Flow gently sweet Afton/ Flow gently swee-eet Afton/ Flow GENTLY—and here he rose to full height, as he knotted his muffler and flowed down the staircase to the mirror-&-marble foyer. At the corner of Charles, he angled himself into a standing taxi. When the driver smiled and said, “What is this?”, Orrin’s confidence in the espionage aspect sagged briefly, but the river swept him gently round that small jut of rocky soil, like a piece of paper caught and then spun free, and he replied with charming unconcern, “Maid’s night out.” In a trice they were off for Kenmore Square.
Orrin once had a client who owned a gorilla suit. A sweet shy fellow who harbored within his bosom a vast exuberance for life that he rarely expressed, for fear of attracting notice. Inside that suit, however, the man could really cut loose. Dancing in the stands at football games, boldly approaching women in the street (with admittedly mixed results), working happily with groups of children.
Orrin’s getup tonight was just as all-concealing as a gorilla suit, and provided the same kind of shelter. It was like watching through one-way glass in a clinical observation room; the next best thing to being invisible. Totally unselfconscious, he filtered inside the club and down the curving stair to the cellar, mingling among the couples and clusters of young people. The place was lousy with pipes—half the plumbing in Boston routed through this Rat, miles of copper and cast-iron plus some outsized ductwork that alligators might easily negotiate—and thick with cigarette smoke and very dark, though garish lighting would flare up, flicker and bobble in irregular sequence.
Zap! it would spotlight a babyblue drummerboy, then Zoom! it would switch to a hot pink lady with a headdress of green feathers. Peacock? All the while the sound was mountainous, a squadron of planes strafing the room, but no one seemed to mind it, or even hear it. Orrin kept looking up, waiting to be engulfed, but all he saw was pipes.
He exchanged smiles with the lugubrious bartender, a tall young man with the posture of a discarded pipe cleaner, then turned his attention to a remarkable couple. They never spoke a word to one another yet clearly had a complete understanding, even though they seemed to belong in different magazines. The boy, swaying to the loud fast music as though it were a Chopin waltz, wore legtight jeans with torn pockets, and black boots with chromium buckles. Chains and bracelets on his arms and ankles, an earring with a long green tuft, and a simple discreet gold ring in his nose.
His hair-do looked a day’s work easily, for on top it was shock electric, a comic-book Harold who has glimpsed a ghost, while down the back it fell in a queue, braided and beribboned like a turn-of-the-century Chinaman. And what made the effect so striking was the girl, swaying against him to the same secret rhythm, but totally without affect. Skirt and heels, understated co-ed makeup, dark hair brushed up neatly into two tortoise-shell combs. They did everything as a perfect duet, leaning together in their private dance, sipping beer from a single long-neck, even smoking on the same cigarette. It was the most concentrated display of oral activity Orrin had ever witnessed—until they went him one better with the single wad of chewing gum.
Then lightning struck the room—once, twice—and a crash of percussion occasioned deeper baths of blue illumination. For a moment all heads turned toward the band, who moved from this raucous transition into a blues number so soft and melodic that people actually listened for a minute. It was the lady with the feathers still, but she could sing, and in black spandex tights even seemed a little fetching. Orrin speculated that if she kept on peeling away layers of the rock-and-roll joke like a stripper, she might be quite something in the end. Might well provide another chance to confront and deny his sexuality, for the spandex really was a touch.
Then at last he woke to it. He had been killing time, waiting to see Elspeth, and he had nearly missed her clean. Right there on the drum he saw it, Air Force Two, but the blues had concluded and the band was unplugging, packing it in. Already the stage lights were down, as he searched for her and saw only thin boys snapping out jacks, reeling in wire, folding up cases. The girl in the headdress was Elspeth, he had seen her and he had not; had heard her without taking note. Shortchanged on this opportunity he had been hoarding up for weeks, Orrin charged past startled faces toward the dressing room door.
