“Oh, come now. Surely there’s something good.”
“Good? Well, what do you mean by good? There are all sorts of terrible plays people think are good. My God, it’s an absolute disgrace. Every year they publish the plays of people like John Whiting, Bullins, Leonard Melfi—plays that absolutely nobody went to see, that the critics unanimously condemned, it’s criminal to put them between hard covers, but they do it and people begin to call them masterpieces, modern classics. The next thing you know, they’re being performed in repertory at the University of Montana or someplace, or adapted for television.” He spoke to the plate. He seldom looked at anyone directly.
“John, you’re always saying the same thing,” his wife said.
“Keep out of it,” he told her.
“The plays you like, nobody goes to see either,” she said. “People went to see Marat-Sade, didn’t they?”
“You didn’t like that.”
“I didn’t like it, but I didn’t dislike it.” He drank some wine. His upper lip was damp.
Had he heard of Richard Brom, Nedra asked.
“Brom?”
“What do you think of him?” she said.
“Well, I have nothing much against him. I’ve never seen him.”
“I think he’s the most astonishing actor of our time.”
“You’re lucky. Most of the time you go to see his plays and end up on some street of used furniture stores and dry cleaners, all closed. We’re all interested in the invisible, but in his case it’s carried a little far.”
“He believes in a committed audience.”
“By all means, by all means,” Veroet cried. “He’s tired of the old audience, and I’m tired of being part of it. But there’s really no such thing as unseen theater, that’s contrary to the whole idea. Eventually it must come out into the light. If it doesn’t, it’s not theater, it’s something else, it’s just recited lives.”
“Who is this man?” Peter asked.
Nedra began to describe him. She told about his performances, the strength in his body, the inexhaustible energy. Veroet had toppled over sideways and was asleep on the window seat. “He always does that,” his wife explained.
“John, wake up, listen to this,” Peter was calling. “No wonder you never find anything interesting in the theater. Wake up, John! Nedra, don’t mind him, he’s hopeless, go on…”
The Veroets drove her home. It was past eleven. What did they think, she asked.
“About Peter?”
“Yes.”
“He could live a month,” Veroet said. “Or he could live five years. There’s a woman in Sag Harbor who’s had it as long as I can remember—not as bad, of course. It depends if it attacks a vital organ. He was feeling very well tonight.”
“He was marvelous.”
“It was like old times,” Veroet said.
Peter Daro never walked to the sea. He died in November. At his funeral, in the coffin, was a face colored with cosmetics, like an invincible old woman or some kind of clown.
Five
1
WHERE DOES IT GO, SHE thought, where has it gone?
She was struck by the distances of life, by all that was lost in them. She could not even remember—she kept no journal—what she had said to Jivan the day of their first lunch together. She remembered only the sunlight that made her amorous, the certainty she felt, the emptiness of the restaurant as they talked. All the rest had eroded, it existed no more.
Things she had known imperishably—images, smells, the way in which he put on his clothes, the profane acts which had staggered her—all of them were fading now, becoming false. She seldom wrote letters, she kept almost none.
“You think it’s there, but it isn’t. You can’t even remember feelings,” she said to Eve. “Try to remember Neil and how you felt about him.”
“It’s hard to believe, but I was crazy about him.”
“Yes, you can say that, but you can’t feel it. Can you even remember what he looked like?”
“Only from photographs.”
“The strange thing is, after a while you don’t even believe them.”
“Everything has changed so.”
“I always just assumed the important things would stay somehow,” Nedra said. “But they don’t.”
“I remember my wedding,” Eve said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yes. My mother was there.”
“What did she say to you?”
“She just kept saying, ‘My poor baby.’ ”
“I was seventeen the first time I came to New York.” She had never told this to Eve. “It was with a forty-year-old man. He was a concert pianist, he’d passed through Altoona. When he wrote to invite me, there was a rose in the letter. We stayed at his house in Long Island. He lived with his mother, and he came to my room late at night. You know, I don’t even remember his face.”
It was all leaving her in slow, imperceptible movements, like the tide when one’s back is turned: everyone, everything she had known. So all of grief and happiness, far from being buried with one, vanished beforehand except for scattered pieces. She lived among forgotten episodes, unknown faces bereft of names, closed off from the very world she had created; that was how it came to be. But I must show nothing of that, she thought. Her children—she must not reveal it to them.
She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea thrilled her. I am beyond it and I will not sink.
This submission, this triumph made her stronger. It was as if finally, after having passed through inferior stages, her life had found a form worthy of it. Artificiality was gone, together with foolish hopes and expectations. There were times when she was happier than she had ever been, and it seemed that this happiness was not bestowed on her but was something she had herself achieved, had searched for, not knowing its form, had given up everything lesser—even things that were irreplaceable—to gain.
Her life was her own. It was no longer there to be taken by anyone.
2
WHEN VIRI SOLD THE HOUSE, SHE was startled. It was something she assumed would never happen, for which she was unprepared. She was disturbed by the act. It was either sickness or great strength on Viri’s part; she did not know which she feared most. There were many things there that belonged to her, she had never bothered to take them, she was always free to. Now, when she suddenly saw them about to vanish, it did not matter. She told her daughters to take what they liked; the rest she would attend to.
Viri was going away, they told her.
“Where?”
“His desk is covered with travel folders. He has some of them marked.”
She called him. “I was so sorry to hear about the house.”
“It was falling apart,” he said. “Not really, but I couldn’t take care of it. It’s a whole life, you know?”
“I know.”
“I got a hundred and ten thousand for it.”
“That much?”
“Half is yours. Less the mortgage and all that.”
“I think you got a very good price. It isn’t worth that. I’m sure they didn’t look in the cellar.”
“It’s not the cellar, it’s the roof.”
“Yes, the roof. But in another way, it’s worth much more than a hundred and ten thousand.”
“Not really.”
“Viri, I’m very pleased with the price. It’s just… well, we can’t sell it again, can we?”
He sailed on the France in the noisy, sad afternoon. Nedra came to see him off, like a sister, an old friend. There was a huge crowd, a crowd that would stand at the end of the pier finally, jammed together, waving, a crowd of the twenties, of revolutions in Mexico, threats of war.