The Anatomy Lesson (10 page)

Well, now he was angry outside of the books. Moderation? Never heard of it. He got down a copy of
Carnovsky
.
Had it
really been proposed in these pages that Jews can stick their suffering quote unquote? A sentiment so scathing just dropped like a shoe? He looked in his book for the source of Appel
’
s repugnance and found it a third of the way through: penultimate line of two thousand words of semi-hysterical protest against a family
’
s obsession with their minority plight—declaration of independence delivered by Carnovsky to his older sister from the sanctuary of his bedroom at the age of fourteen.

So: undeluded by what grown-ups were pretending to their students, Appel had attributed to the author the rebellious outcry of a claustrophobic fourteen-year-old boy. This was a licensed literary critic? No, no—an overwrought polemicist for endangered Jewry. The letter could have come from the father in
Carnovsky.
It could have come from his own real father. Written in Yiddish, it could have come from Appel
’
s, from that ignorant immigrant junkman who, if he hadn
’
t driven young Milton even crazier than Carnovsky. had clearly broken his heart.

He pored over the paragraph like a professional litigant, drawn back in a fury to what galled him most. Then he called Diana at school. Needed her to type. Had to see her right away. Anger was a gun and he was opening fire.

Diana Rutherford was a student at Finch, the rich girls
’
college around the corner where the Nixons had sent Tricia. Zuckerman was out mailing a letter the first time they met. She wore the standard cowpoke denims, jeans and jacket beaten senseless on the sun-bleached stones of the Rio Grande, then shipped north to Bonwit
’
s.
“
Mr. Zuckerman,
”
she
’
d said, tapping him on his shoulder as he dropped the envelope in the box,
“
can I interview you for the school paper?
”
Only yards away, two roommates were in stitches over her brashness. This was obviously the college character.
“
Do you write for the school paper
’
.
’”
he asked her.
“
No.
”
Confessed with a large guileless smile. Guileless, really? Twenty is the age of guile.
“
Walk me home,
”
he said;
“
we
’
ll talk about it.
”
“
Great,
”
the character replied.
“
What
’
s a smart girl like you doing at a place like Finch?
”
“
My family thought I ought to
learn
how to cross my legs in a skirt.
”
But when they got to his door fifty feet down the block, and he asked if she
’
d like to come up, the brashness gave out and she sashayed back to her friends.

. The next afternoon, when the buzzer rang, he asked who it was through the intercom.
“
The girl who
’
s not on the school
paper.
”
Her hands were trembling when he let her in. She lit a cigarette, then removed her coat, and without waiting to be invited, set about examining the books and the pictures. She took everything in room by room. Zuckerman followed.

In the study she asked.
“
Don
’
t you have anything out of place here?
”

“
Only you.
”

“
Look, it
’
ll be no contest if you start off hypersardonic.
”
Her voice quivering, she still spoke her mind,
“
Nobody like you should have to be afraid of anybody like me.
”

In the living room again, he took her coal from the sofa and, before hanging it in the closet, looked at the label. Bought in Milano. Setting somebody back many many hundreds of thousands of lire.

“
You always this reckless?
”
he asked.

“
I
’
m writing a paper on you.
”
From the edge of the sofa she lit the next cigarette.
“
That
’
s a lie. That
’
s not true.
”

“
You
’
re here on a dare.
”

“
I thought you were somebody I could talk to.
”

“
About what?
”

“
Men. I can
’
t take much more of them.
”

He made them coffee and she began with her boyfriend, a law student. He neglected her and she didn
’
t understand why. He phoned in tears in the middle of the night to say that he didn
’
t want to see her but he didn
’
t want to lose her either. Finally she
’
d written a letter asking him what was going on.
“
I
’
m young,
”
she told Zuckerman.
“
and I want to fuck. It makes me feel ugly when he won
’
t do it.
”

Diana was a long, narrow girl with a minute behind, small conical breasts, and boyishly clipped dark curls. Her chin was round like a child
’
s, and so were her dark Red Indian eyes. She was straight and circular, soft and angular, and certainly wasn
’
t ugly, except for the pout, the Dead End Kid look around the mouth whenever she began to complain. Her clothes were a child
’
s: tiny suede skirt over a black leotard and, pinched from Momma
’
s closet to amaze the other girls, high-heeled black shoes with open toes and a sequined strap. The face was really a baby
’
s too, until she smiled—that was big and captivating. Laughing she looked like someone who
’
d seen it all and emerged unscathed, a woman of fifty who
’
d been lucky.

What she
’
d seen and survived were the men. They
’
d been in pursuit since she was ten.

