New Yorkers

by Hortense Calisher

  Everyone looked with distaste—at the bird.

  “He was the one who was in my country, yes?” said Felix.

  “No, that was my father.”

  “As a missionary?”

  Austin considered. The panorama of the Fennos spread before him, a pleated fan. A family for jokes. Comfort overwhelmed him; Aussie, everything will turn out all right. “Only in a large way,” Austin said.

  Dinner had shrunk Felix’s laugh, but it was still loud. “Capital, oh capital!” He clapped Austin on the shoulder. The two grinned at each other like equals, and shook hands.

  “Excuse me, Simon,” said Pauli, “but I am always foolish nervous about flying. Leni here always says it is because I was only in the cavalry.” He was kneading his conductor’s knuckles around a note he made them all hear. “I go and phone the airport, hah?” He was shivering. Ruth was unlucky. He’d always been convinced of it.

  “Of course,” said her father. “Telephone on the landing.” He turned back to the company, spreading his hands. “Who has the children, here?”

  Madame’s voice was soft. “Only you, Simon.”

  Why should Leni, who had none, look daggers at her?

  “Cavalry?” said the Judge, as Pauli left the room. “I never knew.”

  “Leutnant, Owstrian Army, 1918,” said Leni. “He would get a pension, if we was not here.”…Of course he never said. We fought against you. …

  “Year I was turned down,” said the Judge enviously. “Shameful. How we never get over not having gone. Against all conviction.” The weather and the city came back for a moment in the clatter of heels on the level above their heads; this was a basement after all. He found he was praying to the air, to be careful of his children. …Oh air, lanes of air, where will I take this woman—with your kind permission—tonight? The air, heavy with wine too, held them all fast. …Mirriam, stand by. …He was just about to say anything—to Dan, to whom one could—when Austin spoke.

  Austin’s hands were clasped between his knees, his chair pushed away from the table; both were unlike him. He had a somber little smile on his face, a contradiction also brought into being since the Mannix household had last seen him. “I have a little sister who wants to be Jewish,” he said.

  Leni gave a parrot cry.

  In silence already spelled by the phone on the landing, everyone waited to hear what the Judge would say.

  “Does she now.” His voice shook with tenderness. Could he say it? He dared. “‘We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts.’” Only a Jew could say it that way. “The Song of Solomon.” He leaned forward carefully. “Maybe she’ll marry into it. Some of you are lucky for us. You yourself have the look of a man who brings luck with him everywhere.”…Mirriam, attend these banns. …“Even here. And some of us, maybe, are good for you.”

  Pauli was back, beaming. “They have docked, I mean, what is it—parked. Ach Gott, I mean—landed. They had a delay, somebody sick on the plane. No, none of ours. I asked.”

  “What name?” Blount.

  “Name. Aie, yes. Freund. Friend.”

  Blount shook his head.

  “None of ours,” said Felix pertly, like the prep school boy he sometimes knew he was.

  Elation was all right now—safe. The Judge stole a look at Ninon, who had come to help him give up his daughter at last. Did she know? She was staring at Austin. He’d never seen her bemused before. It parted her lips and widened her eyes, making her younger, though the shadow-cleft between them deepened like a shaft from her hair-jewel. “You…are positively—” She reached out and flicked the young man on the back of his hand. Her finger released a blush that aureoled him, all blond and red in his battle-cheap indigo. “—a type!” she said.

  “Well, Austin, well.” Not for this house, did she mean? The host’s color was high also, two dark spots under the linenfold upper lids, on the cheekbones. “This is an honest room, eh. And Ruth is home.”

  The two of them eyed each other.

  “Anything bad—” said Leni, the slits in her dress quivering like gills—“one would have heard.”

  The Judge touched the bell in front of him. “We’ll have coffee in the—ingle.” He leaned sardonically on a word inherited with the house, though he liked the large, sofa-enclosed bay. “They’ll be a while yet.” He made no effort to move. Hopefully no one noticed that for the duration of these spasms, he couldn’t. The tall-backed Mendes chair, so much too big for him, now supported him. “One more glass of wine, everybody? Mr. Krupong, will you do the honors? Glad to see you like wine.”

