Shakespeare's Kitchen (26 page)

“What has she done to you?”

“Deprived me of you.”

“You can hardly blame her! How can you be angry with her for that!”

“I don’t know what I can or can’t but it’s strangling me.”

“I shall miss you terribly,” said Ilka. “Tell Celie I can put Nat up when he comes to collect his National Book Award because I told him the room was not available.”

Leslie said, “I told him the institute would stand him a hotel.”

“Well,” said Ilka, “he says this time he’s left Nancy for good and needs to hole up at my place.”

 

 

“Nat and I went to hear Mostly Mozart, we went to dinner,” Ilka wrote to Leslie and Eliza at Elm Street. “He says that he is finally convinced he is
the
poet.” “I am glad you and Nat are showing each other a good time,” wrote Leslie, “though I doubt if Nat’s contemporaries think of him as ‘the’ poet.” Ilka wrote: “You
have committed the eighth venal sin which I have just invented. The eighth venal sin is to misunderstand a friend’s irony.” Leslie wrote: “Neither Eliza nor I see the irony in your believing Nat is ‘the’ poet of our times.” “Then the two of you have missed two ironies. Mine and Nat’s.” “If you say so,” wrote Leslie, “but why the gleeful enthusiasm with which you hate my latest chapter?” “Glee! Enthusiasm! I disagree with what you say. Haven’t we always enjoyed our disagreements?” Leslie wrote: “Your poor opinion of my writing is creating a strain between us.”

In copying this Ilka changed it to: “Your poor opinion of my writing has always been a strain between us.”

Ilka had quoted Leslie back to himself: “You once wrote me, ‘How endlessly we misunderstand each other so that we must go on talking forever, thank God.’” “Our misunderstandings,” he had replied, “which used to be an intellectual pleasure and excitement turn into weapons when you use your absolutes against me.”

Ilka copied out, “Our misunderstandings turn into weapons.”

Ilka had written Leslie, “You, with your mercilessly principled judgment on Bethy, your dismissal of Nat, are the absolutist. My natural mode resembles a game of tennis in which I cover both sides of the court. I serve myself an idea, jump over the net to return it to myself, jump back to be ready to return the return. You know what? I think it’s my doubts that swell my noise.” “Universal doubt is the recipe for nihilism. You are a nihilist. Your absolutism is to be at war with every and any belief, with belief as such.”

Ilka copied this onto the paper.

“No,” she had answered, “I’m at war with true-belief.”

He had written and she copied: “You see a true-believer behind every bush. You are the fanatic of the middle. Read your Dante and see the place to which he damns the trimmers who commit themselves to nothing.”

There had followed a week when no letter came from the institute, none from Elm Street where Ilka had finally called him.
Leslie said, “The phone is right outside Eliza’s bedroom. I will write you.” He wrote: “I had hoped that a few peaceful days would permit the chunks that have been floating around in my soul to quit bumping into one another long enough for me to push and tug them into at least an ur-Stonehenge sort of arrangement. But the days have not been peaceful. I had to spend a day in the hospital for tests—everything seems all right, but it meant leaving Eliza alone and in a very fragile state. I worry how she would fare without me. I must pay attention.”

Why, at that juncture, hadn’t Ilka offered to pull out the troops? Because she did not have the sweet confidence in his refusal. “Leslie,” she had asked, “what exactly are we disagreeing
about
?” “I am not as strong as you think me,” he had answered, “I’m not able, right now, to manage. Taking myself out of the way now you are beginning, quite rightly, to consider other men, your finding Nat Cohn a pleasing companion—is a monumental, a physical exertion for me, together with my fear that our quarrel will get into bed with us. Let us stop before love becomes polluted and happiness turns out to have been illusion . . .”

Ilka stopped reading to copy out: “Happiness turns out to have been illusion.”

“. . . Maybe some time in the future—god knows—we can come together again but at this moment my business is to be available to Eliza, which I can hardly imagine managing if, after you and I are no longer lovers, you will not remain my dear friend.”

Ilka wrote him back her fable.

Ilka and Maggie stayed with the Bernstines. “No, you can’t come and see Eliza,” Ilka said to the child. “When you’re thirty-five years old, I’ll tell you a story.”

“How come?” asked Maggie.

Jenny Bernstine said, “You kids go out and play in the yard. Take the dog.”

Ilka said, “My mistake was to call ahead. It gave Eliza the chance to say, ‘Unfortunately I am out of town for the duration.’ I’ll call again.” Ilka dialed Eliza’s number and said, “Eliza, I have something here I want to read to you. Listen, Eliza, please. Eliza?” Ilka listened and heard the silence of nobody on the other end. Eliza had hung up. “I’m going over there.”

