New Yorkers (45 page)

The foot of the table had no women to tuck in. Austin had gotten the old vampire-bag under the table with all her skirts as simply as if she came greased for it. Women would, with Austin, down to the slit. …In the bar, the spoiled priest speaks from painted nose, while Edwin and his mother scrub the taps. “Keeps the rats down and blessed, boy, does the alcohol; even priests use it. But if woman-slut is your trouble, I know naught else that will do.”…

“Never thought of this room as a basement before,” said Edwin. His military stance had attracted the eyes of the others for a moment. He had been the last to sit down.

“Nothing for the table like white damask, is there, Ninon,” said the old bag in green eye shadow.

“Nothing,” said Madame. Leni’s dress, slashed here and there for the gold lining to show through like tarnished skin, made her laugh; it was so much an old-style Viennese dressmaker’s concept of sex—plenty of handwork, to draw the eye
in.
But she agreed on the damask. Damask was what would have been had in servants’ quarters on the Ile St. Louis, of a Sunday. Upstairs, seen from below-stairs in a certain rectory in Islington, it was what they had had.

The two old girls down there at the host’s end were nodding like two peddler-wives on Grand Street. The lacy one looked down the table at him. Queen Mab on wires she was, even at sixty or so, pink all over as that nose, he’d bet—on every pointed end of her, a dancing sex.

“Nothing like a white table,” Madame repeated, staring down the length of it. That young man with a suspicion of snout in the face, what possessed Simon to have him here? She could smell the slum ragout he’d been nourished on a mile away. Something non-aristocratic too in the hairline at the back of the neck, where it always told. Nobody could tell breeding better than she learning it at the start as she had, in the place where it bred.

She smiled across-table at the other young man, in official blue, dowdy, but still a uniform. His extreme good looks were racially impersonal, with the same handed-down air which kept the right sort of clothes from ever looking new. She was surprised to find the type in America. In bed he would be adequate, even hot, but to topple over the last edge of excess was unlikely for these guardians of the seed; in bed he would be a heavy-flanked breeder, the slightest bit too considerate. …Thank God, at sixty-two, but with all organs intact, I can still think of bed. I never really was a dancer. Whores make the best executives. …

“How very charm
ing
,” said the black man to his half-grapefruit. “Like a clown with a red nose.”

At every place, a sawtoothed half-grapefruit, mounted with sugar and a maraschino cherry, sat on its concentric pedestal of plate and service plate, making a consciously festive ring around the table, outside an inner circle of huge, coned napkins, starched stiffly enough to stand.

“These napkins!” said Pauli. “One gets them nowhere else.”

“How does she ever starch them?” said Blount. “Would that she could give the secret to the laundresses of the world!”…Starched to stand, yet silky to the lips; my mother used to do it. …

“She?” said Leni. “Your servant?”

The Judge made a face at his spoon. “Maraschino. My wife used to say, ‘Sherry, not cherry, Anna.’ But now she puts both. The menu is hers, I might say. And we’re not to notice her, until dessert. Till then, she thinks of herself as invisible. And won’t have help. After that point, when her
crise
is over, it’s permitted. She may even notice
us.
” As she does all along of course. Anna knows her place. …But why don’t
you,
why won’t you stay upstairs, why must I mention you? Because of Ninon. I’m so seldom taken by surprise. It would be good—to take…” Anna’s our housekeeper. In the family since the children were young.” The Judge noticed that his spoon was ahead of his napkin, and shook out the cone’s folds. “My father-in-law required them big. To tie round the neck. These came with the house. And that way of folding them. The children used to call them Everest.”

“And I used to make a napkin mice for them—see,” said Pauli, whipping one out in front of Leni. Worriedly, he could see she hadn’t yet chosen her style.

“She sounds more like a concubine, Simon,” said Madame Whatshername,
Fracca,
with a laugh, her smile lingering on Austin’s uniform. Taffy-haired, amazing of skin, she didn’t fascinate Austin for herself, though he’d been to dinners abroad where there were women like her, the least malicious of what was said about them being that they “kept themselves up.” He preferred women her age to be like his mother, behind her armorial satin a body fashioned only for his father in long-ago moments one didn’t think of—a woman now modern enough to dye her hair to a shade just blue enough to advise all men it was really gray. But this Madame the Mistress Royal might know how it was, how it really was—with her charge. He wouldn’t say his “beloved,” even to himself. The word smacked of Bibles given to dutiful sons by fathers; this Fenno might maverick yet. And would be the first Fenno to choose the dark city. He looked at his neighbors—in this room consecrated to middleness, bland with it as the chicken which was by the smell on the way—and wondered why he thought that.

