Cynosura

by Tito Perdue

  “Like to kill you,” he said, speaking more loudly than he should.

  “Ssssh! Later.”

  They pushed through the crowd, arriving in good time at an enormous city building the color of vomit. Together with the cello, they looked like three persons ascending the elevator instead of just the two we know them in fact to actually have been. The place held many foreigners, along with Americans of both the best and worst sorts. He spotted a seated woman reading avidly in a book that, upon closer inspection, seriously disappointed him.

  “You’ll have forgotten all about me before I even get on the plane!” the girl emitted suddenly. “It’s always the same, people like you. I know.”

  He seized her, kissed her on the nose, and licked up both tears. Her face was gorgeous, and this was likely the very instant her beauty and character achieved its ultimate summit, as Spengler had said of certain cultures, furthermost utmost summit of her career. She had perhaps already begun to deteriorate even as he squeezed her.

  “You won’t be here when I get back,” she said. “I realize that now.”

  He led her off, set the instrument aside, and kissed her rabidly on her reddening eyes. She was the prize of this world, his life’s reason, nor had she even begun to deteriorate in any perceptible way. There was only one solution for the way he felt, but they were far from the apartment, and even that cure had never fully betided them for more than an hour or two.

  “Oh, God.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I can’t stand it!”

  “You? I’m the one that can’t stand it.”

  “And I’ll be here when you get back.”

  “Me? You’re the one that’s leaving, for Christ’s sakes!”

  “I have to.”

  “For your goddamn little career? Wish I’d never heard of it!”

  “Then you never would of heard of me.”

  They ran into each other’s arms. The passersby pretended to ignore them, save for an elderly man who had seated himself in order to watch. Had ever he (the old one) participated in an affair like this one? Not likely. And now, soon, the plane would be leaving, carrying her off to Europe and beyond.

  He was to remember the moment she turned to look back at him, eyes full of tears, the waning Sun igniting her golden hair.

  Imagine he had known then that he really wouldn’t ever see her again.

  Fifty-eight

  He retired to their apartment and took to bed. Perhaps if he lay there long enough, she’d have returned by the time he grew conscious again.

  He grew conscious again, but she was not there. He went through her belongings, finding not just the books and underwear he expected, but other materials related to an above-average interest in sexual matters. Knocked off balance by the stuff, some of it, he revved up her expensive machine and put on the Sibelius violin concerto, followed right away by the final three movements of Mahler’s Eighth. He had pretty much given up on eighteenth-century music and intended to spend the rest of his life becoming more and more romantic, more so even than at present.

  It was his intention to plunge back into his work, including especially his travails in the state archives. Keeping a noncommittal face, he sat directly across from the proctor, delving deeper and deeper into the private papers of certain figures who couldn’t possibly have wanted such stuff made available. “Am I the only young person of my age in Tennessee who spends his time this way?” he asked, receiving no reply.

  The girl would be over Europe by now, her adorable eyes sheltering under two fringed lids. Coming nearer, he sought to find the irises behind those thin membranes. Yes, she was sleeping, her mind having parlayed itself into a blue-green pond with lilies in it. Below, the map of lovely France was passing in review, a Valois territory replete with castles and flower gardens and the like.

  He left the apartment, strolled two blocks, and lit up a cigarette. A movie show theater just then appeared up ahead where three roads ran together; taking two dollars and fifty cents of their joint money, he paid the fare and tried successfully to smuggle his burning book and cigarette into the building. Book, he meant to say, and slowly-burning cigarette. The film promised to be a good one, and by hap he had come in upon the face of a beautiful woman on the verge of a kiss. Not that she bore comparison to his own sweetheart, of course, whose eyes, so to speak, were a crime both against nature and all those timid boys frightened away by them.

  The following scene was of little interest, but the one after that revealed the woman in a bathing suit. Her physique was of the American type, nice enough, he admitted, but lacking the sort of décolletage he required in the better sort of ladies’ beachwear. Sadly, he was just two seats away from a crowd of people of approximately his own age, imbeciles making comments anent the sound of chewing. He wanted to rise and move away, and would have done so but for his tumescence. The movie star was bending over to gather up her towel.

  Sick by natural inclination, he could never be calm again, not till his sweetheart had come back to him. He was nervous, too, and his cigarette had worn itself out without any effort of his. But mostly it was the actress’ face that upset him; better these people were bees or ants and all looked just alike.

  He walked home in a light drizzle that partly calmed him and let him look forward to the reading he had planned for that night. Owing to events, he had begun to look into the mysteries of Romanian history, especially that thousand-year period during which either nothing had happened or else no one had written it down. Of course, he could always fill in the blanks with imagination.

  Fifty-nine

  She had arrived in Bucharest at just after nine and gone direct to her hotel. She disliked it when the taxi driver went on staring at her in the mirror, and although she had memorized perhaps fifty words of the language, it wasn’t enough to detach his gaze. Her skirt of course was short, an adjunct to her philosophy, and in any case she had already stretched it out as far as possible. If her legs were beautiful, were it not a cruelty to keep them hidden? She had a duty to reify herself. And, then, too—why not admit it?—it gave her a thrill. She couldn’t know her boyfriend was suffering at just that moment in a downtown movie theater.

