The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane (10 page)

But Mrs. Mendelbaum was not ready to let it go and insisted on carrying all the courses into the dining room while keeping going a running monologue about her own frailness and the unfairness of such accusations, the better to torment Uncle Marten, until he finally gave up, saying “I can't listen to any more of this. Do what you must. I've got particles on my mind. Articles about particles.” And left the table.

“There you see!” said Mrs. Mendelbaum, turning triumphantly to us. “He is no GOOT to us anymore. He is RHYMING!” And she took away the dishes with a queer little smug smile on her face. Uncle Marten spent a lot more time in his room after that, and it was our impression he was avoiding seeing her ever again.

*   *   *

During all of this, we had been scouring the island and I couldn't believe that we hadn't found so much as a fuselage. “He must have made it up,” I said for the umpteenth time to Jocelyn.

“He couldn't. He hasn't the imagination,” she said.

“If he didn't make it up it's not because he hasn't the imagination. He has plenty of imagination. I think if he didn't make it up it's because he has too much respect for the truth.”

“Uncle Marten must have seen the plane parts himself, then. Otherwise how would he know they were here? It's a big island and we haven't seen it all.”

“He might not have seen them. He was told a bunch of pilots crashed small planes. He might have just assumed there were plane parts still around,” I said, collapsing on a hillside and getting soaked again. We were always getting soaked. I felt like a fish. I thought we'd have a nice whiny time of it in the mud deploring the size of the island, but Jocelyn looked at me sitting in wet leaves, turned abruptly, and walked back to the house. I could never get used to how she didn't announce her intentions ever; when she wanted to go somewhere she just left without a word as if emphasizing the lack of connection between you. Her lack of obligation to you in the form of explanation, greetings, or closings or the usual grease of human interaction. I groaned and stood up on sore cold limbs and hobbled back behind her.

That night I awoke around 2 a.m. with an idea. I dressed quickly and, taking the flashlight that was beside my bed, went to Jocelyn's room and woke her. She screamed as soon as I touched her shoulder. I moved my hand swiftly over her mouth to muffle it, saying, “For heaven's sake get a grip,” and she bit me.

 

JOCELYN

A
LL WAS DARKNESS AND DREAMS
when I suddenly awoke on a train to bright, uneven, moving light. Firelight where there should be no fire and strange faces and screaming. Where were my parents? What were they doing to those women? Where was my mother?

“You'll have Mrs. Mendelbaum in here in a second if you don't shut up,” hissed a voice as a hand clamped over my mouth.

I sat up in bed panting beneath it and then, having apparently bitten Meline's hand, gently pulled it away. A cold sweat dripped down under my arms beneath my loose nightgown and my eyes slowly adjusted to the familiar furniture of the bedroom. Meline didn't seem to notice the state I was in, but I was used to this. No one else here had seen the fires or the bodies or the cast-off limbs. There were others there when it happened who were whisked off as quickly as I was, but even when I returned to identify bodies, I spoke to no one else who had been there that night. And then I was carried away as quickly as possible to safety as if geography could put distance between me and what happened. As if I didn't live there now, every day. Your mind could be a country, I found out, and those around you made foreigners by an unshared memory.

“I had an idea,” Meline was saying excitedly, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as usual. She was always so energetic. As if she had no feelings to weigh her down. As if she didn't care what had happened. “We may have missed the airplane parts because over the years they've been covered with leaves which have composted. They may be the hills we've walked on. They may be camouflaged under bushes and brush. If there's bits of metal poking out though, light has a better chance of finding it than our naked eyes. We need dark and a flashlight to spot metal peeking out from beneath all that brush.”

“It's the middle of the night. The whole idea was crazy to begin with anyway.”

“So far,” Meline pointed out, “all you've done since getting here is sit around and raise your eyebrows at people.”

This took me aback. I had been mentally raising my eyebrows at people, it was true, but I had no idea it had been detected. This horrified me. I thought I had appeared scrupulously polite and kind. Sort of like Grace Kelly. “We'll probably get pneumonia, going out in the rain at night,” I said quickly, leaping up and putting on my clothes to change the subject.

“Probably,” said Meline cheerfully, handing me a flashlight.

