New Yorkers (55 page)

Behind her, Pauli made an abortive, trailing sound, but he was merely the conductor, he could do nothing.

“Yes, I remember.” Leni’s reddish hair dropped backward over the neck which no longer could bend back of itself. On the hand spread across her puce mouth, one nail had chipped. “‘Is he a policeman, your friend?’ I said to her. When he went to the men’s room. So big he was, when he got up the table almost went over. She didn’t answer me. Not a word, remember, Pauli? Not a word. Until he came back.” The palm pressed for a moment on the Judge’s shoulder left a powder mark. “
You’d
gone by then; you had to leave. “Soldier of fortune,’ your wife said then, ‘that’s what Nick Posliuty is. Who doesn’t go to war.’ And I said, ‘Posliuty?’ And he looked up quick and said, ‘Polski?’ And I said in our language,
‘Glos
—” The palm rose in smart salute.
“‘Glos wolny wolnosc ubezpieczajacy!’
An old proverb. And she laughed. How did she know what I said to him? ‘A free voice guaranteeing freedom.’ Remember, Pauli, later when you ask what it mean, what I say to you? ‘Ask her.’”

The Judge sat as people did when old times were recalled to them, looking past the narrator at the still, small voice of the scene itself.

Pauli advanced, putting his arms around Leni from behind. With an almost lithe pull she took advantage of it, spreading skater-like back against him, his hands gripped in hers. She had involved him now, he must stand and support her—the prima, gone from the rib cage down, but the face possible to imagine swooping forward, suspended at the breastbone, riding aloft a man’s hand, with swanlengthened eyes. “He saluted me back,” it said. “‘Not me,
I’m
the champ’,” he said to her. “Your wife’s friend, Judge. The Pole.”

Ruth was moving, taking the minimal steps to carry the plate, which she was still holding, arrested there in her little spotlight of her own making, over to the sideboard. She wasn’t the prima, this slightest passage of the limbs demonstrated, merely a member of the chorus entrusted with the safety of a prop. She put the plate down carefully, a tranced but good child moving to an invisible beat. For a moment her hands, freed now, hung at her sides. Austin had never seen hands look emptier. Was she still dancing?—then she was a marvel at pantomime. But one of her hands crept behind them, to touch her dress at the seat, to wipe off blood which wasn’t there, then recalled in time that there was no blood on it, that she had changed.

To Austin, from a family of sisters and girl cousins, this was a known gesture from the decently guarded monthly trials of women, which a brother wasn’t to notice, sitting rigid at fourteen for instance, eyes straight ahead, while his mother whispered to Alice, “Take little Di upstairs, tell her she’s come through.” He sat like a brother again, uneasy, marveling, eyes straight ahead, once again bereft forever of that straight-legged sprout in jeans, his cousin Di. But this girl has never been seen before for what she is; isn’t that what lovers always say? What she is, what she feels—never by anyone, except me. Bright chains of love-friendship interchanged themselves in his breast—reaching out for all their family pain, hers, so needlessly dabbled with blood. And it appeared to him that all this pain in him was instantaneous.

Pauli had already spoken, a stifled blurt of outrage at Leni, who leaned against him now like a statue which had begun to fall. At Austin’s side, Madame placed a hand on his shoulder, pressing like a signal. She was watching the Judge. How could a man who limped like that get so quickly to his daughter’s side?

“That business on the plane…why should you…why should it have to be you?” Who was Mannix angry with, his face so white? “You want to go upstairs, my darling. Tuck yourself under, hmmm. Go and do that.”

“I’m not tired. I’m never tired.”

It was such a standardly bold young disclaimer. Austin himself had made it often, before the war. But surely there was a bit of the girl herself in the way she leaned to pat her father’s cheek, being taller.

“Who’s
to
carry me,” she said, “now?” Then she flushed, dark and deep. “No, I’m all right.”

A knock came at the door.

“Edwin, it must be Edwin!” She cried it as if rescued. “I’ll go. Let me.” But first she ran to Ninon. “You’ll want to talk to Father.” Then to her father, “You’ll want to—talk to her.”

A second knock came.

As she passed Austin she whispered to him, “Edwin. You still don’t like him, do you?”

“Should I?”

She sighed, went on past him to the outer door. That sigh chilled him, so near, so far. Why do I think of her as “the girl”? Her name is Ruth.