  “Good as this, yes sir. People are very wrong about this country, yes.”

  “Well, you’re always welcome here, in this house—may I say ‘Felix’?” It was over. Release from any setback (which was that pain was) always made him mischievous afterwards, arrogant in the face of the force behind things. This was when he had been in best command of his wife. When he had been “Si.” “Incidentally, Felix—you don’t have to worry about being ‘an idea’ here. We Jews feel guilty to people, not to ideas.”

  “Why…yes sir, thank you sir.” The young man’s long, powerful jaw came forward; the brows knitted. How foreign he was, yes. “B-but—how did you hear me say that?”

  “How?” The Judge’s eyes were half closed. “Maybe I belong to the same secret society as your grandfather.”

  “The same,” said the Nigerian. “The very same.” He half rose from his chair, smiling, but in the sheepish way he looked down at himself—suit bought on King’s Parade, long white cuffs on his marble-dark wrists—the struggle going on between cloth and skin was apparent as a child’s. “I said it to myself when I first walked in, yes. Woo-oo yes, I know him.” He sat down again, twitching on and off the smile.

  “Just a trick, Felix. You’ll understand it, if you meet my son.”

  “Oh—!” said Austin. …All these years, and I didn’t know. Mannix can lipread. But how unfair! Would one of us do that?…

  “Do you belong to that society yourself, Felix?” said Simon.

  Felix had regained himself. “Grandfather sent me to Cambridge instead.”

  “Ha. Well, you must call me Simon. To avoid confusion.” The Judge took a long draught of wine and set down his glass with the firmness of a man who says to himself, to the company, “The last.” Hope you do come, often. We like intelligent young men here. But mind—we’re not noble, eh? We’ve very middle-class, here.”

  …Simon, Simon. Not with me at the foot. …

  “Aren’t we—Austin?” said the Judge.

  Once before at this table Austin had been chivied like this, long ago. They could use a bit of Fenno hard-mindedness, now and then, his pet Jews. “The middle class avoids definition, Judge Mannix,” he said. “That’s what a middle class is.”

  Felix said very softly, “Hear this.”

  “The hell you say,” Edwin said, standing up, staggering back against his chair.

  And it was true; he saw it in their aghast faces—they’d forgotten him as if he were the ghost at this table. Though his flesh was solid with what he had learned here. The flesh of the disciple is solid with what it has learned—or else it is carrion. All down the table, the tops of the wineglasses gazed at him unwinking, monocles screwed into the red eye of anti-Christ—though he had never seen a monocle in his life. …I swim toward these people—up, up from the dirt floor to the wicked debris of dinner, up through the wine—to the top. Father Dialogue is who you find there—at the top of the wine, his locked, Mongolian face.

  The face confronted him “Edwin.”

  Down in the cunning depths of his own reservoir, he saw—with a savagery reared by icons who wept when carried into warmer rooms—that he was still honesty, to them here.

  “I” Felix started to rise. When the Westerns quarreled among themselves, he felt infinitely more aged than his grandfather, and with the wrong education. “If you will excuse me. I feel your beautiful wine after all. I will go for a walk around the square, yes
.” Often in Cambridge he’d done the same.

  “Of course, we all need some air. Austin, would you open another window in the bay. We’ll all move over there in a minute.” The host stood up. Everybody rose in the sweet, tranced lull that came with these social directions. …Politics is quickness before anything, Edwin; act in the rush of other peoples’ blood. And give the men you know least the auxiliary jobs. …“But first I’ve an announcement to make. And a toast of my own.”

  Leni leaned out from under Pauli’s restraining wing. “A wedding! I knew it. I have heart.”

  “Yours, Leni?” said Madame.

  The old one in green drew back as if two pieces of ice had been dropped in those icebags, her breasts; cool the head, those would. “Fill my glass, Austin,” Edwin said. “Aus-s-tin, fill my glass.” All was wine-mist and glide up there at the far head of the table, but he could stand up to it. The arm he pushed forward extended like a cue at pool. “’Member the day I ate the ice cream from the serving bowl?”

  “The day you came?” said the Judge. “Edwin. No. No, you can’t drink to this one. My toast is to you.”

