Augusta Played (11 page)

“And why should I play the flute? For whom am I going to play it? Let's be rational,” she said, “the way you're always telling me to be. Do I have a concert to give? No. Do I have a record to make? No. Maybe you would like to hire a hall for me so I can make a debut.”

Norman didn't answer at first, and Gus told herself that she shouldn't have said that. She couldn't ask him to be somebody he wasn't—he was a theoretician, not a performer. What did he know about things like concert halls?

“Okay,” he said, abruptly. “You get your program in shape. I'll pay for it.”

“What are you talking about? We don't have the money for something like that. I don't mind, Norman! I really don't.” She was frightened by the dark color of his face, the tension in his neck, the stoniness of his features. “I knew before we got married that I wasn't going to get to make a debut.”

“I didn't marry you so you could give up your career.”

“I don't want you to ask your father.” She was looking at him closely, trying to determine if that was what he had in mind.

“I won't
ask
him,” Norman said, not meeting her eyes.

“Are you thinking of getting a job?” It was the first time it had ever occurred to her that
Norman
might go to work. It had not yet occurred to him.

“Don't worry about it,” he said.

She didn't. The fight was over, and Gus wasn't one for rehashing arguments. If Norman said she could give a debut recital, that was good enough for her. It was so simple! Why hadn't she ever asked him before? She would tell her mother—all she had ever had to do was
ask
. Norman wouldn't let her down!

Being married was not, after all, so very different from being engaged: Gus thought this with a buoyant sensation of relief, with a feeling of jettisoning darker, heavier freight. At night, in bed, she kissed Norman's reluctant mouth in the blue and white light from the stars and street lamps. It was cold in the room, but it was warm under the quilted comforter.

Norman capitulated, but not without reserve; he was surprised that she didn't seem to sense it, a certain tenseness in his back, a distance in his words, as if he were speaking a foreign language with great facility without having a clue as to what the words actually meant. He felt obscurely threatened. Then suddenly he felt painfully contrite, and, wanting to be friendly, leaned over her sleeping face, cooled her damp cheeks with the back of his hand and whispered. He wanted to ask her what went on in her mind during these silvery hours, but she was already as lost to his wakeful world as an antiworld.

In the morning, Gus woke up in a sunny mood. She took her flute out of its case first thing, and started to polish it. She had a silver flute made by Haynes, with a mouthpiece of gold and a low B key.

Norman made himself a cup of coffee and then wrote out the request for a renewal of his fellowship for the following year. He had been putting it off, but the deadline was tomorrow, and yesterday had shown him it was time to start thinking of the future. When he had finished, he dropped it onto Gus's lap. “Here,” he said, “will you type this up now?”

She looked up.

“It's got to get in the mail today,” he explained.

“I'm working,” she said.

“It won't take a minute.”

“Why don't you type it?”

He laughed. “I can't type.”

“You mean you've been in school all your life and you never typed a term paper?”

“Will you type the letter?” he asked, getting sore.

“I suppose some chick typed your papers.”

“That's right.”

“I'm nobody's chick.”

“Holy smoke, nobody said you were!”

“Besides, I'm working on my flute.”

“It'll only take a minute.”

“I'll type it when I finish this, okay?”

“No, not okay. It has to get in the mail this afternoon.”

She didn't understand what he was trying to do to her. Didn't he just tell her the night before that she should get down to work? If she was going to be a professional, she had to practice like one. How could she do that and this at the same time? “You'll have to take care of it yourself.”

“I explained to you that I didn't know how.”

“Then go find yourself a chick with a typewriter,” she said, carried away with her own cleverness, the sunlight sparkling on the polished gold of the mouthpiece, the promise of a debut, and Tweetie's cheerful good-morning.

