The Hothouse by the East River (9 page)

‘I need
not call it anything. I don’t need to say anything. Islanders don’t need to
speak to each other for survival. They act in unison. They do it by telepathy.’

‘We are
not islanders here in New York.’

‘You
and your sister never became Americanised in the sense that I was Anglicised.’

‘You
are not very English,’ says Pierre, ‘although you may think you are.’

‘What
it boils down to,’ says Paul, ‘is that you didn’t like that word “blackmail”.’

‘No, it
could have been left to telepathy.’

‘Nevertheless,’
says Paul, reaching again, really this time, for his cheque book, ‘I said it,
and by God I’m glad I did.’

V

She stamps her right foot.

‘They
fit like a glove,’ the salesman says.

‘No,
they’re a bit large,’ she says. ‘When you lose weight as I have, you know, you
lose it everywhere. Everything’s a bit large.’

‘You
need a smaller size, a half-size smaller, Elsa,’ says the salesman, walking
reflectively round her with his eyes on her feet. ‘I don’t know,’ he says in
his precise foreign voice, ‘if we have a smaller size in that model. I’ll have
to see.’

She
stamps her left foot. ‘Definitely too big. Boots especially — you know, they
slip up and down your leg if they’re too big.’

‘A
minute,’ he says, and goes to the back of the shop. Elsa yawns. A very thin
woman with a champagne-coloured head of dead-looking hair and a long, squeezed,
but distinguished face comes in and stares around, waiting it seems, for an
assistant. It is the lunch-hour. No assistant appears, although Elsa’s man can
be heard playing with cardboard boxes somewhere at the back and, from the
sound, evidently high up on a ladder.

‘He
won’t be a minute,’ Elsa tells the woman, and sits down.

The
woman sits down, too, and looks at Elsa’s shadow, then at her own, then at the
other shadows, referring them, too, back to Elsa’s.

‘Yes,’
says Elsa.

‘What?’
says the woman.

‘Now
you know,’ Elsa says.

‘Excuse
me?’ says the woman.

‘You
know it’s true, you’ve seen for yourself,’ Elsa says. ‘And now you can button
up that common little mutation mink jacket and take yourself back to your
office, and put through a call to my husband, and tell him that it’s true, he’s
got a big problem, as he says. I’m tired of seeing you follow me around. You’ve
been shadowing me for three weeks, but you’re a hopeless shadow.’

Her
real shadow makes a hopeless gesture in keeping with her real hand. The woman
abruptly stands up.

The
salesman comes back with two boots, one brown, and one red. ‘Try these for
size, Elsa. I’ll have to order them in black if you want them in black.’ Then
he notices the other woman, and thinking her fretful, says to her, ‘Take a
seat, Madam.’

But she
goes, buttoning her pale mink jacket, banging the glass door, so that the
salesman frowns.

‘My
husband’s analyst,’ Elsa says. ‘She’s been following me for three weeks.’

‘She
looked upset,’ says the salesman.

‘I told
her to clear off,’ says Elsa. ‘I was rude.’

‘Well,
now she knows.’

‘Yes,
now she knows. And I daresay she thinks you’re Helmut Kiel.’

‘From
all you have told me, Elsa,’ says the salesman fondly, ‘I wish I had been that
man.’

She
pulls up the boot, stands, and stamps her left foot.

‘Pierre’s
play is opening at last, next Thursday, ‘she says.

‘You
must be proud of your son,’ he says with a correct little bow.

‘Well I
can’t say one way or another till I’ve seen the reviews.’

He
giggles, evidently delighted with her ways. ‘It should have opened last spring,
but there was a hitch. My husband didn’t finance it enough, so I had to help.
The theatre is called the Very Much Club, only it isn’t a club, it’s a theatre
in Greenwich Village, I believe.’

‘Is it
a good play?’ says the man, stroking the boots which Elsa has now taken off and
handed to him.

‘It
sounds awful. But it might make money. My son doesn’t need money.’

