Trust (30 page)

But Enoch, who had no idea, mumbled: "A week maybe?"

"A day or so," my mother amended.

"A month or so?" I interpreted.

"Well, take a full suitcase, you never can tell," she acknowledged ominously.

In short they would reveal nothing. They kept to themselves, and pitied one another for their predicament, whatever it might be: with nothing left over, neither wonder nor regard, for the fact of my exile: only, I suspected, relief. They were saved; I had saved them. They had put me between themselves and Tilbeck; this time money was not enough, money would not do, money was not what he wanted; he wanted me.

I decided to speak to William.

But first this happened: Ed McGovern telephoned and asked to see my mother.

"Good," she said. "Tell him to come. I want his opinion on Vronsky." For two days she had been arguing with my stepfather about the characters in
Anna Karenina:
she was angry that Tolstoy had made Anna's lover feel ennui. "It isn't sensible," she said, all vague and pouting, "it's rude. It's insolent."

"You mean it's real," Enoch said.

"
I
all wouldn't have done it. First those silly asterisks"—my mother believed in literary "frankness"; she owned an unexpurgated copy of
Lady Chatterley's Lover,
of course, a smuggler's copy, and had modeled her foreman's love scenes with Marianna after the gamekeeper's—"and then, practically right after the consummation, he's bored to death with her!"

"
You
wouldn't have done it," Enoch repeated.

"No, I wouldn't."

"You wouldn't have had her throw herself under the train either?"

"What a way to end a book!"

"Nobody denies it's a tragedy, dear. Then I suppose you would have had her go back to her husband?"

"Not
that
husband. What a prig, exactly like William. What
I'd
have done," she said meditatively, "if I were Tolstoy, is"—she really did not know, and had to suck her lip for inspiration.

"Remember," Enoch said, "divorce wasn't available—"

"Well I know that! Ssh, I'm thinking." But just then the maid knocked to announce the arrival of Ed McGovern. "I'd simply have found a new lover for her!" she burst out.

"—who wouldn't get bored?"

"Well look, for goodness' sake, it's not Anna who was boring. She's not a
boring
woman, after all. That's why I can't see Tolstoy's conception, I just can't see it. There's something wrong with a man who'd tire of a bright woman like that. I mean, I sort of see a bit of myself in Anna—"

"So do I," said Ed McGovern.

"There! You see, Enoch? Now don't look me all over please, I have to stay in bed."

"If it's too much for you—"

"No, no, stay, I'm perfectly all right. I'm not sick any more, but my hair's all coming out. I don't see
how
I can remind anyone of that beautiful Anna when I know how awful I look. It's just lucky for me that a turban's becoming to me. In the thirties I used to wear them all the time, it was the style, even though it
was
a little old for me—did you bring the proofs?" she broke off.

"Well, no," said Ed McGovern, and stopped.

"Didn't they come yet? Really, that printer—"

"Oh, they've come, they've come."

"Then what's the matter? You don't have to be nasty about it!"

"They look lousy, if you want to know the truth."

"You're not going to start about the capital letters again, are you, because I warn you if you do—"

My mother's editor very slowly sat himself down on her bed and began moodily searching for an ashtray. "It's not the capitals, it's the commas. You just can't print sonnets without commas, Mrs. Vand, they don't make sense."

"Then
don't
print sonnets. I never gave you permission to have sonnets anyway, did I? We've discussed it a thousand times—
Bushelbasket
's got to be really revolutionary or nothing at all."

"Then it's nothing at all."

I brought him the cap of a cold-cream jar from the dresser and received in it the long grey snout of his cigarette, just in time.

"Maybe you're having a sterile period," Enoch suggested from his chair. "Artists usually do."

"Artists yes, but editors aren't allowed to," my mother said severely. "Don't joke, Enoch. I pay this young man perfectly good unfunny money, and he's got to do what he's told."

"There's a Rat in my room," the young man morosely observed.

"Don't try and tell me I'm responsible for that!" said my mother. "I didn't advise you to live in that sort of neighborhood."

