“Wasn’t that Dazz in the limousine?” Emily asked, putting away her flute.
“Mm.” He had a vision of red hair and heard a cool laugh, remembered the conversation like something from the distant past. “Wants us to go to a party with him tonight.”
“Are we going?”
“Mm. Let me see how I feel.” He wasn’t sure he was ready for a party with Dazz’s friends, where he would be expected to interact with intensely chic types who used words like “viable” and “persona” and “mystique.”
“You’ve still got your face on,” Emily reminded him.
“I'll take it off at home.”
“Can I keep the duck?”
“It’s all yours.” He realized that his head had stopped hurting somewhat, though its preoccupation had not diminished in the slightest. He wondered about the man again, tried to make sense of it all, failed totally. What sense was there to be made? Had he been hypnotized? Possibly. And possibly not.
He reached for his grenadier’s tunic, which lay spread out to dry, picked it up, and whirled it in a circle. Jesus, no! He remembered his wallet, money to be deposited—and the banks were closed. Then, with mounting panic, he was feeling the jacket, finding all the pockets empty. He looked around wildly, stopped, and began combing the grass. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t at the fountain, either. It was gone. And with it, thirteen hundred bucks, all his summer’s savings.
He looked back at Emily, standing apart, regarding him with a look of concern and confusion. And affection.
He shook his head. “Well, it looks like we get to start all over,” he said, indicating empty pockets.
He put his arm around Emily as they started their walk back to his apartment. It was, of course, impossible to blank from his mind all that had happened, but fortunately Emily was content to talk, to allow him to be quiet, to listen. And now there was the loss of the money to ponder as well. Gone, in exchange for what? To that question, at least, he had an answer.
In exchange for a taste of what he knew he had always been looking for, though he had no name for it. He would call it real magic. Dark magic. Night magic.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kindred Spirits
LENA SAT AT THE open window, fanning herself and trying to catch whatever breeze might be stirring. There was none. She looked mournfully at the broken air conditioner and, below it, at the shallow pan of red-brown water where metal chips lay in various stages of oxidation, some of them quite advanced. Air-conditioner maintenance, like creature comforts in general, was not high on Max’s list of priorities. He never noticed things like wilting temperatures or suffocatingly heavy air. Sometimes she imagined that he was hollow inside, like an empty nutshell, dry and shriveled, indifferent to heat or cold or life itself. Yet she needed him, just as he needed her. Their relationship, like the seasons, just seemed to endure.
She could see Max’s big black umbrella at the corner newsstand. As his gaunt figure drew nearer, she tried as usual to read his mood from the way he was carrying the umbrella; having observed several dips, a couple of tilts, and one nearly complete twirl, she looked forward to a relatively pleasant evening.
She heard him as he climbed the stairs slowly, opened the door, and uttered his perfunctory, general greeting, as though addressing all the heterogeneous objects scattered about the large room. Lena looked at the heavy black coat, the beard, the nose, and shook her head. “On such a hot day, why do you wear—”
He made a placating gesture, as though to avoid argument, and left the room. When he returned, he was without the beard and the rubber nose. His long gray hair was wet where he had slicked it back, and his shirt collar was damp. He carried his black coat on one arm, held it against his lap as he sat, and left it draped there as he took up his newspaper, squinting to scan the front page. Lena remained in her chair at the window but contrived a position that allowed her to observe Max without staring at him. He bent his head, turning it slightly to the light, and eased from beside his nose something that he put on the heavy mahogany table: a dull glass eye. It lay on the embroidered linen runner, staring up at the ceiling. After quickly putting on a black patch with an elastic band that he slipped over his head and adjusted, he began rummaging in his jacket pockets, drawing out first one wallet, then another, then a third. These he opened, extracting their contents, laying the cards and photographs in his lap and fingering the money, glancing with his good eye over his shoulder to where Lena sat silent and immobile, as if for a portrait. When he had counted the money, he slipped the cards and wallets into the shopping bag beside him, fanned out the bills, and contemplated them again.
