Expensive People (29 page)

“That's fascinating,” a woman said. “Is it tied in with your work?”

He wiped his mouth. Excited, passionate, a little overwrought— was it the liquor, or the airplane flight, or the prospect of his speech the next day? (for, alas, he gave a very poor, shaky, nervous speech and disappointed the Cedar Grove ladies)—he began glancing apprehensively around the room. “Did you speak ironically?” he said to that lady.

“Did I what?” she said graciously.

“Ironically. Did you speak ironically?”

“My heavens no. I don't know how to speak ironically,” she said, surprised.

He grinned at her, then stopped grinning, then glanced around for Nada. Nada was scratching the base of her head idly, off in a corner. Silence fell.

“Some of us have been meaning to ask,” another lady ventured shyly, “whether there is much intellectual excitement in the New York world? Do you think that we in the Midwest are missing much the best part of life?”

“Is this the Midwest?” he asked vaguely. “Oh yes. No. I don't know.

Of course we go to boxing matches in New York. That sport is marvelous. It's so contained. Within a comparatively small area, it tests manhood and skill. It… it's very much like writing. I had a workout the other afternoon with Norman Mailer—”

“Ah yes,” said a gentleman, “didn't he write … ? And then didn't he go downhill afterward?”

“John, for heaven's sake,” said a woman, “don't you know they all go downhill? After all! Didn't Tolstoi go downhill after
War and Peace
and
Anna KareninaT

The gentleman turned seriously to the editor. “Well, I'll put that up to
you.
Did Tolstoi go downhill after
War and Peace
and
Anna Kareninai”

The editor was taking another drink. “I think he did. Yes, I believe so,” he said gloomily. After a few minutes of silence he began again, as if from another angle, telling us about his latest discovery, a disturbed and alienated young man who wrote film reviews for various New York publications. This young man had just made an underground movie called
Dentist which
was forbidden exhibition even in
a private
East Village hangout… a fantastic event, unparalleled, a raw comment upon the psychosociological inertia of contemporary America … and a very gifted young man too …

Unfortunately, just then Father arrived from the airport (“Held up by fog!” he explained), rushed and happy, and strode into the living room already agreeing with the editor.

“Yes, yes, interesting, fascinating!” Father declared loudly.

The editor got to his feet and they were introduced. Father chuckled with sheer good feeling. “Yes, very fascinating words I heard just now!” he said, looking around the room. Everyone agreed. He drew up a chair and sat facing the editor as if he'd flown in from Holland just for this talk.

The editor returned to his subject but something had gone out of his spirit. Father sat facing him, shifting his buttocks and agreeing, “Uh-huh,
uh-huh,”
and with every grunted agreement the editor weakened, losing his grip on his sentences, stuttering over the phrase, “the whitewashed society and its brainwashed morality.” Everyone else listened in the way Cedar Grove people listen to all things— immensely polite, enthusiastic, generous, showing interest especially around their mouths. Finally Father eased sideways into the conversation by saying, “Now, what you've said about freedom is, you know,
one of my favorite topics of conversation. I've spent many hours discussing it with various people. However, as our Yugoslav man says, one cannot always define such things—freedom for me might not be freedom for you—so in the meantime what's left?”

He had taken on a slight “British” air, just as Nada, when excited, took on a “Russian” air.

“Freedom through legislation … or … or revolution,” the editor stammered.

“Ah-hah, it was some Founding Father, I believe, who said, this wonderful man said, ‘Who cares about understanding the world? We're going to change the world!’
Yessir,
and we Americans have changed the world forever, you can bet your last dollar!”

The editor stared at Father. There was a moment of silence, then Mr. Bone said amiably, “Elwood, was it by any chance Thomas Jefferson who said that?”

“Probably,” said Father.

The editor looked around. He began to say something, then thought better of it.

By the time dinner came and went the editor was inclining his head toward Father and flushing with agreement, yes, uh-huh, his hand with its pointless circular gesture adjusting itself to Father's more masculine sweeping gesture, which reminded you of nothing so much as a jetliner taking off for London in the early gray light of the American continent.

