by Ward Just
It is, yes, I said.
Not their hatred, he said loudly. Your hatred. Yours. You cannot possibly understand fully at your age, the way you live and where, your country at peace. It’s your hatred of them, and this hatred becomes an obsession to you, a passion that you can only know when you see them, see their faces, listen to their speech, watch their hands, these degenerates, so-called members of the human species. In your passion you become like them. No difference between them and you, and you find yourself thinking thoughts that are unimaginable and committing acts that are more unimaginable still. The line dividing them and you vanishes, except they are powerful and you are not. The abnormal becomes normal and you are—reduced. And you enjoy it, this reduction. The more extreme, the more pleasure you take. This does not occur at once. You do not recognize the change day to day, and then one morning there’s an encounter and you know your heart’s grown cold. In such circumstances pleasure and pain are the same thing. You need only a context. So do not believe for one minute that there is very much difference between one human being and another. We all have a will to survive, but it is stronger in some than it is in others; and the urge for revenge, that too is stronger in some than in others. As a father I have tried to keep this knowledge from Aurora. Dr. Brule raised his timeworn head and sighed deeply. He was silent at last, his thought concluded. He remained standing with his back to me and then, at a noise somewhere in that many-chambered apartment, he wheeled and left the room, motioning for me to remain where I was.
I watched him hurry off, and when I was alone the room seemed to exhale, and settle, exhausted. I was trying to make sense of what he had said to me, his monotone growing louder with each sentence. Of course my heart went out to him. I felt an intruder into some terrible private grief but I had no idea what had given rise to it, other than my father’s trouble and how lucky he had been. Aurora’s father had told me too much and not enough. He unnerved me and I wondered why I had told him about Havana and the brick, the note and the phone call, and the Colt .32 from the sheriffs arsenal. I had never told Aurora. I had never told anyone. Certainly, psychiatrists had a way of eliciting information, that was what they were trained to do, although Aurora had said her father rarely commented himself. Rules of the game. What had begun this sermon—I could think of no other word to describe it—was my stubborn insistence that my father had not been frightened. But he had been; anyone would be, blood on his hands, blood on his shirt, an attack without warning. I knew that at some time in his life Jason Brule had been frightened profoundly and had never forgotten. I could understand why people were bothered by him, his emotions so deeply buried but seething all the same. I wondered if he was in the paper’s morgue. If he had ever been in the news. Henry Laschbrook had assured me that everyone was news once in their life, a birth or a marriage or a lawsuit or some scrape with the police, unless they had the clout to keep their names out of the paper. Otherwise they’re in there somewhere, Henry said, pointing at the room filled with filing cabinets. You only have to know the alphabet, you want to find them.
I looked at my wristwatch, almost eight o’clock, dusk falling rapidly in Lincoln Park. My drink was finished and I wondered if I was allowed to fix another but decided that would be presumptuous. I had already begun to think of Dr. Brule as a prospective father-in-law and wanted to make a good impression—but his passionate and coiled manner suggested to me that that was not how he saw himself, and I already had the suspicion that he knew much more about me than I knew about him, so I went ahead and poured the drink. I had a question or two for Aurora as well, Aurora whose disappearance was ill-timed and had lasted far too long. I couldn’t imagine what she was doing, unless it was a’séance with her father, discussing matters that I couldn’t possibly understand fully at my age because of the way I lived and where, a nation at peace. A subtle change in the room’s atmosphere, and a whiff of familiar perfume, told me I was rescued at last. I rose at once from the couch, turning to the door, and said, Where have you been?
Why are you sitting in the dark? the stranger said.
Good question, I said.
Who are you anyway? Where’s Jack?
