by Philip Roth
I had strange fellows at the library and, in truth, there were many hours when I never quite knew how I’d gotten there or why I stayed. But I did stay and after a while waited patiently for that day when I would go into the men’s room on the main floor for a cigarette and, studying myself as I expelled smoke into the mirror, would see that at some moment during the morning I had gone pale, and that under my skin, as under McKee’s and Scapello’s and Miss Winney’s, there was a thin cushion of air separating the blood from the flesh. Someone had pumped it there while I was stamping out a book, and so life from now on would be not a throwing off, as it was for Aunt Gladys, and not a gathering in, as it was for Brenda, but a bouncing off a numbness I began to fear this, and yet, in my muscleless devotion to my work seemed edging towards it, silently as Miss Winney used to edge up to the Britannica. Her stool was empty now and awaited me.
Just before lunch the lion tamer came wide-eyed into the library. He stood still for a moment, only his fingers moving, as though he were counting the number of marble stairs before him. Then he walked creepily about on the marble floor, snickering at the clink of his taps and the way his little noise swelled up to the vaulted ceiling. Otto, the guard at the door, told him to make less noise with his shoes, but that did not seem to bother the little boy. He clacked on his tiptoes, high, secretively, delighted at the opportunity Otto had given him to practice this posture. He tiptoed up to me.
“Hey,” he said, “where’s the heart section?”
“The what?” I said.
“The heart section. Ain’t you got no heart section?”
He had the thickest sort of southern Negro dialect and the only word that came clear to me was the one that sounded like heart.
“How do you spell it?” I said.
“Heart. Man, pictures. Drawing books. Where you got them?”
“You mean art books? Reproductions?”
He took my polysyllabic word for it. “Yea, they’s them.”
“In a couple places,” I told him. “Which artist are you interested in?”
The boy’s eyes narrowed so that his whole face seemed black. He started backing away, as he had from the lion. “All of them …” he mumbled.
“That’s okay,” I said. “You go look at whichever ones you want. The next flight up. Follow the arrow to where it says Stack Three. You remember that? Stack Three. Ask somebody upstairs.”
He did not move; he seemed to be taking my curiosity about his taste as a kind of poll-tax investigation. “Go ahead,” I said, slashing my face with a smile, “right up there …”
And like a shot he was scuffling and tapping up towards the heart section.
After lunch I came back to the in-and-out desk and there was John McKee, waiting, in his pale blue slacks, his black shoes, his barber-cloth shirt with the elastic bands, and a great knit tie, green, wrapped into a Windsor knot, that was huge and jumped when he talked. His breath smelled of hair oil and his hair of breath and when he spoke, spittle cobwebbed the comers of his mouth. I did not like him and at times had the urge to yank back on his armbands and slingshoot him out past Otto and the lions into the street.
“Has a little Negro boy passed the desk? With a thick accent? He’s been hiding in the art books all morning. You know what those boys do in there.”
“I saw him come in, John.”
“So did I. Has he gone out though.”
“I haven’t noticed. I guess so.”
“Those are very expensive books.”
“Don’t be so nervous, John. People are supposed to touch them.”
“There is touching,” John said sententiously, “and there is touching. Someone should check on him. I was afraid to leave the desk here. You know the way they treat the housing projects we give them.”
“You give them?”
“The city. Have you seen what they do at Seth Boyden? They threw beer bottles, those big ones, on the lawn. They’re taking over the city.”
“Just the Negro sections.”
“It’s easy to laugh, you don’t live near them. I’m going to call Mr. Scapello’s office to check the Art Section. Where did he ever find out about art?”
“You’ll give Mr. Scapello an ulcer, so soon after his egg-and-pepper sandwich. I’ll check, I have to go upstairs anyway.”
“You know what they do in there,” John warned me.
“Don’t worry, Johnny, they’re the ones who’ll get warts on their dirty little hands.”
