My Heart Laid Bare (57 page)

Darian manages to protest, mildly, “But—how would I have known you were here? We've been out of touch for—”

“No, no,” Abraham Licht says quickly, with a look of alarm, “—we must put the past behind us. Where is your coat, son? Here?
This?
” Abraham has taken up the formal jacket with its silly split tail which Darian wore as conductor, and which Darian had tossed onto the floor. “Something less formal, I should think, would be appropriate for the hour. Ah, here—this will do better.” Abraham has discovered another jacket, which Rosamund takes from him and brushes, for it's dirty from the floor; it seems that Abraham Licht and his new young wife are going to take Darian out on the town to celebrate the world premiere of
Esopus, the Lost Village
—Abraham has made reservations at the Pierre, a short carriage ride away up on Fifth Avenue by the Park. “But, Father, I'm drunk; I'm exhausted, humiliated, broken—I want only to sink into sleep and into oblivion—please!” Dar
ian protests laughingly but again no one listens. There's no elevator in the Empire State Hotel so Abraham Licht, Rosamund and Darian descend the stairs, several flights of poorly lit, gritty stairs, Darian finds himself gripped by the arms, protected from slipping and falling, there's much laughter, good-natured jesting, for both Abraham Licht and his beautiful young wife have been drinking this evening, though assuredly they're not drunk, such glamorous demigods never get drunk, it's poor Darian Licht visiting Manhattan from Schenectady, New York, a visiting instructor at the Westheath School of Music who's likely to get drunk, yet in the open air Darian revives, or almost, managing after two attempts to climb up into the horse-drawn carriage, the driver in tails and top hat grinning at this handsome trio of revelers, he's hoping for a generous tip, the elder gentleman in evening attire looks well-to-do and magnanimous, crying, “To the Pierre, my man! Posthaste!” in a commanding baritone voice.

The jostling carriage ride causes Darian's head to rattle as if pebbles are being shaken inside it. He begins to cry—tears are streaking his face.
Where am I being taken, who are these people, Father why did you forsake me for so long!
But it's Rosamund who slips her fingers through his, her gloved fingers through his, to steady and comfort. Darian is seated between the new Mrs. Licht and Father, squeezed upright between them, the ride is jolting, hilarious, the driver wields his whip, the dapple-skinned horse whinnies with excitement, or with pain, as he's whipped, careening along Eighth Avenue north toward Central Park.

HOW TO RESIST
, you cannot.

After more than a decade's estrangement Darian and his father are reconciled. Late next morning when Darian wakes from his comalike sleep, having missed the train to Schenectady, he'll be unable to recall why he'd ever vowed
not
to be Abraham Licht's son.

“The island is finite, its promise infinite.”

Abraham Licht confides this wisdom to his youngest son Darian who's so unworldly, he'd been drinking the “Manhattan” his father had prepared for him as if it were merely beer, to be swallowed quickly down. Even Rosamund laughs at him, with sisterly mock-censure. “Oh, Darian!
Do
go more slowly.”

Since being taken up by Father and Father's new young wife, Darian Licht has been, you might say, careening . . . wild crashing chords up and down the keyboard, hands crossed over so the left is pounding the treble and the right, the bass.
Am I in love? Or just drunk?

Though trying to remain sober. Trying to remain . . . Darian, the skeptic. Caring for nothing but his music, which is to say his solitude; the solitude required for the composing of . . . music.

He hears his own laughter, often. A harsh raw boyish laughter as of a violin long out of tune, half its strings broken.

Abraham Licht is in a mood to confide. He's forgiven his youngest son, apparently, for ten years' estrangement—“The stubbornness of youth, I suppose necessary if analyzed in Darwinian evolutionary terms.” He has forgiven Darian, and Darian has evidently forgiven him. (“Why did we ever quarrel?” Darian wonders, genuinely baffled. He believes it may have had something to do with the Vanderpoel Academy . . . what a difficult adolescent he must have been, tormented by emotions as by acne. “But no more!”)

