The Prince of West End Avenue (20 page)

"Nevertheless, I remember him fondly."

"Fondly, yes, and with good reason. He made millionaires of you! But no, I don't really mean that. Old resentments, I suppose. I'm amazed at myself. All that is long over and done with. Forget what I said. You're not to blame for society's ills. And besides, you lost everything. . . . But you wrote, too, didn't you? After Hitler came into power? You were something of a journalist, that's right, isn't it? Every other week, I seem to remember, there was another Korner article."

The door to Dr. Comyns' office opened. The "new girl" was as thin and bent as a twig. She wore a blond Afro-wig over her parrot's face. Dr. Comyns made the introductions, but I paid no attention to her name. It took all the strength I had simply to stand on my trembling legs.

"Which of you fakers is next? Mr. Kunstler?"

"Go ahead," Kunstler said to me. "I'm in no hurry."

"Perhaps you'd better, at that," said Comyns in alarm. "Your color is far from good." He helped me into his office.

My TROUBLES, it seems, may be solved by a Valium, a muscle relaxant, and, inevitably, stewed fruit.

WHY DID THE MUSE no longer whisper in my ear? How was it that the flame of inspiration had died so utterly in me? The forge at which, while still a boy, I had hammered out my verse, the bellows blasting, the coal white-hot, now stood long idle, long neglected. Yes, I could with effort still shape a poem, but it was a dead thing, lacking lively heat. I turned to prose, short stories, began a novel. No use, no use. In my frustration I threw myself into my work at the Korner Company, turned my energies into ringing coin, grew thick in the middle, witnessed

the shrinking of my soul, became what I most despised. Within, I wept. My youth was gone; I was now married, had a child. Responsibilities mounted. With a sour and envious spirit I read the publications of my friends, my heart leaping at a bad review.

Meta knew what was wrong with me, but her early efforts to ease my inner misery served only to increase it. "Why don't you write anymore, Toto?"

I was sitting in my study, angrily leafing through a sheaf of papers I had brought home from the office.

She stood before my desk humbly, like a schoolgirl awaiting reprimand. "Please, Toto."

Still I ignored her.

"Why won't you write a little poem for me?"

I tasted the bile on my lips and at last looked up at her. "Because, my pet, I do not write my 'little poems,' as you justly call them, on demand."

Her cheeks reddened. She turned from me and silently left the room. How could I have treated her so! My eyes smarted, and I longed to call her back, to run after her, to fall on my knees before her. Instead, I savored the bile.

Otto Korner in marriage was that ugliest of monsters, a sadomasochist. His wife's natural joy he perceived as a deliberate reproach to him. He began to treat her, this intelligent and blooming woman, this loving wife, as if she were a naughty and irritating child. "Really, Meta, for heaven's sake!" (tone: mild exasperation); "You will permit me to remark, Meta, that that was not exactly the wisest choice" (tone: icy politeness); "How extraordinarily witty, Meta!" (tone: sarcastic scorn). She would flinch, turn away, blush, sometimes even cry.

My pleasure at her anguish caused me an anguish that gave me pleasure. I was, I suppose, testing her. How far could I go before she ceased to love me? Far, very far. But over time I killed something in her. No longer did she smile when I

appeared; no longer did she seek to wrap her arms around my neck. I became Otto; Toto vanished. Decorum entered our household, at least in my presence. With her friends, with our families, signs of the old spontaneous joy could still appear, splashes of bright sunlight against the enveloping gloom. With little Hugo in particular, the bubbles of happy laughter burst forth.

The child became a battleground between us. Meta was, I told her, making Hugo effeminate; he clung too much to his mother's skirts, we would have to send him to boarding school.

"No, no, Otto! He would be so afraid. I could not bear it!" She held Hugo to her, kissed his curly head.

"Your brother, Joachim, went to boarding school. He came to no harm."

"That was different. He was older."

"Well, we shall see."

Pure torture, nothing but torture. I did not dream of sending Hugo away; I, too, could not have borne it. Jealously, I tried to win him from her. In vain. They had a secret understanding, the two of them, a bond unspoken, almost palpable. I could not penetrate it. Hugo grew quiet in my presence.

