“The
A friendly chat. It was now half past two. At noon Katrina had been afraid that Victor might hit Wrangel on the head with his stick for saying “Most ideas are trivial.” How well they were getting along now.
“You didn’t mean that you were any kind of John the Baptist?” said Wrangel.
“No, it just drove me wild to be patronized.”
For the moment, Victor was being charming. “Most people know better than to lack charm,” he had once told Katrina. “Even harsh people have their own harsh charm. Some are
It was plainly Wrangel’s purpose to resume—to develop a serious conversation. It was the drive for serious conversation that had made him cross the continent from L. A. to Buffalo. Trina was beginning to see a certain efficiency and toughness in Wrangel. It was not by accident that he had earned so many millions. While he seemed “humbly happy” in Victor’s company, he was also opinionated, obstinate. In the past, and even today, Victor had dismissed him—not a mind of the A category—and Wrangel was determined to win a higher rating. He thought he deserved it. That was Katrinas view. The shy, astute man in the arctic fox coat had Victor Wulpy to himself—a failing Victor, but Wrangel would not know that, since Victor carried himself so firmly, and after a few slugs of Scotch he sat up as princely as ever. He was, however, very far from himself. He was in one of those badly lighted (on purpose) no-man’s-land restaurants that airports specialize in; he had eaten all the sesame sticks and crackers on the table, and when he put one of his hands under the back of Katrina’s sweater she felt an icy pang through her silk slip.
The food was served just as Victor was called to the phone, and Wrangel asked the waiter to take it back to the kitchen and keep it warm.
Tilting to the right to avoid the hanging ornaments, fixtures with gilt chains, Victor followed the hostess to the telephone.
“Do you know,” said Katrina, partly to forestall a conversation about Victor, “I was interested to hear that you started out by inventing plots for science comics. You must be very quick at it. I’ve been trying and trying to do a children’s story about an elephant stuck on the top floor of a Chicago department store, and you have no idea how it drags and bothers me. When the animal was taken up in the freight elevator, she tested the floor, and she was reluctant to trust it. Her mahout—the trainer—sweet-talked her into it. She was a great success in the store, but when it came time to go down and she tested the elevator again with her foot, she wouldn’t enter.”
“They’re stuck with her? How to get her out?” He gave one of his intense but restricted smiles. “What have you thought of?”
“Piano movers; the fire department; drugging the elephant; hypnotism; dismantling a wall; a wooden ramp down the staircase.”
“A builders’ crane?” said Wrangel.
“Sure, but the roof would have to be opened.”
“Of course it would. Even if there were a hatch. But look here—suppose they braced the floor of the elevator from beneath. Temporary steel beams. She goes in. Maybe some person she trusts is inside and gives her hay mixed with marshmallows while the supports are being removed by mechanic commandos at top speed. So they get her down and parade her on Michigan Boulevard.”
“Oh, that’s a perfectly angelic solution!” said Katrina.
“As long as the floor is firm when she tests it.”
“Fabulous! Do elephants have a weakness for marshmallows? You are a wizard plotter. I think I may be able to handle it now. Totally inexperienced, you see.’
“I’d be only too happy to help. If you get stuck, this card of mine has all the numbers where I can be reached.”
“That’s awfully decent. Thanks.”
“And it’s a very bright idea for a kids’ book. Charming. I hope it goes over big.”
Trina for a moment considered telling him what a difference an independent success would make to her. He looked now, despite his own success and celebrity, like a man who had had very bad times, ugly defeats, choking disappointments, and so she was tempted to talk openly to him. It would bring some light and warmth into this dark frozen day, some emotional truth. But it wouldn’t be prudent to open up. He had helped with the elephant. However, there was Victor to think of. This Wrangel might be eager to make use of what she would tell him about herself to obtain privileged knowledge of Victor, for which he perhaps had an unusual, a ravenous, a kinky appetite.
“Victor is a marvelous man,” said Wrangel. “I always admired him enormously. I was just a kid when I met him, and he couldn’t possibly take me seriously. For a long time I’ve had a relationship to him of which he couldn’t be aware. I made a study of him, you see. I’ve put a tremendous lot of thought into him. I’m afraid I have to confess that he’s been an obsession. I’ve read all his books, collected his articles.”
“He thinks you came East on purpose, to talk to him.”
“It’s true, and I’m not surprised that he guessed it. He was sick last year, wasn’t he?”
“Near death.”
“I can see he’s not his old self.”
“I hope you don’t have some idea about straightening out his thinking, Mr. Wrangel.”
“Who, me? Do I think he’d listen to
“And I don’t want you to think that if you tell me your opinions I’m going to transmit them.”
“Why would I do that? It would be just as easy to send him my opinions in writing. Believe it or not, Miss Gallagher, it’s more a matter of affection.”
“Although you haven’t even seen him in thirty years?”
“The psyche has a different calendar,” he said. “Anyway, you haven’t got it quite right. Anybody who knows Victor naturally wants to talk about him. There’s so much to him.”
“There are a hundred people you could discuss him with—the famous painters he influenced, or types like Clement Greenberg or Kenneth Burke or Harold Rosenberg—or any of the big-time art theorists. Plus a whole regiment of other people’s wives.”
“You must be a musician, Miss Gallagher. You carry a violin.”
“It belongs to Victor’s youngest daughter and we’re taking it to Chicago for repair. If I were a violinist, why would I write a story about an elephant? I understand that you used to fiddle yourself.”
“Did Victor remember my left-handed fooling—my trick instrument?”
“Anyway, what were you going to say about Victor, Mr. Wrangel?”
“Victor was meant to be a great man. Very, very smart. A powerful mind. A subtle mind. Completely independent. Not really a Marxist, either. I went to visit Sidney Hook last week, who used to be my teacher at NYU, and we were talking about the radicals of the older generation in New York. Sidney pooh-poohed them. They never had been serious, never organized themselves to take control as the European left did. They were happy enough, talking. Talk about Lenin, talk about Rosa Luxemburg, or German fascism, or the Popular Front, or Leon Blum, or Trotsky’s interpretation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, or about James Burnham or whomever. They spent their lives discussing everything. If they felt their ideas were correct, they were satisfied. They were a bunch of mental hummingbirds. The flowers were certainly red, but there couldn’t have been any nectar in them. Still, it was enough if they were very ingenious, and if they drew a big, big picture—the very biggest picture. Now apply this to what Victor said one plane hop back, in Buffalo, that it takes a serious political life to keep reality real….”
Katrina pretended that he was saying this to the wrong party. “I don’t have any theoretical ability at all,” she said, and she bent toward him as if to call attention to her forehead, which couldn’t possibly have had real thoughts behind it. She was the farmer’s daughter who couldn’t remember how many made a dozen. But she saw from
