Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“Oh, Margaret,” I said.

“Just thinking of your career,” Margaret said lightly.

“Margaret, I am not Rudy Lip.”

“Don’t be so self-righteous,” Margaret said. “Mr. Lip serves a worthwhile purpose. Mr. Lip is a craftsman, like a leather worker or a blacksmith. You ought to feel sorry for him — and for me too. We’re both in danger of technological unemployment.”

“Margaret,” I pleaded, “talk seriously with me.”

“How can I when you wave those ridiculous opera glasses at me? Besides,” she said, “you are not a serious person.”

“I am so.”

“No,” she said. “You’re not. You are not serious. You’re only obsessed.” She was serious.

“By love,” I said lightly.

“Maybe,” she said. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“I’m taller than you are,” I said absently.

“What?”

“I’m stronger.”

“Don’t show off,” she said.

“I’m older and heavier. Oh, Margaret, we’re perfect for each other.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s because I’m a commoner.”

“Oh, honestly, Boswell,” she said impatiently, “would you want your sister to marry one of them?”

The music began and she had nothing more to say to me.

This conversation with Margaret has illustrated an important principle to me. It was something I was aware of before, of course, but it was only our exchange and something that happened earlier in the week that brought it home to me so forcefully. I had gone to one of those movie houses here in Rome where there is a variety show after the film. They are sort of haphazard and just barely professional, and I find they relax me. When the lights came on after the picture and I looked around to see who was in the house, I noticed two men coming down the aisle toward me. As usual, I was sitting in the front row in order to see into the wings, and when the men passed I saw they carried instruments. The piano player and the drummer were already set up in the pit. The men with the instruments still had their coats on. There was no way of getting into the pit unless they climbed over the railing. It was a little awkward with the instruments, and the piano player reached up and took their cases from the two men and then offered his arm to steady them as they climbed into the pit.

Once he was in the pit the taller of the two men picked up his instrument case and took out a saxophone. He was fitting the pieces together when the piano player came up and started to talk to him. By the earnest expression on both their faces I could almost guess what they were saying.

The piano player was saying, “Henry, it’ll depend upon the timing. If it looks like we’re going to be pressed we’ll just have to forget it, but if I nod after the seals I want you to go into your solo on number 14. It may work out. Douglas was telling me that the trailers will be very short tonight, but the time saved there may be lost during the collection for Victims of Earthquake Relief.”

The sax man nodded and said, “My lip’s a little thick anyway. I was doing a wedding until two this morning.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see,” the piano player said. Then he twirled around on his stool and leaning slightly forward began to address the others. “Listen,” he probably said, “take Rose’s number pianissimo. She was complaining last time that the audience couldn’t hear the taps.”

“There’s a crack in my drum,” the drummer probably said.

“Bass or snare?”

“Bass.”

“Why didn’t you get it skinned?”

“Walter the Skinner is down with flu,” the drummer probably said.

“Oh,” the piano player probably said. “Well, just hit it very lightly. That’ll work out all right in Rose’s number anyway.”

“I use the snare in Rose’s number,” the drummer probably said.

“Okay,” the piano player probably said. “Are we all straight?” He looked at the other musicians.

The other musicians nodded that they were all straight, and indeed they were. It was this which my life lacked. I had never had a conversation like this. I mean, this is the way people talk to each other. This is the way things get done. One man asks another man where Taylor Street is, or what train his wife is coming in on, or how many beds are set up in the hospital for the casualties, and the other man tells him. There’s no hanky-panky. It’s very professional. Serious! Scientific! There are no conversational flights soaring toward planes where life is not lived, no badinage, no repartee. What a calm, silent, serene world, I think.

The Principessa sensed this about me at once. She cannot love me because she thinks she cannot talk seriously to me. She is afraid of me, as one is always a little afraid of anyone who one suspects is not entirely serious. From time to time I have even felt this myself. Why else do I always have so much to say to elevator operators, to clerks, to officials? It’s as though I deliberately seek them out to practice some foreign language on them. But I haven’t the art of it, really. Even with them I am soon involved in conversational maneuvers. I fall back on my English, as it were, and instantly we are into a routine, like two people at some college reunion with nothing in common but their briefly mutual past. If I am ever to be successful in my campaign with the Principessa I must remember what I learned from the musicians. I will be ruthlessly clinical; I will introduce shop talk into love.

“Look, Principessa,” I will say, “the angle hasn’t been right. Slip this pillow beneath your buttocks. Let’s try for fifteen minutes of pre-play tonight. Of course, we’ll have to see how the time is. I haven’t had an orgasm in three weeks and I may not be able to control it. But let’s see how it works out. Are you ready? All right, begin!”

I told Margaret that I meant to have all the experiences and she said she had already had them and couldn’t we do something else, and I told her very frankly, I said, “Listen, Principessa, Margaret — dear — this is my love affair and we’ll do it my way. It’s not my fault you’re a depraved sybarite and come to me deflowered and spoiled and idly rich and all.”

“Well,” she asked, “what are all the experiences?”

“Actually,” I said, “I was hoping you could help me. After all, this is rather outside my usual line.”

“Well, what did you have in mind? Something flashy and expensive?”

“No, no,” I said. “I think not. Why not utilize the resources at hand?”

“Like Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday?”

“That’s it, that’s it,” I said. “You can pretend you’re just an ordinary shopgirl and I’ll be an ordinary shopper. Cinderella in reverse, you see. Young love at its simplest and most innocent, with all the anxiety about screwing and everything left in. I’m thirty-two years old but I think I could handle it.”

“Well,” she said doubtfully.

“Please,” I said. “You’ll see.”

“What could we do? The things I can think of don’t seem like much fun.”

“Say what you’re thinking.”

“We could go to the Colosseum by moonlight,” she said doubtfully.

“Excellent,” I said. “We’ll do that. For a starter we’ll go to the Colosseum by moonlight.”

We went to the Colosseum by moonlight, but we had to wait two days because it was raining. On the morning of the third day I called Margaret and told her that the paper said fair, and we promised to meet that night

“I’ll pick you up at the pensione,” Margaret said.

“No, no,” I said. “I mustn’t see your car. Come in by bus.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Margaret said. “No buses come this far out the Appia Antica that time of night.”