Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“So,” I told Nate, “I asked her. And as you saw for yourself, they were married. I made a match, Nate, I made a match.”

“Well,” Nate said uncomfortably, “I wish you all the luck. She’s beautiful.”

“What am I, Nate, chopped liver?”

“All the luck.”

“Thank you, Nate.” I had no desire to make him any more uncomfortable. “Listen,” I said, “I’d better go find Margaret.”

“Sure.”

I walked away, nodding happily to all the guests— my guests, I thought, my guests. Margaret had dowered me handsomely. It was a different feeling, I saw, to give the party, even if I was giving only nominally.

As I passed the USO troupe I heard Nate say, “It’s an international incident.”

“What I want to know is who gave him the two bucks for the Cardinal?” one of his comics said. “Margaret,” I said. “No offense,” he said shamefacedly. “None taken,” I said.

I continued my happy walks through the gardens, nodding and smiling to everyone. I had a greeting for everybody. “Baron,” I said. “Countess.” I went through the clipped arch of an enormous hedge. “General,” I said. “Premier.” I strolled past a fountain where a group of distinguished-looking people stood somewhat protectively around an infirm old man. “King,” I said, “how are you?”

It was wonderful. I felt the special immunity of my elation. I was a genuinely charming man. I oozed not sophistication so much as a sort of genial novelty. Men could restore themselves in my presence. I went among them like someone bearing a gift; it was life itself I was prepared to show them. I could join any of these people. I had things to tell them all. I could speak to the point about triumphs and about times I thought the game was up; I could bring them my life as a happy lesson in persistence, turning it before them like some bright crystal to catch the sun. Perhaps Margaret even got as good as she gave. It was only a pity that I was taking her away to America before I had the opportunity to prove it. I was the incarnate American-con-artist-adventurer-rustler-Mississippi-river-boat-gambler, a sort of Medici in my own right, or what narrowly passed for right among the breed. Add to this the fact that I was an understander, going the merely compassionate one better, and Margaret came out almost ahead.

Was this what they meant by happiness? Why, it was wonderful to be happy. I would have tried it years ago had I known. Suddenly I felt I had to sit down to think about it. Very carefully I held the crease in my morning trousers and sat down beneath a tree. I placed my top hat beside me.

Margaret came up. “You’ll stain your clothes,” she said.

“Margaret,” I said, “until ten minutes ago I never felt cute. Now I feel it. I feel waves of cuteness. Am I cute, Margaret? I mean really cute? It’s very important.”

“Well, you’re more curious than cute,” she said. She stepped back happily to appraise me. “You know, I never noticed before, but you don’t wear clothes very well. Boswell, you’re a little slobby.”

“But am I cute?”

“No,” she said seriously. “Your real charm is your despair. I married you for it.”

“It’s left me, Margaret,” I said. “I don’t feel it any more.”

“It will come back.”

“I hope so, Margaret.”

“It will come back,” she said. “Just think of death.” I had told Margaret about death.

I contemplated death for a while. At first it seemed difficult, far-fetched among these lovely people in this lovely garden, but by degrees it began to take on its old validity. I pretended it was two years hence. Already the garden seemed not so crowded, a little desolate even, the voices more subdued. The infirm old king was gone, and two or three of the other old people. I projected five years into the future. There was not much change. Some of the younger people had come into their prime and many of the old ones still hung on. I increased the tempo, stepping up the future by ten years, fifteen. Now you could see the difference. The place was half empty. If you didn’t know better you might have thought there had been a war. Nate Lace was gone. Penner, that old saint, had been gathered to his reward. I pushed time ahead another two years. It was child’s play now; I need only leap ahead by months, even by weeks, to empty the garden. In another year Margaret herself would be gone. And I wasn’t feeling too good either.

It was my statistic trick and it always worked. Whenever things got to looking up, whenever the sense of fate seemed to leave me, the old confidence in withering catastrophe, I would think of the future in order to restore order to my life. It’s amazing. You’re sitting in a crowded theater and you think, One of these people will die in an automobile accident this year, eleven will have heart attacks, seven will be stricken by cancer, two will be shot, one will commit suicide, four will die of blood diseases, three of wounds that will not heal. And so on. And so forth.

“You’ll really have to get up,” Margaret said.

“I was getting up,” I said.

“The Grand Master wants to see you. He sent me to look for you.”

“Why?”

“Well, to talk to you. He’s a little angry, I think.”

“Why?”

“I told him about the settlement I made on you,” Margaret said.

“It’s not his business,” I said. “He can tell the White Pope, but he can’t tell me.”

“Of course he can’t, darling, and I’m sure he won’t say very much, but he wants you to explain it.”

At the palace the Grand Master was in his study, a young priest told me. He took me to the huge double doors and knocked for me. A voice answered, and the priest nodded and left me. I pushed the heavy doors and entered a remarkable room. I had expected books, rich carpets, a fat, illuminated globe, but it was empty except for a crucifix and a very long table. The table was familiar from the movies: people drank mead at it. I expected to see it bruised from so many heavy mugs having been thumped against it. There were high casement windows all the way around the room; the effect was somehow like being in a cloister. The shutters on all but one of the windows had been pulled and fight came into the room queerly angled through this single window as though it were a gangplank fixed to a ship, or, perhaps purposefully, some oddly illuminated tunnel that led to heaven. The table had been placed along the wall opposite the door, as if it had been set there to make room for dancing. The arrangement unbalanced the huge room and I didn’t seem to walk so much as pitch forward into it. Ah, the Jesuitical intelligence, I thought.

The Grand Master had placed himself in silhouette in front of the open window at the far side of the long table. He had removed his ceremonial vestments and was dressed now in the plain suit of the ordinary priest. As I stepped toward him I felt like someone in a black and white film. The bright gardens behind him seemed part of a different world.

Despite my boasts to Nate, I had taken the Grand Master for granted. Margaret had explained the tradition of his marrying all the Medicis. It went back five centuries. Until now it hadn’t puzzled me that I had become involved with something that had gone on for five centuries. Well, so what? Nobody ever said man’s traditions were mortal.

Though he had spoken in a firm, clear voice a moment ago, the Grand Master now seemed to be asleep. He was an old man, as old as Herlitz had been. His face, as difficult to see in that dark room as if it had been in a painting in a church, seemed even in repose faintly cruel, used to power. It was no different from the Renaissance faces I had seen in portraits in the Uffizi when I had gone with Margaret to Florence. (Margaret still had rooms there — that was part of the five centuries, too — though her family had given the palace to the state long ago.) It was a pale face with a surprising patch of red on each cheek, faintly like the high spoiled blush painted on dolls. It was undeniably handsome, though drained by its long familiarity with power, as though power were a sort of bad habit like alcohol or narcotics that ultimately ravaged the features. Its expression was what people euphemistically called “aristocratic,” and was at least one part a faint fear and two parts a boredom with the stupidity of others’ responses. Clearly, the Grand Master loved a mystery. To give myself the advantage I tried to imagine him naked, on the toilet, dead. I couldn’t; he had a tenacious dignity and I began, despite myself, to admire him.