"You said it was a romantic part of New York, didn't you? Full of writers, ha, ha. How should
I
know New York? I took your word for it, didn't I?"

Enoch asked, "Where are you from?"

"Boston."

"
South
Boston," said my mother maliciously. "That's pretty far from lace-curtain."

"Don't cast aspersions, Allegra."

"Anyhow he went to N.Y.U., he knows all about New York."

"I did not go to N.Y.U.," said McGovern haughtily. "I merely registered, I did not
go.
"

"You also registered at Columbia, the New School, St. John's University in Brooklyn, and the Henry George School. I know. I paid all the fees."

"You did not. The Henry George School is free."

"Free hot air," said my mother, who even in her radical days had been against the single tax. "The point is, Enoch, he's lived in this city for six years. Where do you think he got that fake Flemish accent? He can't blame his rats on me—it's a subterfuge."

"I did not say rats. I said Rat. One Rat."

"How do you get a Flemish accent from living in New York?" Enoch innocently inquired, but both my mother and her editor snubbed this foolish question with a simultaneous shrug. I suspected that my mother had copied hers—a rather steep lift of the left shoulder—from her protégé.

"It's really hard to understand the poems without the commas," I offered meekly.

My mother yielded up all her scorn: "Who asked you? You don't understand the first thing about modern poetry. I know what they taught you in that college, they taught you
Wordsworth,
" she sneered.

"Wordsworth's not so bad," Ed McGovern said.

My mother stared. "Dear boy, are you undergoing a conversion?"

"All I said was Wordsworth's not so bad. You'd probably like him if he'd left out the commas."

"If that's sarcasm, you might just as well forget you've ever been an editor."

"All right. I'm going to San Francisco."

"What!"

"I mean I'm going if you'll give me the carfare."

"What about
Bushelbasket?
You just can't pick up and leave without—"

"You fired me, just now, in the presence of two witnesses."

"Oh stop, I didn't fire you."

"You said if that was sarcasm I might just as well forget I've ever been an editor. O.K., it was sarcasm. Honest it was."

"Listen, don't you dare resign just before mailing-time! Not when circulation's just
about
to boom. I've got fifteen new people who've promised to subscribe—"

"I know, I just got their fifteen contributions."

"Money?" said Enoch.

"Poems," said McGovern.

"One of them is from Euphoria Karp," my mother said admiringly.

"Who's that?"—Enoch.

"She publishes practically every other month in
Harpers! You
know. William suggested that she submit to us as a sort of, well, charity, wasn't that nice of him?"

"William?" I could not help wondering at this; for if William thought novels imprudent, then he must have found poetry positively immoral.

"Light verse," McGovern explained. "Light
medical
verse."

"Ah, an invalid spinster," Enoch ventured.

"Don't be silly, her husband's Professor of Copyright Law; but he was dropped from
Who's Who,
don't ask me why. He's one of William's closest friends—I mean William's cultivating him nowadays," said my mother, "for a particular reason. What's this about San Francisco?"

"The Golden West," said McGovern.

"Yes, but what's
there?
"

"Fresh Horizons."

"Look here," she said, blowing out a long breath, "do you want a raise?"

"I've got a Rat," he persisted. "What more could anyone want?"

"I'm perfectly sure they have rats in San Francisco too," said my mother. "Be reasonable. I'll give you five dollars more."

"Per what?"

"What do you mean per what? Per month."

"Per week."

"Oh, all right," she capitulated. "Bring the proofs tomorrow. I want to look them over and take out all the sonnets."

"Not tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm leaving for San Francisco. I need an advance on my salary, please. I need an advance on my
new
salary, please."

"I told you there was a subterfuge! He simply came for money, Enoch. Hand me my pocketbook, will you?" she commanded me; and to McGovern said in a loud monotone—as though she were addressing an opposing volley-ball player across an immense gymnasium—"How do I know you'll come back?"

"Because you're the least boring woman I've ever known, Mme. Karenina; and because it's a tremendous opportunity to be editor of
Bushelbasket
and in charge of a staff of three part-time graduate students; and because I don't take my duties lightly."