“Ha ha. Those books happen to cost—”
So that Mr. Scapello would not descend upon the boy with his chalky fingers, I walked up the three flights to Stack Three, past the receiving room where rheumy-eyed Jimmy Boylen, our fifty-one-year-old boy, unloaded books from a cart; past the reading room, where bums off Mulberry Street slept over Popular Mechanics; past the smoking corridor where damp-browed summer students from the law school relaxed, some smoking, others trying to rub the colored dye from their tort texts off their fingertips; and finally, past the periodical room, where a few ancient ladies who’d been motored down from Upper Montclair now huddled in their chairs, pince-nezing over yellowed, fraying society pages in old old copies of the Newark News. Up on Stack Three I found the boy. He was seated on the glass-brick floor holding an open book in his lap, a book, in fact, that was bigger than his lap and had to be propped up by his knees. By the light of the window behind him I could see the hundreds of spaces between the hundreds of tiny black corkscrews that were his hair. He was very black and shiny, and the flesh of his lips did not so much appear to be a different color as it looked to be unfinished and awaiting another coat The lips were parted, the eves wide, and even the ears seemed to have a heightened receptivity! He looked ecstatic—until he saw me, that is. For all he knew I was John McKee.
“That’s okay,” I said before he could even move, “I’m just passing through. You read.”
“Ain’t nothing to read. They’s pictures.”
“Fine.” I fished around the lowest shelves a moment, playing at work.
“Hey, mister,” the boy said after a minute, “where is this?”
“Where is what?”
“Where is these pictures? These people, man, they sure does look cool. They ain’t no yelling or shouting here, you could just see it.”
He lifted the book so I could see. It was an expensive large-sized edition of Gauguin reproductions. The page he had been looking at showed an 8½12 × 11 print, in color, of three native women standing knee-high in a rose-colored stream. It was a silent picture, he was right.
“That’s Tahiti. That’s an island in the Pacific Ocean.”
“That ain’t no place you could go, is it? Like a ree-sort?”
“You could go there, I suppose. It’s very far. People live there …”
“Hey, look, look here at this one.” He flipped back to a page where a young brown-skinned maid was leaning forward on her knees, as though to dry her hair. “Man,” the boy said, “that’s the fuckin life.” The euphoria of his diction would have earned him eternal banishment from the Newark Public Library and its branches had John or Mr. Scapello—or, God forbid, the hospitalized Miss Winney—come to investigate.
“Who took these pictures?” he asked me.
“Gauguin. He didn’t take them, he painted them. Paul Gauguin. He was a Frenchman.”
“Is he a white man or a colored man?”
“He’s white.”
“Man,” the boy smiled, chuckled almost, “I knew that. He don’t take pictures like no colored men would. He’s a good picture taker … Look, look, look here at this one. Ain’t that the fuckin life?”
I agreed it was and left.
Later I sent Jimmy Boylen hopping down the stairs to tell McKee that everything was all right. The rest of the day was uneventful. I sat at the Information Desk thinking about Brenda and reminding myself that that evening I would have to get gas before I started up to Short Hills, which I could see now, in my mind’s eye, at dusk, rose-colored, like
a Gauguin stream.
When I pulled up to the Patimkin house that night, everybody but Julie was waiting for me on the front porch: Mr. and Mrs., Ron, and Brenda, wearing a dress. I had not seen her in a dress before and for an instant she did not look like the same girl. But that was only half the surprise. So many of those Lincolnesque college girls turn out to be limbed for shorts alone. Not Brenda. She looked, in a dress, as though she’d gone through life so attired, as though she’d never worn shorts, or bathing suits, or pajamas, or anything but that pale linen dress. I walked rather bouncingly up the lawn, past the huge weeping willow, towards the waiting Patimkins, wishing all the while that I’d had my car washed. Before I’d even reached them, Ron stepped forward and shook my hand, vigorously, as though he hadn’t seen me since the Diaspora. Mrs. Patimkin smiled and Mr. Patimkin grunted something and continued twitching his wrists before him, then raising an imaginary golf club and driving a ghost of a golf ball up and away towards the Orange Mountains, that are called Orange, I’m convinced, because in that various suburban light that’s the only color they do not come dressed in.