Then stopped. The bar was forty feet long and so was the mirror above it. Somewhere around the thirty-fifth foot, he caught a glimmer of himself (warts and all) and hit the brakes. This was not low profile; it would not do. He wanted desperately to keep to the sane—to keep the joke a little funny. He must not wreck Elspeth’s evening, not to mention his own teetering life. Orrin leaned on the bar, softly humming a broadcast test signal until he felt composed. The bottles caught his eye, with just their necks reflected, and brought him back toward the tangible. Must be cool.
He could no more connect the character Elspie was playing with the sweet daughter he knew and loved than he could connect his own mirror image with himself. Too many bridges to cross. It was getting hot inside the rubber wig, but he would stay cool now. I’m cool, he told himself. Be cool. Time to go, Daddy-O. Talking to himself, yes, but just to set an inner rhythm.
Crossing Mass Ave., he started to sing a ditty his father had always sung in the car—“Oblivion the gem of the ocean!” This was the old man’s running joke (it took a hundred forms), with the mythical town of Oblivion, Ohio always at the core. Sometimes in high spirits, the whole family would try it together in shape-note harmony—“Oblivion the gem of the ocean!”—and John Summers would smile and shake his head with wonderful meaningless irony and say, Oh yes, Oblivion was definitely the place to be.
III
The End of the Thread
Volition, cognition, and perception were like a tangled skein. One noticed this only when one tried to find the end of the thread.
—MUSIL
15
Orrin sat home in a bleak state of mind on the day after his fifty-ninth birthday. We think of our lives (most of us do) as being ahead of us—about to happen—even when we are not so very young. But there must come a moment, a sequence of years that breaks down toward an extended moment, in which this ceases to be true. Orrin wondered if that time had come for him.
He had been thinking of friends, and decided to make a list of his ten closest, to see where they all stood at this juncture. He could think of only seven, and three of them were dead. A fourth, Charlie Burns, was wheezing badly.
Fifty-nine years old! It was the ninth year of a decade that contained its end. People made much of turning thirty, forty, fifty. In truth the damage was done at twenty-nine, thirty-nine, forty-nine. The ninth was the killer year, the tenth was already the start of a new run. Orrin was as good as sixty.
He had no conviction that his life lay ahead of him. Even Eli’s straw man, The Mean American Male, could look forward now to a mere dozen years of life—one brisk childhood!—and there remained the possibility always that one had less than an hour, less than ten minutes. Having recently pondered the state of mind of children on their birthdays, Orrin found the subject of older folk much less a conundrum.
Now Eli was back. He had been away so long this time that Orrin had ceased to expect him, but he burst in, dropped his briefcase and haversack on the sofa with a dusty splash, and clapped Orrin on the shoulder.
“How are you? Did you get my card?”
“Card? No. I don’t think so. But it’s nice to see you, Eli.”
Paperman, spur of the moment fellow, appeared to have travelled. And Orrin was glad to see him, though he did not manage to display such pleasure as he bespoke. Mired so low in his chair that he might have been entombed there, his slow voice seemed to come from six feet under. In his birthday gloom, Orrin had pre-deceased himself!
Eli saw at once there was a problem, evidence of a binge lay all about the room. But what had been going on? Had Tia taken him up only to drop him so soon?
“O’Summers, you know I am no reformer, but I do see quite a few empties around the house.”
“
Oh don’t worry, they were full.”
“I’m sure they were. Did you manage this impressive project on your own?”
“So many bottles! I see what you mean.”
Orrin seemed to come back from the dead, and to take note of the accumulated glassware as though for the first time. Despite the weight of gathering years, he was roused to life by the younger man’s presence. Yet he was peeved with Eli too, with his absences and his insufferable vitality, and wrestled with this conflict not unlike a neglected lover.
“Looks to be an average of about one a day,” said Eli.
“And it’s all my fault. It wouldn’t look that way at all, if not for me. I feel personally responsible.”
Eli just kept shooting him the grin. He saw no sign of current drinking, no fresh glass at hand. The last thing he needed was a hassle,. having overdosed on planes, trains, and taxicabs—even on work. He had strolled home from Government Center rather than take another change for Charles, grateful for the soft wind and peaceful evening light.