  She dined (delicately) in the hotel restaurant, an exquisitely-appointed place with high-priced foods. She could have bought my student a pair of new shoes on the cost of an aperitif. She experienced some guilt that the charge was to an impoverished orchestra in one of Europe’s most questionable places. In the event, she had a pro forma salad, white wine, and nothing else.

  Her room was aesthetically-appointed, too, and held a spare toilet (bidet) that mystified her. She tried the television, but found the spoken language far too rapid. Finally, she spread the blanket on the floor and went quickly through a series of exercises that you and I could not likely have replicated. The radio gave good music while concentrating just a bit too much, she felt, on a certain composer who happened to have been a native of the place. She showered, first placing a chair to reinforce the door. The mirror was old and out of focus from too much usage.

  She gave no more than forty minutes to the cello and then jumped in bed and mounted the pillow. Whence comes the notion that a person oughtn’t do things like that, look in a mirror and use a pillow? It wasn’t of course the same as actually being penetrated by a certain one, but in the meantime would have to do. And sometimes she wished (not really) that she were still an innocent girl for whom the birds used to come and sing.

  Came morning, she hit the street in bright Sun and sallied off on a three-hour tour of the famous city. There are places where a woman will draw quite enough attention by dressing conservatively with head held high. It isn’t true that women are dominated by men, not when a woman walks in the optimum way. She strolled slowly, testing the temper of this essential city, and then took a taxi to the concert hall, where soon she would have to earn her pay. By late evening she was back in her hotel, a musty place of antique furniture, massy portraits on the wall, and
thick red drapes endued with nineteenth-century dust—she adored it.

  The restaurant occupied one whole floor of the building and was perpetually attended by a definite number of odd-looking people. A tiny orchestra was lodged in the corner, and although the evening was early, the players were tired and old already. Someday, as her gloomy boyfriend liked to say, the whole world would be like this. She perceived the cellist, an elderly woman with too much lipstick and a goiter. There was undoubtedly some good music to be had in this city, but as for the people themselves . . . She had been warned.

  She exercised at length, too much really, and then took out and studied the cello score she would be required to play later on. She had been apart from her man and her lizards for more than thirty-six hours by now, and yearned grievously, if not equally, for all of them.

  The bed was enormous and had been used, she felt sure, by cellists and cardinals, yea, King Carol himself, mayhap. She bathed and freshened and depilated herself in the pattern demanded by her man. He had no dislike of her luminous hair, certainly! She used no deodorants, of course, another of his requirements. She tried not to think of him, however, and shortly after eleven o’clock, managed to fall off to sleep.

  When according to wont the Sun, her own special star, arose from regions more easterly than Bucharest, she leapt from bed and did her exercises. Always aware of “time’s chariot” drawing near, she deemed herself about as pretty as she had ever been, not to mention more sophisticated by a great deal. Having a glass of wine at a table of her own in ancient Bucharest with men staring at her (she did not feel naked when men stared at her, but only when they didn’t), she could go in safety whithersoever she wist.

  It was at this table that she inscribed her third and fourth letters to the reprobate back home in Tennessee. No one seeing her at that time and noting her worthy silhouette, her far-away melancholy and immaculate tailoring, no one, I say, could have imagined the sort of material those letters contained. I’ve seen them.

  She returned to her room, adjusted herself, checked the mirror, and then hefted up the cello—the wench was strong—and carted the thing out into the fraught purlieu of easternmost Europe. The people she saw! And yet others appeared fully evolved, assets to Western civilization as she supposed. A man hurried up to help with the cello while two others followed at a distance. I could have told them their chances.

  She strolled past all sorts of shops calculated with devilish insight to appeal to a woman’s cockles. Small things, very cute, even adorable indeed. But she dasn’t use up any of their joint money, the boy’s and hers. An adolescent, an awful one, now came up and offered his assistance, as she interpreted it. Instead, she turned into Strada Demetru Dobrescu and slithered into a crowd of reasonable-looking people of middle-age or better. The women, some, were more tastefully dressed than they needed to be; she could feel her gorge rising. She spotted a more or less handsome man who, however, wouldn’t have lasted five minutes against her boyfriend. She was strong (see above), but was beginning to tire after having trekked the six to eight hundred yards to the building assigned to her.

  She had the stamina to carry her fiddle up three stories and into the office of the man to whom she was obliged to report, a portly individual who right away began welcoming her in the uncanny language of the region. She had studied a bit of Latin, but this was foreign to her. He looked her up and especially down and then called an English speaker from the adjoining office who focused instead on her lapidary face.

  “Well!” he said. “Yes. And so you’re here now.”

  She agreed.

