Sourland

bleached, too. A sweetish scent of cologne wafted from his skin. Woods Gottschalk was a stocky perspiring young man yet oddly attractive, self-assured and commanding. His face was an actor’s face, Leah thought — unless she meant the mask-face of a Greek actor of antiquity — as if a face of ordinary dimensions had been stretched upon a large bust of a head. The effect was brightly bland as a coin, or a moon. Lines from Santayana came to Leah — a beautiful poetic text she’d read as a graduate student decades before: Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feelings once faithful, discreet and — .

“As you see I’ve stepped outside — outside ‘time’ — and slipped away from your party, Mrs. Zalk. In one of my incarnations — speaking metaphorically, of course! — I’m an emissary from Uranus — I’m a visitor here. People of your generation — my parents’ generation — and my grandparents’ generation — are so touching to me. I so admire how you carry on — you persevere. Well into the ‘new century,’ you persevere.”

Leah laughed nervously. “I’m not sure what option we have, Woods.”

“Look, I know I’m being rude — circumlocution has never been my strong point. My mother used to warn me — you knew my mother, I think — you were ‘faculty wives’ together — ‘Take care what you say, dear, it can never be unsaid.’” Woods paused. He was breathing deeply, audibly as if he’d been running. “Just, I admire you. I’m just kidding — sort of kidding — about ‘Uranus’ — being an ‘emissary.’ See, I did a research project in an undergraduate course — ‘History of Science’ — a log of the NASA ship Voyager that was launched in 1977 and didn’t ‘visit’ Uranus until 1986 — one of the ‘Ice Giants’ — composed of ice and rocks — the very soul of Uranus is ice and rocks — but such beautiful moon-rings — twenty-seven moons, at a minimum! Uranus ate into my soul, it was a porous time in my life. Now — I am over it, I think! Mrs. Zalk — Leah? — you are looking at me so strangely, as if you don’t know me! Would you care for a — cigarette?”

“Would I care for a — cigarette?” Leah stared at the blandly smiling young man as if he’d invited her to take heroin with him. “No. I would not.”

She was thinking, not only had she not seen the Gottschalks that evening in her house, she hadn’t seen either Caroline or Byron — was it Byron, or Brian? — in a long time. In fact hadn’t she heard that Caroline had been ill the previous spring…

“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Zalk. Really.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“Cigarettes. Smoking. If you smoke, or not. Our fates are genetic — determined at birth.” Woods paused, frowning. “Or do I mean — conception. Determined at conception.”

“Not entirely,” Leah said. “Nothing is determined entirely.”

“Not entirely. But then, Mrs. Zalk, nothing is entire.”

Leah wasn’t sure what they were talking about and she wasn’t sure she liked it. The disingenuous blue eyes gleamed at her behind round glasses. Woods was saying, with a downward glance, both self-deprecatory and self- displaying, “My case — I’m an ‘endomorph.’ I had no choice about it, my fate lay in my genes. My father, and my father’s father — stocky, big, with big wrists, thick stubby arms. Now Dr. Zalk, for instance — ”

“‘Dr. Zalk’? What of him?”

Dr. Zalk was Leah’s husband. It made her uneasy to be speaking of him in such formal terms. Woods, oblivious of his companion, plunged on as if confiding in Leah: “My grandfather, too. You know — ‘Hans Gottschalk.’ He was on that team that won the Nobel Prize — or it was said, he should have been on the team. I mean, he was on the team — molecular biologists — Rockefeller U. — who won the prize, and he should have won a prize, too. Anyway — Hans had ceased smoking by the age of forty but it made no difference. We’d hear all about Grandfather’s ‘willpower’ — as if what was ordinary in another was extraordinary in him, since he was an ‘extraordinary’ man — but already it was too late. Not that he knew — no one could know. Grandfather for all his genius had a genetic predisposition to — whatever invaded his lungs. So with us all — it’s in the stars.”

“Is it!” Leah tasted cold. She had no idea what Woods was talking about except she knew that Harris would be scornful. Stars!