 

MRS. MENDELBAUM

S
UCH PEOPLE
who come looking for work. The last says to me, “I'd rather dig ditches than work for the likes of you.” Is this something you should say to a person? A feier zol im trefen. So that was that. No more applicants. No butler. Then, a brocheh, out of nowhere comes one more. But such a man. Like a corpse. So tall and thin. Does he eat, I ask myself ? And such color. He has never seen the sun? Eyes so far back, looking out from the back of caves. Like he stands perhaps at the edge of the ocean and looks out over water at you. Oy, this one gives me the shivers. And no résumé! Who comes for a job with no résumé? All right, I had no résumé, but what did I know? And no hat, but this I overlook because at least he keeps his head like a man. The helicopter? Not a word. This one does not turn a hair. “Implacable,” says Meline as we watch from the window. He climbs down the ladder. “Maybe that should have been in the ad.” “Hush,” I say to the girls. He should think this is a comedy club?

“Zo, your name is Humdinger?” I say when he arrives and tells us his name. “Sit. How long have you a butler vanted to be, Mr. Humdinger?”

“How long have I, have I what, Mrs. Mendelbaum?”

All of them bad ears. Repeating, repeating, I spend all day repeating to them. So I repeat again.

“Well, never,” says Humdinger.

So this answer is new. All of them before tell me they wanted at birth butlers to be. So, where do I go from here, I think? Should I ask him what he means by such an answer? Should I go on with questions? “Zo the next question, then. I zee you arrive mit out the hat?”

“I don't believe I own a hat, Mrs. Mendelbaum,” says Humdinger.

“No hat? No hat?” Now I am confused. What should I say to such a person?

“I find a collar much more satisfactory,” says this Humdinger, smiling even. “How are you, Mrs. Mendelbaum? How is it working out for you in this gentleman's employ?”

“How is … how is it for
me,
ahzes ponim?”

I look at this man. Yes, he looks very neat. A nice black suit, a little old maybe, a little threadbare, but this I don't mind, he has worked, this man, and almost a collar like the kind they call mandarin. What is with such a collar and no tie? Maybe I think he is more up to date with butler fashion. Maybe they wear collars and no hats now. This is practical. Hats can fall in soup when you make it. A hat on such a tall man can be knocked off in doorways. And it is a good question, how do I enjoy working for Mr. Knockers? He should only know. But still, how else can he find out what kind of man will maybe employ him? He is thinking of himself, this one, smart fellow.

“Of course, you are thinking of it from your end. But still, no résumé, no appointment, what am I to think?” I ask him.

“Well, no résumé, no, but I did call Mr. Knockers to say I'd be stopping in for a brief visit, but he just said, Another one, and hung up. Is he about?”

“Feh, him!” I say. “Bal toyreh! He is not in charge. I am in charge. He tells me you are coming. A Humdinger. He cannot make out why. He does not say it is a person who wants the butler job. But does he remember from one day to the next? Well, perhaps you will see.”

“I think maybe there has been a misunderstanding about my arrival,” says Humdinger.

“Yes, yes, but we will overlook it. You should have sent a résumé. But you have not. And you have not the hat, but at least you have the collar. And you do not seem so afraid of me as these pansy boys who came before.”

“No, but you see, Mrs. Mendelbaum,” he begins again, but I will not let him. No, this one will not himself do in with silly prattle. So I stop him. He is the last chance. And he is not so bad, after all. He does not seem too much one for the fancy things. The types who come before, movies, books, the fashion plates they make of themselves. Don't think I don't know the type. This one looks as if he could worry.

“SO!” I make the sudden decision. My hands they slam down on the table to show this is final and I get up. “You are hired. No, not another wort! Ich hob es in drerd! I am exhausted. Ganz farmutshet. I am taking a nap.”

 

MELINE

M
RS
. M
ENDELBAUM
left a bemused Humdinger watching her disappear upstairs. Then he did a strange thing. He was putting his teacup by the sink, which was always stopped up, and he rolled up his sleeves, took the whole thing apart, fixed it, and then went upstairs to introduce himself to Uncle as the new butler.

“At least,” said Mrs. Mendelbaum to us later with the least scorn she had expressed about any of them, “he wasn't a QUITTER.” But we suspected she was willing to be more forgiving with him than the others because he was the last applicant.