Almost, it's a litany that might be put to music. In fact it is a litany that might be put to music. Darian envisions kettledrums, a B-flat cornet, a baritone voice in Gregorian-chant style.
Bethlehem Steel. Mexican Seaboard Certificates. Pan American Western Corporation. Cole Motors, Indianapolis. American Telephone & Telegraph. Fleischmann's Yeast. New York Central. Fisk Insurance. Standard Oil of New Jersey. Kennecott Copper.
“All very conservative stocks,” as Abraham Licht says. “For, despite his exemplary broker's tips, ‘Moses Lieb
knecht' is too cautious to gamble his hard-earned money.” Exactly who “Moses Liebknecht” is, Darian isn't sure though he's been told; both by Father and by Father's new young wife, laughingly. “When we'd met, it was ‘Moses' I first loved,” Rosamund says, shaking her head in wonderment. “Little did I know that ‘Abraham' was guiding us both.”

Apart from the stock-market profits which, Darian gathers, are considerable, in this careening season of summer 1928, Abraham Licht and the beautiful young Mrs. Licht are beginning to make a fair amount of money from the sale, increasing weekly, of Liebknecht's Formula. “At the outset, I'd marketed it as an ‘elixir of health'—that sort of thing. But, y'know, there are many competitors; too many; what's wanted is a specific property. It was staring us in the face all along: fertility.”

Darian isn't sure he has heard correctly. “‘Fertility'—?”

Abraham says, smiling happily, “Human fertility, Darian. Babies—to be blunt. Some couples are unable to conceive. It's a medical predicament of which few persons wish to speak—at least at this time—yet of course it exists, and women are aggrieved at being ‘barren,' and men at having failed to ‘sire.' One can't blame them, for it's a biblical injunction
Increase and multiply!
‘Liebknecht's Formula' is being promoted as a fertility elixir, manufactured and distributed by Easton Pharmaceuticals in Pennsylvania. It
is
something of a wonder drug, I would swear to it.”

At this, Rosamund begins laughing like a young girl, and has to leave the room; Darian hears the sharp tattoo of her high-heeled shoes on the parquet floor, and her melodic voice raised at the rear of the brownstone (she must be speaking to the housekeeper); in a minute or two she'll return, giddy and flush-faced, for she's never out of Abraham Licht's presence for long, and possibly she's drawn to Darian as well.
Am I in love, certainly not. My own father's wife. What a joke!
Darian too begins laughing, and coughing; Father slaps him between the shoulder blades; telling him of a whim of a bet he'd placed the previous Sunday, on a filly running at the Preakness, odds 5 to 1, he'd had a hunch she might win for her name was June Hardy
and the month is June and some years ago—“Someday, son, I will tell you in full”—Abraham had been a dear friend of the former president Warren Harding, a good-hearted soul for all his failings and his deeply American ignorance; and so, with such stars in collusion, Abraham had known the filly would win.

“Only imagine, Darian—your madman of a father sneaking off without telling me, and placing two thousand dollars on a horse, and returning with ten thousand! And in cash, in all his pockets,” Rosamund cries, nearly faint with laughter, pretending to be thrusting her hands into the pockets of Abraham's velvet smoking jacket as he laughingly fends her off, “—commanding me to search him! Till all the carpet here was covered in hundred-dollar bills. But I don't, y'know, approve of gambling. I
don't.
”

“Yes, Rosamund is of old, censorious American-Puritan stock. Her ancestors arrived on these shores in 1641—imagine! Some years preceding our own.” Abraham grows sober suddenly, as if his words have awakened a disturbing memory; but the mood of the evening is such, sobriety can't endure for more than a few seconds. At once Abraham is on his feet mixing another round of this delicious new drink, new at any rate to Darian—“The ‘Manhattan.' Smooth as silk going down, yes?” Rosamund brings Darian his drink, their fingers brush as he takes the exquisitely shaped crystal glass, never in his life has he so much as lifted such a glass to his lips, never exchanged such a glance, such a smile from a beautiful young woman so clearly fond of him. (“Am I your ‘stepmother,' Darian dear? I should have rushed to get well, instead of languishing like a ridiculous old prude, all those years.”) Abraham is informing Darian that he's invested nearly $1 million in Manhattan real estate. This three-story brownstone residence (at East Seventieth Street and Fifth Avenue); a similar brownstone on East Sixty-third; and a commercial building on Broadway and Forty-fifth. Prices in Manhattan are steep but will continue to rise; in another five years, if all goes well, the price of these properties will have
trebled.
“You have only to contemplate the stock market to see how prices will rise, rise and rise—like a spouting fountain.”