‘Why
don’t you just grab your jewellery and run away?’ says her friend.

‘Why
should I take my jewellery?’

‘That’s
.what jewellery’s for. Every woman grabs her jewellery when she runs away,
doesn’t she?’

‘Only
if she has no money. In my case, I’m the one with the money.’

‘Then
go wherever your money is,’ he says.

‘Switzerland,’
she says. ‘Switzerland, you know.’

She is
walking along the Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich, blown by the wind, indifferently
passed by the other pedestrians but never jostled. It is so different from
Manhattan where one is bumped into and almost placed under arrest by the otherwise
occupied passers, and where people rush out of arcades and buildings stripping
pieces of paper from candy-bars, then biting the bar and letting fall the paper
as they hurry along.

She is
standing by the verge of the lake in Zürich, looking back and forth from her
reflection in the water to her shadow beside her, smiling at them both. She has
lost weight and her shadow is thinner than it was last summer, even allowing
for the bulk of her heavy coat and the bulge of the fur collar spreading
obliquely behind her, while before her the same shape ripples. ‘You would have
to know a lot about atmospheric physics,’ she thinks, while a large fat youth
tramps methodically past her on his way to work, turning his head towards her
with a note-taking interest neither more nor less than that of a humble
adding-machine.

Now,
later in the morning, she is walking once more along the Bahnhofstrasse and
glances at her shape in the reflections of the clean shop-windows. At the end
she crosses the street, walks back a little way, turns off at a corner and into
the hotel where she is staying. It is not quite twelve-thirty.

Her
friend from the shoe shop is waiting by the door.

‘Goodness!’
she says, ‘you really do remind me of that man Kiel I used to know. Just
standing there, you looked for a moment so like him.’

‘Well I
wish it was so, in a way, Elsa,’ he says, ‘now that you have said what you have
said of your youth.’

‘Let’s
go to the bar and have a drink,’ she says, ‘while we decide where to eat.’

Fractional
Manhattan is closed for Sunday but Paul Hazlett has set aside the afternoon, as
he frequently does, to work over that anthology, his collection of personal
problems old and new.

The
apartment on the East River is empty and hot. Paul tries to turn the handles of
the radiators in the drawing-room, but they are all swivelled as far to the
right as they will go; when they are in this position the heat should be turned
off, but, as usual, the old-fashioned radiators burn like kindled stoves to the
touch.

The
telephone rings and Paul stands up, first looking at it anxiously and then
dashing across the floor not to miss it. A voice, when he answers, says, ‘Call
for you from Zurich.’

‘Paul,
it’s me,’ says Elsa’s voice.

‘What
are you doing in Zurich?’ he says.

‘Getting
into bed,’ she says.

‘What’s
wrong with you?’ says Paul. ‘Nothing. It’s bedtime over here.’

‘But
what are you doing in Zürich?’

‘Sleeping
with Mr Mueller.’

‘You’re
what?’

‘Having
an affair with Mr Mueller.’

‘Who?’

‘Mueller
from the shoe shop. The one you call Kiel. He’s on vacation here with me.’

‘Be
serious, Elsa.’

‘I’m
sleeping with him to check if he’s really Kiel. It’s the only way to identify
him,’ she says.

‘Then
you did sleep with him during the war?’ he yells.

‘Be
careful on the phone, Paul. I slept with him last night. I don’t think he’s
Kiel. He’s having a shower at the moment. Maybe I’ll call you tomorrow and let
you know my final reactions.’

‘I can
have him fired from his job. I can have him arrested as a spy.’

‘I own
the shop,’ she says. ‘How can you have him fired? I acquired the shop.’

‘Did
you acquire the State Department, too? He’s a spy.’

‘I was
saying, Paul, I don’t think he’s Helmut Kiel. This one’s much too eager. Helmut
as a lover was not all that lecherous. His basic approach was different, you had
to coax. But this one—’

‘What’s
your hotel, Elsa?’

‘The
Ritz,’ she says.

