Trust (20 page)

It was stung with light; the panes gleamed with double reflections; the ceiling was a lake of light. A brown curtain came winging out of the window, and behind it lapped a vague seepage of voices. The curtain stirred, and blew back into the bright room: its film of shadow swam across the ceiling like a cloud or wash of fog. My mother was remonstrating—"No," I heard her bleat into the wool of the other's derision, muffled by his fresh and stupendous roar—"Oh, no."

I could see the corner of the high bureau, and the worn nape of an armchair, and the bulbs blinking with uneven current, and I dared myself to crawl out a foot farther along the ledge, and then another longer space, until the flat grey sky swung obliquely into sight in the big oval mirror on the bureau.

"Don't talk to me about
terms,
" my mother moaned. I was astonished: her words had leaped into clarity. "What do terms have to do—"

"With you and me?" the visitor asked pleasantly.

My mother rasped. I heard the coarse congregation of spittle in her throat—she might have been breathing in my ear, so close and wounding was her cry. "You said you were coming to talk at arm's length."

"All right, then say I have a short arm." The visitor sent out one of his rattling laughs, and the sound of cold rain running from the gutter went gurgling through it. It seemed to chill his mirth. He resumed, a trifle spitefully, "Still, I only reach for what I can get. The world won't blame me for that, will it?"

"I'm not the world."

"But you run it—it comes to the same thing. It's all in the literature of social protest—anyone who can pay off the gendarmes runs the world."

"Then you saw in the papers we were here!" my mother exclaimed. "You saw all about it!" she said with the thickening note of satisfaction.

"In the papers? I'm afraid I gave up the papers months ago. They're no good without a war."

"But how—"

"They're getting stupidly political, haven't you noticed? Or else they're full of blown-up International Society news—it's part of the trend toward world Americanization. All the editors are becoming surly as a result. Every time you read a column you feel someone's picking an argument with you. I'm a man of peace, I hate to be disturbed. A regular war's more sensible—the news worries you, and when you're worried about a thing of that scale you feel important, and when you think you're important you feel flattered. —And I really like flattery, you know,"

"I gave you credit." my mother began weakly.

"Oh, look, that's not flattery!" He waited a moment before flushing the room with his laughter. "Not when it's cash I've come for!"

Inadvertently she abandoned the tone of entreaty. "I
did
give you credit. I really thought you might have some vestige left of—"

"Vestige!" crowed the visitor. "Vestige! If I've got anything. it's got to be a vestige!"

"Self-perception," my mother finished.

"Oh, good, that's much better. I thought you were going to say decency. Human decency, in fact—that usually runs in vestiges."

"I didn't believe it was an ordinary liaison. A simple ordinary liaison," my mother went on with unexpected scorn.

"Annie, you mean? You want to call it a liaison, you go ahead and call it that. They call it something else in Dutch." He gave an artificial half-sneeze, a sardonic noise just between humor and malice, which seemed to emerge from the flooring; he might have been squatting or bending in some imitative or satiric motion. Whatever the gesture, it could not, according to his satisfied snort, have been obeisant. "The poor girl really
did
get in Dutch with you, didn't she? I suppose you've already fired her?"

"Of course. She went last night."

"Expeditious! I congratulate you, M13. Vand."

"The child can do without that sort of influence."

"At all costs?"

"At no cost," my mother spit out.

"Oh, you're very determined, I can see that. But it's all to the good—it shows you administer a good bringing-up. According to all the rules of pedigree—the horse code. No vestiges."

"None," my mother agreed sharply.

"Then I'm glad I came. I really had misgivings—I didn't think we'd be on the same side! I'm very, very glad. That's from the heart, you know."

"I wish you'd state your business and keep your heart out of it."

"It bothers you, my speaking from the heart? You don't like me to be sincere?"

"
You
talk about sincerity!" My mother gave an automatic cough, for poise; I heard it very clearly. "Don't be obscene."

"If I can't be sincere I've got to be something. It isn't enough to be vestigial, after all. You think it's pleasant to come here and find I'm looked on as a sort of refurbished fossil—"

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that—you can't be a fossil if you were never alive to begin with," she assured him.

"That's the tone to take!"

"I'm not taking any 'tone'."

"I beg your pardon, wasn't that Mrs. Vand's tone? The high and mighty tone of the high and mighty Mrs. Vand?—I've heard about it."

"You've heard a great deal—your friend didn't keep back a thing. Apparently there was nothing she denied you."

"Very few people deny me what I ask for, Mrs. Vand."

But my mother had for the moment marvelously recovered. She might have been addressing Anneke, so purely sovereign was her sally. "Then your requests must be generally worthless," she superbly brought out.

He seemed not to mind this a bit. "In that case there must be something in the
way
I ask!"

But she was no less sly. "Is it your tone?"