The woman in the doorway looked to be in her early thirties, indisputably a city woman, tall and slender, fashionably turned out and made up, nothing sporty about her. She had a trace of an accent, Italian I thought, or Spanish. She looked Italian, smooth olive skin and a long thin nose and the blackest hair in Chicago, worn loose so that it fell carelessly over her shoulders. She wore heavy rings on her fingers, gold at her throat and wrists, and a knee-length black dress. The dress was as snug as the hair was loose. She stood in the doorway as if she owned it, an expression of anticipation on her face. She carried a little gold purse slung over her shoulder on a chain. The house key she held in her hand disappeared into the purse, and now she stood looking at me, a frank appraisal. Her posture reminded me somehow of a circus performer, feet wide apart, hands on her hips, prepared to execute the daredevil stunt as soon as the applause died down.
Wils Ravan, I said.
Ohhhh, she said, and gave a provocative giggle. You’re the nice boy Aurora goes out with, the one she talks about all the time. The one that’s different from the others. The one who works for that dreadful newspaper and visits pool halls and racetracks in order to learn the ways of the masses. The one who does not believe in the present. You’re the boy who came to work in dancing shoes and was almost fired for it. What a riot. Happy to meet you. Her hand flew to her mouth and she giggled again.
I said, And your name?
Consuela, she said. Connie.
What else did Aurora tell you?
Much, much more, Connie said. But I’ll never tell, she added, and made a gesture as if to say, That’s all for now but not forever. She looked around the room and said again, Where’s Jack?
I don’t know, I said. He was here and then he went away.
Where did he go? He didn’t go out?
Somewhere in the apartment, I said.
We have a dinner date—
I expect he’ll be back. There’s his drink. I pointed to the untouched glass of gin on the table.
She sighed and shook her head. He’s impossible. He makes them and doesn’t drink them. Can you beat it? I have been with Jack one year and I must have thrown out a gallon of gin. But he is not always predictable, and he does not like to explain. Also, he does not like to be searched for. So I will await him here.
She strode around the living room turning on lights, the two lamps on either side of the couch and the standing lamp near the drinks tray. She straightened the journals on the coffee table, lit a cigarette, and flung herself into the chair by the window and said, Make me a drink, darling Wils. Cinzano and soda, light on the soda, lemon peel, one ice cube. I’ve had a ghastly day, just ghastly.
She went on to describe the ghastly day, something about a fitting gone wrong and a canceled lunch date with an editor who was in town for only about three seconds and couldn’t spare one of the seconds for a bite at the Buttery to discuss the contents of her book, taking shape at last after so many interruptions and false starts. Rush, rush, rush all day long. Cabs were impossible, and this midwestern heat, a furnace from hell, how do you stand it? It’s worse even than Famagusta.
When I looked at her blankly, she said, Cyprus.
Where I spent my summers in a white villa by the sea, my little brothers and sisters always underfoot, a grove of lemon trees, owls in the trees, butterflies, too. A boiling sun. Homer’s sun. The nights were almost as warm as the days, yet the air was always beautifully fragrant. In the afternoons we drank clove tea and played backgammon while we listened to the news on the radio. That’s the book I’m writing, summers in the villa at Famagusta, a walled city, the destination of refugees for thousands of years. For refugees, Famagusta was a paradise. Of course there was unrest. There has always been unrest in Cyprus owing to Turkish provocations. They are not gemüüich, the Turks. They are lethargic and cruel
, a morbid combination. My father’s family is Greek in origin. My mother is Hungarian, mostly. And I can still see the butterflies in the lemon trees and taste the clove tea in Famagusta. So now you know all about me, including my irritation that Jack is absent and unaccounted for.
So you must come sometime to Famagusta, she said.
I would be delighted, I said.
When I handed her the Cinzano, she smiled and said, I was only teasing, What I said about you and the proletariat. The dancing shoes.
Aurora talked too much, I said, but I smiled as I said it.
She makes up for her father, Connie said.
He talks to me, I said.
