I’ve got to…get to a phone.”

  Shapiro fled into a system of corridors and polyp-like lobbies or reception rooms. Oh, to be alone! The men’s room? Maybe not. Well, actually, there was a phone booth. Shapiro sat down inside it, shutting himself into an oceanic silence. Beyond the glass wall people floated by—huge, serene, assured, like exhibits. Shapiro leaned against the wall. He rested his hand on the phone as though it were the hand of an old lover. Absently, he stroked the receiver, then lifted it, releasing a loud electronic jeer—the sound, as silence is not, of emptiness. He would tell Beale that he was unwell, that he had to go rest.

  Shapiro paused at the entrance to the restaurant. Beale was sitting at the table alone, his narrow shoulders hunched and his spaceship head bent over the tape recorder as he spoke into it. There was urgency in Beale’s posture, and his face was anguished. What could he be saying? Shapiro took a step closer.

  “Ah!” Beale said, clicking off the machine with a bright smile, as though he’d been apprehended in some mild debauchery. “Get through?”

  “Excuse me?” Shapiro said.

  “Get your call through?”

  “Oh,” Shapiro said. He sat down and passed his hands across his face. “No.”

  “No,” Beale agreed with unfocussed sympathy. “Oh, it’s all so difficult. So difficult. Now—” He smiled sentimentally. Amazingly, he appeared to have completely forgotten he’d been in the process of attacking Shapiro. “Not to worry—we’re going to get a very nice little segment about you. In fact”—he twinkled slyly—“I’ve already done something by way of an intro. Your name and so on, you’re down here for the festival, you’ll be playing the García-Gutiérrez…Hmm.” He removed his glasses to study a crumpled piece of paper. “And, let’s see.” He turned on the machine and spoke into it again. “You’ve played the piece before with great success…Mr. Shapiro, I understand.” He nodded encouragingly and indicated the machine.

  Shapiro looked at it. “Yes,” he said, wearily.

  Beale gave him a wounded glance. “In fact, you premièred the piece in the U.S., I believe.”

  Shapiro closed his eyes.

  “Yes,” Beale said. He took a deep breath through his nose. “Well, anyhow, that was back in, let’s see…nineteen…goodness me! You must be very fond of it.”

  “Well,” Shapiro said, “I mean, it is in my repertory…”

  Beale emitted a giggle, or hiccup. “I have a set of little spoons,” he said. “Tiny little silver things. For olives or something of the sort, that someone gave a great-aunt of mine as a wedding present. And somehow I’ve ended up with them.”

  Shapiro opened his eyes and looked at Beale.

  “Well, I don’t throw them out, I mean, do I?” Beale said. “I say.” He frowned. “Are you not going to…?” He waved at Shapiro’s plate.

  “No, no,” Shapiro said. “Go ahead. Please.”

  “Thank you.” Beale switched off the tape recorder and placed Shapiro’s full plate on top of his own empty one. “We’ll go on in a minute. And I think we’ll get something nice, don’t you? Most people like doing radio. It’s a lovely medium, lovely. Do you know what I especially like about it?” He interrupted himself to eat, then continued. “One meets people. Oh, I know one does in any profession—it can hardly be avoided. But I mean one goes out to meet people, on an equal basis. The voice—it’s freeing, wouldn’t you agree? Yet
intimate. There one is, a great glob of…oh…pork pie!” His eyes gleamed briefly with lust. “But I mean all one’s qualities and circumstances just…globbed together, if you see what I mean. The good, the bad, the…pointless…” He paused again, and rapidly forked food into his mouth. “But with radio, you see, there’s a way to separate out the real bit. And all the rest of it—I mean one’s body, one’s face, one’s age…even, even”—he glanced around as though bewildered—“even the place where one is sitting! Well, one is free of it, isn’t one? One sees how free one really is.

  “Great leaps. Teleportation. The world is so…roomy. So full of oddments. But there’s that now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t quality about life that makes one so very nervous. Danger, as you pointed out just now, yourself. Danger simply everywhere. Everything destroyed, lost, forgotten…Well, that’s what they want, you know, most of them. ‘There’s nothing about it in the reports,’ they’ll tell you. They’ll say it straight to your face. Of course there are ghosts, people say. I suppose that’s some help. But a ghost is simply not terribly…communicative. They haunt, they grieve, that sort of thing. But it’s all rather general, you see. Because they don’t much really talk.