"Don't compare my tone with yours!" he rallied. "Mine's perfectly charming. You don't see me intimidating anybody, do you? The nicest thing about me is—you know what?—I'm amenable."

"Yes," my mother said. "I'm aware of your amenability."

He permitted himself a practised hesitation. "Oh, when it comes to that, I can recall
yours.
It doesn't take much digging up, if you're interested in the archaeology of it. You remember that night after the parade—"

"There were lots of parades," Enoch said suddenly; his voice came between them with the brusqueness of a guardian or keeper. I had nearly forgotten the third person in the room, and all at once I thought it odd that the private visitor, Enoch's visitor who had come on Enoch's business, should direct everything all deftly at my mother: and odder yet that Enoch should pace and pace (his footfalls continued to shudder and tramp and weave a ring) and let them sniff up their cage unhindered. "Dozens of parades," he said, "nothing
but
parades"—still, it was impossible to tell from this whether he spoke in defense of my mother, inside the bars; it might as easily have been an accusation.

"
She
knows which one I mean."

"No," my mother protested. "I don't."

"It was January."

"I don't remember any January."

There was a brief disparaging silence.

Then: "She doesn't remember any January," Enoch said.

"There!" confirmed my mother.

"I see it does you good," the visitor said softly, "to think of me as a fossil."

"I never think of you at all."

"A real moral good. It's what makes you Mrs. Vand." He stopped and loosed a self-amused sound, not really laughter any more. "You don't mind my saying Mrs. Vand? I'm rusty on Allegra, and I think I
ought
to say Mrs. Vand, under the circumstances, I mean—"

"Under the circumstances that's who I am."

"What?"

"I
am
Mrs. Vand." my mother responded stoutly.

"I don't argue it. It couldn't be plainer. I admit to it," said the visitor, "gladly, gleefully. I even applaud it. Look, I admit to it with all my heart—"

"I told you to keep your heart out of it."

"—only I'm somebody too. Look at it that way, Mrs. Vand."

"You're Nick."

"All right—"

"And Nick doesn't exist. That proves it."

"Proves
what?
"

"That I never think of you."

"Never?"

"You're the man in the moon." She was all confidence again. "You're not there, that's all. You don't exist," she repeated.

"Not for you, then maybe for someone else."

But she was practical and patient. "You don't exist for anyone."

"No one?"

"Isn't that what I'm saying? No one. Not a soul."

He seemed to suck on the moment that mildly intervened. "You prefer it that way?" he pretended to wonder after a while. "You really prefer it?"

"I more than prefer it. I intend it."

"You intend it. See!" he said. "Didn't I tell you we were on the same side? We peep through the same pair of eyes, Mrs. Vand!"

"You might just as well keep your eyes out of it too," she came briskly back.

"Eyes too? Eyes and heart—you don't leave me much to negotiate with. There's nothing left but arms and legs! You didn't think I came for a wrestling match?"

"You're rough enough, even for that."

"Rough? Oh, like a diamond in fact! But I know what you mean. I haven't any facets. I come all in one lump—not a solitary shiny part. Still," he reasoned, "it doesn't change what I'm worth."

"
I
can tell him what he's worth, can't I?" But it must have been the window and the walls as much as Enoch my mother sneeringly addressed; and there was no reply from any of them. Meanwhile the visitor appeared to be mopping away a long meandering trickle of fresh amusement: from all that foam his intimate skeptical tones came up horny and hard, like the dogged dependable back of a turtle. "I'd like to hear it, Mrs. Vand," he pursued—"it's just for that I'm here. Perhaps"—and surely the hearty din of his "perhaps," with its far convivial reverberations, was struck for Enoch too—"perhaps we can all agree on a price," he gave out, and let the notion stand.

It stood. "Price," said Enoch solidly. "There you are, Allegra."

"It isn't as though I didn't expect it," she complained. "It's
exactly
what I expected, didn't I say so?"

But Enoch once more only answered "Price," and went on dropping muffled steps around the room.

"If you expected it," resumed the visitor, "that's better yet We accommodate one another—that's even more than
I
expected! Although I'm not surprised at your point of view. Mine is just the same. That's the crux of it all—we hold a single intention, Mrs. Vand: you and I! It's remarkable, isn't it?—when you think of it?"

"I have better things to think of," countered my mother.

"Of course. You're thinking of a price."

A syllable of outrage fell from her.

"Ah, but when I bring you exactly what you want," he comfortably reproved. "I'm perfectly willing not to exist, you see, for someone else"—somehow she obliterated the flare of her little cry—"as long as I can manage to exist for
you.
That's the thing, after all. One wants one's due."

Her spite was light and fine. "Oh, if you were to get
that!—
"

"Well, put it that one wants a little acknowledgment," he conceded.

Enoch darkly emerged: "It depends of what."

"Of who one is; of what one is. Oh, I don't say as a regular thing—only now and then: I want to be fair. I don't ask for anything contrary to temperament."