They heard her step outside the door, leaving it ajar. The city drifted in to them. They raised their heads to it, all but Madame, who was a foreigner—did they own it, or were they owned? Intently listening, all of them, after a murmuring out there they heard the door close.

Krupong came in uncertainly, clearly surprised to see them all still there, quickly debonair. “Your stars are out.” A whiff of these came in with him. He saw that his quiet, poetic tone was welcome—young Fenno for one looked as if he could have used a more elegiac end to the evening than seemed likely. But it was not in himself to maintain it. “But Blount is gone,” Felix said. As usual, everybody had to laugh; the sequence of his thought was so fresh—or different from theirs.

Austin stepped forward. “Have you a place to stay? If not—we can put you up. At my house.”

“Thank you, I am stopping at a club. But what I would like—there is an all-night bar I have been told of. Will you come?”

“Did Edwin come back with you?” said the Judge. “Are those two going along with you?”

“Alas, they did not say. She said not to wait up.”

Everybody suddenly said it had been a wonderful evening.

“I should have had you all together long since,” replied the Judge.

“Can we give you a lift, Ninon?” said Leni. “We
always
take a cab.”

“Thank you, I shall stay on a bit.”

“Remember now, Felix,” said the host, “come again.”

“Thank you. May I just—?” He was directed to the hall. Madame, following after, turned and went up the stairs.

“Good night, Uncle Pauli.
Gaudeamus.”

“Good night, Owstin.” Pauli leaned closer. The dinner party as over; already a part of the calendar to be pieced over at will. It belonged to the ages, maybe some day even to Rameau. Outside was life, fanged and waiting. Important things must be said hurriedly between the two states of being, at the door. “Such a darling,” murmured Pauli distractedly. “Will she be all right with him, Austin, that Edwin? She has such bad luck!”

“Sehr interessant!”
Leni was still at such a height—or now felt the Judge and his house to be—that only another language could convey her compliments.
“Sehr interessant,”
she repeated, until dragged away.

“What a handshake that woman has,” said the Judge, after her. “Once a European gets the idea of them—” He saw that he and Austin were momentarily alone. “Austin—” Was Mannix going to ask him to go after those two? If so, he was prepared to counter—“When is
he
coming to live here, in the house?”

“Triple amputee,” said the Judge. “God, that…conjures up—The man was
all
physical. Anyone could see that.”

Austin supposed a man would prefer to think that about his wife’s lover. Until now he’d assumed a man wouldn’t talk about it.

“Think me a shit if I asked you—which?” The Judge drew his palms down his cheeks. “I can get rid of the image maybe. Once I know.”

“I can do better. I’ll tell you what he said when he saw himself. In the mirror.” He told him. In the older man’s stricken look he saw he’d have done better to call him a shit. “He’s got a leg,” he said. “The left.”

They heard the outer door being tried. Neither man went to help. If I see her come in that door again, Austin asked himself, standing his ground—what will I know?”

The door was pushed in jauntily. A breeze came with it. Edwin came in, riding the breeze. Not drunk any more, he looked as Austin had used to glimpse him in their coinciding years at Harvard, when he’d already had a reputation, as much for circumstance as mind. In physique nothing much, his face and manner had already had a duality; it was never quite possible to tell from either what Edwin
was.
This made for a secret power most sensed but few knew, like Austin, the source of—that Edwin himself hadn’t been brought up to know.

Austin squared his shoulders. No holds barred—will
our
kind of training be up to that? He saw that his rival was elated.

Edwin walked straight up to the Judge in his chair in the bay. “Just came back to be sure Krupong told you. Not to wait up.”

Strange advice, from a secretary! But the old man ignored his presence. In spite of black hair and eyes, Mannix could look old when he needed to. He was examining his own hands like a palmist. “I could mirror-write once, both at a time. But the one thing—they wouldn’t do for me.” He looked up, at Austin. “
He
—did—what he wanted to. A leg. A leg…You tell him—I would know him anywhere.”

“I don’t ever expect to see him.” Or tell him, if I do.

But the Judge was ignoring Austin now. “Edwin—where’s Ruth?”

“Down the block.”

A child’s phrase, and a city one; used past childhood it belonged to those who lived their life in the streets.

“We’re going on the town. Her idea of it.”

“Where?”

“Not to a settlement house, Fenno. You wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“Where?”

“My old neighborhood.”