  “Oh, didn’t you just love it when you were a boy? It’s raining outside, your mum’s still working in the shop, you haven’t a friend in the world, then you turn on the radio, and someone’s talking—to you. Oh, my darling! Someone is talking to you, and you don’t know, before you turn that radio on, who will be there, or what thing they’ve found to tell you on that very day, at that very moment. Maybe someone will talk to you about cookery. Maybe someone will talk to you about a Cabinet minister. And then that particular thing is yours, do you see what I mean? Who knows whether it’s something worth hearing? Who knows whether there’s someone out there to hear it! It’s a leap of faith, do you see? That both parties are making. Really the most enormous leap of faith.” He paused to devour the food remaining on Shapiro’s plate, and then looked helplessly into Shapiro’s eyes. “I mean, I find that all enormously, just enormously…” He shook his head and turned away.

  Shapiro set his alarm for 6 a.m., and slipped out of the hotel before Penwad could come for him, consequences be damned. Ha-ha—the day was his! Screechy traffic flew cheerfully through the streets, and toxins gave the air a silvery, fishlike flicker as the sun bobbed aloft on waves of industrial waste.

  Shapiro walked and walked. He passed through grand neighborhoods, where armed guards lounged in front of high, white walls. And he passed through poor neighborhoods, where children, bloated with hunger, played in the gutters, their eyes dreamy and wild with drugs. Beyond the surrounding slopes lay the countryside—the gorgeous, blood-drenched countryside.

  In some parts of the city Indians congregated on the sidewalk. Some sold chewing gum or trinkets on the corners, some seemed to be living the busy and inscrutable life of the homeless. Their clothing was filthy and tattered, but glorious nonetheless, Shapiro thought, glorious, noble, celebratory—like the banners of an army in rout.

  Shapiro considered them with terror. The destitute. People who were almost invisible, almost inaudible. People to whom almost anything could be done: other people. At home, in the last five or ten years they had encamped in Shapiro’s neighborhood. At first he thought of them as a small and temporary phenomenon. But now they were everywhere—sleeping in parks or on the pavement, ranging through the city night and day, hungry and diseased, in ragged suits and dresses acquired in some other life.

  Everyone had become used to them; no one remembered how shocking it had been only a few years earlier to see someone curled up in a doorway, barefoot in freezing temperatures. Most of the time they were just a group at the periphery of Shapiro’s vision. But when a student failed to show up for a lesson, or no concert work materialized, or the price of the newspaper went up, or some unexpected expense arose, Shapiro’s precious hands would tingle. Injury? Arthritis? Even as it was, daily life was beginning to eat away at Shapiro’s small savings. And at such times Shapiro would see those other people with an individualized and frigid clarity, would search their faces for proof that each was in some reliable way different from him, as though he were a dying man approaching the gauzy crowds waiting for judgment.

  And they—what were they seeing? Perhaps he and his kind seemed a ghostly population to them—distant, fading…Perhaps at some terrible border you’d simply leave behind everything that you now considered life, forget about once precious concerns, as though they were worn-out shirts or last year’s calendar or old lists of things that long ago it had seemed important to accomplish.

  Oh, it was probably true, as Caroline had sometimes said, that his fears were irrational. That he’d always find some way to manage. But when the door closed behind her that day he ought to have understood—yes, he thought, that was the moment he ought to have understood—that success, the sort of success Penwad’s letter seemed to promise for him again, was something he could just, finally, forget about.

  But he had understood nothing; he’d simply sat there numb—for hours—until Lady Chatterley threw herself forward in a frenzy of carpet shredding. “Stop that,” he’d said. “Stop, O.K., please?” He’d flicked a finger at her rear, and she’d leapt, snarling. The truth was he had always been a little afraid of the cat. She was Caroline’s, but Jim, evidently, was allergic.

