The Man Who Cried I Am (21 page)

The spring days whisked by. The American Lyceum of Letters ceremonial was approaching. Harry and Charlotte spent a great deal of time looking out of the window as if trying to memorize every shadow and the position of every light pole, the colors of the houses and doors on the other side of the street. At those times, Harry would study his wife's face. Such a flitting sadness. She looked with such longing at the Italian ice vendors. But then she'd lift her head and stare across the street. Envisioning, Harry imagined, Paris. Paris in the spring. (Hell, she was a woman, wasn't she?) Bittersweet the going, bittersweet the leaving. Harry turned from the windows. The good thing (and he knew it was a desperate rationalization) was that what they did to you kept you on your goddamn toes. Made you think a little faster. Or else it was your ass. You lived once, but damned if they didn't make it seem like forever. Prometheus Black. Only they don't know it's fire they got, these American eagles.

The night before the day of the ceremonial, Daniel O'Brien called. O'Brien was a poet and Harry had heard that O'Brien was the man who had been given his Lykeion Fellowship in creative writing.

“Harry Ames? I'm Daniel O'Brien.”

“Hello, Daniel O'Brien.”

“Hi. About tomorrow. I'm going to take that Fellowship. I did a lot of thinking about it, and I'm going to take it.”

“You're a writer, I think you ought to take it.”

“Yeah, well this is why I called: I'm going to say a few words tomorrow. Can I say something for you?”

Harry heard the poet breathing regularly into the mouthpiece.

“Well, I am going to say that I was the second choice and that you were the unanimous first choice. Maybe a couple of other things. Is that all right with you?”

“It's all right,” Harry said. Why didn't they just leave him alone? Why piss on him too?

“I'm sorry,” O'Brien said, “but I want to go, I couldn't turn it down.”

“Sure, I understand,” Harry said. “Well, go ahead, say what you will. Good luck.”

“Yeah, sure. S'long, Harry Ames.”

The ceremonial was an especial one. Burke McGalpin had been dredged out of the Okefenokee Swamp and urged to set his bourbon aside. He was getting a special medal. It was somehow ironic that the Master of Southern Literature was to be at the ceremonial; it was almost as if the Northern Literary Masters were saying to him: “This is how we handle our niggers. Give a little, take much more.”

Max joined Harry the afternoon of the ceremonial so they could listen to the broadcast together. Charlotte would listen to it at her mother's house. Max was looking better, Harry thought, as they settled in the living room. He wished Max were going with them. Maybe later. Max had promised.

Now, over the radio there came the blabbing of many voices which were faded under an announcer. Max glanced at Harry. The entire business had cut his ego to ribbons, but perhaps this was the end of it. There had been petitions, phone calls, conferences. Harry had stood firm in refusing the consolation prize—which was easy enough to do if you got a three-thousand-dollar advance. Well, Don Kenyon was no fool. All the copy would be good for his house and he'd get a good book besides. He'd always wanted to be a fighting publisher.

Names were called off in monotone. Over the radio they heard the shuffle of feet, the scuffle of chairs, the sound of the mike being adjusted and readjusted. Then, finally, Daniel O'Brien was on the air. “Harry Ames declined the Lyceum Grant because he was refused the Lykeion Fellowship in Athens after having been the unanimous choice of the Lyceum judges. I was runner-up in the competition and therefore won it.”

The voices babbled and bubbled again. Max was grinning when he looked at Ames. “That's a gutsy cat,” he said.

Harry looked out the window. “Max, don't you know that guy's dead? He's blabbed, he's taken their money and he's called them names. Yes, he'll go on off to Athens for his year, and he'll write poetry and maybe he'll publish some of it. But that man is dead. They'll get to him. They'll make that poor sonofabitch sorry for trying to do the right thing.”

Max said, “He should have kept his mouth shut. He didn't have to say a damned thing.”

“Yes,
he
did, Max. He had to say it.”

Max turned off the radio. Neither of them moved for a long time.

