NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN (27 page)

“I’m Bert,” his moist friend added, “and this is Freddy. We’re your upstairs neighbors. If we’d known that you’d moved in, we would have been down for a chat, but we assumed that you were a buddy of Moonshine’s.”

“Of who?”

Freddy tilted his head at Angus Mondschein’s door. “Anxious Moonshine. He tried to convert
us
at first—just imagine!—and he keeps his hand in by propagandizing everyone who moves in.”

“He’s been very nice to me.”

“That’s a sure sign he wants to convert you. Has he given you any reading material?”

“Well…”

“Oh, let’s not stand out here discussing Anxious,” Freddy murmured, passing his hand over his pale yellow hair. “We’ve just come from a fatiguing session at the Unemployment Insurance office. Won’t you come up to our digs and have a glass of wine?”

“Thank you, but I’ve never tasted wine.”

“We’ll brew some lovely Lapsang tea.
Do
come!”

“All right then.”

Peter stepped gingerly forward at Freddy’s insistence onto a worn oriental rug, and found himself sitting presently on a studio couch, half-smothered in little pillows and a fur throw of some sort which Freddy tossed across his lap.

“Now Bert,” Freddy said, “do hurry and brew the tea, that’s a dear. I’m sure that Mr.—”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Peter struggled to sit erect in the midst of the little pillows. “My name is Peter Chifley. It’s just an ordinary name, but everybody seems to get it mixed up.”

“That’s probably because you’re an extraordinary person. I’m going to call you Pierre, if I may,” said Freddy. “As for us, Bert is a very promising young poet. His grandfather was a merchant prince of San Diego, and
No Quarter
magazine has already printed one of his poems. And I—” he paused to light an Egyptian cigarette, “—I’m trying for a career on the Broadway stage.”

“Are you an actor?”

Freddy ran through his yellow hair rhythmically with a small
gold comb. “I’ve done one or two small things at the Cherry Lane Theater in summer stock, but I’ve been forced to clerk from time to time in one of the Doubleday Book Shops. At present Bert and I have to get along on our unemployment checks, plus what Bert receives from his filthy rich aunt in San Diego.”

“Now tell us all about yourself, starting with what brought you to Seventeenth Street,” said Bert, who had come in with a flowered tray and was pouring tea into three small Japanese cups.

“I came to New York because I wanted to learn how to dance, but I haven’t got very far as yet.”

“What kind of a dancer are you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“It strikes me,” Bert said nasally, “that you’re not beautiful enough.”

“I didn’t know you have to be beautiful.”

“It’s the soul that I’m thinking of. Your face is too pastoral. I think you lack the
spirituel
quality of our truly great mimes.”

Peter did not know what a mime was, but he was too cast down by Bert’s words to inquire its meaning. Freddy said, with some asperity, “Sometimes you don’t know when to stop talking, Bert. Pierre is just on the threshold of a career. In fact I want him to meet the right people and possibly make a few contacts.”

Bert leaped to his feet with a snort and began to prowl agitatedly about the room.

“Oh do sit down, Bert!” cried Freddy. “Someone has to see that Pierre isn’t taken in by nuisances like Anxious Moonshine.” In the next breath he continued, “While you’re at work composing verse I’m going to take Pierre to meet our crowd, and to a few shows, and most important of all he must join a dance group in the Sevenfold School of Theatrical Arts.”

Bert remarked coldly, “The only thing you’ve left out is that we should throw a party for Chipmunk.”

“Chifley,” Peter said.

“That’s a wonderful idea, Bert!” cried Freddy. “Do you have any money, Pierre?”

“A little.”

“That’s all we need. But we can talk about that later—we’ll need to buy wine, pretzels, apples, cigarettes, and soya sticks.”

Peter looked up at a painting of a greenish girl seated on a yellow burro. The word Blight was lettered on the girl’s buttock, like a tattoo. “Isn’t that the landlady’s name on that girl?”

“Didn’t you know?” muttered Bert. “Mama Blight is a painter. Imagine, she gave it to us for a Christmas present!”

“It’s kind of funny looking, isn’t it?”

“Ever since she read about Grandma Moses in a picture magazine,” said Freddy, “she made up her mind that she’s a great primitive. She makes everybody call her Mama Blight, and she paints only naked ladies with burros.”

