Old Acquaintance (18 page)

THERE
was no answer when she knocked, so she tried the handle.

“It isn’t locked,” said Charlie. “The horse is gone.”

She went in. He wasn’t doing anything. He was sitting in an armchair, in a black and white striped dressing gown. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. He didn’t seem much of anything. For the moment he had run down where he sat. He was waiting to rewind. For that he would need help, not much help, just an audience to go on ticking for, that was all. He knew better than to ask for more than that. At least she hoped so. If she had mastered the rules of the game, then
so must he. When you are down is no time to sob and say you’re human. To say you are human is only permitted if you laugh.

All the same, poor Charlie, wounds heal in time, but Charlie had a wound a year. Or was it that the old one burst open from time to time, from strain or abrasion; that it is probably better to be hurt, than not to feel at all? One or two shocks had lasted her a lifetime, but if he needed more, that was his chemistry. Happiness is only for the young. When you’re older, what you want is peace and quiet, or something as solid and substantial and as gossamer as that. But he never seemed to learn. There are different ways of being happy. It makes some people furtive. Others kind. She didn’t touch him. You can tell a sad body by the feel, even when the face smiles. She didn’t want to feel.

Charlie smiled. “He’s gone.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I suppose you would, wouldn’t you?”

“I saw them off.”

“It’s funny. We had such a pleasant evening yesterday. I went to bed quite happy. And he didn’t even take his clothes.” Charlie stood up. “What am I going to do with all those clothes? Come and look.” He went into the bedroom and opened the closets. “What am I going to do with them? Who else would they fit?”

She knew the process. She’d been through it once before. He had to work himself up. He had to push himself over the edge. He wanted the ruins to collapse of their own weight, then he’d have air to breathe again, something to build on, and could smile up at the sky again. That was the way he kept himself sane.

She closed the closet door. “We can send them on.”

“Where?” He didn’t want the closet door closed. He flung
it open again. The suits hung there, rustling, a series of Pauls, neatly pressed, in search of their next body. Irritated, he slammed the door and stalked off to his own room.

She followed him, patiently.

“I’ve done everything,” said Charlie. “I’ve been married four times. I pay for everything. I pay more than the really rich ever do. I have to. I give everybody everything. What else can I do? Why does it always have to end like this?”

She refused to play up. She had been married once herself, though not many people knew it; still was, for that matter; she hadn’t bothered with a divorce. She let it ride. She hadn’t wanted to remarry, either. But sometimes the thought of that unhappy man out there in the night somewhere, she’d no idea where, going through something much like this, probably, over and over again, made her uncomfortable, though she seldom saw him. There are things we would rather not see. There are things our bodies will not let us forgive, even though our hearts would rather do so.

But Charlie was a friend. Therefore she refused to help him. In this case writing a check wouldn’t do. Therefore he would have to help himself.

Which is what he was doing. Though she was no actress herself, she recognized the motions. There was something too tight about this rage, as though good humor were straining to burst through. In order not to feel, he had to pretend that he did. She did not interfere.

Charlie looked round the room. He wanted to break something, she supposed, but his best things were in here, and everything was too valuable to break.

“Well, say something.”

“I’d rather you did the talking.”

“I’ve been talking for fifty years!” shouted Charlie. She’d never seen that look on anybody’s face before. She’d never had a child.

“Charlie, are you wearing a corset?”

He stopped in his tracks. “Of course not. It’s some sort of latex contraption for men.” He glowered at her, but she could see he had almost smiled. Hysterics sometimes do.

But apparently he hadn’t finished his demonstration yet. He picked up the Korean plate.

“Charlie, no!” She’d miscalculated. That was something that really mattered to him.

He lifted it over his head, shut his eyes, and dashed it to the floor. It was like smashing a bottle of milk. The white drops of porcelain splattered everywhere.

They both stared at them.

“Oh, my God!” said Charlie. He looked solemn. He also looked absurd. “I’ve never done that before.” He sat down heavily on the bed.

She got down on the floor and began to gather up the pieces. A sliver brought blood from her thumb.

“Don’t do that.” He sounded irritated.

“But, Charlie, it’s irreplaceable. You can get it wired. There’s a very good shop in London, behind Knightsbridge somewhere. They specialize.”

“I know it is,” he said. “That’s why I’ve got three more in storage.”

She straightened up. “What?”

“Well, it means a lot to me. I was always afraid I’d do that some day. You see, it’s happened before. It was a set of six.”

It could be true, it could be false. With Charlie you never knew.

He shrugged. “Now I’m down to three.”

“Dear God in Heaven!” she said. She wiped the blood off her thumb.

He looked contrite. “I feel better now. I think I’d like to be alone.”

She found it difficult not to laugh at him, he looked so sad.
But she knew she mustn’t laugh. That would have spoiled everything. She left him and didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.

IT
was evening. The room was dark. He didn’t feel so much better as all that. But he was beginning to rally. He did not like the sight of that smashed plate, so getting the cardboard from a shirt, he swept the pieces up. He never did feel right without the plate. There he had been speaking the truth. He supposed he’d have to go to Switzerland and get another out of store. But that in turn would mean seeing his wife, and he didn’t much like the idea of that, not unless there was someone else there.

Petroushka can go to Hell. Charlie’s heart had never been in the Petroushka game, anyhow. To play that game you had to be the Christ-like type of artist, which he had never been. His archetypal figure was different.

He had discovered that at the period when all the followers of Jung were playing the animus-anima game together, like backgammon, in the evening. He’d made the figure up, and then discovered that he hadn’t, that it had been there all along. He had had the same hallucination, always, as a child, falling asleep, of an elegant man in gray who came stalking down the corridor and then stood at the foot of the bed, staring down, without eyes, without a face. When he was forty that figure had at last disappeared. That showed you what Jung could do for you. The replacement had been an improvement.