Part  Two

14

LEIDEN

Now, seventeen years later, Max remembered that afternoon, perhaps because it had been a spring afternoon. And Max remembered the kind of dazed look of Harry and Charlotte and the kid in their room on the
Flandre
. It's not for real, the look seemed to say; it can't be. Yet there they were, the odor of the North River full in the room, that room crowded with well-wishers, flowers, champagne, muted voices that ship departures always bring.

Once Max had looked into a corner. He saw Harry and Daniel O'Brien raising their glasses. A toast, Max thought. To what?

One year later Max knew. It had been a toast to America. O'Brien had written a poem hinting at it, a poem that said if we must sacrifice some to get where we must go, then count me first. Harry had been right about O'Brien; that was the last published poem of his Max had ever seen or heard about.

“
LEIDEN
” the sign said. Another half mile and Max peeled off the main road, shifted into third and moved slowly through the streets. Once he stopped to look at his directions, then drove on to the train station; the street he was looking for was near it. Twice he missed it and had to double back on one-way streets. The third time he hit it just right, drove past a weatherbeaten wooden windmill (left up for the tourists) and went down the street until he came to the number Michelle Bouilloux had given him. There was a wall around the house. Max got out of the car and stretched. The first thing he'd do was go to the bathroom; the cotton felt wet. He glanced at the sun; it was directly overhead. Noon, or just about; it shouldn't have taken him that long to drive down here. He'd do better going back, he thought.

Max rang the bell. He breathed the scents of spring, the water in the canals, the fresh blooming trees, the noontime cooking and, faintly, the exhaust fumes of cars. He heard the lock on the garden door snap open and he pushed at the ancient, browned slab of wood. In the garden, color rose layer above layer. First was the thick carpet of grass divided by a walk, then fern bushes and daffodils, then red and pink roses, all dwarfed by giant spreading oaks on either side. He almost missed seeing the house behind the flowers and plants, but he started down the walk, closing the door behind him. Up ahead, at the other end of the walk, the door of the old stone house opened, and Michelle Bouilloux rushed out, her red hair glinting copper as she ran toward him through the different levels of color. Max perceived her dimly, rushing out of the past as it were, and heard her shoes slapping ever so gently upon the old slate walk, and for the first time he smelled the flowers themselves.

The black she wore this time was not so formal; it allowed her form to show and beneath her simply cut dress her breasts heaved up and down with each crimping little stride she took toward him. He thought with surprise, She's a redhead! Of course, she was a redhead. He'd known that once. Why had he forgotten? It was just the day, the time of day, that hour in life through which all past thoughts and desires filtered once more. As she came closer to him, her ripe, reluctantly aging body still—(how would he say it?)
succulent; un repas succulent
—he noticed that she fixed his face with her eyes in such a searchingly bright manner that he inwardly recoiled, not from her, but from what it was she saw. “Hey, Michelle,
ça va, chéri, umm, très chic toujours, ah?
” Only by bracing himself was he able to take her crashing embrace without falling. It was his own fault. He had thrown open his arms and thrust himself forward in a feeble attempt to recapture the greetings of old. They kissed and hugged and kissed again, until she drew back and let her eyes go over his face again. “Max,
es-tu malade?
”

“What?”

“I'm sorry. Are you sick, Max? I noticed in Paris that you did not look well. Now you are here—Max—you look worse. Come, I will fix you a coffee.” She took his arm and they walked to the house.

As soon as they entered Max said, “Michelle, I must use your bath.”

“But of course, Max.”

When he came out the coffee was ready along with neat little open-faced sandwiches. “You are hungry, Max?” Michelle asked.

He nodded. As she poured the coffee, he leaned to look out the window. A canal flowed right next to the house. He guessed it was a pretty cold place during the winter. The house was very old and extremely Dutch in style. “Is this your house, Michelle?”

“Yes.” She passed him his coffee. “Way in the back,” she said, “in history, one of my relatives was a soldier with Napoleon. Coming back from Waterloo, he simply stayed and took a Dutch wife. They built this and used it from time to time when they were not in France. But,” she added hastily, “we are far more French than Dutch.”