For, yes, as Abraham is fond of saying—
The island is finite, its promise infinite.

And its corollary—
Manhattan today, all of America tomorrow.

Still, Abraham Licht's plan isn't to remain in Manhattan for long. He and Rosamund are going to make a major purchase sometime before the fall, a horse ranch in the Chautauqua Valley—“That most beautiful region to which I yearn to return, with my bride.” Both are great admirers, it seems, of Arabian horses; Rosamund rode when she was a girl out on Long Island, and Abraham has long been interested in (hadn't Darian known? surely yes) breeding Thoroughbreds for racing. “Not at all for money,” Abraham says sternly, “—but for the aesthetics of the sport. For nothing, y'know, is quite so splendid as an Arabian in his prime.”

“Or her prime,” Rosamund murmurs.

“Certainly, yes. Or her prime.”

Husband and wife exchange an intimate smoldering glance. Just to witness it is to feel the danger of combustion.

Darian takes a large, improvident swallow of his Manhattan.

Abraham Licht is musing how in the Chautauqua Valley, not many miles from Muirkirk, they might lead a secluded and idyllic life; precisely the sort of life suited for their imminent situation.

Imminent situation?

No. Yes. Of course. Rosamund is pregnant . . . that explains much that has passed between husband and wife; and Darian, being an adult of nearly twenty-nine, was expected to have understood without having been told explicitly.
My father, again a father. And I, another time a brother.

Rosamund, seeing Darian's startled glance, blushes. A faint lovely rose rising from her slender throat into her angular, rather narrow face. Her skin is of the hue of ivory; despite her vivacious manner, which may be fueled by alcohol, she's an abnormally thin woman; shivers often, though
perhaps in excitement, nerved-up, as Katrina would say high-strung as a filly in heat; except, being pregnant, Rosamund is assuredly not in “heat.” She has draped a white crocheted shawl over her slender shoulders; her loose-fitting dress is of sea-green silk, falling fashionably to midcalf; not bobbed or shingled in the fashion of the day, her glossy black hair is parted this evening in the center of her head and gathered back in a Grecian twist at the nape of her neck. The proud mother-to-be. Darian would cry, “Congratulations! To you both.” But instead takes another swallow of his drink.

Over a cold supper of oysters Rockefeller, filet mignon, creamed potatoes, Stilton cheese and glazed apricots, served by a Filipino woman in black, Abraham Licht takes up the subject, perhaps a familiar one to him, though unfamiliar to Darian, of the philosophical consequences of physiological experimentation in identity. “Whether, that is, an individual being identical and fully present in either half of his brain might be ‘divided' into two separate individuals to be housed in two separate bodies. As William James believed, we are as many ‘selves' as there are individuals who know us; so it may be that . . . ” Darian nods, trying to follow his father's abstruse logic; yet distracted by Rosamund's presence, her daughterly attentiveness to Abraham as if every word of his were sacred, to be committed to memory. Darian feels a pang of jealousy; of loss; that Abraham and Rosamund hadn't attended his recital . . . for, surely, Rosamund would have found something to admire in
Esopus
; Rosamund would have recognized Darian's heartfelt yearning, the very music of his soul, beneath and beyond the playful experimentation of sound.
My music was written for you. Will you hear my music . . . someday?

Abraham is musing on the paradox that identity seems to reside in the head; in “consciousness”; yet we don't really identify with our physical selves—“For this, we say, is ‘my' hand, implying that it's a mere possession, and we're possessors. ‘My' arm, ‘my' head; even ‘my brain.' Isn't it paradoxical that we're in the habit of referring to ‘my' soul as well?”

Darian, aroused by wine and by Rosamund's presence, laughs ner
vously; saying he doesn't know, he's never given much thought to it, if you're a musician you're immersed in music night and day, day and night, hour following hour, like a lover obsessed with his beloved. “And possibly, Father, it's only just a convention of language, peculiar to English.”

“No. Hardly peculiar to English. ‘Moses Liebknecht' is both psychologist and linguist, a polyglot in fact, and informs us that such patterns of speech indicate a universal human habit, of separating, as Descartes did so methodically, ‘mind' from ‘body.' What interests me is why we resist identifying even with our souls.”