Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

If Nachman had stayed in California, he’d have gone to work in his office at the Institute of Mathematics and never heard himself described as a drifty man who walks about with his fly unzipped. Nothing she had said was true, but she had said it. She actually said it. We were all going to die, but Helen Ferris had to kill people.

The voices persisted, but Nachman focused on the suitcase and tried not to listen. Shirts, underwear, dresses, trousers, and tennis shoes lay in a confused pile, and a stack of papers had been tossed on top. Nachman admired the indifference with which the expensive-looking clothes had been flung into the suitcase. He saw passports and airline-ticket envelopes among the papers and reached out to open them. His hands were shaking. His heart swelled as he intruded upon the privacy of strangers. How could he do this?

Before he’d engaged the question, he felt a soft pressure against his lower leg. He looked down and saw an exceptionally fat Siamese cat. It must have hidden under the bed, frightened of Nachman, but then decided he was no threat and emerged to brush against his leg. The cat leaped onto the bed and stepped into the suitcase, settling on top of the papers, as if it knew that Nachman had been about to look at them. The cat wanted Nachman’s attention. Nachman stroked its back. A fat purring friend come to comfort and console him. While he stroked the cat with one hand, he tried to lift the corners of the papers with the other.

There were no rugs or drapes in the room, nothing to absorb the voices, and the moisture in the air only sharpened them. Nachman wasn’t listening, but then, abruptly, the water noise ceased.

“He’s had a hard time,” Helen Ferris said. “He flew across the country to meet someone at the conference and he was stood up. I felt sorry for him.”

“If I were stood up, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Word gets around. People think you’re a schmuck.”

“He tried to be cheerful, but I could tell he was furious. The minute I said hello, he started venting like a maniac.”

Helen Ferris’s voice changed, becoming husky and teasing.

“Tell me, Benjamin,” she said.

“What?”

“That I am beautiful.”

“Come here.”

She laughed. “No, no, no.”

Nachman glanced toward the bathroom door. He imagined Helen Ferris’s dark-brown hair, cut level with her chin, now a wet black shining cap about her eyes and cheeks. Her mouth, free of lipstick, was softened and bloated by hot water. Nachman thought she’d look better without lipstick. He remembered her motherly sexy eyes. Barefoot, she was maybe five two. She stood as high as his chest. She had wide hips. Did she have large breasts?

She squealed. The note was pitched so high that Nachman thought — terrified — that she had entered the room and was staring at him with shock and revulsion.

He shut the suitcase instantly. On the cat. It thrashed against the leather. Instead of flipping the case open, Nachman pressed the lid down harder, as if to hide the evidence. Not too hard, not hurting the cat, but thus, unintentionally, Nachman gave it time to piss.

When he realized that he was alone and hadn’t been seen, he opened the case. The cat sped across the blue silk sheet and leapt onto the maple floor, trailing turds of fear. It vanished behind the bar in the kitchen area, and Nachman saw that it had deposited about a gallon of liquid in the suitcase. Letters and legal papers had softened and wrinkled, edges curling as urine attacked their fibers. Trapped in the suitcase, the cat had spun beneath Nachman’s hands, hosing in all directions.

In the elevator, Nachman kept his eyes on the doors and didn’t glance at the mirrored walls. He didn’t want to see his reflection. In a spasm of superstitious dread, Nachman thought that if he saw it he might be obliged to leave it behind. He wanted to get entirely out of the building, taking himself and his reflection far away from the Ferris couple, particularly the naked, squealing Helen Ferris. The Ferrises had taken something from him, torn a hole in his existence. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the doorman nod. Nachman went by with no acknowledgment and was immediately outside in the anonymous street. He wanted no human recognitions, however minimal, as he headed downtown. Strangers passed like ghostly shapes in the night. Nachman walked mindlessly, block after block until, gradually, he stopped feeling devastated and, in the cool nighttime air of the city, recovered the good simplicity of being himself. “A fool,” he said, “but mine own.”

He thought about finding a restaurant and having dinner. But he decided he wasn’t hungry and continued walking. In Washington Square Park, Nachman came to an empty bench and sat down. The paths were shadowed by trees, through which lamplight shone brokenly. He couldn’t make out the features of passersby, and assumed that he was more or less invisible to them, too. Alone, unknown, unseen, he became deeply peaceful and free in his thoughts.

He thought about Helen Ferris. Her smile, which Nachman had read as anticipation, he now understood had meant something different, like expectation. Nachman had been expected to light up just as she had, but he’d failed to recognize her. He was no longer the person he had been. A part of his life was gone.

She’d given him her card, though God knows what she thought of him now. Perhaps she believed Nachman, not the cat, had pissed in her suitcase. He could phone her tomorrow, or perhaps the following day from California, and explain what had happened. He could ask her to tell him her maiden name. If he finally remembered who she was, he might then be enriched by memories of himself. Memories are far superior to photographs, for example, which are good only for nostalgia, not understanding. But did Nachman want those memories? The Nachman he no longer remembered was certainly himself. After all, who else could it be?

It’s been said the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Nachman wasn’t against examining his life, but then what was a life? The day before yesterday he’d been in California, and tomorrow he could be almost anywhere on the globe. He could change his name, learn a new language, start a new existence. He could go to an exotic place, get married, have children of various colors and surprising features. It was easy enough. People did it all the time. He could herd yaks in Mongolia, or be a slave trader in Sudan. It took no courage to consult a travel agent. Such metaphysicians were in the phone book. “Get me a flight to Mongolia,” said Nachman to himself. “One way.”

But Nachman wasn’t adventurous. He had no passion for change. As for “a life,” it was what you read about in newspaper obituaries. The history of a person come and gone. Nachman would return to California and think only about mathematics. Numbers have no history. For history something has to disappear. Numbers remain. Just wondering about Mongolia, with its bleak and freezing plains, made him homesick. He yearned for his office and his desk and the window that looked out on the shining Pacific. He’d never gone swimming in the prodigious, restless, teeming, alluring thing, but he loved the changing light on its surface and the sounds it made in the darkness. He didn’t yearn for its embrace.

On a bench nearby, partly obscured by shadows, a man began playing a guitar. The tune was a bossa nova, haunting, something like a blues, only more finely nuanced and not at all macho. The rhythm was subtly engaging and it seemed to caress Nachman’s heart. He thought again about phoning Helen Ferris. He’d apologize, certainly, for not waiting until she and her husband came out of the bathroom. Vaguely, he supposed that they might have a lot to say to him. His thoughts became still more vague as they surrendered to the bossa nova, and soon he wasn’t thinking at all, only following the tune. It made a lovely, sinuous shape, and then made it again and again, always a little differently and yet always the same, as the rhythm carried its exquisite sadness toward infinity.