“Is it safe there?”

“Safe, Aussie? You’ll have to ask her.”

Not just a street insult. What it said was, “
She’s
your rival, Aussie, isn’t she? And
I
know.”

Krupong and Madame leaned in from the hall, arm in arm. “We’re going into the garden,” he said. “To see your stars.” She waved.

The Judge smiled at both young men. “Wait up? No. Tell her I won’t.” He made as if to get up then, but his wife’s soft chair held him. He stretched a leg, reflectively. “Not for a girl who’s old enough—to go on tour.”

“Then she’s going?”

“Why, yes, Edwin. You’ll be the only young one in the house. Or maybe we’ll all decide to leave…or meet in London.” He was struggling to get up. It became clear to the two young men that he couldn’t. Each reacted in his own way: Red; White. Austin, relic of James, remained quietly waiting. Edwin, relic of nothing beyond his dialogues with the Judge, walked forward to the head chair at the table and picked up the cane beside it.

“Just a civilian wound,” said the Judge. “Nothing to yours, Austin, or to—Edwin, did you know Austin’d been wounded?”

Edwin was weighing the cane. “No, Sorry to hear that.” He said it with wooden sincerity, his thoughts elsewhere. “Ill tell Ruth.”

“Never mind that,” said Austin, in utter fury.

Edwin didn’t, toying with the cane. “She wants us to go to see a night court session.

“Night court?” said her father. “She say why?”

Edwin brought the cane forward. He was carrying it like an equerry, or a street boy acting one, guying a cop—or yesterday’s friend. He presented it. “Good night—” An ancestry came out upon his face men surely. What else was it when a man’s brow narrowed like that, feral but innocent? “Good night,
Simon.
” Quick-fading as a street runner, he was gone.

“Who’s in charge here, I wonder.” After a minute Mannix shrugged. “When you say that, I suppose you no longer are.”

“Shall I go after them?” said Austin.

“Why?”

“No holds barred, with him. With
them.
I can understand that. But with him it’s more than that. With him, you don’t know what holds there are.
He
doesn’t. And that’s dangerous.”

“Ruth knows. Ever since she brought him here.” Mannix peered up at him cautiously. “She even says—he and she are alike. In a way.”

“
Like!
—why, she’s known what she is, every day of her life.”

“Yes.” The Judge fingered the cane’s silver crook. “Night court. Her mother used to do that in the thirties; it was chic then. But they’re in for a surprise; I don’t think that kind of city court is held any more…What you young remember, eh? Enormous, isn’t it, Austin? But I can’t deal with it any more.” With the aid of the cane, he stood up. Then he tossed it away.

“You in pain?”

The Judge looked down at his leg. “Just something for the doctors to settle. Otherwise, if you ask me…may I say ‘Aussie’!”

“My family calls me that.”

“Know that drawing feeling in a wound? That’s what I’m in. I’m in
healing.
The two sides of my life, the two halves—are drawing together. It’s the most extraordinary sensation.”

“Halves?”

“Everybody.”

They heard the two others come in from the garden and go upstairs.

“We better go up to them.” At the dining-room door, the Judge turned to look back at the chairs ranged round a table shining now and cleared, a court ever in session, waiting for the family to come. “Sorry, what I mentioned to Edwin, about you. Shouldn’t’ve.”

“It’s all right. Realized that when you told him. Doesn’t help any, not to. Won’t help what I feel.”

“What’s that”—the Judge drew breath—“my dear boy?”

They avoided looking at one another. A woman peering in wouldn’t have known that they were both moved.

“I don’t feel private any more.” It struck him—a mere pebble—that he had come to the end of his youth. “Everything’s in question,” Austin Fenno said. “Everyone. I never knew.”

The cane had fallen across the entrance. The Judge bent with amazingly convalescent lightness to pick it up. “My grandfather’s. And my father’s too.” He stood it carefully in a corner: “Will
he
be able to…get about? The Pole?”

“They’ll—think of something.”

“I can see I shouldn’t have asked that either. Why do we have to…keep track?”

“That’s easy. Because you’re a civilian.”

“That’s honest of you…Aussie. Look at that dining-table. Know what I think to myself, every time I see it like that?” The chairs waited, regal, ugly, comfortable. “Families behind the lines,” said the Judge.
“Families behind the lines.
I often wonder. Is it only—with
us?
”