Through the elevator shaft, from the street above, the din of racing motors peaked: to an explosion— All three ducked.
“Jesus, man!” Harvey exclaimed behind his lifted shoulder.
“O-o-h!” Ira cowered.
The two men stood rigid, motionless, eyes meeting in tense inquiry.
“Hear that?” Walt returned, hands gripping canned goods. He tossed a can on the counter; it was dented. “It’s chicken à la king. I dropped it.”
Another loud bang followed.
“It’s nothing. It’s nothing with nothing. It’s a beckfire,” Mr. Klein reassured.
All heads slightly tilted toward the din of racing engines above, heard gears engage, the sound of motor vehicles grinding into motion. . The noise diminished, faded, ended.
“I told you it was nothing,” said Mr. Klein.
“I bet a few of ’em musta jumped off the stools.” Walt mounted the stairs.
“Only thing I ain’t live through yet. I live through ‘bout everything else.” Harvey’s face changed significantly. “What about you, Miste’ Klein? What d’you take?”
Mr. Klein wagged in dour negation. “I don’t take nothing. What should I take? I don’t need it.”
Harvey laughed suddenly, teeth gleaming in the dark height of his features. “I don’t either, Mister Klein. Just so not to lose democracy, like the major say.” Swinging pail and shovel, he continued on his way.
“A kleege shvartze,” Mr. Klein admitted. “Noo,” he waved a hand in sweeping dismissal. “It’s efter five o’clock. Shabbes b’nakcht. You know what I’m gung do?” He smacked his lips audibly. “Stay here.” He stepped quickly into the aisle directly ahead, returned with a bottle. “Perrier water. It’s French seltzer. It’s a little warm,” he brought out Lily cups and an opener from under the now bare, dented and gleaming table. “A little warm shott nisht. It’s still good.”
“It’s funny seltzer,” Ira expressed his reservations after a sip or two.
“Det’s not seltzer, like you buy for two cents plain,” Mr. Klein instructed. “This comes from the ground det way. Drink. It’s like a kiddush ha shem.”
XXVIII
Oh, well — the loud thumping on the keys under the piano-tuner’s hands, the turning of his tuning wrench, invaded Ira’s consciousness: The piano-tuner had to bang them, M explained before leaving; he had to hear the beats. Oh, well, Ira listened to the notes increasing in pitch, becoming blue when visualized: He wasn’t the first writer to have gone astray, gone off course, off the preplanned track. He wasn’t the first, wouldn’t be the last: he had written himself into a corner, exactly as cartoonists were given to depicting.
Why? Why had he departed from the script, from the first draft he had typewritten — in ’79? Was that the reason? The first draft had been written five, no, it was now six years ago; had he changed that much? The first draft had stressed, crudely but more to the point, predictably, black-white confrontation, predictably, almost stereotypically. This latest, committed to the computer, had indicated reconciliation.
Why? To avoid the stereotype? Perhaps. But he didn’t write that way as a rule, that consciously, cerebrally. He wrote subject to consonance with emotion, in phase with it, like the key and that piano-tuner’s fork (it occurred to him). So why the departure? Was it any better? Who knew? Did it reflect an increased maturity, an increased understanding? Again who could say? Increased understanding, perhaps; but increased maturity at age seventy-nine sounded a little ludicrous. Gratifying to think so — if it was so. But if so, it was achieved at the cost of painting himself into a corner, a cul-de-sac, blind alley — you name it, Ecclesias. Things as they were changed upon the computer.
— Heaven and Wallace Stevens forgive you. My advice is: Proceed as if you hadn’t departed from your original course, or not too much, and resume the track, the incidents you felt necessary to provide unity to your initial envisaging. The thing’s a fake anyway; I don’t mean in the sense that it’s a deliberate deception. You spoke of painting yourself into a corner. You long ago painted yourself into a corner; your very premisses, not to pun, virtually hemmed you into a corner. So what is this you speak of, this present admission, recognition? A double encompassing: a circle within a corner. Nevertheless, round it out, round it out.
It’s all so far away, Ecclesias. I hadn’t dreamt when I began in ’79, as late as ’79, in the seventy-third year de mon âge quand tous mes hontes j’ai bu, long ago, how desiccated, to quote Baudelaire, it would all become in a few years, not unimportant, but not that important, shamefully, crushingly important. Is that the word I mean: un-important?
— It soon won’t matter, these existential considerations will soon be consigned to dust.
I agree, and disagree, Ecclesias. Beyond the limit, nothing matters; the human condition no longer matters. But this side of the limit, everything matters: Israel, the sense of a folk; Mario, surrogate son, Italian — Florentine translator of my one novel — arriving in Albuquerque in a few days; poor Jane, who if anyone loved not wisely but too well, she did: my son. And pays for it now — I hope they are withdrawal symptoms — beyond all measure; has paid. . I could sit back and dream. With that imagination with which I was endowed, churned up by or further churned up by — how the one thing ties into another! — I could conceive, I do conceive, the wildest, most erotic, wacky, and yet fully sustainable, plausible novelistic situations. I hope she herself can use her own traumas eventually in a literary way, without my, alas, dominating behest, use her woe to win plaudits, material rewards, other derivative consolations.
XXIX
A few minutes before six o’clock, Mr. Klein dismissed Ira, reminded him to get his books, and sent him on his way before the store closed: out the side entrance into the early autumn’s near-sunset: Lying on curb, sidewalk, gutter, partly in the glow athwart the corner from the lights on humming Lenox Avenue, partly in ebbing twilight’s lengthening shadows lay tufts and shreds of the day’s activities, testimonies to Prohibition: chiefly antic stalks of straw in which the wine bottles had come wrapped that had somehow sifted through the boxes. He should have taken a leak before he left, he told himself, was on the point of going to the toilet but was distracted from his purpose by Mr. Klein’s peremptory generosity in excusing him the last few minutes, perhaps to prevent him from going near the bottle still hidden there, Harvey’s trove. Well, there was the park: Cut across from Fifth to Madison at the foot of the hill and duck into the Comfort Station.
So he thought. But when he reached the Comfort Station, hurriedly turned the knob of the GENTS door, it was locked. Six P.M. The need to urinate became more urgent, now that the way was barred and he kept thinking about it. He hadn’t gone to the toilet since midafternoon, he realized, not since he had eaten the Lorna Doones, drunk water at the utility sink at around. . when? Jesus, if it only were a little later: dark. He was too big to take a leak in the park. People passing, ladies — he couldn’t see a cop, but maybe. Better make it snappy. Gee, that French seltzer, too. It was a big bottle, and Mr. Klein had finally persuaded him to take another swig. Cost so much. Get going. What did they say? Your teeth were floating, they said. His teeth were floating. Books tucked under arms, he began to jog. Jack and Jill climbed up the hill to fetch a pail of water — Oh, no!