“Best for last perhaps,” said Jocelyn.

“Best or worst, him I was hiring. Your uncle never talks to me and not even a phone to use whenever I like. Just his radio phone, which I have to go up to that LAIR to ask for. No television. And how long can I listen to the radio?”

Mrs. Mendelbaum had tried for a week to convince Uncle Marten to buy a television set, but this he stood firmly against. “I won't have it. They're evil. Nothing kills off brain cells faster. They're noisy and they bring the entire world into your home. I've a good mind to throw that radio into the sea as well, and I will if I hear one more word about it.” After that, Mrs. Mendelbaum was afraid to even talk to him for several days, and Jocelyn and I speculated that she hired Humdinger out of pure spite because every time Uncle Marten ran into him in the hallway, he jumped with fright. Humdinger did look like something that someone had dug up.

Humdinger didn't walk so much as he padded around like the cat he brought with him. He appeared suddenly behind you when you least expected. When he smiled, it was always at his own no doubt strange thoughts, barely a movement in his lips as if he had the neat trick of containing the smile within his eyes. As if even his
smile
was silent.

Because Humdinger insisted on slithering about so, we tended to forget about him, which seemed to suit him fine. When he spoke at all, it was to correct the pronunciation of his name, which none of us seemed to be able to get right either once we saw it spelled. He would correct and we would forget and he would correct again. It was Humdinger, “din” as in “dinner,” “ger” as in “German.” But the tendency was to want to call him Humdinger as in wasn't he just a real one. Eventually, though, we caught on, all except Uncle Marten, who never called him anything but Humdinger to rhyme with “ringer.” Humdinger, after the first time, seemed to give up on him and never corrected Uncle. Jocelyn felt this was very bad for Uncle. She said she could see that he had been coddled and indulged, and that he didn't adhere to the manners the rest of us were supposed to. I guessed by that she meant me and her and Mrs. Mendelbaum, but she might as easily have meant the rest of the world. Jocelyn seemed to live by some pretty absolute standards.

Uncle Marten, once Humdinger arrived and succeeded in keeping Mrs. Mendelbaum busy and out of his hair, forgot all of us. He seemed to find it harder and harder to accept that the people who were on the island with him were not a temporary condition like houseguests or fleas but were going to be here for good. There would be no reprieve. So he locked himself more and more in his room, coming down only for meals and often working right through them, so that he wasn't really present for those either. It didn't matter to me and Jocelyn; we were up nights looking for airplane parts and, even though we slept late in the morning, were always tired. Our clothes never seemed to quite dry out, and I was afraid to use the dryer because it would attract Mrs. Mendelbaum's attention to how often we went out and how wet we got. So far no one seemed to have noticed we were going out at night.

 

MARTEN KNOCKERS

O
NCE THIS FELLOW
H
UMDINGER ARRIVED
, things seemed more orderly in the house, and Mrs. Mendelbaum began leaving me alone for more periods of time. Although I didn't like having people around, I oddly enough did begin to develop a certain fledgling affection for Humdinger's cat, who had been delivered by helicopter after Humdinger was hired. The cat, for some catlike reason of her own, decided that my hermitic temperament made me a soul mate and took to hanging out in my room with me, lying at my feet as I worked, or curling up on my desk or my bookcase. Once she tried to curl up on top of my head, perhaps because my bald head was so shiny and attractive. I always did think that a bald head, from a certain perspective, must be enticing. And now I had found out whose perspective it was. It was a cat's! Perhaps she thought she could be my missing hair. But, of course, it didn't work and the cat slid down my back, clawing for her life all the way, leaving huge scratch marks in my shirt, which made Mrs. Mendelbaum make caustic comments about my private life when she did the the laundry. She'd seen plenty when she was a girl in Vienna. Nothing would surprise her, she grumbled. Really, sometimes I did wonder about her past, but everyone has secrets and I had no desire to find out Mrs. Mendelbaum's. That
I
could hardly have much of a private life, living as I did, was of no matter to her. She knew mankind and its slippery practices. I seldom tried to change Mrs. Mendelbaum's mind about anything once she had taken a notion, which for her was apparently a process akin to pouring cement.