  Shapiro supposed that, to whatever extent Caroline was thinking about him, she would be imagining him in debonair company here, taking part in animated and witty conversations of a sort no living person had ever experienced. Shapiro felt short of breath, as though Caroline were suffocating him with a pillow. “This is a wonderful opportunity for Aaron,” she could be assuring Jim at this very instant. “Really it is.” Oh, yes. He, Shapiro, must be happy so she could be.

  An Indian child playing nearby in the street skinned a knee and howled for his mother. Shapiro felt an almost uncontainable sorrow, as though he were just about to cry himself. But to cry it’s necessary to imagine the comforter.

  Caroline had never cared what things were really like. He’d once overheard her saying thank you to a recorded message. Everything was nice, pleasant, good. If he spoke truthfully to her, she couldn’t hear him. She despised no one. Those who were not nice, pleasant, happy simply ceased to exist.

  Shapiro was ravenous. He entered an inviting little restaurant. Inside, it was very dark, but low-hanging, green-shaded lamps made a pool of light over each table.

  The waiter spoke no English, but was agreeable when Shapiro pointed at a nearby diner’s plate of soup. But there had been a time—truly there had—when Caroline actually loved him, had been fascinated by him, not just by his reputation. For a moment he saw her distinctly. She stood holding Lady Chatterley, gazing into space with a baffled sorrow. “Caroline—” he said.

  Had he spoken aloud? Three men at a neighboring table were staring at him with a volatile blend of loathing and amusement. All three were mammoth. One appeared to be a North American; he and one of the others wore pistols, visible even in the restaurant’s pleasant gloom, beneath their shirttails.

  The waiter, bearing soup, interposed himself; Shapiro gestured fervent thanks. He took a spoonful of the soup. It was clear, and delicious. Food, he thought.

  Plus rent. Plus utilities…Yes, tonight the stage of a concert hall, a tuxedo. A party, champagne, adulation. But tomorrow it was back to cat fur.

  The waiter arrived with a second plate for him, huge and unexpected. A pretty selection of things that seemed to have been cooked in the broth. Mmm. Shapiro leaned into the light of his hanging lamp to poke around at it—carrots, onions, white beans, cabbage, celery, a small…haunch, something that looked…like…a snout…

  One of the men at the next table chuckled softly. Shapiro glanced at them involuntarily again, and they stared back, their faces framing the teardrop of light from their hanging lamp. Then one of them, still staring, reached up and unscrewed the bulb.

  The enfeebled musi
cians threw themselves on García-Gutiérrez’s last, idiotic, triumphal chord. What had happened? Shapiro felt as though he’d awakened to find himself squatting naked in a glade, blinking up at a chortling TV crew that had just filmed him gnawing a huge bone. Had he played well or badly? He hardly knew. He’d played in a frenzy—the banal sonorities, the trivial purposes, the trashy approximations of treasures forged in the inferno of other composers’ souls. Lacerating ribbons of notes streamed from his hands as he tried to flog something out of the piece, but it had simply sat there over them all—a great, indestructible, affirming block of suet.

  The sparse audience stopped fanning themselves with their programs and made some little applause. Seething with confusion and misery, Shapiro stood to take his bow, and caught a glimpse of a man who could only be García-Gutiérrez, opaque and dignified in the face of tribute. At the sight, Shapiro reexperienced the frictional response of his skin, seventeen years earlier, to the man’s blandishments, like an acquiescence to unwelcome sensual pleasure.

  Outside, Penwad resumed his post at Shapiro’s elbow. “We’ll just stick around here for a few minutes,” he said nervously, “then round everyone up and get going to the reception. Oh. I don’t believe you’ve met. Joan.”

  “That was lovely,” Joan said. “Just lovely. You know, we looked for you at your hotel today. We felt sure you’d want to see our Institute of Indigenous Textiles.”

  “Oh, Lord—” Shapiro floundered. “Yes! No, absolutely. I—”

  “We left messages at the desk,” Penwad said.

  “Well,” Joan said. “Those people at the desk…”

  Night had ennobled the Center. Musicians and members of the audience milled about in the uncertain radiance of stars and klieg lights. A slow, continuous combustion of garbage sent up bulletins of ruin from the hut-blistered gorges, which were quickly snuffed out by the fragrance drifting down from the garlanded slopes of the Gold Zone.