…
Used to, used to.
The air here was anaesthetized with its own legend, beautiful visits that don’t go anywhere any more, having got all that was wanted, long ago. Or what was not wanted? Surprised at itself, the foot of the table stared at the host. But the whole world already knew merely that about him. Yet I am more intelligent than anyone he lets come to the house. …

“A concubine?” said the Judge. “Mine?” Glancing up, he saw in the younger men’s face the barometric halt that came when any older person, hoping to be contradicted, referred to his age. … Edwin’s embarrassed, as one’s children are, by one’s sex.
Is
personal emotion a filth of you, Edwin? Against all Harvards, is that where you’ll always be—second-class? Or I’m a father to you, is that it? Are you dear to me—as a son?…“No, not mine,” he said aloud. “Maybe someone else’s. Edwin thinks she has a secret life.”

Austin’s embarrassment at that, the Judge saw, was different—social. …Yes, I know one doesn’t discuss the servants. Women make us vulgar, Austin—haven’t you yet found that out?…

The Judge’s smile at Austin made no effort to win him, and never would. … You’re not a son to me. …At the boy’s glassy coolness, he himself felt a certain withdrawal, recognizing the slight chill that came upon meeting an equal. …Is it because you’ve been to the wars and this house has never been, even in your uniform? No, we were equal even before, you and I. Don’t worry me, boy, don’t let me guess it. …Austin, Austin, what do we share?…

Edwin turned from watching Krupong, up the table at his left, who was penciling on a memo pad some kind of diagram too sidewise for him to see it clearly. “Oh, Anna has secrets, all right,” he said, in imitation of the careless style here. “Don’t know whose.” Had he done it badly? No, the Judge’s cold stare seemed to be for Austin. Who had done nothing, in a casualness not to be imitated. …Simon—a god shouldn’t be frightened. Simon—don’t be Simon, to
me.
What have you let into the house, Judge Mannix? Who?…

“Oh, this house has depths,” said Blount. “I never ask too many questions here.” He looked up, startled. “Why—it’s
true.
That’s why I come here. Isn’t it?”

Felix chuckled. Austin smiled at him.

“And it has a
bidet!”
said Leni. “Upstairs, in one of the baths. I saw.”

Chuckles flickered round the table—tentative. Were things going to warm up? Will we be friends here—for a summer evening? Will the floes melt a little closer, merge for a night in the same life-direction—and move on? Down the table, grapefruit halves were withered, gutted, sprung or untouched pearly, according to each person’s habit. It had better happen now.

“Fin-de-siècle
depths,” said the host—and in laughter, the ice broke. Leni bridled like a wit. Pauli clapped his hands.

“Oh, Dan gets the credit for that remark,” said the Judge. “Long ago. See here, let’s have the wine.” He began serving up an entrée from a tea-wagon at his side. “A little salmon with water chestnut. That’s
my
choice.” Two decanters stood ready on the long oaken sideboard, whose heavy ox-yoke handles clinked when a drawer was pushed in—a sound unique to the house. “Austin…will you?—that’s right, the white. And Edwin, the red. Thank you.” He patted Leni’s hand. “There, I’ve got the younger ones working…May I tell you your earrings are very handsome?”

“
Aida.
Munich. Long ago…Oh look, Pauli, two kinds of wine!”

Long ago. Memory soup. Edwin, getting up for the decanter, caught the black man watching him, and said quickly, “Taking notes on us?” Sounding nastier than he meant.

“See what you have been missing, darling,” said Pauli.

Krupong wrote a word, then closed the notebook. “Not exactly. I make book.” He grinned at Blount. “What’s that in American?”

Blount grinned back. “Take bets. What odds you give us?”

“We?” Krupong was watching the wine go round. Decantering might mean either that the host wished to mask an indifferent wine, or knew how to treat a good one. His bet was on the latter.