It was his longest speech so far. "And because you're bound to run out of money," I said stiffly, but my mother pretended not to hear me; or perhaps she did not really, for she was busy grimacing after what she must have supposed was a shrewdly leonine eye, lit with an elegant mistrust, to turn upon her editor.

But she succeeded only in looking teased and pleased. "You see! He's impossible! Now I can't find my checkbook—oh, here it is. All right: get back here in one week, no longer, you hear? And don't spend it all on beer. William would be furious if he knew I was giving in like this."

"No doubt it's intelligent editorial policy," Enoch remarked. "Besides, beer is art."

"Well, sir, you can ridicule me if you like..."

"An Ambassador can ridicule anybody, you're perfectly right," my mother said hastily. "I suppose you saw in the papers about Mr. Vand's being, appointed Ambassador?"

"It so happens that this Rat I have eats newsprint; but I heard about it on the radio."

"Don't be difficult. I'm letting you go, and that should satisfy you. Anyhow you're mistaken."

"But he does eat print, honest he does. He ate right through my paperback Schopenhauer, if you want to know the truth."

"It's a pessimistic beast, isn't it?" Enoch said.

"Have you tried poison?" said my mother.

"Or Kant? Perhaps a change in its diet—"

"Enoch, don't badger the boy."

"You just said yourself he's mistaken."

"I meant about going West. The point is there's no one who really
counts
in California."

"Not past seventeen, anyway," Enoch said mildly.

"Now what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I'm as alert to Trends as the next man—they're all writing imitation Japanese poetry out there, aren't they? The kind that has exactly seventeen syllables."

"Oh, haiku," said my mother abruptly; but Ed McGovern glanced at my stepfather with a slight increase in respect. "I don't care for that sort of formalism. It's like a straightjacket. As far as I'm concerned it might as well be a sonnet. Look here," she said severely, "don't go bringing back any haiku. I won't have that sort of thing in
Bushelbasket.
I don't care if it
is
the wave of the future."

"The wave of the future," said McGovern, solemnly killing his butt in the bit of cold cream that lined the cover of the jar, "is philistinism."

"In that case," Enoch said, "if we're going to have a discussion about Literature, I'd better get poor old Tolstoy out of earshot."

"Don't!" squealed my mother, but it was too late—he had aimed the thick green weight of
Anna Karenina
straight for her pillow, where it landed neatly beside her shining shoulder. "Ouch, you nearly knocked my head off."

"That dear old hairless thing. Quick, hide it under the covers."

"My
head?
Enoch, you're mean."

"Tolstoy. So as not to offend him. He knows nothing about Literature—most great writers don't: all they know is life. Now ssh, what's this about philistinism?"

"Enoch, you're
mean.
Leave the boy alone."

"He ought to be able to defend his opinions, Allegra."

"Well, if you'd let him get a word in."

"It's a mark of diplomacy not to. I thereby save him from himself. Watch and see, he'll tell us the East is effete."

"It is," said McGovern.

"And decadent."

"Right," said McGovern.

"And tied to outmoded forms."

"I don't deny it."

"And under the thumb of the academic critics?"

"Absolutely."

By this time McGovern was viewing my stepfather with positive enthusiasm.

"Well, don't let Mrs. Vand hear you say all that, or she'll cut you out of her will."

"Enoch!" protested my mother. "I'm the one who's the real revolutionary—you can see it just on the
face
of things. I never print anything that doesn't have symbols, or an objective correlative at least, or tension between images, and things like that! I just
said
I can't stand formalism—"

"Exactly," said Enoch. "That proves it. You're effete, decadent, outmoded, and academic."

"I am not!" She appealed to her editor: "Am I, Eddie?"

"Is she, Eddie? There's a moral choice for you! Before answering, consider carefully the benefits of literary philanthropy."

"I already have," McGovern responded promptly, entrusting to my stepfather a tone both of solidarity and admiration.

"Well, am I?" she whimpered.

"Mrs. Vand," said McGovern, "you are the most avant-garde person I have ever encountered."

My mother giggled.

"An art pioneer," Enoch recommended.

"Certainly an art pioneer," McGovern conceded.