“All right,” Norman said, putting on his coat, “I will!” But after he'd got outside, cold air bringing him to his senses as if someone had waked him by pouring cold water on his face, he realized that he no longer knew any chicks. There was D. D. Jones, but she was such a hot-shot artist these days she wouldn't have time to type for him. He wondered what Bunny Van Den Nieuwenhutzen was doing.

When he went back up five minutes later, Gus was crumpled on the bed, crying. She sniffled, penitent and anxious. He patted her on the head like a puppy. He thought he didn't care about the letter anymore, that he cared only about making things right between his wife and himself, but when she typed the letter, he couldn't help feeling faintly satisfied; he became aware of a certain warmth in his groin, as if he'd scored.

19

A
LL
THIS
TIME
, Norman had had a sense of unfinished business, of something he had been meaning to do, only he couldn't remember what it was. It had something to do with Birdie Mickle, and something to do with Mario's mother. Now, under pressure of necessity, he made the connection. He had been meaning to find out Miss Mickle's professional name. He remembered this while he was shaving, and the thought excited him so much that he cut himself. He was not a good shaver at the best of times. His beard was heavy and, like his hair, wiry. He had to use a dog comb on his curls. If he used a regular comb, the teeth broke and all day long he rained plastic bits from his scalp.

He stuck a piece of toilet paper on the cut and joined Gus in the big room. She was pulling her panty-hose on. She fell back on the bed as she did this, and he rejoiced in the shape of her long legs, superimposed against the background of snow-filled window.

“I think I'll leave early today,” he said.

“How come?”

“I'm broadening my horizons,” he said, spontaneously.

“I've been focusing too obsessively on the psychoanalysis of music. I think I should open up the field a bit, take a look at music as an index of cultural organization and disintegration. Of course, the composers are unconscious of these connections. They think they are writing the
G'ötterdämmerung
, for example, when they are really writing the swan song for the Third Reich. And that's another thing.”

“What is?”

“Opera. Do you know what they listen to in Red China?”

“What?”

“Opera. An infallible sign of decadence in a nation. Of course, they say we're decadent, but that's only a matter of semantics. When did Rome fall?”

“I don't know.”

“When the Italians began to listen to opera. Italy hasn't been a world power since Rossini. The nineteenth century was the last straw. It's the high notes that do it,” he added, brimming with elation. “They scramble the brains.”

“And you're going to make a dissertation out of this?”

“Poor Gus,” he said, kissing her quickly and turning toward the door. “You thought you were taking up the flute out of free will but it was multiply determined that you should become a flutist. Penis envy generates its own necessities. If you examine the matter dispassionately,” he said, only half-facetiously, “you will see that by playing the flute you are reflecting the situation of women in American society today. You are part of America in transition.” He peeled the toilet paper from his chin. Just before she let go with her shoe, he picked up his books and slipped out the open door and shut it; he heard the shoe slam against the door and slide to the floor. He was grinning as he ran down the steps and hit the street. It was a bright, icy morning, and besides, a wife would have to get up pretty damn early to get the jump on him!

The next item on the agenda was a telephone. He headed for Low Library at Columbia and dialed his father's office. “I don't think he'll speak with you,” Jocelyn said.

“That's okay,” he said. “Actually, I just wanted a little information that I think you can give me. Do you know Miss Birdie Mickle's professional name?”

“Well,” Jocelyn said, “I don't think—”

“It's perfectly all right,” Norman said. “You see”—he lowered his voice conspiratorially—“Augusta and I thought Pop might come around to seeing things our way if we arranged a surprise meeting. I could ask Mother, but suppose this doesn't work? The old man might make a big scene, and it would only end with her being upset. Maybe you think we shouldn't try it at all,” he plunged on, “but Augusta has her heart set on it. I hate to let her down. We haven't been married very long, you know, less than two months.” He knew what his voice sounded like—it was a wonderful instrument. He could do with his voice what Gus could do with her flute: win the world. He played heart-beseeching, lightly laughing, boyishly sexy and ingratiating notes on it. Jocelyn said, “Well, if you're sure it's all right.”