“Do we suppose I threw a party?” said Orrin, and his continuing disingenuousness briefly overcame Eli’s craving for quiet.
“Too many bottles, O’Summers. It reeks in here.”
“Now you are reforming. Open some windows if you like. Here, I’ll open one for you.”
“Sorry sorry. I didn’t mean to sound moralistic—”
Maybe there had been a card—news from some coast or other. Orrin now wanted to believe in the missing postcard, one from Minsk for a change, full of good cheer.
“No, Eli, I’m sorry. Please excuse my state if you can, it’s all too simple-headed. You see I have aged in your absence—a birthday, you know—and barely one-third of my immediate family thought to call and sing. Besides which, I didn’t even want to age.
“So all this cheer was a birthday celebration?” said Eli, scooping loose bottles into a paper sack.
“Call it that, yes. I have been drowning in self-pity for the sheer glory of it. And know what else? I’d like a drink right now.”
“Well at least it is the right time of day. We could both have one.”
“Let’s,” said Orrin. He had thrown a test at Eli, a pop quiz, and Eli, perceiving it as such, had passed. To Orrin it meant his young friend cared after all.
“Well here’s to you,” said Eli, “To the birthday boy, skoal and banzai.”
“Done.”
“I hate birthdays too. I hate any holiday, actually. Any quirk in the calendar. Give me a good old Wednesday or Thursday anytime.”
“To new legislation, then, calling for all days hence to be designated good old Wednesday or Thursday. And on the second day he rested, God bless his weary bones.”
“The two-day week, skoal and banzai.”
They knocked back in unison, then Orrin in bitter careless levity flung his glass at the mantelpiece in the grand manner. It didn’t even break—nothing on the fastball! But his smile couldn’t stay, and now he felt a deepborn sob jamming his gullet.
“What can a man say?”
“No need to say anything, Orrin. No big deal.”
“But purpose, Eli, what’s the bloody purpose. When your wife is gone, your kids are of course gone … and your work is what? A big sandbox. A shadow-box to play in, where you never produce anything concrete. All the breathing that goes on, and analyses of bloody analyses, my God what’s to show for it. At sixty! Nothing. Bloody nada. Nujitsu. Zilchma.”
“You make a life. You build a self.”
Eli emitted this pearl with a nice conviction and may have even believed it. Hardly sentimental, he was a sincere man. Yet at the same time he was thinking; all this because the ex-wife neglected to wish him a Happy Birthday? And the rock-and-roll daughter?
“A pisspoor job I made of it, in that case. Face it—I’ve been facing it—there is no purpose. Even a pimpled adolescent can tell you as much.”
“Leaving the complexion of things completely out of it, Doctor, I make a point of not going to adolescents for my slant on life.”
“Rebut, then.”
“All right. For the defense, then. Do you remember the film you saw, about an Austrian army man? Colonel Redl?”
“Redl, yes. Proceed, with the reedle of life.”
“There’s one scene where Redl is very depressed, disillusioned with all the political maneuvering, and his woman—blue-eyed beauty, wise and strong?—comes to him at the window and says, Forget it, it doesn’t count, any of it. It only matters that we are alive. Do you remember the scene?”
“Actually I slept through a lot of that Redl film.”
“Well that’s it. That’s the rebuttal. It all matters. Drop a stone in the water and you realize the splash matters.”
“A splash? That’s what she said, the blue-eyed beauty?”
“More or less, Orrin.”
“Damn. And I come to such knowledge late in life.”
But Orrin was grinning too, by now. And when Eli said the Defense would rest, Orrin said the Prosecution could use a little rest himself, and thanked Paperman for having made him feel better-already.
Which he did. Distracted and soothed. When the children were small, he used to walk them along Rock Creek and play countless games of Poohsticks off the old kingpost bridge. And it was true, to a child the splash did indeed matter, very much. The literal visible splash and the different-shaped sticks spinning below the bridge on uneven curling currents.