As he was sipping his coffee, Max felt an urge to turn; it was as if someone was looking at him. He looked up at a photograph of Harry Ames standing in a far corner on the mantel of the fireplace. Max turned and looked at Michelle, then back at the photo. It was Harry's devilish photo. His eyes danced and his brows were arched like mountain peaks.

“My husband never knew of this house,” Michelle said with a little smile. “It belongs after all to
my
family.”

“So this is where you and Harry used to vanish to.”

“Yes.” She sat back in her chair and crossed one leg with a flash of white. “But, how have you been, Max? Are you still with the magazine? No more novels, Max? What happened? And Margrit, you saw her in Amsterdam. Is she well? Is there any hope for you two or is there someone else?”

Max shrugged. “There's no one else. Margrit? She's fine. The magazine? [What had he told Margrit? That he had quit three months ago or—No] I took a leave for a little while. I was getting tired, Michelle. Too much traveling, too many different countries and people and things in too short a time. Not like the old days, they say, before the jets. Just tired, honey.”

“We always hoped you would come back to Paris and settle down to live, Max. So much was missing when you decided to return to America. Harry felt badly about it. You made him feel that he might be wrong. It was not a good feeling for him to have. Harry was not a good man to know when he was uncertain about things; he thrashed about and he hurt people. And your swift passings-through were never enough.”

“Well …” Max let his voice fall off. Tired, he thought, damned tired.

“I often had the feeling,” Michelle was saying, “that there were certain important things America could do or say in some fashion, and they would have been enough to send Harry rushing back to New York. America never said or did them. All day I've been thinking: maybe he wasn't happy in France after the first few years. Maybe he wasn't.”

Max said, “He never wrote about the French; he never wrote about France, nothing in love, hate, anger or even indifference. Maybe he was wrong.”

“His heart did lay in America, and one could always find time to reflect on that and be sorry—”

“Michelle,” Max said, breaking in more sharply than he intended, because he was feeling a sudden lurch of pain even through the morphine. Anticipating it after the morning's drive, he had increased his dosage in her bathroom. “Why are we here?” Michelle closed her mouth slowly and firmly. Ah, he is not well, she thought; that explains it. That must explain it. She glanced out the window. Max saw her in full profile. His eyes went down to her chest where her breasts swelled to bursting against her dress, then mercifully sloped back to her stomach. He was now conscious of her perfume, a faint something. Violet? Michelle uncrossed her leg and crossed the other. She leaned forward and took a sandwich and glanced at the window again as she took a bite. Max waited, staring at the dark waters of the canal. Why didn't she get on with it?

“I have something to give to you.” She took another bite of her sandwich. Max, warm in the stupor he felt himself tumbling into, watched her open her small, rounded mouth. No lipstick. Fluttering like a newborn snake, his penis strained toward an erection. Max groaned and clutched his coffee, wincing. Michelle frowned. Her pout vanished and she came forward, setting her cup on the small table that stood between them. She touched his knee. He placed a hand over her hand and with the other wiped the stinging tears from his eyes. She looked up at him quizzically. “What, dear Max? Tell me. You are ill. O! Max!” Her own eyes filled suddenly with tears. “We are
all
getting old and sick and dropping dead, with everything still a mess.”

“Michelle,” Max said, trying to laugh lightly. “I never made love to a woman with red hair. Never in my entire life.”

Michelle laughed a little through her tears. “Why, what an extraordinary thing to say!” She giggled. “Max, why do you say that?”

Max leaned forward now, spinning rapidly somewhere between a wild high and stupor. “Would you let me make love to you if I were going to die and could complete that act just once before I did?” Max smiled at her.

Michelle smiled back. “But we are both so old—I would not like the responsibility of having your death on my hands, dear Max—”

“I would do it for you, Michelle.”

“You would?” Michelle frowned and smiled by turn. What a strange conversation. How odd, how odd! She stood and retrieved her coffee and then coquettishly said, “I might consider it. But enough of this game, Max. It frightens me.” She wiped the edges of her eyes with a tiny lace handkerchief.

“Michelle,” Max said, feeling some of the tension ease from his body, “the mess was a long time in the making; it'll take a long time in the cleaning. Harry thought he could do it all. Now tell me what Harry left.”