“I think you’re brave, Leah. Giving this party you give every May at about now — opening this house — that shouldn’t become a mausoleum…”

And now — Woods was offering her a drink? — he’d slipped away from her party with not one but two wineglasses and a bottle of red wine? “If not a cigarette — you’re right, Leah, it’s a filthy habit — ‘genetics’ or not — how’s about a drink? This Burgundy is excellent.”

Leah was offended but heard herself laugh. When she told Harris about this encounter, Harris would laugh. It was not to be believed, this young man’s arrogance: “I have an extra glass here, Leah. I had a hunch that someone would come out here to join me — at large parties, that’s usually the case. Like I say, I’m an ‘emissary.’ I’m a ‘Uranian.’ I bring news, bulletins. I’d hoped you would step out here voluntarily, Mrs. Zalk — I mean, as if ‘of your own free will.’ So — let’s drink, shall we? A toast to — ”

Leah had no intention of drinking with Woods Gottschalk. But there was the glass held out to her — one of their very old wedding-present wineglasses — crystal, sparkling-clean — just washed that morning by Leah, by hand. Unable to sleep she’d risen early — anxious that the house wasn’t clean, glasses and china and silverware weren’t clean, though the Filipina cleaning woman had come just the day before.

Woods held his wineglass aloft. Leah lifted hers, reluctantly, as Woods intoned:

“‘The universe culminates in the present moment and will never be more perfect.’ Emerson, I think — or Thoreau. And who was it said — ‘Who has seen the past? The past is a mist, a mirage — no one can breathe in the past.’” Woods paused, drinking. “From the perspective of Uranus — though ‘Uranus’ is just the word, the actual planet is unfathomable — as all planets, all moons and stars and galaxies, are unfathomable — even the present isn’t exactly here. We behave as if it is, but that’s just expediency.”

Leah laughed. What was Woods saying! All that she could remember of Uranus is that it was — is? — unless it had been demoted, like Pluto — one of the remote ice-planets about which no romance had been spun, unlike Mars, Jupiter, and Venus. Or was she thinking of — Neptune? She lifted the wineglass, and drank. The wine was tart, darkly delicious. It had to be the last of the Burgundy wines her husband had purchased. Woods was saying, “These people — your friends — Dr. Zalk’s friends — and my parents’ friends — are wonderful people. Many of them — the men, at least — I mean, at the Institute — ‘extraordinary,’ like Hans Gottschalk and Harris Zalk. You’re very lucky to have one another. To ‘define’ one another in your Institute community. And the food, Leah — this isn’t the Institute catering service, is it? — but much, much better. What I’ve sampled is excellent.”

“The food is excellent. Yes.”

“I could be a caterer, I think. The hell with being an ‘emissary.’ If things had gone otherwise.”

Leah was distracted by the deep back half-acre lawn that was more ragged, seedier than she remembered. Along the sagging redwood fence were lilac bushes grown leggy and spindly and clumps of sinewy-looking grasses, tall savage wildflowers with clusters of tough little bloodred berry-blossoms that had to be poisonous. And a sizable part of the enormous old oak tree in the back had fallen as if in a storm. This past winter, there had been such fierce storms! But Leah was sure that Harris had made arrangements for their annual spring cleanup…She felt a stab of hurt, as well as chagrin, that the beautiful old oak had been so badly wounded without her knowing.

“What do you do, Woods, since you’re not a caterer? I mean — what does an ‘emissary’ actually do for a living?”

“Oh, I do what I am doing — and when I’m not, I’m doing something else.”

Woods’s tone was enigmatic, teasing. His eyes, on Leah’s face, flitted about lightly as a bee, with a threat of stinging.

“I don’t understand. What is it you do.”

“Strictly speaking, I’m a ‘dropout.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of time. Make that a capital letter T — ‘Time.’ I’ve ‘dropped out’ of Time to monitor eternity.” Woods laughed, and drank. “The crucial fact is — I am sober — these past eleven months — eleven months, nine days. I am not a caterer — not an ‘emissary’ — I just ‘bear witness’ — it’s this that propelled me here, to deliver to you.”