Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

Spence said quietly — out of character but into another maybe — that the object of this little coffee break had seemed for a time to be to go away from all that information into — but how had she made him talk so much? — and who was that imprisoned child? (He darted a look out the window and she knew he was out there for an instant.)

Oh a mutual acquaintance had had these dreams from Mel’s son and relayed them to the Chilean (a fellow economist, apparently, though the Chilean seemed to joke), said her receiving these dreams meant that she knew much more and—

Spence was looking down at Pearl and out the window, and asked what Mel’s escaped child had to do with it all.

Imprisoned child, said Pearl, with a laugh and a shrug. But what about this opera in the warehouse?

I’ve been pulled back in, said Spence glumly.

So have I, said Pearl Myles. Mel said my phone call meant I still questioned his wife Sarah’s death.

You do? said Spence.

Which would never have occurred to me, since I merely believe that sometimes we become the person we’ve been in the dream or always were simultaneously.

Spence thought this didn’t make clear sense but he had had a dream or two like Pearl’s and there was a We talking in some of it.

Yes, said Pearl.

The opera involved favors Spence thought three or four people were doing and what it led to was anybody’s guess, possibly unknown, but probably a feather in the cap (or someway utilized) of an opera star’s boyfriend—

Ah, Pearl had heard of him.

— but where the opera came from was getting to be another matter.

You like opera? said the Greek.

Pulled back in? asked Pearl, rising as if not to be excluded yet maybe to

go-

From where I was when I left the.rehearsal, said Spence.

You are in the opera? asked the Greek.

You were feeling something when you left that place, said Pearl, and Spence said, It’s why I’m concerned about your safety but I’ve got to go. Why do you look like you’re already in a couple of places? said Pearl — you probably know what your associate asked me over the phone as well as you know I got in touch with the Ojibwa healer Santee at the aeronautics school as soon as I learned the Park Avenue doctor had obtained a tapeworm through him.

I used to know all these things, said Spence. As recently as yesterday, in fact. I guess I have to go on being myself.

Your associate was upset underneath that pleasant sophistication of his, and he asked me if I had heard further from the Ojibwa as to the progress of his aeronautic training and if it was true someone was presenting him with a plane upon graduation.

And? said Spence.

And if certain journals of my old pupil’s family that had been taken by his brother contained information—

I am concerned for your safety, said Spence.

She asked him why, like a woman rather sternly on her own, and said he could have her phone number if he wanted it.

Because of what you are carrying in your head, said Spence.

Well, if he meant the information that had come variously to the Chilean economist — a charming, rather funny man, but in some kind of, pain, yes? — it was of a German sub that had been borrowed (or, he said, perhaps rented!) in 1945 for the escape of a thirty-year-old composer who had with her an unperformed anti-Nazi symphony with odd subject matter but a very plain message—

And it passed near the Jersey coast, said Spence. The Greek took one small step closer. Spence glanced at his watch and pressed the date button and— What’s the matter? she said — Oh either this thing is flipping afternoon today into tomorrow morning, or— Maybe you need a new battery!

— and while there is no question that she surfaced in Chile and was known to be trying in the most unselfish way imaginable to get produced a mysteriously original yet popular or somehow familiar opera partly composed by her great-grandmother, rumor now had it that the submarine had paused off the American coast to take on or let off some fugitive and had been threatened by a waterspout and disappeared but that the composer had more importantly been the great or grand niece of a legendary Chilean zoologist who had traced the scent glands of an inter-American mammal to the night habitat of a hermit-healer where she had left her mark upon a firearm later to figure in the Mayn family fortunes and that whether the reference was to her work with desert javelinas or to the opera still unperformed, there had been nothing equal to it since her day—

— since who? said Spence reaching and jamming his hand into his pocket so the Greek waiter stepped back.

Why, since Mena, said Pearl, shouldering her bag. Since Mena — the obscure sister (think I got it right) of the young symphony composer’s great-grandmother.

Desde Mena, said Spence.

This was the information you meant? said Pearl, and Spence opened his mouth to answer but could only ask what had been the opera’s strange subject matter, so that the tall and dear woman in front of him could quickly say, Mountains, mountains that could speak and think and dream and so forth, did it sound like Wagner or Berchtesgaden? certainly not New Jersey! — and still keep alive her query (This was the information you meant?): and Spence, who felt he could not see straight while Pearl Myles felt he saw her through a fearfully expanding angle, and each understood the other, told her that Jim Mayn never dreamt, whereas he, Spence, had never… but he could only let it show, not find the words, but then said, You think I may be a brother of Mayn’s.

Now I do, said Pearl. Some information is worth more.

They were going separately toward the door, feeling somewhat clothed amidst the booths. Spence asked to know why she had really looked up the Ojibway — Ojibvva, as she said — and she said it was because of her husband who had left her after an argument to do with a father’s death caused in her opinion by a retouched composite photograph of two other shots taken by a pro with the same name as the Indian healer-flyer.

At the door she bent forward slightly to kiss Spence on the cheek just where an abandoned tear stood. Yes, he would like her number, he said. The Greek nearby sighed, amused — but when she said, Here or home? and Spence/ Santee said, Home, and she named that old number, he lifted from his pocket a brittle oblong of paper with two phone numbers on it. I like a little permanence, he said. Oh my God! Margaret Mayne’s funeral! said Pearl Myles, and felt in her fingers the paper she had handed Alexander on the day of his wife’s unwanted burial.

A bookmark, said Spence, and was gone.

In the plate-glass window of the bank the two knew each other. What do you think you’re doing? you were following me, weren’t you? asked the gaunt-faced, once-murderous man in the windbreaker (suede), medium-small backpack (red), foreign cigarette burning away. I’d just given up, said Spence, you turned away from where we were supposed to meet and I’m going there anyway, I’m looking at myself to see what was wrong with me. Was? croaked T.W., exhaling as Spence turned to face him. Yes, in the eyes of the man I’m going to see I hope, said Spence. That’s his problem, said T.W.; who is he? He might have been my brother all these years, said Spence. Listen, said the man, if I got into tracking down my family, it’d be a full-time occupation. A fur tail was poking out of his backpack. T.W. pulled out two small green lozenges Spence knew to be eucalyptus from Sweden specially made for singers, and popped them into his mouth. T.W. scratched the cactus-green double lobe of his right ear. I’ve decided to believe you that you didn’t dig up that firing-squad picture yourself but got given it like you said, though how you could have thought the restaurant in Minnesota went with the Cuban firing squad I still can’t see but my father’s dead and my mother I hear got married again so who cares? Probably not even the electrician who married her.