In time I stopped sleeping with Meta. It began as an experiment, another test. I started to stay late at the office, feigned tiredness, feigned indifference to the demands of the libido. How would she react? At first with understanding, then with tears, at last with resignation. Another turn of the screw: I began to sleep in the guestroom. She said nothing. After a while she moved my clothing there.

In my lonely bed I relived again and again the moments of our first rapture. Meta had a strong libido; it had been her thrust on me that tore the stubborn hymen, a wild, an exultant frenzy. She had lain then beneath me, gazing into my eyes with an intensity of adoration reserved by a medieval martyr saint for a vision of the New Jerusalem. She had loved me utterly and

unreservedly. All this I had thrown away. No matter that by then what I wanted most was to hold her once more, undo what I had done; our estrangement had gone too far.

I managed in my madness to convince myself that she was to blame for the indifference I had carefully cultivated in her. We spoke to one another finally with distant politeness only. Before family and friends we still contrived a show of marital contentedness; alone, there was only the foul odor of our mutual irritation. She no longer loved me, but the vacuum the departure of love had left within her was not, I think, yet filled with hate. That would come later, when the musicians of the New Order began to tune their instruments for the saraband of death, when it became evident to her that I was prepared to sacrifice wife and child to the demands of my ego, the sick appetite of my pride.

How can I convey to you the living woman? It is an impossible task. She is beyond my grasp, where I thrust her. How could such innocent Beauty have loved so guilty a Beast? Desire needs food, like anything that lives. I had fed on Meta but offered her only poisoned scraps.

principal business of the morning, the going over of my notes for the afternoon's rehearsal, the arrival of the players at Elsinore.

Leonard Sweetchild, the First Player, is giving me trouble. The role demands a subtlety beyond his grasp. The First Player, after all, has to deliver his lines and control his gestures in two distinct styles. On the one hand, he has to speak as a professional actor responding to the warm hospitality offered him and his fellows by his princely patron; on the other, he has to speak as an actor "in character," first in the Hecuba passage in act 2, scene 2, where Hamlet requests a sample of his thespian skill, and later, of course, as the Player King. Shakespeare distinguishes the two language modes clearly enough for any ordinary understanding, but Sweetchild, unfortunately, has a tin ear. Worse, if he has an iota of acting talent in him, I have yet to see it. Worst, he has a dismaying and highly visible habit of taking steps as if every inch of his shoe sole were required to make contact with the stage in a deliberate and slowly rolling gait. To this comical rhythm he recites his lines. There is no discernible distinction whatever in the two aspects of his part.

He remains in the play for historical and sentimental reasons. Unlikely as it must seem, Sinsheimer was very fond of him. They sang the songs of the old operettas together, the sentimental Scbmalzof Kalman, Lehar, Fall, arm in arm beside the piano. Sweetchild took the death of Sinsheimer very hard; not even Lipschitz had the heart to oust him after that, and now I have inherited him. Well, somehow I must penetrate his denseness.

Meanwhile, I was sitting in the library, as I have said, my own denseness such that the newspaper paragraphs failed to penetrate it, my hand trembling rather more than usual. The day was severely overcast, with a grim, darkly smudged sky. Not much light entered the windows; all the lamps were lit. It might have been late on a winter's afternoon. Impatient with myself, I

was on the point of abandoning the paper unread when Kunstler and Hamburger came in.

"God save you, sir," said Hamburger.

"My honored lord," said Kunstler.

"Good lads, how do you both?" I said.

They were in a jocular mood. I tried my best to match them, if only for Hamburger's sake. They got on well together.

"We've been looking for you, Gerhardt and I," said Hamburger. "Guess who were last night's big winners? You wouldn't believe how much."

That Hamburger, who knows well enough my attitude toward these nightly debauches that sap our players of their energy, should thrust his glee under my nose, I looked not to find. "Congratulations," I said, in as even a voice as I could muster.

"So, Otto," said Kunstler, "you, too, are in luck. We're going to treat you to breakfast at Goldstein's. Whatever you want, you order. The sky's the limit."

"Actually, Lottie Grabscheidt is treating, in case you don't want to spend our money. Can you imagine? She's holding three aces and a king, and she loses the pot." Thus Hamburger.

"And she folds with a full house," said Kunstler. "Don't forget that."

