Edgar Pangborn - A Mirror for Observers

Vividly, self-consciously female. Her mouth is unhappily petulant when she forgets to smile. She has an air of listening for something that might call her any moment. She was practicing little-girl awe at anything that fell from my lips. I guess I’m into the Party, Drozma, if I choose to play it that way. But now that I know Angelo is alive, all bets are off. I have no plan beyond tomorrow morning, when I shall go to that apartment after Keller should have left for his office.

Miriam was watching for someone, and presently asked: “Abe Brown didn’t come up with you and Bill, did he?” Her hand wandered toward a solitaire diamond on her finger as she spoke.

“No, he was practicing. I didn’t even meet him…. Honey, I’m a horribly observant old man.” I beamed a Santa Claus look on the diamond. “Abe Brown?”

There was something wrong with her little act of cute annoyance. It was acting twice removed: meant to look like pretty irritation hiding pleasure, what it hid was not pleasure but some sort of confusion. “You don’t miss much, Mr. Meisel — can I call you Will? Yes, that’s how it is.” And then she was introducing me here and there. I shook something moist and unappetizing that belonged to Senator Galt of Alaska, and he brayed. Has a hirsute fringe like William Jennings Bryan.

And Carl Nicholas. Yes, Drozma. Max’s big room was so full of smoke and women’s perfumes that I did not distinguish the scent from Keller’s until Miriam took me over to meet him. Gross, ancient, pathetic. His Salvayan eyes are far down in morbid flesh. The nine years have brought him into our change of old age, Drozma. And whereas you, my second father, accepted the change graciously as you accept all inevitable things, and spoke of it once in my presence as your “assurance of mortality,” this Abdicator, this Namir — why, he’s a bottle imp, irreconcilable, locked up in fat and weakness and still aching to overturn an uninterested universe. He wheezed and touched my hand but hardly looked at me, intent on Max’s performance. Nevertheless I was worried and escaped quickly. Miriam said under her breath: “Poor guy, he can’t help it, gives me the creeps though. Know I shouldn’t feel that way. He’s done a lot for the Party, Max thinks everything of him.” She patted my arm. “You’re nice. Silly, aren’t I?”

“No,” I said. “You ain’t. Just young and slim.” She liked that. “You’re — full time in Party work, Miriam?”

“Oops!” She round-eyed her lovely face at me. “Didn’t you know? Little me, I’m secretary to — Him.” The eyes indicated Max’s gaunt grandeur and misted over. “It’s wonderful. I just never get used to it.” After a pause resembling silent prayer (no, I don’t dislike Miriam: she’s funny and pretty and I think she’s going to get hurt) she took me to see Max’s famous collection of toy soldiers.

They have a room apart: broad tables, glass-covered cases. Red Indians, Persians, Hindus on elephants, Redcoats, Dutchmen of the Armada. Some are old; one set resembled some I saw at the Museum in Old City — French medieval. They say Max plays with them when he can’t sleep. A quirk of greatness? That room was dim when we entered. Miriam turned on overhead lights, disturbing a muttered conversation of two men in shadow at the far end. Miriam ignored them, leading me from case to case. One of them was Daniel Walker, and his smooth round face was ravaged, desolate. The other — old, white-haired, taller than I, absurdly cadaverous — was far gone in drink, glassy-eyed, holding himself upright with silly dignity. As we left, Miriam whispered: “The old man, that’s Dr. Hodding….”

Same Hodding, Drozma. Late of the Wales Foundation, and evidently still with this crowd. I don’t get it. May have a chance to dig up something.

Max was showing fatigue, darkness under the eyes, when I shook hands for good night. Interesting, being near enough to a Great Man to notice the bad breath. But what I saw at that leave-taking was not a Great Man but a scared child, the kind who’s just put an iron pipe on a railroad track. For that matter I met a really great man once. It makes a difference, a greater ease in meeting malign pygmies such as Joseph Max. I visited the White House in 30,864. One doesn’t forget.

Through the thick apartment door I heard limping footsteps, and turned my changed face away, though I knew I would never be any readier to look at what nine years had done. The door was opening. It was after ten-thirty; I assumed Keller would have gone to work. Namir? To hell with him.

The boy’s no taller than Sharon. I realized I was staring at his shoes. No brace; the left sole is thickened. “Mr. Keller home?”

“Why, no. He’s at his office.” He has a good voice, mature and musical. I had to meet his eyes, which haven’t changed. A V-shaped scar over the right one. No recognition. “He left about an hour ago.”

“I should’ve phoned. You must be — Mr. Brown?”

“That’s right. Phone him from here if you like.”

“Well, I…” I blundered in past him, a confused and silly old man. “Think I left something here last night. Stopped in for a drink before he took me upstairs to meet Max. You were practicing, I think.”

“Left something?”

“Think so. Can’t even recollect what — lighter, notebook, some damn thing. Ever have your memory go back on you? Guess not, at your age. Only had a couple of drinks at that. Name’s Meisel.”

“Oh yes. Bill spoke of you. Look around if you want to.”

“Hate to bother you. If I did leave something, guess Mr. Keller’s uncle wouldn’t’ve noticed — no, he’d already gone upstairs.”

“Mr. Nicholas? Hate to wake him. He’s not well, sleeps late—”

“Heavens no, don’t bother him…. Smoke?”

“Thanks.” I used the fancy lighter. While he was intent on the flame I managed for the first time to look directly at his face. The angel of Michelangelo has hurt himself, Drozma. “I’m always forgetting things too,” he said. Yes, even at twelve he had that sort of tact.

“Just my eighty-year-old memory playing tricks.”

“You don’t look eighty, sir.” Sir? Because I’m old, I guess. It’s an almost obsolete courtesy.

“Eighty just the same,” I said, and dropped in an armchair with a grunt. “You have another sixty to go before they call you well preserved.”

His beginning smile vanished as he cocked his young head at me. “Haven’t we met somewhere?” I couldn’t answer; before my eyes found the painting near the foyer entrance, I glimpsed fear in him. “It’s your voice,” he said. Fear, and defiance too. “I can’t place it though.”

“Maybe you heard me when I stopped in last night with Keller.” He shook his head. “I don’t hear anything when I’m practicing.”

Yes, that dreadful Bach…. “Going to music school?”

“No, I — Maybe next fall. I don’t know.”

But why was he afraid? “I heard a fine recital Wednesday. Newcomer. Sharon Brand. Audience went nuts and no wonder.”

“Yes,” he said with too much control. “I was there.”

So much for our celebrated Martian sixth sense! He was there, remembering Sharon. Perhaps even near me on that balcony, seeing the gleaming downstream passage of that ship as I saw it. Near enough to touch. And because his mind must have been full of Sharon, perhaps he even remembered me too, now and then — a ghost, a moving shadow. “Splendid talent,” I said. “She must’ve given up everything else for it, to get so far at nineteen. Well, I happen to know she did. Known her since she was a little girl.”

I still peered stupidly at the painting, knowing the hand with his cigarette had stopped halfway to his mouth. He said with desperate politeness: “Oh…? What sort of person is she, off the stage?”