Does he? Well, it’s natural, isn’t it? You are his daughter’s friend. It’s natural that he should want to know you, what kind of boy you are. He and Aurora are very close. He’s protective of her, as fathers are. He has not had an easy time. He struggled terribly with that cow of a wife. She is in no way agreeable. She misbehaved when Jack was away in the war, and misbehaved again when he returned. She is a low personality, concerned with herself alone. So Jack worries about Aurora, surely you can understand that. He feels responsible for her, and that’s why he attends those wretched parties in the countryside. He does not make a fetish of it, however. Do you like her?
Yes, I said. Very much.
Of course, I can see that. I am not an idiot. I don’t know why I asked. Forgive me for asking.
She’s very special, I said.
Jack, she began, but did not finish her thought. She said instead, You, too, are reserved with your opinions. You’re quite grown up, that’s obvious. Everyone in America grows up faster now, it’s one of the good things about this country. At last.
So he goes to the parties to watch after Aurora?
To be present, Connie said. Aurora looks after herself.
But I’ve never seen you, I said.
I do not care for children’s parties.
You’d like them, I said. There’s music—
I am not invited, Connie said stiffly.
But that’s absurd, I said. You have as much right as anyone else.
And if I were invited, she said, I would not go. Jack tells me about them, as much as I want to hear, the orchestras that are playing ... She hesitated, listening, then rose from the couch and stepped to the open window, where she pitched her cigarette into the street, leaning over the sill to watch it fall. When she turned back to me, she was smiling broadly.
He doesn’t like tobacco, she said.
I know, I said.
But he has a terrible sense of smell, so it is possible for me to enjoy tobacco without his knowing. This is fortunate.
I can see that, I said.
So he tells me who is dancing, she went on. The tensions among families, who is straying from the marriage bed. The banality of the conversations. The grief, I should say. Who Aurora danced with and whether she had a good time and if she had a ride home. That is what Jack tells me. It’s enough for me to hear about the parties from him without having to go myself. We have another sort of life, Jack and me. Parties do not figure in it.
I was nonplused by these revelations—no one in my strait-laced family would ever tell such stories to a stranger—but before I had a chance to reply, Dr. Brule was in the doorway, freshly showered, smart in a tuxedo. He moved nervously to Connie’s side, murmuring an apology, kissing her lightly on the mouth. She straightened his bow tie and adjusted the handkerchief in his breast pocket. He took her hand, smiled pleasantly at me, and escorted her from the room, both of them moving with the weightless self-absorption of ballet dancers, all this without a spoken word. Connie winked at me as they swept by. I heard them pause in the foyer, and then a rustle of clothing and a low laugh from Connie. The front door opened and closed, and I was alone again in the living room.
8
I STOOD at the window and watched them on the sidewalk, Dr. Brule standing on the curb with his hand raised, Connie beside him saying something. I heard their laughter and when he said something back, she gave him a playful shove. A cab arrived and the doctor opened the door, Connie still talking; she bent, taking her time, and I watched him slip his hand under her skirt while she paused a few more moments. The cab disappeared and I turned back to the room thinking about their other sort of life in which parties did not figure. Now there were three untouched drinks on the coffee table. I made another scotch for myself and a Dubonnet for Aurora and stepped into the empty hallway. Connie’s scent hung in the air and I paused, wondering if she had returned; she was not quite real to me, an imaginary woman along with her owls and butterflies in restless Cyprus. A long corridor led to the interior of the apartment. I called softly but there was no response from Aurora, so I set off down the corridor, peering into rooms as I went. I did not feel as if I were intruding. Thanks to Connie’s shared confidences, I felt like an honorary member of the family, a country cousin or other poor relation. There were bedrooms and a large bath and a library, more bookshelves and framed photographs on the walls, with a leather chair and a sofa and a Webcor phonograph, a man’s room, as private as a locked desk. I wondered if this was his consulting room, but it didn’t look like a consulting room and no woman would be caught dead there. I paused and looked in but did not enter.
I’m here, Aurora called, her voice coming from no obvious location, so I continued down the corridor, the two drinks cold in my hands.