‘There
isn’t a Ritz in Zürich. I’m coming over. I’ll make a declaration to the police
and I’ll bring Garven.’

‘I
think I’ll be home day after tomorrow,’ Elsa says. ‘As soon as I’m sure of my
facts, anyway.’

‘You
believe her?’ he says to Katerina on the telephone.

‘Well,
Pa, it depends if she’s given him a nice present or something. He’s got plenty
of girls.’

‘I bet
he’s right here in New York.’

‘No,
they said at the shop he was out of town. On business.’

‘That’s
Kiel the spy, all right. Your mother’s age.’

‘I
wouldn’t say so, not one bit. His name’s supposed to be Mueller.’

‘Did
you really date him, Katerina? You had sex with him?’

‘Oh, I
don’t know, Pa. If it wasn’t him it was someone else. Mother could be having a
game with you, Pa.’

‘He’s
having a shower right now, she said.’

‘It
makes quite a picture,’ Katerina laughs. ‘It’s her with Kiel in 1944 that makes
quite a picture,’ says Paul. ‘That’s what you don’t understand.’

‘Oh God,
what was 1944? It never happened to me,’ she says.

He is
tracking her down on the telephone to Zürich, hotel after hotel, far into the
night. At last he talks to her.

‘It
must be the middle of the night your end,’ she says, ‘because it’s nearly eight
by my watch.’

‘Where
is Kiel?’ Paul says. ‘Pass me Kiel.’

‘Kiel?’

‘Well,
Mueller. Mueller, Kiel, I want to speak to him if you please.’

‘Excuse
me,’ she says, ‘you’ve got the wrong number. This is not Ecstasy Farm.’

He
says, ‘You called me, Elsa. You told me, Elsa. Take it easy. Try to recollect
what you did yesterday.’

‘I
never do today the same as I did yesterday,’ she says. ‘Why should I remember?’

‘Why
are you in Zürich? Come home,’ he says.

‘I’m
expecting my breakfast, Paul. They do an American breakfast here. Why should I
come home if I can get American breakfast here? Why should I come home if I can
get American breakfasts in Switzerland?’

‘Is
Kiel in the bathroom?’

‘Who?’

‘Kiel.
Mueller, Kiel — is he having another shower?’

‘Just
hold a minute,’ says Elsa’s voice. ‘I’ll see if there’s anybody in the
bathroom.’

‘Elsa!’
Paul shouts, but he hears only the sound of the receiver being placed on its
side. He waits, watching the seconds-indicator on his watch creep round the
dial and creep again. ‘Elsa!’ he shouts. There is a click. ‘Have you finished
speaking?’ says the operator from the American end.

‘I’m
still talking,’ Paul says. ‘I’m holding on. My wife-’ But he is already cut
off.

It
takes more than half an hour for Paul to be reconnected. ‘Can you hold on?’
says the European operator.

‘I can
bear to suffer,’ Paul says.

‘Baby
doll,’ says the operator, ‘don’t aggravate me.’

‘In the
United States of America,’ says Paul, ‘we no longer speak that way.’

‘Halo,’
says Elsa. ‘Allo. Vous êtes en erreur.’

‘Elsa,’
he says.

‘Oh,
it’s you,’ she says. ‘Why are you calling?’

‘Who’s
there with you?’ he says.

‘You’re
so tribal,’ says Elsa.

‘Final,
did you say?’

‘Tribal,’
she says.

‘I
don’t understand you, Elsa. What do you mean?’

‘You
can’t keep on calling a person from New York early in the morning.’

‘Who’s
with you in the room?’ Paul says.

‘No
one,’ she says. ‘Why?’

‘I just
thought there might be,’ he says patiently, trying not to frighten her. ‘You
did call me yesterday, you know. Don’t you remember?’

‘What
has yesterday got to do with me?’ she says.

‘Elsa,’
he says and he looks out of the window at the dark sky above the East River
waiting for her to say something else, a something, any little thing to calm
his terror. The line is silent. ‘Elsa, you still there?’ he says.