“I'm not sure, but I
think
so. I
hope
so.” He laughed, engagingly modest. “It's worth a try, anyway, isn't it?”

“Yes, Norman, it certainly is,” she said, to build his morale. “/ can't see what's wrong with a son wanting to make it up with his father. Miss Mickle's professional name is Chicken Delight.”

“Oh my God,” he said, cracking up.

“What did you say? This connection's not very good.”

“Nothing, Jocelyn. But I don't think she'll be listed in the Manhattan directory under that name, do you?” Immediately, he envisioned an ad in the yellow pages.

“Just a minute.” She gave him the number. “She works at a place on Times Square. It's just called The Joint.”

“Thanks a lot, Jocelyn. I always knew you were a decent person.”

“I hope I haven't done the wrong thing,” she said, plainly wanting her pay-off: reassurance. “Miss Mickle might not appreciate this.”

“Oh, I think she will. She seemed like a well-intentioned woman to me. You both are. Women are terrific,” Norman said, enthusiastically. “It's too bad that fathers aren't women.”

“Don't tell your father I gave you her number.”

“I won't tell a soul, Jocelyn. I'm going to call her as soon as I hang up now.”

“Okay,” she said. But after she hung up, Norman didn't ring the number he'd written on the inside of the cover of the Thayer biography of Beethoven. He sat in the booth for a few seconds, thinking, and then he buttoned and belted his Burberry trench coat, walked back out into the snow, and hailed a cab.

“Where to?” the driver said.

“Times Square. Do you know a place called The Joint?”

“Do I,” said the driver. “Let me tell you, it's a real joint.”

20

I
N
OTHER
WORDS
,” Sid said, “you're blackmailing me. I'm not surprised. I knew it would come to this. A one-shot deal, you said, but nobody ever quits with once already. This is a fact of human nature a former D.A. knows like he knows his own name. Myrtle it isn't. So,” he said, again, “you're blackmailing me.”

“I wouldn't say that.”

“I would.”

“It seems harsh.”

“You're asking me to pay you to keep your mouth shut and you say
I'm
harsh? Oy, for a son I've got a regular little Talmudist. And do you call black white as well?”

“You're working yourself up into a real state of sweat for nothing, Pop. I'm not threatening you where it really hurts, am I? I could”—he reached past his father for the napkin dispenser; they were at a counter in a Chock Full O'Nuts—“I could suggest that one person who might be especially interested to hear that you're getting nookie from a cookie on the side is Mother, but I would hate to involve her in this shit.”

“You do and I'll kill you.”

“Watch it, your chili is dripping.” They were both eating hot dogs with runny chili. “That would be what? Filicide?”

“That would be a pleasure, that's what it would be.”

“I don't see why you have to take it so hard,” Norman said, shaking his head. “It's not as if I were doing anything contemptible. In fact, I think it is really a very existentially interesting situation. I have given this considerable thought. You disowned me, and now I have restructured the situation to give you the chance to buy me back. How many fathers get second chances in this world? You're a lucky man, Pop. Of course, if you don't think you're so lucky, I'll just drop in on Messrs. Amato and Leibowitz. Very likely I have a civic duty to do that anyway, and coming to you like this I am letting filial loyalty get in the way of my political conscience. It's not as if Birdie Mickle was an insignificant swinger, your average mere expense account item, a lady of the night or a fleshpot or whatever word your generation uses. She is
Miss Chicken Delight
. Her name is in neon. She has professional standing. Artistic ambitions. She could even be a feminist, what about that?”

“What about what?”

“Is she a feminist?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“No,” Norman said, “I guess you wouldn't. However, that neon speaks volumes. The point is, if this became known, you'd be laughed off the bench. You wouldn't stand a chance at sitting on the big one.”

“You are a snake in the grass, Norman. It occurs to me now that you probably did steal the diamonds.”

“What diamonds? What are you talking about?”