She was lying on her bed reading Lie Down in Darkness. The bed was populated with dozens of stuffed animals, bears mostly, but also lions and other African beasts, and a yellow bird with a blue beak. Aurora seemed small and childlike in the big bed surrounded by her menagerie. She put the book aside and raised her eyebrows.
So you met Con-su-e-la, she said, drawing out the last syllable, laaaa.
We are great friends, I said.
I’ll bet you are, Aurora said. Line forms on the left.
She’s Greek, I said.
No kidding, Aurora said. She moved her legs and two of the bears fell off the bed.
And where have you been? I asked. Not fair, you know, leaving me alone with your father.
He wanted a private word and asked if it was all right with me and I said it was, and before I knew it he was back in his bedroom and I heard her voice. Hard to miss it, that screech. She was a nightclub singer. But I bet you guessed that. I’ll bet when you heard Consuela’s voice you said, Nightclub singer. Not out loud of course. I didn’t hear you saying much out loud.
You were listening, I said.
From the corridor, she said. But I couldn’t hear everything.
She told me about Famagusta and the lemon trees. Her book. A missed luncheon date. Much else.
She had a word or two about my father, didn’t she?
And the parties, which she thinks of as children’s parties. She isn’t invited to them. Not that she’d go.
Well, Aurora said, and smiled. Consuela’s not dumb. And what did she say about my father?
She talked about how much he cares for you.
It’s not up to her to say that, Aurora said. Who does she think she is, saying that? Then, after a smoldering silence: What are you looking at?
She meant well, I said.
Consuela does not mean well, Wils. She means a lot of things but well is not one of them. But you should know that yourself, being so grown-up. A perfect specimen of American grown-upness. She drives me crazy. She drives me up the wall. You better get used to it. Aurora was silent a moment, her eyes narrowed and her mouth working, talking to herself. So how did it go with my father? she said at last.
He asked me about trouble in my family, I said evenly.
Did he? I didn’t tell him.
How did he know?
My father knows things, she said. Maybe one of his neurotic patients said something. People talk. He listens. That’s his occupational specialty, listening. But it wasn’t me. I’ve spoken to him about you but not about that. Because you’ve only given me the bare
bones. It’s tough enough as it is, Wils. Don’t make it harder. She cleared a space on the bed, animals tumbling to the floor with soft plops. I sat down and handed her the Dubonnet. In the harsh glare of her bed lamp her face looked flushed and when I said I was sorry, she gave a weak smile, almost a grimace, an expression I did not recognize. When I took her hand, she seemed not to notice.
All these animals, she said. Did you have toy animals as a boy?
One bear, I said.
I have eighteen, she said.
So I notice.
My father always gives me a bear on my birthday, no two alike. She picked up a tiny black bear by the ears and let it fall. One of these days he’ll be forced to buy a duplicate, and I’ll notice and call him on it. And we’ll laugh and he’ll blame his memory. You probably had fire engines, chemistry sets, and a football. Boy stuff.
War stuff, I said. Battleships, lead soldiers, artillery pieces, and an enemy-plane spotter kit so that when the Luftwaffe bombed Quarterday I could tell my father that they were Messerschmitts, hot Stukas. Dive for cover! They’re after the sand traps! That won a tired smile from Aurora, and a squeeze of my hand, but she was still far away. She had not touched her Dubonnet and I wondered if it was a tradition of the Brule family that drinks were made but never consumed, prepared for decorative purposes only, like a bowl of terra-cotta apples.
I said, Probably you had a dollhouse, too.
No, only the animals. I was never interested in dolls because I was never interested in playing house. Or mom. That worried my mother and was the occasion for a conversation with my father. He said she wasn’t to worry, I was all right. That was the expression he used, “all right.”
Do you want a cigarette?
I don’t mind, she said. He hates smoking but he never comes in here, so I smoke whenever I feel like it. I handed her a cigarette and lit it for her, then lit my own. She opened the drawer of her bedside table and put an ashtray between us and we sat smoking in silence.