It mattered whose stick came out first to the sunlight too, mattered tremendously. Redl’s woman was right—the things that mattered were everywhere, for everyone. Only you had to feel it that way, or it wasn’t so.
It was like old times next morning at The Paramount. Two newspapers, two coffees, two orders of the Hessian Eggs. And Eli restless, eager as always to begin the day’s battles—this time an evidentiary hearing with the local school board that had failed a fourth time to hire a black headmaster in a predominantly black school.
“What I can never figure,” said Orrin, smacking the paper with the backs of his fingers, “is whether there are two Stanley Ellins and one Stanley Elkin, or the other way around. Or are there two of each? And why the hell don’t some of them change their name to Kluszewski, if you see what I mean.”
“I’ve heard of Kluszewski.”
“It’s going to take me another shot of coffee to get to the bottom of this one, Paperman. Yourself?”
“No thanks, I’ve had enough. I’ve got to get moving in a minute. But maybe we can crack this Elkins case over dinner.”
“You’re on for the evening meal?”
“Absolutely. Though I might bring Marce, if she’s bitter about last night.”
“What happened, Eli? I thought you didn’t see her last night?”
“Well that’s what happened, of course. I didn’t see her.”
“Ah. But yes, bring her. You needn’t ask, you know—it is your home too.”
“Thanks, Orrin.”
“Speaking of home, did you see your family last week?”
“I did. I even spoke with them though we were forced to converse in their language. I figure it’s like getting by in Mexico with a small vocabulary—you’re okay if all you want is coffee in the morning, beer in the afternoon, and tequila at night.”
“You’re too hard on them. I trust you are not so hard in their presence.”
“No, there’s nothing to be lost or gained at this point. It’s odd, when you think about it—that parents and their children can be so different. And I suppose you probably do think about it.”
“Not really,” said Orrin, wondering briefly what ever became of Gail’s “lost gain” on the old house. “What I have considered is how the tie that binds doesn’t—doesn’t bind, you know. Differences never surprise me, but I would think the common experiences, and the blood tie, would be worth something. I told you I saw her sing? At The Rat?”
“You didn’t. I assume you mean your daughter. But listen, O’Summers, you and I are not speak
ing the same tongue either, it seems. First you tell me I never mentioned I’d be gone, and now you say you did mention this—”
“I’m never quite sure, you know. I mean to tell you something or other, but then you’re off for a spell. It gets said out loud in my head and stops there. Let’s agree the problem is mine—in a haze of alcohol and so forth.”
“Too many bottles,” Eli grinned. “So how did you find out?”
“About the band? Clyde told me at my grandson’s birthday party. The group calls itself the Air Force, the idea being—”
“Air Force Two! I know their stuff. I mean, they have a disc out, Doctor, that’s a very hot band. What an idiot I am. Your daughter is Elspeth Summers. Unbelievable. You have to introduce me.”
“I’d love to, if someone will introduce me first.”
“Orrin, she’s good. She’s a hot ticket, your little girl.”
“I’m not sure I can think of her quite that way,” said Orrin, which was so—though it had not been so last Friday night, in her spandex masquerade. (As for that, intimations of Electra, Orrin was hardly concerned: to him it was only close-up magic, the disappearing coin, the cap and ball.) “I’m not sure I can allow you to think of her that way, either, Eli. A hot ticket? Elspeth was very thin as a child, you know. Sweet and very skinny, with a wide gap-tooth grin.”
“Later. I’ll want all the details, ancient and modern. After which I will marry her and call you Dad. What do you say to that, O’Summers. But look here, this has to be one of the wildest. MAN CRUSHED BY QUARTERS. Read it and weep, it’s sad but true, page twenty-two.”
“I don’t know, Eli. It may make a funny headline, but the poor fellow is really dead, you know. And look, he has a family.”
“I know, it’s a terrible weakness of mine, headlines. But you’ll have to cure me later, I’ve got to sprint now.”
Postcards from Pinsk Page 13