He walked along streets half empty, lit by the neon of Chinese restaurants, the doors of cheap hotels. He was thinking of his wife, of where she was. He was not yet free of her, of her approval, her whims. Suddenly, twenty paces ahead of him, he saw his father. For a moment he could not believe it. They were walking in the same direction. He looked more closely: the gait, the shape of the head, yes, they were unmistakable. Reality fell away in slabs, in great segments reaching toward the center. An old man walking along, his mouth a little open, his eye watery and slow. They were coming to a corner, Viri would see him plainly, his heart began to race, he did not want to, he was afraid. It was as if a coffin lid were about to be opened and a man more ill than ever brought forth, the lines black at the corners of his mouth, breath reeking of cigars. He would need medicine and care. He’s going to ask me for money, Viri thought desperately. He would have that gray cast to his cheeks, that sadness of old men who have not shaved. Embraces of those who have already parted, unbearable agonies repeated. For God’s sake, Papa, he thought. His mind, loosened by the heart cries of Ibsen, was alive but powerless, like an oyster cut from the shell. Come home, he thought, come home and die!
He stared at the stranger beneath the streetlight, a man with a face marked by the city, unhealthy, dark with greed. For a moment they were like men in a railway station, alone on the platform. They examined each other coldly and turned away. He stood on the corner as the old man walked on, glancing back once, suspicious. He looked nothing like Isaac Berland. The empty storefronts devoured him, the roaring buses, the night.
It was late when he reached the house. Hadji was barking in the kitchen, he was so old it sounded like a saw.
The house had changed; he had a sudden sensation of it at the door. He knew this house, it was as if someone were hiding in it, an intruder pressed flat against the wall—no, his imagination was overstimulated. As he went from room to room—his dog losing interest meanwhile and lying down, he himself calm, resigned, accepting the peril—he gradually recognized it was empty.
“Nedra!” he began calling. “Nedra!” He ran as he shouted, frantically, as if there were an urgent telephone call. “Nedra!”
He was trembling, undone. He turned on the lights as he ran, and in the hallway unexpectedly came across his sleepy daughter who mumbled in confusion, “What is it, Papa? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, God,” he cried.
In the kitchen she made him tea. She was barefoot in her robe, her face still thick with sleep. The face, he noticed as he sat gratefully at the table, a bit foolish, a bit ashamed, was not as fine as Franca’s. It was more human, not so mysterious; it might have belonged to a serving girl or a young nurse. And without make-up it seemed even more truthful, more revealing, like the palm of a hand. He sat in the kitchen and his daughter made him tea. This simple act that was like love, in which no insincerity could ever be concealed, touched him deeply. In bewilderment he realized it was like some worn piece of furniture in a refuge, it might be nothing to someone else but in these poor times it was everything, it was all he had.
She sat with him. In her womanly gestures, her movements, her clear, direct glances, he constantly saw her mother.
“How was the play?” she asked.
“Apparently it was quite powerful,” he said. “It turned me into some kind of maniac, running around the house and baying for your mother.”
“Yes, it was strange. For a moment, when I woke, I thought she must be here.”
He drank his tea. He heard the clack of his dog’s old nails on the floor. Hadji sat at his feet, looking up, hungry like all the aged. His dog that had run in the breathless snow, stronglegged, young, his ears back, his keen glances, his pure smell. A life that passed in an instant.
He looked at his daughter. In the way that a gambler who has lost can easily imagine himself again in possession of his money, thinking how false, how undeserved was the process that took it from him, so he sometimes found himself unwilling to believe what had happened, or certain that his marriage would somehow be found again. So much of it was still in existence.
“How is the missus?” Captain Bonner would ask. He gathered junk up and down the road. Half the time he didn’t recognize Viri. Was the question malicious or only dull-witted? Stained, brown suitcoat, a stocking cap, a face old as Punch’s, a yellow face, teeth long gone, smiling as he thinks of something, is it food, women? He was carrying a door down the road; he leapt in front of the car as Viri drove toward him, waving, demanding a ride.
“I’m going to town,” he announced. He could not get the door into the car. He struggled. “I’ll put it on the roof,” he said. “I can hold it with my hand.”
The skin on his hands was blue, paper-thin, on his dried cheeks a stubble. His shoes were like dirty slippers, the toes curled up.
“Nice weather,” he said. He smelled of wine. Then, after a pause, that casual question about Nedra.
“She’s fine,” Viri answered, “thank you.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen her around.”
“She’s in Europe.”
“Europe,” the old man said.
“Ah. Lot of nice places there.”
Viri was watching the door, which overhung the windshield. “Have you been there?” he asked distractedly.
“No. No, not me,” Bonner said. “I’ve seen enough right here.” There was a pause. “Too much,” he added.
“What do you mean, too much?”
The old man nodded. He smiled vaguely at nothing, at the white sunshine before them. “It’s a dream,” he said.
The house still smelled of her potpourri, the garden lay neglected. In a drawer of a desk that the sun fell on were children’s notebooks from school in years past. Franca, her handwriting so obedient, so neat, had saved every one.
The feast was ended. Like the story he had read to them so many times, of the poor couple who were given three wishes and wasted them, he had not wanted enough. He saw that clearly. When all was said, he had wanted one thing, it was far too smalclass="underline" he had wanted them to grow up in the happiest of homes.
5
ONE OF THE LAST GREAT REALIZATIONS is that life will not be what you dreamed.
He went to dinner at the Daros’. There were people there he did not know. “How do you do?” they said. Handsome people, quite at ease. The woman wore an emerald floor-length dress with a gold necklace and bracelets of gold mesh. Her name was Candis. Her husband was an art director. He worked on films; he designed the jackets of books.
“Viri, what would you like to drink?” Peter asked.
“Do you know what I think—I haven’t had one for a long time…”
“Whatever you like.”
“I think I’d like a martini,” Viri said.
He drank one, icy cold, in a gleaming glass. It was like a change in the weather. The pitcher held another, potent, clear.
“How do you make them so cold?” he asked.
“Well, you happen to have commanded the drink which is, in my opinion, the one true test. You have to have the right ingredients—and also you keep the gin in the freezer.”
“Ah.”
“I once was going to do an article on the ten greatest bars in the world. I did a lot of research. It just about ruined my health.”
“Which is the greatest?” the art director asked.
“I don’t think you can pick one. It’s really more a question of which of them is nearest at hand. I mean, there’s an hour in the day when one’s tongue begins to depend, when nothing will avail except to have a drink, and to be close to one of these establishments at that time is like Mohamet’s paradise.”