 

 

Ilka rang Eliza’s front-door bell. She knocked and she knocked. She walked around the house peering in the dining-room window
and saw the piles of papers laid out on the table and over every surface. The paper looked dusty and dry, beginning to curl at the corners. Ilka went to the back door and knocked on it. She looked in the kitchen window. The kitchen table was covered with papers; there were papers on the counters, papers on the drain board. Ilka returned to the front of the house, parted the overgrown bushes and looked into the living room. Eliza sat on a straight chair with her back to the window. Ilka watched her pick up the water glass half full of white wine, carry it to her lips, sip and set it down. There were pages of manuscript on the seats of the two armchairs and the sofa. “Eliza!” Ilka knocked on the window. It was open an inch at the bottom and Ilka tried to push it up. It was latched on the inside. Kneeling on the ground she was able to align her mouth with the opening. “Hi, Eliza? Eliza, listen. I want to read you some things he wrote me. Listen to this: ‘How endlessly we misunderstand each other. Your poor opinion of my writing has always been a strain between us. Our misunderstandings turn into weapons.’ Does that sound hot and heavy to you?” Eliza got up. Was it Eliza, bent and gray, a hairy crone walking toward Ilka on the other side of the glass? “You asked me to help you, Eliza. Listen. He thought that I was bossy. He wrote me, ‘You are a nihilist.’ And here: ‘Your absolutism is to be at war with every and any belief, with belief as such. Read your Dante and see the place to which he damns the trimmers who commit themselves to nothing.’ Eliza, listen! ‘Happiness turns out to have been illusion. And polluted.’” Eliza unlatched the window. She pushed it all the way down, refastened the latch and walked with an unsteady gait to the chair with its back to the window. She sat down. She picked up the glass and unhurriedly brought it to her lips.

 

 

“I don’t know that she heard anything I was saying,” Ilka reported to the Bernstines. “Joe, give me Matsue’s number.” “Hello, Matsue. Yes! Ilka. Hello. I’m in Concordance for a few
days. Yes, thank you. Listen, Matsue, can the reverse bug broadcast some sentences into the living room of a private house? It can! It can’t? Why can’t it? Why can’t you? I don’t understand what you are saying.” “I don’t know a thing he was saying,” Ilka told the Bernstines.

Joe said, “The lawyers have drawn up Matsue’s contract so that he is prohibited from conducting experiments in Concordance proper.”

Jenny brought Ilka a cup of coffee. Joe watched her drink it. Ilka looked out the window into the yard. Poor Bethy stood with her back against the wall watching Maggie and Teddy chase the barking puppy. Ilka said, “This wasn’t ever going to do her any good? This was nonsense from the start?”

Ilka’s mother died. Eliza Shakespeare died. Nat Cohn was dead. The Jewish year turned, and Ilka called Maggie, who was a grown-up with a life. “Remember when you put all my friends on my computer for me? Well, it’s crashed! I don’t know anybody’s address and can’t send out my Yom Kippur cards! The only people I still know in Concordance are Celie, the receptionist, remember her? And Yvette. And Mrs. Boots, the cleaning woman. I doubt if anybody ever knew her address. Alpha and Alfred are retired near Santa Fe, I think. Nancy Cohn has moved god knows where. The Bernstines are in France. I’ve lost my friends—all the people I know in America.”

“Oh, Mom! You’ve never in your life thrown away a piece of paper that had words written on it. When I transcribed your addresses onto the computer did you toss out your old address book?”

“I can’t imagine throwing an address book out.”

“Look for your old address book and you’ll find people who will know where people are.”

“I do love you.”

“Yes, dear.”

“You’re wonderfully full of common sense, which is beautiful.”

“O.K., Mom.”

 

 

It was while she was looking for her old address book that Ilka came once again across the old correspondence. “Since the day your letter ran me over,” she had written, “I’ve learned to keep my mouth neutral while we shop for Maggie’s back-to-school jeans and shirts and shoes. How could you put an end to love by letter? Why not face to face?” “I was cowardly,” he had answered.

There followed a series of his letters written from Elm Street, dated, heartbreakingly friendly—Leslie attempting to stuff the years of passion back into the mold that had contained their easy, early friendship. Concordance chat: Cassandra had met her appropriate end. She had gone barking after a woman on a bicycle whom she must have suspected of some crime or misdemeanor. She got run over by an oncoming car—not the cyclist. Cassandra. The Bernstines have got Teddy a puppy and hope it will be less judgmental. We had dinner at the Stones’, who send their love. Nat Cohn tells me he is coming to New York to stay with you. Please write us at Elm Street.”

But Ilka continued to write him at the institute, had written reams, apologizing for the lined yellow foolscap and the pencil which could be erased, could modify, expand, interpolate to get the thing said right, clarified, explained, explained, and explained.

To Elm Street Ilka had written: “Nat was in town and has, I’m happy to say, gone home again. The problem is not Nat’s morals but his conversation, which, like himself, has grown fat.”

By return mail Leslie wrote, “I have reread your old letter about Nat saying he was ‘the’ poet and cannot understand how I missed
the irony. Eliza is in pretty good shape and thinks of coming with me to next month’s New York meeting if you can put us up.”

As the date approached Eliza had become less and less disposed to travel. Leslie came by himself but stayed at the little hotel around the corner from Ilka. He took her to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. She said, “I’ve come across a Göthe poem called ‘Parting’ which says,
Und doch welch Glück geliebt zu werden! Und lieben, Götter, welch ein Glück
!”

“Will you translate it for me?”

“
Glück
can mean either
luck
or
joy
.
Und doch
means
and yet
, but what I think he’s saying is,
in spite of all the crap
. So: ‘In spite of everything, the sheer luck of being loved. And, oh ye gods, the joy of loving.’”

Leslie said, “Maggie is at your mother’s for the night?”

“Yes.”

“Can we go to your place?”

 

 

There followed years—Ilka remembered them as the halcyon years in which she had written to him at the institute and he returned her letters enclosed in his answering letters, arranging where to meet. They wrote about joy, they talked about their luck. Where had they been and what could she have said across the table, at dinner, that caused him to ask, “Do you expect me to decamp again?” She had had to take time to think and had answered, “I don’t.”