Fall and Rise (7 page)

“We didn't.”

“There. So forget her. If you can't talk from the beginning, you're through from the start—that's my motto or somewhat. I also know she prefers men a lot more established, stable and scholarly than you.”

“More stable and established? I almost never leave my apartment or for that matter my desk seat. And there must be a couple of people who'd consider me scholarly. Geez, I speak the Emperor's Japanese without ever having been to the Ryukyu Islands or Japan. Who in this room even knows of the Ryukyus or at least its most recent cession and if they do then the exact date when, or can read, speak, write and translate almost flawless Japanese without in fact ever having seen the Pacific?”

“There's a Japanese weaver here and his potter wife who are visiting the city for a year. They can do all those except say they've never seen the Pacific and translate Japanese into near perfect English and the reverse, though he does have a profitable sideline translating Japanese plays and verse into Korean and Chinese.”

“Oh yeah? Where? I should speak to him. What's his name?”

“Don't and let's not mention his name or allude too loudly to him till they leave. He doesn't like your translations and introductions. He specifically requested I not think it appropriate for you to meet. It's his opinion, and one he says shared widely in the Japanese literary world, denoting a fame I never knew you had, that you've done more harm than anyone in any English-speaking country to stop English-speaking people from appreciating modern Japanese poetry.”

“Oh, I see him, unless you have other Japanese friends here. I should corner him and do what I can to change his mind. But nuts to him, not that I won't defend my right to object to his beliefs. First tell me about Helene.”

“What's to tell?”

“Is she married, and if so, living with her husband? And if not, how long's it been since the trial separation or divorce? And if so, living with any male now in a faithful relationship? And if not, so serious with any male now that there'd be no chance of a nonmarital separation or divorce?”

“She was, once, maritally tried and divorced, and currently unattached but not loose and teaching American literature in a college upstate. She also has a book coming out not from a university press but a real live and hearty trade publisher that actually gave more than a five-hundred-dollar advance on the short stories of twentieth-century American writers. She believes, something I scolded her for because of the counter reaction it might start against my literature professor friends, in brief plain-speaking critiques and short un-gossipy biographical sketches with plenty of humor and active verbs and few adjectives or big words or discursive turgid sentences. It's her objective—I think because she was brought up hardworking and poor where every morsel, minute and cent meant something—to say in ten thousand words per author what most scholars manage to do in a hundred thousand or two, which could put a few of them out of business or force them to reduce their paragraphs, sabbaticals and requests for grants. She's also very sweet, decent, modest, sensitive, even-tempered and with the most thought-out high virtues and lived-out public and private morality of anyone I know, besides being one of my best friends. Is any of this coming through to you?”

“All. It's everything I like. If she asks, you'll slip in a good word for me, and if she doesn't, you'll volunteer?”

“The truth is you're not good enough for her. For me, yes. I prefer single-hood and no kids and my minor escapades that don't interfere with the well-paying fulltime work and month-long vacations I love, so I'll accept much less. But she needs and can maintain while carrying on her other major pursuits an equally right-minded child-wanting youngish dean of a highly regarded semiexperimental college who also teaches a freshman writing course twice a week and is adored by all his students, envied by most of the faculty, sought out by the most prestigious eleemosynary institutions and do-gooding organizations for his intellect, integrity and class and who also sails, skis and runs besides owning a woodsy home with fireplaces in every kitchen and den and a green thumb, bluish blood, purple passion, red background, pink glow and lots of lustrous hair-locks and stylish tidy clothes. Something of that agglutination, but you just won't do, which she'll let you know soon enough if you're still so foolish to pursue her, since she's also intently though unbrutally frank. Please put the bowl on the bar before the cubes dissolve and try to stay up till midnight when the party starts to end and a group of us is going to eat Chinese, compliments of a Soviet-supported Russian poet on tour whom I think I just heard resonate through the door.”