Much later that evening, when all of Nada's guests were gone and only she and the editor and Father remained downstairs (Father had fallen asleep in his chair), and I was at my drowsy perch on the stairway landing, the editor began to speak to Nada in … in a certain tone I had been dreading. “Natashya, this is fantastic. This. Him. What is this, where are we?”

“Not so loud,” Nada said.

“Is this a location in space or a condition of the brain?” the editor said drunkenly “This? All this? Who is that man? Years ago I knew you, and since then
this
man appears,
this
mansion of a house, and a child! Natashya, are you quite serious about all this?”

“Of course I'm serious,” Nada said vaguely.

“And the child too?”

“Of course.”

“You've had a child, you, you've become a mother? Is it possible?”

“Will you shut up about that?”

“But you, you're not even a woman, I mean, you're
in essence
not really a woman, and yet you've had a child. It's monstrous …” He sighed heavily. “Natashya, you frighten me. I'm a wreck. That man there, that massive man, he frightens me. He unmanned me tonight, he devastated me, and do you know why?”

“You're drunk.”

“He devastated me because he is not contemporary with me. No. That man, what's-his-name, Elmwood? Elwood? That man is out of Charles Dickens and he should not exist today, Natashya, not as your husband, you know that very well. Don't look so disgusted, of course I'm drunk. Natashya, I see you've sold yourself and well done too, but don't you sometimes feel rotten about it? You're a beautiful woman, Natashya. I will always regret turning down that novella of yours. You were very spiteful about it—it broke off our friendship. You took everything too seriously in those days, but, my friend, imagine a reader struggling through the thoughts and impressions of a fourteen-year-old girl who has become demented! Imagine! You expected too much of your readers in those days, Natashya. Now you've loosened up and wised up. The other day I read your story in galleys at
Esquire,
and it's very nearly a
New Yorker stoxy
—think of how far you've come!”

“Jesus Christ,” Nada said in disgust.

“But a husband out of Charles Dickens—”

“He is not out of Charles Dickens but out of Proust, you bastard,” Nada said.

“Well, anyway I haven't read either of them. Look, Natashya, I'm not as nervous as I seem. My hands shake like this after midnight. No, don't laugh, I am being quite serious … even tragic. I think I must have been in love with you at one time. Because other women remind me of you. I have an extraordinary fixation upon beautiful women! But then I read those novels of yours, and all those stories, you dumped thousands of pages on me and I couldn't possibly … couldn't get through them. Does your husband always sleep so peacefully? What is his secret? I have insomnia every night. Why is there such terror in him, in his weight? Even asleep he looks like a torpedo, or like a certain kind of deadly fish. Tell me, how much money does he make in a year?”

“You'd better go up to bed, you're drunk.”

“But I have something to say to you. I won't pretend I came all the way out here just to say it… I'm honest… actually I need the money and five hundred dollars is a lot to me, I'm broke. But I wanted to see you again, Natashya, and tell you that I think of you often, and I admire you … but must you publish all the time, must I see your name everywhere and feel like puking, Natashya, when I should admire you? Look … I will tell you about the most beautiful evening of my life.”

“Really? What was it?” Nada's voice had become rather eager.

“Don't mind my hands shaking like this, it's the hour, and also I feel very sentimental. Look … you must promise not to tell anyone about what I'm going to say.”

“Of course I promise.”

“You know my life. A rotten childhood, like everyone's, the years at Harvard … the early years fighting for the integrity of
The Transameri-can,
rescuing it from the Trotskyites. Jesus, what I've given of my life to that magazine! And last year the paid subscriptions, library and individual, went down to eight hundred! And my writing, always my own writing, that took years off my life, my translations of Rilke … and my first marriage … and … and the twins … this is very maudlin, Natashya, and I forbid you ever to put this in a story, in fact I beg you, for both our sakes—”

“But what happened? What was this wonderful event?”