Lena could no longer assist in silence at this spectacle. “Really, Max,” she sighed, “I shall never understand how a man with your abilities can stoop to such things. Why aren’t you embarrassed?”
He fixed her with his good eye, but her guess as to his mood had been accurate; he wasn’t angry, his look was mild, without impact.
“I, on the other hand, shall never understand your fondness for the reiterated reproach,” he said airily. “And you know very well that such pranks never embarrass me. Banal moralizing—now there’s something embarrassing.”
“Who’s moralizing? I simply want you to set your sights higher. Do you get so much pleasure from stealing? And if you must steal, why not steal something large? An air conditioner, for example.”
He chuckled in that eerie, cackling way he had. “My dear Galena, what would be the use of such a thing?” he asked, narrowing his single eye. “Surely you've noticed the chill in the room. You must be cold.”
She rose abruptly from her seat and shut the window. Casting a wounded look in his direction, she left the room. Several minutes later she returned, wearing a shawl over her shoulders and carrying two steaming cups of tea on an elaborately worked Persian silver tray. She placed one cup at his elbow, next to the eye on the table, touched his shoulder, and took the seat across from his. Putting on her reading glasses, she began to peruse part of the newspaper as she sipped her tea.
Max had been lost in thought, staring at the shopping bag beside his chair, but now he opened the bag and withdrew the largest of the wallets, the one with the monogram “M.H.” Once again he went through the various cards, slowly this time, absorbing the name, the address, the scraps of information about the young man whose property he had filched, recalling his earnestness, his innocence, his hurt, surprised eyes. He chose one of the cards, a small, plain, white one, and put it into his shirt pocket.
Lena glanced up from the paper. “Where were you today?”
“Uptown.” Sounding casual, as if nothing had happened uptown.
“I see. The beard. That awful nose. You were at the museum. Interesting, about the Rembrandt.”
“Somewhat,” he said offhandedly, but he was not interested in the Rembrandt now, nor in Egyptian antiquities. No, something else had pricked his curiosity. What had that sign read? “Presto the Great.” Absurd, amateurish, but the boy himself was not. Callow, certainly, and untutored, without a doubt, yet somehow compelling, not to be dismissed. Yes, there could be an answer here. The more he thought about the young man, the more it became clear that some further action must be taken in his regard. He would not let this one go.
During their evening meal, Lena hardly spoke. Max was unaccountably, uncharacteristically voluble, though he did not mention the museum or the painted Eye, guarding it in his thoughts as jealously as any curator. He did talk about a young man he had met, who he thought looked interesting despite his immaturity, a young street magician. He seemed likely as a prospect, Max said. Then, after they had finished eating, he made the suggestion—it was too mild to be a request—that he had been contemplating all along.
Taken by surprise, Lena dismissed the notion with a flat refusal. “Tonight? You must be mad. Let me remind you of what happened last time—and the time before that. It only brings trouble. Besides, my head is aching, and my hands hurt.” She illustrated her last point by rub
bing her hands. “It’s a bad idea.”
He shrugged his shoulders, the most easygoing of men. It was only a thought. She might try finding out something. The young man in question seemed particularly likely. The final decision would of course be up to her.
“Of course,” she said wearily, rising from her chair and walking over to a small, marble-topped table, on which lay a curiously carved cedar box filled with her pungent French cigarettes. She extracted one, lit it, and turned to face Max, who had remained in his chair with an expectant look on his face. “Why don’t you do it yourself?” she asked, mingling pleading and recrimination. “You’re the one with the power.”
“Because, Lena dearest, I do not choose to. Power is different from strength; if you don’t use strength, it goes away. But power accumulates.”
“Like interest?” she snorted.
“Perhaps. But I had in mind something less material. Like longing, like desire.” He smiled deprecatingly and stood up. “In any case, I’m going downstairs for a while. Please consider my request,” he said, in the tones of a hopeful suitor, but he knew she would do as he asked. She always did.
