The 1st Deadly Sin (7 page)

An art nouveau mirror on the papered wall. A small oil nude of a middle-aged brunette holding her chin and glancing downward at sagging breasts with bleared nipples. A tin container of dusty rhododendron leaves. A small table inlaid as a chessboard with pieces swept and toppled. And in a black leather armchair, with high, embracing wings, the most beautiful boy Daniel Blank had ever seen.

“Hello,” the boy said.

“Hello,” he smiled stiffly. “My name is Daniel Blank. You must be Anthony.”

“Tony.”

“Tony.”

“May I call you Dan?”

“Sure.”

“Can you lend me ten dollars, Dan?”

Blank, startled, looked at him more closely. The lad had his knees drawn up, was hugging them, his head tilted to one side.

His beauty was so unearthly it was frightening. Clear, guileless blue eyes, carved lips, a bloom of youth and wanting, sculpted ears, a smile that tugged, those crisp golden curls long enough to frame face and chiselled neck. And an aura as rosy as the cherubs that floated overhead.

“It’s awful, isn’t it,” the boy said, “to ask ten dollars from a complete stranger, but to tell you the truth—”

Blank was instantly alert, listening now and not just looking. It was his experience that when someone said “To tell the truth—” or “Would I lie to you?” the man was either a liar, a cheat, or both.

“You see,” Tony said with an audacious smile. “I saw this absolutely marvelous jade pin. I know Celia would love it.”

“Of course,” Blank said. He took a ten dollar bill from his wallet. The boy made no move toward him. Daniel was forced to walk across the room to hand it to him.

“Thanks so much,” the youth said languidly. “I get my allowance the first of the month. I’ll pay you back.”

He paid then, Blank knew, all he was ever going to pay: a dazzling smile of such beauty and young promise that Daniel was fuddled by longing. The moment was saved of souring by the entrance of Valenter, carrying the martini not on a tray but in his hand. When Blank took it, his fingers touched Valenter’s. The evening began to spin out of control.

She came in a few moments later, wearing an evening shift styled exactly like the black satin she had been wearing when he first met her. But this one was in a dark bottle green, glimmering. About her neck was a heavy silver chain, tarnished, supporting a pendant: the image of a beast-god. Mexican, Blank guessed.

“I went to Samarra to meet a poet,” she said, speaking as she came through the door and walked steadily toward him. “I once wrote poetry. Did I tell you? No. But I don’t anymore. I have talent, but not enough. The blind poet in Samarra is a genius. A poem is a condensed novel. I imagine a novelist must increase the significance of what he writes by one-third to one-half to communicate all of his meaning. You understand? But the poet, so condensed, must double or triple what he wants to convey, hoping the reader will extract from this his full meaning.”

Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips while Valenter and the boy looked on gravely.

“How are you?” she asked.

Valenter brought her a glass of red wine. She was seated next to Blank on the leather sofa. Valenter stirred up the fire, added another small log, went to stand behind the armchair where Anthony coiled in flickering shadow.

“I think the Mortons’ party will be amusing,” he offered. “A lot of people. Noisy and crowded. But we don’t have to stay long.”

“Have you ever smoked hashish?” she asked.

He looked nervously toward the young boy.

“I tried it once,” he said in a low voice. “It didn’t do anything for me. I prefer alcohol.”

“Do you drink a lot?”

“No.”

The boy was wearing white flannel bags, white leather loafers, a white knitted singlet that left his slim arms bare. He moved slowly, crossing his legs, stretching, pouting. Celia Montfort turned her head to look at him. Did a signal pass?

“Tony,” she said.

Immediately Valenter put a hand tenderly on the boy’s shoulder.

“Time for your lethon, Mathter Montfort,” he said.

“Oh, pooh,” Tony said.

They walked from the room side by side. The lad stopped at the door, turned back, made a solemn bow in Blank’s direction.

“I am very happy to have met you, sir,” he said formally.

Then he was gone. Valenter closed the door softly behind them.

“A handsome boy,” Daniel said. “What school does he go to?”

She didn’t answer. He turned to look at her. She was peering into her wine glass, twirling the stem slowly in her long fingers. The straight black hair fell about her face: the long face, broody and purposeful.

