young men from suitable families. Envy struck me in the crowded subway, then petulance. Why had I been singled out for this disaster? I loved my daughter. The power of love I felt for her seemed pure, strong, and natural. Suddenly I felt like crying. Every sort of door had been open for her, she had seen the finest landscapes, she had enjoyed, I thought, the company of those people who were most free to develop their gifts.
It was raining when I left the subway. I followed her directions through a slum to a tenement. I guessed he building to be about eighty years old. Two polished marble columns supported a Romanesque arch. It even had a name. It was called the Eden. I saw the angel with the flaming sword, the naked couple, stooped, their hands over their privates. Masaccio? That was when we went to visit her in Florence. So I entered Eden like an avenging angel, but once under the Romanesque arch I found a corridor as narrow as the companionway in a submarine, and the power of light over my spirits?always considerable?was in this case very depressing, the lights in the hall were so primitive and sorry. Flights of stairs often appear in my dreams, and the stairs I began to climb had a galling look of unreality. I heard Spanish spoken, the roar of water from a toilet, music, and the barking of dogs.
Moved by anger, or perhaps by the drinks I had had at the club, I went up three or four flights at a brisk clip and then found myself suddenly winded; forced to stop short in my climb and engage in a humiliating struggle for breath. It was several minutes before I could continue, and I went the rest of the way slowly. Flora had tacked one of her calling cards to the door. I knocked. “Hi, Daddy,” she said brightly, and I kissed her on the brow. Oh, this much of it was good, fresh, and strong. I felt a burst of memory, a recollection of all the happiness we had shared. The door opened onto a kitchen and beyond this was another room. “I want you to meet Peter,” she said.
“Hi,” said Peter.
“How do you do,” I said.
“See what we’ve made,” said Flora. “Isn’t it divine? We’ve just finished it. It was Peter’s idea.”
What they had made, what they had done was to purchase a skeleton with an armature from a medical supply house and glue butterflies here and there to the polished bone. I recognized some of the specimens from my youth and recognized that I would not at that time have been able to afford them. There was a Catagramme Astarte on the shoulder bone, a Sapphira in one eye socket, and a large cluster of Appia Zarinda at the pubis. “Marvelous,” I said, “marvelous,” trying to conceal my distaste. Compared to the useful tasks of life, the thought of these two grown people gluing expensive butterflies to the polished bones of some poor stranger made me intensely irritable. I sat in a canvas chair and smiled at Flora. “How are you, my dear?”
“Oh, I’m fine, Daddy,” she said. “I’m fine.”
I kept myself from remarking on either her clothing or her hair. She was dressed all in black, and her hair was straight. The purpose of this costume or uniform escaped me. It was not becoming. It did not appeal to the senses. It seemed to reflect on her self-esteem; it seemed like a costume of mourning or penance, a declaration of her indifference to the silks that I enjoy on women; but what were her reasons for despising finery? His costume was much more bewildering. Was its origin Italian? I wondered. The shoes were effeminate, and the jacket was short, but he looked more like a street boy in nineteenth-century London than someone on the Corso. That would be excepting his hair. He had a beard, a mustache, and long dark curls that reminded me of some minor apostle in a third-rate Passion Play. His face was not effeminate, but it was delicate, and seemed to me to convey a marked lack of commitment.
“Would you like some coffee, Daddy?” Flora asked.
“No, thank you, dear,” I said. “Is there anything to drink?”
“We don’t have anything,” she said.
“Would Peter be good enough to go out and get me something?” I asked.
“I guess so,” Peter said glumly, and I told myself that he was probably not intentionally rude. I gave him a ten-dollar bill and asked him to get me some bourbon.
“I don’t think they have bourbon,” he said.
“Well, then, Scotch,” I said.
“They drink mostly wine in the neighborhood,” Peter said.
Then I settled on him a clear, kindly gaze, thinking that I would have him murdered. From what I know of the world there are still assassins to be hired, and I would pay someone to put a knife in his back or push him off a roof. My smile was broad, clear, and genuinely murderous, and the boy slipped into a green coat?another piece of mummery?and went out.
“You don’t like him?” Flora asked.
“I despise him,” I said.
“But, Daddy, you don’t know him,” Flora said.
“My dear, if I knew him any better I would wring his neck.”