She leaves without the platters. Some have to be heated and I light the oven, hold the platters over my head to see if they're ovenproof, and stick them inside. I take the ice to the bar, pour another vodka, take the cold food platters to the table, see the poet, buoyant and big-voiced and coat over his shoulders, thick cowlick falling over his cheek which he keeps remedying with a quick hand sweep or flip of his head, go back for the heated food and two hot plates and potholders and serving spoons, bring them to the table, potholders on the platters' ends so the first people to take from them will know they're hot, look around for someone to talk to, forget where I left my drink, elderly man in tweed and scholastic keys whom Helene had talked to, say hello and he says “How are you, sir?” and I say “Fine thanks, but weren't we introduced?” and he says “That could be true in so rowdy a room, but my memory's still tolerably good, so I doubt it. Wheeler Smith's the name. Do you also work alongside Diana on that unlucid magazine?” and I say “No, strictly on my own, not that I'd snub an article-writing slot with free medical insurance if I could land one. Daniel Krin.” I extend my hand and we shake. His is mostly meaty and cold and when I glance at mine when I take it away I see it has ink stains on it from this afternoon or maybe from a memo I wrote on the train. “Nice party,” and he says “That it is, Mr. Krin.”

“Daniel or Dan. Diana gives them a lot?”

“Once a year around Thanksgiving, give or take a Friday. I often think it's the one good thing I've to be thankful for around this time, not being a fancier of sugared cranberries and dried-out turkeys and parades promoting Macy's and the advent of frenzied Christmas buying.”

“So you know Diana for a while.”

“If I were an artfully addled old man I'd say for how long. I was her dissertation director when she was finishing the city's youngest Ph.D. in fifty years. You're a pleasant new face here so I'll conjecture you met her at that colony I'm a trustee of.”

“We lived in footboard to footboard rooms and shared the same bathtub and can of Ajax. I noticed you talking to Helene Winiker. You direct her too?”

“Wish I had. She wasn't the youngest but without question was one of the brightest, aside from being an aesthetic and colloquial treat. Seeing and speaking to Helene here is the second entry I'll put on my list of things to be thankful for this time of the year. But you haven't said what you do, Mr. Krin. It could be your work was sent to me last spring and I voted on your colony stay.”

“I translate.”

“I only get fiction in the original. One of the Slavics?”

“Japanese, and if I have some help from a sinologist, a bit of Chinese.”

“An admirable underpaid profession and if you could excel in the latter language you'll be in the coming wave. Well. Seems the line to Gurygenin has declined so mind if I say goodbye for the time being to attend to the amenity of shaking the great man's hand?”

“Is it?”

“Surely the shaking one is if that's the hand he writes with. If I were a speculator in men's fortunes and careers I'd say he'll receive a Nobel in the next ten years if his country can keep its nose relatively clean.”

“Then I'd say someone a lot more deserving would be out about two hundred thousand dollars for better world politics.”

“I doubt you'd think that if you translated Russian. Much success to you, Mr. Krin.”

Gurygenin sighs when he sees him and kisses his cheeks and says what seems like a ribald remark in Russian in Smith's ear. They laugh. Some people near them laugh when Gurygenin repeats the remark in English, which I don't wholly hear. Something about old appetites and young women and the time it takes to complete the feast and how when a man is young and just as hungry he would pass up a steaming savory-smelling four-course supper for a cold snack. I look around, no one I know, see my glass, dump the vodka into a large glass and add tomato juice to the top, see a woman Helene had said hello to spreading caviar on a cracker. I go over, slice a piece of brie, hold it up between two fingers and say “Ah, just as I like it: boiled for two and three-quarter minutes and then quickly rolled over ice and rushed to the diner's plate,” and she says “Leave it to Dee.”

“For Diana? And Helene. Is she H?”

“You know Helene? I was in the bathroom scrubbing my ugly face and looking forward to a chat with her when all of a sudden she disappeared.”

“Went to a wedding. Had a previous commitment to it for months.”

“Anybody I might know? And listen, stop me if you see my arm reaching for another chunk of food. Anything here but the lettuce garnish—clip me on the wrist, even, okay?”

“I will. And I've been sworn not to say whose wedding it is. The bride doesn't want any gate crashers or some reason like that Helene said. Or any gates crashing. That was it. Too much noise. She doesn't want the ceremony disturbed. Because suppose the groom later contends that the wedding should be nullified because he didn't hear all the nuptial words being said. Because at the precise moment the bride was saying ‘I do' or whatever they say today that legitimates the marriage contract, the gates were crashing away. No, that can't be, since the wedding was this summer. Helene never said anything to me except that she was going to the reception.”