An hour later, Lena sat again at the heavy table in the front room, smoking one of her Gitanes. Under the light, the yellow pad and pen lay ready. She smoked and looked at them and coughed. She knew she should give up cigarettes, but they were one of her few pleasures. Expensive as well—nearly four dollars a pack, three packs a day; approximately eighty dollars a week. How much was that a year? She’d never figured it up, but the expense secretly added to her pleasure.
Since Max had left, the room was stifling again, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Sometimes, sleepless, she liked to cook late at night. Not tonight, however; the thought of a stove or an oven made her want to scratch. Besides, there was the thing he wished her to do. She sat motionless, trying to think of nothing. A television set, incongruous amid the Victorian clutter, stood across the room, but she would not turn it on until it was time for the news. She put a record on the phonograph instead: Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in e minor, a passionate performance by Heifetz, first recorded in the 1930s. Ardent and soaring, the sound enveloped her, and she was absorbed in it for a long time.
The record ended, the return of silence shocked her into awareness. She pushed her damp hair behind her ears and arranged her blouse awkwardly as she crossed the room to turn off the phonograph. She thought about banging on the water pipes; Max would hear it in the cellar, but she knew it would do no good; he would come up when he wanted to. The strains of the Mendelssohn seemed still to hug the high corners of the ceiling and float out the reopened window, mixing with the other sounds—radios, stereos, televisions, street noises. Below, people gathered on doorsteps, under streetlights, talking in groups, or moving up and down the walk as though on a Sunday passeggiata in Milano. Everything was quieter than usual, hushed by the heat.
Lena sat again at the table and eyed the wallet Max had left there, then picked it up, not without reluctance. The two gold initials told her nothing. She looked inside: empty. She sniffed the leather, felt it in her fingers. Nothing was revealed, about it or its owner. What did he want to know? What could it mean, to say that the young man “seemed likely,” “looked interesting”? In the years she had known him, Max had once had an assistant, but things had ended badly and the subject had seldom been mentioned again. Besides, was stealing people’s wallets and searching through them any way to recruit help? Normal people placed ads, left notices on bulletin boards; Max picked pockets and examined what he found there. And why on earth did he need an assistant, for that matter? Lena wondered. Life with Max prompted an endless series of questions, most of which she was afraid to ask.
She expelled her breath so hard that it made her lips vibrate. Holding the wallet in both hands, she laid it against her cheek, then her forehead, then resumed running her fingers over it. The ornate clock on the mantel chimed; a delicate Viennese sound: quarter to eleven. She watched the little brass pendulum swinging in the painted circle on the glass door, saw the hand move a fraction of an inch. She might as well start. She stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another, arranged wallet and ashtray to her liking, and leaned toward the yellow pad.
The clock ticked drily in the silence as she sat and stared at the pad in the lamplight, her fingers laced in her lap, the cigarette dangling from her lips. She put it in the ashtray and watched as a little pencil line of smoke rose toward the light. When she had composed herself, she took up the felt-tipped pen, pulled off the cap, and held the pen poised in her hand, waiting.
She waited for perhaps a minute, letting everything flow out of her, so it could flow back in. Her hand moved slowly along the paper, scribbling, then more rapidly, then still faster. She could feel the working of her hand, a detached, automatic thing, un-commanded by her brain. She recognized the writing: Mrs. Carsin’s, enlarging into broad scrawls and loops, then becoming erratic, until Lena’s fingers fairly flew across the paper and the page became filled with script. As fast as one page was filled, she tore it from the pad and began another, until there was a pile of pages on the table.
She stopped abruptly, waiting until her breathing slowed. She put on her glasses and read the pages aloud, then thought over what she had read. Obviously Mrs. Carsin was concerned about the Rembrandt. But Lena already knew about that from the evening paper. This was not news to anyone, certainly not to her. Should she try further? The clock continued ticking as she put aside the sheaf of pages and took up the wallet again. She held it flat in the palm of her hand, then laid her other hand over it. The leather felt warm. She ran her nail over the gold M, and the gold H. She raised her hands to her forehead, the wallet between the palms, closing her eyes. Yes, there was something.