  “He wants to welcome you to Romania,” he said, nodding to his superior. “He wants you to enjoy your stay here with us—this is what he’s saying. And remember this—he doesn’t understand a word of what we’re saying. You can speak freely. But tell me, are you satisfied with your lodging arrangements?”

  “Of course. I grew up on a farm.”

  “Really! You don’t look like it.”

  “And plan to go back eventually.”

  “Truly? Nobody in this country wants to live on a farm. However, we are becoming a more tolerant place, I think. More equal. To say the truth, I’m not sure we really need any orchestras anymore.”

  The girl didn’t comment.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve met the conductor yet? He’s anxious to see you.”

  She was made to sign a few papers, none of which she could decipher, and then was given a laminated identification card bearing a two-year-old photograph that the organization had somehow acquired. The original man was still speaking, still smiling, still betraying his wife with every glance.

  The conductor—she knew a little about him already—was as normal-looking as the original man wasn’t. She noticed at once two aspects of his personality, namely that he spoke a form of English, and secondly that he didn’t care a whit for how beautiful she was. She sat erect in Victorian dignity, a nineteenth-century cameo in a short skirt

  “New person, yes? Cello?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Not much experience.”

  “Some.”

  “Good, good. Good. Rehershal [sic] seven p.m. o’clock.”

  She left.

  She wanted to inspect the concert hall in more detail and did so now, this time resorting to an unpainted taxi with a multicolored driver. The streets in some ways might almost have been found in America, but in other ways not. They tended to keep well away from each other, the cars and people, her own natural tendency as well. A drunk man was slumped against one of the storefronts; another was wearing a fez.

  She paid the driver (too much) in American money, which he did not refuse. An old-style individual, he actually helped with the cello and spoke courteously, employing one or another of the languages there in use. It was a nuisance, taking her instrument everywhere she went, but did at least prevent it being stolen from her hotel room. The concert hall was appealing to her, a rococo pile that put her in a “European” mood, if you take my meaning. She thought that perhaps she should stay (stay in Europe) if these people really respected cellists as much as appeared.

  She strode to the front door of the auditorium, collecting further respect from the janitor lunching out of a paper sack. He stood at once and pulled open the door for her—such is the regard for beauty in southeast Europe. There’s much to be said for societies of that kind. She stood for a time appraising the stage from the point of view of an attendee in cheap seats. From this vantage, she ought to be entirely visible, she believed. How strange that she would herself be on stage in just one day and eleven hours from this present time.

  Finding no taxicabs with trustworthy drivers, she walked two blocks in what she believed to be the correct direction before stopping all of a sudden and racing back for her cello. Arriving home, she saw that someone had entered her room, leaving the bed even better-made than she had left it. However, she was a little bit enfeebled by her long walk and the recurring effects of that lifelong disease that was to kill her before much longer, before she had “used up” her beauty, she liked to say. “A better thing than enduring old age.” She rested, therefore, briefly, and then arose, showered, and exercised, or exercised and showered rather, and then took out the score and began studying it most sedulously.

  Sixty

  On the ninth day, he received three letters all at once. Postal service was bad in Europe, and the ink she used was by no means of the best quality; indeed, he had seen better in certain old nineteenth-century diaries stored in state archives. Had someone been reading over her shoulder? The letter was far too cool and even official, the language reflecting little of the passion that he expected in messages addressed to him. He fell into depression.

  The second letter was better. She had touched down in east-central Europe and had gone off by herself to a telephone booth, where she could write openly about matters afflicting them. She wanted to come home. She had been crying. She ached for another dosage of what he alone knew how to suppl
y. She hated it already, the place to which she was going. She enclosed two strands of golden hair, one of which he put away in his wallet and the other of which he consumed.

  (The first “letter,” in fact it had been nothing but a postcard legible to anyone who cared to look at it. Hence the few weak lines it had conveyed.)

  The third and the last letter of the day detailed how she had been to the embassy to learn how to come home. He had to wait four more days to read that she had performed two times on stage and was waiting for him in a third-floor hotel room in central Bucharest. The embassy, a sympathetic group, had given her a stick of peppermint, a little brown teddy bear, and a ride back to her hotel.

  Regarding his own letter to her, it was seven pages long owing to the poetry and drawings incorporated into the body of the text. Carrying it by hand to the Post Office, he paid the fee to Bucharest, knowing it would need weeks to arrive there. Would she still be beautiful then? More importantly, had anyone ever been as beautiful as he thought that he remembered her to have been? Nothing worried him more than that she might have turned into a standardized postmodern woman before he saw her again. Cheerful, ignorant, optimistic, and the rest. Vacuous as air, and so on. The sort that loved her children more than her man.

  His next letter, inscribed late that evening, told how he had acquired four hundred tulip bulbs at a giveaway price and had planted them in the most artistic fashion around the gazebo of one of the nearby aristocrats. His employer, predisposed to treat inferior people in kindly fashion, had smiled maternally and given him a soft drink. Perhaps he might still measure up to higher standards someday.