“We’ll be right back,” Brenda said to me. “You have to sit with Julie. Carlota’s off.”
“Okay,” I said.
“We’re taking Ron to the airport.”
“Okay.”
“Julie doesn’t want to go. She says Ron pushed her in the pool this afternoon. We’ve been waiting for you, so we don’t miss Ron’s plane. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Mr. and Mrs. Patimkin and Ron moved off, and I flashed Brenda just the hint of a glare. She reached out and took my hand a moment.
“How do you like me?” she said.
“You’re great to baby-sit for. Am I allowed all the milk and cake I want?”
“Don’t be angry, baby. We’ll be right back.” Then she waited a moment, and when I failed to deflate the pout from my mouth, she gave me a glare, no hints about it. “I meant how do you like me in a dress!” Then she ran off towards the Chrysler, trotting in her high heels like a colt.
When I walked into the house, I slammed the screen door behind me.
“Close the other door too,” a little voice shouted. “The air-conditioning.”
I closed the other door, obediently.
“Neil?” Julie called.
“Yes.”
“Hi. Want to play five and two?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I did not answer.
“I’m in the television room,” she called.
“Good.”
“Are you supposed to stay with me?”
“Yes.”
She appeared unexpectedly through the dining room. “Want to read a book report I wrote?”
“Not now.”
“What do you want to do?” she said.
“Nothing, honey. Why don’t you watch TV?”
“All right,” she said disgustedly, and kicked her way back to the television room.
For a while I remained in the hall, bitten with the urge to slide quietly out of the house, into my car, and back to Newark, where I might even sit in the alley and break candy with my own. I felt like Carlota; no, not even as comfortable as that. At last I left the hall and began to stroll in and out of rooms on the first floor. Next to the living room was the study, a small knotty-pine room jammed with eater-cornered leather chairs and a complete set of Information Please Almanacs. On the wall hung three colored photo-paintings; they were the kind which, regardless of the subjects, be they vital or infirm, old or youthful, are characterized by bud-cheeks, wet lips, pearly teeth, and shiny, metallized hair. The subjects in this case were Ron, Brenda, and Julie at about ages fourteen, thirteen, and two. Brenda had long auburn hair, her diamond-studded nose, and no glasses; all combined to make her look a regal thirteen-year-old who’d just gotten smoke in her eyes. Ron was rounder and his hairline was lower, but that love of spherical objects and lined courts twinkled in his boyish eves Poor little Tulie was lost in the photo-painter’s Platonic’ idea of childhood; her tiny humanity was smothered somewhere back of gobs of pink and white.
There were other pictures about, smaller ones, taken with a Brownie Reflex before photo-paintings had become fashionable. There was a tiny picture of Brenda on a horse; another of Ron in bar mitzvah suit, yamdkah, and tallas; and two pictures framed together—one of a beautiful, faded woman, who must have been, from the eyes, Mrs. Patimkin’s mother, and the other of Mrs. Patimkin herself, her hair in a halo, her eyes joyous and not those of a slowly aging mother with a quick and lovely daughter.
I walked through the archway into the dining room and stood a moment looking out at the sporting goods tree. From the television room that winged off the dining room, I could hear Julie listening to This Is Your Life. The kitchen, which winged off the other side, was empty, and apparently, with Carlota off, the Patimkins had had dinner at the club. Mr. and Mrs. Patimkin’s bedroom was in the middle of the house, down the hall, next to Julie’s, and for a moment I wanted to see what size bed those giants slept in—I imagined it wide and deep as a swimming pool—but I postponed my investigation while Julie was in the house, and instead opened the door in the kitchen that led down to the basement.
