Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

“We vote Democratic. We got a name for ourselves all over the world as nigger-lovers.”

“Just more anti-Semitism,” someone said sadly.

“I’m not going to change your minds,” Preminger said. “Why don’t we just stop talking about it?”

“That’s the ticket,” Lena Jacobson said. “He’s young, he’s an idealist. Leave him to heaven.”

During dinner they wanted his opinions on Vietnam, on welfare and minimum hourly wage laws. What concerned them most, however, was the campus situation — SDS, the Weathermen. Why were they so angry? They saw him, he realized at last, as a representative of the younger generation. He was there to be baited.

“For God’s sake,” he cried, “look at my hair. Is it longer than yours? Am I wearing bellbottoms? Is anything tie-dyed? I swear to you, I washed my hands before I came to the table.”

“Drugs. What about drugs?”

“I take ten milligrams of Coumadin.”

“You hear? He admits it.”

“It’s a blood-thinner. I had a heart attack.”

“Do you smoke Mary Jane? Have you ever smoked horse?”

“You don’t smoke horse. You inject it.”

“You know an awful lot about it.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Do you drop acid?”

“I’m thirty-seven years old.”

“This boy saved my life,” Lena pleaded.

“It’s true,” Jack said. “No more.”

They ate the rest of the meal in silence.

Afterwards they went back into the living room. Marshall poured himself a very large bourbon. Two of the women went into the kitchen to help Lena with the dishes. A third walked around the apartment and studied the photographs — there might have been a hundred of them — on the Jacobsons’ walls. “Lena, this one of Laurie, it’s very nice. I never saw it.”

“The one with Milton’s grandson?” Lena called.

“The blond?”

“Sherman. Milton’s grandson.”

“Who’s Milton?” a man asked.

“Wait, I can’t hear you, the disposal’s on.”

“I said, who’s Milton? ”

“Milton,” Lena called from the kitchen, “Sherman’s grampa. Paul’s partner’s father-in-law.” She came into the living room, drying her hands on a dish towel. “A brilliant man. And what a gentleman! You remember, Jack, when we were to California and he had us to supper in his home? Brilliant. A brilliant man.”

“What’s so brilliant about him?” Preminger asked.

“He’s eighty-four years old if he’s a day.”

“But what’s so brilliant about him?”

“He’s brilliant. A genius.”

“How?” asked Preminger.

“How? How what?”

“How is he brilliant? How’s he a genius?”

“That’s right. He’s very brilliant.”

“How?”

“He’s eighty-four years old if he’s a day.”

“That doesn’t make him brilliant,” Preminger said.

“I didn’t say that made him brilliant.”

“I saved your life,” Preminger told her, “I think that entitles me to an explanation of how Milton, Sherman’s grampa, Paul’s partner’s father-in-law, is a genius.”

“Hey, you,” Jack Jacobson said.

“No, Jack, he’s right. You want to know why he’s brilliant? I’ll tell you why he’s brilliant. He’s brilliant because he’s got brains.”

“What sort of brains? What does he think about?”

“He’s retired. He’s eighty-four years old. He’s retired.”

“I see. He’s retired,” Preminger said, “does that mean he isn’t brilliant anymore?”

“He’s just as brilliant as he ever was.”

“How?”

“He’s got a house.”

“He’s got a house? That makes him brilliant? That he’s got a house?”

“He’s got fifteen rooms.”

“So?”

“It’s on a hill. In the Hollywood Hills. On a steep hill. On the top of a steep hill in the Hollywood Hills. They call it a hill. It’s a mountain.”

“Then why do they call it a hill?”

“With a private road that winds up the mountain. And when you get to the top there’s his house. With a patio. Beautiful. With a beautiful patio.”

“How is he brilliant?”

“I’m telling you. In the patio there are marble slabs. Slabs of marble. Like from the most beautiful statues. And the truck that brought them to set them in the patio broke down on the hill. On the mountain. And the old gentleman was so impatient he couldn’t wait. The driver went back down the hill to get help, but Milton couldn’t wait. Eighty-four years old and he picked up the slab from the back of the truck and put it on his shoulder and carried it by himself up the mountain. It weighed ninety pounds.”

“Oh,” Preminger said, “you mean he’s strong. You don’t mean he’s brilliant. You mean he’s strong.”

“I mean he’s brilliant.”

“ How? How is he brilliant? ”

“When his wife saw what he was doing she nearly died. ‘Milton,’ she yelled, ‘you must be crazy. Carrying such weight up a mountain. Wait till the truck is fixed.’ But he wouldn’t listen and went down for another slab. And for another and another. He must have carried eight slabs up the hill. A thousand pounds.”

“That makes him brilliant? An eighty-four-year-old man carrying that kind of weight up a mountain because he wasn’t patient enough to wait for the truck to be repaired?”

“Ah,” Lena said, “it was an open truck. He thought people would steal the marble before the driver came back. He worked five hours, six.”

“What makes him brilliant? How’s he a genius?”

“Wise guy,” Lena screamed, “when the driver finally got back with the part for the truck Milton couldn’t straighten up. His neck was turned around from where the weight of the slabs of marble had rested on it and he couldn’t move it. He was like a cripple. He couldn’t straighten up. He couldn’t turn his head. They had to put him to bed!”

“ What makes him brilliant? ” Preminger was shouting.

“What makes him brilliant? I’ll tell you what makes him brilliant. He was in bed five months. Paralyzed. The best doctors came to him. They couldn’t do a thing. It strained him so much what he’d done he couldn’t even talk it hurt his neck so. He had a television brought into his bedroom. He watched it all day. Everything he watched. If his family came to him he waved them away. He watched the television all day and late into the night. And his favorite program was Johnny Carson. He stayed up for that. And one night Johnny had on a — what do you call it — a therapist, and the therapist was talking about how arthritics could be helped by exercise and she had this gadget it was like a steel tree. It was set up on the stage and there were bars and like rings hanging from it, and the therapist showed how a person could straighten out a crooked limb or a bad joint by hanging from a ring here and a bar there and stretching like a monkey.”

“So?”

“So? So he ordered one and had it set up in his living room. Jack, you remember, you saw it. In the middle of his living room like it was a piece of furniture, and every day he’d practice a little. Then a little more. He’d pull this way and he’d pull that way. And even though it hurt him this brilliant man didn’t give up. He practiced pulling and hanging — eighty-four years old — and finally it began to work. And Milton can turn his head today. He can nod and shake it as good as a person half his age. He can even straighten up a little. So now you know. Wise guy! Now you know why he’s such a brilliant genius. There, are you satisfied? ”

The dinner party changed nothing. He still reported for duty at the pool every morning, and though he rarely climbed the high platform any more, he was able to survey the pool from where he sat beside them gossiping.