Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

The remark was inconsistent with her profession, even if Inger was still young, only a semi-pro, but it was the way she said “could,” exactly as Beard had said it, that bothered him. He detected hostility in her imitation, and he was afraid that he’d underestimated Inger, maybe provoked a distaste for his character that was irredeemable.

He’d merely expressed his feelings, merely been sincere, yet somehow offended her. Her reaction was unfair. He did not even know what he’d said that was offensive. Worse yet, he was afraid that he’d established with Inger the same relations he’d had with his ex-wife. In twenty-five years of marriage, she’d had many fits of irrational hostility over his most trivial remarks. Beard could never guess what he might say to make her angry. Now in another country, in love with another woman — a prostitute, no less — Beard was caught up in miseries he’d divorced.

The more things change, he thought, they don’t.

Inger knew nothing about Beard’s marriage, but she’d heard that one’s clients sometimes become attached, and it was hard to get free of them. Beard was only her fifth client. What troubled her particularly was that she’d upset Beard more than she might have expected. He sounded deranged, shouting in the crowded restaurant, “I’ll pay double,” and slapping the table. How embarrassing. What had the waiter thought? She felt slightly fearful. “You are a sweet man,” she said. “Very generous. Many women in Germany would be yours for nothing.”

“I prefer to pay for you. Can’t you understand?”

She understood but shook her head no, astonished and reproachful at once. “I understand that you are self-indulgent. If I were like you, I would soon become dissolute. My life would be irregular. I would feed my monkey table scraps instead of monkey food, because it gives me pleasure. She would then beg every time I sit down at the dinner table. It would be no good for her or for me.”

“I’m not your monkey.”

“You think you’re more complicated.”

Beard was about to smile, but he realized Inger wasn’t making a joke. Her statement was flat and profoundly simple. Beard wasn’t sure what she intended. Maybe she was asking a question. But it seemed she really saw in Beard what she saw in her monkey, as if all sentient beings were equivalent. She put him in mind of Saint Francis of Assisi.

As had happened several times during his acquaintance with Inger, he was overcome by a sort of mawkish adoration. His eyes glistened. He’d never felt this way about a woman. Spiritual love. At the same time, he had a powerful desire to ravish her. Of course he’d done that repeatedly in the hotel room, in the bed and on the floor, and each time his desire had been satisfied, yet it remained undiminished, unsatisfied.

“Well, what are you, then?” she asked softly.

Beard, surprising himself, said, “I’m a Jew” With a rush of strong and important feeling, it struck him that he was indeed a Jew.

Inger shrugged. “I might have Jewish blood. Who knows about such things?”

Beard had anticipated a more meaningful, more sensitive response. He saw instead, once again, the essential Inger. She was, in her peculiar way, as innocent as a monkey. She had no particular, cultivated sensibility. No idea of history. She was what she was, as if she’d dropped into the world yesterday. A purely objective angelic being. He had her number, he thought. Having her number didn’t make him detached. His feelings were no less intense, no less wonderful, and — no other word for it — unsatisfied. She got to him like certain kinds of music. He thought of unaccompanied cello suites.

“Inger,” he whispered, “have pity. I’m in love with you.”

“Nonsense. I’m not very pretty.”

“Yes, you are.”

“If that’s how you feel …”

“It is.

“You feel this now. Later, who knows.”

“Could you feel something for me?”

“I’m not indifferent.”

“That’s all?”

“You may love me.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. But I think …”

“I’m self-indulgent.”

“It’s a burden for me.”

“I’ll learn to be good.”

“I applaud this decision.”

“When can I see you again?”

“You will pay me what you promised?”

“Of course.”

She studied his face, as if to absorb a new understanding, and then, with no reservations in her voice, said, “I will go home tonight. You may come for me tomorrow night. You may come upstairs and meet my roommate.”

“Must you go home?”

“I dislike washing my underwear in a bathroom sink.”

“I’ll wash your underwear.”

“I have chores, things I have to do at home. You are frightening me.”

“I’ll call a taxi.”

“No. My bicycle is still at the hotel.”

The next morning Beard went to a barbershop and then shopped for a new jacket. So much time remained before he could see Inger. In the afternoon he decided to visit the cathedral, a Gothic structure of dark stone. It thrust up suddenly, much taller than the surrounding houses, on a curved, narrow medieval street. Beard walked around the cathedral, looking at saintly figures carved into the stone. Among them he was surprised by a monkey, the small stone face hideously twisted, shrieking. He couldn’t imagine what it was doing there, but the whole cathedral was strange, so solemn and alien amid the ordinary houses along the street.

Men in business suits, students in their school uniforms, and housewives carrying sacks of groceries walked by without glancing at the cathedral. None seemed to have any relation to it, but surely they felt otherwise. They lived in this city. The cathedral was an abiding feature of their landscape, stark and austere, yet complicated in its carvings. Beard walked inside. As he entered the nave, he felt reduced, awed by the space. Most of all, he felt lonely. He felt a good deal, but it struck him that he could never understand the power and meaning of the Christian religion. With a jealous and angry God, Jews didn’t need such space for worship. A plain room would do. It would even be preferable to a cathedral, more appropriate to their intimate, domestic connection to the deity, someone they had been known to defy and even to fight until, like Jonah, they collapsed into personal innerness, in agonies and joys of sacred delirium.

Walking back to the hotel, he remembered that Inger had talked about her monkey. The memory stirred him, as he had been stirred in the restaurant, with sexual desire. Nothing could be more plain, more real. It thrust against the front of his trousers. He went into a café to sit for a while and pretend to read a newspaper.

That evening in the hotel room, with his fresh haircut and new jacket, he presented himself to the bathroom mirror. He had once been handsome. Qualities of handsomeness remained in his solid, leonine head, but there were dark sacks under his eyes that seemed to carry years of pain and philosophy. They made his expression vaguely lachrymose. “You are growing the face of a hound,” he said to his reflection, but he was brave and didn’t look away, and he decided he must compensate for his losses. He must buy Inger a present, something new and beautiful, a manifestation of his heart.

In a jewelry store window in the hotel lobby, he noticed a pair of gold earrings set with rubies like tiny globules of blood. Obviously expensive. Much too expensive for his travel budget, but he entered the store and asked what they cost, though he knew it was a mistake to ask. He was right. The price was even higher than he had guessed. It was nearly half of his inheritance. Those earrings plus the cost of the trip would leave him barely enough money to pay his rent in San Francisco, and he didn’t have a job waiting for him when he returned.