She put her wine glass aside and rose suddenly. She moved casually about the room, and he swiveled his head to keep her in view. She touched things, picked them up and put them down. He was certain she was naked beneath the satin shift. Cloth touched her and flew away. It clung, and whispered off.

As she moved about, she began to intone another of what was apparently an inexhaustible repertoire of monologues. He was conscious of planned performance. But it was not a play; it was a ballet, as formalized and obscure. Above all, he felt
intent
: motive and plan.

“My parents are such sad creatures,” she was saying. “Living in history. But that’s not living at all, is it? It’s an entombing. Mother’s silk chiffon and father’s plus-fours. They could be breathing mannequins at the Costume Institute. I look for dignity and all I find is…What is it I want? Grandeur, I suppose. Yes. I’ve thought of it. But is it impossible to be grand in life? What we consider grandeur is always connected with defeat and death. The Greek plays. Napoleon’s return from Moscow. Lincoln. Superhuman dignity there. Nobility, if you like. But always rounded with death. The living, no matter how noble they may be, never quite make it, do they? But death rounds them out. What if John Kennedy had lived? No one has ever written of his life as a work of art, but it was. Beginning, middle, and end. Grandeur. And death made it. Are you ready? Shall we go?”

“I hope you like French cooking,” he muttered. “I called for a reservation.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

The dance continued during dinner. She requested a banquette: they sat side by side. They ate and drank with little conversation. Once she picked up a thin sliver of tender veal and fed it into his mouth. But her free hand was on his arm, or in his lap, or pushing her long hair back so that the bottle green satin was brought tight across button nipples. Once, while they were having coffee and brandy, she crossed her knees. Her dress hiked up; the flesh of her thighs was perfectly white, smooth, glistening. He thought of good sea scallops and Dover sole.

“Do you like opera?” she asked in her abrupt way.

“No,” he said truthfully. “Not much. It’s so—so made up.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “it is. Artificial. But it’s just a device: a flimsy wire coat hanger, and they hang the voices on that.”

He was not a stupid man, and while they were seated at the banquette he became aware that her subtle movements—the touchings, the leanings, the sudden, unexpected caress of her hair against his cheek—these things were directorial suggestions, parts of her balletic performance. She was rehearsed. He wasn’t certain of his role, but wanted to play it well.

“The voices,” she went on, “the mighty voices that give me the feeling of suppressed power. With some singers I get the impression that there is art and strength there that hasn’t been tapped. I get the feeling that, if they really let themselves go, they could crush eardrums and shatter stained glass windows. Perhaps the best of them, throwing off all restraint, could crush the world. Break it up into brittle pieces and send all the chunks whirling off into space.”

He was made inferior by her soliloquies and made brave by wine and brandy.

“Why the hell are you telling me all this?” he demanded.

She leaned closer, pressed a satin-slicked breast against his arm.

“It’s the same feeling I get from you,” she whispered. “That you have a strength and resolve that could shatter the world.”

He looked at her, beginning to glimpse her intent and his future. He wanted to ask, “Why me?” but found, to his surprise, it wasn’t important.

The Mortons’ party leavened their heavy evening. Florence and Samuel, wearing identical red velvet jumpsuits, met them at the door with the knowing smirks of successful matchmakers.

“Come in!” Flo cried.

“It’s a marvelous party!” Sam cried.

“Two fights already!” Flo laughed.

“And one crying jag!” Sam laughed.

The party had a determined frenzy. He lost Celia in the swirl, and in the next few hours met and listened to a dozen disoriented men and women who floated, bumped against him, drifted away. He had a horrible vision of harbor trash, bobbing and nuzzling, coming in and going out.

Suddenly she was behind him, hand up under his jacket, nails digging into his shirted back.

“Do you know what happens at midnight?” she whispered.

“What?”

“They take off their faces—just like masks. And do you know what’s underneath?”

“What?”

“Their faces. Again. And again.”

She slipped away; he was too confused to hold her. He wanted to be naked in front of a mirror, making sure.