Peter answered suspiciously, “I never heard of a landlady before who was a painter too.”

“Well, you have now,” remarked Bert.

“You’ve been very hospitable,” Peter said, his hands sinking into several appliquéd pillows as he pushed himself erect, “and I hope you’ll come down to visit me in my room soon.”

Bert looked at him with renewed belligerence. “Together or separately?”

“Oh gosh,” Peter replied, “I don’t know. Whichever you want.”

Freddy threw back his long fair head and laughed so that Peter could see nearly all his teeth. “Suppose I call for you early in the evening, Pierre, on my way to the Sevenfold School?”

“That’ll be all right, I guess. And thanks again.”

Peter took the steps two at a time going down to his room. He was restrained from leaping down the entire flight when he caught sight of Angus Mondschein and Mrs. Blight on the landing.

“Hello, Angus,” he said. “Hello, Mrs. Blight.”

“If it isn’t the prodigal!” said Angus, puffing furiously on a short stubby pipe. “Have you been killing a fatted calf with the girls upstairs?”

“Did you happen to notice,” asked Mrs. Blight, “the painting that I gave Freddy and Bert?”

“I couldn’t help but notice it, it’s so big.”

Angus yanked his pipe out of his mouth and glared at Peter expectantly. “And what was your reaction?”

“I thought it was kind of crazy.”

Mama Blight was not put out at all by Peter’s judgment. “You’d
better watch out,” she chuckled, “or I may not give you a primitive for your room!”

“Fortunately,” said Angus acidly, “Mom won’t request you to pose, inasmuch as she only portrays naked femmes.”

Peter blushed. “I have to go in and clean up now.” As he closed the door behind him he heard Angus saying to the landlady, “You fail to recognize that the oppressed multitudes will look to your pictures for a clearer understanding …”

Peter felt a thrill of excitement that evening when Freddy led him through the corridors of the Sevenfold School building to a gymnasium where many young men and women were leaning forward at strange angles from bars attached to the wall, and cavorting about like young animals. Peter began to tremble with anticipation; but it seemed to be one of the rules of the school that they register first for a classroom course in the Theater of Tomorrow.

When Freddy and Peter entered the classroom, the students were just settling themselves to listen to a guest lecturer, a huge red-haired man with a voice like a foghorn. An enormous metal ring on his index finger glittered every time his fist flashed through the air. “That’s Gripping Rotheart, the big producer,” whispered Freddy. “He flirts with the avant-garde.”

When the class was over Freddy took Peter by the hand and led him to the front of the room. “Gripping,” he said confidently, “I’d like you to meet a new friend of mine, Pierre Chiffon.”

Peter was about to correct this when he felt his hand being grasped in a vise of steel. Rotheart squeezed Peter’s fingers in his powerful hand as though they were so many grapes. The band of his skull and crossbones ring cut into Peter’s flesh so cruelly that he felt the tears start to his eyes.

“Ah, a non-professional,” Rotheart boomed, in a kindly tone. “I don’t meet many of them.”

“We’re throwing a little party for Pierre next Friday,” smiled Freddy. “Could you drop in for a while—after the show, of course?”

“Love to.”

On the way home Freddy spoke excitedly to Peter. “You see?
Grip is a force in the theater. Next time he casts a musical, he’ll remember you.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

Freddy smiled down at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you.”

During the next week Peter was truly caught up in the whirlpool of New York theatrical life. It seemed to him at times that he would have drowned if not for the helping arms of Angus Mondschein and Freddy, for he was still not really dancing, and with every passing day he seemed to be further away from his goal. But to tell the truth Angus seemed to be losing interest in him, and indeed to be actually hostile.

This came about as a result of Angus’s insistence that Peter invite a homely but progressive Negro girl to go to the Stanley Theater to see a Russian technicolor movie about spores and algae in the Soviet Arctic. “I’d ask her,” Peter assured his friend, “except that she doesn’t like me, and besides she’s so homely. Couldn’t I take a nice-looking girl?” “Sometimes,” Angus said patiently, “I think that you simply aren’t interested in the fight for peace and civil rights.” Peter made the mistake of laughing heartily, and replying, “You think I ought to like colored people because they’re colored. But I like people because they’re people. Isn’t that
more
radical? You know, I think you’re not radical at all, Angus.” To his astonishment Angus was infuriated with this statement, and refused to argue calmly, as he had done on numerous occasions when he had explained that Peter was confused or backward. Peter tried to make amends, but Angus would not yield.