“
Half your life,
”
he said.
“
What have you learned?
”

“
Everything. They want to come in your hair, they want to beat your ass,
t
hey want to call you on the phone from work and get you to finger yourself while you
’
re doing your homework. I
’
m without illusions, Mr. Zuckerman. Ever since I was in seventh grade a friend of my father
’
s has been calling every month. He couldn
’
t be sweeter to his wife and his kids, but me he
’
s been calling since I
’
m twelve. He disguises his voice and every time it
’
s the same damn thing:
‘
How would you like to straddle my cock?
’”

“
What do you do about it?
”

“
I didn
’
t know what to do in the beginning except listen. I got frightened.
I
bought a whistle. To blow into the mouthpiece. To burst his eardrum. But when I blew it finally, he just laughed. It turned him on
more.
This is eight years now. He calls me at school once a month.
‘
How would you like to straddle my cock?
’
I say to him,
‘
Is that it? Is that the whole thing?
’
He doesn
’
t answer. He doesn
’
t have to. Because it is. Not even to do it. Just to say it. To me.
”

“
Every month, for eight years, and you
’
ve done nothing about it except buy a whistle?
”

“
What am I supposed to do. call the cops?
”

“
What happened when you were ten?
”

“
The chauffeur used to play with me when he drove me to school.
”

“
Is that true?
”

“
The author of
Carnovsky
asks me if that
’
s true?
”

“
Welt, you might be making yourself interesting by making it up. People do that.
”

“
I assure you, it
’
s writers who have to make things up, not girls.
”

After an hour he felt as if Temple Drake had hitched up from Memphis to talk about Popeye with Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was stunned. It was a little hard to believe in all she said she
’
d seen—in all she seemed to be saying she was.
“
And your parents?
”
he asked her.
“
What do they say to these chilling adventures with all the terrible men?
”

“
Parents?
”
She came catapulting up onto her feet, sprung by that one word alone from the cushioned nest she
’
d dug down in the sofa pillows. The length of the leotarded legs, the speed and aggression of the delicate fingers, that mocking, cocky beat she took before driving in her
point—a budding female matador,
Zuckerman
decided. She
’
d certainly look great in the gear. Might be frightened out of her wits to begin with, but he could also see her going in there and doing it.
Come and get me.
She
’
s breaking free and being brave—or trying hard, by tempting fate, to learn. Sure there
’
s a side of her that wants and invites this erotic attention—along with the side that gets angry and confused; but all in all there is something more intriguing here than mere teenage chance-taking. There
’
s a kind of perverse autonomy covering up a very interesting, highly strung girl (and woman, and child, and kid). He could remember what it was like saying,
“
Come and get me.
”
That of course was before they
’
d got him. It got him. Whatever you wanted to call it, something had got him.

“
Where have
you
been?
”
she asked.
“
There
are
no more parents. Parents are over. Look. I
’
ve tried to make a go of it with the law student.
I
thought he
’
d help me concentrate on this silly school. He studies, he jogs, he doesn
’
t do too much dope, and he
’
s only twenty-three—and for me that
’
s young. I
’
ve worked hard on him. damn it, him
and
his hang-ups, and now, now he doesn
’
t want to do it at all.
I
don
’
t know what the matter is with that boy. I look at him cockeyed and he turns into a baby. Fear, I guess. The sane ones bore you practically to death, and the ones who fascinate you turn out to be nuts. Know what I
’
ve been pushed to? What I
’
m just about ready for? To be married. To be married and to get knocked up. and to say to the contractor,
‘
Put the pool in over there.
’”

Twenty minutes after receiving Zuckerman
’
s call, Diana was sitting in the study with the pages to be typed and mailed to Appel. He
’
d filled four long yellow pages before sliding from his chair to the playmat. Back on his back he tried to get the throbbing to subside in his upper arm by kneading the muscle with his fingers. The base of his neck was on fire too, the toll for the longest sustained piece of prose he
’
d composed sitting upright in over a year. And there were more bullets left in the chamber. Suppose through careful analysis of those early essays I demonstrate how Appel harshly denounces Zuckerman because of a distressing conflict with Poppa insufficiently settled in himself—show that it
’
s not only the menace of Islam that
’
s provoked this reappraisal of my
“
case
”
but Ocean Hill-Brownsville and black anti-Semitism, the condemnation of Israel in the Security Council, even the New York teachers
’
strike; that it
’
s the media
dada of loud Jewish Yippies whose playpen goals he ludicrously associates with me. Now for
my
reappraisal of him. It isn
’
t that Appel thinks he was wrong about
Zuckerman
in 1959. Or wrong about his own rootlessness in 1946. Right then, and now that he
’
s changed his mind, right again. The
“
mind
”
may change, or appear to, but never the inquisitor
’
s passion for punishing verdicts. Behind the admirable flexibility of judicious reappraisal the theoretical substructure is still blast-proof concrete: none of us as
seriozny
as Appel.
“
The Irrefutable Rethinkings of Milton Appel.
”
“
Right and Rigid in Every Decade: The Polemical Spasms of a Hanging Judge.
”
He came up with titles by the dozen.