The basement had a different kind of coolness from the house, and it had a smell, which was something the upstairs was totally without. It felt cavernous down there, but in a comforting way, like the simulated caves children make for themselves on rainy days, in hall closets, under blankets, or in between the legs of dining room tables. I flipped on the light at the foot of the stairs and was not surprised at the pine paneling, the bamboo furniture, the ping-pong table, and the mirrored bar that was stocked With every kind and size of glass, ice bucket, decanter, mixer, swizzle stick, shot glass, pretzel bowl—all the bacchanalian paraphernalia, plentiful, orderly, and untouched, as it can be only in the bar of a wealthy man who never entertains drinking people, who himself does not drink, who, in fact, gets a fishy look from his wife when every several months he takes a shot of schnapps before dinner. I went behind the bar where there was an aluminum sink that had not seen a dirty glass, I’m sure, since Ron’s bar mitzvah party, and would not see another, probably, until one of the Patimkin children was married or engaged. I would have poured myself a drink—just as a wicked wage for being forced into servantry—but I was uneasy about breaking the label on a bottle of whiskey. You had to break a label to get a drink. On the shelf back of the bar were two dozen bottles—twenty-three to be exact—of Jack Daniels, each with a little booklet tied to its collared neck informing patrons how patrician of them it was to drink the stuff. And over the Jack Daniels were more photos: there was a blown-up newspaper photo of Ron palming a basketball in one hand like a raisin; under the picture it said, “Center, Ronald Patimkin, Millburn High School, 6‘4”, 217 pounds.” And there was another picture of Brenda on a horse, and next to that, a velvet mounting board with ribbons and medals clipped to it: Essex County Horse Show 1949, Union County Horse Show 1950, Garden State Fair 1952, Morristown Horse Show 1953, and so on—all for Brenda, for jumping and running or galloping or whatever else young girls receive ribbons for. In the entire house I had’nt seen one picture of Mr. Patimkin.
The rest of the basement, back of the wide pine-paneled room, was gray cement walls and linoleum floor and contained innumerable electrical appliances, including a freezer big enough to house a family of Eskimos. Beside the freezer, incongruosly, was a tall old refrigerator; its ancient presence was a reminder to me of the Patimkin roots in Newark. This same refrigerator had once stood in the kitchen of an apartment in some four-family house, probably in the same neighborhood where I had lived all my life, first with my parents and then, when the two of them went wheezing off to Arizona, with my aunt and uncle. After Pearl Harbor the refrigerator had made the move up to Short Hills; Patimkin Kitchen and Bathroom Sinks had gone to war: no new barracks was complete until it had a squad of Patimkin sinks lined up in its latrine.
&nbs
p; I opened the door of the old refrigerator; it was not empty. No longer did it hold butter, eggs, herring in cream sauce, ginger ale, tuna fish salad, an occasional corsage—rather it was heaped with fruit, shelves swelled with it, every color, every texture, and hidden within, every kind of pit. There were greengage plums, black plums, red plums, apricots, nectarines, peaches, long horns of grapes, black, yellow, red, and cherries, cherries flowing out of boxes and staining everything scarlet. And there were melons—cantaloupes and honeydews—and on the top shelf, half of a huge watermelon, a thin sheet of wax paper clinging to its bare red face like a wet lip. Oh Patimkin! Fruit grew in their refrigerator and sporting goods dropped from their trees!
I grabbed a handful of cherries and then a nectarine, and I bit right down to its pit.
“You better wash that or you’ll get diarrhea.”
Julie was standing behind me in the pine-paneled room. She was wearing her Bermudas and her white polo shirt which was unlike Brenda’s only in that it had a little dietary history of its own.
“What?” I said.
“They’re not washed yet,” Julie said, and in such a way that it seemed to place the refrigerator itself out-of-bounds, if only for me.
“That’s all right,” I said, and devoured the nectarine and put the pit in my pocket and stepped out of the refrigerator room, all in one second. I still didn’t know what to do with the cherries. “I was just looking around,” I said.
Julie didn’t answer.