Collected Stories

Guarnerius.”

“So you met for breakfast?”

“Yes. And then I was taken to meet the boy’s family. He turns out to be a young Archimedes type, a prodigy. They’re refugees, probably on welfare. Fair enough, that among all the criminals the Cubans stuck us with there should be a genius or two….”

“By the way, are you sure he’s such a genius?”

“You can’t go by me. He got a fat four-year scholarship in physiology. His brothers are busboys, if that. And that’s where Nessa is meddling. The mother is in a state.”

“Then she gave you her violin—an errand to do?”

“I accepted to avoid something worse. I paid a fair price for the instrument and by now it’s quintupled in value. I want an appraisal from Bein and Fushi, just in case it enters Nessa’s head to sell the fiddle and buy this Raul from his mother. Elope. Who knows what…. We can go to Bein together.”

More errands for Katrina. Victor had sent Vanessa away to avoid a meeting with his lady friend, his Madame Bovary.

“We can lay the fiddle under a seat. I suppose that leftwing students came to your talk.”

“Why so? I had a bigger crowd than that. The application of The Eighteenth Brumaire to American politics and society… the farce of the Second Empire. Very timely.”

“It doesn’t sound too American to me.”

“What, more exotic than Japanese electronics, German automobiles, French cuisine? Or Laotian exiles settled in Kansas?”

Yes, she could see that, and see also how the subject would appear natural to Victor Wulpy from New York, of East Side origin, a street boy, sympathetic to mixed, immigrant and alien America; broadly tolerant of the Cuban boyfriend; exotic himself, with a face like his, and the Greek cap probably manufactured in Taiwan.

Victor had gone on talking. He was telling her now about a note he had received at the hotel from a fellow he had known years ago—a surprise that did not please him. “He takes the tone of an old chum. Wonderful to meet again after thirty years. He happens to be in town. And good old Greenwich Village—I hate the revival of these relationships that never were. Meantime, it’s true, he’s become quite a celebrity.”

“Would I know the name?”

“Larry Wrangel. He had a recent success with a film called The Kronos Factor. Same type as 2001 or Star Wars.”

“Of course,” said Katrina. “That’s the Wrangel who was featured in People magazine. A late-in-life success, they called him. Ten years ago he was still making porno movies. Interesting.” She spoke cautiously, having disgraced herself in San Francisco. Even now she couldn’t be sure that Victor had forgiven her for dragging him to see M*A*S*H. Somewhere in his mental accounts there was a black mark still. Bad taste approaching criminality, he had once said. “He must be very rich. The piece in People said that his picture grossed four hundred million. Did he attend your lecture?”

“He wrote that he had an engagement, so he might be a bit late, and could we have a drink afterward. He gave a number, but I didn’t call.”

“You were what—tired? disgruntled?”

“In the old days he was bearable for about ten minutes at a time—just a character who longed to be taken seriously. The type that bores you most when he’s most earnest. He came from the Midwest to study philosophy at NYU and he took up with the painters at the Cedar Bar and the writers on Hudson Street. I remember him, all right—a little guy, quirky, shrewd, offbeat. I think he supported himself by writing continuity for the comic books— Buck Rogers, Batman, Flash Gordon. He carried a scribbler in his zipper jacket and jotted down plot ideas. I lost track of him, and I don’t care to find the track again—Trina, I was disturbed by some discoveries I made about my invitation from the Executives Association.”

“What is this about the Executives?”

“I found out that a guy named Bruce Beidell is the main adviser to the speakers committee, and it turns out that he was the one who set up the invitation, and saw to it that I’d be told. He knows I don’t like him. He’s a rat, an English Department academic who became a culture politician in Washington. In the early Nixon years he built big expectations on Spiro Agnew; he used to tell me that Agnew was always studying serious worthy books, asking him for bigger and better classics. Reading! To read Beidell’s mind you’d need a proctoscope. Suddenly I find that he’ll be on the panel tonight, one of the speakers. And that’s not all. It’s even more curious. The man who will introduce me is Ludwig Felsher. The name won’t mean much to you, but he’s an old old-timer. Before 1917 there was a group of Russian immigrants in the U.S., and Lenin used some of these people after the revolution to do business for him—Armand Hammer types who made ingenious combinations of big money with Communist world politics and became colossally rich. Felsher brought over masterpieces from the Hermitage to raise currency for the Bolsheviks. Duveen and Berenson put in a cheap bid for those treasures.” Victor had been personally offended by Berenson and detested him posthumously.

“So you’re in bad company. You never do like to share the platform.”

He used both hands to move his leg to a more comfortable position. After this effort he was very sharp. “I’ve been among pimps before. I can bear it. But it’s annoying to appear with these pricks. For a few thousand bucks: contemptible. I know this Felsher. From GPU to KGB, and his standing with American capitalists is impeccable. He’s old, puffy bald, red in the face, looks like an unlanced boil. No matter who you are, if you’ve got enough dough you’ll get bear hugs from the chief executive. You’ve made campaign contributions, you carry unofficial messages to Moscow, and you’re hugged in the Oval Office.”

Fretful. Fallen among thieves. That was why he had sent for her, not because he suddenly suspected a metastasis.

“I’ll hate seeing Beidell. Nothing but a fish bladder in his head, and the rest of him all malice and intrigue. Why are these corporation types so dumb?”

Katrina encouraged him to say more. She crossed her booted legs and offered him a listening face. Her chin was supported on bent fingers.

“Under these auspices, I don’t mind telling you my teeth are on edge,” he said.

“But, Victor, you could turn the tables on them all. You could let them have it.”

Naturally he could. If he had a mind to. It would take a lot out of him, though. But he was not one of your (nowadays) neurotic, gutless, conniving intellectual types. From those he curtly dissociated himself. Katrina saw him in two aspects, mainly. In one aspect Victor reminded her comically of the huge bad guy in a silent Chaplin movie, the bully who bent gas lamps in the street to light his cigar and had huge greasepaint eyebrows. At the same time, he was a person of intensest delicacy and of more shadings than she would ever be able to distinguish. More and more often since he became sick, he had been saying that he needed to save his strength for what mattered. And did those executives matter? They didn’t matter a damn. The Chase Manhattan, World Bank, National Security Council connections meant zilch to him, he said. He hadn’t sought them out. And it wasn’t as if they didn’t know his views. He had more than once written, on the subject announced for tonight, that true personality was not to be found at the top of either hierarchy, East or West. Between them the superpowers had the capacity to kill everybody, but there was no evidence of higher human faculties to be found in the top leadership. On both sides power was in the hands of comedians and pseudopersons. The neglect, abasement, dismissal of art was a primary cause of this degeneration. If Victor were sufficiently fired up, the executives would hear bold and unusual things from him about the valuing of life when it was bound up with the active valuing of art. But he was ailing, ruffled; his mind was tarnished. This was the condition of Victor himself. He was thinking that he shouldn’t even be here. What was he doing here in the Buffalo airport in midwinter? In this lounge? Bound for Chicago? He was not at the exact center of his own experience on days like this. There were sensations which should absolutely be turned off. And he couldn’t do that, either. He felt himself being held hostage by oblique, unidentifiable forces.

He said, “One agreeable recollection I do have of this man Wrangel. He played the fiddle in reverse. Being left-handed, he had the instrument restrung, the sound posts moved. Back then, it was important to have your little specialty. He went a long way, considering the small scale of his ingenuity. Became a big-time illusionist.”

The attendant had brought Katrina a small bottle of Dewar’s. Pouring it, she held the glass to the light to look at the powerful spirit of the spirit, like a spiral, finer than smoke. Then she said, “It may do some good to look at