"
Your
temperament, you mean," said my mother.

"My temperament—of course. I like to think of the long run."

"You've never noticed the long run," Enoch said with the precision of recitation, quite as though he had come to the end of one of his lists, "in all your life." But my mother overwhelmed the bareness of his declaration with a dozen sudden hoarse condemnations, which passed without purpose through the bright panes and into the oddly coarsened air—the rain had begun to multiply, and changed its pitch to avoid the eave, and came against my nape and cheeks in little blows. I did not mind the rain; it was endurable; for meanwhile I was preoccupied with the arrangement of my limbs. My left leg, which had been twisted under me for a sort of bolster, was stiff with cramp. It was partly numb and partly thick with black pain; I had to drag it after me across those eroded concrete inches, turning halfway on the ledge and reassembling myself as best I could. My mother's wails had quickly grown familiar. They left me no curiosity; I was bored by all that vivacity without intelligibility, and thought to retrace my cold brief trail. So I crept on with the solemnity of disappointment, and looking down saw the garden, through interstices, grey and drenched, and the blue bicycle sunk almost out of view behind a grating of bobbing twigs. The concierge's husband's silly bush bounced: and under an assault of big drops the little stubborn flag beat like a fierce rag-bird to escape the tether of its stick—it tore away and would have flown off, but each time the wind struck it back and furled its striped plume. The private visitor, returning, would find his things in ruin. Already his bundle had slipped off the fender and was dangling like an out-of-rhythm pendulum, square-edged, from a wet string. I watched it queerly hang and rock, and wondered whether he would be angry and would blame my mother for keeping him long, while all the while his flag and books (I thought I knew what sort of books) were getting spoiled. She did keep him; she kept him and talked, and sent out her unaccountable faint whine, and would not buy. For I did not doubt that he had come to sell. What else could he have come for? I supposed he was a salesman, one of those curious entrepreneurs and pursuers who made secret appointments and uncommon offerings, dogging my mother: sometimes
it was gems they sold her, and frequently cars, and often paintings, owned previously by duchesses; and if the man chattered of gems, cars, or paintings, my mother would not buy, but if he spoke of something else (of the duchess, say) she would. Usually, therefore, the man would wisely speak of something else, for though he may have looked a fool (uniformly they looked to be fools, breathless, hairless, flat-thumbed), he had come a long way and grown clever on the journey—he might throw down his traveling-box, certainly he would hurl aside his window-frame portfolio stuffed with touched-up photographs, as though these were impediments to the style he knew my mother's brilliance required, and smiling and fawning and whirling his elbows he seemed obliged to sell, before anything else, himself And regularly afterward my mother would glitter in a new place (a long-unused finger would suddenly spawn a fantastic ring; or a shining stone looped from temple to temple by the dark deft hands of a Parsee salesman would sit astride her brow) or she would be driven off gaily in a snail of white enamel, or she would confront with comfortable purrings a preposterous picture full of rosy gnats, and carry it under her arm all day. But she never minded when I attended, as once or twice the occasion had it, one of these odd private entertainments, rich with flattery and implausible pleasurable gossip; she never pretended the man had come on Enoch's business. And I no longer believed that he had come on Enoch's business, this Nick who avoided speaking of nothing, and who was careless of my mother's feelings, and seemed unaware of the expectations of her brilliance. It could not have been Enoch's business he had come on, whatever my mother might say: and he had arrived with no merchandise but his bicycle, his bundle of books, his bit of spangled rag. Did he mean to bribe their favor by waving the flag of compatriotism? And having won it, did he mean to sell his old bike? (How I would have fancied just such a vehicle for my own, miraculously blue, clanging and ringing!) Or did he mean merely to hawk his books?—But Enoch's visitors came discreetly, presenting their accounts and inventories with the deep attention of the very bored; they drove dusty little French cars; they complained of their territory; they complained that their merchandise was slow to move: that it was too fresh, being redolent still of factory-handling; that it was too stale, being old as violated Eden. They complained that the market was reluctant; that there were no reputable outlets; that facilities for distribution were a tangle of contradictions; that the supply of the product exceeded by ten thousand percent the demand for it; that it was consequently impossible to dump even whatever portion was already released from the wholesalers and the chains. This was their language, although I knew it was corpses they meant, and mass graves, and exhumations, and freight cars lurching westward, and names lost forever, and the blind tongues of the dead, and cinders and smoke. It was their language, practical, purposive, and without whimsy: it was the jargon of trade. The gem-men and the auto-men and the picture-men had the same difficulties with turnover: in trade it is all the same, whatever the merchandise. But this Nick was something new. If he had not come to haggle over late acquisitions with Enoch, if he had not come to fatten my mother's velvet jewel-sack, why did I hear his calculated tradesman's laughter just now beading the wind?