Finally, finally, she reappeared and drew him away. They flapped hands at host and hostess and stepped into the quiet corridor, panting. In the elevator she came into his arms and bit the lobe of his left ear as he said, “Oh,” and the music from wherever was playing “My Old Kentucky Home.” He was sick with lust and conscious that his life was dangerous and absurd. He was teetering, and pitons were not driven nor ice ax in.

There was Valenter to open the door for them, the sweetheart rose wilted. His face had the sheen of a scoured iron pot, and his lips seemed bruised. He served black coffee in front of the tiled fireplace. They sat on the leather couch and stared at blue embers.

“Will that be all, Mith Montfort?”

She nodded; he drifted away. Daniel Blank wouldn’t look at him. What if the man should wink?

Celia went out of the room, came back with two pony glasses and a half-full bottle of marc.

“What is that?” he asked.

“A kind of brandy,” she said. “Burgundian, I think. From the dregs. Very strong.”

She filled a glass, and before handing it to him ran a long, red tongue around the rim, looking at him. He took it, sipped gratefully.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Strong.”

“Those people tonight,” she said. “So inconsequential. Most of them are intelligent, alert, talented. But they don’t have the opportunity. To surrender, I mean. To something important and shaking. They desire it more than they know. To give themselves. To what? Ecology or day-care centers or racial equality? They sense the need for something more, and God is dead. So…the noise and hysteria. If they could find…”

Her voice trailed off. He looked up.

“Find what?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes vague, “you know.”

She rose from the couch. When he rose to stand alongside her, she unexpectedly stepped close, reached out, gently drew down the lower lid of his right eye. She stared intently at the exposed eyeball.

“What?” he said, confused.

“You’re not inconsequential,” she said, took him by the hand and led him upward. “Not at all.”

Dazed by drink and wonder, he followed docilely. They climbed the handsome marble staircase to the third floor. There they passed through a tawdry wooden door and climbed two more flights up a splintered wooden stairway flecked with cobwebs that kissed his mouth.

“What
is
this?” he asked once.

“I
live
up here,” she answered, turned suddenly and, being above him, reached down, pulled his head forward and pressed his face into the cool satin between belly and thighs.

It was a gesture that transcended obscenity and brought him trembling to his knees there on the dusty stairs.

“Rest a moment,” she said.

“I’m a mountain climber,” he said, and their whispered exchange seemed to him so inane that he gave a short bark of laughter that banged off dull walls and echoed.

“What?” he said again, and all the time he knew.

It was a small room of unpainted plank walls, rough-finished and scarred with white streaks as if some frantic beast had clawed to escape. There was a single metal cot with a flat spring of woven tin straps. On this was thrown a thin mattress, uncovered, the striped grey ticking soiled and burned.

There was one kitchen chair that had been painted fifty times and was now so dented and nicked that a dozen colors showed in bruised blotches. A bare light bulb, orange and dim, hung from a dusty cord.

The floor was patched with linoleum so worn the pattern had disappeared and brown backing showed through. The unframed mirror on the inside of the closed door was tarnished and cracked. The iron ashtray on the floor near the cot overflowed with cold cigarette butts. The room smelled of must, mildew, and old love.

“Beautiful,” Daniel Blank said wonderingly, staring about. “It’s a stage set. Any moment now a wall swings away, and there will be the audience applauding politely. What are my lines?”

“Take off your wig,” she said.

He did, standing by the cot with the hair held foolishly in his two hands, offering her a small, dead animal.

She came close and caressed his shaven skull with both hands.

“Do you like this room?” she asked.

“Well…it’s not exactly my idea of a love nest.”

“Oh it’s more than that. Much more. Lie down.”

Gingerly, with some distaste, he sat on the stained mattress. She softly pressed him back. He stared up at the naked bulb, and there seemed to be a nimbus about it, a glow composed of a million shining particles that pulsed, contracted, expanded until they filled the room.

And then, almost before he knew it had started, she was doing things to him. He could not believe this intelligent, somber, reserved woman was doing those things. He felt a shock of fear, made a few muttered protests. But her voice was soft, soothing. After awhile he just lay there, his eyes closed now, and let her do what she would.