“Is that so.”

“Of course she said a few other things. ‘How come fall's falling so fast?' ‘If you're going to the bar, could you take back my glass?' But you seem dubious of my even saying why Helene's not here.”

“I shouldn't be, and for several good reasons, the best of them being that you didn't stop me from stuffing myself with more food?”

“Actually, I only met Helene tonight. Right here. No, over there where that man and woman smoking black cigarettes are standing, though our positions by sex reversed. I came over and said. She looked at me and said. Later I said and she said and then she mentioned the reception. Didn't the crashing. Did the bride, though would a bride after so many months still be a bride if the reception's her wedding's? Never said a word about gates. Yeats, yes. Maybe also mates. Traits and fates only just conceivably when we got into a hot conversation about weddings and receptions, but about beddings and conceptions, nothing. You know, I never till now realized how effortlessly so many words come to mind that rhyme with gates and also relate to it. Sates. Straits. Grates and greats, the last with an e-a-t because of Yeats, and even that e-a-t now I see relates to the ate in plates and pates if you want to pronounce and spell pâté that way, besides the past tense of eat and so on. But yes, let's. No, you won't allow me to allow you to, though I'll have some more.” I hold a knife over the brie and my expression says “Would you, despite your not wanting to, like me to slice you a piece?” She shakes her head, squeezes what doesn't seem like a lot of flab on her waist.

“May I ask your name?” she says.

“It's one I'd like to forget tonight.”

“My, you're feeling sorry for yourself. That the reason you're acting the bizarre way you are? The wordplay gibberish? The Helene gate business ridiculousness? If it's the drink, you shouldn't. Not my affair and far be it from me to try to stop you when you didn't my nervous eating, but you really shouldn't drink anymore tonight even if it isn't the drink. It can't make you better. I know. You're looking at a former walking bottle of alcohol. Walking? Hah. And I like a slight amount of seriousness with those I speak, so if…”

“Ten thousand years,” and I clink her soda glass on the table with my glass and drink down my drink. “That's banzai in Greek.”

“That's not funny in any language.” She takes her glass, breaks off a couple of blue-cheese crumbs and puts them in her mouth and says “Really, at a party I love nothing more than to schmooze around, so it's no shun if I say I'll see ya?”

“Wait, you're right. I am feeling sorry for myself tonight and I didn't just say that to agree with you. I've been going on also. Running. The mouth. I'm not always like this. Rarely. Sometimes I'm even self-effacing, deferential and shy. I've made potential enemies here. I must be self-destructive. Just using the word ‘made' instead of ‘encouraged' and ‘enemies' instead of ‘adversaries'—or more accurately have said, since the examples I gave make little sense, ‘I caused or prodded people to be hostile to me'—maybe illustrates that fact. Someone once said that about me. About being self-destructive. Someone? I can be a liar too. Meaning that that's what I can also be—I didn't mean you. Several said it. All women I was very attached to, though I doubt it was ever as evident as now, and not my attachment to them but my self-destruction. Look. I think I felt I had nothing to say before so wanted to make up clever and controversial things to say so I'd seem interesting. That sound true? I might have just said it to seem interesting, but I don't think I did and I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Excuse me. Still running. That I wasn't even able to give my name to you? Saying and doing all those socially asinine things I don't feel proud of I can tell you. Even what I've just been saying: this uncappable self-spill. At my age, coupled with my inferior income and no security, to be such a schmo sometimes is hard sometimes for me to believe and take. Oh fuck. I acted and am still acting the way I did because I don't relate, or for those or additional self-destructive reasons think I don't, to anyone here except maybe the host. So I'm provoking and annoying people and saying ridiculous and wretched things just to what? Don't go yet. That can't-relate feeling-sorry-for-myself outcast and -classed self-destructive argument I guess, though ‘argument' not used in any contentious sense but in the manner of reasons induced and concluded I think, wouldn't you say, or am I now being self-destructively unclear?”