  Turning heads, they all saw him. The table was small enough, big enough—middle-sized. He saw it contract, expand, a heart, a bladder, or a surface plant seen from the water bottoms below. … Will I be a filth to you?

  “I am being personal,” he said.

  The Judge lifted his own glass high. “A fine maiden speech. …To anarchy, then!…And a summer on the ward!”

  “On the ward…? You are sick, Simon?”

  Anna had come in, just as Pauli spoke.

  “No, it’s a phrase, Mr. Chavez,” said Edwin. “Used by us politicians.”

  “Never felt better in my life.” Over his glass, the Judge glanced at Ninon. That’s the way declarations should be, at our age. In cliché. And the rest of it—under the table. All down his festive board he could see life beating, for the old ones at least, being passed back and forth like money under the table. … Pauli, you’re too aboveboard—never get Leni to marry you that way. Sweep them off their feet vulgarly, downstairs, in front of a curio cabinet belonging to their father. Or upstairs, and let who will watch. Yes, nod at me, Ninon, I see that brooch of yours already sparkling, in the bedclothes. “So…you’ve made your decision, boy. A toast, then…To Edwin Halecsy. A learner. …And now—an announcement.” Picking up reactions round the circle of faces, he thought he saw Austin’s stiffen. So the boy was human enough to be jealous of Edwin’s place in his own affections. …Never mind, boy—I’ll have you both in the house yet. …“To Edwin. Who’s kindly promised to come and be my—political secretary. Who will be one of us truly now. Who has promised to come and live here.”

  Had he? He had only time enough to think it.

  From behind them all a dish crashed to the floor. All faces turned. Luckily, the dish had been a clean one. Anna faced them quietly for a moment, as if she was being introduced; then she bent to pick up the white spears of china. They saw Edwin spring forward to help. The two heads almost met—blond snub-face, heavy blondgray. Then they all saw the snarl from the lace-collared head, the boy’s recoil—that shocking slum kinship, two animals over a garbage pail. The boy, standing up slowly, nodded at her, as if to say—our kind of friendship. Bending over had made him sway. He flaunted a weak smile at all—yes, I’m that drunk—and turned to Anna. “Will I be a filth to you?”

  Crouched, she picked up a last shard, arose heavily, and turned her back on him. No, she was turning again—One mute look at her master. Her heavy face struggled to communicate what it had trained itself not to—and lost. She left the room, wheeling out the tea-wagon.

  “Edwin, you need air. Mr. Krupong—Felix. Take him with you. Go straight out that way, the basement door. …And now, let’s leave the table,”

  Awkwardly, chairs were pushed away, the guests straying against one another with the regretful feel of parts of a pattern which, in spite of all, had pleased. They disposed themselves in other chairs, looking round the new niche warily—would this pattern be as good?—in the thought that the evening wasn’t over yet; there would be more.

  Outside the dining-room door Edwin stopped, looking back, though he couldn’t see those in the ingle. Now the high-backed chairs in their flowered black covers were empty again, as he preferred them to be, holding immanent the absent family that owned them—out somewhere on its beautiful visits, powerful in its absence, sure to return. A cane leaned against the head chair. He turned his back on it.

  At the basement door, which as in all these houses led out into the areaway below the front stoop. Krupong said, “Is there a toilet down here?” Edwin pointed down the lower hall and waited, but shook his head when the black man, returning, offered to wait for him.

  “No.” He shook himself again, like a swimmer. “That’s Anna’s bathroom.” He steadied himself. “Let’s go.” At the door, he leaned a finger on Felix’s lapel. “Krupong—?”

  “Yes?” The face above seemed very, patient. Brotherly,

  “What’s my juju?”

  When Krupong’s teeth showed, the effect was lost.

  “Anna knows,” Edwin said.

  “Does she, now.” Krupong couldn’t place this secretary—what a fascinating house!

  “She knows how I’m going to pay him,” said Edwin suddenly.

  “How?”

  Oh nigger, how smart you are! To say How? at once. Not—Who?…

  “In rotten fruit.”

  “Watch it,” said Krupong, opening the door for him. “When you hit the open air.”