The scene is an opera by Gluck, with real stars, but without the music. The scenery isn’t by anybody. For once it’s there on its own terms. We are in a cool place, on a cool planet, far away, and stand on a gravel floor, between granite walls. They were not built by Man. There is a foot-bath pool of still water, overhung by ferns. There is no other water and yet somehow we have just arrived by boat.

“Ah, there you are,” says Hermes Psychopompos, a gracious oiled figure wearing a chlamys, one of those Japanese hats the ancient Greeks liked to wear, and very little else. “I have been waiting.”

Together we turn, and he conducts me on my way, by the light of a spluttering torch. The air is cool, scentless, and musical as ice. The stars are vivid overhead. They are trying to get through.

“Watch,” says Hermes Psychopompos, and dashes his takes another step down. The bottom is in darkness, but one can hear the drip of seepage, somewhere, from what was once a waterfall.

“Watch,” says Hermes Psychopompos, and dashes his torch into the darkness. It hits with a shower of sparks, far ahead, far below. There is nothing to see but a blank wall, but for some reason this is reassuring, and Hermes stands very close to me. He, too, is reassuring. He is my friend. The sparks die down and then flare up into celestial fireworks, subdued as a spiral nebula, or the green crackle of a log settling comfortably in the grate. One wakes up. One feels much better. I don’t know why. Unless it is because Hermes Psychopompos, though distant, is so beautiful, and understands.

or, more simply,

What does it mean? I’ve no idea. It’s just an imaginary game. That’s all our lives are, thought Charlie: imaginary games.

So he tried to conjure them up. They came, slowly. Each time they come back it is a little more slowly, but at least they come.

It’s a dreadful waste of time to be sad, he thought. I want to laugh. I’m tired of doing it by myself. And so, I suppose, the time has come to take up the search again, accompanied, as Lotte is by hers, by Knoop’s Celestial Circus, Lifeboat, The Normandie game, Penis Rock, Playing Dead, Hermes Psychopompos, What Century are we in Today, Turgenev, Singing alone in the Car, and by Mr. Farnaby, the pun man. I am very fond of them really. They’ve pulled me through. Which is lucky, for there is nobody else.

Lotte was also lucky. She had learned her game early, the hard way. But never mind. When you get as far as the evening, even the shadows are good company.

So tomorrow, after Lotte’s performance, he would go to fetch his plate. Meanwhile, he rang down for dinner to be sent up, for he didn’t wish to be seen in public just yet, went into Paul’s room, ran his fingers across the sleeve of a tweed coat, and then came out and shut the door.

LOTTE
was in the wings, waiting in the dark, and listening to the M.C. If you want to be the idol of three continents (she hadn’t been to Asia yet, and Africa was out of bounds), you need a flack. Just being lovable isn’t going to get you anywhere. But that didn’t mean she had to listen to what he had to say.

The house lights were going down. Reflected in their mirrors, behind the diners, the lusters paled out. She was fascinated. The reflection reminded her of the Christmas trees at home, as a child, as you came down late at night to see what you were going to get the next morning, and saw the candles burning through the French doors from the hall to the living room. In those days, whatever you got, you could at least be sure it would be a gift.

She had not remembered one of those family parties for years, but now memory gave her a whiff of
gemütlichkeit
(that was before inflation), good cooking, and uncles and aunts in their favorable phase. All gone now. For those who live alone, Christmas and Easter are the hardest times. Even Miss Campendonck went somewhere.

The auditorium blanked out. That was something she always insisted on. She knew the value of appearing complete out of the dark, and merely standing there, until the applause came.

Somewhere in the darkness a glass chinked and someone dropped a knife. Someone else said shush. It was what she had been waiting for. The garrulous always ask for quiet,
and it is then that you must catch their attention, or else you never can.

Her theme song eddied ahead of her, and then Bill broke into a chorus of
Did
You
Ever
See
a
Dream
Walking
,
Well
I
Did
. He had nothing against
La
Vie
en
Rose
, but he preferred the home product. He gave her a wink as she went by, in the enormous rustle of a gown so vulgar as to be a travesty of itself. They were on again. That’s what counts. She owed a lot to Bill.

He vamped a bass, while she gave them a naughty song, naughty, but nice. It always took a while; for one thing, even now, she was nervous when she began; but after the second number the applause began to roll in, as inevitable as surf along a shore, a thousand feet below her. She got into the swing of the thing. Past a certain age, and to seem young is no problem, for then you remember the gestures so much better, and how it felt. You send them back; you volley them. You even enjoy them a little.

Despite rehearsals, the spotlight wobbled, varied, and caught Charlie up out of the gloom, before it circled back to her. He looked glaringly white, but he was there, and he had time to wave before darkness engulfed him and she had her light back again.

It made her feel a lot better to see him there. Now everything would be all right. Now her world was complete again.

Yes, it was like that. Because of course one can.

CHARLIE
sat alone in the dark, in the Cosmic Opera House. Masks of Tragedy and Comedy come in pairs. He was pleased to see them hanging up again. The last scene painter to work in the Cosmic Opera House was Tiepolo. He was also the last of the mystics, the last of the painters who painted light. Charlie doted on Tiepolo. If we have to suffer, we may just as well dress to the nines and look our best. And come to think of it, Lotte was the only person, male or female, he had ever known who would have been quite at ease in a Tiepolo, who indeed belonged there. She had the Tiepolo touch. She was herself the Comic Muse.

As he sat in the dark, listening to her, the ceiling opened out, as the ceiling always does in a Tiepolo, and he could watch the stars.

He liked it here. He belonged here. He liked all of it.