As for Freddy, he took an immense pleasure in escorting Peter to those plays for which Peter could afford to buy them seats, and in introducing him to the members of his set—until the night of the party.

The party was a staggering surprise to Peter, even though he was by now familiar with the habits of Freddy and Bert. When he entered their room, he was stunned by the babbling of voices (some of which were singing a kind of church music) and the thick gray fog of tobacco smoke. He felt quite forlorn, even after
Freddy caught sight of him with a gay cry and proceeded to lead him about, introducing him to a collection of strange faces.

In one corner of the room four people were gathered intently about an elderly drunken gentleman wearing suede shoes without stockings, seated in Freddy’s sling chair and reciting very rapidly in French with his eyes closed. A few feet away, a young lady with long black hair and a flowing velvet skirt, who looked like a witch, was sitting on the oriental rug, piping sadly on a little wooden recorder. Her knees were drawn up so close to her chin that Peter could see clear up to her crotch before he averted his eyes.

Nearby, under Mama Blight’s painting, Bert was declaiming nasally, “
Tex
tual critics,
tex
tual critics,” to a knot of intensely angry young men.

None of these people paid the slightest attention to Peter, even when Freddy introduced him as the guest of honor; and Peter was beginning to wonder how he could steal back down to his room unobserved, when Freddy deposited him on the couch in the midst of the little pillows, next to Gripping Rotheart and a beautiful girl.

“Introduce Pierre, won’t you, Grip?” Freddy requested.

The producer smiled at Peter in a most friendly way, and for one tense moment Peter feared that Rotheart was going to shake his hand in another crushing grip; but the producer was merely pointing at him with his index finger, on which the skull and crossbones ring glinted grimly. He wore a tuxedo, and a stiff white shirt on which an enormous enameled yellow stone glinted as he swung around.

“Hello again, son,” he shouted. “Have you met Imago Parson? Mag, this is Pedro Chieftain. A non-professional.”

“How utterly interesting,” the girl murmured. She had the roundest face that Peter had ever seen, and the prettiest little nose, and the roundest eyes, which were a wonderful orange-brown shade that made him think of Halloween. They looked at him so intently—in contrast to the supercilious glances everyone else had flung at him—that he felt his face grow hot. Reluctantly he removed his gaze from her smooth face, only to find himself staring at her equally round and luscious bosom, and then at her warm bare little arms.

“Grip,” she said, without turning her eyes away from Peter, “be a gem and get me a glass of wine.”

“Of course.”

“Are you a friend of Freddy’s, Miss Parson?” Peter asked.

“You must call me Imago.” She smiled, and displayed a number of magnificently even, white teeth. “I went to Bennington College with Bert’s sister Electra, a repellent virgin from San Diego. But I’m here tonight because I was eager to meet you.”

Imago had leaned forward as she spoke, and now it seemed that she was suspended before him, ready to fall against his chest if she were so much as touched. A springlike fragrance drifted up to his nostrils from the mysterious valley between her bell-like breasts. Peter felt himself growing dizzy, and as he leaned back among the little pillows Imago swung about on the couch so that there should be no room for Gripping Rotheart when he returned.

The rest of the evening was a blur. Thinking back on it later, Peter could remember little except the smoke, Imago whispering flattering words, and the angry frustrated expressions of Freddy and Gripping when he and Imago left together.

Nor could he remember his first view of Imago’s little apartment, or even how he managed to remove his clothes in the dark without knocking anything over or otherwise making a fool of himself. But he would always be able to recall his halting reference to his total lack of experience, and Imago’s clear-eyed, immediate reply.

“How shockingly refreshing!” she had cried. “I’ll be the envy of my colleagues!” and then, “Don’t just stand there like Dionysius. Come to bed at once, do you hear? At once!”

In the ensuing hours Peter experienced a portion of that soaring delight that he had first previsioned months before in Japan. Intoxicated by Imago’s elastic flesh, he began to appreciate simultaneously the pure pleasure of the selfless spirit, and the benefactions that his dancer’s body was able to dispense.