  Back in the ingle, over coffee, the others heard the door slam. “Funny,” said the Judge. “Only wine does it to him.”

  “A matter of breeding.” Even in the squashy seats, sighing with inches of down, which Mirriam had placed here, Ninon sat straight as in her box at rehearsals.

  “Well now, Ninon, be careful. All he has, he got here.”

  “You think so?” She shrugged. “What marvelous chairs.” She let herself sigh, and before their eyes made her own outlines melt and soften. …Watch, Pauli. Yes, admire. Leni, poor jointed Leni who can’t any more, remember how this is done. …“Wherever did you get them, Simon? I shall fall asleep.” She already knew the answer. Why he wanted her to ask these things wasn’t her concern. Men were always wanting one to pull at the thorns other women left in them, and one did it, a whore’s job too.

  “We used to sit here a great deal, in Mirriam’s time. She got them. Mirriam. My wife.”

  They all had a moment’s general silence in which to recall, as happened at such dinners, that they were not really a very close company.

  “Austin, do me a favor. Get me that bottle from the sideboard.”

  Austin carried it over reverently. “I’ve never had it, sir.”

  …Bit of a prig, sirring, aren’t you. But you’ll call me Simon in the end. …“In praise of several occasions,” said the Judge, and checked his watch. He settled back. Now that those other two had left, the rest had the relaxed look of nationals left to themselves—all except Austin, too young a Fenno yet to admit that a black man or a slum-born one were different from him. Even a black man whose grandfather heard everything.

  “Well now, Austin,” said the Judge. “Tell us about the war.”

  On the instant, he knew his mistake. In their faces, he caught it. He wasn’t of their breed, or wouldn’t have asked that spectator’s question. They’d all been to the wars in one way or another, even Leni. He was the foreigner here.

  Blount came to his rescue. “No, I will.” His job excused it. “Bet none of you know the term ‘hot pursuit’ isn’t just a newspaper head.” He culled a murmur of assent from the Judge, blank looks from the two women, the proper silence from Austin.

  But Pauli stood up, fondling the glass of yellow liqueur against his cheek, over the saber cut his mother had always been so proud of. “I do, why, of course.” Journalists who hung around opera houses in hope of “notices” to write were his wh
ole experience of Blount’s trade. He had the European indifference to it, vaguely connecting it with Paris and women like Nana—whom he thought real. “In the academy, we learned it. When we studied that old von…who was it, the adviser of Bismarck? ‘Jawohl, meine Herr’n’, the teacher used to say. ‘Kindly remember “hot pursuit” has nothing to do with the study of love.’” The cuff around the dandy wrist he pointed at Blount shone like all the linen one couldn’t get any more. “Your State Department, it keeps asking the allies for permission to go across the river, but it won’t get it, am I right?” He sipped from the glass without emphasis; such wines were his due. “Excuse me.” His smile was deferent. “My State Department too.”

  “Von…was it a von…who was that man…?” said Blount. “No—they won’t. I was with the Eighth in North Korea in January, when it was driven out of there.”

  “Ahh…you were with.” Paul interpolated a sip. “Pyongyang. Once I was near there.”

  “With the army?”

  “Ach, no, no. After my home service. Long before we came here, eh, Leni?” The women, in adjacent chairs, were deep in their own talk. “With an opera troupe. We got stranded.” God knows we did, I and the woman. She was worth following out there, a whole troupe in herself.

  “But you’ve been there.” Blount turned to them all. “Yanggu, I want to go. The Communist capital. A Peiping broadcast to solicit guns for them came through yesterday. Through Reuters, Hongkong. Everything’s open enough.” He turned back to Pauli. “You’ve been there. Tell me now…”

  Under cover of an exchange in which Blount, once again happily moving the world about in question (“North bank of the Hwachon reservoir…? Hyon-Inye road cut…?”), was in return being given a tour of the Chinese provinces via L’Elisir d’Amore, Austin—who’d been near enough the main defense triangle three weeks ago—heard himself addressed by the Judge.

  “‘Scratch any Austrian,’ my father used to say, ‘and underneath the waltzes, you’ll find war.’”

  “Scratch any refugee, too.”