She glanced at the curio cabinet behind the piano, where something drew her attention. Something to do with the wallet? She went to the cabinet, opened it, and stared at the objects on the shelves—the astrolabe, the statuettes of various ancient Egyptian divinities, the cluster of tan pebbles lying in a box lined with cotton batting—and then her hand went to the silver christening cup on the second shelf. She set it in her hand, its round base on her palm, the wallet on the other, and held them as if weighing them against each other. That was strange, she told herself, why the cup? She waited. Nothing happened. She put the cup back on the shelf, closed the cabinet door, passed the mantel with the clock. Seven more minutes had elapsed; the clock now read eight before eleven. She wanted to be done in time for the eleven o’clock news.
Seated again, she placed the wallet between her palms, this time pressing it against her breast. Her fingers began to twitch, little tremors of energy. She put down the wallet and took up the pen.
It was Carsin again, her large loops and scrawls, more about the Rembrandt. Then, quite suddenly, Lena felt a wrench, like a soft muffled blow inside her, and her hand was scrabbling about on the paper in a series of erratic gyrations. It came under control finally, with a different sort of writing. Neater, more legible, in a smaller, more feminine script. It wasn’t much, only a paragraph; then it stopped. She sighed, and her head fell forward, striking the tabletop. She heard the sound, felt the pain. For a moment—no more—she perceived only darkness, then she opened her eyes, saw the room sidewise, with her head still on the table. She lifted her head and looked down at the page, at the single paragraph written in something resembling an old-fashioned calligraphy.
I will try to tell you. There is a beginning here somewhere. Ask of John, he knows. Numbers 21, 6 and 8; 22, 18 and 19. He will reveal all, if you know your Scriptures. Alpha and Omega, in that order. This will be Greek to you but it is not difficult, I don’t think. Remember the Archangel, of celestial armies Prince. This is important. He will bring a thirst and must be given to drink. You will know him when you see him, don’t be surprised at that. Must he be told? I think he must. Tell M the money must be returned. All restored as was. James. James. He will know James. John through James or James
through John, I am not sure which. I will have more numbers for you if I can come back. Yes, M must be…
Must be what? She had trouble making out the last word. It seemed to read marred, or was it warned?
She sat with her fists digging against her chest where the pain was; then she gently pressed all along her knuckles, trying to rid herself of the pain in her hands. She became aware of the odor. Not cigarette smoke; a floral scent. Some kind of flowers, but un-fresh, as if wilted in the heat. She took the single page, folded it, and slid it between the pages of a book, which she laid on the shelf. She folded the Carsin pages and took them to her chair, turning on the television set before sitting. A movie was on. She put on her glasses and peered at the clock. It was still before eleven. She took up her crewelwork and was sewing when he came in.
“You're up so late, Lena. No wonder you look tired.”
“I’m waiting for the news.”
“The news must be over, surely.” He took out his watch. “It’s ten minutes to twelve.”
“Then the clock has stopped.”
But when? She was surprised.
He went to the mantel, tapped the glass. “So it has, so it has. Have you taken to wearing perfume?” He was lifting his nose and sniffing.
“No.”
“Then what…?” He fanned the air negligently as if to rid his nostrils of the smell, then casually glanced at the yellow pad on the table. “Well, what do they say, your chatty friends?” Trying to sound jovial, easy, preserving the amenities while his curiosity drove him like an appetite.
“Nothing. Nothing, really.”
“Nothing?” He took up the wallet from the table, and when he spoke again, his tone had darkened. “Ah, Lena, you lie so poorly; you have no talent for it, and I even less patience. Now answer me. Did this help?” He brandished the wallet at her like a weapon.