The two young men had gone round the table in opposite directions, and now approached him. Both were blond, and in knee breeches would have made a passable pair of footmen, though the nonmilitary one was too short for it, and the other too much at his ease. The short one, who had just now addressed him, the one with the decanter of red, was covertly watching the young man with the white, copying his general style of pouring well enough. But Red hadn’t yet noticed that White was filling his glasses, very properly, only halfway. Krupong watched with interest. Wine protocol was effete only to fools; at home he’d seem similar subtleties served up with the fresh blue entrails of beasts just fallen. “Ah,” he said, as the two drew up on either side of him. “What service. I am the last, eh. I warn you, I like wine.” Red poured first, stanching the drop at the bottle’s lip with a napkin. “Well done.” The glass was filled to the brim. Krupong stole a look at white.

Austin filled the glass slowly to the halfway mark, a very little more, then stopped. About to return his decanter to the sideboard, he saw Edwin staring at the two circles of glasses down the table, all the red ones full, and Krupong’s eyes on himself. Austin moved to fill Krupong’s glass of white to the brim, thought better of it, and stood fast. Then both young men went to the sideboard to leave the decanters, and resumed their places at table. Like chess, it was. But it was White who flushed.

“You did well,” Krupong whispered, as his neighbor White sat down. “And you did right, by our laws at home too; you were compassionate. But you blushed for the
other
one—Mr. Red—who won’t like that.” Lifting a glass, he stole a look at the foot of the table. No, “Ah,” said Krupong, inhaling but not tasting, “I’ve won my bet.”

“About us?” said the host, who’d seen all this byplay. “Ninon—your glove.” He rescued the glove from her glass. Earrings and a glove, and a dinner, long ago.
Stay upstairs.
“That thing on your hair, why it’s got a sort of crown on it—just there.” He touched it.

“To be presented in. Just in case.” When she moved her nose, she knew it pulled her upper lip, in youth too rich a Cockney pulp for some, but now shrunken only to adequate—poor Leni’s was cross-hatched like a bad darn. …Simon always did notice cat-close. There, he’s scratching his crotch just as if he wasn’t born to a sort of crown himself—a Jew, but on the Disraeli side. He could have been a prime minister—with us. And the daughter—an assoluta—but of
what?
That state picture of the mother, in the drawing-room. I don’t believe it—there must be a better, somewhere. Though I don’t want to know what happened to him. Nothing gets farther away from the truth than the truth. I should know. I
want.
Must be because I still have all my organs, or never gave birth. Where would we go? I shall drink and eat all I crave; tonight my waist will get its own exercise. Where
will
we go?…

For God’s sake sip, mine host, Felix Krupong silently intoned—taste your wine. …He twirled his glass, politely waiting. Was this an uncommon household in America?…Or shall I find it at Princeton too—only one servant but the air so swaddled in
safety.
“There’s a war on,” as is said here, but the air everywhere seems so dry of swords. In England, the houses were thick with other hypocrisies, but war’s a penny-dreadful they don’t hide. Always some old assegai of a relative hanging about, or the colonial ghost of a limb left on the battlefield. That Little War of the Roses we had a minute ago was interesting. And up there, at the head of the table, is my grandfather, I would swear it, under those lapels. Drink for the love of me, Grandfather. Ah. There. …

He sipped. After a moment he said a sharp, pleased word in his own Efik dialect.

“What?” Edwin leaned toward Krupong, across the memo pad set carelessly in one extra service plate Anna hadn’t after all removed.

…Ah, a researcher; those so often came from the foot of the table. This chap, Mr. Red, bore that with some dignity, or maybe was used to it. But I, Krupong, must keep in mind that there’s no need for me to understand social power here. It’s all
white.
“And I am black but oh my soul is white”? Nonsense, it’s my
tongue
that’s white. Like the wine. …

Felix’s laugh at himself, often so pleasantly disconnected with what it saw that it could be taken for innocent, drew all the table. “Montrachet, yes?” he said.

On Austin’s left, Leni, fixedly attentive to the Judge and Ninon, said suddenly, in a loud confidential whisper to them, “Imagine, he knows wine. We had one of them like that at the theatre in Vienna, black too as the ace of spades, a woman, a dresser, she could find out anything, for the girls. Any man who came to the stage door, if he was young, she could tell a girl next day how much his inheritance would be, if he was old, the state of his health. Whether he was
clean,
you know. She could always tell. And she could make a juju—a charm, to help him marry you.” She saw the Judge was listening, and leaned toward him. She had had three
framboises,
before the wine. “Mmm, those days. But I imagine
you
never had to wait at the stage door.”