Queenie (26 page)

…Surprise again, all that champagne and excitement has shook me loose. I’m not as pregnant as I thought I was.

But that moon will come up anywhere…

From our usual dateline, in bed in the Hotel Bienvenida, we are looking at it. And I am remembering politics.

“That moon is about as political as I am,” I say. “It’s possible that if you could get to the heart of it—not just walkie-talkie around on it—you would find a moon tape.”

Giorgio walks me to the window to watch. I can see by his face that it still cuts him deep.

“Well,” he says, “we’ll soon be bringing the show into New York.”

He says Umberto has already good as sold the diamond for us. To a tycoon who is fleeing the revolution and wants his assets portable. To Palm Beach.

“And you’ve finished ‘The Abattoir,’” I say.

“How did you know?”

“You’re wearing your vest.”

…And I’m bringing in Queenie, but privately. Everybody has to be his own revolution. That’s mine…

“There’s no doubt about it,” I say. “Our private and public lives will be synonymous.”

…And am I liberated? Or was I born free?…

That’s a question I’m not yet asking.

“Queenie,” Giorgio calls, “come out on the balcony.”

Out there he grabs me. Just for grabs. “God
dam
the empyrean,” he says, looking at it. “I still want to fly.”

I say, “Maybe there’s a way to do everything.”

We are both full of the revolutionary spirit.

“We’ll do it yet,” he says. “We’ll explain youth to the world!”

The view from Rio is some view.

“Oh, I will, I
will
,” I say in my new musical-comedy voice.
Off
-Broadway, though. “And except for this once, I’ll never even mention the word ‘sex’.”

Then we just stand there. For a moment in a language I cannot name. Holding fast to each other, it feels like the future might even be around somewhere. But I don’t mention it. I’m not a bomb-virgin anymore.

We
don’t mention it. This is the secret life.

“The empyrean,” I say hoarsely. “At this time of night, is still slays me.” Blowing cool, dark and forever, through
my
spit curls. While all the grief is still wallpapering the world.

“Oh you cosmos, you’re no Cakewalk,” Giorgio says, looking up, and holding me tighter.

Well, I’m me, I think. And for me, that’s something.

“Ciao, cosmos!” I say. “We three are all together now. Everybody’s here.” Over there, like in a corner of it, is even my childhood, that big baby-doll.

…Ciao—that kind of hail-and-farewell word you pick up when you are traveling…

Ciao, everybody. Hi. Be welcome. What else can you say when you are traveling?

“Ciao, childhood!” I say. “Be happy.”

I don’t know yet whether I mean hello or goodbye.

Hortense Calisher (1911–2009) was born in New York City. The daughter of a young German-Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from Virginia, she graduated from Barnard College in 1932 and worked as a sales clerk before marrying and moving to Nyack, New York, to raise her family. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled
In the Absence of Angels
, appeared in 1951. She went on to publish two dozen more works of fiction and memoir, writing into her nineties. A past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of PEN, the worldwide association of writers, she was a National Book Award finalist three times, won an O. Henry Award for “The Night Club in the Woods” and the 1986 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for
The Bobby Soxer
, and was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1952 and 1955.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1971 by Hortense Calisher

Cover design by Kelly Parr

978-1-4804-3895-8

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com