' 'Better we were playing strip poker,' she tells us."

" 'Do me a favor,' says Blum—he's also losing heavily— 'don't strip.' "

"So, old friend," said Hamburger, "we're taking you to breakfast."

"Unfortunately, I've already had breakfast. Besides, Comyns has put me on a regimen."

"Well, coffee, then, Otto," said Kunstler. "Come and have coffee. You can watch us eat."

"Many thanks, good of you. But alas, I have a full sched-

ule this morning. And rehearsals, as always, this afternoon." I shook the newspaper and lifted it, dismissing them. "You find me trying to catch up with the news before getting to work."

"Half an hour you can spare," said Hamburger, his disappointment, like a child's, painted on his face.

"Sorry. A rain check."

"Listen, Benno," said Kunstler, "if he can't, he can't. Do me a favor, go over to Goldstein's and get us a table. I'll be along in a minute. I want to have a private word with Otto."

The last thing I wanted was a private word with Kunstler! I rustled the newspaper impatiently. Kunstler, meanwhile, waited until Hamburger had disappeared and then sat down on the chair opposite. I lowered the paper and made a show of disgruntled resignation.

"So, Otto, we can talk."

"The library is not the place for a conversation." I pointed to the sign: Silence Pleases; Please, Silence.

"It's no secret you don't like me."

"Mr. Kunstler, I scarcely know you."

"I get on with most people."

"I've observed."

"Take just now, for example: all I wanted was to be sociable, treat you to breakfast. Was that so terrible?"

"Very kind of you. But as I said, I'm on a regimen."

"So what is it? What's bugging you? Get it onto the table, clear the air, talk turkey."

"Your command of idiom is exemplary."

"Is that what you do to the hand of friendship? Spit on it?"

"Very well, Mr. Kunstler, since you ask. You've been making secret inquiries about me. That, as you can imagine, I don't like."

He seemed genuinely puzzled. "What d'you mean?"

"You want I should spell it out? All right. I saw you in

Selma Gross's office. No doubt you remember the day. When you spotted me outside, you put your finger to your lips, and Selma nodded."

"But that had nothing to do with you! It was a private matter—Selma's. You got it back to front: she asked me to keep quiet."

"Of course."

"I swear it." He put up a hand as if about to take the Oath of Allegiance. "Look, I can even tell you about it now, if you want. The rumor's already circulating, the blabbermouth must've told one person too many. Selma's leaving Bernie, that's all. She says that since his operation he's a changed person, wants to be waited on hand and foot, even refuses his Friday-night duties. He's afraid of the strain, a relapse. She's going to take him for a bundle; then she's going to quit work and become a resident here. She says it's a lively place, the Emma Lazarus."

And Selma had said not a word about it to me!

"You believe me now?"

How could I not? A pause. "I apologize, Mr. Kunstler."

He grinned and waved my apology aside. "Never mind the 'Mr. Kunstler.' You can call me Gerry. But you see how it helps to clear the air? Okay, another thing." He grew serious. "Benno tells me you don't like to talk about the old days. Of course, I understand. Perfectly. You'll excuse me, I've seen the number on your wrist. But in Dr. Comyns' office I scraped a raw nerve, I could see, and that had nothing to do with the war years; the subject was your writing. Yet you clammed up. Why?"

"A man does not bare his soul to the first stranger who comes along."

"Who asked you to bare your soul? We were only chatting, that's all. But you looked as if I'd pulled your trousers down. Why should you be ashamed?"

"Because I've much to be ashamed of. And I still don't want to talk about it, not to you, not to anybody. You want to be friendly? Be friendly: drop the subject. You don't know what you're putting your nose into." I was trembling, whether from anger or terror I cannot say.

"But you're wrong just the same. First, you were not the only one. Second, you may even have done some good, particularly in the early days. Third, what counts is motivation and intent. You did what you did for the good of all. What more could you do? No one could have imagined what was coming."

I said nothing.

"Think about what I've said. If you want to talk later, we'll talk. If not, not." He got up and put out his hand. "Friends?"

Well, I took his hand, of course. What choice did I have? Kunstler, who knows everything, knows nothing! But in his ignorant wisdom he put his finger very precisely on my shame.