Страница 64 из 194
There was a great opening for Rudolph in the ancestral oven. “I am going into grains.” Or perhaps, “I intend to join the German army. My father is an alumnus.”
Rudolph felt a sick surge of envy for all his friends. Be
On a night like this you could understand why people robbed banks.
He wasn’t going to come to any more parties. He didn’t belong there, even if he was the only one who knew it.
He wanted to go home. He was tired. He was always tired these days, somehow. Aside from the bicycle route in the morning, he had to tend the store every day from four to seven, after school closed. The widow had decided she couldn’t work the whole day, she had children at home to take care of. It had meant giving up the track and the debating teams and his marks were slipping, too, as he never seemed to find the energy to study. He’d been sick, too, with a cold that started after Christmas and seemed to be hanging on all winter.
“Julie,” he said, “let’s go home.”
She sat up straight on his lap, surprised.
“It’s early,” she said, “it’s a nice party.”
“I know, I know,” he said, sounding more impatient than he intended. “I just want to get out of here.”
“We can’t do anything in my house,” she said. “My folks have people over for bridge. It’s Friday.”
“I just want to go home,” he said.
“You go.” She got off his lap and stood over him angrily. “I’ll find somebody else to take me home.”
He was tempted to spill out everything he had been thinking. Maybe she’d understand then.
“Boy, oh boy,” Julie said. There were tears in her eyes. “This is the first party we’ve been to in months and you want to go home practically before we get here.”
“I just feel lousy,” he said. He stood up.
“It’s peculiar,” she said. “Just the nights you’re with me you feel lousy. I bet you feel just fine the nights you go out with Teddy Boylan.”
“Oh, lay off Boylan, will you, Julie?” Rudolph said, “I haven’t seen him for weeks.”
“What’s the matter—he run out of peroxide?”
“Joke,” Rudolph said wearily.
She turned on her heel, her pony tail swinging, and went over to the group around the phonograph. She was the prettiest girl in the room, snub-nosed, scrubbed, smart, slender, dear, and Rudolph wished she would go away someplace for six months, a year, and then come back, after he had gotten over being tired, and had a chance to figure everything out in peace and they could start all over again.
He went upstairs and put on his coat and left the house without saying good night to anyone. Judy Garland was on the phonograph now, singing “The Trolley Song.”
It was raining outside, a cold, drifting, February misty river rain, blowing at him in the wind. He coughed inside his coat, with the wet trickling down inside his turned-up collar. He walked slowly toward home, feeling like crying. He hated these spats with Julie, and they were becoming more and more frequent. If they made love to each other, really made love, not that frustrating, foolish necking that made them both ashamed after it, he was sure they wouldn’t be scratching at each other all the time. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It would have to be hidden, they’d have to lie, they’d have to sneak off somewhere like criminals. He had long ago made up his mind. It was going to be perfect or it wasn’t going to happen.
The hotel manager threw open the door of the suite. There was a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. There was a smell of jasmine and thyme in the air. The two bronzed young people looked around the room coolly, glanced at the Mediterranean. Uniformed bellboys brought in many pieces of leather luggage and distributed them around the rooms.
“Ça vous plaît, Monsieur?” the manager asked.
“Çava,” the bronzed young man said.
“Merci, Monsieur.” The hotel manager backed out of the room.
The two bronzed young people went out onto the balcony and looked at the sea. They kissed against the blueness. The smell of jasmine and thyme became stronger.
Or …
It was only a small log cabin, with the snow piled high against its sides. The mountains reared behind it. The two bronzed young people came in shaking the snow from their clothes, laughing. There was a fire roaring in the fireplace. The snow was so high it covered the windows. They were all alone in the high world. The two bronzed young people sank down to the floor in front of the fire.
Or …
The two bronzed young people walked along the red carpet on the platform. The Twentieth Century to Chicago stood on the tracks, gleaming. The two young people went past the porter in his white coat, into the car. The stateroom was full of flowers. There was the smell of roses. The two bronzed young people smiled at each other and strolled through the train to the club car for a drink.
Or …
Rudolph coughed miserably in the rain as he turned into Vanderhoff Street. I’ve seen too goddamn many movies, he thought.
The light from the cellar was coming up through the grating in front of the bakery. The Eternal Flame. Axel Jordache, the Unknown Soldier. If his father died, Rudolph thought, would anyone remember to put out the light?
Rudolph hesitated, the keys to the house in his hand. Ever since the night his mother had made that crazy speech about thirty thousand dollars, he had felt sorry for his father. His father walked around the house slowly and quietly, like a man who has just come out of a hospital after a major operation, a man who had felt the warning tap of death on his shoulder. Axel Jordache had always seemed strong, terrifyingly strong, to Rudolph. His voice had been loud, his movements abrupt and careless. Now his long silences, his hesitant gestures, his slow, apologetic way of spreading a newspaper or fixing himself a pot of coffee, careful not to make any u
He went over to the door leading to the bakery, unlocked it and passed through it to the back room and descended into the cellar.
His father wasn’t doing anything, just sitting on his bench, staring ahead of him at the oven, the bottle of whiskey on the floor beside him. The cat lay crouched in the corner.
“Hello, Pa,” Rudolph said.
His father turned his head slowly toward him and nodded.
“I just came down to see if there was something I could do.”
“No,” his father said. He reached down and picked up the bottle and took a small swig. He offered the bottle to Rudolph. “Want some?”
“Thanks.” Rudolph didn’t want any whiskey, but he felt his father would like it if he took some. The bottle was slippery from his father’s sweat. He took a swig. It burned his mouth and throat.
“You’re soaking wet,” his father said.
“It’s raining out.”
“Take off your coat. You don’t want to sit there in a wet coat.”
Rudolph took off his coat and hung it on a hook on the wall. “How’re things, Pa?” he asked. It was a question he had never asked his father before.
His father chuckled quietly, but didn’t answer. He took another swig of the whiskey.
“What’d you do tonight?” Axel asked.
“I went to a party.”
“A party.” Axel nodded. “Did you play your horn?”
“No.”
“What do people do at a party these days?”
“I don’t know. Dance. Listen to music. Kid around.”
“Did I ever tell you I went to dancing school when I was a boy?” Axel said. “In Cologne. In white gloves. They taught me how to bow. Cologne was nice in the summertime. Maybe I ought to go back there. They’ll be starting everything up from scratch there now, maybe that’s the place for me. A ruin for the ruins.”