“It was in New York last winter. By then I had made it, you know, all the years of struggle added up, my anthology of radical essays was reviewed by Harry for the
Times Book Review,
and by Linda for
The Nation,
and Joey Kay was all set to do it for
Newsweek
when he got sick … well, anyway, I had made it to the top, I was invited to six parties a week, to ten parties a week … and … and—”

“And you were a judge for the National Book Awards, you bastard,” Nada said.

“And, Natashya, listen to me. I'm not drunk, I mean I am not simply drunk … with alcohol… I am drunk with this memory. I was invited to Pandora Bright's apartment. You know, she owns a television station and some magazines, in fact, she owns my magazine. She owns everything. And there, there at a late supper, at a large gathering of only the best people in the city, there I was introduced to Princess Margaret, who was visiting Pandora that week …”

There was a dramatic moment. The moment passed in silence.

“You what?” Nada asked.

“My dear, I was introduced to Princess Margaret!
I,
Moe Malinsky, the ordinary, insignificant, intellectual Moe Malinsky,
I was introduced to Princess Margaret!”

The
Transatnerican Quarterly,
with which some of you are familiar, is an excellent magazine, I believe, though reading it gives me a headache. I don't think I ever read it through, even in the old days when I suspected Nada of… I suspected the editor of… but never mind, that will come. The magazine gives you a general frontal headache, a dull glow of a headache that can't be concentrated upon and so can't be shaken, as you think, Just
what is
the New Radicalism? after you've read fifteen smudgily printed pages. And what is “Action Theater,” after all? (” Action Theater' tears away the walls of the bourgeoisie and destroys totally the idea of Theater; it is the only art form that will ultimately bring about the long-awaited synthesis of ethics and aesthetics …”) Pieces on “Soviet Economic Growth” and “China: The Sound of Tomorrow,”
de rigueur
and harmless enough; also, “An Open Letter to Our Young Friends of the New Left.” Lyric reviews: “This young poet has vitality, wit, paradox, firm technical control— and yet—and yet curiously enough his poems do not succeed …” “It has become increasingly difficult for me to take American art seriously …” And on and on, uh-huh. The stories are all experimental, though not as good as Nada's (or am I prejudiced?), and you've all read the poetry:

And now it is time to tell about “A Doctor Looks at Love and Life for Teen-agers,” and about my mad spell in the flower bed outside the
Cedar Grove Bank of the Republic, and about Mavis Grisell's sister who cracked up in her new Lincoln, unable to get it out of a parking spot in the village and therefore driving it into the car ahead, jerking it into reverse and slamming it into the car behind, back and forth, back and forth madly, desperately, while a small crowd watched and a mother cautioned her son, “Don't say anything, she could sue” (actually, the sister's crack-up was Mavis' reason for coming to Cedar Grove), and …

Here is my problem: I am afraid to die, and when I finish this memoir I will be faced with suicide. I have made up my mind. There's no turning back. But still I am terribly afraid, which is why my memoir keeps going on, going on. But no matter. I had several other digressions in mind which I will not indulge in; I will be concise. The business about the doctor did not seem to me at the time to have anything to do with my behavior, but now, seven years later, I am not so certain. Though my criminal act was committed with all freedom, still it might have been influenced by one or two things in my environment. (It's difficult to analyze yourself.) I know I am completely to blame for what I did; I was free then and I am free right now. As Nada said, “I want you to be so free, Richard, that you stink of it.” Well, yes, I do stink. And I am free also.

Well, one morning Father said to me on his way out, “Kid, I think I know what your trouble is. This moodiness, this out-of-focus look … no, don't be frightened, Kid, just sit still… it's typical of young teenagers, I mean, pre-teen-agers, I know all about it. I was your age myself once! Greg Hofstadter and I were talking yesterday at the club, and he said yes, now that I mentioned it, Gustave was the same way, all moody and bookwormy doesn't want to go out and play and we hit upon a solution. You and Gustave are going tonight to the high school to hear that Doctor what's-his-name give a talk. It's all very educational, Buster, okay?”

He was backing out, his briefcase in hand, and he filled even that large doorway with his brimming holy energy. I said “yes” but he didn't hear me, so I said
“YES”
and he grinned and winked and was gone.