Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

“Is there anything really interesting about Rue?”

“There’s a small blue tattoo on his right shoulder. I liked it. Black moles are scattered on his back like buckshot. The tattoo is an ideograph. I saw him minutely, you know what I mean? I was on the verge of hatred, really in love. But you wouldn’t understand. I won’t tell you any more.”

“Answer my question.”

She didn’t.

“You felt sorry for him. I feel sorry for you. Is it over now?”

“Did it begin? I don’t really know. Anyhow, so what?”

“Don’t you want to tell me? I want to know. Tell me everything.”

“I must keep a little for myself. Do you mind? It’s my life. I want to keep my feelings. You can be slightly insensitive, Herman.”

“I never dumped YOU at a party in front of the whole town. You want to keep your feelings? Good. If you talk, you’ll remember feelings you don’t know you had. It’s the way to keep them.”

“No, it isn’t. They go out of you. Then they’re not even feelings anymore. They’re chitchat commodities. Some asshole like Claude will stick them in a novel.”

“Why don’t you just fly to Paris? Live with him.”

“He’s married. I liked him for not saying that he doesn’t get along with his wife, or they’re separated. I asked if he had an open marriage.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘Of course not.’”

Margaret spoke more ill than good of Rue. Nevertheless, she was in love. Felt it every minute, she said, and wanted to phone him, but his wife might answer. He’d promised to write a letter, telling her where they would meet. There were going to be publication parties for his book in Rome and Madrid. He said that his letter would contain airline tickets and notification about her hotel.

“Then you pack a bag? You run out the door?”

“And up into the sky. To Rome. To Madrid.”

“Just like that? What about your work? What about Gracie?”

“Just like that.”

I bought a copy of The Mists of Shanghai and began reading with primitive, fiendish curiosity. Who the hell was Claude Rue? The morning passed, then the afternoon. I quit reading at twilight, when I had to leave for work. I’d reached the point where Dulu comes to the brothel. It was an old-fashioned novel, something like Dickens, lots of characters and sentimental situations, but carefully written to seem mindless, and so clear that you hardly feel you’re reading. Jujuzi’s voice gives a weird edge to the story. Neiping suffers terribly, he says, but she imagines life in the brothel is not real, and that someday she will go home and her mother will be happy to see her. Just as I began to think Rue was a nitwit, Jujuzi reflects on Neiping’s pain. He says she will never go home, and a child’s pain is more terrible than an adult’s, but it is the nourishment of sublime dreaming. When Dulu arrives, Neiping wishes the new girl would stop crying. It makes Neiping sad. She can’t sleep. She stands beside the new girl, staring down through the dark, listening to her sob, wanting to smack her, make her be quiet. But then Neiping slides under the blanket and hugs the new girl. They tell each other their names. They talk. Dulu begins slowly to turn. She hugs Neiping. The little bodies lie in each other’s arms, face to face. They talk until they fall asleep.

Did Claude Rue imagine himself as Neiping? Considering Rue’s limp, he’d known pain. But maybe pain had made him cold, like Jujuzi, master of sentimental feelings, master of cruelty. Was Claude Rue like Jujuzi?

A week passed. Margaret called, told me to come to her loft. She sounded low. I didn’t ask why. When I arrived, she gave me a brutal greeting. “How come you and me never happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“How come we never fucked?”

She had a torn-looking smile.

“We’re best friends, aren’t we?”

I sat on the couch. She followed, plopped beside me. We sat beside each other, beside ourselves. Dumb. She leaned against me, put her head on my shoulder. I loved her so much it hurt my teeth. Light went down in the tall, steel-mullioned factory windows. The air of the loft grew chilly.

“Why did you phone?” I asked.

“I needed you to be here.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“No.”

The perfume of her dark hair came to me. I saw dents on the side of her nose, left by her eyeglasses. They made her eyes look naked, vulnerable. She’d removed her glasses to see less clearly. Twisted the ends of her hair. Chewed her lip. I stood up, unable to continue doing nothing, crossed to a lamp, then didn’t turn it on. Electric light was violent. Besides, it wasn’t very dark in the loft and the shadows were pleasant. I looked back. Her eyes had followed me. She asked what I’d like to drink.

“What do you have?”

“Black tea?”

“All right.”

She put on her glasses and walked to the kitchen area. The cup and saucer rattled as she set them on the low table. I took her hands. “Sit,” I said. “Talk.”

She sat, but said nothing.

“Do you want to go out somewhere? Take a walk, maybe.”

“We were together for three days,” she said.

“Did he write to you?”

“We were together for hours and hours. There was so much feeling. Then I get this letter.”

“What does he say? Rome? Barcelona?”

“He says I stole his watch. He says I behaved like a whore, going through his pockets when he was asleep.”

“Literally, he says that?”

“Read it yourself.”

“It’s in French.” I handed it back to her.

“An heirloom, he says. His most precious material possession, he says. He understands my motive and finds it contemptible. He wants his watch back. He’ll pay. How much am I asking?”

“You have his heirloom?”

“I never saw it.”

“Let’s look.”

“Please, Herman, don’t be tedious. There is no watch.”

With the chaos of art materials scattered on the vast floor, and on tabletops, dressers, chairs, and couch, it took twenty minutes before she found Claude Rue’s watch jammed between a bedpost and the wall.

I laughed. She didn’t laugh. I wished I could redeem the moment. Her fist closed around the watch, then opened slowly. She said, “Why did he write that letter?”

“Send him the watch and forget it.”

“He’ll believe he was right about me.”

“Who cares what he believes?”

“He hurt me.”

“Oh, just send him the watch.”

“He hurt me, really hurt me. Three days of feeling, then that letter.”

“Send it to him,” I said.

But there was a set look in Margaret’s eyes. She seemed to hear nothing.

BEFORE WORLD WAR II, Cuba was known for sugar and sex, but there was also a popular beach with sand imported from Florida, and grand hotels like the Nacional, where you could get a room with a harbor view for ten dollars, and there were gambling casinos organized by our glamorous gangsters whose faces appeared in Life magazine, among them Meyer Lansky and my uncle-by-marriage, Zev Lurie, a young man who could multiply giant numbers in his head and crack open a padlock with his hands. Habaneros, however, celebrated him for his dancing — rumba, mambo, cha-cha — rhythms heard nightly in New York, Miami, Cuba, Mexico, Central America, and much of South America, where Zev toured as an exhibition dancer before he went to Cuba and caught the fancy of big shots in the mob.

The first time I heard mambo, I was in a Chevy Bel Air, driving from Manhattan to Brooklyn with Zev’s son, my cousin Chester. We’d just been graduated from high school and were going to a party. To save me the subway ride, Chester came to pick me up. He wore alligator shoes, like Zev’s dancing shoes, and a chain bracelet of heavy silver, with a name tag, on his left wrist. It was a high school fashion, like penny loafers and bobby socks. Chester had spent time in Cuba, but mainly he lived with his mother in Brooklyn and hardly ever saw his father. Uncle Zev, I believe, didn’t love Chester too much, or not enough. This accounts for an eccentric, showy element in his personality, which distinguished him in high school as a charming ass, irresistible to girls, obnoxious to boys. As we drove, he flicked on the radio. The D.J., Symphony Sid, began talking to us, his voice full of knowing, in the manner of New York. He said we could catch Tito Puente this Wednesday at the Palladium, home of Latin music, Fifty-third and Broadway. Then Symphony Sid played a tune by Puente called “Ran Kan Kan.”